Ben grabbed my shoulder. “We should get you to the infirmary. Could be broken.”
“Nah,” I said, pulling away. “This thing bleeds if you look at it funny. I’m cool.”
He looked me in the eye. His eyes were a translucent blue. He looked kind. I didn’t want to look away. I realized that not being the gay kid here allowed me more access. I wasn’t supposed to hold eye contact with jocks back in Boulder. It was understood: They accepted me, and I didn’t freak them out with eye contact. Here, no such contract had been made. Ben blinked at me, I blinked back, and when it began to feel a bit too close, I averted my eyes.
That turned out to be the winning touchdown. I played the final set of downs with blood dripping from my nose, and when the game was over, Bryce came over and handed me some paper towels.
“Thanks,” I said.
“No worries,” he said, with a lack of inflection, and he and Ben walked off, all holier-than-thou, leaving me with Steve and Zack.
We walked back to the dorms together, and they asked if I wanted to have dinner with them later. “Hell, yeah,” I said. And I went back up to the room with a bloodied nose and a euphoric feeling in my chest that was entirely new to me.
Wow, I thought, climbing two steps at a time up to my dorm room, keeping pressure on my nose with the paper towel. Here I was, two hours into my Natick adventure, and I was already in that entirely new skin I had fantasized about. Jock Rafe.
It felt freaking fantastic, to be honest.
Nothing could throw a wrench into this new plan, I thought, and then I cursed myself, because anyone who has ever watched a single Hollywood movie knows that thoughts like that lead to, well, big-ass wrenches.
Enter big-ass wrench number one.
The door to my room was open, and I peered in. Inside, a short, pudgy guy in a black T-shirt was unpacking the suitcases that had been in the middle of the room. Lying where they had been amidst the wreckage — cereal boxes, soda cans — was a skinny kid with spiky hair. He was facing away from me, and his hands were behind his head like he was doing sit-ups. I pressed the paper towel to my nose and then took a look at it. Still pretty bloody.
“So let me ask you,” the spiky-haired guy said. “Let’s say there was a gang of six-year-olds roaming the streets. And they attacked you. How many of them could you fight off?”
I stood in the doorway, as yet undetected. Aside from the disaster area that was the middle of the room, I was pleased to notice that at least things were being put away. A pile of what appeared to be nothing but black T-shirts on the short kid’s bed was getting pretty high. He opened a drawer on the dresser next to his bed and started stuffing it with shirts.
“Do they have weapons?” he asked.
“No, just fists,” Spiky Hair replied.
“Then probably four of them. Two of them could probably take out my legs, but I’d still have my arms. They could each grab hold of one limb, but then they wouldn’t have anyone to go after my midsection. I’d be pretty much, like, incapacitated, I guess, but I’d be alive.”
“Yeah,” said Spiky Hair. “Probably four. I’d like to think I could take on four myself. I know if it was five, I’d be in some trouble.”
“What if they had weapons?” Stocky Guy asked.
I crossed my arms and leaned against the doorway, which creaked when I put my weight against it. Both guys turned and looked at me.
“So why are these six-year-olds in a gang?” I asked, wiping blood from my nose.
Spiky Hair sized me up.
“Bad parenting,” he said. “Their parents are like crystal meth addicts, and the kids don’t have anywhere to go at night, so they roam the streets, looking for trouble.”
Stocky Guy chimed in, “Also peer pressure. They have older brothers who are in eight-and nine-year-old gangs.”
I nodded, folding the paper towel so that I could place a clean part of it under my nostrils. “Yeah, peer pressure is hard. Do they really want to do you harm, or are they just showboating?”
“Mostly showboating,” Spiky Hair said. “It’s like an initiation thing.”
If these guys were at Rangeview, I thought, they’d be survivalists, kids who wore army fatigues and hung out at the shooting range and watched lots of shows about fishermen who got killed hunting crabs and stuff. Hence the exploding-car poster, I realized.
“I wonder what a six-year-old has to do to become a gang leader,” I mused. “Knock over a 7-Eleven made from Legos?”
Stocky Guy squinted at me. “Don’t be naive,” he said. “It’s a strength thing. Survival of the fittest. Toughest becomes leader. Like Lord of the Flies.”
“Yeah, in Lord of the Flies there was a fight to the death for that role,” Spiky Hair said, sitting up and facing me and rubbing a zit on his cheek.
“Right,” I said. And then we were all silent.
“You’re Rafe?” Stocky Guy said.
“Yep.”
“I’m Albie. And this here is Toby.”
“Hey,” I said, coming in and sitting down on my bed. “You have a radio with lots of buttons.”
“It’s a police scanner. Knowledge is power,” Albie said. “You have a bloody nose and lots of dirt on your legs.”
“Football,” I said.
Albie looked over at Toby, and they exchanged a look. “Great,” he said, in a way that meant not great.
I glanced around the room. “So I’m guessing you’re not studying to be a housekeeper?”
“Not so much,” he said. “Are you seriously anal-retentive?”
“Nah,” I said, realizing that I was, in fact, seriously anal-retentive, since just looking at our room was filling me with the strong urge to buy a vacuum cleaner. Or maybe a butler. “That’s a lot of black T-shirts.”
“Thanks,” Albie said.
“Albie shops at the waiter’s store,” Toby said.
“Yeah, that’s hilarious,” Albie responded. “You shop at the ‘I could never be hired as even a busboy because of my criminal record’ store.”
“Good one,” said Toby.
“So what do I need to know about Natick?” I said.
Toby and Albie shared another look.
“Run for the hills!” Toby said.
“It can’t be that bad. And I’m pretty sure I just came from the hills. I’m from Colorado.”
“Well, then I guess it depends on what kind of guy you are,” Albie said.
The old Rafe would have let it go. But I really felt like I had to call him on it. “Why do I have to be any particular type?”
He looked me up and down, in a very obvious way. “Well, you don’t have to be, but you are.”
I grabbed another paper towel from the roll on my desk and pressed it against my nose. “Okay, then,” I said. “What’s my type?” I crossed my arms and stuck out my chest a bit.
“I’m guessing preppy jock,” Albie said.
“And that’s … a bad thing?”
Albie shrugged. “Having a moth fly into your ear and lodge itself into your brain is a bad thing. Being a preppy jock is just … I don’t know. It’s a thing.”
“You mean it’s a bad thing.”
“Well, it’s not a moth burrowing into your brain, but, yeah, it’s kinda lame.”
“Geez, Albie!” Toby said.
“Well, he asked.”
Maybe it was the adrenaline from the football game and getting the nosebleed. Maybe it was just the irony that I’d finally been labeled something mainstream and acceptable, and now here was my loser roommate giving me trouble. “And I see you’re the type of guy who enjoys exploding cars and police scanners,” I said. “Are you in a militia?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re a genius. I am in a militia. You should probably sleep with one eye open.”
“Dork,” I muttered.
“Republican” was his response.