Free The Way You Are by Matthew Lang Page B

might you be?” Rook asked.
    “Kristina,” Krissy said. “Nice to finally meet you.”
    “You as well! Leon’s told me a lot about you.”
    “Well, he hasn’t told me nearly enough about you.”
    “Leon, are you hiding all your good-looking female friends from me?” Rook asked, although his gaze never left Krissy’s.
    “No, just the straight ones,” Leon said. “Honestly, she’s been working,” he added hurriedly as Krissy looked as though she would aim a kick at him.
    In the meantime, Seth had banged on the lectern for silence. “Well, I think that tops any speech I was going to make,” he said with a grin. “Merry Christmas, ladies and gentlemen.”
    “Merry Christmas!” the crowd thundered back.
    “Okay, that’s enough from me. Let’s eat!”
    Space was made to squeeze Krissy in at the head table, and the four friends partied well into the night, following the crowd to The Gateway Hotel when campus security came by to close the building.
     
     
    T HE following morning, Leon rolled out of bed and went in search of clean underwear, leaving Warrick to sleep in. Rubbing sleep from his eyes as he stepped into the kitchen, he was greeted by a familiar figure perched on a chair, cast sticking out and crutch off to one side.
    “Hello,” Leon said. “I see you and Krissy got to know each other a bit better.”
    Rook blushed. “Not that well. We were both drunk and, well…. Hey, looks like the footage made news just about everywhere,” he said, holding up his phone. “I’m betting the Herald wishes it published a Sunday paper now.”
    “Well, that’s a start at least,” Leon said, as he headed for the fridge. “Want some juice?”
    Rook raised a mug. “Nah, I found the coffee. I’m good.”
    “I can’t believe you’re not hung over,” Leon said.
    “I don’t get hung over,” Rook said severely. “Just occasionally depressed—in a nonclinical fashion.”
    “Good for you,” Leon said, pouring himself a glass of orange juice. “Warrick is decidedly under the weather.”
    “I think he just had a lot to celebrate,” Rook said, raising his mug toward Leon.
    “So do I, come to think of it,” Leon said. “Oh, we had something else for you.”
    “More?” Rook asked. “How can there be more? Don’t tell me, you worked out how to achieve world peace?”
    “Kill all the humans,” Leon said promptly. “But I’m not advocating that.”
    Rook chuckled. “Okay, what is it?”
    Leon walked into the lounge and returned with a Nexus tablet. “This,” he said.
    “I think I have an iPad at home, you know.”
    Unlocking the screen, Leon started a video and sat back. “No, not the tablet. This is you,” he said. “Given your amnesia, we thought, well, Warrick and I….”
    Rook’s eyes were already glued to the small screen, which was showing a small boy riding a bright blue-and-yellow tricycle around a small courtyard. “Where did you get this?”
    “Your mum gave us that one,” Leon said. “And that,” he added as the video faded to an old family photo of Rook’s parents, a small child that Leon knew at once to be his friend, and a small, newborn infant. “We also got a fair amount from Facebook. You need to check your privacy settings, dude.”
    “Who’s that?” Rook asked as another photo came up on screen, this one of a gap-toothed boy with bowl-cut brown hair. “Wait—isn’t that you, Leon?”
    “Not me. That’s your brother, Kent.”
    “Kent?”
    But now another video was showing two boys on the beach playing cricket in the sand, the older boy obviously Rook, probably age fifteen or so, the smaller, wiry boy smiling happily as he chased after a battered tennis ball. “Wow, he’s emo,” Rook said. “An emo who smiles. I like that.”
    “Good at eyeliner, though,” Leon said. “And that’s him with carrot sticks at Taronga Zoo, I think.”
    “You mean dropping the carrot sticks and running away from the kangaroo,” Rook said.
    “Same thing.”
    Then a