Page 19 of String Boys

Seth blinked at him and smiled self-consciously. He had to calm down. If he didn’t relax just a smidge and at least try to appear human, he might scream, “I think I’m gay, and I kissed Kelly, and I want to do it again!” at the top of his lungs before running out into the dark and stormy night.

“I mean why are we having it?” he said, enunciating every word. “I haven’t done anything bad. Did you get a promotion?” And then, oh horror! “We’re not moving, are we?”

“No,” his dad said slowly. “At least,I’mnot.” He set down his box of orange chicken—his favorite—and looked Seth full-on in the eyes. “Son, were you even going totellme about Bridgford?”

Seth jerked back. “What about it? The rich kids are going there next year.”

Mr. Boyle had told them all about applying to Bridgford two months ago. Seth had listened with half an ear and figured he was talking about the other kids, not the kids who took the city bus from Seth’s neighborhood.

“Dr. Boyle called me to ask if you’d considered a scholarship. So I applied online, Seth. You’re good for a full ride. That could be room and board for the rest of this year, next year, and your first two years of college if you wanted it—and a fast track to your next two years at one of their feeder colleges. Aren’t you even interested?”

Seth gaped at him. “You want me to leave?” he asked, wounded to the center of his mass. “I… I thought I didn’t have to go anywhere until graduation.”

His father blinked. “No. I don’t want you to go. I’m not trying to get rid of you, Seth. I want you to fly.” He picked up a forkful of orange chicken and chewed thoughtfully. “I was supposed to go to college,” he said with a sigh. “I was in junior college, my parents had money saved. But….” He smiled—a faded version of the one Seth had only seen in pictures.

“I fell in love with your mother. And they weren’t happy about that. And then we had you. I thought you were a miracle, but they weren’t happy about having a grandson either. So, no college for me. And then your mom died and….” He swallowed, and Seth felt the pain all over again.

“Your grandparents were nice to me, Seth. I don’t want you to think they weren’t. But they thought I’d just give you to them when she died. And you were all I had left of her. So when I got the chance to work out here, I took it.”

He shook his head, all pretense at eating Chinese food completely gone. “There’s no excuse for me, when I started drinking. None. I think about….”

His voice grew rough, and Seth’s body chilled to zero. Oh, he hated thinking about that time, and obviously, so did Dad. “I remember those days, and the planet isn’t big enough for my shame. But I think it started when I took the job out here. It was just me and you. And I missed… everybody. My parents were…. I won’t let them near you. Ever. And Kesha’s parents weren’t speaking to me either. You and me were so alone. There’s no excuse for me, for what I did, but I’ll tell you now… that time had its roots in being so lost in my own heart because I had no people around me to guide me. If it hadn’t been for the Cruz family, we would have been lost, and I think you know that.”

Seth did know that, and that’s why he had wanted to stay. But he didn’t know how to say that. It seemed his father had all the words anyway.

“But you, Seth, you have opportunities. You can go out in the world and know I’m right here to come back to. You can move to Almond Lakes and go to Bridgford, and come here for long weekends and holidays. It’s right by San Francisco—we’ll see each other. You… you can have the life my parents wanted for me, but without all the… thestringsthat went with it, you know? You can have it all, free and clear.”

Seth bit his lip, his eyes burning. He didn’t want to go. He knew, objectively, that college was coming and that he’d have to be making decisions soon. He’d been planning to take the PSATs in the spring. But this… this was so soon.Kelly! That’s a whole four years without Kelly!

His father shook his head and sighed. “Well, you know, I didn’t really expect you to leave in the middle of the year. You have until June. At least until the summer program starts. Then there’s the scholarship for next year. You know that, right?”

Seth squinted at him. “No. Dr. Boyle said Christmas.”

“That was for everybody else, Seth. Have you, I don’t know, noticed anybody sitting through your practices in the last month?”

Seth shrugged. “We had a guest conductor. He audited the advanced orchestra class and then conducted a song or two. I guess he was going to be doing ‘1812 Overture’over Christmas.”

Dad grimaced, and in light of his story—and remembering that Seth had been afraid he’d be getting a stepmom—Seth had a terrible, terrible realization.

His father wasn’t old.

His father was… wasyoung.Thirty-five? That was old for a kid but not old for a grown-up, was it?

And Seth was all he had.

“Do you remember where the guest conductor wasfrom, Seth?” Dad was asking patiently.

Seth searched his memory and came up with studying the complicated first violin part for “The Devil Went Down to Georgia,”which they were doing with the choir and Dr. Boyle assured them would be a fan favorite.

“No?”

Dad made that now-familiar, “I don’t believe this!” face that Seth always associated particularly with himself. “Well, he came from Bridgford. Seth, he’s been in that class for a monthscouting you.”

“Mr. Pantalone? No.” Mr. Pantalone was young for a grown-up—about ten years younger than Seth’s dad. He had shoulder-length curly hair, fuzzy sideburns, and wicked gray eyes. Seth had always found him appealing in an absent sort of way. Oh wow, maybe Seth could have had a crush on his teacher if he hadn’t had a raging heart-on for his best friend’s brother.

“Mr. Pantalone,yes.He’s spent a month at your school to see if he can convince you to come to Bridgford. They extended the deadline foryouuntil June, just in case.”

Seth scrubbed his hands through his hair, which had grown long enough to form tiny ringlets after the rain had hit the oil he used daily. His dad was good at buying him things—Shea butter for his skin, oil for his hair—that most white people wouldn’t know black people used. He had a moment of remembering his mother, right before she’d died, telling both of them, him and his dad, about the oil and the butter and how his dad had to make sure he had butter on his shoulders and lower back.