Stand-Off (5 page)

Thankfully, I controlled myself before raising the chair even half an inch. Any higher than that, and I would certainly have snapped and thrown the thing out the goddamned window, or possibly—probably—at Sam Abernathy's face.

Another deep breath.

“Sam,” I said, my voice quaking, “it . . . it's just really cold in here. Sam. Abernathy.”

And I hobbled over to the open window. Did he actually remove the screen, too? There was no screen. I'll admit that it kind of creeped me out, going to the window, because you know how when it's dark
outside you can imagine all these terrible and horrifying things that aren't really there. They aren't really there, are they?

“You took the screen off?”

He didn't need to confess. I could clearly see the screen lying on the ground right next to where the footprints of the monster were.

Sam didn't say anything. He just grunted softly, like he was being stabbed or something, when I slid the window shut and latched it. Then I limped around the debris field between our beds and shut the bathroom door, and Sam Abernathy whimpered again.

In the flickering light of a television program about reducing a sauce and pan-seared something, I stripped out of my shoes and clothes, threw them on my upended miniature desk, examined the purple mark on my right shin, and slid into bed. Okay, two things: First, our dorm room looked like a bomb had gone off, which made me feel strangely satisfied, and second, there was something to be said for flannel Princess Snugglewarm sheets, considering that I was going to bed inside a fucking meat locker.

“Is it okay if I watch TV?” Sam's little voice drifted across the wreckage.

I rolled over and faced the wall. I was so not-tired, and I was convinced I would lie there for hours seething at the Abernathy.

I waved a dismissive hand in the icy air between us.

“As long as you promise not to talk to me.”

The silence—well, with the exception of something about roasting
Brussels sprouts with cherries—lasted for a whopping fifteen seconds.

“Don't you have any pj's?”

I sighed. Fog. “This is high school. Grow up.”

“Oh. So, in high school boys don't wear pajamas, and you also don't brush your teeth before going to bed?”

The only person I had ever punched in my life was JP Tureau. Sam Abernathy was pretty small, and, like I said, he was cute enough to be his own Internet meme, but I can't begin to express how much I wanted to punch the kid at that moment. And Mom would be so mad at me if she knew I skipped brushing my teeth.

I storm-limped across the room to the cabinet-size bathroom, which didn't have a bath—unless you were the size of an Abernathy, in which case the sink would do.

Brush. Spit. Rinse. Spit. Back to bed.

Thank you, Sam Abernathy, for being my dental hygiene conscience.

The program had moved on to something about making a roux. I had morbid thoughts of cooking the baby marsupial from
Winnie the Pooh
.

“I have microwave popcorn.”

NOOOO!!!!!

I said nothing.

Thirty seconds of silence, during which time my blood pressure elevated to Himalayan altitudes.

“Would it be okay if I used your microwave oven, Ryan Dean?”

But I endured.

I lay there, refusing to speak to the Abernathy, listening to the psychedelic mix tape of microwave corn explosions layered over an explanation of Moroccan carrot ribbons with black lentils, steeling myself for what was undoubtedly going to be the longest night of my life.

You know how when you're lying there, thinking about methods you might use for falsifying your own disappearance and assuming a new identity, and you're trying to
not
pay attention to the other person in the room who is responsible for your disappearance fantasy, so it is inevitably all you do—pay attention to
that one thing
that is giving you a severe fight or flight crisis? Yeah. That.

So Sam Abernathy and his soccer ball pajamas stood
on my half of the empire
(Yeah . . . I'm like that: his half/my half. Deal with it.) and his little face lit up in pulses of golden light as his bag of microwave fucking popcorn spun around and around, just inches from my bare feet, which I had to stick over the end of my child-size goddamned bed.

“That looks like it hurts,” Sam Abernathy, obviously ogling my naked right shin, told me.

That was creepy.

I curled up into a fetal position beneath my unicorns so the Abernathy would stop examining me.

Then he scampered back over to his bed and sat there in the glow
of the Cooking Channel and played a dental symphony that sounded like a beaver clearing a forest while Sam Abernathy ate his popcorn.

Okay. So, you know that moment when you're just at the balancing point between consciousness (agony and awareness of the proximity of a masticating Abernathy) and sleep (pure unaware bliss), and you're just about to fall, fall, fall . . .

“I have really bad claustrophobia.”

What the holy hell?

I jerked back to the land of consciousness as Sam Abernathy padded across the room and cracked our door open a few inches, which allowed a shaft of the most-annoying-possible glaring incandescent hallway lightbulb light into our room.

“What?”

“Really, really bad claustrophobia, Ryan Dean. That's why I had the bathroom door and window open, and why I took the screen off. In case you were wondering.”

I was not wondering.

Why did he make me wonder?

Chomp chomp.

And the television said, “The worst crime you could possibly commit with a scallop is overcooking it.”

Great.

Just fucking great.

I'LL ADMIT IT: I DO
not like to get out of bed once I'm in it.

But I didn't need an alarm clock on that first day of twelfth grade. Who needs an alarm clock when you're stuck in a refrigerator-size room with Sam Abernathy, and all night long you've had to try to sleep with your front door wide open while people—guys—pass by in the hallway and offer commentary like “Why are these assholes sleeping with their door open?” and “Hey, do you smell popcorn?”

So I got up before sunrise. And I shut our door so I could undress and take a shower. I even shaved. I didn't need to shave, there was just some keen sense of satisfaction I got from leaving my razor and shaving cream sitting out in the same bath—no, shower—shower room Sam Abernathy was going to use. And you couldn't bring a change of clothes inside the shower room either, unless you wanted your school things to get soaked, not that there was enough space to actually get dressed in there to begin with.

When I came out, naked and wrapped in a towel, Sam Abernathy had reopened our window.

We were ultimately going to have to negotiate a claustrophobia treaty, but I wasn't in the mood for talking to Sam Abernathy while I was freezing and naked and trying to get ready for school with an
open ground-floor window through which any passerby could watch the naked-Ryan-Dean-West-and-his-unstable-roommate show.

Also, the Abernathy had straightened out our desks and picked up and folded my clothes again too. I concluded he was likely a claustrophobe with a neatness obsession. Ryan Dean West, child fucking psychologist. With just a sprinkle of pyromania and perhaps a shoe perversion, Sam Abernathy could potentially be the most insane twelve-year-old on the planet.

I closed our window and lowered the blinds.

“I need to get dressed,” I explained. “And it's cold. And that's exactly eight words more than I intended to say to you this month.”

Sam Abernathy sat on his Mario Bros. bed in his soccer pajamas. He'd laid out his perfect little Pine Mountain first-day-of-school boy outfit neatly beside him.

“I need to pee,” Sam Abernathy said.

“So?”

I put on my socks and underwear.

“I also need to take a shower.”

“Again. So?”

And I realized my shirt and school pants looked pretty nice the way Sam had folded them.

“Well, I can't be inside the bathroom with the door closed. I would stop breathing, and nobody here would know they need to call an ambulance or start CPR. But if I leave the bathroom door open, then I won't
be able to pee or take a shower because you'll be in here watching me.”

I thought about doing CPR on the Abernathy.

No.

The kid was squirming and his eyes were watering.

What boy doesn't know that look painfully well?

“It's not a bathroom,” I pointed out.

I tried to calculate how long I could take getting dressed so that the Abernathy's bladder would explode, and if all this could happen in time for me to meet Annie and my friends for breakfast and still make it to my first class on time.

“Dude. Trust me. I am
not
going to watch you pee or take a shower.”

Sam Abernathy rocked back and forth slightly, his knees clenched tightly together.

And I kept telling myself,
I am not going to be nice to him, I am not going to be nice to him
.

Then the Abernathy looked at me with his gigantic Internet-meme, basket-full-of-puppies eyes and said, “Please?” Which, when you think about it, could be a perfect meme.

At which time, my inner mantra evolved to
I am not going to strangle him, I am not going to strangle him.

I grabbed my backpack and schedule, and, shirt unbuttoned and hanging out, I threw my untied tie over one shoulder and my Pine Mountain sweater over the other and stormed—without tripping once!—out of our (
my
) fucking dorm room.

“IT HASN'T BEEN TWENTY-FOUR
hours, and I just can't take him anymore.”

I was sitting in the dining hall before class with Annie, JP, Seanie, and Annie's roommate, Isabel, whom I still found to be wildly hot. Also, there was something dramatically different about Isabel, but I couldn't exactly put my finger on it. So I concluded it had to be one thing: Isabel had lost her virginity over the summer.

What else could it possibly be?

She had this all-knowing, goddesslike, and voluptuous look in her simmering black eyes. I had to find out. She would tell Annie, right? Because girls do that, right? Just like guys, right? I need to know these things. I had to get Annie to find out for me if Isabel had lost her virginity, and who it was with, and if she wanted to sit around a campfire or something and tell me about it. Tonight, if possible.

“Have you even heard one thing I've said to you, Ryan Dean?”

Annie was so hot when she got that scolding voice.

“Huh?” I said, suddenly aware that I'd been sitting there for at least five minutes at breakfast with my friends, thinking about Isabel having sex, and then thinking about Isabel talking to me about having sex. And a campfire, which, like having sex, is also
specifically against the rules at Pine Mountain.

“Well, clearly you're misleading yourself if you think you're not going to at least be kind to him. Leaving him alone this morning was a very thoughtful thing for you to do,” Annie said.

“Huh?” I was still thinking about Isabel and sex, as opposed to Sam Abernathy taking a shower, and my compassion toward him.

“It stands to reason that Winger and the little guy would bond,” JP added. “After all, they have so much in common. And besides, you've got to feel sorry for a kid with irrational fears, right, Ryan Dean?
You're
not afraid of anything,
are you
?”

For just a second, I thought I saw a flash of that dude in the black cloak—Nate—looking at me from over JP's shoulder.

I hated JP Tureau.

Annie shifted in her seat and cleared her throat, which was her way of letting us know she didn't appreciate it when JP and I picked on each other around her.

Then Isabel looked at me with her liquid black eyes and said, “You should ask him to hang out with us at dinner tonight. That would be so cool of you to introduce him to some older friends, Ryan Dean.”

“What?!!” I was shocked. Also, to be honest, I was imagining Isabel naked.

I just can't help these things. Nobody can, right?

Seanie slapped the table and shook his head decisively. “There
are certain social barriers that cannot be broken. Inviting a freshman to sit at a senior table could only end up in total anarchy.”

Seanie Flaherty was rarely the voice of reason, but when he rose to the occasion, it was like drifting into a life raft when you're treading water in the middle of the Pacific.

“Nobody wants total anarchy,” I said.

•  •  •

Everyone knew the game plan for senior year.

It was supposed to be easy, right? I'd taken my SAT in June (I aced it, thank you very much), had been working on my college apps (as a gesture to my parents, I sent one to Harvard and one to MIT, even though I already knew I wanted to go to school in California, dude), and had completed all the core requirements for graduating from Pine Mountain. To top it off, pretty much all I had to do this year was play rugby and take fluff and breadth classes. Easy report card full of vowels. It was all lined up perfectly.

But Sam Abernathy equaled total anarchy, treading water for the next nine months.

To make matters worse, Sam Abernathy would end up being in two of my classes: Creative Writing, followed by the worst-imaginable scenario, Culinary Arts, which was also the only class I had with Annie Altman. But I didn't find out about this wonderful arrangement until later.

I could not get away from the guy. At least I was safe for first period, Body Conditioning (which was only for twelfth-grade boys) and for Health (also, a new
thing
at Pine Mountain—a class for only senior boys that was a ninety-minute endurance test in discomfort because it was (1) taught by a woman, Mrs. Blyleven, and (2) all about “issues” like sex and consent and being a good young man); and then I could always count on the sanctuary of rugby practice and Coach McAuliffe to make me forget everything Abernathy and Blyleven.