The Thing That Makes Us Brave

     He made a friend.

     The little Blue Shoyru hadn’t wanted to move away from Neopia Central. He had spent his whole ten-year-old life there, eating hot dogs at Hubert’s Hot Dogs, making wishes at the Wishing Well, and playing with all the sprightly creatures at the Petpet Shop. But his mom had gotten a better job at Meridell, and his dad had quit his job to go job hunting when they moved, and neither one seemed interested in listening to Jonah’s carefully listed reasons on why they should stay.

     And so, after some tearful goodbyes to his cousins, classmates, and the only home he had ever known, Jonah and his parents moved all the way from the busy and frantic city of Neopia Central to the simple and quaint kingdom of Meridell.

     He hated it here.

     Well, no, not really. On their drive to their new house, Jonah and his family had driven across all sorts of cool stuff, like Turdle Racing, Illusen’s Glade, and even another Petpet shop called Ye Olde Petpets, with creatures he had only seen in the Neopedia. But his mom was too busy working, and his dad was too busy looking for work, and that left Jonah alone, doing cartwheels in his backyard and jumping on puddles just to make the time pass by.

     That was, until a Wocky came crashing into him.

     “Watch out!” he heard a voice say from behind him. By the time he turned around, it was too late — a young leaping Wocky had crashed into him, and the two fell onto the ground, the Meridell grass thankfully being soft enough to cushion their fall.

     “W-w-what was that?” Jonah said as he got himself back up. He looked at the strange red Wocky with caution as the Wocky got back up on his two feet as well, and now that he was getting a good look at him, Jonah realised that he couldn’t have been any older than he was.

     “Sorry!” the Wocky said, smiling with a hand behind his neck. “I didn’t mean to crash into you like that. I just got really excited because there was a flat rock in your backyard, and I’d been looking for one the whole day.”

     As he watched the Wocky rush to grab a flat rock off the grass, Jonah raised an eyebrow and tilted his head. “What do you need a flat rock for?”

     “It’s a cool trick I learned at Boy Scouts last summer,” the Wocky said, pulling out a stick from his pocket. He placed the rock on top of his palm, and then slowly placed the stick on top of it.

     At first, the stick did nothing. But after a few seconds, it began to slowly rotate, and Jonah’s eyes grew wider as the stick spun and stopped, its sharp tip pointing in the direction just between the two boys.

     “Cool, right?” the Wocky said.

     “What happened?” Jonah asked, looking at the Wocky. “Where’s it pointing to?”

     “It’s pointing North!” the Wocky said. “Something about the Neopian air makes it do this. That’s what our camp counsellor says, anyway. As long as you have a stick and a flat enough rock, you can find your way out of anywhere.”

     “Huh,” Jonah said, nodding his head. He looked back at the Wocky and smiled. “Got any more cool tricks you learned at Boy Scouts you could show me?”

     And so the two spent the rest of the day making compasses, rubbing sticks together to make a campfire, and everything else the Wocky had learned at camp that summer. His name, Jonah discovered, was Alex, and he was the same age and grade as Jonah. The two became friends the way little kids became friends — fast and heavily, and most of Jonah’s remaining summer was spent with Alex by his side.

     Third grade started. Luckily for Jonah, he now had someone to get through his first day of third grade with. The two sat beside each other as their Ruki teacher asked them each to say hello to the class, along with something interesting about themselves.

     “Hi, I’m Alex,” Alex said, being the first since his name started with an A. “Something interesting about me is that I’ve read all the Library Tales books!”

     “Hi, I’m Jonah,” Jonah said when it was his turn. “Something interesting about me is that I’ve heard all of Yes Boy Ice Cream’s albums, and I even got their automachines when they came to Neopia Central!”

     The entire class laughed, and Jonah shrank a bit and gave his classmates a sheepish smile. “Whoops,” he said. “I meant their autographs.”

     As third grade went on, Jonah thought himself lucky he had Alex to get through the school year with. And to eat lunch with, which they always did at the white table near the cafeteria doors. And to do school projects, which they always did at the library after school. And to play video games with, which they always did every Friday night at each other’s houses before a sleepover.

     “Trap him with the Web Gun!” Alex shouted as Jonah pressed buttons on his controller, moving his character all the way to the end of the screen as the floating boss shot fireballs in his direction.

     “Not yet,” Jonah said, squinting his eyes and concentrating hard on the screen. “Not until the right time. I gotta save it for when the Nefarious Gnorbu only has two or three lives left.”

     When they weren’t in school or having sleepovers, Jonah and Alex would often spend their weekends laughing around at Ye Olde Petpets, chasing and playing with creatures like the Zebie, the Gallion, and the Turmac. Jonah’s parents never thought he was responsible enough to own a Petpet, and truth be told, he was kind of a scaredy-cat about having to keep one alive himself, too, so his weekends with Alex at the Petpet shop were the closest either boy ever got to being a Petpet owner.

     “If your parents let you, which Petpet would you keep?” Jonah asked Alex one day as he stroked the fur of a Ganuthor.

     “Oh, a Turmac, definitely,” Alex said as he picked one up and rubbed noses with it. “I think this little dude will come in handy when I play Pick Your Own at Meri Acres Farm, don’t you think?”

     Jonah laughed. “Mine would be a Ganuthor,” he said as he gave the one on his lap a hug. “A winged creature for a winged creature, after all!”

     Time passed, and the boys grew up, going from third grade to fourth grade and fourth grade to fifth grade, and the two remained as inseparable as ever. Their weekends now involved playing Cheese Roller, Potato Counter, and Extreme Herder, doing their secret handshake with every win, which was a lot. When these two played a game together, something in their friendship doubled their luck and made them win almost every time.

     So when Alex decided to join the spelling bee, he knew exactly who he had to ask for help from if he wanted any chance of placing.

     “Kleptomaniac,” Alex said as Jonah looked at the index card with the word on it. “C-L…”

     “Nope,” Jonah said, chuckling and shaking his head. “Kleptomaniac starts with a K, not a C.”

     “Ugh,” Alex said, burying his face in his palms. “What even is a kleptomaniac?!”

     Fifth grade turned to sixth, then seventh, then eighth, and it seemed like there was nothing that could break the bond between the Wocky and the Shoyru. Not tough class projects, not turning into teenagers, and not even seventh grade when their popular Usul spread a rumour about Alex that Jonah didn’t fall for, not for a second.

     Jonah and Alex both revelled at the awesomeness of having a best friend, a brother they chose and who chose them too. Someone that they could share jokes with, play games with, talk about books with, tell their deepest secrets to, and instantly turn to when they were feeling down, or bored, or lonely, and needed a friend.

     This must've been how the great friendships of the Neopedia pages felt like, they thought. How Hanso and Brynn felt, how Garin and Jacques, how Tomos and Nabile, how Jazan and Nightsteed.

     Then, the ninth grade came.

     ******

     “You’re leaving Meridell?”

     The words hung above them as the two stared at each other, and it took a few seconds before Alex broke the silence. “Yeah,” he said. “I wish I didn’t have to, but my dad’s big dream is to be an Altador historian. He’s been wanting this for forever.”

     Jonah nodded and sighed. He wanted to protest, but maybe he had gotten too old for protesting. After all, he had seen the struggle his dad had had when he was looking for a job, and the elation on his face when he finally landed one.

     “Well, that sucks, obviously,” Jonah said, kicking the ground. Still, he looked up and forced a weak smile at his best friend. “But we’ll keep in touch.”

     “Of course we will,” Alex said.

     “We’ll Neomail each other all the time,” Jonah said. “And we’ll call and send each other our arcade scores and, hey, for next year’s summer, you can visit here, or I’ll visit you in Altador, and maybe I’ll finally be able to visit an Altador Cup!”

     Alex smiled as he walked forward and gave his best friend a tight hug. “I promise we won’t stop being best friends.”

     But promises were easy to break, especially ones that had no clear end. It wasn’t that they didn’t try. They did, very much. When Alex first arrived in Altador, he had received a call from Jonah that very night, and a letter from him the very weekend. The two called and messaged and texted, and for a while, it seemed like everything would be okay, even if that okay meant eating alone at the cafeteria and having no one to play Web Hero with on a Friday night.

     But the more high school went on, the more changes it brought to both boys, like new experiences and new friends. Jonah joined the board game club and Jonah the student council, and Jonah started working part-time at Merifoods and Alex started working part-time at Magical Marvels. Both boys sat with different friends during lunch break, and both spent their weekends at different places doing different activities.

     One missed call became two. One letter went from a week of no reply to two or three weeks with no reply. And when summer arrived, Jonah’s plan to visit the Altador Cup got put on the shelf because he was doing something that summer, and Alex's revisiting Meridell got put on the shelf because he was doing something that summer, too.

     Tenth grade came. The boys grew apart. Then eleventh. The boys grew apart some more. Alex’s dad was doing incredible work as an Altador historian, so his family had no real desire to visit Meridell again, and Jonah and Alex’s interactions were getting less and less frequent with every passing week, month, and year. Every time one of them remembered to call or write back or keep in touch, they’d tell themselves they’d do it later, but later would often come too late.

     Sometimes, it wouldn’t come at all.

     By twelfth grade, the two boys had officially stopped talking. There was no big fight, no concrete falling apart. One day, Jonah just realised it had been a while since he had last heard from his best friend, and it had gotten too awkward to reach out again. He wasn’t even really sure if he wanted to, or if Alex wanted to hear from him again.

     High school ended. A lot of Jonah’s new friends had moved away, off to fulfil their magic dreams in Faerieland or music dreams in Tyrannia or wherever it was their dreams required them to be. None of them was ever the best friend Alex had been to him, though, so Jonah hadn’t expected any of their friendships to stay strong, and he was right.

     In less than a year, he no longer regularly heard from any of them.

     As for Jonah, he still had no clue what his dream was or where it required him to be. How any of his schoolmates knew what they wanted to do for the rest of their lives, he couldn’t wrap his head around. He didn’t even know what he wanted to do that evening.

     And so, he spent the days roaming the green pastures of Meridell, walking past places like Cheeseroller and Kiss the Mortog and Illusen’s Glade, and having no motivation to play any of them. No motivation to play with the Petpets of Ye Olde Petpets, even.

     And, if he was being honest…

     He was beginning to really miss Alex.

     ******

     It was an average Saturday morning. That’s what it seemed like at first, anyway. Jonah checked his mailbox, like he did every morning. He wasn’t expecting anything noteworthy — maybe a few notices from the Trading Post or the Auction House.

     But then he saw it.

     There, lying inside the mailbox, was a gift wrapped in red wrapping paper.

     Jonah stared at the gift, confused. It wasn’t his birthday. It wasn’t anywhere near his birthday. He didn’t do anything worth celebrating recently, and Shoyru day was a dozen weeks away. It had to have been a misdelivery, a gift that was actually meant for his Eyrie neighbour, or maybe the Jubjub that lives in 321 and not 312.

     He grabbed the gift, pulled it out of the mailbox, and took a good look at it. On top of the gift wrap was a white envelope with something written with black marker on its seal flap, and Jonah had to do a double-take when he read what was written on it.

     TO: JONAH

     FROM: ALEX

     Alex sent him this?

     Alex, his old friend? Alex, the Wocky he hadn’t spoken to in over three years? Why? What was Alex doing sending him this, or even still thinking about him? For a second, he wondered if he should even open the gift, or just leave his friendship with Alex in the past.

     But then, he paused.

     Maybe he should open the gift.

     Or at least read the letter in the envelope.

     ‘After all, if Alex had wanted to reach out after all this time…’

     Before he could fully decide, though, something happened. A streak of purple appeared out of nowhere and whipped past him, pushing him down to the ground and making him fall on his back. He grunted as he got up, and when he looked around, the gift that had been in his hands just two seconds ago was nowhere to be found.

     He did another turn, frantically searching the grass around him. There was no sign of the gift anywhere.

     Then, he heard a cackle from above and behind him.

     Jonah turned his head around and up at the sky, and his heart nearly stopped at what his eyes saw. There, in the Meridell sky, was the Pant Devil with a mischievous smile on his face and Alex’s gift in his hands.

     The Pant Devil had stolen his gift!

     Before Jonah could even fully process what he was seeing, the Pant Devil took off and flew away to who-knows-where, and Jonah’s fear took the better of him and froze him in place instead of flying after the Devil. The Pant Devil was someone Jonah had only ever heard about in scary stories, something he thought he’d never meet in his life…

     ‘No, no, no,’ Jonah thought, his mind racing and his feet finally working again as he paced around his front yard. ‘He can’t have that gift. He can’t have it. I gotta do something, I gotta do something, I gotta do something.’

     ‘I gotta get that gift back.’

To be continued…