Talk to Me

Chapter 1

Collin Gray’s voice changes anytime he gets excited. Something between a squeal and a hiss emanates from his mouth, directly into his victim’s ear. Nine times out of ten, over the last two years, I’ve been his victim. While I don’t begrudge my friend getting excited and wanting to share something with me, the delivery leaves something to be desired. The fact that he can get excited about almost anything doesn’t help, either. An entire class lecture can be lost to him filling my ear with his excited whistle tones because he had gotten thirty-percent off his most recent clothing purchase. It’s impossible to focus on a professor explaining the concepts of the class when you’re worried your eardrum is going to rupture before you even manage to have lunch.

The problem with Collin’s excitement really falls in when he decides to express it. He can never pick up the phone and call a guy. Or even shoot you a text. Hell, even an email would suffice for most of the things he gets excited about. Instead, he waits until your focus needs to be on something of importance, riles himself up, leans in, and wails into your ear. Somehow, he manages to be shrill enough to pierce an eardrum, yet quiet enough that no one else notices much. There’s never a witness to his assaults.

He’s a gossip, but he’s a sneaky one.

After two full years as dormmates and occasional classmates at Midway University, I’d learned to cope with his flaw. Which is why, when I sensed him lean over our shared armrest in the lecture hall during Economics of Information, I was prepared.

“That’s him.”

Collin’s breath was hot against my ear.

I never understood why he felt the need to whisper so closely to my ear. Of course, no one else looked over at us, so maybe whispering directly into my ear helped muffle his gossip?

Looking up from my notes, I shot a look to my left at him, then began scanning the lecture hall. We were seated in the fourth row from the top of the amphitheater, so I quickly realized that there were a lot of rows to examine. Professor Warkesh had lowered the lights for his PowerPoint presentation, so even if I’d had a vague idea of who had caught Collin’s attention, locating his target would have been difficult.

“Who?”

I replied in a sensible, human-like whisper.

“Two Gays from Blaze.”

I turned my head, giving Collin my full, bewildered attention.

“Well,”

he frowned, “One Gay from Blaze now, I guess.”

“What are you—”

“That guy from Blaze University who—”

I waved him off, as if swatting a gnat buzzing around my face at a barbecue.

“Third row from the bottom. Tenth from the left. Blue blouse. He’s trying too hard to be trendy.”

Collin pretended he hadn’t seen my hand splitting the air between us.

To hammer the nail home, I waved my hand in his face again, swatting him away. Collin sat back in his seat with a huff. When he crossed his arms over his chest, stuck out his bottom lip and stared straight ahead at our professor, I knew he was done bothering me. He’d read me the Riot Act after the lecture, but at least I could sit in peace and learn something for the remaining forty minutes of class. I could take notes that weren’t full of holes for once.

Though I didn’t intend to do it, I did let my eyes drift through the lecture amphitheater a few moments later, counting rows and seats, until my eyes landed on the target of Collin’s gossip. A regular looking guy in a blue…shirt…was sitting in row three, seat ten, watching Professor Warkesh’s lecture. In the dim light, I wondered how Collin could have spotted a specific person—especially one so nondescript. Why Collin had described the guy’s top as a “blouse”

was another mystery. Nary a ruffle in sight, the object of Collin’s attention was wearing a nondescript collared shirt that happened to be a shade of sky blue.

His hair was short on the sides and back, a bit longer up top, kind of stylish, but in a devil may care type of way. However, from the back, he looked like any other male student at Midway University. His shirt might have been a little too fitted and stylish for a morning class—and maybe he looked a little too put together for so early in the day, especially for a college student—but he was…normal. I couldn’t help but shoot Collin an irritated glance once I realized the tea he thought was piping hot was actually iced. Since the guy appeared to be attractive from behind, the tea could have been called lukewarm, since I felt generous.

After the lecture ended, a riveting hour going over the syllabus to prepare us for the coming term, I slid my notebook and pen into my bag. Sitting near the top of the amphitheater had the advantage of making it easy to be one of the first students out of class, especially if you sat near the end of the row as Collin and I had done. So, when I saw a flash of a blue shirt whiz by up the stairs, I couldn’t help but take notice. Collin’s gossip item had whirled out of the amphitheater as if he’d grown wings.

Standing from my seat and slinging my backpack over my shoulder, I turned to find Collin pouting. Which is exactly what I’d expected. Fortunately, the people in the row behind me wanted out, so Collin wasn’t able to trap me. However, once we’d made it out of the row and up the stairs into the hallway outside of the lecture hall, I was met with his frown once more. Rolling my eyes, I slung an arm over his shoulder and pulled him along with me.

“Don’t be such a sourpuss,” I said.

“You didn’t even listen to me!”

Collin replied.

“Well, if you’d wait until after class—you know, when I’m not trying to hear the lecture—I’d listen better.”

“It was important!”

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What could possibly be important about a gay fire thing or whatever?”

I asked the logical question as we waded through the sea of Midway students.

Midway University, though a smaller midwestern college, had a dense student population due to the number of students on such a small campus. Between classes, the hallways of buildings, the quad, the dining hall, the student bookstore, the library, and computer lab were always packed. If you wanted to navigate campus without bumping shoulders with dozens of other students, you had to get up awfully early or stay late.

I didn’t mind the chaos so much. Coming from a town where the high school and middle school were in one building, the chaos was a nice change. Small town life often makes people long for the hustle and bustle of big city life. Unfortunately, Midway University was the only big thing in town. For miles, in fact. A bustling college campus, Midway University is in Big Fork, Iowa. Big Fork, Iowa is exactly in the middle of nowhere.

With a population of less than five-thousand people, Big Fork isn’t really much of a town at all. Unless you’re on campus at Midway, you won’t find much to do. There’s a pizza place, a small movie theater, and a bowling alley, but when you come to Midway University to study—that’s mostly what you end up doing. I suppose that’s the best way to look at Big Fork and Midway University. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for students to get into trouble. Unless you want to drive the half hour into Des Moines. Which I do weekly.

“A gay fire thing?”

Collin gasped as we pushed our way out of the Economics building and into the open air of the quad. “Do you hear yourself?”

“You said something about a gay blaze or whatever?”

Stepping out of the double glass doors of the Economics building and into the quad was like stepping out of a five-star hotel into a cornfield. Midway University is one big square, bordered by buildings on all four sides, with an enormous park-like center in the middle. When you’re inside one of the buildings, stainless steel, brick, glass, and chrome give Midway a modern, even futuristic, feel. However, the quad is nothing but green grass, a smattering of trees, benches, and study areas for students to hang out. There’s even a fish-stocked pond in the middle of the quad where you can often find ducks taking a break from whatever it is that ducks do.

Collin hooked his arm through mine and dragged me away from the doors of the Economics building and towards the closest bench at the edge of the quad. Practically throwing us onto the bench, I grunted as the corner of my backpack jabbed me in the ribs. As students passed by, back and forth, in throngs, I adjusted my bag while Collin dug in his pocket for his phone.

“Peepers,”

Collin said cryptically.

“So, we went from a gay fire to…what?” I asked.

“Peepers!”

Collin practically shrieked at me.

A serious looking girl passing by jumped at the noise, then hustled away. I couldn’t help but grin. Collin Gray had claimed another victim without even trying.

“You can say it a million times a million different ways,”

I said, turning to prop my knee up on the bench to face Collin, “but I have no clue if you’re even speaking English.”

“You don’t know what Peepers is?”

Collin asked, his thumb racing over his phone.

“Gay Easter candy?”

I shrugged.

He rolled his eyes.

“A new song that all the homosexuals won’t shut up about?”

I asked. “Probably by Ariana or Gaga or—”

“Oh, shut up.”

Collin waved me off and stuck his phone in my face. “It’s a social media site—you big homosexual.”

Laughing, I took Collin’s phone from him. On the screen an app he had clicked was loading. A pair of purple binoculars flashed on the screen a few times, which was replaced by an eye, which dissolved into a grid of videos from which to choose.

“Okay?”

I pushed his phone back at him.

Collin grabbed my hand and shoved his phone back in my face.

“Peepers is a social media app everyone is on,”

he explained. “Especially the gays. Everyone except you. Because you think you’re too cool to be on social media.”

Using my thumb to scroll through the grid of videos, it looked like most of the people on Peepers liked to dance to whatever was the latest, popular song. Why people would record themselves dancing in their—often unclean—bedrooms and put it out into the ether for the whole world to judge was beyond me.

“I don’t think I’m too cool for social media,”

I said, handing Collin his phone. “I don’t like social media. There’s a difference.”

He rolled his eyes and flicked his thumb over the screen of his phone before stuffing it back into his pocket.

“Anyway,”

Collin drew the word out, “he’s from Peepers.”

“Who?”

“The guy from class!”

Collin shrieked again. “The guy in the blue blouse!”

“Shirt. The blue shirt.”

“Whatever. He’s, like, the most famous guy on Peepers,”

Collin explained dramatically. “Well, one of the two most famous guys on Peepers. Him and his boyfriend had the Two Gays from Blaze account?”

“I still don’t recognize any of these words as English.”

I shook my head.

Collin was getting huffy, so I decided to take it easy on him for once.

“Okay,”

I said. “So, him and his boyfriend have an account on Peepers and they’re super popular. Got it. So?”

“They had an account and they were super popular,”

Carmyn explained. “They shared an account called Two Gays from Blaze. Because they were going to Blaze University and they were a gay couple, right?”

“Sure.”

“They had like ten million followers and were the most popular account on Peepers,”

Collin continued. “That’s so many followers they had almost twice as many as the next most popular account!”

“Crazy.”

Though I didn’t want to admit it, I was actually impressed that a gay couple was the most popular account on any social media site. We, as a people, have come a long way.

“I know!”

Collin squealed. “Like, they were interviewed on talk shows and stuff and even had an article written about them in People magazine!”

“Insane!”

“I know you’re mocking me, you bitch.”

Collin sniffed. “But anyway, then, like, the guy in the blue blou—shirt—Theo? He cheated on the other guy—Ben? And then they broke up and half the people stopped following the account and started following Ben. And Theo is, like, Satan to everyone in the community!”

“The…community?”

I asked. “Which community?”

“The gay Peepers community!”

“Ah. Is he going to be okay? I mean, should we start a fundraiser or something?”

Collin glowered at me.

“I know you don’t think social media matters, Josh, but you could at least pretend,” he said.

“Impossible. Peepers isn’t a real place.”

With a roll of his eyes, Collin continued.

“Anyway, I guess everyone was so hostile to him at Blaze University that Theo left after his sophomore year. And now he’s turned up here! We have Theo Hendrix at Midway University!”

“I’ll have to call my parents. They’ll be delighted to hear of this development at my educational institute. Maybe the cost of my tuition won’t bother them so much once they know that Theo Hendrix is studying here, too.”

Collin jumped up from the bench.

“You are a snide little bitch and I want nothing to do with you!”

Collin, the dude who slept ten feet away in the other bed in our dorm room almost every night, announced.

I watched Collin as he marched six steps away. Then he turned.

“Well,”

he asked, “aren’t you coming? It’s pizza day in the dining hall.”

I laughed.

“Yeah.”

I rose from the bench. “I’m not going to miss pizza day.”