Page 22 of Bobby Green

“I like your friend,” she said sleepily. “He’s not a fag, is he?”

Oh God. “V, that’s a mean word. Most of the words on your walls are mean. I think we need to paint your walls and stop learning mean words on the internet.”

“But they’re all out to get us, Reggie,” she said, eyes suddenly open wide and limpid. “You know that—the fags and the spics and the ni—”

He put his hand over her mouth. “V, that’s bullshit, okay? You’re looking that shit up, and idiots are spouting bullshit, and you’re soaking it up like a sponge. If you don’t start looking up nice shit, I’m going to take away your computer, okay?”

“You can’t!” she gasped, sitting up in bed. He’d changed her sheets while she sat downstairs, and he felt mildly better about the whole entire world now that he knew she was no longer sleeping on those sheets. “Those people on the computer—they understand me!”

“And some of them are okay,” Reg said, remembering the talks John and Dex had given him about reading his fan mail. He’d wanted to respond and get to know people and maybe hook up—and then he’d seen the bad reviews and his feelings had been so hurt! But they’d explained to him about trolls and how some people just frothed in their own jizz (John’s words), and maybe it was just best to let computer people stay on their side of the computer. “But a lot of them just….” He couldn’t say “froth in their own jizz” to his mentally ill sister. “A lot of them just roll around in their own crap and then try to smear it on anyone who will listen. This shit on your walls, that’s someone else’s ji—uh, crap. And you wrote it all over your walls and made it your own.”

“You’re just mad ’cause I called you a fag,” she lashed out, but hey—Reg fucked guys for money, had for a long time. He’d been called worse, and he knew that now.

“I wish you wouldn’t, but that’s not it.” He took a deep breath and let his eyes wander around the room. “V, meanness just… breeds meanness.” He managed a smile for the girl who used to make him peanut butter and banana sandwiches when there wasn’t anything else to eat in the house. “You’re my sweet big sister. Sometimes, even if they’re out to get you, you gotta forgive them and find another way to be.”

“They put the bugs on my arms,” she said disconsolately, but he was used to her saying things like that.

“No, they didn’t,” he told her gently. “Your brain put the bugs on your arms. I wish I could make it stop.”

She nodded, her mouth crumpling. “Me too. I’m sorry, Reg. For saying mean things. I shouldn’t say them to you. I’m so sorry.” Tired tears seeped from the corners of her eyes, and Reg breathed and nodded and waited for her to fall asleep.

He made it downstairs, his shoulder aching fiercely—in fact, his entire body hurting in ways he couldn’t even define. He always felt like this after one of V’s meltdowns. It was like the fear and the anger and the frustration—and the love—backed up inside his joints and just hurt.

Lance sat at his beat-up kitchen table, textbooks open. He glanced up as Reg stepped into the kitchen, smiling grimly.

“You look like shit, Re—I mean, Digger. This happen a lot?”

“Once a year or so. Sometimes every six months.” He shrugged and then called himself retarded because he’d hurt his own goddamned shoulder. “It is what it is.” He put his hand out to the doorframe, suddenly exhausted. “It won’t bother your schoolwork none if I watch TV, will it?”

Lance glanced up from his books. “TV won’t help you sleep,” he said. “Wanna fool around?”

Reg grinned suddenly, because he spoke this language. “You got no idea. I helped Dex film this kid this morning—had a ten-incher, if you can believe that.”

Lance widened his eyes comically and stood up, sauntering over to Reg with familiarity if not with passion. “Ten inches like a pencil?” he asked.

“Ten inches like awater bottle,” Reg corrected earnestly, comforted by his friend’s smile and the way he was laughing.

“That’s fuckin’amazing. Think I can get on the schedule with him?”

“You’ll have to talk to Dex,” he murmured. Lance liked to kiss—he remembered that—and kisses were warm and animal, and even if Reg wasn’t gay, he liked them.

“Sure,” Lance said, putting his big hands on Reg’s hips. “I’ll talk to Dex in the morning.” He lowered his head and took Reg’s mouth, and Reg sighed into his bigger body.

This. This he knew. Could be the only thing he was good at. And even if Lance moved on to practice medicine and marry a tiny blonde wife, right now it was the only cure he had.

Afterward, as he lay groggy with encroaching sleep, Lance stood up to dress, and he found himself thinking about it—about the moment when this smart, nice, pretty doctor boy would move on and leave Reg behind.

“Lance?” he mumbled.

“Yeah?”

“You think you’ll remember me when you’re off doctoring and being famous, and I’m still here?”

Lance’s hand in his hair was gentle, and in spite of what they’d just done in bed, brotherly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to forget you,” he said, his voice raspy and sad.

Reg was going to tell him not to be sad—Lance was going to go off and doctor and that would be awesome—but Reg’d had a hell of a day, and Lance had reamed all his worries away.

He fell asleep instead.