Because You Love to Hate Me(80)

Every last one of them died. I didn’t ask why or how I controlled their fates.

I just did.

Which is why I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Steven Kemple would not die.

DON’T BE AN IDIOT, JULIAN

The Friday after Steven Kemple pulled something big enough to deserve a name and birth certificate from his mouth and smeared it on my Herbert Hoover High School cross-country team polo shirt in Mr. Kang’s biology class, Mom and Dad went to Minneapolis for three days.

“You know the rules, Julian,” my dad told me before they both kissed me on the forehead and climbed into the Prius.

Of course, it didn’t matter what the rules were. I could break every one of them, leave bloody corpses strewn throughout the living room, and Mom and Dad wouldn’t even notice. This is probably foreshadowing.

Mom, who did not wear hats, slid her window down and waved. “And call us every night!”

They gave me permission to have a party. But let me be clear: “party” to a skinny, dorky fifteen-year-old from Ealing, Iowa, named Julian Powell meant my best friend, Denic, was allowed to come over and spend the night, and we’d stay up late eating pizza and playing the dorkiest, most violent video game that was our current obsession, which was called Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners.

Denic came over at five. The delivery guy from Stan’s Pizza, a senior named Scott Neufeld, who was also on the Hoover High cross-country team, knocked on the door when Denic and I were about an hour into Battle Quest: Take No Prisoners.

I thought it was odd that Denic had ordered four pizzas from Stan’s. We usually couldn’t even finish one.

“Are you starving or something?” I said.

Denic carried the stack of pizza boxes into the living room.

“No. You’ll never guess what I did,” Denic said.

“Lost a bet that involved making an entire pair of pants out of four extra-large Stan’s pizzas?” I guessed.

“No,” Denic said. “I invited Kathryn and Amanda over. And they said yes.”

“Did they tell you they eat a lot?”

“No. I just—Don’t be an idiot, Julian.”

I will admit that it was simultaneously thrilling and terrifying to think of being alone in my house on a Friday night with Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores.

“Why did you invite them?” I asked.

“Are you out of your mind?”

I was certain Denic’s question was purely rhetorical.

“But I’m in pajama bottoms and a T-shirt,” I pointed out to the fully dressed Denic. In fact, it was just at that moment that two things happened: first, the doorbell rang, which is not really foreshadowing because you already know who rang it, and it was someone named either Kathryn Huxley or possibly Amanda Flores; and second, I not only realized that Denic was fully dressed, but that he was dressed nice, like school-dance nice, which is something a fifteen-year-old guy would never notice about his best friend unless he found himself in a situation where he was embarrassingly underdressed in the impending presence of two very beautiful and smart, popular fifteen-year-old girls.

“You fucker,” I said.

Denic waved his hand dismissively. “They’ll think it’s sexy.”

“Then you should put on pajamas, too.”

“Don’t be an idiot. You know I sleep in my boxers.”

“I’ll lend you some of mine.”

The doorbell rang again while Denic and I argued about fashion and sleepwear.

Denic repeated the mantra of the evening. “Don’t be an idiot, Julian. Answer the door.”

Amanda Flores laughed at me. “Don’t tell me this is a pajama party. What are you? In fourth grade?”

I was pretty sure those were rhetorical questions.

And my pajama bottoms had 1953 Chevy pickups on them.

“No. I. Um. Always dress like this. Um. When I . . .”

Denic pushed past me and opened the door all the way so that Kathryn Huxley and Amanda Flores could see that he was dressed like a tenth grader, as opposed to a shoeless fourth grader with little red trucks on his pajamas.

He said, “Hi, Kathryn! Hi, Amanda! Are you hungry? We got Stan’s. Come in!”

I kind of hated Denic at that exact moment, but not the kind of hate that would cause him to be crushed by a reticulated python, or end up strangled by a Windbreaker that got pinched in the rubber rail of an escalator, which is what happened last April to Camaro Douchebag the day he intentionally splashed me with mud when I was running. And, like I said, it’s perfectly okay for best friends to hate each other from time to time.

It wasn’t the kind of hate I had for Steven Kemple.

Kathryn and Amanda followed the very nicely dressed Denic into my living room.

Kathryn said, “Are your parents gone?”

She sounded so sexy and daring when she asked it. I nearly passed out, which would have been super embarrassing.

I managed to squeak out an answer. “Yes. They went to Minneapolis till Sunday.”

“Nice socks,” Amanda said. “Hey, aren’t you the kid who got handcuffed to the drinking fountain in his underwear at Bloomer Park when we were in sixth grade?”

“It was seventh,” Denic pointed out.

My socks didn’t match. I hadn’t noticed until Amanda Flores pointed it out. One was grey and one was white. This was turning out to be the worst night of my life, which, as you have probably guessed, is major foreshadowing.