Suicide break - a really tasteless way of referring to the week-long break from University in mid-February, normally called Reading Week, so called because it exists as an attempt to reduce the number of student suicides.

Since arriving at University, and, as a result, living in a city with an actual library, Erik had acquired a particular, refined hatred for doing research. Not simply because it was dull, but because it was frustrating. The University library claimed that their online search engine was absolutely fabulous and thorough. It was thorough. Erik couldn’t deny that. It was so thorough that he could spend hours with it, searching for a single decent-sounding book on his topic, especially when he was in a big class and the topics had all been rigidly assigned by the professor.

After a couple hundred titles, all of which were unhelpful or unavailable, Erik had found a collection of essays about Charles Dickens. It was fifty years out of date. Professor Marshall had serious reservations about any source of information published before 1980, as Erik had discovered, much to his annoyance, on the return of his last English paper, but he had realized, staring at one of the many library computers, that it was the best he was going to find unless he felt like putting in three more hours in front of the damn machine. So he had checked the book out, thrown it into his backpack, cursed Professor Marshall to an eternity of marking papers written by engineers, and gone home.

His frustration level was near to overflowing. Opening the door to apartment 306 and finding his roommate chatting pleasantly with his mother, on the couch, did not help his frustration level.

At all.

“Mom!” Erik yelped, dropping his bag.

“Oh, hello sweetie,” his mother said pleasantly, as though two parts of Erik’s life that should have been kept far apart at all times had not just horrifically collided in his living room. “Did you have a nice time at the library?”

“Mom, what are you doing here?” As soon as the words were out, Erik realized they weren’t the best things to say to one’s mother, but he found it hard to be polite and tactful when said mother was talking to one’s completely insane roommate.

“Sigurd!” Ray said in a shocked voice. Erik froze in horror at the sound of his first name on his roommate’s lips. “That’s no way to greet your mother. Why, if my dear mother was able to visit me . . .” He trailed off and sighed sadly, over-dramatically.

Erik’s mother gave Ray’s shoulder a sympathetic pat.

Ray, Erik realized, should have been an actor, not a lawyer, and certainly not a ninja. He was obviously delighted by the situation, even if he was covering it with a ridiculous layer of put-upon sadness, and Erik knew the sudden arrival of his mother was going to be milked by Ray for all the entertainment it was worth. The only coherent thought in his mind was a loud, ‘Fuck you, Fujimoto.’

As soon as his mother was gone, possibly before she was even on the elevator, Erik vowed to strangle Ray to death.

“It’s alright,” Erik heard his mother say. “Sigurd’s always taken for granted the things he has that others don’t. Like a mother who isn’t on the other side of the country.”

Erik bit back an angry comment that it was now February, he was well into the second term of his first year of University, and it was the first time since his parents had brought him to Saskatoon to sign the lease that his mother had been anywhere near King Place. “It’s not that. I was just surprised. That’s all. It’s good to see you, Mom,” Erik lied through his teeth.

Erik knew his mother to be capable of smelling a lying teenager at twenty paces. He had seen her uncanny powers at work, reducing burly high school boys to gibbering, cowering shells of their former selves. He’d been subjected to them so often that he’d lost count. Yet his mother’s only response to his blatant lie was to smile at him fondly and finally get off the couch. Away from the evil influence of Ray. “Better,” she said, and leaned up to kiss Erik’s cheek before pulling him into a firm hug.

Ray was watching this display of maternal affection from the couch, and was wearing a poker face incapable of hiding the glee in his bright eyes. ‘Why,’ Erik wondered as he groaned, utterly mortified, ‘can he not wear expressions like that while playing actual poker?’ “Mom! I’m eighteen! Remember?”

Erik’s mother did not look impressed or remotely apologetic. He had found out long ago that the old ‘be considerate of others’ rule only applied if ‘others’ weren’t your children. “A boy who doesn’t have a good relationship with his mother – ”

“Grows up to be a serial killer,” Ray interjected helpfully.

Erik groaned again. ‘Thank you, Ray.’
“Among other things,” Erik’s mother agreed, and finally released her son.

Once more capable of breathing, Erik tried to steer the conversation away from a direction that might have proven capable of driving him to the first of his many homicides. “It’s great to see you, Mom. Really. I was just a little surprised to find you here is all. If I’d known you were going to drop by, I would have” – tied Ray up and locked him in the closet, sold Ray to slavers, given Ash and Dustin twenty bucks to keep Ray at their place, sewed Ray’s mouth shut – “cleaned the apartment,” he concluded lamely.

Erik’s mother laughed. She reached up and gently ruffled his hair, and he felt himself turn beet red in response. Mothers, he was certain, only did such things to ensure that their sons never had the self-confidence to defy them in anything. Ray was trying to muffle his laughter on the back of the couch. “Sweetie,” his mother said, her voice full of patience, understanding, and all other motherly qualities, as though they could compensate for the pure humiliating evil she generated, using the tone in the way of mothers everywhere to make her teenage son feel like the most thoughtless creature on Earth, “if I came here and found everything neat and tidy, well . . . I’d be worried about you. I’d think something was wrong, honestly. I did give you over a week’s notice, of course, but I certainly wasn’t expecting you to exert any effort on account of that.”

“You . . . did?” Erik frowned, wracking his brain for a memory of an e-mail or phone call. If Ray has answered the phone and not bothered to mention the call, then no ninja powers in the world would save him from Erik’s wrath.

“You were out, but I left a message. About the teachers’ conference this week. I called last Saturday.” She made her way through the empty boxes that littered the floor and went back to the couch. Ray handed her the purse which had been lying on the floor, giving her a charming smile.

Erik eyed Ray. His roommate’s innocent expression showed no hint that he remembered the phone call, but it wasn’t the suspicious, overly-innocent expression he sometimes wore, either.

Ray hadn’t answered the phone.

Last Saturday . . . Erik frowned with thought. Dustin and Ash had been busy, Sarah had been out with some girlfriends, so it had just been the two of them, and Ray had decided it would be a perfect time to see how bad their eye-hand coordination got when they were drunk. There had been three six-packs involved, and a racing game Ray had run out to rent, because he thought playing a game neither of them was familiar with would be the only fair course of action. They’d ignored the phone the entire night. Somehow things had gone from playing a racing game while drunk to wrestling while drunk. The impromptu match had started at one end of the apartment, near the couch, and had ended by the door. Ray’s foot had caught on the answering machine cord and the machine had fallen on the floor. Everything had been wiped, some important answering bits had been blown, and so Ray had bought them a new machine the next day, after he had recovered from his hangover . . .

Shit.

“Uh, right. Last Saturday. We were, uh, out. With Dustin. And a couple other friends, or, uh, we would have, um, answered the phone. Right.”

Ray’s eyebrows rose in disbelief, either because he remembered what they’d been doing or simply because he was only just realizing what a horrible liar Erik was.

Erik’s mother raised her eyebrows. Nervously, Erik swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing violently behind the scarf he still hadn’t been given a chance to take off, and awaited the moment his mother would fry him with her laser vision. But all she said was, “It’s okay, sweetie. I’m not upset. I’m glad to hear you’re getting out more than you did back home. It’s good to know you’re making the most of your time in the city.” She smiled at Erik in that way mothers do when they know, no some level, that they have just horribly humiliated their offspring in front of a friend. Even if the friend was just Ray Fujimoto.

Erik twitched violently, his face burning, while Ray looked ready to explode from holding back his laughter.

“Besides,” Erik’s mother continued, like an unstoppable force of nature, “I’m sure you’ll clean the place up a bit before I drop your brother off on Wednesday.” She frowned as she nudged a dangerous looking pizza box with her toe.

Abruptly, Ray’s barely contained laughter stopped.

“Collin?” Erik asked weakly as his brain tried to process this latest, horrifying surprise.

Erik’s mother turned her frown from the pizza box to her son. “Sigurd, if you had any complaints about the arrangements, you should have called and talked to me about them. It’s a little late to change plans and find new accommodations for Collin near the campus now. I could have paid the University for accommodations with all the other boys, but that seemed a waste with you living so near. Try not to forget who’s paying your rent, dear.”

“Yeah, but – ” Erik tried to protest.

“You certainly can’t expect me to drive Collin to and from campus for four days, Sigurd. My hotel’s on the opposite end of the city. Do you have any idea how high gas prices are right now?”

Erik tried again. “I just meant – ”

“He’s only fourteen, Sigurd. He’s hardly ever been somewhere bigger than Doherty. You can’t expect me to dump him on a bus in the big city and have him find his own way to campus. What kind of mother would I be? What kind of brother would you be if you didn’t try and make things easier for him? What kind of son would you be if you didn’t try and make my life a little easier?”

“Mom – ” Erik tried to get out from beneath the quickly increasing weight of parent-induced guilt.

“He can walk to the hockey rink from the hotel the teachers’ conference is in, that’s no trouble, but he’s done there on Wednesday afternoon. So I’ll bring Collin and his bags by after he’s done, and we can all go out for supper – your friend can come too, if he likes. Did you know he’s been to Wales? Your grandfather and grandmother would adore him.” Erik’s mother paused her monologue long enough to smile at a rather confused, but polite-looking Ray.

Erik put his hands up, desperately trying to get his mother’s attention. “Mom, there isn’t any room. There’s only the one bedroom, we aren’t hiding any air mattresses or anything in the closet, and I’m not sharing a bed with Collin!”

“Me neither,” Ray said dryly, still looking a bit lost, but his usual smirking cheeriness was beginning to reassert itself at the sight of Erik’s obvious distress.

“You do have a couch, Sigurd. I assume there’s nothing living in it.” Erik’s mother eyed the rather tattered piece of furniture with sudden suspicion, her gaze lingering on the bottom where Ray had scrawled ‘The couch fantastic’ in big, bold black letters one night while he was drunk, before Erik had dumped all the sharpies down the garbage chute.

There were a few strategically placed, clumsily drawn hearts.

“Of course not,” Erik said irritably, reminding himself to turn the cushion that Ray had thrown up on one night, which still bore a dark and suspicious stain, over before Wednesday. “The couch doesn’t pull out or anything, though. If Collin’s doing sports stuff it’ll probably be really uncomfortable for him . . .” he trailed off after this last desperate attempt to change his mother’s mind. He looked imploringly at his roommate, but Ray simply shrugged and grinned. No help to be found there.

“Things like that build character,” said Helen Thorbiornsen, terror of Doherty teenagers. Her voice was firm. End of discussion.

“Mom . . .” Erik sighed, defeated. His shoulders slumped. “Wednesday. Right.”

Erik’s mother smiled, patting his shoulder. “I knew I could rely on you, dear.”

“Right.”

“And it was very nice to meet you, Ray.”

“Pleasure was all mind, I assure you. It’s nice to know that dear Sigurd didn’t escape from a mental institution,” Ray said, lying back on the couch.

“And I’ll see you on Wednesday, sweetie.” Erik’s mother leaned up to press another kiss to his cheek.

“But you just got here,” Erik said in confusion.

“I know, sweetie. I just stopped by to see how you were doing and check the apartment. I left Collin at the mall, and I need to get back and find him before something happens.”

“What could happen at the mall?”

“Oh,” the bright smile faltered for a minute, “you know your brother . . .”

“But – ”

“I’m sure you have lots of work to do. I’ll see you on Wednesday, okay?” Erik’s mother smiled up at him and shouldered her purse before heading to the door.

Erik’s shoulders slumped further. “Right. Wednesday.”

“Love you, Sigurd,” she said as she opened the door and stepped into the hallway.

“You too, Mom,” Erik said. The door shut quietly on his words.

“Well,” Ray said, filling the sudden, awkward silence. “She could have at least brought cookies or something. Mine would have brought cookies.”

“Shut up, Ray,” Erik said. He began to struggle out of his winter clothing. Toque, scarf, mittens, and jacket all fell to the floor by the boots he kicked off. He couldn’t make himself pick any of them up and put them away in the closet. After a minute of staring at the pile, he picked his backpack up from where it had fallen when he first came in.

“She’s hot, you know.”

Erik shuddered. “Shut up, Ray.”

“Scary, though. Does she always get all dictatorial like that when she’s organizing other peoples lives?”

Erik’s lips twitched helplessly as he fished his book on Dickens out of his backpack. “Yeah, usually.”

Ray rolled over, propping his chin on his hands. “You grew up with that and you still can’t put your socks in the laundry basket?”

“What can I say? I’m a crazy, wild rebel,” Erik said, deadpan, as he walked to the computer, dropping his backpack on Ray’s head as he went.

Ray sneezed and rolled onto his back, tossing Erik’s backpack to the floor. “Sigurd, huh?”

Erik could feel Ray’s obnoxious grin without turning around to see it. His ears began to burn with embarrassment. “Stuff it, Fujimoto.”

“Didn’t say a thing, man, not a word. I mean, who am I to judge? It’s a good name. Very Viking. Very menacing.”

Erik groaned. “Ray . . .”

“Yes, Sigurd?” Ray asked sweetly, practically purring the name with exaggerated care.

“Shut up.”

“Scary, Thor, scary.” Erik had never been so glad to hear the stupid nickname that had been plaguing him since he had moved to Saskatoon. “Man, you would have been the worst Viking ever. You probably couldn’t pillage to save your life. As for the killing and the raping, well . . .”

Erik glared intently at the monitor. “I’m trying to get some work done, Ray.”

“Uh huh,” Ray said, uncaring. “Should we start cleaning the place up for your brother?”

“Nope,” Erik answered calmly, typing a sentence. He stared at it for a minute before proceeding to delete it, one letter at a time.

“And defy Dictator Mom? Sigurd, how could you?”

Erik typed a line of nonsense into the word processor as he thought. “Weren’t you playing Ultimate Legend before I went to the library?”

“Yeah, but your mom came when I was in the middle of catching those moths, so I paused it and turned off the TV – ”

“I was just wondering, ‘cause the console’s off now.”

Ray sat bolt upright. He scrambled to the floor to stare at the console and its distinct absence of any glowing lights to show it was on. “I must have turned it off without thinking when I was talking to her . . .” he said, his voice filled with horror.

“Man, that sucks. Hope you remembered to save. It would bite if you had to go through all that stuff again, just for those moths . . . ”

Ray emitted a strangled cry, cursing in Italian, and began to beat his head on the floor.

Erik smirked, and began writing his paper.