The Scumbag's Guide To Heroism

I dismissed the notification and swung my legs off the bed. The apartment was gorgeous. Diane had outdone herself. The walnut desk caught the afternoon sun at the perfect angle, and the reading chair Diane had picked sat like it had grown out of the floorboards. But sitting alone in seven hundred and fifty square feet of luxury on move-in day while the building slowly filled with the most dangerous eighteen-year-olds in the country felt like wasting ammunition.

I grabbed my phone, pulled on one of the four identical black hoodies, and headed downstairs.

The common area had changed in the forty minutes since I’d helped Ray and the bald mover wrestle Petra Lang’s imperial dresser through the front door.

Three more families had arrived, their belongings stacked in the entryway like a refugee processing center that happened to stock high-end luggage.

A mother with a wide-brimmed hat was crying quietly near the elevator while her son, a stocky kid with forearms like bridge cables, patted her shoulder with the resigned gentleness of someone who had been through this exact performance at every school drop-off since kindergarten.

A father in a polo shirt so aggressively branded it probably qualified as an Aspect of its own was loudly explaining to a facilities woman that his daughter required hypoallergenic pillow inserts and that the standard bedding was unacceptable.

I claimed the far end of the modular couch closest to the south-facing windows, where I had a clean sightline to the front entrance and the elevator bank simultaneously. The cushion was firm without being hostile, the kind of furniture that cost enough to be comfortable without advertising it. I sank into the corner, stretched one leg across the seat, and pulled out my phone.

Three messages from Sloane. The timestamps were four minutes apart, which in Sloane frequency meant she’d been typing and deleting for twenty between each one.

The first message: "Where did you go."

No question mark. Not a question. An accusation formatted as a sentence.

The second message: "You didn’t say bye. You just LEFT. Like some kind of ghost. I turned around and you were GONE."

Capitals. She was warming up.

The third message arrived while I held the phone. "Mom saw you leave. She’s coming to your building. She said something about making sure your lamp cord is right. That is NOT what she’s coming to do. She is coming to MURDER you for leaving without saying goodbye. You have maybe twenty minutes. Hurricane Diane is incoming. This is your only warning. I hope you enjoyed being alive."

I could hear Sloane’s voice in every word. The way the text got louder as it went on, the sentences fragmenting and then rebuilding with more force, the absolute commitment to presenting herself as angry when what she actually was, was hurt that I hadn’t hugged her before walking out. The ears would be pink right now. I’d bet my entire education trust on it.

I started typing back. "I said bye to your garment bags. They were the most responsive members of the household at that point. You were busy making Koda promise to spar with you and didn’t notice me leave because your brain had already entered combat mode and I became invisible to your targeting system."

Send.

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again. The Sloane cycle was running through its full sequence.

"That is NOT what happened. I was being POLITE to my new classmate. You know. NETWORKING. Which is what normal people do on move-in day instead of DISAPPEARING like a—"

Another message landed before she finished the first. "Also you’re wrong. I noticed. I just. Didn’t want to make a scene in front of people."

There it was. The softening underneath the volume. The real sentence hiding behind the fourth wall of her anger. The thing she’d been circling for three messages without landing on it directly.

I started typing a response that was honest enough to matter and funny enough that she wouldn’t feel exposed for admitting she cared.

"I’ll come by tonight. We can properly say hello to your new mattress and test whether the walls are as thick as the housing packet claims."

Send.

The three dots pulsed for nine full seconds. I could track her internal recalibration in real time through the rhythm of it. The first two seconds were raw flustered response. The next four were her trying to route it back to anger. The last three were her deciding which register to commit to.

"I hate you."

"That’s not a no."

"It’s not a NO because I haven’t decided yet if I want to REWARD you for bad behavior or PUNISH you for it. Both involve the mattress. Don’t push your luck." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

I leaned back against the bed frame, the grin spreading wider than it had any business being. The lowercase on "reward" and "punish" was notable. She’d typed those words carefully. She was thinking about what they meant before she sent them.

"Both sound good."

"SHUT UP."

The capitals were back but the energy behind them had shifted. This wasn’t anger. This was Sloane realizing she’d said something out loud she meant to keep internal and trying to backfill the volume to cover for it. The follow-up would arrive in about thirty seconds. She wouldn’t be able to help herself.

Twenty-two seconds later: "You’re seriously the worst. I take back everything. You can stay in your boring dorm with your boring lamp cord and your boring empty walls. I’m going to have a GREAT time with Koda and we’re going to decorate and it’s going to be AMAZING and you’re not invited."

"Sounds fun. I’ll still come by tonight."

The dots appeared. Stayed there. Disappeared. She was typing something, deleting it, typing again. The full Sloane composition process on display.

Finally: "Fine. But only because I need to yell at you in person about the garment bags thing. That’s the only reason."

"Sure."

"It IS."

"I believe you."

"You DON’T. I can HEAR you not believing me through the phone. Stop smirking."

I wasn’t smirking. I was full grinning at this point. Sloane Fitzgerald, seventy-seven percent Temptation Gauge, Devoted status, incapable of being calm about anything related to me for longer than it took her to form a complete thought.

I loved this girl.

The specific chemical composition of her anger, the way her texts escalated until the emotional honesty leaked through the cracks, the fact that she threatened me with mattress-related punishment and genuinely could not figure out why that was not the deterrent she intended it to be. All of it. Every single overheated, capitals-heavy, ear-flushing word.

I was composing something about the acoustic properties of Halloran dorm construction when the front door opened.

Not dramatically. Not with the ownership energy of Petra Lang on her phone or the overwhelming chaos of a family hauling boxes. Just a quiet push, like whoever was behind it wasn’t entirely sure the door was for them.

A head poked around the edge of the frame.

And here... we... go.