The Worst Night Ever

by Dave Barry

  “You filed a complaint with the police?” my dad said.

  “Dad,” I said, “it’s true. There was a Komodo—”

  “We investigated the complaint,” interrupted Officer Daly.

  “You did?” I said.

  “Actually, Officer Morales did.” Officer Daly nodded toward the younger police officer, who was looking at me unhappily. “Officer Morales checked out the backyard of the Bevin house, with the full cooperation of Mr. Bevin. Officer Morales, what did you find in the backyard?”

  “A backyard,” said Officer Morales.

  “No dragon?”

  “No dragon.”

  “That’s because it’s underground!” I said. “They’re hiding it under one of those mounds! There’s a tunnel!”

  Everybody was staring at me.

  “Officer Morales,” said Officer Daly, “did you see a tunnel in Mr. Bevin’s backyard?”

  “I did not.”

  “It’s hidden!” I said. “It has a secret entrance! I saw it! You need to go back and look again! I’ll show you where it is!”

  Officer Daly sighed. “So that’s your story? That’s why you claim you were at Mr. Bevin’s house?”

  “Yes! It’s the truth!”

  “You’re sure there’s not some other reason?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m talking about something that was missing from Nick Bevin’s room, the room you and your friend went into.”

  “What’s missing?” I said.

  “A watch. An Apple watch.”

  “We didn’t take his watch!”

  Nick spoke up. “It’s the forty-two millimeter model. It’s gone.”

  My mom gasped. She grabbed my arm. “Did you take his watch?”

  “No!” I said. “We just went to get Frank back!”

  “You stole my watch,” said Nick. “And then Troy saw you climbing the wall. You knew we’d figure out it was you who took the watch. So you made up this stupid story about some endangered lizard as a distraction, to get us in trouble.”

  “That’s not true!” I said. “We saw the dragon!”

  Even to me, that sounded kind of weird.

  Officer Daly held up his hand to quiet me and Nick. He turned to my parents and said, “Look, I’d like to clear this up as quickly as possible.”

  “So would we,” said my dad.

  “So what I’m asking,” said Officer Daly, “is if you’d give me permission to take a look around your son’s room.”

  Dad looked at me.

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I don’t have his watch.”

  “All right, then,” said Officer Daly. “Mr. Bevin, why don’t you and your sons stay out here with Officer Morales. I’ll go inside with the Palmers.”

  We trudged up the walkway to our house. My dad unlocked the front door and we went inside, where we were joyfully attacked by our large hairy dog, Csonka, who as my dad likes to say is a cross between a Labrador retriever and an aircraft carrier. Csonka is always very sad when we leave the house. And whenever we come back, even if we were only gone five minutes, Csonka has to demonstrate, by intensive licking, how thrilled he is to have us home again. He’s always especially thrilled if we bring somebody new, like Officer Daly. After he licked Officer Daly hello, he sprinted off to get his favorite toy, which is a stuffed animal that was originally supposed to look like a hedgehog, although after years of being slobbered on by Csonka it’s really just a filthy disgusting wad of fur. It has a squeaker in it, which amazingly still works. Csonka came racing back with his hedgehog, squeaking it like crazy and prancing around Officer Daly, trying to get Officer Daly to try to take it away, which is Csonka’s favorite game. He thinks everybody wants his hedgehog as much as he does.

  But Officer Daly didn’t want the hedgehog. Nobody was in the mood to play with Csonka. So he ended up just standing there, squeaking a little sadly, as we all walked past and went down the hall to my bedroom.

  I wasn’t nervous. I was upset about the Bevins calling the police on me, but I wasn’t worried about Officer Daly searching my room, because I knew I didn’t have the watch.

  We stopped outside my door.

  “This is his room,” said my dad.

  Officer Daly opened the door and went in. My parents, Taylor, and I stood in the hall, watching. Behind us stood Csonka, emitting the occasional squeak in case anybody wanted to play.

  Officer Daly was methodical, going around the room clockwise, starting near the door. He looked in my closet, checked the shelves, then moved to my desk and went through the drawers. He walked by the window to my bed. He knelt and looked under the bed, then lifted the mattress enough to look under it. Then he picked up the two pillows.

  Then he stopped and looked.

  There, on the bed, was the watch.

  “Ohmigod,” said my mom.

  My dad was staring at me.

  Officer Daly reached down and picked up the watch.

  “I did not put that there,” I said. “I swear.”

  “Then how did it get there?” said Officer Daly.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I swear I didn’t—”

  “The window,” said Taylor.

  Everybody looked at her. “Did you lock it when you came in last night?” she said.

  I thought about it. I left it unlocked when I snuck out so I could sneak back in. I didn’t remember locking it when I got home. “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.”

  Taylor looked at Officer Daly. “So that’s how they did it. They came in through the window while we were at the soccer game. They had lots of time.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” said Officer Daly.

  “The Bevins.”

  “You think they planted the watch here?”

  “They must have!” I said.

  “Why would they do that?”

  “They want to frame me!” I said.

  “But why?”

  “Because I saw the Komodo dragon at their house! They want to get me out of the way!”

  “You mean the Komodo dragon that Officer Morales didn’t find when he went over there?”

  “But it’s there! Matt saw it too!”

  Officer Daly sighed. “Son, you’re just making it worse for yourself, here. Mr. Bevin is a reasonable man. If you just admit what you did…”

  “But I didn’t do it!” I said. “I swear I didn’t! I’m not a thief! Mom, Dad, don’t you believe me?”

  I looked at them both.

  Mom was crying.

  Dad was looking away.

  They didn’t believe me.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Palmer,” said Officer Daly, “I need to take your son to the police station.”

  The good news was, I didn’t have to go to jail. Neither did Matt, who was also picked up at his house and taken down to the police station. We got a long lecture from Officer Daly about what could happen to us. He mentioned the word “prison” maybe fifteen times. Every time, my mom made a moaning sound.

  The worst part was the Bevin brothers, who sat with their father during the lecture, looking at me and Matt, but mainly me. They tried to look serious, but I could see in their eyes that they were totally loving watching us get reamed out.

  After the reaming, Officer Daly told us that the great and powerful Mr. Frank Bevin had decided, very generously, not to press charges. My dad shook Frank’s hand and thanked him like fifty times; I thought my mom was going to kiss him. Matt’s parents also went on and on about how grateful they were. Frank Bevin said he was a parent himself, and he understood that boys will be boys and kids sometimes did stupid things, but it shouldn’t ruin their lives. Then he looked at Matt and me and said there was one condition, which was that he did not want us to come on his property again. My parents and Matt’s parents said absolutely, we would never come anywhere near the Bevin house. My mom assured Frank that if I got caught on his property, I wouldn’t have to worry about going to prison, because she, personally, would kill me.

&nbs
p; I wasn’t 100 percent sure she was exaggerating.

  Anyway, I was relieved that I wasn’t going to prison. But something bothered me. Why did Frank Bevin make such a big deal about us not going to his house? I didn’t believe he really thought we would go back there and try to steal stuff. I believed it had to do with whatever was going on in his backyard. The look he shot at Matt and me was not a friendly, forgiving look. It was a mean look, and it said stay away.

  Which I definitely planned to do.

  We walked out of the police station with Matt’s family. Matt and I stood for a few minutes on the sidewalk listening to the two sets of parents discuss what a pair of disrespectful idiots we were and how long they planned to ground us. They didn’t decide on a definite time period, but they agreed it would be many days. Possibly even months. Possibly years. Possibly they would decide to confine us to our rooms for the rest of our lives. When we died the hearse would carry us directly from our rooms to the cemetery. Our tombstones would say PERMANENTLY GROUNDED.

  So maybe we would have been better off with jail.

  While we were standing on the sidewalk, the three Bevins came out of the station. My parents and Matt’s parents decided that they had to thank Frank Bevin again for being so generous and forgiving and blah blah blah.

  While that was going on, Nick and Troy drifted over to where I was standing. They both had big smiles on their faces. Nick stuck out his hand to shake mine. “No hard feelings, right, Palmer?”

  Like an idiot, I stuck my hand out. Nick took it and started squeezing, hard. My hand felt like a truck was driving over it. I tried to pull it away, but Nick just squeezed harder, still smiling. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of hearing me whimper, but I did make kind of a high-pitched noise, and I could feel tears in my eyes. Of course my parents didn’t notice any of this because they were too busy kissing the wonderful generous butt of Mr. Frank Bevin.

  Finally, just when I thought all the bones in my hand were going to crack, Nick let go.

  “See you in school, Palmer,” he said.

  I didn’t say anything. I was rubbing my right hand with my left. Trying to get the pain out.

  Troy leaned over and—just loud enough for me to hear but nobody else—said, “You really should keep your bedroom window locked.”

  Then the Bevins got into Frank’s brand-new black Mercedes Maybach S600, which cost like $200,000, and drove smoothly away. I rode home with my family in my dad’s eight-year-old Toyota Camry, listening to my mom tell me, in great detail, all the ways my behavior was unacceptable.

  Other than that it was a fun Saturday.

  When we got home my parents told me to go straight to my room. At least they didn’t take away my phone. So I texted with Matt, who was also stuck in his room. Mainly we texted about how much the situation sucked, especially the fact that our own parents thought we were thieves.

  During this conversation Matt actually had a good idea, which was that maybe Victor could fly his drone over the Bevin backyard to get some video proof that we were telling the truth. So we texted Victor and told him what was going on, and he said that after it got dark, he’d go out on the patio to watch the Bevin house and see if he could figure out a good time to fly the drone across the canal. He said he’d connect with us on MultiFacet, which was this app he had on his phone that would let him stream video from the drone so we could watch. Victor is very tech-y.

  While I was sitting around my room waiting for it to get dark, Taylor knocked on my door.

  “What,” I said.

  She opened the door and peeked in. “Can I talk to you?”

  “About what? How I’m grounded forever?” I really didn’t feel like hearing her mock me, which is what I figured she wanted to do.

  “No,” she said, stepping into my room and closing the door. “I wanted to help you.”

  “Help me what?”

  “Prove those people have a Komodo dragon. I think it’s horrible that they have that poor animal in captivity.”

  “Okay,” I said, “but that poor animal is huge, and it looked like it wanted to eat somebody.”

  “That’s because it was scared.”

  “Well that makes two of us.”

  “Anyway, I want to help.”

  “How?”

  “Marissa lives in Bay Estates.”

  Marissa is another one of Taylor’s best friends. She has like ten of them.

  “So?”

  “So I could go to Marissa’s house, and I could walk over to the Bevins’ and try to get a picture of the Komodo dragon.”

  I held up my hand. “Taylor, no. You can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because these are bad guys.”

  “I’m not afraid of them.”

  “Well, you should be. They’re really bad, and they’re not going to let you just walk in and take pictures.”

  “They won’t even notice me. I’ll just be some harmless little girl around the neighborhood.”

  “Taylor, no. It’s too dangerous.”

  “So you’re just gonna let them get away with this?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Do you have a plan?”

  “Kind of.”

  That perked her up. “Really? What is it?”

  I sighed, because there was no way she was going to leave until she knew everything. So I told her about Victor’s drone.

  “I like it,” she said. “Text me when we’re ready to start.”

  “We?” I said.

  “Yeah, we,” she said, on her way out the door.

  So as if the day wasn’t already weird enough, now I was Plan Buddies with my sister, even though, technically, we hated each other.

  I spent an hour or so watching random stuff on Netflix without really seeing it. It got dark out. I kept staring at my phone. Finally it made a booping sound, and there was Victor in a box on the screen, holding his drone. He had a Bluetooth thing in his ear. There were two smaller boxes on the bottom of the screen, one with Matt in it, and one with me.

  “Can you guys see me?” said Victor.

  Matt and I said we could. My door opened and Taylor came in. She must have been lurking outside listening. She sat on the bed next to me.

  “Hi, Victor; hi, Matt,” she said.

  “Why is she there?” said Matt.

  “Never mind,” I said.

  “Okay, listen,” said Victor. “A boat just pulled up to the Bevins’ dock, so I’m gonna launch the drone. I’m changing the video feed now so we can watch the drone camera on our phones. Let me know if it’s working.” The screen went black for a few seconds, and then we were seeing Victor’s sneakers on the patio, in the weird green color you see on night-vision cameras.

  “It’s working,” I said. “I can see your feet.”

  “Me too,” said Matt.

  “Okay,” said Victor. “Here goes.”

  He set the drone down, so now we were seeing a super-close-up view of a patio brick. Then he turned on the drone and it started to rise. We saw more bricks, and then we saw Victor, with green skin, looking up at the drone and holding the remote controller. He got smaller as the drone rose, then disappeared off the edge of the screen as it moved out over the canal. For ten seconds or so we mainly saw blackness while the drone crossed the canal. I shivered a little, remembering what it was like to paddle on that dark water at night.

  Then the drone was over the Bevins’ dock, and we could see boats tied up. The metal door in the wall was open. The drone slowed down and went over the wall. I was leaning over my phone now, staring hard at the screen, trying to make sense of the greenish blobs below.

  “There they are,” said Victor.

  I saw them. Moving green people-shapes on the edge of the screen, surrounding a squarish thing.

  “It looks like another crate,” I said. “But it’s smaller than the other one.”

  The drone was right over them now. They were moving the crate along the walkway, toward t
he house.

  “I’m going lower,” said Victor.

  The drone started down slowly. I counted four people-shapes around the crate. I kind of thought I could make out the Bevin brothers down there, but I wasn’t sure.

  “Careful,” I said to Victor. I was almost whispering, even though there was no way the shapes could hear me.

  The drone got lower. The shapes had stopped now. It looked like they were next to one of the mounds.

  The drone dropped a little lower. One of the shapes turned on a flashlight—it was a really bright greenish-white on the screen—and shined it sideways, and I could see I was right—they were next to one of the weird backyard mounds. Another shape moved toward the mound.

  “Okay,” I said, “I think maybe they’re about to open a door.”

  Now I was staring at my phone screen so hard my eyes hurt. The shape leaned over and reached toward the mound. This was it; they were going to open the door, and then we’d see them transfer whatever was in the crate.

  “Get ready to record this,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Victor.

  Then suddenly the flashlight swung away from the mound and pointed up, straight at the drone. The light made the screen flare almost totally white.

  “Get it out of there!” I said.

  Then the screen went black.

  “What happened?” That was Matt’s voice.

  “Victor?” I said. “You there?”

  “Hang on,” said Victor. The screen was still black. About a minute went by. Then the screen flickered and Victor’s face appeared.

  “You guys there?” he said.

  “Yeah,” said Matt.

  I said, “What happened?”

  “I think they shot the drone,” said Victor.

  “What?”

  “I heard a popping sound across the canal, and the camera went out. I’ve been trying to make the drone fly back this way, but I don’t see or hear it. I think they shot it down.”

  “Like with a gun?” said Matt.

  “Yeah,” said Victor. “Like with a gun.”

  “Wow,” said Taylor. She looked at me. “They are bad guys.”