Rooming With My Monster

The bus smelled like diesel and wet socks, and I'd been breathing through my mouth for the last forty minutes. Across the aisle, Marcus had his headphones on and his eyes closed, pretending to sleep so nobody would talk to him. Smart man. I should've done the same, but I'd made the mistake of bringing a book, which meant I had to keep my head down and my eyes on the page while the rest of them threw balled-up receipts and made jokes I couldn't quite hear but understood the shape of.

Then Mrs. Okafor stood up at the front with her clipboard, and the whole bus went quiet in that way it does when someone's about to read out the room assignments.

"Listen up," she said, adjusting her glasses. "The hotel's smaller than we expected. Some of you are going to have to double up."

A ripple of groans. I kept my eyes on my book, a paperback I'd read twice already because I liked knowing how things ended. That's the thing about me. I like knowing.

"Benji," she called out. "You're with Leo."

The book slipped in my hands. I caught it before it hit the floor, but not before half the bus turned to look at me, and not before I heard Leo's laugh from the back row, low and easy, like he'd been waiting for exactly this.

---

Leo was one-ninety-three. I know because he'd told everyone on the first day of school, back in September, when he'd walked into homeroom and announced it like a challenge. I was one-seventy-three. I know because I'd measured myself against the doorframe that same week, hoping for something better, and gotten the same number I'd gotten the year before.

He was twenty. Held back twice, though nobody said it to his face. He had shoulders like a door and hands that could palm a basketball like it was a grapefruit, and he wore his hair in a buzz cut that made his head look like something carved out of rock. When he walked down the hall, people moved. Not out of respect. Out of arithmetic. They calculated the distance between themselves and him and decided they'd rather be somewhere else.

I'd known him since we were kids. We'd gone to the same primary school, the same middle school, the same everything, because this town was small enough that you couldn't escape anyone, even if you wanted to. And I'd wanted to. God, I'd wanted to.

The thing about Leo was that he wasn't stupid. That's what people got wrong. They saw the size of him and assumed there wasn't much going on behind the eyes. But Leo noticed everything. He noticed when I flinched. He noticed when I laughed too loud at something that wasn't funny. He noticed when I couldn't look at him, which was most of the time, and he filed it away somewhere, and he used it later.

He'd used it last spring, at a party I hadn't wanted to go to. I'd gone because Marcus had promised he'd stay with me, and Marcus had gotten drunk and wandered off, and I'd ended up in a back room with Leo and two other guys I didn't know, and Leo had decided it was time to teach me something. I don't like to think about it. I don't like to remember the sound of his voice, or the way he'd laughed, or the way the other guys had laughed too, not because they thought it was funny but because they were afraid of him. I don't like to remember how I'd just stood there and let it happen.

He'd apologized the next day. That was the worst part. He'd found me by my locker and said he was sorry, that he'd been drunk, that it wouldn't happen again. And I'd nodded. I'd said it was fine. I'd said I didn't even remember it that well.

I remembered it every night for three months.

---

The hotel was called the Blue Horizon, which was funny because you couldn't see the horizon from anywhere in it. It was a six-story block of concrete with a pool out front that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the last decade. The lobby had a carpet the color of old mustard and a front desk manned by a woman who didn't look up from her phone when we walked in.

Mrs. Okafor handed out key cards. "Two to a room," she said. "Don't lose these. They're twenty dollars to replace."

I stood in line with my duffel bag over my shoulder and tried to think of a way out of this. Maybe I could say I was sick. Maybe I could say I'd forgotten my medication and needed to go home. Maybe I could just walk out the door and keep walking until I hit the next town, and nobody would notice until it was too late.

But I didn't do any of that. I took my key card when it was my turn, and I walked to the elevator, and I pressed the button for the fourth floor, and Leo got in behind me.

The doors closed. We were alone.

"Benji," he said.

I didn't look at him. I looked at the numbers above the door, counting down the floors.

"Benji," he said again. "Look at me when I'm talking to you."

I looked at him.

He smiled. It was the kind of smile that didn't reach his eyes, the kind that made you want to check your pockets to make sure you still had your wallet. "This is gonna be fun," he said. "Don't you think?"

The elevator dinged. The doors opened. I walked out first, fast, my key card already in my hand, and I found the room, and I unlocked the door, and I went inside, and I stood by the window with my back to the beds, listening to him come in behind me.

The room had two beds. Two nightstands. One lamp between them. A TV bolted to the wall. A bathroom with a door that didn't lock, I checked later, because of course it didn't.

Leo dropped his bag on the bed closest to the door. He sat down, and the mattress groaned under him, and he looked at me with those eyes that noticed everything, and he said, "You can have the other one. I don't care."

I didn't move.

"Relax," he said. "I'm not gonna do anything. We're roommates now. That means we gotta get along, right?"

I wanted to believe him. That was the problem. I always wanted to believe people, even when they'd given me every reason not to. I wanted to believe that he'd changed, that the apology had been real, that this was just a coincidence, a random assignment, nothing more.

But I knew better. And he knew I knew better. That was the game.

I sat down on the other bed and pulled out my book and pretended to read, and he watched me for a long time without saying anything, and the silence got so thick I could feel it pressing against my ears.

Then he said, "You still have that thing? From last spring?"

I didn't answer.

"I think about it sometimes," he said. "Not in a weird way. Just, you know. It was funny."

I turned the page. I hadn't read a word.

"Yeah," I said. "Funny."

And that was the moment I understood that this week wasn't going to be a trip. It was going to be something else entirely, something I couldn't name yet, something that was already happening, already in motion, and I was already inside it, and there was no way out but through.