Two Typical Troublemakers

“Did you understand?”

“No”

I sighed in frustration. “It’s really not that hard. Look: We get in through the only window they never lock, the one next to the garden. The children will already be sleeping, so the only person we’ll have to avoid will be the nanny. There really isn’t a better day to do it. Today the parents won’t be home. This’ll be a piece of cake.”

Nicolai looked at me with a blank expression.

“What part of this don’t you understand?!” I half yelled.

“No, I do get the logistics of it.”

“Then?” I was glaring at him by now. I loved Nico, but he was getting on my nerves.

“I just don’t understand why you’d wanna do that.” He grabbed a grape from the bowl on his lap and popped it into his mouth.

“Of course you do! You know perfectly well why we’re doing it.” I went over to the couch where he was sitting and took a grape from his plate. He pretended to be mad and furrowed his brow. I rolled my eyes playfully and took the whole plate from him.

“Well, yeah, I do, but I’m not sure that’s the best way to get the money.”

“It is,” I assured him. It’s the quickest way. And I need the money as soon as possible. Lloyd needs the money as soon as possible.”

I went over to the couch and sat down next to him. I rested my head on his shoulder. “You know I have to do this.”

“No, you don’t,” he replied softly. He lifted his shoulder to move my head away from it. Then, he grabbed me by my shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Look, Eve. You’re my best friend. I’ve always supported your crazy ideas, but this one’s gone too far. Maybe we should rethink this.”

“But is it really considered that bad if it’s for the right reasons?”

Nico smiled sadly. “Yeah, because that poor family did nothing to deserve this.”

“I mean, they have money to spare, and besides, it’s not like I’m gonna hurt them. I’m just gonna march in there and take their–”

“Evie, stealing is stealing. The context doesn’t matter; it’s still a crime. Besides, is it really worth the trouble? If we got caught, you’d go to juvie since you’re 17, but I’d go to real prison since I’m already 18.”

I opened my mouth to argue, but then there was a sound behind us. I got up quickly by instinct. I grabbed Nico’s arm and pulled him into my room quickly.

“What are you doing?” he whispered as I was quietly closing the door.

“You know my dad, he’ll ask questions. We looked pretty suspicious.”

“And hiding out in your room isn’t suspicious?”

“Not if he doesn’t see us,” I said, smirking mischievously. He laughed a bit too hard at that, and I quickly put my hand over his mouth and gave him a look. “Besides, we aren’t staying here. Come on.”

Getting out of a house from a second-floor window isn’t an easy task, unless you’re the typical troublemaker. Luckily for us, we were (although Nico had more of a moral compass than me). We jumped onto a branch of a nearby tree with agility, and after climbing down a bit, we made another jump towards the ground.

I signaled Nico to follow me, and we jogged down a few streets, trying not to look suspicious. We stopped in front of an avenue and waited for our turn to cross the street. As we were catching our breath, Nico turned to me.

“Where are we going?”

“I actually have no idea.”

With that, we both broke into uncontrollable laughter. A lady looked at us weirdly as she drove by, and that made us laugh even harder. When we finally stopped, my expression hardened a bit.

“Maybe we should go and see Lloyd. We’re doing this for him, after all.”

“Ah yes of course, your favorite person.”

“Hey, he’s not my favorite person. You are. He’s just my favorite cousin.”

Nicolai's green eyes sparkled as he grinned, and with that, we headed towards Lloyd's apartment.

For the past few weeks, I’d visited Lloyd very often. I always called before visiting, but this time I decided not to, since we were already halfway there.

I’ll be a nice surprise, I thought to myself.

“I hope he’s not sleeping,” Nico said, interrupting my thoughts.

“No, I don’t think he’ll be,” I answered. “I know all the medicine makes him tired, but he’s always awake at 6 pm, believe me.”

Nico raised his hands in a can’t-argue-with-you way. “I mean, he’s your cousin.”

A few minutes later, when the sun was beginning to set (too early for my liking, but hey, it was autumn), we finally got to his apartment. Even though Lloyd was always awake at 6 pm, he was in bed at all times. He couldn’t get up at all. I knew that if he didn’t get the money for the operation soon, he'd get much worse.

I shook the thought away as we walked up two flights of stairs to apartment 3B. Before ringing the doorbell, I tried opening the door to see if it was unlocked, and to my surprise, it was.

Nicolai gave me a look. “Great, two illegal entries in one day.”

I elbowed him in the stomach playfully. “Oh, shut up. If it’s gonna be a surprise visit, we’d better fully commit to the surprise part.”

“Yeah yeah...”

As we walked through the apartment quietly, we heard a noise that got louder and louder as we neared Lloyd’s bedroom. By the time we were standing outside of his door, we’d figured out the noise was coming from the TV inside. There was another noise that sounded like Lloyd himself yelling at the TV, but I knew that couldn’t be possible, since Lloyd barely had energy to talk. I looked around and wondered where the nurse was. I'd never actually seen her. She always seemed to be on her break when I came by.

I shook my head and grabbed the door handle, and without thinking twice, I pushed the door open. At first, I couldn’t process what I was seeing. Lloyd was standing–standing–in front of the TV, fully dressed, watching a soccer game. The volume was so loud, he didn’t even hear us come in. He was yelling at the TV as though the players could hear him, and as though he wasn’t sick...

“Lloyd?” I said. He practically jumped when he heard me. That baffled me even more, since as far as I knew, he was so weak he practically needed help getting dressed. I turned to look at Nicolai, and his expression mirrored my feelings.

“I–” Lloyd started to say. “It’s not what it looks like!”

A wave of anger possessed me. “Lloyd, are you sick or not?”

His expression was a mix of guilt and defeat. “No,” he answered in a quiet voice. We stared at each other for what would’ve been a few silent moments, if it hadn’t been for the unusually loud TV. As if reading my thoughts, Nico walked over and turned it off.

“Explain yourself, now” I told him.

“Fine,” Lloyd said, shifting his feet. “I needed to collect money for something important, so I pretended to be sick. It actually would’ve been a lot easier if you hadn’t come to visit so often.”

“Hey!” Nicolai said in a strong voice. “She visited you because she cared about you! How dare you–”

“Continue the story,” I told Lloyd. I backed up a bit so I was standing next to Nico and gripped his hand as if to say thank you for defending me. He squeezed it back.

“Well, after faking for a few weeks, I announced the operation, and how I would meet my horrible fate if I didn’t go through with it. People are stupid. No one ever asked for any proof that I was sick. Anyways, after that, I mentioned the most essential part of my plan, which was that I was a few thousand dollars short. After that, people did the work for me and basically started giving me money for free.”

“But...” I was at a loss for words. “To think about what I almost did to get you the money!”

I burrowed my face in my hands, and Nicolai put his arm around me defensibly. I looked at him and he was glaring at Lloyd.

“But why, Lloyd? Did you at least have a good reason? What were you going to use the money for?” I couldn’t possibly believe that my favorite cousin, the one I’d trusted for so many years, had turned out to be so selfish. I knew there had to be an explanation.

“Simple,” he said. “I was gonna use it to run off somewhere and start a new life.”

That was it, I couldn’t take it anymore. I turned to look at Nico again, but I couldn’t see his expression, as tears had begun to form in my eyes, making my vision blurry.

“Come on, let’s go,” Nicolai said, half dragging me towards the door. Before he stepped out, he walked back towards my selfish cousin and lifted him by the collar, even though Lloyd was 4 years older than him. He muttered a threat I only half caught about “If he ever hurt me again,” and then let him go, grabbed my hand, and marched out of his apartment with me besides him.

We walked in silence for a few streets, still holding hands. The sky was completely dark by then. As we neared my house, I stopped him and made him look me in the eyes.

“Thanks” I said. “For...everything.” Even though I didn’t say it, I wasn’t only talking about how he’d stood up for me. I was also referring to the way he always tried to talk sense into me, and when I didn’t listen, was always there to do the crazy stuff with me. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t a troublemaker at all, but simply decided to accompany me in my shenanigans when I was too stubborn to change my mind, just to make sure I was alright. He was the best friend I could’ve ever asked for.

He smiled sweetly. “Hey, anything for my favorite person.”