Away We Go by Emil Ostrovski Read Free Book Online Page B

she’d be hurt? A voice in my head insisted: yes.
    â€œAs much as I don’t want to move—” I started.
    â€œBecause you’re drifting into my eyes—”
    â€œYes, that. As much as I don’t want to, my whole body is numb. If only there were a more comfortable place for two boys to lie.”
    He tousled my hair, which nearly killed me.
    â€œVery sly,” he said. “If only all my constituents were so subtle.”
    â€œMention your constituents. One. More. Time. Zach.”
    I pulled both of us up, then pushed him gently onto his bed with a sheepish grin. I turned the lights off and jumped onto the bed after him, hit my head on the wall, and laughed.
    â€œI’m so awkward,” I said as I slid under the covers and lay facing him.
    The brush of his hair against my forehead made me feel real.
    I wanted to tell him I liked that he said God all the time, and that he had led me on a race through the rain, that he would’ve won, that he’d let it be a tie, that his boxers were blue, that he smelled like clean clothes and rain, that he had a radiator, that he was sick, that he existed at all, that there was a world with Zach in it, that I could reach out and touch him, feel that he, too, was real.
    I wanted to do more than just lie there, but I couldn’t.
    He might say no.
    He might push me away.
    Before he fell asleep, he whispered into my ear, “By the way.”
    â€œUh-huh.”
    â€œI’m starting a club.”
    â€œOf course you are.”
    â€œI want you to be in it.” He paused. “It’s Polo.”
    â€œUh,” I said. “Like, with horses?”
    â€œDon’t worry about trivialities, Noah.”
    And then he was snoring into my ear.

 
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    POLO
    I dragged my roommate Marty along to Polo Club’s first meeting, without telling him what I was dragging him to.
    â€œIt’s a surprise,” I explained.
    â€œ Noah .”
    â€œOh, come on. Hurry up,” I said, cutting across the Galloway lawn in the direction of the academic quad.
    He sighed theatrically, lagging behind. “All right.”
    â€œYou won’t regret it. I swear.”
    When we got to Lombardy 207, we saw written across the board in neat, bold letters:
    POLO CLUB
    Marty turned to me, eyes wide behind his glasses. “Polo?” he spluttered.
    â€œThat was my reaction, too.”
    â€œThe sort with— horses? ”
    â€œThat was my reaction, too!”
    Before Marty could adequately translate the exasperation on his face into words, Zach grabbed a piece of crumbling chalk and wrote a question that knocked everyone’s breath away.
    What is ‘going away’?
    And a second.
    Where do we ‘go’ when we ‘go away’?
    â€œWe suspect, we speculate, we hear rumors,” Zach said, gesticulating at the front of the room, the same Zach whose hair had brushed against my forehead. He wore a shirt thatread: Earth Science Rocks, which nearly killed me. “But we don’t know for sure. Polo Club is about knowledge. We’re not going to be like F.L.Y . We’re not going to demonstrate, or write editorial letters. We’re not going to go on hunger strikes in Galloway. We’re not even going to be an official organization. Our first rule is discretion. And the first thing we need is a plan of escape, a fail-safe—”
    â€œYou can’t be serious,” a blond boy near the front said. “What are we even talking about? Even if we could get out—I mean—we’re quarantined for a reason. You want to get more kids sick?”
    â€œHouston all over again,” someone else muttered, and there were murmurs of assent.
    â€œWe’re out in the middle of nowheresville, Vermont,” Zach said, his splash-blue eyes searching for a friendly face, resting briefly on mine. I winked, and he blushed slightly. “As long as we don’t go near other people