Chapter 1—Cree
“Do not go out in this, Cree!” Quinn rushes up the porch steps and shakes his umbrella, flinging massive amounts of droplets of rain all over the porch.
All around us, rainwater cascades off the roof in sheets, reminding me of the time my uncle took me camping, and we found a waterfall with a small cave behind it.
“I won’t drown.” I lean against the rental house just beside the door and light a cigarette. “Ivan is picking me up.”
“You guys bar hopping again? In this weather?”
“Nah.” I take a drag on the cigarette. Ivan and I rarely go bar hopping, but drinking is easier to explain to your average college undergrad than our actual nocturnal activities. “I’ve got a paper to finish.”
“No fun, man.”
The rain pours down harder, and the sound echoes around the porch like a herd of elephants having an orgy right above my head. Quinn looks up, and I wonder if the same mental imagery is filling his head or if I’m the only deviant this evening.
Though he’s pretty straight-edge, Quinn is the best roommate I’ve had in my three-and-a-half years of college. We keep similar schedules and have about the same ratio of party to study time even though he doesn’t actually drink. He does like dancing at clubs and makes the perfect designated driver. He pays rent on time and keeps up with the other household bills, unlike other roommates I’ve encountered. The main issue I have with him is the dishes.
No matter what, he just won’t put them to soak. He’ll bring them into the kitchen, place them in the sink, but won’t spend the extra three seconds turning on the water to rinse them off. By the time I start to load the dishwasher, the plates are covered in dried-up spaghetti sauce, and the cups are filled with blackberry seeds left over from his smoothies.
The last time we got into it, he said he’d just start loading the dishwasher himself. The next time I went to unload it, all the dishes were still dirty and had to be soaked and washed again. At that point, I gave up.
My roommate shakes his umbrella again before shoving it into the taller of two flowerpots near the door, neither of which have ever held any flowers. He looks back at me and narrows his eyes.
“I thought you quit.” He nods and points.
“I did,” I reply, looking down at the cigarette between my fingers. “Then midterms happened.”
“I hear ya.” Quinn glances out at the pouring rain once more before heading inside.
Two bright lights surrounded by glowing halos shine through the rain. I quickly ditch the end of the cigarette into the smaller flowerpot, pull up my hood, and grab my backpack. I race down the short sidewalk and reach the bright yellow Jeep just as it pulls up to the curb.
I pull on the door handle, which is locked, and I glare through the window until I hear a click. Yanking the door open, I grab the handle at the top of the door, haul myself into the lifted Jeep, and throw myself into the passenger seat. I slam the door shut before the rain floods the floor.
“Sorry about the lock, bro.”
“No worries.” I reach over and bump my fist against that of the tall, muscular guy in the driver’s seat.
I met Ivan at a freshman mixer about a week after I started college, and we’ve been mismatched buddies ever since. He’s a chemistry major, and I’m studying psychology. He lives in a condo on the edge of campus, drives a really nice, new Jeep, and I huddle in reduced rent housing for underprivileged upperclassmen and occasionally drag out a busted-up bicycle for transportation. Ivan has about six inches on me, and my biceps are about the same size as his forearms. With his brawn and speed, he scored an all-expense paid trip to an undergraduate degree on a hockey scholarship while I was barely scraping by on a meager merit scholarship and a lot of student loans. His family is loaded to boot, so he didn’t even need the money from the school whereas I came from nothing and would likely be paying my debt after retirement.
Oh, well. Life isn’t fair.
We definitely don’t seem like we would run in the same circles, but shortly after that freshman mixer, we met in another environment and discovered we shared a very similar…hobby. After that, we started hanging out more and more. We met Mason, Casey, and Rocco, and the five of us have been fairly inseparable ever since.
“Thanks for driving me.” I yank my hood back and wipe water from my face.
“You’d drown if you tried to walk across campus in all this.” Ivan looks over his shoulder before pulling back onto the road.
“At least it isn’t more snow.”
“If it were snow, we’d be buried and everything would be closed,” Ivan says. “You wouldn’t be going anywhere.”
“True.”
“With the melt from last week’s snow, there are flood warnings all over the place.” Ivan pats the dashboard with his palm. “Glad I got this baby to keep us up high!”
“I thought the contents of the baggie in the glove compartment is what kept you high.”
“Ha! Not while I’m driving. That shit’s for later.”
Ivan downshifts, hits a speedbump, and we both jostle around in our seats. Rain continues to pour down, and the wipers don’t make a lot of difference.
“How can you even see?” I tilt my head from one side to the other as if changing the angle is going to make any difference.
“Who says I can?” Ivan laughs loudly. “Don’t be a pussy, Cree. It’s just rain.”
“For the third day straight,” I mutter as I stare at the window. I can’t stare out of it; the rain is too heavy.