Page 75 of String Boys

HE WASactually there a half an hour early. He followed Kent’s directions up the stairs and down the hallway, and found the door. Then he threw his bag of clothes on the ground, making sure the one school book he’d brought was flat to the floor, and slid down on top of it, leaning his back against the wall.

Kicking back, he closed his eyes and prepared to wait for Seth to get home. He’d been there for maybe five minutes, arms crossed, catching some z’s, when the door opened and he found himself looking into the face of one of the prettiest boys he’d ever seen.

“Hello?”

“Hi. I’m just waiting for Seth Arnold. He’s coming back in half an hour, right?”

The boy rolled his eyes. “If you say so. I mentioned missing root beer, since the school went soda free, and he and that girl just sort of took off. It was weird.”

Kelly pushed himself up, using the wall as a brace. “He’s going to get you root beer. You know that, right?”

The boy just stared at him. “How would you think that?”

Because I went for root beer in May and almost didn’t come back.“Superstition. Leave it at that. Anyway, I’m just waiting. You can go back to doing what you were doing.”

“You could come in?” Vince asked, opening the door and gesturing.

Kelly cocked his head and regarded the tiny room, and an absurd part of his brain had a giant flameout.

Seth wasn’t in that room.

Kelly didn’t want to be in that room without Seth.

“I’ll just sit here,” he said, ignoring the way his body burned with cold sweat.

Vince cocked his head back. “I’ll bring you a chair,” he said.

And then he brought two and sat out with Kelly and talked.

Mostly they talked about Seth, and Kelly was surprised to find thathisdreamy boy was not the same boy everybody else saw.

“Yeah,” Vince sighed, handing Kelly a water after they got their chairs situated. “At first, I thought he was deliberately being an asshole, you know? Not talking, practicing until the last possible moment, spending every available minute doing homework. It actually surprised me that Amara liked him, because she’s so sweet, right? Everybody loves her, and I couldn’t figure out what she was doing hanging out with this silent, brooding prick. I was like, ‘abusive boyfriend’?”

Kelly burst out laughing. “Seth? No!”

“Seth, yes!” Vince protested.

“He’s shy,” Kelly said. “And… and not here all the time.”

“You think?”

Kelly had to appreciate Vince—he was beautiful, yes, but he was also a smartass. “I know,” he said mildly. “He’d….” Kelly shrugged. “He’d go to fetch you root beer because you wanted some and he didn’t want you to get lost if you went yourself.”

Vince shook his head. “What is it you two have against root beer?”

Fuck.“I went to get root beer in May and almost didn’t come back,” he said bluntly, and Vince clapped his hand over his forehead.

“Oh! He said you got beat up—that’s what happened?”

And then because Kelly had spent months talking about it to the counselor and drawing it in pictures and dealing with how real it was and how it wasn’t all he was, he said, “A group of… well, they like to think they’re a gang, but they were just druggie shitheads mostly. They all beat me, and one of them sexually assaulted me. It sucked all around. Seth—he blames himself a little, because he was arguing with his dad, and I was gonna go get us root beer floats, and they’d be done arguing when I got back.”

Vince had gasped when he said “sexually assaulted,” but now he nodded a little.

“What was he arguing about? Because he seems okay with his dad now.”

Kelly rolled his eyes. “About coming here. He didn’t want to leave either of us, mostly.”

“Bummer. So he talked more before?”