“You’re not buying us dinner again. Chinese sounds great, but you’re not paying for it.”
“I insist.”
“Absolutely not.”
The task of ordering and picking up dinner falls on me, though Mom doesn’t go so far as to make me pay for it with my own money. I do a lot of deep breathing during the drive. A lot of deep breathing.
12.
I stare at my bedroom wall.
I can’t be certain, but I think Blake moved all his posters about an inch onto my side. It’s not enough that I can prove he did anything, though the subliminal impact is there. As soon as I stepped into my room, I thought, He messed with the posters again.
I’m not sure when he would have done it. It would’ve taken a while to move every single poster, and I don’t think he’s been in my room unattended tonight. He’d be taking a huge risk of getting caught. Still, I’m almost positive that his posters take up one more inch wall space than mine.
This must be part of his plan to make me doubt my sanity.
I should draw a line on the wall in case he does it again.
No, that’s something that somebody who doubts their sanity would do.
I’ll just be on high alert for the sound of pushpins being pulled out of the Sheetrock and stuck back in again. I’m not saying that Blake won’t drive me insane, but if he does, it won’t be with my posters.
Actually, if he did move all his posters, there’ll be separate holes in the wall one inch from where the corners of each poster are now. I walk over to the center of the wall and pull out the pin in the upper left corner of a poster featuring a raccoon and the caption “Stick ’Em Up!” (Presumably, the raccoon looks like a bank robber wearing a mask. This doesn’t seem to be a clever enough visual for somebody to translate into poster form, but I won’t judge.)
There isn’t an extra hole in the wall one inch away.
I check the lower left corner to be sure.
Nope. No extra hole. In fact, it looks like Blake considerately used the same holes from the posters of mine that he took down.
Fine. Maybe he’s not performing slight rearrangements of our decor in an attempt to make me question my sense of reality. That doesn’t mean he’s not a jerk.
“What are you doing?” a voice asks behind me.
(Spoiler alert: The voice belongs to Blake. You probably guessed that, but if even one of you reading this said, “Wow, I bet there’s a major plot twist about to be revealed regarding the identity of the person who asked what he was doing!” then I’ll consider my attempt to draw out the suspense a success.)
I turn around. “Oh, hi, Blake.”
“Why are you messing with my poster?”
“I’m not,” I say, quickly squeezing my hand closed, which isn’t something I recommend when you’re holding a pushpin. Fortunately, I’m composed enough not to wince in pain as the pin jabs through my tender flesh.
“Yes, you are. It’s flopping over.”
“Don’t tell me what to do in my own room.”
“I wasn’t,” says Blake. “I was asking a question. You got all bent out of shape when I touched your posters, so I assumed that you’d respect mine. I already offered to take them down.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I walked in here, and there was movement behind the raccoon poster. I thought there might be a centipede behind it or something. I figured you didn’t want a big bug slithering back there, so I took out two of the pins so I could check to be sure. Turns out there’s no centipede. Good to hear, right? Centipede juice doesn’t come out of posters well.”
“Centipede juice?”
I nod. “It’s what you get when you squish a centipede. I thought that if you saw your poster moving, you might slap it. So I did you a favor.”
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t.”
“Well, like I said, there wasn’t anything back there, so I guess it was a hallucination on my part. That happens sometimes.” I stick one of the pins back in the corner of the poster.
“Was there blood on that pin?”
“Nope.”
“Is there blood on your palm?”
“Nope.”
“I think there is.”
“I think maybe you should worry about your own palms.” I replace the second pin. “Whammo. Good as new.”
“Did you say whammo?”
“Yes. And I’ll say it again.”
Blake is quiet for a moment. “Well, let me know if you have any other centipede sightings. Working as a team, I’m sure we can defeat the centipede menace.”
Blake leaves my bedroom.
I wonder if he did that trick where you smear toothpaste on the wall to fill in the holes made by pushpins.
I decide not to check.
• • •
I drive to school every morning. I assume I’ll have to tell Blake, “Sorry, dude. Looks like you’re taking the bus,” but Mom has to sign some paperwork at the school, so she’s driving him today.
Fortunately, we’ll only share two classes—third-period English and seventh-period biology. Oh, and lunch. I hope he’ll make some friends before lunch so he won’t want to sit with me.
For my first two classes, it’s a completely normal day. I can’t remember if I said this before, but I’m a pretty good student. I pay attention in class, and when Mr. Gellbar springs a pop quiz on us, I’m confident that I got at least a nine out of ten.
When I sit down in English class, I’m glad that my assigned seat is in the middle of the room with classmates to my front, rear, left, and right. The one vacant seat is in the back. Blake won’t be sitting next to me.
Blake walks in as the bell rings. I was sort of hoping that he’d get hopelessly lost in the labyrinth, but I guess somebody gave him directions.
Ms. Mayson, who looks like she’s about eighty, but also looks like she could, if necessary, beat up the entire class like she was in a kung fu movie,
