by Amy Lane
“Not boys?” Evan was sort of disappointed about that, and Dr. Stottemeyer must have caught that note in his voice.
“Would you like boys to hug you?”
Evan shrugged. “I just… I don’t know. I like the way boys look.”
Stottemeyer made a soft grunt like he was assimilating something. “Well, some boys will want to hug you, but in this day and age, you need to make sure they’re not going to bang you on the head for trying it. Choose your friends, okay?”
“So… choose friends that hug?” Lamest. Advice. Ever.
“Yeah,” Stottemeyer said, but his lips were pursed, like he knew it wasn’t the keenest thing a shrink ever said. “Choose your friends.”
Well, why not? Mom and Dad weren’t doing it for him, right?
“Got any suggestions for how to do that?”
Stottemeyer shrugged. “Still like comic books?”
Because comic books and Godzilla were still on Evan’s top-two list of things that never let him down. “Yeah.”
“You got an animation club at your middle school?”
Evan blinked. “Yeah.”
“Are those people nice?”
He fidgeted. Those people were the kind of people you didn’t want to get involved with unless you liked your hair done by swirly. “They’re not very popular,” he hedged.
Stottemeyer grimaced. “Buddy, those are usually the people who need hugs the most.”
It was like Evan saw a bright light in front of him, shining down upon the ragtag bunch of übergeeks who spent their lunches hiding from the bigger kids but who always seemed to have each other’s backs.
“It’s a good thing it’s summer vacation,” he said practically, and Stottemeyer gave him a bemused smile. God, he was pretty. Not “pretty” pretty, because his nose was a little big and his lips were a little full, but Evan realized with a buzz that he’d been trying to get this man to smile at him since he was a traumatized five-year-old.
“Why?”
Evan tamped down on the attraction, because it would probably freak the whole world out. It didn’t matter anyway. Finally, finally, he had a plan to tackle the one thing that had been bothering him since his mother had shooed him into the living room after he flipped his bike and scraped his knees. “Because if I’m gonna hang with those people, I need to work out a little. We’re gonna need a lot of protecting.”
Stottemeyer shrugged, and his eyes measured Evan from top to toe. Evan knew he wasn’t going to be that tall, but even worse, he probably weighed eighty pounds soaking wet before a good poop. “Couldn’t hurt,” he said practically. “Physical activity is a really positive outlet for a lot of problems. Ask your gym teacher for some advice on how to bulk up.”
Evan nodded, liking this plan. He would work out, get pretty, and hang with people who liked Godzilla. So far, the proposition was win-win.
“So,” his mother said as he emerged from the tiny little office at the mental health center, “How’d it go?”
“Great,” Evan said, smiling widely. “I’m gonna work out!”
“Great, Ev,” she said, her long Italian face lighting up with genuine enthusiasm. “That sounds healthy!”
He grinned back, and she put her hand on his shoulder and steered him to the car.
Step 3—do some destruction of your own
“Ev, are we going to Sacanime?”
Evan looked up from his English homework, smiling as Curtis slid across from him at the lunch table. Next to him, Brittany gave him a quick elbow, and he leaned in to her. He’d completely forgiven Stottemeyer for not getting the hugging thing when he was twelve, because the three years since had been outstanding in the hugging department. Curtis was a little standoffish because he was a guy, but Brittany, Ryane, Jessie, Margot, and all of the girls in the anime club were like hug central. Of course, it helped that Evan had gained sixty pounds and bulked up like a badass over the past three years. He figured he had one more growth spurt until he hit maybe five ten, and then it was all about his chest and his arms, and he’d be a superstar.
He could handle that.
Who needed to be a jock or a football player or on the student council? Man, Evan finally had people who would hug him, no pads or equipment needed. In fact, the thought of something violent, like football or the insane speed and pounding on the basketball court, sort of made him a little queasy. Wrestling seemed all right, but then there were those unitard things. There you’d be, wearing something so tight you could tell if a guy was circumcised or not. What if he got an erection in one? He liked getting erections, but God, everybody would see him rolling around with another guy, sporting wood! Everybody would know that guys sent up his wood, right? God, it was bad enough that girls did it sometimes, but guys? He’d be a walking boner.
So he was comfortable working out after school and hanging with the anime club. The girls draped themselves over his back like sweaters, and he lived for lunches, for before school, for those moments hanging out afterward, when he felt like he could breathe.
Curtis was looking at him with big dark-brown eyes now, like he was waiting for Evan to let him down.
“You still haven’t answered my question about Sacanime, man. Are you going or not?”
Evan grimaced. “Okay, so I asked my mom, and she won’t let me come without a chaperone—”
“You’re a little big for a chaperone,” Brittany said at his elbow, and he grimaced before he ran his hand over his paper. Paper had a texture—smooth and white—and he liked to feel it while he thought of an answer to her question. He needed time to think of an excuse because she was right. Pretty much if anyone was going to grab him by the arm and jerk off all over him now, he’d have to agree.
He was starting to think that as long as he liked the person and had a say, it wouldn’t be a bad way to go.
But the more he read manga with the girls, the more he was pretty sure there were more things he could do than just jerk off.
“Yeah,” he said, trying to pull in his wandering thoughts about sex. “I am, but, you know, mothers.”
“My mom can take us,” Brittany said excitedly. She was a pudgy girl, with glasses on a snub nose, who wore her Naruto headband to school and spent all her allowance on acrylic paint to make bad pictures of the characters from Bleach. Evan sort of loved her, because she thought all of the stories were real. He also sort of didn’t tell her how often he flexed his developing muscles to keep people from beating the holy hell out of her. He didn’t care. She hugged him all the time. He would do about anything for a person who gave him unconditional touch.
“All of us?” Curtis asked, getting excited too. “Because that would be great. We could all meet at your house and go as a group!”
Brittany shifted her look to Evan, sort of low and under her lashes. “I don’t know, Curtis. My mom’s car is awfully small—”
Ryane showed up at the table then, so Brittany stopped talking. Evan was grateful because she spared them all what was about to become a really uncomfortable moment.
“Good news!” she bubbled, which was funny, because Ry never bubbled. Ry had dyed her splitty hair black and chopped it off with kitchen shears and caked white makeup over her acne scars. If she was bubbling like this, that meant it was something awesome.
“Your mom can take us all to Sacanime?” Evan asked in some relief, and Ry looked at him in exasperation.
“Who told! It was supposed to be for my birthday—she’ll even pay for your ticket. We’ll go all weekend—but you’ve got to pay for food.”
Evan brightened. “Excellent—is she going to be there too?”
Ry nodded, looking a little disgusted. “Yeah. You’d think she could deal with me being old enough to go on my own, right? I mean, I’m turning fifteen.”
Curtis nodded soberly. “That’s okay,” he said softly. “You never know where the whackos are, right?”
He sent Evan a furtive look, but Evan nodded like there weren’t undercurrents there. He wasn’t
stupid. He knew all of his friends had shit going on in their heads and that he wasn’t privy to all of it—or even all of it that pertained to him. But after ten years in therapy, he had a very clear sense of what his shrink called “boundaries.” He’d learned to ruthlessly squash his curiosity about the people around him. If they wanted to tell him, they would, but he wasn’t excited about spilling his guts to anyone he didn’t have to.
“Yeah. No—my mom’s taking Allie for a fitting on her wedding dress. She can’t bring us, so it’s good your mom’s all pro. And do we really get to go to all three days?” Evan brightened, because the first day….
Ry nodded, her face lighting up. “We can do the costume contest!” she trilled. “And it’s in six weeks! Who are we going to be? C’mon, guys—let’s hear ideas!”
“Bleach!” Brittany said, her faded eyes brightening in excitement.
“Naw,” Evan said before he remembered he had to be careful with Brittany. “Everyone’s going to be doing Bleach. We need something… I don’t know. More cutting edge.”
“One Piece!” Curtis said excitedly.
“Ulgh!” Ry muttered. “Too obscure!”
“Vampire Knight?” Curtis said. His smile went a little dreamy. “I’d love to play—”
“Zero!” they all supplied. “And no!” Evan added.
“Why not?” Curtis looked like he was going to cry.
“Because that’s one of those ones that everybody’s going to be doing—don’t you want to be doing something—”
“Grown-up?” Ry suggested, her eyes sparkling. “How about One Punch?”
“One Punch?” Evan hadn’t heard of it.
Ry shrugged and looked around like they were going to be overheard. As. If. Nobody listened at their table. Mocked them, yes. Threw food—well, until Evan elbowed that one football player in the face—yes. But not listened to them.
“One Punch!” Brittany sniffed. “There are no female characters in One Punch.”
Ry grimaced. “I keep forgetting about that. Yeah—if we’re gonna do all guys, we might as well just do Starfighter and get it over with.”
Brittany practically glowed. “Starfighter! That would be awesome.” Then she looked at Evan and Curtis, her excitement fading. “Yeah, but you guys wouldn’t like that, would you?” Her face colored. “It’s sort of explicit, you know? We might as well do Full Metal Alchemist, which isn’t bad.”
Evan and Curtis looked at each other. There would be scores of Full Metal Alchemists at the convention—Evan had picked out three just looking at the news footage from the one in September.
“Starfighter?” Curtis asked.
“Yeah!” Ry’s voice dropped. “It’s yaoi—you guys would have to be okay with that.”
Evan cocked his head, intrigued. “So, yaoi? Is it manga? Could we get it at the library?”
“Even better,” Ry said, nodding. “It’s a webcomic. You can get it on the computer—here.”
Evan chuckled. “They’re so stupid,” he said with disgust. It was true—the school’s firewall didn’t recognize any of the manga sites. They didn’t know shojo from bishonen, which meant searching through the forbidden stuff on their downtime in the library was a snap.
“Yeah, but if we’re gonna do a yaoi webcomic, maybe we could do Children of Justice. It’s superheroes. And there’s girls. But,” she sighed, “the costumes are easier with Starfighter. Forget Children of Justice.” It was always surprising when Brittany got pragmatic. “Either way, are you guys okay with yaoi?”
“Can we find it online?” Evan asked, dodging the question about yaoi. The truth was, he’d been dying to read some yaoi. The bishonen he got plenty of, and it was sweet—but he wanted to see the boys kissing too.
“Yeah, no problem,” Ry said, nodding at both of them. “And not all the boys are gay. If we do Starfighter, we could make the girls navigators and the boys pilots—”
“What about Jessie and Margot?” Evan asked, liking the idea of that. It was symmetrical. He’d felt outnumbered by the girls his entire life. He liked the idea of symmetrical.
Brittany and Ryane looked at each other and shrugged, and it was Ryane who spoke. “Margot’s really tall—she can be a pilot and Jessie can be her nav. If we can figure out how to make the flight suits—”
“We’re good! Will we have to act out a scene?”
Ryane and Brittany burst out laughing, and then they both eyeballed Curtis appraisingly.
“No, but you both may have to dye your hair. If you’re Cain and Curtis is Praxis—”
“Wait,” Brittany asked, “which one of us is gonna be Abel?”
“I am,” Ryane said, shrugging. “I dye my hair all the time. I could do the yellow streak, no worries.”
Brittany sighed and pushed at her heavy blonde-brown hair. The color was gorgeous—it was, in fact, the only really pretty thing about her. Evan didn’t blame her for not wanting to mess with it.
“Then us and the dye bottle?” Evan asked, and Ry nodded sturdily.
“Of course! But you gotta look tough, Ev. Think you can do that?” And then they all laughed, because Evan was their enforcer, and they knew it. Evan laughed with them and high-fived her, and Brittany grimaced—but she also looked mollified.
“Great,” Evan said, feeling pleased. “Now I just have to read it.”
“Starfighter or Children of Justice?” Curtis asked curiously, and Evan shrugged.
“Why not both? I mean, we’ve got, like, a week left in the library, and I gotta tell you, I had the project done last week.”
And that was another thing he didn’t have to worry about with this group. Good grades were not a mark of anything but good grades. They weren’t status, they weren’t selling out—they were just good grades.
“Awesome,” Curtis said, his narrow, thin-nosed, needle-chinned face relaxing into its usual sardonic lines. “It’ll give me something to do when I’m pretending to work.”
Ry glared at him in irritation. “I think you should do your work first,” she lectured, and Curtis rolled his eyes.
“Why, Mom, do I not get to go to the anime convention if I don’t do my work?”
“No,” Ry said, sniffing. “No, you do not. I’m serious, Curtis. Get your ass in gear!”
Curtis shrugged and affected complete and total indifference, but Evan saw it as he pulled out his own homework and started working on finishing his math before the bell—he smiled.
LATER the next day, they were not quite so relaxed.
“Stop looking at her or she’ll be coming this way,” Evan hissed, his eyes bulging out of his head.
Oh God. Oh Jesus. Explicit. Explicit?
It was… well, the artwork was beautiful, but the… the….
Sex.
“That,” Curtis said thickly, “is not a healthy relationship.”
They both stared with huge eyes at a panel in which Abel, the uke, spread his legs and begged—begged—to take it up the ass from Cain, the seme.
“He sort of begged for it,” Evan said, still not blinking. “Is she coming?”
“She who? They’re both boys. Oh yeah… wait. Shit! Yes!”
Evan quickly hit the tab on his browser, and he was suddenly researching the etymology of words like “pasquinade” while Ms. Cuthbert, their young and way-too-trusting English teacher, walked up behind them to check and make sure they weren’t doing just exactly what they had been doing.
“I can read the top of the tabs, you know,” she said dryly, and Evan grimaced.
“Uhm—”
“I read Starfighter too,” she said, her voice positively arid, and Curtis was the one who blew it.
“You do not! It’s so dirty!”
Ms. Cuthbert nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, it is. Which is why I don’t read it here, you morons! Now look up your porn on your own time and get busy with your project on mine!”
And with that she turned crisply on her heel and stalked off.
Evan and Curtis watched her
go with big eyes.
“Well,” Curtis muttered, bumping him with a shoulder until he closed the web browser. “You heard her. We need to read this at my house.”
Evan slid his eyes sideways, not missing the way Curtis’s eyes were rabbiting left and right. Curtis had dark hair like Evan, and big brown eyes too, but that was where the resemblance ended. Curtis was so thin that his teachers actually snuck him food, and nobody chastised him for eating in class. Besides the needle nose and sharper chin, he had impossibly high cheekbones. When Evan thought of Vulcan children, he thought Curtis would be a good one. But Evan had gotten used to the pudgy, the acne afflicted, the unbeautiful. His family was blessed with good genes, but his friends? They hugged him. It was all he asked for, and they were good at it.
It wasn’t the appearance that made Evan hesitate. It was the….
Curtis’s gaze rabbited around the room again, and he put out his hand tentatively on Evan’s shoulder. “I’ve got a dog,” he said like an offering, which was fighting dirty, and he knew it. “And my mom shops good. She has snacks. We’ll just… you know. Read. Do homework.”
His smile was so broken with nerves that Evan couldn’t turn him down. “Yeah,” he said. “No problem. You wanna do that today?”
Curtis swallowed and shrugged like it was no big deal. “Tomorrow, maybe. My room’s sort of a disaster.”
Evan smiled reassuringly. “It’s okay—I sort of forgot I’ve got to do something after school anyway.”
Which was a very vague way of saying he needed to short call his shrink.
Dr. Stottemeyer had only gotten better with age. At some point, he’d cut his hair short and stopped wearing sweater vests. Evan had noticed that the picture of his wife and kids had disappeared about then to be replaced by a picture of his kids and a guy who looked not a thing like any of them. Evan wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t curious, but he wasn’t stupid, so although he hadn’t asked the logical question, “Hey, Doc, did you finally shrink your thousandth confused teenager and realize you were gay?” he assumed it was the truth.
