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The 18th of July may be an ordinary day for most people on planet earth, but for Abed Nadir it was the day on which the greatest superhero film of all time, The Dark Knight, was released. To him, it was a day to celebrate. A day to be thankful. A day to forget the woes of living and rewatch the movie for a bazillionth time. But Annie Edison had made it so that he couldn’t. She’d stepped on his Dark Knight DVD with exclusive commentary from Christian Bale and broke it to pieces. Broke his heart.
Abed had scoured the internet for a replacement, but no one was willing to part with their copy of the limited-edition DVD. And why would they? The additional fifteen minutes of commentary completely changed the movie, exploring in great detail the raw sexual tension between Batman and the Joker. Once you have seen this version of movie you could never go back to the original. Any Balehead worth his Rescue Dawn knew this.
A tiny ray of hope shined through when Abed found a listing for the DVD on eBay, but the greedy owner had set the price at a non-negotiable six thousand dollars. Meanwhile, his bank account languished at a staggering seventy-eight dollars. He would never be able to muster that kind of money. He could ask his father, but just hearing the dollar amount might give the old man a heart-attack. As for his mother, she wasn’t even returning his calls. Perhaps he could sell some body parts. His heart had been whining a lot lately. Perhaps someone might be willing to take it off his hands…
Seeing as there was nothing else he could do, Abed resigned himself to a Dark-Knight-less life, but every now and then he would check up on the listing, see if the owner finally came to his senses and dropped the price. But that never happened. Until that morning that is. Not only had the price dropped to zero, but the word ‘sold’ was stamped across it in big, red letters. Dejected, Abed went to Greendale early. He needed some time alone with his thoughts, which was difficult in their apartment, and the drematorium malfunctioned when fuelled by despair.
As soon as he stepped into the study room, Abed knew something was off. Something was out of place. Did someone move the dioramas? Was the lighting different? And then he saw it. On the study table, right in front of his chair, the very thing that sent his OCD-sensors into overdrive: The Dark Knight DVD with exclusive commentary by lead actor Christian Bale in mint condition!
*****
“Abed, are you okay?” He felt Britta’s bony fingers stabbing his shoulder.
She had this concerned look on her face. Or maybe that was just her face. He could never tell. It was one in the afternoon, and the gang had regrouped in the study room after the morning classes. Abed has skipped his classes and spent the entire morning staring at the DVD. But he didn’t dare touch it.
Britta grabbed him by both arms and shook him like a ragdoll. “Abed, are you delutionalizing again?”
“Depends,” Abed said calmly, once she let go. “Do you see anything on the table in front of me?”
“Yeah, I see a batman DVD.” Britta’s classification of one of the greatest accomplishments of modern cinema as a ‘Batman DVD’ annoyed Abed, but he was just glad it was real and not just a figment of his imagination.
“Ha!” Annie squealed from the other side of the table. “That’s not just any Batman DVD. That’s a limited-edition Dark Knight DVD with exclusive commentary from lead actor Christian Bale, the one that I…” She cleared her throat, “accidentally stepped on. Did you buy a new one?”
“No, Annie,” said Abed. “I found it. Right here. On the study table. This morning. I was hoping you had bought it, as a way to make it up to me, for taking away one of my most prized possessions.”
“Ugh!” Annie folded her arms in indignance. “I already made it up to you when I made butter noodles that one time… Besides doesn’t the DVD cost like six grands now? Do I look like someone who has six grand laying around?” She poked a finger through a tear in her sweater to demonstrate her pauperdom.
Abed nodded in agreement. “You are right, Annie. In fact, the price puts this out of the grasp of you, me, Troy, and Britta, which means the DVD must have been purchased by Jeff, Shirley, or Pierce, aka the old people.”
“The old people! Excuse me?” Shirley’s voice sunk to the depths of hell, as her eyebrows soared to the heavens.
“Yeah!” Jeff condoned Shirley’s condemnation. “And how is Britta not in this bracket?”
Britta scoffed and moved her chair slightly towards Abed and away from Jeff.
Pierced seemed to have taken no offense. He simply leaned back in his chair and said, “I’ll have you know I am the youngest person in my Senior’s Bingo Association… And no, Abed, I did not spend six thousand dollars so you can be a nerd.”
Likewise, Jeff and Shirley recused themselves off any responsibility, confirming Abed’s worst fear: the DVD was not meant for him. He was merely the protagonist of a coincidence.
Abed let out a deep sigh. “In that case, I guess I’ll have to return this to Lost and Found.”
“No!” shrieked Troy and Annie in unison.
Troy was the first to explain his outburst. “Abed, whoever left the DVD alone in this cold, harsh world does not deserve to have it. Let’s take it home and love it as our own.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Annie agreed. “You know what they say: finders keepers losers weepers!”
Annie performed a little choreography that was very reminiscent of the Schmittys they encountered a few years ago.
Jeff gave her a disapproving look. “They who say that are third graders with dried boogers in their intestines, but I do agree with the sentiment, Abed. You should keep it.”
Shirley did not approve, of course. “Don’t listen to these heathens!” she said. “Be a good Samaritan and return the DVD.”
“She’s right,” Britta added. “Taking things that we did not rightfully earn is why we live in a capitalistic society that promotes corporate slavery.”
Everyone around the table rolled their eyes, and Abed turned to Pierce who hadn’t added his two cents to the pot.
Pierce simply shrugged and said, “I don’t care. Do with it what you will.”
Abed took a moment to carefully weigh his options and came to a tough decision. “I must return it.”
“Why?” Annie protested.
Abed sported a wry smile. “As someone who previously owned this DVD, I know the pain and suffering losing it would cause,” he said. “I cannot, in good conscience, do that another person.”
“But what if there isn’t another person?” said Troy, out of left field.
Abed rarely failed to follow his friend’s train of thought but this was one of those rare ocassions. He tilted his head to the side, like a puppy hearing a strange sound for the first time.
“Troy,” called Jeff, who seemed similarly confused. “Are you gonna’ say a ghost left it? we cannot use that excuse for everything.”
“No, silly!” Troy said in a scholarly manner. “I am saying the study room gave Abed the DVD. It’s a magical room that manifests our deepest desires!”
“Ha!” Annie chirped. “Like the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter!”
“Exactly!” Troy concurred.
Even for Abed, the suggestion was a bit fanciful. “But if the room grants our wish,” he wondered out loud, “how come Britta hasn’t solved world hunger, Jeff still has so much forehead, Annie is not President, Shirley hasn’t turned us all into Christians, Pierce is not married to Kate Upton, Troy does not get Inception, and my mother won’t pick my calls?”
Abed did not intend to say the last part, but it slipped out. He did not want his friends to be worried, but it was too late now. He could already feel their concerns burning the oxygen in his vicinity.
“Well, the room can’t give you everything.” Troy said, breaking the awkward pause. “It’s like the genie. It has rules. Limitations.”
“Wow, what other unicorn bullshit can you pull out of your ass, Troy?” asked Pierce, the level four Laser Lotus.
“He’s right, Troy. I just don’t buy it,” said Abed.
“Well, what if I told you the room gave me something too!” Troy announced, proudly.
“It did?” Interestingly, it was Britta who seemed most sympathetic to this hypothesis.
“Yeah,” Troy continued. “Last December, I was cold. Really, really cold. I walked into the study room and guess what I found hanging on my chair: a brand-new leather jacket. What’s even more awesome, it’s in my favourite color, black, and fits me perfectly. Almost too perfectly… I can’t breathe when I wear it.”
Troy’s story left everyone scratching their head. It left Jeff scratching his lawyer itch. “Troy, that sounds like less like a miracle and more like a larceny,” he said.
“Larcen-y? Who is Larson and why is finding awesome jackets named after him?” Troy’s response seemed to have sent Jeff into an existential crisis, as he opened and closed his mouth several times without producing any sound.
“Jeff,” Shirley called sweetly from the other end, “are you, a white man, accusing Troy, a black man, of theft?”
“No, Shirley. It’s me, a prolific jacket-wearer, worried about Troy, a potential jacket-kidnapper!” Jeff snapped back.
“Well, instead of jumping to the worst conclusions,” Shirley continued in her sugar-coated voice, “we could entertain the possibility that sometimes things like this just happen.”
“They do?” Abed tilted his head to the other side.
“Of course,” said Shirley. “One time, when I was pregnant with Benjamin, I got a real bad hankering for a roast beef sandwich. I came to the study room to pick my purse and there it was on the study table, a roast beef sandwich, fresh off the oven, ready to eat.”
“And you think the room manifested this sandwich?” Jeff asked, punctuating each sentence with plenty of sarcasm.
“I am not a crazy,” snapped Shirley. “I thought Jesus left the sandwich for me.”
Several facepalms were heard around the table, and Shirley went into a tirade about how the lot of them will burn in hell come end of days.
“Was God a good cook at least?” Britta asked.
“Eh, it was okay,” said Shirley. “I clearly remember thinking: I can make a better sandwich than this.”
“Wait a minute,” Abed said, his eyes now sparkling. “What if that sandwich incepted the idea of starting a sandwich shop in your head. May be this room is magical after all!” He felt his grip around the DVD tightening.
“Whoa, I just got Inception!” Troy shouted out of the blue. Then quickly followed it up with a sad, “No, I didn’t.”
“While we are on the subject of revealing things we found in the study room,” Pierce spoke in his loud CEO voice. “I found a letter. A love letter. A secret admirer of mine writes in excruciating detail the various sexual and depraved things they would like to do my body.”
Ew! Spat everyone.
“Pierce,” Annie said with wide eyes. “Are you sure that letter was intended for you?”
“Of course,” Pierce said. “It didn’t have my name on it, but there were several references to my six feet four stature and how this person did not mind the age gap between us. As a matter of fact, it turned them on.”
Another round of Ews!
“Six feet stature and age gap? I cannot think of anyone else who would fit that description, Pierce” Jeff said. “But I’d really like to give this letter a read sometime.” While Jeff spoke these words to Pierce, he was looking only at Annie, who went red in her cheeks.
“Well,” Pierce continued. “I just assumed the letter was from one of the ladies or Jeff, but if the room is indeed magical, perhaps it was just the universe confessing it’s love to me…”
This made Troy snort a chuckle. “Wow, so you are older than the universe? That’s a no-look-self-burn!” He and Abed exchanged their trademark handshake.
Jeff, who was still smiling ear to ear, said, “I am suddenly more interested in knowing what else people found in this room.”
“Well….” Annie squeaked in her squeakiest of voices. “I once found an envelope with a thousand dollars in cash. That’s it. No biggie. Who’s next?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, and you took it?” Britta was surprised.
Annie nodded, but her head never came back up. “It was back when I was living in my old apartment. I really needed the money to make rent, guys…”
“Are you sure the envelope was not made out of leather? Because it may have been somebody’s wallet,” said Britta, more sanctimonious than usual. “This is not a good look, Annie.”
“Oh! This is not a good look?” Annie stood up, as veins began to pop in her forehead. “What about Jacket Jack-son, Perv-Austen, and the Ham-Burglar over here?”
Shirley covered her mouth. Troy looked like he couldn’t figure out whether Jacket Jack-son was cool or racist or both.
“And you, Britta,” Annie continued her diatribe, “you are just mad the room didn’t give you anything, because you are the worst!”
“Oh, but the room did give me something!” Britta stood up too, matching Annie’s energy. “And it’s not something stupid like a sandwich or a DVD-“
“That was uncalled for,” Abed interjected.
“The room gave me an alien device that played futuristic music that soothed the soul!” Britta finished.
“Well done, Britta,” Jeff said immediately after. “That may be the dumbest sentence I have ever heard.”
“An alien device that played futuristic music?” Annie scoffed at Britta’s dubious claims. “Can we see this device?”
“I lost it,” said Britta.
“Of course,” said Annie.
“Britta, how many pounds of weed did you smoke before this futuristic music calmed your soul?” Shirley sneaked in a jab.
“The same amount Jesus smoked when he split the red sea,” Britta snapped back.
“Moses split the red sea, you junkie!” Shirley raged.
“Ladies, calm down,” Jeff intervened. “We have more important things to discuss than your petty squabbles, like how come the room hasn’t given me anything?”
And just like that all the antagonistic energy in the room was redirected towards Jeff.
“Not true, Jeff,” Abed said. “For a lack of better term, the study room is where you got with Britta, which was your sole mission all of first semester.”
“That doesn’t count,” Jeff said with a dismissive smile and hand-wave. “And even if it does, it counts under Britta’s column, not mine.”
Everyone groaned. Annie louder than anyone else.
“Either way, one thing is for sure,” Abed said, hugging the plastic casing to his chest, “this room does fulfil our wishes. And this DVD belongs to me now,”
But not everyone was as happy as he was. A sinister silence began filling the empty spaces between the chairs, as nasty glares flew by in every direction. Although Abed was not great at reading facial cues, he knew folded arms, squint eyes, and ripples in the forehead were all indicative of anger and disgust. He’d learnt that from all the times his parents fought when he was younger. And yet there was something different about the eyes. His parents’ eyes were that of someone who wanted to leave. His friends’ eyes were that of someone who wanted to stay. Or maybe he was just making shit up.
“Here’s a wish the room can fulfil,” Pierce finally said. “I wish we could go back in time by thirty minutes to when we weren’t fighting.”
For all his social ineptitude, sometimes Pierce just knew what to say.
“I wish I hadn’t taken those thousand dollars,” said Annie, shivering in her sweater. “I’m the worst.”
“I wish I wasn’t so judgemental sometimes,” said Shirley.
“I wish Inception was directed by Michael Bay instead,” said Troy.
“I wish Pierce’s secret admirer wouldn’t be so hard on herself,” said Jeff, gently lifting Annie’s chin. Pierce promptly labelled this wish as ‘unmitigatedly gay’.
“I just wish I had my alien device back,” said Britta.
Troy suddenly perked up with curiosity.
“Britta,” he called, holding up an iPod Nano. “Is this your futuristic music device?”
“Praise the lord!” squealed Britta, as she snatched the Apple manufactured device from Troy. “Where did you find this?”
“That’s not an alien device!” Annie was baffled.
“It’s not?” Britta seemed confused.
“It’s an iPod Nano,” Abed clarified. “It’s been in use since the early 2000s. In fact, it is actively going out of fashion in 2013. I say this as a friend, Britta, but it’s time to throw away your discman. And Jeff was right, you definitely belong in the old people bracket.”
“But how do you have this?” Britta repeated her question.
“It was in one of the many pockets of my leather jacket,” said Troy.
And that was when it hit Britta. “That’s my jacket,” she cried. “I lost it last year!”
“No way it’s your jacket,” said Troy. “My jacket is not a women’s jacket. It’s very manly.”
“Does your manly jacket say Girl Boss on the back?” Britta asked with narrow eyes.
“It does say girl boss on the back of my…” Troy’s world came crashing down, as he started to cry. “I cannot give your jacket back, Britta. It ripped in half the very first time I tried to put it on!”
“I don’t care Troy,” said Britta. “I’m just glad to have Nanopod or whatever this is back.”
“Hey, that’s my iPod!” Pierce’s voice boomed from the other end of the table. He walked over to Britta and snatched the device away. “I lost it two years ago.”
“Oh!” said Abed, finally making sense of Britta’s claims. “The futuristic songs are just really old songs that no one born after the 70’s has heard of.”
“Pierce, I really need that back,” Britta begged, but to no avail.
“A friend once told me, we should never take things that we did not rightfully earn.” Pierce put the device way. “You can have it, when you have earned it.”
“Annie,” Shirley called. “Don’t worry about the thousand dollars. It was mine. I left it for you. It was during that time Pierce was trying to bribe you. I knew you wouldn’t take it if I gave it to you.”
“Oh, Shirley!” Annie thrust herself into Shirley’s embrace. “I’m sorry I called you a Ham-Burglar.”
“And Shirley,” said Jeff. “That was my sandwich.”
“I didn’t mean to take your…” Jeff stopped Shirley’s apology midway.
“Shirley, I’d rather starve a thousand years than my godson be hungry for a single meal,” Jeff said.
“Jeffrey!” Shirley pulled Jeff into her embrace as well.
“I need a hug too!” Britta jumped on them. As did Troy.
Pierce and Abed refrained, but they shared a gentleman’s nod.
Once all the merriment subsided, Abed picked up and gazed at the DVD longingly. “That accounts for everyone’s miracle, which is to say none of them are miracles. The room isn’t magical after all.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that Abed,” said Jeff, standing up, gathering his books and jacket. “I just feel like I witnessed magic here today. And if this is not magic, nothing is.”
With that, Jeff and the rest of the gang began their slow saunter towards the cafeteria. Abed didn’t join them. He had to visit the Lost and Found. He owed them a Batman DVD. But he didn’t move immediately. He just stood there for a moment, listening to his friend’s voices slowly fading away.
“You know what the study room did not give us… any studies!”
“Hey, how come no one told me who the letter was from……”
****
When Abed returned, he found Troy waiting for him in the study room.
“Troy, what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be in Biology Class?”
“I didn’t go,” said Troy, standing up to face him. “Did you return the DVD?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I bought the DVD, Abed,” Troy confessed. “I know you have been feeling down lately, you know, because of your mother and all… I just wanted to cheer you up.”
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
“I don’t know. I was embarrassed, I guess. And I will never hear the end of it from Annie if I bought a DVD for six thousand dollars.”
“I figured as much,” Abed smiled, as he pulled the DVD from underneath his shirt. “I didn’t return it.”
“Abed…”
The two boys began their usual handshake, but somehow ended up embracing each other. Abed’s ears were warm when they finally let go. That’s new! He thought to himself.
“Skip Biology class and watch the Dark Knight?” Troy offered.
“We are skipping Biology class and watching the Dark Knight,” Abed agreed.
“Cool, cool, cool!” Troy said, the way he usually did.
And they said good bye to study room, just for that evening.
THE END