“I do. And it’s worse than I thought. I’ve never encountered a sock of such stink. We should arm ourselves, my liege, before it’s too late, and see if we can best it in battle. Alas, we may not survive but history shall treat us well.”

The bedsprings giggled as Tub took a seat.

“Sorry, Jim. No monsters. No trap door. There’s not even a crawl space in this joint. This is your basic, boring mid-’80s suburban house plan, same as fifty more down the street, same as my place. It’s like I said: there’s nothing special about our homes, nothing special about us. Get that through your dumb head.”

The following hour was nonetheless spent setting up the nanny cam. To the untrained eye it looked like a teddy bear, but its mouth held a wide-angle camera and its butt housed various cables for connecting to a TV. The quality was worse than the camera on my phone but the stuffed bear had better stamina: it could record for up to twelve hours. I posed it on the dresser facing the door, and it grinned at me like an imbecile. I sure felt like one.

Next we built a fake me that we named Jim Sturges Jr. 2: The Decoy. We fashioned JSJ2’s body out of a sweatshirt and sweatpants and stuffed it with dirty laundry. For a head we appropriated a bowl that had last seen use five years before, during my unintentional slaying of five innocent goldfish. After Tub got done threatening, again, to report me to a local animal rights organization, we covered JSJ2 with a blanket and grunted our satisfaction. Now all we needed was for something to take the bait.

We waited for Dad to go to bed. Tub killed time browsing for naked celebrities on my laptop while I studied RoJu, and after the late news we heard Dad going through his nightly triple-check of the doors and windows. The chimes of the armed security systems made me feel even lamer. How was what Dad was doing out there any different from what I was doing in here?

Dad poked his head into the room to say good night—Tub knew how to conceal computer-screen boobs faster than anyone I knew—and afterward we withdrew the archery set from the duffel bag. Tub thumbed the single arrowhead and pronounced it nice and deadly. I brought out the athletic equipment that I’d collected in a hamper, and Tub claimed the hockey gear, leaving me with the less-impressive whiffle ball bat. The last thing I did was spread marbles all across the floor. Finally, we opened the closet, realized how closely we’d have to squish together, and made each other swear we’d never mention this to anyone else. Ever, ever, ever.

For two hours, the only sound was the soft whirring of the nanny cam.