Page 3 of String Boys

At eight, Kelly Cruz was about the cutest thing Seth would ever see. He was missing two teeth and had dimples on his little round clay-tinted cheeks. His mom had combed his loose curls tightly back, and only a few springlike strands sprang across his forehead, making him look impish. Adorable but capable of great mischief, Kelly was the one who spent hours occupying his twin sisters so his mom could talk on the phone, which was her job and helped them make the rent.

Like most of the students at Three Oaks Elementary School, Kelly and Matty weren’t just one thing. Seth had shown up in the second grade with his speech all prepared. His father had gotten a job in California, and they’d moved up from Arizona, where he’d needed to say, “My mom’s dad and mom are mostly black, and my dad’s mom and dad are white. And my mom was mostly black. That’s why I’m pale brown.” Everybody in his old school had asked. But when he’d shown up at Three Oaks, nine out of ten kids had a complexion between his own pale tan and Mrs. Joyce’s dark teak, while the few all-white kids showed up like a freakish neon pink. Nobody had seemed to care, and Seth had been grateful.

Kelly and Matty’s dad was half Mexican and half white, and their mom was half black and half white, but they’d only told him that while they’d been playing cars at their house, because it was something to say. Not because they expected Seth to ask them so they could rank themselves by who was the most white.

And unlike in Arizona, where everyone had expected his dad to leave him with his mom’s parents when his mom died, nobody in California asked about that either.

Seth liked Sacramento.

He could disappear.

Except he wasn’t disappearing on the stage this night. Or if he did, it was the best magic trick ever, where he could play that violin and it would speak for him. Nobody had to see the boy attached.

All they would notice was that sound—that pure string sound, like the violin was crying—that he could make when his body was loose and his soul was dreamy and everything in the world was made of light.

Kelly’s charming smile, his perpetual goodwill, told Seth that was possible.

“Yeah,” Seth told him, smiling back quietly. “I’m ready to make that sound.”

LATER, THEboys walked home with Matty and Kelly’s mom. Matty took stroller duty because he wanted to be the man of the house, and while he talked to his mom about the concert, Kelly kept pace with Seth behind them.

“You were really wonderful tonight,” he said, and Seth managed a smile for him. Seth didn’t smile a lot. Matty often said he was mysterious, but the truth was, smiles attracted attention. Seth was just as glad to be invisible in his house.

But for Matty and Kelly, he’d smile.

“Thank you,” he said, feeling shy. “So were you.”

But Kelly shook his head, almost shaking off his red knit hat—a hand-me-down from Matty and a little too big around the ears. “No!” he protested, then winced when his voice carried. “No,” he said a little more quietly. “I don’t mean ‘You’re great!’ and you say ‘No, you’re great!’ This isn’t a… a tradeoff, where I’m saying you’re good ’cause I want to hear it back—”

“Don’t you want to hear it?” Seth asked. He did. He’d been given a solo, and the audience had applauded wildly. For him. No, he hadn’t grinned or preened or strutted—he’d given his usual small smile and bowed slightly, like Mrs. Sheridan had taught him.

“Only if I’m good,” Kelly whispered, his words so honest, Seth’s heart broke a little. “And you’re… you were like a different animal. All of us were cats, and you were a lion. I want to hear you play again.”

Seth’s cheeks tingled, because he was blushing against the winter wind that had become colder close to the river. “I practice every day,” he admitted softly. “I go home and practice before my dad gets home. You… you could listen to me sometimes.”

“You practice athome?” Obviously, the ultimate sacrifice.

And Seth lowered his voice and admitted something to Kelly that he hadn’t even admitted to Matty. “I like it when people say I’m good.”

Kelly’s brown eyes practically glowed. “You’re good,” he said reverently. “You’re real good. You practice all you need to, okay?”

Seth looked away, even from Kelly, who only recently turned eight, and nodded. “Deal,” he said softly.

Matty’s mom asked Seth in for hot chocolate after he helped Matty get the stroller up the stairs to the top of the fourplex. Seth and his dad lived in the two-bedroom apartment downstairs, but Matty and Kelly needed a room, and the twins—Lily and Lulu—needed one too, and Matty and Kelly’s mom, Linda, had one as well.

Seth sipped his hot chocolate and stared at the small Christmas tree that stood in front of the landing window in a haze of colored lights, and listened as Matty proclaimed his relief to be done with all stringed instruments, at least for a while.

“But Mrs. Joyce says we may have to practice for the spring concert too,” he finished, deflating.

“We need to practice,” Kelly said pragmatically, “so we can walk Seth home.”

Matty got the same look on his face that he got when Seth was trying to help him with his math. “Why does Seth have to do it too?”

“Because Seth’s really good,” his mom said, laughing a little. When Seth got old enough to appreciate grown-ups being pretty, he would always think Matty and Kelly’s mother was the gold standard to pretty people. She had glossy brown hair that she pulled into a thick ponytail, lush lips that often curved into a smile, skin the color of pale clay—darker than white but light enough to show blushes on her cheeks easily when she was pleased, and the biggest, brownest eyes Seth would ever see in anybody other than her son, Kelly.

She was lovely, and her smiles always made Seth feel warm.

“Thank you,” he mumbled, embarrassed and pleased.