Page 9 of Ginjuh

He glanced over at Jay and me standing there looking at him.

“What are you looking at, Mankins?” Jay fake jumped at Austin.

Austin just stared at us a moment longer, not reacting in the slightest. His eyes met mine and I gave him a small, uneasy smile. He didn’t return the smile, but instead, turned his head back to his locker and reached inside. He pulled out a composition notebook, ya’ know, the kind with the “marbled” black and white covers, and closed the locker door. He glanced over at Jay again, to which Jay gave another fake start towards him. Austin’s eyes flicked over to me a second time, then he turned around and headed off in the opposite direction.

“He’s so fucking weird.” Jay shook his head.

“Why do you do that to him?” I asked, frowning at my best friend. “He never says or does anything to you, man.”

“Exactly,” Jay’s arm was around my shoulder again and he was patting my stomach with his other hand, “I’m trying to get a rise out of him. Get him to do something. Anything. Damn, friend-o. Summers on the farm are paying off.”

Before I could stop him, Jay raised the front of my shirt to expose my stomach. Mandy and her friend Katie chose to walk up right at that moment. Both of them whistled at my exposed, freckly abs. I blushed and shoved Jay’s hand away, forcing my shirt back into its previous position.

“Lookin’ good, Ginjuh.” Mandy winked at me before turning to Jay. “You giving me a ride home?”

“You know it.” He grinned at her, his arm moving from my shoulders to hers. “I’d give you a ride anywhere, sexy.”

Mandy giggled.

Katie’s head was tilted downwards and she was looking up at me through a flutter of eyelashes.

“Don’t bother, Katie.” Jay put his other arm around her shoulders and led the two of them away from me towards the exit. “Ginjuh has the hots for me. You’re not his type.”

I didn’t correct Jay, but instead rolled my eyes and followed behind them, always the fifth wheel. As the four of us made our way out of the building, I turned my head to look in the direction Austin had wandered off to. He was exiting the building through the door at the other end of the hall, his notebook tucked under his arm, his black clothes making him stand out in the sea of brightly garbed students trying to leave for the day.

Poor guy. He’s obviously got something going on.

Once I managed to break away from my best friend, his…girlfriend?...and Katie, I climbed into my car. Immediately, I cued up some Florence + the Machine—redheads gotta support each other—and as Dog Days Are Over poured out of my speakers, I made my way out of the school parking lot. A few songs from Florence, and one apiece from Tori Amos and Ed Sheeran—again, gotta support my tribe—and I was driving down my grandpa’s driveway. He was seated in his rocker on the porch, no coffee cup in sight, due to the afternoon hour, but he waved as I turned off the car and the dust settled around the vehicle.

“Hey, Grandpa!” I waved excitedly as I jumped out of the car.

“Zach, I’m getting’ old.” He shook his head with a smile. “I could hear that music from the road. You’re going to ruin your ears and mine can’t stand it.”

I laughed. “Sorry, Grandpa.”

He waved me off.

“You ready to work, son?”

“Aren’t I always?”

He gave an upwards nod as I looked around for the “farm hand” Grandpa had said he was going to hire but it was just the two of us in sight. Looking out at the acres of corn that had dried in the late summer sun, my stomach fluttered a little. This was going to be work. Grandpa couldn’t really help—maybe drive a tractor with a Brush Hog if that’s how we were doing things—but I didn’t know if two people could manage all the work in time for Halloween. Then again, Grandpa always had a plan for anything we set out to do, so I told my stomach to stop fluttering.

Trust Grandpa.

“Well, today,” Grandpa cleared his throat, “I’m going to get you boys to lay out some guide lines so that we know the path for clearing out corn. If we got time before the sun gets too low, maybe you can scythe some down to make it easier on the Brush Hog, but—”

“Is this going to be, like, a real maze, or just a haunted maze that has a clear entrance and exit?” I asked quickly, excited at the idea. “I mean, I don’t know if you just want something kid-friendly where people just wander around, trying to find their way out or if we’re going for a scary thing for teenagers to bring in some big bucks.”

I chuckled.

“Well,” Grandpa reached into his pocket to pull out a folded wad of paper, “John Duke got these plans for me for a corn maze off the internet that he said would work for the acreage I got here.”

I stepped away from the car and ascended the few steps to the porch to look over Grandpa’s shoulder at the paper he unfolded. Upon the paper was a grid showing lengths and widths that needed to be cut, in which formations, and so forth. There were a clear entrance and exit and it wasn’t so much a maze as paths cut through the corn to lead people on an indirect path to the exit. Haunted Corn Maze it spelled out to me.

“I think that’s a plan for a haunted corn maze, Grandpa.” I nodded. “I mean, no one could get lost in it, right?”

“I reckon your right.” He nodded, looking down at the paper. “You think this is something we can manage?”