These Secret Years

Sullivan

Chapter One

FORCED FUN.

Is this what freedom feels like? Society promises great things about college in general. Independence. A chance to find yourself. Lifelong friendships. Connections. Intellectual growth. School spirit.

So far I have a roommate who’s nothing like me, hunger pains worse than a migraine, and a colorful flyer taped to my dorm room door promising “forced fun” with a mandatory mixer.

Deandre, my roommate, takes one look at the flyer, grins, then drops back to the floor in front of our beds to continue his endless series of push-ups. “It’s one way to get to know everybody,” he states when he sees the troubled scowl on my face.

“By forcing it?”

“Sure. It’s a big school.”

It’s a huge school. The University of Southern Missouri is the largest in the state. It’s known for three things—the business school, fine arts, and football.

Deandre, a wide receiver from Texas, is here on a full ride and then some. They gave him something like three cars, a new house for his parents, and a stipend with a dollar amount he said he’s not allowed to disclose, but I looked it up online, and it’s 500K a semester.

Insane.

The way they treat football players is absolutely fucking insane. How I wound up in a dorm with all of them was due to sheer lack of research on my part.

Deandre seems great, though. I’ve had no problem with him as a roommate so far, but it’s only been a weekend. He hasn’t been around much, but when he is, he’s thoughtful, neat, and has no problem striking up a conversation. He even told me to call him D.

I’m here for the music program on a full ride of my own, but my tuition isn’t being paid by the university. In other words, I’m lucky to be here.

“Are you any good at UNO?” Deandre asks, with no sign whatsoever that he’s even winded.

“Is it possible to be good at UNO?” I deadpan. “It’s just luck.”

“Bullshit. You gotta know when to use those Skip and Take Four cards. There’s strategy.”

“Why UNO, though?”

“‘Cause everyone knows how to play it.”

“I guess.”

I read the flyer from top to bottom.

FORCED FUN

Mandatory Mixer courtesy of your Type A RA.

Join the rest of Four East in the common room at six sharp tonight for Ultimate UNO.

Bring your game face and prepare to face off in an epic tournament. YOUR ATTENDANCE IS MANDATORY. You won’t make friends if you don’t get out of your room, so I’m afraid I must insist. Snacks and prizes provided. BYO age appropriate B.

Look sharp. First impressions count. No excuses.

Don’t be a dick.

Let’s have some fun.

Sincerely,

Gabe Kent, #401

I’ll give the RA some credit. It’s obvious he didn’t use AI to write this.

Deandre switches from pushups to mountain climbers. Those do cause him to breathe heavier, but he’s still able to talk. “You don’t know anyone here, right?”

I lie down on my bed. Watching him is exhausting. Setting the flyer aside and reaching for my violin, I rest the neck on my pillow and stare at the strings close-up, running my fingertip gently across the bridge. “No, but classes haven’t even started yet.”

“What’s that?”

“I said classes don’t start until tomorrow.”

“Right, well, now you can maybe meet some people who might be in them.”

It’s nice of him to show concern about my social life, but I’m more concerned about finding my way around the huge campus.

I’m concerned about college algebra and long multiple choice tests.

While my “scholarship” isn’t exactly contingent on my GPA, I could easily flunk out.

I want this chance, but school has never come easily to me. Not the way music does.

In the space beneath the taut strings on the new violin, a melody forms in small rectangles.

It’s classic at first—rectangles usually are—and then come harsher bursts, like stars.

Something strange and discordant takes shape.

It emerges in a pattern I watch as my gaze jumps between depths and distances along the fingerboard.

I hear it as well as if it were being played aloud.

A rough strike flattens the space, a stop breaks, and then, a long, high harmonic cuts straight through my breastbone. I release a puff of a breath.

I could write it down for practice, but I don’t need to write it to remember it. I already know exactly what comes next, too. This, maybe, is also a form of insanity. The kind only one person in my life has ever claimed to understand.

I blink away thoughts of him and turn my back on the violin—his gift to me “until next time.”

“Let’s talk about what you’re gonna wear,” Deandre says.

I glance down at my joggers and the old high school orchestra shirt I have on. “I have to dress up, too?”

“What does look sharp mean to you?”

“What does it mean to you?” I throw back.

“Ordinarily, it’d mean a suit, but for an UNO championship in a dorm lounge, I’m gonna go with jeans and a clean shirt.”

I’ve seen his wardrobe. It’s better than mine by miles.

Name brand and designer everything down to his socks.

I have one suit from a mall in Grand Rapids, but nearly everything else in my closet is from thrift stores.

Not that I haven’t found some good stuff, but nothing I’d call sharp.

Adrian keeps my nice clothes at his house because he bought them all.

“I have pants and clean shirts, too.” My stomach is attempting to consume itself. I could go get food, but it’d take effort I don’t feel like spending. Free snacks at the mandatory UNO tournament are only a couple of hours away, and since I have to be there anyway, I tell myself I can wait.

“There’s these two twins—they share a room down the hall—Dillon and Derek—huge dudes. You’ll like them.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re likable.”

“Because they’re huge twins?” I ask.

“Nah, they’re funny.”

“Are they identical?”

“Of course.”

“They’re on the football team?”

“O-line.”

I don’t know what that means.

“The red shirt quarterback lives on this hall too. Haven’t gotten a read on him yet.

He’s either quiet or an asshole. I can’t tell, but that’s why this UNO shit is good.

” Deandre blows out a breath, drops to his knees, and sits back on his heels.

He’s covered in a glossy sheen of sweat, making his dark skin look polished like smoky quartz.

He shakes some of the displaced twists from his eyes.

Most of them are chin-length but the ones framing his face hit around mid-cheekbone.

His brown eyes gleam with a hint of mischief that always seems to be there no matter what he’s talking about.

He’s also always smiling, or his mouth has a natural smile to it.

The opposite of a resting bitch face. He’s good vibes personified.

I’m guessing he’s one of those people who has the ability to have fun wherever he goes by virtue of the fact that he’s there.

“Red shirt quarterback?”

“It just means he’s not playing this season.

He’s on the team, but he’s not using one of his eligibility years, which is smart in his case because the starting quarterback is a senior, and the new guys likely won’t get much play time.

Ideally, what you want as a quarterback is for a coach to build the team around you, and this team is already built around the current starter, which is why I’m red shirting this year, too. ”

I shake my head. “It won’t make sense no matter how many times you try to explain it.”

He chuckles and stands. “Fair enough. I’m gonna hit the shower. Want to join?”

I’m struggling to warm up to the idea of community showers. The stalls are private enough, but I’m no jock. I’ve never had a conversation with someone while I’m washing my hair. “I’ll go in a little bit. I have a song I want to play.”

Deandre glances at the violin. “Yeah? What song?”

“Something I came up with while you were doing push-ups.”

“Like just now?”

I nod, making myself sit.

“That’s a thing you do? Write music in your head?”

I reach for the case where the violin bow is still strapped in. “It is a thing I do,” I say quietly.

He grabs a fresh t-shirt and a pair of shorts from the small dresser in his closet. “Is the song any good?”

“It’s new,” I tell him. “Sometimes it takes people awhile to appreciate new things.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning, it is good, but you might not get it.”

He huffs. “Guess I’ll be the judge of that when I get back from the shower.”

Whoa—absolutely not. “I’m not playing it for you.” I say as he opens the door to the hall.

“Yeah, you’re gonna, or it’s gonna be the longest year of both our lives.”

Not entirely sure what he means by that either, I shrug and let him go.

Carefully placing the practice mute on the bridge of my new violin, I stand in the narrow space between my bed and desk and play the notes, listening to the new song again.

It’s finished within minutes, probably before Deandre’s water in the community shower gets hot.

The Four East common room sits at the intersection of the East and South wings of our dorm.

Earlier today, it looked like a basic study area and lounge, but now it’s crowded with a bunch of shitty card tables and chairs.

There’s a larger table off to the side covered with a plaid bedsheet where the snacks are laid out.

There’s a cheese and meat tray, fresh from the grocery store, an assortment of crackers, various chips and dips, and a container of crappy looking cupcakes.

None of it looks appetizing, and there are already a few guys picking through it with hands that could have been anywhere.

The unmistakable twins are the main culprits, loading up paper plates with chips, cheese, and two cupcakes apiece.

They’re big, white guys with baby faces and thick auburn hair.

One of them has a traditional short haircut, while the other has let his hair grow out a little.

They’re dressed like Deandre—in jeans and clean shirts. One blue, one black.

The football players are all glaringly obvious with their biceps and quads and sculpted asses.

Even the twins who border on heavy-set, have enormous muscles under a thicker layer of insulation.

I’m six-feet tall, but since moving in here, I’ve felt smaller than I ever have in my life.

Deandre is six-four, and most of these guys are taller than I am, too, but not as tall as my roommate.

As the common room fills, there’s about a half and half split between the athletes and the guys like me.

Gabe Kent, the type A RA, stands on a chair to introduce himself. He’s a junior, not tall, with an average build. He’s got a full beard, shaggy, dishwater blond hair, and reminds me a little of a teacher in a movie—the kind all the kids think is cool.

The first thing he does is take a head count to make sure we’ve all followed the mandatory part of the instructions, then he thanks us for coming. “Everyone knows how to play UNO, right?”

When no one says they don’t, he goes on.

“Eventually we’ll work our way up to team games like Spades because it makes the tournament brackets more interesting, but since we’re all getting to know each other, and I don’t know where you guys came from or how good any of you are at cards, we’ll start here.

I won’t make this mandatory again, just strongly encouraged.

This is a big ass school, and shit gets busy, but for a lot of you, it’s your first time away from home, and I like to think we can count on each other if we know each other. Good deal?”

“Yeah, man,” Deandre says gamely from my side as a few other guys murmur their assent.

I wouldn’t say I’m nervous. Not the way some of these guys look like they are, but I can think of about ten things I’d rather be doing, from studying the campus map to sleeping.

As Gabe explains how the tournament brackets are going to work, I scan the gathered crowd of about two dozen freshmen. I stop when I find a pair of deep set brown eyes locked on me.

The guy glances away after a second, but then looks at me again, and yeah, I’m still looking at him.

He’s clearly a football player, if my height requirements and muscle mass rules are correct.

White, dark-haired and broad-shouldered, he’s got a five o’ clock shadow on a classically handsome face.

Strong jaw, straight nose, lips on the thinner side.

There’s a heaviness about him that has nothing to do with his weight. It’s something in the way his mouth draws down at the edges. The way his eyelids seem to fight to hold themselves open.

He runs a hand over his short hair and looks away from me again, like he just got distracted and hadn’t meant to stare. Now that I realize I’m staring, I look away, too, back to Gabe, who’s telling us to find our names on one of the tables, have a seat, and introduce ourselves to our tablemates.

Deandre claps me on the back, and we head off in different directions.

I wind up with the twin in the blue shirt—Dillon, another football player named Tyson, and a skinny dude with glasses. He says he’s studying architecture, and he introduces himself as JT.

Tyson shuffles and deals the first hand. It’s a best out of five situation, forcing us to stay at the table until we’re decently acquainted. Not only that, but as the two first players to finish at each table advance in the bracket, there’s a losers bracket, too.

No one’s going anywhere any time soon.

“So,” Dillon says once the first card is thrown. “Where’s everybody from?”

“What I wanna know,” Tyson interrupts, “is who’s got something better than water to drink?”

Dillon chuckles. “I gotchu, bro.” He leans back and slides a silver flask out of his jeans pocket just enough for us to get a peek at.

Hastily, we all pass our cups his way.