Page 16 of The Villains of Winter

“They don’t want to study with us, Elliott.”

“She mentioned the mentorship herself; I’m behind on a few lectures.” Elliott reached for the rum and coke, but James wouldn’t let him make the decision without being stone-cold sober first. There was a sudden hockey shot and the pack of centaurs leapt off the couch to cheer, howling and spilling beer all over themselves, tackling each other in ferocious embraces. Another delivery of fresh, hot pizza boxes sailed through the doorway that Heather Tần manned with a silver helmet and a hunting spear. Her quiver of hard-metal arrows threatened to slice across students’ hands and elbows whenever they stood too close to her money.

James glanced at the senior next to Elliott. His voice intensified slightly. “Is she your type?”

She had curly hair, smoldering eyes, and an Amazonian height. She was Elliott’s favorite type. Girls with bouncy, curly hair, dark brown skin, and gapped teeth were Elliott’s weakness. It reminded him of his Halle. He melted for her. Except, she wasn’t thinking of that. The hibernal was in only two months. Why couldn’t James understand that?

“Never mind, the hockey game is almost over anyway.” James pointed to the beer-drenched television screen. Pepperoni slices were scattered on the floor from the raucous excitement. James slid his eyes back to Elliott. “If you prefer their bedrooms, I’ll do whatever you want to do.”

Elliott spoke over the sports chants rising in the room as the timer counted down. “No, if you came for the game, let’s stay. It might be a win.”

“There’s another hockey game on Tuesday, the Carnivores are going to lose this one. My last year of hockey games will hopefully be a win.” James finished his Scotch in one last swallow. “Let’s get blitzed and head upstairs, it’s fine.”

“Don’t say that it’s your last.” Elliott hated when James talked that way. His eyes stung. The upperclassman grinned at the concept of death. He swung his arms around Elliott. “Do you need to borrow a condom?”

“That’s not what they want.”

“It’s exactly why they’re interested in you, Elliott.”

Her tiny lip bite confirmed it. “It’ll be the best nightcap you ever had.”

Now Elliott flushed pink. The mentorship was a pickup line. Elliott didn’t know why people stopped saying what they wanted outright anymore in college. There was a strange artifice of innuendos and insinuations for him to decipher like a surreptitious language he couldn’t understand.

Elliott offered the sphinx his rum and coke as recompense. He stammered an apology, since Misty was more beautiful than anyone in the dormitory, but he figured she wanted her last intimate nights to be with someone she loved. Elliott was clumsy, adoring, and heartfelt in bed. Passionate.

He was easily smitten.

However, girlfriend after girlfriend broke up with him because he’d eventually confess he was still helplessly in love with Halle Mercer.

She graciously kissed his cheek, accepting the beverage. “Another time then.”

James purchased another set of drinks for the game.

Crowned with a pharaoh’s nemes, Huey Powell switched the stereo to a new hip-hop beat and the room pulsed as the clock ran out. Huey never buzzed his afro for good luck. It infrequently worked. Last season, the Connecticut Carnivores won the division title for the first time in five years. However, in the end, the Saturday night score was 3-2 in favor of the Pittsburgh Penguins which still exploded the Common Room, everyone rabidly whistling, stomping, and pounding their chests. King Arthur back-flipped off the oaken tables. The Headless Horseman shotgunned a beer.

It was a good omen that the Penguins won.

They’d learned to treat every loss as a victory. Delusion was the cure to sorrow.

Elliott found Heather. He slammed down more rum and cokes, three then four, as the Common Room celebrated the loss. My last year of NHL games will hopefully be a win. Elliott couldn’t get the words out of his head. James wouldn’t be dead. He lost his balance by the time there were body shots and Jell-O shots passed around. James had to keep him upright as they sang along to Bruce Springsteen and Lionel Richie at midnight when it became Sunday morning. Elliott tripped over his feet.

Fifteen sophomores snuck into the rambunctious party, beer keg stands and cheap burger sliders offered as bribery. A half-asleep Robin Hood fled the dorms with a textbook as a body shield, chased out into the freezing snow by a furious Hera who wanted him to return dressed as crowned Zeus of olive leaves and thunderbolts.

James and Elliott ate their weight in pizza and sliders, then reenacted the first score by Nils Eriksson. Their imaginary hockey sticks clacked together as random freshmen went around, blundering through the crowds with naïve eyes, asking, “What would you do if you were chosen?”

“Exactly this.” James grinned like a boy. Happy, drunk, and fed.

Elliott threw his arms around James, and in a single glance James interpreted exactly what Elliott’s passionate gaze meant, and James’s eyes widened in alarm. “Don’t do it. Not here.”

“Why not?”

“You’re out of your mind.”

“No one is looking.” Elliott grinned back, knowing exactly what he would do if this was his last weekend alive. The room had gone quiet since the new start of slow, tender songs. Elliott didn’t bother to listen to James, and perhaps it was all of the rum, and the invincibility of drunkenness, and the camaraderie of the upperclassmen that encouraged him. “She’s one of your favorites.”

“Yes, but I don’t need all of Winterthur Hall to know that—”

“‘Through the fire–’” Elliott sang the lyrics and danced around the Common Room. It was the one illegal song they knew from when James had stolen a radio from Professor Winston on Elliott’s birthday once. Chaka Khan’s Through the Fire was released in 1984 and they wouldn’t have known it otherwise and, now, Elliott was singing on top of his lungs of how he’d gladly risk it all, right down to the wire, even through the fire. It was the song he’d sing on his last day on earth.