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There is an alarm going off somewhere. A loud, intermittent buzz. And then a BANG BANG BANG which startles Tim to full consciousness.
The rain has stopped.
Alex is already up, pulling on his pants. "Just stay here," he says, and he leaves.
Tim sits up, keeping the blanket pooled in his lap because he's not quite ready to admit to himself that he isn't wearing anything. The room seems larger than it did last night, maybe because of the morning sun filtering through the blinds.
The camera is on the bedside table, turned away from the bed. He picks it up. There's a fresh tape in it. He turns it toward himself, wondering if Alex actually watches all of these tapes. What does he do with them if he doesn't watch them? He must have boxes and boxes of them somewhere.
Tim is still holding the camera in one hand when he gets out of bed and finds his pants. He brings it out with him when he wanders into the living room.
He hears Alex's voice first. Then, he hears Jays and he stops short. He edges in close enough to hear, but not close enough to be seen from the door.
"--making a big deal out of nothing." Alex's voice, clipped.
"It didn't sound like nothing when you called me the other night."
"Well, it was."
"I should've come over then." Jay's annoyance is more uncharacteristic than Alex's. "You would've told me the truth."
Their voices are getting more hushed. Tim tries to move forward. "I'm not going to stand in my doorway arguing about this. I just got out of bed. I'll just call you--" Tim's foot thumps against the side of a chair he didn't realize was there. Both Alex and Jay go quiet for a long moment. Finally, Alex continues. "I'll call you later."
"No you won't," Jay says, and the door closes.
Tim hears Alex sigh before he comes back to find Tim standing there in only his unbuttoned jeans, holding the camera. He quirks an eyebrow at him. "I told you to stay in the bedroom."
"You've always said I'm not good at taking direction."
"I can't argue with that."
Tim laughs a little, but Alex doesn't. The alarm is still going off somewhere. "Where did you go last night?" Alex asks.
"What?" The camera is starting to feel heavy, so he switches it to his left hand. "I was here."
"Yes, I remember. But you left." It sounds almost like an accusation. Alex walks past him toward the kitchen. "I woke up and you were gone thirty minutes, maybe more."
Tim frowns, moving the camera from one hand to the other again before drifting back to sit on the couch. Did he get up to go to the bathroom? Not for half an hour; he would've remembered going to the bathroom for half an hour. "Why does it matter?" he calls into the kitchen.
Alex is quiet for a long moment, then he calls back, "Are you hungry?"
"I, uh. I guess I--" Something moves on his thigh, startling him, and he remembers that his phone is in his pocket. He pulls it out and finds a text from Jay. "No. I need to get home."
"Okay. Well. I'll see you later, then."
"Yeah... I'll, uh. Call you." Tim sets the camera down on the coffee table and stands.
Alex doesn't answer. Tim goes to grab his shirt out of the bedroom, and he’s halfway out the front door when he hears Alex say, "Where is that alarm coming from?"
Jay is drinking coffee, and he's bouncing his knee up and down vigorously the way he does whenever he's had even a whiff of caffeine. There's a half-eaten chicken sandwich on his tray.
"Alex left a voicemail on my phone the other night," he says, before Tim has even finished scooting into the booth across from him."I didn't get it until the next morning. I've been taking these sleeping pills and they just knock me out; I must not 've heard it. I've got to stop taking them. What if--"
"Hey, slow down. You said you wanted to meet up with me because Alex left you a voicemail?"
Jay blinks at Tim, then looks down at the table. "You took him home that night, right? That night after the cast party, you took him back to his place."
"He was drunk." Tim swallows thickly, wishing he'd grabbed something to drink from the cafeteria before sitting down. "I just, you know. Walked him home. Why does that matter?"
"He sent me a voicemail that night. Here." Jay pulls out his phone and presses a few buttons before handing it over. Tim looks at it for a moment before putting it to his ear.
“--not him.” Alex is gasping. His mouth is too close to the receiver. “It’s like before. Remember? Do you re--” His voice changes to a loud, staticky noise, and Tim has to jerk the phone away from his ear.
“Sorry, something’s wrong with my phone. Sometimes the messages end up like that.” Jay scratches at his hair. “There, it’s quiet again. Listen.”
Tim cautiously puts the phone back to his ear. Alex is still breathing heavily, and there is some clattering in the background. “I have to go back. I think I’ll go cr--” He’s interrupted by a quieter static than before. “--have to come with me. You have to help. It’s here. It followed--” The clattering ends with a loud thump. Then, Alex whispers, “Help us, Jay.”
If you would like to save this message, press--
Tim pushes the phone back across the table. “He was drunk. He was probably-- What does this have to do with me? Why are you showing me this?”
“Because.” Jay puts his phone back in his pocket. “You took him home. Did you just leave after you took him home?”
Tim shrugs. “I didn’t have any reason to stay.”
“Yeah, but did you? I mean, he says us, right? And, Brian... I mean, Brian lies sometimes. Or he gets, uh, confused, or maybe I do. But, Brian told me you were there after--”
“Yeah, okay.” Tim runs his fingers through his hair. What exactly had he told Brian? Had he told him he stayed? No, he wouldn’t have told him that. “He was drunk, and that house is kind of creepy at night. Maybe he just got scared or something, and now he’s too embarrassed to admit it.”
“You’ve been to his house at night?” Jay doesn’t wait for Tim to answer. “Look, I know about Alex. If something’s going on with you guys, it’s none of my business, and even if it were, it wouldn’t matter to me. He’s my best friend, and you seem like a nice guy. All I care about is finding out what happened. Alex...” Jay takes a deep breath and looks up at Tim directly. “Alex gets weird sometimes.”
Tim sits back against the booth cushions. He shouldn’t have come here. He knew as soon as he saw the text that he shouldn’t have come. “Everyone gets weird sometimes.”
“Yeah, but... That wasn’t just drunk, Tim.”
“Alex was right; you’re making a big deal out of nothing.” Tim glances over at a couple walking through the side doors into the cafeteria. He can feel Jay watching him, connecting the dots. “I have to go to class.”
He starts to get up, and Jay gets up with him. “If you remember anything from before you left...”
“I guess I”ll let you know.”
Jay nods and fakes a quick smile before Tim starts walking blindly toward the exit.
Tim is half an hour early to class, but Brian is there before him anyway. He has his laptop open, and he’s playing with the settings on his webcam. He points at his distorted face, as Tim sits down next to him.
“Yeah, this video editing class is definitely paying off for you, Brian.”
Brian laughs, and switches to a setting that pixlates the image and changes the colors to warm reds and yellows. “I only took it to hang out with you anyway.”
“And Jay said it was an easy A when he took it in Spring.”
“Okay, that too.” He grins widely at Tim, swiveling his chair back and forth restlessly. “Not like I was going to take a hard summer class. That’s just masochistic.”
“Hey, I don’t know what you’re into,” Tim mutters as he pulls out his own laptop. The class isn’t as easy as Jay and Brian think it is. They’d probably think it was hilarious if they knew he was scraping by with a low C. “Speaking of Jay, he told me you talked to him.”
Brian shrugs. “I talk to him all the time.”
Tim watches his laptop boot up. “He told me you talked to him about me and Alex.”
“Ohhh that.” He laughs a little and stops swiveling his chair. “I know I acted kind of weird about that before, but. I guess I didn’t think he’d be your type or whatever. I mean, even if you like guys. He’s my friend, but he’s kind of a dweeb, right? But, whatever, I mean. He must be your type, considering.”
“What do you mean ‘considering’?”
Brian sticks out his tongue at his monitor, the effects turning it bright red. “I saw you leaving his place this morning. Wearing the same thing you did yesterday.”
“What?” Tim whispers, even though no one else is in the classroom yet. “How do you know that?”
“I was coming by to talk to him about something, and I just happened to see you, that's all.”
Tim stares at his screen, but his eyes won’t focus on it.
“Don’t flip out,” Brian says. He switches his webcam settings to one that leaves delay ghosts as he tilts his head from one side to the other. “Everyone experiments in college. I can’t believe it’s Alex, though. I thou--”
“Why did you have to talk to Jay about it?”
Brian blinks at him. “Oh, uh. It just kind of came out, I guess. Sometimes I just say things.”
“Could you maybe not say things about it to anybody else for a while? I’m not flipping out, but I wasn’t exactly ready for everyone to know.”
“Who else am I going to tell? Seth and Sarah, I guess...” He glances at a group of classmates entering and finding seats together, far away from the two of them. “You hardly even know them, do you think they’ll care? The only people you really know are the three of us. And mostly it’s me, except I guess Alex is getting up there now.”
“Either way, just don’t talk to anyone else about it.”
“Okay, I won’t.” Brian leans over, resting a hand on Tim’s forearm. “I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to piss you off. I just don’t always think things through before I say them.”
Tim nods, taking a deep breath. He waits for Brian to move away again. “It’s just Jay’s... Did he have you listen to that voicemail Alex sent. The one from after the cast party?” Brian frowns and shakes his head. His eyes dart away for a second to look at the effect on his monitor. “I don’t know. Alex left a weird voicemail, and Jay thinks I know what it’s about.”
“Do you? I mean, did you stay that night too?”
“Yeah...”
“So what happened?”
Tim rubs at his neck. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything like what was on the voicemail.”
Brian watches him, then leans back in his chair. He reaches forward to turn off his webcam. “Class is about to start,” he says quietly.
Tim nods, and opens up his project to make a few last minute fixes. He hasn’t worked on it in days. He’s been too distracted.
As the professor walks up to the front of the room, Brian whispers, “Somebody went missing in one of the houses near Alex.” Tim looks at him, and Brian shrugs. “Maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time over there.”