AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I do.” He twirls a cigarette in his fingers. He won’t smoke in my room. I’ve never told him, but he’s the only reason school isn’t unbearable. He’s the reason there aren’t more tampons in my locker—or worse. He made sure his old friends left me alone.
I’ve needed him.
If he wasn’t here, I’m not sure I’d have the strength to stay.
Maybe I’d find it somewhere else, but he’s kept me looking forward. At a better future. At a better place.
In our quiet, I hear the front door to the apartment opening, audible from my cracked bedroom door. Voices emanate from the hallway, and I’m sure my roommate (the only other person with a key) has stepped inside the living room.
Seconds later, my door swings further open, until Maya sticks her head inside. She wears a pink wig and plastic body armor. Her costume: Lightning from Final Fantasy.
“Hey,” she says. “I’m heading out. You sure you don’t want to come?” A smile creeps on her lips. “Your first college party could be a cosplay Halloween.”
At seventeen, I might be living in an off-campus apartment near the University of Pennsylvania, but I’ve successfully avoided the college parties so far. Thinking about them brings on this whole new wave of anxiety that I didn’t even know existed.
“It’s tempting, but I have to go to Loren’s neighborhood thing.” It’s Lo, Willow. Right. Lo. Lo. Lo.
“Yeah, I heard about that on Yik-Yak.”
Garrison snorts from my rug. “Someone yakked about it?” He returns to the video game, eyes glued to the screen as he plays.
Maya squeezes a little further into my room but stays in the doorway. “I think the yak was something like ‘my dream is to party with Loren Hale on his birthday’—not at all detailed.” She casts sly glances from Garrison to me, back and forth, but she’s not as worried as when I first brought him over.
As the Superheroes & Scones manager, she finds his attitude troubling. She was worried he’d steal the comics and sell them online.
The fact that I brought him to our apartment—that he’s grown closer to me—made her a bit more protective and apprehensive too. I think she thought maybe this all might be a trick. Get close to the geek for other reasons.
Burn her. Make fun of her. Humiliate her.
Like classic teen movies. He’d try to change me, so that I’d become popular like him. Or he’d pull some cruel prank in the very end.
Neither has happened.
Outside of lacrosse, he spends nearly all his free time with me. He’ll message me on Tumblr first. (We still haven’t exchanged phone numbers.) Sometimes, he’s already in the parking lot before he asks if he can come up. Sometimes I wonder if a tree was outside my apartment complex, if he’d climb it and knock on the window.
I think he would.
Garrison might not be up-to-date on comics like the other Superhero & Scones employees, but he has a geeky side that he’s repressed and hidden from his friends.
He loves computers.
He loves video games. Retro things like Lion King on Sega and Pokémon. We spent three whole days playing Mario Party on N64, and if he asked, I’d waste another three weeks doing the same thing with him.
That doesn’t feel like someone tricking me.
And so far, he’s proven trustworthy at the store. No theft. No vandalism.
“Garrison,” Maya says, catching his attention from the video game. “Just a heads up, I’ll be quizzing you about Cable’s history on your next shift. Two wrong answers”—she holds up two fingers—“and you have toilet duty.”
“Shit,” he mutters and mouths to me, who’s Cable?
I try to restrain a smile. “I’ll help you.” Cable is in X-Men and has a complex history, tangled with Scott Summers, so it might go over his head at first, but he’s caught on with other superheroes before.
Garrison swings his head back to Maya. “Should I take this heads up as you partially liking me?”
Maya wears a great poker face and then says something in Korean, knowing he can’t understand. She grips the door, about to leave.
“One day I’m going to learn Korean!” Garrison calls after her. “And then what are you going to do about it?”
She pops her head back in. “That’ll be the day.” She slips out, just as quickly. Then she pops her head in one more time. “Friendly reminder: I’m to report back to Loren if anything R-rated is happening in Willow’s room. I don’t like being a spy, so don’t make me be one.”
I go rigid. “We’re just friends,” I emphasize for probably the millionth time to Maya, to Lily, to even Lo.
I haven’t even hugged Garrison. I don’t want to ruin what we have by turning it into something more. I can’t imagine…I can’t imagine losing his friendship.
Garrison nods in agreement. “She’s just my girl.”
I pale and then begin to smile impulsively. I hide it by busying myself with my hair.
