by Anna Wu
Chapter 15: The Boiling Point
By the time the two boys left Nick's house, it was dark outside. "I wish we had taken the hover car," Nick complained while trudging along beside Jimmy. "We must have walked five miles today."
Jimmy silently nodded as they rounded a corner and came upon Jimmy's street. He stared down it fondly, glad that he could sit down and rest in a minute. "Well, we're almost home now."
Nick breathed a sigh of relief as the Neutron home came into view. Within five minutes they were sitting Jimmy's lab, sipping hot chocolate with Libby, Sheen, Carl, and Cindy.
"So, what exactly did you and Nick do today?" Libby asked Jimmy while adjusting her injured leg on the couch.
"We gathered some supplies," Nick quickly answered. He glanced nervously at Jimmy, who seemed to be debating whether or not to mention the specifics.
"Yeah, just food and tools and stuff," Jimmy said with a slight twitch of his left eye. "Hey Sheen," he said while clearing his throat, "could you and Carl go bring my, uh, cat, um, Chowder in here? I think he's sleeping in my parents' room. I need to check him for fleas," Jimmy said while tugging on his shirt's collar.
"No problem!" Sheen shouted while jumping off of the couch and dragging Carl with him.
"But I'm allergic to cats!" Carl complained.
"Don't be such a baby!" Sheen angrily spat at Carl while pulling him out the door.
Cindy stared at the two of them for a moment before finally asking the question that was on everyone's minds. "You have a cat?"
Jimmy set his mug of cocoa down on the coffee table and pulled his hypercube out of his pocket. "No. That should keep them busy for ten minutes," he monotonously explained. "Nick and I were really out gathering firearms," he quickly told Libby and Cindy.
"What?" Cindy asked while setting her cocoa down as well. Libby and Nick followed suit.
Jimmy nodded while pulling a pistol out of the hypercube. "We need to keep this between the four of us for now," Jimmy instructed the girls.
"Why?" Libby asked, shuddering at the sight of the gun.
Jimmy noticed her apprehension and glanced at the bandaged wound on her leg. "Sorry," he sincerely apologized while putting the gun back in the hypercube.
"And to answer your question," Nick began, "Jimmy feels that we need an advantage over the Yolkians, and that guns are it." He looked over at Jimmy. "That's the reason, right?"
"Yes, that's the reason," Jimmy agreed while nodding his head. "Basically, the odds of us rescuing our parents while unarmed are minimal. Nick has experience with guns, yada, yada, yada, so we're going to use these to help get our parents back. We've got around a hundred fifty guns and plenty of ammo," he quickly explained while nervously glancing over his shoulder at the lab's door, expecting Sheen and Carl to burst through it any moment.
Jimmy noticed that Cindy was unusually quiet. "Hey, Vortex … I mean Cindy," he said a little more harshly than he had intended. The day's stress was catching up with him and unleashing itself on its usual target. "Sorry. Something the matter?"
Cindy shook her head. "No, no problem. Just trying to understand why you're going to place deadly weapons in untrained hands."
Jimmy frowned as he realized that he was going to have to relive his argument with Nick. "We need weapons, Cindy."
Cindy scoffed at his remark. "Yeah, sure. Because we were armed like commandos the last time we fought the Yolkians. Sheen used a grenade … no, sorry, it was a tomato, wasn't it?" she told Jimmy while reminiscing about her last encounter with the aliens. "We beat them before without guns, and we can do it again."
Nick snapped his fingers and pointed at Cindy. "That's what I said!" he excitedly shouted.
Jimmy shot Nick a fierce look before meeting Cindy's stare. "It was a million to one shot that we beat them. We are not going to battle an advanced alien civilization unarmed!" he shouted. Libby and Nick slid back in their seats, afraid of the battle which they knew was coming.
"Giving an untrained kid a gun is giving another kid a bullet in the head!" Cindy shouted back.
"They're not going to be untrained," Jimmy strained to say, his eyes squinted in anger, "Nick is going to teach them!"
"About that," Nick began, still uneasy about that responsibility.
"Shut up!" Cindy and Jimmy both shouted at him.
Libby tapped on Nick's shoulder. "You don't want to interrupt them when they're like this," she advised him.
"You're being ridiculous!" Jimmy shouted at the top of his lungs.
"You're being ridiculous!" Cindy repeated.
"Well, you're stupid!" Jimmy shouted back.
"Oh, I can see how you're a genius with great insults like those!" Cindy shouted while bringing her face closer to Jimmy's.
"Now this," Libby whispered to Nick, "is the part where you always think they're going to passionately kiss in the heat of an argument, like in the movies. But that has yet to happen." Nick nodded in understanding.
"You know what, Vortex," Jimmy said while backing away from Cindy, "I gave you unrestricted access to my lab. You think you could at least trust me on this."
Cindy's anger reached the boiling point. "Is that why you gave me this stupid floppy disk?" she asked while pulling it out of her pocket. "So you could hold it over my head and get me to go along with whatever you say?" she shouted while hurling it at him.
Jimmy caught it; nearly breaking it in half while angrily gripping it. "I was stupid to ever think that we could ever work together on this. Even when everything we love is in danger, you'll still look for any excuse to belittle or second-guess me. You're amazing," he said while shaking his head in amusement.
Cindy stood up, as did Jimmy. Their noses were nearly touching. Cindy brought back her wrist as if to slap him, held it for a moment, and then finally let it drop to her side. "You are so stupid it's unbelievable. You are so obsessed with logic and cold reasoning. You can't realize that your smarts are more powerful than any gun, and that your brain wouldn't get us killed," she angrily told him before storming out of his lab.
Jimmy stared after her for a moment, his face scrunched in anger, trying to figure out if she had just insulted or complimented him. Finally, he let out a deep breath and stormed out as well.
"Where are you going?" Libby asked.
"For a walk," Jimmy told her while slamming the door shut behind him.
Another few seconds went by before Sheen and Carl breathlessly ran back inside the lab. "Jimmy's cat ran away!" Carl hysterically screamed.
"Don't panic!" Sheen shouted while slapping Carl across the face. "Nick, set up a search party. Wake the kids. Jimmy can't find out about this!"
"There is no cat!" Nick shouted at them before walking towards the door. "You two are idiots!" he shouted in Sheen's face.
Sheen and Carl followed him as he left the lab. "Why don't you say that to my face, you coward?" Sheen shouted after Nick before slamming the door shut behind him.
"I just did!" Libby distantly heard Nick's final remark through the thick door to Jimmy's lab. She looked around and realized that she was all alone.
"That's fine! It's not like I'm crippled or anything!" she screamed after everyone.
