The Hurricane Read Free

grin.
    Every summer, Roby’s parents squirreled away their son in a
never ending string of self-betterment camps while they spent their time at
various locales abroad.
    Roby looked away from Daniel and out over the courtyard.
Kids shuffled by with deflated, first-day-of-class backpacks on.
    “…”
    “I’m sorry,” said Daniel. “What camp?”
    He knew what camp.
    “It was a vocal retreat,” Roby whispered.
    “Singing camp, right?”
    “What did you do with your summer?” Roby asked.
Daniel listened for any change in his friend’s voice, any sign of perfect
pitch, but noted none.
    Daniel shrugged. “Worked
at the carwash. Got in a fistfight with Hunter. Pissed off my sister to
no end. Roasted on the beach.”
    “Did you see that girl again?”
    “Nah.” Daniel tried to make it sound as if the loss were
incidental. That girl referred to a fling the previous summer with a
tourist from Georgia. Her parents had rented a house on the beach for a week,
and Daniel had labored into first base with her, panting and sweating and not
even thinking about leading off for second.
    “See anyone else?”
    “Not really.”
    “ I met someone,” Roby said.
    “No shit?” Daniel felt immediately bad for the way he’d said
it. Even worse for the way he looked his friend up and down, disbelieving. The
primary reason the two of them were fast friends was because they couldn’t keep
up with anyone else in the cool department. Daniel’s problem (his own
self-assessment) was that he was too normal . He had tried fitting in
with a few cliques: the jocks, the preps, the hipsters, the gamers—but in every
case he had felt like he was donning a costume and playing make-believe. His
comfortable attire of t-shirt (not vintage), jeans (not skinny), and modern
sneakers (not retro) left him looking dull and uninteresting. Anything else he
tried just made him feel like a spectacle.
    “No shit,” Roby said proudly—ignoring Daniel’s complete and
absolute lack of belief.
    Roby’s problem (once again, according to Daniel’s
assessment) was his parents’ expectations. He was the smartest kid in school,
but mostly because he worked his ass off. He didn’t have time for friends, even
though everyone knew him. They jockeyed for desks near his, crowded around him
in class because he was known as a human cheat sheet. He studied too hard to
get anything wrong, and was too overly polite to hide his answers. He wasn’t
exactly revolting, just awkward and soft of body—but then half the kids in
their school were overweight to some degree, and most of them still
managed to score with the opposite sex.
    “You meet her at math camp?” Daniel turned and started
walking toward his first class. Roby followed along. “Did she cube your root?”
    Roby laughed. “I don’t even know what that means.”
    Neither did Daniel.
    “And no, I met her at the vocal retre—at singing camp,” he said, shrugging his sagging backpack further up his shoulder.
    “So she likes sopranos?”
    Roby punched Daniel in the arm. “I’m a tenor , ass.”
    “Whatever.”
    “She and I are kinda steady, actually.”
    Daniel stopped outside the English building and turned
around. He searched his friend for a sign that he might be joking, but came up
empty.
    “No shit?”
    Roby shook his head.
    “Where’s she live?”
    “Columbia.”
    “How’re you gonna see each other?”
    A gulf had opened between them. Daniel could suddenly feel
it. The earth beneath Beaufort had become a void with just a thin shell on top.
One crack, and he’d plummet forever.
    “She has a car, so she might come down some weekends. And
Mom says she’ll take me halfway, up to Orangeburg, to meet her now and then.”
    “Your mom knows about her?”
    “We all had lunch together.”
    “Who?” Daniel heard splintering beneath his feet.
    “Me and her and our parents.” Roby danced out of the way as
a thick plume of jocks burst out of the English building. Daniel tried to move
but was