"It's a fucking negative integer, you nimwit" Jack Merridew proclaimed forcefully as he slammed a frustrated hand down on the kitchen table. "You're adding in the wrong direction."
"Damnit! I keep thinking about number lines like rulers" Ralph sighed frustratedly.
"Well, don't" Jack flatly suggested. "They're not rulers, zero is in the middle, not at the end. A fucking hamster could figure this shit out faster than you are. What gives?"
Ralph took a deep breath and leaned back against the back of the wooden dining chair. "Maybe I'm just distracted, I dunno" he shrugged.
"Distracted by what?" Jack pressed.
"What do you think?" Ralph asked sharply.
Because it was now September 4th, Ralph's parents had reminded the boys that morning that they'd need to make their decisions about attending the commemoration ceremony at Bainbridge Military Academy. The ceremony was only two days away, and Ralph couldn't think about anything else. He was tired of looking at the number line Jack drew in pen on a sheet of lined paper. It had several erased pencils markings on it; evidence of over ninety minutes of work. Although Ralph's understanding of the subject wouldn't have led anyone to believe they really were working that whole time.
"Should we just be done with this then?" Jack diverted Ralph's question. "Maybe we should come back to it later. It's not due til Monday, right?"
"I think so" Ralph responded uncertainly. "Tuesday, maybe. Whichever day I have math."
"Well good then, tomorrow's Saturday so there's no need to worry about it now" Jack pointed out as he jammed the scrap sheet of paper into the crevice of Ralph's textbook and slammed it shut.
Jack looked up to find Ralph staring intently at him. Though it wasn't the usual, loving, hypnotized stare he usually looked at Jack with. He looked like he was trying to piece Jack together like a puzzle.
"What?" Jack asked hotly.
"Have you decided about Sunday?" Ralph asked seemingly out of nowhere, his gaze still and steady. When Jack didn't answer right away, Ralph pressed on. "Are you even thinking about it? Do you have even the slightest idea about what you might do? Just a general idea of where your head's at would be nice. My parents wanna know by the end of the day, in case you've somehow forgotten."
"I haven't forgotten" Jack spoke after a brief moment of bitter quiet. "I'd just rather not talk to you about it."
"Why not?" Ralph asked in a low, sad tone he was doing a bad job at hiding. Jack could tell that Ralph was offended, but didn't want him to know it.
"Does there have to be a reason?"
"I—" Ralph paused abruptly as he was rendered momentarily speechless. "I guess not."
Whether there had to be a reason or not was beside the point because there was a reason, Ralph knew, he just wasn't sure why it was a secret. Sometimes, Jack was difficult to figure out; especially when he didn't want to be figured out.
"Good then" Jack smiled with satisfaction as he stood up from the table and ventured into the kitchen to refill his empty water bottle.
Later that night, the boys were camped out on the living room floor in an organized mess of blankets, pillows, couch cushions, and a few empty fruit and cracker bowls around them. They were on their second movie of the night. Had the commemoration ceremony not been so hot on Ralph's mind, he would've been able to better enjoy the peace that came from knowing he could stay home all day tomorrow with Jack instead of getting up for school like he did all week long.
Ralph sat with his back propped up against the bottom half of the couch, atop a pile of blankets to cushion the otherwise hard floor beneath them. Jack's back was pressed against him, the older boy's back to Ralph's front, his head comfortably resting against Ralph's chest. Ralph crossed his arms over Jack, gently and mindlessly tapping his hands against the blond boy's bare chest. Ralph had his legs stretched out on either side of Jack's body, on the outside of Jack's legs resting between his as they watched the ending of the film.
"How's movie night going?" Laurie asked as she wandered through the living room on her way to the kitchen.
"Good" Ralph responded hardly comprehensively, moments after stuffing his mouth full of saltine crackers.
Laurie watched the last few minutes of the movie from her stance in the kitchen after she finished tidying up. She braced herself for the conversation she knew she had to have with the boys; the one that'd either bring them together in agreement or put them at odds with each other.
"So" Laurie ventured into the living room, switching off the TV monitor before turning back around to face the boys. Her eyes found each of theirs as they stared up at her from their place on the messy floor. She hated that she had to make them talk about it, that no matter what they decided to do, nothing about it would ever be easy. "The ceremony is on Sunday, right? Have you guys made up your minds about going?"
"I haven't changed my mind" Ralph answered right away. "I still wanna go."
"Are you sure, honey? I want you to know how important it is to make that decision for the right reason. Not out of obligation, not because your friends are going, but because you want to go. For you. Right?" Laurie sought to ensure. She knew Ralph, and it wouldn't be unlike him to make the 'right' decision at his own expense.
"Yes, Mom, I know" Ralph insisted with an eye roll. "I really do wanna go, honest."
"Okay" Laurie nodded with satisfaction. "Then we'll make sure you can be there."
Ralph nodded, giving his mom a weak but genuine smile as he brought a hand up to play with Jack's disheveled, knotty hair.
"And Jack? What about you, hon?" she turned her gaze on the boy lying comfortably against Ralph.
"I don't want to" Jack confessed after a split second of tense silence, followed by another equally tense but slightly longer moment of silence.
"That's okay" Laurie assured him once her train of thought started moving again. "You don't have to go, as long as you do what's best for you."
"Okay" Jack shrugged simply as he diverted his eyes to focus on his twiddling thumbs.
"Make sure you two clean all this up before you head off to bed, m'kay?" Laurie gently reminded them before trekking back down the hallway.
"Wow, I'm surprised" Jeffery declared as his wife climbed into bed beside him.
"What's surprising about it? Ralph expressed his desire to go when he first found out and Jack's desire not to was what caused that fight between him and his father last week" Laurie reminded him.
"I knew they were leaning in different directions but I'm surprised they didn't land on the same decision. After all, they're connected at the hip most of the time. Wherever one goes, the other goes. I just wasn't expecting them to stay on opposing sides of this, that's all" Jeffery thought aloud.
"Well yeah, but this is about the island, Jeff" Laurie vaguely and seemingly irrelevantly pointed out.
"And?"
"And they were friends before that plane crash, Jeff. But by the time they were rescued, they weren't anymore. I know you didn't really see it the way I did when we picked Ralph up at the airport that day, but something was off between them. It could've just been the situation as a whole but it seemed to me like Ralph was scared of Jack" Laurie recalled.
"Oh come on, Laur. They were traumatized, emotions were flying high, they'd just been thrown back into the real world after spending five months fighting for survival. Of course Ralph looked scared. It would've been weird if he didn't" Jeffery argued.
"It was more than that, Jeffery. You didn't see the way he shrunk and hid behind me when you called out to Jack. I'm trying not to make assumptions but I think something awful might've happened between them out there" Laurie informed him.
"If that were true, do you really think they'd be so in love with each other now?"
"I don't know" Laurie admitted. "I'm not saying I understand it, I'm just telling you what I observed. But if they won't talk to us about it, there's no way to ever know for sure" she determined with a heavy, exhausted heart. And that, she realized, just might be the most bitter of all truths.