Page 69 of String Boys

“I can’t think of anything right now.” Vince sighed. “What was wrong at home?”

Seth swallowed and looked away, and Vince rolled his eyes and turned back to his homework. Oh. Well, shit. Seth could at least tell him what he’d told Amara, right?

“My boyfriend, he got beat up,” Seth said. “Really bad. Right before I was supposed to leave. I… I found him. He was in the hospital. I found the guy who beat him up, and….” Seth shook his head.

“Those bruises? Your eyes?” Vince said, swinging around to face him. “We were all talking about it, that first week in the summer program. Your boyfriend was worse?”

“A week in the hospital worse.” Seth swallowed, remembering how sad Kelly had been. “He’s still… not okay.”

“Oh. Shit. I’m sorry.” He looked sorry too.

“I just had to make sure he’d be okay,” Seth finished. And then, because Vince had been human to him, he added, “I’m sorry again. I didn’t mean to make you worry.”

“Mm.” Vince just kept looking at him, like there was more to say.

“Do you miss your home?” Seth asked after a silence that felt like an atomic wedgie.

“Horribly,” Vince admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “Everything in Hawaii is either mountains or sea.” He gestured around them, the valley before the mountains that guarded San Francisco. “This shit ain’t either. And it’s not green. Or it’s not, at least, past the grounds. I can’t stand it here.”

Seth smiled wistfully. “Remember when we played at San Francisco State? And we got to go to the ocean for half a day after the performance?” After the first leg of their journey touring Stanislaus State and Fresno State—in June!—the gray July day spent on the coast had seemed like heaven.

“Yeah.”

“That was the only time I’ve ever been to the sea.”

Vince gaped at him. “It was cold as fuck!” he burst out.

Seth shrugged. “It wasn’t 110.”

Vince let out a laugh and then sighed. “I take off my shoes in the practice room,” he said, seemingly at random. But Seth didn’t mind.

“Yeah? Does it help you play?” Vince played trumpet. Seth didn’t understand wind players—it seemed like you might as well talk, but he didn’t like to judge.

“Helps mebe,” Vince said passionately. “I wore flip-flips all my life, and I swear, here? They act like you’re spreading the plague.”

Seth thought about it. “Aren’t they called flip-flops?”

“Not in my family. My little brother, Marcus, called them flip-flips. It’s like a family tradition.”

“Sounds like something Kelly would say.”

Dear Kelly—

I got back to the dorms okay, and had to apologize to my dorm mate for scaring him. It was okay, though. We talked. Apparently he’s nice. I had no idea. And he promised to keep teaching me how to shave.

But don’t worry.

He doesn’t like me like you like me.

Did you know that when you lean your head on the train window in the dark, and you’re zooming through all the farmland in the valley, it looks like the ocean?

I want to take you to the ocean someday.

I want to play music that sounds like the valley at night on the train.

And the ocean.

And you.