The Music of What Happens(41)

Pam says, “No self-respecting Mexican has ever listened to Imagine Dragons. Ever.”

“Um, okay,” I say, unimpressed with their logic or their classifications. I listen to what I like. Whatever the hell I want.

“What has killed more people? Trains or Train?” Jordan says, and Pam and Kayla laugh, and then Jordan puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “We’re just funnin’.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Yeah. I’ve met you. I get it. The kids and their sarcasm and all that.”

Jordan gets mock stern and points at me. “You kids and your sarcasm. When I was your age, we were sarcastic sometimes, and other times we were serious.”

I laugh. “When I was a child, we walked three blocks to school,” I say.

“We used that one already,” Jordan says, and he turns to Kayla and Pam and says, “We’re working on a character. Stan the Somewhat Uninteresting Codger.”

“Curmudgeon,” I correct.

I glance over, curious to see Pam and Kayla’s reaction. It’s a mutual eye roll. Which makes me feel a little more at home. Betts and Zay-Rod? They wouldn’t even know how to react to that shit.

“So what are we gonna do?” Pam says. “So bored. Summer sucks so hard.”

Kayla’s eyes light up and she shouts, “Dream throwing!”

This apparently means something to them, because Jordan shrieks, “Yes!” He runs upstairs like he actually lives there, sort of like I’d do at Betts’s place. Pam and Kayla sprint up after him, so I follow along.

When I get to Kayla’s extremely girly-girl room upstairs, Jordan is already sprawled out on her pink-sheeted bed like it’s his own, and the girls are on the floor, tearing pieces of loose-leaf paper in half. Kayla grabs a coffee mug that reads You’re the Lorelai to my Rory from her desk and pulls out four colorful pens. She tosses one to Jordan, and then, when she sees me at the door, hurls a green one at me. It comes straight for my eyes, and I catch it.

“Wooh!” she says. “Athlete?”

“Yup,” I say back.

Pam gives me a side-eye. “Gay, hot, athletic. What’s the catch?” she says to Jordan.

“Dude bro,” he says, and they laugh.

“Hey,” I say. “I’m right here.”

“Broseph,” Pam says, mocking, and just like that I decide they are basically Betts and Zay-Rod but female. We trash-talk and don’t mean it. If Jordan likes them, they gotta be okay. And if they’re making fun of me, that has to mean they like me.

“Wassup, bro,” I say. “So I was kickin’ it with this ho and she straight up shot me down, yo. She was all, ‘Enough with the brobalization. I seen enough of you people, yo.’ ”

Pam laughs. “Serious, yo. That shit is sick!”

I say, “Straight up. What’s the haps?”

“What up, dog?” Kayla says.

“Oh my God,” Jordan says. “Is that really how you talk to your friends?”

“Naw. We just stick the word ‘bro’ in every sentence, and say ‘gnarly’ and ‘no way, dude’ and ‘for serious though’ and ‘bam.’ Like every other word. Bam.”

“And you wear a hat backward, right, like always?” Kayla asks.

“Dude,” I say. “We are total stereotypes, dude.”

Jordan says, “You don’t gots to be Sherlock Bromes to figure that shit out.”

“Jordan in the hay-ouse!” Pam says. “Bam!”

I laugh despite myself. “I think this is on the verge of being offensive.”

“No way, dude,” Pam says. “For real though. I want in on your bromance. I about had it with these two. Too much estrogen, bro.”

I laugh. “You’re in. We’re like dude bros with a heart of gold. Are we done making fun of me now? Can we move on to Jordan, who definitely deserves this more than I do?”

He gives me a mock shocked look and then sticks his tongue out at me, and I admit I get kinda flushed in the face.

“Can a dude bro even be gay?” Kayla asks. “I kinda think of dude bros as macking on the ladies.”

“Um,” I say. “Apparently. ’Cause I’m all about the dudes, bro.”

“And your friends are cool?” Pam asks. “With you being a bromosexual and all?”

I shrug. “They’re my boys. We cuddle. They’re not too worried about it.”

“I think I love them. Who are they? Do I know them?”

“You know Xavier Rodriguez?”

She shrugs. “What’s he look like?”

“Shaved head. Tall. Kinda light-skinned. Does slam poetry?”

She shakes her head. “Cute?”

“He’s my boy. So, no. But yeah, I guess. The ladies dig him.”

Kayla sticks her finger down her throat. “Yeah. Not seeking a dude bro. A straight one, anyway.”

Jordan says, “Well I’m kinda dude bro hooked now. This one carried me out of the desert when I was basically dying of heat prostration today. True story.”

Pam crosses her arms across her chest and looks at me. “Was our boy getting all dramatic again? He does that.”

Jordan gives her the finger.