Sophomore Year (Smopkins #2)

Reflections

Gary was the first to wake up.

He sat up on the couch and set his blankets aside, looking around. It was still dark outside, and with the horizon showing no signs of the sun rising, he wondered what time it was. Gary pulled his knees to his chest, before remembering Jimmy.

Jimmy was across from him, somewhere in the darkness. Asleep. Or not. Gary stood up and manoeuvred around in the dark, trying his best not to trip over the coffee table or a stray barstool as he searched for his pile of clothes. He wanted his phone. Gary could figure out what time it was.

Pawing through the fabric, Gary stopped when he felt something square and hard. He pulled his phone out from the back pocket of his jeans and stood there, not yet turning it on. What was he supposed to do if it happened to be one in the morning? All he could do was sit there, or stare at Jimmy, or go through all of his shit and risk getting caught. Gary wasn't excited by any of those ideas, but it looked like his best option was going to be staring at Jimmy as he waited for the time to pass. Unless he wanted to try going back to sleep, which he wasn't sure would happen. Once Gary was awake, he was awake. For good.

Gary turned his phone on and groaned as the bright screen started to scathe his retinas. He turned down the brightness and read through what little notifications he had.

(603) 867-5309: Hey Gary ;)

He huffed. That had to be Jimmy, so what was with the winky face? Gary guessed he was trying to be sly or something. Gary set Jimmy's contact name and closed iMessages, feeling a tad disappointed that nobody else had messaged him. But it wasn't like he gave his phone number to a million people. His father had it, in case of "emergencies," and now Jimmy. Both were asleep, and why would he want Jimmy to message him if they were in the same room?

Gary checked the time. Three AM, which wasn't too bad, but he knew he would have to distract himself for at least four more hours, if Jimmy didn't wake up between three and seven.

He sat back down on the couch and pulled his blanket over his legs. Instagram. That's what Jimmy wanted to message him on initially.

After glancing over at Jimmy (or where he was supposed to be), he huffed in frustration that he wasn't able to see his face. Gary sunk back into the couch and tried to focus, but he could only make out vague lines and shapes, like the dark couch contrasting against the bright cream colored wall. He remembered how Jimmy hugged him at the carnival, and asked for his number... was that supposed to be flirting?

No. Not flirting. Jimmy only wanted to talk to him, and he had everybody else's number in Bullworth anyway. Friends went out and did things together all the time, and the carnival was no different. Just because lots of people went on dates there didn't mean that...

But there was more. Jimmy held his hand as they walked to the beach. What did that mena? At the time, Gary figured it was just an attempt to calm him down. It made sense, so he tried to think of two other people that were friends- Russell and Trent, for instance- and couldn't see it in his mind. Maybe girls would hold hands. He could see Pinky and Mandy wandering around the carnival holding hands, but not for long. So what about... him and Jimmy?

Gary considered the fact that Jimmy was way different than Russell or Trent. He was more affectionate. Jimmy cared about him in a different way than Russell cared about Trent, or Ted cared about his friends on the team, or even how Pinky cared about Mandy. It wasn't a romantic gesture, it was a friendly gesture.

At least that's what he kept telling himself.

Then he remembered Petey, another one of Jimmy's friends. He couldn't see Jimmy and Petey holding hands either. Jimmy would say that it was gross and jerk his hand away.

But there was something else, something far more damning than anything else Jimmy had said or done to him in his (almost) two years at Bullworth. Jimmy called him cute.

Gary shook his head to himself. It was just a tease, after all. Jimmy was trying to poke fun at him, and it worked. It shut him up and got him wondering, and that was exactly what Jimmy wanted.

He lifted his phone from his lap and went to the AppStore, deciding to download Instagram. What was the harm? He could make an account with no profile picture, and make his username a bunch of random numbers, and nobody would know it was him. Or he could decide to not follow anybody, but he knew some people had private accounts. Gary hoped Jimmy wasn't one of those people.

Another thought popped into his mind. Jimmy wouldn't call Petey cute to "poke fun at him." There was absolutely no way. Gary might do it to Petey, after calling him gay and teasing him relentlessly, but Jimmy wouldn't do it. Never.

Gary let out another huff and opened Instagram once it was fully downloaded, putting in his email and some random numbers for the username. Once his account was made, he tried to search for Jimmy's account, which wasn't hard. Most of the profile pictures were graying old men, which meant Jimmy was pretty easy to find.

He tapped on each of Jimmy's posts. The most recent one was a black screen, with the caption "Anyone who takes geometry DM me I'm failing," and the post after that was a picture of a supermarket isle, with Gary's face photoshopped on some poor man pushing a cart. The caption was "Gary at target what will he buy." Gary had no clue what the fuck that was supposed to mean, but the post had gained 63 likes, so everyone else was in on the loop. Unfortunate.

There were a few posts after that, one of Russell's zoomed-in face with no caption. The very first post on Jimmy's account was another picture of Gary.

The two of them were in the basement, and Gary actually remembered Jimmy taking the picture. It was when Gary was leading him to the pit. He glanced over at Jimmy again, still frustrated that he couldn't see him. Jimmy wrote the caption as "We trapped in Crabblesnitchs sex dungeion :( help." Gary remembered those moments leading up to it, how he scolded Jimmy for fucking around in the basement, and how he felt proud of himself. Proud of himself for "outsmarting Hopkins." Gary wondered if he would change anything, if he knew how things were to turn out.

Were things that bad, though? Here he was, in Jimmy's beach house. Jimmy seemed to take some sort of liking to him, at least enough of a liking to keep Gary around and not sic some greasers on him. And Jimmy cared about him now. Would Jimmy care as much about him if Gary had never started working against him? Would they be in the same place today if Gary had never ended up in Happy Volts?

Gary didn't think so. But then again, if Gary never stopped taking his meds... there was a possibility the two would have remained friends, and they would be even closer now than they already were.

He set his phone back down, still opened on the post. Jimmy kept it up, even after everything that went down. Why did he post it in the first place? Was he seriously proud to be friends with him, or at least not ashamed?

There were only three posts about people on Jimmy's account, two of which were about him. One was Russell. No Petey, no Mandy, no Zoe. No girls whatsoever. Maybe it was because Jimmy just didn't use Instagram that much, or he deleted his posts about his girlfriends after he broke up with each of them. There was no way to be sure.

Gary's phone screen went black. He set his phone on the coffee table and laid back down, pulling his blanket over him. He had a lot of thinking to do.