We got help from Audiovisual Club, borrowed spotlights from Drama Club, and talked Coach Wilder (football coach and health sciences teacher) into letting us use his sound system.
He was nervous about turning middle-schoolers loose with expensive electronic equipment, so when we borrowed the system, we sort of borrowed Coach Wilder along with it.
At first he just hovered around us as we worked, making sure no one accidentally stuck a tongue in a light socket or something.
Once he got a whiff of what we were trying to do, he started tossing out suggestions—suggestions that were surprisingly good for a guy whose brain spent so much time cooped up in a mildew-infested locker room.
“Squirrel-cage fans,” he growled. He was standing beside the sound system, beefy arms folded across his chest like giant sausages squeezed into a gray sweatshirt. “What you need are squirrel-cage fans. And footlights.”
We frowned, nodded, and gave one another confused looks. What the heck were squirrel-cage fans?
“Don’t worry about it.” Coach Wilder pulled a stubby pencil from behind his ear and a small, grubby notebook from the pocket of his workout pants. “I got connections.”
He worked his jaw for a minute, licked the pencil lead, scribbled something in the notebook, and gave a solid, football-coach nod. He tucked his notebook back in his pocket.
The next day, when we got to Art Club, there they were: four huge metal fans that looked like enormous hamster wheels and a row of small, portable lights, lined up along the floor.
Coach Wilder was right. They were exactly what we needed.
I dragged Noah into the action. He wasn’t a member of Art Club, but we needed a theme song, and Noah knew everything about music.
(Everything about everything, really. If Art Club decided to recite medieval poetry or launch a satellite into space, Noah Spooner would be our man.)
Case File: The Wild Man
Status: Sidekick, apparently—to The Spoonster, a.k.a. my best friend, Noah Spooner.
Base: The Amelia M. Earhart Middle School boys’ locker room.
Superpower: Able to endure the stench of recently worn gym shoes without a flinch.
Superweapon: Access to equipment: helmets, pads, tackling dummies, fans, ladders, duct tape, elastic bandages, spare spotlight parts—if you need it, Coach Wilder can get it.
Real Name: Ronald T. Wilder, Head Football Coach/Health Sciences Teacher
Once Noah and Coach Wilder put their heads together, they were like the Dr. Frankensteins of the anti–pep assembly soundtrack. Coach had a whole collection of stadium jams. They riffled through to pick the best tunes. They collected drumbeats. They recorded sound effects. They hooked Noah’s laptop into Coach Wilder’s system and mixed and taped and edited and calibrated and pieced the parts together into a monster of thundering sound. Noah, like a true mad scientist, documented every step in his logbook.
Finally, when the monster was ready, they flipped a switch and let it roar.
Art Club shot one another raised-eyebrow looks, mouths open.
Because it was perfect. Their monster soundtrack instantly took our anti–pep assembly to a whole new level.
Spencer shot me a thumbs-up. “Puh-zing,” he mouthed.
I nodded.
By the time Friday rolled around, Art Club was ready.