Jim - Seven

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, Moretti! 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.

“Amery 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.”

“Any time.”

“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.

 “Wouldn’t take much to do better than you,” he said, putting out his match.

“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 was just as bad at this as I was. “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, Amery?” 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 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 f*****g 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 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, and I was humiliated that I had even thought I was on their 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.

Lucky 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. But 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 a 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 tripped over the rug and caught myself against the door as I yanked it open.

Hersch stood on the other side, looking confused. “What was that?” he asked. I must have 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 behind him. 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.”

Reviews

[Coyote Poetry]

Good conversation and thoughts in this chapter. I like the desire to be quiet in the discussion of the journal. I like the way you are create four lives in this story. Each one with their own thoughts and needs. This is a amazing story of four boys growing up in a hard time and place. Thank you for the excellent chapter.
Coyote