Page 72 of String Boys

She laughed softly. “You did. All last year. Every time you looked at each other. Daddy figured it out camping. He came up to me that night you boys were in the lake and said, ‘If they don’t know they’re in love, they’re dumb as a box of diapers.’”

Kelly had to laugh. “We knew,” he said. “We’ve known for a while.”

She nodded. “He’s been visiting, hasn’t he? Besides Christmas.”

He’d told them about Christmas so they’d understand why he was spending so much time with Seth’s dad and why Craig wasn’t coming upstairs.

“Then it’s good Matty’s going. Seth can come upstairs when Matty’s gone. It’s not the whole neighborhood or the city, but it’s not just Craig’s apartment either. It must be making him crazy not to practice.”

Kelly thought of the longing looks Seth cast at his practice corner, and the way he brought the violin out sometimes and just practiced bow and fretwork without actually running the bow across the strings. “Not so’s you’d notice.”

She gave him a small smile, and he realized how pinched her full mouth had become this last year. “And the girls miss him. Well, we’ll have to get rid of your brother, then.” She sighed. “But right now, yeah. Go ask Seth’s dad if you can stay for a while, okay?”

Oh God.

“Okay.”

Kelly added some more clothes to his backpack. And then some more. And then he took them all out and packed a new one so he could use that backpack for his schoolwork.

His parents were still talking to Matty as Kelly threw a pack over each shoulder and slid out the door.

Seth’s dad had gotten used to him just coming in the front door by now, but he must have heard something going down upstairs, because he looked up… and grimaced. “Dammit, Kelly. Sit down, and I’ll get you some ice.”

He came back with an ice pack and asked Kelly if he wanted to talk about it.

Kelly grunted around the pack he held to his lip. “My brother knocked up his girlfriend. Apparently that means we all gotta suffer.”

Craig sighed. “I’m sorry. What’re your parents doing?”

“Trying to invent a time machine so they can go back and not have him,” Kelly said. “I think the only thing stopping them is that me and the girls would have to go, and they like us.”

Craig snickered. “Time travel could be very useful in this situation. So you’re here for a little while?”

Kelly sighed. “Yeah. I… I was just starting to like home again too.”

“I’m sorry, kiddo.” He patted Kelly’s shoulder. “I’m doubly sorry that it’s this weekend.”

“You got a date?” Kelly perked up. He’d started to think that Seth’s dad had been alone too long. He wanted to start setting him up with all the divorced women in their neighborhood, but Seth’s dad seemed like too much of a catch for those women. It had to be someone special.

“No, I’ve got overtime.” Craig shrugged. “But Sunday we can catch a movie if you like.”

They did this sometimes. They both liked comic book movies, it turned out, and Kelly was glad to have a friend.

“We’ll see,” Kelly said, his mind wandering. All day tomorrow? God. He couldn’t do it. He needed to get the hell out.

“You have other plans?” Craig cocked his head expectantly, because he was still a parent, and Kelly appreciated that.

“I’ll let you know,” he said. In his head he was making plans already. He had an allowance from watching the girls after school, and with Seth’s dad paying for shit, he’d saved some up.

While Craig went into the kitchen and started to fix dinner—a salad and some hamburger patties, bless his heart—Kelly pulled out his phone and started to plan.

The next morning he left a note—Going to see him. K.He wanted to say when he’d be back, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t help it. He just didn’t ever want to come back.

But the plan was to go spend the rest of his formative years on Seth’s floor, and it didn’t have a contingency plan for his father pulling up next to him in the family minivan, window rolled down.

“Get in.”

Kelly didn’t look up. “No habla English.” Of course the irony was, he didn’t habla Espanol either, because his father didn’t speak it in the house, and he’d taken French in school. All he knew wasmijo.