The second the guns were turned away, the boys behind them shouted for their cohorts. An explosion of paintballs came hurtling toward them, but now they could fire back. And fire they did.
Before long, the offending projectiles had reduced significantly as the other boys were forced to duck and dart for cover, allowing David and Zeke to better focus on gaining ground.
“Is it just me, or does it look like the trees are getting thinner?” Zeke panted after a long minute, gazing around wildly as he struggled to hike up his pants with one hand.
“I think you’re right,” David breathed back. It was becoming easier to run, with less low-hanging branches and fat trunks to dodge. He realized he could also hear the low zooming of vehicles. “Keep going,” he said with renewed strength in his voice. “We’re almost out.”
A couple minutes and a few more rogue paintballs later, they were out of the trees and standing on the edge of a busy, brightly-lit road. David came to a halt, his chest heaving. He looked back into the forest, concerned the guys were going to follow them out and keep firing. But the trees behind them remained still. Their attackers seemed to have retreated.
“Guess we passed the test,” David said, gingerly running a hand through his sticky hair. He glanced down at his trousers and was surprised to see they had survived the run. Mostly. Now he only hoped he hadn’t permanently injured himself.
“And thank God for that.” Zeke gasped, reaching his side and bending over, hands on his knees.
When he straightened, David finally got a proper look at his friend. Zeke’s short, black beard had turned fluorescent pink, courtesy of a ball that had exploded on his upper chest, and the rest of his face had been splattered a sickly green. His bowl-cut hair had tinges of both colors and was sticking up at all angles.
“You look good,” David said.
Zeke scoffed. “Oh. You are funny, David. For the record, I am sure I look just as good as you.”
“Don’t give me the details,” David muttered, sliding a hand beneath his trousers to adjust his underwear.
Then the memory of his upcoming exam came slamming into him like a sledgehammer. He had to get home—now.
Looking left and right along the road, David realized he didn’t have a clue where they were. He hadn’t spent much time off-campus since he’d arrived in Cambridge, and he certainly didn’t recognize this area.
He cast another glance over his shoulder at the forest, half tempted to venture back in to try to negotiate a ride with the boys if they hadn’t buggered off already. But the risk of getting them all riled up and trigger-happy again didn’t sit well, so he discarded the idea.
“We need to go that way,” Zeke suddenly said.
David turned to face him, surprised at the confident tone. “How do you…” His voice trailed off as he followed Zeke’s gaze to the other side of the road.
Signboard. Genius.
“Okay. Let’s get moving.”
David started striding forward but halted again after three steps. He looked down at Zeke, who had stalled alongside him, and they shared a glance.
“We should change first,” David said.
Zeke nodded sullenly.
They moved back to the forest border and ducked behind a row of bushes, where they stripped to their underwear and exchanged clothes. As sodden and sticky as Zeke’s were, they were infinitely more comfortable in size, and David emerged from the bushes a happier man.
Happier—but not exactly happy.
“Any guesses how long it’ll take to walk?” David asked, his voice tight, as they resumed their brisk pace along the sidewalk.
Zeke let out a long breath, looking equally, if not more, stressed. “Um. I-I don’t know.” He dug a hand into his disheveled hair. “I think I have passed this area on a bus before, but walking…perhaps an hour.”
David increased his pace. “I need to be back in half an hour—or less if we can manage it.” He’d been pressed for time even before his housemates had snatched him. It killed him to think how much this was setting him back.
“You’re not the only one who needs to get back,” Zeke replied, his voice suddenly pitchy. “All this socializing is going to mess up my midterms. And if that happens, I swear, my parents will literally disown me.” He cursed, his breath becoming sharp and uneven. “You have no idea how hard they worked to get me here. All the after-school tuition. Practically their life savings—” His voice choked up, and David turned to stare at his friend in surprise.
He’d known Zeke was under a lot of pressure. The guy had a large and highly ambitious family back home—and he often griped about the lofty expectations they had of him. David was used to his mood swings, too, and his habit of looking mournful and depressed almost every time he sat down to work.
But he’d never seen Zeke looking quite this…flustered. Judging from the glisten at the corners of his eyes and the slight tremor of his lower lip, he was close to tears.
David reached out to grip his shoulder. “Hey, man. It’s okay. You’ll pull through this. We both will.”
Zeke bit down hard on his lip, his eyes fixing stoically ahead, and David tried to think of what more he could say—or even if he should say more, at this point.
David wasn’t exactly in the same boat as Zeke, performance-wise. Because he had no family pressure. No family at all, actually…
He’d been adopted by a middle-aged British-Israeli couple when he was only a month old and raised by them until his late teens. His mother had passed away after a stroke when David was seventeen, and his father had died of lung cancer a couple of years later.
And he didn’t know who his birth parents were, because it had been a closed adoption. The only thing his adoptive parents knew was that he’d been born in Boston, where they had been living at the time. They’d brought David back to London when he was two, and England had been his home for the rest of his childhood and adolescence.
That was one of the reasons David had worked so hard to get a scholarship at Harvard. He’d wanted to get back to America. He’d planned to take economics as his major, anyway, and he had never been one to settle for second best when a bit more effort would get him to first. His adoptive father had always encouraged him to push for greatness, and David had worked hard to make him proud. But more than that, now that the parents who’d raised him were gone, the UK no longer held enough for him.
Once he got a better handle on his classes, David wanted to try to pick up his birth parents’ trail. He was profoundly grateful for the parents who’d raised him and the incredible start to life they’d given him, but now, he just…wanted to know who he was.
His mother had always said he was probably Jewish, but he knew it had been out of affection, that she didn’t have any solid reason for assuming it. He’d been brought up in an ethnic Jewish background, but was that his culture? Who was David Rosen, actually?
He wanted to understand. He wanted to know whose ocean-blue eyes he had. Why his skin was a pale shade of olive. Why his hair was a dark mocha brown, and where he got his height from—his mother, his father, both? At six feet, he’d towered over Mr. and Mrs. Rosen. Did he share any personality traits with his birth parents? Or was every little part that made him him solely a product of his environment?
Why had his parents given him away? Had they ever wanted him, or had he been a burden from the start?
As uncomfortable as the answers might be, they were his story. His truth, which he’d been deprived of for the past twenty-one-years.
