Boys' POVs

Losing the Game (Zach)

Girls were weird. I mean, I'd always known this. It was like common knowledge; like a law or something—like putting on your seatbelt or not murdering someone. Something we all knew and something that was set in stone. It just was how it was.

Girls always flocked to me; they had my entire life. Anywhere I went, I'd be hit on or flirted with, and it became the norm. That was why, when Maxynn continuously rejected me, my interest and want for grew even more. Because she was even weirder than all the other girls.
So there was no way in hell I was going to pass up the opportunity to hook up with her when she suggested our little game. I'd get to make out with her and do who knows what else, and then she'd end up falling for me at the end of it? Who would pass up something like that?

But, of course, there was always something that had to go wrong... And in this case, it was Johnny. She'd been obviously crushing on him ever since she started going to school with us, and that made pursuing her difficult. And then, when I finally got to hook up with her, she started dating my him. My best friend.

I wasn't about to let him get in the way. I'd been waiting for this for too long.

Maybe it made me a bad person, maybe it made me a bad friend. But I didn't care. All I seemed to care about, all I seemed to be able to focus on was her. And it ticked me off a little bit.

I never thought about any other girl like I thought about Maxynn Chase. Ever since her first day at Corvus, ever since she first rejected me... I couldn't get her out of my mind. These thoughts only got worse when she moved into the room across from mine. They became more frequent and a lot more explicit, too.

She'd do the most normal, mundane things, and I'd just be turned on by it. Things my mom or my sister would do, but with Maxynn, it was completely different. I'd notice all these little details about her, like how nimble her fingers were, how her upper lip would twitch right before she started to yell at someone, or how she'd grab at her covered arm where her scars were when she was uncomfortable, as if it was a reflex.

I hated that I noticed these things about her, but I couldn't stop. I hated that almost everything she did turned me on, and it was just getting worse and worse every single day.

Maxynn and Kate had gone out to the convenience store that day, and after practically throwing the candy at Ethan (and ignoring my request for condoms, unfortunately...), the two of them scurried upstairs without saying anything else, leaving my younger brother and me on the couch to wonder why they were acting so strangely.

"Girls are weird," Ethan muttered, digging into the bag of candy without a second thought about it.

He had no idea. But something told me that one day, he'd know just as well as I did.

I wasn't very hungry, but I couldn't say the same about Ethan. He was scarfing down that candy like his life depended on it, and it reminded me that, even though he rarely ever acted like it, he really was just a kid. There were days when he'd just sit around and hang out, though those days had been becoming less frequent than they had once been.

When my phone suddenly buzzed beside me, I didn't think much of it. I got texts from people all the time. But when I looked down to see that it was from Elizabeth, I was surprised. The only time she ever texted me was when she needed more toilet paper or something.

You should go make sure Maxynn's okay, the text read, catching me off guard. She nearly socked a cashier at the convenience store earlier.

Now that didn't surprise me. It seemed that whenever Maxynn got too angry, someone's nose was going to be in trouble. It was as if her automatic response was to just swing at someone's face whenever they pissed her off. Luckily, I hadn't had to deal with that reaction of hers toward me, though I had seen it done firsthand to someone else.