The first skill an only child learns is to be alone and completely satisfied. Norris had fourteen years of experience under his belt; having someone else to talk to was nice, sure, but it had never been a necessity. So he spent his free period and his lunch hours walking around. The earbuds were mostly for show, to externalize his desire not to engage. Besides, he really did like walking for walking’s sake. Back in Montreal, he used to leave his hockey equipment at the rink overnight and walk home instead of trekking it back and forth on the bus. Aging into an old man with a collection of pimped out canes did not frighten him one bit.
He was wandering the halls between classes and had glanced into an empty classroom when he turned around and came face-to-face with a very long torso that turned into a mess of curly brown hair at the top, staring down at him with uncomfortable intensity.
“Jesus Christ!” Norris yelped. (Actually, not yelped: screamed. It was a Viking-like scream of virility, not a yelp.)
“Are you a ghost?!” Norris yelled, his heart beating out of his chest.
“No,” the guy under said hair answered after a moment, as if he’d actually taken the time to consider the question.
“Liam,” the strange boy continued. He had light brown eyes, sharp features, and the gum over his left top front tooth went down a bit, giving him the mouth equivalent of a lazy eye. “Liam Hooper.”
“Sup.” Norris nodded through a throat clear.
The boy showed no sign of moving out of Norris’s personal space. He really was quite tall, which probably explained his slouch. At the moment, he ranked somewhere between a close talker and good old-fashioned creep.
“You’re the super-rude Canadian, right?” he asked with a deeper voice than expected.
Was that how the Madisons were marketing him to the public at large?
“All right then,” Norris said, sidestepping this strange human pole. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m going to have to ask you to screw off, Liam, Liam Hooper.”
“Yup, it’s definitely you,” Liam said, sounding satisfied—the first thing close to an emotion he came to displaying.
“Me what!” Norris snapped, pocketing his noiseless headphones because this was clearly going to be a whole thing.
“Sorry, I wanted to be sure,” Liam said. “I’m game. Let’s do it.”
“Dude, what are you talking about?”
“Well, I’m a beginner,” Liam said, shifting his weight from one leg to the other. “A nonbeginner, really. Haven’t begun yet, y’know.”
Why was he fidgeting?
“I don’t really know how to do it exactly, but I’ve seen plenty of videos online,” Liam continued. “It doesn’t specify beginners or, like, advanced, and I figure it can’t be that hard, right?”
“Um . . .” Norris mustered. “I’m eighty percent sure you’re talking about porn.”
“Ice skating,” Liam finally volunteered. “I’ve always wanted to learn. It just seems cool and—”
“Liam, Liam Hooper,” Norris interrupted as a ghastly picture was starting to form in his head. “What are you talking about?”
“The ad,” Liam said.
The boy reached into his messenger bag and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper that he proceeded to flatten by pressing it against his flat torso before extending it to Norris. A glance was all it took for Norris’s mind to collapse into itself.
“At first, I thought it might have been some old dude looking to fondle, but then I heard there was a new black Canadian kid here, and it’s blurry, but the guy in the photo is black, so, y’know . . . Connected dots and all.”
Credit where it was due, Norris did not scream.
Nor did he instantly burst into a long, protracted scream, strip naked, and walk out of the school, all screams and nudity and heading straight into traffic, which was a very close second choice.
WANTED: HOCKEY ENTHUSIASTS & OTHER FRIENDS
Nice, charismatic young man, new to the area, seeks new friends who share his interest in all things hockey. Has lived all over the world!
Most offensively, the flyer was written in Comic Sans. At the bottom of the glossily xeroxed sheet was an email address that Norris knew to be Judith’s spam account.
“That’s you, right?” Liam asked calmly, which was how Norris suspected this boy did most things.
The picture under the text was definitely Norris. He didn’t have enough photos of himself floating around cyberspace like most teens to lose track of one, let alone that one.
The red Canadiens hockey jersey. The dented black helmet. There was probably some irony in seeing one of his proudest moments on the rink coming back to gnaw him right on the penis—and in Texas of all places. If one of the jocks from chemistry saw this . . . or, worse: Aarti.
“Where did you get this?” Norris whispered, instantly crumpling the sheet into a ball.
“You’re a very intense person,” Liam noted, watching Norris’s hands.
“And tall men are at a higher risk for prostate disease!” Norris snapped back, continuing to crumple the ball of paper until his palms were red. That sucker would never be crumpled enough. “Where did you get this?”
“It was by the turtle pond.”
“Dude! I don’t have time for pothead poetry here,” Norris said. “Where?”
“I don’t smoke weed,” Liam said solemnly, sounding almost offended. “And I’m serious. It was on this billboard on the UT campus. They have a sweet turtle pond in their quad I like to check out sometimes.” After a beat, he added, “My dad works there.”
Norris shoved the now warm and perfectly spherical ball into his pocket and walked away. He made it halfway down the hall before giving in to the urge to look over his shoulder. Liam was still standing there, eyeing him perplexedly from fifteen feet away.
“Do I follow you or was this you walking away from the conversation?” he asked. “I’m not familiar with your walking tempo yet.”
What the hell?
“S—stay! Go! Whatever you want, dude. I—I have class now!” Norris sputtered. “This was a mistake. I’m good on both friends and interests, thank you very much.”
“Why did you put up the ad then?” Liam asked.
“Does this really look like the reaction of someone who put up the ad, Liam, Liam Hooper?!” Norris tried very hard not to shout back.
“It looks like the reaction of someone that needs the advertising,” Liam mumbled in reply.
Norris pretended not to hear it, plugging his headphones back into his ears with such power, he might have perforated something. Norris did have class, albeit in another hour. He could not deal with this weird, affectless, tall boy, and his turtles, or whatever the heck he’d been talking about. There was matricide to prepare.
Norris did not fuss that night. Instead, he patiently and maturely waited until it was dinnertime and he had a stomach full of oven-baked mac and cheese to confront his mother with the undeniable proof that it was, in fact, her deepest wish to ruin his life.
“Were you a dancer? Is that it, Mom?” Norris casually brought up while loading their plates into the fancy dishwasher built into their new kitchen.