Page 11 of Dire Straights

“Well, you know, we’re all in this together,” Arie answered sagely.

“Yeah, yeah. Wildcats,” Maddox answered him flatly.

“What the heck are you guys even talking about?” I finally asked, completely lost.

“You haven’t seen High School Musical?” Maddox asked, sounding incredulous.

“Oh,” I realized. I kind of vaguely knew what it was, but I’d been more into stuff like anime and comic books. “Uh, no.”

“This guy’s hopeless,” Arie said to him, once again patting me on the shoulder. “I’m doing my best to introduce him to civilized society, but he makes it hard.”

Maddox’s eyes darted to where Arie’s hand was resting on my shoulder, narrowing a little. Maybe he thought it was weird that Arie was so touchy with me? Maybe he thoughtIwas weird for being okay with it?

“Well, anyway,” he said. “We have to work on our project.” He sat across from me at the table and set his bag on it, pushing it into Arie’s butt with just enough pressure that he had no choice but to slide off and stand on the floor.

“Well, excuse me,” Arie said, with a comically shocked look on his face. I could tell he wasn’t really mad, though. “I’ll just study over here and leave you guys to your super secret ultra important project, then.” He set up his laptop a couple seats away from us, opening it and putting earbuds in his ears.

“So… Hi,” I said. Now that the chaos of Arie’s introduction was over, it was too quiet.

“Hi,” he answered. It was funny, we’d just seen each other the night before. It’d barely been over 12 hours, but I’d still gotten excited to meet him again. I wasn’t totally sure why. I mean, I liked him and all but it’s not like we had particularly deep conversations or anything.

“Did you, um, get a chance to think of any new ideas since Monday?” I asked. I’d jotted down a few ideas here and there, but nothing impressive or concrete.

“Not really,” he admitted. “Between classes and swim club and trying to be social, I don’t really have a lot of free time.”

“Be careful not to burn yourself out,” I said, frowning a little. “I mean, I know we’re supposed to be working hard and all that, but…”

“I’ll be fine,” he said quickly. “I’m used to it.” But he was looking at me strangely, like I’d said a combination of words he hadn’t known was possible in the English language.

“Well, okay. But remember to take care of yourself, too!” I finished, giving him a smile that I hoped was encouraging.He didn’t return it, but nodded slowly, still looking somewhat confused. I wondered why he thought that particular concept was so strange, but I tucked it away in my head for later.

We’d pretty much gotten nothing done that first day in class, so we had a lot to talk about. Luckily, we agreed that we wanted it to be something simple and light, nothing too deep or emotional. After a good bit of brainstorming ideas, we decided our story would be about a paranormal investigator and a skeptic real estate agent who get locked in a supposedly haunted house overnight. Some of the stuff we planned was pretty funny, with a bit of slapstick humor thrown in for good measure.

I’d write the first 1000 words, send it to him, and he’d write the next 1000. And we’d go on like that until we hit the word count goal, then go back and edit. I was so engrossed in typing out my part that I didn’t look up from it for a long time, until the sound of guys talking and laughing snapped me out of it. To my surprise, when I glanced at the clock, nearly three hours had passed.

“Whoa!” When I looked around, I saw Arie and his laptop were gone. “Arie left?”

“He left a while ago,” Maddox informed me, but he wasn’t looking at me. When I looked over to the entrance he was staring at, I saw some other guys from the swim team coming in. They were being loud. At least, loud for the library. The librarian shushed them, but they just snickered and elbowed each other in the ribs before sauntering further in. “Hey, do you want to get out of here?”

“Um, yeah. Actually, I have plans tonight.”

“With Arie?” He asked sharply.

“Well, yeah,” I answered, a bit taken aback by his tone. “And my roommate Aspen, and Che. Che is Arie’s boyfriend,” I tacked on. “Do you have a problem with him or something?”

“No,” he answered, for some reason instantly more relaxed. I’d thought maybe he found Arie weird because of the makeup and nails and stuff, but now I wasn’t sure. “He seemed alright. I’ve had a few people mention the Zac Efron thing but I don’t really see it. Maybe from one angle, kind of,” he added. “Anyway, I-”

“Holmes!” The swim team guys had finally noticed Maddox. The one who’d called for him was taller than the other two, with his dark hair buzzed really short. None of them looked anything alike, but they all had kind of a stereotypical jock look. “Weird party last night, right?” he commented, once they’d reached our table.

“I wouldn’t know,” Maddox answered. His voice sounded controlled, like he didn’t want to show any emotion. But it didn’t appear like he was all that fond of these guys. Then again, that kind of seemed to be his default emotion. “I left after someone got a little too close to playing pyromaniac.”

Yeah, aftersomeonegot a little too close to playing pyromaniac. Someone with really nice hair and really blue eyes that was weirdly nice to me and was sitting right across from me. Not to name anyone specific, though.

The taller guy sighed, but he was grinning. “Drunk chicks. What are you going to do, you know?”

I was just a little shocked to see Maddox shrug a shoulder, and give a completely straight-faced grunt in response. There was no way I could have played it so cool if I’d done what he did.

“Anyway, we were just leaving,” Maddox said, standing up from the table and gathering his stuff into his bag. I quickly followed his lead, standing as well. When I did, they all looked over to me like they’d only just noticed me. The one with red hair and freckles scoffed a little, before giving me a condescending head nod.

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