Nights with company were awesome, but Elliot might have liked the mornings best. He woke up in his room with light streaming through the windows, and Jase awake and looking down at him.
“Hey,” said Jase, and kissed him. “Is there any food? I’m starving.”
“Are you in luck,” Elliot told him. “Because I can make truly terrible pancakes.”
He made the first pancake as Jase fiddled with the radio and turned it to a station that met with his approval. Then he gave Jase the first pancake, and Jase’s eyes widened and he went on the hunt for strawberry jam to disguise the taste.
“I know, I’m really not used to electricity when cooking,” Elliot said apologetically.
“Jesus, military academy is hardcore,” said Jase.
“Heh-heh, uh,” said Elliot. “I know, right?”
Jase ate his pancake. Elliot sang along to the radio, using his wooden spoon as a microphone, and Jase beat time on the table with his fork.
“Maybe you should be our lead singer,” he said.
“You do need a new one,” Elliot said. “Marty is terrible and the band is not going to succeed.”
Jase laughed.
“No, I’m serious,” said Elliot. “Dropping out of college for the band was a terrible idea.”
“Yes, yes, I get it, you love school,” said Jase, kissing Elliot’s neck. “Sing again.”
Elliot swung around and sang, Jase laughing at him as he did so. Elliot pushed Jase, who slid in his socked feet until his back hit the oven, and Elliot pushed the bowl of pancake batter onto the counter and moved in, still singing.
The door opened with a treacherous little creak. His dad was standing framed in the doorway, still and startled. Elliot dropped his spoon.
There was no way it looked innocent. His dad was watching his sixteen-year-old son with a twenty-year-old tattooed guy. Neither of them were wearing shirts. They had clearly been just about to make out. Everything was terrible.
“I can explain this,” said Elliot.
“I’m gonna go,” said Jase.
He fled. Elliot glared at him for this treachery but had to admit that he would have liked to flee too.
“Do you want a terrible pancake?” he asked his father.
“No,” said his dad, but he came over and sat at the kitchen table instead of leaving the room, which was such unusual behavior that it terrified Elliot.
He could not help but wonder if he was going to get kicked out of his house, and then he thought that he would have to go back to the Borderlands. He couldn’t go live with Jase, that would be insane and he didn’t even know if Jase would want him to, and he wasn’t trained for anything in this world.
It was almost a relief, having the decision made for him.
“I didn’t think . . .,” his dad said slowly. “That you were . . . like that.”
It was news to Elliot that his dad thought he was like anything. Had he noticed the photo of Serene, listened to the few things Elliot let drop? Elliot found himself staring at his father, feeling as if he were trying to glean clues about a complete stranger. His father was looking the same way at him, but with an added distance: as if he might look away, bored, at any time.
“I like girls too,” said Elliot. “But Jason’s my boyfriend.”
“That’s not what I meant,” his dad said. “I meant . . . how you were, with the singing. You looked . . . happy.”
Elliot stared at the spoon on the floor. “Did you think I was never happy?”
It was possible that his father had never seen him happy before, had thought of him as nothing but a bitter-eyed, bitter-tongued ghost child among all the ghosts of his memories.
“I don’t know,” said his father. “I never thought about it, I suppose.”
“Great,” said Elliot. “That’s just great.”
“I don’t care about that person being a man,” his father told him. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
“What does matter to you?” Elliot asked. His dad didn’t answer, and Elliot picked the spoon up off the floor. “Listen,” he said roughly. “I’m thinking about not going back to school this year. I mean—I could go to the school here. It might be better for me, to stay here, to live a—a more ordinary life. The other school’s pretty intense. I’m not sure about this, but I was thinking about it. What do you think?”
He looked over at his father. His father wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at something Elliot couldn’t see.
“I think you’ll go back,” said his father, at last.
He stared off into space for a while longer, then got up and walked away. Elliot poured his pancake batter down the sink.
An ordinary parent would have been more trouble, he thought vaguely, remembering Serene’s mother lecturing her. He would have had to answer questions: about how they met, if they cared about each other, what the age difference was. A real parent would have needed to know Elliot was not in a bad situation.
Elliot did not even know why he was surprised. Elliot had been in bad situations before. He remembered being out playing when he was a little too old for a babysitter and yet a little too young to be left alone for the long stretches of time he was left alone for, and breaking his wrist. Dad had come home and found Elliot white-faced and clutching his wrist on the stairs, and driven him to the hospital, and paid for Elliot’s care. He’d done all the right things. He just hadn’t said anything: asked Elliot what had happened, scolded Elliot for putting himself in danger. He hadn’t cared.
Now he’d accepted that Elliot had a boyfriend, Elliot hadn’t been punished or hurt, hadn’t been subjected to the cruel unfairness of Jason’s Uncle Joe. But Elliot knew Joe loved Jason: knew Joe had liked Elliot, more than Elliot’s own dad had ever liked him.
Elliot had lost count of all the ways that people could betray you, out of love or indifference. He didn’t know which was the worst way to be betrayed. He sat down in a kitchen chair, put his head in his hands, and felt sick.
He knew one thing. His father thought he was going back, so he was staying.
Elliot stayed. The day he was meant to go back, he did not go.
He leaped up and packed his bag to go halfway through the day, then forced himself to unpack. He went and leaned against the window, looking out on buildings like strange square traps and the glaring eyes of electric lights, and he thought about never seeing mermaids and never writing all the peace treaties he’d dreamed of. Then he reminded himself of a life without computers, without electricity, without college, a life where he would be absolutely trapped. He was not going to choose something so stupid.
He crossed over to the mirror, picked up the picture of Luke and Serene, and said: “You don’t even want me there, you’ll be much happier without me,” because that had always been true of Luke and it was true now of Serene too, Serene who didn’t love him and didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness and inconvenience of his love. “It’s better this way,” said Elliot. “And if I came back—you’re probably both going to die. I’d be stranded and you’d be dead.”
They were soldiers. This way, Elliot would never know if they died.
He put the photo down. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You’re not going to die. I don’t know why I said that.”
If he stayed here, he would not be forced to worry about his friends being killed. He would be a normal kid in school, with a real life ahead of him, and with somebody who wanted him there. This was the right choice.
He went over to Jase’s, but Jase was not there. Alice was, though, and they played video games for a couple of hours until Elliot felt less like he was about to explode out of his own skin and run for the Border.
“You okay?” Alice asked. “Did you and Jase have a fight?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Elliot.
He answered quickly because it was true, but Alice clearly didn’t believe him. “You’re a lot to handle.”
“I know,” Elliot said, nettled. “Jase doesn’t seem to
mind all that much.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Alice looked wary, as if she did not want her roommate’s boyfriend having a tantrum in her direction. Elliot leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I have to go. Thanks for being kind to me.”
The next day, he called up the local school and pretended to be his dad so he could get information on enrolling. He tried to work out which of his classes to catch up on.
He also spent a while working out whether he could go back to the Border for just one more year, say good-bye, see mermaids, sort out what he could, and then come back and catch up and have that normal life with electricity and without mortal danger. He thought he could. Then he forced himself to stop making those calculations.
The next day he packed for the Border again, in a frantic terrible hurry, hardly putting in any electronics at all, wanting to keep his pack light so he could move fast, so he could just go now.
Eventually he left the bag on the floor, and fled to Jase’s. It was late enough so Jase was already at a bar, and he met Elliot outside. Jase was barely outside the door when Elliot launched himself at him: backing him up against the large glass window. Jase’s mouth opened under his, slick and hot with a sting of tequila, and it was a long time until they disentangled enough to go back to Jase’s.
In the morning, Elliot devoted himself to multitasking: buttoning his shirt, making toast, and attempting to tell Jase that he was sticking around.
“I’ve been thinking that I want to make some changes,” Elliot tried out.
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking the same thing. With your dad knowing and all. It’s kind of heavy,” said Jase. “I think maybe . . . we should call it quits.”
“Oh,” said Elliot. He put down the toast and did up his shirt: he only had one task now.
Jase seemed to warm to his theme. “You’re a different person than I thought you were, and maybe we don’t mesh that well together, yeah?”
Jase had said much the same thing before, but Elliot hadn’t paid attention because Jase had clearly liked him. Elliot stared at Jase over the kitchen counter and the cooling toast, and believed two things: that Jase still liked him, and that Jase was a coward. Elliot remembered Jase not wanting to hear about college, about his band, about Elliot liking girls as well, about his uncle, about everything that Elliot had found understandable and forgivable but which taken all together formed a tower of things that Jase had not wanted to deal with.
Jase liked Elliot being the way Elliot was, but he didn’t want to like it: he was looking for something that wouldn’t push him out of his comfort zone. Jase didn’t want to be challenged.
It was strange how different the same thing could feel. Serene had dumped him, and he would’ve done anything to get her back, had missed her every day for months. Now Jase had dumped him, and suddenly and simply, Elliot didn’t ever want to see him again.
“Okay,” said Elliot. “Good-bye, then.”
Jase didn’t seem to like that either. “It’s just the way you are,” he said. “It’d be difficult for anyone to put up with.”
“That’s true,” said Elliot.
Jase softened, hearing what he wanted to hear, but Elliot saw it now as condescending instead of affectionate. “If you were a bit more grown up, maybe . . .”
“Oh my God,” said Elliot. “You can’t handle me now.”
He found himself almost laughing in Jase’s baffled face. He knew what was wrong with him: awkward, spiky, occasionally cruel, inherently unlovable, all of that. But he’d always had a certain intense belief in what he could do: write treaties, end wars, throw all the knives away, make people listen to him, accomplish whatever he wanted. He was getting better at it too: by the time he was twenty, someone like Jase would be a haystack in the path of a hurricane.
Jase looked angry. Elliot felt nothing but that strange amusement and cold contempt, for Jase and for himself.
The key scraped in the lock of the front door, and Marty and Alice walked in.
“Oh my God,” said Marty, giving Jase a sad look. “Don’t tell me you’re doing this here.”
Jase was a terrible roommate, Elliot realized. They were probably counting the days until they could be rid of him. But that didn’t mean they would want to be friends with Jase’s latest castoff, either. He didn’t have anyone in this world, but he never had.
“I’m just leaving, guys,” he said. “Marty, please, please take a course in something that will be useful to you when you are trying to gain employment in the future. Alice, thanks so much for teaching me about lights. Everybody have a nice life.”
He walked out. Jase made a discontented sound, almost fretful, as if he’d pictured it all differently, but it was Alice who chased after him, who leaned over the rail to call down to him as he was making his way down the stairwell.
“I really do think you’re a nice kid!” she said.
“I’m really not,” Elliot called back up.
Alice smiled. “Well, I definitely think you’re going places.”
“I definitely am,” said Elliot.
He stopped off at his house and picked up his bag. He thought about leaving his dad a note explaining where he had gone, but the thought made him laugh. He just went.
He’d already worked it out. He could go for one more year, and see mermaids.
Elliot climbed the wall alone. Usually he saw someone else in the distance, going to the Border camp, or thought he saw someone else coming, but this time there was nobody in sight. Everyone else was already gone.
He climbed high gray stone steps into a bank of cloud that was like a white cliff he could disappear into. When he came walking out of the cloud and down into the Borderlands, the whole sky had changed. It was bright, light blue, sparkling as if it had been freshly washed. Elliot knew it was weird magic sky business, but it felt symbolic.
He went striding through the long green grass of the meadows that led home. It was an easy walk, though it had seemed farther when he was a child. With every step, he was gladder to be back.
There was time to become whoever he chose. There was still time.
There was even time to see if Jase and Alice and Serene and his father and everyone else he’d ever met so far was right, and nobody could put up with him for long. Serene had liked him for a while. Jase had liked him for a while. There might be someone who would like him for longer than that. Thinking of Jase made Elliot remember Jase’s reaction to Elliot saying he liked girls as well, and that made his lip curl. The odds were better for Elliot than other people: he could look for a boyfriend or a girlfriend.
Surely he could get this right, one day.
The sun was seeping through the thin material of his shirt, warm as a welcome. He approached the Border camp, the cabins and the tower, the practice grounds where unfortunate souls were hurling javelins and having swordfights, and he checked his watch. It was about time for the first Trigon game of the season. Elliot was so sad that he knew when the games were.
Luke would be playing and Serene would be watching, so Elliot shifted his pack from one shoulder to the other and made a beeline for the pitch.
He could hear the hum of the crowd as he approached the little scooped-out valley, with artificial hills at its center, and saw the filled benches with people leaning toward the game like flowers to the sun. Elliot looked for the people who had been knocked out, and saw there were four gone from the other year’s team already. So Luke was winning and all was as it should be.
Elliot was so sad that he knew the rules of Trigon.
On the pitch, a guy was taking off his shirt. Elliot supposed Trigon wasn’t all bad.
Then he noticed something much more important. There was someone lurking at the back of the Trigon stands, and Elliot was amazed and thrilled to see that they were taking pictures. He had given technology to this world. He was an industrial revolutionary!
“Hi,” he said affectionately to the camera-wielding stranger.
“I??
?m from the newspaper,” said the stranger. “I have permission to be here from the commander.”
“That’s awesome,” said Elliot. “The newspaper. That’s so awesome.”
“I’m doing a piece on the Sunborns,” he continued.
“No,” Elliot said faintly. He felt betrayed.
“With a particular focus on the young Sunborn champion!”
“Oh my God, so quickly I see the problems with a free press,” Elliot moaned.
The shirtless guy on the pitch was Luke, he realized suddenly, now he could see his hair. Elliot made a face. Everything was terrible. Now he came to think of it, his options were actually no greater than they had been, because what guys were there who liked guys in the Border camp? Luke, obvious emotional suicide, and Dale, obvious violation of the bro code. Maybe there was someone in the council-training course. That would work better for Elliot anyway.
“Do you know Luke Sunborn at all?” asked the worst journalist of their time.
“I don’t,” Elliot said firmly. “But I have heard that nobody likes him, and he is dull. And he has an unhealthy and morbid attachment to lettuce. Write that down.”
The journalist didn’t write it down. Elliot looked back at the pitch, where Luke had just viciously fouled someone. Elliot was sad a third time that he knew so much about Trigon, and also sad because of wantonly violent warrior ways, but wantonly violent warrior ways meant Luke was turned in the right direction. Elliot waved, so that Luke would know he was there. He figured Luke could tell Serene. He’d talk to them both later, and unpack now.
He pointed at the reporter and repeated sternly: “Write that down!” Then he headed for his cabin.
He was only about ten steps away from the Trigon game when he saw Myra, walking through the gate of the enclosure around the tower, and she saw him. She started and then ran right at him, smiling all over her face: Elliot caught her as she came. She was small but sturdy, and he was somewhat amazed at how easy it was to lift her off her feet and swing her around. She felt light and he felt light, too, all over.