Page 76 of String Boys

“No. I’m the one who talks. I’ve got, like, this big family—”

“Wait, wait, don’t tell me—Lily, Lulu, Agnes, and your older brother, Dickhead!”

Kelly snickered. “Yeah, those people. Anyway, Dickhead was super good at sports, so I had to be super good at talking, and I guess it worked, ’cause Dickhead is home getting bitched at for knocking up his girlfriend, and I got a ride down here so I can sleep on my boyfriend’s floor.” He punctuated this with a yawn, and Vince laughed.

“So, you want to come in and nap on his cot? They were taking the local bus, and sometimes that takes forever.”

Kelly yawned and thought about the room again. He knew Vince now. It didn’t seem quite so small.

“Sure.”

By the time Seth got back—with root beer and Vince’s favorite cookies and a bag of cheddar potato chips for himself—Kelly was sleeping on his cot, happy just to smell him on the sheets.

ALL TOLD,the weekend wasn’t a big deal.

They had a quiet junk food party in Seth and Vince’s dorm room, smuggling Amara in because they all liked her and because she also brought marshmallow chocolate graham cracker cookies and she’d share.

They watched scary movies on Vince’s computer—because it had the biggest screen—and Amara slept on the floor with Vince’s pillow, and Kelly slept on Seth’s bed, mashing him back against the wall.

The next morning, Seth and Kelly got up super early and went for coffee, and for once Seth talked, pointing out the landmarks of the little town of Almond Falls, which appeared to be not much more than a wealthy commuter community into San Francisco.

“If you had more time, we could take a bus to the city,” Seth told him as they sipped coffee in a charming little shop that wasnotStarbucks. “I haven’t done it yet. I want you to come.”

Kelly looked at him. Seth was still wearing a sweatshirt that had been rotting off his body in high school, and his hair was too long because nobody was nagging him to go to the barber shop two blocks down and get it cut close to his head. “You need to not save everything for me,” he said after a moment. “You… you need to go have life without me and then show me what it looks like later.”

Seth frowned unhappily. “But—”

Kelly looked around—comfy chairs, some very rich food in the glass case, some indie art on the walls. “This is a good place,” he said. “You knew to take me here. Go to the city with your friends, Seth. Show me the best parts when I come visit.”

Seth gave a tremendous sigh. “I hate this.”

“Well, you know the only difference between how we’re living our lives now and how we’d be living our lives if all that shit didn’t go down?”

He shook his head, because unlike Kelly, who could draw things that weren’t there, Seth could only play things that were. “You can’t come home,” Kelly told him baldly. “That’s it. That’s the only thing. Because you and me, if we were gonna make it, we were gonna have to figure out how to make it while you were out in the world being special. Big question is, can we still do that?”

“You’re special,” Seth told him soberly.

“But I’m homegrown special.”

“Until you graduate,” Seth said with some authority. “Then you can be out-in-the-world special too.”

Kelly nodded. That was doable. “Deal.”

SOTHATwas the plan.Thatwas the conversation that got Kelly back on the train and didn’t let him cry too much.Thatwas the promise that got him through the next few months of Matty this and Matty that and we gotta cut down on everything so Matty can have an apartment when he marries his girlfriend right outta high school in what was probably the most doomed relationship of all fucking time.

But the one thing that never got cut down was that somebody’s dad, once a month, took Kelly down to see Seth.

Once a month. It wasn’t so bad, right?

Once a month, they could touch each other and pretend everything was normal. Pretend all the bad shit never happened. Pretend that they had a future waiting as soon as Kelly graduated.

They just didn’t know it was pretend.

Matty got married the weekend after graduation. Seth’s dad was invited, and Kelly begged him to come, so he did.

Seth was not—but not because Mom and Dad didn’t want him to be there.

Matty said it. “His dad can come, but that little psycho’s not invited. He’s bad for the kids.”