~ Twenty-Seventh Encounter ~

If I remember right, it was about a week and a half after we returned to school that Mark came running up to me while I was shoveling snow off the front sidewalk.

“Max, you’re not going to believe this!” Mark said, gasping and panting for air. It was actually kind of cool, I mean, seeing him breathing so hard because his breath was creating puffs of frozen air that sort of just hung there in front of his face and then slowly vanished.

“Dude, are you going to die? Cause if you are, can you do it over there where I haven’t shoveled yet.” I joked.

“No, listen!” Mark said, placing a hand on my shoulder to steady himself. Apparently, Mark had run all the way to my house and was seriously out of breath.

“I found out the name of that kid!” He said between huffs.

“What kid?” I asked.

Mark tried to flick my ear but missed. “Hello! The one that played the Baby New Year?!” he said slowly.

I’m so glad he didn’t make contact with my ear because my ears were nearly frozen, and it probably would have shattered.

“Oh man! I nearly forgot!” I said punching him in the arm for nearly flicking my ear. “And stop hitting me or I’ll put icicles in your diaper!”

He hit me in the arm back, “Stop hitting and listen!” he said, sounding serious and backed up so that I couldn’t hit him back.

“Okay, what’s his name?” I asked, leaning on the snow shovel as I pulled off my stocking cap to wipe the sweat from my brow.

“Mike Rabur.” Mark said and then added, “I talked to him for a while after practice while we waited for our parents to come pick us up. He’s really cool and get this, they just moved right before Christmas.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“They live like three blocks over, on Pepper-Ann Court.” Mark said in such a way that made it sound like he’d just revealed a national secret or something even more sacred.

I started to say something else but Mark stepped toward me again and spoke before I could say anything. “Max, you are going to flip out when I tell you that he’s having a huge birthday party, and he invited everyone at the dojo to come.”

“Really? So are you going?” I asked.

“Dude, we’re both going!” He said as though I’d missed out on part of the conversation.

“What do you mean? I’m not in your Judo class.” I said.

“No, I asked him if it was cool for me to bring a friend and he said, ‘The more the better!’ so you get to come too!”

“When?” I asked, now sounding like Mark.

“One week from this Friday.” Mark answered, “So, you in?”

“Do you wear diapers?” I said, purposefully loud, which earned me another punch, but with my winter coat on, I couldn’t hardly feel it.

As you might understand, going to a birthday party for someone you don’t know is kind of like going on a blind date. Not that I’ve ever been on a blind date. Anyway, my first priority was to get a gift for a boy I didn’t know anything about. In the end, I decided that you can’t go wrong with money and my dad even helped me to get a Visa Gift Card that comes in a cool little box. I only had twenty-six dollars and some change saved up, so I had to get a loan from The Bank of Dad. I thought a gift card of only twenty-six bucks would be pretty lame, so I got enough from dad to get a fifty dollar Gift Card. Yeah, a present could have cost me a lot less, but I honestly couldn’t think of a single thing to buy for him.

My next problem was, what to wear. I settled for nice blue jeans, a crisp white button up shirt and I polished up my good shoes. Oh, and I also put on some Bling. My brother let me wear his gold choker which, on me, was more like a dangling chain. My brother helped me put it on and he just had to make a comment about how scrawny he thought I was.

“Do you really think I’m scrawny?” I asked, self-consciously.

To which my brother popped me upside the head and told me not to be dumb. I guess that was his way of saying that I wasn’t scrawny?

I also have this awesome watch that I got for Christmas, it’s gold and silver colored with a cool light brown band. What I like most about it is, the face glows in the dark so you can see what time it is at night.

My brother can be pretty cool sometimes. Like besides loaning me his gold choker, he also followed me into the bathroom and helped me to get my hair looking good. Some say girls spend a lot of time on their hair, but my brother would give them a run for their money. He got the front of my hair to stand up using some hair gel and believe it or not, I even let him trim around my ears a little.

Mark’s mom gave us a ride over to Mike’s house, which turned out to be the old Swanton place. If you scare easily, then you might want to skip this next part.

About three and a half year ago, our small town was rocked by a triple murder. No kidding, it was in all the papers and on every local TV and radio station for weeks. Over the years, there have been countless rumors about what happened, but the truth is, Mr. Swanton, who used to own the Handy-Mart, caught his wife in bed with another man. In a fit of anger, Mr. Swanton killed, not only his wife and her lover, but he also killed their two teenaged daughters and their dog before killing himself. Don’t ask me why he killed his kids and that collie because no one will ever know why he did that. I’m sure you are wondering how I know the truth. My dad is a lawyer. Anyway, most everyone in town believes that the ghosts of the Swanton family still haunt their old home, including yours’ truly, and since the murder, the house had remained for sale with no prospects to buy it. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts, would you want to live in a house where four people and a dog died in it? I know I wouldn’t!

As we pulled up in front of the old Swanton place, Mark’s mom made a funny sound out of her nose and I secretively punched Mark in the arm for not telling me that the party was in a haunted house.

“What was that for?” Mark griped as he rubbed the sore spot.

“Did you leave out a small bit of the story?” I said to him.

“What?” He griped again, “How was I supposed to know that it was this house?”

Without saying a single word to us, Mark’s mom let us out of the car and drove away, leaving the two of us standing on the concrete driveway apron of the haunted house.

It turned out to be a seriously awesome party once Mark and I got over our initial fears of the house. Before moving in, Mr. and Mrs. Rabur had the entire house redone inside and out. It looked marvelous and was so modern looking. They had gone all out for the party too. Every main room of the house was decorated with streamers and the living room had been cleared so that everyone could dance. Oh yeah, and Mike’s dad is a professional DJ. He works for WKEG radio, ‘The best of the 80’s, 90’s and Today!’ as well as running his own DJ business.

While Mark and I stood at the end of the drive way gapping at the house, Mike had opened the front door to let us in.

“Hey, don’t you know that it’s winter?” Mike called out to us.

I looked toward the front door and saw him. With just a quick glance, I was unmistakably sure that he was the same boy I’d seen in the hospital that one day with his broken leg and collar bones. Except, he’d had time to heal and he looked quite a bit more dressed up then the two previous times I’d seen him. Of course those two times, he’d been wearing nothing more than a diaper.

Mark and I made our way to the front door where Mike greeted us by shaking our hands and taking our coats. As I was slipping off my coat, I noticed that Mike was looking at me with an odd trance like expression.

In an explosion of people, the three of us were swept off into the house and the festivities, which were already in full swing. Before I knew it, I was in the living room dancing to some crazy techno music with some blonde haired girl I didn’t know. When the song ended, the girl thanked me for the dance and vanished into the crowd.

I spent the next fifteen minutes fighting my way through the crowd of people while looking for Mark. I found him standing near the kitchen, talking with two other guys and some girl who I later learned were all from his Judo class.

From about halfway across the room, I tried shouting for him over the music, “Mark!”

He couldn’t hear me, so I had to make my way through the throngs of people which took another five minutes. I was finding it difficult to believe that all these people were in the same Judo class.

Finally, I reached Mark and pulled him away from his friends so that I could have two seconds alone with him.

“Dude, this is crazy-insane!” he shouted into my ear so that I could hear him over the loud music.

“Who are all these people?” I asked.

He smiled, shrugged and put it simply, “Who cares!”

“Can you believe that someone Mike’s age would have parents that would throw him a party like this?” I shouted back to Mark.

“You are just about gullible! You do know that don’t you?” Mark said while flicking my chin.

Of course, I had to ask what he meant by that, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Mark pointed at the DJ, who I thought was his father. He said, “That’s not his dad.”

“It’s not? Well who is it then?” was my next question.

“Who knows, but he’s great isn’t he?” Mark shouted as he started to dance next to me.

“Wait. Is this even a birthday party?” I asked, thinking that I was starting to get a clue.

“Of course, it’s Mike’s thirteenth birthday.” Mark said while raising his hands over his head and bee-bopping in place.

I finally had enough. I grabbed mark by the front of his shirt, pushed him backward and pinned him to the wall.

“What the heck, Max?!” Mark said, but I didn’t actually hear him, I just read his lips.

“Stop screwing with me Mark. Out with it or so help me.” I shouted right next to his ear so that there was no chance he couldn’t hear me.

“Take it easy Max! You’re acting like there’s something illegal going on here.” Mark said, “It’s just a party. Don’t you wish you could have thrown a party like this when you turned thirteen?”

“Are his parents even here?” I asked.

“Come on Max! Get real!” he said and before I could say anything else, some girl in what looked like an old fashioned bathing suit pulled him away to dance. That was when someone bumped into me and spilled red punch all down the front of my white shirt. I don’t even think they knew they had done it, because when I looked up, no one seemed to be paying any attention to me at all.

I fought my way back to where I thought the bathroom would be. I’m not sure what I was going to do once I got there. I knew that my shirt was ruined but still, I had to try to rinse it out some.

There was only one door that I wasn’t able to look into, so I had to assume that it was the bathroom. However, it appeared to be occupied. I stood there and waited five minutes, then ten, then fifteen and still, whoever was in there hadn’t come out. Finally, I knocked on the door, but even down the hallway, the music was too loud to hear if someone said something on the other side of the door. I tried putting my ear against the door and knocking again but still, I heard nothing from inside so I tried the knob and it opened.

However, right at that moment, about ten or more guys came plowing down the hallway. For a panic filled second, I thought they were after me, but they blew past me, knocking me into the bathroom. When I got back to my feet, I quickly closed and locked the door. When I turned around, I saw Mike sitting on the edge of the bathtub and he was crying.

Seconds seemed like minutes as I stood there with one hand on the doorknob I just locked, and the other cupped over my gapping mouth. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Mike was sitting on the edge of the bathtub wearing a dazzling metallic orange button-up shirt and khaki pants. He really looked good except for the painfully obvious wet streak that ran down the inside length of his left pant-leg, all the way to his brown loafer.