by Anna Wu
Chapter 4: A Beautiful Night
Jimmy's head hit the wall with a sickening crack! He couldn't focus on his aching throat and dwindling supply of air, his head hurt too much. Purple spots danced before his closing eyes.
"Jimmy!" Cindy crazily shouted while charging Nick. She tried to shove him to the floor, but she was surprised by his strength. She bounced right off of him and landed on the ground. She looked up to see Jimmy on the verge of blacking out and Nick sneering wildly.
She immediately jumped back up to her feet and kicked Nick hard in the crotch. "Ahhhh!" he shouted, the first time he had spoken since waking up. He stumbled backwards and tripped over his bed.
Cindy ran over to Jimmy, who was sliding down the wall to the floor. "Come on, wake up, wake up," she pleaded, on the verge of tears. She smacked him hard across the face.
Jimmy suddenly opened his eyes and coughed sporadically. "What?" was all he managed to say before being wrapped in a tight embrace by Cindy.
"Cindy!" he shouted, trying to break free of her. "Cindy!" he screamed.
She finally released him and took a few steps back and began to blush. "Um, you're alive. Good," she said in the meanest voice she could muster, trying to act like her usual self.
Jimmy slowly got up and smiled at her, and she just looked away, still blushing. He rubbed the back of his head and slowly walked towards Nick, who was grabbing his hurt area and lying on the bed. "Nick," he whispered, "are you ok?"
Nick tried to lunge at him once more, but his pain slowed him down. Cindy easily caught him, and he didn't resist when she set him back down on the bed.
Nick wrapped an arm around his headboard and took a deep breath to rid the pain. "What," he began, trying to control his anger, "the hell did you do to me?"
Jimmy stared at him with a puzzled expression for a moment before answering. "What are you talking about?"
Nick slowly got up and walked towards Jimmy, but Cindy blocked his way. Nick raised his hands up in a sign of defeat and sat back down on his bed.
"What am I talking about? Well, let's see. I'm sitting in my room reading a magazine, I get a horrible headache, I vaguely remember swirling darkness, and then I wake up with a pain in my gut and you standing over me with your hand curled in a fist! So stop playing dumb and tell me what sick experiment you've done on me!"
Jimmy and Cindy stared at each other, silently asking the other to come up with an explanation.
"Nick, calm down. We've been on the moon all day. We have no idea what is going," Jimmy tried to explain further, but the ringing of his cell phone interrupted him. "Damn it," he muttered while walking away and flipping his phone open.
"Neutron here. Go," he said while turning his head back around and staring at Cindy, who was whispering to Nick.
"Jimmy," a scared Carl shouted, "something's wrong."
Jimmy clenched his empty hand into a fist. "Of course it is. Is Libby ok? Do you need me back there?"
Carl shook his head back at Jimmy's house, although he knew that Jimmy couldn't see him do it. "I tried with your phone, Cindy's house's phone, my house's phone, and then my cell phone. I can't get anything through to 9-1-1. All I keep hearing is static. I can't believe I got through to you," he muttered in belief.
Jimmy rubbed his temple and clenched his teeth. Libby was far from being fatally wounded, but he didn't like the idea of her bleeding on his couch with only Carl and Sheen taking care of her. She needed a doctor's care, or at the very least, his own. "The 9-1-1 calls go to a dispatch center in Houston," he muttered, not sure if Carl could hear him.
"So?" Carl asked, not sure what he was getting at.
Jimmy took a moment to think. "Call some other numbers out of town. See if they get through. Then try some other numbers in Retroville. Call me back when you're done," he instructed his friend.
"Alright, if you say so," Carl nervously said while hanging up the phone.
Jimmy turned back around to face Nick and shoved his cell phone back into his jeans' pocket. "Cindy explain everything to you?"
Nick looked perplexed. "What the hell is going on?" he asked again.
Jimmy smiled for the first time since he got back from the moon. "We were hoping you could tell us. As I'm sure Cindy told you, it looks like our parents are missing. So are yours. We thought our parents were out searching for us, but I don't know your mom and dad would leave you here alone."
"That means they were kidnapped, and I bet the same goes for every other kid's parents in Retroville," Cindy finished. "The fact that you were knocked out isn't exactly disproving our beliefs. I figure you can put the pieces together."
"Yolkians?" Nick offered.
Jimmy and Cindy nodded. "Exactly," they both said.
"Anything you can tell us will help," Jimmy told him. Nick opened his mouth, but Jimmy held up his hand. "Not right now. Not here. Libby's hurt and I need to get back to her. It's better we debrief you at my lab. You ok to walk there?"
Nick weighed his strength for a moment before nodding. Cindy grabbed his hand and pulled him to his feet. He slowly walked down the stairs and out the front door.
"Hell of a night," he told Cindy. They both looked up at the dozens of shining stars and the glowing full moon.
"Looks even better from the moon," Cindy said while smiling and leading Nick by the hand to Jimmy's house.
Jimmy groaned as his cell phone rang again. He motioned for Cindy and Nick to stop while flipping the phone open. "Carl?"
"Yeah, it's me," the wheezing voice of his friend answered. "I did like you said."
"Well?" Jimmy asked, hoping that his hypothesis had been wrong.
Carl shook his head once again on the other end of the phone, but this time in confusion. "None of the calls to anywhere outside of Retroville are going through. The calls are going through to the numbers in Retroville, but nobody's answering."
"Damn it," Jimmy muttered while covering the phone with his hand. He took a deep breath and resumed speaking to Carl. "Me and Cindy picked up Nick. The three of us will be back at my place within ten minutes."
"Alright," Carl said, about to hang up the phone.
Jimmy slammed his phone shut once again, albeit this time a bit more forcefully. He thrust it back into his pocket before spinning around to face Cindy and Nick. "Come on, let's move. We've got a lot of work to do."