Chapter One - Package

“Derrick…Derrick, you left your phone downstairs. Come answer it!”

Scraggly tufts of hair began to reluctantly emerge from beneath the comforter on the bed, mildly irritated grumbling following soon after. A brisk knock came from the opposite side of the room after the brief rhythm of feet pounding up stairs.

“Derrick! Did you hear me? One of your friends is on the phone downstairs...I’m not going to tolerate hearing them call three or four times. Get out of bed and go answer it!”

“Why couldn’t you have brought the phone upstairs to me, mom…?” droned the thoughts of the boy beneath that comforter. He fought with his subconscious for a moment, deciding that he would be continuously bothered until he got up and went downstairs to obey his mother’s orders. Two legs, imprints covering the skin from lying on wadded-up sheets overnight, fumbled their way into the lazy morning air as Derrick sat up in bed and heaved a sleepy sigh.

“Derrick!!”

“Hang on, I’m coming…!” he murmured half-heartedly, stumbling out of bed, running a hand through his ruffled hair, and scowling at the florescent light of the hallway that greeted his sensitive gaze as he opened his door and made his way downstairs. He reached his cell phone just moments before the ringer stopped, and the high-pitched jingle engaged to tell him that he now had two missed calls. Derrick grunted, his eyes ablaze in the attempt to blink the remaining sleep from his eyes, and he dialed a return call to the contacted called ‘Scott.’

“Yo,” he greeted the inside of his phone after a few synthetic rings, “I just woke up; sorry I missed your calls. What’s up?”

“It’s almost one o’clock, wanna run with me to get some food?” responded the voice of his friend, the soft hum of a vehicle audible in the background. “I’ve needed to get out of the house for a while, and I’m getting kinda bored of driving around your neighborhood waiting for you to answer your cell.”

Derrick had furrowed his brows and sauntered to the window carved ornately into his front door, peering into the summer streets of Pallet Drive. “Creeper,” he remarked into the phone as he saw Scott’s red Cavalier inch past his front lawn. “Gimme 10 minutes to pull myself together, and we’ll head to Subway, or something.”

“Sounds good.” A soft click, and Derrick’s phone reverted to its home screen. Derrick laid his phone back where he had found it, and trod back up the stairs to the bathroom, where he could more closely examine the damage he had done to his hair and skin while he slept.

“Mom,” he called, brushing his hands through his hair some more, “I’m going out for lunch with Scott.”

“I’ll assume that was his car that was looming about our house earlier today, then,” she responded. “Oh, Derrick, don’t forget to keep an eye out for your package, alright?”

Derrick lazily squirted toothpaste onto his toothbrush and thought for a moment. “Is that supposed to come today?”

“Well, it’s Friday, and you haven’t gotten it in a couple of weeks, so it should be coming any day now. Just check the mailbox before you get in, sweetie.” Derrick mumbled in acknowledgement, his mouth filled with suds of Aquafresh toothpaste.

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“You’re a pig, Scott,” Derrick chuckled as his friend slid a half-eaten Subway sandwich from its plastic bag, wadding the wrapping material at the bottom of it, and ripped a large chunk of it into his mouth.

“Whur a’ a stopligh’,” he mumbled with his mouth full of bread and deli meat.

“Not my point. I thought the rest of that was supposed to be your dinner tonight.” Scott shrugged, and continued to make light work of his ‘dinner.’ Meanwhile, borderline suburban/city traffic buzzed menacingly around the Cavalier in anticipation for a green light. Derrick listened to the soft gurgle of the intersection, trying to mentally guess radio stations in the stereos of louder cars, until his eyes caught the dark brown of a UPS vehicle.

“Oh yeah,” he piped up, “Stop at my mailbox when we get back to the house?”

“Sure,” Scott replied, laying his sandwich back on his lap to botchily wrap it up just as the light ahead turned green, “only if you’ll let me finish this at your house and raid your fridge for a drink. What’re you expecting in the mail?”

“I got something off eBay a few weeks ago, and I should be getting it any day now.”

“What’d you get, a video game?”

“Yeah, Pokémon Red.” His friend chuckled.

“What for? I thought you already had a copy of that game. Did you lose it?”

“Nah, I still have that copy. I bought another copy so I could mess around with glitches and not have to worry about messing the game up. It was cheap, so yeah.” Derrick’s eyes locked with his house as they approached it. Pulling slowly into the edge of the driveway, he got out of the car and jogged to the mailbox, its lid protruding open. He let the lid fall as he pulled out bills, magazine subscriptions, and a small-ish brown envelope.

“Yup, that’s it…”