“Cap on or cap off?”
“Cap on.”
“Full-fledged insertion” — I treaded carefully — “or . . . ?”
“I think he just wedged it between Tyler’s ass cheeks,” Roby said. “I mean, I say ‘just,’ but . . .”
“That’s crazy,” I said.
“Yep.” Roby pushed off from the planter and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Wanna see a picture of my bunny?”
I hadn’t recovered from the pencil sharpener in the butt hole. Now I was supposed to switch gears to a bunny?
“You have a bunny?” I asked.
He looked at me like I was nuts. “A bunny? Who do you take me for?”
“Dude . . .”
Roby jabbed me with his elbow. “Your face. You kill me. Lily has a bunny, not me.”
Lily as in Lily Lily? Stevie’s (un-) (I hope) sex slave? Since when was Roby friends with Lily?
Roby lowered his phone. “I don’t actually have a picture of it, but it’s cute. Fluffy.”
“So Lily has a picture of her rabbit, and Lily showed this picture to you?”
“No, Natalia showed it to me. She’s in Ms. Summers’s class with us?”
I knew who he was talking about. Natalia, who was super cute and who asked Stevie where the girl lobsters were while the boy lobsters were busy duking it out.
Forget Lily. Since when was Roby friends with Natalia?
“Lily posted a picture of her bunny on Snapchat, which Natalia saw, which Natalia showed me,” Roby explained.
“Do Lily and Natalia cuddle Lily’s bunny?” I asked.
“How the hell should I know?” Roby said. “You think I’ve got a BunnyCam?”
My dick seemed to be getting a little stiff. Frickin’ BunnyCam, promising visions of cuddly Natalia.
Redirect! Redirect! I told myself. But also, remember to find Natalia on Snapchat. Lily, too. Why not?
“All right, well, do Lily and Natalia cuddle you? On the sly, obviously?”
“Lily doesn’t,” Roby said. “She’s out of my league. But Natalia . . .” He popped an invisible collar. “Let’s just say she doesn’t yet, but she will.”
“Of course,” I said, although I had the ungenerous thought that Natalia was as much out of Roby’s league as Lily. Natalia was out of both of our leagues.
I saw Mom’s car turn into the parking lot. Soon she’d pull up to the building.
“So, we should hang sometime,” I said, trying to sound casual. “Like, outside of school.”
“Yeah?” Roby said. He grinned. “I mean, yeah. Totally.”
Mom and I aren’t poor, but our house is small and messy. Books are piled up everywhere, and the pantry is stocked with Pop-Tarts and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos and half-eaten boxes of stale cereal.
Roby’s house is huge, with an entryway and a wine cellar in addition to all the normal rooms. The ceilings are high, and the lighting is airy and bright. Even the air smells fancy, thanks to a “scent diffuser” with a small fan that blows out cedar-scented air.
“Do you make your bed every day?” I asked Roby the first time I went over. “You do, don’t you?”
“You don’t?” Roby said.
“Ha. Funny boy.”
Both of Roby’s parents worked. Mr. Smalls had a normal “Hi, honey, I’m back from the office!” job, while Mrs. Smalls worked from home in order to be there when Roby got out of school.
Mrs. Smalls was very much a mom-type, with brown hair and a pear-shaped body. When Roby introduced me to her, she smiled warmly and gave us a snack of Perrier and fat salted cashews. The three of us sat together in the living room, and it was weird. We had to use coasters. The sofa wasn’t the sort you could wipe Cheetos dust on. I felt overly formal and couldn’t find a comfortable way to sit.
Also, we weren’t going to hang out with Roby’s mom the whole time, were we? Nothing against moms. Just saying.
I rolled my neck and told myself to get a grip. Grandmom and Granddad’s house was as nice as Roby’s. Cashews were cashews — though these were some crazy amazing cashews. I couldn’t get over how chubby they were.
On the coffee table sat a leather-bound photo album with Roby’s name embossed on the front. “Hey, look,” I said to Roby. “It’s a book all about you.”
Roby did a double take. “Wow. Yeah. I mean, now that you’ve pointed it out, it seems so obvious, but . . . wow.”
I told him with my eyes how clever he wasn’t. He smirked.
“It’s Roby’s baby book,” Mrs. Smalls said. “Would you like to see it, Paul?”
It was my turn to smirk. “It would be a pleasure and an honor.”
Mrs. Smalls made Roby move so that she was between us and opened the album on her lap. “I don’t know if he’s mentioned it, but Roby was born two months early.”
“Mom,” Roby groaned.
“Well, honey, it was a scary time,” she told him, all the while showing me photo after photo of tiny Roby in the NICU with wires sticking out of him. “He was in the intensive care unit for over a month.”
“Paul doesn’t care,” Roby said.
“Of course I care,” I chided. “I could look at your baby pictures all day.”
I regretted the words the moment they came out. Had I just given Mrs. Smalls the opening she’d been hoping for? Again, nothing against moms, but I already had one.
Also, Baby Roby was not a cute baby. At all. His legs were so thin that Roby’s mom could circle them with her thumb and forefinger, and they splayed open beneath his miniature diaper like the legs of a frog. He was tiny and wrinkled, and in every single picture he had his eyes closed and his head turned to the side. He looked like a shrunken movie star shielding himself from the paparazzi.
“He was hooked up to a mechanical ventilator, which helped him breathe because his own lungs weren’t strong enough to do the job,” Mrs. Smalls said. “And he was fed through a tube in his belly — see there? — although I breastfed him as well.”
“Mom,” Roby said.
“If he’d been born fifty years ago, even twenty-five years ago, he would have died.” She took Roby’s chin and wiggled it. “And then we wouldn’t have you with us. We couldn’t have that now, could we?”
The more of Roby’s baby photos I looked at, the more uncomfortable I became. Maybe it was because Roby, as an infant, was completely and utterly defenseless. Weak. I found myself thinking that Roby shouldn’t reveal his weakness to me like this, and that his mom should know better, too.
But where was this “show no weakness” mentality coming from? Of course Roby as a baby was weak. He was a baby. What next? Was I going to mentally pit baby Roby against a big, strong claw-clacking lobster?
Mrs. Smalls closed Roby’s baby album and set it on the coffee table. “When we were finally allowed to bring him home, he had to stay hooked up to an oxygen tank. The doctor called it his astronaut pack.” She paused. “I think Dr. Benton wanted me to think it was fun, setting off with a tiny baby and an oxygen tank. An adventure! But it was terrifying.”