Escape: The Ashwood Lies (Prequel)

by RJ Infantino

  Ben chewed through his nerves and eyed the door longingly. It took him five minutes to finally speak.

  “Look, I was homeschooled until I came here, and we didn’t have any dances on the farm, obviously. Last year I just hid out in my room and avoided every single one of them. And . . . uhh . . . I was wondering if you could maybe, I don’t know. I mean, I guess what I want to know is basically how you’re supposed to dance with a girl.”

  Tre and I locked eyes. We tried to keep it together. Really, we did. That lasted for about two seconds before we disintegrated into a pile of laughter. Tre doubled over, clutching the dresser in front of him for support. I wheezed great gulps of air trying to compose myself. Through teary eyes, I watched Ben glow red with embarrassment. I tried to stop, but the sight of Tre’s convulsing was contagious.

  Struggling for air, Tre managed to say, “That’s why—gasp—I just couldn't—gasp—promise—gasp—gasp—wait till the guys hear about this!”

  Ben stood up, mortified. “No, you can't.”

  Tre was joking, of course, but guilt started to taint my laughter. Everyone had been in Ben’s position at one point. It wasn’t Ben’s fault that he was the only one crazy enough to ask about it. Before Ben could escape, I put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down to the couch. “Sit down. We'll see what we can do with you. Tre, what do you think?”

  “Well, first we’ve got to do something about those clothes.”

  “My clothes? What's wrong with my clothes?” Ben thumbed the buttons of his short-sleeved pastel button-down.

  “Your shirt’s hideous, but that's not what I am talking about. Are you boxers or briefs?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What are you wearing, farm boy? Boxers or briefs?”

  “What does that matter?” Ben asked defensively.

  “If it’s boxers, you need some tighter pants. With briefs, you’ve got a little bit more freedom.”

  Ben looked to me for help. But I just shrugged and nodded.

  “But aren't briefs, I don't know, for nerds? I mean, isn't a girl going to laugh when she sees I’m wearing some tighty-whities?”

  “Man, where do you get this stuff?” Tre asked, trying to fight through another fit of laugher. “You don't even know how to dance yet and you’re already worried about a girl taking your pants off.”

  Ben raised his hands in surrender.

  “Alright, next you need to take off your belt,” Tre said.

  “Ok, this is just getting ridiculous.”

  “I'm serious. Think about it. If you were a girl dancing with some guy, would you want a belt buckle grinding into the base of your spinal column?”

  “No . . .”

  “I don’t know why in the world a girl would want to rub her butt up on a guy’s lap in the first place, but the least we can do is make sure it isn’t painful for her.”

  Ben stood up skeptically and unfastened his belt, sending his jeans sagging to mid-thigh before he finally caught them.

  He looked mortified, but I just shrugged. “Well, now at least we know it’s boxers.”

  Tre brought a finger to his lips and shook his head. He eyed Ben unapologetically, a sculptor before his first chisel. “Chase, get the boy some pants. And a real shirt while you're at it. You’re about the same size.”

  Tre could work in one of those fancy clothing stores with his fashionable, creative, and thoroughly obnoxious shtick. After some fishing about, I selected a faded-purple cotton tee and a pair of slim-fit jeans.

  “Come on, now I just know you guys are messing with me. I can't wear purple,” Ben looked at Tre for help that wasn’t coming.

  “I'm not even going to dignify that one with a response,” Tre said.

  Ben looked completely overwhelmed. “Look, guys, thanks for the help but I came here to learn how to dance, not to get a makeover.”

  “No point in learning if you scare everybody off with that shirt you have on.”

  Ben sighed in defeat and finally ditched his well-mocked shirt.

  Tre whistled. “Look at you, kid. I should probably stop making jokes before you decide to kick my ass.”

  Tre wasn’t wrong. Sure, Ben was only a second year, but all those hours on the farm had paid off. He was ripped. Of course, Ben was oblivious as ever. After putting on the pants, he ditched his button-down and reluctantly slipped on the V-neck.

  After a nod of approval, Tre slumped into the couch to admire his own reflection again, this time in the black glare of a silent computer screen. “My work’s complete. Chase, you’re up.”

  I threw a sock at him. “Thanks for leaving me the easy part.” A hopeful look sprung up on Ben’s face. I had to kill it. “This? This isn’t easy. You’ve never danced with a girl before? Ever?”

  “Well at weddings, sure But I don’t think that they will be playing the electric slide tonight.”

  Tre swallowed down a chortle and went back to readjusting his shirt so that it showed just the right amount of chest.

  “You’re not wrong,” I said, shaking my head. My eyes scanned the room before settling on the standing fan in the corner. Perfect.

  I dragged it into the middle of the room, trying to brush off the dust.

  “Ben, I’d like you to meet . . .” I paused, trying to think of a creative name. Then, I spotted the brand name chiseled into the plastic at the base of the fan. “I’d like you to meet Arctic Chill, your first dance.”

  Tre didn’t laugh this time, but that was only because he was back on his phone texting again. I reached around the big, grated fan face and readjusted it until it slid down to hip height. “So, pretend that this rounded part here is your girl’s butt.”

  Even Ben laughed at that one. This had to be the most absurd thing that had ever happened in our room. And that was saying something.

  “The first thing that you have to consider is your approach. You can’t just sneak attack them from behind,” I said. Ben nodded seriously. “You really only have two acceptable options. The smooth way is to first make eye contact, smile—you know, do your thing. When she seems interested, put out your hand and when she puts her hand in yours, spin her around in a little half-ballet pirouette. Pull her close and you are right in the grind. It’s smooth, and more important, it’s consensual.”

  In reality I had never done the first option. I wasn’t anywhere close enough to smooth to pull off something like that. But it sounded good, so I went with it. I always opted for option number two.

  “Your other option is what I like to call the awkward shuffle. Start off by dancing your way in front of the girl. Don’t get up in her face or anything, just close enough so that she knows you’re there. Make your eye contact, and then start casually dancing your way over to her. Not too quick, though. That’s why it’s called the awkward shuffle. You want to do it slowly to give her time to react. If she's interested she'll start to turn her back toward you, inviting you in for the dance.”

  “Wait, when she turns away that means she’s interested?” Ben looked confused.

  “Yeah, because if you get over there and she keeps trying to face you, then she’s trying to block you.”

  “You know, there is a third option,” Tre said out of nowhere. “You could always just ask her.”

  I glanced at Ben and we both shook our heads. We were cut from the same cloth, a lot less cool than people thought we were.

  Ben slouched down onto the couch next to Tre. It was a tight fit. “Why couldn’t it just be easy? I’m not like you guys. I mean, you could have a talk show about this stuff.”

  Tre perked up with a British accent. “And tonight, we will continue our study of the mating habits of Homo sapiens with a special emphasis on the Tre as we attempt to discover exactly why girls just can’t keep their hands off him.”

  I left Tre to his monologue and turned back to Ben. “We’re not done. You still have to learn the actual dancing part. You need to start off with a good base. Keep your knees bent and your weight light up on
your toes.” I wondered if Ben realized that my advice was almost word for word how our basketball coach taught the defensive stance. Actually, defense was a not the worst metaphor for dealing with girls.

  I gestured toward our fan standing innocently in the middle of the room. “Alright Ben, let me see what you’ve got.”

  He approached the fan with cautious purpose, pausing just in case Tre and I really were messing with him. With a sigh, he positioned one foot on each side of the circular base, bent his knees, rocked onto the balls of his feet, and gently pressed the crotch of his jeans against the fan grate. Reflexively, his hands stretched out to his sides, exactly like he was defending the fan out on a basketball court. Tre hit the switch, and suddenly the fan whirled into motion. Ben dutifully shuffled right along with it, like a crab.

  It was too much. Tre and I lost it again. Our composure was pretty delicate already, and now it could only collapse into raucous laughter. Even Ben was grinning as he stubbornly maintained his defensive stance. No matter what happened at the dance tonight, there was no way it was going to be any more entertaining than this.

  “Alright, alright,” I said, trying to catch my breath. “You’ve almost got it. Now you just need to be brave enough to touch her.”

  For the first time, Ben noticed his awkwardly extended arms and quickly drew them into his sides. His face, once pink, was now medium rare with embarrassment.

  “You want your hands to rest naturally on her hip bones, the perfect location for both form and function. It’s sensual but not creepy, and it puts your fingers on the pulse of her rhythm. Don’t be that guy who tries to lead the girl with his hands either. It’s a bad idea even for people who think they know what they’re doing.”

  A pained concentration twisted across Ben’s face. And then the door opened.

  There were a couple guys outside, but it was Dante who poked his head in. His deep brown eyes darted to Ben frozen against the fan. “I don’t even want to know.”

  To be fair, Ben learning how to dance probably wasn’t even in the top ten of weirdest things happening in the dorms at that moment.

  “Come on,” Dante said, mock disapproval dripping from his voice. “We’re already fashionably late.”

  Chapter Three

  The thump of synthetic bass echoed through the old stairwell as our feet tumbled down the stairs. The six of us could have made a pretty intimidating sight if we weren’t a bunch of nervous guys showing up purposefully late to a high school dance.

  Dante wasn’t nervous, of course. He didn’t even have to pretend. His deep brown eyes exuded a chilling calm that spread across his mix of Italian and Egyptian features. He was annoyingly attractive, and he knew it, even if he’d never admit it out loud. And his shirt? Well, that silky black button-down definitely cost more than every shirt I owned combined. That was one of the perks when your father was an international oil baron. I didn’t put a lot of stock in antiquated notions like the “cool kids,” but Dante definitely existed in a world apart.

  I gave him as hard a time as anyone, but he was anything but cliché, and his weird collection of friends was the perfect example of that fact. Take me, for example. I’d never left the state of Pennsylvania. Dante hopped across the globe. He’d seen things, done things, that I’d never even imagined. But Dante didn’t care about that stuff, not in a literal sense. No, Dante was more interested in being interested. He liked to be challenged, engaged, entertained. And for some reason, he found that in me.

  I don’t know if we would have ever been friends if we weren’t roommates during our first year, but sometimes that’s just the way things worked. Actually, I don’t even know if friends was the right word exactly. I think he never could fully get a grasp on me, and in Dante’s world that came with respect. It was his own unique brand of “friendship.”

  The rest of his crew made even less sense on the surface, but Dante always had his reasons for pulling someone into his circle. Marcus was the worst of the bunch. His red, freckled face burned with a seemingly endless frustration with the world. It was too much to deal with even on a good day, and Marcus didn’t have many good days. I think Dante kept Marcus close because he’d do anything to impress him. That was more valuable than you’d think.

  Toshi, on the other hand, didn’t care about impressing anyone. He was an exchange student from Japan, so he and Dante were always lumped together during the school’s exchange functions, but I couldn’t really tell if he actually liked Dante all that much or not. He usually kept to himself, which is why I was surprised that that he was going to the dance at all. He caught me looking at him and just flipped his half-jelled hair coolly away. I always got the sense that Toshi didn’t like me, but I could never figure out why.

  And how did Ben, Tre, and I fit in? Well, as much as we tried to pretend, high school boys weren’t all that different from high school girls. We all got stupidly nervous. Traveling in packs was safe.

  Down in the main hall, I could feel the music trembling through the aging floorboards, the alien sounds clashing with my own internal rhythms. The door to the dining room stood in front of us like a present waiting to be unwrapped. Full of hope and, most likely, disappointment. After three years, we’d gone to countless of these stupid dances, but the first one of the year always held a unique promise. Each new year held new potential. Even Dante lingered at the door for a second, preserving that moment where anything was possible.

  But with one swift pull, the trance was broken. A wave of sound, heat, and musk rushed through the opened door out of the darkness. The dining room was unrecognizable: all the old wooden dinner tables were pushed up against the walls, and empty chairs lined the new perimeter. Flashing strobe lights dangled from the chandeliers. And amazingly, the smell of that evening’s beef stew was almost undetectable. A shapeless mob gyrated in the dark near the center of the floor, while pockets of the more timid formed shadows chatting off to the sides.

  A few people turned to look at the sudden flood of light that we let in from the door. It was almost enough for me to just bag the whole thing and consider following Ian up to the attic after all, but instead, I pushed to the front and of our little group and headed toward the far wall. I walked just slowly enough to casually scan the crowd, and just fast enough so it wasn’t obvious. I didn’t see her, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. Maybe it’d be better if she wasn’t. I climbed up to sit on one of the tables, setting my feet to rest on the chair below.

  Everyone followed me except for Tre. He just dove right into the thick of it. Sometimes I was jealous about how easy he made it look, but the truth was, most of the time, I liked my view from the edges. You could see things from there, understand them. You couldn’t do that from inside the fray. Maybe that’s why so many people jumped in.

  Ben took a seat in the chair next to my feet, and the rest of the gang fed in around us. The funny thing is, some of the younger kids probably looked at us sitting there and thought we were so cool. Trust me, we weren’t. But that’s all coolness is: perspective and illusion. A glance at Ben’s tense shoulders reminded me to relax. What those younger kids didn’t realize was that apathy was anything but effortless. I settled into my perch and scanned the crowd for friendly faces.

  After teaching Ben how to dance, I felt an aching responsibility to actually get out there and do it. The truth was: I didn’t dance much. Never did. Sometimes when I had a girlfriend, sure, but I probably don’t have to tell you that wasn’t very often.

  I didn’t even really know what I was doing there that night. Dances really weren’t my scene. Maybe this will make me sound weird, but I liked talking to people. Listening was even better. There wasn’t any of that on the dance floor. Honestly, I didn’t see anything out there interesting at all. Entertaining, sure. But interesting? No. The truth was interesting, and I didn’t see any truth.

  What I did see was something else entirely. Technically, yes, it was a dance, but the truth was a different kind of choreography. Everyone had
their roles. Shy. Nervous. Bold. Delusional. Each person was performing a version of themselves, the version that they thought other people expected, the version they thought we wanted. It was exhausting just watching it.

  The amorphous blob of bodies ebbed and flowed to the beat, revealing, hiding, and shuffling a mix of sights that ranged from the hilarious to the downright disturbing. Dancing, or whatever it was called that they were doing out there with their bodies, was not the most elegant display of affection.

  At the edge near the doors, a couple of second years were displaying just how much affection they had. (It was a lot). Under the blinking strobe lights, it looked like they each had about six arms, and every single one of them was exploring their dance partner. The owners of the arms barely seemed to notice, they were more focused on trying to, well, someone less experienced might have called it making out, but from where I was sitting, it looked dangerously close to waterboarding. It was a miracle that the professors on duty hadn’t pried them apart with a crowbar yet.

  Now that I thought about it, where were all the professors? Usually, they were all over these things. Something was happening, and it was probably a lot more interesting than this mess.

  I was just about to make up an excuse to leave and check it out when my eyes found Taylor. Surrounded by her friends bouncing around to the electronic beat, a girl, the girl, seemed suspended in grace. Her hips swayed softly to a music that was entirely her own. Eyes closed in her own little world, I wondered desperately what it was like. The rest of the mob seemed childish in comparison. Every eye in the room must have been on her, but it didn’t matter. She didn’t notice. She didn’t even know I was there, but in that moment, it felt like she was the only other person in the room.