Page 30 of Theoretically Straight

“Can you show me? I tried to find it earlier, but I didn’t have your handle.”

“Oh, yeah. Duh. My bad. Here.” He hands me over his phone, the tips of his fingers brushing against mine as he does.

I tap the screen to start the video. It’s the classroom, of course, with the weird chalkboard and the singed walls. Then, about halfway through, a thrill shoots through me as I spot the first orb by the chalkboard, then the other just before the video ends on the other side of the doorway from where I was standing. It floats towards the camera and then vanishes as the video starts over.

“Dude, I was, like, right there!” I say, quickly realizing I’m being too loud and reeling it back in. I hand him back his phone, but not before making a mental note of his handle so I can find his page later.

“Right? That’s why I wanted to talk about it with you. To see if you remember anything out of the norm while you were in the hallway?”

Out of the norm? I mean, not for a creepy, abandoned church basement. To be honest, I was too flustered by the fact that I just tried to hold a straight boy’s hand, so I wasn’t exactly present in the moment.

“Not that I can remember,” I say with a shrug. “I was still coming down from the scare with the vent. Sorry.”

“Damn,” Theo mutters, then his eyes get wide, and he looks up. “Sorry, I mean darn.”

I laugh, shaking my head. “It’s fine. You should hear some of the colorful language that gets tossed around at our lunch table. These ears have heard far, far worse.”

Theo smiles again, and I can’t tell if he’s just doing it to be polite or if he’s actually enjoying himself. Why can’t I be better at reading people?

“This is a great find,” I add, steering the conversation back to the video. “I mean, I don’t think they’ve had a lot of orb sightings at the location. It could be big news!”

Theo leans forward in his seat. “Right? I keep thinking about Hudson seeing it and coming down for a whole investigation. It would be so lit.”

“Do you think he’d bring along Samantha and the entire crew, or would he do, like, a solo mission like he did at Alcatraz?”

Theo lets out an animated grunt. “Dude, the Alcatraz video messed me up for days. I still get chills just thinking about it.”

“Me too! Can you imagine being locked up by yourself? But also, it was very educational. Like how I had no idea that Alcatraz means ‘pelican.’”

“It’s my number one fun fact,” Theo says before sipping from his cup.

I do the same with mine, letting a silence bloom between us.

Did he only want to talk about the video? Maybe I should excuse myself now before things get awkward. I can go ahead and text Lola to come and pick me up. I mean, other than Triple H, what else could we possibly have in common?

“Hey, how did you do on Hyung’s quiz today?”

I blink, confused by the fact Theo’s still talking to me. “Oh, um… Okay, I guess? I kinda ran out of time, so I didn’t answer the last three questions, but I got an eight-three. Thankfully, it was mostly review from last week’s homework. What about you?”

“I did okay. I kept getting distracted by all the buzzing in my pocket. I had to sneak it out and silence my app notifications so I could finish.”

Huh, so it seems like I wasn’t the only one with a focusing problem today.

Theo leans back in his seat, his posture relaxed.

He doesn’t really seem to be in a hurry to end the conversation, so I ask, “Why didn’t your friends want to go down in the basement with you? Y’all went as a group, right? You could have had the whole gang down there like that old cartoon, snooping for clues. Although, you’d need a dog. A dog would totally have completed the experience.”

Theo laughs, crossing his arms over his chest. “We were trying not to draw too much attention to ourselves, so I went down on my own. Then again, I must have been doing a bad job of sneaking because you found me no problem. Harrison would have totally come with me, but he was too busy flirting it up with Elise.”

“Oh, wait, so Elise isn’t your girlfriend?”

Theo scrunches his nose. “Elise? No way. I mean, she’s great, don’t get me wrong. But she’s uh… a bit too loud for me. Just not my vibe, you know?”

I do not know. I have no idea what his vibe is at the moment, which is exactly why I’m asking these questions. But I nod along like I understand.

“Yeah, so me and Harrison have been trying to figure out a way to blow up for the last couple of months, and I’m super into paranormal stuff, so it just seemed like a good plan. He keeps telling me we should make longer-form stuff for YouTube, but TikTok is where it’s at right now. I mean, YouTube is nothing but reaction videos and old people trying to be relevant five years too late. Other than Triple H, of course. And that’s what I keep–oh, sorry, man.” He stops, scratching the back of his head as he looks down at the table. “I get really passionate about this kind of stuff. I didn’t mean to rant at you.”

“You’re fine,” I say with a laugh. “Everyone has their thing, you know? Like, my friend Wren and I love old horror movies, and they’re super talented with special effects make-up, so they’ll go on forever about the difference between practical effects versus computer-generated ones. Then Freddy will start talking about soccer, and he’ll lose us both.”

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