Kid in a Locker (REWRITING)

28. We Are Your Friends

Four months later

"Guys, come on! I'm about to call him!" I shout.

Sounds of rustling are heard across the hall as Peter and Romul rush around their rooms. Bangs and curses are followed by the sound of pounding feet as they run across the hall.

My bedroom door bangs with an extreme force, banging against the wall under the weight of their bodies. They come stumbling over to my bed and sit down on either side of me just as I grab my laptop from off the mattress and sit it on my lap.

One again, we're in a different country. Boxes surround my cot; the little cot that i had surprisingly missed while sleeping on that lush bed in Italy. My clothes are thrown everywhere, and in the corner on a hanger is the uniform for my new public school that I'll be attending.

Romul better be thankful that he graduated yesterday. Peter and I were already tired of the school dress code, and we haven't even been inside a single class yet.

"Let's do this." Romul pats on his legs with excitement, wanting to really see his friend.

"Okay, okay. Hold on." I click into the Skype app and then over to Nick's contact. He's online, most likely waiting for me to call him.

The phone rings two dull times before he picks up. At first we see only a pitch black screen and then his lamp cuts on, illuminating his room. Outside his house it's in the dark early morning hours, while here it is merely lunch time. He sits in pajamas while we sit in our own, but for completely different reasons.

"Hey!" He greets. "There's my girl."

"And me." Romul says, waving a hand so that Nick will notice him.

"And me!" Peter leans over in my lap and gets close to the camera.

Nick laughs. "Right right. Hello, Romul. Hello, Peter."

"How are you, Mr. Graduate?" I laugh. For some reason my brothers and my boyfriend have grown closer since we were last there, which was Valentine's Day. I didn't know when or how, but suddenly they were asking me about when I would be FaceTiming Nick, and asking if they could join.

"Worse off than y'all. Where are you this time, again?" He sighs.

I don't take offense to his forgetfulness. It was his last week as a senior at Baker Street. He had better things to worry about than what new country I would be living in for a while.

"Korea."

"Korea, right. Sorry."

I shake my head. "It's all good."

"Do you have any thing planned? Senior week? Road trip?" Romul asks, curious. He had been wanting to do something for his graduation for as long as I could remember.

When I had first heard of his plans, we were in Russia. We had been staying there for six months, and six months anywhere made us feel like we would stay there forever. It was enough that Romul actually thought he would have the same friends when he was to graduate. Sadly, it wasn't meant to be. And now, since we are in a brand new country yet once again, he couldn't do something like that even if he wanted to. We knew absolutely no one around here, besides Sergeant Donovan and his two freakzoid kids.

"I don't have any friends to hang out with, so no."

I wanted to be over there with him, to sit in the crowd and cheer him on as he walks across the stage. I couldn't, however I was able to fly back in for the party he was having in two weeks.

"We are your friends."

Peter and I look over to Romul, dumbfounded. He's never had friends, or at least none that he willingly admitted to having. Romul having a friend was about as alien as him playing any type of high school sport: you just never saw it happen, no matter how hard people tried.

"What happened to no attachments?" I ask. The mantra he always says everywhere we go. No attachments, no attachments. Attachments only lead to unnecessary pain. And then my reply. Why do you care?

Why did he care? Why did he suddenly want to have a friend? All of these questions I never thought I would be asking myself in the seventeen years I've known him. Romul didn't get attached, never wanted to.

"It was kind of lonely, don't you think?" He smiles crookedly over to me.

"Sure seems like it." Nick says through the screen. I glance back down at him to see him with a knowing look. He knew what Romul was like. Everything was a risk. It seemed like a friendship with Nick was a risk he was worth taking.

"So, y'all are coming for my graduation party though, right?"

I look at the screen in front of me. Nick is shoved in the lower right hand corner in a box, oblivious to the air line website opened up on the rest of my screen. I scroll through the seating options on the plane heading from Korea to Wisconsin to two weeks time.

"Wouldn't miss it for the world." I smile to him. "I'm booking the tickets now."