Page 11 of Class Clown

“Long live shadow puppets,” he called before the door closed.

I slid one of the kitchen chairs over to the foot of my bunk and climbed up to get started. Holding the corner of the sheet with one hand, I pressed it up against the cabin ceiling and squeezed the handle of the staple gun until I heard a satisfying click. First staple was in. I worked my way down the sheet, satisfied at the progress I was making until, of course, a gun-shot bang slammed through the room from that blasted front door.

“We had a deal,” I squealed as I teetered on the chair, my hands still up in the air.

I reached a steadying hand toward the bunk bed post but caught only air. I fully expected to fall backwards off the chair, crack my head on the floor, and come to in a puddle of my own urine, but my windmilling arms made contact with a solid shoulder at the same time that two strong hands grabbed my waist to steady me from behind. I was pushed upright until my feet were once more stable on the chair and I was able to grab onto the bed for added support, but the hands lingered.

I took a few steadying breaths, already knowing who I’d find when I turned around. He let go of my waist as I slowly faced him.

“Nico, what is your last name?” I asked as I sucked in a last deep breath and pushed my raggedy hair out of my face.

“Crawford,” he replied in that unnervingly slow manner of his, as though he were deliberating before handing me a weapon.

“Well, Nico Crawford, the front door is out of order.”

“The door I just used?”

“That thunder-cracking sound it makes? Not normal. Cole and I made a deal to only use the back door.”

I looked back up at the sheet I’d been hanging, grateful to see it was still in place. With one last staple I secured the end and hopped off the chair, sort of surprised that I stuck the landing. It had been fifty-fifty that I’d fall on my face given my current shaky status.

“Sorry,” Nico said when I gave him a look.

“Do you have any sisters?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, ma’am.”

Okay, he was both a Texan and a military man, but it had been a long time since I’d been called ‘ma’am’. It didn’t really happen in Utah and the phrase caught me a little off guard. In a good way, to be clear. A handsome man could ‘ma’am’ me any day of the week.

“Well, I’ll tell you something about girls then.” I pointed at him with the staple gun to emphasize as I spoke slowly. “We do not like to be scared. It makes us have to pee. And when our bladders lose control, we also lose control of our tempers.” His brows rose and then sank, but bless his heart he maintained eye contact rather than looking down to see if I was standing in a puddle. He seemed to be processing each word separately, the way I had intended. “That is why we have agreed not to use the front door,” I added, now pointing at the door. “The noise makes me twitchy.”

“So… you don’t like surprises?”

“I like surprises like a nice sunrise in the morning, or a guy leaving me a flower on my windshield, or stumbling across a real-life male model carrying cupcakes all for me. I don’t like surprises that make me have to face the reality that I’m not prepared to fight for my life.”

He tipped his head at the sheet. “Is your dislike of surprises also why you’re hanging a sheet around your bed?” he asked.

I looked at the sheet and back at him. “That’s more to prevent surprises. Like, oh, hey, here’s some skin you have no business seeing.”

He was supposed to laugh, but he didn’t, and the air around us grew heavy as we both stared back at the dangling sheet. This was the now the second longest conversation we’d ever had, and neither of us seemed to know what to do from here.

My theory about him being a murderer gave up its last breath. He’d never be able to charm a woman into his lair. He was hopeless.

Thankfully, Cole walked in through the front door with a couple more sheets and hooked his thumb over his shoulder as he rammed it closed with his hip.

“I was surprised to see this open. I thought we weren’t using that door.”

Nico looked at me and I gave him asee, what did I tell youlook before reaching for the sheets from Cole. “Thanks.”

I slid the chair toward the dressers and climbed back up as I overheard Nico saying something to Cole that sounded a lot like “your sister and her bladder don’t like sudden noises.” A laugh rose in my throat and I had to turn away from them to hide my smile. It had sounded so hysterically funny in the somber tones that Nico used. I slid the sheet between the two dressers and had to lean up on my toes a bit to get the sheet against the wall, bracing my knees against my dresser as I put in the first staple.

“White is see-through if there’s a light behind it,” Nico said, still under his breath, to Cole. “Weren’t there dark sheets?”

Cole laughed. “Ruby said the same thing.” Then he slapped Nico on the back and said the biggest dummy thing to ever be said by a brother. “Hope you don’t mind seeing my sister’s shadow every night as she changes into her pajamas.”

I froze. I’m pretty sure Nico froze too, because the only thing I could hear over my heartbeat was Cole walking briskly across the wooden floor and out the back door of the cabin. Mortification wasn’t a familiar emotion, which is probably why all I could do was lick my lips and manage toforce out a few quiet words while keeping my eyes fixed on stapling up my non-privacy screen.

“He’s an idiot.”

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