by Mike Thayer
“Fair enough.” I chuckled, holding up my hands in surrender. Freddie may have not known all the things that Zak and I were doing with the double day to make this plan work, but she was no less committed to seeing it succeed. Once she knew that she had a couple of friends at her back, it was awesome to see how her confidence had blossomed.
Freddie took a deep breath and nodded, gesturing for me to descend the ladder. “Now that that’s settled, lead the way … for once.”
I hesitated, placing a hand on my chest as if deeply offended. “Was that yet another jab at my playing style?”
“You’re the mind reader.” Freddie smiled. “You tell me.”
CHAPTER 23
ROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS
(Discard Saturday—Oct. 9th)
We scrambled down out of the tree house and ran to the front yard to see Zak waving at us from the passenger side of a shiny blue Ford truck. He climbed out and helped me load my bike into the back before we all piled in.
“So you must be Danny and Freddie,” Zak’s dad said with only a hint of his native Ghanaian accent. He turned around and shook our hands with what was basically a human bear paw. I’d seen baseball gloves smaller than Zak’s dad’s hand. I buckled my seat belt and ran my hand over the smooth, black leather interior. I glanced over to Freddie, who couldn’t have looked more awestruck if Zak had picked us up in a helicopter. I doubted she was used to traveling in a car this nice. Heck, I wasn’t used to traveling in a car this nice.
After a few minutes, we pulled up to the Pocatello mall, in all its small-town Idaho glory. I’m pretty sure there were grocery stores in Texas that were bigger than the entire Pocatello mall, but, size notwithstanding, it thankfully had the essentials: a GameStop, a pretzel place, a Cinnabon, a Hot Topic, a comic book shop, and a movie theater. Any other stores were pretty much just fluff. Even more important than that, we were hoping to find one more thing at the mall today: Noah.
Earlier in the week, Freddie had caught wind that Noah planned to be at the mall on Saturday morning as part of a promotion for his dad’s business. We’d kept tabs on Noah during school hours, but thought we might be able to learn something by seeing what he got up to on the weekend. With that bit of information, I had developed the perfect plan of attack.
☐ Step 1: Buy and relish cinnamon roll from Cinnabon.
☐ Step 2: Go by Noah’s family business to see if he is hanging out with any other potential cheaters that would need to be investigated.
☐ Step 3: Browse video games at GameStop.
☐ Step 4: Browse cool T-shirts at Hot Topic.
☐ Step 5: Buy a pretzel.
☐ Step 6: Check on Noah again.
☐ Step 7: Look at comics.
☐ Step 8: Maybe buy another cinnamon roll (it is a discard day after all).
☐ Step 9: Go home.
I read over the steps written in my notebook and had to say that I had rarely put together a better plan for a Saturday morning. We got out of the truck and made our way to the food court. We walked past the Arby’s, Sbarro, and Wok This Way, the smell of warm, sweet, cinnamon goodness guiding us to the counter of Cinnabon. I got an order of cinnamon roll centers, while Zak got twisted churros. When it came time for Freddie to order, she froze.
“I’m fine, uh, I don’t want anything—”
“Special?” Zak finished her sentence and then turned to the cashier. “She’ll have a normal cinnamon roll. I got this one.” Zak pulled out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to the cashier.
Freddie stood wide-eyed, staring at Zak like a kid would Santa Claus. “Are you serious?” Freddie said, reverently taking her cinnamon roll from the worker.
“Yeah, it’s no big deal.” Zak brushed it off. But it was a big deal, to Freddie at least. Not that I’d ever really doubted my decision to tell Zak about the double day, but he did have an uncanny ability to continually reassure me I’d made the right choice. Zak was a good dude to the core, and he had just cemented his friendship with Freddie on the unbreakable foundation that is a fresh, gooey, cinnamon-flavored roll. Whatever else happened on this discard day, I’d need to make sure I repeated this moment on the sticky day.
After scarfing the cinnamon rolls, we made our way to Noah’s dad’s business, which was coincidentally directly across from GameStop. A flashing LED sign hung over a shop with blacked-out windows.
“The Pocatello Escape Room,” I read.
“Well, he doesn’t win any bonus points for originality, but it does look pretty awesome,” Zak said.
I’m not sure why it irked me that Noah’s family business was something legitimately cool like an escape room, but it did.
“Let’s do this,” Freddie said, taking a big breath and leading the way into the store.
The lobby had a pair of leather sofas and smelled faintly of fresh paint. Four movie-style posters were hung on a brick wall, depicting the various rooms you could try: Lost in Space, Back to Reality, and the Magic School Bus. The fourth one, Brain Teaser, had a creepy picture of a zombie with the words Coming in October at the bottom. Underneath each poster was a leaderboard with times and names.
“Hey there, kids,” a man said from behind the counter on the opposite side of the room. “Welcome to the Pocatello Escape Room. We’ve got a weekend promotion going on. All the games are half off, although I would suggest the Magic School Bus for a group your size and age. I’ve got another group that’s about to hit the time limit in there, so the room should be free in about five minutes. You’re what, sixth and seventh graders?”
“Sixth grade,” I said. “We’re actually in your son Noah’s class. We play video games together at lunch.”
“Ah,” Noah’s dad said, his jovial customer-service-oriented demeanor dropping a touch. “That’s probably the only way you’d ever get his attention. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that his teacher has to send him a text to ask him a question in class.”
I actually laughed at the comment. Noah’s dad seemed about as frustrated with Noah as anyone … almost.
“Is Noah here?” Freddie asked.
His dad pressed his lips together and raised his eyebrows in the exact same expression my dad gave me when I knew he was about to tell me something less than the truth, but he didn’t care to hide it. “He hasn’t quite made it in yet. He’s at his mother’s for the weekend, but should be here anytime now.”
I noticed Freddie give a thinly veiled sigh of relief. She was brave enough to face Noah, but it didn’t mean she’d be disappointed to not have to go through with it. Just then three kids came out of a door on the far side of the room. Had it been a sticky day, I would have nearly fainted. Jaxson, Braxlynn, and an older boy, who, judging by his similar look and build, could only be Jaxson’s brother, came walking toward the counter.
“Welcome back,” Noah’s dad said, his salesman smile returning. “Did you unlock the secrets of the mysterious magical school bus?”
“We would have solved it forever ago, but my genius little brother here kept reading his codes backward.” Jaxson’s older brother whacked him upside the head as they went to a bank of lockers to retrieve their jackets and phones.
Noah’s dad gave an uneasy laugh. “Well, don’t be too hard on him, the rooms aren’t supposed to be easy. Do you want to take a picture? We’ll put it up on our Facebook and Instagram pages.” Noah’s dad motioned to a corner of the room with a stack of signs that said things like TOTAL GENIUS!, ALMOST!, and NAILED IT!
“As long as you have a sign that says ‘I’m with a complete moron.’ We easily had that top spot on the leaderboard until we put Bozo the Brainless here in charge of using the cipher wheel.” Jaxson’s brother shoved Jaxson, who almost tripped over a small end table.
An awkwardness settled on the room like a stifling fog. Jaxson noticed Zak and gave him a slight nod but didn’t say a word. Braxlynn briefly looked up from her phone and inadvertently made eye contact with Freddie.
“Oh hey, Braxlynn,” Freddie squeaked.
Bra
xlynn rolled her eyes and went back to her phone, her face oozing with disdain. Something inside me snapped. I took a step forward to say something, but Freddie beat me to it.
“Hey, Braxlynn,” Freddie said more forcefully, clearing her throat as she leaned down to get Braxlynn’s attention. “I said hey.”
Braxlynn slowly tore her gaze from her phone and looked at Freddie like she was something stuck on the bottom of her designer shoe. “Uh, hey.”
“Yeah, hey, as in ‘Hey, how’s it going?’” Freddie took a step forward, growing more confident with every word. “Or ‘Hey, remember when we used to be neighbors and would do stuff and you didn’t have your face glued to your phone?’ It’s okay if you actually talk to me, you know? My hand-me-down clothes aren’t contagious.”
For a moment it was like all the oxygen in the room had been sucked out through an air lock. Braxlynn’s disgusted look gave way to true surprise as Freddie amazingly held her gaze. I knew Freddie had talked about being brave, but I wouldn’t have been more surprised had she suddenly sprouted a second head.
I took a half step toward Freddie. It was a small movement that I’d hardly meant to even do, but with everyone else standing still it was especially noticeable.
“Well, at least someone’s got his girl’s back,” Jaxson’s older brother said.
Braxlynn folded her arms and glared at Jaxson, her eyes echoing the comment. We all waited, the tension growing like someone slowly tuning a violin string tighter and tighter. I braced myself for some biting comment from Jaxson, but he said nothing, not with his voice at least. His message was in his look. I’d been pounded by Jaxson before on a discard day, but being hit by this murderous stare was somehow worse than being clobbered by his fists. It wasn’t just the threat of one beating, but the promise of a hundred beatings. Despite my discard-day self, I swallowed hard.
When Jaxson finally moved, it was only to grab Braxlynn’s arm and march out of the store. He bumped into a sign advertising the weekend promotion and knocked it to the floor but didn’t bother stopping.
I stood there, looking back and forth from Freddie to Zak, trying to process exactly what had just happened. In life’s game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, people like Jaxson and Braxlynn were rocks to my spineless sticky-day scissors. They used their position and status to smash others, but never did it occur to me what kind of person would be the paper … until now. Freddie could never crush them; she would never beat them at their own game. She could stand up to them, however, and use her courage to stifle them.
People like Braxlynn had looks, money, and popularity, and they used them to elevate themselves and put others down. People like Zak had those same things and used them to buy people cinnamon rolls. Jaxson was athletic, and he used it to bully people, while Zak used his physical gifts to stop the bullies. He was like a rock that smashed the bully rocks. Noah was good at games and gloated, while Freddie was good at games and wanted nothing more than to share with others. I stared at Jaxson’s older brother, who still stood at the counter. Apparently Jaxson got picked on as much as he picked on others, but it wasn’t like Freddie didn’t have older brothers who made her life miserable. She even had to wear their blasted hand-me-down clothes just to add insult to injury. Some people seemed to act a certain way because of their environment, and others acted a different way in spite of it. What made the difference was beyond me.
“Friggin’ wuss,” Jaxson’s brother scoffed and followed Jaxson and Braxlynn out the door. “Wait up, Bozo.”
There was an extended pause before I turned to Freddie. “Epically courageous, huh?”
Freddie shrugged, trying to play it off like it wasn’t the most significant social moment of her life. She might have convinced me had she been able to restrain the purest, most genuine smile I had ever seen in my life.
Noah’s dad shook his head. “Kid kept blaming his little brother. We got cameras in there, you know? That older kid couldn’t figure his way out of a paper bag. So now that that’s all over with, you want to give it a go?”
“You guys in?” Zak asked, righting the knocked-over sign before removing his wallet.
Freddie clapped and rubbed her hands together. “I feel like I could wrestle an alligator right now.”
Noah’s dad barked a laugh. “No gators in here, but this Magic School Bus room has only a thirty percent completion rate, so your work will be cut out for you.”
“You give Danny one crack at anything like this, and he’ll have it figured faster than anybody,” Zak said, turning to me and flashing a meaningful look. “Guaranteed.”
“Is that right?” Noah’s dad said, the uncomfortable feeling left by Jaxson and his group lifting. “We’ll have to see about that.”
Our discard-day time was 53:21. Respectable, but not enough to earn us a spot on the leaderboard.
“We’ll see you next time.” Noah’s dad waved as we left the escape room and walked out into the mall.
“What do you want to do next?” Freddie asked, her eyes glittering.
“We could see if they have an exotic-pet store,” I offered. “Maybe they have some alligators we can wrestle.”
Freddie playfully punched me in the arm. “Sounds like a plan,” she said, skipping away.
“Have you ever seen her like this?” Zak asked as we watched her almost collide with a sunglasses kiosk.
I shook my head. “I cannot say that I have.”
Freddie’s glee lasted the entire afternoon. She was a different person. Well, maybe not a different person. More like a purer, happier version of herself. It was an image that stayed with me the rest of the discard day and into the sticky day as we returned to the mall and sat again at the food court, cinnamon rolls and churros on small paper plates in front of us. Freddie was nervous now. Nervous at the prospect of meeting Noah. She had no idea that he wouldn’t be there. That we’d instead find Braxlynn and Jaxson.
I repeatedly checked the clock and absently prodded my cinnamon roll centers with a plastic fork.
“You all right, Danny?” Zak asked.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m good, man.” I had thought before that it was impossible not to enjoy a cinnamon roll, but I had been wrong. I watched the minutes tick by and slowly chewed my food. If we left within the next two minutes, we’d be at the escape room when Jaxson, Braxlynn, and Jaxson’s brother came out, but the thought of Jaxson’s glare kept me glued to my seat.
I forced myself to look at Freddie, to confront the fact that if I backed down now, then there was no telling how long, if ever, it would be until she had a moment like she’d had on the discard day.
“Let’s go.” I sprang to my feet, not trusting my courage to last.
“But you’re not done with your cinnamon bites,” Freddie said.
“C’mon,” I said, walking briskly to the escape room. Zak and Freddie hurried to their feet and followed me as we made our way through the mall. I stopped in front of the escape room and checked the time. They’d be out in the next minute.
“We going in?” Zak asked.
I took a deep breath. “Yeah, let’s…” I trailed off as I saw the weekend promotion sign that Jaxson had already knocked over.
“Let’s what?” Zak asked.
“Let’s go to GameStop first, though,” I said, breaking my stare and turning around. “I want to check something out real quick.”
By the time we came out of GameStop, Jaxson, his brother, and Braxlynn were long gone. Despite setting a blistering time of 33:46, dumbfounding Noah’s dad and earning the top spot by more than ten minutes, it all seemed a bit hollow.
I’d always thought selfishness was a Discard Danny thing, but I wasn’t so sure anymore. I guess it was only fitting for life’s game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. If rock smashes scissors, and paper covers rock, then scissors was destined to cut paper.
I looked at Zak and Freddie as we bought our ridiculously large pretzels toward the end of our mall trip. Freddie dipped her pretzel into a cup of yellow cheese sauce and too
k a bite, laughing as it ran down her chin. She couldn’t have been happier with how the day had gone, or at least she thought she couldn’t. I knew, however, that she could have, and I’d robbed it from her. I had felt like I was making progress with reconciling my sticky-day and discard-day halves, but maybe I was only kidding myself. I was no better than Braxlynn. I criticized her for her false image of perfection that she peddled around online with her filters and curated poses, but wasn’t that the exact same thing I was doing with my sticky day?
Choking down guilt with every bite of my pretzel, I vowed to never disappoint my friends again, but even as I had the thought, part of me was afraid that I could never keep that promise.
CHAPTER 24
FRENEMIES
(Sticky Monday—Oct. 11th)
It was sticky-day Monday. I set my lunch tray down on the table and took a seat a few spots away from Noah. I glanced over at Freddie and gave a nearly imperceptible nod. This part of the plan had a few moving parts, so yesterday’s discard-day performance during the Brown Bag Game had to have been just right. Luckily, our practicing had paid off. I cued up my game and wiped the sweat from my palms on my pants. I could do this. I knew exactly where SpudMasterFlex and his bodyguards would be dropping in and had shared my strategy with Freddie during the bus ride to school.
I put my two dollars in the brown bag and readied my character, a cloaked elf with a wooden mask. Now that I knew who Noah’s minions were, I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t seen it before. That was the thing about these battle royale games, though. You were so focused on the mad dash for resources and weapons that any evidence of foul play just got lost in the chaos.
Freddie and I dropped into the middle of a rocky outcrop just north of Bandit’s Bog, and I quickly snatched up a bow, slingshot, and belt of throwing knives. To the south, SpudMasterFlex and his three bodyguards landed on opposite ends of the bog. We had good cover and the high ground, but Bandit’s Bog was famous for its good weapon and item drops. If you could get in and come out alive, you were usually pretty well set up to do some damage.
