After we drop Jesse off at swim, Allie takes me home.

“I thought I’d help you pick up the coffee table guts before Mom and Dad get back,” she says as she walks up to the door.

Allie and I work together to clean up the mess. While I lift the table frame out of the way, Allie uses the broom to push the chunks of glass out from under it. Then she holds the dustpan as I sweep the pieces into it.

When we’re done, Allie sits on the couch and nods at the old-school camera that is still on the tripod.

“Obviously we need to watch that.”

“Obviously,” I say, even though I don’t want to.

Allie gets the camera, adjusts it so we can both see the screen, and presses Play.

We can’t see Mom in the recording, but we can hear her narrating. “This is for the underwear jumping record. Johnny, wave to the camera.” Dad, wearing neon underwear over his khaki pants, waves.

Allie laughs. “This is already terrible.”

Mom continues, “Johnny is going to attempt to beat nine jumps in thirty seconds.”

Dad gives a thumbs-up and then points at the camera. “This is for you, honey.”

Mom leans in front of the view. Only half her face shows. “What a man. Stay back, ladies. This guy’s all mine.”

I roll my eyes. Allie nudges me with her elbow. “Oh, come on. It’s cute.”

“Ready, set,” Mom says on the video. “Go!”

Dad definitely goes. He pulls down the underwear, steps out of them, and then jumps with both feet. He makes it through the leg holes and pulls the underwear up. Then down and then off. He jumps back in with both feet. Up, down, off again.

“Fifteen more seconds!” Mom calls out.

Dad’s breathing so hard. He stumbles on the next jump. He looks ridiculous—nothing like the guy on the website. Still, I find myself leaning forward, silently rooting for him even though I know how this is going to end.

He makes another jump. Undies up, then down. He’s slowing down, losing steam. His hops are now more like steps.

“Five more seconds! Keep going!”

Don’t do it, I think, as if I can actually change the ending.

He makes his final jump. His left foot makes it through, but his right foot gets caught. He wobbles, corrects himself, and then finally gets his second leg through.

“Stop!” Mom calls.

That’s it. It’s over. He didn’t fall.

For a second, hope is stronger than truth.

The challenge is over, but Dad is still off-balance. He takes one step back to keep from falling, then another step. And then it happens. His leg hits the edge of the coffee table, he sways and… I close my eyes for the inevitable.

Crash.

On the video, Jesse and I run into the room.

Mom’s bent over cry-laughing. Dad’s cracking up so hard, he’s making no sound. Jesse scrunches his face like he’s trying to solve a puzzle, then he starts laughing too.

On the couch in real time, Allie is cracking up. She’s practically convulsing.

There are some truly epic fails in the history of Guinness.

This one time in Iran, a group set out to beat the record for the WORLD’S LARGEST SANDWICH. They might have won—if the crowd hadn’t gotten so hungry. The audience ate the sandwich before it was measured and recorded.

There was another guy who was going to break the record for fasting. To do this, he made a little glass box where people could watch him not eat. Only he forgot to tell Guinness he was attempting this challenge—and realized this after fifty days of starving.

What if those are our people? What if we never get a record no matter how many times we try? What if we never win? What if all I’m known for are my epic fails?

I get my laptop and sit back on the bed. I glance at the door even though I know nobody else is home, and I type “Guinness World Record Certificate” in the Google search bar and press Enter. When the results pop up on the screen, I click on the Images tab.

Scrolling through a couple of rows of pictures, I click on the certificate without a watermark and save it as a PDF file to my desktop. It’s an outdated record for the LONGEST CROCHETED SCARF—TEAM set by Mother India’s Crochet Queens in May 2017.

I whisper an apology to the Crochet Queens as I use a text box to cover the information about their record-setting 46,223-foot 9-inch scarf and type in, “The record for the largest crowd of people dressed as insects was achieved at Shotwell Stadium in Abilene, Texas.” I save the newest version and print.

In the office, I grab the certificate off the printer and hurry back to my room. It looks legit—exactly like the one that should have been ours. It even has the “Officially Amazing” logo at the bottom. If I hadn’t made the certificate myself, I would never know it was fake.

The garage door hums as it opens. My parents are home.

“Milo?” Dad calls out.

“Coming!” I slip the fake certificate into my backpack and go downstairs. Mom is in the kitchen. She fills a mug with coffee.

“You’re back. How’s the arm?”

“As soon as we walked into the ER with those bloody paper towels, we got tons of attention.” Mom laughs. “I think they were worried about us freaking everybody else out. The nurse took us straight to a room.”

Dad holds up his arm, which is covered in white gauze from his fingers to his elbow. “Guess what! Twenty-seven stitches! Can you believe it? Doctor said it was lucky I didn’t hit the artery, or I could have bled to death.”

Picturing twenty-seven stitches under that wrap is enough to make me have a Jesse-type reaction. I hold on to the back of the chair. “Are you okay?”

“Mostly. Just bummed because this many stitches should be a record.”

“Oh. Um. I’m sorry you weren’t more hurt?”

“I searched the internet while he was getting sewn up,” Mom says. “There’s a lady named Denise Bartlett who holds a world record for two hundred ten.”

“I wonder how many stiches Richard Browning got on his way to victory?” Dad says as we go to the living room.

“We may never know,” says Mom.

“I may not have gotten the record for my stitches,” Dad says, “but the doctor said I did get the most stitches of any patient he’s had so far.”

“That’s right, honey,” Mom says. “That victory is all yours.”