Page 4 of Man On

THREE YEARS LATER

The alarm blares, too loud and too close to my face. My hand swipes towards the bedside table, knocking my phone to the ground. Now I have to get up and search for it to make the fucking noise stop.

I guess I can't hit snooze again.

Well, I suppose I'm up now. I rub at my eyes absentmindedly, glaring down at my phone and groaning.

Shit, I'm going to be late.

A glance across the small cabin shows Lane's bed is empty.

He's probably been up for hours. It’s no surprise. He thinks he's so fucking perfect.

His bunk is, of course, expertly made, like we're cadets at a fucking military academy. His shoes are lined up neatly under his bed, and there isn't one speck of dust or clutter in sight. At least not on his half of the room. Lane all but drew a line across the room and threatened my life if I so much as stepped into his personal space. We'd both voiced our protests at being assigned as bunkmates, but the camp coordinators don't give a damn if we hate each other, as long as we don't repeat the fight that got us sent home when we were fourteen. And since the other camp counselors all got here before we did, thanks to Lane's honor society induction that I got dragged along to, we ended up being stuck together. Worse, we’re the only two in our four-person cabin, so there’s not even anyone to act as a buffer. I tried to get Miah to move to bunk with us, but his cabin is right across from the girls' cabin, so he’s not going anywhere.

Out of spite, because I hate the fucker, I step across the invisible divide and start moving his shit around, but only just enough to make him second guess if anything’s been moved. It’ll drive him crazy. I change the order of his shoes, scoot his stupid inspirational quotes calendar over a quarter of an inch, and move the bookmark in the book he's reading. Then, for good measure, I empty half of his bodywash down the drain. I consider jacking off into the bottle, but I don’t have time for it.

These little things will do for now. He'll know something's off. He’s too meticulous not to notice. But he won't be able to prove it.

Snickering, I make sure to squeeze the toothpaste in the middle of the tube when I brush my teeth. Even with all of that, I manage to wash the sleep from my eyes and get dressed just in time to make it to the mess hall.

Lane is standing at the head of the room, discussing plans with the other junior counselors like he's in charge. I don't know if it's his no-nonsense attitude—one that I attribute to the stick permanently embedded in his ass—or because, at seventeen, he's a head taller than nearly everyone in the room besides me. Whatever it is, people naturally fall in line whenever Lane is around. He suggests they jump, and they eagerly line up to show him how high they can lift their knees. It's not an exaggeration. I’ve seen that exact scenario play out on the soccer field with the campers this past week.

Fucking Lane Blakely has managed to one-up me in every aspect of our lives since the moment he crashed into my life. Especially after getting sent home early that first summer. It was like he had something to prove, or that he needed to make up for getting in trouble. He didn’t have to bother, everything was blamed on me. I’d promised to stick to him like glue, to help him meet people and make friends. It was an easy promise to make before I met the weirdo.

Before I met him, I was kind of looking forward to having a brother. How bad could it be having another guy my age around? I thought we'd play video games, share comic books, maybe gossip about how all the girls our age were growing boobs.

But he was so… rigid. Standoffish. Painfully strange.

My first warning should have been the lecture I got from my dad the day my stepmom went to collect her mysterious, long-lost son. He warned me that things would be a little different, starting with the new name we were to refer to him by. He wasn’t Isaiah anymore, he was Lane. I thought it was dumb, but I went along with it.

I shrugged it all off. Tried to be understanding. I get that the kid was sheltered. He was homeschooled by his super religious grandpa, who sounds like he was a dick. But come on, what fourteen-year-old boy doesn't watch TV or play video games? He'd never even had a soda before. I offered him a Coke, and he'd looked at me like I'd offered him a swig from a liquor bottle.

Back then, he was always looking at me like that. Everything I said, or wore, or thought, was either way too interesting or somehow offensive to him. By the time summer camp rolled around, I'd already endured weeks of his judgey bullshit and incessant staring, and I snapped.

My jaw clenches at the memory of the consequences of my immature prank. I didn't think he'd go along with it. There was no doubt in my mind that he'd run off crying or something. But he didn't. He let me do it. Let me kiss him. He let me part his mouth and lick his tongue. And he liked it. He really liked it.

I wouldn’t have said anything. No matter how much he annoyed me or how much my life had been fucked since he moved in, I wouldn’t have told a soul that he’d gotten so hard he’d busted in his pants. Hell, I’ve still never told a soul. I’m not that much of an asshole.

My own confused reaction to the kiss was enough to keep me quiet, even if I had been enough of an asshole to rat him out.

He’d taken advantage of my momentary lapse in sanity. I’d only wanted to push him to be the one to back out, but then he made the softest sound when I surprised him and licked into his mouth, and I think I wanted to keep going. For a tiny second I’d forgotten we were playing that sick game, that anyone was watching us. The kiss clouded my mind and made my brain react in a way it never had before.

Finding myself on my ass in the dirt was a rude awakening. The hatred in his eyes when he loomed over me and shouted was more hurtful than the embarrassment. Still reeling from the feelings that coursed through me during our kiss, I watched him stomp away. Obviously, I couldn’t just let him humiliate me like that. Once I got my bearings, I made a few sarcastic quips and got even the next day. He’d technically lost the bet by pushing me away and leaving, so I did exactly what I said I’d do. He lost the game, and the consequences were clear.

When he found the sign on his back, he snapped. In the middle of the camp picnic, with all the other kids and counselors and parents—including our own sitting right next to us—he punched me square in the face. It took two people to pull me off him, and another three to hold him back. On the drive home, our parents had to separate us. I rode up front with my father, who was so mad he didn't speak to me for the whole three-hour drive. And Lane rode in the back with his mother, refusing to talk to her about what happened.

She's babied him from the moment he moved in after his grandpa died. That much hasn’t changed in three years. I think it's because she feels guilty that she basically dumped him with his grandpa and ran after she had him. But whatever. He's an asshole. I would have left him, too.

I was a good son to her, but I was never enough to fill the void his absence left. He barely talks to her, and it makes her sad, but she still always takes his side. And my dad always takes her side.

I'm the odd man out.

The moment we arrived home after getting kicked out of camp that day, Lane and his mother went into my bedroom, the one we were supposed to share, and didn't come out for half an hour. When they emerged, her face was blotchy and tear stained, and then she and my dad helped move all Lane's stuff into the basement. I got a lecture about brotherly love and self-control, and Lane got the bedroom upgrade that was supposed to be mine when I turned sixteen. From that moment on, he was Mr. Perfect. He never stepped out of line or argued. He always helped keep the house clean, set the table before anyone could ask, and got straight A's. He charmed my friends on the first day of school, except for Miah, and got a late spot in my rec soccer league without a proper tryout simply because he's a damn giant that can kick a ball. Thank fuck he didn’t get put on the same team as me. Our rivalry was too heated to share anything.

"Dude, you need to take that death glare down a notch before you burn a hole in somebody." Miah's voice startles me, jolting me out of my self-loathing. His eyes trail over to where Lane is laughing at something one of the camp directors is saying, and I roll my eyes. Can't they see how fake he is? "Does he iron his t-shirts?" Miah asks, absentmindedly smoothing down the front of his matching dark red junior counselor jersey.

"I'm already over this summer," I groan, walking past the line of campers to fill our plates.

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