He shrugged and waved me off as if to say, “Don’t give it a second thought Alvin.” I took that as his way of saying, that everything was cool between us. And yet I still couldn’t help wondering where the heck he had been for the last couple of weeks and why no one seemed to know anything about him.
“Hey, want to come over?” I asked, trying to break the silence between us. “I just got a new comic book! It’s the latest edition of the Fantastic 4.”
To my delight, Chris smiled, picked up his hockey stick and the two of us walked toward my grandparents.
Like happens most days when I arrived home, there wasn’t anyone to greet me. Oh sure, I knew one or maybe both of my grandparents were around somewhere, but they rarely welcomed me home from a hard day at school.
Chris seemed to be in awe of my grandparents’ enormous home. His eyes seemed to dart this way and that, while trying to take it all in. I led him to the room I was staying in, tossed my backpack on the floor and he dropped his hockey stick beside it. Chris didn’t seem too interested in my latest copy of the Fantastic 4 comic. He had produced a spiral notebook. I hadn’t seen him with it before, so I assumed he had it rolled up in his back pocket or something. He plopped down on the floor near the foot of my bed, gave me a wink and buried his face in his notebook. Whatever it was he was reading, it seemed to interest him, so I sat across from him and reread my comic book for like the tenth time.
After a while, Chris stood up, grabbed his hockey stick, laid it across his chest with the end of the handle resting on top of his left foot and gave me another wink.
“You need to go home now?” I asked and he nodded that he did.
“Okay, I’ll show you the way out.” I said as I tossed my comic onto my bed.