“Wow, not only did you yell, you said my name.” Oh, yeah that would make him easy to identify.
“How would I know that’s bad? I’ve never vandalled before.”
“Common sense.” It was dark so I couldn’t see his face, but his voice expressed a lot of judgement.
“If you really expected me to have common sense, that’s on you.”
“You’re right.” Hell yeah. “Which is why Mr. Jones won’t wake up no matter how much noise we make. He’s deaf without his hearing aids.”
“You know what?” I didn’t sound screechy at all. “The less I know, the better.” Like, for example, I don’t want to know if our victim is a nice elderly man with hearing loss. Or Batman or the pope.
Wait, I want to know if it’s Batman. Don’t want that guy holding a grudge against me.
It was fine. This would be fine. If it wasn’t, Luke wouldn’t be here with me.
Maybe I wasn’t as badass as I pretended to be on TV. Maybe I hadn’t done very many bad things. Maybe I wasn’t even on TV. Maybe lots of stuff. But on the other hand, Luke.
He liked doing the right thing because it was the right thing to do and not just because it was advantageous at the time. He was sweet and the angel on my shoulder. Also the devil. Not because he was bad but because he was hot like fire.
I could do this. Luke was right next to me, holding my hand.
…
This might not have helped with the tough, ruthless thing I was trying to do, but yeah, Luke and I held hands while we worked our way through the darkness. I could try going it alone but then I’d fall over a zillion times and also Luke’s hand in mine. I may be a criminal now, but I wasn’t gonna turn down a good thing.
We made it to our target. My vision began to adjust to the dark, and there was a vague structure in front of us. A chicken coop. Sans chicken. I wasn’t going to vandal animals, I’m not a monster.
Unlinking our hands, I gripped my bat with both hands. I bounced on the balls of my feet, psyching myself up for this. I needed to act before Luke asked me if I was sure again.
I could do this. I could do this. I could—
Alright.
This sure seemed wrong, but if Luke was okay with it…
I took a deep breath, raised the bat over my head, and charged. “AHHHH!”
“Ryan, that’s the exactoppositeof stealthy.”
* * *
Luke
Fade out.
No, fade in. Maybe?
Fade in or out.
Ugh. If we’re setting the scene, that would be fade in, right?
Hollywood didn’t always make sense. Or at least theater. I watched Alicia rehearse for a play one time and the director said right and everyone just knew that meant left. Like, that wasincrediblyconfusing. But it meant stage left, Alicia explained later.
I have no idea why right and left switch on stage. Maybe it’s part of getting into character?
Um. Action. That’sdefinitelya movie thing.
We, I mean Ryan and Luke, I mean the two stealthy guys were all stealthy as they… stealth-ed. Only we, I mean they, were about to whack something with bats, so maybe that wasn’t a stealth mission.
