Forever Freaky by Tom Upton

pssst sounds, just in case,
he, too, had fallen asleep. But I got no response. It didn’t make
sense. He must be under there. I wasn’t sure of the exact time, but
it should have been more than enough for him to get to his hiding
place.
    Unless something went wrong.
    “Jack,” I called out, keeping my voice
low.
    But there was no answer. Great, I thought,
sure that he wasn’t there. I should have been relieved, but instead
I resented the hell out of him. He’d talked me into this
harebrained scheme and for one reason or another he bailed out on
me. That should have been a good thing, except, alone or not, I
didn’t want to be doing this anyway. What was I? The guardian of
all tree-hugging bitches?
    I stooped over and started to duck walk under
the bleachers. I made it halfway down the length of the bleachers,
but never stumbled across any sleeping idiot. I found a spot where
I could sit, resting my back against the wall, and wonder what to
do. I had no watch, so I wasn’t exactly sure of the time. It was
late, but how late? Had everybody left the building? Was Carl the
janitor still lurking around?
    While I was trying to figure things out, I
heard the gym door open and shut. The lights didn’t go on, and a
moment later, I heard stirring under the bleachers as Jack crawled
toward me. He stopped about four or five feet away and then seemed
to settled down to wait, completely unaware that I was nearby.
    At first I sat there quietly, listening to
his excited breathing and the rustling noise his gym bag made as he
shifted it around. Who is this dude? I wondered, for about the
thousandth time in the past two days. I avoided reading him, so he
remained something of a mystery to me. Was he just some guy
obsessed with the paranormal? Did he really have the hots for me?
Or was it some combination of both? I wasn’t sure I really wanted
to know. In any case, he would lead to problems and/or
disappointments.
    Finally I said, “You’re late.”
    Though I didn’t speak loudly, he issued a
startled yelp—a rather girlie-sounding startled yelp— and there was
sudden movement followed by the loud thunk of skull hitting thick
bleacher wood.
    He seemed to settle back down again, uttering
a low “Ouch.” He was probably holding his head in the dark. For a
second I genuinely felt sorry for him.
    “You okay?” I asked.
    “Why am I hitting my head whenever you’re
around?” he asked.
    “You should take a hint—associating with me
will only lead to pain.”
    “No, seriously, lie to me.”
    “Oh, in that case, it’s probably because of
my scintillating personality and the allure of my curve-less
body.”
    He chuckled in a pained way.
    “I thought you’d be in the locker room,” he
said.
    “Yeah, that didn’t work for me. What time is
it, anyway?”
    “A little before ten,” he said.
    “Where were you?”
    “Drama club rehearsal ran a little long.”
    I rolled my eyes. “Drama club? Figures.”
    “What? You have something against drama?”
    “Just about everything,” I said. “Listen, can
we do this thing, and then get out of here?”
    “Not yet,” he said. “Carl is still in the
building. I saw him in the auditorium before I sneaked over
here.”
    “Well, how long is he going stay?”
    “I figure another half hour or so.”
    I sighed. “I feel like an idiot, sitting
here.”
    “Hey, I’m sitting here, too.”
    “But it must be normal for you to feel like
an idiot,” I said, and instantly regretted it. “Sorry,” I
muttered.
    We sat in the darkness, under the bleachers
in the gym of a closed school. It was a stupid place to find
myself. But it was sort of peaceful. Nobody was around, except for
Jack, and, really, it was as though he wasn’t even there, because
he was keeping quiet and I was blocking out his thoughts.
    I folded my arms in front of me, and shut my
eyes. With any luck, I would doze off and the waiting wouldn’t seem
so long.
    I heard Jack stir as he shifted his gym bag
on the floor.