If you really want to know about it the first thing you'll want to hear about is where I was born and what my parents are like and all that A&E Biography kind of crap but I really don't want to talk about it if you want to know the truth, and my parents would get two haemorrhage's apiece if I told anything personal about them, they're quite ashamed of me and don't want anything to do with me. All I'm supposed to tell you about is that crazy viking story that happened to me last year.
It all started at Wembley Prep, some phony preparatory school in New England. It was mid-December and snowing like hell outside. Most of the other guys in my dorm had gone back home for Christmas holiday, but I was stuck here on account of my parents hating my guts. Anyway I was laying in bed reading this book I had checked out of the library called Nine Stories, it was a book with a bunch of short stories in it, there was this one about a guy who was in bed with this chick and he gets a call from his friend asking if he had seen his wife and then ranting about how she kept sleeping around, and in the end it turns out that the girl who was in bed was the other guys wife. That killed me. Anyway that's when Alex, the guy next door, burst in. He was brushing his teeth, he's always brushing his goddamn teeth.
"Don't you have a date?" Asked Alex.
"Do I look like I have a goddamn date?" I said, not looking up from my book. "Why aren't you home?"
I caught a glimpse of him shrugging in the corner of my eye. Poor bastard, I don't even know if he has a real family. That makes me sad as hell, when you get a lousy kid like Alex that doesn't have a real family, that spends his time in the halls of some phony prep school brushing his goddamn teeth.
Alex kept asking all these questions except I really wasn't thinking about what Alex was saying, I was thinking of Saint, my old roomate.
A few weeks ago everyone was invited to this big gala ,held at this big phony hotel called the Conchord where every doorman treats you like shit if you look sorta lousy but kisses your ass when you're some kinda goddamn hotshot, thrown by the school for some good goddamn reason. I was only there for the after party, to tell the truth. The schools principle was giving a speech about how he was "truly proud to see such fine students that would continue to feed the moral fiber of what Wembley Prep was made of". Strictly for the birds. First of all, everyone at the school was either some jock bastard, a stuck up bitch, or some kind of pathetic nerd. I stopped listening to the principals goddamn phony speech when I saw Saint sitting with Marion Gallagher. Old Marion Gallagher, she knocked me out. She was this terrific girl and all, but she had the ability to always date a horrible guy. A few months ago she was dating this scumbag hockey player and last year she was dating this guy who I'm pretty sure is a flit. Not that I'm sure and all, just that when a guy spends so much time getting well dressed they always kinda look like a flit. Anyway, Marion was sitting with old Saint a few tables away from me. It worried hell out of me because I knew just what a sexy bastard Saint was. I finally talked to him after that goddamn speech which only lasted about a million years and asked him what he was gonna do after the after party.
" I rented a room here. I'm coming back to sleep with my girlfriend."
I knew just what he meant by "sleep". He was gonna give her the time. I wanted to sock him right in the goddamn mouth after he said that, but I restrained myself. After all he did carry a goddamn dagger in his cane. What a bastard. I felt so lonesome that night.
Anyway, that was what I was thinking about while chewing the fat with Alex. Saint in that damn hotel room with Marion.
"Listen, wanna catch a movie?" I asked to change the subject.
"Nah, I'm too tired."
That's another thing about Alex. He's always tired, you have to twist his goddamn arm if you want him to do anything.