Birthday(10)

I take out the Tupperware containers and drop them on the coffee table. “Let’s feast!” I say.

“You’re so weird,” Morgan finally replies, and it stings, even though I know he doesn’t mean it the way my brothers do. He smiles and shakes his head, then disappears into the small kitchen. He returns with two forks, and sits beside me on the couch.

“I’m weird?” I say through a mouthful of cake. “You should have seen yourself today.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Morgan says. His expression turns blank. But I know him. I know when he’s actually chill and when he’s faking it.

“What was it you tried to tell me earlier?” I say. He shoves cake in his mouth to avoid talking and hunches his shoulders. “You can tell me.”

“It’s nothing,” Morgan says. He wipes frosting from his lips and looks away.

“You can tell me if…” I start, and I want to finish with, “if you’re gay,” but it feels like the wrong thing to say. And as much as I think that’s maybe Morgan’s secret, part of me also thinks that maybe I’m wrong. Honestly, for every girly thing Morgan does, I can think of something gross or rowdy to balance it out. Sometimes he lip syncs to Mariah Carey with a hairbrush as a mic, but sometimes he falls off his bike and barely notices that he’s skinned his whole leg. Sometimes he sits with his legs crossed and flips his hair, but sometimes he farts when I sleep over at his house and laughs so hard about it he can’t breathe. We’ve only talked about girls the one time, and he wasn’t interested, but we spend so much time together I think I would have noticed him looking at guys.

To me, Morgan is just Morgan, like he’s always been, but sadder and more distant every day. If he is gay, then I know it could be really good for him to hear that it’s okay. But if he isn’t, then what if I accidentally offend him? I really just want to tell him it’s going to be fine, whatever it is.

Morgan takes a deep breath, like he’s thinking about something, squares his shoulders, and then deflates again. “I was just stressed about watching this year’s birthday tape,” he says. “It’s just … hard.”

Morgan wipes at his nose and I shut my eyes tight, mad at myself. Of course. I should have known it was his mom.

He rests his forehead in his hands and lets out a long, shaky breath. “Things have been really, really hard lately.” He looks at the ground, and before I know what’s happening, he’s crying. It’s almost a relief. He used to cry all the time, enough that people would tease him, but after the funeral he mostly just … stopped.

I put my arm around his shoulder stiffly, trying not to be as awkward as I feel. He still smells like chlorine from the pool. I feel this weird urge to hug him with both arms. To hold him closer.

A memory springs up of us in the park together last June. Morgan had just fallen out of a tree from the fourth or fifth branch, scarily high. I knelt over him to see if he was breathing, to ask if anything was broken, and he opened his eyes, his huge, dark brown eyes, looked up at me, and maybe I was dizzy from the heat and adrenaline, or maybe it was that his hair was getting long and he was starting to thin out, but he looked like a girl. A really pretty girl.

I shake that thought away.

“I’m sorry, Morgan,” I finally mutter toward the floor.

Morgan pulls away and arches his back, taking in a deep breath. For a second, the distance between our bodies feels wrong, but then I don’t know why I keep thinking that. Faggot, I hear my brothers’ voices say in my head, and I push it away. “No, I’m sorry for being so off,” he says.

“I’m your best friend. I don’t care,” I say. And it’s true, I don’t.

Morgan turns toward me, his eyes red from either the chlorine or tears, I can’t tell. “We’re gonna be best friends forever,” he says, his pupils large. “High school, college, jobs … none of that’ll get in the way.”

As the words come out of his mouth, I wonder if Morgan read my mind, or if maybe I read his. Relief washes over me. We’re both worried about the same things. Maybe because we were born on the same day, we have special powers. Like we’re cosmic twins, or something. But that’s stupid. Lots of people were born that day. Lots of people didn’t spend three days in the same room during a freak storm though. Who knows?

I nod and offer him another slice of cake. “Forever,” I say.

He takes a bite and smiles, his teeth jam-packed with sprinkles. “Good,” he says, and I feel a weight shift off my chest as I tell myself that everything is going to be fine. We’ll always be Eric and Morgan. Nothing is ever going to change that.





fourteen





MORGAN



It’s hot again today, and the air conditioner’s still busted. How was there ever a freak snowstorm in September? The idea of a blizzard on a day like today feels impossible.

I wake up early before my alarm and shuffle into the kitchen, my thigh-length Creepshow T-shirt sweat-plastered to my back and armpits, cursing whoever’s in charge upstairs for dooming me to life in a place where temperatures crawl up to ninety even in early fall. My long hair sticks to my neck. I pour a bowl of cereal and stare blearily at the linoleum.

“Ugh,” Dad says as he emerges from his bedroom, dark spots already forming under his armpits and down his spine. He squeezes into our kitchenette, starts to pour coffee into his work thermos, then fills it with ice first. He doesn’t seem to notice me until he’s had his first sip. “You’re up early.”