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According to Ray, middle school sleepovers consisted of late night horror movies and made up games. Egon’s personal favorite of the stories Ray told about his childhood was about the time he and his friends wanted to play truth or dare, but nobody was brave enough to pick dare. From there, they created their own game that they called “truth or square”. Square didn’t mean anything. It was the same thing as picking truth, but it added some sort of variation to the game and that seemed to satisfy him and his friends.
Childhood stories were something that Egon often lived vicariously through. The discussion of the endless days playing pretend out in the sun with neighbors stirred up the slightest twinge of jealousy. When you’re expected to spend all of your free time studying, you miss out on a lot of those memories that children are supposed to make. Still, Egon was thankful that he at least got the college sleepover experience of all-nighters studying with one of your best friends.
Growing up in Ohio, Egon felt extremely misplaced. His attitude towards everything seemed to go beyond that of his peers. They never seemed to understand what he was saying. He learned to accept this and was sure that there was some kid out there in the world who felt the same way as he did. That was why Ray had clicked with him almost instantaneously. When their friend Peter introduced the two, there was suddenly a whole world of research to be done.
The two were up late testing out Egon’s newest neural equipment -- he wanted to know how Ray would react to different pieces of media shown. It was all going smoothly until their late-night session was interrupted by a simple mind wander.
“You know, Spengs,” Ray began. “I talk a lot about the friends I had growing up, but I feel like I’ve never once heard about yours.”
Egon’s mouth lifted just to the side to form the small smirk that he occasionally gave to his friends in lieu of laughter or a real smile. “It’s late, Ray. We should pick this up again in the morning.”
Suggesting to go to sleep at one in the morning was unusual behavior for Egon. Ray knew his friend’s mannerisms in the same way he knew himself. Being someone who was so emotionally aware of himself, he was hyper-observant to the people around him. Ever so gingerly, Ray placed his hand on Egon’s arm for some sort of comfort. “You don’t need to talk about it if you don’t want to, but if you change your mind I’m here to listen,” said Ray. “I do care about you, you know?”
A silent nod was all Egon replied with. It suddenly felt like he was a million miles away. His footsteps across his small apartment were heavy as he walked himself to bed. Ray was lying on the couch, ready to fall asleep as soon as he could get his mind to quit wandering. He knew that if he thought too hard, he would only shove himself into an endless pit of remorse.
Meanwhile, Spengler lied on top of his covers and stared at the ceiling of the apartment that he had started to call home. Being across the country from family, he thought it was best to stay off-campus so he didn’t need to head all the way home in the summertime. Besides, he liked being in New York. It was a clean slate for someone who, despite his intelligence, spent so much time hiding amongst the shadows of his peers. Nobody here needed to know about the time he was sent home from school for dissecting a large earthworm he found amongst the mulch of the school playground with a couple of rocks he found, much to the disgust of his peers. It was simple, really: Egon never felt he had anyone who understood him until he made friends in college. In fact, after spending so much time with Ray, he felt like in past friendships, people just kept him around because his awkwardness was an easy flaw to talk behind his back about. People are funny that way. They always feel like they need to have the upper hand on people. It doesn’t matter how smart or how social you are with others. There always seems to be something to complain about.
The small alarm clock on his bedside table read 3:00AM. It would seem late to most, especially considering that Egon had been lying there without any sleep for over two hours now, but he felt that it was right on time for his body to catch the drowsy sensation he needed to fall asleep.
***
By the time Egon awoke in the morning, Ray had already left his apartment. It felt strange that he left so soon, considering that Egon never needed too much sleep and tended to wake up early. Ray always liked to sleep in a little more than Egon did. Egon felt as though every hour of the day was precious and needed to be used. This typically gave him days that ran between eighteen and twenty hours.
At least it was a Saturday. The lack of classes meant that Egon could do whatever he wanted. Today, contradictory to the regular, he wanted to relax for a minute. Being someone who always ran on minimal sleep, caffeine was practically Spengler’s lifeblood. He rummaged through the cabinet and grabbed a thin, papery filter and started to scoop some cheap coffee grounds into it. As he placed his finger on the button to start brewing, there was a small knock on the door.
Egon’s skepticism of who was at the door was brimming. He took a look through the peephole, but that didn’t do much good. All he could see was what looked like someone carrying a jar and a load of laundry. Usually he would ignore a stranger, but today he decided to open the door. Just then, none other than Ray poked his head out towards the side of the bundle of blankets he was carrying.
“I figured maybe we could take a day off of all the research,” he said, walking inside his friend’s house without the invitation inside.
He sat the blankets down on the couch, laid some movies out, and sat the jar on the coffee table. The jar was filled with folded up strips of paper and had the words “Truth or Square” scrawled across the lid of it with sloppy handwriting.
They picked out a movie to watch together, closed the blinds, and switched the lights off. As the two watched, Egon felt a strange pull towards Ray. Maybe it was the repressed horror-esque memories from his childhood that he felt were replicated in the film. On an impulse, he reached out and grabbed Ray’s hand, gently squeezing it at the moments that were a little more frightening.
The two finished the movie and then began to play the silly game that Ray had made up as a child. As the day went on, Egon could feel himself loosening up a little more. They had moved into several different locations, still joking around and coming up with their own pointless truth or square questions.
***
At this point they were simply lying on the floor next to each other. A moment of silence shoved itself between their giggly questions. “Hey, Egie,” Ray started, holding back a bit of laughter. “Have you ever cried underwater? Is that a thing?”
“Can’t say that I have, buddy,” Egon replied. “Why?”
“Just crossed my mind is all.”
“Well, if we wanted to, we could find out.” He never did like leaving things out in the open. Answers always felt necessary to him.
“No, no, that’s okay. It isn’t exactly one of life’s biggest mysteries, is it?”
Egon continued to stare at the ceiling. For once, he felt like he was okay with not having an answer. After all, it was just a silly question posed. “I guess you’re right about that,” he concluded. In that moment, Egon just liked spending time with his friend. There was no reason to consistently move and solve the answers to the endless stream of questions in his head. Being with Ray was just what he needed today.