"You buying me a gift?" Sid grinned. It was the Monday following the weekend where I had been involved in two parties, and we were both sitting in the living room after he was home from school. He had noticed that my eyes had not left the screen of my phone for over an hour, which was when he asked me that question and I finally looked up, giving him a non-committal smile and shrug before going back to my phone. It was only natural that he asked me that specific question, as his birthday was tomorrow. In point of fact, I was doing something on my phone regarding his birthday, but I wasn't about to tell him that.
"Don't worry about it," I replied vaguely after he had asked again. "It's something that I need to do on my own for now. If I need your help, I'll ask." It was particularly important to me that I do this on my own, because the result of what I was doing would decide the outcome of a bet that Sid and I had made around the time of his last birthday.
The next day, we didn't really get to have any kind of party until the evening, considering that Dad and I were at work, and Sid was at school. However, Mom had used her day off work to decorate the house with streamers. She had also baked a cake for the evening, as I could tell the moment I walked in the door from the aroma coming from the kitchen.
"You don't have your phone with you," Sid remarked, after we had finished eating.
I grinned. "I'm done what I needed to do." My parents glanced at me inquiringly; they knew all about what I was planning, and I gave them a subtle nod to indicate that it was taken care of. Suddenly I remembered something. "By the way, Sid, since you're sixteen now, you're going to go for your driving test."
He paused while in the middle of taking a bite of his cake. "Now?" he asked, shocked.
"No, you have school this whole week," I answered. "I was thinking next week, on Monday, since that's the first weekday of the winter holidays."
He nodded. "That's fine then, gives me plenty of time to prepare." He paused again, and narrowed his eyes at me. "Is this what you were doing yesterday on your phone? Booking my test?" he demanded.
"Not booking it, you don't need to for the G1 test, but I was looking up their business hours... among other things," I replied truthfully.
He still looked suspiciously at me for a few more seconds, but then decided not to ask any further questions. We passed by the rest of the evening in a rather unusually serene manner, without any tension, and I was glad Sid got to enjoy the latter half of his birthday. However, if all went well with my plan, he would enjoy an extended celebration very soon.
* * *
The servers at Stomae went down late on Thursday evening, so I had the day off on Friday. I had asked for that day off anyway, as I had planned to have Sid's party start right after school that day, but now it wasn't necessary. As matters stood, I was sitting at home, playing on the Xbox when I got a text from Sid around half past one.
'Can you give me a ride home in half an hour? I don't really feel like walking home today :P,' said his message. I frowned at it, not out of annoyance but because I was thinking hard. This posed a problem; I had coordinated with four of Sid's friends that I would pick them up from school at the end of the day, so that we would be waiting to surprise him when he got home, as he usually liked to walk. I hadn't counted on the fact that he may ask for a ride. However, I wasn't about to refuse, either.
'Sure, I'll be waiting at school at two,' I answered, before turning off the Xbox and TV and starting to get ready, all the while thinking of how to get through this latest conundrum; there was no way I was going to let the surprise be ruined at this point, when it was so close to being complete. After a couple of minutes, I got an idea.
