The Worst Night Ever

by Dave Barry

  Football players, at the far end of the locker room, headed toward me. Practice was over.

  I looked around for a way out, but there was no exit at this end of the locker room. Next to the last group of lockers was a door marked JANITOR. I scurried over to it and turned the knob. It was unlocked. I opened the door, stepped inside, closed the door. It was pitch-black, and it smelled like chemicals. I heard the voices getting closer.

  Then I realized I was still holding Troy’s backpack.

  I opened the door a crack, thinking I could maybe toss the backpack out before anybody got close. But it was too late. Guys were already right outside. So I quietly closed the door and listened. My plan now was to wait for the players to get dressed and leave, then take Frank out of the backpack and get out of there. But for the moment all I could do was watch and listen.

  I could hear pretty well through the closet door. Mostly I heard a lot of jokes I didn’t get. As far as I could tell, the players were changing out of their uniforms, going to the showers, coming back and putting their regular clothes back on. After about twenty minutes they started leaving; I wasn’t hearing so many voices. Finally I was hearing mainly two voices: the Bevin brothers. They were talking about Troy’s backpack. Which I was still holding.

  “I left it right here,” one was saying. Troy, I figured.

  “You sure?” That would be Nick.

  “Yeah.”

  “You think somebody grabbed it by mistake?”

  “Nah. It doesn’t look like anybody else’s. And nobody left theirs.”

  “So you think somebody stole it?”

  “Yeah. And I think I know who.”

  “Who?”

  “The little punk with the ferret. I bet he snuck in here while we were practicing.”

  “You think so?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So why didn’t he just take the ferret? Why’d he take the whole backpack?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m gonna kill him and his ferret.”

  They stopped talking then. I heard a locker door slam shut, hard. I was hardly breathing, holding totally still, waiting for the Bevins to leave, praying I wouldn’t sneeze. They’d leave, I’d wait a few minutes, then I’d get out of there as fast as I could and meet my mom, who was going to pick me up any minute. She was probably waiting out there now. I just needed to hold tight until…

  Oh no.

  My phone was burping.

  “Did you hear that?” said Nick.

  “Yeah,” said Troy. “Sounded like somebody burping.”

  It was Homer Simpson. My ringtone was a recording of him burping. I yanked my phone out of my pocket to shut it off. I saw on the screen that it was my mom calling. She was probably in the school driveway, wondering where I was.

  “It’s coming from that closet,” said Troy.

  I looked around, which was stupid, because it was pitch-black inside the closet. From what I could remember, there was nowhere to hide in there anyway.

  “Is somebody in there?” said Troy, his voice getting closer.

  The doorknob turned. The door opened. There was Troy, wearing only a towel around his waist. Behind him was Nick, also wearing only a towel. Troy saw me, saw his backpack in my hand.

  “You,” he said, stepping toward me.

  I didn’t think about what I did next; I just did it. I threw the backpack at Troy. He did what people do when you throw something at him: he raised his hands to catch it. While he was doing that, I ran past him.

  “Hold it!” he said. But I didn’t hold it. Like I said, I’m not an athletic person. But over short distances I can move pretty fast, especially if I have a good reason, which I did now, because I could hear two sets of Bevin footsteps running behind me. They were gaining. Nick was yelling, “Stop!” and Troy was yelling, “I’m gonna kill you!” So together they were basically saying, “Stop so we can kill you,” which is not really a logical argument for stopping. But I don’t think the Bevins were into logic right then.

  I hit the locker room door at full speed, opening it with a bang. That slowed me down a little. The Bevins were closer.

  The gym was still empty. There were two main exit doors: the one I’d come in by, next to the practice field; and another one that opened onto the main school courtyard. The courtyard one was closer, so that’s the one I aimed for, sprinting across the gym floor with two pairs of big bare feet pounding right behind me. Just as I reached the door, a hand—Troy’s—grabbed my shoulder and yanked. I started to fall, but I had enough momentum to slam into the door, which banged open. I tumbled through the opening, landed on the sidewalk outside and rolled to a stop, curling into a ball in preparation for being killed by the Bevins.

  Which is probably what would have happened, except that standing in the courtyard right outside the gym door were maybe twenty-five people, kids and grown-ups. It turned out that they were a tour group of eighth graders and their parents, checking out Coral Cove. The tour was led by two seniors. Everybody was staring at us: me curled up on the sidewalk; the Bevin brothers standing over me and suddenly realizing that they were wearing nothing except towels. They both turned red and scuttled quickly back through the gym doorway. A couple of kids were shooting video with their phones.

  Troy looked down at me. Just before he slammed the gym door shut, he said, “You’re dead.”

  “Are you okay?” one of the parents asked me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, getting up and limping away as fast as I could. And I was fine, unless you counted the fact that my knee hurt and I was a dead person.

  My phone was burping. My mom again, calling from in front of the school. She wanted to know why I didn’t answer the phone before and why I’d kept her waiting for ten minutes and did I know she had to get home and make dinner and she was already late. I said I needed a couple more minutes to get my backpack from my locker.

  In case you were wondering, that was unacceptable.

  It took maybe eleven seconds for a video of me and the Bevin brothers to show up on Instagram. I look pretty pathetic, lying on the ground, curled up and wincing in terror. But the Bevin brothers don’t come off great, either. Their hair is wild from being in the shower, and their faces are red from being embarrassed, and when they run back through the gym door Nick’s towel slips and there is definitely a visible flash of a hairy Bevin buttock. So all in all it’s an uncool, non-Hollisterish look for them.

  Naturally, because it featured the famous Bevin brothers, the video went majorly viral among Coral Cove students. Probably ten people sent it to me, and everybody was watching it and laughing the next morning on the bus to school. The only person not talking about it was Matt, who was talking about Frank and how were we going to get him back.

  I didn’t see the Bevins in the school courtyard. I did see Suzana from a distance, and I was ready to smile at her if she looked at me, but she didn’t look at me. She continued not looking at me in English class. Chemistry and Trig were the usual combination of boring and extremely mysterious. By the time lunch period came around I was starting to think there was a chance I would get through the day without getting killed. I was sitting at a picnic table with Matt and some other kids, eating a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, which I realize sounds weird but you should try it because it’s really delicious. Suddenly everybody got quiet, like in a movie when the bad guys walk into a bar.

  “Move,” said a voice behind me. Troy’s voice.

  The other kids got up and moved away fast. Matt and I started to get up too, but we both felt hands on our shoulders pushing us back down.

  “Sit,” said Troy. Like we were dogs.

  We sat. Troy and Nick went around the table and sat across from us. So now it was just the four of us, facing each other across the table, with many spectators spectating from a safe distance.

  Troy leaned over the table toward me. His face was red, and I could see the muscles in his neck bulging in an angry manner. He put his face about an inch from mine. I st
ill had a largish bite of sandwich in my mouth, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it. This didn’t seem like a time for chewing.

  “You’re dead,” he said.

  “You already told me,” I mumbled. When I pronounced the t in “told” I spit out a little piece of banana, which landed on Troy’s cheek, which made him even madder. He wiped it off and flicked it angrily at the spectator crowd, which parted to let it fly past—a little banana missile of rage.

  “Yeah, but now I mean it,” he said.

  “The Instagram video,” said Nick, jabbing his finger toward me. Even his finger had muscles. “You’re gonna pay for that.”

  “But I didn’t shoot that video!” I said, trying to swallow and talk at the same time. “I’m in it, remember?”

  “Yeah,” said Troy, “but the video exists because you tried to steal my backpack.”

  “I wasn’t trying to steal your backpack!” I said. “I was trying to get his ferret back.” I pointed at Matt, who decided this was his cue to speak. This is almost never a good thing, because as I may have mentioned, he’s an idiot.

  “If you don’t give me back my ferret,” Matt said, “I’m gonna call the police.”

  “Really?” said Troy. “You’re gonna file a missing-ferret report with the police? I’ll bet they’d drop everything and get right on that.”

  I had to admit, it did sound pretty stupid.

  “Then I’ll tell your parents,” said Matt.

  The Bevins actually laughed at that.

  “You do that,” said Nick. “You tell our parents.”

  Troy leaned toward Matt. “You really miss your little pet rat?”

  “Yes,” said Matt. I could see his eyes getting wet.

  “We’re taking good care of him,” said Troy. He looked at Nick. “Show him.”

  Nick pulled out his phone, some kind of new one with a screen the size of a coffee table. He tapped it, then turned it around so Matt and I could see. It was a video of Frank, close up, being held in a hand. He looked nervous. Then the video zoomed out, and you saw why he looked nervous: he was being held over an open cage. Inside the cage was a snake.

  A really, really large snake.

  The hand moved; now it was holding Frank by the back of his neck, dangling him over the snake. Frank was wiggling and waving his legs around, like he wanted to run away, but of course he couldn’t. The hand slowly lowered Frank toward the snake. The snake moved its head a little, like it was watching.

  “That’s a reticulated python,” said Troy. “Beautiful animal.”

  “Her name is Roxy,” said Nick. “She looks slow, right? You wouldn’t believe how fast she moves when she’s hungry.”

  “Which she is now,” said Troy.

  Matt looked away from the screen. “You didn’t…Did you…” He couldn’t finish.

  “Nah,” said Troy.

  “Not yet,” said Nick, turning the video off.

  “But tonight,” said Troy, “you’ll want to be checking out Instagram.”

  “Roxy’s really hungry,” said Nick.

  “No!” said Matt. “You can’t!” He was crying now.

  “Yes we can,” said Troy.

  “Okay,” I said. “You win. You made a ninth grader cry. Good job. Now can he have his stupid ferret back?”

  “He’s not stupid!” said Matt, suddenly, idiotically, mad at me.

  “I don’t think so,” said Troy.

  “Why not?” I said. “You win! We’re scared. We’re pathetic. We’re freshmen. You’re the Bevin brothers.”

  “Exactly,” said Troy. “We’re the Bevin brothers, and you made us look bad.”

  “And that thing bit me,” said Nick.

  “Seriously?” I said. “A stupid”—I looked at Matt—“I mean, a harmless animal that is somebody’s pet happens to bite you, because your brother threw it to you, and that means it’s okay to feed it to a snake? Really?”

  “Snakes gotta eat,” said Troy.

  I looked at Troy, then at Nick.

  “Why are you sitting here?” I said. “If you’re gonna beat me up, why don’t you just do it? If you’re gonna kill his ferret, why don’t you just do it? Why did you come here and sit down to talk about it?” A thought bubbled up in my mind. “You know what I think?”

  “No,” said Troy. “What do you think?”

  “I think you guys enjoy this. You like scaring us, just like you liked dangling the ferret over the snake. This is fun for you.”

  Troy looked at Nick. “What do you think, Nick? Is this fun for you?”

  “It was,” said Nick. “But now it’s getting boring.”

  “Yeah,” said Troy. “We’re outta here.” They got up.

  “Please,” said Matt. “Give him back, okay? Please. I’m really sorry he bit you.”

  “You’ll be sorrier soon,” said Nick.

  And then the Bevins were walking away, leaving Matt staring at his lap so people wouldn’t see he was crying. The Bevins moved through the crowd, which parted for them, everybody smiling at the two golden gods, everybody wanting their approval, nobody seeing the side of them Matt and I just saw. While I was watching, Suzana strolled into view, looking sensational with two of her sensational-looking friends, the three of them and the two Bevins all gravitating naturally toward each other, forming a critical mass of attractive coolness, everybody laughing about something only they were cool enough to hear, Suzana putting her hand on Troy’s large forearm muscles in reaction to something supposedly hilarious he said.

  So lunch sucked.

  I barely remember the rest of the day, because I was busy thinking about how crappy my life had suddenly become. After school I went to Mr. Forster’s office and got my latex gloves and garbage bag so I could do my second detention. Mr. Forster told me to pick up garbage in the student parking lot. The good news was, this meant I wasn’t near the football team. The bad news was, the garbage in the parking lot was even more disgusting from baking in the sun. It made yesterday’s rotting-sandwich-parts-palooza smell like a French bakery.

  So I was trudging around out there, picking up garbage and trying not to puke, when I saw Matt walking toward me with Victor Lopez. Victor went to middle school with us and was involved in the big class-trip mess. He’s kind of serious, but he’s a good guy, and he’s really, really smart, especially about science and math. Like I bet he totally knows about the hypotenuse.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “What’s the smell?” said Victor.

  “Me,” I said.

  “Whoa,” said Victor, taking a step back.

  “Okay,” said Matt. “I have an idea.”

  This is almost never a good thing.

  “What kind of idea?” I said.

  “On how we get in,” said Matt. He does this—acts like you know what he’s talking about, when there’s no reason why you would.

  “Get in where?”

  “Bay Estates.”

  Bay Estates is this super-fancy neighborhood with maybe ten houses in it. When I was in second grade I went to an Aladdin-themed birthday party there for this girl. They had an actual camel there, giving kids rides. The house was enormous. It had a game room and a movie theater. I got lost trying to find the bathroom. When my dad picked me up after the party, I asked him—remember, I was in second grade—if I could have a camel at my birthday party. He laughed and said probably not a whole camel, but if I was really, really good, he might be able to get hold of some camel poop. My dad thinks he’s a riot.

  But my point is, Bay Estates is where the absolute richest people in Miami live. It’s surrounded by walls and canals, and it has a gated entrance with security guards.

  “Why do you want to get into Bay Estates?” I asked Matt.

  “Because that’s where the Bevin brothers live.”

  “You want to go to their house?”

  “Yes. I want to get Frank back. We need to go there tonight.”

  “Wait, we?”

  “You don’t want to help me?�
�

  “Well, yes, I mean, I want to help, but going to their house…” I looked at Victor. “Are you in on this?”

  “Sort of,” he said, looking a little embarrassed. “I’m providing aerial reconnaissance.”

  “What?” I said.

  “He has a drone,” said Matt. “With a night-vision camera.”

  “I live across the canal from Bay Estates,” said Victor. “I can control the drone from my backyard.”

  I stared at Victor—who, unlike Matt, is not an idiot. “So you think this is a good idea?”

  “I didn’t say that,” he said.

  “So you’re doing it because…”

  “Because I’ll be in my backyard. You’re the ones who’ll be at the Bevin house.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Bay Estates has a security gate. We can’t just walk in there. You have to tell the guard who you’re visiting, and you have to be on a list, or they call the house to see if it’s okay to let you in.”

  “We’re not going in by the guard gate,” said Matt.

  “Then how are we going in?” I said.

  So Matt explained his plan and asked me if I was in.

  I thought for a second about the Bevin brothers, the way they looked at Matt when he begged them to let Frank go. Then I said I was in.

  So I guess I’m the real idiot.

  “Watch out for alligators,” said Matt.

  “Right,” I said.

  “No, seriously,” he said. “There’s alligators in here.”

  “I know, but what am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Don’t fall in.”

  “Very helpful tip, thanks,” I said. But I also shifted my feet a little bit so they were as far as possible from the edge of the paddleboard.

  Paddleboards. That was Matt’s plan. After dinner, I told my parents I was feeling kind of tired—planting the idea in their mind—then went to my room. After dark I checked back with them—they were binge-watching season four of The Walking Dead—and told them, over the sound of splattering zombie brains, that even though it was Friday night, I was going to bed.