The next day, Ryan did get pretty bored waiting outside while Zach tried to escape, but they came up with a new version of the game after lunch. The bad guy would catch both of them, and make one torture him until he revealed the location of some secret plans. In the beginning, nobody actually got hurt. They imagined that a screwdriver was red hot metal and some scraps of cut wire delivered electrical shocks. The prisoners would bravely refuse to spill the secret, and help would arrive in time.
A couple of weeks later, a thunder storm chased them inside after they spent the morning swimming. As usual they ended up in Ryan's garage. Zach lay down on the weight bench and grinned at Ryan with a purple popsicle mouth that matched his swim trunks. He told the imaginary bad guy that he was wasting his time, while Ryan tied him to the bench. Ryan chimed in to agree with Zach, though really he was paying more attention to wrapping the skipping rope around Zach's ankles. He saved the kite string for the wrists, because it was harder to escape that way.
They went through the usual routine with the screwdriver and the wire, but Ryan got bored. He found a pair of needle nose pliers, and used them to pinch Zach's stomach lightly. Zach grimaced and pretended that it hurt. Suddenly Ryan had to know what would happen if he pinched his friend for real, and he did it right as it occurred to him.
Zach yelled and jerked away. Adrenaline hit Ryan's veins hard, and he felt his next heartbeat. He was sure Zach would be mad and get him in heaps of trouble.
Ryan was wrong. Zach stared at him, breathing hard for a moment, then clenched his teeth and told the bad guy to go to hell. Ryan caught another bit of skin between the pliers and squeezed. Zach squealed and struggled. Ryan kept pinching him in different spots on his stomach, riding a kind of roller coaster thrill. Surely any second Zach would tell him to stop it. Probably, he'd tattle or punch Ryan as soon as he got a chance, and Ryan knew he would deserve it. What he didn't know was why he kept hurting his friend.
Zach started to cry, and Ryan finally felt guilty enough to put down the pliers. He said that their rescuers had arrived, and cut the kite string to free Zach in a hurry. Zach sat up, and Ryan handed him his beach towel so that he could dry his face. They sat next to each other on the weight bench while Zach's sobs subsided. He sniffled and dropped the towel on his lap. "Want to come over to my house and play battleship?"
Battleship bored Ryan, and Zach won most of the time, but he jumped at the chance to partly make up for the thing with the pliers.
Partway through the game, Ryan got to the point where he couldn't take any more suspense. "Are you going to tell on me?"
"B 7. What?"
"Miss." Ryan pointed to Zach's stomach. It was covered with sharp purple bruises that stood out against his light skin. "Are you going to tell on me for that?"
Zach looked down and his eyes widened. "Oh. That. No. Just a minute, I'll go change so my parents won't ask what happened." He pushed his chair back and ran upstairs to change out of his swim trunks.
Ryan wondered if he was really going to get away with it that easily.
***
The next morning, five minutes after Ryan's mom pulled her car out of the driveway to go to work, Zach knocked on the door. He wanted to play the weight bench game again, and be the prisoner. That's when Ryan knew he was going to get away with it for sure.
Zach was always the prisoner after that, and Ryan made him cry a lot of times that summer. When school started, they still snuck into the garage to play the weight bench game on Saturdays when Ryan's mom went to her bipolar support group.
