Broken Record

Chapter 4

“Into a place where thoughts can bloom/Into a room where it's nine in the afternoon/And we know that it could be/And we know that it should/And you know that you feel it too.” -Panic! At the Disco, “Nine in the Afternoon”

The next day was Saturday, also known as Samantha and Nick’s day. For as long as Nick cared to remember, they had hung out together every Saturday at one of their houses.

In the summer, that meant going to the pool, seeing a movie, basically keeping out of the heat. These activities would usually involve other people, such as Tobias or Meredith, Lorie if she was in town. The real hanging out would be that evening.

The two would watch movies and eat junk food together. Or watch TV at eat junk food together. Or play three board games at once and eat junk food together. Junk food, usually taking the form of pizza and ice cream, was always involved.

In the winter, they usually would usually start the real hanging out earlier, basically as soon as it was dark. The actual hanging out was not much different, it still involved junk food and some kind of activity, but Nick liked it better. It just seemed, to him at least, that during the winter these nights were better. Cozier, somehow.

So that night should have been great. It should have been them getting back to normal. He had actually looked forward to tonight and had gotten out all Samantha’s favorite movies and gotten her favorite ice cream, Strawberry Spectacular. But it wasn’t great. It wasn’t even good.

Samantha had spent the last two hours talking all about Luke. It wasn’t as bad as usual with the description of his entire body, but now she had moved onto the depths of Luke’s soul.

Nick was sitting on the floor and she was on his bed sitting up against the wall. He was going through the books he had stacked under his bed since his bookcase was filled with his records. He was trying to find his copy of The Giver, which had been a gift from Samantha.

He hadn’t actually read it yet but that was only because when she had given it to him last Christmas he had also gotten a car so the book ended up getting stuffed under the front seats when he was late to school the day they went back.

Also under the seats were numerous CD’s (bought only because they were not on vinyl and CD’s are better than downloaded songs), his copy of A Farewell to Arms (which he read for English last year and still hadn’t returned to the library), a few dirty t-shirts, and a belt he wore to church that one time his mom made him go (it was Christmas Eve so he couldn’t refuse).

The problem was that when he went to look for the book the only book he found was A Farewell to Arms (it was covered in Cheeto dust by the way). So now he was looking under his bed behind the stacks of books. Hopefully it was under there.

It wasn’t just that he hadn’t read the book yet. He had survived a year since Samantha had given it to him perfectly well. He only decided to find the book for two reasons. One, Samantha was giving him crap about it. Two, he remembered she had written a note inside it that he had liked but he couldn’t remember what it said.

Finally he laid on his stomach and put his arm under the bed, waving it around wildly. Finally he hit something and he pulled it out, hoping it wasn’t some moldy food he had forgotten. Luckily it was the book.

“Found it!” He said, holding it up in victory until Samantha looked up at him and nodded before going back to painting her nails. He hated it when she painted her nails in here, it made his room smell like rubbing alcohol for days.

Satisfied with his victory, Nick lowered his arm and inspected the novel. There was something on it.

“Why does all my stuff have Cheeto dust on it?”