Free Nothing Else Matters by Leslie Dubois Page B

next phase of Stu's plan. But her reaction to what I had already done was worth the intrusion.
      "What the hell is this?" she asked holding up a dingy piece of cloth.
      "Uh, it's my jock strap," I replied innocently as if she was crazy. I mean she did look quite absurd holding a dirty jock strap at the edge of her finger in the middle of the hallway.
      "I know what it is. What I want to know is why it was in my locker?"
      "Well you didn't ask that. You specifically asked ‘what the hell is this?'"
      "Scott, what is the matter with you today? Why are you acting all weird? You've never been all over me like you were this morning, and why would you put this in my locker?" she asked, holding the jock strap closer to my face as if I couldn't see.
      "Well, I thought you might like it to remember me by. I mean didn't you leave your panties in my car?"
      Amber turned scarlet. "I ... you ... it's not the same thing!"
      "Why not?" I pretended to be truly perplexed as I folded my arms and waited for an explanation from her.
      "Panties are sexy. This," she flung the undergarment at me, "is just disgusting."
      "So, you don't find me sexy?" I gave her the same big puppy dog eyes she gave me every time I didn't compliment her on a new outfit.
      "Ugh, you’re insane," she mumbled before storming off.
      Wow, Stu was right. She wouldn't be able to take her own medicine.
    ***
      Reyna waited for Stu as he exited his last class. She had to talk to him. She wasn't concerned about the Amber situation anymore. She was sure they probably had something up their sleeves that she just needed to stay out of. She wanted to find out if Stu had been noticing strange symptoms in Scott as well.
      "Stu," she called as soon as he emerged from the classroom.
      "Hey, Rey," he adjusted his backpack and tucked his jet black hair behind his ear. He looked a lot like Scott when he wore normal clothes and didn't dye his hair. But in his Goth get up no one would ever suspect he and Scott were even related.
      "Do you have any plans? I think we should talk about Scott."
      "I thought you'd never ask."
      They walked together to a coffee shop a couple of blocks away. After settling down in a booth with their drinks, Reyna got right to the point.
      "Have you been noticing anything weird with Scott lately?"
      "Besides the fact that he's finally realized that he's in love with you?"
      Reyna smiled a little, and then took a sip of her decaffeinated tea. She never drank coffee. She had a hard enough time getting to sleep at night. She didn’t need to add caffeine to the problem.
      "No, I mean, yeah. I mean,” she shook her head to clear her thoughts. “I was really referring to his health. Has he had any strange symptoms?"
      Stu looked down into his mug of coffee. He drummed his black painted fingernails against it.
      "What, what is it?" Reyna asked impatiently.
      "I'm actually kind of worried about him. It's not like it's been anything big, it's more like a feeling that something isn't right. He's just not being the same Scott."
      "What do you mean?"
      After taking a sip of coffee, he sighed and said, "He's been sleeping a lot more. Now, an extra hour or two a day is no big deal, but twice in the past two weeks he's slept like an extra six hours. That's just not like him."
      Reyna made a mental note to add fatigue to her list.
      "Anything else?" she asked.
      "Yeah. I think he's in pain. Like a lot of pain. Scott is super strong. If something makes him cringe even when he's trying to hide it from me, it has got to be extremely painful."
      Reyna shook her head. "We gotta do something."
      "What have you noticed?"
      "Well, I know he's in pain. He actually took a shot of Dilaudid to get him through the game last Friday."
      "I don't know what that is, but I assume it's serious."
      "And today he had a bout of uticaria ."
      "You gotta lay off the medical terms." Stu set his coffee down, leaned back and crossed