Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Over the course of many weeks leading up to the end of school, Jonas had seen identical flyers posted on every bulletin board; plastered on the glass of every door; wallpapering the office. Like everyone, of course, he had ignored them in favor of the plans he had made. Everyone had plans, even if they didn’t; not having plans was their plan. That was the glory of summer. It meant freedom; room for real life to happen. There was no reason to read it because if the school had put it up then it couldn’t mean anything good. He was going to breeze out the door on the last day of school and no one, least of all administration, was going to sell him suggestions about how to use his summer.

And yet, here Jonas sat, in his usual seat at the dinner table, with one of those previously inconsequential flyers in his hands. There was no excuse not to read it now. In fact, he couldn’t stop reading it.

Sellwood Mollusks Summer Program

Build character, acquire life skills, learn team work,

goal setting and fulfillment, financial responsibility, and more.

Extra Credit!

May 18th - July 18th

Applications available in office or apply by phone.

Apply on or before May 15^th.

Space is limited!

Jonas felt the stares of everyone left at the table burning through the other side of the paper. It was part of the reason he kept reading. He felt like throwing up.

“I don’t want to do this,” he said at last, lowering his only defense: a literal freaking piece of paper. He was addressing Dean, really. Not Sidney, who was making mush out of her over-dressed salad to combat the awkwardness she felt in one of the few situations in which she could not fly to his defense, and not Sue, who was looking at Jonas with as much pity as she could get away with communicating nonverbally. Dean had his elbows on the table, hands clasped under his chin. This issue was already closed and everyone knew it. Jonas didn’t have long to make his stand before the case was closed.

“I understand that. I do. But, Jonas…you’re going to have to start taking steps to improve yourself. I mean, you’re about ready to graduate.”

“I don’t--I don’t understand--I have straight A's and I’ve already picked three colleges. I’m in the band and Mr. Campbell said I might be top of my cla--”

Dean’s eyes fluttered shut. He held up a hand. “That is not what I mean.” The air in the room, which had begun to thicken the moment Dean had handed Jonas that flyer, was slowly turning to sludge. Their shoulders were tense. Even the table and chairs seemed stiffer than usual. Sidney wanted to leave so bad, he could tell, but she wouldn’t leave him alone. “This is not about grades or intellect necessarily. It’s about becoming a better version of yourself. The version people want to see when you go to apply for a job or meet the woman you’re going to marry someday.”

Jonas knew where this was headed. He seldom argued with Dean about anything, no matter how bad he wanted to. But he really, really wanted to this time. He sat up a little straighter. “It says this is a two month camp.”

“It would have to be. You can’t expect to learn anything in less than thirty days.”

“But…this is going to eat up all of my summer. I made plans with Lewis. We were going to marathon a bunch of movies and do a huge D&D thing…” Desperation was creeping into Jonas’s voice. The futility of his fight loomed hugely before him. All was lost. Jonas was used to bowing to Dean’s will in all things by this point, but this was an unprecedented act of unfairness: to snatch away the one thing that made this time in his life gorgeous and enviable--summer break. His last summer break. “We never get time to do that stuff during the year.”

Dean tossed his hands briefly into the air, unable to imagine a solution. “That’s exactly what I mean, right there. That’s the sort of thing you need to put a stop to. That stuff should’ve been left behind years ago if it should’ve been there at all. It’s time to grow up and act like you’re supposed to. “

Jonas looked at Sue. She took her dinner plate and began scraping the scraps onto a platter. He looked at Sidney who at least had the decency to look at him back, even if he did hate the wet glare of pity he saw in her eyes. His heart was thumping in his chest. Not for the first time in his life, Jonas wished he were someone else, someone like Mitch Mueller, who said what they were thinking and let the other person deal with it their way. Someone who couldn’t be injured with dislike. And if it came to blows, then it came to blows, and he could stand up and deal as much damage as he took.

“You don’t need to laze around anyway,” Dean went on. He took a swig from his water, refusing to flinch as all the ice tumbled toward his face. “That’s part of your problem. You need to get out and do something. Be physical. Get some athleticism.”

A sudden burst of hot indignation flared up. Because Dean knew where that particular nerve was located. “I’m not lazy.”

“Well you’re something!”

Sue rose and began gathering dishes. She shot Jonas a pleading look.

Fat. Fat was the word he wanted. And ironically, being fat made him less. Was he lazy because he was fat, or fat because he was lazy? To Dean, the answer was ‘yes.’

He stared Jonas in the eye, long and unblinking. When he did that the lines on his face deepened. He meant for whoever received that gaze to look away first. But tonight, Jonas didn’t. He stared back until his eyes began to sting and water accumulated in the corners.

“What about Sidney? Is she going?” Sidney looked at Jonas crossways, as if to say, Uh, screw you. Leave me out of this.

“No. But I’m glad you brought that up, because that’s another thing.” He pointed a stiff finger in Jonas’s direction. “I don’t care if you’re twins, you don’t have to spend so much time together. It would do you some good to surround yourself with other boys your age.”

“But Lew--”

“For God’s sake, Lewis doesn’t count. And if his parents have any sense they’ll send him, too. I meant real boys. Boys who are going to end up being real men.”

For the first time since the other foster kids had left the table and this whole pickle with the camp began, Sidney opened her mouth. “Jonas, it probably won’t be that bad.”

“Thanks, Sid. That’s a real consolation.” As soon as the words left his mouth he was sorry. His chair scraped against the floor as he rose suddenly. He had to get out of here before he said anything else he didn’t mean. Because later, he would apologize to Sidney and she would forgive him, but a slip of the tongue like that with Dean there was no coming back from. “I’m going to my room. Thanks for dinner, Sue.”

But Dean Wagner had the last word always.

“Now don’t you go up there and have a tantrum like a six year old,” he called as Jonas mounted the stairs. “The first part of all this is turning that attitude around!” His voice rose steadily to a yell to ensure that Jonas’s retreating ears continued to hear him. “With any luck and a little effort from you, this will be the thing that changes your li--”

He let the door slam. Dean was probably on his feet now, charging up the stairs with glee to lay into Jonas, who was in violation of the Door Slamming Act. But Jonas was finished with him. This wasn’t about that idiotic summer camp anymore--it was about defending his own worth. How could he argue his point to someone who was committed to the notion that he wasn’t a whole person? He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. All he could do was go to this godforsaken camp and return just as he’d left, thereby proving he was impervious to the sort of peer pressure alchemy Dean hoped would remake him entirely.

Oh my freaking god. This is terrible!

Laying on his bed like a dead person, he ground his palms into his eyes to keep whatever hot, wet thing they were threatening to do from happening. So that was it then--his summer gone before it had even begun; his self-worth a beaten, bloody victim. God, this semester had started off so good, as it always did with the promise of the end looming. And not just the end of classes, the end of everything unsavory; the end of after-gym showers and cold dark mornings at a bus stop. The end of Neil Beckham’s bucktooth smirk, and the end of peeking around corners for wrestling team jocks. He and Lewis had been hyping this summer up since spring break. They were going to marathon the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, even if it took them a couple days, what with their respective curfews. Lewis had long mocked Jonas’s amateurish skill at D&D and it was among his life goals to remedy that personally, which, again, they had blocked out time for this summer. Season two of Stranger Things was due to release and they were going to recap season one at Lewis’s house. And Lewis aside, Jonas and Sidney had planned on coming and going from the skate park almost as they pleased.

And now I have man camp instead. Swell.

The door to his room burst open, revealing a sheepish looking Sidney. Guilt cramped in Jonas’s chest, and it sucked so much he threw an arm over his eyes to obstruct his view of her. She shut the door more quietly behind her and he prepared his speech.

“Sid, I’m sorry. I didn’t…I wasn’t trying to sound like a jerk. I just…Dean…he was...he always...”

Wow. World class. Obama eat your heart out.

Sidney pulled out the chair at his desk and sat down with a pressurized sigh. “I know. I’m sorry, Jojo. I was trying to ease the tension but I think it just came off as me not being on your side. Which I totally am and you know that.” They lapsed into silence for a minute as Jonas stared up at the blank white of his ceiling, thinking for the first time what a good space for posters it might have been if he hadn’t just decided he was through living a life here with permanence in mind. “For the record, you handled it pretty well considering he never even brought it up to you before he sprung it on you out of the blue in front of us. I could tell it messed you up good, though.” She paused to gauge his reaction. “You know…I could talk to him, if…Jojo, if you really want me to go I could try to get him to--”

“No. No, are you kidding? That would be completely unfair.” At this point the guilt was climbing his esophagus like reflux. “Besides, I was just using you obviously not going to make a point about double standards, but all he managed to do was weaponize it, so I guess I walked into that one.”

“Well you understand why that didn’t work, right? Double standards are,” she swiped an open hand over her head, “for him. They’re not a flaw, they’re the way he thinks things ought to be.”

Hm. That…kind of checked out. When he thought back to all the examples of how gender worked in their household, it did come across as a statement about moral high ground.

Sidney got up and strolled over to the widow, heaving it open. The last thin light of sunset fended off total darkness before its time. A single breath of air slipped in as she did, shifting the curtain. He liked to sleep with it open on fair weather nights such as tonight, and Sidney had admitted she was guilty of opening her own window when there had been a significant display of ugliness in the house. The bed cratered as she perched on the edge to stare out into the twilight.

“Not to make light of how shitty your hand has been, but while you’re gone I’m going to catch all the flack that normally goes to you. Sue’s too whipped into shape to be any fun to bully anymore, and the younger kids won’t take it to heart yet. I’m going to have to sneak out if I want to go to the skatepark because if he catches me, suddenly there’s going to be a pile of dishes that needs doing, or one of the kids is hungry, or a load of laundry has miraculously piled up. And since he’s the “man of the house” his hands are tied.”

Sidney was right, of course. Dean could not simply exist, satisfied, in an environment where nothing was wrong and there was no one to chastise. As Jonas’s equally chubby, equally, freckled twin with no apparent understanding of gender roles, she was runner up to receive the honors of constant surveillance and unending correction.

“But he would keep you.”

Sidney twisted around. “What do you mean?”

This was so petty. But he was ready to say it out loud, not simply think it to himself. Too often he kept what he was thinking and feeling chained up in the recess of his mouth like some shameful secret to avoid causing others pain; to not be the reason trouble and inconvenience happened. But this particular unspoken reality was growing where he kept it. In fact, it had already grown so large others could see it.

“Think about it, Sid. We’re the same.” Jonas gestured back and forth in the space between them. “We’re barely different. And between all the things he hates about you and all the things he hates about me, only one of us is worth putting up with all summer. Maybe he thinks you belong at home helping with the chores and the kids, but he isn’t sending you off to housewife bootcamp. He’ll take you the way that you are and try to turn you around himself if he can. But…” And for crying out loud, Jonas’s throat closed like a fist. Sidney watching him patiently didn’t help. For a second, he stared back, unable to open his mouth. “Everything wrong with me is so wrong that he can’t even look at it anymore and…” he swallowed, gulping “he’s hoping I don’t come back. He wants someone else.”

Sidney didn’t immediately say anything, but she did reach across the bedspread and take his hand while Jonas willed every muscle in his face not to squeeze out a tear. He and his sister had been surrendered together, unwanted together. But Jonas had always been just a little more unwanted. The bonus kid. People flocked to Sidney in groves to be her friend, accepting him as a not unreasonable part of the package.

“Well, that’s too damn bad,” she said, squeezing his hand and giving him that look that said, argue with me, dare ya. “Dean is one person and his shitty opinion counts as one opinion. Other people around here want you back the same. Me,” she started a finger count, “Sue. Sue loves you fine,” she reassure when he didn’t seem convinced, “Lewis, who is your best friends and would die if you came back without whatever gland makes nerdiness inside you. Maddy, who’s ready to ask your hand in marriage…”

Jonas snorted and closed his miserable eyes. “Great. That’s not even a whole hand--”

“And you.” She held out her thumb. “Because no one can make you into some he-man if you don’t wanna be one.”

Of course she had to go and find an angle he hadn’t considered and turn his whole argument on its head. She was right: Dean was outnumbered. Too bad his opinion seemed to carry the weight of five people.

Jonas sighed, sitting up against a backboard of pillows. Much of the initial heat of emotion had cooled into a warped and ungainly sadness. It was heavy, but less taxing.

“I better call Lewis before he spends anymore money or plans anything else. He’s probably going to take this harder than I did.”

Sidney leveraged herself off the bed and made for the door. “Don’t let him make you feel worse. He has this habit of harping on terrible things that were only half as terrible before he got hold of them. And don’t lay awake all night agonizing. You know I can feel that shit.” She jabbed a vaguely threatening finger at him.

“Oh my god. Goodnight, Sid.”

“Goodnight, Jojo.” She eased the door shut, her grinning face slipping out last.

The last remnants of anything like a smile slid off Jonas’s face. He pulled out his phone and swiped through a few apps without really seeing the content. Google got tapped and he doom scrolled through news articles that made his own misfortune into something laughable. And all the while he tasted the act of procrastinating telling his friend that their summer was a bust like an acrid medicine on the back of his tongue. He longed for tomorrow, for this day and all its emotional turmoil to end, forgetting that every tomorrow, every hour, brought him closer to no summer at all. Closer to some kind of conversion camp for fat, socially incompetent losers.

Well…now or never.

Before he had anymore time to agonize over it, Jonas tapped on Lewis’s contact, easily identified by the stupid contact photo of him sporting two crazy straws jutting from his nostrils. It rang too loud in his ear. Rang again. Being irreligious, he appealed to the universe that Lewis not pick up. Just this once. Next time. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

The fourth ring cut off midway and there was a distracted click on the other end. He briefly closed his eyes.

“Hey...”

Jonas felt his head jerk back. That…was the saddest greeting he had ever received. It was so pathetic that for half a second Jonas wondered if he had somehow dialed the wrong number despite using a tried and true contact.

“Yeesh. What’s your deal?”

“Me? Listen to your voice. You sound like you’ve been trying to deep throat a garden hose.”

Jonas’s body wanted to laugh because at rare and unforeseeable times, Lewis could be crass funny like that. The breath of laughter jumped out of his throat like he’d been shoved in the gut, but his face wasn’t game.

“Yeah, that’s me. Can’t be trusted alone with one.” There was a rhythmic whacking sound patterning in the background, and immediately Jonas knew that Lewis was bouncing his superball with a figurine of Spider-Man crouching inside between the floor and the wall, over and over. He had gotten very adept at doing this one-handed. If Jonas were to take up a habit that caused a racket like that, Dean would fly upstairs and make him wish he’d gone ahead and swallowed it instead.

“Well…I don’t know how you plan to break it to Maddy that you’re not saving yourself.”

“Shut up!” Jonas’s lips curled this time. Who knew--maybe the third time he would laugh for real. “You know you’re the second person in less than twenty minutes to make a joke about that?”

“Yeah, Sid and I are on a wavelength, no big deal.”

“I mean…I didn’t say it was Sidney…”

“Oh, sorry. Was it Dean?”

And as predicted, it happened. The skin around his mouth and eyes pulled like he was a statue constructed of solid self-loathing and mortification laughing for the first time in his life. The salt-crusted residue of dried tears cracked in the corners of his eyes. Some of the shadows fled from the sound, from the feeling. Sidney had been right, as per the norm. He might have avoided certain things in his life if he had only fit a more standard mold. He might have avoided a relentless onslaught of bullying, Dean’s ire, Carmen’s unspoken but clear rejection; and tragically, Lewis.

Lewis, who could lift him out of a funk with a stupid joke without trying, even while caught in a funk himself.

Damn it.

Jonas’s head fell back against his headboard. Over the line he heard ba--dunk, ba--dunk, ba--dunk.

“I have bad news. Horrible, actually.”

“Me, too. You go first, though.”

“Uh--you don’t want my news first,” Jonas warned. “Because it’s going to take whatever’s left of your soul and turn it to dust. So, apres vous.”

“As always, you underestimate the gravity of how being an acquaintance of mine can ruin everything good in your life!” Jonas pulled the phone away from his ear to avoid the drum bursting and rolled his eyes. Disasters in Lewis’s life didn’t typically register on the Richter scale of hardship other people measured their own troubles with. Once, he had had to accompany his family on a trip to rural Oregon to visit his mom’s cousins, but he dealt with it about as well as being marched to his own public beheading. 

“Oh my god, fine. I won’t be around this summer,” Jonas spat. “Like, at all. Dean ambushed me at dinner and basically told me I’m a lazy, good-for-nothing weener and he’s sending me to that freaking idiotic school summer camp thing to learn how to be something that makes him proud. And I’ll be gone for two months. ” A little of the anger that had settled in the cracks while they joked and pretended things weren’t already going wrong resurfaced. He tried to keep it out of his voice so that it didn’t sound like he was yelling at Lewis, but he didn’t feel successful.

Silence lapsed over the line. The ball had gone still. That’s right--crushed into silence, just as promised. 

“Dude…are you joking?”

Jonas felt a load-bearing thread of patience snap, propelling him forward off his pillows. “No, I’m not joking! Does that seem like a good joke even to you?! I wish it was a freaking joke, but Dean can’t physically make a joke--”

“No! No, Jonas…” Lewis made a sound like he was literally choking on his words in a rush to get them all out at once. “Me, too! Me, too, dude! That’s the bad news I was going to tell you. My parents signed me up for that thing the moment the saw the flyer. The freaking window hadn’t even opened yet! They paid in advance. I was the first one on the list.”

No way. There was no way Jonas was understanding this the way he thought he was. Because what he thought he was hearing was that he and Lewis, two hopelessly nerdy lost causes, were about to be partners in exile, banished to the same outdoor hellscape to be bitten to the brink of insanity by mosquitoes until their testosterone kicked in.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I hope so because I don’t know how to say it any clearer. That abomination of a flyer with the perfect jock teens laughing awkwardly in matching khaki shorts?”

Briefly, Jonas lost himself in a ‘Nam-like flashback to that very image, which had scored his cornea back at the dinner table. “Yeah!”

“Two weeks ago they handed me that thing with two hundred bucks and told me to start packing. That’s why I didn’t call sooner about it. I wanted to see if I could talk them down, but…”

Jonas could imagine. If it had been anything like his spat with Dean, Lewis had limped away not only with no summer to speak of, but with a huge dent in his self-esteem. Lewis’s parents weren’t like Jonas’s, though. Whatever kind of disagreement they had had about it, Jonas was certain there hadn’t been that breathless atmosphere of everything teetering on the edge of disaster. 

Still, prolonged time spent at the Halls household had made Jonas aware of the unspoken tones that floated on the air there. Lewis’s dad was approachable and even-keeled in a way Dean had never been. He co-owned a moderately successful HVAC business with his brother, which didn’t exactly leave room for a lot of say-so about whether his son was sufficiently masculine in Jonas’s opinion. He wore sweater vests for crying out loud. His mother walked around like she wasn’t bearing the weight of the roof on her neck and didn’t cook half as much as Sue did. Jonas could count the number of times she had served him food made from scratch on less than two hands. There was nothing high and mighty about their house; in fact, stepping inside was a little sliding back in time to the 1970s. The carpets were long, the rugs were brown and patterned like a hallucination you’d have on LSD. Crystal lampshades everywhere--gold and green and hanging from chains in corners. All in all, not the sort of people or environment where someone might catch flack for being a huge dork. And yet…

A couple of years ago, Lewis had started complaining that his dad was confronting him about things he had never given a rip about before, like how much time Lewis spent in his room, and the graphics on his T-shirts, and that he spent his allowances on comics. Jonas recalled how confused and upset Lewis had been as he told him about it. At the time, he hadn’t known what to say, but what he made sure not to say was that he knew Lewis’s dad had been hanging around Dean more and more lately.

If Dean was an egotistical bully, Lewis’s dad was a spineless coward who took criticism to heart.

Jonas switched his phone to his other ear to give his left arm a break. “Well, at least we’ll still get to spend the summer together, even if it’s not doing what he wanted.”

“Yeah…” Lewis didn’t sound totally convinced, but Jonas didn’t hold it against him. “You think this will be a summer-long gym class?”

Jonas snorted. “Probably. God, did you see how it said something about teamwork? I’m imagining three-legged races.”

“Trust falls.”

“Human wheelbarrows.”

Lewis wheezed and Jonas wasn’t far behind him. Already the looming future seemed less daunting, like the sun was rising on it. It might be bad, might be the worst summer Jonas had ever lived through, but his best friend would be there.

“Did Dean really call you a weener?”

Oh, yeah. Dean. Dean was downstairs. Dean was something he still had to face every day for another week.

“Not in so many words. But he did get really vocal about how I need to become a ‘better version of myself,’ spend less time with Sidney and more time with boys who are basically already the man he wishes I was.”

“Ah. So more time with me ought to do the trick, huh?” Jonas laughed, but he couldn’t tell if Lewis was clued in on what Dean really thought of him or not.

“You do know you get points for not being fat, right? You have that on me at least.”

Immediately Jonas regretted playing that card. Being bitter about how others responded to his weight wasn’t any of his friends’ problems. It wasn’t that he wanted them to cook up some profound sentiments to make him feel better; he just wanted someone somewhere to know the nature of his injuries when they occurred, and that he was bleeding internally.

“Does he give points for not having muscle mass either? You know I struggle in high winds! And hey, at least you skateboard. That’s the point you earn with my dad, even if he doesn’t say it. Hence my former plan to rob you of precious skateboarding time this summer and indoctrinate you into the Church of D&D. Your dad gets no points, my dad gets no points, everybody loses.”

“You know it doesn’t have to be one-sided. You teach me D&D and I could teach you to skateboard.”

“Pass. I’ve had a lifelong fear of a sports accident making me a quadrapelgic. And without the use of my hands my mom would finally cut my hair the way she wants.”

A ghostly breeze caught the curtain from the open window, making it sway seductively and drawing Jonas’s attention to the solid black square he had once been able to see out of. He had an hour or so before someone would pop their head in here if any sign of light were visible beneath the door, and call it a hunch, but he was certain Dean would elect to appear to make sure Jonas was sufficiently beaten down for the evening.

“I better get off of here,” he sighed.

“’Kay, dude. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I think you’ll be seeing me everyday for a very long time.”

Glad to be off the phone and in total isolation for the evening, Jonas dug out his most comfortable sleeping clothes. When he flipped off all his light, deciding the weather was even-tempered enough to leave the window open, he crawled under the covers and plugged his headphones into his ears. He tried to conjure in his head all the benefits he might reap from this banishment. And through three songs, the only perk he could summon up was that every day he woke up and every night he lay down, Dean wouldn’t be there.

Chapter Text

“I gotta do fuckin’ what?”

Principal Greene sighed out a huge gust of air like her ghost was trying to leave her body, like having to break this news was more frustrating that having to receive it. She interlocked her fingers on her desk, inadvertently showing off her fancy pants acrylic nails painted up with little beach scenes that didn’t make any damn sense. She was a fuckin’ pantsuit wearin’ principal, not a sno-cone girl at the pier. Wasn’t that what they called “unprofessional?”

“Mueller…curb your tongue.” Mitch squinted, unable not to imagining his tongue as a car with wheels parallel parked by a meter. “This could’ve been avoided if you had A,” she counted on one of those nails, “not skipped so many days back in the first semester, and B, turned in a few more pieces of work with even a speck of effort put into them. Plain and simple.”

Ordinarily, Mitch listened to these lectures with one ear. He would stare around the room scrutinizing her choice of decor (leopard print crap), and judge the photos of her family that were plotted in every conceivable place someone might turn away from her to look. He would notice that the smell good juice in her jar of sticks on the filing cabinet was low and that the janitor sure as shit wasn’t cleaning in here because there were cricket corpses along the baseboards. But the seat he was sitting in across from her was form fitted to his ass, being the frequent flyer that he was. It was all too familiar to even be of feigned interest.

For the first time in each of their careers here, she had Mitch’s undivided attention. Actually, it was divided between the accusatory shade she was throwing him and the flyer she had slid under his nose across the desk. He had seen these around school, pissed on one and plastered it to the hood of Jeff’s car, in fact. Which was the only reason he recognized it.

Wait a minute…camp…bad grades…

“Hang on.” Mitch straightened up in his chair where previously he’d been flung all over it. “This some kinda retard daycare?” he asked, staring her down. “You tryin’ ta put me on a short bus next to those kids that slobber ‘n wet their pants?”

Principal Greene blinked. “Mitch, this opportunity is for extra credit. It’s not for our special needs students.” She emphasized. “I don’t think you’re special needs. In fact, I don’t think you have any learning disabilities at all. I think school is so low on your list of priorities that there’s nothing I or anyone else can do to make it seem worth your while.”

That wasn’t entirely true. Mitch hated school, but so did a million other people; it didn’t have anything to do with his desire to pass. In the next year or so--he’d sort of lost track at this point--his mom would be getting out of prison, and the last thing Mitch wanted to tell her was that he hadn’t even been able to manage a high school diploma in her absence. That she had taken the fall for his biggest, shittiest mistake in life, and he had used the freedom she had afforded him to flunk out of school and get in his own way. The ins and outs of why he couldn’t seem to make school work for him was a long and complicated fuckin’ mess. But it was worthwhile.

“I guess I don’t understand how the fuck this is ‘sposed ta help me pass,” he blurted, uncrossing one arm to gesture at the bastard flyer. “I don’t see nuthin’ on here about math or readin’ or anything. How’re you gonna determine my grade if there ain’t gonna be any school work?” There was some kind of delight in throwing shit in her way. 

“It’s a completion grade,” she replied, at the ready as always. She didn’t give the foot he had on the edge of her desk the time of day like she used to. “Our school is participating in this program alongside other schools in the surrounding districts. The people who’ve been hired to run it won’t necessarily be taking a grade in the sense that you’re used to, but they will assign tasks and those tasks will be assessed using whatever rubric they’ve prepared.” She tossed her hands up, which rejoined as if magnetized. She started to say something, stopped, and started again. “You know, Mitch…despite what most people think, there’s more to our education as people than interpreting Shakespeare or solving for x.”

Shake a spear and solve what?

“Soooo…”

“So, the goal of this program is learning through exposure to, and then application of, life skills.”

“I see,” Mitch said smartly. But he did not see shit. “Then why aren’t we learnin’ that crap in school ‘steada wastin’ our youth on whatever the hell it is Jeff tries to teach us every day?”

Mitch knew he had hit a nerve when she tried losin’ her ghost again. “Mitch, look. I don’t get to decide what we teach in school. Okay? That stuff is up to the state of California.” She snatched the flyer roughly off the desk and held it up. “Can I count on you to be here the morning of or not?

It was right then, staring at the damn piece of paper that he couldn’t wait to see the last of, that Mitch’s brain caught up with what his eyes were seeing. In a transport of outrage, he lurched forward, arms planting on the desk. Mrs. Greene drew back in her chair.

“Two months?!” Mitch bellowed. “Fuck! We’ve been in here all this time an’ you didn’t think to say anything about it bein’ all summer?!

“Well, I did give it to you to read."

“’Scuse me but I was a little overwhelmed.” Launching out of his seat, Mitch swiped the paper out of her hands, giving her another scare, and plopped back down, whereupon he scanned it for further fine print meant to mystify and mislead him. It made him wonder what he had even been reading before to miss all the worst parts because the next thing that snagged his attention almost made him swallow his tongue. “It’s in Northup?! That’s fuckin’ three hours away!”

“There’s a camp ground there that they plan to use. Everyone will meet here in the parking lot that morning and a bus will take you there. When it’s over, the bus will bring you back.”

She talked like it was some kind of no-brainer; easiest thing in the world. What issue could he possibly take with that?

But he took a big-ass issue with it!

Not only could Mitch not use his own summer as he saw fit (aka: get high as a motherfucker, drink himself into oblivion, or gawk at porn), but at the end of every christ-forsaken day, he couldn’t even come home and see his friends. They couldn’t sit in a circle and have a smoke while they unburdened themselves of the shit du jour. They couldn’t light anything on fire, or pool their money for slushies at the Cash ‘n Dash, or line up at Javi’s house when his mom was doling out food to everybody (Mitch never tossed what Javi’s mom cooked).

They can still do that shit, idiot. It’s you that can’t.

Mrs. Greene was pursing her lips at him, infuriatingly patient. Mitch looked back at her. He wanted to be so much angrier--clear the shit off her desk, break stuff, punch a window out.

“I don’t have a fuckin’ choice, do I?”

Her brows flew up like two birds startled. “Yeah, you have a choice. This is a life line I’m throwing you. You can take it or you can drown. It’s the same choice everyone gets.”

Mitch didn’t know what irony was, but he felt it as a vague, humorless amusement. He didn’t know how to swim.

Folding the paper carelessly in one hand, Mitch stood up. “Sure, I’ll be there.” He started to get up.

“Uh--hold the phone.” Mitch froze, partially out of his seat, and slowly lowered himself back down. She had that look on her face that always--always--preceded a threat. “I guess it’s only fair that I let you know. You come to school and pull the crap you normally pull and that’s one thing. I know what to expect out of you by this point. But there will be zero second chances if you get up there and pull even one escapade. I had a talk with the coordinator…you so much as make a fist, I told them to call the police. Straightening you out isn’t their job.”

Mitch wasn’t riled by the threat of police. If he had a dollar for every time someone had threatened to call the police on him, he’d take the chance and post his own bail. That said, he also knew how easily he might be arrested if cops got involved. He’d had run-ins most of his life. He was familiar with getting cuffed, getting searched, getting bent over hoods. But a record like his would counteract any defense he had. He couldn’t be the victim, even if he was.

“So that’s another choice you’ve got,” she went on, boring her eyes into his and pointing a finger at his chest. “When it happens, and I know it will…whatever it is…is it worth getting arrested for?”

With none of the usual commotion, he exited the office, only slamming the door a little as he closed it.

School had been out for about thirty minutes so there was nothing left to do except take his sorry ass home on foot. Scratch would have waited for him for a while, but she’d be long gone by now. In fact, checkin his phone revealed Javi had texted him three times wanting to know where the fuck he was at before giving up. Didn’t matter to him; he’d walked home a trillion times over the years with and without ‘em. Anyhow, he could do with some solitude to sort out how the fuck he was going to break this shit to them. And for that matter, whether or not he was actually going to go.  

But on the way to the south door something snagged at Mitch’s awareness so hard it jerked him to a halt. It was recognition; he knew this hall, particularly this exact portion of it. There, ahead on the right, was Jeff’s room. And doing a few calculations involving this exact spot and that door divided by the number of times he had mowed people over to get to both, Mitch looked directly to his left.

Jonas’s locker.

Silence lay all around, so out of place and obvious it was creepy. Still, he took a gander back down the hall the way he’d come, just in the event some member of fuckin’ faculty was lyin’ in wait to stop him carrying out his business as they couldn’t seem to stop doing. In two strides, Mitch was standing in front of it, vibrating with the thrill of doing this here, with no one around. The metal was cold and smooth where he reached out to press his hand against it. His fingertips slid downward, a bid for tenderness with a stand-in that was neither soft, nor freckled, nor trembling with fear of him. On his way down he tweaked the pull affectionately, the way he would a cheek. The pain of longing suffused the cavity of his chest, spreading slow and thick like a bloodstain.

“Love ya, Joey.”

No one could have heard it; he had barely heard himself.

The ache became too much, rising up the canal of his throat, which itself began to tighten against the fuckin’ worst thing of all: tears. Mitch Mueller didn’t cry. Not in the daylight. Not on school property. Not where so much as a fly could whiz by and see him. He turned and strode away before it could come to that, shoving the door open with ridiculous force.

A wave of heat greeted him with a slap in the face. It was hateful after all day in the school AC, but it dried the glaze of wetness on his eyes in no time.

What the fuck was with the water works and the emotions and shit all of a sudden? On the last day of school, Jonas was going to sprint out of that place and not look back, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to spare Mitch a final thought unless it was to kiss his bullyin’ ass goodbye. But try as he might to pretend otherwise, Mitch knew what it was about. He felt a horizon approaching that he didn’t often acknowledge due to how fuckin’ horrifying it was to consider. The window of time he had with Jonas in his life was shrinking. Graduation was coming, and even God couldn’t say when or how far it would take Jonas from him. Two years of that precious time down the drain already, and if nothing else, he learned time and distance alone would not be enough. More than just about anything on earth, Mitch was afraid he would love Jonas forever, and never see him again.  

Just shut up! Shut up before you make it worse, dickhead! What the fuck is your problem?

Being shipped off this summer didn’t directly affect things with Joey. It wasn’t like they planned to see one another. But…maybe they could. Fuck. Should he be takin’ this as some kind of sign to patch up the mess he’d made before it was too late? He didn’t know where Jonas lived. And he could just picture the pants-pissin’ freak-outs his acquaintances would have to being approached by Mitch Mueller asking after the address of a kid he pursued famously. That meant he had one last week of school to do it on campus: the only place their territories overlapped. One last week to change a horrible opinion he’d spent years helping Joey cultivate about him.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

“There he is…” Mitch couldn’t keep the smirk off his face at the sound of Javi’s voice, no matter how sour he felt. He was late. The smoking circle had started without him.

It was four assorted chairs they had each dragged from their trailers: a barely alive purple beanbag, a busted metal office chair with the stuffing poking out, a spare dining room seat, and a vintage green and yellow folding lawn chair. Sometimes they surrounded a burning barrel, other times nothing but a trash bin to catch their beer cans. Since Cliff had the largest property at the far end, they usually just let the shit live there, at least until Cliff’s uncle got all hopped up on pills and decided it was suspicious seeing four chairs in a circle like that, and it was somehow taking up too much of the property. Then they’d drag their seats home until next time.

“Where ya been?” Scratch asked, balled up in her beanbag like a cat with her cigarette.

Mitch plopped down in his chair between her and Cliff. “Principal’s office.”

“Ah, shit. What’d you do?” Javi teased. But they all knew it wasn’t for nothing.

Mitch opened his mouth to tell him, paused, and blew out a breath. He turned to Cliff sitting beside him, sprawled open in his lawn chair, an open beer perched on his knee. “You got any more of those?”

“Yeah, Boss.” His hand disappeared into a box or something Mitch couldn’t see on the other side of him, and then a can was arching through the air his direction. He barely caught it and held it out over the grass in front of him to pop it open, helpless against the fizz and foam that crawled out over the rim and down his fingers.

“It’s not what I did...it’s what I gotta do. She grabbed me as soon as I started to leave and pulled me in.” He slurped the head off his can top. “Apparently if you skip too many days and you ain’t doin’ so hot on paper you get shipped off to a fuckin’ labor camp all summer. ‘Cause that’s where I’m gonna be. Nice knowin’ you all.”

When he finally got the nerve to pull his eyes off the grass, Javi’s brows were pinched together. He’d come home and washed his paint off and it never sat right with Mitch. Javi was a light Juggalow and the paint was part of his anatomy. No one could ever know it, but Javier’s opinion was among the most important in Mitch’s life. Up there with Jonas’s. Up there with his mom’s. And if he thought for even a second that Javier was disappointed in him, he felt it like a sunburn.

“They can’t fuckin’ do that shit!” Scratch shouted, rabid at the idea. “It’s summer. School’s out. How’re they gonna tell you anything? It’s like cops, y’know? Jurisdiction.”

“Well that’s why they laid it on him now,” Javi said. He indicated Mitch with his cig. “It was a pass or fail thing, huh?”

“Yeah, basically. Said she can’t make me go.”

A car pulled into a driveway down the road, drawing their attention. It was Mitch’s aunt. She must have been home early from work because he hadn’t expected her for another hour and a half. If she saw them from down the road she didn’t spare them a glance as she unlocked the door and disappeared inside, but seeing her in this context did remind Mitch that, should he decide to actually do the right thing for once, there would have to be yet another discussion about this shit storm with her, including a very fuckin’ important conversation about how to take care of Bud in his absence that he did not expect to be well received.

“Well, you ain’t gonna go, are ya?” Scratch was looking at Mitch like he was thinking of leaving her in a box outside the fire station. Mitch took a swig of his beer and ran a hand through his hair. Christ, when she looked at him like that it made him feel like dog shit, and he hadn't even done anything wrong yet.

“I don’t fuckin’ know yet, alright? I just had that shit sprung on me not thirty minutes ago. I haven’t had time to consider what’d be worse: failing or becomin’ a boy scout.”

“Cliff’ll sell you the weed to put in your cookies, huh Cliff?” Javier joked. Scratch cackled like a cicada.

“That’s girl scouts, Bozo.”

Cliff belched. “I ain’t got the supply right now, so it don’t matter either way. I can give ya some a’ that skunk as a cheaper alternative, but ain’t nobody in their right mind gonna eat that shit,” he assured, wagging his head.

“What the fuck, Cliff! I just bought some off you yesterday. How can you be out?” Scratch hollered.

Cliff, for all he was blind as a goddamn sheepdog, looked over indignantly and tapped the ash off his cigarette.

“That there was a portion of my personal stash you insatiable pest. And I done smoked everything I had left. That makes you the oonnnly one of us,” he gestured around the circle with hand covered in motor oil, “with any grass. So when you blow through it don’t come cryin’ to me.” He started to put his cigarette back in. “Or go riflin’ through my truck. I got about as much weed on me as a fuckin’ minister.”

Scratch had the good graces to look penitent as only Cliff could get her to do. Sometimes Mitch was amazed by it. By all appearances, Scratch was half-feral. They had once watched her chase a squirrel straight up a tree. But--and this was a truth they all knew by now--she wasn’t. She was a person. A fuckin’ maniac, but a person. And she and Cliff seemed to have what Mitch and Javier had--a kind of magnetism for one another in particular.

“Y’know…now that you mention this absurd thing…” Javier blurted, veering them back on track. “I remember seein’ a sign on the wall about this shit. Buncha alabaster bitches in matching shorts, lookin’ like a motherfuckin’ Jesus cult.” His brows went up to his hairline. He jabbed a finger. “I had a cousin who went to a fuckin’ church camp where some shit like that was goin’ on. You get there and somebody addresses you as ‘my brother in Christ,’ you yell Hail Satan immediately.”

“Better yet, just keep your hand on your cock the whole time. Nobody will even approach you that way,” Scratch advised. Mitch squinted at her, figuring he could just walk on all fours while foamin’ at the mouth and get the same results. It seemed to do the trick for her.

Oh my fuckin’ god…

Mitch leaned his head back out of sheer overwhelm and ground his palms into his eyes, careful with his cigarette. These fuckers were bringin’ up a lot of angles he hadn’t thought of. Like the fact that he stood a good chance of being completely out numbered by nerds he couldn’t even remotely assimilate with. Dorks who’d have to bust out the inhaler if he even cussed once. He might be able to put up with someone who was willing to try smoking for the first time, or at least be bullied into not rattin’ him out if he lit up.

“What the fuck am I gonna do?” he said, finally breaking down. “I know this is my fault ‘n shit, but this is bad. Real bad. No fuckin’ weed, no beer, prob’ly won’t get away with smokin’, fuckin’…nerd infestation, you guys’ll be three hours away…”

“Nah, Boss. It’ll be me ‘n you. I gotta go, too.”

Dead silence stepped in. Three pairs of eyes turned to stare. Mitch’s beer was halfway to his mouth. If Cliff noticed he seemed to have caused an awkward silence, he didn’t let on, but who knew what Cliff was thinking ever? He set his beer can on the grass by his chair and casually started to tap another cigarette out of its box to light up. Javier jerked his own out from between his lips.

“Excuse me!” Cliff finally looked up. “We been chillin’ here all this time and you didn’t think that might be important to mention before now? How long have you known this?”

He shrugged. “Two ‘r three days, I guess.”

“Two or thr--Were you gonna say anything?!”

Cliff shrugged. “Wasn’t sure if I was gonna go ‘r not. But my uncle started lecturin’ me about how I got a chance ta improve the future ‘a this lineage or some shit. Says if I git a high school diploma that’ll be a degree more’n he’s got, an’ his ol’ man before him.” His hands flopped over, open-palmed. “What the hell I need to graduate high school for? I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I can just about rebuild a engine from the ground up, an’ I figure that’s what I’ll make a good livin’ doin’.”

A devastated gasp rent the air, scaring everybody.

“Clifff!!” Scratch shrieked. She slunked out of her bean bag and scuttled over on all fours, putting her hands on his knees like a beggar. “No! Not you, too! What’re me and Javi gonna do all summer without you guys?”

“Why am I not enough?” Javi begged, feigning hurt. She whipped around, looking sorry.

“Oh, c’mon, Javi. You know what I mean. You know it’s gonna suck ass, same as I do.” That said, she turned her attention back to Cliff at whose feet she knelt like a worshipper at an idol. She perched her chin on the hand covering his knee and gave him the eyes. “Cliff, my dad’s on the verge of makin’ me get a job this summer. And if he sees me bummin’ around too much that’s what he’s gonna do! I need you here to keep me unemployed. You understand?!”

Cliff sighed, planting a hand on top of her head affectionately. “Kid, I git it, but it’s like we said. It’s a choice, but it ain’t. God knows I don’t wanna go anymore’n Mitch does, an’ boohooin’ at my feet ain’t makin’ it any easier for me. Now go sit down so I can think rational.”

Dismissed, Scratch crawled back over to what was essentially a dog bed and shriveled up in disappointment.

The spirit of the circle began to flag as they each retreated to the bleakness of their own private thoughts. A few of Cliff’s dogs came around the trailer and took an interest in their presence, ignorant of the heavy as shit cloud of turmoil hangin’ over their heads. Gretchen, Mitch’s secret favorite of the pack (because seven dogs was a pack) came right over to him, ears smoothed back and eyes squinting to show her interest in affection. She wedged her pointy head between Mitch’ s knees, tail walloping his legs. He took her sweetheart face in his hands and squished it, scratching behind her ears and patted that spot on her rump that was heaven to pat. She was the sweetest of the dogs and paid for it by getting pushed around and bullied out of her food if Cliff wasn’t watchful. To make up for it, she was the only dog allowed in the house. She was a licker. Sometimes she would lick Mitch’s hand until it felt like the flesh was pulling off, which was what she started to do when he guided her head away. “Go on ya weirdo. That’s my smokin’ hand.”

Bang!

Mitch and everybody jumped like a motherfucker when the door to Cliff’s trailer blew open, smacking against the siding. His uncle stood in the door way, pouring sweat like a shower and wide-eyed as a lunatic. He took one look at their little get-together and the dogs spread out over the lawn and that was it. Stepping down, he pointed in turns at Cliff and the dogs and each of them and a tire by the door, huffing air.

“What the hell’re the dogs out for?” he shouted like Cliff was down the road and not ten feet away.

“Hell, I don’t know. They--”

“Git ‘em back in the yard!” He leaned forward, eyes so wide you could see the whites all around them, and licked the sweat off his upper lip. One finger twirled in their direction. “An’ break this ‘Luminati shit up right this minute! They can sense that. Yer markin’ us for a visitation. You cain’t be sittin’ around in no circles. What you want the neighbors ta think of us?”

“I want ‘em to think you ain’t related to me,” Cliff mumbled, getting to his feet. There wasn’t any arguing with him, so one by one they started dumping their beers and tossing the cans in the bin, trying to avoid eye contact until Cliff’s uncle retreated into the trailer still bellowing nonsense. Javier took off with his shitty office chair scraping along the road back in the direction of his house. Mitch would text him later about all of this, maybe.

Scratch got to her feet and went to grab her beanbag to head off when Cliff grabbed her by the upper arm, hauling her to him. It was rough, and Mitch stood there watching for a second, his own chair under his arm.

“Now look. If I do happen ta be gone, I don’t want you comin’ around here by yerself,” Cliff warned, pitching his voice low. The cigarette between his lips twitched as he spoke. “He gits fucked up on them pill an’ he don’t know what’s real. And when he’s sober he’s a nasty ol’ pervert. He’ll stare at yer tits till they catch on fire. That’s why all his girlfriends been flat chested. I’m gonna leave my bedroom winduh unlocked, case you need the bathroom, but don’t go in there unless you see him leave, and be outta there ‘fore he comes back.”

“Okay. Shit.” She made no move to jerk away, but massaged her arm when he did finally let go. She frowned at the ground. “I’ll get a job this summer. Pay you back all the money I owe you for weed.”

Cliff slung an arm around her shoulders. “Good girl. Keep yer ass outta trouble. If we don’t end up goin’, we can git in allll the trouble you want.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- --

Getting up for school the next day was no trouble at all because Mitch was wired like a car battery. He got out of bed before the sun was up and took an honest to god shower, cheap soap and shampoo and all. Bushed his teeth and flossed! He slathered on a little cologne, but not enough to smell like a tool, and greased a little product through his hair to polish over the worst of himself. Standing in front of the bathroom mirror, he took a gander at his clothes and sighed. Nothin’ could be done for them. They were clean and that was as good as it was going to get.

There was less than a week of school left and he was going to start attempting to approach Joey today. That way, if he turned chickenshit the first time, it’d be fine. And he fully expected to turn chickenshit. Jesus almighty, this kid really didn’t know the power he had over Mitch. Joey had the power to keep him awake all night, make him floss, make him worry about his fuckin’ looks for Christ’s sake. That was too much power for one man.

He played with the idea of making a packet of oatmeal to weigh down his jittery frame, but he wasn’t a fan of carrying stuff around in his stomach when he felt like this, and there’d be no purging these next few days--none. So he had to be judicious about what went in there. But he did make some coffee and doctored it up the way he liked, dark with no sugar and a couple dollops of creamer. The act was grounding, making time move slower somehow.

When they piled into Scratch’s car, Mitch wished he had a car of his own. He didn’t want the company just yet. His head was full of what-ifs and worst-case scenarios that played in reels, one after another. Scratch was just shy of a zombie in the mornings and used all of her barely alive faculties to focus on getting them through the busiest part of town. Cliff was Cliff at all hours of the day and night--saying something when something needed said, neither tired nor awake, unaffected by caffeine whatsoever. It was Javier who took up sound space. He messed with the radio now and then, gabbing to the cab at large about whatever was on his mind, flicking ash out the window and sharing his coffee with Scratch when she reached out imploringly.

Mitch had decided not to tell the others, even Javi, about what he planned to do today. That way, if the shit hit the fan, he could limp home and no one would even know he was injured. He could pretend nothing had happened. Only Joey would know--and Joey’s sister, probably, and those other two dorks he hung around. But Mitch didn’t plan to tell a soul.

They walked across the lawn and into the school as a unit, but in the main hall they scattered. Cliff went to Jeff’s first class across on the far side of the building and Javi cut a path to the bathroom to pay recompense after all the coffee. Scratch bumped into Mitch’s waist, her version of a parting hug, and left for her English lit. class.

And Mitch was left alone. Seconds ticked by and he just stood there, watching people weave in and out of each other. Whatever baggage he normally showed up with containing all his anger and misanthropy and unprovoked aggression, he hadn’t brought it. He didn’t try to menace passers-by or shoulder-check anyone. He hoped to god that nobody got it in their head to start any shit with him until was he was fixed because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to rally to it or not. He felt naked and unarmed and a little afraid.

A girl walked by and caught him on the arm with her shoulder. An accident. When she turned and saw who it was, her eyes bloomed. “I’m sorry,” she said, like Mitch might take it out of her hide.

“’S alright.”

She left without hearing him. Limited to minimal brain functions at the moment, he scoured the dwindling number of people scurrying all over the place a second time.

They didn’t know. They didn’t know that today was the day that someone was going to serve Mitch Mueller a fat fuckin’ slice of humble pie.

He did the only thing that made sense then. He shambled off to his history class, quiet as you fuckin’ please. By the clock, he was a little late, but he wasn’t even the last one with his ass in a seat so that had to be some kind of triumph. The teacher was already scribblin’ shit on the board and instead of face planting on the desk like he normally did, Mitch dug the textbook out from the shelf under his desk and went to the page written. He didn’t read it, though. He wasn’t that far gone.

“’Kay, people. This is an easy-peasy worksheet day,” the teacher announced, crossing Ts and dotting Is. “I know it’s the end and nobody has the will to live anymore so I’m gonna pas--” She caught sight of Mitch, whose face probably resembled a stranger’s given how infrequently he was upright in his chair. “Uhhhh, I’m…passing out a simple fill in the blank sheet. Chapters eighteen through twenty-one. You know what to do. Take care of yourselves.”

Mitch left that class having turned in some bullshit. But he’d turned it in, and every blank had bullshit in it, some of which might have been right. He’d had to borrow a pencil from the little guy who sat on his left, and he had handed it over like Mitch had had him at gunpoint, even though he had been cordial, and ran off before Mitch could give it back.

The day barreled on. Mitch attended his second and third classes; made himself sit up and look forward and write on paper with the gifted pencil he was careful not to lose. He came and went from bathrooms with people still trippin’ over themselves to get out of his way. At lunch he got a tray for maybe his third time since middle school and ate exactly three pickles off his burger and all the tomatoes from the salad and half the shitty unsalted french fries. All the while Javier was eyeing him like he knew something was up, because Mitch didn’t get trays and he sure as hell didn’t eat off of them.

At PE he jogged in a loop with everyone else to the sound of Creedance Clearwater Revival blasting out the boombox on the bleachers. There was a hiccup in their rhythm and when the kid pacing him got his feet tangled up and started to go down, Mitch caught all ninety pounds of him by the back of the gym uniform and hauled him upright before he could eat waxed wood.

And Jonas was there to see exactly none of it. Zero points earned.

They shared a free period, though, he and Joey. And that was the time to make his move. The cigarettes in his pocket sang him a siren song, but Mitch wouldn’t even slip outside for air at the risk of indulging. That cologne was twelve bucks, and he hadn’t used three dollars worth this morning just to end up smelling like an ash tray by one o’clock. No. He hid in the bathroom with a view of Joey’s locker and pretended to be on his phone if someone walked in. And every few seconds he cracked the door and peeped out like a total creep. Ten minutes passed with Mitch stationed just inside the door, scaring the shit out of anyone who walked in and rehearsing what he’d say when Jonas appeared.

Uh, Spots Joey…listen, I know I’ve been an asshole an’ I don’t even deserve ta be standin’ here in front of you right now, but I just wanted to--

Yer not even sellin’ it, man.

Joey, please--please don’t go! I ain’t gonna hurtcha, promise. Listen...I don’t wanna--

An’ he kicks ya right in the balls to escape.

Jonas…I don’t wanna be yer bad guy anymore. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to make up for it. I’ll get down on my knees if ya want. I wanna be the reason you come to school every day. I wanna be the reason you laugh. I wanna be--

He'd lost track of time daydreaming, forgetting he was supposed to be keeping watch for the reason he came to school.

Mitch reached to ease the door open, but before he could even touch it some asshole swept in, doing it for him. Whoever it was passed under his nose unnoticed because when Mitch looked up, there Joey was, shoving stuff into his locker, yellow snapback on backwards, sleeves rolled up, a vision in blue, ass on point.

Before he could give the command, he was gliding out of his hiding spot into the open air of the hallway where he stood out like a fuckin’ six foot four neon sign that, were Joey to turn around, would flash warning, warning, warning. Joey grew closer an inch at a time as Mitch was helpless to stop himself shambling forward. His heart had never beat so hard in his life. It shook his hands and made his head swim. Suddenly he couldn’t remember a single scripted line or contingency plan if Joey tried to get away. Nothing. He had jack shit.

Empty-handed, Jonas shrugged off his backpack and wedged it into the locker to hang on the center hook. His hat came off next and went in with it. A piece of paper had been floppin’ around in his hand through all of this, smacking against the side of the locker and generally getting bent all to hell like it didn’t mean a thing in the world to him.

And then Mitch had to stop walking because he was there, two feet away, close enough to smell the guy. His mouth opened to god knew what utterances. He peered down over Joey’s shoulder and choked.

The paper in Joey’s hand wasn’t some piece of trash homework--it was a flyer. The same one Mitch had. And there was a check attached.

A glimpse was all Mitch got before Joey slammed his locker shut and strode off, totally ignorant of the emotional wreck standing behind him. Mitch’s eyes followed him every step, but he couldn’t even swallow, let alone pursue him. Jilted out of his hard-earned redemption, a liquid despair coated his throat. Fuckin’ come on! I’m tryin’ to atone here.

But the old cogs fired up and the big picture was starting to make sense. If he was looking at this right, if Joey really was going to this thing too, he didn’t have a few days to turn Joey’s opinion of him around, he had all summer. A whole extra two months.

Still fucked up and reeling from the almost-encounter and the revelation and what it meant, Mitch collapsed on his back against Joey’s locker and fished his phone out. He scrolled as fast as his eyes could read through his contacts until he found Cliff’s number.

Mitch

Were on 4 loser camp

Chapter Text

Few mornings in Jonas’s life had been as grim as the morning of the second day after school let out. At eight sharp, Dean bellowed the time up the stairs as if Jonas wasn’t fully aware and ahead of schedule. Two duffel bags and a backpack stood by the door of his room like security hired to make sure he left peacefully. When Dean shouted, Jonas had been perusing his book collection for a novel to bring along, but grabbed one at random to skirt being warned a second time. He shoved it into his backpack before shouldering it and taking each of his other bags in hand.

The house was deathly quiet, as most of the kids were still asleep, although a few must have been awake because he could hear the tin can sound of cartoons funneling in from the den. When Jonas entered the kitchen, a pall cast itself over the room. Sue was stirring oatmeal on the stove; Sidney was working on a plate of toast and jam; Dean was in his uniform and standing by the door like he was there with a warrant for Jonas’s arrest. All of them turned to look at him.

“Lewis’s dad is outside,” Dean stated. “Can you handle getting all of that in yourself?” That was all the farewell he was going to get from Dean: a barely concealed criticism that he’d kept someone waiting, and a prompt to get out of their sight as soon as possible. Dean wasn’t even going to see Jonas off by walking to the car with him. He was ready to shut the door on him the second his feet were on the mat.

“Well, I got it down the stairs, so…” There. A little sass to remember him by.

Without waiting to see what it got him, Jonas passed into the entrance hall toward the front door. At least he’d be outside soon, where maybe a bird would chirp or an icecream truck would roll by and impart some cheer on an already bleak start to his day. As badly as Jonas didn’t want to go, he couldn’t stand to be in here anymore, breathing an atmosphere that had spent all night souring. It was cold enough inside to put his jacket on in here, and it felt like someone else’s house.

“Wait, Jojo.” Sidney’s chair scrapped against the floor in her rush to get up. Without the countering effect of a bag on each shoulder Jonas would have toppled with the force of her embrace. The grip around his neck was as tight as she knew he could tolerate. He had a face full of her coconut scented hair. “Call me. Send me a picture of Lewis breaking a sweat if you can catch him at it.”

Jonas laughed, sending hair flying away from his nose. “Why don’t I just bring you back some leprechaun gold or something easier to come by?”

“Jonas…” At the depth in Dean’s voice, Sidney released him at once, giving his hand one final squeeze. “They’re waiting.”

Remembering what he’d wished for so badly last night, Jonas heard the ghost of Mitch Mueller’s voice in his head. Oh, they’re waitin’? That’s a real kick in the dick. They can keep waitin’.

Jonas didn’t say goodbye to Sue, or any of the kids in the other room, and sure as heck not to Dean standing there with his arms folded. He waved a final goodbye to Sid and shut the door behind him, wondering what Dean would have done if he had even attempted to say something like that since he had already paid for Jonas to go.

Lewis was waiting by the back of the car where the trunk stood open. Neither of them spoke as they loaded Jonas’s stuff on top of Lewis’s. He had been wrong: there were no chirping birds or giggling babies or anything remotely wholesome out here to supplement the warmth he had lost in the house. The sky was gray with the threat of impending rain, and he and Lewis were like two pallbearers loading a casket into a hearse. 

“Good morning, Jonas,” Lewis’s dad greeted brightly the moment Jonas slid his butt into the back seat beside his friend. That wasn’t the kind of uplifting he wanted.

“Morning,” he deadpanned.

“Are you guys ready? This ought to be a pretty cool thing. Kind of like summer camp.” They pulled away from the house and took off down the street. The moment the car accelerated, carrying Jonas further away from his house, and subsequently, the summer that was rightfully his, he felt what was left of his resolve succumb to death utterly.

“Summer camps are for twelve year olds,” Lewis replied in what Jonas privately thought was the most attitude he had ever seen Lewis give an adult. But he didn’t disagree.

“Well, that can’t be true because this one is for high schoolers.” Lewis’s dad was biting down on whatever clap back he would have liked to give due to Jonas’s presence in the car. Jonas rolled his eyes. At this point, the last thing he needed was to be trapped in a car with familial animosity while he was still choking on the toxic fumes from his own household. “It’s not like you’re going to be at the school. Hopefully you learn a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t get to learn otherwise. And if you don’t…well, at least you got to have fun in a new environment. Kind of like a vacation.”

“What if I don’t learn anything or have fun?”

“Lewis…” Jonas pleaded in a whisper.

“Well, then that’s on you,” Lewis’s dad barked, finally losing it. He cast several glances in the rear view mirror. “This is for your own good. And I’m sure Jonas’s dad would agree. You guys spend too much time goofing around in your rooms and not enough time out in the world. You’re going to end up with no sense of belonging when you realize you can’t do what other guys can.”

“Did you know I built the computer that’s in my room?” Lewis turned to lock eyes with the his dad’s reflection. “Can you do that?”

“Lewis. Just…let it go. We’re almost there. It doesn’t matter anymore.” Jonas never liked to be the voice of reason, especially between a friend and their parent. He had never seen that look on Lewis’s face before: the look of betrayal and honest, unbridled anger. He didn’t know what to do except be a pacifist, even if Lewis was right. Even if Jonas wanted to punch Lewis’s dad in the mouth.

Dead silence lapsed, broken only by the sound of Lewis’s dad slapping the turn signal on with more force than necessary. Lewis returned to staring out the window; Jonas took off his cap and rubbed at some random discolorations. Was this what they were going to return to? Resentment and hurt feelings? he  didn’t see any way around it. Even if this stupid summer camp thing turned out to be not so bad--they hadn’t been asked if they wanted to go, and their self-worth had been bruised. Dean couldn’t un-imply that Jonas was a fat lay-about, and Lewis’s dad couldn’t erase what he had just insinuated.

When the school came into view Jonas was almost relieved. They whipped into the parking lot practically on two wheels and swerved recklessly into the first empty spot.

“Alright. Unload,” Lewis’s dad announced, throwing the car in park.

A school bus was parked a few yards away with several people lined up to board. Dread pooled in Jonas’s stomach, making it cramp up. It wasn’t that he was afraid of new experiences, or even of meeting new people, which he needed to do more of. But he felt so ill-prepared for this that he would have rather camped out in a public restroom than get on that bus. The only thing keeping him from all out fear was Lewis’s sulking presence right beside him--his partner in misery.

Loaded down with the weight of their luggage, Jonas and Lewis trudged toward the bus like they were working against gravity. Apparently they were a few minutes late, even though the docket had stated the bus would not depart until nine o’clock. Lewis had not said goodbye to his dad, much as Jonas hadn’t to Dean. Upon their return, Jonas would rather have to walk home carrying every freaking bit of his luggage than endure a car ride like that again.

“Sorry.”

He looked over at Lewis, surprised. “What for?”

“For being a jerk. Just…he thinks he can go to bed and everything will be fine the next day if he acts like it is. ”

“Tch. Not Dean. He wakes up and dares you to go on being mad about it.”

Jonas saw Lewis look at him from the corner of his eye. “You think our dads have been talking about us?”

“Dude, I know they have,” Jonas exclaimed. “How else do you think we both managed to end up here?”

They had to stop talking when the growl of the idling engine became too loud at their approach. The signature stench of school bus fuel and leather was making Jonas feel sick in a way it didn’t normally. It was extra strong and the engine was extra loud and the steps were extra tall. He had to grip the rail for dear life with his bags dragging him backward as he high-stepped up each one. The bus driver was a lady he recognized from the regular school routes. She was as brown and leathery as a Galapagos tortoise, like she had spent too much time in the sun her whole life, and wore lots of folksy beaded jewelry. She didn’t spare anyone passing by a glance, probably as bummed out to be hauling kids in the summer as they were to be there.

Once Jonas was able to see around Lewis’s ginger plumage he was shocked by an immediately noticeable common denominator that everyone there shared: There was not a single girl on this bus.

Lewis screwed his head around to whisper low over his shoulder. “Are you noticing what I’m noticing?”

“Yeah, no girls?” 

“No. Dude, look around. This looks like a freaking prison bus.”

Jonas thought he had been looking around, but on closer inspection, Lewis was right. Excluding Lewis and himself, there was a grand total of about five people on the bus Jonas would feel comfortable sitting beside. And the rest of that percentage consisted purely of people who stood a serious chance of actually being on a prison bus one day. Since the people in front of them were taking their sweet freaking time choosing their seats, Jonas had time to get a good look at who he would be sharing this--the worse summer of his life. He saw four or five wresting team meatheads with whom Jonas had had some…shall we say strained encounters involving Jonas being cornered once in a bathroom and several times in the boys’ locker room. Oh, god, there was Jeremy Whitten, spoiled rotten whitebread punk who had once pushed Jonas down a flight of stairs on “accident.” His wrist still twinged now and again from that one. And coming up on his right were a couple of greasy skater junkies that Jonas distinctly remembered seeing at the skate park once, and turned his butt right around and went back home.

The guys holding up the bus over where to sit finally slid out of the way and Lewis promptly stopped dead in his tracks, causing Jonas to collide face first with his back. Irritated after this morning’s shitshow, Jonas leaned around him to lay into him face to face and immediately solved the mystery of why they had stopped.

There, near the back of the bus on the left, staring them down without a flicker of amusement, sat Mitch Mueller and one of his no account friends.

Jonas’s heart started a manic rhythm in his chest. Every other muscle-headed jerk and wannabe thug paled to nonexistence around him. Distantly, he realized he had a stranglehold on the back of Lewis’s shirt, but had lost all control over his faculties and couldn’t let go.

He saw Mitch and Mitch saw him, and Jonas locked up in some form of fear induced hypnosis.

But Mitch didn’t seem all that surprised to see him.

“Sit the hell down already!” the driver shouted, breaking the spell and sending Lewis and Jonas scrambling into the nearest empty seat. Jonas shouldered in last, panting like he’d run there. Their bags ended up wherever they could be crammed easiest and quickest: underfoot, between legs, in laps.

“Lewis!” he whispered, looking at his friend in desperation. “Lewis, nononononono--”

“There is no god,” Lewis said, staring straight ahead.

Jonas doubted very much there was a god anyway, but in his mind, this proved that something big and cosmic hated him intelligently. He pressed his backpack and head into the seat and smashed his hands over his eyes, willing it all to be a hideous dream. Of all the people on earth!

“What am I gonna do?” he whispered. “This summer was going to be bad enough without him. Now I have to watch my back and there’s no principal or detention for him to be put in or anything!”

“Maybe they’ll keep us all too busy for him to get to you….Or me,” Lewis squeaked. Lewis was never an outright target of Mitch himself, but he’d been cornered plenty of times simply by proxy of being next to Jonas at the wrong time.

“Yeah. That’s what the school was supposed to do.” The school hadn’t done a good job of intervening on Jonas’s behalf, aside from throwing Mitch in detention from time to time and pulling him into the office. But it was enough, sometimes, for him to slip away until next time. Jonas felt chills sheet his skin. He was going to be so far away from everyone who could help, so far away from home--with Mitch. And bless Lewis’s heart, but the kid couldn’t help him outside of moral support. He was made of noodles, just like Jonas. “It was bad enough Jeremy Whitten’s here. This is worse, though!”

“I dunno, Jonas. Didn’t that guy almost break your wrist pushing you down the stairs once?”

“Yeah, and Mitch went to jail for a stabbing.” He leaned into Lewis’s face. “Stabbing!”

“Okay! Jesus, I get it.”

They took a breather from the subject, pulling apart to struggle out of their backpacks. The repeated whir of the engine was starting to grate on Jonas’s nerve. He kept catching himself clenching his jaw. It was nine on the dot according to his watch; why weren’t they going anywhere yet? God, Dean had really thrown him into a lion’s den here. All around him he could hear the dopey hyena sound of multiple jerks laughing at god knew what, and it put him on edge. Among them he could hear the pitchy, privileged cackle that foretold of Jeremy somewhere in the vicinity. In his absolute freaking meltdown over Mitch, he had forgotten about the others. Jonas and Lewis stood a very good chance of being victimized by any one of these guys, particularly Jeremy, who took a very hands on approach to his torment. Mitch wasn’t the only problem Jonas had, it seemed. Jeremy Whitten was like Neil Beckham--he was no Mitch Mueller, but he wasn’t nothing either.

I don’t know who’s scarier--self-assured white boy with no sense of consequence, or thug with a rap sheet.

Right on cue, something bounced off the back of Jonas’s head. Lewis heard it and looked over at him in horror. His heart stuttered. Oh, crap. Not now, not yet.

“Hey, Freckles. You ready for sleep away camp?” Jonas’s heart plummeted at the sound of Jeremy Whitten’s mild lisp addressing him, and an echo of snickers around it like the chorus of demons you hear when you fall into Hell. A few people in front of them turned around to look. “Got your little knappy sack… I see you brought your ginger friend to have your first queer experience with.”

Beside him, Lewis’s whole body tensed, so now they were both made of stone. Jonas stared at the back of the seat in front of him, willing himself not to cry. They hadn’t even left the parking lot yet and he was getting bullied. He wished Dean were here to see this so he could scream ‘I told you so!’ right in his face.

“You’re on the wrong bus, Freckles. Fat camp boards tomorrow.”

Jonas’s heart was pounding in his throat. Beside him, Lewis’s hands shredded his jacket. “And this is the bus to conversion camp so what the hell are you doing here?” Jonas fired back.

A moment of silence stepped in as everyone held their breath, waiting to see what Jeremy would do about being talked back to. Someone let out a wheeze of laughter. Lewis was staring at the side of his face like Jonas had gone insane. But far from it. It didn’t matter whether he stood up for himself or not--he got bullied either way. Hiding in the shadows never worked, being quiet never worked, and being nice certainly never worked. Might as well take a piece for himself on the way down.

Jonas dared to sneak a look at Jeremy. The cogs were turning fast and hard behind that vein sticking out in his forehead. He looked like he wanted to slap Jonas in the face. “I wonder if you could say that face to face with me standing up,” he said, sibilant Ss and all. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that fat little weirdo nerds like you are smart enough to talk themselves into some shit, but too gay to fight their way out of it.”

Without missing a beat, and not knowing where this was coming from, Jonas said, “Well at least you learned one thing.”

Jeremy shot up out of his seat like it was on fire. “Let me up,” he said, swatting and kicking at the guy who had him trapped. “Let me out. I’m gonna show him.”

Jonas’s heart was rabbiting now. His lungs could barely keep up. He felt Lewis grab a hold of his sleeve as they both watched Jeremy fighting tooth and nail to get to him over laps and luggage. Suddenly all of the logic that had carried him through bravado before fell apart and he couldn’t for the life of him understand why he had done that. There was nothing stopping Jeremy from beating him half to death right where he sat. Nothing. Dean wouldn’t let him come home just because he got a call that Jonas had been pummeled. He was going to arrive at this place unconscious on day one.

“Sit the fuck down!”

Jonas and Lewis jolted like they’d been hit with lightning, shoulders up around their ears. The whole bus shut up at once. Mitch’s voice, rougher and deeper, was not a voice you ignored--not when it sounded like that. Even the bus driver was watching in the rear view now.

Yep, thug with a rap sheet. Thug with a rap sheet is scarier.

“Tired a’ hearin’ yer snake-ass voice. Start up again an’ this’ll be the bus to the fuckin’ hospital.”

A few people ooh-ed, but nobody offered any lip in return. More than anything Jonas wanted to turn around and assess, but didn’t want to risk making eye contact with either of them. The silence was golden, even if it had come at the cost of conflict centered around him, and for the first time in his life, Jonas was just the tiniest big grateful for Mitch’s uninhibited mouth.

“What’d I tell you?” Lewis hissed in his ear, no more breath than Jonas had. “Prison bus.”

-- -- -- -- -- --

The night before Mitch was due to leave, he tackled the one thing that made him nervous--and there wasn’t a lot on earth that made Mitch Mueller nervous.

All his clothes were laid out on the bed (only not so much laid out as sorted into piles)--like, all his clothes, since there wasn’t much to his wardrobe. Two months was a hell of a long time; he’d probably need it all at some point, right? And he could stand there starin’ at it all night with his hands on his hips, putting off what he had to do next, or he could rip it off.

Buddy hobbled out from under the bed, crunching over a pop tart wrapper right under Mitch’s nose, like all this thinking about him had woken him up and drawn him out. Mitch sighed and bent over, scooping him into his arms. The thing had gotten heavier over the years, and fuck, uglier, but in a way that endeared Mitch to him. He’d die for him, and that’s why this next order of business was so important.

With rat-thing in hand, Mitch walked out of his room and found his aunt--shocker, right where she was every night--sitting on her ass in the living room. Channels flew by on the screen so fast it threw police lights across the walls.

“Listen, I need a favor while I’m gone,” he explained, trying his best to sound neutral, even sincere.

She turned and looked at him like she’d never seen him in the house before. “A favor?” She took a pull of her cigarette and Mitch felt the coming difficulty in his bones. “Well, I can tell you right now, it better not have anything to do with lettin’ any of those weirdos you hang around with into this house while I’m here alone.” She warned, shifting around in her seat. Her perilously loose robe nearly gave Mitch a reason to take his own life. “That Mexican gives me the willies.”

Mitch huffed. Yeah? You should tell him sometime, ‘cause that’s the idea.

“That Mexican don’t want nothin’ to do with you. It’s about Buddy. He can stay in my room with the door shut if ya want, but he’s gotta eat twice a day.”

During this preamble, she had started to groan, rolling her head around in misery. “Oh, Christ, Mitch! You know I hate that thing!”

“But that don’t change the fact that he’s gotta be taken care of, does it?” Mitch rallied. “It’s simple. All ya gotta do is feed ‘im and keep his water bowl full. I keep the dog food in the cabinet over the fridge, but ya gotta make sure the thing shuts good ‘cause he can open those doors. ‘S why I put it way the hell up there. Alright? It’s just like a dog or somethin’.”

“Yeah, there’s a reason I don’t have a dog.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the dune of ash in the tray and groped at her goofy lookin’ curlers. Buddy began his ascent up Mitch’s chest to perch on his shoulder, drawing a look of absolute disgust from his aunt. “And he goes to the bathroom all over the carpet I guess?”

Mitch rolled his eyes. “You think I let my pet shit all over my room?” She threw her hands up. “No. There’s a litter box in there. Just scoop it a few times.”

Inconvenienced, she released a great sigh, making a big to-do with her shoulders and grabbing her glass off the table. She looked at Bud chewin’ something to pieces on his shoulder without an ounce of understanding. Mitch felt the fight slipping out of him until he was standing there, limp-armed and droopy-eyed. This was not something he could fight, or threaten, or punch. This was not something he could bully into going his way. This time, he was at the mercy of another, of the possibility of being hurt. It seemed like he was in danger of being hurt by a lot of things these past few days. His mother’s disappointment, for starters; Jonas’s frigid rejection and eternal departure from his life; the death of his beloved pet at the hands of a drunk old cow. He was juggling knives.

Mitch pulled Buddy down into his arms like a cat. He suddenly felt very young and desperately tired.

“Will ya please just do this?” he practically whimpered, not recognizing the sound of his own voice. “I don’t wanna have ta worry about this, too.”

She wasn’t looking at him anymore, but she muttered something that sounded like the closest thing he was going to get to a yes. He waited until he got back to his room to text Scratch about possibly ducking in his window once in a while to check on him since she loved Bud so much. It would have to do for reassurance.

And the next morning, as he threw the bag containing all his clothes and deodorant and shit into the back of Cliff’s truck, he dumped the issue in the yard and left it there. He’d done his part--bigger fish to fry now. Fish shaped like pretty, tan-skinned, dark-haired boys. Fish shaped like succeeding at basic milestones. He had wanted to drop in and see Javier one last time before he left, but he and Cliff were having to leave earlier than Javier liked to wake up, and Mitch didn’t want their last encounter to me colored with annoyance.

Cliff’s truck was a hunk of shit in a constant state of repairs and rebuilds. It was a white 1970 Ford pick-up with beer-stained burgundy seats and a replacement stereo that only took cassettes. The ash tray was used as much as the original manufacturer of the thing had anticipated and the seat was squishy after nearly 50 years worth of asses. It snarled as it rode and smelled incredible--like gasoline and cigs. Mitch loved it, secretly. But they took Scratch’s car most places instead. It seated all of them, and it could get up to speed if they needed to haul ass. Not to mention half the time they asked, Cliff had the radiator out; the tires off; a new fuel pump waiting.

It was too early to engage in any kind of banter yet, so they smoked and rode in silence with the windows down. He tried to distract himself by taking an inventory of all the shit he’d thought to bring. He had his toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste he’d “borrowed” from his aunt due to his being a curled up husk with nothin’ in it. He had his shampoo and his razor and his aftershave, which was the most extravagant thing he owned. He had his phone and his charger and a chunk of the rainy day fund stashed inside the ceiling tile in the top of his closet--a cool three hundred, now a hundred lighter.

“Aw, ain’t this cute. We gonna get hauled there in yella school bus like a buncha kinee-gardners on a field trip.”

Mitch pulled his face out of the side window and saw the bus like a beacon to all the unfortunate losers cursed to be on it. Cliff parked a few spaces down and they took a second to work up a sweat cranking their windows up manually. There were a number of other cars polka-dotted all around them, but he didn’t spend the brain power cataloging people’s cars unless their particular car needed piss on the handle.

“You sure you wanna do this? It ain’t too late to peel outta here an’ act like we forgot school’s out,” Cliff asked, pausing with a grip on the door lever.

Mitch sighed, looking away. It was his last chance to back out, and it was tempting. But he’d spent all that time sorting out his affairs, and bickered with his aunt about Buddy, and popped a bunch of Pepto over talking to Jonas like a person. And blowing it off was what everyone was expecting him to do.

“Nah. This is gonna be fuckin’ terrible, but…s’not gonna kill me. Maybe I won’t graduate, but the least I can do is make it to senior year and drop out on my own ‘steada having someone else fail me out. Been a victim of circumstance my whole fuckin’ life, but I got a choice now and it ain’t that hard. So I think for once I’ll just suck it up.” Mitch had left out a lot of truths, but for pulling some last second excuse out of his ass, he felt like he could have done worse.

Cliff whistled appreciatively. “Damn. You might could git into Heaven now, I don’t know.”

Mitch’s face split into a real smile for the first time in recent memory. Laughing had this instant anti-gravity effect on his neck and shoulders, making it easier to climb out of the truck and pull his bag out of the bed and do what he’d said: suck it up.

“You don’t gotta stay, though, just ‘cause I am,” he thought to add, shortening his gate to pace alongside his friend. “I just got my reasons, y’know.”

“Same here, Boss. And I ain’t gonna just leave ya here. That’d be tacky.”

The papery old bus driver lady eyed them as they climbed the steps, Mitch bringing up the rear. There were five other guys spread around the place, two of them sitting together and the rest taking up half seats. Mitch recognized a couple of them as individuals that he had, uh…put in a position once or twice. And from the looks on their faces they hadn’t forgotten it. He was used to that reaction by now, even when he wasn’t trying to get it, even when he just wanted to find a seat on a damn bus. Whatever. They could relax because he wasn’t here for them. That shit wasn’t going to be happening.

Cliff led them further back until they were almost riding the rear wheels. They crammed their shit between their feet and sat back to wait. Mitch used the time to chase his out of control imagination down to try and stop it from sending his peace of mind over a fuckin’ cliff. What if he had been mistaken and misread whatever clues had led him to believe Jonas was going to be on this bus? What if he hadn’t been taking a form to the office, and had simply been holding one in his hand? What if he took one look at Mitch sitting there and decided to cut and run? What if he couldn’t fuckin’ pluck up the courage to talk to him and shit the whole summer away being a coward? What if he tried to make contact and the cops were called immediately--

“You okay?” Mitch jerked a little at the intrusion of Cliff’s voice on his pile up of catastrophes. “Yer fidgetin’ over there.”

Mitch looked down to find his own knee jumpin’ up and down, the fuckin’ whistle blower. His hands were trying to strangle each other. “I’m good. Wish we could get this shit on the road, though.”

If they had known people weren’t going to start showing up till fuckin’ fifteen till, they wouldn’t have gotten up when they had and scooted over here so quick. People--mostly boys, Mitch noticed and thought was odd--started showing up in clusters. Idiots, too. Nerds, some of ‘em. A few jackasses came aboard already too loud and keyed up for Mitch’s liking. Who made noise like that before nine?

Assholes who hollered together sat together, apparently, and all the nerds who realized they were out of their element here sat alone, too scared to buddy up. Too scared to look around, too. Mitch watched one of them, a slight kid with soft brown hair and glasses too big not to be funny, pass up seats until it dawned on him how close to Mitch he was. He locked up right there in the aisle, tried to go back, and realized he couldn’t. Seating was too evenly plied with jerks and his bags wouldn’t allow him to turn around. Mitch’s first thought was that it was ridiculous, until remembered that he had done this: surrounded himself with red tape that he couldn’t just take down. Trying hard to come off benign, Mitch averted his eyes, watching the kid dart into a seat two rows up and across the aisle.

Jesus. He really had his work cut out for him with Joey if he was a death threat just sitting there.

When Jonas did rise up those stairs it was in slow motion, like in all those movies where the dreamiest guy of all time walks in. Because that was exactly what was happening. Mitch heard the music of his love for him like it was blasting through the speakers straight into his ears. It was like the first time every time. Blinded and deafened and breathless, Mitch felt like he was high as a kite on drugs. He never knew what to stare at first: the abundance of dark freckles laying across his nose and forehead, begging to be kissed; the dark waves of hair, thick and enticing, swept back in the front by that yellow cap; the totally fuckin’ delicious curvature of his body, full and soft and so goddamn sexy it was a crime. It hadn’t taken Mitch long to figure out that he didn’t know if he had a type or not, because he didn’t want anyone who wasn’t him. He wanted what Jonas had, but would he want it in other people? Jonas was the only Heaven Mitch had ever seen. The only one he believed in. And he wanted to laugh at the irony, because there was no admittance for a sinner like himself to this paradise either.

“Ain’t that the kid yer queer for?” Cliff trumpeted in his ear, surprising Mitch with the fact that he had apparently committed this to memory. He decided to let the terrible fuckin’ choice of wording slide because, yeah, that was the kid, and because he knew the idiot didn’t mean it how it sounded.

“Yeah,” Mitch affirmed stiffly. “Maybe a little louder next time. I don’t think he fuckin’ heard ya.”

As was inevitable, Jonas somehow caught wind of Mitch sitting there and they entered into a full-blown staring contest. Mitch made no attempt to be his asshole self for Jonas, did not laugh or smile or sneer. He simply gave Jonas the time to process that he was here--that they were here together. And Jonas was as devastated as Mitch was thrilled.

What felt like a fuckin’ eternity must have only been so to Jonas, Mitch, and the bus driver, because their private acknowledgement abruptly ended with her shouting at them to plant their butts in a seat and then Mitch only had the back of Joey’s head to contend with.

Well…that had gone over about as well as he’d expected. Joey hadn’t run off the bus--that counted for something.

Cliff gave a hollow huff of a laugh, his tongue like a wad of dip in his cheek. “It allll comes together now, don’t it?”

Mitch shut his eyes. “Christ. Will you just shut up already?”

“What was all that bullshit about takin’ yer future in yer own hands and mannin’ up again? I can’t recall due to the sound ‘a little birds ‘n shit twitterin’ around yer head.” This was Cliff being sore, thank god. He never got too hot about much of anything unless it hit a nerve square on the head. “But really we’re here ‘cause you knew there’d be some piece of ass on this bus.”

Mitch couldn’t muster the heat either, because Cliff wasn’t really that mad and he had sort of been caught in misdirection. “All that stuff before wasn’t a lie,” he interjected, defending his honor just a little. “I didn’t know for sure he was gonna come. I was goin’ off a hunch.”

“Yer a damn ho’s watchu are.”

Mitch choked, but his lips were trying to curl upward. “Wh--the fuck you mean? You see the way he looked at us just now. He wanted to climb out the damn window. I’m ain’t gettin’ anything from him any time soon.”

“That mean you ain’t here to try?”

Mitch’s attention was stolen away by the commotion of something happening up ahead. A bunch of laughter broke out and that dickface of dickfaces Jeremy Whitten was crowin’ like a fuckin’ rooster on coke. It was well that Mitch had looked over, because it was just in time to witness a paper ball sailing through the air and smacking fine-ass Jonas Wagner in the back of the head. Jonas flinched, but didn’t turn around or otherwise acknowledge this crime against him. He was scared, and who wouldn’t be with a bunch of fuckin’ jackals all around?

“You’re on the wrong bus, Freckles. Fat camp boards tomorrow.”

Jeremy Whitten was getting his car pissed on. Mitch would go get Javi and Cliff, and hell, even Scratch, and they’d piss on it until it ate the paint off.

Two things: nobody--absofuckinlutely nobody--made up pet names about Spot’s spots but him, and though Mitch was aware that jokes about Joey’s weight made the rounds, nobody poked fun at it right under his nose.

Remembering what Greene had said about getting arrested for the least bullshit, Mitch kept his ass in his seat and casually observed. And he was glad he did, because the sass that came out of Jonas Wagner’s mouth was golden. Mitch was so proud of him he could hardly breathe. It sounded so natural, so effortless. Why didn’t he sass him that way?

Yeah, let him have it, baby, c’mon.

Cliff wheezed in mirth, unobservant of the silence that had befallen them in the wake of a balls to the wall comment like that. Jeremy looked like he was about to blow a fuckin’ gasket. His face was fever red and his jaw tight as a clamp. Mitch’s whole body was tense at the ready. It was like holding back a racehorse.

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that fat little weirdo nerds like you are smart enough to talk themselves into some shit, but too queer to fight their way out of it,” Jeremy said, clearly wounded on some level. More than just about anything, Mitch wanted to fly out of his seat and find out how queer you had to be to lose. Because he was pretty fuckin’ queer.

“Well, at least you learned one thing.”

Oh, fuck. His favorite nerd was so smart and so sassy. Mitch had never seen this side of him before. Only he didn’t have time to admire it because Jeremy was out of his seat and that, Mitch couldn’t allow.

“Sit the fuck down!” he barked, startling the poor nerd to his left and just about everyone else. Joey and his friend disappeared behind their seat like turtles. Jeremy spun around to glare at him like Mitch wasn’t very familiar with the art of glaring. He invented glaring for fuck’s sake. “Tired ‘a hearin’ yer snake-ass voice. Start up again an’ this’ll be the bus to the fuckin’ hospital.”

The bus driver was watching him, hardly blinking. He had diligently not gotten out of his seat so as not to appear as much of a threat as Jeremy, but he’d lay down the law if he had to.

Jeremy sat back down after a beat of intense staring and everyone gradually relaxed, though the volume never recovered since some of the fun had been killed dead by what was essentially a terf war.

“Alright,” Cliff said quietly once Mitch had sagged against the seat. He was no stranger to the holy wrath Mitch could bring down when his crush’s honor was at stake. “You’re here…he’s here…you’re evil plan’s bein’ hatched. So what now?”

What now. That was a damn good question. Everything Mitch had planned, he had seen through--he was on the bus with Joey. They were going to this thing together. That was as far as he had gotten. His overarching plan remained: to smooth things over with Joey as best he could, and a great fuckin’ start he was off to, wasn’t he? Raising his voice and making threats before the bus left. Every time he did stuff like that he could feel the hole he was in grow a little deeper, and Joey on the surface fade further from view.

Ahead of him, the heads of Jonas and his friend leaned into one anther, twitching with an exchange of whispers. Once or twice, Jonas’s head turned to the side haltingly, but never fully, like he wanted to look at Mitch, but couldn’t bring himself to.

“Workin’ on that as we speak.”

Chapter Text

“Some of you are here because you want to build character. You want to grow your independence, solidify your more fundamental life skills. Maybe you’re here to figure out who you are when you’re not just some kid living in the back of your parents’ house. Maybe you’re here to challenge yourself, or to challenge someone’s perception of you. And some of you are here…because you need the credit to pass.”

After a highly uncomfortable and socially strained three hour bus ride, they had arrived, the last of three shuttles, disembarking like an army of stiff undead with all their belongings. A troop of sporty adults in Underarmour shirts had swarmed them with their clipboards and sunny dispositions, oblivious to the lukewarm reception. After a brief roll call they were herded down into an open clearing. It was a camp, just as promised, surrounded by thick, gargantuan pines and here and there a cabin peeping through the trees. A bald patch of dirt sat at the nucleus of the clearing where a bonfire had burned the grass away forever. And radiating outward from it in all directions were felled logs and picnic tables.

Jonas and Lewis were practically magnetized at the shoulder, walking as a single unit anytime they moved. Without the maze-like interior and tripping hazards of the bus they were hyper-aware of every person standing too close. After that morning’s blowup they made it a point to keep as far away from Jeremy as they could without accidentally backing into Mitch, so it took all four of their eyes to keep equidistant from potential “accidents.”

But now their fearless leader had apparently arrived--some gum-smacking dude-bro in a backwards visor and khaki shorts laden with utility pockets. He wore a maroon T-shirt emblazoned with a Just Do It Nike emblem and as he made semi-circular passes before their gathering, he couldn’t seem to stop scraping his fingers through the dark scruff on his chin. He had not at all sounded pleased that some of them were here for credit alone.

“I’m looking around,” he projected, “and I see people others might call weak, and I see people others might call strong. And I’m here to tell you that not only do those terms make no sense to me, they do not exist within the bounds of this campground. Every one of you has a strength as well as a weakness. Those are things that we possess or do not possess. They are not things that we are.”

Beside him, Lewis let out a huge gust of exhausted air. Jonas didn’t disagree with anything that this guy was saying; that didn’t mean he wanted to stand around and listen to it. Unsolicited advise was usually a lecture, no matter how much sense it made.

“Alright, that’s enough of me preaching. I get on these tirades. You guy’s will just have to shut me down when I start to do that stuff,” he joked. It wasn’t a very clever thing to say; this guy had no idea the kinds of people here who might indulge him. The clipboard he had been toting around finally saw relevance as he started flipping through its papers. “I’m Chris, this is my team of volunteer miracle workers,” he gestured to the group of adults from before, who waved enthusiastically, “and we’re all going to be on this journey together for the summer.”

For the next half hour they listened to a breakdown of what this thing was going to look like. Right away, some very disturbing news that gave Jonas an immediate stomach ache: they were going to be paired off. And though he was no statistician, Jonas could guess with absolute certainty that the odds of he and Lewis being partnered were laughable at best. Lewis was going to be ripped away from Jonas like an organ out of his body and transplanted somewhere else, while he had to learn to adjust to a foreign replacement. Partners were not simply sharing cabins with one another, they were all each other had throughout the summer projects. They would do everything as a team, cook their meals and plan their day and complete assignments. That, Chris explained, was part of independence--doing for yourself, but leaning on others for support.

“Every group has a laptop in their cabin containing all the instructions for everything you’ll need to do. All the information is there. You’ll want to check the email multiple times a day for announcements and messages from me. I’ve been very explicit with instructions in the emails, but of course, if any questions come up, you can email me for clarification. And please don’t take those out of your cabin, okay?”

They got the lowdown on the meal situation; there would be a debit card containing their food fund for two weeks. They had worked out an arrangement with a store across the road to let them set up the card thing, which was exclusive to the program. “It will not buy anything you want it to,” Chris yelled, making sure everyone heard this part. “It will not buy anything that does not meet criteria for nutrition, hygiene, first aid, or household supply, like dish soap and stuff. You’re welcome to use personal funds for anything else.”

“I’ve never cooked anything in my life,” Lewis whispered in Jonas’s ear. “You know I’ve never cracked an egg?”

“I’ll be cooking my own food, thanks,” Jonas replied, thinking how easily he could be poisoned by someone who didn’t know what they were doing. Like Lewis--although he still preferred Lewis as a partner.

“As far as the assignments go…there is no deadline except that it must be done by the time you leave here. All of it. That is how you will be assessed. That’s why, when the email specifies you need to upload the photos to the assignment drives, it’s imperative that you do it. If there’s a sign-in sheet somewhere, it’s imperative that you sign it. That way, if something happens to your project, the proof will be where I need it to be. Otherwise, you can go at your own pace. Assessments will be conducted the day before we leave. I’ll look at your photos to see your progress and come by your cabin to check out the physical stuff.” Chris paused to let the point sink in, smacking his gum into the silence he received and looked between blank faces. “Okay, cool. Cool. So! We move on to…” He spanked his hands together in a rallying clap. “The Rules.”

Groaning rose up the crowd like a smog. Bodies shifted in agitation.

“Yes, rules. Gotta have ‘em. Okay, first off. Participation in all activities is mandatory, except for bonfire nights. Those are optional.” ‘Mandatory activities’ was not a phrase that ever boded well, because mandatory activities were never intellectual; they were always things like sports and PE. They favored a particular sort of person, which Jonas would never be. You hear that Dean?! Never!.

“Second…you must sleep at your own cabin every night. Okay? No sleepovers, no tradesys.”

Someone in the back snickered, and when Jonas turned to look, he saw Jeremy yucking it up with the guy he’d been next to on the bus. He caught Jonas’s eye. “No sleepovers, fag,” he mouthed, wagging his finger discouragingly. What a freaking loser, Jonas thought, turning back around.

Yeah, a freaking loser who could end up being your partner all summer.

“No leaving the camp for any reason, except to go to the store. If you are unaccounted for, I will have no choice but to report you missing. And lastly, There are boats by the dock, but they are for daylight use only. No romantic midnight boat rides. It’s for safety purposes, folks.” Chris must have been prepared for a lackadaisical first day. He didn’t seem fazed by cricket chirps in place of voices, or nodding, or even blinking. “And that’s it! Four simple rules. That’s what we live by. Easy.”

Chris took a second to rearrange the papers on his clipboard and Jonas took advantage of the downtime to get a look at the people here from neighboring school districts. A few girls had come from other schools, but he doubted they’d be paired with any boys. Looking around at the boys he didn’t recognize gave rise to a lump in his throat. They were more or less just like everyone who had come from Sellwood. And there was no telling based on looks alone who was safe to be with an who was actually a total prick. He could be stuck with a Jeremy he didn’t know as easily as the one he did.

“And now for the fun part!” Chris announced, overenthusiastic enough to make up for how much everyone, especially Jonas and Lewis, dreaded this. “I’m going to call your name and then your partner’s name, followed by the cabin you will be staying in, so listen for that number. When all that’s done we’ll do a short meet ‘n greet while we pass out the passcodes to your cabins, which are private by the way,” he said pointedly.

For all Jonas knew, the first couple of names were Uncle Sam and Indiana Jones. He couldn’t hear any name that wasn’t his; he could barely hear anything at all over the way his heart was kicking up in his chest. Beside him, Lewis pressed his shoulder tighter to Jonas’s, through which his own massive inner panic could be felt like static. If he didn’t think anyone would see, he might have squeezed Lewis’s hand he was so wrecked. But all he needed now was for Jeremy Whitten to catch him holding hands with the kid he’d accused Jonas of being gay with. That’d really round his torture here off nicely. So he strangled the straps of his bag instead.

“Eric Selby and Jeremy Whitten. Number eight.”

The demon of panic fled from Jonas’s body, leaving his knees weak and his head light. Immediately, his heart took it down a notch, so that the world no longer throbbed around him. Lewis gave him a wining smile like they’d just won the lottery together.

“Man. I hope whoever that Eric guy is has a cyanide capsule or religion or something,” Lewis remarked, looking in circles for the unfortunate.

“I wished I had one on the bus earlier. And that was my first ten minutes with him.”

“Just in case…do you have religion?”

“No, but don’t tell Dean. Do you?”

“No, but don’t tell Mady. She’s always pulpiteering to me and I don’t want her to know it’s all been a waste.”

This was what he was going to miss: he and Lewis and their back and forth trading of barbs. They had already defied great odds once by being sent here coincidentally, they wouldn’t get it again. First, their summer had been stripped away, and then gifted back to them in the form standing here together, waiting to find out who they’d be spending all summer with instead. Jonas wasn’t just bitter about a couple of months wasted not doing D&D; one day in the not so distant future, before they knew it, he and Lewis would be two emerging adults with separate lives that grew very slowly in opposite directions. They’d get into different colleges and manage keep up while overburdened with work, meeting up when they could and catching up. But they had to get back, they couldn’t stay long. Lewis would be Jonas’s best man at his wedding, which he would take a flight to because he lived out of state. And then it would be the occasional Facebook message and class reunion between kids’ birthdays and career stuff, but they would be different people by then; they wouldn’t really know each other anymore. Until, one day, without realizing it, they would talk to each other for the last time. That was why every second counted right now.

“Mitchell Mueller and Jonas Wagner. Number twelve.”

It came out of nowhere like a harpoon to his liver. The air was knocked out of Jonas’s lungs, which still ached from the doom spiral his thoughts had gone down. Chris said it so easily it was cruel, it was ruthless. Jonas wanted to slam his foot down on some kind of break to stop time, stop everything. He wanted to shout wait, wait, wait! and explain to anyone who would listen why this couldn’t happen.

He and Lewis whipped their heads around to look at one another in absolute horror.

“Oh, holy shit, dude,” was all Lewis could say. He had no jokes. And that made Jonas feel infinitely worse. Against his own wishes he began scanning the surrounding crowd for his newly appointed other half, willing himself not to find him, hoping he’d run off. He’d been so utterly obsessed with the possibility of being Jeremy Whitten’s partner that he had forgotten about the other unthinkable possibility. Things were bad for you if Mitch Mueller dropped off your radar.

But there he was, very clearly not skipping town. And he’d located Jonas first. The size of his eyes said he had been little more prepared to hear this than Jonas had been. His friend was elbowing him in hysterics, making Jonas feel like the butt of a huge joke. But Mitch didn’t seem angry at least.

“Lewis Halls and Clifton Lonnie. Number thirteen.”

They had not yet recovered from the first bomb when the second hit. Lewis grew so pale it looked like he was starting to fade away entirely. He latched onto Jonas roughly. “Who is that? Who the hell is that? Jonas?” But he already knew. They both did. Nobody among the four of them was laughing anymore. The world went on around them like nothing was wrong. People continued getting paired like two lives hadn’t just ended.

Oblivious to the devastation he had caused, Chris was jumping down from the stump he stood on and merging into the student body. “Everybody find your partner. Shake hands, even if you already know them.”

Jonas would rather die on the spot. He looked at Mitch looking at him across the distance between them. How much worse was this summer was going to get if the first day was turning out like this? Unlike he sometimes managed to do at school, Jonas could not run away, could not slip out beneath Mitch’s arm while he wasn’t looking and disappear. Those little encounters had always been brief and fleeting; he’d never been with Mitch for any extended length of time. And now, they’d be alone together, unsupervised, every day and every night for two months. With all that spare time there was no telling what Mitch might do to him.

Jonas licked his parched lips and straightened up. “We have to go over there.”

“No.”

Irritated, because this was perhaps ever harder for him as it was for Lewis, Jonas grabbed a hold of Lewis bag strap and dragged him forward. “Just…come one, man. Let’s get this over with.” Lewis fought him half-heartedly the entire way; it was like pulling a mule, which meant Jonas had to work twice as hard, what with his own hesitancy working against him like gravity. Approaching Mitch was an out of body experience, going against his very nature. The world was shaky around him as if he was watching all this through a video camera instead of his own eyes. Every rock beneath his shoes was a boulder and the crunch of grass was too loud in his ears.

They only stopped when they couldn’t go any further, and stood before their respective partners. In front of him, Mitch towered out of sight. Jonas couldn’t bring himself to look up into his face, and instead watched the front of his worn out black shirt shifting with his breath. Somewhere in the distance, Chris was cruising through the throng, yelling, “Shake hands, shake hands.” And since none of this could end if it didn’t begin, Jonas raised his eyes, dragging them inch by inch, past the graphic that said ‘Two Seater’ with up and down arrows, over a graceful length of neck and into a face he was accustomed to seeing almost exclusively with his back against a wall. He connected with Mitch’s amber eyes and thought he could almost see his own stricken face reflected there.

A hand appeared between them. A big one. “Mitch.”

Jonas glanced between that outstretched hand, with its sculpted, bruised knuckles, and that smarmy grin that put all its teeth on display, and did nothing.

“Shake hands, shake hands.” Chris happened by just in time to see Jonas trying to refuse and looked at him expectantly.

Swallowing his pride and his fear, both of which could choke a horse, Jonas cautiously extended his hand. It slotted into Mitch’s rough palm, dwarfed and ridiculous looking. Now came the part where Mitch rendered that hand so useless that a even a pirate’s hook would serve him better. There was so much power and energetic potential in the hand he was holding that it couldn’t not happen.

But it didn’t. When Mitch’s fingers closed around his like a Venus fly trap, it was painless. In lieu of shake, he gave Jonas’s hand a firm but gentle squeeze. The underlying architecture of veins and tendons slithered beneath the skin in the act.

“You got no idea,” Mitch started, spooking Jonas with the nearness of his rough voice, “how glad I am to see you, Spots. I was worried I’d end up with that cocksucker from the bus.” Predation practically dripped from between his teeth. “We’ll be fine together, though. You an’ me.” He leaned inward, pulling Jonas toward him where he had him prisoner by the hand. “We’re gonna be a lot closer by the end of this. I can feel it.”

Jonas was getting ready to pray. He wanted the earth to crack open under his feet and swallow him whole. Mitch still had him by the hand, and slowly, Jonas began to pull away. Surprisingly, Mitch let him go, easing his grip just enough for Jonas to slip through his fingers. Searing under the stove-hot pressure of Mitch’s undivided attention, Jonas took it upon himself to check on Lewis next to him, if only to put the interaction on pause.

Beside him, Lewis was caught in a vigorous handshake. His green-clad arm wriggled in Cliff’s fist like an eel trying to escape.

“Cliff.”

“...Lewis.” Lewis regained possession of his hand and began rubbing the whiplash out of his wrist.

Though equal in height to Lewis, Cliff stood on his toes to survey Lewis’s mane of hair, which had grown exponentially over the last year, and let out a whistle of appreciation. “You are redder’n the devil’s dick. That yer natural color?”

Mitch snorted with laughter while Lewis and Jonas traded looks that conveyed everything they wanted to say, but couldn’t.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The cabins were spread out over an enormous lakeside property. They were so far separated that even though Cliff and Lewis had started off with them on their way to the cabin succeeding Jonas and Mitch’s, they had not been with them for some time, having diverted farther and farther right to keep on track to it. Until little by little, Jonas was alone with Mitch for the first time. Alone in the wild with his mortal enemy. Jonas feared that Mitch would take immediate advantage of their solitude to pester him violently, but so far they had trudged together in silence. Awkward silence. Everything wrong with their relationship and their circumstances hung in the air between them like a cloud of poison gas. Eventually, their path, worn to visibility by years of traffic in the same two directions, led them into the trees, and they departed from the wide world of the sun, passing through a veil to a darkened under-canopy, hushed and ethereal. The respite from the sun almost drew a groan out of Jonas throat. So many other groans could have come out instead. The groan of bone-heavy fatigue from being weighed down with all his luggage on a footpath in the woods; the groan of mingled dread and relief when their cabin broke into view.

Maybe it was because the trek was nearly over, but suddenly he couldn’t carry his bags the way he had hurriedly arranged them on his body even one more foot. Jonas stopped so short that Mitch with his long gate strolled right past him several feet before he was able to stop. Startled by the sudden change, he looked back at Jonas standing dead on his feet like he’d done a magic act.

“Whassamatter?”

“I gotta…readjust this, hang on,” Jonas panted, pulling tangled straps off one by one. Mitch watched him, brows pinched. Jonas couldn’t tell if he was angry or confused.

“What’d you pack all this shit for?”

Oh, god. Not now. Jonas fumbled with the strap of his duffle bag, which had somehow gotten intertwined with the strap of his backpack. All of it had to come off or none of it would. He slipped the backpack off his shoulders, letting everything fall to the ground. “Well…two months is a long time. And they weren’t very specific about what we were supposed to bring so I just…covered all the bases.”

“Yeah? An’, how many bases ya think there are?” he commented, watching from on high as Jonas knelt in his shadow and unwove all his bag straps. Sweat beaded and rolled down Jonas’s back, not from the heat, but from putting himself in such a vulnerable position with no one around to corroborate his story to the police later.

“At least I won’t have to do laundry as often,” Jonas reasoned.

“Tch,” Mitch scoffed. “Yeah, and the fuckin’ cost is yer anchored to the damn trail and we can’t get to the house.”

Flustered to the point of nausea, Jonas swung his newly freed backpack onto his shoulders and wisely didn’t reply. Years spent in Dean Wagner’s household had taught him the art of tongue biting and he had thereby adopted the philosophy of: if you can avoid an unwinable fight, then duh, do it.

With his backpack in place and one overnight bag hooked over his shoulder, Jonas bent strategically to pick up the other and the first promptly slid to the ground.

“Jesus, gimme some a’ that.” Before Jonas could protest, Mitch had swiped his final bag off the ground like it weighed an ounce and hung it from his shoulder, turning right around and starting down the path for the cabin.

“You don’t have to do that--”

“Well, we’re never gonna get there if I don’t,” he called, never looking back. Jonas watched his form retreat with half his belongings for the summer before he set off, wanting a gap to form between them. Already. They hadn’t even crossed the threshold of their shared living space and already they were at odds.

When Jonas made it to the porch Mitch was standing there like he was waiting for an elevator to arrive. The door had a code box attached and Jonas had the code on the map in his hand, so Mitch had had to wait. “9-1-0-9,” he uttered aloud for Mitch as he punched the numbers into the code box. There was a mechanical whir and the sound of the lock sliding open.

“Holy hell,” Mitch remarked appreciatively as they wandered inside. And Jonas couldn’t help but agree. It wasn’t some dumpy, hollowed out dirt clod that existed as a shelter and nothing more; it was a small house. There was a thirty inch TV in the living room and a window unit AC pumped in cold air. The main room was furnished with a plush sofa and matching armchair in a cozy little arrangement with a coffee table. Everything from the floors to the walls to the hanging clock ran together in a dizzying pattern of wood grain. “Well, it’s already way fuckin’ nicer than my place,” said Mitch, unloading Jonas’s bag from his shoulder and plopping it at Jonas’s feet. “And my aunt ain’t here, so that’s two things it’s got goin’ for it.”

With no idea what to say now that they were somehow even more alone than they had been on the walk over, Jonas stayed quiet, watching as Mitch paced ahead of him and stared between the two doors on their left. He tossed the door to the left-most room open to reveal a bedroom, said, “Dibs,” and shut the door behind him.

The clock ticked on the wall. No sound came from the other side of the door behind which Mitch had disappeared. It was as if he had blipped out of existence. Before he could make a reappearance Jonas made for the door to what he guessed must be the second bedroom and hoped that his roommate wouldn’t get any funny ideas about barging in uninvited. As long as they could have these unencroachable sacred spaces, then maybe, Jonas could get through this.

Shutting the door behind him, he took in the space where he’d be doing the bulk of his crying over the next two months. A firm looking double bed stood front and center, flanked by two end tables with lamps and a closet on the left. A window on the right stared out between trees to the lake, which looked close enough to walk to. All this natural beauty, wasted. The single upside he’d managed to find like a nugget of gold in this situation (Deanlessness), ruined.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

As soon as the door was shut Mitch planted his back against it and cringed into his hands. What the actual fuck are you doing, asshole?! You just treated him like shit. He grit his teeth. His fingers started to curl into his hair line, ready to tear his face off at a moment’s notice. It was like he couldn’t help himself around the kid. As soon as he was standing in front of him all pretenses of friendliness curled up and died. Too many years of forcing himself to be someone he wasn’t for Joey, he guessed. And now he couldn’t not be that. Fuck, he hadn’t even wanted to come off the way he had when Joey had approached him in the grass earlier. Finding out that, by some fuckin’ chance, out of all the people standing around, he he ended up paired off with the reason he was here in the first place must’ve jarred loose the resolution he’d made to be more approachable. He hadn’t been able to mask how floored he’d been. It was too good. And too goddamn scary. He hadn’t known which was bigger.

Watching Jonas approach him, face bleached with fear, Mitch made the decision in the brief seconds he had to say something normal, and technically it had started out that way. He intended to tell Jonas how much better off they’d both be not paired up with Whitten, but somehow, in a turn of events he didn’t even understand, his sentiment had taken on this sinister, oddly threatening quality?

Mitch shed his bag and collapsed onto the bed, bouncing a few time with the force of his falling, mortified carcass. Jonas had endured bullying first thing this morning, not four fuckin’ hours ago, and all Mitch had done was assume that guy’s place. What was worse: his bullying seemed to manifest less as his usual teasing and more as aggression. He was cornered, and cornered things always turn.

Mitch’s thoughts fell quiet for a second, enough that he heard the silence that had settled over the cabin. Thick, absolute silence, as if he was alone there. He turned his ear to the wall beside his bed and focused every ounce of his energy on listening, all the while terrified he might hear crying. But no sound came through at all.

How was he going to fix this? He had basically mocked Jonas’s physicality and that sickened him. Because that was what all of Jonas’s other, lesser, bullies did to him. It was not what Mitch did. His ire was not for Jonas; his aggression, his anger, his fists were not for Jonas. Thinking back to that frankly fuckin’ horrifying moment when he had been standing right behind Jonas, ready to say something all profound and shit, meant to turn Jonas’s opinion of him around then and there…Jesus, what might have come out instead? Now that he knew it might not have been what he’d been thinking.

You fuckin’ idiot. Shoulda known this was gonna happen. ‘Cause that’s all you know how to do--be as fuckin’ terrible as humanly possible at all times. You’re gonna ruin this for both of you and it’ll be what you deserve.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Mitch must have blacked out or put himself into a coma to hide from that voice in his head, because the next thing he knew he was stirring listlessly on the bed, coming groggily back to life. His body weighed about five hundred pounds where it lay, like the earth was sucking him down. It didn’t want to move. His eyes refused to open, too seduced by the taste of sleep he denied himself so often. He rolled onto his side, heavy as a boulder, and tried to blink himself awake. Instead of the stained up popcorn ceiling normally hanging over his bed, there was wood grain, wood grain in every fuckin’ direction, even on the floor. It was like waking up in a bird house.

Oh, shit.

Bit by stupid bit, his awareness opened up. That’s right. He was not at home; he was at loser camp; Cliff was here somewhere and they had both been shacked up with a pair of nerds, and Mitch’s nerd was Jonas himself. And just earlier (the room was full of a dim, watery light that meant they were entering the tail end of the day) he had basically ripped Jonas up and down for no good fuckin’ reason at all; like having too many bags and implying he wasn’t strong enough to carry them, and being an all around dick.

Alright, prick. No more passin’ out. You gotta start patchin’ this shit over. Starting right now.

Mitch heaved himself into a sitting position and let himself get his bearings. Outside the room, he heard what sounded like a kitchen chair scraping across the floor and perked up like a squirrel. Jonas was out there, milling around and taking this shit by the horns and risking Mitch making an appearance that everyone and their mother knew he didn’t want. And that was exactly what was about to happen.

Mitch dug a comb out of his bag and ran it through his hair; wiped his hands down his shirt to smooth out the wrinkles (to no fruition). With his hand on the knob, he drew a breath, letting his shoulders drop as it released. Again, he had no plan. But he opened the door anyway.

Jonas was sitting at the kitchen table before an open laptop and turned at the sound of a door opening. When he saw Mitch standing there, he grew stricken as a death row inmate and swallowed. Thanks to his power nap, Mitch’s brain was nimble enough to inventory all the things he needed to be conscious of right this fuckin’ second. He started by letting any tension slip out of his shoulders, no matter how bad it wanted to be there--he had to force it. Next, he slouched. Slouching was a go-to any time he wanted to appear less like his gigantic self. He balled his hands in his pockets and strolled over to the table real slow and casual like. Jonas had already turned his back on him, feigning deep interest in what he was doing, but his dead give-away was that he looked like he was carved out of wood.

Though he should have been used to it by now, Mitch had to swallow the bruising pain of seeing physical evidence that Jonas didn’t want him there. He watched from above as Joey scrolled blindly and senselessly, and beat back the urge to pet the fear out of him.

He pulled out a chair right next to Jonas, who flinched, and plopped down into it. A silence stretch on as Mitch watched Jonas pretend not to be affected.

“So…what’re we doin’?”

Jonas peeked over like he was just noticing he wasn’t alone. He shrugged. “Just checking all this stuff out.” He shuffled a stack of notebooks and papers on the table. “And looking at the instructions for all the projects we have to do. Some of it doesn’t sound so great.”

Mitch nodded, even though Jonas wasn’t looking. “Read it to me?”

“Huh? Oh, uh…okay.”

Jonas didn’t so much read the emails as explain them. They were to take turns cooking meals, or at least work together during these times. But they would have to take pictures throughout the process and post them in the drive as proof they’d done all this shit. Same went for laundry and other household chores. ‘A household as a shared space should be one of equality and partnership’ the email claimed. And while Mitch didn’t have any argument with that, it did make him sweat a little to think that he was basically living his dream: sharing a house with Jonas as his partner. All that was missing was Jonas’s half of the love that existed between them.

“Um…we also have to log our personal thoughts and stuff into these notebooks. It says we can write about whatever we want as long as it’s true and relevant. He promises he won’t read them, but he will judge them on the percentage of paper use.”

“So you’re sayin’ we gotta keep a fuckin’ diary?”

“It’s not really a diary. I think it’s just supposed to be a journal chronicling our thoughts and feelings about this whole process.”

“...Spots, that’s the definition of a diary.”

Jonas paused to chew on this, and then, to Mitch’s delight, smiled and went all rosy. Mitch looked on, practically drooling. “Oh, yeah,” he laughed shyly, “I guess it is. B-but it’s not like it’s hard work or anything. Basically if you write in it every so often you’re going to do well on it. Easy.”

“...I don’t get it.”

“What do you mean?”

Mitch rotated a few degrees in Jonas’s direction, and consciously or unconsciously, Jonas tilted away. “What’s the point of that? If they ain’t gonna read it then it don’t really mean nothin’. I could jot down any old shit in there. I could write ‘fuck you’ over and over again and as long as I use enough paper, I do just as good as, let’s say your nerd ass, for instance, who will probably take that shit seriously. How is that fair to you?”

“Well…I think it might have more to do with not being able to read thirty journals, plus look at all of our other stuff, two days before we leave. And--and, I don’t really think you can judge someone’s personal thoughts anyway, so there’s not point in reading it. There’s nothing to get wrong.”

Mitch sniffed. “Fine. What else?”

Jonas released a lung full of air like he had avoided some consequence after his little fuckin’ nerd rebuttal and blinked rapidly. “Um, let’s see... Firewood duty rotates twice a week…watch for the email indicating it’s your team’s turn… Nature scavenger hunt packet,” he said with finality. “Use one of the notebooks provided to document locally occuring flora and fauna--”

“Whah?”

“Plants and animals,” Jonas explained. “Photograph each organism listed in the packet and save to the drive. Use the notebook to describe the habitat, time of day, behavior, and other circumstances at the time of sighting.”

Not so deep beneath his mask of malcontent, Mitch felt the sting of his own stupidity threatening to make itself very fuckin’ apparent these next few weeks. Jonas was so goddamn smart it was sexy, Jesus Christ. But throw a bunch of school words around in one sentence like that and Mitch started to squirm inside--sometimes outside. Little known fact: he was afflicted with his own set of insecurities. His intellect, for instance; his ghetto-ass trailer house, his secret bathroom habit, his unbridled tendency towards bein’ an absolute motherfucker, etcetera. And being so close to Jonas, especially in an academic environment, magnified everything bad about being Mitch Mueller.

Mitch watched Jonas scroll with increasing speed through the remainder of the document without reading any of it aloud. Abruptly, he smacked the laptop shut and let out a sigh from the very depths of his gut, eyes fluttering shut as if to put off a migraine. “Look…Mitch….” Mitch held his breath as Jonas search around in his mouth for the words that would inevitably break the skin. “If you don’t want to do any of this stuff with me, I get it. And I won’t be offended if you don’t. I’ll handle as much of it as I can on my own. That way…we’ll both get the credit and we won’t have to get in each other’s way.”

Uh-oh.

Hurt sat in Mitch’s throat like a golf ball. He could feel his aggressive, face-saving self slipping back behind the controls, since this current version didn’t seem to know what to do. He fought it the whole way, aware of his own face, trying to keep it blank.

“You think I’m just gonna let you bust yer ass while I do nothin’?” Jonas only stared, rigid and pale. “What the fuck, Spots? That’s what What’s His Ass woulda done. I ain’t that shitty.”

“Well, sorry. It’s just that I know you didn’t want to be shacked up with me in the first place, so I’m--I’m just trying to give you an out. That’s all.”

I don’t want an out. I’m right where I fuckin’ wanna be.

“Well thanks an’ all, but fuckin’ quit it.”

Jonas sighed again, throwing in the towel. He turned his head away from Mitch as if to look at the screen, but it was shut. It was probably better if they just got used to the viscous nature the air between them took on when they were together, because the summer rolled out before them like a carpet. Like an ocean.

“How do ya know, anyway?”

Jonas looked started that Mitch was still there. “What?”

“How do ya know that I didn’t wanna be with you?”

The look on Jonas’s face was priceless. It’s the look someone gets when they have no idea how to even begin to explain something so obvious. “Mitch…you don’t.”

“That’s an awful big assumption ta make.”

“I feel pretty sure about it.”

“Do ya really?”

Jonas pulled his eyes away in what Mitch--aggressor extraordinaire--recognized as a loud as fuck gesture of submission. He hadn’t meant for that last comment to come across like that, like a dare he was challenging Jonas with; like the bullying was about to begin. But that was how he’d read it. They knew this dance and fell into it easily, even if neither of them had intended to.

“I think it’s you,” Mitch said, unable to leave well enough alone. “You ever stop to think you’re jumpin’ to conclusions?”

Jonas seemed not to think danger was off the table just yet because he angled his head toward Mitch, but never lifted his eyes. He opened his mouth, but forever went by before anything came out of it. Any second now, it was going to come: the admission that Mitch was right, followed by a humble apology for puttin’ words and thoughts in his head. Mitch felt sure of it.

But nothing came out. And nothing came out some more. Mitch’s face began to fall. Finally, when Jonas shut his mouth to futile nothing, Mitch slid his chair back loudly and strode toward the bedroom he had emerged from earlier. He regretted that now. What had they accomplished? Mitch was hurt and angry and Jonas was scared and put-out. If anything, they had taken a step backward.

__ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _

Journal Entry 1  7:35 p.m.

Gonna be honest here…subpar first day. The following is an agenda of this day from the time I awoke at god knows what o’clock in the morning to right now.

Ordered coldly out of my home by Dean

No breakfast

Strained car ride with my best friend and his jerkface dad, no radio

Jeremy Whitten is on the bus

Mitch Mueller is on the bus

So is one of his no-account friends

I am nearly beaten to death as soon as I get on

Mandatory activities

Lewis and I are torn apart for the duration of summer

I fell down the ladder of Hell and into a version of this universe where I am summer-long partners with Mitch

Got hounded for the number of bags I brought

Got my head bitten off for trying to lighten his load (spend as little time w/ him as possible)

He stormed out of the room, but it wasn’t violent, so that’s something. Idk. Maybe it was a little rude to just come out and basically admit I didn’t want to be around him, no matter how true it was or desperately I meant it. Mitch isn’t really a bear-down-on-assignments kind of person. I thought he would take me up on the offer, no hesitation. But, now that I think about it, he did come out of his room all on his own to find out what the projects were. I will admit to being too freaked out by him to think clearly about it. Not sure if I should apologize or let the whole ordeal slowly get buried by whatever happens next. We’re supposed to go to the first bonfire so my next order of business is to go get him I guess, because I doubt he remembers.

Jonas stashed his journal and pen in the drawer of the night stand. He didn’t want to say he didn’t trust Mitch enough to leave it lying in plain view, but he didn’t.  

An hour had elapsed since Mitch had vanished into his room, which at the time had seemed like a blessing and only mildly like a curse, because Jonas hadn’t meant to upset him so badly, or at all. So far that was shaping up to be a pretty easy thing to do. Not knowing what else to do, Jonas perused the agenda one more time, making sure there was nothing he had missed. That done, he took a casual stroll around the kitchen, peeking in drawers and cabinets. There was half a bottle of vegetable oil and some boxed cake mixes in there. The fridge contained nothing but a box of baking soda to combat odors. Some plastic forks and ketchup packets lay in a random drawer. Jonas tried to envision the two of them standing in there, over the stove, pulling open drawers and cabinets and stirring in pots. He couldn’t. He couldn’t see Mitch doing anything more domestic than flipping off a light or flushing the toilet.

In the end, Jonas went to his room and shut the door. It was tempting to text Sidney, but a text saying he was trapped in a house with Mitch would prompt a string of attempted phone calls and the house was too quiet for it. So he grabbed his journal and forced something out.

By the time Jonas had a decent--if somewhat negative--entry penned out, the sun had made some headway in disappearing. The view outside the window was shaded and obscured by a dusty pink-tinted light that would be darkness soon enough. Tonight was the inaugural bonfire night and a bunch of pizzas had been ordered. Jonas was only going in order to touch base with Lewis one last time, but he also hadn’t eaten all day, and as if awakened to the reality of it, his stomach lodged a very loud complaint.  

The problem was then whether or not to knock on Mitch’s door. They had to be there in ten minutes. It could easily take that long just to wake Mitch up if he was asleep. But if Mitch was going to blow it off, Jonas had to know right now. He was starving.

Gritting his teeth, Jonas climbed out of bed and stationed outside of the adjoining bedroom. Scenario after scenario ran through his head. Mostly, he imagined a gruff voice coming through the wood to tell him to fuck or something. That was the workable end on a spectrum of things that could happen. On the red end, he imagined Mitch hearing his knock and coming out of that room like a bear out of a cave.

His stomach roared.

Jonas raised a fist and knocked three times, palms hot, heart tapping.

Silence.

He knocked again, slightly louder this time in case he was sleeping.

Still nothing.

Anxious and ready to leave on his own, Jonas got two more knocks out before leaping clean out of his skin as the door flew aside with an audible woosh of air.

“What?” Mitch sounded only mildly inconvenienced, but the sudden appearance of his towering form lent a threatening slant to the whole situation. Jonas locked eyes with Mitch’s shirt, ready to apologize, when he remembered he had knocked for a good reason.

“Uh…the bonfire…”

“Yeah?”

“It’s…kinda going on, like, right now. Are you coming with me?” Jonas was rent in half with conflicting desires here. On the one hand, it would have been grand of Mitch to say no, thereby allowing Jonas to spend an evening with Lewis, free and easy; on the other, Mitch saying yes meant they could start again. Again.

Mitch leaned an arm against the door frame and slouched there. “Shit, I dunno. I wouldn’t wanna be underfoot, trippin’ ya up or anything.”

Jonas cringed, still stinging from the initial spat. “Yeah, sorry about that. I…I really thought that’s how you would have preferred things to be. Sorry if I offended you.” Feeling brave, Jonas straightened his chin and allowed his eyes to creep up to the other boy’s face. “Come with me?”

Mitch’s face had gone slack and a pink hue lay across his nose and cheeks. Jonas shivered. Was Mitch an intense stare-er, or was Jonas just especially susceptible to it? Seriously, that look was a searing, razor-sharp, and scary as hell hybrid of anger and…something Jonas didn’t have a name for. Jeez.

Mitch straightened up, letting his arm fall back to his side. “…Fine. You ready to go now?”

“Yeah.” Jonas turned the hat he’d been wearing all day backwards on his head and took a gander down at himself as he followed Mitch to the door. “I hope the bonfire nights aren’t supposed to be formal or anything.”

Mitch pulled the door open, surprising Jonas beyond words when he held it there, presumably for Jonas to exit first. “I sure as shit hope so, too. ‘Cause this right here…” Mitch made a sweeping motion down the length of his body, intending that Jonas should behold the ripped up pair of jeans and zombie T-shirt peeking from beneath a flannel button-down. It was on brand, at least. “This is all anybody’s gettin’ outta me.”

On the trek through the darkening outdoors neither of them offered up any further conversations. The bonfire burned like a beacon in the distance, cleaving the dark ground and the pink sky in two. From their slight elevation Jonas could see people scattered around the circumference of its light. A generous distance had wedged itself between them the moment they were off the porch, but there was nothing bitter about it. Jonas walked with his arms crossed, as if against a chilly wind, and Mitch walked with his hands pouched in his jean pockets. And it could have been Jonas’s imagination, but he could have sworn Mitch was easing up on his stride to keep pace with him.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -

Courtesy of Lewis’s quantity of hair, Jonas spotted him at once from the edge of the clearing and broke into stride like Lewis was water in a desert. When Lewis caught sight of Jonas his eyes bloomed. They grabbed onto one another’s arms in desperate gratitude, letting go quickly because they could hear the donkey braying that was Jeremy’s maniacal laughter in the near vicinity.

“Oh man, am I glad to see you,” Lewis panted. By the look on his face, things were no better in cabin thirteen. He surveyed the area over Jonas’s head, whispering, “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. We split up as soon as we got here. But my money’s on wherever yours is at.”

“He’s over there.” Both of them turned toward a log in the distance where Cliff sat with his back to them, elbows perched on his knees, blond hair draped over one shoulder. A second later, Mitch appeared and plopped own next to him, mimicking his pose. Empathic soul that he was, Jonas supposed that even though they had not greeted each other with the same fervor, they were equally as relieved to see one another again.

Hm. Mitch Mueller is a person with person feelings. Weird.

Weird and kind of…reassuring?

Suddenly, Jonas felt the emotional toll of the day like a leaden blanket over his body. Everything sagged, from his shoulders to his face to his freaking hair. It was impossible that today had been twelve hours and not six months. Mitch’s proximity had had him wired like his finger was stuck in an outlet, and now that Jonas could relax he felt him might collapse.

“Let’s get some food and sit down. I’m wiped.”

They endured a short line to get their plates and a solo cup full of ice and root beer, something Jonas hadn’t enjoyed in recent memory because Dean was picky about what sodas he allowed in the house. And if Jonas liked it, it was barred. When they finally sat down, Jonas caught sight of Lewis’s plate by the firelight. It was five pizza slices high because the guy could eat like a bear and see no effect. Jonas was ravenous, but limited himself to three pieces, chanting “Three is enough for anyone” in his head to alleviate the mindless need for more.

They ate slowly, exhausted from running high all day, and stared around at the others plotted here and there around the glaring fire, whose heat they could feel even at their distance. Every once in a while, they peeked over in the direction of Mitch and Cliff, hoping each time to find them still there and no closer, and regaled the day’s terrors and hiccups in turns.

“I think he stares at me sometimes, but I can never really tell with his hair in his face like that,” Lewis said, sounding creeped out through a mouthful of pizza. He shook his head. “He’s going to ask me if the carpet matches the drapes. He’s bursting to. I just know it.”

Jonas couldn’t help it--he laughed. “Well, do they?”

“Shut up will you? I can’t tell what he’s thinking ever. He hardly ever talks. How am I supposed to work all summer with someone like that?”

“I know what you mean,” Jonas said, staring across the way at the curvature of Mitch’s plaid back. “We’ve already gotten into it a couple of times.”

“Seriously?” Lewis perked up. “Like over what?”

Jonas shrugged, too tired. “Just…I dunno. Me being me and him being him.” He watched Mitch’s body twitch and gesticulate in conversation with Cliff. He was calm and relaxed. Jonas almost wished he could hear what kinds of words came out of him in such a state. “We haven’t spent too much time together. Just enough to lay out the email stuff, and then we went to our rooms.”

“I had to take the lead on that stuff, too. He took one look at it and said he wasn’t putting his face in front of some government perv cam.” They lapsed into introspective silence. Jonas had finished his pizza and sipped at his soda, savoring it. Lewis was working on his fourth piece. It was warm by the fire, almost too warm for a summer evening, but Jonas could have easily fallen asleep there. The sun was gone, and if they hadn’t been so close to a blazing fire, they could have looked up and seen every star in the sky.

“Have you told Sidney any of this yet?”

As badly as he wanted to, Jonas could not handle the thought of breaking a single one of today’s events to his twin. “Not yet. After everything today I don’t feel like facing the freak out she would have to any of it. I need to come down first.”

“Yeah, I hear you. She can be kind of intense.”

“You call anyone?”

Lewis beheld Jonas like he’d asked him to jump over the fire. “Hell, no. If I called home on the first day,” he said, putting down his plate to jab a finger into his palm emphatically, “my old man would grill me about what I’m supposed to be doing and why aren’t I doing it. He’s sitting in his chair at home right now and wondering about my testosterone levels.”

It was a sad truth, but Jonas snickered anyway and crunched on some ice from his drink. “Yeah. That’s Dean. If I don’t come back thirty pounds lighter and with a second set of testicles, then this has all been a waste and he’ll want his money back.”

Having taken an inopportune drink, Lewis promptly spewed root beer, choking and laughing so hard that a few people turned and glanced. “If he calls I dare you to tell him we’re sitting around the campfire eating pizza and drinking soda. I bet it’d turn his hair white.”

“I will not!” Jonas exclaimed, serious as a heart attack. “I’ll tell him we’re throwing axes or something.”

“Throwing logs.”

“Wrestling bears.”

“Building our cabins.” There were tears in their eyes. Lewis had to hunch over to get air.

“Eating a bowl of nails.”

“With no mil--” Jonas couldn’t finish. They broke off in a bout of laughter so hard they were silent except for the occasional wheeze. Lewis’s pizza slid off his plate, landing face down in the dirt and sent them almost wheeling backwards off their log, blue in the face and ready to crap out a lung each. Barely able to open his eyes in the throws of mirth, everything Jonas could see was a blur of tears--the fire, the stars, the people. Heat toasted his face and arms and a mosquito bite was already forming on his elbow. It felt good to laugh, to smile for real and not out of awkwardness. To let his guard down and close his eyes and be nowhere near Mitch Mueller.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

“Well, well, well. If it ain’t the ghost of my former friend, Mitch, who died earlier this very day when he shit ‘imself ta death after gittin’ shacked up with that freckled band nerd. Do not haunt me, specter!”

“Shut up ya fuckin’ hillbilly.”

Mitch took a seat on the hard as shit log next to Cliff. A wave of relief rippled through Mitch’s body, undoing every knotted muscle and stiff joint. It was like falling into his own bed, like going home. Even that stupid redneck accent was sweet to his fuckin’ ears. Much as he loved being next to Joey, it could be hard work. Lotta back and forth and constantly trying to read the room and watchin’ his own body language and getting jerked between defensiveness and arousal and love that took his breath away.

Cliff, though--he understood Cliff. Now more than ever Mitch was glad he had him: someone who he knew how to be around, and who knew how to be around him. He just wished the others were here too. Jonas had broken away from his side the moment he spotted his ginger friend, and Mitch let him go, aware that he’d done a piss poor job of working toward his ultimate goal, and not blaming Jonas for wanting to literally run away from him.

“How’s things in lucky number twelve?” Cliff asked, taking a slice of pizza from a plate on the log between them. He crammed half of it in his mouth to start with.

“Not so good. Surprised?”

Cliff wiped the corner of his mouth with a paper towel, hair a stage curtain across his eyes. “Yeaahh…yer a hard one to love. Ya donkey’s ass.”

A laugh broke out of Mitch’s throat. It felt incredible, like taking a breath for the first time in hours. “Guess I can’t argue with that. And I’ve been way worse than a donkey ass, man, lemme tell ya. I shit the sheets today. Twice!”

At the sound of something scraping Mitch turned and saw Cliff scooting the plate of pizza toward him. “Sounds like you need some pizza then.” There was a pointed emphasis to that statement that had Mitch squinting.

“Nah. I’m goo--”

“Boss.” Mitch stopped, staring. It was unnerving sometimes--knowing Cliff could see you and you couldn’t see him. “Fer fuck’s sake.”

For a while neither of them moved. Anxiety was shrinking around Mitch’s skin like a vacuum seal. Did they know--the others? Was that what this was? Quickly weighing whether or not it was worth the cost of tossing it later with Joey in the house, or if keeping it was a possibility, Mitch pulled his guilty-ass eyes away from Cliff’s staring fringe and took the thinnest slice he saw. Waffer thin, flat as a fuckin’ saltine cracker. It was worth it to put a stop to whatever this was, because Mitch had never felt so seen in his life.

“Thanks.” Courteously, Cliff said nothing and went back to gnawing on his slice as fast as he could put it in his teeth; like a wood chipper. Privately, Mitch wished that Cliff had snagged them a place closer to the fire. Mitch loved a good blazing inferno. They reminded him of the smoking circle back home, and he loved the natural blaze of heat across his skin, the psychedelic warp of rising haze, the light he could stare into for hours and never hurt his eyes. “How ‘bout you guys? How’s that goin’?”

The last of the crust vanished into the void that was Cliff’s mouth, and he dusted the crumbs off his hands. “Hard ta say just yet. He sure is a pissy little thing, ain’t he? Biggest nerd I ever laid eyes on. Bigger’n yers maybe.”

Mitch chewed slowly, refusing to let himself admit to feeling better. He hadn’t eaten since that peanut butter and jelly yesterday afternoon. Time and practice had made him a veteran at going for stretches of time without. But the pangs sometimes got him; and the shakes and the sweats. Pangs were rippling through him now, in fact, and if he planned on not bein’ a total fuckin’ prick to Jonas later, he was probably due for a slice of pizza at the very least.

“You ask him if the carpet matches the drapes?”

“Ah hell, ya know I’m dyin’ to,” Cliff said, dead serious. Mitch nearly fell into hysterics, clutching onto Cliff’s shirt with one hand. “It’s almost gotta, don’t it?”

“You been thinkin’ about this pretty hard, huh?” Mitch choked out between convulsions of laughter. Cliff took a swig of his cup and threw up a limp hand.

“It’s just so fuckin’ red! It’s all over the damn place. I ain’t ever seen the like. You tryna tell me I’m s’posed to look anywhere else?” He took one last sip from his half full cup and passed it to Mitch. Peering into the dark liquid curiously, Mitch looked between the cup and his friend and accepted it.

It was fuckin’ root beer. Root beer! This really was some kinda fuckin’ kumbaya children’s camp.

Still, it was pretty good stuff, considering…

Both Mitch and Cliff swiveled around as a bunch of celebratory whoops rang out. It was feral, like a bunch of fuckin’ werewolves out roaming the night. But away on the far side of the fire they could make out the figures of Jeremy Whitten and a ring of his fuckin’ bootlickers sitting around him like a cult. They laughed long and loud, forcing their presence on every person there. Mitch’s hackles went up at once. The night was his; it was theirs--Javi and Scratch and Cliff and himself. The nerve of these fuckers, howling at their moon.

Beside him, Cliff alerted to Mitch’s edginess like they were of a pack mind. That happened sometimes. They could all catch the off scent of aggression or sadness on one of their own if it was potent enough or things were quiet. Cliff saw what Mitch saw: a bunch of fuckin’ jerkoffs prancin’ around like it was a frat party and their cups were full of beer; a big, loud display meant to put everyone else on edge.

Cliff turned to Mitch, the question already forming like a cloud in the air. “…Whaddaya think?”

Mitch started at Jeremy’s stupid face and sighed deeply. Rock and a hard place, that’s where he was. Every nerd in this place was in danger of that asshole. And that posed two problems. Number one, Mitch was the reigning threat to nerds everywhere and he didn’t plan to be usurped by some numb nuts with a kid lisp anytime soon, and two, Jonas was a nerd; a nerd at the top of Whitten’s list. Was Mitch not under an obligation to protect him--more so now than ever because they were partners?

“If I do anything that that loser counselor dude sees as a threat, he’s gonna have me arrested. Principal said so before I left.”

Cliff turned his unseen gaze on Mitch sharply. “The fuckin’ cops?” Mitch nodded and Cliff started shifting around in agitation. “Now what the hell’s that even mean? So he could call ‘em fer anything he wants then, if she left it up ta him.” Mitch nodded again, having thought about this very thing with his down time on the bus ride over. It sounded as if he would have to do very little to get them here.

“That motherfucker is gonna push every button I got and some I didn’t know about,” Mitch said, jaw muscles clenching at the mere idea of conflict. “But I gotta keep my fuckin’ head on, man. I cannot leave Jonas here alone with him.”

And I can’t throw this down the toilet. Alone with Joey all summer. It’s too good.

“Weelll,” Cliff drawled. “You git the urge ta lay his ass in the dirt lemme know. I’d gladly hitch a ride back home with ya. I’m already missin’ my girl anyway.” For one insane half second, Mitch figured Cliff had some girlfriend he hadn’t told them about. But he smiled softly when he realized that the girl he was referring to was Scratch. “We could bring yer boy with us,” Cliff added, smirking conspiratorially. “Him an’ his dorky lil buddy. Just grab ‘em an’ run. After we beat the tar outta Chickendick a’course.”

Mitch huffed a half-hearted laugh, taking advantage of his friend staring off toward the fire to eye him unnoticed. Cliff had come a long way with the whole notion of Mitch being gay. The idea was still foreign to him, Mitch could sometimes tell. For instance, he struggled to grasp that it wasn’t something Mitch could help; that it was as much a part of him as being male or being white. What a fuckin’ concept.

But he was trying. And making a statement like that…that Joey was Mitch’s boy…was as good a declaration of acceptance as Mitch could expect from him.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The fire had reduced in height by several feet, retracting the circle of its light. Dread was creeping in with the darkness, chilling Jonas’s skin despite the warm summer air. The fire would be put out in twenty minutes, meaning his and Lewis’s time together was over; meaning he had to make the trek back to the cabin alone with Mitch. The pizza glazed over like cement in his gut and he was eternally grateful he’d limited himself.

He and Lewis had stopped talking several minutes ago in favor of listening to the fire snap and people watching. Only once had the calm been rent in half by a round of highly unnerving laughter from Jeremy Whitten and friends. It was a little stupid; they were eating pizza and drinking soda around a campfire for pete’s sake.

They watched a few people rise and start back toward their cabins, disappearing into the darkness completely. The reality sat between them on the log, unspoken, unwelcome, unavoidable.

Finally, Jonas broke the silence. “I guess I’d better find Mitch while there’s still some light to look for him by.” He rose, expecting Lewis to do the same since it was obvious their partners would be together. But he didn’t get up.

“Go for it. I’m going to hang out till the last second, probably walk back by myself. The only thing worse than being alone right now is being alone with someone who won’t say much and smells like a horse trailer.”

As much as Jonas couldn’t disagree with that, the idea of wandering off vaguely in the direction of their cabin plotted somewhere in this acreage of unfamiliar territory in the pitch black was unthinkable. At least with Mitch, someone was with him, preventing him from getting lost and making noise to cover ambient horrors. So Jonas left Lewis there, eyes scanning every shadowed form on every log he passed, making sure to steer clear of the far side of the fire where, somewhere among the remaining people, Jeremy lay nestled like a trap ready to spring should Jonas happen by. That was another thing he didn’t care to imagine while groping his way through a dark wood: someone evil-spirited like Jeremy crouched in a bush with the intent of paying Jonas back for that smart remark on the bus. If Jonas managed to get through this Hell summer unscathed, he might have to start considering church, because that would be some divine intervention for sure.

A full-bodied laugh that Jonas would know in his sleep drifted to him from across the grass. On instinct, every organ in his body went on high alert; even his knees tried to lock. But the desire to have this over with and barricade himself in his room for the night overrode all of it, and without another thought he was marching toward two silhouettes barely within reach of the dying firelight. Actually, it wasn’t so much marching as forcing himself to put one foot in front of the other determinedly, with his tail between his legs.

The way that the two dark figures fit the people he knew them to be was almost cartoonish; one long and lean and perfectly Mitch-shaped, the other slouched with the clear outline of a hat and fringe of hair. Their conversation died at Jonas’s approach.

I wonder if walking up to this guy will ever feel like an okay thing to do.

“Well, you fuckin’ jerk…looks like yer ride’s here,” Cliff drawled as he came to a halt in front of them. Jonas marveled at anyone on earth having a free pass to refer to Mitch in such a way. “You better git home ‘fore you turn into a zucchini or some shit.”

Perhaps for the first time in their lives, Mitch and Jonas were one in their confusion. “It’s a pumpkin ya hick.”

“Tch. Not with yer lank ass it ain’t.”

Mitch shook his head, smiling like this sort of idiocy was endearing, and turned his very formidable attention on Jonas.

“Um, they’re putting the fire out soon. I didn’t want to leave without finding you in case you went looking for me. B-but if you’re not ready,” Jonas amended quickly, “I can head back alone and you can--”

“I think the fuck you will not,” Mitch interrupted. “Yer my partner and I will walk you back. Now let’s go.”

Mitch got to his feet and Jonas turned, stiff as a plank, eyes huge.

“Now you kids go straight ta bed, ya hear?” This was followed by a series of smooching noises. Mitch whirled around like he’d been slapped and Jonas flinched at the prospect of violence happening so close to him. “I’m just teasin’ ya, Stretch. Settle on down.”

Appeased, but only just, Mitch turned away and started back toward the cabin. “If I’m not mistaken, you got a nerd ‘a yer own around here somewhere,” he yelled over his shoulder, then more quietly, “Prob’ly hidin’ from the smell of yer breath.”

The dwindling firelight didn’t carry them far. By the time they’d left Cliff behind it was already too dark to look anywhere but dead ahead. The sky was incomprehensible here. It was somehow even bigger than its daylight self. A breath-taking purple-tinted chart of stars and gaseous formations. Jonas had never seen starlight illuminate anything, but that had to be what made the heavens so much brighter than he’d ever known a night sky could be. All the darkness in the universe was down here with them, in the great basin of the earth, where the trees and the ground were a unified black substance. He nearly missed that there was no moon.

By the time he finally realized that, in the complex layering of sounds filling his ears, Mitch’s breathing was close enough to hear, it was too late to call off looking.

Mitch was peering up there too: at the sky. It would be hard not to with it rising up like that, gargantuan and too beautiful even for Mitch to tear his eyes away from. Some of that ethereal light settled on the features of his face like a gauze, just bright enough for Jonas to glimpse him unguarded, vulnerable awe on display. It competed for Jonas’s fascination with the heaven’s themselves, because he knew he was not meant to see it.

“So…how long have you guys been friends?” Just like that, Jonas shattered the crystalline perfection of the night. They plummeted back to earth, where the crickets were disharmonious and the air stunk of humid vegetation. The head of Mitch’s vague form whipped toward him like a hand lashing out to strike. Was it stupid to drum up a conversation? They couldn’t go on like this all summer: not speaking unless it was to bicker. He would never learn where the line was with Mitch unless he reached out to feel for it.

For a second, it seemed like Mitch might now answer, because of course, idle chat was not a thing he stooped to doing, and Jonas resigned himself to having tried.

“Fuck, I dunno. Middle school?” Mitch replied. “Turned out we lived in the same shithole neighborhood, an’ the rest is fuckin’ history.” Jonas uttered a subtle sound of intrigue and steered all his focus on not falling on his face over the minefield of roots that spoke of how near to the cabin they were getting. The twinkling velvet sky veined over with the black fingers of limbs in the canopy, and suddenly it was staggeringly dark. Jonas high-stepped, not trusting his ungainly self, because the only thing that could possibly further complicate his life was a broken arm.

“He seems…fun,” Jonas squeezed out, like he wasn’t talking about one of guys who hunted him down some days at school on Mitch’s order. “I mean, he’s kinda funny.”

A scoffing noise issued from the depths of Mitch’s throat. “No he ain’t. He’s a fuckin’ fake redneck. Nothin’ funny about that.” Still, there was a humor dancing in and out of his words, like he agreed with Jonas, but denying it was part of the joke. “What about you an’ Whatshisname?”

“Lewis?”

“Shit, yeah.”

Jonas’s heart stuttered a few beats. Was this a conversation? Was he currently engaged in a conversation with Mitch Mueller? A normal one with give and take? “Same, I guess. About sixth or seventh grade. He was friends with my sister first, though. That’s how I met him.”

In the silence that followed, as they groped and stumbled over uneven ground, blind as everything, Jonas wondered if Mitch was remembering. That they had met and befriended each other well before any of the friends they had now. That their acquaintanceship, however sour it had become, had stood the test of time.

Jonas was the first to stumble, and then Mitch swiftly after, as if caught by the same root. Jonas started to go down a second time, only for Mitch’s hand to shoot out and grab him roughly by the back of the shirt. Dazed by the fact of Mitch’s heroism and impressed by that one-handed show of strength, Jonas muttered a quick “Thanks.” Clearly, they had missed the footpath, and he began to wonder if they shouldn’t stop and reevaluate where they were when the trees parted and the golden squares of light that were the windows of their cabin came into view.

“Thank fuckin’ Christ,” Mitch grumbled, traipsing ahead and clomping up the stairs. Stabbing the code into the box, he let them in and promptly collapsed on the living room sofa.

Jonas slowly closed the door behind him, feeling awkward. Mitch hadn’t flown into his room like he was supposed to, meaning Jonas felt an obligation not to fly into his. Instead, he stepped into the sitting room casually, bordering cagey, hands clasped in front of him. He didn’t want to sit down and impart any kind of permanence to this arrangement, but neither could he pass it by.

Mitch’s eyes dropped from the ceiling and landed on him, and Jonas felt some interior muscle jump in surprise.

Case closed. He’s an intense stare-er. But I don’t think he can help it. Also I’m pretty soft-bellied, so…

Mitch’s brows zipped together. “You been cryin?”

“Oh--no. Lewis and I were laughing pretty hard earlier. That’s all it is,” he explained, smile reforming at the memory and rubbing beneath one eye, embarrassed.

“Hm.” Mitch’s feet appeared one after the other to whack down on the coffee table. “And just what’s so funny, if ya don’t mind me askin’?”

Here, Jonas hesitated. This question was a doorway that Jonas didn’t necessarily want to walk through with Mitch. He could lie, but as Sidney had told him, anyone with two eyes and at least one ear could detect a lie when Jonas told it.

“Our dads sent us here,” he finally confessed. “He asked if I would tell mine that we were sitting around eating pizza, so we started thinking up more manly things to tell them instead.”

“So he don’t think yer enough of a man? Thought he’d ship ya out here to get some chest hair or whatever?”

Embarrassment crept up his flesh like rising water. He didn’t know why--maybe because here he stood in the presence of a guy like Mitch, all soft, round edges and ridiculous freckles and no rumble in his voice to speak of, implying that his dad didn’t see a man when he looked at him.

“Damn,” Mitch remarked. “So you don’t’ wanna be here either, huh?”

Jonas wagged his head soberly. Understatement of the freaking century. And then, figuring he’d gone out on a limb several times already, and that one more couldn’t hurt, he asked, “Why are you here?”

Mitch sighed, letting his head fall back against the cushion. “Need the credit. Too many skips.”

“Ohh.” Jonas kicked his foot, feeling fidgety and in awe that Mitch complied to his question so easily. “So you just have to complete it, which is a lot easier that what I have to do.”

Mitch frowned, observing him through hooded eyes and looking almost sleepy. “Whadda ya gotta do different?”

Unable to mask the frown that sat heavily on his face, Jonas shrugged. He really shouldn’t have opened this door, he realized now, because Mitch as he knew him was sure to find none of the injustice in it that he did. It was a little boggling, though, that Mitch was willing to walk through it himself. “Find a way to change everything about myself. Or become someone else completely.”

For what must have been eternity according to the embarrassment that sweltered across Jonas’s skin, Mitch said nothing. And the only part of his body that moved were his shrewd, discerning eyes that swept over Jonas’s standing form; up his arms and over his face and down his middle, too close--too personal. A shiver trembled down his spine.

“No.”

“...”

“...”

“...What?”

“I said no. I don’t want that.”

For the first time in Jonas’s life, his brain was as empty as a beach shell. Every cog ground to a halt, every function froze. All that was left was the default ability to stand there and gape, because eighteen years of life had not prepared him for what to do when those words come out of the mouth of the meanest, scariest guy he’d ever met.

When Mitch pried himself off the sofa Jonas employed every ounce of restraint not to take a retreating step. In two slow steps Mitch was looming over him at his full height, eclipsing the light of the ceiling fan.

“Nothin’ ta argue with now, is there,” he rumbled. “So when ya go home an’ ya don’t have a six pack or whatever…just tell him it woulda upset me real bad if ya did. An’ you don’t wanna upset me…do ya, Spots?”

Jonas’s heart smacked against his ribcage like it was trying to make an exit from his body. Mitch was so, so freaking huge, and now more than ever it was impressing itself upon him how utterly, hopelessly alone they were together. “N-no, Mitch,” he stuttered breathlessly.

“No.” Mitch whispered, shaking his head in accordance. The gap of space between them buzzed with tactile, frenzied static. It danced across the surface of Jonas’s skin, across his lips, through his hair.

And then Mitch turned and strode away toward his bedroom. “Night, Spots,” he called casually and disappeared behind a slamming door.

Jonas’s ears rang with adrenaline. His hands were wobbling under a sheen of palm sweat. Dizzy with fear, he cut a zigzag path to his bedroom and shut himself inside. His journal lay like a beating heart in the drawer of the bedside table, and not knowing what else to do with so much pent up energy, he dove onto the bed and dug it out.

Entry 2  9:47 p.m.

First bonfire night wasn’t all that bad. Glad to see Lewis finally, even though we’ve only been apart for a few hours. Haven’t been beaten to a bloody pulp yet, but being cooped up with Mitch is every bit as scary as I imagined. Already feeling the whiplash with him, though. One second he’s acting almost human and the next I piss him off somehow and wonder how fast the ambulance can get to this neck of the woods. We had  the most civilized conversation ton  our first real conversation tonight, and he kinda, sorta didn’t blow it off. In fact, it took a pretty personal turn and now Mitch Mueller knows that Dean hates me for the fat, nerdy disappointment of a son that I am. I thought for sure that would turn into bullying fodder, but instead he sorta took it and gave me an out.

Jonas shoved the journal back into the drawer and reclined. He was choking on the number of questions trying to process in his head. Why didn’t Mitch want him to change they way Dean did? Why had Cliff made kissing noises at them? Freaking yuck! Jonas would sooner rip a shot of bleach than even come within kissing distance of Mitch. And aside from being unduly grouchy and pants-pissing scary, why hadn’t Mitch done anything truly antagonistic?

Well, he supposed only two of those things were in question right now. Because Dean wasn’t here and Mitch Mueller was. Sorry, Dean. But as reigning threat to Jonas’s health, what Mitch wanted this summer, he was getting.

Chapter Text

Out cold, Mitch was awakened by one of the worst fuckin’ sounds on earth. Knocking. Polite but insistent knocking. His eyes peeled open, slow and sticky as two gross-ass clams. The sun had broken in through the blinds, not striking Mitch directly in the face, but close enough that he wished he didn’t have eyes at all. The knocking stopped and a long, blissful silence settled in place. Maybe he had dreamed it: the knocking, the way you dream up weird, non-existent shit when you’re really out of it. His eyes slipped closed again, easy since his eyelids were made of made of lead and his brain refused to start. He had been dreaming of something before, something that must have been kind of sexual, because even half-conscious he could feel his stiff dick beneath the sheets. And that, at least, gave his brain a boost. Whatever the dream had been about, he abandoned the search for it in favor of thinking about Joey lyin’ in bed on the other side of the wall. Would he be out of it just enough to let Mitch slip into bed beside him? Let him touch? Let him rub up against--

Knock, knock, knock…

Mitch shot up in bed. “The fuck. What?”

“Uhh…s-sorry. But I think we should get to the store and buy our groceries, otherwise we won’t have any breakfast or anything to drink.” By the muffled sound of Jonas’s voice, Mitch could picture him perfectly. He was standing on the other side of that door wringing the life out of his hands and talking to the floor.

Mitch sat up, dangling his legs over the side of the bed, his dick limp as a dead bird. “Spots, it is…” he checked his phone, “ass o’clock in the mornin.”

“Well, I mean…nine-thirty…”

Grunting, Mitch stood and made for the pants from yesterday laying over the dresser. He jammed his legs into them and dug a fresh shirt out of his bag. With a comb and his toothbrush, he yanked the door open, nearly tripping over Jonas, who still stood there looking cowed.

“Oh, s-sorry,” he said, scrambling out of Mitch’s way. Mitch hid the smirk that started to split his face. Jesus, this boy was so perfect. “Take your time and everything. I just thought we should get that done before we have to fight everyone else for space at the store.”

“Yeah, be out in a sec.” And he shut the door.

Alone again in the bathroom, he looked a the version of himself that appeared in the mirror. This Mitch was better rested than usual, with only subtle evidence of hollows around his eyes. He’d slept most of the night, frankly because there wasn’t shit else to do. He had no weed, no friends within reach, no Buddy, exactly zero cans of spray paint, and he was trying not to antagonize his favorite nerd so often. What did that leave?

How ‘bout talkin’ to him like a person, ya ghoul?

“Shut up,” Mitch commanded, hoping Joey hadn’t overheard. He squirted a healthy amount of toothpaste onto his brush and got at it. Mitch was cursed with prominent teeth, and with a lifestyle like his, he did his daily best to keep them clean as possible. And with Joey hanging around in such close quarters, Mitch felt the heat was on to keep himself up more than normal. Joey could push back against him on whatever grounds he wanted, but Mitch wouldn’t let gross teeth be one of them.

Streaking a little product through his hair, he went in search of his partner and found him waiting on the porch next to a…fuckin’ wagon?

“What the hell’s this?”

Jonas looked at the thing himself. It was one of those canvas fold-out wagons you hauled to fairs and farmer’s markets and shit. “We have to walk to the store. It’s up the road, so I guess we get these things to carry our stuff back in.”

“Great. So I gotta be seen pullin’ a kid’s toy full of food like a bum.” He looked at Jonas, who was waiting to be struck by lightning or something. “That not embarrass the hell outta you?”

“Eh. I’d rather not be seen with it right on the roadside, but I’d also rather have it than not. I can pull it. No big deal.” He picked up the handle and fought with it down the steps until he could walk with it rolling along smoothly behind him, leaving Mitch to stand there on the porch like the world’s biggest douche bag.

For a long time, Mitch walked next to Jonas. Every now and again he let himself fall behind a few steps to get an eyeful of Jonas’s ass and appreciate the shapely curvaceousness of his body. His cap was turned backwards the way Mitch loved; the complex fragrance of his personhood trailed behind him like a wake that Mitch was riding in. A heady combination of his laundry detergent and his soap and his skin. It was insane how simply existing near Jonas could cure Mitch of the bulk of his misery. It didn’t change anything; he still lived in a squalid little trailer, he was still too white trash for his own good, he still wasn’t classy, and his mom was still in jail…but none of it counted for much right now. Basking in Jonas’s light was a salve for all of that, taking away the burn. The world shrank around them until all that mattered was the three feet that separated them.

“So what kinds of stuff do you cook?” Jonas asked, breaking through the bubble of bliss surrounding Mitch’s head. “Or do you?”

“I have some. But it ain’t classy stuff like yer prob’ly used to, though.”

Jonas scoffed. “Trust me. Being part of a household of ten people, nothing is classy. Or clean, or sanitary. Ever. I learned to cook helping Sue make giant pots of pasta and thirty pound casseroles. So…I guess I’m good at making sure there’s enough.”

Mitch knew what this was; this was Jonas trying to make polite chit-chat relevant to their task. He wasn’t mad about it. If anything, it was endearing, because here Mitch was, an uncooperative ass, and Jonas was still trying to be productive and amicable.

“Ya got ten fuckin’ people in yer house?!” Mitch couldn’t help the disbelief in his voice. “Yer parents a couple of sex fiends or what? Are they your brothers and sisters?”

“Oh, no. Sid and I are in foster care.” Mitch did a double take of Jonas’s profile. He never knew that: that Joey’s parents were his real ones. All this time he’d spent teasing him about his perfect, straight-from-a-box life… “Dean and Sue adopted us, so they really are like our parents, but we’ve had more than the usual number of foster kids the last couple of years.”

Cars soared by on the approaching road. They stopped to do a look around so they wouldn’t get run the fuck over and started down the side of it, hugging the ditch with the wagon scraping along behind them. Mitch had to slow up on his stride more than ever with that thing in tow.

“They stuck me with a foster family for about three months after I got out of juvie,” Mitch said, trying to be conversational and unable to find anything to say about himself that wasn’t absolutely hideous. He liked learning things about Joey, but figured it was a give to receive type of arrangement. Those little pellets of information weren’t for free. “Fuckin’ hated it. Buncha strangers tryin’ ta paint you up all proper and suburban.”

“I bet you were a joy to have around.”

Laughter burst out of Mitch’s nose in the form of air. “You better fuckin’ believe it. I made that the worst Christmas of that family’s life.” The sound of Jonas snickering drew his attention. And when he looked over he caught him shaking his head and looking almost fond, Mitch’s chest filled with helium. His shoes filled with sunlight. “What?”

Jonas feigned looking out across the road to hide his face. “Nothing. I see the store coming up.”

The local store was just some little mart at the far end of a series of businesses tapering out to this end of town. Jogging across the street, he could also make out a sleazy motel, a thrift store, some Waffle House rip-off diner, and a gross as hell-looking bait shop. Mitch never thought he’d live to say it, but this place was worse than Sellwood. It had that worn to shit weathered look that all lake towns end up with, and which no one ever seems in a hurry to fix. Although he had always known so, it was official now; he could cross this dump off the list of places to ever find himself again.

“We probably should have made a list,” Jonas lamented as he pulled a shopping cart free on the way in. A sudden tension had taken over the pocket of air between them, and it wasn’t really clear if it was because Jonas was overwhelmed by the task at hand or if Mitch had slipped back into whatever shape Jonas usually saw him in. “Okay. So the food card renews every two weeks, but I say we don’t empty it, just in case we realize we need something before then. That way we’ll always have a safety net.”

“No arguments,” Mitch said. Jonas seemed to have a firm grasp of this particular facet of independent life. Mitch, for all he was good at taking care of himself when no one else was in a position to, was terrible at thinking in organized little boxes like that.

“Let’s separate for a minute. You grab stuff you need, I’ll grab some stuff. We can find each other or meet up by check out.

And then he was off, speeding away from Mitch as if embarrassed they might be spotted together. With nothing left to do but obey, Mitch meandered off through random aisles, a Rolodex of all the things he had ever made flipping through his head. This whole food thing was making him anxious on a lot of different fronts. For one, he didn’t want Joey to know about his relationship with food, but he didn’t see any way around it. Mitch and food weren’t strangers--he could eat. Keeping what he ate was the problem. But he planned to keep whatever Joey put in front of him. He would do his best. For Joey, he would try.

Alright, Mitch. Start with the basics.

Peanut butter and jelly (for those days he wanted nothing else), cereal and oatmeal for breakfast, Tobasco sauce for the eggs, pancake mix (that was an appropriate to have on hand, right?) A few of the things Mitch had chosen he’d done so with Joey in mind. And much of the stuff he was passing up, he knew better than to contend with. A lot of junk food, for instance. That shit was not meant to come back up, he’d learned the hard way. Hot dogs especially. Nothing that could act as a potential dye, either. Tomato soup was pretty good, but seeing your fuckin’ guts in orange was never worth it.

Mitch wished Joey hadn’t taken off with the cart. Both arms were full and a there was a small bag of rice hanging from his teeth. He’d never make it to check out; he had to find Jonas now. The syrup bottle wedged beneath his armpit was riding low.

Giving everything an upward toss to redistribute the weight, Mitch made for the center thoroughfare. And he would have made it, too, if his eyes hadn’t gotten snagged on one of the few fuckin’ things on this earth that Mitch loved: Chili. His mom used to make it for him and his brother when they were dirt poor and living off canned stuff. But she’d dress it up; put it on chips and over frozen burritos. Excited to find something he would keep for sure, Mitch managed to free of one hand by some miracle and went to digging in the back, hoping to find the same brand he remembered.

“I don’t give a flying fuck if there’s gluten in it. We’re getting it because I can’t live for two months on your stupid girl diet.”

Oh hell, did he know that voice.

Shifting a row of cans to the left gave Mitch a prime view to the next aisle through a gap in the shelf. Straight into the face of Jeremy Whitten’s miserable lookin’ dweeb of a partner. Seriously, the look on that kid’s face was one of supreme unhappiness, the likes of which Mitch had seen countless times. He was a slight little guy, about Jonas’s height, but slender and pale. The poor kid wore glasses, and that was his first mistake.

“It’s not a…girl diet,” he nearly gave up trying to explain. They had obviously been over this more than once. “I’m saying I can’t physically eat a bunch of gluten. So you have to be prepared to eat all of that yourself.”

“Well, that was the plan. So why don’t you prance away and find yourself some Special K bars and Diet Coke, you fuckin’ twink.”

Whatever the item in question was, Jeremy yanked it off the shelf and spiked it into their cart. It sounded like it busted into million pieces.

“You ever think that’s why you are they way you are? Maybe if you ate a little more meat and a little less Frappuccino there wouldn’t be any question about whether or not you’re really a dude.”

Mitch would be the first person to admit that he was in no position to pass judgement on Jeremy right now; the list of nerds he had personally victimized was longer than the fuckin’ Nile. But if this kid was from Sellwood, that made him Mitch’s nerd. And if Jeremy was going to keep spouting homophobe bullshit, that made him Mitch’s responsibility.

Once they were back in school, of course.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Without Mitch’s contributions, Jonas had no idea how close they were to their cap . As he stood over the stuff he had in the cart, he tried to tally it to an approximation in his head, but he was terrible at mental math and the tax was throwing him off big time.

Okay. Got the butter, eggs, milk, cheese, beef and chicken, but the chicken was on sale so that helps. Got the pasta and the frozen stuff. Oh crap, tomato sauce.

Jonas turned around and meandered his way to wherever they kept tomato sauce here, which was pure guess work. He snatched two boxes of instant macaroni out of a dollar bin he passed, and a couple of Gatorades. Dean’s voice was practically speaking over the intercom: Jonas, pasta is a side dish, and it’s one of the worst. Jonas, sports drinks are only for people who do sports. He would lose his ever-loving mind if he saw the pack of root beers in the cart. But that jerkface wasn’t here and Jonas planned to take full advantage. Not that he was going to go hog-wild and stuff his face full of junkfood, but if he wanted something, he would take it, no matter how forbidden it was. After all, something of this summer “break” had to be for his pleasure.

And when he thought of it like that, all of this started to seem a little bit more like a vacation than it ever had. Jonas was in a store by himself, hours away from Dean, with a debit card and his own free will at his disposal. No one was there to slap things out of his hands or bark at him to not even look down the cookie aisle. Other adults were passing him, pushing their own carts and not giving him the time of day because they were busy with their own lives. He was one of them, a free adult.

The subtle curve of an easy smile sat on Jonas’s mouth. Suddenly everything was beautiful. The air was more…airy in here; it slid into his lungs a little smoother. Colors were gorgeous.

Wow, cheese is so pretty.

So what if Mitch was around some corner, looming like a shadow in an otherwise quaint little store--he wasn’t here right now.

Rejuvenated, Jonas steered his cart down an aisle towering with boxes of various shaped pastas and promptly felt his gut hit the tile.

Back out! Back out! Back out!

But Jonas was frozen, afraid that any movement now might alert his presence to the only other two people down the aisle. But in the midst of his internal tug-of-war about whether or not to go bravely forward or throw it in reverse, Jeremy turned to scowl at his companion, and Jonas felt the moment they locked eyes like a slap in the face.

“Ohh, shit,” Jeremy called, straightening up to get a better look. “Attention shoppers, get the Little Debbies while they last. They are now an endangered species.”

Jeremy’s partner looked curiously over his shoulder, and Jonas’s face fell even further. The kid was a pallid gray. Being cooped up with Jeremy was literally turning this kid into one of the undead. Their eyes met, and his were saying, Please push me off the roof.

Swallowing, Jonas committed to the same decision he’d made on the bus: to plow through this. He continued toward the other two (how fortunate that they were basically standing right in front of the tomato sauce of all freaking things) and pretended not to have heard the insult.

Jeremy seemed thrilled by Jonas’s arrival. There was a glint of zeal in his eye as he latched his gaze onto him and addressed his partner. “You think it was gluten that did that to him?”

“No.”

“Shut up! I wasn’t really askin’ you.”

Jonas couldn’t really see any of the things he was farcically perusing. He saw the colors and the shapes and the words, but none of it meant anything, because all of his mental energy was spent trying not to let the burning behind his eyes come to fruition. This was a bad idea. Bad, bad. He should have come back later, or not at all. No longer in total control of his body, he opened a freezer door on his right and grabbed a box at random, throwing it into his cart.

“Hey, Selby. We need any milk? Now’s the time, ‘cause we can get it fresh from Freckles’ titties while he’s here.” Jeremy was pealing with laughter before he finished the sentence. He had to fold over the rim of his cart he was laughing so hard.

Desperate to make it out of this with at least one can of sauce so that nobody’s misery was in vain, Jonas managed to wrangle his brain into locating the cans and heading toward them. Every inch of his skin was tight with humiliation, and a cold sting washed over its surface. Unfortunately, getting what he wanted brought him perilously close to Jeremy himself. Oh god, if he could just get it, the sauce. It was right there. If he could just reach out and grab it and speed walk away--

A hand shot out, pinching the soft flesh of his side. And it went all over him.

Something snapped in his brain like a twig. “Don’t freaking touch me, idiot!” Jonas shoved away from Jeremy like he was fire hot. With his heart thundering ninety to nothing, his breaths were coming like a set of bellows. Jonas was nothing if not accustomed to being harassed both verbally and physically, but they weren’t in school now, and Jonas had just come off a very potent freedom high.

Infuriatingly, Jonas’s outburst came off more amusing to this asshole than it did threatening, because Jeremy was chuckling. Tears brimmed in Jonas’s eyes, skewing his vision, but not quite spilling. Unbidden, his blurry eyes darted over Jeremy’s shoulder, catching with his partner’s. His face was pained as he watched, but his shrunken posture said that he knew better than to try and intervene.

“Oohh. Hey, no big deal, Freckles,” he said, grinning. “I just wondered if all that fat had any feeling in it.”

Jonas turned for a brief second, just long enough to snag two cans of tomato sauce and hurl them into his cart, ready to peel out on two wheels. Jeremy seemed to be closing in on him where he was wedged between the shelf and his cart.

Jeremy opened his mouth; drew a breath in preparation for something that would hurt…

“Spots.”

The three of them flinched in unison. Jonas turned and saw Mitch loitering at the opposite end of the aisle. His arms were overflowing with everything Jonas hadn’t meant to make him carry. The muscles in his jaw flexed menacingly. He looked ready to bite someone. “Come ‘ere.”

Without hesitation, Jonas was burning rubber making a U-turn with his cart. Never in his life had he been grateful to see Mitch, but the relief that washed over him as he raced from one bully to another wasn’t one he was in the mood to analyze. Mitch and Jeremy were worlds apart in the ways they chose to make him feel like dying. Jeremy’s was sharp as steel and never grew dull. The wounds he inflicted were keen, drawing blood every time; whereas Mitch was doom personified; he was brutal and unyielding and already had a record of attempted murder. If he had wanted, he could have beaten Jonas to a stain. But they had done this dance so often, he and Mitch, that Jonas knew the steps. He knew where they stood. And once or twice already, Mitch had allowed his humanity to be glimpsed.

“Ah, we were just talking, Mueller.”

“Well, fuckin’ stop. I hate the sound of you talkin’.” Jonas curled inward as Mitch leaned over him to emphasize. “In fact, you ever talk in my direction again, I’ll rip out yer voice box and play it like a fuckin’ flute.”

Jonas felt himself going white as a sheet from the effortless aggression rolling off Mitch in waves. It was like being in the middle of a dog fight. It didn’t sound as though Jeremy had any rebuttal at the ready, so Mitch turned away and let the stuff in his arms tumble like an avalanche into the cart. They did not consult one another, but moved as a unit toward the check-out lines in silent agreement that it was time to go whether they had everything or not.

Hot, unshed tears swam in Jonas’s eyes until he could barely see where he was going. He clenched his jaw to keep them from falling and didn’t dare blink. Mitch had seen him cry before, but that was because he’d been the cause of it. For some reason beyond Jonas’s understanding, crying at the hands of another bully was not a dignified thing to do in front of him. Maybe it had something to do with what he had admitted to Mitch the other night about what Dean thought of him; maybe it was proof.

The silence between them was filled with the beeps of scanners and the whir of receipt printers and the tin can sound of Garfunkel and Oates piping through the speakers. Not to mention the static ripple of private thought in progress. Mitch had taken to slouching on the cart, one foot on the lower bar, while Jonas stood aside with his arms crossed, watching everything shimmer through a bifocal of tears. From the edge of his vision, he could see Mitch staring at him, and it was making things ten times harder.

“Spots…”

At the sound of his nickname, spoken with more patience than he’d ever heard from Mitch, the dam broke. Jonas looked away hurriedly, dabbing away fat tears that slipped down his face with the cuff of his sleeve. “What?”

There was a pause, and that, too, made it worse. Because Mitch Mueller was at a loss for words. Oh, Dean would be all over his emotional ass if he could see this. And when Jonas thought of that, his throat grew so tight he could barely breathe.

Mitch sighed through his nose. “Nothin’.”

The line moved forward one person, and they each got to take one whole step. By then, Jonas had gotten a hold of himself.

“I feel sorry for his partner,” he croaked. “Did you see the freaking look on his face? Can you imagine?” But who was he kidding? Of course Mitch couldn’t imagine what that was like, anymore than Jonas could imagine bullying a kid until they looked like death.

“No. I fuckin’ can’t imagine. ‘Cause if it were me in there with him, shit’d look a lot different,” he grumbled with a confidence that brooked no argument.

At last they reached the register. The cashier was about a hundred and four and so creaky he resembled an old fortune teller dummy. He swiped their things over the scanner while barely moving his neck, and Mitch--surprising Jonas--took it upon himself to bag everything up and load it into their wagon. The dent in their funds was significant, but not a total wipe-out, so score one for financial independence!

Cars whizzed past them back out on the road, throwing dust and hot air in their faces. After loading the cart, Mitch had not given Jonas the chance to take it, so Jonas was content to stroll alongside, watching where he put his feet on the busted up pavement.

“Thank you.”

Mitch turned, staring for a while as a recently lit cigarette jutted from his lips. “For what?”

Jonas shrugged. “For coming when you did. I think that was about to get a lot worse. And…for the bus thing, too. He would’ve murdered me. I don’t know why I mouthed off like that, it was so stupid. He was right: I wouldn’t have been able to get myself out of that. I know you didn’t do it for me, but…thanks for shutting it down anyway.”

“No I did do it for you.”

Jonas almost tripped. He threw his eyes on Mitch who was staring ahead casually. “You--why?”

“’Cause, ya little dweeb. The way I see it…nobody--I mean fuckin’ nobody--deserves to be harassed by a cocksucker like that guy. No nerd of mine especially.”

A tingling sensation prickled across Jonas’s face. Was that how Mitch saw him? As territory? Their twisted relationship (if it could be called that) was pretty longstanding. And Jonas did have the honor of a very special amount of his attention. But never in a thousand versions of this moment would Jonas have guessed that Mitch thought of it so…personally.

“Oh,” was all he could think to say. “You know he tripped me down the stairs at the start of the year? I almost broke my wrist. I had to wear a brace.” A streak of indignant outrage flared up in Jonas. Well, if Mitch was so bent on keeping Jonas to himself, why hadn’t he ever done anything about the half dozen other bullies on Jonas’s case?

Mitch plucked the cigarette from his mouth and blew smoke. “Yeah? You notice he wasn’t in school for a couple days after that?”

Jonas thought back to the incident. No. He didn’t remember that, preoccupied as he had been with avoiding Jeremy like the plague. But if Jonas was understanding what Mitch was implying, that meant that--

“Are--are you saying you beat him u--”

“I beat the holy fuck outta that guy,” Mitch finished, leveling Jonas with a hard stare. “Broke his fuckin’ nose and everything. You never seen so much blood in yer life.”

Jonas was speechless. The implications of this! He was about to trip trying to glance between the road and Mitch’s face. All this time he’d thought Jeremy had gotten away with nearly murdering him, and…he hadn’t. Not at all.

Jonas kicked a chunk of asphalt out of his path. One of the wheels on their wagon was rickety, by the sound of it. A car whizzed by and flung grit.

“Why, though?”  

“’Cause,” Mitch took a drag. “I’m the only one who gets to terrorize ya.”

Alarmed, Jonas turned to Mitch, and caught the tail-end of a smirk trying to straighten itself out.

Was he…

Was that a…joke? Was he making a joke? Were they joking right now?

Wow, dark humor.

Still, Jonas let himself smile too, and he didn’t hide it when Mitch peeked down at him. A little of the tension instinctually present in Jonas’s frame whenever Mitch was near slipped out of him. For the first time since middle school--so basically forever, and knowing it would never last, Jonas stood beside Mitch unafraid.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

By the time they got back to the cabin, the comfortable feeling had begun to flicker in and out of signal. Maybe it had something to do with being indoors that messed with Jonas’s perception of his partner; making him seem disproportionately large. As they unloaded their bags in the kitchen, shutting things away in cabinets and drawers, popping things into the freezer and wading up bags for use later, Jonas found himself using much of his brain power to stay out of Mitch’s way. If they went for the same cabinet, Jonas yielded; if their paths collided, he gave Mitch the right-of-way. Sweat broke out on his neck as Mitch leaned over him to put a box of spaghetti in a cabinet over his head. Flashbacks of having his back against lockers flitted through his mind. If he closed his eyes and breathed the smell of a week’s worth of cigarettes and cologne surrounding him now, they could have been there.

When Mitch disappeared into the bathroom, Jonas used the opportunity to slip out onto the back porch for a lungful of air and some solitude that wasn’t his room. The lake shimmered in the mid-day sun between trees in the near distance. He plopped onto the bench and took out his phone. He supposed he owed Sidney a phone call by now; he was shocked she hadn’t tried to phone already, or at least text. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Dean was trying to dampen their communications by confiscating Sid’s phone. It’d be just like him.

He dialed, counting the rings. Sid always picked up for him by the third ring, if not sooner.

The third ring came and went. Then the fourth.

His spirit began to wilt, and he started to ponder what he would do if she didn’t pick up. Fart around with the syllabus some more? Whip up something in the kitchen with Mitch breathing down his neck--

“Jojo! Hey!”

Jonas sagged. “Hey, Sid.”

“Missin’ me already, huh?”

He sat back, tucking one leg under the other the way he did to settle in for a comfortable phone session. “A lot, actually. Like so much, Sid, you don’t get it.”

“Yeesh. That bad already?”

Oh, lord. With what words did he begin to describe how bad things were before this conversation had even begun? Did they exist? “Are you busy or anything?”

“Nope. I’ve been celebrating the inauguration of summer by barely moving. You know how it is.”

Boy, did he. One of their favorite things about the first few days of summer was what Dean called ‘a wasteful and arrogant expenditure of precious time’. They caught up on sleep by laying in until ten thirty, drifting in and out of nap-like states for the rest of the day; watched TV on their butts until well into the night. Only by this process did they have enough restored energy to use the next two and a half months to the fullest. Not that there was anything keeping him from sleeping in and staying up late--they were operating on pretty flexible rules here. It was only that there wasn’t much to look forward to in the awakened state.

“Rub it in my face why dontcha, jeez.”

“Okay. Spill. Something’s bad. I can smell it. Smells like burning hair.”

Eh--that wasn’t unreasonable. “I guess if I had to describe how this trip has gone in terms of smell, I’d use burning hair.”

“Wait! Let me get my big gulp for this. Hang on.” There was a great quantity of shuffling and fumbling through the line, followed by a slurp and a gasp for air. “Okay. Go.”

Jonas sighed, long and deep. “Okay, so…you know how…Lewis and I ended up going to this thing together? And we thought that it might make things a little more bearable? Like idiots?”

“Oh man. I’m already on the edge of my seat here.”

“Yeah, that didn’t happen. We got split up immediately. ‘Cause why shouldn’t it get worse?”

“Wait, what do you mean split up?”

Jonas forgot that Sidney knew literally nothing about how things went around here. He would have to spell it out. “Oh, this isn’t some all-join-hands kind of place, Sid. They started pairing us up at random as soon as we got off the bus. It was carnage.”

So it was that Jonas began to lay out the map of his journey so far, in order that she might perceive every one of its hellish hardships. The uncomfortable car ride with Lewis and his suddenly fascist dad; the bus full of fiends and villains, peppered with the odd nerd; Jeremy Whitten versus Mitch Mueller in the almost beating that someone was about to get. When he told her about getting partnered with Mitch, she sputtered on her soda and started yelling so loudly that Dean popped his head into the room and told her to keep it down. And as he waited, eavesdropping on the otherside of the line for that interaction to wrap up, Jonas took immense pleasure in the fact that he would not be on the receiving end of a chastisement like that for many weeks to come.

When the coast was clear, Jonas barreled on, coming to the parts wherein he and Mitch had locked horns in a matter of hours.

“Man, you mouthed off to two bullies in one day? You feeling invincible or what?”

“I didn’t mouth off to Mitch. I would never. I just voiced my thoughts, because…I mean at some point, I had to. We can’t go on avoiding each other all summer.”

“Nope. You’re right. And how long till you get out of the hospital?”

Jonas watched the silver surface of the lake rippling, wishing Sid was here for real. It was a cruelty that his arm was already tired from holding the phone up. “Yeah, that’s the thing,” he went on, glancing around to ensure that a certain tall jerk wasn’t lurking nearby. “He hasn’t done anything to me. Like, anything. He’s kind of been the one putting a stop to it.” He told her about the god awful run-in with Jeremy at the store just now, and the ensuing rescue by Mitch. For reasons unknown to him just yet, Jonas opted not to say anything about Mitch’s admission back on the road.

“Ohh! Speaking of scary people not being so scary all of a freakin’ sudden…I had a weird encounter of my own.”

“Oh yeah?” Jonas was more than happy to let the subject of his turmoil go. It was taxing.

“Yeah. So, staying in the vein of your street rat partner, I got the slip on Dean ‘cause he got called in, and I went to the skate park, practically skipping because I didn’t think I’d get to go this early in the summer, right?”

Jonas nodded, sympathetic.

“Anyway, it starts getting crowded, so I decide to go to that corner store right down the street from there. You know the old gross one that’s kinda cool and kitschy but you feel like you might get robbed at gun point?”

“Yeah, Sid. I’m not new in town.”

“I’m trying to set the scene here, Jojo. Yeesh. Anyway, so I got a pocketful of the money I earned from Sue, and I decide, to hell with it, I want a giant Icee. So I splurge. And when I get up to the counter, that girl he hangs out with? Crystal? She’s working the counter in there.”

“So you’re not going in there anymore?”

Through the line, Jonas could hear her gearing up to contradict him. “…I mean…I think I will. She was…sorta…not that bad?”

“Like she didn’t hop on the counter and bite your nose off not bad?”

“Like she gave me a discount. A big one.”

“...Really?”

“Yeah! I can’t figure it out. She started talking to me like we’re old friends and not someone I’ve had to beat away with a stick before. You remember--”

“The Stick Incident? Yeah, I remember.”

“I don’t plan to stop going. It’s my last summer and I don’t plan to let anyone--and that goes for Dean or her or Jesus himself--get in the way of it being as good as it can be with you not here.”

Jonas laughed. “Yeah, don’t let the Man keep you down. Or the girl at the Cash N’ Dash.”

About that time, the cabin door squealed open and Mitch stepped out onto the porch. He caught sight of Jonas bug-eyed on the bench and stuck a fresh cigarette in his mouth, groping for his lighter. Jonas angled away. “Hey, I gotta go. I’ll call you in a couple days maybe. Or you call me.” Without waiting for her to respond, he hung up and stowed his phone, as if he’d been doing something illicit.

“You don’t gotta hang up on my account. I just had to get outta that room for a while. Fuckin’ smells like somebody’s grandma’s house.” He didn’t appear to find the lighter, and instead left the unlit cigarette jutting from his lips as he went to sit on the steps leading down, facing away from Jonas. “That yer clone?”

Mitch’s voice in such a conversational setting was strange. It was his, but it wasn’t; it was a different colored variation of the voice he knew to by Mitch’s. Maybe a truer one.

“Mm. She was pretty upset I wouldn’t be at home for out last summer. I was catching her up on everything.”

Mitch’s shoulder jumped in a single scoff of laughter. “Oh, yeah? What’re you tryin’ ta do? Make her jealous?”

“She, uh, said she ran into your friend working at the store by the skatepark.”

Mitch stared at him, his brown pinched together, and Jonas swallowed out of habit. “Who?”

“...C-crystal?”

Mitch snorted. “You mean Scratch. She don’t go by Crystal.”

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t suit her, I guess.” He peered around again at Jonas over his shoulder, mulling the end of the cigarette in his mouth. “She got a job at the Cash N’ Dash?” Jonas nodded. “Guess she wasn’t jokin’ around about that.”

With no earthly idea what that alluded to, the idea of sitting here caught in a struggle for something to say forced Jonas’s hand. “Do you want to check something off the list?”

“Like what, exactly?”

Jonas conjured the list of objectives from the email via his phone and perused it. Something simple. Basic. Something they could ease into all this with, for god’s sake.

“It says you should do a trust exercise if you’re having trouble acclimating to or getting along with your partner.”

Mitch rotated on his butt, leaning against the banister, the better to look at Jonas with that fire-eaten intensity that made his hair stand up. “Are we havin’ trouble with that?”

Is he serious??

“Uh, we could probably do with some improvement,” he replied, chewing his lip and fixing his eyes on his phone. “Luckily it sounds like we can each come up with our own. And that’s good because I don’t even trust Sidney enough to catch me in a trust fall.

“Ain’t that the point of doin’ it?”

“...Maybe.”

“But yer not willin’ to let me try, are ya?”

Jonas pursed his lips; they began to sting, along with the rest of his face. “I’m really heavy, Mitch.”

“Ah, fuck, Spots,” Mitch complained, shifting toward him. “That’s bullshit. You an’ I both know I could toss ya around if I wanted.”

Jonas’s spine stiffened.

How did he explain it? How did he make Mitch understand that the sort of trust missing between them wasn’t the kind being caught falling could solve? God only knew Jonas had all the faith in the world in Mitch’s strength; it was Mitch the person that he didn’t trust; his hands, his eyes, his words.

“You’re really gonna make me come up with somethin’ totally original just for you, huh?”

“It’s not like it’s one-sided or anything. I have to do the same for you. I couldn’t catch you either, y’know.”

Mitch glanced over him appraisingly, “Nah, prob’ly not.”

Jonas could see the moment that the cogs started to turn in his partner’s head. His eyes narrowed; the cigarette twitched as if being chewed on. Suddenly, Mitch shot to his full height, startling Jonas, who was beginning to feel ridiculous about how often that happened.

“Alright, I got it. Wait here. I got an idea for mine.”

“Y-you do? I mean--already?”

But Mitch had already breezed into the house, the screen door slamming behind him, leaving Jonas with sweat across his brow and his guts tangled with dread.

What had he done? Maybe letting Mitch catch him falling wasn’t such a bad idea, or at least it didn’t seem like one now that he had basically given the guy a free pass subject him to any number of atrocities.

Just do it, whatever it is, said some inner voice of reason. Maybe it won’t help you trust him, but we can cross it off the list for good.

The screen door burst open and Jonas was filled with a fear he could not chalk up to surprise. Mitch stood there, a strip of black fabric twisting between his big hands. The word ‘strangulation’ zipped through Jonas’s mind.

“C’mere. Stand up,” Mitch instructed eagerly.

Jonas took one look at that random cloth and that mischievous smile and shook his head hard.

“Aw, fuckssake, Spots!” he griped, throwing his hands out. “Maybe it don’t do any good to say this, but yer gonna have to trust me a little. That’s the point of this whole thing. You ain’t even gonna make it to step one?”

Okay, since when did Mitch Mueller make good points? Man, they really had trust issues if Jonas didn’t trust Mitch to even begin.

Steeling himself with a breath, Jonas pushed to his feet and went to stand in one of his least favorite places on earth: right in Mitch Mueller’s shadow.

Two giant hands planted on his shoulders and spun him around--perhaps an even worse imposition. The black fabric appeared in front of his eyes and suddenly the whole world disappeared, save for a few pin pricks of light. He stood still while it jerked and twisted as Mitch tied it behind his head.

With his sight gone all that remained was the fragrance of pine, the slightly wobbly row of planks beneath his feet, and Mitch behind him, who exuded a presence that eclipsed everything else in Jonas’s environment.

“W-what’re you gonna do?”

“Take ya somewhere.” Jonas could hear the smirk in Mitch’s voice. It seemed as bad an omen as any.

“Where?”

“That don’t matter. The point is trustin’ me to get ya there.”

One final tug at the knot and Mitch’s hands fell away. Jonas felt the boards hum beneath his feet as Mitch came around him to stand in front. “Alright Wagnerd. Walk toward the sound of my voice.”

“I can’t walk around blindfolded, Mitch, are you crazy? What if I fall?”

“How many times do I gotta tell ya, ya dweeb? It’s fer you to trust me, not worry. Ah-- Leave that thing on!”

Jonas snatched his wandering fingers away from the hem of the blindfold.

“Now…” said Mitch’s voice, authoritative and confident. “Go when I tell ya. An’ stop when I tell ya.” Jonas nodded the nod of a bank teller at gunpoint. “Walk forward. Straight.”

Reluctantly, Jonas did, knowing that here in the middle of the porch at least it was flat ground, the shape and expanse of it stamped in his mind’s eye clearly, and he took his first few steps with some confidence. For one reason or another, the loss of his vision made the role of his hands unclear. He couldn’t very well go around with them hanging dead at his sides; if he tripped they’d never make it out in front of him fast enough to catch himself. So he let them drift out a head of him to avoid anything he might bump into.

Once he was sure he was near the place Mitch had been standing, he put out his hand, reaching for him. But Mitch wasn’t there.

“Stop,” came his rough voice to the far left and downward. Jonas turned his head, as if to look at him, now off in the grass. Triangulation was a miraculous thing.

“Huh-uh! I’m not doing the stairs!”

“I’m gonna help you. Do what I say.”

“No.”

“Do. What. I. Say. Dork.”

Pinching his lips together like a ziplock seal, Jonas reached up and straightened the blindfold. He angled his body toward the steps, already trembling with the ghost sensation of tumbling down them.

“Okay, take two steps toward me.”

Sensing the sheer ledge like a cliff, Jonas absolutely did not step. He slid his feet flat along the porch until he felt the unhewn edge of the planks biting into the sole of his shoes. His heart fluttered.

“Mitch…” He felt for the railing.

“No rails,” Mitch announced. “Only me. C’mon, Joey. This part’s easier than you think.”

Jonas paused with his foot halfway down the riser, hand clutching at air. Mitch was the only person on earth who called him Joey, though he seldom ever used it. Hearing it now, colored by a certain amount of desperation, reminded him of how personal that was. Mitch had been his very own villain for so long that he felt comfortable resorting to a pet name like Sidney did. Call him stupid, but Jonas didn’t hate it. He could pretend that, given the circumstances, it was affectionate.

When his feet crunched on the unmistakable foundation of solid earth, Jonas sagged in relief.

“I’m gonna have a heart attack.”

“Christ. You and the dramatics,” Mitch said, clearly rolling his eyes. “You need this more than I thought. Alright, same shit as before. Come at me.”

Jonas paced forward like he was on a balancing beam. The land around the porch would devolve into very cagey territory. He remembered their trek back to the house from the bonfire--how they had barley made it back with their lives.

“Keep comin’, keep comin’. High step on the right, there’s a stick.”

“Mitch. This is scary,” Jonas complained, groping his way toward Mitch’s voice. He felt his shoes catching on every little obstacle.

“You haven’t fallen yet, have ya?” Mitch teased somewhere in the unknown ahead. “Wish you could see how far away from the house ya are.”

“Yeah, really encouraging.” He felt stupid with his hands out in front of him like this, but what if Mitch was leading him straight into a thorn bush, or a hole in the ground just for laughs? Was that impossible? “Just wait till it’s your turn. You’re gonna pay for this.”

“Oooh, I’m pissin’ my pants over here.” Mitch let out a laugh that immediately inspired Jonas to laugh a little as well. Because all a threat like that to someone like Mitch could be was hilarious.

“I’m serious. You’ll be as scared as I am right now. Watch.”

“You challengin’ me?”

“...N--yeah. I am.”

“Alright, badass. You keep goin’, and if you take even think about peekin’ through that blindfold yer startin’ over from inside the house.”

The ground began to grow treacherously uneven. Jonas hyper-focused on every bump and notch. The end of his shoe caught on something and put his heart straight through his chest.

“You’re still going to tell me where to go right?”

Leaves clattered together overhead; sticks broke under his aimless feet; the lake sloshed in the distance. But Mitch didn’t respond.

“Mitch?”

Nothing. Deafening silence.

Suddenly, one of his hands collided with a tree truck, scaring the life out of him because of how easily it could have been his freaking face. Beneath his shoes were only roots and rocks now, but he pushed on because he believed Mitch about that starting over thing.

“Mitch, this isn’t funny, you jerk! You want me to break my freaking neck?!”

Under the canopy and out of direct sunlight, the little stars of light permeating the weaving of the blindfold twinkled out. This was it, wasn’t it? The big joke. This was the comeuppance he was waiting on from letting Mitch put a blindfold on him. The dirtbag was probably already back in the cabin waiting on Jonas to figure it out and drag himself back inside.

“Freaking--”

His hands groped along the rough bark of a felled log, trying to figure out why he didn’t rip the blindfold off his face if he was so sure Mitch had abandoned him. Maybe because some foolish, microscopic part of his faith in the idiot’s humanity believed the he was still there.

Man, the ground was really getting rough. In fact, there wasn’t much ground to speak of; only clusters of large, in-ground rocks and the odd branch that snagged at his pant leg. He moved along the fallen tree, clinging to it like…well, a blind person.

And then, as was inevitable, Jonas’s foot came down where there wasn’t any ground at all. Cold with fear, he skated down a sort of embankment, still miraculously upright.

“Mitch where are you?!” Jonas’s hands shot out in a final bid for rescue, terrified to move, dizzy with darkness and the world spinning around him.

Relief such as he never known descended as two warm, rough hands enveloped his. “Right here. I’m right here,” Mitch’s voice breathed in his face. Jonas could hear his smile, but also his mild alarm. He clung to those enormous hands, not giving a single rat’s ass if they were Mitch’s or not; they were strong and steady. “I gotcha, Joey.”

“Where’d you go?” Jonas demanded.

“Nowhere, nerd. I been right here the whole time,” Mitch laughed, squeezing his hands. Jonas let them bear some of his weight while he dislodged his foot from between two rocks.

“Well, don’t do it again!”

“Jesus, you should fuckin’ see where you are right now. The shit you managed to get yerself in. Scarier without me, huh?”

Mitch gave his hands an experimental tug, and Jonas went with him slowly, feeling out his path. Mitch’s hands were something else. Rough and big and…capable. Imagine taking one of those to the face. They held onto him gently, never gripping or pulling.

“Thanks. For not leaving.”

“Joey, I wouldn’a left ya out here, alright? I ain’t a monster believe it or not. C’mon. Get off these fuckin’ rocks.”

Mitch guided him carefully forward. Or maybe it was back the way he’d come--Jonas had no idea which way way up anymore. Deep down in his gut of guts something unknotted. Maybe that scheme Mitch had pulled was having an effect.

“I’ve decided to concede that maybe you’re not a monster.”

“Well don’t tell nobody. I got a reputation ‘n shit, y’know.” One of Mitch’s hands vanished, presumably for a good reason, but Jonas immediately when to wobbling as if one-legged. He clung to the remaining hand, and then his wrist and his arm. As he fumbled his way over what felt like a ditch, Jonas hugged Mitch’s arm to his chest desperately. The longer the blindfold was on, the dizzier he felt.

“Fuck…” he thought he heard muttered into the wind.

“What?”

“What?”

“...You said---Am I holding on too tight? Sorry…”

Mitch guffawed. “Spothead, on your best day you couldn’t hurt me.”

“How do you know? I’ve never tried.”

“Okay, so try.”

With no idea what came over him, knowing only that he was challenged, Jonas tightened his grip on Mitch’s arm with all his earthly might and squeezed until his hand shook with exertion. It occurred to him almost too late that he hadn’t given this a second thought.

Mitch was wheezing when Jones let up. He’d never heard Mitch laugh that way before, so deeply that his voice cut out.

“Holy shit, Spots,” he gasped. “you are so fuckin’ soft. Yer little hands were shakin’.”

Indignant, Jonas tried to yank his hand out of Mitch’s, but he wouldn’t let it go.

“Relax, I’m not makin’ fun of ya.” Jonas very much doubted that. Was anyone ever going to do anything but emasculate him?

He let himself stew in a bitter silence while Mitch led him, at last, to level ground. And with the danger of tripping and bashing his head open out of the way, Mitch slipped his hand away and instead slung an arm around Jonas’s shoulders, all chummy like.

“Alright, don’t freak out. The ground’s gonna do a weird fuckin’ thing and make you feel like yer on shrooms, just…hang onta me.”

Except there wasn’t any way to hang on with them side by side. So Jonas reached up and clung to the hand draped over his right shoulder. Maybe it was panic-induced delirium, but he thought he felt a thumb swiping over his knuckles.

The ground did shift, skidding to the right without warning. Jonas seized up. “Holy crap!”

“Chill the fuck out I said. Yer makin’ it worse,” Mitch chided, tightening his hold on Jonas to correct their footing. “Just keep walkin’ straight. I gotcha.” The arm around him constricted. They took measured steps together, almost in sync with one another. And then Mitch jerked them to a halt. Standing still, jostled lightly as if on a boat’s deck, Jonas could hear the sloshing of water and feel a breeze unobstructed by trees grazing through his hair. He had a pretty solid idea of there they were.

“Can I take it off now?” he asked, tugging at the hem.

“No. Sit down first.”

Mitch held Jonas by the shoulder, guiding him straight down into a criss-cross sitting position. The floor beneath him was hard wood, like the deck. “Now.”

Jonas tugged the blindfold down around his neck. Glaring light struck him in the eyes painfully, potent after so many minutes in sheer darkness. He squinted against it. The lake was silver and vast before him, spreading out in all directions. Beneath them the dock swayed and bobbed in response to their arrival, but sitting down, it became hypnotic, rather than unsettling. It was beautiful.

When Jonas glanced over, he was surprised to find Mitch watching him. The sun glanced off his normally auburn hair, giving it a golden streak. He was a little pink, possibly from sun exposure.

Jonas had to divert his gaze, blushing for reasons unknown. Things were, admittedly, not going as predicted, and his brain could not compute it.

“I guess…I am glad that I’m not with Jeremy.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah.”

Mitch reclined back on his elbows, face out of view. Jonas’s eye cut over to the lean length of midriff, envious. “You mean you only guess yer glad yer not with that deadshit I thought about lockin’ in the freezer back at the store? Fuck, you mean I’m only a little better than that--”

“Okay, okay,” Jonas interjected, smirking uncontrollably. “I’m really glad. There.”

“Yeah, well fuckin’ me too. Or you and me both know I’d be in county right now insteada sittin’ here with you.”

Jonas peered over his shoulder at Mitch’s face squinting into the sun. “You think I’m better than jail?”

Mitch grinned and bounced his knee off Jonas’s shoulder. “Fuck yeah I do.”

Jonas surveyed the area, watching the placid surface of the lake ripple with unseen disturbances. This was another dimension--it had to be. One where he was sitting on the dock of a gorgeous lake next to Mitch Mueller, who was suddenly singing his praises.

Absently, his hands toyed with the blindfold looped around his neck. And when it came to his attention, he glanced down at it. “Where did you even get this? What is it?”

“I cut up one of yer shirts.”

Jonas tore the thing off and spun around in alarm, but Mitch was convulsing with laughter, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun. “I’m bullshittin’ ya. I cut up one of mine. God, it’s too fuckin’ easy.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Fukin only time I probly do this but fuk it here goes ---

Deer fukin diaree or whtevr  

Been a hell of a day. 1 ^st  I cauhgt that asshat Whittn about to fuk with Joey. I alredy delt with his ass once so I gess hes gnna have 2 lern again. Runin low on cigs, but Im not usng any of my cash to get any. Be a waist. Lerned from Joey’s clone that scratch actully got a job. WTH me n cliff aint even been gone a week! Hope she can still chek in on buddy now n then. I miss him. Been thinkn about calling Ma. Aint haerd from her in a long time. Exsited for her to come home finely. Nervus tho. Theres some stuff about me I should probly tell her. Maybe Ill just do it over the phone like a cowerd. Think I finely made Joey trust me little bit today. Gotta fukken long way to go tho. But he held onto my hand and I feel lik thats a big jump frm not bein able 2 look me n the eye. Gess well work on that nxt. I don’t wanna say 2 much cos I dont trust that dr phil motherfuker not 2 reed this. Shit if I got a hold of sum bodys diaree Id reed it for sure. Be hilairyous to reed Cliffs, but the poor hillbilly can barely hold a pencil. Haha.. Shit I bettr check on his ass. Make sure he hasnt fukkd with his nerd to much. Joey wud kill me.  

MM

Chapter Text

Lewis has the laptop pinched under his arm. He’s the only one who ever touches it. If Cliff sees it sitting open on the table, he shuts it. “Quit leavin’ that thing open,” he always chides Lewis. “I can’t stand ta sound like my uncle, but that thing’s lookin’ at us. See that little eye right there?” He always points out the camera like it’s some kind of scandal he’s exposing.

Needless to say, it’s been a rough couple of days, and he’s been in his room for most of it.

Lewis’s heart goes out to Jonas. It really does. How terrifying would getting stuck in a house alone with Mitch be? For Jonas especially! If it had been Lewis, you wouldn’t be able to walk five feet without stepping in a puddle of his piss.

But…

Jonas has an advantage that Lewis imagines no one is considering. Jonas and Mitch know each other. They have an established dynamic in place (no matter how shitty it is). And that at least gives Jonas the upper hand in guessing what his partner would do, would say, would be angered by.

Lewis knows Cliff as a face. An extension of Mitch. And it’s all he needs to know. What else is there to learn? Anyone who slums it with that guy is someone Lewis would go miles out of his way to avoid.

Except he can’t avoid him. They share walls for the next two months.

No. Lewis has to learn Cliff from the bedrock up. His sounds, his habits, his boundaries. Presumably the hard way.

Right now, very much against his will, Lewis is on his way to the cabin’s covered back deck to talk to this faceless goon. Literally faceless with that hair in his eyes. He pushes the screen door aside and smells a problem before he even sets eyes on the guy.

Cliff is propped up in a solid wood Adirondack chair to his immediate left, one ankle perched on the adjacent knee. A live cigarette pumps smoke from his mouth like the Hogwarts Express.

“Really? What are you trying to do, burn the whole forest down?” Lewis strides to the stoop and takes a load off on the top step.

“This ain’t my first cigarette, Smokey. I can light up without catchin’ my hair on fire.”

“I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to smoke out here.”

“And I’m pretty sure you ain’t s’posed to take that Commie spy machine outta the house.”

“Well, think of it this way. I’m accommodating you and your unfortunate habits.”

Cliff gives him a sloppy salute, cigarette pinched between his fingers. “Much obliged.”

Lewis…he totally won that one. But just take a breath, man. This guy is a professional dick. It’s his niche in life to rile you up.

Lewis throws the laptop open in front of him and tries to unclamp his lips. It’s a second before he can rally his faculties and focus enough to open the drive. The are so many documents and folders that in his state of fluster he can barely read them. Meanwhile, Cliff lays draped across his chair like a towel, puffing away as if nothing had happened.

“We should probably start thinking about how we want to do some of this stuff,” Lewis suggests. “It might be best if we hammer out a weekly schedule--”

“Hold on,” Cliff interrupts, holding up a hand. “Now keen as I am to git crackin’ on that shit…I’m thinkin’ we need to be aimin’ a little smaller ‘fore we start tryin’ ta be perductive.”

Lewis squints. “Start smaller…what do you mean?”

Cliff uncrosses his feet, switching them up. He tilts his head in thought and Lewis imagines his brain rolling to the other side like a marble. “Don’t you think the hardest part of all this is gonna be livin’ in this place together? Whadda you know about me?”

Lewis hesitates to open his mouth because the answers he has are not flattering. And anyway, Cliff has the sort of arms that look like they could make his spine into a balloon animal. “Nothing much.”

“An’ all I know ‘bout you is yer a twiggy lil ginger with a distaste fer me smokin’ on my own time outdoors in this here free nation.” For a moment they make very pointed eye contact. The only thing Lewis has a distaste for is being referred to as a ginger. And twiggy…?? “Seems ta me that the first order of business is figurin’ out what’s what in there.” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder toward the wall behind his head.

An oddly sensible idea, Lewis thinks. “Okay.”

“Here. I’ll start.” Cliff sniffs, sitting up. “I sleep in the nude. So don’t come barrelin’ inta my room unannounced. It’s bin brought to my attention that the size’a my naval is such as to be considered frightnin’.”

Lewis nearly chokes on his own spit. This is not happening. He is not stuck in a domestic situation with this backwoods teeth-picking jerkoff bully talking about his proclivity for sleeping nude and the size of his dick. No. “Thanks for the tip and the mental image. I sleep fully clothed. Still knock, though.”

Cliff shrugs in askance. “What for? If yer dressed.”

“Uh, hello. It’s common courtesy. What if I’m having a private moment?” Christ, did this guy’s family forget to evolve their fish brains when they started walking on land?

“Ah, yer a night-time jacker-offer like me, huh?” Cliff says, grinning and nodding as if they’ve finally found some common ground.

During the stunned pause that ensues, Lewis wonders if this is one of those dreams. Birds chirp all around them, unobservant of the awkwardness. This? This is not what he’d thought this goon of Mitch’s would be like. He had been expecting more brutish behavior; more meathead bully talk. But Cliff is the most lackadaisical person Lewis has ever met. Even his speech is lethargic and rounded as he cuts corners clean off of English pronunciation.  

“This is good. You know what I’m learning from this? Neither of us should come out of our rooms at night. Maybe not ever.”

With a shit-eating grin on his mouth, Cliff stares at his phone. It shifts ever so slightly in Lewis’s direction, and then he taps the screen.

“Did you just take my picture?”

“Now what the hell would I want with yer picture?” he chuckles, tapping like crazy.

Yeah, that’s it.

Lewis smacks the laptop shut and pushes to his feet. He’s done trying to assimilate with this weirdo. He’ll go about everything himself if he has to. Jonas is probably over there thinking the same thing.

“Aw, don’t be like that, now. C’mon, Red,” Cliff beseeches like Lewis is being unreasonable. “We ain’t been out here five minutes.”

Without a word, Lewis throws open the screen door and lets it slam behind him. He makes it through the kitchen and halfway into the living room when he hears it screech open behind him. He drags his feel to a halt, rolling his eyes. Heck, he rolls his whole head.

“Lemme tell ya something,” Cliff bellows, coming in hot. “Yer gonna hafta pull it outta yer ass if you insist on gittin’ through this shit.”

Lewis whirls at the audacity. “Me?! Really? I’m the one who needs to change to make this work? Really? Me?”

Cliff perches a hand on one hip and adjusts the brim of his cap. And everything about him reads ‘exasperated redneck. “Well if yer waitin’ on me to slap on a tie and start talkin’ French or whatever, I hope you brought a crossword, ‘cause it’s gonna be a fuckin’ while. And in the meantime you oughta look into loosenin’ up a little. Yer gonna give yerself a hernia.”

In this moment, Lewis almost wishes Cliff would live up to his reputation and stomp Lewis half to death right there on the pine wood floor. At least he would know how to respond. Lewis isn’t exactly a novice at trading barbs, but he can’t perform in the face of someone with a better grip on their emotions. And in this very unique case, the person with a better grip on their emotions also has a beer stain on his shirt.

He takes a breath and sets the laptop on the table before he throws it.

“I’m not asking you to be all pretentious. I’m asking you to be some shade of normal. Any shade!”

Cliff actually staggers back as if hit with a fish. “You think yer the normal one betwixt the two of us?”

“Said the guy who used ‘betwixt’!” Lewis bellows. “Oh my god. You know what? I thought being in here with you was going to be totally, completely different. But since it’s every bit as unbearable, I think this is exactly what I expected out of someone who makes a point of hanging around Mitch Mueller.”

The moment this is out in the air between them, Lewis sees Cliff’s chest inflate menacingly. His shoulders square up like a cobra’s hood. “Don’t take a shit all over my best friend like that! He might be a giant dick, but he’s my giant dick!”

Lewis’s nose scrunches in disgust. As he pulls his hands down his face, he feels every second of every day of the summer ahead. A veritable eternity.  

“Okay. I’m done. I’m going to my room for a while. This is a waste of brain power. We can try this again later. Or not. I don’t care.” He turns his back on Cliff and starts toward his room. This is beginning to rival the car ride with his dad.

“Good with me. I was meditatin’ when you showed up anyway.”

He hears Cliff’s boots scuff on his way back to the porch, and Lewis’s own sneakers scuff when he grinds to an abrupt halt between the kitchen and the living room. Out of nowhere, a tangle of anxiety knots in his abdomen. It hurts like a stomach ache.

“Let me ask you a question first. And I want a serious answer, not one of your pre-programmed smart alec quips.”

Cliff stops. He angles his head to the side, annoyance rolling off of him. Lewis swallows.

“Is your friend going to hurt my friend?” The question is a loaded one; he already knows he isn’t going to like what he hears. His hands tremble by his sides; the knot made of his insides undulates like a mass of worms.

“No. He ain’t.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do, trust me, Red.” He starts for the door, gripping the handle. “I think it’s likely to be the other way around.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

A few hours later, Lewis is awakened by a dubious smell wafting into his face from somewhere in the cabin. It’s food-like for sure. A clatter of dishware can be heard in the kitchen as he watches the bar of light beneath the door, the only light in his otherwise black bedroom. Shit. Has he been asleep all this time? He and Cliff had argued sometime around one o’clock in broad daylight.

His head is leaden when he sits up, but in a way that feels refreshing. Maybe a good headbutting was all he needed to finally get into a sound REM cycle. He wants to leave this place so badly his body had put him in a vegetative state, no dreams allowed. And now, regrettably, he’s awake. There’s a throbbing tumor of guilt pulsing in his conscience. It has hair and teeth and a voice that tells him he has shot himself in the foot. Both feet in fact. Because he had started all that, hadn’t he? Maybe even created something that wasn’t there.

With a grunt, Lewis stands. He feels sedate. Ready to maybe not be such an ass. The odd smell reaches a crescendo as he shuffles out into the light, coming to stand awkwardly in the doorway of the kitchen, where he is greeted with Cliff’s back curving over the stove. His smooth blond hair slips over his shoulders.

It’s hard to think of something to say and decide what that smell is at the same time. Meat, maybe? A cake? What the hell…

“Uh…” he chokes. “What’re you making?”

If Cliff is surprised by the sudden intrusion, he doesn’t show it. He doesn’t even turn around. “Corndog casserole. If you must know.”

Ohh-kay. So it’s still a little raw.

“You went to the store by yourself? Wh-why didn’t you wake me up?”

“Figured you crawled into yer private quarters fer a reason. Wasn’t my place as a piece-a shit Mitch Mueller tag-along to go peepin in there,” he replies sourly, talking over his shoulder.

Lewis cringes and wraps his arms around himself protectively. Was there any way to salvage this so that he could stop feeling like the aggressor in a room containing just himself an infamous bully from his school? Any way to pump the breaks on this apparent path to becoming a bully himself, since he’d basically bullied the shit out of his partner earlier? He was a MIT applicant for Jesus’ sake!

“Well…can I help with anything?”

“Negative. This sucker just came outta the oven.”

“What about the pictu--”

“Already took ‘em.”

“Right…”

Cliff finally turns around, clutching a plate heaping over with a steaming pile of the stuff. “Will you be partakin’?”

Lewis passes Cliff on his way to the table and stares down at the pan on the stove. Since there’s no polite or justifiable reason to turn it down, he says, “Sure. Yeah.”

Cliff’s already hunched over his portion at the table and digging in like it’s Thanksgiving. “There’s a real good sauce that goes over top. I do recommend it.”

If nothing else in the world can be said about Cliff, he was not easy to rile. It makes Lewis feel even shittier. It’s Cliff who’s the bully; he’s the one who’s supposed to be all messed up over getting paired off with Lewis and yelling about it. But it isn’t. Not once. All he’s done is smoke on the porch and defend himself and his friend from Lewis’s slander. And then, before they could even reconcile, turn right around and recommend the sauce.

Lewis peers into the bowl next to the stove and can’t believe his eyes. “This is just ketchup and mustard mixed together.”

“And yer problem with that is?”

He dollops it over the pile of corndog whateverthehell. “None at all.”

So they’re going to sit in a forced amicable silence over a meal that looks like something two hobos slapped together under and overpass. Swell, Lewis thinks as he takes his seat opposite Cliff. For a second he watches Cliff use his fork like a shovel as he pushes his own around. It looks disgusting; like a pie of cornbread and chili with hunks of hotdog peppered in. But being famished makes him a risk taker.

He takes a bite, scraping the fork along his teeth and carefully not letting his lips touch in case it’s too gross to swallow. Only, shockingly, it isn’t bad. Tastes like something you’d get at booth at a county fair. Even the contemptible “sauce” doesn’t taste out of place.

The disharmony of their forks scraping in the silence brings him back around. Cliff seems at home with the whole cold shoulder act, but it makes Lewis itch.

“Look, maybe we should just…start over, okay? You were right. We might as well figure the boundaries out since we’re going to be here anyway.”

Cliff finally sits up, elbows on the table, mouth full of food. Lewis is only pretty sure he’s looking right at him. “Fair ‘nough. Whadda you suggest?”

Well, that was easy.

“The syllabus said if you don’t know your partner very well you can play, like, twenty questions or two truths and a lie or something to break the ice.”

“Games?” Cliff says through his chewing. “What was wrong with the way we was doin’ if before?”

“You mean just spewing facts at random?”

“Sure.”

Lewis pretends to cringe, helping himself to another bite. “Well…that doesn’t really help either of us figure out what we want to know. Like wouldn’t it be easier if I just straight up asked you something about yourself that I was interested in knowing?”

All the knots in the pine paneling are gaping faces that watch them while Cliff’s brain ruminates behind his bangs. Lewis thanks every star in the heavens that his lot seems to be turning around. So far, he’s learning that Cliff, at least, can reason. He isn’t a slave to his impulses. In fact, he seems to have no impulses at all except to smoke and curse and push every button Lewis has. Still, assuming that both Jonas and that Eric guy who got stuck with Jeremy are still alive…he can’t believe that this--this!--ended up being the lesser of three evils.

“Alright. Shoot.”

“O-uh, okay, uh…” Lewis flounders under the sudden responsibility of leading the charge. Putting his fork down, he takes a silent minute to think, deciding not to go for any low hanging fruit. The game won’t be of any use or have an ounce of entertainment value if they don’t throw out wild cards. “Why did your parents name you Cliff?”

His partner has been in the process of taking a sizable swig of his soda. Lewis waits, watching him dump it back and clap it down on the table, gulping heavily.

“’S a family name. Short fer Clifton. Was my old man’s name, and his before him. I’m Clifton Everett Lonnie the third.”

Lewis balks. That was...much more drama than he was expecting. For starters, it was Clifton, not its much more idiotic cousin Clifford. “A-alright. Your turn.”

Please don’t ask about he carpet and the drapes. Please don’t ask about the carpet and the drapes. Please for the love of baby Jesus and the three wise men, don’t ask abou--

“How’d you git that?” he says instead.

“...What?”

“That scar on yer arm.” He points with his fork. “How’d you git that?”

Lewis peers down at the old scar, about an inch long, striped across his left wrist. It’s pale, and he can’t fathom how Cliff spotted it though all that hair, or at what point they were close enough.

“Oh,” he says, rubbing and thinking backward. “Some…jerk in eighth grade. Pushed my into a fire hydrant. It’s old. Doesn’t hurt anymore.” He doesn’t really want to talk about this with someone like Cliff. He sits back and takes another bite of his weird hobo meal. The taste is growing on him. As he does, he stares at the half of his partner’s face that he can see. Cliff has a shadow of stubble swathed across his jaw. The sort of thing Lewis’s dad would be proud of these days. “Can you see okay? With your hair all in your face like that?”

“Is that yer question?” Lewis shrugs, a sort of test. But Cliff slouches back in his chair, one hand propped on his knee. “Why’s everbody always askin’ me that? Would I just be walkin’ around blind? Drivin’ a truck?”

Lewis throws up his hands in surrender. “Hey, no offense. I just think it must be difficult.”

“I can see fine,” he gripes, shaking his head and making the sheet of blond hair ripple. “Fer instance…I can see yer eyes’re brown. I can see ya got little freckles all over yer forehead. Ya bite yer nails, but only on yer left hand. An’ ya got dog shit dried up on yer shoe.”

Sure enough, when he looks down, there a patch of brown sludge crusted along the edge of his shoe. Embarrassed, he scrapes it across the floor as he turns back around.

“Howzzat fer seein’ alright?”

“...Touché.”

Cliff polishes off his dinner by scraping the varnish off the plate and pulling a clean fork out of his mouth. He pushes all of it away and plonks his elbows down on the table. There comes the unmistakable sting of scrutiny, hot as a candle across Lewis’s skin. It’s impossible to tell if this is going better than he had planned or worse.

“What time you git to bed every night?”

“Whenever my body tells me. What time do you wake up?”

“If there happ’ns ta be a rooster in the vacinity, the ass crack’a dawn. And if there ain’t, I got no idea. You gonna try to feed me some’a that exotic stinky food from overseas?”

“My stomach is sensitive to various spices, and out here in the middle of god-forsaken nowhere I’m not going to risk anything hotter than salt. So no. What’s your favorite breakfast?”

“Bacon.”

“...”

Cliff takes advantage of Lewis’s stunned pause to adjust his posture in a way that reads I’m about to throw you a curveball. “You ‘n yer little buddy over there…” he says nodding in the direction of Jonas’s cabin. “Ya’ll got girlfriends?”

A clammy sensations creeps over Lewis’s face and palms. It’s slick and swampy and gross. He can already feel his posture sinking like a collapsing cake. “No.”

Cliff nods, accepting. Nothing like laughter comes; nothing like he already knew and just wanted to hear Lewis say it. But why include Jonas in the question? “Yeah me neither. Ain’t no big deal, kid.”

Hmm, Lewis squints minutely. Whatever that was, it had a big red flag stuck on top of it. But speaking of Jonas… “What did you mean,” Lewis says, treading like he’s walking over glass, “when you said it was probably going to be Jonas who hurts Mitch? And not the other way around.”

Lewis can see the moment Cliff stiffens with the naked eye. It’s not that anything changes in him, but that’s just it; he goes even stiller. Like a photo. He goes to cover it by taking a drink of his soda, but it rings out between them, empty. “Ah shit, Red. You can’t be askin’ me what the hell I was talkin’ about hours ‘n hours after the fact,” he replies through forced laughter as he suddenly pushes up from the table and shuffles casually toward his bedroom door, like Lewis is some kind of newborn fool who doesn’t recognize an escape when he’s looking right at it. “Rule number one you gotta know ‘bout me. If enough times passes, shit I have said before is lost to history.”

“But I remember you saying that.”

“It’s fuckin’ riddle, Red. Sorry, I can’t crack it for ya. That was daylight Cliff and he ain’t here no more. See ya in the A.M.”

And he shuts the door, leaving Lewis perplexed and facing the wrong way in his chair.

Chapter Text

Life with Mitch had become doable. It wasn’t cozy; it wasn’t comfortable or simple or even very enjoyable. But it was doable. And that was as far from where they had started as east was from west. After Jonas had learned that Mitch wasn’t expressly out to torment him, and that he was, in fact, as bummed out to be here as Jonas himself was, he let himself unclench. He didn’t look at Mitch and see a walking, talking injury waiting to happen anymore, but neither could he unsee what he had seen him do in the past. Throw desks and punch dents in locker doors; threaten adult men and beat athletes with twice his muscle mass to a bloody, tenderized pulp. And the stabbing, his inner coward was always quick to add. Don’t forget that.

And yet there were some things that Jonas couldn’t seem to stop doing even if he wanted to. Subtle, stupid, highly ingrained behaviors that even the hard-won improvement in their relationship couldn’t correct. If he and Mitch went to enter the kitchen at the same time, Jonas’s body went rogue and pulled backward, allowing Mitch to go first. He still sometimes found himself talking to Mitch’s shirt and shoulder and shoes in place of his face. Sympathetic soul that Jonas was, he knew, logically, that Mitch could not necessarily help some of that stuff. He loomed because he was tall and his hands were just that big, and the timbre of his voice, sometimes rough as bark, gave Jonas goosebumps. Nothing for it.

But he thought of Jeremy’s partner, whom Jonas had not seen since the grocery store incident, made an absolute wraith by proximity alone to that asshole. Jonas had never felt like that. If anything, his fear--though waning--made him feel alive. Mitch had never made him want to lie down and die. Never applied pressure to his spirit until little by little, it was crushed to death. He made him want to run for his life until his legs broke off, beg with his words until he couldn’t breathe because his heart was working overtime. He made his cheeks flush and his hair stand up and his stomach knot.

Speaking of, Jonas could hear Mitch now, mucking around inside from where he stood on the porch. An obligatory wave of tingling anxiety washed over him, and he tried to ignore it to death by shoving his hands in his pockets and having a look around.

Because Mitch couldn’t seem to bring himself to rise before ten a.m., it was late morning before anything could get cracking. Jonas had been awake since eight, already made himself a breakfast and had a shower and puttered around like a little old man trying to put off the urge to wake his partner up. But finally, after a lot of inner talk about how he’d been braver in more dire situations, Jonas poked his head into Mitch’s dim room.

His eyes didn’t adjust right away. Shadows hung all around despite the morning light letting itself into the window. Mitch was a vague substance on the bed, a shapeless mass he couldn’t make heads or tails of.

“M-mitch?” Jonas called out quietly. He heard low, slumberous breathing, and had the oddest sensation of being Bilbo Baggins.

A long, empty pause meant he’d have to try again, and he was just about to when he heard a husky, “…Mmhh.”

Excuse Jonas’s French, but Jesus almighty Christ. Mitch didn’t even have to use words to sound terrifying. Jonas licked his lips. “Uh…why don’t we go out and find something to do so we’re seen. For a while at least.”

The substance shifted. Jonas wanted to pull his head out asap. The sound of sheets chaffing and lungs filling with air was strangely intimate.

“Fuck…’kay. Be a sec.”

And Jonas had been waiting outside ever since. It was temperate out. Birds were singing and the heat was still soft. The perfect conditions through which to fight for his life making banter with Mitch.

The door shut behind him and Mitch appeared at his side. The dregs of sleep hung on him like cobwebs.

“Sorry to come in your room like that,” Jonas said, deciding not to offer any excuses.

“’S fine,” Mitch replied, his voice rough with sleep. “Your voice did a better job than my fuckin’ piece a’ shit alarm. Must’a slept straight through it.”

Jonas led them off the porch, beginning their journey toward the common area at a steady march. The grass was long, making a standard kicking stride unfeasible. He felt ridiculous even slightly high-stepping next to Mitch, whose feel hardly left the ground. Maybe they’d run into Cliff and Lewis and make this whole thing easier. Cliff could distract Mitch just enough, and Lewis could be Jonas’s outlet.

Only it wasn’t supposed to be like that. Lewis couldn’t save Jonas every time he decided he didn’t want to be alone with Mitch. He had to grow a spine sometime.

“What do you want to do when we get there?”

“Fuck, I dunno.”

“I’m not really a tennis player if that’s alright.”

“Oh, no shit?” Mitch laughed. It was so smart ass that it drew a smirk out of Jonas himself.

“I mean if you’d rather start with that I guess I ca--”

“Spots,” Mitch interrupted, “can we please quit acting like we don’t know each other a little better than that? Have you eeever seen me on a fuckin’ tennis court?”

Jonas’s brain slipped backward to all the places and all the shenanigans he had ever seen Mitch up to. “Yeah, I saw you tagging the one at school once.”

Mitch grinned so hugely at the memory that lines appeared around his eyes. Jonas had seen Mitch smile a hundred thousand times in a hundred thousand contexts, but he had never seen those lines before; neither did he think he had ever seen that particular smile before. A real one.

“I’d be at the fuckin’ Olympics if vandalism was a sport, lemme tell ya.”

But Jonas was snagged by what Mitch had said earlier. Did they really know each other? In a way, he supposed, they did. A different kind of ‘knowing’, maybe. Not born of positive relations for sure. Jonas, for instance, knew that Mitch hated organized extracurriculars to the point of belligerence because he belittled the hell out of every participant he saw. And smoked once in the afternoon, his second cigarette of the day after the one he usually showed up smoking. And if he had the change on him, he would sometimes get a Sprite from the vending machine in the cafeteria. Mitch hated racists. One time, a kid came to school with a homemade Nazi tattoo, and when Mitch and his friends caught sight of it no one ever saw that guy again. Never. People insisted he was still alive but Jonas had his doubts.

“Besides, I already know in a line-up of sports yer gonna shoot hoops before anything else.”

Jonas’s head snapped up. Because that was…true…? “How did you know that?”

Mitch looked down at him like it should have been obvious. “Ya tried out for basketball back in September. Remember that?”

“Yeah, but…how did you know that?”

“We go to the same school. Duh.” Mitch shoved his hands in his pockets and watched his footing for a while. The worst of the roots and uneven ground was behind them, and they were on the footpath proper. “An’ I saw ya at tryouts”

Well, that’s a humiliating revelation.

“Why?”

“Jeezus, are you fulla questions or what?” Jonas threw his hands out in speechless askance and Mitch rolled his eyes. “I don’t fuckin’ know. Nothin’ better to do. I was by myself.”

Great. So that meant of all the people to see him make a fat idiot out of himself, Mitch had been one more. It could have been worse, though. It could have been Carmen, because she might have needed another reason not to dump Neil and elope with him.

The common area was an oddly arranged plotting of buildings and flat tops. The laundromat was a squat cinder block building on the far right next to the tennis court. Front and center was the basketball court, much smaller in dimension than anything official. People were everywhere. Four people were whacking a ball to and fro on the tennis court; the lake was peppered with boats. Picnic tables were booked. There was some kind of relay race going on in the field to the right.

And unfortunately, both ends of the basketball court were occupied.  

Jonas and Mitch stood with arms at their sides, watching a group of four tussle for the ball at one end, while another pair casually shot hoops at the other.

“Looks like it’s gonna be a while,” Jonas lamented, glancing up at Mitch.

He was watching the players keenly and rolling his lip between his teeth. “I’m gonna go over there,” he said, wandering in the direction of the court and smiling innocently over his shoulder at Jonas. “Maybe put our names on the sign-in sheet.”

Jonas squinted as he tracked Mitch across the lawn spanning between himself and the basketball court. His infamous partner didn’t normally take such forward initiatives. Nor was he polite. Nor did that smile ever bode well. And out of curiosity alone, Jonas traipsed along slowly behind.

The clipboard with the sign-in sheet hung from a screw on the goal post, and as Mitch approached it, the level of activity on the court began to flag. The ball came down from a dunk and was left to bounce itself out, forgotten. Bodies became shifty, even as Mitch paid them no mind and picked up the clipboard and pen. Jonas watched his shoulder blades shift beneath the fabric of his shirt as he penciled them in.

Joey x Mitch #12

Mitch’s handwriting was hurried and careless, but oddly legible. To see his name scrawled in it next to Mitch’s own, was weird.

Mitch let the clipboard whack back down and pouched his hands in his pockets. Very casually, he spun around, and when he noticed Jonas loitering behind him he graced him with a tight-lipped smile that hid every tooth he had. Jonas couldn’t squint any further; his eyes were nearly shut.

“...What’re we doing?”

His partner shrugged, going up on his toes and down again. “Signin’ up to shoot hoops.”

“Mitch, we should just find something else to do until it’s vacant.”

“Until what’s vacant?”

“The freakin’ basketball c--” Exasperated by the sheer volume of unpredictability that seemed to surround Mitch at all times, Jonas threw out a hand toward the concrete and promptly choked. It was empty. The court was empty. The guys were gone, and when he scoured the vicinity, Jonas couldn’t even spot them. The balls were still rolling around, freshly helpless.

“Oh, fuck yeah. Our turn,” Mitch said, wandering over with Jonas hot on his heels.

“You did that on purpose.”

“Did what?”

“Made them leave,” Jonas said, stooping down to pick up the ball.

“I didn’t make ‘em do shit. I came over here to write us down and they left. That’s on them.”

Only Mitch could bully six people away without saying a word, or looking at them, or trying period. Because his reputation preceded him. And since several of those boys didn’t know Mitch from Adam, it had only taken getting an eyeful of him to say screw it.

Jonas sighed, deciding not to push it. He dribbled the ball a few times, unsure of what to do now. Were they just supposed to take turns shooting or--

“Hey!” Mitch snatched the ball straight out of Jonas’s hands and held it clear up to the sky, basically putting it in orbit. Jonas couldn’t have reached it with a ladder. Despite his very own dignity begging him not to, he started reaching and jumping, all but climbing Mitch’s body like a tree. If anyone was watching this and laughing he wouldn’t have blamed them, because that ball might as well have been the moon.

And like the jerkface villain that he was, Mitch watched him work for it with that shit eating grin on his face.

“Mitch, come on. What’re you doing?” Jonas sagged, huffing and out of breath.

Mitch began dribbling the ball in tight, shark-like circles around him. Jonas stood still and felt his body and all its innards trying to slip into bullying mode, wherein all his inner structures and their linings grew cold and heavy. It didn’t seem like that was what was happening, but these days Jonas struggled to gauge what counted as bullying from Mitch anymore.

“Wanna make this interesting?”

“You mean it’s not interesting enough already?”

“I’ll shoot. If I make it, you gotta tell me something embarrassing about yerself.”

“No,” Jonas said flat out. “No way am I telling you of all people something sensitive.”

Mitch stopped in front of him, trapping the ball under his foot, and pinched his brows together. “Why? What the fuck do I gotta do with anything?”

Jonas went quiet. A sheen of perspiration was already forming across the back of his neck. From the sun, he tried to tell himself. And Mitch must have caught onto to some kind of clue because understanding formed his mouth into a straight line. “Jesus, I ain’t gonna beat ya up right here in fronta everyone--”

“Then what are you gonna do with whatever I tell you?”

“Laugh at it, duh!”

“Well, why does it have to be something embarrassing? Why can’t it be something autobiographical?” Right away, Jonas knew he had used that term in vain. Historically, Mitch struggled with much shorter and simpler words.

“So the stakes’re higher,” Mitch said, the fire of excitement glinting wild in his eyes. He picked up the ball and went to circling again.

For a second, Jonas allowed all parts of his body to process this: his brain and his gut and his skin, and very odd places like his throat. And in each of them he could feel thought happening differently. Only his mind could talk, though; everything else spoke to him in the primitive tongue of sensation. And the one thing they all seemed to be agreeing on was that he should definitely not do this.

“You’ll do it too, right?” said his throat, which was rallying to the idea of not being such a clenched up stick in the mud.

“Whaddaya think I am, some kinda asshole?”

It’s a game, said his brain, coming around next. And what are you supposed to do as Mitch Mueller and Jonas Wagner? Play regular old basketball? Weird. 

“Fine, but I get to go first, since it was your bright idea and all.”

With no argument and only the slightest of ill-portending smirks, Mitch handed the ball off at once. In the passing, their fingers touched, just lightly, tips over tips. But it was enough, and Jonas shivered. Touching Mitch, even accidentally, was like touching a wild animal. Whatever power coursed through the taller boy’s body zapped through his own like a surge of electricity.

Jonas lined up before the goal and dribbled nervously. His heels left the ground in the shot, and between his hands at the rim he prayed to the ball, who was master over his momentary fate. Please, please let Mitch have to bear his soul before I do, amen.

He missed. The ball smacked between the rim and the backboard and tumbled to the blacktop, rebounding again and again in betrayal.

“Aw, bad luck, Joey,” Mitch cried, brimming with mirth. He strode over to the ball, high as a kite on life, and resumed his place at the free throw line beside Jonas, who was three inches shorter and shrinking by the minute.

He shot.

He made it.

“This isn’t fair,” Jonas complained, turning to look Mitch dead in the face. “You’re like eight feet tall.”

Mitch beheld Jonas, who must have been a sight in all his angry five foot four inch glory, with the ball on one hip and his hand on the other. “Trust me, it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Now spill it ya shrimp.” He looked hungry. Hungry for Jonas’s misery.

Jonas turned away, the better to think. His brain was scurrying to find something, anything, as long as it didn’t feel like flaying himself alive to reveal. “I’m scared of bugs. All bugs. Like even lady bugs and butterflies and stuff,” he admitted to the goal post. “I can’t even sleep if there’s a fly in my room because I’m afraid it might crawl in my ear.”

Silence stretched on, during which they could hear tennis balls being pummeled and whistles being blasted. And when Jonas couldn’t take it anymore, he turned to find Mitch staring down at him. His eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “So when I gave ya--” His mouth snapped shut. He looked utterly aghast at himself. “Fuck, nothin’. But you gotta do better than that next time. ‘Cause that wasn’t shit.” He traipsed off to retrieve the ball from the grass and bounced it to Jonas from across the space.

“Gee, sorry my personal shames aren’t juicy enough for you. I’ll try to be more of a closeted freak.” Jonas didn’t give himself time to second guess his capabilities. He launched it, watching on his toes as it teetered on the edge, and finally, tumbled into the net. Triumph suffused his body, ridiculously good.

“Heck yeah!” His grin was too big for his face as he turned, practically salivating.

Mitch’s eyes fell shut in defeat, but Jonas could see he was fighting off a smile. He licked his lips and looked at the sky instead of Jonas. “So I got this radio that I leave on in my room at night. And sometimes…Taylor Swift comes on…and I don’t…always change it.”

Jonas gaped in awe. This was a bananas thing to learn. There was no way Mitch was telling him this. “You are joking.”

“Shit’s catchy!” Mitch defended. But Jonas was too floored. His long-held impression of who Mitch was as a person now had a crack in it.

“Oh my god. I cannot believe I know that about you!” His face ached from shit eating joy. “How do your friends let you get away with that?”

Mitch was silent, staring at him from the corner of his eyes. And Jonas nearly crapped himself. The smile actually dropped off his face. “They don’t know…”

“’Course they don’t fuckin’ know! I’d never hear the end of it, would I?!” Mitch yelled, but Jonas was catching onto his yelling. It wasn’t always something to be alarmed about.

Not over the fact that he of all people knew something about Mitch that not even his closest friends knew, Jonas tried to pull himself together as Mitch trotted toward the ball. He missed his next shot. And so did Jonas. And the next three after that.  

“Ya know I kinda thought you’d be better at this since you tried out an’ all.”

It was a conscious decision on Jonas’s part not to be offended. “The fact that I did would probably be my next confession if you didn’t already know about it,” he admitted stiffly, bitter about the fact that he had put his dumb self out there, only to eat it spectacularly in front of so many people. “Plus if you were really there then it should come as no surprise that I’m terrible at this.”

“Well…” Mitch sighed, watching his next shot bing the rim and come right back to him. “Ya kinda made up for it when ya made that pass and hit Neil right in his fuckin’ rodent face.”

Jonas laughed at the memory. Oh, right. That had happened. Neil hadn’t been able to shut up with the smart alec remarks and the fat jokes the coach was pretending not to hear. Being a trooper, Jonas ignored him and went to pass, only for someone to intercept and knock the ball straight into Neil’s face. He’d had to pull over and test the integrity of his front teeth. Only now, when the memory arose, there in the stands was Mitch, yucking it up.

“I guess you really were there,” he said, tingling with wonder. “Sounds like you were paying attention, too.” He took the ball Mitch was offering him, staring at it like some kind of oracle that could explain the last few days in a way that made sense.

Mitch was watching him with an implacable expression. He was wearing a stained up wife beater that must have been something like white once upon a time. The sun glanced off his bare shoulders, following the curvature of his muscles, and Jonas noticed for the first time how fair Mitch’s complexion was.

“I’m paying attention most of the time, ya know. I ain’t brain dead.” He took a shot and the ball rounded right off the backboard and into the net with perfection.

“I once tore my pants at the skatepark, and had to walk all the way home holding my pants closed in the back.”

Tickled pink, Mitch asked, “Why? Ya didn’t have underwear on?”

“No, I tore those too.”

Mitch had to bend at the waist, laughing so hard and true that his laugh as Jonas knew it was changing. He had never heard this laugh before. There were lines around his eyes and all those wolfish teeth didn’t look so wolfish anymore. Jonas began to laugh himself, because that incident was safely in the past, and revealing it no longer seemed like the risk it once had.

Equal parts fortunately and unfortunately, their luck began to improve.

“I got shit-faced once and woke up in a women’s restroom.”

“I let my sister give me a makeover when we were younger…. Tw-twelve is young. That was a long time ago.”

“I used ta have a nipple ring.”

“I gave a whole eighth grade presentation with toilet paper stuck to my shoe.”

“My aunt locked me outta my house butt-ass naked and I had to run down the street to Javi’s holdin’ my dick.”

“Lewis and I had to kiss on a dare once.”

Eventually, as was inevitable, because his life was prone to embarrassments of the malicious kind, Jonas ran clean out of light-hearted things to say. So the next time Mitch dunked his shot, Jonas’s next thought came like a cloud across the sun. “My crush uses me all the time and doesn’t like me back.”

He refused to look at Mitch as he said it, and went to retrieve the ball bouncing away from the scene like it was too embarrassed for him to stick around. He dribbled it back, watching where it struck the ground and lined back up to take his shot. He made it and Mitch said.

“Mine don’t either.”

Jonas couldn’t stop himself from turning to look at Mitch in awe. Because learning that Mitch had the capacity for affection was like learning that Bigfoot was real. What was that like? What was it like to be the person Mitch didn’t want to hurt; the person he would touch softly; the person he kissed? Jonas thought backward into all the years he had known the guy; tried to recall if he had ever seen him with a girl. But quickly he realized that Mitch Mueller kept two kinds of company: the company of his friends or the company of himself. He tried to imagine what sort of girl he might go for, but whoever she was, she didn’t exist as Sellwood High.

Mitch’s face was hard, his eyes a little stony, not quite as if he was daring Jonas to judge him, more like he was showing him a scar.

He wanted so badly to ask, but it was none of his business.

“Boys!”

Mitch and Jonas turned in unison toward the voice that was obviously addressing them; they were the only people left in a twenty yard radius because Mitch had arrived and he repelled people like bug spray. Chris was waving at them midway between the blacktop and the row of trees, where a cluster of others stood in a row. He had his hat on backwards and sunscreen slathered across his nose.

“I need one more pair for a relay. You guys in?” he shouted. “Easy points!”

Jonas looked in askance at Mitch, whose decision it was. Jonas could take or leave group activities, which reminded him of so many humiliating PE games, but if Mitch didn’t want to, that would be the end of it.

But Mitch was already looking down at Jonas and shrugging. “Ya want to?”

Overthinking things was one of Jonas’s strengths. The game they were playing was already in the process of drying up, and he did not have a plan B. At least if they participated, Chris would be there to see it, and there would be another piece of paper with their names on it. Boxes checked all around.

“Sure. Let’s do it.”

“Yes! Alright. So as you can see,” Chris turned his back to them and gestured with a hairy arm to the farthest tree at the end of the lineup, “every pair has their own tree. They’re a lot bigger once you get up to them. There are five pieces of cloth stuck up in the branches. Now, I’m about to hit the timer,” he said, checking his watch. “You can use  any of the tools on the ground by your tree to get them down however you see fit, but you must use teamwork. The winning team receives a fifty dollar preloaded card.” He took their names down on his ever-present clipboard and jogged backwards away from them, silver whistle glinting between his teeth.

At the base of their tree they found two very long rods curved at the ends like hockey sticks, four kickballs, and two pool noodles. Jonas and Mitch shielded their eyes and peered up into the tree where the five strips of cloth were scattered among the branches. Very foliated branches at that. The rags seemed miles away.

“How the fuck…”

The pierce of a whistle shattering the sound barrier cut Mitch off, and then everyone dove forward. Everyone except Jonas and Mitch, who squandered a few seconds watching all the rods rise up into the air like giraffes’ necks.

“Alright, I got an idea,” Mitch said, stooping to pick up the rods and passing one to Jonas. “See how everyone else is trying to push their own down?” Jonas did. One pair was pelting the canopy with the kickballs, but everyone else had a rod of their own, jamming them up in the branches with methodless imprecision. How Chris wasn’t flagging them on the grounds of no teamwork was a mystery. “You take one, I take one, we use ‘em like tongs and pull ‘em down.

Thrown off by this sudden show of commitment, Jonas floundered unsteadily for a second. And then slapped himself mentally as hard as he could. He wasn’t going to belly-up now if Mitch--a textbook slack-off--wasn’t. The phantom floating image of Dean’s scowling head visited his inner eye, and that was all it took to light a fire under his ass.

“Okay,” he nodded. “Yeah.”

Their sticks clattered together in the branches over head, heavy and awkward as they tried to find the rhythm. “’Kay, push on me,” Mitch would direct. “Pull, pull, pull…aw, shit.” The cloth hung onto the rough bark like Velcro. Even when they had their act together and managed to get their sticks to work in perfect unison…it slipped through. It was all the thrill and disappointment of a claw machine game. They didn’t bother with the kickballs obviously, and the pool noodles lay untouched.

“This isn’t working,” Jonas panted, bringing his rod to rest on the ground. The sun was starting to bear down pretty hard. Patches of sweat spread across his back. And when he stole secret glances at Mitch, Jonas was captivated by the intensity he saw there. Mitch was barely blinking, even as sweat dripped past his eyes and down his throat. He swiped a hand across his forehead, glaring at the rags in the tree like he did when someone defied his authority. His brain was working a mile a minute.

“I got another idea.”

“What is i--”

“Hey!” Mitch shouted over Jonas’s head at Chris, who was spectating at the back. “Can we climb this tree?”

“What?!” Jonas exclaimed. But Mitch ignored him.

Chris would say no, almost certainly. There was no way he would allow two teenagers (one of whom was exceptionally heavy) to scale a freaking tree of this height for the sake of a fifty dollar visa card. No. And thank God for that because Jonas and heights did not mix. He was subject to gravity the way a refrigerator was.

But, to Jonas’s mounting horror, Chris shrugged, smacking gum like it was the last piece on Earth. “If one of you does, both of you do. It’s a team effort.”

Mitch looked down at Jonas as if aware of the impending rebuttal. “Joey--”

“You want me to climb a flipping tree?!”

“I ain’t gonna let ya fall.”

“How can you make a guarantee like that?”

Down the line, a team was celebrating the capture of a cloth. And then another.

“Joey…ya trust me now, remember?” Mitch said, redirecting his attention. “Just stay in the lower branches and work at getting those two. I’ll go higher and get the rest.”

Admittedly, Mitch was a heck of a leader when the moment called for it. Maybe that was what had made him the shot-caller of his group, over a guy in clown makeup and a girl with some kind of rabies and a guy with a faceful of hair.

This was one of those times. One of those times Jonas felt the looming of his own stereotype. Again the disembodied apparition of Dean’s ugly scowl appeared before his inner eye, daring him to be a man for once and do it, and daring him to embarrass his family.

Except that no one was here. Jonas was alone. He could only embarrass himself. Himself and Mitch Mueller, the terror of nerds and geeks everywhere, who believed in him more than his own dad right now.

“Oh my God, fine.” He let his rod thud to the grass and marched after Mitch to the hulking trunk studded with branches as low as Jonas’s waist. “But if I die I’m haunting you, jerk.”

Mitch grinned with full teeth, pleased as punch. “Ya promise?”

Jonas’s mouth hung open as he watched Mitch scale that tree like he climbed it every day. He was so lithe and fit, it was fascinating to someone like Jonas, who felt like a chunk of lead on the ground. Suspended between branches, Mitch looked down and extended an open hand that Jonas would have to climb several branches to even touch. “C’mon, Joey. I gotcha.”

This really is a different reality, isn’t it?

Hoisting himself up one branch at a time, Jonas did not keep track of the growing distance between himself and the ground, or the approaching canopy. Fear made his joints stiff and kept his eyes glued to where he was putting his hands and feet. “I can’t believe I’m going to fall to my death chasing you up this tree,” he panted, “and my dad will have me cremated so he doesn’t even have to see me one more time. And my obit. will read, Fatty Dies During Routine Phys. Ed. Activity. And then even my death will be an embarrassing story.”

“Will you shut up. I said I gotcha.” Mitch took a supportive fistful of his shirt as Jonas came within reach. So he’d make it to the ground shirtless if he fell, but he couldn’t deny it did feel like a safety harness to have that big hand attached to him. “Reach out an’ grab that one to yer right,” he instructed.

Trembly and locked up with rigor, Jonas screwed his head to the right and saw a white cloth twitching in the breeze. Unclenching his hand from the branch took some serious internal labor, as it went against his most basal instincts. He could feel his heart rabbiting in his mouth as he reached out and snatched it away, cramming it into his pocket at once.

Mitch was not where he had been when Jonas turned back around. But leaves were raining down on him from above, and when he looked, Mitch was contorting himself between branches, his outstretched hand grasping for a white cloth.

Jonas was in such a prime locale to see right up the gap in Mitch’s shirt. A trail of hair connected the band of his underwear to the hem of his shirt. What was is even like to have hair anywhere besides your head and eyebrows and crotch? Jonas didn’t even have to shave. The plane of his abdomen was flat as everything, rippled with muscles tensed by the effort it took stay balanced. And holy God, those jeans swung low! So low that the heat around Jonas seemed to intensify in his embarrassment that he was even looking at that. All the humidity in the air pulled toward him, clinging to his cheeks and neck, dampening his hair.

“Ya got the other one yet?” Mitch called out to him, snapping Jonas out of his gross reverie about his partner’s happy trail. “I got fuckin’ two already!”

“Uh..yeah. Going for it right now, just…” he clambered higher like a toddler climbing a highchair, “making sure I have my footing. Also, brag about it why don’tcha!” You weirdo. You total freak. And with Mitch no less…

A tattered sliver of white cloth fluttered on a branch just over Jonas’s head. He thought he might stretch his shoulder right out of it dang socket straining to reach for it. Going up on his tip toes felt like balancing on a high wire, but it was no more perilous than attempting to go up a branch. And when he caught its evasive edge between two fingers the relief made him dizzy.

“Got it!” he announced.

“No more up this way. Comin’ down, so watch yer shit.”

Jonas had to shake his head to dislodge the barrage of twigs and leaves that came down on him as Mitch descended. When he was eye level with Jonas, he squatted down on his branch and wiped the sweat out of his face with the collar of his shirt. Jonas knew he was staring, but Mitch looked so much healthier than usual that he couldn’t help it; it was like looking at a different person entirely. His eyes were wide and clear, and there was a youthful exuberance not normally visible behind a screen of slouching and grime and scowling.

“It’s closer to you than me,” Mitch said.

Jonas shook his head a little to clear it. “What?”

He pointed. “The last one. C’mon, Joey, hurry. We been up here fer fuckin’ ever.”

Jonas finally caught sight of the cloth he was referring to hanging on a twig some five feet away. One branch--that was all it would take to bring him within reach of it, and then they could climb down forever.

Swallowing the lump in his throat the size of a walnut, Jonas summoned the last of his nerve and made the step across the plummeting void between the two branches. His hands clung to the mother trunk for dear life, and as soon as he was able to free one, he jammed the cloth into his pocket.

“Fuckin’ yeesss!” Mitch celebrated, grinning like the sun.

“Oh my god,” Jonas panted, his knuckles white. “That was the scariest part for some reason.”

“Ya feel like a badass?”

“No. I feel like I’m gonna pass out, now can we please get down?”

This was uncomfortable, partly because of the height and the sweat and the impending cramps, and partly because Mitch had never looked at him like that. Like he was proud of him; like there was nothing else in the immediate vicinity more important to look at. It gave Jonas the same gut flutters he got any time someone complimented him more than he felt he deserved. And Mitch never complimented him.

“Fuck, yeah. Lemme go first so I can h--”

Crraackk.

The whole world ground to a halt as the branch Jonas was standing on jolted. His heart lept into his throat.

He and Mitch stared at one another, and Jonas felt the way the kids in the car in Jurassic Park must have felt when the water started to ripple. It did not help his fear that he had never seen Mitch look more afraid.

“Joey, don’t move.”

In the midst of his breathless near death experience, Jonas felt a streak of annoyance. “Why would I move, Mitch?” His heart thundered with adrenaline, rattling him all the way to his toes.

Mitch put out a hand for him to take. “Gimme yer hand. I’ll pull you over with me.”

Jonas couldn’t have moved, even if he wanted to. His joints ossified as if becoming a piece of the tree itself. Every inch of air separating him from the bone shattering ground was beckoning him, pulling him down. He looked at the branch under Mitch’s feet and tallied the logistics of how two people could occupy such a space at once.

“How? Mitch, it can’t hold us both. And you’re already standing on it.”

“Joey, it’s fine. Look,” he stamped on his experimentally. “Rock solid. Come on before you fuckin’ die.”

“But where will I stand?!” he argued, growing frantic.

“Right here. Right in front of me.”

“We cannot both stand there!”

“Joey! I can hold you. I promise--”

“I’m too heavy, Mitch!” Water danced across Jonas’s vision, obscuring Mitch and tangling the branches. Every time he breathed it seemed he could feel the branch bobbing perilously. Wow, he though, I was kind of joking before, but I might really die like this.

The expression of contorted anger that came over Mitch’s face was so familiar Jonas actually felt comforted. “Don’t you fuckin’ argue when there ain’t another solution. I said I could fuckin’ hold ya and I can. Now come’ere!”

“But Mitch I--”

“JONAS!!”

Jonas’s mouth clapped shut. The big, scarred up hand reaching out to him shook with every bit of the desperation in Mitch’s voice.

Mitch had called him by his full name exactly twice in his life. Once when they had first met in sixth grade, when Mitch had spat it back out like it had tasted bad while Jonas’s orange lay squashed under his foot. And right now, at the moment of Jonas’s death.

The branch under him snapped again in warning, and then Jonas didn’t care anymore. All considerations blinked out of his mind as he lunged for Mitch’s hand, intending to tread lightly as he pushed off to prevent tearing the whole thing down with the pressure of leaving it, but Mitch yanked him across the span of nothing between them like he was another piece of white fabric who weight nothing at all.

Fearing the coming imbalance, he wound his arms around Mitch’s waist and held on like the world was upending. He buried his face in Mitch’s shoulder and didn’t give two flying craps about how it looked or what Mitch thought of it. His eyes screwed shut so that all the existed was the smell of Mitch’s shirt in his nose (like sweat and cigarette and faint detergent), the feel of it on his face, and vice-like clamp of Mitch’s arms winding around his back and shoulders.

There was a horrendous series of cracks, followed by the crash of limbs upon limbs. Jonas wanted to look, but the idea of seeing how little breadth of branch they shared made sure he didn’t. Beneath him, Mitch’s chest was heaving. Jonas could feel his heart smashing against the wall of his sternum and onto his cheek.

“Oh, fuck. You okay? I gotcha.” The hand on his back smoothed down. “That was fuckin’ wild, Joey. Holy shit!” He leaned over to peer down at the fallen limb, nearly giving Jonas a coronary.

“Mmf hmbffd mfmbmf.”

“What?”

Jonas freed his mouth. “I said thanks for saving me.”

“Don’t thank me, thank yer fuckin’ self. What the fuck were you thinkin’?”

Needing oxygen, Jonas let himself look. He turned his head and pressed a cheek against Mitch’s chest as he peered down at the detached branch on which he had once stood. It was caught in the other limbs and hung onto it’s original mounting by a few fresh strands of pale, sinewy wooden flesh. It was unnecessary how long he stood there staring at it, clinging to Mitch like he was on the wing of a plane. Mitch’s breath crashed against the top of his head in waves.

He gulped. “Figured…I was going down either way. I didn’t want to take you with me.”

“That is the dumbest shit I have ever heard! I told ya I could handle you!” Mitch barked. The hand at the back of his shoulders balled, yanking his shirt roughly until it forced him to look Mitch in the face. There was outrage there. “I oughta beat yer ass for real this time. Yer lucky we’re in this goddamn tree.”

After a scare like he had just had, Jonas didn’t feel terribly threatened. Mitch told him to wait as he climbed down first so that he could help him get his footing. Climbing down was easier than climbing up. He didn’t have to pull so much of his own weight. Mitch was excellent at feeling out the best path down, and then coaching Jonas where to put his feet. Having cheated death once, Jonas fantasized about slipping each time he moved to step down; slipping on a leaf or loosing his grip, and tumbling down on Mitch and dying after all.

When they finally set foot on solid ground, Jonas nearly collapsed. His legs wobbled stupidly and his sweat-coated hands trembled. “Sweet, sweet earth.”

They had just started plucking the white rags from their pockets when Mitch shouted, “Motherfucker!”

Mitch swore like this so often that it could be difficult to discern why he was doing it. In all situations and in all spirits he swore. But when Jonas looked up, he was able to work this one out pretty quickly.

They were alone. The race had been won--long ago by the looks of it. Teams were skipping off in all directions to other activities, leaving their stuff abandoned by the trees. Chris was nowhere to be seen.

“That dickhead forgot about us,” Mitch griped. He spiked the fistful of cloth onto the ground like he hoped they might explode. “If we were layin’ dead on the fuckin’ ground right now not a single one of these assholes would know about it. I can’t fuckin’ beli--”

“Mitch.” Nerves shot, Jonas reached out and took Mitch by the elbow. It was tacky with dried sweat. “We’re not, though. We’re alive and that’s enough for me.”

Mitch considered him for a sober moment, breeze rifling through his hair. He nodded. “How ‘bout that beating now, ya punk ass disobeyer?”

Jonas chuckled. A blast of adrenaline to the organs could do weird stuff to the fight or flight response. “You wouldn’t hit your favorite nerd, would you?”

Mitch’s cheeks looked a little sunburned. He fought off a smile while trying to stare Jonas down, lost the fight and looked away completely. “Nah. Not my favorite nerd. Even though he definitely deserves it.” Jonas grinned, biting his lip. Mitch watched it like a hawk. “Aren’t you special.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The guilt of almost killing Jonas would stay with Mitch all the days of his raggedy fucked up life. Haunt him like a ghost, even. He had been ready to beg when he thought Jonas might refuse to come to him until it was too late. He remembered feeling his throat close with dread, hearing his voice crack. And when he had finally gotten his hands on him, Mitch dropped all pretenses of not loving him. He coiled his arms around him the way he always wanted, made sweeter by the fact that Jonas seemed desperate for something to hold onto.

Jonas confessed to not wanting to take Mitch with him if he went, not knowing Mitch would have gone either way.

Fifty dollars poorer and completely forgotten about, Mitch took Jonas on a little stroll down by the lake. He was sweating bullets so he pulled his shirt over his head and draped it across his shoulder. Maybe he’d get a tan here.

Jonas was either sunburned or blushing as he looked at him. Mitch couldn’t tell. They had been outside all day. When Jonas looked away, Mitch’s first instinct was an awful urge to put his shirt right back on. Like something about him had offended Jonas’s sensibilities. Only he could put it back on now without inviting more attention, so he ignored it.

“Sorry I smell fuckin’ terrible,” he chose to say for some reason.

“You smell like sweat and cigarettes, but when I thought I was going to fall out of a tree, it was the greatest smell on earth. So please, don’t apologize,” Jonas quipped, kicking stones out of his path.

Mitch wanted to jump out of his body and ascend to Heaven. Conquer it and put Jonas on its vacant throne.

Unfortunately, something was about to come out of his mouth that he didn’t think he could prevent. “You smell good all the time. You know that?”

Jonas looked up at him, startled, as he should’ve been. It was a weird as fuck thing to say.

“...Really? Like even right now?”

“You smell sweet, like…I dunno, vanilla or somethin’,” Mitch told him. “I used to smell it on ya in school all the time. You smell like it now, just sweatier.”

Mitch’s heart was starting to thud again, independent of the tree incident. This shit did not come out of his mouth normally. It stayed tucked away in the squished up folds of his brain where it belonged, where it could not disgust anyone or betray him as a regular man crippled with feelings.

Out over the lake, a seagull cried. An actual fuckin’ seagull.

“When I smell cigarettes I think of you,” Jonas confessed to the dirt. “No matter where I am. Even though I know a dozen other people who smoke, I picture you, stomping up to the school all pissed off and smoking. I don’t know why.”

Mitch swallowed and tried to remember to watch where he was walking. “’S a fuckin’ nasty smell. Sorry--”

“No, it’s…” Jonas bit his lip and scouted for the word somewhere ahead of them. “I can’t explain it. It’s not bad. Not when you carry it around on you the way you do.”

Sometimes, Mitch could read a moment for what it was. He didn’t say anything, wanting that sentiment to exist in the air between them forever, because he was keenly aware of how quickly and effortlessly it might be fucking obliterated by whatever unforeseen douchebag thing he might do or say next.

They plodded along the wet sand until their calves started to ache, and then Mitch began guiding them back. They passed the damn tree and all the shit laying about from the race. Mitch spotted Chris doing God knew what with his back to them and Jonas had to yank his arms down when he aimed two impressively tall middle fingers in his direction.

The basketball court was as empty as Mitch had made it earlier. Joey had been onto something with that accusation that he had made those guys leave. People tended to have a number of reactions to his arrival, and one of those was desertion. It had been worth a try, and it had paid off. And he didn’t have to resort to anything troublesome to do it.

They were just about to start up another round of their earlier game (minus confession, because enough of that for one day) when Mitch’s phone began vibrating. When he slipped it out of his pocket Javi’s name stared at him from the screen.

“Be right back. I gotta take this.”

He jogged out of earshot from Jonas, plopping down on the surface of a worn out picnic table in the shade. The thing had been ringing for a while so Mitch answered it as fast as he could before Javi could hang up.

“Hey.”

“What is up my brothuh!”

Mitch grinned. Just the sound of Javi’s voice was enough to flush the tension out of his body. Warmth spilled in like sun coming in through a window. “Fuckin’ around at camp. Y’know, ridin’ horses and makin’ flower crowns ‘n shit. Why? Ya jealous?”

Javier laughed, full and rich, making Mitch wish he was here even more. “No, but I’m tryin’ to picture it and you know what? It ain’t even that hard. Your convict-lookin’ ass gluin’ a birdhouse together…Cliff sharing shit about himself in circle time that nobody will ever recover from. Ya’ll gonna get that place shut down.”

“With any luck.” Mitch crossed his arms as best he could while holding his phone to his ear and smiled like an idiot. He watched the distant figure of Jonas shooting hoops alone, missing as many as he made. “What’s goin’ on with you guys? I heard Scratch started at the Cash ‘n Dash.”

“How the fuck you hear that already?”

Mitch locked up. This wasn’t how he wanted to introduce the fact of Jonas’s presence to Javi. Shit, he really had to start thinking ahead before he opened his mouth. “Cliff told me.”

“Well, she’s there like three days a week. I can’t be left alone with my brothers that much so I drop in on her sometimes at the last shift. She hooks me up with free cigs when the manager ain’t there. Pretty sweet perk I say.”

“Yeah, not bad.”

And then it fuckin’ happened. The natural flow of the conversation dropped away, as if into a ditch. And the could feel Javi doing what he was doing: trying to think his way out of it. They didn’t talk on the phone that often.

“Scratch said to tell you she broke into your room to check on Bud. He’s good. She wants to know if she can crash there some nights.”

Mitch thought back to what he’d heard Cliff saying with all seriousness about steering clear of his batshit crazy pervert uncle. And then thought about what he had seen the few times he’d been in Scratch’s room, and the single bed crammed in the corner of the puny excuse for a room where Javi barricaded himself from his brothers.

“Shit, I don’t care. I ain’t there, am I? Bud don’t like to be left alone for too long anyway.” It was sort of comforting to think that someone would be keeping his bed warm and his pet company. It lifted a fraction of the worry off his shoulders.

“Hm,” Javi mused into a pause, wherein Mitch, a seasoned smoker himself, could tell he was lighting up. “So what’s it like up there? Crawlin’ with nerds like we thought?”

“Eh…not crawlin’ exactly. Tons a’ goddamn jocks, though, which is worse. Fuckin’ Jeremy Whitten’s here. Javi you would not believe the shit.”

“I beg to differ, bro. I remember last year. Guess he’s gonna need a reminder.”  

“My thoughts exactly. Like I literally wrote that in my little diary thing.”

“I’m sorry, your what?”

“Ain’t important,” Mitch said, face warming like a stove. “Anyway, I’m fuckin’ his car up when I get back. You in?”

“Sign me the fuck up. What we getting’ him for?”

“...I just hate ‘im.”

“Yeah? He’s messin’ with the nerds up there, huh?”

“I mean, yeah? As usual.”

“Any nerd in particular?”

Mitch’s spine turned to stone. His pulse ticked. Sweat accumulated on his palms. “No--”

“Ah, cut the shit, Mitch! I already know about you playin’ house with lil bro, okay? So you can knock it off already.”

“What the fuck! How’d you know about that?”

A grunt came over the line and Mitch could see Javi giving him that withering look like he was right in front of him. “How do you think? Cliff told Scratch and she told me.”

Mitch wanted to tear his hair out. “That goddamn loud mouth snitchin’ hick!”

“Don’t get mad at him. He didn’t tell me. He told his bestie, and guess the fuck what? Mine didn’t. I had to hear about it through the fuckin’ grapevine like we’re a bunch of gossipin’ church biddies. What the fuck man?” Javi demanded, sounding wounded.

Guilt started to swell in Mitch’s throat. He clutched his arms tighter around himself to combat the feeling of implosion. “Javi, I--look man, I didn’t--I wanted to tell ya, but…” Cruelly, Javi waited patient and silent on the other end, giving Mitch the stage to stammer out his piss poor excuse. His chest ached; this happened sometimes when the god awful reality of appearing human in front of others clashed with a desperate want for help he couldn’t voice. “I didn’t know what to say. I don’t really…uh, talk about it. And I didn’t figure you’d care that much.”

“Didn’t figur--” Javi broke off, drawing a breath. Mitch cringed. “Mitch…I don’t know how to tell you this, bro, but you got no bigger cheerleader on this earth than me, my guy. When I found out you was gay, I was so fascinated, like holy shit, the biggest motherfucker I know can actually feel soft shit, and he feels it for dudes. This I gotta see.”

Every knot of worry in Mitch’s lithe body unwound, leaving him feeling like noodles. A dopey, fond smile slipped onto his face, half because Javi loved his gay ass, and half because whenever Joey took a long shot his shirt rode up his tummy.

“Fascinated?”

“Man, you got no idea. You have punched so many dudes in the face, I thought, fuck, he hates ‘em. So imagine my surprise.”

Laughter burst forth from Mitch’s very gut, embarrassing him with how much it sounded like relief. “I fuckin’ do hate ‘em. But…” Joey dribbled the ball in place. He shot and missed. “Joey ain’t one of ‘em.”

Mitch proceeded to tell Javi about life with Jonas in their cabin by the lake like it was some kind of Hallmark Christmas tripe. It was rife with strained encounters and awkward exchanges: a lot of nervous sweating on Jonas’s part and barely there self-discipline on his. He swore him to secrecy about Joey’s fascist dad and the quest for manhood. He recounted the momentary softness of their trust test and the good-natured game of basketball it had paved the way for. Punctuated the whole tale with how he had held Joey for the first time to prvent his untimely death.

“A’right, a’riiiight,” Javi crooned seductively. “Sounds like it’s goin’ good. So when you gonna make a move?”

Mitch almost shit. The idea. The very fuckin’ idea of putting the moves on Joey anytime soon scared him like nothing else could. He shook his head and ran a hand down his face. “Jav, he’s too scared. He wouldn’t even let me touch him. He’s scared to death.” There was a prolonged moment of silence for this sad truth, and Mitch couldn’t stand it. “Plus, ya know…I dunno if…” He petered off, hoping Javi might take the liberty of filling in the blanks so he wouldn’t have to say it. Because it hurt to say. But of course, he didn’t “He ain’t gay, Javi.”

“You know that for a fact?”

“Well, fuckin’ nearly! He’s all over that bitch at school fer chrissake!”

“Okay, okay, I gotcha. Hear me out, though.” Oh, this oughta be good, Mitch thought. What argument could he possibly have to “the boy ain’t gay”? He could hear the light scritch of Javi rubbing his stubbled chin. “I don’t really know how to say this since I ain’t ever said no shit like this before, but…dude, you’re kinda handsome.”

Somewhere a car was screeching to a halt. “Excuse me?!”

“Oh, fuck you! I didn’t stutter. Don’t ever make me say that again. C’mon man, you know what I’m talking about. You got that slick haircut and that jawline. You’re all tall and fit and ya got a nice smile if you’ll just fuckin’ show it to him.”

Mitch couldn’t believe his ears. “Why Javier…I never knew you felt this way--”

“Don’t misconstrue. But I think you oughta at least make an attempt to use that to your advantage.”

Thoughts in Mitch’s head were firing a mile a minute trying to unravel what in the blue hell made Javi think he was any better looking than any other junkie on their side of town. He was greasy and half-clean and so far removed from what Joey deserved it wasn’t even funny.

“Anyway, I don’t know why you think I ain’t interested. Shit’s juicier than anything we got goin’ on here. I can sit around on my ass waiting’ for Scratch to get off work and then sit around with her…or I can get all embroiled in my bro’s personal drama.”

Over on the blacktop, Jonas abandoned the ball, swiveling this way and that until he spotted Mitch on the table. Mitch wasn’t so out of touch that he couldn’t look at Jonas approaching him and see what others saw. A sweaty, chubby, freckled boy whose cheeks were flushed and whose thighs brushed together just enough to give his hips a nice little sashay when he walked. That kind of sight put some people off, made ‘em mad even. The difference was, to Mitch, who sat there with the phone glued to his ear and the wind wooshing into his open mouth, it was the sexiest sight on planet earth. And it was headed straight for him.

“Joey’s comin’, Jav. I gotta go. Text ya later.”

“Tha’s my boy! Get that nerd di--”

Mitch shoved his phone in his pocket, getting to his feet as Jonas arrived huffing.

“Hey,” he panted, squinting in the sun and smiling bashfully.

“Hey.”

Jonas sniffed and rubbed the sweat from his upper lip with the back of his wrist. “I think I’ve had enough outside fun time for the day. Wanna go home?”

Jesus-skateboarded-off-a-cliff-did-a-barrel-roll-and-turned-into-a-pteradactyl Christ! That question coming out of Jonas’s mouth. For him! His brain was frying! They had a home. Their home. His and Jonas’s together. And Joey was willing to call it that and wanted Mitch to take him there now.

“Sure, Joey,” Mitch said, turning to walk by Jonas’s side. He couldn’t keep his mouth straight. It curled into a contented little smile.

--- --- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

In the solitude of the bathroom, Mitch shut the door behind him and felt the quiet press against his ears. He and bathrooms had something of a love-hate relationship. They were safe spaces away from home. Whatever gross-ass emotion might come over him at a moment’s notice, there was usually a bathroom somewhere in the vicinity he could escape into until he snapped out of it. Bathroom walls did not judge, and how could they when they were haunted by the ghosts of a thousand farts and covered in hastily scrawled bulletins about dicks? And they had seen all manner of literal shit; nothin’ he did was any worse.

But he wasn’t in here to do anything fucked up right now; he was supposed to be getting fresh for his dinner with Joey. Not that he’d ever say so, but Mitch couldn’t count the times he had fantasized about taking Jonas on the most white bread date in history. Good restaurant, fancy. Like with tablecloths and candles and shit. Maybe a wine menu. Joey looked good in those fantasies, but Mitch was always ridiculously out of place. Occasionally, those fantasies turned to nightmares, and his brain couldn’t help inserting a little self-loathing. Sometimes security came to escort him out; sometimes he realized he reeked too badly of cigarettes to be in there; sometimes he could see Joey coming to a heartbreaking conclusion. And in light of shit like that, this was probably better: slapping food together themselves in some random lakeside bungalow where Mitch couldn’t embarrass Joey; only himself.

He leaned into the shower and cranked on the hot water, letting it run the cold out. In the meantime, he pulled his shirt over his head. It fucked up his hair like it always did and he had to sweep it back into place. And when he glanced in the mirror to check it he caught an eyeful of himself as if for the first time, because Javier’s words were playing in his head like he’d recorded them.

Dude, you’re kinda handsome.

Forcing his brain to keep it’s hateful shit to itself for once, Mitch tried to look at himself like he had never seen this jackass before in his life. And what an absolute fuckin’ prick of a guy; Mitch would beat the piss out of him any day of the week. He looked like a damn snake with that hard, no bullshit stare that sat comfortably on his face. So--and it took some conscious effort--Mitch relaxed it. It was hard to say what had changed exactly, but something had because he didn’t look like a fuckin’ murderer anymore; he just looked like some dude.

You got that slick haircut and the jawline…

Mitch angled his head, eyeing the shape of his face. It was…a face. A jerk’s face. He didn’t get the appeal. Like every other part of him, his neck was long and slender, studded with an Adam’s apple he was lucky wasn’t too prominent, as they tended to be in guys like him. Did people really care about that shit? About the shape of your jaw and stuff?

Mitch’s eyes cut up to his hair. Almost time to buzz the sides again. He was capable of sprouting a serious head of hair if he wanted. Unfortunately, when Mitch let his hair get too wild, it started to take on that reddish tint that his mom had. That Freddie had. Freddie hadn’t given a shit, but Mitch had hated it as a kid and scalped himself monthly to hide it. And then Freddie was dead, and year after year of hearing how much he looked like his brother began to chip away at him. He didn’t want to look in a mirror every day and see someone he couldn’t have back for fuck’s sake! So began the trend of changing it as much as he could without looking like a fuckin’ skinhead.

And as for being fit… it was a result of running from the cops; jumping fences; picking kids up and shaking the money out of their pockets.

An’ smoking, his inner asshole chimed in, giddy and taunting, and stickin’ yer fingers down yer throat; an’ turnin’ your nose up at lunch--

“Shut the fuck up!” Mitch tore off the remaining clothes and barreled into the shower. Water roared over his hears, filling his head with blessed white noise. His inner demon was hushed up for now, but things weren’t quiet.

He wished that Javi hadn’t said that stuff, because the part of him that wanted so desperately to believe it now understood that, if it were possible for Jonas to be attracted to him based on looks alone, it would have happened long before now. And now his hopes, which had started to gain some elevation, were hanging lower than his balls.

Soap visited foreign and exotic parts of Mitch’s body. Behind his ears, for instance; as much of his back as he could pretzel his arms to reach; between his toes. Nothing was spared. Even the dark lines in the grout of his nails got it. His hair didn’t get the half-assed job it normally did; he went to fuckin’ town on it. No more grit and grime. If he wanted Joey to care about him in any way, he had to start caring about himself.

It was while toweling off his hair that he remembered the final installment of Javi’s compliment. You got a nice smile if you’ll just fuckin’ show it to him.

Mitch locked eyes with himself again in the mirror. He had never, ever done this before, because why the fuck would he? But he forced his cheeks upward until he was performing the act of smiling. And it was GOD FUCKING AWFUL. Jesus R. Murphy! You look like Patrick Bateman.

The corners of Mitch’s mouth fell like they were cut from two strings. That was better. Nice ‘n neutral.

Out in the kitchen, Jonas was standing over a steaming skillet, poking and prodding whatever was inside. The realization that he was finally seeing Jonas in an organic state of solitude had Mitch watching silently from the doorway. While he’d been gone, Jonas had changed into some Star Wars pajama pants, from beneath which his little socks peeked, and a gray T-shirt. The vintage light fixture hanging over the table threw a warm amber light across everything, not reaching into the living room, barely reaching Mitch lurking in the door. A cozy little bubble through which he was glimpsing a fragment of Heaven. Mitch’s chest began to constrict painfully, because he could not enter it. To go in would be to unmake it; to create another place entirely.

Jonas’s head straightened, probably sensing that he was being watched, and then turned like an owl to spot Mitch in the doorway.

The bubble popped. The sound of sizzling was too loud and the light was too harsh. But in a small victory, Jonas didn’t look nervous.

“Hey,” he said.

I love you. “Hey.”

Jonas smiled shyly and turned his attention back to the meat he was browning in the pan. “Do you mind snapping a few pictures of all this? And also spaying that pan with oil?”

Could Mitch, creep supreme, use his phone as an excuse to prolong his study of Joey’s perfect being? Uh, hell yeah.

Mitch pushed off from the door and slipped his phone out of his pocket. With one hand opening his camera app, the other grabbed the cooking spray and shook it like a beer he was about to offer to Cliff. This domestic shit wasn’t half bad. The commands he let Jonas give him and the subtle way he yielded to them was intimate and intoxicating. Mitch would have gone outside and raked every leaf in the forest if Jonas had asked.

“Thanks,” Jonas said, pushing the meat around.

It seemed awkward. It should’ve been. Mitch couldn’t think of anything to say to that, and Joey didn’t say anything further. But it just wasn’t. Joey had a contented little fuckin’ smirk on his face despite Mitch standing right next to him. He wasn’t tripping over himself to fill the silence, or doing that thing where he cast kicked puppy glances all around. It was just Joey and himself and a pan of sizzling meat. The snow globe scene from before was gone, but there was nothing to complain about yet.

Mitch leaned his hip against the counter and poised his first shot. When he snapped it, Jonas’s eyes cut over.

“This is weird,” he said, smirking harder.

“Why?” Mitch craned his phone over the pan to get a beauty shot of the meat.

“I’m being photographed cooking beef in my pajamas.”

“You asked for it.” Snap. “How do ya think I feel? I ain’t a photograph-er.”

“You mean photographer?”

“Oh, shit. Right. That was you. Maybe we oughta switch off.”

Jonas turned to Mitch, his face slack. His eyes roved over Mitch’s person and back to his face like two bees. “…You knew I was in photography class? Is there anything you don’t know about me?”

Steam billowed up out of the pan and Jonas scraped everything to one side, dabbing paper towels around to soak up the fat. Using every ounce of his ill-gotten criminal underhandedness, Mitch snapped a few more pictures that were mostly Jonas and avoided answering the question. Things must have been cooking faster than he anticipated because he hurried to turn down the heat.

“I feel bad,” Joey said, opening a drawer and extracting a can opener, smirking cheekily up at Mitch. “All I know about you is that you’re a Swiftie with a nipple ring.”

“I don’t got that thing anymore, as I said,” Mitch corrected firmly. He hoped Joey didn’t turn around and get an eyeful of his face, which was reddening. From the steam…

Jonas laughed and strayed off to pull something out of a cabinet over the microwave. Taking advantage of a rare and delicious opportunity, Mitch immortalized the view of Jonas’s body elongating as if for his viewing pleasure by snapping a covert photo that would never be glimpsed by any two eyes but his.

Jonas sighed as he returned to the stove with a can. “The most hard earned can of tomato sauce in the world, right here.” He pinched the ledge in the crook of the can opener and started to crank it. “I can’t even look at it without smelling that idiot’s breath in my face.”

The first thing Mitch felt was the instinctual approach of sweltering anger bubbling up from the depths of his gut like reflux. But it burned up in the atmosphere of the moment, bursting before it could prickle his skin. Preserving what he had here with Jonas mattered so much more than getting fucked up over a memory that Mitch actually felt his pulse slow.

“Ah, he ain’t shit. Don’t think about him.”

That wasn’t exactly true. He wasn’t shit to Mitch; to someone as nonconfrontational as Jonas, Jeremy was all the shit you could ask for and more. What Mitch had wanted to say was: Nothin’ that dick can do to ya right now. I’m here.

For a while, Jonas was content to stir while Mitch stared his heart out through the safety of his phone screen. Joey was making lasagna and that shit was starting to smell good enough to make his stomach growl. Mitch had a lot of self-control in the realm of ignoring his appetite. That didn’t mean his nose quit working, or his mouth didn’t water. He caught a pretty damn quality photo of Joey pouring the water out of the boiled noodles and sprinkling oregano into the sauce. Joey knew his way around a lasagna without question. There were no recipes laid out, no timers set, no measuring spoons. He had his head shoved in it so hard that nothing seemed able to pull his attention away. And amazingly, for a moment, it was as if Mitch didn’t exist.

Mitch smirked at the sense of triumph he felt, because it was kind of a big fuckin’ deal for Joey to let his guard down like that. In fact, he felt like getting experimental with it.

Holding the camera slightly elevated in both hands, Mitch eased into Jonas’s blind spot. The floor popped under his shifting weight as he worked his way behind him. Inches existed between Mitch’s belly and Joey’s back. His insubstantial shadow overtook the whole stove.

Joey didn’t freak over having Mitch creep up behind him. It didn’t even seem like he noticed. Fuck, this was progress. More progress than Mitch imagined they would make all summer.

The floor popped again and this time Joey angled his head to the side a few degrees. “What are you doooing?” he sang, voice colored with suspicion.

“Gettin’ an aerial shot,” Mitch lied. He held the camera well over Jonas’s head and photographed the pan Joey was layering in. “Also puttin’ a kick me sign on yer back. Hold still.”

“You’re the only one here. Might as well just kick it yourself.”

And before Mitch could lasso his impulses, he prodded a knee straight into Jonas’s pert ass. Not hard, but enough to jolt him forward. He took several retreating steps as Jonas whirled around, and snapped an award winning photo of his startled expression.

“That’s right. Run away,” Jonas said as he turned back around, suppressing a smile.

“Oooh, I’m shakin’.”

By the time the lasagna was put together it must have been four inches deep and weighed thirty fuckin’ pounds. They could’ve thrown it through the windshield of a car. Mitch had to help him lift it off the counter because the foil pan was so flimsy. After Jonas had set a timer and scampered off to the shower, Mitch used the alone time to flip through the pictures he’d taken, sorting them into shit he’d keep for himself and everything else. Never in his teenage wasteland life did he imagine he would ever have pictures of Jonas on his phone. If nothing else came out of this summer, he had that at least.

Closing his camera revealed he had texts that he hadn’t noticed since they arrived throughout the earlier parts of the day when Mitch had been distracted saving Joey’s life.

Cliff :  ask ur boy wtf im suposed 2 do wen this jinjer wont come outta the bath. Its been 2 hrs! I have to take a shit

Mitch cackled. Fuck, it must be wild to be in the cabin with those two. For as different and he and Jonas were, they had nothin’ on Cliff and Lewis. Cliff had a lifestyle unlike anything he imagined someone as uptight as Lewis was prepared to accommodate. And Lewis, as far as Mitch could tell, did not come off as someone who budged easily. Mitch would pay all the cash and cigarettes he had to be a fly on the wall.

Scratch:  Im n ur room creepin. JK. But srsly I have some notes. U need 2 hide ya boy mags better. Frst thing I noticed. Also buddys bein a lil cutie. We gon catch some zzzs 2gthr now byee

There was a selfie attached showing Scratch laying in his bed with Buddy snuggled up next to her under the covers. She was pretty and Buddy was almost queasy adorable and he felt a bunch of toasty feelings swarm his gut.

Cliff:  its been 3 hrs. I have shit in the woods

Javi:  sha la la la la la kisss de boii

Cliff:  look.. even if u got a dick n ur mouth ur hand r free 2 answr me 

Lorraine:  You need to pick up this room when you get back. Something else has been living in here.

Mitch drew up one of the better photos he had taken of Joey giving him a smile and sent it to Javi with the message: Makin progress I guess. Then, because he felt bad for accidentally ignoring Cliff, he replied: Fine. Nxt time theres a dick n my mouth ill put you on speakr

Living with Joey was giving Mitch un-fuckin’-precedented access to all sorts of versions of the kid he had never been privy to. Like when Joey walked into the room, fresh out of the shower. He was fuckin’ delicious. Hair all half-dried and shiny; the scent of soap wafting off of him and circling Mitch seductively. Christ.

He was smiling like some kind of Mona Lisa. Like none of this was weird.

The lasagna came out of the oven looking like a million bucks; all brown and crusty and shit, which sounded nasty.

“Sorry there isn’t a salad or anything to have on the side. Veggies go bad so fast. I didn’t want to waste the money on them just yet,” Jonas explained as he plopped down adjacent to Mitch with his paper plate and fork.

“Yeah, I think yer doin’ that thing where you forget that I don’t know what the fuck yer talkin’ about,” Mitch said. “When my mom made a meal, she made one thing. Nobody thought anything about salad or whatever. If we were lucky, we had chips with our bologna sandwiches. Plus, this is like…three days’ worth of food by itself.”

“Hmm,” Jonas responded in thought. “Well, I guess that makes things easier. And cheaper.”

Quiet dropped over them. You could almost hear the heat still sizzling away in the meaty depths of the pan. Steam rose out into the air between them. Mitch sat with this arms crossed on the table; Jonas slouched bonelessly back in his chair. It was their first sit-down meal together and it showed. Mitch wasn’t afraid to look at Jonas, but Jonas was content to examine the wood grain in the table.

“You can help yourself,” he said, meeting Mitch’s eye.

Man, Joey was a hard one. One minute he’d be running conversational laps with Mitch, keeping up, beating him even. And then all of a sudden it was like he remembered who Mitch was.

Mitch sighed, picking up the spatula. Without a word, he reached over and took Jonas’s plate, cutting a wedge of lasagna roughly the size of what he thought a normal person, unlike himself, might want, and hoped to Jesus that--whether he was wrong or right--it didn’t come across as a statement about Joey’s weight (which was sexy).

“Thanks…” Jonas said, barely masking how stunned by this gesture he was. He eyed the considerably smaller portion Mitch had served himself. “You’re not very hungry?”

“No, I am. I just…I like to ease into it. I never pig out or anything.”

To Mitch’s relief, Jonas only nodded and dug into his share. Mitch gazed down at his plate, feeling his own hunger thrashing inside him like an unfed circus animal in a cage. It was always there to some degree because he never satisfied it fully. And what he gave it he sometimes took away. This, though. This thing that his Jonas had slaved over making for him…he would take it like a fuckin’ communion. It would turn to gold inside him and he would live on it forever.

It didn’t hurt that it was the best food he’d had since god only knew when.

“Mmmm.” Jonas closed his eyes in ecstasy. “Sue’s recipe. Fool proof. She only makes this like…every three months. And here it is in front of me. Thank you God.”

Mitch vacuumed air into his mouth along with the cheese. “Fuckin’ dicks! Hot, hot…”

Jonas snickered, twisting a string of cheese around his fork. “Better than school lunch at least?”

“I could go outside and make a bear shit sandwich and it would be better than school lunch.” Jonas lost it over that, so Mitch went on. “I could climb a tree and start eatin’ the bark off like a corn cob. Pull a fish outta the lake an’ bite its fuckin’ head off.”

Jonas was in hysterics with his head tossed back. It was so beautiful that Mitch forgot there was food in front of him and some of it was in his mouth. He was making Joey laugh for the first time in his life.

“Oh my freaking god,” Joey gasped. “That’s so true. It’s like an insult some days. I’ll be sitting there watching Lewis suck it down on gulash day and dry heave till I crack a rib. Ugh.”

Mitch huffed a laugh and pulled out his phone. “Oh, huh…that reminds me. Cliff texted me wantin’ to know what to do when Lewis won’t come outta the bathroom.”

“Find another bathroom.” Jonas deadpanned. “He basically moves in when he has to do anything in there.”

“Sucks,” Mitch uttered as he punched out a paraphrasing of this answer and hit send. “Cliff’s shittin’ in the woods when that happens so watch yer footing out there.”

Jonas cringed as he took another bite. And since Mitch had barely touched his yet, he put his phone down and forced himself to pick up his fork. His eyes scooted to the side where Joey was very much invested in the sight of his own dwindling portion, and then he let himself eat more.

It was goddamn good. Like Heaven after all the PB and Js and cans of Spaghettios and packs of Twizzlers that constituted so much of his diet these days. He had cooked for himself once upon a time. Nasty, white-trash fare, but real food. Nothing this good, though.

“Who was that on the phone earlier?” Jonas asked, sawing into his lasagna with his fork.

“Javier.”

“Oh…”

Mitch paused with his fork en route to his mouth. “...What?”

Joey shook his head. “Nothing. That guy just…he scares the crap out of me.” He pushed his food around with his fork, put off momentarily by the very thought of Javier. “Can I ask you a question about him?”

Mitch shrugged, knowing more or less what usually followed nine times out of ten someone wanted to ask about Javi.

“What’s with the…” Joey gestured to his own face vaguely.

“The paint?” Joey nodded, a little wide eyed like they were onto some real off-limits shit here. “He’s a Juggalo,” Mitch laughed.

“Okay. And that is?”

“Y’know? Insane Clown Posse?”

Jonas stared. Mitch shrugged. “Check it out some time is all I can say,” he said, digging back into his food. “It ain’t gonna be yer thing, but you’ll see.”

Joey didn’t say anything, but Mitch was watching him from the corner of his eye. By the far away look in his eyes and the subtle frown weighing his mouth down, Mitch knew that Joey was thinking about it. He was remembering Javier in the only way he knew. A shitty way that was Mitch’s fault, and which Javi didn’t deserve.

“Cliff’s my best friend…but Javi’s my best friend, y’know? He’s the one I go to with all my shit. He’s a good guy.” And when Joey gave him the subtlest quirk of a brow, he put his hands up. “I swear on my fuckin’ grave.”  

He wanted to say he could prove it, and would when they got back. But he didn’t want to think about that time and what he may or may not have accomplished by then; what dynamic they would be working with when they both left here.

Time to turn the tables. He cleared his throat. “Speakin’ of sketchy people, what the fuck is up with your clone?”

Jonas apparently needed to stand up to get the cutting of his second piece just right. “Sidney? What do you mean?”

Mitch looked at Jonas like that was the stupidest question ever posed. “Uh, she’s a little tight in the ass don’t ya think?

“What?! Tight in th---no. She just…doesn’t put up with a lot.” He plopped back down in his seat before giving Mitch a very fuckin’ pointed look. “And she doesn’t like it when people mess with me.”

“Who the fuck is messin’ with you? Gimme their fuckin’ names.” Mitch pushed his plate away in the act of being mock pissed. Unimpressed but not quite mad, Joey cocked a brow and talked around a mouthful.

“Uh, you may or may not have heard of this guy. He’s kinda famous for being some kind of devil-may-care asshole. His name’s Mitch--”

“Oh my fuckin’ shit, Joey,” Mitch decried, collapsing back in his chair. “It hasn’t been that bad.”

Mitch knew he’d fucked up and said the wrong thing as soon as the words were out. Even before Jonas stopped chewing and stared at him owlishly. Shitshitshit, he hadn’t meant it that way, but he couldn’t piece the words together fast enough.

Jonas swallowed the food in his mouth like it was a bunch of glass. He put his fork down carelessly and it rang out into a noxious silence.

“What?” No levity. The tone of the evening shifted so fast it turned his stomach. The air was sour. The snow globe was shaken. “You think it hasn’t been that bad?” Jonas said. He was hot, and for the first time in Mitch’s life, he was scared of what might come out of this kid’s mouth. He among few others had the power to hurt Mitch. “You think you haven’t made my life a living freakin’ hell?”

“No. I mean--ye-no. That’s not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean? ‘It hasn’t been that bad’ is pretty hard to misinterpret.”

Mitch didn’t squirm in his seat because he wasn’t the squirming type. But his guts felt like a mass of worms. “…Uh…”

The look of outrage on Joey’s face was the fuckin’ embodiment of wrath. Mitch had never been on the receiving end of anything remotely wrathful from Joey; he got his fear and his tears and his cute little growly faces. This wasn’t the shrinking violet who held onto his bag straps for dear life; this Jonas had a spine, and he was about to use it like a whip.

“Do you think I haven’t played sick to avoid coming to school because of you? You think I haven’t gone the long way around campus? How about this…Let’s play another game where we tell things about ourselves. I’ll go first. Once, right after lunch, I had a run-in with you and it scared me so bad that after you were gone I threw up everything I had eaten. I had to miss my next class to drink seltzer in the nurse’s office.” Mitch sat there, frozen. He had barely drawn a breath before Jonas reloaded. “I have nightmares about you. You! Not Jeremy who pushed me down the stairs, not Neil who chases me down the hall making pig noises, not those freakin’ wrestling goons who’ve actually beat me up…you.”

Shit. That really was worse than he’d thought. He made Joey sick. He gave him nightmares.

Well, what’d you expect you fuckin’ monster?

Jonas stood abruptly, mouth a sealed line.

“Joey…”

His chair scraped across the floor and made Mitch jump. “Five years of that. My friends and I have a code word for when you’re coming.” He gathered his trash into the center of his plate and crushed it all together, then strode across the kitchen to jam it in the trash. “I cannot believe you are this blind and heartless.”

He turned away and started for the bedroom, and Mitch, though he had no fuckin’ clue what to say or do, couldn’t bear the idea of leaving it like this. As abruptly as Jonas had, Mitch got to his feet, sending his own chair screeching back.

The reaction was immediate.

Jonas shoved his back against a wall like a shot had fired. His entire body went into rigor; his eyes locked on Mitch and wouldn’t blink. It was the look of some poor animal expecting to be torn apart.

Mitch froze. Hands out in front of him in a declaration of innocence. “Shit, sorry.” Jonas’s chest swelled and deflated like he’d been chased. “You can leave if ya want. I ain’t comin’ after ya.”

They stared at one another in a silent standoff, and Jonas had that look in his eye like he didn’t quite believe him. Realizing his fuckin’ hands were still poking out in front of him stupidly, Mitch dropped them. Slowly, like Joey was some wild deer that might spook, Mitch reached between his jittery knees and pulled his chair back under his ass, dropping his weight into it--never looking away. Fuck, he had to watch that shit: that whole body language thing.

“You can put the food up,” Joey finally said in the act of turning toward his bedroom door. “Send me the pictures.”

The door slammed between them, leaving Mitch in the middle of the kitchen with his ears ringing. He was so amazed by how suddenly he had ruined things that he didn’t even understand it. In his chest his heart was a broken piece of crockery, cutting him with every breath he took. Looking back, it seemed like Mitch had been born with it broken. He could not remember a time when it didn’t seem like there was something sharp in there. Being in love with Joey had made it worse. There were few whole pieces left anymore; and after tonight, after learning that he was a vomit-inducing nightmare to the boy he loved, much of it was dust.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

What a dick. Even in the sanctuary of his own head, Jonas allowed himself to curse only in very special circumstances. And tonight made the cut. What a complete asshole. 

To spend something like five years making his life a day in and day out hellscape and then turn around and down play the damage it had done him. Did he not remember all the times Jonas had cried for him, because that was obviously what he had wanted? The freaking nerve of that guy!

Ugh!

Jonas had made an angry little nest in the center of his bed and sat in the middle of it with the laptop in his lap. A good hour had elapsed since the blowup in the kitchen, and for the most part the heat of emotion had cooled to a light steam. Not too long after, the pictures began to arrive to his phone one at a time. They were decent enough shots. In the order that they came to him, they depicted the pan and the cutting board, and then increasingly, Jonas himself took up more and more of the composition. Which was…odd. It had clearly been done on purpose, and Jonas would even concede that the pictures didn’t do him any disservices (which was a real feat, because he was a chubby nerd with excessive freckles and unruly hair).

He posted them one at a time, selecting files and uploading with a numb detachment. Not knowing what else was required in the submission, he typed up a quick blurb detailing that it was lasagna they had made that night, and that Jonas had done much of the prep and cooking, due to the fact that it was his recipe, and Mitch had assisted by taking the photos and wrapped up dinner by offending Jonas to his very bones. He had also cleaned up.

Okay, he hadn’t included that, but still…that’s what had happened, in case anyone was wondering.

The sound of Take On Me playing out of his phone drew his attention. Lewis was calling.

“City morgue, you stab ‘em we slab ‘em. How may I direct your call?”

“You know, that was funny the first, like…five times,” Lewis said. But Jonas laughed anyway because Lewis didn’t realize that was exactly why he kept saying it; to annoy.

“Oh my god, I bet you are the life of the party over there.”

“Shit, dude. I’ve come to the realization that I’d rather be cooped up here with Hee Haw than whatever you got going on over there. I’m sorry to say.”

“Did you call just to bicker?” Jonas asked, pinching his phone between his shoulder and his ear so that both hands would be free to maneuver another photo into the folder.

“No. I’m doing a welfare check. Is this your ghost I’m talking to?”

Jonas huffed, feeling better already. Lewis could be the worst additive in the world for a situation, or the best. “I’m alive.”

“Can’t tell you how shocked I am.”

Another photo popped open as he clicked on it. It was the “aerial” shot Mitch claimed to be taking as he slunked behind Jonas, and which had preceded the knee he’d gotten in the butt. It looked as if it had been taken from the top of a telephone tower.

“Lewis, I gotta tell you, this hasn’t been anything like what I thought it would be.” Jonas leaned forward onto his knees and made a face he couldn’t help. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…I’m…I’m…glad it’s Mitch. Instead of…”

“Instead of Jeremy?”

“Instead of a bunch of those other guys! Remind me to tell you about what happened at the store sometime, but…Mitch isn’t as bad as I thought.”

Lewis sighed through his nose into the speaker. “I can’t believe you’re saying that either, because I don’t believe it.”

“I’m serious, though. Like we’ve only fought onc--well…we are in a fight right now, but that--”

“When you say ‘fight’…”

“More like an argument, but it’s…a pretty bad one.” A little of the night’s venom reignited in his veins. But it ached more than it burned.

“What was it about?”

Jonas opened the last photo in the line up, for quality check mostly. It was of him and him alone. Jonas was looking straight into the camera, smiling a smile he did not recognize. When had he even done this--smile at Mitch like that? He didn’t remember it, but here was the proof he had.

“...He doesn’t think the stuff he’s been doing to me all these years has been that bad. His words. ‘Not that bad.’”

“Are you kidding me?”

“No. It happened over dinner.”

“...Jonas…” There was a pause and the sound of Lewis shifting positions in agitation. “Kick him in the nuts and leeeaave. I’ll go with you. Let’s get the hell out of here, man. You don’t have to put up with that for some b.s. masculinity points. I got more than enough cash to get us back to Sellwood and put us up until the camp is supposed to end. Let’s go on the lamb.”

Jonas laughed weakly, but its levity felt good. He couldn’t find the words or, more importantly, the energy to try to tell Lewis that Mitch hadn’t given him any reason to run away. In fact, Mitch had barely defended himself tonight. He had tried to back pedal but Jonas wouldn’t let him. The whole evening had been an emotional taxation rivaled only by the circumstances surrounding his arrival.

Suddenly, out of nowhere and for no good reason that he could see, there was a lump in his throat. He remembered the boneless way Mitch just sat there as Jonas unloaded on him; the slackened, penitent look on his face. None of it characteristic of the Mitch he knew. The Mitch he knew did not allow himself to be accused of anything, guilty or not. Not by jerks like himself and not by worms like Jonas. So why had he done that?

“Lewis, you’re gonna yell at me for this….but…I really don’t think--”

“Jonas, don’t!”

“I really don’t think he knows. I mean you should have seen the look on his face when I told him about the time I threw up. And the nightmares. You can’t fake that.”

“Jesus Christ,” Lewis groaned like Jonas was a lost cause beyond the reach of reason. “Nobody is that dense, Jonas. You’re trying to tell me he couldn’t see the look on your face every time he put you in a headlock and think, hmm…I dunno if he likes this or not?”

The photo of Jonas with his Mona Lisa smile still stared at him from the screen, a testament to the notion that something was possible which had never been possible before. Little doors were opening, evidenced by all the subtle ways in which Mitch was defying Jonas’s understanding of who he was. He had a choice here. He could let this whole thing feed whatever festering animosity existed between them, or…he could take a chance and walk through one of those doors. See where it went.

Jonas sighed and dropped his head into his hand. “I think I have to apologize.”

“You have to apologize?! Are you hearing yourself? Jonas…you don’t owe him that. He owes you that. A thousand times.”

“Yeah, he does. But, right now, I think it’s my turn.”

“Sidney is gonna shit her pants.”

“Not any worse than you’re doing now. I’ll call you later. Bye.”

“What the fu--”

Jonas hung up before Lewis could start up again. He submitted the last photo and the write up, sans any accusatory clauses, and shut the computer. It was after one in the morning according to his phone, much later than he had thought. Few times in his life had he stayed up this late, but right now sleep was as far away as the morning. The idea of trying to lie down and wait for it to come for him was unthinkable. After he had stormed out of the kitchen, Jonas had heard Mitch bustling briefly around in the kitchen, presumably doing as instructed and sticking the pan in the fridge. But he hadn’t heard Mitch’s bedroom door shut, or the TV in the living room. He hadn’t come to Jonas’s door, or tried to text him with his argument even though he had Jonas’s number.

Feeling restless and itchy, Jonas slid off the bed and poked his head out of his bedroom door.

The house was a dark stage. Everything sat motionless in various shades of shadow. It was eerie; he could easily imagine that Mitch wasn’t here at all, and that he was alone in a cabin in the woods in the dead of night.

Shivering, he stepped out a little further and peered to the right, where Mitch’s door stood wide open and dark as a cave inside. Jonas padded out into the living room still in his socks, checking the sofa in case Mitch had passed out there. But it was vacant. The clock ticked on the wall; the refrigerator hummed.

Had Mitch left?

The thought of being abandoned here for the remainder of the summer gave off conflicting waves of gut cramps. Things would sure be simple. Jonas was sure be…alone.

Maybe he went to Cliff’s. There’s nowhere else for him to be, except--

Jonas froze, ears pricked like a rabbit. Maybe he was hallucinating in this late hour, but…he could have sworn that the sound he was hearing was the sound of a…guitar. A guitar being strummed through multiple walls. What the hell? 

The sound wafted in like a lure, catching Jonas by the ears and drawing him forward like a cartoon character floating toward the scent of a pie. It pulled him through the living room and into the black kitchen, still hung with the smell of oregano and echoing with the ghost of their argument. Now he could hear that the plucking of strings was scattered and broken; amateurish, but not a first time attempt. It was coming through the cracks of the door leading to the porch. Already he could smell the ashen bite of cigarette smoke.

The porch was almost as dark as the inside of the house as he eased the screen door open and stepped out. The thrumming swelled to a solid presence off to his left. And when he looked, there in the darkness cut by the moonlight bouncing off the lake was someone who could only be Mitch. Jonas could make out one long leg jutting out onto the porch and the illumined swath of his paler hair. The fire-bright cherry of his cigarette glowed and bobbed like a firefly in the dark. He could see Mitch’s finger spider crawling along the neck of the guitar.

Mitch surely knew that he was there, after all, the screen door had whined. But he went on plucking experimentally, messing up and starting over, a little “shit” now and again.

It was radio silence on the air. All the vibrations that had always existed between them on some level were gone. Jonas could no sooner read the room than the expression on Mitch’s face.

“I wake you up?” Mitch’s rough voice was startling coming out of the dark like that. It was not the first thing Jonas was expecting to hear. ‘Can I fuckin’ help you,’ maybe, or ‘Beat it you fuckin’ nerd.’ But Mitch hadn’t been too fired up when Jonas had yelled in his face either.

“No. I was up posting the pictures,” Jonas replied, pitching his voice low for no reason. “And talking to Lewis on the phone for a while. I’m just not tired I guess.”

Mitch played with a little tune that didn’t ring any bells, and while he was distracted, Jonas gathered his resolve and walked out onto the porch toward the bench. As soon as Mitch noticed his approach, the twanging died and Jonas saw the glowing bud of the cigarette vanish. Mitch fanned an arm to disperse the atmosphere of smoke uselessly.

“Where’d you get that thing?” Jonas asked, sitting down. It turned out that the bench only seemed graciously sized when you were alone on it. Now it was a loveseat.

“Found it hangin’ on the wall in the corner of the livin’ room. Same color as the paneling. Didn’t see it for a long time.”

Mitch picked at something until it started to make sense. Stopped and started again. Jonas stared at the reflection of the full moon shivering silver on the surface of the lake. His eyes were adjusting to the scant light and now he could make out individual trees and boards on the porch. Ready to test it, he glanced at Mitch.

He could see the shape of his face, and his lip worried between his teeth. His tongue darted in and out in the throws of concentration. He could see the tendon working in Mitch’s thumb and the knee that was propping up the neck.

“You play guitar?”

Mitch huffed without smiling, never looking up. “No. I can only do as much as my brother taught me.”

Of all the shocking and incomprehensible things Jonas had learned about Mitch, this one took the breath out of his lungs. Most people had brothers and sisters--that was nothing unique. But Mitch was such a singular event, such a force of nature that Jonas often thought of him as something that came into existence by springing out of the ground, having no origin and no connection to anyone.

“Whoa. I didn’t know you had a brother. Younger or older?”

“Older,” Mitch sighed. “Big ol’ dick of a guy. You think I’m bad? There were days even I couldn’t stand him.”

Jonas couldn’t imagine. A bigger, badder, and all around worse version of Mitch?

“What’s his name?”

Mitch plucked at various strings experimentally, twisting the tuning knobs. “Freddie.”

“How old is he?”

Mitch was doing some mental math, tilting his head. He was still messing with the tuning, and Jonas noticed he hadn’t looked at him once since he had come outside. “He’d be…twenty-seven in August. But he died when I was ten. Car wreck. Killed him instantly.”

A lump of solid horror swelled up in Jonas’s throat. “Oh. Crap. I’m sorry I made you think about it.”

Mitch shrugged and tested the musical integrity of each string one at a time. “It’s over an’ done with now. Nothin’ anybody coulda done.”

Jonas’s heart constricted. When a tragedy happened in his life, he could cry about it--couldn’t help it, in fact (much as Dean detested him crying). He could walk around with his sadness hanging out to no or little criticism, because showing emotions was what soft-bellied nerds like him were expected to do. Sidney would sit up with him; Sue would offer him sage, mature advice. But he didn’t imagine it was that easy for Mitch. Jonas didn’t know anything, but Mitch’s friends didn’t seem like the sort to let anyone cry on their shoulders.

With a gaping bloody wound now open between them, Jonas stared ahead at the lake again. Apology, apology. Think of an apologyyyy…

“So what’s the code word?”

Taken aback, Jonas almost twinged his neck looking over. “What word?”

“You said you an’ yer friends had, like, an emergency code word for me…”

“Ohh…” Embarrassed, Jonas tried to laugh it off, managing to sound awkward as only he could. He didn’t want to say it. Not because he didn’t want Mitch to know, but because this was clearly the inaugural segue into the subject of this evening’s falling out. “It’s The Dark Lord Approaches.”

Mitch snorted, plucking lightly. “Dark lord, huh?”

“Yeah,” Jonas laughed. “I think it was a little too nerdy in retrospect.”

Mitch didn’t say anything for a long while. He played the guitar and messed up, mumbled curses under his breath and left Jonas there squirming in the dark. Lewis was right, in a sense. Jonas owed Mitch nothing. Nothing! If anything he owed him punch in the mouth. Mitch had got the truth earlier; the truth about what their relationship was to Jonas. So if that was in any way shocking or upsetting (though it shouldn’t have been), that was on him.

So why didn’t throwing all of that out in his face feel as good as he’d always imagined?

Maybe it was because Mitch hadn’t presented as the same jerk he normally did. All he had done since the moment they had embarked on this thing together was fend off every insult aimed at Jonas; stood by him when it was time to bear down on responsibilities; given him space when things grew heated. And maybe it was because the possibility that Mitch genuinely didn’t think he had really hurt Jonas was very real.

“Sorry I yelled,” he finally said, wringing his hands and playing nervous footsy with himself. “I don’t…normally talk to you like that…”

Mitch actually laughed. “Think I oughta spank ya?”

“I thought you might when you got up. Which was stupid. I’m sorry--”

“Spots…” Mitch sighed deeply and stood the guitar up on its butt on the bench between them, resting his hand at the base of its neck. Jonas didn’t resent the use of his original nickname over the progress that was Joey, but there was something disappointing about it. “I’m the one who’s a big fuckin’ scary asshole, alright? I know it. You know it. Ain’t anything stupid about it.”

Jonas watched in silence as Mitch seemed to undergo some sort of inner war with himself. He sighed again, staring at the overhanging roof, and breathed through his mouth. The silhouette of his face stood out against what light made it through the trees. His adam’s apple shifted, and Jonas had the craziest, most baseless urge to reach out and touch him. He crammed his hands beneath his thighs, just in case one shot out to do it without permission.

“I know it don’t excuse any of the shit I’ve done, but Spots…my life has been fuckin’ terrible.” He ran his fingers through his hair front to back. “I wish it hadn’t turned me into the fucker that I am, but it did.” He looked over at Jonas for the first time. “Sorry I’m such a horrifyin’ dick to ya. You’ve prob’ly been waitin’ to say that shit to me for a long time.”

“Oh, Mitch…y-you’re not horrifying.” Even in the dim light, Jonas could read the look Mitch leveled him.

“Spots, you nearly shit yer pants when I got up.”

“Yeah…yeah, I did, but I’m pretty jumpy.” Jonas tucked one leg under the other, not minding that his bent knee rested lightly against the side of Mitch’s thigh. “Lewis called earlier. He tried to convince me I didn’t owe you an apology, but I w--

“Ya don’t, Spots. I deserved that. Not a lot of people out there givin’ me what I deserve. And if anybody should get away with it, it’s you.”

“Is this you admitting that it’s been bad?”

Mitch’s thumb plucked a string distractedly. The note blossomed between them like a ripple in a pond, spreading out into the night to become part of the landscape. “I know it’s been bad,” Mitch admitted. He propped an elbow along the back of the bench and looked at Jonas, his head resting against the side of the cabin. “But…that ain’t what I meant back in there. I meant…it coulda been worse. Spots, if I wanted to hurt ya, you’d be hurt.”

Thinking back to all the times he had seen Mitch really hurt others, like black and blue, blood on the ground, the sound of meat hitting meat kind of hurt…he supposed this was true. Mitch wasn’t some Adam Sandler film meathead whose threats were skin-deep; he was the real deal. Jonas had never quite thought of it like that. But that’s what Mitch had meant: he could have beaten Jonas half to death if he’d wanted.

Huh…wonder what that means?

“Joey,” Jonas said.

“...Uh, what?”

“I like it better when you call me Joey. Spots is okay, but that’s what jerk Mitch calls me, and…you’re not jerk Mitch.”

“Wow,” Mitch said, and Jonas could hear the smile on his mouth. “I’ve never not been a jerk before. This is fuckin’ new and exciting.”

Jonas laughed from the depths of his stomach. The dried salt in the corners of his eyes cracked. He had been waiting for a come-to-Jesus about this whole thing with Mitch since his first year of public school, and it had just happened. There was no assurance that it was going to last, or that when they left here at the end of the summer, things would not slide backward. He yearned to know what had happened; what had caused Mitch to turn on him so horrendously. He didn’t dare ask about it, though. Not now. Mitch had swallowed so much of his pride tonight even Jonas was choking on the enormity of it.

Oh my god, wait till Sidney hears about this!

“Since I’m officially not a total asshole, will ya please tell that nerd over at Cliff’s I’m not over here choppin’ ya up in little pieces or anythin’? Cliff says that’s all he ever worries about,” Mitch said, pulling the guitar back into place in his lap.

Oh, sh*t, yeah! Wait till Lewis hears about this!

Chapter Text

Something wakes Lewis up. A sound. The sound of something scuttling through his open bag lying on the floor. It tugs at the alert edges of his consciousness until his eyes flutter open to total darkness. Oh, god, he thinks. This place has rats.

He lays there for a minute, listening, hoping it doesn’t happen again, or that he learns it’s coming from outside the window. But it does happen again. Only it isn’t the rapid pitter-patter indicative of rodent feet. It’s slow and deliberate--a drawn out sort of rubbing. It gives Lewis the ick and the creeps and all the heeby jeeby feelings.

It has to be a rat. What else could be in here?

He tries to peer over the edge of the bed, but the floor is flooded with shadows and his window catches only enough of the moon’s light to illuminate the glass.

It happens again, and this time Lewis seizes right up. Even his insides crawl up deeper inside him. What the fuck is that? 

He gropes for the lamp, reaching long and far from the middle of the bed, and all the while he imagines the rat scaling the bed sheets and slipping under the covers. Lewis isn’t afraid of rodents. He used to have three pet mice when he was twelve. That doesn’t mean he’s keen on some feral specimen nibbling his toenails.

Already a plan is brewing in his mind: Spot the beast; toss the trash can over top of it; find a way to trap it and get it outside without alerting Cliff. He’s a man for god’s sake. It’s a rat and he’s a man, and there is nothing about this situation that he can’t handle to his dad’s satisfaction.

Finally, his hand shimmies under the lampshade and he flicks on the light. The room bursts with soft amber light, too bright for his dark drenched eyes. Some rapid blinking gradually takes care of the sensitivity, but before it’s fully alleviated he’s scanning the floor and his bag on the far side of the room. The flap lays open and several pairs of folded clothes lay around it from where he’d rummaged through it earlier. There is a row of his shoes in perfect, symmetrical alignment; and a stack of the five painstakingly selected books, including the unfinished copy of Dune, and the biggest snake he’s ever seen in his life.

All semblance of able-bodied personhood flies out of his body like a sneeze. Lewis jumps to his feet on the bed like he wasn’t already off the floor and does the only thing that makes sense in this moment.

“CLIFF! CLIFF! CLIIIFFF!!”  

His little store of tenacity has fled. Snakes are a hard no. Granite hard. Their leglessness makes him gag, and that tongue flicking makes him want to peel his skin off.

Maliciously, the snake glides forward, unhurried, unalarmed by Lewis shrieking like a banshee, as if taunting him. And it works. Lewis’s brain is leaking out of his ears.

“CLIFF! WHERE ARE YOU, GODDAMNIT?!”

Lewis is just imagining having to stay up here all night losing a game of wits with a snake when he hears a thud outside the door and Cliff explodes into the room.

“What in fuck’s name is goin’ on?”

He is stark naked. Seriously, the most naked person in history. Not a shred of clothing on anywhere; even his hat is off. Lewis can’t help but notice, right before he slaps a hand over his eyes, that his dick, as promised, is enormous.

“OH MY GOD! WHERE ARE YOUR CLOTHES?”

“Airin’ out on the porch. I told ya I’m a nighttime nudist. This is exactly why we had that discussion, which I recall you didn’t wanna have,” Cliff bellows. “I woulda throwed somethin’ on but I thought a lady was bein’ murdered in here. Now what in the sam hill?” He tears the sheet off Lewis’s bed and winds it around his waist.

“There!” Lewis jabs a finger toward the snake, who at last seems to be paying attention. A man with a donkey dick had barged in, after all--who among God’s creatures could ignore that?

There’s a pause as Cliff stares at the cause of all this. And then he chuckles. The chuckling becomes and a laugh, which deepens until what’s coming out of him is a series of wheezes.

“What?” Lewis demands, brows pinching in indignation.

“Are you kiddin’ me?”

“What?”

“You went bonkers an’ raised the dead ‘cause a’ some little ol’ snake? That’s what I run in here cock out for?”

Lewis nearly chokes on his own spit. “What are you, blind?! It’s like five fee long! It’s all black and fat. Cliff, get it out of here!”

Clutching the sheet around his waist in one fist, Cliff walks over and scoops the damn thing up with the other. Lewis’s stomach churns watching it drape from his hands like that, twisting and winding and looking all around.

“Oh my god.”

“Ah, he ain’t a bad boy,” says Cliff like he’s addressing a dog. “It’s just a rat snake. They git pretty robust I will admit. But he ain’t a biter.”

Lewis purches on the edge of his bed now that Cliff is leaving the room with it. “All snakes are biters. It’s a mouth and a spine for cryin’ out loud.”

The kitchen light pops on and he hears the screen door open and shut. Just in case, he waits where he is, hoping that Cliff has the presence of mind not to simply drop it in the middle of the yard where it could find its way back.

Well, he has certainly lost some man points over this. He wasn’t even sure he had any to lose. Was he in a point deficit??

The screen door claps and Lewis wanders out of his room to find Cliff folded in half with his head buried in the fridge.

“What’d you do with it?”

“Took ‘im out back an’ put a cap in his ass. Whadda you think?”

He doesn’t see the withering look his sheet-covered back side receives. Still, Lewis had screamed the guy awake and demanded he take care of a problem that wasn’t his.

He folds his arms and leans against the door frame. “Thanks. For doing that.”

“Mm.”

“You going back to bed?”

“Nah, I think I’ll have me a beer.” He shuts the fridge and when he turns around, there’s a can of beer in his hand. Lewis does a double take as he sets it on the counter and pops it open one-handed.

“Where did you get beer?” He surely hadn’t bought it when he’d gone to the store on his own that day. The visa wouldn’t cover it and unless he had used a fake ID…

“Smuggled it from home,” he says, taking a foamy swig.

While his instinct is to be outraged, a moment’s pause reveals that what Lewis actually is is envious. If only he had thought to sneak more food in here and save on groceries.

Cliff leans against the counter and tips the can back. His Adam’s apple bobs dramatically. “Want a sip?” He waggles the can enticingly, as if he somehow knows that Lewis has never had anything so potent.

In this moment Lewis feels the enormity of his own stereotype. He’s an honor student who says no to drugs and scoffs at parties and tisks at underage drinking. He quotes Star Wars and owns a massive set of Magic the Gathering cards and gets real jazzed up to go to math class. And not even Jonas knows that he sometimes struggles to maintain that form.

For some time now, Lewis has looked at people in his school--people like Cliff and Mitch, who didn’t give even one shit between them--and wished for that sense of carelessness the way a kid wishes for superpowers. What does it even feel like to care so little about consequences that you sit outside in broad daylight on campus and light up a cigarette? Or laugh in the face of a teacher giving you detention? Is it as liberating and empowering as it looks?

“What’s it taste like?” he says.

Cliff shrugs and examines the label. “Pretty good if y’ask me. We drink it all the time back home. God, I miss home,” he sighs.

Lewis takes a cautionary step into the kitchen and a satisfied, if somewhat evil, smirk plays across the visible half of his partner’s face.

This summer doesn’t have to be a two month-long church camp. Lewis is here against his will, but now that he is, he’s…unsupervised. And he has to face it: he’s never going to have the intestinal fortitude to experiment back home. Too many eyes and ears.

But there’s no one around now. It’s him and Cliff and several yards of dark empty woods in all directions. So partly out of curiosity and partly out of revenge, Lewis takes the proffered beer and brings it to his lips.

Firstly, it has a dank, yeasty stink that wrinkles his nose. Cliff is watching him like a hawk, lips parted in fascination. Lewis tips it back carefully until is splashes over his tongue. And regrets it immediately.

The can smacks as he plops it down on the counter and dives for the sink, but Cliff is faster. He catches Lewis’s face in his big, stupid hand.

“Don’t’chu spit that shit out! I got a limited supply an’ we prob’ly ain’t gonna be gittin’ no more,” he snaps, pinching Lewis’s cheeks roughly. “Now swalla!”

Lewis has two wolves inside him. One wants to swallow it; the other wants to spew it from his puckered lips; both are gagging.

Finally, he chokes it down. “Okay!” his malformed mouth slurs. Cliff releases him and he rubs his face. “Bread flavored soda? That’s what you’re drinking back home? That’s what you couldn’t live without?”

“Ta each his own, ya hater.”

Lewis pushes past Cliff to snag a soda out of the fridge to rid his mouth of that awful coating. Cliff is laughing at him, not in an out loud kind of way, but with this halo of mirth outlining his body. He produces a cigarette out of the hair over his ear like David Copperfield.

“Wanna try somethin’ else?”

Lewis does not remember the next few seconds. The magic of the witching hour, or maybe he’s drunk off an ounce of beer. Cliff has some kind of siren call effect that only he can hear because the next thing he knows, they’re sitting on the edge of the porch with no lights. Their shoes are off and Cliff is still swaddled in his bedsheet toga. He’s sun brown enough to become one with the darkness, whereas Lewis is so pale he looks radioactive.

“You sure that snake is gone?” Lewis asks, peering around the dirt at his feet, looking for a black snake in the dark.

“Listen to yer urban self right now. Red, even if it’s gone, there’s another’n round here somewhere. This is the outdoors.”

He’s firing up a cigarette. The lighter flares, and for a moment it illuminates his blond bangs and strong jaw. When it goes out, it’s darker than ever. The aroma of tobacco is pungent and smells like everything Lewis has ever been told to avoid his whole life. It smells like temptation and risky behavior; it smells like questionable back-alley business and bad manners; it smells like trashy red-neck greasers and people who don’t get pushed around, but do the pushing.

When his eyes focus again the cigarette is in front of his face and Cliff is blowing his portion out through his lips.

Now, Lewis already knows he isn’t going to like this anymore than he liked the beer. But liking any of it isn’t the point.

He puts it to his lips and drags just enough to bring the smoke into his mouth, to taste it. It’s horrible and bitter and hot, but he holds it there for a second before breathing it into his lungs. And he coughs.

And coughs. And coughs and coughs some more. He coughs so much that Cliff confiscates the cigarette before he can light his shorts on fire and rolls him to face the ground, applying several bone-rattling slaps to his back.

“Yeeaahh, I remember my first cig. Let it all out, now. Tha’s it.”

Lewis sits up, eyes streaming, throat raw. “Goddamnit.”

“Guess that’s a no fer smokin’. An’ drinking. Aaan’ snake wranglin’.”

“I didn’t try it to see if I liked it,” he chokes, clearing his throat with a few swallows. “I did it to piss off my dad. Even though he’s never going to find out about it.”

Saying this in the presence of someone like Cliff feels petulant, and he’s glad the dark cloaks him.

“Ahh, I see. Old man’s a prick, huh?”

“That’s the thing,” Lewis says, leaning back on his hands. “He didn’t used to be. He started talking to Jonas’s dad who thinks Jonas isn’t enough of a man. And now I’m not either. Then he became a prick.”

“So that’s why yer here,” Cliff says like it’s a revelation. “See, that makes a lot more sense. ‘Cause I couldn’t figure out why an uppity lil dork like yerself would even sign up fer something like this.”

“Well, I wouldn’t have.” Lewis looks at Cliff just in time to see the vague outline of his hand running the back of its fingers under his chin, creating a light scritch.

“I don’t git it. If he don’t think yer a man, then what’s that make ya?”

It’s a good question. What does his dad see if not a man? If not a girl? Because it isn’t about maturity necessarily. It’s about checking all the right boxes, even if--as in Lewis’s opinion--there are no wrong ones.

“A big disappointment, I guess. I don’t know.”

Cliff ruminates on this, placing the cigarette back in his mouth and dragging on it. Lewis sort of wants to ask to take another stab at it, but doesn’t want his heavy-handed partner to break his ribs again.

“Ya know, ya can’t have it all. People usually got one ‘r two things they’re good at ‘n that’s it. That’s who you are.” In the dark, the cloud of smoke he blows is invisible, but Lewis smells it. “I sorta figured what most people want outta their kids is what you are.”

“What am I?”

“Some lil brainiac in sensible shoes.” Lewis bursts out laughing. He can’t help it. “Never done nothin’ illegal and don’t care to. Shit yer pants if ya git a B. All that.”

“I tried to make that point to my dad,” Lewis said, recalling the car ride to the school. “The problem is…” he pulls his feet up under him on the porch, out of snake reach. “My dad doesn’t know what he thinks of me. He doesn’t know if it’s good enough to be an intellectual instead of a stud or not because none of it’s his idea. It’s Jonas’s dad’s. Right now, I guess it feels like the consensus is that it’s all well and good to be smart, but you gotta start talking about football and playing golf at some point or it doesn’t count.”

“Hmmm,” Cliff hums. The cherry flares bright against the blackness as oxygen flows through it.

How many times had he spotted Cliff and Mitch and the rest of them smoking against some wall on campus? And how many times he scampered past them, praying not to be seen? In a sudden bout of clarity, Lewis marvels at the fact of sitting right beside the guy in an apparent cease-fire, his cornea stamped with the image of his dick.

“Well…”Cliff muses. “I don’t know a whole lot…but if there’s one thing I can tell ya from personal experience…ya ought not try ta be somethin’ ya ain’t unless yer willin’ to commit to it. Lotta work to keep that shit up.”

Lotta…what? From personal experience--

Suddenly, Lewis caught the flash of Cliff’s hair whipping toward him in the dark. He douses the cigarette on the step.

“Wanna go skinny dippin’?”

Even blind, he can hear the skeevy smirk on Cliff’s mouth. Lewis is appalled. He’s never done anything so debauched.

“You want me to whip my nakedness out in front of you and anyone else who might be out here?”

“Why the hell not? You got a look at mine!”

Literally there are crickets chirping into the silence as Lewis chews on his lip. His brain revs up to over-think this when its latest trump card pops out. Oh yeah--he’s operating by his own rules here; that’s why his mouth tastes like beer and his lips like tobacco. Miles away from home in the dead of night, he doesn’t have to adhere to Sellwood proper.   

Cliff has to lead him by the wrist to the dock so they don’t get separated in the low light. It’s a sort of midway point between their cabin and Jonas’s. As they approach it, Lewis peers in that direction on the look out for Jonas storming out like “Lewis! What the freak are you thinking, butthole!?” Because Jonas doesn’t cuss.

The sheet did not accompany them, so Cliff is buck naked the whole time. But out on the bobbing dock, Lewis starts to peel his clothes off, shedding his apprehension as he goes. There are fireworks in his blood stream and poprocks in his chest. Fireflies are winking out over the water. And then Lewis is naked in the dark night air.

He’s never felt more alive in his life. He breathes and his lungs fill beyond capacity. Moonlight touches him in places that have never seen the sky and it’s intoxicating. Maybe you can’t go around abiding every rule and accepting what everyone hands you all the time. Maybe this is the feeling you miss out on if you do.

There’s a tremendous splash and the reflection of the beaming moon is shattered. After a second, Cliff surfaces right at its center. “Fuck me, you are pale, Red. Ya look like a ghost,” he laughs.

“Is it deep right there?”

“’Don’t be chickin shit. A’course it is.”

Lewis doesn’t think anymore, ready for whatever is coming next. He bales in and grits his teeth against the shock of cold lake water that swallows him whole. And holy shit is that a new sensation.

When he surfaces and opens his eyes, Cliff is right in front of him. His hair is swooped back out of his face, and try as Lewis might, he cannot see his eyes. He isn’t wearing his glasses either.

“What color are you eyes?” And right away, by the smirk he can see on the idiot’s face, he knows he isn’t going to get a straight answer.

Sure enough, Cliff reclines in the water, paddling lazily. “Only my best girl knows that.”

“Who? That girl you guys hang out with?”

“The very same. Best girl on Earth.”

Lewis paddles himself in s circle, pirouetting to look at the whole camp shrouded in darkness. It feels like the whole world is asleep, leaving them alone in the spotlight of the moon.

“Is she your girlfriend?”

Cliff guffaws, unafraid of rattling the silence that surrounds them. “Hell no. Said I didn’t have one, didn’t I? She’s my best friend.” He smooths a stray lock of hair out of his face. “She likes the ladies, I think. But she won’t tell me about it.”

That the girl he’s referring to is a lesbian comes as no surprise. What does is the judgement-free tone in his voice. Not to profile, but Cliff does have several hallmarks of a…shall we say: not very inclusive person.

“That’s who you sent my picture to, isn’t it?” Lewis said, already sure.

“I said I didn’t--”

“But we both know you did.”

Cliff wheezes, apparently not as committed to the narrative of not snapping a secret photo of Lewis as he let on.

“A’right. Ya caught me.”

“You barely denied it.”

“She’s real interested in you.”

Lewis treads water, staring at the prone form of Cliff floating on his back like a mattress. The question of why is poised on his lips, about to slip out. But he swallows it, too caught up in the sensation of bliss to travel down any more rabbit holes. Bliss is the only word for it: being suspended in cool water, endless in all directions as far as he’s concerned, with the stars wheeling overhead. It’s euphoric. Crickets harmonize in the bushes; fireflies flash all around them like stars that had drifted too close to the earth. Lewis had never felt so free in his whole life. To think that he would never have done this--not on his own… He isn’t thinking of school or his MIT submission. He isn’t thinking of graduation or his dad and what he plans to say when the summer ends. This must what the kids call “living in the moment”.

He glances at Cliff taking a dunk a few yards away, surfacing and flipping his hair out of his face. He isn’t feeling it: that toe-curling sense of liberation, because he does stuff like this all the time.

Lewis lets himself sprawl on his back. “Is there anything else you can corrupt me with. I’m kinda having fun.”

“As it turns out, there is. I’m savin’ one of ‘em fer another night, though.”

“Good,” Lewis says, and hopes it isn’t hard drugs. There’s a giddy feeling in his stomach that terrifies him--a dark feeling of delight. It makes sense now why people seem to be addicted to mischief.

After a pause, Cliff speaks again, and Lewis can hear the smirk on his mouth. “You just say the word, Red,” he says, “an’ I’ll turn you into whatever kinda devil you wanna be.”

 -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

When Lewis comes to the next morning, all of his muscles are loose. His joints are barely holding together he’s so relaxed. Apparently, unclenching makes for a real good night’s sleep. His eyes roll around in his skull observing the daylight pouring into his room; very advanced daylight. It must be late morning.

He slides out of bed and does his whole bathroom thing, pulling on a fresh shirt from the formerly snake infested bag on the floor. Man, he would really have to start putting that stuff away at some point.

Emerging into the kitchen, he is greeted by a state of mild chaos. Bacon has been made here. Even the air is greasy. A sodden napkin on a plate sits there in memoriam. At this point, Lewis will just wait for lunch.

Cliff’s bedroom door is standing wide open and reveals itself to be empty. Tempted, Lewis stations himself before it in a way that might seem innocent enough should Cliff wander in right about now. The bed is unmade and there’s crap scattered here and there. A heat is filtering out of there like the whole room is shut up tighter than the others, and it smells a little like tobacco and laundry. From here, he can see Cliff’s journal lying on the bedside table. A pen is wedged between two pages. Was Cliff actually writing in that thing? What kind of beefcake thoughts were on that paper? Who was he in the medium of the written word?

A yearning like none other comes over him then. It’s strong, but the threat of Cliff finding him with his nose in his private musings and making him beg for forgiveness is stronger.

Out on the porch (having overcome temptation), Lewis finds Cliff making quick work of a pile of wood in the middle of the yard. A wave of heat knocks the air out of his lungs and makes his scalp itch.

“We’re not on firewood duty for another week,” he shouts.

Cliff brings the axe down. There’s an almighty whack, and the two halves go flying in opposite directions. Lewis can barely plant a knife blade down in a chopping block without anxiety. “It’ll be done then, won’t it,” Cliff replies, placing another log on the stump.

Lewis sits down and watches him work from the stoop. Cliff is pouring sweat. The sun is beating down. “Are you wearing sunscreen?”

“No, Ma.”

The insinuation that he’s being some kind of uptight mother hen makes him fold his arms in tightly. “You should be wearing sunscreen. Melanoma is not a joke.”

Cliff lets the blade of the axe come down on the stump and sags, catching his breath. “Tell you what,” he gasps, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist. “You look like you been locked in a attic fer four years. How ‘bout you come git some color an’ try yer hand at this here manliness tester. An’ I’ll take a load off in the shade and heckle you. I’ll take yer picture and you can send it to yer dad as proof.”

“And you can send it to your friend, right?” Lewis accuses.

“I dunno. I can’t see inta the future.”

Since Lewis is all about trying shit he’s never done before this summer, he gets up and strolls over.

Up close, Cliff stinks. He’s glistening and he stinks. But Lewis can feel why. He’s been under direct sunlight for all of forty seconds and already he can feel its weight baring down on him.

Cliff holds out the axe and when Lewis receives it into his open hands, it almost drags him to the ground. “This thing weighs a ton!” he complains.

Cliff drops onto the steps, bone tired. He chuckles, “Boy, you gotta real fuckin’ struggle aheada you if yer already complainin’ about the weight, Red. Oh, an’ another tip…yer gonna sweat right through that shirt you got on. Might wanna lose it.”

Lewis looks down at himself and then over at Cliff lounging back on his elbows. The muscles in his arms are bulging even at rest. A wave of self-consciousness rears up for the first time. Lewis is self-aware enough not to be under any pretenses about what kind of mold he fits physically, but he isn’t ashamed of himself. Not the way Jonas is. There’s something about Cliff staring from the shade, though. Something that makes it harder than usual. But Lewis is here to toughen up, among other things, so he yanks his shirt over his head and throws it on the ground.

“Jeezzuss,” Cliff mutters as the sun strikes his alabaster skin.

Hoisting his axe back up, Lewis fights it over his head on wobbly arms, trying his best to mimic the technique he had seen Cliff use. When he brings it down, the blade buries itself in the stump, missing the log by several inches. Cliff doesn’t say anything, thank god, but wheezes in laughter.

Extracting the blade takes some work; full body work. Sweat drips down his spine and into the back of his pants, tickling his ass.

“Come on, Red. Show that chunka wood who’s boss.”

The axe flies free so suddenly that Lewis staggers backward. Pushing his glasses up his nose, he realigns, channeling his inner he-man. It’s so hot his skin is tingling, like the sun is cooking him alive.

This time, he shaves the bark clean off of one side. It peels off like a pencil shaving, skinny as a wood match.

“Aw, shit. We’ll be here all day if yer gonna slice it up paper thin like that. Come on now.”

The message is so clear that Lewis can’t even be mad. Even with his flesh melting in the sun, it’s hard to look at Cliff grinning his all-American boy grin from the porch and not find it endearing.

“Point taken.”

He centers the log on the stump, takes a step back and spreads his feet. He thinks of all the kung fu movies he’s seen where want and will-power were enough, and draws from the well of anger that simmers quietly in his depths at all times, trying to make a fuel of it.

The raising of the axe over his head makes him feel like an executioner about to lop the head off some arrogant Frenchman. As its leaden head wobbles unsteadily over his head, Lewis realizes the satisfaction he’s expecting to receive when it flies in two is purely performative. He wants to do it because Cliff is watching.

It falls, out of Lewis’s control now except for a rough ability to guide it. There is a whack and and crack, but it’s only because it buries itself in the upper edge, causing the whole thing to tumple over and go to shit.

“Goddamnit!” Lewis curses, jerking at the axe with the log wedged onto the end.

A boot scrape on the ledge of a plank and a series of thuds in the grass is all the warning he gets before Cliff’s voice is behind him.

 “Y’ain’t holdin’ it right. Hands’re too low.” He reaches around and pries Lewis’s fingers off the shaft with rough, stained hands, correcting their placement. One higher, closer to the head, the other much lower. At once Lewis can feel the change in control.

“Don’t let it hang over yer head so long. Keep the momentum goin’ in a circle,” he advises.

Together, they line up the tip of the blade with the log, tapping it once, and then Cliff is guiding him through the motion of the swing until the blade is back where it started and further. It sings as it plants itself in the stump and two equal hunks of wood jump away from each other.

“Holy shit, that felt amazing!” exclaims Lewis. But he drops the shaft into the grass because doing it again is out of the question. As it stands, he can tell precisely where blisters will pop up if he continues.

“Yeah, it’s a real rage release. Only you don’t do this kinda thing in the summer. This stump is in the worse fuckin’ place. No tree coverage’r nothin’.”

“Speakin’ of,” Lewis says to himself, made once again aware of the fact that he’s roasting alive. He turns his back to the sun for the sake of his eyes and starts to pull the hair tie off his wrist.

Cliff is still standing there, right in Lewis’s personal space. Up close, the stink is worse, but it’s in layers: there’s an undertone of cologne buried under the smell of sweat infused with hormones and chemicals Lewis has never secreted even once in his life, nor does he think his dad ever had.

Okay, we get it weirdo. Cliff is all man. He’s got the biggest dick on earth and four testicles and muscles like Tarzan. So the hell what?

Lewis gathers his mass of hair in his hands and starts to work it into a short, puffy ponytail at the back of his head. Against his parents wishes, growing his hair out gives Lewis a sense of maturity. With a texture like his, keeping it too short forced it into an afro-like formation that made him feel like a latent middle-schooler.

Cliff is staring; it’s getting easier to spot. His head tilts to watch Lewis’s hands go through the motions. When its finished, he takes him by the upper arm and steers him to the side. The sensation of fingers in his hair, tugging slightly, makes him shiver.

“How’d you do that?”

“…Um…I dunno. Just--pull it back and tie it up?” When he turns and looks he can see the gears grinding in Cliff’s head, blond hair sleek and straight, but plastered to his neck and shoulders. “Want me to do yours?”

It’s going to be a no--Lewis is sure. So when Cliff says, “…You got another one a those things?” he balks.

“Y-yeah. Yeah, I have a bunch ‘cause I’m always breaking them. Hang on.”

He jogs up the steps and into the house. Not a lot is going through his head as he strides into his room and digs through his bag, because what is he supposed to think of a situation in which he is hunting for a hair tie to show Cliff Lonnie, the fake redneck thug of Sellwood High, to put his hair up.

When Lewis returns, Cliff has taken refuge in the shade of the porch. His hands are perched on his hips as he catches his breath.

“Alright, turn around.”

Cliff pivots around and presents Lewis with the sheet of astoundingly blond hair that just reaches past his shoulders. It’s the envy of curly-haired people everywhere. Lewis combs his fingers through it from the crown to the tips, freeing any snags, then gathers it up.

“Don’t make me look like a goddamn cheerleader.”

“’Kay. I won’t make it too high then.”

His hands shake a little, for whatever reason. This feels like some kind of privilege. Lewis gathers it and gathers it until it feels right and then twists the band in place. “Sorry,” he says when he accidentally pulls.

“I ain’t tender-headed.”

When it’s done, there’s an impressive ponytail curving off the back of his head, and what Lewis considers one big problem in the front.

“Uhh…” he says when Cliff turns around with his bangs still draping his face. “I think I already know the answer to this, but…do you want me to…”

Cliff tilts his head to the side. His bangs tumble across his nose in a way that must tickle. He doesn’t, however, say anything one way or the other, as if waiting for Lewis to come to some conclusion on his own.

“Or just, y’know…tell me if you want to later.” Backing down from what seems like a challenge, Lewis turns and disappears into the air-conditioned indoors. That’s quite enough time outside his comfort zone for one day, thanks.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Dear Diary?? I guess,    

Hard to say what I’m getting out of this summer just yet. I feel very little development happening, at least in the sense that I’m supposed to be developing. What has happened is a lot of messing around w/ stuff I don’t normally touch. Cliff let me try his beer, which tasted like ass, and his cigarette, which was even worse. Srsly, how do people get hooked on something that gross? Skinny dipping was Cliff’s idea, but I will admit to not taking much convincing…for any of this stuff. Cutting loose has felt good.

Speaking of Cliff…I saw his junk, and that was also a first. It was my fault, sort of…? But I think, for my mental health, I need to take a sec to vent about this thru writing, which is what this journal is intended for. The dick on that guy is a threat to national security. Wtf? How is he just walking around with that? I might be exaggerating just a little, but--real talk--I have seen some porn and that’s what Cliff is working with. Mother Mary, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death, even tho I don’t believe in you, amen. --End--

Ok-- In other news, Jonas said he and Mitch are over there fighting. SHOCKER. I hope that Cliff is right and nothing happens to him. I feel pretty lucky to be shacked up w/ Cliff bc so far he’s been pretty chill. I feel safe. But if Mitch did anything to really mess Jonas up…Idk what would happen to our standing. Jonas said living with him was better than he’d expected…but Idk what that means. I guess he’d tell me if anything happened.

We’re supposed to write about goals and stuff in here, but I don’t have any freaking goals. I guess my only goal is to try and enjoy this summer in whatever way is possible given the circumstances. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but things could actually be worse. Jonas and I are right next door to each other and can basically see each other whenever we want. Maybe I’ll invite him to stay with me one night. God knows I’m not going over there.

Shit, I better go. I left the laptop open and Cliff just found it. Last time I did that he threatened to put it out on the porch.

Chapter Text

Summer without Jonas was odd. Time and space were off balance, and Sidney felt like she was learning how to adjust to missing a limb. There was, after all, a strange new gap in her life. She had certain things to say, and yet no one to say them to. She and Mady texted off and on, made plans and followed through with them, but she was no substitute. Their relationship seemed to undergo a strange shift in the absence of Lewis and Jonas, leaving it deficient.

And God only knew she wasn’t going to hang out at home, jesus christ! With Dean popping in a little too often and all the kids home for the summer, there was nowhere even remotely relaxing to be except her room.

So, again, she was speeding away from the house on her skateboard for about the tenth time since summer started. Already half way to the skatepark, the scenery was beginning to change. Businesses were a lot older and houses a lot shittier. There went the dumpy old laundromat and the frequently robbed liquor store and the tattoo parlor that Dean commented on every single freaking time they drove by them. The closer she got to the skatepark, the number of tar-black wads of flattened gum polka-dotting the sidewalks increased. People looked a little cagier and cars were barely running as the rolled down the streets.

That was why it made such a great departure from the strictly regimented and heavily policed Wagner household. Nobody gave a shit here. Your clothes were dirty and didn’t match? Fine, you fit right in. You wanted to curse out loud? Go ahead--everyone was cursing at the top of their lungs!

And it didn’t hurt that the only skatepark around was here--her favorite place in town. It was grungy and gritty and overrun with hyper-Californians. They weren’t her crowd necessarily, but they shared a common interest…busting their asses on concrete.

Only today…she was passing the skatepark. Just for a second. And not so much passing it by as going across the street. To the corner.

To the Cash ‘n Dash.

For an Icee.

No other reason.

Certainly not because dropping by and having micro-interactions with Mitch’s psycho friend at the counter had become the most interesting thing to come out of the summer so far. Not because it was kind of terrifying, but also kind of fucking titillating when someone so crazed toed the line between teasing and flirtation. And no one flirted with Sidney. Not really. And nobody interesting ever did. That was the tamest possible way to describe Scratch: interesting.

But there again: was she flirting? And if so, did that make Sidney a back-stabbing judas priest? This girl had been right at Mitch’s side as he bullied Jonas since sixth grade, a fact she had Sidney ignoring after a wink and a few discounts. Wtf?

And still--still!--the wheels of her skateboard were roaring in the direction of the store. I just want a soda or something. The vending machine at the park is broken, shit!

She watched the other skaters flying up into the air and rocketing back down into the bowl against the backdrop of the far away ocean and adjusted her purple cap so the strap wouldn’t leave a mark on her forehead. Boy, this summer had really managed to mesh their two highly distinct groups almost to completion. Jonas was stuck with Mitch; Lewis was stuck with his fake redneck friend; Sidney and Scratch were…in some typa…situation…?

She ground to a halt on the gray pavement outside the store and took her time shoving her skateboard into her backpack as far as it would go. Back around the corner of the building, the front half of a cruddy black car jutted out far enough to make out the skull embellishment on the hood, so Sidney knew she was working today. God, it was so trashy. The passenger side doors were missing and the paint job needed a miracle.

But it was also kind of cool as fuck.

Bully chick. Enemy, her lizard brain chanted.

The bell dinged as she pushed inside. It smelled like sticky soda and corndogs turning on the warmer. Scratch was at the counter ringing up some tweaker and hadn’t appeared to notice her.

Oh well, idgaf, she thought, strolling toward the back to the machines, cool as a cucumber on the outside, inside like a microwave with a spoon in it. Christ these floors needed scraped. And a mop job wouldn’t hurt. Did no one clean this place?

At the Icee machine, Sid encountered the same dilemma as every other time. Pretty colors. Which one? 

Even as her brain labored under the weight of this totally arbitrary decision, one ear was tuned to the sounds of the register, the voices, the drawer shutting, the door dinging.

Pink, she decided. It tasted kind of like bubblegum, and a little swirl of the blue stuff on top for aesthetic purposes. She grabbed a large cup and watched the satisfying twirl of it piling up one coil at a time until it physically couldn’t hold another ounce, and jammed a straw into it.

‘Kay…done…

There was a three person line at the counter, thank god. She stood at the back of it and sipped, eyeing the gobs of candy and Corn Nuts and beef jerky, watching blistered hotdogs glisten in the light. Between voices and door dings, she could hear the motorized whir of the giant fiberglass slurpee rotating on the building’s roof. A heavily tattooed woman walked in wearing an unflattering tube top and a cheeky pair of shorts; two high-as-fuck skaters were pocketing snacks down the back aisle.

What a place. If Dean could see the kind of riff raff that came and went from here, she’d never be allowed back.

The smelly dude in front of her left the counter and suddenly it was just the two of them. Scratch’s midnight eyes locked on her standing there clutching her cup like someone was going to try and take it from her. Her deranged, but oddly pretty face split into a sharp-toothed smile, too bright for the barely-there relationship they had.

“Hey, Dotty.”

Sidney sat her cup on the counter and started rifling through her pockets. “Uh, hey,” she returned, attempting a smile.

“So it’s a skate day, huh?” she said, punching buttons.

“Technically every day’s a skate day. I just can’t make it over here that much.”

“Well, that’s a fuckin’ shame, wouldn’t ya say?” she said, smacking gum. Her black coated lips and off-white teeth were hard to look away from.

Sidney pulled a fistful of change and bills out of her pocket and plopped it onto the counter, waiting for her total. “Sure is,” she muttered.

But the total didn’t come. In fact, Scratch was punching buttons like the wind, as if backspacing.

“I hear…” Click, click, click, click, click, “that your boys…and my boys,” smack, smack, smack, “are hangin’ out.” She looked at Sidney wide and wet-eyed like Betty Boop, if Betty Boop had zombie-green hair and an extra half pound of metal attached to her body.

“I dunno if hanging out is the word,” Sidney said, letting a little of the trademark disdain slip into her tone. “The way I see it, my guys are stuck in a situation they can’t escape from with a couple of tools who’ve made our lives hell for too long.”

Oh, yeah. There it was. That flaming upsurge of injustice she was supposed to feel coming face to face with this chick. She nudged the change a little further onto the counter and swallowed the disappointment that came with realizing this was how this encounter was going to play out.

If being bitten at was in anyway a shock, all it got out of Scratch was a brow lilt and a broadening of her smile, as if a little hostility were exciting. Sidney should have known that someone like her would find any sort of conflict compelling.

Scratch leaned forward onto her elbows like a crouching tiger, eyes electric. Sidney gulped and diligently did not look at the gap in the front of her shirt. “Ya know…we don’t gotta do that,” she said quietly, like someone was listening. “That thing we always do. The boys ain’t here. It’s just us gals. We don’t got any shit between us.”

Sidney couldn’t believe her ears. Oh, they didn’t have any shit between them? Except the terf war that was Jonas? It was so unbelievable that a smile broke out on her face. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’m never serious, babe,” Scratch said, frowning and shaking her head where it rested on her knuckles. “But I mean it. You got anything goin’ on this summer?”

Though it was hanging open in indignation, nothing came out of Sidney’s mouth except a gust of air.

“See? Me neither,” she said, messing with the ring in her nose. “Look, I don’t got no girls to hang around. The guys are my whole life, don’t get me wrong. But…” She leveled Sidney with that crocodile grin again. “I think we could have fun without ‘em.”

Someone must’ve opened a door in Sidney’s body and shoved a sparkler in there. This was truly one of those crossroads they always tell you are coming in life. She just never imagined it would be…this. Stand by your twin and maintain the boundary between yourself and a person responsible for years of misery, or see where the hell this inevitable trainwreck was headed.

An eternity seemed to crawl by as Sidney stood in conflicted silence. Scratch left her to it. She took a bill out of the pile of money on the counter and flattened it out; counted a few coins for the drawer and left the rest there.

“Wassa matter? Ya freaked out?”

“Yep. Little bit,” Sidney admitted, unable to lie and scooping the leftover change into her pocket.

Scratch rolled her eyes, and in a moment her face had transmogrified into a scowl aimed at something over Sidney’s shoulder.

“You guys are gonna pay for that shit, right?” she snapped. Sidney looked back to the two stoners she’d seen pocketing stuff in line earlier. They froze, exchanging heavy-lidded glances.

“Uhh…yeah, just…don’t have enough…hands...”

“Uh-huh,” Scratch agreed loudly, giving an exaggerated nod. “Just know that if you try to make it outta here with anything, it’s gonna be you callin’ the cops. Not me.”

As soon as her attention was trained back on Sidney, she was the Scratch from before. “Tell you what, Dots. I get off in two hours. I’ll drive you home, or wherever the fuck ya wanna go. Just meet me out back by my car. Or if you don’t want to, whatever. I can take a fuckin’ hint I guess.”

Sidney’s attention was drawn to a doorway behind the counter, where a dopey-looking guy with horrible acne was popping his head out.

“Crystal,” he whined. “Look…we’ve had this talk before. You can’t talk to customers like that, okay? You can’t use the S word. And you can’t make threats of bodily harm. I’m right here in the office.”

“Oh, shit, Greg, I forgot. Sorry. Hey--hey, guys! Greg says I can’t say or do any of that, so that stuff’s on the house.”

“No, no..no!” He darted out of the office in alarm and jogged down the aisle, vest flapping out behind him. “This establishment has a no tolerance policy on thievery!”

Sidney couldn’t help it--she laughed from the depths of her gut. Nothing that funny had happened in weeks; not since Jonas and Lewis left. “What a fuckin’ embarrassment,” Scratch muttered, and Sidney laughed even harder. “See? You’re havin’ fun already.”

“Just because I laughed at that doesn’t mean I’m having fun with you.” Sid grabbed her discounted icee and inched towards the door backwards. “But it wasn’t…unfun.”

“So maybe I’ll see ya later, huh doll?” Scratch smiled toothily, combing her fingers through her green hair.

It wasn’t that Sidney was forgetting who Scratch was or what she had done. She wasn’t forgetting that Jonas was enduring Mitch even as she herself was free to come and go from the skatepark as she pleased, was free to not get involved with this girl at all. But every second the offer was on the table was another second that Sidney couldn’t think of a better use of her time. Nothing was waiting for her at home but chores and responsibility. The skatepark was never not going to be an option, so, really, she was going to see her either way.

Sidney shrugged as she shouldered the door open. “Think I’ll make you sweat on it.”

Based on the grin Scratch was giving her, that wasn’t too disappointing an answer.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Two hours was a lot of skate time. It didn’t measure itself in minutes; it measured itself in knee scrapes and rushes of dopamine, sore elbows and celebratory hollers. And she had had her share of each of them many times over by the time she sat down on the far side of the park, back against the fence bars. All around her skaters continued to launch into the air, sometimes missing her by carefully planned inches. A seasoned skatepark veteran, she’d learned not to flinch at that stuff anymore. Nearly losing a tooth to a flying wheel was part of the experience.

After an hour and a half on the hot concrete her icee was reduced to two inches of foamy juice that she was still spooning into her mouth as she stared at the storefront across the street, the giant faded slushee on the roof pivoting tirelessly under the glare of the sun.

Sidney remembered Scratch Dyer back in middle school, when she was just Crystal. Some invisible nobody at the back of half her classes, slouching over her desk while she vandalized it. The kind of student others hated to sit beside and teachers hated to teach. She bit people, everyone said, a rumor that started after she apparently bit some uppity chick who sat next to her in class, and then, locked in the detention room with a teacher, bit him too. True or not (and at this point, she believed them), Sidney kind of respected that. Was it batshit crazy? Sure. But there were times when she was so blackout pissed at perfect strangers that biting felt like the only catharsis. Crazy that there was someone out there actually doing it! Insane!

The girl hadn’t stood a chance. She wasn’t groomed and her clothes were too tattered and her hair was an off the charts mess. But people drew the line at smelling bad--it was too hard to pity. That and the general weirdness, not including the biting thing, which hadn’t come until later. Really, though; who could open their arms to someone like that? Sidney had nothing in the world against people with a bad lot in life, but jesus!

Maybe it was only fair to her that Mitch and those boys had come along. Because really, didn’t everyone deserve to find their people?

Uh…you’re being a little judgemental for someone who’s thinking of hanging around her, don’t you think?

But Sidney wasn’t judging, she was marveling. Because finding Mitch had apparently given Crystal whatever confidence boost she’d needed to turn things around for herself. She had a (very brazen) sense of style now, and it…kind of worked. Whether or not the clothes were clean was another issue; they served their purpose, and that purpose was to send the message: fuck around and find out.

The days of people taking a shot at Crystal Dyer were over. No one was even tempted. She might’ve been the shortest member of Mitch’s whole entourage…thing, whatever it was. But what she lacked in the way of physical intimidation she made up for with pure, inhuman menace.

Yeah, four horsemen of the fucking apocalypse those guys. Let me say it again. This is a person you are considering hanging around. A person you just used ‘inhuman menace’ to describe. Are you fine?

The time on her phone read read one minute past five. Shit! She was going to be late.

She wrestled her skateboard into her bag on the run, trying to keep any eye out for skaters both in the air and on the ground, because all she needed now was to get knocked out cold and left on the dirty park pavement among the cigarette buds and spit.

She would make it. The store was just across the street on the corner, if nothing else, Scratch would see her jogging over from her car, assuming she was there, and assuming she was giving Sidney the benefit of the doubt.

I cannot believe you are doing this. It doesn’t matter if Jonas is trying to make nice with Mitch right now. It’s because he doesn’t have a choice. He’s in survival mode. But you’re making a very purposeful, very CONSENSUAL decision to--

Wham!

Sidney smacked face first into some wall of a dude coming into the gates of the park right as she was trying to go out. Spots flashed before her eyes between the heat and the impact, causing her to stagger backward momentarily.

“Fucking christ! Watch where you’re going, asshole!” they barked.

Oh. That was not a dude. It was one of the biggest (and hell, burliest) girls Sidney had ever seen. The skateboard under her arm made it very clear what she was here to do, but Sidney didn’t understand the physics. Logging should have been her thing. Shot putting. Cow lifting?

“Jesus, my bad I guess,” she muttered, pushing toward the gate. Bitch.

“Next time I’ll just walk straight over you.”

Now, Sidney, unlike her demur twin, had a mouth that was barely under her control half the time. Historically, exactly two people had existed for whom she had bitten her tongue until it nearly bled. One of them was Dean, and the other she was due to meet five minutes ago.

“Oh, please. If I wasn’t distracted I would’ve seen you coming a yesterday, Godzilla.”

It was usually after a remark like that that she remembered people didn’t always come back with words as she did. This chick, for example, was coming back with her whole body, swinging it toward Sidney like a door, like they were about to go at it MMA style.

“You know, that was real fuckin’ funny. You want those to be the last words you ever say?”

Sidney’s back hit the gate, clanking against the wheel of her skateboard. She reached back and drew it out like a sword from its sheath and held it up like a promise. Was all of this a sign? Was the universe trying to stop her gallivanting with Scratch after all?

“Do you want whatever bloody sound comes out of your mouth when I take all your teeth out with this to be yours?!”

Her towering opponent huffed a laugh. “You gotta hit me first, bitch.”

“I never miss with this thing.”

Tires screeched behind Sidney and she decided that since the other girl was distracted by whatever was happening behind her, it must be safe to take a peak, as long as she didn’t let her board down.

A familiar-looking black piece of shit missing two doors was still swaying with the force of its sudden break. On the other side, a flash of green hair barely able to see over the roof appeared, and then the diminutive Scratch was marching around the car toward them.

“I don’t know what the fuck I’m lookin’ at here…” she barked, referring to the sight of a standoff in which Sidney was battling her own personal Goliath with a freaking skateboard, “but it better not be what I think it is.”

A beat passed. The towering girl on the other end of Sidney’s board pulled a face like that was the stupidest thing she’d ever heard. “And just what do you think it is?”

“Like some mountain troll makin’ Dotty here late for her appointment with me!”

Sidney wanted to dart out of the gate while she had the chance, but she was afraid to move now that she was caught between an unstoppable force and an immovable object. If these two people touched each other, it could be atomic.

Big girl put a hand on her hip (waist? trunk?). “Well your girl here’s got a smart ass mouth.”

Flaming rage, the likes of which made Sidney wonder if the Scratch she had spoken to earlier was ever real, came over her face. She stomped closer to the gate and Sidney flinched at appearance of a Scratch she actually recognized. “I was hoping to find that out for myself! But thanks for spoiling it, bitch!”

“Wait your turn! I’ll get to you, shrimp,” the tall girl snapped, stepping up to the bars of the gate. The height difference would have been laughable, but Sidney knew Scratch, and height meant nothing. She had seen her put boys and girl alike on the ground, all of them taller.

“Oh no, bitch! This is a you and me problem now. It don’t even concern her.” She gestured at Sidney, whose board was a shield now, more than a melee weapon. “I just clocked out and I’m lookin’ to cut loose. Actually, I’ll cut anything. I don’t care what it is.” Out of thin air a switch blade appeared. The silver business end snapped as it whipped out and little pasted-on gems glittered against the black hilt. “You volunteering?”

Silence answered. The two of them entered into a hate-filled stare down. Their yelling had attracted the attention of several skaters in the park, who were perfectly willing to witness, but not do much else. Same as Sidney.

Looking between their faces, it was impossible to say who would yield first. Sidney had to hand it to this other girl. Not many people could stare into the face of Scratch Dyer wielding a knife and hold their nerve as long as she had.

So suddenly that Sidney jumped, Big Girl shoved away from the bars and strode backward. “You two are fucking crazy,” she announced, pointing to each of them in turn. “Have at each other, I guess.”

She turned and stormed off, and every muscles in Sidney’s body unclenched at once. Some of them were actually sore!

Grinning like the devil, Scratch ran the blade of her knife back and forth along the bars of the gate so that they rang out in a god awful victory cry. “They never wanna dance when Liberace shows up!”

“Were you really gonna cut her?” Sidney couldn’t help asking, even if she kind of already knew the answer. She didn’t protest, or even hesitate when Scratch led them back to her car parked carelessly on the street. She threw her bag and skateboard in the passenger floorboard and and climbed into the seat. It smelled to high heaven of cigarettes and oil, but at this point, Sidney would’ve jumped on the back of a horse if it would take her away from that beastly girl at the skatepark. An air freshener shaped like two cherries with a tongue in between was fighting for its life against the reak of tobacco and soda syrup from the empty cups bonking around her feet.

“Hell yes I was!” Scratch exclaimed, slipping the bejeweled knife into some pocket. “I don’t make empty threats, Dots.” After a thought, she squinted. “Why? Did it seem like a bluff?”

“No. It very much did not.”

She nodded, relieved, and put the car in gear. As they sailed down the road, going just a smidge faster than Sidney was comfortable with, it occurred to her that under no circumstances could Dean see her being brought home in this car.

Ahem! came that same pestering inner voice. This chick just bailed your ass out of some absolutely medieval shit. A thanks might be in order. A little compliment, maybe?

Cutting her eye to the side revealed that Scratch drove with a little deranged smile on her mouth. “Thanks. That was really…like…scary…and impressive of you.” This was so uncomfortable. “I really did mouth off, y’know. I can’t help myself.” Sidney looked at Scratch to make sure she wasn’t suddenly angry about having to get her out of a jam. “I was really gonna brain her with my board, y’know?”

“Oh, I could tell,” she chirped. “It was fuckin’ sick, Dots. If you think you’re goin’ down, take a piece of ‘em with ya I always say.”  

Odd words coming from a school bully.

“I like a girl who mouths off,” she said, glancing at Sidney with dark, glinting eyes. “You don’t put up with anybody’s shit, do ya?”

Sidney shook her head. “No I don’t. Why should I? Why should anyone?”

Scratch put on her blinker and leaned forward to peer through the side mirror. “I’ve seen you mouth off to Mitch a few times. That takes guts.”

“Yeah well--” Sidney clapped her mouth shut. It didn’t matter if she hated every inch of Mitch’s greasy guts--he was Scratch’s friend, and she had almost been in a knife fight ten minutes after her shift on Sidney’s behalf. “I do if for my brother. He’s too nice to tell anybody off half the time.”

“Cute little guy.”

“...What?”

“Your twinkie. He’s kinda precious.”

After today, Sidney’s brain was too wrung out to process what in the earthly fuck she meant by that. Was he cute, or was he a nerd? If he was so cute, why torment him? So she sighed and watched things and places fly by the gaping, door-shaped hole beside her. Flecked asphalt whizzed by on the ground a couple feet away, a little too close for comfort. She glanced back to check for a seat-belt, but unsurprisingly, there wasn’t one.

“We’re kinda all each other has,” she found herself admitting. “You think I defend myself? Wait til you see me defend him?”

Almost too late, it occurred to Sidney that they were cruising through an area she wasn’t all that familiar with. And she hadn’t told Scratch where she lived or where she needed to go. They were heading deeper into the grungier part of town, winding through streets almost deliberately. They passed more convenience stores like the one by the skatepark, except Sidney didn’t think she had the nerve, or the tactical training, to go into any of them. A few hole-in-the-wall restaurants lit up with neon signs were actually kind of cool looking, if you didn’t think about health codes or anything.

“I’m fuckin’ famished after that. You hungry, Dotty? You want a cherry sno-cone? I could really go for a cherry sno-cone right about now. Lemme buy ya one, c’mon!”

Sidney laughed at being begged before she’d even answered. “I…I dunno… You saw how much money I had back at the store. Or didn’t have I guess.”

Scratch scowled, whipping them around a corner so sharply that Sidney nearly flew out of the car. “Who gives a shit? I got this job to be able to afford Cliff’s weed--and jesus do I owe him bad. And a chunk of it goes in my savings, but other than that I got nothin’ else to spend it on. Plus, I would never…let a lady pick up the tab.”

“Okay, but I gotta be home by eight or I get grilled.” In fact, the more Sidney thought about it, getting home after tonight was going to be a whole song and dance. Dean could not see her getting out of this car with this person. He could not get close enough to her to smell the essence of cigarette on her clothes and hair.

“Pff! We got forever then!” she said, elated. “I’ll take you to my two favorite places!”

-- -- -- -- -- - - -- -- -- -- -- --- -- -- - -- -- - ---- -- -- --

Unsurprisingly, Scratch had a small case of road rage.

“You giant flaming nutsack! What are you, blind?! I’m already in this fuckin’ lane! You can have over when I say you can have over!”

Couple it with the swerving and the lead foot and the no doors and the lack of seat-belts, and it was starting to shred Sidney’s nerves. Thankfully, the place Scratch was taking them (at great risk to their safety) was coming up on the left, and it was the only miracle Sidney believed in.

It was some dumpy little drive-thru only place called Scratchy Dick’s. She had to do a double take to make sure she could read. But yeah…she had read it right the first time. Scratchy Dick’s. The neon signs were so bright you couldn’t read them. Some were flickering and half lit. But there was a crowd parked in the back.

Scratch pulled right up to the window, for which her car was a little too low. But no worries; to fix this, she simply got up on her knees and stuck her head out the window and her ass in Sidney’s face.

“Yeah?” said whoever came to the window.

“Is Ronny workin’ today?” Scratch asked.

“No! I fired him for givin’ out friend and family discounts, which don’t fuckin’ exist here.”

“...Right. That’s why I was askin’. I wanted to avoid getting one of those.”

It wasn’t the worst ass Sidney had ever seen. Kinda small, but all of Scratch was kind of small. There was a skull patch ironed onto the right pocket. Those pants are…tight. 

Sidney managed to turn her head back around just in time as Scratch peered back over her shoulder.

“Sorry about my ass.”

“Uh, d-don’t be. It’s your car.”

Ultimately, Scratch ordered for both of them and Sidney was grateful. She hadn’t seen a menu and couldn’t be bothered to look at one. “Two chili fries, dirty, with ranch, no onions, jalapeno on one with a mustard packet on the side. Oh, and two cherry sno-cones with a splash’a cola. Cherries on top.”

Sidney smiled in the privacy of the car. That was so…normal. Not the order--that was batshit, but the act of it. A normal teenage thing coming out of this insane girl who had a bedazzled knife called Liberace in her pocket and half a shaved head. But no onions, please.

“You do like cherry. Don’t ya, doll?”

When Sidney looked, Scratch was peering back over her shoulder. And she couldn’t be sure, but it seemed like a that wasn’t the only question she was being asked.

“...Yeah,” she said, looking her square in the eyes. “I like cherry.”

That got her a greasy secret smile in return. Those grins didn’t seem as ugly as they used to, now that she was starting to understand their secret language. There was the one she wore to tease and the one she wore to be saucy; the toothy, glee-filled one that meant trouble for someone else, and the resting one that seemed to live on her face all other times, which was possibly the craziest one, because of how fragile it was. It could turn in an instant.

They were handed their food in two paper baskets lined with grease-sodden checkered paper. But sweet jesus, Sidney was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, expecting to be back home after the skatepark for leftovers. Thank god she had let Scratch talk her into this because food like this didn’t happen at chez Wagner. Sue and Sidney had to make everything themselves, and if they got to order out, it was pizza or Chinese every time. Nothing covered in chilli, nothing ‘dirty’.

Scratch parked them in the back. From the parking lot, if you faced the right way, such as they were, you could see the screen of a drive-in theater some blocks away. It was small and partially angled away; the white covering was starting to peel at the top, but Sidney had never even known Sellwood had one. This side of town, scary as it could be, had a kind of magic that cleaner, more gentrified neighborhoods like theirs could never have. And the only way to get a taste of it for yourself was to go in and take the good with the ugly.

“Sorry I was kind of a bitch back at the store,” Sidney blurted, dipping a fry in her ranch cup. “Smart mouth, like I said.”

“Ah, it’s okay, Dotty. I’m the demon queen of chaos. I can handle a little cheek.” Her eyes slid down to the seat Sidney was sitting in. The smile that pulled at Sidney’s mouth could barely be contained, even as she spooned sno-cone into her mouth and bit down on the straw. “Plus…I know how it is. I’m used to it.” She slurped through her own straw. “It’s like I said, though. Your boys ain’t here. My boys ain’t here. We can play whatever kinda game we wanna play.”

The tone of her voice snagged Sidney by the face and pulled. Tiny little wisp of a thing that she was, she could sit with her feet in the seat, facing Sidney. Her head leaned against the seat rest, and the deep, dark look she was giving Sidney was like a honey trap. Her brown eyes weren’t just two black spots as she had always thought. Now that she was up close, they were hot amber, molasses dark. Her two-tone lips were full and beautiful, and for the second time today, hard to look away from.

“What kinda game do you wanna play?”

She pulled a cherry from her sno-cone and sucked the juice off of it. “Maybe one that…you don’t wanna play.”

She caught the bulb of it between her teeth. The whole world shrank to include nothing but the sight of it pinched there, rolling slightly, the stem barely hanging on as she pulled it between her fingers. Pretty lips. She has a…tongue ring. 

The pop of the stem breaking free…the snap of it bursting between her teeth…Sidney was suddenly very awake.

Oh. Oh this is real. Holy shit. This is really real. She wants to mess around. Scratch Dyer, Mitch Mueller’s fucking gimp, wanted to…

“Dotty?” Scratch said, leaning into Sidney’s line of vision with a frown of concern. “Ya ain’t blinkin’, doll.”

Sidney shook her head to clear it. This was so embarrassing. She had played into it too, but now that it was exactly what she had only guessed it could be, she felt the size of things becoming too big to swallow.

“Um…I just…I don’t know. We…you’re…” Her lungs were a little short on air. Scratch drew forward, pulled by whatever was on Sidney’s face.

“I can back off if ya want,” she said. “You don’t gotta be scared or nothin’, Dots. Don’t be scared.”

The careful tone of her voice made Sidney want to cry. She must look on the verge of tears anyway if Scratch of all people thought she needed to be talked to like that. It was only that Scratch was an extension of Mitch. And Mitch was the avatar of chaos in their lives, the embodiment of unsteadiness, the incarnation of the struggle they faced looking the way they did in this world.

She could say she wasn’t scared, but Scratch already knew.

She put her empty Styrofoam cup in the holder. Darkness was trying to descend. The sun was gone from the sky and the farewell light tinted everything purple. She had to be home soon. Another hour. Even if she rolled in at eight on the dot, Dean would ask where she’s been.

“I’m not scared,” she said anyway, loathing the way it made her sound like an eight year old.

“No. ‘Course not,” Scratch said, smiling. Her hand wandered over, nudging Sidney’s fingers with her own darker ones. “You were gonna beat that chick to death with a skateboard. You ain’t scared of nothin’.”

That forced a smile on Sidney’s face. Their fingers were tangled. Just the first two on each of their hands. It was tentative, cautionary. It sounded stupid to say there were butterflies in her gut, but something was in there. Something big and warm and achy. Something that was blind to who Scratch was or what any of this was supposed to mean. It liked the little dance their fingers did. Lifting and nudging and stroking.

“I gotta be home soon,” Sidney said, eyes stuck on the formation their fingers made.

“Sure, Dotty.” She slowly retracted her hand to put the car in gear, and now that it was gone, Sidney couldn’t help hoping it wouldn’t be a one time thing.

The radio blared some punk rock stuff that drowned out the silence between them. It gave her a moment to process what she clearly had not been fully considering all this time. The fact that what seemed like flirting might actually be flirting. And that Scratch might push it. And that it might actually be hard to say no, even if it shouldn’t have been. And then, in case that didn’t confuse matters enough, what was this supposed to be? And for how long? Sidney had never been in a relationship before or even anything relationship adjacent. Were they supposed to cut it out as soon as school started back so that everyone could take their places and resume what had always been? Did they go back to hating each other? And on the flip side, if she backed out, did that mean she had to avoid the corner store all summer? Avoid Scratch? Avoid the skatepark? Go back to having nothing to do?!

Jesus Christ on a stick.

At some point, Sidney had to turn it down to give Scratch directions. Little by little, the scenery changed. Cars that drove past them were nicer and nicer until the contraption they were in started to draw some attention. Scratch didn’t seem to notice as she steered, wearing that contented little smile that at least made Sidney feel like maybe she hadn’t disappointed her.

“We gotta kinda hide, don’t we?” Scratch said, already guessing what Sidney hadn’t told her.  

She sighed, embarrassed again. “Yeah. My dad is chief of police and he has these squeaky clean ideas about morality, and no offense, but if he sees you I’ll never get to leave the house again. No more skatepark. No more pink icees…” She turned her wilted expression on Scratch, the better to get her point across. “No more cherry sno-cones.”  

Scratch’s face fell open, eyes, mouth, all of it. “Your old man is the chief of police?!”

Hm. Not the reaction she was expecting.

“...Yeah?”

Exactly one beat of silence passed, and then Scratch slammed on the breaks, squealing them loudly. She wheezed, deep and long. Mashed her head against the back of the seat and screwed her eyes shut and opened her mouth like a gramophone of laughter.

Sidney stared, still reeling. “What is so funny?”

She whirled on Sidney wide-eyed, grinning like a Jack o’ lantern, and just as suddenly, pursed her lips shut. “Inside joke. You wouldn’t understand. But I hope that one day you will. ‘Cause it’s rich, Dotty! It’s so fuckin’ rich!”

Whatever.

Sidney gathered her own trash out of the floor and the cup-holder, so as not to contribute to the litter in there. She strapped on her backpack and hugged her skateboard under one armpit, and when she had come to the point that it could not longer be put off, she looked the other girl in the eye. There was a smile there that she hadn’t seen yet, but it seemed like as good an omen as any at this point. This mess wasn’t a total lost cause yet.

“I’ll walk from here. My place is one street over,” she gestured behind her. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Sure, doll.”

“And dinner, earlier.”

“No problem.”

“Aaand pulling a knife on that goon at the skatepark.”

“You’re welcome.”

And then Sidney laughed because she was grinning so happily, as if nothing had gone wrong today at all. Maybe they had very different lives, and very different ideas about what it meant for something to go wrong.

Sidney turned to go. “I’ll see you next skate day. Later, Scratch.”

“Oh, honey. That’s what the boys call me. But you can call me…” in a blink she had thrown a wad of paper out through the passenger doorway, “later.”

Before Sidney could say or do anything, she peeled away, cackling like the freaking joker and leaving Sidney in a cloud of gray exhaust. She knelt for the paper and uncrumpled it carefully, as it was sweat-sodden and fragile. There was a phone number scrawled in red, and at the bottom in utterly atrocious penmanship, it read:

Call for a good boy-free time

Crystal

Chapter Text

Jonas pinched the tip of his tongue between his teeth when he was concentrating hard enough. He also chewed his lip and mouthed things he was thinking. Every now and then he swept back his messy bangs, revealing a swath of never before seen freckles. Mitch had always wondered what was under there. Logically, he knew it had to more more of the spots he loved, but how many? In what shape? The number was not as great as it was across his nose and cheeks, but there was a spectacular burst of them along the ridge of his brows that dispersed toward his hairline. Immediately he began committing the sight to memory in case he never saw it again. It was quickly becoming a favorite landmark of Joey’s face. And Mitch did have his favorites among Joey’s freckles, chosen up close and personally one by one in the countless, fleeting moments he had had Jonas cornered in halls over the years. They were the ones on the shores of his lips. Tiny and pale, treading the line between lip and not lip, and giving Mitch fits, because when you’re supposed to be bullying a kid you can’t be starin’ at their lips.

“Are you staring this hard for any particular reason, orrr…?” Jonas said, shading in the sketch of a robin which had been hopping all around them in the notebook on his knee.

Mitch was supposed to be snapping photos of stuff like that on his phone while Jonas did the pencil work, but he kept getting distracted. They were sitting under a tree some distance between the lake and their cabin, watching for birds and bugs and whatever kind of wildlife seemed fit to catalog. Every now and then, Jonas plucked a specimen of a nearby plant and tucked it into the pages of the journal, claiming he would tape them down later and add labels.

“How do you even know where I’m lookin’ if you ain’t lookin’ at me?”

“Because I feel like I’m about to burst into flames. Do I have something on my face?”

“Yeah. About a million of ‘em.”

Jonas snorted. Mitch felt like a god every time he got him to do that. “I didn’t know you were funny.”

“Yeeaahh, well…” he reclined on his elbows in the grass. “I am.”

Jonas’s head knocked against the tree as he laughed. “Sure, dude. You’re funny and I’m Brad Pitt.”

“Brad Pitt ain’t even all that sexy, so I don’t think yer makin’ the point ya think you are.” Mitch centered his phone camera on the robin pecking a worm out of the dirt and snapped two pictures. “Plus, you laughed twice just now.”

“It was out of pity. I mean, who else is gonna laugh? It’s just me here.”

Feeling like this was one of those situations that Mitch could get away with cozying up, he dragged himself backwards and propped against the tree right beside Jonas. Their arms brushed, but if Jonas noticed, he didn’t let it stop him sketching. And Joey was a hell of an artist, shit. That did look fuckin’ exactly like the bird they were watching.

Trying to play his cards right, Mitch leaned into him under the guise of getting a better look at his notebook.

“Damn, that’s pretty good, Joey.”

“Thanks,” Jonas mumbled shyly. Mitch’s eyes cut over and caught a pink flush tinting his face. “I wanna find a couple more things to catalog, though. So far we just have this bird and that squirrel from earlier. That kinda sucks eggs.”

Mitch couldn’t help himself; he spasmed with laughter, made worse by the sight of Jonas’s open-mouth stare of confusion.

“What’s with you today? What’s so funny?”

“Sucks eggs…”

“Yeah??”

“Sucks. Eggs,” Mitch wheezed. Tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. “Is that, like…the most profane thing you can bring yerself to say?”

“Look, you don’t say cuss words in Dean Wagner’s house if you value your life. You find alternatives.”  

“Say fuck right now.”

Jonas looked up at Mitch as if to check he was being serious. That scandalized expression was fuckin’ thrilling, especially since Mitch was still craned over Joey and it was right there, a few inches from his face.

“I…I mean…why?”

“’Cause why fuckin’ not? It’s just you an’ me here. Screw yer old man.”

Jonas twiddled the pencil, tapping it against the page in a nervous tic. “Well…I don’t really, y’know…have a good reason to. It would be kind of disingenuous.”

Mitch rolled his eyes. “Je-zus! That guy really has you brainwashed, huh? You won’t even break his bullshit rules when he’s three hours away. An’ what the hell’re ya talkin’ about?! Ya don’t need a good reason to swear, Joey. That’s the beauty of it. Swearin’s equal opportunity. Anybody, anytime, anywhere.”

Joey looked at Mitch, and through him. His tongue went to work in his mouth, and Mitch liked to imagine it was searching for its first good profanity in the grooves between his teeth. He would have liked to hone in on that mouth and let his eyes play hopscotch across his favorite freckles, but rolled them away to save himself the embarrassment.

“Look, if he pops outta the bushes, I’ll kick his ass for ya, alright?”

Jonas bit down on his lip to suppress a smile and doodled some nonsense in the corner of the page, hating that Mitch was a laugh riot, obviously. “You would beat up my dad?”

“Sure,” Mitch shrugged. “He sounds like a shit-suckin’ tool.”

“My dad, the cop?”

Mitch knew from the way Joey’s brows twitched that he hadn’t hidden his surprise at all. “Yer dad is a cop?!”

“Chief of police,” Joey chuckled.

His Joey…his boy…the son of a motherfuckin’ cop. A cop! The fuckin’ mouthpiece of authority. And not just any old cop--chief of police! What were the odds of this? That he, a professional cop-hater, would fall in love with the son of the cop-est cop in Sellwood.

“Shit! He gets it free just for that. Nothin’ I hate more than a damn cop.”

Easy, idiot, said a voice from within. The guy ain’t even here and yer gonna turn into Jerk-Mitch just thinkin’ about it. And Joey don’t like Jerk-Mitch, remember?

To calm the thunder that simmered at all times just beneath the surface of his skin, Mitch ran a flat hand over the grasses beside him. Plants were always so chill. How’d they do it? Not having heads and faces and shit probably helped. If you didn’t have ears and eyes, absolutely nobody’s bullshit could get in and disturb your peace. Eating nothing to stay alive and full of poisons… Mitch was jealous.

“Joey, if you were a plant what kind would you be?” Broad velveteen leaves rasped against his palms, christening him with their dew and their dirt, leaving his hands cleaner and purer than they’d ever been.

The scratch of the pencil paused. “Mm. A sunflower, maybe. It’s impossible not to think they’re pretty.” When only silence answered, Mitch knew Joey was waiting for some kind of response, but his brain was occupied by thoughts of how perfect and correct an answer that was. “What about you?”

The grass under your ass. “A cactus,” he said instead, honing in on a movement in the weeds. “You ever know anybody who wanted to tangle with a fuckin’ cactus?”

Joey snorted. “Mitch, I don’t know how to break this to you, but you’re already kind of a cactus.”

The thing in the grass darted. “Yer already kind of a sunflower.” Triggered like some kind of predator, Mitch lunged for it, clapping his hand over the top of a cluster of leaves, taking care not to crush it.

“W-what?”

Confident that Joey was going to lose his shit imagining what was in Mitch’s hand, he sat back up and threw an arm around his neck to keep him where he was. And as predicted, Joey locked eyes with the cage of Mitch’s fingers and stiffened up like he was being electrified.

“Mitch, what is that?” He began to struggle slightly in Mitch’s hold.

“Wanna see somethin’ cool?”

“If it’s a bug go ahead and get it the freak away from me, Mitch. You know I don’t like bugs!”

“Hold still ya dork. I got us somethin’ else to put on the list.” Mitch brought his hand closer to Jonas, who threw a hand around his wrist to stop him, breathing a mile a minute. “Joey, Joey…would I put a bug on ya knowin’ yer scared?”

“Yes!”

“What the fuck? The answer is no.” Even though he was laughing, Mitch flinched away from the thorn-like prick of shame and offense. Tightening his hold on Joey, Mitch uncurled his fingers to reveal the cold, sticky frog he hadn’t meant to terrorize this badly.

Immediately, Joey went slack with relief. His head fell back against Mitch’s arm with a sigh. “Why didn’t you just say it was a frog?” he asked, digging his phone out to snag a photo before it inevitably hopped out of sight. “Could’ve saved me a lot of embarrassment.”

“Ya didn’t gimme a chance!” he cried, putting a little pressure on the frog to hold it still. “Heh. Remember when I put one of these in Neil’s hair that one time?”

Jonas was trying to sketch out a quick likeness of the frog squatting in Mitch’s hand. He huffed. “Yeah. I also remember you trying to give me the biggest most ugly bug of all time. Like you wanted me to take it in my hands?! Uhlegh!” he wretched.

Mitch held his breath, hoping against hope that this wasn’t hurdling toward a conversation about what had happened. And somehow, at the same time, something incredible was unfurling in his chest. The memory of his small, wobbly fledgling love for Joey taking its first breath, ‘causing him to do stupid caveman shit like offer the new freckled nerd at school a fuckin’ insect. Mitch remembered that feeling, a big, honkin’ brick of a thing too heavy for his scrawny little body. But he was a man now, and knew how to carry it after all this time. Aging had smoothed its edges, and acceptance had built a special place for it inside him. Its weight was a ballast now instead of a burden.

The frog must have sensed it was a third party to something it wanted no part of, because it flung itself from Mitch’s palm and leaped away.

“I didn’t know you were scared of it. Ya shoulda just told me. I put that thing in my pocket and it died there. Poor fucker.”

Jonas burst with laughter. His pencil fell against the page, and then he turned and looked at Mitch like he was a scientific mystery, which was a bold as brass move because he didn’t realize the danger he was in staring up at Mitch like that, with his lips all… and his eyes just…

Green as fuck?

“You know what?” Jonas said, peering fondly up at Mitch with his head nestled in the crook of his elbow. “I take it back. You’re too soft to be a cactus.”

Thinking quickly, Mitch closed his arm around Joey’s neck in a mock headlock. “Yeah? Well don’t fuckin’ tell nobody! Got it? They might kick sand in my face at the beach!”  

Jonas cackled, struggling weakly against Mitch’s hold. When he started to sink down, Mitch sat him up and let him go. For a while they watched the lake shimmer in silence. Joey packed up his supplies and Mitch checked his phone.

“We should take a boat out on the lake.”

And just like that, the bottom dropped out of Mitch’s guts. Of all the fuckin’ things…

His eyes cut over to the side of Joey’s face. “Should we?”

“Yeah, I mean it’s nice out. No body can bother us out there. I wanna head back and change first, though. Jeans are gonna suck if we end up in the water.”

As he trudged after Joey on the way back to the cabin, Mitch tried to keep a lid on his panic. Shit, this must have been what Joey was feeling when Mitch had insisted they go up that tree: like his last moments were upon him, and his final thoughts were of how easily this could have been prevented. The words were there, knocking around behind his teeth as he watched Jonas toddle along in front of him, chipper as you fuckin’ please, and as he stood like a piece of furniture in the living room while Joey changed.

Joey, I can’t swim.

That would do it. Sensible, level-headed egghead that Joey was, he would piece together that maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea after all and call it off. But Mitch’s mouth stayed shut. The smallest of his fears was that Joey might try to make him wear a lifejacket, or waterwings or some shit, in which case, he would gladly drown. Although he would never say so in a hundred thousand years, because he was simply too good a person, Mitch knew that Jonas, like everyone else, probably thought of him as some goon with half a brain in his head. This wasn’t going to help the impression.

Mitch was so lost in his thoughts that he jumped when Jonas reemerged from his room. He was wearing light weight khakis and a dark green t-shirt. “All set?”

“...Mmhnnyeah.”

He strolled past Mitch to the door, all smiles, utterly oblivious to Mitch’s sweat and turmoil. As he slunked along behind Jonas obediently, he could see the ghost head of Javier, so often his voice of reason, scowling at him in disapproval.

Yo, what the fuck are you doin’, bro? Tell the boy you can’t swim!

Mitch’s head shivered back and forth.

So that’s it then? You just gonna die right in front of him and ruin his life…

He nodded, feeling sick.

Ghost Javi scoffed. You know, you used to be one of the baddest motherfuckers I knew, but you’re bein’ so limpdick right now that if I was there, you’d leave me no choice. I’d have to beat your ass.

“You’re being awfully quiet. Are you okay?”

“Thinkin’ about dinner. Getting’ kinda hungry,” he lied.

“Same here. We’re kind of low on meats so we’re gonna have to start getting creative.”

So far, everything they had eaten had been a Jonas Wagner creation. Mitch did his part cataloging photos and helping out wherever Jonas asked him to, and making himself the occasional bowl of cereal, but so far their contributions hadn’t been all that equal.

Dear Universe or whateverthefuck…if you let me live through this, I’ll make Joey the best goddamn food he’s ever eaten. I swear on my life…

By the time they reached the dock jutting out from the camp center, Mitch’s asshole was clenched up so tight it basically didn’t exist anymore. Wasn’t he supposed to be the brave one? The one who wasn’t afraid of shit? Joey was really showin’ him up in that category and had been for years. At least when he was afraid of something, he voiced it to the world, and then did it anyway.

Joey stepped down into the little boat first. It jigged in the water, wobbling like it wanted to throw him off balance. But he turned in a little circle and sat with his back to the lake like he didn’t even notice, looking at Mitch expectantly.

“Jesus fuckin’ shit,” he muttered shakily as he extended his leg. The boat rocked even harder, like it knew he was afraid.

“If it’ll hold me it’ll hold you,” Joey joked.

“It ain’t sinkin’ I’m worried about. It’s tippin’.”

“Nah, we’ll be fine.”

Mitch pushed them off from the shore with one of the paddles, sending them drifting away from solid ground.

“Dean and Sue used to take us all out to the lake every spring break for about…mm..three years. He would take me out on a boat and try to teach me to fish every time, but I didn’t like the idea of the fish getting hooks in their mouths, so I pretended to be really bad at it.”

“Ya couldn’t just tell him ya didn’t wanna go?”

“He would’ve just made me.”

Frankly, Mitch didn’t want to talk about this. Not because it was boring or anything, but because it was starting to paint an ugly fuckin’ picture of the kind of life Jonas lived. And though he had mocked it in the past, he didn’t want the long-held image of Jonas’s cushy, perfect life broken. It was what he deserved.

Shakily, Mitch kicked back into a standard relaxed pose, because they were on a boat over deep water and it was normal and fine. Fun even.

“Don’t feel too bad, Joey. In my experience, the dads are usually the worse parent,” he said, scowling at a reel of old memories. “It’s like they fuckin’ hate ya.”

“I think Dean loves us. He just has really strict ideas about parenting.”

It didn’t escape Mitch’s notice that Joey didn’t appear to believe this even as the words came out of his own mouth. “Joey, that’s real generous of you an’ all, but what you think he feels don’t mean shit. It’s what he does to show it. That’s all you can go off of.”

Joey continued to paddle them through the water lazily, saying nothing, and it could only mean that they agreed on one thing: this Dean fucker didn’t love Joey and his sister enough. But oh, Mitch knew exactly how to patch this up right away. A little perspective to make the kid feel better about himself and his shitty wanna-be dad.

“My dad put me in a closet when I acted up.” Jonas’s paddle fell still as he turned to look at Mitch. “Couple times I slept in there. And sometimes Freddie was in there with me. And that made it a punishment for real. Had me beggin’ to get out.”

“Jeez, Mitch.” Joey’s face was crumpled with sympathy. “That’s terrible. I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. Real dickhole.” Fuck, that water is high. This boat sinkin’? “Stepdad was even worse.”

They were far out now. The dock was so shrunken and distant that Mitch felt the cold fingers of horror touching him all over. Deep, dark water stretched out around them in all directions. And down. Holy shit, he just knew there was no bottom for a long, long way, if there was one at all. He could see for a few inches below the surface and then…nothing. A solid gray void. The walls of his throat began to constrict. If you went in…how would anyone ever find you?

Joey stopped paddling, letting them drift to a stop. He laid the oar in the bottom and twisted around in his seat so that he was facing Mitch. But he didn’t sit there; he slid off the seat and planted himself on the floor to lean back against the side, drawing his knees up. His mouth opened, but nothing came out for a good long minute as he picked at a thread on the hem of his pants.

“...Kind of…on that subject…I wanna ask you something. But I don’t want you to get mad.”

“I won’t.”

“Oh, yeah. No, sure, Mitch “punch-stuff” Mueller never gets mad. What am I saying?”

Offended, but amused, Mitch didn’t hide his smile very well. “Whadda ya think I’m gonna do, Joey? We’re in the middle of a lake. Even if I got fuckin’ pissed I couldn’t do nothin’ about it.”

“I dunno. Punch a hole in the boat?”

“Trust me,” Mitch emphasized, serious as a heart attack. “No I won’t.”

A moment went by as Joey seemed to draw into himself, looking for the nerve; the right words, maybe. He glanced out over the water and licked his lips, generally being ridiculous. What could he possibly have to ask that would tear Mitch up so bad he destroyed the only thing keeping them from fuckin’ Davy Jones’ locker?

He looked at Mitch, his eyes darting all over him. “Is it true…what everyone was saying about why you left?”

Uh-oh. Mitch gulped.

Joey must’ve mistaken his silence for something it wasn’t and plowed on. “It’s just that--you were gone all of a sudden. I figured you were just suspended or something. But then you didn’t come back and didn’t come back and...then I didn’t see you the next year, or the year after that.”

Flashbulb memories were jumping behind Mitch’s eyes, none of them good. Jesus Christ, time had really dragged by and, somehow, flown.

“People started spreading all kinds of rumors. Like, they said you had just moved. I guess that one wasn’t too hard to believe, but then people started saying you--” He choked, glancing up to Mitch to make sure of…something. Maybe that he was allowed to go there, or whether Mitch was critically in danger of punching something. But Mitch’s face was as straight as he could make it in a purposeful indication that he could say it without blowback.

“That you went berserk and stabbed your stepdad.” Joey’s voice cracked just a little on the delivery. “And went to jail.”

Jonas was one of the things he had thought about the most after all that shit went down. After he got hauled away in that cop car in handcuffs; after he was sentenced to juvie; after he got out and moved back in with his mom in another town, another house, enrolled in another school. Joey would be glad he was gone; would go to bed and wake up everyday knowing he had put up with Mitch for the last time, and having no idea that Mitch was sick with the pain of his loss. It was day in and day out heartache. Some days he couldn’t get out of bed, and most nights he couldn’t sleep. He remembered reading somewhere that pain meds could take the edge off of that ache in his chest because it was real pain. But the pills in his mom’s cabinet didn’t pack enough punch, so he started taking stronger stuff. Stealing it sometimes. That was how he had gotten on drugs. That was why his mom was in prison.

Joey blinked at him.

Mitch sighed and slid off the bench to sit across from him in the bottom, facing the other way. He would have liked to sit beside him to avoid looking into his face, but he was afraid of overburdening that side of the boat.

“Did you believe it?”

Joey’s eyes rolled around, thinking backwards. Mitch couldn’t decide whether it was or was not a comfort that it didn’t seem like an easy question to answer.

“No. And…yes.” Mitch waited for elaboration with a feeling growing in his chest at the idea of Joey thinking of him the way everyone else did. A feeling like the lake: dark, cold, deep running. “I believed that you stabbed somebody and probably got carted off.” He looked at Mitch meaningfully. “I didn’t believe that you did it for nothing.”

It was enough, he decided, that Joey had been able to at least know that about him. That he was mean as a motherfucker, but not a cold-blooded murderer.

This is gonna fuckin’ suck.

“It’s true,” Mitch admitted, monitoring Joey’s reaction very closely. Catching the brow hike and the parting of his lips.

“Did he die?”

“No. And I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t or I wouldn’t even be here now. But I wish he woulda, so he couldn’t do that to anybody else.”

“Do what?”

“Beat the holy ever-lovin’ shit outta me an’ my mom.”

A quiet cut in that was more absolute than any that had occurred between them up until that point. Joey’s face hung open in an honest expression of dismay. It actually kind of felt good to tell him. Maybe he could take it and parse through it and put together something that excused him.

“I got home from school and they were already at it,” Mitch explained to the water rippling beyond the boat. “I thought it would get better as the night went on. Like he would get hammered on beer and pass out, so I went to my room and hid, tryin’ to wait it out. But it just never quit. And then I started to worry that this was gonna be the time he finally killed her.”

Mitch was still lucid enough to know he was in a boat with Joey, but in front of his eyes, it was as if he’d traveled back in time and occupied the body of his younger self. His room, blue-tinted by the night, with shit layin’ everywhere, just like now. Busted dresser squatting in the corner, spilling clothes out of every drawer. Spit wads plastered on the ceiling. A poster of a nude chick because Freddy had always had them in his room and he’d given one to Mitch as hush-currency after he borrowed Mom’s car. And Mitch there under the covers, shoes on, heart pounding, eyes wet. Freddy’s knife trembling in his fist.

“I was gonna go down there and just threaten him,” he said, coming back around so that those particular details didn’t have a chance to rear up. One of Joey’s hands was toying absently with Mitch’s shoe lace, so he watched that instead. “But when I saw my mom I just put my knife right in his guts. Three times. ‘Cause I didn’t even fuckin’ recognize her.”

The only sound was water lapping at the sides of the boat. Mitch hated it.

“Anyway, long story short, I went to juvie, not jail,” he said, plowing through the rest of it. “Got out, did some hard shit, very fucked up, even for me. And my mom took the fall for it, so she’s sittin’ in a women’s prison. Ya know, man, sorry to be a fuckin’ downer, Joey. We don’t gotta talk about this anymore.” Mitch shook himself mentally, sitting up a little straighter. “I don’t wanna traumatize ya with my fucked up life.”

“Mitch, I asked because I wanted to know. Not because I wanted you to sugar coat anything or censor it.” He swallowed and it looked like it hurt. “I remember you said you’d had a rough life, but I never imagined that’s what you meant. Wow, a lot of stuff makes sense now.”

The hand tangling itself in Mitch’s shoelace came to the forefront of his attention. It might as well have been a flesh and blood piece of his body because he could feel it through his shoe and the ecstasy that Joey’s touch gave him was breathtaking. He would never have touched Mitch before, not even this tiny fuckin’ extension of his personhood. That was how far they had come. And Mitch would climb in this boat and row to fuckin’ Neverland as long as Joey would touch any piece of him.

Joey was thinking about something; shaking his head. “I’m gonna be perfectly honest here. I thought things would be better without you around.”

Mitch put a hand on his chest in mock offense. “What?! I mean…why?”

“No, listen,” Jonas laughed. The hand on his shoe grabbed a hold of his leg. He could die now on this water and it would be fine. “It was like…jerks started coming out of the freaking woodwork. I couldn’t go a whole day without getting messed with.”

Don’t tell him, the voice in his head advised. Don’t tell him they were there the whole time, they just knew whose territory he was. 

But I gotta give him somethin’, he told himself.

While he summoned the nerve, Mitch reached back and put out a hand over the surface of the water, as he had done back in the grass. It was sun warm, like a glass tabletop. “I thought about ya sometimes…while I was gone,” he said. Understatement of the fuckin’ century.

The pause that followed was the actual sound that surprise makes. “You thought about me?” Jonas said, full of disbelief. “Why?”

“Fuck. I don’t really know,” Mitch lied.

There was exactly fuckin’ nowhere the conversation could go after that, so they let it die. Joey took off his shoes and laid on his back, hooking his legs over the edge of the boat to dangle in the water. It took some convincing on Joey’s part, but eventually he got Mitch to do the same. They lay on their backs, side by side, shielding their faces from the sun.

It occurred to Mitch that in all the time they had spent in the company of one another their whole lives, good or bad, they had never been so alone together. No one could see them, no one could hear them. The dumb camp and everyone in it was forever away. And neither of them could leave, even if they wanted to, without taking the other with them on a long ass journey back across the lake. They didn’t even have their phones.

The wooden bottom got too hard on Joey’s head and when something touched Mitch’s foot, that was it for him. They sat up and Mitch, being his crude self, started a spitting contest. He could spit further than Joey, but only because Joey was laughing too hard to spit further than straight down.

When their mouths were dry, they each grabbed an oar and paddled themselves in a circle, spinning as fast as they could get the boat to go.

“Can I ask you somethin’ now?”

“Sure,” Joey said, chipper as hell, pulling his oar in to let them spin in the heat like they were in a microwave.

Mitch braced himself for this one. For starters, it wasn’t his business, for another, Joey was going to take it like a criticism. For something to do with his hands, he picked up little rocks piled up in his corner of the boat and tried skipping it across the water.

“What do ya like Carmen Ramirez for?”

He could tell he’d really hit Joey in a blindspot because he whipped around with his eyes big as an owl on speed. “How’d you know I like Carmen?”

“Gimme a fuckin’ break, Joey. Ya don’t even hide it.” Mitch pursed his lips behind the force of his throw. These were too small; didn’t skip all that good.

Put upon, Joey sighed and turned back away. “I don’t know, she’s…nice, and sweet, and pretty--”

“But that’s the thing. She ain’t nice’n sweet. You said it yerself. She knows ya like her and uses it to make a slave outta ya.”

“I did not say that!” Jonas argued, twisting around to treat Mitch with a spicy little glare of indignation. “I don’t have to do stuff for her, ya know. I choose to. You said you had a crush, too. You ever done anything for them?”

Broken Jeremy Whitten’s nose. Busted Andrew Wallace’s whole fuckin’ face open. Slashed all the tires on Eric Almeida’s car. Kicked the captain of the wrestling team in the nuts. Locked dog shit in the gym coach’s truck. Put a knife at Neil’s throat. Been suspended, put in detention, written up, faced the cops…

“Yes.”

Joey looked at him like he was waiting on Mitch to connect two dots. “And you still don’t get it?

“No, I do. But Joey, it’s worse than her not returning the favor. She’s screwin’ around with Neil knowin’ he comes after ya when she does that. Don’t you see how that’s a shitty thing ta do--”

“Oh! Like you can cast stones at anyone for doing bad things to others! Why do you even care about this so much?”

When Mitch quit hurling gravel and looked over, Joey was hugging his knees and the air was sour. Shit, he had to be more--what was that word? Crunchientious?

“I just don’t understand why you wanna do that to yerself. It’s so dirty even I can’t stand it.” Jesus, he couldn’t keep the bite out of his tone. He hadn’t meant to let things escalate like this, but jealousy welled up inside him so big that hearing Joey defend her made it pulse like a huge ugly zit, and when it burst it sounded like the gayest thing he had ever said. It sounded like, “Bitch!”

Joey’s mouth became a straight line, tight as a crease. His nostril flared out like a bull. “DON’T--talk about her like that!”

Without thinking, Mitch responded to that the only way his dickhead mouth knew how. “Or what?” he challenged with his famous shit-eating grin.

For a few beats, Jonas just sat there, mind whirling like a turbine. Red as an iron, he jammed one hand over the side of the boat and then Mitch was turning his face away from the onslaught of water that drenched him. He let it drip away from his eyes in silence. Impulse control was admittedly not a strength of his. And it wasn’t something he currently had as he reached over the side and flung twice the quantity of water back at Joey.

When Joey recovered, hair sodden, eyelashes glistening, mouth open in shock as well as gasping for air, they stared at one another. Mixed emotions swarmed the air around them like hornets.

Thinking the same exact thing, they dove for the edge at once. Water went flying in both directions like a fuckin’ tsunami. Mitch could barely get a lungful of air before he was being downed. It was cold as shit and his jeans were shrinking around his legs and ass like a miserable sausage casing.

“Alright, cut it out! I said cut it the fuck out!” Mitch stood up and shook water out of his face. Joey stood up too.

“Or what?” he mimicked. Even as Joey stood at his full height, Mitch had to look down into his face. Water dripped from his hair onto Joey forehead as they glared at one another. Actually, Joey was the one glaring; Mitch’s fire was out. He couldn’t look into that face with its wet lashes and gorgeous fuckin’ freckles and fiery green eyes and feel anything but arousal stirring his his belly.

Yeah, bein’ sassed is just as hot as I thought it would be.

“What’re you smiling about, jerk?” Joey said, quietly now that they were sharing air. It seemed like a little of his fire was cooling too.

“Oh, I’m jerk-Mitch again, huh?”

“I think you’re doing it on purpose.”

“Maybe.”

“Why?”

“’Cause you never sassed me before, an’ I think it’s cute.”

Joey’s head jerked back just an inch. “Cute?” His cheeks were turning red and that was very fuckin’ interesting.

“’S’what I said.” Mitch migrated just a centimeter closer, and he allowed it. “See, Whitten gets that mouth and gets so fuckin’ mad he blows a testicle. I just think it’s funny. Because yer soooo goddamn…” he took a stream of Joey’s soaked hair and tugged it down so that it stuck there on his forehead, “short.”

Joey let out a breath like he had been forgetting to breathe. His mouth twitched in the fight not to smile, but Mitch was a motherfucker and just let his rip. He had won that one, and he knew it.

“Okay, Gigantor. So there again I say,” he lifted his chin defiantly, and Mitch had never been so turned on by this boy in his life, “or…what?”

Playing his big, dumb, meathead card, Mitch’s eyes rolled up to the sky in mock though. Meanwhile, his hand was sneaking up between them, placing its fingertips at the base of Joey’s chest. “I dunno. I think I could maybe still win this without beatin’ ya up.”

Joey inched back at the insistence of a gentle nudge. “You didn’t even give me a chance to criticize your crush,” he argued.

Mitch shook his head. “Nothin’ ta criticize. Perfection.”

A little gleam of desperation flashed in Joey’s eyes as his back started to crane beyond edge of the boat, but the quirk of his mouth said it wasn’t all fear.

“Would you push your favorite nerd into a lake?”

Laughter bubbled up from Mitch’s stomach. Holy shit, teasin’ this kid is so much more fun when he plays too. “Joey, I am pushing my favorite nerd into a lake.”  

Joey tipped just a tad too far. His eye blew open wide, even if there was still a smile on his lips. Mitch wished he could have seen it all in slow motion; maybe then he would have had time to react as Joey latched onto his outstretched arm. Mitch was helpless against dead weight yanking him forward. There was just enough horrifying time for half a “Shi--” before he swallowed a bunch of lake water, and the lake water swallowed him.

Chapter Text

As far as being shoved went, into a lake wasn’t the worst way to go. And Jonas was an expert on being shoved. He gave his body into the water’s pull, arms limp, legs dead. Weightless, he was suspended some feet below the surface. Bubbles rushed past him in a hurry to the top. This was no backyard chlorine pool, clear as crystal and pricking his eyes with chemicals. The world bled in shades of blue and green, roaring the song of the womb in his ears. A cold, watery sun reached to him through darkness, and he let himself be drawn toward it like an afterlife.

The heat was waiting for him on the surface, but his cold-washed skin rebuffed it. Five feet away, Mitch was clinging to the boat, hooked over the side of it by the armpits.

“Ha. Are you okay?” Jonas asked, unbothered and reclining on his back.

Mitch glared at him like a wet cat. “Does it fuckin’ look like it? Didn’t fuckin’ realize I was going swimming too.”

“You are not allowed to be mad about this,” Jonas declared, happy as a clam in the cool water, even though his clothes weighed a hundred pounds and were floating all around him. “Plus, you deserved it.”

Mitch’s hair was slicked back, plastered to his head. His clothes clung to his body, and honest to god, Jonas hadn’t thought he could look any thinner than he did on dry land. There was a tension in his muscles that you could have cracked a coconut against as he clung to the boat and a look in his eye like murder. Hissy fit and all, he really was a wet cat.

“Yeah, well…you deserved it too, pissy pants.” Mitch grumbled, smearing water from his face.

Feeling penitent, Jonas swam over him. Maybe it did mean something if even the likes of all-around asshole Mitch Mueller thought his relationship with Carmen was unhealthy. Sidney would be eating her heart out right now. After all, that totaled about four people who had tried to convince him to knock it off with the free labor, “even if she is the modern incarnation of Aphrodite,” (-- Lewis Halls). Mitch had said Jonas didn’t even hide it; could everyone see it? The whole school?

Something like guilt suffused his chest cavity, because he had shot down the concerns of all the people who cared about him as soon as they were out in open air, thinking they couldn’t know better, thinking they didn’t. So why did Mitch’s opinion carry so much weight? Because he was not one of those people who cared about him? Because it seemed, at times, like the opposite?

He beheld Mitch clinging to the boat.

Was this the Big Sign?

“I know,” Jonas began with a deep sigh, “that Carmen knows what she’s doing, and I know it sucks. I’m not completely stupid. And also, I kinda lied before. I don’t really know why I like her other than the fact that she’s gorgeous.”

To Jonas’s surprise, Mitch was listening with an undivided sort of attention he’d never known he was capable of. Laboring under the weight of that heavy amber gaze, sharpened almost dangerously by long, wet lashes and rivulets of water streaking down the slope of his jaw, Jonas felt his tongue swell up in his mouth. Jeez, he might have been a total creep and a horrifying jerk, but…he was a good looking guy, at least when you stripped away the grime and the dark circles under his eyes and the permanent grimace and the smirk of pure evil. And it seemed like having him stare openly as Jonas was having the same effect it did anytime someone more attractive was allowed to look directly at him. Embarrassment tanned his skin. He averted his eyes.

“I’ve never told anyone this…but sometimes, I wish I didn’t like her. Only I think I’d feel lost if I didn’t.”

“Maybe my opinion don’t mean much, but it doesn’t sound like you do.”

The kicked and undulating of Jonas’s arms and legs slowed. Him--Jonas Wagner, not head over heels in love with Carmen…?

“What do you mean?”

Mitch shrugged, readjusting his hold on the side of the boat. “Well, if she ain’t nice and she ain’t sweet and she don’t give a flyin’ shit about ya, and the only thing you can think to say about her is that she’s hot…that’s just attraction. It don’t sound like you like her at all.”

For a couple of seconds all signs of electrical activity in Jonas’s brain ceased. That was actually a…solid point. Everything that Jonas liked about Carmen was, in one way or another, an experience of the senses. The gleam of her chocolate colored hair; the warmth of her skin tone; the smell of her perfume, which he could sometimes taste on the air as she strode right past him; the musical note of her laughter; and weird stuff he would never utter aloud, like the circumference of her thighs.

“Can we get back in the boat now,” Mitch said. He tried hoisting one leg over the side, only to have it splash back down. “This water’s dark and creepy as shit.”

“No way. Come on, Mitch. I haven’t been swimming in forever and this feels amazing,” Jonas sang. With one fluid motion of his legs, he was drifting out to open water. “We’ll take the boat back in a minute. Come swim with me.”

“Nah, I’m good where I am, thanks.”

Jonas applied the breaks and sat up in the water as much as one can. And when it hit him, it hit him like a semi truck. Mitch hadn’t let go of the boat even once since he had surfaced. His hips were dead in the water, and the crankiness and the wide-eyed look of horror, and the--

“Mitch, do you not know how to swim?”

Mitch drew a breath, and Jonas expected to hear any number of quips deflecting what was very obvious. But all that came out was a bone-tired groan and Mitch’s forehead knocked against the side of the boat. “Noo.”

“Oh, holy cripes. Why didn’t you tell me?! Idiot! We’re in the middle of the lake! I pulled you in!”

“No shit! Ya think I forgot or somethin’?!” Mitch barked back, glaring at Jonas over his shoulder.

Jonas took a clarifying breath. Put yourself in his shoes, Jonas. Nothing bad has happened yet. Just chill out.

“Did you think I would make fun of you or something? You know I wouldn’t do that--”

“I fuckin’ know, Joey! Okay? I just…” He perched his chin on the edge. Seeing the fight slip out of Mitch, seeing him watered down and clinging by his nails and totally helpless, was a real trip. “Never learned. It’s not somethin’ I tell about myself.”

Jonas, for one, couldn’t imagine not knowing how to swim. Not at this stage of his life, and he couldn’t recall what it was like before he’d learned. But it sounded like the ultimate imprisonment: to be stranded on dirt and rocks, to never feel what Jonas was feeling right now.

“Wait,” Jonas said as Mitch was gearing up to try climbing back into the boat. “Wait, Mitch.”

“Chrissake, I don’t wanna wait. What?” He swung a leg, flinging water into Jonas’s face.

“I can teach you.” He blinked water from his eyes. “I’ll teach you how to swim.”

Mitch let his body fall still. “Hell no!”

“This can be my trust activity. For you. Look, I know you’re scared. I was scared too--”

“No. Joey.” The expression on Mitch’s face was naked, vulnerable. Jonas froze. “That shit is not the same, because nothing was ever going to happen that I wouldn’t have stopped. I would never have let anything happen to you,” he panted.

“But I didn’t know that.”

They stared at one another. Jonas shook his head. His arms and legs were starting to ache.

“Do you remember how scared I was to let you put that blindfold on me? Mitch, I was scared to death of you. Having the blindfold on was almost too much by itself. But you have it easier. You know I’m not going to do anything shady. And I’m sure not going to let you drown. So, there you go--trust part, check. All you have to do is let me show you how.”

Mitch regarded Jonas in thoughtful silence. Beneath the surface his legs weren’t totally limp. They were kicking very slightly, which was a good sign. The instinct was there, at least.

“Fuckk…fine. Fine, whatever, just…can we get in now? My abs are killin’ me.”

Jonas rolled his eyes. “Gee, that must suck. Can’t relate.”

The problem was that every time Mitch tried to swing over the side, the whole boat tried to tip over on top of him. So Jonas came up with the bright idea that each of them should try getting in at the same time on both sides. “To counter the each other’s weight.”

It was a struggle at first. Being forced from opposite sides, the boat tried going in circles. Ultimately, a short window of perfect leverage gave Jonas enough time to thrust himself up and in as Mitch hung with all his weight on the other side. He dumped heavily into the boat and immediately began pulling Mitch by the shirt.

With a wet splat, Mitch landed on his back. His head plopped into Jonas’s waiting lap.

“I’m gonna hate swimming,” he panted. “That sucked ass.”

“That’s because that wasn’t swimming, dummy,” Jonas replied, grinning at how dramatic Mitch could be. Four of his fingers took it upon themselves to comb the sodden hair away from Mitch’s forehead and out of his eyes, which traveled up to connect with Jonas’s upside down ones. His finger nails grazed the scalp as he combed back along the natural curve of his head.

Mitch’s eyes fluttered shut. “Ah, gawd…that feels good.”

What in T he Hell  are you doing?!

His eyes fell shut completely, leaving Jonas alone with his weird choices and burning face. Petting a tiger--that’s what this was. Crazy that it was allowed; crazy that he was still doing it.

His fingers made another pass, mostly just because they could. Something unnameable hitched in his stomach as he stared at Mitch’s exposed throat and the sleepy rising of his chest. They were sort of becoming friends now. That had to be what it was about. Who knew if it would last, but it sure was a rush while it did.

“Promise you won’t let me drown?” Mitch mumbled, eyes sealed, looking for all the world like he was asleep.

“I promise. Are you kidding? You’re the only thing keeping Jeremy from walking straight into our cabin and beating me unconscious. I need you here.”

“I would rise from the fuckin’ grave. Swear to god,” Mitch laughed.

They paddled back to the dock in a longer and more exhaustive reenactment of the journey out. They were hot and wet and, in Jonas’s case, flushed and tingly and uninterested in thinking about it. Purging all that stuff about Carmen, opening the door and letting the air into the inner sanctum of private thoughts where the shrine lay, was like having a good, hard cry. It was a cleanse, a sun bath, an exorcism. Not that Jonas thought his adoration of Carmen was over, but after a fever-hot come to Jesus about the ‘why’ and a cold, blue baptism, he felt remade, and the adoration of her felt a little less like his religion.

But he had lost something in the lake. Because as they dragged the boat to the dock and stepped out onto the bank, Jonas realized he didn’t have it with him. The realization stunned him for a second and he stopped, rubbing his wet shirt against his chest. The ecstasy of his longing for her, the beauty of the possibility of ‘them’, was gone. It had left its empty shell inside him, but he did not want it.

“Hey. Y’okay?” Mitch was looking back at him, realizing that Jonas wasn’t following.

There was, as he had earlier predicted, a weird sense of disillusionment, which he couldn’t seem to mask as he stood there blank-faced. Mitch was frowning at him in confusion.

“Yeah, sorry,” Jonas sputtered, coming around. “Just thinking.”

As soon as he was close enough, Mitch threw an arm around his shoulders. His big hand gripped the far shoulder and squeezed it a couple of times. And in the spirit of all this, Jonas threw his arm around Mitch’s waist in their first ever embrace (that didn’t involve nearly plummeting from a tree).

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Mitch must’ve had a nervous bladder, because as soon as they were near enough to the cabin he slipped inside to use the restroom, while Jonas headed right down to their dock. He wished he’d brought a bathing suit because, as it stood, not being a shorts person, he didn’t even have a pair of those.

He could do this…right? He could teach Mitch to swim? Over the years, Jonas had tutored a thousand people in English and Math, some of them foster kids at home, some of them highschoolers like himself. But teaching someone how to use their body--bringing some long-buried instinct to the surface… He had taught Sidney how to skateboard; that was kind of in the same vein.

Mitch’s approach was announced by the see-sawing of boards under Jonas’s ass, and then Mitch was folding his long self up to sit down beside him.

“Can you please fix your face?”

“What fuckin’ face?”

“The face you’re making right now that looks like I’m asking you to walk a plank.”

Mitch sighed. He lifted his arms and started pulling his sopping wet shirt over her head, and when that slender midriff with its trail of auburn hair came into view, Jonas was very violently reminded that as he sat there, his shirt was basically vacuum sealed to his body and giving away every secret he had. Which was bad enough, until Mitch stretched out on his back and started unbuttoning his jeans.

Jonas couldn’t blink, let alone look away. The band of his boxer briefs, with which Jonas was fairly familiar since it had been on display on and off over the course of their acquaintance, and everything below it was suddenly out in the open as those long legs kicked their way out of his jeans.

He threw everything behind him with a water-logged splat and sat up.

I am sitting next to Mitch Mueller in his underwear. Like, he’s almost naked. Do I have to follow up with this or…?

When Jonas didn’t move (even by having the decency to look away), Mitch blinked at him. “You gonna wear that shit in the water again or what?”

Embarrassment flared up higher than it had since Jeremy had confronted him on the bus. It clenched at his throat, stung his face and eyes.

“Yeah, probably.”

“Why?”

The ache of embarrassment was unbearable, agonizing. “Can we please not do this?”

From the corner of his eye, Jonas could see Mitch staring at him. The other half of summer stretched out ahead of them, with a lake and swimming lessons and showers and just living together in general. It was bound to come up sometime. He just wished it hadn’t chosen right now beside a nearly naked Mitch.

“Not do what?”

“Can you not pretend not to understand why I’d want to keep my shirt on? Come on, Mitch. You’re not that dumb.”

“Joey, it’s just me here.”

“I know it seems like that should matter, but it doesn’t as much as you’d think.”

To make matters worse, Mitch turned his whole body toward him. Jonas could feel eyes roving over every visible part of himself. He closed his arms tighter around his middle.

“Why not?”

“Because,” Jonas snap, feeling his back hit a wall. “You try being the chubby kid who has to strip down next to that,” Jonas gestures pointedly to the lithe body next to him, “while somebody tells you it’s fine. It doesn’t feel fine.”

“What the hell’s that even mean, what you just said there? I ain’t Neil fuckin’ Beckham, thinkin’ I’m better than everyone else ‘cause I got something they don’t have.” When Jonas did nothing but sit there and hug his belly, Mitch said, “What do I gotta do? Bully it offa ya? Would that make it easier? Take that fuckin’ shirt off, Wagnerd. Pants too. Lose ‘em.”

Now there was a tone of voice Mitch hadn’t used in a while. And yeah, it sort of did make it easier. Because now Jonas could pretend that he didn’t have a choice.

He started with his pants, putting off the big reveal for as long as he could. Mitch made sure not to give him even a moment of privacy, as Jonas hadn’t, while his thighs came out an inch at a time. And while he had the momentum going, he threw his pants over his shoulder and started working his shirt up before he could think about it too hard. It was sticky with moisture and clung to him like a second skin, but he almost had it over his shoulders.

“Woahh…”

Jonas’s heart plummeted. A horrible, bruised feeling welled up in his chest, and the urge to cry was on him faster than it had ever been. “W-what?”

But when Jonas checked Mitch’s face to see how much disgust he was working with here, he realized that Mitch wasn’t looking at his stomach. He was looking at his back.

Rough fingers glided lightly over his bare shoulder. “Yer spots are on yer shoulders. Fuck, they go all down yer back. Holy shit, Joey.” Mitch smoothed his finger tips down the slope of Jonas’s back. It was such a raw feeling, having someone touch his bare skin. Rawer still because those were not the smooth, manicured hands he used to dream about touching him.

“Don’t remind me,” he muttered, flinging his shirt the rest of the way off. He’d had his fill of being stared at for the moment, and escaped it by shoving off the edge of the pier and splashing into the water.

When he came up for air and smoothed the hair out of his face, Mitch was scowling.

“I’m not doin’ that.”

Jonas started laughing. “I wasn’t going to ask you to. But I actually think you could touch here. I felt the bottom when I went in.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“I climbed at tre--”

“Yeah! Okay! Ya gonna play that card forever? Here I come. Christ on a cracker.”

In hindsight, it might have been wiser to let him walk in from the shore and let the level rise gradually to a place he was comfortable with. But the theme of this summer was jumping into a terrifying situation feet first without knowing the depth. And no one was exempt from it, not even the Great and Terrible Mitch Mueller.

Mitch turned on a hip and slid over the edge, catching himself by the death grip he had on the pier’s ledge.

“Let go. You’ll feel the bottom,” Jonas assured. He watched Mitch’s face staring at him, wavering on the fence between trust and overwhelming fear. And to Jonas’s surprise, he let go without another word, sighing in relief when he landed on the bottom. His chin road the surface perfectly, a fact which appeared to scare him into keeping his neck as elongated at possible.

“Holy shit,” he grinned. “That stuff feels so fuckin’ gross on the feet. Goddamn, that is slimy.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty mossy down there.” He held out his hand to Mitch. “Come here.”

Jonas was treading water only a few feet away, but he caught the moment Mitch sized up the space between them, as well as the hand he was offering. “It won’t get deeper yet,” he promised. “Just come away from the dock a little. There’s a lot of weeds and stuff down there.”

Mitch tried to watch were he was stepping, but ended up getting water in his mouth. In about two steps, Mitch reached out and clasped onto Jonas’s hand, and heck was it a tight grip!

“JoeyJoeyJoey! I’m floatin’! Fuckin’ shit!”

Although he probably shouldn’t have, Jonas laughed. “Yeah, you’re supposed to, Mitch. It’s how you keep from drowning. Now look. Hold still a second, I got your hand. Just watch my legs.”

Jonas waited until he saw Mitch was looking below the surface and undulated his legs in an exaggerated version of the maneuver he normally did, for demonstration purposes, of course. Mitch tried to mimic it, but every time his feet left the lake floor, he started to sink. Apparently he wasn’t floating enough.

“I can’t. My huge dick is weighing me down,” he joked. Jonas would have sold his soul not to smile at that, but there were no offers. I might be a nerd but this guy is a huge dork and the only reason he gets away with it is because no one in their right mind would confront him about it.

“Okay, so this is where the arms come in. Let go of my hand for a second.”

He did, but with extreme reluctance. This would for sure be something Jonas laughed until he cried about later in the privacy of his room, with a pillow over his face so Mitch wouldn’t hear. It wasn’t funny, but it was comical, because he had never seen Mitch look so humbled in his life.

“So you just do the leg movement, but you add the hands. Keep them stiff, but back and forth and kind of side to side, like this. Your hands are bigger, so it should be easier for you in theory.”

“In theory, he says,” Mitch muttered, hopping up from the bottom and testing it out. It took a few tries, mostly because he was waving his hands and legs around like a lunatic and tiring himself out. So they had to pause and have a very confusing lesson and heated argument about the logistics of how flapping less meant staying afloat better.

If nothing else, Jonas was learning that Mitch was not unteachable. In fact, all things considered, he was picking up this lesson with much less friction than anticipated. But it wasn’t without its struggles. Mitch could piss and moan with the best of them, but in the end, he always yielded to Jonas’s instruction.

Once he felt that Mitch had more or less mastered the art of treading water (at least to a degree that it could save his life), Jonas moved on to the actual act of swimming. Except that the idea of convincing Mitch to follow him into deeper waters DID NOT appeal. So, if he couldn’t convince him…

He would resort to trickery.

Right now, he had Mitch on his back like a piece of debris. Jonas held his hands under his back for support, guiding him in a revolution until they were back where they started. This, Mitch loved.

“Fuckin’ wild that you’re able to do this. Like scientifically,” he commented, grinning at the sky. Jonas snickered, because this was one of the most basic examples of hydro-physics. “Hate my ears bein’ under, but swear to god, I could probably sleep like this if I had to.”

Stealthily, Jonas pulled his hands away while Mitch continued to float unawares, and propelled himself away from him.

“Hey.”

Mitch looked over, and Jonas beckoned to him with a hooked finger.

Upon seeing that his lifeguard was leaving him adrift, a mild panic flashed across his face. “Joey.”

“Come on.”

“Joey, don’t go too far.” He took the bait, giving chase immediately, not appearing to realize he was swimming whether Jonas was there or not. “This ain’t fuckin’ funny.”

“I’m right here. Come to me.” Jonas slowed down, keeping just out of reach as Mitch used his arms and legs in tandem. “You’re so close, come on.”

The look on Mitch’s face was equal parts holy shit please come back and challenge accepted you little twerp. The longer he chased, the smoother his technique became, until Jonas was really having to propel himself to keep at bay.

“I’m gonna fuckin’ get you,” Mitch teased, spitting water out of his mouth as it skimmed the surface.

“Yeah? What’re you gonna do when you catch me?”

Mitch’s face split into that grin and not only was it not the harbinger of terrors it once was, but Jonas kind of wanted to be caught. The thought of finding out, the horror of his inevitable capture, the promise of something that could only be named with that smile…

It was fun. It was a power exchange. And Jonas was in power. A subtle, quiet, gentle power; the power of advantage, but only just. He smiled coyly and Mitch smiled back, his finger tips reaching, barely grazing, missing by a hair’s breadth, circling round and coming again. They were breathing deeply into the space between them, heavy with exertion, dragging through the water like running in a dream.

Mitch was going to follow him forever. As long as Jonas retreated, Mitch would be there. That’s what that unbroken gaze meant as he made for Jonas’s eyes like an island, never blinking in case he lost sight of it.

But Jonas wanted to know how far.

Would he go where he had never been before?

Stuck in the momentum of backward propulsion, Jonas sank beneath the surface like a descending ship, leaving Mitch with a departing smirk. The surface closed over his head and his ears filled with oceanic roar. He pushed himself down. Down and down until whatever tether existed between them brought Mitch down after him. He was right on him. In fact, the pace had barely flagged. They had not practiced going under, but here he came anyway, after him like a sinking treasure, pulling and kicking and twisting and unafraid of the depths they were reaching, perhaps unaware of it.

But he didn’t quite have Jonas’s knack for resisting the draw of the surface, weighing so much less. And when Mitch started struggling to keep up, Jonas couldn’t stomach the distress that took over his face, and reached out a hand for him to take. He pulled him toward himself. Wrapped his arms around Mitch’s neck like a siren to keep him down.

They smirked at one another, tight-lipped, little bubbles escaping from their noses. Everything was green and dark and empty. Their hair swirled around their heads. Mitch hovered over him, a loose hold on Jonas’s torso, kicking lazily to drive them further.

Their bellies collided as Jonas’s back laid gently against the sanded lake floor. Mitch’s hands had migrated so that now he held Jonas by the hips, but Jonas figured he must not realize, because he was taking in their surroundings. And as was inevitable, no sooner had the arrived here than an unmistakable look flashed over Mitch’s face.

He needed air. Now.

And frankly, so did Jonas.

They kicked off the slimy bed, ascending twice as quickly as they had come down. Mitch broke the surface beside him, gasping one huge gulp of air and panting his way to an oxygenated brain.

The dock was forever away.

“You little brat,” Mitch teased, seeing this.

“It was for your own good.”

Mitch pinched the water from his nose, treading water like a natural.

“We can practice some more another time. I’m ready to dry off.”

It was a good thing the dock lay a ways off. And it was a good thing that the journey back was starting to burn his calves until he could think of nothing else. Because if he were to get out now, his shorts would not be laying flat.

Something to unpack another time. To his pen and paper therapist maybe.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

“I dunno man. He makes stuff that, when I look at it, I wanna toss up an organ. But that’s the thing! It smells amazing. It tastes amazing. Looks like shit. The other day, he cracked open a can of corn, cut up a weenie and some Velveeta and microwaved it like a cheese dip. That was the best garbage I’ve ever eaten, but he had to basically threaten me before I would try it.”

Jonas wanted to vomit just hearing about it, but the shirt he was wearing was the last clean one he had, and he didn’t want to walk to the laundromat shirtless. The laundry basket he was carrying was so full of his and Mitch’s mingled clothing that he was wishing he had through to bring the grocery wagon instead.  

Lewis was marching along beside him, red in the face from exertion and huffing like the atmosphere was thinning. His laundry was hilarious to look at because it was an amalgamation of brainiac graphic t-shirts, expensive fitted jeans, stained up sleeveless rags, and Coors print boxers.

Lewis had called and asked if Jonas wanted to meet up and do laundry, citing the need to surround himself with his own kind for even a couple of hours.

“I’m starting to miss Maddy.”

“You miss getting told you watch your language?” Jonas joked.

“No, but I miss familiarity. I swear to god, every day with him is some kind test. A patience test, a nerve test, a test of my gastrointestinal fortitude. And a comprehension test, because sometimes I don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about. The other day I was headed to the bathroom and he said, ‘You better do yer business and git outta there faster’n shit out of a goose.’”

Jonas erupted with laughter, obviously not the response Lewis was wanting. “What does that even mean?!”

“I don’t know, dude.” Jonas had to stop and readjust his grip on the laundry basket. He had nearly lost it laughing. “At least he’s consistent. Mitch is…I dunno. Not.” Jonas fell quiet, recalling the little jaunt on the lake and the misadventures thereafter. His skin stung. “I’m trying to decide whether or not to tell you something.”

Lewis’s head whipped toward him. “You have to!”

“I do not have to,” Jonas assured him sternly. “It’s about Mitch and I think it would embarrass him if anyone found out. I don’t even know if Cliff knows.”

“Then why bring it up?!”

Because it would be nice to have someone other than his journal to divulge some of his thoughts to. “Because you’re my friend and I’m going to tell you, on the grounds that you practice some discretion and don’t say anything, even to Cliff, okay, loud mouth?”

Lewis almost had the audacity to look scandalized. Almost.

He rolled his eyes. “Jesus, okay. Just tell me.”

“Mitch and I took a boat out and got into an argument and then we pushed each other overboard and that’s how I learned he couldn’t swim so he agreed to let me teach him,” Jonas blurted in a single breath before he could lose the nerve.

Lewis shook his head like the words were bees attacking him. He even slowed to a stop under the weight of his laundry. “Woah, hang on. Argument, pushed, Mitch can’t swim… What should I be concerned about the most?”

“The fact that I’m teaching him how to swim,” Jonas replied, stopping with him. “Come on, this thing is getting heavy. I’m already sweating through the stuff I’m wearing.”

Reluctantly, Lewis caught up with him and they began mounting the slight hill leading into the common area until the laundromat and the courts came into view. With the exceptional heat of midday, few people were roaming about. The pavement would be hot as a griddle top. In fact, as they passed the basketball court, Jonas could see a solid heat haze rising off of it, distorting his view of the docks, where a few people were canon-balling into the lake. From the east, someone was returning from the store with their wagon, looking like they had already been for a swim, except that Jonas knew it was sweat. They would look like that if they were out here much longer.

Lewis couldn’t let the subject of why Jonas and Mitch had fought so fiercely as to shove each other off a boat rest, so Jonas was forced to elaborate on the fact of Mitch’s hatred of his crush on Carmen.

“See??” Lewis said, mashing his perceived correctness in Jonas’s face. “It’s so uncool that even the greatest villain of our time can’t stomach it.”

What Jonas would not say was that every second that passed, Mitch seemed less and less and like the villain in his story. Not when there were so many other, more qualified parties in his life.

The AC unit behind the laundromat was roaring like a jet engine. It was beautiful, and they trudged toward it like they were two men seeing a mirage in a desert. The last few feet, Lewis broke into a jaunty little run, bent on getting in the door first.

When he pulled the door open, a gust of arctic air blasted Jonas’s body.

“Oh, sweet Santa,” Lewis moaned as Jonas jostled his way in behind him, refusing to blister like a hotdog while Lewis took his sweet time in the doorway.

Frigid air swirled around their sweat drenched bodies, every bit as good as falling in the lake. Jonas lifted his arms to catch it in the swamps that were his armpits, and Lewis was shaking his head to fan it against his scalp. The smell of detergent and cheap floor cleaner and dryer heat pampered their olfactory senses after so long in the stink of the sun. Jonas couldn’t smell himself anymore.

“Do you think we died out there? Is this Heaven?”

“Even better. It’s real, and I got in.”

They were loitering in a narrow entryway just inside the door, barred from the rest of the room by a partition of wall. Once the sweat had dried across their skin, leaving a stiff, briny crust, they picked up their baskets and jugs of soap. The sound of chatter and laughing told them they weren’t the only ones taking refuge in here.

Lewis took a washing machine right beside Jonas’s. They dumped in their clothes, Jonas’s full of wet wads of fabric that were no doubt growing mildew by the second. If Jonas could have gone back in time, he would have piled his and Mitch’s clothes back into the basket, grabbed Lewis by the back of his belt and backed out of there like a thief in the night. If only he had noticed there then. If only he had looked first.

Lewis brought his jug of detergent down on the washing machine like it weighted fifty pounds, and the sound it made said that it might have.

“Oh, heeey, Freckles! Ging! Welcome to the cool kids’ club!”

Jonas and Lewis sagged in unison. They knew that voice, those names. They turned as one and looked to the other side of the room, which was set up to be more of a rec room with a TV on a wall-mounted stand, several vending machines and a bunch of tables.

Tables full of pricks and dicks and Jeremy Whitten, their king. Some of the boys he recognized from school, but most of them were strangers.

“Peeps, if you’re not from Sellwood, let me introduce you to two of our school’s biggest embarrassments,” he announced to the room at large. That was a lot of eyes on him. A lot of eyes belonging to a gaggle of fit, cross country-type boys with short shorts and tanktops and not an extra pound anywhere. “Yikes. I don’t know what I would do,” Jeremy continued, looking Jonas dead in the eye with a smirk of evil glee on his mouth, “if I came into the world looking like I was splattered with horse shit, but I sure as hell wouldn’t go and make my situation any worse by eating like was going to the electric chair.”

Jonas’s face burned like it had never burned before. It burned so hot it stung the rims of his eyes and tightened the skin of his face. He whipped back around and started dumping detergent into the cup, nearly spilling it as his hands quaked. “I’m not doing this,” he told Lewis, who was looking over at him. “I’m not doing it.”

Lewis started copying him, but he knew, and Jonas knew it too. He was next.

“And then, right next to him, on the other end of a spectrum of horribly unfortunate conditions you can be born with…you’ve got a menu of shit you don’t even want by themselves. Imagine winning that lottery.”

“Question.” A hand shot up into the air, and Jonas recognized its owner as Sellwood soccer royalty, Oliver Kingsley. “Is he an alien?”

“Good question, Oli. I haven’t been able to figure it out. Why don’t you offer up your ass and see if he probs it?”

They shoved their debit cards into the machines so fast they barely had to to read them. Lewis’s fired up first. They had to get out of here. Over the years, a sort of callous had developed over Jonas’s pride. It protected him most of the time from barbed remarks and snickers he knew were aimed at him. But there was flesh and blood and nerves underneath. If this went on long enough, the efficacy of his callous would wain and Jonas would cry. It was the very last thing on earth he wanted. He didn’t want to cry in front of Lewis, or all those guys sitting there like an audience, already sold on the idea that he and Lewis were massive losers.  

“There’s a lot of bad breeding like this at our school. I feel like there ought to be better qualifications for admittance, but it’s public, so I guess we have to mingle with trash if we want to get an education,” Jeremy said conversationally, as if Jonas and Lewis weren’t in the room.

As soon as Jonas’s machine kicked on, they spun on their heels and hustled for the exit.

“See ya in a minute!” Jeremy called as they tried to squeeze out the door almost at the same time. “Fucking freaks.”

No chilling in the AC for them. Back out in the heat, the sun was boiling, but there were no razor-edged remarks being flung, so it was still an improvement. They didn’t speak for a few yards as they put as much distance as possible between themselves and whatever close call that could have turned out to be. Jonas was still ringing with humiliation like a bell.

When it seemed like they were far enough away, Lewis whirled around, funneling his hands around his mouth. “Feel free to fuck off to some stick-up-the-ass private school then, you single-celled Social Darwinist hunk of donkey shit!”

“Will you cut that out!” Jonas hissed, check behind them to make sure no one was coming out after them. “We have to go back in there at some point.”

Lewis groaned. “Why did we leave our stuff there, Jonas? Why didn’t we just come back later? Why, why, why?”

“Because! We gotta do laundry at some point, Lewis. What if they hang out in there all summer? We can’t just not ever go!” Jonas could tell that Lewis wanted to argue, but he couldn’t because it was true.

“They’re going to do something to our clothes,” Lewis said. “You realize that.”

Jonas sighed. “Yes. But if they tear them up I hope it’s my clothes and not Mitch’s. I don’t think he has very many.”

Lewis let out a miserable sigh and kicked a clump of sod straight out of the ground. “I don’t know what Cliff would do. But I can hear his voice right now. ‘Ah, hell, Red. My only pair’a socks was in that hamper, ya big orange turd. What the hell am I gonna do now? Gimme a pair’a yers I guess. I can’t go--”

“That is way too easy for you,” Jonas laughs.

“Hey, quick question. Where are we going?”

They stopped dead in their tracks. It was a good question. The washer needed roughly an hour to do its thing, and Jonas wasn’t hiking back to his cabin until it was all the way over. They weren’t smack in the center of camp, but early on in the chronology of cabins. In fact, the first four extended in the opposite direction, beyond the commons and the courts and the laundromat. You had to pass everything up to get to them.

“I have an idea but we need to be careful.”

“Jonas, no good idea is ever followed with a ‘but’ like that.”

“I didn’t say it was good. But I think we should check on Eric while Jeremy is occupied. He’s going to wait on us to come back, which means he probably doesn’t have plans to go anywhere just yet.”

Jonas might as well have been asking Lewis to lay down his life. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath through his nose as if preparing for a great sacrifice. “I know you’re right, but I hate you for it. I hate you so much for it.”

It was hard to believe sometimes that there was a person in that house with him. A person like himself, like Lewis, alone day in and day out with Jeremy. Jonas thought back to the specter of a human he saw at the store that time, all gray and sagging like a person pinned to a clothes line. They had to check on him. Once or twice Jonas had looked for him at the bonfires and found him sitting by himself near the fire. It had never seemed like a good time to approach because Jeremy lurked at all times like a vulture that stalks a dying animal. If he had seen Jonas talking to his partner, that was as good as any invitation to get involved.

He remembered that they were in cabin number eight because…frankly, he would never forget the moment it was Eric’s name called and not his. He could place himself in the moment like it was happening now. He remembered the sound of Chris’s voice, every strategically placed pause, the cadence of it.

So they went straight for it. Lewis lagged a few steps behind as if doing this was going to keep him from getting there sooner than needed. He was scared and that made perfect sense. Even if his logic was sound, the thought of Jeremy finding them anywhere near his cabin, talking to his partner was unthinkable. Jonas had to keep running over what he knew to be true in his head: that Jeremy was at the laundromat, which they had just left. He was waiting on them to come back to whatever horror he had enacted in their absence, and had neither reason nor time to drop in to his own place. No way, no how.

But still…

Stepping onto the porch of number eight was the same as stepping through the gates of hell. Jonas rapped on the door before his nerve could break. This was his duty as a fellow victim. And Lewis’s too, whether he wanted to own up to it or not.

Some time went by with the two of them loitering on the porch. Lewis was on the lookout for literally anyone approaching, while Jonas was tempted to peek in through a window. Oh, god, though. What if that kid was blacked out on the floor? Bound and gagged?? MURDERED???

You’re imagination’s riding off into the sunset, Jonas. Get a hold of yourself.

Both of them stiffened at the rapid approach of footsteps from the inside, and then the door was pulling open. “Jeremy, I told you, the code is on a piece of paper under the mat--”

When Eric saw them standing there he straightened up like a watered plant. His eyes bloomed open.

“Oh. You guys.”

Jonas cleared his already clear throat, not sure how to preface this. “Uh, Eric? Are you okay?”

Glancing around the area like a mouse coming out of it’s den, Eric stepped out onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind him. He was very lithe, almost underweight, with huge wire-framed glasses and soft brown hair. In a side-by-side, Jonas and Lewis were lumberjacks. The poor kid was precisely the sort of fodder Jeremy ate for breakfast.

“Yeah,” he said, voice quavering. “And…no. I don’t know? I’m alive if that’s what you mean. But I can’t wait to go home.”

“Look,” Lewis said. “Have you told Chris about this? He really made it seem like he might throw up if he encountered anything like this. I mean he gave that whole bullshit spiel about weakness and strength that one time.”

Eric took a lungful of air that told of how very complicated the answer to that question was and surveyed the area. “You guys mind if we talk about this somewhere else. I don’t want Jeremy finding you guys here and I gotta get outta this place for a while."

They were going to trek down to the commons dock where the boats were kept, but it was visible to any passers-by going to or from the laundry room, including any passers-by named Jeremy. So they ended up dipping down behind the cabins several yards from Eric’s place, where the trees crowded together to block them from view, and the bank sand ran up to the roots. There was a large bolder embedded in the sand and a felled tree log for them to sit on while they bent forward and gathered pebbles to throw into the lake.

“For the record, I have told Chris about this. Twice,” Eric began, pelting a stone into the water.

Jonas’s head whipped toward him, shocked. “Really?”

“Really,” he nodded. “He took the diplomatic route and gave me some shitty speech about giving him a chance and learning how to be okay with not being liked,” he told them, using air quotations.

Lewis’s mouth fell open. His eyes squinted the way they do any time he heard something he disagreed with. “Oh, how very proactive of that fake social justice guru. Does he realize this is not simply a matter of not being liked?” He blasted his own pebble like he hoped it might hit the water and explode.

“I don’t think he’s thinking about it like us,” Eric answered sadly. “Not that I’m asking for it at all,” he held up a hand, “but it would have probably gone a long way to have some bruises or something to show him. It can be a lot harder to convince someone there’s a problem if there’s no evidence of it.”

“Has he not even touched you?” said Jonas in disbelief.

Eric shook his head. “No. I think it’s on purpose. Can’t pretend not to have beaten me up if you obviously did. No, he’s very hands off. Jeremy’s a name caller. He likes to make claims about my sexuality and about how girly he thinks I am and take a dump all over the foods I eat, but if I stay out of his way, I can usually avoid it.”

“He can be hands on, though,” Jonas warned. The memory of his own brush with just how hands on Jeremy could be ached in his wrist. Tired of the grit and weight of all the rocks in his hands, Jonas threw all of them at once into the lake, watching their rings spread and interlock. He was about to extend an offer which had only just sprung up in his brain.

“There isn’t much summer left at this point, but,” Jonas’s eye slanted over to Lewis and back. “If it gets too much, you can come to my cabin if you have to. I don’t care about that whole sleep in your own bed cabin rule. Just be sneaky about it and you can hunker down with me and Mitch for a while. We’re in twelve.”

Eric paled. “Mitch Mueller? Oh, woah. I forgot he’s your partner.”

“Yes, Jonas. Mitch Mueller? Who you haven’t run this idea by?” Lewis gestured emphatically with his eyebrows. It was not their most subtle nonverbal exchange.

“Mitch will be fine. First, because he doesn’t make all the rules in that place, and second, because unlike Jeremy, Mitch actually isn’t a total asshole. He hates Jeremy so much I think he might do just about anything as long as it pisses him off.”

Lewis dumped his own few remaining rocks back into the damp sand and shrugged. “You can come to thirteen too, if you want. Cliff doesn’t care about much. He’d be cool with it, I think. He wouldn’t be worried about that prick showing up either. He’s not afraid of anything.” He looked up at Eric suddenly. “Don’t wander around in the night, though. Whatever you do.”

“That guy stole my lunch money once!”

Lewis let out a huge, tried sigh. “Yeeaahh. I didn’t say he was a saint.”

“Mitch isn’t a saint either, but he’s not pure evil like everybody thinks. We get along now. He’s nice to me and…” Jonas decided to clam up right there and looked at Eric, certain of the veracity of what he was about to say. “He wouldn’t let Jeremy take you out from under his watch alive.”

Eric withdrew into himself then, clutching at his arms where they sat propped on his knees. “I know I’ll make it to the end. Thanks for the invite. Hopefully I don’t have to use it.”

They all took a moment to exchange phone numbers and then ambled back up the bank toward the center of camp. They parted ways with Eric as they passed number eight, waving half-heartedly. Jonas hoped to God he wouldn’t refuse to come over if he needed to simply because Mitch was there. A few heart-felt utterances about how wholesome Mitch was with Jonas didn’t undo the damage he had inflicted on others. Eric was a big nerd. And if you were a big nerd at Sellwood, chances were you’d had an encounter with Mitch.

“Let’s get this over with,” Jonas groaned at they approached the door to the laundry room. Lewis made a whimpering sound behind him, but Jonas didn’t stop to give either of them a minute. “I’m not sticking my crap in the dryer either,” he stated. “We’re getting in and getting out.”

Except that it appeared they would not be getting in and getting out.

The first thing Jonas spotted was a pair of his own underwear plastered to the wall like a poster. And another. And another, all lined up in a row on display. And there was Mitch’s shirt hanging from the pendant lamp. Who could say who the clothes all over the floor belonged to at this point? There were socks draped over the windows like little decorative curtains; a shirt he recognized as one of Lewis’s favorites was hanging from a nail on the ceiling! And the further he looked, clothes were on the TV, on the vending machine.

Not to mention they had an audience.

Someone snorted with unconstrained laughter.

“Welcome to the giant underwear museum,” Jeremy stood up out of the center of the room. He strode over to where Jonas’s underwear lined the walls like Christmas garland and gestured to a pair of Jonas’s favorites printed with seals. “You actually wear these, Freckles?”

With his heart pounding through his open mouth, Jonas leaned toward Lewis and whispered, “Lewis?…I don’t have my phone. If you text Cliff…would he come?”

Lewis was panting next to him, an amalgamation of near sun-stroke and the horror of seeing Cliff's underwear whirling on a ceiling fan. “I dunno. Maybe?”

“Do it.”

Jonas wasted no time. He waltzed straight over to his laundry basket, still miraculously sitting where he’d left it, and began gathering clothes he recognized into it. Lewis meandered in a little circle as he punched out a lightning fast S.O.S.

“You know two of us could both fit into these ones right here?”

“Mm. Sounds like your penises had to get really close for that to happen. Might want to punch yourself in the face I guess,” Jonas quipped, snatching a bunch of socks off the floor. To avoid being tripped or grabbed, Jonas moved like a honey bee, darting around the room. He picked up every garment he saw, whether or not it was his. He yanked the one off the TV and checked the deposit in the vending machine.

Oh, nice. My third favorite shirt is in here.

All the while, Jonas was being stalked at a short distance.

“Freckles feels invincible,” Jeremy told the chuckling room, “because his partner is a low class, junkie burn-out with anger issues and a big fucking mouth who thinks everyone will bow down to him if he gets belligerent enough.”

Lewis was moving just as quickly, checking all the machines for laundry easter eggs.

Hearing Mitch reduced to terms like that sprang a hot, oily leak of bravery in Jonas’s gut. He turned around to address the room full of idiots who couldn’t think for themselves. “And Jeremy’s nose is really crooked, in case no one’s ever noticed. I wonder where he got that.”

Some people oohed, but it was not because he had won them over with a good point. It was because he was eating the chum in the water, thrown out just for him.

He turned to look Jeremy, whose face was a hybrid of enthrallment and venomous potential. So Jonas knew he’d gotten him for sure. “I don’t think you have to be a burn-out to want to break the nose on somebody like him,” Jonas went on. His well of testicular fortitude was a geyser. “I think you just have to have two ears and get tired of hearing the same joke over and over.”

With his heart thundering so hard he could barely speak, Jonas continued on toward what would have been a fabulously elegant departure, except that Jeremy reached around him and snatched something out of his hamper. When Jonas whirled around to reclaim it, it was lobbed across the room where another guy caught it.

Cheers went up. The garment, which Jonas recognized at the underwear Mitch had had on during their swim lesson, flew in a circuit around the room. Every time it sailed by over his head at Jeremy, he jumped for it, knowing he was making an idiot out of himself, but he didn’t know what else to do. The fire-red spirit that had dwelt within was dwindling and he felt its heat leaving him. Mist fell across his eyes like a morning fog.

Jeremy caught the underwear and held it up to the ceiling like a world cup trophy, knowing Jonas couldn’t get it, and knowing he wouldn’t try. The rest of the room seemed to laps into mixed interest with the end of the keep-away game and only a few were invested now. But Jonas and Jeremy were all in. The locked eyes and Jonas clenched his teeth so that the mist in his eyes didn’t become a rain.

“You know, I don’t think Mitch is gonna like that fact that his underwear’s getting tossed around a room,” Jonas warned. He missed the brazen feeling of bravado, and had no clue how to get it back at this point.

“Oh, do you not?” Jeremy said brightly. It was too confident for someone holding a pair of Mitch’s boxers. He gave a careless shrug. “I don’t think he’ll do shit about it, though. Do you?”

Confused, Jonas stayed quiet. Jeremy leaned into his face, his arm still pointed at God. “See, I’ve been noticing something about our pal Mueller. I don’t know if you noticed or not, but he seems a little, mmm…” He pulled a thoughtful face, “inhibited. He’s been all bark lately. For somebody who’s not the type to give out warning he sure is giving out a lot of them.”

Thoughts were stirring in Jonas’s head. Mitch hadn’t gotten out of his seat on the bus that morning. In the store, Jeremy had gotten his head torn off, but that was it. He’d walked away from it, and that was like walking away from a car accident.

“I’m pretty interested to know if he’ll do anything at all, even if he walked in here right now.” Jeremy said. He shook his head in feigned sadness. “But I don’t think he would.”

‘Can’t pretend not to have beaten me up if you obviously did.’

Jonas looked at Jeremy’s crooked nose one more time, because he really hadn’t ever noticed it before, and he doubted he would get the chance again. “I don’t think you will either,” he said confidently.

Jeremy’s teeth bared, and just as he was gearing up to give Jonas a piece of his mind, Lewis, who had maybe an inch on Jeremy, swooped up and snatched the forgotten underwear out of his hand, spiking it into the hamper on Jonas’s hip.

“Let’s go, Jonas. This is getting old now. You’re right, he’s not going to do anything.”

Lewis spun on his heal and made it exactly two feet, or at least his body did. His head stayed where it was because Jeremy had shot out a hand and pinched a few stands of Lewis’s hair like a flower petal. It jerked Lewis to a halt and nearly pulled him to the floor.

Jonas’s heart sped up. This wasn’t doing ‘nothing’. He was helpless as he watch Jeremy back Lewis up until his butt his the watching machine. The laundry hamper in his hands prevented them from getting as close as he and Jonas had been.

Jeremy released the hair at the back of Lewis’s head in favor of a single strand at the top, which he pulled in tiny, gradual increments until it was no longer a kinky, compressed line, but a straight one. “Think I oughta take one of these. Have it run through a lab. See what the fuck you actually are. What do you think, Red?”

“Don’t call me that!” he shouted straight in Jeremy’s face. His head launched forward as far as the hair would allow. The sudden ferocity of it even took Jonas by surprise.

The tension on the hair tightened. He watched it, feeling his own sanity about to snap in kind.

“What’d you say?”

Lewis’s winced against it. The whole room was on the edge of its seat.

“Beg yer pardon.”

Everyone turned. Lewis and Jeremy turned as a unit, given that they were attached by a literal hair.

Cliff was standing in the entrance, hands on his hips, a blinding smile on his mouth. The sleeves of his wife beater were cut clean down to his hips. Lewis let out a long-held breath that caused his chest to cave in. The TV on the far side of the room was forgotten about as every head in the place turned upon the source of that accent, which didn’t belong in the state, let alone the room.

“Imma letchu know, just as a courtesy,” he forced out, “that that is my partner. Now…I dunno how many hairs you done pulled outta him ‘fore I got here…but you better git down on the floor an’ find ever single goddamn one of ‘em, an’ put ‘em back where you found ‘em. I’m sorta fond’a that mess.”

The room was mostly quiet, but someone snickered. Cliff’s head whipped like a shotgun toward the sound. “I dunno what ya’ll laughin’ at,” he said, smiling pleasantly. He looked back at Jeremy still standing there, about to pluck that hair like a daisy. “’Cause if that hair yer holdin’ there breaks…” he wagged his head. “Buddy…I will bring calamity on you that’d make all these lil fuckers watchin us right now go home and crawl back inside their mothers.”

Jeremy let go of the hair. As soon as he was free, Lewis scampered out from under him and strode past Cliff for the door, barreling out of it. Jonas took off after him, not wanting to be last out of the room. At the door, he turned and took one last look at Jeremy, and he would have laughed if the occasion had permitted it. Because the guy clearly did not know what to make of Cliff or the stuff he was saying, but his mouth wasn’t out of gas just yet.

He locked eyes with Jonas of Cliff’s shoulder. “Hm. I’m noticing Mueller’s standing outside the window over here…” Jonas glanced at the window, and sure enough, Mitch was pacing back and forth, staring at the ground. “Guess I called that one.”

“I dunno what in the hell yer talkin’ about, but if you think that makes you lucky ‘r somethin’, I’m here ta tell you that if I ever catch you messin’ around with my partner--er even his partner fer that matter!” Cliff leaned forward on his toes and pointed a finger. “Yer gonna wish it was Mueller that gotta holda you.”

And with that, Cliff spun around and Jonas peeled forward out the door to get out of his way.

Stepping out the door was a hot, red slap in the face. Jonas could barely draw a breath, even as a breeze blew like a hair dryer directly into his mouth and nose. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily, he didn’t have much time to appreciate just how awful it was. In three paces he was being yanked by the front of his shirt to the side of the building. The laundry basket hit the ground, his back hit the wall, but his head conked against something much softer.

Mitch blocked out the sun, casting a hot shade. And it was then that Jonas realized the soft-ish thing that had prevented his skull from cracking open on the brick was Mitch’s hand cradling the back of his head.

“Y’okay? What the fuck happened in there?”

For a second, Jonas’s brain was so conflicted about the signals it was receiving that it did nothing but buffer. They were in a terribly familiar formation, with Mitch yoinking him around by the shirt and towering over him. But his face didn’t match. Jerk-Mitch’s body language; real Mitch’s face.

“Every prick in California’s in there. They threw our laundry all over the place while we were gone. Got in my face, got in Lewis’s face…” Jonas put a hand over his forehead. How had a simple trip to the laundromat turned into a freaking hatecrime?

“Did he fuckin’ touch you?” Based on the tone of Mitch’s voice, the tension in his shoulders, the crease of his mouth, Jonas figured he had better make whatever the answer was, it was no.

“Not me, but he did Lewis,” Jonas said, watching Cliff and Lewis’s retreating forms. Lewis glanced back at him just then, but they were too far apart now to convey anything unsaid.

It was crazy--the range of emotion Mitch could sometimes have. Like right now, as his granite hard eyes crimped shut and the hard line of his mouth broke open to let out a frustrated gust of air. He ground his palms into his eyes and ran a hand through his hair.

“Joey, listen to me.” He grabbed both of Jonas’s shoulders firmly. Leaned into his face. Eye to eye, no b.s. “I know that you walked into that shit, ‘cause you didn’t know, and it was all that fucker’s fault. It’s always his fault. I know. But jesus christ, I’m beggin’ ya.” The hands on Jonas’s shoulders squeezed a little harder, shook him just a little. “Try to stay outta that guy’s way. I’ll do what I can, but I can’t protect ya like I could if we were at school. I can’t just beat his ass.”

As fire-hot as the day was, Jonas still felt heat spread like a piss stain in his chest. What a flipping rush--hearing that. That Mitch would protect him. But…couldn’t? As far as Jonas could remember, nothing on God’s green earth had ever stood in the way of Mitch Mueller beating up someone he thought deserved it.

“N-not that I would ever ask you to do that, but…why not?”

Thumbs on the front of his shoulders swiped in soft arcs. Mitch swallowed and the architecture of his throat shifted. “If I do anything…like…ya know…”

“Confrontational?”

“Yeah, con-f--that. Chris is gonna call the cops. An’ Joey, they’re gonna arrest me if they come. My record’s too bad. Why do ya think I didn’t storm in there?” He gestured at the door leading inside. “Cliff wouldn’t let me. Normally I don’t care about cops’n shit, but…what the fuck am I supposed ta do? Get myself locked up an’ leave you here alone? Even if I beat him brain dead, there’s plenty of other fuckers still here. I can’t…” Mitch dropped off helplessly.

‘He seems a little, mm…inhibited.’

Jonas pulled Mitch’s arms away. “Let’s get out of here,” he suggested, pitching his voice low. It would be just like Jeremy to be watching them, unseen; listening despite the roar of the AC; basking in the satisfaction of having been right.

Jonas went to grab the basket weighed down with damp clothes, but Mitch snatched it up first. After everything that piece of crap laundry had gotten him into, he didn’t try to get it back.

“Mitch, I think he knows,” he said as they started back.

“Knows what?”

“Before Cliff barged in there, he was saying how uninterested you seemed in putting anyone in their place, and talked about all the stuff he had basically gotten away with. The bus, the store…and then he said you probably wouldn’t do anything about this either, and then you didn’t.” Mitch’s eyes squeezed shut. “I’m glad you didn’t, but he’s putting the pieces together is all I’m saying.”

Without breaking stride, Mitch reached into his back pocket and withdrew a cigarette, jamming it between curled lips and lighting up despite Jonas’s proximity.

“That FUCKIN’ SHITHEEL!”

Jonas was looking respectfully. Smoking, as a rule, was gross, but…cripes, Mitch made it a part of his look. If Jonas tried to smoke, he would look like a clown. Mitch had some kind of James Dean thing going on with that swagger in his hips, the surly pinch of his brow... When he blew the smoke out of his nose, Jonas looked at the ground.

“I’ll figure out a way to avoid him even more. Somehow. That’s not going to be the hard part, though.” Mitch looked at Jonas with a face that conveyed total confusion, and put his cigarette back in. “I sorta….mouthed off again,” he cringed. “I know that makes things worse, but…he just makes it so easy!”

“Heh!” Mitch barked. “Good boy.”

Jonas stumbled in the grass. Rosy-cheeked, he recovered by looking back over his shoulder for the culprit.

There was a pebble there--that was probably it.

After the air-conditioned bliss of the laundromat, the blistering outdoors was ten times the hell it was before. Jonas walked looking at the grass, his mouth open to ventilate his head. He focused on breathing and putting one foot in front of the other and counting down the minutes until the sun disappeared. The density of the atmosphere didn’t seem to weigh on Mitch as heavily.

Stupid, dumb, skinny butthead. Why am I taking the heat harder than a guy who smokes?

Bursting the bubble of pessimism, a hand came down on Jonas’s head. It ruffled his hair and knocked his head all around. Sweaty and irritated, Jonas shook it off, and when he looked up to scowl at the perp., Mitch was smirking at him fondly.

“Yer hair’s fucked up.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

During these increasingly frequent moments, when Mitch was a pill of a different sort, more of an endearing pest than a bully, there always followed a snarl of conflicting feelings. Jonas’s tummy did a thing he could neither name nor describe. But he pretended to be grumpy about it every time; because that was the natural order of their relationship carved out by the Universe itself: Mitch plus teasing yielded Jonas grumping, or crying, or yelling. It couldn’t mean he enjoyed it. His biology still didn’t quite have a grip on how to process enjoying Mitch in any capacity.

“I think Cliff was really mad about Jeremy messing with Lewis,” Jonas blurted to shut down what he realized was his brain about to spin out of control.

Mitch looked over. “Oh yeah?”

Jonas nodded, sending beads of sweat racing each other down his forehead. “He threatened him pretty good.”

Mitch peered in the direction of their friends’ cabin with his thoughts all over his face. “He woulda done it too. Cliff don’t make threats like that all too often, but when he does, they ain’t empty.” Mitch took his cigarette between his fingers and let the smoke out to burn away under the glare of the sun. Why was he even lighting up right now? They were already breathing the smoldering ash of the atmosphere. “People think he’s just some dope, but the difference is, he don’t walk around all pissed off like me an’ Javi. He ain’t mad about nothin’. Not his lot in life, not his junkie uncle… So when he does get pissed off…he means everything he says.”

Jonas nodded again. “I believed him.”

No one had offered up any nonsense in rebuttal, except Jeremy right there at the end, and that had really been aimed at Jonas. All the evil glee in the room began crawling out the windows; smiles hung crooked off faces; laughter lay dead. Because who said stuff like that?! That wasn’t your run-fo-the-mill ‘I’m gonna beat you to death’ kind of promise, which they were expecting from Mitch, who did had not arrived. You couldn’t even argue with it. And even a blind man could have seen that Jeremy hadn’t known what to think, because it was Mitch he had figured out. It was Mitch he was getting ready to face down with all the certainty of Alexander the Great, when out of left field came this dirty redneck nobody, who swore that if anything like what Jeremy had meant to happen to Lewis had happened, he would have made a fetus out of him and everyone else.

“And I think Jeremy did too.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Journal entry…think I’ll title this one: What the freaking heck? And Other Questions I Have: Part 1

Been a while since I dug this thing out. Lots to say, even if I am a little hesitant in case someone reads this.

Let me preface this entry by saying that, first off, this camp is a joke. Aside from the forcible sports participation, there is nothing about this thing that feels like a challenge. It’s like the Great Force in the Sky wanted this to be some kind of bump in the road of my life, but they’re a bad at pulling it off. We’re literally just here living life: buying our food and cooking it and doing stuff outside... The only difference is we have to report it with proof like we’re in some kind of George Orwell novel.

Anyway, the real drama is social, and occurring on two fronts. Things with Jeremy seem like they’re about to ramp up. He’s figured out that Mitch’s hands are tied somehow, and he’s getting closer and closer to me every time. Mitch said he would do his best to keep him in his place, but he admitted today that he can only do so much without getting the police called on him.

You know, there was a time in my life ( about 35 days ago) when I would have said, “Good! Call ‘em!” And the idea of Mitch getting hauled to the slammer in handcuffs was the stuff of sweet dreams. But…I don’t really want Mitch to go anymore. And not just because I don’t know what would happen to me if he did. Would they put me with another group? Maybe I could request to join Lewis and Cliff. But the idea of being left alone in this place with Jeremy circling like the vulture he is makes my stomach hurt.

I don’t want him to go because I’m actually starting to like him as a person, and that brings us to the other side of the coin.

He’s actually a really good friend. Still kind of a creep and a dirtbag, but…I know he can’t help it. And he doesn’t necessarily lose points for it. It’s what makes him interesting. I pretend to deny it, but he really is super funny, sometimes when he’s not trying to be. I’m learning all his little secret languages, like how his brows twitch together when he’s confused, and he bites his lip when he daydreams, and he rubs the back of his neck when he’s nervous. He doesn’t eat much and gets up some nights to watch TV in the livingroom by himself. He plays the guitar, sort of…he’s getting better. And I think he likes plants. Anytime we go outside he’s always touching them and staring at them really closely. Which I think is hilarious, because Mitch Mueller can barely spell four letter words and once threw a desk out of a window. And he’s always touching me. Like, always. I don’t feel that I have the sort of physique that lends itself to a pleasurable touching experience. I’m afraid anyone who does is going to be grossed out by how soft I am. But Mitch seems to love it, or at least not mind the softness. Now that I think about it…he was kinda touchy even before we came here. He was always grabbing me by the shoulders and putting me in a chokehold and pushing and pulling…

I don’t dislike it. Him touching me. Maybe I’m a little touch starved. Would’ve been nice to know that sooner. So maybe Sid hugging on me all the time isn’t enough. Maybe it’s the wrong kind.

Something happened earlier during Mitch’s swim lesson (I’m teaching Mitch to swim, but I’m not getting into it on page three). I don’t want to say in too much detail what it was, but I had a…reaction…to something about it. Maybe the excitement of our game of chase? Maybe I was just high on life?

Food for thought.   

Jonas put his journal back inside his pillowcase and booted up the laptop. It lived in his room most of the time, and why not? He did all the data entry anyway.

The sun was getting lower and his skin, though not burned, still felt sort of raw after the day’s heat. His room was so cool and his bed was cradling his ass just right and the lamp was dim enough… He wanted to lay down and slip out of existence for just an hour. But the bonfire was coming up and Jonas wanted to see Lewis and figure out what had happened after Cliff had disappeared with him from the laundry room. And then there was the matter of dinner and what they were going to have and who was going to put it together. Not to mention the collection of photos and data from today that needed to be entered. It could be done anytime, but the thought it piling up or being forgotten put Jonas in a rigor of anxiety.

A little vibration zipped through his phone where it lay against his thigh. And when he looked and saw a text from Mitch that wasn’t a photo, the realization that this was the first real text they had ever shared came over him.

Mitch

u hungry?

Jonas sighed. Being in the sun and water all day had drained the gumption out of every corner of his body. It wasn’t a text asking him to cook, but the implication was there.

Spots

Yes. Very.

He hit send and stared at the screen, waiting to see where this went. Dots appeared as Mitch typed on the other end, then vanished and reappeared over and over. Ultimately, whatever it was never came.

What did was a picture of Sidney, accompanied by the repeating sound of Dennis Nedry singing “Uh-uh-uh. You didn’t say the magic word.”

As Jonas didn’t think he could bring himself to press even one more key on the computer, he snapped it shut and pushed it across the bed in favor of hearing Sid’s voice for the first time in a couple weeks.

“How am I ever going to get anything done with you calling me this much?”

Sidney sputtered. It sounded like she had been in the middle of taking a drink. “Yeah, you know me. Don’t got a life of my own or anything. I live for the sordid details of your second life at broken down summer camp in a shit spackled lake town.”

“Wow,” Jonas said, impressed. “You know, that sounded just like something Mitch would say. You guys might not be that different.”

“As if!” she snapped, taking the bait. “Speakin’ of. How are things in hell?”

Hell in the sense that it was hotter than. Ugly sometimes. Sweet once in a while.

“Weird, “ Jonas confessed after a pause. “I don’t know how else to describe it. Everything is backwards. It’s too much to tell, and I already put everything in my journal so I don’t feel like rehashing it right now.”

“Aw, you have a journal?!”

“Shut up, it’s part of our grade. But if we’re allowed to take them home I’ll have to burn it in a barrel or throw it into a volcano or something.”

“Woaah. Big secrets, huh?”

Hm. Were these secrets? They were certainly observations that he didn’t want anyone to know he was making. Even Sid.

“Like you don’t have any,” he said, trying to take her out at the knees. What he did not expect was the giant suspicious silence that descended over the line following this remark. “Right?” …. “Sid.”

He and Sidney weren’t identical, but there was a sort of telepathy that strung between them at times. Right now for instance. He could feel the prickly surge of distress; see the cringe crimping her face. Secrets were not a thing they had, not from each other. Privacy, yes--like his journal entries and her hidden Pinterest boards. But secrets were outlawed, and right now, he smelled an undisclosed truth like a burning cake.

“...I’m…I’m trying to decide…”

“What do you mean you’re trying to decide? Decide whether you want to tell me or…not? Since when is ‘not’ an option.”

More of that silence, those visions. “A lot of reasons. First, I’m not sure if I’m even supposed to tell you. And… I’m trying to have some regard for how it might make you feel. Sue me.”

“I’ll wait. That giant guilt complex will get you in the end. It always does.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

“...”

The wind of an inhale crackled through the speaker. “I’m screwing around with Mitch’s lady friend!”

It came out like a canon blast, fast and loud and leaving Jonas spinning. Each of those words took its sweet time computing in his sun-fried brain. Mitch’s lady friend. Screwing around…

Questions flew into his mouth like a mob, all of them valid and equally pressing. He couldn’t choose his favorite.

“Say something, please,” Sidney whined, bringing the fact of his prolonged silence to his attention.

“I don’t know what to say.” And that, of course, was the wrong thing to say, because Sidney keened and he hadn’t meant it that way. “No. What I mean is--like, what? Why? When did this start? And messing around like how?”

“You’ll recall how I told you she was giving me unsolicited discounts at the Cash ‘n Dash? And chatting me up like our relationship wasn’t defined by violence and trauma? And it was weird, but in an interesting way?”

“I--yeah, I guess.”

“Well, it turns out--maybe not so surprisingly--that that was flirting.” A pause stepped in, as if she were giving Jonas time to lay an egg in shock. And when it was not forthcoming, she let out a mighty sigh. “It’s been about two weeks. We’ve worked out this whole underground railroad type scheme for meeting up. I go to the skate park some days. Other times I walk a few blocks and meet her at Beverly Park. But mostly we text.”

Yet another example of how their respective worlds were merging to completion in a single summer. Was there some kind of planetary alignment going on? Some unprecedented but anciently foretold prophecy scratched on the wall of a pyramid in Giza? Was someone somewhere having a tea part with their Voodoo doll likenesses?

“Okay. Well, while this is definitely coming out of left field--like the left side of left field…I’m not mad about this?”

“...You’re not for real?”

“Yeah? No? I don’t know how to answer when you phrase it like that? Sid, I don’t have a right to be mad. Not when Mitch and I are kind of becoming friends.” Jonas pitched his voice low as his intrusive thoughts got the better of him. What if Mitch heard him say that through the wall? And what if he didn’t agree?

“Yeah, this is no friendship we got goin’ on,” she warned. “We’ve been making out a lot. Like a lot.”

“Okay. Loud and clear.”

“She kinda scares me, but now I think it’s supremely hot.”

“I said okay!”

“We got in the back of her car an--”

“I’m hanging up! I swear to God I will!”

Sidney muffled her laughter, tipping Jonas off that her location was somewhere in Dean Wagner’s house and that he was afoot.

A sudden knock at the door startled him into jumping a little. The force-field of safety lining the walls of his room hummed like an electric fence powering on. He could practically see the grid of electric blue caging him inside.

Jonas shushed Sidney and moved the phone away from his mouth. “What’s up?”

“Uh…you mind if I open the door?” came an obstructed voice. Mitch was so tall that it sounded like he was speaking through the top crack.

Hm. Such forethought, such manners…

“Oh. Uh, yeah. Come in.”

Jonas braced himself for whatever reason, and the door swung open to reveal Mitch’s awkward form carefully not taking a step inside. His eyes did a brief circuit around the room, hitting on all of Jonas’s visible crap and then returned to him like a bird to its perch.

“Shit, sorry. I didn’t realize you were on the phone,” he apologized, noticing the phone Jonas cradled to his neck. “I made us a dinner.”

He what?

“You what?” The disarmingly lost expression on Mitch’s face made Jonas want to kick himself in the nuts. “Sorry. I just didn’t know you were in there doing that. I wish you would have said something so I could’ve helped you.”

“Nah, ya done enough today. And it was my turn anyway. But if ya don’t want it I can’t put it away for--”

“No, no. Of course I do. I’ll be right there.”

Mitch’s eyes flitted to the phone and back, and Jonas felt the understanding that it was his Sidney on the other end breaking over him.

Apparently short on words at the moment, Mitch only nodded as he reached in and pulled the door shut.

“You hear that, eavesdropper?” Jonas said, pressing the phone back to his ear. “Mitch made us dinner?”

“Nice. I’m gonna go ahead and climb in the apocalypse bunker, so my service will probably drop.”

Jonas rolled his eyes, sliding off the edge of the bed. “When the becomes funny I’ll call you back so you can hear me laugh.”

He hung up on the sound of Sidney cackling and went to the mirror to check on the state of himself. Mitch wouldn’t care how he looked necessarily, but it bothered him to think he might wander out with his hair afright or something in his teeth when Mitch had taken it upon himself to whip up a dinner all by himself. Like the least he could do was show up looking fresh and hygienic.

Unruly as usual, he combed his finger through his locks, trying to persuade them to at least exhibit some unity. He leaned forward and inspected the skin of his face for dirt or sweat or blemishes that could hide in among his freckles. Taking a whiff of his shirt proved that it was as clean as when he had taken it out of the dresser after this evening’s shower, and took way too long to decide that leaving his shoes off was for the best.

Just outside the kitchen, Jonas took a moment to stand there undetected as he watched Mitch fooling with something at the counter. The first thing he noticed was that his shoes were off, validating his earlier choice. Mitch wore a t-shirt in a strange shade of mauve purple that Jonas had never seen before. Over the cacophony of clattering dishware, the sound of humming tickled his ears, and it unbalanced him when he realized it was coming from Mitch’s throat. It was actual humming. He was singing to himself, barefoot in the kitchen as he turned off the stove and scraped something out of a skillet, for Jonas.

He knew he would snap out of it any second, but for the time, Jonas couldn’t remember what about this had ever seemed frightening. It begged the question of whether or not they could ever resume the shape of their old selves in the event This, whatever it was, didn’t survive. Solid fact: Jonas would never be able to look at Mitch with the same trepidation, nor did he think the wilted fear within him could ever be revived. Not now that he knew what he knew, and had seen what he’d seen.

Jonas was jolted out of his head when Mitch, whose back was to him and gave no indication that he knew Jonas was there, said, “Ya like hot stuff at all?”

Oh, God. Did he know I was staring?

“Uh, yeah, sort of. Not if it’s going to burn the flesh off my tongue or anything, but spicy is good.” Jonas stepped into the room and glanced around, unaccustomed to having idle hands in a kitchen. There was an open carton of eggs on the counter and half a sleeve of sliced bread, but he didn’t see any meats anywhere.

“It’s almost done. You can sit down,” Mitch said, tossing a quick glance over his shoulder. And for lack of anything else to do, Jonas did. “We definitely gotta get to the store soon. Got no meat, no cereal, no fuckin’ butter after tonight, cheese is molded, two sodas and a bottle of water in the fridge, which I have already drank out of.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

Toast sprang out of the toaster and Mitch burned his fingers extracting it. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. A promise that they would both wake up, still here together, making a life happen around them, no matter how fabricated it was. The shirt on Mitch’s back looked soft, and the room was hot and humid with grease. He was pitching his already rough voice so low, and Jonas was so sleepy. They had made it; they had made it to comfort through the horrors of getting to know one another. And pardon Jonas’s French, but damn it felt so good. Everything felt so good lately, now that there were no egg shells to walk on, no walls in the way on the journey to Domestic. They had arrived.

A plate tapped down in front of Jonas, who might have been thinking all this in a dissociative half-sleep.

“Bone apple teeth.”

“Shut up!” Jonas laughed. “You know that is not how that goes.”

Mitch smiled as he sat down next to him. Their dinner was fried eggs and toast. A jar of jelly and packet of butter joined them as soon as Mitch remembered it and went to get it. The jar clacked down with showmanship, the cold butter with a smack, and--

“Tobasco?” Jonas stared at the familiar red and green label.

“Hell yeah. You ever had eggs with this stuff. Fuckin’ delicious. Fuckin’ gor-may!”

The laugh that came out of Jonas’s diaphragm spasmed so hard he curled forward. “Hot sauce on eggs. That’s what does it for you? Like that’s top tier dining right there?”

“Wait till ya try it, ya little smart-mouth fucker. Just ‘cause it ain’t a fuckin’ rack’a lamb don’t mean it’s not just as good.” Mitch took the bottle and peppered the ocher liquid all over his eggs, taking no care whatsoever to keep it off his toast. When he was done, he sat it back down a little closer to Jonas.

At first, Jonas sprinkled the stuff on conservatively, wary of it’s vinegary zing, and not wanting to ruin the whole plate. Mitch was right; they were almost out of food and he was starving right now. There would be nothing else until the tomorrow they agreed on.

From his left, Mitch’s covert staring was like a security camera picking up his every move and facial twitch as he forked some into his mouth. It was briny and pepper hot, probably healthier than the ketchup he put on his omelettes. Maybe he would keep this habit, as a souvenir from this summer.

“Mm. You’re right. It’s good.” He helped himself to a more generous dousing of the stuff. “You make eggs really well. These are like…perfectly cooked. I have a hard time with keeping the yolks whole like this. I’ve never not broken one, so I always do scrambled.”

It wasn’t just a compliment. These eggs were restaurant good. Slight crisp edges like Jonas liked, enough grease to flavor and make it feel like a real comfort food. Should he have felt guilty about feeling so surprised Mitch could pull something like this off? It was just cooking after all.

Mitch dipped the corner of his toast in the pool of yolk that spilled out of his egg. This was one of those times, Jonas noted, that Mitch seemed to slip into a pensive, wordless iteration of himself. Mitch lite, if you will. If it happened, it happened in the evenings, and intensified the feeling of the world closing in with the night, in case the heightened darkness and claustrophobic proximity of tree weren’t enough.

He didn’t reply to Jonas’s comment about breaking the yolks, preferring to slather a glob of jam across his toast inelegantly. Jonas chewed and looked on. He could work with this--was grateful for it even. He was tired and sluggish and they still had the upcoming bonfire shindig to endure before he could lay down. A little peace was nice.

For a few minutes the only sounds were their out of sync munching and the clock ticking like a bomb on the wall. There was a cricket on the porch making one heck of a racket.

“What the fuck are we sittin’ in here for?” Mitch blurted suddenly. He looked Jonas square in the eye. “You wanna eat this shit in the living room like two normal people?”

In eighteen years of life, Jonas had never eaten a single corn chip in his living room at home, let alone an entire dinner. But he knew millions of people in much more normal homes than his did that. Lewis’s family did sometimes. It was one of those trivial little frivolities that made him giddy to think of doing with impunity.

So, in no time flat, they were on the couch. The lights were still off because they hadn’t had a free hand between them to turn them on, and the glare of the TV was pretty all encompassing. They were watching some reality show with a lot of intermittent beeping to indicate profuse swearing, and blatantly staged fist fights.

Dean would blow a gasket, he thought, reveling in his many sins: sofa dinner, inappropriate TV trash depicting uncharitable behavior and women in bikini tops, local poster boy for immorality Mitch Mueller sitting close enough to spread his cooties of delinquency.

Jonas smirked while he chewed.

“Where do you live?” was what fell out of his mouth, as if lurking there in a blind-spot his consciousness couldn’t see.

Mitch was sunken down in the couch until his head was almost lower than Jonas’s. His long legs stretched out across the coffee table next to his empty plate, arms folded, staring at the TV.

Except now, he was staring at Jonas.

“You mean in Sellwood?”

Jonas nodded. He dropped the overdone crust of his toast into the residue of egg and deposited his plate on the table. “I always wondered. I never see you outside of school.”

Mitch turned back to the TV and scratched at a spot on his arm. “My aunt’s place on the other side of Beverly Park. Real shitty side of town, but it’s got everything I need I guess.” The silence that descended caught his attention, and he looked at Jonas curiously. The slight quirk in the corner of his mouth was such a satisfying mathematical curve that Jonas couldn’t tear his eyes away from it. “That something you wonder about?”

“Occasionally. What’s your house like?”

“Oh, Jesus. Ya wouldn’t believe it. First of all, it ain’t a house. It’s a trailer. We all live in trailers. Me, Cliff, Javi, Scratch… Every last one of ‘em oughta be condemned. ‘S a fuckin’ travesty. Why’re you thinkin’ about that?”

Because Jonas wanted to know everything about Mitch, and if he was transparent with himself, always had. Paralyzing fear of someone had a way of resembling obsession if you looked at it in the right light. Mitch had always been such a powerhouse that everything he was seemed distorted and fantastical. Larger than life. Where could a guy like that possibly live? What kind of dwelling contained him?

But like heck Jonas was gonna say that stuff.

“Profession curiosity. Can I see it sometime?”

“Hell no! I ain’t lettin’ you see that shit. Nevermind the fact that someone like you don’t even belong on that side of town. You’d be eaten alive, Joey.”

“But I’d be with you, so it’d be fine.” Jonas turned to stare, realizing what he’d said. Mitch was realizing it too. “Would you let me?”

Mitch did not blink. The couch was so plush they were sinking into a crater, gravitating toward one another. Their shoulders were close enough to share static and Jonas was almost cross-eyed trying to look him in the eye. His smell was drifting over; his heat.

There was really no excuse for it.

“If that’s what ya really want.”

“It is what I want,” he said. Was there no end to the ways in which Mitch would bend to Jonas’s will? “I want to see how the Great Mitch Mueller lives.”

Mitch snorted. “He lives like shit. But sure.” He looked over. “This offer go both ways?”

Try as Jonas might, he could only barely imagine Mitch in the habitat of his room, among his pristine, boxed collectibles and photo collages. He would be a tactile looker, without a shadow of a doubt. He’d touch stuff and make fun of his record collection and stretch out on his bed just to rile him up.

“Something tells me you already know this, but my dad would take one look at you and slam the door in your face.” It might not have been a joke, but Jonas couldn’t keep the smile off his lips. “Actually, he’d be upset if he knew I was even around you at all. Whether we had a choice or not.”

Delighted, Mitch smiled with his trademark glint. “Oh yeah? Whyzzat? He afraid I’m gonna do somethin’ to his son?”

Jonas knew that he was blushing, but not why or how much or even how to stop it. He shook his head. “He’d look you up in the system and file you in his head under criminal trash. So if you did something like…I dunno, shank me in the guts,” Mitch laughed, “that would prove his point, but what he really wants to prevent is someone like you implanting your heathen ideals into my brain.”

Mitch hummed with exaggerated understanding, lips pursed. “Well, what that motherfucker whose son just invited himself to my house doesn’t know, is that I don’t gotta use my powers of criminal brainwashin’ on ya,” he said quietly, eyes roving around the ceiling in pretend thought. “Yer runnin’ to me all on yer own.”

Something unknowable flared up so hot in Jonas’s body that it hurt. And just as quickly, it was gone. But there was no time to analyze it because he realized that his butt was vibrating and probably had been for several seconds.

“Crap,” he said, digging his phone out. “We have to head out.”

Mitch started to get to his feet, disappointing him because he had hoped they might share a reluctance to go.

Time to bask in the perfume of burning wood, which would cling to their recently cleaned clothes for days to come.

-- -- -- -- ---- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Cliff and Lewis always beat them to the commons somehow. When Jonas and Mitch strolled up, they were already sitting side by side on a split log, far enough from the fire that it’s outer heat touched their faces and no further. Attendance was pretty sparse so far, but a few people were milling about. The sun hadn’t quite taken the last of it’s light away.

“How did you guys get here so fast? We’re early,” Jonas wanted to know, plopping down next to Lewis. Mitch wandered around to the far side next to Cliff, and Jonas couldn’t ignore the pang of disappointment he felt.

“We had firewood duty, so we’ve been here for like…twenty minutes already. There wasn’t anything else to do so we stayed,” Lewis explained. His thumbs were working a mile a minute punching out a text. Not wishing to be a rubber-neck, Jonas refrained from leaning over to look, but he could make out a substantial sized paragraph from where he sat. In the glow of the fire, little shadows filled the crevices of his wrinkled brow.

“What’s wrong?”

Lewis hit the send button and the text bubble pasted itself into the conversation feed. He punched off the screen and tucked the phone between his legs with a sigh.

“My dad,” he muttered, leaning toward Jonas conspiratorially. “This conversation has stretched out all freakin’ day. I guess he’s finally bored enough at home to remember that he’s concerned about what I’m doing here.” He adjusted his glasses. Over his shoulder, Jonas spotted Cliff and Mitch having a huddled exchange of their own. “I considered lying, and I did about some stuff that probably wasn’t worth lying about. But he’s giving me hell about it. Like what does he want me to do? Ask them to make things harder? It’s not my fault this place is a sham.”

It was a sham. A poorly thought-out, ill-prepared waste of time and money and writing.

“Tell him you’re going to bed. He won’t know the difference. Nobody’s called me except Sidney and I don’t know how to feel about it. Like not even Sue has called.” That was a reality he had swallowed for a few days now. That his mother wasn’t checking in. It made him wonder if she was being instructed not to. It would be nice if someone besides Sidney thought he was worth going out on a limb for.

The commons was filling up around them as people arrived in trickles. Little by little the sky had purpled in the west, but no stars came out; no moon either. Blackness was creeping in from the rear, out of the east, as if to spring on them if the fire failed. Jonas couldn’t even make out individual trees as he peered over his shoulder into the void. They wavered at the edge of the circle of light, which laid thinly across them like a lace hem. Next time, if he and Mitch arrived first, he would secure a closer seat. Anything could be lurking out there. Werewolves he didn’t believe in, but which suddenly seemed horrifingly possible; various cryptids of the bipedal and hair-bearing variety.

It helped, though, to feel Mitch sitting five feet away. It helped more than he cared to admit. Would help more if he was right beside him.

Jonas tapped on Lewis’s knee, leaning in even closer than they had before. “What happened after you guys left the laundry room?”

He wasn’t exactly worried that Cliff had been angry about having to come spring them out of a situation, but Mitch had been so desperately concerned about Jonas’s well-being that anything less would seem cruel.

Lewis checked over his shoulder that Cliff was occupied. “We didn’t talk most of the way back,” he whispered, so quiet that Jonas had to slow his breathing to catch every word. “Finally he asked me what happened, so I told him. And he said there was no excuse to take shit like that. So I said, ‘Cliff…’ And, you know…I’m thinking of all these dudes at school (him!) that I could never fight off. And I said, ‘Cliff…I can’t just make it stop like you can. I don’t have it, whatever it is. I can’t do it.’ And he said that was bullshit and showed me how to punch somebody in the face to ensure maximum blood gushing.”

Knowing that he probably hadn’t been meant to overhear what Cliff had said back in the laundry room, Jonas made the decision right then to omit it from whatever he might say.

“But dude! What about you? Mitch jerked you out of that place like he was gonna beat your ass in the car.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t as bad as it looked, I promise. But Lewis, we have to stay away from that idiot at all costs. If Mitch gets into it with him, he’s going to get the cops called on him.”

At the last second, Jonas caught the sound of desperation in his voice. He swallowed, embarrassment pinching at his cheeks. And now Lewis was looking him in the eyes like he could read Jonas’s thoughts through them.

“Oh my god. You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said, not so much asking as realizing. “You guys are really over it. You’re friends now.”

Jonas nodded, swallowing again. He couldn’t seem to swallow enough. And his cheeks still twinged, but he couldn’t have said why. Maybe the fire was finally getting to him. He cast his gaze out over the milling crowd that had accumulated since they had arrived; that stare was too much. It looked like it might see things he couldn’t see himself.

“Yeah. What abou--”

Lewis’s phone blared out some generic ring tone.

“Oh no,” he keened in agony. “It’s my dad.”

The whining caught Cliff’s attention, and his hair swished like a skirt as he turned to check out the ruckus behind him.

Lewis looked from the phone to Jonas in desperation as another round of the tone started. “Well, answer it or don’t. What’s he calling for? It’s pretty late.”

“I don’t know,” he whimpered. “But if I ignore it now he’ll just call tomorrow morning. He never lets a missed call go.” He cringed like someone was sticking a fork in his ribs. “What does he want? I’m already here. Isn’t that enough? Plus, I’m still not over that crap he said in the car.”

Out of nowhere, Cliff snatched the phone out of Lewis’s hand and got to his feet, leaving Lewis floundering with his hand full of air.

Cliff swiped the green icon and Lewis was out of his seat.

“Hello?” he said, putting the phone to his ear like it was his own. Lewis made grabs for it, but you didn’t have to be very agile to dodge a attempt from Lewis, so Cliff just turned away. “No, this is Cliff….Well, who ya lookin’ for?…Lewis?? Who the hell-- Oh! Red. Yeah, no this is his number.”

They went in circles, Lewis grabbing and reaching, and Cliff spinning out of reach without effort or thought. On the other end of the bench, Mitch cackled like it was the funniest thing he had ever seen.

“Gimme that you nut…”

“And you are?…Oh, izzat right? Well, Pops, it pains me ta say this, but he ain’t gonna be coming to the phone right now. Matter’a fact, he won’t be comin’ to the phone much at all this summer,” Cliff explained, cordial as you please, but with an air that brooked no argument.

Lewis made a particularly deft lunge for the phone, only for Cliff to snatch his wrist out of the air and hold it at arm’s length. Lewis knocked at the fingers latched around him, but it might as well have been an iron shackle.

“Y’see, when you put him on that bus, you handed ‘im over ta me. I’m his partner. An’ I’m here’n you ain’t. An’ if anybody’s gonna be puttin’ in their two cents on whether’r not he’s doin’ enough man-related shit around here, I feel qualified, bein’ somethin’ of a man myself, ta do it.”

Lewis had given up the way a punctured bouncy castle gives up. Sagging at the knees and shoulders, he could only watch in limp submission. Mitch, when Jonas looked over to check, had stars in his eyes. He gazed at Cliff like he was not only a genius, but an idol. A legend. And frankly, Jonas didn’t hate this, even for Lewis’s sake. His dad needed a reality check and a lesson taught and someone to lay down the law. And if this was how it had to happen, then that really sucked, but maybe he should have taken the hint sooner.

“Thank ya for yer time…but we are in the middle ‘a something very masculine right now, an’ anyway, my boy can’t be foolin’ with the phone too much on account ‘a he’s got a blister on his hand from choppin’ wood.”

Jonas spewed with pressurized laughter because that was absolutely true, and he knew it without the evidence. The scowl that Lewis threw him made it funnier.

“Uh-huh…yeah…aaalrighty, Pops. Thank ye fer checkin’ in, but you’ll git him when I give him to ya. Toodleloo.”

Cliff released Lewis’s hand and hung up the phone, which he then flipped into the air for Lewis to catch in a fumbled panic.

“That oughta do it,” he said, taking his seat. Mitch slapped him on the back. “Now siddown and git that look off yer face. We all knew yer a man, an’ that’s majority.”

Lewis did sit down, only because there was nothing else to do. He looked like he’d been abducted by extra-terrestrials, had his brain probed, and been deposited back on earth. “What am I supposed to think right now?” he asked Jonas blankly.

“I really don’t know,” Jonas shrugged, half way to laughing. “Maybe let your dad be the one asking that question.”

Someone threw an illegally smuggled firecracker into the fire, prompting a lovely if not startling series of blinding explosions that summoned Chris and every other presiding adult from out of the shadows. Once the pops and crackles had burned out, they were treated to a lengthy Smokey the Bear type lecture about preventing forest fires, and that explosives were not approved items. And they took it about as seriously as a lesson in sex ed.

”I wish I had thoughta that,” Mitch said, staring at the fire like a oracle. “That was pretty damn good. Good idea. Fire.”

No matter how frantically the pragmatic cortex of Jonas’s brain waved it’s red flag at Mitch’s disregard for fire safety, his chest gave a couple of throbs. Apparently his heart thought that was kind of precious. Which was stupid.

“Speakin’a unapproved, illegal shit,” Cliff said. Jonas leaned around Lewis and beheld Cliff digging in his pocket. “Who’s in?”

There was a spectrum of reactions to seeing the rolled white tube pinched between his fingers.

“Hell yes! This question ain’t for me. I am all the way in!” Mitch hollered. Jonas had never seen him this jazzed about anything in his life. “I thought you said you were outta this stuff?”

“Fuckin’ had to, didn’t I?! This is the last survivin’ scrap of my plants, ‘cept the roots themselves. This little fucker’s been in witness protection since I learned I had to come here. Like hell I was gonna show up without at least one.”

Mitch lurched forward, face like a kid at Christmas, and found Jonas looking sweaty. “Joey?”

Oh, crap. Drugs? Weed was a pretty small time drug, but still. ‘A gateway drug’ Dean called it. ‘Opens the door. Leads you away from right thinking’. Jonas couldn’t even pretend he didn’t understand what he was feeling. He was scared. Scared of what would happen to his mind and body. Scared that right now that ever-lurking moment of drug-fueled peer pressure that every teen is always warned about was upon him. Ooga-booga! Say no to drugs!

And scared to say no with Mitch looking at him like that.

“Uhh…I dunno.”

Cliff drew forward, almost into Lewis’s face. He held the joint under their noses and rolled it between his fingers enticingly. “Red--”

“I’m in.”

“Lewis!”

Cliff grinned proudly, patting Lewis on the jaw. “Atta boy.”

Lewis turned toward Jonas slowly with his face warped by apology, but, oddly, given that he knew his friend to be an evergreen do-gooder, he didn’t seem sorry enough.

“Jonas. I’m tired of staying in the lines all the time. It’s not getting me anywhere. My dad sent me here because he thinks there’s something about me he doesn’t like. Well, I’m going to give him something not to like.”

Jonas couldn’t believe his ears. He also couldn’t believe that Lewis of all people had passed him in the race to rebellious experimentation.

Seeing that he was on the verge, Lewis leaned into his line of vision, forcing them to look each other in the eye. “Think of it this way. If you say no to this out of fear of Dean, then Dean is here with us now. He’s winning, Jonas. And think of what that means for your future. Will you ever be able to live a life, even ten thousand miles away, where Dean isn’t still making your choices for you?”

Sidney would do this, he realized as he sat frozen with the scales of reason tipping back and forth in his head. Everyone who was staring at him now would too, apparently. Maddy wouldn’t. Not because she was afraid of some parental crack down, but because it did not coincide with her own morale. Which meant that everyone he knew had taken their lives by the horns. Everyone had learned to exercise the innate gift of free will.

And there Jonas sat, in dead last, feeling like he was still in the process of hatching from an egg.

His gaze slid over Lewis’s shoulder and caught Mitch, who was on the edge of his seat like this was the drama of a lifetime. Their eyes slotted together, and there was that intense depth that had so frightened him in the beginning. The same intensity that used to force him to look at Mitch’s shirts to avoid being destroyed bit its power. But, as it turned out, it wasn’t the power of destruction they had; it was the power of persuasion, the power of temptation.

Oh, heck.

“Okay.”

Mitch lit up like the dynamite from earlier. Cliff and Lewis were already on their feet and stepping over the log, making a bee line for the dark maw of the trees behind them. Things did not seem real, and yet the seemed more real than Jonas could stand. His insides fizzed as he got up and trekked after their retreating forms. And as he tried to beat a path over a ground he couldn’t see in fading light, he started to feel the potency of what Lewis had said merge into his bloodstream.

Jonas had missed out on so many standard teenage experiences, not just because of Dean standing guard over his purity like the freaking Eye of Sauron, but because of his own unfortunate nature: Chunky kid with too many freckles and not enough charisma to make up for it. Sidney had slurped up all the congeniality in the womb and left him with sensibility, which was the Raisin Bran of personality traits. Legal adulthood was upon him already, and he was about to enter college with a great many unchecked milestones, good and bad.

Maybe this was happening for a reason. Maybe, finally, Dean was right. This really could be the thing that changed his life.

“Freakin’ out?”

Jonas nearly jumped out of his shoes. Mitch was suddenly right behind him like a massive shadow. His many white teeth cut through the dark like the Cheshire cat grin in Alice in Wonderland.

“Cripes! You freakin’ scared me!” Jonas recalled his earlier fears about cryptids and other boogers in the dark, and all he could see right now were teeth and eyes. “Is that you, you freak?” He threw out a hand, relieved when it made contact with Mitch trim waist.

“Who the hell else would it be?” Mitch laughed.

“I don’t know, but you should see yourself right now. You look like the Devil.”

“That handsome, huh?” Mitch made a purring sound in his throat, and Jonas started to sweat, but it was a summer night.

“More like deranged, but sure.” Jonas tried to play it cool. Lewis and Cliff were nothing but the sound of crashing brush and the odd voice ahead of them, the only beacon he had to follow because they were not, as far as he could tell, going in the direction of their cabins.

“Ya don’t gotta do nothin’ ya don’t wanna do, Joey. Like I’m gonna smoke the shit outta that thing, make no mistake about it. But I just wanted you to come.”

Hearing the voice of reason come out of Mitch’s mouth was a trip every time. It made Jonas’s embarrassment worse knowing that Mitch felt like he had to reassure him that it was fine not to want to partake, as he clearly didn’t.

“I’m still thinking about whether or not I want to, “ Jonas snapped, throwing up a protective shield of callousness. “What if we’re murdered out here and we’re all too fried to do anything about it? Haven’t you ever seen a horror film?”

“Have I seen a horror film…” Mitch retorted. “Joey, I’ve seen every fuckin’ horror film. That’s how I know what to do if somethin’ horrifyin’ happens. They wanna get a piece of you…they gotta tango with me first!” He charged ahead and left the ground in a flying kick. “Hiyaah!”

A thin swizzlestick of a branch snapped off the side of a tree, and Mitch landed in a defensive stance.

“Wow, thanks Jackie Chan,” Jonas deadpanned as his chest throbbed again and he beat back the urge to laugh hysterically.

Apparently fire was the theme of the night because when they finally caught up to Cliff and Lewis, Cliff was attempting to use his lighter to strike one up in the middle of the clearing.

“Goddamn piece’a shit Bic lighter. I ain’t buyin’ these no more. Imma have Scratch hook me up with a good one from the store when I git back. If Javi can get all the cigs he can smoke, I can git a better lighter. Boss, gimme yers!”

Mitch flung his own lighter toward Cliff and in a few sparks, tiny orange flames were struggling to stay alive in their kindling house. Cliff got on his hands and knees to give it the breath of life, while Lewis fussed at him not to catch his hair on fire.

As there were no convenient benches out here, they had to sit on the hard, pebbled ground. Lewis took his place across the fire from him. Mitch on his right. Cliff on his left. The fire grew in strength incrementally, illuminating all their faces. They listened to it crackle for a while, and then Cliff rose and walked over to a shrub outside the circle.

“What’re you doing?” said Lewis. When Cliff turned around he was brushing the leaves and twigs off a six-pack of beer and a bottle of wine.

“Ohh, shiiit!” Mitch cried, happy beyond words as Cliff handed the six-pack down to him. “Fuck, I think I’m gonna cry. Booze and weed, man. You shouldn’t have. Yer the best friend a guy could ask for. Joey, trade me places. I wanna sit next to my best friend.”

They traded spots.

Mitch tore a beer off for himself and passed the remaining cluster to Jonas. Well, this, at least, was more palatable than smoking. Maybe he could start with that and still appear to be on board here. He tore one off and passed the rest to Lewis.

“Go ahead an’ hand that shit over here. We done been through this. Yer just gonna waste it,” Cliff ordered, snapping the fingers of his out-stretched hand.

Jonas whirled on Lewis. “You’ve already been drinking?”

“Well, I--”

“No,” Cliff interrupted, chuckling. “He ain’t been. He took one sip an’ about keeled over. Barely swalluhed it.”

Lewis glared at him as he passed the beers over. “I was GONNA say I tried it and didn’t like it, but thanks for doing all my talking for me today.”

Jonas’s attention was drawn to his left as Mitch popped open his can, tipped it back, and took a deep swig. His long neck curved back, exposing his throat. He drank like he meant to take the whole can down while Jonas watched the shadowplay across his adam’s apple.

“Fuck…” he gasped, coming up for air. “Missed this.”

Beer had never, not once, appealed to Jonas. The idea even. The look of it in television ads, the pissy color, the foamy head, the type of people who enjoyed it. There wasn’t a selling point for him. Watching Mitch thoroughly enjoy it might have been the closest he had ever come to even wondering. And as he looked at the beer can in his hand, it seemed the wondering was over.  

He popped the tab, aware of the silence it commanded, the eyes on him from all sides, and sipped it like a coffee.

It wasn’t even room temperature at this point--it was hot. It tasted like it looked and smelled. Mankind had been drinking this crap by the barrel for centuries, and for what?

Whatever expression he was making when the can came away made Mitch laugh so hard he fell on his back in the grass. “It tastes like dog urine!” Jonas declared, wiping every last remnant of it from his lips with his wrist.

“My thoughts exactly,” Lewis chimed. “In a world where you can drink anything--”

“Ah-ah!” Cliff tutted. “Don’t be a hater. We done talked about this. Snakes come outta the woods ta bite haters on the ass.”

Lewis drew his knees up and peered around the dark forest floor, whispering, “Oh, god.”

Mitch sat up finally and scooted closer to Jonas. He took the full can of rebuked beer from Jonas’s hand gently and sat it in the dirt a few feet away. “It’s okay, Joey. I’ll drink it later. You wanna try the wine?”

“Does it taste better than beer? I mean, I don’t see how it couldn’t, but…does it?”

Mitch’s lips twisted in thought. “Totally different taste, but ya might like it better. It’s sweeter. Kinda fruity. Waaay more alcohol content, though.”

Eh. What the hell.

“Alright. Sure, I guess.”

Wine, as it turned out, was not the grape juice adjacent situation they made it out to be in movies and books. It was vinegary with a wang that had Jonas wincing. Warmth spilled down his throat after it, heating his core like a nuclear reactor. So maybe this answered the question of whether or not he would be a wine person in life (probably not), but that fire-filled feeling was a good one; it felt like bravery. He opted to stick with it for something to do with his hands.

Lewis and Jonas watched Cliff light the joint between his lips like they were witnessing the signing of the Declaration. The cherry flared and Cliff took the inaugural hit.

When the released the thick fog from his lips, he said, “Been countin’ down the seconds to this moment. Swear ta God.”

“Wait a minute. Where are you getting alcohol? We’re in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere?”

Mitch leaned in close to Jonas. “Yer friend just cursed pretty bad,” he breathed in Jonas’s ear. Hot breath slithered down his neck while the skin of his jaw prickled with gooseflesh, causing him to shiver violently.

“Yeah, he cusses kind of a lot sometimes. It’s fine,” he answered, turning his head into the conversation. “What’s the matter? You never seen a nerd cuss before?”

He wagged his head, heavily. “Huh-uh.”

Jonas would have bet all the money in the world Cliff was going to pass the joint to Mitch for a secondary demonstration and because of best friend privilege. But he didn’t. He leaned toward Lewis, holding the thing in his fingers like it was made of gold, and handed it off at mouth level.

“’Kay, hit it, hold it, an’ let it out slow. Don’t suck it down too fast, now. You’ll git to chokin’ like last time.”

At first, Lewis seemed to take his instructions very well. The fire crackled as he followed the steps one at a time, cautious, verging on anxious. He hit it. He held it, he coughed like he had the Black Death.

Cliff was ready for it. He rolled Lewis forward and hammered on his back with an open hand. “Ah hell, you’ll git the hang of it, Red. Don’t worry. Yer little nerd lungs ain’t hand nothin’ but Albuterol and Mentholatum, poor bastard.”

Jonas laughed to himself and took a swig of wine from the bottle, which he apparently had all to himself.

Mitch finally got the coveted joint in his possession and hit it like it was sacred peyote.

“I think,” Cliff announced importantly as a quiet descended, “that it is time fer me ta tell y’all about these woods.” He took a silly huge gulp of beer and twisted the can into the dirt. “They’s haunted--”

“BULLCRAP!”

Cliff craned his head back in agony. “Fer the love ‘a shit! Can you let us have a good time, just fer a second?”

Jonas was already about to spew wine and pee his pants he was chuckling so hard. Cliff and Lewis were like an Abbott and Costello act. But there was no real heat in it, and that was the curious part. It was like they had known each other their whole lives.

“As I was sayin’… These woods is fulla spooks. Why do ya think they shut the place down back in ninety-five.”

“Because it wasn’t up to code?”

“’Cause it’s plagued by evil!” Cliff shouted for dramatic flair. Having received the joint a second time, he handed it off to Lewis, who puffed at it cautiously. “Back in the day, long-ass time ‘fore it closed down, there was a drownin’ up here. Some nerdy little mental case who couldn’t swim got shoved in the lake an’ never come up again. Workers was fuckin’ in a hayloft ‘r some shit. Never even knew. His ole mama got so fire-eatin’ pissed she come down here’n killed the whole slew of ‘em. Got her own head lopped clean off her shoulders for’er troubles.”

“That is the plot of Friday the 13^th!” Lewis accused, but there was something sluggish about his words. His face did not communicate his usual outrage.

Jonas felt great. This whole idea was turning out to be the stress-reliever he needed. Lewis, hilariously, was getting the hang of weed smoking and this wine business wasn’t half bad once you knew what to expect.

“You believe in ghosts, Joey,” Mitch asked, crumpling his second can of beer, which had previously been Jonas’s.

Jonas swiped his tongue along his teeth to clear the wine from his last drink. “Hmmmm… I think it’s possible. But I’m spekticl…speciall…skep-tic-al…about evidence and stuff. I mean just ‘cause we can’t figure out how to mea--”

“Time’s up, nerd!” Mitch interrupted. “Let’s test it right now.” He straightened up, addressing the forest at large. “If there’s a ghost here, grab Cliff’s ass!”

Lewis fell into a case of the chuckles, and for this, he had his joint confiscated. “Give that here! You done had more’n yer share. Jonas ain’t even got a puff.” The joint was suddenly being presented to Jonas. “Want a go at this?”

Jonas looked at the half of Cliff’s face that he could see and the smoke slithering out of the end of the joint. And then, like a child, he looked at Mitch, his only source of guidance in these uncharted waters.

Arriving at some decision, Mitch smirked and took the joint out of Cliff’s hand. “Wanna taste it first?”

“How do you t-uh, taste it it without smoking it?”

“Ya shotgun it.”

“Shotg--w-whatsat?”

He didn’t know how he had missed it coming, but there was suddenly a hand on the junction of his neck, pulling him forward. He watched the profile of Mitch’s face as he took a draw of the joint, studied the shape of his angular jaw and the swath of light stubble in the firelight. Maybe the wine was getting to him. Was he still moving forward? Or was Mitch coming to him?

Mitch faced him and his eyes dropped to Jonas’s lips. That was where the whole world began and ended--the inch between their faces.

“Breathe,” Mitch whispered, a cloud of smoke crashing into Jonas’s mouth as he spoke.

Jonas parted his lips obediently, drawing air. “Breathe it slow,” Mitch coached, giving him his hit with every word. “That’s it.”

He was so close Jonas could feel the vibration of his words on his lips. Pungent heat washed into his mouth and down his throat and into his lungs. It tasted like nothing he had ever tasted before. It was the heat he liked, more than the flavor. Like the wine.

But soon enough, Jonas’s lungs were at capacity, and Mitch was drawing back. “Hold it for a few. Then let it out slow.”

He didn’t cough as Lewis had, which may have had something to do with the method of delivery, but it still felt like a triumph. And when the world came crashing back around him, the fire was crackling loudly into the silence. An owl hooted. Lewis’s eyes were shut and it looked as if he had missed that whole scene.

But Cliff had seen it all. And he was still staring.

“I’m gonna…go pee.” Jonas put the bottle on the ground and felt his bladder throb. He pushed off from his criss-cross position and immediately staggered.

Mitch’s hand shot out and grabbed him by the shirttail. “Woah, you good?” he laughed.

“Yep. I’m good. Great actually.”

And he wandered into the woods, shoulder-checking a tree.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

If Cliff was waiting on Mitch to swoon or some shit, they were all gonna be here till they were skeletons. Mitch could see him staring from the corner of his eye, so he swiped Jonas’s wine--alarmed by how light it was--and took a swig.

“What? Fucker.”

Cliff grinned at him like a fuckin’ Jack o’ lantern. “Nothin’.”

“Good.”

That damn owl hooted again. Lewis was over there starin’ at the fire like it was giving him visions of the future. Mitch loved doing shit like this, but with Cliff and Javi and Scratch. Maybe they shouldn’t have done it with Joey and Lewis. He was getting tipsy and Mitch was a getting high, and suddenly he could barely read the air between them, not that he had been too great at it before.

“It’s just that I think you coulda done it.”

“Done what?” Mitch wasn’t really grumpy, but it was the best armor he had.

Cliff threw up a dismissive hand. “Fine. Act like a shithead,” he said, pitching his voice low since they didn’t know how far away Joey was and Lewis was (in a physical sense) still here. “But ya weren’t lookin’ at it from where I was sittin’.”

And this was another thing. How did he even talk about this with Cliff? It was hard enough with Javi sometimes. He was embarrassed he had put himself in such an intimate position with him right there.

“You poor, poor idiot,” he whispered, shaking his head. “Ya can’t even help yerself, can ya?”

Inebriated, Mitch wagged his head. “No.”

To Mitch surprise, Cliff scooted on his ass and inch at a time until he was right beside him. He slung an arm around his slouched shoulders. The joint lay on a leaf, pinched out for now since everyone was already riding on it anyway.

“I just want ya to know,” he said as Mitch stared at the spot where he figured his eyes were, “that even if we leave here an’ ain’t nothin’ different…” Mitch’s  throat tightened at how possible that seemed, “yer still a dumbass bitch--”

“You motherfucker!” Mitch wrestled Cliff to the ground and pretended to choke him while he laughed at the attempt. Alright, so he kinda needed that: a little comedic relief

“Cliff?” They cut the horseplay out and looked up at Lewis, who was squinting at their little fire like it was the sun. “I think the…fire’s gettin’ too cold.”

He tilted toward it like he was going to look down the center of it or something, but Cliff shot out a hand and snatched him by the back of the shirt, yanking him back.

“Wooaah, now. You git any closer an’ that hair ‘a yers is gonna go up like a fuckin’ hay stack. Here.” He picked up a couple twigs off the ground and threw them in. “That better?

Lewis let himself be guided back onto his ass. His eyes stared at nothing, but Mitch knew from experience: just because there was nothing there didn’t mean he wasn’t seeing anything.

“Cliff…I’m right here…but…in my head…I see space.”

“Oh, buddy,” Cliff said, full of sympathy. “It’s hittin’ ya. An’ it’s gonna gitcha good too, if yer goin’ straight fer outerspace.” To Mitch’s utter surprise, Cliff pulled the shirt off his own back and moved to spread it across the ground like a pallet. “Just lay yerself right down there, Red. Yer gonna go fer a little ride now.”

He started to guide him down to lay parallel to the fire. “S-slow down. I gotta go slow!”

“A’right. Go slow.”

“This is crazy. Sometimes I can’t see you. I can’t see any of this. I know where the stars are. I found ‘em. They’re behind my eyes.”

“That’s great, buddy.”

“Holy shit,” Mitch laughed. “He’s really trippin’. Maybe these nerd ain’t built for this stuff.”

Cliff didn’t answer. He was leaning over Lewis’s prone body and picking debris out of the spread of his hair. It was weirdly…tender? Like the last thing Mitch would expect Cliff to do for anyone, except maybe one of his dogs. His hair hung down in a long, smooth curtain blocking the view of his face. What he could see, though, was that Lewis’s eyes were open and he must have been back on earth for a second, seeing Cliff leaning over him.

“You’re so…blond,” Lewis mused. “I been thinkin’ that for a long time. You’re really, really…blond.”

“Thank ye.”

The hair itself was too irresistible because he reached up and carefully twirled a ribbon of it around his fingers. “Blondie. Imma call you that.”

“A’right, Red.”

Am I hallucinatin’ too, Mitch wondered as his eyes darted between them. Cliff was notorious for the defense of his hair. Scratch could touch it; made a big show of doing it sometimes, in fact, and cut the ends when they started splitting. But it was generally off limits.

Except, apparently, for this random nerd friend of Jonas’s.

Lewis departed to other realms again and Cliff took the opportunity to untangle his hair from those fingers. When he sat back down by Mitch’s side, the first the he found was Mitch grinning at him.

“What the hell you grinnin’ at?”

“You like your nerd.”

“I do fuckin’ not. He’s the damnedest little thing.” He took the bottle of Joey’s wine out of Mitch’s hand and tipped it back. Swallowed it thickly. Watched Lewis layin’ there like a lobotomy patient. “He’s more like a pet. Pet nerd.”

Logically, Mitch had always known going in that Cliff wouldn’t hurt Lewis, but it was still a fuckin’ relief to know he was thinking of their cohabitation like that, because if he was a dick to the kid, it could jeopardize the health of his increasingly positive relationship with Joey.

Shit. Speakin’ of Joey…

The kid had been gone a while. Maybe he shouldn’t have allowed him to go off into an unfamiliar part of the woods without all his wits about him.

“Joey?” Mitch called. “You okay? Where are ya?”

Jesus Christ. Any number of tragedies could have befallen a cute chubby drunk nerd in the woods at night. Mitch was about to get his ass up and go hunting for him when the bushes rattled and he came strolling out into the clearing.

“Sorry. I had to go pretty bad and then I got lost when I turned around,” he drawled.

His spatial understanding must’ve been really fucked up because when Joey sat back down, he sat between Mitch and Cliff.

“Where’s the wine?” he asked looking around.

“I think ya had enough, Joey,” Mitch said, grinning and pulling the bottle out of reach when a very slow attempt was made to grab it.

Hilariously, Joey’s face crumpled angrily. It took every ounce of Mitch’s will power not to burst out laughing, and he almost couldn’t handle it when Joey did what he did next, which was to lean toward Cliff while glaring at Mitch.

“Lewis…I’m-I’m feelin’ pretty good about myself. I think I might be able to fight him,” he hissed loudly. Cliff was trying to keep his shit together.

“I think it’s worth a try. He ain’t all that. Look at ‘im,” Cliff whispered in Joey’s ear, playing into it.

Jonas nodded at this perfect reasoning. “I dunno, I feel…pretty strong right now. Maybe I’ve always been strong…like maybe I’ve been able to take him all along.”

Mitch was grinning so hard his face actually hurt. Joey was so adorable, even when he was making a laughable threat to possibly, maybe, beat his ass.

“Jonas, I’m over here!”

Jonas did a double take at Cliff grinning next to him, and then at looked at Lewis laying down on the other side of the fire. “I think I’m gonna do it!” he shouted to him.

Lewis went into a tailspin. “Noo! Jonas don’t! He’s got big arms!” He tried to roll onto his belly like a baby. “Remember he got Troy Hutchinson. The funeral!”

“That kid did not die, Red. An’ there wasn’t no fuckin’ funeral. Chill out.”

But true to his word, Jonas was stumbling to his feet and zigzagging a path to where Mitch sat. His fists were balled and Mitch almost pissed his pants when he noticed. Fuck, he was almost tempted to let him!

“Mif-Mitch! It’s--it’s time. I’m gunna beat you up. As punishment for everything.”

“Oh, yeah? Yer gonna beat me up, Joey?”

“Yeah I am. Yeah I am, Mi-Mitch.”

“Alright. I deserve it, yer right. C’mon. Let’s go.”

Joey raised one of those little fists and tried to hammer him over the head with it. Mitch fell into a spell of hysterics because he imagined it making a squeak toy sound when it hit him. He managed, with ease, to catch Joey’s hand, and when he leaned back out of the way of Joey’s other rogue fist, Joey fell forward and straddled his hips.

Mitch lay prone, unable to speak for laughing, as Joey gathered his shirt in his fists. “Quit laughin’!”

Mitch wheezed.

“Shut up, you…freakin--you giant jerk! I’m tryin’ to fight you!”

If Joey managed to punch him square in the mouth, Mitch wouldn’t have moved. For the first time since about ninth grade when he had first started fantasizing about it, Jonas Wagner was on top of him. His ass was grinding dangerously against Mitch’s junk and it was starting to have an effect. It was hard to ignore, even though Joey had him by the collar of his shirt and was shakin’ his shit all around.

“Apologize now!”

“Apologize…” Mitch wheezed, “apologize for what?”

“For bein’ a big dick!”

“Have I been a big dick?”

“Cliff has a big dick!”

Cliff threw a handful of leaves at Lewis. “You shut up over there! What in the good goddamn…!”

That seemed to sober things up a little, at least for Mitch. He looked at Joey sitting atop his hips all glassy-eyed and completely out of it. Some of that fabricated outrage on Joey’s cute face was real, though. This drunken self of his remembered what sober Joey had managed to overcome.

Mitch caught both of Joey’s fists in his hands and held them. He looked him in the eyes, forcing the fact of this super erotic arrangement out of his mind like a man for once.

“I’m sorry, Joey,” he murmured. It seemed harmless to take small advantage of his altered state to caress those small hands. “I know I’ve been a dick to ya and I’m sorry for it. Okay? I won’t fuck with ya anymore.” Joey sat silent and still, processing. “Do ya still wanna hit me?”

“A little, yeah.”

Shit.

“Alright. Guess I earned it. Go ahead.”

Joey raised an almighty fist up and poised it so taut it trembled with impending doom. Mitch really did brace himself. Getting hit in the face, no matter how small and delectable the fist, was no fuckin’ day at the beach. He hoped Joey didn’t go for the mouth; he liked having a full set of real teeth.

The fist hung there, quivering. Joey’s mouth was a pursed line of intent. Mitch screwed his eyes shut and pinched up his face. Ready for pain he deserved. Maybe it would make his boner go away.

But it didn’t come. He peeked an eye open. Joey was dropping his fist and frowning.

And then he delivered an open-handed smack right across Mitch’s face. Just hard enough to force his face to the side. He recovered at once, cheek stinging, to make sure Joey was okay in the emotions department, but all his expression conveyed was a resolute sense of discipline.

“There. Ya feel be--”

Smack.

“Jesus, alright!”

Relieved of his need for justice, Joey giggled. “I’m better now. I decided I cou--I couldn’t…mess up yer face too bad. It’s han-handsome.”

More than just his cheek was stinging now. Cliff let out a long, rude-ass whistle and Mitch decided he’d better get Joey home. He didn’t think he could handle anymore inadvertent teasing without revealing how badly it was affecting him. Getting slapped had taken some of the pressure off his pants, but it could come right back.

“I think I better take you home you drunkard. Before you fall into the fire.” Mitch rolled and guided Joey gently onto his side. He didn’t much protest, which led Mitch to believe he might have been sleepier than let on. Mitch had to get his ass up as soon as possible because, during the transition, he suddenly found himself tucked between Joey’s legs.

“You guys gonna be okay out here or what?” he said to cliff, pulling Joey up by the armpits.

Cliff gazed at Lewis lying on his shirt. He had a goofy smile on his face and his glasses pushed up to his forehead. “Yeah, boss. We’ll head out here in a sec. It ain’t gonna be fun gittin’ this one back in the dark.”

As Mitch guided Jonas over every rock and root in a path he couldn’t see in a direction he was only partly sure was correct, while riding on his own blitz, the last thing he heard of the other two was Lewis crying out in the dark, “I am God’s marionette!”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- --- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

They almost tripped and broke their necks coming through the door. Thank god they had left some lights on.

Mitch dragged Joey over to the fridge and pulled his half bottle of water out of it. “Here. Drink some water before bed, Joey. Ya don’t wanna pass out with nothin’ but wine in your stomach.”

Joey leaned against the counter and accepted the drink put into his hand. It missed his mouth initially and some of it dripped down his chin.

“’M sorry I had to slap you,” he slurred. Mitch laughed a little because he wasn’t sorry for slapping him; he was sorry he had to.

“It’s okay, Joey. I’ve taken worse. And I had it comin’.”

Joey frowned, swaying where he stood. “Mmmyeah, but…it was j-jerk-Mitch I wanted ta hit. But I had ta hit you.”

Taking Mitch by total surprise, Jonas fell against him. At first, Mitch figured that, being smashed, he had lost his balance. But when Joey’s arms clambered their way around his waist, Mitch froze. Joey’s cheek nuzzled into his chest, sugar sweet, and he hummed a little chord of contentedness that thrummed through Mitch’s ribs.

“Trust me. Jerk-Mitch felt it, okay?” Mitch let his hands rub at Joey’s back. Warm liquid amber was filling his chest at the sensation of Joey’s soft body pressed against him. He smelled like his own brand of sweetness and the ashen heat of fire. “Am I getting’ this hug for a reason?”

He had to talk. He had to talk so his thoughts couldn’t run away with him.

Joey was almost asleep standing up. His eyes were shut and he swayed to and fro there with Mitch in his arms. “Mmm,” he grunted. “Feels safe right here. Feels…good. You smell good.”

Mitch’s head thudded against the fridge door. His eyes fell shut against an onslaught of pleasure streaking down the core of his abdomen. Restraint was slipping out of him every second.

He’s drunk, pal. Don’t even think about it.

Mitch pulled the water out Joey’s hand and screwed the cap on quickly. It came with them as he spun Joey around by the shoulders and guided him toward his bedroom door.

“Where we goin’?”

“Takin’ you ta bed,” Mitch said.

At the doorway to his room, Joey tried to throw out his hands and block himself from being shoved inside. For once, Mitch didn’t find it funny. He pulled Joey’s arms to his side with a clipped sigh and forced him to sit on the bed.

“I don’t want you to get arrested,” he slurred, as Mitch crouched down to untie his shoes. He placed his water on the bedside table in case he needed it in the night.

“Well…I’m gonna try not to be,” he reassured, offering a small smile. He pulled Joey shoes off and then his socks, and waited. The warm weight of pleasure that had welled up inside him persisted, but it no longer seemed like a high he could ride on. It was heavy as a bowling ball and hurt his stomach, throwing a tantrum inside, begging to be satisfied, but unable to be.

“Lay down, Joey. I gotta go to the bathroom.” He put a hand on Joey’s chest and pushed him back, scooping the dead weight of his legs onto the bed. He started to walk away, but Joey grabbed his hand and toyed with it as he looked up at Mitch with those glassy, heavy-lidded green eyes. His mouth was open just a fraction and even the way his lungs were taking a breath was too much for Mitch in this moment.

Joey looked like he was about to say something, but before he could get it out, Mitch tore his hand away and strode out of the room, slamming the door.

He went to the bathroom and locked himself inside, yanked down his pants and flipped on the shower, barely able to keep himself from jumping in before it was hot. He jerked off, rinsed, then jerked off again when it felt like he still had one in the chamber.

No more getting Joey drunk, apparently.

Chapter Text

At ten o’clock the next morning, everyone was summoned to a meeting in the commons. Jonas’s stomach was squirming with anxiety as he stood beside Mitch. The message hadn’t said what this was regarding, but to Jonas’s hungover logic in tandem with his guilty golden child complex, how could this not be about them?

Everything was silent. Some people were bored stiff. Mitch, for example, was standing there with his arms crossed and a trademark glower. Cliff too. The wind whipped his shirt like a flag against his body and his hair flew into his face.

Lewis was like Jonas, stiff in the shoulders, face carefully neutral as if to convey his innocence in whatever this was about.

Chris was quiet. He looked like crap. There was a megaphone dangling from one hand, while the other massaged his forehead. Counselors stood on either side of him, but they had been standing around waiting for him to speak for so long that several of them had sat down.

Finally, Chris took a fortifying breath and stuck the thing in front of his mouth.

“Alright, announcement numero uno. To the unknown person who has been breaking into my personal vehicle and taking the…” the California flag billowed into the pause, “beverages in there…I have to warn you that, should I catch you doing that, there will be…consequences.”

Not believing their ears, Jonas and Lewis exchanged wide-eyed stares and turned in unison to look at Cliff, who--along with Mitch--was vibrating with suppressed laughter.

“And before you get any ideas, know that I am an orange belt,” Cliff wheezed so loud that even Jonas smirked, “and will deal with aggression…swiftly.”

Mitch had to put his forehead on Cliff’s shoulder. Jonas stuck his tongue in the pocket of his cheek and bit down. He dared to have a peek up at Lewis and found his eyes shut and his lips vacuumed safely into his mouth.

“Next thing.” Chris threw out his hand. “There are no fireworks here!” he bellowed into the megaphone. “What are you people thinking?! How’d you all like to have your things searched? Hm? No? I didn’t think so. Explosives were not on the list of disallowed things because duh!” The megaphone rang out shrilly, causing people to shrink back. “Maybe we need to rehash the no-no list. No nighttime rendezvousing in the water. No sleepovers! No dipping out unnecessarily! And last but not least…” He stood up straight and glared out into the mouthpiece, “parti-ci-pation!”

Jonas’s head was mostly clear from the night before, but not for that particular frequency. His skull rattled.

“And now, I guess we have add to the list: stay out of my personal spaces, as I stay out of yours, and do nothing to endanger yourselves or one another.” He lowered the megaphone and gazed around the listless crowd while pacing back and forth. One of the counselors on the bench spat her gum out and rolled it into some paper.

“Anyone have anything else they think needs to be black listed?”

He was being facetious, but Jeremy didn’t catch it and raised his hand.

“How about, don’t leave your laundry all over the laundry room. That is a shared space.” he offered, turning to stare openly back at them.

“Actually, that’s a good one,” Chris said.

Before Jonas could recover from the audacity, which had hit him like shrapnel in the chest, Lewis was shouting from right beside him. “How about, don’t take other people’s laundry out of the washing machines and throw it all over the place?”

“O-okay--”

“How about, keep your hands to yourself?”

“Now--”

“How about, take confessions of bullying seriously?”

Jonas’s heart was pounding. Where did he look first? At Lewis, who was openly calling out the camp director as an enabler? At Chris, who faltered in his pacing to glare suspiciously in their direction?

“Y-yeah. Those are all good suggestions.”

Jonas yanked on Lewis’s sleeve. “Where is this coming from?! Are you still high?” he hissed.

“No,” Lewis whispered, shrugging. “But I’ve done weed. I’m a badass now, Jonas. If Jeremy can stand up there and make an idiot out of himself in front of everyone, why can’t I say whatever I want too?”

At the last second, Jonas swallowed the laughter that wanted to burst out of him at the comment about badassery.

“Here’s what I want to happen now,” Chris announced, clearly evading a jab aimed at his vitals. “I want everyone to spend the first half of the day out and about. I don’t care what you do. I want blood pumping and sweat pouring and at the end of the day, Shelley and I,” he pointed to the lady who’d spat her gum out and she offered a half-interested wave, “are gonna bust out the projector for movie night right here in the common area.”

Everyone turned away and began milling in different directions.

“Aaand, break!”

“It’s hotter’n the Devil’s anus out here,” Cliff complained into the center of the little circle they all made together. They peered around at the commons crawling with people like ants. He looked over his shoulder. “Tennis is open, as always.”

“Yeah, ‘cause the pavement’s like the surface of the sun,” Lewis griped.

Cliff leaned toward him, a big shit-eating smile on his mouth. “I’ll play ya fer the joint. You win, you keep it. It’s yers.”

Lewis quirked a brow. “And if you win?”

“Yer on dinner duty.”

Lewis gulped like he was choking down an egg. Jonas tracked a bead of sweat dripping down the side of his face, unable to believe that either of these two criteria were worth sweating over.

“Fine. Deal.” Lewis shook the stained up hand that Cliff had stuck out between them. “You guys wanna double team?” he asked, looking between Mitch and Jonas.

Jonas caught eyes with Mitch, down for whatever since it was “mandatory.” What he didn’t like was the impish smirk spreading across Mitch’s face. “Sure,” he said. “Me ‘n Cliff, you two nerds.”

“Are we playing for anything,” Jonas asked him.

Mitch took on a far away look, shifting from foot to foot. Sweat began to gather in the trench between Jonas’s shoulder blades. Why was he constantly putting his fate in Mitch Mueller’s hands?

“’Kay, I got it.” Jonas got that marrow-deep oh-no feeling. “I win…we do what I have planned tonight. And no! Ya can’t know what it is first,” he blurted, seeing Jonas’s mouth fly open. “And if you win…?”

The floor opened for Jonas to make his demands and his brain went in frantic circles looking for a prize this opportunity could win him. And when he found it, the satisfaction was sugar on his tongue. It almost made the idea of a noontime tennis game at the height of summer worth it.

Almost.

“Then you tell me the name of your crush.”

Clearly, Mitch had not considered that his butt could be in danger as well. The arrogance slipped right off his face.

“Hooo, boss!” Cliff declared, amused at Mitch’s expense. “You stepped in it.”

It looked very much like Mitch wanted to turn it down. Maybe his pride was blocking the words from coming out; maybe his innate ‘game on’ instinct was too powerful. Either way, Jonas suddenly wanted to know ten times worse.

“Alright,” he conceded, resigned to it like an execution. “Deal.”

They started down the slope toward the tennis court in pairs--Mitch and Cliff a few feet ahead. Watching them closely, Jonas thought he could make out covert murmurings based on the way their heads twitched minutely toward one another. And then, very distinctly, Jonas heard the word, “…cannot…”

Lewis yanked on Jonas’s shirt. “Jonas! I cannot lose this!”

“Oh, screw you, Lewis!” Jonas hissed. “If you lose, all you have to do is slap a sandwich together! I don’t know what Mitch is planning, but it’ll involve one of two things: breaking rules or breaking laws.”

“We all got drunk and high last night around an illegal campfire. We already checked those boxes!” Lewis argued. Then he leaned it closer. “And what’s this about a crush? Does…” he pointed at Mitch’s back. “Does he have a crush on somebody?”

“Yeah, but he won’t tell me who.”

“Oh...” Lewis’s face grew distant, warping with internal disgust as if imagining an alien autopsy. “Oh my god! Can you imagine?”

“Imagine what?” Jonas whispered even quieter, hoping to god that Mitch wasn’t hearing this.

Lewis looked at Jonas, his face unreadable. He knew what Lewis was getting at here, but Lewis also didn’t know what Jonas knew about Mitch, and what he knew could be summed up by saying that...Mitch might be a healthy partner. Or at least not the worst partner imaginable. He could be very tender, and pretty selfless. He listened well for someone who was about to flunk out of school, and was considerate of others’ feelings, as long as that person mattered to him. He had a strong protective instinct and a down to earth sense of humor and…he wasn’t bad face-wise.

Cliff was jotting their names on the sign-in sheet hanging from the fence when it happened.

Chris strode by, took one look at the four of them standing there, and stopped like he had hit the end of his leash. “Doooo you guys have shorts?” He pointed at them with finger guns.

Jonas looked at the three pairs of legs, including his own. Pants across the board.

“What, you mean in our pockets or somethin’?” Mitch snarked.

“Nnnooo, I mean it’s too hot out here to play tennis in jeans. I’m going to have to insist on you guys changing into shorts before you get out there. It’s spicy today. You got shorts in your cabins?”

They looked at each other. Then they all looked at Chris decked out overenthusiastically in active-wear. Douchy sunglasses, check. Overpriced athletic shoes, check. Ridiculous bucket hat, shorts festooned with tactical pockets, sweat-drenched tank top, check check check.

Mitch sighed. “We all been here this whole time doing our thing in jeans. Why’s it matter now?”

“Well, have you played tennis?”

“God, no.”

Lewis snorted.

Chris scrutinized Mitch with an expression Jonas could spot out to sea. He’d seen it on the faces of countless teachers over the years. It was the look of an adult unsure of how to proceed in the face of Mitch’s insubordination.

“You must be Mitchell Mueller.”

Jonas held his breath. It didn’t matter what Chris said, Mitch was going to fire off every time. So when Mitch said, “You want an autograph?” Jonas laughed. Mitch turned to look at him, smirking like a prick, and Chris looked at him through those sunglasses like a disappointed fly.

“Alright,” he sighed, surrendering in record time. “You’re all getting shorts from the spare clothes closet. Sizes. Go.” He pointed at Cliff and clicked his pen out to jot their answers down on the ever present clipboard.

“Jezus christ. I dunno. Medium?”

Chris made a mark on his paper and glanced at Lewis.

“Are they elastic at the waistband?”

“...No.”

“What about the inseam length?”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Trust me, he is,” said Cliff.

“You’re getting a medium, kid.” He looked at Mitch like you look at a ladder leaning against the side of a house. “Small for you. And…” Then he looked at Jonas, and the analytical pause thereafter went on for just a smidge too long. “We’ll try XL.”

It was too hot to feel his embarrassment on the outside, so he had to make do with the internal spasm of cringe.

When Chris returned with a stack of folded khaki shorts, Jonas felt like hissing at him. They had to change one at a time in the laundromat next door and face the reaction of everyone else when they each came out. Cliff went first. His legs were pale and glistening with hair so blond it was almost imperceivable. It was well he had worn sneakers today in place of the boots he seemed to favor. All in all, Jonas expected to come off looking much worse.

Lewis was next. Jonas had seen him wear shorts on rare occasions, so it wasn’t anything special. But Cliff was enamored with the fact that even Lewis’s leg hair was red.

Mitch snatched a pair of shorts from the stack and stormed off in ill temper, but it was understandable under the circumstances.

When Mitch came out of the side door, he was a sight to be sure.

“HOLY FUCKIN’ SHIT!!!” Cliff bellowed. He fell into a gut clutching bout of hysterics while Mitch attempted to set him on fire with his eyes.

Jonas had seen Mitch’s legs for the first time the day of their swim lesson, but this was not what he remembered. Then, they’d been bunched up and hidden under the surface.

Mitch had legs for days. Days! They were long and skinny and spider-like. Pale as the moon with a covering of auburn hair. They made the shorts look about six inches long. His thighs had a some visible muscles. Running from cops and responsibility would do that to a guy, Jonas supposed.

What Jonas hadn’t counted on--but wasn’t surprised by--was how small the shorts ran. They hugged his own butt and thighs like the shorts they wore in gym, and were hardly any longer. Because God forbid two more inches of fabric get in the way of their movement. He yanked and pulled at the hems, trying to maximize every bit of their length, and was still doing it when he walked out into the blazing light of day.

A long, lewd wolf whistle zipped through the air as the door slammed behind him. It made Jonas flush for reasons that were less clear.

“Goddamn,” Mitch hollered as Jonas traipsed to the other side of the court with Lewis. Even as he walked, the shorts bunched between his thighs. “Joey, it’s a tennis court. You can’t bring that cake out here!”

Jonas picked up his racket, fighting not to grin like an idiot. “You’re gonna pay for that one Mueller.”

“Can’t wait for you ta fuckin’ make me, Wagnerd.”

“Wow, you guys are kinda unbearable,” Lewis complained with a hair band in his mouth. He was gathering his hair to pull back. “You want your hair up, big guy?”

Jonas and Mitch watched in mute fascination as Cliff met Lewis on the other side of the net and presented him with his back. Lewis put the band in his teeth, gathered up all that golden hair and twisted it up into a tidy bunch. A few stray ribbons still whipped loosely in the breeze.

“Holy jesus christ,” Mitch swore. He fished around in his pocket frantically for his phone and snapped a picture. Jonas knew enough by now to know where it was going.

“Anybody know the rules ta this thing?” Cliff asked, taking his place next to Mitch.

Jonas looked from Mitch and Cliff to Lewis and himself. “I think the answer’s no, but for two very different reasons.”

“A’right, here it is.” Cliff dug his phone out and started punching on it. “I’m gonna set a timer fer twenty minutes. Whoever’s side ‘a the net it’s on when the timer goes off is the loser. Plain ‘n simple.” He set the phone on a bench off court. “Red, you got any amendments you wanna offer up er what?”

“Hahahah,” Lewis mock laughed. “No. Just serve it, Blondie.”

Really, it wasn’t until Jonas’s eyes were tracking that green ball as it launched into the air that it occurred to him what was at stake here. Not whatever diabolical thing Mitch had planned; at this point, he trusted Mitch enough not to embroil him in anything too hairy. But he had the chance to know the identity of Them™. The person Mitch had once called ‘perfection’. The person he probably didn’t mess with or hassle. The Person. The One. Jonas had to know. And he was going to fight for it as hard as Mitch was going to fight to keep it a secret.

So when that ball came sailing over the net, Jonas dove for it and sent it whizzing right back.

To Lewis’s credit, he carried his share of the burden, fighting to keep the ball away like his life hung in the balance. He was quicker than Jonas, but he didn’t have Jonas’s thrust power. Cliff had incredible thrust, if limited reach, and Mitch had the full package. His freakish anatomy lent itself to devastating opponenthood. Every angle was doable and every distance was within reach, and years of punching people had honed his swinging muscles perfectly.

The sun didn’t give a crap about what they wanted or didn’t want. It beat down on them like it was blood sport. Jonas’s thighs were so slick with sweat they no longer chaffed. His shirt clung to his back and his hair to his forehead. Every time he thought about slowing down for a minute, he remembered that he didn’t know where they were in within the time allotment, and if he let the opportunity slip through his fingers he would never forgive himself. Why wouldn’t Mitch just tell him? Jonas would never dream of having a laugh about it! As Carmen’s cuck, he didn’t have a right to!

“Jonas…” Lewis gasped, running to whack the ball as it struck the pavement between them, “you’re…slacking on me, man! I can’t…do anymore!”

Jonas left the ground to counter it as it went careening over his head. “And you…think…I can?? Also…” whack, “you gotta stop making…that noise…when you swing!”

“Hyeauhh!!” The ball went sailing back over the net. Jonas keeled forward in laughter and put his hands on his knees. “I can’t! It turns out…that’s the sound…you’re body makes when you’re…hyeauhh!…about to die…of boiled guts in a…tennis match!”

“You ain’t gonna die…’fore you…cook my dinner, carrot top!” Whack!

“If I cook your dinner…” Whack! “You may die!”

“Impossible!…I got a…stomach like a…trash compactor!”

Mitch howled, nearly tripping as he dove for the ball Jonas sent him. “He ain’t lyin’! He can eat a…fuckin’ cigarette.”

“Hyeauhh!!” Whack! “How about you eat…pressurized rubber in a poly-blend felt coating traveling at approximately thirty-five meters…per second, you cowboy ken doll! It’s basically what the…dinner I make’s gonna…taste like!”

“Joey…we don’t speak nerd! What’d he say?”

“He said…eat flaming tennis ball, hottie!”

“That…that is not…!”

Cliff dipped out to take a peek at the timer and Lewis tripped over his shoelace and took a theatrical tumble onto the ground. Since he wasn’t in a hurry to recover, that left Mitch and Jonas to dual it out for a time. Mitch was feeling the heat, and not the climate sort. All the levity was gone from his sweaty face as he took to sending the ball to Jonas as hard as he could. Sometimes the ball traveled so fast that it whistled past Jonas’s head, a blur he couldn’t possibly hit and had to chase down. At one point, Jonas was moving so fast, he served the ball up, swung, and missed it.

“Thirty seconds!” Cliff bellowed.

A fresh burst of heat purged from Jonas’s body through his pores. There was a chemical change to the pattern of his rabbiting heart that made it a cheerleader rather than a workout partner. He couldn’t rationalize why he wanted that name so badly, almost more than anything. More than his empathy toward Mitch, who would have to give it up unwillingly. But Jonas would console him after; tell him not to be embarrassed, if he was; tell him you can’t help who you like; the heart wants what it wants and all that. It would be painless, ultimately. Mitch would see.

“Fifteen!…Fourteen!…Thirteen!…”

“Lewis! For cryin’ out loud!” Lewis was still lying on the hot pavement like a beached fish. Jonas expected to trip over him any second, but if he did, he planned to go down on him hard in retribution.

“Ten!…Nine!…Eight!…”

Jonas had to turn and run for the back of the court in pursuit of the ball where it rebounded off the fence. His serving arm was so wrung out it felt like it was about to fall off, so when he swung the racket with everything he had left, the ball cleared the top of the net hem and not an inch more. It bounced over the edge and sent Mitch scrambling toward it with his racket out like a hot pan. And Jonas realized only too late what was about to happen.

He surged forward in a panic, feeling like he was running in water. The ball ricocheted off the court and straight up into the air, just in time for Mitch to fly out on his toes and tip it right back over the net with a centimeter to spare. It hadn’t even hit the pavement when Cliff shouted…

“Zero, losers!”

Jonas had to grab onto the net as he reached it to stop his momentum. All his muscles went lax at once and he nearly slid to the ground. Thank god that was over! Name or none.

Mitch stood on the other side of the net with his head bent back. His hair was dark and limp with sweat. Fatigue did not justify the slump in his shoulders or the way he panted like he had just outrun Death; that was relief. That was down on his knees, thanking god, kissing the hand of fate relief. If Jonas stared hard enough, he thought he could almost see the thump of Mitch’s heart pulsing in the hollow of his throat. And he was staring hard enough.

Mitch straightened up and set his sights on Jonas, who was everything Mitch wasn’t right now. He was flushed and glistening like a pool inflatable. He had matching bibs of sweat on his chest and back and his shorts were sucked up between his thighs. He was aware of all these things without looking, but Mitch had eyes for his face alone.

“Better luck next time, Wagner,” he said, smirking like the devil.

Jonas decided to match it. “Thanks, Mueller. You better hope your luck holds out, because there will be a next time.”

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

After the worst idea Lewis has ever agreed to, he and Cliff part ways with Jonas and Mitch for a while. Lewis can see them standing at a table at the kite building station in the shade, being all safe and sensible. In a shocking series of revelations, Mitch, it turns out, is not the real risk taker of his posse. It’s Cliff. Where Mitch is obviously letting Jonas set the tone of their day to day adventures, every day with Cliff is a roulette of temptation and recklessness and chaos. Lewis is very Jekyll and Hyde about it because, while his new manifesto is to ride the wave of civil disobedience this summer, his tendencies for self-preservation are not easily rewired.

Right now, for instance. Jonas and Mitch are stretching paper over sticks in the shade, and Lewis is standing with Cliff in the blazing sun as one of the only nerds in the group. Because this is not an activity for anyone with a low BMI. This is--

“Axe throwing,” their counselor lady bellows, “is not a game! It’s not a joke, it’s not funny, and the axe is not a toy!”

“Then why are we doing it?” someone mutters.

Their activity leader is Trish, and Trish looks like a women’s prison guard. She’s got a bosom like a silverback gorilla and a stern, no bullshit resting expression. There’s a back brace cinched around her girthy waist and she’s sweating like a bull. As she paces back and forth in their midst, her hands are clasped behind her back. It’s as if they’re being briefed on their drop into Vietnam.

“It’s difficult! Many of you will not land a single hit.” Her eyes touch on Lewis for a whole second. “And some of you definitely won’t.”

“You know, this is incredibly dangerous!” Lewis hisses in Cliff’s face since he insists on standing too close. “I can’t believe this is an activity that’s having a resurgence in popularity during my lifetime. Barbaric!”

Some of Cliff’s hair lifts on the breeze and caresses Lewis’s chin. He’d taken it down after tennis. Lewis has formulated that it probably doesn’t feel natural enough to be a thing he can tolerate for very long.

“I think it’s lame as hell. Ya throw an axe and it lands in a piece’a wood. Where’s the fuckin’ challenge? Who can’t do this?”

Lewis twists at the waist and levels him with a pleading look.

“Don’t gimme that face, Red. Ya got two workin’ arms. Even you can do this one.”

“Thank you for your vote of confidence, but that’s not the point. The point is…flying axes! The only way to make them more dangerous. Throw ‘em!”

They are treated to several demonstrations of delivery and posture, grip and stance. Trish could plant it with her eyes shut, landing it every time just outside the white center circle. At one point, she hurls three axes, one after another, bam, bam, bam. There is a vein of concentration bulging at her temple.

Cliff’s chest bumps his arm. “Ya think she’s got Axe Throwin’ Champ 1979 tattooed on her left tit?”

Lewis bites his lip to keep from all out grinning as he leans into Cliff. “No. Right forearm, Got the chops to win.”

Cliff wheezes as quietly as he can, hiding it behind Lewis’s head. “Inner thigh. Got wood?”

“Tramp stamp. Back that axe up.”

Lewis has to turn his head like an owl into the alcove between their heads because he has no control anymore. The sound of Cliff’s wheezing makes it worse. Tears gather in the corners of Lewis’s eyes, making him dizzy. A hand settles on his back just below his shoulder blades. Even through his shirt, Lewis can feel its strength where it sits lightly against his spine, and knows without a shadow of a doubt that it could steady him against a hurricane.

“Hey, love birds?” Trish is watching them with her hands on her hips. So is everyone else. “I hope my very important and detailed instructions on safety and protocol didn’t interrupt your sweet nothings.”

“No, ma’am. It didn’t,” Cliff replies.

“So what’d I say?”

Lewis pipes up this time because he did hear everything, and he doesn’t want Trish to have the satisfaction of Cliff leaving something out. “Wait for your whistle, do not cross the white line before the next whistle, only use your own target, do not stand directly behind the person in front of you, be aware of your surroundings.”

Trish stands there, staring at Lewis like he’s robbed her of the chance to make a laughing stock of two teenagers. “…Alright. Very good,” she concedes, stepping over to them. She squints at Cliff. “Can you see the target with your hair in your eyes?”

Her eyes cut over to Lewis who is forewarning her with a discreet shake of his head.

“Better’n you can, ma’am.”

“Hmm. Really? Well, let’s see if that’s the case.” She passes one of the axes she’s holding off to Cliff, and he takes it, bouncing its weight in his hand experimentally.

“Now, face the target fully and adjust your stance so that your feet--”

Cliff raises the axe and lets it fly right where he’s standing, flinging it away as carelessly as if he never wanted to hold it in the first place. It strikes the target and buries the forward point of its blade in the white circle. Not dead center, but damn close.

The students in the other lines start up a chorus of oohs and guffaws. Lewis himself feels a certain amount of pride open up in his chest. It’s hard not to root for Cliff sometimes, despite all the occasions he’s been an absolute motherfucker.

Trish, to the surprise of all, does not indulge this blatant act of hateful triumph with anything. In a stony silence, she storms over to the target, wrenches the axe from the wood, hands it off to Cliff handle first, and takes her place on north side of the lanes, as far from them as she can get.

Lewis steels a glance over at his partner while he’s inattentive. Not even the shadow of emotion sits on his face, as if showing the instructor up at her own game was nothing to go on thinking about.

“How do you do that?”

“It ain’t nothin’. Ya just try to git it ta flip twice--”

“Not that. I mean how do you just do everything? Without thinking about it and without second guessing yourself?”

Cliff looks at him in what Lewis has come to recognize as mild surprise. His jaw ticks to the side in thought, almost as if there’s a phantom toothpick in his mouth. “It ain’t that I can do it. I just whip it out ’n do it. An’ whatever happens, happens.”

Very sage, if a little simplistic.

“What’s it feel like ta be so smart you can build a computer that does whatever ya want it to?” he fires back, recalling something Lewis had told him some time ago about applying to MIT and being conflicted about the paths available to him: robotics engineering, NASA…

“Probably the same as it feels to rebuild an engine.” Because Cliff had paid that information back in kind.

Trish blasts the whistle with unnecessary breath pressure and axes go flying. Some arch so high they sail over the target; some smash into them with no technique at all; one hits the ground in the middle of the lane, and one buries itself in a tree beyond. Trish is shouting corrective measures at the top of her lungs. People in the lane next to theirs scatter as the axe rebounds off the target and comes flying back with a vengeance.

Cliff holds one of their axes out to him. “Don’t think about nothin’. Just do it.”

Lewis takes it. Being a fraction of the size of the one currently lodged in the chopping stump outside their cabin, it’s not as cumbersome, but its weight is still unexpected.

Is this really what his dad wants instead? Does this skill count for more than writing code and knowing math like the back of his hand? Successfully throwing this axe into a hunk of wood is the thing that will earn him points toward acceptance? Really?

Suddenly, Lewis hates this. He hates this stupid axe and that fugly target and this whole charade. He hates Trish and the line of guys two lanes down who he recognizes from the laundromat snafu. He hates that this place advertises the value of achievement, but has a clear bias for the physical kind.

He flings the axe away from him like he hates it too. It somersaults head over hilt in the air until it plants with a thwack on the line at the base of the white circle.

“Holy shit. That worked,” he exclaims, gaping in amazement. “I didn’t think of nothing, but I did get super pissed.”

They take turns hurling axes for three more rounds. Cliff is a natural despite never having done this before, and Lewis’s luck, as usual, peters out. His hits strike everywhere but the center, and they never come as close as his first attempt. Some of them don’t even land. Trish nearly blows a gasket when someone makes a throw at another lane’s target and brings everyone to a stand still while she lays into them.

“You gonna be okay for a minute by yerself?” Cliff asks. “I got somethin’ I wanna do. But I’ll find ya in a lil while.”

“Uh, yeah. Okay, sure.” He watches Cliff wander off in the other direction, figuring this must be code for having to take a dump or something.

There’s enough time for two more throws and then Trish calls it as some of the other adults start bringing in--what else?--archery equipment. How standard and predictable.

The crowd who had shown up for axe throwing begins a process of filtration by osmosis of the archery stuff itself. People leave. People stay. People arrive. Partners split up. Lines break apart and reform before canvas targets, and Lewis allows himself to be shuffled in among them since he hasn’t made up his mind if he wants to stay or not. Maybe he’ll give it a whirl. This is a more inclusive mixture of participants so he doesn’t quite stand out so much.

Trish is still the instructor for this thing, surprise, surprise. He wishes Cliff were here so they could build on the lore they had been generating about her before. None of this is any fun without him, actually. It’s one of those facts he can’t believe is true, but it’s just that: a fact.

Oof!

Somebody collides with Lewis from behind, knocking him forward slightly. When he turns around, Eric of all people is standing there looking crowded and sheepish.

“Sorry,” he says, twisting away from the rambunctious group of guys behind him. “’Cause, you know…making space for everybody in a line outdoors would be foolish.”

“Yeah. Standing still’s dumb too.” Lewis studies the line he hadn’t realized was accumulating so much behind him. It’s a grab bag of normal looking people he doesn’t recognize and a few meatheads from Sellwood. And Eric and himself, of course. “You should’ve been here for axe throwing. It was like this, but while throwing axes.”

“No thank you.”

“Where have you been?”

“Flag football,” he sings, grimacing. “Full contact.”

Now that Lewis looks him over, there’s grass in his hair and across the back of his shoulders. Wow…to be brutalized for a Velchro flag--Lewis can’t imagine. It had obviously not been this ninety pound twink’s idea to participate. Which reminds him…

Lewis tenses up and glances all around them, ears open for the distinct sound of mocking jackal’s laughter. “Where is he?” he hisses.

Eric smears his mangled hair away from his forehead. If a snapping twig were a person, Lewis thinks. “Back there.” He jabs a thumb over his shoulder, and when Lewis’s eyes follow it, they see Jeremy standing at the back of their line, hands in his pockets, yuckin’ it up with his friends, not a care in the world. His hair is whipped into a swoosh as the uniform of well-to-do trust fund kids.

And then he catches Lewis looking. A turn of the head and their eyes lock. Jeremy has the remnant of carnivorous laughter on his mouth. Lewis doesn’t tear his eyes away as he once would have.

“Take a fucking picture, Ginj,” he calls out.

Lewis rolls his eyes. Jeremy Whitten is a cartoon. He can’t be real. Nobody checks all the bully boxes. But here he is…a walking, talking stereotype.

Lewis turns back around just in time for Trish to pass off a bow to him since he’s at the front of their line. There’s a bucket jutting with arrows to his right. They’re much longer than he always thought arrows would be, and it sickens him that Cliff is not here to instill some kind of made up confidence in him.

For the second time today, Lewis humors Trish through another tutorial on posture. She’s sweating so much that he catches a drop of it falling off her chin and wants to hurl.

“Is this a life skill?” Eric says behind him as Lewis tries to replicate the hold on his bow and arrow.

“I don’t know what life skills are anymore.”

Lewis aims his arrow and tries to clear his head of all thoughts and his heart of all cares and his face of all expression. He doesn’t give a shit, he tells himself. Fuck this, fuck that. He holds it until his arm begins to shake from the strain and then lets it fly.

Initially, the trajectory seems like a real winner. It’s arcing nicely through the air, but at the last second, Lewis watches in dejection as it wobbles out of formation and everything goes to shit from there. It strikes the canvas without even puncturing it and hits the ground.

Swell.

Heh! Shit, Red. That was bad. That’s what Cliff would say if he were here. It dulls the disappointment a little, and Lewis even finds it in himself to smirk.

“Jezus, Ginj!” he hears instead. “You suck at this!”

Lewis hands the bow to Eric and begins his journey to the back of the line. A journey that takes him past everyone behind him, including Jeremy, who is delighted by his approach. He looks as if he’s itching to bite him as he passes by.

“You ever consider that your wrists are a little too limp for this kind of thing, Ginj?”

“I dunno. I’ll ask my partner to weigh in on this discussion. I’m sure you noticed the other day that his wrists are fine.” Lewis doesn’t stop to observe Jeremy’s reaction, but when no remarks come flying after him, he takes a point for himself.

From the back of the line, he watches Eric grapple with the bow as he had, trembling to pull it taught enough, hating every second of it. The rest of the line behind him grow shifty and impatient. Trish is barking at people not to point their arrows into the air unless they want to go to prison for manslaughter.

“Nerd! Gooo!”

Eric releases his arrow and it breaks away from him like a wild bird, flinging with even less grace than Lewis’s toward his target. It arrives sideways and falls to the ground like the stick it is. He passes off the bow to the next person, relieved that his obligatory turn is over, and follows in Lewis’s footsteps.

“Thanks for embarrassing me,” Jeremy says, slapping a hand down on Eric’s head as he passes by and roughing up his hair. “Every real man who has ever died is rolling in his grave.”

Eric says nothing, lips clamped together, neck stiff as a board. He tramps through the grass until he’s standing behind Lewis to do it all over again.

“I wish a portal to Hell would crack open right here and take me to a better place,” he mutters

Lewis nods because he’s had a similar yearning--within recent memory, even. But it’s been a long time since he’s thought that way. Cliff doesn’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to really. There’s nothing in the world keeping him here. There’s nothing keeping Eric either.

One quick glance at Jeremy reveals he’s distracted by the person up to bat, so Lewis takes Eric by the wrist and guides him away. “C’mon. Let’s get outta here for a while.”

Eric doesn’t argue, but he does cast a glance over his shoulder toward his partner. Lewis isn’t sure if he’s worried about a future comeuppance or being caught slipping away, but he doesn’t waste time trying to get to the bottom of it. The more distance they put between themselves and freaking archery the better.

They run for the hills. Literally. Lewis is making for the shallow hill near a copse of trees, counting on its incline to cover them once they’re on the other side. Breaking into the shade is as good as baling into the lake. The temperature drops a full ten degrees and suddenly Lewis can unsquint his aching eyes. A breeze finds them at this elevation and swiftly dips under their arms and tunnels up their shirts.

A row of tables is set up under the dappled shade of the canopy. It has a runner of clear cubicles full of myriad beads and tangles of colored bands. Lewis doesn’t care that it’s bracelet making or that every girl in camp is here doing it. Eric must not care either because when Lewis plops down on the bench, he’s right there beside him, catching his breath. No one is barking instructions or shouting spittle into their faces, most importantly. In fact, the loudest sound here is the soughing of the wind through the leaves overhead.

Eric gets into the spirit of a Jeremy free zone pretty quickly by plucking a band from the pile and sifting through a container of beads, making himself right at home.

“Already feels like I had a cantaloupe sized tumor removed from my face.”

Lewis chuckles and turns around in his seat. “Imagine being the kind of person that people liken to something like that. Embarrassing, really.” He pulls a thin black cord out of the bin and runs it through his fingers while he window shops the array of beads.

“Oh, humiliating. Too bad it’s lost on him as so many things are.” Eric’s piling up a bunch of purple beads for stringing and talking like Lewis is a figment of his imagination rather than a person right beside him. “You know, if this place were a battle of wits instead of an overrated gym class, I’d be the alpha dickhead who mocks him for eating pork rinds and Slim Jim.”

“Yeahhh,” Lewis sighs, hording the browns. “I’ve had the same thought. And so has Jonas, I guarantee it. But I learned to throw an axe today, so I’m one step closer to solving all of my problems brought on by an inadequate pituitary gland.”

“Don’t forget to put that on your college app.”

“Won’t have to. When they see that the size of my testicles has put me in a wheelchair, they’ll pay me to come.”

Eric laughs through his nose as he punches the band through the eye of a bead. His nails are painted, and Lewis only notices because he’s sitting close enough and the light strikes them just right. Because the color that’s on them isn’t really a color at all. It’s a holographic shade of nude that gets funky as he moves. Very subtle, and a good choice on his part.

“So where’s your partner? I didn’t notice him at archery and that sorta seemed like…ya know…something he might be into.”

“You’d think so, but I don’t think it is. He slipped out before it started. I don’t know where to. He’s going to love having to find me though when he gets back.”

The bracelet Lewis is fumbling his way through distractedly makes no sense. It’s alternating brown and white of all colors. It doesn’t have any letters or charms on it yet so he pulls a bucket toward him and starts pilfering through it, all the while taking note of the one Eric is making. Some of the beads have a glittery coating and some of them are shaped like stars.

“That’s a bold decision. Are you gonna wear that where he can see it?”

Eric sighs like he’d rather not, but being true to himself makes the decision not his own. “Yeah. I’ll have to make two of them, though. This one will be the decoy that he’s inevitably going to tear off my wrist, but if it survives, I’ll give it to my boyfriend.”

Lewis doesn’t miss the little glance his face receives when the word ‘boyfriend’ arrives on the scene. But Sidney is gay and several members of his robotics team are queer. Queerness is a fact of life. Some people are gay, some people are black, some people have no gender. The science of it…the diversity of the human genome…is beautiful.

And only once in his life has he had a wet dream about a boy. And since he’s never known what to make of it…it’s a fact that stays tucked away at all times.

“May they both survive.”

“May we all.”

Suddenly, Lewis realizes that here on this hill, he has a perfect view of the kite flyers. A dozen or more colored paper polygons are quiver in the air, tethered to their owners by tails studded with ribbons. Some of them are elaborate with streamers that whip around hypnotically. Some of them are sloppy as hell, all wonky shaped and too shoddy to keep in flight. And right there in the middle of it all is Jonas and Mitch.

Lewis stays quiet a minute, feeling a little guilty about subterfuge, but there they are--out in the open for anyone to stare at. This is perhaps the first time that he’s had a view of them untainted by his and Cliff’s presence.

Mitch hovers over Jonas. Not in the looming ways of old, but like he’s shielding him from the sun; like he can’t help but orbit him tightly. And Jonas seems to barely notice as he pulls back against he wind that’s yanking on their kite. In fact, that proximity almost stabilizes him. He moves with a confidence that says Mitch is a north star his center of gravity is magnetized to. They know their way around a space, around each other, without looking.

It’s actually kind of crazy to watch because it’s very apparent they have no idea it’s happening. Mitch takes over control of the lead, and immediately Jonas is holding onto his arm in a form of back-seat driving because he cannot bring himself to surrender control.

“They’re getting a long better than I thought,” Eric comments out of the blue. Frankly, Lewis had forgotten he was there. He’s followed Lewis’s gaze and worked out the puzzle of where his thoughts have disappeared to. “Can’t say I’m not shocked. That’s some Daniel and the lion’s den shit.”

“Right?” He looks down at the pile of half strung beads on his forgotten bracelet. “Sometimes it feels unreal, like one of those hyper-realistic dreams you have right before you wake up. Only…I sort of hope I don’t wake up. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean I want things to go back to how they were. For Jonas’s sake.”

“And for yours. Right?”

“Huh?”

Eric ties the strings on his so called decoy bracelet, which according to him, may not live to see the sun go down, and slides it onto his wrist. He gives it a flick to line out the beads. “Did you forget it’s your dream? You must be getting something good out of it too or you would have called it a nightmare.”

This is true. Lewis has had worse dreams. Few weirder ones, maybe. A weird dream isn’t always one you want to hurry through to the end, though. Sometimes the weirdness makes you want to stay for its own sake. Because it could never happen in real life. And the only thing that makes this the weirdest dream of his life is that it isn’t a dream at all.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

When Lewis wanders back into the commons he’s by himself. Eric had decided to make the most of his temporary freedom and, last Lewis saw, was sneaking down to the lake with a bunch of guys who didn’t seem to mind his presence. If Jeremy was looking for them all that time, he never found them. For all Lewis knows, he had taken an arrow through the eye. Although he likes the mental image of Trish tearing a switch off a tree and whooping that jackass until he cries.

The sun is past its post at high noon. He doesn’t have a watch or his phone, but he figures it must be well after two o’clock. People are starting to disperse. The crowd is thinning and a few pairs are taking off toward their cabins. Lewis doesn’t blame them. Th air has died and it’s getting hotter. The tennis equipment lay strewn about the court as if the players had been raptured. People are coming in with their kites and their tie dyed shirts; wet from the lake, and with their flag football belts still on.

He’s about to head back to the cabin alone just to get out of the sun when he sees Cliff come out of a stand of trees on the other side of the commons. Lewis wants to kick the little streak of excitement that jumps in him like a dog as he heads in his direction to meet him half way. The breeze drawn up simply by walking almost parts Cliff’s bangs enough to catch a glimpse of his eyes, but it’s never quite enough. Always just a tease.

They stop in front of each other. Lewis can feel the way his mouth refuses to frown. It hangs there on the verge, ready to smile like it’s been trained.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Cliff’s is the same: a line sitting lop-sided on his face. He shoved his hand into his pocket and after a moment of rooting around in there, it comes out with something hanging from a string.

“I whittled you a snake charm fer ward’n off the lil devils. Y’know…in case I ain’t there naked ta save ya.”

Lewis takes the proffered pendant and brings it closer to his face. Because there are all these little details that should be impossible to impart on a one inch piece of balsa wood. It’s a little snake curled up in a stack of coils, its head peaking out the top. Scales criss-cross along the skin in a fast and dirty form of texture work.

Lewis loves it instantly. For what it is and what it stands for.

He reaches into his own pocket, prickling with embarrassment now that Cliff is standing in front of him with his farmer’s tan and his wife-beater sleeves cut down to his hips.

“I made you a bracelet,” he admits, pulling it out. “It says ‘fuck’ on it and it has a cigarette charm… I was gonna make it say ‘Cliff’, but…nobody wants to walk around with a name tag on their wrist, and also I couldn’t find another F. So…”

His skin crackles as Cliff looks at the alternating brown and white beads, the f-u-c-k ,and the little metallic charm glinting in the light. This had been a stupid idea in hindsight. He is doing it now: the thing his dad had been warning him about. Not being able to understand his fellow male and foresee that Cliff would not go for this. You’re going to get out into the world and realize you don’t know what other guys know.

Cliff holds out his hand into the gap between them, letting it dangle at the wrist.

He says nothing and Lewis isn’t sure if this is surprise or if subverting expectations is right up Cliff’s alley.

Either way, he loops it over his wrist and pulls the strings to cinch it up. Their arms fall to their sides and when Lewis gets the stomach to look at Cliff’s face, he’s giving him one of those crooked smiles that show off his teeth and his one dimple.

“All the shit I like. Swearin’ an’ smokin’.”

The waiting smile goes streaking across Lewis’s face. He tries to reign it in by biting down on his lip, but it’s like spitting on a fire, so he causes a distraction by sliding the cord over his head.

Cliff throws an arms around his shoulders and it stays there all the way back to number thirteen and up onto the porch.

Chapter Text

Movie night was kicking off with a long-winded exposition on why these old black and white monster movies were the superior option for canvas screen projection, featuring key speaker, The Lewis Halls himself.

After it was announced that the film was going to be some black and white vintage affair, a chorus of groans rose up from the crowd like the cries of the undead. Jonas didn’t care one way or the other. He wasn’t averse to old movies, but to Lewis, who was a stone cold vintage monster movie aficionado, this was tantamount to heresy.

“That’s what they were made for! The contrast is the key! By the time the light travels from the projector to the screen, colors are washed out and the whole things looks like shit. Black and white is the OG. You people need to get some culture!”  

Now, there were a number of individuals who could have beaten the talk feature right out of his brain just for how loudly he had voiced this, but Jonas was learning that this place was populated by the sort of people who don’t give a crap about much, and it probably helped that he and Lewis were sandwiched between Mitch and Cliff.

All the logs had been rotated to face a massive white cloth draped over a frame. People had brought blankets and pillows and snacks from their cabins. It was honestly the most harmonious thing they had all been involved in together since they’d arrived. Nobody cared that Lewis was over here grumbling and irate; nobody cared that Chris was trying to talk over them; nobody actually cared that the movie was an oldie, and best of all, Jeremy Whitten did not appear to be anywhere in the vicinity.

When the projector popped on and illuminated the drape, an opalescent light washed out over the commons. It was like protocol that you sit on the ground and lean back against your log, and that’s what everyone, including Jonas and his group, was doing. He saw someone pelt a handful of popcorn at the group behind them. People were laughing loudly at apparent nothing, and the sound of it was the anthem of teenage summer, which Jonas was trying to memorize before it died off. Crazy how that happened when you stopped dividing everyone into teams and making everything a contest (looking at you, sports).

Jonas’s eyes continued surveying further and further to his right until they ran into Mitch sitting beside him. He took note of the purpley shirt he had chosen to wear again, and then rolled his eyes up the length of Mitch’s neck to stare at the profile of his face, unobserved. On screen, a dramatic vintage countdown began, and in the flickering light, Jonas accidentally started listing his favorite things about that stupid face.

1. The glass cut corner of that freaking jaw. Holy crap was that interesting. Pretty to look at, even. Covered in a light stubble and not an ounce of extra skin anywhere.

2. The edge of that mouth, another corner, relaxed as he stared at the screen--also super interesting, weirdly. His cheeks were so drawn compared to Jonas’s full ones that it pulled his eye in toward it like gravity to the lowest valley.

3. The swoosh of that hair, which he used to think of as thuggish. Now, the curve of it was so pleasing to the eye that it was mathematical.

4. Lashes that a bully like him shouldn’t have.

Mitch’s face swiveled, catching his eyes like Jonas’s thoughts were a feather touch. He smiled that whisper-soft, closed mouth smile that Jonas always felt was a privilege to witness.

“What?” Mitch said quietly.

Jonas lifted a shoulder, suddenly shy. “Congrats on your brutal tennis defeat today.”

Mitch laughed through his nose and put an elbow on the back of the log to rest his head on his knuckles. “It was pretty brutal, huh?”

“I know you’ll probably spit on me for saying it, but you should be on the tennis team. You were actually really good.”

Jonas winced on instinct when Mitch feigned a spitting sound. Instead of laughing at his flinch, Mitch smiled again, and his eyes were so soft and sweet that Jonas just balked. Those lines appeared in the corners, streaking down the sides of his cheeks.

5. Lines

The movie fired up with a dramatic, attention grabbing score. Universal-International Presents…The Deadly Mantis.

“Hell yeah! 1957! This is a good one,” Lewis jabbered to Cliff with his eyes glued to the screen. Cliff took the shaking of his arm very much in stride. “The practical effects are super good in this one. I’ve only seen it about fifteen times.”

Maybe it was Jonas’s piss poor dim light eye sight, but he thought Cliff’s mouth was cut in a sort of smirk.

“Booooo,” Mitch muttered. And it had the desired effect. Lewis’s scowling head whipped toward him like a possessed doll. Mitch cackled because it was in his blood to raise hackles for his own amusement. Cliff was grinning himself, but he also had the presence of mind to lay a hand on the back of Lewis’s neck.

“Oh, you’re such a cinephile over there, huh? What’s your favorite movie and I’ll tell you if you’re right or wrong.”

“Return of the Living Dead.”

“...”

“...”

“Okay. Touché,” he conceded, turning back around. “I’ll let you have that one for free.”

“You gracious soul,” Cliff said.

Jonas felt the rosy glow of affection swell inside him. As the movie delved into the early meat of the plot: the giant mantis encapsulated in ice and clearly about to be revived by a thawing and wreak stupendous havoc, he felt the heat of Mitch’s proximity touching his right side. He smelled the perfume of fading laundry detergent and tobacco (less strong because Mitch hadn’t been smoking as often) swirling between them, kissing at his nose and mouth.

Whoever this illusive mystery crush was had no idea the power she wielded. She could have this Mitch, who was tame as a campground deer. And that…sucked. Because this Mitch was Jonas’s. No one saw what he had seen the past month and a half. It was his discovery. And he felt sure that if this chick came around to Mitch’s affection…he would drop Jonas like a sack of hammers.

Mitch didn’t owe Jonas anything, except an apology, which he had already given. But as he sat there side-eyeing him, something nagged at his stomach--a sudden hunger. He wanted something else. Now that they had unpacked most of their baggage and managed to lose that long-standing animosity, something new had filled the space. The trouble was: he couldn’t interpret it.

But he was beginning to understand that maybe the dire urge to uncover the identity of Mitch’s crush wasn’t exactly coming from a place innocent curiosity.

Across the widening space that had formed between Mitch and himself and Cliff and Lewis, Jonas could hear Lewis muttering incessant trivia to his partner like it was his job. He was so into it that Jonas doubted he realized he had sidled up to Cliff. If it bothered Cliff, though, he didn’t let on. He had laid his arm along the back of the log behind Lewis’s shoulders. Those two had made strides that Jonas could not begin to understand.

“Hey.”

Jonas turned around and found himself face to face with Mitch leaning into his space. So much so that the minty bite of toothpaste tickled his nose.

“Hello.”

“You into this?”

The efficient order of Jonas’s brain was momentarily flung into chaos until he realized that Mitch was referring to the movie. “Oh. Uh, it’s okay I guess,” he said, shrugging and trying not to sweat. “I could take it or leave it. Why?”

Mitch perched his jaw on his knuckles and huddled next to Jonas conspiratorially. “Ya hungry?”

“Yes.” They had not had dinner.

“How do ya feel about ditchin’ this shit an’ lettin’ me cash in what I won earlier?”

“And I still can’t know what it is?”

“Nuh-uh. Ya gotta go in blind.”

“Why though?”

“Joey. It ain’t actually nothin’. I just wanted it to be a surprise. It ain’t like I’m gonna force ya to hold up a gas station or anything.”

Jonas fell into a bout of chuckles because this was Mitch calling out his own stereotype. But how could Jonas ever say no to that dastardly smirk that no amount of the good guy-Mitch in him could completely erase?

“Oh, okay. What do I have to do?”

Mitch started to get up, tugging at Jonas’s sleeve. “Well, first we gotta make a blood pact. So gimme yer hand.”

“Hahahahahah….” Jonas mock laughed as he got to his feet after him. Mitch offered a hand and he took it, marveling at the way his bicep flexed when it bore Jonas’s weight.

“Nahh…nothin’ like that. Just sneak outta here with me.” Jonas didn’t miss the way his eyes darted over Jonas’s shoulder at the other two and back, fast as a lightning strike. Enough to send a similar bolt of thrill through his core. Wow, you have really got to use your brain during these moments. It’s like you would let this creep lure you into the mouth of Hell. “Think ya can manage that, goody fuckin’ two-shoes?”

Mitch’s hand fell away and as he started to move in the opposite direction, away from Jonas, Jonas followed without thinking.

He couldn’t not.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

A commotion over his shoulder draws Lewis’s attention, and when he looks, Jonas and Mitch are clambering over the log away from them.

“Hey. Where are you guys going?” They don’t even give him the time of day as they turn and scamper off into the gray twilight. “Guys?!”

The arm lounging along the back of the log behind him nudges him back around. “Leave ‘em.”

“Where are they going?” he says, interrogating the side of Cliff’s face.

He shrugs. “Wherever the hell they wanna. We ain’t all attached at the fuckin’ hip.”

Since that’s a pretty good point, Lewis relaxes. He’s getting vertigo trying to crack the Da Vinci code of Jonas and Mitch’s relationship these days. Maybe it’s better not to look directly at it since none of it matters right now anyway. What matters is what’s left of it when they return.

He sneaks a covert side glance at Cliff, who actually appears to be watching the movie.

“What do you think so far?”

“About what?”

Lewis’s head falls back and hits the arm behind it. “About the movie, of course,” he laughs.

“Mm,” he shrugs. “S’alright I guess. I don’t git it, though.”

“Don’t get what?”

“What ya like about this so much. I mean it’s just some ol’ B-movie tripe they had ta make ‘cause they didn’t know no better at the time.”

Lewis has to take a breath. Words flood his mouth and make no sense. So many of them want out at once that he chokes on them.

“You can’t be serious,” he says, twisting toward Cliff as a barrage of missiles explode all around the giant mantis. “Ju-just because we’ve improved on the quality of special effects does not make every old movie a bunch of garbage! It shows the ingenuity of our film-making predecessors. Y’know…like, they walked so we could run! They made everything we can do today possible because they showed us it was possible in the first place. A-a-a-and rubbing out the art of practical makeup and effects with reckless amounts of CGI is the opposite of what film is about. It’s about creating illusion. I-i-i-it’s about…making people believe the lies their eyes are telling them! Y’know…A-a-a-and the art of storytelling is--”

In the silver light bouncing off the screen, Lewis can see that Cliff has a shit eating smirk on his mouth.

“...Oh, fuck you,” he says, turning to hide the fact that playing right into that one had actually been kind of funny.

“Soon as I saw Mitch do it I knew I could do it better,” he chuckles. “And boy almighty! I gotchu wound up, didn’t I? You went ta chewin’ my ass like a lion.”

Lewis crosses his arms and glues his eyes to the screen, pretending not to hear. It’s not the hardest he’s ever pouted; he can’t quite bring himself to those lengths because the bread and butter of The Pout is to frown spectacularly, and he cannot seem to pull it off.

“Aw, c’mon, kid.” The hand behind Lewis’s right shoulder prods at him. “I’m teasin’ ya. This shit ain’t too bad. ‘Specially when ya got some lil dork whisper’n all the behind the scenes shit in yer ear.”

Lewis doesn’t react since he has a little more self-control than that. From the corner of his eye, he can see Cliff staring at him, waiting. Let him wait. Let him sweat, his vindictive inner self chants.

And for once, it seems like Lewis’s is finally getting the better of him.

“Quit it, now. Turn aroun’ here…” He takes a sudden hold of Lewis’s body and tries to force it to angle toward him. “C’mon…”

“No. The commentary is turned off for jerks and their games.”

“Red, cut the shit. Come ‘ere.” Lewis allows himself to be posed with malicious compliance. But he’s startled when a rough hand tries to turn his face away from the screen. “Keep tellin’ me the stuff, c’mon. Right in my ear.”

Cliff grabs Lewis’s hand and tries to force his shirt into its fingers. “Here. Grab onta my shirt like you was doin’.”

“I wasn’t doing that!”

“Yeah ya was. Here. Do it some more.” Lewis lets his fingers hang onto the shirt at last, rifling through his memory of the last few minutes for recollections of it. But if Cliff says he was…

As the movie plays, only a few people get up and leave--after Mitch and Jonas of course, who hadn’t even made it fifteen minutes. But to Lewis’s surprise, most people stay. The fabric of Cliff’s shirt sits loosely in his fingers between their hips as they watch the Deadly Mantis in companionable silence. Since he can basically play out this film in his sleep, he steps away from it mentally and considers yesterday.

About this time yesterday night, Cliff was telling his dad off on Lewis’s cellphone; leading him off into a dark forest to experience the transcendental euphoria of getting high for the first time; half carrying him as they stumbled home in the dead of night. He remembers being talked out of his shirt, and then carefully helped out of it before being pushed back into his mattress. He remembers begging Cliff not to leave him laying in the dark of his room alone with reality breaking down all around him, and feeling his mattress dip down beside him. And no matter where in the multiverse his batshit crazy high took him, he heard Cliff’s voice coaching him through it, keeping him tied to planet earth.

And yet, things don’t feel awkward, despite the fact that getting high is not like getting drunk. Lewis remembers everything he was thinking and everything he said. No doubt Cliff remembers all that too.

“Thank you for running my dad off,” he hears himself say out loud after all this introspection. “That was actually pretty funny now that I think back on it. And it worked. He hasn’t called or texted since.”

Cliff chuckles at the memory. “My pleasure, Red.”

“And for the laundromat thing,” he continues, watching the giant mantis fly through the clouded night sky. “I never thanked you for that. It’s a good thing you showed up when you did because I didn’t know if you even would, and by that point I was really considering hitting him myself. And I think we both know how that would’ve turned out.”

“Oh, I’da bloodied him fer sure then,” Cliff drawls. “I ain’t lettin’ the brains ‘a this operation take head damage.”

Lewis’s eyes cut over to the side of Cliff’s face. “Is it true what you said in there? You like my hair?”

That startles him just a little. By now, Lewis knows enough about all of Cliff’s “faces” to spot it in the low light. The way his face turns toward Lewis suddenly, jaw still. There should be some kind of badge he earns for learning this language.

“Well, it was the first thing I noticed aboutcha,” he says, something Lewis is all too accustomed to. “Thought it was fuckin’ magnificent.”

Lewis laughs. “Redder than the devil’s dick. Yeah. I remember.” And that makes Cliff laugh with him. “You acted like it was the first time you had ever seen me.”

“Might as well’a been. I don’t remember nothin’ aboutcha before that moment.” He looks at Lewis as squarely in the eyes as one can with a barrier of hair in their face. “Is what you said true? You been obsessin’ over how profoundly blond I am?”

It’s Lewis’s turn to squirm because, as he’d said before, he remembers that clear as day. Talking about it in a sober capacity is mortifying. But if Cliff can own it…

“Yes,” he says, taking stock of it, pin straight and golden in the dark. Exploding missiles and the deadly mantis and the world itself shrink away so that he is alone with his study of the way the fringe of those bangs sit at the apples of his cheeks, blunt cut and feathered. They tickle across the bridge of his nose when he smiles. Like he’s smiling now.

Lewis swallows. “Profoundly is a good word.” And boy, is it ever. Cliff is a shade of blond normally reserved for hot beach-going girls. Men are never so blond. It’s been difficult to process.

He waits for whatever rebuttal is surely coming while they share the air between them. But as they stare at one another, it doesn’t come. The smile slips, just a few degrees, and then slides off his face totally. Cliff looks away toward the screen. His arm must be falling asleep on the log behind Lewis’s shoulders because it shifts back.

He does this sometimes, Lewis realizes. Recoils. It’s a hard thing to put his finger on because…recoils from what? It’s just something he has noticed can happen if certain precipitating factors occur all at once. Only he doesn’t know what the precipitating factors are, or what brings them on, or how to avoid this. But he has noticed, also, that it carries a sting when it happens. Because it always seems to happen when they like each other the most.

Lewis steels a glance at Cliff from the corner of his eye. He’s staring hard at the screen through his bangs and his jaw looks like it’s wired shut. The sting comes then, looking at him like that. But he thinks there might be a way to turn things back around, even if he doesn’t understand it.

The fabric of Cliff’s shirt is still pinched between his fingers, and he gives it a tug. “Did you know…praying mantises are the closest living relatives to cockroaches?”

Admittedly, Lewis wasn’t expecting the hook to sink in quickly, but it does. Cliff’s head swivels to look at him. “…Really?”

“Yeah,” he says, playing cool, fiddling with the shirt and watching the screen to give Cliff a little of the distance he seems to want. “If you ever look at one up close…it looks like their eyes are looking straight at you. But it’s just an illusion. It’s a pseudopupil. Mantises have compound eyes, and depending on where you are, the ommatidium--that’s the individual facets--that you’re looking down doesn’t reflect light, so it looks like a black pupil.”

Cliff doesn’t say anything, but he’s watching him openly now. The line of his mouth is softer. Lewis tugs absently at the shirt, just like he was asked, and stares back.

“That just a lil fact you keep on yerself fer parties ‘n such?”

“Never had the opportunity to use it until now. Been saving it for the moment I find myself at a mantis themed movie night.

“You are the most perfect nerd of all time.”

Lewis feels the moment his face slackens. It’s on the journey from the screen to his partner. What does that mean, exactly? It’s the darndest thing, but he has a feeling in his vitals that it’s a compliment, a ringing endorsement from someone who’s an expert on nerds. Which makes it especially moving, because there are about a million nerds at Sellwood.

He didn’t say in Sellwood. He said ‘of all time’.

“I saw somethin’ like this once at the drive-in back home,” Cliff muses, choosing not to elaborate. “Wasn’t too bad actually, if goofy shit’s yer thing.”

“There’s a drive-in in town?! What the hell? Where? Why don’t I know about this?”

“Yeah. Real old crummy place over in my part ‘a town. Ya gotta go pretty deep in there ta find it, but they play old shit like this all the time. Right up yer alley.” Suddenly there’s a lot of dirt on his pant leg. Lewis can’t see it, but it must be there because he starts brushing it off like it’s a dress code violation. “I’ll, uh...show ya where it is sometime. Better stick with me, though. Ya don’t wanna take any wrong turns over there, end up in a trap house ‘er some shit.”

The onslaught of chemical reactions that take place in Lewis’s body cavity are confusing, but as he hugs his knees against his stomach, he can’t pretend not to understand that the thought of seeing Cliff again like this back in Sellwood thrills him.

“You wouldn’t be embarrassed of me?” he says, reminded that this would never have occurred naturally.

“What?”

“To be seen with me? Like…around all your…I dunno, people?”

“No, I mean ‘embarrassed.’ Whatssat mean?”

Lewis laughs, catching on, and cranes his head back to rest on the log. His hair fills the crook of Cliff’s elbow. There are a billion stars just where his eyes can see, and he considers going off on a tangent about those too just as an excuse not to leg go of Cliff’s shirt.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Blindly trusting Mitch was getting easier and easier. Every day, every moment, Jonas thought about it less; weighed the consequences less. He no longer had visions of Dean’s scowl, Sidney’s frown, Lewis’s blanching look of horror. For so long the idea of even shutting his eyes with Mitch in the room was unthinkable. But Mitch couldn’t seem to stop proving that he was in total control of himself. And after a while of that, Jonas grew comfortable with the idea that if Mitch wasn’t a danger, there were no dangers.

Running off with him now took no convincing, and came as easy as breathing. Asking no questions and having no answers about what was going to happen to him was okay. Not being able to see everything as the light of the screen dwindled to deepening shadow was fine.

Mitch was a little ways ahead of him. Every few seconds, he glanced back over his shoulder, making sure that Jonas was still there, still okay with this, and smiled at him every time.

‘You’re runnin’ to me all on your own’.

At this point, after the dilemma about substance use and the siren call all young people feel toward a little danger before adulthood, Jonas had started to realize that he did feel that call. Following Mitch Mueller into a dark wood was his flirtation with wrongdoing. Chasing that entanglement of thrill in his stomach, being led by it without knowing what it was or where it was taking him…that was his drugs and alcohol. And nothing short of the earth crashing into the sun and burning them up was going to stop him.

“You okay, Joey?” Mitch panted, looking back at him with that smile.

“Yeah. I’m good.” Just having some realizations that move Heaven and Earth over here, no big deal. 

They had made it to the tree line across the wide clearing of the camp center. The sun was setting fast and it threw the woods into midnight darkness. A black patch of Hell against the pink and purple west, for which they were headed. They weren’t supposed to be leaving the camp right now, so it was the safest route, but it was going to be a real obstacle course.

“Mitch?”

Jonas watched the vague substance of Mitch high stepping over something on the ground. “Yeah?”

Wow. You are so goddang selfish. You surely realize what you’re about to do has the potential to ruin this.

“...I know that I lost the tennis match fair and square. And I know you have boundaries that you’re entitled to and all… But…why can’t you just tell me who it is?”

Mitch let out a breath that Jonas couldn’t decipher. It could’ve been a tired laugh; it could’ve been a sigh of frustration “It’s killin’ ya, isn’t it?”

“Yeah! It really is! Mitch, I…I’m going out on a limb here, but I feel like this is something we should be able to trade off at this point. I got an earful from you about Carmen and I didn’t even get to tell you about that. You guessed it.”

“That’s ‘cause yer always slobberin’ over her when she walks by. It ain’t a secret, Joey.”

“Wasn’t.”

A verdant branch caught Mitch in the face as he passed. “Sshit… What?”

“It wasn’t a secret. It’s not really the case anymore. My…feelings, I mean,” Jonas admitted glumly to the dirt. From the peripheral, he saw Mitch’s face swing toward him. “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. And you were right. She makes me feel like crap. I haven’t felt the same about her since.”

Silence stretched on for a span of seconds, yielding only to the crack of detritus under their feet and the whir of cars flying by on the road ahead. Jonas’s body echoed like a cavern in the aftermath of his confession. Speaking it aloud was like conjure. It was true now, bearing the seal of his word, and the universe rearranged itself in accordance with this motion.

You better darnwell hope it is now, because when you lay eyes on her back in Sellwood, there’s no changing your mind. It’s done.

“’Bout fuckin’ time, Joey. Jesus Christ. I’d say I’m sorry for guiltin’ ya outta yer fantasy of her, but I ain’t. You deserve better than her.”

Ignoring the cherry red flare of feverish warmth that burst in him, Jonas caught Mitch by the arm to stop him. He wasn’t going to let him get away with dodging the subject just because it had strayed to Carmen. “I’m sorry, but I can’t live with the fact that you act like I can’t be trusted with it after everything we’ve been through,” he said, desperation creeping into his voice. “Will you at least tell me before the summer’s over?”

And you turn away from me again?

Mitch stared down at him from on high, casually too close for all the space they had to themselves (i.e. an entire wood). Every day since they had put their enemyship aside, the gap of air between them, formerly the boundary representing personal space, had waned until he was sure there was nothing left of it.

A sigh breezed from Mitch’s nose and washed across Jonas’s forehead.

“Okay,” he surrendered, and Jonas felt the dagger of guilt catch him in the neck. “Before the summer’s over…I’ll tell ya. If that’s what ya want.”

Ohh, god… “Okay…th-thanks.”

They turned and started into the trees again. The atmosphere hadn’t come away completely unscathed, but the strain wasn’t too bad. Mitch gave off a vibe of injury more than irritation, and Jonas, for his part, felt the guilt like an albatross around his shoulders. It shouldn’t have been prodded at. But he shouldn’t pop pimples either and he did that. He shouldn’t have soda after seven and sometimes did that too. What was the difference?

It was midnight in the woods. The beachy California twilight became a thing they looked out at from between branches and through leaves. The inky substance of every trunk and shrub bled together until Jonas couldn’t tell ground from root. Once, his foot snagged on a fallen limb and he nearly ate dirt.

“I can’t see like…anything.”

“So ya can’t see this hand gesture then, I guess.”

“Very funny, Tosh.0.”

The sound of Mitch’s laughter was infectious. It was hard to recall a time when his ears had hate it.

Through the dark, a pale hand held offered itself up to him. “Here.”

Without a thought, Jonas took it, feeling large, rough fingers close around his own. No more boundaries, as he’d said. No more walls. Heat throbbed like a heart in the pocket between their palms. It was well that Mitch was so pale because Jonas couldn’t bring himself to look anywhere but at the union of their hands. For all he knew he was about to walk into a bear trap.

Mitch helped pull him up a slight embankment while cradling his hand like it was made of glass. And when it was safe he held it snugly, nesting his fingers in Jonas’s palm as he led him through the trees.

Are you supposed to be liking this so much?

“Shit, shit, shit!” Mitch hissed suddenly. He hunkered down and pulled Jonas toward the ground, scampering to crouch behind a wide trunk.

“What? What’s wrong?”

“Of all the fuckin’ people to be out here when ya don’t wanna be seen sneakin’ around! Fuck’s sake!”

Jonas settled on his heels with his back scraping against the rough bark. Mitch squatted in front of him, peeping around the trunk toward the road, which was mere yards away. Only a sparse partition of thin trees separated them from the odd car that zipped by. And when Jonas followed Mitch’s gaze, he went as still as his human body would allow and tried to slow his breathing.

Jeremy and a bunch of his friends were jogging across the road toward them, clearly having just been on the same sort of illegal romp they were embarking on now. Their trajectory wasn’t ideal because as Jonas mapped them, they would enter the forest basically on top of Mitch and himself, and would pass by at a fatal enough distance that enough careless sounds would give them away.

When the group reached the side of the road and descended into the ditch, Jonas had to turn his head away. His heart was pounding. It wasn’t that he thought he might be victimized or anything, but this small adventure was so fragile. Why should Jeremy be the one who got to break it?

Instead, he focused on Mitch breathing with him into the space between them. Their hands knotted together tighter than ever in the gap created by their legs. Jonas’s fingers twitched and Mitch squeezed them.

“Joey, shhh. You’re breathin’ loud,” he breathed in Jonas’s ear. Hot air slithered into it and down his neck, seizing up his spine. The sound of crunching leaves grew louder and closer, and Jonas couldn’t seem to rally himself to urgency as Mitch leaned in even closer, putting his lips almost against Jonas’s ear. “Don’t fuckin’ move.”

Jonas’s eyes fell shut. The unfurling of pleasure was beginning in his diaphragm. And when Mitch spread his free hands over Jonas’s thigh to steady himself, it hurt in the best way possible.

Holy cripes! You are touch starved, my guy! Lonely maybe. Jeez, you gotta get some supplemental intimacy somewhere fast because Mitch Mueller is NOT giving you The Feeling™ right now. No way!

Mitch was consumed with watching Jeremy and the rest stroll by them, laughing and care-free in the dark; he didn’t notice Jonas succumbing to bliss right in front of him. He couldn’t help himself. Jonas had evolved to be hyper-aware of Mitch in positions like this. His eyes saw every movement and his ears heard every sound. He smelled the varied and complex layers of his personhood, and if he opened his mouth just enough, he could taste it.

The very unsubtle sounds of five dudes crashing through the underbrush started to dwindle off into the distance, and when it seemed safe, Mitch released a breath.

“Alright. C’mon, we’re gonna make a run for it.”

Jonas leveraged himself up with Mitch’s help, taking a fortifying breath of his own for very different reasons. His legs only trembled a little.

“Where do you think they’ve been?”

“Who the hell knows? Prob’ly lookin’ for someone to sell ‘em weed. I hope they got taken for a fuckin’ ride. Ended up overpayin’ for parsley.”

As they broke out of the trees and mounted the incline to the edge of the road, Mitch spread his long fingers at the same moment Jonas spread his. Their fingers laced together, curling one at a time until they were threaded snugly. Out of the dark shade of the trees and in the bruised last light of the sun, Jonas could finally see it for real. His hand in Mitch’s. He was holding on too tight and he knew it, but his tummy hurt so good and Mitch’s hand was so warm and rough.

Since he couldn’t bring himself to look anywhere but at Mitch, Jonas watched his beautiful face whip to the left and the right on the lookout for oncoming cars, unaware of Jonas’s staring eyes and parted lips and the chemical high he was still riding on from whatever had happened back against that tree.

When Mitch darted, Jonas went, pulled by their interlocked hands. With no difficulty at all he could say that he would go wherever that hand took him. Over a cliff; across a road he hadn’t checked for himself. A semi could be barreling toward them and Jonas would be oblivious because he would rather watch the lift and fall of Mitch’s hair as he ran; the pretty smirk on his clever mouth; the light glancing through the amber glass of his eyes.

Jonas’s chest fluttered. Hugely. Not a moth, a bird.

This couldn’t be him. This couldn’t be Mitch Mueller. Jerk-Mitch and Good-Mitch were one and the same and Jonas had always known that. But this was too much; he could not reconcile the cosmic difference between that holy terror he had come here with and the boy holding his hand. He made Jonas feel good. Good, as in worthy, as in golden; good, as in unflawed. Telling him he was undeserving of Dean’s ire and too good for Carmen’s wiles. Laying himself bare in order that Jonas might forgive him and respecting his boundaries and touching him like he couldn’t stop. Like he was delicious--

Jonas let out a gasp.

Oh, shit.

He jerked to a halt so suddenly that inertia carried Mitch past him and their hands were torn apart. Luckily, they had made it to the far side of the road.

Mitch skidded to a halt in the gravel and whipped around, wide-eyed and alarmed. “You okay?”

No. I just realized I’m in love with you. Nothing is okay.

Jonas’s heart was pounding in his chest, forcing air in and out of his lungs so heavily he knew Mitch could see it. He tried to blink away the expression of dismay he could feel on his face while sweat seeped through onto his palms, disgusting and thick.

“N--uh…yeah. Yeah, I just…got a sharp rock in my shoe. Hang on.” He scraped and jangled his foot around farcically, trying desperately to ignore how changed the whole world was around him--colors, sounds, the presence of something new and permanent in his chest. It sat squarely on his diaphragm, heavy, gorgeous, shocking.

“’Kay. I’m good,” he muttered, returning to Mitch’s side as he turned and guided them on. The camp-designated grocery store sat lit up on their left with two hours to closing. “We’ll hit that place up later,” Mitch assured him when he caught Jonas looking. They did not take up hands again unsurprisingly. And while it left Jonas off balance, he was a little relieved. His hands were clammy with a coating of sweat he couldn’t’ wipe away.

Sidney’s gonna kill me. She’s gonna kill me and tell everyone she meets going forward she doesn’t have a brother. I’ll be the shame of her past. She’s gonna cut me out of photos and burn all my crap in a barrel. Maddy will go along with it because obviously I’d be better off taking a dirt nap than pining after Mitch for eternity, and Lewis will have died of shock upon learning of it and we can burn in Hell for real together this time--

Hey, hey, hey! You ain’t gonna tell nobody, sucker! Least of all Sid! Not until you can examine this further. Cripes! Get a hold of yourself!

“Fuckin’ ta-daaa!” Mitch flourished at the neon sign out front of the diner across the parking lot from the store. It flickered and buzzed when looked at, zapping flies and gnats.

Jonas quirked a brow. “The diner?”

“Yeah, the diner. I thought since we didn’t have shit ta eat at the cabin I’d buy us dinner so neither of us has to cook tonight after burnin’ in the sun all day,” Mitch announced. He was so handsome and pleased with himself with that big dopey grin that Jonas could feel his face flush in real time. In a million versions of this reality, the people back home would never believe how selfless and perfect Mitch really was.

Jonas smiled while the bird in his guts went crazy. “Mitch, I didn’t even bring one dollar with me to this place.”

“Were you not listenin’? I said I’d buy you dinner.” He closed the distance that had grown between them since their hands parted and stared down into Jonas’s face with a tenderness that nearly had Jonas moaning. He drew a breath, blinking long and slow as if to reset. “Jonas…can I buy you dinner?”

He must know, his inner voice said. He must know that you can’t say no to him. Somehow he knows.

And Jonas couldn’t say no. Not when this seemed like something it couldn’t be. Like Mitch asking him on a date.

“Sure,” he answered, smiling and demure, belly tight. “Thanks, Mitch.” Not worrying about dinner tonight actually did sound like a gift in and of itself. So, two birds?

As they mounted the step to the door, Jonas hugged his arms, feeling inexplicably bashful. Mitch held the door for him and he swooned internally. Everything Mitch did now was slanted by this new understanding of what that feeling was. And now that he knew, he realized how many days had passed, how many moments they had shared with it flowering in his chest, getting at little bigger, a little brighter every day. Mitch had been right: he had never loved Carmen, or even liked her as much as he had thought. He would have remembered This. It was such a foreign object, something he was not born with, but which belonged inside him as much as his own heart.

“Welcome to Smacky’s Diner, PlEAse be sEATED!” an ancient waitress bellowed at them through phlegm from across the room.  

They shrugged at each other and then Mitch led Jonas to a booth by a window where they slid into seats opposite one another. When their eyes met across the table they shared giddy smiles they couldn’t seem to help. Mitch’s was crooked and secretive, making Jonas’s stomach swoop. Neither of them seemed able to think of a thing to say in these strange new surroundings, so Jonas shoved his hands under his thigh and stared out the window while Mitch scooted the sugar shaker around.

After a moment, the old waitress from earlier materialized at their table, hacking wetly into her fist. “What can I get you fellas to drink? No coffee! Pot’s broken.”

“Uh, I’ll just have a soda,” Jonas said.

“Ice water,” Mitch answered. “Ya got any cut up lemons?”

“Sure do.”

“’Kay.”

Jonas caught a look at her name tag as she turned away, jotting their order down. Darla.

When he turned his head back around, he caught Mitch’s eyes darting away.

“This is weird.”

Mitch frowned and Jonas kicked himself. “Whadda ya mean? Ya wanna leave or--”

“No. No, sorry. I just meant…” he stared out into the deep blue night which had chased them across the road and swallowed up everything outside the diner. The trees were a vague substance walling off the camp and the rest of the world. “I’m sitting in diner with you. And like it’s not mandatory or part of the camp or anything. It’s just us. Because we want to.” He glanced up through his lashes and shrugged. “I never thought we’d be here.”

Mitch put his chin in his hand and grinned toothily. “Like it?”

Oh my god. I’m starting to love that stupid smile. “Yeah…”

“Good,” he murmured, looking Jonas dead in the eye with that weaponized intensity.

Goosebumps erupted across the backs of his arms. Holy good grief, he was going to have to learn how to remain balanced when Mitch did stuff like that. It was just that these feelings were so new; that heat in his stomach, the ache in his chest… It was impossible to predict when they would strike, and so far the only pattern Jonas could deduce was that literally everything Mitch did could set it off. His newly discovered desire had no preferences. Those soul-gazing amber eyes, that sleazy smile that was getting sexier by the second, the tone of his voice, the veins running through his hands… Everything.

To temper the effect, he snatched a menu off the stand and started perusing the specials. Meatloaf? Yeah, no thanks. And chowder?? Do you have to be on social security to eat here?

Darla arrived with their drink order and plopped the glasses down on the table, sloshing both. “What’ll it be, kids? The steak’s no good. Don’t order it. Cook quit last week and the new guy just got outta prison.”

Well, bearing that in mind, Jonas tore his eyes off the specials and scanned the menu for something budget friendly--since Mitch was paying--while being conscientious of his weight. He didn’t give the burger section the time of day, or the chicken fried steak. Man, Lewis had really been onto something about Dean making his choices for him; it was like he was here in the booth behind him, glowering at the menu over his shoulder.

“I’ll have the club with fries,” he blurted as an excuse the get the menu away from him. “Easy mayo, please.” He put the menu back and looked at Mitch across the table. There was a look on his face which Jonas had seen at least once the night he’d cooked lasagna and a couple of times since. A look that said he’d rather not have any of it at all.

“Same thing. No tomatoes.”

When Darla hobbled off, Jonas examined Mitch pinching the lemon into his water and tipping it back. “Are you not very hungry?” He didn’t understand how it was possible not to be after the day they’d had.

Mitch shrugged. “I am. I just don’t want nothin’ greasy. Don’t sit too good with my guts.”

Even though they had ordered the same thing, and Jonas had chosen it first, he felt a big bruise of guilt and embarrassment welling up. He didn’t like overly greasy stuff either, but it wasn’t clear to anyone who looked at him.

“I wish I had your self-control,” Jonas admitted, sipping his soda and watching headlights soar by on the road. “It was really only that gross comment about the cook that kept me from getting the chicken fried steak, so maybe it was for the best.”

“Joey, I been with ya all this time. I’ve seen ya eat every day for weeks and weeks. And ya know what I didn’t see happenin’?”

“...”

“You eatin’ anything without self-control. You been eatin’ normal ass food in normal ass amounts. It ain’t a crime to have seconds.” He took a sip of his drink, hypnotizing Jonas with the shift of his adam’s apple. “Yer ignoramus dad put that idea in yer head?”

Before he could speak, laughter sputtered out of Jonas’s mouth at this description of Dean. Between Mitch and Dean, Jonas couldn’t have said with a gun to his skull which was the unstoppable force and which was the immovable object.  

“He did, didn’t he,” Mitch answered for him. He wagged his head. “Pig motherfucker.”

Some old fart at the bar started getting irate about the state of his meatloaf, reinforcing Jonas’s decision to stay as far away from the specials as possible. He caused enough of a racket for Darla to disappear into the kitchen, and when she reappeared there was a giant dude with a tattoo on his face right behind her. Joints like this really were a gamble.

“Well…” Jonas sighed, “even if Dean didn’t care so much about it, I’d still have to face Neil oinking at me every other day in the hall and the odd Snickers bar that hits me in the back. They don’t care what you eat. If you’re fat you have it coming.”

“Ya ain’t fat, Joey. You ever seen a fat person? You’re just chubby’s all. Better than bein’ a fuckin’ rat-faced dickwad with Hitler hair.” He smirked at Jonas laughing across the table, eating it up. “You look good the way ya are,” he said softly. “Can’t imagine ya any other way.”

Something about that sentiment felt like a kiss on his soul. The thought of Mitch imagining him in any capacity. Liking what he sees…

“And anyway, those guys can yuck it up all they want, but they ain’t as solid as they put on.”

“Oh, no?” Jonas smirked because he knew where this was going.

“Ask me if some of those guys piss their pants when you corner ‘em in the bathroom. Ask me if they cry a little.”

“Do they cr--”

“Yeah they do, some of ‘em.”

Soda fizz rocketed up Jonas’s nose mid-drink as he lost it. Mitch threw his head back and cackled at the sight of Jonas pinching his nose. Being reminded that Mitch did stuff like that was jarring; it had been so easy lately to forget that he was soil-your-pants scary when he wanted to be. Because Mitch’s monstrosity was gone for Jonas. It could never be there again.

Under the table, Jonas felt Mitch’s legs extend, trapping his own. The gentle contact of them resting together, as if it were nothing for their legs to be nested together so intimately, sent a twist of pleasure through Jonas’s abdomen. He let his knees relax, letting them fall against Mitch’s. What a privilege it was to be allowed to touch Mitch in this way--to be touched by him in return. Mitch was not looking at him, but rather at his fingernails. He had no earthly idea that if time and store hours permitted, Jonas would have stayed between those knees all night and into the day.

The food arrived, thank God. Jonas was starving and ready for something to do with his hands. They entered into a comfortable silence, trying to fill the voids of their stomachs which had been on empty all day. All around them the sound of cutlery rang and the grill in the kitchen hissed intermittently. People chattered wordlessly and Darla hacked wetly. It was too cold inside and out on the road headlights flew by in both directions, headed to God knew where.

Suddenly and without warning, Jonas was reminded of his freeness. He was in a restaurant of his choosing, in a booth next to a window overlooking the woodland night, tucking into a pretty good sandwich and fries instead of the vegetable medley, and the boy he loved was in the booth across from him.

The boy I love.

I wonder if that will ever not seem like the most insane thing I’ve ever said.

A burst of quiet pain erupted then in Jonas’s chest as he watched Mitch in stolen glances. Mitch was affectionate, that was all. He had only just learned to like Jonas anyway; just this summer. Was it possible that Jonas was so enchanted by the new fling of friendship he and Mitch had that he was mistaking this feeling for something it wasn’t? Maybe. Whatever it was, Jonas had never felt anything like it. Friendship or attraction, the electricity between them was the most exciting thing he had ever experienced. He never wanted to be without it. He never wanted to watch Mitch from a distance too great to feel the spark.

But… He liked someone else--very devoutly. Someone Jonas could never be in a hundred lifetimes. Someone flawless to him. Jonas was sick with envy, he realized, and had been for a long time.

He dropped his half-eaten french fry and pushed his plate away. There was a third of a sandwich still on it.

“What’s wrong?” Mitch asked, looking between the plate and Jonas.

He spouted the first lie that popped into his head. “Nothing. Figure I better stop there.”

“Joey, if ya wanna finish it, finish it,” Mitch begged. “I ain’t judging ya.”

Jonas stared at the unfinished portion, feeling oversatisfied. The door of doubt had been opened and now the doubts wouldn’t stop pouring in. Half of this would have been enough, his embittered conscience admonished. Mitch tells you your weight is fine, he’s unbothered by the sight of it and the way it feels when he touches you, but he’s being a good friend. He doesn’t want it like that. He doesn’t want someone so heavy. Not many people do.

“You know… I used to hate getting comments about my weight so much that I decided to fast-track losing weight by eating once a day. I would skip breakfast and lunch and then eat the smallest dinner I could stand to have.” Jonas shrugged. “I figured if I could get used to the feeling of being hungry it would stop bothering me. And then I could deal with having less and less all the ti--”

Mitch snatched Jonas’s hand off the table and clutched it tightly in both of his. Startled, Jonas stared at the way Mitch held onto him like he might float away, and when he looked up, he couldn’t believe the level of desperation he saw on Mitch’s face.

“Oh, Joey…” he breathed, eyes glossy, “Please don’t ever do that. Please, I’m beggin’ ya. It hurts to fuckin’ much. It ain’t worth it. And nobody loves ya anymore because of it. They never do. Ya just make yerself less and less every day and nobody gives a shit. It’s never enough.”

Jonas watched Mitch ramble on the verge of tears with his mouth open.

“It hurts so much, Joey. Please don’t let anyone get ya to that point. Ya feel so rotten all the time. The hunger don’t go away, and ya don’t get used to it.”

Out of steam, Mitch sat back and raked his fingers through his hair, but he clung to Jonas’s hand just the same. His eyes flitted around the table and Jonas’s chest, everywhere but at his face. He blinked and blinked and rubbed the fingers of his free hand together nervously. Something was coming up. Jonas could see it and stayed quiet.

“I ain’t ever told nobody this before. I mean nobody. Not Javi, not Cliff…nobody.” Mitch told him. His voice was tired and rough as he finally looked Jonas in the face. “I hate eatin’. Sometimes I go in the bathroom and make myself throw it all up. Fuckin’ sucks. I feel like shit basically all the time.” His fingers stroke and play distractedly with Jonas’s, but Jonas barely notices because his brain is tied up processing that Mitch is admitting to having an eating disorder. “It’s too fucked up to go inta detail about right now an’ I don’t wanna make ya sick right after dinner, but… take it from me, it don’t solve nothin’. It takes every problem ya got and makes it worse.”

Guilt like never before wells up in Jonas’s chest. It fills his mouth and tries to brim over his eyes. All the times he had admired Mitch’s body, expressed his envy, even out loud to Mitch’s face… All the times he had implied that Mitch was the lucky one, didn’t have it as bad…

For a second, he can’t get any words out and returns the grips Mitch has on his hand. His other one joins the knot by latching onto his wrist.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mitch. I made that stupid comment about your size back at the lake ‘cause I was being stupid and self-conscious and jealous…I…I didn’t know--”

“Joey, Joey. It’s okay. Ya didn’t know ‘cause nobody knows,” Mitch reassured him with a smile, stroking his thumb along Jonas’s knuckles. “That’s how I wanted it. I’m tellin’ ya now ‘cause I think for once it might actually come in handy for makin’ ya understand that nothin’ changes if ya do that.” He shrugged. “Ya just got a new and worse problem on yer hands.”

Right about that then, Darla showed up and plopped the bill tray on the table, saying nothing about their tangled hands and the deep, unbroken gaze they were sharing, and stalked away. She didn’t even cough.

Mitch’s cheeks inflated as he sighed and sat back, letting their hands slip apart. He glanced at the bill, dug in his pockets, and slapped a couple bills into the tray.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here, Joey. Still gotta hit the store and carry all that shit home. Shoulda brought the cart.”

As Jonas slid out of the booth and decidedly did not take Mitch by the hand as they walked out the door, he felt his ever developing understanding of Mitch come to completion. He mourned the years he, like everyone, had thought of him as some one-dimensional piece of trash because frankly, Jonas had never met anyone with so many layers, so much history, such intense emotions. So much trauma. His heart broke just thinking of the onslaught of struggles and hardships Mitch had weathered, endlessly and on all fronts. Jonas wanted to lay him down and make him rest. He stole a glance up at him and watched those shoulders sway with his long stride. Mitch was so strong. To still be up, fighting and laughing and loving... It was his most attractive feature.

Wow, you are GONE for this guy. RIP.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

“I just want to apologize now. This…is an abomination. I was never intended to operate in a place where food preparation takes place. In my defense, I warned you, but perhaps not to the best of my ability. If you have to go to the hospital tonight, I beg of you…please don’t tell them I made it. Tell them you dug it out of the trash because if they have to do an autopsy later it will corroborate what they find inside you. I feel, as doctor Frankenstein must have felt, that I have cursed this world with my hubris, and spit in the face of God--”

“Will you shut da hell up and gimme my food? It’s gittin’ cold with you standin’ there holdin’ it.”

Cliff is sitting at the table with a paper towel tucked in the front of his shirt and a fork at the ready. After so many days of watching him digest creations they would reject on Fear Factor, Lewis has concluded that his tolerance will carry him through whatever makes it down his gullet tonight. But his taste buds may stop it at the door.

He sighs and places the plate on the table in front of him, then sits down before his own helping. In the silence, they study what’s in front of them, and Lewis feels like he’s in a tanning bed.

“What, uh…what--what’re we looking at here,” he asks, gesturing with his fork.

Lewis clears his throat. “W-well, this is mashed potatoes with bonus pepper because the guard came off the shaker. And this,” he pointed to the brown lumpen shapes on his own plate, “is glazed carrots, extra soft for your chewing pleasure. And the chicken may be a little…dry. I fear nothing like I fear the microbial revenge of undercooked poultry.”

Cliff nods, examining it. “Okay.”

Lewis doesn’t get embarrassed easily, even though the world sometimes makes it abundantly clear that he should. It has tried tirelessly to ensure that he knows his curly orange mane is strange, and often comical, to just about everyone on earth. It’s shown him how many things in nature his pasty, insubstantial framed can be likened to (E.T., ghosts, the usual). It’s made sure he knows that being smart is an admirable and lucrative, but incredibly lame thing to be.

But Lewis counts himself among a lucky few in life who are not embarrassed by their inability to live up. Eighteen years of life and not a single blush of shame. Even Jeremy Whitten, who probably thinks he gave him the roasting of a lifetime, had not moved him to humiliation. And it’s because Lewis understands why things are the way they are for him. Genetically speakings, he is something of an anomaly, if one considers genetic norms within a given population; he’s not a medical freak or anything--but he’s not exactly an every day occurrence either. Socioculturally, his proclivity for niche interests and advanced placement courses alienate him from his peers. Even his dad and his Iron Age ideas about gender only make him angry because they’re small-minded and baseless.

When you break emotionally hurtful truths down to fundamental scientific facts, they hurt less. Because nature can be unfair, but not maliciously.

But Clifton Everett Lonnie the third makes Lewis feel embarrassed about everything.

Cliff forks up a little of each. Potato that looks like it fell in dirt, carrot which goes to mush as soon as it’s touched, and chicken that doesn’t want to separate from itself like some newly hybridized ultra elastic silicone. Lewis watches the struggle in agony, wishing they would both go up in a gas explosion.

Finally, Cliff gives up and pulls the chicken apart with his bare fingers, placing a piece of it on his fork. And then the whole things goes into his mouth where he chews it continually like a camel. He chews so long that Lewis hurries to get him a glass of water.

When it finally makes it down the hatch, Cliff rolls his tongue around his mouth. He holds up a finger. “This is a job fer hot sauce.”

Lewis puts his head in his hands and groans as Cliff makes for the fridge. “Great. A guy who eats trash can’t eat my food without scorching his taste buds off first.”

“Oh, git over yerself. I put hot sauce on the trash too.”

Lewis laughs into his hands because he might as well. When Cliff gets back to the table, he peppers the whole affair with something he brought with him called Bubble Guts. 

“So you’d rather shit out your stomach lining than eat this without it.”

“This stuff’ll take the hair off a Sasquatch.” He takes another bite, licking the sauce off of his thumb. “It ain’t my go-to bottle, though. I prefer Montezuma’s Revenge, The Prolapser… But my favorite is called Ouch, Ouch, My Butt. Illegal north ‘a Mexico.” He raked the mashed potato off his fork between bared teeth. “You ain’t touchin’ yers?”

Lewis looks at the plate in front of him and vows to starve first. “Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“Oh, well… Thanks fer these huge portions then.”

“I was hoping you’d polish it off so there were no leftovers.”

Pulling the napkin out of his shirt, Cliff falls back against his chair and smiles his big American boy smile. His handsomeness is disarming, bordering on rude. “You got a lotta faith in me, don’tcha?”

“Yeah.”

In the ensuing silence, the smile on Cliff’s mouth slips a degree. They’re staring at each other. Lewis is stinging with embarrassment again and it’s getting hard to keep track of what does and doesn’t do that for him.

Cliff pushes his plate away, breaking the spell. “Sorry, Red.”

Lewis shrugs, standing up. “Oh well. You got further than I did,” he says, gathering their plates to dump in the trash.

Suddenly, there’s a hand on his shoulder. It pats him twice and glides across the back of his neck to squeeze the other side as Cliff slips past him. “I’ll do breakfast if you take care a’ the toilet.”

“What’s wrong with the toilet?”

“Nothin’ yet.”

Not so long ago that very joke would’ve had Lewis frothing at the mouth. Even his own analytical mind cannot spot the difference between the two chapters of their time together. But now Lewis laughs at that stuff easily. It’s endearing; not bathroom humor per se, but Cliff’s bathroom humor.

Apparently, Cliff is going to perch against the counter and be an audience to Lewis cleaning up. As he scrapes carrot peelings onto a paper plate, he finds he isn’t uncomfortable with the dead air between them. But he searches for that conversational spark anyway, because up close like this, Lewis likes the sound of Cliff’s voice rumbling across his sternum. That accent curls in his ears and makes him cling to every word.

“Can I ask you a question about Mitch and not make you mad?”

Cliff pauses, weighing. “Shoot.”

Lewis dampens a paper towel and wrings it out, trying to formulate his thoughts so that they pass out of his mouth in a way that makes sense. “What is his deal? I mean…if it’s possible to be nice to Jonas, why hasn’t he just done that all along?”

From the corner of his eye, he watches Cliff shift, bracing his palms on the counter behind him. “Ya know…it ain’t that simple fer ever’body.”

When he doesn’t continue, Lewis makes a conscious decision to let the silence go on. He fills it by gathering up all the dirty utensils spread all over the counter and dumping them with a clamor into the sink. And soon enough he hears Cliff draw a deep, tired breath.

“People git in the habit of thinkin’ of Mitch like he’s some kinda monster. And they don’t stop ta think that…y’know…he ain’t??” he says, dripping with sarcasm. “I know just about ever’thing there is to know about Mitch, an’ lemme tell ya…if people knew the shit that boy has been through…they’d think it’s a wonder he come out as gentle as he did. Hell! It’s a wonder he’s even fuckin’ alive!”

That gets Lewis’s attention--the idea that Mitch isn’t as bad as he could be. He studies the uneven line of Cliff’s mouth and feels green, if green is a feeling one can have. It’s a stew of guilt and awe and sickness at the idea of enduring something that could make a person like that.

"That stuff messes with ya. He ain’t ever had a normal thing happen in his life. How’s he s’posed ta do anything the way everybody else does?”

Lewis stands there with the sponge forgotten in his hand. “W-what stuff? What happened to him?”

“Use yer imagination,” he says, stacking the soiled pots and pans from the stove and carting them over to the sink.

“But--but…” Lewis turns to him, enthralled now. “That doesn’t answer my question. He’s a dick all these years, trauma or not… but lock him in a room with Jonas for a few weeks and suddenly he’s a perfectly decent human being? Why is that the solution that works?”

“I don--”

“And why does it work with you for that matter?” Lewis interjects, pointing at Cliff’s face in a sudden burst of clarity.

Cliff’s head jerks back. “Me?”

It should be offensive that he doesn’t remember, but since Lewis doesn’t expect anything less, he just smiles about it. “You don’t remember putting me in the janitor’s closet, do you?” Based on the blank look he’s receiving, Lewis gears up to elaborate. “Mitch had Jonas in his villainous grasp, and obviously something had to be done with a whistle-blower like me, so you shoved me into a janitor’s closet which locks automatically. I spent an hour in there.”

Frustratingly, Cliff turns back to the sink and begins squirting dish soap all over the contents. He flips the faucet on. “So what? Are ya unhappy that I ain’t tried to stuff ya in a closet yet? What’re ya complainin’ about?”

Lewis has abandoned the clean up and since Cliff seems willing to start the dishes, he opts to stand there and be his audience this time. “No. I’m befuddled. Have you thought about it?”

“I’m thinkin’ about it right now.”

He’s helpless against the laughter that comes. Even though Cliff’s back is to him, when he tilts his head, Lewis can see that smirk denting the corner of his mouth.

It’s easy. This is easy.

“Wow. Jonas got lucky?? Why are you meaner than Mitch Mueller?”

“’Cause I ain’t in love with ya.”

“...”

“...”

“...”

The sink cuts off.

Cliff stands rigid, staring forward while Lewis’s brain builds to an understanding of what that means. And as a picture comes together, his pulse quickens.

“What?”

As if on a roasting spit, Cliff turns to face him. And Lewis doesn’t need to see the other half of his face to know that Cliff has fucked up.

“Ssshit!” he says. His chest begins to heave as he takes a step in Lewis’s direction, and for the first time since they had set foot in this house together, Lewis takes a step back. “You can’t say nothin’, Red. You understand?” he says, jabbing a finger.

But half of Lewis’s brain is frying with the effort to process what he thinks he’s hearing: that Mitch is in love with Jonas. The idea. The words. They don’t make a sentence. His hair is burning trying to compute it.

“Cliff…” Lewis takes another retreating step, mashing down on a creaky board. “I’m gonna be…perfectly honest,” Cliff’s arms are menacingly sculpted, “you’re springing this on me out of nowhere…man. I don’t…I don’t think I can keep this from Jonas.”

“Well, that’s a fuckin’ problem. An’ until you can git a hold a’ yer mouth, gimme yer phone.”

“No.”

Cliff stops. Lewis stops, his spine at an angle like the earth is tilting. It’s not the answer Cliff wants and it shows. He seems to swell up like a cobra right before Lewis’s eyes.

“Give me--yer phone--right--fuckin’--now.” Lewis is frozen, on the precipice of being ripped in half by two conflicting courses of action. But whatever Cliff is feeling, the hesitation inflames it. “GIVE IT TO ME! THIS AIN’T A JOKE! I don’t trust ya with it!”

Lewis jolts at the sudden explosion in volume. The Cliff who smokes on the porch and talks like he’s on tranquilizers isn’t here. He can feel his phone like a chunk of lead in his back pocket, but he doesn’t dare try to reach for it.

“I swear ta God, either you give it, or I take it. And if I have to take it it’s gonna be rough,” Cliff warns.

Oh, Lewis doesn’t doubt it. His hands are shaking from the force of his heartbeat alone. This is like the snake in his room. He can’t think with rationale, only the primitive stump of his brainstem is functioning and, courtesy of evolution, it comes standard with two options in times like these.

He glances over his shoulder.

“Don’tchu--”

Lewis bolts.

Regret is swift. There’s a horrible crash behind him like cutlery hitting the floor, maybe a chair turning over. He scrambles for the door, praying to every one of Man’s gods that it opens without a hitch because Cliff is right behind him, and Lewis can feel his anger like the heat of the sun. The vibrations in the floor are seismic.

The force and speed by which his profusely sweaty hand twists the knob and throws it aside is a mystery of physics. But by the time the door collides with the wall, Lewis has flung himself into the night. He has no plan beyond this, and when his feet hit the ledge of the porch, he vaults onto the grass. His underused knees nearly give out in the landing, but he uses his momentum to power through it because falling is not an option. In a moment of pure insanity, he recalls the casual threat Cliff had offered up to a room full of other boys no problemo, and nearly laughs, because he is one boy and Cliff had been half as pissed at the time. He might as well laugh because when Cliff gets a hold of him, as he inevitably will, Lewis may never laugh again. He’s going to break faster than a fortune cookie and will probably live out the rest of his life slobbering in a motor chair and talking through a Speak ‘n Spell like Stephen Hawking.

But when he hears the viscerally terrifying sound of Cliff thundering down the steps in pursuit, Lewis’s thoughts kick off and he just screams. His legs are on autopilot like two numb jelly limbs; he’s never run so hard in his life.

“LEWIS, YOU LITTLE FUCKER!! STOP!”

Absolutely do not stop, his inner self advises, like no shit. It’s not too late to hurl your phone as hard as you can to the left and run straight down the road and onto the highway.

They haven’t even made it off of number thirteen property when Lewis feels, with heart-stopping dread, the tug of fingers snagging on the back of his shirt. Cliff’s ragged breath syncs up with his own right behind his ear.

And, just like that, they go down. Lewis hits the ground and drags across it like a meteor striking the earth, while Cliff tumbles on top of him, clutching his shirt like it owes him money. In the middle of spitting sod out of his mouth, Lewis is suddenly flipped on this back, bringing him face to shadowed face with Cliff, who’s straddles his torso.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Cliff yells in his face. “Where are you even goin’? You’re just gonna run over there and blow everything to shit?! Do you have any idea how many lives you could ruin?!”

Lewis shrivels where he lays against the ground, wishing he could burrow into it. His eyes won’t blink despite their inability to make heads or tails of the face in front of him.

“Everybody’s! You’re gonna ruin Mitch’s life. Yer gonna scare the shit outta Jonas and ruin his life. An’ Mitch is gonna know I fucked up and then he’s never talk to me again, and you’ll have ruined my life!!” 

Cliff is so pissed his accent is slipping. It’s barely survived this thing and for some reason that scares Lewis to death.

“I wasn’t--I wasn’t g-gonna go over there,” he manages, feeling dew seep into the back of his shirt.

“Then where the fuck’re you headed?!”

“I don’t know!” he finds the guts to yell back. “Freakin’ Jeremy’s place at this rate! Jesus Christ!”

Instead of reloading, Cliff clutches at Lewis’s chest and curls forward like he’s having a heart attack. “Ohh, my fuckin’ god. Stupid, stupid moron,” he berates himself in whispers. “He’s gonna kill me.”

“Who? Mitch?”

“Mitch ain’t gonna be fit to pick himself up off the floor if I let you loose. But Javier’s gonna make a rug outta my ass,” he says like he’s talking to himself. And then he seems to remember that Lewis is there and leans into his face menacingly. “That what you want?? You wanna tear us all apart? You wanna take Mitch and Jonas and the little firefly fart’s worth of happiness they got goin’ on and you wanna take a big creamy dump all over it?! Get up!”

He couples Lewis’s wrists in one hand--one hand!--and hauls him to his feet. Lewis fights it for all he’s worth, but that hold is ironclad. “Quit squirmin’!”

“Bite me!”

That gets him an arm yoked around his neck. With his hands shackled together and his head in a vice, Cliff drags him back toward the house so roughly his feet can barely keep up. Lewis doesn’t talk as he’s hauled up the steps, where the only thing that keeps him from falling on his face is the chokehold around his neck. His throat is pinched almost to airlessness, so he doesn’t try to argue his case just yet.

The door is standing open and as soon as they’re in, Cliff uses his foot to kick it shut. His next order of business it to free Lewis’s head and frisk him all over for the coveted phone. He pats him on the right ass cheek and then the left, and rips the phone out of it.

“You can’t just confiscate my phone, asshole!” Lewis yells, going ballistic trying to yank his hands free. It’s insane the hand strength this idiot has. “Quit that! Let me go!”

“I don’t think I will, seein’ as yer prone ta streakin’ through the night to tell ever’body’s business like a fuckin’ town crier.”

“I’m not the one who let it slip!” Lewis lets his knees give out and sinks to the ground, counting on his sudden dead weight to loosen Cliff’s hold. But it doesn’t, of course.

“An’ you will continue not to be.” Tired of wrangling him, Cliff’s free and grabs him by the arm and stands him up so fast Lewis’s head spins. His legs frantically try to keep up as he’s dragged sideways into, of all places, Cliff’s bedroom. The door whams out of their way and Cliff slaps the light switch on.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Lewis yells. He’s fighting in earnest now, because none of this makes sense anymore and that scares him. Cliff clenches his wrists even tighter as he rifles through his bag on the dresser.

“You are NOT gonna be the reason.”

When his hand reemerges, Lewis feels his heart sink into his rectum. There’s a bright silver roll of Duct Tape in it. Something vocal climbs his throat, but he takes a jab to the stomach as Cliff barrels into him, purging the breath from his lungs. His knees his the bed and then he’s on his back and Cliff is caging him in between his knees. He yanks the tape away from itself in that famously ominous ripping sound that no nerd of Lewis’s caliber ever wants to hear in a losing power struggle.

“What the fuck, Cliff?! Why do you have that?!”

Cliff tears the strip off in his teeth. “’Cause. It fixes everything. And it’s gonna fix this.”

Lewis goes to bucking like his life depends on it. His hands, briefly freed, grab and slap and shove at anything he can make contact with. It crosses his mind to grab a fistful of that golden hair, but he quickly rationalizes that this shit show can, in fact, get worse if he makes it. So instead, he plants an open palm against Cliff’s face and shoves it away as hard as he can.

It must be the last straws because all of a sudden his hands are grounded on either side of his head, and when Lewis peeks his eyes open from the full body flinch, the two bluest eyes on planet earth are glaring down at him in seething rage.

“You little shit! You think I ain’t bein’ easy with you? It can git worse! I swear on my pappy’s grave!”

All the motor functions in Lewis’s body are arrested. The tunnel of blond hair over his face is hypnotizing, blocking out the ceiling lamp and creating a halo of golden light around his head . Nothing is that blue. They’re so sharp and cold he feels them cut across his skin like the edge of a glacier. He’s aware that Cliff is winding tape around his wrists, but he can’t seem to bring himself to do anything but drink in as much of those blue eyes as he can get before they go away again. He watches them flit around behind some seriously long dark lashes.

And then the eyes are gone, and Cliff is climbing off of him. The trance breaks and Lewis remembers he’s being assaulted. He throws a kick aimed at Cliff’s stomach, except that Cliff turns just then and it clips him on the ass. In no time flat, tape is winding around his ankles.

“You--cannot--do this!” Lewis shouts at Cliff where he stands over him.

“It’s called a time-out. Now quit yellin’ or--”

“JONAAAAS!!” Lewis bangs his paired feet on the wall by the bed. “JONAAAA--”

The sound of tape stripping from the roll interrupts him, and then he has a nice little silver mouth accessory to complete the set. He tries to scream through the disgustingly flavored adhesive, but nothing comes out aside from a series of muffled hums.

Cliff flips off the light, becoming a black silhouette in the doorway. “You can use this time ta think yerself into some sense. Process it an’ calm it down.” He starts to close the door, and stops. “No wonder I shoved you in that closet. Nighty-night, whistle-blower.”

And the door slams shut.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

It’s hard to say how much time has gone by since The Taking. That’s what Lewis has decided to call it: The Taking (the Taping?).

It has a dramatic ring of prestige that may work out in an autobio someday. His eyes have adjusted to the dark. He had spent a good portion of time watching the light under the door where a shadow frequents. Based on what he’s hearing, Cliff is cleaning up the scene of the crime and finishing the dishes. After a time, the light had flipped off and he could hear the tin can sound of the TV.

Though this room is a total clone of his own next door, with the vibe going on in here it might as well be another house. First of all, the smell. There’s a light must, nothing too offensive, but it’s boyish and probably emanating from the dirty laundry pile and the socks draped over the foot board. The room is northwesterly, so the accumulated evening heat does not leave it quickly. Humidity amplifies the scent. It mingles with the essence of tobacco carried in on Cliff’s clothes, and there are notes of cheap body wash.

Eau de backwoods prick.

He’s aware of Cliff’s journal sitting on the nightstand and can see it when he turns his head. If he were braver--and not taped up like a Fedex package--he might consider thumbing through it out of revenge. But he’s in enough trouble as it is.

And speaking of that!

Mitch had a crush on Jonas!

Love. Cliff had used the word love.

A reel of his and Jonas’s entire friendship whizzed by before his mind’s eye, and Mitch had been a constant through all of it, always lurking somewhere in the background. You couldn’t count the number of times on all hands and feet that Lewis has had to stand by, lost and helpless, as Mitch cornered Jonas, sometimes dragging him away to god knew what atrocities, while Sidney yelled up and down the halls after them. It didn’t stop when Jonas begged or cried. What kind of person loves like that?

‘He ain’t ever had a normal thing happen in his life. How’s he s’posed ta do anything the way everyone else does?’

Unfortunately, that doesn’t help make sense of things. There’s a context which must exist in the scheme of Mitch’s approach to showing his interests--if they do exist, but for God’s sake, Lewis can’t begin to imagine why it involves putting the object of his affection in a headlock. What does have context now is why Mitch had looked so freaked out before the tennis match; his anonymous crush had been standing right in front of him. Deep down, that’s funny, but the kind of funny you feel only as a minor bubble of indigestion that never makes it to the surface.

Lewis doesn’t know what to think of this. Jonas has never expressed interest in boys before, at least not to Lewis. And even if he had, this is Mitch they’re talking about; that’s another sexuality altogether. He’s grimy and loud and crass and shows a flagrant, bordering on hateful, disdain for higher learning. He’s violent and impulsive and probably has a rap sheet longer than a CVS receipt.

But…

Jonas seems to like him. But if it’s in any capacity other than friendship, he hasn’t told Lewis about it. He does seem happy for someone shacked up with Mitch. And because Lewis is a selfless friend, he has to prioritize that progress over the urge he feels to get involved. Because, actually, Cliff is right. (Wow, that tastes awful). If Lewis spews this earth-shattering fact into Jonas’s face without preamble, there could be an ugly blow back for everyone.

At the sound of the door rattling, Lewis’s head twists to watch it swing open. He can’t see his face, but Cliff is standing there with his arms limp at his sides like Frankenstein’s monster. A dark minute ticks by and he says nothing. And Lewis says nothing because he has tape over his mouth.

“I…am a little drunk.”

Lewis rolls his eyes. Oh, great. 

Cliff shambles into the room and shuts the door. His hand sweeps along the wall for the light switch, but he gives up and Lewis can see him staggering toward the bed by the moonlight slanting in through the blinds. Apprehension builds in his chest and he tenses where he lays defenseless.

The towering form comes to a stop right next to the bed. His face is beyond the reach of the light and, given the nature of their last encounter, it’s unsettling. He can hear languid breathing and knows he’s being stared at.

“Mmhmmmahmhmhm.”

“What?” Cliff reaches down and rips the tape off his mouth, along with enough hair and flesh to clone him by, and both his lips.

“OW! I said I have a deviated septum! I can’t breathe!”

“You got a doctor’s note?” He chortles at his own cleverness, obviously in better spirits with a little cool down time of his own and a judicious applications of beer. “So. How ya feelin’?”

“Scared. What do you think? I’m a hostage.”

Cliff wheezes drunkenly. “You ain’t a fuckin’ hostage, drama queen.” For a second, Lewis thinks he’s about to trip backward, but he’s trying to coerce his ungainly feet into kicking off his shoes. He staggers, knocking into the dresser which whams against the wall. “I told ya you were gonna git out in the mornin’.” He pries each of his shoes off and they go flipping across the room. “An’ ya ain’t gotta be scared, Red.”

“Oh, really, Liam Neeson?”

“You think…you were scared?” he says. He isn’t too far gone, but his tongue sounds lazy in his mouth. “Ssshit…” There’s a loud thud as he trips over one of the shoes in the dark.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m tryin’ ta git in bed.”

“Do you remember that I’m in the bed?”

“’Course.”

“So you need to put me in my room.”

“Nooo can do, Lew.”

“Please never--.”

“I know how that plays out. I stick you in there an’ you chew through yer tape like some kinda marmot an’ escape into the night. I know. I been there. Twice.”

Lewis still isn’t getting it. Or at least that’s what he tries to convince himself--that he’s wrong. But it’s getting harder and harder to maintain that delusion with everything that comes next. Like how Cliff stands in the slated light of the window and peels off his shirt. Lewis isn’t quick enough to bat away the ineffable mental stamp of what he saw the last time they crossed rooms.

“Are you still gonna get naked?!” he whimpers.

The belt comes off next, careening through the loops like a whip. “Since yer a guest in my kingdom I ain’t gonna go full nude tonight. Sorry.”

“...Uh, no need to apologize.”

“Consider it a giant honor. There is nothin’ I hate more’n the feelin’ of wallerin’ around in my clothes while I sleep.”

Kicking off his jeans, he approaches the bed and then Lewis feels his feet lifted into the air. “No shoes on the bed,” Cliff admonishes, pulling them off. They tumble to the floor and then his legs flop down onto the mattress. Literally half a dozen quips fly into Lewis’s mouth for that, but he doesn’t let any of them out because this could go on all night. There is no naturally occurring end to the back and forth they can’t help but create, so he makes a conscious decision to shut up for a minute.

The next thing he feels is the mattress dip, then Cliff’s arms scooping beneath his shoulders and knees, followed by the alarming sensation of being lifted straight off the bed. “Holy shit,” he squeaks, bobbing as he’s dropped on the other side.

Only when Cliff collapses with unnecessary force next to him does Lewis allow himself to accept this reality: that a time in his life has come where he is bound up in tape and trapped in bed with the guy who did it. These beds are doubles, but they aren’t meant to accommodate two grown men lying shoulder to shoulder. Cliff’s bare skin puts off heat like a furnace. He’s helped himself to the only pillow and left Lewis to lie with his head flat on the mattress at armpit level with him.

“Where’s my phone?”

“Hidden.”

“You went through it, huh?”

“Why would I? I got if from ya ‘fore you could sound off.”

“I mean for fun.”

“Mm,” he mutters noncommittally. “Guess you’ll never know.”

For the first time since he’d been tossed in here like a piece of luggage, Lewis closes his eyes. Not because he’s tired, but because Cliff is so infuriating that it’s incredible, breathtaking even.

They lay in silence from there on out. Platinum light filters into the room and over their bodies like something out of space. Morning feels lightyears away at this point. He can feel every second of every minute dragging by. Hell, he can feel the infinitesimal space between them; those little blinks of nothing time where one second dies and the next is born.

Beside him, Cliff is motionless, barely breathing, but he isn’t asleep yet. He’s too still, and besides, the very air is alive with the currents of private thought, churning so swiftly that the atmosphere crackles with a phantom electricity. That might make a great thesis paper for someone dabbling in the intriguing foolishness of parapsychology: Why can we feel it when someone else is thinking too hard?

Cliff lets out a deep sigh. “We can’t interfere with it, Red. It’s their thing. They have ta face it an’ come out of it on their own. Ya understand?”

Because Lewis isn’t stupid, he knows that. But the alarm bells his mind has evolved as a response to Mitch’s presence does a number on his rationale. They don’t just turn off because he’s behaved himself for half a summer, or even because Jonas’s have.

He licks his lips, centering himself. “What’s going to happen if Jonas doesn’t…want it?”

“Nothin’. It’ll kill Mitch, but he ain’t gonna do nothin’ to him if that’s what ya mean.”

“That is what I mean. So he’ll take no for an answer?”

“First of all, you better watch what you imply to my face. Mitch ain’t no fuckin’ rapist. He’ll take it hard, but he’ll take it. I said it a hun’erd times before an’ I’ll say it again--he ain’t a monster.”

This is all very life-altering. Suddenly Lewis is reviewing every memory he has of Mitch and Jonas within fifty feet of each other. At a glance, none of it reads that Mitch has anything but contempt for Jonas, as if his very existence leaves a bad taste in Mitch’s mouth. So if that has been an act all this time, it has been the performance of a lifetime; Oscar worthy.

Overwhelmed, he starts to bring his hands up to rub his face and remembers that they’re useless when he feels his wrist hair snag in the tape.

“I just don’t want Jonas to get hurt.”

“Yeah, well I don’t want Mitch to git hurt. You wanna break his heart?”

“N-no…”

“You wanna break mine??”

“...I…”

“You run yer mouth ‘n they might both git hurt.”

At the mention of his mouth, the skin around Lewis’ lips tingles with the echo of its recent waxing. Adhesive is stuck in the hairs, a waking sensory nightmare.

“There any chance at all,” Cliff’s voice pitches low, snagging Lewis’s full attention by the undertone of anguish, “that Jonas could like dudes? Even the tiniest little--”

“If he does, he’s never told me about it. And we tell each other basically everything.”

In the dark, a little sigh escapes Cliff’s nose and he angles his head toward the window over the bed, the window that faces number twelve. Lewis suddenly feels the world’s strongest urge to apologize. Not for freaking out and having to be tackled, but for delivering an answer that Cliff really, really hadn’t wanted. It doesn’t take an academic team alumni to be able to taste the air and know that the likelihood of Mitch getting his heart broken is not only killing Cliff, but devastatingly probable.

“Sorry,” he whispers to the ceiling. Because in regards to Cliff’s earlier question...no. He doesn’t want to hurt Cliff this way. He can feel the weight of the reality of things sitting on Cliff’s chest like it’s sitting on his very own.

He hears Cliff swallow. “I guess it don’t matter much now if I tell ya. Mitch has loved Jonas since the minute he laid eyes on ‘im. An’ it ain’t ever went away.”

The earth jerks as it stops moving.

“Holy shit.”

Everything he always thought he knew about Mitch Mueller is unraveling, and now the individual pieces don’t fit back together. Mitch, like Lewis, had met Jonas six years ago. Six years! And left town for two of them. Stabbed his dad, got arrested, moved away to God knew where… All the people he’d met and fresh hell he’d caused. And still, still, he had held out for Jonas. Thought of him; missed him; came back and found him. Lewis cannot imagine being hostage to that longing for so much time.

“That’s…” He has never wanted to rub his face so bad in his life. He screws his eyes shut. “This is…a lot to take in. I haven’t even got to the part where I process that Mitch is gay.”

“Yeeaahh…” Cliff sighs again and shifts beside him. Sighing is the theme of the night apparently. “I coulda handled that better when I found out. That’s why I can’t be the one that fucks this up for ‘im. Javier would beat my ass ta death.”

Only now is Lewis starting to grasp how badly his reaction must have scared Cliff. There’s a history there: with him and Mitch and being gay. He has more tact than to ask about it, but oh brother! Does he want to.

Almost as if remembering that he’s drunk, Cliff goes to flipping around like a fish to turn over on his side. Lewis’s head jerks back a little because he’s suddenly face to face with him. The curtain of bangs over his eyes lays across his nose onto the pillow like fringe.

“I hurtcha when I put ya in that closet?”

Taken utterly by surprise, Lewis places himself back there: the moment that he remembers clear as glass and which Cliff does not. In it, he has Lewis by the shirt collar, insistently backing him against what Lewis thinks is a wall. But he reaches past him, and then Lewis is being shoved into a dark recess reeking of bleach and various caustic chemicals that aggravate his mild asthma. And the last thing he sees is a stupidly pretty smile before the door slams in his face.

“No. But I fought a mop for the rights to the corner under the air vent.”

Cliff bursts out wheezing. Lewis basks in it until it peters out, leaving him with silence and lightheartedness that clears like dust. Now that he thinks about it (taped up in this bed), Cliff has put him through some real shit.

“I hurtcha tonight?”

“Um-yes.” Of all the dumbass questions…

A sincere frown materializes on his mouth, and then to Lewis’s…horror? Cliff latches onto him one limb at a time like big, drunk, redneck octopus. One arm slides under his head and the other coils him toward a naked chest peppered with blond hair. A leg hooks itself across his hips. “Fuck, I’m sorry,” he whines, sounding drunker by the minute. He hugs Lewis’s body like a tree. “I didn’t wanna hurtcha, Red. I just…I couldn’t letcha go. Y’understand? I couldn’t letcha git away. I’ll cut ya loose in the morning. But ya gotta gimme yer word that y’ain’t gonna say nothin’ to Jonas. That’s my only condition.”

“Okay, Cliff,” Lewis surrenders to keep this beefcake in his underwear from crying on his shoulder. “I won’t say anything. You’re right--it’s none of my business.”

But Cliff doesn’t really hear him. “Fuck. Fuck, I was too rough with ya, Red. I’m sorry I lost it on ya. Shit. Don’t ever run from me, a’right? It sets me off. Jus’…jus’ lay down for me next time. Okay?”

…

Ohhh.

…

Oh, no, no, no, no…

Like some kind of sleeper agent that even he didn’t know about, Lewis’s body begins to respond to that phrasing. Prickling heat goes snaking through his veins until he can map every twist and turn of his circulatory system. His belly clinches up tight. Cliff had been rough tonight alright, and it hadn’t been fun. But now that he looks back on it with the edges dulled by passed hours, all he remembers is an effortless display of strength. Being yanked around and held down and pushed and picked up…

He doesn’t…he doesn’t have a…..kink, does he?

For…y’know…being…

…handled? Or, like…a power imbalance…

He sucks in a lungful of air to cool down his inner workings because that’s probably how that stuff works. Questions and realizations run rampant through the cortices of his brain. Cliff’s skin is hot against him, even through his shirt.

You are not getting an erection right now! You’re not! Put it down!

But, of course, he is.

The clear memory of how hard he had fought (until sweat gathered on his back) and gotten nowhere won’t leave his thoughts. It no longer makes him mad; it makes his dick twitch. Cliff’s rule about pants in the bed suddenly makes all the sense in the world because they’re shrinking.

Cliff hums into the side of Lewis’s head in a drunken half sleep. It vibrates down every bone of his skeleton.

“You’re a cuddly drunk,” Lewis complains.

“Makein’ up fer…bein’ mean,” he slurs on the cusp of sleep. “Gotta be…good to ya. Make ya feel better.” He squeezes Lewis a little tighter and pets the far side of his face.

Cliff’s touch is something else. Lewis has been aware of his taste for it for a very long time, acknowledgement notwithstanding. Even when the guy is at his most unbearable, Lewis wouldn’t push him off. It’s firm and steadying, a ballast he can lean against. And right now, in the private darkness of his bed, with no one looking, no one knowing…it makes his navel hot. Makes his back arch just a little.

The thigh draped across his lap is adding just enough pressure to short circuit his brain, and when he looks down at the band of those boxers, snug around a bare hip, and the interlocking circles of muscle in his arm, and the hot, heavy weight of Cliff half laying on him, Lewis lets his brain switch off and gives in completely.

“If you cut my hands free I can apologize,” he whispers. He doesn’t know if it’s allowed, but Cliff is apologizing this way, and Lewis is just realizing in agony that he cannot touch back. And maybe, with just a little urging, he could get it the way he wants it; in the places that he wants it. Would Cliff do that for him? If he promises to stay where he is--stay on his back. If he does everything he’s asked and obeys… “If you cut me loose I’ll stay right here. I won’t try to go, I promise.”

Cliff is barely alive, but he puts a hand on the union of Lewis’s taped wrists. It’s such a gently domineering act that Lewis figures he could probably cum from it at this rate. “Hm-mm. In the mornin’, Red. ‘S okay. I gotcha. Yer not in trouble anymore.”

“Cliifff…” Lewis whines. The tightness in his belly is too much; it’s starting to ache.

“Mm.”

“I want…I’m…I…” How does he even voice this? You’re hitting a lot of switches for me these days and…I think I want you to get me off.

Instead, he says, “Can you at least turn me over?” Maybe if he takes the sight away?

In a stupor, Cliff goes to roll him, except that instead of meeting a wall, Cliff’s brick shithouse chest appears an inch from his nose. “I meant the other way.”

“Don’t want yer hair in my face.”

“Oh yeah, you wouldn’t want hair in your face.” Lewis rolls his eyes.

Cliff doesn’t respond, and on his way out of this world, his last order of business is to pat Lewis affectionately on the back like a baby. It’s precious. It also adds another very complicated layer to the already mounting dossier of things he needs to process starting tomorrow.

His inner self shakes its head. These Californian redneck types…

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

The worst part about walking home was that there was absolutely no chance that they could hold hands again.

Mitch had most of their grocery bags since he had the guns to carry more. Jars of pasta sauce and cans of soup; a gallon of milk and bags of rice. Jonas had been allowed to take the tortillas and the bread and everything else. It was hard enough getting through the trees at night without their arms laden with things they couldn’t afford to drop in the dark; Jonas dreaded the trek back, envisioning dragging himself over fallen trees, snagging his bags on some evil claw of a branch and raining provisions across the ground, never to be seen again. Right up until Mitch made the best point of all time: They didn’t have to creep back into camp through the woods. They could take the main road back in because they had been to the store; there was nothing to defend themselves against if confronted.  

The night had cooled off drastically, making the stroll back a pleasure. It was a pleasure for other reasons too. Like how chummy they had gotten in the store after they had cleared the air back at the diner. The unburdening had served him as much as he had it had Jonas. He was a different person, yet again. Jonas couldn’t put his finger on how, but it was like he had been given back his soul.

But back to the whole being chummy thing… Maybe it was just his imagination, but Mitch was sort of…flirty. They did not part ways as they had gotten in the habit of doing here. Each went where the other went, stopped when they stopped. And Mitch stayed very close, to Jonas’s delight. When he reached over Jonas’s head to grab something off a shelf, his side rubbed against Jonas’s shoulder. When he wanted to stop the cart, he laid a hand over Jonas’s on the handle bar. He touched his back, and his arms, and once or twice carded his fingers through his hair fondly...like a dog. And Jonas died and went to heaven when Mitch slapped him on the butt with a box of Hamburger Helper.

It was hard not to push the issue of Mitch’s problem with food while they tossed things into the cart and talked about meal ideas because all Jonas wanted to do was ask if Mitch would eat it? He had so many questions about the rules he followed and the triggers that must have existed for something like this. But it wasn’t the time; maybe it would never be. It wasn’t worth it to spoil the aura of contentedness that Mitch had taken on. How long must he have been holding onto that? Keeping it even from his best friends.

Movie night was wrapped up by the time they reached the camp, multiple sacks dangling from each of their hands. The screen was a ghostly stage in drapery and the surrounding logs sat eerily abandoned. No one was anywhere, except Mitch and Jonas who were alone in the glare of the light post outside the counsellors’ office. It might’ve been a total horror show except that he was with Mitch, and Mitch didn’t seem to even be considering fear. He had probably been in much, much more frightening positions than this one. Jail, for instance; juvenile detention; the streets of east Sellwood.

By the time they made it back to the house and walked into the kitchen, Jonas was thinking about doing something he vaguely remembers doing back when he was drunk. He thought about it as they laid the bags on the counter and and spread everything out to put away, laughing till cramps about the state of that diner. He thought about it as he shoved the eggs and milk in the fridge while covertly watching Mitch twist all the cans in the cabinet so the labels faced out. He thought about it even harder after Mitch disappeared to take a shower and he disappeared into the private paradise of his room.

His pajamas were waiting loyally for him on the bed. He tore off his day clothes and pulled them on, then crawled into the center of his bed and pulled his journal out from under the mattress corner.

Journal entry # whatever I can’t keep up::

Big life-altering events  taking place at this rando camp in the middle of god-forsaken nowhere. I don’t even know where to begin. Actually let me get one thing out of the way while it’s fresh on my mind: Chris, if you’re reading this for real, I want you to know you’re a huge piece of sh  crap. You are allowing a kid (probably multiple kids) at this place to continue getting bullied despite having come to you for guidance. You are the worst kind of administrator. I don’t usually like to be mean but I will be if I have to. You’re a loser and a joke. I hope that if you die your body floats down into the sewer so you can finally be with your own kind. And also so I can piss on it. --

Anyway... let me cut right to the chase here.

Snuck off with Mitch tonight, no longer against my better judgement; it felt like the only thing worth doing. This happened as a result of mine and Lewis’s tennis match defeat against Mitch and Cliff earlier. There was a bet involved, long story short. I had to participate in whatever Mitch had planned tonight, and it turned out what he had planned was dinner. That’s it. He was buying me dinner at the diner across the road.

That doesn’t seem all that groundbreaking, except that only a moment before I learned of it, I realized that I accidentally fell in love with Mitch. Like very hard and fully. And then it was like my third eye flew open and I realized that it’s why I’ve been so excited to do stuff with him the past few weeks. It’s why I get all giddy when he looks at me and smiles. It’s the reason he suddenly smells so good and looks so good and his stupid voice is so…mm.

It’s also the reason I can’t help the frustration of him not wanting to spill the name of his crush, (which I nearly killed myself for the rights to in the rasum frasum tennis game). As he was dragging me through the woods in the dark, it occurred to me that I was afraid of him being taken away from me if the mystery girl ever crushed on him back. And then we ran across the road and the light hit him just right or something, and I fell face first in love with him and realized I am jealous as heck !

Whatever unknowable cosmic force is behind people falling in love…I just wanna talk. I thought it was bad enough when I had no sense and liked Mayor of Pricktown Neil’s girlfriend. Turns out that was nothing like what loving Mitch has shaped up to feel like. But it is, perhaps, a much worse pickle to be in. Because Mitch has this illusive girl on a pedestal in the stratosphere and I’m the guy he used to tease to tears and only just decided he likes. I’m also a guy, period. You see my problem.

Mitch also admitted something very horrifying to me over dinner. I won’t talk about it here in case you are reading this, you brown-nose Chad. I don’t want to out him that way. I never imagined that something like that could touch a guy like Mitch in the first place, but I think that thinking like that is what prevents people from spotting it. I don’t know how to help him, but I hope he lets me try.

I’m scared of what things are going to look like when we leave here. It feels like we’re in a bubble, apart from earthly space and time. But we’re leaving in less than two weeks, so ready or not, I’m gonna find out. I guess I have a lot of things to make peace with on the three hour bus ride back. Like how things are going to change between Mitch and me, if they are. Like the possibility that I came to this stupid place against my will and all I got was this debilitating heartbreak. I dread the thought of things going back to normal. Only what was normal can never be again. And I dread a distance growing back between me and Mitch, and having to carry these feelings around anyway. It hurts to imagine. I think it might be my new biggest fear.

Jonas snapped shut and secured the notebook in its secret place, sliding off the bed. Time for a drink to get settled in for the night. Maybe some popcorn and TV before bed. Anything to stave off lying wide awake and consumed with thoughts about his sexuality. He’d have to spread that process out over a series of days if he didn’t want his brain to burst into flames. It could barely accommodate the fact itself.

From the kitchen, Jonas could hear that the hiss of the shower had shut off as he helped himself to a water bottle. A complacent little smile settled on his mouth as he took a packet of extra butter popcorn from the cabinet and stuck it in the microwave. Everything felt so light; the atmosphere, the weight of his body, which was defying gravity by holding him a hair’s breadth off the floor. Jonas wished his nervous system or whatever was responsible for him feeling so virginal and giddy would settle on down, though; there was no reason to go frolicking around the kitchen, high as a kite on love, when Mitch was probably just an inadvertent tease who didn’t give a rat’s anus about him that way.

Man, you are really all over this place with this whole being in love thing. First you’re crashing ‘cause he probably doesn’t feel the same, now you’re walking on air. Will you please pick a mood!

“Joey? You burnin’ popcorn or somethin’?”

“Oh, crap!” Jonas’s nose caught a whiff of nuked kernels and he yanked the microwave open, plucking the bag out pinched between two fingers. “Any kitchen with me in it is where popcorn goes to die,” he groused aloud, pulling the bag open and dumping it into a bowl. It wasn’t a total waste, but it was going to have a robust flavor.

Mitch strolled into the kitchen fresh out of the shower in his t-shirt and underwear just to give Jonas fits apparently. A few streams of his damp hair refused to follow the same grain as the rest and curved down over his forehead. Jonas was trying not to stare, but what an absolute god.

“I like it kinda burnt,” Mitch said, folding his arms and leaning a hip against the counter by the steaming pile of fubar popcorn. “It tastes like if popcorn was evil.”

Jonas laughed a little too hard at that. And Mitch laughed because Jonas was slumped over wheezing. They christened it Gothcorn when they caught their breath. Another thing that belonged to them alone. The private culture of their days here together had grown so much. His chest ached to think of it fading away in the coming year. Even something as stupid as gothcorn.

He popped a few pieces into his mouth to make sure it was still edible. It wasn’t bad enough to toss out so Jonas left it on the counter.

“You can have some if you want,” he said. And then realizing how easily it might have come off as pressuring, he panicked and vomited every word he knew. “I-I’m not trying to pressure you. Or-or tempt you. Was that too tempting? I’m not trying to trick you into it or anything. I swear. I--”

“Joey.” Mitch shut him up by putting both hands on Jonas’s shoulders. “I know yer not trickin’ me. Trust me, I know when that’s happenin’.” he assured him, smirking at Jonas’s obvious distress. “Yes, I’ll have some. Thanks.”

Jonas nodded, tingling with embarrassment. Mitch gave his shoulders a final squeeze, thumbs massaging at his collar bones, and then he turned away, maybe for the fridge, maybe for the living room, Jonas didn’t know. But his brain remembered what he had been considering doing earlier, and which now seemed long overdue.

“I’m gonna g--”

Jonas reached out and snatched Mitch by the back of the shirt before he could get very far, pulling him back. It was harder without the false bravado of wine, but he pushed through the agony of cringe and coiled his arms around Mitch’s middle, not waiting to see if it was welcome. And holy heck, what a difference being sober made, and standing on solid ground; because it was actually the third time they had been in this position.

Mitch was barely there. Jonas was so used to hugging Sidney, who was his twin in every way. But he could close his arms so completely around Mitch’s trim waist that it was jarring. There was none of the yielding softness of fat, only hard planes of muscle and stomach. But Jonas wasn’t complaining. That svelte smoothness against his palms was so new and unexplored--it was delicious.

Cautiously, Mitch’s own arms settled low around his shoulders. Two big hands spread across his back and began smoothing up and down with a tenderness that was mythological in him. No one would believe it.

“Mitch. I’m sorry I thought you were trash just like everyone else.”

“Uh,” Mitch snickered, “it’s okay??”

“I didn’t know things were so messed up for you.” Jonas pressed his cheek against Mitch’s chest, basking in the nearness of his scents.

“Yeah, well I didn’t know things were so messed up for you either. You just say the word, I’ll fuck yer dad right up. Might end up in jail but I’ll make him realize it ain’t so bad havin’ a son that’s all sweet ‘n soft. Could be a motherfucker like me.”

Water squeezed out of Jonas’s tear ducts and skimmed over his vision. The lights bled and swam. His throat closed in around his tongue. No one--not even Sid--defended him from Dean.

“I really, really like you,” Jonas finally squeaked.

Mitch curled forward and rested his chin on Jonas’s head. “Ya wanna know somethin’ I never told no one before?” He adjusted his hold on Jonas’s shoulders, gathering him up closer. “My favorite thing about you is how fuckin’ soft you are.” To demonstrate, he gave Jonas a tight squeeze. “I fuckin’ love it, Joey. ‘S why I said no to you changin’ anything about yerself back when we talked about it that first day. You ain’t my favorite nerd for nothin’.”

The sheer joy Jonas felt bubbled up from his gut and sputtered out of his mouth in laughter. “That’s why I’m your favorite nerd? Because you can feel how soft I am when you put me in a headlock?”

“Among other shit.”

“Like what?”

Finally, they untangled from one another, and somehow they had rocked themselves into switching places because now the counter’s edge was biting into Jonas’s butt and Mitch had him boxed in with his hands. He propped himself up at eye level and looked at the ceiling in mock thought.

“Mmm… sometimes you get real mean. An’ make these little growly faces at me like a fuckin’ Pomeranian.” Jonas was struck with unbridled laughter, unable to argue on his behalf. “An’ sometimes ya get all doe-eyed and trembly, and ya act extra sweet an’ nice ta me ‘cause ya think I won’t do nothin’ to ya that way.” Okay, now Jonas’s laughter had petered out to nothing. Something warm and gooey spilled in his chest, pooling in his stomach. “No, Mitch. Please, Mitch. Thank you, Mitch,” he mimicked. Jonas shivered at how much more of a game that had all been to Mitch. And then he shivered again; because he had never been in any danger at all.

“Ya kinda have that look right now.” Their faces were inches apart, breathing each other’s heat. A flare of the old cat and mouse feeling prickled at Jonas’s spine, more exciting than it had ever been. “Yer not scared, are ya?”

Jonas swallowed. Mitch was teasing, and Jonas had never been more into it than he was right now.

“N…no--”

Knock, knock, knock…

Both of their heads whipped toward the front door.  

“You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me!” Mitch groaned.

In not so many words, Jonas agreed. What terrible timing. His palms were tacky and his heart was still throbbing a mile a minute behind his ribs, but he ducked and started to slip through the narrow gap between Mitch and the counter. But Mitch did not let him out.

“Woah, woah, where ya goin’?”

Jonas froze, eyes darting between his partner’s confused ones. “Did you miss that someone knocked on the door?”

“No. But…” His mouth gaped a little as he stopped himself. It was pleasing to no end that he couldn’t seem to find the gumption to say whatever he was thinking, but Jonas liked to fantasize that it was exactly what he was thinking himself. “Let’s just…don’t.”

“Why not?” The underside of his skin flushed at the notion that Mitch wanted to keep them alone. Jonas wanted that too, but it seemed there was no established decorum for how to express it.

Mitch shrugged, uncharacteristically short on words. “I dunno. ‘Cause it’s fuckin’ late as shit. Who’d even be knockin’ right now.”

“What if it’s Cliff or Lewis?”

“Fuck ‘em.”

“What if it’s Chris?”

“What if we’re busy?” Mitch stared down so boldly into his face that he almost couldn’t bare the weight of it, or the heat it ignited in his belly. Weaponized intensity--he’d said it before.

“A-are we busy?”  

Jonas was a pro at reading the parade of expressions that came across Mitch Mueller’s face. He knew them all by now. And he knew the answer to this question based on the one he was wearing right now: a little smirk on his clever mouth, a gleam in his eye that was both a darkness and a light.

Since he hadn’t blinked in recent memory, Jonas caught it when it happened. Quick as streak of lightning, Mitch’s eyes darted to his mouth, lingering no time at all. Jonas saw pink. Flowers burst open in his head and his stomach. His heart revved up again, drumming at the base of his throat. Mitch did not try to cover himself. He knew Jonas had seen it and held his gaze, bold as brass.

Is he gonna…

Jonas’s eyelids were getting heavy. His insides were a tangle of nerves and thrill, tightening as Mitch’s hand settled back on the counter by his side. He still felt the touch of those eyes zinging across his lips.

“We could b--”

Knock, knock, knock…

They both lurched, having forgotten the unwelcome intruder waiting on the porch.

Mitch sent a glare in their direction and tore off toward it. Jonas had not fully recovered from the spell he’d been under as he broke forward to head Mitch off. His head swam dizzily as he threw out an arm and caught him by the shirt tail.

“It’s nice to see you again, Jerk-Mitch, but I think you better let me get it.” He did not wait for Mitch to allow it, bustling past him to reach the door before Mitch could tear the head off of whoever was standing there.

I swear to God… If this isn’t a life or death emergency I might let Mitch have them.

As he swung the door open, Jonas fixed his face. And he was glad he did, because the person standing there, wringing his hands, was Eric.

The irritation dropped out of Jonas’s stance at once, replaced with a red urgency. “Hey. You okay? What’s going on?” He scanned all the bare skin he could see for dark marks and bruises, but in the orange porch light, he couldn’t detect anything out of place.

“Umm…” he said, picking awkwardly at his nails. “I was just wondering if that offer to hide out here for a while still stands?”

There were no pillows or blankets tucked under his arms; no spare clothes or bags or carry-on of any kind. His hair was limp from the damp night air. It all read very loudly of an unplanned stealing away under the veil of night.

“Of course. Yeah, come in.” Jonas moved out of the way in order that Eric might slip inside, but he took one step and froze, having caught an eyeful of Mitch loitering in the background over Jonas’s shoulder. Jonas didn’t hold it against him; after all, he had been that guy before. Not so long ago, in fact.

“Hang on a sec,” he said. He swung the door forward at a very genteel pace, so as not to seem like he was slamming it in Eric’s face. When it clicked in the latch, he turned around.

“Can you like…go somewhere?”

Mitch stood there, blinking. “Whaddaya mean?”

“You know like, can you…make yourself scarce.”

A wrinkle appeared on his forehead. “What--”

“Mitch, go away,” Jonas laughed, because Mitch’s density was marginally adorable. “You’re scaring him.”

“Why? I ain’t doin’ nothin’.”

“I know that. But to give you a little insight into how nerds see you, you don’t have to be doing anything.”

Mitch chin lifted in understanding, and Jonas felt his heart throb. It was untrue that Jerk-Mitch was back up and running; that had been a joke. Mitch didn’t always grasp the effect he had on people, especially people like Eric. It was downright cute the way his frame seemed to droop a degree. His shoulders slumped, trying to make himself small.

“Shit,” he mumbled, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck. “Alright. Lemme know when it’s safe.” He backed out the room and turned away toward the kitchen.

Jonas let out a breath, mourning the loss of whatever had been happening only a few moments earlier. Maybe it could be recaptured, or maybe it had flown away for good. The chemical buzz of it still fizzed in this bloodstream, petering out slowly as he opened the door to make good on his promise to smuggle Eric into his cabin if needed.

“I made him leave,” Jonas said standing aside. Eric entered this time, glancing around nervously, as if ‘making him leave’ only meant that Jonas had thrown a sheet over Mitch in the corner.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean for him to have to hide in his own house, but…you know…”

“Yeah. I know.” They shared little beaten down smiles common to scared nerds everywhere. “He doesn’t know how scary he can be sometimes.”

Eric lifted a brow and wandered farther inside. “Who’s gonna break it to him?”

“I already did, to his incredible confusion,” Jonas said, shutting the door. “Come on. You can have my room.”

He started to lead Eric toward his bedroom. “Oh, no, no. I can’t take your bedroom away.”

“It’s really okay,” Jonas assured him, taking his arm and guiding him into the room. “We were planning to stay up a while anyway, maybe watch a movie or something. Besides, you’re company. I would never banish you to the couch. You don’t have a pillow or anything.”