Lyle was absolutely fed up with being jerked around by everyone today. The pranks, the abuse, the disrespect and humiliation… He’d had enough… As far as he was concerned, he was done with people for the rest of the day. He was going to go to his car, drive home and veg out for the entire weekend, and the first person to get in his way was going to DIE.
“Where the hell is my CAR!?” He shouted as he reached his assigned parking space in time to watch the fleet of loaded school buses drive away.
“UGH, now what am I supposed to do?”
He pulled out his phone and texted his mom-
*Do you have the car?*
*I have it, but I can’t pick you up today… Can you get a ride?*
“Unbelievable!” Lyle screamed in his mind. “That’s supposed to be my car! She could at least text me when she takes it… And if I hadn’t been in that stupid mentoring program, I would have seen that my car was gone and ridden the bus! This is such BULLSHIT!”
Just then Lyle caught sight of his friend Ben heading toward his car wearing a pink gym shirt. He ran after him as fast as he could while still cradling his throbbing funny bone.
“Hey Ben!” He shouted hopefully. “Can I get a ride? I’m kind of stranded.”
“Oh hey,” Ben replied, looking up from his phone. “Sorry, man. I’m not allowed to operate heavy machinery for the rest of the day… I was actually going to have to walk home myself, not that it’s as far away as your place...”
Just then Ben got a phone call and while Lyle listened in he could tell the discussion was at least partly about him. He waited for it to end so he could get the details, hoping a ride was somehow being arranged for them both.
“So, what’s up?” Lyle asked as Ben ended his call.
“That was my mom.” He replied with a sigh… “She says your mom is remodeling your room or something, so you’ll be staying at our place over the weekend.”
“Cool…” Lyle said, thinking it a little strange that his mom would suddenly decide to redo his room, but also kind of excited by the prospect… “I guess we can walk home together then.”
“Yeah, but my Mom took JJ to the learning center so I guess it’ll just be you and me.” Ben stated flatly, looking a little unhappy.
“JJ? JJ from the mentorship program? Brothers? JJ WILLIAMS?” Lyle thought to himself, suppressing the impulse to make Ben aware of his sudden realization that he and JJ were brothers… He hadn’t recognized the freshman before, but now that he thought about it he did have a vague memory of seeing JJ before at Ben’s house, but he was generally off doing other things, leaving him and Ben alone for the most part… Thankfully.
“That’s cool. He’d probably cramp our style anyway…” Lyle finally replied with a chuckle.
As they started the long walk to Ben’s house, Lyle enthusiastically recounted his experiences in 7th period geography with JJ and the project they were assigned to do together and all the annoying things JJ did and said, but it was clear that Ben was only half listening, robotically giving the occasional dose of positive feedback to keep Lyle progressing the conversation while he internally groaned or rolled his eyes or zoned out for long stretches of time in an effort to endure the tedium of having to escort his younger brother’s best friend across town after a difficult school day.
“Are you alright?” Lyle asked, noticing Ben’s lack of engrossment.
“Huh? Yeah, man; sorry… I had a rough day… My shirt got soaked in chloroform and I spent the morning passed out in the Nurse’s office.” Ben replied, gripping the front of his pink gym shirt to further illustrate the consequences of the accident.
“Oh, yeah.” Lyle replied, his eyes going wide. “Me too! But some joker put me in Max’s jacket to humiliate me!”
“Humiliate you?.. It wasn’t like that at all.” Ben began sternly. “When the nurse called Coach to get us a couple of shirts to wear, Max offered to bring them to us himself, and when he realized how cold it was in the office he gave you his jacket instead.”
“Oh, sure…” Lyle began with disgust, “He would have had to make up some quick story in front of the Nurse to get her to go along with it, but there’s no question what he was really up to.”
“I don’t think it was like that.” Ben said genuinely. “I saw him bring it in, I think he was trying to be nice...”
Lyle couldn’t decide if his friend was just being naive or if he himself was being a giant douche canoe for thinking the jacket had been some kind of mean-spirited prank…
“Well, what about this then?” Lyle questioned heatedly as he presented the neon blue cast on his arm.
“I never got the story behind that… JJ’s been pretty tight lipped about it and I figured you were sick of people asking...” Ben admitted.
“You think JJ had something to do with it?” Lyle asked probingly, his voice raising slightly.
“I don’t know anything about it, man.” Ben replied disarmingly with a chuckle.
“Well, can you at least help me pry it off? I’ve been trying myself all afternoon and I haven’t even gotten close.” Lyle pleaded while clawing once again at the cut seem.
Ben regarded the cast with a hint of disgust…
“Even if it weren’t super gross… I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Come on; you know it’s not broken! Just help me out.” Lyle pleaded again with growing frustration.
“I know it’s not, but you should still have a doctor take it off; they have the equipment to do it safely... You could hurt yourself prying it apart by yourself… What if it snapped back on your wrist while you were pulling your arm out? It’s like playing with a loaded mouse trap...”
“I’m sure you could figure out a way to do it safely… Put your doctor ambitions to good use...” Lyle suggested temptingly.
“Forget it, man.”
“UghUH, FINE...”
The two remained mostly silent for the rest of the walk to Ben’s house. Ben was preoccupied thinking about the classes he’d missed that day and how hard his absence was going to make the mountains of homework he’d been assigned.
“So, what do you wanna do?” Lyle inquired as they finally entered Ben’s house.
“I don’t know. I should probably do my homework.”
“I was thinking we could play a Sierro game we haven’t played in a while... Queen’s Crusade IV, or Enigma Cottage.”
Ben and Lyle had always played and nerded out together over old PC games made by Sierro. They had been part of an active online community of digital game archivists and enthusiasts for years.
“Really?!” Ben replied in shock. “OK!… Have you ever played Shade of Obscurity?”
“Nope, but the name sounds awesome! You got it?”
“Yeah, I just got it yesterday from an archivist online; I was planning on playing it this weekend anyway.”
“That’s perfect!”
The two quickly pried off their shoes and abandoned them by the door before rushing up to Ben’s room where they booted up his old DOS computer. It was a true anachronism with a big heavy enclosure, complete with a 5.25” floppy drive and an accompanying dot matrix printer, but the setup reproduced the old games far more faithfully than modern systems could, thanks mostly to the old CRT monitor’s inherent scanlines and bulging, contoured surface, as well as its subtle magnetic banding artifacts; Ben just loved that kind of stuff...
The two played and chatted for a couple hours, solving the Game’s puzzles together and drawing parallels between other Sierro game’s they’d played. Ben was shocked by how much Lyle knew about the old games… He’d thought it was a pretty niece interest to begin with, and Lyle never struck him as the type to enjoy vintage digital entertainment… or even modern digital entertainment for that matter… He was really enjoying himself hanging out with Lyle, but when he allowed himself to think about the situation long enough, something in the back of his mind told him it wasn’t right, a paranoid uneasiness and discomfort he tried to set aside.
Eventually their amusement was interrupted by a commotion from downstairs as someone bounded through the front door and up the stairs toward Ben’s room.
“Hey Lyle! I’m back from The Learning Center… Dr.Gupta say’s hi.” JJ shouted as he swung excitedly around Ben’s door frame.
“Oh. Hey JJ.. That’s great.” Lyle replied with little interest.
“You wanna make some moolah?” JJ asked with a giant grin, rubbing his thumbs against his index fingers exaggeratedly. “I’m going to set up my gourd stand before it gets dark, and we can split the profits!”
“No, that’s alright…” Lyle responded. “We’re playing Shade of Obscurity, and -”
“It’s cool, Lyle. You go ahead… I really should start my homework.” Ben said as he got up to retrieve his book bag from the front entrance.
“Yeah, But I -”
Before Lyle had a chance to protest, JJ grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him through the house and out the front door. He had tried to get Ben’s attention but before he fully knew what was going on, they’d gone their separate ways and he found himself looking on as JJ rolled out a wagon full of gourds and parked it alongside a fold out table with a sign that read ‘Festive Gourds $1 Each’.
“You can handle the money if you want, but if you have trouble making change, I can get a calculator.” JJ said as he assembled his gourd selling stand. “I sold enough yesterday to buy a new soccer ball; it glows in the DARK!… We can play with it later tonight, if you wanna.”
“That sounds, so -”
Before Lyle had a chance to get out a sarcastic response, an old woman appeared on the other side of the street and waddled her way over to join the boys.
“Why hello JJ. I saw you getting all set up again; I’m so glad you’re open for business today. It looks like you have some extra special ones that I haven’t seen before.” The lady said sweetly.
“Yeah.” JJ replied, beaming with pride. “I picked a bunch a new ones yesterday and this one’s my favorite,”
JJ held up a small white and green speckled gourd with spines all around it that looked like a gnarly organic spaceship.
“It’s still for sale too though… but it’ll be, maybe, a dollar fifty!” He continued with a shrewd gleam in his eye.
“I’ll take it.” She said cheerfully. “And those two on top of the wagon as well… Is this your friend?”
“Yeah, that’s Lyle.” JJ replied with excitement. “He’s staying over for the weekend and we’re splitting all the money today, and he’s saving up for a dart board, but his Mom maybe won’t let him have one on account of he’s so accident prone.”
“Oh my.” The lady said with a laugh. “I sure hope you get to have one, but do be careful.”
“Uh-huh.” Lyle said flatly.
Lyle was somewhat in awe as a parade of old ladies seemed to come out of the woodwork laying down cash for misshapen ornamentals and simply gushing over JJ’s adorably energetic demeanor.
As the sun began to lower below the horizon, JJ started fingering through the stack of bills they’d collected.
“Almost twenty dollars, Lyle.” JJ cheered happily. “You’re a pretty good salesman!”
“Thanks.” Lyle replied sarcastically, having barely said a word or moved an inch since they’d come outside.
“JJ! Time for dinner.” Came his mom’s voice from the front door.
JJ quickly finished his final sale, offloading a particularly obscene looking yellow gourd in the shape of a one-nut-phallus, and broke down his little stand with eager speed.
Lyle followed JJ inside and sat down at the table with the rest of the family while JJ recounted how well their sales had gone, to everyone’s polite delight.
“So, it’s going to be a big weekend. Pretty cool about the new room, Lyle. Do you boys have any big plans?” Ben’s mom asked.
“Well,” Lyle began. “We were playing-”
“We’re going to try out my new soccer ball.” JJ cut in. “It’s gonna look so cool in the dark!”
“Oh, sweety… Lyle needs to take it easy after what happened in school today. Remember his head...”
“Yeah...” Lyle continued… “and I was hopping Ben and I-”
“Let’s watch The Gooners!” JJ shouted with excitement.
“The Gooners?!” Lyle said with distaste. “Is that the one with the kids who break a statue’s penis off in the first few minutes? I’ve never seen past that scene, it looked really stupid...”
“That’s the one… Oh SPIT man, now we’ve gotta watch it. It’s the best movie ever!… You gotta give it a chance. You’ll love it!!!”
“That’s a great idea.” His mom said, nodding in approval. “I’ll make you some peanut butter popcorn.”
“OH.” JJ said, shooting Lyle a wildly excited face that froze in place at its most exaggerated point. “Peanut butter popcorn… YES! And if we’re not too tired after The Gooners we can have a Three Doofuses marathon until we fall asleep... Gary, Bo, and Swirly, they’re hilarious...”
“Actually, I thought I’d sleep in Ben’s room.” Lyle said matter-of-factly.
Ben, who had been standing up to go to his room, immediately froze in place upon hearing Lyle’s words and an uncomfortable quiet seemed to fall over the rest of the family…
“... Uh...” The mother began. “Well, we’ve already made up a place for you to sleep in JJ’s room… I’m sure you’d be more comfortable there tonight.”
Lyle turned to meet Ben’s gaze to try to get some support from his friend, thinking he’d surely want to hang out for the rest of the night, but to his surprise Ben had snuck away from the table and was nowhere to be seen…
“Let's go!” JJ shouted, grabbing Lyle by the arm and pulling him off to his room.