Page 23 of Wildfire
It was Stassie, wasn’t it?
STASSIE
Excuse you
JJ
Nah, I negotiated with Hen
BOBBY
“Negotiated”
HENRY
He hid my paintbrushes.
JJ
You’ll be glad of my presence when one of you asks for advice from a real-world adult
LOLA
I’ll be sure to never, ever do that
RUSS
This was a lot I’m here but the cell service sucks
I always wondered what it’d be like to be in the inner circle when I was on the outside. Now that I’m in it, I realize it’s mainly chaos, but in a kind of wholesome way. By the time I’m done catching up, I’m at the front of the line, which gives me the perfect opportunity not to dwell on the fact I am once again on some shitty college gossip page, the girl I’m with on there has a super-rich family, and there’s absolutely no way I’m going to be able to fake knowing anything about race cars if I ever see her again.
It doesn’t take long for me to be given my welcome pack, told a meeting starts in an hour, and find my cabin. Pushing my way through the stiff door, I immediately spot my new roommate for the summer.
“What’s up, man,” he says coolly, nodding from the bed he’s taken on the other side of the room. “I’m Xander.”
“Russ.” I swear I nearly say muffin. “Good to meet you.”
“You, too.” His eyes drop to my T-shirt, where the white Titans logo stands out against the navy-blue material. “You at UCMH?”
Part of me dies a little bit, because I didn’t think when I put this shirt on. I hoped there wouldn’t be Maple Hills students here, since it’s so many hours away, but it was silly of me to assume they wouldn’t be attracted to the same things as me. You’d think familiar faces would be a comfort, but as soon as I mention hockey they bring up the rink, which I fucking hate talking about. I reluctantly answer Xander. “Yeah, you?”
“Nah, man. My mom’s husband is faculty and I don’t need that in my life. Plus, my stepbrother is there and we’d probably kill each other if we played on the same basketball team. I’m at Stanford. You play?”
Dropping my bags to the floor and emptying the things from my pockets, I sit on my bed and brace for the normal reaction. “Yeah, ice hockey.”
“Sweet.” He gestures toward the keys. “Was it a long drive?”
It takes me longer than it should to answer him because it wasn’t the question I was prepping for, and the more small talk we make, the more relaxed I become because he doesn’t mention the rink at all.
I’m sure it’s an anxiety thing to assume that every single person with links to Maple Hills knows about the situation I caused at the start of the year. It’s my biggest shame, the first time I thought, “Yeah, Dad’s right, I am a fuckup,” so it isn’t as easy as choosing not to think about it like my teammates suggest. Stassie says that over time it won’t be the first thing I worry about, but I’m still waiting for that to happen.
An hour flies by so quickly I don’t even get a chance to open my welcome pack before we have to head over to the main hall for the meeting. This place is huge but, thankfully Xander worked here last summer so he knows exactly where we’re going.
We grab two empty seats in the front row and wait for the rest of the room to fill up. Xander passes me a sign-in sheet being sent around the room, and at the top is the Wi-Fi password.
“The Wi-Fi fucking sucks, by the way,” he groans. “It’s not too bad if you’re in the main buildings, but in our cabin it’s nonexistent. You’ll get random service and all your messages will come through at once and scare the shit out of you.”
“No service is good for me, to be honest.” I sign my name and connect anyway, passing the sheet on to the people beside me. More messages from the group chat come through, along with some other notifications and messages from my mom.
