20 Bang for Your Buck

Chapter 20 BANG FOR YOUR BUCK "Let me do the talking, okay?" Coke told his sister as they approached the front of Boom Pow! The Fireworks Superstore. "Okay, okay." Before they opened the door, Coke took out his wallet to see how much money he had. Minus the five dollars he had spent on gag underwear at the souvenir store, there were fifty dollars he had saved from raking leaves back home, plus the money his mother had given him. "Do you have any money?" he asked Pep. "I have forty dollars," she replied. "But that's the money Mom gave me plus all my babysitting money. I don't want to spend it all on

fireworks." "Look," Coke said, "Evil Elvis is trying to kill us. Do you grasp the magnitude of that? He's trying to kill us. He's got weapons. You know what they say. Desperate times call for desperate measures. We need all the firepower we can afford." "Okay, okay," Pep said, handing over the money she had worked so hard to earn. There were big signs plastered all over the window of the store. Call us before your next party or special event! Get more bang for your buck! Come here for all your pyro needs! Coke pulled open the door. The place was huge. It looked a little bit like a supermarket, but instead of aisles marked SOUP, DAIRY, and

FROZEN FOOD, they were marked MISSILES, ROCKETS, AERIAL REPEATERS, and ROMAN CANDLES. The twins picked an aisle randomly to walk down. It was jammed with all kinds of explosives in scary-looking packages, with names like Midnight Dynamite, Purple Powerhouse, Nuclear Warhead, Sky Slammer, Freaky Tiki, and Hairy Eyeball. "This isn't a store," Pep marveled. "It's an arsenal." "If this place ever catches on fire," Coke said, "I just hope I'm here to watch it blow." A tall, skinny, and extremely well-pimpled employee wearing a Boom Pow! T-shirt came toward them. He looked like a high school kid. His name tag said Trey. "I'm sorry, but you gotta be eighteen years old to buy fireworks, y'know," Trey told them. "You two don't look eighteen." "Let me handle this," Coke whispered to his sister. "This redneck looks pretty dumb. He's probably the result of some serious inbreeding."

Coke straightened his posture to address the kid. "You're right, technically," he said, "but we're dizygotic twins. So two fertilized eggs were implanted in our mother's uterus wall at the same time. In other words, together we're twenty-six years old." Coke glanced at Pep to make sure she wasn't going to open her big fat mouth. Trey stared at the two of them for a moment, looking back and forth from one to the other. "Okay," he finally said. "What do you need?" "We figured we'd buy some firecrackers," Pep said. "Firecrackers?!" Trey spit on the floor, then hollered, "Hey, guys, get this! These kids want to buy firecrackers!" A few men standing around the cash register started falling all over themselves like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. "I thought we agreed that I would do the talking?" Coke whispered to his sister angrily.

Then he put one arm on Trey's shoulder and said, "She's just kidding. We want the real stuff." "Well, now you're talkin'," Trey said. "We got megabangers, herbies, California candles, Texas rockets, Killer Comets, triple-whistler bottle rockets, anything you want. The X-18 Mega Blast is on sale this week. How much money are you thinkin' to spend?" "We have a hundred bucks and change," Coke said. "Maybe you can make some recommendations?" "Hmmmm," Trey said, picking up a large box from a shelf. "Lemme see. We just got in these American Beauties. They're five-hundred-gram cakes that explode in red, white, and blue with white strobes. Or maybe you'd rather go with a Barrel Buster. The blast opens up like a round of machine-gun fire. It's awesome." "Which one makes the biggest explosion?" Coke asked. "Well," Trey said, "both of 'em are pretty intense. I mean, you get too close to either of

these babies, and you'll have a headache that'll last you a lifetime. But if you're looking for flat-out, blow-out-the-ears power, I'm thinking the best thing for you might be our Classic Repeater Four Pack. Four repeaters in one package— Green Bamboo, Big Snow, Yellow Bees, and Cloud Dragon." "Wow, you sure know a lot about fireworks," Coke said. "Yeah," Trey replied. "I'm sorta into blowing stuff up." "Who isn't?" said Coke. "I'm not," said Pep. "Well, you're a girl," Trey said with a laugh. Then he and Coke high-fived each other. "You can do some serious damage with this stuff," Coke said. "You ain't kiddin', buster," Trey agreed. "It's like having a missile silo in your own backyard. Listen, you look like good kids. I'll tell you what I'm gonna do. For a hundred bucks, you can have the Classic Repeater Four Pack, and I'll