Author's Note:  Heya, just wanted to thank everyone who's reviewed thus far – goodness, you guys are making my head swell up bigger than a breadbox! ;)  Well, I'm glad folks are liking this, I must say it's been a fun one to write!  Anyway, this is the last chapter, so thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy.  Oh, and Saje, thanks for the suggestions on future stories – I honestly dunno yet what my next one will be, but rest assured, your ideas are under consideration! =)

Okey-doke, enough blathering…

~High Planes Drifter~
**************

"Double-D, you should've seen the look on your face!"  We were back at my place now since we – er, Double-D and Ed – were pretty shaken up after the Kankers and needed someplace to lay low for a while.  I even managed not to laugh right in Double-D's face…at least not until he finally got his hat back on right and I could actually see it!  Oh man, he looked like he'd been swarmed by mosquitoes!  With really big lips!  That, um, kissed instead of bit…yeah.

Well, trust me, it was funny.  And the best part was that Double-D was dealing with it in his usual calm, cool way.  You do know what Double-D's usual calm, cool way is, right?  Think 'Chihuahua on a caffeine high.'  I love that!  "This is so out of control, Eddy!"  And didja ever notice how he's always turning to me when something's freaking him out?  Yeah, I dunno why he does that, either, but it sure makes it easy to pull a fast one on him!  Is trust a great thing, or what?  "Mother and Father's requests have become unsound!  It's as though they were written by someone other than my parents!"

Uh-oh!  "Nope, it was them all right."  I had to give him something else to chew on before he figured things out and ruined all our fun.  "Who knows what the next sticky note will say?"

He gasped so hard, I thought he was gonna inhale my dresser.  "You're right, Eddy!  Do you hear it?  Distrust is knocking on my door!"  Yeah, he still talks like that, even when he's freaking out.  "Listen, could it be?"  The sound of total core meltdown?  "It's the STICKY NOTES OF THE APOCALYPSE!!!"

Sticky notes of the apocalypse!  What'd I tell ya, the guy's a riot!  I couldn't even breathe, I was laughing so hard!  Oh man, we could've pushed him right over the edge just then if we'd had another sticky note, but I couldn't stop laughing long enough to get Ed to write one.  Talk about your bad timing!

"I can't go home!"  Double-D was staring around like he thought sticky notes were gonna start jumping in the window at him.  "There's only one solution, I'll just move in with one of you!"

"Move in with me!"  Oh, darn, Ed offered before I could.  "We could be like brothers and share the same bathroom!"  Yeah right, Double-D can't even look at Ed's bathroom without washing his hands.  If he ever found out about that giant ball of eyebrow hair behind the toilet – well, that'd be it, his brain would snap.  And – oh man, just think of it – Sock-head, stuck in the same house as Sarah!  Why didn't I get him to go along with that?

Too bad Double-D spoke up so darned quick.  "Thank you Ed, that's…nice."  Translation: 'I'd rather eat a taco pulled out of the sewer.'  Just once I'd like to hear him come out and say something like that, wouldn't you?  Hey, it's not like Lumpy would've minded – heck, he'd probably want a sewer-taco, too!  That would've been so much funnier than what really did happen next.  "B-but I'll stay with Eddy."  That's when things stopped being funny.

Ed perked up like someone just gave him a whole jar of pickle juice.  "Ooh, ooh, I know!"

What did he know?  And how come Double-D was starting to clean up?  He knows he's not supposed to touch anything unless I have to clean my room – he always throws out stuff I wanna keep and I can never find anything afterwards.  What the heck was going on?  "Don't I get a say in this?"

"Please submit any suggestions anonymously and I'll see if they fit in the plan!"  Double-D just kept going like he didn't even hear me!  Gimme a break, that's supposed to be my shtick! 

And Ed!  "Here is a bookshelf and a new ant farm!"  How could he turn on me like that?  Before I knew it, he'd wrecked my turntable and my fireplace – what'd I tell you, he's a walking disaster area!

"I'm sure my ants will be very happy there!"  How could Double-D not care that Ed was messing up my stuff?  He's supposed to be my pal!  "Let me help you, Ed!" 

Help what?  Help take over my own personal room?!  I don't think so!  "Double-D, wait!  It was all a big joke!"  He didn't say anything, so just I kept going.  "Me and Ed – well, mostly Ed."  Hey, I couldn't take credit for Ed's hard work, could I?  "Wrote those silly sticky notes!"  Not that I was feeling guilty or anything, but all of a sudden I could barely work up a laugh.  "Funny, huh?"

He just stared at me.  He gets so touchy when I play tricks on him, like he doesn't even see how funny they are.  For a second I thought he was actually gonna get mad – at me, how unfair would that have been?  But he didn't.  "Reality check!  I think I can recognize my own parents' handwriting, Eddy!  Puh-leeze!"

Oh man, he didn't believe me!  I'm too good for my own good!  Now what?  I was trying to think of some other way to stop him, but that's when Ed really started messing with things.  Just remember that – what I did next was all Ed's fault!

"I cut the air in two!"  The big ape was sawing at the air – my air!  "This side's yours, Double-D!"

Uh, well, okay – I didn't even know you could cut air.  At first I thought it was just Ed being Ed, but then Double-D spoke up.  "We can share the air, Ed!"

Think about it – Sock-head knows way more about all that science junk than me and Ed, and he never misses a chance to yap about it when we're wrong.  If he was going along with it, it really must be possible to split up the air!  "It's my air, I ain't sharing!"  The nerve of him, trying to barge in and breathe up half my air!  But that wasn't the worst of it.  "My rug!"

Double-D had dragged in the vacuum and sucked up my snazzy 70's rug like he owned the place!  "Shag rugs are a magnet for discarded nail clippings!"  This is why I never let him touch my room if I don't have to – he's a monster when he's in cleaning mode!

That was bad enough, but then – "My magazines!"  Didn't he even notice he'd just vacuumed them up?

"Not to worry! I have plenty of educational material we can share!"  Well duh, that's what I was worried about!  Besides, you can learn a lot more important stuff from any of my magazines than from all Double-D's stupid books put together!

You'd better not be laughing, there's nothing funny about what was going on!  Just think – not even an hour before, Double-D had been dressing up pigs and getting mauled by the Kankers.  How could such a great day suddenly go so bad?

Enough was enough.  "That's it!!"  Double-D quit vacuuming long enough to listen – I can always get his attention if I yell at him, I think it's 'coz I'm the only one who ever does.  Uh, that's the only reason I do it, you know – how're you supposed to get around in the world if you can't even deal with a little shouting?  "Put back my magazines, my shag rug, and my air!"  Too bad Ed's not as easy to stop – oh, look, there goes my mirror ball.  Man, that's the third time this summer!

"Oops, it wasn't me!"  Yeah, right.  It's always Ed.

So here's the scene: Ed was hanging from my ceiling, my mirror ball was smashed, my magazines were gone, my turntable was broke, and all my air was, um, cut.  So yeah, I was a little upset.  "Get outta my room!  You're a pest!"  Okay, I was a lot upset!

"Fine."  At least Double-D was smart enough to leave before I had to toss him out headfirst.  "No need to repeat yourself, no sir!  I'm a good listener!"  Oh, what, so I maybe hurt his feelings a little.  He still didn't need to be such a drama queen about it!  "I'll just sleep under a bench somewhere, seeing as I can't return to my home or rely on my friends."  Feh.

"Out with ya!"  Now don't you go getting all blubbery on me – you would've chucked him out, too!  He needed to learn you can't just go around messing with other people and their stuff, you know?  It just ain't right!

And Ed!  I went to give him a piece of my mind, but the big lug was looking at me like I'd just done something awful – like, I dunno, like I'd just kicked my best friend out into the street or something.  "What's with you?"  Hey, Double-D got what he deserved!  It's not like it was my fault he couldn't go back home!  "What?"  Or like it was my fault that he didn't have anywhere else in the whole world to go…"Stop looking at me like that…"  Nobody else to turn to, always coming to me first…"N-now look what you did!"

Don't even say it.  I wasn't getting all choked up – it's just that there was a lot of dust in the room from all that cleaning.  Getting in my eyes and all, you know?  And when I ran outside, I wasn't going after Double-D, all right?  I was just getting some fresh air.  That's all.  I mean, sure, Double-D's my buddy, and okay, maybe I let things get a little out of hand with all those sticky notes – but that still doesn't mean anything.  Really!

Oh, okay, fine!  I was running after Double-D – you want a medal or something?  Geez, I don't see what the big deal is.

"Double-D!"  At least I didn't have to run far, he ain't exactly The Flash, you know.  I found him looking at a rock – I bet if I'd just left him alone, he'd have figured out a way to make it into some sort of, um…rock…house…thingy.  But nooo, I had to go and be all Mary Poppins about it.  "Double-D, don't touch that rock!" 

He wouldn't even look at me.  "It is yours, I suppose.  I'll go elsewhere."  Man, nobody does 'huffy' like Double-D.

"No, wait!"  What?  I couldn't let him go sleep under a bench, could I?  "You got it all wrong, pal!  It was all Ed's fault!"  Hmm, Ed can't even blink right without someone to tell him to close both eyes at once.  "And Kevin, as usual!"

"Kevin?  But Kevin wasn't in this show, Eddy!"  Double-D came up with this idea once that maybe our lives were just one big TV show, as if all that rotten luck we always have only happens because it's funny for the 'audience'.  He even did some calculations that he said 'proved' that that's the only way we could've survived some of the stupid junk that's happened to us.  Ed thought it was totally cool, he kept waving at the 'camera' until I finally told him he'd be written out if he didn't knock it off.  Me, I think it just proves that whole thing about how the smarter you are, the closer you are to the nut-house, too.

"There ya go!"  I didn't wanna encourage him with any more 'show' talk – the last time he really thought about it, he freaked out so bad we couldn't get him out of his room for two whole days!  "So my room's your room!"

I don't remember the last time I saw Sock-head so happy.  You'd think I'd just given him a new bottle of dish soap or something.  "Thank you Eddy!  Thank you!  You won't even know I was there!"  He practically fell all over himself to hug me, geez!  What if somebody saw?  What if Nazz saw?

"Uh, our faces are touching, Double-D…"  I've just gotta teach him the art of the manly handshake.

*****

So that's how I ended up like this – it's bedtime now and I'm wiped out from spending the whole rest of the day watching – er, helping – Ed and Double-D fix-up my room.  Yeah, 'fix-up.'  I can't find my albums anymore, and I know my lava lamp didn't always have a piece of toast floating in it!  All I want is to go to bed and forget this whole stupid day ever happened.

Only I can't.  Someone's already in my bed.  Gee, can you guess who?

"Nice and comfy, Double-D?"  I should've just let him sleep under that rock.

"Tuck me, Eddy?"  Oh, geez.  This is what I get for being so nice.  I'll tell you, it just doesn't pay!  But what the heck, I'll tuck him in if it'll shut him up.  "Thank you, Eddy."

Yeah, whatever.  "Here's your warm milk…"  He says he never goes to sleep without a warm glass of milk and a bedtime story.  I feel like such a sissy.

We don't keep a lot of books around the house – Dad says books are only good for keeping people with more brains than personality away from those of us with actual lives.  But I remembered my brother had a whole stack of 'em in his room – I think he was planning some sort of textbook scam before he, uh, went away.  Oh well, at least they'll come in handy now.

I'm glad Double-D read the title, 'coz I sure couldn't.  "'Biology for the Astute'?"  Not even he would want to hear this one, right?  And, gee, since I don't have any other books, I guess he'll just have to go to bed without his story.  "Good choice!"  Great.

Well, the sooner I start, the sooner I'll get this over with.  "And so from the still pond a young mosquito also known as a lar…"  Geez, how am I supposed to read this if they won't even use English?  "What's this word?"

"Larva, Eddy."  Of course Sock-head knows.  He probably has the whole book memorized already.

"Oh yeah."  Man, I can't believe his parents do this every night, no wonder he's so –

Wait a minute.

His parents read him a bedtime story every night?  His parents, who're hardly ever even home when he goes to bed?  His parents, who probably carry a sticky note in their wallets instead of a picture to remind themselves of him?!?

That dirty, double-crossing sneak!  He did believe me when I told him the truth about those fake sticky notes!  He had me feeling so bad, I let him trash my room and sleep in my bed all while I was waiting on him hand-and-foot – and it was all a scam!!  That lying, good-for-nothing weasel!  That smug little – that, that…

That…Eddy!

I am rubbing off on him!

I don't know if I should be proud, or if I should be making him pay for this.  I mean, come on, nobody pranks the King of the Pranksters!  How am I supposed to scam people if I have to worry about them scamming me back?  Yeah, I definitely oughta flush that hat of his down the toilet.  Heck, I oughta flush him down the toilet!  But…well…um, hey, I can't give him the satisfaction of knowing I know he got me, right?  Uh, yeah…

All right.  I'll let him get away with it.  Just this once.

What?  Yeah, shut up.  Let's see, where was I in that stupid book?

"You know, Eddy, before bed Mother and Father would usually massage my feet, it relaxes me so!"

Okay, I'm definitely flushing his hat as soon as he's asleep.  And getting pictures.

Nah, just kidding.

Maybe.