Well, our two brothers have made their way over to Michael's house. Since the boys never have to stand on ceremony at one another's homes, Jeremy and Scully let themselves in through the back door. Michael is asleep but, when he wakens, let's let him continue the narrative...

I can feel my dream sliding away from me as reality begins intruding on my consciousness. Something wet and clammy is wiggling on my bare back. I had been sleeping on my stomach and I reach behind my back for the source of the irritation. All I feel is a slimy spot. My brain is still rather foggy and so, propping myself up on my elbows, I look over my shoulder. Standing beside my bed is a grinning Scully Flinders...aka: The Weasel.

"Whad' ya put on my back, Weasel?" I croak, my throat still gruff from a night of mouth breathing.

I slap my hand back there again and feel around, just a bit nervous. Then I realize how unlikely that could be and I glance at the Weasel's index finger...it's all wet.

"You liar, Weasel! You spit on your finger and smeared it on my back, didn't you?" 'Yech...' I'm thinking, 'how gross!'

"Well, Michael, I thought of peeing on my finger but I thought that would be kind of gross!" he says, smirk dancing.

I yawn big time and, leaning on my left elbow, I swivel some and looked back over my shoulder, looking for Jeremy. There he is, perched in front of my computer...snooping! He is probably wondering if I put anything in my journal last night about...well, you know what. I feel this huge grin growing on my face.

"It's no use, Jer" I tell him. "I password protected my journal to keep it safe from prying eyes."

"Michael," he replies, not bothering to turn around, fingers flying across my keyboard..."the day I can't bypass any password you devise is the day I give up the computer in favour of an Etch-a-sketch."

This causes me to sit up in bed to gawk. Shit! I'm going to have to get a better password, I guess.

"By the way, Michael..." he continues, intently reading what he sees on the monitor, "if you get a better password I'll just pull the thing up in DOS and bypass Windows altogether."

Damn, maybe I'm going to have to write to disk or something and then hide the disk. Oh well, all I wrote last night was about the newt. I sure wasn't going to mention any of that other stuff. Crap, no.

"Snoopy!" Michael replied, looking over at his brother with a smile. Then he says...

"You have to try for some originality, Michael. A huge brain like yours can surely think of something to boggle my brother."

The little dork is buttering me up with the brain remark. Of course, it is true. I will think of something to protect my journal. The little bugger is OK, at least he has always appreciated my potential. Only thing is, Jeremy really outstrips me in his computer knowledge. And worse than that, Jeremy's little shadow, known as the Weasel, has more computer savvy than even his big brother. Scully is a nerd of a geek to the n'th power.

"If you want, Michael" the Weasel offers, "I can set up a virtual drive for you and protect it with 256 bit encryption."

"Don't you dare, Skull..." Jeremy says, swinging around in the chair and looking at his brother.

Jer is referring to the trick he pulled on the Weasel once when we were at Potter's field. Scully had gotten tired of helping us dam up a creek and laid down in the grass to rest. He was soon snoring away and Jer dropped a wriggling worm into his brother's open mouth. It woke him and he sat up...digging a finger into his mouth. When he pulled out 3 inches of squirming Night crawler he started to gag and get the dry heaves. I don't think he has ever forgiven his brother for that one. I am going to have to ask him sometime what he did to get even.

"Besides, Michael..." Jer says, looking in my direction now, "if Scully does help you encrypt your diary, I'll just make him open it for me." He turns towards his brother.

"Sigh," says the Weasel. "I suppose so. Sorry, Mic," he says, looking at me... "but blood is thicker than brains."

I feel my grin fade. Damn. He's probably right. Then, what Michael said to me registers a little deeper in my brain.

"Diary? You said diary...you dip-shit, Jeremy. It's a journal! Lewis and Clarke didn't keep a diary. They kept a journal. Men don't keep diaries...ass-bite!"

Jeremy is grinning hugely at me now. So is the Weasel, but at least Scully is gracious enough to try to hide his grin behind his hand. Oh well, I know Jer deliberately calls it a diary just to get my goat. I shouldn't rise to his bait so easily. I decide it's time to change the subject anyway.

"Hand me my shorts on the floor there, Scully" I tell him, pointing to my pants by the end of my bed. "I need to get up and take a whiz."

I have a woody and I'm not going to tempt Jeremy or get him all red faced or anything. Scully is about to question why I don't just walk over and get them myself when Jeremy stands up, walks over to my shorts, scoops them up and tosses them to me. Scully just looks at his brother kind of questioningly. Jeremy notices his brother's look and he reddens a bit. Then he tells Scully...

"When you get our age, Skull, you tend to wake up with your body in a certain excited state that you don't really want to call attention to."

I'll be damned, Jeremy has hit the nail right on the head. I am surprised, though: If anyone should want to see me in a certain excited state I would think it would be Jeremy. Maybe he is just protecting his little brother's virgin mind.

Scully's questioning look changes to one of acknowledged understanding. Then his face lights up and he turns to me.

Jeremy and I look at one another kind of incredulously. When did the shrimp suddenly become aware of this sort of stuff?

"SCULLY..." Jeremy admonishes his brother, "you know how body-conscious Michael is. I don't think you need to be embarrassing him with remarks about his stiff dick!"

Now they're giggling back and forth to one another. Neither one of them tires of teasing me for my natural, God-given modesty. The Weasel is just as bad as his brother when it comes to a total lack of modesty. I've seen him walk around in their house with nothing on but a smile. Not that he has anything worth hiding.

I grab the shorts and turn my back to them while I slip them on. It's the same pair of cut-offs I was wearing yesterday so they aren't going to do a very good job of protecting my modesty anyway: they are a bit snug. But at least the old bone isn't sticking straight out now - it's sort of mashed to my groin. I think both of the brothers pay too much attention to that area as I walk past them to go to the bathroom.

After I have done my business and brushed my teeth I hear them laughing up a storm as I walk back into my bedroom. Feeling quite certain that I am the likely subject of their levity, I decide not to comment. I just walk back to my bed and sit down. The Weasel is sitting in the extra chair at the computer desk alongside his brother. They are both looking at me with giant, shit-eating grins. OK, OK... so I knuckle under quickly to curiosity.

"You know, Michael, they make underwear with a flap in the back so you don't have to remove them when you go to the outhouse."

Oh, he must be referring to yesterday morning when I put my jockeys on backwards. Jeremy must have been telling stories while I was in the toilet. Then Jeremy quips with...

"Yeah, Scully ... trying to poop through the hole in a pair of jockey shorts would take a heck of a marksman!"

Now I have to admit that is kind of funny and so we are all giggling over that one. Jeremy is the first to get back to his serious side and he says...

"You know, since we have three awesome brains gathered in this room, perhaps we should do a little brain storming over our next monkey-trap."

This instantly sets Scully into paroxysms of laughter. He is giggling and twittering all over the place. Evidently Jer had told him about the trick we pulled on the Jones brothers Friday.

"Oh Lord" he said, "I wish I went to your school. I would have loved to see those brothers get ink-faced. So, do you suppose they are at home right now trying to scrub the ink off?"

"Naw," I answer, "they don't seem like they are into a whole lot of personal hygiene stuff. They will probably wait for it to wear off."

"Well," Jeremy continues, "there is a much bigger butt-head than those guys to reckon with. You know who I mean, Mic?"

Yeah, I do know...Sammy Smith, the biggest, nastiest bully in the ninth grade. He is also a super jock and considers himself Mr. Handsome as well. But then, he's dated just about every good-looking girl in the ninth grade, so I guess he isn't too ugly.

"So..." I say as my grin gets bigger, "you're thinking about maybe making Sammy boy our next monkey target?"

"Who's Tyson and what did this Sammy guy do to him?" Scully queries. So I say...

"Tyson's this really neat kid that's in the Chess Club with Jer and I. He's on the skinny side so he's fair game for the bullies. Sammy loves to torment him. He put the poor guy into his own hall locker then he jammed a pencil into the door frame which wedged the door shut real tight."

"Yeah," Jeremy picks up the story, "then he breaks the pencil off flush with the door so no one can get a grip on it and pull it out. Poor Tyson had to wait for the janitor to pry his locker open and get him out. It turns out he is really claustrophobic too, so he was pretty shaken up about the whole thing."

"Ouch," Scully says, "Sammy sounds like a real rectum, alright. OK...I'M IN...let's nail the bugger!"

I can tell Scully's in seventh heaven. He loves feeling like he is a part of the big boys' plans, meaning Jeremy and me. And, I have to admit, he can be a pretty good asset. I would hate to have this kid hold a grudge against me. He has a devious mind right up there with Jeremy's and mine. And to top it off he is just as cute as his big brother. But they both have these ugly glasses to contend with. Anyway, I add...

"I don't think it should be something as complex as an ink squirter though. We need to simplify things to lessen the chance that something could go wrong."

"You're probably right." Jeremy agrees. "Whatever we do to Sammy, I really, really want it to work. So let's come up with the simplest and best plan we can think of."

"Tell me about this guy," Scully said. "Who he is, what he does during the day, stuff that might trigger an idea."

Jeremy launches into as much of Sammy's biography as he knows while I get up and go through my drawers. I need to put on fresh underwear and I want to exchange these snug cut-offs for some board shorts. I gather up what I need and go into my closet to change. Both the brothers grin as they see me heading in there but Jeremy doesn't disrupt his story.

When I finish changing and come back into the room, the brothers are dancing around and high-fiving each other.

"Oh my God, Mic..." Jeremy says, turning towards me, "Skull has come up with one hell of an idea to totally destroy this dick-head. The plan is simple, elegant and will hit him right where he lives...in his vanity."

Scully is giggling and waggling about like an excited puppy. Jeremy gets this conspiratorial look on his face and explains...

"Well, you know how Mr. pretty boy is always combing his pretty boy hair and primping in the bathroom mirrors between classes?"

"Well," he continues, "we think his hair is his Achilles heel. We can attack him at the follicle level."

"Sammy is into sports and so he showers every evening in the boys' locker room. That means he must keep a bottle of shampoo and maybe even a bottle of conditioner in his locker."

"So ... what if either or both of those bottles were to be emptied and then refilled with NAIR?" He was looking at me expectantly now, waiting for me to break out into a cheer or something.

"Jeeze, Michael," the Weasel pipes up. "I can't believe that someone with a sister doesn't know about the stuff women smear on their legs to dissolve hair. You know, so they don't have to shave their legs. Nair just melts the hair and they shower it off."

My face goes from puzzled to beaming after the Weasel gives me his explanation. My God, what an invention! This kind of stuff has all sorts of possibilities for future pranks - Mrs. Armbruster's noisy dog for one thing. She is our pretentious, next-door neighbor who has this yapping, obnoxious poodle named Miss Puff. It would be interesting if I could make that dog's puff go poof and turn it into a hairless bag of skin. That would knock the sails out of Mrs. High-and-Mighty.

Now I am dancing around with my dynamic duo. We are grinning and giggling and high-fiving and flexing our muscles and kissing our biceps. Yep, together we are the Three Musketeers of the new century. All for one and one for all! The mighty shall fall and the brains stand tall!

We soon grow tired of all our mutual back patting and sit down to make some plans.

"So here's the deal..." I say, " we go to the drugstore this afternoon and buy a big bottle of this stuff. Monday I can sneak into the locker room, after school, while the basketball team is practicing, and make the switch."

"I do..." Jeremy adds. "I have gym class with the pretty boy and I know exactly which locker is his."

"How cool is that?" I respond, inching forward on the edge of my bed. "OK, It sounds like it is going to be your job to make the switch then. And it might simplify things if you can do it during your gym class. No one will wonder why you are in there because you belong in there. If I did it during basketball practice it might look a little suspicious and we would be considered the likely culprits."

"Oh yeah. OH YEAH!" The Weasel is up and dancing around again. "Oh man, I would just love to be there to see this guy with his new bald look!"

"Actually, Skull," Jeremy responds, "I don't think he will have it on his scalp long enough to actually melt his hair. It will probably just make it sticky and nasty and impossible to comb."

"Who knows," I add, "as vain as this guy is about his hairdo he might use both shampoo and conditioner. That might give him enough exposure to turn his hair into one big glob!"

The deed might have been already accomplished by the way we all leaned back with our smug, self satisfied grins and imagined the outcome of our mother-of-all pranks.

"You know, guys, of all the tricks we've pulled, this will be the nastiest, lowest and cruelest yet. Don't you think we should have second thoughts about doing something this mean?"

We all think about that...for about 3 milliseconds, then all respond together...

The brothers stay in my room, playing on my computer, while I go downstairs and make myself a bowl of cereal. It wis too early for my Mom or Sister to be up and I want to be gone before the nag sessions start. Cheeze, just try living in a two woman household and see if you don't try to avoid as much interaction as you can. Anyway, I eat my cereal in my room while watching Weasel and Jer surf the net. When I'm done we all walk down the stairs and they wait while I rinsed out my bowl and put it in the dishwasher. We are off to Skaags drugstore and the Nair department. I don't bother to leave a note for Mom or anything because she is used to my being gone all day on school weekends. I manage to turn up by dinner time or, if I am invited to eat at the Howes, I call first. We head out the back door.

"So, guys..." Scully asks as we walk the four blocks to the store, "what if this Nair is a different color than the shampoo or conditioner this guy uses?"

"Well.." Jeremy says, "that will be the first thing I check out then. If it turns out that his shampoo is colored, or something, I won't make the switch until we get a chance to doctor up the Nair to make it a close match."

That sounds like a pretty good plan. And we discuss various ways to change colors and even viscosity if we need to. With that settled, the only thing the plan relied upon was Jeremy having enough unobserved time in the locker room to make the switch.

"I'll just start faking a cramp in the gym and then say I need to go take a dump," he says.

"Better if you just find a way to sneak off un-noticed" I say. "You don't want to be remembered as the last person in the locker room when Sammy boy starts playing detective. He is going to want to blame someone in a bad way."

"True enough," Jeremy adds. "OK, I'll look for an opportunity to sneak into the locker room. I'm kind of invisible in that class anyway."

Boy, he hit the nail on the head with the invisible remark. It's the same with me. A short, skinny, nerdy and un-athletic kid isn't exactly first pick for teams. Everyone likes to pretend I'm not even there... which is fine by me.

"And besides," Jeremy continues, "just about every boy in the school either fears the creep or hates him, so we aren't the only potential culprits."

Things are starting to sound better and better all the time. Oh God, I am sure looking forward to Monday now!

After making our purchase, we spend the rest of the day by going to the movies and then spending some time in the library. Later on we finish the day at the brothers' house. We want to try the Nair out but none of us wants to sacrifice any of our curly locks for the experiment. Besides, we can't have any visible melted hair or that would be a dead giveaway at school. I think of volunteering my sister but I really don't need to be grounded for the next 10 years.

"All right, guys." Jeremy says, as we are all laid back in his bedroom. "I am going to make the ultimate sacrifice. None of us, except Skull, dares to use the hair on our heads, and my Mom would kill me if she saw a melted patch on Scully. So, I have one hidden patch of hair that I guess I can sacrifice.

A hidden patch of hair? What the hell is he talking about? The Weasel and I just look at each other in confusion. Jeremy just sighs in exasperation and lowers his board shorts, pointing to his dick.

Oh my God... he's talking about his pubes! I break out in a fit of giggles and Scully follows suit, politely hiding behind his hand again. I'm not so polite, so I just point and grin and say...

"You said a hidden patch of hair. I don't see how you can call five or six hairs a patch!"

The Weasel is guffawing over that remark while Jeremy just starts getting red in the face.

"OK, wise guy..." he responds. "Let's just see how much of a patch you have for us to use, then."

Whoops... guess that kind of backfired on me! I shouldn't have been so quick to tease him. They are both looking at me expectantly now. Probably figure they are going to get a gander at my elusive crotch cricket. Uh uh, buds... it's not happening. Besides, I only have one hair... and I pee out of it!

"I'd volunteer..." pipes the Weasel, "but you will have to put your plans on hold for a few years until I grow a patch" giggle, giggle.

"OK, Michael, let's see what you've got, then!" Jeremy demands, looking all superior.

"Hmm ... look Jer, I really didn't mean to demean that fine patch of pubes you have growing down there. Besides, I'm kind of sensitive to chemicals and stuff. I really don't want that Nair crap so close to little Michael, if you know what I mean."

"He has a point, Jeremy." Scully says, looking a little nervous. "That is a pretty sensitive area to be experimenting with. You sure you want to do this?"

"I'm not sure at all, Skull. But, if I'm going to do this I'm going to do it right now before I think about it anymore and chicken out. Jer, grab that bottle and you guys follow me."

Jeremy hikes up his pants and heads out into the hallway. Scully and I are trotting after him like his entourage.

'Wheew,' I think. That was a lucky save. I've only recently been producing a drop or two of nectar from the old stinger and I have more hair on my eyeballs than I do around my groin.

We go into the bathroom and Scully shuts the door. Jeremy drops his drawers to his knees then I hand him the bottle of Nair. Holy shit, he is actually going to go through with this! I can't help wondering, though, if this is an excuse to get me doing a close inspection of his stuff - not that I'm complaining, mind you.

"Wet a washrag real good, Skull. I want to be able to wipe this stuff off as quickly and thoroughly as I can. What do you think, Mic, would 10 seconds be about the amount of time it will be on Sammy's head before he rinses?"

"Yeah, that sounds about right. He won't lather up as much in the locker room shower as he probably would at home. Let's see what kind of hair damage we can get in the minimum amount of time." Then I drop to one knee to get a good view. 'Well...hello there, little Jeremy!'

Jeremy squirts a small amount on two fingers and they are just hovering over his miniscule amount of dick hairs.

"Skull, you time me...10 seconds. Michael...when Skull says 'go', you put my dick in your mouth so I don't get Nair on it." giggle, snort.

Weasel is chortling and Jeremy is giggling... and yours truly is coloring up very nicely.

"Good one, Jeremy" I say, looking up at him, "but I might get it caught in the gap between my front teeth."

Scully is chortling louder and looking at his wrist watch, ready to give Jeremy the ten second go-ahead.

Jeremy carefully applies the liquid to his pubes, making sure none of it gets on little Jeremy. We're all doing a 10 second stare at Jeremy's crotch rocket. At least, I'm looking at the rocket, the others are staring at the tiny scattering of wet hair. At least I thought they were, Scully is staring at me, kind of quizzically.

"Oh yeah. Time, time!" Scully says, glancing at his watch again. And Jer makes three fast wipes with the wet wash cloth. Scully goes back to watching me as I am focused on his brother's boy bobbin. Then he looks over at his brother's pubic area.

"Well, I'll be..." the Weasel exclaims, "you look just like me now, big brother...of course, your dick's a little smaller, but you are as bald as a billiard." He grins at his older brother.

I'm still on one knee and my mouth is hanging open. It worked, it actually worked! I held up my hand for a high-five and quickly received two of them. There appeared to be one, lonely and scraggly looking hair left!

"Umm...Michael," Scully says, "while you're down there, you might want to kiss Jeremy's boo-boo all better."

Smart little ass, I think. I can feel myself coloring up again, however. I stand back up and Scully wags an eyebrow at me with this sly little grin on his face.

Shit, I'm thinking. Just how perceptive could Scully be about sexual stuff? At age 10, everything he knows about sex should fit in his belly button and have room left over for a wad of chewing gum. But still, that looks like a thirty-year-old's lecherous grin on his face. Jeremy, on the other hand, has this wistful look as if he were wishing I had kissed his boo-boo all better. Crap, are my desires written all over my face?

"We know now that we are going to do a fair amount of damage to pretty boy's hair even if he washes for just a short amount of time".

God, the little shit is making me nervous. What's going on in that head of his? I'm going to have to watch myself.

Silly Michael. Scully has grown up with the internet. He has probably done plenty of sexual research. Maybe his knowledge of things 'anatomical' wouldn't quite fit in his belly button after all. I would say you definitely have him wondering. Your stares probably haven't gone unnoticed by Jeremy, either. He may chalk it down to wishful thinking, however.

Oh well, tomorrow is Monday and the boys' prank is either going to work or get the shit beat out of them. Please drop me a line if you are enjoying this little saga.

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Geeks

Chapter Five

By Paul Schroder