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“We’re definitely going to get arrested.” Pope peeked up over the tall grass they were lying in, peering through the chain link of the fence.
“Pshaw,” said Kie. “We’ve been arrested before.”
“Hasn’t killed us yet.” JJ shrugged.
“And this is for a good cause!” John B shot a gleeful fist in the air, his hand full of stuffed shopping bags.
“You guys are useless,” Pope said.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” JJ said. “You still love us though, right?”
“It’s up for debate,” muttered Pope.
JJ slanted him a look. It was after dark, but the moon was high enough through the dappled clouds that he could see everything. The barbed wire on top of this fence, the cheap lycra of Pope’s Halloween costume over his perfectly rounded ass, and also his new fondness for boxer briefs.
Which was doing a great deal to feed JJ’s new fondness for boxer briefs.
“Okay, who’s gonna hop the fence?” JJ said, changing the subject like he usually did when he had a boner to hide. “I say we do a little rock, paper, Pope. Cause it’s definitely Pope, though.”
“Don’t you remember the last time I hopped a fence, at that graveyard? My shorts tore off my entire body. No shorts were remaining. I would say I am not our reigning expert at fence hopping.”
“Right, and it was spectacular…ly funny, I mean!” JJ swooped in for the save at the last second. So much for changing the subject from his boner. “But tonight, you’re wearing the best suit for a little cat burglary, so you’re up, my man.”
“But Kie’s Catwoman. Literal Catwoman.”
She wriggled in the grass next to JJ, still trying to pick the same wedgie she’d been bitching about the whole hike through the woods.
“Have you ever tried to move in a leather jumpsuit this tight, Pope? Because I’m here to tell you, the gymnastics in that movie are pure fiction even without those ankle-breaker heels.”
“I don’t know why you had to go full leather jumpsuit when there’s a party at the Boneyard,” John B said. “What, like we don’t already get in enough fights over there?”
Kie grinned. “What do you think the whip’s for?”
JJ moaned lightly. None of this was helping the boner situation, really at all.
“You okay, buddy?” John B popped his head up. “That last shotgun go down a little foamy for you, too?”
“It’s probably just because he ate all my pumpkin-shaped Reese’s,” Pope grumped.
“Yours, too?” Kie crinkled her nose. “Dammit, JJ, hands off the peanut butter cups. It’s against the Pogue code.”
“It definitely isn’t, though,” John B said. “Which is good, since I ate the rest of yours when JJ was distracted by Pope’s costume.”
JJ reached across Kie’s back and flicked John B’s ear. That definitely was against the Pogue code. All things divulged during Drunken Boating Truth or Dare were fair game for teasing and otherwise leveraging against the confessing party for all time: except things of a romantical nature. The Pogue code was clear.
“What’s wrong with my costume?” Pope looked crestfallen at JJ. His eyes were really pretty when he was crestfallen. “Is it because it doesn’t have a cape?”
If it had a cape, that would cover his ass, and JJ wouldn’t be in this predicament. Well, there’d still be Kie’s Catwoman suit to deal with, but he’d been wrestling his boners on Kie’s account for so long he hardly even noticed anymore. It was like how you had to vent a beer properly in order to shotgun it—just a fact of nature.
“It looks way better without a cape,” JJ said. Fervently.
John B smothered something into the grass that sounded suspiciously like a chuckle.
Kie looked grossed out. “Can you seriously not do one shotgun without burping all night, Jombie?”
“Why can’t we all climb the fence instead of just me?” Pope wasn’t over the fence topic yet.
“We been over this bro, we can’t climb carrying the tank and we can’t go in from the roadside or people might see. You gotta go in and move the old pallets stacked in front of the gate so we can get inside.”
“Tell me again how this doesn’t end with us being brutally murdered. I’m black, JJ. In a Halloween horror movie, I’m the one who dies in the first scene!”
“Nah, you’re a virgin, you’ll make it through most of the movie.” JJ wriggled in the grass, thinking about it.
“And I’d be the last girl standing,” Kie said with some satisfaction.
There were murmurs of agreement all the way around. There was no sense even trying to argue. In a fight between Kie and a Halloween serial killer, their money was on Kie.
“I think I take him out with a chainsaw,” Kie mused.
“In a bikini!”
“A bikini, JJ, really? How is that practical?”
“How else are you going to last until the last scene? Production value, baby.”
“I have to piss. How long are you assholes gonna talk about it before we actually get to do this thing?” John B said.
“No, but wait, we didn’t actually answer the question of how we avoid being brutally murdered while breaking into the trailer of an armed drug dealer from whom JJ stole $25,000.”
“Easy,” John B said. “He’s a drug dealer on Halloween.”
“Right, It’s like Santa on sleigh day.” JJ fist-bumped John B across Kie’s back. “Boy’s at work.”
“And if he sells out early and comes home to brutally murder us?”
“For this? It’s gonna be worth it, bro. Trust me.” JJ patted his shoulder. Twice. Just for moral support, not because Pope’s lats were getting really bulked from all the swimming he’d been doing. “Now get your tight ass over that fence.”
“Okay,” Pope sighed. “But this lycra’s way thinner than those denim shorts I tore off. If I rip my Spiderman suit, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
“A boy can pray,” JJ said, under his breath.
“What?”
“I said good luck!”
Pope got up and started to climb the chain link, his Spiderman suit nearly invisible in the shadows except for the red slashes of the Spider insignia.
JJ rolled onto his back. Just because it was comfortable. No other reason. “John B?”
“Yeah, bro?”
“Where do you get religion?”
“Jesus, I think. Maybe in his heart or something? How come?”
“Just thought I might like to take up praying.”
“Please,” Kie scoffed. “Barry is not that tough. He best be the one praying…that Sarah doesn’t get her hands on him. His face has never been the same since she car-doored it.”
“So um, where is Sarah, tonight?”
JJ and Kie both cracked up. “Oh, yeah, super casual and all but just like hey—”
“If you happened to know where Sarah was—”
“Right now, like with say GPS precision and video feed—”
“Then that’d be cool. Is all I’m saying. Not that I care.”
“Not that I’m in love with her back mole and want to marry it or anything.”
“You guys are,” John B pronounced, “the fucking worst. And I told you about that mole in confidence, JJ. And it’s not on her back, it’s at the perfect apex of that soft spot on her shoulder and the very nape of her neck where her hair just like, naturally falls to the side.” He socked JJ. “Anyway, that was Drunken Boat Truth or Dare which means you’re not allowed to use it against me.”
“Only for things of a romantical nature!” JJ yelped, trying to fend off the punches while also watching the play of bunching muscle in Pope’s lycra-clad legs.
John B just stared at him.
“Oh. Right. Well, I didn’t think it applied to girls you were already with.”
“He’th not with Sarath,” Kie said, her voice distorted because her tongue was busy licking chocolate off the wrapper of a Reese’s pumpkin-shaped peanut butter cup. “She dumped hith assth for being such a dildo.”
“Hey, I thought you were out of Reese’s pumpkins!”
“What, you think I’m so stupid I’d leave them out for you pack of hungry animals to find? Not my first rodeo, JJ.”
Pope was just getting to the top of the fence. He paused at the single string of barbed wire, then started to kick his leg up in preparation for crossing, muscles popping out all through his back and shrink-wrapped arms.
“I wasn’t being a dildo,” John B said mournfully. “If I’d been being a dildo, then by definition, it would mean I’d still be getting—”
“Shut up, you guys,” JJ hissed. “We’re just getting to the good part.”
“Of the prank?”
Pope swung his leg over the barbed wire, his legs straddled wide and fabric perilously close to the spines of the barbs. The fabric was dark, but there was a definitive, thick bulge. In places. One interesting place in particular. JJ didn’t blink.
“No, of my prayer. That I’m saying. To Jesus’s heart.”
One leg was over. Just as Pope started to kick the other over, a shaft of moonlight broke through the clouds and illuminated every taut muscle in his whole body, poured into black lycra. JJ began to sweat.
Just as he almost cleared the fence, one barb snagged at his inner thigh and Pope yelped.
“I’m caught! Guys, I’m caught!”
“I’ll save you!” JJ lunged for the fence, the chain link clashing.
“Ouch, that was my hand!” John B yelped.
“Shut up about your hand!” JJ scampered up the chain link and reached for Pope’s inner thigh.
“Let me see it, you big baby,” Kie said from below.
Before JJ could make it to the promised land of lycra and thigh, the shaking of the fence ripped the thin fabric loose and Pope tumbled to the ground.
“You okay?” JJ yelled. “Bro! Speak to me, bro!”
“Shut up!” hissed Kie. “The neighbors are gonna hear you.”
Pope was sprawled on the ground, picking at the ripped spot in his costume perilously high on his inner thigh. His boxer briefs were light-saber print, from Star Wars. JJ was immensely charmed by this.
“Are you sweating, dude?” John B said. “It’s barely eighty out here and it’s dark. Are you sick?”
“In the heart,” JJ said, dropping back to the ground and clinging to the chain link between him and those glorious light-saber boxer briefs.
“He means in the head,” Kie said, hauling herself up and dusting herself off, then trying unsuccessfully to pick the wedgie of her catsuit again. “Pope, get the damn gate. My high’s wearing off and I’m out of candy.”
“Right. On it.”
Pope moved the stack of pallets, they hopped one, two, three, through the gate and over the pile. JJ carried the tank. John B carried the contraband. Kie took four tries to stretch her leather-clad leg higher than two inches. Finally they had to lift her over, John B taking her by the shoulders and JJ taking her legs, but also filching a Reese’s out of her ankle-bound knife sheath.
Soon enough they were all piled inside Barry’s trailer, lit only by the flashlights from their phones because undercover.
“It smells like a sock died in a box of Lucky Charms in here.”
“Marshmellow Mateys,” JJ corrected. “The generic has more of a spoiled-sugar tang to it. Also, that was not a sock.”
“It wasn’t—”
“It was.”
“But why would Barry even have a jock strap? It’s not like he plays sports.”
“Many gentlemen of a certain persuasion,” JJ said, “find the jock strap a fetching garment for, um, at-home-locker-room scenarios.”
Kie thought about that. Popped a pink balloon on the helium tank. Thought about it some more.
“How do you know Barry’s gay, dude?” John B wanted to know.
“How do I know you’re dumb, dude?”
John B socked him and JJ knocked over the funnel he’d been using. “No fair, asshole, you just got glitter on my pants!”
“To be fair,” Kie said, “Those aren’t pants. Though I think the gunbelt would have looked better with pants.”
“Cargo shorts have pockets.” JJ swiped a plastic gun out of his left-hand holster and spun it around his finger. It flew off and smacked him in the nose.
“What do you need pockets for, keeping your brains in?” Kie asked, picking up his gun off the ground and passing it back.
“Nah.” He re-holstered the gun and grinned. “Pockets are way too big for that.”
“Speaking of, do you have the safety on that other one?” Kie pointed to the black automatic in his right-hand holster.
He pulled it out. “Nope! Good looking out, Catwoman.” He pretended to blow imaginary smoke off the barrel of the gun, flipping the safety on with his thumb.
“JJ!” John B and Pope yelled in unison. “DON’T POINT GUNS AT YOUR HEAD!”
“What?” He popped it back in the holster and grabbed the glitter funnel again. “The safety was on.”
“I think the cargo shorts are fine for a Sundance Kid costume,” Pope said. “Besides, it’s really hot tonight.”
“Thanks, Pope!” JJ’s grin widened.
“The cowboy hat’s nice, too,” Pope said. “Uh, I mean, for the sun. Because it keeps the sun off.”
“It’s dark,” Kie said.
“Right, but it wasn’t always dark,” Pope argued. “There was sun. And when there was sun, JJ’s cowboy hat would have been good for the sun. Is all I’m saying.”
“He put it on after it was dark.”
“Uh, yeah but—”
“Shut up about my hat already, Kie, you know you think it’s sexy.”
She glared, flicking a little puff of glitter at JJ. “I know you think a lot of things are bigger than they really are, including your ego.”
Pope snickered. “I don’t think that joke works. Pretty much you just called his ego surprisingly small.”
Kie pouted. “See if I share my last Reese’s with you, traitor.”
“You said you were out of candy!”
“A lady never tells.” She flipped her hair.
“Stop getting glitter everywhere,” John B said. “If Barry already knows there’s glitter, he’s not going to pop all the balloons inside, and then he won’t be infested with glitter until the end of time, thus playing out our neverending revenge.”
“That is a fine point, John B, my man. Let’s hurry this up. I’ve got beers to shotgun, hearts to break, etc etc.” JJ grabbed a balloon in each hand. “Funnel me, Pope.”
“What we need is an assembly line,” Kie said. “John B, you’re on helium. JJ and Pope, get the glitter in the balloons. I’ll tie them off when they’re done.”
“Just put it in already,” JJ interrupted, distracted by Pope’s fumbling attempts with the funnel.
“It’s really tight!” his friend yelped. “I don’t think it’s gonna fit.”
“Just do it harder,” JJ advised. “It’ll stretch.”
John B made a strangled sound.
“Stop BURPING!” Kie yelled.
“Shhh!” they all hissed at her.
They made it through two balloons, bent over the tiny dinette table, before JJ started spitting.
“Ugh, John B, your hair’s in my mouth and the powder’s gross.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want to dye it grey so I just went baby powder.” He batted at his gelled-to-standing hair.
“What kind of doctor are you again?” Kie eyed him. “Dr. Finger-in-Light-Socket?”
“Doc Brown, from Back to the Future. Remember? Great scott!” he yelped.
“You were supposed to be Butch Cassidy.” JJ pouted. “Otherwise the Sundance Kid thing doesn’t really work and I’m just a gunslinger.”
“Gunslingers are hot,” Pope offered. “Wait, I mean, hot like fast is what I meant. Like guns are hot after you shoot ‘em a bunch of times, that’s why you have to blow off…erm, the barrels.”
“I didn’t want to be Butch!” John B whined, and Kie started giggling.
JJ grabbed one of the finished balloons out of Kie’s hand and took a big huff of helium. “I didn’t want to be Butch!” he squeaked, and John B flushed red. Kie and Pope erupted in gales of laughter.
JJ huffed another big lungful of helium. “I’m John B! I—” He broke off, coughing a spurt of glitter into the beam of an iPhone flashlight.
“Oh shit, the glitter in the balloons,” John B said. JJ started to cough and John B pounded his back. “Get it out, man. Get it all out. If you leave glitter in your lungs, it goes moldy. You get stripper lung.”
Pope’s eyes widened. “Wait, really? Is he gonna have stripper lung forever? Is it terminal?”
Kie rolled her eyes. “Oh my god, stripper lung isn’t real or the pep squad would never have made it past sophomore year. JJ, do you want a beer?”
“Shouldn’t he have water?” Pope asked dubiously.
“It’s JJ.” Kie stuck her head in Barry’s fridge. “When has he ever drank water? He probably doesn’t even know how.” She came up with a beer and cracked it. “Here, JJ, it’s gonna be okay.” She rubbed his back. “Don’t worry, it’s not a lite beer.”
Meanwhile, JJ was busy coughing so hard his abs burned like he was three rounds into the best lay of his life. It didn’t help that he was bent double with the force of it, his head nearly level with Pope’s lycra-wrapped package. His eyes started watering. Also his mouth. Which was from the coughing. Probably.
He started to be able to breathe, but Kie was rubbing his back, and Pope’s Spiderman pants were ripped real bad, and he could see the rip really quite well from here. JJ wasn’t too sure he shouldn’t just stay down here. For the coughing.
Kie passed him a beer and he took a swig, still bent companionably double. Yeah, this really wasn’t too bad.
“I better get him home,” Pope said. “I can check WebMD for signs and symptoms of stripper lung and keep him under observation. You guys go on to the party without us.”
JJ jerked to attention. Then he stood up, too.
“Yeah, I feel ill,” he said. “Real bad.” Threw in another cough for good measure, then clutched the beer Kie stole for him. “Woe is me.”
John B stuffed a fist against his mouth, emitting a muffled shaking. Then said, “Excuse me. Had to burp.”
“Come on, JJ.” Pope put an arm around him, and it was really warm through the thin fabric. “Let’s get you home. Guys, you mind if we take the Twinkie?”
“Nah, we can hitch to the Boneyard. You seen what Kie’s wearing?”
“Leave the skateboards,” she advised. “Then we can hookie bob if we have to.”
“Fill it all the way to the ceiling for me,” JJ told them. “Pink balloons for days. No way to get ‘em out but pop ‘em.”
John B saluted. “Aye aye, Sundance.”
JJ hobbled out of Barry’s trailer, emitting a feeble cough here and there in between sipping his pilfered beer. He shifted his pistol away from Pope’s hip. “Careful. My gun’s loaded.”
“Right, sorry.” Pope just pressed closer, holding JJ’s shoulder. He got a little dizzy, and leaned against Pope. “Whoa, you’re in really rough shape, aren’t you?” Pope sounded concerned and JJ liked it so much he wondered if this was like the dream he’d had on Wednesday. He peeked up, but nope, a white nurse’s cap hadn’t appeared on top of Pope’s head.
They got to the pile of pallets and Pope climbed over, but when JJ started to trip, he couldn’t catch himself without letting go of his beer. So instead, he tumbled straight into Pope, who went over backwards, landing with a small “Oof!” in the soft grass.
JJ Maybank wasn’t known amongst his teachers as a fast learner. However, amongst people who needed a bong built and only had a Pringles can, an apple, or the tinfoil wrapper off an Arby’s sandwich, he definitely had procured a reputation as a quick study.
Right now, his mind was moving as fast as a Pogue running from DCS Sheryl. And what he’d learned was that the bulge in Pope’s Spiderman costume was exactly as interesting as it had looked from afar. It felt exactly as good against the front of his cargo shorts as he had imagined that it would. And finally, that it was indeed, of a variable size. It was in fact varying from a size medium to a size large, at the moment.
“My legs are broken,” JJ said, which wasn’t true so much as he just wanted to say that it was.
“I think you might just be drunk,” Pope suggested.
“I think I’m in love with you,” JJ said.
“Or it could be all the Reese’s,” Pope further hypothesized. “The pumpkins have a larger surface-area-to-volume ratio than the cups, so they can do more damage.”
“I guess it could be just lust,” JJ said. “I blame the Spiderman costume.”
“Oh, you really said that out loud,” Pope said. “I thought you only said it in my head.”
“What else did I say in your head?” JJ said immediately.
Pope ducked his head and squirmed.
“Really?” JJ was very interested. His teachers, had they been present, would have been thoroughly impressed with his level of engagement and intellectual curiosity.
Pope looked down and mumbled something.
“What was that?”
JJ was hoping Pope was also drunk. If by drunk, you meant horny and if by horny, you meant completely in love with JJ Maybank, hopefully forever or at least until they ran out of condoms.
“I said do you really like my Spiderman costume?” Pope peeked up at him, all wide and vulnerable eyes.
“It’s not lust,” said JJ, who was not known for thinking before he spoke.
“It’s not?”
JJ shook his head. “I’m definitely in love. With the Spiderman costume.” He set his beer down in the grass. It might have spilled. “Also, you.”
“You just spilled your beer for me,” Pope said wonderingly.
“I did.”
“Are you sure you want to get that serious before we’ve even kissed?”
“No,” JJ said, and kissed him.
Sometime later…
Flashlight beams cut over the top of the pile of pallets, and Pope twitched. “JJ, should we—”
“Nah, fuck it.”
“Wait, you guys are still here?” John B said.
“Have you been making out this entire time?” Kie sounded pissed.
“Dude, I blew up like 30,000 pink balloons.”
“Always use plenty of rubbers, that’s what I always say,” JJ said, lifting a hazy finger in the air.
“JJ, Is the safety on that gun?”
JJ reached up above his head for his gun belt and checked. It was not. “Hey, good call!” he said cheerfully. “How’d that happen?”
Kie sighed.
Pope giggled.
“Well, Pope,” John B said. “I guess you’re gonna die a lot earlier in the horror movie now. Least if we’re judging by what’s left of that Spiderman costume.”