Free The Party by Christopher Pike

leave now.” He started toward the door,
    “Go out the back,” Michael said. “I don’t want some cop taking a shot at you.” He held out the gun. “Take this with you.”
    Kats smiled as he accepted the revolver, slipping it into his belt beneath his shirt. He had a fetish for guns. It was probably part of the reason he wanted to join the marines. His crummy singleroom apartment was packed with rifles, shotguns, all kinds of ammunition. “Good thinking. Hey, you’re not really mad at me, are you, Mike? You know I would never try to rob you. You and me, we go way back. Coming to the game later?”
    “Yeah, maybe.” Michael chuckled in spite of himself. This was turning out to be a weird day. “Go ahead, get out of here. Go home and take a shower. You stink.”
    “Thanks, Mike. See you later.”
    When he was gone, Michael called the police. Turned out they had received no alarm. He called one of his bosses, told him he had accidentally bumped the button. The boss gave him the same story as the police; no alarm had gone off. Hanging up the phone, Michael pulled on the wiring attached to the button. It was burned out, shorted.
    “At least now we’ve got your feet to protect us,” he told Nick. “That is, if you haven’t changed your mind and want to quit?”
    “I’m not quitting, Mike. I’m just beginning to feel at home.”
    Between the two of them, they cleaned up the mess. The equivalent of three cases had been destroyed. Michael decided to juggle the numbers on the store inventory until Kats came up with the money, if he ever did. Michael figured he’d probably end up paying for the damage out of his own pocket.
    Michael’s replacement, the twentyyearold son of one of the bosses, came in at nine o’clock. Amir went fulltime to the local junior college and spent most nights at the store. As a result, he was chronically exhausted, and did little during the wee hours of the morning except run the cash register and study. He simply nodded when Michael introduced Nick as their new employee. Michael hoped Amir’s father had the same reaction.
    Michael and Nick were walking out the front doors of the Eleven when the phone rang. An hour had passed since the phony holdup. It was Bubba. Michael took the call in the small office in the back.
    “Did you invite Nick Grutler to come to the game with us?” Bubba asked.
    “Yeah.” The invitation had surprised Nick, but he had accepted without hesitation. He seemed to be looking forward to it. “Where are you? You said you’d pick me up at nine.”
    “Kats is here,” Bubba said, lowering his voice. “He tells me Grutler tried to kill him.”
    “Did Kats also tell you that he pulled a gun on us?”
    “Yeah, but that was a joke, Mike. What’s wrong with this guy? I hear he practically cut The Rock’s throat this afternoon.”
    “Get off it, Bubba. You know as well as I, The Rock started it. Nick’s cool. Are you going to pick us up or not?”
    “If it was just up to me, I’d be there already. But Kats wants to go to the game, and he says if Nick comes with us, things might get ugly. He’s full of it, I know, but why don’t you and Nick go on alone?”
    “Since when does Kats tell you what to do?”
    “It’s no big deal. Let’s not fight about it. I’ll meet you there. Come on, it’s getting late, and I want to talk to Clair before halftime ends.”
    Michael was disappointed in his friend. “Whatever you say, Bubba.”
    Michael owned his own car, an offwhite Toyota that had had over a hundred thousand miles on it when he bought it. The interior was clean, and although the engine drank a quart of oil every month, it ran smoothly. Yet as he opened the passenger door and adjusted the seat for Nick’s long legs, Michael thought how plain it would look to a girl like Jessica Hart who had just returned from sunbathing in the Aegean Sea. He was hoping to see her at the game, maybe say hello.
    The school lot was packed; they had to park a block away in