“Oh hell yeah, Brian’s finally here! Now the party can really start.” My friend Morty shouts out from across the late night bonfire. “It feels like forever since the three of us managed to hang out, right? Busy with schoolwork huh?” I hop down on one of the weather-beaten wood chairs we kept at the campsite, cracking open a cheap shitty hard cider. I can tell by the rosey tinge on Morty’s pleasantly plump face that he’s more than a few deep already. 

“Of course he is. We ain’t callin’ him Brainy for nothing.” Frank comes out from the parking lot, carrying a couple bags full of snacks and supplies that were in the back seat of the car that he picked me up in like they don't weigh a thing. It’s true that I was busy most of the day, hence why he picked me up so late into the hangout. Told them it would almost be over when I got there and that they should just do it without me, but he replied that we have all been so entirely busy that we weren’t going to let another opportunity to be together as a group miss us again. The next time we’d see each other would probably be at the party in a few days where we wouldn’t really get a chance to hang out, and then after that who knows when the next time our schedules aligned again would be.

Even if they’re technically correct about me missing this because of school, I can’t help but correct him about my nickname. “I mean, you do remember you actually did start calling me Brainy for nothing, right? You just assumed I had to be smarter than I let on.” I take a swig and then lick my lips, savoring the taste of semi-cold cider pulled from the mostly watery cooler. Free hand playing with the items in my pocket for want of something to do.

I met Frank first, back when I moved here. I had grown up in this community way out in the backwoods at the edge of the state, gated, completely sheltered life. So when I left such an insular little town and entered the wider population in my junior year, I didn’t have much of an ability to integrate with anyone I didn’t know. Spent the first month in school keeping to myself, not really trying my hardest to break into any friend circles. I basically tried out for the football team solely so I wouldn’t bore myself to death.

Coach picked me up as an alternate because ‘the spirit and the knowhow is there, but the physique is limited’, which was code for ‘not enough people tried out to make a whole team without you’. I never ended up actually playing more than a handful of games; the majority of them was spent as a bench warmer. Least I could say I did respectable when I did play.

Frank was the opposite. Stood out as basically the star player, jacked as hell running back. Extremely charismatic, sweet to everyone. Chiseled features to boot. I don’t know why, but he decided to start spending time with the absolute loser hanging out on the bench after every game. Eventually I got absorbed into his friend group, of which the only one he (and thus I) were actually close to was Morty. 

Morty wasn’t anything like Frank. Short, slightly overweight (in a pleasant meat on his bones way), cute cherubic face. I was told he grew up with an incredibly mean streak in him, but as he grew up it became a lot more of a playful teasing nature. (Well, from what I hear it got knocked into him pretty hard, but still. It’s one way to learn a lesson) Sure still did like to make fun of basically everyone though. I always gave him as good as he could. Insulting each other was our love language.

He was actually the one who gave me the Brainy nickname. When we met he was joking about how, if I’m not great at sports then I must have been great at school, and that he should ask me for some help in class. Turns out I was pretty terrible at that too; when your backwater school doubles as a compound meeting site, it turns out you don’t get the greatest education in the world. In the end I came to him for help in a lot of places, and it became a sort of ironic moniker.

Not like I was mad about a little teasing from someone who would actually help me. No, there actually was one thing I was good at, and it was making fun of myself. Being best friends with the most popular kid in school basically makes you extremely popular too, and if I didn’t want to disappoint the lot of them I had to stop being a wallflower and start being something more entertaining. I found tapping into the beefhead brutish yokel persona I had built up as a kid worked out pretty well, so long as I had Frank and Morty to remind me not to give in to my worst impulses with it. Pretty soon I started getting expected to be the life of the party. I could out drink, out smoke, out anything anyone wanted of me. Usually it was girls who wanted to say they had a football player’s tongue down their throat. Didn’t matter that ‘player’ had an asterisk and that the relationship was meaningless otherwise. Appearance is more powerful anyways.

“Hey, earth to Brian. Did you space out on us again?” Morty punches me in the shoulder, spilling a little cider on my jacket. I took a look at my phone to see yeah, I was sitting around reminiscing for a good forty minutes instead of paying any attention. 

I shrug, turning back to look at the fire. “Yeah, sorry. Thinking about school.” Morty tries to pass me a joint and I wave him off. “Nah, man, you know I’m trying to quit.” I picked up a pretty bad smoking habit in my old neighborhood, one that I couldn’t bring myself to ditch even after leaving all that behind me. I’ve been free for a good month, which of course means I’m still jonesing bad. Even though this ain’t the same, it’s just going to make me crave them harder than I already am. College is a fresh start though, so a great time to get a fresh image. And I don’t wanna be seen as a smoker.

Frank leans back over, laughing. “Trying to quit, but keeping that thing on you still? You’re jinxing yourself, brother.” I look at what he’s pointing to and… Ah, yeah, my monogrammed lighter. I guess I had absentmindedly pulled it out of my pocket and started flicking the hood of it again. I flick it closed, and rub my thumb over the little F.M.A. carved on the front of it. It’s a pretty common practice for me. After all, if you’re going to fidget with something, might as well be something you have on you twenty four seven. 

I lean back on the chair softly. It gorans, warps a little under my weight. How the thing is still standing at this point I have no idea. “Lay up, it’s sentimental. I’m not gonna get rid of it just because I’m not gonna buy any more ciggies.” 

Morty gives a little laugh at me. “You know, thinking about school at a party, trying to get sober. I was right, you’re Brainy as hell. Should have called you Square.”

Hey! “First off, I don’t think drinking with a couple friends is really a party. Secondly, no. I’m really not, man.” I take another deep gulp of my drink to keep from thinking about smoking anymore. “I mean, college just started and I’m already behind. I don’t know how I’m gonna handle four years plus of this.” 

“Hey,” Frank starts, “at least you’re going to school. You were so worried you wouldn’t make it earlier this year. You know, you worried for nothing. Morty I wasn’t so sure about though.”

Morty throws a marshmallow at him in response to that. “I’m sorry, which of us isn’t in college anymore? Last time I checked Brainy and I was doing fine. Couldn’t even get a sports scholarship?” 

He just lets the marshmallow ping of his absolute mountain of a body, crossing his arms tight. “I took a bye year. Told my folks that my sister got one, so it was only fair that I can hang for a bit too.”

“I didn’t hear a no!” Morty pops the cap of yet another drink, taking a long gulp of it. “Speaking of your sister, I don’t see her around. What was the excuse this time, space aliens?”

Frank rolled his eyes. “She’s in the middle of her apprenticeship, she can’t exactly leave for a bonfire.” Frank kept talking about wanting to introduce her to his group, but she’s always found some kind of excuse to not meet up. To this day I haven’t met her. Honestly though, considering her profession, I don’t really mind her taking a while…

“In the craft, right?” I shiver a little at the thought, and Frank notices immediately. He gives me a little side eye, and I melt a little under his gaze. “Sorry,” I apologized quickly. He knows I have a bit of a past about this. I don’t really mean it, it’s just that it’s easy to fall into the wrong crowd when you’re young when your entire town is the wrong crowd. When I was a little kid, my ma caught me repeating some ignorant things I had gotten from my friends, which in turn they got from their parents, which they got from the rest of the town. Not just about how that stuff was dangerous and not to be trusted, but about all kinds of people who shouldn’t be either. What kind of people belong on which rungs of the social ladder; straight white ‘real’ men on top of course. Spent a good while drilling it into me how wrong it was to think that and how they wouldn’t raise me to be a bigot. It scared me straight, but the next time it came up with my friends and I didn’t join in, I stopped being a friend and started being a target. 

I had to be learned real quick to shut up and just play toadie to any of the awful cruel things they wanted me to do. Consoled myself that, of course I knew privately that I was ‘better than that’, on my own time. Learned to excuse a lot of nasty behavior because it was ‘just survival’. Hurt some people that actually really mattered to me too. But eventually word got back to my ‘friend’s’ parents about my sudden change of heart because of my ma, and of course it turns out they were just as cruel and controlling as their little spawn. Suddenly she was ostracized from daily life too, and I’m basically persona non grata unless I’m seen as in the collective force of the attack squad. Finally it got to be too much, and that pushed us out back into the normal world. It’s a good thing we left when we did too; the atmosphere of that place started getting really dark in the last few years we were there. And so much worse after we left…

A cheery little ring comes out of Frank’s breast pocket, once again knocking me out of my mood. “Speak of the devil right? I’ll be right back, I just gotta take this.” Me and Morty spent a few more minutes talking about nothing in particular, roasting marshmallows, if we were actually going to wear costumes for the party, whatever. Frank comes back over into earshot, finished with his call. “Ok guys, wrap it up. That was my sister, we gotta head out.”

CassieSandwich

I was referring to the present in past tense. It was the only way that I could survive.

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