Always Messin'

"Lets go play basketball downtown."

A couple of weeks ago my roommates and I went driving around downtown to find a basketball court to play on. The sun was setting, but my roommate Greg had spotted a goal in a questionable part of town. So we parked, got out, and shot around for half an hour, always watching our backs. Greg and I decided that it was high time for a prank. Little did we know that it would turn out to be one of the worst nights of our life.

We started walking to the car, which Greg parked a hundred yards away because he thought we needed playing room. We had told our other two friends, Ryan and Will, that we would be pulling the car up closer, but we saw Greg needed gas so we thought it was a perfect opportunity for a prank. As we pulled away, I remember laughing loudly out the window and screaming, "Suckas!"

"How messed up would it be if we got back and they just weren't there? And we didn't see them for two weeks and then they just showed up and wouldn't tell us what happened," I said as we sped to a gas station. As soon as I said this, a pang of nervousness shot through me. It had gotten dark and the area was beginning to crawl with shady nightlife. As soon as Greg was done pumping his gas, we hurried back to the basketball court to collect our friends and go home.

We pulled up to the court and our worst fears had come true. It was dark, isolated and there was absolutely no sight of our two roommates. "They're just messing with us. Will and Ryan are always messin'," Greg said. We shouted their names for several minutes, but no response came. We knew that they would just walk out anytime and try to surprise us. Greg kept saying, "This is the most messed up thing that's ever happened." After a short while we both began to panic. My mind kept racing with visions of my friends dead, mugged, kidnapped or worse.

I called my parents practically in tears. They didn't seem to understand the severity of our position. Greg and I drove around the neighborhood looking for them. We decided that our only chance of hope rested in the fact that the basketball had been taken as well, so maybe they hadn't been straight up mugged. I finally couldn't take it anymore so we called the police. They told us that a missing person was not a priority until about a day or so. I kept envisioning the conversation I would have to tell their parents. "I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Ryan and Will, we left your children for dead." Greg and I decided that we would have to quit school, try therapy and then just move to Mexico. Nothing was funny about our situation. Neither Ryan nor Will had their cell phones or any ID with them.

After three hours and two conversations with 911 later, we got a call from an unknown cell phone. It was Will's voice on the other line. He sounded out of breath and tired. "We got tired of waiting on you so we decided to run back. As we got to a gas station some guys stopped us and asked for all our money. I got away but Ryan ran in the other direction and they all chased him. I think they got him." I looked at the expression on Greg's face and knew that our lives were over and that we had just gotten our friend killed.

And then I heard Will laugh.

Our two roommates had decided to just walk back and play the prank on us. The thought of them walking back had never crossed my mind. It seemed too far to walk back at night. No one in their right mind would do that. Will and Ryan were laughing but as soon as Greg and I stopped yelling at them, we told them that the police were looking for them. They didn't understand how serious the situation was. I was going to kill them myself when I got back, but I didn't. I was too glad to see my friends, alive.

Will and Ryan seemed afraid to look us in the eyes. I called the police officer back, and told him that we had found our two stupid friends. We went upstairs afterwards and shared a pizza while telling the story of their kidnapping to anyone that would listen. I kept the police officer's card as proof of the night I helped my best friends get abducted.