Apparently, Cara was dealing with similar fears. She swore under her breath and started gathering up the supplies as quickly as she could. “Come on, we’d better get out of here. Officer Bradley isn’t a big fan of art . . . or of me.”
Cara stuffed her supplies into her backpack and bolted for the tree line on the far side of the cemetery. I sprinted after her, not bothering to question why we were running. In Denver, cops plus teenagers generally didn’t equal fun, and I wasn’t about to hang around and find out if things were different in Spencer. Up ahead, Cara had disappeared into the surrounding woods. I had no idea where we were going, but I kept on running, my chest burning, trying to keep up with her lightning-fast pace. Then the skies opened up and rain poured down on us, making my skin slick, soaking my hair, my clothes. Even with the cover of the trees, I was drenched in seconds.
But I kept running, going, chasing after Cara, and feeling free.
It felt good. I felt good. Better, in fact, than I had in a long time.
At last, I rounded a moss-covered oak and came to the clearing where Cara had paused to rest. I stumbled to a stop beside her, nearly falling. She reached out a hand and steadied me, then placed the same hand to her chest to calm her breathing. I leaned against the oak, watching her, trying to catch my breath in the pouring rain. I looked up briefly and felt like I was drowning.
Cara leaned against the tree, too, her chest rising and falling in deep, panting breaths. Curves straining against dripping wet clothes. She closed her eyes and turned her face upward, letting the streams of water brush her hair back from her face.
It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
Without thought, without worry, without any of the possible repercussions winding through my mind, I leaned in and pressed my lips against hers. My eager hands found her waist and pulled her to me, wanting her close. There was a soft thump as her backpack fell to the ground at our feet, but I barely noticed it. All I heard was the thunder of my heart, the still-falling rain, and the soft mmm Cara made when I kissed her.
I pulled away slowly. I whispered, “I’m sorry.”
“I’m not.” She smiled up at me, her breath hot on my neck. We were standing so close that I could feel the heat of her flushed skin against mine, but neither of us moved. Neither of us spoke. The rain lightened up until it was barely drizzling. I watched water stream from the tips of Cara’s hair and down her face. I was about to tell her she was beautiful, when she kissed me.
chapter 6
My dad didn’t ask about the strange girl I’d never mentioned, but over the next few days, I caught him eyeing me like he was trying to figure out who this boy was who looked a lot like his son.
We’d finished caulking the windows, but my grandmother had decided that her toolshed needed to be scraped and repainted. So Dad and I scraped and sanded, patched and primed, and mostly pretended that we were cool with each other when we weren’t—not really. Life in Spencer was wearing him down. And the bills for my mom had finally found us here—my grandmother had left the first one pinned up on the refrigerator for us to find after dinner one night. Just about the only time I could relax around my dad was when he had his nose in the paper or his laptop open, searching so desperately for employment that it was starting to seem might never come.
I spent as much time as possible in my room and away from him, wondering how Cara was and if she’d been thinking much about me. I hadn’t seen her or Devon around during my errands into town, and I kept stopping just shy of knocking on their door. I was starting to think the night at the movie theater had been some sort of test, and I’d failed. And I didn’t want Cara to think I was stalking her or something. Things would have been a lot easier if I’d had a cell phone.
Dad peered down at me from his place on the ladder and cleared his throat. “I talked to your mom this afternoon. She said she still hasn’t heard from you since the move.”
“I was going to call her last night but Grandma was on the phone.”
“Uh-huh. Sure. Just call her, Stephen. She’s your mother, for crying out loud.”
She’s not my mother, I thought. Not anymore.
But I just nodded and passed him the paintbrush.
Once we finished putting on the second coat of Soul-Sucking Gray—which might not have been the official shade, but who from Sherwin-Williams was going to stop me from calling it that?—I headed inside to grab a quick shower. I’d hardly made it ten feet before the sudden, powerful urge to call my mother swept over me. Before I knew it, I had the receiver in my hand and two numbers dialed. The truth was, my dad was right. The truth was, I missed her. I should let her know that I was okay, the move went fine, that there were some parts of my new home I was actually enjoying and I felt guilty because she wasn’t here to see that. She was my mom. Crazy or not, she had to be scared being shut up in a strange place with no family around. She probably missed us, missed me. And my refusal to pick up the phone until now couldn’t be helping matters.
On the other hand . . .
I slammed the receiver back down with a shaky breath. As selfish as it sounded, it didn’t matter what she was probably feeling at the moment. I was still hurt and angry and not ready to hear her voice. I knew it was irrational, but I couldn’t help it.
I went to bed that night without ever taking a shower and with a load of guilt weighing down my thoughts. In an effort to distract myself, I devoured every page of that small leather book—which definitely turned out to be Devon’s journal. He’d signed his name on some of the sketches and poems, as if he’d meant for someone other than himself to read it all. At least, that’s how I justified what I was doing.
A few pages in, I found a scratchy-looking sketch of a bird’s wing, drawn in heavy black lines that seemed so raw, so immediate, it was as if Devon had been driven to get the image out of his mind and onto the page as quickly as he could. Almost as if by drawing it, he could remove it from his thoughts—purge himself of the image. The wing dipped onto the opposite page, pointing to a few lines of poetry that Devon had attributed to someone named Michael R. Collings. The poem spoke of “winged shadows in clefts of wailing yews.”
Not that I had any idea what a yew was.
I flipped to the next page. A more carefully drawn sketch occupied much of the left side, as if Devon had taken his time with this one, maybe reveled in what it was that he’d been drawing. Maybe this was an image he wanted etched into his thoughts as well as onto the page. Who could say but Devon? All I knew was that whoever had drawn this large, winged creature attacking a train car had taken his time doing it. The detail was incredible. Tiny, horrified faces peered out of the car windows, mouths agape in screams as the car left the tracks. Water swirled in the reservoir below. Each feather on the creature’s wing was drawn in intricate detail. There were no words on this page. The picture was enough. The next page, however, contained only words—a few lines Devon had credited to someone named Lynn Samsel. I wondered how deeply they had spoken to him:
No one I know talks to crows the way I do.
Probably no one listens to them either.
“Probably not, my friend,” I muttered.
I turned the pages, past more drawings and more poetry and song lyrics. I stopped on a sketch that grabbed my attention and refused to release its grip. It was of a building on fire. Perched on top of the building was another large, winged creature. In its beak was a lit match.
I closed the journal and dropped it back into the drawer of my nightstand before stretching with a good yawn. All in all, it was a cool piece of fiction, and even though it might be wrong to do so, I was planning on keeping it.
I drifted off with images of giant black wings in my mind, but I didn’t sleep for long. A tapping sound woke me. Knuckles on glass. When I pulled back my newly hung curtains, it was to find Devon himself, beckoning me with a crooked finger. I smiled and nodded, but inside, my stomach twisted in a knot. Surely he didn’t know about the journal. He couldn’t. I released the fabric, letting it
fall back into place, and debated my options.
After slipping into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, I grabbed my sneakers and headed down the hall. I stepped into my shoes and tied the laces, then moved outside, amazed that night could be so warm. I joined Devon on the sidewalk, and he immediately started walking. He didn’t have to ask me whether or not I was going with him. I’d already proven I’d follow him. Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I said, “So where are we going exactly?”
“The Playground, of course.”
“Why now?”
He kept moving forward, his steps confident, even cocky. “Because night’s better.”
I didn’t ask what night was better for, mostly because I already knew. Everything.
“No, I mean . . . we haven’t hung out all week. I haven’t even seen you. Why now?”
Devon’s smirk spread across his mouth into a smile. “We have revelry to attend to.”
“Revelry?” I raised an eyebrow, wondering on what planet a teenage guy said things like that. “And just how often do you guys attend to revelry in the Playground?”
“Every night.” He glanced over at me, the low light of the street lamps reflecting briefly in his eyes. “But I thought tonight you might wanna join us.”
“Why?” Not that I was complaining. Just curious. And okay, maybe a little insecure after last time.
Devon’s shoulders tensed with what seemed like annoyance at all my questions. “Because the boys were asking about you. Because you looked pretty pathetic out there painting that shed today. Because I think you could use some revelry.”
Not long after, I was sitting around a bonfire at the back of the Playground with him and his friends. Who needed sleep? I was making memories.
The nameless guys from the other night turned out to have names after all. “Scot, Nick, Cameron—we call him Cam—Thorne, and Markus. Everyone, this is Stephen.”
As he spoke their names, I exchanged nods with each of them, making an effort to remember who was who. I remembered Markus from his lock-picking skills, but the others had pretty much been shadows in the dark—something I hoped would change tonight. Already, this time the guys were looking me in the eye and acknowledging my existence, which was a major step in the right direction.
A big paper grocery sack was sitting on the ground by Markus’s feet. He reached inside and retrieved a brown bottle with a drawing of a peach on the label. The top of the label read Dekuyper. At the bottom were words that sent a nervous tingle through my core: Original Peachtree Schnapps. Nervous only because I’d promised my mom a few years ago that I’d stay away from anything heavier than beer until it was legal. She hadn’t asked much of me in the way of discipline during our seventeen years together, apart from yelling at me not to drink bleach when I was five and uttering this little gem on my fifteenth birthday: “No smoking, Stephen. No drugs. And if you insist on sneaking booze, stay away from the hard stuff.”
Because she’d asked so little of me, I felt obligated to listen to all of it. Only . . . now I was in a cemetery, in a crappy town that was looking less and less like a temporary home, surrounded by potential new friends. And my mom was a million miles away. Not just in Denver, but on Mars. Did I still owe her anything? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that when I was seven, she’d uttered another phrase that had stuck with me ever since: “Make a promise, keep a promise.”
Markus handed the bottle off to the tall guy with the big, broad grin and the dark brown hair—Scot, I thought—who twisted off the cap and took a swig before holding the bottle out to me. I looked at it, not sure what to say or do. I wasn’t a partier, but I wasn’t straightedge either. There I went again, knowing full well what I wasn’t, but not at all what I was.
Meanwhile, Markus passed out more bottles, and I watched as caps were removed and drinks were taken. No one seemed to notice that I hadn’t yet taken the bottle from Scot’s hand. They were all distracted by their own drinking and by the bonfire they were building. A stack of stray twigs and dead branches had been piled atop one grave, and Devon was using his lighter to start the blaze. Scot shook the bottle at me and smiled, his voice kind of quiet. “It’s okay. It tastes sweet.”
Reaching out, I took the bottle and brought it closer to my face. As I sniffed the contents, Scot chuckled. “Never drank before, eh?”
Smoke had enveloped the wood pile, and within moments, flames took its place. I wondered what would happen to us if we got caught lighting a fire in a graveyard, let alone drinking. “Just beer. But not much of it. You guys do this a lot?”
“Some.” He shrugged and then shook his head. “You don’t have to.”
Oh, sure. I didn’t have to drink liquor in the cemetery. Just like I didn’t have to break into the movie theater. Just like I didn’t have to go with Devon in the first place. There was always option B: puss out and go home. Of course I had to. Who did Scot think he was kidding?
“Where’s the Peachtree?” The one Devon had referred to as Cam hurried over. He was short, skinny, and pale, with dirty blond hair and the craziest blue eyes I’d ever seen. Something about those eyes told me that he was an excellent listener. He looked curious and kind. I liked him instantly. Nodding to the bottle in my hand, he reached for it, eyebrows raised. “Hey, you mind?”
Not only didn’t I mind, I sighed in relief inside my head where no one else could hear.
Cam took a healthy swig, then placed the bottle right back in my hand.
Damn.
He looked at Scot, and for a moment, I felt invisible. His voice grew softer, and a light entered his eyes that hadn’t been there when he was addressing me. “Can we talk later?”
“Yeah.” Scot smiled down at Cam, and not only did I feel invisible, I was starting to think that I had actually turned invisible. No one was in this conversation but Scot and Cam. It made me wonder if they were maybe a couple or something, and I made a mental note to ask one of the other guys later. “Of course.”
“Cool.” Cam grinned. Before turning to walk away, he gave my shoulder a friendly slap. “Nice to meet ya, man. Stephen, right?”
“Yeah.” I nodded. After a moment of just standing there, I looked at the label on the bottle I was holding, as if I were deeply concerned about its ingredients. To my great and apparent interest, it only had seven grams of carbs and seventy-two calories. Fascinating.
Devon appeared beside me, his lips a thin line. “Are you gonna drink it or just stand there pretending to?”
“Make a promise, keep a promise.”
But hadn’t Mom promised me that she’d always be there for me? Hadn’t she and Dad both promised me that we’d always be a family, and that we’d stay in Denver for the rest of our lives? Promises, it seemed, were made to be broken.
Deciding I’d kept my promise long enough, I lifted the bottle to my lips, and time slowed a bit as I felt this weird sense of losing something I couldn’t get back. That is, right up until the moment the liquid poured into my mouth and I swallowed. Then my throat momentarily caught fire and smoke rolled out of my mouth and ears. It was pretty much like a Bugs Bunny cartoon. And if you have a problem with me equating my first real drinking experience with a beloved childhood cartoon . . . you have deeper issues than me.
I looked at the label again, this time in disgust. If that crap contained acid, you’d think the manufacturer would have said something. “Peach, my ass. It tastes like syrup.”
“In six more swallows, you won’t give a shit.”
“I could use some of that,” I said. “Not giving a shit.”
“Then get to it, man. But don’t hog the schnapps. There’s plenty more else to drink.” Devon snatched the bottle out of my hand, his absolute annoyance coming through loud and clear. I couldn’t tell if he was irritated with me and my indecision or if he was just having a mood swing. Either way, I knew it was probably best that I kept any questions to myself.
Scot must have felt the same way. “Hey, Cam. You wanna talk now?”
 
; Cam and the big guy, Thorne, were thumb wrestling, but it took only a word from Scot to pull Cam away. “I thought you wanted to wait.”
Scot shrugged. “I’m done waiting.”
Scot followed Cam away from the fire, and I stood there awkwardly for a moment, not really sure how I was supposed to react. I guess it showed, because right then Markus came over to me and pulled a short, rectangular bottle from the bag. The liquid inside was bright green, almost fluorescent. It didn’t look like something any human should ingest. On the front, it said MD 20/20, which made it sound more like a chemical than a drink. He tilted his head curiously at me. “Mad Dog? They say it’s kiwi-and-lemon flavored, but if you ask me, it tastes like I imagine antifreeze would.”
“I’ll pass,” I said, wrinkling my nose. Scot and Cam were disappearing into the woods on the edge of the cemetery. If I was wrong about my impression of them, I was seriously curious about where they were going. I glanced at Markus, not wanting to ask because it was really none of my business, but wanting to know just the same. If it weren’t for my curiosity, I’d never know anything. “So . . . about Scot and Cam. Are those two—”
“A thing? Yeah. But they still haven’t admitted it to anyone. Not even us.” He looked at me then, suddenly guarded. “You don’t have a problem with that, do ya?”
“Of course not.” I’d had gay friends in the past—knew lots of gay people back in Colorado. It didn’t matter to me what someone’s orientation was. I guess it just surprised me to find this kind of tolerance in such a small, otherwise backward place. Open minds were everywhere, it seemed. How closed-minded of me to presume otherwise.
Finally accepting my reluctance to drink something that tasted like automobile lubricant, Markus dropped the Mad Dog back in the bag. “Good. Because I know for a fact that every guy here would kick your ass for giving them a hard time. Scot and Cam are cool. And we protect our own.”
Shrugging, I said, “I was just curious.”
Markus raised his left eyebrow at me. “Curious curious? Or just curious?”