Aaron laughed. Nick chuckled at the thought, too, but the truth was that he was worried. He’d tried to call his friend several times, had even gone by his house yesterday after school, but there’d been no one home. That was odd. Victor had always been something of a latchkey kid, but he took advantage of that, and when his parents were out, he was usually in, acting as though he were lord of the manor. But he was not at school, not at home, not answering his phone…so where was he?

As much as Nick dreaded the idea, he was thinking he might tell his parents and have them call Victor’s parents to find out what was going on.

“So are you rewriting your play?” Aaron asked.

Nick nodded. “Sure. It’s now called Diarrhea Jones Goes to the White House, and it’s about a man with irritable bowel syndrome who’s invited by the president to spend a weekend at the White House. Hijinks ensue.”

“Seriously, bruh, Nelson’ll have your ass if you don’t do something more…normal. Maybe something without shit in it?”

He chuckled. “I know. But I still haven’t come up with anything. Although I’m thinking of making a YouTube video of me reading my new poem, Mrs. Nelson is a Bitch.”

Aaron’s eyes widened. “Are you serious?”

Nick laughed. “No. But it’d be cool, right?”

“It’d be awesome!”

“Maybe this summer we’ll do something like that. Post it anonymously.”

Greg Holloway and three of his jock friends walked by, and one of them threw a half-empty Coke can that missed Aaron but splashed soda on his backpack. The four boys continued on, laughing and high-fiving each other.

“Assholes,” Aaron muttered.

“Someone’s going to have to change the oil in our cars when we’re rich and famous.” Nick smiled. “High school doesn’t last forever.”

“Thank God.”

They ate for a moment in silence.

“So, hey,” Aaron asked, “do you have a bank account?”

“What?”

“Did your parents ever open up a bank account for you, where you, like, save your money?”

“What does that have to do with the price of poon in Thailand?”

“I was just wondering. I always had this sort of piggy bank in my room where I kept all my cash. It’s like a Thomas the Tank Engine I got when I was a little kid, but it didn’t make any difference because I never had much money. I mean, my grandma would give me twenty bucks for my birthday, and my parents paid me a measly allowance, but that usually went pretty fast. Now, though, all of a sudden, my dad’s on my ass about opening up a bank account.” Aaron paused. “It’s kind of weird.”