Standing for Weirdo

Chapter 25

While I wondered where he was or what he might be up to, I managed to get through the rest of the afternoon in a somewhat productive manner—trig homework finished, history chapter answers semi-coherently jotted down, that sort of thing. Then, right before dinner, my cell rang.

Trevor's number. Finally!

Jumping out of my chair, I closed the door to my room and plopped down on the bed.

“Hey,” I said, grinning.

“Alice?” The voice wasn’t Trevor's, and cold dread coiled in my stomach.

“Mr. Bennett?” I asked, fighting to keep my voice from shaking.

“Yes, it’s me. I’m, um, sorry about calling you this late. I didn’t want to inconvenience you, but, to be honest, you’re the only friend of Trevor's can think of, and your number was among the recent calls, so…”

“Is Trevor okay?” The rambling wasn’t helping. Not at all. I needed to know everything was okay, then we could move on to the reason why he’d given me the scare of my life.

“He’s here, at home.” The unspoken “but” hung heavy between us. “I really hate to ask you this, but, ah, do you think you could drop by?”

I was out the bed and down the stairs before Mr. Bennett had finished his question.

“On the way. Give me ten minutes, tops.”

I hung up, not waiting for an answer, called out a warning to my parents—“boy emergency, I’ll dine out,” which wasn’t exactly a lie—and shoved my feet into my trainers.

Beating my own records, I was ringing Trevor's in just under eight minutes, completely out of breath and unconscious of the fact that I was wearing my old, shaggy gym pants, that my hair must look like a nest of pencils and other assorted memorabilia, and that my running shoes treaded mud all over the vestibule when Mr. Bennett opened the door.

He was both surprised and relieved to see me. “I’m so glad you could come,” he said. “I didn’t want to scare you, but…” He fidgeted and motioned toward Trevor's closed door. “I can’t get him to stop. I can’t even get him to talk to me. I probably shouldn’t have called you anyway, but you did get his attention the other day, with the cake, so I thought…”

The poor man was beyond himself. Thick worry lines etched into his face, and his distress, oddly enough, helped me to control my own.

“It’s okay, Mr. Bennett. I’m glad you chose to call me. How long has he been playing?”

“Hours, for all I know. He got up early to cram some practice in, then I had to leave for work… When I returned, I found him like that. I don’t even know if he’s stopped at all.”

I shook myself, trying to recover from the surprise.

“I’ll just…” I gestured toward his room.

“Please.”

I walked the short distance to the door, bypassing Sparrow’s eerily glowing eyes in the corridor, and let myself in with a shiver, not even knocking.

I closed the door behind me, trying to close out Mr. Bennett, trying to spare him the shock in my face.

“What the hell?” I whispered, when I could get enough breath past the lump in my throat.