The Roommate Situation (19 page)

I could have done worse.

During the short ride to Quaid, she asks fifty questions about what she should pack for me for the beach and answers them all herself, not letting me get more than an “Okay” and an “I don’t—” in. And then we’re parked, not even that far from the residence hall. My dad pops the trunk from the front seat as my mom and I open our doors. We meet around back, the two of us, Dad staying in the car to enter the restaurant receipt into his phone.

I lift the trunk lid and look down.

There’s a smallish box.

A cardboard box, its flaps neatly tucked into each other.

That’s it. There isn’t even lint on the trunk’s carpeted floor, just that one not-guitar-sized box.

“I got you a bag of gummi bears, and I baked some treats for you,” she’s saying, “and I threw in a few healthy snacks as well.”

“Where’s my guitar?”

“What, honey?”

“You said you’d bring my guitar.”

“Oh, shoot. I’m so sorry, Shane. With your father being in a fog, I had to arrange everything myself, and I was in a rush this morning to finish the muffins I made you before we had to run out the door—I just forgot. I’ll bring it next time, okay?”

“You can ship it to me. I’ll pay you back for the cost.”

“Is this for the band you were telling us about?”

“There is no band. They got someone else. I still want the guitar. It’s my guitar.”

“I know, Shane. I know.”

“So ship it to me!”

She stares at me, her mouth agape, one hand pressed to her blouse. From the expression on her face, a passerby might think I just spit on her.

Dad comes around the car. “What’s going on?”

My mother appears to not be able to speak. She stares at me with her eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“What happened?” Dad says.

“I forgot to bring his precious guitar.”

“I thought we discussed that already. You’re supposed to be focused on school.”

“I just wanted something for when I was taking a break from studying.”

“I cannot believe you just spoke to me like that,” she says.

“I’m sorry. I’m just—I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to jump on you. I was just looking forward to my guitar.”

“It’s all right.” Her hand’s still at her breast, but she fixes my jacket collar with the other. “It’s all right. I understand. You’re under pressure from your midterms. You need to focus on those right now. Your guitar will always be there.”

There
. A couple of hundred miles away. Asking them to bring it when they picked me up for Thanksgiving break was going to be just as fucking pointless.

“You just focus on your schoolwork.” She hugs me.

I stiffen at the scent of her perfume, the scratch of her hair on my neck.

There’s no peeling off of bills from my father’s wallet when we shake hands. He tells me to buckle down. They leave me with the box of snacks in my arms, my mom saying, “We’ll see you for Thanksgiving, honey. Do well on your midterms.”

I watch the sedan pull away.

I so fucking hate you.

Upstairs in Quaid, I kick the door to the room shut with my heel, stop for half a second, my chest constricting like metal straps are tightening around it. I screw up my face and throw the box at the wall.

It hits and drops to my bed.

God damn it.

The amp sits next to my desk. I jerk out of my jacket and drop to the floor in front of the amp, cross-legged. My forehead hits the edge; my thumb and finger hold on to one of its useless knobs.

I hear a hesitant noise behind me, and I can feel Derek eyeing me.

“Let me guess,” he says after a moment.

God
damn
it.

He crosses the room and crouches beside me.

“I have a useless fucking amp,” I say without lifting my head.

“It’s a nice amp, though. Sounded pretty good when you were checking it out.”

I wrap my arms around the Peavey, my heart beating against it.

“There’s always Thanksgiving break,” he says. “You can bring it back with you. What are they gonna do, refuse to start the car until you put it back in your room?”

“I’m not going home for Thanksgiving,” I mumble. “We’re going to the
beach
. That was my other surprise for the day.”

“Oh.” He settles on the floor, one hand hanging on to the edge of my desk.

“I have an amp and no fucking guitar.”

“You’ll save up again. And either you’ll buy one by Christmas, or you’ll go home for winter break and bring it back with you. Unless you’re going to Hawaii for that?”

“Don’t fucking put it past them. My mom probably lies awake at night thinking, ‘How can I keep Shane away from his guitar?’ You’d think it was heroin. Fuck.”

I pull away from my amp.

I do still like it. I just wish I had something to fucking plug into it. “Might as well be a plant stand after all,” I say.

Derek smiles.

I shift around and lean against the wall.

“Well,” he says. “I guess you’ve got some free time this afternoon. Want to rearrange the room?”

“Yeah?”

“I drew up one way we could do it. Hold on.” He goes around the locker and comes back with a scrap of paper he’s sketched a rough floor plan on. “We put the lockers against the walls, here and here, the beds here, both our desks under the windows…” He looks up. I bring my gaze up from the paper, then back down. And he says, “Doing it this way, we can slide one bed over against the other at night. In the mornings, we just push it back against the other wall.”

I look up again. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I smile. “Cool.”

“All right, then. Throw any loose shit up on your bed, and let’s start arranging.”

Chapter Twenty

The Japanese maple down in the quad has already burned out its fiery red, leaving just a skeleton behind. I shift my desk to unplug the laptop’s power supply so I can roll it up and stuff it in my bag. I’d put off packing till the last minute—my mom will be texting anytime now to say they’re ten minutes away. Derek’s in class. No final good-byes before the long weekend. The good-bye I gave him last night will have to do.

I’m getting pretty damned good at blowjobs, if I say so myself.

As I zip the bag closed, the ten-minute warning comes. One last look around to make sure I’m not forgetting anything, and then I shrug on my jacket and grab a couple of textbooks under my free arm. The easiest way to not have to listen to my mother prattle on is to stick my face in a book…even if I’m actually texting back and forth with Derek behind it.

My parents get out of their car. Mom hugs me and kisses me on the jaw; Dad does the usual stiff handshake.

“This is going to be so much fun!” she says. “Franklin, let Shane drive awhile. He’s been cooped up in school.”

“You haven’t forgotten how?” he asks with a smile, dangling the keys.

“I just pedal up the hills and coast down, right?”

He swats me on the shoulder before walking around the car.

The GPS unit’s already been programmed; I just follow orders for the next three hours, until Mom needs a bathroom break and suggests it’s a good time to stop for dinner anyway.

Service at the restaurant is slow. My mom’s on my nerves already. I don’t have much to say, but she doesn’t let that get in her way. When she tells Dad to take over driving again, it’s fine with me. I can sit in the back and play on my phone. Except the other back door opens, and she settles in beside me, smiling. Saying, “Well. It’s nice to get to spend some time with you again. Some mornings I wake up and push open the door to your room to make sure you’re up, and there’s no one there.”

I scroll through my e-mail, deleting the junk. “Sorry.”

“Oh, it’s all right. I do a quick dusting, run the vacuum, and I think about how you’re in college—college! I can’t believe you’re old enough for that already, but I’m so excited for you. You’re finally living your life.” She chucks me on the knee. “You’re on your way to making something of yourself.”

“Yep.” Mostly as a fetish model. I should show her some shots. Instead I open my messaging app, in case I’ve gotten a new one and there just hasn’t been a notification. Nothing. I type one up to Derek:
Turns out when you’re going to hell you do it in the back of an Infinity hybrid
. I tap out of that app and look at the home screen, wondering what I can get away with.
Angry Birds
is probably out.

Mom leans toward the front. “How much longer do you think, Frank?”

“The GPS says two and a half hours.”

“It’s so dark already.” She settles back, adjusting the cardigan over her shoulders.

My phone blips.

“What’s that?” she asks.

“I was just reminding Derek to empty the trash before he leaves.”

“Do you have to remind him of that sort of thing a lot?”

“I never have to remind him of that sort of thing, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt. You know, it could get missed in the rush to get out of there. I mean, I didn’t think to empty it.”

Derek’s text says,
Is it at least black?

Stormfront gray—also appropriate
, I type before turning the sound off.

“You know, I was thinking you should talk to him,” my mother says.

“I talk to him every day.”

“You didn’t let me finish. About rearranging the room. It’s not right that you have no sunlight on your side.”

I stretch, flattening my hands against the sedan’s ceiling. “We rearranged it already. My desk’s in front of the window next to his now.”

“Oh! Good. I’m glad you were able to work that out.”

“It wasn’t exactly a ‘work that out’ kind of situation, but I’m glad you’re happy about it.”

“You look tired, honey,” she says. “Have you been getting enough sleep?”

I look vaguely irritated is what I look. “As much sleep as anyone. I’m good.”

“Have you been remembering to eat breakfast?”

“Mom.”

“Okay, I’ll stop.” She makes it three and a half seconds. “You can always keep some fruit and cereal bars in your room for a quick breakfast.”

This is going to be the longest holiday weekend on record.

* * * *

“Ted Turner was an economics major,” she says as she sets out plates on the table. The rental house Jerry hadn’t been able to use is a shoebox with two narrow bedrooms pushed up next to each other, a shower that half works, and—at least this is an upside—a two-block walk to the beach, which has so far been overcast and cold, the Atlantic as gray and grumbly as my mood.

“And Warren Buffet,” she says. “You know who he is, right?”

“Did he do that margarita song?”

“And Enron’s Kenneth Lay,” my dad says, rattling the
Wall Street Journal
as he reads over the top of his glasses.

“Well, there’s always one bad apple.” Silverware clatters as she sets a handful down so she can fold the paper napkins to set them on. “I’m sorry we don’t have the same spread of leftovers we would have had at home. This kitchen’s just not equipped for big meals.”

“So you said yesterday when you laid out Thanksgiving dinner.” I straighten my napkin and fork.

“You know, they expect most guests will just be grilling out.”

“You said that too.”

“Well, I guess I’m just becoming a broken record, aren’t I?” She musses my hair on her way around the chair. To Dad she says, “Put that down and join us for lunch, Franklin. What do you boys—you
men
, I mean”—she winks at me—“want to do after lunch?”

“I was thinking of studying.”

“I guess it’s not a great day for the beach,” she says. “How about we play a game of cards? Gin rummy?” She carries in one dish after another, food reheated in the oven or on the stovetop. Microwaves, in her opinion, are good only for reheating coffee.

I scoop a blob of potatoes onto my plate.

“Tell me if they’re not hot enough,” she says.

“Sit down and eat, Margaret,” Dad says.

It takes another fifteen minutes for that to happen. I’m digging into seconds by then.

Franklin, Margaret
. I say a silent prayer of thanks that they didn’t make Alexander my first name, because that’s what they’d insist on calling me, all four syllables of it.

“So,” she says, transferring a dollop of this and a sliver of that to her plate.

“Are you dieting?” I ask.

“I’m watching my figure. Tell us about your friends at school, honey. There’s a—was it a Charles?”

Again with the formal names. “Chuck. And his roommate, Pete. He started dating a girl he spilled—” I almost say
beer
. Almost. “—his drink on at a party, I guess a month ago.”

“Do you have classes together?”

“Pete and I do.”

“So it’s just the three of you, then, just like in high school with Jamie and Taylor.”

“Well, I actually spend more time with Derek.”

“Derek. That’s your roommate?”

“Yes.”

“And you hang out a lot?” she asks. She’d been forking turkey to her plate; now the fork hovers over the platter.

“Well, we live together.”

“Yes, but do you, I don’t know—what do you do with your friends?”

“Play video games and foosball.” And get buzzed at the occasional party. And fuck, but not with
all
my friends.

“That Derek looks like something out of an old motorcycle movie.” She shudders a little and laughs.

“Pretty sure I mentioned he has a bike.” I push the cranberry sauce to the side of my plate. I hadn’t put it there.
I
know I don’t like cranberry sauce, unlike some people.

“Well, there you go,” she says.

“I was more of a table tennis guy in college,” Dad says, swinging his butter knife like it’s a paddle.

“I guess foosball’s the thing now.” I scoop gravy-laden dressing into my mouth.

“Now, what is foosball again?” Mom asks, furrowing her brow. She takes a tiny bite off the end of her fork.

“Table soccer,” Dad says. Again.

“Oh. Yes. Well, now. Does he spend a lot of time in the room, your roommate?”

“What’s the fascination with my roommate?” I ask. “You didn’t ask seven billion questions about Skip.”

“Do you still talk to Skip?”

“No.” At least that’s the truth. My knife scrapes the plate as I cut through my turkey.