In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(84)

“Whoa,” I hear Leo say, and I slide off Rex’s lap. Rex clears his throat, but doesn’t get up. Will has Leo by the back of the shirt, no doubt preventing him from walking into the kitchen.

“Uh, maybe we should just order a pizza instead?”




AFTER WE’VE eaten pizza, we’re sitting around in Rex’s living room and Leo is trying to teach Marilyn to roll over. She keeps sitting instead, as if Rex has taught her not to listen to people who tell her to do stupid things.

“Hey, don’t you have any friends you should be hanging out with on Halloween?” Will asks, lazily running his finger around the mouth of his beer bottle. It’s become clear to me that this is just how Will talks, but Leo turns red and looks down, embarrassed.

“Rex, how did you ever date such an *?” I say, without heat.

Leo’s head snaps up.

“You two used to date?” he asks, and I can practically see the porn he’s writing in his head right now.

“He doesn’t mean anything by it,” Rex says, leaning back into the couch and ruffling Will’s hair. Will pulls away and shoots daggers at him as he fixes his hair. “He just doesn’t always remember that other people have feelings.” He shoots the last two words at Will.

“Jeez, sorry!” Will says, looking at Leo. “I’m sure you have hundreds of friends and it’s so kind of you to grace us with your presence. Okay?” He makes a face.

“No, it’s okay,” Leo says with a sigh. “I guess I should go and leave you guys to your evening.”

God, Leo’s a nice kid. He gets up slowly, giving us all every opportunity to stop him. I shoot Will a look and see that Rex is doing the same. Will’s eyes get big and then he rolls them at us.

“Wait, Leo,” he says. “Don’t go. Stay and we’ll… uh—” He looks around wildly. “—we’ll play a game?”

“Really?” Leo is back in a flash. “I love games! What are we gonna play?”

I look irritatedly at Will. Does Rex even own any games? He doesn’t really seem like much of a game player. Besides, he’s alone most of the time.

“Oh, wait, Rex doesn’t have any games,” Will says. Leo’s face falls, like he thinks Will was just messing with him.

“We could do something else,” I offer. “Watch a movie. It’s Halloween; there’ve got to be some good horror movies on, right?”

Leo doesn’t look thrilled with that idea either and twists his hands in his lap. Then he looks up, excited again.

“We could play Celebrity! You just write the names of different celebrities on pieces of paper and then you draw the names out of a hat and try to get us to guess them as fast as you can.”

Will looks at Rex, his eyes shifting quickly back.

“Um, no, that’s no good,” he says. “Old man Rex over there won’t know any celebrities unless they’re circa Hedy Lamarr.”

“Who?” Leo and I say.

Rex opens his mouth like he’s about to tell us, but Will interrupts.

“How about Pictionary?” Will says. “Two teams of two, and each team can just tell the drawer what they’re drawing. No work involved.”

I shrug.

“If you guys want. I can’t draw for shit.”

“Yeah,” says Leo, “I can’t really—”

“Here, kid, you can be on my team and the lovebirds over there can be together.” Will pulls Leo over to him and Leo goes easily, shutting up the second Will touches him. I flip Will off, but move over to Rex.

“Sorry in advance,” I tell Rex. Rex brings out pads of paper and pens and we start to play. I am an embarrassingly bad artist, trying to communicate things with stick figures and totally not-to-scale objects. Rex gamely guesses, following my trains of thought pretty well. He’s a good artist, though. Everything he draws is neat and precise, with simple, clear lines like a blueprint. Leo, like me, isn’t good. He draws fast and large, taking up the whole page only to scribble it out and start over, which drives Will crazy. He guesses at rapid-fire pace, going in a different direction practically every time Leo draws a new line, to the point where the kid gets flustered and starts narrating what things are, which loses them the round.

But Will is an amazing artist. He begins to draw and, with only a few pen strokes, pulls a whole story out of the page. His drawings have style and personality even when they’re things like milk or flyover states.

We’re playing to ten and we’re tied at nine, our team having lost the last round, so if Will and Leo get the next point, they win. It’s Leo’s turn to draw and I gave him The Talking Heads.

“A corpse! A mummy! A mannequin?” Will guesses. “A guy blowing a bubble! A guy blowing a bubble through a straw! A guy fishing with his mouth! Two guys mouth fishing? Two guys blowing bubbles? Come on, Leo, what the hell is that? Wait, fellatio! Come on, Daniel, you gave the kid ‘fellatio’?”

“I can assure you I did not.”

“People with dentures! People with dentures blowing a bubble! People with wax lips and clown noses sucking each other off! Robots! Dick-sucking robots!”

“There are no dicks, you *!” Leo finally yells. “That is not a penis!” He points to his paper.