“Hey! That's not fair!” Jesse shouted as he furrowed his brow at his younger brother. “I want to have the statue on the table next to my bed!” Scowling, he climbed his feet up on the lower bunk bed that he slept in and tried to reach out towards his younger brother's hands, which held on to an ebony idol about six inches tall. They had just bought this from a small shop near Machu Pichu, where they had gone on vacation with their family the week before. The old Peruvian woman that ran the shop claimed it was an ancient treasure from the ruins themselves, and that it granted a special blessing on whoever slept near it.
"Fair?" Jacob scoffed as he sat the idol down on the shelf above the top bunk which belonged to him, laughing slightly. "I'm the one who saw it first and who got Mom to buy it! What's fair is that I should keep it." As the youngest of the three, Jacob was used to getting his way, as their parents tended to favor him and baby him, a fact of which he knew all too well and manipulated to his advantage.
"Would you two quiet down?!" Jordan shook his head in frustration as he sat on his bed on the other side of the room. "You guys have been bickering about that stupid idol since the beginning of the flight home!" Jordan, the older brother, always tried to keep a measure of calmness about him, as he knew he was the role model to the other two boys. Of course, he would sometimes forget and lose his temper, but he tried to make sure these situations were rare.
"Well, what do you want us to do, then?" Jesse asked, blowing the hair out of his eyes in frustration. "There's only one idol, and there's three of us.
Jordan sighed. "Didn't you guys go through Kindergarten? We're all gonna have to share."
"Well, we are sharing!" Jacob exclaimed. "You two can look at it from my shelf."
"Bullshit!" Jesse shouted, lunging again for his brother and grabbing his shirt, trying to wrestle him down.
"Hey, hey, HEY!" Jordan jumped up and grabbed both of his brothers, separating them. "Calm down, you guys. There's no need to fight about this. Now, I know we all want to sleep near the lucky idol--"
"It's not lucky!" Jacob interjected. "It's supposed to be sacred!"
"Whatever," Jordan rolled his eyes. "The point is, all three of us can't be the closest one to it every night. We're going to have to take turns."
"Fine," Jesse said as he shook himself free from Jordan's grip. "But who gets to have it tonight?"
"Yeah," Jacob said, climbing up to his bed and sitting on it. "Who gets it?"
Jordan thought for a moment, looking closely as the idol as he did so, until an idea came to him. "You know, this thing is vaguely in the shape of a bottle. What if we spin it, and whoever it's pointing towards gets to keep it for the night?"
The two other brothers considered the suggestion. "That sounds fair, I guess," Jesse finally said.
"Cool!" Jacob exclaimed. "So we're gonna let the idol decide who gets to sleep with it!"
The three boys sat down in a circle, with Jordan still holding the idol. They made sure they were all equally far apart from each other, then Jordan placed it on its side in the center of the circle, paused for a moment, and then gave it a good spin. It spun around remarkably fast, keeping on going for nearly thirty seconds, but it eventually landed on… indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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