I don't get sexually frustrated, I get adventurously frustrated.
Hi, I'm Max, I'm a seventeen year old male who has yet to start a rebellion, or slay a dragon, or defeat an emperor, or be granted my magic wizard powers. But thats all right because this year things will be different! As soon as my fingers unthaw...

I've been standing in front of the heater for about an hour and I still can't feel my fingers. I believe this is what people call 'frost bite.' Not uncommon in Canada and pretty much all of my friends have gotten frost bitten toes or ears, but as I stand here hoping feeling will return I can only think about Steve. You know, Steve Rogers, Captain America? Suspended in the ice? Yea, I feel like him, frozen everywhere.
"Maxwell?" A high, strained voice calls from the front entrance hall. "Why is it so damn cold!" I grin and wiggle my nonexistent fingers again.
"You tell me, mom." I say. I hear her bustle about for a bit and I crane my neck to get a glimpse of her.
"Dammit," she mumbles from outside my view point, "I'll have to ask Jerry to call the propane company. We're out."
"Thought as much."
Finally my mother came into the small living room, of course my mother made everything seem small, even me. She was a slightly larger woman with kind eyes and a warm smile, (I could already feel my fingers warming up) she always seemed to make people happy. She kept her curly red hair in a tight bun all day and her scrubs were the fun kind that made you smile at the doctors office.
"You look freezing." She commentes breaking out a toothy grin. I smiled back and she began taking off my winter gear like I was three.
"Nooooooo," I protested, "I'm soooooo cooooooold! Mooooooom!" But it was too late, she'd already spun me out of my large beige winter jacket and left me standing next to the useless heater shivering.
"You wore your Westley sweater today!" She commented pointing at my red shirt with a large gold 'M' on it.
"Weasley, mom, it's a Weasley sweater." I mumbled tugging at it self consciously. She nodded although I knew she'd never bother to say it correctly even though she'd seen all the Harry Potter movies with me.
"Alright, well I'll start the kettle if you grab some blankets!" She chimed starting into the kitchen that was just off from our living room. "Oh, and Jerry will be late tonight, she picked up another shift."

I was practically crawling inside the linen closet for extra blankets. It was small and cramped and all our winter stuff was at the bottom of the pile. I hated digging through for the winter survival equipment because I always ended up knocking over stacks of towels and then I'd have to refold them which I could not do under any circumstances. I was rummaging gently and just felt the nice warm texture of the mink blankets when my phone buzzed like an upset storm of wasps in my back pocket. I groaned and retreated from my quest for blankets to check my phone.
No caller ID. I glared at my phone that had taken me from my toilsome job and slid my it into my back pocket, double clicking the power button to ignore the call like I'd done so many times before.
Now, I should explain, I am not a people person, and talking over the phone makes me anxious and sweaty. Sure this is probably the reason I haven't gone on any adventures since I was seven, and sleighed the monster in my sisters closet. But I'd much rather live a small sheltered life than talk to some mob boss over the phone.
I reached back into the closet for the blankets and started my task all over.

"Traffic was a bitch!" A voice yells from the entrance hall. I looked towards the door although I knew I couldn't see her. "Traffic was a bitch and then I come home to an ice cube!" Jerry was the only one in the house who swore. Mom said it was taboo and shouldn't be used for emphasis unless one is really peeved off, and I tried to limit myself to three swears a day since I watched kids to earn cash.
Jerry walked into the living room and plopped down on the couch to the left of mom and mines couch.
"Hey Jer-bear," My mother cooed pausing the movie, "how was work?" Jerry tossed her arms exasperated. I could tell by her lacklustre bun and her slightly askew round glasses that today was very stressful. I subconsciously adjusted my own thick-rimmed rectangle glasses.
"Can I use the word bitch again?" Jerry asked pulling on her pink woollen socks and an oversized hoodie. Mom nodded. "It was a bitch." Jerry said and then looked to the tv without further discussion of her day.
Jerry was the cool older sibling that everyone wanted. She worked behind the scenes on movies and did a ton of things! Coffee runs, makeup, and occasionally shouting action. I followed her to work in grade 9.
Jerry ate some dinner and the three of us watched Batman for the fourth time this month. We stayed up until eleven chatting about work, kids, school, and an abundance of other things before mom said goodnight to us and trotted off to bed. I loved when Jerry and I got to be alone. She always told amazing stories about her job, and tonight was no different. She recounted the tale of the storm bringing down the power and totally screwing with their recordings, and then how she and the main four actors sat in a circle telling ghost stories until the power was restored.
"What adventures happened to you today, Moxie?" I smiled and pushed my glasses farther up my nose. Everyone had different nicknames for me. My sister called me Moxie because of my one year awkward obsession with Moxie dolls, my best friend Anne calls me Maxine due to my towering height reminding her of Madam Maxine from Harry Potter numero four, and my mom calls me Maxwell because that was my dads name and apparently him and I are identical.
"Me, adventures? Never." And the both of us grin.

   What. The. Actual. Fuck.
My alarm hadn't gone off, and now I'm sitting in my Doctor Who pants starring wide eyed at my alarm clock that has just betrayed my trust. It kept blinking 12:00 at me, and for some reason it didn't register that another storm had blown through. Finally I scrambled out of bed and over to my phone charging on the other side of the room. Turning it on resulted in momentary blindness, and I squinted to see the real time.
10:55.
I was four hours and twenty five minutes late. My heart was creeping into my throat.
No, no, no, no, no!
That's all that was running through my mind while I grabbed one of my brown shirts off the ground and tugged off my pants to replace them with different pants.
No, no, no, no, no!
I pulled my phone, charger and all out of the wall in my mad dash for the kitchen and when I slid into the room practically falling into the wall I was met by a heavenly light! It was actually just the sun reflecting the snow outside so I closed the curtains, and still it didn't register in my head that school had been canceled.
No, no, no, no, no!
I checked the clock on the kitchen stove, it blinked 12:03. The whole houses power had gone down last night. I was so majorly screwed. By the time I had my coat, hat, gloves, and boots on it was 11:09, and I was so majorly screwed.
I stood in snow up to my knees and fumbled with the lock on my moms car. Everything was frozen, and the snow was piled so high. My stomach had tensed into knots so my brain had stopped it's mass panic and I was starting to think more clearly since the chill was getting to me and I was thinking about just giving up going to school. That's when it registered. The snow. It was literally everywhere. A blanket that covered the entire landscape seven times over. Suddenly the cold seemed like the clammy hands of death and I yelled at myself to stop being such an oblivious moron, and trudged back inside the snow collecting inside my boots.

The heater was on full blast, and directly next to my face. I had three blankets on, some thick socks, and two sweaters. Breakfast had been hot coffee and even hotter soup. I could no longer feel my mouth it burned so bad. No one else was awake and the Monday morning cartoons aren't the best, so I put on Gravity Falls in the background while I went through and cleared all my notifications. Of course, Anne had sent me a gazillion messages.
Huge storm! - 3am
That means no school! - 3:03am
Which means no history test! - 3:03am
Which means more study time! - 3:03am
Maybe there is a god! - 3:08am
Maxine I know ur awake! - 3:20am
Buses can't make it! - 6:30am
Teachers aren't coming into school! - 6:30am
Chaos insures! - 6:30am
Ensues* - 6:31am
Are you still asleep? - 6:50am
You're a smart man, Max - 7am
Text you later - 7am
I smiled at the texts and tapped a small smiley face. Did I mention I am not a people person, because I'm not.
I was about to set my phone aside and swap to the Wii Netflix when it started buzzing again. I knitted my eyebrows together while the No Caller ID lit up the screen.
I sighed and picked up the phone hoping it wasn't a mob boss.

Okay so I hate talking on the phone. The person on the other side can hear me swallow, breath, sniffle, everything, and that's anxiety racking right there. I held the phone to my ear wiping my left hand on my pants to dry it off.
"H-Hello?" I stutter wiping my left hand more fervently. There's a crack and the sound of breathing on the other end I swallowed hard, and quietly as I could.
"Maxwell Orino." The gruff voice asks. My heart leapt into my throat and I desperately tried to swallow it, to no avail.
"Uhm, no, this is Ma-"
"Maxwell, it's important. I need you to grab the box and get down here."
"No, I'm sorry, my dad he's-"
"Max. Please." The call ended.
   Okay so, I am not one to complain about my anxiety but the words 'box' and 'down here' and then the pain in his voice when he said please...I was panicking.
   What box?
   What place?
   Who is he?
   How did he know my dad?
   What's happened that's so important?
   Why did I get my dads old phone?
   I was seriously freaking out and I needed some grounding; however no one in the house was awake yet. The Orino's, champion sleepers. I didn't know what to do so I texted Anne without even thinking I might be bothering her, or interrupting some game, or causing her to pause her workout routine, which are all things I normally think.
I need you, ASAP.
   My heart thudded rapidly in my ears, and my hands shook slightly as the little dot dot dot popped up.
Be there in fifteen.
   Relief exploded in me. I flopped onto my couch, exhausted suddenly from that one tiny freak out session, although I did feel a bit better.

   Fifteen minutes later Anne was walking through my front door just as Jerry was walking out. They exchanged evil looks that only girls could give, and for a second I thought they were both going to drop dead from the tension. Luckily, neither did.
   Anne removed her winter gear and cane and plopped down next to me on the couch. She had her golden toast coloured hair laying down in its natural curls, and her honey coloured skin seemed more tan than usual if it was possible. Her butter coloured nails clutching her phone made me realize: I was very hungry.
   After a quick snack of toast and honey Anne and I got down to business (to defeat -duh duh- the Huns!) I explained everything to her. The mysterious phone call, the box, the down here, the man thinking I was my father. She nodded along and had a very serious look on her face. When I'd finished my tale she smiled at me.
   "Well, you do look a lot like your father." She said, everyone said that, I was a little carbon copy. I was a perfect twin of my father, and I'm also 85% sure he just asexually reproduced and I was the spawn.
   "Yea I know, but this is all just so weird." Anne shook her head and grinned.
   "Weird? Max, this is amazing!" I was unsure how she drew the word amazing to mean utterly terrifying and hair wrenchingly awful, but I wasn't going to question Anne's motives, we'd been best friends since preK so I trusted her judgement calls. "Just think about how cool this would be if we found this box and went 'down there' and helped that dude out!" Now I was the one nodding with a serious expression. I am NOT an adventurous person; however due to my horrible selection of friends, (Im joking Anne you're a saint) Anne was. So, after lots of convincing I agreed to help her search the house for 'the box' that was sure to cause lots of awful things in my once safe life.