The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

Chapter 445: 445 | The Boardwalk Was Always The Plan [CASTLE BONUS]

"No," I said.

"It’s a little manly," Caden offered.

"It is zero percent manly. This is six teenagers in a parking lot outside a closed strip club next to a tax preparation office. This is the opposite of manly. This is what gets screenshotted and sent to Steele by someone in the nail salon who recognizes our uniforms."

"We’re not wearing uniforms."

"We’re six men aged eighteen in an SUV staring at a neon woman in a cape. The context does the work."

Caden Holt rubbed the back of his head where I had hit him and produced the specific expression of someone who had spent considerable effort planning something that was collapsing in real time and lacked the emotional infrastructure to process the failure.

His hazel eyes moved from the sign to the parking lot to the nail salon to his phone screen, where the Yelp page remained open, and for a fraction of a second the class clown disappeared and what sat in the passenger seat was a kid who had tried to do something nice and miscalculated in a direction that would follow him through the remainder of the academic year.

"Okay," Caden said. "Okay. I accept responsibility. I planned Boyz Day around a strip club that isn’t open because I genuinely did not know that strip clubs have operating hours. I assumed they were always available, like hospitals or gas stations. This is a gap in my education that I will address privately and never discuss again."

"I’m putting it in the notebook," Percy said.

"Please don’t put it in the notebook."

"It’s already in the notebook. The pen touched paper four sentences ago."

"Can you at least categorize it as a miscalculation rather than a character deficit?"

"I have categorized it as ’Holt, C. — navigational error stemming from insufficient research into entertainment sector operating norms.’ The subcategory is ’Boyz Day Incident.’"

"There’s a subcategory."

"There is always a subcategory."

Marco threw a chip at Caden’s head. It bounced off his temple and landed in the cup holder. "Brother. My man. My guy. I love you and I will defend you with my life and also my dinner plate, but you planned six hours of male bonding activities and the anchor was a building that won’t open for another two hours and forty-six minutes."

"I had a secondary plan."

"The secondary plan is ramen." Marco checked his phone. "The ramen place you found is three blocks from here. It opens at eleven."

"Everything good opens at eleven!" Caden’s voice cracked with the injustice of a universe that had conspired against his one attempt at organized social contribution. "Why does nothing in this city open before eleven? What happens between nine and eleven? What is the city doing?"

"Sleeping," Finn said. "Normal people are sleeping, Holt. That’s what people do on Saturday mornings. They sleep. They don’t ride Ubers to strip clubs."

"Hero-themed entertainment venues."

"Strip clubs with capes."

The driver cleared his throat with the delicacy of a man who had calculated the exact distance between professional courtesy and personal judgment and decided the meter still running gave him permission to occupy the space between them. "Gentlemen. The meter is still running."

I pulled out my phone and opened the map application because someone in this vehicle needed to demonstrate basic logistical competence before we ended up circling the same strip mall until the nail salon staff began taking photographs for their group chat.

The surrounding area contained exactly what you would expect from a commercial district whose architectural highlights included a cape-themed strip club and a tax preparation office sharing a wall: fast food chains, a pawn shop, two barbershops competing for the same demographic, a gym that appeared closed permanently despite its optimistic signage, and four blocks south along the coastal access road, a boardwalk that extended toward Verano’s entertainment district with the kind of generic reliability that mornings like this required.

The boardwalk opened at nine, which meant it was open now, which meant I had salvaged Caden’s social coordination disaster through the application of a functioning phone and baseline awareness of what buildings existed within walking distance of a strip club that would not open until sunset.

"South," I told the driver. "Take Meridian four blocks to the coastal access road. Drop us at the boardwalk entrance."

Caden turned in his seat. "The boardwalk?"

"The boardwalk is open. The boardwalk has food. The boardwalk has an arcade that probably opens before eleven because boardwalk arcades understand that Saturday mornings exist. We are going to the boardwalk, eating something that violates every nutritional guideline Steele has established for us, playing games designed for twelve-year-olds, and pretending that the last nine minutes of this parking lot did not occur."

"Can we still get ramen at eleven?"

"We can get ramen at eleven."

"This is the new plan," Caden announced to the car, his grin reassembling itself from the wreckage of the strip club revelation with the resilience of someone whose ego recovered faster than his judgment failed. "The boardwalk was always the plan. The previous location was a decoy designed to test group cohesion under unexpected circumstances. You all passed."

"Nobody passed," Marco said. "We all lost. Every single one of us lost the moment we got in this car."

The Uber reversed out of the parking lot and I watched the neon sign shrink in the rear window, the silhouetted cape woman flickering twice before disappearing behind the nail salon’s roofline. Percy documented the departure time and the strip club’s GPS coordinates in his notebook, which would exist permanently in his records for reasons that could only be described as either professionalism or psychological warfare depending on when Percy decided to deploy the information.

Eden leaned forward between the seats. "So we’re definitely not going in there at eleven, right?"

"We are not going in there at eleven."

"What about twelve?"

"Eden."

"I’m just asking! Caden brought it up and now it’s in my head and I can’t get it out! Do you think they have a bee-themed dancer? Like, hypothetically. If someone wanted to know. For research purposes."

I smacked Caden on the back of the head again.

"OW! That one was Eden’s fault!"

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!