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It was 3:22 in the morning, Arthur was crying in his bunk and, for the first time in his twelve years on earth, Patrick realized he had a chance to decide what kind of person he wanted to be.
They had just been assigned as roommates at the Mark Rebellato Tennis Academy. So far, Patrick knew that Arthur was too skinny for his height, looked at the ground and stammered when he managed to talk, and didn't know the right kind of product to save his curly hair from its tangled, undifferentiated mess.
Patrick already knew half the kids here from camps and tournaments across Maryland, Long Island, and New Jersey. He'd beaten most of them. They wanted to eat at his lunch table, and they laughed at his jokes, even the unfunny ones. Arthur was from Chicago, so he said his As kind of weird. When Patrick finally managed to look at him straight on, it turned out his wideset, squinty eyes were slightly different colors.
And he cried, out loud, in his dorm room bed.
Patrick could think of a dozen ways to make this kid's life miserable for the next eight months to six years, and that was without trying very hard. Patrick had never been a bully, exactly, but he had lots of practice being a pain in the ass. He’d also never been at a school where anybody gave a shit that he was good at tennis. Here, Patrick had a fair shot at being an alpha dog. An awkward, skinny crybaby with weird eyes would be extra easy to push around.
And so Patrick Zweig learned something about himself: he had no interest in being that type of person.
Something else, then.
He waited, lying still in the top bunk, until the sobs from Arthur's bed quieted long enough for Patrick to pretend he hadn’t heard. Then he swung his legs off the bed and jumped to the floor with a satisfying thud.
Arthur made a confused, sleepy noise and, if Patrick didn't know better, he could have believed his roommate just woke up.
“Were you sleeping?” Patrick didn't bother to whisper.
Arthur just pointed to the clock, which now said 3:48.
“Sorry. I’m hungry.” He rummaged in a dresser drawer and came out with a fresh, full package of Oreos, which he shook in Arthur’s direction. “Want to share?”
“I'm not supposed to,” Arthur said, but he was already holding out his hand. “Thanks.”
Patrick dropped two cookies in Arthur's palm and the rest of the box on his bed spread. “We're building muscle. Calories are our friends.” He tried to give a meaningful, I’ve seen your skinny chest and you are obviously going to be on a bulking regimen look. It was probably too dark for Arthur to see, the same way Patrick didn't have to see how red and puffy his roommate's eyes must be.
“They've got me on lots of, like, eggs and pasta, and chicken breasts,” Arthur said. “ For snacks I'm supposed to have granola and nuts and stuff.” But he said it while he was unscrewing an Oreo. He scraped the creme off with his teeth and looked up at Patrick. “You think these would be good with almond butter?”
They were. Patrick opened the cookies, and they took turns eating the filling. Then Arthur smeared the insides with sticky almond paste, smooshed the tops back on and ran his finger around the side to make them neat. They stacked the improved cookies into one of Patrick’s Frisbees and snacked on them, sitting crosslegged beside each other, while Arthur showed Patrick the best stuff on his Game Boy Color. Once he got going, Arthur was chatty and cheerful, looking Patrick in the eyes and talking with barely a hint of a stammer.
By 5:05 a.m, the cookies were fully extinguished, and Arthur had coached Patrick on how to beat a Pokémon Puzzle Challenge level that had been frustrating him for weeks. “Thanks, Arthur.” It must have been the twentieth time he had said his roommate’s name without thinking about it, but now Arthur stopped and cleared his throat.
“It’s Art, actually. Everybody calls me Art.”
Patrick objected without thinking. “That’s an old man name.”
“I like it,” Art said, suddenly prickly. He flopped on his back, spreading out, which reminded Patrick that the bed wasn’t his and maybe Art wanted him out. “It’s my name. How would you feel about someone calling you Pat?”
“I'd murder them. It’s always Patrick.” He lay on his side next to Art, testing if the other boy would push him away, but instead Art made room. Patrick reached out to bump his fist. “Okay, Art.”
“Okay, Patrick.” Neither one of them moved and, after a quiet moment, Art asked, “How do you say your last name? Is it ‘Zweedge’ or. . .?”
Patrick was surprised Art bothered to ask. People butchered his name all kinds of ways, and the fact Art cared almost made up for such a horrible first guess. “We say it like 'Zv-eye-g.' It’s closer to ‘Sv-eye-k’ in German but if you say the ‘v’ and the ‘eye’ right, it’s good enough.” Most people didn’t.
“Zweig,” Art repeated, getting it more or less right. “Is your family German?”
Patrick stared for a second to see if Art was kidding, but he looked honestly curious so Patrick said, “Sort of. The Jewish kind.”
‘Ah,” Art said, then, “I don’t think the Donaldsons are really anything. Or the Prices. That’s my mom’s family.” That meant they were WASPs, probably, that they’d been playing tennis for generations without anybody worrying about what they were and whether there were too many of them at the country club. Patrick kept that guess to himself, for now, and then Art asked, “Are you having a bar mitzvah next year?” At least he knew that much.
“Yeah,” Patrick said, “It’ll be awesome. Well, no, it will be lame, but at least there’ll be a party. Until then, I have to take a shuttle twice a week to Gaithersburg to study Torah. But the good news is Kat Zimmerman goes too.”
“Which one is she?”
This Patrick could talk about. “Curly red hair. Tall. Lots of freckles, and -- ” He put his hands in front of his chest in the universal sign for ‘absolutely spectacular breasts.’
“Oh,” Art said. “Oh oh. She was wearing that neon green tennis dress? And has the Power Puff Girls stickers on her gear? She seems cool. Is that who you like? Are you gonna ask her out?”
This was a lot of questions for Patrick, who hadn’t noticed Kat’s gear or, actually, technically, spoken to her. “Probably.” He tried to project an air of definitely believing she would go out with him but also weighing the many, many dating options he would surely have among their classmates. “What about you? Do you have a girlfriend back in Iowa or whatever?”
“Illinois,” Art said, with a twitch of a smile that said he knew Patrick wasn’t really confused about where he was from. “Not really. There’s this girl Ruby I played doubles with since we were kids. Not as much lately. She got busy with school and stuff. We went to a couple dances together at the country club and when I applied here I thought she’d at least want to try but --” He shook his head. The room was getting light from outside, so maybe Patrick really could see Art blinking away tears. “She wasn't interested. It’s not like she’s not good enough, she’s real good. But tennis isn’t such a big deal to her as it used to be, I guess. She said I could call her, but --” He shrugged.
“Is that why you didn’t want to come here?”
“I wanted to come here. It’s the best program in the country.” Arthur spoke like he was a talking doll and someone had pulled on his string. Then he rolled over on his other side and looked away from Patrick. “You heard me. Earlier. You’re trying to pretend you didn’t but you did.” It wasn’t a question.
"Yeah," Patrick admitted. "But I don't care. How you feel about being here isn't any of my business."
Art rolled back over and gave him a smile that was gentle and real. Patrick didn’t ask what the tears had been about. That was Art’s to tell, or not.
“It’s dumb,” Art said, finally. “It was my idea to come to this school. I had this coach who graduated from here, and once he told me what it was like, I couldn’t shut up about it. Then today I’m finally here and -- they kept us so busy, and finally I got to the phone, and I was going to call my friend Philip. I’d been thinking about it all day. He’s my best friend. But then we had to line up and get the long distance codes, to use the phones. And it took so long, I finally called and his mom answered and she told me, ‘Sorry, Art, he went to the movies with --” He stopped to paw at his eye. “It doesn’t matter. Two other kids from our school. From his school. And like. Since when was Philip even friends with those kids? Then I realized this is just what it’s always going to be like. Philip and Ruby and movies and dances. Everything back home is going on without me. Even if it turns out I’m good at tennis, which I’m probably not, what if it makes me lose all my friends? ” He looked down. “I told you it was dumb."
“It’s not dumb,” Patrick said.
Art’s stammer came back as he said, “P-please, don’t tell anyone. About --” He pointed at his eyes. He didn't need to say more.
“Who would I tell?” Like Patrick hadn’t thought the whole thing through and decided against it. No reason to let Art in on what an asshole he was capable of being. There would be time for that. “There’s no one here but me and you.”
Most of the kids Patrick knew back in Potomac were headed for other, different boarding schools. He took for granted he’d see them when he was home for winter break, or on vacation at someone’s summer place, but there was no way anyone, anywhere was crying themself to sleep because they missed his stupid ass. He had never had a friend like that. He wondered what it would be like.
“It’s just you and me,” Patrick repeated. “And I can already tell we’re going to have the best fucking time.”
“Yeah,” Art said. “Me too. You’re totally right.”
Soon Art, finally, fell asleep. Patrick would have gotten back in his bunk, but they had to be up in thirty minutes for morning sprints and it was easier just to keep lying here, next to him. He brushed the cookie crumbs off the side of Art's face. They would get up, soon, full of sugar, and probably puke all over the track and get their snack food and their GameBoys confiscated and have to run more laps. But Patrick didn’t like to worry about things that hadn’t happened yet. It didn’t do any good. He would rather imagine a future where Patrick Zweig and Art Donaldson were best friends and ate all the Oreos they wanted and they both won twenty Grand Slams and had a great fucking time doing it.
Why not? The sky was the limit. What was going to stop them?