Neil
threw down his controller and stood. He was tired lousy goddamn people being
better than him at video games.
He picked up his phone and saw that Asta had
called, and realized he’d ignored it. He dialed her number and listened to it
ring straight to voicemail. He left a message, “Hey, sorry I didn’t pick up. Call
me back when you wanna.”
He lay down for an hour on his bed,
an ice pack on his face. He watched television, but didn’t pay attention. He
tried closing his eyes to fall asleep a few times, but when his eyes were
closed he just saw the goon that had attacked him. When his phone rang, he
answered it before he even knew who it was; he expected it to be Asta, but
instead he heard Hana’s bright voice, “Hey, Neil?”
“Yup,” he said, “What’s up?”
“I’m trying to get a thing
together,” she said, “There’s a show in Downtown tonight, I was wondering if
you’d like to come with Mary, Dani, Elys, Mike, Alice, and I?”
“Oh,” Neil said, “Sorry, but, I
guess I’m not in the mood.” He didn’t say why. It took him a second to
understand why he wasn’t interested. “At least for anything Downtown, at
least,” he said, “I’d be up for something else maybe. Somewhere else.”
“I thought you loved Downtown,” Hana
said.
“I did,” Neil said, “Now it’s lame, ok?”
“Yeah, fine,” Hana said, “You wanna
do anything after the show is over?”
“What’s the show?” Neil asked.
“It’s Hamlet, but a musical. This
guy from the college made it,” she said, “They’re a friend of mine, I’m trying
to support them and get a big crowd.”
“Oh,” Neil said, “Sorry.”
“Not a problem Neil, although I
still don’t get why not.”
“I had a… Mary can explain I guess,”
he said.
“I’ll call her up then. But yeah,
afterwards you wanna do something? We can pick you up if you need a ride.”
“Yeah, I’d be up for anything,” Neil
said, “I’m pretty sure at least. Call me again when the show is over.”
“I will,” she said, “Anything else?”
“Uh,” Neil said, “I can’t think of
anything else.”
“Ok,” she said, “Bye.”
“Wait,” Neil said, loud enough that
he missed the sound of the connection cutting out. It was something like a
sudden absence and a buzz. His phone beeped afterwards, in case the listener
hadn’t noticed that they were suddenly talking to no one. What time is it going to be over? Was the other thing he was going
to say before he had been too slow to say it.
He thought about redialing her but
decided not to. No one else had tried to call during his conversation so he
went back to lying down with the ice on the side of his head while he faced the
television but didn’t make any sort of effort to watch whatever was on.
Something made him expect Asta would
call back, and so he kept the phone on the pillow in case she did. He realized
that it’d been months since they’d last seen each other. They didn’t pass each
other much at the High School. He wondered what she’d been up to, but
remembered her strict parents and decided she’d probably just been going to
school and nothing else. He told her to get a hobby, like guitar or drawing,
but she’d shrugged and said that nothing really interested her. He thought that
maybe there was something he could find that she might like, but he ended up
falling asleep before he could think of anything.NEXT PAGE
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