Meeting, Lucas's Perspective

       Personally, I hate long bus rides. Normally, they get you places, and I like just about any place better than the parched desert I live in. So it's really frustrating when a long bus ride takes you a parched desert.
       Thankfully, Dylan and I were the first ones off that stuffy old bus. We sat in the front for just that reason. That, and because there was an air conditioning vent just overhead. One that didn't work, mind you. I shoved my newest mechanical project, a watch, in my pocket, and pulled out a crumpled letter, directing us to our room.
       "Room 422. And we don't have to sign in, either," I said. "Also, we're members of the," I paused, squinting my eyes, "Riverbed dorm? Really? What's with the water theme here? There is no water."
       "Let's get to our room before you start complaining. It's hot out here," Dylan replied. We turned right and walked on. I tried to get a layout of the school by looking around. It seemed pretty small for a university, but then again, what did I know? I was right about one thing, though. The water theme definitely didn't work here. I stopped at an outdoor drinking fountain along the way, but it only spurted out a few drops of rusty water, then shut off.
       Needless to say, we were quite relieved to reach our dorm room. We entered hurriedly into the welcoming flow of air conditioning. There were already two other boys in our room across from the door. The boy on the bottom bunk was lying down with an arm over his eyes, but the one on top looked up from his book and smiled shyly. "Come on in. Make yourselves at home," he squeaked. He swung his bare foot down and dangled it over the boy’s head on the bottom bunk. He was very short, maybe 5 feet tall. His long, dark brown hair swung crazily in his eyes, but he just brushed it out of the way and placed his toes on the other boy’s arm.
       “Go away, Oliver!” he snarled, flailing his free arm to swat away Oliver’s foot.
Oliver retracted his foot and leaned over. “They’re here, Jeremy. You should say hi.”
Jeremy waved his arm lazily at us, then it collapsed by his side and he mumbled, “Make yourselves at home.”
       Oliver immediately went back to his book, at that was the end of that. I glanced at Dylan, who shrugged mildly. I threw my stuff on the top bunk to unpack and checked the clock. I groaned inwardly. It was already ten o’clock at night. I’d unpack in the morning, I decided. Meanwhile, Dylan took the initiative to speak with Oliver, who was obviously extremely shy.
       “Hey Oliver. I’m Dylan.” He extended his hand and Oliver shook it timidly. Dylan continued, “Whatcha reading?”
Oliver showed him the cover without speaking. I glanced up and took a look at it. No joke, that kid was reading The Fault in Our Stars. Kids at my old high school could get beat up for reading that book. That’s why I read it at home and never took it to school.
       “Great book," I said without thinking.
       Dylan glanced at me and gave me a weird look, then returned his gaze to Oliver. But before he could talk, Jeremy spoke up from next to him. "Do you guys think you could pipe it down? I've had kind of a long day."
       "I hear you," I mumbled, but when I glanced over at him, his mouth was hanging open and he was breathing heavily.
       I took this as a sign to be quiet. Jeremy didn't seem like the type of kid who enjoyed being messed with. Besides, this was a good opportunity to take a look around the dorm room. Looking into the room from the doorway, the two bunk beds were set the the right of the room. The left branched off into an area for a sink and bathroom on the left-hand side, complete with four cups, one already set apart and marked with an 'O', and a TV, closet, and hot plate on the right-hand side.
       I turned back around and checked the clock again. 10:03. I have a weird thing where I constantly check clocks. I never remove my watch because of it, but almost never look at it if there's another clock in the room. At the same time, it had been 3 minutes since I checked the clock. That was a bit much for me.
       How else to pass the time? Oliver obviously was too interesting in his reading to talk, Dylan was on his phone, and I had a hunch about whom he was texting with. Jeremy probably wouldn't appreciate it if I did anything too noisy, like unpack.
       I grabbed my pajamas and pulled them on in the bathroom, quickly brushed my teeth, and climbed into the top bunk above Dylan with my iPad. In addition to the spare watch I was creating in my pocket, I was also working on an application that played specific games for me. The current game I was working on was a difficult math game, 2048. Well, difficult for most people. Then again, most people don't go down to run-down, poorly named colleges on a full-ride math and computer science scholarship.
       Anyway, the goal of the game was to slide matching number tiles together until they add up to 2048, with the slight difficulty of extra tiles popping up with every turn. My algorithm wasn't working quite yet, but once perfected, it would be able to beat any high score without filling up all the spaces and ultimately losing the game.
       I glanced over the rim of the bed and looked down at Dylan's phone screen. My suspicions were confirmed. He was texting exactly who I thought he was texting. I rolled my eyes and leaned back. Sometimes he and I would be in contact late into the night, usually with some joint project, but this was ridiculous.
       I had better things to do than snoop in Dylan's personal life. Although, snooping just enough was fun at times. I could pull inside jokes that I was never a part of, getting strange and sometimes horrified looks from him. Snooping wasn't my style, though. I had better ways of accessing people's conversations. I once tapped into a teacher conference where they went off on a tangent about their favorite and least favorite students. Sadly, I wasn't mentioned.
       I opened another app on the iPad and typed in the password. I then placed my thumb on the scanner that I'd programmed into the iPad. It read my print and opened up a page filled with options. I could access anything the school had to offer now. I'd never actually used this app for anyone's benefit or harm, even my own. I kept it on for one reason and one reason only.
       I opened the page marked 'Student Info' and scrolled through the long list of names. I reached Dylan and tapped the area of his last name. I erased his real last name and made my edits. "Ketchman," a name that would haunt Dylan no matter what school he went to. That typo infuriated him, so of course I took the opportunity to change it. Every attendance sheet in the school that contained his name would now be misspelled.
       Backing out, I scrolled down to my name. I changed my last name for better reasons than the usual trolling. I hated it when people recognized my last name, so I always switched it out for my pseudonym. At this school, like all the schools before it that I've attended, would know me as Lucas Widdlewerth. I don't know why I loved the last name so much. I made it up forever ago, and stuck with it ever since. Of course, my close friends knew my real last name, and no one had ever given me away to the system. My parents weren't a huge issue. I got them to agree to the last name change with my reasoning behind it.
       Dylan glanced up and asked, "What're you up to?"
       I quickly tabbed over to my game-playing app and said, "Programming. Are you still texting?"
       Dylan smiled up at me. "Of course. What else did you expect?"
       I rolled my eyes and mumbled, "Surprise, surprise." I was about to tab back over when Oliver stuck his head up and looked around. I shut off the iPad, suspicious of what he was looking for.
       "What is it?" I asked him. Instead of answering, he took a deep whiff and crawled out of his bunk onto the floor.
       "What is it, Oliver?" Dylan asked him. Oliver reached down and started rummaging through one of the bags at the foot of his bunk. When he pulled it out, he was holding a bag filled with something that looked like chopped-up leaves.
       "Is that . . . ?" Dylan began, but his voice trailed off.
       Oliver looked at Jeremy. "Really?" he said. "You brought weed to school?"

       I lay on the top bunk, my arms behind my head, feeling extremely guilty. I knew we should report the pack of weed that was stowed in Jeremy's bag, but Oliver convinced us to wait until Jeremy woke up and was able to explain himself. Besides, it was late, and we all wanted to sleep. For a runty shy fellow, Oliver sure was convincing. But as I lay in bed, I knew I wasn't going to sleep well.