Underage

[37] Back to the Beginning

[37] Back to the Beginning

The first time I stepped into Evan Michael's room, I wasn't allowed to touch anything. His bed was black, the comforter tucked neatly beneath the mattress and only two matching pillows at the head. The basement was turned into his room so he could line the walls with chalkboards and white boards. His handwriting—the same messy interconnected numbers and letters as his brother—littered the boards in different color chalk.

Stacks of books were everywhere, all in an organization method I could never figure out. It wasn't by genre or author, but every time he tried to explain it to me, his words went right over my head. So, I stopped asking.

He didn't have room for more than the one brown bookshelf he kept beside his bed. It was crammed with textbooks and the works of fiction he found to be the best. Most were classics. He made sure to buy the most expensive copies he could find—the leatherback editions with the pretty spines and gold edged paper.

I was the only one allowed inside, besides his mother. We spent an entire Saturday coming up with a knocking system so he would know it was me. He had a different sequence for every member of his family.

I would knock seven times, wait five seconds, and knock three more. He would knock twice and I would knock once, before opening the door.

Evan's leather jacket was a gift when he graduated from Princeton. He already had a car, he had one of the brightest minds, and all he wanted was that jacket he found in a random store when we were shopping. When I told Ethan, he made sure his parents bought it and had Evan's name stitched into the material.

Evan had to have his name on everything he owned. From his chalkboards—he wrote his name in permanent marker at the top right hand corner of each one—to his clothes and shoes and books. He wrote in each book he owned. He would pen his thoughts in the margins. When he finished reading, he wrote his own review on a piece of paper and stuck it between random pages. In some of the smaller paperback books you can see the end of the paper sticking out on both sides.

It started when I found an empty bottle beneath his pillow. He was pacing in front of his whiteboard, a marker in hand, and the cap between his lips. He was staring at some equation that wasn't working. To me, it looked like he was trying to make something out of nothing.

"Evan," I said. "What is this?"

He paused for only a second to glance at me, his green eyes skimming over to the beer bottle. When he turned back to the board, he removed the cap from in between his teeth. "It's a beer bottle, Thea."

I sighed. "But, what is it doing under your pillow?"

"If that is what you wanted to know, you should have asked that in the first place."

"Evan, what is this beer bottle doing under your pillow?"

"I drank it." He shrugged his shoulders. His eyes trailed over the black numbers on the board. He'd been looking at the same equation for hours, but made no move to change or add to them. He simply stared.

"Are there any more?"

"In the fridge if you want one." Evan motioned towards the mini fridge in the corner of his room. It was a new addition, a gift for Christmas.

At first, he didn't use it. There wasn't a space open near an outlet to place it. It took only two weeks for me to subtly move things in his room before I could fit the fridge near his bed. He knew all along, I could tell by the clenching of his jaw and the annoyed looks he would send me, but he never said anything.