Chapter Eight
The big surprise is that the party is so tightly compressed, a hundred people bunched up like in a crowded theater lobby. Robin had imagined room to stroll, small gatherings of conversation, a makeshift dance floor in the living room. Instead, Maggio’s house rumbles with rock music and noisy chatter and the chanting of drinking games. Most of the faces are familiar from the halls at school, but they’re not people he ever talks to, and as he enters, he gets questioning stares thrown his way, the kind that remind him that there’s a big difference between seventeen and thirteen, seniors and freshmen.
This house is bigger than his but not so different in its layout—the staircase goes right up from the front hallway, the living room opens into the dining room and the kitchen beyond. There are kids in the kitchen, up the stairs, on the couches. A group at the dining room table is bouncing a quarter into an empty glass. When the quarter misses, someone drinks. Everyone is very enthusiastic about this. Robin gets that the point is to do a lot of everything: talking, drinking, smoking. Making out, too. They’re going at it everywhere. A boy on the couch has his hand inside a girl’s shirt; both of them have closed their eyes. I’d close my eyes, too, Robin thinks, if I was doing that in the middle of this room.
He lets Todd clear a path, following him closely before the space fills in again. There’s no other way to move around without risking shoving someone, pissing off an upperclassman. He’s surprised how few people Todd talks to. There are nods here and there, but he doesn’t stop for anyone. Todd slinks through the crowd as if leading them somewhere, though Robin can’t figure out where that might be. Finally they get to the bathroom, where a metal keg rests in a tub filled with ice. It looks like something that washed ashore from a shipwreck—dented, scratched along its curved surface, the pump at the top like a periscope. Todd fills two plastic cups for them and then finds an empty section of the hallway where the idea, apparently, is to stand and lean.
“Pretty big scene,” Todd says.
“Yeah,” Robin agrees, sipping the beer. He doesn’t like the taste but takes a big gulp anyway, then coughs a little on the foam.
“I don’t usually deal with this party scene too much,” Todd says. “I like to party, but I don’t like parties, you know?”
“Sure,” Robin says, trying to sort that out.
“I might not stay too long,” Todd says, scanning the room through narrowed eyes.
Robin imitates Todd’s stance—one foot on the wall behind him, his weight on the other leg. When he was getting ready for the party, Robin settled his panic about what to wear by trying to dress like Todd: he put on his most faded, worn blue jeans and a dark blue T-shirt with a New England Patriots logo ironed on the front—a shirt that Larry left at his house. The only problem is his jacket; he doesn’t own a denim jacket like Todd’s, and the closest thing he came up with was an old beige windbreaker that he’s left unzipped because it’s too tight in the shoulders. His mother frowned as he left the house, saying, “You look like you work in a gas station.” She seemed to have believed his staying-up-late-at-Victoria’s story, though he won’t be sure until he gets home. He’s trying to not think about his parents now, trying to not even care.
Todd pulls out two Marlboros. He lights his own and then lifts the flame to Robin’s, locking eyes for a moment across the disposable lighter, a moment Robin immediately suffuses with significance and desire. It doesn’t last, though; before he can settle on the secret meaning stored within the flick of Todd’s Bic, Ethan is suddenly there, growling, “Spicer!” and landing a punch on Todd’s shoulder. “Man, you said you’d be a no-show!”
Todd looks surprised. “I thought you weren’t coming. What happened to your big night with what’s-her-name?”
“Fuck her, man. She’s a stuck-up twat. But we knew that, right?” He play punches Todd in the stomach again. Robin watches attentively, wondering if Ethan remembers him. Another guy named Tully joins them. He’s short and stocky, smiling drunkenly, the long bangs of his messy hair covering half his face. He and Ethan talk quickly back and forth about what’s-her-name, coming up with a stream of contradictory insults: slut and prude, bitch and tease. Robin strains to keep an agreeable expression on his face, though this is exactly the kind of boy talk that drives him crazy. He’s having a hard time believing that either one of them has really been with a girl at all. Todd is still scanning the party, cool as ever, leaving Robin to wonder exactly what Todd is doing with these losers.
Ethan asks, “Who’d you come with, man?”
Todd tilts his head toward Robin. “I’m letting neighbor boy tag along,” he says offhandedly. Ethan and Tully look blankly at him, finally registering his presence.
“I’m probably the only freshman here,” Robin says.
“Which means you’re candidate number one for getting fucked up and blowing chunks!” Ethan sends a fake punch his way. Robin flinches.
Todd smiles as if the idea pleases him. “Can’t get him too shitfaced. We don’t want to be on cleanup duty, you know?”
“Listen, let’s get to my car and spark up. I’m not wasting it on this crowd.”
“Definitely,” Todd says.
Robin tries to keep up with the three older guys as they step back into the crowd, but quickly understands that this kind of navigating takes practice. A menacing guitar solo is blaring from a pair of enormous wood-paneled speakers. He feels his enthusiasm dropping with every step, hates the way Todd has gone from being his protector to acting like a pathetic follower trapped by his friends. He thinks he might just sneak out the back door and go home.
In the middle of the living room he is blocked by a couple of girls swaying to the music with their cigarettes held aloft. Behind them Robin sees a familiar face: Scott.
Scott doesn’t see him. Scott’s eyes are on Todd, whom he seems to be pursuing. Robin calls out Scott’s name to no avail. He lunges past the swaying-cigarette girls, only to be cut off again.
“Are you Tracy’s brother?”
He looks up at a girl with frizzy brown hair and a T-shirt reading Virgin. “No,” he says, trying to move past.
“Oh, I thought you were Tracy’s brother. She’s got this younger brother who always parties with her.” Her voice is unnaturally high-pitched.
“No, I’m nobody’s younger brother,” he says.
She stares blankly for a moment and then giggles. “That’s so funny. ” He glances over her shoulder. Todd and his buddies are out the door, with Scott closing the gap a couple of paces behind. Robin sucks a mouthful from his plastic cup and leans against the wall, suddenly needing to put distance between himself and whatever confrontation might happen between Todd and Scott outside.
The self-proclaimed virgin is smiling at him over the lip of her beer. Her eyes and her eyeshadow are both green, and red rouge dots her cheekbones. She might be pretty, he thinks, if she toned down the makeup. She is waiting for him to say something else.
“I have a younger brother of my own,” he says.
“I hope he isn’t here!” she squeals.
“No. He’s in the hospital.”
“Really?” She frowns. “That’s a depressing thing to say.”
“I can’t help it,” Robin says, hoping she’ll stop talking to him. “He’s really messed up.”
“Like does he have leukemia or something?”
“No.”
“Good, because there’s a lot of that going around. I keep hearing about these kids with leukemia. I mean, like two years ago I never even heard of leukemia. Now there’s always a new kid with leukemia or something.” Her voice pitches higher.
“Maybe it’s because of pollution,” he says without much energy. He inches to the side, hoping she’ll get the hint.
“What do you mean?”
“Air pollution, water pollution. You know, pollution.” He finishes off his cup with a gulp, holding the excess beer in his mouth until he can fit it all down his throat. The alcohol is a warm flood, vaporizing into his skull.
“I bet you’re right, like we’ve just totally poisoned everything and now it’s affecting little kids,” she says. She reaches out and surprises him by wiping suds from his lower lip with her wrist. Powdery perfume invades his nostrils.
“Could be,” he says. He takes a step forward, bumps into someone, hastily adjusts himself against the wall.
“That’s so sad,” the girl whines. “I have to stop talking about this or I could cry.” She leans against the wall next to him and brushes her hand against his. “Too bad you’re so young,” she says quietly.
“I’m thirteen,” he says.
“I went out with a freshman last month,” she says. She rolls her head toward him and lowers her eyes.
Is this how it happens with girls? he hears himself thinking. I could go for it—that would show everyone. But there’s no conviction to the thought, only a renewed urge to flee. He announces, “I have to find my friends outside. Wait here.” Before she can respond, he pushes past her and forces his way toward the front door.
Todd and Scott are standing next to each other, forming a circle with Ethan and Tully near the hood of Todd’s Camaro. A joint moves from one to the other. Robin crushes his empty cup in his hand and drops it on the lawn. He hears Scott talking rapid-fire as he gets closer.
“So, then I’m like, no way, Dad, I’m not doing this shit anymore. I fucking painted the garage last month, no way I’m painting the house. You know what a drag my old man is, he just doesn’t quit. You know what I’m saying? Todd, remember that time he chased me down the fucking block just to beat my ass? Remember?”
Todd takes a long puff. “No.” He doesn’t look at Scott, and Robin sees on the faces of the older guys that Scott is talking too much, too frantically.
“Hey, guys,” Robin says.
Scott spins around, his mouth agape.
“Robin, the boy blunder!” Ethan bellows. He slaps him on the back. “Pass the doob to junior, man.”
“Thought we lost you,” Todd says, patting him on the shoulder.
Robin takes the joint. “Hi, Scott,” he says before inhaling.
Scott turns his stunned face away from Robin and resumes talking to Todd. “I’m like definitely not hanging out there for more than a year, you know? ’Cause like you told me that time, once I’m sixteen I can file a petition of the court or whatever? Remember, Todd, you told me that.”
“Chill out, Scott,” Todd quietly orders. He takes the joint from Robin again. “You guys know each other?”
Robin answers first. “Yeah.”
Scott’s face is some mix of confusion and contempt. “Sure,” he says without much emphasis. Robin holds Scott’s glance and then looks away. Scott hops up on the hood of the car and crosses his arms.
“We got the two freshman at the party in this crowd, man,” Ethan says. “Not gonna make us look very cool.”
“Not like you’d win some cool contest anyway,” Todd says to Ethan.
“Aw, fuck you, Spicer. Tully, man, you notice Spicer is always hanging around with these little dweebs?”
“Maybe I’m just sick of my old friends,” Todd says.
Tully’s deep voice wanders out from behind his hair, “Give me that joint, Spicer. You’re bogarting.”
Ethan says, “You’re one fucked-up stoner, Spicer—you know that?”
“Takes one to know one,” Robin says to Ethan, the pot making him suddenly nervy.
Ethan flips him the finger. “Who asked you anyway, fag?”
Todd reaches out and shoves Ethan hard. “You’re bugging me, man. You’re rude. ”
Robin backs away as Todd and Ethan glare at each other. Scott watches him intently, almost angrily. Scott’s figured out Robin came here with Todd—Robin can see it in Scott’s piercing glare.
Scott slides off the hood. “I’m going back inside,” he says. “You want to come, Todd?”
“What for?”
Robin suddenly wants to get away from Todd and his crowd, wants to offer some explanation to Scott, though he doesn’t know what that might be. “I’ll come with you,” he says to Scott.
Now it’s Todd scowling at him.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Robin says, hoping the lie will be good enough for Todd.
“Maybe you can sniff out some pussy in there,” Todd sneers.
Robin runs to catch up with Scott, who doesn’t look back at him. When they get into the house, Scott says, “The bathroom is upstairs,” and slips into the crowd before Robin can say anything.
The pot on top of the beer has hit hard. Robin wanders around for an hour, hoping to latch on to someone. Scott hasn’t reappeared, and he’s only seen Todd for a moment, passing through a doorway, whispering something to an obviously drunk girl. He’s heard the expression “make-out party” before, but only now does he get the picture. At this point in the evening, almost no one remains uncoupled. Bodies drape across the furniture and press against the walls, heads moving feverishly, hands groping. The nonstop guitar rock that fills the air casts a hallucinatory pallor, numbing his discomfort, creating the illusion that he is floating, an invisible observer.
He squeezes himself onto the end of a couch, trying to ignore the entangled petting going on next to him. A hand falls on his arm; he expects Scott or Todd, but it’s the girl in the Virgin T-shirt, several shades more wasted than before. “Hi!” she exclaims. “Where did you go?”
“I got stoned,” he says.
She clasps his arm and moves her face close to his. “You blew me off,” she whines.
As he is trying to remember what he had said to her, she puts her arm around his neck and pulls their faces together. Her lips mash his. His first thought: I don’t know how to do this. It takes him a few startled moments to comprehend that, mechanically speaking, this is the same thing as kissing Scott, which he managed OK. He watches the girl, her eyes closed, her face a blur at the end of his nose; he looks past her ear to another squirming twosome—the girl’s hands are planted on the guy’s ass, which looks really sexy. Robin remembers Todd telling him to go get some pussy and decides this is his chance. He prods his tongue into her mouth and wiggles it around.
The kissing seems pointless pretty quickly—too hurried to be enjoyable and not leading anywhere. From some back corner of his mind he starts to form an argument about the stupidity of the whole thing: making out with this girl whose name he doesn’t even know, when he might still be able to find Scott, whom he would really like to be kissing.
Robin pushes back from her, meeting her startled eyes. “I can’t do this. I have too much on my mind.”
“Like what?” She looks crestfallen.
He scrambles for an excuse. “I told you, my brother’s in the hospital.”
“You can’t cure him tonight!”
He hops off the couch, and she stands up next to him, tucking in her shirt. He feels bad about this encounter—wishing she were Scott, using Jackson as an excuse to dump her—and he wants to get away. “You’re really nice, but I have to go.” He pecks her lips, hoping this is an appropriate sendoff.
She circles her arm around him, stumbles against his chest. “You’re so cute,” she purrs.
He pries her off. “I really have to go.”
“Fucking freshmen,” she mutters as he walks away.
He makes his way through the kitchen, bumping into people all the way. “Watch it,” someone says, and when he doesn’t look up, a hand shoots out and blocks his path. A guy in a varsity jacket with one arm around his girlfriend is glaring at him. “You just spilled my fucking beer.”
“Sorry.”
“You better be fucking sorry.”
Robin takes a step backward. “I’m just buzzed, that’s all. I didn’t mean to.”
“It’s on your jacket,” the girlfriend says, pointing to a darkening stain on the sleeve.
Robin reads the embroidered name over the chest pocket: Maggio. Oh, great. It’s his party. I’m so fucking lame. He looks toward the hall, plotting an escape, when Todd’s face appears in the doorway. Robin calls out his name.
“What’s up?”
The guy narrows his eyes at Todd. “This little wimp just totaled my beer.”
“Lay off, Maggio,” Todd says. “I’ll take care of it.”
“Fuck you, Spicer. You gonna clean my jacket?”
“Take a pill, man,” Todd says, pulling Robin away. When they get out the back door, Todd mutters, “Fucking jock.”
“Thanks,” Robin says. “I’m so klutzy sometimes.”
Todd pats him on the head, squeezes fingers against his skull. “You’re wasted, Girly Underwear.”
The old insult, so soon after escaping Maggio’s wrath, wrenches Robin from his momentary gratitude. He crosses his arms and turns away.
“What’s your problem?” Todd challenges.
“I thought you weren’t gonna call me that.”
“Just a joke.” A car curves from the street into the driveway, drenching them in yellow light. Todd spins away from it, throwing himself into silhouette. “I just saved your ass. Don’t get on my case.”
Robin shields his eyes, trying to read Todd’s face. “I just hate it when people call me names.” He exaggerates the pout he feels himself sinking into. “Especially my friends.”
Todd grabs his arm again and pulls him farther into the backyard. “You want to go for a walk?” he says, his voice more hushed, more like his voice on the phone when he invited him here.
Robin agrees, letting himself be pulled along a few steps, liking the way Todd is paying attention to him again, feeling special. And then he thinks about Scott, wonders if this is what it was like when he was Todd’s friend, which makes him stop guiltily in his tracks. “Wait. I never said good-bye to Scott.”
Todd scowls. “He’s passed out upstairs. He’s a total beer lightweight.”
“I should check if he’s OK.”
Todd grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him roughly. “Forget about Scott-fucking-Schatz, OK? He’s a fucking pain in the ass, and a liar, too.”
“OK, sorry,” he says meekly, a little afraid of the force of Todd’s grip.
Todd leads him through an opening in the fence at the back of the Maggios’ property. They run across another yard while a dog barks from inside, winding up on a street that leads down to a dark golf course at the end, the Valley Ridge Country Club. They struggle drunkenly over the fence. A few ghostly lights spaced far apart throw the rolling green hills into spooky, shadowy patterns. He shivers in the cold and keeps pace with Todd.
“I’ve never been here before.”
“My parents belong,” Todd says. “They wanted me to caddie here, but I said no fucking way.”
When they get to a little slope over a pond, Todd drops to the ground. He lies on his back and stretches out. Robin watches the light catch the pale of his stomach as his jacket and shirt tug up, revealing, as far as he can tell, that Todd is once again without underwear. He wishes he’d remembered to not wear any tonight—that would have been perfect.
“Why don’t you like him?” Robin asks, trying not to stare at Todd’s flesh.
“Who?”
“Scott.”
Todd shakes his head as if confronting an irresolvable problem—though Robin can’t tell if the problem is Scott or the fact that Robin keeps talking about him. “He just drives me crazy, that’s all.”
“But you guys used to be friends. I know about that.”
“Yeah, who told you?”
“Victoria.”
“Don’t listen to everything you hear, Robin. It’s not usually the true story, you know?”
“So you weren’t friends?”
“Forget about it.”
“Me and him were going to be friends,” Robin says, lying down next to Todd. He rests his face against the damp grass, which actually feels warmer than the air; lying down flat seems to reduce the intoxication, too. Crickets are chirping loudly. When he rolls over on his back, the black sky is flecked with stars.
“What about that girl you were with?” Robin asks.
“Man, you got a lot of questions.” Todd grabs a clump of grass and throws it at him.
“I told you, when I get high I can’t shut up.” He giggles nervously. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“No one serious. I mess around a lot.”
“Why not? Don’t you want a girlfriend?”
“Girls are a hassle.”
“But everyone wants a girlfriend.”
“No, everyone wants to fuck around. It’s not the same thing.” Todd stands up. “You don’t have a fucking girlfriend, freshman.”
Robin feels instantly defensive. “For your information, I was just making out with a girl. That girl in the Virgin T-shirt.”
Todd shrugs as if he can’t place her. “Where were you doing it? Did anyone see you?”
“Probably. We were on the couch. I mean, I was. She was next to the couch.”
Todd leans down toward him, smiling in some combination of disbelief and titillation. “How far did you get?”
“I don’t know.”
“I’m gonna find out her name and fix you up with her,” Todd says. “We’ll get you hooked up.”
“I don’t even like her.” Every time he speaks to Todd, he feels outsmarted, as if he can’t possibly keep this conversation from somehow trapping him. He’s never talked for so long with Todd, alone like this. Robin sits up and leans his head on his knees. The green ripples out in front of him like a low-pile carpet, bleeding in and out of focus.
In the distance, a faint bass line from the party is thumping; closer to them, night creatures buzz. Robin looks at Todd, who is studying him, his face unreadable. Then, in a sudden gesture, Todd pulls off his jacket and tugs his shirt over his head. A soft line of hair brushes across the shallow muscles in his chest. Robin watches in disbelief as Todd leans down and pulls off his shoes, and then starts unfastening his jeans.
“Let’s go,” he says, pointing toward the dark pond below them. “This’ll be a total goof.” He pulls off his pants, his dick bouncing as he dashes naked down the slope. Robin—eyes open in surprise—jumps to his feet as Todd bellyflops into the still water, then rises a moment later, cursing and rubbing his shoulder. “Shit! I forgot it’s only like a foot deep. You gotta come in slowly.”
“I’m not going in there!” Robin is immediately getting hard just watching this—he can’t take his clothes off now; he doesn’t want Todd to see.
“Get in here, Girly Underwear, or I’m throwing you in, clothes and all.” Todd rises up, his naked body streaked with slime dragged up from underneath, and takes a few steps forward, arms extended like the monster in Creature from the Black Lagoon. His dick dangles out from the shadow of his groin.
“OK, OK, give me a minute.” Robin fumbles with the zipper on his jacket. He feels the shakes taking over his body, same as when he was with Scott at The Bird. He tries to concentrate on something other than Todd’s body—he thinks about that girl in the Virgin shirt, her garish makeup, her whiny voice—but it doesn’t help. He’s almost completely stiff. He turns around and lowers his pants, then his underwear. His dick springs free. Behind him the splashing has stopped.
“Close your eyes.” Robin spins around, hands over his crotch, and charges down the slope. As he nears the water, he loses his footing and skids, flapping his arms to right himself. Then he’s down, landing hard on his ass, sliding into the pond. The silty muck oozes up through his legs, around his balls. “Ow!”
Todd is crouched in front of him, looking between Robin’s legs, wearing a grin as wide as his face—and before Robin can cover himself up again, Todd is chopping his arms into the pond, sending water in every direction. Robin strikes back, giggling as he tries to keep up, slapping and spitting dirty water though he can’t really see his target; he gives it his best until it’s clear he can’t win. In the postfight stillness, Todd rises up again, looming above him as if he wants to be studied and appreciated—or so it seems to Robin, who thinks of statues in art books, naked men frozen in time. Todd is dripping from head to toe, dark dribbles of pond scum across his body, down around his half-hard, bobbing dick, around his balls—Robin is fascinated by his balls, which are really different than his own: they swing like small eggs suspended in a sac, stretching the skin down with them.
“You know what this reminds me of?” Todd asks, dropping back down into the water with a splash.
“What?” Robin asks, aware of how long he let his stare linger.
“Zabriskie Point. You ever seen that movie?”
“No.”
“It’s fucking mind blowing. It was playing at the midnight movie in Ridgewood a few years ago. It was rated R but I snuck in. There’s this guy who kills a cop during a student riot. It’s during the ’60s, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“And he steals this plane and flies over the desert and meets this girl.” Todd flips onto his stomach. He’s propped up on his elbows, his face near Robin’s hip, his ass rising above the water like a flotation device. Robin positions his leg so Todd can’t see his erection cutting up through the water.
“ ’Cause there’s this scene, see, when him and this girl are in the desert and they’re naked and having a fight with all this sand, throwing it at each other and stuff. So I was thinking about how, you know, having a waterfight and throwing sand—it’s kind of the same thing.”
Robin just stares, unable to respond, hoping Todd just keeps talking. The shakes are threatening to begin again. He rubs his arms along his shoulders to bring some warmth to his skin.
“This guy is really cool, you know?” Todd says. “Mark Frechette is the actor’s name. I mean, if I could be any guy in the whole world I’d be this guy. He just does whatever he wants. I mean, he gets killed at the end, but mostly he just does what he wants. He’s really studly, too, you know?”
Robin holds himself still, afraid to even nod because that would mean he was admitting he thought that a guy was studly, that he looked at guys that way. Even though Todd just said it, it could be a trick, because even sitting naked together in this water, even after Todd stood in front of him practically demanding to be looked at, it’s too much to believe—Todd thinking about a guy that way. Robin asks in a nervous burst, “So what happens in the movie? After the sandfight?”
“They do it,” Todd says. He pushes Robin flat on his back, then crawls toward him, grabbing one of his knees in each hand, pushing them apart. He slides his hands down Robin’s legs and around to his ass, lifting him out of his muddy seat, raising his dick into the night air. Robin gasps, falling back on his hands for balance. Grains of silt rub between Todd’s hands and his own thighs. Todd says, almost casually, as if he isn’t even touching him, as if Robin’s boner isn’t sticking up in his face, “They just roll all over each other, and then all of a sudden there’s like a hundred people in the desert, all these guys and girls, and some of them are in little orgy scenes, two guys on a girl or two girls with a guy, and they’re all making it in the sand.” He drops his head down between Robin’s thighs. “Like if I was Mark Frechette, and you were that girl, Darla or whatever her name was, this is what we’d be doing in the desert. In that movie.” His lips close in around Robin’s dick. Robin feels the rush of it all the way up through him, all the way to his chattering teeth and down his arms to his wobbly wrists. The saliva mixing with pond water in Todd’s mouth is like liquid polyester, like a smooth shirt being rubbed all over him. He gasps as Todd pulls him deeper into his throat; he can’t believe that Todd is doing this, that his dick is inside Todd.
Todd lifts his head, mumbles instructions Robin can’t quite make out, and pushes him out of the pond, up the slope. Todd’s face is smudged with mud. His eyes are glazed over, eager, oblivious to anything else—it reminds Robin of his own face in the bathroom mirror while he’s jerking off.
For a while, getting his dick sucked is more pleasurable than anything he’s ever felt: lush, concentrated, far more intense than what he’s done to himself. It feels like magic that Todd can do this—how could a tongue or lips turn his whole body inside out? He feels teeth, too, which almost hurts, but not really, it feels better than that, the way getting tickled is both fun and not fun at the same time. Momentum builds inside of him and then subsides again, or maybe he makes it stop so that he doesn’t shoot in Todd’s mouth. He can’t really tell what he’s doing versus what’s being done to him, and after a while this not knowing turns his pleasure into anxiety, and he’s not feeling anything. He’s just looking around, watching out to see if anyone else is about to come stumbling down the golf course.
“Todd?” he whispers. “Wait a minute.”
Todd’s face is spaced out, trancey. Saliva drips from his lips. “What?”
“Someone might see.”
“Shit.” He climbs up on his knees, takes a dazed look around, then spits on his dick and starts pumping. He slips back into the trance, staring at Robin’s dick. “You should see that movie.”
Watching Todd like this, totally focused on making himself come, Robin drifts back into the thrill of it. Todd looks sexier than anyone he’s ever seen. He looks studly. Instinctively, Robin reaches out, wanting to touch him.
Todd backs away. “No, don’t.” He puts his other hand under his balls and rubs. This a completely new Todd, an animal Todd; the usual Todd is disappearing into this pleasure more deeply with every blurred stroke—after a while he’s not even looking at Robin. He’s gone. He keeps at it until the motions slow and his body seizes up in a series of grunts and his dick fires out three stringy squirts that land soundlessly on Robin’s leg.
“In two years I’m getting out of here. I’m going on the road,” Todd says, his voice slurred with wasted exhaustion. They are lying on the grass, watching a green-white cloud blanket an incomplete moon. Robin has gotten fully dressed but Todd is only in his jeans and T-shirt, his feet still bare. Robin had expected Todd to run away as soon as he came, the way Scott did, but here they are, talking.
“Where are you gonna go?” Robin asks, still jittery from the encounter. He hasn’t come and his hard-on is pulsing in his pants. He shivers from the cold but now he doesn’t mind it. He can’t take his eyes off Todd. A Bee Gees song from Saturday Night Fever is stuck in his head: How deep is your love? I really need to learn.
“All over this country. Colorado. It’s beautiful there. The Rocky Mountains are outstanding. And I’m going to New Mexico and Arizona and to Death Valley.”
“I went to the Grand Canyon when I was little,” Robin says encouragingly.
“The Grand Canyon is for tourists. I’m going to the cool places, with no families on vacations. There’s a lot of room out there. You can just do what you want to do. And I’m going to California, too, the northern part. There’s fields of pot growing there. I’m gonna set myself up with a cabin in the woods, and no one is gonna be on my case.”
“I never thought about going to any of those places,” Robin says, suddenly wondering why not. Todd’s world is unlimited, he thinks. Todd has vision.
“What, are you going to spend your life in New Fucking Jersey?”
“No. I want to move to New York.”
“New York sucks. Eight million people? No fucking way. Plus, it’s way too close to home.”
“It’s where all the people go who appreciate art and culture.”
Todd grunts, unimpressed. He sits up and pats the ground to find his socks.
“One day I’m going to have a big apartment with a view all the way down to the Statue of Liberty, and a good job. Like I’ll work in a museum or something.”
“Work in a museum? I never heard anyone say that before: work in a museum. ”
“I want to move to the Village. That’s where all the artists are.”
Todd stops in midgesture, leaving a sock dangling off the end of his foot like something suddenly withered. “Artists?” he spits out. “You mean homos. ”
Robin braces against the word. “No, I mean—”
“Those people are sick, man. They’re a bunch of very messed-up people.” His voice grows more agitated. “Perverts and sex maniacs and child molesters and guys who think they’re really girls and big ugly women who look like men and stuff. Why would you want to go there?”
Robin looks down at the ground, feeling attacked. “I’ve never seen any perverts and sex maniacs.”
“Oh, come on? You’ve never driven down the West Side Highway and seen those transvestite hookers by the underpass?”
“You’re making it sound worse than it is,” Robin protests. “Don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t think.” Todd slams his sneaker into the grass. “Those people are nothing like you. They’re sick.” He slams his sneaker again. “They parade around wearing dresses and leather and all that—I saw one of those parades once in the Village. I know what I’m talking about. You’re the one who’s full of it.” One more slam and then he throws his sneaker across the green.
Robin scowls at him, speechless, not sure if he should argue or change the subject. He feels accused, but he’s not sure if Todd’s right or wrong.
Todd points his finger at Robin, which reminds him of Uncle Stan ranting that he was a mama’s boy. “If you wanna go live there, fine with me. I don’t give a fuck.”
Robin backs away defensively. “You’re the one talking about sex movies with orgies.”
“That’s different. Mark Frechette wasn’t a pervert; he was a free-spirit. He was out on the road.”
Their eyes lock on each other’s, and this time Robin doesn’t look away. Robin is thinking about the sex that just happened between them; the whole thing replays itself again in fast motion. Todd was sucking his dick, right here, just a few minutes ago. Now Todd’s trying to use the Force on him, to hypnotize him into forgetting. Robin looks away because he doesn’t want to forget. He wants to say something about it, but he doesn’t get the chance because Todd is suddenly on his feet, striding off after his sneaker, shouting, “I’m getting outta here.”
Robin squeezes his hands around his head, trying to compress his thoughts into one good response. This feels just like with Scott, where everything got bad at the end, after the sex part, and he wants to repair it. He catches up with Todd. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you so mad.”
“Just forget it, OK? I don’t want you to talk about that stuff. It’s got nothing to do with you.” He rushes angrily through the trees toward the fence. This is another Todd again, neither his usual cool self, nor the person he became while jerking off, but a pissed-off, distressed Todd, unbalanced in a way Robin’s never thought him capable. All the way home, Todd drives recklessly, plowing through stop signs and taking corners so fast that Robin has to hold on to the door to keep from landing in his lap. Robin attempts to smooth it over as he clicks open the car door in the Spicers’ driveway—“Sorry I got you mad”—but Todd remains silent, almost pouting.
Robin wishes he’d never mentioned New York or the Village. He wishes he could go back to right before then—idling in the cool grass, feeling as if he’d awakened to the place he and Todd were meant to discover together, their private hideaway. He knows—isn’t it obvious?—it was his fault the spell had been broken. He should have just kept his mouth shut; he thinks of Jackson saying, “You ask for it”; he thinks of Scott saying, “Don’t make a big deal about it.” Still, he can’t shake that image of Todd banging his sneaker against the golf green, flipping out about the Village, then stomping away in a rage. That was the most unexpected thing of all, maybe even more unexpected than Todd’s mouth on his dick—seeing Todd Spicer completely lose his cool.
Robin takes his seat at the kitchen table in front of a plate of steaming scrambled eggs. Ruby stands at the sink, washing out the last of the pots and pans Clark has used to prepare breakfast. The kitchen is bright with the light of late morning. His mother has put a breezy and plaintive Miles Davis album on the turntable, but the music plays in contrast to her obvious fatigue. She drops herself sluggishly onto a seat at the table, which does not surprise Robin. When he had gotten home from the party, resigned to whatever punishment awaited, his parents were locked in their bedroom arguing strenuously. He wiped grime off himself and brushed his teeth and climbed into Ruby’s bed, falling asleep before talking to anyone.
Now his head pounds dully, six chewable orange-flavored aspirin not yet having any effect on the alcohol still sluicing through his bloodstream. This is a hangover, he realizes, the morning after everyone talks about. He doesn’t think he can make himself eat, not only because he feels physically ill but because he’s anxiously awaiting an interrogation about why he got home so late, and he’s still not sure what made-up story he’s going to offer to them.
“Should we say grace?” Ruby asks.
Robin looks over at his mother, who is biting her upper lip, probably trying to keep herself from saying no.
“Sure. Why not?” Clark says cheerfully.
Ruby clasps her hands in front of her and bows her head. “Bless us, oh, Lord, and these Thy gifts we are about to receive through Thy bounty through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
“Rub-a-dub-dub, God bless the grub,” Robin adds.
“Thank you, Ruby,” Clark says. “And, Robin, watch it. That was a little disrespectful.”
“Why do you think he said it?” Ruby shoots back.
Robin mutters a halfhearted apology and steps up to the stove to pour himself a cup of coffee.
Dorothy’s eyes are on him. “Just decided you needed a little boost, huh?”
Robin sucks in his breath apprehensively. “I’ve always liked coffee,” he says, loading up on milk and sugar.
“It’s especially good when you haven’t gotten enough sleep,” Dorothy retorts, false levity in her voice. “But let’s not get into that yet. Let’s enjoy this food, shall we?”
He returns to the table, not meeting her eyes, knowing it’s only a matter of time before he’ll have to answer for last night.
Clark eats hurriedly, forking food into his mouth while still chewing the previous bite. “I wanted to let you two know what’s going on,” he says with a look at Robin and Ruby.
“About what?” Robin asks.
“About your brother.” Clark slurps orange juice. There’s an almost antic quality to his speech. “There’s some sense from the doctors that Jackson will need to be in the hospital for another month before he’ll be well enough to come home.”
“That seems far away,” Ruby says.
“We should be thankful,” Clark says. “Though when he gets home, he’s not going to be completely recuperated. He’s going to need some time to regain full use of his motor skills.”
Clark pauses to think for a moment. Robin senses there is more to this, and he feels dread building up. He looks at his mother, whose face seems very strained.
“The plan is ...” Clark begins. He spears a piece of bacon on his fork, but it falls off as he lifts it to his mouth. He puts down his fork and wipes his lips. “The plan is to build Jackson his own bedroom. Downstairs. He won’t be strong enough, we think, to make it up and down the stairs.”
“Build it where?” Robin asks.
“Out from the dining room into the backyard.”
Robin looks at Dorothy; the glance she returns reveals to him that she’s heard this already, and though she seems unhappy with the idea, Robin can’t discern exactly why. His father, on the other hand, is obviously pleased with this plan. “We’re going to put a special hospital bed in the room and a treadmill and a couple of other things that he’ll need to build his strength back up. Uncle Stan is going to help me find the equipment. He has some leads.”
“How are you going to build a room?” Robin asks, remembering the never-finished project of turning the basement into a “family room.” They nailed the paneling in but never laid down the floor covering, and once Clark hit a snag rewiring, the entire project was abandoned. The pullout couch now sits on an old brown area rug down there, a shabby reminder of unfinished business.
“The old-fashioned way, Robin,” Clark says. “With wood and nails and cement and your basic materials. We’ll knock part of the outer wall down to build a special, extra-wide doorway. It’s going to be pretty disruptive, but there you go.”
“How are we going to pay for that?” Robin asks.
Dorothy speaks up suddenly. “Robin, your father has assured me he’ll be working out the details.”
“Stan’s gonna pitch in a little,” Clark answers, tension creeping into his voice.
This must have been what they were fighting about last night, Robin thinks. He doesn’t like that he feels so suspicious about the whole thing, that he doubts his father so easily. But there’s something desperate about the plan, as if it isn’t so much based on sound advice as wishful thinking. The mention of Stan’s name also casts a dubious shadow, as if his father has been duped into a half-baked scheme. Robin asks, “Wouldn’t it be better to leave him in the hospital until he’s totally ready to come home? Like, use the money for that instead?”
Clark shoots an aggravated look to Dorothy. “Don’t stare at me,” she says defensively. “I didn’t tell him to say that.”
“Robin, we’re just going to figure it out. This is the way I’ve decided to get Jackson home and back up to speed. You can help me out on weekends and after school. A little more manpower is welcome. And seeing as how you’re grounded for the foreseeable future,” Clark adds, his voice firm, resolved, “it all works out pretty good for everyone.”
Robin’s stomach drops. “I’m grounded?”
“As of this morning, buddy boy,” Clark says.
The buddy boy is a surprise touch; it makes his father sound like Officer Krupke, which makes him feel as if he’s already been tried and convicted. Robin slips back in his chair and crosses his arms, outsmarted, dejected. “I didn’t even get a chance to explain myself.”
Clark slams the table, startling him, and raises his voice. “When did you become such a selfish pain in the ass? That’s what I want to know? Huh? When did you become so damn pleased with yourself that you can lie to your parents and get away with it? Or do you just think we’re stupid?”
Robin looks over to Ruby, who is staring at her hands, her lips moving ever so slightly, as if whispering to a doll. He looks to his mother for help. She waves her hands in front of her, absolving herself from responsibility. “I have nothing to say.”
Robin pushes his chair back and rises. “I’m not hungry. May I be excused?”
“Sit down,” Clark commands.
“Don’t raise your voice,” Dorothy says. “This is obviously difficult for Robin. For all of us.”
“Difficult for Robin?” Clark mocks.
“You’ve just given him a very harsh punishment.”
“Don’t worry, Dottie,” Clark snipes. “You can still take him into the city once in a while. Just check with me first.”
Dorothy exhales furiously, the tendons in her neck tightening. “Don’t speak to me that way. I will not be condescended to.”
Robin holds his breath, frightened to find himself in the tightening noose of their anger.
“Why is everybody yelling?” Ruby moans.
“We’re not yelling,” Dorothy says, her gaze still pinned on Clark. “This is not yelling, Ruby. You don’t even know what yelling is.”
Ruby begins to sniffle wetly. “Mom—”
“Now she’s gonna cry,” Robin spits out.
Clark stands up, towering above Robin. “Robin, go to your room. Just go to your room and stay there. And don’t come out until I tell you to.”
“I just said I wanted to go to my room and you said no.”
Clark’s arm flies up over Robin, his fingers curling tightly together. Robin backs away from him, averting his eyes, stunned by the rage on his father’s face.
“Clark, sit down,” Dorothy yells.
Ruby’s sniffles have grown into sobs.
“Just get the hell upstairs and shut your mouth,” Clark says, shaking his fist.
“Whose room am I supposed to go to? Mine or Ruby’s?”
Dorothy stands now. “Robin, come with me.”
“Where are you going?” Clark says.
“I’m taking Robin for a ride so we can talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about! I’ve explained what’s going on, and you don’t need to baby this kid just because he’s too damn full of himself to take what’s coming to him.”
“You’re babying him,” Dorothy shouts. “You are bellowing like a madman. Sit down, go to your room, shut the hell up. What kind of way is that to talk?”
“It’s a damn lot better than filling his head with sissy crap like you’ve been doing for thirteen years.”
Robin feels his throat go dry, his ears burning. An image of himself at his mother’s side, laughing on a New York sidewalk over some shared joke: sissy crap.
“Go to hell,” Dorothy snarls.
“Am I asking too much? Tell me, Dorothy, am I asking too damn much? Am I the only person in this family who cares about Jackson?”
“Don’t do this.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Clark says. “Tell me what it will take to have a little control of this family?” He reaches out and grabs Robin’s shirt in his fist, trying to pull him toward the door.
“Let go!” Robin slides free of Clark’s grasp. He darts around the table to stand behind Dorothy. “Mom, make him stop.”
He watches as Clark’s predatory eyes scan the room—King Kong looking for a pedestrian to scoop up—and land on his plate, which he picks up and hurls at the cabinets on the far side of the room. Clumps of scrambled eggs explode in every direction; ceramic shatters on the pressboard. Ruby shrieks and covers her ears. Dorothy pushes Robin behind her and screams out, “Stop it, stop it, stop it.”
Robin makes a move, sprinting through the living room, grabbing his jacket on the way out the front door. On the front lawn, he skids to a halt: a couple of little kids are playing with toy trucks across the street. He’s never seen them before, they must be cousins of the Kellys or something, but the effect of them—two boys, one older, one smaller, enjoying themselves so easily—leaves him stunned. It’s so normal and peaceful—the whole street is like that: a car rolling slowly by, a leaf blower clearing a lawn, a voice calling from a neighbor’s porch. Why is his family so full of problems? Why is he running out of his house like a criminal? But then his father is behind him, throwing the screen door open on its squeaky hinge, calling, “Get back in here,” and Robin is dashing alongside the house into the backyard, thinking he’ll cut through to the Spicers, thinking Todd will help him out—a thought that immediately echoes back as ridiculous: Todd’s mad at him, probably won’t ever speak to him again, and besides, his father would just follow him there and drag him home; this is no solution at all.
His bicycle is leaning against the garage. He throws a leg across, points the handlebars toward the street, starts pedaling. Both of his parents are in the driveway now, Dorothy with her hand on Clark’s arm as if restraining him. Robin stays to one side, pedals with his eyes closed, afraid he’ll be stopped, afraid they’ll stand in the way and he won’t be able to stop, he’ll crash into their bodies and knock them down and hurt them, hurt them just like he hurt Jackson, just like when he couldn’t stop himself and lifted Jackson’s legs over the edge of the railing to throw him into the air, up into the air away from him. No, he thinks, that’s not how it happened. He opens his eyes just as his mother is tugging his father out of the path of the bicycle.
When he looks back, Clark has forced Dorothy away from him and has begun a chase. But he’s not close enough. Robin turns down Bergen Avenue and keeps riding. He cannot pedal fast enough to please himself.
He rides to the center of town and stops at a payphone where a phone book hangs inside a metal cover. He finds Scott’s number. “Hey, it’s me, Robin,” he says hopefully.
“Yeah? What do you want?” Scott sounds gruff, but maybe a little curious, too.
“I want to come over,” he says breathlessly. “I’m running away from home, I think.”
“So what am I supposed to do about it?”
“I need somewhere to go. I’m on my bike. My father’s probably following me in his car.”
“Man, that’s lame. You’re not supposed to let them know you’re running away.”
Robin wipes sweat off his forehead, checks around for his father. “We had a fight. He threw his plate across the room. I couldn’t help it. I always say the wrong thing.”
“I have fights with my father every fucking day, man. What’s the big deal?”
He stands silently, wishing he hadn’t made this call. Even though it was so weird between them at the party, today Scott had seemed like the right person to call, the only person to call, someone who’d understand a house full of commotion.
Robin gets an idea. “Do you have five bucks? I could take a bus to New York.”
“I shouldn’t even give you the fucking time of day, man.”
“Are you mad about last night?” Robin asks. “I tried to find you before I left that party. I wanted to talk to you about stuff.”
“I saw what happened,” Scott says faintly.
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“I saw you walk out with Spicer.”
Robin feels instantly panicked. “Scott, we just went for a walk. I was really drunk and had to walk it off.”
“Yeah, where’d you go?”
“Just for a walk,” he insists. “Can’t I go for a walk without getting the third degree? You were the one who ditched me anyway.”
Scott clucks his tongue against his teeth, then sighs heavily. “Where are you?”
“In town.”
He gives Robin his address and hangs up.
When Robin finally finds Scott’s house, his nose is running and he’s tired and shaky. He pedals up a cracked asphalt drive alongside a two-story clapboard house that his mother would label “quaint” until she noticed that the curtains were dingy and crookedly hung, the paint was peeling and the bushes were overgrown. Scott walks out to the driveway, sort of nods to him but doesn’t get very close.
“Come on inside.”
Mr. Schatz is at the kitchen table in a tanktop undershirt, watching a football game on a small-screen black-and-white TV, downing a can of beer. He’s as menacing as Robin remembers, his face expressing only hardness. “You’re the kid that had to go to the hospital that time—what’re ya doing here?”
Scott pulls Robin by the sleeve. “He’s my friend, Dad. Ever heard of that?”
“Yeah, sure. I got plenty of friends.”
“Plenty of losers,” Scott mutters.
“Watch your fucking mouth,” Mr. Schatz says, tossing an empty can after them.
Robin likes the sound of that: my friend. Maybe Scott has forgiven him. Following Scott into his bedroom, he lets himself relax, feeling a little protected at last. Scott’s room: a big color poster of David Bowie on the closet door, one of Queen over the bed; a frayed brown rug over a discolored linoleum floor; clothes piled everywhere; albums stacked in the corner next to an elaborate stereo system. The bed sags in the middle, Scooby-Doo sheets crumpled at its baseboard. The one beautiful thing in the whole place is an aquarium containing two dark, delicate angel fish coursing in circles under a soft purple light.
Robin approaches the tank. “They’re so pretty,” he says, drawing his fingertip along the glass.
Scott tucks a towel along the bottom of the door, then pulls down the shades, sealing the room into darkness. He opens a dresser drawer and pulls out a joint.
Robin looks at him skeptically. “I can’t. I gotta get out of here.”
“You just got here,” Scott says, lighting up.
“I told you, I’m running away.”
“You can hang out for a while. They’re not going to come looking for you here.”
Scott’s words make sense, and since he doesn’t know what else to do, Robin takes the joint. “Your father won’t get mad?”
“He’s always mad,” Scott says matter-of-factly.
The first puff sends Robin into a minute-long coughing fit. Scott watches him through the whole thing, almost enjoying it, Robin thinks. Then he feels the rush in his head. He knows why they call it stoned: it’s like his brain has turned into a weighty rock rolling around inside of his skull. He’s just sinking into the high when Scott pulls out a water pistol and starts shooting it at him. Robin tries to dodge and, when he can’t, lunges at him, grabbing for the pistol. Scott knocks him onto the bed facedown, then gets on top of him and starts humping Robin’s ass through their clothes.
“Cut it out,” Robin says, trying to squirm away.
Scott keeps his weight on him and relights the joint. He holds it in front of Robin’s mouth until Robin sucks in some more smoke.
“We should play wiener in the bun,” Scott says, grinding his boner into Robin’s tailbone.
“What’s that?” he asks, though he thinks he gets the picture.
“Take your pants off.”
“No way.”
“Why? You did it for Todd Spicer last night.”
Robin tries to fidget out of Scott’s hold, dragging himself across the bed on his stomach. Scott leans in and pins him in place by the shoulders. “Scott, what’s your problem?” he asks, talking quickly. “You’re preoccupied with Todd Spicer. All we did was go for a walk.”
Scott leans more heavily into him. “Who do you think taught me how to play wiener in the bun?”
Robin feels a pit open up in his stomach, feels a lump of lead dropped in there to fill the gulf. Todd and Scott, doing what Todd and he did last night. It makes him jealous, jealous of both of them, of the situation existing before he knew anything about it. He takes a gulp of air and summons enough strength to flip Scott off of him.
From across the bed, Scott looks him in the eye and says teasingly, “Sissy boy.”
“Shut up,” Robin barks. He gets up to move toward the door. “Takes one to know one.”
“That’s what he called you.”
“Who? Todd? When?”
Scott looks away coyly. “Never mind.”
Robin takes a step back toward him. He feels his mind dancing between stoned and sober, making it hard to find the right thing to say. “If you have something to tell me ...”
Scott grabs a pillow and hugs it. He stares into the aquarium, his eyes following the fish as he speaks. “One time me and Todd were at his house, on mushrooms.”
“You mean, like funny mushrooms?” Robin asks.
“Duh,” Scott mocks. “We were totally tripping at his kitchen table, and he looks out the window, and you’re sitting on your roof, listening to the radio.”
“When was this?”
“I don’t know, like a year, year and a half ago.” He wipes his nose. “Doesn’t matter. It was back then, when we were still friends. So he sees you from the window, and he’s like: That’s Robin MacKenzie. I had a dream about him. ”
“He did?”
Scott nods, his eyes look drowsy now, almost sorrowful. “He said in the dream you were naked and dancing in front of him, or some shit like that, and he was calling you his little sissy boy.”
Robin sits down on the bed, dizzy, not sure whether to believe this, though Scott is telling it very calmly, the way secret things sound when they surface. “That’s so weird,” Robin says. “Are you sure he wasn’t just hallucinating on drugs?”
“All I know is, he told me when he woke up from that dream he had come in his pants.”
“Oh, my God.” Robin rubs his forehead with his fingers. “He had a wet dream about me?” He searches Scott’s face for the truth, but Scott just throws his pillow at him.
Robin falls backward onto the bed, feeling somehow dirtied by the story, as if Scott’s intention wasn’t to reveal something about Todd but to humiliate Robin. He curls into the pillow, in a fetal position. The high is raging through him, truncating his thoughts. He tries to mold questions for Scott but nothing congeals. He suddenly feels very weak.
“Take your pants off, Robin.” Robin lets Scott roll him onto his stomach and obediently unclasps his pants, helping Scott slide them down. He hears Scott doing the same.
A warm fleshy thing presses between his butt cheeks. Scott spits into his crack and then rubs his dick back and forth, spreading the wetness around. Each pass across his asshole is like an electric tickle, sending a charge out in waves. Robin’s skin goosebumps; he hears himself whimpering, a doll’s voice being squeezed out of him. He tries to imagine Scott and Todd doing this—he is Scott and Scott is Todd. He feels like he’s at the bottom of some food chain.
Scott moves faster and faster while the bedsprings sing beneath them, finally gasping and holding still. Robin shuts his eyes and waits through a long pause until Scott’s goo sprays the small of his back. Scott hops to his feet, grabs a sock off his bed, and wipes Robin clean.
“That’s it?” Robin says, still not looking at him. “Do I get to do it to you?”
“No, man, it’s over.”
He rolls over dejectedly and watches Scott pacing about, acting like he’s busy doing something though he’s clearly just trying hard to not stand still. “That’s not very fair,” he mutters. His own dick is wet at the tip, just getting started.
“It’s just a game, Robin.”
“Oh.” He relights the joint, almost burns his hair in the flame. Takes a puff. “So you won and I lost?”
The high feels protective now, soothing him through a situation he isn’t very happy with. He spends a moment in complete forgetfulness—unsure what just happened, what he felt about it, why he came here to begin with. Then something breaks through the cloud. “Do you have five dollars now?” Asking the question makes him feel better, like Scott owes him something and he can cash in.
Scott frowns, digs through a drawer. “Here. Here’s three dollars and another joint. You can sell it and keep the money.”
“Sell a joint?” The idea is perplexing, makes him giggle.
“Just find some kid looking for one and tell him you can hook him up. Then make a meeting place and sell it to him. Go to The Bird.”
“Why don’t you just give me the money?” he asks, liking this demand, happy to see Scott squirm a little.
“You’re the rich one. Why you asking me for money?”
“Yeah, right, like I can just go back home and ask for money.”
“You should have planned it better.”
Scott’s father interrupts their bickering with a loud bang on the door. “I’ll kill you kids, smoking that shit in my house.”
Scott motions him to the window. Robin follows Scott out onto a small, steep roof, like the one outside his own bedroom. They walk a few steps then climb back into another window, which leads them into a different boy’s bedroom, though this one is so clean it looks unlived in. Robin tries to recall if Scott mentioned having a brother, but he hardly has time to consider this before they are dashing down the stairs and past Scott’s bellowing father. Robin gets on his bike and Scott gets on his and they race away down the driveway as Mr. Schatz yells his booze-thickened threats from the front door.
Once they are far enough away to be sure Mr. Schatz is not following, they slow down, and their ride drifts into aimlessness. They recount their getaway again and again, each time embellishing the details until what was a quick escape is transformed into a full-fledged romp. Now that they are both running from their fathers, the tension between them has leveled. Scott doesn’t mention anything about the party or Todd anymore, and Robin lets himself forget that Scott has been playing hot and cold with him. He still doesn’t know whether or not to believe the story about Todd’s wet dream, but he puts it out of his thoughts for now and concentrates instead on the sweet pleasure of circling their bikes around each other while they talk the afternoon away.
They ride out to the Ice Pond, where they sit side by side on the rocks throwing stones into the water. “Whoever throws farther gets to make the other one do anything he wants,” Scott says.
Robin rolls his eyes, knowing he’s going to lose, but agrees anyway. They choose rough gray rocks the same size and weight. “On the count of three.”
Scott’s rock soars high, but Robin pitches his from the side, sending it straight and fast. It plunks into the brown water more than a foot beyond Scott’s.
“Two out of three,” Scott says, shuffling away, searching for another rock.
“No way,” Robin says. He plants himself in front of Scott. “I won.”
“OK. What?” Scott says.
Robin looks around and, finding no one else in sight, grabs Scott’s shoulders and pulls his face in for a kiss. Scott is stiff in his grasp, but his mouth remains neutral, neither tightening in resistance nor parting for more. Breath escapes Scott’s nose in jittery puffs that land on Robin’s upper lip. He’s just waiting for it to be over, Robin thinks, but when he opens his eyes—he doesn’t even remember closing them—Scott’s are closed, too. He seems sort of lost in it. Robin adds the slightest pressure to his lips, waits for Scott to respond, for his lips to soften; he does, they do. Little by little, moving in millimeters, the kiss expands. Robin’s hands slide to Scott’s waist. Scott does the same, pushing his fingers under the waist of Robin’s pants, pushing his belly and hips into Robin.
The outside world intrudes—some rumbling sound, just a truck on a nearby road, but it’s enough to pull them apart. Nothing is said. Robin fights back the grin that wants to take hold of his face. Scott wipes his lips. They don’t meet each other’s eyes.
Scott resumes throwing rocks into the pond though there is no more talk of contests. Hours tick by, silent but for the occasional splashes. They sit so that their hips and shoulders touch, close but not too close. Robin is bursting with wanting more, but he lets himself rest on the small victory of kissing Scott. They lean back, curl up against the rocks, and let sleep take over.
When they wake to the setting sun, the spell has worn thin. The night’s dropping temperature demands a decision, and Scott, sure that his father is either too drunk to remember what happened or has passed out, decides to go home. Before he leaves, he coaches Robin on what to say to his parents: “I don’t know what got into me. I can’t explain it. I’m sorry.” He says it’s the safest bet.
Robin spends the three dollars Scott gave him on food and Asteroids at Jerry’s Pizza in town, then nurses a Coke for an hour. He imagines his mother storming in to Jerry’s and finding him moping in this red vinyl booth, taking one look and accusing him of feeling sorry for himself. He imagines his father’s anger, this new anger that never existed before Jackson’s injury, exploding again. Maybe this time he really will get hit. He thinks about sneaking into the house while they are out visiting Jackson, then gets a better idea.
He hops back on his bike and rides to the hospital, arriving before visiting hours are over. As he had hoped, his parents are there. No matter what they say to him, he repeats some version of what Scott advised, and nothing more. It seems to work. He is sternly lectured in the hospital cafeteria and in the car all the way home and again back at the house. His father repeatedly tells him he is selfish, inconsiderate, thoughtless; his mother voices her confusion and disapproval at his rebellion; together they spell out a list of prohibitions: no socializing, no hike rides, no unnecessary phone call, But the impact is much softer than he suspects it would have been had he not chosen to return to them at Jackson’s bedside, where kind-faced nurses were coming and going and the fragile pulse of medical machinery droned eerily all around them.