Page 75
Somebody knocks on the door.
"Castel!" It's Sorel. Loud whisper. The loudest whisper in North America. "I have pizza!"
Owen's eyes fly open.
"I got the extra large," Sorel says through the door. "With the jalapeños. You said you wanted jalapeños. Open up, I know you're awake, you're always awake."
Owen's out of my bed before I can move. He doesn't go to his own bed. There's no time. He just rolls, sideways, off the edge of the mattress, and lands on the carpet in the gap between the two beds with a thump that shakes the lamp.
"What was that?" Sorel says.
"Nothing!" I say. "I dropped my phone."
"Your phone sounds like a body."
"It's a big phone."
I get up. I pull on a T-shirt. I look down at Owen, lying flat on his back on the carpet in his boxers, staring at the ceiling with an expression of total, complete despair. I throw his own pillow down on top of him. Then I pull the comforter off his bed and drop it over him too, so he's just a lump.
I open the door.
Sorel's standing there in pajama pants with little penguins on them, holding a pizza box the size of a manhole cover. He walks right past me into the room.
"Where's Hale?"
"Ice machine."
"At one-thirty?"
"His knee." I shut the door. "You know. His knee."
"Huh." Sorel sits down on Owen's bed. Right on the edge of it. Directly above the lump. He opens the pizza box on his lap. "Want some?"
"I'm good."
"You said you wanted jalapeños. You said it on the bus. You said, and I quote, I would kill a man for jalapeño pizza."
"I changed my mind."
Sorel takes a slice. He takes a big bite. He chews, and looks around the room, and his eyes land on my bed, where there are very obviously two dents in the pillows.
"You sleep with two pillows?" he asks.
"For my neck."
"Since when?"
"Since Columbus," I say. "The pillows in Columbus are very thin."
Under the comforter on the floor, the lump shifts, very slightly. I watch Sorel's foot, which is dangling off the side of the bed a hand's width from Owen's head.
"Are you okay?" Sorel says. "You're sweating."
"The heat's up really high."
"It's sixty-five in here. I can see the thermostat."
"I run hot."