Whatever.

by S. J. Goslee

  Mike doesn’t say anything, though. Half because he doesn’t want to encourage Cam and half because he knows it won’t matter what he says, anyhow.

  * * *

  Sometime in between their kiss and Mike doing everything possible to convince himself he doesn’t give a shit about Wallace, something happens: Wallace stops giving a shit about him.

  The last committee meeting for Homecoming, only five days before the actual dance, is weird. Mike gets the distinct feeling Wallace is freezing him out. No doubt he’s angry that Mike’s hanging out with Serge, because at some point Cam’s going to talk Serge into doing something stupid or dangerous, or stupid and dangerous; that’s a given. And Mike’s not sure why it bothers him, either, but Wallace is giving him cool looks and polite smiles and Mike never thought he’d miss Devil Incarnate Wallace, the smirks and odd attentiveness and innately evil soul. But it does bother him. It really, really does.

  Mike spends the whole meeting staring at Wallace without really staring at him. Tragically, he doesn’t even think Wallace notices.

  “So why does Rook suddenly have a massive stick up his ass?” Dotty asks, stalking him to his locker after the meeting.

  “How the fuck would I know?” Mike says, disgruntled. Fingers fumbling, it takes him three tries to spin the lock and get it open.

  Dotty stares at him with narrowed eyes. She says, “Maybe because he’s only acting like this around you.”

  Mike bites his lip and tugs his jacket out of his locker before slamming it closed again. “That doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It means you had a fight,” Dotty says, and what the fuck, how does she get that out of this, when Mike and Wallace have never ever been friends to begin with?

  Is it Mike’s fault that his archnemesis has devolved into fucking pouting in his presence? Or, like, being coolly disdainful, whatever. Mike still doesn’t get how befriending Serge has turned into this mess.

  Mike clenches his hands into the thick canvas sleeves of his army jacket. He feels like it would be so much easier to accept this and move on if Wallace hadn’t manhandled him like a cheap whore at Cam’s Halloween party. That part, he’s willing to admit, he’d liked a little too much. And because of that, all the rest of this shit is pissing him off.

  But it’s just like with J. J. It was just a kiss. Right?

  Dotty squeezes his arm. “Mike?”

  Mike rolls his shoulders, dislodging her hand. He slips on his coat and says, “Yeah, no, I’m okay.”

  * * *

  Mike is miserable for the rest of the week. It’s pathetic, but he can’t help it, everything just feels wrong. Off-kilter.

  Friday afternoon, he spends the pep rally underneath the gym bleachers. He sits propped up against a metal support beam, knees bent, dust all over his jeans, and listens to the band swell in between announcing the starting varsity football players. When they start on the Junior and Royal Courts, Mike holds his breath, hands balled into fists over his kneecaps, but they take his absence in stride. He smiles a little when they call Mo’s name along with Smith’s. So there’s Mo, shoving it in everyone’s faces. She’s a brave little toaster.

  “Thought I’d find you under here.”

  Mike tilts his head back to look up at Cam. Cam’s forearm cast is completely covered in multicolored writing and obscene pictures. “Where’s your sling?”

  “Fuck my sling,” Cam says. “I’m fine.”

  Cam definitely isn’t fine, but he’s always had a ridiculously high tolerance for pain, so whatever. His shoulder must still hurt like a bitch, especially with the weight of the cast, but if Cam can take it, Mike’s not gonna be a mom about it. That’s what Cam has Deanna for.

  Cam drops down onto the ground next to him, wincing a little when he jars his arm. They sit quietly when the band starts up again—since it’s not like they could hear each other over it, anyway. Mike’s only somewhat cheered by their Daft Punk medley. Mike hates Daft Punk, but everything sounds better with crazy amounts of percussion.

  Mike and Cam have been friends since preschool. Mike doesn’t remember meeting him—or Lisa, either. All three of them ended up in the same classroom, but his mom says he came home from his very first day talking nonstop about a boy in a Spider-Man shirt and red pants, and they’ve been inseparable ever since. They’ve been picked up by the police no less than five times over the years, most often for Cam’s stupid stunts, but that one time for public nudity, which sadly had nothing to do with alcohol at all. Their families take vacations together, spend holidays together, hold joint barbecues. There was a time when Mike had wished Uncle Jem and his mom would just get married already. And even though that’s never happened—and isn’t ever going to happen, since Mom’s likened it to incest—they’re still some sort of mishmashed family, anyway.

  Mike has known Cam the longest. Longer than Meckles and Deanna, who they both knew since second grade, and longer than Omar, who they met the first week of middle school.

  Mike should be able to tell Cam anything.

  Deep breath …

  Mike nudges Cam’s sneaker with his own. “So,” he says in the short lull between songs and cheers. “I’m pretty sure I like guys.”

  He feels Cam tense for a long moment, all along his side, and Mike’s stomach flips over.

  Then Cam says, “Sexual deviancy, dude. I totally approve.”

  Mike chokes out a laugh. “Fuck you,” he says, and he goes almost boneless with relief.

  Cam jostles his arm and says, “You know, that conversation about Tobey Maguire makes a lot more sense now.”

  * * *

  The football game is a disaster, as most of their football games are. They have no hope of winning, that’s obvious five minutes in. Then it starts raining halfway through the second quarter, the band gives up the ghost, and Mike happily retreats to Omar’s van.

  This is where he’s accosted by Lisa. She swoops out of nowhere, her long dark hair plastered to her skull, water dripping off the end of her nose, face scary-pale from the cold rain. Mike barely manages to stifle a yelp of terror when she grabs his arm.

  “I’m letting you go stag,” Lisa says, pushing him across the bench seat as she follows him into the back of the van, “but I’m certainly not letting you dress yourself.”

  “I have a suit,” Mike says defensively. He actually has two suits to choose from. He knows what’s appropriate, thanks very much. “I’m not Cam.”

  “Cam has a suit, too,” Lisa says, unimpressed. “I’m sure he’ll show up with a tequila sunrise shirt tucked into his slacks. That’s not my problem. You’re my problem.”

  “Hey, I stopped being your problem a couple months ago.” He doesn’t mean to sound petulant, but he’s cold and wet and he has to go to a school dance tomorrow night, and he’s not Lisa’s anything now.

  “Oh, Michael,” she says, reaching over, sodden hoodie and all, and squishing him into a hug. Mike’s face is mashed into her soaked shoulder, but it’s not like he could get any wetter. “You’ll always be my problem.”

  Mike tries to pretend like he isn’t melting inside—Lisa’s like a sharp-toothed wolverine with unexpected soft spots. He snakes his arms around her waist and pulls her closer.

  * * *

  “I’m reluctantly impressed,” Lisa says.

  “Thanks,” Mike says dryly.

  Mike has a black suit from last Christmas and a gunmetal gray one his mom made him get for this past Easter. He has no preference for either of them, but he figured he’d wear the black. He doesn’t think he can go wrong with black for evening wear.

  Lisa pulls out the gray one, though. “Let’s see your ties,” she says.

  Mike has the navy tie he bought with Cam, a diamond-patterned champagne one with some unidentifiable stain on it, and a plain deep red one that’s only a little creased.

  “Red,” Lisa says, nose wrinkled. “I’ll iron it for you.” She tosses it onto his bed, then places her hands on her hips and stares at him.

&n
bsp; Mike lasts for a full minute before caving with an unfortunately whiny “What?”

  “You know what,” she says.

  “Not sure I do,” Mike says, even though he’s blatantly lying. Damn it. He was really hoping she’d forget about the whole Halloween party thing.

  “Spill.” Lisa’s eyes are scary-narrow and her toes start tapping impatiently. Mike would ignore these warning signs if he didn’t suspect that they’d lead to painful maiming and/or public humiliation.

  So Mike says, “Wallace kissed me.” He’s downplaying it a little, of course, because what Wallace really did was attack his face and use his tongue for sexy evil, but he doesn’t want to get into those specifics with Lisa.

  “Oh my god,” she says. A wide grin breaks across her face and she punches him in the arm. “I knew it!”

  Mike flinches away, frowning. “Knew what?”

  “Rook! Rook has—wait.” Lisa pauses, waving a hand. “We are talking about Rook, right, not Serge?”

  “Uh, yeah.” Mike makes a face. It would be really weird and kind of gross if Serge kissed him. No offense to Serge; he’s just way too young and, uh, pale.

  “Yes.” Lisa pokes him this time, hard in the chest; Mike’s going to have bruises later. “Rook has a crush on you. Or more than a crush, I can’t decide.” She shrugs. “Whatever, Rook likes you, I know he does.”

  “Wallace likes everyone. It’s his cover for being the Antichrist.” Mike knows he’s being unfair, but Wallace has been on his hate list for so long that this response is kind of knee-jerk for him.

  Lisa looks disappointed. “Michael.”

  Mike drops down onto the edge of his bed. “I don’t know what it is, but Wallace doesn’t have a crush on me. We’re not even talking.” Not like they normally talk, but that’s the only way he can think of to describe how Wallace is pointedly denying his existence at the moment.

  “What do you mean you don’t know? Are we talking making-out kissing, or, like, a peck on the cheek?” Lisa says.

  Mike feels his face get hot. “Um.”

  “Oh my god, seriously.” Lisa sits down next to him, hand gripping his leg just above the knee. “Was it better than J. J.? Tell me it was better than J. J.”

  “I don’t remember J. J.,” Mike mutters. He flops back, sprawling out on the bed, arms wide. He’s not sure how to describe Wallace’s kiss without gushing about how hot it was. He really doesn’t want to have this conversation with Lisa. “It was … nice.”

  “Nice,” Lisa says, skeptical. She turns a little, pulling a leg up to curl on the mattress so she can stare into his soul.

  Mike sighs and presses his palms into his eye sockets. “I might have climbed him like a monkey. I was wearing a skirt, Lisa.”

  “Right.” Lisa grabs hold of his thigh again. “Right, start from the beginning.”

  Mike lifts one hand and peeks out at her. She looks disturbingly gleeful, even though she’s not actually smiling. “He asked about me and J. J., I told him to mind his own business.” Close enough. “He kissed me, and now here we are.”

  The corners of her mouth pull down. “There has to be more to it than that,” she says.

  “Considering the cold shoulder he’s giving me? I think there’s even less to it than that.” And Mike is totally not bitter or disappointed about that.

  Lisa slumps. She digs her elbow into her knee and drops her chin into her palm. “Huh.”

  “Yeah.” He stares up at his ceiling. His body feels sleep-heavy, tired. He wants to crawl into a dark hole and stay there for a week or three. Then maybe the world as he knows it will start making sense again. Christ, being an angsty, emo teen is fucking exhausting.

  If he had any energy left at all he’d kick his own ass for being such a pussy.

  fourteen.

  Mike wakes up Saturday morning to a knot of dread twisting up his stomach and also to Rosie and her hermit crabs. She’s made a hermit crab town out of Play-Doh on his bedroom floor. She’s also got every Matchbox car ever made spread out around her and he’s got to wonder how long she’s been down there. His phone says it’s quarter to eleven.

  Rosie looks up from where she’s trying to stuff poor Godzilla into a rapidly caving-in red-and-yellow house. She says, “Mom says I can get a gecko.”

  A gecko. Just what they need, a speedy lizard that’ll disappear somewhere in the house for Mike to find months later, a dried-out lizard husk. Considering how attached Rosie is to ’Zilla and the Professor, Mike’s really not looking forward to that.

  Mike slips out from under the covers and onto the rug with a slightly pained oomph as all his limbs hit the floor, then drags himself up and knee-walks over to Rosie, pushing tiny cars out of the way. He says, “What about these guys?” He yawns and picks up Professor Cheese, smiling as his pincers slide out, feelers flicking the air.

  Rosie presses her lips together, like she’s really thinking hard about it. Then she says, “I’d still love them best.”

  Mike says, “Rock on,” because he’s not exactly all the way awake yet. Rosie doesn’t care. One of the many reasons why she’s so great.

  He spends the next hour or so letting Rosie tell him what to do with the hermit crabs, the Play-Doh, the cars, the lone, naked Barbie that mysteriously ended up under Mike’s bed. It’s mindless and easy, and he doesn’t have to think about anything else for however long Rosie has him trapped there.

  Which is basically until she decides that Sandwich is hungry. Mike’s pretty hungry, too, so he’s not complaining, even though he has to scrape his ass off the floor and actually get dressed.

  The knot of dread lasts through grilled ham and cheeses and three episodes of SpongeBob, and it swells up to clog his throat right around the time there’s a knock on the front door. Mike knows why the dread’s steadily churning into a big ball of vomit: it’s four in the afternoon, and it’s getting closer and closer to when he’ll have to suit up and suffer through a horrifically long night of techno dance tunes.

  What he doesn’t know is why Serge is on his front stoop, shifting uncomfortably on his feet, hands in his pockets, head bowed. Mike’s surprised enough to say, “What are you doing here?” instead of hi, but at least it doesn’t come out as rude as it could have been.

  Serge shrugs. He says, “Rook’s being an asshole,” to Mike’s front stoop.

  Mike says, “Yeah, well,” with the clear implication that Wallace is an asshole, so yes, that’s his natural state, Mike’s not exactly shocked. He pulls the door open wider and says, “Come on in, we’re watching iCarly reruns.”

  Serge’s eyebrows go up.

  “Yeah, whatever, like Teeny doesn’t make you play with My Little Ponies,” Mike says. Mike thanks the god of little sisters everywhere that Rosie would rather play with earthworms than baby dolls, but he’d bet money that Teeny probably has tea parties and that Serge lets her do his makeup.

  Serge shrugs again, but the corners of his mouth curve up into something like a smile.

  * * *

  By six, Lisa has called him ten times—to make sure he wears the red tie and his black shoes and that he actually shows up, because if he doesn’t she assures him she will hunt him down and beat him to death with his own arm. Omar’s also texted to tell him they’ll be by around eight to pick him up. Mike doesn’t respond to either of them. He just wants everyone to fuck off and die.

  He slumps back on his bed and pointedly doesn’t look at the clothes Lisa hung on the outside of his closet door.

  Serge is sitting on the floor by Mike’s stereo, flipping through his DVDs.

  Serge gets talky when he’s relaxed. Usually it’s the opposite for people, like they babble when they’re nervous, but Serge shuts down when he’s uncomfortable, Mike has noticed, and Serge has been lecturing him on contemporary artists or poets or shoes or something for the past forty minutes. Mike had stopped listening comprehensively at some point, it’s all just blah, blah, blah, Gioia, blah, Nelson, blah, blah, I hate Ginsberg, blah, fight for you
r right to party—

  “Wait, wait,” Mike says, leveraging up on his elbows. When did this evolve into a conversation about the Beastie Boys? “Licensed to Ill is an okay album.” Mike’s never really been into rap, but he’s pretty sure everyone’s required to like “Sabotage.” “But it’s not, like—listening to that, it’s nothing like hearing Weezer’s blue album for the first time.” Mike’s not talking Hallelujah Chorus or whatever, but that CD blew Mike away when Zack first made him listen to it.

  Serge rolls his eyes. “Everyone likes the blue album.”

  “You say that like that’s a bad thing,” Mike says. He doesn’t get this thing where you can’t like what you like because it’s popular and gets radio play and is fucking awesome. There’s underrated cool, sure, and there’s stuff out there that’s mind-bogglingly bad, but it’s like … it’s like … “Does anyone hate Flood? It’s physically impossible to hate They Might Be Giants’ Flood, right?”

  “I don’t know,” Serge says with a frown.

  “Trust me,” Mike says. “Flood is perfection. The blue album rocks. You tap your toes to MisterWives, I know you do, and if you say you don’t, you’re a fucking liar.”

  Serge frowns harder, but it doesn’t match his eyes. “I don’t,” he says. “I like Atreyu. Or, like, Cannibal Corpse.”

  “Dude, you like Cannibal Corpse?” Cannibal Corpse is gross. Mike honestly can’t see Serge rocking out to them. “I bet you secretly dance all around your basement to Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer.”

  Serge scrunches his face up in disgust. It’s fucking adorable.

  “That’s it.” Mike laughs. “Come on, you’re coming with us to the dance. My black suit should fit you.” The minute he says it the lump of sticky shit sitting at the base of his throat starts dissolving. If he can’t be happy, at least someone else will be able to share in his misery. It’s the best idea Mike’s ever had.