Page 119 of The Bright Lands

Luke stopped reading. It was rather a long list, and the sight of some of the things on it made his dinner roil in his stomach. There was a smell coming from inside the triple-wide—an awful mix of decay and cheap citrus candles—that really wasn’t helping.

And when Luke saw something worse than either the sign or the smell he hurried back toward the steps.

The entire front wall of the triple-wide was shingled in Polaroids. The subject of each photo was identical. A boy, surrounded by a naked gang of others his own age, bled from a cut to the arm or the leg or the chest and stared at the camera with a numb shock Luke recognized very well. The only thing in the pictures that changed were the hairstyles, from shaggy pelts to baggy mullets to bleached-tip spikes and buzz cuts. The Polaroids rattled on their nails when the breeze stirred.

Luke recalled the flash of light he’d seen when his blindfold had been pulled free earlier. The message on this wall was simple enough, he supposed:Talk at your own risk.

A note of alarm had been sounding, all night, in a distant corner of Luke’s head. It grew too loud now to ignore. What would the men here do if they discovered that the only reason Luke was still in the closet was simply because no one had ever asked? If they were to discover that he had no fear of anyone knowing the truth about him?

A warped little voice called from the triple-wide’s door, “Is someone there?”

Luke kept moving. He skirted a massive chugging generator that reeked of gasoline. He heard a loud moan of ecstasy come from the red trailer but he didn’t care. After years of solitary nights and empty weekends, Luke was so saddened by the brotherhood he’d found here that all he wanted to do was leave.

He noticed something odd: the dark spots of his blood in the dirt at the center of the circle were gone. There was no breeze that could have blown the bloody dirt away (and besides, wouldn’t the blood make the dirt too heavy for the breeze to lift?) and surely it hadn’t been so long the blood could have dried away so thoroughly it left no trace. It was almost as if the ground had swallowed it.

He didn’t like that idea. He didn’t like that idea at all.

He hustled past the generator toward an orange RV that looked (mercifully) empty. He was only spooking himself—surely that’s all it was—but the longer he stayed out on this thirsty ground, here under these lights, the more certain he became that something—not someone, his mind told him, something—was watching him. That coming out here might have been an enormous mistake.

HOME ON THE RANGE read the sign above the orange RV’s door, and sure enough, the dim trailer was stuffed inside with cowboy kitsch: Indian rugs, cow skulls, a lovingly lit photograph of some twink named Roy Rogers. An old television in a walnut case was playing grainy porn. Luke supposed it would pass the time.

Lowering himself onto a couch in the dark, he almost sat on a boy’s face by mistake. He jumped, turned back, apologized to the kid sprawled over the seat beneath him. The boy had a buzzed head and a dirty blond crotch and he gave Luke a carnivorous little smile that was the first welcome sight Luke had seen all night. It was the defensive tackle from the Stable Shootout.

“You sacked me at the game,” Luke said.

“It was an honor and a privilege.” The tackle sat up, handed Luke his beer. “Cheers.”

Luke hesitated, smiled back. “Cheers.”

They passed the bottle in silence for a time, watching the desultory porn, their knees just barely touching. Luke leaned against the arm of the sofa and unwittingly released a sigh.

“It’s a lot to handle, isn’t it?” the Stallion said finally.

“The nineties?” Luke said, nodding at the TV.

“All of this.”

Luke nodded, drank, said, “I don’t understand—are the guys here actually straight?”

“Not the angry ones.” The Stallion laughed. “The angry ones are gay as hell—the old dudes are good at spotting fags. But some of the dudes here are straightish, sure. They like to try some no-strings shit like they could in the city, see what the fuss is about. Mostly I think they like having a secret, you know? Getting out of trouble around home. Getting pampered.”

“And there’s drugs.”

The boy nodded. “And there’s drugs.”

“It’s kind of like a dream. At first, I mean.”

The Stallion hesitated before he drank. “It ain’t free, you know. Those Old Boys, they always want some gratitude from you eventually.”

Luke studied him. He saw a pain on the other boy’s face, the mark of something Luke knew would never be named. “Were you hiding in here?”

“Maybe I was just waiting for you.” The Stallion smiled, extended a slippery hand. “Bryan, by the way.”

“Luke.”

“How come you’re all the way over there, Luke?”

Mitchell Malacek found them joined together at the mouth a few minutes later. He waited until Luke looked up with a line of spit dangling from his chin. Mitchell said with a snicker, “Can I borrow your gloves? I swear I’ll get them—”