Page 103 of String Boys

She didn’t yell, though. Her eyes got bright and shiny, and she looked around at her daughters, her granddaughter, her son, and chewed her full lower lip. “I don’t suppose you’d stop doing this if I asked,” she said after a moment.

“I just started to talk to my drummer,” he said plaintively, and Kelly snorted.

“Is it interfering with your classes?” Craig asked. “I can work more overtime—”

“Please?” Until that moment, that word, Seth hadn’t realized how much this meant to him. “Everybody….” He looked at Kelly, and his throat grew tight. He had to look away. “This is my way to help. Please?” There was more. Everybody telling him he had to go out and play. That his music was his way out, his way up. All the work people had done, going to his concerts, giving up time to see him. When did he give back? When did they get something out of it?

This was his turn.

His father looked at him helplessly.

“He said please,” Linda said, amused and impressed at once.

“He did.” Craig twisted his mouth. “You’re nineteen, you know. It’s not like I could stop you.”

Seth let out a humorless little chuff of air. Of course they could stop him. All they had to do was beg him not to. Tell him why he shouldn’t. But he was helping. This once. He was giving back.

“That’s it?” Kelly asked, like he’d been holding his breath and this was his chance to breathe. “You’re going to let him?”

“You object?” Craig asked, and Seth kicked Kelly under the table.

Kelly gave him a look that said he kicked like a noodle and he’d have to do better. “Of course I object. He gotbeat up.They tried to rob him—”

“Only because we made extra that night.” Seth nodded. “It was Christmas. People wanted Christmas songs. Can we eat now?”

“Seth! Your face—”

“I thought you liked my face?” He kept his eyes wide as he said it, and he saw Kelly’s own eyes narrow in suspicion.

“You are doing that on purpose.”

“Doing what?” He only knew a little bit what Kelly was talking about, but if it let him keep playing gigs and making money, he would cheerfully pretend he had no idea for longer.

“Just….” Kelly suddenly deflated. “You could get hurt,” he muttered. “I have to know you’re out there—you know that? Like… like the stars. Like if they go out, I couldn’t wake up in the morning.”

“But I’m not a star,” Seth said reasonably. “I’m a real person. I need to have a place to meet you.”

“In fucking Sacramento?” Kelly cried out, and Seth knew what he was thinking, about their little apartments, about his job selling used clothes, about his brother, pounding the door drunk.

“Everyone I love is there,” he said simply. “Chloe, sweetheart, are you going to eat that or wear it?”

Chloe smeared some more pasta over her face and chewed on her fist to get the rest of the flavor out. “Mmf!”

Seth kissed the back of her head. “Agnes, are you getting your name on a plaque at the school this year?” The graduates from the grade school got awards like the Socrates Award and the Aristotle Award and the Hercules Award. The Cruz children had monopolized the plaques—Kelly had gotten the Socrates Award for thinking outside the box, and so had Lily. Lulu had gotten the Aristotle Award for being the best all-around student, and Matty… Matty had gotten the Hercules Award for citizenship.

“We don’t know until the end of the year,” Agnes said smugly. “But since I challenged the teacher on the reading assignment because I felt like it represented people of color badly and as cruel stereotypes, I think I might have a shot at the Socrates award.”

Everybody at the table stared, and Agnes grinned back. Once again, Seth was forcibly reminded of Kelly at this age—but Seth missed the bubbles. Looking sideways at Kelly, Seth wondered if Kelly would ever bubble over like that again.

“You really said that?” Kelly asked, as though shaking himself out of a dream.

“Yes. The textbook is old, but you know much of that industry is controlled by a small group of people in Texas anyway, right?”

A slow smile crept over Kelly’s face.

“Really?”

“Oh yes.” Agnes reached for another piece of sourdough bread and spread some butter on it. “Lulu did that report on it last year.”