White Rabbit(10)
It was not an easy partnership in the beginning. Bash’s popularity elevated him well above my own meager social standing, putting him into the orbit of Ethan Allen’s student royalty. He hung out with guys like Fox Whitney and Race Atwood—and, thusly, my brother, Hayden, as well. Natural enemies, Sebastian and I were antagonistic from the moment we were introduced, boring holes into each other with iron glares.
Over the course of the next two months, however, things slowly changed. Our mutual hostility proved too difficult to maintain when we were forced to sit together in the same car for hours a couple times a week, driving back and forth to different away games. I started to realize that he actually was a pretty good sports writer after all, and the atmosphere between us gradually shifted from open animosity to resentful cooperation to a grudging but necessary pact of silent non-aggression. Finally, at a football game in Brattleboro the week before Thanksgiving, Bash Williams actually spoke to me in a genuinely friendly way for the first time ever.
I was rummaging through my bag, digging for a camera lens that had gotten lost in the other useless crap that I kept in there, and I had hauled a bunch of items out in order to make the search easier. Right on top of the disordered pile I was creating beside me sat a battered and dog-eared copy of Love—the fourth volume from the most badass manga series of all time.
“Dude,” Bash blurted unexpectedly, a spark of something unfamiliar glimmering in his eyes. “Are you seriously reading Death Note?”
“Uh … yeah?” Aware that this might be a trap, I kept my answer guarded. But Bash surprised me.
“That story is the shit!” He couldn’t keep his excitement under control. “I don’t want to give anything away or whatever, but by the time you finish that? You’re gonna have lost your mind. What part are you up to?”
“Actually? I’m kind of rereading it. For the third time,” I admitted, eyeing him with a curious level of newfound respect. I didn’t think popular kids were into anything except the Top 40, other popular kids, and ganging up on nerds. “You like manga?”
“I mean, sorta.” He shrugged sheepishly. “My girlfriend’s little brother, Javier? He’s, like, nuts about anime and stuff. All last summer he was bugging me to read Death Note.” Bash was in a very high-profile on-again-off-again relationship with Lia Santos—the kind of obnoxiously torrid love affair that involved tons of handsy PDA in school hallways, followed by tons of screaming arguments also in school hallways, a breakup, a make-up, lather, rinse, repeat. Paying attention to them was exhausting. “I finally agreed, just to get him to lay off, and … man, once I started it, I stayed up for thirty-six hours straight and finished the whole series. I mean, I think I literally know what it feels like to come down off a meth binge now.”
“I know what you mean,” I said with a short laugh. “The first time I read it was back in the seventh grade, and I didn’t sleep for about a week, because I was convinced that maybe it was really possible to kill somebody just by writing it in a notebook.”
He grinned. “You did?”
“It’s really embarrassing.” I felt my face turning red, but I smiled anyway, because he didn’t seem to be mocking me.
“I get it. I, uh … I actually maybe kinda slept with the light on for a few days after I finished?” he confessed, rubbing the back of his head. “And that was last August.”
“It’s freaky as hell,” I agreed.
“It’s awesome,” he returned, seriously. “Have you read Blue Exorcist? It’s wild—it’s all about the son of Satan learning to fight demons so he can bring down his dad. The action sequences are rad as hell.”
“I’ve heard of it.”
“You should check it out,” Bash said, his eyes not quite meeting mine. “I’m, like, obsessed, and … and I’m sick of not having anybody to talk to about it.”
For a second, I wasn’t sure how to react. This sudden and unexpected olive branch was difficult to process and harder to trust, given our history; but at last, I said, “I will. It sounds really cool.”
He looked at me then, and smiled; and there was a quality to it that was shy and sincere and searching, and I felt something warm flip over in my chest.
And, just like that, I realized the horrible truth: I had a crush on Bash Williams.
*
As soon as the spinning in my brain begins to slow, the throbbing fire in my chest to subside, I break my contact with Sebastian and step away. No matter how much I trusted him in the past, I can’t anymore—and maybe never should have.
“You okay?” He asks gently, and the compassion in his voice is almost more than I can bear.
“I’m fine.” I look past him to the kitchen, where Fox’s head is just visible behind the island, a dark mass in a spoiling pool of scarlet-black blood. Weirdly enough, it helps me get a hold of myself, like a sudden cold-water bath. “I’m all right.” Stiffly, but not without real gratitude, I mutter, “Thanks.”
“Did you find anything outside?”
“Not really. No bloody footprints or whatever, and pretty much every room in the cottage has a door that opens onto the porch. This place is at the ass-end of nowhere, though. No one came in off the street and did this. Either it was April, or…”