The Boy's Club.

i. it was a plan.

Smalls  | 1

It's been a while since you've heard from me, but, I'm back. You know how in the movie it takes you from us being just boys and straight to being men? Well, I'm not satisfied with that. We had way too many good adventures to let them slip by like that. That's why I'm here with the help of my fellow brothers in baseball to introduce you to our whole new world that you didn't know about. Let's begin with the creation of Squints' sixteenth birthday party.

--
"Okay," Michael "Squints" Palledorous paces around the room with his hands tangled behind his back. Us other guys sit on the floor of his living room with our hats resting on our kneecaps.  "As you all know, a very important person's birthday is coming up this Saturday. A.K.A 'Two days from now.' A.K.A April Twenty-First. A.K.A 'The Best Day Ever.' Yeah you get the picture. Anyways, this special person would like to request a surprise party. He'd like a big cake, loud music, and baseball of course! But most importantly," he gets close to our faces. "He wants Wendy Peffercorn to be there."

I'm sure we're all thinking the same thing, but Kenny is the one to say it. He puts his thumb and his index finger under his chin. "First of all, how is it a surprise party if you know about it? Second of all, Wendy hates you. Third of all, where do you expect us to get money?"

"Yeah-Yeah," the obvious one, chimes in, "and how are we supposed to reach Wendy? You got us banned and she's already graduated from high school, remember?"

"Mhm." Bertram nods along to the statements being made and the questions being asked.

Benny sits there in deep thought about something unknown, (this is completely normal for him), and Timmy waves his hand in his face, trying to make him flinch.

Tommy plays with his shoe string while agreeing with everyone else about the party. By the way, he's given up the whole 'copy-cat' act. He says that it was his way of showing maturity.

Ham stares at his reflection in the frame of Squints' family photo. He comes back into the conversation and leaves every few seconds.

And me, well, I do as the normal Smalls would and I try to come up with answers and solutions to this birthday mess. "I got it!" I yell as a lightbulb comes on inside my mind. I get everyone's attention, even Benny's. "I know what to do!" I spring up and walk to the middle of the floor. "Have at it," Squints pats me on the back and he sits down with a big cheesy smile on his face.

I begin. "The problem with money - we could all ask our parents for money to buy Squints gifts, and then we won't use it to buy anything but cake and decorations. Squints, you'll just have to be OK with not getting gifts.

On the topic of Wendy, we could write a letter leading her to think that there's going to be some type of lifeguard reunion at Yeah-Yeah's house. I say Yeah-Yeah because his sister used to also be a lifeguard at the community pool.

As for this not being a surprise party.. Well, Squints, you better put on your biggest poker face if you want a reaction out of the people who attend."

Ham makes a comment. "Alright, genius, but if Wendy is no longer the lifeguard, how are we going to get this letter to her? "

"Thank you for the kind genius comment, Hamilton, we're going to sneak to the post office, watch her open her box, copy down the number, sneak into the back of the post office later, slide the letter in, and wallah."

Tommy plays with his bottom lip. "Or we could just mail the letter to her.."
I'm not sure how I didn't think of that.

Kenny nods, "my mother has plenty of stamps."

Everything was coming together.

Squints claps at the effort. "So nice, so beautiful. Now what do I do?" I think for a minute. "You stay close to your house phone. You write down who's in and who's not. Got it?"

"Got it." He rubs his hands together.

Ham stands up. "We're all fifteen now, with the exception of Tommy, and it's about time that we did something a little challenging."

Bertram laughs. "Benny literally got chased through the town by a (from what we knew), vicious dog." He earns laughters from everyone in the room, including Benny.

I look down at my timepiece. "Well, we're all going to be jets if we don't get home. It's four-fifteen." That was the thing, on school-days, no matter how old you get or how good you are at sports. Four-thirty through five in the afternoon is education time.

We all run out drowning in the sea of "See ya later's" and "Bye's". My mind was on one thing - is this plan going to work?

Squints sits by his phone all night, and at six o'clock on the dot, he gets his first call.

Benny rattles change that equals $10.50  in his hands so that he can hear. "I'm in."

Timmy holds $9.25 while smirking. "I'm in." He hands Tommy the phone after, he has $8.61 in his hands. "I'm in."

Bertram has $6.32 in his pocket. "I'm in."

Yeah-Yeah calls in with $8.43 to his name. "Yeah-Yeah, you betcha I'm in."

Kenny has two stamps and $7.21 by his bedside. "I'm in."

Ham has a total of $3.17 when he calls but finds three dollars under his bed at last minute. "I'm in."

I hold my own $9.19 in my hand as I whisper on the phone. "I'm in."

And it was a plan.