“Say hi to Josh for me,” I said.

Eliza blushed, her wild eyes filled with bashfulness and a hint of something else. My shoulders felt empty as she removed her hands from them, our moment over.

“You’d be a good dance partner, Maguire. Any girl going out with you would have a lot of fun.”

“Duh,” I teased. “Remember, if your date with Josh is sub-par and you ever want a redo.”

“You wish.”

Great, now it’s weird.

“I should go now, before this gets any more . . .” Eliza’s shoes clicked as she walked like she couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

“Bye, Carter!” She called. She nodded in my direction. The light seemed to follow her as she left the doorway.

“Is she gone yet?” Carter’s voice was faint.

“Yeah, dude.” I sank back into the Oreo beanbag. The refreshing hiss of a pineapple juice can opening came behind me. “Josh Daley. Gross.”

“You had one job, Nick,” Carter sighed. “One freaking . . . ugh. In any case.” He paused for a sip. “What’re we waiting for? This is the first time you’ve been here since Eliza came back from Australia. Remember all those ideas we had? My mom’s probably in bed now so . . .”

“Oh, hell yeah.” We’d had many pranks in store. “Did you get a new gun yet?” By gun I meant a Nerf 2000. He broke his old one a few months ago when we’d decided to test Austin’s reflexes. We’d completely forgotten Austin spent two summers at karate camp (a fact he likes us to forget), but when we hid in the coat closet and fired at him, he’d jumped into a karate stance and chopped Carter’s plastic toy in half.

The definition of tragedy.

Carter shot me the evil smirk he reserved for these moments. “Better than that. C’mon.”

We tiptoed through the hallways until we reached an old, squeaky set of stairs that led to his attic. As fancy as Carter’s house may have been, his attic always reminded me that it was not made in this century. Arguably, that tidbit made it even cooler.

“Did those bats leave yet?”

“Looks like.” Carter lifted a piece of yellow newspaper in a cobwebby corner.

“Damn.” Two weeks ago, we’d found a family of six baby bats flying around. It had been cool, kind of like a vampire family was living there.

“I know. They could’ve come in handy. It’s okay, though. I saved the dung beetle from Austin’s birthday party.”

I high fived him and we set to work. Once the musty, rodent smell wears off, the attic’s really not that bad.

“Dude.” I opened one of the less dusty-looking cardboard boxes. “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 three liters of water. I had to carry it with two hands. “You know how much waterpower we can get with this thing?”