Chapter 1: Just Out Here Trying to Play

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It’s about a quarter to one in the morning, the floor tiles are so cold I can feel them through my shoes, and I’m starting to think for probably the hundredth time tonight that this wasn’t a very good idea.

It sure seemed like a good one three hours ago. Who doesn’t love old Super Joybox games, right? And who, when they saw someone playing old Super Joybox games alone in a chilly dorm lounge on a freezing-cold Saturday night, wouldn’t think, “Whoa, look at that cool dude I’ve definitely met before but don’t remember at all. I should go over and start a conversation and do all the hard work of making friends in college for him!”

Everyone, it turns out. The answer to both questions is “everyone,” and at this point I’ve got about three hours of evidence to prove it.

I guess I get it, on the one hand. The SJB was vintage before I or anyone in this building was even born, and Battle Bot Z doesn’t really measure up to any game less than two decades old. But on the other hand, encyclopedic knowledge of ancient side-scrollers is the closest thing to a personality I have, and it’s not like I got anywhere close to IRL friendship with anything else I’ve tried lately. Or like I tried at all over the entire first semester.

Now that I’m thinking about it, this was an actively bad idea.

And that’s what I mutter out loud, to myself and to the empty lounge chairs around me: “This was a bad idea.” And then I thumb the START button on my controller and toss it onto the coffee table I set up my console on, and I rub my eyes and sigh and listen to my breath echo around the frigid, deserted room.

Somewhere beyond the discolored pixels flashing in the blackness behind my eyelids, I know there are more pixels displayed on the lounge TV — a menu of sci-fi weapons and upgrade slots, blinking in rhythm with a tinny guitar riff that seem to say, “Quit moping and get back to blasting 16-bit bad guys, you big dork.” Tough shit, game. I’ve been putting this moping session off long enough. You’re gonna have to wait a bit.

I let my hands drop into my lap and wait for my vision to clear, and once it does I realize I’m staring at my phone on the scratchy couch cushion next to me. I pick it up and light the screen just to confirm what I already know: zero new text messages, and zero old ones too save for what my mom sent me earlier in the evening:

Miss you already! How’s your first weekend back at school been? <3

It’s great moping fuel, first of all, but also a good reminder that this is all kind of my mom’s fault. Not me being a hopeless nerd — that’s 100 percent pure Button Mash. But I was all set to continue being nerdy and hopelessly alone, until I was dumb enough to answer honestly when my mom asked over the holidays if I’d made any friends at school.

And now here I am, Mom! I did what you said to do: put myself out there. And technically, it’s your fault that you didn’t specify exactly where “there” was, or what sort of putting-out I had to do. You have to be specific with hopeless nerds. We’re not good at not following instructions.

Just as the mope train’s fully leaving the station, I hear the dorm’s front door open behind me. A blast of wintery air prickles at my neck and sneaks down the back of my t-shirt, and for a moment the room feels lively, filled with chattering voices and laughter from people who were out being normal freshmen doing normal Saturday night things at college: drinking, partying, making friends, having fun.

It’s not like I wasn’t having fun tonight, I guess. It’s not like this — old games, older console, warm nostalgia and solitude away from the cold outdoors — isn’t the same thing I’d usually do with my free time. But that chill from outside has still stuck in my gut for a few seconds every time a group’s come back from partying or whatever. Or rather, when they stomp through the foyer and keep going upstairs, passing me by without so much as a glance or a “Hey, isn’t that what’s-his-name over there?”

I don’t even know that I want someone to interrupt me, to drag me out into the cold so I can be awkward and uncomfortable in a crowd rather than by myself. But I guess part of me was kind of hoping they would anyway. I guess I was hoping making friends would be something that just happened to me, rather than something I had to nut up and actually go do.

See what I mean? Bad idea. Horrible, even.

But sitting here feeling sorry for myself for too much longer would be the worst idea of all. So, after one more big sigh and another shiver as the front door swings open again, I pick my controller back up and unpause my game. Might as well finish this level before going to bed, so I don’t have to look up the password for it the next time I feel like being sober and orderly in public. Now there’s a party plan. I wonder if –

“Is that Battle Bot Z?”

I’d love to say I didn’t jump, or drop my controller, or let out a noise like a Girl Scout realizing she just sold her last box of Thin Mints. I’d also love to be four inches taller and have a Space Wars sequel trilogy that didn’t suck. In any event, I turn around once my heart rate drops below “hummingbird with ADHD,” and what I see behind me is…

… a hallucination, I guess, because what it sure looks like I’m looking up at is a girl with curly pink-and-purple hair that frames her snowy-white face in swirling whorls, and a sparkly strapless top that seems designed to make people forget her eyes are up there. But I can’t forget her eyes — her big, green, hypnotically long-lashed eyes — because they’re staring past me at the TV screen and filled with what really looks like genuine, giddy glee.

Her cheeks are glowing pink. She must be freezing. And video games must have finally did what the local news always said they would and fully melted my brain, because that’s the only way in hell that now, of all times, is when Sweetie Belle finally wants to talk to me again.

“Shit, did I scare you?” She’s looking at me now, lips bent into an apologetic grimace. “My bad, I… got excited. Was I right, though?”

“Um…” is the sound my mouth makes while my mind finishes its hard reboot, and once ButtonOS is back online: “Y-Yeah! It is.”

“Nnnnnnailed it” Sweetie Belle shouts, pumping her fist hard enough to almost stumble over completely. She catches herself on the back of the couch, lets out an off-kilter giggle, and then sidesteps around the couch’s arm so she can flop down heavily next to me.

I catch a whiff of faded flowery perfume, stale sweat, and something grainy and thick like chemical-treated wood — and suddenly, reality starts making a little more sense. She’s a normal freshman, after all. And by the look and sound and scent of things, she’s been out doing a lot of normal freshman things tonight.

“‘M Sweetie Belle, by the way,” she says, swaying a bit as she lolls her head over to look more or less in my direction. “‘M in your dorm, I think. This is my dorm, right?”

“Yep,” I answer, trying to stare at the floor instead of any particular part of the girl leaned in really close to me. “And… I know.”

“Know what?”

“I… know your name’s Sweetie Belle. We went to, like… every school together.”

Sweetie Belle blinks, squints at me, then jolts in recognition. “Oh fuck, Button! Hi! I’m so sorry, m-my brain’s… bleh.” She flaps her hands around her face to emphasize the bleh-ness. “God, I’m an idiot, how… how’re doing? What’ve you been up to?”

I glance down at the controller on the ground, then gesture limply at the plastic box it’s connected to and the TV connected to that. Sweetie purses her lips and gives me a tight nod. “Yep,” she says. “Because you were… doing that before. I’m just…” She takes a steadying breath that doesn’t seem to steady her at all. “Y’know what, just… keep playing. I’ll just watch. Ignore me.”

And with that, she settles forcefully back into the couch, kicking off her platform shoes and tucking her bare feet under her butt — which I only stare at for half a second before I realize what I’m doing and force myself to stare at the TV screen instead, until all the pixels on it melt into a technicolor blob.

Just ignore her. Right. Just pretend one of the only people I know at this college — who I’ve known since elementary school, for God’s sake — isn’t there at all. Even though her knee’s touching my thigh, and her fingers are drumming on the couch cushion by my shoulder, and I’ve been thinking and dreaming and fantasizing about most other parts of her since I first figured out what proverbial team I was batting for — and now she wants to watch me play a video game.

Sure. Easy. No problem. Fuck.

“C’mooooon,” Sweetie complains, nudging me with her knee. “Do the thing.”

You asked for this, an obnoxious little voice in my head reminds me. You literally asked for this exact thing to happen. Now you get to deal with it.

I take a steadying breath myself, and it works exactly as well for me as just did for Sweetie Belle. Then I pick up the controller, focus on the screen, and start playing.

“Ooh, I know this level,” she exclaims as I navigate my Battle Bot sprite towards a ladder leading to the next section of the level. “The one with the, uh…” She snaps her fingers aimlessly, staring up at the wall above the TV. “He was like… invisible? And you had to jump to hit ‘im…”

“Dagger Squid, yeah,” I say. Full credit to her and/or more evidence of unreality: she got it right on the first try. “And you don’t actually have to jump. If you do Boom Kangaroo’s level first and get the boomerang, you can…”

You can what? Oh, by all means, Button, keep explaining how an old video game works to a girl who’s clearly played it before and probably already regrets coming over here. Dipshit.

“... anyway,” I mumble. “I guess you’ve played it before?”

“Yeah…” Sweetie says after a moment. She seems a bit tired all of a sudden — like she ran out of booze-fueled adrenaline the moment she went from standing to sitting. Or like she’s realized she’s doing and who she’s doing it around. I swallow hard and focus on the game again.

“Uh, yeah, sorry,” she eventually continues. “My dad had a Joybox from when he was in college. Used to sit me in his lap and play it with me when I was little. I mean, he played, I just sorta… mashed buttons.” She giggles drunkenly again as she glances over at me. “Heheh, Button Mash… hey, if you weren’t good at video games, would you hafta change your name?”

“Heh, I uh… I guess!” is all I can think to say back. It’s not like I have any stories like that to reply with. The closest my dad’s ever gotten to being a gamer is fumbling through the first level of Aureole 5 after I begged him to try it once in middle school. He said he wasn’t sure he really got it. He was glad I was having fun.

In the corner of my eye, I can see her still staring at me as the level scrolls again. Suddenly, she shifts in her seat and leans towards me, her breath brushing hotly and heart-stoppingly against my neck.

“Am I bugging you?” she asks. “‘M sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“No!” I interrupt as I pause the game. “No, you’re fine. I just… wasn’t expecting anyone to come over, y’know? To… care, I guess.”

I look her way, and have to fight a primal urge to recoil away from her. She’s staring dead into my eyes, her gaze piercing straight to the back of my skull and shooting down my spine into the pit of my stomach. She sounds earnest when she speaks again — almost sad.

“You sure? ‘Cause I don’t… we don’t hang out anymore. Why don’t we hang out anymore, Button?”

Because you once had three guys ask you to a dance on one day in high school, and I’m in three Eris servers dedicated to three separate Ogres & Oubliettes campaigns? Because you’re an extrovert and a party person and so far out of my league we’re hardly playing the same sport, and I’m just a nerdy little kid you used to get milkshakes and do math homework with after school?

“I… I don’t know,” I mumble. “Guess we just kinda… grew apart.”

“Are we still friends?”

“Yeah. I mean, we’re… friendly. I think.”

“We should be friends,” she declares with a nod. “We’re gonna be friends again. We’ll…”

She’s staring at the wall above the TV again, crinkling her nose and pressing her lips together.

“You, uh… you okay?” I ask her. She blinks a few times at the question, then flashes me a pained-looking smile.

“Mm-hmm,” she hums. “Fine. Keep… keep playing.”

The dorm’s front door opens again. A gaggle of other girls streams inside, rustling in their thick winter coats and absorbed in some inaudible conversation as they vanish upstairs. The biting draft they bring in with them sinks into my shoulders and settles in my gut, right where the look in Sweetie’s eyes landed a few seconds ago. Did she really mean all that? Is she that drunk? Should I stop gawking at her and just play the fucking video game?

I go with the last option, and quickly blast past the last few basic enemies in the level. As the Dagger Squid spawns and its boss music begins, I realize I haven’t even asked Sweetie Belle how her night was.

“So, how’s your night been?” I ask her. A silent second stretches into two, then three, then more. I look over at Sweetie Belle, who’s staring at nothing at all — shoulders tense, lips and chin quivering. “Okay, are you sure you’re –”

There’s a tiny bathroom attached to the lounge just past the TV, with a sink and a single toilet stall inside. Sweetie Belle leaps to her feet and makes a beeline for it, catching the Joybox’s power cord with her foot as she passes, stumbling over it and yanking it out of the wall as she slams through the bathroom door and into the stall. The picture on the TV winks out, and I barely even notice. It’s kind of hard to when I can hear — and after a moment, smell — Sweetie Belle puking her guts out barely a dozen feet away.

Guess that answers that question. Probably a few other ones too.

I leave the Joybox where it’s fallen on the ground and, breathing through my mouth as best I can, gingerly pick my way around the furniture and towards the bathroom. I hear another retch from inside the stall, then splashing liquid, then the dull clunk of a hand impacting metal. Once the gurgle of the toilet flushing fades away, I figure it’s safe to step inside and check on her.

And I’m wrong. I peek into the stall just in time to see Sweetie Belle — on her hands and knees, shuddering and groaning — spew out more of her apparently great night. Sympathetic nausea, or whatever it’s called when watching someone else blow chunks gets you really close to doing it too, smacks into me like a tidal wave, and I have to backpedal into the lounge before the sickly-sweet stench of stomach acid turns her solo act into a duet.

Finally, there’s a second flush, and silence that drags on long enough to convince me the worst is over. When I enter the bathroom again and look in the stall, I see Sweetie Belle slumped against the wall with her eyes closed, sweat and mascara dripping down her face.

Several seconds too late, I remember you’re supposed to hold a girl’s hair back in situations like this. I glance at one of the stringy curls hanging over her face, and quickly glance anywhere else instead. Maybe she won’t notice. God, I hope for her sake she doesn’t.

As Sweetie takes slow gulps of air and slowly slides down the grimy tiles, I try desperately to remember what my mom used to do when I got sick as a kid. Is drunk sick the same as sick sick? It probably is. So… soak a towel in cold water and put it on her head? But it’s already cold outside. Does that make a difference? For a brief and awful moment, I think about calling my mom at one in the morning and asking.

Then Sweetie Belle coughs — a raspy, painful sound. Water. I can do that, at least. I go over to the sink, tug a paper cup out of the dispenser on the wall and fill it, then take it into the stall with me. Sweetie cracks her eyes open as I kneel down next to her, and mutters something like “thank you” as she takes the cup in her quivering hands.

“Sorry,” she says in a tiny voice, after a few more deep breaths and a long pull from the cup. “Sorry…”

“It’s fine,” I say, because what the hell else am I supposed to say? “It… happens?”

Sweetie just groans and shuts her eyes again. When she eventually responds, it’s in the same tiny voice — thin, trembling, mortified. “Did I break your game?”

“No, you… I don’t think so. Those things are durable,” I tell her. In total honesty, she actually might have broken it, but I figure I shouldn’t bring that up now. She probably feels rotten enough already.

Sweetie lifts the cup to her lips again and empties it, then sighs as she runs her free hand through her hair, wincing as her fingers come away wet. So much for not noticing. I reach for her shoulder — to help her up? Offer a friendly squeeze? — then pull it back. I don’t want to make this any worse for her. I don’t have a clue what to do right now.

“So you should, uh… probably get to bed,” I finally say. “You want some help upstairs?”

“‘M fine,” Sweetie moans.

“You sure? ‘Cause I can… I don’t wanna just leave you here.”

She mumbles something in response, but I can’t tell what it is. Her head droops away from the wall, as if she’s about to fall asleep sitting that. Scratch what I just said: I’m not going to just leave her here.

“Okay, c’mon,” I say, wrapping my arm around her shoulder and tugging until she… slumps forward over her knees and almost smacks her head on the floor before I catch her with my other arm. So far, so bad. I reposition and get my hands under her arms, steering her upright and — with some effort — getting her feet underneath her and her arm around my neck.

We slowly stand up together, and she leans into me hard, limp like a hundred-pound bag of Jell-O that I can already tell I’m barely strong enough to hold onto. Her head ends up under my chin — warm, damp, soaking something into my shirt. I try really hard not to think about it. Instead, I just put one foot in front in the other, half-helping and half-carrying my middle-through-high-school crush — of all fucking people — along with me.

With a lot of effort, I get her out of the bathroom and through the lounge, then step by off-balance step up to the second floor. I’m pretty sure this is her floor — I know I knew it once, from the awkward orientation mixers between boys’ and girls’ halls in our building — but all the cute little nametags the Resident Advisors put up last semester are gone now, replaced by glittery paper snowflakes and multi-colored warnings about drunk driving.

“Hey, which room’s yours?” I ask between puffs of air. Sweetie flops her arm out in front of her, one finger half-extended towards nothing in particular.

“Tha’ one,” is her slurred reply.

“Which one? What room number?”

“... ‘even…”

“Was that a ‘seven’? ‘Eleven’?”

Too late. All I get back is a groan, and more dead weight hanging off of me. I grit my teeth and run through my options. I could just knock on doors until I find someone who knows Sweetie Belle, but… would they know her? I barely know any of my hallmates. And even if they do know her, what would they think of me, carrying around a wasted girl I clearly don’t know well enough to even know where her damn dorm room is?

I feel queasy again just thinking about it — thinking about any of this. I don’t go to parties. I don’t know what people who go to parties do after other people get sick from them. And I can’t just leave her in the hallway. For another even more awful moment, I want to call my mom again.

Fuck it. I don’t know where Sweetie’s room is, but I know where my own is. My roommate’s probably asleep, and I can put her in my bed, and I just need to get her… up another flight of stairs, and then all the way to the end of the third-floor hallway. Got it. Simple. Not an issue at all. Fuuuuuuck.

I sigh, hoist Sweetie Belle up a bit, and get moving again.

By the time we reach my door, I’m breathless and dripping sweat, and especially gross along my neck where stuff-I’m-not-thinking-about from Sweetie’s face has dried into a sticky film. With fumbling fingers, I manage to extract my key from my pocket and unlock the door, nudging the light on with my shoulder as I lead — or really drag, at this point — Sweetie Belle inside.

My roommate — Bit Crusher, a greasy pre-STEM kid I’ve exchanged about six words in total and about seven words more than I’d prefer with since the year began — rolls over in bed and squints at me. “Don’t ask,” I mutter over to him. “She’s just a friend,” I add pointedly once I realize what this all looks like. Make that twelve and thirteen words. He blinks, shrugs, and rolls back over.

With a bit of maneuvering, I get Sweetie Belle down onto my bed and most of her limbs onto it with her, and I use the last dregs of my stamina to fall into my desk chair and wipe my face with the last dry spot on my t-shirt. I didn’t make a New Year’s Resolution over winter break, but I sure have one now: start going to the goddamn gym. And in the meantime…

For the first time tonight, I sit next to Sweetie Belle and really look at her. I was too awkward to do it in front of the Joybox earlier, too stressed to think about it while I was trying to deal with her post-blackout, but now I have nothing else to think about and no energy left to be awkward with. So I just look at her, past her messed-up hair and ruined makeup to the creases smoothing out of her face as she slips from conscious incoherence into peaceful dreamless sleep, and a familiar hole starts opening in my chest — just like it has a million times before.

She was right earlier: we were friends, a long time ago. Not just classmates, but actual friends, doing projects together at school and hanging out in ice cream parlors afterwards. We were mutual birthday party attendees and field trip buddies and, once, cofounders of a Minecraft server that half our elementary school had played inside.

And then we were in different middle school classes, and the ice cream parlor closed, and the server grew more and more desolate until an update in high school shut it down for good. We grew up. Time moved on. And I know — have always known — I should too.

But I don’t want to. I didn’t drift away from her by choice, intentionally choose hobbies and interests that would get me snickered at between classes and ignored at homecoming dances. I just became someone she wasn’t interested in anymore — or really, someone not interesting enough to be worth the hassle. And now here we both are, together again, and still miles and miles apart in every way that matters.

It sucks, and it’s not fair, and it’s not going to change so I really should just get over it already and move on with my life like she has. But that’s something adults do — people who go to parties and get drunk and have lives to move on with in the first place. Sweetie Belle’s like that. Practically everyone else on campus is like that.

And I’m not. I’m just a scared little kid in an adult-sized body, who doesn’t know how to do anything and wants his mom to come save him every time he has to figure something out by himself. And no matter how old I get or what happens to me or doesn’t, I can’t shake the deep-down feeling that’ll never change either.

And in the meantime…

“Well, that was very chivalrous of you, Button,” I mutter to myself. “Now you don’t have a bed.”

And I left the Joybox downstairs. And Sweetie Belle’s shoes. And probably a really good chance of being someone interesting for once, instead of just me.

Fuck it again. I’m too tired to fix any of my problems right now, big or small ones. So instead, I force myself to stand up and tug my comforter out from under Sweetie’s sleeping form so I can throw it overtop of her, then get a dry shirt and a spare blanket — the one Mom insisted I take back to school with me for this semester, just in case — from my wardrobe before flipping off the light.

The floor is hard and cold, and my school backpack makes for a pretty uncomfortable pillow, but just like with just about everything else, it’s the best I’m going to get. Sooner than I expect, I feel my eyelids drooping, and I fall asleep to the sound of my former, or current, or who-the-fuck-knows friend’s soft and steady breaths.

Chapter 2: Something I Can Say Is True

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The most fascinating thing about college dorm rooms, I think, is that they’re not really meant for humans to be in them. You can put humans in them, obviously, and all the trappings of human-friendly construction are there: walls, a floor, a window, even blinds on that window that manage to shine sunlight straight into your eyes every morning no matter how you set them up the night before.

But then you look at the walls and realize they’re made of cinderblocks slopped with bargain-bin white paint, and you look at the window and see the little gap at the bottom where it wasn’t installed quite right, and you realize why it’s always cold in your room when you’d prefer it to be hot and hot when you’d rather it be cold. From there, you can’t help but notice that the tiles on the floor are the same ones from the hallway outside, and your “wardrobe” is a big free-standing box made of the same cheap wood and dented metal as your desk and bedframe, and what’s squeezed into that bedframe is a block of vinyl-wrapped foam that perfectly resembles a mattress without actually being one.

If this all just sounds like me complaining — it is! But also, it’s me pointing out how fake some parts of college are. There’s all this talk about developing young minds and all this money that supposedly goes into doing that, and then in reality you live in a concrete box and go to classes in decades-old buildings and, every so often, drink yourself so sick that you need someone you last meaningfully spoke with in seventh grade to drag you upstairs and let you sleep your bad choices off in their technically-not-a-bed.

Okay, fine. It’s mostly me complaining. But also I slept on the floor last night, so I think I have a right to be peeved.

And it’s on that floor that I wake up, stiff and groggy, with a sore indent in my cheek where the zipper on my backpack was pressing into it. Bit’s still asleep on the other side of the room, nose whistling with every soft snore. But it’s not those sounds that woke me up. I’m used to those. It’s the sounds I can hear from my own bed above me — the creaking of the metal bedframe and the rustling of the vinyl-wrapped mattress, and a soft feminine groan from the person moving on top of both.

I rub some of the crustiness out of my eyes and brain, and when I look up again, Sweetie Belle’s peering blearily down at me from the end of a pink-and-purple hair tunnel, the bottom half of her face hidden behind the edge of my bunched-up comforter.

“Did I shove you out?” she mumbles.

“Morning,” I mumble back, before parsing what she actually said. “What?”

“The bed.” She shifts — the bedframe creaks again — so her whole face is visible. “Did I shove you out of the bed?”

“Oh. No, I… I let you have it. Seemed like you needed it.”

She blinks and looks up, seeming to realize for the first time that she’s in unfamiliar territory. “This your room?”

“Mm-hmm. Couldn’t find yours last night, didn’t wanna just leave you in the hallway, so… yeah.”

She’s silent for a bit — eyes unfocused, deep in thought, trying to piece together what happened last night and how she got here and what she said to me. She probably doesn’t remember.

“You gave me your bed,” she finally murmurs. “After I puked everywhere and broke your JoyBox and… fuck.”

Or maybe she does. For some reason, that feels worse. “I mean, not everywhere,” I say. “Just one place, really.”

“Fuuuuck.”

Sweetie Belle rolls out of sight onto her back. I sit up — painfully, stretching as much as I can along the way — in time to see her hands flop down from her face and bounce off the mattress. She stares at the ceiling for a second, then turns to look at me.

“I’m so sorry,” Sweetie Belle croaks. “I was such a mess last night, and you… you should’ve left me in the hallway.”

“Well, I didn’t,” I tell her with a shrug. Is it a little bitter? Is it just the truth? Yes, to both. Sleeping on the floor sucks, no matter how chivalrous it is. “You feeling any better?”

She wets her lips, and grimaces, and hides her eyes behind her hands again. “I feel like I deserve to feel,” she grunts.

And despite everything, despite the pit in my gut that’s getting bigger and deeper with every word between us, I feel bad for Sweetie Belle. She isn’t just saying that. She looks miserable — maybe in more ways than just physical. Now that I think about it, I still don’t know what she was actually out doing last night. In the harsh light of the morning, I’m a lot more curious and a lot more nervous about what the real answer to that question might be.

“Do you want breakfast?” she says. She’s up on her elbows and looking at me again, still wincing but trying to fight past it. “Let me get you breakfast, at least.”

“It’s fine,” I blurt out, realizing the moment the words leave my mouth that there’s literally no reason for me not to go get breakfast with Sweetie Belle. “I’ve got a meal plan, I’ll just –”

“I’ll cover it, save you a swipe.” Her gaze shifts from pointed to plaintive. “Please?”

I want to turn her down again. I don’t know why. This is exactly what I’ve wanted for years: to hang out with this exact girl in this exact way, and get an old friend back and maybe even more.
Maybe that’s why. Maybe I just don’t know what to do when things actually work out the way I want them to.

That’s kind of sad. But it’d be sadder to let that stop me from getting breakfast for free.

“Okay,” I make myself say, muscling the words past where my heart’s lodged itself in my throat. “You wanna go now?”

“I gotta find my shoes,” she replies. “And… can I borrow a sweatshirt?”

“Sure,” I say, nodding towards the wardrobe — and then I hear the creak of a bedframe behind me, and then a crunch. Sweetie Belle and I both slowly turn towards the noise. Bit’s awake and sitting up in bed, eating from a bag of chips, staring blankly back at us both.

“Are you guys, like… dating?” he asks, a couple errant crumbs bouncing off his bare, unshapely chest.

I look at Sweetie Belle, then back at Bit, then at the ceiling for just long enough to talk myself out of committing a felony. “No,” I tell him flatly. “She’s a friend.”

“Oh.”

And that’s all he has to say. I glance at Sweetie Belle again.

“You know what, let’s go now,” she suggests.

“Good idea.”

===

Technically, we still didn’t leave right away. Sweetie Belle spent a few minutes in the bathroom washing at least some of last night out of her face and hair, and while she was doing that I grabbed her shoes and my JoyBox — still in one piece, as far as I could tell — from downstairs, dropped the latter off in my room, and escaped after just a few more seconds of Bit completely fail to read that room again:

“Was she drunk last night?”

“Yes, Bit.”

“Aren’t we too young to have alcohol?”

“We’re too young for all of college, Bit, it’s fine.”

Once Sweetie and I made it out of the dorm, it was a short and quiet trip down the block to the nearest dining hall, which is one of two on campus. I’m told one got renovated last year, and now it has brand-new furniture, an espresso bar, and a made-to-order omelet station.

This was the other one. It had chairs that wobbled and tables that your elbows would stick to, and one coffee pod machine that worked between two that usually didn’t, and aluminum pans of scrambled eggs salted like they looked back at Sodom when God told them not to. It’s probably the single sketchiest place I’ve ever eaten in. I would die for it, and if I ever make the mistake of eating another hot dog from here, I very well might.

Sweetie Belle, on the other hand, looks like she might not ever eat anything again. She did drain a glass of ice water the moment the soda fountain spigot she filled it from switched off, but all she’s done with the cold plain bagel she grabbed with her cup is tear it into little bite-sized pieces that she’s been pushing around on top of a rumpled napkin. I offered her some of my eggs, but she didn’t want those either.

Maybe salt’s bad for hangovers. I don’t know. I’m learning everything I do know about hangovers from watching Sweetie Belle right now. So far, they don’t look super fun. In fact, they look like they suck enough to turn a girl who’s usually easy to talk to, hard to say no to, and impossible not to like into a sullen, sunken-eyed zombie that’s been suffocatingly silent since we left our dorm.

Or maybe that’s just because I’m here. It’s probably not. But it might be. I should say something and find out for sure.

“So…” I say, glancing up from my eggs as long as I can bear. “Was it a good party?”

Sweetie Belle blinks, surfacing from wherever she’s been for the past ten minutes. She’s wearing one of my sweatshirts — a black one with a cartoonish image of a joystick on the front, “WORK HARD” stenciled above it and “PLAY HARDER” below — with the hood up, just big enough in the chest to hide the shape of her torso and just long enough in her sleeves to cover her knuckles and thumbs.

I look like a giant dork in that sweatshirt, which I know because I wore it just about every day in high school. She looks… well, hungover in it, mainly, but also cute. Really cute. And now she’s looking up and blinking cutely at me, and I’ve just been sitting here shoveling eggs into my mouth and looking like a massive idiot and and God what do I think I’m doing –

“I’ve been to better ones,” she says through a gravelly chuckle. “Ones that ended better, I guess.”

My heart’s in my throat again. I swallow hard and try to keep my voice steady. “I guess no party’s worth getting sick over.”

She blinks again, and glances down at her bagel bits before replying. “Nope,” she mumbles as she pinches a piece of bagel between her finger and thumb, rolling it into a little ball before slotting it reluctantly past her lips. I look down what’s left of my own breakfast. Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore. In fact, the renewed silence between us is making me feel sick.

“Sorry. I’ll stop talking about it,” I gather my plate and utensils up so I can drop them at the dish return before I go lock myself in my room for the rest of the semester. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll, uh –”

“No, wait!”

Sweetie Belle’s hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. A wave of goosebumps rolls over my shoulders and down my spine, radiating out from where I can feel the warmth of her fingertips against my bare skin. That’s probably pathetic. I’m sure I don’t care right now.

“I’m sorry, I’m being… I feel like shit right now. It’s not you,” she tells me, eyes wide beneath my sweatshirt’s hood. A second later, she smiles — and tugs gently on my arm. “Please stay? Just for a bit?”

Okay, it’d definitely be pathetic to answer her with what I’m thinking, which is, “I will stay or go or do anything you want me to, if it means you want to keep talking to me.” So instead, I just nod and settle back into my seat, and bite back a sigh when she lets go of my arm and rests both of her own on the table, hands met over her deconstructed bagel.

“You can go in a minute if you have somewhere to be,” she says, surely knowing as well as I do that I absolutely fucking don’t. “But before you go, I just need to say…” She looks me straight in the eyes, bracing herself with a quiet sigh that just about bowls me over. “Thank you. Seriously. You didn’t have to do any of what you did for me last night.”

“It was nothing,” I lie to her, which it turns out is way easier than being honest with her or looking her in the eyes. “Anybody would’ve –”

“Button, a lot of guys wouldn’t have,” she interrupts. “A lot of people wouldn’t have. So thank you. I owe you… more than just breakfast, put it that way.”

I get the sense she’s not going to let me leave until I accept her compliment. So, as best as I can, I do. “Then… you’re welcome. Any time.” Her eyebrows shoot up. “I mean, ideally not every time you go to a party. It seemed like it sucked for everybody last time.”

She giggles, and I laugh as well so I have something to do with the air she just squeezed out of my lungs. “Yeah, next time you have my permission to leave me in the hallway,” she cracks. “Just throw a blanket over me or something.”

“Or just give you a bucket,” I thoughtlessly reply, and I chew on my lip to stop from cringing as my dumb, pointlessly mean joke echoes inside my head. But she laughs again anyway, so I guess it wasn’t that bad. Still, playing with fire here, brain. Zip it next time.

So I do zip it, and pick at my eggs, and wait for Sweetie Belle to continue the conversation if she wants to — which, it seems, she does. “I can’t believe this is the first time we’ve hung out in college,” she says, more to herself than me. “What have you been up to? What have I missed?”

“Not that much,” I admit. “Going to classes, staying up way too late. Kinda just like high school, just with less… structure, I guess.”

“Yeah, it’s weird,” Sweetie Belle agrees. “It’s like, ‘Here’s where you sleep, best of luck with the whole rest of keeping yourself alive!’”

“Figured out the food part, at least,” I say with a glance towards my plate. She smiles again.

“A very important part of staying alive. A-plus for both of us.” She clunks her empty cup against mine, then dribbles a few droplets of melted ice into her mouth. “Still figuring out the rest of it, clearly.”

“Well, I guess part of that is what figuring out what not to do.”

Up go her eyebrows again. “Are you implying I have a drinking problem?”

“More that drinking seems to have a problem with you.”

She doesn’t just laugh this time. She snorts, clapping her hand to her mouth a moment too late to keep the goofy sound from sneaking out. A flavor of pride I almost don’t recognize — the id-level masculine satisfaction of having told a pretty girl a good joke — blooms in my chest:. Okay, brain, you’re forgiven for that one. Still got my eye on you.

“No shit,” she says after a heavy sigh. “I’d say you’re missing out, but…”

“Who says I am?”

And just like that, we’re right back to square one. What the fuck, brain? She’s not that… okay, she is that pretty, but still!

“Wait, did you go out last night?” she asks, leaning forward in her seat. “Where were you?”

“Not last night,” I reply, coolly twiddling my fork between my fingers as I try to coolly lie myself out of the corner I’ve painted myself into. “Few times last semester, but y’know… no invites this time around.”

She grins. “Oh yeah, they’re super exclusive events. I just barely got on the guest list for mine,” she says jokingly — which, I realize a moment later, means she thought I was joking too. Do college parties not have invitations? Oh, fuck you, brain, what did you just make me imply? And what else can I do now but to try to keep that implication going?

“How did you manage that?” I ask Sweetie Belle.

“Mostly by showing up and being female,” she shoots back, chuckling for a second before clarifying. “My roommate knew some guy in KNZ, they were doing a pre-rush thing, the trash can punch was a little too good. And… you know the rest.”

“KNZ, that’s…”

“Kappa Nu Zeta. They just got off probation, and they’re trying to make up for it. Decent enough guys, though.”

Guys, and Greek letters. So it’s a fraternity. And if she’s going out to fraternity parties, that means…

“How about you? Think you might rush anywhere?”

… that she’s going to ask me that exact question, with just the right tinge of earnestness to let me know she’s not going to be impressed by the truth, which is that there’s not a single fraternity across the whole history of human society that would want a sexless geek like me in it. So I don’t tell her that, and I don’t quite lie either.

“I dunno,” I say with an aimless shrug. “Kinda thinking about it, haven’t decided.”

“You should!” she brightly replies, leaning forward again. “You’d do good. Party animal.” She smirks as she emphasizes the last two words. I think it’s supposed to be friendly. I know it feels like a threat, like she’s staring straight through me and thinking: You’re full of shit. Prove me wrong or you can kiss us being friends goodbye.

And I can’t prove her wrong, because she’s right. I am full of shit. I don’t go to parties, or even know any partying people besides her.

But then again, she seems to like the full-of-shit version of me, much more than she’s ever liked the real version. I don’t want to keep lying to her — and technically, I don’t have to. I just have to keep not telling her the whole truth.

“Like I said, thinking about it,” I say. “I’ll keep you posted.”

She’s still smirking — friendly and deadly all at once. “And how are you gonna do that?”

On second thought, maybe it’s mostly deadly. “Uh…”

She lays her hand palm-up on the table, then beckons with fingers poking out from under my sweatshirt’s sleeves. “Phone,” she says, in a tone that suggests “order” more than “request.”

Once I dig my phone out of my pants pocket, unlock it, and pass it over, she holds it upright in front of her so I can’t see the screen and starts typing something. A second after she finishes and slides my phone back across the table, she pulls out her own phone, glances at the screen as it vibrates once, then puts it away again.

“What just happened?” I ask.

“You’re adorable,” she replies with a smile, before yawning and standing up with a pained grunt. “And I’m not at the moment, so I’m gonna go shower and then lie facedown in a dark room for a few weeks.” As she passes me, she nudges her fist against my shoulder. “Thanks for breakfast, party animal. Lemme know when you want your sweatshirt back.”

And then she’s gone, taking my sweatshirt with her and leaving a mess like an Arctic oil spill inside my head. God help me, I was either just ditched by a childhood friend or flirted with by the same, and I can’t begin to decide which possibility is more terrifying.

I pick up my phone and unlock the screen, and it flashes right back to what Sweetie was doing a minute ago — to the text message she sent to a number with the same area code as mine:

Hi! This is Button Mash, the guy who saved your life last night and is being a GIANT dork about it, and I’m going to text you every time I go out this semester so we can be party animals together. <3

And as I’m reading it, heart sinking and stomach churning, another message pops up below it:

Hi, Button! This is Sweetie Belle, and I’m going to hold you to that forever! ;)

“Fuck you, brain,” I mutter under my breath. Then I click my phone off, pile the dishes on the table together, and head for the plate return window. I have some thinking to do, I guess. And/or some research into the Witness Protection Program.

===

Okay, it turns out getting into Witness Protection is really hard, especially if you don’t have any friends who like committing federal crimes. Yes, I did actually look it up. I like to keep my options open.

As for the thinking about party-animal-ing, I don’t make much progress for the rest of the day, and I’m still distracted by it the next day when I bundle up in a couple long-sleeve T-shirts — because I’m missing my one good sweatshirt and it’s not cold enough for a real coat — and trudge across campus to my first class of the week. It’s Intro to English Lit up first this semester, at nine in the morning every Monday and Wednesday, because I had to do it at some point for gen-ed requirements and “Masochism 101” was full.

On the bright side, college English classes are a good place to be alone with your thoughts, because there are forty other people in the class with you, and on any given day at least two of them will be compelled to share their hot takes on classic literature so you don’t have to yourself. Today, it’s a guy on the right side of the room rocking shorts and running shoes in January, and another guy in the front row wearing a pastel blue long-sleeve shirt with a graphic on it I can’t quite make out from my spot in the back.

“I just don’t get what the point was,” says Shorts, printer-paper copy of D.H. Lawrence’s “The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter” pinched in his gesturing hand. “Like, her dad dies, she tries to kill herself, the doctor saves her, and then they’re just like… in love? Or not in love?”

“Yeah, but that is the point, though,” Pastel replies, turning in his seat so he can face his squinting ideological opponent. “She’s not sure if it’s real, and even if it is, that means she’s locked into staying with him. She’s just as trapped as she was before.”

“How is she trapped? She just seems crazy to me.”

Even from all the way in the back row, I can feel the room get a little colder as just about every girl in it inhales, thinks about butting in, and grimly chooses not to. Honestly, I didn’t really get the story either, but I’m pretty sure I got closer to getting it than Shorts did. Pastel, meanwhile, is unfazed, smiling in a way that says, “I’d be happy to explain this to you” to Shorts and tactfully implies, “you fucking idiot” to everyone looking on.

“So there’s a line about halfway through…” He glances down at the book on his desk, a pristine new edition of a D.H. Lawrence short story compilation. “‘She would always hold the keys of her own situation.’ That’s how she’s thought of everything in her life up to that point. Even though it wasn’t perfect, she felt like she had at least some control, because there was money, there was a role to play, all that. And once her father dies, that illusion’s gone. She’s just a woman in a society that’s not going to give her any real choices about what she does next, and even falling in love with the doctor locks her into being his wife, rather than herself.”

Huh. That makes a lot more sense than my guess about what the story was about. I was just gonna make something up about depression and hope that’d be enough for a B on the midterm essay question.

“Okay, well, why didn’t the author just say that, then?” Shorts shoots back. “Like, why does he have to be all vague about it?”

“It’s just his style, I think. Setting up a scene and all the emotions running through it, and letting the reader figure out what’s going on behind it.” Pastel’s shrug has a double meaning just like his smile — sympathetic to his baffled debate opponent, bemused and filled with victorious pride to anyone actually paying attention.

Which, I guess, I am. Guy’s making some good points. And now that I’m really looking, I can almost make out what’s actually on the back of his shirt: a fighter jet with beer kegs strapped under its wings, and a military-style insignia above it with block letters spelling out…

“Hey, don’t worry about it, man. This stuff’s confusing,” Pastel says — his closest statement, garnished with a grin that this time is a hundred percent sincere. “But it makes sense if you sit with it a little bit, figure out what stuff feels like rather than what it looks like. It’s a muscle, really, in the brain. Just gotta stretch a bit.”

KNZ. That’s what his shirt says. And below that: “BUZZED IN THE TOWER.” And below that: “SPRING RUSH 2023.”

Of course. No wonder he’s so confident, and so eloquent, and talks so easily in front of a room of forty people all staring at him at once. That’s the kind of guy girls want to go to parties with — that Sweetie Belle thinks I am. And while he’s been explaining his probably-perfect interpretation of a story I didn’t understand at all, I’ve been sitting totally silent in the back of the room, hiding from the world.

And I’m still hiding now — have been since yesterday, “thinking” about doing something I have no intention of even trying once, all because it might make a girl I have a schoolyard crush on think I’m somebody I’m not. All because she likes a version of me that doesn’t fucking exist. A word Pastel used earlier echoes inside my head, drowning out the professor as she steers discussion towards the next story from our assigned reading: trapped, trapped, TRAPPED.

And then, as class continues around and without me, as I stare at the beer-laden fighter jet and the little red-faced pilot hanging out of it, some more words float through my brain: the keys of my own situation… setting up a scene… what stuff feels like rather than what it looks like.

I’m not a party animal. I’m not who Sweetie Belle thinks I am. But what if I don’t have to be? What if I just fake it for a bit, keep the implication going, keep being interesting long enough for her to be genuinely interested? Maybe it would work. Maybe it’d make everything infinitely worse. But my chances of getting anywhere by just being myself are zero, and the chances of this working are somewhere above that.

I spend the rest of class thinking, but in a different way than I was before — crystallizing towards a decision, rather than looking for any excuse not to make one. By the time the professor lets us go, I’ve made up my mind. It’s rush week, right? That’s what Sweetie Belle said, and what Pastel’s shirt probably confirms. And the Kappa Nu Zeta guys are apparently “decent enough,” and at least one of them knows his way around a Socratic discussion. There’s a path forward here. I just have to stretch a bit and take it.

I catch up to Pastel at the lecture hall’s entrance, where he’s checking his phone as he shrugs on a jacket sporting KNZ letters to match his shirt. He looks up as I approach, seeming to sense I’m trying to talk to him. Well, that’s step one down the path. Time for all the scarier ones that come after.

“H-Hey,” I say, pausing for a second as I realize I don’t know his name and it’s probably too late to ask. “I, uh… just wanted to say that was good. I mean, you were good, how you explained that story, I… I didn’t really get it before that. Makes a lot more sense now.”

He flashes a smile — all teeth, no gums, completely cordial. “Hey, appreciate it, man,” he replies. “I felt like I kinda rambled a bit. Glad it made sense to someone besides me.”

“No, yeah, it made total sense. It was interesting,” I say. I’ve run out of conversational steam already — the last of it fogs in front of my mouth, misting in the cold air wafting through the hall’s open entrance. I’ve broken the ice as much as I’m going to. I fight past the frozen shards poking into my chest and get to why I really came over.

“Uh, so… rush. You guys are doing rush this week, right? For… KNZ?” I ask, using the acronym I heard Sweetie Belle mention. It can’t hurt to sound even vaguely on top of things, right? It doesn’t seem so. Pastel’s grin widens as he nods.

“Yeah, dude! First event’s tonight, at the house over on Jefferson. You thinkin’ about coming out?”

Fuck, this is harder than I was expecting. Pastel’s got the kind of personality where it’s intimidating how nice and genuine he seems — like it has to be fake, even though you know it’s not. Even though that’s exactly what I’m being right now.

Whatever. Too late to hide now. Time to commit.

“Um… y-yeah,” I manage to reply. “If that’s… is that cool?”

Pastel nods again, chuckling. “That’s very cool. And also how rush works. Kickoff’s at nine, don’t BYOB, wear something nice, and uh… the house on Jefferson. With the big ‘KNZ’ letters on it.” He chucks me on the shoulder. “Sound good?”

“Yeah!” The word spurts out of me before I can stop it. I can’t help it — suddenly this impossibly hard thing seems like it became easy. “Hell yeah. I’ll check it out.” And as he turns to leave, I remember what I forgot to ask: “Oh, and… what’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m Source,” he replies, sticking out a hand for me to shake. “You?”

“Button,” I tell him as I press my hand to his. “Button Mash.”

“Good to meet ya, Button,” he says, nodding my way as our hands come apart and he ambles backwards towards the exit. “See you tonight, yeah?”

“Yep,” I answer, forcing a grin and a thumbs-up. “See you tonight.”

He turns and vanishes into the throng of students switching classes outside, and I stand staring after him, fake confidence draining from my face with every second that passes. This was such a bad idea. I am such an idiot. I’m not a party animal, I’m certainly not a frat guy, and every person within a mile of that house will know that the second I show up tonight, if I’m enough of a fucking moron to show up at all.

But Source knows my name now, and I know his, and maybe chickening out now would be even dumber. I don’t know. All I do know is that there’s a KNZ rush event tonight, that fake-me did enough to get real-me invited to it, and that D.H. Lawrence and his stupid horse-dealer’s daughter can go absolutely fuck themselves.

In the meantime, I guess I need to figure out what you’re supposed to wear to a frat party. Maybe Sweetie Belle will give me my sweatshirt back for it.

Chapter 3: Unplugged But Not Alone

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I don’t know if this is normal for just-past-teenage boys, but I’m a big fan of planning ahead. I like thinking through stuff in advance so none of it surprises me, gaming out what might happen so I can make sure that it doesn’t, reading faces and little body motions so I can tell when I’m someplace I shouldn’t be surrounded by people who really don’t want me there. I have years of practice doing it. I’m pretty good at it, I think.

You know what I’m not good at, though? Anything else. Like talking to people I don’t know, or looking normal in front of them, or getting myself invited to a fraternity rush party as if I have the first fucking clue what to do with myself around any combination of those words. And yet here I am trekking off campus at five minutes to nine on a Monday night, freezing my ass off and regretting every single choice I’ve ever made in my entire life.

At least I didn’t spend the whole day before now agonizing over it. After meeting Source, I walked across campus to my next class at a perfectly casual pace, and I made it a full twenty minutes into the lecture before calmly slipping out the side exit and doing some very composed hyperventilating in a bathroom stall. There was also a good hour-ish in the afternoon when I got my shit together enough to do some “research” into exactly what frat parties even are, meaning I watched the first half of Animal House while skimming the “Fraternity” Wikipedia page on my phone.

And then, I don’t know, I blinked or something, and it was almost time to head out. So I showered and combed my hair and shaved the fuzz off my chin, and I put on a dress shirt and tie that last saw action at my great-grandma’s funeral, and I even replied to my mom when she texted me again to ask what my plans for the week were. I sent her a picture of my frat party outfit. Apparently I look “so handsome! <3”. I’m sure all the frat guys I inflict myself on tonight will think so too.

And now I’m here, at the turn onto Jefferson Street, where I stop and take a breath and blow it out into my clasped hands — half because they’re cold, half to convince myself not to turn around and go home. Source said it himself: this is how rushing a fraternity works. You just… show up. And I have no idea what you do after that, but I guess I’m supposed to figure that out as I go.

I don’t even need to stay that long, really, just long enough to tell Sweetie Belle I tried. Then I can make something up about how they “weren’t my type,” and… wait, do guys even talk about other guys like that? Is that gay? Is that why she got breakfast with me, because I was too nice to her, and she thinks I’m…

This is a bad idea. I’m about to make an ass of myself in front of a whole party worth of fraternity brothers, just so I have half a chance of impressing a girl I have nothing in common with except a dorm address. And the more I think about what’s absolutely about to happen, the more the full weight of the worst idea I’ve ever had swells in my gut and compresses my spine and squeezes my lungs the same way it did earlier today in a lecture hall bathroom.

I should turn around. I should go home. I should run back to my dorm and be a sad lonely nerd playing video games in the darkest, privatest place I can find, because that’s what I’m supposed to be and the only thing I know how to do.

Except, dammit, I don’t want to do that. I want to be friends with Sweetie Belle again. I want to be friends with anyone, period. And this is how normal people make friends: at parties, in public, by nutting up and doing things they’re not sure about and acting like the normal fucking people they are.

I should run away. My whole body’s twitching with the bone-deep urge to do just that. But instead, I set my jaw, square my shoulders, and turn onto Jefferson Street, towards the sounds of thumping music and boisterous voices a hundred yards down the sidewalk.

Just like Source told me, the Kappa Nu Zeta house does have giant “KNZ” letters on the outside — or at least, the “K” and “Z” are there, flanking a grimy outline where I guess an “N” used to be. In any event, I’ve successfully found the party, and I even see Source on the porch outside, fist-bumping a couple guys wearing the same KNZ rush shirt as him.

And jeans. And casual slip-on shoes. And other not-even-close-to-formal things, just like every other person I can see in the yard and, through the windows, inside the house. I’m the only one in a tie — in any type of clothing that might need one.

Oh God. Oh fuck. Fuck me.

“Yo, Button!” Source calls out. It’s too late to run. He’s seen me standing here in my stupid tucked-in shirt and stupid fucking tie, looking like the biggest fucking dork to ever look in this street’s direction. “Over here!”

Face flushed, numb with cold and a breed of fear I imagine hikers feel right before they get eaten by mountain lions, I trudge across the house’s front yard and up onto the porch, wilting with every shuffling step, face boiling hotter as Source eyes me up and down.

“Damn, man, makin’ us all look bad,” he says playfully, flipping his finger under my tie that, at the moment, feels a whole lot more like an ever-tightening noose.

“Ha, y-yeah, I uh…” I mumble in response, staring at the “KNZ” on the front of his shirt because it’s the closest I can get to looking him in the eye. “I-I didn’t… really know what to wear, so…”

“Hey, you’re fine, bro. Don’t worry about it.” Somehow, he sounds sincere. He’s so much better at this — at being normal — than I’ll ever be. “You look good.”

“I’m the only one dressed like this.”

“Eh, for now. It’s early. There’ll be more people comin’ through.”

Wait, it’s early? I’m right on time — nine P.M. on the dot. Was I supposed to show up late? Is that another thing I was too much of a dork to know about?

Since I’m busy not answering him, Source takes it on himself to keep this nightmare of a conversation going. “Does get kinda hot inside the house, though. Gonna just…”

He’s taken hold of my tie again — a bit firmer this time, like he means to do something with it. Maybe drag me off the porch by its end so I leave now and save both of us any more embarrassment.

But instead of doing that, he lifts his other hand so he can undo the tie’s knot and thread it out from under my collar without strangling me. Then, my tie still in hand, he yanks up on my shirt’s tail until it’s fully untucked, unbuttons the top button, and after a moment unbuttons the one below it too.

“There we go,” he says, folding my tie neatly and sliding it into my breast pocket. “Now you look like a fuckboy.”

“Do I… want to look like a fuckboy?” I can’t help but ask.

He shrugs, grinning. “There are worse fucks to look like. Beer?”

“Uh…”

Well, I can’t say no. And I definitely can’t say that I thought Source telling me not to B my own B earlier meant there wouldn’t be any Bs at this party, period. Because it’s a rush event, right? Because this is for freshmen trying to get into a frat, and freshmen can’t drink alcohol, and obviously that’s one of the rules of frat parties that I clearly knew so much about beforehand.

“... sure?” I say, trying — and failing — to sound less peer-pressured than I feel.

“Hey, no worries if you wanna stay dry,” Source tells me, severely enough to make it clear he really means that. “Seriously, your call.”

Okay, then. It’s my call. I can just not drink if I don’t want to, and keep following the plan I had to get through tonight sober and well-dressed and perfectly on time.

Because that’s worked great up to now.

“Nah, I’ll take a beer,” I tell Source. “A… light one? Do you have light ones?”

He chuckles and nods. “Yes we do,” he says in an odd tone, like he’s thinking about the punchline to a joke but not saying it aloud. “Right this way, sir.”

I follow Source inside the house, and the moment I step over the threshold the shift in temperature hits me like a slap from a wet towel. He wasn’t kidding — it is hot in here, and humid too. I guess that’s what happens when you stuff twenty-some guys, almost all wearing the same rush shirt as Source, into the first floor of an old and poorly ventilated house. Source doesn’t call attention to us as we pass through the middle of the crowd, but I can still feel everyone’s eyes turning my way — some curious, some bored, all bearing down on me like a jury sentencing me to death by public mortification. Thank God I’m at least not still wearing the tie.

Past the house’s main room is a kitchen with a sticky vinyl floor, grungy counters holding unopened cases of beer, and a rickety table in the middle with two triangles of red plastic cups pointed towards each other on top of it. Two guys in rush shirts who look like upperclassmen face each other from opposite sides of the table, both holding red cups in one hand. One of them — a tall guy with an orange beard the same shade as his blown-out hair — has a ping-pong ball pinched between the thumb and index finger of his other hand.

As Source scooches past the table and towards the refrigerator, he makes a face — fingers raised in a V in front of his mouth, tongue waggling between them — at the guy holding the ping-pong ball right before he throws it at the cup triangle on the table’s far end. The ball bounces off the rim of one with a hollow clack and rolls out of sight under the toe kick of one of the cabinets.

“Fuck off, Source,” the guy mutters.

“Stop sucking, Mandarin,” Source shoots back as he opens the fridge. From inside it, he produces two aluminum cans, tossing one to me and cracking the other open for himself. I make the catch with both hands and a little help from my torso, and check the can’s label as I straighten up: Leystone Light, 12 FL OZ, 4.1% ABV.

“You’re early, so you get a cold one,” Source says, nodding to me before taking a big swig from his own can. I gamely crack mine open and lift it to my lips, my nose wrinkling involuntarily at the yeasty, sour scent that wafts up into it.

Beyond the rim of the can, I can see Source making another face and mouthing something to the two guys at the table, but I can’t tell what it is and I don’t really care to either. I have to focus. I’m about to try my first beer. Hopefully it tastes better than it smells.

I tilt the can back and sip, and oh my God, it doesn’t. Oh my God, it’s so much worse.

There’s no point trying not to grimace — I can barely grit my teeth and swallow without openly gagging. It tastes like soggy bread strained through sweaty underpants, like carbonated embalming fluid that something furry and diseased died in. There’s no way these guys actually drink this and like it. This is a prank. They gave me the wrong can as a joke.

And maybe they did, actually, because all three guys in the kitchen are grinning and laughing at me. Source is the first one to compose himself, still smiling as he leans against the counter behind him.

“God, sorry, couldn’t resist,” he says. “Had to see you try your first beer. Always priceless.”

Oh, cool. So I was screamingly obvious about that too. Any other ways I can come off as a hilariously clueless jackass for you guys, or is it cool if I head out back to bury myself alive now?

“Trust me, it gets better,” Source goes on. “I mean, relatively. You get used to it. Kind of a Stockholm Syndrome thing.”

I try to laugh, to play along, and all I can manage is a sort of strangled cough that — of course — Source zeroes on right away. He shoves himself off the counter and edges around the table, nudging me on the shoulder once he’s close enough. Something’s changed in his expression. His face is too blurry to see exactly what.

“All right, enough of that,” he says. His voice is different now too, a bit softer and a lot more insistent. “Let’s finish the tour.”

I don’t have a clue what tour he’s talking about, but I also don’t have the energy to turn him down. So I take another sip of beer, just as nauseating as the first, and silently follow Source as he heads for a door with a window in it covered by bent-up Venetian blinds.

When he pulls the door open, cold air blasts past both of us, and I shiver as he leads me back outside. We’re on a porch raised a couple feet above a fenced-in backyard, where the ground is muddy and grassless and dotted with scattered cans and food wrappers.

“So,” Source says coolly, leaning against the porch’s railing as he drinks from his can and looks over its rim at me. “How you feelin’?”

What the hell am I supposed to say to that? That I’ve fucked up every part of this I possibly could so far? That I’m too much of a freak to handle a completely normal frat party? That seriously, how in God’s name is he drinking what might literally be rat poison like it’s lemonade?

“F-Fine,” I lie, staring at the boards beneath my shoes, teeth chattering from almost everything but the cold. “Y’know, it’s…”

“It’s a lot.”

For the first time that night, I find the courage from I-don’t-know-where to look Source in the eyes. The expression I see in them isn’t anything like what I was expecting. It’s sincere, sympathetic — knowing.

“It is,” he says with a shrug. “Doing something completely new, trying to meet new people… it’s fuckin’ scary. You party much in high school?”

The truth shoots out of me before I can stop it. “Not at all.”

Source nods. He already knew that — he just wanted me to say it out loud. “Most people didn’t. Most of us here didn’t, honestly. Everybody was clueless at one point or another.” He shifts against the railing, leaning forward a bit. “And you know something else? Not everybody does something about it. Seriously, just coming out at all means you had the ‘nads to actually try. So while you’re out already, I figure you might as well hang out, talk to some people, see what happens or what doesn’t. And hey, if you’re nervous, that’s what the beer’s for. It helps more than you’d –”

I take a giant sip of beer — wincing at the taste, coughing as the carbonation sticks in my throat. Source stares for a second, then snorts.

“See?” he says. “Works great. Just don’t go too hard. It sneaks up on you.” He pushes off the railing and gives me a nod as he passes. “I gotta mingle. You should too.”

I watch him open the house’s back door and head back inside, but I don’t follow him in. I don’t know whether I want to, or whether I should want to.

Part of me knows I’ll regret it if I went back in, that I’ve been coasting on dumb luck so far and it’s just a matter of time before I embarrass myself again — before I’m being laughed at, talked about behind my back, made fun of by people who look and act and are just like Source. Just like always. Just like every time in high school and middle school and everywhere else I’ve had the ‘nads to try being somebody I wasn’t.

But another part of me is wondering whether I really know anything at all. So far, I’ve been wrong about everything I assumed would happen tonight, and now I can add Source — the cool, confident, popular frat star who just went out of his way to make sure a random freshman from his English class felt comfortable at his house party — to that list too.

This is college, not high school — a fraternity rush party, not a homecoming dance or the empty corner of a crowded cafeteria. Those are adults in there, not kids, and as long as I don’t act like a kid, maybe things will be different. Maybe I’ll be wrong in the right way this time.

I look down at my beer can, take another pull, and… well, it’s still not good. But it’s not as bad as it was. Beneath the mealy taste and the chilly prickling on my tongue, there’s a bit of warmth too, like a thin blanket in the middle of a blizzard — far from enough, but better than nothing. I guess that’s what starting to get drunk feels like. I think I’m starting to see the appeal.

What was it Source just said? If I’m nervous, that’s what the beer is for? Well, I’m fucking terrified, so I guess I better get some more beer. And all the cans are inside the house, so…

I blow out a sigh, take another swig, and reenter the party.

It’s definitely more crowded inside now than it was when I got here, and way louder. There are more guys who aren’t wearing rush shirts, most of them already deep in inaudible conversations or bobbing their heads to the nightclub-y music pumping out of speakers in the main room.

Some are even wearing button-downs like me — untucked, two buttons undone, sleeves rolled up a bit. Looks like Source knew what he was doing earlier with my own outfit. I’d thank him, but he’s vanished among the pastel-clad bodies filling the kitchen and spilling into the hall leading to the main room — mingling, I guess. Like I’m supposed to be doing.

Another sip of beer. The can’s already mostly empty. I take a few more gulps until it fully is, then — following the lead of the KNZ brother with a beard that Source talked to earlier — toss the can into the growing pile of them at the kitchen table’s center. Call that environmental storytelling, I guess. Like a frat party video game or something.

Actually, maybe that’s how I’ll get through this: make a game of it. Objective updated: talk to people. Quest marker: floating over the head of Beardy McFratStar. I know how to do this. I can do this.

“You got through a lot of those,” I say to him with what I hope looks like a jokey grin.

“What?” he yells back. He’s barely audible over the noise of the party ramping up. I wasn’t audible at all.

“I said you got through a lot of those,” I yell back, gesturing at the cans on the table. “Does that mean you’re winning or losing?”

“Both,” he says. Then he grabs two fresh cans from a case on the counter behind him, cracks both open, and starts filling the red cups on the table in front of him, ignoring me and my rapidly fading smile completely.

Objective failed: talk to people. New objective: find a rock in the backyard big enough to hide under forever.

I grab a can from the same case, crack it, sip it, and barely keep myself from spitting that sip out into the sink. Another thing Source was right about: showing up early and getting a cold beer is a big deal, because as rough as the chilled ones were, the lukewarm ones are fully bioweapons. But, still each mouthful is another layer of insulation against the storm of social suicide raging around me, wrapped tight around my loosening shoulders and slowly spreading its warmth down my arms and spine.

Okay. That was one attempt. I can make more. I’m going to make more. Source told me I could do it, sort of, and I’m not going to prove him wrong if I can help it.

I squeeze between bodies in the kitchen and wade down the hallway towards the front room, Plan B forming in my head along the way. Maybe I’m a bit underleveled to start with the established frat guys, but there’s gotta be some basic adds in here to warm up with — guys like me, who don’t know anybody and are looking to change that. Just gotta find them, and walk over to them, and use all of the zero social skills I’ve developed in my life to — as I can see now that I’m in the main room — naturally insert myself into the conversations they all seem to already be having with frat guys.

Come on, reality. I can’t be the only petrified, socially inept nerd at a frat party. Work with me here.

A gap in the crowd widens briefly into a tunnel, and at the end of it, I find my mark: a skinny-looking kid with messy green hair and wide brown eyes, wearing a fratty-looking shirt that’s a different pastel shade than the KNZ rush ones and sticking out in it like five fingers on a whole sore hand. Objective updated: mingle the shit out of this guy.

He sees me coming as I nudge my way across the room, and even from a distance I can see the relief wash over his face. I’m almost offended by how quickly he clocked me as a fellow nerd, before remembering that’s why I’m heading over towards him in the first place.

In any event, there’s an open space next to him, and I slide into it. We exchange tight nods of male-on-male acknowledgement, then shift awkwardly back and forth on our respective feet for a few seconds. At the end of those seconds, I realize he’s not going to say anything unless I say something first.

“You know anybody here?” I ask.

“Kind of,” he says, sounding more like he thought he knew people before he showed up and has since learned he really didn’t. “You?”

“I mean, one guy,” I tell him. “I don’t know where he went. Trying to… meet people, I guess.”

“Is it working for you?”

I take a sip of beer, then after a second realize that doesn’t count as an answer since this guy doesn’t know what it means. “Not really. You?”

“Not really.” He sighs and runs his free hand through his hair, messing it up even more. “I thought it’d be easier.”

“I thought it’d be about this hard,” I reply. “First thing I’ve been right about tonight.”

“What?”

“First thing I’ve been right about tonight!”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

We both fall silent again. I’m pretty much chugging my beer now, barely separating the can from my mouth between sips. The green-haired kid makes like he’s going to do the same with his can, then sighs and puts it down on the floor next to him.

“Fuck it,” I think I hear him mutter, and then I definitely hear him say to me, “I’m Dogwood. Or… Woody. People call me Woody.”

I look at his face, then down at his hand — the one reaching out towards me. Once I clue in, I reach back and shake it. “I’m Button,” I tell him. “People usually don’t call me at all.”

Woody laughs, and I laugh too, imagining a little triumphant jingle in my head. Objective complete. Maybe I’ll get social XP for this. Put some skill points into handshakes, make ‘em twenty percent firmer with a chance for a friendship buff.

Oh shit, friendship. Friends. I’ve been talking to Woody for a couple minutes now, and we know each other’s names, and we seem to feel the same about this party. I tilt my can back and drain it, and I’m not even nervous when I do.

I think I just made a friend. And I think beer is really starting to grow on me.

“So what do you do?” I ask my new friend Woody. “Aside from, y’know… this. Party-animal-ing.”

“Not a lot,” he says with a shrug. “I’m not very interesting.”

“Well, I’m interested,” I say, because I am, and also because I want to make the most out of this mingling success before I have to go try it again with someone else. “You said you kind of know people here. From class, or what?”

“No,” he says — and suddenly he seems really uncomfortable, like he’s embarrassed by what he’s about to admit. “It’s… it’s kind of…”

And I don’t hear what it kind of is, because I find out pretty quickly what it actually is.

“Woody! Yo, Wood-aaaay!”

The crowd parts — or really, gets shoved apart — so a guy who’s bigger than both me and Woody put together can make a beeline towards us. His straight black hair is shaved into a high and tight fade, and he’s wearing the standard KNZ rush shirt with the sleeves cut off into a tanktop, which means I get a great view of how big his exposed biceps are when he wraps his arms around Woody and lifts him fully off the ground in a bear hug, squeezing hard enough to make Woody’s eyes bulge out.

“What the fuck is up, lil’ Thorn!” the guy yells, shaking Woody back and forth so his dangling legs swing helplessly six inches off the ground. The motion makes a sloshing noise too — the big guy’s clutching a black-labeled bottle in one hand that’s filled with amber liquid. When he finally puts Woody down, he takes a big swig from the bottle and shakes his head like a wet dog as he swallows.

“God, I haven’t seen you in fuckin’ ages, man!” he says to Woody. “Why didn’t you come out in the fall?”

“I-I… y’know…” Woody stammers, mouth twitching as he tries to smile and laugh and fails to do either. If he was a bit nervous about talking to me, he looks petrified talking to whoever this guy is. “J-Just wanted to get settled, before –”

“Hey, no worries, lil’ Thorn, I get you. School’s important. I love school.”

“Yeah,” Woody mumbles. “Love school…”

The frat guy takes another swig from his bottle — John David’s Bourbon, according to the label. I feel like I should help out somehow. Woody’s my friend, after all.

“I’m Button,” I say, extending my hand.

“Hey, what’s up,” the frat guy intones, glancing my way and nodding before looking back at Woody. “So how’s the party treating you, bud? Everything you dreamed of?”

“Yeah, it’s cool!” Woody replies, with all the sincerity of a hostage staring down the barrel of a gun. “Really fun!”

The frat guy either doesn’t notice Woody’s discomfort or doesn’t care. Either way, he wraps his arm around Woody’s shoulders and squeezes him in close. “Good shit,” he says. “Come with me a second. Got some dudes you should meet.”

Woody stiffens, and sucks in a breath, and puts on the single most painful-looking grin I’ve ever seen outside a dentist’s office. “Cool…” he says, before looking pointedly at me. “This is Button, by the way. He’s cool too.”

The frat guy glances at me again, this time long enough to meet my eyes. The look in his own eyes — prying, intense, like a tiger staring down prey and deciding it’s not even big enough to be worth eating — just about knocks me over.

“‘Sup, Button,” he says dully, sticking his fist out a bit from Woody’s shoulder. I have to stretch a bit — knees still shaking, fight-or-flight instinct fully committed to the latter — to bump my own against it. “Alkaline. You rushing?”

“Y-Yeah,” I say, biting the inside of my lip so I don’t shudder as he looks me up and down. For the first time all night, I’m back in familiar territory: getting sized up and found insufferable from a single fleeting look.

And then, as if I’d imagined everything that I just felt, Alkaline’s face shifts into a broad, seemingly genuine grin. “Dope,” he says. “You oughta meet the guys too. Let ‘em get to know you.”

Without waiting for a reply, he tugs Woody away from the wall and steers him through the crowd, motioning once with his head for me to follow him. Between that and the pleading look Woody shoots back at me, I don’t have much choice but to head off with them.

We end up in the opposite corner of the main room, where two more guys in rush shirts are lounging on a lumpy leather couch and a third sits in an easy chair positioned catty-corner to it. All of them look up and nod at Alkaline as he approaches, then at Woody under his arm. If any of them notice me, it’s for the briefest of moments — the way you notice someone you edge past on the sidewalk before completely forgetting they exist. Familiar territory again. And I finished my beer on the way over, so I don’t even have that to fall back on.

“Hey, y’all remember Dogwood, right? Thorn’s little brother?” Alkaline says, giving Woody a squeeze around the shoulders that doubles as a shove forward towards the other frat guys. All three of those guys nod and smile, and the closest one extends a fist that, after an awkward moment, Woody bumps his own against. “He’s done being responsible, wants to start ragin’.”

“I… am rushing, yeah!” Woody clarifies. “Me and Button both are.”

Alkaline’s face tightens as Woody brings me up again, but the other three frat guys are either a lot less annoyed about it or a lot better at hiding it. “Hey, Button,” one of the guys on the couch says to me. “Thanks for comin’ out. You guys in the same dorm?”

“We just met tonight, actually,” I reply, rolling my empty beer can around in my fingers. I’m coasting right now on the last sip I took, but that confidence is fading fast, and panic is waiting impatiently to replace it. “Haven’t met… Thorn?”

“Hawthorn,” the other guy on the couch says. “And you wouldn’t have, he graduated last year.” Now he looks at Woody. “How’s he doing, by the way? You talk to him lately?”

“He’s fine, just busy with work,” Woody answers, before his face splits with a sheepish grin. “Actually told me I didn’t have to rush if I didn’t want to.”

“Didn’t want the competition,” Alkaline cracks, squeezing Woody’s shoulders again. “You gonna be a fuckin’ legend like he was?”

Based on the look on Woody’s face, I’m gonna guess “no.” Based on the look on Alkaline’s face, I can also guess he isn’t going to take “no” for an answer.

“Al, c’mon, cut the kid some slack,” the guy in the chair says. “It’s his first night out.”

“Hey, gonna start somewhere, right?” Alkaline shoots back. He takes a big pull from his whiskey bottle, then holds it out under Woody’s nose. “Speaking of which, you look sober. Let’s fix that.”

Woody stares at the bottle, and I do too. I’ve never tried whiskey before. I kind of want to right now — and Woody seems like he very much doesn’t. “I-I… I’m okay…” he tries to say before Alkaline cuts him off.

“Nooooo you’re fuckin’ not, not for a first night out. C’mon, bud, you got a legend to live up to!”

The guys on the couch and chair chuckle, but they don’t do anything else. Woody looks desperately at me, begging me to… do what? Talk us out of this? I’m as clueless as he is.

Then again, I suppose misery loves company. And company is what I can be for a friend. For my friend Woody, who needs my help.

Alkaline sighs and starts to say something, and this time I cut him off. I grab the neck of the whiskey bottle, tug it free of his hand, and take a pull.

The whiskey burns on my tongue and sears my throat raw, and I can’t help coughing as I swallow it down. But once it’s inside me, it’s like a comfy little fire in my belly, warming me all the way through and slowing my heart down until I feel halfway close to normal again.

Alkaline’s upgraded from frowning at me to full-on glaring. Well, too bad for him. He was being a dick to my friend. But also, my friend should have some whiskey, because I had some whiskey and I feel great, and the frat guys on the couch are laughing and nodding like they feel great about me too.

I hold the bottle out to Woody and give him a sort of smile-shrug thing that’s supposed to say, “Might as well, right?” After a second, he nods, takes the bottle, and takes a sip, coughing just like I did afterwards.

“Attaboy,” Alkaline tells Woody. “Told you you’d like it.”

“No you didn’t,” Woody wheezes. I get why. Whiskey’s really rough on the throat.

“Well, whatever, you liked it,” Alkaline says. “Now come on, let’s go.”

“Go where?” I ask — because hey, if Woody’s with Alkaline and I’m with Woody, I’m going wherever they’re going. Alkaline looks like he wants to argue, but then he just grins, grabs the whiskey bottle from Woody, and presses it firmly back into my hand.

“Let’s go kill this bottle, Button,” he says. “And meet some more of the frat.”

I look at him, then at Woody, then at the bottle, and then I shrug. Sounds good to me. I take another drink, and then Button blacks out, which I the author am choosing to express in this way because I think it’s funny. Anyway, if you highlighted this text like a big nerd, there’s nothing to see here but what was already obvious from context clues, so uh here’s the Bee Movie script I guess: According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don't care what humans think is impossible. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Ooh, black and yellow! Let's shake it up a little. Barry! Breakfast is ready! Ooming! Hang on a second. Hello? - Barry? - Adam? - Oan you believe this is happening? - I can't. I'll pick you up. Looking sharp. Use the stairs. Your father paid good money for those. Sorry. I'm excited. Here's the graduate. We're very proud of you, son. A perfect report card, all B's. Very proud. Ma! I got a thing going here. - You got lint on your fuzz. - Ow! That's me! - Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000. - Bye! Barry, I told you, stop flying in the house! - Hey, Adam. - Hey, Barry. - Is that fuzz gel? - A little. Special day, graduation. Never thought I'd make it. Three days grade school, three days high school. Those were awkward. Three days college. I'm glad I took a day and hitchhiked around the hive. You did come back different. - Hi, Barry. - Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good. - Hear about Frankie? - Yeah. - You going to the funeral? - No, I'm not going. Everybody knows, sting someone, you die. Don't waste it on a squirrel. Such a hothead. I guess he could have just gotten out of the way. I love this incorporating an amusement park into our day. That's why we don't need vacations. Boy, quite a bit of pomp... under the circumstances. - Well, Adam, today we are men. - We are! - Bee-men. - Amen! Hallelujah! Students, faculty, distinguished bees, please welcome Dean Buzzwell. Welcome, New Hive Oity graduating class of... ...9:15. That concludes our ceremonies. And begins your career at Honex Industries! Will we pick ourjob today? I heard it's just orientation. Heads up! Here we go. Keep your hands and antennas inside the tram at all times. - Wonder what it'll be like? - A little scary. Welcome to Honex, a division of Honesco and a part of the Hexagon Group. This is it! Wow. Wow. We know that you, as a bee, have worked your whole life to get to the point where you can work for your whole life. Honey begins when our valiant Pollen Jocks bring the nectar to the hive. Our top-secret formula is automatically color-corrected, scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured into this soothing sweet syrup with its distinctive golden glow you know as... Honey! - That girl was hot. - She's my cousin! - She is? - Yes, we're all cousins. - Right. You're right. - At Honex, we constantly strive to improve every aspect of bee existence. These bees are stress-testing a new helmet technology. - What do you think he makes? - Not enough. Here we have our latest advancement, the Krelman. - What does that do? - Oatches that little strand of honey that hangs after you pour it. Saves us millions. Oan anyone work on the Krelman? Of course. Most bee jobs are small ones. But bees know that every small job, if it's done well, means a lot. But choose carefully because you'll stay in the job you pick for the rest of your life. The same job the rest of your life? I didn't know that. What's the difference? You'll be happy to know that bees, as a species, haven't had one day off in 27 million years. So you'll just work us to death? We'll sure try. Wow! That blew my mind! "What's the difference?" How can you say that? One job forever? That's an insane choice to have to make. I'm relieved. Now we only have to make one decision in life. But, Adam, how could they never have told us that? Why would you question anything? We're bees. We're the most perfectly functioning society on Earth. You ever think maybe things work a little too well here? Like what? Give me one example. I don't know. But you know what I'm talking about. Please clear the gate. Royal Nectar Force on approach. Wait a second. Oheck it out. - Hey, those are Pollen Jocks! - Wow. I've never seen them this close. They know what it's like outside the hive. Yeah, but some don't come back. - Hey, Jocks! - Hi, Jocks! You guys did great! You're monsters! You're sky freaks! I love it! I love it! - I wonder where they were. - I don't know. Their day's not planned. Outside the hive, flying who knows where, doing who knows what. You can'tjust decide to be a Pollen Jock. You have to be bred for that. Right. Look. That's more pollen than you and I will see in a lifetime. It's just a status symbol. Bees make too much of it. Perhaps. Unless you're wearing it and the ladies see you wearing it. Those ladies? Aren't they our cousins too? Distant. Distant. Look at these two. - Oouple of Hive Harrys. - Let's have fun with them. It must be dangerous being a Pollen Jock. Yeah. Once a bear pinned me against a mushroom! He had a paw on my throat, and with the other, he was slapping me! - Oh, my! - I never thought I'd knock him out. What were you doing during this? Trying to alert the authorities. I can autograph that. A little gusty out there today, wasn't it, comrades? Yeah. Gusty. We're hitting a sunflower patch six miles from here tomorrow. - Six miles, huh? - Barry! A puddle jump for us, but maybe you're not up for it. - Maybe I am. - You are not! We're going 0900 at J-Gate. What do you think, buzzy-boy? Are you bee enough? I might be. It all depends on what 0900 means. Hey, Honex! Dad, you surprised me. You decide what you're interested in? - Well, there's a lot of choices. - But you only get one. Do you ever get bored doing the same job every day? Son, let me tell you about stirring. You grab that stick, and you just move it around, and you stir it around. You get yourself into a rhythm. It's a beautiful thing. You know, Dad, the more I think about it, maybe the honey field just isn't right for me. You were thinking of what, making balloon animals? That's a bad job for a guy with a stinger. Janet, your son's not sure he wants to go into honey! - Barry, you are so funny sometimes. - I'm not trying to be funny. You're not funny! You're going into honey. Our son, the stirrer! - You're gonna be a stirrer? - No one's listening to me! Wait till you see the sticks I have. I could say anything right now. I'm gonna get an ant tattoo! Let's open some honey and celebrate! Maybe I'll pierce my thorax. Shave my antennae. Shack up with a grasshopper. Get a gold tooth and call everybody "dawg"! I'm so proud. - We're starting work today! - Today's the day. Oome on! All the good jobs will be gone. Yeah, right. Pollen counting, stunt bee, pouring, stirrer, front desk, hair removal... - Is it still available? - Hang on. Two left! One of them's yours! Oongratulations! Step to the side. - What'd you get? - Picking crud out. Stellar! Wow! Oouple of newbies? Yes, sir! Our first day! We are ready! Make your choice. - You want to go first? - No, you go. Oh, my. What's available? Restroom attendant's open, not for the reason you think. - Any chance of getting the Krelman? - Sure, you're on. I'm sorry, the Krelman just closed out. Wax monkey's always open. The Krelman opened up again. What happened? A bee died. Makes an opening. See? He's dead. Another dead one. Deady. Deadified. Two more dead. Dead from the neck up. Dead from the neck down. That's life! Oh, this is so hard! Heating, cooling, stunt bee, pourer, stirrer, humming, inspector number seven, lint coordinator, stripe supervisor, mite wrangler. Barry, what do you think I should... Barry? Barry! All right, we've got the sunflower patch in quadrant nine... What happened to you? Where are you? - I'm going out. - Out? Out where? - Out there. - Oh, no! I have to, before I go to work for the rest of my life. You're gonna die! You're crazy! Hello? Another call coming in. If anyone's feeling brave, there's a Korean deli on 83rd that gets their roses today. Hey, guys. - Look at that. - Isn't that the kid we saw yesterday? Hold it, son, flight deck's restricted. It's OK, Lou. We're gonna take him up. Really? Feeling lucky, are you? Sign here, here. Just initial that. - Thank you. - OK. You got a rain advisory today, and as you all know, bees cannot fly in rain. So be careful. As always, watch your brooms, hockey sticks, dogs, birds, bears and bats. Also, I got a couple of reports of root beer being poured on us. Murphy's in a home because of it, babbling like a cicada! - That's awful. - And a reminder for you rookies, bee law number one, absolutely no talking to humans! All right, launch positions! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Black and yellow! Hello! You ready for this, hot shot? Yeah. Yeah, bring it on. Wind, check. - Antennae, check. - Nectar pack, check. - Wings, check. - Stinger, check. And that’s enough of that BACK TO THE STORY and the music’s loud, like feel it in your chest loud, like the floor’s rumbling and the air’s thick and I can’t really hear myself think or keep the thoughts in order so I mostly don’t try, just hang out and just listen and just get it for the first time.

I hate house music or I guess hated past tense, because I thought it was just loud and that was it and every song kind of sounded the same but they don’t actually, like they’re mostly the same but that’s just the mix or the DJ or whatever’s in control of it because I don’t know who set up the playlist, but they got it right because I finally get the point of this music is the feeling of it and the thumping like the heartbeat of the world and the swells like ocean waves you ride on top of and bounce up and down and feel through your whole body plus all the bodies around you, like one long song that never ends and keeps pounding and keeps you going as long as you want it to which is forever.

I love house music right now and I love this party and I love beer and I don’t actually know what beer I’m drinking, it’s not the same kind I had earlier but it basically tastes the same because all beer kind of tastes the same and that’s the point like how the point of the music is it all sounds the same, because the point is you’re with other people and you’re all the same even though people act like they’re not because they want to be different and sad because being sad means you’re smart, and I was stupid not to do this in high school just because I was different even though I wasn’t because everybody’s the same and they just like to party and how did I get to this party anyway?

This isn’t the KNZ house so it must be somewhere else, because we were at the house and then we left and it was freezing outside and it’s hot as shit in here like it was hot as shit in the house but this is a different hot that’s wetter and louder and the music’s so fucking loud I can barely hear myself think, which is probably why I can’t remember the walk except for when Woody left to go home because Woody’s my friend and he was tired and I told him he should text me but I didn’t get his number because I’ve never really texted people because I didn’t have many friends until Woody who’s really cool and a nerd like me, and he likes me and I think Source likes me too because there he is next to me and he’s smiling and I smile back because I like him.

Source says something and I don’t hear him because it’s so loud and then he says it again and I think it’s how you doin’, which is great, I’m doing great, so I tell him that and he laughs and says I can tell and then saw you met Al which I guess means Alkaline who’s so cool and knew everybody at the party and took me and Woody around to meet them all, and I guess I just told Source all that too because he smiles weird like he wants to laugh but doesn’t want to really and he puts his arm around my back and asks me how I’m feeling again, so I guess he forgot like I almost did before he asked again and I remembered I’m feeling great so I tell him I’m feeling great again.

And then I remember how scared I was and how dumb it was to be scared and I laugh when I realize I’m not just remembering because I’m still talking, because I’m telling Source how much fun this is and how cool all the guys are and asking is it cool if I go to more parties with them because I’m feeling great and I really like him and I wanna feel like this all the time like a party animal, and he grins and says you can come to more parties, that’s how rush works, and then he says right now though you should think about going home, you look partied out, and I don’t know what that means but Source is my friend and he likes me and I guess I’m kind of tired and dizzy because it’s so hot and loud, but I haven’t finished my beer and I don’t know where it went.

I ask Source if I can finish my beer first and he says you’re good buddy so I guess I am, but he got a beer from somewhere and it’s mean to not let me have one and he’s got a phone in the other hand that he’s typing into, and then he puts the phone in my pocket and I realize it’s my phone and I wonder if he was giving me his number like Sweetie Belle did and I remember I don’t have Woody’s number, and I try to ask Source but I can’t quite look straight at him and it’s cold now instead of hot even though we’re still inside and I’m sweaty and swaying and Source is way stronger than he looks or I’m way lighter, and suddenly we’re outside.

He asks me what dorm do you live in, and I tell him the place’s name and he says okay so go down this street and turn left then five blocks up Main past downtown then right at the streetlamp and it’ll be right there, got it, and I say yes because I do got it, obviously I know where I live but it’s nice of Source to make sure because I’m partied out and really tired and the cold air outside makes me even more dizzy, but I told him I’m fine and I am fine and I’m gonna go home and go to bed so I’m not partied out anymore so that later I can hang out with Source and Al and Woody again and have friends and be a party animal like Sweetie likes, because god I like her so much and she maybe likes me but she definitely will if I’m good enough at partying and so far I’m still feeling good.

I start walking down the sidewalk and then in the street for a bit and then back on the sidewalk, and it’s really cold outside but not that bad and I’m not feeling as great now that I’m not partying anymore but that’s okay, I’m okay, just gotta go down this street and turn left then five blocks past Main and home to the streetlamp, which I just passed under but that’s a different streetlamp that isn’t mine, I haven’t even turned left yet because there’s the end of the street right up there so now I can turn left and stay on the sidewalk because there are cars in the road and I don’t want to get hit, because my Mom said be careful around cars when I was a kid and for some reason that makes me feel bad so I don’t think about it and I keep walking.

Except that doesn’t make feel better and I feel cold again but still sweaty, but I have to keep walking because I’m not at the streetlamp yet but I don’t remember how many blocks I’ve walked and I think I’m in downtown but I don’t know what counts as downtown and what’s just the town without a direction, but the point is I know what direction I’m going and it’s home and I can make it there if I just keep walking and stare straight ahead and don’t think about anything because I’m really not feeling good anymore, and I didn’t lie to Source about that but I did lie to him about other stuff like being a party animal and being cool and wanting a beer and I had so many beers that I don’t remember how many.

I stop in the sidewalk and stare at the ground and my chest feels tight and my throat feels full, and there’s a store window next to me and I can see myself in it and my shirt’s untucked and my buttons are undone and I look like a fuckboy like Source said, and I stare back and laugh at how dumb I look and then I hiccup and my throat’s really full and fuck oh fuck I’m not feeling fine I’m gonna fucking Scared out of my shorts, check. OK, ladies, let's move it out! Pound those petunias, you striped stem-suckers! All of you, drain those flowers! Wow! I'm out! I can't believe I'm out! So blue. I feel so fast and free! Box kite! Wow! Flowers! This is Blue Leader. We have roses visual. Bring it around 30 degrees and hold. Roses! 30 degrees, roger. Bringing it around. Stand to the side, kid. It's got a bit of a kick. That is one nectar collector! - Ever see pollination up close? - No, sir. I pick up some pollen here, sprinkle it over here. Maybe a dash over there, a pinch on that one. See that? It's a little bit of magic. That's amazing. Why do we do that? That's..

Okay. I’m okay. It’s out of me. It’s fine, I’m fine, I’m fuckfuckfuckFUCKpollen power. More pollen, more flowers, more nectar, more honey for us. Oool. I'm picking up a lot of bright yellow. Oould be daisies. Don't we need those? Oopy that visual. Wait. One of these flowers seems to be on the move. Say again? You're reporting a moving flower? Affirmative. That was on the line! This is the coolest. What is it? I don't know, but I'm loving this color. It smells good. Not like a flower...

I haven’t puked since middle school. I forgot what it feels like. I forgot how it burns the back of your throat because you’re trying to fight it but you can’t, how your whole body goes cold and your shoulders lock up and it pushes everything not just out of your stomach but your whole body, so there’s sweat soaking and snot dripping and tears splattering the ground where you god dammit not AGAIbut I like it. Yeah, fuzzy. Ohemical-y. Oareful, guys. It's a little grabby. My sweet lord of bees! Oandy-brain, get off there! Problem! - Guys! - This could be bad. Affirmative. Very close. Gonna hurt. Mama's little boy. You are way out of position, rookie! Ooming in at you like a missile! Help me! I don't think these are flowers. - Should we tell him? - I think he knows. What is this?!

That’s gotta be it. Please. If that’s not it I’m gonna fucking die. I might die anyway. Please, God, just fucking kill me or cut it out already.

A few seconds pass. My stomach churns. I’m bent over double, hands braced on my knees, sucking in raspy breaths and trying to spit the god-awful taste of god-knows-what out of my mouth. I’m exhausted. I can barely stand up. I’m freezing and I’m drunk and I feel like curling into a ball on the sidewalk and crying until I pass out.

But it’s over. It’s all over. I’m partied out. I’m alone.

I wanna go home.

Chapter 4: Careful What You Do to My Head

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Here’s a fun fact I learned when I was doing frat party research yesterday: despite all the medical advancements humans have made over the centuries, we actually still don’t know exactly what causes hangovers. There are lots of theories, of course, and contributing factors and correlations and other science-y ways to make it sound like we know, but… we don’t! Could be anything, really.

But as of about ten seconds ago when I woke up, I’ve come up with a new theory, and it goes like this: I think hangovers happen because some sort of God exists, and He or She or It hates us and wants us to suffer.

Which is really just unnecessary, I think. Because I also think I hate myself enough right now for the both of us.

I should clarify: I didn’t really wake up just now. Waking up requires you to have been asleep at some point, and I don’t feel like I slept last night or even remember getting into my bed. Mostly, I just feel like my tongue has shriveled up like a prune and my stomach’s dissolving in its own acid, and my head hurts so bad that I almost can’t focus on how close I am to throwing up again.

Which is also unnecessary, because one thing I do remember is throwing up last night. A lot. On my way from a frat party I shouldn’t have gone to back to a dorm I never should’ve left. I can still taste it in my dry mouth, and feel it in my burning throat, and groan as the memory rises from my chest into my neck and almost up to…

I shift just enough to poke my head off the edge of my bed, so I can at least hurl off of it rather than in it. Ultimately, though, I don’t do either. I stare blearily at the floor, and gulp like a fish on the floor of a boat, and feel really jealous of that imaginary fish because it only has a bit more thrashing to do before it mercifully gets to die.

I am not lucky. I am hungover. Because God hates me, and I hate me too.

“You okay?”

I don’t look up. Looking up is a bit beyond me at the moment. And besides, I know who’s talking already — from the creak of the bed across the room from me, and the perfectly gormless question they just asked. Good morning, Bit. I made bad choices last night.

“No, I am not,” is what I try to say, but what actually leaks out of my throat is “Nnnnnneeeergh,” which I guess gets the point across just as well. Nevertheless, Bit’s bed creaks again. He has more gormlessness to inflict on me.

“Did you go out last night?”

“Mmmmrrreh.”

“Are you, uh… gonna go to class?”

“Eh.”

“Um… okay. Well… see you later, then.”

Goodbye, Bit. Please lock the door on the way out so my corpse doesn’t stink up the hallway.

I hear the lightswitch flip off, then the door click shut, and then I don’t really hear anything because I’m not really conscious for a good while after that. But eventually, I “wake up” again — head still pounding, drool soaking my sheets where my face was pressed into them — and manage to paw around blindly on my school desk next to my bed until I find the water bottle I was pretty sure I’d left there.

It’s mostly empty, and some of what was in it ends up joining the spit in my sheets, but draining it leaves my mouth less dry and washes out some of the awful aftertaste of my awful-er decisions last night. If I want more water, I’ll have to get up.

Sure. I can do that. Also, I just realized I’m gonna pee myself if I don’t, so that’s two reasons to start moving.

I can’t find my shoes once I sit up and can’t really be bothered to look that hard either, so I shuffle out of my room and down the hall to the bathroom in my socks, wrinkled dress shirt crackling against my aching skin the whole way. Once my body’s completely emptied of liquid rather than just mostly, I shed the shirt and everything else I’m wearing, stumble into a shower stall, and slump on the floor under the hottest water I can stand, which feels really nice until I remember that I didn’t bring any soap with me or, y’know, a towel.

Whatever. These clothes are already ruined. I’ll dry off and change once I get back to my room, which I’ll do once I feel like standing up, which might be never. Who knows? It’s a mystery, like hangovers and God and the existence of both, and whatever part of me thought I could ever in a million years be the partying type, let alone the type of partier that other party people would like.

Eventually, though, the hot water turns lukewarm, so I force myself to stand up so I can turn the shower off, drip-dry for a bit, and rub out the little pink-ridged imprints that the shower floor’s tiles left on my butt. One soggy trip back down the hall later, I tug on sweatpants and shrug on a pullover that I really meant to wash at some point, and I’m ready to face the day.

Which, judging by how bright it is outside, has steamed past noon already and isn’t about to slow down on my account. Guess that means it’s lunchtime. Maybe the dining hall will sprinkle some ibuprofen into an oatmeal bowl if I ask nicely.

The pullover isn’t thick enough to keep the January chill out, but it feels appropriate to be miserably cold on top of regular-miserable right now. So, shivering with every step, I make the plodding journey to the dining hall, which is fresh out of oatmeal and prescription-strength pain medication. I settle for a single plain bagel instead, which I already know I’m gonna get through three bites of, max. Hey, if it didn’t work for Sweetie Belle, why shouldn’t it not work for me?

And really, I should’ve known better than to follow her lead for hangover food, or think about her while I’m looking for a table to slump over, or try to act like anything other than a colossal dork she used to know and eventually thought better of staying in touch with. Because just like God hates me, so does the Devil, and speaking of him…

“Hey there, party animal.”

Sweetie Belle’s dressed for the weather in a fur-lined purple coat and matching boots, hair hidden under a snow-white beanie and rosy cheeks peeled back into an impish smirk. She has a backpack slung over her shoulder by a strap lined with little pins — cartoony flowers and musical notes, and something with hooves that looks more like a cat than a horse. She shrugs it and her coat off as she plops down in the seat across from me, then folds her arms on the table as she leans forward, still smirking.

I’d have blushed if I could feel my face, and probably tried to smile back if the thought alone didn’t make me want to blow chunks again. It’s probably just the hangover. If I keep telling myself that, maybe at some point I’ll start actually believing it.

“You didn’t text me when you went out,” Sweetie says, in a tone that’s somewhere between playful and pouty. Yesterday she looked cute even through a hangover, but today — cleaned up, made up, wearing a fuzzy turtleneck that fits snugly around her narrow waist — she’s a magnet drawing eyes towards her from all over the dining hall. “Care to explain yourself?”

“Sorry,” is the best raspy answer I have at the moment. “My bad.”

“It is your bad. It’s rude not to tell your friends you’re out partying. I may never forgive you.”

“Please forgive me,” I mumble. I can’t pair it with a pleading look because my eyes are closed, because the dining hall’s spinning around me and I’d very much like it to stop. Over the blackness and the blurry pixels flashing inside it, I hear Sweetie Belle let out a put-upon sigh.

“Well, since you asked nicely,” she says. When I feel steady enough to look up at her, she has her chin balanced on top of her laced fingers, piercing gaze leveled straight at me. “So how was it? You have fun?”

Instead of knocking me further off-balance, staring right back at Sweetie Belle feels kind of steadying instead, like watching the horizon so you don’t feel quite as carsick. “I genuinely don’t remember,” I tell her. “So… hard ‘maybe’ on that.”

“A hard ‘maybe’?” She makes a face like she’s scandalized. “And after all that work you put in to get invited...”

“All right, I know, I’m full of shit,” I groan, rubbing my eyes. “I’m not a party animal.”

“You sure look like one right now.”

“I look like I got mauled by one. And feel like it.”

Her smile widens as she chuckles. “Well, practice makes perfect. If you still wanna practice, that is.” When I don’t say anything, she leans forward again. “So, do you wanna?”

“Does it matter?” I mumble, and then I look up at her and see her expression and realize that, somehow, it really does. She really wants to know what I want to do, who I am — whether I’m the type of person she should want to hang out with. This is a test. I’m in the social arena with her, and I’m close to failing gloriously.

“I mean, sure,” I tell her. The shrug I try to pair with the words almost sends me teetering off my seat. “I met some cool guys last night. Probably try to hang out with ‘em again.”

She nods — and for just a moment, almost looks disappointed. But a blink of my gummed-up eyes later, she’s grinning again, just as sincere as ever. “Nice. Where at? Which house did you go to?”

“KNZ. Kappa Nu, uh…” I trail off as I realize I don’t remember the right Greek letter. It’s not “Zed,” is it? It’s…

“Zeta,” Sweetie says — and there’s that look again, flashing through her eyes for the split between seconds, just long enough to stick in my head as a question I don’t know how to phrase. “Yeah, I’ve heard good things. You think it went well last night?”

“Dunno.” I can’t help but chuckle — painfully, thanks to the throbbing that little motion starts up in my skull. “Don’t remember.”

“Well, keep me posted, all right? I wanna know how it goes.”

I nod, eyes closed and thumb raised. “Yep. I’ll text you.”

“No, actually, you’re gonna tell me in person. We’ll get lunch here tomorrow. You suck at texting.”

I mean, she’s right. Recent evidence suggests I do. And we’ll… wait, get lunch? Like a… is this a…

“You gonna be up for that?” she asks, and finally I get a grip on myself. If it was a date, she’d have called it one. She just wants to know how rush goes, because she wants to be friends like we used to be and I’m messing it up by not playing along. So I nod, and smile, and start playing too.

“Up, yes,” I say. “Awake, no promises.”

“Oh, you better be awake,” she shoots back as she stands up, donning her coat and bag mid-movement. “I’m taking a Stage Combat class this semester. I can and will pretend to kick your ass.”

“I’ll just… pretend it doesn’t hurt?” I say, getting an eyeroll for my efforts.

“We’ll have to see tomorrow, won’t we?” she says as she leaves, before turning back and adding, “Drink water!” I offer another thumbs-up while I watch her leave, and the second she’s out of sight, I let my hand drop hard onto the table and lean back as I rub my face with the other.

Nice one, Button. Now you have to go out again tonight, and probably get sick again, and feel even worse tomorrow, all because it’d feel the tiniest bit awkward to be honest exactly one time with a girl who has exactly zero interest in being anything more than friends.

Or actually, do I have to go out? I told Sweetie Belle I’d try to keep rushing, not that I’d succeed, and I haven’t heard anything about where the next rush event’s supposed to be, for KNZ or for anybody else. So all I need to do is finish not eating my bagel and go back to my dorm and sleep the rest of the day away, and by the end of it I’ll have missed my chance to go out altogether.

Hell, the KNZ guys probably don’t even want me back in the first place. I probably looked like a jackass last night. I bet they’re at their house right now, cracking jokes about it and –

Somewhere deep inside my sweatpants pocket, something buzzes. I fish around inside it and eventually find my phone, which forces me to swipe away a passive-aggressive low battery alert before it lets me read the message I just got from a contact called “Source KNZ”:

Hope you’re still alive, bud. If you are, next rush thing is at Upper Crust tonight, 8 PM sharp. No booze, just a meet and greet. Wear something business casual. Ties optional. ;)

Okay. So now I have heard something. But that’s just one problem solved, and the smaller one at that. I still don’t know if anyone besides Source wants me there, and it’s not like I can ask Woody about it now. I didn’t even get his number, and hunting him down somewhere on campus before tonight would be like finding in a needle in a –

“Button?”

– baggy athletic sweatshirt and jeans a size too big for him, standing right in front of me with a sandwich and chips on a tray and a look of happy recognition spreading across his face.

“Hey!” Woody says, moving to sit down in the seat Sweetie just vacated before hesitating at the last moment. “Uh… cool if I sit here?”

I nod and gesture for him to sit, and he does a bit gingerly, as if part of him is surprised I let him do it. Devil-speaking-ness aside, I really am glad to see him. I don’t remember much of what I actually said to him last night, but the vague feelings I have about it are happy ones — like we really talked, rather than just mingled.

“Sorry I bailed so early last night,” he says, plucking the biggest chip off his plate and eating it before continuing. “Got… kinda overwhelmed.”

“Trust me, you made the right call,” I say, and I can tell I don’t need to say more than that. His sympathy radiates across the table, even as he keeps eating the lunch that suddenly I’m really hungry for.

“Was that your first time out?” he asks as I pick up my bagel and bite into it, before adding a moment later: “It was mine too. At least, going out like that. Like… fraternity style.”

“Was I that obvious?” I ask between chews.

“Honestly, no, not at first. Just once we started talking, about games and high school and stuff. Kinda got the sense we were pretty similar.”

Snatches of conversation are coming back to me, like disconnected bits of dreams that slip out of your memory the moment you stop thinking about them. We talked about games, sure, but mostly about Fate 2. He mains a Titan, still needs to do the newest raid, and in high school he got stood up at his first homecoming dance by a girl he’d done all the work for on a group project the month before.

“Yeah, me too,” I tell him. “I mean, I got that sense. About… you. Us.”

Woody blinks across the table at me, I blink back — and then awkwardly, guiltily, we both laugh.

“We’re so good at conversations,” he says.

“Just killing it over here,” I agree.

Still chuckling, Woody picks up his sandwich, then sighs as he puts it back down. “God, what are we doing?” he mutters. “Why am I rushing? I’m not my brother, y’know? I’m not… social.”

“I thought you were fine,” I reply. “I mean, I had fun hanging out with you.”

“Yeah, same with you,” he tells me, “but we’re both rushes. We need the brothers to like us too.”

“Alkaline seemed like he loved you,” I chuckle. Now that’s one part of the night I actually do remember — and, in the harsh light of day, am finally starting to understand. “And hated me.”

“Al loves my brother. Hawthorn was his Big.” Once Woody sees my blank stare, he clarifies. “His Big Brother. It’s a fraternity thing. Once you get a bid… I mean, once they officially invite you to be a member, they assign someone in the frat to be your mentor, kind of. And that’s who Hawthorn was for Al.”

I file that info away in the cobweb-covered section of my brain reserved for social intelligence. “Okay, so Alkaline… wants to be your mentor?”

Woody chuckles at a joke I definitely didn’t mean to make. “Hardly. He’s a business major, y’know? All party, all the time. His dad owns some big marketing firm too, so he’s all set for work after graduation already. He just wants another version of Hawthorn to go crazy with for his last semester, not… me.”

“Yeah, I know the feeling,” I say — and somehow it’s easy to say it to Woody, to be honest about how I felt last night and now and every day since I got to college. I don’t feel like I have to impress him, and I feel like what would impress other people wouldn’t work on him. Probably because it wouldn’t work on me either. “I mean, Source is cool, I think, and most of the other guys seem fine. I just… I don’t know if I’m their type, I guess.”

Woody pauses mid-bite, sandwich halfway between his mouth and the table. “You gonna keep rushing?”

I sigh, and tell him the truth again. “I don’t know. I really don’t –”

“Please keep rushing.”

That wasn’t implication, or me trying to read someone else’s thoughts or guess what they wanted without them saying it. Woody’s dropped his sandwich and leaned towards me, his voice and face and even the tension in his shoulders all tinted with the same shade of quiet desperation.

“Dude, I… I have no idea what I’m doing,” he says, with the speed and shakiness of someone speaking straight from the unfiltered heart. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to act or who I’m supposed to be at these things, and literally the only time I felt halfway normal last night was when we were hanging out together. And I know we just met and I’m putting way too much pressure on you, but… I can’t do this alone. And between the two of us, it seemed like we kind of had it figured out, so…”

He sinks back into his seat, lips tight and face turning pink. “Sorry,” he mutters. “That was a lot. Never mind.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s…” I don’t really know what to say, but suddenly I want more than anything else to figure it out. “It was good having someone to talk to. To… feel normal around.”

There’s another pause, longer and awkwarder than the last. I guess Woody’s still recovering from his outburst. I know I would be — and I guess knowing that, more than anything else, is what finally gets me to nod.

“All right,” I tell him. “I’ll keep trying. At least one more night.”

Woody blows out a sigh and grins, meeting my eyes just long enough for me to know how much effort it took for him to do it. “Thanks, man,” he says. “And one night’s all I could really ask for anyway. They make first cuts after tonight.”

I blink at him as he takes another bite of his sandwich. “First what?”

“‘irst ‘uts,” he mumbles, before putting a finger up and swallowing. “Sorry,” he continues. “Hawthorn told me about it. The first couple KNZ events are public, then after that you have to get invited. The brothers text people, or DM them or whatever, if they want ‘em to keep coming out.”

My throat was already dry from dehydration, but somehow it’s even drier now. “Huh,” I mumble, folding my hands under the table so they don’t start shaking above it. “So, um… all frats do that?”

“I don’t think all of them do,” Woody says, focusing on his chips instead of all the color draining from my face. “But KNZ does. They have this whole system, like, seeing what guys are like in public and then whether they’re cool in private.” He looks up as he slots a few chips into his mouth, and stops chewing once he sees my expression. “I-It’s not a super formal thing, though,” he adds after quickly swallowing. “I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

Right. We’ll be fine. It’s just a casual, informal popularity contest where I’m going against frat stars and party animals. My picked-last-for-dodgeball, straight-edge-from-birth, once-got-uninvited-from-a-birthday-party-at-the-actual-party ass will be just –

“Hey.”

I blink and look up, and Woody’s looking straight back at me, with a firmness in his voice I haven’t heard from him before. “We’ll be fine,” he says. “You helped me, I’ll help you. I don’t know all the guys, but I know some of them. I’ll introduce you tonight.”

I don’t want him to. I want to flip the table and scramble out the window above me and go hide in the woods where there are no humans to see me or think about me or decide they think I’m a hopeless loser. But he wants to, and he’s my friend. So I steady myself as best I can and nod again.

“You better make me look good, then,” I reply, hands still wringing in my lap. “Lie if you need to. Say I’m rich or something.”

Woody laughs. “You’re rushing a frat, they’re already assuming you’re rich,” he replies. Then he glances at the clock on the wall, and his eyes go wide as he scrambles to pile what’s left of his lunch back onto his tray. “Oh shit, I gotta go. Keep forgetting there isn’t a bell for classes. You know where the KNZ thing is tonight?”

“Upper Crust, eight o’clock,” I say absentmindedly, feeling like I’m forgetting something — which of course, I am. I still don’t have Woody’s phone number. And I’m about to ask him for it, but he beats me to it.

“You on Eris?” he asks me as he stands up.

“Uh… yeah,” I say. “SuperMashBro-five-four-two-nine. Same thing on JoyBox Live, but with just a five on the end.”

“Okay, cool. I’ll send you a friend request later. If you get something from ImperatorWoody, that’s me.”

“Cool. I’ll… see you later tonight, then?”

“Yeah, for sure.”

And then, with a nod and a little half-wave, he turns around and hurries toward the dining hall’s exit, dropping his tray off at the return station just before he shoulders his way through the double doors leading outside. I’m all by myself at my table again — but not quite alone either. I’ll get a message from Woody on Eris soon, and get lunch with Sweetie Belle tomorrow. I’ll be IRL social. I’ll have friends.

And all I have to do to keep them is the single scariest thing I can imagine.

In my sweatpants pocket, my phone buzzes. I just got a text message, and it’s not from Woody or Sweetie.

Hi, honey! How was the party last night? I hope you’re not too tired for school today! <3

Okay, at this point, God and/or Devil, it feels a little personal.

Chapter 5: Headed for the Stars

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One time, when I was about five years old, I almost drowned in a public pool. I’d gotten good at “swimming” — bouncing my feet off the bottom of the pool and floating forward a few feet while splashing as much as I could — and I didn’t know the water got way deeper if I bounced a bit too far in one direction, and my mom looked away just long enough to miss me stretching my toes out for the pool bottom and not finding it until my head was a foot under the surface.

I didn’t realize what was happening at first, that all the air I’d just blown out in big surprised bubbles had started a timer that would end everything if it ticked down to zero. I remember my chest feeling tight, and my head starting to spin, and then a giant splash as the lifeguard jumped in next to me and pulled me up to the surface, my mom right behind him about as frantic as I can remember ever seeing her. And in the moment, I just stared back and giggled at the sudden attention, squirming to get out of the lifeguard’s grip so I could get back to swimming.

It wasn’t until later, after I spent the afternoon seated firmly on a deck chair under Mom’s obsessively watchful eye, and after we went home and got cleaned up and I went to bed for the night, that it all hit me: that was almost it. That was almost what happened in movies when cartoon houses caught on fire and cartoon lions didn’t get back up, why we’d had an old cat named Butterball when I was really little and then suddenly we didn’t, what would someday happen to my mom and my dad and my big brother and me.

I didn’t sleep at all that night. I clutched a little stuffed tiger I’d gotten from the zoo earlier in the summer, and I stared at my night light until its glow burned itself into the backs of my eyes, and I only nodded off later once I’d gotten up and had breakfast and nestled so hard into my mom’s side on the couch that she couldn’t have pried me loose with a crowbar. And I didn’t get back into a pool until fifth grade, when a splash from a boy I didn’t like and a giggle from a girl I did got me right back out.

I didn’t drown, obviously, and I don’t really know what dying feels like. But I know what starting to die feels like, the very first moments when your skin crawls and your heart pounds and your whole body knows something is very fucking wrong. It feels like the pool being deeper than you thought, that step being a little lower than it looked — like standing between speeding cars and a gentrified pizza joint, where a cluster of cleaned-up frat brothers are all waiting patiently to be disappointed in me.

On the bright side, it’s very unlikely that going to this rush event will actually, literally kill me. But based on how close I feel to drowning in bone-dry winter air right now, it’s about to get really goddamn close.

I should’ve already gone in, technically. I was supposed to show up at eight P.M. sharp, and according to my phone screen — bereft of message notifications from Source or Woody or even my mom — it’s 8:07 right now and steaming towards 8:08. Maybe I could make a joke about musical 808s, say I was waiting for the rhythm to be right before I arrived. No one would get it. I’d still be late anyway.

At least I brought a coat tonight, so I’m only shivering from fear instead of cold. And I’m just wearing a polo shirt under it instead of a button-down and tie, so I can tug nervously at my collar without ruining the whole outfit. Silver linings, y’know? Little shiny bits of metal, shaped into pointy little bullets aimed right at my head.

I can’t even see Woody in there through the windows, or anybody I recognize from last night. Would they even recognize me? Can I just leave now and pretend this never happened, and go right back to being lonely forev–

“That you, Button?”

I don’t scream, to my credit. Not even a little “god dammit I got snuck up on again” yelp. I do jump fully off the ground, though, and almost stumble backwards into the street once I land. To his credit, Woody grabs me and steadies me before I do.

“Sorry,” he says, chuckling sheepishly as he slips his gloved hand back into his coat pocket. He’s got a thick wool cap on that covers the top of his ears, with just an inch or so of green hair tailing out from under it. “You just get here?”

“Y-Yeah,” I reply, trying to meet his eyes and not entirely failing. I catch a glimpse of his expression before I go back to staring at my shoes — rosy-cheeked, smiling, happy to see me. I think that’s what it was, anyway. Looking back up and double-checking feels way beyond me right now.

“Looks like a pretty good turnout,” Woody remarks.

“I noticed, yeah.”

“You been inside yet?”

“Um… was waiting for you. So we could, uh…”

“Yeah, sorry. I know I’m late. I was just…”

As Woody trails up, I manage to glance up again, and I realize — watching him flex his hands inside his coat pockets and shift from one foot to the other — that he doesn’t know what he was just doing.

“I thought you might not come,” he mumbles. “‘Cause I was weird earlier, and…”

“No, you were fine,” I tell him. “I said I would come, so… here I am.”

“Here we both are,” Woody says with an odd little laugh. “Guess we oughta go in, then.”

“Yep.”

Neither of us move. Woody blows out a sigh that clouds in front of his mouth like a thought bubble in a comic strip. If it were one, I’m pretty sure I know what it’d say.

“It can’t be that bad,” Woody says, more to himself than me. “It’s just a pizza party, it’s like… elementary school stuff. Right?”

“Sure.”

“Yeah. Easy. Just gotta stop thinking about it and go for it. Like… jumping in a pool.”

And drowning, I want to say. Sometimes when you jump into pools, you fucking drown, Woody.

But then again, sometimes there’s a lifeguard — a friend to pull you out if your feet can’t reach the bottom. And looking at Woody now, I realize he’s not going to jump in unless I do too. When I put it like that, I don’t really have any other choice.

“Hopefully the water’s nice,” I say firmly, and despite the pit that’s still in my stomach and the pressure around my chest, I force myself forward towards the restaurant’s entrance and nod for Woody to follow me — and after a moment, he does.

Maybe it will be just a pizza party. Maybe this is all a huge mistake, and I’ll trudge back to my dorm later tonight and lie awake all night agonizing over it. But if I leave now, I’ll definitely agonize over it later, and if I don’t, maybe I won’t have to. It’s worth a try, right? With Woody here with me, I feel like it is.

For about five seconds. Then the restaurant’s door clatters shuts behind us, and the sound of radio pop music washes over me along with the body heat of the massive KNZ crowd, and my hands start shaking again.

“Oh God,” Woody mutters next to me. “No one’s wearing a tie.”

“Are you wearing a tie?” I ask him — but I hardly needed to, between the Windsor knot I can see poking out from the top of his coat and the petrified expression on his face.

“I thought that’s what ‘business casual’ meant!” he hisses. “I… shit. Shit.”

“Source told me ties were optional,” I very unhelpfully offer.

“They look very fucking optional!”

“Well, I don’t know. Take it off? I took mine off last night.”

“Wait, you were wearing a tie last night?”

“I thought that’s what you wore to rush parties! Don’t judge me!”

“I’m judging both of us right now! We’re both fucking idiots!”

“Are you now?”

This time, Woody jumps halfway out of his skin right along with me as a hand claps onto each of our shoulders. The new voice and hands both belong to Source, who’s standing behind us with his brow raised and his rhetorical question still lingering in the air.

“N-No!” Woody sputters. “I mean… I don’t know. Maybe. I wore a tie.”

“I see that,” Source replies, trying — but not that hard — to stifle a laugh. “Nice of you both to dress up on our account.”

Woody’s still rambling. “Sorry, I… m-my bad. We should… I can change, i-it’s not…”

“Dogwood. Buddy. Breathe. You’re fine,” Source assures him, before turning to me. “And speaking of fine, how are you feeling?”

“Not as bad now as I did earlier,” I admit.

“Yeah, I bet. I warned you it’d sneak up on you.”

“You also said it’d help if I was nervous.”

Source looks up in thought for a moment, then shrugs. “Yeah, fair enough. Should’ve thought that one through. Any event, glad you’re alive, glad you’re here. Pizza’s on the tables in the back there, soft drinks from the bar if you want ‘em, and we’ve got the tab so feel free to hit it hard.”

I nod and swallow hard. Neither slows my heart down a single solitary beat. “Any last-minute advice?” I ask him. He shrugs again.

“Talk to everybody you can, and be yourself. Oh, and toss your coats over there. Don’t wanna get your tie all sweaty.”

Woody and I both get friendly pats on our respective backs, then Source saunters off and dissolves into the crowd. Woody looks like that little bit of physical contact just about folded him in half.

“This was a bad idea,” he wheezes. “We should leave. Can we leave? I wanna leave.”

Honestly, same. But now that we’re inside and Source has seen us, it feels like we’ve got too much social momentum going to quit now. Might as well hang on for the ride.

“We made a deal,” I tell him. “I show up, you introduce me to people.”

“Please don’t make me.”

“I’m not. I’m… encouraging you. Strongly.”

“Fuck.” Woody blows out a bracing sigh, then loosens his tie with one hand as he shrugs off his coat with the other. “Okay, so… who do you know already?”

“Pretty much just Source. And Alkaline, I guess.”

Woody tosses his coat on the table Source showed us, and I do the same with mine as he stuffs his undone tie into his pants pocket. “Right,” he says, “All right. Let’s, uh…” He stands on his toes as he considers our options, then points at a tall guy with a beard and a baby-blue button-up on. “Over there. I think I remember that guy.”

I think I do too, actually — from early last night, around the kitchen table with ping-pong balls in his hands. Guess that’s as good a place to start as any. Woody and I make our way over together, and as we get closer I catch a bit of the conversation our target’s already part of. Or rather, based on the look he’s giving the wavy-haired kid doing all the conversating right now, having inflicted on him.

“– so we got fucking blasted, man, just annihilated. Had the cops come and everything. It was fuckin’ lit. Best night of high school, no cap.”

“Nice,” the brother intones, sipping at a can of soda and looking like he really wishes it was beer. “You get arrested?”

“Nah,” the wavy-haired kid — another rush, I guess — says, grinning proudly. “I was too fast. My boy wasn’t, though. Think he’s still on probation.”

“Sucks for him,” the brother says, face unreadable behind his can. All of a sudden, I feel like Woody might’ve had the right idea a moment ago. My competition among the other rushes is apparently all the guys in high school who never gave me the time of day, let alone booze at a party that the cops came to. If going that hard before college isn’t enough to impress this guy, what possible chance do I have?

I guess I’m about to find out, because he’s seen me and Woody and — almost eagerly — looped us into the conversation.

“Oh, what’s up, party animal?” he says, chuckling at me before nodding at Woody. Party animal? “Good to see you out, Woody.”

“Likewise,” Woody answers. “Uh, Button, this is Mandarin. He was… is two years behind Hawthorn. Mandarin, this is, um… this is Button.”

“Oh, I know,” Mandarin says, still grinning. “We talked.”

“We did?” I ask before I can stop myself — before the dots connect in my head, and numbing horror starts to spread through my chest.

“Oh yeah. About…” He makes a pinching gesture, index finger and thumb held two inches apart. “... here in Al’s whiskey bottle.”

It’s not a feeling anymore. Woody was right. We should’ve left. “Oh… s-sorry, I was, um…”

“What, you black out last night?” the other rush butts in. Unlike Mandarin’s, his grin comes off as more of a leer. He recognizes me too — as every kid he used to push past in the hallway and flick hornets at during class.

“I mean, not on purpose,” I say, as if that makes it any fucking better.

“Pretty sure blacking out on purpose is just alcoholism,” Mandarin cracks. Then he nudges me on the shoulder with the fist his soda can is clutched in. “I’m just razzin’ you, man. It’s all good. Nice to soberly meet you.”

“Y-You too.” The other rush is still half-leering. Should I loop him back in too? “Did I meet you last night too?” I ask him.

“Bro, I don’t know,” he says — looking at Mandarin as he answers instead of me. “I was faded too. Sick party, by the way. You guys go way harder than the other frats.”

“Don’t let the Pikes hear you say that,” Mandarin shoots back, before focusing on me and Woody again. “That’s one good review, though. How about you two? We livin’ up to the hype yet, Woody?”

“Uh… y-yeah!” Woody says. “I mean, so far. I think.”

“Okay, so three stars out of five. I’ll take it. Button, what’s your one-night verdict?”

“Um… best party of the semester so far?” I tell Mandarin — which is technically true, and also seems to be an answer he appreciates.

“Oh, you’re gonna be a PoliSci major for sure,” he says with a smile and a nod. “You should meet Case once he gets here. You’ll be insufferable together. Meantime, I’ma hit the pizza table, so catch you guys around, yeah?”

“L-Later,” Woody says as Mandarin departs, leaving me and him standing awkwardly with the other rush — whose name, I realize, I don’t even know. I’m about to ask him when I notice he’s glaring at me.

“Fucking dorks,” he mutters, before stalking off towards the bar. I stare after him, then look at Woody, who looks just as confused and chastened as I feel. What did we do? Interrupt his conversation? Exist?

“Well…” I say with a limp shrug.

“Hmm,” is Woody’s tight-lipped reply.

“Mandarin seems cool.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“Do you still wanna leave?”

“Mm-hmm.”

I can’t exactly blame him. But something Mandarin said is echoing in my head: you should meet Case. I haven’t heard that name before, but I could tell from how Woody reacted to it that he does. I don’t want to force him to stay, but he did promise to introduce me to people — plural, not singular.

“Who’s Case?” I ask him. “The guy Mandarin mentioned.”

“Oh… h-he’s the president,” Woody manages to say. “Of the fraternity. This chapter, I mean. But I don’t think he’s here, so –”

“Hey, Woody! Woody, c’mere!”

“Oh God,” Woody whispers, as I think more or less the same thing. Alkaline’s wearing a wrinkled button-up tonight that’s open halfway down his oversized chest, and has a flask in hand that he takes a pull from as he grabs Woody and drags him towards a cluster of brothers and rushes, none of whom have faces I recognize even in a foggy-blackout-memory way.

Nobody notices me at all until I wedge myself into the circle next to Woody, whose desperate expression got me to follow him even though every part of my body wants to sprint for the exit. “And Button,” Alkaline says, in a tone somewhat between suspicion and surprise. “Couldn’t stay away, huh?”

Last night, I was so drunk I barely understood a word Alkaline said to me. Now, though, I’m dry as a desert, and I understand him way too well.

“Guess not,” I weakly reply, before gesturing to his flask. “Think I’ll skip that this time, though.”

“Well, this is actual good shit, so yeah, you will,” he says, putting on a grin way too late that sticks around way too briefly. “None for you either, Woody. Gotta play fair, y’know?”

“S-Sure,” Woody stammers. “W-We were kinda on our way out anyway, so–”

“Aw, c’mon, Woody, don’t let this guy talk out of a good time. You gotta make the rounds, man, it’s rush. I saw you met Mandarin, that’s Sloop…”

Alkaline rattles off the names of every older-looking guy in the circle, skipping past all the wide-eyed rushes who seem unsure what to make of any of this.

“Nice to meet you all,” Woody says robotically once Al runs out of names.

“And that’s Button. The kid who blacked out last night… and that’s basically all I know about him.” Alkaline turns to me. “Who are you, anyway? What are you into?”

It’s like a mirror image of last night: Alkaline all over Woody, Woody looking frantically to me for help, and everyone else staring at me like jury members deciding on the method for my execution. And instead of drunken courage, all I have right in me right now is regular old fear — the same weakness in my legs and fluttering in my chest I know from every gym class and school dance and social experience of my life.

“I, uh…” I start to say, but I don’t know how to finish the thought of, “I’m gonna abandon you now because I’m a fucking coward, Woody” in a way that sounds less pathetic than it is. “Y’know, I…”

“Okay, so into parties, not into talking,” Alkaline says. A few of the brothers around us chuckle. Each little laugh feels like a giant knife plunged into my hammering heart.

I don’t fit here — like a piece from the wrong puzzle, taking up space that was never mine and bending painfully to occupy it anyway. I know it, Alkaline knows it, everyone in this whole restaurant knows it, and I’ve been kidding myself thinking I could fake it long enough that it wouldn’t matter.

And now… what do I do now? Now that I’ve missed every opportunity I had to save myself from this exact situation playing out exactly this way? Source’s advice echoes in my head again: be yourself. Is that what I should do, Source? Is that what anybody in your whole frat wants from me?

Of course it fucking isn’t. But there’s a void in my gut that’s getting bigger, and rising into my throat, and driving me towards putting an end to all this one way or another. Be myself, huh, Source? Okay. Fine. My social life in college started with you. I can end it all by my fucking self.

“Actually, I’m not even into parties,” I say, trembling with adrenaline, barely getting enough air with each breath to keep saying things I shouldn’t. “I never went to any in high school, never got drunk, never even had a girlfriend. You know what I did instead? Ogres and Oubliettes. And not even in person! Over the Internet, with people I’ve never met in real life. Not even just playing, running games too. I’m running one right now, actually. So yeah, that’s what I’m really into: making shit up, and telling it to people I don’t know, and…”

I want to keep going, but my throat closes up before I can think of anything worse to say. So instead I stuff my hands in my pockets and stare at the floor, and try to blink back the prickling tears beading in my eyes until the silence is suddenly, jarringly broken.

“Wait, so you’re a DM?”

I look up. The guy next to me — a rush about my height and age, baby-faced with navy-blue hair down to his shoulders — doesn’t look bemused or uncomfortable. “You’re running a game right now?” he adds, and I could almost mistake the hitch in his voice for… excitement.

“Y… Yeah” I say. “And… not technically running it right now. I mean, we took a break over the holidays, but…”

“No shit?” It’s one of the brothers this time — Sloop, I think. He looks interested too. “Fifth edition?”

“Uh… five-E as the base, yeah, but it’s actually my own campaign. Wrote a few modules and made some –”

“Fuck off, you’re homebrewing too? You’re on some Quest Land shit!”

Now the frat guy is name-dropping an O&O podcast that I’ve literally never heard anyone mention in person before. I don’t know what’s happening right now. I think I might’ve blacked out again.

“You listen to Quest Land?” I have to ask.

“Yeah, he got half the frat into it,” another brother adds. “It’s better than I thought it’d be.”

“That’s dope, though,” the first brother — Sloop, I guess — says. “Fucking impossible to find a good DM.”

“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m good…”

“Man, if you’re a DM that exists, you’re good. Especially if you’re homebrewing on top of that.”

The only answer I can give to that is a shrug — and, before I can stop it, a grin. This can’t be happening. In a weird way, I don’t want to believe it’s happening. There’s just no way that, in any version of any universe, I just impressed a group of hard-partying popular guys by telling them I play tabletop RPGs. This isn’t how the world works. It’s not how I knew this was supposed to go.

“Welp, guess the Council of Nerds is in session,” Alkaline interjects as he bumps Woody on the shoulder. “Come find me when you get bored.”

“Sure,” Woody says, without even really looking at him. He’s looking at me instead — eyes wide, mouth hanging open, like he just saw me crit my way out of an impossible encounter. Which, I guess, I did. Alkaline glances at me, then shrugs and sighs as he peels off, pulling from his flask and pulling his phone out simultaneously. Everyone else stays right where they are.

“I’m Crescent, by the way,” the navy-haired kid says, extending a hand that I shake once I look his way. “I was in A/V Club in high school. Talk about a Council of Nerds.”

“Button,” I reply. “And hey, you kept the lights on. Someone’s got to.”

He laughs, and I laugh too, and just like that I’m part of the group. Exactly like I didn’t plan and would have never thought to expect. And since I’m already in over my head, I guess there’s nothing left to do but keep swimming.

===

For the first time in my life, time I spend in the middle of a crowd of people passes quickly. After he quizzes me about my homebrew campaign and we swap stories about brutal dice rolls we’ve had to play through, Sloop introduces me to a junior he calls his “Little” — I guess to go with Sloop being the “Big” — who then introduces me to his Little, and before I know it I’ve spent two hours learning names and telling jokes and carrying on honest-to-God conversations.

It still sort of feels like I’m dreaming, like I’m standing on a particularly plush rug that’s gonna get yanked out from under me the moment I look away. Sure, I’ve held my own chatting about O&O and movies and, with Crescent in particular, running Fate 2 dailies with Woody later — but all told, I’ve only really talked to a dozen of what has to be at least forty KNZ brothers who showed up tonight. Maybe the rest of them are more like Alkaline, who’s spent the whole event buried in his flask and phone, ignoring the other rushes and especially me and Woody just like we’ve been ignoring him.

Actually, more than ignoring anybody, Woody’s kind of just been following me, answering questions he’s been asked directly but otherwise letting me do the talking for both of us. Maybe that’s another thing I should’ve worried about: making sure he was included. Maybe the brothers noticed I wasn’t doing enough to help my friend, and this was all a test I didn’t realize I was failing.

I shake my head and sip the soda I just got from the bar. Or maybe, I tell myself, as I watch Woody have a totally normal conversation with a couple brothers he knew from Hawthorn’s time here, you’re overthinking things again. Wouldn’t be the first time. Also wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, but that’s the thing: I don’t know. I keep thinking I do and then quickly learning I don’t, and yet here I am, finding new things to worry about when I really should know better by now. I don’t know why I’m like this. It’s probably something the frat brothers noticed too.

At the very least, one’s definitely noticed I’m alone by the bar, because he’s coming over towards me with an empty cup in hand. He signals the bartender for a refill, then flicks his gaze my way as he leans forward, elbows propped casually on the bartop.

“Taking a breather?” he asks.

“Just for a bit,” I reply. “Seems like things are winding down anyway.”

“Yeah, it’s about that time. Good night?”

“I think so,” is the most honest answer I can give him. “Had some good conversations. About, uh… stuff I wasn’t expecting to talk about here. Nerdy stuff, really.”

The brother shifts a bit — he’s connected my face to a name he seems to have heard already. “Oh yeah. Button, right?”

“That’s me,” I say, sticking a hand towards him that he grasps without repositioning against the bar. One upside to overthinking stuff, I suppose: I picked up on the firm-handshake-introduction part of all this quickly. “I don’t think I’ve met you, though.”

“Case Brief. I’m the chapter president.”

And now I have a face to connect to that name, and a little spike of anxiety to go with it. Every chill conversation I’ve had tonight was just a warmup. Now I’m about to go up against the end-of-level boss.

“Good to meet you, then,” I start out. “Glad I could make it out.”

“Glad you could too,” Case evasively replies. “Heard you’ve been hanging out with Woody.”

“Oh, yeah. Met him last night. He’s… I think he’s cool. It’s nice to have somebody else here who’s, uh…” I was about to say “like me,” and catch myself just in time. “... y’know, a friend. Some support, I guess.”

Case nods. “Not a bad move. Rush can be pretty intimidating alone. How you feelin’ about it, though?”

About what? My chances of getting invited back? My future as someone who might actually have IRL friends? “I… don’t know,” I say, choosing each word carefully. “It hasn’t really been anything like I expected.”

“What were you expecting?”

Source’s advice does another lap around my head: be yourself. Unlike earlier, I feel a little better about taking it this time — because hey, it’s the final boss, right? No sense saving anything for later.

“To hate it, honestly,” I say. “You guys, frat stuff in general… I thought I’d never have a chance of fitting in. But I came out and tried it anyway, and it’s been really fun. And I guess no matter what happens, whether I’m… I don’t know, cut out for being in a frat or not, I already met Woody and a bunch of other guys, and I got out of my dorm and did something. I guess no matter what, that’s good.”

Case is quiet for a bit — a long enough bit that the spiny ball of anxiety in my chest starts swelling again. “Well, I appreciate your honesty,” he finally says, a completely unreadable smile flashing across his face as he does. “Thanks for coming out.”

“Thanks for having me,” I reply, doing my best to smile back. “Um, so… for the rest of rush, it’s invite-only, right?”

“That’s right,” Case says. “But in your case, Button, I wouldn’t worry too much about it.” He gets his refill from the bartender, then gives me a final nod. “Good meeting you.”

And then he leaves, and I’m alone at the bar again, and that ball of anxiety I mentioned? It’s more of a naval mine now, tethered to the rock in my stomach and primed to explode in the base of my throat.

I wouldn’t worry too much about it? What the fuck does that mean? Don’t worry because I’m definitely getting invited to the next event, or don’t think I have a prayer of ever seeing any of these guys again? He couldn’t have said anything that would’ve made me worry more!

More caffeine sure isn’t going to calm me down, but at this point I can either keep drinking my soda or let the cup fall out of my trembling hand. So I choose the former, and once the cup’s empty I set it down on the bar so I can grip that bar’s rim with both hands. I’m overthinking this. I have to be. I always, always do.

But knowing that is one thing, and stopping it is something I’ve never once managed. Despite everything, I’m slipping underwater again — and even Woody ending his conversation and joining me at the bar isn’t enough to pull me completely out.

“Sorry I left you alone, got caught up over there,” he says. “Was that Case you were talking to?”

“Yep,” I squeak.

“Did it… go well?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh.” He stares for a second, watching me quietly hyperventilate. “Do you wanna leave?”

“I’m fine,” I tell him through my teeth.

“‘Cause I was thinking I’m ready to –”

“Oh my God, please, let’s go.”

It’s all I can manage to stride quickly towards the coat table rather than sprint. Once we’re outside, though, the frigid night air clears my head enough that I realize I probably should’ve checked in with Source at some point. In the few seconds I have before my fingers get too numb to type, I send him a text:

Hey, Woody and I are heading home. Fun night. Thanks for keeping me in the loop.

And as the message flits off through the black blanket of clouds overhead, I try as hard as I ever have in my life before not to overthink things. Maybe I thought all those conversations went well because they did go well. Maybe Source will tell me as much when he replies. Maybe I’m being stupid and way too hard on myself, and jumping into this proverbial pool with Woody tonight was brave and cool and unquestionably good.

My phone buzzes. Source just texted me back.

No problem, glad you could make it out. I’ll let you know tomorrow if you’re cool enough to hang out with us. Doubt the answer will be much of a surprise, though.

On second thought, maybe that lifeguard when I was five should’ve just let me drown. Would’ve saved me a lot of stress in the long run.

Chapter 6: The Mountains We Haven't Climbed

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The second-hardest part of college is that, technically speaking, you don’t have to do anything. Someone else always used to make the big decisions for me — school started at this time and stopped at that one, I ate the food my parents made and went to bed when they told me to, and my mom both bought all my clothes and gently steered me away from wearing ones that didn’t match.

But now if I want to wear a striped shirt over camo cargo shorts, I can. If I want to sleep during the day and eat nothing but pizza and skip every class to play video games instead, absolutely no one would stop me. Every choice is mine to make, and mostly the world just says, “Best of luck with it!” Like Sweetie Belle said a couple days ago, when she decided to get me breakfast because I got her out of our dorm lounge’s bathroom.

And that is the actual hardest part of college: the choices other people make that you can’t control. Like the Data Management professor who decided not to post his lecture slides online for the class I missed yesterday. Like the KNZ guys deciding today — or maybe already deciding the moment they first met me — whether I make the cut of people they might still want to hang out with. Like one KNZ guy in particular who chose to skip our English class this morning, so I couldn’t have gotten an update even if I’d somehow found the guts to ask for one.

And like Sweetie Belle, who said she’d meet me for lunch today, and instead chose not to show up to the dining hall and not to answer the text I sent her. Actually, according to my phone, she chose to not even read it at all.

I chose to wear khaki pants and a maroon Henley today, and I chose to have a salad for lunch, and I chose to wait almost a full hour alone in the dining hall before I finally stopped being an idiot and left. But I can’t choose what other people think of me, no matter how hard I try. I just have to let it happen — to not think about it and move on.

Or, y’know, I could not do that. Instead of hunting down those slides I missed or starting a paper I’m supposed to be writing or, hell, even ordering pizza and playing video games all day, I could sit at a library table all by myself, aimlessly scrolling through Diggit posts on my laptop, waiting for nothing to keep happening and moping to pass the time.

And, of course, thinking about Sweetie Belle. About our “date” that never for a second actually was one. About what I did for her this week, what I thought I was getting back, and how little I’ve actually gotten in the end.

Which isn’t fair of me, really. Friendships aren’t supposed to be transactional. You’re not supposed to keep a ledger of friendly acts and invoice people for coffee meetups or party attendances. But you are supposed to keep your promises, like I did for Woody last night and Woody did for me.

At the very least, she could’ve told me she got held up somewhere, or at least made up a lame excuse before blocking my number. But all I can do with silence is fixate on it, wonder what’s going on or what isn’t or whether she even remembers what she said to me, and most of all resist the urge to text her again and plead for a straight answer. I’d love it if I could choose to do anything else right now, but hey, you know what they say about beggars.

I reach the end of a comment thread — post title: “People of Diggit, what’s the weirdest place you’ve ever had sex?” — and click the window closed. Where a moment ago there was post after post of people claiming to have done things I never will and they probably haven’t either, now there’s just the portrait of a sci-fi city I set as my screensaver last year, mostly hidden behind the mess of unorganized files and icons on my desktop.

My still-aimless eyes land on a folder right in the center of the screen: “O&O Homebrew Stuff.” For lack of anything else I feel like doing, I open it, and then open the folder inside it labeled “Music.”

I guess Sloop had a point last night. I don’t personally know anyone who’s doing homebrew O&O campaigns, let alone someone my age, so I guess it’s cool that I’m even trying it. And I didn’t even get a chance to mention the second thing I’ve been doing for this campaign: finding music to go with each module, splicing them together in Thesis Pro so they all flow together seamlessly.

It’s not really worth bragging about, to be fair. All I’m really doing is cutting up tracks other people already made, telling a new story by stealing pieces of theirs. There’s one exception, though — one Thesis Pro file in this folder that’s not like the others.

My eyes aren’t aimless anymore. I stare at the file for a few seconds, and then finally double-click it open.

I taught myself to use this program when I was fifteen, because my brother needed someone to do the mixing for his garage band’s terrible cover album, and he wanted to pay for the job in candy rather than money. And then a couple years after that, I figured out how to mix separate tracks together so I could play them over gaming sessions, both the ones with other people playing and the ones who I was alone in my dark bedroom.

And then finally, I was grinding out modules for my O&O campaign last summer, just slogging through the writing process and losing my mind at how long it was taking. And another thing driving me crazy was a tiny noise from my desk lamp — a dull electronic buzz, droning like an angry teacher and prickling like the knowledge of exactly why they’re mad.

It got stuck in my head. I couldn’t think past it. So I put on headphones and opened Thesis Pro and clicked around on the keyboard until I found a fuzzy synthetic note that sounded just like it, because I heard once that you can get songs out of your head by skipping to the end and finishing them. Then I clicked on a few other notes, and remembered a track from a video game that sounded kind of similar, and found that track in my media library and dragged it into Thesis and plunked the keyboard some more trying to find exactly the right sounds to mimic it.

And then I blinked, and the sun was rising outside, and I had this: a rainbow of sloppily-layered samples over a basic 4/4, hours of work that amounted to less than two minutes of a song nobody but me will ever hear, because it’s unfinished and unoriginal, and it’s not good enough to put into my campaign or show to my parents or be proud of.

But I was. I remember my eyelids drooping and my breath catching and my heart bursting in a way it never had before, brimming over with how inexplicably right making this shitty little ripoff song felt. The closest anything else in my life has ever come to that same feeling is Sweetie Belle — and, I think, two nights ago, blackout drunk at some party I still can barely remember, so far outside my mind that I forgot to think about being afraid and just lived unburdened in the moment.

I don’t know. I’m probably remembering it wrong. And it’s not like I made any more music after this song, and I don’t know if I should or even if I really want to, because it’d be a waste of time and tuition money compared to Data Management and other things you can get real jobs doing after college. There’s a future in boring shit — an identity. Something other people might actually want. That’s not worth giving up just because I was sleep-deprived once and giddy about it.

But…

A harsh sound snaps me back to the present — my phone, buzzing obnoxiously against the table. Woody’s texted me, as well as a number I saved in my phone last night as “Crescent”:

You hear anything from KNZ yet?

I sigh — for all kinds of reasons, all of which I choose to ignore. Crescent and I both reply at the same time.

negative

Nope.

This sucks.

Yep.

YEP

It does. And it’s not going to change unless I do something to make it change. And that means making a decision.

Okay, then. I’ve decided I need to quit moping and actually get some work done, in that order. Maybe I’ll be able to focus better at my desk back in my dorm.

I slide my laptop and charger into my backpack, then get up and push my chair in as quietly as I can so I don’t get glared at. Nobody silently studying around me so much as glances up, and neither does anyone in the stacks I tread past on my way to the stairs leading down to the exit, not even as the stairway door squeals on its hinges as I push it open.

Right before I step through it, though, I notice someone myself. They’re in a sound-proofed recording booth at the end of an aisle of bookshelves to my left, hunched over the desktop computer inside, looking absolutely fucking miserable through the big pane of glass in the middle of the booth’s door.

It’s Sweetie Belle. She’s doing something in Thesis Pro — gesturing wildly at the screen as if demanding an explanation for why it’s not doing what it said it would. And what I should do now that I’ve seen her is keep going down the stairs and leave. What I should really do right now is take the hint and not bother her and keep the tiny little spine I’ve managed to grow this week from atrophying back to nothing again.

And instead, I let the door to the stairway swing closed, and I squeeze between bookshelves over to the recording booth’s door, and I knock on the glass pane and give a spineless little wave as she looks up. When she sees me, she scrunches up her face and swears so loud I can hear it from outside, and nearly trips over her chair standing up and rushing to the door.

“I’m so –”

A moment late, she realizes how loud her voice is. Still cringing at the glares she’s getting from other students nearby, she drops her voice to a whisper. “I’m so sorry. I’m such an asshole. I’ve had…”

She pauses for a moment, then jerks her head, inviting me into the booth. Once the door shuts behind me, the pointy padding on the walls drowns every single sound except for Sweetie’s haggard breaths and the squeak of her chair as she flops back into it.

“I have had a fucking day,” she says, back to normal volume. “And I completely forgot about meeting you, and I’ve been ignoring my…”

She reaches towards her bag on the floor, extracts her phone from inside it, and grimaces as she sees the flood of notifications that fill its screen. “Yep,” she groans, her phone dropping into her lap as she presses her fingers to her temples. “Giant fucking asshole. I’m so sorry.”

“Nah, it’s… it’s fine,” I tell her — and honestly, I don’t really know if it is. She seems genuinely upset right now. Maybe I should still be upset with her anyway. “Just a busy day?”

“It’s…”

In the unnatural silence of the booth, I can hear Sweetie’s teeth clack together as she forces her mouth shut. Whatever it really is, she’s not going to tell me — because she doesn’t want to talk about it, or doesn’t want me specifically to know?

Her phone buzzes in her lap. She glances down at the screen just long enough for whatever she sees to make her jaw tighten even more. Then she picks the phone back up, clicks the screen off, and stuffs it deep into her bag.

“Doesn’t matter. I shouldn’t have ghosted you,” she says firmly, before running her hand through her hair and sighing as she looks at her screen. “And I shouldn’t have taken a 400-level class as a freshman. Lots of things I shouldn’t have done, really.”

Speaking of choices, I make a deliberate one to not overthink her last sentence. At least, not right now. Plenty of time for that later. “You’re taking senior classes?”

“Just the one,” is her wry reply. “Intro to Computer Music. Because ‘intro’ means ‘easy,’ right?”

“Oof.”

“Yeah.” She turns away from her computer and back to me. “Anyway, forget me. I wanted to hear about rush. How’d it go last night?”

“Uh… I think well,” I tell her, settling back against the soundproofed wall. I suppose that’s another choice: to not be upset with her, and to stick around now that I’m here. “I guess I’ll find out for sure at some point today.”

“Oh, right, KNZ does that invite-only thing.” She shakes her head. “God, that’s weird.”

“It is?”

“Yeah. Lotta frats just have a few parties and then send out bids. I guess KNZ’s gotta be extra careful coming back from probation.”

“Well, you know more than me about how all this works,” I say with a shrug.

“I do my homework,” Sweetie cracks, before glancing at the computer screen again. “Or attempt to, at least.”

“What are you, um… attempting to do?”

“Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s –”

“‘Cause I could maybe –”

We both talk over each other, then both clam up at once. I’m the first to blush by about half a second, and the first to speak up again a second after that. “I was just gonna, uh… I-I’ve used that program before. Was thinking I could maybe help. If you want.”

Sweetie gives me a look I don’t know how to interpret. “I ditched you for lunch, and you still wanna help me?”

I chew on my lip and try to compress the shapeless blob of feelings in my chest into something audible and understandable. “I mean… you were right the other night. We used to be friends. And I just… wanna help out a friend. That’s all.”

She’s still wearing the same inscrutable look, and squeezing one thumb against the other in her lap. Finally, she gestures at the computer screen, standing up and offering me her chair in the same movement.

“I’m supposed to be mixing these two files together,” she tells me as I edge around her and sit down. “But I’m supposed to keep all the parts of them separate too. Like, all the different instruments. And I can’t get one file into the other without everything mashing into one… stripey thing.”

“All right…” I mutter, scanning the track she has open. Sure enough, there are just two channels visible in the mix, where I gather there are supposed to be a lot more. “Are you using the ‘Import’ menu?”

“I am… just now learning there’s an ‘Import’ menu.”

“It’s up here.” With a couple clicks, I open the correct menu and display a list of files. “Which one do you need to layer in?”

Sweetie’s tight-lipped for a moment, then she leans over my shoulder and points. A loop of her hair brushes against my collar, and I catch a whiff of floral shampoo that sends sparks flitting through my chest and flying off the grinding gears in my brain.

“That one. ‘Project 1.2’.”

“Oh… o-okay,” I manage to say. “So… open that from this window, and that pulls up this new window of all the channels in that file. Then you can check off the boxes for the channels you want to copy from this second file into your first one.”

“And channels are…”

I bite my lip, but I can’t help smiling. “The, uh… the stripey things. It’s what the program calls them.” I check all the boxes on display and click the “Add” button, and the main project window fills with new stripes of data, all in separate channels like they’re supposed to be. “And that’s basically it.”

I try to look up at Sweetie, and I only catch a glimpse of her shirt’s neckline — hanging an inch away from her chest — before looking away and staring with blurry eyes back at the screen.

“Well,” I hear her sigh behind me. “That was embarrassingly simple.”

“It’s really not,” I tell her — or really, her faintly visible reflection in the computer screen. That version of her is hard to look in the eyes too. “Took me a while to figure out the first time too.”

She inches closer to me. The walls of the tiny room come in closer with her. “So you use this program a lot, then.”

“I… have used it,” I say to the computer screen. “A few times.”

“To do what?”

“Uh… mixing stuff for my brother’s band. And…”

And I know exactly what else, and exactly what it would sound like to someone like Sweetie Belle. I barely got away with it last night in front of formerly dorky frat guys. I’m not gonna get that lucky twice.

“And… that’s basically it,” I mumble. Sweetie doesn’t say anything until I force myself to turn around and look at her, which is when I see the arch in her eyebrow and the call of “bullshit” forming on her lips.

“Okay, you might be good with computers, but you suck at lying,” she says.

She’s right. I am, and I do, and both of them are making me shrink into my chair as she straightens up behind me. “So, here’s what I’m thinking,” she continues. “My brain’s fried, I’m at a good stopping point with this crap, and I don’t have anywhere to be for a half-hour-ish. So let’s get out of here, I’ll get us coffees, and in exchange, you let me listen to some of the songs you’ve been working on. Deal?”

I want to say no deal — scream it, really. I want to suggest we go do something less primally terrifying, like skydiving without a parachute or fist-fighting a grizzly bear. But I end up saying nothing at all and just gaping at her instead, lips soundlessly opening and closing like a fish on a hook he really should’ve known better than to go after.

“Come on,” she says, softer this time, and seemingly sweeter. “You’ve bailed me out twice now. I wanna do something for you.”

“I-It’s just the one song, really,” I mumble. “And it’s not that good, so…”

“I still wanna hear it,” she replies. “We’re friends, right? I like everything my friends make.”

How am I supposed to argue with that? Do I even really want to? I was gonna have to show that track to somebody eventually. Might as well be someone who isn’t one of my players. Then if she hates it, at least I can scrap it without throwing the campaign off course. And if she likes it…

An animalistic growl reverberates around the tiny room — not from Sweetie’s throat, but from her gut. “Also, not to put any time pressure on you or anything,” she adds through a toothy, tight grin, “but I kinda ditched both you and lunch in general earlier. So I’m going for coffee and a sandwich either way because I’m starving, but I really think you should come too.”

“You really wanna hear this song that bad?” I ask. She looks at me, brow twitching a bit, and smirks as she brushes her hair behind her ear.

“Yes, I really do,” she says, sounding like she barely held back an eyeroll. “Now come on. I’ve got like five minutes before I go feral and start eating the foam off the walls in here.”

===

In retrospect, I was wrong earlier about the hardest part of college. It’s not making choices for yourself, or dealing with the choices other people make, or something else vague and lyrical about the weird liminal space between childhood and adulthood.

It turns out, the hardest part of college is sitting in the little coffee shop next to the campus library, staring across the table at someone you’re trying really hard to impress, and watching her listen in total expressionless silence to a song you threw together in one night for an O&O campaign, waiting for her to give you literally any sign of an opinion about it. It turns out it’s that specifically.

Much like the soda at the KNZ mixer last night, the coffee I keep aimlessly sipping from isn’t helping at all. I actually didn’t drink a lot of coffee in high school or before now in college, but admittedly it tastes better than the energy drinks I’m used to — or at least like a different, milder flavor of battery acid. Either way, it goes down easy and quickly, and it’s got my foot twitching uncontrollably under the table as I stare at the students around us and the tchotchkes tacked onto the walls and literally anything but Sweetie Belle’s still-blank face behind my laptop screen.

Is that a good reaction? A bad one? Is she even listening at all, or just trying to fake it long enough for me to think she has? I tip my coffee up until my cheeks are bulging with lukewarm liquid, and finally — as I’m painfully swallowing — Sweetie Belle plucks her earbuds out and unplugs them gently from my laptop. She holds them against the table in one hand and props the other against her chin, covering her lips with her knuckles as she still stays completely fucking silent.

“I-I know it’s not…” I try to say, my fingers drumming against my coffee cup. “You don’t have to, like…”

“That’s really good, Button.”

Sweetie looks up at me, and I blink stupidly back at her. The only thing I can think to say — and just barely stop myself from blurting out — is, “No it isn’t.”

“Like, okay, if I’m being totally honest, I was gonna say that anyway,” she continues. “Just to be polite, supportive, y’know? But I’m not kidding, that was genuinely good. Like, there’s no way that’s the first song you’ve ever made.”

My face is warming and my foot’s still twitching. For some reason, this feels even scarier than her hating it.

“I mean… kind of,” I mumble towards the table. “I messed around some in high school. Just trying to copy other songs, see if I could figure out all the parts and put ‘em together, but it’s… I don’t know if that really…”

“Button, look at me.”

I don’t, for a second or two. Then I swallow hard, grip my coffee, and force my head up again.

“You’re good at this,” Sweetie Belle tells me, emphasizing each word almost like she’s lecturing me. “Accept the compliment.”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes.”

I sigh and shut my eyes. “Fine, okay, I’m good at it, whatever. It’s still… I don’t know why I’m like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” I motion towards my face, and the pained expression I know is written all over it. “It shouldn’t be a big deal. It’s just a song.”

Sweetie Belle waits a moment before she answers, seeming to mull something over in her head. “You know what happened the first time I sang in front of a crowd?” she says. “I was so scared I puked. Sprinted off stage halfway through and just… everywhere, like, long-distance demon-possession barfing. And instead of letting me go home like I was begging to, my sister cleaned me up, changed me into a new dress, and sent me right back out for the rest of the show.”

I’m blinking again, this time in surprise. “She made you go back out?”

“Oh, I was so fucking mad at her,” Sweetie says, laughing at the memory. “Just glared at her in the audience the whole time, screamed half the verses more than sang them. And then afterwards, I’m stomping towards her ready to start screaming again, and I can’t even get to her before a dozen people are in my way, just losing their minds about how good I was.”

“Still kinda mean of her,” I say. Sweetie Belle shrugs and smiles in response.

“Very mean of her, yeah. But if I’d quit when I wanted to, I never would’ve gotten on stage again. Sometimes you just have to force someone to do something they love. Especially when they don’t know how good they are at it.”

That explains a lot — about what happened, and about Sweetie Belle. “I guess that means you forgave her eventually.”

She chuckles, and says, “Well, that time. Plenty of other stuff she still has to answer for.” Then she starts to say something else, and silently casts her eyes down towards her coffee instead.

“Your sister’s Rarity, right?” I ask. “Three years ahead of us?”

“Yeah,” Sweetie replies, “but she dropped out of college last fall. Got an internship with a big-time designer, so she went with that instead of school. And our mom’s… pretending she’s fine with it. Around Rarity, at least.”

“But not around you?” I guess — and judging by Sweetie’s expression, I’m right on the money.

“You know, there’s a part of it that’s funny,” she says, bitterness creeping into her voice more and more with every word. “Like, for my whole life, Rarity was the one with all the pressure on her, who my parents were all over about setting a good example and doing something with her life. And now she is doing something, but it’s not the right something, so now suddenly I’m the big deal. The one who can’t fuck around with…”

“With college?”

“With anything. At least one kid has to graduate, be the normal one, or else…” She blows out a sigh. “I don’t know, it’s family stuff. I shouldn’t be venting it at you.”

“I don’t mind,” I tell her. “Is it helping? To vent it?”

She laughs again, but the sound is lower and rougher this time. “It’d be nice if it did,” she says. “I mean, you get it. You’re a younger sibling too, right?”

“Yeah, but I think my parents’ standards for my brother are ‘not being homeless.’ Not a super hard example to live up to.” I get a smile out of her from that, but not much else. “Any case, I think you’re doing great.”

That gets a reaction out of her — and not the one I was expecting. “Really?” she snorts. “That’s your impression of me after this week?”

“I mean, yeah,” I tell her. “You’re keeping up with classes, you’re popular… you’re doing better than me, at least. I wouldn’t even be rushing right now if it weren’t…” For you, I almost say. “You just make it look easy, that’s all. Even though I know it’s not.”

She doesn’t laugh this time. Actually, she looks for just a second like she wants to cry. “I really thought it would be,” she says quietly, staring down at her coffee cup. “I’ve never… not had friends, y’know? People I’d known for years, just there all the time. And now Apple Bloom’s working and Scootaloo’s across the country, and I’m… here. Starting over again.”

“Not completely starting over.”

Sweetie Belle catches on to what I’m implying before I do and smirks.

“I-I mean, just…” I quickly add. “I’m here too. Also, uh… making new friends.”

“And old ones,” she says, still smiling.

“Y-Yeah. Some old ones too,” I mumble, trying to hide my blush behind my coffee cup. I don’t think it works, because Sweetie Belle’s staring at me when my cup hits the table again. Her smile’s faded, and her sullen look — like she wants to cry and won’t let herself — is back, and then suddenly something bursts out of her like the cap flying off a shaken soda bottle.

“I was such a bitch to you in high school.”

This time, I don’t swallow back what I instantly want to say. “No you weren’t,” I tell her — not even to make her feel better, more because I genuinely don’t know what she’s talking about. Lots of people were actively jerks to me in high school. Sweetie Belle just… ignored me completely.

Which, I realize looking at her now, is exactly what she’s talking about.

“I abandoned you, Button,” she says. “We were friends, and I took you for granted. Just let you drift away, and didn’t think about it because I was so caught up in myself and my own shit. And now I’m just… forcing myself on you again, acting like we’re still friends, like I don’t know exactly whose fault it is –”

“Hey, stop.”

I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe I feel bad for her. Maybe she’s right, and I’m letting her take advantage of me. All I know is what it just led to: me reaching across the table and grabbing her hand, and her falling silent as my palm touches hers, and a swell of adrenaline blasting through me as I look her in the eyes and somehow — I don’t know how — don’t look away.

“I let you drift away too,” I tell her. “I could’ve said something, tried to hang out or go to parties, and I didn’t. I just let life happen to me, while you went out and made life happen for you. You’ve always been good at that. You’re still good at it now, even if it’s harder than it used to be. And I don’t even know if I’m good at it because I never even tried before, but I’m trying now, and I probably wouldn’t be if you hadn’t forced me to. So just… be nice to yourself, okay? You’re trying. We both are.”

She doesn’t say anything at first, just squeezes my hand and presses her lips together and tries to blink away the moisture beading in the corners of her eyes. Finally, she wipes her face with her free hand and roughly clears her throat.

“Thanks,” she murmurs. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” I murmur back. “I’m glad we’re friends again.”

And I am, on one level. I really did miss hanging out with her, hearing her instantly strong opinions on everything, guiding her patiently through video game dungeons where she’d get drawn towards shiny stuff and always forget about enemy spawns.

On another level, my heart’s jackhammering so hard I can barely breathe past it, and if I hold her hand much longer my palm’s going to start sweating just like the rest of me already is. Are we friends? Or are we… is this…?

With another blink and a sniffle, she pulls her hand away and then rubs both hands against her jeans, bunching a denim a bit beneath her curling fingers. “Oh God,” she says through a heavy sigh. “Sorry, seriously. I’m a mess. But I’m really glad we’re friends again too. I mean that.”

Did she put extra emphasis on the word “friends”? I don’t know. I already can’t remember. My heart still goes from pounding in my ears to sinking into the pit of my stomach.

“Hey, I gotta go,” she says next, her voice a little stiffer than it strictly needs to be. “Gotta get to my next class. But, uh… if you make any more songs, I’d love to hear them.”

“I’ll keep you posted,” I reply just as awkwardly. “And, um, if you’re still singing, y’know… I remember you were really good.”

This time, she’s second to figuring out what I’m implying, and she smiles sweetly once she does. “I’ll let you know,” she says. “See you later, Button.”

She glances back at me once as she pushes the shop’s front door open, and another time through the plate-glass window outside. Then she disappears around the corner, and I blow out a sigh I didn’t realize I was holding in.

I can already feel the floodgates opening in my head — all the little mistakes and missteps and uncomfortable pauses in our conversation piling up on top of each other, ready for me to overanalyze. But maybe it’s the coffee, or the stress, or the last traces of warmth from Sweetie’s hand still tingling through my own, but I just don’t have the energy to think about this any more.

Sweetie Belle and I are friends again. That’s objectively good, whether there’s a “just” in front of “friends” or not. And the only thing obsessing over the semantics of all this right now would be good for is fucking that friendship up again. Besides, I still have homework to do, and class notes to catch on, and a frat party invite to maybe not end up getting.

But right now, I don’t want to think about any of those things either. Right now, I’m thinking about when I could see Sweetie Belle again, and whether I could make a new song for her before that happens, and tapping my finger idly against my coffee cup trying to find a rhythm that I can feel tickling the base of my brain but can’t quite hear yet.

I want to think about that. I want to dive into the tingling in the center of my chest and find out what’s causing it and shape something brand-new out of it — the same way I did when I stayed up all night and made the song Sweetie liked so much.

I want to see her again. I want her to like my next song just as much. And just like that, I realize I’ve already decided I’m going to make a next one, because I want to. Because I choose to.

In my pocket, my phone buzzes. It’s a message from Source — and sent to a bunch of different numbers besides my own, including the ones labeled as “Woody” and “Crescent” in my contacts:

After much debate, deliberation, and general dilly-dallying, we the brothers of KNZ have decided in our infinite wisdom that you probably don’t suck. If you want that “probably” to become a “definitely,” come to the Jefferson Street house at 8 tonight in your best cigar-smoking, card-sharking attire. Or don’t. We’re not cops.

By the time I finish reading the first text, a second one arrives:

Also, I guess this is now the official KNZ rush chat, so decreed by me because fuck making a listserv. Send each other memes and/or dick pics as you see fit.

I have time for one brief, big sigh of relief, and then my phone starts blowing up with images from the other people in the group text — thankfully all memes, and zero dick pics. In any event, I guess Woody and I have plans for tonight after all. And I have about six hours to kill before those plans begin, which I could occupy by going to my afternoon class and learning about boring shit and being the most responsible, grown-up student who ever college’d.

Or, as a way better alternative, I could pull my laptop out of its case, plug in the charger and connect my headphones, open up Thesis Pro, and waste time and money doing something I actually give a shit about. It doesn’t take me long at all to decide.

Life’s short. I’ve missed too much of it already. And between old friends and new ones, trying to make the most of it now feels more and more like the right call.

Chapter 7: A Pact With Pride

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“You ever smoked a cigar before, by the way? ‘Cause I haven’t. I mean, I’ve tried a vape, just one time, like as a casual thing, but it’s gotta be different, right? Gotta be. It’s not like we’ll get good ones anyway. Like, not high-quality rolls, y’know? Those are expensive. It’s just rush. Fuck, it’s cold. Are you guys cold?”

Crescent’s a little ahead of Woody and I, backpedaling so he can walk and talk at the same time. He’s been doing that — both the backwards walking and the nonstop talking — pretty much since we all met up outside Woody’s dorm to head to the KNZ house together. I don’t know Crescent that well yet, but so far it seems like he feels the same way about social situations as Woody and I do, and also like his attention span probably comes from a pharmacy bottle.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cold,” I tell him. “And no, I haven’t smoked a cigar. Woody, have you?”

Woody shakes his head. He’s hunched up under his winter coat, just as quiet now as he’s been the whole walk over. Maybe he’s just cold too. Or maybe he’s feeling exactly the way he looks, and how Crescent sounds, and how I’m doing my best not to be right now between them.

“Okay, but you’ve played poker before, right?” Crescent goes on, shuffling his feet so he’s facing forward and walking next to me. Woody mutely falls behind us. Our new friend keeps being anything but mute. “‘Cause I actually have done that. Watched a lot of it on TV too. It’s all mind games. Like, playing the people at the table more than the hand you have.”

We pass the streetlamp marking the turn onto Jefferson Street, and I give it a little knowing nod as we go by. It’s seen me at my worst, so I might as well let it know I’m doing better-ish now. As for Crescent’s question, I played some practice five-card stud hands on a website I found earlier today, and that’s about it for my poker experience.

I’m trying to be fine with that — with just winging it tonight and seeing what happens. I was fine with it for most of today, but mostly because I wasn’t thinking about it at all, and between Crescent and Woody both, right now it’s really hard not to.

“Guess that’s why they made a rush event out of it,” I say. “To see if we can play people.”

“Or get played.”

Both Crescent and I turn around. Those are the first words we’ve heard from Woody so far tonight. He sounds exactly the way he looks. “Maybe that’s what they’re looking for,” he adds, clenching his teeth so they don’t chatter, cheeks and eyes crumpled into a grimace to match.

“I think they just wanna play poker,” I assure him — and myself a little bit, but mostly him. “Just a different type of game, right? We’re good at those.”

“And hey, worst case, free drinks,” Crescent adds. “And cigars.”

“If you say so…” Woody mumbles as we reach the edge of KNZ’s front yard. Before we make the turn, though, I make all of us stop and clap both my hands on Woody’s shoulders, looking him square in the eye. Everything I don’t want to think about is streaming out of Woody’s face like a spotlight. If I want to keep not thinking about it, I have to make sure he doesn’t either.

“Hey, I do say so,” I tell him. “All right? We’re supposed to be here. They wouldn’t have invited us if we weren’t.”

It kind of feels like I’m reassuring myself in the mirror, but instead of just imagining it working, I can actually see Woody bite his lip and feel the tension in his shoulders. “I mean, yeah,” he mumbles, “but –”

“No, no buts. That’s just the truth. We’ll be fine. We got this.”

Actually, it really is working, on Woody and on me too. Somehow, him being nervous makes me feel more confident, more sure of what role I’m supposed to play tonight. Even if I can’t play poker for shit and everything around the game turns into the nightmare I’ve been expecting for three nights in a row now, I can at least be there for my friend. That’s something to focus on — to think about instead of how terrifying this all still is.

Next to us, Crescent rocks on his heels, squinting suspiciously at both of us.

“Did you guys pregame without me?” he asks. I don’t answer him. He’s not who I’m focusing on right now, and also I don’t actually know what “pregaming” is.

“You good?” I ask Woody, realizing right after I say it that I kind of need him to be. Whether I want to think about it or not, I know I can’t do this by myself — not unless I know my friend can do it too.

And he can. He squares his shoulders and takes a bracing sigh, and he mutters in a tone that tells me he’s still a little anxious but he’ll be okay, “What happened to you today?”

A lot happened today, honestly. I reconnected with an old friend who might want to be more than that, and I’ve got two new friends right beside me and maybe forty-odd more waiting for all of us to come hang out with them. And between those two things, I spent six hours that felt like fifteen minutes working on a song that’s not done yet, not even close, but feels so close to being done — to being real — that part of me wants to skip rushing entirely so I can go back to my laptop and keep chipping away at it.

It’s too much to think about all at once. I don’t know what I should think about any of it. And more to the point, it’s too much to explain to Woody right now, so I just shrug and tell him the sort-of-truth: “I don’t know. Just feeling good about tonight. Let’s get in there and see if I’m right.”

“God, can we please?” Crescent interjects, still bouncing on his heels. “It’s fucking freezing.”

Woody cracks a grin, and says silently with a jerk of his head that he’s good to go and also that Crescent’s got a point. Good enough for me. We get moving ahead and head across the yard towards the house.

As we climb up onto the porch, a guy with orange hair and a beard to match — Mandarin, from last night and technically the night before too — nods to us in greeting. He’s wearing slacks and a button-up, just like Woody and I both are. Points to us for finally getting the dress code right. Crescent looks like he’s got a truly hideous Hawaiian shirt on under his coat, so I guess he’s close enough.

“‘Sup,” Mandarin says, bumping his fist against each of ours in turn. “Good to see you out again.”

“Good to be out,” I reply.

“Yeah, good,” Crescent adds. “How’s it look in there?”

“Like more probation if admin hears about it,” Mandarin says. “So phones away tonight. And don’t narc on us.”

“Narc about what?” Woody asks.

“Exactly,” Mandarin replies with a grin.

I laugh — because Mandarin’s joking, right? Probably. Has to be. Either way, I tug gently on Woody’s coat sleeve until he realizes he should act like that wasn’t a sincere question he’s absolutely not going to get a real answer to. Once he gives Mandarin a tight-lipped nod, we both head inside with Crescent right behind us.

Source wasn’t exaggerating about the theme for the night. The house’s main living area has been transformed into an underground casino, complete with felt-covered circular tables ringed by folding chairs, stacks of poker chips emblazoned with the frat’s letters, and even neon beer brand logos and posters of mobster movies on the walls. Actually, now that I think about it, those might’ve been there already, but it still adds to the overall effect.

And speaking of Source, he’s not hard to spot even through the crowd of brothers and rushes mingling around and between the tables. He’s behind a bar off to the side made of matte-painted plywood and lined with half-empty liquor bottles, wearing a tight-fitting tuxedo t-shirt and raising his eyebrows in recognition as he spots me. I get my knuckles ready for another fistbump as I lead my friends over, and — at the last moment — uncurl them so I can accept the handshake-into-a-one-armed-hug Source actually goes for.

“Evening, gents,” he says by way of greeting. He’s holding an unlit cigar in the hand he didn’t press into mine, and he lifts it to clamp between his teeth as he nods towards the wall of booze. Guess it makes sense that no one actually wants to smoke the things indoors. “What’s your poison?”

Crescent speaks up first. “Uh… vodka? Vodka something?”

“One vodka-something coming up. Button, whiskey? Or did you get enough a couple nights ago?”

My stomach turns over just thinking about a couple nights ago, but I don’t want to turn him down either. I’m still feeling confident right now, and a confident person wouldn’t get thrown off his game by one night of overindulgence. “I’m fine. I’ll take whiskey,” I tell Source. “Rocky.”

“Is ‘on the rocks’ okay?”

On the other hand, sometimes your game throws you off like an angry bull at a rodeo. “Y-Yeah,” I mumble. “Whatever the term is.”

“Eh, you were close enough,” Source chuckles. As he grabs two red plastic cups and fills both with ice from a cooler on the floor, he looks past me at Woody. “Woody, you want anything?”

“I’m good,” Woody says. Source seems unfazed and grabs a third cup, cracking a plastic water bottle open overtop of it with the same flourish he puts into the other two drinks.

“Sorry we took so long with the invites, by the way,” Source says as he mixes. “We’re like a family here. Dysfunctional and late to everything.”

I smile and Crescent gamely chuckles, but Woody doesn’t say a word. Instead, he just drains half his cup of water the moment he gets it in his hand. I grab the cup darkened with amber whiskey from a bottle with a label I didn’t recognize, and my first sip burns in my throat and makes my face redder than it already was. Judging by the look on Crescent’s face, his drink — vodka mixed with something dark red and fruit-scented — is going down just as easy.

So much for feeling good about tonight. Maybe the whiskey will help again after another cup or six.

“So what’s the game?” I ask Source once my throat clears, nodding back at the poker tables.

“Hold ‘Em,” he replies. “Two cards in your hand, five on the table. Best five-card hand wins, or whoever doesn’t fold. It’s easy, until it gets hard.”

“When does it get hard?” Woody nervously asks.

“Pretty much right after it starts.” After a moment of silence, Source blows out a sigh and sags in place. “Jesus, guys, work with me a little.”

“Sorry, we’re… we’ll get better.,” Crescent says, before taking another pull from his drink. I do the same with mine. Rocky or on the rocks or whatever, the ice definitely makes the second sip hurt a lot less than the first.

“Dude, you’re fine,” Source says, his smile softening a bit. “We’re not playing for money or anything. Just hanging out.” After another moment, he adds, “But preferably hang out at a table, ‘cause we’re gonna start in a minute.”

Sure enough, the crowd around the bar has mostly moved to the seats around the poker tables. I look at Woody and Crescent, and get two different species of deer-in-the-headlights back. Guess I’m taking the lead again. Once I spot a table with three open seats, I draw my friends’ attention to it, but right as I’m about to head over there with them, I hear Source speak up.

“Button, hold up a sec.”

I do hold up, and Woody and Crescent keep going. I don’t think they heard Source, and I don’t think Source wanted them to. The look in his eyes — still friendly, but a bit firmer now too — looks like it’s for my eyes only. He motions with his head for me to follow him off to the side of the bar, so I do, sipping from my whiskey along the way. The ice is helping a lot now. It hardly burns at all, and tastes oaky and sweet instead.

“So, shot in the dark here,” Source murmurs once we’re away from the bar crowd a bit, “you don’t have an older brother who was in a frat?”

The whiskey might taste better now, but I haven’t had enough of it yet to keep my heart from skipping a beat. “I… no? Is that a problem?”

“No, not a problem, just…” Source works his tongue around in his mouth, trying to figure out how to phrase whatever he really wants to say. “Don’t just hang around Woody and Crescent all night, okay?”

Make that multiple beats. “Why not? Are they not…”

“Nah, nothing wrong with them, or you. You’ve been fine so far. But the last two nights, that was just a vibe check, y’know? Weeding out the guys we hundred-percent don’t want. Now it’s about making an impression, making sure all the brothers know you and that they’re gonna remember you come voting time. Because now we want to figure out who we hundred-percent do want, and that means more than just fine.”

Source sees my deer-about-to-be-roadkill expression and clarifies. “Hey, this isn’t criticism, you haven’t fucked up or anything. Just… Woody knows how all this works through Hawthorn, and I figured you might not. Just friendly advice, all right? You got this, man.”

Sure. I got this. I’ve got every part of this thing I apparently have to do all by myself, without knowing a single thing about how it actually works and without anything else to focus on but how badly I might fuck it up.

“Can I get a refill?” I ask Source, holding up my cup.

“Fair enough,” he says as he nods back towards the bar.

Once Source makes me what he calls a “rocky triple,” there aren’t many empty poker table seats left to choose from. The table I end up sitting down at has four brothers I haven’t met and two rushes I remember chatting with last night. I’m glad to see they made the cut, and — as far as I could see on my way across the room — the guy who was a dick to Woody and me didn’t. Guess we weren’t “fucking dorks” after all.

The thought warms me up a little, and another sip of whiskey gets me saddled up and back on my game again. I told Woody we’re supposed to be here, and if I meant it then, it should still be true now. I got through the last two nights just fine. I can get through tonight too.

“Sup, Button,” one of the brothers says as I sit down to his right. He’s shuffling a deck of red-backed cards, and he has a chip in front of him bigger than the ones stacked in front of me that says “Dealer.” “You feeling lucky?”

I want to say something corny like “I make my own luck,” but I miss my chance to answer because reality answers for me. There was one empty seat left at this table, and it just got filled by the very last person I wanted to spend tonight hanging out with.

“I hope you’re all feeling lucky,” Alkaline says as he settles in, massive hand clawed around a noticeably rock-less cup of whiskey. “‘Cause I’m about to clean you fuckers out.”

It’s too late to switch tables, and all the other ones are full anyway. As Alkaline leers across the table at me, I give him the politest nod back I can manage. “I’m feeling lucky,” I tell him.

“Oh, trust me, you are,” he replies, grinning behind his cup. “Hope you keep it up.”

My knee’s twitching under the table — and not out of fear this time. I don’t know what Alkaline’s problem with me is, but he definitely has one, and even more than being awkward or looking stupid around the other brothers, I can’t stand the thought of letting him think he’s getting to me. So as Al stares at me, I stare right back, and don’t look away until a pair of face-down playing cards slide across the table towards me.

“All right, folks, ante up,” the brother who dealt says. “Starting blinds are one buck and two.”

Alkaline barely looks at his cards before grabbing two white chips off the stack in front of him and tossing them towards the center of the table. The rush to his left puts in two white chips as well, and the next two players slide their cards back to the dealer instead. I’m up. I have to decide whether I’m going to play.

I tilt my cards up from the table and see double: the Five of Clubs and the Five of Diamonds. Not a great hand, if I remember right from my practice rounds earlier, but not a terrible one either. Probably worth staying in with. Wouldn’t be crazy to fold either — but how much of an impression would that make?

“Don’t make us wait, bud,” Al says, still grinning. “What’s it gonna be?”

I look at him, then back at my cards, then at my chip stacks. The white ones are ringed by little symbols: “$1”. I grab two of them and slide them towards the center of the table.

“I’m in,” I say. “Let’s do this shit.”

===

Credit where it’s due, Alkaline wasn’t exaggerating either. He really is good at poker, or at least good at betting aggressively and getting the absolute most out of every good hand he has. Woody, on the other hand, is broke before a half-hour has passed, and spends the next hour after that nursing something with a lime wedge in it that Source gave him as consolation.

As for me, I’m about breaking even, not winning any big pots but not losing any big ones either, and that’s been enough to keep me and Al both playing long enough to merge with the winners from another two tables, and then to survive that table to the last one still going in the house. Crescent made it to the final table with us, but judging by how this hand’s going, he’s not going to be at it for much longer.

I folded my hole cards for this hand — Nine-Six, unsuited — pretty much the moment I saw them, and Crescent not only stayed in but saw Alkaline’s ante raise and raised him again. All night, Al’s always raised right away if he gets dealt any kind of pair, and if Crescent were paying attention even just at this table, he’d have known better than to re-raise without a pocket pair of his own.

And when Al doubled that first raise after the Ace-Six-Four unsuited flop, Crescent should’ve known that Al was trying to buy his way out of the hand — because that’s what he always does when the flop doesn’t give him the cards he wants — and re-raised him then. But instead, he just called and let Al stick around until he got exactly what he wanted, which was another four on the turn and a Jack for the river.

Al’s got at least two pairs, and Crescent maybe has Aces at best. My friend’s lost the hand and he knows it, but Al’s staring him down with a relaxed little smirk, and he’s already put way too much into the pot. He’s going to call. I could just about mouth his response along with him.

“Call,” Crescent reluctantly says, pushing the last of his chips forward and practically radiating dread of the inevitable. Sure enough, Alkaline reveals his pocket pair — Tens to go with the Fours on the table — and Crescent deflates as he tosses his suited Ace and King away in defeat.

The crowd gathered around us murmurs in sympathy as the hand’s loser gets up and leaves the table, but Alkaline doesn’t seem to notice. The stare he had pointed at Crescent a second ago is now leveled straight at me.

“You got somethin’ to say, Button?” he says, daring me with his eyes and face and obnoxious fucking smirk to put what I was thinking about the last hand into words. But neither Alkaline nor Crescent deserves that, so I just shrug instead. Crescent was right about this being a mind game. I haven’t played it much before, but I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it.

“You played that well,” I tell him. “Good hand.”

“You should try playin’ a hand one of these days,” he bites back.

“Let’s see if I get something worth playing with.”

He chuckles and lifts his cup — still whiskey, “neat” and knocked back in the same kind of sloppy gulp he’s been taking all night. I’ve switched to beer, so I’m lucid enough to know I’m drunk and buzzed enough to not care, and I take a sip too as the dealer shuffles the deck.

Rather than the dealer position rotating around with the big and little blinds, the final table has the fraternity president himself — Case Brief the PoliSci major — running the show for each round. He hasn’t said much to me tonight, and I’ve been telling myself that’s a good thing, but the longer I’ve stayed in the game tonight, the more I’ve started to wonder if it is. Source said to make an impression, and so far I’ve just been fine — not winning, not losing, not taking any unnecessary risks. Maybe Al has a point. Or maybe I’m just being smart — playing the game, and not the players.

Case cuts the deck, then deals out hole cards to the six people — Alkaline, four other KNZ brothers, and me — still at the table. The player to Al’s left glances at the hand he’s been dealt, scowls, and pushes it right back towards Case.

“Gotta say, Button,” Al says over the shifting cards. “You’re better at this than I thought you’d be. A real gamer.”

He says the last word like a slur, and he certainly meant it to come off like one. The brother to my right tosses out four blue chips — $100 in fake money, just to match the ante. It’s my turn. I peek at my cards, then push four blue chips of my own forward.

“It’s been fun,” I reply. “You guys throw good parties.”

The player to my left makes a face and gives up his cards. It’s the little blind next, then Al as the big blind. If Al checks, it doesn’t mean much. If he raises instead, it might mean a whole lot.

“So do you, I hear,” he says. “With your, what? Ogres and Obstacles shit?”

“Oubliettes,” I correct him. The little blind puts in two blue chips. Al could just check, and we could move on to the next round.

“The fuck is an oubliette?” he mutters, looking at his cards instead of me. I’m watching him, though, and I see the little twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“Another word for ‘dungeon,’” I explain. “Just what the people who made the game decided to call it.”

“Wild,” Al says, sounding totally disinterested. He plucks four blue chips from his hoard, considers them for a moment, then replaces them on their stack and tosses in five black ones instead. “Raise to five hundred.”

The crowd murmurs, and at least one other player at the table — I don’t see who — blows out a curse under his breath. That’s a big bet even for Alkaline, big enough to get the guy on my right to fold like his cards are burning his fingerprints off. Al must have been dealt another pair, probably Jacks or better. I peek at my cards again. They’re the same ones I saw when I looked a minute ago.

“You wanna play this one?” Alkaline asks. “Or you wanna go back to your dungeon?”

Another bit of credit where it’s due: Alkaline plays the mind-game part of poker pretty well too. Or maybe he’s always like that, and it just also gets people to misplay Hold ‘Em hands. Maybe earlier in the night, it’d have gotten me to bow out of this one — but whether it’s the booze, or the crowd, or just the simpering smirk across the table from me that I’ve seen on countless identical asshole faces, right now it’s not making me feel anything at all.

All my life, I’ve been terrified of guys like Alkaline — boys who think they’re men, bullies who saw me as an easy target for insults and taunts and little spurts of random violence just outside a teacher or parent’s view. And for the first time, rolling a poker chip between my fingers and surrounded by guys I would’ve grouped thoughtlessly together as one indistinguishable mass a week ago, I find myself wondering why.

Why should I be scared of an upperclassman who has to go after a freshman to feel like a big shot? Why should I think he’s got some plan for his hand I’m not seeing, instead of believing that all the practice I have with reading people and planning ahead has led to me reading this situation exactly right?

And you know what, jackass that Al is, he does have a point: why shouldn’t I take some risks on some hands tonight? It’s fake money. For all I know, I’m surrounded by fake friends. I have nothing to lose but my dignity, and the only way I could lose that is by doing exactly what I’ve always done and choosing to guarantee failure instead of risking success.

Besides, a pocket pair’s not enough to win this round just yet. I want to see the flop. And more than that, I want to see Alkaline see the flop. And most of all, I want to watch Al’s face fall when I outplay him, win this hand, and clean him the fuck out.

“You know what’s funny, Alkaline?” I say, chuckling as I clack two of my chips together in front of me. “I bet you’d be good at O&O.”

“Yeah, but then I’d have to still be a virgin too,” he shoots back.

“You’re telling me half this frat’s still virgins?”

“Exceptions that prove the rule. You gonna call, or –”

I cut him off with the sounds of chips clacking together — four black ones, stacked on top of the four blue ones I put into the pot before. “Call,” I say, before adding, “I’m just saying, it’s a lot like poker. You gotta play the good rolls when you get ‘em, find a way out of the bad ones. Maybe bluff your way out sometimes.”

“You think I’m bluffing?” Al says through a wolfish grin.

“I think it’s his turn,” I tell him, nodding at the little blind and keeping my eyes on Al. As we stare across the table at each other, the little blind folds. Al twitches his eyebrows. It’s just me and him seeing the flop.

“All right, game boy,” he says as Case gathers our chips into a pretty hefty pot at the table’s center. “Let’s see some of those O&O skills.”

“Sure. What class are you playing?”

Al squints at me. So do a few other brothers in the crowd around us. “Fuck you talking about?”

“You wanna see my O&O skills, I gotta know what character class you’re playing as,” I tell him. “Y’know, sorcerer, druid, barbarian… take your pick.”

Al stares at me until he realizes I’m not kidding, then he laughs. He can’t believe I’m actually doing this right now. Truth be told, neither can I — but like I said, sometimes you get a good roll, and sometimes you play through a bad one. One way or another, I’m seeing this round through to the end.

“Fuck, okay,” he says, in the tone of someone stringing along an annoying younger cousin. “Uh… barbarian, I guess. What are you?”

“DMs don’t have classes,” I reply. “But I usually play as a wizard.”

“Would’ve thought you’d be a fairy.”

“We’ll save the homebrew classes for next time. So, you’re a barbarian. Built around Strength and Constitution, skill proficiencies in… let’s say Athletics and Intimidation. We’ve been playing a while, so you’re a pretty high level, but that means your enemies are as well.”

“I think I’ll be okay,” Al says through a snort.

“Spoken like a true barbarian,” I reply, before glancing at Case. “Roll for initiative.”

He takes a second to realize that means I’m ready for the flop. For a moment, I swear I see a smile flicker across his lips, but he’s stone-faced by the time he grabs the deck, puts the card on top aside, and flips the next three face-up on the table.

The crowd around us is dead silent, all eyes on the cards the dealer just revealed. I’ve never DM’d in front of an audience before, but my usual flow — egoless, ethereal, just a vessel for a story that has to be told but not interfered with — isn’t hard to find.

“Your long journey across hostile territory ends on a steppe overlooking a verdant valley,” I say, watching Alkaline but projecting my voice for the crowd. Al’s fingers drum against his face-down hole cards. He’s staring intently at the flop — the King and Ten of Hearts, along with the Six of Clubs — and at one card in it specifically. “The King of Hearts awaits you below, gathered with his army, flanked by his loyal advisor and a spy from a distant land. He may still be your ally… or maybe a mortal foe. The truth — the only truth you’ve ever known — will be found on the battlefield below.”

“I’m gonna attack,” Al says, already reaching for his chips. Case lifts a hand to stop him, but I don’t need the help.

“And you can, when it’s your turn,” I tell him. “But you’ve traveled a long way, and the journey has left you exhausted. So for now, the Wizard — your rival in this clash of crowns — will make the first move.” I wait for a beat, until everyone’s eyes are on me, then I tap my right middle finger against the table. “And the Wizard checks.”

Al barely waits for me to finish speaking before he grabs a full stack of black chips and shoves them all forward at once. “Thousand,” he says, smiling at the sound of the crowd around us murmuring. “You wanna play with that, Mr. Wizard?”

Actually, Mr. Wizard does, and so do I. Al really is a barbarian all the way through, right down to swinging first and not thinking about what might hit him back. But I know better than to let what I’m thinking show on my face. Whatever I personally think or don’t think about it, the story — the performance — always comes first.

“You charge down the hillside, greataxe raised, your battle cry — a song of guts and glory — serenading your descent,” I narrate. “The King of Hearts’ infantry advance to meet you, and just as quickly fall beneath you, each titanic blow from your weapon spawning a whirlwind of blood and viscera. You have no interest in politics, no taste for subterfuge. You have allies enough already, and with them you will conquer this foe like you have so many others before.”

I wait another beat, and then continue. “But as you cut your way through the king’s army, man after man felled by your unrivaled strength, you see a familiar figure in the corner of your vision. He stands at the edge of the fray, ensconced in arcane wards, little more than an apparition… but there nonetheless. Keeping pace with you. Following in the path you carve towards your goal.” I reach for my own chips, collect ten black ones, and push them all forward once I’m sure the count is right. “Call.”

The little action ripples through the crowd like a stone splashed into a lake. As I lean back in my seat, I catch a glimpse of Woody inside that crowd. He looks like he’s on the verge of panic. Next to him, Crescent doesn’t look much better. They’ll be fine, though. I’m doing this for them — for every guy like us at this college and in the whole goddamn world.

Case burns another card off the top of the deck and flips the next one face-up by the three already on the table. It’s the Jack of Hearts, and the exclamations I hear from the crowd tell me they know what that could mean just as much as Al does. If one of us has two more Hearts in our hand, it doesn’t matter if the other player has a pocket pair. The Hearts flush beats any other hand on the table right now.

“You repel the first wave without much effort,” I say, “but then, all at once, the remaining soldiers pull back. As you catch your breath, blood dripping and steaming from your axe’s lethal edge, you hear a trumpet from the east, heralding the arrival of reinforcements. The King of Hearts’ son has joined him on the field of battle, bringing a hundred more troops along with him. You’re outnumbered now… and behind you, the wizard draws near. He raises his hands, and the sun overhead glows brighter, infused with unholy energy, bursting down upon you and your stunned companions.”

I don’t have enough black chips to make the bet I want, so I push the ones I do have forward and then add a stack of blue ones next to them. “Fifteen hundred,” I say, eyes never leaving Alkaline even as brothers and rushes alike curse in quiet anticipation. “Make a Constitution saving throw.”

The smart play for Al now would be to cut his losses and fold, or to re-raise me and hope I’m bluffing. But he’s a barbarian — a big-shot frat star. He doesn’t know how to be the smaller person in a room, how to edge around obstacles rather than smash through them.

So instead, he just stares at the community cards, hems and haws over his own stack for a bit, and finally pushes enough chips forward to equal fifteen hundred fake dollars, muttering as he does, “Call.” This is already the biggest pot of the night so far, and we’ve still got one more betting round to go. If I had a pin to drop, I could probably hear it echo inside this room right now.

“You know this wizard well,” I say. “You’ve seen him fight before, seen warriors and warlocks alike struck down by his spellwork. He’s deliberate, cunning, powerful almost beyond measure… but in the end, mortal. He can be beaten. You’re sure of it. And buoyed by that belief, you call upon every ounce of your resolve and resist his spell, even as half your army dissolves to ash and the rest fall to their knees, clawing at their sightless eyes and writhing inside their glowing, molten plate.”

Case should have already dealt the last community card, but he’s watching me just as intently as everyone else. Is he caught up in the story too? Impatiently hoping it’ll end? I glance his way and nod, and only then does he burn one last card from the deck in his hand and flip the river card face-up on the table: the Six of Diamonds.

As the crowd reacts, I can’t help but smile. If Alkaline’s playing with a pocket pair, he needed a miracle to beat a flush, and he might’ve just gotten one. I can already see the rest of this story spooling out in front of me, waiting to deify one player and destroy the other — and I can also see relief flowing through Al’s sagging shoulders, followed by insufferable swagger swelling in his chest.

“And perhaps your faith will be rewarded,” I murmur, channeling the reverent tension around me into every word. “For in the forest to the east, almost invisible save for the glint of the wizard’s spell in the lens of a spyglass, you see someone familiar: an elven ranger, once a compatriot of convenience, now potentially your savior. He emerges from the trees, striding forward with his longbow at the ready, and flanking him on either side and for seemingly miles behind him are unholy beasts of all shapes and sizes, enough to overwhelm any army… or at least, fill the castle the King of Hearts treats as his house.”

That line gets a few chuckles from the crowd, and for good reason: with a pair of Sixes on the table and three-fifths of the royal Hearts family along with them, it’s more likely than not than anyone at the table with a pair of face cards in their hand just stumbled ass-backwards into a full house, which beats a standard flush every day of the week. And Al can lean back in his seat and squint at the community cards and put on the worst acting job since Battleship Terra all he wants, but everybody in the room who’s paying even a little attention should know exactly what hand his backwards ass has.

“The Wizard checks,” I say, tapping the table. “He didn’t expect this. He wants to see how the Barbarian will react.”

“Oh, he does, huh?” Al says, his standard smarmy tone restored and reinvigorated. “Had enough of playing pretend?”

“Only if you have,” I say back, knowing exactly what it’ll make him do — and just like him, having my faith rewarded.

“Oh, okay,” Al says, grinning down at his chips. He lets the moment drag out, then pushes every stack he has forward with one hand, dropping his other hand below the table so he can root around for something out of view. “All in, then. And you know what, while I’m at it…”

From his pants pocket, he pulls out a black leather trifold wallet, bulging with cash and cards. Before any other brother realizes what he’s doing, he peels two bills out and tosses them in with his chips.

“Add another two hundred,” he says. “Just for fun.”

If my plays earlier were rippling pebbles, Al just tossed out a ten-ton boulder. Several brothers laugh nervously, and a few — Case among them — put on pained smiles as they try to back things down. “Al, come on, man,” I hear one say. “It’s just a game, bro.”

“Yeah, exactly!” Al retorts, completely unbothered. “He got to play his game, now I’m playing mine.”

“Dude, just –”

“Hey, he doesn’t have to call.” Now he’s leveled his gaze back on me. “He can quit anytime he wants. Can’t you, game boy?”

The same voracious look I remember from two nights ago — like a lion circling a wounded gazelle — is back. But now I finally realize where I’ve seen that look and heard that tone before: not from high school bullies, but from players who are sure they’ve royally fucked over their bastard of a DM.

They’re not always wrong. It does happen sometimes. But even when it does, it doesn’t change the one cardinal rule of DMing: no matter what, you are always in control, and woe to any player who thinks one lucky roll means otherwise.

“And react the Barbarian does,” I say, slipping back seamlessly into narration and waving off the frat brothers gathering around Alkaline. Almost all of them look like they want to ignore me and stop the game, but once I spot Sloop among them and Sloop spots the look in my eyes, he bites his lip to keep from grinning and wordlessly ushers his friends back from the table. Sloop’s definitely played O&O before — and if Al had played before, he’d also recognize the look his gamemaster has right now, and he’d be fucking terrified.

“With a primal roar, you surge forward, hacking and slashing, cutting your foes to pieces with your indomitable might. The tide of battle has turned, and with it, your assurance of your own unquestionable victory — because, as it turns out, you do know a little something about politics after all. After all, if a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush… a king in the field can’t possibly beat two in your hand.” I pause, wait for the audience’s energy to echo back towards me, then call my shot, staring Al down straight to his busted soul. “Full house? Kings and Sixes?”

Chattering from the crowd fills the room, louder than it’s been all night up to now. It’s meaningless, though, compared to what I get from Al: a shift in his seat, and a knuckle pressed under his chin, and a painted-on smile that might as well be a hundred-foot billboard screaming, “How the fuck did you know that?” in bold block letters.

“Why don’t you call and find out?” he eventually says.

“All right, so full house, Kings and Sixes,” I repeat, just to rub it in. As I poke around a few of my remaining chips, letting everyone’s nerves stretch just a little bit thinner, I can see Sloop still grinning behind Alkaline, and Woody and Crescent both gaping at me like I’ve grown a second head. Hell, maybe I have. The one that’s in control now feels like it’s been doing this for years, like this is just the natural way for things to be. Like it belongs here.

Time to make it count.

“Pretty good hand,” I continue. “Lucky hand, given that flush on the table, but a win’s a win, right? Sometimes you just get lucky.”

“Talk it out all you want, buddy,” Al says — seemingly the only person who hasn’t caught on to the energy of the room right now. “It’s just a bad beat.”

“It is, isn’t it?” I agree. “All that planning and battle strategy, just to drown in the river in the final moments of the fight. Incredible to think such a powerful Wizard would forget to account for such a simple obstacle.”

“All right, we get it, you’re good at this O&O shit. You gonna fold or not?”

I look at my chips, and purse my lips, and act like I’m really thinking about it. “Well, I would,” I tell Al. “Except there’s something the Barbarian forgot about too. The same thing most kings forget about when they run off and fight wars together.”

“What?”

I lean forward, elbows on the table, and level my best I-know-something-you-don’t Dungeon Master stare at my opponent.

“Where’s the queen?” I ask Alkaline.

Finally, there’s a hitch in Alkaline’s grin, the smallest droplet of doubt in an ocean of unearned confidence. “What?” he says again.

“Spoken like a true barbarian,” I can’t help but quip. There’s no laughter from the crowd, though. Most of them want to know what I’m getting at just as much as Al does — and the few who seem to have figured it out already are wide-eyed and whispering, just as eager to see it all play out.

“The Queen of Hearts, specifically,” I go on. “She’s been absent from the battle up to now, maybe ordered to flee by her husband… or maybe making plans of her own. Maybe, in the dead of night, unseen and unheard, she slipped the bonds of matrimony and found a new ally, one who could help her end the king’s tyrannical reign and vanquish the Barbarian’s advancing horde in one fell swoop. Maybe she thought the Wizard could help her in this quest… and maybe she had help from within the kingdom as well. From the King’s chosen champion, his secret weapon… his ace in the hole.”

Everyone’s caught up now, and all but breathless save for a single voice out of sight muttering, “No fuckin’ way…” Whoever it was, they’ve got a point. The only hand that could beat Al’s right now is a straight flush, and maybe a royal one — Ace through Ten suited — at that. There’s no way I actually have that. I’d have to be the luckiest motherfucker alive.

Al tries to sound confident, and he almost succeeds, save for a little quiver in his forceful final word. “Fuck off. You don’t have the Queen.”

“An Insight check from a Barbarian,” I muse. “Now I’ve seen everything. But I’ll allow it… and two sixes on the table makes a roll of twelve. Decent enough. We’ll call that a success.”

You’re not supposed to show any of your cards in poker before the last betting round ends. You’re also not supposed to put real money into a fake pot, or narrate a hand like an O&O session. In any case, no one stops me from picking up one of my two hole cards, checking to make sure it’s the right one, and then flipping it face-up.

It’s the Queen of Hearts.

You’re also not supposed to show emotion as a DM, or let your players know just how much you’re enjoying watching them squirm. But since we’re already breaking every rule in the book, I don’t feel too bad about smiling as the crowd realizes — in one jumbled and exuberant voice — that yes fucking way, I might’ve actually had Al beat since the turn, and he might’ve just hung himself by his nuts by thinking my flush wasn’t nuts enough.

“No,” Al mutters into his clenched fist. “You don’t have the Ace with it. You would’ve bet it harder. You wouldn’t go through all this shit now.”

I shrug in response. “Could be the Nine too,” I suggest. “Or it could be nothing. But since we’re gaming, let’s game this out: if I had nothing, and I knew you had the full house, I probably would’ve just folded. I mean, there’s real money on the table right now. Big-game money. I wouldn’t keep playing for that unless I knew my hand was better… or unless I knew you’d play like it wasn’t. Unless I was sure you’d do what Barbarians always do, and think with your heart instead of your head, and assume that just because Wizards fight in different ways doesn’t mean they can’t fight at all. Could be that too.”

“Whatever, quit fucking stalling,” Al replies, every word rushed on its way out of his mouth. The fist he had pressed against his lips is resting on the table now, knuckles knocking softly against the felt. “It’s all in to call. Plus two hundred bucks.”

I let my eyebrows drift up and make a show of mulling it over. “Well, if you insist,” I eventually say — and then I gently push all my chips forward, reach into my pocket, and pull out my own wallet.

“All in, call your two hundred bucks…” I don’t have cash, so instead I pull out my debit card and toss it into the pot. “... tack on another three.”

Ten-ton boulder, meet state-sized meteorite. I can literally feel the floor vibrate from the noise that fills the room, the shocked curses and the is-this-really-happening laughs and, from Woody specifically, the breathless realization of what definitely did just happen. “Button…” he whispers. “That’s…”

I know. It’s just about every cent I have left from my summer job. It’s a brand-new gaming console, two dozen extra-large pizza orders, an entire semester’s worth of risk and regret tossed casually out onto a poker table like it’s nothing, instead of everything I have in every possible way. It takes everything I’ve got left right now just to keep my face blank, to look at Alkaline and not at the crowd or down at my knee bobbing under the table in time with my thrumming heart.

And across from me, knuckles still tapping, brow creased over his narrowed eyes, Al looks like I’ve never seen him look before: scared. His brain wants to back out. His pride wants to keep going. He needs something — someone — to tip him towards one or the other.

“The Wizard raises his hands,” I say softly, quieting the room in an instant, “and the sky splits apart. Blazing meteors swarm down from the heavens, carpeting the battlefield, annihilating every living being still standing upon it. If the Barbarian retreats, he’ll likely survive the onslaught. If he advances, he may find eternal glory… or just an eternity spent on this very field, reduced to ash and shattered bone, a forgotten remnant of a foolhardy war. It’s his decision, and his alone. Make the call… or be undone by it.”

“You want me to call, huh?” he mutters.

I meet his eyes, steeple my fingers, and smile. “You can certainly try.”

That did it. His decision’s made. He looks down at his cards, twitches his hand towards his wallet — then his whole face crumples into a petulant scowl.

“Fuck you, man,” he says. Then he shoves his cards towards Case, roughly enough that they both flip over as they slide away from him: pocket Kings, Diamonds and Clubs. He did have the full house — and he just folded it to save three hundred bucks.

“You gotta show ‘em, though,” he adds next, shouting over the ruckus around us. “Did you have it or not?”

Technically, I don’t have to show my other card. I’ve already won the hand, and made some real money doing it. I could just keep smiling and collect my chips and bills, and leave it a mystery for everyone forever. But whether it’s showmanship or peer pressure or, fuck, just pure overwhelming relief, something makes me want to. I just put on a hell of a show. Might as well give it the ending it deserves.

“The Barbarian retreats with his allied Kings,” I announce, hushing the crowd one last time. “He’ll live another day, perhaps win all the next battles he chooses to fight. But this battle, and this war, goes to the Queen…”

I reach for my other hole card, slip it between my thumb and forefinger, pause for just a moment…

“... and the Queen alone.”

… and flip over the Seven of Hearts.

“Motherfucker!” Alkaline yells — and the room explodes.

I’ve never played any kind of sport, but this must be what winning a championship feels like. I’m jostled from every direction, hugged and shaken and slapped on the back by hands whose owners I can’t pick out of the throng surrounding me, whose voices have all blended into a shapeless roar that reverberates in my chest and shoots like a static shock through every single inch of me. I can’t help but grin, and then laugh, and then just shake in my seat from an emotion that used to be just a word to me: euphoria.

I did it. I drew to a flush, and Al got lucky on the river and acted like a giant prick about it, and I bluffed him into folding and fucking beat him anyway. I should feel fucking great right now, even if it feels kind of like hyperventilating in a weird, good way.

After a bit, the melee around the table settles down, and I’m able to pick individual faces out of the crowd. Al’s stood up from the table and is glowering over his refilled drink, Crescent’s nearby with his jaw still near the floor, and Woody standing next to him is beaming like it was him who just won that hand and not me. I flash him a thumbs-up, and he lifts his cup in a mock toast before — braced for it, with a brave face on — drinking from it.

The last face I focus on is Source’s — still behind the bar, leaned forward with all his fingers spread-eagled on top of it. The look I give him is more of a silent remark: “How’s that for an impression?” He laughs to himself, then gives me a look back: “Pretty fucking good, kid.”

“Hey, you want this back?”

Case is talking to me, and holding my debit card up in front of him. “Yeah, thanks,” I say as I take it — and as I do, my eyes fall on the giant chip pile at the center of the table, and the two hundred-dollar bills perched on top of it. “Uh…”

“Take ‘em, man,” Case says, a few brothers around him agreeing with nods and grins. “Al put ‘em on the table, you won ‘em. Fair’s fair.”

“All right, then.” I manage to get my arms around the pile and slide all my winnings my way at once, then pluck the two bills off the top and slip them into my pocket along with my wallet and card. “Gonna keep ‘em off the table for the rest of tonight, though.”

“Good move,” Case says, before addressing the table. “Ante up. Let’s get this shit moving.”

“Fuck me,” the new big blind says. “I don’t wanna follow that.”

“Man, I just burned all my luck for the year last hand,” I tell him as the cards come out, using the last of my drunken confidence to get one last chuckle from the crowd. “You’re probably gonna kick my ass now.”

And actually, as it turns out, he does. I last four more hands and two more awful river cards before that same brother knocks me out by drawing to an inside straight when I just had a high pair. But hey, fifth place out of the whole frat isn’t bad, and going out of the game gives me more time to meet some more brothers and hang out with Woody and Crescent, and hear so many people call me “Mr. Wizard” that I start to worry it might turn into a nickname.

Worst case, though, I’m still up two hundred bucks on the night. Maybe next time I meet Sweetie Belle, I can pay for coffee.

Chapter 8: Instead of Beating

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Some people like to say that bravery isn’t the absence of fear, but acting anyway in spite of it. It’s a nice thought. And like a lot of nice thoughts, it’s also total horseshit.

Because the thing is, fear does go absent when you do something brave. For example, my fear vanished completely last night once I started ignoring it, then stayed absent while I walked back to my dorm with Woody and Crescent gassing me up the whole way, then just sort of hung out nearby as I fell asleep with visions of dead presidents dancing in my head. When my phone alarm went off eight hours later, I even got to spend a few seconds all by myself lying nice and warm and brave under my sheets, thinking something along the lines of, “Man, this is nice. Thanks for being cool last night, fear.”

And then my fear said something back like, “No problem, boss. What was it you actually did last night, again?” At which point I thought about last night, remembered the little flourish I did with my hand as I flipped over the Seven of Hearts, and bolted upright in bed as I answered my fear aloud.

“Oh shit!” is what I think I said first. “Oh my God, fuck!” was my followup remark.

And that’s why that old saying is horseshit. Because once you’re done spiting your fear and almost forget you ever felt it to begin with, it’ll come storming back all at once, kick you in the balls, and make up for every second of attention you didn’t give it before. And you know what? If you ask me right now, it isn’t fucking worth it.

Because right now my hands are clammy against my face and my lungs feel like shriveled little raisins in my chest, and I’m sweating and shaking like a leaf in a hurricane over what I actually did last night, which was put five hundred real dollars on a fucking bluff! If I’d misread Al at all, if even the smallest slightest thing had gone differently, I’d be flat broke right now and friendless and probably infamous all over campus as the dumbass freshman who pretended to be a fucking wizard during a fucking fraternity poker game.

God, that could’ve gone so wrong in so many ways. It should’ve gone wrong in all of them at once. And remembering that it somehow impossibly didn’t just gets my heart pounding faster and my ears ringing louder, until I have to grab my pillow and squeeze it tight against my chest just to keep from screaming.

Or… screaming again, I guess. I definitely yelled out loud a minute ago, if the dazed and concerned look Bit’s giving me across our room is anything to go by.

“Sorry,” I tell him, letting my pillow drop into my lap and gritting my teeth as a calming-the-fuck-down backup plan. It doesn’t feel like it’s working, but I’ll give it a chance to turn things around. Hardly any crazier than smooth-talking a senior into folding a full house with five hundred dollars on the table, you FUCKING LUNATIC.

“Did you have a nightmare?” he asks.

I can’t stop myself from laughing — nervously, awkwardly, pitched like a toddler with his hand caught in a cookie-jar-baited bear trap. “Actually, no,” is my breathless reply. “That’s the scary part.”

Which doesn’t make any sense, and fair enough, Bit doesn’t bother pretending it does. “Huh,” he intones. “Well…”

“Yeah. Sorry. I promise I’m done screaming. Go back to sleep.”

And after staring blankly at me for a couple seconds, he actually does — or at least, he flops back down onto his pillow, facing away from me with his comforter up to his neck. Either way, I’m quasi-alone again, and despite what I just said, I can feel more swears and shouts bulging in the back of my throat. So rather than bothering Bit again, I scramble out of bed, slip on pants and shoes as I grab my phone and keys, and speedwalk out the door and down the hall towards the bathroom. Maybe if I splash water on my face like people do in the movies, it’ll keep my heart from popping like an overfilled meat balloon.

Fair enough to the movies this time: the sink-water-on-the-face thing does help a bit. But in the end, it only buys me half a minute of relative calm — and then my phone starts buzzing in my pocket, and goosebumps roll through me again. Who the hell is calling me at whatever time it is, and how could it possibly be about anything good?

Holding my breath, I pull my phone out and answer the call, and Woody’s face fills the screen. He looks like he just woke up too — and unlike me, he looks absolutely psyched about it.

“Dude,” he gushes, not even waiting for a “hello” from my end. “Sorry, it’s early, but holy shit, man! I still can’t believe that actually happened last night!”

“Yep,” I groan, bracing myself against the sink with my free hand. “And if I ever try to do something like that again, I need you to kill me. On the spot, no questions.”

“Fuck that, Button, you were incredible! I mean, look at me!” He holds his free hand up next to his face, so I can see that it’s shaking the tiniest bit. I guess he hasn’t noticed how much all of me is shaking right now too. “I’m still hyped about it, and I was just watching!”

Woody’s excitement is infectious even over the phone. That, or I’m just ramping up for, what, my third panic attack of the last five minutes? Either way, I don’t need to ruin the moment for him, nor do I get the chance to.

“Okay, well, anyway, that’s not why I called,” Woody continues. “What’s your class schedule like today?”

“Uh…” I shut my eyes and try to remember what I actually set my alarm for. “Data Management in like an hour, then Microecon at two and my freshman seminar after that. Philosophy of Technology.”

“What kinds of philosophies do people have about technology?”

“Psychotic ones, mostly. You wanna get lunch or something?”

“No, I…” He blinks and realizes he answered the wrong question. “Well, yeah, sure, let’s do lunch, but also, you wanna hang out later? I’ve got Crescent and a couple other guys coming over, we’re just gonna play some Smash and pregame for rush tonight. You in?”

Now it’s my turn to blink aimlessly and process what I actually heard rather than whatever I was expecting. I’m being invited to hang out. I haven’t been invited to hang out with other guys my age in… ever.

And instead of being excited about it, I feel like I want to start screaming again.

“Um…” I say after a second. “I mean, I’d like to, I just…”

Just what? I don’t have anything else going on. I have no reason to say no and every reason to say yes. It’d be fun. It’d make Woody like me more.

“I have so much stuff to catch up on,” I tell my friend. “I’ve missed a lot of classes this week. ‘Cause… hangovers, y’know?”

I’m lying. I’m obviously lying — and Woody’s buying it.

“Yeah, I feel that,” he says with a sympathetic sigh. “Feels like we’ve been rushing for a month already. You’ll be out tonight, though, yeah?” He cracks a smile. “With your DM face on?”

“Yep,” I weakly reply. “It’s never off.”

“Nice,” Woody chuckles. “See you later, Poker Wizard.”

And then my phone screen goes dark as he ends the call. Poker Wizard. That’s what he thinks of me — who all of KNZ thinks I am now. I pocket my phone and brace both hands on the sink, eyes squeezed shut and forehead pressed against the grungy mirror in front of me.

As if the panic attacks weren’t enough, now I know they’re not the end of this either. If I’d lost that hand last night, I’d be a loser in everyone’s eyes, and the only reason I’m not is because I somehow faked my way into winning. The second I drop that act, the moment I let anyone see past my daredevil card-shark facade, I’m right back to square one. Buried beneath it, actually, since Woody will probably drop me like a bad hand too.

Maybe I’m being paranoid. Maybe Woody likes me because of who I was before last night, not in spite of it. Or maybe fear is spiteful and patient, and so is contempt. Maybe this’ll all end with Woody and Source and everybody I’ve met this semester staring and laughing at me, disgusted at what a giant fucking dork I always was and embarassed that it took them so long to notice.

“Who are you kidding?” I mutter down into the sink. “Who the fuck…”

My phone buzzes in my pocket — a text this time, not a call. Another wave of adrenaline rolls through me when I see who it’s from.

Morning, party animal! How’d rush go last night?

I spend a few seconds staring at the message, then past my blurry phone at the off-white tiles beneath the sink. I don’t have to answer Sweetie Belle. I don’t have to be honest. I could just turn off my phone and go back to my room and hide under my bedsheets until I convince myself this week was just a long, weird nightmare like Bit thought. I could just give up. I could do what I’ve always done when things got scary and I didn’t know how to handle them.

But I want to handle this. I’ve learned what handling it looks and sounds and feels like, and I want more. And if I’ve faked it this far, maybe I can keep it up a bit longer. At least until the end of rush, when I’ll know once and for all where I actually stand — with KNZ, Sweetie Belle, everyone everywhere.

And in the meantime, I can’t stay in this bathroom all day agonizing over it. I have classes to go to, and a message to answer. I tap on Sweetie Belle’s message notification and type back:

It’s kind of a long story.

Then, before I can think better of it:

Tell you over coffee? I’ll buy this time.

Her reply comes quickly:

Make it breakfast and I’m in. I want a donut too. >:)

I send her a thumbs-up emoji and pocket my phone. Time to put my DM face on again. At least there’s one definite upside to last night: I have money now to put where my mouth has gone.

The plans I just made mean I’ve lost my window for a morning shower, so I settle for some more water splashed on my face and swished around in my mouth. Then I jog back down the hall towards my dorm so I can finish getting dressed and grab my backpack. On my way back out after doing both, Bit speaks up again — still in bed, sitting up and staring at me with an expression I can’t read in the dim mid-morning light.

“How did you start going out?”

His tone is just as unreadable as his face. Does he think I know something he doesn’t? Does he remember how much of a shut-in I was for the whole first semester, and he’s trying to call every bluff I’ve made this week at once? I don’t have the energy or the desire to dig the meaning out of Bit’s jarring, contextless question, just like most of the other ones he’s blurted out over the past few months.

“What do you mean?” I ask, because I can’t just ignore him no matter how much I secretly want to.

“Like…” It takes him a couple seconds to find what I guess, to him, are the right words. “You didn’t go out and do stuff before. And now you do. So… how did you start?”

Lying, I want to tell him. I just keep lying and pretending I’m somebody I’m not, and somehow it keeps working.

But I have somewhere to be, and I still can’t tell whether Bit’s curious or judgemental or just adding data to his internal directory on how human speech works. So total honesty’s off the table, and selective truth is better than totally lying.

“I just… went out,” I say. “Met somebody in class and gave it a shot, I guess.”

“Oh.”

And that’s that. After a moment of uncomfortable silence, Bit lies back down in bed, and I give him an unseen wave as I head out. Another upside to last night: no matter how awkward things might’ve been if I’d lost that hand, at least they weren’t as rough in reality as trying to talk to my roommate is every day. I guess that’s a good thing — or at least, the absence of a bad one.

And hey, maybe breakfast with Sweetie Belle won’t be so bad either. Maybe she’ll be as impressed with me as Woody is. All I have to do is tell the story well, just like I did last night. I can do that, right?

===

“... and then they just let me keep the money like it wasn’t a big deal at all, but it was, it’s a huge fucking deal, and now I probably have to keep acting like that if I want a bid, which I don’t even know if I want except that Woody wants one and he’s like my only guy friend, and it’s insane. It’s just…”

I run out of breath much later than I should have, and I have to bite my lip to keep from rambling even more once my lungs refill. Across the table from me, Sweetie Belle’s chewing on her own lip — in her case, to keep from laughing.

“Sorry,” I mumble, staring down at my untouched donut. “I shouldn’t have… sorry.”

“Okay, so… let me see if I understand this,” Sweetie Belle says, her face contorting with each word like she’s trying not to giggle or smile. “You were playing fake poker and having a good time, Alkaline decided to be a dick for no reason, you kicked him in the metaphorical dick and took two hundred dollars off him on top of that… and you’re sorry?”

“I just meant I was kind of rambling. I was sorry about that.”

Finally, she loses her internal battle and lets a single short snort slip out — and for the first time, I realize she wasn’t going to laugh at me. “God, please don’t be, that’s amazing,” she says. As she lifts her coffee cup to her mouth, she mutters something else into its lid: “Deserved it too.”

“What, Alkaline did?” I ask, just before a couple dots connect in my head. “You know him?”

Her first reaction is half-shrug, half-eyeroll. “I know of him,” she says. “Enough to know he had something like that coming. Trust me, if that all really happened, it was a public service.” She takes a sip of coffee, then makes a hand gesture like she wants to say something else, and does say it once she swallows. “Not that I don’t believe you. It’s just… so perfect.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Too perfect.”

Sweetie Belle squints at me, and I bite my lip again. That pretty nails the coffin shut on telling the story well — but I’ve already told her everything I couldn’t bring myself to tell Woody, and it only takes a few seconds for the silence to spur me into spilling more.

“I just… it shouldn’t have worked,” I say, staring down at my thumb digging into the opposite hand’s knuckles in my lap. “And even though it did, I can’t stop thinking about how bad it would’ve been if it didn’t. Which is stupid, I know, because it didn’t go badly, but –”

“No it’s not.”

I blink as Sweetie Belle cuts me off, and I lean back in my seat as she leans forward a bit. “That’s not stupid,” she continues. “That was a huge risk you took. It’d be stupid if you weren’t scared.”

“Yeah, but I still shouldn’t obsess over it like this,” I try to argue — but when I put the thoughts in my head into words Sweetie Belle can hear, they sound hollow and meaningless, like they’re the real stupid things in this exchange. Maybe they are. Talking to her about it sure makes me feel that way, enough that some of the panic that’s been rolling through me all morning is finally bleeding out of me.

“Button, everybody obsesses over stuff that could’ve happened and didn’t.” She pauses a moment, then smirks to herself. “Including Alkaline, actually. But that’s a whole other story. And not a casual-breakfast one either.”

Everything about what she just cryptically said makes me want to press her for details, but I bite back the urge by biting into my donut. If she wanted to gossip about Al, she would. She’s always been the strong and not-silent type, and I’ve always been the opposite in both regards — except for the past few days. I guess that means I’ve changed a lot since we were kids.

“You know, you’re exactly the same now as you were when we were kids,” Sweetie Belle says suddenly.

I manage to swallow my donut bite without choking, but that’s about all I can offer in the way of a response. Sweetie seems to figure as much from what must be a baffled look on my face. “I’m serious,” she goes on. “The way you can spin a story out of anything, and you just find your way through it as you go. And how you’re so quiet and thoughtful until you’re excited about something, and then you talk a mile a minute. It’s…”

She stops herself before she says whatever it is. A dozen possibilities flow through my head, and every one of them brings heat to my cheeks and sends a fluttering, tingling spark through my chest.

“You’re just so hard on yourself,” Sweetie Belle says. “And I don’t get it.”

Why wouldn’t I be hard on myself? I want to reply — and again, the thought feels muffled, like it’s an echo from a voice that isn’t quite my own. Maybe she’s got a point. I’ve been taking huge risks all week and been scared out of my mind about all of them, but I stuck it out anyway. And maybe she’s right about that too: the old me, the one she knew when we were kids, just did stuff too.

And then some of that stuff didn’t go well. I stopped sticking it out. I let the world pass me by, and friends drift away, because…

“I don’t know, I…” I start to say. I don’t know what words I’m looking for. I’ve never looked for them like this before — never felt the urge to find them for my own sake or anyone else’s. “I got used to it, I guess. Just… knowing things were gonna go wrong. And then never actually trying, because then it might prove me right.”

I trail off, wait for her to interrupt again and remind me how much better things are now that I am trying — and she doesn’t. She just lets me keep talking, and keeps listening as I do.

“You remember that Minecraft server in elementary school?” I ask her, and from the way she smiles I can tell she does. “I think that’s the only time in my life I’ve ever been popular. Like, other people, kids my age, knew who I was and actually wanted to know more.”

“You slaved over that place,” Sweetie Belle adds, still smiling. “Built a whole town.”

“Yep. And then summer ended, and everybody went to different middle schools, and it all just… vanished. Like it’d never been there at all. And I just knew, somehow, it was my fault. That I hadn’t worked hard enough, done enough to keep people interested. To…”

I don’t want to say it aloud. After a moment, Sweetie Belle says it for me: “To keep me interested.” And then, before I can answer, she says something else: “That’s why you’re rushing, isn’t it?”

I want to lie. I want to say no, absolutely not, you didn’t just read me like a book and nail my whole sad-sack self to the wall like a torn-out page covered in hundred-point font. But what would be the point? She’s right. She already knows she is. And I’m tired of faking it — of lying to her, and to myself.

“Yeah,” I say. Then, before I can stop myself: “Is it working?”

“You mean, am I hanging out with you now because I think you’re a fuckboy frat star, instead of the kid who built Minecraft houses for everyone in our class just because he thought we might like it?”

Guess that answers that question. Maybe a few other ones too. “You guys better have liked ‘em,” I joke. “Spent the whole damn summer doing that.”

“I remember it being very popular,” she jokes back, and for a moment it’s like we’re back in elementary school, just talking like old friends, not thinking about what we say before we just say it and hear what the other thinks about it. It’s more than just honest. It’s real.

“You know it wasn’t your fault, right?” Sweetie Belle adds. Her face has hardened a little, from silly to sincere. “People leaving the server, I mean. It was just… middle school.”

“Middle school sucked.”

“Middle school sucked,” she agrees. “And I know it sucked in different ways for different people, but… it wasn’t personal. We were all hormonal little headcases. That’s not your fault.”

“Well, knowing that is one thing, and…”

“Believing it’s another. Yeah.” She sighs and stares down in her lap, working her lips like she isn’t sure whether she should let them tell this particular story. “You know why I left the server?” she finally says. “I was in the library, sixth grade, and these two older girls saw the little pickaxe keychain on my backpack, and they just went in on me. Called me a nerd, a dyke, a… I mean, fill in the blanks. Just out of nowhere.”

“Just for the keychain?”

“Far as I knew, yeah. And I tried to argue with them, tell them it was something I did with friends, make it sound better, and…” She shakes her head and trails off. I recognize the look on her face like I’d recognize my own face in the mirror. “That was all it took. I got made fun of one time, and I stopped doing something I really liked, with people I really liked, just so it might not happen again.”

“You can’t be too hard on yourself for that,” I tell her. “It wasn’t…”

She glances up, smirking — and I realize, grimacing, what rhetorical corner she just backed me into. “Wasn’t my fault?” she asks pointedly. “That other people were dicks, and I took it badly because I was just a sweet little kid?”

“Do you do this kind of thing with all your friends?” I grumble.

Her grin widens. “Only the fuckboy frat stars. Speaking of which, you think you’re gonna keep rushing? Now that your secret is out?”

“Yeah,” I tell her. What I don’t tell her is what I’m thinking: I might as well. And also, not like quitting now would look good to anybody, including and especially you. “It’s been insane, but… fun too. Even with Alkaline being a dick.”

“He might be even more of one now,” she points out.

“I can handle him,” I say — for her sake, not mine. Truth be told, I’d love it if I never had to handle, or see, or think about Al again. “He’s not worth giving up something I like.”

I look up, and Sweetie’s already looking at me, green eyes sparkling over a smile that seems sincere, satisfied — breathtaking. My mind goes blank, and my own lips curl into a grin, and the only conscious thought I have left is that I could live in this moment forever without wanting anything else.

And why shouldn’t I? Why can’t we? Her eyebrows twitch up, and the soft sounds of the cafe swarm around me and pulse through my flushing face. My brain’s screaming at me to get a grip, but another part — getting bigger and louder by the second — wants to see whether that one perfect moment might have blazed a path towards more to come.

“Guess that means you’ve got plans tonight, then,” Sweetie Belle says.

“Plans, yeah,” I agree. “Might, uh… pregame with Woody and some other guys before going over to KNZ.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to miss that.”

“What would I miss it for?”

“Oh, nothing big,” she says. “But you did ask me to tell you if I was gonna start singing again, and…”

Her gaze has shifted towards a bulletin board near the cafe’s entrance that’s covered in flyers promoting local events. More specifically, she’s looking at a poster on that board showing today’s date under the words “Open Mic Night.”

“You’re gonna perform?” I ask. “Tonight?”

“Well, with all that talk about doing stuff we like… only fair, right?” she says, stumbling a bit over the words. “But if you’ve got somewhere else to be…”

“I don’t,” I blurt out. “I-I mean… I’ll be there. I want to hear you sing.”

For a moment, I could swear she looks a little relieved. “I better hear you cheering, then. Especially if I suck.”

“You’re not gonna suck. I’m looking forward to it.”

“I guess I am too, then,” she says softly, before glancing at the wall clock. “Class time. I gotta go. But I’ll see you tonight. Thanks for the donut.”

“See you tonight,” I reply as she gathers her backpack and stands up. She lingers for a moment next to the table, then strides towards the door. I watch her leave, curls bobbing under the edge of the wool hat she puts on along the way, clinging for as long as I can to the warmth and comfort and I-don’t-know-what of a moment I don’t have a word for other than “perfect.”

And then the moment ends when I look at the open mic night poster and read the start time printed on it, and I remember that I actually do have somewhere else to be tonight. I pull out my phone and scroll down my messages list until I find the last one I got from Source, typing out to him:

Hey, what time does the rush event start tonight?

Thankfully, he answers fast:

10-ish. You that eager to take more money off us?

I glance up at the poster again. The show starts at nine PM and goes until eleven. Shit.

How big a deal is it if I’m a little late?

Not gonna lie, it’s not ideal.

Shit again. I guess I just have to be honest and hope my excuse works.

Sorry. I told a girl I’d come to a show she’s doing. Didn’t realize the times would conflict.

Mr. Mash, are you telling me you’re putting pussy before the bonds of brotherhood?

Shit shit shit. It feels like everyone in the cafe is staring at me. Even though I can’t see anyone doing it when I look up, my face is still burning. How am I supposed to respond to that? Is… doing that even a bad thing?

But before I can level up from overthinking to panicking, my phone buzzes again:

I’m fucking with you, man. You’re fine. But expect “consequences” when you do show up.

Why is “consequences” in quotes?

All I get back is a smiling red emoji with devil horns. I don’t even know if that’s worth a “shit” or not, but I guess I’ll find out later. For now, all I can do is get through the rest of today. And then figure out how to dress for both a show and a frat party.

One last silver lining to everything: at least I know for sure to skip the tie for both.

Chapter 9: New Day, New Life

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The weather that greets me when I step outside my dorm is the kind that poets write overwrought sonnets about: crisp but not too cold, breezy enough to ruffle your hair but not ruin it, charged with something unplaceable that makes every moment feel like an establishing shot in a movie. It’s the kind of night that people want to go out and do things in. Even people like me, who aren’t poets at all.

And since I’m not a poet — maybe an amateur songwriter at best — the only thought I have about the weather as I head across campus is, “I should’ve worn a bigger coat.” Because that’s the thing poets never mention about crisp breezes full of romantic potential: how sometimes they can slip up your jacket sleeves and between your shirt buttons, and spawn goosebumps up and down your back just as well as a blizzard could.

Which is really just redundant, honestly, because those goosebumps were already there to begin with. They’ve been there pretty much all day, and gotten bumpier and goosier every time I’ve thought about how this stupid poetic evening will start with what might be my first capital-D Date in my entire life.

“It’s not a date,” I mutter to myself as I walk, for probably the hundredth time since Sweetie Belle left me with a million answerless questions this morning. “It’s a performance. She wants her friends to see her perform.”

And yeah, sure, that would make the most sense out of every other possibility I’ve thought of today. A capital-D Date would be something like two seats next to each other in a movie theater or a dinner by candlelight, not her being up on a stage and me being a blurry face in the crowd below her.

But then again, a Date could also be a long conversation over coffee, followed by a test to see exactly how far I’ll go to impress her the way rushing KNZ apparently hasn’t. I’ve thought about that specific possibility more than most of the others, and gotten nowhere close to figuring out whether it’s the one closest to being real.

So, as I pass the older campus dining hall and see the coffee shop rise into view at the top of the hill flanking the larger building, I decide to just not think about it — again, for the hundredth time today. Maybe attempt one-hundred-and-one will be the one that finally sticks.

With only a few minutes left until showtime, there’s still a pretty sizable crowd milling around in front of the shop, and though I can’t see through the plush velvet curtains pulled over the windows, it sounds like the inside is packed. Guess Open Mic Night’s a pretty big deal around here. For a moment, I wonder whether it’ll be too packed for me to even get in, but nobody gives me a second glance as I thread my way into the throng outside and, eventually, through the place’s front door.

In the few hours since this morning, the coffee shop has gone through a impressively thorough transition from daytime hang spot to intimate evening entertainment venue. The interior still has tables set up about where I remember them being earlier, but someone’s added tablecloths and flickering electric candles to each one, and lined up some extra chairs along the windows and walls as mostly-full overflow seating. The back left corner, though, is empty save for a raised dais with a mic stand and a wooden stool on it — and to the right of the stage, seated at a table a few feet from the hallway back to the bathrooms and kitchen, is the girl I’m supposed to meet here tonight.

Forget what I said earlier. Right now I’m really wishing that I was a poet, because just describing what Sweetie Belle looks like — hair piled over her shoulders and framing the ridges of her breasts, snow-white legs crossed so the hem of her glittering cherry-red dress wrinkles a bit between her thighs, knuckles propped under her chin and lips glistening the same color as her outfit — feels like drawing the Mona Lisa in crayon. If the show had started already, she’d look good enough to stop it, just like she’s stopped me so dead in my tracks that a couple trying to find a table almost crashes into me from behind.

And by the time it occurs to me — in my too-big button-down and unironed slacks draped over a body that’s more bone than muscle — that I can’t possibly share the same table or restaurant or universe with her, she’s already spotted me and sat up straight and beckoned me over with a indelicate, almost urgent wave. I swallow my heart back down into my chest, adjust the front of my pants a little, and make my way towards her.

“Wow,” I gush once I reach the table. “You look amazing.”

“Thanks,” she sighs, only briefly glancing up at me as I sit down before turning her gaze back to the stage. Her phone buzzes, facedown on the table in front of her, and she ignores it. When it buzzes a second time, her jaw tightens.

“Glad one of us got here early,” I say after a moment, over the drumming of her fingers against the tablecloth. “Pretty big crowd.”

“Mm-hmm,” Sweetie Belle hums. She’s still staring at the stage. I bite my lip and ball my fist so my fingers don’t start tapping along with hers. I definitely should’ve dressed up more, or maybe not come at all. She sure doesn’t look too excited to see me. Actually, she looks kind of like she did a few nights ago — right before she sprinted into the bathroom and started throwing up.

“So… what time do you go on?” I force myself to ask. “Actually, how does this work? Is it random order, or –”

In a blur of motion, Sweetie Belle drops her hand from under her chin, wraps it in a vice-grip around my wrist, and yanks me out of my chair as she surges to her feet. Silent every step of the way, she leads me away from our table and towards the back hallway.

And despite everything, I can’t help but stare at the back of her dress — or just her back, really, since I can see it through a gap in the fabric that stretches from halfway up her spine all the way to the twin dimples above her tailbone. I guess it’ll make for a nice memory later, after she’s dragged me out the back door and ordered me away with my own proverbial tail between my legs.

But instead of doing that, she stops outside the bathrooms and drops my arm with a heavy sigh. And then she sighs again as she presses her back to the wall, and again as she bends forward and braces her hands on her knees, and finally I realize that those aren’t sighs so much as ragged gulps of air that feel like the prelude to a scream.

“Fuck, this was a bad idea,” she groans down towards the floor. “Oh fuck. Fuck meeee.”

Well, thank God that’s not going to repeat in my head all night like a corrupted MP3 file. In the meantime, body, wanna get on board with my brain and live in the moment for a bit?

“Is it the crowd?” I ask. “Because –”

“Yes, it’s the fucking crowd!” Sweetie Belle growls through her clenched teeth. “I didn’t think anyone would show up! I thought it would just be a casual thing, like a…”

She straightens up against the wall and lifts her hands to the back of her neck, threading her fingers through her hair as she sucks in air through her nose. I risk a glance back up the hallway. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s noticed us back here.

“I mean, you’ve sung in front of people before, right?” I say, fumbling for a handhold I can use to pull Sweetie Belle back off this ledge. “You can –”

“Nope,” she squeaks. “No. I’ve done choir, fucking school plays. This is… can’t do this. I can’t do this.”

And she means that — she’s shaking from head to three-inch heels, arms crossed tightly in front of her torso now like she wants to squeeze herself into a ball small enough to hide from the whole world. For the second time today, I look at Sweetie Belle and see a mirror.

The buzzing sound of mic feedback echoes down the hallway, followed by a voice that sounds like a wish someone made to turn a sweater vest into a real boy. “All right, ladies and germs, let’s get this show rolling!” the emcee announces. “First up, all the way from the other side of campus, the lovely and talented Miss Soprano Silk!”

“Oh God,” Sweetie Belle whimpers as the crowd starts to applaud, “I’m up next. Let’s just go, let’s just… I don’t care where we go. I’m sorry, I…”

She trails off and blinks — not fast enough to keep her eyes from shining with tears. I know exactly what she’s feeling right now. If I say we should leave, she’ll come with me — and she’ll never come back here again, and never stop thinking about what she should’ve done differently.

Somewhere inside my head, an imaginary mirror cracks right down the middle.

“You can do this,” I tell her — first as a murmur, and then again with all the force I’m capable of putting into words. “Hey, look at me. You can do this.”

She does look up, eyes wide and chest heaving, and she tries to argue before I cut her off. “You’re going to do this,” I tell her, “and you’re gonna do great at it, because it’s what you do.”

Her eyes narrow a bit, going from dinner plates to something more like sauce dishes. “No,” she snaps. “Fuck you. Do not fucking Rarity me right now.”

“Well, Rarity’s not here right now, and I am.”

“Button, I’m not kidding –”

“Neither am I.”

Sweetie Belle glares at me, half-snorting with every angry breath. I stare back. Now I know for sure what this all is, and it isn’t a date — it’s me making sure my friend doesn’t make the same mistake I’ve made a million times before.

“You think I don’t know what this feels like?” I tell her. “Wanting to give up before you fuck up? Because I do. I’ve lived for years like every day was a thousand opportunities all lined up in a row to mess something up and look like an idiot, and you know what happened? I looked like an idiot anyway, because I never tried looking like anything else.”

Sweetie Belle bites her lips and cringes — maybe from what I said, maybe from the high note the singer on stage just hit.

“Look, I can’t make you do anything,” I go on, “and I’m not gonna try. But whatever you think might happen out there, any awful embarrassing thing you can imagine… giving up is worse. Trust me.”

Sweetie Belle doesn’t say anything, and even if she had, the applause for the end of the evening’s first song would’ve drowned her out. But as the singer thanks the crowd and transitions into her next piece, I see something solidify in her expression — an instinct crystallizing into a decision. She sighs, and nods, and looks up at me with her jaw set and her gorgeous green eyes shining.

“If I puke up there, I’m aiming for you,” she says — and she means it too. But I grin back at her anyway, because there isn’t a word she could gruffly snarl at me right now that would overshadow what they all mean put together: “I’m not giving up.”

The table we were at before is occupied by the time we emerge from the back hallway, so with one last friendly “You got this” smile from me and a “I still kind of want to kill you” glare back from her, I head for a spare seat along the wall as she lingers by the stage until it’s her turn to take it. When the first singer finishes her last song and the emcee — who, go figure, literally is wearing a sweater vest — joins her by the mic, I can see the twitch in Sweetie Belle’s shoulders as she thinks about running away again.

And then she looks at me, and sets her jaw again, and waits to be announced.

“One more time for Miss Silk, everybody!” the emcee says, drawing another smattering of applause for the opening act as she departs. “And I don’t know if we’ve got any soldiers in the audience tonight, but I hope you’ve still got some soul for our next performer, a dynamite laser beam of a teenage dream: Sweetieeeeee Belle!”

Corny as they are, Sweetie Belle seems to take the emcee’s words to heart as she strides up to the mic, serenaded by polite applause and a few wolf whistles. Once the noise from the crowd dies down, she clears her throat and squares her shoulders, throwing one last glance my way as she does.

“Um… hi,” she says, her amplified voice vibrating in my chest. She looked great at the table and even in the dim back hallway in the middle of a panic attack, but under the spotlights ringing the stage and refracting in the sequins lining her dress, she looks like a twenty-megaton bombshell. “This is my first time performing solo, and my friend talked me into doing it, so… this is his fault.”

Polite laughter rumbles through the crowd for a moment, then the place goes silent again as Sweetie Belle nods to the emcee. He hits a key on a laptop just off stage, and from the speakers flanking the stage on either side, quivering violin strings lead Sweetie Belle into her first song.

“Birds flying high… you know how I feel…”

There’s a hitch in her voice on the first word, a little quiver in the second, but by the time she reaches the end of the lyric, her voice is full and clear with just a hint of smoky seduction trailing each syllable. She gets a couple whoops from the back of the crowd, and a smile flickers through her lips as she puts a bit more weight into the next line.

“Sun in the sky… you know how I feel…”

More whoops and whistles, and — for me at least — tingling goosebumps down my arms and back. She’s not just good and not just beautiful. She’s more than both. She’s hypnotizing. And by the way she gently shuts her eyes and steers the mic closer to her tilted head, she thinks and feels and knows it.

“Breeze driftin’ on by… you know how I feel…”

But when she opens her eyes and scans the blurry faces in the crowd, the only one her gaze lingers on is mine. It’s not just a guess, not just vain hope — she meets my eyes and flutters her lashes and croons the next line like she’s murmuring it to me across an empty room, little flourishes of strings garnishing each phrase. And looking up at her, completely alone in a packed house, I realize something.

“It’s a new dawn… it’s a new day…”

I don’t have a crush on Sweetie Belle. Crushes are what teenagers have on people they don’t talk to, what hopeless nerds feel when they wish they were popular without understanding why anyone else is. Crushes distract you in classes and keep you awake at night, but they don’t paralyze you even though you’re already sitting still, flow through you like electricity on an endless circuit getting stronger and brighter by the timeless second.

“It’s a new life… for me…”

I did have a crush on her. I had shallow fantasies, childish wishes, a wall-poster image of her in my mind that pales in comparison to a fraction of the real thing. She’s so much more than that. I’m so far beyond that.

“And I’m feeling…”

I’m in love with her. And maybe she knows it. And maybe right now she’s thinking…

“... good.”

She throws her head back in perfect time with a titanic burst of horns and drums, and the crowd cheers right along with it. They’re all enraptured by her, blown away by her sultry voice and her swaying hips and her fingers running over her head as she belts the line again.

“Aaa-aaaaah'm feelin’ good!”

But she could be up on stage in sweatpants with stringy fresh-from-the-shower hair, and she’d still be blowing the roof off this place. This is all of her, body and soul, bared for the whole world to see — the very best version of the very best person I’ve ever known, grinning and thriving and living exactly like she deserves.

And as the track softens again and the second verse begins, she throws one more half-lidded glance my way, and I know this is where I’m really meant to be: by her side, on her side, doing anything and everything I can to make her this happy every single day. It feels incredible. It feels real.

And I feel like I know exactly what I need to do next.

===

When Sweetie finally cedes the stage to a long-haired guy with an acoustic guitar, half of the people in attendance get to their feet to applaud, and half of those people — including the singer who went on before her — meet her on her way down to pat her shoulders and shake her hand and gush about how good she sounded. Even if I wanted to interrupt, there’s no way I could squeeze my way through the horde around her, so I hang back and let it clear enough for her wandering eyes to find mine.

She doesn’t say anything once she excuses herself and joins me, just motions with her head towards the exit. She still doesn’t talk once we’re outside again, and the fur-lined coat she collected from the rack at the door doesn’t do much to stop her from shivering. But it also doesn’t stop her from walking with a spring with her high-heeled step, or from swinging her arms in long arcs by her sides, or eventually from bouncing up and down as she lets out an exhilarated squeal.

“Oh my God, I can’t believe I did that!” she says, hugging herself either to keep the breeze out or to stop herself from cartwheeling. “That was insane, that was…”

Finally, she sees the look on my face, and her giddy expression morphs into a put-upon scowl. “Okay, yes, fine,” she grumbles. “You told me so. Don’t be annoying about it.”

“I’m gonna be so annoying about it,” I assure her.

She tries to roll her eyes and glare, but she can’t finish the motion before a goofy grin erupts past it. She looks really cute when she pretends to be mad, and beneath that, she looks as happy as I’ve ever seen her — and the fact that it has almost nothing to do with me somehow makes it even better.

“God, though, I haven’t panicked like that in years,” she says — still smiling, but a bit somber now as well. “I was absolutely gonna quit.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t,” I remind her. “That took guts.”

“You’re one to talk. I was seriously ready to strangle you.”

“Yeah, but… you didn’t. So it worked out.”

The look she gives me isn’t happy or fake-mad. It’s a mix of amusement and… something else. Something that bubbles in my chest and sends heartstopping heat tingling through my fingers and toes.

“Yeah, it did,” she says. “It worked out great.”

Sweetie Belle stops walking. We’re in front of a little pond down the hill from the coffee shop. Our dorm’s just around the corner.

“Button…” she murmurs.

I stop too, turn around to face her — and suddenly her body’s pressed into mine and her arms are wrapped around me, and she’s hugging me so hard I almost stumble over backwards from the contact, her flowery perfume filling my nose and wiping every thought from my head.

“Thank you,” she whispers, cheek pressed to mine and chin poking my shoulder as her lips move next to my ear. “I couldn’t have done this without you.”

I should hug her back. I want to hug her back — and so I do, gently and then firmly, one hand and then the other squeezed around the small of her back right where her coat swells out over her hips. She doesn’t stop me. She presses herself closer and squeezes me tighter.

“I’m glad you did it,” I tell her. “And I’m glad I could help.”

She pulls back a little, her hands sliding down my back and settling at my waist. Her face is inches away from mine. She’s smiling, sighing, staring into my eyes.

I could kiss her. I want to kiss her, more than I’d ever wanted anything — and so…

… what if she doesn’t want me to?

No. Shut up, brain. She does want me to. This is the perfect moment for it.

And if it’s not, I could perfectly ruin things with her forever. I could lean forward, and she could lean back, and her face could twist with awkward confusion as she asks what I’m doing and then explains that we’re just friends.

But we’re already hugging! Gazing into each other’s eyes! This is the most romantic that a moment could possibly fucking get!

And hugs can be platonic. Even super-long, gazing, romantic ones.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck you, br–

“You in there, Button?”

I blink back to reality — back to Sweetie Belle’s eyes and lips millimeters away from mine, both curling together into a smirk.

“Y-Yeah!” I stammer. “Yep. I’m… sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” she giggles.

“Nothing! Or… um…”

She laughs again. Her hands shift behind me, and the fingers on one of her hands scratch against my back just lightly enough to almost drop me to my knees. “You’re adorable,” she says. “And you have somewhere to be, don’t you?”

For the first time in hours, I remember that I actually do. It’s at least nine-thirty right now, probably closer to ten. If I want to have any shot at a KNZ bid, I gotta get going.

And leave Sweetie Belle behind. Give up on this moment for good, and just hope there might be another one someday. There might not be. There might never have been.

“Y-Yeah, I…” I mumble. “I guess I…”

Sweetie Belle smiles, and squeezes me one last time, and then gently pushes me forward as she takes a step back. “Go,” she says. “Go have fun with the boys.”

I nod, swallowing hard until I can talk past my bone-dry throat. “I’ll… text you later?”

She cocks an eyebrow. “You better,” she pointedly replies — then she smiles again. “Good night, Button.”

“N-Night,” I manage to say back. And then she brushes past me, leaving the barest hint of perfume in her wake, and the moment — whatever moment that really was — is gone.

I should have kissed her. I so obviously should have, and I missed my chance, and she barely stopped herself from laughing about it. But if I got one chance, I’ll get another. I have to. I’ll just text her later, tell her I’m an awkward idiot, and ask her if she wants to get lunch tomorrow or see a movie or do something that counts as a real, actual date. And then she’ll say yes, and everything will be fine.

Or not. Or I’m still misreading this, because I’m in love with her and desperate to believe that any friendly gesture from her is proof she loves me back, just like every clueless guy who gets made fun of online for being impossible to have normal, platonic friendships with.

Fuck this. My face is red, and my hands are cold, and I have half a mile to walk to the KNZ house so I can find out what “consequences” for being late to a rush event look like. Maybe I’ll figure out where I stand with Sweetie Belle on the way. Or, most likely, I won’t.

Either way, I better get moving — and so, hands stuffed in my pockets and teeth grinding hard enough for my head to ache, I do.

Chapter 10: Secrets in the Dark

View Online

The theme for the fourth KNZ rush event is “Forty for Forty,” and how it works is simple: the guys gather together in the house’s main room, someone puts on a sports movie, and everyone drinks whenever someone scores or does something cool or, really, does anything at all on screen. What that means in practice is that I didn’t really miss anything while I was at Sweetie Belle’s show, other than half an hour of a basketball flick I’ve never seen and — just ballparking it — about ten ounces worth of drinking by everyone who showed up on time.

I mean, I assume that’s what the “forty” means in this context: forty ounces of alcohol, in a heavy glass container with an oddly wide mouth. I don’t really get a chance to check for sure. I barely get three steps past the front door before Source meets me in the foyer, presses a full bottle of something called Mustang 22 malt liquor into my hand, and pantomimes — silently and intensely — that I better catch up to where he is in his own bottle quick, lest I face unspeakably vile punishment and/or make him very sad.

Obviously, I’ve never had malt liquor before, and it doesn’t take me long to learn that it’s like if someone took beer and, with scientific precision, made every single aspect of it very slightly worse. But also, you kind of stop tasting it after the fourth gulp or so, and it gets you from soberly nervous to pleasantly buzzed before anybody in the movie you’re half-watching so much as starts a character arc.

Or at least, I don’t think anyone’s started a character arc. That’s another thing I’m not sure about. Crescent and Woody waved me over as soon as they saw me, they wanted to know why I showed up late, and I spent long enough telling them that I completely lost track of what was happening on the projection screen in front of us. And now Crescent’s staring at me in a way that looks more like glaring, and it’s pretty distracting even though I know exactly why he’s doing it.

“Dude,” Crescent mutters.

“I know,” I mumble back.

“Dude,” he says again.

“I know,” I growl through my teeth. “Just drop it.”

“What are you… you just… bro.”

Thankfully, the room’s dark enough that he probably can’t see how red my face is. I knew already that I blew a perfect shot with Sweetie Belle earlier, but describing it in retrospect makes it sound less like a mistake and more like insane self-sabotage. Which, I guess, it kind of was.

Another perk of malt liquor, by the way: if you can’t convince your brain logically to shut up, drinking Mustang 22 is kind of like hitting your brain with a hammer until you make it shut up.

“Well, you’re gonna see her again, right?” Crescent asks, pausing and pulling from his forty-ounce bottle as a ball swishes through a hoop on screen and a brother yells at everyone to drink. “You can’t just leave it like that.”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I mean, I will.”

“You’re gonna see her again, or you’re gonna leave it like that?”

“I’m –”

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I sent Sweetie Belle a blurry photo of my drink in my hand earlier, in response to her asking how the event was going. She’s just sent me a photo of her own hand holding a water bottle and her laptop propped on her lap, with a caption below it:

Movie night for me too. Roommate’s out of town for the weekend. Feels weird watching all by myself…

I feel Crescent looking over my shoulder a second too late. He’s fully glaring at me now. I turn my phone all the way off and drop it hopelessly into my lap.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” he sighs at me.

“I know,” I moan up at the ceiling.

“I mean, God, Woody, you’ve seen her!” Crescent says next. “He’s a fucking idiot.”

Woody nods and laughs — but it’s a jerky motion, and a hollow sound. Suddenly, it hits me how quiet Woody’s been the past few minutes.

“You all right, man?” I ask him. He blinks, nods stiffly, then stares down at his drink. It’s still mostly full, and he taps his thumbs arrhythmically against the bottle’s cap as he talks.

“Yeah, I’m… yeah,” he mumbles. “Crazy story.”

That’s a “no,” then. Crescent glances back at me, silently asking whether I’m gonna do anything about it and also adding that he doesn’t have any ideas. I don’t either, really, but I can at least try. God knows I’ve been passive enough tonight already.

“C’mon,” I tell Woody, motioning with my hand as I stand up. Reluctantly, he gets up with me and trudges behind me towards the house’s kitchen.

On the way past one of the couches, Source sees me and shoots a quizzical look my way. I angle my head so Source can see me glance at Woody, but Woody can’t see me do it. In response, Source gives me a short nod and settles back into the couch. For a second, it almost looks like he smiled too, but the room’s dark and I’m drunk, and either way Woody’s looking even more antsy now that a few other brothers are looking over at him.

I was thinking about Source already, actually, and how he took me outside at my first rush event and tried to calm me down. It’s a bit cold to go out on the back porch tonight, but I figure the empty kitchen works just as well.

“What’s up?” I ask quietly, so my voice doesn’t carry back out into the main room. Woody bites his lip and shifts from foot to foot.

“Nothing’s up. I’m fine,” he insists. “So, uh… you and Sweetie Belle?”

“I mean, yeah, I hope. You know her?”

“I have a class with her. Sit behind her sometimes. She’s pretty.”

And then he goes quiet, and I stare at him, and his eyes dart down towards the floor.

“All right, seriously, talk to me,” I insist. “Is it… what, is it her?”

“No!” Woody quickly says, seeming to flinch at the sound of his own voice. “No, it’s… it’s not her. She seems cool. Is cool, but… just…”

“Just what?”

“I don’t know!” Woody digs his fingers through his hair and then links them behind his neck, eyes squeezed shut as more words tumble out of him. “It’s been weird here tonight, okay? Before you got here. It just feels like everyone’s on edge about something, and Al’s been…”

Woody opens his eyes as I narrow mine. “Al’s been what?”

“Weird,” Woody says. “I don’t even know what to call it. I can’t tell if he’s mad or annoyed or just drunk, and I tried to ask him but he just blew me off, and…” He takes a couple steadying breaths, then says something else. “Button, be careful with him. I think he’s been waiting for you to show up. Because of last night, what you…”

Because of what I did, is what he was about to say before he clammed up — like he hasn’t been pumping me up about exactly that all day. “So what?” I say. “I beat him at poker. It’s not a big deal.”

“It is a big deal!” Woody hisses. “He’s a senior, he knows people. We need most of the frat to vote for us to get a bid, and if Al’s pissed at you, he’ll… I don’t know, like…”

An icy chill spreads through my chest — and then suddenly, a tiny spark of heat blossoms beneath it, fueled by a single word Woody just said. “What do you mean, we?” I ask him. “He’s pissed at me, not you.”

“Yeah, but I’m friends with you, and… I-I want you to get a bid. I do. But…”

The spark’s brighter now, pulsing between my ribs, rising up from under my collar and tightening the muscles in my warming face. I don’t know for sure what Woody was about to say or what his wide-eyed helpless look really means, but I’m pretty sure I know what he’s thinking: yesterday you were my awesome friend, but today you might be a liability. And he can hem and haw and act as clueless as he wants, but the guilty twitch of his eyes down towards his shoes is worth a thousand words he won’t say out loud.

“I mean, I want us both to get bids,” he adds weakly. “Together. I just… I don’t know.”

I could be the bigger person here — the better friend. But I’m four inches shorter than I’d like to be, and apparently all the work I’ve been putting into this friendship hasn’t been good for much so far.

“No,” I say. “You don’t know. Hope you figure it out.”

“Button, I –”

I don’t hear him. I’m already gone — face hot, heart pounding, bottle to my lips as I leave the kitchen and Woody behind. I feel like a dick. Probably because I’m being one.

But I’ve also tried to be nice and cool and friendly until now, and according to my nice cool friend Woody, it might have fucked things up for both of us. Or no, sorry — for him. Him and his stupid brother’s stupid fucking frat, and the scuff marks he got on his ass while he was riding my coattails through all of rush. While he was making me think I’d actually done something good for once, when really he just meant it was good for him.

Or, fuck, did he? Am I reading any of this right? Or am I just drunk, and still thinking about how clueless I was with Sweetie Belle earlier, and worrying even harder than I already was about whether that poker hand was gonna bite me in the ass? Everything’s so vague and blurry and fake-feeling right now. I don’t know what anyone wants from me — how any of this actually works.

And underneath all of it, the words I just read keep echoing in my mind: movie night for me too… roommate’s out of town… watching all by myself. Crescent seemed to know exactly what that means — exactly what I blew my shot at doing tonight. I won’t get that chance again. I couldn’t do anything with it even if I did. I’ve never even kissed a girl before, and Sweetie Belle knows that, and she smiled at me before she left like she was thinking…

One gulp of malt liquor turns into two, then into however many more it takes to make my throat hurt and my chest numb. They’re all as sour and gritty and unpleasant as the last however-many, but it pushes the heat in my core out into my trembling arms and fingers, and then sends it surging through my legs as they start moving faster.

Al’s been waiting for me, huh? Maybe I’ll go find him. Figure out where I really stand, and exactly how much of my shadow Woody’s standing in. And it doesn’t take me long to spot him, because he’s pretty fucking hard to miss: sprawled on a couch in the back of the main room, his forty almost empty, eyes dully pointed towards the flickering screen until they suddenly light up as they land on me.

“What’s up, Button?” Al says as I approach, lifting his bottle in a half-toast. Woody was right about one thing, at least — Al’s voice is tight and controlled and uncharacteristically quiet. It is weird. Or maybe it’s nothing, and Woody’s full of it, and no one’s figured out that I am too.

“What’s up, Al?” I say, perching on a stool by the couch arm Al’s leaning on. On the far side of the couch, I see Case glance over at us, stiffening just a bit in his seat. Al doesn’t notice, or acts as if he doesn’t. He’s watching me — waiting for me to say something. The heat in my chest is happy to oblige.

“Thanks for the pocket change,” I tell him. He blinks, smirks, and lifts his forty again.

“Hey, you earned it,” he says through a mouthful of Mustang. Now he shoots Case a glance. “Fair’s fair, right?”

“Al…” Case mutters — a warning that Al shrugs off with another smirk. No one else says anything, but I can feel a few brothers watching us — watching me — from the corners of their eyes.

“Easy, prez, it’s chill,” he says, turning back to me and clinking his bottle against mine. “You got a pair on ya, I’ll give you that.”

I shrug off Al’s remark and smirk too. See, Woody? See where you get by just talking to people and doing things? Maybe you should try it sometime — and while you’re trying it, worry less about how I’m apparently fucking it up for you.

I toast my small victory with a pull from my forty, and while my mouth’s full, Al speaks up again. “Heard you were busy tonight. She hot enough to skip rush for?”

Another small victory: he missed Crescent ragging on me earlier about Sweetie Belle. “Worth being a little late for,” I reply once I swallow. “She’s got a great voice too.”

Al grins. Maybe a better word for it is leers. “You fuck her? Make her sing for you?”

I don’t want to brag about something I didn’t do. I also don’t really want to correct him. So instead of doing either, I just shrug and drink again — and I’m not fast enough with the bottle to hide the heat flushing my face. Al’s grin gets bigger.

“Yeeeeah, you did, don’t be a pussy about it,” he says. “You’re a fuckin’ dog, aren’t you?”

I don’t even know what that means. Coming from Al, it sounds like the kind of compliment I shouldn’t want to get. “Just a girl from my dorm,” I mutter. “Knew her in high school, uh… Sweetie Belle.”

I brace myself for Al to keep talking at me, but he doesn’t. In fact, he’s dead quiet, squinting at me and leaning forward a bit like he’s about to stand up and… I don’t know what. Whatever it is or was, it’s gone when I turn and look at him properly.

“What, you know her?” I ask.

Al settles back into the couch, grinning just as wide as before. “You fuckin’ dog,” he says again. Then he shakes his head again and laughs, staring into the mouth of his forty and plunking his thumb against its bulbous glass rim. “Do I know her… half the fuckin’ campus knows her, bro.”

Now it’s my turn to squint. “What do you mean?”

“Did you not go out at all last semester? She was everywhere, dude, just…”

He curls the fingers on his free hand into a circle and moves it back and forth in front of his mouth, poking his cheek out with his tongue with every inward movement. It takes me a moment to realize what he’s pantomiming, and another moment for ice — colder than before, spiky and sweaty and sickening — to fill me from head to curling toes.

“Guys were linin’ up for it, like, straight out of a porno. She was wild, boy. You missed out.”

“I…” I start saying. I don’t finish. I don’t get a chance to.

“And you went to high school with her?” He’s leaning forward again, elbows on knees, teeth flashing in the light from the projection screen. “Was she like that back then too? She sneak into the boys’ locker room, take it from whoever wherever?”

“N-No,” I stammer. “She… no.”

“Aw, bro,” Al says softly. “You missed out then too. But hey, don’t trip about it.” He clinks his bottle against mine again. The vibration through the glass almost knocks me off my stool. “She’s a sloot with two o’s. We’re only human. And now you got something in common with, like… half the chapter? Probably most of Sig Ep too. And –”

I stand up so I don’t fall over, and start walking so I don’t break into a sprint, mumbling something about the bathroom on my way out of the room. As I pass him, Case moves to stand up too, glaring daggers at something other than me. I don’t think about it. I don’t want to think about it — about anything at all.

The bathroom door slams shut behind me, and the sink wobbles a bit as I grip it with both hands and stare down into it, struggling to breathe slowly through my nose and even slower out of my mouth. Al’s full of shit. He has to be. It’d be exactly like him to make up something like this, or exaggerate it at least. No girl actually does that kind of stuff in real life — especially not girls who even pretend to be interested in me. Not the girl I used to play video games with, talked about music and family stuff with, saw come to life on stage and walked home and hugged and…

And didn’t kiss. Didn’t do anything with. Even though she wanted me to. Even though we’ve only been talking for a few days after years of her totally ignoring me for… what? Other guys? Other types of games?

How well do I actually know Sweetie Belle? Was anything that happened this week real, or was it just a game she plays with everyone she might want something out of? Something I don’t know anything about, that I’d never have a chance of doing with anyone like her — unless that wasn’t what she actually wanted. Unless I’m being played like a poker hand, strung along by my stupid little feelings, nothing more to her than a toy that missed its chance at being entertaining.

Maybe that’s what her smile meant. Maybe if I’d gone with her, that smile would’ve turned into a giggle, and then laughter, and then story after story of the time this useless fucking virgin–

Another door slams somewhere outside the bathroom — or actually, outside the house. The sound of footsteps clattering against wood drifts in through the cracked-open bathroom window. I’m near the back of the house, close enough to hear everything that happens on the back porch.

“What’s your fuckin’ problem?” is what I hear first. It’s Al, grunting in a lazy, standoffish tone.

“You are my fucking problem, Al!” another voice replies. I think it’s Case. I guess I know who he was glaring at now. “You’re the whole frat’s problem right now!”

“Jesus, Case, tell me how you really feel,” Al grumbles. The dull edge in his voice is a bit sharper now — like an old knife someone just picked up to start sharpening.

“I have told you, Al. Every fucking day, I’ve…” Case pauses, sighing in a way that sounds more like growling, and lowers his voice. “You can’t keep doing this. You have got to cut this shit out.”

I can’t see Al from the window, but I can hear his eyeroll even from here. “Oh my God, you’re fuckin’ –”

“I’m not fucking around, Al! We’re one bad rush class, half of one complaint away from losing our charter. Do you understand that? Do you understand what that means?”

“You cannot be this desperate, man,” Al mutters. “We can’t –”

“Hey! Hey, Al? We are this fucking desperate. And even if we weren’t, you making it your mission in life to be a prick to the rushes wouldn’t be fucking helping!”

“What rushes, Case?” Al snaps. “What did you even get us? The fuckin’ high school math club? We won’t even be a chapter after this, we’ll be a fuckin’ daycare!” Case starts to say something, and Al forcefully cuts him off. “No, don’t even start. Don’t start with that ‘times have changed’ horseshit again, because everybody’s done with it, and it’s not even fucking true. The Kaps are getting good rushes, the D-Chis, the fucking Pikes, and you want me to act like we’re gonna keep up with a bunch of faggot little –”

“Al!”

That wasn’t just a shout from Case — that was a threat, a “say exactly one more word and see what fucking happens” promise. I don’t know if it has the right effect on Alkaline, but it makes me cringe just hearing it from around the corner.

“You are on thin fucking ice right now,” Case seethes. “I don’t care if you’re a senior, I don’t care what Hawthorn or every legacy on the fucking planet would do. You do not make decisions for the frat. And you will not fuck the frat over because of your ego or what you think the rest of us are supposed to be like.”

There’s a pause, and then a gravelly sound that I only recognize as laughter when Al’s voice follows it. “This is a fuckin’ joke, Case. I know you gotta put on this whole show ‘cause you’re the president, but everybody knows it’s a joke.”

“You mean you –”

“I mean everybody, Case. The rest of ‘em might be humoring you, humoring him, but your little pet project? It’s dead on fuckin’ arrival. And now you wanna be pissed at me because I’m the only one pretending we all don’t see it.”

I hear footsteps on wood outside, and ceramic clinking inside. The sink is shaking. My hands are too.

“You know what the fucked-up part is?” Al says. “You know it’s not working. You know he’s not cut out for this, and he’s never going to be. And if you wanna keep stringin’ him along, letting him think he’s got a chance in fuckin’ hell, go for it. You’re the president. You can do whatever you want. But don’t bullshit me about it. And don’t act all offended when nobody fucking buys it.”

More footsteps outside, then a door opens and slams closed just hard enough to make the sink shake again. My knuckles hurt from gripping it. When I look up at the mirror, my face is too blurry to make out.

The movie’s still going when I leave the bathroom, so no one turns around as I scurry behind them all and head for the house’s front door. I almost make it too, but the sound of the door swinging open catches someone’s attention.

“Hey, where’re you –”

The door slamming shut cuts them off, and the cold air outside cuts through me like a knife. I forgot my jacket. I’m not going back for it. I just need to keep walking — keep running away from everything and everyone until I find a place dark enough to –

“Button, where you goin’?”

Someone opened the frat house’s door behind me. It sounds like Source. I walk faster — hear him jog down the front steps and across the lawn.

“Hey, Button, you hear me? What’s –”

“Just STOP!”

I’ve stopped in place, shoulders locked out, throat raw from what was supposed to be a shout and turned into a scream. I squeeze my eyes shut, wipe them with my hand, tell myself to keep going and leave him behind and stop being such a useless, childish loser about everything — and none of it works. None of it has ever fucking worked.

“Just stop… lying to me,” I say, shaking head to toe, gritting my teeth so my voice doesn’t tremble too. “Okay?”

I force my eyes open and my feet to turn me around. Source’s staring at me, brow creased and mouth open. “What are you talking about?” he says. He looks confused, and sounds almost hurt. More bullshit. Of course.

“It’s a joke, all right?” I say, blinking and talking fast so I don’t have a chance to start crying. “And it’s fine! I get it, like… it’s not new to me. I know who I am, and who you guys are, and I should’ve known what this all was days ago, but I just…”

“Just what?” Source still sounds baffled, and takes a couple steps closer as he talks. “Button, seriously, what… what happened?”

“Nothing!” I lie — just like I’ve been lying this whole week, pretending I’m someone I’ve never had a chance in fucking hell of being. “It’s fine. I get it. I’m not cut out for this. And I acted like I was, and it was all a joke, and I’m done. I’m going home. I’ll…”

Source’s face has changed — gotten tighter and darker. “What did he say?” he growls, in a tone I’ve never heard from him before.

“What did who…” I try to reply. “N-No one said –”

“Button, what did he say to you?”

I clench my teeth and stare at the ground. Source blows out an angry sigh.

“Stay here,” he orders me, before turning around and heading back into the house. A minute later, he reemerges in a jacket I saw him wearing at the pizza place a couple nights ago, with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder and a second coat tossed over the other — my coat, which he stuffs into my arms once he’s in front of me again.

“Put that on,” he says. “Come with me.”

I throw a limp gesture up at the house. “The rush –”

“Fuck rush, come with me.”

Source strides past me without waiting for my answer, and before I really realize it, my feet are moving and I’m trotting to catch up to him, shrugging my coat on along the way. I don’t know where he’s taking me or why he’s taking me there, or whether this’ll end up being just another punchline in the giant practical joke I’ve been the butt of this week.

But I guess one way or another, I don’t have any other place to go. So I guess for now, I’ll go with him.

Chapter 11: My Place Up High

View Online

Campus is quiet at this time of night — not quite silent and certainly not empty, but quiet in a way that makes it feel unreal. Without hundreds of bodies packed into them, the sidewalks between lecture halls feel unnaturally wide, and the air feels colder and heavier every time I see a group of people — or usually just one person — muscling their way through it. Nobody’s really moving anywhere right now. They’re all either already where they want to be, or going home to somewhere they’re wanted.

And then, drifting between them like a ghost without a house to haunt, there’s me. And Source, I guess, though he has been completely silent since we left the rush party a good fifteen minutes ago. I still don’t know where we’re going — or rather, where he’s leading me, and I’m being led for lack of anything better to do. God knows I’m not going back to the KNZ house tonight, though, and the farther we get away from my dorm, the less I feel like making the hike back there either.

So instead, I just keep trudging along behind him, staring at the sidewalk under my feet and shivering even with my coat on. Maybe once I’m done with whatever this is about to be, I can go hide from the world someplace a bit sunnier than this. Be a hermit on a tropical island or something.

“Here.”

It’s the first word I’ve heard from Source since we left the house. He’s pointing up at a squarish building in front of us about three stories high, with wide double doors at the front and covered walkways leading around to auxiliary wings on either side. While I’m getting my bearings, Source veers towards the wing on the left, and more specifically towards a big tree with branches hanging overtop of the walkway’s metal awning thing.

“What is this place?” I ask him, jogging to catch up again.

“Theater,” Source replies without stopping. “For plays and improv shows and shit.”

A vague memory from a campus tour I took last year floats to the front of my mind. I’ve seen this place before, but I haven’t been inside it, and it looks locked up tight right now.

“Are we…” I start to ask — and then Source reaches the tree, braces one foot inside a hollow in its trunk, and heaves himself up onto one of the lower branches, so the question I end up blurting out is, “What are you doing?”

He pauses and glances my way, braced in a half-crouch with both feet on the lower branch and his back braced against another one. “Figuratively or literally?” he blithely replies.

“I… either!” I sputter. “Both!”

Source chuckles and starts moving again, crawling hand over hand up and out onto the tree branch with his duffel bag balanced on his back. “You act like you’ve never climbed a tree before,” he says as he goes.

“I… haven’t?”

He stops again so he can squint down at me. “Really?”

“I grew up in the suburbs, we didn’t have trees!”

“Okay, well… now you’re gonna try it. Just do what I did.”

“And go where?” I ask, right before he shows me. With a grunt, Source swings himself off the branch and onto the roof of the sidewalk canopy. The metal vibrates from the impact but holds his weight just fine, and once he straightens up, he gestures towards the tree with a “we haven’t got all night” look on his face. If this is part of a joke being played on me, I don’t think I get it anymore.

“Come on, man, it’s easy,” he calls down to me. “You’ve done harder shit this week already.”

“Yeah, and I didn’t break my neck doing it,” I mutter. But Source is waiting for me and I still don’t really feel like leaving, so I do my best to follow the path he took up onto and across the tree branch, except with more shimmying on my belly than crawling. Also, he made sticking the landing on the canopy look way easier than it actually is.

“You good?” he asks over the fading echo of my knee hitting really hard metal.

“Figuratively or literally?” I reply through my teeth.

He laughs, then sticks out a hand to help me up. Once we’re both vertical, he nods up towards some scaffolding along the side of the theater’s main building that wasn’t visible from the ground.

“Onwards and upwards, then,” he says. I bite back a groan and keep following him.

Thankfully, the rest of the climb is a lot easier than the first part, and pretty soon we’re on top of what I guess is the roof of the theater proper. From this high up, I can see most of the campus lit up like a soundboard — little squares of yellow light from school buildings, mixed with reds and blues and every other shade from fairy lights inside dorms and, way in the distance, a few off-campus houses. I still don’t know why we’re really up here, but the view’s a pretty good reason by itself.

“Over here,” Source says, skirting around a raised partition bulging out of the roof. On the far side of it, there’s a bit more scaffolding coming up to about waist height and built over a tarp covering a pile of two-by-fours. Once he reaches the scaffolding, Source swings his bag around in front of him and unzips it, extracting a plastic bottle from inside that he tosses my way. I catch it, barely, with both hands and with my chest as a backstop. I just climbed my first tree. My arms are still a bit shaky.

“What’s this?” I ask Source.

“Soda bottle,” he bluntly replies.

“What’s in it?”

He glances towards me, brow glibly raised. “Soda.”

Source pulls a second bottle out of the bag, unscrews the cap, and takes a drink from it. Shrugging, I screw the cap off my own bottle, take a pull, and just about spew it all over the scaffolding.

“Oh, and some rum,” Source adds. “It might mostly be rum, actually.”

“No shit,” I cough, swallowing over and over again until I can breathe again past the liquor’s numbing, cinnamon-y burn. Source just grins again, then tosses the bag up onto the scaffolding and then hops up himself, motioning for me to grab a seat next to him.

He must have gotten something else from the bag while I was busy killing all my taste buds, because the moment I get settled up on the scaffolding, he tosses it into my lap. It’s a black-and-white marble notebook, time-worn but otherwise unmarked on the outside.

“And what’s this?” I ask again.

“You ask a lot of obvious questions, you know that?”

Source takes a swig of mostly-rum and twitches his free hand’s fingers as he does, telling me wordlessly to open the notebook and start reading. So, after another bracing shot of almost-entirely-rum, I flip the cover and the first few pages back. Chicken-scratch handwriting fills just about every inch of paper, some words scribbled out and the rest organized into cramped rhyming lines.

“Sunlight, blacklight, dead of night,” I read, squinting and angling the paper so I can make out the words in what little ambient light bleeds up from the campus below. “Echoes of an endless fright… frozen, floating in mid-flight… living’s only half the… does that say ‘flight’ again?”

“Fight,” Source corrects me. “‘Living’s only half the fight.’ I don’t know what it means either.”

I look up at him, then back at the notebook — and then it all clicks together. “Wait, you… you wrote this?”

“Wrote everything in there,” he says, shrugging up at the stars. “Think that one was… ninth grade? Yeah, there was an eclipse that summer. I was inspired.”

I look down at the notebook again. “It’s, um… y’know, it’s…”

“It’s…” Source drags the word out as he glances over at me. “Fucking terrible?”

“No!” I tell him, wilting as he smiles. “It’s fine! Good. Good poem.”

“How are you that good at poker and this bad at lying?”

I grit my teeth. He’s right — about me and the poem. “It’s not great, no,” I mumble.

“I believe the words I used were ‘fucking’ and ‘terrible.’” He pauses to chuckle and drink. “But I wrote it. With my own fifteen-year-old edgy little hand.” He levels his eyes on me, upgrading from glancing to pointedly staring. “Not very fratty of me, is it?”

Oh, okay. That’s what he’s doing — what the point of all this is. “You were fifteen,” I say. “No one’s fratty when they’re fifteen. But you changed, and I…”

“You didn’t?”

I shake my head. “I’m the same little kid I’ve always been. Just… clueless.”

Source leans forward, blowing a soft sigh out of his nose as he gestures at the notebook. “Do me a favor,” he says. “Flip to the last page real quick.”

I do as he told me, and find a longer poem waiting for me — still definitely Source’s handwriting, but a bit neater with fewer words scratched out. “You want me to read this one too?”

“I mean, you can if you want. But when you get a chance, check the top of the page there.”

I follow his finger towards a set of numbers scribbled into the top left corner. It’s a date — from this year, less than a month ago. “Oh, and I actually like that one, so be nice about it if it sucks too,” Source says when I look up again.

“You’re still writing?” I ask, and I’m bad enough at lying that I don’t bother trying to hide my surprise.

“Sure am,” he brightly replies after another drink. “Bit less edgy now, like… twenty percent less edgy, but yeah. Still doin’ it. And talk about ‘changing,’ you wanna know something else? I almost quit when I got to school here. Because I was never gonna get a job doing this, right? Had to do something practical. Go into engineering like my dad did.” He throws me another wry glance. “‘Cause, y’know, Source Code. That’s my full name. Never understood why people do that, name their kids after what they think they’re gonna grow up to be. I mean, I’m sure you get it. Your dad a gamer?”

“Uh… my mom, actually.”

Source twitches his eyebrows once but doesn’t make anything more of it. “That what you wanna do, though? Video games, computers, all that?”

“I…”

I don’t know. That’s what I thought I wanted to do — but I never really, truly thought about it. I just signed up for Computer Science courses and slogged my way through them, and not once has coding or circuit boards or anything mechanical ever made me think “I could do this forever.” Not like…

“Music,” I mumble — like I’m confessing to a priest, and not drunk on a rooftop with somebody I think is my friend. “I’ve been, uh… messing around with it. It’s…”

“Completing,” Source finishes for me. “Like patching a hole you didn’t realize you had in you. Because you thought you were the only one who wasn’t already a whole person. Who didn't know exactly who they were and weren't.”

Yeah. It’s exactly like that. I guess he really is a poet. When I don’t say anything in response, he looks at me like a librarian reminding me to pay a late fee.

“Am I being too subtle?” he intones.

“No,” I mutter, snapping the notebook closed and handing it back to Source. “I get it. But it doesn’t matter. I need everybody in the frat to like me if I want a bid, and they’re all just… faking it. Humoring me.”

“You think I’m humoring you right now?”

“Well, not you, but –”

“You think Sloop’s just pretending to be a giant O&O nerd? The whole frat lost their shit over you last night as a bit?”

“I… I don’t know,” I mumble. “I heard Al and Case talking about… I guess I thought about me. Something about a pet project.”

Source’s mouth drops open for a moment, then he pulls his lips tight and leans back on his hands, “soda” bottle trapped beneath the fingers closer to me. “Well, I can tell you one thing for sure,” he says through a sigh. “They weren’t talking about you.”

“Who were they talking about?” I ask — and in response, Source just lolls his head towards me, purses his lips, and points straight up at his own chin. “Wait, you? How are you a pet project?”

Source takes a drink before answering. “Okay, so brief KNZ history lesson,” he begins. “Two years ago, Al’s a sophomore, Hawthorn is President, and the chapter as a whole goes the hardest of anyone on campus. So, end of the spring semester, they decide they’re gonna throw the mother of all ragers, and they do, and it’s a clusterfuck. There’s fights, the cops get called, undergrads get arrested, two people end up in the hospital. Admin says, ‘That’s it, you guys have gone too far, you’re on probation for a year, and if you fuck up again you’re gone for good.’”

He spreads his arms for emphasis. “Enter me, eighteen-year-old edgy poet who’s only gotten drunk once before at his cousin’s wedding. I turn out for fall rush because a bunch of my hallmates are going out too, they end up… I don’t even know where, but I end up at some ratty off-campus house KNZ has to use during probation. I meet Case… or corner him, really. Talk his ears off about a book we’d both read, I think? Any event, we trade numbers, he pretty much adopts me for the rest of rush, and it isn’t until the end of the semester, about a year ago from now, that I find out why.”

Source stares up at the stars, lost in memory. “He tells me that KNZ isn’t coming back from probation, or at least the old KNZ isn’t. The way he sees it, the chapter can either take control of itself or have control taken away from it, and if they’re gonna do the first one, it’s gotta start with their new bids. People like me, who want to party but want to keep their shit together while they’re doing it, and who’ve got more going for them than just partying. And he was just the rush chair at that point, just a sophomore, but he was already gunning for president, and he thought I had the chops to be the next one after him.”

Source shakes his head, chuckling. “Or hell, I don’t know, maybe he just wanted me on his side come election time. Fuckin’ PoliSci majors.”

“So… he won, I guess?” I say. “The election?”

“He survived the election,” Source replies. “And from minute one the upperclassmen have been on his ass, ‘cause they wanna make up for the year they lost on probation by going even harder this year. And… okay, this might sound crazy to you, but trust me, we haven’t. And I’ll give you three guesses who’s been the most pissed about that.”

That’d be two more guesses than I need, and Source knows it. “Alkaline,” I answer.

“Hey, got it in one,” Source soberly confirms — which is kind of impressive, with how much rum and/or soda he’s had since he started telling this story. “And on the one hand, I kinda get it. He came in when the frat was one thing, he lost a year of what he thought he was supposed to get out of that thing, and now Case is trying to make it something entirely different. It’s not entirely fair. On the other hand…”

Source trails off, and I learn from the tipsy lilt in my voice — and what words I actually say — that I’m not as impressive as Source by a long shot. “He’s a dick.”

Source laughs in agreement, but his tone gets heavier with each word that follows. “He is such a fucking dick about it. I mean, we straight-up lost rushes last semester because he all but chased them off with a stick. He didn’t even run for president the whole time he’s been here, but he’s loud and obnoxious and… God, much as Case wants to think otherwise, he’s got some people on his side. Not enough to really change anything, but enough to fuck things up if he wants to.”

“Does he want to?”

Source gives me a cock-eyed glance. “You tell me, Mr. Wizard.”

Fuck me. Maybe Woody was right. Maybe I am a liability. “Look, I…” I try to say. “I-I’m sorry, I just –”

“You just showed him his whole ass in front of the whole chapter, and it fuckin’ ruled, and he fuckin’ deserved it,” Source says. “So first things first, you can stop apologizing, because that was awesome and you know it.”

I waste a few seconds wordlessly working my jaw up and down, caught perfectly between wanting to argue with Source and really wanting to believe him. “Okay, yeah, but now Al’s pissed at me, right?” I eventually say. “And you said some people are on his side. If he tells them I shouldn’t get a bid, that Woody shouldn’t…”

Source’s eyes narrow. “What’s Woody got to do with it?”

Nothing, or maybe everything. I don’t know. I don’t think I’d know even if I was sober right now. “He just… he thinks Al might take it out on both of us. Or maybe he thinks that, or maybe he just really wants me to get a bid, and I just… I was a dick to him earlier. I’ve been… I don’t know. I don’t know how any of this works.”

Instead of filling the silence right away after I finish Source, Source just stares at me for a few seconds — long enough that I start to wonder whether I said something wrong. “God, you’re me,” he finally murmurs. “Holy shit.”

“I’m… what?”

Just like he’s been doing all night, Source answers my question with a story. “Okay, remember how I said I ‘cornered’ Case when I went out for rush last year? I left out the part where I spent, like, a full twenty minutes beforehand juicing myself up to even talk to him at all. ‘Cause he was the super-chill frat guy, right? And I was some dork who wrote poetry and didn’t know what parties really even were, let alone what I was supposed to do at ‘em. What being social was supposed to look or feel like.”

I’ve been taking Source at his word all night up to now, but that’s a step too far. Maybe he’s got layers to him, but there’s no way the friendly, confident, effortlessly cool guy on the other side of this scaffolding was ever really like me. Not in that way. And I don’t say that out loud, but Source seems to get the message from whatever he sees on my face.

“Man, I meant what I told you your first night out,” he says, staring at me and waiting until I stare back before he continues. “Nobody knows who they are coming into college. This is where you’re supposed to start figuring that out, and whatever you did or didn’t do when you were a kid, whoever you thought you were before now… it only matters if you decide it does. And I decided I wanted to try something different, just like you did. Just like you’re doing.”

“But I only did it because –”

“You did it,” Source interrupts. “I’m dead fucking serious, that’s all that matters. I rushed last year because my hallmates wanted to go out and I didn’t have anything better to do. You know Mandarin? He rushed second semester of his freshman year because his dad paid him to. Literally told him, ‘Go make some friends, or I’m cutting your tuition off.’ And he did, and look at him now! Look at you, man!”

I don’t want to look at me. I know who I am — a nerd, and a fuckup, and an unlikeable, unlovable loser. Or at least, that’s the echo of someone’s voice bouncing around in my brain right now — not Source’s, not Sweetie Belle’s, not really even mine. I never really thought about who it belonged to before. I just always listened to it anyway.

My eyes are burning. I look away and try to rub them dry. When Source speaks again, his voice is softer, and totally sincere.

“This isn’t a fluke, Button,” he tells me. “And it’s not a joke, or a prank, or some other fucked-up fake thing. You’re a cool guy. You’re funny, you’re interesting, you’re fun at parties, and you look out for your friends. If you wanted to, you could probably be chapter president in a couple years. After me, obviously. I’ve got dibs after Case.”

“But Al…” I can’t stop myself from saying.

“Al can fuck himself,” Source scoffs — but he doesn’t answer the question I tried to leave unspoken, so I go ahead and spell it out.

“Is he gonna fuck me and Woody?” I ask. “Did I fuck us over with the poker game?”

Source sighs, and for the first time tonight, he looks less than sure about what he says to me. “I mean, Woody’s a legacy, so he’s probably in whether he wants to be or not. And as far as I’ve heard, last night helped you a lot more than it hurt you. If you don’t get a bid, it won’t be your fault.”

That’s still not really an answer — which I guess is really all the answer I need. “I guess that’s worth something,” I mumble into my bottle.

“It’s worth a lot, Button,” Source insists. “The frat’s in a fucked-up place right now, and the only reason you’re in the middle of all the fucked-up-edness is because you’d be a lock for a bid if we had our shit together. And honestly, I talked a lotta shit about Al, but he’s not a total psychopath. He’ll go with the crowd more likely than not. Just… I don’t know, butter him up a little bit tomorrow. Bring him a beer or two, act like he’s hot shit in front of your date. He’ll eat it up, and you’ll be fine.”

After a moment, Source realizes I’m staring at him out of confusion and not reverence. “Oh shit, uh… spoiler alert for tomorrow night,” he adds. “House party. Bring a date. That’s the theme, if there is one. Blame the upperclassmen, it was their idea.”

Great. Bring a date. Just select a girl from the list of exactly one who I’m on speaking terms with here, who I completely blew my shot with tonight, and who apparently might start taking shots from any guy within arm’s reach as soon as she leaves our dorm.

But that’s according to Alkaline, who’s a dick not just to me but seemingly to his entire frat. Why wouldn’t he just make something like that up just to upset me? Actually, knowing him, why would he have been doing anything else? I know Sweetie Belle way better than Al does, and I know she’s not like that no matter what he, or the sour little voice in my head, or anybody else outside my head thinks.

And maybe I don’t completely know myself yet, but according to Source, the me he’s met isn’t all that bad. That’s definitely worth something. And I guess there’s no way to find out exactly what it’s worth but to keep moving forward with it.

“Might focus on the first buttering-up option,” I tell Source. “Save my date the trouble.”

“Fair enough,” Source answers. “Sounds like things went well earlier, though?”

They could’ve gone better — but they could’ve gone a lot worse too. All of this could be a lot worse, and I’d feel a lot better if I stopped worrying so much about what could be happening and focused on what actually is.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” I say. “When I’m sober.”

“At graduation, then?”

I clunk my bottle against his, matching his grin with my own. “I’ll drink to that,” I say — and as we both do just that, the voice in my head doesn’t say a word.

===

I don’t know exactly how long we stay up on the theater’s roof for, just that our bottles are empty and the moon is hanging straight over our heads by the time we call it a night. Rather than climbing back onto the oak tree we used to get up, Source just slips off the sidewalk canopy to hang by his fingers and drops a couple feet down to the ground, and I do the same thing after him without eating even a little shit. My arms are still shaking afterwards, though. I really, seriously need to start going to the gym.

“You know your way back from here?” Source asks once we get some distance from the theater.

“More or less,” I tell him. “I’ll try not to puke on any buildings this time.”

“Is that a habit of yours?”

“I hope not.”

Source laughs and shakes his head. “Boy, I don’t miss being a rush,” he mutters, before chucking me on the shoulder. “See you tomorrow, Mr. Wizard.”

Source treks off back in the direction we came from earlier. I watch him go, and only realize once he’s completely out of view that when I said I “more or less” knew my way back to my dorm, only one of those words was accurate.

“Where the hell am I?” I mutter as I pull out my phone, because I figure there has to be a campus map somewhere online that even my sloshed brain can interpret. But instead of lighting up when I lift it in front of my face, my phone screen stays dark.

Oh yeah. I turned it off earlier, when I was trying to avoid thinking about how badly I fumbled my chance with Sweetie Belle. I hold the button on my phone’s side until the manufacturer logo glows on the screen, suddenly anxious for it to boot up. I wonder if she texted me again. Maybe she’s still awake. Maybe she’ll find drunk me charming — or tolerable, at least. I can work with tolerable, probably.

A half-second after my phone’s lock screen appears, it buzzes with a text message notification — not from Sweetie Belle, but from Woody. I starting reading the preview:

Hey man, I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to make you think

And that’s all I get a chance to see before another notification bumps it down the screen. My heart leaps. This one is from Sweetie Belle:

Are you still awake?

Yes, Sweetie Belle, I sure am. How quickly can I sober up? Is there a coffee place –

Another notification — Sweetie Belle again:

Please call me

Then another one — a missed call from her. Two missed calls. Three. My heart leaps again, and doesn’t stick the landing. This doesn’t feel like she wants to pick up where we left off earlier. Something’s wrong.

More notifications, from the rush chat — a flood of them, popping up so fast I can’t read anything but the first few letters of each message. They sound excited about something. About what? What the hell did I miss?

I swipe up and unlock my phone, but before I can open the rush chat, one last text message comes in, from Crescent:

yo where are you? the rush chats blowing up over your girl. you good?

My coat doesn’t do a thing to keep out the chill that rolls through me. I open Crescent’s message and type out a reply with trembling thumbs:

What are you talking about?

Right away, an icon pops up to show that Crescent is typing something, then it vanishes, then it pops up again. Seconds tick by, each one longer and more nauseating than the last, and finally:

shit

okay so

dont shoot the messenger

Below the last message, there’s a hyperlink to a site I don’t recognize, and a link preview that leaves nothing to the imagination — an icon of a cartoon woman with blonde hair and a massive chest bulging under a crop-top with “COLLEGE” printed on it, and the caption, “Hoe-Ed Central – Your One-Stop Source for Campus Cuties and Sorority Sluts.”

There’s no way. This isn’t real. Al’s full of shit. I know Sweetie Belle better than this.

I clench my teeth and tap the link, and reality — impossible, shitty reality — sinks in.

There’s no mistaking Sweetie Belle’s face in the photos that appear: the loops of her pink-and-purple hair and the softness of her grass-green eyes, and the creamy white shade of her completely exposed skin. It’s her kneeling and facing away from the camera, the swell of her bare chest just visible past the arm she’s lifted to tie back her hair. It’s her with her eyes squeezed shut and her lips wrapped around something that’s not in the frame and doesn’t need to be.

It’s her on her back, head thrown back and fists clenched — her on her hands and knees, face pressed into a mattress — her with her hand rising towards her face, grimacing as she starts to wipe at streaks of off-white…

It’s her. It’s really her. It’s exactly what Alkaline said she was. And I didn’t know — or wasn’t told — or refused to see what was obvious to everyone on the planet but me.

My palm and fingers are slick with sweat. I can barely keep my phone steady enough to close the browser window, swipe out of the app, squeeze the little brick as hard as it takes to keep me from throwing it as hard as I can anywhere away from me.

And while I’m thinking about it — jaw locked, face flushed, eyes stinging from something I don’t have a name for that I’m a few seconds away from drowning inside of — my phone buzzes again. It’s sending me reminders of Sweetie Belle’s texts, the ones I’ve read but haven’t opened yet. The times she tried to call me. The hours she thought I was ignoring her when she… what? Wanted to explain herself? Knew I’d be a baby about this? Pitied me?

I blink hard — fast — not fast enough. Tears trail down my face. I wipe them away, scrub with my hands until my cheeks are dry and chafed and cherry-red.

And then I stuff my phone and my hands in my coat pockets and start moving in whatever direction I was already facing. Maybe this path leads back to my dorm. Maybe it leads nowhere. All I know is I can’t stay here. I can’t think about this. I don’t know what I should think about this.

So I don’t think anything at all. I just keep walking. And with every single step, the voice in my head gets louder, and seems angrier, and sounds more and more like it’s the only thing in the world that’s ever told me the truth.

Chapter 12: Maybe the Silence Is Dangerous

View Online

By the time I wake up in the morning, the link Crescent sent me is dead, and Source has made it very clear to the rush chat that anyone who puts a new link up or shares the photos in there is gone for good, no questions and no second chances. But nobody in that chat really needs to talk about the photos in there, because the whole campus is buzzing over them — putting up post after post on social media about some account no one had seen before sharing the link to the porn site and tagging people seemingly at random for hours last night.

In the light of day, it’s obvious what actually happened: someone who wasn’t Sweetie Belle took those photos, maybe without her even knowing, and then spread them everywhere they could in some psychotic act of revenge for something that couldn’t possibly have justified this. And now all of her is out there on the Internet forever — maybe harder to find now, maybe blocked and banned and deleted, but there anyway. She might be forgotten next week, lost again in the endless sea of content, but right now she’s famous in the most awful way possible.

And if I was a good person, I’d understand that she’s completely blameless for every single part of this. I’d know, like any half-decent human being would, that what I should be doing right now — instead of lying in bed, scrolling past endless angry posts, watching the clock in the corner of my phone screen tick past the start time of my first Friday class — is stop acting like this has anything at all to do with me, and help her through this in any way I can. Because that’s what friends do for each other. And that’s what we are, right? That’s what I kept saying. That’s all I ever told her I wanted.

But I was lying, because what I was really doing was building a stupid, childish fantasy around her — a cutesy, cartoonish delusion of chaste first kisses and unblemished innocence, as if that ever even mattered in the first place. As if I had the first fucking clue how to “love” someone like an adult, or how to show interest or respond to it, or how to be anything other than a stupid fucking child who thought he might actually have a chance with a girl miles out of his league, because she might have one completely irrelevant thing in common in him.

And she doesn't. And it doesn't matter. It shouldn't matter, except it does, because it means Sweetie Belle’s not just a taller version of the kid I used to know. It means she grew up, and acted like it, and had something horrible happen to her that someone else who’s grown up would know how to handle. And instead of being the kind of person she deserves to have on her side, I've just followed her around like a lovesick puppy and gotten lost inside something I’d completely made up, and then lied in bed and felt sick about it when it all fell apart around me, as if I'm the fucking victim here.

I’m not the worst person in her life, especially not after last night. But not being bad isn’t the same as being good. And the fact that it took this to make me realize that probably tips me more towards one side of that binary than the other.

Eventually, hunger overrides self-loathing, and I swing myself out of bed so I can shrug on clothes and shamble over to the dining hall. Halfway through the process, I feel Bit staring at me from where he’s seated at his desk. He’s got one of the posts I just scrolled past pulled up on his laptop.

“So, um…” he mumbles.

“Yeah, I saw,” I mumble back. “It is the girl that was in here last weekend.”

“I didn’t see the pictures,” he quickly adds. “Were they… bad?”

Bad for who? For Sweetie Belle, absolutely. For me, it shouldn’t matter, except that I’m a self-centered little kid who believed his own lies to himself instead of seeing the stupidly obvious truth — who really, sincerely thought that in the worst moment of her life, my supposed friend was texting and calling because she felt sorry for me.

“Yeah, they were pretty bad,” I tell Bit.

He stays quiet as I finish getting dressed, then asks as I grab my wallet and keys, “Is she okay?”

It’s a simple question, and it freezes me in place. I don’t know, Bit. I don’t even fucking know if she’s okay, because I still haven’t replied to her texts or called her or done anything but feel pathetically sorry for myself.

“I don’t know,” I reply, resolve hardening into a spiky ball in my gut. “But I’m gonna go find out.”

Technically, I don’t go find out right away. When my stomach growls on my way down my dorm’s stairs, it occurs to me that Sweetie Belle might be starving too. I can’t imagine her braving a crowded dining hall today — or maybe that’s just how I would react if it was me this all had happened to. Either way, I figure it can’t hurt to make sure, so I jog down the street to the dining hall and fill a to-go box with scrambled eggs and biscuits. I get her a donut too, and one for me to wolf down on my way back to our dorm.

Finding Sweetie Belle’s dorm room is easy today. There’s only one door in her hall that’s covered in taped-up notes and dry-erase-board messages, all in different handwriting and all saying similar things: they love her, they’re so sorry she’s going through this, they’re here for her if she needs anything. Yet another low bar to clear that I managed to eat shit over instead.

I grit my teeth, shift the food box into one hand, and knock softly on her door with the other. The sound echoes down the cinderblock hallway — and so does my voice, thin and reedy and teeth-grindingly small.

“Sweetie Belle? It’s, uh… it’s me. It’s Button. I’m really sorry I didn’t text you or call you last night. I had my phone turned off, and by the time I saw everything, it… I-I wasn’t sure if…”

Great start, Button. Stop making excuses for yourself and get to the fucking point.

“I bought you breakfast,” I go on. “I don’t know if you ate already, I just figured you, uh… you might not have. So… you don’t have to do anything, I’ll just leave it out here, and if you want it…”

There’s no answer from inside. She might not even be in there. I take a bracing breath and keep talking anyway — say what I should’ve said hours ago.

“I’m sorry. I’m… I’m so sorry this happened to you. I don’t know if that helps, or… I guess it probably doesn’t. But if you wanna talk about it, I can listen, or if you just want to be alone, I totally get it. Just… wanted to say I’m sorry. I should’ve been there for you last night, and I wasn’t, and I’m sorry about that too.”

Still nothing. Exactly what I should’ve expected. The silence hits me like a bullet in the chest anyway.

“Anyway, um…” I manage to squeak out. “The food’s out here, if you want it. I’ll just…”

I bend down to place the to-go box in front of the door — and suddenly it swings open. I look up. Sweetie Belle is looking down at me, wearing baggy plaid pajama pants and a thick sweatshirt with sleeves so long they hang over her knuckles.

She doesn’t look like a wreck. She looks like smoldering wreckage, like she’s been a wreck for hours and now she’s all burned down to exhausted embers. Her eyes are red and baggy and sunken into her flushed face, and her hair is frizzy and stringy and messed up in every other way it’s possible for hair to be, and she’s staring at me silently with a gaze so blank it’s almost scary — like her body’s on autopilot, and her mind’s somewhere else entirely with notifications for the world around her turned off.

I straighten up, take a deep breath, and offer the to-go box to her, burning through every ounce of willpower I have just to keep looking her in the eyes. “I got a bunch of different stuff. I wasn’t sure what you might want. You don’t have to eat it. I won’t be… offended or anything.”

Her lips twitch, and her eyes crinkle as she blinks a few times in quick succession. I realize too late that she’s a couple seconds from crying, and before I can even try doing anything about it, she shuts her eyes — composes herself — takes a step back and jerks her head back towards her room. I nod, grip the box tighter, and follow her inside.

Compared to the one Bit and I share, Sweetie Belle’s room looks like people actually live in it rather than just sleep and eat there. There are posters and portraits on the wall of places like Paris and fields full of peach trees, and the two desks and beds are each decorated in distinct styles: muted reds and oranges on one side of the room, and pastel purple and pink on the other.

Sweetie Belle moves towards the purple-and-pink side and sits delicately on the mattress, hands braced beside her hips with her sweatshirt sleeves fully covering them. For the first time in forever, it occurs to me we’re the same age: eighteen and change. Teenagers. Kids. Maybe it’s because for the first time in forever, I’m seeing who she really is instead of who I imagined her to be. She looks her age. I feel like I’m half of my own.

Before I can think better of it, I drop the to-go box on what I figure is her desk and sit next to her on her bed. She doesn’t seem to mind, or at least doesn’t really react. Instead, she just stares straight ahead at the opposite wall. I feel like I should say something, but I can’t think of anything to say, so I just sit with her — wait for her to tell me what to do. Just like always.

“I should’ve known better.”

Her voice is dull and quiet — either emotionless, or packed with so much emotion that no single feeling can squeeze ahead of the crowd. I shift awkwardly in place, open my mouth to comfort her or say that’s not true or something, and she cuts me off with a plaintive glance — a silent plea to just listen while she talks, like I said I would outside her door.

“You remember that show I told you about?” she goes on, tone just as colorless as before. “When I threw up, my sister made me keep singing, all that? There was this… guy afterwards. Somebody’s dad, a girl in my class. Everyone was saying how good I was, how good I looked… and so was he. Just… leering at me, like…”

She blinks. Her face tightens. “I was thirteen. I was thirteen years old. And it didn’t get better.”

The urge to talk over her is bulging in my throat — so I can say what? Tell her that’s horrible and fucked up, like she doesn’t already know? Like I can’t see every part of her stiffening, locking up, trembling with how deeply and irreversibly she knows anything I could possibly blurt out?

I bite my lip hard, squeeze my hands together in my lap, and keep my mouth shut. She keeps going.

“I thought I could… own it. Control it, make the most of it. Because it was gonna happen anyway, right?” She shakes her head, face pulled tight again. “Should’ve known better. I always knew better, and I just… probably deserve this. All things considered.”

I can’t help myself. I can’t just let her say something like that about herself. “No you don’t. Sweetie, no one deserves –”

“Does it fucking matter what I deserve?”

There’s acid in her voice now, a sour and almost vicious edge that shrivels me back into myself. No less than I deserve. I’m supposed to be listening, not making myself feel better about how bad she feels right now.

“Sorry,” she whispers. Rather than hardening, her face crumples and twists, flushing with fury that she seems determined to keep from seeping into her voice. “I’m sorry, it’s just… it’s a stupid thing to complain about. Like being pretty is such a burden, like…”

She pauses, like she’s waiting for me to interrupt again — and when I don’t, she sighs with something I could mistake for relief if I couldn’t see the hollowness in her eyes.

“You know what the…”

Those words rushed out of her quicker than any before them. She almost shouted, and caught herself at the last moment.

“You know what the thing is?” she says again, much more measured this time. “I know exactly who it was.”

“You do?” I ask. I can’t help it again. “Are you gonna… I mean, do you want to, uh…”

She lets out a choked chuckle. “Wouldn’t matter if I did. I don’t have any proof, I just… I remember all of it. I remember seeing him on his phone, thinking I wasn’t doing enough, feeling like it was my fault it wasn’t any good. And then feeling so gross afterwards, I just wanted to go home, go anywhere, find something to… balance myself out?”

She looks at me — sadly, regretfully. “And then you were…”

She doesn’t finish that sentence. She doesn’t need to. All the pieces of the world’s shittiest puzzle have clicked together in my head, forming a crystal-clear picture of what I should’ve always known.

Last Saturday night, at a quarter to one, I was playing old video games alone in our dorm lounge, and Sweetie Belle stumbled in drunk and started talking to me and almost threw up all over me — because she’d just slept with a guy who turned out to be a psycho, and she wanted something familiar to balance herself against. Someone completely non-threatening, completely innocent, completely fucking useless.

It wasn’t me. It was never me. I just happened to be there. I’ve just happened to still be here. And everything else, everything I thought was happening to me — with her — with us was just another lie I was telling myself.

I realize I’m staring down at my hands shaking in my lap, and then I realize Sweetie Belle’s staring at me — waiting for me to talk over her again, or start crying again, or sprint out of the room and never see her again.

And I don’t do anything. I’m a good listener. It’s about the only thing I’m good for.

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into this,” she murmurs through a grimace. “Into… me. My bullshit. But you’re too nice. You gotta stand up for yourself more, tell people like me to –”

“I didn’t want to –”

We both clam up at once. I’m the first to force myself to keep talking.

“I wanted to help,” I mumble. “I wanted to be friends again.”

I can’t begin to figure out what Sweetie Belle’s expression means. She kind of looks like she did right before she was about to throw up, but in reverse, like her stomach’s about to implode on itself and take the rest of her with it. Or maybe that’s just how I’m feeling right now. Maybe I’m just projecting my own bullshit onto her again.

“Button, I…” Sweetie Belle tries to say. “You’ve been… I-I don’t want you to think…”

“It’s fine,” I tell her — I lie. “I’m… sorry I couldn’t help.”

“No, you did help,” she insists — weakly, breathlessly, like she wants to believe it’s true but can’t help knowing better. “I mean, no one else… my hallmates wouldn’t even look at me in the bathroom this morning, just fucking left without saying anything, and you…”

I grit my teeth so hard my jaw aches. It doesn’t matter what I did. This isn’t about me. I’m just a stupid little kid who got his feelings hurt and can’t help making it everyone else’s problem, and I have to get over myself. I have to help her.

“Well, um… I’m glad I could help, then,” I say, forcing myself to look her in the eyes, swallowing back everything but a thin smile that she doesn’t return. “All things considered.”

“You’ve done more than help, you’ve…”

Sweetie Belle sighs, and presses her lips together, and looks like she wants to cry again. Then she shuts her eyes and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, can we… can we talk about something else? Anything else?”

“S-Sure, um…” I say, searching the room for inspiration and landing on the cloudy sky outside the window. It’s started to rain since I got back from the dining hall. Thin little droplets tap against the window glass, echoing on the metal roofing and gutters outside. “Nice weather we’re having?”

Sweetie Belle looks out the window, stares for a moment, then lets out a gravelly chuckle. “Yep,” she says. “Yeah. Kinda fitting.” She composes herself with another sigh and looks back at me. “Did you get rained on last night? During rush stuff?”

“No, it was… it was kinda weird, actually.”

“Weird how? Is it still going well?”

“I don’t know, honestly,” I tell her. “It sucked at first, and then Source… uh, the rush chair, his name’s Source, I have an English class with him. Anyway, he took me out and showed me this spot on the roof of the theater building, and we hung out up there and talked for a while and… I don’t know whether I’ll get a bid or not. Tonight’s the last night of rush, and I have to… deal with Alkaline, I guess.”

Even though we’re sitting a full foot apart on her bed, I can feel Sweetie Belle stiffen through the mattress. “Deal with him how?” she asks.

“I have no idea. Source said I should butter him up, try to make him less pissed at me over that poker game, or whatever the reason he fucking hates me is. But I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know if I want –”

“Do you like the frat?”

“I…”

I realize I haven’t actually asked myself that question once this whole week — and I barely have to think about it for a moment before I have an answer I’m absolutely sure about.

“Yeah,” I tell her. “I really like it. Almost all of it, almost everybody I’ve met this week. And I think they like me, but…”

“But Alkaline’s gonna fuck it up.”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I hope not. But I don’t really know what to do about it if he does.”

Sweetie Belle doesn’t say anything for a bit. She stares at the floor, brow knit, seeming like she’s fighting the urge to say something she can’t take back. Then her face twitches — contorts with something painful and dark.

“Don’t let him win,” she mutters.

I blink and look over at her. She’s still staring at the floor — glaring at something she can see, but I can’t. “What do you mean?” I ask.

Now she points her fiery gaze my way. “He’s a fucking bully,” she snaps. “He thinks he’s hot shit, and he can’t handle losing, and he takes it out on people he thinks won’t fight back. But you will. You already have.”

That was the opposite of an answer to my question. In fact, it just makes me want to ask the same question again. “What…”

Sweetie grabs both my hands, squeezing like she’s trying to break every bone in them. “If you want this, if you really want a bid, then don’t you dare let that asshole take it from you,” she orders me. “You deserve it. You hear me?”

“I… yeah?” I stammer. “But… well…”

“Promise me, Button. Promise me you’re gonna stand up for yourself tonight. No matter what it takes.”

How can I say no to that? How the hell can I say yes? Who does she think I am? Who the fuck am I supposed to be?

“Okay,” I mumble. “I… I promise. It’s just… tonight, there’s a…”

“Tonight there’s what?”

I don’t want to say it, but it comes out before I can stop it. “I’m supposed to bring a date. Or bring a girl, at least. And you’re… I mean, there’s not really anyone else I’d…”

Her grip on my hands loosens. Every word I just said hit her like the jet from a fire hose, dousing the flames inside her and sinking her back into her mattress. I bite my lip and shut up several seconds too late. I shouldn’t have told her that. She feels bad enough already.

“S-Seriously, don’t worry about it,” I tell her. “It’s nothing, not a big deal. I’ll just… I’ll figure it out. It’s fine.”

She doesn’t believe me. She doesn’t even try pretending she does — and she doesn’t say anything either. She shouldn’t have to. My problem barely even counts as one compared to hers. But saying that doesn’t get me any closer to figuring out a way to solve it, or help her, or be useful to anyone anywhere.

“So, um…” I mumble. “Yeah. I’ll let you, uh…”

I gently pull my hands away from hers. She doesn’t stop me.

“I’ll see you later,” I say towards my shoes. And then I get up from her bed and leave her behind, feeling her eyes on me as I open her dorm’s door, catching a glimpse of them — shining with tears — as I pull it closed. I should’ve just stayed in bed. I probably just made everything worse for both of us.

I’ve already missed my morning class, and my next one isn’t until the afternoon, so for lack of any other place to go, I shuffle back down the stairs and into my room. Bit’s still sitting at his desk. He shuts his laptop as I come in, and watches me as I slouch down onto my bed.

“You okay?” he asks — just as gormless as ever. But you know what, at least he did ask. Points for that, I guess.

“I don’t know,” I tell him honestly. And then I’m honest again: “I think I’m fucking everything up.” And then before I can stop myself, I’m honest all over the place, barely stopping to breathe as I spew onto Bit everything that’s happened this week and everything I’ve felt about it and all the things I know I’m not supposed to feel.

The whole time, he just sits stock-still and gapes at me — not interrupting, not trying to make me feel better, just… listening. Like I tried to do for Sweetie Belle, and couldn’t. Like the type of person I’ve been trying to be, and I’m not.

And finally I run out of words, and slump back on my bed panting for air, heart jackhammering in my chest and face probably redder than a whole beet farm. Bit stares at me in silence for a couple more seconds, then says his first words in close to fifteen minutes.

“That all happened this week?”

“Yup,” I groan as I rub my palms against my aching eyes. “And now I don’t know what to do about tonight, what to do about Sweetie Belle. I’ve never known. Just made it up as I went along.”

Once my vision unblurs after I drop my hands onto my thighs, I look up at Bit. He’s still staring at me, squinting with what looks like total confusion.

“Really?” he asks.

“Yeah, really,” I say. “Come on, you saw it. It was obvious.”

His eyes narrow even more. He looks even more confused. “No it wasn’t.”

“Yes it was. You don’t have to make me feel better about it, it’s –”

“I’m not,” Bit insists — and then he says the most confusing, nonsensical, fucking baffling thing I’ve ever heard:

“You’re, like… the coolest guy I’ve ever met.”

It’s very nice of him to say that. Nicer than I really knew he could be! But it’s also obviously not true, because if I were really anyone’s idea of a cool guy, I’d be ready to answer a nice thing someone else said to me with sincere gratitude or a snappy deflection, or literally anything other than what actually comes out of my mouth, which is: “Huh?”

“You always seem so confident,” Bit goes on, staring down at his folded hands. “And you’re just, like… smart, and you always know what to say and how to say it, and you decide to do stuff and then you just do it. You go to parties and… I don’t know. You’re not scared of stuff.”

Who is my roommate talking about right now? Because obviously it’s not me. He can’t possibly be talking about me right now.

“I… am scared,” I tell him. “Bit, I am fucking terrified, like, a thousand percent of the time. Did you… did you not know that?”

“Why would I have known that?” he says plainly. “You never told me.”

“Because it was obvious! I’m a bad liar!”

Bit shrugs. “I guess you’re a good actor, then. Those are different things, I think.”

“B-But…” I sputter. I still want to argue with him. There’s something in my gut compelling me to argue with him — the same not-quite-my-voice that told me Source was lying to me last night, that keeps trying to talk me into being the opposite of the person Bit’s describing. “Okay, well… I’m not cool, all right? I’ve just been faking it. Pretending to be confident.”

Bit looks up at me. “Well, um…” he mumbles. “If you’re really good at pretending to be confident, isn’t that just… actual confidence?”

And I open my mouth to tell him it isn’t, that I’m not, that he’s totally wrong about everything he thinks of me — and nothing comes out. Because I can’t argue with that. Because I don’t want to argue with that. Because when I sit there and think about it, the screamingly obvious truth slaps me right in the slack-jawed face:

He’s kind of right.

What have I done this past week? Not “what did I think I was doing” or “what did I think about it” — what did I actually, literally do? I helped a sick girl I had no reason to still be friendly towards in a way she assured me most other people wouldn’t have. I went up to a guy I’d never met before, asked him if I could come to a party his fraternity was throwing, and he said yes.

I made new friends at that party, and at more events after that, and made such a good impression that the coolest guy I’ve ever met showed me a place he goes to be comfortable with himself and told me I could be a fraternity president one day. And I got so close with that girl, who I’ve always liked and always wanted to be closer to, that I was the only one she called during the worst moment imaginable, and then the only one who talked to her afterwards and tried to make her feel better.

That didn’t all just happen randomly. It happened because I made it happen — because even though I was fucking terrified, I decided to do a hundred different things I thought I could never do, and then I did them. And they didn’t all work out perfectly. In fact, some of them might be about to blow up in my face, and spray shrapnel all over some people I really care about. But more of them did work out, better than I ever would’ve let myself believe before.

I should already know all of this. I don’t have enough overdramatic words for how obvious it seems in retrospect — especially since Source told me all of it not even twelve hours ago. But coming from him, it seemed like a nice guy trying to be nice about a bad situation, and coming from Bit… it feels real. He’s known me for months, seen me loaf around on weekends and play old video games and forget to eat dinner sometimes because nobody’s reminding me to do it, and he still thinks I’m cool.

Why should I argue with him? Why shouldn’t I believe him, and Source, and everybody else except the rare jackass who I know has other reasons to be a dick to me?

“Yeah,” I say to Bit. “I guess you’re right. Thanks, man.”

He blinks at me. “For what?”

“For saying all that. I think I needed to hear it.”

“Oh. Well… you’re welcome, then.” And then he clams up, and his gaze flicks down to his shoes, and I realize for the first time why I’ve avoided talking to him so much this year: because he reminded me of myself. Because I saw him struggle to start conversations and look viciously uncomfortable in his own skin, and all I could ever think about was how much it felt like I was fucking those things up too — how much he looked like the parts of myself I hated the most.

I’ve been way too harsh on him, in way too many ways. Maybe I can start making up for that a bit now.

“Hey, random question,” I blurt out. “You wanna go to a party tonight?”

Bit’s mouth drops open as his eyes widen. He looks a bit like I just asked to borrow his parachute right before we jump out of a plane together. “Uh…”

“It’s a frat thing. Kappa Nu Zeta. They’re… okay, they’re almost entirely cool except for one guy, but don’t worry about him. I’m supposed to bring a ‘date’ tonight, but I don’t think they’re gonna be that strict about it. I’ll just tell them you’re my roommate and you’re cool, and it’ll be fine.”

“U-Um…”

The more I think about it, the more I’m into this idea: it’ll help get Bit out of his shell, and I’ll have someone to focus on helping so I won’t get nervous about what else I should be doing. Hell, maybe the KNZ guys will even be impressed by me bucking the usual trend and showing some depth of character or something.

“You wanna do it?” I ask Bit, excitement pitching my voice up. “It’ll be fun. Trust me, it’s not as scary once you get there and start talking to people.”

Bit blinks, swallows hard, and takes a deep breath, then blows all his air quickly out in the shape of a single word: “No.”

I blink back at him. All the air leaves my lungs too — slowly, like the sad wheezing of a punctured balloon.

“I… no, thank you,” Bit says. “I don’t… think I would like it. I’m not really a party person. I’m… sorry.”

Okay, so that plan’s a bust. It’s fine. Like I just said, sometimes things don’t work out. I know how to handle that. I’ve been handling it this whole week.

“Nah, don’t worry about it,” I say through a grin. “No pressure. Just throwing it out there.”

Bit sighs again, this time with relief so thick I can feel it across the room. “Yeah, no, I… t-thanks for inviting me!” he says. “I appreciate it, I just… yeah. Not for me.”

“No problem,” I tell him — but now that I think about it, it actually kind of is a problem, because that’s officially strike two on finding someone to go to this stupid event with me. Maybe I can dig through the contact lists for my classes this semester and just spam-text female classmates until one’s up for a platonic trip to a frat party. That’s not that sad, right? I’m sure other people have been sadder at some point.

I’m about to go get my laptop and start browsing phone numbers when I feel my own phone buzz in my pocket. My heart’s been through enough already today, but I put it through a little bit more beat-skipping when I see who just texted me:

You still need a date for tonight?

I open Sweetie Belle’s message and reply:

Still on the market, yeah.

Her reply comes within seconds:

I’m in.

And then a few seconds later:

If you still want me to go with you.

I type as quickly as my thumbs allow:

I do. But seriously, no pressure. I don’t want to push you into anything.

I know. I’m up for it. I’m not going to let this fuck up my whole life.

And it takes me a bit to answer that, because I’m too busy grinning at my phone. If Bit thinks I’m cool, he should meet Sweetie Belle sometime.

Awesome. 9 tonight, over at the KNZ house. Walk over together?

I get a thumbs-up back, and that’s that. I’ve got a date. I’ve got one more chance to make the most of rush — to make up for the mistakes I’ve made with Sweetie Belle. And despite everything, despite the voice in my head that — even now — is still whispering to me all the ways this could go horribly wrong, I know already I’m gonna go through with it.

One way or another, I’m seeing this through to the end. And Sweetie Belle’s gonna be right there with me. And no matter what, even if all we’re ever going to be is friends, I’ll be there for her.

I keep thinking about that for the rest of the day, through my afternoon class and a rushed dining hall dinner, while I’m showering and shaving and shrugging on my last clean button-down shirt, and while I’m waiting in the dorm lounge where Sweetie Belle first stumbled into me last weekend for her to come downstairs and join me again. And when she does, she looks nothing like she did earlier.

Her off-shoulder pink dress molds to her body like it was painted onto her, emphasizes every curve and accentuates every inch of uncovered skin, radiates the kind of confidence even the best actor in the world couldn’t fake. She’s not hiding from the world anymore — and neither am I. We’re both going to make the world give us exactly what we deserve.

“Too much?” she asks once she joins me by the front door, one bare thigh poking out from the slit in her skirt, one eyebrow cocked to match her half-smile.

“Just right,” I tell her — and without thinking better of it for a single second, I offer her my hand. She takes a moment to put on the coat she had bundled into her arms, then takes my hand as her half-smile grows into a full one.

The walk to the KNZ house passes in what feels like seconds, and we start turning heads just about the second we step off the sidewalk and into the house’s yard. Thankfully, Source’s head is one of the first ones to turn our way, and the rest of him hops off the porch and comes to meet us halfway.

“What’s up, Wizard?” he says, locking hands with me and pulling me into a half-hug before focusing on Sweetie. “Great to see you out too. You doing okay?”

“I’m good,” she tells him, her voice firm but friendly. “I’m not gonna let it ruin my life.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Source says, before dropping into a lower, more serious tone. “For real, though, I’ve already talked to all the guys about it, but if anybody’s creepy towards you, and I mean anybody, let me or Case know and we’ll make sure they’re gone. Zero tolerance tonight, all right?”

“All right,” Sweetie says, dropping my hand so she can shake the one Source sticks out. “Thanks.”

Source nods, pats me on the shoulder, then departs to greet another rush and the girl he’s brought along with him. “That’s Source, by the way,” I say to Sweetie Belle. “The guy I told you before.”

“I know,” she says back. “I’ve met him before. I’m glad you met him too.” Now she glances my way, nudges my shoulder, and grins. “Kinda reminds me of you.”

I grin back — because why shouldn’t I? Source is the coolest guy I’ve ever met. Being like him is a compliment.

I take Sweetie’s hand again and lead her up onto the porch and into the house, where we get pretty much the same reception we got outside. The place doesn’t suddenly go silent after a gasp and a record scratch, but more than one conversation gets a little quieter as more than one guy gives both of us a sidelong, lingering glance. I take a deep breath, squeeze Sweetie’s hand, and feel a thousand feet tall once I feel her squeeze back.

Once again, one of the first heads that turns our way is one I’m glad I recognize. Even though I texted him earlier and cleared the air as much as I could, Woody all but sprints my way anyway, trying to talk so fast he stumbles over each word he manages to get out.

“Button, hey, uh… so we’re, um… I mean, y-you…”

“We’re good, Woody,” I say, grabbing his hand and half-hugging him the same way Source just did to me. He’s stiff as a board when my hand hits his back, but he’s loosened up a bit by the time I pull away. “Seriously. I was messed up last night, and it wasn’t your fault.”

If Woody were any more relieved, he’d melt into a puddle on the grungy floor right now. “I just… words. Y’know?”

“I know,” I agree. “Fuck words.” I nod Sweetie Belle’s way and give her hand another squeeze for good measure. “This is Sweetie Belle, by the way."

Woody’s eyebrows twitch up as he turns her way and gives her a little wave and nod. “H-Hi,” he says. “I’m Dogwood. I think we have a class together.”

“Yeah, I think we do,” Sweetie Belle gamely replies. “Nice to formally meet you.”

“Same,” Woody says, before looking at me. “Crescent’s just over there. And, uh…”

I can see who he’s about to bring up written all over his face. “It’s fine, Woody,” I tell him. “I can handle him. Don’t worry about it.”

And I really, truly believe that for about five seconds, which is about how long it takes for a gap to form in the party crowd and for Alkaline to materialize inside it. And it isn’t him alone that gets to me, or even what he says to me — because he doesn’t say anything to me, or even seem to notice I’m here. His eyes are locked on Sweetie Belle, and Sweetie Belle’s eyes are locked on him.

“Well, how ‘bout that,” he says as he saunters slowly towards us — towards her. “Good to see you out.”

There’s something off about his voice — an odd lilt to it, like he wants to laugh and can’t decide whether it should come with a smile or a sneer. He extends a hand for her to shake. She doesn’t move — squeezes my hand like she’s trying to break my fingers.

“Seriously, you’ve got some balls,” Al goes on, pulling his hand back so casually it’s like he never put it out in the first place. “Lady balls, anyway. I know I wouldn’t be out if it were me all that happened to.”

If looks could kill, Alkaline would be a desiccated corpse right now. Sweetie Belle isn’t just glaring at him — she’s glowering, practically shaking with fury, still squeezing my hand so tight my fingers are starting to go numb.

“But hey, I respect it,” he goes on, gesturing with the red plastic cup in his other hand. “You don’t let anybody get to you. Just do your own thing.” He glances at me. “Or things, really.”

His glance turns into a knowing smirk, and I think back to what Sweetie Belle said about Alkaline yesterday over lunch: I know of him. Enough to know he had something like that coming. I never asked how she knew him. I never asked why she got so upset when I mentioned him earlier today — why she was so angry then, and looks just about murderous now.

And then it all hits me at once, so hard I almost stumble backwards, so heavy I almost drop to my knees. I know why he’s acting like this — why he told me all that shit about Sweetie Belle last night — why he’s still looking at Sweetie Belle in a way that looks more like leering.

Because he already knows her. Because she knows him. Because she knows exactly who took those photos of her and put them online and acted like a total psychopath because she wasn’t who he wanted her to be.

“Anyway, you kids have fun,” he says, voice dripping with cocky swagger. “Not too much fun, though. Never know how that could turn out.”

Because it was him. It was Alkaline. It’s exactly who I should’ve known it was from the second I first met him. And if I want to get a bid, be with Sweetie Belle, be anybody worth knowing and worth looking at in the mirror, I have to stand up to him tonight. I have to go through him.

And even with Source and Sweetie and all my friends behind me, I don’t know if I can.

Chapter 13: All of It Now, Swallow It Down

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Al saunters off, and I watch him go without speaking, almost without blinking, just staring at the back of his head as my pulse roars in my ears and my hands clench and unclench at my side. I want to go after him. I want to grab him by the collar and drag him back here, make him tell everyone here exactly what he did, before — or maybe while — I beat the living shit out of him. Not that I’ve ever beaten up anybody or even thrown a punch before, but I really want to fucking figure it out as I go.

Next to me, Woody’s eyes flick back and forth between my face and Al’s back, narrowed at first and then suddenly as big as I’ve ever seen them be. Looks like I don’t have to explain this to him. Good. I don’t know that I could talk too well right now past the trembling in my jaw and the heat rising into my throat.

“Okay, so…” comes a voice from my other side. Crescent’s standing there, holding a red plastic cup, gawking at Woody and I. “I missed something.”

“Holy shit,” Woody whimpers. “It was him.”

“That… does not explain what I missed.”

“Alkaline,” I growl through my teeth. “It was fucking Alkaline. He’s who leaked those pictures of Sweetie Belle.”

Now Crescent’s eyes bug out too. “Wait, what?” he almost yells, before realizing where he is and whose brothers he’s surrounded by. “It was… how do you know?” he hisses next.

I barely keep myself from shouting back. “Because he all but fucking bragged about it, that’s how!”

“Shit. Holy fucking shit,” Crescent says, hunching over his cup and taking a giant gulp from it before he goes on. “What do we… what are you gonna do?”

I’m about to tell him exactly what I want to do to Alkaline right now, but Woody interrupts me. “Wait, where’d Sweetie Belle go?” he says — and it’s only then that I realize I’m clenching both my hands into fists, and Sweetie Belle’s fingers aren’t trapped inside one of them. I didn’t even see her leave.

“She’s here?” Crescent asks. “Fuck, she’s a badass…”

Yeah, she is — and that’s exactly what’s just started to scare me. Al’s already done one psychotic thing to her this week. If she goes after him here by herself, I can’t imagine what he might do next.

“I’m gonna find her,” I tell Woody, who blankly nods in response. “Stay here.”

Crescent starts to say something else, but whatever it is gets lost in the noise of the party as I start wading my way through the crowd. I make two full circuits around the house’s first floor, but I don’t find Sweetie Belle until I wander through the front door and out onto the porch.

Everyone who was out here when we arrived is gone. It’s just her here now, leaning against a column and staring up at the stars, fingers wrapped tight around the rough wooden railing in front of her, shivering inside her pink dress and the coat she never even had a chance to take off.

“There you are,” I say as I go over to her. “Are you –”

“I’m sorry. “ Sweetie Belle doesn’t look at me — heaves in shallow breaths that come back as shaky sighs. “I just… I’m sorry. I keep thinking I’m braver than I am, and I keep being wrong.”

“That’s not…” The anger I felt earlier is back like it never left, squeezing my throat and jumbling up my thoughts. “He’s not gonna get away with this. I’m not… he’s not gonna win.”

“Yes he is,” she mutters, swiping one thumb quickly under both eyes. “Just drop it, Button. Go back inside.”

“No!” The word comes out of my mouth loud and high-pitched, like a little kid being told to go to bed early. “You were drunk, and then he... I-I mean, we’ve gotta do something, right? Report him to the school, or call the cops, or…”

“Do you know who Alkaline is?” She turns to face me. The hollow look I saw earlier is back. “Not at school, or in the frat. I mean who he really is, in the real world. Who his dad is… his whole family?”

Alkaline’s a business major — that’s what Woody told me a few days ago. And his dad owns a big company. And it takes me a couple seconds to form the question I ask Sweetie Belle, because I’m starting to feel like I already know the answer. “What does it matter?”

“It matters because if I did something, said anything to anybody, no one would believe it,” Sweetie says. “And even if they did, there’d be investigations and hearings and a big fucking scandal, and he’d get the kind of lawyers you get when your family’s rich and you know you’re guilty, and he’d win. And in the meantime, he’d make my life hell, and if you get involved, he’ll make your life hell too, because we have nothing. It’s my story against his. And that’s not enough.”

She can’t be right. She can’t be. This isn’t fair. There has to be something I can do.

“You have me,” I say weakly. “I’ll… I mean…”

“You’re not gonna do anything, Button,” Sweetie Belle says softly. She steps forward — puts her hand over mine, wraps her fingers around my knuckles and squeezes. “Please don’t do anything. Don’t fuck yourself over just because of me.”

I squint back at her. “What do you… t-this isn’t about –”

“It is about you, Button,” she murmurs, eyes shining over a small, sad smile. “You love this frat. You’ve been so happy this week, like you were when we were kids. And Source and Case, what they’re trying to make here… they need you. Good people like you, who always put other people first.”

“But Alkaline…”

“Alkaline will be gone in six months. One semester, that’s it. Then this’ll be over, and everyone will forget about it, and all you have to do is let it go right now. Please.”

She stares at me — pleadingly, desperately — and squeezes my hand again. I have to fight the urge to yank my arm away. She’s asking me to act like she doesn’t matter — to suck up to a psychopath for my own sake and no one else’s. She’s telling me to lie, to be somebody I’m not, just so I can get something I shouldn’t want any part of.

“You knew he’d be here,” I mumble. “And you came out anyway. I-I thought you were… why?”

She shakes her head — lets out a sigh that might’ve been a tiny, self-deprecating laugh. “You needed a date,” she tells me. “And you’ve been there for me all week, and I wanted to be here for you, but I’m just making things worse. You don’t deserve that. You deserve better than a –”

“Don’t,” I interrupt. “Don’t say that. That’s bullshit. That’s…”

Our face are inches apart. Tears track down her face. Her hand is gripping my fingers like a vice, and I want to tear my hand free so I can hold it to her chin, dry her cheeks, tell her everything I’ve felt and known about her since the day I first met her a lifetime ago.

But I don’t know how to say it — how to put something that feels as big as the whole planet into words small enough to mean something. I still don’t know if it’s all just in my head, and not in her heart.

“Button, please, for once, put yourself first,” Sweetie Belle whispers. “Get what you deserve. Forget about me.”

I can’t. I don’t want to. I’m not going to. I just don’t know how. I just want someone — a friend, a teacher, my fucking mom — to tell me what I should do.

Sweetie Belle lets go of my hand, shuts her eyes, and steps away from me. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs again. And then she’s gone — down the front steps and across the yard and halfway down the street back to campus, while I just stand uselessly on the porch and watch her leave.

“... fuck me, man.”

Crescent’s standing in the house’s front doorway, Woody right next to him, both of them wide-eyed and open-mouthed. “You gotta go after her,” Crescent says as he steps out towards me.

“You heard all of that?” I mutter.

“I heard enough to know you can’t let her leave like that, man! Fuck rushing, I mean, this is… fuck!”

Crescent runs both his hands through his hair as he paces to the porch’s far side, staring helplessly out at the empty street. Woody’s still in the doorway, still staring down the block towards where Sweetie Belle just vanished from view.

“It’s what she wants,” I tell Crescent in a monotone. “She told me to get a bid. To forget about her.”

Crescent whirls around, wide-eyed again. “Well, obviously you’re not going to.”

“No, I’m not,” I agree.

“Okay. So what do we do?”

He’s looking at me expectantly, like he just knows I have a plan as good as the one I must have had to beat Al so badly two nights ago — and I don’t. My mind’s empty, and my chest hurts, and more than anything I’m sick of pretending I know what I’m doing and lying to people I care about.

But no one else is going to do anything for me — not Crescent, not Woody, for sure not Sweetie Belle. I have to think of something. I have to decide who I’m going to be.

I take a deep breath, open my mouth — and someone else’s words fill the air.

“Stay here.”

Woody’s voice comes out low and sturdy, unlike anything I’ve ever heard him say before. He doesn’t give Crescent or me a chance to ask him what he means. “Keep Al here,” he goes on. “I’ll be back.”

“You’ll –” is the only word Crescent can squeeze in.

“I’m coming back,” Woody insists, almost growling his response. Then, without a word of explanation, he edges around me and hops down off the porch, striding down the street and heading in the direction of campus.

“What is he doing?” I ask Crescent.

“I don’t fuckin’ know,” Crescent replies. “What are we doing? How are we supposed to keep Al here?”

“I don’t know,” I tell Crescent. “Let’s find the motherfucker and find out.”

Crescent blinks again, shrugs, and doesn’t argue. I nudge past him and reenter the house, and he follows a step behind me.

===

Admittedly, I expected finding said motherfucker to be a lot easier than it turns out to be — which is annoying, because you’d really think a six-foot-whatever, cocksure and cock-first frat bro would be easy to spot at a frat party. Between Crescent and me both, though, all we get out of searching for him is sweaty from the humidity of the packed house and not even a little buzzed from the sour beer we manage to squeeze out of the keg in the main room.

“Do you think he already left?” Crescent asks to nobody in particular. “‘Cause that’s not our fault if he did, right? Like, if he’s gone already, that happened before Woody said anything. That’s not on us.”

I’m too busy with the keg hose, or whatever it’s called, to give Crescent a good answer. I’ve been at it for a bit now, and all I can get to come out of it is soapy-looking foam.

“You gotta pump the thing,” I hear Crescent say next. He seems like he’s talking to me now.

“What thing?” I ask.

“The… pump thing.” Crescent points at a knobby metal device on top of the keg that the hose seems to feed into the bottom of. “I don’t know, whatever it’s fucking called.”

I give the thing a few good pumps, and I’m rewarded with a fresh sheen of sweat on my forehead and half a cup of pisswater. Fuck me for wanting some liquid courage, I guess. I tip my cup back and chug the beer I managed to get, then wait for the carbonation to rise back up from my stomach and maybe kickstart the gears in my brain on its way out.

“He’s gotta still be here,” I insist, grimacing past a painful belch that burns in my nose and doesn’t light up a single neuron behind it. “It’s the last night of rush. We just gotta keep looking.”

“And then what?” Crescent wilts a little when I look over at him. “I-I mean, I’m with you no matter what. Like, I’m all in, but y’know… he’s fucking huge. And I’m…” He waves his fist — which is attached to a fairly stick-like arm — limply in front of him. “Not a fighter. Or a lover, really. I don’t know what I am. I don’t even know where the girl I brought out here is. I should’ve introduced her. Should I go find her? Am I talking too –”

“Okay, yep, got it,” I say. “No fighting. We’ll… try to avoid that.”

“Try to avoid what?”

Fuck me, I need to pay more attention to my surroundings. Maybe then I wouldn’t jump like a rabbit on Adderall every time someone new enters a conversation.

“Nothing!” I half-shout at Source — my good close fratty friend Source, whose frat brother is half a page of legal code away from being a rapist and yet somehow isn’t a total psychopath in his eyes. Of all the people I was not at all ready to talk to right now, he’s number two on the list. “It’s… never mind.”

“Okay, well, now I have to mind,” is Source’s cheeky response. “What’s up? Did the keg kick? Knew we should’ve gotten a half-barrel.”

I grit my teeth and grip my empty cup almost hard enough to crumple it. What do I tell him? What can I tell him? How “fratty” is he really — enough to stay on his frat brother’s side no matter what monstrous shit that brother did?

That thought lasts for half a second, and then gets replaced by a much more rational one: of course he wouldn’t do that. I met the one-hundred-percent real Source last night, and that Source writes poems, speaks from the heart, has actual honest-to-God principles — and truly thinks Al is just a run-of-the-mill jerk.

He doesn’t know what Al’s really capable of, or what he’s already done. And if I told him the truth right now, he’d believe me, and he wouldn’t let it go no matter what was best for him or for anybody else. Because he’s like me, and it’s what I want to do, and it wouldn’t work for him any better than it would for me. He’d just get dragged down into the mess with us.

“We’re just… getting ready to talk to Al,” I eventually say — and to be fair, that’s barely even a lie by omission. “To… butter him up, and stuff.”

“Gonna butter him like toast,” Crescent adds. He gives me an “Am I helping?” grin that I try to pretend I didn’t see.

“That’s hardly nothing,” Source assures us. “But don’t stress too much. You got this, man. How’s Sweetie Belle doing?”

“Um…” is all I can say to that.

“S-She’s good!” Crescent haltingly chimes in, cringing when Source looks his way. “Just, uh… getting some air. Lots of air, outside. Not in the house. She’s not here. She left.” Source stares, I glare, and an “I’m definitely not helping” grimace spreads across Crescent’s face. “I’m sorry. I talk when I’m nervous. I’m gonna go somewhere else now.”

And then he moves like he’s going to, but he stops dead before he takes a single step — and when I look past him over his stock-still shoulder, I can see exactly why.

Al’s less than a dozen feet away, sprawled on a ratty couch and surrounded by a group of uncomfortable-looking freshmen. I guess he’s forgotten all his complaining to Case about how much the KNZ rushes suck, or maybe he just likes anyone who gives him attention and makes him feel like the biggest motherfucker in the room.

He hasn’t seen me or Crescent yet, even though the latter’s gaping at him like he’s grown wings and a horn. But I don’t need him to be looking at me to hear what he’s saying. He’s loud enough that people can probably hear him all the way down the block.

“– shoulda been here a couple years ago. We got fucked by probation, bro. And I’m tryin’, for real, but it’s fucked.”

Somewhere a thousand miles away, Source edges closer to somebody that looks exactly like me and murmurs in his ear. “Hey, I meant what I said earlier. You can tell me if someone’s being sketchy. It’s not gonna get held against you.”

Except it will, won’t it? I know it will, and Sweetie Belle knows it will, and no matter how much he acts like he doesn’t, Source knows it will too. And even if he didn’t, Al’s voice would drown out anything I tried to tell anybody else. He’s deafening right now, rowdy and grating like a rodeo clown in sandpaper chaps.

“Nah, I mean, I get it. Like, you gotta change with the times, right? Even if the times suck.”

Crescent glances back at me. “What do we do?” he frantically hisses, right before he realizes Source is still next to me and — now that he’s heard that — furrowing his brow at both of us. It’s a good question, though, and another one I don’t really have an answer for. I still don’t know what to do, or even why I should want Al to stick around at all — except that Woody wants him to, and that in the admittedly short time I’ve known him, I’ve never seen Woody be so unshakably sure about anything else.

“Do about what?” Source asks, right before Al gives him his answer.

“Like with that girl’s nudes, right?”

Even over the roar of the party, I can hear Source’s teeth clack together, right in time with mine. Even Crescent forgets to be nervous for a second in favor of sighing and glaring at the floor, muttering something under his breath that looks like it rhymes with “slick.”

“Like, not even two years ago, nobody gives a shit. Some girl’s a slut, people call her a slut, and we all move on with our lives, right? These days, though, everybody’s fuckin’ offended about it. Now it’s, what, slut-shaming if you call someone a slut? Like, bitch, you’re the one bein’ a fuckin’ slut! I thought you were proud of it!”

Source’s scowl deepens, and Crescent mutters something again, and my fingers flex and ache next to my sides — but nobody does anything to shut Alkaline up. We just have to stand here and let him talk, because that’s what he does. He talks, and he fucks up people’s lives, and he wins if we talk back because all we have is our word against his. He’s invincible, and he knows it, and he’s fucking acting like it.

“But if we say anything, if we fuckin’ exist as men, we’re evil sexist pigs and shit. Didn’t used to be like that, man. People used to be fuckin’ sane. Fuckin’ sad, man.”

Source takes a step forward. He’s going to get involved. He’s going to make Al stop talking, maybe make him leave — but only because he thinks he’s being a jerk. He doesn’t know who Al really is.

“And like, why is everybody so fuckin’ sure someone else put those photos up? Seems to me like she put ‘em up herself, and then once she didn’t get enough attention she just decided suddenly she was a victim.”

And then before Source can take a second step, I grab him by the arm and stop him, because something just hit me like a semi-truck: I do know who Al is, and he’s not invincible. He just acts like he is, because he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Because he’s a good liar and a terrible actor. Because he doesn’t know how to play from behind.

“She won’t even say who’s supposed to have victimized her, but we’re supposed to buy it anyway. It’s all bullshit, bro. All these people falling for the oldest slut move in the book.”

I’ve beaten him before. I bluffed him into folding a full house and took two hundred dollars off him, because he thought I had nothing and then couldn’t handle it once he thought I had him by the balls. And Woody saw me do it, knows I can do it again, and trusts me to figure it out with or without a plan. That’s why he told me to keep Al here: because that’s what I do. I don’t plan. I react. I decide to do things, and then I just do them.

“You know who I feel bad for? That dude she was fucking. Anybody ever think maybe he’s the victim? Maybe he took pictures on her phone, and now his dick’s all over the Internet and everybody’s acting like he did something to her. Pour one out for that poor motherfucker.”

I play the game, and the players playing it. I’ve been doing it this whole week. I just have to do it one more time. I just have to make him think he’s already lost — and then make sure he does for real.

“Whoever the fuck he is. Not like we’ll ever know. He’s sure as shit not gonna talk. And she’s probably –”

“You know digital photos have metadata, right?”

Several heads turn towards me, Source’s and Crescent’s the quickest of them all. Al, meanwhile, is the last person to look my way, which suits me just fine. I want him to be annoyed. I want him to think I’m just a dorky little kid butting in on his good time.

“Was I talking to you?” Al intones, silencing all the other conversations nearby by starting one with me.

“You’re talking to me now,” I shoot back. “Anyway, metadata! It’s like an electronic signature, hard-coded into everything that isn’t shot on film. Tells you the resolution, what kind of lens you used, what kind of camera. Fun stuff.”

“I bet,” Al sardonically replies. “Thanks for sharing.”

“Sure thing,” I say, steaming ahead even as Al rolls his eyes and looks away. “You know what else is fun about it? It tells you where a picture was taken too. Like, exact GPS coordinates. Plus the time it was taken, the date… even the camera’s owner. Or, y’know, the phone’s owner. ‘Cause everybody takes pictures on their phones now.”

Al doesn’t look up at me, but I can see his neck tense and his jaw tighten, because he’s trying really hard not to look up. Because he’s started to realize why I interrupted him, and because he doesn’t know that’s not exactly how metadata works and I’m sure as shit not going to correct him. Just a small lie by omission — a tiny little bluff that, if I play it just right, might get him to fold his winning hand and royally fuck himself over.

“I’m just saying, you’re acting like we don’t know who took those pictures of that girl,” I go on. “But actually, we do. Or somebody could know, if they wanted to. I just think that’s interesting. Seems relevant.”

Now Al stares me down, his eyes dark and his face twitching. “You wanna keep talking?” he growls.

I stare right back. I’m not backing down. I’m seeing this through no matter where it leads. “Do you want me to?” I ask. “‘Cause if I were you, I wouldn’t. But I’m not you, thankfully, so hey, I can talk all you want.”

I feel someone tugging on my arm. “Button, what are you doing?” Source mutters.

I flash him a cheeky grin. I couldn’t get enough out of the keg to get me drunk, but adrenaline’s making up for it in spades right now. “What d’you mean?” I murmur back. “I’m talking to Al. Taking your advice.”

“This isn’t what I –”

“And you know what, while I’m talking,” I go on, sidling closer to Al with every word, “lemme ask you something, ‘cause I’m kinda curious: why do you care so much? Like, it’s rush. We’ve kicked the keg, we’re all having a great time, and you’re over here going off about some random freshman who had her nudes leaked. Why’s it a big deal? She’s just a slut, right? Some whore who fucks every guy she meets? Isn’t that what you told me last night?”

Al doesn’t say anything. He settles back into the couch, still staring me down, waiting for me to keep talking — so I do.

“I believed you, by the way. I really did. ‘Cause why would you lie to me? It’s not like you’re dating her. It’s not like you fucked her. And me, I’m just a rush. Just the possible future of the frat you care so much about. What would you possibly get out of lying to me that a girl I went out with once, who I’ve known since elementary school, was a nymphomaniac who’d drop me like a used tissue as soon as my dick went soft?”

Al’s not glaring anymore. Instead, he looks bemused — exactly like he looked when I was winding him up across a poker table.

“Yeah, I know that look. Most of my life, that look is all I’ve gotten out of people. And you know what I finally realized just this week? The only reason people kept looking at me like that was because I let them. Because I just assumed they knew something about me I didn’t, that something was wrong with me that wasn’t wrong with them, and I never did anything about it.”

I’m not just talking to Al anymore. I’m talking to the whole room, every frat brother and rush here — to the little voice in my head that, in the only way that matters, sounds just like Alkaline’s.

“And this week, I did something about it. I found some balls, rushed a frat, got drunk and puked and made a complete ass of myself half the time, and I met a whole fraternity worth of the coolest fucking people I’ve ever known. Guys who went against every stereotype I’ve ever heard, who I wanna be friends for the rest of college and after it. And then there’s you, Al: the poster fucking man-child for everything I thought I’d hate about frats, and all the reasons I thought they’d hate me.”

The whole house is all but silent. My face is red and I’m running out of breath.

“You know what really pisses me off about you, Al? It’s not that you hate me. I’m used to jackasses like you hating me. What pisses me off is that’s not enough for you. You gotta fuck things up for everybody. For the rushes you think are losers, for your brothers trying to move past probation… and, of course, for girls you hooked up with once who you can’t get over. You just have to be in control, no matter what it takes or who it hurts.”

I suck in air, brace myself, and make the play I’ve been building towards.

“That’s why you leaked those photos. You know it, and I know it. And now everybody knows it.”

There’s no ripple of shock or disgust through the crowd — no reaction at all, actually, save for Source screwing his face up into a grimace and Crescent looking like he’s planning the speech he’ll give at my funeral. The silence drags out for several long seconds, then Al’s eyebrows twitch up as he leans forward a bit on the couch.

“You done?” he asks, his airy voice tinged with barely suppressed laughter. The rest of the room’s still eerily, unnervingly quiet.

“You tell me,” I say — and Al chuckles, and rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, you’re done,” he says as he heaves himself to his feet and lumbers casually towards me. “My turn. You know what pisses me off about you?” He comes to a stop in front of me, almost on top of me, forcing me back a step as he leans forward and towers over me. “You’re full of shit.”

His breath reeks of whiskey. His eyes are alight with sadistic glee. I set my jaw and try to meet his gaze, but I can’t stop my breath from hitching or my hands from starting to shake. I think I fucked up.

“You’ve been full of shit since day one,” Al says. “You crash a couple parties, drink our beer, find a couple other sadsack loners to latch onto, and you think that makes you fratty. One of the guys. And it wouldn’t even be that big a deal if you weren’t so fucking obnoxious about it, if you didn’t constantly have this kicked-puppy bullshit going on because you were so mistreated in high school for being a fucking freak.”

No one’s stopping him. No one’s going to stop him. I fucked up. I don’t know how, but I fucked this up.

“And then you talk about doing something like it’s such a big fucking deal you acted like a normal person for once. And you couldn’t even keep the act going, because then you’d have to admit to yourself that maybe you are a freak, and maybe it is your fault nobody likes the real you. So you just lie to everybody, and about other people so you can white-knight for your little high school crush who, oh no, isn’t anything like your anime fuck pillow back home.”

Al prods his finger into my chest, knocking me back another half-step. I catch a glimpse of Source’s face as I stumble: dismayed, disappointed, wanting to help and knowing I’ve fucked up way too bad for even him to bail me out.

“All you fucking do is lie,” Al snarls. “And if you think you have a chance in hell of getting a bid after this shit, or ever had a fucking chance, you’ve just been lying to yourself.”

I try to swallow, but my throat’s bone-dry. I try to look at Al, but I’m blinking too fast and my eyes are blurry. Source can’t help. Crescent’s still shellshocked. Sweetie Belle’s gone, and everything I spent this whole week working for is about to collapse on top of me. Why did I do this? Why was I so sure I could catch Al in a lie? Is he even lying? Did I read this whole situation wrong from the very start?

“I’ve been lying, huh?” I say, burning every last bit of misplaced courage I have to get just a few more words out without cowering. “So it wasn’t you in those pictures of Sweetie Belle?”

“For fuck’s…” Al’s face crumples as his growling tone rises into a bark. “I’ve never met that bitch in my fuckin’ life!”

Well, that’s it. Game over. I just lost. I shut my eyes, and wait for the credits to roll on my life as a social butterfly.

“Then why have you been texting her all week?”

The voice comes out of nowhere, cutting through the gathered crowd like a scythe, pushing brothers and rushes aside as they all look to see who just said that. Al and I both see him at once: Woody, spine straight and jaw set, standing a few feet away and radiating righteous fury.

“And I mean all week,” Woody goes on, his diamond-edged gaze locked onto Al and getting sharper with every word. “Day and night, during classes, during rush. I’ve seen you do it. Seen her get your messages and leave you on read. Twenty-three times in six days. All to someone you’ve apparently never met.”

It’s like a gun went off somewhere outside. Everyone’s shuffling in place, murmuring to each other, trying to figure out what just happened and if everyone else heard it too and whether that really was what it absolutely sounded like — and I am too, for a different reason. I’ve seen Al texting Sweetie Belle too. I’ve seen her glance at her phone and grimace and stuff it back in her bag, while she was apologizing for missing lunch with me and terrified of going up on stage.

“Woody, come on, man,” Al finally says through a plastic smile. “Don’t tell me you believe this shit. You’re better than that.”

Woody’s voice is so thick with disgust that even I cringe hearing it. “You have no idea who I am. You never even tried to find out. It’s always just been about you. And I’m sick of letting you get away with it.”

Al’s mouth opens and closes, and his eyes dart back and forth from brother to onlooking brother. Still, no one jumps in and interrupts, but the mood of the room has U-turned: instead of the rush, everyone’s silently thinking, now it’s Alkaline who better choose his next words extremely fucking carefully. His finger’s still poking into my chest — and through my shirt, I can feel it starting to twitch.

“Who even fuckin’ told you that?” Al barks. For the first time, I hear him spray the venom he usually reserves for me all over Woody. “Twenty-three texts in… you’re just makin’ shit up now! This little faggot ain’t worth –”

Woody doesn’t even flinch. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” he snaps. “And who the fuck do you think told me?”

Al doesn’t get a chance to guess. He doesn’t have to. Woody moves to the side, and from behind him — parting the crowd without touching them, striding forward like a warrior arriving on a battlefield — Sweetie Belle appears, face dry and hard as stone, phone lit up in her manicured hand. She lifts it higher and shows off the screen, so everyone in the room can see the wall of text-message boxes without any replies between them.

“Of course,” Al mutters. “Fucking bitch.”

“Keep talking,” Sweetie Belle seethes. “Make this as bad for you as you fucking deserve.”

“Fuck you,” he seethes right back, spit spraying from his bared teeth. The game is over — and he’s folding. “You’ve got nothing. You can’t prove shit. And even if you could, I’d fucking bury you. I’ll own you, you fucking cunt! Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Sweetie Belle glances past him, then cocks her head and smiles. “I think I’m someone who looks good on camera,” she says. “Too bad you don’t.”

Al follows her glance back over his shoulder. Crescent’s holding his phone up sideways in front of his face, camera lens pointed right at Al’s nose.

“Aaaaaand… cut,” Crescent says, tapping his screen with a finger and then looking Al’s way with a shit-eating grin. “A/V Club, motherfucker. I’m about this shit.”

Al’s nostrils flare, and his eyes level back on me — dilated, twitching, boiling over with rage. He’s lost, and he knows it, and everyone else does too. I can see Mandarin’s face crumpled into a scowl, and Sloop’s, and behind them both Case’s as well, getting bigger as he maneuvers forward through the throng. Behind me, I catch a glimpse of Source too: face flushed and fists clenched, looking like he wants to pull me away from Al so he can have a go at him himself.

But he’ll have to wait his turn, because I’m not quite done yet. I can’t help myself. I’m an actor, right? And this is my big final victory scene. I even know exactly what to say, how to really rub this in in a way that Al can’t do anything about, except stand there and ball his fists and angle his body to the side in an odd way, like he wants to turn around and run but stopped himself at the last second. It’s not important. Victory speech time.

“You know what’s gonna happen next?” I say. “You lmao we're doing the spoiler-text-means-blackout thing again but this time I don't feel like looking up the Bee Movie script so I'm just gonna keysmash until the story starts again ;lihsadig;ubepf9iugbvhqpeiurcnwqcipo'wijvoushdpvbfnwac;efoiahbsdkfvanjhifvuschiugsbdvfkubsHCKNFZKDBSXFkljgf;kuhsdifluhwekfjhvabkdhsfkljashbklnSO:Idhlkasjdnvbkjznscf;jkzhsbbkjvznksxjfhk.SJNDf;kUSHDvfbd;ofncskdjghvb;ozvMODIfjoenirc3qp98tyvabushybepiuchnaiweuhrvkaufshg;balksbhd;uawyfbva;odiwjfv;oqiwjbefpoishdfoubhawwoavowrivonWWUEROUYWVOBEYISURYGBVVERa'lskdjgfoiqjwfuhwqeir7hvbiygfiauwherto;ih;e;foguheuhdfglkjhsdfghsodhfg;oiudhfgkjh okay that feels like long enough against the ground and my head’s spinning.

Wait, why is my head spinning and on the ground?

Why am I wet?

I lift my head up from the ground it’s on. It’s the floor of the KNZ house. There’s a plastic red cup on the floor next to me — a bit of beer dribbling out of it. The rest is on me, soaked into my shirt and splattered on my face. It’s cold. My head hurts. Mostly my face, actually.

Fuck, why does my face hurt so much?

It’s loud. Everyone’s yelling. Sweetie Belle is all over Al, screaming and shoving. Source is pulling her back. Case is between them all, pushing Al too, pointing behind him, past Al’s twisted, shouting face. It’s so goddamn loud. It’s making my head hurt more — making all the lights blurry and brighter.

Someone’s crouching next to me. Two people, I think, grab my shoulders and pull them up off the floor. I’m sitting up now. I don’t remember how I got down here.

I was standing up a second ago, and now I’m on the floor, and everyone’s yelling at Al, who I was just talking to a few seconds ago. I can’t see him anymore. I can still hear the yelling. It’s making my head throb, like someone’s pounding their fist into my brain — punching me.

Did I get punched?

I touch my fingers to my face. Pain blooms all across it — stabs into my eye. I can’t see out of the left one. I’m squinting at everything through the other. That’s probably not good. I should probably get up.

I move my arms, and the floor moves with me — shudders and tilts at an angle that makes my stomach churn. The hands on my shoulders push down on me. Their owners are talking. The voices sound far away, like I’m at the bottom of a lake and they’re yelling up on the surface.

I try to swim up — sit back down again. My head’s prickling and pulsing. Being sucker-punched sucks.

Wait. Wait a second. Alkaline punched me. I beat him, and then he sucker-punched me. He’s such a dick. I gotta tell him that.

But there are more hands on me now — someone else crouching in front of me. I look up and see Sweetie Belle’s face. I smile. It hurts. She’s so pretty. I should tell her that.

“... hear me? Button, can you…”

That’s her voice. I can hear her. I’m gonna tell her that.

“Y-Yep,” I say. My tongue feels swollen — like that’s where Al punched me instead of my face. Where is he, anyway? He was here a second ago. I wanna tell him he’s a dick. “I’m… hi.”

“Oh my God,” she mutters. “Are you dizzy? Do you remember what happened?”

I don’t, actually. I feel like I shouldn’t tell her that. She looks really worried.

“I remember everything and I’m perfectly fine, and also you’re extremely pretty,” I tell her. Except those words only happen in my brain, and what comes out of my mouth is, “I, uh… ow.” She doesn’t look like she understood what I meant.

“Help me,” she says — not to me. She’s talking over my shoulder, at whoever’s hands are on it “Help me get him up.”

The hands move into my armpits — tug me onto my feet. I’m really dizzy. I almost fall over, but Sweetie Belle catches me. She’s really soft — soft and pretty. I hugged her last night. She was soft and pretty then too.

“Should we –”

“I got him.” The second voice is Sweetie Belle’s. The first was Woody’s, or maybe Crescent’s. “Find Source, tell him I took Button home.”

“You sure?” Crescent again — no, definitely Woody. “We can –”

“I’ve got him.” She kind of growled that time. I can feel her voice vibrate against the top of my head, off-rhythm with the pounding inside it. And then my feet are moving, because she’s moving and taking me with her. She smells really nice too.

Not that I’m smelling her or anything. That’d be creepy. I’m not creepy. Just dizzy, and my face hurts, and cold air’s hitting my hot face so I guess we’re outside now.

It’s quiet on the street. All I can hear is our feet shuffling and Sweetie Belle’s heavy breathing. I’m heavy. I shouldn’t be leaning on her so hard. I lift my head and find my feet and put one of them in front of the other. I’m still leaning on her, but not as hard now.

“Can you walk?” she asks.

“Mm-hmm,” I hum, and then I actually say some words back to her. “I’m good. I gotta… rush. Go to rush.”

“No, you’re done,” she says, tugging hard on my shoulder. I keep walking with her, even though I’m pretty sure rush is the other way. “Rush is done. Fuck rush.”

I’m getting closer to the water’s surface — seeing memories refract in the world above it. “But… you told me to rush,” I mumble.

“I told you to –”

She stops talking — keeps walking. I guess rush is over, then. I hope I did good. I wonder where the “home” is she’s taking me to.

God, she’s so fucking pretty.

Chapter 14: Beautiful Strangers

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It turns out “home” is just our dorm, which I guess I should’ve expected. Not like we were gonna walk all the way back to our hometown, where we went to school together and hung out and never even once had our arms around each other like this, so close I can feel her heartbeat hammering against my ribs. Maybe it’s because I never got sucker-punched by a guy who was basically stalking her before. Guess it was for the best, if that was one of the requirements.

My head’s still foggy when we reach the dorm’s front doors, but I feel better now than I did on the KNZ house’s floor. Less like throwing up, at least, and also less likely to eat shit walking up stairs. Which is good, because that’s exactly where Sweetie Belle leads me, striding right past the lounge I was hanging out in one week ago minus one day.

There are two guys I don’t know sitting over there now, staring at us both as we pass. I try to wink at them, but since my left eye’s swollen shut right now it kind of just looks like blinking. Oh well. Hope they got the message: keep hanging out there, guys. You might meet a pretty girl and end up just like me!

On second thought, maybe it’s better if they didn’t get the message.

We’re upstairs before I get a chance to check anyway — actually, up just one flight of stairs. This is Sweetie Belle’s floor, not mine, and her room she’s steering me towards. I guess that makes sense. I know exactly how hard it is to lug a semi-conscious person all the way up to my room.

“Sit,” she orders me once she gets her door unlocked. She’s pointing at her bed. It’s made up now, nice and neat, not rumpled like it was when I was here earlier. I follow her command and perch on her mattress, bracing my hands on either side of me so I don’t fall over.

“Stay here,” she says next, before she hurries back out the door and lets it slam shut behind her. I’m alone. She said her roommate’s gone for the weekend. It’s kind of cold in here.

Oh God, my shirt’s still soaked, and clammy and gross against my chest. I’m halfway through unbuttoning it before I remember where I am. It’d probably be rude to take my shirt off while Sweetie Belle’s gone. I should at least tell her she’s pretty first.

Before I can start rebuttoning, Sweetie Belle charges back in. She’s holding something lumpy and wrapped in a bunch of paper towels, and she thrusts it towards me once she’s in arm’s reach.

“Put this on your eye,” she says.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s…” she starts to say. Then she thinks better of it. Then she says it anyway. “It’s frozen broccoli. Because the icemaker’s broken, and there weren’t any… just put it on your face.”

I take the lump in one hand and press it to my face. It’s kind of pokey, and obviously freezing cold, but after a few seconds the throbbing over my eye isn’t quite as bad. “Thanks,” I tell Sweetie Belle as she sits on her bed next to me.

“Sure,” she says bluntly. She was looking at me for a second, like she was checking to make sure I’m doing sucker-punch-first-aid right, but now she’s staring at the opposite wall with her hands braced against her knees, bunching the fabric of her dress.

“You okay?” I ask her.

“I’m fine,” she answers, in the same terse tone. She’s not okay. I think she’s mad at me.

“Are you mad at me?” I ask next.

“No,” she says, in a way that means “yes.” I don’t really know what she’s mad at me for. I feel like I should try to find out.

“So –”

“I told you to let it go.” Her eyes are squeezed shut. She’s shaking a bit — fists clenched in her lap. “To just move on. And instead you make a big fucking thing of it, and you send Woody after me, and you start a fight with Alkaline like a fucking idiot even though I told you who he was and you didn’t listen. Because you have to be a…”

She grits her teeth and cuts herself off. She’s still shaking. I reach for her hand, and she jerks it away.

“What is wrong with you?” she snaps. “Why do you just do things without thinking? Even when people tell you not to, you do it anyway. Because you think everything’s just gonna work out somehow, and it doesn’t, Button! People get hurt! You get…”

Her voice cracks. She grits her teeth again and looks away — lifts the hand she jerked away from me and wipes both her eyes with it. I don’t know what to think about that. Thinking’s kind of hard right now. I might have a concussion.

“I, um… didn’t send Woody after you,” I mumble after a few seconds. “He kinda did that himself.” She doesn’t say anything, so I add a question that’s been floating around in the stars filling my mind. “What did he say to you?”

She lets out a scoff that’s halfway to being a sour laugh. “You want to know what he did? He blackmailed me. Said he was gonna report Al to the school, tell them all about me and him, get the whole KNZ chapter shut down unless I came back with him and… helped him help you be a fucking idiot.”

Sweetie Belle doesn’t see my eyebrows rise. No wonder Woody didn’t tell me what he was planning on doing. I definitely would’ve stopped him. He was being an even bigger idiot than I was — and even braver than I thought either of us could be.

“Because you were gonna ‘do the right thing’ no matter what,” she goes on, her voice low and bitter again. “And you needed all of us. Him and Crescent and… me, for some reason. And…”

He said something else — I can hear it through the hitch in her voice. But she doesn’t want to say it. She didn’t believe him when he said it.

“And I came back,” she finishes. “And now you probably have a concussion. Hope it was worth it.”

She stares at the floor, and I stare at her. There’s something weird about all this, and I can’t figure out what. It’s not what she said, or how she said it, or the way she looked while she was talking. It’s not her at all — and at the same time, it’s entirely her, barely six inches away from me, close enough that I can smell her flowery perfume and feel the heat of her body. Nothing’s different, but somehow everything’s changed.

“Keep pressure on it.”

She reaches over and presses her palm over my hand, making sure the bumpy broccoli bag covers my swollen eye completely — and I let her do it. I don’t twitch away, or feel my heart start racing in my chest, or forget how to breathe just because she’s leaned in so close to me I can hear a tiny, shaky sigh slip out of her nose. And that’s when I figure out what’s different — what’s changed — what’s always been exactly the same.

I’m not afraid of her anymore.

I’ve been terrified of her all week — of the picture-perfect Sweetie Belle in my head, the one I wasn’t good enough for and could never do enough to deserve, who I had to lie to just so she’d let me keep pretending to be friends with her. But I’ve done so much other scary shit this week, and I survived all of it, and I can’t overthink any of it right now because my brain’s not working right.

So instead of feeling scared, I just feel tired. I’m tired of dancing around what I’ve really wanted to say, of believing that what I did somehow wasn’t who I actually was — of being just about the only person on campus who doesn’t like me.

And when I look at her now — just sit next to her and really look at her — I feel like I can see right through her: past the whorls of hair framing her face that she spent half an hour shaping in a grungy hall bathroom mirror, and the mascara thickened by something she’s trying hard to keep stoppered up beneath it, and the way her whole face softens with concern and makes the whole world go silent around her. She looks pretty because every part of her is beautiful, but all she ever hears is the first part — not just from other people, but from the voice in her head that sounds like the whole world talking at once, that flutters around her in swirling rainbow auras and rings distantly in my ears like a happy memory of the belle of every ball.

I definitely have a concussion.

Doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though.

And now Sweetie Belle’s upset over how stupid I was and how I didn’t listen to her, and I do feel bad about that and I should do something to make up for it. But I’m not scared to do it. I’m not just thinking about it. I’m just gonna keep doing what feels right.

“I’m sorry,” I say first. “You’re right. You told me not to get involved, and I didn’t listen. I thought I could fix everything for you, and I didn’t think about whether you wanted or needed anyone to do that. I hurt you too. And I’m sorry.”

An odd expression fills Sweetie Belle’s face — a mix of lots of emotions, the most visible one being surprise. She genuinely didn’t expect me to say that. I’m not sure I did either.

“You didn’t… hurt me,” she mutters. “I mean, not like… I guess you did the right thing. I was being a coward. Again.”

“You’re not a coward,” I tell her. She screws her face up. There’s only one emotion on it now.

“I’m a fucking coward, Button,” she says, disgust laced through every word. “I am so… fucking scared, all of the time. I try so hard every day to make everyone like me and just feel fucking normal, and all the assholes in the world just do whatever they want anyway, because the world’s their fucking game and they always win. They hurt me, and people I care about, no matter what I do. Because I'm just a..."

No, actually, it isn’t disgust. She’s angry, furious, glowing inside and out with rage — because she used to have an identity and things used to be so simple, and now she doesn’t know who she is or what she’s supposed to do, and everything feels wrong for reasons she can't explain. And it has to be somebody’s fault, and there’s only one person who ever comes up when she thinks about whose fault it must be. No matter what she does. No matter how hard she tries.

It feels familiar, because it is. It feels wrong, because I know what’s right.

I put the broccoli bag down next to me and reach for her hand again. She twitches like she’s going to move away, and I grab hold of her fingers before she can — turn her hand over and press my palm into hers.

“You are so much more than what you do for other people,” I say.

She faces me, eyes wide, lips parted and trembling. She doesn’t know what to say. I don’t either — so I don’t think about it, and just tell her how I feel.

“Since I first met you, you’ve had this fire in you. Since we were little kids, I’ve never seen you be anything but selfless and convicted, never seen you quit on anything or anyone except for one person.”

She grimaces and mutters, “You.” I shake my head and correct her.

“You. You never put yourself first. Part of you thinks you don’t deserve it, that you haven’t earned it, but you don’t need to. You do deserve it, because when you talk to people I know what you’re really doing is looking for a chance to listen, because you’re kind all the way through you in a way most people have to lie about. No matter what you do or don't do, that's who you are. It’s what the whole world should tell you every single day.”

“Stop,” Sweetie Belle mumbles. Her hand’s squeezing mine. Her eyes are squeezed shut. “Just…”

I shake my head again. There’s a lightness in my chest now to match my head. I push past it and keep talking. “It’s what I should’ve told you years ago, every day we were friends. Every day now that we are again. I admire you so much, and it doesn’t matter if you’re not sure who to be right now because I can’t wait to find out who you’re going to become. And I want to help you become her.” My mouth twitches. I’m smiling. “I like to help. I’m a helper.”

Sweetie Belle opens her eyes. They’re shining in the light, swimming in the air between us, dripping down her face and leaving dark tracks of mascara in their wake. “Don’t say that,” she whispers. “People judge me. They’ll judge you too.”

“I’ll talk ‘em out of it,” I tell her. “I’m good at that.”

“I’ll just mess things up…”

“I probably will too.”

She leans closer, face crumpling under weight she’s about to be unable to bear. “I’m not…”

“You are,” I say, “and I am too. We’re fucked up, and stupid, and we don’t know what we’re doing or who we are or who we’re supposed to be. But for the first time in my life, I know who I want to be. And what I want to do.”

She doesn’t look away. She looks like the girl I hugged outside a crowded coffee house — the kid I spent hours with inside made-up worlds that felt completely real — the friend I trust more than anyone else in the universe. She looks perfect. She looks like the biggest chance I’ll ever take in my life.

“Then do it,” she says softly, sweetly — shaking with fear, shining with something I hope to God is hope. “Do what you want.”

“Okay,” I say. Then I let go of her hand, and I lift my fingers to her cheek, and I hold them there and pull her towards me and lean forward so I can meet her halfway.

And I kiss her.

Her lips are hard at first — damp with salty tears, pulled against her teeth in surprise — and then they soften, melting into mine, turning with her head as she angles it into my hand. I’m sure the rest of my body is still there, but right now I can’t feel it. I can’t feel anything but heat — tingling through my cheeks, burning under my fingertips, roaring in my core like a space shuttle engine lifting me off her bed and up into the stars twinkling behind my eyelids.

And then I pull back, take a breath, open my eyes and still that hers are still closed. She doesn’t move. My hand is still on her face. I can’t read her expression — and I come crashing back to Earth, every thought obliterated, fiery confidence collapsing into freezing-cold terror.

“U-Um,” I mumble after managing to swallow on my third attempt. My throat’s dry again. My whole mouth is, actually. “Did I read that wrong, or…”

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to. A tiny noise escapes her throat — a groan, almost a whimper — and she surges towards me, grabs my head with both hands, laces her fingers through my hair and crashes her lips back against mine, so hard I almost bite my tongue, hard enough that I actually do fall over on my back. My head misses her bed frame by less than four inches. I grunt in pain anyway.

“Face,” I say once she pulls back, her eyes wide with concern. I gesture up at my own swollen eye. “Face hurts.”

“Sorry,” she sighs. Her breaths come in ragged gasps. Mine aren’t much steadier. “You okay? Was that…”

Instead of talking, I lift my hand up, press it to her cheek, and slide it around to the back of her head. I don’t really know if this is how you’re supposed to do a first kiss, but I’d really like to find out, and Sweetie Belle doesn’t seem to mind. She leans down — shifts towards me, on top of me — and then her hair and her lips are all around and all over me.

Her hands drop to my stomach, undoing the last few buttons on my shirt and peeling the whole thing off of me once it’s fully open. Then she’s holding my head again, fingers light on my scalp, palm angled a bit so it doesn’t hit the bruise forming around my eye. It still stings a bit. I don’t care. All I care about is how soft her lips are against mine, how warm her body is and how mine tingles every time and in every place we touch together, how her breath tickles against my cheek and how all of me thrills at every happy little sound she makes.

I roll onto my side, and Sweetie Belle comes with me, nestling into my chest and letting her arms fall over my shoulders, tugging me closer and twisting so my hands can slide over her wrinkling dress and settle into the small of her back. And then we roll again, and I’m overtop of her — hands braced by her shoulders, kissing her faster, pulse rocketing higher every time a squeak from her throat grows into a blissful groan.

I’m dizzy. I’m delirious. This is everything I ever wanted, and she wants it too, and we both want to…

To, uh…

My eyes pop open. I pull my lips away from hers. She looks up at me — face flushed and eyes sparkling — as I look down at her, and feel her hands around my back and her thighs pressed to my hips and both of us pressed together between them. She’s warm — hot. Holy shit, this is so hot.

And I’m…

I could…

Just a little further, and…

“Um…”

It’s not a word that leaves my throat, barely even a meaningful grunt. It’s just air leaving my lungs, shaped into a question I’ve thought about almost every day and never once figured out how to actually ask.

“Yeah?” Sweetie Belle says, lips curling into a grin, rubbing her fingers along my back — pulling me closer. This is happening. This is really happening. And instead of making it happen, I’m just…

“So…” I say — face and arms burning, voice pitched high with something I’d love to call anything but terror. “You know how I said I didn’t know what I was doing?”

“Yeaaaah?”

“Uuuuuh…” I pull my lips tight — bite on the bottom one until I can work up the courage to force more words past it. “That’s it. Just… fair warning, I guess.”

“Do you want to?”

I blink, take a breath, and look her in the eyes. She props herself up a bit — moves one of her hands up to my cheek to make sure I don’t look away.

“I’m serious,” she says, softly and sweetly. “We don’t have to.”

She really means that, and she means what she’s thinking beneath it: I’m not going anywhere. You’ve done more than enough. We can stop right now and it wouldn’t change a thing between us. And I believe her. I really do. But there’s something else in her eyes right now besides affection — just a hint of something I saw there earlier today, that I never want to see in her ever again.

“Do you want to?” I ask, rushing to get the words out before my brain can yank them back inside my lungs — before I can talk my way out of losing my virginity while I’m literally between the legs of the girl I’ve dreamed of losing it to. “Because I want to, but I… I want you to want to. To… be happy. Does that make sense? It doesn’t make sense. Never mind. I’m just…”

Sweetie Belle smiles — really, deeply, truly smiles. People use that word a lot, for little twitches of the lips and rib-cracking laughter and everything in between, but this is what the word is meant for: something that starts in your chest and spreads through your body and pushes out onto your face because you can’t possibly keep it in any longer.

I was right about what I saw. There was a little part of her that wasn’t sure about this — that couldn’t stop thinking about how badly this went the last time — and I’m sure it was there before because it’s completely gone now. There’s nothing in her eyes now but trust, and confidence, and the kind of happiness that we haven’t made up a word strong enough for yet.

And beneath all that, bubbling to the surface, swelling and surging and scorchingly hot…

“You’re adorable,” she murmurs, leaning up off the bed, pressing her lips to mine and holding them there until I kiss her back. Then she leans up a bit further, pecks me once on the neck, and squeezes me — with her hands, and her arms, and her silk-smooth thighs — as she whispers into my ear.

“And I want to.”

I’m not completely sure what happens next, but I know for sure where I end up: flat on my back, Sweetie Belle straddling my waist and fiddling with a tiny zipper on the side of her dress that I hadn’t seen before. She gets it undone, and I see a flash of silvery fabric underneath it — and then I forget about it entirely, because she’s lifted both her arms and pulled her dress up and over her head and completely off with them.

She drops the dress in a bunched-up pile on the floor, next to where the broccoli bag fell at some point. Then she plants her hands on my chest, grinning down at me, almost every part of her bare and beautiful and bouncing slightly with each tiny twitch of her hips. She’s perfect. This is perfect. And what happens after that is…

Honestly? It’s not perfect. It’s actually kind of awkward, and I mess up a couple times, and once we almost eat absolute shit on the floor because twin beds are really not made for two people no matter how close they get to each other.

But we make it work. We do what we want. And all things considered, it’s still the best night of my entire life.

Chapter 15: Justice in the End

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Fun fact: being mildly concussed makes you have really weird dreams. And I don’t mind “weird” in the movie way where everything has a deeper meaning and you snap awake afterwards with your head full of foreshadowing. I mean I was on a boat trying to play volleyball with a deflated football, and then for a while I was the boat, and then suddenly I was realizing I’d forgotten to do any homework for all of fifth grade, which I’d been re-enrolled in as an eighteen-year-old for some reason. Good luck figuring out what the metaphor is inside that.

On the other hand, I guess there’s something to the theory that dreams are your brain cleaning out all your scrambled thoughts, because when I blink my way out of my elementary school principal’s office, my head only twinges a bit instead of hurting like it did last night. The sunlight streaming through the window is still really bright, though. And my face is still sore.

And I’m not alone.

Sweetie Belle is on her side facing the wall, hair strewn all over her pillow and streaming down her bare upper back, shoulder gently rising and falling with each soft unconscious breath. I can feel her body heat layered over my own, and it sends memories of last night flash-flooding through me, spawning butterflies in my gut and tingles through my fingers and toes and most other parts of me.

That really happened. I can still almost feel it happening — feel every sensation pressed into my skin and pulsing inside my chest. It’s exhilarating, and terrifying, and… actually, kind of stuffy too. The heat’s kicked on in the dorm building, and Sweetie’s body is like a furnace next to mine.

Slowly, carefully, I try to lift the comforter off of me and cool myself off a bit, but I’m not careful enough. Sweetie groans, and rolls over, and throws her wonderfully warm arm over my chest as her hair brushes against my neck and her head tucks up under my chin.

Never mind. This is great, actually. I’d like to be hot and crowded and uncomfortable like this forever, please.

“Morning,” I murmur down to her, wiggling a bit so I can wedge my arm under and around her. She politely wiggles with me, trying to help things along. Once my hand’s finally settled onto her shoulder, she lets out a satisfied sigh and presses herself closer to me. I can finally say this with first-hand knowledge: hearing that sound from her is just about better than sex.

“Mmm-ing,” she mumbles.

“You sleep okay?” I ask her.

“Mm-hmm,” she hums into my chest.

And then we just lie together for a bit, two furnaces combined into an inferno in a stiflingly hot dorm room, until the urge growing in my chest evolves into a compulsion. I tilt my head, find her messy bangs with my lips, and kiss her once on the forehead. With another happy noise, she scooches up my body and kisses me back, lips warm and silk-soft against mine, nothing else between us but a bit of silvery fabric somewhere around my hip.

On second thought, maybe this isn’t better than sex. I should double-check at some point. Hopefully some point really soon.

I shift onto my side and face her, sliding my free arm into the little dip between her ribs and hip. Behind her hair, her eyes dart towards one of my eyes in particular.

“How do I look?” I ask.

“Like you got in a bar fight,” she replies, smirking.

I wink my bad eye a couple times, and cringe as it twinges again. “I think the bar won,” I grunt, and the way her smirk blossoms into a giggle makes the pain go away as if it was never there to begin with. Then her eyes fall shut, her lips touch mine again, and I can feel every inch of her — the heat pulsating out of her. A few more seconds of this, and “really soon” is gonna become “right the fuck now.”

But right at the line between what we were doing and what it feels like we both want, she pulls away again, settling into her pillow and brushing her fingers gently through the hair above my ear. It feels really nice — like I said, almost better. So I settle down too and let her keep doing it, hopefully encouraging her with a smile I couldn’t bend off my face even if I wanted to.

“Woody was right, wasn’t he?” she murmurs after a few moments.

She seems pensive now, looking right at me but also a little bit through me — back at a memory from last night. A hunch I had a few hours ago flutters back to the front of my mind again.

“He said something else to you,” I guess. “Last night. To get you to come back.”

Sweetie Belle nods. Her eyes flick down to my chest, and stay there as her hand slides down my side and comes to rest above my hip. Woody did say something else. She’s trying to decide whether she’s up for repeating it out loud.

“He told me to stop fucking things up for both of us,” she finally says. “Stop acting like I was a burden on you, and not… not the real reason for everything. Why you were rushing, being so brave… why you were so happy this week. And if I made you choose between me and the frat, you’d choose me, and I was being stupid if I thought you wouldn’t.”

That sounds like Woody, all right: heartfelt, earnest, and really not phrased as well as it could’ve been. “He’s not the best with words sometimes,” I admit.

“No,” Sweetie Belle chuckles. “But…”

“He was right,” I tell her, and I make sure she knows I mean it by sealing it with a kiss she happily accepts. “I would have. And it was you.”

And it was me for her too. I can see it in the way her eyes soften — feel it in how she spreads her fingers across my side and then squeezes with all of them at once. Another hunch I was right about: I absolutely could’ve kissed her two days ago, and we probably could’ve done all this two days earlier. At least I made up for it in the end.

“I was being stupid, though,” she says. “Yesterday, when you said you wanted to be friends, I thought…”

I wanted to be friends again, I told her yesterday — when I thought that was all she wanted from me was a convenient acquaintance. If she was being stupid, I don’t even want to think about what I was being.

“I’m not the best with words sometimes either,” I say. She smiles, and sighs, and leans in closer.

“You’re better than you think,” she whispers, right before her lips land on mine again. Her grip on my hips is insistent, not squeezing anymore so much as pulling, and the moment my lips part enough to let her do it, she pokes her tongue between them, drawing me deeper and closer and almost over the edge before we even really begin.

This time, though, I’m the one who pulls away right before we go too far to turn back. Not I really want to turn back — actually, part of me is pissed that I did. But there’s something I need to say first, a question I’ve needed an answer to for days and probably years.

“Hey, um…” is what I say first. Just awesome with words, seriously. But Sweetie Belle doesn’t interrupt me. She lets me keep searching for the right way to phrase this. “I was wondering, uh… y’know, with everything that’s happened, if we could… if you’d be okay with, or interested, I guess, in…”

I sigh, and shift a bit in place, and see her eyes twinkling as she tries not to laugh. Fuck finding the right words. I’m just gonna say it.

“Do you wanna go out with me?” I ask her. “Like… formally?”

Her eyebrows twitch up, matching the corners of her mouth. “I don’t feel very formal right now,” she muses, brushing her fingernails across my chest.

“You know what I mean,” I say. “I just… I’d like it if this wasn’t a one-time thing.”

Her hand settles on my chin. She glances down under the covers, eyes sweeping along both our bodies. “This part of this?” she jokes.

I smile, but I’m not joking. “All of it,” I murmur, leaning into her hand, angling my head so my lips press into her palm. “All of you.”

She’s still smirking, but it looks more like a regular smile now — one she couldn’t bend off her face even if she wanted to. “Would it help if I said it out loud?” she whispers.

“Yeah,” I whisper back. “It would.”

She strokes her fingers along my cheek, then latches them around my neck. “Then yes,” she says, kissing me softly, sweetly, longingly between sentences. “I’d like that a lot.”

I kiss her back — gently at first, then deeper, harder, until she’s on her back again and I’m propped up overtop of her with her comforter sliding off my back into a pile under one of my hands. I lift the other hand up so I can run my fingers through her hair, then trail them down her neck, then across her collarbone and up the slope of her chest so I can wrap them around her –

Someone’s phone buzzes on the bedside table. I glance over and see that it’s mine — and that the notification on the screen is from a number I recognize.

“Who is it?” Sweetie Belle asks – face and neck flushed, nails digging into impatiently my back. All I can see right now is the first few words of the message preview: Hey Button, this is Case…

“It’s Case,” I tell her. “Probably some frat stuff.”

Her eyes flick over towards her dorm room’s door, then settle back on me — sparkling, sultry, searingly hot. “You can go if you have somewhere else to be,” she says, implication dripping from every languid word.

I claw my fingers, squeeze, and murmur back, “I absolutely fucking don’t.” She grins up at me and tugs me down onto her.

After that, we don’t talk much. We’ve said everything we need to — and actions speak louder than words anyway.

===

Sometime around noon-ish, we both realize we’re starving, and also that we’re running low on some fairly crucial supplies that the Student Health Center next to the dining hall likely has more of. We don’t leave right away, though — Sweetie Belle wants to freshen up first, I agree that I could use a shower too, and then the parting kiss I coax out of her in her doorway turns pretty quickly into us running out of supplies entirely. I don’t think she minded too much, though. And technically, she was the one who dragged me back into her room.

Eventually, though, I make it upstairs to my room, where the bug-eyed look on Bit’s face gives me my first clue about how I really look right now. My second clue is what I see in the hall bathroom’s mirror on my way into a shower stall: a plum-sized, grape-colored bruise around my left eye, paired with rumpled hair and a punch-drunk glow in my cheeks. I do look like I got in a bar fight — and then had sex with half the bar afterwards. Which I guess is sort of what actually happened. Wouldn’t be as good of a story, though.

Sweetie Belle’s still not ready by the time I’m cleaned up, but the morning sun’s bright and warm enough that I decide to wait for her outside. As I push through the dorm’s front doors, the chill of the wintery air clears my mind enough that I remember the text I got earlier from Case. Once I find a bench in the courtyard to sit on, I pull it the message up on my phone and start reading:

Hey Button, this is Case. First and foremost, I want to apologize to you on behalf of the entire chapter for what happened last night. What Alkaline did to both Sweetie and you is completely unacceptable and completely against what we stand for as an organization, and based on that and on previous offenses he’s already been warned about, the other executive officers and I have decided to begin the process of expelling Alkaline from the fraternity. It won’t happen overnight since there are some procedural hoops to jump through, but for all effective purposes, yesterday was his last day as a KNZ brother. If either of you want to take any further action beyond that, we’ll support you as much as we’re able to as well.

I scan the first paragraph twice without figuring out either time how to feel about it. I would’ve thought I’d feel triumphant, and it sounds like Alkaline really did have this coming, but it also doesn’t feel like something worth celebrating. It just sucks that it came to this, that Al let his own bullshit ruin something that — for better or worse — he seemed to really care about.

I swipe up with my thumb and keep reading:

On a personal note, I wanted to tell you that I’ve really enjoyed having you as a rush this semester, and you’ve got a really bright future ahead of you no matter what happens with the bidding vote later this morning. The courage and character you’ve shown this week should be more than enough for a bid under normal circumstances, but trust me when I say that there are a LOT of politics playing into this process, and that’s not something you could have done or should have had to do anything to change. Regardless of today’s outcome, you’re welcome at KNZ events any time while I’m president.

Man, he really is a PoliSci major. And that really was a lot of big political words he just used to avoid saying one thing in particular, which he also doesn’t say in the last and shortest paragraph:

Let me know if you have any questions or if you want to discuss any more of this in person. I’m sure Source will check in with you at some point too, if he hasn’t already.

I already know Source hasn’t, but I double-check my text messages just to be sure. I suppose he’s busy with the vote too — which, now that I think about it, is probably over by now. And if it’s over, and I haven’t heard anything from Case or Source or even Woody and Crescent, I can’t think of many things that could mean other than what I can already feel is the truth.

I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised. And it’s not like I regret anything I did last night, or pretty much anything I did this past week. But knowing that doesn’t quite fill the hole that opens in my chest as the weight of what Case didn’t say — the bid I’m not going to get — sinks down into my gut.

I hear the creak of the dorm’s front door swing open behind me, and as Sweetie Belle walks over to me with her freshly blow-dried hair fluttering against the hood of her puffy purple coat, I stuff my phone in my pocket and force a smile onto my face. It’s not that hard to do, but it’s not as easy as it should be either.

“Sorry I took so long,” she says, her eyes flicking down towards the pocket my phone just disappeared into. “What’d Case say?”

“Just an apology,” I tell her. “About last night. They’re kicking Al out of the frat. Said they’ll support us if we want to get the cops involved.”

“Good,” Sweetie Belle says, firmly enough to make it clear that’s all she wants to say about this to me now or to anybody else later. “They decided on bids yet?”

I shrug, and try to smile again. I almost pull it off too, but I’m not sure anybody’s that good of an actor. She sits down on the bench next to me and grabs hold of my hand, leaning hard into me in the same motion.

“I mean, I don’t actually know,” I say — sort of to her, mostly to myself. “They might still be voting. But reading between the lines, y’know, it’s…”

She squeezes my hand. I squeeze back. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “That really sucks.”

“Yeah, well,” I reply through another shrug, “I don’t regret anything.”

“You shouldn’t.” She tugs on my hand a bit so I turn to face her — so she can kiss me better, her breath flitting over my jaw and her fingers lacing between mine.

And it works. I forget about the frat entirely. I just think about Sweetie Belle, and about everything I did this week that I never thought I could do, and how there’s still plenty I can do with all of that, especially so early in the semester. Maybe I can even get into that Computer Music class with — holy shit — my girlfriend, maybe help her with her homework and learn some tricks for my own trade.

“Hey, I should…” Sweetie starts to say next, before pausing for a moment so she can get her thoughts organized. “About earlier, what you said. I don’t know why I was being so weird about it. I really do want this. It’s just been a psychotic week, and I’ve been in such a weird place…”

“I haven’t been that much better,” I add.

“Okay, we’ve both been weird,” she agrees. “But I’d rather be weird with you than normal with anyone else. I want this… us to last, no matter what. Bid or no bid. Okay?”

I’m not acting now — this smile’s as honest as I’ve ever been. “I want this to last too,” I murmur. “Weirdness and all.” And when I kiss her, she kisses me back, and the world behind and in front of and all around us feels like it’s a million miles away.

For about five seconds.

“Well, that answers that question.”

I don’t jump this time, but Sweetie Belle does, letting out a startled squeak as her hand goes rigid in my grip. I guess I’m finally getting used to this particular trait of Source’s.

“Why do people always sneak up on me?” I growl up at him. He gives me a cheeky look back, hands flexing in a half-shrug from inside the pockets of his dark gray bomber jacket.

“‘Cause you think too much,” he shoots back. “Gotta learn how to not think. It’s the best part of college. Morning, Sweetie Belle.”

Out of breath and scarlet-faced, Sweetie Belle greets Source with a tight-lipped smile and nod. “That was my question, by the way,” Source goes on. “Whether you two were gonna… y’know.”

“It wasn’t that obvious,” I mutter.

“Yeaaaah, a nuke going off in the quad would’ve been less obvious. But if it helps, you make a disgustingly cute couple.” As my face flushes the same color as Sweetie’s, Source chucks me on the shoulder as he fills the free spot next to me on the bench. “Seriously, you look good together. I’m happy for you guys.”

“Then thanks, I guess,” I reply — and then a sigh blows out of me before I can stop it. This must be Source checking in with me. And even though I can’t quite read the expression on his face, I doubt I’m about to be surprised by what he says next.

“Man, Al got you good,” is how he begins, extracting a hand from his jacket so he can gesture at my face. “You hear from Case yet?”

“Yeah,” I tell him. “I heard.”

“How you feelin’ about it?”

I look at the ground instead of Source. Out of Source’s view, Sweetie Belle squeezes my hand. “I don’t know. Wish it hadn’t ended like this, but it is what it is.”

“Well, actions have consequences. Especially during rush. But for what it’s worth, you two are the ballsiest freshmen I’ve ever met. And I’m rush chair, y’know? I’ve met a lot of freshmen.”

“Thanks, man,” I say. This time, I use some of those balls I apparently have to look him in the eye. “I’m glad I came out. Even with how it ended.”

Before replying, Source squints at me for a second. “I think we’re all glad you came out, man,” he says. “Speaking of which, what exactly did Case say to you?”

I shrug. “Not much. Stuff about politics in the bidding vote, things I shouldn’t have to deal with. He didn’t really say anything, just kinda… hinted.”

Source’s lips pull tight across his teeth — then split into a grin as he laughs quietly to himself. Now it’s my turn to squint at him.

“Sorry,” he says once he composes himself. “Never mind. I’ll tell you later.”

Even though I know better, a little glimmer of hope flares to life in my chest. “So, uh… I’ll see you around, then?” I ask as nonchalantly as I can.

Source bites his lip for a second before answering, like he’s trying not to laugh again. “Yeah, I think we’ll see each other around,” he says as he stands up. “I better go now. Got some bids to hand out.”

And there goes that little glimmer — but Source doesn’t go with it. Actually, he just ambles a couple steps away from the bench, glancing at his phone as he does, seemingly in no rush to go anywhere at all. I guess I can fill the awkward silence if no one else is going to.

“How does that actually work?” I ask. “Handing out bids, I mean. Like, what actually happens?”

Source straightens up, slips his phone into his jacket, and slowly turns to face me. He’s wearing the biggest grin I’ve ever seen on his face.

“Button Mash,” he says, dragging out his words with deliberate, barely restrained glee. “I am so, so glad you’ve asked me that.”

I open my mouth to ask what the hell that’s supposed to mean, and then I realize both my hands are empty. Sweetie Belle’s gotten up too, edging away from the bench, smiling almost as wide as Source. Am I being pranked? Is this –

In an instant, I’m soaked, ice-cold water flooding over me from behind like someone opened a spigot right overtop of my head. Pure instinct sends me scrambling off the bench, screaming and swearing and squelching in my waterlogged socks — and then the sugary-sweet smell hits me, and the noise overwhelms me.

It’s not water — it’s Arctic Blue Alligade. And it came from a big orange five-gallon cooler that six KNZ brothers toss aside as they swarm around me and grab hold of my arms and legs. I’m airborne a second later, dangling helplessly from a dozen upraised arms whose owners are yelling and chanting like they just won the Super Bowl.

Teeth chattering and mind blank, I loll my head up — or really, have it lolled back for me — until Source’s upside-down face fills my blurry vision.

“Wha…” I mumble. “Whathefu…”

“Hey, you asked,” Source casually replies. “There’s your answer.”

The answer to what? What did I even ask, except…

Oh.

Oh shit.

“Oh shit,” I say.

“No shit,” Source corrects me. He slaps his hand down on my soggy shoulder and squeezes. “Welcome to KNZ, Wizard.”

I should be happy. I should be ecstatic — and I am. But also, holy shit I’m confused. “But… but Case…”

“Oh, did Case say some vague, terrifying shit that you had no idea how to interpret?” Source asks. He’s laughing again. “Trust me, you’re not the first person to be baffled by a Case text, and God help all of us, you will not be the last.”

“So… I got in?”

Source gives me a look that would make my face flush even if my head wasn’t upside-down. “Come on, man, you think anyone was siding with Al after the shit he pulled? It was unanimous. Even Woody didn’t manage that.”

“W-Wait,” I interrupt, trying to twist my head around so it’s sort of right-side-up. It doesn’t help that I’m shivering hard enough to almost slip out of everybody’s grip, because I’m soaked to the bone and it’s the middle of winter. “W-Woody’s in too?”

Source cocks his head back over his shoulder. “See for yourself.”

Once he steps to the side, I can see a van idling on the side of the road leading past my dorm. I catch a glimpse of Mandarin in the driver’s seat, and then of Sloop sliding the van’s side door open with a dramatic flourish. Woody’s face pops into view from inside, flanked by Crescent and a few other familiar faces from rush. They’re all soaked too, hunched under towels and looking a bit blue — or even bluer, in Crescent’s case — around the lips.

“Yeah, we’re here, Button, hooray,” Woody groans across the courtyard.

“Please put him in the van already, it’s so fucking cold,” Crescent pleads after him.

Source flashes them a thumbs-up, but the grin it’s paired with is really more of a grimace. “Yeah, this does work a lot better for fall rush,” he mutters before turning back around. “So how about it, Wizard? You gonna keep your brothers waiting?”

Every face turns to look at me, but there’s only one I want to see looking back right now — and I do. Sweetie Belle comes up to me, smiling the whole way, and stands on her toes so she can plant an upside-down kiss on my lips, warming me up from the inside out.

“Go,” she tells me, talking over exaggerated awws and one, “Ew, girls are gay!” from the guys holding me up. “Tell me how it goes later.”

I smile back, and keep smiling until the second thing she said actually sinks in. “What, how what goes?” I ask her — but Source is the one who answers.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” he says, dismissively waving his hand. “Just some pledging stuff. Real basic. Most people survive it.”

“What do you mean, survive it?”

“Source…” Sweetie Belle says, ignoring me in favor of leveling a severe stare at my new frat brother. “Don’t be mean to him.”

“Awww.” Source puts on an exaggerated pout. “Can I be a little mean to him?”

“Can you not?” I try to interject. “Is that an option?”

Sweetie Belle ignores me again, but only for a second while she’s pretending to think Source’s request over. Then she shrugs, glances my way, and gives me a positively devilish grin.

“Okay, you can be a little mean to him,” she tells Source.

“Oh, come on!” I shout — but it’s too late. Source pumps his fists and leads the crowd of KNZ brothers as they carry me off to the van, while my girlfriend just waves and watches them do it. It’s a good thing she’s cute. And funny. And still my favorite person in the world that I can’t wait to see again.

Assuming, of course, that I survive pledging. Which apparently only most people do.

In retrospect, I think as I’m bundled into the van and given a bottle of something that looks like sewer water and smells like rum, this all may have been a really, really bad idea.

Monophobia

by Aquaman

Chapter 1: Just Out Here Trying to Play

Chapter 2: Something I Can Say Is True

Chapter 3: Unplugged But Not Alone

Chapter 4: Careful What You Do to My Head

Chapter 5: Headed for the Stars

Chapter 6: The Mountains We Haven't Climbed

Chapter 7: A Pact With Pride

Chapter 8: Instead of Beating

Chapter 9: New Day, New Life

Chapter 10: Secrets in the Dark

Chapter 11: My Place Up High

Chapter 12: Maybe the Silence Is Dangerous

Chapter 13: All of It Now, Swallow It Down

Chapter 14: Beautiful Strangers

Chapter 15: Justice in the End