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17

Teen Shit

Tents up. Fire going. Hot dogs on sticks, marshmallows on sticks, hot dogs and marshmallows together on the same sticks—that one came to life once Nick and Hamish started smoking weed out of Nick’s glass pipe, the one he called the Purple People Eater. Snacks were open, drinks were out—cheap beer and a bottle of Jameson stolen from Nick’s dad (“stolen” because Nick’s dad knew they were taking it and didn’t give a shit). Owen started with the beer—Coors Light, which made him sad to drink because Coors Light was sadness in a can.

He asked Matty, “Ready for me to kick your ass at Magic again ?”

Matty said, “Yeah, yeah, sure thing, yeah,” but Owen could see by the look on his face that it wasn’t happening. “I’m just gonna run off with Laur here for a minute and go look at the uhh, the vista—” And Lauren gave Owen a look. She hung that look on him like a heavy coat, and he didn’t know what it was or what to do with it. Was it guilt? Shame? Sadness? Condescension? Was it a silent apology? Was she judging him or judging herself? Or maybe the beer was already making him fuzzy and she was looking right through him, seeing through time to whatever was to come with her and Matty.

And then those two were off, and Nick was at one side of him and Hamish the other. “We’ll fuckin’ play Magic with you, man,” Nick said.

They played a few games. Nick had a play style that he called Chaos Monkey Mode, where he did random shit every turn, totally unpredictable— ook ing like a mad chimp whenever he did something truly bizarre, like giving one of his opponents the gift of a good enchantment for no discernible reason other than to fuck with the game. He didn’t play to win, he just played to amuse himself. Hamish played to win, on the other hand, but never really had a strong grasp of the game’s mechanics—mostly he was just a “spawn tons of creatures and march them into battle again and again” kind of player. Not much strategy. Though they weren’t playing, Matty was pretty good at the game once in a while, but couldn’t hold a candle to Lauren, who mostly said she hated the game (“So boring and pedestrian,” she always said with a vigorous eye roll, even as she shuffled her deck and readied for war), and yet she always had a keen stratagem every single match. In truth, she was Owen’s only real competitor. But she wasn’t here. She was off with Matty. In the woods.

Playing her own game. A new stratagem.

Just don’t think about it, Owen told himself.

It’s fine.

You don’t care.

They’re just looking at the vista .

First game ended, and Owen won—but barely, if only because Nick high played better than Nick sober for some fucked-up reason. Hamish, not so much, who mostly just sat there giggling at his cards and saying their names in increasingly goofy voices. “ Merfolk Looter. Goblin Lackey. Balduvian Horde! ” Eventually he just made up his own card names. “Yawgmoth’s Yum-Yums! Crovax the Fuckin’ Uncrustable! Phrexian Butthole!” He and Nick were laughing so hard, they were crying at this point. The fire nearby snapped and popped, coughing up embers that rose on spirals of smoke, dying in the air.

Owen put down his beer and switched to the whiskey. It tasted like the campfire. He hated it. He loved that he hated it. So he drank more.

“I bet they fuckin’, ” Nick said finally, when their laughs had subsided.

Hamish snorted. “Yawgmoth and Crovax?”

“No, dickhead, Lauren and Matty. I bet he’s got her up against a tree right now. Going to town. Poundtown, population: those two.”

Owen made a face and drank more whiskey. It hurt. Good. Fine. Yes.

Hamish gave Owen a sad, protective look, then chastised Nick, saying, “C’mon, Nick, don’t be gross. They’re our friends.”

“Gross is who I am, Hamish. Tiger can’t change its spots.”

“Nick—”

“Oh, shit, you think maybe he’s putting it in her ass?” At that, both Owen and Hamish shot him a warning look. Nick held up his hands in faux surrender. He laughed, cruelly. “I mean, maybe she’s putting it in his ass, no judgment, it’s almost the year 2000, if people want to get freaky-deaky, I very much support it. Whatever makes their grapefruits squirt, yanno.”

“ Nick .”

“They might not be doing anything,” Owen said, erupting.

“Don’t be retarded,” Nick said. “They fuckin’ .”

“You can’t say that,” Hamish said.

“They fuckin’?”

“No. The, the, the other word, the r-word.”

“Retarded? I just said it, retard. If I can’t say it, then how did I say it?”

“It’s not cool to say it. You’re not supposed to—”

“I can say anything and everything, that’s the amazing thing about words. They’re just words. They don’t mean anything. Monkey grunts and insect clicks. Just because you’re offended by one doesn’t change my ability to say them, you fucking retarded-ass—”

“ Nick, ” Hamish said, and the way Hamish said it, it meant that he really, really fucking meant it. Like he was serious. Hamish didn’t get deeply serious all that often, but when he did, you knew it was real. Like, headbutt-a-tree real. “I’m calling Covenant.”

“Covenant. Okay! Okay . Fine, whatever. It’s not like I mean it in the bad way. I don’t say retarded and mean actually retarded people—”

“Yeah, you fucking do. You say it meaning someone or something who’s stupid. You mean it like mentally challenged, handicapped and shit. You can’t—it’s not cool. You know, Mikey Hart’s sister has Down syndrome, and she knows what the word means and it hurts her when she hears it—”

“Ugh, god, you are seriously the worst right now, Ham. You’re absolutely crushing my high. Bringing me down, man.”

“It’s fine, you’re fine, we’re all fine,” Hamish said, chuckling. It was his way of smoothing it all over. “Besides, there’s more weed where that came from, brother.” He clapped a hand on Nick’s shoulder, and the two of them got to the act of sorting the sticks and seeds from whatever weed they had brought with them.

Nick said, “Well, whatever they’re doing, Matty and Lauren are missing out.” Then he perked his head up like a startled meerkat in a nature special. “Wait one fuckin’ minute. Zuikas. You don’t—nah, it can’t be. You’re not into Lauren, are you?”

“No,” Owen said, protesting. He felt like Nick was just messing with him. Nick knew, right? They all knew. “I—no, what, I don’t know.” He stood up suddenly, the bottle of whiskey still in his hand. It sloshed around. “I have to go take a piss.”

They called after him, calling his name, telling him to come back, but he waved them off and hurried away from the firelight. He didn’t really have to piss. Instead, he wandered farther into the trees, sipping the whiskey that once burned him like a candlewick but now had just turned him numb and melty. Less the wick, more the wax. He pushed Matty and Lauren out of his thoughts and instead stood there in the darkness, listening to the night bugs chack ing and clack ing and buzz ing. He let the night wash over him. Tried to empty his head entirely—but as it emptied out, something slipped in.

The staircase.

He’d forgotten about it, but now, it stood tall inside his mind—unasked for, unbidden. As if it had risen there, built on the earth inside him. So real he could nearly touch it, even though he couldn’t really see it, even though it wasn’t even near him. But inside the darkness of his brain, it was there, waiting. The stairs easing forth until they were right in front of his feet. Like a dog nosing your hand to pet him, it was as if those stairs wanted to get under the front of his foot, pushing him up so that he was upon them. Like it was begging him to come to them and climb them. It had no voice. But it was urgent. It demanded to be thought of. To be seen.

To be used .

He shook his head. Drank more. Let the whiskey push it out. But then he thought, Maybe it’s the whiskey doing this to me . Or the contact buzz from the secondhand smoke. Or a bad hot dog. The staircase was the staircase; it was weird, but that’s all it was. It didn’t have thoughts. It didn’t want anything. It was just the ruins of an old house in the middle of the woods.

Shut up, Owen. Shut up .

Stupid betrayer brain.

But even as he turned to go back to the campsite, he was almost sure he could see the staircase out there, way out there, in the trees. Rising into the dark. A shadow blacker than night, like a shape cut into the fabric of the world.