Joe Hardy –  

I hate it when people hover.  Instead of making me feel better, it usually makes me feel worse.  

Yes, I’ll admit it. I am scared.  

Even more now, an hour later… I can still feel the press of the knife against my throat…  

And it stings.  

Not the knife.   

The cut.  

Oh the cut itself isn’t too bad, I guess. It never needed stitches anyway.  

I was very lucky, that’s all I know.  Oh and thank God Sam’s aim was true.  

But it still hurts.  

I’ve been able to convince my Dad at least, that I didn’t need to go to the hospital, this time.  And that’s something.  But it didn’t stop him from insisting that I needed to be looked at by the paramedics.   

So I sat there on the edge of a small stone wall and waited patiently…well as patiently as possible, until the medics satisfied my Dad that not only wasn’t I going to die…but that I didn’t need to go to the hospital.  

Hello? Hadn’t I just been saying that to him??  Oh well, they put some antibiotic ointment and a strip of gauze over the cut and sent me on my merry way.  

Want to hear something pathetic?  I was impressed to not recognize these paramedics… sad isn’t it?  

But seeing that I’d only had a tetanus shot a few weeks ago, there really was no need for me to go to Bayport Memorial… again.   

I shake my head thinking about that one….Frank still feels bad, although it wasn’t his fault.  

The task was supposed to be a simple one.  And the outcome, in all honesty, was really my own fault, but whenever I get hurt, my brother always thinks it’s a reflection on his ability to keep me safe, or something.  

Pretty ironic actually, as the most dangerous person to me is…well…usually me.  

Hmmm, wonder what he’s going to say about what happened tonight??  

Okay back to the tetanus shot…  

Mom had asked us to clean up the debris in the backyard.  A strong wind storm had come in off the Atlantic and ravaged Bayport for almost 24 hours.  It pulled shingles and siding off houses, downed power lines and stripped the trees of their autumn leaves.  

And our backyard, like everyone else’s, was a mess.  

So armed with thick garden gloves, garbage bags and warm sweaters, Frank and I set out on our task – the promise of hot mugs of chocolate and melted marshmallows as our incentive.  

Well…really only my incentive actually, as I’m the family chocoholic; Frank used to love hot chocolate almost as much as I, but recently he has taken a new bean under his wing…the coffee bean.  

Coffee’s okay I guess. But I find the caffeine makes me a bit more anxious than I’m comfortable with…and quite frankly (ha, ha) no one needs a ‘wired-for-sound’ Joe around. I have enough ‘spirit,’ as I prefer to call it, without a caffeine boost!  

So thinking about the drink, I set out with my older brother to de-damage our backyard.  

Everything started out okay until I began to feel that we needed to take a break.  I love doing things with Frank but sometimes he’s just too serious…way too intense, and I know he counts on me for the lighter side.  So after about 45 minutes, a record for me, I felt it was time to deliver.  

When Frank had his back turned, I reached down, picked up a big handful of leaves and tossed them at him.  Immediately he turned and scowled at me; so of course, I pretended to be innocent.  

Somehow I don’t think he bought it…  

I waited until he was turned away again, and I picked up some more leaves and tossed them at him.  

“Joe.” This time he gave me a verbal warning.  

“What?” I asked innocently as I raised my eyebrows and held out my hands.  

“Knock it off,” Frank growled.  Shrugging, I gave him my best muttered indignities as I turned back to my own work.  Someone was a grumpy Gus today!  

I suppose I should have stopped right then and there…but what can I say, I never do know what’s good for me.…  

So I waited until I figured he’d let his guard down again and then I prepared my third assault.…  

Let his guard down my ass! I should have realized…and this time, he was waiting for me!  

Before I could even toss the leaves, he’d turned and tackled me, knocking me right down into the pile of leaves I’d been raking up!  Well that started out an all-out war as we scuffled and roughhoused for a few moments; laughing and rolling around in the leaves.   

You’d forget that we were 17 and 18 and not nine and ten again!  

And that is when it happened.  

In true Joe Hardy luck, it had to be me.  

Although to admit the truth, I prefer when it is me. It scares the living daylights outta me whenever anything happens to Frank…  

Well apparently a piece of wood had blown off the side of our neighbor’s wooden house and it landed among a leaf pile in our yard. Not usually a problem, except this particular piece of wood had a large… well actually humongous, nail sticking up out of it.  

A nasty accident waiting to happen… to me.  

I had almost pushed Frank off me when he gave another playful shove and pinned me back down… right on top of that piece of wood.  Oh boy, now there’s a memory I could live without!  

It probably wouldn’t have been so bad except just as I felt the sharpness of the nail against my shoulder, Frank threw his weight on me… intending on making me holler “uncle” or something. Oh yeah I hollered all right but it wasn’t uncle.  

Frank had impaled my shoulder on that nail.  It went all the way through with just a bit of the tip sticking out the front… and the pain…oh… it makes me sick just thinking about it!  

Poor Frank. He still feels guilty about it.  

I remember very little of what happened next, only snippets of Frank pressing his bare hands against my bleeding shoulder. He was white-faced, apologizing over and over again as he yelled for my mom… and then he was helping me get to the car.…  

The pain was blinding and I don’t remember anything after that until the painful jab of the tetanus shot and finally the numbness of the painkillers kicking in….

****

So NO, I didn’t need to get a tetanus shot tonight.  

Dad finally left after I’d convinced him that I really was okay. He needed to go back to the police station to give his statement over what had happened.

I didn’t really want to be alone, but his worried hovering was making me ill.

That’s another strange thing about me, I guess.  While I hate anyone fussing or playing nursemaid to me, that doesn’t extend to my big brother.  I think it’s because he’s the only one I feel I can let my guard down around, without disappointing him.  

I love Mom and Dad but I want so desperately for them to be proud of me, I always feel like I’ve let them down when I’m feeling like this…a bit sick and a bigger bit scared.  I know it sounds silly but I can’t help it.  

Deep down I’m just so afraid that I’m not the son they deserve. My Dad is Fenton Hardy for cripes sake!!  

Sure I’m good in sports, but academics are a bigger challenge…and anyone can be a dumb jock.  Now that would get me a slap across the head if Frank heard that.…  

I’m very proud of my big brother.  

Frank is the smart one.  And he’s pretty good in sports too, although he’s losing some of his interest now in favor of computer geekiness.  Man I got to save him.  

Anyway, like I said, he’s a smart jock….  

In fact sometimes I think everything comes easy for my big brother but I don’t resent him for it.  That’s one thing I’m not…jealous.  But I am proud.  Although I don’t think I’ll ever tell him…can’t have two swelled heads in one family.  

Hmmm, come to think about it – Frank is my hero.  And I can’t think of a time in my life when I didn’t think so.  

So that is why after Dad left, and the full weight of what happened threatened to crush me, I ended up here – in my brother’s room.  

Frank is the anchor in the storm that I call my life.  An overly emotional person at times, my ups and downs are often likened to weather patterns by my family and friends, so this seems a fitting analogy.  

My temper is too often worn on my sleeve… as is my heart, I guess, and has – more times than I’d care to admit – gotten me into hot water, in which I would have drowned if Frank hadn’t been there to pull my sorry ass out.  Although I will admit that tonight’s fiasco actually had nothing to do with my own hot headedness, this time. And for once I was actually just an innocent bystander instead of a busted participant.  

Too many times while Frank and I were investigating something, one or another of us had been caught and used as a hostage.  But tonight I had just been sitting and waiting for Sam – nothing else…and not even anywhere near the action!!  

I was just supposed to be the ride home.  

After Frank left on his date with Callie, and Mom went to work – she had the nightshifts this week; Dad had to relieve Sam on a stakeout.  He asked if I wanted to drop him off and then give Sam a ride back to the house.  Dad’s partner, Sam Radley, lives in New York City and he was staying with us while he was in town on this job.  

So I, not having any other plans for the evening, said “Sure.”  I liked Sam a lot anyway and figured we could grab a sandwich or something together before we came back to the house.  Like me, he was usually hungry after a stakeout.  

We left a few minutes later, and I dropped Dad off a couple of blocks from the suspect’s house and then waited for Sam.  

In hindsight, I suppose I should have been more alert but hey, I’m only 17 and I wasn’t supposed to even be anywhere near the stakeout, so I closed my eyes, laid my head back against the headrest and drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.  I hate waiting.  

I figured it’d be 20 minutes or more until I saw Sam anyway, as Dad had to walk a couple of blocks, debrief Sam and then Sam had to walk back to the car. So I was surprised when about five minutes later, the passenger side door opened.  

Opening my eyes I was shocked to see a strange man, but before I could even move, he was in the car and had a knife pressed into my side.  

I’m still shaking hours later as I remember his exact words: “Just give me an excuse, Blondie – please…an excuse!”  Okay so I have to admit, while it is bad enough being used as a hostage under ‘normal’ circumstances, it is quite another when your abductor is really itching for an excuse to cause you some real pain.  

So I swallowed back an intense wave of fear and nodded slowly, “No problems from me. What do you want?”