With Friends Like These

Let me start by saying this:

None of this is my fault.

I just seem to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time and this was one of those times.

It all started when I found the book. That stupid, stupid book. It was just this little, unassuming notebook, laying there on the sidewalk, and I almost tripped right over it. I don’t really know why I picked it up, but I did, and I started reading.

And whoa.

There was some major information in that book! All detailing the, uh…salacious affair between our congressman and some blonde who was definitely not his wife! I mean, there were dates and pictures and details that I needed to gouge my eyes out after reading.

Because I read it and I read it all.

“Whoa,” I said, letting out a low whistle. That kind of info in the wrong hands would be…detrimental, to say the least.

“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice said behind me. I turned around, feeling like I had been caught doing something bad or dirty.

It was a bald guy who looked pretty beefy hanging out the car window of some black SUV, like I was in some mob movie or something. He even had a gold tooth!

So, like any normal person, I just slowly turned around because he surely wasn’t talking to me, right?

“Don’t walk away from me!”

Wrong.

He was looking for me apparently. But what the heck was a mob-boss type guy after me for?

I turned around and—yes, I did—I pointed to myself.

“Yeah, you. That notebook you got there don’t belong to you.”

I held it up. (Note that I have not said one word to this guy at all yet.)

“Yeah, that’s the one. Hand it over.”

Now, I don’t really know what possessed me to do this. Any other guy, standing there, with mob-dude staring down at me with his gold tooth and meaty hands would have just handed the notebook over.

But I am not your typical guy.

I ran.

I heard the engine rev and wheels squealing behind me as I took off. Of course I wasn’t enough of an idiot to think that I could outrun them but thankfully I had lived in my small town my whole life and I knew all the little shortcuts that were all over the place.

I hopped a fence and scooted down a hidden walkway with overgrown trees and ended up on my best friend’s street. I pounded on his door, out of breath, looking over my shoulder, just waiting for mob-dude to pop up out of nowhere.

When Connor answered, I just pushed him out of the way and went up to his room.

“Ethan, dude, what’s your deal?”

I held out the book. (I was still out of breath. I don’t want to say I was out of shape but…)

“Where did you get that?”

Not really the response I was expecting.

“Man, you’ve gotta read this.”

“Read it? I wrote it!”

What?

That’s what I was thinking but the word couldn’t quite make it out of my mouth. I just stared at him all open-mouthed and wide-eyed until he went to his closet and got a duffel bag out.

“Check it out.” He nodded toward the bag.

I walked over and opened the bag.

Money.

A lot of money.

“It’s $20,000, in case you were wondering.”

I found my voice.

“What the…what is happening?”

“I found all that stuff out about Congressman Reynolds, did a little reconnaissance, wrote it all down, made sure I had proof, and then I just, you know, calmly let him know what I had.”

“You blackmailed him.”

He scrunched up his face. “I mean…yeah. I could try to say that I’m not but yeah, that’s pretty much what I’m doing. Until you ruined it!”

“Me?!”

“Yeah, you! I had dropped the book in the drop-off place and they were gonna come get it! That’s what they paid me for! Now they’re gonna be after both of us, you idiot!”

“It was a book on a sidewalk! How was I supposed to know?!”

Banging on the door.

Did I scream like a girl?

No.

I screamed like a little girl.

“Shh!” Connor hissed.

“We know you’re in there! Connor Matthews, you owe us. Come out, or we’re coming in!”

“Where are your parents?” I asked Connor, crouching behind his desk.

“Work!” he said.

The door was kicked in with a loud thud and I was pretty sure I heard a gun click as it was cocked.

“I am so dead,” Connor moaned and I knew he was thinking about the door and his parents but I was a little distracted by the gun!

“We’ve gotta get out of here!” I told him.

“How?”

“Window!”

Connor grabbed the bag and we faced the open window.

“Dude, leave the money!”

“No! I made this money! It’s mine!”

I didn’t have time to argue with him.

Now, Connor and I are not the coolest guys in the world. We had never had the opportunity to climb out of a window, with the fear of being caught rushing through our veins, so this was not a very graceful exit.

Connor’s room was on the second floor. We stepped out on the roof and I immediately knew mistakes had been made.

The roof was at a slant and, you know how in the movies there’s always a tree or a lattice thing for someone to climb down or at least a pile of leaves or a pool to break a fall? Yeah, Connor’s house had none of that.

“Hey!”

The meat-head poked his face out the window.

“Jump!”

We jumped and about broke our legs and our backs as we rolled across his lawn but we couldn’t milk our wounds for long. A gunshot rang out and Connor grabbed me by the collar and pulled me to my feet.

“Car!”

“It’s a piece of junk! We won’t make it anywhere!”

“Mom’s!”

“Do you have the key?” I asked as I slid into the passenger seat. Connor threw the bag of money behind us and shook his head.

“No.”

“What are you gonna do?!”

He shrugged. “Hotwire it.”

“You know how to hotwire a car?! How?!”

Another shrug. “Movies.”

“You’re betting our lives on your knowledge from a movie?!”

He rolled his eyes as he messed with the wiring and, what do you know? It worked. The car roared to life and we both shouted out in excitement and adrenaline and relief and a little bit of crazy.

We backed out and backed directly into meat-head mob-dude. It didn’t really faze him but I felt pretty victorious.

Connor sped down the streets, wheels squealing, the black SUV trailing behind us, always in the rearview mirror, shots ringing out behind us. (Yes, they were shooting at us. Where were the police when you needed them?)

That was when we heard the sirens. (Ah, there they were.)

Connor just sped up. The SUV came up beside us and nudged us, trying to make us lose control. We did a little back and forth and Connor got in a few good shots but, in the end, the SUV won.

We spun around a few times until we ran into a telephone pole. The car was totaled, but we were okay. We climbed out from the wreckage and Connor still had the bag.

The meat-head was after us, running, and we tried our best, except we were still sore from the whole jumping off the roof thing, not to mention the head-on collision we had just endured, (even though it was really not as bad as it sounds).

I got ahead of Connor and the meat-head took him down.

“Ethan!”

I turned and he tossed the bag at me. I caught it mid-air, jumping like I was Vin Diesel in some bad action movie. The meat-head punched Connor and then it was just me and him.

He pointed his gun at me and cocked it, aiming it at my head.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a gun pointed at you, but let me tell you—it’s not a good feeling.

“Give me the book and the money.”

“How do I know you won’t shoot me?”

“Why would I shoot you?”

“I know the secret! I can just write it all down again!”

He paused. “Oh right. I didn’t think about that.”

Good going, Ethan.

“You’re right. I guess I should just shoot you now…”

“Put your hands up!”

Ah, thank goodness, the police.

Except that they were a little confused because yeah, they got the meat-head bad guy but they, for some reason, were under the impression that Connor and I were also bad guys. Maybe not as bad as mob-dude, especially once we explained everything, but…there were some consequences.

But, all in all, everything turned out okay. Mob-dude went to jail and so did the Congressman, since he hired him.

We did have to give the money back.

And sign a non-disclosure form, meaning that we weren’t ever allowed to talk about Congressman or his, uh, activities ever again.

And I got probation and Connor got an ankle monitor.

But still. It could have been a lot worse.

My phone goes off and it’s a text from Connor:

Library. 6.

Just because he’s stuck at home doesn’t mean I have to be. I grab the notebook with all our research and quickly calculate all that I was going to buy with the payday we were about to get.

Hey! I said we got off easy! I never said we learned our lesson.

And $20,000 can buy a lot.

I text back:

On my way!