“Low standards?” I mocked, waving my ring in front of her face. “You call this low?”
She giggled and snatched it off my hand, trying it on herself. “Oh my gosh,” she said in alarm, dropping her hand dramatically to the floor. “How do you even keep from knocking into things? This thing is insane.”
“I know.” I shook my head self-righteously. “A veritable albatross.”
“I bet it wouldn’t even fit into the bottle,” she mused, holding them both up and squinting appraisingly. I took them from her hands.
“Let’s see.”
With a wave of comedic brute strength, I shoved the ovesize ring against the mouth of the bottle. It fell inside with a loud clink.
We both froze.
“Oh shit!” Amanda cried.
“Why did you make me do that?” I panicked as I started shaking the bottle wildly upside down. It became immediately apparent that the ring wasn’t going anywhere.
She grabbed a pencil and handed it to me. “I didn’t make you do anything—you’re the one who shoved it down there!”
“What am I supposed to do with this?” I waved the pencil around. “Write the mayor?”
“You need to leverage it out,” she explained, miming the motion. “It’s basic physics.”
“That’s…” I paused, “an interesting idea.”
We fiddled around with it for about a minute before throwing the pencil down in despair.
“That’s never going to work! I don’t even think it’s scientifically sound!”
Her face fell as though she’d been let down. “I saw it once in a movie.”
“A movie?! I thought you said—”
“I thought I saw it in a movie,” she murmured, “but I might have made it up.”
“Enough! We’ve got to get it out of there!” I shook my head as the obvious solution hit me hard. I only hoped it didn’t somehow backfire. “Okay…one thing left to do!”
I took off down the hall to the bathroom, Amanda scampering along behind.
“What are you going to do?” she asked with wide eyes as I prepped the tub. “Wait…why do you need to use my towel?”
I finished spreading the towel out and took a giant step back. “In case it gets glass in it.”
“Yeah, I got that,” she glared, “but why do you need to use mine—”
With a fierce shriek, I hurled the bottle down into the tub.
…nothing happened.
I blinked. “Well, I thought—”
“Give it here, you weakling.” She sneered, picking it up and winding back her arm.
She cast it down with all her strength, but again, nothing.
We both frowned.
“They must use really thick glass to protect it during shipping—”