by Lisa Henry
“You have plenty of friends for very short periods of time,” she points out. “Then you pack up and go somewhere else. There’s nothing wrong with it. You’re just wired differently. When the zombie apocalypse comes, you’ll be fine living in your mountaintop cabin with only the birds for company.”
The zombie apocalypse? Jesus. His mom and Nick would get along like a house on fire, wouldn’t they? That’s just the sort of random reference Nick would love. Jai’s not sure what worries him most: the fact he’s already noticing the things Nick would love, or that he’s apparently hooking up with the teenage-boy version of his mom. There’s not enough ice cream in the world to deal with a realization like that.
“And in the zombie apocalypse, you would . . .?”
“Die by shooting myself in the head as I was surrounded by a horde of revenants, sacrificing myself after creating a diversion so the rest of you could escape.”
“The fact you didn’t even have to think about that for a second is incredibly disturbing,” he tells her.
Janice shrugs. “The Walking Dead, Jai. How have you never watched it?”
“Is it on Netflix?”
“Ronny has it on DVD.”
“Maybe I’ll borrow it.”
“Maybe you should.” She drops her spoon in the sink. “And maybe next time your friend is over, you’ll introduce me.”
He knows when he’s beaten. “Okay, Mom.”
“Good night, Jai.” She smiles, and the wrinkles around the corners of her eyes deepen.
“Night, Mom.”
He finishes half the ice cream before he heads back downstairs to bed.
Nick: Got my first BJ last night!
Devon: Congratulations?
Nick: Fuck yeah congratulations! Except it was over really fast. :(
Devon: TMI.
Nick: Seriously though? How long did u last when that Mathlete girl blew u?
Devon: HOURS, BRO. HOURS. I was like a machine.
Nick: Dirty liar.
Devon: :D
Because his parents said he could go to Devon’s on Friday night, Nick decides that over the weekend he should really try to get another summer job like he promised he would. He doesn’t feel guilty for going to Jai’s place instead, but he does feel like since he’s totally abusing his parents’ misplaced trust, he should at least try to do something right. Also, it’d be nice to get his car back and not have to ride his bike everywhere.
Job hunting in Franklin totally sucks. Nick spends five minutes poring over the ads in the back of the local paper, then gives up and turns to the comics instead. Wow. Not only are newspapers still a thing, but so is The Family Circus, huh? Nick then spends ten minutes googling the history of The Family Circus, gets sidetracked by a few random links, and then it’s suddenly two hours later and he’s been sucked down a bishounen rabbit hole on Tumblr.
It happens.
It happens a lot, actually.
Before his dad was obsessed with getting Nick a job, he used to be obsessed with getting Nick a hobby, or a sport, or something, because apparently spending hours on his computer all day or drawing his web comic are not what Chris Stahlnecker considers a healthy use of his son’s time. Which is pretty unfair considering Nick inherited his dad’s complexion. He’s part alabaster, part vampire. The sunlight does not agree with him. Last summer while Devon was getting an even, glowing tan, Nick was peeling like old paint. It was not at all attractive. Also, it itched like hell. So pardon Nick if he much prefers the indoors.
He thinks of Jai working on the site, and how hot he looked, in both senses of the word. Really, Nick’s glad Mr. Grover gave him an office job instead of something on the site. Air-conditioning and indoor bathrooms are two of Nick’s favorite things.
Thinking of Mr. Grover makes him feel bad. He wonders idly if he should write a letter of apology to Mr. Grover, then decides that he probably should, but also that he probably won’t. Because awkward.
Nick eventually heads to the bathroom to shower. When he gets back to his bedroom, his mom is standing in front of his open closet with a notebook in her hand.
“Mom?” he asks warily.
His mom has a calculating look in her eye. “It’s only a few months until you’re off to college, and we need to figure out what we have to buy you.”
Nick’s mom loves writing lists. She writes grocery lists and laundry lists and lists of chores for herself and for Nick’s dad and for Nick. She writes lists about what she has to do every week, and then breaks them down into daily checklists. Once, when she and Nick’s dad went away to a conference overnight, the list she left Nick—which covered everything from remembering to feed the dog to all the emergency numbers she could think of—was three pages long. She writes lists about what lists she needs to write.
“If we get it now, you won’t need to dip into your own money once you’re at school,” his mom says.
Nick has almost four thousand dollars in his college account. It’s more money than he’s ever seen in his life, and it doesn’t quite feel real because it’s just a row of numbers on a statement. Nick sort of wants to go to the bank and withdraw the whole lot in one-dollar bills so he can make it rain. But the account is actually in his dad’s name, since he opened it when Nick was still a toddler, and his dad won’t sign it over yet because he knows Nick too well.
The money is for when he’s at college. For incidentals and stuff that his parents aren’t going to cover for him. It still seems like a lot, but his parents worry it won’t last very long at all. It’s a lifetime of saved money. It’s twenty dollars here and fifty there. It’s birthdays and Christmases. It’s from uncles and aunts and grandparents. It’s from Nick missing out on splurging on comic books and candy, and forgoing the instant gratification of buying wonderful, glorious things in order to have the money for the future.
And now the future is here, and Nick’s not ready for it.
Nick sits down on the end of his bed, his stomach knotting.
What he told Devon is true. He’s scared of the idea of college, and not just because it means a forced separation from Devon, which should absolutely be against the Geneva Conventions. He’s scared he doesn’t know what to do with his life, and he’s run out of time to decide. He’s scared he’s expected to be an adult now, and he still feels like a kid. Mostly, he’s scared that in a few years he’ll look back and not even recognize himself. Nick likes who he is, okay? Even if he hasn’t totally figured himself out yet. And it feels like college is a non-Nick-shaped box he’s being shoved into, and in order to fit, he’ll need to lop parts of himself off.
And then, when he thinks about that, he worries he’s maybe overreacting. It’s just he can't shake the idea that growing up feels a lot like giving in. It feels a lot like losing something valuable, even if that something is so intangible Nick can’t properly articulate it. How is he supposed to want to study criminology when it only feels like last week he was eight years old and wanted to be a Jedi?
Everything he was, and everything he is, has somehow been distilled down to this moment. To his mom setting out his balled-up socks in a regimented row on the floor and counting them up, and somehow closing the door on the childhood—on the freedom—Nick’s not yet ready to leave behind. It’s all socks and storage boxes, and pillowcases and linen, and minors and majors, and for a second Nick feels like he can’t breathe properly and will never be able to breathe again.
It’s like trying to grab a fistful of water and hold on to it.
Nick closes his eyes and pushes down the sudden spike of panic tearing through him.
“Nick?” his mom says. “Nick?”
He opens his eyes again.
“I said, you’re going to need new socks.”
Nick blinks down at the row of socks, and feels like he may as well be looking at something he’s never seen before. “Okay,” he says at last, his head buzzing. “Sure, Mom.”
On Saturday afternoon Devon comes over for a swim. He brings Ebony
with him, and she brings her friend Shelley. Shelley is only sixteen, but she already has a tattoo. She shows Nick the tattoo, and the fake ID she used to get it.
“I’m telling you, bro,” Nick says in an undertone when he and Devon are lazing in the deep end of the pool, “my mom was counting my socks, and I almost had a legit panic attack.”
It’s to Devon’s absolute credit that he’s listening to Nick and not staring at Ebony in her swimsuit as she sits on the edge of the pool.
“I think I’m channeling Holden Caulfield or something,” Nick says. “Like proper existentialist angst and stuff. And a while ago I had all these feelings about dandelions that I’m pretty sure was exactly the same as watching my little sister on a carousel or whatever.”
Devon lifts his hand to wipe his dripping hair back. “Do you want me to take you to a carousel so we can ride it?”
“No. The whole point is we don’t get to ride the carousel anymore. We only get to watch the kids do it!”
“I don’t think that’s actually the point,” Devon says, but he doesn’t sound sure. “We can ride as many carousels as we want.”
“But it’s not the same,” Nick tells him urgently. “Nothing’s ever going to be the same.”
Devon looks worried. “I know that, but we can’t stop things from changing.”
And that’s the crux of it right there, Nick knows. It’s exactly what he’s so afraid of.
Whatever Devon is going to say next—and Nick likes to imagine that it would have been wise, thoughtful, and life-changing—is interrupted when, at the shallow end, Ebony pulls a screaming Shelley into the water.
“Should I get a tattoo?” Nick asks Devon later that night.
Devon snorts awake. “What?”
“A tattoo,” Nick says, watching the sweep of light across his ceiling as a car drives down the street. “Shelley’s only sixteen and she already has a tattoo.”
“What would you get though?” Devon asks.
Nick thinks about it for a while. He likes the idea of a tattoo. He likes the idea of permanence, of picking something that’s meaningful to him and wearing it on his skin forever. Except he’s worried that he doesn’t have anything that meaningful in his life. Would it be weird to get Devon’s name? Yeah, probably. And while Nick has an incredibly long list of things he loves—Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, and the Avengers, to name a few—he’s not sure he wants to have anything from those franchises inked on his skin. He wants something that’s his alone, maybe? He just doesn’t know what that is.
“I wonder if Jai has any tattoos.”
“You don’t know?”
Nick shrugs and tugs the comforter over himself properly. “I haven’t actually seen him naked yet.”
“Dude, really?”
“Is that weird?”
“I don’t know,” Devon says. “Kind of? I mean, aren’t you supposed to get naked with a fuck buddy?”
“I’ve seen his dick though. Just nothing else.”
“I guess that’s a start.”
“It’s a really nice dick,” Nick tells him with a sigh.
“Good for you, bro,” Devon says staunchly. For a straight guy, Devon is incredibly supportive. It’s only fair, Nick figures, since he has to listen to Devon wax lyrical about girl parts. Which are cool and all, just absolutely not Nick’s thing. But Nick is also supportive. Once, when Devon was dating a girl back in high school, Nick had even helped him research how to give oral. Seriously, the internet knows everything. Except how to alleviate a cramped tongue, apparently, which had been Devon’s downfall in the end.
Nick sighs again and rolls over onto his side. He rests his head on Devon’s chest, and Devon curls an arm around him. And it’s probably a total violation of their cuddle bro code that Nick immediately wonders how it would feel to curl up with Jai like this.
“Are you thinking about Ebony right now?” he asks.
“Some part of me at least is always thinking about Ebony,” Devon admits. “Does that make me a creepy stalker?”
“Um, are you actually stalking her?”
“No!”
“Then, no, you are not a creepy stalker.”
“It’s cool that we’re friends and everything, and I think that maybe she’d be okay being more than friends, but what if I ask her and mess everything up?”
Nick thinks about it for a moment. “But what if you ask her and everything turns out great?”
“Seems like a big gamble,” Devon says quietly.
“Relationships are hard,” Nick murmurs.
“Yeah.” Devon shakes his head. “You think we’ll ever figure this stuff out?”
“Going on our track record, probably not.”
“Probably not,” Devon echoes, sounding pretty bummed. “Maybe we’ll never figure anything out.”
Nick’s angst is either really contagious, or everyone has at least a bit of it. The thought is not as comforting as he’d like.
On Sunday night Nick is woken up by music. It’s being played softly. He climbs out of bed and slips silently down the stairs. The lights are on in the living room. Nick peeks around the corner.
The coffee table has been moved.
Scooter the dog is sitting beside it, tail thumping noiselessly on the carpet.
Nick’s jaw drops.
His mom and dad are dancing. Arms around each other, doing a slow sort of shuffle that Nick thinks means they don’t know any actual dance steps. His mom is resting her head on his dad’s shoulder. There’s a gentle smile on her face, and her eyes are closed. His dad is nodding his head slightly, like he’s trying to pay attention to the beat.
It may be the strangest thing Nick has ever seen. And he’s seen every David Lynch movie ever made.
Is this what people do? Randomly dance together in the middle of the night? Or has Nick accidentally walked into some sort of otherworld where it turns out his parents are totally different people than he always thought? Except instead of having creepy buttons for eyes or something, they’re dancing.
Nick feels suddenly overwhelmed, and he’s not sure why. He can’t even tease the threads of his conflicting emotions apart to trace them back to their source. It’s sad, and it’s beautiful, and everything and nothing all at the same time. It’s a tiny flash of something bright that’s buried too deep in ordinariness to ever shine.
His mom curls her hand around the back of his dad’s neck, and her smile grows.
His parents are in love.
The sudden, acute awareness of it makes his throat ache and his eyes prick with tears.
A part of him wants to stay and watch, but he also doesn’t want to see the dance end. He doesn’t want to see them step apart and back into their mundane lives again. He heads upstairs, careful of the third step that always creaks, and slumps back down on his bed.
Under everything, twisted up with all those other threads into a complicated knot, Nick thinks he can draw out a string he recognizes: jealousy.
It would be nice, he thinks, to have someone to dance with in the night.
Nick: What’s your favorite place in the world?
Jai: 1770, Australia.
Nick: That’s a number.
Jai: It’s a town.
Some conversations can’t be had via text. Nick calls Jai.
“What’s so special about this place that I’m pretty sure you made up?”
“It’s past midnight, Nick.”
From downstairs, Nick can still hear the faint strains of music. “It’s important?”
Jai sighs or yawns or something. “There’s nothing really special about it, I guess. But I was stuck there for two days when I ran out of cash, and I just walked around and sat on the beach, and this old couple in an RV fed me and let me sleep in their camper when it rained.”
“So it’s not the place, it’s the people?”
“Yeah.”
Nick frowns at his ceiling. “Why do you have to go all the way around the world to meet nice people? T
here are nice people here.”
“It’s . . .” Jai hesitates. “It’s not about people being nice. It’s about going to somewhere totally different, and discovering that people are still people, you know?”
Nick’s not sure he does.
“It’s about realizing that the world is so much bigger than you ever knew, but also so much smaller.”
“Oh.” Wow. Jai really is Zen or something.
Jai sighs again. “Any more burning questions?”
“Do you have any tattoos?”
For a moment there’s only silence, and Nick wonders if Jai ended the call. Then Jai huffs out a laugh. “That’s for me to know and you to find out, isn’t it?”
Nick squirms at the thought of it. “Challenge accepted!”
“Good night, Nick.”
“Good night.”
Nick drifts off with his phone still clutched in his hand.
Nick: I googled 1770. It is an actual town.
Jai: Yes, I know.
Nick: It just sounds really dumb.
Jai: Ok, but I didn’t name it.
Nick: Fair point.
Jai manages to pick up a few days’ work with Bill Hollister. Bill lives down the street and runs a lawn mowing service. He usually has a guy help him out, but the guy’s down with the chicken pox.
“The goddamn chicken pox,” Bill grouses. “Who the hell gets the goddamn chicken pox?”
Jai just nods.
It takes a while for Bill to start his old truck, and then they’re rattling their way over to the north side of town, where their first stop is a two-story brick place on half an acre. Bill gets the ride-on mower, while Jai gets to do all the legwork with the string trimmer.
“Still got that motorcycle, do ya?” Bill asks as he levers himself onto the mower.
“Yeah,” Jai says.
Bill pats his left leg, which ends in a stump where his knee should be. “A 1973 Yamaha TX. I loved that fucking bike. Loved my leg too.”
He starts the mower before Jai can think how to respond.
