Stand-Off

by Andrew Smith

  I did glance back for a second, though, just to catch a glimpse of the mess I’d left behind.

  I felt virile and godlike—and angry, too—like a senior should.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BUT THEN THERE WAS THIS. Always this.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ANNIE AND I WENT ON our usual Buzzard’s Roost run that afternoon. I kept trying to notice if things were different now, but everything around Pine Mountain seemed to have been stuck in a sort of suspended animation since last year. Annie and I kissed at the top of the mountain. The day was clear enough that we could see the ocean.

  And I wasn’t joking when I asked Annie if she wanted to go swimming naked in the creek with me, but when she didn’t answer I took it as a sort of challenge. So I told her, “Okay, Annie. I am not joking. You and me. Naked swimming is totally going to happen one day before we graduate out of this place.”

  And later at dinner, Annie wasn’t joking about the comic I’d drawn either.

  Annie had a serious, but very hot, about-to-scold-me look in her eyes.

  “Were you really this mean to him?”

  I’d given her my “Meet My Roommate: Sam Abernathy” comic as we sat in the crowded and buzzing cafeteria for dinner together. It was the first time I’d shown Annie one of my drawings since my friend Joey died the year before.

  I wagged a french fry at her like a potato finger of correction. “I wasn’t that mean to him. Just sort of mean.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Yeah. Like, not too much. Kind of like a you-don’t-want-to-cuddle-with-a-smelly-cat mean. That’s all.”

  Annie avoided making eye contact. That’s what she did when she was disappointed. I instantly felt like shit.

  She said, “You, of all people, should be ashamed of yourself, Ryan Dean.”

  The bite of fry I just swallowed seemed to balloon to the size of a porpoise in my throat.

  “I . . .”

  “And what’s this?”

  Annie put her fingertip on the dark figure I’d drawn clawing his way into our room through the open window.

  “Oh. Him? He’s Nate. Just someone I draw now,” I lied.

  It was a lie, because Nate wasn’t just someone I drew. I couldn’t get away from him. He was everywhere, and he made himself appear in everything I drew or daydreamed about. It was inevitable that Nate—the Next Accidental Terrible Experience—would catch me again and again.

  Wasn’t it?

  Annie shook her head. Her hair danced. It was hot, the way she could do that. Then she stared at me and I could see her eyes getting wetter. Annie folded my comic and slipped it into her bag. Neither of us said anything.

  When we finished eating and put away our trays and stuff, Annie took me by the hand and walked me over to the freshmen’s side of the cafeteria.

  She said, “I want you to introduce me to your roommate.”

  “Sam Abernathy?”

  “Yes. Sam Abernathy.”

  “Well, he might be hard to find. He’s really small. We might have to get down on our hands and knees.”

  “Stop being mean,” Annie said.

  I was confused. I didn’t think I was being mean.

  As we threaded our way through the tables of ninth graders, all these sets of little eyes fixed warily on us, as though they expected some major and humiliating act of hazing to initiate them into Pine Mountain.

  Now I knew how sharks felt when they cruised through massive schools of mackerel.

  But Sam Abernathy wasn’t among the fry.

  It wasn’t like I was keeping tabs on the kid, anyway. He could easily have come, eaten, and gone without ever being noticed.

  “The Abernathy fish stick is not here,” I said. “He’s probably asleep inside his Poké ball or something.”

  “Oh, stop it, Ryan Dean,” Annie said. But she was smiling, too.

  We walked slowly back toward the De-Genderized Zone between the dorms. I was so tired, but I didn’t want to say good night to Annie and then have to be alone, far from home, in a room with a stranger. Because I’d never really been alone since Joey died. I always had people I knew—my friends—to stay with. Now it was as though everything was new, changed, and I didn’t really want things to be like that.

  And why does that last night of summer, on the day before school starts, always have to be so goddamned depressing?

  We stopped at the T in the walk.

  “You think something bad’s going to happen, don’t you?” Annie said.

  I shrugged.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I guess we are,” I said.

  “I mean talk to somebody about it. Maybe my mom.”

  I kind of lit up at the thought of visiting Annie’s house again. Her mom was a psychologist, and she’d helped me out more than I can say after Joey died. But I didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

  And I could feel Nate watching me, hidden in the dark thorny hedge that separated the dorms. I felt dizzy and sick, like I was about to fall off the ledge of a skyscraper, worried that something bad was going to happen to Annie.

  I leaned close to her—so close, our bodies touched, and I thought about duct-taping Sam Abernathy inside a desk drawer and sneaking Annie into my dorm room so we could mess up Princess Snugglewarm together.

  I shook my head. “I don’t need to talk to anyone, Annie. I’ll stop drawing that guy if it bothers you. I just . . . I . . .”

  And when I put my lips to hers, a flashlight beam splashed onto our faces.

  “Hey! That’s enough of that, you two!”

  It was Mr. Bream, the resident counselor who lived on the ground floor of the boys’ dorm.

  “Are you trying to start off the school year with a PDA write-up and a call home to Mommy and Daddy?”

  Annie and I backed apart.

  I cleared my throat and squeaked, “I’m sorry, Annie.”

  Mr. Bream turned off the flashlight and stepped up to us.

  “Ryan Dean West? Is that you?”

  Mr. Bream combed his mustache with his index finger. He always did the same thing when he was angry: two strokes on each side, then a final swipe on the right.

  “Yes, sir,” I confessed.

  “Did I read the housing assignments correctly? That you’re on floor one with a freshman roommate?” Mr. Bream asked.

  I gave Annie a pained look, like I’d just been kicked in the balls, which is a look I have had quite a bit of experience with.

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “Did you get in trouble again?”

  I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know why they did this to me.”

  Mr. Bream combed his mustache again. Five times. Then he pointed his flashlight at the center of my chest. “I don’t agree with putting a senior on floor one, so you just better know I’m keeping an eye on you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “All right. Well, you two can say good night and run along.”

  And Mr. Bream just stood there watching me and Annie.

  Annie said, “See you in class tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’d better run along, Annie.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  IT WAS NINE O’CLOCK.

  What twelfth-grade boy on the planet goes to bed at nine o’clock at night?

  Ryan Dean West does, that’s who.

  I grudgingly dragged my feet back to Unit 113, which was my new home away from anywhere I cared about; and one that came equipped with a built-in Sam Abernathy. I thought about going upstairs and hanging out at Seanie and JP’s, maybe watching some television with them, but I didn’t really feel like they’d want me around. I could only hope that the Abernathy larva was such a bigger loser than me that he’d already be fast asleep, so I wouldn’t have to talk to him or listen to him or look at him or anything else with him for that matter.

  No such luck.

  When I got back to my—ugh!—our room, the Abernathy was awake, sitting up under the covers in his Super Mari
o bed with the lights off and the television on. Also, I might add, once again our window, and the door to our pint-size bathroom (our!) were both fully open—and didn’t Sam Abernathy know about the dark guy who’d been standing outside the window all day watching me?

  It was freezing cold.

  I didn’t bring a television to Pine Mountain. I had a microwave oven. To me, watching the illuminated countdown of LED numbers when you’re zapping instant mac and cheese was just about as thrilling as looking at most television programs. The Abernathy had taken it upon himself to bring a notebook-paper-size flatscreen TV, which he placed on top of our one and only book/microwave oven shelf located along the wall at the foot of my Princess Snugglewarm child-size-extra-small bed. The Abernathy had to sit up in his bed to watch his TV due to the desks forming a kind of Maginot Line of defenses between Princess Snugglewarm and the Mario Bros.

  It was 130 square feet of hell, except that it was freezing cold.

  The other thing I noticed right away, besides the open goddamned window and the icicles that were forming on the sill—and Sam Abernathy’s pleading puppy-dog eyes staring at me as soon as I got through the door—was that, apparently, the Abernathy had taken it upon himself to very neatly fold and hang all the clothes I’d strewn around the Ryan Dean West half of our divided state. That was gross. I did not want the Abernathy to ever touch my socks and underwear.

  Did I mention it was cold?

  Seriously, my breath fogged the moment I entered my (our) room.

  “Hi, Ryan Dean.”

  Okay. Let me make this clear right now: Sam Abernathy was the kind of kid that human beings instantly like. He was as cute as a laundry hamper filled with beagle puppies and cotton balls, and he was just so goddamned nice all the time.

  But what did I care about that? I’d already decided I was not going to like or be nice to Sam Abernathy, and that, as far as I was concerned, was that.

  I stood inside the door, shifting my eyes from Sam Abernathy to the television (he was actually watching a cooking show), to the open window, to the bathroom door that I practically tripped over, and then back to the Abernathy without saying anything to him.

  So Sam picked up the pleasantries on his own.

  “Do you want to watch TV with me, Ryan Dean?”

  I took a deep breath. I gave the airsacs in my lungs frostbite.

  If I could give a score to the degree to which I wanted to use a choice swear word at that point, it would easily be a five out of five skinny-dipping sessions with Annie Altman on the Ryan Dean West Scale of Things That Ryan Dean West Had to Deny Himself the Pleasure of Doing.

  Because I am responsible, and also mature and in control. After all, I’m fifteen and a senior, right?

  So I said to him, “I do not cuss, Abernathy. I want that to be known up front.”

  Sam Abernathy lit up like a six-month-old Christmas tree on the surface of the sun.

  “I don’t cuss either, Ryan Dean!” he gurgled.

  Okay. I’ll admit that I sometimes take liberties with the truth, like when I drew my Sam Abernathy comic for Annie. But the kid actually was wearing pajamas. Not the kind with built-in feet, but still . . . Sam Abernathy’s pajamas had soccer balls on them. Actual soccer balls. And he was wearing the pajama top, too. No boy in high school wears pajamas, much less full-set pajamas with soccer balls on them.

  I sighed a swirling cloud of angry fog.

  “What I mean to say, Abernathy, is this: It is thirty-five insert-appropriate-swear-word-here degrees Fahrenheit outside, and you have the insert-appropriate-swear-word-here window open.”

  Then I dramatically stormed across the room, which, architecturally speaking, was not suited for dramas involving flailing teenagers storming and such, so I ended up bashing my right shin into my desk chair, which then caused a domino-type chain reaction involving gravity, a fifteen-year-old storming senior, and both of our desks.

  “Oh my gosh!” Sam Abernathy, who was probably having an internal dialogue about the swear-worthiness of exclamations that included the word “gosh,” said, “Are you okay, Ryan Dean?”

  And the level of niceness and concern in the Abernathy’s voice was so infuriating, I thought I might actually burst into flames. I sprang to my foot (my left one, because my right one may have actually been severed, it hurt so bad) and grabbed my desk chair in both hands and started to lift it.

  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 ly
ing 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.