by Shay Bravo
CHAPTER SIX
Here is the thing about volunteer work at the History Department main office: it sucks.
You’re not superhappy about it, the people in the office aren’t superhappy about it, and the only person winning is the dean of the department because he doesn’t have to see you or the secretaries sulking. It’s a slow death. Arranging flyers, putting out the trash, taking letters to different offices, resisting the urge to play Minesweeper on the old laptops in the department.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there’s a lot of great volunteer opportunities and people actually driven by passion for them. This simply isn’t one of those.
“If I placed a picture of your face right in front of you I bet you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference,” Carlos says, slapping something against my shoulder.
“What does that even mean?” I remove the sticky note he pasted on my shirt. It’s a badly drawn zombified version of me that looks like it’s about to fall asleep.
“If you keep staring at the clock people are going to think you’re a statue instead of a volunteer.” He tries to stick another note on me but I give him the glare of death and he stops. “You shouldn’t let the secretaries see you so bored or they’ll start complaining.”
“Who are you, the volunteer police?”
“No, but I am your club vice president. If you get kicked out of the department for not doing anything you could get put on probation with the club.”
I narrow my eyes.
“That’s against club policy and I literally went to deliver a message to the business building five minutes ago.” I know what he wants. He has a stack of educational magazines that are supposed to be delivered to the professors’ offices and he doesn’t want to move his lazy ass.
It’s not like I don’t know some of the professors; in fact, I’d love to catch up with some of them—after all, some scholars appreciate their students coming by and visiting them outside of office hours to strike up conversations, they’re people too. Carlos dragged me into volunteering this morning, though, when he mentioned I was falling behind on my metrics, but my mind is simply not into any of this.
“Why don’t I help with the emails you’ve been going over while you go deliver those academic papers to the professors?” I scoot my chair closer to him.
“I think I’m fine.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
We stare at each other. Five minutes later both of us have half a stack of magazines and are walking down the hall. The Liberal Arts Building is one of the older ones at WCC, with large windows along a couple of hallways that face southwest onto the square and allow students to see the other buildings across. The concrete floors have specks of white in them and posters for theater plays and upcoming concerts line the walls. The professors’ offices are on the third floor, and the sun is particularly bright this morning as we make our way down the hall.
“Think about it, it’s faster this way.” He places a magazine in the file holder attached to the professor’s door.
“Whatever, I’m not talking to you for five minutes.”
“You just talked to me.”
“Shut up.”
“You did it again.”
Rolling a magazine in my hand, I approach him like I’m going to hit him when I remember something. I take out my phone, which has been on mute because I didn’t want to be that volunteer who is on her phone all the time. There’s still about two hours left before the club meeting and a bit of an hour and a half before I meet Ethan outside of the Liberal Arts Building.
Carlos pushes his head against mine, trying to catch a glance of my phone’s screen.
“Who you texting?”
“No one.” I elbow him away and squeak when he pokes my side. “Stop it.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Shut it!”
“It started out with a fork, how did it end up like this?”
“Carlos—”
“It was only a fork. It was only a fork.”
“You know what? Screw you.” I drop my magazines on the floor in front of him. “Have fun delivering the rest of these.”
He laughs as I walk away.
“You know I’m kidding, Solecito.”
“I don’t care, I don’t like you.”
“I’ll buy some raspas after the meeting if you help me.”
There’s a little raspas place on the outskirts of town that we like to hit up every now and then. That’s how he gets me every single time, that or IHOP. No matter what happens, he knows it’ll work and I have cursed him many times over it.
“Will you buy me el volcán?”
The volcán is a chamoy shaved ice with lime juice, pineapple, and strawberries, and topped with chili drizzle and chili powder, gummy bears, and Airheads. Incredibly unhealthy and heavenly good.
“That and anything else you might want.”
I pretend to think about his offer for a second before grabbing the stack of magazines I had dropped and hurrying down the hall, my sneakers making squeaky sounds which are soon followed by Carlos’s.
“What exactly does this club represent?” asks Ethan as we walk toward the club room. Carlos is still sizing him up. The neat thing about having Saturday meetings is that there’s usually way fewer students than during the week—sure the odd couple of people who like to hang out in the lobbies or come to drink coffee with their favorite faculty member are around, but other than that, the halls are empty.
“I’m sure you believe it’s an illegal entity that manufactures drugs and steals candy from children,” I say.
“Which is truly a possibility,” Carlos adds.
“Really, we’re your average school club, but one with a peculiar initiation process,” I continue.
“We like to have fun,” Carlos points out.
“Breaking the law?” Ethan is far from amused at our banter.
“Isn’t that what I said?” Carlos drapes his arm over my shoulders. “Wasn’t it, Sol?”
“I didn’t hear any difference,” I answer.
Ethan looks like he wants to strangle us both, but we have arrived at the club room.
Shaking Carlos’s arm off my shoulders, I turn to Ethan. “Don’t threaten Anna or the club in the meeting. You’re not going to gain any friends by doing that.”
When we open the door, we find Alan and Ophelia arguing over a desk on which a tray with two sandwiches rests. Scott is on top of the professor’s desk eating what appears to be a third sandwich. Anna is nowhere to be seen. Two girls sit at the back of the classroom, talking quietly, and only turn to look at us for a brief moment before going back to what they were doing.
“What’s going on?” Carlos asks, strutting in.
“It’s about the sandwich,” says Alan.
“It’s not about the sandwich,” Ophelia says, although the way she says this makes me feel it is about the sandwich. “He’s being overdramatic because he forgot to specify what his food restrictions were.”
“She’s trying to kill me!”
Ophelia throws her hands up at his comment and walks away, taking her own food with her as Carlos approaches Alan and Scott.
I tune out the conversation about Alan being allergic to tuna, and the dark theory of Ophelia trying to poison him. There is also a Shakespeare joke thrown around.
“So, this is your cult,” Ethan says.
“I told you not to call it a cult.”
“Where is your leader?”
“President.”
When we met him outside of the building, the first thing Ethan asked Carlos was whether or not he was the leader of the cult I was in, followed by if he was aware that I bribed people to run me over. Carlos was amused by both of those, but yes, he was aware because I’d bribed him in the past multiple times to run me over; what kin
d of friends would we be if I hadn’t?
“And I prefer the title emperor,” he’d said to Ethan.
“Pharaoh is better,” I replied.
I sit down at a desk closer to the door and Ethan follows me. Carlos and the other three are still arguing about food, but the conversation seems to have shifted to whether or not you can be allergic to things such as salt and pepper.
Ethan takes his glasses off, looks at them, then puts them back on as he sits down at the desk across from me.
“So, Sol? That’s your name, right?” he says.
“That’s not important.”
“You hadn’t told me your name.”
“I gave you a hint.”
“What?”
I can’t blame him for not knowing more than one language, but he could have done his research at the very least.
“Sol means sun in Spanish—”
“You’re Spanish . . .”
“Latina, Mexican, not Spanish. That’s a language or it’s used to refer to people from Spain, which I’m not.”
Ethan lets out a single laugh and holds up his hand. “Sorry, it was the first thing that came to mind. So, why did you join this group?” he asks.
I suddenly feel like I’m in an interview I did not prepare for. But as I’m scrambling for good ideas to deflect any questioning that might lead to me sharing personal information, Anna walks in, blue hair shining over her bright-orange jacket.
“Hello, my children.” She’s carrying two cases of soda and some bags hang from her right elbow. Every time she goes anywhere it looks like she owns the place, and she has a strut to match. I wish I had that kind of energy. “Sorry for being late, I woke up not too long ago and realized I had to pass by the grocery store for some snacks for you all.”
Ethan grabs my arm and hisses, “That’s your leader?”
“Our dear leader, yes, Mr. You-live-in-a-cult.”
“No, I mean that’s Anna Howard.”
“Yes, and you’re Ethan Winston—”
His eyes widen. “You know my last name?”
“No, I know your grandparents’ last name. I’m assuming you go by the same name.”
“I won’t be getting my key back. Not from her, at least.”
Carlos is bringing Anna into the conversation about the poisonous sandwich, which Ophelia, eating her own lunch, is clearly fed up with, and hasn’t had a chance to notice me and Ethan huddling together in the corner of the room.
“What? Is she your ex-girlfriend or something?” The drama would be a nice distraction, honestly.
“Not exactly.”
Anna laughs and turns around to scan the room, her eyes falling on us.
The room goes silent. This is soap-opera worthy and I wish I had brought coffee or pan dulce to eat as I watch.
A small smile appears on Anna’s lips as she says, “Hey, neighbor.”
Ethan goes rigid, and I and the other group members quickly look between them. There is static in the air as she beams at him.
“I’ll talk to you at the end of the meeting. First, we’ll get some things sorted out for everyone else.”
He doesn’t answer, but the mixture of surprise and simmering anger in his posture tells me that this talk will possibly not go down easy.
The meeting goes over basic club activities. Anna explains the initiation process and answers any questions the newbies might have. She assures everyone the club is normal and harmless and would never put anyone in danger, but avoids any questions about what exactly the dares would be like. Ethan is silent throughout the entire ordeal.
Once the meeting is adjourned, Anna and Ethan talk in the corner of the room. I intend to wait and see if anything interesting goes down, but Carlos pulls me away and out the door.
“Do you wanna come hang out at my place?” he asks. It’s not unusual for us to be the first out, and as we walk down the hall I begin to feel like it’s another regular Saturday.
Not even a couple of steps later, though, the loud bang of the classroom door being slammed open reminds me today is not a regular Saturday, and as Ethan speed walks past us I get the feeling that his little talk with Anna didn’t go quite as well as I secretly hoped it would.
“Actually, I’m going to check out what that’s about. I’ll message you later about it.” I unhook my arm from Carlos’s and follow the angry man making his way through the Liberal Arts Building.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“You guys are neighbors. What’s the big deal?” I ask, leaning against the side of the monkey bars as I watch him pace around the playground tower.
There is a small park you can cross if you’re making your way to the freshman parking lot (the worst parking lot by the way, and another reason why I prefer biking) from the rear of the Liberal Arts Building. I assume the park is here in case some students have children, or perhaps for faculty members who have a daycare close to work, although most of the time it’s students who hang around here to eat their lunches when the weather is nice. Today the weather is not, in fact, nice. The sun is high in the sky, warm even though we’re nearing the end of January. While the wind is cool, the metal of the playground threatens to burn through my shirt and sear my skin.
Ethan sighs and takes off his glasses as he sits at the top of the slide. We walked here on the way to his car after the meeting; he didn’t say a single word the whole way, but he waited for me to unlock my bike and walk with him, so I assume he has something to get off his chest.
“We’re not neighbors anymore.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
He looks at me. Without the glasses his face makes me go: Whoa, man, he could get it.
“Never mind.”
“Tell me or we’ll never get your stupid key.”
“He, I mean, she, and I had a thing in middle school, but I might have rejected her.”
“She was your girlfriend?”
“No, we never dated. It was before—we kissed once or twice then I moved in with my grandparents and we went to different schools after that.” He puts on his glasses, as if having them on will somehow make this clearer.
“You don’t think that this is all some sort of plan to get revenge on you, right?” I look down at my phone. Diane texted something about me coming over to her place to watch the movie I never got around to, but I haven’t answered yet. I should really pick up around the house and work on that essay before doing anything else.
“Do you think so?”
“No. No one holds on to grudges that long It’s been years, and she has a boyfriend from what I know. What did you guys talk about after the meeting?”
Ethan shrugs, sliding down the bright-orange slide. “That you guys need more members to keep the club running and that she wasn’t allowed to give the key back because it was policy, unless I was a member.”
“Did you ask her how she got the key in the first place?”
“You think I didn’t?”
I press a hand against my temple, the ghost of a headache singing “I Feel It Coming” by The Weeknd in my ear. “Humor me, Winston.”
“She claims an ex-club member who knew my grandparents gave it to her. I told her that’s bullshit but she shrugged and said it was okay if I don’t believe her.”
That does sound suspicious, but I haven’t known Anna long enough to figure out whether she’s lying or not. She doesn’t share a lot of things, though I can’t say I don’t do the same. At the same time, she also looks like that cool girl you want to be friends with but don’t know how to approach.
I look down at my phone to check how much time I’ve spent here and not at home, which is where I wish I was. Biking is going to be a pain.
“What will you do?”
“About?” His expression contorts.
“The club. Are you joining us?”
&nbs
p; The more times Ethan and I have spoken about the club, the more it really does start to sound like an occult organization where people become enthralled with their members. Although, the club getting dissolved because of a lack of members sounds like a better resolution than me getting prosecuted.
And maybe going to jail.
Jesus, when did I enter this strange parallel universe of my boring life?
“Are you crazy? Break the law? Sol, if someone like me”—he gestures at his face—“enters someone’s house, I’m getting shot. No questions, just boom. Dead.”
I grimace. “Don’t say that.”
“Am I wrong?”
“Okay, I could ask them not to put you in any situation that could put you at risk of being shot.”
“How? Have you seen any amount of news lately? I could be walking down the street and—” He pushes his hands through his hair, shoulders tense as he exhales. There’s a part of me that wants to put a hand on his shoulder in reassurance, but not being sure which way he’ll react, I opt for offering my best idea. “I can’t mess around, Sol, I don’t get that luxury.”
“I have a good source.” Although Carlos, who jumped out of his second-story window with an umbrella and broke his leg when we were younger, is not necessarily the best of sources. “If you don’t want to join, fine, but you have to swear not to tell anyone about what goes on in the club. Not to me, to Anna.”
“Why does it all come back to her?”
“She’s the president, Ethan, everything goes through her. If something happens to one of us, it will all fall on her.”
I’m not entirely sure if it was her easygoing attitude to me being found or the fact that she always seems to be on top of everything that told me I wouldn’t have been in a lot of trouble if I had been found. She was a lot more public with her initiation, and so was Carlos—it really makes me wonder about the club’s involvement with the WCC, or even the city of Westray itself.
“You can’t possibly believe that I’ll trust you.” His eyes narrow as a breeze passes the playground, the trees around us moving slowly in the warm afternoon sun.
“You already do, otherwise we wouldn’t be standing here, would we? Besides, I wouldn’t have any sort of good outcome by lying to you.”