Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 18)

And so, Monty told us his story. It all started a little over a month ago, when the karate club had failed, completely and utterly, in the kumite tournament thanks to Monty’s unfortunate collapse during the first-round tiebreaker.

Exhaustion.

That was why Monty had collapsed mid match, Tuesday had said.

And she was right.

Between karate club, instructing karate classes at the local studio, work, and being a senior in high school, Monty was working himself to the bone. His body and mind just couldn’t keep up. Couldn’t keep going. And so, one day, they didn’t. And right in the middle of an important match, he gave out.

Monty knew he had a problem, an obstacle in the way of fulfilling his dream. It wasn’t passion or drive or determination or guts. It wasn’t the will to see his goal through to the very end. It wasn’t money or power or any of that.

It was time.

If only he had more time, then he’d be able to devote everything to karate, everything to the club.

Something in his schedule had to give. And it sure wasn’t going to be karate.

But at the same time, he couldn’t let his already mediocre grades fall any lower than they already were. If he were assigned remedial work on top of everything else, then the karate club really was doomed.

Unwilling to sacrifice karate. Unable to sacrifice schoolwork. Making more room in his schedule for martial arts was a tougher challenge than he ever thought it would be.

Unless he made a trade.

A commonplace trade, one people make every day. Nothing to bat an eye at.

Time in exchange for money.

To free up his schedule, he would foist all his schoolwork on someone else, and not for free either. And who better to conspire with than the smartest nerd at school? Not only did Sheldon already know how to do the homework for senior classes — he needed the money. Ivy Leagues weren’t cheap, even for a well-off family like his. The extra cash he could make off of Monty in exchange for doing all his homework wasn't much, but it couldn’t hurt.

What could hurt, Sheldon quickly discovered, was doubling your homework load all at once. Even Sheldon couldn’t handle something like that. Not for long anyway. Within days, Sheldon was struggling to keep up. He tried to talk Monty out of it. Tried to call the whole thing off.

Monty wasn’t having it.

What if Sheldon simply slept less? That was Monty’s suggestion. Eight full hours a night were a killer timesink after all. But Sheldon couldn’t do it. Not unless he found some way to take quick naps during the day so that he could stay up all night.

Thus, with cat naps as their new goal, the plan to catnap a cat was born.

And as luck would have it, Monty knew one cat ripe for the napping.

#

Monty was tossing his orange up and catching it, his palm an eager cup for its dimpled skin. The room was dark by the time he finished telling us the truth. Almost as dark as his heart.

Well, ok. Maybe that was an exaggeration. Monty wasn’t evil or anything like that. I could see clearly why he did what he did. I even felt for him a little. But he had gone too far, crossed lines he never should have crossed. Worst of all, he had betrayed his friends’ trust. Even if, in the end, he was doing it for the sake of the club.

“Well,” said Monty, “that’s it. I know what I did was wrong. Go ahead and moralize me, why don’t you? Get it over with.”

Truth was, I wanted to. Telling him off may even have been the right thing to do. But I had no right to judge. I knew that in his own way, misguided as it may have been, Monty was just trying to plant seeds that would see his club live on, far beyond his time.

He palmed the orange one final time. Somehow, I could tell he was done tossing it up and down. Deep silence and stillness followed, and then he held the orange out to me. But this time, I shook my head no. I couldn’t take it. There was nothing I could do. Couldn’t he tell? After all that? No one could make things right but him. The rest of us were powerless. The only one with the power to plant the seeds of the future was Monty himself. He had to do it the right way.

With a growl, Monty lobbed the orange my way. For a second, it hung at the height of its underhanded arc, blocking out my vision entirely with the citrusy breadth of its sphere.

I was blinded.

And in that moment, Monty sprang.

The orange fell. Behind it was a fist, heading straight for my face. Monty’s. No time to react. No way to get out of the way. No chance to block. My hand, still hurting from before, stung like mad at the thought of interception. My entire face puckered, creased preemptively together, braced for impact.

An impact that never came.

I opened my eyes.

Lily’s bare hand had turned into a catcher’s mitt, and Monty’s fist the ball. She had stepped in front at the last second, stopped him. She was holding him back. I could see her arm, tense and unmoving, the outline of bones, veins on the back of her hand. Realistic in every way. What was it grandpa had said? “Indistinguishable from a flesh and blood person.”

Meaningless words filled with something like hate fell from Monty’s mouth. “Why you… Why you… You stupid…!”

In a blink, he was on the other side of the room. On the floor. Sprawled. Contorted. Gasping.

She had hit him. Lily had punched him clean in the face and sent him flying. I was stunned. I couldn’t even blink. She turned to me, opening and closing the fist she had used to do it.

“Robot fist,” she said. “Packs a punch.”

The end of Pun Detectives and the Case of the Kidnapped Kitten! (Part 18)!
To be continued in Part 19!