Page 68 of String Boys

“Not a problem. Now go make up to Vince. You really hurt his feelings.”

Oh.

He’d almost forgotten Vince’s name—he certainly hadn’t mentioned him to Kellyorhis father.

“Okay. I didn’t mean to.”

“Yeah, well, sometimes people care about you whether you’re paying attention or not.”

Oh hell.

Seth grabbed his stuff and made it up the stairs to his dorm room. The boys’ rooms and the girls’ rooms were identical—two hard cots, side by side, with about five feet in the middle. They had a window by the head of their beds and a desk each at the foot, and a shared closet next to the door.

Vince was sitting at his desk, doing what Seth thought of as “angry math.” It was a thing only Vince did, where he pressed the pencil so hard, Seth had once curiously looked at the blotter underneath and could tell what problems Vince was doing.

“Vince?”

Vince barely glanced at him before going back to his work, and Seth guessed angry math was a real thing.

“Vince, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you where I was going.”

Vince closed his eyes and took a deep breath, still not looking up. He was a handsome boy from Hawaii, whose Polynesian ancestry shone through in his copper-skinned, wide-cheekboned features. Seth had always figured they’d been put in the same room because most of the other students at Bridgford were white. Maybe the counselors, in their misguided way, had thought these two boys would have something in common.

Seth had always wondered what would happen if he told Kent that he really didn’t have much in common with anybody there, except Amara.

But now, looking at the hurt on Vince’s face, he thought maybe he’d been wrong.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” he said helplessly, wondering if this relationship would be broken beyond repair before he ever knew it existed.

“You did,” Vince said, scribbling furiously on his paper.

“I… things weren’t right at home. My boyfriend and my dad sort of needed me—”

Vince swung around suddenly, fury written on his face. “See? I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend. Or a dad instead of a mom, or both. You practice until the rooms close and come in here and do homework and then go to bed. And sometimes, you and me don’t even talk. But you’re another human goddamned being, Seth, and it’s my job to look out for you, and….”

A beat. Another.

“And what?” Seth asked, curious.

“And you don’t even know I’m here.”

Seth grimaced. “I try really hard to give you time in the bathroom,” he said, because this was true.

“I don’t even know if youcrap!” Vince burst out.

“I do. I have a break between second and third. I come back when you’re not here.”

For a heartbeat Vince just stared at him. “Auuuuughhhhhhh!”

Seth flinched. He wasn’t sure how that was failing as a human being, but apparently it was. “I… you know. Didn’t want to be a bother.”

Vince scrubbed at his face—clean-shaven, because that was something he did every morning too. Seth had actually considered asking him for help in that area, but…. God. How embarrassing. The only person he could tell things like that to was Kelly.

“How about afriend! You know, I’m new too! And I’m ajunior.It would have beengreatthis last month to have someone to talk to.”

“About what?” Seth asked, thinking that now he could make himself available when he’d apparently failed before.

Vince sighed and tilted back in his chair, apparently giving up on Seth. Well, Seth couldn’t blame him.