Young Writers Society

The nauseatingly cold air iced my lungs as I stepped into the dark, metallic cube, a narrow staircase leading down through the annals of the main building. As my feet clanked on the rusty steps as my declension began, a smell of wilting paint in the air, the bitter taste of aged metal on the tip of my tongue, I couldn’t have helped but wonder if somehow Chelsea had been right. It returns to the same mistake John F. Kennedy made, of traversing to a great unknown despite the fears of those around him. Was I really going to make the same mistake?

The room felt airtight, so I hastened down the narrow, winding staircase, to the moment where I reached another set of double doors. I pressed my shivering hands against the silver metal plates, the cold stinging my skin as I muscled it open.

A shift in the air metastasized my lungs as the gleaming lights of the warm library momentarily blinded my eyes, before taking in sight of a massive arena of wondering, colorful literature of all shapes and sizes. Heavy shelves filled with books and books formed an endless hall leading to an abandoned computer lab in the distance. The books were organized neatly by sky blue signs hanging from the rafters. Mystery. Horror. Romance. Who organized this place? How was it I didn’t know it existed before?

“Get out," a voice echoed, and my heart froze like arctic stone.

My eyes moved from the book-filled shelves stretching to the ceiling, to the hall right in front of me, where Theodore Goulagh stood, his fists clenched up, his pale face turned pink with an unrelenting anger. “Get out of here and don’t come back.”

“No,” I said, rooting my two feet firmly to the ground, attempting my best to hide the nervous jitters in my voice. “This isn’t your library, Theodore.”

“It is our library,” he sneered. “It’s the only place we can get away from everyone. And we don’t like you. None of us do. So get out.”

“I’m not even here for you,” I said, crossing my arms. “I’m here to talk about Charles.”

“Talk about me, then,” Charles said.

I knew the creaking, menacing voice straight away and let out a tepid sigh as he cackled slyling behind me. With a loud gulp, my body twisted around, and I faked a smile. "H-hey there, Charles," I greeted as he looked at me with his signature sinister glare.

“Tsk, tsk,” he said, folding his one arm across his chest, tapping his foot on the ground rhythmically. “No need to explain, Toby Kyle. I know why you’re here. I understand.”

“Y-you do?”

“You’re here because you want to be our friend,” he said, raising his eyebrows as he adjusted his glasses, his menacing eyes glowing devilishly underneath. “With Chuck gone, and Bailey getting it on with Coach Johnson, you’re out of friends, aren’t you? That’s why you’re here.”

“Hey! Don’t talk about Bailey like that!” I warned. “You know what happened.”

“Humph,” Charles said. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t. But the answer is no – I reject your friendship.”

Could he have been right? Why was I down there? Did I really need help to find Charles a present, was I really all that clueless? Why didn’t I go to Mr. Tyler instead? Either way, I wasn’t going to let him stab at my pride any longer. “That’s not why I’m here,” I explained.

“It’s exactly why you’re here,” Theodore said. “Charles is never wrong!”

“Charles is always wrong, and you’re just a prick who follows him to the end of the earth,” I responded. "Even if he told you to jump off a skyscraper, you'd still do it!"

“I’m sorry, Toby,” Charles said, shaking his head, tears starting to well up his eyes. “But once you’ve been stabbed in the back once, it’s exceedingly difficult to trust anyone else. I have trusted people in the past, I have…but they use me, they treat me like dirt after only pretending to be my friend. So no! I can’t be your friend! I’m sorry! I really am! Eric stole from me! I trusted that wicked weasel, and he stole from me, he did.”

“There you go again, can't make it an hour without whining about Eric. Well I never wanted to be your friend,” I beamed. “Even if Chuck and Bailey both curled up and died, I still wouldn’t want to be your friend. The whole reason I came down here was to figure out just what to get you for Secret Santa, because I drew your name. But now I might as well get you a lump of dirt, because that’s exactly you deserve. So I hope you sleep well tonight. Because I know Bailey won’t. Asshole.”

Without another word, I stormed back out of the library.

***

As I made my way back through the campus, a wrenching, painful knot formed in my stomach, as if my gut was already telling me I was in the wrong before my mind came to that conclusion. It was the first time I'd seen Charles come even close to crying, or even show real, genuine emotion, honestly. But like I said, I was a bomb ready to explode on anyone who was near me. And since I couldn't come up with the words to make it up to Charles, I had to do it with action.

I marched right to the dormitory and began to pound on Eric’s bedroom door. “Eric! Eric!” I belted. “Open up. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”

There was no answer. “Come on!” I sneered. “I know you don't go anywhere else. Open the door!”

“Hey there,” Mr. Tyler said, emerging from the dorm entrance. "Don't burst the door down on me. Don't know hard it is to get someone in here to fix it."

It clicked open, and Eric rolled out into the lobby on his wheelchair. “What is it you want?” he scoffed. “Here to give me dirty looks like you always do, or what?”

“What? I’ve never—look, Eric. I need help getting Charles a present for Christmas. Can you help me or not?”

Eric’s eyes glowed precariously, and he adjusted his glasses over his face, snorting audaciously. “Oh. Ha. Ha, ha. That’s grand,” he said, a precariously amused glow in his eyes. “Rich, even. Oh, ho. Ha.”

“Come on, just help me,” I complained. “What did you do to Charles that made him hate you so much?"

“If you must know, there was a car crash long ago,” Eric explained. “A very bad one, at that. Charles lost his arm, Theodore lost his eye, and Norman lost his nose."

“And you lost your ability to walk, right?”

“No, no, I suffer from something called spina bifidia,” Eric explained. “I can actually walk, although it is excruciatingly painful. Thus, I prefer to sit. Anyway. That is why we used to be, but are no longer, friends. My father was the driver, and Charles blames me. There. Now you know."

“You know that's not true,” a voice sighed from behind us. "Tell him the whole story, man."

I turned around, having been so engaged in the conversation that I failed to notice Norman Goulagh standing behind us. “That’s not why they don’t like you,” he added. “Tell them about the necklace.”

“Necklace, huh,” Mr. Tyler said, seeming to be just as interested in the whole debacle as I was. "Yeah. Think I heard about that one."

“Yes. The famous Goulagh family golden necklace,” Eric admitted. “Worth twenty-thousand dollars. It's quite a sum."

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Twenty-thousand?” Mr. Tyler said, his eyes glowing as his mouth dropped to amusement. "Why don't you buy a nice car with that money?”

I blinked several times in disbelief, rubbing my eyes as my tongue twitched around the edges of my teeth, my mind simply unable to come up with the very words. Twenty-thousand dollars is certainly no pocket change.

“Well, we wouldn't be able to buy candy bars with it,” Eric said. “It went missing at the start of this school year, and they all think I stole it. That's why they don't like me.”

“I never believed that,” Norman said. “But Charles won’t take no for an answer, and Theodore sort of goes along with whatever Charles says. But I'm smarter than them. I know you didn't take it.”

“Actually, you’re wrong and they’re right,” Eric said. “I did steal the necklace.”

“What?” the three of us exclaimed in unison, a loud, collective gasp echoing throughout the lobby.