You wake in a rush, yanked from sleep by a knock at the door. You check the time on your phone, and discover you are in a strange bed. It's a bunk bed, and you're in the bottom bunk.
There's another, more insistent knock, and you crawl out onto the floor. As you glance around, you find that your brother—back in his own face—is sound asleep in the top bunk.
A third knock—like a battering ram—sounds, and you pull the door open. Joe, wearing the biggest, most maniacal grin on his face, falls in.
"Goooood morning, sleepyheads!" He glances past you, at your brother. "Heavy sleeper?"
"I ’unno." You yourself are still groggy, and rub an eye.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, just— I saw the time and thought I was late for school."
"Oh, you're late all right, just not for that." He steps over to the bed, goes up on tiptoes, and screams in Robert's face: "Wake up!"
Robert bolts up, hitting his head on the ceiling. "Cheez-fuck!" he yells, and rubs his noggin.
"Frank used to do that to me all the time. I didn't think it was funny then, but it's a riot now. How'd you like to kick your brother's ass at paintball?"
Robert stops short with a frown. "What?"
"There's chores need a'doin', and losers that need a'doin' 'em."
"Losers at what, doing what?"
"Hut hut! Dressed and downstairs in two, if you want to know the rules." Joe throws a quick punch at your stomach, and exits with a wink and a cheeky grin.
--
Joe, with a backpack bouncing between his shoulder blades, warbles a melody as he leads you and Robert into the back yard and through a low gate. The alley beyond gives onto a street, which dead ends into a field that runs out to meet some wooded hills, beyond which rise a trio of rocky peaks. No one speaks, and Joe interrupts his whistling only long enough to give you a wink. He leads you up a track into the woods and, some twenty minutes later, you emerge into a clearing.
"This place," Joe says as he drops his pack and opens it, "is the best spot in the world for paintball, but there’s not so many kids around, so it’s usually empty." He unloads the equipment—the guns, the CO2 canisters, the protective gear—and hands it around. "Rules are simple. Find a good hiding spot and wait for the whistle. Then come out shooting. Last man unstained wins the set, first to reach three sets wins the match."
You and Robert exchange a glance. "What do we win?" Robert asks.
"Bragging rights. Losers do chores for Laverne."
You and Robert exchange another glance. This time, your faces are a little paler.
Joe checks your equipment, then orders the dispersal. You find and slip into a small crevice in an exposed rock face behind some trees. There you wait, even after a shrill whistle sounds, and there's not long before you hear a loud shout and a golden-throated laugh. They sound far away, so you step from the crevice.
Bpam! You're instantly hit between the shoulder blades and whirl. Joe stands ten feet off, his face shining with glee. "How'd—?" you start to ask.
"Bobby! Robert!" Joe shouts in a strange voice, not his own. He holds your eye and grins like a maniac. "Did Joe get you?"
"No!" your brother calls from far off. "I shot at him, but he's using his dumb prodigies!"
"I think he's over here, come quick!" Joe shouts. Your jaw drops, because you now realize he's mimicking your voice. Footsteps crash through the underbrush. "He's over here by some rocks, Bobby! Hurry!" Joe fires his rifle into the air. "Cheez-fuck!"
"Bobby!" you shout. "Don't—!"
But Robert comes bursting out from around some trees, and Joe shoots him in the chest. "Cheater!" Robert yells as he looks down at the yellow stain.
"Did I say prodigies were against the rules?" Joe steps to the side, and vanishes in a blur. His voice echoes distantly from what sounds like other side of the valley. "Give ya two minutes to find a new hiding spot! And this time, no hidin'! Come out huntin!"
--
Round two: You come upon Joe, in the clearing, standing his with hands on his hips and his face turned up, drinking down the sunlight. You shoot point-blank, but the ball goes right through him. Abruptly, he vanishes, revealing a spray of black paint on the tree he was standing in front of. You cuss under your breath and dive under a bush.
And not a moment too soon. Joe, silent as a panther, slides out from between some nearby trees, his rifle raised and an alert look on his face. Your first instinct is to shrink back into your hiding place, but you seem well enough hidden, for his eyes sweep right past your spot without lighting on you. An expression of consternation and anger flashes onto his face, and he lowers his rifle to his side.
There's a soft crack from nearby, and a red splotch appears on Joe's shoulder. He wheels and screams, "Where the fuck—?"
Robert, laughing, comes crashing out of cover. His glee turns to astonishment when a black pellet from your gun hits him in the gut. He and Joe do a double-take as you step out from cover with a grin.
--
Round three: "Will!" your brother calls. There's panic in his voice. "Will, come quick, you gotta come help me!"
"I'm not falling for it, Joe!" you shout back.
"Will, it's me! I—!"
"That's your brother, Will, it's not me!" Joe's voice, sounding urgent, calls from the opposite side of the woods. "Robert, where are you?"
"I'm—!"
You're already crashing through the underbrush in the direction your brother is calling from. You round a spinney of trees and are shot twice, once in the chest and once in the leg. Joe and Robert, perched on a boulder with their rifles aimed at you, high-five each other.
--
Laverne has lemonade for you when you get back to the house. "Did you have fun, boys?" she asks as, hot and blown and covered in scratches and welts, you and the others come into the yard.
"They ganged up on me," you tell her.
"You still had fun," Joe says. "And now you get to mow the lawn. This one—" He jerks a thumb at Robert. "Gets to vacuum. And I get to watch from the old porch rocker!"
"How were we supposed to win," Robert demands, "against someone who can move so fast and be in two places?"
"You got me, once." Joe pats the stain on his shoulder.
"That was luck!"
"Well, maybe that's how you were supposed to win."
"By being lucky? That's a stupid answer!"
"Well, maybe it was a stupid question." Joe takes a lemonade. "Lesson is, learn who you shouldn't fight because you can't win against 'em." His expression turns grim. "And learn how to guard against other people's dumb luck."
--
A week passes, of chores and games, light errands, and two nights of camping on a hillside, three to the tent. You and Robert never did much together, for you had your own friends and mostly fought when you were thrust together. But you discover during this time that he is your brother, that you know and share secrets and in-jokes and habits that Joe, for all his playfulness, can't enter in to. Also, despite those first day antics in the woods, it is a lot easier and more natural for you and Robert to gang up against him than to gang up with him against each other. By day six, he's actually accusing the two of you of hassling him.
On a Sunday night you're in the bedroom playing a laptop game that Robert has been pestering you to try, one that challenges you to fit patterns together against a timer. It doesn't seem that hard to you. You've already beaten Robert's high score, and with only a little more practice you're pretty sure you can beat Joe's. But you're interrupted by Charles, who summons you into the small dining nook. There's an old cardboard box on the table, which he opens to show you the contents. "Computer games are good for the brain," he says. "This might help you relax with your hands."
"What is it?" The box is full of pieces of plastic, wood, metal and rubber, of no obvious purpose or utility, like a disassembled model or toy.
"You won't know until you put it together."
"Does it come with instructions?"
"No."
"So how do I—?"
"Just make of it what you can. When you think you're done, show me."
"Alright, sir." You are pulling your lip and wondering if it's like a box of Legos as he leaves you.
--
A few days later, the thing you've assembled, which has the shape of a mechanical soldier, lights up and begins marching around the table, saluting and presenting arms. This startles but doesn't surprise you. As soon as the image of a marching soldier came to you, you knew you wanted to build a thing that would act in just this way. There was nothing in the pieces that was obviously shaped to achieve this. And yet, as you fiddled and fumbled, the pieces came together and you saw more and more clearly how to use what you had to make what you wanted. In the end, it came to needing only a single rubber band in a single spot. You found it in the box, snapped it into place— And now here it is!
Charles is delighted when you show it to him, and sits on the floor with it like a child with a new toy. It is still marching about when he touches your shoulder and says, "I feel this is a good moment to have a talk."
"I think my dad gave me that talk a long time ago."
He laughs. "Not that talk." With a grunt he gets to his feet. "Just let me send Joe and Robert into town."
"Why?"
"I'm sending Joe to distract your brother. And I'm sending your brother, because although you're ready to hear what I have to tell you, he isn't."
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