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I scanned the PDF again, making sure I had filled in every piece of required information. I didn’t want to miss anything and have his application denied. Once I was certain I had covered every field, I digitally signed the form, forging Alex’s signature as well as that of the caseworker whose account I was currently logged into.

I normally had to study someone’s keystrokes over a few days, but she was easy. Alex’s caseworker liked to linger in Starbucks with her laptop open. I sat down behind her with a cup of coffee and, not three minutes later, she got up to go to the bathroom and just left her state-issued laptop open and unlocked.

It took me perhaps 11 seconds to slip the USB drive into it and implant the spyware. Easy-peasy.

I logged out of her DocuSign and clicked over into her emails. I opened the automated confirmation that the document had been signed and received, and then deleted it so she wouldn’t see it in the morning when she logged on.

The woman had been perfectly useless as a case manager, but I was hoping she would at least have enough sense to reach out to Alex if his application was accepted. Alex was 18 now, and technically not under her care anymore. Despite him still living with his last foster family, according to the government and social services, he was an adult and officially no longer their problem.

This all would have worked out much better if the Westing House project had started six months before his birthday. Unfortunately, however, the city had only just listed it. It was like a dream come true. Alex had always had some kind of weird fascination with the old house. Every time he passed it, he paused to take in it’s dilapidated facade and overgrown gardens. It was special to me, too, albeit in a different way. The first time I’d ever seen Alex was in front of Westing House, several years ago…

I watched through the blinds as the coroner loaded the gurney into the back of an unmarked white van with no windows.

“I’m so sorry, Gabriel. Your mother is at peace now. She’s with God. No more cancer, no more pain.”

I nodded silently, my gaze laser-focused on the back of the van as it pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the street.

“Thank you, Father McKinley.”

It was the only thing I could get to come out of my mouth. He placed a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Have you been able to get a hold of your father, yet?”

I shook my head as I finally turned from the window to face him. “He’s usually home pretty late nowadays.”

Translation: he hadn’t stumbled in from the bar before midnight for at least the last month.

“I’m happy to wait. I know it’s going to take a lot to get you both through this. Your mother was so involved with the church. Please know we are at you and your father’s disposal. Anything you need.”

“Thank you, father. But you don’t have to stay. I think we are both just going to need some time.”

“Of course,”

he replied, a somber smile on his lips. “I’ll let you have some time. Mary Ellen will start preparing the service arrangements. Take a few days, and we’ll get together to finalize details.”

I nodded and walked two steps behind him as he crossed the living room and opened the front door. He paused halfway through the frame and turned back. “I know it’s been a long time since you came to Sunday Mass, but there are a lot of people there that loved your mother very much. And you, too. In times like these, we need to seek out community, and find comfort in those around us.”

I nodded and offered a strained half-smile. “Thank you.”

Once he’d gone, I took a seat on the small sofa and took a long look around the room. The family pictures on the mantle. The accent wall Mom had demanded to have painted and then absolutely hated and complained about for the next five years.

“The swatches didn’t look like this… the color is all wrong,”

she’d say. Convinced the folks at Sherwin Williams had performed a bait-and-switch. Dad and I had both tried to convince her it would be ugly as sin, in the first place, but she was always hard-headed.

I caught myself smiling at the memory as I stared at the terrible posy-pink varnish, still as godawful as the day she'd made my father roll it on. That was back when we still functioned as a family. When Mom wasn’t bedridden. When dad came straight home from work instead of stopping at the pub to down a fifth of Bombay.

When we got the news the cancer was terminal, Dad completely lost it. He managed to keep things together long enough to get through his work day and keep up his income with the firm. He was too weak to handle being here too long with her in the shape she was in, so he just stayed at the bar. I dropped out of my second year of college to come back to Emberford and take care of her once it was evident my father couldn’t be trusted to do so. She didn’t want to die in some facility somewhere, and he was out to lunch, so I moved home. That was eight months ago. And now what?

My grades were great, and I was well on my way to an early bachelor's in finance, but I hated it. I used my mother’s illness as an excuse to walk away, but, in all honesty, I’d probably have quit anyway. Her cancer was just the scapegoat.

I had these childish ideations about what going off to college was going to be like. I’d get to be my own person. Explore different things, meet different people. Wild parties, hot college boys to play with every night. A big circle of friends…

I’d been at university for a year and a half, and had managed to get my dick sucked exactly one time. The next morning, when the booze wore off, and the bright morning sun illuminated the dorm room, it was over. He never spoke to me again. I wasn’t the kind of guy boys drooled over. I was overweight and still had a fuzzy face thick with baby fat—not exactly a desirable combination.

No twink wants to cuddle up to the fat kid from their math seminar. They wanted the athletes… the gym bros with more abs than brain cells.

I sighed and looked down at my round gut. I’d started walking in the afternoons. A mile and a half, down to the queer-owned coffee shop and back. It wasn’t much, but I figured it was a start.

My mother's voice echoed through my mind as if she’d just spoken the words.

“You are perfect, just the way you are, Gabe. Don’t ever let anyone else convince you different.”

It had been a loaded crock of shit. I knew then that it wasn’t the truth, and college had only served to illuminate her lie.

There wasn’t any reason for me to stick around here, either. I knew then that I could easily go the rest of my life without seeing my father again. He would just come home drunk and find the both of us gone with no explanation, and probably wouldn’t even care.

I pulled at the collar of my shirt, anxiety welling up inside me as I stood up and looked around the room again. I needed a break from these walls. I’d been cooped up in this house looking after her for the last however many weeks. I needed some fresh air.

I made quick work of getting out the front door and down the driveway before pausing and taking a deep breath, trying to ground myself enough to even pick a direction. Did it even really matter? My feet were on autopilot as my mind continued to spin with next steps and possibilities.

In no time at all, I made it to the end of the block and crossed the street towards the backside of the old train station. I rounded the corner and stopped as I saw two boys standing a few hundred feet up the sidewalk. They were talking and staring up at a dilapidated old Victorian when the taller of the two reached over and put his arm around the other one. The taller one had short, buzzed hair, making him look almost bald. The shorter one had a mop of messy chestnut curls spilling down onto his forehead and the sides of his cheeks. He was fucking adorable.

Were they… boyfriends?

My heart skipped a beat at the thought of seeing a cute gay couple in Emberford, so open and loving. I took a few steps closer, thinking maybe I’d introduce myself. Finding some new friends would be nice. The taller boy leaned over and kissed the cute one. I watched as the boy’s eyes fluttered closed, and he brought his arms up around the other’s neck. They were adorable.

The shorter boy opened his eyes and noticed me for the first time. He pulled away, breaking their kiss. The taller one looked confused for a second before turning his head around to see me as well. Once he did, his eyes went huge, and he put his hands on the other boy’s chest to push him away. The shorter boy stumbled backwards, losing his balance and slamming down hard against the chain-link fence guarding the old estate.

What kind of fucking monster treats someone like that? One second you’re kissing him, and the next you’re pushing him to the ground?

My feet took over my brain and I hurried towards them.

“Hey! Why would you do that?”

I walked straight past the aggressor and over to the boy on the ground.

“Are you okay?”

He looked up at me, his eyes wide with panic, his breathing shallow and strained. God, he had the fucking wind knocked out of him.

“He’s fine; he just fell,”

the bastard said from behind me as I helped the boy back to his feet.

I held onto his arms as he steadied himself and brushed some dirt off the side of his pants.

“Y-yeah,”

he stammered quietly. “I j-just f-fell.”

“No, you didn’t,”

I disagreed softly. “He pushed you, I saw him. That’s not right.”

The boy's eyes went wide as he stared up into mine. They—his eyes—were big and beautiful, the color of maple syrup. I wanted to swim in them. Our exchange was cut short when a forceful hand grabbed my forearm and jerked me back away from the boy.

I spun around to face the taller one, who still had a death grip on my arm.

“Hey, piss off!”

he said, raising his voice. “He said he’s fine. You can go now.”

I stared at the guy with disgust, balling my right hand into a fist. I’d never been in a fight before, but I was ready to knock this guy's lights out.

The curly-haired boy got between us, forcing his “friend”

to let go of my arm.

“R-really, I’m f-fine,”

he said, forcing an unconvincing smile to splay across his lips. He turned back to the taller one and said, “Let’s just go.”

And, with that, he walked away down the sidewalk.

The taller one and I stared angrily at each other for a few more moments before he finally turned and started to jog away, catching up with the other.

I cupped my hands over my mouth. “Just so you know… If I was lucky enough to get a kiss from a cute boy like you, I’d never push you away.”

But only the taller one looked back.

“Faggot!”

That was hilariously ironic. He was the one kissing a boy in the middle of the street. There were several things about myself I was ashamed of, but being gay wasn’t one of them.

Once they had turned the corner and were out of sight, a fresh wave of panic washed over me. I slid my sweaty palms down the front of my jeans.

“He’s gonna hurt him again…”

The voice was as strong and as clear as if someone was standing beside me screaming it into my ear. I took one step forward, and then another. Once I reached the corner, I stopped and crouched down behind an unwieldy bush jutting out between the fence and the street corner. I could barely see the two of them walking half a block ahead. They had crossed the street and were headed towards Fifth Avenue. The neighborhood only got worse from here. When I was growing up, I was forbidden to go past Fifth.

The area wasn’t as awful as my mother thought, but it was far from the best. The gangs mainly stayed towards the south end of the city. The people down here were just, well, poor. There were a lot of homeless and some drug addicts, but there weren't shootouts every night. Not that I had ever heard about, anyway.

I kept myself low, and towards the back of the sidewalk as I closed a little bit of the distance between the two boys and myself. I crossed the street and stood behind the metal dumpster at the mini-mart as the taller boy boosted the shorter one up and over the chain-link fence towards the woods.

Once they had disappeared past the treeline, I approached the fence. It was at least eight feet tall, and the top had already started to cave in on itself. There was no way I was getting over it without the whole bar collapsing. Even if it would hold, I probably didn’t have the strength to pull myself up and over.

“Fuck!”