CONNOR ARRIVED at the school a few minutes early on Saturday afternoon. Graham’s car was in the lot, but there was no sign of him near the shed. So Connor climbed the slight incline on the other end of the parking lot to the enclosed football field. And there he was, as if Connor had some kind of homing beacon leading to Graham. All week long it had been the same thing. No matter where he was, if Graham was in the general vicinity, Connor could find him. In the parking lot before school, in the halls, heading out to practice with the other soccer players. It was ridiculous.
Though called a football field, the area also acted as a soccer field and a track and field arena. Graham ran along the track circling the grassy area, his gait smooth, his pace steady. It looked as though he’d been running awhile. Sweat plastered his long black bangs to his forehead and smeared the eyeliner he wore. Someday he was going to ask about that. What would make a perfectly normal guy wear makeup? Graham nodded as he glided past, raising and twirling his finger to indicate he was going to do one more lap.
Connor nodded and walked to where Graham had set his stuff. Next to a backpack sat a bottle of water, a folded hand towel, and a scuffed soccer ball. He grabbed the ball, testing its firmness, and tossed it into the air a couple of times. He’d always wondered how soccer players managed to direct a ball when it bounced off their heads. He glanced over to make sure that Graham was on the far end of the track. He tossed the ball into the air again, and as it made its descent, he planted his feet. The ball rebounded off the top of his head and his jaw snapped shut at the force of the impact, making Connor bite his tongue. He spat pink-tinged saliva and retrieved the ball from the ground.
No way he’d quit after one try, bloody tongue or not. Connor hefted the ball and whipped his head forward to try and get the black-and-white leather to shoot away from him. It worked, sort of. The soccer ball hit low on his forehead, nearly mashing his nose in the process. He stumbled back a couple of steps and rubbed at the red mark that he knew must’ve blossomed above his nose.
“One more time,” he muttered. He tossed the ball higher, figuring the more time he had to gauge the trajectory, the better. He shifted and sprang off his right foot. The ball rolled off his shoulder and continued for several feet before a neon-green running shoe stopped its progress. Graham stood there, hands on his hips, and panting from his run.
Graham did something with his foot that had the ball bouncing into the air and used his knee to knock it into his hands.
Connor smiled, abashed. “Doesn’t it hurt when you guys do that in a game?” He tapped his forehead.
“Match,” Graham corrected, tucking the ball under one arm. “And if you do it right, it shouldn’t hurt. Want to see?”
“Yeah, that’d be cool.”
Graham reached down to grab the hand towel and wiped his sweaty face. He ushered Connor toward the barren goal box. “First, you want to hit the ball with your forehead, but right at the hairline.” He reached out and traced his finger at the correct spot on Connor’s forehead, making pterodactyls burst into flight in Connor’s stomach. “If you head it with the side of your head or the top, you’ll end up with a headache. You know, like those action movies where someone bashes his head against an opponent and knocks that guy out but leaves the good guy conscious? It’s like that.”
Connor thought about that. “I guess that makes sense.”
“Like this.” Graham tossed the ball and jumped into it, hitting it at the hairline, exactly where he’d said. The ball shot forward and went straight through the goal posts.
Graham scooped up the ball. “Second, when the ball is coming toward you, keep your eyes open and sort of watch it into your head,” he said with a motion like he was guiding a plane toward his face. “You always want to hit it. Don’t let it hit you. That way you have control of the direction and velocity.”
Graham drop-kicked the ball, making it go straight up, and jumped into it, sending the ball at Connor. Instinctively, Connor grabbed it out of the air before it hit his face.
“Uh-uh uh,” Graham said with a scolding wag of his finger, “no hands, remember.”
Connor snorted. He threw the soccer ball up and watched the black-and-white hexagons spin as it fell. At the last possible moment, he surged into the ball. It smacked off his forehead in exactly the right place, and, unlike when he popped it off the top of his head, it didn’t sting. The same couldn’t be said for his tongue, though. The jolt of the ball snapped his jaw shut, making him bite his tongue. Again.
“And finally”—Graham reached over and used two fingers on Connor’s chin to close his mouth—“keep your eyes open and your mouth closed. That way you’ll see where the ball is coming from and you won’t bite your tongue in the process.”
Connor touched the sore spot on his tongue, then looked at his finger, checking for blood. “You couldn’t have told me that part before I’d bitten my tongue for the second time?”
“Where’s the fun in that?” Graham grinned unrepentantly.
“Nice. You ready to get to work on the shed? I hate to see what we’re walking into.”
Graham nodded and stored everything but the bottle of water into the backpack. He twisted the cap off and took several deep gulps. He tipped the bottle toward Connor. “Lead on.”
GRAHAM EYED the so-called shed they were supposed to organize and paint. It was roughly the size of a barn, with equipment-loaded racks and bins crammed into every space. One corner in the back was filled with a dozen lumpy boxes and an equal number of ratty equipment bags. A thick layer of dust covered the whole lot of it.
“It’s going to take us the rest of the year to clean this up and get it painted.” Graham trailed his hands across a gritty shelf.
Connor picked up a deflated football lying in the middle of the aisle. “You’re not lying. I’m pretty sure there are things in here that haven’t seen the light of day in decades.”
“Where do we even start on something like this?”
“I think,” Connor said after a thorough study, “that we should sort and organize first. Let’s figure out what can be used and what needs to be tossed. We can organize by sport, maybe. Then sort the stuff out in the court and use the bins to keep things separate.”
“The court?”
“There’s an old tennis court behind the shed. Kids go there to skip class and smoke or hang out after school. One of these days, it’ll probably get taken out, but for now it should give us enough space for our sorting piles.”
Graham examined the contents of the shed. “We should start with the big bins here at the front and work our way back. The farther we get, the more we’ll need to see if Baxter can get us other storage options for the stuff that’s piled around. And I’m not sure cardboard is the best option. It’s sure to get moldy or something.”
“If it’s not already.” Connor scrunched his nose. “Something in here is definitely rotting.”
The work was dusty and dirty and boring as hell. Or it would have been if Graham had been doing it alone. Strangely, he found the time practically flew as he and Connor sorted through boxes and shifted metal bins full of balls and equipment.
“How long do you really think this is going to take?” Graham asked when they paused after wrestling a rusty metal cart full of football equipment outside and onto the court. He rested against the door for a minute, enjoying the clean spring air. It was nice to clear away the mildew and dust accumulating in his lungs. He didn’t mind the work so much—it wasn’t particularly difficult—but the air in the shed was getting to him. Lack of windows made it hot and stuffy, and there was no airflow to speak of.
Connor used his forearm to wipe away beads of sweat from his forehead, leaving behind a gray smear of dust. It reminded Graham of the previous Saturday when he’d dropped his car off at the garage. Yeah, smudged was a good look for Connor. “At this rate? Maybe four or five weeks.”
“I’ve got a tournament next month. Hopefully we’ll be done by then.” Graham wiped his dirty hands on his shorts and led the way back into the shed.
“I don’t think you have to worry. Even if we’re not, Baxter won’t keep you from playing. He tends to make games and tournaments a priority.”
“Did you catch how he called us pansies? I didn’t think coaches actually talked like that outside of cartoons or sitcoms.” Graham squatted to drag a neon-yellow tennis ball from under one of the shelves. He couldn’t quite contain the small shudder when a thick, sticky spider’s web stuck to his hand. Spiders. Nasty. He brushed the web away and tossed the ball into the basket of miscellaneous junk by the door.
“That’s Baxter. I swear he’s been at the school since the Dark Ages, but he’s built a great athletics department.”
“I know. That’s one of the reasons my family and I moved here.”
“I heard Coach Mullin flipped when you transferred in. You’re kind of a big deal, huh?” As he talked, Connor shifted a big box forward. Its contents clacked with the sound of wood against glass.
“Oh yeah, I’m a big deal all right.” Graham laughed. “Just call me Beckham.” He shook his head. It was cool that Coach Mullin was happy to have him—especially since he came in midyear and took over the previous starting goalkeeper’s spot—but it always felt weird to have someone tell him how great he was.
“I don’t think this is sports equipment.” Connor tore off the yellowed and cracked packing tape. He pulled apart the flaps and saw what looked like several large frames wrapped in sheets of newspaper.
“What do you think it is?” Graham squatted down next to the box and pulled one of the frames free. He ripped away the newspaper to reveal a picture of basketball players in green uniforms. Large gold lettering spelled out “State Champions 1986–87” along the frame.
“Cool.” Connor wiped away a layer of dust to read the list of names printed at the bottom.
“Hey, look, is that Baxter?” Graham squinted at the image. “It is, it’s him. He has more hair and it’s darker, but it’s definitely him. Look at that mustache. That’s a total porn ’stache.”
“Ha! That’s awesome. Let’s see what else there is in here.” Connor handed the frame to Graham before delving in the box.
The next few pictures showed four consecutive seasons of baseball state champions. Graham flipped through the images, taking in the years. “Wow, it looks like you guys have a long history of state champion baseball teams.”
“Yeah, we’ve been state champs every year since 1987.”
“That’s quite a legacy.”
“Tell me about it. We can’t lose. No one wants to be on the team the first year we didn’t win. It’d be like we let down decades of ball players.”
“No pressure or anything.”
Connor snorted. “Right.”
Graham pulled the last frame out of the box. He looked at it closely for a minute. There was something about the guy in the center. It reminded him of Connor: the build, the blond hair was the same. Actually, it looked almost exactly like Connor. He glanced at the year on the picture. “Hey, is that your dad?”
“What?” Connor scooted closer. He tilted the frame a little to reduce the glare from the open door. “Yeah, that’s him.” He stood up and started gathering the discarded newspaper.
“So your dad was a baseball player. Was he a catcher too?”
“Nope. Pitcher. Went all-state in his day.”
“Cool.”
“I guess.”
“I know it’s none of my business, but don’t you get along with your dad?”
Connor sighed while he stuffed the newspaper into one of the big trash bags they’d unearthed in a cupboard. “It’s not that. It’s, you know, regular teen/parent crap. I mean, we’re not supposed to get along with our parents, right? Isn’t that part of the whole teen angst, coming-of-age thing?”
He was evading. Graham didn’t know how he knew it, but he did. “Maybe.” He shrugged. “It’s probably pretty complicated. I mean, sometimes parents can really come through.” His parents had certainly gone above and beyond. Connor shifted away, so Graham said, “We don’t need to get into it.”
Connor only nodded, which made Graham even more curious. He didn’t want people prying into his personal life, so he knew better than to pry himself. At least not when the subject had so clearly been closed.
Connor didn’t say much the rest of the afternoon. Graham didn’t mind; it gave him the chance to study Connor. He didn’t shirk. The job was dull and the shed claustrophobic with its dim light and racks of equipment, but Connor didn’t take advantage of the lack of supervision. He did what had to be done without complaining or slacking. He went from one task to the next as though he were following a mental checklist. And, man, the boy was strong. He lifted heavy boxes and tubs as though they held gym socks, which, by the smell of it, were probably rotting somewhere on a shelf.
Graham tried to keep up, but at one point he got a little distracted. How was he supposed to stay on task when Connor pulled his sweat-soaked shirt off and tucked one end in his back pocket, leaving the rest to hang like a tail? It should have looked silly, but instead it drew attention to the curve of Connor’s spine and the definition of his obliques. If Connor in a white, grease-stained tank shirt was hot, Connor shirtless was the thing of wet dreams.
When it was time to call it a day, they returned the equipment from the court and locked up the shed. It only took a minute to walk to the parking lot.
Graham had just put his bag into the backseat when Connor spoke up. “Can I ask you a question?”
Graham tucked his hands into the waistband of his running shorts and leaned against the car door. “Sure.”
“Are you out to your parents?”
“I think they figured it out.” Graham laughed and looked down at his shirt. This one was a plain white T-shirt—long-sleeved, of course—printed with a small rainbow. Pale blue bubble letters spelled out “We are everywhere.”
Connor goggled at him. “You came out to your family with a T-shirt?”
“Well, they would have surely figured it out if I tried it that way, but no. They found out long before I invested in my T-shirt collection.” If he’d had his way, he would have talked to his parents rather than letting them discover it the way they did. No one should have to find out something like that at the same time their son fought to live.
Luckily, Connor didn’t ask any more questions. He nodded and said, “See you next Saturday.”
“Same time, same place,” Graham agreed.
“Later.”
Once again, Graham found himself watching Connor drive away, all the while wishing for a way to extend their time together.