Against the Universe

12 • grover

It's Guy Fawkes Day. I'm pretending to listen to Seth as he obsessively goes through the details of the party he's planning to throw for later. He's amped, and he keeps raising his voice a few decibels too loud. The librarian has come over 3 times to chide him.

"Sorry!" he whisper-shouts, and she scowls before angrily marching back to the front desk.

"Bitch," he mutters under his breath, and I give him a pointed look. "Sorry. Cunt."

"That's even worse."

"Really?!"

I can feel the librarian's murderous eyes on us again. As I look up to see if she's coming over to kick us out, my gaze falls on Madelyn over by the bookshelves.

I've been seeing her everywhere recently, outside of the one class we have together. In the hallways. At lunch. Through the window of the auditorium, where she does rehearsals with the other music students. It's coincidental, but I always feel like such a stalker.

Right now, she seems to be staring up at the top shelf. Her face is crumpled in frustration.

She can't reach.

And I'm sitting here watching her, like a creep. I should ask if she needs help.

Just as I'm about to get up, she starts waving down Garrett Evans (blue mullet, calls everyone 'comrade') as he strolls in. He's one of the less insufferable people from maths class.

"Hey, you! Long legs! Yes, you— would you be so kind as to — no, not that one — yep, that's it — thank you!"

He hands her a large textbook, and she beams. "I love your nail polish, by the way," she says, and he awkwardly thanks her before leaving the library, even though he only just arrived.

Madelyn has that distracting effect, I realise. You completely forget what you were doing when she starts talking to you.

She also has the mystical ability to make me talk more, which can be devastating given my tendency to say the wrong thing. Like at hers the other day, when I complained about mum being 'overbearing'.

"Grover!"

My eyes snap back to Seth. "What?"

"You're coming with me to get everything, right?"

"Not if you ask me a 15th time," I grumble. Since Seth doesn't turn 18 till December (damned Capricorns), I've been given the responsibility of buying the fireworks and alcohol for a party I don't even want to go to. Payback for when he helped me after I fainted in front of everyone.

"Good." He stands up. "Let's go."

It takes me around 10 minutes to notice Seth's driving in the opposite direction to ASDA.

"Where the fuck are we?"

He looks away. "I have to pick something up real quick."

We pull into a random neighbourhood. There are a few people sitting in parked cars, others walking around with nervous faces, shoving their hands in their pockets. Realisation sinks in.

"Seriously?!" I'm going to kill him. "We're at Ryan's?"

"You can yell at me after."

Now I'm sitting here in the passenger seat with spicy armpits and my heart hammering like a war drum, meanwhile Seth just looks so calm and collected, and it makes me furious. I want to grab him and knock some sort of fucking sense into him.

"We're going to prison," I announce. "This is it. This is it! We are going to prison. We might as well start watching tutorials on how to make shivs while we're here."