"I don't get him at all. It's like he's got multiple personalities or something."

"I don't think they'd let him in here if he actually had MPD, Jenny."

"Well take a look at him."

This was a ritual we all went through whenever fresh meat came into the school. Not 'freshmen' kind of meat, but 'new kid who just moved from some other place' kind of meat. And when said new kid was actually at least a year older than us, it definitely raised a few eyebrows.

It was hard to take a look at a guy who wasn't in the lunchroom with myself, Jenny, Drew and Cheryl. I'd only seen him for a very brief moment in the cafeteria once before, when he poked his head in, turned right around and left for the library. I lifted my head up off of my hands and surveyed the area. Luckily I was gifted with being at a moderate height of six foot two, though there were still tons of guys (and a handful of girls, for that matter) who easily towered over me. Apart from the colourful and energetic murals painted by the Art Club and hundreds of kids younger than me sitting, eating and gossiping, I didn't see anyone who looked remotely out of place.

"So Travis," Cheryl said, turning to me and leaning her head into her hand. Her sandy blonde hair cascaded over her shoulder. "Sadie Hawkins Dance is coming up. Wanna go with me?"

"It's tempting, but I've got other plans."

The table next to us burst into laughter at something unrelated to our conversation. Niners, I don't really get them. Glad I grew out of that phase pretty quickly and saddled up with some tenth and eleventh graders. One particular boy caught my eye for a brief moment, dressed up in his Abercrombie and Fitch attire and trying to blend in with everyone else. Unfortunately, since this school wasn't known for it's students having rich parents, he only managed to make himself look more out of place than if he had come to school in a bunch of rags.

"That's the answer all the guys gave me today," Jenny said, sighing and playing with her own hair, which she had died red and purple a week before. I imagined that if they were in a quieter place I would hear it crinkle, since the dyes she put in it so often was probably killing it. I dyed my own from time to time, but I knew to leave it well enough alone and let the barber take care of it. Her honey-coloured eyes scanned over Drew and myself. "They're so intimidated when the girls have to ask the boys, eh?"

"I'm not intimidated," Drew replied, shoving his thumb into his chest, only covered by a white wife-beater. He was growing his hair out again. Good. He never looked good in the crew cut.

A bolt of lightning flashed through the windows while the rain had continued to pour. Despite our good moods, the weather seemed to be taking a turn for the worse. I blame global warming. And I hear that this winter is going to be the coldest Canada has seen in the last fifteen years. Luckily for me I liked the snow, and wished that it would replace all this rain we were getting soon.

I stabbed my fork into my Styrofoam container of poutine and slowly lifted it to let the excess gravy drip off. Unfortunately my cheese curd went with it. I should have gotten in line sooner. The gravy would've been hot enough to melt the cheese. But oh well, a favourite food is still a favourite food. I pushed the processed fries into my mouth and savoured the warmth of the reheated gravy.

"Well anyway, enough about that," I said after swallowing. "Yeah, that new guy's kinda—"

"What's his name, anyway?" Drew cut in.

Jenny looked up to the ceiling while she thought. The rafters overhead were painted white, as were the rest of the stone walls, to give the cafeteria the appearance of a large size overall, though the paintings on the walls messed that up a bit. "Simon, I think. Or at least something like that," she finally said.

"Anyway," I continued, stressing the word so that they'd avoid interrupting me again. "The new—Simon may be strange, but it's not like we've never met someone who wasn't antisocial before."

"But that's just it," Jenny added. "Haven't you seen him in College Math Twelve?" That was the math class we both shared and that Simon had popped into a few weeks ago. "He doesn't talk. At all."

"That's a lie," I replied. "He talks when Mister Jenkins calls on him. And he really knows his stuff."

"Well yeah, but other than that, do you hear him talk that much?"

The cafeteria was slowly quieting down as people left to find their lockers. I could hear Amy Winehouse's 'Rehab' playing over the intercom as I took a minute to think on what Jenny said. "Well there was that one time he told Jacob O'Grady to grow the fuck up."

Jake had deserved it, too. Him and his gang of friends were doing a bunch of practical jokes and so on that I stopped seeing around in maybe the seventh grade, and trying to get the rest of the class in on it. Fortunately for him, the rest of the class was more than willing to put off work to fool around. But when he tried to pull the same thing on Simon, there was a small, hushed outburst that goaded the class into a collective 'Ooh...' followed by some laughs over Simon's apparent 'freak out.' If they thought that was a freak out, I'd hate to see what they'd call 'downright psycho,' though I don't think they'd see that at the hands of Simon.

"That was only once," Drew said. He knew the story, considering his connections in the gossip vine due to his reputation as a womanizer.

"So?"

Cheryl leaned forward. "Don't you have another class with him?"

"Law. Next period, actually."

"And how does he act there?"

Now that they mentioned it, there was a major difference between the Simon in Law and the Simon in the Math period we had immediately after. "He's actually really talkative, though it's only with some people in the back. They joke around a lot."

"So within the five minutes it takes to go to a new class, he suddenly changes from happy to creepy."

"He's not creepy," I insisted.

"Why're you defending him, anyway?" Cheryl asked.

I grinned. "Well if I judged you right when you first started high school, I don't think we'd be friends now, would we?"

"Oh, don't remind me," she replied, changing the subject immediately. Anything to avoid the fact that she was a Grade A bitch in the ninth grade.

A few minutes later Jenny pushed the cardboard container for her salad aside and brushed at her purple turtleneck, checking for crouton crumbs. "I've gotta head up to my locker. If I get in shit with Mrs. Lieberman one more time I'll get detention." She stood up and stepped out of the bench, quickly followed by Cheryl, since it was only natural in this school that the girls do everything in pairs. It was something I never understood, but I figured I might as well go grab my books as well, since the poutine never tasted that good when it was cold.

"Hey," Drew said, reaching for my arm but restraining himself. He stood up along with me and got a little closer. "My parents are gone tonight. My aunt's gonna have a crotch monster popping out any day now and my mom's over there helping out. And my dad's on a business trip."

"Cool."

"So, uh...wanna come over tonight?"

I bit my lip and started walking to avoid suspicion, but kept my voice low. "I'll be there around seven."

---

Our math class had the desks arranged so that half of them were on one side of the room facing the windows on the opposite wall, and the other half was on the opposite side. It reminded me of a debating room, since those of us on the window side of the room had nothing to look at but the other side's faces and a blackboard the teacher never used. The rain was still coming down. I could hear it splattering against the window behind me.

The last few of us trickled into the classroom before the final bell rang. I looked over to the other side of the room, spying Simon with his nose in a book. He had it pressed flat against the desk while he read, so I couldn't see the title. But what grabbed me was that Cheryl was actually right. It took maybe five minutes for a regular student to go to his locker, grab his books, and get to the next class. In that five minutes time, Simon's happy-go-lucky personality from Law disappeared and changed into that of a quiet and withdrawn mathematical know-it-all. He wore a black long-sleeved shirt and faded blue jeans. It was plain. It was generic. It was invisible. As if he didn't want to be noticed.

Jenny poked my arm and gave me a sceptical look. I gave her an apathetic shrug and turned to the page in the textbook that was written on the board before opening my notebook and starting on the math problems. Our teacher hadn't arrived yet. Late as usual, though at least he had the decency to unlock the door so we weren't stuck out in the hall making a traffic problem.

The sound of something plastic hitting the ground and rolling caught my attention. A red pen skidded across the floor in front of me, rolling to the other side of the room and stopping under Simon's left Nike shoe. An echoing whisper filled the classroom like the flame of a candle. "Watch what he'll do next." "He's gonna freak out again." "This'll be good." "Shit, that's my good pen..."

Simon simply picked it up and looked over to our side of the classroom, raising a black eyebrow. Equally black hair sat on top of his head, messed up and shiny as if he had just come out of the rain. "Whose is this?" he asked out loud.

A redheaded girl a few seats over from me stood up and mumbled her apologies, crossing the room in her furry boots to retrieve it. My classmates seemed disappointed to seem him just hand it back to her and return to his book. He was quite the reader. I had seen inside of his backpack once before, and there was a miniature library in it. Unfortunately it seemed to get him in trouble during Math and Law when he was caught reading from his own books instead of the textbooks provided to him, but he was able to keep up with the classes well enough.

His grey eyes caught mine, and I realised I was staring. I looked back down to my book. Still on question One D. Considering there were fourteen more with their own small mini-questions, this would take all period, and probably a good hour at home. And when Mister Jenkins arrived with a winner's smirk on his face before taking a seat at his desk, I knew that's just what he had meant to do. Simon scrambled to hide his own book under the textbook, staring at his page and looking around for a pencil.

---

I drove into Drew's garage in my white, piece of crap Dodge before cutting the engine and stepping out with an overnight bag. I stepped over his dad's power tools and sidled beside my car with my backpack so I could get out. The garage door closed automatically. Drew knew I had arrived.

I walked up the stone path to his family's white bungalow house, ringing the doorbell to make it look like just a regular visit. The rain had cleared up a little earlier on, but now it was pouring again. Within the half-minute of walking through the rain, I had already gotten soaked. My hair fell into my eyes and restricted my vision before I brushed it aside. Drew opened the door and invited me in, giving me a towel to dry myself off with once I closed the door behind me. "Glad you came," he said with a nonchalant tone. "The 'rents are gone so often that it gets lonely sometimes."

After ordering a pizza we settled for a few rounds of Death Match on Halo 2, followed by munching on garlic sticks and straight up pepperoni and cheese pizza while watching House M.D. I could tell Drew was growing bored of the rerun already, with the way he kept jiggling his one leg inside of his Levi's and looking over to me to see if I was still watching. It vaguely reminded me of a kid that had to go pee really bad. I sighed and leaned back in the black leather sofa, waiting for the end credits to roll by. He tapped his fingers on the couch's arm and leaned away from me. He feet were twirled together, and his toes were writhing inside of his dirty white socks.

"Let's head upstairs," I told him after the show ended. "I've got a bit of homework to do, but I could probably do it during Spare tomorrow. I'm dead tired."

He led me through the hall to the staircase, passing photos of his parents' wedding and various other family members, himself included, mounted on baby blue walls. He was a cute kid back in the day. I never formally met him until about the sixth grade. We padded up the carpeted stairs in a half circle before reaching the second floor, and he pulled on a cord in the ceiling to let us go into his room in the attic. The walls hadn't been touched with any paint or decorations, instead just supporting the rafters. There was a bay window on one end of the large room, with his desk slid up against the opposite wall, and his bed in the middle.

Drew pulled me up the last step and closed the trap door. He didn't have to, but the way he urgently tugged at my fingers and interlaced them with his own sent the message across loud and clear. Up here the rain sounded like a dull roar of the ocean's waves. Very calming. I could hear his breathing get a little faster as I pulled my hand from his and stretched. My shirt rode up my stomach. Drew reached for the exposed skin but I stopped him, running my hand along his abs and pulling myself a little closer.

"Have you been working out?" I whispered into his ear before kissing it and sliding my tongue into the lobe. He quivered in delight every time I did that, as if it was the most satisfying thing of the entire experience. Drew bucked against my body with every shaky step we took in unison, trying to bring ourselves to the bed instead of just collapsing on the floor. "Been to the...gym a few times..." he sighed. I pulled his shirt over his head and nipped at his lower lip. My left hand traced over the erection in his denim jeans. He gasped and moaned simultaneously. It was lost in the soft roar of the wind and rain. I laid him down on the bed stomach up, kissing down his smooth chest. I unzipped his fly and looked back up into his green eyes. "You look great."