The Mission

         “I’m not cut out for this adventure,” Martha whined, wiping his auburn hair out of his eyes.
         “Of course not; you’re a pansy.  Why else would you have such a sissy name?” Carl sniggered, jogging ahead.
         “Not that again!” Martha frowned. 
         “Then stop complaining.  Do you want the other guys to tease you or not?  Pick up the pace!”
         Martha took larger steps, but it only caused him to stumble over the sapling stumps.  “Why can’t we just slow down?”
         “Because I don’t want Rob to bitch at me again for being late!”
         “Well, I’ve never done this before, so maybe they’ll go easier on you.”
         “Yeah, right!  They’ll go that much harder on me!  You are not going to slow me down!”
         Martha sighed and shifted his messenger bag on his shoulder.  This was all so ridiculous. 
         “It’s not that hard, Martha.  We just have to sneak into the science building, break into the lab, and get the ingredients.  Then we gotta meet the guys back at the dorm.”
         “Right.” Martha hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.  He jogged to keep up with his friend.
         “Hush!” Carl stopped dead in his tracks. 
         Martha didn’t notice and bumped right into him. 
         “Come on, you oaf!  Pay attention!” Carl growled.  “Now, this is how it’s going to go.  George left a protractor in the front door hinge to hold it open so we can go in there.  I’m going to pick the lock for the lab door and keep lookout.  We need you to go in there, pry open the door to the storage room, climb to the top of the cupboards, and lift up the ceiling tile that Bryan marked.  It should have a small, light “X” done in pencil on one of the corners.  Bryan snagged the supplies out of the professor’s desk.  They should be in a shoebox sealed with duct tape.  Break the seal, and we’ll kick your ass so hard your dead grandpa will feel it .  Don’t open any cabinets or an alarm will sound and then we’ll all be screwed.  Got it?”
         “But why do I have to do this?”  Martha couldn’t help but whine.
         “Because if you don’t, then you’ll be as much of a loser as you are right now.”  Carl didn’t look in Martha’s direction.  “Perhaps even more so.”
         Martha scowled, but didn’t say anything in reply.  He stared at the large brick building with a mixture of nervousness and excitement.  In the dark, it seemed so much bigger and foreboding.  This was the first time he had done anything like this.  He had no idea what to expect.  Perhaps he could finally be accepted as one of the guys.  He was interrupted from his thoughts when Carl gave him a sharp poke in the back.
         “Alright.  Here we go.  Remember, be as quiet as you possibly can.  If we get separated, save yourself, okay?”
         Martha nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat.  “Okay, let’s do this.”
         “Remember, you have to get the box.  Under no circumstance shall you leave it behind.  We won’t be able to make the explosives without it.”
         “Eh, explosives?” Martha’s voice quavered.
         “Yes, explosives, you pansy.  We’re gonna set them off in the dorm.  It’ll be hilarious!  Don’t chicken out, man.  Just get in, and get out, and haul your ass back over to the dorm.  Clear?”
         “Crystal.”  Martha replied unenthusiastically, shifting his bag on his shoulder.
         Carl led Martha to the door, looking about cautiously as he did so.  The door opened with a terrible squeak.  The pair tiptoed inside.
         “Dammit, Martha!  Why do your shoes sound like high heels?!”
         Martha looked down at his feet.  “They’re not.”
         Carl rolled his eyes.  “Take them off anyway,” he whispered fiercely.
         Sighing, the boy slid off his brown loafers and stuffed them into his messenger bag.
         “Alright.  Here we are.  Room 112.”  Carl reached into his pocket, producing a Swiss Army knife.  He wedged the blade in the keyhole and with a few expert jiggles of the doorknob, the door of the lab swung open.  “Okay, it’s all yours.”
         Martha’s heart was pounding.  He stepped slowly into the familiar room as Carl  closed it behind him.  The classroom certainly looked different at night.  The moonlight streamed into the windows and reflected off of the top of the shiny desks.  He immediately felt intimidated as he looked at the door in the back of the room labeled “Supplies”.  This was his first mission.  Carl had taught Martha a few short lessons on how to pry open these doors, but he was now beginning to question his skill.  After all, he never had an actual reason to do it, the other times were simply practice.
         Creeping over to the door, Martha reached into his satchel and produced a pocket knife.  Flicking it open, the twelve-year-old realized how much his hands were shaking.  As he proceeded to insert the knife into the keyhole, the tip of the blade caught his finger.  Martha winced with pain and sucked on the end of his index finger.  He quickly pulled it out of his mouth, half because he was sick of being called weak, and half because he wasn’t sure what chemicals lingered on the doorknob.  A rush of adrenaline surged through the boy’s body.  He was going to do it, and he was going to do it right.  Pushing the hair out of his face, Martha jammed the knife into the keyhole just as Carl had done, shook it about a few times, and the door squeaked open.
         Martha’s heart swelled with pride at what he had done.  The guys back at the dorm were going to be impressed when he would announce how he was able to open the door on the first try.  “Not bad for a rookie,” they’d say, and perhaps the leader, Rob, would even let him have a swig of the bottle of forbidden whiskey he hid under his bed, officially proclaiming his entry into the group.  Motivated by this, Martha ventured deeper into the large closet.  Tightly secured shelves lined the walls, and small red lights blinked on the locks, an obvious sign that the alarm system was on. 
         And it was then that Martha realized how high the ceilings at the academy were.  The ladders used to reach various chemicals and ingredients had been locked up for the night, in case a student were to attempt to steal something.  Martha grinned.  He would find a way past this minor inconvenience.  His smile faded, however, as he tried to judge the distance between himself and the ceiling tiles.  He would have to climb around twenty feet.  While Martha was very slim and it would be easy for him to hoist up his weight, he was not a very experienced climber, and he most definitely was not the athletic type.  He began to worry if the knobs on the doors would support his weight.  Remembering that he was the smallest out of the group, he soon realized that this would not be a problem, since someone from the group must have put the supplies there for him to retrieve.  But why would they go through the trouble of putting them up there in the first place?  Martha was starting to have second thoughts.
         “Yeah, Rob’s group has got some other cool stuff, too, you know,” Carl had told him.  “He snagged a pack of cigarettes off of his mom, and Tony has a private stash of dirty magazines that are for members only.”
         Martha’s heart pounded in his chest.  The closest he had come to seeing a naked girl was when he accidentally walked in the girls’ restroom back at his public school.  He caught a glimpse of Penelope Matthews, the early bloomer, adjusting the straps to her bra in front of the mirror just before she shrieked.  While he was definitely embarrassed, he felt a strange sort of excitement at the thought that he could have seen something forbidden.  He did not like to think of himself as a pervert, but he was a bit curious as to what it all looked like…
         “That group is just a bunch of jerks,” his best friend, Arrow, had told him.  “You don’t want to get caught up with the wrong crowd.”  Of course, Arrow had told Martha this as he was working on his extra credit for British literature.  Arrow was just jealous that he hadn’t been invited to work on the mission with him.  He just wished he could be part of the group.
         The thought of Arrow’s jealous face boosted Martha’s confidence.  He looked down and realized that he had already made it on top of the countertop.  Now for the cupboard climbing.  Martha would have to plan his next movements carefully.  Placing his stocking feet on top of a couple of knobs, Martha knew he would also have to climb quickly before the knobs dug into the soles of his feet too badly.  The boy began his climb.
         “.. And he did it without his shoes on, either!” Carl would boast.
         Then the guys would all give Martha a hearty slap on the back, congratulating him.
         “Martha, I don’t know how we could’ve done this without you, man,” Rob would say, trying to hide the admiration in his voice.  “We needed these ingredients the most for the explosives, so it really means a lot.”  Then maybe Rob would give Martha a cigarette of his own, a prize given to those who were noted for their bravery.
         Martha might smoke it just a little, just to try it, but he would keep it in the prized tin box his watch came in.  He’d keep it in there with the naughty magazine clippings and maybe even a bottle tab, representing his first beer.
         Martha hoisted himself on top of the cupboard, but not before knocking his knee loudly on the side.  Biting the insides of his mouth, he tried to divert the agony to a different area, but his eyes swelled with tears of pain.  He quickly wiped them away with his forearms, remembering to be cautious of any chemicals that could have come in contact with his hands.
         Now, the ceiling tile.  Martha sighed.  It was far too dark to see anything written lightly in pencil.  He was thankful for bringing his messenger bag up with him, even if it did clunk against his bottom uncomfortably.  Opening the bag, he fished around for a flashlight.  Whipping out the purple flashlight he had taken from out of Arrow’s nightstand, he clicked it on. 
         The ceiling tiles were rough, and Martha knew that finding the marking on the tile was going to prove to be a difficult task indeed.  He slowly moved the disk of light across the panels, thoroughly searching every nook and cranny for a pencil mark.  Martha silently punished himself as he noticed the marking right above his head.  Of course it would be in the last place he looked.  Martha was a bit annoyed, yet strangely relieved that his task was almost over.
         Pushing up the tile, he caught a shoebox that nearly fell down to the floor below.  Shining his flashlight, he noticed how the secure duct tape held the box closed, and Rob had even gone through the trouble of writing out Martha’s name with black electric tape.  Suspicions rose in the pit of Martha once again.  Why did they go through all of this trouble?  Why did they not just take this to the dorm themselves?  It was then that it hit Martha.  This was his mission.  This was his assignment for getting into the group.  It was all a test.  They were seeing if he would chicken out or not.  Carl probably hadn’t said many kind things about him to Rob.  The only reason either of them gave Martha the time of day was because he had shamelessly begged to join the group.  Now was Martha’s chance to redeem himself.  The worn out shoebox was no longer a plain cardboard container.  It was a treasure chest securing secret objects.
         Martha’s fingers hovered over the tape.  What harm could one little peek do?  The thought of Penelope’s round breasts reminded Martha of one of the prizes for joining the group.  He would do exactly as Rob had said, and that was that.  Finish the task, and get the reward.  How much simpler could it be?  Martha shoved the box in his bag and carefully began his treck down the cupboard.
         Just as his feet hit the first knobs, a loud thud echoed in the hallway.  Martha’s heart stopped for a moment as he tried to make sense of what was going on.
         “Martha!” Carl poked his head in the room and whispered as loudly as he could, “I dropped my flashlight, and it seems that the security guard is here tonight.  We gotta get out of here!  I’m leaving now; I think he saw me.  I’m taking the front door and jamming this one shut to buy you some time.  Get the box and haul your ass back to the dorm, pronto!”
         Before Martha opened his mouth to reply, the door slammed and he could hear Carl sprinting away.  Martha’s heart leapt up into his throat.  Carl’s slamming of the door had made it quite obvious that someone had broken into the lab.  Had Carl just diverted all of the attention to Martha to avoid trouble?  Martha was too afraid to be annoyed.  He knew that he couldn’t be wasting his time with the climbing, though. 
         Martha looked down below him at the hard tile floor.  He would have to jump in order to save time.  Holding his breath as if diving into water, Martha leapt down from the cabinets.  The soles of his feet were filled with a dull pain from the landing.  Knowing there was no time to waste, Martha scurried out of the storage room and relocked the door. 
         A cold wave of terror consumed Martha as he realized he had nowhere to go.  He very well couldn’t go out the door, for he knew that the security guard would be there any minute.  Glancing at the windows, he wondered if he could close them again from the outside.  Martha shook his head.  He would have to open the window as little as possible and squeeze through, so that it looked like the professor had simply forgotten to shut it.
         Shoving the bag through the crack in the window, Martha glanced back at the door.  His heart was pounding too loudly in his ears to hear anyone coming, but he didn’t want to take any chances.  The boy quickly hoisted himself up to the windowsill and squeezed his way out.  Dropping to the ground, Martha scrambled to slide his shoes on his aching feet, knowing it would help him run faster.  He stood up, threw the bag over his shoulder, and broke into a dead run.
         Martha’s heart pounded uncomfortably.  He was so close to the dormitory that his knees grew weak.  His eyes wandered up to the fourth floor window on the far right.  Rob and the guys were probably waiting there, setting up for the explosives.  Martha’s stomach went sour as he realized what he had accomplished.  Who knew that he would have the courage to break and enter?  The feeling only lasted a moment, though.  He was too excited to care.
         Martha flung open the door so forcefully that it hit the wall.  “I got the box,” he announced breathlessly, pulling it out of his bag and handing it ceremoniously to Rob.
         The tall brunette turned the box over in his hands.  “Good.  I see you didn’t open it.  Thanks.  You are now one of us, man.”
         The group of boys cheered Martha as he took a seat on the hard wooden floor exhaustedly.  He noticed out of the corner of his eye that Carl had made it back safely, and he seemed rather calm after the whole ordeal.  Only a well-seasoned member could be so brave about it all.  Martha sighed.  He wished he had that kind of courage.  Martha was still a rookie, and felt rather ashamed for arriving so out of breath.
         “Alright, man, we start the ceremony after we set off the explosives, okay?”  Rob placed the box in the center of the circle the eight boys were sitting in.  He handed his pocketknife to Martha.  “Well, you provided, so you get the honor to open the box, man.”  He ruffled the redhead’s hair.
         Martha bit back a grin and tried to remain cool and nonchalant.  “Sure, whatever.”
         However, his hands shook as he ran the blade down the seal of tape.  Lifting the lid, Martha dropped the knife and stared in confusion.
         “What is this?”
         “Part of the explosives, man,” Rob slapped Martha’s back, grabbing a bottle of diet cola from a six-pack that sat on the floor next to them. 
         Martha lifted the ingredients out of the box, touching them curiously.  “Mentos?”  He tried his best not to sound so disappointed.
         “Yep!” Rob snatched one out of his hand as he threw it in his bottle of soda.  A rocket of bubbles touched the ceiling as the guys roared with laughter.
         Martha stared at the guys in disbelief.  “You guys made me go through all that trouble for a pack of mints?!”
         “Well, we had to test you somehow,” Rob laughed.  “But it’s all good.  You’re one of us, now, Martha.”
         Martha glared at the boy.  “Are you serious?”
         The smile on Rob’s face vanished.  “What’s wrong?”
         Martha got the sneaking suspicion that there was no security guard at the science building.  “Man, you guys are a bunch of jerks.”  Martha stood up and walked toward the door.
         “Where are you going?” Carl asked.
         “I gotta return Arrow’s flashlight,” Martha answered, slamming the door.