My roommate's name was Hunter and he said he once knew a Jared. The Jared he knew was a school shooter. Hunter was from the US. In the beginning I thought he was quite an unpleasant guy to share a room with. He scattered all his belongings all over the place and almost beat me up over the bed situation. He wanted my bed. I would’ve let him beat me up because that makes another guy like you. You know, when he feels superior to you, when you're not a threat anymore, it makes him like you. Primal instincts. But I wasn’t in the mood to be beaten up so I just said it’s gay to fight over the better bed.
He contemplated that for a minute. Then he grunted and took a step back, and moved his stuff to the other bed. I’m good at this, guys. I always know the ones that won't do something when they think it's gay. I asked him if he wanted a drink with me when I took the bottle out of my suitcase. I didn’t really feel like drinking with him but I was being polite. You gotta be polite with guys you’re gonna room with for a year. I wanted peace.
His eyes widened. “Holy shit, put that away. Someone will catch you.” That was the first time his voice didn’t sound condescending and mean. He sounded genuinely scared.
I almost laughed. “What are you scared of? Let them catch me. They won’t kick me out.”
“You don’t know that”, he said.
“Well, do you?” He was new at this school, too. I took a swig and felt the familiar warmth spreading in my throat.
“Is that wine?” He hadn’t budged from where he was standing.
I almost felt like I was dominating the room. “Sure. Not a good one, though”, I said, trying to impress him, I guess. I knew it wasn’t "a good one" because it was cheap. It tasted all the same to me.
“That’s gay, dude.”
“It’s not gay to drink wine if you’re a real man. Like in the old movies.” Hell, I could see him getting curious.
“Yes it is. You even look gay with your weird-ass hair and your pretty-boy face.”
“You think my face is pretty? Now, that’s a gay thing to say.” I took another big gulp. I hadn’t had anything to eat yet, dinner was scheduled ridiculously late. So I don’t know if the wine was already kicking in to make me this confident. Or if I just didn’t give a shit on anything that day. Like I usually do. The latter was more likely.
Hunter sat down on his bed. “Just do whatever. But I’m not drinking on my first night”, he said.
Then he took out a book and started reading. Naturally, I was curious as hell because he seemed like the kind of guy who’d say it’s gay to read. But I kept my mouth shut. It was nice like this. Peaceful. The only sounds were him turning the pages and me drinking from time to time. And the shuffling of cloth when we shifted positions. I looked out of the window until the streetlamps went on. It had been dark for quite a long time before they went on. At my last school, the streetlamps would go on before the sun even set.
I did ask him, at last. “What’re you reading?”
“Nunya business.”
“Aw, come on. At least show me the cover.” I knew there wasn’t much to see on the cover, it was simple with the title written on it. I couldn’t make out the title from here.
He sighed. “Stop annoying me.”
“I’m not annoying you, I’m asking you a question”, I said. The bottle was almost empty. I swirled the rest around. It sloshed up higher than I'd thought. “Do you want this on your book?”
I imagined lunging forward and staining his bed. It was red wine and his sheets were white. I’m not an asshole like that, usually.
He looked up and frowned. “You wouldn’t.”
Then I did lunge forward but I made sure the bottle stayed upright in my hand. It was enough to make him react, though. He tried taking it out of my hand, but I’m quick. I’m even quicker when I’m sober but hell, I was still quick. I yanked my hand back and the one sip that was left in there moved dangerously close to the neck of the bottle. I put it down on the floor next to his bed.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”, Hunter shouted and tried shoving me away but he didn’t hit me properly because I was half kneeling on his bed now and the weight-shifting thing was going on.
I tried to snatch the book out of his hand and he kept a tight grip on it but I didn’t give up. Slowly, I managed to pry his fingers from the thing and when I had it in my hands, I read the title aloud: “Romeo and Juliet. By Shakespeare.” He glared at me.
“Is this for school?”, I asked him, knowing it wasn’t. School hadn’t even started yet and he didn’t strike me as the nerd who reads all sorts of books in advance. Also, the book looked worn and like it had been read many times. A book of a nerd in disguise.
He shook his head. “Now give it back!”
But I evaded his hand and opened it at a random page.
“How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath224Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlEExyusxtV
To say to me that thou art out of breath?224Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNDH2to7Thx
The excuse that thou dost make in this delay224Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡb7FjLJDuj2
Is longer than the tale thou dost excuse.224Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡXuUkbafW3w
Is thy news good, or bad? answer to that;224Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1eUMls7u8k
Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance:224Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0TnjW35y0z
Let me be satisfied, is't good or bad?” I started to read, with a pretentious, pompous voice. I’m good at reading things like that. But Hunter yanked the book from my hands again, shutting it.
“Hey, I was reading this!”
"Dickhead."
I pouted. “She’s got a point though, whoever she wants to tell her whatever should just say it.” I was proud of myself, you know. Because I had understood it even though I was reading aloud. That's hella difficult, if you ask me. I shouldn't have read it aloud, because there were notes scribbled next to the text, with pencils, and ballpoint pen, and I'd have liked reading them too. His reactions, maybe. Or maybe references to other books. Or his shopping list. Perhaps it was more interesting this way, not knowing. As long as I didn't read the notes, they could be anything.
He said nothing.
He was trying very hard to hate the situation, I could tell, but my silly mood was contagious. Or I was just being ridiculous enough to make him laugh because a minute later we were both laughing. “Romeo and Juliet”, I gasped, “A true romantic, aren’t you?”
“It’s not about that, keep your peasant hands off this... valuable record of a genius mind!”
“So you admit to having a crush on Shakespeare?”, I shrieked and he hit me with it. It was a paperback but it still hurt pretty bad.
We were play fighting over the book, careful enough not to damage it. I realised he was a fun guy really, one that lets you fool around and play fight over something important to him. I hate those people who protect their books like they’re holy or some shit.
He calmed down first. “Now get your drunk ass off my bed. This isn’t funny.” He almost meant it. It was crazy how fast he could go from exhilarated to annoyed.
“I’m not drunk.” I stood up and swayed a little, proving my words wrong at least partly. I wasn’t drunk. Just tipsy. Enough to think life was fun, anyway. I picked up the bottle and asked him again if he wanted the rest.
“Wine is still gay”, he said again but didn’t sound too convinced.
So I sat on the floor and looked at him intensely. “You’re homophobic.”
He didn’t say anything.
“You’re homophobic because you’re scared you might be gay and so you avoid all things that could mean you’re gay at all costs.” I sounded like a psychoanalyst, although my speech was starting to get slurred. I thought I was Sigmund Freud.
“That’s not true.”
“Prove it.” I handed him the bottle.
He peered into it. Then he knocked back what was left in one big gulp. He made a face and almost shivered. “That shit’s disgusting. Happy now?”
I was.
“You’re crazy”, he said and threw the bottle so that I could catch it. I didn’t catch it. I’m terribly bad at catching things. Especially when I’ve drunk some. So it landed next to me and fell over, thankfully without breaking. A single drop landed on the floor. The floor was wooden, so it soaked in fast and didn’t look too suspicious.
Hunter was laughing at me while I put the empty bottle away and contemplated taking out another one. Not wine, this time. I think it was Vodka I had. I’m not sure though, it could have been rum. Whatever it was, I didn’t take it out.
We went to dinner then. I could tell you about the rather bland food we had or the speech the headmaster gave but I’d be bored just writing it down. It was all about making well-adjusted, successful and happy people out of us. I don’t think that’s even possible. You’re either born successful and happy or you’re not. That’s not something you’re taught at a school.
All the adults were awfully stuck-up and conceited when they gave their little self-absorbed speeches, and all the students were awfully bored. The girls were all talking to each other and the boys were playing with their food. I was sitting with some guys I didn’t know. Heaven knows where Hunter was.
The guys I was sitting with knew each other because they’d gone to this school for years, so they were having a conversation about the teachers I didn’t know and I listened casually, zoning in and out, looking around.
Then I spotted Glass. She was sitting at the far end of the dining hall, at a table with a bunch of girls that were engaged in conversation, laughing every couple minutes. Glass wasn’t joining in the conversation, she just looked around a lot and poked in her food with her fork. It was rice, if I recall correctly. Rice with some sloppy unseasoned meat. I looked at her the entire time then. The lights at the ceiling reflected in her hair, making her glow. Her eye colour wasn’t discernible from the distance and I wasn't sure if I remembered it correctly. I had a vague shade of blue-ish grey in mind, close to the right one. I mean I know the right one, now, that I've looked at her a million times. So that night she was rolling her wrist around and inspecting her nails. Maybe she was wearing nail polish. She would wear this clear polish a lot that made her nails look more shiny. As if she needed to.
When we were back in our dorms, there wasn’t really anything left to do but to sit around and kill time. It was well past midnight and we weren’t even allowed to leave our rooms. So I unpacked my suitcases and watched Hunter throw his clothes into the drawers while I looked for a place to hide the alcohol and cigarettes. I just left them in my empty suitcase for now. I couldn’t get Glass out of my head. The name suited her, after all. I would've pitied other kids with that name, and I despise parents that name their kids after objects. But it suited her.
Her face was so vivid in front of my inner eye I decided to draw her, despite the fact that I was getting rather tired. I was sitting on my bed and Hunter watched me from his chair. He pretended to read but he was watching me. Then he asked me what I was doing. I showed him. I had captured her expression well, her cool eyes and slightly raised eyebrows. She almost looked arrogant, but not quite. She kinda looked sad, I only noticed that when I looked at my drawing. The shape of her eyebrows made her look sad, if that makes any sense. She radiated everything, sex appeal and intensity. But it looked like she was sad behind that. Hunter wouldn’t have understood me if I had told him. Or maybe he would. He understood Shakespeare.
“Hot”, he said. “10/10, would totally bang. Someone you know?”
“Someone from here”, I said. Something about the way he rated her bothered me more than it would if it was just some random girl. Then again, she was just some random girl, maybe exceptionally hot.
He nodded slowly. “You want her?”
I don’t know what he meant. I want her, what? Want to fuck her? Want her to be my girlfriend?
I just asked, “Do you?”
He shrugged. “Looks crazy, if you ask me. Hot bitches are always crazy.”
“You don’t know if she’s good crazy or bad crazy.” I was getting terribly tired. Wine does that, when you sober up.
“Well, I won’t stop you. She’s probably too hot to let that stop you anyways. Maybe she's worth a shot.” He furrowed his brows.
I shrugged and changed into my pyjamas.
I had kinda waited all the time for some fat preppy prefect or housemaster to come in screaming we should sleep. There had been one at my last school. He had been hella annoying. But they didn't enforce any of the rules they had read to us, on the first day. I thought maybe they were generally more relaxed here, almost felt hopeful. Well, they just ended up enforcing the rules from the second day on. But I didn't know that yet.
Hunter was still sat on the chair when I laid down to sleep, risking to be woken up by a screaming prefect. “So you’re not gay”, he said, still looking at the picture of Glass which he had put on my desk. It was the only thing on my desk.
“You thought I was?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. You drink wine. And you squeal like a girl when you’re hit.”
“Stereotypes.” I rolled my back to him. “Can you at least dim the light?”
He said it wasn’t possible and then we argued a little about if he should turn it off or not until he did.
“Are you really not gay though? Not even a little?” He wouldn’t give me a break about that.
I pretended I was asleep. And thought of Glass. No, I wasn’t gay. Most definitely. Not even a little. Because I had never been as attracted to anyone as I was to that girl.
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