Brendan Dude

Joey apologized a million times after that one show at Goosehaven. He did it so much that it got annoying. Yeah, whatever. It was an accident. Let it go. At least the gig after it was pretty damn awesome.

And besides, maybe those old farts told their grandkids about us.

Or more likely, they completely forgot about our performance.

God, I hate old people.

My birthday sped by - March 7th, and I turned fourteen. Joy! I couldn’t care less about getting another year older. Puberty sucked enough without a number attached to me.

And my birthday was exactly a week before Pi Day. You know, March 14th, 3.14…well, anyways, Claymore was having a huge parade devoted to freakin’ pie. Both the math and food aspects.

The event was titled, “Pie Day.” Imagine that.

The only people who actually cared about it were little kids who only said they like the math part to impress mommy and daddy. They were really only in it for the actual pie, not the pi. The entire thing was pointless. My parents paid taxes for it. If there was a bigger waste of money than Pie Day, let me know, and I’ll send you a million bucks.

And guess who was playing at Pie Day?

Yes.

Joseph Veins, Plaster Caster’s manager/“tour manager,” and my idiot brother, booked us.

Don’t get me wrong - I was actually kind of looking forward to it. That is, until the guidelines were sprung upon us.

We’d be wearing giant fruit costumes. Yep, yours truly was the blueberry, Soria was the strawberry, Luke was a banana, and poor Ren was a singing apple.

And it was hard enough to imagine playing with giant foam fruits limiting our movements. Then, we were told we had to play a song about pie.

We were all ready and prepared to play our song “Common Sense.” But when we were informed of the pie song dilemma, Soria scrounged together a halfassed song describing the fruity wonder. Even she said it was crappy.

So on March 14th, we spent most of the day balancing ourselves on a parade float while moving down Knight Street in ginormous fruit suits.

“Crap! My zipper’s stuck,” Soria grumbled, twisting and turning to reach the back of her costume.

“Here,” Ren said, giving her a hand. His head barely poked out, so he had to stretch his neck way up to get to the mic.

Luke probably had the most trouble. The curve of his banana costume got in the way of his bass, and he had to hold it up to his chest to play it properly. As the drummer, I was going wild with my hands and had no use for a giant blue ball in my way. Why do you think most drummers drum shirtless? The tiniest obstacle could restrict our movement.

I tripped on the way to my stool, relying on Joey to help me up. “Yeah, nice choice,” I grunted to him. He rubbed the back of his head.

“Sorry man, options are limited. At least you’re getting some recognition,” he said.

Ch’yeah.

“Break a leg,” he added. With that stupid costume, I might have.

The float flung forward with a jolt. Ren stumbled backward but regained his wits as we rounded the corner and waited for our cue.

We started to play. Because of the costumes, we went a little slower than rehearsed. Poor Ren had to shout loud as he could to make himself heard, and even then he was barely audible. Soria had to limit herself to just chords, since she could hardly move her arms. And Luke? Well…

Luke set off a pretty disastrous chain of events.

First, he tripped backwards over a cord and landed with a huge thud. Then Soria got off beat while he squirmed all over the floor. Ren didn’t even notice all the commotion until the song was over. I rolled my eyes and kept on playing since most of the people had disappeared.

Yeah. Most. Not all.

“Wha - oh, hey! Look up there! Isn’t that just precious? Haha! Losers! You guys suck!”

It was the perfect time to screw up, during a parade with giant fruit outfits. Thanks for the identification, Joey. We really freakin’ owed you.

And to make matters worse, the ones that made fun of us were high schoolers right next to us that we’d have to deal with next year. Perfect!

When we stopped, I put aside my drumsticks to help Luke up. He was laughing his ass off the whole time, saying, “Great show, guys!”

“Tsh. Yeah, that went wonderful,” I spat.

“Well, it could’ve been worse,” Ren said.

“How?” Soria questioned.

“…We could be naked…”

We nodded and shrugged, agreeing. In a blur, Joey stumbled up on the float with his mouth wide open. “Luke! Dude, you okay?!”

He smirked. “Yeah, you know…balance betrayed me.”

Joey patted his back. “Great job anyways, guys. You made pie rock,” he grinned, trotting away.

“Dangit! Crap…wait, no…yeah, my zipper’s stuck again,” Soria muttered. Ren darted over to her side to help her out, clambering the best he could in the crimson apple costume.

“You look like Pluto, man,” Luke pointed out to me.

I squeezed the rubbery foam and grunted. “This stupid thing’s going in the trash. Anyone got scissors?”

Soria climbed out of her giant strawberry, straightening her shirt. “Hey, there’s a new nickname - Brendanberry!” she laughed. The others smiled at me.

“Yeah, well…Soria Strawberry!” I countered.

“Touché.” She didn’t look fazed.

Luke walked over to pick up his bass and ended up knocking over an amp, because of his costume’s shape. It landed with a big thump on the concrete, smashing to three big pieces.

“Aw, man....”

Strike two.