“Sorry,” I said, when he didn’t look away. He had a kind of bumpy nose that made me think it had been broken. “Waiting for someone. Thought you were going to be my friend.”
“May I help you?” Candice said, and I turned back around again.
“Coffee,” the man said. He didn’t say “please,” which annoyed me on Candice’s behalf. I watched him. He didn’t look like the sort to come to Meeples, which didn’t often attract the suit-and-tie crowd. Candice’s greeting had been cordial and professional.
That probably meant she didn’t know him.
I sighed and turned off my Stranger Danger alarm. The man might be rude, but he just wanted a coffee.
I went back to my cards. My second game wasn’t going anywhere near as smoothly, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be able to pull off a win. The next card I drew had the little monster on it, and I eyed the deck of remaining cards.
Yeah. No way. Time to throw in the towel. No need to drag it out. The threads of anxiety in my gut loosened.
I shrugged, shuffled the cards back together into one big pile, and started putting them back into the box. To my surprise, the guy in the suit—and it really was a nice suit, sort of a charcoal grey, with a black shirt and a red tie that was the only real splash of color—had sat down and was tapping away on his phone, his coffee so far untouched.
He caught me looking at him, and I smiled.
He looked away.
Well. So much for community outreach with the suit-and-tie crowd. I had a brief, weak moment of wondering if the man could tell I was gay, then shrugged it off. Who cared? This was Meeples. If some random stiff in a suit didn’t like me on sight, I could cope.
I pulled out my bullet journal. My daily to-do list was officially in tatters. I hadn’t studied, though I at least had my calculus textbook in my bag, since I’d grabbed it from my locker before the meeting. In fairness, “teleport to Meeples” wasn’t on the list either, so it hadn’t been part of the daily plan.
I doodled a quick sketch of Candice in the margin. Her hair was a challenge. She almost always wore it braided, and I’d yet to get it right. Today was no different.
The door opened again. This time, it was Alec.
The relief I felt was palpable.
Alec was wearing jeans and a grey sweater. He was a big guy, wide-shouldered and stocky like his dad. He’d needed to start shaving in eighth grade and had more or less given up by the eleventh. He always looked tanned, even in winter, which was unfair, but his skin had been hit harder by the acne fairy than me. It was fading now, and if it was possible for a few acne scars to be attractive, that was how it played out. The overall result was scruffy, but it worked for him. I pretty much thought of him as my walking, talking teddy bear.
Something I could never, ever tell him.
I got up, and he gave me one of his awesome hugs. The last of my nerves melted away as I felt him squeeze me before he let go.
“Hi, Alec,” Candice said.
“Hi,” Alec said, letting go of me.
“Mocha?”
“Thank you. You read my mind.”
We sat down, and he eyed the Onirim box on the table. “Please no.”
I laughed. Alec wasn’t big on board games. “It’s fine. I already played two solo rounds.”
He exhaled. “Good.” His phone pinged. He checked it. “So, that’s the third person to ask me if I know where you went in the last ten minutes.”
I took a swallow of my now not-so-hot chocolate instead of answering. It was almost gone.
“Ah,” Alec said. “You’re avoiding them.”
I put down my cup. “Sort of?” Did it still count as avoiding your friends if you accidentally teleported away from them after a public humiliation? Probably.
“Was it Grayson?”
I shook my head. “No. It wasn’t Grayson. It’s not always Grayson.”
Alec snorted.
Right. Well. Last year’s mess was a whole other mountain to climb.
“I just…” Once again, I wasn’t sure what to tell him. I didn’t like this feeling. At all. I usually knew what to say. It was, like, the only advantage of constantly imagining conversations that hadn’t happened yet.
“Is it about the locker?”
I scowled. “Meeting stuff isn’t supposed to leave the meetings. And you don’t come to the meetings anymore.”
Alec crossed his arms. He was big enough to pull off the intimidation look. “You want me to kick someone’s ass?”
“There’s no one’s ass to kick,” I said.
He frowned.
“Look,” I said. “I can’t rat anyone out. It wasn’t…” I sighed.
“You didn’t see who it was, did you?” Alec said.
Here we go again. The same assumption the club was making. And it was tempting to take the out, but I didn’t want people thinking I’d been stuffed into my locker by a non-existent homophobe at school. I didn’t want people looking at me—once again—like I was damaged goods. The freak. The kid who got shoved around.
Colenap.
I closed my eyes. I didn’t have a strategy for dealing with this. I had run through all sorts of imaginary encounters with potentially hostile idiots in my life. My folks had been so endlessly overprotective that I’d finally gotten them off my back by begging them for self-defense classes. They’d jumped at the idea, and I’d even passed the courses with flying colors. I wasn’t dumb. I didn’t go places without telling them, I didn’t ghost on my friends, and I didn’t leap before I looked.
I was a planner. Planning was the only way I’d gotten any freedom at all.
But this shit? There was no plan for this.
“Cole.” Alec squeezed my hand. I had a weak and selfish moment of wishing he was just like me, but he wasn’t. I’d come to terms with that last year when he’d come out at Rainbow Club. Alec was ace.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I refuse to let this become a thing. It can’t be a thing.”
He didn’t look happy, but he nodded. Alec knew me better than anyone in the club.
I exhaled. If I had Alec in my corner, I could handle anything. He squeezed my hand again.
“Okay,” I said. “Help me figure out how to tell them all I don’t want to do anything about the whole locker thing.”
Candice brought Alec his mocha, and when he thanked her, I glanced up and saw the guy in the suit-and-tie was looking right at us. For a second, I almost let go.
Instead, I held Alec’s hand until the man looked away.
Take that, hater.
* * *
“Are you sure you won’t come?” I said. “Have my back? You know how they can get about standing up for ourselves.”
Alec didn’t have a poker face. He grimaced. “Really? You think having me there would help?”
“Grayson can be a complete dick,” I said, “but he doesn’t speak for all of us, and if I’m going to face them and tell them to drop it, I’d rather not stare down their ‘we’re not mad, we’re just disappointed’ faces on my own.” I gave him my best puppy eyes. “Please?”
Alec groaned. “You’re relentless.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
“Is that what you call it?” He shrugged. “Sure. Okay. One meeting.”
It would have been heroically uncool to punch the air in victory, so I held back. Just. I had a plan and a wingman. Life, as they say, was good. Bring on Thursday.
We gathered our stuff, and I paid for our drinks and brought Onirim back to Candice. Alec put his arm over my shoulder and gave me another squeeze, and I couldn’t help but glance to see if suit-and-tie man was going to react, but he was gone. The table he’d been sitting at now had a couple of kids I recognized from school, playing a game I didn’t recognize.
We made our way to the front of the store, and I nearly tripped us both up when I stopped just a step short of the door.
Right. Doors.
“What’s up?” Alec said.
“
So, it’s possible I’m developing a door phobia,” I said.
“What?”
I forced a smile and gripped the door handle, hyper-aware of everything around me. I just wanted to pass through the door and end up on the street. A normal thing normal people did with normal doors. I felt the door give, felt the cooler air outside against the back of my hand, and then my face. I heard the sounds of the street outside.
There was…something. A…tug?
Go. Just go.
I stepped through.
And nothing happened. I was on the street.
Alec followed, and he touched my shoulder.
“It’s okay if it threw you,” he said.
“Pardon?”
“The locker. It’s okay if you’re freaked out a bit about it. Really.”
He didn’t know what he was really talking about, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t right. I was indeed freaked out. And more than a bit.
“Thanks,” I said. “Hey, any chance you can give me a ride home?”
“Of course,” he said. Then he blinked. “Wait. Did you walk here from school?”
I shrugged. Watch the amazing planner not lie by not answering the question at all.
“Dude,” he said. “Did you run? You were here pretty fast.”
“I got here like that,” I said, and I snapped my fingers.
He shook his head. “I’m parked over here.”
* * *
“So. Was it just the locker thing?”
Alec’s Jeep was a lot like him. Big, maybe a little dinged up, and super comforting. It smelled like him, too: a combination of coffee and something vaguely sweet. He worked on it at his dad’s garage and had pretty much fixed it from a barely running piece of junk into a perfectly good car even if it maybe still resembled one that wasn’t.
I faced him. “Sorry?”
“Last night. You said you wanted to talk, but we didn’t really talk.”
Oh. Right. “We talked.”
“Uh-huh.” There was no doubt about how much he believed me. Crap. We didn’t often do this whole “talking about our feelings” thing, but I wasn’t going to get out of this easily.
I supposed I could just blurt it out. But the more I tried to figure out a way to bring up my teleportation, the more my chest tightened. I caught myself staring at Alec, his big shoulders and his scruffy hair and his surplus jacket that looked like it was going to fall apart at any minute, and I just couldn’t get my damn mouth to work.
He glanced at me. “It’s okay,” he said.
“It’s really not.” I exhaled.
“When you’re ready. I get it. Just…you’re okay, right? You’d tell me if you weren’t okay?” Man, he always could see right through me.
I couldn’t get the words out, so I nodded. Even with Alec so close, I couldn’t bridge the gap. He might as well have been on the other side of the river. Somewhere far away.
Like, say, the aviation museum.
Thinking about my trip sure didn’t help my mood. I closed my eyes and imagined telling Alec. Hey, Alec, it turns out I can teleport. You got any secrets you want to share?
“Pardon?” Alec said.
Shit. Had I said that out loud? “Hmm?”
Alec shook his head. “Thought you said something.”
We pulled up in front of my house.
“I’m okay,” I said. I even meant it.
Alec’s smile always made me feel better.
“We’re overdue for a movie,” he said.
“Truth.”
“We’ll figure it out.”
“After Thursday, maybe? I think I’ll have an open social calendar after that.”
“Don’t underestimate them. Y’know, except for Grayson. Grayson will no doubt live down to your expectations.”
I rolled my eyes. Those two.
Alec didn’t pull away until I was at my front door. I waved. Once his Jeep was out of sight, I put my hand on the door handle, then let go like it might bite me.
Doors. They were everywhere, once you thought about it. What with buildings and stuff.
Just like before. Just focus on staying where you are. You’re going home. Going through the door into your own home is easy. This is where you live. You’re not going anywhere.
By the time I opened the door, I had myself completely convinced it was going to be fine.
You’d think I’d learn.
Poof.
To-Do
X Bring home calculus textbook
Exam prep: calculus, biology
Exam prep: English (reread?)
Exam prep: French (practice exam!)
Movie night with Alec this w/e?
X Make lunch for Tuesday, slacker
X “What happened?” joke
Laundry
Slap Malik King
Doors? DOORS!
Alec at RC on Thursday
Seven
The good news was I was home.
The bad news was it was the wrong one.
Don’t let anyone else be here. Please don’t let anyone else be here.
The new owners of the house I’d lived in until I was ten had repainted the entrance hall a soft yellow. It was nice. Sort of cheerful. Did cheerful yellow-paint people freak out when teenage boys showed up in their homes unannounced? The coat rack didn’t have any coats on it. Maybe that meant I wouldn’t have to find out.
The dizziness passed while I stood there, breathing. Even faster than the last time.
Okay. First thing, get the hell out of here. Preferably unnoticed.
I turned around, grabbed the door handle, but it didn’t budge. Locked and dead-bolted.
The organized part of me filed that away as interesting information. Apparently, I could teleport to the other side of a locked door. The rest of me tried not to notice how much my hands were shaking as I undid the two locks and cracked the front door. No one was outside.
I was a good half-hour walk from where I wanted to be. We’d moved when my dad’s business needed an office, but neither my mom nor my dad had wanted to leave town, despite my campaign for us to move to Ottawa or Toronto or anywhere that wasn’t where Colenap loomed over my head.
Still, a half-hour walk wasn’t so bad, right? I mean, it was lucky we hadn’t moved to Toronto after all. How in the world would I have gotten back to Toronto from here?
The same way you came.
I froze, hand still on the doorknob.
You need a plan. You need to stop doing this at random.
These were facts. How long before the incredible teleporting freak ended up somewhere really unfortunate? My locker was bad enough. There were worse options. Public ones.
I let go of the door.
So. Was there a plan to cover this?
Ignore it and it will go away? I didn’t even sound convincing in my own head.
I took a long, deep breath. The same way I came.
Home, I thought. Specifically, my own, current home. Where my stuff was, where my mother and father were. I pictured the front porch, and the lopsided light fixture my father had installed just shy of straight. I thought about the breakfast bar we all often ate at, despite my mother swearing to use the dining room more. Then I pictured my room, my bed, my desk.
I stepped through the door.
Poof.
* * *
I was either going to dance or burst into tears.
Maybe both.
I was in my bedroom. My bedroom, in my house. I pumped my fist in the air.
“Yes!”
The effect was maybe a little lessened by the way my voice cracked, and it’s possible I had to wipe my eyes on my sleeve, but success is success, and I wasn’t going to ruin my own moment. Teleportation. I could do this. I just had to put figuring out this whole teleporting thing on the to-do list, right between calculus and biology. Totally. I looked at myself in my mirror.
“You’re so screwed,” I muttered.
“Cole?”
I jumped. It was
my mom. I whirled around, but my bedroom door was closed, which again struck me as something to remember.
“Yeah?” I opened the door.
She was still wearing her dental hygienist outfit. She had a ton of different patterned scrubs. Today it was butterflies.
“I didn’t hear you come home. You made me jump.”
“Sorry.”
“Your dad’s making dinner tonight. You want to help?” She stretched, raising her hands over her head. I heard the little pop her neck made.
“I will do that.”
“Okay. Shower time for me.” She looked wrecked. We both got those really dark smudges under our eyes if we were tired.
“Long day?”
She nodded. “No empty units, no no-shows, and an angry mother who blamed me for her daughter’s five cavities.”
This was not new. It blew my mind how often my mother got the blame for the state of other people’s children’s teeth. She saw them once every six months. What did they think she was doing, drilling little holes into their teeth to make sure cavities formed later?
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, and Dr. Joshi had a fainter, so we had the paramedics in again. Last patient of the day, of course.”
“Diabetic?” I asked. It had happened before.
She smiled at me. “This is why you’re my favorite child. You listen to my stories and remember them.”
“I’m your only child.”
“Still counts. How about you?” she asked, eyeing my lip. “How did you feel today? Did you eat?”
I crossed my heart. And my stomach rumbled, loud. Traitor.
She laughed. “I’m sensing a growth spurt.”
“Go have your shower. I’ll go make dinner happen faster.”
She waved and was off down the hallway.
“Okay,” I said, regarding my bedroom door. “Pay attention.”
I stepped through my bedroom door into the hall, as slow as I could, and hyper-aware. I felt that…something. Like a tug, or a pull that seemed to hook into the center of my chest behind my ribs. It held on to me for a second, and I wondered where I’d go if I let the tug pull on me.
Exit Plans for Teenage Freaks Page 5