ALSO BY JEFF STRAND
A Bad Day for Voodoo
I Have a Bad Feeling about This
The Greatest Zombie Movie Ever
Stranger Things Have Happened
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Copyright © 2018 by Jeff Strand
Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design and illustrations by Nina Goffi
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Strand, Jeff, author.
Title: How you ruined my life / Jeff Strand.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Fire, [2018] | Summary: Rod’s life is going well until his rich, prankster cousin, Blake, moves in for three months--moving into his room and moving in on his girlfriend and band--ruining everything.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017037472 | (13 : alk. paper)
Subjects: | CYAC: Cousins--Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)--Fiction. | Bands (Music)--Fiction. | Punk rock music--Fiction. | Family life--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.S8963 How 2018 | DDC [Fic]--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017037472
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
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Encore!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
This book is dedicated to the kind people who’ve never actively tried to ruin my life. You know who you are!
1.
“Thanks for coming out tonight! Are you ready to rock?”
A couple of people in the audience indicate that yes, they are indeed ready to begin the process of rocking. A few others don’t look up from their cell phones, but I’m confident that they’ll discover their readiness to rock as soon as we start playing. The rest of the eleven or so people in the club haven’t bothered to walk over to the dance floor. Presumably, they’re waiting for the headline act before committing to whether or not they’re mentally and physically prepared to rock.
“We’re Fanged Grapefruit,” I say into the microphone. “This first song is an original called, ‘You Can’t Train a Goldfish to Catch Popcorn in Its Mouth, So Don’t Even Try.’ One, two, three, go!”
I can’t remember which of us came up with the name Fanged Grapefruit. I think it was Clarissa, our drummer. I consider myself the creative driving force of the band, but if you see Clarissa, you’ll understand why she doesn’t lose many arguments. She’s at least six foot three (though I’ve never measured her), and you wouldn’t want to arm wrestle her unless you were willing to lose an arm. When she really gets going, her drumsticks become a blur. And when she’s done with a set, the sticks look like they’ve been gnawed on by beavers.
Mel, short for Melvin, is lead guitar and background vocals. I’m lead vocals and rhythm guitar. Ironically, Mel is a worse guitar player and a better singer than me. Not everything we do in Fanged Grapefruit makes sense.
Mel doesn’t look like he should be in a punk rock band. He looks like he should be president of the Chess Club. Which he is, but I assure you, the guy plays chess with attitude. He also gets straight A’s and is likely to be our class valedictorian, and if so, I hope he’ll pause his inspiring commencement speech for a wicked guitar solo.
I’m Rod, short for Rodney. Nice to meet you. I’m pretty much average, I guess.
Other band names we’d brainstormed included Untidy Reptiles, Autocorrected Text Fail, Rod & the Whacknuts, Carnivorous Vegans, Impolite Music for Unruly People, The RMC Experiment, Say Goodbye to Your Ears, Pawn Takes Rook, Crunchy Noise, Crispy Noise, Chicken Fried Noise, (The Parentheticals), Apes with Monkey Faces, Hairnets Gloriously Aflame, Dog Eat Dog Eat Munchkin, The Self-Diagnosing Hypochondriacs, Sequel II, and Sushi Gun.
We play at this club, the Lane, every Monday, which is the only day you can get in if you’re under eighteen. We go onstage around eight, and we’re home by nine fifteen, so all our parents are cool with us being out on a school night. It also helps that they’ve never actually been inside the Lane, which is a bubbling pit of health code violations. If you have to go to the bathroom, hold it. Trust me.
I’m sure we’d have a much bigger audience if we could play on a Friday or Saturday night, but Clarissa, Mel, and I are only sixteen, so we’ve got a couple of years to go. (Sorry if it was insulting that I did the math for you.) We hope that by the time we’re old enough to play there on a weekend, we’ll have upgraded to venues where your feet don’t stick to the floor as often.
Anyway, we begin to rock out on our guitars and drums, and select members of the audience begin to move to the music. Well, okay, only two of them. And one is my girlfriend, Audrey. You might say that she doesn’t count, but we got together because I was in a band, so I think she does count, thank you very much.
Audrey runs our merch table. We never sell anything, though she gives away free stickers to people who look like they might be band managers. She’s as tiny as Clarissa is non-tiny. You won’t believe me if I say she’s the most gorgeous girl at our school,
