“Dude, you would not even believe what the last hour of my life has been like.” Carter skirted past Sophia like she wasn’t radiating anger and hoisted himself up on a ledge in the apartment. “Have you ever been at the wrong place at the wrong time?” he asked everyone in the room.
“Every second of my life, man,” Xander replied without looking up from what he was typing on his laptop, his beanie pulled low.
“Carter,” Sophia said as she grabbed his arm and tugged on him. He didn’t budge an inch. “They have their own work to do.”
“No, we don’t,” Xander said. “Not until we hear why Carter was late.”
“My car wouldn’t start, and when I finally got it going and started to reverse, there were nuns in my rearview mirror. And I’m not gonna tell some nuns to move, so I just let them continue with their conversation, but I’m pretty sure one of them said ‘Fuck you,’ so I don’t even know if they were real nuns. They could’ve just been some chicks in costumes—”
“Okay, you can take him now,” Xander told Sophia.
Sophia grimaced. “And we need to get started if you’re going to pass the quiz tomorrow.”
“I don’t know why he has to quiz us every week,” said Carter. “Like, what’s the psychology behind the stress he puts us under? It’s gotta be damaging, right?”
We all looked around at one another. He kind of had a point.
“Maybe you can ask him tomorrow,” Sophia answered. “I’m sure that’ll go over well. Now come on. We can study in my room.”
“Fine, fine,” Carter muttered before sliding off the ledge and retrieving his backpack where he’d dropped it. He cast another look at us and then did a double take. “Hey, wait, you’re that guy,” he said, pointing a finger at Xander.
Xander squirmed, looking uncomfortable under the scrutiny. “I am a guy, yes.”
Carter rolled his eyes. “No, you’re the guy. The one who tried to set the library on fire.”
My brow furrowed, but it seemed everyone else knew what Carter was referring to because they stared at Xander, mouth agape.
“That was you?” Toby asked, his voice sounding accusatory.
“Holy shit,” Aniyah breathed. “You’re not just pretending to be an asshole. You actually are one.”
“Hold on a damn minute,” Xander barked as he put his laptop on the ground and sat up straighter. “One, I’m not pretending.”
“I know, that’s what I just said,” Aniyah quipped.
Xander stared daggers at her. “And two, I didn’t try to set the library on fire. It was a cycle of unfortunate mishaps that nearly collided to form a devastating disaster, but thankfully this school’s security team isn’t a bunch of asshats, and everything worked out just fine.”
“The top floor of the library was closed for a whole semester. We lost an entire section of primary sources about the Balkans,” lamented Toby.
“Oh,” Xander said. “Then you’re welcome, because that sounds boring as fuck.”
“What the hell are we talking about, libraries?” My question was treated as if it were rhetorical, but I truly wanted an answer. None came. “This is why you didn’t want to meet there to work on our project, isn’t it?”
“It’s not as much about my wants as it is about school-mandated restrictions. They refer to it as probation, but I like to consider it more of a guide for avoiding prison. They said in exchange for my complete cooperation, they’d keep my identity under wraps, but”—Xander raised his hand in Carter’s direction—“apparently not.”
“I know everything,” Carter explained. “It’s a gift.”
“How’d they find out it was you?” Sophia asked. “Were you caught in the act?”
“It was the librarian, wasn’t it?” Carter asked. “She framed you.”
“Framed in the sense that I was in the frame of the camera they have monitoring that floor,” Xander answered. When everyone continued looking at him in silence, he groaned in frustration and rubbed a hand over his face. “It was an accident. Sometimes I get a little…frazzled. It’s hard to turn my brain off. But I’ve found that watching a flame flicker can help me zone out. It’s like meditation.”
“No, being a pyromaniac is what it’s like,” Aniyah said.
Xander shook his head like he was used to people not understanding. “I don’t usually even set things on fire. Watching the flame of a lighter is typically enough, but it ran out of fluid, so I had to use matches. The librarian must’ve seen what I was doing and came up the stairs screaming. She startled me—”
“Damn librarian in that section’s a nuisance,” Carter chimed in, his voice dripping with disdain, like it was her fault the library almost burned down.
“Yes,” Xander said, clearly happy to have someone on his side. “She is. Not for this, necessarily, but she’s not an innocent. I’m pretty sure she makes voodoo dolls of students when she’s not stirring her cauldron and collecting cats. Anyway, the match dropped onto a notebook I had on the floor, the paper caught fire, and I panicked, so I kicked it toward the stacks. Since she was focused on yelling at me, she didn’t notice what was happening at first, and I froze for a second. That’s all it took for the fire to spread to the shelves and the Balkans were history. Literally. It was a total accident.”
“I can’t believe they let you stay enrolled here after that,” Sophia said. “No offense.”
“None taken. And they wouldn’t have, except my dad said he’d pay for the repairs and a few other upgrades. And hey, it gives him another way to tell me I’m a fuckup every time we speak. It’s a win for everyone.”
“Doesn’t sound like much of a win for you.” Aniyah’s voice was low and soft. She sounded almost…compassionate.
Xander shrugged. “I get to stay in school.”
“True.”
“Well, in my opinion, you didn’t do enough damage.” Carter walked over and held out his fist for Xander to bump. “Not all heroes wear capes, my man.”
Xander looked at Carter’s fist curiously before giving it a soft bump. “Thanks. I think.”
“Okay, Carter, story time’s over,” Sophia admonished. “We have work to do.”
“Coming, Mother,” Carter whined as he winked at us. “You guys going to be here a while? We can hang out after Professor Scrooge is done with me.”
“Hey, you’re the one who wants my help, jackass.”
Carter turned to look at Sophia. “Can we be real here? When I asked you to study with me, what I meant was will you let me copy your homework, write all my papers, and let me look over your shoulder on quiz and test days? I never expected any of this actual studying crap.”
She put both hands on her hips. “Why would I ever agree to that?”
“Because I’m a football player and you’re super hot.”
“How do either of those things translate into me doing all your work for you?”
“It’s unwise to ask questions you don’t want answers to,” Aniyah warned.