Apt Pupil 2

Todd returned to school with several new items (except the college guide. He left that in his room at the Bowden residence. Yes sir, that baby was tucked on the shelf there and forgotten…Monica would see it, sure, but she’d think that he had merely forgotten it. She would sigh and tell herself to remind him where it was. She would, of course, forgot and the book would stay there). Chris watched him put these things away with a mixture of curiosity and envy.

If Todd noticed, he didn’t comment.

XXX
Chris lay on his bed; belly down, feet up in the air. His textbook (Introduction to Cultural Anthropology) was lying open and unread in front of him. Once in awhile, he picked at the ratty cuffs of his sweater, but mainly he just stared, uninterested, at the page. Other students still ruled by adolescent behaviour would have thumbed through the book for the numerous pictures of tribal men and women unconstrained by Western modesty. Chris wasn’t in the mood, had never, in fact, bothered flipping through the pages. Cultural anthropology failed to hold his interests and all the nude pictures in the world couldn’t erase the fact that anthropology was featured in the text surrounding any otherwise engaging photos.

Giving up on studying, Chris brushed the textbook onto the floor. The two-hundred dollar textbook landed awkwardly, bending pages as it hit the thin carpeting. Chris righted it, more out of boredom than an acknowledgement of its monetary value. As he did so, his eyes caught sight of a slim book pushed haphazardly under Todd’s single bed.

It caught Chris’ eye only because Todd was, by nature, not the type of person to have anything disorderly. Everything had a place and everything was in that place. And while Chris most certainly could respect that, he often wondered how anyone could train themselves to automatically put things back when finished with them. His own belongings were of his own, less than perfect, cleaning style.

Sliding half way off the bed, Chris picked up the book. His mind was screaming at him (“This is wrong…You’re invading his privacy”), but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. His hands seemed like that of a stranger’s and utterly beyond his control. They opened the book without his consent and his eyes found themselves disobeying him and looking at the small blue ink marks littering the pages on the inside cover. Swastikas. There were several of them, all traced over, as if they were no more harmless than the numerous other doodles done by millions of other young adults out of boredom.

Chris sucked air between closed teeth. His stomach turned over inside him and for one terrifying moment he was sure that he was going to vomit all over the book. He didn’t. Instead, the same curiosity that forced him to pick up his roommate’s book forced him to turn the page. The same small blue ink littered the lined pages as well. Morbid fascination caused page after page to fly before his wide eyes. Page after page was littered with an assortment of swastikas.

It was too much and the book closed with a snap. Moving on auto-pilot, the book was shoved back under Todd’s bed.