Chapter Text
It was a Tuesday afternoon. The dawn of the final day. The day of Reckoning.
The day that Kevin and Arnold were going to try and talk to Nabulungi. They had been planning this for over a week now. Kevin shared a biology lecture with her that day, and knew for a fact that no teacher could be bothered taking attendance for it, so Arnold was tagging along to sit in on the talk. Then, with the help of Kevin, he would strike up a conversation with Nabulungi, ideally woo her within minutes, start dating and get married and have a big Mormon family and they would finally finish their project and Kevin would be free—
Okay, maybe the last part was a little idealistic. Still, Kevin was an optimist.
“I don’t know about this,” Arnold said as they pushed their way through the crowd. He was turning red already, and sweating an awful lot, Kevin thought. “Isn’t this kind of like lying? My dad hates it when I lie…”
Kevin shook his head. “It’s definitely not . You’re just… checking the subject out. Maybe you’re thinking of switching a class.”
“But I’m not—” Arnold was caught off mid-sentence by Kevin shushing him, placing a finger over his lips.
“It only stops being true when you say it out loud, pal. Just believe it’s true for, like, an hour and we’re all good.”
Arnold nodded his head up and down, slowly, like he wasn’t fully convinced, but within seconds his face lit up. “There she is!”
And Nabulungi was there, sitting quite close to the front of the lecture hall, looking around the room, doe-eyed and a little lost – probably waiting for one of her friends to turn up, Kevin figured. It was a big place to sit alone in, and it got pretty intimidating at times. Thankfully, this meant that the seats around her were all practically empty. He caught her eye and waved, starting to make his way over while pulling Arnold along by the hand, who was just starting to slightly hyperventilate.
“Hey there! I’m Kevin Price. Do you remember me?” He said, taking a seat next to her. “From Anthro with Ms Myers.”
She looked up at him quizzically, as if racking her brain, then grinned in recognition. “Oh, yes, I remember you, Mormon boy.” If it was said by anyone else, it would’ve sounded like she was mocking him, but Nabulungi had such an air of innocence about her that Kevin felt at ease with her teasing.
“This is my friend, Arnold,” he said.
Nabulungi peered at him curiously. Kevin elbowed him as subtly as he could, and the shorter boy managed to plaster a smile on his face.
“Hi,” he giggled, fidgeting in his seat. Kevin didn’t even know Arnold had the self-awareness to be this shy.
“Actually, Arnold here is from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints as well. He went on his mission to Uganda!” Kevin said. He and Nabulungi looked over at Arnold. There was a long silence as he stared back at them, before jolting in realisation.
“Oh! Yes! Yes, I did do that.”
Nabulungi perked up and clapped her hands together in glee. “Oh, how wonderful! What did you like about Uganda?”
Kevin smiled. It was all going according to plan, so far. Time to initiate ‘Phase 2’.
He got up from his place between the pair. “I’m just going to dash to the bathroom quickly before we start. Here, Arnold, you take my seat for now.” He shepherded the shorter boy into the seat next to Nabulungi and made his way outside, pretending to look busy, tying his shoes and checking his watch as if he was waiting for someone, until about five minutes had passed, which Kevin considered an appropriate amount of time to pretend to spend in the bathroom. He headed back into the lecture hall.
Nabulungi had now been joined by a few of her friends, but Kevin was delighted to see that she was still talking animatedly to Arnold, who watched on with a goofy, lovestruck look on his face, eating up every word she said. In fact, he was so preoccupied with the love of his life that he’d forgotten to save the seat next to him. Kevin frowned. This could throw a wrench in the whole operation.
He made do by sitting a few rows behind, where he could keep a careful eye on the whole exchange, painstakingly texting guidance to Arnold between PowerPoint slides as the professor began his lecture – but the button keypad on his phone made texting so slow that usually by the time he had punched out some words of advice, the moment had already passed between the other two, or Arnold didn’t bother to check his phone in time.
Like when Arnold was whispering some joke to Nabulungi while the professor was talking about the difference between mitosis and meiosis, Kevin wanted to tell him to not distract her too much or they could get in trouble, which would draw unwanted attention to the pair, which would embarrass Nabulungi which would make her hate him and then she would never speak to him and then he would never finish that gosh dang project and then—
“Excuse me, is there something more important than this lecture that you need to be discussing?” Before he could try and save the day, the professor went ahead and scolded the two. Kevin could barely watch and buried his face in his hands, fearing the worst – but when he eventually worked up the nerve to peek at them between a gap between his fingers, he realised that Nabulungi wasn’t angry, but was giggling , and giving him a playful punch on the arm, and oh my goodness were they playing footsie?!
And later, when the lecture finally finished and Kevin was able to catch up to the pair, pacing slightly behind them – the path was too small to fit all three of them – he heard Arnold ask for Nabulungi’s phone number. He cringed and nearly threw up, oh no, this was it, this was the end, Arnold was going way off plan , obviously Nabulungi wouldn’t have a phone—
But Nabulungi pulled an iPhone out from her pocket and swapped it with Arnold’s Android, pushing some of her hair out of her face as she punched in her number into his phone. Was she blushing? Or was it a trick of the light? Kevin couldn’t decide. He pushed himself in between them as soon as they traded phones back. He was afraid Arnold would try to hug her, or something. That’d just be too much.
“Well,” Arnold said, “I’ll see you around, Nala.”
Kevin froze. But if Nabulungi noticed the name slip up, she didn’t show it.
“Bye-bye, Kevin Price. Bye, Arnold Cunningham,” she said, beaming, and looked at Arnold. “I’ll text you later.”
The boys watched her skip away in solemn silence.
“Well,” Kevin said, “that was—”
“Awful!” Arnold wailed. “That was terrible!”
Kevin blinked. “But you seemed to be getting along so well—”
“I got nervous. She asked what my major was, and I got nervous and I made it up ,” his voice quavered as he spoke.
“Well, that’s…not ideal , but maybe we can work with it,” Kevin said, furrowing his brow, “what did you tell her it was?”
“Neuroscience . I told her I was going to be a brain surgeon.”
“Oh, Arnold .”
***
They sprinted back to home base – Arnold’s dorm – to brainstorm what to do next. Connor was already there, sitting cross legged and clutching a musical score, practising harmonies bar by bar. Arnold was gasping for air when he burst through the door. Whether it was from running, or a panic attack, Kevin didn’t know.
“Back so soon?” Connor said, not looking up from his sheet music, “I figured you guys would still be talking to that girl.”
“Yeah. We have a problem,” Kevin said, leading Arnold to a nearby bean bag and helping him sit.
“I lied, Connor.” Arnold was red in the face. Connor’s mouth dropped into the shape of a small o.
“You did what? ” The red-haired boy turned to Kevin and prodded a finger into his chest. “You! Why didn’t you stop him?”
“Why is this my fault?” Kevin said. “Someone took my seat, so I wasn’t there to back him up—”
“Okay, you know what? Never mind. We can talk about your gross irresponsibility later. C’mon, Arn, buddy, you know what to do,” Connor patted Arnold on the back and mimed something that Kevin didn’t quite understand. The gesture looked kind of similar to turning a key in a lock, or something like that.
Arnold nodded, thought for a bit, then he stopped being so flushed, and the smile returned to his face.
“You did it!” Connor said, smiling.
“Uh, what did he just do?” Kevin asked.
“He turned it off!” Connor said, making the gesture again. Kevin realised now that Connor wasn’t mimicking a key in a lock, but was miming turning off a light switch. “When our minds are filled with bad thoughts, we turn them off.”
Kevin had been told something similar once before, in high school. He was sixteen. He had sought out his seminary teacher after class. His teacher, Brother Donahue, was fairly young, in his mid-twenties, and well-loved by everyone in seminary. He was described by Kevin’s father as “switched on,” which is probably why he noticed Kevin hanging around his desk, wringing his hands together, almost instantly.
“What’s wrong, Kevin?” He had said, still packing up his things. Kevin rushed to his side and started to shuffle papers into piles for him.
“Oh, it’s just… I wanted to ask, that, if, hypothetically , someone was struggling with unclean thoughts,” he had replied, “ hypothetically , because there was so much temptation out there. What should he – I mean, they – do?"
Donahue chuckled. “Is this someone a close friend of yours, Kev?”
Kevin looked away, scratching the back of his head. “Maybe…”
“Well,” Donahue said, leaning back in his chair and adjusting his glasses as he looked up at the tall boy, “the bishops always told it to me like this: you can replace the thought with something more positive. It’s kind of a nifty little Mormon trick.” He winked.
“How do you do it?” Kevin asked.
“Think of your favourite hymn,” Donahue said. Kevin thought hard for a minute, then nodded. “That hard to pick, huh? Now, hum it.”
Kevin began to sing softly, under his breath.
“When you think of a bad thought, focus on the hymn until you get your mind off of it. Remember, you’re in control of your mind.” Donahue said, nodding approvingly, “but, if I may say so – while some thoughts can certainly be confronting, it can be helpful to contemplate these things. It’s an opportunity to learn from the things that scare us. They might not necessarily be bad thoughts. Remember that, okay?”
At the time, Kevin had nodded slowly, mulling it over. It kind of made sense, but how could this – these feelings – be a good thing?
The words of advice crossed his mind now. It felt uncomfortably relevant, considering that he couldn’t get his mind – or eyes – off of Connor. The cute boy who probably thought Kevin was an idiot. They’d probably never speak again after all of this. He crossed his fingers and toes, wishing for a black hole to come and swallow him up. Or, at the very least, a time machine, so he could go back and fix all of his mistakes. Better yet, he’d stop himself from ever meeting Connor McKinley.
“What are you staring at?”
“Nothing,” Kevin said, quickly, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Don’t you think we should talk about what happened? I mean, we have to fix it.”
“We will. For now, we gotta calm Arnie down. When he gets nervous, he lies. That’s how this whole mess got started in the first place.” Connor pinched Arnold’s cheek. “You’re feeling better now, right, buddy?”
Arnold gave a thumbs up. He was abnormally tame after this whole turning it off thing. It sent a shiver down Kevin’s spine.
“Yeah, I’m okay. I just—wait, I gotta go to the bathroom, you know the relaxation just releases all of the other senses—” He leapt from his seat and went jogging down the hallway.
The other two sat in silence for a moment.
“It really wasn’t my fault,” Kevin mumbled, after working up the courage to speak.
He wondered if he looked as miserable as he felt. Connor stared back at him, exasperated.
“I’m sorry for yelling at you, Kevin,” he said, but it didn’t really sound like he meant it.
Kevin turned away and started to rummage through his backpack. “I bought your scarf.”
Connor’s expression softened. “Oh. You remembered.”
Kevin held back from saying, of course, of course I’d remember , and wordlessly handed it off instead, not meeting Connor’s gaze. He had washed it and sprayed a little of his cologne on it. Just to make it smell nice, he reasoned, and definitely not to make it smell like himself. It’s not like Kevin wanted Connor to think of him whenever he wore it, or anything like that. He was just being polite.
Connor took the scarf, gingerly, and didn’t look at it. “Thank you.”
“Why does he do that?” Kevin asked. “Lie, I mean.”
Connor stared out his window. “It’s not really my business to share.”
“Okay,” Kevin said. Another awkward pause. “I guess I’d better be going. Tell Arnold I’ll call him later.”
Connor looked like he wanted to say something, but he stayed quiet.
The walk to the bus was bitter and cold.