Lucky

Fourteen

  I sent text messages to both Kate and Patrick and asked them to meet me at my house that evening. I texted Ryan to tell him there was a change in plans, but to still come over at 7:00. It didn’t take long for me to strategize everything in my head, but I would need the help of my friends to pull it off.

  Rich and I were watching Spongebob reruns when Patrick came in. Not Patrick Star. My friend Patrick. With the blue car.

  “Hey Trav. Rich. What’s going on?” He was obviously surprised to see Rich sitting in my living room.

  “It’s time,” I said, cryptically.

  Patrick plopped down into the recliner. “For what?”

  “To deal with Daniel,” I said. “I need everyone’s help.”

  “I told you I would go rough him up for you, but you kept saying not to,” Patrick pointed out.

  “It wasn’t the right time,” I said. “Now is the time.” I wouldn’t tell him any more until the others arrived.

  Kate and Ryan showed up at the same time and I was finally able to go over the first part of the plan.

  “Everyone gather round,” I instructed, sitting at the dining room table, where my laptop was ready to go. “About a month ago I stumbled upon a personal ad on Craigslist,” I explained. “I happened to come across a familiar face and had the good sense to save it.”

  “Who is it?” Kate asked.

  “You’re about to find out,” I said. I navigated to the Craigslist page that I saved earlier.

  Everyone groaned in horror, except for Rich, who said he could happily go the rest of his life without ever seeing those pictures again.

  “What is Daniel doing?” Patrick asked, looking at one of the pictures.

  “What’s in there?” Ryan asked.

  “I’ve seen bigger,” Kate remarked. Everyone turned and looked at her. “What?” she asked.

  “I originally found the ad a month ago, but luckily he posted this one just a couple days ago. It means he’s probably still looking for – well – whatever the hell it is he’s looking for,” I said.

  “You’re going to blackmail him, aren’t you?” Patrick asked.

  “Hell yeah,” Rich said eagerly. “That little bitch is going down.”

  “He’s been keeping a pretty low profile since everything went down,” I said. “We need to get him alone and ambush him.”

  “And hobble him?” Kate asked.

  “No,” I said. “We need him to tell everyone that he made everything up about what happened the night of Karen’s party. If he doesn’t do it, we threaten to show everyone his little personal ad.”

  “We have to ambush him? Why don’t we just go to his house?” Patrick asked.

  “It’s too unpredictable,” I said. “I need a controlled environment. I want him here and I’m never going to get him here willingly.”

  “What exactly do you have in mind?” Kate asked.

  “Ryan,” I said, turning to him, “I need you to text him.”

  He looked uncertain. “Why? Why me?”

  “You’re the only one he doesn’t know,” I explained. “He put his phone number on Craigslist, so just text him and say you saw him on there and you’re interested in hooking up.”

  “I don’t know about this, Travis. Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Yes. I need you to have him go to your house. So, go ahead. Text him,” I instructed.

  “Now? Right now?” Ryan looked unsure. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “The sooner, the better,” I said. “Say, ‘Hi, I saw your ad on craigslist. Still looking?’ That should be enough to get the ball rolling. Say whatever it takes for him to agree to meet up with you.”

  Ryan reluctantly sent the message. “I hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  “What if he doesn’t want to hook up with him?” Kate asked.

  “I just have a feeling he will,” I said. “Who can resist this?” I asked, grabbing Ryan’s face, embarrassing him.

  “This might take a little time, so everyone get comfortable. Who’s up for Chinese?” I asked.

  We watched television and ate while Ryan engaged in an uncomfortable and tedious text exchange with Daniel.

  “How should I ask him about the hook up thing?” Ryan asked.

  “Just ask him,” I said. “Like, ‘Hey, I have the house to myself tomorrow, wanna come hang?’”

  “But I won’t have the house to myself tomorrow. My dad will be there.”

  I had to think about this for a minute. “Okay, what if you tell him to come over, but have him meet you in your shop instead of your house? Would that work?”

  “Does it have to be my house?” Ryan asked.

  “I think he might think something weird is up if you ask him to meet you in a public place since his goal is to get laid. You’re the only one here whose house he won’t know,” I said. “But I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do. If you’re uncomfortable, just tell me.”

  “Okay. No, I think it will be okay for him to meet me in the garage.”

  “And then we’ll hobble him?” Kate asked again.

  I turned to look at her. “No.”

  “Let’s just hope that my father doesn’t pick tomorrow to start working on Sundays,” Ryan said.

  He sent the text as I dictated, suggesting they get together and soon after received Daniel’s reply.

  “He wants to know what I look like,” Ryan said. “Should I send a picture?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “He’s going to see you anyway when he comes over so you may as well.”

  “Alright.” Ryan took an awkward selfie but wasn’t happy with it so he took another one. And another one. And another one.

  “Let me do it,” Kate said. “I’m really good at this.” She took Ryan’s phone and gave him a list of instructions on how to position his face, his body posture, his eyes, and so on. Once she took the photo she came over to show me. “Perfection,” she said. “Look at him. He’s hot.” We laughed

  I turned to Ryan. “You can send that picture to me, too.” He blushed again.

  The photo was sent to Daniel and a few minutes later Ryan’s phone chimed and he read the message to himself and groaned.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “He can’t not be interested in you,” Kate said. “You’re way out of his league.”

  “No, it’s not that,” Ryan said. “He wants to see a picture of my junk,” he said, sounding embarrassed.

  “Just tell him you don’t like sending out nude pictures of yourself,” Patrick suggested.

  “Is that what I should say?” Ryan asked me.

  “It can’t hurt,” I told him.

  A few minutes later, Ryan got another message. “He says he won’t meet me unless I show him. And he said that I need to be giving a thumbs up next to it so he knows it’s me.”

  “Crap,” I said.

  “So send him a picture of your dick,” Kate said. “We won’t look.”

  “I’m sorry,” Ryan said, first looking at Kate and then at me. “I just can’t.”

  “Kate!” I yelled. “I don’t expect him to do that.”

  Rich got up and walked over to Ryan. “Give me that,” he said, taking Ryan’s phone. “I got this.”

  Rich walked over to the corner of the room and turned around.

  I could hardly sleep that night, plotting every detail of what would happen the following day over and over. I gave everyone explicit instructions on where to be and what to bring with them. With the amount of planning that was going into it, you would have thought I was preparing for D-Day, not bringing some jerk to my house for restitution. I finally turned my bedroom TV on to try to get my mind off of it for a while.

  I woke up around 8:30 am to the sound of some very eager people demonstrating the world’s greatest blender.

  “You’re not just getting a blender,” I heard a man say. “You’re getting a food processor. An ice cream maker. Want homemade soup you can prepare in just a few min
utes?”

  “I sure do, Jim!” a woman said, and an audience applauded.

  I fished around next to my bed for the remote and switched the television off.

  It felt like an eternity while waiting for noon to roll around, which was the time I instructed everyone to meet back at my house. Kate was the first to arrive.

  “I’ve been so excited since we left last night,” she said upon entering. “It’s been such a long time since I was part of a good revenge plot. I could barely sleep.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Do you really think we can pull this off?” I asked her.

  “This is going to be huge,” she said, confidently.

  Patrick, Rich, and Ryan all showed up soon after.

  I held my hand out to Kate. She rooted around in her purse for a minute and produced a pair of handcuffs that I shoved in my pocket.

  “Kinky,” Rich mused, with a big, stupid grin.

  “I know, right?” Kate said.

  “Okay, guys. I think we’re set,” I said. “Rich, come with Ryan and me. Patrick and Kate are going to hang out here until we get back.”

  The three of us jumped into Ryan’s truck and drove to his house. He parked in the garage as I had instructed him earlier. We waited in the office, and luckily Ryan’s dad was nowhere to be seen. Counting the minutes until 1:00, the time Daniel was set to arrive, was excruciating.

  Ryan looked at me. “I can’t believe this,” he said flatly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he said with a nervous laugh. “It’s totally crazy.”

  “I promise,” I said, “my life isn’t usually like this. I’m usually a pretty boring person. Rich, tell him.”

  Rich looked at me. “Well, I don’t think I’d call you boring. But I’ve never known you to kidnap anyone before.”

  “How many times do I have to tell you,” I said, “it’s not kidnapping. We’re just detaining him temporarily.”

  It was 1:05 when a green Nissan pulled into the small gravel parking lot.

  “I told him I would probably be at the shop when he got here and said if the door was open to come right in,” Ryan said.

  “Good thinking,” I said. Rich and I walked through the swinging door that led from the tiny office to the main garage and we perched ourselves on either side of the doorway. All Ryan needed to do now was get him to walk through that door.

  Rich and I watched through the tiny cracks in the door frame and Daniel strutted in. Ryan was at the desk, pretending to look through some paperwork.

  “Hey,” Daniel said.

  “Hey, what’s up?” Ryan asked, putting down the papers he wasn’t really looking at.

  Daniel was his usual charming self. “This place is, like, filthy.”

  “Yeah,” Ryan said. “This is what a repair shop looks like.”

  “You are too cute,” Daniel said, walking toward Ryan. “You’re not out, are you?” he asked.

  “Well,” Ryan said nervously, “no, I’m not.”

  “We are going to have so much fun,” Daniel said. “I can’t wait to get my hands on that huge cock of yours.”

  I looked at Rich, knowing it was his physical endowment that Daniel was actually referring to. He gave me a smirk and shrugged.

  I turned my attention back to Daniel in time to see him put his hand on Ryan’s stomach and slide it down to his crotch. I nearly leapt through the door to strangle him and Rich grabbed my arm and put his finger to his lips, telling me to be quiet.

  “What was that?” Daniel asked, apparently hearing my movements.

  “Oh, um, probably just one of the machines,” Ryan answered. It was impressive that Ryan could think on his feet in the midst of this crazy scheme. The only problem was that he looked physically uncomfortable, but perhaps Daniel could chalk that up to Ryan being new to man on man sex.

  Finally, I heard Ryan say, “Come in the garage with me for a sec,” and I saw him coming toward the door. Rich and I exchanged a glance and when the door opened Ryan walked through followed by Daniel and Rich immediately threw a sack over his head and held his body so he couldn’t move. Daniel screamed like a child and I slapped the handcuffs on him before he could get himself free.

  “Let me go!” I heard a muffled voice yell. “What the fuck?! Let me go! Let me fucking go!” he yelled, twisting his body in an attempt to pull himself free. Ryan casually walked over with a dirty rag which he shoved under the sack and into Daniel’s mouth. Such a badass move. I loved it.

  Rich tightened the strap on the burlap sack enough so Daniel couldn’t force it off by shaking his head around. Ryan handed me the belt I brought and I used it to bind his ankles together as Ryan held them in place. We picked him up, kicking and presumably trying to scream, and threw him into the back of the Bronco. Rich and I sat on either side of Daniel, not giving him any room to move around, and Ryan hopped in the front and started the truck. In another badass move, Ryan cued up a sick cover of Psycho Killer on the stereo. I was seriously about to fall in love. I fist bumped Rich and we were off.

  The drive to my house seemed much longer with Daniel flopping about like a fish, and Rich and I held him in place so he couldn’t move around too much. We were sure not to speak, as I wanted him to sweat it out for a while. For all he knew, he was being kidnapped by a serial killer and being led to his slaughter.

  When we arrived at my house, I had Ryan back all the way up the driveway so we could lead Daniel to the back door with a minimal chance of anyone seeing what was happening. When Rich and I pulled him from the truck, he decided to go limp, forcing us to drag him into the house, which was not easy. We got him through the back door and into the kitchen and sat him down on a chair. Kate looked like she was going to bust with laughter, which became contagious, forcing us all to stifle ourselves from laughing.

  Once we regained composure, I stood about five feet in front of Daniel and motioned for Patrick to remove the sack. He snatched it off and Daniel looked right at me. A moment later, Rich leaned in and yanked the rag from his mouth. To my surprise, he didn’t say a word. He truly looked terrified. While I knew this entire plan was probably not the most ethical course of action, I couldn’t help relishing in what we had accomplished so far. Daniel slowly looked around the room, taking in what was going on.

  “What is this?” he finally asked, in a quiet, but shaky voice.

  “We have a little score to settle,” I said, trying to sound cocky.

  He was wide eyed. “Okay, I get it,” he said, in a placating voice, “You’re upset about the stuff at school. I didn’t mean for it to get around like that.”

  “You didn’t mean for it to get around?” I asked. “You started the rumors yourself. It’s impossible for those details to have come from anyone else,” I said, angrily.

  “Okay, yeah, I guess I started it. I was just trying to cover my own ass.”

  “Not from what we’ve seen,” said Kate, undoubtedly referring to the pictures Daniel didn’t yet know we had in our possession.

  “I mean,” Daniel continued, “What was I supposed to say?” I couldn’t believe he actually thought his reasoning was logical.

  “How about the truth?” I yelled.

  “Hey, a lot of it was true,” he said defensively. “I might have tweaked some things.”

  “Might have?” I asked

  “Okay, I did. But, hey, I wasn’t lying when I said you’re gay, was I?” he asked, accusingly.

  I felt myself getting angrier than I ever remembered feeling. “That is not for you to decide!” I yelled. “You don’t have to right to choose when and to whom I tell anything!” He winced, as I was getting close to his face. “Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?”

  He said nothing.

  “Most of my friends at school won’t talk to me. My parents don’t trust me anymore. I had a concussion. And this,” I said, putting my right arm in front of him, showing him the stitched up gash that was still healing.

  Daniel sighed. “Alrig
ht. I get it. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, you’re so not even close to being sorry yet,” Kate said.

  He looked around again. “So, what, you’re all going to gang up on me now?” he asked. “What the hell is Bodkin doing here?” he asked, referring to Rich. It must have stood out, as Rich was not a part of my regular circle of close friends. Rich spoke up.

  “I’m here to make sure that things go according to plan. If they don’t, I’m gonna bust that ugly ass face of yours,” he said, sounding very intimidating.

  “Um, excuse me,” Kate interrupted, holding a hand up as if she was asking a question in class. “Why wasn’t that face busting thing plan A?”

  “I told you,” I said, “it’s not about revenge. It’s about squaring up.”

  “Not about getting revenge?” Daniel repeated incredulously. “What was with the kidnapping and Patty Hearst ride?”

  “Well,” I said, “maybe that part was slightly revenge-y. I just thought you might like to know how it feels to go for a terrifying ride that’s out of your control.”

  Daniel sighed, impatiently. “Cute. Can you just do whatever it is you’re going to do to me?”

  “It’s not about what we’re going to do,” I said. “It’s about what you’re going to do.”

  “What? What am I going to do?”

  I leaned in. “You’re going to tell everyone the truth. You’re going to tell everyone that I never made any advances toward you and I had no part in causing the accident.”

  “I could do that,” he said, “but it probably wouldn’t do any good now.” He was obviously trying to weasel his way out of doing what I wanted.

  “Well, we’ll just find out for sure,” I said.

  “Come on, Travis, you don’t really expect me to go up to every single person in school and tell them.”

  “Technology to the rescue,” Patrick said, holding up his cell phone.

  “I was thinking, it would just take way too long for you to go around telling everyone in person, so we’re going to make it simple,” I said. “You’re going to record a nice, accurate explanation that you will post on Facebook, and, don’t worry, I’ll personally take care of putting it on YouTube.

  “You cannot be serious,” he said, getting angry. “I’d rather die,” he said, with disdain.

  “See,” Kate said, pointing at Daniel, “There’s a plan B, right there.”

  As much as I enjoyed Kate’s witty one-liners, I had to keep on a serious face.

  “Here’s what it all comes down to, Daniel,” I said. “You are going to make and upload this video, because if you don’t, everyone is going to be treated to a copy of this,” I said, handing him a print out of his extremely vulgar Craigslist ad.

  Daniel said nothing, so I decided he made need a little more encouragement.

  “Patrick?” I beckoned.

  “Yes?”

  “Weren’t you telling me that you recently got a new top of the line color laser printer?” I asked.

  “I sure did,” he said.

  “And,” I continued, “about how many of these could you print in, say, an hour?”

  He scratched his furry chin. “Well, about 800 I suppose.”

  “That many? That’s pretty much enough for, well, everyone. And, you know, it’s just so handy to be besties with someone whose mother is the school secretary. I’m willing to bet she could get us the home addresses of all the students. Am I right, Kate?”

  “Sure. And faculty,” she added.

  “I wrote down everything you need to say, so you don’t have to worry your pretty little head. All you have to do is read it into the camera.”

  Daniel was literally sweating at this point.

  “Fine! I guess I don’t really have a choice,” he said.

  Daniel sat at the table, with the pre-written speech in front of him. Patrick used Daniel’s cell phone to record him, as I did mine. This way Daniel could easily upload the video to his Facebook account and I had my own copy to do with what I saw fit.

  “Ready?” I asked Patrick.

  “Rolling,” he replied.

  Daniel sighed.

  “My name is Daniel Rivera, and I’m a liar,” he started, almost choking on his own words. “I want to set the story straight about the events that happened the night of December sixth. I was at a party at Karen Harney’s house and cajoled Travis MacArthur into getting into my car. I earlier claimed that Travis was drunk and made sexual advances toward me, and that when I declined, he grabbed the steering wheel and caused me to crash into a utility pole. None of those things are true. He wasn’t drunk, he never made any sexual advances, and he had nothing at all to do with the accident. I was drunk, and the accident was entirely my fault.”

  Everyone watched intently as his eyes pivoted from the paper on the table to the two cameras. He then, unexpectedly, went off script.

  “Look, everybody, a lot of people have been treating Travis pretty badly lately. It’s all my fault, and he doesn’t deserve it because he’s a good guy. He didn’t do anything wrong. I did. I’m sorry.”

  With that, I stopped recording and Patrick followed my lead.

  “Well, it’s about time you acted like a decent human being,” Kate said.

  “Okay. I did your video,” Daniel said, sounding defeated. “Can I go now?”

  “Rich, untie him and take the handcuffs off,” I instructed. I turned my attention back to Daniel. “I’ll be looking for that video on your Facebook page. I’ll be checking it in the future. If that video disappears, the Craigslist photos will go out.”

  “Okay, I get it,” he said.

  Once his hands and legs were free, he pretty much bolted out the door.

  This entire confrontation felt like I was in a movie. Things like this didn’t happen in real life, did they? Seeking justice for an inconceivable wrongdoing and actually getting it. Acting all confident and intense, and literally frightening someone into doing what you wanted. It felt incredible, and I almost felt that I was enjoying it a little too much. It did successfully bring closure to the entire ordeal. I never would have believed the events in my life would ever have led me to pulling off something like that. I couldn’t have gotten here without my true friends. Patrick, my deep-thinking soul brother. Kate, the razor-tongued voice of reason that kept me grounded no matter how much I spaced out. And now Ryan, with whom I was about to enter uncharted territory. How lucky can a man get?

  That night in bed, I was thinking Zac Efron should play me in the movie adaptation of my life. He was a little old, but, damn, that body.