Brendon was out of bed, making an early morning bathroom delivery. Justin crept up the stairs, doing his best to avoid all the spots on the stairs that creaked. This was not an easy task. Tracy had been goading Mike for years to repair some of the worst offenders. Some of the creaks were as loud as a pistol shot, especially in the middle of the night. But Mike had staunchly held his ground. He had always thought of the creaks as his own alarm system. He had argued intensely that no intruder would ever be able to sneak up into the bedroom unsuspectingly. Tracy couldn’t even begin to fathom the depths of Mike’s survivalism and paranoia. Although as he would tell you, it’s either one or the other, and he preferred to call it survivalism. Then he would add that if someone could get past the security bars, Henry and the ‘stair alarm system’ without garnering any attention, then they deserved to take some stuff. So, maybe using Henry in the equation wasn’t a great example, but still.
Justin crossed from one side of the steps to the other, at one point climbing over one step completely to avoid a particularly nasty groan. He appeared to be playing some advanced three-dimensional version of hopscotch. He stopped at the top landing, directly facing his parents’ bedroom.
There were four hot spots on the landing, the problem however was that not all were active at the same time. It was like playing Russian roulette with floorboards. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Justin had his suspicions that his dad somehow had the floor rigged. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibilities. Justin’s right foot came down tentatively. Nothing. He sighed in relief. Next he strategically placed his left foot as close to the banister as possible, more times than not this was a safe bet, but not today. CRAAACK – Justin froze, only the sweat on his forehead had the audacity to move. Nothing stirred, not even Henry. After a thirty-second pause in which Justin expected his mother to come bursting out of her bedroom, nothing happened. He took a quick left which marked his first successful completion down the gauntlet. The next part was going to be equally difficult. On the left of the hallway was his dad’s office which was now Brendon and Nicole’s room. Directly across from it was the bathroom. Justin noticed the light on underneath the bathroom door. If it was his sister, the jig was up before it ever got going. She would not be persuaded to not tell their mother. For the second time in two minutes, Justin found himself frozen. This time, however, it was with indecision. He needed to think of a valid reason for his being in the hallway at this time of the day if his sister came out of the bathroom. Somehow asking her if she wanted to play Monopoly at 6:30 in the morning didn’t seem like a viable option. He then had the idea of getting Brendon awake, convinced and out of the bedroom before his sister returned. Not an acceptable alternative, she would surely go looking for Brendon if she came back and he wasn’t in bed. They’d never get out in time unless of course she had fallen asleep on the john. Justin laughed a little at that picture, he couldn’t for the life of him imagine his prim and proper sister falling asleep on the toilet.
It was the smell that got Justin moving. For a fearful second he thought that a zombie had broken in. When he realized that it only smelled LIKE something had died, and had not
“You might want to use a different bathroom,” Brendon said quietly with a hint of a smile across his lips.
Justin was trying his best to breathe through his mouth, but the mere thought that he was now ‘tasting’ the essence of Brendon’s offal did little to quell the queasiness that was building up in his stomach.
“Gotta talk to you,” Justin rushed out on exhale, and pointed down the stairs. If Brendon in anyway delayed, Justin would have to go downstairs without him. Justin had promised himself that he would not take another gulp of air anywhere in the vicinity of the ‘death zone.’ Brendon nodded and followed Justin down. The floorboards had not had sufficient time to reset and both boys were able to make it all the way down without so much as a minor crackle. Justin took a few long pulls of fresh air, hoping to evacuate all the poison from his lungs. He felt almost immediately better.
“What were you eating, a rotten rhino?” Justin asked when he had sufficiently cleaned out his airways.
“Did you like that? I was working on that just for you. As a matter of fact I was going to come down and get you so you could get a whiff,” Brendon laughed.
A greasy smile split Justin’s lips. “Thanks man, I appreciate that,” he said sarcastically.
“What’s up?” Brendon asked more seriously. He could tell Justin had something to ask him but was hesitant to come out with it.
“All right, if I ask you something you have to promise if you say no, that you won’t tell Nicole,” Justin said tentatively.
Brendon had to think about this for a moment. If she were to somehow find out that he had important information and had withheld it from her that would not end well. Nicole was all of four foot eleven, but she was a veritable spitfire. Mountains would quake in the wake of her voluminous voice. What she lacked in size she MORE than made up in for in vocals. And to top it off she was quick to anger and so very slow to mellow. Those were not great ingredients if one were to perpetrate a lie. Brendon had learned the hard way.
“Justin, I don’t know if I could do that,” Brendon said in all seriousness. “You know how your sister gets.”
Justin nodded in reluctant agreement. Of course he did, he’d had nineteen years of personal experience. Justin was secretly attempting to find a work around to this dilemma.
“How about this,” Justin started. “What if I ask you something but you don’t tell her until she wakes up?”
“Again, that depends,” Brendon answered. “If it’s important she’ll be pissed that I didn’t wake her to tell her.”
“Damn it,” Justin muttered.
“What’s going on?” Brendon asked, curiosity starting to get the better of him.
“Damn it,” Justin said for the second time. “Here goes nothing. I want to take Travis, Tommy and hopefully you to go get Paul.”
“Your dad’s best friend? Does your dad know? Of course not or we wouldn’t be doing this whole covert conversation in the living room,” Brendon said as he nervously wiped his forehead, even though sweat had not yet begun to form although it would soon. “What makes you think they’ll even let us out of the gate?”
“My dad just left on the semi.” ‘I think,’ Justin thought to himself. “I’ll tell the guys at the gate that he wanted us to follow.” ‘And hopefully they won’t ask where, cuz I have no clue,’ he finished his inner dialog.
Brendon turned to walk back upstairs. Justin became anxious, fearful Brendon had made up his mind and not in the appropriate direction.
“I’m going to get my stuff,” Brendon explained as he now began to play the advanced hopscotch game.
Justin was excited and worried at the same time. He ran downstairs to get the others and get out of the house before he changed his mind. This undertaking was of his design and if anything went wrong it would be his responsibility. This was a little bit more unnerving than making sure the shelves were correctly stocked for the frenetic holiday shoppers at Wal-Mart.
The boys had decided to take Brendon’s Explorer, after some initial resistance. Brendon’s truck had the habit of breaking down at the most inopportune times, but this fact still seemed like a better alternative than facing Mike Talbot if something should happen to his beloved Jeep. With nothing closing in and no elevated terror level, Brendon’s truck, of course, clamored to life easily, just as the sun began to shine under an opaque sky. Brendon pulled up to the gate guard who was putting his hand out to halt them, although this was a useless gesture. It wasn’t like Brendon could miss the five-ton yellow bus.
“Vere are you boys going?” Igor Drudarski, the guard, asked. Igor was a fifty something, fat Russian man who had emigrated over from the former Soviet Union some twenty years previously. He had not lost a hint of his former accent or his profound ability to drink vast quantities of vodka. The sour stench permeated through the truck as he looked over the boys and all the weapons they carried. Tommy smiled back, greedily stuffing a blueberry Pop-Tart into his mouth.
“We have Pop-Tarts?” Travis asked softly.
“Weef did,” Tommy smiled weakly back.
