Page 67 of String Boys

“I didn’t fake out a bunch of gangbangers by yelling ‘It’s the cops!’” Kelly told him dryly, and Seth grinned.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Kelly burst out laughing, the tears that had gathered around his upper lip sputtering onto the folded pages in his lap. “You’re such a dork.”

“Yeah. But I’m your dork.”

And Kelly grinned back. “You hopped on a train and cut school because you heard I was sad through layers of bullshit. You’d better not be anybody else’s.”

Seth chuckled, and Kelly laughed back, and that’s where they were when Seth’s dad got back with groceries—holding each other and laughing, like everything in the world was gonna be okay.

THAT NIGHTthey lay in his bed again, fully clothed, and for the first time, Seth felt the restriction of that.

He tempered it, though, satisfying himself by splaying his hand on Kelly’s bare stomach under his shirt.

They talked this time, quietly, mostly about small things. Then Kelly surprised him.

“It was a good day. I… I just know I’m not gonna be all better from just one good day.”

“Maybe… you know. You graduate next year. Maybe you can get some scholarships to one of the schools in San Francisco. We can see each other more. Maybe….” He took a deep breath. “Get an apartment. The older kids can live off campus, but I’d have to get a job. Maybe… you and me….”

And Kelly took off with it. With planning. With who they could be if they held on just right.

It was spun sugar, maybe? Maybe cotton candy dreams, giant castles out of clouds, because they were still kids.

But maybe cotton candy dreams show a person where the bones of real dreams may lie. Maybe if they had steel in their hearts and spines, they could build a skyscraper out of dreams and put that steel in the girders and the clear glass of vision in the windows, and the bedrock of their faith in the foundation.

Maybe they could build something lasting from their cotton candy dreams in the sky.

Seth fell asleep dreaming of a tiny apartment, and Kelly being a famous artist, and falling asleep like this every night.

LEAVING WAShard.

Seth’s dad and Kelly dropped him off at the train station, and Seth kissed Kelly hard, right in front of his dad, and then hugged his dad and kissed his temple as he sat in the driver’s seat.

“Take care of each other,” he told them, his voice rough.

On the train, with that giant whooshing rumble of the tracks purring in his mind, he found himself pressing his forehead against the glass, looking across the dusty Sacramento farmland as he cried.

He pulled himself together enough to order an Uber back to school, and this time he checked in with the dorm supervisor to apologize and tell them he’d returned.

The man in charge—a roundish college student with earnest brown eyes and horn-framed glasses—was legitimately hurt.

“Seth! I get that you wanted to go home, but we were worried about you. Vince was freaking out.”

“Sorry,” Seth said, trying to remember how to be human after the weekend when it hadn’t been such a stretch. “It… it felt like an emergency.”

“Was it?”

“Yes. But not in the way you’d think.”

Kent tilted his head. “What kind of emergency was it?”

“The kind where everybody has needed each other since May, but we never got a chance to have that big group hug.”

Kent raised his eyebrows. “Okay. Okay. Sometimes emergencies are like that. Next time you have one of those,let me know.For one thing, I’ve got a car, and I can save you an Uber ride.”

Seth smiled then. One Uber ride was another stuffed animal for Kelly. “Okay. Thanks, Kent!”