Boys of West Denton ✓

chapter thirty-eight

sebastian

"'Bed rest' is a little bit extreme, me thinks," Harris says, crossing his arms across his chest. He's currently in bed, resting, propped up by the pillows wedged between him and the wall. "I feel great. Fantastic. All good, all betterer. Let's play some fuckin' Parcheese, am I right?"

Granny Mac stands next to his bed, a bowl in hand. "This is boiling hot soup, duckie," she says. "And I will pour it over your dingle-dongle if you try to get out of bed."

"Well why don't I just eat the soup first, and then get up? Seems kind of obvious."

"Oh, Harris. I'll just make more boiling hot dingle-dongle soup."

"Oh, Grandma. I'll be long gone by then."

Her head swivels slowly toward me and Saanvi. Her eyes are slits. Her lip is curled in disgust. Her sweater reads, If I'm sittin', I'm knittin'. "I can't do this anymore. He's all yours."

As she walks toward the stairs, a bowl of boiling hot soup left on the bedside table, Harris calls out after her. His voice is still slightly raspy. "Noooo, come back. I neeeed you. Gwwwaaaandmaaaa."

"Okay, I don't care how bad your cabin fever is. 'Gwandma' makes me want to commit homicide," Saanvi says, walking over and sitting on the edge of Harris' bed. "So how was having a shitty-ass disease? Is hospital food as bad as they say it is? Or were you unable to eat solid food? Or was it, like, a weaning-you-into-it kind of situation? Were there hot nurses? Were they mean?"

Harris blinks at Saanvi. His track sweatshirt is wrinkled, his hair an uneven, poofy mess. There are bags under his eyes, slight enough that you might not notice them if you didn't consider staring at Harrison McCammon's face to be your calling in this life.

"Wasn't it just technically an infection?" Harris asks. "Seb?"

I snort and walk over to the opposite side of the bed, sitting down. The mattress shifts underneath me; I have to stick out my legs so that I don't slide off onto the cold concrete floor. "What are you asking me for?"

"You're literally a pre-med," Saanvi says, her previous interrogation already forgotten. "Don't you get off on knowing if it was an infection?"

Harris grins, tugging my sleeve. I am seriously regretting wearing the Blues Clues-esque striped shirt. I feel like the ultimate dipshit. "Yeah, Seb. C'mon, tell us. We know you're getting off on knowing. Now you just have to work on getting off on telling us!"

"The only thing I'm getting off of is this topic of conversation."

"You love it. You know you love it. Doesn't he love it, Saanvi?"

"Yeah, no, he's deffo getting off on this too."

I groan. Saanvi and Harris both mimic me, each just as exasperated as the other.

"Anyways, I can't stay long," Saanvi says. "I have to get going home. Flight to catch, all that jazz."

"Oh my god." Harris grabs her forearm, clutching her through her open button-up as if his life depends on it. "You have to take all the pics for me."

"I will, I will." She tries to brush his hand off. He grips harder.

"I mean it. I wanna feel like I'm in India. Not in Shittystankstankland, Minnesota, stuck in bed for the rest of frigging eternity."

"Yeah, okay Harris."

"Panoramas. Can you get drones or something to do three-sixty degree shit? Is that a thing? Nevermind. Just, if you have a really really really tall cousin, make them pretend to be a drone. For me. As I am stuck in bed, for who knows how long. Maybe forever."