“What happened to your light?”

“Shhh…” Nathan started to chuckle again.

“What’s going on?” Kevin whispered.

“I’m watching Gunther’s bathroom light.”

Kevin smiled, “Why?”

“Gunther wanted Alexis’ phone number—his cell phone broke or something. He keeps all his numbers in his phone like I do. Well anyway, last Friday night after the game Alexis made him promise to call her and said that would be the condition to her coming over this Friday to hang out. I guess he never calls or something… but anyways, he had been putting if off all week until today. He came over to me being all desperate and asking me if I had her number—“

The expression on Kevin’s face assured Nathan that his friend wasn’t making the connection between the story and the bathroom light.

“Don’t worry, It’ll all make sense in a minute.”

Kevin started to laugh because how excited Nathan was in relating the story.

“Anyways, he wanted her number—you know, I never thought it was fare that a person should be a football star and get the girls—anyways, so…” he began to laugh again but worked hard to contained it. After a moment he regained partial composure and continued, “Well he called her and she’s over there now. I didn’t give him her number right off…” Nathan was laughing harder again, “I told him that if he would eat that plate of brownies in one sitting that I would be impressed and that he would have earned her number.”

“What plate of brownies?” Kevin inquired in hast.

“The brownies we baked for you brother and his friends.”

“Gunther ate the whole tray?” he said in surprise.

“He’s been in that bathroom nine times already. I don’t think they made it though that movie they’re watching.”

The Sneaky Plan

Todd stood in the doorway with a look of confident reassurance. Dan wasn’t feeling so confident. He was quietly entering the bedroom while his older brother slept. Dan’s brother kept all of his clothes, clean or dirty, in the same tangled landfill at the foot of his bed. Dan looked with apprehension at the pile, turned to Todd and whispered,

“I’ll just grab a pair.”

“No,” he whispered back, “You need to make sure they’re dirty.”

Dan started to dissect the pile with the wooden ruler and the plastic coat hanger that he carried.

“They all have skid marks on them—”

“Make sure that you get a really dirty pair.”

Dan looked down at the four pairs of underwear that he had excavated from the pile.

“They all look really dirty.”

Todd put his fingers up to his nose indicating to Dan that he should sniff each pair.

Dan looked down at his task with distress. After a moment he leaned down to the first pair, they were clean. The second pair was then tested. When he smelled the third pair, Todd could see that Dan found the winner. After recovering from his momentary retreat, he picked up the underwear with the ruler and carefully left the room.

Todd had a plastic bag waiting at the bottom of the stares. As the two of them walked to school, Dan asked, “How are we going to get them in there?”

“Easy,” said Todd, “I have her locker combination.”