And then we were near the end.
“That’ll be another two weeks detention, Carson,” Mr. Gomez said, breathing heavily and writing something down. (He’d had to pry the pen and notebook off his desk.)
“For what?” I said, playing my part like always. “I didn’t do anything.”
“You want to make that three?”
I knew it was a bluff—it always was. He didn’t want to push his luck. I could fight back, after all, and tell my parents, and then the superintendent would get involved and it would be a huge mess. Neither of us wanted that. So I played into his bluff like always.
“No, sir.”
“Good. You may go now.”
And just like that, it was over.
CHAPTER 3
AFTER DETENTION, I MET UP WITH DILLON, DANIELLE, ZACK, AND Ethan by the school’s football field. I still had the package, of course, but at the moment I was more concerned about how much they’d glued down and if any of them had gotten caught. They usually helped me with my pranks, especially Dillon and Danielle, who were twin brother and sister. And they got detention from time to time. But I was usually the guy taking the fall. And I liked it that way. They were my master plans after all.
“What’s that?” Dillon asked, pointing at the package. “Is that like some sort of secret delivery that you have to make for a mob boss? Or did they finally get to you?”
Ethan, Danielle, and Zack all groaned, but I merely marveled at how close he might actually be to the truth. That guy in the suit could have been some mobster or something. I mean, I still had no idea who he was, or what was in the package.
But that was the thing about my best friend, Dillon. There was always a “they.” He was a conspiracy theorist, which basically meant that he was always convinced there was something fishy going on with absolutely everything at absolutely all times. And it changed from week to week as to who the “they” he was ranting about actually were. Sometimes it was aliens taking over the planet, sometimes it was microscopic robots, created by the government, that get inside our brains to control us, and other times it was Icelandic spies determined to take down the US so they could use our land to bury millions of cubes of Mako shark meat and then dig it up months later to eat it.
It was one of the things I loved most about Dillon, though. Sure it could get annoying sometimes, since he never let up and was always trying to get me to go investigate his theories with him, but most of the time it was too funny and interesting and different to be anything but entertaining. I mean, at least he envisioned this town being something more than what it was. And at least he said stuff that nobody else did. He didn’t just talk about what funny videos he watched on YouTube last night or who was going out with who, like pretty much everybody else. When he talked, it was usually something unexpected, even if it probably was made up.
Once, for about a week, Dillon was convinced that his younger sister was really a demon and was trying to kill him in his sleep by cramming Lucky Charms marshmallows into his ears. Or, even just last week, he tried to convince me that he saw some spy dressed as a lion tamer snooping around the water treatment plant across from the school. Another time he told me he found out that Walmart was really a secret front for a huge, international monkey-smuggling ring. That one was pretty far-fetched, even for him.
“Monkeys?” I had said.
“Yeah, monkeys.”
“Don’t you mean like drugs or guns or something?”
“No,” he said. “Monkeys. You know, for like secret drug testing and genetic experiments and illegal pets and stuff. They got to get the monkeys from somewhere, right? Now let’s go, we gotta go check it out!”
“Dillon, I’m not going to Walmart on a Saturday. That’s where everybody goes on Saturdays, including the weirdos. The things I’ve seen in that place on Saturdays haunt my dreams!”
“But the monkeys!”
I had just laughed at this. Dillon’s faced had remained grim. It was funny, sure, but he always took it seriously. He always used to say to me, “Yeah, you can laugh now, but one day you’ll see. You think the whole world really operates on the level?”
It was the same look he was giving me now, his eyes constantly flicking back to the package under my arm.
“This? This is nothing, just something I was supposed to bring to the school office today from my parents but forgot to,” I said, holding up the package. “I’m assuming since you’re all here that you got away safely?”
“Yeah,” Danielle, Dillon’s twin sister, said. “We glued stuff in at least thirty classrooms and even more doors and lockers and nobody even saw us.”
“Yeah, that goat thing was perfect!” Zack said. “The teachers all panicked and rushed outside. The school was deserted.”
“I still wish I’d gotten to see it, though. The goats, I mean,” Dillon said, seeming to have accepted my explanation of the package. For now.
“Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure at least a dozen kids caught it on their phones and it will be posted on YouTube by tonight, if it isn’t already,” I said. “Well, thanks again, guys. It’ll be hilarious tomorrow when everyone realizes what the real prank was. I gotta run or I’ll miss my bus.”
We said our good-byes and I jogged back toward the front of the school where the buses picked up each day.
I carried the package carefully on the bus and the walk home from where the bus dropped off. I debated putting it in my backpack, but it didn’t fit and I didn’t want to have to cram it inside. So instead I carried it under one arm like a football.
“Dude, nice job, with the goats and everything,” my brother Austin said almost as soon as I walked in the door.
He was entrenched on the couch as usual, his pants crumpled on the floor. I never understood why my older brother was so obsessed with walking around in his boxers all the time. But it was the first thing he did every day when he got home—take off his jeans, grab a soda, find the couch. Maybe it was just what every guy does after high school?
“You heard about that already?”
He laughed. “Yeah, everybody has heard about it. The whole town, practically.”
I nodded and couldn’t hide my grin, especially since it wouldn’t be until tomorrow that everyone understood what the true prank was.
Austin grinned back. “Nice work, brother. I bet the top of Gomez’s head blew off right there on the spot.”
“Yeah, he was pretty mad,” I said. “It was awesome.”
Austin nodded. “I bet. I mean, I’ll never forget the look on his face that one time I turned his office into a swimming pool. When— Hey, what’s that?”
He pointed at the package tucked under my arm.
“Oh, nothing,” I said, trying to play it cool.
Austin squinted and tilted his head. “No, really, what’s in there? Let me see it.”
“Nah, I’ll just be . . .” I started, but then suddenly he was on his feet and blocking the route to the stairs.
“What’s in the package?” he asked again.
My brother is a curious guy. Nosy is probably a better word for it. He didn’t like to miss out on anything that even had a remote chance of being fun, funny, or totally and completely reckless and dangerous. All three was the jackpot of course. And a mysterious package had possibilities.
Instead of answering, I held the package out to my left. When his eyes followed it, I darted quickly to my right. He reacted fast, but I had caught him off guard and so he overcompensated. That’s when I did a quick spin back to my left and I was past him just like that.
I backpedaled through the kitchen toward the stairs holding the package out in front of me. “Sorry, it’s top secret,” I said with a triumphant smile.
He didn’t pursue me but instead just grinned and then plopped himself back down onto the couch.
“Hey,” he called just as I’d started down the stairs to the basement where my room was, “I’m going to the circus tonight with some friends; you and Dillon and Danielle want to
come?”
The circus always came to town for a few weeks at the beginning of every school year. Except it was more like a circus–fair hybrid with rides and games and stuff in addition to the giant tent and acrobats and elephants. It was sort of a tradition that we went at least once every year, sometimes more. Pretty much every kid in town did.
It used to be the thing that I looked forward to the most. For those two weeks every year there was actually something cool to do in town. There were rides and games and animals and weirdo carnies around. We all liked to play a game we called “Guess Which Carnie Is Secretly a Serial Killer.”
But then I noticed, starting around fifth grade, that even the circus had begun to feel like a part of the North Dakota routine to me. It was just another section of the track that we were all on. I still went, and it was still fun. But it definitely wasn’t the same as it used to be. In fact, the simple truth that it was still the most exciting thing to happen around here every year almost made it feel worse. Like, if this was as exciting as things got around here, then we were all doomed.
“Mom made you ask me?” I said, knowing that no eighteen-year-old kid would really ever want his little brother and his friends tagging along.
He just rolled his eyes in response.
I was tempted to say yes, but the thought of abandoning the mysterious package in my closet didn’t seem like a very good idea. I mean, what if that guy really was a mobster? And his cronies came looking for the package? I didn’t want to be responsible for getting my parents whacked or something. My dad was already a terrible swimmer, and wearing a pair of concrete shoes certainly wouldn’t help much.
“Nah, I have stuff to do,” I said. “Aren’t you a little old for the circus anyway?”
“Yeah, well, there are, uh, ways to make pretty much anything fun,” he said.
I nodded, despite not really knowing what he meant exactly and then went downstairs to my room and hid the package in my closet.
CHAPTER 4
IT WAS AFTER DINNER NOW AND DARK OUTSIDE. I WAS BACK IN my room. And I had a problem.
I swear, before that moment, I really had no desire to open the package. Mostly because of what the sweaty guy in formal wear had said earlier that day when he’d handed it to me: And whatever you do, don’t open it!
Suddenly, though, alone in my room, with the day’s events behind me, staring at the simple brown paper wrapping, I was dying to know what was inside. Was it secret documents? A box of old worthless baseball cards? Maybe the whole thing had been an elaborate counter-prank orchestrated by Dillon?
I was so distracted during dinner that I almost blew my cover about the goats when my mom asked if I’d heard about it. Unsurprisingly, it had made the local news. Around here a herd of goats at a local middle school was prime Top Story material.
After she asked me about it, I shook my head innocently. Then I said something like, “Goats in a school? That’s crazy!”
Which made my brother laugh so hard that he spit a chunk of green bean right into my glass of milk. Which of course had then made me fling a bean back at Austin and then my dad started yelling at everyone to settle down.
But now here I was, back in my room, staring at the package and wishing I had X-ray vision or something. It dawned on me just then that this little brown package was the single most exciting and mysterious thing to ever come into my life. It sat on my bed and the moonlight coming in through my one small window made the brown wrapper almost glow. As if it was actually alive, taunting me.
Open me.
Come on, open me.
“I’d better not. That guy said . . .”
Ah, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Don’t you want to know what’s inside? How bad could it be?
“Um, I don’t know—you could be filled with a deadly gas, which I could release into the atmosphere and cause the zombie apocalypse.”
Pfft. What are the odds that really ends up being true? This is North Dakota; that kind of stuff doesn’t happen here. You know that.
The package had a good point.
“The thing is . . .”
“Carson,” my mom said from outside my room, “who are you talking to in there?”
Had I been talking out loud to the package?
“Nobody,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound as crazy as I probably was.
“Well, okay,” she said, sounding unconvinced. Nonetheless, I heard her walk down the hall to the laundry room.
Who are you calling a nobody?
“It doesn’t matter what you say, I’m not opening you,” I whispered.
There could be money inside, did you ever think of that?
The truth was I hadn’t thought of that. There could be money inside after all. In the movies, the mysterious packages that were exchanged in business deals and delivered by couriers always contained either money or . . . well, drugs.
Look at it this way. You could either not open me and deliver me to Mr. Jensen like the guy said to and then that will be that—you can go back to your same old North Dakota life and nothing at all will be different. You’ll still go to school and sit through boring lectures and take pointless tests so you can go to college and take even more tests all so you can get a job working in some tiny office here in town with a boss who plays solitaire all day long and goes bowling every other Tuesday night to add excitement to his life.
“Or?”
Or you could open me right here and now and see what’s inside and potentially find something that could change your life forever. Or at least make for an exciting couple of days.
The package made another good point. What I’d seen that day after school had been so unexpected, so utterly non–North Dakotan, that my brain had barely even been able to register that it had happened at all. And now here I was, with a chance to somehow become a part of whatever crazy thing was going on, with a chance to actually break the routine for once.
Well?
“I’m thinking. Give me a second.”
The package just stared at me. And so we were back to this. It looked so unassuming, sitting there wrapped up all neatly in its brown paper.
I mean, if it was something dangerous, then why was it being delivered to a school? In September, in North Dakota? And what about those pasty-faced guys? No, this probably had to be a prank of some sort, anyway. It was just the sort of ridiculous thing that made for good pranks. In the end, it was just too good to be true. There was no way it was real—it would be just too cool of a thing to actually be happening here.
I never thought you’d end up being such a chicken.
“That’s not fair, Package.”
There was a long pause.
Bok.
Bok-bok-bok.
“That’s not going to work, you know. I’m not eight years old anymore.”
Bok. Bok-bok-bok. Bok-BOK-bok-bok.
“Fine!”
I scooted my chair over toward the bed and picked up the package. I carefully lifted up the end flaps, picking at the tape first so I didn’t tear the paper. Though I’m not sure why I thought that suddenly mattered since I was now doing exactly what the guy in the suit had told me not to.
Underneath the brown paper wrapping was a box. It was black and rectangular, slightly smaller than a shoe box, and about half as thick. There were no markings on the outside of any kind. The cold surface seemed to be made of metal and at first it didn’t look as though it had a lid, or any seams at all for that matter. But then I saw the small quarter-size ring resting inside a shallow indentation.
A handle.
I looped my index finger through the ring and pulled. It didn’t budge.
What are you trying to do, pick my nose? Put some muscle into it!
I had thought the package was done taunting me.
I grabbed the edge of the box with my free hand and tightened my grip on the little ring. I held my breath, then gave it a good, hard yank, as if I were trying to start an old lawnmower. This time there was a click.
The lid swung open.
But I’d actually pulled too hard and so I lost my grip and my balance and sprawled back onto the floor, tipping over my chair.
And then, from the floor, I heard a woman’s voice rise out from the black box still sitting on my bed. A real voice this time. One that actually talked to me aloud.
“Hello,” the box said.
CHAPTER 5
I SLOWLY GOT TO MY FEET. I WASN’T EVEN SURE THAT I REALLY wanted to see what was inside. A real live lawn gnome? A spirit that I’d just freed after years of captivity? A talking shoe with a beard?
But it wasn’t any of those things; it was nothing alive at all. Inside the box, just below the surface, was an LCD screen. Its display was entirely blue, except for this message in white letters:
Touch Here to Continue . . .
I just stood there and looked at the blue screen for a while. I wasn’t even trying to figure out what to do. My brain was too shocked to process or entertain those kinds of thoughts. So mostly I was just gaping at it.
Then it spoke again and I nearly jumped right through my ceiling and into the kitchen one floor above me.
“Please touch the screen to continue.”
The woman’s voice was friendly and polite, a little robotic. It sounded just like any other automated voice I’d heard before. Like the ones that play over the intercom at the airport, repeating the same messages over and over again.
If this was a prank, it was elaborate. Too elaborate. For the first time, I realized, I was really, truly considering that this might be real. That the sweaty guy in the suit really was serious about this box being important and that I was suddenly in possession of something I had no business being in possession of. But I also had to admit that I liked the possibility that this was real. For the first time pretty much ever, I truly didn’t know what was going to happen next. Just sitting there staring at a metal box had suddenly become the most exciting thing I’d ever done, as strange as that sounds. Even more exciting than when Dillon and I snuck onto the Zipper for the very first time at the circus when we were in fourth grade.
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