Starry Eyed

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-One

James finally came screaming in at three past eight that nine, just as Star was getting up to leave from a brutal game of Go Fish on the carpet. His hair was knotted and sprayed with melting snow, tiny white spots. There were no gloves to be seen on his muddy hands, but he wore a Christmas sweater with a reindeer grinning on the front, and a scarf that dangled down across his chest. The look in his eyes was enough to start a hurricane.

He stormed in, and I leapt off the edge of his bed just before he could push me off himself. "Buzz off. This is my side of the room," he snarled, reminding me of the first immature day we spent. (Or words to that effect.) I darted across the imaginary line, where Star was brushing off her clothes with raised eyebrows.

"Who pissed in your cornflakes?" She asked. I was half expecting James to deck her.

"Nobody pissed in my cornflakes," he snapped as way of responding. "I'm just mad, okay? Can you both just go and host your stupid love fests somewhere else?"

"Well, I hate to break it to you, buddy, but the only other place we can go is my dormitory. And you might have heard about how perfectly well Luca over here gets on with my roommate. Kim, remember? I'm sure you know about that," Star smirked. She was trying to make him rewind back to stupid Facebook posts and embarassing haircuts. But not only did I not want to go there, I was also seriously doubting that it was the best tactic with the Ken doll when he was at this level. 

"Stop," I muttered in warning to her. She ignored me. 

"I was just on my way out, actually," Star drawled on. "But now I think I'll stay a little longer. We deserve an explanation, I think, now that you've come crashing in and disrupted a perfectly good night."

"You don't deserve a fucking explanation just because you happened to be in the room when I got back!" James shouted, waving his arms about in the air like he was tossing his mind out into the black abyss. Instead, though, he booted his suitcase beneath his bed and crashed down onto the bed, snatching at big hunks of his hair. Flakes of melting snow fluttered across the duvet. 

I stepped to his side, feeling olbiged to make him stop under the official roommate code I'd written out in my head. "Relax," I said, trying to sound reassuring. It came out as if I was pleading him to calm down. "You're here. You're still alive, right? Someone in the world has it worse, I promise." 

"Only one person in the world can say that right now, though," Star piped up unhelpfully, her arms folded across her chest. I didn't have time to even turn and glare at her before the bomb blew up again.

"You don't know shit!" James bellowed. "You don't know anything about me. You might think you do, but we're not BFFs like you seem to think. We're not even remotely close to friends. We're roommates, and nothing else. So could you just piss off?" 

I don't know why those words got me, but they did. Up until then, I guess I had kind of believed that James and I might have been getting along. I thought maybe if we kept it up, we could become mates instead of arch-enemies. And I knew he was upset, and whatever he said wasn't necessarily true or right. But he still dealt a heavy blow.

Star arrived at his side, then, perching next to him and swinging her arm around his shoulder. "Alright, yeah, yeah. You hate us both, whatever. Now that we've gotten over that, can we try discussing this? Because it's going to help you a whole lot more than burning down the whole freaking room." 

Memories swept around the room then. It was only one misstep, but we all felt it. Star winced. "Sorry. But really, you know? You can't lash out at everybody and expect it to be okay. So what's happened?"