March 19, 1941

The boys get back to classes and try to find out a little more about each other

Hersch "

Wednesday, March 21, 1941

            So apparently the hunt for broads didn’t go exactly as planned. I guess to say they failed miserably would be an understatement, seeing as by the time they sulked back into the room around noon Erich was hysterical, Gabe’s virginity was (seemingly) still intact, and Jim had been smacked so hard he had handprint on his face that didn’t go away for the rest of the day. I had to laugh at them. They looked so stupid.

            Anyway, we’re all finding out a lot more about each other, mostly by accident. Erich’s been in a foul mood all week. For a while there it looked like he was done picking fights, but I’m starting to think he’s just getting started. Sunday afternoon we were all joking about how bad the girl search went and we accidentally put him over the edge by asking about the girls back home. It seemed pretty harmless, but it put him in such a mood that he practically broke Jim’s face when he suggested that Erich might have gotten a dame in trouble. I guess I should have seen that coming. I guess if someone asked about my girl back home I would do anything I could to keep from talking about it. Erich’s life is definitely just as messed up as mine and, though it makes him a pretty unpleasant companion, it’s making me hate him less and less.

            Gabe’s having problems too. Erich says he’s has been talking in his sleep about someone named Leo. None of us have asked about it, but I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to this story. Gabe says he’s never gotten his hands on a dame, which is probably true. But he gets really uncomfortable about showering with us, he plays the violin (something he hasn’t actually mentioned, but I recognized the instrument case he had with him on the first day), he’s always looking at Erich, and now he’s talking to some guy in his sleep. This leads me to an unfortunate conclusion. But he denied it when I blurted it out the night we stole the stash, and I’m not about to bring it up again. Most guys, Erich and Jim included, would probably kill him if they found out. But he really is a good person and I don’t want to be the one who gets him hurt. The poor guy, if his is that way, it’s got to be tough for him to be here.

            Also, someone’s been in my journal. I don’t even really know why I was keeping it a secret, except that it’s probably the last place I can actually talk about what happened back in Poland.  It’s not even that I’ve written anything I don’t want them to see, but I keep my pictures of home between the pages, and I can’t let them start asking questions about that. I guess I’m just going to have to hide it a little more carefully. It’s nice to be able to confide in the guys about some things, but if they get a hold of this, if I can’t let out what I’m really feeling,  I won’t have anything to keep me sane.

            S**t, they’ll be coming soon, and I didn’t have time to write Rebecca.  It’s almost lights out, and I need to stash this before the rest of the guys get back to the room. I’m going to try and stay awake to hear if Erich is telling the truth about Gabe’s sleep-talking.  I’ve got to see if I can figure out anything else about these boys, because at this point, if I can’t trust them, I can’t trust anybody.

…

Jim "

“All right, so it didn’t go exactly according to plan,” I muttered. The guys were winded from laughing as I bent over the mirror, trying to rub the lingering handprint from my cheek. All the through lunch they had been having a fit over my failure to impress the dames, and now they had started up again. “Those British girls are even tougher to pick up than the ones back home. I mean, really, if they’re going to show off like that shouldn’t they be a little more open to compliments?”

Gabe blew smoke and coughed through his laughter. “I don’t think many broads take ‘Hey there, honey. You’ve got yourself some good looking gams’ as a compliment. Even I know that!”

I scowled and tossed a pillow across the room at him as they exploded with laughter. “Shut it, Gabe! It’s not like you did any better.”

“It wasn’t my stupid plan!”

“Well it wasn’t only my idea!”

“Yeah, but it actually worked for me,” Erich said, lighting a cigarette and looking smug.

I glared at him. It was true. Surrounded by girls, Erich became a completely different guy. Well, technically he stayed the same, but his stony exterior had a completely different effect. He stayed out of the action (and let me make an a*s of myself out there alone), brooded in the corner. Somehow, by eleven thirty, he had half the girls there hovering around him like flies. Shortly before we (and by we I mean I) called the mission quits, I saw him slip behind the building with a really ginchy blonde. He reappeared shortly after, just in time to witness my humiliation. Still, I couldn’t argue with him.

“F**k that,” I growled, for lack of a better response, “you didn’t last ten minutes with that girl.”

“Wait, what?” Gabe asked, looking confusedly from me to Erich. “What girl?” If I didn’t know better I would think he looked genuinely concerned.

“Erich got a girl?” Hersch asked, sitting up and looking intrigued. “Well s**t, why aren’t we talking about that? Enough about Jim already, we all know he’s an a*s.”

“Thanks a lot, Hersch.”

“Nothing happened, guys,” Erich said, looking down into his empty bottle.

“Yeah right,” I scoffed, “you probably went down in flames, too.” I sincerely hoped that was the case.

 “Unlikely,” he said, putting out his match. “No one can fail like you, Banhart.”

“Then what happened?” Gabe asked, flipping on to his stomach.

“Nothing!”

“Come on!” Hersch leaned over and punched him in the arm.

“Damn it, guys! Would you just drop it? I mean, yeah, she was keen. But…”

Erich broke off, but I wasn’t giving up. I just wanted to know if he had gone down in smoke too. “But what?”

His lip curled, but he answered. “But… but I don’t need another girl in the picture getting me in trouble,” he said reluctantly.

I looked at him teasingly and Hersch raised an eyebrow. “Hmm, you got a girl back home getting you in trouble, Erich?” Hersch asked jokingly.

“Or would you say that you got her in trouble?” I laughed.

Well Erich definitely didn’t think that was as funny as I did. His head snapped up and he tossed the empty whiskey bottle he had been holding across the room furiously. I held a pillow in front of my face to block the impact, but the bottle bounced off and shattered at my feet. I stared at him.

“What the hell, man?” I asked angrily. “What was that for? You could have f*****g killed me!”

He stood up heatedly, knocking over the chair, bringing himself to his full, insanely intimidating height. I braced myself for a punch, but nothing came. Erich just gave me the darkest look I had ever seen and stalked out the door, slamming it violently behind him.

I turned around and looked at Hersch and Gabe, who had done absolutely nothing to help me. “What was that?” I asked, completely bewildered. “He’s crazy! I was just messing around!”

Gabe sighed and bent over to pick up the glass. “Just drop it.”

I looked at him. “F**k! I didn’t do anything!”

“Jim, we’ve all got s**t in our past that we don’t want to talk about,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “If a guy like Erich swore off girls, there’s got to be a reason that he really doesn’t want people to know.”

I was opening my mouth to protest when Hersch butted in. “He’s right, we shouldn’t have gotten into it, man.” Unlike Gabe, he looked me meaningfully in the eye. “All of us have fucked up lives. Don’t you have anything you don’t want us to know?”

I thought hard. But honestly, I didn’t have anything to say. My life was normal, simple, completely average. I mean, it was boring as hell, and I had done all kinds of stuff to liven it up, but honestly, I didn’t have anything to lash out over, nothing run away from.

But they all did. For the first time, it occurred to me that none of my roommates had, like me, come to Wellington’s for the sake of trying something new. They didn’t have a choice.

I didn’t answer Hersch, but turned around and sulked out the door. It wasn’t because I was afraid of them or whatever they were hiding. But I didn’t have and answer to the question.

I stomped out to the courtyard, hoping sincerely that I wouldn’t run into Erich. The situation was starting to look more and more hopeless. For a minute there, I had actually believed that we had all been on equal ground. I thought I had a shot at impressing them. But I might as well have been from a different planet.  No matter how tough I acted for these guys, they would always be tougher. I was going to be the safe one, the pretty boy, forever, and I was humiliated that I had thought I was on their same level.

It had gotten cold outside and most of the crowd had moved to the main building, so as I made my way around the back of the dorms I figured it would be safe to have a smoke. The cig calmed me down a little bit and I leaned back against the wall. I tried to appreciate the fact that my life, unlike theirs, probably, wasn’t already completely fucked up. But, though I tried to feel privileged, all I felt was inexperienced and left out.

After a long while, my hands had gotten so cold that I decided it was time to swallow my pride and head back to the dorm. I guessed that the whole incident was so weird that no one else would want to talk about it either. As I trudged back towards the room, I wondered how we would ever make it through the term if I never knew when one of them would blow up over something that meant nothing to me.

Luckily for me, the room was both empty and warm. I grabbed another cigarette and realized I had dropped my matches outside. I figured one of the guys would have one, so I reached for the nearest trunk and opened it. It was Hersch’s, and I quickly discovered that, though he did have a light, the guy almost literally didn’t own anything. All he had was a few shirts and a pack of matches. I reached in to grab them out and realized that there was something inside the one of the shirts. Curious, I unfolded it and pulled out the object.

It was a book, a relatively new one. It had nothing on the cover and, overcome by interest I opened it. It didn’t take me long to realize it was a journal and, though I was insanely curious, I didn’t want to get in any more trouble for snooping in the past. I tried to close it quickly, but something fell out from between the pages.

The two photographs floated to the ground at my feet. I picked them up, unable to keep from looking. One was a pretty typical family picture, with two parents, a much younger looking Hersch, and a girl who seemed to be around his same age. The second one was different, just one girl, a different one from the first photo, sitting in front of the window. She was pretty, maybe a little younger than us, laughing at something out of frame. I wondered if she was Hersch’s girl, since his sister must have been the girl in the first picture. But I didn’t have time to think about that, because at that moment, the doorknob started to rattle.

Luckily, whoever was outside was locked out by the broken door. “Hold on!” I called, cramming the pictures back into the book and dropping it back in the chest. I rushed to the door and slipped on the rug in the process, catching myself against the door as I yanked it open.

Hersch stood on the other side, looking confusedly. “What was that?” he asked. I obviously looked suspicious.

“What? Nothing!” I said, leaning against the doorframe and trying to look casual. “Don’t be stupid. Just… slipped on the, uh, rug.”

He looked at me like I was an idiot, but it was better than letting him in on what I had really been doing. “You coming to dinner? We’ve been looking for you.”

I was glad to see at least he had already put the unpleasantness of the afternoon. Hersch was turning out to be my favorite guy at this school. I couldn’t risk losing the only person who I had a shot at being friends with, and I promised myself I would never bring up anything I had seen in his journal. “Dinner? Yeah, I’ll be right there.”

 

Gabe "

            After our weekend, it was tough getting back to classes on Monday. Everyone seemed to have gotten over the awkward scrap between Jim and Erich the day before. We woke up in our usual order and got dressed extra slowly, trudging to breakfast at a listless pace, communicating with each other using a maximum one syllable at a time.

            First period was hell. I was usually the one in charge of waking the other guys up, but I had grown up in England, and I had been hearing about British History since I was born. So we took turns slapping each other awake (it took two of us to wake up Erich once he started snoring) and taking the notes while the professor wrote maniacally on the blackboard.

            Economics, second period, was no better. Erich and I ended up paired off together to discuss the pros and cons of capitalism. Instead we debated whether the female professor was attractive (he said yes, I said no).

For as badly as we had hit it off, the two of us were actually starting to get along. But as I listened to him spew comments about broads, I couldn’t help but remember the last time I let down my guard around a guy I thought I could trust. I had to remind myself that I could never let that happen again, though I somehow doubted I would ever find myself in such a similar situation with a guy like Erich.

            Unfortunately, I had an unlucky schedule change during lunch. Erich and I were just sitting down when Jim and Hersch showed up, grinning widely.

            “What are you two smiling about?” Erich asked with his mouth full.

            “No History of Africa today,” Hersch smiled, “showers again.”

            “Again?” I groaned. I couldn’t hide the strain in my voice. The shower itself was bad enough, but having to miss music class for it was a nightmare.

            They all gave me an odd look. “It’s not that bad,” Jim said, biting off the corner of his sandwich, “damn I’m tired of this food.”

            “Yeah, Moretti,” Erich said, giving me a push, “you didn’t stick around five minutes last time. You need it more than anyone.”

            “I don’t know guys,” I said hesitantly, “I’ve got a lot of stuff to do in third period.”

            “What class do you even have?”

            I bit my lip and racked my brain for a better answer than the truth. “Um… anatomy?” It sounded like a question.

            The look they gave me was obnoxious, but they seemed to believe me. “What the f**k are you taking anatomy for?” Jim asked.

            Erich started to laugh before I could answer. “He needs to figure out where to put it when he finally picks up a girl!”

            I scowled. “Shut it, Amery.”

            “Hey, kamerad I’m just messing around,” he punched me in the arm. “But seriously, come shower. You need it more than any of us.”

            I groaned, but I knew I couldn’t drop out again without looking suspicious, and, besides, I was starting to smell like a pig. “Fine,” I said reluctantly. Really, if they wanted me to shower with them, they couldn’t possibly be thinking what I was trying to keep them from thinking.

            We made our way to the shower building, complaining about classes and the general lack of girls in the area. I tried to keep pace with them, but I felt more and more weighed down by the knot in my stomach as we went along.

It seemed like it had taken no time at all by the time we reached the filthy room. The four of us got undressed (all but socks) and stepped into the freezing water. I took a deep breath, turned off my mind, and stripped down.

           

 

 

Erich "

            Showers were as bad as the first time, though, for whatever reason, Gabe finally joined us. I can’t figure out why he skipped out last time. Just shy, I guess.

            Group showers are pretty common back home, but the feeling of being seized up by a new group never gets less awkward. Not that I don’t measure up (literally), but I’ve got some serious competition from these guys, if you know what I mean.

             Anyway, after showers none of us felt like going to Biology, so we decided to cut class and the four of us headed back to the room for a shave. Jim, who had obviously come here under the least difficult circumstances, was the only one who had brought a kit, but we didn’t really have a choice. We were starting to look like pretty rough.

            The four of us crowded around Jim’s mirror and lathered up. “F**k, we’ve got to get some provisions if we’re gonna keep living like this,” Jim complained. “I mean, Jesus! Did you guys pack anything?”

            “F**k you, Banhart,” Hersch said, passing a razor to Gabe “You think you could survive at this school without us? Under Knight and the Wankers’ watch?”

             “Yeah, right,” Jim said, swiping violently at his cheek with the razor. “I think I can handle myself,” he said sarcastically. “I saved all our asses from Knight when he came in for inspection, didn’t I?”

            “You used your brains for that,” I pointed out, “the Wankers aren’t about to challenge us to a game of chess.”

            Jim puffed himself up. “Please. I could take those guys blindfolded.”

            We burst out laughing and the razor slipped out of Gabe’s hand and he sliced his jaw. “F**k!” he said angrily, pressing his palm to the cut. It was the first word he had said in an hour.

            “Ha! The monk’s broken his vow of silence,” Hersch snorted, still winded from laughing at Jim.

            “Hey, shut it, Abrahamson!”

            “No, he’s right,” I laughed, falling backwards onto the chair. “You’re a mute virgin! You must be a monk!”

            Gabe scoffed and pulled out a rosary that had been hidden under his shirt. “I’m Catholic, actually.”

            “No s**t. Then you’re a priest. Same thing,” Jim hooted.

            “Yeah,” Gabe grumbled as he toweled off his face, “we’ll just see.”

He threw the bloodied towel in my face sullenly. I jumped back and exaggeratedly tossed it to the ground. “Hey, I don’t want your virgin blood all over me.”

“F**k off!”

Jim covered his mouth in mock horror. “That is offensive! Give me a hundred Hail Mary’s!” he cried, grabbing the crucifix on the rosary.

            “Hey, put that thing away,” I said, “you might offend the Jew.”

            “What the hell do I care if he has a f*****g rosary? I knew it was there. I’m not f*****g blind.”

            “Well there’s a surprise,” Gabe snickered. “You know wanking causes blindness. You ought to be blind as a bat by now!”

            “Hey I don’t need that stuff. I got a girl, remember?’

            “Yeah, a girl who’s a million miles away,” I laughed, lighting a cig. “You ought to be letting it out in the shower like a normal guy.”

            “I would, but you fuckers are there!”

            We all hooted at that. The four of us pushed each other around like that for the rest of the night, and walked into dinner winded from laughing.

            The West Block Wankers glared at us from across the room. I was starting to get worried. They hadn’t given us any trouble since Friday, and to me that was a very bad sign.

            “I don’t like this, guys,” I said, keeping an eye on the Wankers and biting into my boiled cabbage. “They’re up to something.”

            “Aw, relax, Amery,” Jim said, leaning back in his chair. “We already proved we could take them.”

            “Actually, I think we proved we could run away from them,” Hersch pointed out.

            “And distract them with cigarettes,” I added with a mouth full of food.    

            “True,” Gabe said, pointing at us with his fork. “But just look at them,” he turned around to emphasize his point, “They’re scared stiff.”

            “They’re not the only ones who are stiff,” Jim complained. “I’ve got to wash my f*****g sheets. If we don’t get some girls here fast I’ll kill myself.”

            Hersch looked at him disgustedly. “Thank you so much for sharing that with us. But you had your chance, Banhart. How well did that go?”

            “A fluke.”

            “Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?” I snorted.

            “You just wait,” Jim grumbled, “as soon as we get out of this shithole I’ll show you.”

            “Oh he’ll show us,” Hersch laughed, “now I see why you couldn’t get girls!”

            He scowled. “F**k you.”

            I smirked. “I’d rather not.”

            “So that Economics essay…” Gabe jumped in, changing the subject abruptly. We spent the rest of the evening with our schoolwork and hooch until we were falling asleep in our chairs and had to fumble into bed.

            I was all pumped up from my last cig and decided to just wait it out until I could fall asleep. It had been a long day, and as I lay there in the dark, I thought about how odd it was to be a part of what might be actual friendships. I hadn’t had time for friends in years, not with my father pushing me to be the very best soldier I could be. I didn’t want to admit it to myself, but those boys I had initially hated were actually growing on me.

            I could tell everyone else was asleep already, and I was beginning to feel myself slipping off too. I was just getting comfortable when a noise made me bolt up in bed.

            It wasn’t a normal sound, and I had heard just about every sound imaginable in my years of rooming with other guys. It came from the bunk below me, from Gabe. He was obviously asleep, but it almost sounded like he was crying.

            It took me a minute to realize he was mumbling miserably in Italian. I couldn’t understand a word he said until he broke into English for just a few seconds.

            “Leo… Leo, don’t go. This isn’t my fault. I need you to stay. I need you.”

 

Reviews

[Arianna]

i'm really likeing it,
the 4 different perspectives thing is still really cool :)

.novelists.elite.info.
.display. .ana.016.
.memberID. 016
.division. II
.division.leader. Shane
.name. Arianna
.username. nerdypenguin2427
.novels. Sanctuary, Right Side Up
.status. Reader, Early Writer, Role Model
.join date. 04-03-2011

[hannah]

i enjoy reading about hersch and jims friendship. i'm sick of gabe hiding, i'm ready for him to just come out already. lovin it!

[trish420]

Just one technical: Group showers are pretty common back home, but the feeling of being seized up by a new group never gets less awkward. Should be: Group showers are pretty common back home, but the feeling of being SIZED up by a new group never gets less awkward.

Other than that the story progressing very nicely... good pace moving forward without rushing and giving us a bigger and bigger peak into their psyches and pasts... I'm just oh so very curious and impatient to find out everyone's whole story, excellent! And, by the way, thank YOU for the great story that helps keep me occupied at work LOL! Really though, I figure a review is only fair since I really do truly enjoy reading your work; you are very talented and really hope you keep up with it :-)