Page 88 of A Dead Man's B-Side
“You’re a revolutionary,” Ajax said with a blank face.
“Alright.” Rain perked up at Paris’ suggestion, the most attention she’d given her peers since she’d entered. “Who’s going first?”
That night, I had found out that Wolf wet the bed until he was six, August was deathly allergic to paint, and that he was deathly afraid of cats, Rain was in her academy’s annual play as Neptune and sang a song about the solar system, Ajax once walked in on his mother and father (before his death at ninety-two), Marigold, the sweet soul that she is, admitted to shoplifting.
Paris failed rehab twice when Ajax asked her about it–well, he practically said it for her.
I waited until after Paris had washed out the dye from my hair before hiding the cigarette boxes away and putting out my own. Rain smoked one stick and treated it like a Cuban cigar, to my surprise, that she even smoked at all, and August was happy to inhale by the millisecond, giving him an estimated time of three days to finish it.
I threw his out when he wasn't looking, which served him right for putting a lit cigarette on a wooden bedside table.
“Alright, Sasha–”
“You can’t call him that.”
Paris paused in her words and turned to whoever had interrupted her, Wolf. “Sorry?”
“I call him that. Find your own nickname.”
Paris bared her teeth, the night waning on her. “When you find your own dorm and invite me in, you can tell me what to do.”
He sat back glumly but didn’t speak otherwise, letting her continue with an annoyed wave of his hand. “Alright, Sasha, truth or truth?”
“Do I have a choice?” I didn’t mind the game. It wasn’t like I’d be admitting to anything that can be used against me.
I’m sure Rain’s solar system song would make such great blackmail material.
Besides, who really willingly offers up the truth, save for someone with a straight-as-an-arrow moral compass, during these games?
Paris grinned. “Sure you do. Truth ortruth.”
I bit down on my growing smile, thanking the weak glow of the lamp illuminating us and answered, “Truth.”
She stroked her imaginary beard and looked around, from Marigold, who sat perched on the corner of her bed, to August, who was still wrapped in a blanket lying across the same bed, to Rain against the wall under the window, Ajax and Wolf sitting against the bed, before meeting my eyes again.
She sat cross-legged on her chair and spoke again, addressing everyone, “What we have here is a very rare occurrence. Rarer than an astronomical miracle. Alexandr Miroslav,” she’d said my name with its respective accent, “will be answering a question, honestly might I add, of my choosing. What say you all, would be an answer worth knowing?”
I hadn’t known there were so many questions left unanswered about me until voices around me spoke up, “What’s the worst crime he’d committed?”
“How did his parents die?”
A little insensitive, but I didn’t take offence.
“Was he bullied in his old school?”
They wouldn’t dare.
“Was he ever in a gang?”
Briefly.
“What was the lowest of his life?”
I’d rather not delve that deep.
“What’s a secret he’d take to the grave?”
Wouldn’t be a secret I’d take to the grave, now would it?
