Read Adam for Free Online

it’s safe and cool.” They would be living with two other people: a friend of Casey’s from Columbia and someone who Casey referred to as “Craigslist” (who their Mom was told was also a friend from Columbia). The apartment had an extra sort of glorified closet-room that they were originally going to use for storage, but that Adam could cram a single mattress (and nothing else) into. He (well, his parents) would pay $900 for the room for the summer, which cut everyone else’s rent down, so they were into it.
    At first Adam had worried Casey wouldn’t want him there—that she’d think he’d be a tagalong, or that she’d have to be responsible for him the whole time—but when he’d called to bring it up, she had been really nice. Casey knew how it had been at EBP for him that year, and she loved playing the role of cool older sister who could solve any problem.
    â€œFuck Brad and Colin and all those pathetic people,” she said the next time they talked. “We’re gonna find you some hot older hipster girl, and you’ll come back with the entire school wanting to suck your dick.”
    Adam saw an image of everyone in the school, teachers and maintenance staff included, all standing in a line that snaked down through the hallways and out into the courtyard, everyone patiently waiting their turn to blow him.
    â€œEverything is different here,” Casey continued. “It’s like my life at EBP never even happened or was just some shitty dream. This is my real life, where I was meant to be all along.”
    Adam remembered how during the month before she left for school a year ago Casey’s response to anything anyone said to her was “I’m supposed to be in New York.”
    â€œCasey, do you have plans this weekend?”
    â€œI’m supposed to be in New York.”
    â€œCasey, it’s your turn for the dishes.”
    â€œI’m supposed to be in New York.”
    Now this became Adam’s mantra too, albeit a silent one. Sitting at lunch, watching the couples paw and giggle at one another—
I’m supposed to be in New York.
Taking his finals, knowing he’d get a C average at best—
I’m supposed to be in New York.
And sitting at the dinner table, Mom telling him to stop chewing so loudly and to sit up straight and to put Neosporin on the zit on his chin before it gets infected—
I’m supposed to be in fucking New York.
    He couldn’t wait.
    ***
    The night before Adam left for New York, Brad spent the night. Adam’s mom had booked his ticket to leave at 6:15 A.M. (His mom always booked these butt-crack-of-dawn flights, which was
so
annoying, though not as annoying as booking the ticket himself.) Since they had to leave for the airport at 4:00 A.M. , he and Brad decided to stay up all night.
    They played Xbox, ordered a pizza, drank beer from the fridge that they snuck down to get at 1:00 A.M. , and IM’ed with Brad’s girlfriend Sandy, who didn’t know Adam was there and gave Brad a verbose, poorly spelled online blowjob. It was fun. It had been so long since he and Brad had had one of these nights where the two of them synced up perfectly, felt like doing the exact same thing at the exact same moment. Adam missed them.
    They were sprawled on the floor, buzzed from the beer and playing two-player
Killzone: Liberation
on their PSPs, when Adam started to get nervous. Why was he going to New York again? To hang out with Casey and her lesbian friends for an
entire summer?
Maybe if he stayed here, it wouldn’t be so bad. He’d just hang out with Brad, and maybe Sandy would have a friend from Bishop O’Dowd that he could go out with. They’d say fuck it to the rest of the group and just the four of them would hang out all summer.
    â€œYou’re such an asshole for leaving,” said Brad, as if he were reading Adam’s mind. “I can’t believe I have to