Maps (4 page)

Before anyone knew what was happening, it was raining—raining peas. It all seemed to happen in slow motion as Maps watched in horror as tiny little green pellets began beating down into everyone’s food, drinks, their hair, the floor, a couple of eyes. Stacie was squealing like it was Christmas, throwing her tiny hands into the air and trying to catch one.

When all the peas had landed, and the table had fallen deathly silent, Maps held his arms stiffly at his sides. “Good day!”

Without looking anyone in the eye, he marched out of the dining room.

It wasn’t until he’d walked through his neighbors’ front door and into his own that he realized the napkin was still stuck to the belt buckle of his pants.

He laughed at the humor of it. He’d been so naïve before. He’d thought once Benji had moved away from the house next door that his life was over, but now, he knew, without a single doubt in his mind, that now his life was
really
over.

For three weeks Maps avoided Lane and his evil little sister.

Maps’ mother had made him call their parents the following day and apologize, which they both laughed off. Other than that, he’d had no contact with the neighbors. The few times he’d seen Lane outside washing his old piece-of-junk car or trying his best to teach Stacie to play catch, Maps had scampered off in the opposite direction, even when he could feel Lane’s eyes burning a hole into his back.

Truth be told, he was embarrassed. A little. Okay, a lot.

It wasn’t his fault that entire night had turned into a disaster. And normally when situations like that arose, he shrugged them off. He didn’t care what anyone thought of him—not strangers, not the other kids at school, no one. Well, besides Benji. And now Lane.

Maps had been a total creep once or twice and sat on the ledge of his bedroom window and watched Lane soap up and rise off—his car, that is. He really was quite tall—at least five inches taller than Maps. His hair was blond-blond, not dirty, muddy blond like Maps’ own hair, and he was definitely in better shape than Maps. Much more athletic. Still, Maps couldn’t figure out what it was about Lane that kept him interested. He’d have to draw up a diagram or a list.

Yes, he’d ask for Benji’s help, because Benji was always extraordinary at making lists—a very useful skill to have—and they’d figure it out together.

The first day back to school after winter break, Maps sat in his desk next to Benji, a few minutes early for class.

As other students trickled into math class right on their heels, a very uneasy looking Lane was amongst them. And a full head taller than anyone else, to boot.

Maps froze.

He was a deer caught in a set of high beams, a crab caught in a fisherman’s net, a Canadian caught in a hockey debate.

There was no escape.

He couldn’t run away from Lane in school. Well, he could, but it would result in skipping every math class and his mom would probably have something to say about that.

But Lane was a year older than Maps and in the grade above him. There must be some kind of mistake; he must’ve been in the wrong room.

In the three weeks since Maps had been avoiding Lane, he’d seen Lane around school, but since Lane was in another grade and often spent most of his time with like-minded meatheads, he was easily avoidable.

Of course, Lane decided to flop his gigantic self down in the desk right behind Maps. Maps kept staring straight ahead of him as though the whiteboard in the front of the classroom now held the answers to the meaning of life.

“Maps?” Benji and Lane both said in unison. Maps slowly swiveled in his chair to first look at his best friend seated next to him, then to the neighbor he’d been trying his hardest to avoid.

“Greetings, Earthling,” Maps choked out. Lane blinked. Benji started coughing, and turned in his seat with a shit-eating grin on his face to look at his new neighbor. “You must be Lane.”

“Why must I be?” Lane asked.

“I’ve heard so much about you,” Benji replied.

“Benji, shut up,” Maps managed to snap at his friend, whispering under his breath.

“Oh. You’re Benji, then, right? Maps’. . .uh, boyfriend?” Lane said with an weary smile on his face. Maps dropped his forehead down on his desk.

“Uhhhh.” Benji turned to Maps with a scowl on his face.

Maps lifted his head and spun around to look at Lane. “Why are you here, anyway? Aren’t you graduating this year?”

“Yeah, but, uh, I’m not so good with math.” Lane cringed when he said the word
math
, almost like he was in pain.

“Well, just so you know, I’m not letting you cheat off of me, if that’s why you sat here . . .”

“Why would I try to cheat off you?” Lane asked, genuinely looking surprised. “I wouldn’t learn much that way, would I?”

Benji gave Maps one of those
is this guy for real?
looks. It was Maps’ favorite of Benji’s looks.

“All right everyone, settle down.”

Their math teacher, Mr. Rogers—no cardigan intended—walked into the room with his usual annoyed expression present on his face. “I know it’s the first day of this semester, but that doesn’t mean we can slack off. And to prove my point, we’re having a little pop quiz. Now, before any of you give me any grief, it’s just for fun. You won’t be graded on this, but it’s to let me know where the majority of you are academically.”

A collective groan sounded in the classroom. Mr. Rogers—the jerk—even had the nerve to look like he actually meant the word
fun
when he’d said it. But Maps wasn’t worried. Math came easily to him like girls to Adam Levine.

Mr. Rogers handed out tests to the first person in each row and asked that they be handed back. When Maps turned slightly to hand Lane his tests, the look on Lane’s face momentarily startled Maps. Lane was absolutely horrified. He was white as a marshmallow. Well, as white as a
white
marshmallow, anyway. Maps never trusted the colored ones.

“Are you okay?” Maps whispered.

Lane looked up. His pupils were smaller than the freckles on his nose, and a thin layer of sweat covered his forehead. Maps thought he even heard a few quiet swears slip passed Lane’s lips.

Oh god. Maps hoped he didn’t go full Hulk.

Maps was completely useless when anyone cried. He usually just awkwardly started laughing, hoping the person was faking it and it would all be some elaborate joke. Nine times out of ten, it wasn’t.

Lane shook his head. “I can’t do this. I’ll fail and look like an idiot.”

“No, you won’t,” Maps tried to assure him, even though he was starting to believe that he might fail and look like an idiot. “This isn’t being graded. It’s just for. . .fun.”

“Turn around, Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Rogers said from the front of the classroom. “You can chat with your friend later.”

Maps looked down at the paper in front of him. It was fairly simply trig, really. A few calculus problems, a quadratic equation or two. Nothing that he didn’t already know from the year before.

He picked up his pencil and worked out the problems. There wasn’t anything there he didn’t know how to do. He was flying through the exam when he started to become distracted by the sounds of heavy, panicked breathing coming from behind him.

Maps imaged he had a puddle of sweat surrounding his desk. He couldn’t imagine what it was like struggling to understand something that you just couldn’t. Maps’ mother always said that some things were a little harder for some people, and Maps usually just ignored her. But now, Lane, the boy with the gapped front teeth sitting behind him, freaking his shit out . . .

A pencil snapped. Maps glanced over his shoulder. Lane was staring down at the piece of paper on the desk like it had burned down his family farm. The broken pencil lay defeated and barely used on the corner of the desk.

Maps sighed. He was an angel. He was better than an angel—he was an arch angel. He was a saint. He was going to get so much karma for this. Buddha was going to love him.

Maps wrote Lane’s name in the name slot on his test. He was just about to turn around when he realized he didn’t know Lane’s last name. So, doing the only thing a great mind like his knew how to do—he improvised. He wrote
Lane E. Bogs
right at the top. That should do it.

Subtly, when Mr. Rogers was facing the whiteboard, he reached back onto Lane’s desk without turning and swapped their papers.

“What the—” Lane began.

“Shhh!” Maps whispered. He turned around and looked at the paper in front of him.

Oh god.

There was a drawing of a cat for answer six, and not even a good cat at that. It was missing whiskers on one side of its face, the poor thing. And the answer for number eleven was just 5. No formula, no explanation—just 5. The poor kid really hadn’t been joking about how terrible he was at math.

With a heavy sigh, Maps scratched out Lane’s name from the top of the paper and wrote his own. Just as Maps was about to begin crossing out Lane’s answers and filling in the correct ones for himself, the beeper on Mr. Rogers’ desk went off.

“All right, everyone. That’s time. Everyone pass your tests up to the front,” Mr. Rogers said. Maps looked down at his paper with the ugly cat on it. He really was a martyr. He was going to drive a Rolls Royce in heaven.

When everyone had passed their papers up and they’d all been collected, Mr. Rogers handed off the papers to his teacher’s assistant, a young woman they’d been instructed to refer to as Ms. Smithson.

For the remainder of the class, Mr. Rogers babbled on at the front of the room, Benji doodled pictures on his notebook, Ms. Smithson dragged that red pen across one paper after another, and Maps tried his best not to turn around and look at Lane.

Maps had planned to rush out of the classroom as fast as he could when the bell finally sounded, but Mr. Rogers apparently had another idea.

“Matthew, Lane, may I see you two for a moment?” This was one of those times where Maps wished Mr. Rogers did wear a cardigan—he’d look a lot less threatening if he was yelling at them while wearing a cardigan. No one could look threatening wearing a cardigan.

Maps absently looked down at the yellow cardigan he was wearing.

Well, shit.

Lane followed Maps up to the front of the classroom, both with their heads hung low. Mr. Rogers was going to yell at them for cheating, and they’d get detention for a week.

“Well, Mr. Wilson,” Mr. Rogers said, giving a pointed look at Maps. “I see you’ve forgotten, well, a lot of what you’ve learned previous years. Your test scores were quite low.”

Mr. Rogers sitting behind his desk, pen in one hand and their tests splayed out in front of him.

Maps gulped, surprisingly not for himself, but more for the feelings of the boy standing to his right. “It’s still early in the term,” he said. “I have lots of time to improve, if I really try.”

“And I do hope you’ll try. Frankly, knowing so little, if you don’t improve drastically I’m afraid you may not pass this class.”

Maps could practically hear Lane’s jaw clench.

“I will try, Mr. Rogers,” Maps said.

“Good. Mr. E. Bogs’ math scores were really remarkable, and I was thinking that he could tutor you until the end of the semester—for extra credit, of course.”

Maps and Lane both slowly turned to look each other in the eyes. They each had horror-struck expressions on their faces.

“Now, boys, it’s not like I’m going to make you hold hands and skip around the park. I’m just asking if you can perhaps work together, just for a bit, until Mr. Wilson here gets on his feet.”

“Uh, Mr. Rogers,” Lane choked out. “My last name is actually Rhodes, not, uh, E. Bogs. I have no idea why I wrote that.”

“Obviously because your sense of humor is upstanding. Seriously,
She’s All That
? No?” Maps asked.

Both Mr. Rogers and Lane stared at him. Maps pushed his thick glasses up by the bridge of the nose.

“So, you’ll do it then, Mr. Rhodes?” Mr. Rogers asked.

Lane nodded, looking like he might be a little sick. “Of course. Anything to help.”

* * * *

Maps slipped into his room late that evening. He had spent the rest of the day at Benji’s house chatting about their first day back after term break, and about how he’d pulled a fast one on Mr. Rogers. Benji didn’t understand why Maps had helped the poor sod out, after all, Maps had been avoiding Lane for weeks. Maps couldn’t place his finger on why he’d helped, either.

But now Maps was exhausted, the thrills of the first day back having worn off. He flopped his heavy backpack down on the floor and flicked on the lamp sitting atop his bedside table. Pulling his warmest fleece pajamas out from a drawer in his dresser, Maps stripped down and put on his comfy sleepwear, fully intent on grabbing his eReader and slinking into bed.

It was cold outside, just after Christmas. It was that lingering time of the year where the cold almost felt welcoming because it gave people a good excuse to wear oversized clothing and cuddle into bed early. The sky darkened earlier at night and the lack of evening light had a tendency to wear on Maps, even though he was normally energetic.

He grabbed his eReader off his side table and curled into bed under his heavy down comforter. He pushed his glasses back up his nose and opened his book to the last page he’d left off. While Maps didn’t have a particular aversion to reading any genre of book, fantasy novels were by far his favorite. Benji liked to joke that Maps was the type to look like he solely read science fiction, but Maps just huffed at that, not dignifying Benji with a rebuttal.

Maps wrapped the ends of the comforter up and under his chilly toes. The world fogged, the letters on his eReader slowly blending as the gentle light from beside his bed carefully lulled him to sleep…

Maps shot awake. He’d dozed off. His glasses were crooked on his face and his eReader had tumbled to the ground. But something had woken him. He didn’t remember what, but something had. He sat up in bed and waited, listened, looked around.

Then he heard it again.