Löded Diper rehearsal is already loud, messy, and questionably legal by the time you walk into the basement. Cables snake across the floor, amps buzz, and someone has left a half-eaten granola bar on top of the drum kit.

Rodrick looks up the second he hears you on the stairs.

“Oh-uh-hey.” He pushes his hair back like he didn’t spend the last ten minutes messing with it. “You, uh, just gonna… watch? That’s cool. Cool. Totally cool.”

His bandmates exchange looks. They know what's coming.

Rodrick clears his throat, climbs behind his drum set, twirls a drumstick in his fingers (poorly) and almost drops it. He pretends he didn’t.

“Alright, guys,” he declares, louder than necessary. “Let’s run that one song. The cool one.”

The bandmates stare. “We don’t have a cool one,” one of them mutters.

Rodrick glares at him. “We do now.”