Jack wasn’t a trouble-maker. Not exactly, anyway. If pressed, he might admit that maybe...just maybe… he had a tendency to bend the rules a tiny bit. Just to liven things up. Surely that wasn’t a bad thing, no matter what the authorities might say.

He had never deliberately dragged his friends into trouble. That was the most important thing. Deep down, he was a good guy, and good guys took care of their friends and their family. No matter what.

Unfortunately, sometimes shit happened. Jack reckoned it was just bad luck that it often happened right in the middle of his very well-laid plans. But you rolled with it. What else can you do?

Anyway, Jack was sure this wouldn’t be like those other times. After all, they weren’t kids in high school anymore. And he wasn’t going to just spring it on them either. He was going to give his friends a choice about getting involved. A choice no one could possibly refuse.

Who would say no to participation in a 100% real magical adventure? Or maybe an actual, factual, science-fictional adventure. Jack wasn’t too sure about the exact details yet. He only knew it was going to be awesome and he couldn’t wait for his friends to see that too.

He just had to overcome that knee-jerk skepticism that had become so annoyingly predictable.

Jack was a master fast-talker. But his friends had, unfortunately, grown immune to his skill over the years. They didn’t believe half of what he said, even when it was the complete, bare naked truth. There was no way they were going to believe him this time and he didn’t relish the thought of explaining that he had managed to secure a job interview in another world. Not without some kind of proof.

He could picture that conversation very clearly. Daiki would roll his eyes and say something sarcastic. Steve would laugh awkwardly as if it was all a joke he didn’t quite understand. Zac would probably just back away slowly.

No, Jack couldn’t tell them. It was too important to get them on-board with the plan without that kind of delay. He had to show them.

Luckily, he had a little event planned that was going to blow their minds and blast away any pesky doubts. Something guaranteed to clear up all their suspicions before his friends even knew enough to have them.

All he had to do was get them into his room, all together, at the right time.

*

Everyone was currently home for the summer, which definitely helped. So all Jack had to do was ask them ‘round to his place for a barbecue. A totally innocent barbecue, a completely foolproof plan.

Jack told his friends to show up at 1 pm. According to his script for the day, that would give them enough time to catch up, eat some food, and get nice and relaxed before the mind-blowing occurred.

Unfortunately, shit does happen, and with annoying frequency. In fact, shit seems to be particularly attracted to the word foolproof.

Zac knocked on Jack’s door at 11.37am, his arms loaded with ziploc bags of chopped vegetables, topped with a massive tub of home-made dip which was barely identifiable under 50 layers of plastic wrap.

A single glance told Jack that a whole year at university had done nothing at all to loosen his friend up. Even though he was over an hour early, Zac was tapping his foot impatiently on the path by the time Jack made it to the door. Zac’s button-up shirt and brown leather shoes were matched by his hair, which had been parted severely and gelled almost flat against his scalp.

His shirt buttons were straining a little more than the last time they’d seen each other, but Jack wasn’t about to point that out.

Zac’s dad was sitting stiffly in his car by the curb, waiting for his son to gain entrance to the house. He drove off with only a quick glare in Jack’s direction.

“He still hasn't forgiven me, huh?”

“He's never going to forgive you. He barely forgives me. ‘I want you home by four, Satyajit,’” Zac mimicked his dad, putting on a heavy Indian accent. “‘And not a minute later.’ You’d think I was still a kid or something. I’m at uni now. Like I can’t stay out as late as I want to.”

For all his big talk, Jack knew that Zac would end up just happening to stay until close to 4 PM, and not a minute later.

Normally he would have teased his friend and maybe cracked a few jokes to cover his dismay that Mr. Datla still hadn’t forgiven him for something that happened almost two years ago, but today wasn’t a normal day. If Zac left before 4 PM, that would cut very close to the mind-blowing. Nobody could miss it. They just wouldn’t believe it secondhand, no matter what Jack did. He was going to have to make sure he distracted Zac as much as possible, to keep him in the house until it happened.

Zac knew his way around Jack’s kitchen. He began plating his vegetable sticks on a bench, fussily arranging them into big starbursts of celery and carrot sticks as Jack hovered and peppered him with questions about his year at uni. Zac was pouring spoonfuls of dip into a couple of ceramic ramekins that he’d found in the back of a cupboard, and steadfastly sticking to single word replies, when the roar of an approaching motorbike beat through the thin walls of Jack’s mother’s house. It could only be Steve. Jack rushed out of the house to greet his best friend.

Unfortunately, Steve wasn’t alone. His girlfriend Zoe gunned her own bike into the driveway, parking beside him. Jack felt his heartbeat rise slightly when he spotted her. Not good. Not quite shit but definitely not good.

However, before Jack could say a thing, Zoe insisted that she was only going to stay for a few minutes. She didn't want to disrupt their little reunion.

“I just wanted her to meet Zac and Daiki,” Steve said to Jack. “Hope that's OK.”

With one long arm, Steve pulled Zoe close. She was not a tall girl, being slightly shorter than even Jack, so Steve had to lean down to bump his chin against the top of her helmet. She beamed up at him in response.

It wasn’t that Jack didn’t like Zoe. It wasn’t even that he minded having his plans disrupted. Not usually, anyway. He was the king of disruption- when it wasn’t this important that everything goes according to plan.

Zoe was a cool chick. Jack had hung out with her and Steve more than once. She appreciated Jack’s sense of humor (which was, of course, the most attractive quality in any girl). She wasn’t squeamish, or possessive, or anything else that could be annoying in a girlfriend, maybe because she had so many older brothers and they were all pretty cool too.

It didn’t matter how cool she was. This was a reunion with an ulterior motive, even if no one else realized that yet. Having Zoe there wasn't part of the plan.

Throwing a tantrum wouldn’t help, of course, and Jack didn’t want to hurt her feelings or piss off his mate. Maybe she actually would leave after a few minutes, so Jack made himself smile and act happy to see her. With any luck, she'd be gone before the fireworks started.

Maybe everyone arriving so early wasn't such a bad thing after all.

Steve grabbed Zac for a bear hug, enveloping his smaller friend, just as Daiki sauntered across the road to join the group. Jack wondered if he had heard the motorcycles, or if he’d just been watching from his own living room window, waiting until the group reached critical mass before he approached.

Daiki and Jack had lived across the road from each other for about a decade now. They both had single mothers and this neighborhood had been all they could afford. It had grown nicer around them as they grew up and now looked like an average suburb, with more green than grey lining the road.

It hadn’t always been like that, although it had never been the worst place in the city, either; regardless, Jack knew that his friend had always hated it. Daiki might have had Jack and Steve and Zac to hang out with in school, but this mostly white- and Pasifika-neighborhood had not been kind to a skinny, half-Japanese, half-mongrel kid who liked photography.

Jack hadn’t even been sure his friend would show up. Daiki had been away for months at some fancy art school and this was the first time Jack had seen him, in the flesh, for about a year.

“S'up,” Daiki said. He nodded coolly at them, then sighed heavily and rolled his eyes when Steve swept him up in a hug.

“I haven't seen you in so long, Daiki,” Steve said, as he did his best to crack his friend’s ribs. “Hey, come and meet my girlfriend. Zoe, this is Daiki.”

“Charmed,” Daiki gasped as Steve finally let him go. Preemptively, he thrust out his hand like a barrier, standing as far away from her as he could manage.

The corners of Zoe's lips were fighting to rise as she leaned forward to shake hands. “No hug for me then?”

Daiki squinted at her. “I'm not really a hugging kind of guy.”

“He's afraid you'll mess up his hair,” Jack said.

Not deigning to reply, Daiki thrust a bag of kettle chips at Jack and strolled past him, into the house. His carefully-spiked and purple-tinted hair was still intact in spite of the manhandling he’d suffered. Zac shrugged and followed him through the front door. Zoe and Steve exchanged a quick couple’s smile and proceeded to unload Steve’s stripped-down bike. They pulled several plastic-wrapped bundles from the saddlebags and carried them inside.

Alone on his front lawn, Jack checked his watch. It was barely noon. Not good. Not quite shit yet, but damn it was starting to get there.

OK, so everyone had arrived. It suddenly occurred to Jack that there were probably a few things he needed to do before lunch could begin. Things like cleaning the grill, and making some salad, and readying the handcuffs in case one of his friends tried to leave too early.

First things first. Jack played the good host and parceled out beers and sodas- one each, and the rest were shoved deep into the fridge, in the hope that Zoe would clear off after hers was finished.

Once everyone seemed happy (although with Daiki it was impossible to tell) Jack set about pulling together the essentials. It took him half an hour to clean the grill, and he cursed himself the whole time for not doing it sooner. If it wasn’t for Zac he might not have bothered, but he knew Zac would freak out if he was served food with little black bits of previous barbecues crusted on it. Besides, Jack reasoned to himself, if the grill caught on fire, it might distract his friends at a crucial moment. Everything, from this point on, needed to be foolproof. No shit.

Meanwhile, Zoe had coaxed Zac out of his shell and Jack could hear them all laughing together through the kitchen window as he slaved away in the backyard. Even Daiki was laughing. It was extremely irritating.

It was the sound of Zoe not leaving after her first drink.

After the grill was clean enough, Steve welcomed Jack back into the house like he owned the place. Jack clenched his teeth as he scrubbed at his hands in the kitchen sink, in an effort to remove the old barbeque grease. Everyone was perched on stools around the kitchen counter, which was now loaded with bowls of chips and the plates of chopped carrots and celery and cucumber. He noticed they all had fresh bottles. So much for getting the hint, but what could he do? Getting upset at this point would only alert them to his plan.

So Jack grabbed a beer of his own and joined his friends. It was time to steer the conversation.

“We were just telling Zoe about how we used to get up to a little bit of trouble at school.” Steve passed a bowl of onion dip to Jack. “Like that time you hacked the principal’s assembly powerpoint and spliced in all those photos.”

Jack almost choked on a carrot stick. This wasn’t exactly the best topic to refresh in their minds right now.

“Oh yeah. Nah, that was more Zac than me.”

“You gotta watch the quiet ones, eh?” Zoe winked at Zac and he straightened up a bit and smiled. As always, his fingers were tapping quietly on the counter to a beat that only he could hear. Their tempo increased.

“He was always so responsible and strait-laced, they never even suspected him.” Jack couldn’t help himself. Enthusiasm crept into his voice. “I mean, he was the only one with access to the projector before the assembly, but he was so… respectable the teachers just couldn’t believe it was him. I can still remember the shocked tone in his voice when they asked him about it. He completely got away with it.”

“It wasn’t all me,” Zac said, magnanimously. “You guys spliced the pictures in. All I really did was swap out the files.”

“What were they pictures of?”

“Well, it was supposed to be an end of year thing. Like, look at all our happy memories, you know?” Jack shrugged. “We just… spiced it up a bit.”

“Made it bearable.” Daiki had already finished his second beer. He was facing half-away from the group, as if completely aloof, but wasn’t about to relinquish his credit for the incident.

“We dripped in the new content at first,” Jack said. “So the teachers didn’t notice. A few memes, and a few weird pictures like that one of Jesus riding a dinosaur.”

“But my favorite bit,” Steve said. “Was when you had put the principal’s head onto a bunch of porn-star bodies. He just kept reading off his speech while the school went nuts. Mr. Finn almost broke his neck trying to get to the projector to shut it off.”

“It was very tasteful,” Jack assured Zoe as she laughed.

“And they didn’t catch you?”

“Those two couldn’t keep a straight face about it.” Daiki shook his head, indicating Steve and Jack. “They giggled like five-year-old girls whenever anyone brought it up. So the admins probably knew who did it.”

“They didn’t have any proof,” Jack said. “And Steve left school that year anyway.”

“Oh right,” Zoe said, nodding. “That’s when he started on the boat?”

“Yup,” Steve said. He tried to say it lightly, but there was an awkward pause in the conversation. No one had been pleased when Steve left school before finishing his final year, least of all him.

“Well, then.” Zoe interrupted the silence as she stood up and drained the last of her soda. “I guess I’d better be going. It’s been great meeting you guys.”

“Aw, no, Zoe, come on.” Steve grabbed her hand. “You don’t have to make that pick-up right now. Stay for lunch. Hang out with my friends.”

Jack’s mind raced as he tried to think of a way to encourage her to leave without looking like a jerk or tipping off his friends. Before he could think of anything, Zoe let herself be talked into lunch.

Right. Lunch. Someone had better get on that.

It was barely 12.30, but Jack ushered the others into the living room, then raided the fridge. He pulled out the bags of sausages and chicken wings he had bought with the money his mother had left him for the weekend, as well as the plastic-wrapped packages Steve and Zoe had provided. Their contribution added up to a big pile of mussels, scallops, and clams.

“It’s fresh,” Steve said, appearing behind him. “Me and Zoe and her brothers went out and got it this morning. The water’s beautiful right now. You should join us sometime. I haven’t seen enough of you guys this summer.”

“Yeah, well… uh, I’ve had some stuff on my mind.” That was an understatement.

“Anything I can help with?”

Jack hesitated. Steve was his best friend. But now was not the time to offload. Not now, maybe not ever. No one liked a crybaby, and this day was already going to be weird enough without opening a second can of worms.

“Maybe. I’ll talk to you about it later.” Or not.

“Sure thing. Whatever you need.”

Jack had never cooked shellfish on the grill before, so Steve offered to take over and it wasn’t long before the air was full of briny smoke and the sizzle and pop of sausages. Jack chopped up some lettuces that his mother was probably saving for something else and threw in a few other ingredients he hoped he could sell as “salad.”

Then they ate.

Either the food was delicious, or everyone was just hungry. It disappeared quickly. Too quickly. The mind-blowing wasn’t scheduled until 3.42pm, and it wasn’t even 2.

This is so stupid, Jack realized as the conversation began to slow and Zac checked his watch. I should have just asked them over at 3 pm for a movie or something. Of course, if he had done that, he was sure no one would have turned up until 4. Shit. Shit happened.

Jack suggested they play some games, hoping that a bit of pixelated violence would drive Zoe away. Of course not, she turned out to be a gamer, closely matched to Daiki in skill (although she wasn’t quite as good as Zac). A bit of gentle teasing led to a bitter fight-out lasting over an hour, as Daiki thrashed his controller around, trying to gain an edge, and became increasingly pissed off.

Finally, as 3 pm approached and Jack was beginning to feel sick from nerves, Zoe’s avatar was destroyed and Daiki leaped to his feet in triumph.

“Yes! In your face! I...” Daiki quickly realized everyone was staring at him. He hurriedly sat back down and checked his hair. “You’ve got some nice moves,” he said quietly. “Good game, good game.”

Zoe laughed. She didn’t seem at all offended. She was almost as stoic as Steve like that.

“Right. I’m going to storm off in disgust now,” she said. “I’ve got to do that pick-up for work anyway. You lot have corrupted me long enough.”

She kissed Steve, who had been sitting on the weights bench by the window, idly tossing a basketball between his hands while watching her play.

“OK sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll be over soon.”

Jack showed Zoe to the front door and told her as sincerely as he could that she was welcome any time. Then he closed the door behind her and slumped against it as her motorcycle roared to life outside.

He took the stairs two at a time. It was just past three. Maybe his plan was going to work after all.