Chapter Eight
The party was low-key. The neighbors, Dan and Mandy Kimball, came over, and they had a cake that Brandon’s mom had made too dry even though she claimed she’d followed the recipe exactly. Brandon’s dad made an effort to include him in conversation. “Brandon’s fraternity is getting ready for some sort of quiz thing,” he said, waving his hand.
“Uh, yeah.” Brandon made fork holes in his frosting. “It’s like, uh, like quiz bowl, that some colleges do? Except Prescott doesn’t have an official team. So we just do it as, like, an on-campus thing, and different groups compete against one another. So Phi Sig puts together a team, and a few other fraternities and sororities. I think the a cappella group has one, and the Art Alliance. The Black Student Union, the improv group…oh, the Water Polo Club has a team, but I hear they play dirty.” The Kimballs were nodding politely. “Anyway, whoever wins the campus tournament goes on to play the best teams at other schools. Last year Phi Sig lost to the Student Senate team at Bucknell.” He shrugged and went back to his cake.
“So are you going to be on the team?” his mother asked.
“No. They’re doing tryouts this weekend, and I’ve got other stuff I want to focus on this year anyway.” Like not completely losing my mind.
His parents and the Kimballs went back to talking, and Ella and Charlotte were deep in conversation with each other, and Brandon let the noise wash over him. He tried to pay attention when his dad opened presents. Forced himself to smile when his dad thanked him and Charlotte and Ella in turn for the watch. Was relieved when his parents and the Kimballs moved out to the back porch, and he could sneak back upstairs and go to bed.
* * * *
When Alex and Blake reached fraternity row after dropping Scoops at his res hall, they saw five Alpha Delts lined up on Phi Sig’s lawn. One of them was Mark Cooper. He was throwing rocks at Deacon’s window. “Come on out here, Holt!” Mark yelled. “We’ve got news for you!”
“Oh boy,” Alex said under his breath.
“Little dude.” Blake walked up to Mark. “What’s going on?”
“Oh, hey, Blake.” Mark glanced at them. No hey for Alex then. Alex was starting to think Mark most definitely didn’t like him. “Check this out. We’re about to destroy my boyfriend’s world. In a fun way.”
The window opened and Deacon stuck his head out. “What the hell are you—” He ducked inside as a rock sailed through the window. There was a crash.
“Sorry!” Mark called.
A few minutes later, Deacon opened the front door and stepped outside. “What is going on?”
“Deacon Holt.” Mark swept his arm grandly to indicate the four guys beside him. “Meet the Killer Numbats.”
“Huh?”
“The Killer Numbats. That’s right, Deke. Alpha Delt’s got an Academic Challenge team. Prepare to have your American arse handed to you. We are gonna sweep the effing footpath with you.”
“Sidewalk,” the guy beside Mark murmured.
“Footpath!” Mark said sharply.
Deacon stared at the ragtag group for a moment. Then he burst out laughing. “Wait, are you serious?”
Mark flushed a little. “What’s so funny?”
“Alpha Delt has an Academic Challenge team?”
“For the first time ever.” Mark paused. “Tryouts didn’t take too long, since there are only, like, three of us who know shit. Plus Russell.”
“Hey.” Russell waved.
“But you’re still gonna get served.”
Deacon continued to snicker. “I just can’t believe this. I never thought I’d see the day. What are you gonna do if you get a question about Faulkner?”
“I don’t see why it’s so hilarious.” Alex detected a note of genuine anger in Mark’s tone.
“Because he’s a Phi Sig, and he thinks he’s hot shit,” muttered a tall, thin blond kid at the end of the line.
“We’re not stupid,” Mark shot at Deacon.
“Well, Russell is,” the guy beside Mark said.
“Yes, I know!” Mark snapped. Russell tried to punch a bee that flew by. Alex thought Mark might actually jab Deacon in the chest, he was gesturing at him so ferociously. “We were gonna be mostly a joke. And own it. But now that you’ve laughed at us, we’re gonna show you just how serious we are.”
“Mark—” Deacon began.
“No.” Mark turned away. “Gay Sean, Straight Sean. Jackson.” He paused. “Russell.” Russell grinned blandly. “Come on.”
“Wait a minute.” Blake, who had been watching the exchange, stepped forward. “You formed a team? And you didn’t ask me to try out?”
Mark and the others exchanged a look.
“We just assumed you wouldn’t want to,” the kid beside Mark—Alex was pretty sure it was Gay Sean—said. “You don’t really like…learning.”
“You still should have asked!” Blake sounded genuinely hurt. “I mean, you asked Russell to be on the team instead of me.”
Russell scratched his nose.
“Sorry, mate.” Mark shrugged. “We really didn’t think…”
“Whatever.” Blake turned and started toward the Alpha Delt house.
For the first time since Alex had met him, Mark looked uncertain. “Right. Guys, let’s go learn some shit about whatever.”
“Mark,” Deacon tried again.
Mark held up a finger without looking round. “Quiet, you. You don’t support my dreams. And you’ve never taken my bear-ror seriously.”
“Bear-ror?” Alex asked, pretty sure no one was paying any attention to him.
“It’s his bear terror,” Deacon said in a low voice, as Mark strode toward the Alpha Delt house, his posse following. “Shit. I’m either gonna have to give him a flawless blowjob to make up for this, or I’m gonna have to learn not to laugh every time he mentions the Killer Numbats. Probably both.”
“Oh.” Alex squeaked. Laughed awkwardly. Wasn’t sure he was supposed to laugh. Serioused up his expression.
“You coming in?”
“Yeah,” Alex said quickly. He hadn’t realized how tense he’d been during the spat. If it was even a spat. It was really hard to tell when these guys were joking. Suddenly all Alex wanted to do was get on his computer and look up obscure dinosaurs. “Actually, I think I’ll go back to my dorm. I have a thing.”
“Okay.” Deacon nodded. “See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Oh!” Alex straightened suddenly. “Um, about that. You’ll still let Brandon try out, right? When he gets back? If he decides he wants to do it, I mean.”
“I suppose. Why?”
“I think I’ve just thought of a way to convince him.”
“Oh. Great.” Deacon didn’t smile though. He was clearly upset about upsetting Mark. Alex thought that was sweet. Alex was still upset about upsetting Brandon. And he hoped what he was going to say to Brandon would help Brandon forgive him. “’Night.”
“’Night.”
Alex scurried back to his dorm.
* * * *
The weekend wasn’t terrible. Brandon was probably just a terrible person for wanting it over with.
Nobody talked much on the way back to school on Sunday evening. Well, Charlotte and Ella talked, but in the way they always had as kids: in a kind of verbal shorthand that Brandon had never been invited to learn.
“You don’t think…?” Charlotte had asked as they’d sped down the highway.
“No!” Ella had clapped a hand over her mouth. “She wouldn’t! Except…”
They both laughed.
When he was a kid, Brandon had gotten mad about it. Accused them of leaving him out and not playing fair. But there was no maliciousness in it, he knew now. It was a language built on years of closeness and a lifetime of shared experiences. He didn’t understand it because he might as well have grown up in a foreign country.
At Prescott, his sisters got out of the car with him.
It was late. They’d stopped at a fast-food place just before campus, so Brandon was clutching his burger and fries in a paper bag.
“Look after yourself, okay?” Charlotte hugged him quickly, and he tensed.
“Okay. You too.”
Ella’s hug was accompanied by a peck on the cheek. “Make sure you check your e-mail more often. It’s like you fall off the face of the earth.”
“I get busy,” he lied.
“Oh,” Charlotte said. “Who’s the cutie on the porch?”
He turned to look. Alex. Of course it was Alex, sitting on the steps of the fraternity house under the porch light, like a big-eyed puppy waiting for his master to come home.
“That’s one of our pledges.” Brandon felt a stab of guilt even though Alex would never know Brandon was being dismissive of him. He felt the plastic Sinosauropteryx in the pocket of his jeans digging into his thigh. “Remember what I said about the Academic Challenge? Alex is like a genius.”
“He is too adorable.” Charlotte waved.
Alex waved back cautiously.
Too adorable, Brandon thought. Yeah. That was the problem all right.
“Thanks for the ride.” He hefted his backpack over his shoulder, submitted himself to another quick hug from each of them, then waited until they’d driven off before heading for the house.
Alex stood as he approached. “Hi, Brandon. Can I talk to you?”
Brandon held his fast-food bag up like a shield. “My burger’s getting cold.”
Alex’s face fell.
Brandon relented. “Come up to my room, I guess.”
They headed inside. Brandon said hello to James and Gavin, and Alex followed him up the stairs. Deacon’s door was open. Brandon glanced in and saw Mark lying on his stomach on Deacon’s bed, face turned toward the door and eyes shut. Deacon sat beside him, a book perched on his lap. He ran a hand up and down Mark’s back.
Must feel nice, Brandon thought. To a normal person.
Deacon, engrossed in his book, didn’t see them pass.
Brandon pushed open the door to his room. He dropped his backpack on the floor and set his paper bag on his desk. The Sinosauropteryx was digging in again, and Brandon suddenly wondered what the hell he was doing. What did it mean, to give a guy a plastic dinosaur? Was it something a friend did, or did it mean more? Did he want it to mean more?
“So, um…” Alex wiped his palms on his jeans and smiled nervously. “So, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mark so quiet.”
“Yeah.”
“On Friday night, he came over here with a bunch of guys from Alpha Delt and threw rocks through Deacon’s window.”
“He did what?”
“I think the Killer Numbats were trying to trash-talk us.”
“Okay, now you’ve lost me.”
“The Alpha Delts have a team for the Academic Challenge,” Alex said. “The Alpha Delts. Mark’s their captain, and they’re called the Killer Numbats.”
“Oh, wow,” Brandon said. “Wow. They’ll get slaughtered.”
“I know!”
It shouldn’t have been that funny, but Brandon grinned, then shook his head. “Poor Mark!”
Alex raised his brows.
“Okay, sometimes Mark is a dick,” Brandon said. “But mostly he’s not. And he’s my best friend.”
And he was secretly—very secretly—insecure. Brandon had seen his brash mask slip more than once. He’d seen it a lot in the beginning of their friendship, when Mark had been homesick and unhappy about being at Prescott. He still saw it occasionally when Mark stared at Deacon when he didn’t think anyone was watching. In those moments, the question was written plainly across his face: What does Deacon see in me?
He was an idiot, because Brandon had seen Deacon look at Mark plenty of times with the answer right there: You’re my light.
“Last night the campus police caught him sitting on Wolford Prescott’s statue wearing his boxers and a fuzzy hat, singing ‘Eye of the Tiger.’ It’s already on YouTube.”
Brandon snorted and dug into his bag. He pulled out his fries, and held the carton out toward Alex. “Yeah, that sounds like Mark.”
“Thanks.” Alex took a fry and poked it into his mouth. “Anyway, it’s the Academic Challenge I’m here to talk about.”
“What about it?”
“Deacon says I’ll definitely be on the team.”
“Congrats.” Brandon had a feeling that wasn’t all Alex had come here to tell him.
“Are you trying out? Deacon said Tony would probably let you, even though you missed tryouts. The team hasn’t been finalized yet.” Alex licked grease from his bottom lip, and Brandon tried not to notice. “Because, you know, you’d be really good, with your memory and all. I mean, not just because of your memory. I’m sure you’re really smart too. Anyway, I should stop talking.”
Brandon had no idea why it even mattered to Alex.
“But,” Alex continued suddenly, “I just wanted to tell you that if you’re only not doing it because you think I’ll be on the team, because”—he looked away—“because of what happened, then you don’t need to worry about that. Because if you do want to try out, I’ll give up my spot. If I—if Deacon’s right that I have a spot. And if the tournament’s the only reason you guys wanted me to pledge, then I guess I’ll quit Phi Sig too.”
ALEX WAITED. FIRST Brandon looked surprised. Then he looked…well, Alex was better at reading computer code than reading people. Finally he kind of waved his hand like he couldn’t be bothered with Alex anymore and said, “Oh for God’s sake, that’s not why we asked you to pledge. It’s just a stupid school tournament. And I don’t care about what happened.”
Ouch. Okay. “Oh.”
Brandon twirled a fry between his fingers. “I just don’t want you giving yourself too much trouble for how messed up I am. Okay?” He gave Alex a tired smile. “In this case, it really, truly is not you. It’s me.”
That only made Brandon more intriguing.
Brandon ate the fry. Kind of aggressively.
Right, fuck. What to say next. Um…
“I still want you to take my spot.” Alex grew increasingly unnerved at Brandon’s silence. “Please? It’s supposed to a—a present? And, uh, it would make Deacon really happy.”
“Why do I have to pretend I want something I don’t just to make other people happy?” Brandon sounded furious. And was it Alex’s imagination, or was Brandon suddenly closer to him? Their gazes locked, and Brandon’s hand trembled in the diminished space between them. “Why can’t I do what I want?”
He was breathing hard, his face inches from Alex’s. Alex definitely wanted to wait this one out in case he was misreading…
Okay. Brandon’s lips were on his. Brandon was kissing him—kissing him! And now it was okay to kiss back. Had to be. Alex groped blindly, knocking the fast-food bag onto the floor, until his hand landed on the back of Brandon’s head. Brandon dropped the carton of fries and they spilled across the desk. Alex stepped forward and accidentally crushed the fast-food bag. Brandon’s lips were soft, and his hair was soft, and his teeth scraped Alex’s lower lip just a little. Alex needed to remember all this for later, but it was happening so fast.
When Brandon pulled away, Alex froze, sure that he had still managed to do something wrong, even though Brandon had 100 percent initiated that.
“Oh shit,” Brandon whispered. He moved toward the door, and Alex gaped. No way—no way—was Brandon going to kiss and run. But Brandon stopped and fished something out of his pocket. Something small and plastic. He handed it to Alex. “I got you this.” Alex took the object. A dinosaur. Not just any dinosaur. A Sinosauropteryx. “I have to go. I have an eight a.m. class.” He left the room.
Totally fucking left.
A few seconds later, he was back.
“No, actually, you leave. This is my room.”
“No!” Alex surprised himself with the force of his tone. “If you kiss me, you have to talk to me about it. You have to tell me whether we’re ever going to do that again.”
“I don’t know.” Brandon sounded so agonized that Alex almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“What’s the problem?” Alex asked boldly. “In the closet? Worried about fry breath? Something about me?”
Brandon closed his eyes.
“Tell me,” Alex said. “I’m not stupid. And I won’t—I won’t be a dick about it, whatever it is. You can trust me. Please?”
Brandon shook his head.
“I’m not letting you give me a dinosaur and run away!” Dinosaurs fucking meant something.
Still no response.
“You have two options.” Alex willed his courage to hold, because he had a feeling he knew which one Brandon would pick. “One: Talk to me. Let me stay here, and talk to me. Two: Agree to take my spot on the team. I’ll leave, and we can pretend this didn’t happen—again. If that’s what you want.”
Alex wanted Brandon to talk to him. But more than that, he wanted Brandon to have someone, even if it wasn’t Alex. So if Brandon doing Academic Challenge meant he’d be out there interacting with people and having fun instead of holed up in his room reading about Keynesian economics, then good.
Brandon had a third option, which was to tell Alex to fuck off. Alex wondered how far Brandon would go to get him out of his room. He imagined Brandon calling the neighbors for backup and a couple of muscular Alpha Delts braving former enemy territory to remove Alex from the premises. Imagined the Phi Sigs telling Alex maybe it was best if he dropped out of the pledge process—that staging a one-man sit-in to get a boy you liked to talk to you wasn’t really model Phi Sig behavior.
With a sigh, Brandon sank onto the edge of the mattress. Put his face in his hands. “I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said softly. Alex’s chest tightened in sympathy. “With you, or at Prescott. Or…anywhere. Anything.” He blew a loud, frustrated breath into his hands. “And this is the first time I’ve kissed a guy. Well, second. I mean, you’re the first guy I’ve kissed.”
Which was awesome.
Alex waited a moment. Hovered a hand tentatively near Brandon’s shoulder. “Is that it?”
Brandon lifted his head. “What do you mean, is that it?”
Alex flinched back. “I thought you had, like, some dark secret or something.” Alex braced himself and put his hand on Brandon’s shoulder. Brandon didn’t murder him or anything, so yay. In his other hand, Alex clutched the dinosaur. “I don’t know what I’m doing either. I just know I like you.”
“I like you too.” Brandon lowered his head again. “I mean, if there was anyone I could do this with, maybe it would be you. But I can’t.”
“Oh. Wait, do what?”
“Whatever…whatever this is.”
“Oh.” Alex sat on the bed beside him. Opened his hand to look at his dinosaur. “I don’t really know what this is either.” He caught Brandon’s gaze. “Not this this. This is a Sinosauropteryx, the first non-avian dinosaur to be found with feathers. It was discovered in China in 1996, where it’s called a Zhonghuá lóng niao. That means China dragon bird.”
Brandon gave an awkward laugh. “Shit. You need to be on the Academic Challenge team, Alex.”
Alex felt warm. Some of it was embarrassment—spouting dinosaur facts had ceased to be cool at about age eight—but mostly it was because he liked how Brandon said his name. “It would be cool if we were on the team together.”
“Yeah.” Spots of color appeared in Brandon’s cheeks.
Alex stood suddenly. He went to Brandon’s desk and picked up his Protoceratops. Then he sat again, and held it out to Brandon.
Brandon took it, smiling slightly. “What’s this for?”
Alex shrugged. “I guess, um, if you don’t want to do anything else, we could play dinosaurs?”
For a second he thought Brandon would laugh in his face, but that smile of his didn’t distort into something mocking. It remained there, slightly wistful and tinged with a sadness that Alex didn’t understand, but felt as well. Brandon hurt, and it made Alex ache too.
Alex shifted so that space opened up on the bed between them.
This was dumb, and they both knew it, but somehow Alex didn’t think that Brandon would throw him out now.
They ate Brandon’s fries while their dinosaurs battled for supremacy on the comforter.