Basketball season had ended. Hank was not okay with it.
Not that it had been the most rewarding season in a technical sense. When you put pen to paper and tallied up wins and losses, Eustace High’s JV team was sitting pretty ugly on a new school record of 3–11.
The varsity Eagles made it to state semifinals.
During the end-of-season banquet, the varsity players and parents dominated the circular tables on the right side of the cafeteria, while the JV entourage hung their heads on the left. At least it was a potluck. Parents could suffer through watching kids who weren’t theirs accept awards and then console themselves with baked beans and plastic cupcakes.
Orson nabbed a table close to the food. Hank’s mother and Grandma Liu seemed to have hit it off. For once Grandma looked almost pleased, accepting Mom’s compliments of her hand-crocheted scarf with sparkling eyes.
Despite Hank’s atrocious performance all season, Mom was beaming. She waited for Orson to lead Grandma Liu to the buffet line before embarrassing the hell out of him.
“Hank,” she said, “I am so happy to be here.”
“I’m not gonna win anything, Mom.”
She waved a hand. “I don’t care about basketball trophies, Hank. You know that.” It was true that Mom had never been on the sidelines. She sometimes sat on the bleachers with a book in her lap and she always made sure he had clothes to practice in, but her smile was never wider than her face. When Dad left and she all but shrugged him away, Hank asked her to stop coming and she complied without an argument for several games and then eased her way back into the peripheries. She refused to leave. That was the difference.
“Well, I hope you’re not here for the food.” Hank laughed.
“Oh no.” Mom smirked. “Although there appears to be macaroni topped with Fritos on the table. Real culinary creativity. It could be worth investigating.”
“I don’t know …”
Hank wasn’t sure when she’d gotten wrinkles. “I’m not here for the food and I’m not here for the trophies. I’m here for you.”
“Mom, please don’t—”
“Hank. Let me be sappy. Please? Let me at least try.” She took a deep breath. “All of this? Orson and Mrs. Liu and the JV players? Hank. I’m relieved.”
Hank inhaled through his nose. “I thought you didn’t want me to play basketball.”
“I have nothing against basketball. I used to play sports.”
He gaped. “You never told me that!”
Mom blew on her nails with Ana-levels of sarcasm. “I scored some hoops.”
“Um …”
“Okay, so I ran track.” Mom clasped his hand. “The point is, Hank—I don’t care what makes you happy. Only that something does. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t question what Mom said, even though they hardly ever talked like this. Maybe because they hardly ever did.
Orson slid onto the bench next to Mom and placed his hand on their little stack. “Gooooooo, Eagles!” he cried, pulling all their hands skyward.
Hank let their hands surround his.
No, Mom had never longed for trophies. Instead she’d spent years asking Hank how his days were, bringing him spare doughnuts from the teachers’ lounge and sneakily making his bed when he was out, and last year when he admitted he was taking Brendan to homecoming, she said she’d have bought him a second boutonniere if only he’d told her sooner.
It seemed stupid to ask her to be more than what she was, when she was already so much.
“You take after your mom,” Orson said minutes later, in the buffet line.
“You wearing dresses now, Tank?” This was of course Tim Miller, scooping macaroni and Fritos from the dish behind them. He broke his bad habits only slowly. “Or does that mean Orson wants to bang you?”
Hank snorted; Orson didn’t.
“Tim, I have to say, I’m always impressed with your ability to determine what the most asinine thing to say in any given situation is.” Carmella paused in her dipping of carrots to grant Tim a condescending glare. “And then! Then your uncanny ability to just spew it out.”
Tim stopped, started again: “Yeah. Sorry.” He slung an arm around Hank’s shoulder and added, half-joking: “Hank’s the one who wants that.”
Orson cleared his throat. “You’re full of so much shit, Tim, that now I gotta go take a dump.” He said this as vulgarly as possible, scooping mud pie onto his plate. “Hold this for me, Tank?”
Hank took the plate.
Coach Huang started tapping on the mike, asking people to take their seats. Hank followed Orson out instead.
“Orson.”
“What the hell, man. I don’t need a conversation partner on the shitter.”
Something Hank knew about Orson—when he was flustered, he made the same stupid jokes as always. The jokes got grosser, but his face didn’t match them.
Orson was a glorious projector. His face hid nothing.
Hank wouldn’t say this to him. Hank would never know how. Instead he caught up in a few long strides. “Tim’s just being an ass. Don’t worry about it.”
“I’m not worried about it. Does this look like a worried face?”
“Well …”
“No. It’s an ‘I really have to shit’ face.”
“You shouldn’t let him bother you.”
“Bother me? Oh, come on. Tim Miller? Tim Miller’s got an ego the size of the shit in his head, and he can’t freaking help but let it all come out his mouth sometimes.”
“… okay. That image’ll keep me up nights.”
“It’s just—like—never mind.”
“What?” Hank stepped a little closer.
Orson ran his fingers through cropped black hair. “I mean … it’s gonna sound stupid. But I don’t think Tim’s the only one.”
“What are you saying?”
“Like, how your mom was looking at me, man.”
“That’s rich, considering how your grandma looks at me.” Hank waited for Orson’s smile. “Cue the part where you say, ‘That’s just her face,’ right?”
“I’m not laughing, Hank.” He really wasn’t. “Your mom looks like she thinks—like she thinks you and me are—you fucking know.” His face was red from all angles. “A couple, or something? You know?”
Hank’s wrist dipped a bit. Potato chips hit the floor.
“That’s crazy.” Hank felt like the words were a grin in themselves, but he couldn’t stop them. “You’re paranoid. Nobody thinks that. You can’t catch the gay. I mean, you can’t even seem to say it.”
“Okay, Hank. But, like … when you’re too close with someone, it gets confusing for people.”
“Confusing for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you too close to me, Orson?”
“Dude, you come to my house EVERY FUCKING DAY. That’s pretty damn close. Don’t you think?”
“But …” Nothing compared to the closeness of an alien living inside you.
“You know what, please forget it.” Orson started to descend the stairs leading to the hallways, away from the cafeteria full of bodies. “You’re right. I’m paranoid.”
Hank called, “Hey, you’re still up for evening practice, maybe every other day?”
“Really, Hank?” Orson was suddenly shouting. “You wanna talk about this right now? Right now, after you—Hank, you’re a fucking tit. And practice isn’t doing shit for you.”
Hank shrugged. “Hardly getting any worse.”
“I’m not so sure you love basketball anymore.” This Orson, unsmiling—something about him distressed Hank.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t worry about it. Just something I’ve been thinking about, but you’re right, it’s totally fucking crazy. So can I go see a man about a dog, or what?”
Hank grinned. “Yeah, whatever.”
Orson wandered out of sight.
Behind Hank, applause sounded.
“Where’s Orson?” Carmella leaned out of the cafeteria. “He’s just won the award for Team Player. It’s basically the Miss Congeniality equivalent, but beggars can’t be choosers. Wasn’t he with you?”
“He left me.”
“What?”
“He just … left.”
Hank was emptier than he had been moments ago, standing with two plates full of food on his palms.
Carmella stepped onto the landing and took one of them, then both of them. She set the plates on the banister and wrapped Hank in the most inexplicable of hugs.
Thanksgiving was tomorrow.
Hank hadn’t lied to Milo, and Mom was right: Things were looking up at Eustace High. Even though basketball had ended and the banquet was weeks ago. Even though Orson didn’t have Hank over anymore. They still hung out at lunch and in the halls, with all the guys. They were part of the same crew, like they had been before things became two people tightly holding hands under a cream soda pong table.
Sure, Hank missed the extra practice. And who wouldn’t? Only someone who didn’t love basketball. Only someone who didn’t love—
Hank’s hands itched. They no longer felt porous. It had to be a good thing.
And as for Milo and the letter, that wasn’t a big deal. They were talking now. Milo was a little quiet. Maybe that was just how it would be, trying to get to know a kid after an alien made you strangle him half to death. When he talked to Ana about it, he told her he thought that maybe being brothers had to be hard.
“Even when they’re no one’s fault, tragedies remain tragic,” she said.
“Is that a line from the show?”
“Just from my sad brain. But I am thinking of writing a script.”
The eldest Vasquezes had been excused from class. They sat backstage on the infamous dilapidated sofa that, it was rumored, virtually every couple had sex on at some point during their high school career. Amazingly, this never seemed to stop anyone from sitting on it.
“I thought Marissa was the writer.”
“The position’s been open for a while.”
Beige paint coated Hank’s palms. He’d volunteered to help the desperate Shop kids finish the set on time. Hank was glad to assist, to lift and move things like he used to. With fewer basketballs to hold, Hank’s hands wanted everything to do.
Dress rehearsal began in an hour. Ana had already painted her face to compensate for the washing out of stage lighting. Beside him she looked like her own evil twin, a twin who favored leopard-print dresses and lipstick the color of oxygenated blood.
“Milo’s an odd duck, Hank. It’s not just about Luz. I think you’re right and not just about brothers. I don’t think things are ever going to be easy with him.”
“No.”
“That’s how we know he’s a Vasquez.”
Elsewhere in the auditorium, Mr. Oldman shrieked with either joy or terror, summoning his cast members. A flurry of motion commenced, students darting to and fro with scripts falling from their hands, makeup brushes powdering costumes.
Ana leaned on Hank’s shoulder to extricate herself from the cushions. She yanked a ridiculous heel up her foot. It occurred to Hank that he and Ana were transforming all the damn time.
Maybe growing into strangers was something all siblings did.
“Here goes nothing.”
“Nah, here goes something!” Before she vanished to meet her overlord, Hank called, “What’s your script going to be about?”
“Kids living in a ghost town.”
The backstage space emptied. Black cinder-block walls that absorbed sound, wooden staircases with no one on them.
“This is already a ghost town.”
“Never thought you were one for gloomy introspection, Hank.” Even by the dim red light of the Exit sign and what illumination bled from under the curtains, Brendan Nesbitt could be no one else. “I come in peace. May I join you on that disgusting couch?”
Hank moved aside. Brendan perched on an armrest, shoes sinking into the cushions. In this costume he looked more awkward than ever, wearing horn-rimmed glasses, a vaguely hairy vest, and pants that didn’t reach his ankles. “How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Hank Vasquez, so help me, if you attempt to skirt me with one of your killer smiles, then I taught you nothing while we dated.”
“Were you trying to teach me things?”
“No. I was, ah, trying to join your family. Remember? And I may have also been trying to kiss you all over.”
“Yeah.” For the pair of them, it had always been easier in the dark. “Now Ana’s your way in, huh?”
“Very funny, Hank Vasquez. I’m not kissing her at all.”
“I’m not being funny.” Hank thought of Orson. Things were confusing.
Brendan sighed. “No. We’re only friends, though I did ask her out. Mostly because she’s kind, and because Arlene was leaving me, after you left me, and I … well, Hank. Do I have to explain that sensation to you?”
“I didn’t leave you. I’m right here.”
“Nah. The Vasquezes have been lost in space for ages.”
Hank shook his head. “And you want to get lost with us?”
“You’ve never been to my house, Hank.” Hank couldn’t see Brendan’s face. “You never asked about my house. I was grateful for that. This may come as a shock, but your family? Your household? It’s a decent thing to belong to.”
Hank tried laughing. It sounded like a sob. “You still belong to it.”
“Thank you. I know you mean that.”
“Even if we aren’t a thing.” Now that Hank had said it, the hole seemed much smaller than he thought it’d be. Last time he’d felt it, it’d been a canyon; now it was a hole-punch’s doing. “Even if we’ll never be. You’re a Vasquez now.”
Brendan exhaled. “And you think you’re not smart!”
“When did I ever say that?”
“You didn’t have to. I didn’t make you smarter, you know. And I didn’t make you better. You were already, let’s say … a pretty good guy.”
“Brendan. You were—I mean, you are too. You shouldn’t bother talking to me, but you …”
“Nope.” Brendan hopped down off the armrest. “Not doing this. We are certainly not getting back together, Hank Vasquez. Did you know that since moving to Naples, Platinum has been to a soiree and, ah, three different museums with three different dates?” Brendan leaned in close enough that Hank could smell the charcoal on his fingers. “She’s not hung up on one. Stupid. Boy.”
“You said I wasn’t stupid.”
“I’ll be going to art school in a year. I’m going to have fabulous affairs with otakus and drag queens. The last thing I need is some handsome lummox pining for me from his athletes-only dorm.”
Before Hank knew what he was doing, his hands reached for Brendan’s torso and his arms pulled his hollow body close, so that Hank’s cheek pressed against Brendan’s navel. “That’s the thing, Brendan. What if it isn’t athletes-only? I don’t know who I am, not like you do. What if it isn’t about basketball? What’s left of me?”
Brendan let his hands fold on Hank’s head, there in the dark. “Oh, there’s plenty left of you, you behemoth. Go to any university, or go anywhere else. And figure the rest out once you get there like every other person.”
“How’d you get so wise?”
“I’m spending time with Ana, recall.”
Hank let go. Brendan rubbed his hands together. “Right! Final thoughts: I think anyone spreading the notion that teenage romances should be lifelong true-love commitments should probably be fed to a man-eating plant from outer space. Agreed?”
Hank nodded. To him it seemed clearer with every passing day: People came and went, but love remained. It just changed faces an awful lot.