Page 7 of String Boys

He loved the way Seth’s green eyes glowed when he was playing something hard, something no boy his age should be able to practice, and he was doing it right.

He loved the way Seth’s lips curved into a smile when a piece was long and slow, and he had to concentrate on just the pure sound of the string.

He loved the way Seth’s tightly kinked blond hair fell loose out of its gel by the end of the night, clustering over his brow.

He loved the way Seth smiled shyly at him when practice was done, as though coming out of a dream and Kelly was the face he needed to see when he woke up.

Kelly especially loved that last part.

Even after Seth’s daddy came home and started working again, Kelly would still listen to Seth play. His mom had quietly told him to mention if any bruises showed up on Seth’s face after that, or if he seemed scared any more than usual.

Kelly wasn’t sure what words to say to open up the tightly locked box of Seth Arnold. Even at his most animated, Seth spoke quietly, in as few words as he could.

But when he came out of that moment, out of that practice, when he smiled at Kelly and offered him something to drink from what was often an empty refrigerator,thenhe would talk.

“I like that piece,” he said one day in March. “It reminds me of spring.”

“Me too. What are you doing for Easter?” Easter was one of the three days a year Kelly’s family went to church, the big Catholic one in downtown Sacramento. Kelly and Matty privately agreed that doing it every Sunday would be the worst, but dressing up on holidays wasn’t so bad. It seemed to make that day seem more special.

Seth frowned. “I don’t know.” He looked at the table uncertainly, where a bag of decorations sat. “I was supposed to decorate the apartment before he got home.”

“I’ll help you!” Kelly bounced on his toes a little. He loved art things.

“Sure. But, you know, once my dad gets here, you gotta go.”

Oh yeah. He remembered all those crashing noises and Seth’s black-and-blue face on the night Kelly’s dad came home.

“Has he…?” Kelly pulled out a package of brightly colored paper eggs and some tape. “Has he… you know…?”

Seth shrugged. “Naw. He said he was sorry for all that.” But Seth still grabbed the stuff out of the package tentatively, like he was afraid to rip it.

“Sorry?” Did that work? Did adults say sorry for things and it just went away?

“He hasn’t done it since,” Seth defended. “He gets home on time, right after work.” He gave Kelly one of his guarded smiles. “I just don’t want to bother him, you know, with the violin.”

Yeah, well, Kelly would have been walking on tiptoes too if his daddy beat his face up. But Kelly wasn’t going to say anything to make Seth feel less safe.

“Then we’ll go really fast,” Kelly said. “So he thinks you did it right after school.”

Seth nodded, and they strung the Easter banner up in the window and carefully taped the colored eggs there too. There were spangles that they taped over the couch, and plastic eggs that were supposed to go in a bowl on the small table. Kelly made Seth laugh by pretending he pooped them out himself and plopped them on the rug, which was totally gross. But Kelly didn’t care.

He got Seth to laugh.

It was a perfect gift.

They were so involved laughing, they didn’t even notice when Seth’s dad came in—quiet, this time, and smiling.

He and Seth had the same smile.

Seth saw him first and started picking up the eggs super quick. “Sorry, Dad. We were just messing around, but see? We got everything else done, right? See?”

“Yeah, Seth,” his father said, voice sounding gruff but not mad. “It looks good. Kelly, you don’t have the right equipment to lay eggs. You’re going to have to buy them from the supermarket like everybody else.”

Kelly laughed, because it was a good joke.

“Okay, Mr. Arnold,” Kelly said, grinning and showing off his lost teeth. Third grade was the year of nobody having any teeth. Kelly liked it very much because all the smiles were equally ugly, and he could show his off, just like everybody else. “I’ll put these in a bowl, then, howzat?”

“Good job,” Mr. Arnold said. “What are you doing here, Kelly? I thought you had to watch your sisters today.”