Two Boys Kissing(48)

When Neil tells Peter what happened at his house this morning, as he will in about forty seconds, Peter will at first be confused and hurt that Neil didn’t tell him right away. Neil will see this, but won’t apologize. Within another five minutes, Peter won’t really care, because he’ll want to know everything that happened, will want to be there with Neil, even after the fact, to give support. He’ll hug Neil into him, and Neil will hug him right back, and more love will flow into each of the vessels, and each of the vessels will expand a little bit more.





“Ruining it?” Ryan says. When he starts the first word, he genuinely doesn’t understand what Avery means, but by the time he hits the question mark, he does. So before Avery can answer he says, “Oh. Yeah.”

“I want to get the day back,” Avery says.

And Ryan, defensive, replies, “I wasn’t the one who took it away.”

As soon as he says this, we know Ryan has to make a decision, and that it’s an important one. Because if he makes the wrong decision here, the odds are good that he will keep making it. Those of us who died angry can recognize the pattern. It is unfair that Ryan needs to make this choice—he is absolutely correct that the day was taken away from him. But now it’s in his power to get it back. Only he’ll need to get past his anger in order to do so.

Avery doesn’t know the stakes are this high. All he knows is that if Ryan’s going to stay like this, Avery’s not going to stay in Kindling much longer. He knows this is a shame, but also knows it’s true.

“Please,” he says. To Ryan. To the universe.

Ryan knocks the back of his head into the passenger seat’s headrest. Then he turns and looks Avery in the eye.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Truly, I’m sorry. I’m such a dick.”

“It’s okay. We haven’t passed the point of no return.”

Ryan shakes his head. “Yeah, but I almost put us there, didn’t I?” His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he takes it out. When he sees the screen, he laughs. He shows it to Avery—a text from Alicia.

You’re fucking this up, boy. Don’t be a dick.

“Guess she liked you,” Ryan says.

“I liked her,” Avery says. “All of them.”

“Even Dez?”

“Eighty percent.”

Ryan nods. “Sounds about right. And where did I stand, two minutes ago?”

“Forty percent? Thirty-seven?”

“So what should we do? I want to get back up into the nineties.”



What do you want to do?

I don’t know—what do you want to do?

This time, Avery answers.

“Let’s go get your aunt’s boat,” he says. “I want to head back to the water.”



It’s not that Ryan has forgotten. And he certainly hasn’t forgiven. But he’s remembered: He only has another year of this. Skylar and his friends will never leave. But Ryan will get away. Even if it’s as simple as stealing away with a pink-haired boy.



Meanwhile, Harry can’t hold it in anymore. He just can’t. His body makes up his mind for him, and right there, right in front of everyone else, he is peeing himself. Once it starts it’s almost impossible to stop. In horror, he feels his underwear grow wet. The front of his jeans.





Craig feels Harry tense, doesn’t know what’s going on. Neither one of them can really see down, not the way they’re standing. Harry spells out an S, then an O, R, R, and Y on Craig’s back. Craig responds with a question mark. Then Harry responds with a P, and instead of being disgusted, Craig snorts out a laugh.



Smita notices, but nobody else does. Harry wouldn’t even know that she knows, but she walks over and adjusts the fan so it’s blowing lower, right onto his pants.



An hour left. All they want is for there to be an hour left. And then there is only an hour left.



The sun is dropping from the sky, taking a little of the day’s warmth with it. The local news stations are beaming their reports to the national news. Tonight, late-night talk-show hosts will talk about two boys kissing. Radio switchboards will light up. Fox News will ignore it, then decry it. Wherever he is, Craig’s father will make sure the televisions and radios stay off, the computers unconnected from the wider world.

He doesn’t want his other sons to see.





Harry doesn’t want to drink any more water, any more energy drinks. As a result, he feels light-headed. Unbelievable as it may seem, there are moments when he barely knows where he is. He slaps himself on the chest to keep awake.



Cooper approaches a big bridge that spans a big river, with a big city on the other side. When we were growing up, this scene was what we always envisioned as the opening credits of our new life. Even those of us born in the city imagined this. Whether we were driving ourselves or in the back of a yellow cab, the city would spread out in its infinite wonder, each window glittering with invitation, the skyscrapers pointing like arrows to the heights we might attain. For most of us, it didn’t play out as easily, but there was still the thrill of those opening credits that carried us through the harder times, that sustained our faith in a city that often didn’t show much faith in us. Even as we were dying, we’d remember that first arrival, or we would remember how we’d pictured how the arrival would be, or we would conflate the two things—the memory, the dream—into one reality, and that would seem to us like a long time ago, but still a time worth visiting.