by Mike Jung
Click.
It was the sound of the sliding glass door being locked from the inside.
Eric and I sprang for the door like a couple of crazed squirrels, grabbed the handle, and tried frantically to slide it open, but it didn’t budge. We slammed our hands on the glass and yelled for whoever the person was to come back, but a whole bunch of loud voices seemed to burst into the air behind us, and when we spun around, pressed our backs to the glass door, and saw a crowd of people with glow sticks, drinks, and World of Amazement hats starting to gather, I suddenly got how dire the situation was.
“What do we do?” I said.
“You’re asking me??” Eric said, darting his eyes in every direction.
Somewhere in the distance a fire engine started blaring its siren, which was only going to make the crowd of people bigger. We were locked out of our room, and the only way back inside was probably to jump off our balcony, run around to the front of the hotel, run through the lobby, take the elevator to our floor, and hope the door was still open. Which we couldn’t do anyway, since our room was filled with toxic fumes. Either way, a lot of people would see us, which was going to be a problem, since I was wearing my Rocket Cats pajama pants and no shirt, and Eric was wearing a Sandpiper T-shirt and no pants, just his underwear.
People would take pictures for sure.
Our pictures would be all over the internet.
“Get down,” I said in a low voice. We both sat down, then scooted around so our backs were against the side of the balcony wall, where we’d be less visible from inside and outside the hotel room.
“What are we gonna do?? I’m not wearing pants!” Eric said.
“I don’t know. I don’t know.” Saying I don’t know over and over wasn’t helping, but I’d never seen Eric so panicked before, and I didn’t know what to do. He was right; it wasn’t that big a deal to have no shirt on, but no pants? If a picture of that made it online—heck, if someone even just talked about it online, he’d be teased and bullied about it until the end of time. Going to a new school in a different city probably wouldn’t even save him. He laced his hands together and put them on top of his head and made a kind of high-pitched groan, and I couldn’t stand it.
“Stay here, I’m gonna borrow something for you to wear.”
“Matt. Nobody’s going to let you borrow their PANTS,” Eric said, putting some extra volume into “pants.” It made it sound like he was mad at me, but I knew he wasn’t.
“I know, but you could wrap a sweater or something around you. At least it would cover your undies.”
Eric groaned again. “I guess, but who wears a sweater when it’s this warm??”
Right. We were both half-naked, but I wasn’t cold at all. I risked peeking up over the edge of the balcony, and I jerked back down when I saw how many more people were out there. If our balcony wasn’t a couple of feet higher than the ground, they’d probably be climbing right up onto it. Or maybe not, since they probably thought the building was on fire.
The fire department, though. The fire engine siren was getting louder by the second, and when they arrived, the firefighters would be right on top of us, and Eric would be doomed.
I was NOT going to let that happen.
“I’ll find someone who does. They’re probably evacuating the hotel, so everyone will be outside. Don’t worry.”
“But all you’re wearing is Rocket Cats pajama pants—”
He had a point—pictures of me would definitely be all over the internet—but that still wouldn’t be as bad as underwear pics. Everyone at school already knew how much I loved the Rocket Cats.
Eric was my best friend. And if I didn’t save my best friend from eternal online humiliation, how could I even call myself his best friend?
The fire engine siren was loud enough to make my ears hurt, and I peeked over the edge of the balcony again. The bad news was that the crowd of people was bigger; the good news was that everyone was looking in the direction of the siren. That was as good as it would get. There was a narrow strip of hedge I’d have to jump over, and I’d have to stand on the balcony wall to do it. I could do that. Maybe. Hopefully.
“Okay, it’s now or never,” I said, trying to sound less terrified than I felt.
“I just thought of something. What if the firefighters—”
“Keep low!”
“Matt, wait—”
I scrambled to my feet, climbed onto the top of the balcony wall (luckily for me, it was actually wide enough for that), tried as hard as I could not to look at anyone in the crowd, and quickly jumped. I cleared the hedge, braced myself for landing, hit the cement with both feet, and felt my ankle do something really, really wrong. There was a dull-sounding but sharp-feeling SNAP, a sudden kind of floppiness, and a gigantic bolt of pain that seemed to go all the way from one side of my ankle to the other. I fell over, howling, tried to stand up, and fell down again. A droning kind of numbness came over me, and I decided lying there on the cement was better than standing up, so that’s what I did. I lay there, weirdly numb and in agony at the same time, and thought about how totally I’d failed to help my best friend.
A police officer suddenly appeared, looking down at me, then kneeling next to me.
“What’s your name, son?” he asked. He seemed nice enough.
“Eric,” I said.
“Try to relax, Eric. We’ve got a couple of EMTs on the way. They’ll—”
“No, no, Eric’s my friend,” I said. “Can you help Eric?”
The cop looked back over his shoulder. “Is that your friend with the … what does that shirt say—”
“Sandpiper. Yes.”
“He’s all wrapped up in a blanket, but he looks like he’s okay. My partner’s talking to him.”
A wave of relief went through me, and I must have moved my leg without thinking about it, because even though my ankle felt more and more like it was wrapped in a million layers of thick cotton, another zap of pain went through it. I yelped. Holy crap, it hurt.
That was okay, though. Someone had given Eric a blanket; there’d be no underwear pics of him online. People were probably taking a million pics of me and my Rocket Cats pajama pants, and it wasn’t very comfortable lying there on the cement, but everything felt fuzzy and remote in a way that was weirdly pleasant, and Mr. D was suddenly there next to the cop.
“Hey, Mr. D,” I said.
“Hi, Matt,” he said, looking serious. It’s nice when teachers care, I thought.
“Everything’s kind of fuzzy,” I said.
“That’s probably because you’re going into shock,” Mr. D said. “Your ankle’s pretty swollen. The EMTs are here, though, and I’m going with you.”
“Where are we going?”
“The hospital.”
And that was when it hit me: My ankle was messed up, and maybe even broken. I was going to the hospital, and probably home after that. Which meant there was no way Eric and I could go to DefenderCon. No way at all. Which was the thing that finally made me start crying.
It was all over. Our plan, which we’d worked so hard on and dealt with so much crap for, was a complete, humiliating failure.
How depressing was it to leave the most fun place on the planet, not perform in the biggest marching band event in the history of the school, miss out on the only goodbye adventure I’d ever get to have with my best friend, go to the hospital, get an operation on my ankle that was broken in two places, and go home? Holy crap, it was the most depressing thing ever. The only even slightly good thing about it was the fact that I didn’t have to lie to Mom and Dad about breaking every rule in existence to go to DefenderCon with Eric, but even that was canceled out by the fact that I didn’t get to go.
I spent the next week at home letting the broken bones in my ankle heal, getting used to the cast and the crutches, and learning lots of unpleasant, uncomfortable things about having a broken ankle. For example, I had no idea how itchy your leg gets when it’s sealed away in a cast, and how hard it
is to scratch underneath a cast. It’s obviously bad to scratch the place where the doctors cut your leg open in order to fix your ankle, so I spent a lot of time just letting it itch and screaming silently into the depths of my own brain. When it’s hot outside, as it usually is in June, your cast will eventually start to smell, because having a broken ankle doesn’t stop your leg from sweating.
I read a lot of books, which was nice, and watched a lot of TV, which was also nice, but I was bored and lonely, and I couldn’t talk to Eric because for some reason he was in a massive amount of trouble. He called after I got home from the hospital, but he couldn’t stay on the phone long because he was grounded and couldn’t use his phone or computer for—
“The rest of the school year?” I could hardly believe it. “You’re not serious.”
“I am, though.” Eric sounded more sad than I’d ever heard him. “It’s actually even worse than that.”
“How could it be any worse?”
“Dude, I can’t tell you yet,” Sad Eric said in his new Sad Voice. “Mom says you can come over one more time next week, though.”
“One more time? That’s so—”
“I know, Matt.”
It felt like I’d been punched in the stomach again, only this time it wasn’t Kenny, it was the whole universe.
“So … I guess I’ll see you then.”
I gulped.
“I guess.”
“Just come over, okay? I’ll be here packing and stuff like that.”
“Okay.”
So I waited for a week, then asked Mom for a ride to Eric’s house. Getting my crutches into the car was way harder than you’d expect something like that to be, and I almost banged my leg against the car door as I got in, but eventually we got on the road. Eric’s house was less than a mile away, so it only took us a couple of minutes to get there.
“Can you let me out here?” I said when we were at a stop sign a block away.
“Are you sure?” Mom looked both ways, went through the intersection, and pulled over.
“Yeah, I’ll walk from here. Or crutch, I guess.”
“It’s still walking,” Mom said with a smile. “You want it to be just you and Eric the whole time you see him, huh?”
“I guess.”
“Okay.” She reached over and petted my head. “Call me when you want me to pick you up.”
“Okay.”
“I love you, Matt.”
“I love you too.”
Getting out of the car was even more complicated than getting in, but after catching the tips of the crutches on eight different places inside the car, almost dropping a crutch into the gutter, and hanging on to the car while hopping over the gutter and onto the curb, I was safely crutching to the end of the block where Eric’s house was.
That turned out to be harder than I thought, because by the time I stopped on the sidewalk in front of the house I was sweaty and winded, and my armpits kind of hurt. I stared at the truck in the driveway with “Eliopoulos Movers” printed on the side of it. It looked out of place, like it’d fallen from the sky and landed in the wrong alternative universe, but the two guys carrying a plastic-wrapped couch were definitely coming out of Eric’s house. I watched as they angled the couch around the corner of the house and behind the truck.
Why was stuff already being moved out of the house?? There was still a week to go!
The guy in front was hopping up into the truck as I painfully crutched my way up to the front door, leaned one crutch against the door frame, and rang the doorbell. Since the door was still wide open, I could hear somebody doing something that involved a lot of crumpling paper sounds on the far side of the house, and I both heard and saw the feet that came running down the stairs, quickly revealing legs, arms, a body, and then all of Eric. He slowed down when our eyes met, walked the last four steps, and stopped at the bottom with his hand still on the banister. We stood there for about a hundred years, alternately looking at each other and looking everywhere else.
“Hi,” I finally said.
“Hey.”
I looked down, then looked up and started talking at the same time that Eric looked up and started talking.
“I’m—”
“I just—”
Well. That was awkward.
We stared at the floor some more.
“I’m glad you came over,” Eric finally said.
“So am I.” I almost crossed my arms, but had to stop when I almost fell over. My second crutch DID fall over, but Eric jumped forward and caught it before it hit the ground.
“Nice,” I said as he slowly handed it back to me. “Thanks.”
I hopped on my good foot as I got my crutches back under my arms.
“I better come in before I fall over,” I said.
“Yeah, you better.”
Eric stepped aside and flapped his hand like a matador, and I crutched past him into the living room.
“You’re pretty good with those things,” he said as I stopped at the sight of the mostly empty room.
“Yeah, I only fall down nineteen or twenty times a day,” I said. “So … wow. Not much left in here.”
“No. Most of the furniture’s being sent in a truck tonight.”
“Aren’t you leaving next week?”
“No. We’re leaving tomorrow.”
“TOMORROW? What about the last week of school? And graduation?”
And your best friend?
Eric shook his head.
“When I got suspended, the principal said I could turn in all my final work by email. It’s mostly written stuff.”
“When did you get suspended??”
“I want to tell you about that, but let me just tell Mom what we’re doing. She knows you’re coming over, but she’s practically got me under surveillance.”
I let my brain marinate in that thought for a second, then looked around the room.
“Is there still furniture in your room, at least?”
“Yeah, the futon’s still there. We’re not taking that with us.”
Eric’s empty living room was a lot easier to navigate on crutches than our furniture-filled living room, and by the time he joined me I was already using his bedroom wall to lower myself onto his thousand-year-old futon. It sounded like he and his mom were having some kind of very serious conversation in the other room.
When Eric finally came into the room his face was way more red and splotchy than normal, but nothing was normal, so that made sense. Or didn’t make sense? He flopped down on the futon next to me.
“Don’t ask,” he said before I could ask.
“Okay.”
I took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry, dude, I—I didn’t—”
“It’s my fault,” Eric blurted out in a wobbly voice. I was so taken by surprise that I stopped stammering.
“What, moving?”
“No. That.” He pointed at the cast on my ankle.
I looked at my ankle and blinked.
“It’s my fault you got hurt and our plans were wrecked. I’m really, really sorry—”
“What are you talking about??”
“You were trying to help me, remember? That’s why you jumped off that balcony and got hurt!”
“I’m the one who decided to jump off that balcony. You tried to stop me, remember?”
“I’m the one who ran out onto the balcony with no pants on!”
“Well, yeah, that’s true.”
“Wait, what do you mean, that’s true?”
“I’m just saying, grab some pants the next time we have to escape a burning hotel room.”
“Dude. Maybe next time you shouldn’t jump off balconies that are eight feet off the ground.”
“It was so much higher than I thought it was.”
We cracked up, and oh man, I felt such a huge wave of happiness, although it was all mixed up with sadness and regret too.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call or email you or anything,” Eric said quietly. “I
couldn’t.”
“Yeah, I know. I didn’t know you got suspended, though.”
“Going out in a blaze of glory, right?”
“Did they blame you for the fire? Because if they did—”
“Oh no, that was Sean.”
“WHAT? SEAN COMMITTED ARSON??”
I mean, come on. I didn’t know if I could handle so many massive bombshells all at once. My head was in danger of exploding.
“Oh, no no no, it was a fake fire,” Eric said. “He brought a couple of homemade smoke bombs on the trip and set one off right outside our room. He also put one in the air duct of our bathroom with some kind of timer. He’s the one who locked us out on the balcony.”
“How did he get into the roo—oooooohhhh, wait …”
An image of Sean talking to Kenny just before Kenny tried to kill me popped into my head.
“Sean set it all up, didn’t he?”
Eric nodded. “Yeah. I guess Hotel of Amazement just gave him a key to our room when he asked for one, which is why they’re not suing the crap out of the school.”
“Wow.”
“Also, now everyone thinks that right after they stopped being friends, Sean started the rumor about Kenny making out with another guy, then told Kenny you started the rumor.”
“Ooooh, I want to kill him. I want to rip his face off the front of his head.”
“You and me both. Kenny was expelled, by the way.”
“Good.”
“Yup. Anyway, there are security cameras in the hallways with footage of Sean going in and out of our room, so he got caught.”
“Wow.” I shook my head. “He’s really bad at that kind of thing, huh?”
“Ridiculously bad.”
“It’s a miracle he was able to plan the whole thing so far ahead without screwing it up,” I said.
“Well, he did eventually screw it up.”
“I guess so. It’s good we didn’t go to DefenderCon with him …”
I had to stop talking because of the huge lump that materialized in my throat. We hadn’t gone to DefenderCon without Sean either. We probably weren’t ever going to DefenderCon.
“That’s actually why I got suspended,” Eric said.
