Page 144 of Good Losers (Lochkelvin Academy)

“Just tell me we’re okay?”

He cocks an eyebrow at me. “Why wouldn’t we be?” Danny asks, bewildered, and relief floods through me, so fast and sudden that I have to blow out a laughing breath, exchanging old, cloying air for a fresh, freeing one. “I mean, I don’t… I can’t… but yeah? Of course?”

I want to cackle at Danny’s inability to speak. It’s a strange knowledge to carry, that I’ve done this to him, that I’ve rendered him a stuttering mess unable to speak a full sentence. But I’m just glad I haven’t scared him off, that he’s stronger than Rory believed.

He tilts his head back up to the ceiling, his eyes feasting on the luxurious surroundings of the lobby. “You know this is whereWeirdo in a Weird Worldwas written?” he informs me with breathless enthusiasm. “He was actually here. Booked a room for a month, bashed out the first draft of his manuscript, and boom. Book done.”

I realize now that, from Danny’s perspective, we’re walking on hallowed ground — the steps his most favorite author might have taken on the route to check-in. That he’s walking the same path his most favorite author would have taken, with ideas furnishing and burnishing their mind. I’m quietly amused.

As Rory swaggers across to the check-in desk, Luke hesitates, sticking to the dark corners of the lobby and rubbing the side of his face to shield himself from view. He pretends to examine an ugly shapely vase with all the interest of a classical antiques dealer.

“Hello,” Rory warmly greets the woman at the desk. Despite her passive professionalism, her brows still manage to furrow at the sight of Rory. I understand. As the first point of contact at a hotel this grand, she’s likely to deal with all kinds of rich assholes — from those who smile and flatter upon first impressions, only to lash out later, to those who greet coldly and grow frostier as time goes on. There’s no middle ground in a place like this. The only thing seemingly different about Rory is his youth. “I’d like to book a room for tonight, please.”

Her eyes flit to the four of us hovering behind Rory, trying to act like we’re not all totally high. That we’re responsible enough to be surrounded by fancy decorative vases and easily knockable knickknacks in a hotel this incredibly posh.

“How many rooms?”

Rory pauses, and the pause swells with meaning. He glances back at me with barely disguised desire. “One.”

Breath catches in my throat.

She checks the computer for availability and confirms the existence of a vacant room. “We only have the penthouse suite.”

“I’ll take it,” Rory says without missing a beat.

If the woman is surprised by this, she doesn’t show it. “Name, please.”

Another long pause fills the lobby. “I’d like to check-in under the name,” Rory begins, sounding so deliberate in his speech that it must be obvious he’s drunk or high or fighting post-orgasm sleep, or all three, “Barry…” Another pause. “White.”

Danny stares at Rory in confusion. “Barry White?” he asks loudly, his voice bouncing around the wide lobby. “Isn’t that a singer?”

Finlay shushes him, noisier even than Danny.

But the woman accepts this, and I wonder how often people check in to hotels under false names. I wonder if it’s more or less often than people use their real names, and if the ratio changes when it comes to absurdly expensive hotels.

The woman prints off an application form. With the pen smoothly gliding across the page, Rory begins to fill out the necessary paperwork. Afterward, he pulls out a platinum card with a flourish, flashing it nonchalantly, before punching in the PIN.

The woman hands over a keycard and directs Rory to the upper level, toward the penthouse suite.

“Oh my God,” Danny mutters beside me, like he can scarcely believe it. “The penthouse suite! That’s where he finished the series, I’m sure of it!”

I watch Danny in amusement. He may as well be bouncing on the spot, he’s so excited.

Together, we take the elevator in silence, riding all the way to the top floor. Danny’s grinning brightly, all his Christmases having come at once. Looking bored, Rory twiddles the keycard between his fingers, a magician about to make it disappear. Finlay hasn’t left my side once since entering the hotel, and Luke… Luke covertly observes me, though when I catch him doing so, he instantly diverts his attention to the panel of glowing buttons on the side of the elevator.

When the elevator dings and spits us out onto the uppermost level, I swear I’m fighting a woozy, weary vertigo. I can feel it in the air, how much higher we are here, how grand our view of the city must be from this perspective. Rory slides the keycard into the door and holds it open for us. And a room the size of a mansion greets me.

You could live here, happily, for the rest of your life. A prison of pretty things, a bed the size of a boat. Watercolors by Scottish artists grace the walls. A glamorous couple dances on a beach, with a man beside them holding a black umbrella aloft, and the thought drifts into my head that it’s me, Rory and Finlay.

The first thing Danny does is race over to the wooden desk, where the bust of some Roman general has caught his attention. He turns the statue over in his hands and emits a small, ridiculous shriek.

“It’s here! It’s here! Oh my God, it’s here!”

I laugh at him. Danny thrusts the upturned bust toward me, not seeming to notice that no one else in this room cares about it half as much as he does. But where politics is everyone else’s religion, science fiction is Danny’s, and so I indulge his behavior for a moment, nodding enthusiastically at the writer’s scribbled autograph and date.

As the door closes behind us, Luke says in an expressionless tone, “We need to talk about what just happened.” His gaze flits over my head and across to Rory, as though this is where the true blame lies. “What the hell, man? What the bloody hell was that?”

This seems like a rather mild invective, even in my opinion, for what the others must have experienced in the taxi. Their discomfort. Their shock. They didn’t ask for this. Well, perhaps excluding Finlay… But no. Rory assumed. Rory forced them to see what he wanted them to see, to experience what he wanted them to experience, without a single shred of remorse.

---