And that’s what made him notice we were in the room. He jumped and turned around, and I realized Frances was in the bed with him, shirt also off, but bra still on.
It was all so messed up that I couldn’t stop laughing. Tears were coming to my eyes.
“Get out!” Sung yelled.
“I’m sorry, Frances,” I said between laughing fits. “I’m so sorry.”
“GET OUT!” Sung screamed again, standing up now. Thank God he still had his pants on. “YOU ARE THE DEVIL. THE DEVIL!”
“I prefer Antichrist,” I told him.
“THE DEVIL!”
“THE DEVIL!” I mimicked back.
I felt Damien’s hand on my shoulder. “Let’s go,” he whispered.
“This is so pathetic,” I said. “Sung, man, you’re pathetic.”
Sung lunged forward then, and Damien stepped in between us.
“Go,” Damien told me. “Now.”
I was laughing again, so I apologized to Frances again, then I pulled myself into the hallway.
Damien came out a few seconds later and closed the door behind us.
“Holy shit!” I said.
“Stop it,” Damien said. “Enough.”
“Enough?” I laughed again. “I haven’t even started.”
Damien shook his head. “You’re cold, man,” he said. “I can’t believe how cold you are.”
“What?” I asked. “You don’t find this funny?”
“You have no heart.”
This sobered me up pretty quickly. “How can you say that?” I asked. “How can you, of all people, say that?”
“What does that mean? Me, of all people?”
He’d gotten me.
“Alec?”
“I don’t know!” I shouted. “Okay? I don’t know.”
This sounded like the truth, but it was feeling less than that. I knew. Or I was starting to know.
“I do have a heart,” I said. But I stopped there.
I could feel it all coming apart. The collapse of all those invisible plans, the appearance of all those hidden thoughts.
I bolted. I left him right there in the hallway. I didn’t wait for the elevator—I hit the emergency stairs. I ran like I was the one on the cross-country team, even when I heard him following me.
“Don’t!” I yelled back at him.
I got to my floor and ran to my room. The card wouldn’t work the first time, and I nervously looked at the stairway exit, waiting for him to show up. But he must’ve stopped. He must’ve heard. I got the key through the second time.
Wes was on his bed, reading a comic.
“You’re back early,” he said, not looking up.
I couldn’t say a thing. There was a knock on the door. Damien calling out my name.
“Don’t answer it,” I said. “Please, don’t answer it.”
I locked myself in the bathroom. I stared at the mirror.
I heard Wes murmur something to Damien through the door without opening it. Then he was at the bathroom door.
“Alec? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said, but my voice was soggy coming out of my throat.
“Open up.”
I couldn’t. I sat on the lip of the tub, breathing in, breathing out. I remembered the look on Sung’s face and started to laugh. Then I thought of Frances lying there and felt sad. I wondered if I really didn’t have a heart.
“Alec,” Wes said again, gently. “Come on.”
I waited until he walked off. Then I opened the door and went into the bedroom. He was back on his bed, but he hadn’t picked up the comic. He was sitting at the edge, waiting for me.
I told him what had happened. Not the part about Damien, at first, but the part about Sung and Frances. He didn’t laugh, and neither did I. Then I told him Damien’s reaction to my reaction, without going into what was underneath.
“Do you think I’m cold?” I asked him. “Really—am I?”
“You’re not cold,” he said. “You’re just so angry.”
I must’ve looked surprised by this. He went on.
“You can be a total prick, Alec. There’s nothing wrong with that—all of us can be total pricks. We like to think that just because we’re geeks, we can’t be assholes. But we can be. Most of the time, though, it’s not coming from meanness or coldness. It’s coming from anger. Or sadness. I mean, I see people like me and I just want to rip them apart.”
“But why do I want to rip Sung apart?”
“I don’t know. Because he’s a prick, too. And maybe you feel if you rip apart the quiz bowl geek, no one will think of you as a quiz bowl geek.”
“But I’m not a quiz bowl geek!”
“Haven’t you figured it out yet?” Wes asked. “Nobody’s a quiz bowl geek. We’re all just people. And you’re right—what we do here has no redeeming social value whatsoever. But it can be an interesting way to pass the time.”
I sat down on my bed, facing Wes so that our knees almost touched.
“I’m not a very happy person,” I told him. “But sometimes I can trick myself into thinking I am.”
“And where does Damien fit into all this, if I may ask?”
I shook my head. “I really have no idea. I’m still figuring it out.”
“You know he likes girls?”
“I said, I’m still figuring it out.”
“Fair enough.”
I paused, realizing what had just been said.
“Is it that obvious?” I asked Wes.
“Only to me,” he said.
It would take me another three months to understand why.
“Meanwhile,” he went
