Carter's house could put Tony Stark's personal playground to complete shame.
The O'Connor mansion is seriously legit. It's huge, first of all, since it has this giant swimming pool with three water slides, an indoor basketball court and ice rink, more gaming systems than any kid could ever ask for, and the walls are actually cool colors: none of that beige stuff that my parents use on our walls.
Carter's room has a mural of a surfer beach party on it. Needless to say, it's one of my favorite places in the whole world.
I drove my car into the long, brick driveway and Javier, the valet, took my keys from me so he could park it. Just kidding. Carter doesn't have a valet. But he does have a butler named Hank who's from Brooklyn. Has the accent and everything.
"Good Afternoon, Mr. Nick." Hank opened their door to let me inside. "It's good to see you."
"Thanks, Mr. Hank." I stepped into the wide entrance hall. "It's been a while."
"It has." The butler gave me an amiable smile. "Although I can't say that's a bad thing."
Hank knew me too well. He'd been the O'Connor's butler for 14 years, ever since Carter and I were three years old, and he'd seen us grow up together. We'd both put him through our childhood with us, and he'd experienced the kind of hell we were capable of raising first hand.
"I think you'll find Mr. Carter in his room." Hank rested his hands behind his back. That was my cue to leave. As fun as Hank could be, sometimes he just wasn't a people person. It was funny; he'd lived out of the city for so long, but he could still give off that aloof, 'don't mess with me' attitude that every New Yorker has.
Only sometimes though. The rest of the time he's the absolute man, even despite the fact that he likes the Yankees.
"Later, Mr. Hank." I sent him a nod and started up the spiral staircase towards the third floor, where Carter was.
On the way, I passed Eliza's room. Her door was closed but she was blasting Adele from inside it so I knew she was there.
It was strange, having someone actually in that room again. For the past year it had been completely empty every time I walked by it, but now that she'd come back from Australia it was like nothing had changed.
Somehow, it was a comforting feeling. It was like I'd finally realized she'd come home, and that made everything seem so much more normal.
When I reached Carter's room I gave him our secret, three-tap knock letting him know it was me. His door was already half open, so I could see him slouched down in his hamburger-shaped chair with the video game console in his hands.
"Hey, dude!" He barely glanced at me when I took the pizza-shaped chair beside him. Just handed me another controller and tried not to ruin his kill streak. I didn't take it badly though. If I'd been playing Black Ops and someone came into the middle of it, I'd have given them a similar greeting.
Three minutes later, the screen went black. "And that's how it's done." I leaned back in my chair. "C'mon, man, you were practicing all afternoon and that's the best you can do?"
Carter punched my shoulder. "Nah. I just know how you get when you lose, and I didn't want to ruin your night at 5:00 in the afternoon."
"Then I want a rematch," I told him. I hate it when people say they lost on purpose.
Carter's eyes narrowed and the playfulness was gone. Now it was all business. We take our video games pretty seriously. "You're on, Maguire," he told me. "But don't cry when I shoot you."
Carter put us on the Ural Mountains in Russia, but just as the game was about to start, a feminine voice interrupted us. A voice I recognized immediately.
"Carter?" Eliza stood in the doorway. Carter paused the game and we both gave her our attention. There weren't many things we would stop to do while we were playing, but Carter had always put Eliza at the top of his priority list.
My jaw almost dropped as I took in her appearance. She looked like she was all ready to go to some kind of semi-formal because she had on this really sparkly, pink halter dress and her hair was up, curled, and styled like a movie star's.
"I'm about to go. Do you want me to get anything while I'm out?" Eliza asked her brother. Her soft, green eyes moved from him to me. "Hi, Nick." She smiled brightly. "Do you like my dress?"
She did a little twirl to show off the back of it. Or non-back of it, I should say. "Yeah," I cleared my throat so the words would come out. "It's great." She looked completely different from the quiet kid I'd spoken to in gym this morning.
"But I should tell you that we don't live in Los Angeles," I said. "So the red-carpet parade won't be taking your picture tonight."
"Eliza's going on a date," Carter told me. If I hadn't known him for as long as I had, I'd have thought he was just stating a fact, but I could hear the slight drop in his tone of voice, and to me, it sounded much more like he was delivering some sort of awful news.
"Who's the lucky guy?" I asked her, crossing my fingers that she wouldn't say the name of a certain someone.
"Josh Daley," Eliza answered me. "We're going dancing." Damn. She did anyway.
I almost choked on my own disbelief. First, because it was Josh and I couldn't see why she'd ever agreed to go out with him, and second, because that was the lamest thing I'd ever heard. Really? Josh couldn't come up with something better than that? Going to a club is so incredibly unromantic. At least, compared to something I would have done.
"I can't be here for this," Carter excused himself to go to the bathroom. Apparently he'd already heard the pre-date-boy talk from his sister, and I didn't blame him for having to leave. I wasn't sure I wanted to talk to her about Josh either.
"I'm kind of nervous though." Eliza took the seat beside me, the one where Carter had been only seconds earlier. "What if he thinks I'm a bad dancer?"
And that's why I don't take girls on dates like that, I wanted to tell her, but I didn't.
"In that dress it won't matter," I said instead, but I don't think she realized how true it was. She looked amazing. "Here, I'll help you." I stood up from my chair and took her hand to pull her up with me.
"What're you doing?" Eliza skeptically cocked an eyebrow as I dragged her to the middle of Carter's room, where there was more space.
"Put your hands on my shoulders like so," I instructed her, moving her arm across the air. "And then I put mine here." I gently placed mine on her waist. "And then you just step from side to side. That's it. It's easy."
Eliza easily matched the rhythm of my movements and shot me her million-dollar smile. "I know how to dance, Nick. This really isn't necessary."
"Then why are you still here?" I smirked at her, taking her wrist to twirl her around me. She caught her balance when there were about four inches of space between us. "Not bad," I whispered as my heartbeat began to pick up speed. I loved being this close to her. She had on this perfume that smelled so good, it was like there was a cherry tree standing right next to me.
"Thanks," she breathed back at me, meeting my eyes with hers. I was shocked by the energy contained in her stare, and when I reached to tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear, its tip had even turned a slight shade of pink.
Then she took her hands off my shoulders and our moment was over. "You're a good dance partner, Nick," she told me as if nothing had happened. "Any girl going out with you would have a lot of fun."
"Remember that, if your date with Josh is sub-par and you ever want a re-do."
She gave me a curt nod. "I should go now, before this gets any more weird. BYE, CARTER!" she called towards her brother's bathroom. Then she waved in my direction and walked out of the room. I could hear the 'click-clack' of her shoes traveling all the way down the hall.
"Is she gone yet?" Carter came to stand where I was.
"Yeah, dude," I answered him, still thinking about what it was like to dance with his sister. "Wow. Josh Daley, huh? Talk about unexpected."
"I know. I'm trying not to think about it," said my best friend. "But c'mon, what're we waiting for? This is the first time you've been over since my sister came back from Australia. Remember all those ideas we had?"
"Yeah, bro." I grinned. We'd had so many pranks stored up for Eliza. "I remember. Did you get a new gun yet?" By gun I meant a Nerf-gun 2000. He broke his old one a few months ago when we'd decided to test Hank's reflexes. Hank, apparently, went through ninja school or something, because when we hid in the coat closet and fired at him, he'd jumped into a karate stance and chopped Carter's plastic toy right in half.
It was so funny. Tragic, because that Nerf-gun had fought so many battles, but hilarious nonetheless. Hank's hand wasn't even bruised.
Carter shot me the evil smirk I'd seen many times before and nodded. "Better than that. C'mon, I'll show you."
I followed him through the ostentatious hallways of his house (seriously - they have a portrait of every dead person they can trace their lineage too) until we reached an old, crickety set of stairs leading to his attic. As fancy as Carter's house may be, his attic always reminded me that it wasn't made in this century. Re-modeled, perhaps, but that fourth floor had been around longer than the town we were living in.
"Did those bats leave yet?" I asked him as we climbed the stairs.
"Yeah, looks like," Carter answered me as we looked around the room.
"Damn." Last week we'd found a family of six baby bats flying around that attic. It had been so cool.
"I know. They could've come in handy." Carter had the same disappointed look on his face that I did. "But it's okay. I saved the dung beetle from Austin's Halloween party."
I high-fived him and we set to work. Once the musty, rodent smell wears off, the attic's actually not that bad. There were boxes and boxes of our prank supplies, ranging from water guns to chocolate sauce, to Michael Jackson CDs, and it gave us a lot of privacy too, since no one else in Carter's family ever went up there.
"Dude." I opened one of the less dusty looking, cardboard boxes. "Is this it?" I held up the biggest super-soaker I had ever seen in my life. It was easily a foot and a half long and the tank looked like it could hold about a liter. I had to hold it with two hands just to carry it around. "You know how much water power we can get with this thing?"
"A lot." Carter grinned back at me. "More than enough."
"Way more." I nodded in agreement.
And so it began.
* * *
Thirty minutes later we were standing inside Eliza's sunshine-yellow room with all of our equipment. We were going to put a transmission box on her radio so every three minutes the station changed. We'd also re-wired her computer monitor so every time she clicked with her mouse the screen would change colors.
But my favorite one was the alarm clock we'd stored under her bed. We'd set it to play Lady Antebellum's "Just A Kiss" at 3:00 in the morning, and we'd hooked it up to Carter's new water gun so if she tried to pull it out from underneath her bed she'd get drenched.
"This isn't too mean, is it?" I asked Carter when everything was set up. "I mean, come 3:00 this morning, she's going to murder both of us."
Carter shook his head. "Nah. She's been having these really bad dreams lately. This is the perfect thing to restart her system."
I considered this, and then decided to agree with him. There was no better cure for a nightmare than being splashed in the face with cold water. "This is going to be epic." I licked my lips.
"Yeah, dude." He grinned. "You know, I bought two more supersoakers when I got that one." He motioned towards the one under Eliza's bed. "What'd you say? Wanna break them out of their packages and let them taste the fresh air of my backyard?"
"Definitely. Those guns need us."
"Last one outside is a rotten egg!" he yelled and tore off towards his attic to grab the toys. I ran after him and after we stopped in his attic, we dashed through his house to get to the stone patio.
When we reached the grassy yard, Carter and I kicked off our shoes and socks. He hadn't closed his pool for the year yet, and there was a good chance we would end up in the water. Neither of us cared if our shirts and jeans got wet, but shoes take forever to dry.
Plus I was wearing this fresh pair of blue Nikes, and if those got ruined my life was over. So. Yeah.
After our tanks were all filled up and our minds were set to the task at hand, Carter and I proceeded to have the most legit water fight known to man.
We were climbing the trees in his backyard, hiding in these super-secret hiding places, and surprise bombing the heck out of each other. It was great.
We continued splashing each other until long after the sun went down, and we were still going at it when Josh's brand-new Cadillac pulled into the O'Connor's driveway. Carter stopped as soon as we saw it and we both stared it down.
"If she's not out in the next three seconds I'm going to go over there and slash his tires," Carter announced, slipping into the role of over-protective brother.
"Relax," I said to him. "Do you realize how uncool that would be? I got this one, bro. Follow me." I didn't want Carter to embarrass himself or his sister by flipping out at Josh, so I took it into my own hands. I'd let him know when it was time.
As stealthily as we could possibly be, Carter and I walked over to Josh's car. Everything was so dark that I could barely see what I was doing, because that idiot didn't have his lights on, but I soon heard a "goodbye," the closing of a door, and then I made out the figure of the car slowly moving away from me.
"GO!" I shouted and together we opened fire on the back of it, using all of the water left in our guns. Josh stepped on the accelerator and was out of the driveway faster than I could call after him, "Shit just got real, Daley!"
"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" A shadow that looked an awful lot like Eliza stormed over to us. "Both of you! What the hell do you think you're doing?" It was hard to see her, but I could tell she was angry. "You got my dress soaked," she yelled at us. "And now it's ruined. Just like my evening, thanks to you two."
"We're sorry," I started to say, because I knew Carter would be at a loss for words. Eliza almost never yells at him. Me, on the other hand... "It was an accident-"
"NICK MAGUIRE," Eliza cut me off. "I don't want to hear it. Not another word from either of you. Just go away." She was so mad that she reached down and scooped up two fist fulls of dirt, and threw them at us.
She had great aim. I looked at Carter and he put his water gun on the pavement in front of us. I did the same, and then followed him into his house. I felt terrible. Eliza was the last person I wanted angry with me, and as much as I'd wanted her to have had a horrible date with Josh, I didn't want it to be because of me.
I hadn't felt this bad since the time we accidentally destroyed the model of the solar system she'd been working on for two days. But this was even worse, because now I actually cared that she might hate me forever.
"Whoops," I said to Carter as we trudged up to his room. He nodded in agreement. Sometimes our ideas just get a little out of hand.
We ran into Hank while we were in the hallway. "Oh good," he said to me. "Mr. Nick, I've put fresh sheets in the guest room for you. And your suitcase is on the bed."
"Thanks, Mr. Hank," I told him, and turned to head in the direction of the guest room. That room is my home away from home, really, because whenever I stay at the O'Connor's it's the room I get to sleep in. There's a bed, a dresser, a light, and about ten bookshelves filled with things like "The Arabian Nights" and "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes", so it's a nice room to have.
I switched on the light and took in the familiar, sea green walls. Last year Carter and I painted an underwater mural on those walls with starfish and a pirate ship and everything. We were terrible artists, and it looked so bad, but it always made me laugh. Seeing those drawings made me feel a little bit better about everything.
I stripped off my wet clothing and put them in a pile by the door. I hadn't realized how cold I'd been until the air hit my bare chest. It was like there was some sort of breeze running through the room.
I took one of the hand towels that Hank had gotten for me off the bed and wrapped it around my waist while I dug around for some sweatpants in my suitcase.
While I was doing that, I heard a soft knock on the door. "Nick?" Eliza called through it.
I quickly pulled on my 'East High Soccer' pants and then answered with a 'yeah. C'mon in."
She gently pushed open the door and slipped inside my room. I noticed that she'd changed into a pair of black yoga pants and a grey t-shirt, but her hair was still really wet. My stomach sank even lower. I hadn't realized we'd drenched her that badly.
"Woah," she said when she noticed my lack of shirt.
I looked down at my six-pack and gave her a small laugh. "Sorry," I said, pulling the towel around my shoulders so it hung over my chest and she wouldn't feel uncomfortable. I'd always been pretty proud of my stomach muscles. That's one of the good things about playing soccer for my school, the coach has an extreme emphasis on his athletes' physical being, and the core, abdominal muscles did not slip by, overlooked.
"And I'm sorry about earlier," I told her, as long as I was apologizing. "I guess I just didn't think it through."
"It's okay," Eliza answered, coming closer to me. "Carter told me it was his idea, but either way it doesn't really matter. Josh deserved to have that happen to him. I was just mad about my dress, and apparently it can get wet, so it's not a big deal."
She stood right in front of me and started to brush some of the dirt off of my face. She'd gotten a good amount of it in my eyes, but by that point I'd flushed most of it out. "Sorry about throwing all that dirt at you."
I noticed that she'd taken a lot of her makeup off. To me, it didn't make that much of a difference. I'd forgotten how good she looked without it. "It's fine." I smirked and put my hand over hers. "This is making up for it pretty well."
Eliza rolled her eyes. "Good. I'm glad I could do that for you." She ran her fingers through her long, wet hair. "By the way you owe me."
"For the dress?"
"No." She shot me that teasing smile of hers that I hadn't seen in so long. "My dress didn't actually get that wet. But I found the present you left me under my bed. You really haven't changed, have you?" But it wasn't a question.
"Which one?" I grinned back at her. "And nope. Can't say that I have."
Eliza turned to leave the room so I could finish getting dressed. "Good. I was worried about that. I'm glad to know you're just as fun as you were before."
"More so," I replied. " Thanks for the compliment. And speaking of fun, wanna tell me why you said Daley's car deserved to be attacked?"
She shrugged and bit her already pink lip, holding back part of her smile. "Maybe when you're wearing a shirt. Maybe." Eliza flipped her long, blonde hair one more time before she walked through the door leaving me standing in her guestroom with a wide, stupid grin on my face.
She was also just as fun as she'd ever been. It was good to have her back.