April 8, 1941

Hersch �"

Tuesday, April 8, 1941

            God, this school is so boring. The guys all left me here and I’ve been staring at the bottom side of Jim’s bunk for an hour now.

            Jim’s off in the library doing some kind of research for Biology. Seriously, the guy isn’t stupid. He’s carrying all of our asses through that class right now. If he wants us to keep believing he’s an idiot, he had better dumb it down and start being fun again.

            Bored as I am, I don’t envy Gabe and Erich right now. They’re up on the roof serving our detention time. Poor b******s. I sure wouldn’t want to be in Gabe’s shoes. I don’t think those two can last three minutes without fighting. If Erich doesn’t push him off the roof in the first two hours, it will be a miracle. But we’ll see how it goes.

            Hold on. I just opened up to Kristen’s picture. Well, I won’t be bored for long. Jim had better take his sweet time.

…

Erich �"

            I dreaded it all day. I knew I had tripped Gabe, and I knew I had done it on purpose. But in my own mind I was absolutely sure that I was the victim here. I couldn’t spend a whole night alone with Gabe, not to mention two nights a week for the rest of the term. I just couldn’t do it.

            What about my plan? How was I supposed to keep him at a distance now?

            I did nothing to prepare myself for the night ahead of me. I woke up in the morning convinced that I could scare Gabe into shutting his mouth for the whole night. By lunch, though, I was so tired of looking scary I just gave up. It wasn’t doing any good anyway. Gabe was still right there, like a pathetic shadow.

            At least he never said anything about the race. Something must have scared him out of confronting me. It had just been a snap decision to bring him down with me. I still wasn’t even really sure why I had done it. Not that I ever would have admitted it, but I actually felt guilty. Or at least, I thought it was guilt. It might have just been self-pity. Those two feelings were always a little hard to tell apart.

            At nine o’ clock, we were all sitting in the dorm, smoking and looking over a Biology dissertation book as thick as a dictionary when Gabe looked at his watch.

            “Erich,” was all he said.

            I groaned and threw down my book. “S**t. Let’s go.”

            “Ha! Have fun!” Jim jeered sarcastically. “Lots of good you’ll do. I’m sure those zeppelins will see you up there and head right back to where they came from.”

            Gabe and I simultaneously told him to piss off. Hersch smacked him with his book. “Hey idiot,” he said. “Why don’t you make yourself useful for a change and help me with this essay?”

            Jim looked disgustedly down at the page. “We’ll never get it done with this s**t. I’m going to the library.”

            “Good luck there,” Hersch laughed. He looked at us. “Don’t you two have somewhere to be?” He was just as sarcastic as Jim. I just growled and trudged out the door with Gabe at my heels.

            Gabe didn’t say anything as we made our way to the commons. I welcomed the silence and couldn’t help but smile at the sound of our feet echoing down the corridor.

            In the commons, we found a prefect waiting for us. He had our provisions, which basically meant buckets of sand and water. They were heavy. I smugly carried four while Gabe struggled with two.

            The prefect led us outside to the fire escape, a tubular shoot on the side of the main building. He then left us there without further instructions, and the two of us were forced to bring the buckets up one at a time (by which I mean, Gabe hoisted them off the ground and I climbed the ladder with one hand). Still, neither of us said anything.

            So it worked out that I got to the roof first. It was flat and wide, plenty of room to put space between Gabe and myself. I looked off into the darkness. I wish I could say there was some kind of beautiful, life changing view, but there wasn’t. Just a bunch of trees and the dorms to the left and right. Plus it was f*****g cold.

            “Hey!” A small voice came from the wall below me. I looked over the edge, realizing that we were much higher than I thought, and saw Gabe dangling from the ladder. His arms were shaking a little, and I realized hefting the buckets had been hard for him (could I really be that much stronger than he was?). He groped helplessly at the ladder and I could tell he couldn’t reach the top rung.

            Well, I wasn’t about to let him fall. It didn’t even cross my mind. A long time later, I would realize what a step forward that was for me, that I hadn’t even imagined going through with the decision that would end with Gabe becoming a bloody pile of broken bones. Instead, I reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling him up to the roof.

            Then he did something that made me want to drop him. Right there, with his hand clasped around my wrist, his face an inch away from mine, he gave me that goddamn look. His eyes somehow managed to get even bigger and even greener, his eyebrows knit together and he blinked a couple times too many.

            Whatever that look meant, it made me so uncomfortable I considered jumping off the roof. Once he had both feet under him, I clenched my jaw and let go of hand.

            Gabe cleared his throat and looked down. “Thanks,” he said quietly.

            I didn’t say anything. I was already walking away from him. With three good strides, I was on the other side of the roof. I leaned against the chimney, hunched my shoulders, and prepared for the most uncomfortable night of my life.

…

Jim �"

            The scarf was in my bag. The scarf was in my bag the scarf was in my bag. The. Scarf. Was. In. My. Bag.

            No matter how many times I muttered those words to myself, I could make myself believe it. Delilah, or Becky, or whoever the hell she really was, had left her scarf in my bag.

            What the hell? Did she want me to have a goddamn souvenir? Did she WANT me to remember her? Because I was planning on forgetting the whole incident as soon as I could, thank you very much. And from the way things looked when I came to she was as ready to have me out of her life as I was ready to get her out of mine. So why the hell wouldn’t she just keep the goddamn thing?

            I couldn’t make it make sense. I hadn’t told the guys, obviously. And they were all perfectly happy to move on like London had never happened. So I was glad to escape from them for a while and clear my head when it came time to finish that essay.

            Once I snuck into the library (using Hersch’s lock picking pin), the essay practically wrote itself. It wasn’t that hard to begin with. Plus I loved the library. I had wandered through the dark, musty smelling aisles of books for ages before I actually started working. As I squinted through the dark at the pages in front of me, I felt more at ease than I had since I left home.

            At the risk of being branded as even more of an outcast, I would never let the other guys know that I was actually smart. I mean, how else could a kid from Wisconsin make it all the way to a London academy with a full scholarship? The fact that they hadn’t figured that out yet pretty much proved that I was the smart one.

            My parents actually had me on track to become a doctor, which was why I was so good at Biology. I had been reading Gray’s Anatomy when I was twelve years old. My parents’ plans for my life were really the only things that I didn’t feel the urge to rebel against back home. Medical schools were all lined up and everything.  All I had to do was survive this semester.

            Once I was finished I reluctantly made my way back to the dorm. It was all dark in the hall, and I had to flip on my lighter (well, the lighter I stole from Hersch) to see. I still couldn’t see to far, though, and I ended up smashing my legs into the laundry tub, which we had started leaving outside because it took up so damn much space. I cursed loudly I wondered to myself why I was the only one who ever had trouble sneaking around in the dark.

            Inside, I heard Hersch shifting around in his bunk. What a bum, I thought, hasn’t moved since I left. I planned to kiddingly threaten to take his name off the essay. But I never got further than one step inside the door and “Hey assh…”

            I knew what I was looking at the second I saw it. I mean, it wasn’t like walking in and seeing a corpse or anything, where you don’t really comprehend what you’re seeing, though it was probably just as scary. I knew what I was looking at because it was no bizarre thing. I, and every other man in the world, had done it a thousand times.

            Hersch was propped up in bed, with a photo in one hand and his massive circumcised dick in the other.

            He didn’t see me, thank God. Too focused on his wanking agenda, I guess. So at least I was saved from the suicide-inducing moment when he would realize I was there. Let me tell you, I got out of that room faster than I had ever moved in my life.

            I galloped down the hall, away from the now-all-too-obvious noises coming from the dorm. When I got outside, I slammed the door behind me and leaned against it. I lit a cigarette shakily and wished for a second that I could burn the memory out of my brain. What now? WHAT NOW?

            I knew one thing now for sure: Hersch really missed that girl.

            The scene played back at me in my head again and I retched dramatically. Then I shook my head and took a few long drags, calming down. I would give him enough time to finish, I decided. I owed him that much. Besides, it was all part of rooming with guys, right? I had known what I was getting in to when I came here, hadn’t I?

            Then I sighed and went back inside, heading for the kitchen. Maybe there I could find something I could use to poke my eyes out.

Gabe �"

            Silence. Nothing but endless, empty, uncomfortable quiet. For the third hour straight.

            It was midnight. Erich and I had been trapped within four feet of each other up on the freezing, shockingly high roof since nine o’clock. Neither of us had said a word for more than three hours.

            More than once I considered throwing myself off the roof, or regretted asking Erich for help when I almost slipped off the ladder.

            I had never experienced anything so uncomfortable. For the first, we had scanned horizon and avoided eye contact. That was when we were still a little hopeful that this fire warden thing might actually be useful, that we might actually see some action and be the heroes who saved the school when the bombs fell. No such luck. Eventually I had started counting the tiles on the roof and Erich had broken out his flask, determined to look at anything but each other.

            Now Erich had his head lolled back against the chimney and his eyes half closed. I figured he couldn’t see me in the dark, so I finally looked at him, just for a change of scenery. I never looked at him or any guy for very long, fearing the assumptions that usually came with staring.

            His shoulders were perpetually hunched, like he was constantly suspicious of something behind him. His once severely cropped white-blond hair had grown out a little since I first met him. His face was all harsh, square angles. His eyes were completely shut now, hiding the ice blue squint that scared the hell out of me on a daily basis.

            I got nervous, then, that he would open his eyes and catch me staring, so I quickly whipped my head back and looked at the stars. I knew the constellations in Italian and English. I laid back figuring it would be a good way to pass the time.

            Big mistake.

            I pointed at the sky, though obviously no one was looking but me. “Gemini,” I mouthed. Gemelli, I heard in my head. Suddenly I was warm all over, thinking of that voice.

            Oh God, I hadn’t thought about this in so long.

            Lying on my back in the vineyard. My jacket spread out under us.

            I bit down hard on my nail. Gnaw gnaw gnaw RIP

            Naming the stars under the light of the full moon. Grass between my toes. The smell of ripe grapes and stolen wine and sweat.

            Gnaw gnaw gnaw RIP

            Hand entwined with mine. Sweet Italian in my ear. Head on my shoulder. Lips on my throat.

            Gnaw gnaw gnaw RIP

            “For the love of God, would you cut that out?” I sat up so fast it made my head spin. Erich was now wide awake and looking at me angrily from across the roof. “Calm the hell down and quit biting your nails! What the hell do you have to be nervous about?”

            I bit my lip and lay back down again. He had snapped me out of the memory, and I was unreasonably grateful. I didn’t care if he yelled at me. Human contact was all I needed.

            “Sorry,” I muttered, promising myself that I would start up again in a few hours. Just to get him talking.

Author's Note

Sorry for the delay between chapters. My process (and scedule) is crazy!

I would love some feedback on how well I'm breaking into the male mind. Thanks!

Reviews

[Arianna]

i love this book!
its amazing, all the different charecters come togother amazingly.
how the hell do you do it???
i want it to move faster...and its like...2:00 am but i cant stop reading
im hooked :)

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.display. .ana.016.
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.division. II
.division.leader. Shane
.name. Arianna
.username. nerdypenguin2427
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[trish420]

YAY!!! I get SOO happy when I notice you;ve posted another chapter LOL drawing it out ALMOST makes it better ;-) So... As I do not have a male mind I really don;t know how well you're breaking into it but it sounds good to me! I love that we're just starting to get into the "meat" of things if you will (LOL). The foreshadowing is excellent and is working quite well to get me all excited/impatient for what I think I know is to come! As usual, wonderful execution :-)

[Coyote Poetry]

The chapter was amazing. I will go back and read the rest of the chapters. I like the characters and the entertaining conversations. Thank you for the story.
Coyote