Page 41 of Summer Lessons

“You are so warped,” Mason muttered, crawling into his bed, glad it was a king-size, because puppy piles weren’t his thing.

“So,” Terry said, his voice growing thin with his own fear and something else Mason couldn’t define, “you’d… you wouldn’t laugh at me for crawling into bed with you.”

Mason’s heart gave a vicious twist in his chest. “No. I come from a family of big scared babies—you’d be part of the crowd.”

Terry and Dane laughed at the same time, and Mason rolled over to one side, knowing Dane would roll over to his other. “Sounds… cozy,” Terry said. “Real… cozy.”

“Well, it will be, until he starts ripping burrito farts under the covers.”

“Yup,” Dane said, sounding drowsy already. “Saving them for you.”

“Just lay there and pretend to sleep,” Mason muttered. “I’m trying to be romantic.”

“That’s what he said,” Dane giggled, and Mason rolled his eyes in the dark.

“Mason,” Terry said in his ear, claiming his complete attention. “Don’t hang up yet, okay?”

He was scared. Mason could hear it—same as Dane had been.

“No,” he said softly. “I won’t. I promise. What do you want to talk about?”

“Tell me about college,” he said decidedly. “I want to hear what I missed.”

So Mason launched into the story of Todd Slezcyk and the lost virginity and listened as Terry laughed, more and more quietly each time. He must have fallen asleep finally, the phone next to his ear, because when Mason hit End Call, he could hear a faint snoring on the end of the line.

He hung up and put the phone on the charger, aware that the electricity had come back on sometime in the last half hour, but all his lights were turned off, so he was still good.

“Todd Slezcyk was an ass,” Dane mumbled into the dark, startling him awake.

“Well I know thatnow,” Mason laughed, so happy the story had done something to ease Terry’s anxiety that he didn’t care if Dane heard or not.

“You should have known that then. Who picks politics over sex, Mason? I mean, seriously.”

Mason chuckled tiredly. “Todd did.”

“Well, I’m glad you and Terry are a thing now. He has more sense.”

Mason hmmed because he didn’t want to wake Dane up when they both had to be up early in the morning. The truth was, he wanted so badly to talk to someone about Terry, to see if he’d done the right thing, if he was saying the right things, if he was even hoping for the right things, but he’d pretty much exhausted his circle of friends this past week, and he figured he was going to have to deal with it on his own.

His last comforting thought was that for the first time, talking to someone until they fell asleep seemed like a talent and not a hideous social faux pas.

The Dangers of Toe-Poking

TERRY HADbeen right and the rain let up the next day. Saturday dawned bright and sunshiny and frosty as hell, the grass coated with ice, even at eleven, when they were all meeting.

The other team wasn’t there yet, so Skipper made them run drills, the first one being to take turns taking goal kicks at Carpenter, who was apparently their pro tem goalie.

“Serious, Skipper,” Carpenter panted. “It’s like you want us to lose!”

“That’s not true,” Skip said, motioning Mason forward to kick the ball. “But we don’t have another goalie, and Mason can sub the defenders. I think it’ll work better if Richie subs all the midfielders and strikers.”

Well, of course. Richie had enough gas for a jackrabbit army. He could probably sub the other team too.

Dane, the rat, waved from the sidelines, absolutely determined to be their cheerleader and not to play at all. Dane had taken dance lessons through school—he hadn’t been great, but he claimed it as his athletic skill, and Mason let him. Now he ran on the treadmill and followed yoga tapes in his off times, which was fine, but Mason was going to tell Mom on him if this game went as south as Mason expected when Dane could have helped. Suck it up, buttercup—if Mason had to make an ass of himself on the soccer field, he wasn’t letting Dane escape.

Mason ran determinedly forward and toe-poked the ball at Carpenter, who caught it neatly and threw it back to the line, where Owens took his turn to dribble it toward the goal.

“Mason, dammit!” Terry called from his place in line. “Do you remember nothing?”