Sunny never thought the first time he took his shirt off in front of a girl would be in the cause of saving another. 

Al had just thrown a rock through the window into Danny Trybek's room, and it was such a good shot that it left barely any glass. "Holy shit! Good job, Al!" Sunny said, examining the window frame. "Wait!" he warned as they made to climb through. That was when he pulled off his shirt, feeling no bashfulness at all even though Lauren was looking at him, because they were in a hurry, and laid it over the rim. "So we don't get cut on the bits of glass still on it."

Al went through first, then the others followed one by one. The shirt did its job; no one said ouch or had bloody hands once they finished climbing through. Sunny dusted his shirt off and put it back on when they were all in. It was a little worse for wear; the remaining glass must have sliced through the fabric and left a few holes. Still, it was a small price to pay to get in here and save Rachel, and he'd probably toss the shirt into the trash as soon as he got home. If they got home. That wasn't a sure thing right now.

"Rachel! Where are you!" Al shouted before they could even discuss whether to reveal themselves. Sunny put a hand on his shoulder to shut him up in case Mr. Trybek was on the other side of that door. He was nearly trembling with fear, unable to believe they'd broken into the house of a man known to be abusing his son and maybe his wife; at the very least they'd be in a lot of trouble for breaking the window, and if Mr. Trybek caught them, he might hurt them just as bad as he hurt Danny, or worse. 

The only reason he was here at all was because Rachel was; Mr. Trybek had pulled her into the house right in front of Lauren's eyes, and Lauren had come running back to plead for their help in saving her. At the time he hadn't even thought twice; he and Al had ditched the paper route they'd just been about to start, grabbed their bikes and raced back here with Joe and Lauren, who'd stopped to get her grandfather's sword, which was probably the most sensible thing ever, an equalizer in case Mr. Trybek tried to hurt them, because he was much bigger than they were.

"Be careful!" Rachel called out from the other side of the door. "He's dangerous! Call the police!" Thank goodness, she was still alive, at least.

Lauren gestured to the others to stay against the wall on either side of the door. Then she slowly drew the sword so as not to alert anyone on the other side of that door. The metal gleamed as it emerged from the scuffed leather scabbard. Sunny stared at it in wonder. It looked lethal, and his friend, who was smaller than he was, planned to use it if she had to. This was a nightmare, and yet he couldn't imagine anyone he'd rather be with to face it together. Lauren was a warrior, a beautiful, dangerous entity, and he prayed he could be of service to her if she needed it when the time came to strike.

"We did already!" Al shouted, even though that wasn't entirely accurate. "They're on their way!"

Lauren looked at the door jamb, then stood on the opposite side of the door knob and slowly raised the sword, gripping the hilt with two hands.

A man's voice yelled, "Fucking... meddling little shits!" And then something hit the floor hard. Sunny hoped that wasn't Rachel hitting the floor. That sounded painful.

"He's coming!" Rachel shouted. "Be careful!"

Lauren took a deep breath. The sword quivered at the top of its arc.

The door opened.

Sunny saw it all happen from where he stood. 

Mr. Trybek entered the room, fist raised. For some reason, his pants were down, and his pee-pee was out, and it was large and hairy and ugly. 

Lauren brought the sword down.

Mr. Trybek's pee-pee fell to the floor, and blood gushed from the stump where it used to be.

Mr. Trybek screamed in agony, and Lauren brought the sword up again in case he tried to enter the room again. He didn't. All he could do was cover the stump with his hands and try to stop the blood.

Joe was first to act. He plowed right into Mr. Trybek, bounced back a little as the bigger man fell on his back, then continued into the rest of the house. Sunny heard him say, "You okay?"

Lauren went next, holding her sword in front of her. Sunny heard her say, "Don't move, motherfucker, or I'll cut your throat!"

Mr. Trybek just kept screaming.

Suddenly Sunny could hear police sirens in the distance, and sagged in relief as he realized the authorities had arrived, and they would sort out this mess and make sure Mr. Trybek didn't hurt anyone else.

Al quietly stepped over Mr. Trybek, and Sunny finally felt it was safe to follow.

 Al found Rachel and sagged in relief. "Oh, thank God!"

Rachel began to cry and held out her arms. Al ran over and drew her up and, even though he was smaller than her, she clung to him and he didn't fall forward.

"Oh, God, we were so worried!" he said. "Lauren ran all the way back to our street and got Mrs. Anderson to call the police! Luckily me and Sunny hadn't gone out to make our delivery yet, so we were there. Lauren got her dad's sword, can you believe it?! We thought it would be best to go through the window around the back, since we knew he wouldn't answer the door, but we couldn't open it from our side, so I grabbed one of the rocks bordering the garden and smashed it."

Rachel looked at him in amazement. "You broke the window? You never do anything wrong!"

"I had to, Rachel! I didn't know what he was doing to you in there! I know it was wrong but I had to get to you!"

Rachel kissed him, on the lips! Sunny watched them, crestfallen, knowing he'd never have a chance with Rachel now. This was serious. She really did like-like Al if she kissed him on the lips.

Al unlocked and blinked at her, mouth hanging stupidly open. He said, "Huh," and patted her arms.

Unable to watch this display any longer and feel his heart break any further, Sunny decided to do something useful and opened the door for the police as they pulled up. Then, to his surprise, Mrs. Anderson appeared in the door, huffing and puffing and red in the face; he'd forgotten the older woman was also on her way. "Kids, you didn't wait for me!" she admonished them. "I had to run here, and I'm no spring chicken anymore!"

Then she surveyed the impossible scene before her, and her face fell. "What in the world happened here?!"

"Mrs. Trybek's nose is broken," Joe said, helping the groaning woman to her feet. "She needs to go to the hospital."

"Mr. Trybek needs to go to the hospital too," Lauren said, grinning. "I sliced his pecker off."

Four police officers in light blue uniforms poured in through the door, rapidly assessed the scene, and took charge. "Put the sword down, little girl!" one of them said, extending a placating hand.

Lauren tossed the sword away from Mr. Trybek's potential reach, but she looked furious and, with a little blood on her cheek, just like the warrior Sunny imagined her to be earlier. "I'm not little! I'm thirteen!"

Another officer radioed for an ambulance on his walkie-talkie.

"She saved us," Danny said, pointing to Lauren from where he sat on the floor. "My dad was going to kill us all if he had the chance."

The next few minutes were a blur of activity as the police secured the scene and discovered Mr. Trybek's severed pee-pee in Danny's room, while Mrs. Anderson comforted Rachel. Eventually she led Rachel outside, and the others followed, Joe helping Mrs. Trybek, because she was still woozy. Sunny helped Danny because he was sore, his face bruised and his nose bloody. Al blinked in the sunlight as if he'd been locked away for years. On the lawn lay the friends' bikes, ditched in their hurry to get inside.

Neighbours had come out on their lawns to see what had drawn two police cars to their street. Across the street, the contraption Rachel and Lauren used for their route still held some papers. One of the neighbours grabbed a copy.

"What do we do now?" Al asked, watching the neighbours.

"We have to wait for the police to talk to us, Al," Mrs. Anderson said. "Good Lord, I didn't think to call any of your parents. They should know you're here."

"My mom will probably be here soon," Lauren said. "When I grabbed my dad's sword and ran out of the apartment, she had to know something was up."

Suddenly Rachel's dad was there, calling for her as he ran. "Daddy!" she shrieked and ran to him. He scooped her up in his arms and she dissolved into sobs, and he picked her up even though she was far too tall to be picked up, and squeezed her tight, whispering words of comfort into her ear. They walked with their arms around each other back to the house, where two of the police officers emerged, one holding the sword by the hilt in two pincered fingers.

Rachel's dad looked at it, then at Lauren, who had an arm around Joe's waist, the two of them smiling triumphantly at each other. Sunny saw them and realized he'd lost his chance with Lauren too.

"Lauren," Rachel's dad said, "Is that your father's sword?"

Lauren turned to him and nodded. "Yup. Still works."

"Cool sword."

Suddenly, Rachel started laughing, then Lauren did, then Joe, and then Al and Sunny. It was the only way they could cope with everything that had happened, and it felt good to laugh. To laugh was to know the worst was over and that, although it might take a while, things would get better. Their laughter was joined by other sounds: the sirens of approaching ambulances, and the clicks and whirrs of cameras held by the neighbours, capturing this strange moment on their street. 

The days that followed were long. Rachel had to stay at the hospital for a while, for some reason. Lauren's parents got into a little trouble because Lauren was using a deadly weapon and they weren't around to stop her; Sunny didn't see why they should have stopped her, because if they did, Mr. Trybek would have hurt them all, maybe even killed them like Danny said. Al's dad, a child psychologist, started seeing all of them for counselling because the events of that day were supposed to be traumatic. Sunny wasn't really traumatized; sure he was scared while it was going on, but nothing bad really happened to him. Maybe he would have preferred not to see Mr. Trybek's pee-pee get sliced off; just thinking about it made him want to cover up his own in sympathy. If a counsellor could help him unsee that, he supposed, the sessions would be useful.

The worst consequence of the events of that day was delivered by his own parents. When they discovered what he'd gotten up to with his friends, they grounded him; his mother was particularly hysterical about it. "You could have been killed, Sunil!" she shrieked. "What would I have done if that man did something to you?! Didn't you stop to think about who would look after your sister if you died?"

Sunny thought it was his parents' job to look after Bishan, but, inconveniently, he remembered his promise to protect her until the day he died, and he did feel a little bad about what had happened, but he wouldn't have done anything different if given the chance to do it over again. Rachel was his friend, and Rachel had needed help, and who better to help her than the Lawrence Street Detective Club?

"But nothing happened to me," he said. "Lauren stopped him before he did anything. She's the real hero of the day."

His mother wasn't convinced. "That girl," she said in disgust. "Walking around with something so sharp. What were her parents thinking?"

"Her father trained her to use it," Sunny said. "She has a great respect for the sword, and only used it to save her friend. Isn't that what Sikhs are required to do with the kirpan? To defend themselves and those they love? To fight against injustice when they see it? What Mr. Trybek did to his family was very unjust."

She was unimpressed by his arguments, and waved him off as she closed his bedroom door behind her.

 Bishan, for her part, visited him in his room to rub in his face that she was free to do what she liked while he had to stay in his room except to attend the counselling sessions with Al's dad.

"Is it true Lauren cut off that man's pee-pee?" Bishan asked during one of her visits; she'd brought her dolls with her and insisted he play with her and her dolls, and he couldn't refuse because he was basically a prisoner.

"Where did you hear that?" he demanded.

Bishan shrugged. "Maybe one of your friends blabbed."

"Who?" He was livid. That detail was not for the ears of his baby sister to hear. "I can't believe any of my friends would tell you. Most likely you were eavesdropping as usual."

"Well then, it's their fault they didn't check for any unwanted attention before they spoke. Maybe that unwanted attention hid among the bean plants while they worked in another row."

"Wait, wait." He took her shoulders in his hands and asked, "Are my friends out there right now?"

Bishan shrugged and nodded. "Lauren, Joe and Al, I think. I don't know where Rachel is."

"So, they're outside, and I'm stuck grounded in my room?!" Sunny shouted, infuriated by the injustice. "I didn't even do anything dangerous, and I'm the one who gets in trouble?!"

"You really made Mom and Dad angry," she said. "I don't know about your friends; maybe their parents just don't care as much about them."

"That's just stupid, don't say things like that."

The grounding ended abruptly, not because his parents finally realized the injustice of grounding him while his friends remained free, but because the City wanted to give them a commendation. It seemed that their perspective flipped 180 degrees because the mayor and the chief of police wanted to shake their son's hand.

Dad made sure he was in his best clothes and shined his shoes for him. "I only wish you could have been baptized by now," he said. "You would have been resplendent in a dastar and with a kirpan on your hip. The people of this city would have seen the little Sikh boy who did a good deed."

"Sorry, Dad. I know that would have meant a lot to you."

He smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. "But every Sikh must choose their own time, musn't they. We cannot truly worship the One True God unless we are free to do so."

"Thanks for coming today. I know your weekends are precious to you, because you work so much and have your union duties."

"Sunil, my weekends are for family, and what better way to spend it than to watch my son be honoured for his bravery. You do know how proud we are of you, don't you? Your mother and I?"

Sunny huffed in frustration. "Then why did you ground me?"

"We didn't know the whole story, Sunil. You and your friends involved yourself with this boy without telling us. We had no idea where you were or what you were doing, and certainly not that you were breaking into his house and putting yourselves in danger. We didn't know how close you'd come to getting hurt or..." 

To Sunny's horror, his father's face crumpled, and the man he considered the strongest person in the whole world was wiping tears from his eyes. "We were shocked, that's all," he went on, his voice high and squeaky and awful to hear. "We were scared we would lose you, Sunil. Do you understand now why we reacted the way we did?"

He didn't really, but his father's emotion was scaring him, and he just wanted it to stop. "Sure, Dad. How about this? The next time I find myself in a dangerous situation, I'll tell you and Mom about it."

His father nodded as if that were the best suggestion in the world. "Thank you, Sunil."

"But you do know we had an adult aware of everything we were doing, right? We weren't completely on our own. Mrs. Anderson was right there."

Dad took a deep breath as if he were controlling his anger. He was usually a calm and kind man, but the few times he'd gotten angry were times Sunny wouldn't forget any time soon. "Mrs. Anderson is not your mother and father. And from what I've been told, you didn't wait for her when you broke into the house. You might as well have been on your own."

"She called the police before we went," Sunny protested, but he knew he was losing this battle. He decided to stop arguing, because it was exhausting, and anyway, today was a happy occasion, and he looked very sharp in his good clothes.

They walked out of their house, all dressed to the nines. Mom, Dad and Bishan wore what they'd worn at Joe's family's ten year dinner, and when they met up with his friends and their families, and Mrs. Anderson, on the way to the community centre, he discovered Rachel wore the pretty blue dress she'd worn to that dinner too, and her hair was brushed, and she was glowing, holding hands with her father, who so rarely had the chance to be home on a weekend because he worked in the kitchen of the Queen's Hotel. Sunny realized he was staring at her, and shook his head in frustration. His crush on her had to end, because she'd kissed Al not too long ago, and she'd never expressed any interest in Sunny that way.

Lauren still wore her overalls, clearly not interested in dressing up for the occasion. Sunny respected that. Lauren was her overalls, and he wouldn't recognize her if she wasn't wearing them. Joe was dressed like Sunny, in the clothes he usually wore to church every Sunday. Al was in his normal t-shirt, corduroy pants and sneakers, but at least they were clean. He walked only with his mother, who was beaming in a pretty, flowery sundress. Al's father didn't leave the house a lot except for work, and he tended to avoid people; it was kind of a worst kept secret of the neighbourhood. Nobody knew if it was pathological shyness that kept him away, or if he just didn't like people. He was a nice man, though, at least from the times Sunny talked to him at his counselling sessions; he genuinely wanted to help.

The ceremony for the commendation was quick. The mayor and the chief of police might have wanted to congratulate the plucky kids for stopping the bad man, but this was a weekend, and the B.C. Day long weekend at that, and they probably wanted to spend time with their own families, or maybe they had other work waiting for them when they were done with these formalities. Sunny didn't mind. Sometimes grown-ups went on and on about things just because they liked the sound of their own voice; even at Gurdwara, he thought, which made him feel guilty. He also didn't want to stand on that stage for longer than he had to, feeling all those eyes on him as they all received the same certificate congratulating them, with their name the only difference on each one, which they discovered when they compared them later.

He knew people were taking pictures, but he didn't know the press was there until Al told him thirty years later, at Mrs. Anderson's memorial, that he saw a newspaper account of their commendation in the clippings binder containing all the stories involving the older woman. He wished his parents had kept that article, because that day was his proudest until the day he was called to the bar.

Finally, at the reception following the commendation, as they ate free snacks and drank punch, Sunny finally got to talk to his friends for the first time since that fateful day. Ironically, he had no idea what to say.

Fortunately, Lauren broke the ice by asking, "Where have you been, Sunny?"

"Grounded," he grumbled.

"Serious? For the Trybek house?" Al asked.

Sunny nodded. "My parents changed their minds when they received the invitation to this ceremony."

"Sorry you had to go through that, Sunny," Rachel said.

Sunny shrugged. "It's over now. Are you okay, Rachel? I heard you were in the hospital."

Rachel blushed and seemed to hunch into herself. Sunny didn't know what he'd said to embarrass her, and wished he could take it back. "Yeah," she muttered. "I'm okay. That's all over, too."

The others were quiet, and a chill ran down Sunny's spine. Why was it so awkward now? They'd never had problems striking up a conversation before. It was as if they'd all become different people during the time he was grounded. He worried something else was over, too: that ease of friendship they'd had since Rachel, Joe, Al and he were five. Something had changed. Was it the fact that when the summer ended, they would all be going to different schools, Joe to Notre Dame in Vancouver, Al, Lauren and Rachel to New Westminster Secondary, and Sunny to Khalsa School in Surrey? Or did the Trybek house change them? Did they enter the house as innocent children and leave the house a little older, a little damaged? Maybe so damaged that they were bent out of shape and unable to fit together the way they used to?

Thanks for reading this far! If you read the previous books in this series, you'll know I wrote that scene through the eyes of Rachel and Lauren, but with different aftermaths for each. This was Sunny's turn, and it was the first point of view that showed the actual events of the commendation, only alluded to in the previous points of view. I apologize if the penis severing scene was traumatic. If you liked what you just read, hit "Vote" and leave a comment. I'd love to hear what you think!

To return to the present and see how one of those commendation certificates made it to the present day, click on "Continue reading."