Page 89 of String Boys

Seth was hope.

He couldn’t let Seth go. Not now. Not when he needed hope the most.

Kelly was a bastard, a user like Matty, because he’d grab hold of that lifeline Seth was offering and drag him down.

His mother had asked Seth to play.

Seth was leaving right after the service. His packed bags were in his father’s car; his violin was next to him. He would play Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the end of the service, and his father would walk him out before the priest said the blessing.

It was such a huge fucking imposition. Mom hadn’t realized what she was doing until it was too late and they’d made the plans, but Kelly had.

And because his mother had asked it, had wanted Seth to be a part of Xavier Cruz’s goodbye, Kelly hadn’t been able to tell his mother Seth couldn’t do that.

So Kelly sat, his hand in Seth’s, and silently willed his uncle Beto to piss off, because anybody who questioned what Seth’s family was to Kelly’s family could jump off a fucking cliff.

And then the eulogy was done. And the priest was reading about the book of Timothy and zombies, and Kelly could do nothing but clutch Seth’s hand and hate the world.

Now it was people telling their Xavier stories, and Kelly wanted to howl. He felt Seth’s squeeze of his hand and waited for the story of how his father had kept a coworker from leaving his wife, because apparently the man was that dumb and he should learn to cook himself if he didn’t like her cooking. As soon asthatasshole wound down, Kelly stood.

“When I was fifteen,” he said, not even sure where he was going here, but suddenly needing to say this so badly, he couldn’t stop. “I… I fell in love with my friend, and he fell in love with me. And we thought we were so subtle. But my family knew. And my friend moved away, and I missed him and needed him. So I took off one day, to spend all my money on a train ticket for twenty-four hours on his dorm room floor. And Daddy stopped me, and gave me a ride, and gave me food money, and told me he’d be back to pick me up, because he’d rather spend two hours in the car talking to me than doing anything else in the world. That was my father. The only man close to being as good as he was is my boyfriend’s father, but that’s another story. My father loved us. He wanted us to be happy. He’d teach us the best things about us so we could be. That’s what all these stories are—they’re Xavier Cruz, helping the people in his life be happy. We’re not going to be happy for a long time, now that he’s gone, but someday, someday we will be. Because that’s what he’d want. And I’d do anything to make my daddy proud.”

The church was silent for a moment, and the priest asked everybody to stand for the hymn.

Seth stood with his instrument and kissed Kelly’s hand before walking to the podium and morphing, like a caterpillar into a butterfly, into the magic music man that Kelly had seen since they were boys.

He had more presence now, looking around the church with intense green eyes to make sure everyone was silent for him, and then launching into the plaintive song—not a hymn, really, but a lament, that people could not be their better selves.

That was the moment Kelly saw people cry. Even dumbass Uncle Beto let the music touch him, let it say goodbye to the brother he must have loved at some point. Kelly couldn’t. He was all cried out. He wasn’t going to bleed for all these people, most of them strangers, when he’d bled in front of the people he loved the most already.

But he loved Seth for his music, for this gift he could give the grieving, for this moment of mourning and solace.

This was why his boy was perfect. This was why he was hope.

When he was done, Craig and Kelly were behind the pews, waiting for him, moving swiftly as the priest gave the blessing.

Isela might have been absent, but her father was there, and Kelly hadn’t missed him giving Seth the stink eye either. Of course, he’d probably been stewing in his own piss the minute Kelly opened his mouth. Kelly hoped Mr. Cortez got pleasure from that, because as far as Kelly could tell, not much else would make him happy.

The heat of an angry June sun beat down on them, and Kelly cursed the damned suit and slick shoes that came with weddings and funerals. Girls got to wear dresses for this sort of day, even if they were black. Seth allowed himself to be steered toward his father’s car, while his father summoned a Lyft on Seth’s phone to take him to the train station. But when they got there, he put a hand on Kelly’s arm.

“Dad, did you bring it?” Seth said, turning to his father.

Craig smiled slightly, his face still bearing traces of grief. “Of course. Kelly, if you give me the keys to your mom’s car, I’ll take this there after you open it, okay?”

“Open what?” Kelly asked numbly.

“Your graduation present,” Seth said, handing Kelly a midsized, heavy package. “We… you know. We’d been planning to give it to you when you graduated.”

“Today,” Kelly realized with a shock. Another year his teachers got to give him pity grades, but this one… this one should have been a celebration.

“Yeah. Anyway, open it.”

The only reason Kelly’s fingers functioned was that he knew Seth was there on borrowed time. He ripped through the incongruously bright paper, at a loss.

“Oh,” he said when he saw it. On any other day, he would have cried. “Oh. You guys. This—this is… oh my God!”

It was an electronic drawing table, artist quality, that was compatible with the tablet Seth’s dad had bought him two years earlier. Expensive—so expensive—but something they had clearly saved for.

Something they’d wanted to share with him in joy.