One for the Team

23 | before

I'm trying to finish my algebra homework in a last-minute effort and Roman doesn't shut up about whatever the fuck he's doing tonight. I know I shouldn't be listening to him in the first place. I should be finishing my homework, but the guy just doesn't shut up. No one does.

Milo says he's ordering pizza and smoking the weed he got with the money his dad sent him the other day. I wonder why the man doesn't just send himself and starts raising his son instead.

"Sounds exactly like what a sad fuck would do," Roman says, because apparently, he's planning on having a girl over. Milo asks if he's doing that before or after he's done masturbating over video game characters.

Ace tells them to shut up. He's standing next to me, looking down at what I'm doing. I'm still waiting for him to say something about it, but he doesn't.

He showed up at my house at five in the morning and crashed in the living room couch for the rest of the night. He asked if he could stay for longer this time. Said he could just sleep on the couch. Said he doesn't need a bed.

I asked if he was okay, and he said yes. Yes, he is. I asked how he got the black eye, and he smiled and said the same old thing. Brought up the same old door. I said he could stay. Of course, he could stay.

"That's wrong," he says next to me, pointing at what I've just written on my textbook. I suspect everything's wrong, if I am to be honest, but I'm afraid I don't know any other ways of doing it, except this one, the wrong one.

Ace looks at my hand, unmoving, and then takes the pencil away from me and does it himself.

I say, "Thanks."

He says, "Shut up."

The bell rings.

"Fuck." I shove my things back in my locker and throw the rest in my bag. The guys are staring at the girls at the end of the hallway. I'm looking too. Ruth is closing her locker in a denim skirt and a pretty top. She's talking to Hannah and Brie and Diana. Levi's not there. I look away.

"I thought you were done with that," Ace tells me. He's looking at Ruth. I pull the hood off his head when we walk into classroom and say hi to Mrs. Edwards.

"We're still friends," I tell Ace. It's true that I haven't been with Ruth in a while, not like that, at least. I think even if I had the time, I wouldn't choose to spend it with her, again, not like that.

"It's a waste of your time," Ace says, sitting down on the seat next to me.

I ignore him. I ignore most of what happens next too. I want to pass out. Maybe I'm going to. I don't know. I know this morning I almost lost a finger to the rusty pocket snips Miss Hawthorne had in a shed in her back yard. I know Levi answered my text with what does that mean, and that I didn't know what to answer, so I didn't.

When he walks into the classroom, I can't help but stare. He's wearing the same colorful sweater he was wearing when we kissed, and he's looking down at his phone and I wonder if it's because he's still waiting for my reply. Probably not.

He doesn't look at me. He knows I'm here. He knows we have this class together because sometimes he texts me during it with commentaries on Mrs. Edwards problematic takes on the social issues she likes to discuss while we solve equations. Still, he walks up to his seat without ever looking my way. Instead, he sits down, and class starts, and I don't pay attention to any of it.

I try really hard not to fall asleep. Not to look over Levi's desk. He's not paying attention either. I can see him drawing on the margins of his books from my seat. So can Milo.

"I bet he's drawing dicks," he says. I look over at his textbook. The pages are covered in mediocre drawings of male genitalia.

"I'm fucking funny, Finn, shut up," he says, going back to building a tower out of all the things he has in his pencil case, which is funny because all Milo has is a pencil he once broke in half in the middle of a class and a badly rolled joint. I'm not surprised, not by that, and not by the fact that he's moved on to stealing Brie's pencil case, fat with the multi-colored stationery she uses to make a pride parade out of her notes.