This HAD to be shared. I can’t believe what happened here. I really can’t. I was struggling for inspiration, and suddenly…. WHAM! Carlo may be totally wacked, but sometimes he has some slightly valid points…
“AND THE WORLD WILL KNOOOOOOOOOW!”
James shook his head and sighed as Carlo finished his elaborate dance number with a flourish of awkward movement. “Carlo, for the last time, we’re listening to Bon Jovi. Not whatever showtunes crap you’ve got playing in your head.” Carlo ignored him completely and began humming the intro to yet another song that was specifically not playing. “Good lord, where does he hear this stuff?”
Ryan laughed and shook his head. “Screwed up as he may be, he had a good childhood. Come on, didn’t you ever watch the classics as a kid?”
“Dude, that’s not even a classic! It’s like… obscure crap. I’ve never heard it before, and now I think I’m doomed to hear it for the rest of my life!”
“Or at least until you leave.”
James scowled. “Don’t remind me.”
Michael shrugged. “I dunno,” he ventured. “I kinda like it.”
“Yes, but some of us are trying to finish an English paper. What the— Holy fish! What the hell is he doing now?”
Ryan cocked his head to the side in amusement. “Looked like some kind of flying barrel roll to me.”
The boys were sitting in their shared room, listening to – as James put it – Bon Jovi on the CD player he’d snuck from his parents’ house. Their room was significantly better furnished than any of the others in the Houses of Refuge, mostly because of James. He was one of the very few that was actually in the Houses of Refuge program completely by choice. The way he saw it, though, life in The Refuge was better than life at home – as evidenced by the fact that he frequently brought stuff to share with the boys from home, and his parents didn’t even to bother to wonder where he went most of the time.
Ryan tapped out the beat to the song on his notebook with the back end of his pencil. “Hey, Michael, what’d you get for number four?”
The dark-skinned boy glanced up at his previous work momentarily. “Uh… B. No, wait… Yeah, that one I didn’t understand the question. I just kinda guessed.”
Ryan shrugged and added the answer to his own sheet. “Don’t matter. It’s still a better guess than I had.”
With a nod, Michael went back to his work. “What’d you put for number ten?”
“F,” Ryan replied without so much as a pause.
Michael started to put that as his answer before he stopped to think about it. “Um… Ryan? There’s only four choices for each question.”
Ryan laughed. “I know. I haven’t gotten to that one yet.”
Again, James shook his head. “Dude, it is no wonder you two get such low grades. All you ever do is copy off of each other.
“Nature’s calling!” Carlo screamed suddenly, right in the middle of the second verse of his song. He grabbed James’ cell phone – the only one in the entire facility – off the bedside table and flipped it open. “Hello?”
This drew a look of shock and confusion from James and a round of hysterical laughter from Ryan. “Hey, James,” the blonde boy struggled out between gasping chuckles. “He’s rubbed his… his crazy all over your phone. You’d better… better not touch it now.”
Carlo actually looked slightly offended by this, which was impressive indeed seeing as it was the first acknowledgement he’d given that there were other people in the room. “Scab,” he said simply.
“What does that even mean?”
“Means you’re a traitor,” Carlo replied. “Kid Blink was a traitor. Sold ‘em out, he did. That’s why they called him a scab.”
Ryan blinked in astonishment. “Okay, I have no clue what he just said.”
“History!” Carlo hissed in annoyance. “Look it up, jeez! You’d think you of all people would get it.” He sighed and started over, speaking very slowly as if to make his point clear, though that did little to help. “Kid Blink turned scab. They almost beat him up for it. Would have too, if the coppers hadn’t shown up to stop them. You remember that next time you have an angry mob chasing you. Them coppers ain’t all bad.”
Ryan chuckled. “Okay, the very next time I’m being chased by an angry mob, I’ll remember not to… to scab. Whatever that means…”
Carlo just shook his head. “You have no culture.”
“And you have no sanity.”
“At least I’m not oblivious to what really goes on around me. Like some people.”
At this, Ryan scoffed outright. “Ha! No, I’m pretty sure you are, Carlo.”
Carlo just glared at him and started humming another tune, adding a little tap footwork to the song in his head, though this time he didn’t sing. Ryan went back to his work, tapping out the beat on the CD player. Then his tapping stuttered as it got mixed up with the beat to Carlo’s song, which was being sounded out against the floor in confusing contrast to the song that was playing. “Okay, man. I can’t concentrate with you doing that.”
“And I can’t concentrate with you tapping, either,” James pointed out. “Why do you have to do that whenever you listen to music? It makes it really hard to listen to anything when you’re around.”
Ryan shrugged. “Just something I do.”
“Well, could you maybe stop? It’s almost as annoying as his… weird… habits… What is he doing now?” Carlo was, in fact, in the process of trying to climb up on one of the bookcases and dance on it, though the narrow space and the presence of the wall behind him was making this feat extremely difficult. “Okay, that’s it!” James exclaimed dramatically. “I’m going to the other room to finish this!” And with that, he stuffed his notebook into his backpack and stomped out of the room. Nobody really seemed to mind.
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