Because You Suck: Chapter 3: Part 2

Frustration and disappointment can make odd bedfellows!

Geronimo was pushing against his cage, thumping his feet on the wire bottom and jumping frantically against the wires. Gentry cast it an irritated glare and flipped open the cage door on his way to the couch.
The guinea pig emerged from his cage, but stopped suddenly before the threshold of the screen door. He then warily raised its head to sniff the air, watery black eyes wide open. Gentry threw his backpack onto the couch, glaring as the demented animal shuffled left, then right, almost out, then in again.
“What are you waiting for, dummy? Run.”
The animal jumped into the air once and fled out the open door, which Gentry closed with his foot. Stupid animal. At least now he was alone, the lofty sitting room was all his. The darkened halls, blue walls, the mahogany table and the drooping ferns. Gentry sat on the couch and opened a book, flipping through it aimlessly. He had hoped the present would trigger something. He wasn’t sure what, but hoped it would make them more than what they were… he wanted it to change things. Maybe Zach didn’t. Who cared? WHO?
“So you’re the one who always lets that beast escape.”
Gentry looked up suddenly, ”Carly?”
He surveyed glinting blackness of the other boy’s eyes, and, seeing nothing in their depths that hadn’t already been there, Gentry turned his attention to his book.
“How did you get in here? Through a window?” he asked listlessly.
“Your Dad let me in. I waited for you.” Carly stepped out from the dim shadows that hung over the den, ”I expected at least a greeting, considering I made you swim team captain.”
“You chose me because I’m the best.”
”You haven’t changed, Gentry.”
”You left for college a year ago, of course I didn’t change.”
Carly laughed and sat beside the redhead, “That’s not what I meant. You still don’t give a fuck about anyone or anything. Not me, not your pet, not even the swim team! But,” he pushed down the books in Gentry’s hands, ”that’s why I made you leader. You aren’t full of sentimental crap… sentimental attachments get in the way of good judgment.”
“I don’t feel like hearing you talk.” Gentry murmured, falling into an irritated silence.
“And I don’t feel like taking your attitude. Save it for your underclass Estonian bitch.”
“Shouldn’t you be in college or something?”
“I am in college.” Carly replied, ”I got invited to be a guest judge for tryouts.”
“And that’s worth traveling across the country for?”
“Of course. They love me here. It’s not like in college.”Gentry looked up at the former leader again. There was something about that once infallible pride that had been cut down, and it made him… sympathetic.