by Mike Thayer
“The one and only.” I held my hands out. “What gave it away?”
“Not too many new kids from Texas around here pulling off magic tricks. It was the locker talk of the day.” Zak had a precise diction when he spoke, like he was carefully choosing each word. He didn’t sound robotic or overly formal or anything, just extremely measured, which wasn’t all that surprising given his strict upbringing. He looked around, then leaned in close. “So how’d you do it?”
“There’s no magic to it, man,” I said, trying to downplay the moment. “Nothing you can’t look up how to do on YouTube.”
Zak squinted one eye with a look that he knew there was more to it than a simple YouTube video, but he let it go. “Well, it was quite the first impression regardless.”
“Practice makes perfect, I guess.” I shrugged.
Our conversation continued much as it had during the discard day, with talk about Zak’s interest in sports, judo, and violin. I wasn’t following a script exactly, but it was important to retread all the main points of a “getting to know you” type conversation like this. Even with all my notes it was impossible to keep up on everything I learned about someone during a sticky versus a discard day, and it made for some awkward moments when I asked someone about their sick grandma when they never remembered telling me that they even had a grandma. The more and more I talked to Zak, the more I liked the kid. I was 100 percent comfortable around him on a sticky day. That was rare for me.
“You know what I was thinking about?” I asked, looking out the window as we turned the corner into my neighborhood.
“What’s that?”
“What if I had a second crack at today?”
“What do you mean?” Zak asked.
“Like what if you had this strange ability where you could repeat the day?” I clarified. “Like let’s say if the first time you lived a day was a trial run. Nothing really mattered, because everything would just reset itself, and you’d have another shot at the day.”
I had asked this question to a few friends over the years, since it was usually a great source for new ideas of things to try out. It didn’t really matter if I brought it up on a sticky day. It wasn’t like anyone suspected that I actually lived a double day. To them it was just a cool thought experiment.
“Hmmm.” Zak looked up and rubbed his chin. “So I’d like remember everything I’d done during the first go-around?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” Zak nodded. “Easy answer. I’d split that first day between practicing the violin, drilling judo moves, and then doing something new like learning a language or something.”
I opened my mouth to reply, then closed it. “Hold on. You’d spend the extra day practicing?”
“Yeah, I’d get crazy good at stuff, crazy fast.”
It was my turn to squint at Zak with disbelief. “You wouldn’t like spend a hundred dollars on candy, run through the school in your underwear, and throw a paint-filled water balloon at your neighbor’s dog?”
Zak gave a confused laugh. “You would run through the school in your underwear?”
“You know what I mean,” I said, although I had done it one time in fourth grade. Very freeing. “Like something spontaneous. Something you could usually never get away with.”
Zak thought for a while. “Oooh, maybe I would be a superhero! You’d read the news and then figure out where all the bad stuff happened, and then you could go save people and stuff.”
I leaned back and stared at Zak. Of all the kids I had ever asked this question, not a single one had given Zak’s answer. Once I brought up the idea of doing mischievous stuff, the thought exercise always went in that direction. I had only ever heard that they would do the same things as me, but here Zak was wanting to become a concert violinist, judo ninja, and protector of old ladies’ purses. Even crazier still, I didn’t get the feeling that he was putting me on. He was completely serious. I had taken a peek at Zak’s second face and just found one that seemed to smile more brightly.
The bus pulled to a stop, and the squeak of opening doors jolted me from my thoughts. I said goodbye to Zak and headed for my house, all the time dwelling on what he’d said.
“I’m home,” I called, opening the front door. I made my way to the kitchen, expecting to see my mom unpacking the pots and pans, but heard her voice call from upstairs.
“Up here, sweetie.”
I walked upstairs and saw my mom slumped in a camping chair, surrounded by an explosion of toys and empty boxes. My two crazy sisters ran around in circles and launched stuffed animals from one end of the room to the other.
“Geez, Mom, you okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine.” She rubbed her eyes as she sat up. “I think the girls have a lot of bottled-up energy from being stuck in the car for two days. I didn’t get much unpacking done today, unfortunately.”
I shrugged. “Well, it could have been worse. They could have gotten hold of some markers or something and drawn all over the walls while you unpacked.”
A stuffed animal smacked my mom in the face, and she barely reacted. “Right now, I think I’d prefer the markers.”
However stressed my mom looked, I knew for a fact that she wouldn’t have preferred the permanent markers. I had made a point of taking them out of the box and hiding them above the fridge this morning. That was the funny thing about sticky days. It was easy to prevent something from happening that I didn’t want, but it was impossible to tell what other things might happen instead. Did I sometimes create an even bigger mess on a sticky day by trying to avoid something that happened on a discard day? Yes. Yes, I did. My middle name could be Unintended Consequences. All in all, though, if you added up the damage I caused versus the damage I prevented, I would have to say I was doing pretty well.
“Hey, do you know where my bike is?” I asked, slipping my backpack off my shoulder.
“It’ll be in the garage somewhere. You might want to wait for your dad to come home.”
“Bike ride?” Alice said, her pigtailed head popping out of a cardboard box like a prairie dog out of its hole.
“Bike wide, Danny?” Sarah echoed, unable to pronounce her r s. She ran at me and latched on to my leg like a four-tentacled octopus. You had to be very careful what words you said around the twins. Certain phrases like bike ride, ice cream, candy, and horse were like uttering the words to a magical spell that drove my sisters mad with desire.
“No bike ride today, twinsies,” I said, trying to pry Sarah from my leg. I finally resorted to the foolproof release mechanism known as the “armpit tickle.”
“Are you looking to go somewhere?” my mom asked.
“It’s nothing urgent. I just had someone invite me over to their house to play video games one of these days. I can go some other time.”
“Video games?” my mom said, looking confused. “Most of the systems we get you just end up gathering dust.”
Did every parent know so very little about their kids, or was it just a double-day problem? “I know, Mom, but I still like to play. Plus it’ll be a good way to make friends.”
“So you met some nice kids at your new school, then?”
Today I did. “Oh yeah, basically everyone I talked to today was super nice. There’s Freddie, the one who likes video games, and another cool kid named Zak. I met him on the bus ride home.”
“Oh, that’s such a relief. It’s so important to find good friends and not get mixed up with the wrong crowd. I’d drop you off at your friend’s house, but I really need help unpacking. We just need to get settled, and then you can have all sorts of playdates.”
“Hang out, Mom,” I corrected as I walked over to my room to drop off my backpack. “The twins have playdates. I go over to hang out.”
I looked down from the second-story balcony at the labyrinth of big, unopened, cardboard moving boxes. My mom hadn’t asked me to help with the boxes on the discard day. Scrub the walls of permanent marker, yes, but not unpack boxes. All real superheroes got
punished in some way for trying to do the right thing. I was no exception.
I spent the next three hours pulling clothes, books, picture frames, and toys from about a million different boxes. It was pretty tedious work, and most of the time it just seemed like we were making more of a mess, but it had to be done, and it gave me time to reflect on the day. I replayed several moments again and again in my brain: seeing Braxlynn piggify that girl’s picture, not using the mind-reading trick to put Noah in his place, watching him tease Freddie. I may not have shown it, but there was always something nagging me at the end of a sticky day, something I did or didn’t do, but this was different. I had known they were all coming. I was the only person who had known they were all coming, and yet I did nothing. Zak would have. This ate at my stomach like a worm burrowing through the center of a bright red apple.
Dr. Donaldson had always pushed me to be responsible with the double day. It wasn’t like he didn’t expect me to have fun with it, just to not spend every discard day trying to eat all the items in the school vending machine. When I wanted to be flippant, I’d tell him a phrase I heard my dad say when he beat my uncle in a very uncoordinated game of one-on-one basketball: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” Roughly speaking, no one else had the double day, so I wasn’t in competition with anyone about how to use the double day. On top of that, I was also pretty sure no one would use it all that much differently than me anyhow.
But then there was Zak. He didn’t know it, but he had me calling into question my whole approach to the double day. I was reminded of Dr. Donaldson’s response: I may very well be in the “land of the blind” when it came to the double day, but that didn’t mean that I shouldn’t do more with it. I wasn’t the one-eyed man because I only had one eye. I just refused to open my other eye.
I pulled out my sticky-day notebook and sighed.
Deep thought: I hate it when Dr. Donaldson ends up probably being right.
CHAPTER 7
STOCKPILE
(Discard Tuesday—Sept. 7th)
“Let’s see who did their reading yesterday,” Mr. Wilding said from the whiteboard, pushing his round glasses up his pointed nose. “Who knows how to solve a fraction divided by another fraction? Take two-fifths divided by four-ninths.”
It was fourth-period math, but by the number of students asleep, you’d have thought it was midnight. The only response from the class was a cough, a sneeze, and some gentle snoring.
I looked over at Zak, expecting him to pipe up. Turned out he was in both my fourth-period math class and my sixth-period honors English class, which was pretty cool. He looked back at me and mimed playing the violin. I guess the kid was human after all.
“Nobody?” Mr. Wilding asked. He seemed more offended than surprised. He spent a long while casting a sharp, hawkish scowl over the class before continuing. “It was on page one of your reading. Page one. This is preposterous … Look, I will give five bonus points on your next quiz to whoever can tell me the answer. Anyone?”
“You find the common denominator?” a girl offered from the back of the room.
“You find the common denom—” Mr. Wilding sputtered in disbelief. “No. You multiply the first number by the reciprocal of the second number!”
I took out my discard-day notebook and jotted down the answer just as Mr. Wilding angrily penned it on the board. Discard days weren’t all just flippant quips and high-risk pranks. Sticky Danny’s pristine and impressive reputation required a lot of upkeep, and ol’ Discard Danny was tasked with most of the legwork. I already had two copies of quizzes stashed in my backpack from first and third period that I’d need to study tonight. Some discard days were about using ammo, and others were about stockpiling it. Stockpiling days were necessary but were never as much fun.
At lunchtime, I went for the ultra-healthy selection of a giant pink cookie and twenty-ounce bottle of soda from the vending machines before heading to the video gaming tables. Freddie perked up when she saw me and gestured to the empty spot next to her. I held up a finger for her to give me a second and walked over toward Noah, who had just taken his seat at the head of one of the long tables.
“Cool shirt, man,” I said, nodding to Noah. His T-shirt had two dragons on it with what looked like Chinese lettering underneath.
Noah looked down at his shirt and then at me. “You know what game it’s from?” The question came off more as a challenge than the start to idle chitchat.
I had played a lot of video games in my life, but I didn’t recognize the symbol. “Are those the dragons from the latest Shimmer and Shine show?”
“You would know,” Noah scoffed. “Shows how legit of a gamer you are. It’s from Double Dragon, you noob. Freaking awesome retro game. One of the all-time best.”
Although Noah spoke with more confidence than Spider-Man in a rock-climbing contest, I highly doubted he knew as much as he put on. First off, he was like eleven years old. Second off, video games had been coming out for basically forty years. There were millions of them. Third off, I’d checked his online stats. He played a lot of Champions Royale. It didn’t leave much time for other games. He probably got the shirt as a gift, played the game once, knew no one else would be able to call him on it, and used it to smugly show how much he “knew” about retro games. I pulled out my notebook.
Stockpile: Learn more about the old game Double Dragon
“I’ll have to check it out,” I replied. “So, I hear you’re like the best at Champions Royale in the school.”
Noah spoke as someone passed him the brown bag. “I’m the best at every game in the school. You gonna play in the Brown Bag, or what?”
“Of course,” I said, holding up my phone. “Just letting you know, I was like the best in my school, especially at sniping.”
“This is my scared face.” Noah tilted his head and gave me a bland stare. “Buckle up, buddy. And just to let you know, my sniping’s straight fire. No one’s better than me.” He gave a predatory smile as he handed me the paper bag.
Noah claiming that he was better than me at Champions Royale was forgivable; I hadn’t played nearly as much as he had, after all. A challenge to my sniping ability, however, was an offense on a personal level. No matter the game, no matter the opposition.
I eyed Noah as I pulled out a wad of cash. “It’s five bucks, right?” I asked, testing to see if Noah would correct me.
“Yep,” Noah said, watching me place a five-dollar bill into the bag.
“Good luck,” I said, walking over to take my seat next to Freddie.
“Don’t need it,” Noah called out after me.
Freddie leaned over to me as if she were some spy slipping me top secret information. She wore an oversized T-shirt and the same worn-out sweatpants from the day before. “What was that all about?”
“Mind games, Freddie,” I said, queuing up Champions Royale. “Mind games.”
A few minutes later, the round started and my character was zooming through the sky toward the map. I dropped into a barn at the southeast corner of Peasantville and watched two other players land in nearby houses. After a quick search, I almost shouted for joy when I opened a chest behind a hay bale.
“The worm-squirming wizard’s cloak,” Freddie hissed in excitement as she watched my screen. “Danny, that’s huge.”
“I know—keep it down,” I whispered back, not taking my eyes from the screen. The wizard’s cloak was one of the most powerful objects in the game. It took up your magical item, armor slot, and weapon slot, but it was worth it. I equipped the cloak and began levitating a few feet off the ground. You couldn’t exactly fly around with it, but the minor levitation allowed you to move over any terrain with ease. I floated out of the barn and found the two players who had landed in nearby houses. After a few blasts of lightning from my hands, I reduced the population of Peasantville to one.
Texcalibur zapped DontFeedAfter12
Texcalibur zapped BigBaller50
“Texcalibur takes the
lead,” I shouted, knowing that Noah would have just seen the kill notifications pop up on his phone. I felt Freddie’s hand squeeze my shoulder and flitted my eyes to the side. She was more intently focused on my phone than I was.
Even though I couldn’t hold any other weapon while wearing the wizard’s cloak, it gave me the ability to command the dragon, which was usually how Noah ended up not just winning but destroying the competition. If I could get to the dragon at the top of Fangthorn Peak before SpudMasterFlex, then there was a decent chance that I could beat him right here and now. And, typically, if I could do it on a discard day, I could do it better on the sticky day. Toppling this kid might not be so hard after all.
I left Peasantville and third-partied another pair of players in Haunted Pines before making my way to the base of Fangthorn Peak. I wasn’t super familiar with the best route up the mountain but still made good progress. From the corner of my eye I could see Noah lean forward over his phone and bite his tongue. He was nervous. This one was slipping away from him. In another thirty seconds I’d be at the dragon’s lair at the top of the mountain, and this thing would be over. I just needed to get to the dragon—
My screen flashed red as a waterfall of fire rained from the sky.
You have been scorched by SpudMasterFlex
“No friggin’ way!” I yelled.
“Class is in session, Professor Tex.” Noah laughed and pumped his fist.
Freddie let go of my shoulder and leaned back. “Yuuuup,” she said with the understanding of one who’d been in my spot far too many times before.
I clenched my jaw and shook my head in disbelief. How on earth had he gotten to the dragon before me? The rest of the game was a slaughter as Noah piled on a blistering seventeen kills. Something wasn’t right. This went beyond the fact that Noah was a good player. Freddie had said earlier that it just didn’t make sense how much SpudMasterFlex won. I took a few screenshots of the end-of-game stats to look over later.