Looking for Alaska

'We gotta go, Pudge. Time to roll up.'

'Dude. Sleeping.'

'You can sleep after we check in. IT'S TIME TO GO!' he shouted.

'All right. All right. No screaming. Head hurts.' And it did. I could feel last night's wine in my throat and my head throbbed like it had the morning after my concussion. My mouth tasted like a skunk had crawled into my throat and died. I made an effort not to exhale near Lara as she groggily extricated herself from the sleeping bag.

We packed everything quickly, threw our empty bottles into the tall grass of the field — littering was an unfortunate necessity at the Creek, since no one wanted to throw an empty bottle of booze in a campus trash can — and walked away from the barn. Lara grabbed my hand and then shyly let go. Alaska looked like a train wreck, but insisted on pouring the last few sips of Strawberry Hill into her cold instant coffee before chucking the bottle behind her.

'Hair of the dog,' she said.

'How ya doin'?' the Colonel asked her.

'I've had better mornings.'

'Hungover?'

'Like an alcoholic preacher on Sunday morning.'

'Maybe you shouldn't drink so much,' I suggested.

'Pudge.' She shook her head and sipped the cold coffee and wine. 'Pudge, what you must understand about me is that I am a deeply unhappy person.'

We walked side by side down the washed-out dirt road on our way back to campus. Just after we reached the bridge, Takumi stopped, said 'uh-oh,' got on his hands and knees, and puked a volcano of yellow and pink.

'Let it out,' Alaska said. 'You'll be fine.'

He finished, stood up, and said, 'I finally found something that can stop the fox. The fox cannot summit Strawberry Hill.'

Alaska and Lara walked to their rooms, planning to check in with the Eagle later in the day, while Takumi and I stood behind the Colonel as he knocked on the Eagle's door at 9:00 a.m.

'Y'all are home early. Have fun?'

'Yes sir,' the Colonel said.

'How's your mom, Chip?'

'She's doing well, sir. She's in good shape.'

'She feed y'all well?'

'Oh yes sir,' I said. 'She tried to fatten me up.'

'You need it. Y'all have a good day.'

'Well, I don't think he suspected anything,' the Colonel said on our way back to Room 43. 'So maybe we actually pulled it off.' I thought about going over to see Lara, but I was pretty tired, so I just went to bed and slept through my hangover.

It was not an eventful day. I should have done extraordinary things. I should have sucked the marrow out of life.

But on that day, I slept eighteen hours out of a possible twenty-four.

the last day

The next morning,the first Monday of the new semester, the Colonel came out of the shower just as my alarm went off. As I pulled on my shoes, Kevin knocked once and then opened the door, stepping inside. 'You're looking good,' the Colonel said casually. Kevin's now sported a crew cut, a small patch of short blue hair on each side of his head, just above the ear. His lower lip jutted out — the morning's first dip. He walked over to ourcoffee table, picked up a can of Coke, and spit into it.

'You almost didn't get me. I noticed it in my conditioner and got right back in the shower. But I didn't notice it in my gel. It didn't show up in Jeff's hair at all. But Longwell and me, we had to go with the Marine look. Thank God I have clippers.'

'It suits you,' I said, although it didn't. The short hair accentuated his features, specifically his too-close- together beady eyes, which did not stand up well to accentuation. The Colonel was trying hard to look tough — ready for whatever Kevin might do — but it's hard to look tough when you're only wearing an orange towel.

'Truce?'

'Well, your troubles aren't over, I'm afraid,' the Colonel said, referring to the mailed-but-not-yet-received progress reports.

'A'ight. If you say so. We'll talk when it's over, I guess.'

'I guess so,' the Colonel said. As Kevin walked out, the Colonel said, 'Take the can you spit in, you unhygienic shit.' Kevin just closed the door behind him. The Colonel grabbed the can, opened the door, and threw it at Kevin — missing him by a good margin.

'Jeez, go easy on the guy.'

'No truce yet. Pudge.'

I spent that afternoon with Lara. We were very cutesy, even though we didn't know the first thing about each other and barely talked. But we made out. She grabbed my butt at one point, and I sort of jumped. I was lying down, but I did the best version of jumping that one can do lying down, and she said, 'Sorry,' and I said, 'No, it's okay. It's just a little sore from the swan.'

We walked to the TV room together, and I locked the door. We were watching The Brady Bunch, which she had never seen. The episode, where the Bradys visit the gold-mining ghost town and they all get locked up in the one-room jail by some crazy old gold panner with a scraggly white beard, was especially horrible, and gave us a lot to laugh about. Which is good, since we didn't have much to talk about.

Just as the Bradys were getting locked in jail, Lara randomly asked me, 'Have you ever gotten a blow job?'

'Urn, that's out of the blue,' I said.

'The blue?'

'Like, you know, out of left field.'

'Left field?'

'Like, in baseball. Like, out of nowhere. I mean, what made you think of that?'

'I've just never geeven one,' she answered, her little voice dripping with seductiveness. It was so brazen. I thought I would explode. I never thought. I mean, from Alaska, hearing that stuff was one thing. But to hear her sweet little Romanian voice go so sexy all of the sudden…

'No,' I said. 'I never have.'

'Think it would be fun?'

DO I!?!?!?!?!?!?!'Urn. yeah. I mean, you don't have to.'

'I think I want to,' she said, and we kissed a little, and then. And then with me sitting watching The Brady Bunch, watching Marcia Marcia Marcia up to her Brady antics, Lara unbuttoned my pants and pulled my boxers down a little and pulled out my penis.

'Wow,' she said.

'What?'

She looked up at me, but didn't move, her face nanometers away from my penis. 'It's weird.'

'What do you mean weird?'

'Just beeg, I guess.'

I could live with that kind of weird. And then she wrapped her hand around it and put it into her mouth.

And waited.

We were both very still. She did not move a muscle in her body, and I did not move a muscle in mine. I knew