Manties in a Twist (The Subs Club Book 3) (14 page)

Zac moved his hands all over the surface of the balloon, making squeegee sounds. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Miles wincing. Zac squeezed the balloon. “I wanna bat now.”

We switched places, and the baseball game continued for some time. I convinced Dave and Gould and eventually even Miles to participate. At one point I was pitching, and Miles, crouched in the catcher position behind our throw-cushion home plate, started doing all these weird gestures. Pinching his nose, pulling his ear, holding up two fingers, then three, then four. Puffing his cheeks out.

“What are you
doing
?” I asked.

Zac turned to look at Miles.

It was so rare to see Miles do anything silly that the rest of us didn’t know what the hell to do. We all burst out laughing at the same time. Miles looked embarrassed but was smiling. “What? I’m just communicating with you.”

Zac put down the “bat” and placed his hands on Miles’s head. Dragged them along Miles’s face until Miles’s cheeks were squished. “You’re weird.”

“I know,” Miles said through fish lips.

“Your dad has
always
been weird, Zac,” Dave informed him.

That cracked Zac up, and man, I freaking loved it. Little kids were the shit.

We played ball awhile longer, until we were all tired and had had one too many close calls with some decorative glass thingie on the bookshelf. Then Drix took Zac out to the backyard to water the garden, and the rest of us sat down.

I plopped onto the couch next to Miles and let my hand flop so it smacked his stomach. “Look at you, all being a dad.”

He ducked his head, smiling.

Dave whistled innocently. “I guess having Drix around doesn’t hurt either.”

“Oh, it hurts,” Miles said. “Believe me.”

It took us all a second. Then I laughed. “Miles made a sex joke.”

He lifted his chin. “I’m not unversed in double entendres.”

Dave was scoping out the bookshelf, which had about eight million parenting books. “Zac’s a
really
cool kid.”

Miles seemed like he could have exploded with pride. “He’s incredible. Though—” he glanced around as though Zac might be listening “—he is one of
those
children.”

Dave turned. “One of
what
children? The Goldshire six?”

Miles sighed. “The ones who say creepy things, and then you submit their eeriest lines to BuzzFeed for some asinine article.”

Dave and I exchanged a glance. I turned back to Miles. “Um, more info, dude?”

“Like the other evening he dropped his truck down the basement stairs, because someone—and I won’t mention names, but it was Drix—left the basement door open. Now, Zac knows he’s not supposed to go into the basement, but instead of calling for me, he stood at the top of the stairs until I noticed. And when I approached, I heard him say, ‘tomorrow.’ Not to me, but to the blackness at the bottom of the steps. ‘Who are you talking to?’ I asked. And he goes, ‘The white lady.’ I wasn’t sure who he meant. He calls Ms. Brennan, his teacher, the white lady, because she’s one of about two white teachers at the whole school. But I knew Ms. Brennan wasn’t in the basement.”

Dave laughed. “So who was he talking to?”

Miles shook his head. “Who knows? But now I’m terrified my basement plays host to some disheveled Victorian ghost with a bruised neck and unfinished business here on earth. Drix loves it, of course. He bought a ghost-hunting kit.”

I got up to get a drink. Saw a note on the refrigerator whiteboard.
Love you through all the ages. – Diaemus
. Which I was pretty sure was Drix’s vampyre name. I grinned. So I wasn’t the only one who was gross and mushy. I wondered briefly if D ever said stuff like that to Dave. I couldn’t really imagine D saying “I love you” to anything except maybe a plate of steak tartare.

All Miles had in his fridge was prune juice, milk, and water, so I grabbed a bottled water and headed back to the living room. Sat in the armchair this time.

Drix and Zac came in a few minutes later. Zac took his sandals off at the door, but Drix just headed for the kitchen. “Shoes off!” Miles called, without even looking up.

“Sorry,” Drix called back. He shuffled back to the door and removed his shoes.

Miles smiled and rolled his eyes at the rest of us. “It’s
him
I have to worry about.”

Drix entered and sat beside Miles. Took his hand and then bent his ridick-tall body to rest his head on Miles’s shoulder. “What are you saying?”

Miles gripped his arm and shook it gently. “I’m asking for tips on how to train my vampyre.”

Drix laughed, looking a little embarrassed. Drix had probably the best embarrassed laugh of anyone I’d ever met. Hard to believe the dude was a frealz sadist. He lifted his head and kissed Miles’s cheek. “Sorry. I’ll learn.”

Zac climbed onto the couch on Miles’s other side, braced his hands on Miles’s shoulder, and kissed his other cheek. “Is, um . . . is . . .” Zac scrubbed Miles’s scalp with his tiny palm and almost whispered: “Is Drix staying here tonight?”

Miles glanced at Drix. “
Is
Drix staying here tonight?”

Drix nodded. “Drix could definitely stay here tonight.”

So . . . probs the cutest family of all time.

We talked some more about werewolves and about Monroe Elementary and a computer game called
Thinking Up
that taught reading and story structure.

I didn’t miss the way Drix occasionally dug his nails into Miles’s arm, or the way Miles straightened just a little when he did.

Like, holy actual shit. We
were
a family. And our family kept growing. This wasn’t even something I could have envisioned a few years ago: sitting here in Miles’s house with Miles’s
son
.

I got a flash of pain, of
something’s missing
, but it was gone quick. Hal would have loved this. He would’ve ragged on Miles for settling down and becoming a dad, but he would have, like, been
thrilled
. Hal had loved kids. For the general safety of all involved, it was probably for the best he’d never had any of his own. But he’d been good with them.

I watched Miles lean against Drix with a long sigh. I caught his eye and smiled. He smiled back. I got these moments sometimes where I, like,
knew
one of my friends was thinking the same thing I was. Made me feel good to have that connection. It seemed like something that would always be there, no matter what else changed.

That evening, Ryan was in bed early, reading
Meg: Primal Waters
, so I spent some time writing a fake review for a sprinkler system on Amazon, hoping it would catch on and encourage others to start fake reviewing it. Then I broke out my guitar and worked on “Fast Car.”

I still wasn’t tired, and I thought maybe Ryan was more interested in megalodons right now than sex, so I went into the back room we were using for storage and stood among the boxes and piles of junk.

There was a box of my old school stuff somewhere, which, yeah, it’s not like I ever did anything that impressive in school, but my mom had saved everything. And I’d kept the box with me because I guess I’d figured at some point it would be fun to go back and read my fifth-grade essay about the trip to the turkey farm or whatever. I found the box buried under lots of other boxes of, like, Ryan’s and my board games and extra dishware and stuff we hadn’t found a place for yet.

There was a lot of random crap inside, including an essay I’d written for freshman English about how I wanted to be a museum curator. Did
not
remember that dream, so there was a small chance I’d plagiarized it from someone on the baseball team. I didn’t see what I was looking for, and I was about to give up when I spotted the corner of a crayon drawing underneath a college tennis plaque.

I uncovered the drawing, and sure enough—it was “Snow Wanderer.” Four pages of glory. The date was twenty years ago. The drawings were even scribblier than I’d remembered, and the story was a little weak on spelling, syntax, and punctuation.

Once there was a boy who hated lima beans and I want a dog.

Then the boy was exaped into the SNOW!

He wonderd all winter with NO COAT and his mom was at home.

He new knew he was going to starve and cryed help me but no one heard. Him.

Then he found a snoman and the snoman had ka carrots nose and the boy ate the nose.

The next page just said.
HA HA HA.

Zukinis for eyes in the snoman and the boy eat ate zukinis.

He did not starve.

His moms bought him a coat.

THE END.

I took “Snow Wanderer” out to the kitchen with me and made a sandwich. Then I grabbed my guitar again and started fooling around. It took me a while to come up with a tune. And then I started tackling lyrics, trying to write a song about the Snow Wanderer. I didn’t want to make it a literal adaptation of my comic—no zukinis—but I wanted something kind of sad and weird and creepy and funny.

Ryan came out after a while to ask what I was working on. I showed him the comic.

“Oh my God.” He grinned at the pages. “This is
hilarious
.” He cracked up suddenly. “What the hell is up with his mom depriving him of coats? Sorry,
moms
. Wow, you were progressive.”

“He had a tough life, okay? That’s the whole point.”

He flipped through again. “Did you, by any chance, hate lima beans at the time? And want a dog?”

“Still true. Anyway, I’m writing a song about him.”

“Ooh. A ‘Snow Wanderer’ song?”

I nodded and played a few chords. Looked up at Ryan. “Don’t laugh. I actually want this to be kind of good. But you can hear what I have so far, if you want.”

He didn’t laugh. He just sat down to listen.

The Subs Club meeting on Sunday was crowded. Maya was there, plus I’d convinced Ryan to come, since he hadn’t been to a meeting in ages. I was rocking some lace panties under my jeans, and I kept reaching back to make sure my shirt was totally pulled down and covering my waist.

Maya gave me a high five when I sat down. “What up, K-snoot?”

“Nothin’, M-skillet. I like your bag.” She had a messenger bag with a real cute kraken on it.

Lots of our online members were women, but Miles and Gould and Dave and me were the ones who met in person and made decisions about the club. So now Dave had basically merged the Subs Club with Finger Bang, and Maya reported back and forth between the two groups.

Maya was a freaking trip—a good trip, I mean. She had this giant cloud of black hair and moles like polka dots on her neck. She sniffed a lot because she had allergies, but it wasn’t the long wet sniffs you usually heard from people with allergies—it was these short little cokehead sniffs.

Dave kicked off the meeting with, “So Cobalt’s closing.”

“Don’t remind me.” I folded my arms on the table. “Now my mom’s always gonna be at Riddle, so I’ll never be able to go there again.”

Miles shuddered. “I say good riddance.”

“Why’s it closing?” Gould asked.

Dave played with a Bobby’s Discount Dentist pen, clicking it over and over. “Cobalt is closing because it’s the moldering diaper on the Unabomber’s rashed behind.”

Gould snatched the pen from Dave and tossed it aside. “Yeah, but they have free snacks. Like, old-school stuff—Nutter Butters. Fun Dip.”

Miles looked at him sharply. “We all need to stop being so snack-motivated. The phalluses of every man in that club have taken a ‘fun dip’ in innumerable orifices.”

I nudged Ryan and spoke in a low voice. “Write this down for a concept: dirty picture book called
Isabelle’s Innumerable Orifices
.”

He snorted. He’d been texting with Amanda since we got here, and I kept catching the others giving him looks of disapproval. Which was frustrating, because come on, it wasn’t like they never played on their phones during meetings. But I kinda wished Ryan would try to make a good impression.

Dave leaned back. “Cobalt’s status as the Bates Motel of BDSM clubs aside, I don’t know if you guys caught the story going around about the woman who was raped there last year? Gould, I know you heard. Kamen?”