THE HEAT of the two latte macchiatos seeped through the gray cardboard tray into Matt’s hand. Had buying them been a good idea after all? It had sounded like one when he passed by the Lazy Bean on his way to school. Shane made it clear yesterday that he didn’t expect anything from him, but being friends included small gifts like this, didn’t it? Especially since Shane had already invited him twice.
Being friends. Thinking this felt like confusing the left and the right shoe. Matt had friends. On the Internet. And he had Florenca—whatever she was—but the first person after kindergarten who wanted to become Matt’s friend was a two-hundred-fifty-pound hunk who could tear him to bits single-handedly. Shane wouldn’t do that. Matt was sure about this. Almost. In case he ever forgot that, though, he carried the folded napkin in his wallet to remind him.
The closer he got to school, the more his stomach churned. That was mostly Iain’s fault, but the prospect of seeing Shane again had its part in this feeling. Could a stomach turn around in two different ways? Hopefully, yes, because it’d be so unfair to Shane if he felt the same way about Iain and him. As he had said the day before, he had so much learning to do. At least he excelled at that.
Matt took the last bend, and the school entrance came into sight. His fellow students stood talking to one another and laughing in little clusters on the campus. The cheerleaders, the stoners, the nerds. Little universes surrounded those groups where nothing but them existed. Every single inhabitant of those bubbles watched him. That wasn’t true, of course, but paranoia was an inseparable part of his school life. This sensation had even intensified compared to the days before. No one knew about Shane and him, and his fellow students didn’t care enough about Matt to be interested at all. Still, he carried a neon sign on his head announcing the news for anyone to notice. Just more moonshine brightening up his head.
He couldn’t miss Shane, who leaned against one of the entrance pillars, arms crossed over his chest, one foot propped against the sandstone. Around him, one of those microuniverses extended with only him inside.
I’m lonely, Matt, and you’re lonely.
Shane’s words made perfect sense. The lion and the antelope dived headfirst into the experiment of keeping each other company. Most fables ended well. Some didn’t. Matt’s stomach knotted up a little more.
Shane straightened himself and took a step away from the pillar. His face lightened up. This had to be just another figment of Matt’s imagination running riot. Why would he affect Shane that much?
“Hey!” Shane’s voice managed the feat of sounding profound and soft at the same time. It had rung so differently when he yelled at Iain.
“Hey!” Matt extended the tray with the lattes. “I brought coffee. The left one’s with double sugar. That’s how you drink it, right?”
“Awesome. You remember how I like my coffee?” Shane took the paper cup.
As he extended his arm, his biceps flattened while his chest bulged out. Every movement he made brimmed with strength. Matt scraped together all of his willpower to not take a step back, ignoring the clutter of voices in his head urging him to get the hell out.
Shane took his first sip and grunted in contentment. “How much?” He reached for the back pocket of his jeans.
“You said that next time would be on me.” Matt had talked back to Shane. However trivial the circumstances, it was the first time he opposed anyone.
“Did I say that?” Shane tilted his head and raised one eyebrow.
Matt’s heart decided to wait for what happened next and stopped beating altogether.
A grin came over Shane’s face. “Yes, I think I did. This time I’m even using it appropriately… thank you!”
Doubling up its beats, Matt’s heart compensated for the ones it had missed. “You’re welcome.” He was smiling, though he had no clue how he pulled that off through all the adrenaline.
Shane took another sip. He paused for a moment. “I’m really sorry about what happened in the cafeteria yesterday.” He slightly squeezed the paper cup in his hand. “If you give me your timetable, I’ll pick you up from every class. Just promise me not to move around in school alone, okay?”
The reminder of that part of their arrangement wiped Matt’s smile away. “You’re serious about that bodyguard thing.” He intended it as a question, but it came out as a statement.
“Of course I am. Friends watch out for each other, whatever it takes.” Shane loosened his grip on the cup, but the paper bore some wrinkles now.
Matt’s experiences with friendships may have been limited, but even he knew that such an offer was exceptional on the third day after meeting. He got out his cell and opened the schedule app. The only currency to offer in return was trust. “I can share my timetable with you.” That sounded much too matter-of-fact. Matt would’ve liked to say something that expressed what he felt, but he didn’t have the first idea about his feelings. He just experienced those emotions, unable to stick a label on them.
Shane’s face had lit up when he had seen him. Now it was ablaze. “Awesome.” He produced his cell.
They connected their phones, exchanging their numbers in the process, and waited for the transfer to be completed.
“That almost works out perfectly,” Shane said after studying the plan. “It’ll take me a little longer to get to the bio lab, but since it’s your last course today, that’s not much of a problem, is it?”
All this happened directly before Matt’s eyes, but reality had fractured and been pieced back together completely wrong. Like in a dream, everything was too perfect. The colors shone a little too vividly, and what happened was just too illogical. “No, not a problem.”
“We can’t have lunch together today. Mrs. Temple sent an e-mail yesterday telling me I have to fill out some more forms. I think she made them up just to bug me.” The light in Shane’s face darkened. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Matt would never set a foot in the cafeteria again. Though with Shane at his side, what could possibly happen? “Maybe tomorrow.” That gave him one more day to rediscover the courage to eat in school, and it was one more day for reality to revert to logical.
“Cool.” The gleam in Shane’s face returned with a vengeance. “So, first stop is—” He looked at the screen of his cell. “—English Lit in room A43.” He pursed his lips. “Positive side effect of being your bodyguard is that I learn where all the classrooms are.” He chuckled. “Lead the way, please.” Shane bowed before Matt, accompanied by more chuckling.
Though the situation just got even more perfect, more vivid, and more illogical, Shane’s enthusiasm poured into their little universe, filled it up to the rim, and swept Matt away with it. Whatever bond was forming between them could work after all. The lion and the antelope might find a place to graze together.
MATT LOOKED at the empty blotch the penicillium fungus had created in the bacteria culture. Shane did the same with people. The difference was that the fungus actually wanted to clear the space around itself.
“Well done, Matt,” Mrs. Cox said. She clapped his shoulder and smiled at him. To the whole class, she said, “We’re done for today. Any volunteers for cleanup?”
Matt’s fellow students scribbled into their notebooks, moved around the petri dishes, and did anything that made them look busy.
“I’ll do it, Mrs. Cox.” He had promised to wait for Shane anyway. Inside a classroom, he just felt safer than he did outside.
“Anyone else? Or do you want to let Matt do all the work?” She let her gaze wander from student to student.
Half of the room didn’t even know who he was. The other half didn’t give a fuck.
“It’s okay, Mrs. Cox. I can do it alone.”
Matt hadn’t even finished that sentence before the other students threw their stuff into their bags and hurried for the exit, minimizing the possibility of being picked to assist. It was all right. He preferred working by himself.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Cox said. “You volunteer so often, and your friends just take it for granted.”
There were so many things wrong with her statement that Matt didn’t even bother to correct her.
He shrugged. “No problem.”
She touched his shoulder again, still smiling. “I have an appointment with some parents. If there’s any problem, you can find me in my office. Just tell me when you’re done so I can lock the room later. Okay?”
“Sure.” Matt smiled back.
MATT ONLY had to put the bottles with the nutrient fluid back on the shelf and he’d be finished with cleaning up.
As he took the last bottle from Lisa and Jennifer’s desk, the lid flew off and some of the clear, thick fluid sloshed onto the floor. Simply wonderful! The two girls had a perfect memory of every single crush they had since elementary school and went over them at full volume in every bio lesson, but they couldn’t remember to close the bottle. At least it hadn’t been sulfuric acid or such. Matt picked up the lid, screwed it onto the bottle, and put it into the rack. He grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser next to the sink before he crouched down on all fours to mop up the mess.
The door flew open.
“Fuck! He’s already gone.”
That was Kevin Woiczak.
“I still think it’s sick, dude.”
Walden Zeddo.
“Twenty bucks for telling Iain where to find Dermond alone. If you don’t want ’em, I do, bro.”
“Iain’ll eighty-six him.”
“Dermond’s problem, not mine.”
“It’s fucked-up, dude, fucked-up….” Walden’s voice trailed off.
The door clicked shut.
He was dead. This time for real. The scene in the cafeteria had pissed Iain off so much that he now paid his snitches. Cold sweat made his shirt stick to his body. Not even Shane could take on the entire school. Matt’s stomach didn’t feel weird anymore, because fear had dissolved it into a gooey mass of yuck, and there wasn’t anything left that could be turned around.
The door opened once more, and Matt flinched so hard that his head hit the table with a dull thud. He clapped a hand over his mouth to prevent himself from yelping. Kevin and Walden had returned, double-checking for him. Or they had sent Iain over.
“Matt? Are you here?”
That sounded like Shane. It had to be Shane. What if it wasn’t him? Matt didn’t dare say anything. He pulled his legs in, wrapped his arms around his knees, and rocked back and forth.
Footsteps echoed through the room. Two legs appeared before the table. He closed his eyes.
“What happened?” This voice was deep and mellow.
Matt opened his eyes and looked into Shane’s face. Worry furrowed the gentle features as he knelt before him.
“Iain.” Matt gasped for air. “He put a bounty on my head.” Breathing became more and more difficult as something pressed tightly to his chest. However much Matt fought against it, his lungs didn’t fill. He was suffocating!
“Hush, hush.” Shane touched Matt’s shoulders.
It was only Shane, but Matt’s body reacted with the same old patterns that had served it so well all these years. The last air in his lungs escaped with a squeal.
Shane yanked both his hands away, his eyes wide with shock. “Yesterday. Remember yesterday!” He reached for Matt’s hand and raised his own fist. Ever so gently, he brought them together. “Just think about yesterday.”
The fist bump that had sealed their deal about proofreading Shane’s essay. No, that had sealed their deal about trying to become friends. The moment he had made the first step toward Shane. The first time he had trusted Shane.
Matt didn’t know how it happened, but the pressure on his chest was gone. If he just concentrated on drawing in the air and letting it go, he could breathe and didn’t have to think about Iain or his devious schemes.
Shane put Matt’s hand down before he pulled his own away slowly. He avoided touching him, and it was Matt’s fault that he thought he had to.
If Shane wrapped his arms around him now, he wouldn’t go nuts. Those arms could keep the world away. He’d be safe… and thinking thoughts like these was a sure sign he’d already gone nuts.
“Iain put a bounty on your head?” The wrinkles on Shane’s forehead deepened.
“Twenty bucks for anyone who tells him where he can find me alone.” Twenty dollars. That was what his life was worth.
Shane’s hands closed into fists, and the sinews stood out on their backs. “He won’t find you alone. If he wants to get to you, he’ll have to pass through me.”
The warm place inside Matt sent out waves of heat, for Shane made good on his promise. Shane had said he’d do this, but seeing his words become action turned them so freaking real. In school, their bodyguard plan might work. But what about Matt’s way home? Oh damn. Home! The tight feeling around his ribs returned. “My parents won’t be home before eight.” Even if he made it to his house without being caught, he’d still have to spend hours alone there. A guy like Iain wasn’t above breaking a window or smashing a door.
Blood on his bedsheets. Teeth scattered on the floor. His lifeless body lying on the staircase.
Matt fought against the images, shoving them away, but the more he resisted, the more they charged against his mind. “I can’t be alone there.” A glacier of ice drove back the waves of heat into the warm place and encased it. The worst thing about this wasn’t the panic. He knew panic and had countless strategies to cope with it, but Shane seeing him like this made him feel worthless. Twenty bucks was too much money for a pathetic creature like him.
“Come home with me,” Shane said.
Emptiness replaced the muddle of Matt’s thoughts and feelings. This wasn’t the silent darkness of fright but nothingness in its purest form, as if “too much” had turned inside out.
Shane opened his hands and moved them an inch toward Matt, but then he froze. His fingers hovered in midair before he let them sink down ever so slowly. The muscles in his face worked overtime. “I know that you’re—” He paused for a second. “—uneasy around me. I’d bring you home and keep watch outside, but I promised my dad I’d take a delivery for him.”
He would keep watch outside? Matt’s mind got stuck on this detail, but it was most significant, for it revealed how much Shane cared. What did he offer in return? He flinched, trembled, and recoiled at the smallest movement Shane made. Holding on to the status quo wouldn’t do anymore. It was time to let it go.
“I’ll come home with you.” He had done the impossible. “If you really want to.” Doubt made him say that, and he pressed his lips closed to stop further words from coming out. The more he talked, the higher the chance of talking himself out of his decision.
Shane blinked, once, twice. He swallowed. “Of course.” He swallowed again. “The question is if you really want to.”
This wasn’t about wanting but about friendliness. Every force is countered by a force equal in magnitude and opposite in direction. Newton’s third law applied to kindness. “I’ll come home with you.” Matt extended his hand. “Can you help me up, please?” He didn’t need assistance, but it was a first act of good will to pay Shane back.
Shane’s face changed to the color of the white tiles that covered the lab tables. Matt didn’t know which gaped open more, Shane’s mouth or his eyes. He sported the look of a kid who had accidentally learned that Santa Claus didn’t exist. “Sure.” While Shane reached out for Matt, the color returned to his face, together with a light that brightened everything around him.
Matt’s hand vanished completely in Shane’s. His grasp was so soft that he would never be able to get him up from the floor. Moments later Matt learned how wrong he was about that. Shane pulled him from under the table and to a stand without Matt doing anything. He opened his powerful fingers, though he didn’t draw them away.
“Thanks.” Slowly, Matt let his hand sink. “Oh.” He looked down. “I have to finish cleaning up and then tell Mrs. Cox I’m done.”
Shane knelt down on the floor again. “Let me do this. You can put on your jacket in the meantime. Then we’ll go to Mrs. Cox together, okay?”
Matt nodded, for Shane had taken away all his words.
Perhaps kindness didn’t behave like an ordinary force after all. Even small amounts of it could cause a tenfold stronger response. This insight was new and so confusing that its impact shattered the shell of ice around the warm place, its heat flooding over Matt.