Cough Drops, Part II

Broken Window

The broken glass covered almost every section of the basement floor. How could such a small window produce so many shards? If you had pieced all the broken pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle, it seemed as if the window would have tripled its original size.
He paused for a moment, surveying the damage he had done; just as quickly, he scraped away the remaining shards from the windowsill, and turned his body around, stomach facing the ground, sticking his feet into the now empty hole. He would deal with the consequences later. It was a residential home, and in his twenty years of living here, no one had ever broken into the home, and no one was going to today, either, especially in the middle of the afternoon. Besides, if they were to break into the house through the now vacant basement window, they would have to be almost as skinny as he, which would be considerable given his slight physique. He snaked his way through the window backwards, legs first, pushing his body through until his arms could grip the concrete windowsill. He jumped down into the basement, ripped a piece of cardboard off the box sitting in the corner of the room, and placed it into the gaping hole. How could his parents be upset now? He had covered the hole, and now no one would be able to break into the house: they’d have to remove the piece of cardboard first. He walked out of the basement, ran up the stairs, found his keys sitting on the kitchen counter, and locked all the doors, before running outside to his car, late for work.

He and his friend Mike returned to his parents’ house after work, leaving the bag with the giant snake in the front seat of the car. He would wait to bring the snake into the house: time it perfectly to scare the hell out of his mom. Her car was in the garage when the pulled in.
They walked into the house. “Hi, Mom.” “Hi, Mrs. C.”
“Hi, Mike.” She looked over from Mike. “D---,” she began, “did you break the window this afternoon?” She already knew the answer as there was absolutely no one else home, and he had a history of intentionally benevolent accidents of this kind.
“Well, yeah. I locked myself out of the house and left my keys inside.”
One section of her hair turned gray almost immediately at this statement. “How could you do such a thing?”
“Well, I just took off my hat, put it up against the window, and punched.” He pulled his hat off and pantomimed a demonstration.
During this exchange, Mike was standing awkwardly by the front door. His mother looked at Mike with a look of wanted accord, looking for concurrence to her disbelief. She shook her head, exasperation floating off of it with each movement. “That was a rhetorical question. You weren’t supposed to answer it.”
“Oh. Um, sorry. But I had locked my keys inside the—“
“You could have come and gotten me at the school,” she continued.
“I was already running late,” he began equivocating. “By the time I would have run to the school,” (which was about half a mile away), “and gotten back, I would have been at least half an hour late. This was the only thing I could do. And I figured I would tell you and dad about it when I got home. I was going to try to fix it.”
His mother just shook her head unable to say anymore. “Mike,” looking at Mike. “You can head home now if you want.”
“Oh, okay.” During the exchange, Mike had stood off to the side, watching, equally stifling a laugh, and trying not to encroach upon Mrs. C’s anger.
“Mike and I were going to go out,” he began.
“Well, not right now. You can head over there after dinner.”
A swarm of relief landed on him. “Okay. After I fix the window?”
“No,” she said tersely, aware that his carpentry and repair skills were matched in ineptitude only by his honesty and goodwill; he was willing to attempt to fix the window, but who knew what it would look like when completed. “You can pay for the window.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later, Mike. Oh--- wait a minute, the bag.”
Mike shook his head. It didn’t seem like a good time for the snake.