We tried to think. It was pretty bad, we couldn’t even sit down cause we didn’twant to mess up the room.

“Theres only one thing I can think of to do,” Zac said with his finger on his pouted lips and his eyes squinted.

“What’s that?” I asked with some hope that he would have a brilliant suggestion.

“We throw our clothes out the window!” He said with a jump.

“Zaaac!” I moaned.

“Shhh!” He said and put his hand over my mouth, “My mom is upstairs, do you really want her to get suspicious?”

“No-” I replied, “I just think that there’s go to be a better way, what would we do if your mom just happened to go outside?”

“We’d pick the clothes up off the ground before she got there,” He said, “Duh silly Sam!” He chorted and I laughed with him, that nick name was funny.

“How about this,” I told him, “We wait for your mom to go downstairs or something, or to sleep. Then we sneak out and run to my house and shower!” Truthfully, I was getting a bit shy of my body and I didn’t want Zac to see it, I mean, he’d never seen it before, but now wasn’t going to be the time.

“Okay, I don’t know how much longer I can wait around here without being able to sit, silly Sam.”

“We’ll try for it Zac.”

We stood there in silence until there was a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” Zac asked.

“It’s mommy,” Diana said.

“Oh no!” Zac bursted out.

“What was that Zac? Can I come in? Do you know what happened to all the ice cream and syrup? There’s hardly any left in there dear,” Diana inquired.

“Oh, uh, we all had some ice cream Mom!” Zac replied.

During this conversation we had both started to take off our clothes frantically. I had run into the closet though. I put on some of Zac’s jeans and a plain black shirt. I came out of the closet to hear Zac still talking to his mom, but in the corner of the room just getting on a shirt from Tay’s drawer.

“Just a second mom, I want to straighten up!” Zac said to his mom. He grabbed my clothes and threw them out the window with his own. Then he dashed to the door and opened it for Diana.

“Is everything okay in here?” Diana asked with a boggled look on her face and one hand on her hip.

“Yes!” We both said.

“Okay.......,” She prolonged, “You two should really get some shoes on. I’m going downstairs to make dinner. Sam, would you like to stay for dinner?”

“Sure, thank you,” I said.

“Great, now get something on your feet you two!”

“Ok Mom,” Zac said.

“Alright Diana,” I said.

She shut the door and we both ran over to the window. We saw Ike. Ike. Ike with Zac’s pants over one shoulder and half in his face. Ike with a nasty look on his visage and hands on hips. He whipped his neck and head to the right and the pants flung off, leaving still syrup dripping down his forehead. We both ran and stumbled for the door, I grabbed my shoes as we ran and threw Zac’s at him. He put them on barely, at the steps and we both scrambled down to see if Ike was alright and if he was mad.

We stopped a few feet from Ike. He looked mad.

“YOU,” He pointed to Zac, “owe me BIG!” Ike then proceeded to wipe his forehead with his hand as he marched into the house angrily.

Once he was inside, Zac and I exchanged glances. Then just let out the laughter as we ran again, back into the yard. We brought our clothes since we had decided to wash them in the river. We had run about half of the way to the river when we finally slowed down into a faster walk.

“Yuck, my arms are all full of syrup!” I said.

“How do you think Ike felt?” Zac replied.

We both laughed as we approached the river. We knelt beside it and just started dunking our clothes. After we were sure that all the syrup was out, we wrung it out. The clothes were still pretty heavy from all water, we knew we hadn’t gotten that much water out from wringing. So, instead of carrying them back we decided to leave the clothes there to dry. I layed both our clothes out then turned around and didn’t see Zac.

“Zac?” I called.

Then I see Zac knelt by a rock with a michevious smile. He gets up and starts to run for the house, “Bet you can’t catch me!” He calls.

I smile and charge for him, “Bet I can!”

The whole sprint back I’m at least 15 feet behind Zac, but around 3/4 through I started to gain on him by increasing my pace. We can see the house and I’m now less than 10 feet away, we reach the backyard and I’m 5 feet from him, then Zac slows down but I kept running and went right into him! We went crashing to the ground.

“Ouch!” I exclaimed.

“You’re such a wuss,” Zac joked.

“Caught you,” I smiled. Zac pressed him lips together in a smirk then shook his head. We rolled over from me onto his back and looked at the sky. We lay there for a minute. “Look! It’s a chicken!” Zac shouted out of the blue.

“Where?” I began to search.

“Made you look!” Zac laughed at how clever he thought he was. I gave him a slight push onthe shoulder.

“Zaaac! Sammmmannntha!” We heard Diana call, “Time for dinner!”

We surged up and ran into the back door.

Walker led us all in a short prayer, as always, and we began to eat. It was lasagne night, that’s my favorite night because Diana makes it sooo good!

“So boys, I think tomorrow would be a good day to go shopping,” Diana started.

Isaac, Taylor, and Zac all exchanged looks of ‘do we have to?’

“You will be needing a lot more clothes than you have now,” She continued.

“Why?” Taylor asked.

“Well, we just got a call from Triune, and they want you boys to go up to New York City to do a few promotional radio interviews and such,” Walker explained.

Now they were all getting excited.

“New York City?! That’s killer!” Isaac exclaimed.

“YeAH!” Tay was excited, but his voice cracked in the middle of that outburst, we tried not to giggle too much, Tay slightly blushed.

“I’ve always wanted to see New York, but if it’s only radio interviews, why do we need new clothes?” Zac asked.

“I’d like some new clothes personally,” Isaac said.

“I do too, I just don’t want to shop for them,” Zac finished.

“When are you going?” I asked.

We all looked at Walker and Diana, back and forth to see who would answer.

“Two weeks,” Diana said, “Well, ten days.”

They were all excited to see New York, but I was bummed. I just got them back and now they were leaving me again. I tried to look happy anyway. Then the phone rang.

“Jeese, this phone is just ringing off the hook!” Walker said as he went over to answer the phone.

“Hello? Uh huh, oh! Zac, turn on 93.3! Thank you,” Walker hung up the phone.

Zac turned the dial to 93.3 and there it was! MMMBop was playing on the radio! Zac’s face lit up as everyone jumped up and down and started to hug anyone and everyone in sight. They blared the radio so loud you would think the neighbors would have been mad!