Fetch

by Scott Cawthon

  Then, when he was done thumbing through the pages his father hadn’t yet bothered to read but had agreed to try out on their problematic first-born, Alec stared at the closed bathroom door his sister had gathered the courage to open, knowing the wrath she’d surely incur. He wondered for the rest of the night about why she had done it. What sort of game was she playing at? What kind of sorcery was she practicing, trying to lull him into a false sense of camaraderie?

  Then he allowed his memory to fall backward. He retraced the times he had confused her in the past, the moments he’d simply assumed she was attempting to throw him off of his game. There was the time she baked him cookies in her toy oven after his parents had ignored his pleas for sweets at the grocery store. There was that one moment during the doomed camping trip when she’d laughed at an unintentional joke he’d made, even as she clawed desperately at her nose for the rogue mosquito. There was that one Mother’s Day when she’d added his name to the card because he’d forgotten.

  Alec stared out his window for the rest of the night, until the dotted stars gave way to the blue dawn before sunrise. It was too tempting to believe that his sister had brought him the book because an alliance had suddenly seemed like a good idea. Ten years of watching the uncanny spells she could cast on his parents and the rest of the world had taught him she wasn’t to be so easily trusted.

  No, he thought as night crept into day. This is just another trick.

  She’d been able to fool everyone else but him up to this point. A phony peace offering wasn’t about to trick him into thinking she was suddenly on his side. Still, it unsettled him a little that he didn’t know what exactly she was up to. There was really only one way to solve that mystery.

  “I’ll play along,” he whispered to himself. “She’ll show her cards eventually.”

  “You’re making it too complicated,” Hazel said. It seemed she was taking to this new alliance with surprising comfort.

  They were sitting by the pool in the backyard, their feet dangling in the chlorinated water as the sun beat against their backs. Alec didn’t need a mirror to know his neck was starting to glow pink.

  “What’re you talking about? It’s the perfect plan,” he said.

  Alec was in such a habit of coldly dismissing his sister, it was exceptionally difficult to pretend to take her seriously. But if he was going to discover whatever trap it was she was trying to lure him into, he had to be convincing.

  Strangely, though, in pretending to take her advice, he was starting to see her differently. It was weird the way this person he was so closely related to was suddenly becoming whole in front of him, like he’d been living with a hologram this whole time.

  She was a completely formed con artist.

  “So let me get this straight,” she said, rolling her eyes skyward. “Your big plan to get Mom and Dad to stop thinking you’re a total sociopath is to act like a total sociopath?”

  After reading Chapter Five the night before, Alec learned that The Plan was a grossly simplistic take on the teenaged brain. If parents wanted a well-behaved, predictable child, they simply needed to treat them as the opposite of that. It was the worst in hokey reverse psychology, and nothing irked Alec more than having his intelligence insulted.

  So his Counterplan was simple; he’d just act worse—way, way worse. He was pretending, of course. He knew his Counterplan was a terrible one. But he needed Hazel to be the one to come up with the idea, not him. It was the only way to make her believe he was falling for her gesture of sibling love.

  Once her guard was down, he’d be able to figure out what she was actually up to.

  “How am I the sociopath in this scenario?” he asked, trying hard not to actually feel offended. It’s just an act, he reminded himself. It’s just an act. “They think the best way to make me good is to treat me like I’m bad!” Alec added in mock outrage. “If you ask me, that’s pretty sociopathic.”

  Now he was fake-arguing that fake acting bad was the best way to counteract his parents’ fake-anger at his real bad behavior. It was all getting very meta. Alec could feel a headache forming behind his eyes.

  “Look,” said Hazel, suddenly sounding older than her almost ten years. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’ve sort of been losing your touch.”

  “My touch?” Alec said, putting his hand on the hottest part of his neck to try and shield it. Only yesterday, Hazel would have been terrified to be this blunt with him. Maybe he really was losing his knack for intimidation.

  “You used to be pretty good at hiding it,” she said, and she looked hard at him, so he knew she was waiting for him to catch on.

  When he didn’t answer, she sighed and said, “You used to get away with a lot more.”

  “How’s that my fault?” he said, not really liking the way he sounded pouty. “If anything, it’s your fault!”

  She blinked at him slowly.

  “They only started to think I was the bad one when they figured out you were the good one.”

  Hazel looked back down at the water, and this time, he thought maybe he saw something of the old Hazel, the one who seemed to tiptoe around him with an apology on her lips, like it was a lost cause thinking they’d ever be friends.

  To Alec’s great amazement, he felt a twinge of remorse for that, a feeling he quickly buried.

  “Okay, what’s your Counterplan?” he asked.

  Her solution was too simple.

  “Be good,” she said.

  Alec laughed. What else could he do?

  “That’s your master class in playing our parents? Reverse-reverse psychology?”

  She shrugged. “If you’re a little bit better, and I’m a little bit worse, maybe it’ll neutralize the attention enough for them to leave us alone for a change.”

  Alec let his jaw do that thing where it dropped. He let his body experience the full shock he had restrained for so long, and he did it in front of the least likely person: Golden Hazel. The child who did what she was told when she was told to do it. The straight As and the coordinated piano fingers, the dish clearer and the classroom helper. The easy parent/teacher conference. The perfect child.

  Maybe she didn’t want to be perfect anymore.

  How had it never occurred to him that his lot in the family was just as burdensome as hers? Why had the tiny sparkle in her eye never caught his attention, the one that said, “Let’s trade places for today”? When had she stopped being Golden Hazel and simply started being Hazel: a kid?

  All the more reason not to trust her, he thought, his resolve hardening. She was tired of pretending to be the good one. She was ready to advance to full bad-kid status. Which meant she was definitely up to something.

  “Do you think you can do it?” he asked, not meaning it as a challenge but as an actual question. “Be bad?”

  “Can you be good?” she asked, and from her, it definitely was a challenge.

  They agreed to test her theory that night as a sort of trial run. Their parents were obviously committed to their own experiment prescribed by The Plan Planner. They’d been on Alec’s case all day: They’d scolded him for failing to pull his clothes from the clothesline. They’d admonished him for playing video games before completing his homework, even though it was spring break. They’d even lectured him on the importance of flossing, a strange battle to pick after a spotless checkup during his most recent dental cleaning.

  By the time dinner rolled around, Alec’s face hurt from smiling. His neck was sore from nodding. His blood had boiled so many times that day, he was surprised he hadn’t cooked from the inside out. He’d swallowed every scolding, never caving to the temptation of sassing his parents.

  And true to her word, at each confrontation throughout the day, Hazel had been there to take a portion of the burden away from Alec. She’d chosen that morning to show their mom the less-than-stellar grade on her spelling test from the previous week. She’d “accidentally” dropped her dad’s shirts in the mud when she pulled them from the c
lothesline. And in response to the Great Flossing Debate of Monday afternoon, she’d marked a first for herself: Hazel mouthed off.

  “How many cavities did you have at your last checkup?” she muttered within earshot of their mother.

  “Young lady, what’s gotten into you today?” their mom said.

  And as Alec and Hazel rounded the corner to retreat to their separate bedrooms after dinner time, they’d tapped fingertips and hid their smiles.

  But as soon as Alec closed his own bedroom door, he reviewed every moment from the day to analyze his sister’s actions: the way she’d jump in too readily to deflect the scolding meant for him, the way she’d been so ready with a smart comeback to their mom, the time she winked conspiratorially at him at the dinner table. It was all just a little too perfect, this little show she was putting on for him.

  You’re not clever enough to play this game, he thought that night before he went to bed. You’re in way over your head, Sis.

  He had five years on her of playing the role of the bad seed. If she thought she was going to usurp that title, she was in for a rude awakening.

  The next day was more or less a repeat of the previous one.

  When their parents decried Alec’s lack of manners at the breakfast table, Hazel burped. When Alec’s dad accused him of scratching the side of the car with his bike, Hazel unapologetically took the blame. When Alec’s mom wondered aloud when the last time was that Alec had ingested a vegetable, Hazel’s quick response was to ask when the last time was that their parents had cooked an edible one.

  That night, as Hazel joined Alec on his perch at the top of the stairs, they listened to their parents puzzle through the past two days.

  “Is it just me, or does Hazel seem to be going through a … phase?” their mom whispered to their dad, teaspoons clinking against the sides of their coffee mugs.

  “I thought it was just my imagination at first,” their dad agreed.

  Their parents’ awe was unmistakable.

  “Did you hear what she said to me this afternoon?” their mom asked. “She actually said she thought I was starting to look ‘haggard’! Haggard, Ian! Do I look haggard?”

  “No, but you sound haggard,” Alec muttered.

  Hazel had to stifle her laugh, but Alec was too irritated to find the humor. His parents were infuriating. Was it really so unbelievable that Hazel could be even nastier than predictably rotten Alec?

  “Well, could anyone blame you for being haggard?” their father said.

  “Oooh, wrong answer,” Hazel whispered, and this time, Alec did find the humor, and his laugh caught him off guard.

  “So then I do look haggard?” their mom said, and Alec could hear a teaspoon clinking faster and faster against the ceramic. One of them was compulsively stirring.

  “Of course not, Meg. Can we try to focus on the kids?” he said, and their mom let out a single, uncharitable “Ha!”

  “Oh, now look who’s ready to be the adult,” said their mom, and Alec and Hazel both leaned back on their step, grimacing.

  “That’s not going to go over well,” said Alec.

  “Really, Meg?”

  “I just think that—”

  “Oh, I know what you think. You’ve made that pretty clear.”

  “Good grief, Ian, grow up.”

  But when Alec looked over at Hazel, she was simply smiling. As though the whole thing were going exactly according to plan. Of course, from her perspective, it was.

  Then she turned her smile to him. If Alec hadn’t been able to see right through her, he might have been tempted to believe it was genuine. If he were the type to fall for such an obvious manipulation, he might have even felt a hint of warmth toward her, a sister simply in search of an actual relationship with her brother.

  It was kind of cute, he thought, how she believed she could outsmart him.

  “Okay, okay,” their dad said, and Alec heard him pull in a deep breath. “We can’t turn on each other.”

  Their mother sighed. “You’re right. Let’s just go to bed. It’s been a long day. Oh, and I can’t find the book, FYI.”

  “Forget it,” their dad said. “We’ll look for it in the morning.”

  Two sets of chair legs scraped against the kitchen tiles, and Alec and Hazel jumped to their feet and slipped into their rooms just as the light on the stairs switched on, announcing their parents’ approach.

  Lying in bed, Alec thought through all the variations in his own plan, the Counter to the Counterplan, as it were.

  Tomorrow was party-planning day. He’d heard his mom remind his dad about it a thousand times, not that it mattered since he’d be at work and she would be dragging Alec and Hazel along to meet Aunt Gigi at the pizzeria instead.

  It was there that Alec would really ramp up his reconnaissance. If he was going to discover what Hazel was actually up to, he would discover it in the place where all of these plans and counterplans were to culminate. He could think of no other reason for why Hazel was so determined to sabotage her own birthday party by allowing Alec to be … well, himself. It had something to do with her birthday on Saturday. Whatever she was planning, it would all go down then.

  Alec’s only real option was to sit back and let Hazel show her cards. It was a matter of time before it happened, and though she’d proven herself more cunning than he’d originally given her credit for, she was no evil genius.

  That title was reserved for Alec.

  Sometime after Alec heard his parents’ bedroom door shut for the night, the door from the bathroom he shared with Hazel opened, and she poked her head inside.

  “Today was fun,” she said, and Alec made a quick switch to his “conspiring brother” act.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Nice job with the cooking dig,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Hazel laughed shyly.

  Oh please, Alec thought, but he managed to keep from rolling his eyes.

  “Hey, you don’t think we’re gonna, like, break them or anything, do you?” Hazel said.

  “Nah,” he said. “They can handle it. Trust me, I’ve put them through a lot worse.”

  Hazel nodded, then gave him one more shy smile before shutting the door and padding across the bathroom back to her own room.

  It was a few minutes before Alec noticed that he was smiling, too. Not smiling because he was recounting all the ways he’d beaten his sister at her own game. Not smiling because he’d exposed her for the fraud she is for their parents and friends and everyone else in the world to see. Not yet, anyway.

  He was smiling because he was enjoying her company.

  Get a grip, Alec, he scolded himself.

  Then he repeated to himself over and over that she wasn’t as good as she pretended to be, that she was only using him as a means to an end. He reminded himself that this alliance was false and temporary, that once he’d revealed her as a fraud, they’d go back to their separate ends of the bathroom, and Alec could proceed unfettered in doing whatever it was he wanted to do, only this time without the constant comparison to Golden Hazel.

  Then he wiped that pathetic smile from his face and fell asleep with vengeance on his mind.

  “Gigi, what do you think? Should we kick in for the extra Fazbear Funwiches?”

  Alec and Hazel’s mom was a wreck on Wednesday. She’d overslept her alarm and had to shove Alec and Hazel into the car without taking a shower or even brushing her teeth. Her hair was jammed into submission under an old baseball cap, and the dark circles under her eyes made her look almost skeletal under the shadow of the hat brim.

  Hazel hadn’t made it much better by asking her—in her most concerned voice—if she was coming down with something because she looked absolutely sickly. And Alec hadn’t made it any better by being … nice.

  “You look fine, Mom,” he’d said, which threw their mom for such a loop, she could only blink at them both before snapping at them to buckle up and running two stop signs in order to meet Aunt Gigi on time at Freddy Fazbear
’s.

  Now she was standing in the party room with a thoroughly unenthused Party Prepper who was waiting impatiently on answers about Saturday.

  “What on earth is a Funwich?” Aunt Gigi asked, leaning her hand on a table and immediately lifting it after detecting something sticky.

  “It’s a … um … it’s a …” their mom tried, but she was distracted by the sight of Alec and Hazel seeming to play together by the Skee-Ball machines.

  “You are truly terrible at this game,” Alec said.

  “I am not!” said Hazel, but after her third gutter ball in a row, Alec just laughed.

  “Okay, it’s not my best event,” she said. “I shine more in the Pinball category.”

  “Can you even see over the controllers?” he asked, rubbing the top of her head roughly.

  Hazel smiled, and so did Alec, but for a different reason. He felt refreshed after a good night’s sleep, renewed in his mission to bring his sister down.

  “It’s a delicious crescent roll stuffed with your choice of fried macaroni, tater tots, or chocolate marshmallow,” the Party Prepper deadpanned to Aunt Gigi.

  “That sounds utterly repulsive,” Aunt Gigi said.

  The Party Prepper didn’t argue.

  “Yeah, but it’s only twenty dollars more, and honestly, I’m just not sure if the Super Surprise Party Package comes with enough food,” their mom fretted, finally taking her gaze from the kids and returning to the task at hand.

  “So that’s a yes on the Fazbear Funwich platter with extra dipping sauces?” said the Party Prepper, by now having had just about enough of this entire interaction.

  “Yes. Let’s do it,” said their mom, clearly relieved at having made the big decision. “I have these coupons from the paper for Foxy’s Pirate Palooza special? Can I use those?”

  While their mom and Aunt Gigi ironed out the last of the details, Alec and Hazel wandered the empty pizzeria out of earshot of their mom and aunt.

  “So what’s the big deal with this place anyway?” Alec said, worried he was giving himself away.