Published: 25 Dec 2016

Tad had no illusions of the true meaning of Christmas.

It was plastered on billboards all over town. There were signs in shop fronts, signs on the sides of transit buses, even signs hanging from lamp posts and telephone poles. Oh, the meaning was so very clear to him. If you were lucky, if you had money, if you had family and friends and people that gave two wet shits about you, you got to get stuff. You could buy people’s love with stuff you gave them. And for some reason, little kids believed that a fat, gnarly old dude wearing some archaic red furred suit and “dashing away” in some weird giant sled pulled by magical flying caribou would somehow pull off a reverse home invasion and actually leave you stuff. All because supposedly some Hebrew baby was born to kick off a totally different religion and overthrow the natural order of things as they were, with the help of stockings hung by “chimneys”, which were mostly non-existent across the continent nowadays.

Fuckin’ retards.

Tad had seen it happen, year in and year out, and still he wasn’t impressed with how, for that little span of time, when the shopping was going crazier than Wal-Mart normally was, all these assholes just pretended to be nicer to each other in “the spirit of Christmas,” all the while griping about the weather and the shopping lines and what to get Uncle Dave; he’s so hard to shop for, you know. And they went mental trying to get everything done on time, that by the time the “wonderful” day arrived, they were exhausted, frustrated, confused, slightly angry, talking behind each other’s backs…

Yeah, Tad had seen the mystical, magical, totally fucked up spirit of Christmas. He knew it for what it really was. Everyone’s chance to make a buck. And screw anyone who didn’t know that for the truth. Fuckin’ savages, is what they are, Tad knew.

At the tender age of 14, Theodore Arnold Denton, III, knew enough of the world to know he was dead on balls right about this. Saddled with a name like Theodore, it would have logically followed that his shortened name, for more familiar use, would have been Theo, which he thought was kinda a cool name. But no, for some ungodly reason his sainted “Mother” had chosen to nick name him Tad. Perhaps she thought it funny that his initials spelt out the same nick name as her husband’s father had gone by. Perhaps it was a reference to him constantly being horny as a little kid, getting erections for no reason at an early age. He’d heard the stories so many times over the years that they would open his diapers to find that “Tad had a pole,” hence the short lived nick name of “Tadpole,” which he hated endlessly.

Strangely, he felt that being a tadpole was sort of ironic given the numbers of different people that his parents had both leap-frogged to after their highly contentious divorce. That had started at the ripe old age of 8, for Tadder. He’d spend 3 weeks each summer with each parent, separately, and then split his Christmas vacation with them, again separately. The rest of the time, he was at boarding school, which was far from as fun as it sounded.

This would be the seventh Christmas since their splitting everything, including Tad himself, down the middle. Somehow, he got the worst part of it. Despite knowing and scheduling for when he was supposed to go yo-yoing between them, his hyper horny Mommy and skirt chasing Dad never really put their lives of hedonism on hold to just spend time with him. He’d woken up so many times to the sounds of someone getting the bottom knocked out of them, walked in on someone’s butt up in the air ready for the next instroke so many times while just trying to get a glass of water or go to the bathroom that nothing they did really shocked him anymore.

He was, impossibly, already bored with watching sex of just about any kind. Which for a horny teenage boy was kind of strange, sad and weird. Much like how he thought of the Christmas holidays in general. All style, no substance. Fluff and show and make believe, without any genuine feeling behind it. Like so much else in his life.

Fuckin’ retards!

So it was almost a genuine relief when Tad heard from both parents that they would not be able to pick him up this year. Both had already scheduled vacations that took them far from his school, and they wouldn’t be able to get him transport nor be able to arrange to meet up with the “other parent” for an exchange. Not that those were ever civil events anyways. He tried to make it easier on all of them, keep the two of them from talking. But they couldn’t resist showing off to each other how much better their life was now that each was separate. Or openly displaying who they were sleeping with now. It was like a fuckin’ contest between them.

Fuckin’ asshole dipshit retards!

Tad hoped like hell he didn’t wind up like either of them. Mom was a vain, self-absorbed socialite who had to be up on the newest trends in fashion, music, culture. Everything about her screamed of trying to hold on to her youth, from her constant working out and eating almost nothing, to her dating men almost ten years younger to seem hip and cool and sexy. Dad wasn’t much better. His entire self-image was some cross between Beckham and Bond. He had to have the right car to match the right suit to match his chiseled good looks, rock solid abs and dream job doing whatever the hell it is that corporate real estate investment bankers did.

They tried to buy his attention. At both of their upscale Park Avenue condo high rise apartments, literally across the street from and facing each other, he had all the toys, video games, clothes, sports gear, computer stuff, music and posters any boy could want. Most of it unused because of how little time he actually spent there, and the fact that he had so few friends there to actually play with all the goodies he was showered with.

Oddly, he felt more at home having a different dorm room every year and having to share with as many as three total strangers than in either of his “designer” bed rooms. He didn’t even open his Christmas gifts for the last three years. He knew they hadn’t bought them. Oh, to be sure, they paid for them, but neither of his parents was the kind to actually shop for him. That’s what the staff were for, looking after the boy, don’t you know.

Fuckin’ retards…

And this year, he wouldn’t have to see either of them. He would get to stay in his dorm, safe from the ravages and savages of fuckin’ Christmas. Away from his sperm and egg donors. Away from their fancy parties and constant intrigues and flavor of the month bed partners. Away from having a waitress slash model slash actress slash skank from Queens named Ricki Lee wearing only a “g-string” walk in on him at age 9, trying to pitch a log, pushing him off the toilet so she can take what she referred to as a “drainer.” Tad shook his head trying to forget that image. And how he got yelled at in the morning for making a mess in the bathroom. Certainly away from the artsy, free spirited guy that strolled around the apartment after just nailing his mom to get a beer from the fridge, still sweaty and naked. At least Tad hoped the wetness he saw was just sweat. Tad didn’t want to think about it. Or about the things his little nine-year-old mind saw swinging as the guy walked by him and tousled his hair. He never knew you could or would ever want to have piercings ”there!”

Gross fuckin’ retards.

He sat on his bed, watching his two roommates packing to go. Patrick had invited him to come to his house, spend the holidays with his family in Aspen. Pat had bragged that they’d get to go skiing on real mountains instead of these pebble encrusted hills out in New Hampshire. He’d said it with that good-natured “Patrick grin,” teasing yet still cheerful. Tad had passed on the invite, however. He didn’t want to mess up Patrick’s fun, especially since this would be the last time Patrick would see his dad for a while. Even officers had long deployments in wartime. The fact that they could get this window right at Christmas time was special enough for their family. Tad wasn’t going to screw up someone else’s fun.

Even Lionel Taylor, the other roommate, had invited Tad to come visit since his parents had dumped him. Ell Tee, as the boys knew him, was the son of a pastor at a southern mega church outside of Atlanta. Lionel had dreams of going to MIT and Harvard, although he wasn’t sure which one yet. He was from an enormous family and knew that there would be more than enough cousins and family and friends around his family tree that adding one more wouldn’t upset the applecart. Tad turned him down as well, gently, because like Patrick, LT was good people. Plus, he was secretly certain he’d be the only white face in the place, and therefore stand out like a sore thumb. Tad had learned not to like being the center of attention, wanted or otherwise.

The lie he told his roommates was that his grandparents might be by to pick him up, so he didn’t want to disappoint them by chasing halfway across the country. And it was completely a lie, since both sets of his grandparents had passed away shortly after his parents’ divorce, part of their enormous wealth coming in the form of inheritances, although, to be honest, there were no flies on either genome generator. Both did extremely well in their individual fields. Well enough that Tad himself might not ever need to work a day in his life.

No, he’d already decided that he wanted to spend this Christmas break alone, apart from all the hustle and craziness, the tinsel and tin horns and extravagances that he hated the holiday for in the first place. It would give him a chance to catch up on his school reading. He’d get to binge watch Game of Thrones. It would be a get away without having to get away, without all the airline crap that travel always entailed. Or getting on the Amtrak boomer from Boston to Manhattan after the commuter rail in from Andover. Or, God forbid, the fuckin’ Greyhound.

He bid his roommates good bye with bro hugs and much back slapping, watched as their taxis took them off to whichever transport method would carry them off to families that cared and adventures unknown. He watched a little sad that he didn’t feel for his family and the season what his roommates did for their families and the holiday. A little sad and a lot glad he didn’t have to put up with all the nonsense and crap. He’d even insisted that no one get him a gift. Why spoil a perfect record? he reasoned.

He walked back into the hall, the boards silent now where hours ago there was the usual pounding of feet. Just about all of the boarders would be going home. Tad felt the confidence and safety of knowing he was likely the only one staying on in his entire dorm wing. He used his cell phone to briefly text the DM that he was checking in for the night. A simple “Okay, text if you need anything,” the quick reply.

Sterile. Clean. Distant. Out of his business. Just how Tad liked his interactions with adults.

Tad settled back into his dorm room. He set up the TV, got a SmartWater out of the fridge, slapped an Orville Reddenbacher’s into the little microwave and set about getting down to just his undies. The floor monitor was gone, so he likely was alone on this level. And with the dorm mother clear in the other wing, on the ground floor with the 6^th and 7^th graders unlucky enough to be staying a few days more until their eventual pick-ups, it was like Tad had the entire building to himself.

His corn popped, his water uncapped, his TV connected to his laptop so he could put the dragons of House Targaryen up on the big screen, Tad propped up his pillows, dressed only in his ankle socks, a “Yankees Suck!” T-shirt and a clingy pair of boxer-briefs that he probably should have gotten rid of last term (but they held everything just how he liked). The hall was quiet, almost echoey and tomblike. The place had a sort of chill, since there was no one opening and closing doors downstairs to trigger the heating system. No one was taking showers to heat the air. No one was being rowdy in the hallways or ordering pizza or having impromptu air guitar solo-offs between beds in the various dorms.

It was all locked tight as a drum, just Tad alone, and for the first time in years he felt happy to be alone. He didn’t even consider that this was the most privacy he’d had since he was 11 years old. Or that if he wanted he could put up the nastiest, most-hard core, graphic internet sex movies on the TV, with the volume all the way up to “OMG! YES! YES! YESYESYES!” and no one could stop him, or keep him from doing what any red-blooded, teenage, American boy would do with such privacy, system availability, TV size and free time.

Tad just climbed into bed, pulled his heavy duvet up over his waist, sat and watched the story unfold for a few hours before dropping off into a slightly dehydrated, popcorn induced sleep, his program still going.

He woke hours later. He’d shifted in bed so he was on his side, curled under the edge of the duvet. His left hand had found its way down to its customary sleeping position, inside his underwear. A lukewarm bottle of water lay against his cheek, thankfully still capped and not draining into his bedsheets. The window rattled as the winter night wind played havoc across the face of the building. Tad felt suddenly very small in the big empty room. Strange how it never seemed so big when Patrick and LT were around.

A sound reached Tad’s ears as he laid there in his bed. The TV had the Netflix “are you still watching” screen on, so the sound wasn’t coming from there. He’d fallen asleep somewhere in the middle of one of the episodes. He’d have to backtrack to find the storyline again. Annoyed at himself, he listened.

There it was again. A soft humming sound, unlike when the furnace fans would direct heat up into the drafty old dorm hall. It was somehow a harder sound than that, but it still had the feel of inky darkness to Tad. Something familiar but that he couldn’t put a name to. And then another sound rang out, different than the first one, different than the wind outside, whipping through the quad.

A sad sound. Small, weak. Almost crying. Something that tugged at Tad’s heart, cynical as he was.

He slipped out of bed and found the air in the room much cooler than the soft, fluffy warmth of his duvet. Gooseflesh chased over his elbows and upper arms as he stood, reaching for his bathrobe. Normally he’d never use the thing. When the hall was full of kids, the air was warm enough that he could walk to the bathroom in just his underwear. Some kids wore only their towel when going to the showers. Some just hooked their towel over their morning wood to free their hands up for their other bathroom kit stuff. Or in the case of Billy Jackson, to show off. That kid was gifted!

Now, in the chilly but not quite cold air of the empty hall, it was as if the lack of bodies moving around dropped the temperature, noticeably. Like the fact that there was no one moving or shouting or just breathing somehow contributed to the lack of heat in the darkened hall. Again, Tad found himself blaming Christmas for the internal engineering that was a discomfort to him now.

The plaintive sound rang out again, seeming to ride along with the constant droning sound. Tad determined that the two sounds were different, and came from different directions. Although what that might mean, he still had no clue.

However, a personal need made itself known to him. A sound that came entirely from within signaled to him that he needed to find the bathroom. A churling sound from his intestines reminding him that while he might be alone during this break, his body still had regulations of its own to follow. He reached into his night table and pulled out a small flashlight he kept there in case of power outages. The hall might be sturdy and predictable, but tripping over something in the dark if the power went down was not a fun way to spend time in the darkness.

He turned off his TV, made sure the robe was snug over his shoulders, and made his way out into the hallway, towards the bathroom, four doors away on the opposite side of the hallway. He didn’t turn the light on yet, but he kept the metal casing in his hand. Somehow the cool metal felt good in his hand, gave him a sort of confidence, even if he didn’t feel the immediate need to turn it on.

Out in the hallway, things looked weird to Tad. The high ceilings and meticulously hand crafted wood work seemed somehow spookier without other boys around. It kept shadows close in the meager security lighting of the place. Only every fifth panel overhead was lit, and even that was in the “night” mode, leaving only shallow, pale cones of illumination in the vast inky depths of the hall. What spoke of tradition, culture, wealth and properness in fully lighted conditions seemed somehow dusty, dark and creepy now, like the set of some Scooby-Doo mystery.

Tad involuntarily swallowed in nervousness, mentally called himself a “fuckin’ scaredy cat retard,” and moved down the hall. As he approached the bathroom, the soft sound became louder, more distinct. And not just because of distance. There was a noticeable increase in the sound, like someone had turned up the volume on a radio. Tad took four steps towards the bathroom when the second sound rang out again, wailing and anguished. And so very small sounding, but echoing through the hall. Tad stopped in place as the sound filtered through the inkiness around him. It was a pause to try to locate the sound, he told himself. He wasn’t scared!

And then his stomach made that churling sound again, and a need to reach a toilet overcame his non-fear and other sensations. Things were about to be dire. And while he knew that he was pretty much alone and could traipse about nude if he chose to, or should some “accident” force the issue, Tad’s personal pride was such that he didn’t even want the personal memory of having an “accident” in his favorite underwear.

He hurriedly dashed to the bathroom, undoing his carefully tied robe sash as he went. The first stall he saw had the “closed for maintenance” sticker over the handle. He mumbled angrily to himself his favorite phrase and moved to the next stall, shrugging out of his robe as he went. It fell in a pile behind him as he jerked open the next stall. Finding everything to be as it should, he turned and hooked his thumbs into his underwear, and with a smooth, practiced motion, dropped his drawers as he sat down. Once in the “action position” nature took control and Tad was rewarded with a sliding sense of inner relief as well as an explosive sound in the porcelain, as things fell out. He let out a long, satisfied sigh and gave things a little push to finish up.

He couldn’t be sure, during his exertions, but he thought perhaps he heard footsteps beyond the stall. And maybe even, possibly, small, delicate sounds of laughter?

Once done with all “private office paperwork,” Tad sat a moment, enjoying the feel of the chill air gradually warming in the close confines of the stall. He rubbed his face with the one hand, realizing that the other hand still held his mini Mag-Lite. And then he noticed something just outside the bottom of the stall door.

Mist? Steam? Fuck, I hope it’s not smoke! Tad thought. Certainly not fog! Fog, indoors… fuckin’ retard! he chastised himself.

Tad pulled up his unders, checking to make sure things were in their usual, snug and secure place. His robe quickly found a spot over his shoulder. He opened the stall door and looked around for the source of the cloudy motion he’d seen. The sound was there as well, and this time he identified it. Strangely, it should have come to him sooner, but he’d never heard the sound of the bathroom showers, all of them, running without the sound of boys running around and talking to each other.

Armed with his flashlight, Tad walked towards the back end of the bathroom, where the large shower area was. The steam issued in puffs from there, billowing and drifting, filling the space with clouds. The air was almost immediately warmer as Tad approached the shower area.

The lighting in the shower area was limited to the same safety pattern as in the hallways, with only one of the overhead lamps lit, and that at half power. The halo of overhead light was filtered by the heavy fog of the steam. The questions ran into each other in Tad’s head as he carefully walked toward the shower area. Who turned the taps on? Why? Were they still in there?

Were they naked?

Tad blinked back at that question. First of all, dumbass, he thought bitterly, if they are in the shower, of course they’re naked. So if you see them in there, it’s like any other time you see guys in there. You ignore, you keep from looking down and you act cool. Pretend you’re in Mr. Chapman’s boring ass European History class and you’re talking about the bubonic plague.

Just don’t let them see that you want to look, retard! Don’t let them see you get excited. Don’t pop a bone! Hide!

He crept forward with his flashlight held by his waist, his thumb resting on the rubberized button. He rounded the corner of the chest high wall of tan tile, and peered into the shower area. There were twelve open stalls in the shower area. Six on the back wall, three on either side. All of the stalls seemed to be running, steam gushing between the partitions. The center area, with a double row of sinks and short mirrors, was like an island in sea fog, barely visible as the mists lifted and dropped and billowed.

Tad stepped into the shower area and immediately stepped back as his sock moistened under his foot. He cursed softly, feeling a dumbass for not thinking that the floor in there would be wet with all the taps running. He’d been taking showers in this school for three years, and here he was forgetting something he knew every day.

He stood for a moment with one foot up off the floor, soaked sock dripping. He had to use his free hand to reach to the wall to maintain balance. He reluctantly reached down to remove the wet sock, but his hand was full of flashlight. He switched the flashlight from hand to mouth, and then reached down to pull off the damp stocking. Reluctantly, he pulled the dry one off as well. He draped the socks over the short wall, noticing that the stacks of towels were all full in the shelf just below.

For the second time, Tad entered the shower area, stepping into the wet-tiled zone. His Mag-Lite felt suddenly much cooler in the warm, moist air. He clicked on the beam and swept it to the right side, looking into the cubicles. He debated on using his voice, at this point. If no one was here, it would be kinda dumb to talk out loud to no one. Then again, someone had turned on all these showers. Tad realized suddenly that if he was going to turn off any of the showers during his investigation, he’d likely get drenched, soaked to the skin just like his socks.

He backed out of the room again, sighing at his own stupidity and shrugged out of his shirt, the beam flipping around wildly in his hand as he struggled out of his clothes. He reluctantly tugged his underwear down as well and laid his clothes on top of the rows of clothes baskets near the towels. He then felt the warmth of the room and relaxed enormously. Why hadn’t I thought of doing this? He mused, rolling his neck around.

He heard a noise again, this time sounding inside the shower area. It caused him to stiffen in shock, sweeping he beam back to the right side of the room. Sounds echoed weirdly inside the shower stalls. The constant drone of the taps pouring water out and the close confines of tile caused the smallest of sounds to cavitate and rebound with occasionally weird effects. So Tad wasn’t entirely sure where the single sound came from.

He swept the beam around, peering into the stalls he could see from his position at the entrance of the shower area. He heard the noise again, a sort of gasp and a whimper sound. And a sniffing, as if someone had been crying, but been suddenly caught at it. Tad stepped into the room, letting the beam play around the stalls, looking for signs of life.

“Anybody in here?” Tad asked, focusing the beam into the back right corner stall. He had taken three steps in and was almost to the row of sinks in the center of the shower area. He craned his neck around, lifting up on his tip toes to peer deeper into the fog enshrouded darkness.

His light played around in the fog, seemingly solid in places, or a mist filled cone of swirling, powder-fine droplets suspended in the air in others. Brilliants reflected back at him from the short, angled mirrors above the sinks, like lens flares from some overproduced Michael Bay film. Shadows and light warred in the fog, the beam playing over the spray cone of one of the shower stalls making the water seem at once solid and particulate.

A chill passed through him briefly, a change as steam rolled past him. Just a cool spot, air trying to equal out pressure and temperature, Tad thought, remembering his science classes. Nothing more. He looked around as his skin readjusted to the penetrating warmth after the area of cold passed through him. A reflection appeared in the mirror as Tad swept the beam around. He focused on it and thought it looked like a younger kid, standing behind him. Staring at his butt, creepily.

He spun on his heel and pierced the zone behind himself with the sharp path of his flashlight beam. But there was no one there, just the open toilet stalls and the bank of urinals along the one wall. He scanned the area, first sliding his light around towards the entry to the bathroom, hoping to see at least the swirl of fog as someone ran off quickly if he couldn’t find the boy who had been staring at him.

Nothing. No one. No body there.

Mind’s playing tricks on me, Tad thought. Maybe that bowel clearing shit knocked loose my brains some.

He heard the gasp again, and then the noticeable lack of sound, coming from the corner stall on the left side. He swept the beam over that way, brushing his hip on the metal countertop of the sink row. The beam was almost a physical thing as it swung through the swirling mists, and it seemed to part them slightly in its passing. When the beam focused on the corner stall, it took a moment for the obscuring mist to whoosh out of the way enough for the light to penetrate to the slick tiles behind.

And to the small form sitting on the floor inside the stall. It was hard to make out details at first, as the beam settled on the other boy. Hard to tell hair color sometimes when it is wet like that. Couldn’t make out any facial features with the head bowed down over the crossed arms resting on the other boy’s knees. He was smaller than Tad, of that much he was certain. He felt a little braver at that, realizing that if things got to a fight he might be actually stronger than this kid.

The boy looked up as the beam played over him, gasping. His hand went up to block the beam as he squinted Tad’s way. Tad didn’t recognize the face, which told him much. Chances are, this boy was in a lower class, based on his size. Tad knew most of the others in his grade level at a glance, even if he didn’t know their names on sight. This kid was not one he had seen before.

“Hey!” Tad said, looking down at the boy. “What are you doing in here?”

“Just, uhmm… Just keeping warm, sir. The heater is turned off in my wing. I’m sorry.” The voice was young. Matches the body, Tad thought, playing the beam over the boy. He was naked, of course, which made sense since they were in the showers. Tad wondered why he didn’t find any clothes out in the towel and clothes basket area. Then, as he took a step towards the boy, he saw why. The boy had draped his own bathrobe over the sink at the end of the countertop. Guess the poor kid didn’t think that the steam would make the robe all damp, Tad reasoned.

Fuckin’ retard…

“What’s your name, boy?” Tad said, feeling authoritatively older.

“Davis.”

“That your last name?”

“First name, sir. Davis Parker,” he replied, a hand reaching up to swipe the dark strands of his saturated hair out of his eyes. Eyes a startling hazel color stared back at Tad, rimmed in red.

“You a sixth grader, Davis?”

“Yes sir,” he said. “I thought I was alone in here.” It became obvious to Tad that Davis couldn’t see him because of the beam and the steam. He lowered the beam away from the boy’s face. “Am I in trouble, sir?” Tad couldn’t tell but he felt that the other boy had been crying. Just something about the eyes, though with all the water and steam, no one could ever see tears.

“I’m not gonna tell on you,” Tad said, walking towards the other boy. As he got closer, Tad saw the boy looking up at him, his eyes red from crying. “You alone?”

“Yessir.”

“I’m just a student like you,” Tad said. “Tad Denton. I’m in ninth.”

“Oh,” Davis replied, bringing his legs closer together. Tad turned off his beam and set it on the countertop.

“Mind if I join you. It is awfully cold out here.”

“Uh, I’m naked,” the smaller boy said.

“Well, you’re in the shower, I hope you’re naked. I’m naked, too.” Tad entered the corner stall and the warm water spray in the closeness of the tile walls felt amazing to Tad. He got directly under the spray to let the heated water drench into his hair. It cascaded down his torso and he let some into his mouth just to spit it out. He looked down and saw that he was oddly close to Davis, who stared up at Tad’s belly area. The splash and spray from the shower landed on the other boy, causing his eyes to blink involuntarily. Tad moved back and sat down, back to the wall between stalls to Davis’ left.

“You walked here naked?” Davis said, incredulously. Tad chuckled and explained how he got here, and where his clothes ended up. Davis turned his head, mumbling something about “I should have thought of that.”

“This was a good idea,” Tad said. “They don’t run the heat much in the halls while everyone’s gone, but they gotta keep the pipes warm.” He looked over at the younger boy who was still very guarded, arms wrapped around his knees. Tad sat with his arms slack to his sides, his knees open, one leg bent at the knee but tilted flat to the floor. “How come you’re still here? And on this floor? I thought the sixers were all on the ground floor in the other wing.”

“They ran out of space in the sixth area, and seventh was full too. They put me in the small room near the floor monitor, by the stairs.”

“That tiny room?” Tad asked, screwing his face up in confusion. “I thought that was a storage closet? Does it even have a heating vent or window?”

Davis shook his head, no. “Just a small register in the floor. The floor monitor said it was a guest room or something. I guess they didn’t use it because everyone else has roommates and this one is tiny. And no one wanted me to join their room.”

Tad felt kind of bad hearing that. At the first of the year, there had been a call for anyone with only three in their room to let a fourth in. All three of us in my room had said no. It was kinda cool having that fourth bed space open to use as like a couch or just a place to toss stuff. Realizing now that he had basically said no to giving Davis a place to sleep where he wasn’t all alone, he felt kinda guilty. But in the dimness and fog of the shower, he easily hid his guilty feelings.

“Well, that explains how you’re up here. No one called you back home for winter break?”

Davis hung his head, shaking it sadly. “My uncle is in the hospital. I don’t know if he’s gonna make it much longer.”

“That sucks, man. Sorry.”

“He’s my only family.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Momma and Dad were in a plane wreck when I was little. Uncle Arnold was actually one of their uncles, but everyone else had died already. I was a surprise. Momma thought she was too old to have babies anymore. And now…”

“Now?”

“Uncle Arnold is sick. Dying. When he’s gone, I’ll be alone.” He started sobbing, leaning over his knees more. He looked to Tad to be the most alone person he’d ever seen. Tad himself craved being separate from his family and their selfish natures. This boy was apart from the one person who apparently had been his only connection to anyone else. It tugged at Tad, in places he felt had long ago been cut off, seared shut and sealed up behind his own resentment.

Without realizing it, Tad moved, scootched across the tiled floor of the shower area and planted his hip beside the younger boy’s. His arm wrapped around Davis’ shoulder and pulled the other boy to him. Davis simply broke down, burying his face in Tad’s shoulder. Tad held the smaller boy as he cried against Tad’s chest, both of them holding to the other; one in compassion, one with a desperate strength and need beyond his tender years.

They sat there together, holding each other while Davis’ tears spent. When the tears were finished, the two sat, still holding on in companionable silence, with only the sound of the shower heads issuing a protective cloud of steam in the cold of night.

“Better now?” Tad whispered. Davis simply shook his head against the older boy’s chest. “Your fingers all wrinkly?” They untangled and Davis looked to his fingers.

“Yup.”

“Well, let’s turn these off so we’ll have hot water for tomorrow. C’mon, we can grab some of your stuff from your room and you can bunk in with me for the holiday. I got a small fridge, a microwave, snacks and three seasons of Game of Thrones to catch up on.”

“You got a TV?”

“Yeah, well,” Tad said, suddenly feeling like a cad for all his good fortune. He had stuff in his room. The sort of things his parents just “gifted” him with either out of guilt or just to keep him quiet and out of their lives. And here Tad himself may have done the same to Davis, without the benefit of knowing that he had done so.

“That’s awesome. Can I really stay with you?”

“Yeah. I’ll talk to my roommates when they get back. Maybe we can move you in with us full time.”

“That would be amazing.” Tad watched a lift happen to Davis’ face thinking about that.

“Yeah, but first, we need to get you into something not wet. I’ll start turning off taps on that side, you do over here.”

“Okay.”

It took the two boys a few moments to get all the taps turned off. And then there was a brief period of both of them sliding around on the wet tiles. A brief wrestling match later, where Tad on purpose didn’t use his full strength, and the two boys moved to where their clothes were, rubbing down with towels.

That was when it happened. A suddenly clinking sound, metal on metal, followed by a clattering of something hard on the tiles. Tad’s ears focused on the sound and he grabbed up the flashlight. The narrow beam swept around in the fog and he centered the beam where he thought the sound came from.

Centered in the beam, Tad saw Davis reaching down to a folded out pocket knife. The blade was much wetter than if it had just been opened in the damp air of the bathroom. Which meant to Tad that it had probably been in the shower stall with Davis.

And then Tad also saw the scratches along Davis’ forearm. WTF! Tad thought. Those looked suspicious.

Davis quickly turned, hiding his arm from the beam’s penetrating light. “I got it. Must have slipped out of my robe.”

“You keep it open in your robe?” Tad said, feeling a bit like he was an investigator. He walked around the edge of the sink in just his boxer briefs, rubbing his towel in his hair with one hand, keeping the beam on in the other.

“I was alone. Didn’t know what or who might be in here with me.”

“Yeah, I bet. Where’d you get that knife?” Tad asked, planting his hip on the edge of the vanity top.

“I… I found it. My room is tiny. I memorized the details of it early. I saw a board that had words carved in it. Brody wuz here, and 1984. I looked at it closely and like, it was a loose board beside the floor register. The only place heat comes to the room. It sort of whistled, kept me up at night. So I moved the board and found a small box under there. This knife was in it.” Davis shrugged. “I keep it with me, for protection.”

“Or,” Tad said, bringing his towel down to the countertop and then gently taking Davis’ arm in his own. Davis at first tried to keep Tad from bringing his arm up, but the older boy’s strength was undeniable for Davis’ small frame. The wrist came up into the beam and Tad’s intuition seemed to be true.

“Or you intended to hurt yourself?” Tad finished. Davis put the knife on the countertop and tried to turn away from Tad. Tears were already running down to his chin. The older boy released the strength of his grip, but didn’t let go. “Why?” Tad asked.

“You,” Davis sniffed, trying to get control of himself, “you ever get s-so lonely, lose hope over everything that the sads in you outnumber the glads?” Davis asked. He started to tug his wrist out of Tad’s gentle grip, but then simply stood there, holding onto his robe. Letting Tad keep him in that embarrassing moment.

“Sometimes,” Tad admitted. He put the flashlight on one of the towels on the counter, letting the beam become partly obscured in the tiny rings of the towel’s terrycloth fabric, softening the light somehow, fuzzing the edges.

“That’s me every day,” Davis returned, sniffling. Tad let his now free hand trace along the scars on Davis’ wrist. They were long, mostly parallel tracks raised in angry rudy lines against the perfectly smooth white skin between Davis’ wrist and inside his elbow. He touched the scars tenderly, looking at them with profound sadness.

“So, this wasn’t just you trying to keep warm,” Tad said, stroking softly between two of the long scratches. “You were gonna do yourself? Cut your own wrists open and just bleed out?”

“I got nowhere to go!” Davis cried out, still facing away from Tad, still with his wrist in Tad’s firm, supple fingers. “Nobody wants me, and when my Uncle dies…” He leaned against the other boy’s grip, straining. Tad released the grip gently, so that Davis didn’t simply face-plant. Davis sagged a step away from Tad but maintained his posture.

“You’ll have no one,” Tad said sadly. Yeah, he knew loneliness. He’d lived it for a long time, but at least he had his anger at his useless, self-absorbed, ridiculous parents. He had the will to live to take their money and make his own life completely without them. Poor Davis…

“And now even you wont want me to stay with you. Nobody does. Wouldn’t it be better to just…” the younger boy sobbed, leaving the question hanging. They both knew that the rest of what Davis was unable to say was “better to just end it now?”

Tad didn’t know what to do. This wasn’t supposed to be his holiday plan. He had no idea how to fix what was apparently very wrong with Davis. He had no experience in dealing with other people’s fuckin’ problems and family situations. He’d spent most of his life avoiding his own.

But here was this kid, this younger boy, so wounded by life. Someone who’d been thrown a much rougher deal than Tad had in his life. So much so that this boy who was younger than him, by a lot, it seemed, was willing to end it all rather than face the uncertainty.

And Tad sympathized. And in some ways, he agreed. This poor kid had no way up. His family was either dead or dying. He was as alone as a single ant trapped under an overturned glass.

Tad, not really knowing what came over him, moved up behind the smaller, naked, crying boy and simply wrapped Davis in his arms. Davis stiffened in surprise at first, but he relaxed back against Tad’s chest. He turned under Tad’s arms and buried his face against the older boy’s chest muscles, wrapping his arms tightly around Tad.

They stood like that for several minutes, Davis’ tears dripped on Tad’s bare skin, and Tad felt suddenly so protective over this young boy. Almost possessively so. And Davis kept up his own embrace, equally possessive, but with a sense of desperation as well. He didn’t know where the words came from, but Tad found himself speaking, almost whispering, into Davis’ hair.

“I don’t know the answer to that, Davis. I don’t know what the future will hold for you. I have the feeling it will kinda suck. But you ain’t gonna be alone anymore, okay? You got me.”

“But what if Uncle Albert…”

“Shhhh, I know. Nothing we can do about that now. From what you say, not much anyone can do there.” Davis sniffled against Tad’s chest. Tad let one of his hands drift up to the back of Davis’ head, comforting him. “But you gotta promise me something.”

“Huh?”

“No more trying to hurt yourself. I don’t want to have to bury you. I just met you and…”

“And your thing is hard,” Davis said, matter-of-factly.

“Yes. Wait, whut?” With a sudden revelation, Tad realized he actually was boned up in his boxer-briefs. Raging boned. “Oh, sorry ’bout that,” Tad said, moving his hips back slightly.

“‘S’okay,” Davis said, moving back closer. Tad felt his body come back into full contact with the smaller boy. “I kinda got one, too.”

“Yeah, well, they just happen sometimes. It’s got a mind of its own, ya know?”

“Yeah. Mine too. Especially when…”

“When what?” Tad asked.

“When someone I like-liked a long time likes me back,” Davis whispered back.

Tad felt a tear slip out of his own eye and melt into Davis’ hair. “Yeah, well, you don’t get to be held anymore if you kill yourself,” he whispered. And then, seemingly totally natural yet also completely out of character, Tad bent his head and kissed the top of Davis’ hair. “So, no more of that, ya got me?”

Davis simply nodded against Tad’s chest.

“Promise?” Tad demanded softly.

“Promise,” Davis said, melting a little more against Tad.

Somewhere in the echoey halls of the building, a sad, plaintive wail lifted, causing both boys to look up from their embrace, startled. It took a long moment of silence for Tad to giggle slightly.

“Old buildings make weird noises when they’re empty and it’s cold and windy out,” Tad explained, sounding suddenly very knowitall-ish. “Probably just the pipes equalizing after all this hot water moved through.”

“Yeah,” Davis agreed.

“Hey, let’s get dry and go grab some of your stuff, then head back to my room, ‘kay?”

“Kay,” he said, stepping back. “Sorry my boner was rubbing on you.”

“Mine was rubbing on you,” Tad said, shrugging. “Guess it’s all good.” Tad released Davis and the smaller boy reluctantly let go as well. “And let’s hurry. It’s already getting chilly in here,” Tad giggled, rubbing his genitals through his underwear. “I can already feel my balls trying to climb up inside.”

Davis giggled, wiping tears from his eyes. He reached for the knife, feeling Tad’s eyes on him. He closed the knife up and picked up his partly soaked robe. “Oh, this wont work.”

“Just wrap a towel around you and then put the robe on over it. Or just wear the towels. Not like I haven’t seen it all, anyways.”

“Guess not,” Davis agreed. He put his robe back over the sinks in front of him and strutted over to the towel stacks, grabbed two and promptly wrapped his narrow middle in one, draping the other over his shoulders.

Tad took his half wet socks and laid them over the radiator near the entry to the bathroom. They’d dry out slowly at the rate the building’s ancient furnace acted. He spun his robe around his body and tied the sash just as Davis settled the upper towel across his shoulders.

Prepared for the cool air, the boys headed down the empty halls, led by Tad’s tiny flashlight. They walked side by side, occasionally catching their companion glancing each other’s way. Together, they got to Davis’ door, stuck in the middle of the hallway with the staircases yawning up and down behind them. With some timidity, Davis pushed the door open. Inside, everything was neat and tidy. But with so little space, any mess at all would have filled the place.

“This is his room,” Davis said, looking around with an expression of trepidation and worry.

“Whose room?”

“You don’t know… about the ghost?”

“Ghost?” Tad snorted, derisively.

“All the older boys talk about it. It’s why this room is never used for, well, anything. They’re all afraid to go in because of the ghost.”

“Get the fuck out. You’re pulling my leg.”

“No. Seriously. There’s a ghost. It’s the ghost of…” he started but both boys said together…

“Brody Doyle.”

“You know about him?” Davis asked, his voice low and reverent.

“Oh sure! It’s been passed around the school since before either of us was born. Back in the old days, like before the Internet, there was a border named Brody Doyle. He was a scrawny 12-year-old who was wicked smart and jumped ahead from 6^th grade to 8^th but the older kids in his dorm didn’t like him. They thought he was…” and Tad kinda slowed the thought down for a moment.

He wasn’t sure where Davis’ head was on the whole gay issue. Despite their recent hugging and emotions and whatever. It was still kinda new and undefined for Tad. He had just met him, fer christsakes. A lot of things just hadn’t had a chance to process for either of them yet. Quickly, Tad contemplated saying something like “a nancy boy” or “a sissy” instead of the hard edged truth, but Davis obviously knew the whole story, too.

“Gay,” Davis supplied, the word sounding oddly ominous as they stood there in the doorway to Brody’s room.

“Yeah, well. Back in the 80’s the kids were kinda more scared of gay people than they are now and I guess the kids thought because Brody was smaller than them and weaker, that they could do things to him and get away with it. You know, play mean pranks, steal stuff, slap him around. Dumbass mean stuff like that.

“They said he used to cry a lot and he slept with a teddy bear. So, just before Winter break, some of the kids wanted to mess with him. They stole his teddy bear and…” I leaned against the door post, thinking of the last parts of the story, feeling a little sorry for Brody, and what happened to him.

“They took his teddy bear up to the top floor,” Tad continued. “Outside the rec room on that floor, there was a flag pole. Out the window facing onto the road. There used to be a lot of them, around the top windows, you know, for like holidays and special events and stuff. During winter, though, the wind between the buildings was too much for any flag. Anything hung out there would just end up whipped about until it was tatters. They took down all those flag poles after what happened to Brody.”

“He was like me,” Davis said. “He didn’t have any family. Not any alive, I guess. But he had lots of money and when his parents died, he was taken care of for money…” he rubbed his eyes with the back of his wrist, the sleeve of his robe covering over his hand enough to rub the cloth against his face. “But he had only his bear to remind him of those he lost.” Davis looked over to Tad. “Finish it,” he said softly.

“Ah, well… The older boys hung his bear out on the flagpole. Apparently, when they got the bear all the way out to the end of the pole, they did something to screw up the ropes. I heard one version of the story that said the ropes were cut. Another said one of the boys did some weird knot thing so the bear wouldn’t drop and the lines would be impossible to get. Maybe they just tied it someway that Brody’s short arms couldn’t get to. At any rate, he couldn’t just bring the bear back in. And the older boys kept him from going to the window.

“Eventually, people started leaving school, you know. Christmas vacation and all that mess. But Brody had nowhere else to go, so he stayed. When he was alone, he snuck away from the house mother and tried to go out to get the bear.

“He musta thought he could just shimmy out on the pole and get the bear. It was wicked windy and cold as a witch’s tit out there. He musta been freezing. Fingers musta gotten too cold to hold on, slipped and then… Six stories, straight down, onto the cold, hard sidewalk. Poor guy.”

“Yeah,” Davis agreed, both boys looking towards the window. Outside, the skeletal fingers of the maples in the quad danced back and forth in the street lamps’ pale cones of light. The wind howled, giving the windows a subtle shake. They were probably thinking the same thing.

The image of poor Brody, hanging from the flagpole, so close to getting his beloved teddy bear back, struggling to hold on, only to have his body surrender to the fierce, hawking winds and the bitter touch of old man Winter. This was no trick of Jack Frost that had finally ended Brody, it was the brutality of raw cold. Hard as ice, unyielding, ancient as the world itself. New England winter at its most treacherous.

“They say that when someone finally found his body outside, more than ten days had passed, and it had snowed almost 14 inches, so he was covered up,” Davis shivered as he spoke. “Someone, probably one of the older boys, had taken the teddy bear off the flagpole. Someone put a different bear in his casket with him when they buried him, but his true teddy was hidden away, so like, no one would get into trouble. The older kids say that Brody’s ghost haunts the halls at night, looking for his lost teddy.”

“That’s horse shit,” Tad said, softly.

“What if it’s true?” Davis asked, tightening his robe in the slightly chilly air.

“But it’s just a legend. A story. I mean, I’m sure there’s something true about it. But there’s no such thing as ghosts, Davis. It’s just stories. The wind playing tricks on you. Stuff you sort of half see and half imagine. Brody may have been a real kid, and everything that happened to him then, well, I can believe all that. But there ain’t no ghosts except in cheap stories on the internet and bad movies.”

“You don’t believe he’s still going around here?”

“What, playing tricks on bullies? Trying to find his lost bear? That’s kinda a sad thing to even speculate, don’tchu think?”

“All the other boys talk about it all the time.”

“Yeah, so they can tease, scare and fool underclassmen. It’s a pretty crappy, creepy, crummy thing ta do, if ya ask me. Isn’t it bad enough we’re stuck here most of the time? Gotta go an make things harder on each other? Buncha stupid-ass, bully, freakin’ retards, is what they are!”

“Omigod… Tad?”

“And a freakin’ ghost story, about a kid that died during Christmas, when like no one was here to see it or know what really happened? That’s soooo lame! Gimme a fuckin’ break!”

“Uhh, but, Tad…”

“No buts, except yours, cutie,” Tad said, swatting him on the side of the leg. The towel certainly blunted much of the hit, and Tad didn’t thump him that hard anyways. He just wanted to get Davis giggling a little bit. Well, and maybe Tad liked his butt a little. At least what he’d seen of it in the shower earlier. Tad shook his head to try and prevent the resurging boner he felt twitching just from remembering Davis naked.

“But… he’s… he’s right behind you…” Davis whispered, his finger lifting to point nervously past Tad’s shoulder, into the room.

BANG-BANG-BANG

“Tad! Mom wants to know if Russ is staying over for dinner!” my younger brother, Parker, called from the other side of my bedroom door.

“Gah!” Russ gasped, looking up from the pages he had been reading. “Geeze, he scared the piss out of me!”

“Not on my bed, I hope,” I grinned, wiggling my eyebrows.

“Ya know,” Russ said, lifting his tummy from my bed where he’d been lying face down, reading the printout of my story. “I don’t know when you’re being a dick on purpose, or if it’s just who you are.”

“Takes one ta know one,” I quipped back. “So, whatcha think? You finish it?”

“Yeah, I was reading it through again. You have a mad twisted mind. Especially if you think you’re gonna get this to pass for the assignment. Old lady Butler will not accept this.”

“Why not?”

“Dude, you use the word ‘fuck’ about forty times in the first three pages. She wont accept it. She might call your parents and have you suspended.”

“Everybody’s a fuckin’ critic,” I said, slumping down into my computer chair.

“See, there you go again. It’s not like you’re writing the great American Christmas story here. You certainly ain’t no D.J. Salinger.”

“It’s Jay Dee Salinger, duffus, not Dee Jay. And I don’t wanna be that asshole. Besides, he didn’t write Christmas propaganda stuff.”

“You write like you wanna be him,” Russ said, tilting his head a bit as he sat up more. He straightened the papers and handed them back to me. “It’s a good story, but…”

“But what?”

“You actually feel that way about Christmas?”

“What?”

“I mean, none of this is you. You ain’t a only child, you ain’t rich, your parents are nothing like those in the story, and they are so openly affectionate it’s almost wrong to watch them kiss under the mistletoe. You ain’t even been to Phillips Academy, so how do you know anything about how the place is laid out. I mean, have you even been to Andover, like ever?”

“It’s a story. Creative license,” I replied. I tucked the pages into a folder and went to stuff the folder in my backpack. Which of course was across the room by the door. If I’d been smarter, I’d have kept it nearer the desk.

“Okay, so, all of that is made up to make the story what it is. I can deal with that. And I kinda like it. I mean, your you in that says all kinda things like someone stuck in that position could believably say. I get all that. But is that the way you want to portray Christmas? Is that… is that how you really feel about it?”

I sighed loudly, turned and flopped down on my bed beside him. I could feel him move to look at me. “It’s not like I don’t feel that way, entirely,” I said, only a little sarcastically. “I mean, it’s turned into this commercialized, huge run around. The churches suddenly double the people showing up, the TV is 40% ads and 25% this Christmas special or that holiday themed whatever. Everyone’s running around doing the whole shopping and bad eating and begging for handouts and charity stuff and…” I had been gesturing with my hands over my head, with the shadows of my fingers dancing between my face and the light from the ceiling.

“And whut?” Russ said, laying down beside me, his arms going up behind his head.

“And I kinda miss how it should be. It should be… idunno, quiet.”

“Quiet Christmas? No carols?”

“Well, how about quiet-ter?” I said, emphasizing the “ter” with a vocal lift and shifting my eyes his way.

“You are sooo weird sometimes.”

“Don’t act like you don’t like how I’m weird,” I grinned. He glanced over, grinning.

“You’re just lucky I do.” His eyes closed as he lay back, breathing deeply.

“So, you staying for dinner?”

“Yeah, my folks are still out helping my sisters shop. I can only imagine the level of crazy that will be at the malls,” Russ said, chuckling.

“Wanna sleep over?”

“If your mom says it’s okay. I think my parents will be down with that.” Russ’s eyes flashed open and he looked over at me again. “Tadder?”

“Yeah,” I said. He was probably the only person I would ever let call me that.

“Your story… you know it’s unfinished, right?”

“Yeah. I have a couple ideas on how to end it up. Dunno if I wanna go all gory and have some kind of, idunno, ghostly revenge theme, or some kind of treasure found thing or something like they find the one thing that the ghost needs to be like at peace or something. I’m still figuring out the ending. It’s the middle part that’s important right now, I guess. If I get that right, then the endings will work themselves out.”

“You really should listen to yourself talk about writing, Dude. You sound like a professor or something. The art and science of writing or some shit like that.”

“Yeah, right! Whatever, shut the fuck up. Anything else?” I asked, wanting his honest opinion.

“It’s good. I’d buy it or secretly download a pirate version of it,” he grinned, but his eyes soon turned more serious. “Tadder?” he said again, and this time I got the feeling he had really wanted to ask this next question before, but switched it. Like he had to get the guts together to ask it.

“Yeah?”

“The way you had your you, ya know, in the story you wrote, and the boy he met… is that really you as well.”

I gulped. Moment of truth time. Leap of faith. I’d written that part in on purpose, knowing that when Russ read that part, it would stick with him. Knowing that it would stand out to him like a beacon.

“What if it was?” I said. Damn, that sounded weak.

“Well… I mean…” he said searching for words. “Like, we’ve done stuff that I’ve never even thought of doing with other guys, you know?”

“Yeah,” I replied. Fuck yeah, I knew!

“So, like, the you in that story, and the way he, I mean the story Tad, the way he says and does stuff…”

“Yeah?”

“Does that mean… I mean, it’s like you’re trying to say…”

“Yeah?”

“That you’re… gay.” He sat up, suddenly, his arms covering his belly. “I mean, if you are, that’s cool and all. It’s not gonna change stuff between us or nuthin.”

“It already has,” I said, softly, feeling really weird. My stomach was tight and twitchy at the same time. I felt like I was trapped in my own bedroom with a question I actually set off like a bomb. And now, here I was on the knife edge of learning what I’d written this whole story about in the first place. Of learning how Russ would feel about me being… being gay, being myself, being… needing to be someone who knew how someone actually felt about how I actually am.

And here it was, and I wasn’t sure I was liking how it was going. Or how I felt. Or how much of an idiot I sounded.

Or how scared I was he would react all weird. Yeah, scared. Just blunt, upfront, no modifiers, no qualifiers scared stoopid.

“Oh, don’t be dumb!” Russ said, poking me in the ribs with his elbow.

“But it has changed things. I mean, you have to ask, and I have to answer. Right?”

“I guess.”

“So ask it.”

He sighed, loudly. Then he looked me in the eye. “No. You ask it.”

“Wha?”

“Look, damnit, it’s your question. You ask it. You ask me how I feel about you being gay. About you asking me if I like you, after all the naked stuff we’ve done.”

“Uh, okay. How do you feel?”

“About what?”

“You really want me to ask the whole thing?” I said, feeling a blush coming on. Scared and embarrassed. Not a combination I’m comfortable with.

“I want the honest truth from you, especially if you’re asking for the honest truth from me.”

“Geeze, this is so tough.”

“Ask, or I go home.” Something in his voice told me he was dead serious. I sat up, turned his way with my left leg coming up to twist onto the bed.

“Russell Simons, I would like to know, with perfect honesty and…”

“Right, g’bye,” he said standing up. He reached for his hat.

“Alright! Alright already. Sit.” He looked at me then sat down, mirroring my leg up position to look directly in my eyes. “Sorry, this isn’t easy.”

“Nothing worth it ever is,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Russ, if I was gay, and if I kinda had more than just friendship feelings for you, would you be like, all pissed and confused and,” and I had to take a deep breath here to keep going. “And would you still be my friend if you didn’t feel that way about me?”

My temples pounded. My heart was stuck between going a billion miles a second and a dead stop. I felt my face kinda squinch up as I waited for his answer. I’d say that my breath was stuck, but I don’t think I could have known at that point.

He regarded me over his crossed arms. His green eyes were steady, unreadable. With great slowness, he reached up to swipe a lock of his dark black, straight hair away from his eyes. He was in need of a cut.

Stop that! I thought to myself. Stop thinking about how you think about him. Stop thinking about what it will mean when he walks out that door for good. Stop thinking that the only thing keeping you from breaking down in tears right now is that you don’t want to look weak in his eyes. He doesn’t deserve a weak friend, or a weak gay friend or a…

A weak possible boyfriend.

“You really want to know?” he asked.

“Russ!” I whined, knowing he was teasing me, drawing it out.

“Okay. I’ll tell you.” He spun his hat through the air and it magically landed on the doorknob. I kid you not, it was like Tom Brady perfect toss, actually spun on the knob once before settling. It’s like he practiced that since he was 8 or something.

He looked back at me as I turned from following the hat through the air. His smirk was kinda infectious and let a little of the tension out of the room. We sorta grinned and then got the serious face thing going again.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Dude! You made me ask. Now you gotta answer.”

He nodded, inhaled sharply and blew it out like he was about to lift something heavy. “I broke up with Cynthia today,” he said. It was completely the opposite bomb from the ones I’d thought he’d drop.

“Really?”

“Yeah, shoulda done it weeks ago. I just didn’t know how to end it.”

“Was it bad?”

“That’s just the thing. She’s cute an’ all, and I don’t hate her or anything like that. I just didn’t feel a zing with her.”

“Sorry, man,” I said, feeling a little weird that the conversation had suddenly gone from me being gay and liking him in that way to his break up with a chick I barely knew.

“I just didn’t know how to pull the trigger, you know? Like, I wanted it over and I think she did too, cuz we were boring each other to tears, but like… I dunno, this is difficult to say. We weren’t good for each other, but we were kinda stuck. I didn’t wanna be an ass to her. We just, idunno, didn’t click. So like we both decided to break it off. She was kinda glad about it, felt the same way I did, didn’t want to hurt my feelings and shit.”

“Did she do the whole thing?”

“What whole thing?”

“The whole ‘let’s just be friends’ thing?” I asked, hooking imaginary quotes in the air with my all too nervous and sweaty fingers. For some reason, this new line of the conversation had steadied the nerves and dried up the sweat. Damnit, even my body couldn’t make up its mind about shit.

“Oh, that. Naw, didn’t come up in conversation. We just kinda said ‘see ya’ and that was it.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t serious, anyways. We didn’t kiss a lot or nothin’. I think we both kinda knew early. Shoulda just ended it that first week.”

“How long were you guys together?”

“Since like homecoming, so, what, early October or something.”

“That’s a long while.”

“Yeah, but it’s like, I feel better now. I was worried about being a dick and all. So like, it’s better all around.”

I nodded, feeling a little better that he opened up to me about that. Still felt a little cheated that he didn’t answer the question he’d forced me to ask, basically outing myself and stuff. “Yeah,” I said, standing up. I could hear my little brother coming up the stairs again. For a scrawny 10-year-old, he sure sounds like a stampede of elephants coming up the stairs. Geeze, I’m starting to sound like my mom thinking that way.

“Tadder,” Russ started again, his hand grabbing mine, tugging at me as I started to go for the door. My little jerk-face brother snatched the door open and saw that. Like, saw us holding hands, behind what had until just then been closed doors. His eyes bulged out of his pointy little head and Russ let go of my hand.

“What?!” I yelled at Parker. He looked up at me, a little scared.

“Uh, Mom says dinners done.”

“We’ll be right down, Park,” Russ said, standing up. Damn it, why was he always so cool and charming to the little urchin.

“You okay, Tad?” Parker asked. “You look all red in the face and neck.”

“I’m fine,” I growled at him through clenched teeth. His eyes got wide at that again and he stood there a moment, uncertain what to do, then turned and bolted down the stairs, noisy as ever, leaving my door open. I felt a lot of the flush leave me as I stood by the door, trying to let my anger go at the same time I was getting over my disappointment of a straight answer from Russ on my gay question. I was over the anxiety a bit, but still felt cheated by not having an answer.

“It’s snowing out again,” Russ said, coming up behind me. His hand reached for my shoulder as he drew nearer. “Look, I know I didn’t answer you completely. I’m not trying to be a jerk about it.”

“I know,” I said, sounding defeated. The anger was gone now. I really wasn’t angry at Parker, although the little shit stain did interrupt a key moment in my gay life. I’d have to let him know it wasn’t him I was pissed at later. I don’t hate him, but he did and does get on my nerves a lot, especially when he’s volunteering to be Mom’s messenger/spy. And I wasn’t angry at Russ either. It was just a lot of… big sigh… emotion, and I felt like it was all for nothing. I mean, I didn’t have an answer one way or the other.

“I’ll give you my full answer after dinner, ‘kay?”

“Kay.” I couldn’t ask for anything more than that at the moment. I swear he’s a freakin’ mind reader, sometimes. Or could just be that he’s been my best friend so long he knows my moods just looking at me. At least the social session with the parents and food would give him time to think of the words he wanted to say. That, and give me the chance to figure out how to deal with the repercussions of this whole fiasco. As coming outs go, this one kinda bombed, wicked.

We ate in silence. Which isn’t to say that my little brother finally figured out how to keep his mouth closed as he chewed, or that Mom and Dad didn’t try to wheedle hints about what we wanted for Christmas out of us. Or that my older sister could put her freakin’ cell phone down for a single meal. Why are they even called cell phones anymore, all she ever does is text and Facebook and YouTube stuff. I think I’ve seen her actually talk on it like on the regular phone exactly three times, and those were to Mom or Dad. Dad does not text; it’s like his one super serious rule for like all existence.

Mostly I meant that Russ and I were silent to each other. And pretty much everyone else too. Mom asked if Russ was staying over tonight. Apparently the moms had that unspoken arrangement thing going. Literally, both sets of parents had power of life and death over us. I’d gotten my ass smacked as a kid by Russ’s parents for screwing up over at their place, same as he had felt the wrath of my mom’s paddle when he’d spoken super fresh in her earshot, too.

All he needed was some stuff from his house. Mostly he needed to make sure the place was locked up. Put water in the tree stand. Feed the cat. You know, just the kinda stuff that kids get assigned as their part of helping around the house. I told him I’d give him a hand. It would give us a chance to talk without my little brother being all sneaky-sneaky. So after dinner, we grabbed our coats, wiggled into our boots and chucked out the mud room door to go the three or so blocks to Russ’ house. The sidewalks had all been shoveled, but the plow poo was still deep in some places, crusted and icy in the three days since the last snowfall.

We walked in silence for the first three houses. Some people in the neighborhood had gone all out on decorating this year and the lights were garish, sometimes so many of them that instead of being funny or cool or festive it looked like a deranged carnival had landed on the block, infecting homes with overly bright displays of warped Christmas dreams. Kinda demented actually.

I expected at any moment he would open up with something kinda heart wrenching and deep. He’d tell me that he loved me like a brother, but no more than that. That we could… would always be friends, but he didn’t have those kinda feelings for me. He’d say something like how telling me about the breakup with Cynthia was supposed to be a clue, that he was letting me down easy from any delusions I might be clinging to because, well, he may not have hit a homerun with Cynthia, but he wasn’t playing for the other team, either.

Part of me wanted to hear him say something like “Dude, I’ve always liked you like that. I dunno if we are gonna like grow up and get gay married and all, but I really wanna just throw you down here in the snow and screw like ferrets until dawn.” I knew that wasn’t on his mind, though. Even a gay boy about to be given the easy pass by his best friend and biggest crush can dream though.

“I been thinking it over,” he began, as we reached the corner. We had to cross the street and then go up around the next corner to reach his house, which was the first facing the street on that block, but because of how things were laid out, was actually the second structure. We crossed together, stepping out into the wet and gritty street. Sand spreaders had been by, looked like. I looked around and watched as a cheap blow up yard display of Frosty the Snowman waved at us from inside a partly deflated “snow globe” and the words “Happy Holidays” flashed in and out, multicolored LED’s blinking in what was supposed to be a twinkling sort of way, I guess.

“Yeah,” I said, feeling that the fantasies were about to come crashing down into frustration and disappointment.

“And I gotta be honest with you. Like always. I mean, I trust you more than anyone else ever. Ever.”

“But?” I asked, trying to help him get it over with. The sooner he said it, what we both knew he was going to say, the sooner we both could get back to this so-called life of me pining, him ignoring, and thus us not being friends anymore, eventually. I saw a neighbor across the street come outside with a steaming mug in her hand, waving at us from her snow-surrounded porch, decorated with simple holly strings and triple candle lamps in the windows.

I know I heard him inhale to say something. I know I kinda knew what it would be. For the life of me, I can’t remember what it was he said. All I do remember next is being knocked into the air and tumbling down onto Frosty. And pain. Lots and lots of pain. Never saw the truck that hit me. Last thing I did see was Frosty leaning in over me for the kill.

I woke up, hurting. Damn near everything hurt. I tried to open my eyes, but something white and out of focus was right on top of my face, and I couldn’t see around it. Nothing made sense, but what was worse is that nothing seemed to be moving. I wanted to move the thing from away from my face, but my hands didn’t do what I wanted them to. Nor did my legs. I tried to open my mouth but even that was stuck shut.

And suddenly the pain slammed into me like I’d just ran in front of a speeding city bus. My joints were all achy, and worse. My face and head felt squished and stuck through like a pig being spit roasted over an open fire. I inhaled to moan and felt my chest screaming in torture at trying to move that way. Everything was pain and broken and stuck.

So fuck you if you think I’m a pussy. I screamed. Sort of. Okay, more like a moan than a scream, but it completely tired me out to just get that out. And it hurt. And yeah, I cried. Just let the drips run over whatever was left of my face. I was scared and hurting and couldn’t see and alone and well, yeah, I panicked. What the fuck would you do?

“Hey! HEY, he’s awake! Someone, help!” I heard a familiar voice say. I didn’t have a name to say for that voice, but I knew that I knew it. Wasn’t thinking clearly just then, I guess.

People, not sure how many, came into the room and all kinds of voices moved around me, poking and prodding at the places where the hurts were hurtiest. After a few moments of this torture extension, I felt a warm, soothing painlessness flood my body. My continuous moaning dropped away to just breathing sounds. And then someone had the good sense to move the blurry white thing from over my eyes.

Hospital room. Doctors and nurses. Holy shit, I must be really fucked up. Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought as my vision sort of found focus again. And shortly after that, I closed my eyes again and passed out.

Later, who knows how later, hours, days, weeks… please not weeks. That would mean I’m really fucked up beyond all recognition. Anyways, later, I opened my eyes again, feeling much better than the last time I woke up. Still kinda stuck in place, still achy and hurty and itchy as hell, but awake. And while my eyes were open, I could tell it was dark in the room.

I could hear someone talking to me, softly. It was like watching snowflakes fall, the big chunky, clumpy, fluffy ones that twist and go slowly to the ground. The swirly ones. That was how this voice sounded to me. And it was almost something familiar to me. Not just the voice, but the words too. Somehow I knew them. I’d written them. Someone was reading my words.

Not just someone. Russ.

“But… he’s… he’s right behind you… Davis whispered, his finger lifting to point nervously past Tad’s shoulder, into the room,” he finished and I heard him shuffle some loose pages as if arranging them to go back into a neatness they’d lost in his reading. “Old lady Butler said there’s an A waiting for you for this if you just wake up and finish it, Tadder. I know I said she’d never accept it, but, I had to bring something to school to show you were gonna come back. I mean, you can’t leave a story like that without an ending, Tad.”

I could hear the anguish in his voice and I turned my head slightly to look over to where he sat. He was leaning over, head in his hands, elbows on knees, my story bound in a notebook and laid on the small table beside the hospital bed I was on. I could hear soft machinery beeping around us. I could also hear him crying.

“You have to wake up, Tadder,” he sobbed. “I don’t know how much longer I can wait for you. I’m almost done with school now and I’ll have to go off to college. Even your little brat brother is growing up now.” He sniffed hard and wiped the back of his wrist under his nose. My eyes did a little focusing dance and came back to look at him. He was older now. Tall, dignified. Cute. No, more than cute, handsome, the way adult guys are. Wow, I thought. He’s gorgeous.

Russ stood and walked to the window. My eyes followed him as he looked out. I could see tiny shadows falling on his face, from the moonlight outside. Tiny, floaty, twisting shadows that could only be the false images cast by snowflakes. The shadows danced over him, giving his stillness a motion unique.

“Why did you do it, Tad?” he asked, staring out into the snowy night sky, tears staining his handsome adult face. I could still see the echo of the boy I loved in that adult face. I could still see the curve of his eyebrows, and the way his bottom lip was rounder than the top one, but stuck out less. I wondered if he still had braces.

“Why did you push me out of the way? It should have been me hit by that drunk driver. I should be laying there instead of you.”

It came back to me, suddenly, like a bolt from the blue.

We had just waved to Mrs. Constantine across the street when the truck came barreling around the curve. The roads were messy, full of wet ice, partly melted snow, that mix of salt and sand that the city spreads to keep the streets from turning into sheets of black ice. Our breath was puffing, and I could see his cheeks burnt rosy by the biting winds. Typical New England winter conditions after sun down.

Two cop cars were right behind it, but the driver of the green pickup wasn’t going to surrender. It spun around the curve, wheels spraying loose sand and wet ice particles from the street, leaning very deep into its suspension as it continued through the curve. The driver wasn’t prepared for the way the truck handled on the slick, nasty roads, however, and he lost it. He banked off a fireplug and went up on to the driver’s side, skidding across the road with his wheels still going, making the truck twist as it came right at us.

Right at my Russ.

I didn’t even think about it. I just leaned his way, braced both of my hands against his shoulder and shoved with everything. Legs, arms, twisting my hip for leverage, pressing up with my toes like in basketball when you do a floppy hand free throw. I pushed Russ as hard as I could and it must have been enough to get him out of the way. He was saved!

Then the truck barreled into me, the flat of the truck bed first. It smashed into me like a spinning baseball bat and knocked me about half a block. I felt the hit, then the drift through the air, then the landing where everything in my body seemed to go even more breaky than when the truck slammed me. And then Frosty leaning over, with his corn cob pipe dropping onto my face in super slow motion. And as Frosty leaned over to take me to hell, the pain rose up and beat him to the punch.

And now here we were, apparently years after that fucked up Christmas, me stuck in a hospital bed, him the backdrop for snow shadows and moonlight. I tried to move and found I couldn’t. I tried to speak, and no sound emerged. I wanted to scream and shout and leap into his arms and make him know I was alive and I’d heard him and I loved him, and loved him and loved him…

And then I felt myself plucked. There’s not really any other word that describes it. Plucked backwards as if some unseen hand had reached through my body, grabbed the root of my spine and just held fast, becoming a 16-ton weight that pulled me down into an ocean of swirling, thick and bubbling nothing.

“But… he’s… he’s right behind you… Davis whispered, his finger lifting to point nervously past Tad’s shoulder, into the room,” he finished and I heard him shuffle some loose pages as if arranging them to go back into a neatness they’d lost in his reading. “Old lady Butler said there’s an A waiting for you for this if you just wake up and finish it, Tadder. I know I said she’d never accept it, but, I had to bring something to school to show you were gonna come back. I mean, you can’t leave a story like that without an ending, Tad.”

I moaned softly, feeling weak all over. I heard him take a deep breath in and stand suddenly. The sound of papers filled the hospital room, sliding on each other, flittering towards the ground, crumpling and settling. I felt a weird not-pain surround my right hand, tingles swirling around in my brain. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or if it hurt.

All I knew was that my Russ was there with me.

“Tadder!” he called out, looking at me. My eyes didn’t really focus too cool on him. He looked like he was floating and warping in and out, parts of his face stretching like one eye was looking to see him nearer and the other was trying to see him farther away. I must be on some GOOOD drugs!

Which meant my body was probably REEAALLY fucked up.

His hand or hands left mine and I guess he must have gone after a nurse call button or something. Moments later there were the sounds of more people around me. Medical things were going on, some guy with a tiny flashlight in my eyes was asking me questions which I tried to answer but I was still feeling sooo funky.

Someone injected something into me and I felt suddenly a lot more lucid. And then the pain sort of hit me. I was expecting a lot more after having a pickup truck knock me around like a pin ball machine doing multi ball. And as all this was going on, I could see, kind of in the background, behind all the medical people doing medical things, Russ. He was standing back, staying out of the way but watching me with the biggest smile on his face.

After several minutes, most of the medical team moved out of the room, some making notes in iPads. The doctor told me I was gonna be just fine. Asked me if I felt like trying some food. You know, doctor stuff. Then Russ moved up and asked the doctor if I could talk. Though I thought for sure he would be doing most of the talking. My throat felt a little dry.

“Let him take some water, slowly, before you push his voice too much, Russell. But yes, he can talk, for a little while. I’m sure his parents will want to talk to him when they get here.” The doctor looked over to me. “You are a very lucky young man. Please reconsider dancing with speeding trucks in the future, yes?”

I nodded, grinning a little through the blush I felt.

“I’ll leave you two to get reacquainted. Oh, and the floor nurse called your parents. They will be here shortly.” He folded his stethoscope over behind his neck and walked out of the room, closing the door gently behind him as he went.

“Alone again,” Russ said, looking down on me. His face was a mix of happy and anxious. “Your eggs all unscrambled in there?”

“How’d they fix that?” I joked, hearing how hoarse my voice sounded. He leaned forward and helped me sip some ice water through a straw. “Thanks.”

“Least I could do. You saved my ass, man. Do you remember?”

“I pushed you,” I replied, keeping things short. “How long?”

“How long? Lucky dog, you are. Slept clear through the new year and missed the first week of school.”

“Merry fucking Christmas,” I said, sadly. “How bad?”

“Wont lie, you got pretty banged up. Both legs are amputated above the testicles and you lost your favorite jack off hand.”

For a moment I panicked, looked to see my left hand (yeah, that hand) in a cast from the fingers to the elbow, and my toes sticking out of casts as well. I looked back over to Russ only to see him barely keeping the chuckles in.

“I always thought you were a lefty handy,” he said, giggling. “Now I know.”

“Asshole!” I hissed and he broke down giggling more. “Seriously, how bad? I gotta know before my parents see me and tell me what they think I want to hear.”

“Complete honesty?” he asked.

“You kinda owe me,” I reminded him. He grinned and his braces showed through. Damn he’s so cute.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds. You sprained a lot more than you broke. Landing on that blow up yard thing saved you from a lot more serious breaks.”

“Thought that fuckin’ snowman was going to be hauling me to Satan himself.”

“You broke both fibulas and your right tibia. So I guess you wont be dancing for a while. Couple of cracked ribs, minor concussion. Sprained your wrists and elbows, dislocated the right shoulder. They had to re-inflate your left lung.”

“Oh, is that why all that hurts?” I tried to sound nonchalant but I don’t think I pulled it off.

“They… they were worried about your brain,” Russ said, his voice dropping, his eyes getting sad. That look worried me. Which is saying much, because if he was that worried…

“This ole thang,” I said, and a coughing fit hit me. He quickly leapt forward to bring me some water. After a few minutes of catching up with my breath and swishing some water across the back of my throat, I was good again. He was so concerned.

“Yeah, you kinda hit head first when you landed, and went all rag doll from there,” he said gravely as I sipped. “Do you remember what we were talkin’ about? Before you got hurt?”

“Yeah,” I said, looking away. I felt my eyes glaze over with tears. Not sure I was entirely ready for this. I mean, this was the moment I’d waited for a long time, a moment delayed by this accident, and I was suddenly unprepared for it. Unprepared, stuck and unable to move to get away. Trapped, and by my own question. I felt a little anxious and panicky so I deflected. “Did the driver survive?” I asked, looking to get some time.

“Yeah, he was fine. Mutherfucker was soooo shitfaced! He banked off’a two cop cars, six other cars, knocked over a power pole and sideswiped the Veterans of Foreign Wars memorial, knocking the horse statue sideways off the pedestal. And he doesn’t remember a thing.”

“Really?”

“That’s what his lawyer said. Wasn’t even his truck! He’s some rich kid from the University. They’re actually gonna try the ‘affluenza’ defense with this bag of dripping turds.” Russ looked pissed. “He even tried to send your parents a note with a blank check in it.”

“Hum. Ballsey,” I replied, lifting my eyebrows in appreciation. Even that ached some.

“Yeah, well, your parents got a lawyer and he’s itchin’ to write in some zeroes after all this plays out. Kid’s gonna be sitting before the state judge on this one. Crossed county lines and all that.” Russ got a dour look to his expression, straightened up in his seat and took on a posh accent. “I believe young master’s carefree days romping at the country club with Buffy and Chet are likely at a most cataclysmic end.”

I grinned, but couldn’t quite laugh. Kid deserved everything he got from what Russ said. Life can be pretty random, but this joker went out of his way to not take responsibility for anything and seemed to think that his money could excuse anything. All I know is, if there’s a check, they better have the zeroes to back up whatever our lawyer figured things were gonna cost.

“But, we were talking about your story,” Russ said, returning to his normal posture. “And the stuff we talked about after I read it.”

“Uh, yeah. Kinda funny, wasn’t it?”

“Funny? Not how I’d describe it. Old Lady Butler really does want you to finish it. And enter it in the state literature competition. She said you’d have to polish the turds off it some,” Russ said, smiling. “But that it was quality writing. Like, award winning stuff. Scholarship winning stuff.”

“Like that will be a problem after this mess goes to court,” I said, trying to deflate things again.

“But, you kinda asked me something huge. Do you remember? Total honesty?”

“Total honesty. Yeah, I remember. And you said you’d tell me after dinner. And we went to walk to your house to see if your cat was okay and… hey, did you feed ole elevator butt that day?” My throat was working a little better, but still felt scratchy. Not sure how much of that was the injuries or just that I hadn’t opened my yap in so long. Or if it was just because I was in all these casts and stuck and about to have to confront my best friend with me being gay. All this waiting and hemming and hawing on his part had me nervous.

“Quit changing the subject, you. I’ve thought about this a lot over the last three weeks.”

“Three weeks! Damn… and I’m still a plaster shrouded mess.”

“Not plaster,” he said nodding his head sideways.

“What?”

“They don’t use plaster anymore. It’s some kind of plastic. Nylon or mylar or something. You’re stalling, so I’ll cut the crap and get right to it.”

“Oh, yes… the crap. Like when you told me about Cynthia to soften the blow?”

“What? No! I wasn’t delaying things by telling you about Cynthia. I wanted to clear the air. I wanted you to have a full idea of where my rock filled head was, ya lousy punk. Fucker!”

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“My mother? No. No, not my mother. Yours on the other hand…”

“Ah ha! Prick!” I faked. “If I could grab a pillow right now I’d frickin’ bash you one,” I said, choking back a coughing fit.

“But you can’t, so you’re totally at my mercy.” His eyes took on the evil gleam he normally got when we play-argue back and forth with each other.

“Oooh, your dream come true.”

“Ya know, you were a better friend in a coma. I could slide a word in edgewise that way.”

“Then speak, oh great master.”

“I will!”

“Good!”

“Okay,” he said, sighing far too dramatically for all of it to just be taking a deep breath and clearing his brain. “So, I told you about Cynthia because I wanted nothing hanging on what I had to say. So you’d know I was speaking truth and all. Total honesty, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay, so, when I was eating your mom’s kinda so-so cooking,” he said, but I couldn’t let that one slide without comment.

“It hasn’t killed you yet, especially how you shoveled it down that night,” I returned with sarcasm. It’s my defense mechanism.

“Yeah, well, sometimes you gotta do things to be polite. Or it could be that eating helps me think, even if its underdone, over spiced, way too salty and unfit for human consumption.”

“Human? Oh, is that what you aspire to?”

“Shuddup! Ya wiseass.” He said it with a grin. “Okay, so…”

“So.”

“While I was thinking about how to answer you, I had to seriously think, ya know?”

“I’m gettin’ a picture. Sprained both of them, didja?”

“Both?”

“Of your surviving brain cells.”

“Geeze, for a guy laying down on the job you sure talk a lot. Will ya gimme a chance here?”

“Yeah, a chance. Like I didn’t give you enough pushing you clear ‘a that truck!” I was suddenly so angry at him. Like I didn’t have enough anger in the world. Like my sarcasm armor needed extra spikes. And Tasers plugged into the spikes so they electrocuted whoever got spiked by them.

“Get the fuck out!” he said, off handedly. “Do you wanna hear the total honesty or do you wanna fight about why you’re such a… a… a fuckin’ toad!” he said, completing his stuttered utterance with a flourish of dumb anger.

“Wow. That the best you can do?”

“I’m gonna chalk it up to the pain meds making you a pain sp-ed,” he returned. I still wanted to make him hurt for some reason. I guess I was just like he said, opened up by the medications and stuck in “rippin’ pissed” mode, or something.

“Yeah, chalk it up to you being too proud and stupid to tell me the honest truth after I opened up to you and told you how I feel and junk and how you spun dumping your stupid slash girlfriend.”

“You just don’t know when to shut the fuck up, do you?” he said, and this time I saw a tear slip over the side of his face. Uh, what the fuck, over? But instead of going light on him, I saw it as an advantage and pushed hard, again.

“Is that it? You cry now because you can’t keep a girl. As good as you look, as smart as you are, just can’t handle being one on one with someone? Huh? Huh? Admit it!”

“Gawd you are such a pain in the ass,” he mumbled, wiping his tear away, getting a stony look to his face. Why the hell was I being such a dick to him? But the anger felt good, as much as my body was either numb or pain, that anger, that heat made me feel alive. And, as I remember thinking at the time, it was his fault I was all fucked up like this.

“At least you ain’t a fuckin’ cripple,” I said back, harshly. His eyes shot open wide at that one. I’d hit a nerve. And suddenly I began to wonder just how fucked up I really was. Was I likely crippled? Was something seriously wronger with my body than I already suspected it was?

“Shut up, okay? Just shut the complete fuck up.”

“Why should I, ya fuckin’ crybaby?”

“Because, you ass! I’m trying to tell you I love you! Fucktard!” he shouted. And it echoed in the room, weirdly.

We both heard a gasp and realized the door to the room was open, my little brother Parker standing there holding it open, his winter coat opened and showing a small ketchup stain on the lower front of his gray “Red Sox” tee shirt. Russ looked back from where we’d both looked over to Parker’s gasp and then he shook his head.

“And now, I’ve outed myself to your family,” Russ said, shaking his head sadly. He grabbed up his coat, angrily, and huffed out of the room, making a point to twist and not brush by my little brother as he passed him. Parker watched as Russ walked away, his eyes as big as dinner plates. Out in the hallway beyond, I could hear my parents talking to themselves as they got closer. I actually heard my father say “Well, he must be getting better, his lungs work fine. Could hear them arguing all the way down to the elevators.”

“Park?” I asked, as my little brother looked back to me, an expression of confusion on his face.

“Hum?” Parker replied, in typical Parker fashion.

“Go! Find him!”

“Oh. Yeah!” he said, and he dashed after Russ. And then the parents came into the room.

And you thought your life is messy?

Well, Mom and Dad came in and were glad I was awake. I know we don’t got the greatest health insurance plan, but I was certain this little vacation of mine was costing a pretty penny. They told me they held off opening Christmas presents until I got better. Turns out it was Parker’s idea. Guess I’ll have to cut the little shit some slack. Not totally cut a lot of slack mind you. Gotta keep him tough as well as kind hearted. It really made me think about how I’ve treated him, and everyone else.

The doctor came in and told me that he was glad I was awake at last. He had my parents step out of the room for a bit while he helped me with a catheter. Not fun. I used some very “don’t talk to your mother like that” language while the doctor helped me there, but it was entirely necessary. I didn’t know my bladder was even full.

Which brought up the question of how bad I was. The doctor said they had a pain block in to protect my nervous system from the pain signals coming from my legs. He said that I would definitely walk again, but it would be a while, with lots of physical therapy and serious work on my part. He also said that the last checks they did on my bones showed them healing nicely, straight and without complications. I was going to be weak as a sick puppy for a few days after the casts came off, and I’d hate life during PT, but he said, and I quote “I’ve seen worse cases than you make it back to full health. As long as you’re not lazy or foolish, you should do well.”

So of course I had to tell him I was likely going to do horrible since lazy and foolish are two of what I do best. And I thought about Russ when I said it. And I started crying. And I couldn’t even use my arms to hide my face or wipe away the tears. He put his hand on my chest and told me to let it out.

After, idunno, twenty years of crying, the doctor helped me wipe my face up and asked if I was good. I said sure. Then he asked me if I cried because of pain in my body, or something else. I felt my face twist up, ready to cry again, but he spoke before I could unleash the water works again.

“Keeping emotional stuff inside will only hamper your recovery. You need to focus on the good things in your life, and getting back to them. Otherwise, you’ll sit here in misery, much like your friend did, all those weeks.”

“Russ sat here the whole time I was zonked?”

“We had to order him to leave. His father had to physically carry him out over his shoulder after he fell asleep one time. He and your family and his family have been here as much as they could, hoping each day would be the one you choose to wake up. He did homework in here, even organized notes from other students in your classes for you. Look,” he said, pointing to a stack of notebooks sitting beside the bedside on the little table with the phone on it.

“He did all that, for me?”

“Takes a special friend to love you enough to wait for you. You’re a lucky young man to have a friend like that.”

“Yeah,” I thought out loud, “Lucky.” Then I looked up at him and it started spilling out of me. The whole idea about the story, trying to get his reaction, then the question I asked him before the truck played tennis with my everything. And I told the doctor about how I felt about Russ.

He sat there and nodded sagely the whole time. None of my descriptions or feelings or just weird things I thought about Russ seemed to weird the doctor out. I even told him about the fight we’d just had. When I was done, I felt like I’d cried a lot, even though there were no tears coming out of me.

“That explains much. Like I said, you’re a very lucky young man. Perhaps you should consider this second chance at life as a second chance with Russell as well. He obviously cares for you. He obviously knows how you feel about him too. I’m guessing he’s suspected for a while now.”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Yeah, definitely,” a voice said, and the doctor turned around to see Russ standing at the door, just behind Parker.

“Well, I think we’re done here,” the doctor said, standing. “We’ll start you on some light food tomorrow. Mostly Jello and mashed potatoes, maybe some oatmeal. Take it easy with that. I’ll leave you boys to talk a bit.” He walked out, clip board box thing tucked under his arm and gave Parker a pat on the shoulder as he left.

“You good?” Russ said with a head lift.

“Gettin’ there,” I replied. He grinned back. I looked over to my little brother, standing there smiling like the cat that just earned a months-supply of tuna. “Thanks Parker.”

My little brother walked up to me and surprised the hell out of me by brushing a strand of hair from my face and laying his head on my shoulder for a moment.

“I never say it, but I love you, little bro.”

“Luv ya, too, jerkface,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. He bounced out of the room, getting a high five from Russ as he exited. He turned back and smiled at me. I felt suddenly so lucky that he wasn’t a prick to me like I’d been to him for so long. Something else I’d have to change.

Russ looked back at me, his hands in his back pockets. It’s a weird habit he has. He stared at me for a moment before realizing that he did in fact have said hands in previously stated pockets and he pulled them out, letting his arms slump to his sides.

“So,” he said, blowing out.

“So,” I replied. “Sorry I was such a dick before.”

“Don’t worry. You come by it naturally. I’m used to it by now.”

“You and Park have a good talk?”

“Some. He just wanted to know if I was being mean to you. Told him he had it backwards, and, well…” he shrugged. “You know Parker. He’s easy to talk to. Understands a lot for a kid his age. I think he just gets people.”

“My little brother?” I asked, and had to sniffle.

“Yeah, well, sometimes we don’t see what’s right under our noses.”

“Like us?”

“Yeah, about that,” Russ said, grabbing a rolling chair, tucking it under his all too cute butt and sat up beside me. “We gotta get a few things straight between us.”

“Not sure I can do that. Catheters are no joke in the pain department. And my handy hand seems to be out of commission, or out of position. Or just out to lunch.”

“Can you cut the crap and be serious for a moment. Total honesty, remember?”

“Yeah. Total honesty,” I sighed. “So?” He had his hands on his knees, and he took a deep breath before speaking. I waited, focusing as much of my attention as I could, since I couldn’t turn my neck much.

“So I guess you figured it out?”

“I think so. But I think we both need to say it. I mean, it’s one thing to think you’re right and be wrong.”

“But not the same as hearing and understanding,” he nodded. Russ looked me in the eyes. “When I told you about Cynthia, it wasn’t to delay. I wanted you to see that there wasn’t anything else forcing my decisions. That nothing else was confusing me, I guess.”

“Okay.”

“And,” he said, running a hand through his hair. Damn, even needing a cut he was cute. Damnit! Focus on his words, I thought to myself. “And I have kinda known how you feel for a while now.”

“You knew?”

“Dude, I’ve known you since we were both crawling hands and knees. You think I wouldn’t know your moods? Or how you look when you’re miserable? Or like when you try to cover up shit by being snarky?”

That seemed a little too close for comfort, so I sort of blurted out, “Oh, I so do not act…”

“Yeah!” he said, standing up. “You do! So quit interrupting. This isn’t an attack, okay?” He slowly sat down, looking totally uncomfortable. “See, you do stuff like that and it gets under my skin. I’m trying to tell you something really important here. And only some of it’s about you. So let me say it. It’s tough enough as it is.”

“Okay,” I said, softly. Russ was really worried about saying whatever he had to say. And I was being a douchebag not letting him say it. I didn’t want him to run away again. I didn’t want him not telling me. Somehow, this was right now the most important moment in my life. Probably his too.

This might be everything I ever wanted. Why was I so afraid to let it happen? Why was I so afraid for it to be just what I wanted?

Why was I afraid what would happen if he said he loves me too? I mean, he sort of said it already, but…

“I’m sorry, Tad,” Russ began.

“Sorry?” I asked, a weird quaver in my voice.

“Yeah. I put this off a long time. I should have come clean about this a while ago. Even before you asked the question, and the accident and all. And then you asked that question. It was the wrong question, by the way.”

“Wait, whut?”

“You didn’t really want to ask if I’d still be your friend.”

“No?”

“No,” he said simply, shaking his head. “You really wanted to ask if you and me had a chance. You know, doing more than just trading handies or jerkin’ ’em side by side. You wanted to know if we could date. If we could be more than friends. If we had a chance as… as boyfriends.”

I gulped, hard. And let me tell you, that hurt like a muthafucka! I coughed for several minutes, with a couple of breaks for sips of water. You have no idea how good that little trickle of H₂O feels going down when your neck is dry from the inside out.

And he was dead on balls right. Because deep down in my heart, those really were the questions I wanted answers to. I had this sudden feeling that he did too. Or at least he already had half the answer, and was waiting for my part.

“Better?” he asked as my coughing fit went away. Didn’t do much to help the pounding in my temples, or the quivers in my chest. I was too nervous to breath normal and too sure it was a bad answer to palpitate. Or Hyperventilate. Or some big word that means losing it. Big time.

He set the water cup with its all-important straw on the table, then simply stood there, near me. If only I could flex that arm, I could reach out and touch him. I’d dreamed of touching him in a way that he’d want to touch me back. Not just the rough housing we did as kids, or even sports stuff, or those “experimental” moments with both of us naked from waist to ankles. But that special touch. THAT touch. The one that meant more than just fingers brushing skin. Friggin’ casts!

“So, here is my answer,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You heard me say it already. The ‘L’ word. And I do love you. Probably a lot more than you know.”

“Oh shit,” I mumbled. I could feel tears building in my eyes. I could almost hear him thinking the word “But” for the next sentence. My lip went into tremble mode and I clamped down on it hard. At least my jaw wasn’t busted up so much that I couldn’t snap down a little personal control.

“Yeah, and I’ve known, or at least suspected how much, you care for a while now. I guess that’s part of why I started dating girls. To give you an easy out. I mean, if everyone thought I was straight, then you wouldn’t feel it was something personal. Like I wasn’t trying to snub you on purpose or something.

“So when I told you about Cynthia, I wasn’t trying to dodge the question. In a way, I was trying to come clean to you.”

Despite my lip quivers, I had a stifle a laugh. He got a curious expression for a moment and then realized his “out of context” moment. He twisted his head with that “I’m trying to be serious here,” look.

“Don’t,” he said, simply, and I reasserted control over myself. “I kinda showed most of my cards. I know you showed yours, so I figured I’d get all mine out, too. Total honesty. And like I said, you may have asked one question, but you were really asking another. You asked if I’d still be your friend if you were gay and professed to like me, ya’ know, that way. You really wanted to know if we have a chance to be boyfriends. Am I right so far?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling my heart racing. I swear, my ears felt suddenly so warm that they were throbbing. I wasn’t even semi down in the funner parts of my lower anatomy.

“Here goes,” he said, sighing. “First one didn’t take me long to have an answer for you, but in light of recent revelations, it’s easier to say now. I’ve been your friend since we both wanted to meet Elmo. I’ve been your friend when we were on that losing lame ass baseball team in 5^th grade. I was the only friend of yours that showed up when your grandmother died. You helped me bury my dog, Sadie, when she got old and died on the back porch. Remember? We used to camp out in summer and run around your back yard naked under the moonlight. I told you more secrets than I would trust with any ten other friends. You don’t trade that kind of trust or love. You earn it.

“So if you think I’d ever leave you as a friend just because you are gay, even if I was still pretending to be straight, then you haven’t been seeing what kind of friend I am, or what kind of friend you’ve been. You could go as swishy as some Hollywood movie stereotype drag queen and I’d still stick with you. As far as all that concerns, we’re not friends at all. We’re brothers.”

He paused, and I saw a tear drip over his eyelid. Yeah, I was so focused on his face that I actually watched it swell on the surface of his eye, droop as gathering liquids do, and slide over, pulling a few eyelashes together, some on the top set but mostly on the bottom.

“Does that answer that one?” he asked, wiping away the tear but keeping his eyes locked with mine.

“Yes,” I said. “I should never have asked that. I should never have even questioned that. ‘M sorry.”

“You saved my life, dude. And look what it did to you to save my worthless ass! That isn’t just something that friends do. Lemme tell you, if I’d been the one to see the truck first, we’d be in different seats right now. I’d sooner die than let anything happen to you, man. Ride or die. Whatever hell you take on, I’m not two steps behind, okay? I’m matching your strides.”

My own tears were about drowning at this point. We both needed a moment to get things together a bit. He did come over and help me wipe my eyes up some. And gave me a few sips. My throat was closing up a bit. I felt like total crap for putting him through all this explanation shit. But something told me he needed this as much as I did, no matter how much it hurt, or how deep the feelings ran.

He sat down closer to me this time, pulling the chair closer. “You good?”

“Yeah. I think I got all the pussy out now.”

“We’ll see in a second,” he grinned, but it was a twitchy grin. One that foreshadowed that I might not like what he had to say.

“Russ, you don’t gotta…”

“Yes. Yes I do, Tadder.” And he said it with that kind of definite tone. You know the one. The kinda tone that you know means he’s thought about this answer for a long, long time. At least the three weeks I’ve been a sleepy cucumber on this hospital bed. For all I knew, he’d been thinking about this next question since the first time we were naked and hard on my bed, watching each other rub one out. I know I been thinking about it that long. We were probably 12 or 13. Seems so long ago.

“I love you. And I know you love me. I just don’t know if either of us is ready for us to shift to boyfriends.” I got a little panicked hearing that but he held up his hands. “Lemme finish. Let’s admit what we’re talking about here. I’m not worried about what our folks will say. And your brother seems pretty amped up for anything that makes you happy. He’s kinda got a hero worship thing for you, in case you didn’t know.” Surprised me with that one. “Tad, if we did become boyfriends, it would totally change our friendship. I’m not talking about the sex side of stuff. We’ll talk about that later.”

“We will?”

“Hey, that cat’s out of the bag. Whatever else happens, we wont be able to ignore the sex question. If it happens or not, we both know the other is thinking about it. But that’s for later.”

“Okay.”

“Okay. So, do I think we could ever be…” and he gestured, like he could find the word in the thin air someplace in front of him and just yank it into view and show it to me. “Romantic. The whole boyfriends thing. Like out and open about it and dating and stuff. All of that.” His hands dropped to his lap and his eyes followed them. His face grew bright and I couldn’t see his eyes behind the screen of his hair.

“I don’t think we can do that,” Russ said.

All the air seemed to expand out of me without leaving me. Just like that. Bam! Too full and empty all at the same time.

One single tear beaded up on the left side of my face, held in place by the angle of my head looking at Russ, and the bridge of my nose. It felt insanely cold against the heat my face must have been putting off. I remember inhaling deeply, feeling all these little pains in my chest.

“Why?” I croaked out, feeling my voice go up sharply. It was like the crying was expressing in my voice before anything else. Everything I had dreamt of, felt, wished for, and in some ways needed for so long was tied up in that one question.

“Because, you dope,” he said, looking up, smiling. “We already know so much about each other. We can’t date, we already know all that stuff.”

“Wait, what?”

“We can’t date,” he said, simply. “I already know and love you. You already know too much about me. If we became boyfriends and then broke up, I’d have to kill you to keep the secrets secret.”

“So we can’t be boyfriends?”

“Well, not if there’s nothing left to learn about each other.”

“I don’t understand.” And I didn’t. And I was starting to get angry again. “Wouldn’t it be better because we do know each other so well?”

“I had a feeling it would sound like that. I mean we can’t date like boyfriends. Heck, I don’t even know what it means to be boyfriends.”

“Just like you and Cynthia, right?” Desperation crept into my voice. And I was totally not able to hide it.

“Wrong. I didn’t like what Cynthia and I had, or tried to have, or didn’t have. I mean, idunno. It was totally wrong with her, so many ways.”

“But…”

“But nothing. I mean, we’re in uncharted waters, here. I dunno what it means to be boyfriends. You don’t either. What do you think will happen if we change from best friends into boyfriends?”

“I…I don’t know. It should be just like boyfriend-girlfriend stuff, shouldn’t it?”

“I don’t know. And that’s the problem. What if we ruin it? What if we wind up hating each other?”

I hadn’t considered that. Thinking about it now, it almost seems silly to think like that. Like that two people that love each other couldn’t possibly hurt each other like that. Like it would be a selfish person that would fuck up something so perfect, so devoted. And then…

Then I remembered how many people thought Russ and Cynthia were a perfect couple. How they seemed to be good for each other. How deceived we all were, heck, how much they had deceived each other at first. How they both knew that it wasn’t working but just didn’t know how to let it go.

“So, my question to you,” he started, his face neutral, serious, pensive. I dunno what else to call it. But I felt he was as nervous in the asking as I was in waiting to hear it. “My question is, what do you want to do? Do we risk our friendship trying to be romantic? Do we just stay buddies who now both are chasing boys? And maybe fool around more seriously from time to time?”

“Meaning?”

“Doing it. Not just all the side things with hands and fingers and mouths. But, well… actual gay sex. You know. Main event.”

“Yeah,” was all I could say. My mind was reeling. Russ had dropped the ball squarely in my numbers. Now all I had to do was catch it and run with it. Or fumble it and get dropped like a hot rock.

“So which is it?” Russ asked again.

Here it was. My big question had morphed into the question I really wanted to ask and now to the question that both of us needed to know. I could see it in his eyes. I could feel my own heart beating hard. Not fast anymore, but just, well, I guess what I was feeling was the moment more than just my heartbeat. But that pulse seemed to be timing things for me more. Gave each moment a musical sense as well as a physical tempo we all share, intimately.

And it was all left in my hands.

“As I see it, I have two ways here. I can either keep things the way they are, love you and never be with you, like with-with you. Or I can say I love you and devote myself to you and be all the things we already were and risk it on us being able to stick together.”

“Yup.”

“I don’t see that.”

“You just said you see that.”

“No, I mean, to me it’s the same thing. And I think you see it that way too, you’re just scared.”

“Scared? Of what?”

“Idunno. I’m scared too. Or excited. Or both. Idunno what it is. All I know is there’s only one person my whole life that made me feel like this. And that’s you. And if there’s a chance it can work…Russell… we can’t turn away from this. You feel it too, don’t you?”

“I do,” he said, after a long pause. “Goddamnit, Theodore,” he swore softly. “I didn’t want to admit this.”

“Admit what?”

“That everything I ever wanted was…” and he closed his eyes, firming up his lips. “That I didn’t want to rush you. I figured you needed some experiences. Some time to figure out other people. Idunno, part of me wondered if you’d even grow out of being gay.” He looked up. “I didn’t want to make decisions for you. I was willing to wait.”

“You know me better than that,” I said.

“Yeah. I shoulda figured you’d not wait for anything. That’s one thing I know about you for sure, Tadder. When you make your mind up, you can’t be stopped. Even when it’s the dumbest move on the planet, you’ll do it your way.

“So… does that mean?”

“If you’re willing to risk it, I am, as long as it is risking with you,” Russ said. He leaned up over me and brushed a hand through my hair, one of the few places that didn’t have bandages. “I love you, Tad. Not sure where this is gonna lead us, but I do love you.”

“Oh good. Because I was kidding about all that gay stuff.”

“Like hell you were,” he giggled. “And once you get out of this plastic prison suit,” he said, tapping the nearest cast, “we’ll have to field test your theories.”

“Oh goodie. Cuz it’s been like three weeks, at least,” I grinned back.

“Well, if you’re a good boy, maybe someone might help you with that.”

“Promise?”

“If you’re good. You still got Santa stuff to deal with too. Park has been very patient.”

“And what if I’m a bad boy… friend?”

“Then I might have to punish you,” Russ said, leaned over and kissed me, first on the forehead, then on the tip of my nose, and then…

Right on the lips.

And then a loud “ahem” sounded behind us, and we were joined by the nurse bringing in my dinner. Russ said he had to go home. Gave me another kiss and a killer grin and let the nurse force feed me like a baby. Fortunately, he didn’t stay for the food injection, but I felt very happy.

And yeah, we’ve kissed a lot since then. And maybe a few other things. Wouldn’t YOU like to know?

All of which got my creative juices going again. I had plenty of time to think between the torture sessions also known as physical therapy. It felt so good after feeling so bad to know I was going to walk again. Plus, I had plenty of extra ears to bounce ideas off of, between Park and Russ. So, I finished the ghost story.

“But… he’s… he’s right behind you…” Davis whispered, his finger lifting to point nervously past Tad’s shoulder, into the room.

Tad turned, his flashlight beam sweeping into the room. Shadows banked away from the light. Davis leaned in at Tad’s side, still pointing. Tad played the beam in the direction that Davis pointed, banishing shadows from that area. Nothing stirred, not even dust motes.

Tad’s eyes moved around the room. On a whim, he clicked off the flashlight. Davis seemed to clutch at Tad’s bathrobe tighter.

“There!” Davis called out, his pointing hand shaking emphatically. Somewhere in the distance, the sound of the building echoed again. A dark shape filled the room before them, roughly boy shaped. Tad was startled at the shadowy form before him.

Tad turned the beam on and off several times. Then, with the beam off, he raised his free arm. The shadowy form also lifted its arm. Tad switched the beam on again and the figure vanished.

“That’s not a ghost,” Tad said, dropping his arm around Davis shoulders. “It’s just our shadow. See?” He turned the smaller boy about, and pointed up the stairwell. “It’s just shadows cast by us blocking the light from the stairs. No ghost.”

The wailing sound rang out again, sounding somehow closer. Sounding lost and forlorn. It was joined by the creaking of a large, bare elm tree outside the tall windows running up and down the stairwell. It was a tree Tad knew well. Many of the freshmen boys favored hanging out by that elm in warmer months, some of them taking their lunches there with the weather was kind. He remembered seeing several of the boys giving bits and pieces of their lunch to a small feral kitten that had somehow wandered onto the campus.

Something to help make the young ones a little less homesick, Tad had always thought. Not that he’d ever felt homesick while at school. To Tad, school was more home than anyplace his genetic donors hung their hats. He never paid any mind to the cat himself. Oddly, he found himself wondering how it was faring in the cold outside. Perhaps one of those kids who fed the small animal took pity on it and brought it home with them. Somehow, he doubted it.

“Night sounds in old buildings and trees creaking in winter wind. Shadows and mists. That’s all it is, Davis. There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“But…”

“But what? It’s just stories and things that older kids tell younger kids to keep them scared.” Tad reached around inside the door and found the light switch on the wall. A bare bulb overhead snapped to life, drenching the room in a sterile sort of white incandescence. It did little to improve the look or feel of the place. It was as inviting as the inside of a prison cell, and only half so well appointed.

Tad moved into the room and began rummaging through the chest of drawers. He pulled out a pair of orange boxer briefs, a neatly rolled together set of ankle socks and a longish t-shirt, also in orange, with Jake the Dog’s (from Adventure Time) eyes and facial features dominating the chest, and a small, thick, curvy tail lifting up from the lower hem printed on the back.

“He talks to me… sometimes.”

“Huh?” Tad said, rolling the underwear and socks up in the t-shirt.

“The ghost of Brody. He talks to me sometimes.”

“Uh, didn’t we just agree that there’s no such thing as ghosts?”

“Sometimes, at night, I get lonely. It was his voice calling me, like mixed with the whistling sound, that led me to find the box.”

“The box hidden in the heating register?” Tad asked, picking up Davis’ pillow off the well-made bed. With a casual air, he tossed the rolled together clothes into the pillow case. “Now I’m kinda interested. Where’s this box at?”

“I’ll show you.”

Davis went to the small student desk in the corner and tugged at the left corner. The desk pulled away from the wall rather easily, sliding on a pair of velvet foot pads on the polished hardwood floor. With some effort, Davis pulled the desk aside and got down on the floor beside a narrow band of brass laid into the floorboards. The single, narrow slit in the brass register plate was barely wide enough for a pencil to drop through without touching the sides, and barely a foot long.

Tad felt further shame realizing that this tiny sliver of airway was the only thing heating or cooling this chamber. Shame that he and his roomies had denied Davis the chance to have a decent place to sleep, study and just goof off in his free times. Of course, they hadn’t seen Davis prior to that, nor seen the tiny hole in the wall he’d been assigned to.

“Here’s the carving,” Davis explained, pointing to the board in front of the brass plate. Even standing near the bed, and with Davis’ shadow murking the light in that corner, Tad could clearly make out the whittled in words: Brody wuz here, 1984. He could also see that the board was loose. Davis expertly lifted the brass plate, not even worried if it might be hot since the furnace was silent. He then lifted the loose board out of the way.

In the space that remained under the register plate and the loose, monogramed board, was a box shaped cavity, seemingly running under the floor into the room to the left of Davis’ chamber and off into the next room to the right. Tad could see a pipe of some kind took up almost a third of the cavity, looking old even by ancient New England boarding school standards. It must be the only heat exchange even going past this room, Tad thought. Forced hot water, maybe. Not even connected to the central air system.

“This is where I found the box,” Davis said, his voice going low, almost reverently so. Tad found himself sitting on the bed, keeping his eyes watching as Davis reached into the floor.

The light overhead twitched. Tad couldn’t be sure that the building didn’t sway slightly. Outside, the wind howled, the elm tree creaked, and with the register pulled, a draft of cool, dusty air lifted into the room. Davis pulled back from the hole in the floor, leaning back on his knees. Dust from the hole contrasted sharply with the white terrycloth draping his shoulders. Tad noticed that one of his shoulders poked out of the towel as Davis rocked back from the opening.

The sound rang out again, seemingly louder this time. Davis looked over to Tad nervously. The sound seemed to extend, stretching longer than times before. A flicker of skepticism crossed Davis’ face.

“When you said the ghost talked to you, is that the sound you heard?”

“Sometimes. Other times it sounded like words. Like another boy talking to me.”

“Uh huh. And what did you and the ghost voice talk about?”

“I don’t wanna say,” Davis said, seeming to shrink a little in the thick towels wrapping him. His shoulders moved forwards, closer together.

“It’s just us here,” Tad wheedled, trying to get the younger boy to open up a little. “I promise I wont tell anyone.”

“You wont like me if you know,” Davis said, softly but with a resolution brought on by a preemptive sense of rejection. Some things you don’t talk about to the only person still around. Loneliness by itself is bearable, sometimes, but knowing that the only other person in your whole world for the next two weeks was on purpose avoiding you because your secret is out would be worse than unbearable.

Better to have just finished what he had started in the shower than to have to admit IT, Davis knew.

Tad decided not to press the point. But he kept how Davis was acting in mind for later discussion.

“Okay, so it was his room and you found a box while speaking to… him. How do you know the box was his? Or the knife for that matter?”

Tad asked, keeping that in play as well.

Davis gave Tad a sidelong look, as if the younger boy knew his reasoning was being challenged. He leaned into the hole in the floor, supporting himself on his left hand and his knees. Tad admired the sharp curve of Davis’ towel clad bottom as the younger boy bent deep into the cavity below. His arm was stretched deep into the hole, craning around to get leverage on something. Tad shook his head to get control of himself. He schooled his face back to normal as Davis sat back onto his feet, hauling a simple wooden box out of the space below.

It wasn’t much look at, the box. If it had been more ornate and girly, he’d have thought it some girl’s music box. The kind where when you open the lid, the tiny plastic ballerina starts slowly twirling and a hidden mechanism of tuned tines counts off some pretty, tinny sounding melody. But this wasn’t one of those. Only in size and the fact that the lid was hinged on the outside were they similar.

It was the kind of thing that would definitely get an “A” in shop class, Tad had to admit. The wood had a natural rosy blonde color with light catching the grain in a pleasing way. Other than that, it was plain, but clearly had been put together, sanded smooth and given a clear coat that wasn’t patchy or overdone. Whoever had built this had done so with the kind of care that the pampered little princes of a wealthy boarding school typically wouldn’t take. No, while this wasn’t anything fancy, it was built by someone who had both brains, patience and heart.

This box had been made with love. Not just skill, care and proper technique. Someone wanted this to show how they felt.

Davis presented the box to Tad. Taking the box, Tad offered the younger boy a hand up. Davis stood, with the offered hand, but had to quickly snatch at the towel around his waist. Some confluence of being on his knees, the motion of standing on his tummy muscles, and perhaps just the quickness of resuming a standing position had loosened the towel enough that Davis needed to clutch the fabric and keep it in place. He blushed profusely while resetting the towel, despite how he and Tad had been fully nude in the showers less than ten minutes before.

Tad noticed the quick hands and blush, but pretended not to, focusing more on the box. “This is nice. So you found the knife in here?” Davis nodded. “Shame it was hidden under the floor.” Tad felt something on the bottom of the box and, keeping pressure on the lid to hold it closed, tilted the box to the side, examining the underside. Something inside moved, but not violently so. Tad kept that in mind, being gentle with this item. He did notice that it was rather heavier than he thought it might have been just based on its size.

The underside of the box had small round beads set at the corners with small felt pads. But it was the irregularity that Tad felt in the space between the feet which captured his attention. Burned and cut into the bottom of the box was an elaborate sun-shaped design. Rays radiated from the central circular design in wavy triangles. But where Tad would have expected to find a cheery face beaming from the face of the sun, instead there were a pair of initials, separated, or perhaps joined, but a large plus sign.

“Dee Aee plus Bee Dee?” Tad asked, reading the initials out.

“See? Bee Dee! Brody Doyle!” Davis beamed.

“Okay, that at least makes sense. But who is Dee Aee?”

“Someone who loved Brody?” Davis offered. “Whoever it was, if they made the box, they cared a lot.”

“Yeah,” Tad agreed. He wished there was someone in his life, anyone, parent, sibling, cousin, friend… boyfriend… who cared enough to make with their own hands something as simple yet amazing as this box. And to have the guts to put their initials on it, not only owning their love but declaring it in something solid. That would be awesome. No wonder that Davis had kept it a secret. Deep inside, Tad knew that Davis must feel the same way about the rightful owner of this box and whoever built it, whoever Dee Aee was, that Tad himself felt.

“This still doesn’t equal a ghost,” Tad said, turning the box back over, to open it. Davis seemed angered about this, but only shifted his stance from left side to right, his right arm cocking up off his hip. “I mean, you could have heard anything. Sounds in these old buildings echo kinda weird. Maybe it was just kids in the next room over talking and because the vent opens here, you just hear the echoes.”

“We talked,” Davis said. He wasn’t budging. “I told him stuff I’d never talked to anyone else about. And he knew things that no one else knows.”

“Stuff about you?” Davis nodded. “The kind of stuff that only happens when you’re alone?” Again Davis nodded, solemnly. “Like that you jerk off?”

Davis gasped, changing his stance to a more balanced position, one hand going halfway to his mouth in shock. His blush was a quick flash of red that darkened his cheeks, clear down his neck. Tad suspected that the blush ran lower, but the towel draped over his thin shoulders hid the younger boy’s chest from view.

“You do know that all boys do that, right? I mean, I have to pretend to be asleep when my roommates get the urge. Usually they just run to the toilets, find an empty stall. I heard a couple of the guys three doors down from me go into the showers on a rotating schedule,” Tad giggled.

“So… so, uhm… do you, uhm…”

“Sometimes two, three times a day. Weird that I haven’t today yet, now that I think of it.” Davis looked away, still blushing horribly. Tad had to remind himself to not think about how cute the kid was. Little dude was gonna off himself, I can’t rush anything with him like that. He’s so trusting, vulnerable. I’m not gonna be some kinda predator, or worse, like my parents. He willed himself not to pop a bone, although he did admit to himself that there was something about Davis that did draw his attention. Physically and maybe in other ways.

“I thought I was the only one,” Davis said, looking down to the brass register plate.

“Well, you aren’t. And it’s cool that you do. Means you’re as normal and horny as the rest of us,” Tad chuckled. “I guess you don’t have a lot of people to talk to about this sorta stuff, huh?”

“Only Brody.”

“What did he say about it?”

“I dunno.”

“Oh c’mon. You can trust me.”

“He… he sometimes tells me how to do it. Like different ways to hold it and… you’ll laugh.”

“Probably,” Tad agreed. “But it’s not like stuff like this isn’t a little funny. I mean, if you hear the sounds my roommates make trying not to make noise at all, that’s pretty funny. And I feel the faces I make while doing it, so, I know that must look completely ridiculous.”

“Bet it looks awesome,” Davis said, under his breath.

“What?”

“Nuthin’,” Davis replied, quickly.

Tad was certain he’d heard something, but decided to press on. “So what else does Brody say?” he asked. The box was still in his hand, unopened. His thumbs twitched with the lid, lifting it just a tiny sliver and then letting it drop back.

“He… he sometimes says things about… about my body. Like he likes some parts of me.”

“That’s cool.” Tad consciously looked up and down Davis’ towel clad form. “You gonna stay in those all night? All dry under there?”

“Oh, yeah.” Davis said. “Uhm, didn’t you get me clothes already?” the boy asked.

“Yeah. Figured you might want a set handy for tomorrow or whenever you shower next. I got no problem if you wanna run starkers down the halls. Might do it myself if the heat kicks on.”

“You’d go naked?” Davis almost shouted.

“Sure! We could run down the halls in just socks and skid the length of the boards if we want to. Not like there’s cameras in the corners.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Davis said. He found himself a pair of long PJ pants, slipping them on under the towel around his waist. He also grabbed a pair of folded jeans, three pairs of socks and a big fleece pullover with a ¼ zip at the lapels. He shrugged off the upper towel, revealing his narrow shoulders. He sat on the edge of the bed and struggled into a pair of ankle socks. His arms were shivering as he pulled the fleece over his head, zipping up the neck all the way to his chin.

The whole time, Tad watched the younger boy get dressed. He wasn’t sure why he watched. Perhaps he didn’t want to admit why he watched. Everything about Davis just seemed so fascinating to Tad. Maybe this is what having a little brother is like… except for how I kinda want to touch him naked and stuff, Tad thought. Stop that! Retard! he mentally chastised himself.

“Well?” Davis asked, breaking Tad out of his naughtier thoughts.

“Huh?”

“You gonna open the box?”

“Oh! Yeah, guess I should.” Tad sat on Davis’ bed, resting the box on his knees. He gently lifted the lid back. It swung up smoothly on its hinge and small chains, much like necklace links, unbent as the lid was opened, stretching to support the lid in its open position.

Inside was completely unlike anything that Tad had expected. The upper lid was intricately carved and painted animal faces. Dogs and cats, Tad realized. Like a sea of pets smiling up at whomever opened the box. This took a lot of work. The painting was intricate and controlled. The carving was nothing short of art. Tad counted at least seventeen different animals looking back at him, smiling without it looking cartoony or faked.

“Dude! This is fuckin’ amazing!”

“I really like the kitten ones. I had a cat when I was little. Her name was Delilah, but I couldn’t say her name all the way. Used to call her Della. She was a very nice cat.”

“What happened to her?”

Davis shrugged his shoulders. “Dunno. We moved and a couple nights after we got to the new house in the city, she went out and never came back. I like to think that she found another family that needed her. But I worry think she may have gotten lost. It was many years ago.”

“Sorry to hear that. I never had a pet,” Tad said, although he had the feeling that may have changed.

Poking around inside the box, Tad noticed the kind of treasures that a boy might keep. A bright green super-bounce ball, the kind that a quarter might buy you from a gumball machine. A folded paper four-point throwing star with banged up points. Several trading cards featuring comic book characters, none of whom Tad recognized. A purple rabbit’s foot keychain with a single key attached, stamped with the Master Lock brand. Five dice, a few pens and pencils, one with a partly worn down cap eraser. A few wallet size photos showing different boys in weird old fashioned fashions were bound by a plastic paperclip. And a drawing, almost looking like a photograph, on a folded sheet of notebook paper.

The drawing caught Tad’s attention. It seemed to be a portrait, almost like a year book or class photo. It seemed to be of a young boy, about Davis’ age, with bright eyes, dark curls brushed to straighten them some, tamed but still a mane. There was something sad, intense about the boy in the drawing’s face.

“The, uhm, the pocket knife was in there,” Davis said. Tad looked back and forth between the drawing and Davis, suddenly amazed at their resemblance. Davis’ hair was slightly lighter, now that it was drying after their shower. His hair seemed to be thickening up as it dried as well, forming shaggy ringlets of brown with golden highlights. But their expressions were very similar. Davis seemed to have a slightly fuller chin, maybe higher cheek bones which gave him a sort of cute squinty look. Much like the box itself that had housed this drawing, sarcophagus-like, this drawing was made with love, talent and intention.

Tad went to put the drawing back when two things caught his eye. In refolding the page, he noticed there was a small passage written on the back. “Je t’aime, ours en peluche. Dee,” Tad read.

“Huh?”

“Here, written on the back.”

“Oh. I could never figure out what that was,” Davis admitted. “Do you know?”

“It’s in French. It says ‘I love you, Teddy Bear.'”

“Wow. I didn’t know you spoke French.” Davis took the drawing and looked at the French words, running his index finger under them.

“Family curse. I wind up in France or Italy or Greece or somewhere European and vacationy three or four times a year. Both my genetic donors think that taking me to foreign places for holidays will somehow forgive the dumb shit they’ve done. Plus, they like trying to outdo each other. Sometimes having no family sounds like a better deal than getting the jerks I’m stuck with. You travel that much you pick up some words here and there. Makes it almost a crime for me to take French for my language credit.”

“So, whoever Dee is, he called Brody Teddy Bear?”

“Guess so.”

“Cool nick name.”

Tad looked back into the box and tugged out what was laying on the bottom. A small notebook, spiral bound on the top so the cover flipped up and behind. Small scribbles, doodles and spots erased through the green color of the cover so the white underneath showed through covered the notebook with “Kilroy wuz here,” and stylized figure 8’s, and Mtv style band logos. The kinds of things that bored kids in a bygone age would decorate their personal stuff with.

“Oh, yeah,” Davis said, putting the drawing down on the bed, folded over. “That’s Brody’s journal. Sort of.”

“Kinda small for a diary,” Tad observed, noting that several pages had been torn out of the note pad. Davis simply shrugged.

“He didn’t write much in there.”

“Have you read it?”

“No,” Davis admitted. “I can’t.” Tad looked quizzically at the younger boy and then with a flick of the wrist, snapped open the cover. One look was all it took to understand. Like the phrase on the back of the drawing, it was written in scholastic French. “Can you read it?”

“Yeah. It’s all sort of formal. Like proper French instead of how French people talk to each other.”

“Huh?”

“Think of it like the difference between reading a text book and reading a comic book.”

“Oooh.”

“There’s only a few pages. It’s weird. This first page is like a poem about falling leaves.” Tad flipped a page. “This one is him talking about how some older boys stole his clothes and towel while he was in the shower. He had to walk all the way back to his room naked and wet, cupping his stuff. Poor kid.”

“Someone tried to do that to me once, but Mr. Archibald stopped them.”

“That’s an odd coincidence.”

“It is?”

“Yeah, Mr. Archibald is the old French teacher.”

“Weird!”

“Yeah, he studied art history in Paris and other parts of Europe.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Teachers like to hear the sound of their own voices,” Tad said with some sarcastic backspin. “I heard he was sick. He hasn’t been teaching this year.”

“Oh. Yeah, I thought that lady with the blonde hair was teaching French now.”

“Yeah, Mademoiselle Butler. She took over the classes in September. Mr. Archibald only taught three classes before he got sick or something. No one told us what’s going on with him.”

“Oh. Was he old?”

“They’re all old,” Tad fired back, rolling his eyes. Davis giggled. “But I think whatever happened with him, it came on him sudden like.”

“Like a cold?”

“Maybe like something that he’d been fighting for a while. Something he wasn’t winning against anymore.”

“Oh. Like cancer, maybe?”

“Dunno, little dude.”

“That’s what my uncle has. Stage 4 leukemia.” The boy’s frown seemed to drop into place as if it were a permanent default mode. Tad felt instantly upset. He wanted to cheer this kid up, not dump him in the doldrums.

“Well, little boy,” Tad said, using his voice like a bad black and white movie villain. “Let’s see what is written in the ghost boy’s diary, Bwah hah hah hah hahaaaaa!” Tad poked Davis in the ribs with a finger and then flipped the next page of the notebook. Davis flinched from the poke and giggled again. Tad smiled as well. His eyes drifted over the next words, written in careful cursive. There were some spelling and grammar errors in the French words, but Tad quickly had it sorted out.

“Oh crap,” Tad whispered, his eyes reading the next few sentences again. “Seems there may be some truth to Brody being gay.”

“Whut? What does it say?”

Tad’s voice shifted slightly as he translated, dropping in tone but rising in pitch. “He kissed me, and I liked it.” Tad and Davis exchanged a look. Tad licked his lips nervously before continuing. “I woke to go to the showers. It is better for me to shower after the other boys have finished and gone to bed. They can not tease me in this way.”

“French is weird, huh?” Davis asked.

“There’s more,” Tad nodded. “He was in the back corner stall, showering as well. His back was to me when I came in, but I knew him. He was crying.”

“Crying?”

“Yeah, it says ‘il pleurait,’ which is literally ‘he was crying.’ See?” Tad pointed to the words. “We talked. He said he was sorry that he picked on me with his friends. He didn’t want to do it, but if he didn’t, they’d pick on him as well. I said I understood, but he said there was more I didn’t understand. That I couldn’t understand.”

Tad flipped the page, sort of glad that the carefully scripted words continued. “We talked while we showered, keeping our voices quiet in case anyone else came into the bathroom. I told him it was okay if they thought I was gay. I don’t know why, but I told him I thought I was as well.” Tad halted, his eyes going over the next line. He read it through again. There was no doubt about the translation.

“Il m’embrassa, sur les lèvres, avec, ses bras autour de moi,” Tad read, then translated for Davis. “He kissed me, on the lips, with his arms around me.” Tad’s eyes flicked towards Davis, trying to measure the younger boy’s reaction to the translation. Davis seemed to be stuck, focused on the words he couldn’t read, reliving the words he’d just heard.

“So… the boy he kissed was one of the ones teasing him?”

“I guess so. I wonder if it says who,” Tad said, scanning down the next few pages quickly.

“Tad, wait. I want you to read it all?”

“Uh, well, it doesn’t seem to go into any ewwy gooey details, it that’s what you want.” And it didn’t. Tad had learned all the swear words and sex words and insults from another kid he’d met on one time when his Dad had taken him to Nice. Mostly, his Dad wanted to spend time with “flavor of the month” someplace where he could show off his money, tan and brains while she was completely in the dark about what was said around her. Tad and that boy had spent a lot of time together on the beach. One might say he picked up quite a bit of French that two weeks on the Riviera. But none of those phrases or words showed up in the rest of the flip book diary.

“But who was the older boy?”

“Uh, lemme see,” Tad said, going through the text slowly. “The only name it gives probably wont help much. Dale, I think.”

“Like the Disney characters, Chip and Dale?”

“From the way he described that kiss, I think he meant more like the Chippendales,” Tad said with a wry, lopsided grin. Davis clearly didn’t get the reference. “I don’t see anything like a last name. Course, Dale could BE his last name. But the way he uses it, my Dale, kinda leads me to believe it’s a first name.”

“Oh.” Davis seemed a little annoyed. “He really was a lot like me. From our talks, it seems he was lonely and upset all the time and… now that I know this…”

Tad closed the note book, giving Davis an appraising look. Whatever was going on in the boy’s head, Tad felt, was about to come out. Even as Tad thought about the phrase “come out,” part of him felt guilty. Here Davis was hurting, trying to connect not only to Tad himself in some meaningful, friendly (possibly more than just friendly) way as well as confirm a link to the past and this supposed “ghost” and Tad himself was having naughty thoughts about the younger boy, while at the same time denigrating his connection to this poor, lost kid whose words still echoed in Tad’s own imagination.

Chill out, Tad thought to himself. It’s only because he’s the only other warm body in this place and we’re both lonely and just been all wet and naked and hugging on each other. It would be sooo wrong to take advantage of him like that! His whole world is crumbling. He needs… he needs a friend. A brother. Tad turned his mind to at least partially validating some of Davis’ feelings.

“I guess, and this is just a wild fling here, that Dale made the box for Brody.” Tad put the items back into the box, but kept the pocket knife out. He turned the box over, keeping the lid secured with his hand. “See? Dee Aee plus Bee Dee. If we’re pretty sure that Bee Dee is Brody Doyle, then Dee Aee must be Dale.”

“But no last name,” Davis agreed.

“Still, kinda clear how they felt about each other.”

“Yeah,” Davis sighed.

A sudden sharp gust of wind rattled the windows in the stairwell, across the hallway. Being alone on that floor, the boys hadn’t closed the door to Davis’ tiny cell. The sound of whooshing New England winter air and the creaking of the mighty elm beyond the window caused both boys to gasp in surprise.

“Damnitalltohell!” Tad cried out, surprised. “I’d hate to be out in that tonight. Freeze ya solid in a second! Colder than a witch’s tit!” He grinned at Davis, getting the younger boy to grin back.

And then, their eyes locked together for a moment. It was like Tad couldn’t look away from those deep green soulful orbs, dancing in the glow of the bare overhead light bulb. Davis was also struck by that ocular connection, frozen in place but feeling suddenly like his neck and face were pushing out heat like molten rock gushing from a volcanic core.

And then the power in the building went out.

“Well, that was unexpected,” Tad said, fishing out his pen light. His beam cut in, scattering a long cone of light through the dense blackness.

“What happened?”

“Just a power out. Hopefully it’ll get fixed before too long. Anything else here you wanna take with us?” Tad asked, looking over the bed, thinking about adding Davis’ comforter to their combined bedding. And thinking about being in bed with Davis, as well. Sometimes good things happen in the dark, Tad thought, wiggling his own eyebrows suggestively.

He flashed the beam around to Davis and felt his face twist sideways in confusion. The boy was pointing to the area behind Tad’s left shoulder, his mouth opened wide. The sound, closer yet somehow with more echoey reverb to it rang out, seeming to come from the opened vent register in the floor. Tad turned around and what he saw made him drop the flashlight.

Standing there, glowing in an eerie wash of pale green, stood a boy, about Davis’ height, staring at the two invaders who dared rummage through his stuff in his place. The face was unmistakably that of the boy in the drawing, although somewhat more transparent and hazy than Tad remembered. The image’s expression was slightly directed down, as if in anger, the eyes seemed to shine with an inner pulse, flashing some warning, peeking out from under bangs that needed a trim.

“Brody?” Davis asked, his high pitched voice quavering in fear.

“Can’t be,” Tad replied, stepping away from the glowing apparition to stand closer to Davis. The younger boy grabbed Tad’s wrist, stood partly behind the older one, his hand resting on Tad’s back. The presence of Davis’ small hand on his back, even through the shirt and thick fabric of the robe was both exciting and oddly comforting to Tad.

But that didn’t take away any of the wash of feelings flooding his own body, spurred on by the vision before him. The apparition seemed to be generating emotions and transmitting them. Mild annoyance, slight anger, and a profound sadness roiled over and through Tad. The ghost of Brody nodded and then looked down. Brody seemed to be floating, but still, inches off the floor. Tad had to nut check to make sure he hadn’t wet his favorite undies.

The plaintive wail lifted again, as we looked on. The apparition seemed to be pointing, roughly downward. Towards the register. The sound seemed to take on an added sense of urgency to Tad as it rang out. The ghost looked back to them and then pointed to the flashlight.

“I think,” Davis said, haltingly, “I think he wants us to find something.”

“I thought you said you talk to him,” Tad whispered.

“I thought you said there’s no such thing as ghosts.”

“Yeah, well, there’s one standing in front of us now,” Tad whispered again, harshly. “Ask him what he wants.”

“I think he can hear us, Tadder,” Davis whispered back. Tad was simultaneously ticked that Davis had called him “Tadder,” yet also kind of turned on that the younger boy had given such a moniker. It was like Davis was in some way laying claim to Tad by giving him a new name. Tad shook his head, focusing back on the situation at hand. You know, the haunting entity making its power and presence felt. He decided that some sort of communication was required. He stepped forward, Davis reluctantly taking a step with him, staying at touch range to Tad’s butt.

“Hi. Brody, is it?” Tad offered. The ghost nodded. “We’ve heard about you for years. So, uh, what do, uh, what do you need here?”

The sound pierced the room, taking on a familiar sound. One that suddenly Davis figured out.

“Is that a… a cat?” Davis asked. The ghost nodded. “You need us to find the cat?”

“I wonder,” Tad said, stroking his chin. “The frosh kids have been feeding a feral kitten at lunch. I pondered what might have become of the furball with everyone heading home for the holidays. Maybe he found his way into the vents and got lost looking for his buddies.”

“He sounds hungry.”

“Could be a she.”

“Well, if he’s a she, then she sounds hungry, too.” Tad couldn’t deny that logic. “But, if he… or she… is stuck in the vents, how can we find him/her? The building’s huge.”

“He kinda has a point, Brody,” Tad said, addressing the ghost directly. “The sound bounces all over the place. How can we find where the cat is? Especially in the dark.”

As if in answer, the ghost pointed to the flashlight, and then down. Tad realized that the ghost was pointing to the hole in the floor.

“Oh. Shit,” Tad said. “Every room?” The ghost gestured to the flashlight and then to the hole again, emphatically. And then the ghost brought up his hands, together over his chest, thumbs together, fingers joined and arched, touching fingertips, forming a heart. “Please, huh?” Tad asked, resignedly.

Davis moved forward. “Brody? I found your box. I have to know. Who was Dee Aee?” Brody pointed to the flashlight, then to the vent hole, and made the heart gesture again.

“I don’t think he can tell us, Davis. I think he can’t speak to us. Not with his own voice.” Tad wasn’t sure where that insight came from. And it didn’t entirely make sense to Tad. If this was the ghost of Brody Doyle, for reals, and if the ghost had been communicating with Davis, why couldn’t he just open his yap and talk now? Remembering back to when he found Davis in the showers, Tad wondered if Brody was the source of his “watched” feeling, maybe even the giggling sound he’d heard in the bathroom.

“But…” Davis started, gesturing towards Brody. Except Brody wasn’t there. “Where’d he go?”

“Dunno. Nice trick, though.”

“What do we do now?”

“I guess we go checking each room’s vents, see if we can find a lost cat.”

“Oh. Guess I better put on another pair of socks,” Davis said. Tad bent down and recovered his flashlight. He leaned down to the open register hole as Davis doubled down. On a whim, Tad meowed into the vent. At least he thought it sounded like a meow.

“Was that you?” Davis asked.

“Yeah.”

“That was awful,” Davis said, finishing pulling on his socks.

“Yeah, it kinda stunk. Can you do better, cutie?”

“You think I’m cute?” Davis replied, meekly. Tad moved to the bed behind Davis and sat. He turned the boy to face the mirror over his dresser, and pointed the beam of light to the ceiling, bathing the room in a soft, pale glow.

“You can’t tell me you don’t see how cute you are,” Tad said, draping one arm over the younger boy’s shoulder, his forearm almost crossing Davis’ chest completely.

“Nobody wants me,” Davis said, turning his head away from the vision of Tad and himself in the mirror, being held by the older boy.

“Hey,” Tad said softly, feeling suddenly bolder. He used his finger under Davis’ chin to lift his face. “I want you.”

“You do?” Davis asked, looking.

“I do. So get all this sadness out of your eyes, mon ours en peluche.”

“Did you jus’ call me your teddy bear?”

Tad nodded and leaned down, with great slowness, and tenderly kissed the center of Davis’ forehead. The younger boy melted against Tad’s chest and simply held on. “Better?”

“Better,” Davis agreed.

“Good, cuz we got a cat to find. Shake your tush.” Davis jumped up and, grinning widely, wiggled his hips, barely avoiding Tad’s attempt to swat his left cheek.

It took close to two hours, the boys going room to room, checking each register. And there seemed to be two of the brass louver plates in each room. Davis would occasionally meow down the length of the vents, getting a long, needy, desperate sounding reply in meowese. They wound up, oddly enough, in Tad’s room. They had to move the “couch-bed” from over the supposedly blocked vent register. It had become their pattern to shine the beam along the vent shaft from one register, up and down to see if they could find the trapped cat. Davis held the flashlight as he knelt over the hole, his comforter draped over his shoulders, warmly.

“Something’s blocking light in between us,” Davis called from his side. “I think we found him.” The older boy looked towards Davis’ side of the vent and saw the shadow inside moving. He reached down and into the hole, beckoning the cat.

“How’d you get in there?” Tad asked, reaching deeper in.

“Meooooow,” the kitten sang back, emphatically. Tad’s hand closed under the kitten’s tummy, lifting gently. The small cat arched as Tad lifted him, not sure if it would be better to be with this tall person or stuck back in the metal tube. Some tall persons weren’t very kind. Some were nice and gave the kitten noms. But others could be cruel, frightening beings.

“So you’re the one that’s been making all this noise,” Tad grinned, bringing the kitten to his chest. The soft, warm terry cloth was very inviting to the kitten, and his tiny claws found easy purchase to help hold on. At least this tall person didn’t jump at the claw tips sinking into the cloth. He sat back on his knees and heels, holding the kitten gently, feeling the feline go into an almost roaring purr against his chest. “I hope I’m not allergic to your kind, fuzzy,” Tad whispered, to which the cat simply turned its head under Tad’s chin and rubbed.

“Tad?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s something else in here. But it’s too deep in. I can’t reach it.”

“Here. Trade places with me. You hang on to… you know, we’re gonna have to give this pile of purr a name.”

“I’ll think of one,” Davis offered, standing and moving to where Tad knelt. He turned the back end of the flashlight around and stuck it into Tad’s mouth, and the two boys began the delicate process of trading the kitten from one chest to another. Davis’ previous experience with his long lost cat Della came into play when they needed to remove the kitten’s tiny meat hooks from Tad’s skin and robe.

Transfer complete, Tad popped the flashlight into his right palm and gave the meowkin a scrub under the chin with his left, to which the kitten simply closed its eyes in feline pleasure. On a whim, Tad leaned in and planted a kiss in Davis’ hair.

“How far in is it?” Tad said, walking to the floor register Davis had been elbow deep in just moments before.

“Farther than my arm. I could just nick it with my finger nail.”

“Time for a trim?”

“I usually chew them off,” Davis said, stroking down the kitten’s spine from the back of its neck. The kitten had fallen completely in love.

“Ah, gross,” Tad deadpanned. He got down on his knees and looked in with the flashlight. He could not see very far into the vent duct, but he stuck his arm in, slowly. He leaned closer to the ground as his hand maneuvered carefully through the sheet metal enclosure. Twice he bumped sharp things, but Tad was moving slow enough not to injure himself. Just as his elbow shifted down into the register hole, his fingertip brushed something soft and yielding.

“Find it?”

“Yeah, I think so,” Tad replied. He managed to get his index and middle finger to grasp the cloth object, sort of like a lobster claw, and he pulled back on it, gently. Whatever it was, it had some weight to it, and was a little bigger than he thought it might be. If it had been trapped in the duct a while, it was a wonder that it had not become an obstruction. Then again, Tad reasoned, if it had obstructed the air flow completely, it might have been discovered well before now.

Going slowly, Tad managed to get the object just enough closer to grasp it more firmly, all fingers and thumb. He eased the object past the sharp spots in the metal tube with great patience. Under a minute later, he pulled the back end of the thing up enough to begin squeezing it out through the register hole. The first part he could see was some sort of zipper, which made Tad think immediately that perhaps this was some sort of pillow case with clothes in it. But as he worked the cloth up more, he realized that the slightly furry nature of the thing pointed to another possibility.

And then the head popped up from the edge of the hole nearest Tad’s face. Illuminated in the flashlight’s tiny beam, a set of sewn in eyes stared back at Tad, large round ears, held in confinement in the vent, swung open. A snout with a sewn in grin appeared and Tad backed up slightly, almost afraid the thing might actually have jaws and teeth to bite him. Keeping his cool, Tad tugged the rest of the way, easing the limbs out one at a time before the fluffy belly cleared the duct as well.

“A teddy bear?” Tad asked aloud.

“You don’t think…” Davis began.

“It has to be. Weird as it sounds.” Tad sat back on his heels, holding the teddy bear in his hands. It was just a generic bear, kind of on the larger side. Something an elementary school kid might use as a pillow on long trips in the car, not that Tad had ever been on one of those. The zipper in the back seemed to be a pocket for storage, and as Tad examined the bear, he heard a familiar crinkle from inside the zippered pouch.

Tad sat down on the couch-bed, the bed that soon would be Davis’ if Tad had his way. Or at least Davis’ once school started up after the winter break. Davis sat beside him as they both examined the bear. The kitten had at first protested to being put down, but he soon found a warm space beside the younger boy’s leg.

“Wow. Brody’s bear,” Davis exhaled gently. The lack of heat showed in how the boy’s breath billowed in the narrow beam of the flashlight.

“This is mad strange,” Tad agreed, and he handed Davis the light. With deft hands, he opened up the zippered section, and reached inside. There, hidden away within the bear, Tad found a folded piece of paper. He carefully un-quartered the sheet of college ruled and oriented it to be read. He did notice right away that the handwriting matched, at least to Tad’s unschooled eye, the passage in French on the back of the drawing in Brody’s box.

Tad and Davis leaned in close, and under the sharp beam of the flashlight they read:

March 13, 1986

To whoever finds this, I want to set the record straight. Brody Doyle didn’t commit suicide. He didn’t jump out the window. He was bullied, but he wasn’t pushed. Some kids here played a horrible prank on him and he died from it. It was an accident. No one wanted him to get hurt.

Three boys here, Jerald Roshman, Diego Cortez and William Henry III stole Brody’s teddy bear. He carried it with him everywhere. We were just having fun, making him frantic and teasing him. It was Jerald’s idea to put the bear out on the flagpole. Diego held Brody where he could see the bear being tugged out to the eagle at the end of the pole. It was Jerald’s idea to cut the ropes loose so that there was no way to get the bear back in.

I know this because I helped them do it. And to my shame, I also helped hold Brody back while still teasing him, letting him see where the bear was. I say to my shame because I loved Brody, and in helping the bullies torture him like this, I betrayed him.

I loved Brody. No one knew. I don’t know if even Brody knew exactly how I felt. We had messed around some. We were both lonely. And I came to have strong feelings for him. It hurt me to be part of those who teased and bullied him. When he pleaded with me to help him, I panicked and let the others finish what they’d started.

Worse, I was the one who crept in after Brody had fell, just hours after he’d tried to crawl out on the flagpole to get his bear. Brody just wasn’t strong enough to survive out there. I got the bear back and hid it, even when the police showed up. I kept it all this time. I have hidden it in my old room, the room I shared with Jerald, Diego and William. I had to keep things silent because I knew if they knew I was gay, and that I had been in love with Brody, that they’d destroy me.

To my shame, I let them still talk bad about Brody even after they’d set him up to die.

My name is Dale Archibald and I am 14 years old, and I loved Brody Doyle. And I let three bullies torture and tease the boy I loved in order to save myself and my family name. And I will never be as whole and loved as I was with Brody.

To whoever finds this, please take care of Brody’s bear. Let the truth be known. Give him the justice that I couldn’t.

The boys looked at each other as they finished reading. Davis’ eyes glistened over with tears. Tad, feeling partly protective, partly possessive, and some other emotion he couldn’t nail down completely yet, reached out and drew Davis to his chest. For several minutes, they sat and held each other, the cat resting peacefully beside Davis’ leg.

A sound reached their ears. A familiar one. Several of the shower taps had turned on in the bathroom all at once, lifting steam out through the open doorway. The giggling seemed to echo around inside the bathroom. Tad and Davis looked at each other and each said “Brody.”

They ran out into the hallways, slipping in their stockings, and having to make almost “Scooby-doo” like movements to keep on their feet. The kitten seemed to reluctantly get up and follow the two boys, at least to the door of the dorm, keeping an eye on them as they ran on. It sat at the doorway, its tail curling around his front feet, as if to say “tsk-tsk, them crazy hyumins,” with mild wry wit. Still, said cat remained watching the two boys, completely curiously interested in what they were doing.

Tad got to the bathroom first, by virtue of his longer legs. Davis almost slammed into the older boy and ducked his head under Tad’s arm to look inside. Both boys inhaled sharply as they looked towards the shower side of the bathroom. Through the billowing steam, a shape was clearly seen.

He was outlined in light this time. A subtle aquamarine glimmer, tracing around the outside edges of the ghost boy’s form. He was no taller than Davis, although he seemed bigger. Trick of the light, Tad thought.

He was dressed in a school blazer, shorts, high socks that almost went to his knees, a thick school tie looking loose around his neck. His hair was fair with lines of light brown cast in here and there. His eyes were the same aquamarine as the light touching his edges, tiny bumps of light bouncing around as if defining his existence in this plane.

Suddenly, the shower taps all turned off. The silence rebounded with a hollowness. The steam seemed to billow backwards towards the see-through figure. Tad realized that the boy seemed to be floating slightly above the floor, although he was standing still, as though on solid ground.

“You really are Brody Doyle?” Tad asked, his voice soft and reverent. The ghost boy smiled and nodded slowly. A slither of motion passed by both Tad and Davis’ legs, brushing against their ankles. Both looked down to see the cat padding silently into the steam. Brody bent down and his semi-transparent fingers stroked through the kitten’s fur. For his part, the kitten turned and bumped the top of his head against Brody’s knee.

Then, just as quickly as it had happened, the kitten turned and moved towards Davis, and bounded up into Davis’ arms. The smaller boy cradled the cat, but kept his eyes on the apparition in the fog. Tad noticed that the ghost boy cast no discernable reflection in the mirrors behind Brody’s ghost, but that could be because of the condensation, Tad reasoned.

“We have the bear, Brody,” Davis said. “We read the note. We know the truth.”

“And we’ll tell the truth,” Tad said. “No matter what. We promise.” Tad hugged Davis sideways.

“Thank you, friends,” appeared in the mirror, drawn by a small invisible finger, tracing the letters through the condensation. Tad and Davis looked on as the small figure in the fog turned to face them. His small face became indistinct and limned in soft lime-green light. As he turned, Tad was certain he saw the flash of small round glasses on the ghost boy’s small face. And a hint of a grin. And then another image appeared, a slightly older boy, putting his hand on Brody’s ghostly shoulder.

The two spirits looked at each other, Brody looking over his shoulder as the taller one seemed to embrace Brody from behind. A dawning realization came over Tad and he knew that the second ghost had to be Dee Aee. Dale. And as Tad realized that, he realized something else from the letter. Something that seeing Dale’s face in the shower mists suddenly made complete sense to him.

“Dee Aee. Dale Archibald? Mr. Archibald?!” Tad asked. The older boy nodded. Brody’s transparent hands rested on the older ghostly lad’s wrists as they wrapped him up.

And then the images faded, slowly, melting into the steam of the bathroom. As the steam faded, it was quite clear that the ghosts were gone.

“Goodbye Brody,” Davis whispered, hugging the kitten close to his chest.

“Yeah, g’bye Mr. Archibald,” Tad said, sadly. He wrapped his arms around Davis from behind, the two of them cradling the kitten together. With a snap, the lights came back on, their illumination helping dispel any ghostly remnants from the steamy confines of the bathroom. Somewhere deep in the building’s underbelly, the furnace sputtered and coughed itself to life.

“C’mon,” Tad said, after a respectful time. He put his arm around Davis’ shoulders, leading him back to Tad’s own dorm room. They both got ready for bed, shirts off, PJ pants on, shivering slightly in the cool air of the dorm. They used the extra bedding from Davis’ room to thicken the covers, making a warmer nest until the ancient heater deep below them could warm the air. Tad climbed into bed and beckoned Davis to come in as well.

“What about the cat?” Davis asked, clutching the kitten to his bare chest. The small animal seemed bare seconds from napping himself.

“Bring him in too. It’ll be cozy.” Davis smiled and climbed in, putting his shoulder under Tad’s arm. Tad brought the covers up over their PJ clad legs, resting his back against the headboard. He triggered a movie from Netflix’s Christmas selection and they settled in.

“So, whutchu gonna call him?” Tad asked.

Davis lifted the cat up from his chest for a moment, holding him over head and looking the kitten in the eyes. His front legs poked out oddly and he looked into Davis’ face with a plaintive “meow.” The smaller boy brought the cat back to his lap and snuggled into Tad’s lap even as the cat snuggled into Davis’ lap.

“He looks like a Brody,” Davis said. Tad put his chin on top of Davis’ head. A short time later, all three had drifted off to dreamland.

I turned the story in. Granted it was four weeks late, but they sort of gave me a long grace period. I had a good reason for not being back to school on time, for once. True to form, Mrs. Butler gave me an A- for the story, noting that my use of what she called “colorful euphemisms best suited to college assignments or popular culture sources” as the reason for the minus. She told me confidentially that I should consider entering it in the state lit competition. Took me about four minutes to do so online. Where it goes from there? Hell, I don’t know. Just have to wait and see.

So, where does that leave me, you might ask? I mean, the story of Brody’s Bear was really just a set up for me being cowardly enough to back door ask my best friend if he would be cool with me being gay. Well and admitting that I wanted to jump his bones. Often. Repeatedly.

Er, yeah. That. Right? Bet you’re all wondering what’s next with Russell and me. Grrrr… Russell and I, okay?

Well, fuckers, joke’s on the rest of you! That’s another story. Guess I’ll just have to leave you in suspense.

Merry Christmas.

You can thank D’Artagnon for wrenching your heart out this Christmas Season by dropping him a note: Dartagnon at CastleRoland dot Net