Diamonds: Life According to Maps | Book Two (4 page)

Maps sighed heavily.

It wasn’t Lane’s fault, really. If he’d changed his mind about liking him, he couldn’t blame him. You couldn’t help who you liked. Or in Maps’ case, who you didn’t like.

Still, that word hurt to hear.

At least now he’d have more time to focus on experiments since he could get over his daydreaming about Lane. Not that he did it often. Or ever.

But now he had to face the music—Lane no longer liked him.

He wasn’t bitter, though. He was mature and could deal with it like an adult.

Maps backed away from the chain link fence, raised his fist into the air and yelled, “Screw you, baseball! You good-for-nothing jerk!”

The kids playing in the field slowed to a stop and gaped at the crazy kid who was yelling profanities at the field full of children.

“You think you’re so cool!” Maps continued. “With your stupid, expensive bats and your
special
, colored dirt! It’s just dirt, okay? You could probably use potting soil instead of being so uptight with your
special
dirt! And your gloves look stupid! So do your little, white pants!’

Maps stopped. That was too far. He’d crossed the line. He really did like the pants, despite everything.

That was when he noticed the crowd of kids staring at him with shocked expressions on their faces. None of them were moving or playing. They were just standing there, watching him.

Red cheeked, he spun around, started to whistle, and walked away. Sometimes he was in his own world and forgot that other people around him could hear the things he said. Benji had always said it was one of his best traits, but Maps more often than not found it to be inconvenient.

He walked home with the sun low in the sky. Tomorrow was a new day full of new adventures, new experiments, and new other stuff.

He didn’t need Lane. Or even want Lane.

At least that’s what he kept telling himself.

M
aps had barely slept
at all the night before, and it wasn’t just because his mind was on overdrive. It was because of the constant
tap, tap, tap
on his window.

“Maps,” Lane whispered from the other side of Maps’ window, “please, open up. I know you’re still awake. I’m… sorry, okay? Can we just talk about it?”

He had hugged his pillow tight against his chest. There was no way in hell he was opening that window. He had no idea what Lane wanted, but he’d made it very clear earlier it wasn’t Maps. And if Lane thought he could keep stringing him along like a little piece on the side, he was in for a rude awakening. Matthew James Wilson was
not
some hussy!

So, he’d listened to the tapping sound on his window and Lane’s voice for twenty minutes before Lane finally crawled down the lattice and slinked back home. Even after that, Maps hadn’t managed to sleep at all.

“
Y
ou look like roadkill
,” Benji said. “The kind that’s super dead.”

“Thanks,” Maps said, shutting his locker door and leaning against it. “I barely slept at all last night.”

“How’d the talk with Tall-blond-and-gap-toothed go?”

Maps shrugged. “Not great. He called me his neighbor.”

“Well, you are.”

“When we were neighbors, you still called me your best friend.”

Benji put his hand on his chin. “Hmmm. True. Except sometimes when I’d refer to you as
That Psycho Who Lives Next Door To Me
.”

You didn’t!”

“Nah, just kidding,” Benji said, trying not to laugh.

“You did!” Maps squeaked.

“Yeah, I totally did.”

The bell rang, indicating the next class was about to start.

“You have a spare now, right?” Benji asked.

“Yeah,” Maps said, sliding his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know what I’ll do. Wander the hallways like a nomad, I suppose.”

“Why not go to the science lab?”

Maps stared at the ground. “I’m not allowed in there unsupervised anymore.”

“Oh, yeah! You almost blew the place up.”

“One little, tiny, explosion, and Mr. Harington loses his mind. I mean, it barely did any damage. Just a few broken beakers, some singed hair, and a busted chair. A small price to pay in the name of science.”

The second ball rang.

“That’s my cue to jet,” Benji said.

“Cue to jet? Who are you—John Travolta in Grease?”

“First of all, Danny Z. would never say something like that. Second of all, being Danny Z. would be awesome. I mean, he was popular
and
badass.”

“People in the seventies wore the smallest pants ever. I wonder how they got into them.” Maps pondered out loud.

As Maps considered multiple ways that a person would squeeze their way into a pair of those shiny, leather pants, and Benji left.

The hallway was empty, shy for a few stragglers getting to class. Sighing, Maps made his way down the hall toward the library. Since he wasn’t allowed in the science lab any longer, he could at least go to the library and do some research for his future experiments.

When Maps rounded the corner, he almost bumped into someone. That someone twirled around, revealing himself to be Perry.

“Hey!’ Perry said.

“Oh, hey Perry,” Maps replied.

“What are you up to? Don’t you have class?”

“Nope. I’ve got a spare. I was just about to head to the library.”

Perry was staring at him. His eyes were wide and his brow was furrowed slightly as he looked Maps over.

“What?” Maps asked, twisting and turning to look over himself. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Do you want me to cut your hair? I have Cosmetology class now and I could use a new victim.”

Maps reached up and ran his fingers through his hair. He thought of Princess Madame Devil and the way she said his hair was dumb. Without being able to help himself, he wondered if maybe Lane would give him another chance if his hair was, well, less dumb.

“Can you make it look less dumb?” Maps asked earnestly.

Perry laughed. Maps had no idea why. Perry was weird.

“It’s not dumb,” Perry told him. “It just looked a little bit like you were electrocuted.”

“Oh,” Maps said, putting his finger in the air. “I was. This morning, before school. I was doing a little experiment at home—you know how it is—and accidently electrocuted myself.”

Perry blinked at him. And then blinked at him again.

He was also beginning to believe maybe Perry had a hearing impairment, and that’s why he gave Maps funny looks, long pauses, and laughed at weird times.

“Okay,” Perry said, grabbing his wrist. “Let’s go.”

Perry dragged him down the hallway. Perry looked fashionable and had a haircut that looked like nice hair—not that Maps knew anything about nice hair—so he figured he’d trust Perry with his hair. Besides, hair grew back. He knew this first hand from the time he’d accidently burnt off one of his eyebrows.

Maps and Perry walked through the door labelled Cosmetology and were effectively transported to Narnia.

There was color everywhere. The walls were each colored different colors, some with lazy paint splatters, a few others with actual paintings. There were students walking around with makeup to make themselves look like rock stars, and hair colors that Maps had never thought possible. One girl was wearing blue lipstick and had a big, red star painted on her cheek. A boy had his head shaved clean on one side, and a leopard pattern in light and dark purple colored into his hair on the other.

Maps stood just inside the doorway and looked around in awe at all the mirrors and hair colors and fancy chairs.

“Well, come on,” Perry said as he motioned Maps toward a chair.

He shuffled his feet along the ground, weary of turning his back on any of the weird, rainbow-people. Not that he had anything against rainbows, being that he was super gay and all, but they were completely overwhelming.

“Here,” Perry said as he pushed down on Maps’ shoulders, shoving him into a swivelling, black chair with chrome accents. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Maps played a game in his head called
The Floor is Lava
. It was the only way to convince himself not to up and bolt out of that chair. He never really felt like he fit in, but just then, he felt like he really didn’t fit in.

Thankfully, Perry was back lickity-split. He quickly swung a long, black, backward cape over him that fastened around his neck. Next, Perry stood behind him and began running his fingers through his hair.

After about a minute, Maps said, “I’m not a cat, Perry. You don’t have to pet me.”

Startled, Perry pulled his hand back. “Oh, what? Sorry. I was just, uh, getting a feeling for the hair.”

Maps wondered how long Lane spent on his hair each morning, or if there was a Perry in his life that cut his hair. It always looked so smooth, no hair out of place. It looked like he spent hours on it each morning, but he’d seen Lane after he’d just woken up, and his hair was still perfectly in place.

“Okay,” Perry said. “First snip.”

Maps sat perfectly still, trying not to move in case movement caused him to lose half of his head of hair. But after a few minutes of Perry pivoting around the chair while he hummed and hawed, Maps relaxed a little. Perry seemed completely invested in Maps’ hair. He snipped and cut, holding strands out between his fingers and then chopping them off like they’d insulted his manhood.

After only about fifteen minutes, Perry whipped the cape off of Maps with an exuberant, “Ta-da!”

Maps stood from the chair and moved forward so his face was only inches from the mirror. He reached up and ran his finger through his shorter, stylish hair.

“Oh, no,” Maps said.

Out of the corner of his eye, Maps saw Perry’s expression drop. “What is it? Do you not like it? Is it not good?”

“No, that’s not it. It’s too good.” He leaned back from the mirror and folded his arms. “I look too much like a teen heartthrob. Much too hunky. I’ll have people bothering me all the time now.”

Perry laughed. “It must be hard being you, Maps.”

Finally
, someone who understood. “Exactly.”

Perry looked at the clock on the wall and then said, “There’s still some time left in class. Why don’t you wait outside while I sweep up, and then we can go to the cafeteria?”

Maps deadpanned. “Okay. Just promise you won’t make a voodoo doll out of my hair.”

He could hear Perry laughing as he shouldered his bag and left the classroom. He leaned against the wall and waited for Perry to finish. A girl walked by and passed him a quick glance.

Great. It was beginning already: the unbridled magnetism that Maps exuded.

And of course, just like in a teen movie, that was when Lane rounded the corner. He paused the moment he saw Maps leaning against the wall, and Maps himself would’ve paused if he wasn’t already paused. He might’ve paused even more, though. He became a statue.

Lane stood at the end of the hall with an odd expression on his face as he looked at Maps like he’d never seen him before. Maps’ heart raced, and silently he wished Lane would come up to him and tell him something devastatingly romantic, like, “Wow. Your hair is totally not dumb now. Let’s hold hands.”

But Lane didn’t move. He just stood there looking unsure of himself and almost, if Maps didn’t know any better, self-conscious. He was wearing a loose pair of jeans and a snug T-shirt with some kind of sports slogan on it. Maps watched as Lane took a small step forward, and then another smaller one back.

Just then, Perry walked through the Cosmetology door. Maps turned to look at him.

Perry smiled and came to stand in front of Maps. He reached up and moved a loose strand of Maps’ hair back into place.

“I leave you alone for one minute and already you’re back to your old ways,” Perry said. “What are we going to do with you?”

“We?” came a voice to his other side. Maps and Perry both jumped at the low, terrifying voice.

Lane was standing right next to them. He’d turned into Nightcrawler from X-Men and had blue-smoked his way down the hall right next to Maps and Perry. Only now, Lane didn’t look self-conscious at all. His chest looked wider, somehow, and he looked even taller and broader than normal. The scowl on his face could’ve melted concrete back into its liquidy state.

Lane crossed his arms over his chest and began glaring at Perry. Maps was honestly surprised that that stare hadn’t instantly turned Perry into a pile of ash. He was even more surprised that Perry looked amused.

Maps couldn’t help but stare at Lane, the curve of his jaw, the brightness of his eyes, the thickness of his neck. He wished so badly that Lane still liked him. But he reminded himself that Lane didn’t—he’d made himself perfectly clear.

“Lane,” Maps said. Lane turned to look at Maps and instantly his expression softened.

“Maps,” Lane replied.

“Perry,” Perry said, pointing to his own chest.

Lane looked at Perry, scowl in full blaze. “Perry.”

“Perry,” Maps agreed. He tilted his head toward Lane. “Lane.”

“Lane,” Perry sneered, cocking one eyebrow.

“And who exactly are you, Perry?” Lane asked.

“Maps and I work together at Chicken Castle,” Perry replied, bright smile on his face. “And who are you?”

Maps replied for Lane. “This is Lane, my
neighbor.
”

Lane’s head whipped toward Maps. “Neighbor?”

“That’s what you said, isn’t it? Neighbor.”

“Oh,” Perry purred. “Maps’ neighbor.”

“Can we talk?” Lane asked Maps.

“We tried that, remember?” Maps was being a little, tiny bit spiteful. But his feelings were hurt, and he did
not
want to talk to Lane about his feelings.

“Maps,” Lane said softly, “please. You’re being unreasonable.”

Unreasonable.

Unreasonable.

Maps Wilson was going to show Lane Rhodes exactly what
unreasonable
looked like.

“Well, excuse me!” Maps said loudly, dragging out his vowels. He tossed his school bag down onto the ground. “First, you come into my life and make me like baseball. The nerve! And then you give me pictures of maps and tell me if I’m lost, I’ll know how to find you. Well, you know what, Lane, I’m lost and I don’t know where you are. And I looked! I waited for you all summer and then I find out from your dumb friend that you’ve been home for days and hadn’t even come over to tell me, or say hi, or anything! And then, as if that weren’t bad enough, you ask to talk, and right in front of your friends, call me your neighbor.

“So, fine. Consider me, Matthew James Wilson, officially, and exclusively, your
neighbor
.”

And with that, Maps scooped up his bag off the ground, slung it over his shoulder, and walked away.

Just before he rounded the corner, he heard Perry say, “Wow. And I thought I knew how to make a scene.”