We Are the Ants(17)

“Obviously. It’s, like, three in the morning.”

I forced a laugh. “I figured you’d be drinking until dawn.”

Marcus paused. “Drinking? What the f*ck, Henry? I’ve got school tomorrow. So do you.”

School? Seriously? The sluggers had kept me on their ship for at least two whole days. I hate when they do that.

The third indignity was listening to Marcus speak to me in that condescending tone, knowing I couldn’t tell him to eat a dick because I needed him to pick me up, and having to pretend it was Sunday when my brain was telling me it was still Friday.

“I wouldn’t have called if it weren’t important.”

“Couldn’t you have called someone else?”

“No.”

The silence on Marcus’s end of the line worried me that he’d hung up, but he coughed, and the phlegmy noise was a relief. “What’s the big emergency?”

“I’m at Ben Franklin Elementary, and I need you to pick me up.”

“Funny.”

“I’m not joking.”

“Dude, that’s way out by Beeline. What’re you doing there?”

The fourth indignity was that Marcus already knew the answer but wanted to hear me say it. “Can you get me or not?”

Part of me wanted him to refuse. To hang up the phone and fall back to sleep, wake up the next morning believing my call had been some crazy, late-night, Chinese-food-fueled dream. But he said, “Give me a few minutes to get dressed.”

? ? ?

No one memorizes phone numbers anymore. They call “Mom” or “Dad” or “Assface.” The entries in their phones are completely divorced from the ten-digit numbers that make calling people possible.

I tried to bring my cell phone onto the ship with me a couple of times. I’d slept with it clutched in my hands, stuffed in my underwear; I’d even duct-taped it to my thigh once. The sluggers had ditched the phone but left the tape. I’m not ashamed to admit that I screamed when I pulled it off the next day. I thought if I could sneak my phone aboard, I could snap some grainy photos, record some video, maybe grab GPS coordinates to prove I wasn’t lying. As an added bonus, I’d be able to call for help if the sluggers dropped me off far from home.

I finally gave up and memorized the numbers of everyone I knew worth calling. The list was short.

Marcus zipped into the parking lot in a sleek black Tesla. His poor taste in music reached me before he did; the car vibrated from the bass, and Marcus sang loud and proud.

When he pulled to a stop in the loading zone, I caught my reflection in the car’s tinted windows before Marcus pushed open the door. My hair was tangled and stiff from the dried water, my chest was streaked with mud, and I was wearing the boxers with the kissing whales Jesse had given me for our first Valentine’s Day. I’m pretty sure whales don’t actually kiss.

“Looking hot, Space Boy.” Marcus, of course, looked perfect. His hair had just the right amount of wave in the front, and he was dressed in khaki shorts and a V-neck T-shirt. He didn’t look at all like someone who’d recently rolled out of bed.

“Can you not call me that?” I started to climb into the car when Marcus shouted, “Whoa, whoa! Hold on.” He dug around in the backseat and retrieved a towel for me to sit on, and one of his track jerseys to wear. It was crusty and reeked of salty sweat, but it still smelled better than I did. “Thanks.”

We barely made it out of the parking lot before Marcus started in on me. “Is this some sort of Space Boy thing?”

I leaned my head against the window and watched Ben Franklin Elementary disappear, trying to ignore Marcus. For him, the party was two days ago—old news—but the things he’d said, the way he’d treated me, were still fresh wounds for me. Being desperate for a ride didn’t mean I was willing to forgive him.

Marcus smacked my arm. “Those aliens lobotomize you or something?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“You were totally abducted, weren’t you?” Marcus fired off a high-pitched cackle that made me fantasize about punching him so hard in the balls that the trauma traveled back through time and rendered his ancestors sterile, thus wiping Marcus McCoy from history. “What’d they do to you? Anal probe? That’s it, isn’t it?”

“Totally,” I mumbled. “Why do you even want to know?”

“I’m curious.”

“Bullshit. You just want the gory details so you can tell your * friends how Space Boy got bummed by aliens.”

Marcus’s eyes widened. “Did you really?”

“No!”

Despite being the only car on the road, we caught every red light. When Marcus pulled to a stop, he slid his hand across the center console and rested it on my thigh, slowly inching toward my crotch like he thought I wouldn’t notice. “I was dreaming about you when you called.”

“Funny, I was dreaming about you, too.”

“Yeah?”

“It was great. I showed up at your party, and you didn’t publicly humiliate me. Of course, that’s how I knew it was a dream.” I peeled his hand off my leg.

“Lighten up, Henry.”

I despised his bully logic. If I did nothing when taunted or teased, I was a *. If I fought back, I was accused of taking things too seriously. He hides behind the excuse that he’s only fooling around, that everyone else needs to learn how to take a joke. Normally, I would have let it pass, but I was too exhausted, too sore, and too upset. It was one indignity too far.