Текст книги "Every Frat Boy Wants It"

Автор книги: Todd Gregory

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Chapter 2

-,lair's car was parked in the lot behind the library.

11 whistled when we got to it. It was a silver Lexus convertible, and still had that new car smell on the inside when I got in. My own car used to be my parents', and they'd just passed it on to me when they bought a new one when I turned sixteen. It was an eighteen year old Oldsmobile Delta Royale 88, with a navy blue paint job at one time, but apparently the paint had been defective so it kind of looked like it had leprosy. My parents had gotten it as a wedding present from my grandparents, and they'd babied it like you wouldn't believe-oil change every three thousand miles, regular tune-ups, and so on. The end result was despite the fact it looked like it belonged up on blocks in a field somewhere, it ran like it was brand new. I called it the Flying Couch, because that's what the ride felt like-like you were driving a couch down the road. I'd never really cared much about how the car looked-I was just grateful that I had one. Most of my classmates at Southern Heights either had to buy their own cars, rebuild one, or do without.

But my car was nothing compared to Blair's Lexus. As soon as he had the top down, he plugged his iPod into the stereo and the car filled with the sound of a techno dance mix at top volume. He dug around in his backpack and pulled out a rumpled pack of Marlboro Lights. He offered the pack to me and I shook my head. "Nasty habit," he said as he shook one out for himself. "I wish I'd never started."

"When did you start?" I shouted over the woman who was wailing through the speakers. I started bopping my head around to the beat. It was a great song.

"When I was twelve," he shouted back, shoving the car into reverse and screeching out of the parking spot. He stopped the car with a lurch and grinned over at me. "Deborah Cox is awesome, isn't she? I fucking love her." He lit the cigarette and slammed the car into drive and we shot off with another squeal of burning rubber.

"Yeah." I shouted back as he veered out of the parking lot and started driving about thirty miles above the speed limit along the road that bordered the back of the campus. An orange grove stretched for miles in the distance on the other side of the road, and I found myself clutching the dashboard.

A light changed and he slammed on the brakes, throwing me forward. He turned the volume down, and gave me that grin again. "Sorry. I like speed."

"It's okay," I replied weakly. I uncapped my Coke bottle and took a long swig, listening to my heart thumping in my ears. "I might have to change my underwear at some point, but it's okay."

"Good one!" He threw his head back and laughed. "Really. I'm sorry. I forget sometimes to be a little more respectful when other people are in the car. When I'm by myself heading home, I really open her up going down the grapevine. There's nothing like driving fast in a car that knows how to handle it." He went on, "My dad has a Aston Martin, you know, like James Bond? Sometimes he lets me drive it out to our place in Palm Springs. That baby can fly."

The light changed, and he drove through the intersection at a normal, law-abiding speed, for which I was grateful. He drove down a few more blocks, and then turned left, driving alongside the parking lot of the football stadium. About halfway down the block he turned right into a short street that ended in a cul-de-sac. The street was lined with parking lots behind large buildings. The parking lots were mostly empty; the ones on the right completely vacant. "That side," he gestured to the right, "is the back side of sorority row. Delta Gamma on the corner, then Kappa Alpha Theta, and then Alpha Xi Delta. This side"-he gestured to the left"is the backside of the fraternities. Lambda Chi Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, and here. . ." He headed to the very end of the cul-de-sac and drove into the last parking lot to the left. There were several cars in the lot, and at the end a huge pole with a basketball backboard and hoop split the asphalt into two sections. He drove right up to the building and pulled into a spot. He shut the car off and grinned at me. "Welcome to Beta Kappa."

I got out of the car, resisting the urge to kiss the ground, and looked at the building. It was shaped in an L, around a yard with two massive trees. It was painted white with brown trim. A huge hammock was hanging between the massive tree trunks, and the lawn looked a little spotty in places. The lower end of the L was only half the height of the other side, with a wall almost completely of glass from which curtains hung. A huge red metal BK hung beside the door to the glass wall. A sidewalk ran alongside the building to this door, and bushes grew up beside it to shield the windows on that floor. In the two-story part of the building, which I was facing, was another door and a huge window on the second floor directly above. A guy was standing in that window, a cigarette in one hand, a Super Big Gulp in the other, just staring out.

Blair waved at him. "That's Jerry Pollard," he said when the guy inclined his hand in a slight wave back. "He loves to stare out the window all day." He grinned at me. "He's a little odd, but okay for the most part. But when he gets really drunk, he's weepy." He shuddered. "Don't ever get cornered by him-it's almost impossible to get away."

"Um, okay," I replied, looking up at him. He was wearing a baggy sweatshirt and jeans, with a CSUP baseball cap pulled down low on his forehead. "Any particular reason ?"

"Nah. I think he just gets depressed when he drinks."

"No, I mean why he stands in the window all the time."

Blair laughed. "I don't know I've never asked. Maybe I should sometime." He headed for the doorway. "Come on.

I followed him into a hallway with a staircase directly to the right. It was gloomy and hot in the hallway, almost stiflingly so. The whole place smelled like old dirty gym socks. The hallway was painted white, and there was an allweather carpet down on the floor. The doors were all painted brown, with small gold numbers mounted on them over peepholes. At the end of the hallway I could see a green chalkboard and mailboxes mounted on the wall. I took a deep breath. I could feel sweat forming under my arms and along my scalp, and I was considering pulling off my shirt when I was about halfway down the hall. Without warning, two saloon doors to my right suddenly swung open, almost hitting me. I jumped back, lost my balance, and fell back into the opposite wall.

"Dude! Are you okay? Man, I am so sorry."

"Um, yeah." I picked myself up off the floor and looked up at a handsome guy who had to be at least six four. He had bright blue eyes and curly brown hair, and he was grinning down at me.

He was also stark naked.

"Armagh, why don't you watch where you're going?" Blair snapped, walking back to us. "You could have hurt a prospective! Are you all right, Jeff?"

"Dude, I said I'm sorry." He stuck out a huge right hand. "Rory Armagh."

"Um, Jeff Morgan." His hand closed around mine as I tried not to stare at him. His body was absolutely amazing. Broad, thick shoulders, huge chest, arms, flat stomach, a sprinkling of hair down the center of his chest to his-I definitely looked away after a quick glance.

He was HUGE.

"Nice to meet you, man." He clapped a hand on my shoulder.

"Rory's on the water polo team and an alternate to the national team." Blair said from somewhere to my left. "And not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you catch my drift."

"Ah, fuck you, Blair," Rory said good-naturedly. "Seriously, man, you are okay, aren't you?" When I nodded, he winked at me. "Well, if you guys want to spark one later, let me know," Rory said, turning to walk down the hall. "I got some killer shit last night. You're gonna love it," he called back over his shoulder.

I bit my lower lip. Doesn't he know the outside door is open and anyone outside can see him? I wondered. But then again, if I looked like that, I probably wouldn't care either.

"You'll have to forgive Rory and don't judge the house by him," Blair said. "He's the only one who walks around naked. We're going to have to pass a new house rule about it, I think, when the fall semester starts again. Ah, well, I guess it's because he's done porn."

"What?" I couldn't have heard that right. "Did you say-"

"Yeah, he's done some porn. Come on, my room's right over here."

I turned back to stare after Rory's white hard ass as it disappeared into a room we'd already walked past. I shook my head. He certainly had the body for porn, I figured. I'd never really seen any porn, just heard about it. My parents had our Internet service blocked for that. But ... yeah, I'd pay money to see Rory naked.

I turned back as Blair slipped a key into a door and walked inside. I walked down the rest of the hallway and stepped through the door.

The room was about the same size-maybe a little smaller-as my bedroom at my parents', but there was a lot more crammed into it. Up against one wall, there was a dresser and a desk with a laptop computer on it, and an iPod stereo system opposite a single bed directly across. A closet door hung open and I could see it was stuffed to overflowing with clothes. A window unit was humming and it was about thirty degrees cooler in the room than in the hallway. Blair opened a small refrigerator. "You want a beer?"

"Um, no." I'd never had a drink of anything in my life harder than a glass of champagne once at a wedding. A lot of the kids at both Newton and Southern Heights had drank, I just never had. I'd tasted a beer once at a party, but hadn't cared for the taste. I never could understand the other athletes at either school who drank and smoked-my parents always told me that you couldn't be an athlete and do either, and the coaches had always said the same thing.

"Okay." Blair shrugged, removing his sunglasses and putting them on his desk. I started looking at the posters on the walls. They were all movie posters: Action Hero and Vietnam Rescue starring Steve Blanchard on one wall-the ones on the facing wall were Mary Queen of Scots and To the Lighthouse starring Nicole Blair.

And then it clicked in my head.

I looked at one wall. "Blair," I said aloud, and then looked at the other. "Blanchard."

Blair grinned at me as he opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. "Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. You'd be amazed how many people never get it and I have to tell them." He rolled his eyes. "Shut and lock the door." I did. "Yup, Mom and Dad." He laughed. "I'm what they call a `star baby', although they got divorced when I was little. I don't remember them ever being married to each other." He placed a large glass dragon and a baggie full of something on the desktop, and started filling a little silver bowl on the side of the dragon with pieces of something from the baggie. "Sit." He gestured at the bed, so I sat down there, shrugging off my backpack. He got up and placed a towel along the bottom of the door, then walked back and lit the bowl, inhaling deeply as it filled with smoke. He set it back down, sat there for a few seconds before blowing a huge aromatic stream of smoke at the ceiling.

"Your parents are Nicole Blair and Steve Blanchard." I couldn't quite wrap my head around it. "But they're movie stars!"

"Yeah, well, you're not in Kansas anymore, bud." He took another hit. "Movie stars are a dime a dozen out here. And Mom's not really a movie star, although she's won an Oscar, which is more than Dad can say," he said after exhaling another cloud.

"Wow." No one back at home would believe that I had a class with Steve Blanchard's son. My parents would freak, too. NIy parents were huge fans of Steve Blanchard. He was the only movie star whose movies they'd pay to see at the theater. And when they came out on video, they rented them. They were crazy about him. Frankly, I didn't think he could act and his movies all pretty much seemed the same to me, but he was a lot of fun to watch. He had an amazingly sculpted body, a beautiful face, and the deepest blue eyes-and in almost every movie he made at some point he was naked, covered in oil and tortured. Not that they ever showed his dick or anything, but his ass-his ass was almost as big a star as he was.

He offered me the dragon. "Oh, no thanks, I don't." I waved it off.

"Have you ever tried?" He looked at me. "Like I said, bro, you're not in Kansas anymore."

I hesitated. In one side of my head, I could hear my parents' endless lectures. Smokingpot is just the start, once you try it you get hooked and if that drug is okay for you, and doesn't mess you up so had, well, why not try cocaine and crystal meth and heroin or LSD and before you know it you're so badly hooked on something you can't stop, and you're destroying your body and your mind, and you're such a smart boy, Jeff, with such a brilliant future ahead of you. Don't be stupid.

But on the other side, there was another voice, the one I'd heard before but always managed to suppress.

But your parents wouldn't love you, Jeff, if they knew what you were really like-that you liked boys instead of girls, that you dream of other boys, that the thought of kissing another boy is what gets you excited; kissing a girl doesn't do anything for you at all. What would your parents say about that? What would they say if you told them the truth? They'd throw you out, that's what they'd do. You've heard them talk about the "queers, " and have they ever said anything that would make you think otherwise? They think queers are freaks, and you're a queer. You've tried to change that, you've gone out with girls, and it hasn't done you any good. You've gone to church and you've prayed, and it hasn't done you a damned bit of good. So why be good? You're bad, through and through, and they've always told you so. So what? Try it. Once won't kill you.

I looked at Blair.

I looked at the dragon.

I reached for it. "Um, what do I do?"

"Ah, I love corrupting the innocent." He grinned, and sat down next to me on the bed. "Well, you see this little hole? You put your thumb over that, okay?" I did as he told me. "Now put your mouth over the big hole here at the top." I did, smelling the water inside the glass, which was kind of nauseating. "Okay, when I light the lighter and put it against the pot, you start sucking in air, okay?"

I nodded.

He lit the lighter.

I started sucking.

"Now take your thumb off."

I did, and inhaled a huge rush of smoke.

And choked.

I started coughing, hard.

I couldn't stop. It felt like I was NEVER going to stop. I coughed and gagged, then coughed some more. My throat burned, my eyes watered, and Blair handed me my Coke. "Take a drink," he ordered.

I swallowed, and that soothed the burning in my throat enough so the coughing stopped.

"My God." I finally managed to choke the words out before finishing the rest of my Coke. "That's horrible." But even as I said the words, I could feel a weird kind of numbness moving through my mind. I'd never felt anything like it before, and as I looked at Blair, I started to giggle. "Oh, wow." I said, and the words seemed to echo and bounce around inside my head. I looked over at the poster for Mary Queen of Scots, and the red velvet dress and pearls Nicole Blair was wearing seemed-somehow almost alive with vibrancy, it was almost as though she weren't a poster image but actually there, breathing.

"Have another hit, " Blair said from somewhere nearby, and I took the dragon in my hands again and obediently put my thumb and mouth in place.

This time I didn't cough at all, and I could feel my mind completely relaxing, and my entire body seemed to be floating somehow. I looked over at Blair, who was taking another hit.

He's beautiful, I told myself, look at those eyes.

Now that I knew who he was, I could see he had his father's eyes, his mother's bone structure and skin. I wanted to touch him, to kiss him.

He's even more beautiful than Kevin.

He put the dragon down, and he reached over and put his fingers on my face. "How you doing there, Jeffy?"

I smiled. "I'm good, it's all good." I giggled again. "Wow This feels amazing."

Blair leaned in and kissed me.

My entire body responded. It was like an electric current was going through me, my entire body felt sensitized and my cock immediately got hard. His lips weren't like I'd imagined Kevin's to be. They were soft but firm, and he tasted slightly of smoke and Coke. As he kissed me, he slid across the surface of the bed until his leg was touching mine, and his arms went around me. I put mine around him and pulled him closer to me. It was everything I'd ever dreamed of, only better. He pushed against me a little bit, and I leaned back until I was on my back, and he rolled over on top of me. I put my arms around him, feeling the muscles in his back and he started grinding his crotch on top of mine.

He stopped kissing me and raised himself up on his elbows and looked into my eyes. "You doing okay there, Jeffy?"

I smiled at him. My head was still full of fog, but I knew I wanted him to keep going, I didn't want him to stop. "Uhhuh."

"Maybe we'd better stop." He got to his feet and smiled down at me. I could see the bulge in the front of his shorts.

"Why?" I sat up. "I don't want to stop."

"Have you ever done anything like this before?"

"Yes," I lied.

"With who?"

"Kevin, my best friend in Kansas."

He sat down in his desk chair and started reloading the bowl. He gave me a bemused look. "Really? And what did you and Kevin do with each other?"

"We, um, we sucked each other off."

He took a hit and put the dragon back down. He blew the smoke out. "And how did Kevin taste? Did he come in your mouth?"

"He-" I hesitated.

"Don't lie to me, Jeffy. You're really bad at it." He gave me a smile as he lit another cigarette. "Look, you're cute as hell and that body"-he pursed his lips and whistled-"but the last thing I want is to take advantage of you when you're stoned." He flicked ash on the floor. "When they're fucked up, Jeffy, straight boys will do pretty much anything with anyone to get their rocks off. Afterward, they either pretend it never happened, or they hate the guy it happened with." He laughed bitterly. "Trust me on that, okay? And I do like you, Jeffy, and I want us to be friends. But I don't want you to wake up tomorrow thinking `Man, that asshole Blair, he got me stoned and took advantage of me', or pretend you don't know me in class tomorrow."

"I wouldn't do that."

"Okay, sure you wouldn't." He shrugged. "We'll see."

"Dude-"

"Yeah." He stood up and stretched. "I'm hungry. You wanna order a pizza or something?"

"Sure," I said, my hard-on starting to go down. I smiled at him.

One day, Blair, one day .. .

Chapter 3

– -hat happened between us that first afternoon didn't happen again, no matter how much I wanted it to.

I was afraid to bring it up, and Blair never did.

It was like it never happened in the first place; a figment of my imagination created by a pot-impaired brain. But in my heart I knew it had happened. I could still taste his lips, feel his arms around me, the feel of our crotches working against each other. He replaced Kevin in my fantasies until I couldn't even remember what Kevin looked like. One night, I tried to summon up Kevin's image, and wound up having to get my yearbook to get an idea. As I looked down at Kevin's senior picture, I shook my head. Why were you so obsessed with him? He's nowhere near as cute as Blair-and Blair's a lot more fun to hang out with.

We started spending a lot of time together. Every morning, he'd pick me up for class and we'd smoke a joint on the way to the campus. That made Macro Economics a lot more interesting, even though I spent most of my time daydreaming about Blair. Whenever I could, I would watch him and try to commit details to memory, so I could call them up later in my bed. I loved the way his shoulders tapered down to his waist. I loved how his torso was almost completely hairless-except for the wiry black hairs that led from his navel down to his waistband. I loved how he only wore Versace underwear, and only black. And my parents loved him-the allure of being the son of their favorite movie star was too much for them. As long as I was with Blair, I could stay out as late as I wanted, and Mom never mentioned me getting a job again. It wasn't like I needed money anyway-Blair always had money, and Blair always wanted to pay my way. It didn't matter if it was a movie, or popcorn for the movie, or the Carl's Jr. drive-through, or pizza-Blair always paid. I kept the same twenty in my wallet day after day, just in case I should ever need it.

But I never did. Blair would get mad if I even reached for my wallet, so eventually I stopped trying. "What's the point of having a rich father," he'd say, "if you can't treat people to something every once in a while?"

And spending a lot of time with him meant spending a lot of time at the Beta Kappa house. Blair didn't really like to go to movies, and we weren't old enough to go to bars anyway. "Besides, the only people we'd meet there are locals," he would say, forgetting that I was one, "and spend a lot of money on watered-down drinks. We can drink here a lot cheaper-and better." And, as he wisely pointed out, we couldn't exactly get stoned and drink beer at my house with my mother around. And so, I somehow moved from prospective pledge to guaranteed pledge-even though they couldn't officially offer me a bid until the fall semester started. It just seemed kind of natural that I'd join Beta Kappa. It was a lot of fun hanging around the house-even though I didn't get to see Rory Armagh coming out of the showers naked again. Every so often, for a change of pace, when I lay in my bed at night pulling on my dick, I tried to remember every detail of Rory's naked body. But even as I got closer and closer to shooting my load, Blair would push Rory out of my mind. And I loved watching Blair whenever we were together, and unlike with Kevin, I didn't care if he noticed. I wanted him to notice. I wanted him to know that whenever he decided it was okay, I was ready to be kissed again. I was ready to make love to him, hold him, suck his dickeven let him fuck me, if he wanted to. My entire world revolved around him, and while I did like the other brothers who were staying at Beta Kappa over the summer-mostly smoking pot and drinking every day-I just wanted to be with Blair.

I got aroused whenever he stretched, memorizing what his flat stomach looked like so I could remember later, or when he bent over to pick something up, as his shorts rode down and his shirt went up, giving me a tantalizing glimpse of his tan line and the crack of his beautiful ass.

I wanted him more than I'd ever dreamed of wanting Kevin.

The other brothers I met were pretty cool. I spent some time hanging out with Jerry Pollard, and found out that the reason he spent so much time looking out the upstairs window at the parking lots was it helped him to focus his creative energies. He wanted to be a writer-as did I-and he was very helpful by giving me the rundown on what classes to take and what classes to avoid in the English department. He was writing a fantasy novel, but no matter how many questions I asked he wouldn't tell me anything about it. "What are you writing?" he asked me finally to get the subject off his own book.

I took a hit out of his bong. It wasn't as smooth as Blair's dragon, but I thought it was cool that it was shaped like Gandalf from Lord of the Rings. Jerry's whole room was done in Tolkien. "Oh, I'm not ready to write anything yet," I replied, passing him the bong back and taking a swig out of my Bud Light. I was developing quite a taste for beer during my time spent at the Beta Kappa house. "I still have a lot to learn, I think."

He frowned at me. "That's just dumb, Jeff, and you're not a dumb guy. Young maybe, immature certainly, but not dumb." He took a hit.

"What do you mean?" I asked. Fortunately, I was pleasantly stoned, otherwise I would have probably gotten pissed at being called young and immature.

"Writers write," he said, waving Gandalf in front of my nose. "Even if it's crap. You should spend at least an hour or two each day writing-even if it's just a journal or a diary, or whatever. Even if it's just venting about something stupid that happened to you that day. It can be great therapy, you know. Writing is like anything else, Jeffy-the more you do it, the better you get at it. Practice, practice, practice."

Later, in Blair's room and on my fifth beer, I mentioned what Jerry had said, and Blair frowned at me. "You never told me you wanted to be a writer."

"You never asked." I reached for the dragon and the lighter.

"You should tell your best friend these things, you know. You want to write fiction or screenplays?" He handed me the bag of weed. "I think that's empty."

"Fiction. I want to write books." I loaded the bowl and took a hit. "I want to be a bestselling author whose books are turned into movies, whose books inspire people to be better people, and be rich and famous and well-respected, asked to speak at colleges . . ." I grinned, "That kind of thing." I shrugged. "I know, it seems silly, but that's what I dream of."

"Why do you think it's silly?" Blair demanded, standing up and walking over to the refrigerator. "You should have dreams-otherwise how are you going to know what you want?"

I dream about you all the time, I wanted to say, but instead I said, "My parents-" I hesitated. "My parents tell me I should get a degree in something useful, so I'll have something to fall back on if I don't make it as a writer." I probably wouldn't have admitted that if I hadn't been stoned. It hurt when my parents told me to major in business rather than creative writing. Don't you believe in me? I'd wanted to scream at them, but they were just being practical, and it was from love.

Or so I told myself every day.

"Parents. Blech." Blair knelt down in front of the refrigerator. "Well, then Jerry's right, you should be writing every day." Blair opened the refrigerator and got us both another beer. "You shouldn't be wasting all your time-not of course that time spent with me is time wasted."

"Lighten up, dude." I giggled. "What do you want to be when you grow up? You've never told me either."

"I want to be an actor." He glanced at his father's posters. "Not like him, but like her." He walked over to his mother's images and stared up at them. "She's an actress, a true talent, not like Dad, who's just kind of good looking in a generic kind of way. Oh, don't get me wrong, he has charisma or whatever you want to call it-the kind of thing stars havebut Mom, she's got real talent." He looked back at me. "She can play anything, you know? She is amazing. She's not the prettiest actress out there, she's not the most charismatic, but there's just something about her ... when she's on camera, you can't look away from her."

"I've never seen one of her movies," I admitted.

"Well, one of these days we'll have to have a Nicole Blair film festival." He replied with a grin. "Would you like that? We could watch To the Lighthouse-that's my favorite, even though she won the Oscar for Mary Queen of Scots, which is also a good one, but I think the romance she did with Burt Reynolds-that's her best performance, probably. I mean, she was convincing-and it can't be easy to convince people you're in love with him. "

"Sure." I couldn't ever say no to Blair about anything. I wanted him to smile at me. I kept thinking, If I could just please him, if I could just make him happy, maybe he would kiss me again. There were times when I thought I should make the first move-maybe he was just waiting for me? At night, in my bed, after I had wiped my come off myself with a Kleenex and lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering if the day would ever come when he would want me again, I would decide to be more assertive-to grow some balls, to know what I wanted and go for it. But in the light of day, when I was face to face with him, I just couldn't bring myself to do it, to say anything. There was no amount of beer or pot I could have inside of me that would make a difference, that could give me the courage to say, Blair, I want you, I want to kiss you and hold you, and run my tongue down your happy trail, and put your dick in my mouth.

And so, he would drive me home and drop me off, give me a friendly wave at the foot of the driveway, and then drive off. I would stand there in the yellow light from the street lamp, watching his tail lights disappear down the street before I would go into the house and go to bed and miss him.

You just need some experience.

But where would I get it from ? And with whom?

"I won't be in class tomorrow, so I won't be picking you up," Blair said one Wednesday night as he dropped me off. "Just come by the house after class, and we can hang out then."

"Why aren't you coming to class?" I asked. Blair was very serious about attendance. I was always ready and willing to skip class every day to spend it with him. But Blair always insisted: "You can pull a C just by showing up every day."

"Because I have a doctor's appointment-nothing serious," he added hastily when he saw the look on my face. "Just a check-up, that's all, I've been putting it off for a long time and Mom goes nuts on me about shit like that, so I'm going in tomorrow." He scowled. "I keep telling her I'll do it when I go back to LA in a couple of weeks, but-"

"You're going back to LA?" My heart sank to my feet. It was the first I'd heard of these plans.

"Well, yeah. Summer session's over, so I'm going to go stay with my dad for a few weeks." He gave me a funny look. "It's not the end of the world, you know You can still come by the house every day-everyone likes you, you're a shoo-in to get a bid during rush-and it's only for a few weeks until school starts again."

"So you'll be gone during my birthday?" I felt incredibly betrayed, and struggled to keep a handle on my emotions.