The Voices Ceased
I’ll admit it freely.
I am a curious person.
I spy, I peek, I peer around corners. I want to know what people are doing, but I never let them know that I’m trying to figure out what they’re doing. So I’m careful.
But I’m always curious when I hear voices.
I was walking through the halls at school, for Pete’s sake, coming back from a meeting with Couch Boomer and Mr. Boy. They were trying to decide which heroes belonged with which sidekicks, and I had to talk to them about my own wishes. God, if they put me with Will or Warren...
But I digress.
The thing was, this time, I was walking through the hallways when I heard loud and angry voices, coming from the boy’s washroom. Now, maybe I should have just walked past. But then, maybe someone was trying to swirlie Ethan again, and even if he’s a bit of a nerd, he is my friend, so I should probably try to stop them. That in mind, I headed for the bathroom, pushing the door open just enough that I could hear the conversation.
Well, they weren’t swirlieing Ethan, because these two had beat up on those bullies who did more than once.
It was Warren and Will.
Okay, so they were my friends, I should have left. I know. But they sounded pissed as all hell, and like I said, I’m a curious person.
“What were you thinking?!” Warren roared. “You could have got us both killed!”
“I thought it was the right thing to do!” Will yelled back. “The grinder is the weak point of the whole machine! I knew I could rip it out and not get myself killed!”
Ah. So they were arguing about the Save the Citizen game this morning. Warren had been taking care of the two villains they were battling, and Will was to save the citizen. Which really, would have been very, very simple, except that Boomer had been forced to create a new way to save the citizen since Will could have just flown to grab it. Now the citizen was rigged with a bomb (flash bomb, Boomer claimed, though no one had yet had the guts to try it) set to blow if the dummy was removed by someone who had flown up to get it. Medulla’s brilliant plan, of course.
Will had needed to come up with a new plan, and he had.
He’d decided that it would work better to just rip the multi-bladed chopping machine right out of the ground. Well, not the whole thing. Just rip the blades out of it.
“Well, I didn’t know that, did I?!” Warren thundered. “I thought you’d fallen when flying, you idiot! I thought you were going to die!”
“Well, you didn’t have to try to save me, did you?!” Will shot back, livid. “I didn’t ask to be rescued, did I?”
“You’re my best fucking friend!” Warren all but screamed. “What did you think I was going to do?!”
“Trust me!” Will yowled back. “Can’t you do that?!”
“I thought you were going to die!” Warren sounded like he was inches away from killing the boy he’d just rescued himself. “I can’t let you die, Stronghold!? Don’t you get it?!”
“Get what?!” Will screamed. “What am I supposed to get?!”
There was a shove, and I heard the clang as a solid, impervious body was slammed back into one of the stalls. “That I love you, you fucking idiot!”
A moment a silence, then a screaming Will again: “What?! Are you trying to mess with my head?!”
A roar of frustration, then: “For fuck’s sake, Stronghold?! Have you turnips for brains?! I love you! As in I want to spend the rest of our fucking lives together, want to fuck you six ways to Sunday, want to get bleeding married and everything, do you get it?! I love you!”
Will faltered. “You don’t... not really...”
“Yes! Really!”
Well, I thought. This is... an interesting revelation, to say the least.
“But... you never said...”
“Like I’m just going to come out and say, ‘oh by the way, Stronghold, I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. What did you get on question four?’ Oh, that’ll work great. Look, forget it.”
“No, wait... I mean... I just.... I didn’t know...”
“Then you’re a freaking idiot, Stronghold, because I am the most freaking flaming hero you’re ever going to meet.”
Then there was another clang as the same back made contact with the same stall, then the voices ceased to be replaced with gasps and moans and panting breaths.
I took this as my cue to leave, all but tiptoeing away, even though they’d never hear me.
Oh, I love knowing things.
Curiosity killed the cat, remember, not the gineau pig.
Go back to Sky High.