Again, But Better

Shoulders are touching.
This is something! 
THIS IS
ROMANCE.
Must stay still. Can’t. Lose. Shoulder contact.
“Awww,” he croons sympathetically as my last bird dies.
“You were so close. I got this.” He gently takes the iPod from
my hands. 
Yeah, sorry I missed that last pig, I’m a little busy
trying to be a statue over here.
We’re on level twenty-seven now. I don’t know how long
we’ve been doing this, but I can finally see out the window
again. When Pilot loses the level, he takes notice of the change
and suddenly sits up straight, breaking shoulder contact.

---

“Oh, man, we must be getting close!” He hands me back the
iPod. My chest deflates a smidgen as his body heat leaves my
arm.
“Yeah, that was fast,” I say, trying to sound casual and not at
all distracted by romantic shoulder-contact nostalgia as I turn
off my iPod and repack it in my bag.
A Parisian taxi drops us off outside a building that looks kind of
like a run-down diner. It’s decorated with faded signs
proclaiming it to be our hostel, so we head through the door.
The inside looks like a diner too. To the left is a cafeteria-
looking area, and ahead of us is a young girl in a red tank top
standing behind a tall hostess-like desk, texting. To her left,
Babe and a pale boy with dark hair are waiting for us on a
bench.
“Hi!” Babe jumps up. “We’ve been down here for thirty
minutes now. I figured you’d be arriving within the hour
window, and since our phones are shoddy, I wanted to make
sure we were here to meet you. We’ve just been hanging out, so
you haven’t missed anything. I got the keys for our room and
your room.”
I bring my roller bag to a stop behind me. “We have two
rooms?” I ask, confused.
“Well, they didn’t have four beds available in one room, so
we’re in one room, and you guys have two beds in the other
room. I figured this way we both have guys in the room with us,
so we’d feel safer about the random strangers,” she says coolly.
I swallow hard. Pilot and I don’t comment. This is weird. I
wonder if there really isn’t a room available with four beds, or if
this is a ploy to give Babe and Chad time by themselves. She
hands me and Pilot keys.
“Come on, let’s go drop your things off and get some food
—oh!” She turns, remembering Chad, who’s still sitting quietly
behind her on the bench. “This is Chad. Chad, this is Shane and
Pilot.”

---

Chad gets up. He’s a little shorter than Pilot—about five-
nine with spiked-up dark hair, brown eyes, and a long straight
nose. He stretches out his hand, so I shake it. “Yo, yo, nice to
meet you,” he says.
I nod and smile.
“Nice to meet you, man,” Pilot says, taking Chad’s hand. I
keep sneaking glances at Pilot to see how he’s gauging all this.
He doesn’t look caught off guard or uncomfortable. He looks
chill. I relax a little bit. If he’s not uncomfortable, I shouldn’t be
uncomfortable. He’s the one with a girlfriend.
“You guys are on the sixth floor,” Babe explains as we
follow her down a bland, gray corridor. We pass a shelf full of
brochures and tourist maps. Pilot snatches a couple as we go by.
The corridor leads to an elevator. We load in and press six. I
stare at the other buttons; they’re different from the usual
elevator. The ground floor is labeled zero and then there’s a
negative one floor … and a negative two floor.
“Guys, look, floor negative two!” I laugh stupidly.
Babe snorts. “Oh my gosh, I didn’t even see that.”
“Must be where they store the dead bodies,” Chad adds.
Babe laughs enthusiastically at his non-joke.
I exchange a look with Pilot, and his eyes go round with
amusement. There’s a ding, and we file out into another dimly
lit corridor, stopping outside a door labeled 
62
. It swings open
to reveal a large room with six beds: all singles, with white
sheets, spaced about a foot apart. It looks like an old-fashioned
infirmary. Everything glows a greenish-yellow under the
outdated overhead lights—the same kind we used to have in my
elementary school classrooms. To the right of the door are a half
a dozen blue lockers. It looks like gym class.
“Wow, cozy.” Pilot grins. He throws himself onto the bed
nearest to the door, opens a map, and starts studying.
Babe and Chad linger near the door as I inspect the lockers.
“This is a little scary,” I start hesitantly. It doesn’t appear
that anyone else is currently staying in the room, but I see that

---

two of the lockers have locks on them.
“You guys have more beds in here than us,” Chad says. “We
only have four.”
“Oh boy, more strangers for us.” I chuckle nervously and
test out a locker.
“Don’t worry, we’ll be fine,” Pilot says, dropping the map
down onto his lap.
Pilot and I don’t have locks.
Babe reads my mind. “They have locks you can buy
downstairs! I got one for me and Chad to share. You guys can
get one.”
“Cool, cool,” Pilot says, rolling off the bed. He hangs his
backpack in one of the lockers, and I shove my carry-on into
another.
After we sort out our lock situation, the four of us find a
Chinese restaurant that’s still open and grab dinner. My chest
feels tight as we head back to the hostel, and my pits are
sweating up a storm.
We’re sharing a room and bathroom with random strangers
who could be ice-pick killers. And I’m going to be sleeping in a
bed a foot away from Pilot. What do I do about makeup? Do I
sleep with my makeup on? I’m not ready to be makeup-less
around Pilot. I’ve never been without makeup, close up, around
a boy I like. I’m going to have to take it off when I know it’s
dark and he can’t see me, and run to the bathroom in the
morning to put it on before he wakes up.
Babe and Chad get off at the third floor, leaving Pilot and
me alone in the elevator as we head up to six. When we get to
our room, the lights are dimmer than before, and there are
bodies asleep in two of the beds in the far left corner.
Pilot sighs and collapses onto his bed with a grin. “I’m
gonna crash. I’m knackered.”

---

I snort. “
Knackered
sounds so wrong without an English
accent.”
Quietly, I maneuver my suitcase out of the locker and roll
myself to the other end of the room. There’s another door here,
and it must lead to the bathroom. When I push it open, heavenly
light blazes out into the sleeping area. I stumble in as quickly as
possible and lock the door behind me.
It’s a restroom. There’s another door across from this door,
which suggests that you can enter from another room as well.
Joy. I lock that door too before catching sight of myself in the
mirror. My mass of blond hair looks matted and disheveled.
I strip down and switch out my boots for flip-flops before
stepping into the shower with my travel soaps. It’s a tiny
claustrophobic white rectangle. I imagine this is what it’d be
like to stand vertically in a casket lined with white tile. I close
the flimsy plastic curtain behind me and look for a shower dial.
There’s only a button. 
One button
. A giant, rounded silver dome
amongst the tiles. 
What the fudge?
I step as far out of the way of the showerhead as possible
(not far at all; any oncoming water will be inescapable) and
smash my hand against the button. Water sprays out of the
showerhead right onto my face. It’s warm, but nowhere near
comfortable levels. I sigh, speeding through my cleaning ritual.
About twenty seconds into wetting my hair, the water goes off.
And now I’m freezing.
“Are you kidding me?”
Oops, I didn’t mean to say that out loud. I smash my hand
against the button again. More lukewarm water falls over me. I
soap up my hair. Forty-five seconds later, the water turns off
again. Deadpan, I smack the button. What the heck is this
shower that only turns on in forty-five-second spurts?
Five minutes later, I step out, seething, and pull on a tank
top and sweatpants. Do I have to wear a bra? I bra up. I’m not
ready to be walking around braless in a room alone with Pilot
and two strangers. After brushing my teeth and taking several
deep breaths, I exit the bathroom.

---

It looks like I had nothing to worry about. Pilot’s already
asleep. He lies on his side, facing the door. I tiptoe over and
slide into the bed next to his, shifting myself into a comfortable
position, facing his back, when suddenly Pilot turns to look at
me. I nervously yank the thin white blanket up to my neck.
“Night, Shane,” he murmurs sleepily.
“Night,” I whisper as he turns back toward the door.

---