Just Like This (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Rian nodded. “He’s pretty worried.”

  Walden’s lips thinned, before he called, “Mr. Maddow.” His voice turned stern. “Please come inside.”

  Several seconds passed before the door creaked slowly open, just enough for Luke’s head to lean inside; he watched Walden like he was looking at some kind of poisonous animal he couldn’t quite identify.

  “...am I in trouble?”

  “No,” Walden said, flicking his fingers imperiously. “None at all. We’ll pretend this conversation never happened. You were never here. Understood?”

  Luke exhaled, then stepped inside, nudging the door closed and leaning against it with his hands behind his back, gripping the knob. “Yeah. That’s good.”

  Walden cocked a brow. “Then please, tell me what you told Mr. Falwell and Mr. Louis.”

  “Well...”

  While Luke explained again, straggling out his words, Rian retreated to lean against the wall next to the door, listening; Damon joined him, and Rian gave him a grateful look as they rested arm to arm, before turning back to following everything Luke was saying. The same story; the same details; nothing changing. Not that he’d thought Luke was lying, when he’d have no reason to if he was so worried for his friend and roommate, but the consistency of it even under Walden’s drilling stare was reassuring.

  But then Luke finished, “...and when he comes back, he’s dirty all over except his clothes, and he smells real bad. Like he’s been swimming in... I don’t know. Beer, I guess, but he ain’t drunk. Sometimes other stuff.” He made a face. “Like, sharper, heavier.”

  Rian came to attention, drawing in a breath.

  That was a detail Luke had left off before.

  Damon’s tight expression said his train of thought wasn’t far off from Rian’s. “Whiskey?” Damon supplied. “Or like, rum?”

  Luke snorted. “You think I know what whiskey or rum smell like?” he said dryly. “My family’s Seventh Day Adventist. Dry house, baby, and that’s a line my ass don’t cross.”

  “A student who hasn’t tried to steal a taste of hard liquor,” Walden said with a cool, sardonic lilt. “I believe we’ve found the eighth wonder of the world.”

  Luke narrowed his eyes. “You said this conversation didn’t happen, right?” he asked, and Walden nodded briefly.

  “Correct.”

  A smirk spread Luke’s lips. “Then I’m not gonna get in trouble for telling you what an asshole you are, huh, Mr. Walden?”

  Walden’s eyes narrowed. “I would suggest not pressing your luck.” With a deep sigh, he laced his fingers together. “Instead, I would also suggest you cooperate a little longer, and assist these gentlemen in searching your room.”

  Now it was Luke’s turn to sigh. “Great. Now everyone’s gonna know I’m a snitch.”

  “We’ll keep a low profile,” Damon promised, and curled a hand to Luke’s shoulder. “C’mon. Let’s go take a look.”

  Walden didn’t say anything until the door was open and they’d started to file outside, Rian bringing up the rear—only to freeze as that icy, silken voice turned almost too pleasant, enough to send shivers down his spine.

  “Oh, and Mr. Falwell?” Walden said.

  Wincing, Rian glanced back. “...yes...?”

  Glacial eyes speared into him, Walden’s jaw set in a hard and irritated line. “The paint cups are still in the sink.”

  Oops.

  “Sorry,” Rian said faintly. “I’ll, um...tonight?”

  “See that you do,” Walden bit off. “Now get out of my office, and don’t come back.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  True to his word, Damon tried to keep a low profile about slipping into Luke and Chris’s room—hanging around the corner of the hall with Rian while Luke unlocked the door, and waiting until the corridor was empty before they went scurrying down the floorboards to duck into the large shared room afforded to students.

  He’d almost never had any reason to enter student quarters when he rarely drew rotation for monthly room inspections, but he didn’t know if it was a point of bitterness or a point of amusement that the room was almost three times the size of his own; he just didn’t need that kind of space, especially when between Luke and Chris they’d filled it with...

  A hell of a lot of mess.

  And Damon was pretty damned sure that inspections were next weekend.

  Luke was quick to move in front of the bed on the right side of the cluttered room, strewn with clothes everywhere, books, junk food packages, a few musical instruments, posters, gaming devices. He spread his arms, giving them both wary looks.

  “My side,” he said. “Stay out.” He nodded toward the other bed on the opposite side of the room, the blue coverlet rumpled and the pillows askew, a few old junior high football trophies on the shelf above the headboard. “That’s all Chris’s stuff. Left side of the closet’s his, too.”

  Damon glanced at Rian, who stared at the room in clear dismay. “Where you wanna start, Falwell?”

  “With a vacuum cleaner,” Rian said hollowly, before shaking his head. “I’ll, um, take the closet?”

  “Sure. I guess I’ll just take...” Damon swept the room with a look. “Everything else.”

  “Trust me,” Rian said as he crossed to the large sliding double door that opened into the closet and pulled it aside, staring with wide eyes and slack lips at the veritable wall of crap the door was barely holding in, “I think you got the easy job. Wish me luck; I’m going in.”

  And with that, Rian literally pinched his nose like he was about to dive underwater, and pushed his way into the bristling mess of sports equipment and balled up clothing and God only knew what else. Damon watched him burrow in with a small smile, then shook his head and set to work himself.

  For long minutes the only sounds were those of the grinding as the interlocked and delicately balanced mess in the closet shifted, Rian’s faint grunts of exertion, and Damon tossing books and things about as he rummaged under the mattress, in the desk drawers, inside the dresser drawers, even digging out Chris’s under-bed storage crates. He found books—a few magazines with explicit covers that Chris was definitely not supposed to have at school, and that Damon wished he could unsee—and clothing, Chris’s football uniform stuffed under the mattress like he was ashamed of it, something that looked like old letters from a girl that were dated from when Chris would’ve been in middle school, numbers in the right hand corner in a looping, feminine, youthfully clumsy hand.

  Tablet, laptop, an inexplicable box of assorted markers from multiple different brands, notebooks full of doodles, an entire drawer full of broken phone charger cables...

  But nothing that would point to something useful.

  “Hey,” he called as he straightened from peering under the bed one more time, settling on one knee. “Anything?”

  Rian had completely disappeared inside the closet except for one ankle and sandaled foot poking out, wiggling as if he was balanced on one leg and using the other leg as a counter-lever and trying not to fall. His voice emerged from the back of the closet, muffled and as distant as if he was buried in piles of pillows.

  “I don’t think so,” he said. “Let me see if—I—oop!”

  Only a faint rumble of warning.

  Before the entire pile of mess in the closet popped like a bubble and came avalanching out, sending Rian tumbling with it.

  Damon dove to catch him, but it was too late; a sprawling tangle of tennis rackets and spare blankets and what the fuck, a garden hose, what the fuck was with teenage boys and God only knew what else spilled across the floor with Rian rolling atop it like he was being washed ashore, clutching a SteelBook collector’s cover for some edition of World of Warcraft to his chest.

  “Oh, man,” Luke groaned, as silence fell and Rian just lay there staring at the ceiling, his hair a tangled mess co
iled in spirals around him. “Y’all better fucking clean that up.”

  Damon let out a rough snort, struggling not to laugh, and offered Rian his hand. “C’mon.”

  Rian shook himself a little, blinking owlishly at Damon, then smiled ruefully, set the game case down, and slipped his hand into Damon’s, smooth and warm against his palm. Damon drew back gently, lifting him up and waiting until Rian got onto his feet without stumbling, picking carefully among the mess eddying around his ankles.

  For a moment they lingered, hands clasped, and Rian smiled at him shyly. “...thanks.”

  “Yeah,” Damon said, mouth dry. “No problem.”

  ...right. Fuck. In a student’s room. With Luke watching.

  Swallowing, he pulled his hand away and glanced at the goddamned trash pile pouring out of the closet. “So all of this is just...?”

  “A hot mess,” Rian said ruefully. “But not useful at all.”

  “Damn it.” Damon sank down on the edge of Chris’s bed, resting his head in his hands and propping his elbows on his thighs. “I hate this. Going in fucking circles with nothing helpful.”

  Rian settled next to him, not quite touching. “I do too. But I—” He stopped, then, tilting his head oddly, brows knitting, nostrils flaring. “Do you smell that?”

  Damon lifted his head, breathing in. “Smell wha—oh.”

  He caught it, then—the faintest whiff, but something that definitely smelled like booze. A mix of beer and whiskey and that sour smell that seemed to cling to every goddamned seedy bar he’d ever been in, somewhere between urine and the hard seltzer sweats. He narrowed his eyes, turning his head from side to side, trying to figure out where that faint smell was coming from...but Rian got there first.

  “Over here,” he said, practically clambering over Damon’s lap and toward the head of the bed, one sandal sole smacking against Damon’s inner thigh a little too high up and dangerously close enough to somewhere delicate that Damon cringed even when Rian’s foot slipped away.

  “Watch out for it if you ever wanna use it again,” he growled under his breath.

  Rian froze on his hands and knees, one hand upraised against the headboard of Chris’s bed, and tossed a wide-eyed, flustered, blushing look over his shoulder. “Um.”

  Luke cocked his head. “What are y’all talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Damon said emphatically, and scowled at Rian. “What’s back there?”

  “R-right.” Rian cleared his throat, then pulled himself up on his knees to peer behind the broad hardwood slab of the headboard. “It’s definitely coming from behind here. Let me see...”

  Squinting one eye up, he squirmed one skinny arm down in the space between the headboard and the wall, stretching, straining—until he let out a little ah-ha!, his face lighting up.

  “Got something!”

  Rian wriggled his arm out...and came up with a battered gym bag, one Damon recognized as Chris’s when he sometimes used it to bring his gear or a change of clothes to and from practice. The bag looked filthy and beat to shit; rather clumsily, Rian plunked down on his bottom next to Damon, only now sandwiched between him and the headboard until they were forced to press in close to each other.

  Only to both recoil as Rian unzipped the bag, and a wave of that stink rolled out, like a thousand bar bathrooms confined into a small space.

  Choking, gagging, Rian turned his face aside, while Damon covered his mouth with one hand and reached in gingerly for the wadded up fabric bristling past the opening. He didn’t want to touch it, but someone had to, and he carefully plucked out what looked like a plain black T-shirt, shaking it out.

  “What is that?” Rian rasped, muffled as he pressed his face against his arm. “Why does it smell like that?”

  “Good question,” Damon grunted against his palm—then bit off a “Fuck” as the shirt unfurled a little more and he caught the logo on the breast of it.

  Hank’s Roadhouse.

  Styled to look so much like the Harley-Davidson logo it was a miracle it wasn’t a copyright violation, but...goddammit.

  Damon knew that place.

  And while Omen might not have much of a gang presence or even a criminal element, anyone who wanted to get drunk and skirt the law a little went to Hank’s Roadhouse—strategically placed right across the Mystic on the other side of the town line, so specific town laws about liquor licensing and other restrictions didn’t apply; only state, and that made it damned harder for the rich families who sent their kids out here to use town laws to try to get rid of the place, too.

  “Oh,” Damon said, followed by Rian’s strangled,

  “Fuck.”

  “Whoa,” Luke echoed.

  Rian stared at Damon. “Why does Chris have that? Isn’t that that—that—not nice place across the river?”

  “It’s sure as hell not somewhere you want your sixteen-year-old kid,” Damon growled, letting the shirt drop atop the bag and then nudging it aside to peer in, but all he saw was a pair of dirty jeans, stained in grit. “What the hell is he doing? He going out there to get drunk and fuck around with people he has no business with?”

  “Luke said he’s never drunk,” Rian murmured, then lifted his head, looking at Luke. “You said he’s never drunk, right?”

  “I mean I’m not making him burp into a tube or any shit, but he doesn’t seem drunk,” Luke said, shrugging. “Maybe he can like, really hold it. I’unno.”

  Rian looked at Damon helplessly. “So what do we do?”

  Damon frowned, then cocked his head. “Stakeout?”

  “Stakeout,” Rian confirmed, only for Luke to roll his eyes.

  “You’re not fucking cops,” he said. “Why the fuck are teachers so weird?”

  “Because we gotta be, to deal with you little heathens.” Damon stuffed the shirt back into the bag fully and stood, trying to keep his fucking cool when goddammit, this just kept getting worse with every new turn. “Bring that. C’mon. We can take my car.”

  Rian rose—but he and Damon both froze as Luke moved to bar the door, folding his hands over his chest and glaring at them.

  “Not yet,” he said, and pointed one skinny brown finger at the mess on the floor. “Which one of you is gonna clean that up?”

  * * *

  It turned out, in fact, that they both cleaned it up.

  Rian didn’t mind, when it was just barely past five p.m. and he doubted Hank’s Roadhouse would be opening before sunset, and even then only for the earliest barflies. That, and he was quickly finding that he enjoyed doing anything with Damon, whether it was discussing what to do about Chris or cleaning up the fountain of pure chaos that had spilled out of Luke’s and Chris’s closet.

  They hadn’t said a word to each other, as they’d worked side by side and handed things off to each other to try to recreate that Tetris mess that had somehow held in delicate balance inside the closet, wedging things in here and there and just...trying to impart some kind of organization.

  It had just been easy.

  Simple.

  That was all it needed to be.

  And all it needed to be was quiet and calm and wordless, as they split up to change into something warmer for the evening, then met up at Damon’s car—an older model Jeep Cherokee, the kind that still had the square edges instead of the more rounded modern contours, boxy and angular and somehow perfectly suited for Damon, right down to its matte dark green finish. When Rian peered inside, the back seat had been let down to expand the cargo area, a rumpled sleeping bag still laid out on the floor with camping equipment piled against the rear hatch.

  “Remnants of your last trip to Rhode Island?” he asked, as he let himself into the passenger’s seat and slung his shoulder bag down at his feet.

  Damon tossed Chris’s gym bag all the way into the back and slid behind the wheel, fitting his bulk in easily—but glanced
over his shoulder into the back. “Not Rhode Island,” he said. “Not that time. The first weekend school started, I needed a little bit to find my stride. Clear my head. So I headed out to this place in Maine, this harbor city that kind of hid itself away beyond this ridge of black mountains so no one even remembers it’s there. Silver Forge. Hard to get to, but real damned pretty.” He smiled slightly. “Never see the sunlight, during the day there. Just mist and clouds and storms, day in, day out. But at night...” He shook his head, dark hair skimming against his jaw as he fitted his keys into the ignition. “Nothing but bright silver moon and stars, turning the sea into this sheet of pewter.”

  Rian watched him curiously, lingering on the warmth in Damon’s face; on the quiet, dreamlike way he spoke. “Sounds like somewhere you wouldn’t mind going back to.”

  “Maybe,” Damon said softly. “Kind of feels like next time, though, I don’t want to go alone.”

  Rian’s eyes widened. His heart springboarded down into his stomach, then up again.

  But before he could say anything, Damon gave him a thoughtful sidelong look, paired with an easy smile. “Buckle up. Let’s go see what’s out at Hank’s Roadhouse.”

  “O-oh. Right.”

  Rian fumbled into his seatbelt, and settled in; Damon fastened his as well, before starting the engine and pulling out of the small, steeply angled parking lot along one side of the hill, easing the Jeep Cherokee onto the wide paved lane that wound down the deeply forested slope, beneath a cathedral archway of black branches and golden leaves.

  Comfortable silence settled; Rian leaned his head against the window and just let it be. He wasn’t sure what had changed with Damon, something easing over the course of late-night texts and time to think...but he liked this. How settled and slow and soft it felt; how nice it was to just relax as the Jeep rumbled its way down the hill and into the town, without a single breath of tension or resentment between them.