Birthday(9)

Isaac comes back out a moment later with two Coronas. “Here.”

“Won’t we get in trouble?” I say. I take the bottle in both hands. It’s ice cold and sweats against my palms.

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Isaac says, kicking his feet up on the wicker table and taking a swig of beer. “Besides, it’s your thirteenth birthday. You’re a man now!”

“Am I?” I take a sip of the beer and don’t hate it like I thought I might. It’s mellow and bubbly, like a soda, but savory instead of sweet.

“My voice hasn’t even dropped yet,” I say, taking another, longer sip. By way of example, I put the beer down and finger the opening riff to “Come As You Are,” the first part of the book I ever mastered, and sing the opening lines, intentionally making my voice squeak and crack even more than it normally does.

“Details,” he says, laughing and waving his hand. “So, how’s it feel? Thirteen?”

“It feels … okay,” I say. I run my foot through the grass. “I guess I’m worried everything’s changing and I can’t stop it.”

“Like what?” Isaac says. He waggles his eyebrows. “Girls giving you that special feeling yet?”

I lean back and frown, while he laughs at my expression. “I guess? I don’t know. I’m just worried about Morgan. It feels like we’re growing apart, and…” I take another sip of beer to stop myself from saying anything else.

“Eh, you won’t care so much when high school starts,” Isaac says. “Sure, you need to make time for your boys, but, I don’t know, you talk about him like he’s your girlfriend. Honestly even if he was your girlfriend I’d think you were pretty whipped.”

I try to tell myself Isaac means well, but he sounds too much like Dad and Peyton did in the car, and maybe that’s not surprising. Of my two older brothers, I like Isaac more, but it feels sometimes like he has a hard time thinking of girls as people, or understanding why someone would care about anything other than sports.

“Cool talk,” I say.

He shrugs and rolls his eyes. “You’ll thank me later,” he says, then gets up again to finish mowing the lawn, scaring off the fireflies, probably for good.

I leave my beer half-finished on the porch, figuring everyone will assume it’s Isaac’s, and head inside.

That’s when I notice the half-eaten birthday cake on the counter and get an idea. I fish for some Tupperware and lift the plastic lids, cut off two big pieces of cake, seal them up, and carry them to the living room where I left my backpack.

“Finally!” Peyton says, looking down from the top of the stairs. “Cake time!”

“It’s not for you!” I say with a glare.

Mom and Dad look up from the TV as I make my way to the front door.

“I’m going out,” I say.

“Not this late you’re not,” Dad says.

“I need to see Morgan.” I swallow hard. I can’t think of a time I’ve ever defied my parents. Maybe it’s the beer.

“Morgan’s got a stomach bug,” Mom says. “He needs to be left alone. And besides, you’ll see him at school.”

“No,” I say. I shake my head. “I need to see him now.”

They start to say something else, but I’m out the door and jogging for the garage before they can get a word in. I hear the front door open behind me, but I’m already on my bike, pedaling furiously down the street.

Morgan’s trailer is twenty minutes away by bike, and mostly uphill through neighborhoods Dad calls rough, trashy, and other things I don’t like repeating even in my own head. People wave at me from trailer stoops, and from apartment balconies, and from corners near burned-out buildings. They pass cigarettes back and forth and watch cars pass by.

It’s clear Thebes has seen better times, and I know I’m lucky to have a family with money, but I hope I never let any of that distract me from the beauty hiding in everything—the light through the clouds, the shadows on the mountains, and the smiles of people who might not be perfect, who have every reason to be miserable, but still find small ways to be kind to each other every day. Dad says I’m na?ve, and when he’s in a bad mood Morgan says I would feel different if I were poor, and maybe both of them are right.

When I finally arrive at Morgan’s trailer park I’m drenched in sweat and condensation from the gathering mist. I lean against the darkened leasing office for a second before making the final climb to Morgan’s lot, where I find him sitting on his stoop in a baggy hoodie, his knees pulled up to his chin, his eyes locked somewhere far off. The crunch of my bike in his gravel driveway draws his attention and for a moment his wide, dark-rimmed eyes pin me to the ground.

“Hey,” he says. His tone is flat and I can’t tell if it’s because he’s sad or because he doesn’t want to see me. It’s so hard to imagine either of us not wanting to see the other, but who knows what’s going on in his head lately?

“Hey,” I say, and suddenly feel stupid. “I brought cake.” I pat my backpack. He leads me inside and I melt into the couch, my T-shirt sticking to my skin. There’s no sign of his dad, so he must have come up with an excuse to be at work.

Morgan just watches me, head tilted. “That’s it?” he asks. Of course, there’s more I want to ask him: How come things have been weird lately? Are you gay? Are we going to be friends forever? Is it weird that I’m worried about all that? But instead, I don’t say anything at all.