The Limit by Kristen Landon

gotten good at my timing so I wouldn’t have to get ready for bed in the dark anymore.
    “More boxes.” I nodded my head at the one large and two small boxes sitting outside Jeffery’s door.
    “Things never change much on the top floor,” said Coop.
    Jeffery’s door flew open. The moment he saw us, his entire face soured.
    “What’s the delivery today?” I asked, pretending the two of us had ever had a civil conversation together.
    “Like you even care,” he said, scooping up the small boxes. “You can’t blame a guy for trying to fill up the long, boring hours he has to spend by himself each night because
someone
came along and stole his only friend.”
    Coop reached out and clamped a playful hand on his shoulder. “Hey, little dude, call a time-out.”
    “Jeff, you know you’re always welcome to join us for paddle-wall-ball. Anytime.”
    He glared at me, squinting his eyes until they were almost completely closed. “It’s
Jeffery
.” Ugh. I knew that. He’d told me at least a dozen times over the past two weeks. I just couldn’t get used to using such a formal name on a twelve-year-old kid.
    “Sorry.”
    He dumped the small boxes inside his room andmoved on to pushing the larger one through his doorway, since it was too heavy to pick up.
    “And just what would the two of you do with me if I showed up in the middle of your precious paddle-wall-ball game? Use me as a target? Gee, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do.”
    “Fine. Be like that. See if we ever try to be nice to you again.” I nudged Coop, and the two of us headed down the hall.
    “Sorry, little Jeffery man, I really do like hanging with you when you’re not teed off at me.” Pausing in front of the last door before the hallway ended, Coop put one finger to his mouth.
    “Is he in there?” I whispered.
    “Don’t think so, but we can try. Just to be sure.” With his goofy grin plastered on his face, Coop started pounding on Reginald’s door and ringing the bell over and over again.
    “Forget it.” I headed into the cubicle area. “We’re never going to get out here before he does. See?” I threw an arm toward the glass cube, the sliding door securely closed. I even risked a visit from a security guard by tugging on the handle. Locked. “He must wake up at like, four in the morning to make sure he beats everyone else.”
    “We’ll get him someday,” said Coop.
    “You bet we will—it just won’t be in the morning.”
    We reached Coop’s cubicle. As he was about to begin his daily ritual of shooting free throws with his Nerf ball and hoop before sitting down to his computer, I snatched the ball and swooshed it through myself.
    “Bro!” He swiped the ball off the floor, and I slipped around the wall into my cubicle.
    Time for my own morning ritual.
    Shoot!
They still hadn’t fixed the problem with my e-mail. The only item in my in-box was Honey Lady’s daily motivational, rah-rah message. I didn’t even read them anymore. They were always sappy sayings, like,
Learn to LOVE to work HARD, and you will discover that it is not HARD to WORK. The person who remains down once he falls ends up with nothing but a mouthful of mud. The slothful and lazy not only lose the game—they lose at life.
Whatever.
    I sent Honey Lady what was turning out to be my daily message to her:
PLEASE FIX MY E-MAIL!!!
    Two weeks and nothing. After two
days
I started wondering if she was ignoring my requests on purpose. Since I also couldn’t make calls on my phone, I began to think she was trying to cut us workhouse kids off from the outside—why she would do this, I had no idea. Then I asked some of the other Top Floors, and every one of them said they had no problem getting their outsidee-mail. Good-bye, conspiracy theory. I was stuck with plain old boring technical difficulties. I knew Honey Lady was busy, but how long would it take for her to send a message to a tech support person?
Just fix it already, Honey Lady!
    “Ta-da!” The