Free The Very Last Days of Mr Grey by Jack Worr

his own for good.
    But he makes his way into the dorm, and the two girls shooting Nerf guns at a guy with a squirt gun lighten his mood some.
    By the time he reaches his new room, the melancholy is almost gone. He knocks, and it dissipates completely when Travis opens the door. “Dude!” He hugs him manily. “I hope you brought beer.”
    “Enough for all of us,” a girl’s voice says, and Mason’s spirits rise even higher.
    Then he looks in and sees the voice belongs to a little kid. Freshman, maybe. Of high school.
    “The dweeb’s my sister,” Travis says, pointing.
    She waves at Mason. “Taylor.”
    Her brother ignores this. “And that,” he says, pointing at the other girl in the room, “is her crazy friend that she’s not supposed to be hanging out with.”
    “No,” Taylor says, “that’s Alice. That ”—she points at her friend—“is Emily.”
    “Whatever,” Travis says.
    Mason waves at them both. “Hey.”
    “Hi,” Taylor says.
    The friend, Emily, just stares at him, and all he can think is, O h great, a freshman has a crush on me. Maybe she just thinks I look scary or something.
    He pushes past them uncomfortably and sets his bags on the obviously unoccupied bed and sits down.
    The girl keeps staring at him. She puts the lie to both of his assumptions by saying, “I know you.”
    Mason looks at her. “Really? Have you seen my mov—”
    “I asked you to buy me cigarettes.”
    “Ew, you smoke?” Taylor says.
    Emily ignores this, staring at him. “Remember?”
    He does. The cigarette detail brings the memory back, and for some reason he thinks of condoms. “You look different.”
    “I’m older.”
    “Yeah,” Travis says suspiciously, “how old are you? Even if you’re not… whoever—”
    “Alice,” Taylor says.
    Travis waves his hand. “She should have friends her own age.”
    She does look older than Travis’s sister, Mason thinks.
    “Just turned fifteen.”
    Despite this seeming about right to Mason, he says, “You don’t look it.”
    “Thanks.”
    “No, I mean you look like you’re twelve.”
    “I would be upset if I didn’t know that I in fact look like a college junior. Ms Adams says so. She says I look like a college junior instead of a high school one and that I shouldn’t be running around with makeup like a little harlot. I love her, but sometimes I think she’s too old fashioned.”
    “I don’t think she was entirely serious,” Taylor puts in.
    “No, probably not. But not entirely joking.”
    “True, true.”
    “You don’t look twenty,” Travis says, then studies Mason’s bags. “So no beer then.”
    Mason laughs. “I know a place.”
    “What’s-her-name?”
    “Huh?”
    “The chick from the roof.”
    The roof. He and Travis met at orientation, and hit it off, and spent that night drinking beers on a roof of some shop. But they weren’t alone up there. The one who got them the beers was with them. She was a senior, and both Mason and Travis tried to make out with her, their attempts growing bolder as their beer supply shrunk. They both eventually got to make out with her, but to Mason’s disappointment, and he was sure Travis’s as well, neither got any tongue. Which just seemed juvenile for a college senior.
    Mason laughs. “Bro, I told you, we never met up afterwards. She probably graduated by now.”
    “Sure. Where’s this place.”
    “The Deli Mart.”
    “Really?”
    Mason just smiles. He stands from the bed, dumps his backpack out on it, then slings the empty bag over his shoulder. “Okay kids,” he says, “the grownups are going to go play. Keep an eye on things.”
    “Ha ha. You are so funny Mr Mason.”
    “Just Mason.”
    “Why do boys like to be called by their last names?”
    “Mason is my first name.” He frowns. “How do you know my name?”
    “What’s your last?”
    “What? Grey. What’s yours?”
    “Doyle. What’s your middle name?”
    “Jeez you’re nosy.”
    “If I’m a little nosy would you call