“She’s masturbating?” he mouthed to his friends in disbelief.
Zoe nodded, still laughing. “I guess whoever’s living here thought she could get a little privacy,” she chuckled.
Nami couldn’t help but laugh too. “This is crazy,” she giggled. “She’s being, like, so loud too.”
“I almost feel bad,” Tyler laughed. “Okay, so the hobo who lives here is-”
The sound of Zoe elbowing Tyler in his hefty gut cut him off. “Homeless person, bozo.”
“Ow… the homeless person who lives here is just flicking the bean and…” He waited for the latest in a series of sexual moans to fill the air. “…howling like a banshee?”
“I guess so,” Zoe concluded. “So, I for one want to get out of here. I feel weird listening to it, I’m sure she doesn’t want an audience, and if she’s… doing this, she’s not exactly in a position to chase us down and kill us.”
“Maybe we should have just you use your flashlight, Tyler,” Nami suggested quietly, thanking the heavens that it was too dark for the other two to see how deeply she was blushing. “Keep covering it with your hand too. I think it’ll give us just enough light to see where to go, but not enough to…”
“I got it, thanks,” Tyler replied impatiently. “Follow me. Don’t speak unless you have to.”
The three walked cautiously through the mall back to their starting point, the moans of pleasure getting farther and farther away as they walked. Eventually, they found their way back into the maintenance room, and eventually, back out of the mall.
“Thank Jesus,” Tyler mumbled as he closed the door and breathed in the outside air. “Can you imagine if some cop came by and sealed up this door while we were in there?”
“That was our craziest adventure yet,” breathed Zoe. She sighed a couple of times before locking eyes with Nami, then she started laughing again.
“What??” Nami protested.
“You’re blushing pretty hard, Nami,” Zoe laughed. At this announcement, Tyler faced her and started laughing too.
Zoe pouted and looked away, knowing that the announcement just made her pout harder. “It… it was weird!” she protested.
“Super weird,” Zoe agreed. “I get people have urges, but wow, she just did not care about holding back. Does it even make you feel better to just yell like that while doing it?” She stared at Tyler.
“Don’t look at me like I know!” Tyler protested. He took off his backpack and started rifling through it. “Anyway, check out some of the stuff I looted.”
“Oh my God, Tyler, you did not,” Zoe protested.
“Oh my God Tyler I did,” Tyler replied defiantly. “This was worth the, uh, Close Encounter of the Bird Kind.”
“Bird kind?” Nami asked.
“Isn’t there a bird word for cooch?” Tyler asked boldly, earning a chuckle from Zoe.
“No, Tyler,” Zoe said between laughs. “There is no bird word for vagina.”
Nami was laughing too, but also wondering if the woman masturbating in there maybe had the same urges as she did. Maybe that homeless woman was the one spraying the cologne, and she had her own Jeremy she was nostalgic towards, or something. Maybe that’s why Nami could smell it. Either way, she had to take care of herself and not let her hormones get the best of her like that – at least, not when she was with friends.
Still, if her hormones were acting up, at least they had the good grace to act up when she was under the cover of darkness.
***
“And… that’s time. Pencils down please,” Mr. Sigorsky called. The only class Tyler, Zoe and Nami had together all semester was math class, and Mr. Sigorsky was their balding teacher, tasked with what may as well have been a teacher’s nightmare – a class with those three at the back of the class.
They weren’t exactly a nightmare trio – Sigorsky saw promise in Zoe, and thought Nami was a ‘good kid’ – but Tyler sure knew how to bring out the beast in them. Even the quiet Nami could be a loud and disruptive influence under Tyler’s little regime, and separating them did more bad than good. This was why, when he went around and collected his kids’ tests, what he said to Tyler shocked the whole class.
“You’re pretty quiet today, Tyler.”
Mr. Sigorsky half-smiled at Tyler, mostly as a joke, but also to show he meant no harm. The trio had agreed that Sigorsky was a pretty harmless teacher, all things considered – there were some real a-hole teachers at Hazelwood, and Sigorsky clearly wasn’t one of them. He was pretty understanding that kids were kids, but he still liked to have some kind of order and authority in his class, so giving an inch to Tyler like that must have meant that Tyler’s quietness was visible.
Out of instinct, Zoe turned towards Tyler and realized that while he wasn’t sad or anything, he was being a lot less disruptive than usual. She joked with him a lot, but she actually liked how bold and frankly obnoxious he could be. He wasn’t so muted today that she picked up on it herself, but after Sigorsky made a note of it, she couldn’t help but think about what was on her mind. She stared at him, trying to figure him out for only a brief second, her teeth nibbling on her pen in thought. Nami was, as usual, staring out the window, probably thinking about boys or something.
After class, while everyone else filed out, Zoe put her hand on Tyler’s shoulder to stop him from walking out, a smug grin on her face. Nami quickly joined them.
“You were halfway decent today, Tyler,” Zoe joked. “Even Sigorsky was surprised.”
Tyler, never shy to being the butt of a small joke, smiled. “Yeah, I’m losing my edge.”
“Are you okay?” Nami asked.
“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” Tyler waved it off. “I got a lot on my mind. This week was rough. I’ve got this dumb To Kill a Mockingbird paper coming up. Anderson wants it in by Thursday.”
“Well, at least you had three weeks to do it,” Nami commented.
Tyler gave her a face. “Three weeks? It was assigned on Friday.”
“Really?” Nami asked. “That’s weird. Wagner assigned ours on Friday too, but she gave us three weeks.”
“So wait, you had less than a week to do this, and you still went tomb-raiding with us on Saturday?” Zoe asked with a grin.
“Of course I did! You’re only young once,” Tyler protested. “I wanna live! I wanna live!”
“Any chance you could ‘live’ outside my classroom for now, Tyler?” Mr. Sigorsky asked humorously. “You have your own class to get to.”
Tyler, used to being chirped by teachers, shrugged exaggeratedly towards Sigorsky. “I almost made it through a whole school day without being called out by you today.”
Mr. Sigorsky gave a small laugh. “You made it through a whole period, I think we can call this a half-victory for you.” He motioned towards the doorway, from which a few students were already filing in.
The three met at Nami’s locker (the other two barely used theirs, for their own reasons) as they always did before their next class. Tyler leaned his head back against the neighboring locker and sighed.
“You sure look like you have more than schoolwork on your mind, dude,” Zoe remarked.
“Yeah, and it’s not like schoolwork is on the top of your to-do list anyway,” Nami joked.
“I think I’m just – hey, Nami, ease up – I think I’m just antsy or something,” Tyler answered. “I just wanna go out and, just, do stuff. Are you two free this weekend?”
The two didn’t say anything for a bit. Zoe’s eyebrows slowly rose. “Two weekends in a row? You’re going to burn yourself out.”
“Did you find something else we could do?” Nami asked.
“Could we, like… go back to the mall this weekend? I mean, we didn’t even get to go to the north end. Maybe there’s something really cool there. Plus, that was like our biggest adventure! Can we?”
“We never go back to the same place twice,” Zoe pointed out. “Wasn’t that your rule?”
“Yeah, well, I don’t exactly have abandoned malls and shit lying around waiting for me. And who knows how long that entrance is going to be there? I can’t explain it, I just want to go back. Can we?”
Neither Zoe nor Nami could explain it, but even though they had their own hesitations, a weird part of both of them wanted to go back themselves, so naturally, it didn’t take too much convincing for the two of them to eventually cave and agree.
It was decided. The adventurous trio were going to go back to the mall that Saturday.
***
The three of them held their breath as Tyler tried the door. In one swift motion, as if worried himself, he turned the doorknob and swung the door open. All three of the friends lightly cheered.
“Okay, here we go,” Tyler announced as Nami handed out the flashlights. “To the north this time. Still past the food court.” With that, he walked in, finding his way past the maintenance room to the court. Looking at each other for a brief second beforehand, Zoe and Nami followed him.
Nami didn’t bother with the mask this time. After all, she seemed fine last time, and even if she wasn’t… the damage was already done? Was that how that worked? She didn’t know. But what she did know, though she wasn’t sure why, was that she was glad to be back in the mall. Tyler was right, it was the perfect place to have an adventure.
And weirdly… in some weird way, she was glad to be breathing in that air again. It was probably the nostalgia, or maybe even the residual smells of the stores or something. After all, she did have a lot of memories of Jeremy in here.
Jeremy…
No, none of that. Not now. She had to behave.
In an effort to clear her mind, Nami started marching forward at a noticeable pace, earning a “Hey! Wait up!” from Tyler. Eventually, all three were matching her pace until they came to a break in the hallway.
“I take it this is the… uh… break in the hallway?” Zoe asked, her voice a little unsteady. Tyler flashed his light in her direction to reveal that her face didn’t show fear or anything.
That was good. Tyler didn’t want to admit it, but if Zoe was afraid, the whole team would be scared shitless inside of one minute. The security guard incident proved that handily. “Yup, this is where the north end begins.”
“Why is it called the north end, anyway? Kind of seems silly to break the mall up like that,” Nami piped in.
“Oh, I have no clue what they called it. I just call it that. I just remember the mall has three ends,” Tyler answered honestly. He shrugged. “Seems like it works.”
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