Efrain And Cory Ch 28

Chapter 28 – Gagging For It

Indie refused to acknowledge the stack of bills Laurel slapped into his hand.

"Why do I have to go?" he asked. "You were supposed to bring alcohol, not send me to buy it two nights before."

"You always get the good stuff." She shrugged. "We thought it would be better if we just collected the money we would have spent and had you pick out something worth drinking."

Laurel's "we" referred to her two best girlfriends, Meggie and Lacey, and their boyfriends, Drew and Clint (the one Efrain and I had traumatized). Efrain, Gio, and I were joining Thursday's party because we live here (and Laurel wanted Efrain to cook). Indie invited his squeak toy (as 'Rain had taken to calling him) because Preston would have invited himself anyways, and Gio had a date, too. JJ and Berta were also coming, oddly by Indie's invite and not ours.

"No, you were too lazy to make a booze run before crashing my place."

"Look at it this way," Mike said. "We would have cleared out your stash instead of drinking the shit we brought over."

"Just imagine a dozen people descending upon your alcohol like a swarm of boozy locusts, leaving you stuck with a fridge full of crappy beer and boxed wine."

I was glad that Keenan lived halfway across the country. I barely handled him and Preston pulling the best-friend double-team on me over Skype; I couldn't imagine them both working me over in person.

"What did you do with all that shit anyway?" Mike asked.

Indie pointed over at Efrain and me. "I made them take it to one of their football party-whatevers."

"Thanks, by the way," Efrain said from his position at the stove. "Most of it ended up puked out all over Matt Carey's floor."

"It's my understanding," Preston said, "that his couch still smells like vomit."

"You see? There is a use for your shitty booze," Indie said, and shoved the cash back at her.

"I know you're all about poetic justice and everything," Laurel said, shoving the money at him once more. "But, you're still going on that booze run."

"I'm not going by myself."

"Fine, take Mike," she said.

"But, I..." Mike started.

Laurel turned on him. "But, sweetie, Efrain is busy making dinner, plus we have to menu plan. And, Cory is all tuckered out from moving his old roommates into their new digs, Gio is out with his lady friend, and Preston promised to help me with dessert." Her tone was honeyed, but you just knew that any refusals would lead to a night on the couch.

"My car or yours?" Mike asked Indie.

"Thought I'd never get him out of here," Laurel huffed as soon as they walked out the front door.

"What are you up to?" Efrain asked.

"My usual antics and shenanigans." She waited until Mike and Indie had driven off before pulling out three books she'd secreted over in a satchel, then crooked her finger at Preston and beckoned him over. "You, sir, have earned a reward."

"Have I, now?"

He walked to Laurel and her stack of what seemed to be yearbooks. The smallest was from a school called Townsend, and the other two were from Bishop. I assumed those were the middle and high schools she and Indie had attended. Laurel cracked open the Townsend yearbook, flipped to a marked page, and pointed. Preston peered at the page.

"

No

," he gasped. "That's him?"

"Absolutely," Laurel giggled.

"I fucking knew he was a blonde!" Preston said. "Cute little shorty."

"I don't know why you're calling him

shorty

," she snorted. "He was already taller than you are now!"

"Whatever." Preston waved his hand. "But this certainly throws my ugly duckling complex theory out the window."

"He was pretty baby, too," Laurel said and shrugged. "I still have no idea why he thinks he's so unattractive."

Curiosity won out, and I came around to look, and Efrain followed, wiping his hands on a dish towel. Laurel's finger still pointed to the picture of a cute teen with chocolate brown eyes and a fauxhawk of dark ash blonde hair. Three sets of earrings marched up his earlobes.

I thought I knew who that was supposed to be, but looked at the list of names just to be sure. The guy was smiling, not the smile you involuntarily give when the photographer tells you to, but an actual smile—like the kid had something to be happy about. Seemed impossible to be the same guy, but sure enough...

"

Indiana?

" Efrain asked. "No wonder he never gave me a key for the mailbox."

"It gets better," Laurel said before moving to another marked page, a two-page spread for the boys' and girls' track and cross-country teams. "That's how we met," she said, pointing out Indie and herself in their respective team pictures. "We both did cross-country in the fall, and track in the spring. I ran the 100m, 400m and relay, and Indie did the 1600m, hurdles, and long-jump."

"That's fucking adorable," I said and pointed to a candid shot of Indie carrying Laurel on his back. He'd had his first eyebrow and lip piercings done by then, and his hair seemed to be a different color. Her face still held traces of baby fat and girlhood, but strongly hinted at the woman who'd eventually be sharing yearbooks with us a decade later.

"I know, right?" she said. "He got a lot of shit because I was still technically an elementary school kid when we started hanging out during summer training." Preston and I gave her a confused look, so Laurel flipped over to an unmarked page and pointed herself out among the sixth graders. To the side of her picture, a school friend had written

Indiana Norman and the Cradle of Doom

. "The fact that I had a huge fucking crush on him probably made the whole 'cradle robber' matter worse."

"You had a crush on

Indiana

?" Efrain laughed.

She paged back to his school photo and quirked her eyebrow. "Tell me you wouldn't try to hit that back then."

Efrain, Preston, and I examined the picture, then looked back at each other. As my boyfriend was in the room, I didn't think it prudent to mention that my thirteen-year-old-self would have crushed on the attractive teen just as hard as my eighteen-year-old-self had crushed on the hot grad student. We shrugged, getting as close as we were willing to admit that

little Indiana

had been a little cutie.

"Y'all probably hadn't even hit puberty back then," she said, and I thought about it. I would have been eight.

I still would've drooled.

"Bitch, you just barely hit puberty yourself." Preston flipped back to the cross-country and track photos. He pointed to her chest. "Just how much of that is

Kleenex

and how much is

you

?"

Laurel laughed. "None and none. Wore a padded bra for

ages

!" She flipped to the last marked page in the small yearbook. "BFFs", superimposed on an infinity symbol, squatted in the center of the page. Surrounding it were photos of best friend pairs, mostly two boys or two girls. There were some trios, too. Each student had been allowed to sign his or her name as part of the caption. Laurel pointed to hers and Indie's photo, the only boy-girl pair. They'd drawn fancy moustaches on their index fingers and were holding them under each other's nose.

"I don't think I've ever seen Indie act goofy," I said.

"He wasn't afraid of being a dork or doing something out of the norm," she said. "If people were going to talk about him, he'd give them something to talk about. Kept them from talking about the things he got tired of hearing." She closed the Townsend yearbook and grabbed the first of the ones from Bishop, which had only one marked page. "His junior year. I was still at Townsend his first two years." She opened the book and pointed to his picture. This time, his hair fell over his face in the emo-est of emo asymmetrical fringes.

"What color?" I asked.

"Bubblegum pink, I think," Laurel said. "He had a flaming red Mohawk the first day of his freshman year."

I looked back at his photo. His face had matured since middle school, the cutie growing more handsome over those last two years. He'd done the second lip piercing, as well as his fourth set of earrings and the first on his forward helix, the top part of his outer ear.

Something else was different this time, but I couldn't place it.

"Okay, let's get his track pictures," Preston said.

Efrain laughed. "You just want to see him in his little shorts again." Preston shrugged; as it was too cold to run in anything but pants, he'd yet to see his fuck buddy in the leave-nothing-to-the-imagination shorts he wore in the summer. Laurel had assured him that the sight was worth the wait, but I think we all wanted to see the teen version of our leggy roommate in his running shorts.

"There aren't any," she said, her mouth drawing into a tense line. "He quit in the middle of track season freshman year. Said he wasn't good enough to compete in high school. I can't tell you if that was his idea, or Jameson's." Laurel looked like she wanted to say more, but just sighed and rolled her eyes and grabbed the last book, so she could show off his senior picture.

Graduating seniors got full-color pictures, so once again we saw young

Indiana

in bright hues. The suit and tie they made him wear contrasted with his alt-scene vibe, but he worked it better than some of the other graduating seniors. Last year's hairstyle had been allowed to grow out, softening the edges around his face. Laurel identified his hair color, a kind of seafoam green, as Manic Panic's Mermaid. Only a few more piercings had been added, including the tongue bar according to Laurel.

Like his classmates, his name was printed under his photo, rather than listed to the side, along with his nickname –

Indiana J. Norman, "Indie"

. Unlike them, however, there were no school activities or personal quotes listed.

The something that I couldn't quite place about his last picture was here, too. I was still trying to figure it out, but Laurel pulled back the book and flipped to the last marked page. When she settled the book on a series of Homecoming pictures, Preston bristled. It was easy to pick out Indie's distinctive looks among the photos of teens in their suits and dresses; he'd shot up to his full-height by senior year, and no one wore as much body jewelry as he did.

In this picture, he and Laurel stood in formal wear with coordinating wrist corsages and boutonnieres. For such a perpetual slouch, the almost model-like proportions of his body sure did look nice in a suit. And Laurel's gamine frame, sheathed in a simple satin number, cut an elegant figure. The couple next to them was a sharp contrast. The girl's frilly confection of a dress gave the appearance of a middle schooler who'd snuck in. The boy's sloppy mop of curls and loosened tie made him look like a schlub in comparison to Indie. They hugged up on each other to the point of dry humping, as if making up for the respectable, yet companionable, distance between the best friends.

The other boy in the picture seemed to account for Preston's negative reaction.

"That's fucking Jameson, isn't it?" Efrain said. He looked again. "He looks like that guy messing with you that one night."

"Yup," she said. "Michael Jameson." I picked up the first Bishop yearbook and flipped through the juniors to find the shithead's picture, but she shook her head and pointed me to the sophomores. "He flunked freshman year," she cackled. "One of those gifted kids that flew through everything and didn't know how to handle things when they got challenging. Just barely made it out of high school."

"You said they'd been together since freshman year," Efrain said, pointing back to the group photo. "Why is he hanging on this girl?"

"Oh yeah, Haiden Coleman," she said. "Indie used to call her 'Hoyden' behind her back. They hated each other."

"Jameson's beard?" Preston asked.

"That's what he told Indie," she said. "And he believed him for two fucking years, even after I told him that Jameson tried to feel me up.

Twice

." She pointed at Haiden's stomach. "She was two months preggo when this was taken. Her parents talked her into having it 'taken care of' over Christmas break."

"That shit's cold," I said.

"The only reason I knew any of it was because she was convinced that we were friends." Laurel rolled her eyes. "She and Jameson split after graduation because her parents bribed her with a brand new car if she went to school out of state. Put a second mortgage on their house to get her away from that piece of shit."

"So, wait," Preston said. "Did Indie know about them?"

"After I told him about Jameson knocking up Haiden," she said. "But, they still stayed together for over eight years, and it was Jameson that left."

"When he knocked up that other chick?" Preston asked.

"Yeah, the one that refused to have it 'taken care of'," Laurel said.

"Indie mentioned that toad's habit of shoving his dick in anything that walked and impregnating it," Preston said. "The fuckwad had the balls to tell Indie that he missed him."

"Missed Indie paying for everything, more like," Laurel growled. "But, I so fucking love this picture. Pissed Jameson off that someone snagged a picture of him with Indie."

"Even though there were two people between them?" Preston asked.

"He was

so

in the closet, and Indie

so

wasn't," she said. "You know he came out in the boys' locker room during second period on the first day at high school?" She chuckled at our shocked expressions. "But, yeah, Jameson didn't want there to be photographic evidence of their relationship in case someone got the idea that he was into the D. Pitched a massive fucking fit when yearbooks came out." Her smile turned downright evil. "Worth every damn penny."

"For the yearbook?" Efrain asked.

"For bribing the yearbook staff," she answered. "Sold more ads than anyone on staff, I wasn't even in journalism!"

"So, what am I being rewarded for?" Preston said, once her evil giggles had subsided.

Laurel pulled out her phone and swiped through a few screens before turning it around for him to see. One of the pictures Preston had taken of him and Indie was on her screen. "I tagged him in

all

of them on Facebook. You have no idea how thrilled his mother is!"

Preston cocked his head to the side. "I just took some pictures," he said, his confusion evident. Laurel pinched his cheek. "What's so big about taking pics of friends?"

"Everything," she said.

I pulled out my phone and opened Facebook. Lately, more of the pics in Preston's feed featured Indie. I tapped on one of the more recent ones and tilted the screen toward Efrain.

"Damn."

"That's what I said,' Preston giggled.

It had been a surprise seeing Indie suited up. Preston even got some shots of him presenting his research with Professor Collins and Mike, looking more confident than he'd been in the lectures I'd attended over the summer.

And then it hit me.

I turned back to Indie's school photos.

He wasn't smiling,

I realized. Somewhere between eighth and eleventh grade, Indie stopped smiling in photos, his face becoming a cold, expressionless mask instead. I flipped back through Preston's pictures, noting the change. Indie hadn't returned to the grinning thirteen-year-old goofball, but cracks were starting to show in his mask. The Iceman had begun to thaw.

No wonder Laurel was happy.

"He hasn't been the easiest person to be around," she said. "I know it's impossible to undo everything that shitstain did, but you've all helped bring back the guy I remember. I thought you deserved to know a little about who Indie was before..." She nabbed Preston in a hug and gave him a big, dramatic kiss on the cheek.

Laurel busied herself with gathering her yearbooks and slipping them back into her satchel, breaking our little moment. A bottle rum materialized from her satchel, along with cake mix and frosting.

"Alright, boys. Who wants to help me booze up some cupcakes?"

~*~*~*~

"You're insane," I said. "You know that, right?"

Indie shrugged. "Perhaps."

"You're really going to do it."

"Indeed," he replied.

"But, it's fucking..." I gestured at the sign above the store's entrance and just barely choked out the rest of the sentence, "

Spencer's

."

"And you're coming in with me."

I shuddered.

As if we hadn't learned our lesson last Christmas, Indie and I had left our holiday shopping to the last damn minute, and thus found ourselves trapped in a fucking mall. I'd plowed through most of my list last week, but I still had a few things left. More importantly, I still had to get my sister something. I'd been trying to figure out what to do because I'd never hear the end of it if I got her a damn gift card like I did last year. Zoe had been hard to buy for ever since she hit puberty. Shit had been easy when all Juaquin and I had to do was get her something pink and frilly. Now, we had to put in actual effort, as if buying a Barbie doll wasn't effort enough for a teenaged male.

But, for the first time in four years, I had a decent idea.

You see, Cory and Rice... erm... Adrian had been going on about these fucking charm bracelets that women in Texas lost their shit over. Adrian had said it was like a gift for yourself as much as the chick. "Dude, you fuckin' buy her the damn bracelet, then buy the fuck out of the charms any time you have to give her something. Hell, they'll make a damn wishlist, so you don't even have to

think

about what you're buying."

Cory agreed. "And, if you fill up the bracelet, you buy another one and fill that shit up, too." Apparently, Elaine Card owned enough charm bracelets to cover her arms, from wrist to elbow, on both sides. "And, if you run out of charms, you buy a different brand and buy the fuck out of those."

I had made the mistake, however, of saying that I should buy one for Zoe, as that led to a lot of, "Who's Zoe?"

I was still kicking myself for not telling Cory to keep my baby sister a secret because he'd not only fucking told the guys about her, but had showed the Brain Trust the fucking pictures that they'd taken with his phone over Thanksgiving. I'd realized too late that he'd never had a sister, of any degree of attractiveness, and had never had to deal with his friends going on about how hot she was (having to listen to his female friends and not-straight guy friends gush about his hot as fuck brothers doesn't count).

Then he just

had

to tell them that Zoe looked just like Mom, which required photographic evidence.

Which he had.

When the fuck did he take a selfie with my mom?

So, now I had been saddled with yet another social group that wouldn't shut the fuck up about

Jailbait Zoe

and

Lena the MILF

.

And add insult to injury, Cory was all like

Fun Fact: 'Rain looks just like his dad

, and Lithgow... I mean, Mitch (going to first-name basis with the Brain Trust was a stupid idea, no matter what Baker... fucking hell... Paul thinks) had to stir the pot by asking if Cory thought Dad was hot and thought it was the most hilarious thing ever when Cory said, "Sorry,

vato

, but Bon's kind of a DILF."

Which required photographic evidence.

Which he had.

When the fuck did he take a selfie with my dad?

So, yeah, charm bracelet for my jailbait sister...

The thought of never having to put actual effort into gift-giving for years, maybe even decades, appealed to me. Even Indie had acknowledged the genius of my plan and decided to come along. Misery loves company and all that shit, but really, I think he just wanted to take the easy way out with Laurel's Christmas present. And since Cory and Preston were tied up tonight with end-of-semester GSA business, we figured we might as well deal with it while they were busy before mall conditions worsened.