The Elephant of Surprise (The Russel Middlebrook Series Book 4) (2 page)

"You just recorded that conversation of you telling us what you're doing, and you're now posting it online, aren't you?" I'd said.

"Yup," Gunnar had said. And I'd known right then that, as much as I like Gunnar and am always happy to see him, this was going to be his most annoying obsession yet.

Back at the zoo, I didn't bother filling Gunnar in on the conversation Min and I had just had. He wasn't really the kind of guy you had conversations about your love life with (although sometimes he surprised me with how much he picked up on the things going on around him).

"Where to now?" I said.

Min and I looked around the zoo. Gunnar, meanwhile, took a picture of an ant trying to lift a huge piece of a cinnamon churro.

"I think I'm ready to go," Min said.

"Yeah," I said. "I'm just not feeling the zoo either."

"I don't think I like zoos in general," Min said. "It seems cruel to put wild animals in cages, then use them for our entertainment. But even as entertainment, they're just not that interesting. They're boring. There's no element of surprise."

Gunnar looked up. "Elephant of Surprise?"

"
Element
of surprise," Min said.

I laughed, and Gunnar did too. Okay, so he didn't
always
surprise me with how much he picked up on the things going on around him.

"What?" Min said.

"I really thought that's what you said!" Gunnar said happily, even as he was posting something about it online. "The Elephant of Surprise! I mean, this is a zoo, right? We're standing next to the elephants."

Min smiled at last. "The Elephant of Surprise. Can you imagine if it really existed? No, I definitely think we can do without him—or her."

"Yeah," Gunnar said. "Imagine if he stepped on you. Ouch!"

Looking back now, I can see we were all wrong about that elephant not existing. There definitely is such a creature, and it was definitely on the move in all three of our lives.

Oh, and Gunnar was right: when the Elephant of Surprise stepped on you, it really, really hurt.

CHAPTER TWO

That night, I IMed Otto, the boyfriend who lived eight hundred miles away. FYI: my screen name is "Smuggler." His is, well, obvious:

Smuggler: Hello you.

OttoManEmpire: Hello you.

Smuggler: How was your day?

OttoManEmpire: Eh. But it's nice to talk to you.

Smuggler: It's nice to talk to you too.

This was all true. I felt so safe around Otto, because I could always be exactly who I was. I hesitate to say this because I know how annoying it will sound, but at this point in our relationship, Otto and I had become one of those couples who had a way of always knowing exactly what the other was thinking. Weirdly, the effect even worked over IM.

Smuggler: Did you know that lions are the only species of cat where the male and female don't look basically the same?

OttoManEmpire: What'd you do, go to the zoo today with Min?

Smuggler: LOL! That's it EXACTLY!

See what I mean? It was uncanny.

I told him more about my trip to the zoo, sans the discussion Min and I had had about being vaguely dissatisfied with our partners, and he told me about going shopping with his mom (it wasn't as boring as it sounds—he found a wallet with fifty dollars in it).

Smuggler: You know what? I like you. You're a good friend.

OttoManEmpire: I totally agree.

But.

Wait. Why was there a "but" there? Was it because something felt off? It wasn't just a conversation between Min and me at the zoo. Something had been off for a while now. But I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was.

I waited for Otto to type something. After all, if we always knew what the other one was thinking, maybe he could tell me what I was thinking about our relationship, since
I
apparently didn't know.

OttoManEmpire: What's wrong?

I knew exactly what he meant: not what's wrong with me. What was wrong with us.

Smuggler: I honestly don't know.

This whole conservation had this weird feeling of anticipation to it, like right before you leave the house on a trip to somewhere you've never been. You know
something
is going to happen, but you have no real idea what, and it's a little scary, but also kind of exciting. What unexpected destination was this conversation going to take us to?

Smuggler: You're my friend. One of my best friends. And you always will be.

OttoManEmpire: But.

Once again, Otto was reading my thoughts. But he didn't seem to know what I was thinking any more than I did.

Smuggler: We're friends.

OttoManEmpire: But not boyfriends.

That was it! He'd said exactly what I was feeling, even though I hadn't known I was feeling it.

Wait. Otto and I were breaking up?

OttoManEmpire: No, we're not breaking up.

Smuggler: We're not?

OttoManEmpire: Okay, maybe we are. But I think maybe we already did. At some point back and we just didn't realize it.

Was this true? Had we gone from boyfriends to good friends and not even known it? It felt true.

Smuggler: Are you sad?

Otto didn't type anything for a second.

OttoManEmpire: Yes. No. Maybe.

Smuggler: Me too. Well, a little sad, but not too bad.

OttoManEmpire: And a little excited too.

Smuggler: Excited? Why?

OttoManEmpire: Well, there's this guy I know.

Wait. Otto had a crush on someone else?

OttoManEmpire: It's not like it sounds. It's not like I've been thinking about this.

But here's the really interesting part: I wasn't jealous. In fact, I was kind of excited for him.

Which told me everything I needed to know. Somewhere along the way, we really had gone from being boyfriends to good friends. It had something to do with what I'd been telling Min at the zoo. It's one thing to feel safe in the wild jungle safari of your relationship—to know the other person is watching your back for lions and tigers. It's something else entirely to be bored.

*   *   *

I didn't tell Min and Gunnar what had happened until I saw them in the school hallway Monday morning before class. All around us, locker doors squealed and slammed. The air smelled like hair product and soap from all the early morning showers, with a faint hint of ammonia from the floor.

"Remember the Elephant of Surprise?" I said to my two friends, standing by our own lockers. "He stopped by Saturday night."

"What?" Min said. "How so?"

I explained how Otto and I had broken up, not because of the long-distance thing, but because we'd both basically realized at the same time that we'd somehow stopped being "lovers" and turned into "friends."

"And you didn't call me?" she said.

"No," I said. "But that's kinda the point. It just wasn't that big a deal."

"Russel, I'm sorry."

"I'm okay. Really."

"But it's not like he's gone forever, right?" Gunnar said. "I mean, you guys are still friends?"

"Yeah, definitely," I said. "And I'm not just saying that. That's the whole point: we
are
friends. Really, really good friends. But we're not boyfriends."

"Good," Gunnar said. "I really like Otto."

As we were talking, Kevin Land, my ex, stepped into sight at the far end of the hall. He was wearing a blue sweatshirt (spattered with red paint) and carrying a computer bag instead of a backpack. It's not like he was in my direct line-of-sight or anything. No, he was buried somewhere within the crush of people. But I guess you could say that I tended to be aware of exactly where he was and exactly what he was doing whenever he was around.

Oh, God, Kevin Land. How do I bullet-point this to make it as simple as possible for those who are just joining the story now?

* He's totally hot.

* We'd had a thing almost a year before. But he was closeted, and a total jerk about it, so it hadn't worked out.

* Then, in the fall, he'd come crawling back, desperate to make amends, even coming out to his friends. I'd almost given into him when I learned he was even more of a jerk than I'd thought before.

And before you call me a hypocrite for saying I was totally done with him, but was still obviously aware of his every move, let me just say I knew it was a problem and was working on it. But come on: I'm only human—a teenager in high school, no less. Isn't this when you're allowed to do dumb, hypocritical things like this?

Kevin yanked on the padlock on his locker, but it didn't open. Had he dialed the wrong combination?

I deliberately turned away. "I'm done with love," I said to Min and Gunnar.

Min looked up from her locker. Gunnar glanced up from his phone.

"What?" she said.

"I mean it," I said. "After that whole thing last year and now this thing with Otto, I'm done. At least for a while."

"Don't bother," Gunnar said. "I tried that last summer at camp. Remember? Em and I got together anyway." Em was Gunnar's girlfriend. She went to another school in town, but she was so great she was even humoring him on his annoying document-his-entire-life-online obsession. "Love will always find a way."

"Love can go fuck itself!" I said. I opened my locker, defiantly blocking any view of Kevin (even though I still somehow sensed that he'd opened his lock on the second try).

Gunnar just shook his head sadly. "You know, you're practically begging the universe for an ironic twist of fate."

"I am
not
."

"You are. Now you have no choice but to fall in love with an ice sculpture."

"An ice sculpture?" I said, confused.

Gunnar shrugged. "Not only can it not love you back, it'll melt in a couple of hours anyway. I mean, talk about your tragic love affairs!"

"Really, Gunnar? Really?" I said this, but it was impossible not to laugh. Even Min laughed, and she had a habit of not laughing at Gunnar's weird jokes.

"The point is, you're just totally tempting fate," he said.

"I am not tempting fate." I looked at Min. "Help me out here."

"Hey, I'm with Gunnar on this one," she said.

"Okay, I'm tempting fate. But if tempting fate means that I'm forced to do whatever I vow not to do, then I also vow not to eat chocolate cake at every meal. And I vow
not
to have my parents give me my own car."

"You realize, of course, you're totally missing the point," Min said. "Right?"

"And
you
realize that fate doesn't really exist," I said. "Right?"

Min rolled her eyes. "It's a
metaphor
. About how crazy it is to think we can predict the future."

Another metaphor, huh? Well, as I've already made clear, I was feeling pretty done with metaphors.

So I ignored her.

"I vow
not
to sleep until noon every day!" I said. "I vow
not
to have my parents install a hot tub in our backyard!"

Gunnar looked up from his phone long enough to take a couple of steps back from me.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing," he said. "Just putting as much space as possible between me, and you and the universe."

*   *   *

Fate didn't strike me down the rest of the school day. Then again, if I were fate, I wouldn’t have bothered with our stupid school in our boring backwater town either.

That day after school, Min and I lingered in the courtyard waiting for Gunnar, who was nearby taking a picture of a melting ice-cream bar. Once again, I was totally aware of the existence of Kevin Land, tying his shoes on the opposite side of the courtyard.

"How's Leah?" I said to Min. I'd been meaning to ask her that ever since we'd talked on Saturday.

"What?" she said. "Oh, she's fine." She fiddled with her hair, back to black now after she'd dyed it purple the year before.

I stared at Min. "No, seriously." Min, Gunnar, and I joked with and teased each other a lot, like that whole tempting fate thing in the hallway, but we all still cared about what was really going on.

"It's the same," she said. "I think something is up, but I have no idea what it is."

"Have you talked to her?" I said.

"Not yet." She thought for a second. "I think you should talk to Kevin."

"What?" I said, totally confused.

"Russel, you're checking him out even now. You're
always
checking him out."

I had been checking him out—he'd finished tying his shoes and was now texting someone—but had I really been that obvious?

"So what if I check him out?" I said. "We have a past."

"You and Otto have broken up now, so I think you should talk to him. Just talk."

"Min," I said. "
Why
would I talk to him? You know what he did!"

Remember when I'd said he'd done something that had totally shocked me? I'd arranged for us to meet at this park near my house, but when I'd got there, I'd seen him hooking up with an older guy in the bushes.

I repeat:
he was hooking up with a guy in the bushes while he was waiting to meet me!
Min was right that I couldn't predict the future, but I knew one thing for sure: there was no way Kevin Land was in mine.

"What'd I miss?" Gunnar said, having finished his latest update.

"Min wants me to talk to Kevin," I said. "Now that Otto and I have broken up."

"Seriously?" Gunnar said. "Why?"

"Because life is complicated," Min said. "Sometimes things aren't always black-and-white."
Min
was the one who was saying this? The bull-headed know-it-all who usually refused to compromise on anything? This was especially weird because Min had never liked Kevin, not since the very, very beginning.