BY KEIGH AHR
Copyright is held by the author.
THE SOFA bed unfolded with grating creaks, as if its springs and hinges were inflicted with metallic arthritis. Blaine stepped back as the centre supports landed on his family’s living room carpet, and the teen retreated another step as he pulled the other half of the groaning bed down.
Olympia glared at the mattress. “Seriously?” she asked. Thin and with deep creases where it had been folded, the mattress looked to have the sleeping comfort of a gravel driveway.
“You think we’re an Airbnb?” Blaine replied. “Like I said, this is our only extra bed.”
“What about the basement?” Olympia asked. “Do you have any sleeping bags?”
Blaine handed her bedsheets and blankets. “The basement’s a mess, and when my brother gets home he’ll work down there.”
“I’ll stay out —”
“And we don’t go camping, so no sleeping bags either.” Blaine balled his fists against his hips. “Look princess, I know this isn’t what you’re used to. Our spare room’s full of boxes and there won’t be a bed there until my aunt moves in this spring. Sorry to inconvenience you, but this bed’s the best we’ve got.”
Olympia tossed the sheets and blankets on the mattress and groaned. The predicted snowfall of two inches had already proven wrong by a factor of 10, with more to come; she’d received texts that school was already cancelled tomorrow. Olympia’s house was across the river and the only bridge in their rural town of Bark Bay had been closed except for emergency traffic. That’s what her father reported when she called him five minutes ago, and no, he wasn’t going to ask the police if picking up his daughter after playing video games at her bandmate’s house was considered an emergency.
Blaine’s mother called from upstairs. “I need to help with her insulin,” Blaine said. “She has trouble doing the injections by herself.”
“Your insurance doesn’t cover insulin pens?”
“Insurance isn’t . . .” Blaine swallowed. “Pens are hard to find. We use what’s available.”
“There’s agencies you can contact — ”
“I know, we’ve used all of them,” Blaine replied. “Still can’t get enough.”
A nurse’s daughter, Olympia knew enough about medical supplies to question Blaine’s assessment. Yet she was also a guest, unexpectedly here until morning, and didn’t want to cause further disruption. Olympia stared at the rough mattress and wondered if Blaine would consider playing games until dawn. “Want to lose again at Black Ops when you’re done?” she asked.
“We’re tied, sorry to remind you. But I’m tired of Black Ops,” he said as he ascended the stairs. “Boring.” In two years of playing with Blaine in their high school’s marching band, Olympia had realized boring was his gravest insult. He found their band director particularly tiresome and threatened to quit multiple times, most recently that afternoon. Olympia shared his displeasure but wasn’t going to abandon her band friends because of their beet-faced, foul-tempered, and frequently inept band director. She wasn’t sure Blaine shared her determination however, especially after their band director called the teen’s bluff that afternoon. Young man, if you’re so unhappy that you can’t stand being here, I can’t stop you from leaving. Olympia was relieved when she approached Blaine after practice and he accepted her self-invitation to play games at his house.
She suggested they play a different game. “Smash Bros?”
“Smash sounds good,” he said. “Go load it while I help Mom.”
“Sure. And Blaine?”
He stopped. “Yeah?”
Some words couldn’t be left unchallenged. “‘Princess?’”
Blaine peaked his eyebrows. “Not any of the bitchy ones, if that helps.”
“Not really,” Olympia murmured before going up to Blaine’s room. A high school junior, Olympia had shoulder-length brown hair, a graceful body, and an effervescent personality. A talented singer and energetic dancer, Olympia played flute in the band because she was drawn to the crowds that attended Bark Bay High School’s football and basketball games. Blaine played trumpet, was quiet except when agitated, and proudly unathletic, with stringy black hair he seemingly brushed out of his eyes every minute.
While exiting their Black Ops campaign, Olympia remembered her conversation earlier that evening with Blaine’s mother, widowed since her two boys were in elementary school. She’d asked Olympia if she was in any of her son’s classes (she wasn’t), whether she had any interest in being in the debate club Blaine enjoyed (she didn’t), had she been in the band camp cafeteria when Blaine ran over a trash barrel chasing another student (she hadn’t). Blaine’s mother welcomed Olympia to come over and play video games any evening she’d like; there would always be a seat for Olympia at their dinner table, just like there had been that evening. Considering the lacklustre quality of the meatloaf Blaine’s mother served, Olympia wasn’t eager to accept that invitation.
Olympia was loading the disk for Smash Brothers when she heard the service door to the garage open, followed a moment later with a loud cry of Why’s the fucking sofa bed open?
“Calm down,” Blaine called from his mother’s room as Olympia ran down the stairs. A man in his early twenties stood in the living room, hands on his hips, glaring at the sofa bed as if aggravated it hadn’t closed on his arrival. She’d never spoken to Blaine’s older brother Trey, yet his almost identical black hair immediately identified him despite his large frame and uneven beard.
“Hi,” Olympia called.
Trey snapped his head towards her. “Who are you?”
Olympia introduced herself. She explained she was in band with Blaine, that they’d been playing video games and forgot to check the weather, and she now had to spend the night due to the storm. “What’s the big deal?” Trey bellowed. “Just a little snow. Don’t bother my pickup none.”
“The bridge is closed to traffic.”
“Bet they’ll let people walk across though. I’ll give you a lift there.”
Olympia blinked. “I’ll . . . get my shoes —”
“Christ, that was a fucking joke,” he said, bustling past Olympia into the kitchen. “What the hell’s my brother doing?”
“Your mother’s injection.”
“Well come have a drink with me. Blaine doesn’t have many of you band-nerds over, and I wanna find out if he’s as pathetic there as he is here.”
Olympia followed Trey into the kitchen. The walls were white and unadorned save for a clock above the sink. In the middle of the kitchen was a rectangular table, a chair pushed up on all four sides.
“You want a beer?” Trey asked, glaring inside the refrigerator.
“I . . . don’t drink liquor.”
Trey turned his disgusted face towards her. “I didn’t offer liquor, I asked if you wanted a beer. Beer isn’t liquor, beer is beer, just like wine’s wine. Whiskey and vodka, now that’s liquor. So lemme ask again — want a beer?”
“Is there any soda?”
Trey grunted. “Coke or root beer?”
“Anything diet?”
“Where the fuck do you think you are, a 7-11? The Coke is that Zero shit my mother drinks, and the root beer’s just root beer.”
She said Coke Zero would be fine. He retrieved a can and tossed it to Olympia, who caught it despite her surprise. Trey grabbed a beer then slammed the refrigerator closed before popping his can open and sitting in the chair closest to him. “Sit down,” he commanded. “I imagine my brother’s a fucking pain in the ass in band.”
“Why do you use so many f-bombs?” She sat across from Trey.
“The way I talk offend you?”
“You can talk however you want. But if everything’s eff this and effing that, it gets . . . boring.” She opened her soda. “Blaine’s cool. He’s our best section leader.”
“Sounds like you like him. That why you’re here?”
“I knew Blaine liked video games so I challenged him.”
“Surprised he’s having a girl over. Ain’t like him.”
“What do you mean?” Olympia regretted her words as soon as she uttered them.
“You don’t know?” Trey’s face twisted into the cruel smile of a trickster god, a Loki toying with a foolish mortal. “He hasn’t told you?”
Rumours about Blaine’s sexuality had swirled around him at school like sharks circling a sinking raft. “Blaine doesn’t say much about himself. I respect that.”
“God, you’re priceless! Lemme guess.” Trey set his beer aside and laid his forearms on the table. “You don’t ask questions because you’re a ‘good girl.’ Do what you’re told, play by the rules, don’t do nothing bad. Bet you have good grades, plan on going to college.”
“I don’t apply for another year.”
“But you will because that’s what’s expected. All you do is follow instructions, listen and obey. Go to college, get a degree, then work all your life just like every other dope.”
Olympia tired of being on defence. “Blaine says you work in a diner.”
“For now,” Trey said. “I got bigger ambitions, trust me. A plan to make some real money, buy my own place so I can move outta here. A plan that doesn’t include wasting money on a stupid college —”
“Trey,” Blaine said, barging into the kitchen and scowling. “Leave her alone.”
The interruption stung Trey a moment before his Loki-smile returned. “Just having a little fun,” he said, rising from his chair.
“Hold on,” Olympia said, waiting for Trey’s attention before continuing. “My turn.”
Blaine pursed his lips and brushed his hair back. “Seems fair,” he said, pushing Trey back down.
Olympia set her soda aside. “I’ve noticed a few things about people. For one, the louder they speak, the less likely they’ll say something interesting. Also, that people who swear a lot think they’re tougher than they actually are. Strong words, weak minds. But perhaps most important is that people who make judgements about someone based on a few facts and five minutes of conversation lack curiosity and intuition, making their judgements pretty worthless.” She picked up her soda, drank, and set the can down. “There’s more I’ve noticed, in case you’re interested.”
Trey glowered at her. Blaine smiled as he did whenever she pushed back against their band director.
“I gotta work in the basement,” Trey said, shoving Blaine’s hand from his shoulder before standing. He then pointed at Olympia. “You, stay the . . . hell outta there.”
She waited until Trey closed the basement door behind him before asking Blaine if she’d gone too far. “Not far enough,” Blaine replied, brushing hair off his face before opening the refrigerator. “My brother talks shit all the time and it’s good seeing it thrown back at him. I like how you don’t let people get away with shit-talk.” Blaine retrieved a root beer and closed the refrigerator. “How you challenge people when . . . Olympia?”
She was crying, hands covering her face. “Sorry,” she murmured. “Some of the things he said . . .”
Blaine hesitated a moment before tearing a paper towel from a roller over the sink. “Don’t be sorry,” he said. “Trey’s a prick. Got the hospitality of a prison guard with indigestion.”
Olympia laughed as she took the towel and wiped her face. “What kind of work is Trey doing down there?” She blew her nose. “He said something about having a plan.”
“I try keeping out of his business,” Blaine said. “As should you. Staying out of the basement was the only thing he said that was worth listening to.”
Olympia stood and tossed the towel into the trash. “Can we play Smash now?”
She lost track of time as they played video games in Blaine’s room. Occasionally she considered the rumours that would spread like a virus on her return to school. Being stranded overnight at someone’s house was routine during a Bark Bay winter, but Olympia knew the smallest match could ignite an inferno of gossip. And how would the persistent whispers about Blaine influence these new rumours? She wanted Blaine to stay in band, but having her name linked to his in any form of wild speculation . . . Olympia didn’t know how she’d respond to the giggles.
They played past midnight, not stopping until Trey barged into the room. “Some people gotta work in the morning,” he said. “Diners don’t get snow days, and I can’t miss tomorrow.”
“Thursday?” Olympia asked. “What’s so special about tomorrow?”
Trey sneered. “I’m in the next room, and I don’t wanna hear your fucking game.” Olympia offered to put the console on mute, but Blaine said he was done playing anyway.
Ten minutes later, wearing an oversized t-shirt borrowed from Blaine, Olympia set her phone on an end table next to the sofa bed. “I’m really doing this,” she said as if convincing herself to lie down on the uninviting mattress. After turning off a nearby lamp she lay on the bed, pulled a blanket over her, and attempted to sleep.
After two hours, she abandoned that attempt.
The mattress felt as uncomfortable as it looked, the sheets made her skin itch, and the blanket had a peculiar odour. Olympia sat up in the bed and looked around the dark living room. Through the door to the kitchen she saw the dim light of the microwave’s clock. She rose from the bed and walked into the kitchen. Inside the refrigerator she saw the soda cans. “Coke Zero,” she whispered. “Caffeine.” Not seeing anything appealing, she closed the refrigerator door.
Then she noticed the door to the basement.
Olympia remembered the warnings from Blaine and his brother. Trey had spent several hours in the basement while she and Blaine played games, but she hadn’t seen or heard Trey since she’d lain down on the sofa bed. She walked to the door and twisted the knob; no lock was engaged. She twisted further, and when the latch cleared she pulled the door open, revealing the darkened stairs.
“This is crazy,” she whispered. Was she so annoyed at Trey to act like a dim-witted character in a cheap horror movie? But with the door now open, sleep would be impossible until her curiosity was satisfied. An alibi came to her immediately – she’d heard an ominous noise and felt compelled to investigate. Olympia walked slowly in the dim light back to the sofa bed and found her phone. Turning on the phone’s torch, she returned to the basement entrance, took a deep breath, and descended.
A thin carpet covered the stairs. She landed cautiously on each step, her bare feet making no sound. As she neared the bottom she detected a smell, familiar but unexpected. She stopped, inhaled the scent deeply. Nail polish remover? She continued to the basement floor, the thin carpet over the concrete chilling her feet, and cast her torch around. The walls were bare drywall, not painted or wallpapered, the heads of mounting screws still visible. At the far end of the room was a door, the roar of the house furnace behind it. Carboard and plastic cartons were spread across the room in uneven piles. A stack of three boxes to Olympia’s right had CHRISTMAS written across the front.
Olympia turned with her camera to look behind the stairs. “There you are,” she whispered on seeing a small computer desk and a wheeled chair. An open laptop lay on the right side of the desktop. In the centre, a monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
Her torch caught a reflection to the right of the desk. Olympia drew closer and saw two white rectangular dry-erase boards hanging on the drywall, each board about two feet wide and perhaps a foot and a half tall. Obscenities and crude drawings covered the boards. The odour of nail polish remover was stronger; she looked down and saw a small metal can of acetone next to a roll of paper towels on the floor beneath the whiteboards. That explained the odour, although she didn’t understand why Trey would use acetone to clean a whiteboard.
A small camera lay on top of the monitor, and the laptop had a camera lens embedded above its screen. Olympia took two sticky notes from a pad near the keyboard and covered each lens. When she nudged the mouse, the laptop prompted for a password. She pressed Enter on the keyboard, but the prompt remained. Hoping Trey had written his password somewhere, Olympia scanned the desktop. A yellow legal pad lay on the left, but its pages were blank.
“Dammit,” she whispered. Olympia wouldn’t risk incriminating herself by guessing at passwords until the laptop locked. As she removed the notes over the cameras, she noticed a pen near the legal pad. It had the thick shaft and large cap of a dry-erase marker, but the shaft was entirely black with silver lettering. Olympia leaned closer and read: Invisiline. UV Blacklight Marker.
A memory from the previous summer came to her. She’d been on an outing to an escape room in a nearby city and her team needed a special flashlight to find one of the clues. Olympia looked at the ceiling and saw two banks of spotlights pointed towards the whiteboards. The spotlight bulbs were purple. “That’s it,” she said and began searching around her. Piles of boxes covered the nearby walls; she began moving the boxes at chest-height until she found a light switch. When she flipped the switch up, the spotlights erupted with ultraviolet light.
Olympia turned off her torch and examined the whiteboards again. Writing was now visible. The word PICKUP was scrawled across the top of the left board, and underneath she saw tomorrow’s date next to the name of the diner where Trey worked, along with the word Humulin. She also saw the names of other places in or near Bark Bay, with different dates and times. Humulin appeared again after several entries, along with OneTouch, Ulticare U-100, and Omnipod. “Insulin and supplies.” She read the right board, which had DELIVERY above more place names, dates, and times. Tomorrow’s date and Trey’s diner was again at the top, next to ReliOn. There were more locations and date/time entries for Humulin, Ulticare U-100, Medtronic, ReliOn, and other products she recognized from her mother’s occupation.
“Trey’s plan.” Olympia bit her lip. “And he thinks I’m a dope.”
After returning to the sofa bed Olympia lay for another uneasy hour before exhaustion finally overtook her. She woke in the morning to the sound of a coffee grinder. “Ah shit,” Trey growled from the kitchen. Olympia remained still as Trey raced through breakfast before exiting through the service door. When his pickup engine faded down the road, Olympia finally escaped from the uncomfortable mattress.
She was folding the bed back into the sofa for what she hoped would be the only time in her life when Blaine came down the stairs. “You like oatmeal?” he asked. She didn’t, but accepted his offer.
She scrolled through her phone as they sat at the kitchen table. Her father texted that the bridge had been reopened to traffic. He’d pick her up during his lunch break.
“How was the bed?” Blaine asked.
“Sucked.”
“You go down to the basement?”
She looked up from her phone and read Blaine’s face. Serene, patient. “Yeah,” she said.
“I figured, the way Trey goaded you. See anything interesting?”
She’d decided not to involve Blaine if he wasn’t already aware of Trey’s operation. “Not much to see,” she said, dipping a spoon into her bowl.
Blaine poured milk over his oatmeal. “You wouldn’t give up so easily. You find the blacklight switch?”
Lying would be easy. Just say she left after finding the whiteboards with their crude drawings – what blacklight switch? Blaine wouldn’t know she’d chosen to not get involved. Yet she’d never forget turning Blaine away when he asked for help with this terrible secret.
“Is your Mom awake?” she whispered. Blaine shook his head. “Does she know what Trey’s doing?”
“No,” he replied. “We’re telling her those agencies you mentioned were finding what we needed.”
“Trey could get into a lot of trouble.”
“I know. That’s why I installed the blacklights.”
Olympia blinked.
“When I figured out how Trey was suddenly getting what our mother needed I realized he needed help,” Blaine said. “The notes on his whiteboards weren’t as cryptic as he thought. Mom goes down to the basement sometimes, other people too — furnace maintenance and such. The only way to stop people from asking questions was to make sure there was nothing for them to see. He leave the acetone out in the open again?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just tell me he’s not dealing in anything more than insulin and supplies.”
“No,” Blaine said. “Trey talks about ‘expansion,’ but he’s probably too chicken-shit to do it. You going to report him to the police anyway?”
Do what you’re told, play by the rules, don’t do nothing bad. “I won’t hurt your mother,” Olympia replied. “But please, let my mother help. She can access resources most people don’t know about. Get what your mother needs.”
Blaine brushed hair off his forehead. “Trey probably won’t stop, but I can only solve one problem at a time. Deal.” He smiled. “And thanks.”
Olympia returned his smile and resumed eating her oatmeal. She silently composed, revised, and edited the words she’d yearned to say since yesterday. When she finished eating, she laid her forearms palms-up on the table. “Blaine — please don’t quit band. There’s no way I’m putting up with our director if you’re not there.”
Blaine scrunched his face. “Is that your price for not going to the police?”
“Fuck no,” Olympia replied. She then grinned. “That’d be ridiculous. Almost as ridiculous as the idea you had me over so I could discover what Trey was doing.”
Blaine nodded, rose from his chair, and picked up his bowl. “Next year. My aunt’s moved in, Trey’s probably got his own place, and we both graduate and move on from Bark Bay.” His hair fell across his face as he collected her bowl. “You’ll finally find stages big enough for your talent, and I’ll be someplace where I’m not surrounded by people who think they know who I am. But that won’t happen for another winter and a half, and marching band’s gonna suck unless we’re both there.” He pointed his thumb towards the front of the house. “Gotta shovel the driveway. Trey’s pickup can get through the snow, but Mom’s car can’t. She’s got a doctor’s appointment that’s probably still on.”
“Got an extra shovel?”
Blaine laughed. “The princess feels obligated because we put you up for the night?”
“More like I want to kill time before King Dad rescues me. And by the way, next time you want to lose at Black Ops you can come to my castle and risk getting stranded. Don’t worry — our guest room’s a lot nicer than your nasty sofa bed.”
Blaine laughed again and then dressed to go outside. Olympia changed back into her clothes and put on her jacket. Her shoe size was nearly the same as Blaine’s mother, so the boots Blaine found for her were comfortably snug. She stepped into the garage, the odour of oil and gas dissipating as she entered the path Blaine had cleared through the thigh-deep snow. The clouds had parted, a snow-reflected sunbeam blinding Olympia temporarily. The air smelled clean and felt brisk, invigorating.
Squinting, Olympia watched Blaine toss snow to the right of the driveway. Her mother would help Blaine’s family, and Olympia sensed Trey lacked the nerve for expanding his operation. Blaine also wouldn’t abandon her to face their feckless band director alone; her unexpected stay had been worthwhile. She’d hear giggles at school, but seeing Blaine dutifully clearing the driveway for his mother renewed her perspective. She could ignore the rumours as effectively as her friend. Olympia picked up the shovel Blaine had left for her and dug its blade into the snow.
***
Keigh Ahr is a phonetic spelling of the initials for Ken Rogers, a writer in Northeast Ohio. His fiction has appeared in Permafrost, CommuterLit, and Corner Bar Magazine. His journalism has appeared in Freshwater Cleveland, WISH Cleveland, and Voices from the Edge, a collection of essays by workers in front-line industries during the COVID-19 pandemic. A graduate of Northwestern University and Loyola University of Chicago, he is now an active member of Literary Cleveland. More of his work can be found at keighahr.substack.com.
