The two boys approached the stairs leading down to the basement apartment. When Peter saw the large black duffle bug he was filled with a sense of fear and anticipation. It meant that Gregory had come with a Mission in mind. Usually they were a sort of military live action role play, a grander version of playing soldier. One or two had been somewhat risky, involving invasions into gang territory. They were never boring. Peter knew better than to ask about it though. Gregory never revealed anything about his Missions until everyone involved was together.
Gregory grabbed the bag and headed down first. “Time for Sleeping Beauty to get up.” He raised his fist to make their presence known and just as he would have made contact the door swung open.
“Been awake for hours, chumps.” Donnie ushered in his friends with a sweep of his arm. He was dressed simply in a plain white tee and a pair of navy sweat pants. His normally unruly black hair was kept restrained in a pony tail by a thick leather band. There wasn’t a bit of makeup in site. In short, he looked like a normal teenage boy. This was the Donnie that the school never saw.
Once all of the bags had been dumped and the first of many bags of chips had been opened the boys sat facing each other. Each sat in a large, overstuffed recliner separated by a four foot square table covered in one inch hexes. Peter was the first to speak. “So what’s the plan?”
A grin split Gregory’s face. “I have a Plan.” You could hear the capital P in his voice. “Next year we’ll be Juniors. You know as well as I do that means that we’ll all be far too busy for adventures until the summer at least. We need one big blow-out Mission before that happens. We also need to kick off this summer in a major way. Vacation starts in a month and I have plans to make men of you both yet.”
Donnie smirked. “Does that mean I’ll have to stop wearing panties?”
“Wear what you like freak boy, but Peter here needs to man up and you need to stop hiding behind that stupid Goth crap.” The words were said without anger, but there was a good deal of long standing frustration.
Peter started humming the Be All You Can Be theme and even Gregory cracked up. “Look Colonel, I know you have ‘what’s best’ for us in mind and I’m sure it involves getting drunk and losing our precious virginity so that we can be ‘real men’, but I ain’t a grup yet and I don’t plan to spend my precious, waning childhood days trying to be one. Love you man, but ease up.”
“Well maybe we aren’t grups, but you need to learn to stand up to the punks at school and Queenie over there…”
“Lecture over, Gregory.” Donnie said around a mouthful of chips. He swallowed and looked at Peter. “You do have a point about our resident coward though.”
“Hey,” Peter said a little weakly.
Donnie soldiered on. “Dude, you’re scared of your own dang shadow if you don’t have dice in your hand. So what do you have in mind for us?”
All name calling and character assassination stopped as Gregory pulled a small notebook from a cargo pocket. “Well you know the old chemical plant outside of town?” He didn’t wait for answers. “We’re going to break in and camp out there.”
“That’s it?” Peter asked. He tried not to think of how creepy it must be at night.
“No, that’s not it. We’ll have to avoid some security cameras and scale some barbed wire fence just to get in. And in addition to that I have it on highest authority that that’s where the stash is.”
His audience seemed to get even more thoughtful at the mention of the stash. It was rumored to contain everything from drugs and booze to stacks of cash that the seniors would use for their big end of year party.
“If we found that…” Peter left the thought unfinished. There was a great amount of potential for mayhem.
