Talon sat on the edge of my bed as I rummaged through my suturing kit, the one I had from my lifeguard position st summer. I'd practiced this during review and, back in June, watched my supervisor give an elderly man three stitches while we waited for the ambunce; I'd been enthralled and riveted.
"This is going to hurt a little," I said.
Before we left Talon's house, I instructed him to hold a clean hand towel to his face and apply pressure. He removed it now, splotchy and a little red on the corner, and pced it on my green pid duvet. It was strange, him sitting here again only hours after he'd left in the early morning like a ghost. We crept back through my window and waited for Mom to leave for her morning walk before busying ourselves.
I'd scrubbed my hands and wore the disposable tex gloves in my kit. I held out an alcoholic swab and winced in anticipation of pain I knew he was going to feel. "It should only be one stitch, though. Looks like your front tooth got it pretty good."
He shook his head. "It's fine. I trust you."
I wiped at his cut and he flinched; I pulled the swab as gently as I could across his lip. He inhaled sharply but didn't pull away.
"Sorry," I murmured. "Now for the tough part."
"That wa'n't the tough pa't?" he joked, or tried to, anyway: my thumb and forefinger were still gripping his lower lip.
I liked this Talon, the pyful version. His chocote eyes locked on mine for a moment before I pulled up the needle and medical thread. He looked away, but I still glimpsed the hesitation.
"You really don't want to go to a clinic?"
"'o."
I sighed. He hated needles. Despite his stoic appearance right now, he was squeamish, couldn't handle seeing people's cuts or wounds or even getting vaccines. So, better to go fast, get it over with.
I pulled his lip and readied it with the small tissue forceps. "Here we go," I said, aiming the needle ninety degrees, slightly to the right of the hole. "Ready?" When I pierced through, he inhaled sharply and closed his eyes. His hand gripped my hip. "I know," I said, "it sucks." I hated the idea of causing him any pain. I looped it and went for the second and third throw. "Okay," I said, "just one more time. You got this."
He again squeezed me when it pierced. "Sorry," I said, focusing. I was in my happy pce. I knew it was a paradox, feeling that adrenaline and rush of crity with someone in front of me, in pain, struggling. But I liked knowing I had the remedy in my brain and my hands. I pulled the needle through, quick, and knotted the single stich.
"All done," I said. "You did great."
He grimaced at me, half-smiling with the side that wasn't affected. He reached his hand up—
"Don't touch it," I said.
"Sorry. Thanks. You're the best."
I smiled. "It's going to be swollen for a bit but it'll look normal soon. Are you in much pain? Want an Advil?"
"I'm okay." He paused, thinking, and then brought his armpit up to his face. "Hey, Ry, is it all right if I take a shower?"
"Of course." I nodded at the bathroom door to the left of my bed. He knew where it was, had showered here plenty. "You want a new shirt or anything?"
We'd always swapped sweaters and jeans when we were younger. We were practically the same size—I was a bit taller—although now Talon looked like a shrunken shell of his former self.
"Sure, thanks."
I put away my kit and cleaned up. While he showered, I looked at his backpack, slumped against the edge of my bed. It was cheap, pin bck, patchy in spots from the sun. He'd covered a significant portion of it in patches and enamel pins: a Leafeon pin I'd gotten him for Christmas two years ago, both of our favorite Pokémon; a simple silhouette patch of Prince, the musician; a cute gopher (he liked rodents, which perplexed me); a rad Priority Three patch; a Murder By Death pin, a band that sounded musically little like their name; a circur pin with a cartoon chicken, pig, and cow; and a bck sticker that said "people before profit" in bold capital letters.
Talon hadn't stopped by his fridge on the way out of his house. We'd silently walked past the sleeping Stephen. Now I unzipped his bag, looking for his lunch. There wasn't any food, no Tupperware or Ziploc bag or anything. There were two pairs of underwear (for P.E., maybe?); a copy of Richard Adams' Watership Down, crumpled and stained now, presumably from sitting in his backpack forever; Charles Dickens' Great Expectations, a novel I recognized from our English curriculum; an empty duotang; deodorant; a small bottle of lotion (unscented); and a sleeve of unused condoms. Was Talon dating someone? Was that why I hadn't seen him tely? I thought of Georgia, a girl who had a crush on him a year or so back. There were also a couple packs of mints, an extra pair of headphones, and a chipped pstic guitar pick.
I ran down to the kitchen as stealthily as I could. Mom was still gone. I whipped up a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and grabbed a bag of chips, a homemade grano bar, a spotty banana, and a Juicebox. I put those in his bag.
I was zipping it up when he came out. He looked scrawny, his thick wet hair swallowing him up. "What are you doing?"
"Huh? Oh—"
"Don't touch my bag."
I looked up. His jaw was set.
"I made you lunch," I said.
"You weren't snooping?"
I said no.
He softened. "Thanks. But don't, like, go through my stuff."
I pulled out a lightweight green sweater for him. It was a cold, te spring. Regardless of the weather Talon would likely choose something to cover his body; in recent years he'd seemed to grow more self-conscious.
"Does this look okay?" he said, and I thought he meant the sweater, but he pointed at his lip. "I bumped it."
"Let's see."
He tilted his head back. Lip was fine. Swollen and tender but fine.
"Thanks," he said. "And Ry?"
"Yeah?"
"You won't tell anyone about st night, right? You promise?"
"You have my word."
"Thanks," he said. We smiled at each other. I turned as he pulled on his clothes. "Mm," Talon said, holding up the neck of my sweater to his nose and breathing in deeply. "This smells like you."
"We better hurry," I said. "We're already halfway through first period and Mom will be back any minute."
It was a good fifteen-minute walk to school. I grabbed my bag, full of books and my water bottle (covered in stickers: Priority Three, a Vancouver-based band Talon loved; a dinosaur that said herbivore, stolen from Talon, but I loved Branchiosauruses; an ironic Jesus sticker; a stethoscope) and lunch. The rain had stopped, but the sidewalks were still dotted with dark raindrops.
"You never told me what we were celebrating," Talon said. Our shoulders brushed.
I bit back a smile. "I got in," I said. "To university. Well, specifically a university I've been hoping for—"
He turned to look at me, his face bright despite his fatigue (and likely hangover). "What? This is amazing. I knew you would but—wow." He grinned. "My best friend's going to be a doctor."
Maybe If I hadn't found out about him—all this information about his father—this news would feel different. But the letter back at home didn't feel as significant as it should.
"Yeah, it's pretty insane," I said. "A lot of schooling."
"But you like school. Where? UBC?"
He was right to guess the University of British Columbia. Vancouver was only a few hours from where we lived and most of the kids who graduated from SRSS headed that way; at least, the ones in pursuit of more education. Vancouver was appealing—a stark contrast, with its lively streets and congested popution—and UBC was a great school. I was accepted three weeks ago. But I'd wanted Ivy League since I was a little kid.
"Uh, no. Not exactly."
Talon nodded slowly. "SFU?"
Another Vancouver-based school. "No, no. Well, I mean. I got accepted there, yeah. But…"
"So where are you going?"
"California," I said. "UC Berkeley."
He stopped on the sidewalk. His cheeks were flushed. "I knew it!"
"I wasn't so sure."
"I knew it for the both of us. Your dream school!" We kept walking and his shoulder bumped mine a second time. "Wow. That's so far."
"Listen," I said. "What you told me st night—"
"Forget that. Let's talk about you."
"You're way more important than getting into a school. We need to sort this—this problem—out."
Talon went silent for a moment. "Things are different now. I can handle myself."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean… I'm bigger. I'm not a kid anymore."
I struggled to connect the dots. Because Talon was physically bigger, he felt he could defend himself? But hadn't he said it was worse now?
"We graduate in a few weeks," he said. "I can wait it out until then. And after…" He looked up at me, uncertain. "Well, I guess I'll go to Vancouver. Get a job. Maybe try and join a band."
I nodded. I was unconvinced by this pn (waiting it out as too passive for my liking), but I didn't have a better one.
"I was kind of hoping you were going to UBC," Talon said. "But I totally get it. Berkeley is incredible. I was just… I thought that we could be roommates or something."
I was finding it difficult to focus on our conversation.
"I need your help with something else," he said, his voice taking on a lighter tone. "I need to pass my biology final, or I won't pass the course. And then I won't graduate."
I rested my hand on his shoulder. We stopped again.
"I can't ignore what you said st night," I said. "I'm not going to pretend you didn't say all of that."
Talon looked away from my face. "I made it sound dramatic."
"No, you didn't. Let me help you. Stay at my house until we graduate. Stay for the whole summer." Before he could speak, I continued: "Please. I'm so worried. I feel sick right now."
Talon watched me for a moment and then looked away, embarrassed. "It's not a big deal."
"What? How can you say that?"
"Because—"
"Stay with me," I said tightly. "My parents don't need to know the details."
Now Talon looked frustrated. "If you care about me, you'll let me do this my way. I know how to handle him. I know what he needs."
We were nearly at the school. Bizarrely, the world continued on: te kids made their way towards the double doors. Those who cared about their attendance half-jogged towards the entrance, and the others loped, unbothered. Was I really going to get through the school day, pretending that Talon hadn't confided these awful things to me? I couldn't just ignore it and hope everything turned out okay because—what if it didn't? Wasn't it my duty to report this? To someone, anyone. Once I was through my undergraduate degree and medical school and officially a doctor, I knew it would be not only my ethical but legal obligation. But maybe Talon truly did have a pn. Maybe he did have it under control.
In a way, it was the normalcy of the morning—my parents, the acceptance, the familiarity of our school up ahead—that sucked me back into rationality and order and sanity. Back to a reality where Stephen was just Stephen, the same person I'd known my whole life. Talon stood beside me in my green sweater, the post-rain sunshine hitting his cheeks. He looked exhausted (and his lip swollen and tender), but mostly he looked all right. Handsome. Normal. Safe.
Finally, I said, "I'll help you pass biology. You're still coming to dinner, right?"
"To Ryan."
Dad sat across from me at the table, dapper in a button-up and tie. The five of us—Mom, Dad, Rachel, Talon, and I—were in a fancy leather booth at Dominic's. The restaurant was upscale, at least for Six Mile River, a fusion of Italian and Korean. We sat around the table, enjoying grapefruit Pellegrino. Dad held up his flute, smiling, crow's feet around his eyes deepening.
"To Ryan," said Mom, clinking her gss to Dad's.
"Ryan!" said Rachel.
Talon held his up as well: "To Ryan." His voice was deep, noticeable in comparison to Rachel's.
"To the future, I guess," I said awkwardly, not wanting to cheers to myself.
Mom and Dad had dressed up: Mom wore her shoulder-length hair down, bangs fluffy. Rachel wore a checkered dress over a white turtleneck and tights. Mom and Dad didn't like when she wore too much makeup, but tonight she wore both mascara and loads of pink lip gloss. She kept gncing at Talon, adjusting her long ponytail, smiling and ughing a lot. He smiled back at her. In the dim light of the restaurant, it was hard to notice his beat-up mouth.
Of course, I wanted to feel celebratory. I'd gotten in to the school of my dreams. But I was so preoccupied that I hadn't even mentioned it to the guys at school. All day, my heart was doing this thing where it felt both swollen and squeezed simultaneously. For weeks now, Lily Beaumont had been smiling at me in the hallway at school. She and I were pying this weird game of who-will-talk-to-the-other-first, set in motion by my friends and hers. But today I only registered that I'd seen her when she already passed me.
"Talon," Dad said, cutting into his steak. "Good to see you tonight. It's been a while. Too long." They chatted about our upcoming graduation and how his father was doing. "Have you applied to any schools?"
Talon looked anxious. (After lunch, his hangover and ck of sleep caught up to him and he said he nodded off during English.) "Well, I think after we graduate, I'm going to go to Vancouver and work for a bit. Take a year off." Hastily, he added: "And then start applying to schools, maybe."
"That sounds like a pn," Dad said, "Sure. Save up some money, that way you won't be drowning in student loans. Responsible."
"Excellent idea," said Rachel, beaming at him. "Brilliant."
Mom finished her Pellegrino and suppressed a burp. "You have such a lovely voice," Mom said. "Do you think we can tempt you to rejoin choir? We miss your baritone."
"Lene's right," Dad said. He'd been trying to get Talon back for over a year now. "If you're interested, you're always welcome back."
"Right, yeah," Talon said. "Maybe."
"In fact, you can stop by the church any Sunday you so please," Dad said. "We'd love to have you."
Inwardly, I rolled my eyes. I knew his intentions were good, but he constantly pushed church on Talon. Dad made him say grace whenever he came for dinner, offered him annotated bibles and even one-on-one workshops and all of that. Dad was kind and he meant well, but it was a lot.
Talon kept poking his fork around his chickpea shakshuka, piercing a chickpea and then scraping it off the side of the cast iron pan it came in.
I leaned over. "Is it bad?" I said.
"Oh, no. Sorry. It's great. I don't know, my stomach's being weird." He moved around a chunk of tomato. "It's hard to eat tely. I got down the sandwich you made, though."
Talon steered the direction back to me and university in the fall. We talked about dorms and America, and which courses I'd take, which branch of medicine I eventually wanted to specialize in, and I got lost in the excitement of it as we parsed the details. After dinner, we climbed into the backseat of my parents' car. Dad turned on the gospel station and Mom hummed along. Talon leaned his head against my shoulder.
We parked out front our house. The sun was sinking in the mauve sky, the evening cooling off quickly. Could I get Talon to stay the night? I had everything he'd need. I unbuckled my seat belt and gently nudged him. I had a spare toothbrush. Besides, I'd seen the contents of his backpack. He had deodorant and fresh underwear with him. What else did he need, really? Sure, it was a school night, which generally went against my parents' sleepover policy. At the same time, my parents were gd to see him; maybe I could do some convincing. I got out of the car, ready to ask—
"Hi, folks!"
I turned. Stephen stood across the road, next to his truck.
Panic momentarily gripped me. I gnced at Talon, but he didn't react. No one seemed concerned. But it was as though I heard an arm bring in my mind.
In one hand, Stephen held his keys, and his shirt looked dusty; probably getting home after work, I figured. Stephen tugged down his navy ballcap and held up a hand in greeting. He waited for a car to amble by before crossing the road to meet us. He extended a hand to my father and then my mother.
"It's been months now, hasn't it?" Dad said. "Great to see you, Stephen. How's work been?"
Talon looked down at his feet. Stephen stood behind him and Talon stiffened. His father put his hands up to his shoulders and held on in a gesture of familial amicability. Mom, Dad, and Stephen chatted briefly. My parents asked polite questions about Stephen's other two sons and Stephen gave them perfunctory answers. Stephen seemed agitated to me, rocking on his feet.
"I hear you took my son out for dinner," Stephen said. With one hand, he reached back to pat his back right pocket, in search of his wallet. "What do I owe you?"
"Oh, nothing, please," Mom said. "Our pleasure."
"We're celebrating," Dad said, "and Talon's always welcome to join us. On Sundays, too. Anytime."
"Celebrating?" said Stephen.
"I got into university," I said.
"His top school," said Rachel, nudging me. "In California."
Stephen looked to me. When he smiled, I saw the way his two front teeth overpped. Talon resembled his father in many ways—the square jawline, their thick hair—but their smiles were not the same.
"You're kidding? Congratutions, Ryan," Stephen said. He rolled his fingers across Talon's shoulders, like a massage. My father did that to me as well sometimes, when I was hunched over my ptop, so seeing that made me feel better: a normal thing fathers did with their kids. "I'm not surprised to hear it. We better turn in, though."
"Thanks again," Talon said.
For a brief and debilitating moment, time slowed. If you say it now, Mom and Dad will get help, I thought. Someone will take Stephen away, and he'll confess, and this—this situation—can be resolved, and everything will go back to normal.
Talon watched my face carefully, even a bit angrily. He gave small shake of his head as if to say don't do it.
Instead of saying anything, we all said goodnight amicably, and I forced myself to smile in Stephen's general direction. I watched them walk back towards Talon's house, Stephen's arm tight around Talon's shoulder.
Later, Dad waved me into the kitchen. Mom and Rachel sat in the living room, curled up in their sweatpants, watching CSI. Dad didn't like when they watched shows like that. He thought the were exploitative, crude, not very Christian. But he let it slide most of the time, resorting only to making passing comments.
"Son, come here a moment." Dad ushered me to the small kitchen table.
I sat and he sat, too.
"I want to ask you something." He looked out the window towards Talon's house. The sun was almost fully down now, the sky tinged soft red. "Is Talon doing well? He seemed distant tonight. Quieter than usual."
The chance offered itself up to me. Tell him, I thought. You can end this right now. Talon might hate you, but so what? Who cares, if he's safe? This wasn't even a proper dilemma.
But, at the same time, the choice—between telling someone and keeping Talon's secret—didn't seem simple. Talon was sobbing st night, begging me not to tell anyone, saying how humiliated he'd be. Graduation was six weeks away. Six weeks wasn't that long. That was two-thirds of summer vacation, and by the time school began after Labour Day we all mented how July and August passed in a dizzying blur. More than the logistics of time, though, I'd given Talon my word. Twice.
"Ryan?" Dad sat back in the chair. The kitchen was quiet. "His lip looked nasty. Biking, he said?"
"Yeah," I said. (Did Talon even own a bike?) The lies came out of me, nearly effortlessly: "He fell. He's doing good, though. He needs some help with school, that's all. Biology."
"Talk to Talon more. Be his friend. Bring him to church, maybe. We'd love to have him."
"Yeah, Dad. I'll do my best."
Upstairs in my room, I busied myself with cleaning in an attempt to slow my racing mind. I closed my open textbooks, stacking them neatly and pushing them into the corner of my desk. My well-worn copy of Frankenstein was face down on my desk; I slid a bookmark in between pages 90 and 91 and pced it back on my bookshelf. I grabbed the sleeves off my Tim Hortons cups and grouped them together for recycling. I pced my complete sudoku books with the others and left the unfinished one in my front desk drawer.
In that same drawer was the Bible I received in grade four, on Christmas Eve before Dad's service. Like Dad's own beloved Bible, this one was full of highlights, neon-colored sticky notes (folded and crumpled along their outer edges), messages I'd jotted in the margins (some from Dad, others from myself during Bible study). My Bible no longer had the pull on me that it used to but, still, I took it out and sat with it on my bed.
Half, or maybe two thirds, of the pictures scattered around my room were of me and Talon. In these photos, you could literally watch us grow up: an image of us at from first grade, bending over a clumsily built sandcastle down at Graff Beach, creating a cndestine world together, his hair dark in contrast to my pale blond; a picture of us in grade five, both of us wearing braces, crowded together on our couch, happily sharing a portable console; Talon, around twelve, smiling at me from the middle of church choir; the two of us on the floor of Casey's tree fort, ughing, eyes squeezed shut; two years back, teenagers at the pool, my forehead and cheeks burnt from some other summer day, arms around each others' shoulders. In another photo it's Rob and Talon at thirteen, dressed like Star Wars characters: Talon wearing Han Solo's vest, Rob in Luke Skywalker's robes. My favorite picture was a more recent one, arranged near my ptop on my desk: Talon st year on the opening night of our high school's rendition of Grease. In the picture, Talon was a little sweaty after performing for over two hours, a resplendent smile brightening his face, hair pushed off his face in that greaser style. Although photography wasn't exactly my strong suit, I loved taking pictures.
Eyes lingering on Talon in that photo, I fingered the soft pages of my Bible. While Talon was studying his lines as an understudy, practicing "Summer Nights" and "Greased Lightnin'," he seemed energized. But, unbeknownst to me, something unspeakable was happening at home. Quickly, I flipped through the delicate pages, hoping a verse would stand out to me—something, anything. Someone had to tell me what to do and it might as well be God, right? I hoped that by randomly opening to a page, something magically applicable would reveal itself to me: Gatians or Romans or Peter.
I nded on Proverbs. Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. I read and re-read the line, willing something to stir in me. Instead, I looked again at the photo of Talon in his Han Solo costume, looking younger than his age, all big eyes and floppy hair. I closed my eyes, trying to steady myself. Trust in the Lord, I thought, but those words seemed empty.
I shut my Bible and shoved it as far back into my drawer as I could reach.
Talon wasn't at his locker by the end of first period. I'd texted him that morning and he said he'd be te, so Rachel and I could go ahead without him—I assumed he meant by ten or fifteen minutes. During my second css, I sent him three texts in a row (maybe a bit intense) and then a fourth ten minutes ter. No response.
By the end of second period, he still hadn't shown. I was having trouble opening my lock; my hands were shaking, my mind unfocused. We didn't have any csses together this semester, but our lockers were right beside each other. Despite Talon growing more distant over the years, and especially the past few months, we still signed up on the first day of every new school year to ensure our lockers were side by side: 601 and 602. The same ones we'd had since freshman year.
I scanned the hallway, hoping to make him out. Why wasn't he here?
He killed himself, my mind told me viciously. You didn't help him. Why didn't you help him?
"Fuck," I muttered.
I took a deep breath and opened my locker, using it to shield my face. I squeezed my eyes shut. I felt dizzy and unsettled.
"You okay, man?"
A voice. Not Talon's. It was another of my good friends, Martin Schuler. He stood next to me, leaning against the locker to my left.
"What?" I said, agitated. I closed my locker.
"I saw you mumbling to yourself like a psycho. And you look all pale and shit, kinda green. You sick?"
"I don't feel great."
He crossed his arms, shook out his dirty blond curls. "Dude, do you want some Tylenol or something? ColdFX?"
"Marty," I said, "that's for colds. I have a stomach-ache or something."
"ColdFX will take care of that for you. You'll feel high all afternoon. Makes csses way fucking better."
"I'm good."
"Whatever, dude. You're still coming tonight, right?" He spped me on the back, which did nothing for my nausea. "To the study party?" He waggled his eyebrows. "Kat said she's trying to get Lily to come, but Lily needs someone to cover her shift."
I tried to find enthusiasm: "Oh yeah? Nice."
"Dude," Marty said, reaching forward and grabbing my shoulders. "First of all, you look super fucking shitty. Take a Tums."
"That's for indigestion—"
"—and second, we're drinking tonight. You can't puke before we start. Then puking afterwards doesn't seem so special."
"C'mon, Marty, it's Thursday."
"And it's our st few weeks of our senior year at this shitty dump of a school. Let's make it fun. Remember? That's the whole point."
I knew how long it took to get back to our house—fifteen minutes—but if you walked fast, you could shorten that time significantly. A straightforward pn formuted in my mind: I'd call Talon. If he didn't answer, I'd walk back and bang on his bedroom window until he let me in. If he wasn't in his room, and if he didn't answer his front door, I'd try Griffin next. He was the only other person I could imagine talon going to for help. And if Griffin didn't know where Talon was, well—all bets were off. Time to call the police.
Just as I opened my mouth to tell Marty that I had to leave, my phone buh-booped.
Talon: Sorry, be there after lunch
I leaned back against the locker. Fuck yes. All was okay. No need to panic.
"Dude," Marty said. "Stop watching porn on your phone and let's go."
"You're hirious." I stuffed my phone in my pocket, calmed. I even had enough energy to listen to Marty's constant bullshit. He reached up to sp me on the chest. "Aren't we at our sp quota for the day?"
Marty and I had been friends almost as long as Talon. He was a spitfire: loud, obnoxious, funny, and also my intellectual competition. He was excellent at mathematics, history, biology, physics. We'd race each other during exams. He didn't look the part of the academic, with his short, beefy frame, his surfer hair. He looked like a partier. But he managed to be both, somehow. He moved through the world easily, smoothly.
"So, you know how Kat and I keep breaking up, getting back together, going to prom with each other, not going to prom with each other?" he said.
"Which one is it this time?" I said.
We stopped by his locker so he could grab our English book, Dickens' Great Expectations.
"Well," he said, pulling it out, grimacing at the paperback, bending it unnaturally and tucking it awkwardly into his back pocket. "We're back together."
"So what's the problem?"
Marty lowered his voice in confidentiality. "While we were on our st break, I sort of. Did something. Or someone."
"Weren't you two on a break, for, like, forty-eight hours?"
He looked at me slyly. "Yeah, well, I only need about three of those to do the deed." He made a grotesque humping motion.
"More like three minutes. But who was it?"
"Mi-yeun Kang."
She was a pretty girl a year below us. Too good for Marty, as usual.
"I'm not following," I said, uninterested. "What's the problem?"
"Well, in my post-coitus stupor I sort of… kind of… told her I'd take her to prom."
"And what's the issue? You just… don't."
We sat in the back of English css. Casey Johnson was in this block as well; Marty instinctively saved him a spot by tossing his unread, bent copy of Great Expectations on a chair, the whole time still chatting away.
"The problem is I don't know how to break the news to her. I'm scared that if I don't take her to prom, she's going to tell Kat what happened. And man, every time we've been on a break, we've always kind of wordlessly agreed that we were still, you know, really together. So I might have royally fucked this up. You'll have to help me think of something."
"Well, you're an idiot," I said.
"We also have to get you a prom date," he said.
We nodded at Casey as he came in. He was reinventing himself this year. He had trimmed down his usual impressive afro into a tighter hairstyle with a fade. Lately, he was really into neon: lime green shirts, hot pink and yellow on his sneakers. It was awesome.
"I'm going solo," I said.
"No way. Tonight, Cloud. We figure it all out."
Casey sat down. "What are we talking about?"
Marty leaned forward across his desk. "Finding you two bozos prom dates."
After lunch, I saw Talon at our lockers. His brown hair looked freshly washed, and he held a thick book in his hand.
"Babel," I read out loud as he stood there, making him jump slightly. "Any good?"
He looked up at me, his eyes dancing. "It's amazing. It's about colonialism and nguage." I loved when he got this: all breathy and excited.
I gestured at the book. "That's why you weren't here?"
"Well, all I missed was biology." He smiled sideways at me.
"Precisely why you're failing," I said. The final bell rang. I hesitated at my locker, not sure about what to say. The awkwardness between us seemed to be easing off, but I didn't want to jump the gun. "Let's work on that soon. Okay? I'll totally help you out."
He grinned and said thanks, he was looking forward to it. His lip was swollen, taut, and shiny on the left side, like a giant bee sting. If anything, it looked worse than yesterday, which was to be expected. Probably another day or two and it'd be going down. When he spoke, I noticed he did so carefully, trying to lessen the pressure on it.
I lowered my voice. "Everything good this morning?"
He gnced around at the full hallway, the kids crowding each other, moving in bustling sets of twos and threes. "Yeah, yeah, it's okay. Don't worry." He fiddled with his backpack strap. "I got history. Better go or I'm going to fail that one, too."
At the end of the school day, Talon and I met again at our lockers. He disappeared at lunch, so I was relieved he was still at school and hadn't skipped the afternoon. Halfway down the hallway, a student was hollering out some type of promposal; I smelled something sweet (flowers or chocote, I wasn't sure), and someone's phone bsted music. Based on the loud and nasally voice, I was pretty confident it was Bug Rooney, whose real first name had been collectively forgotten somewhere around middle school. The nearby group gasped in a shared schadenfreude groan; Bug must've been unsuccessful. Our principal, Mr. Rathert-Hill, chided the crowded group of students and insisted they separate, ciming their cumutive mass was a fire hazard.
Once the hallway noise had returned to its regur level, I nudged Talon.
"Hey," I said, "me and the guys are all heading to Rob's for the night. We're probably going to study and then get drunk. Want to come?"
"I've got an essay to finish."
"Can't you work on it tomorrow?"
"I'm already accumuting te marks," Talon said, "and I can't afford those right now."
"Okay," I said, disappointed but not expecting to make any real progress by begging. I pced a hand on his forearm. "You'll text me if you need anything, right?"
From the look on his face, he understood my subtext.
"I'll text," he said. "Say hi to the guys."
Outside, Casey, Marty and I waited for our other friend Roberto Ruiz, standing around his cheap Nissan. Rob had rearranged his senior year schedule to only have two csses in the afternoons; this meant we could never catch a ride with him to school, only home. Rob was as much a nerd as the rest of us, but in a slightly different way. In advance of our senior year, he enrolled in summer courses ("with the retards?" Marty balked, before adding, "I mean, the developmentally challenged—don't look at me like that!"). Rob didn't do this for early admission into college, but to methodically work through his massive list of videogames that apparently needed to be finished for a podcast idea he had. For hours each morning he would game, holed up in his bedroom, blinds drawn and eyes straining. Rob said in those moments, he knew true bliss. He enjoyed gamifying everything, from chores to school assignments. At fourteen, he got a job stocking shelves at the locally owned grocer downtown and got to work saving for games and for school. He owned nearly every videogame console known to humanity. Currently, he was completing a game called Dungeon Master, pyed on one of those ancient Ataris.
Rob tumbled out of the school, blinking at the sun as though he couldn't believe it truly existed. Rob was plump with a kindly face, round cheeks and dimples, reddish brown hair. He wore circur gsses, a bit small for his face.
"Hey guys, ready to go?" Rob said.
"Just waiting for Kat," said Casey, rolling his eyes.
Rob nodded at Marty. "Are you two on or off today?"
"On. Sort of," I said.
We piled into Rob's car, shoving receipts and crumpled paper bags and pstic packaging onto the crowded floor.
"You two need therapy," Casey said. "I'm not kidding."
"Dude," Marty said, ignoring Casey, "your car is a disaster." He picked up a greasy McDonald's bag and cautiously peered inside. "Fuck! There's half a burger in here."
Rob was almost pathologically messy, a perfect foil to Marty's fastidiousness. Rob seemed entirely unaffected by mess, a trait I almost admired.
"What's this?" Marty said. "You can't be serious. There's a mandarin orange back here. It's May!"
I grabbed the orange—moldy and green on one side—and tossed it in the McDonald's bag. "Yeah, man," I said, "some of this has to go."
"Okay," Rob said, sighing, "this weekend."
"Tonight would be better," Marty said. "Right now would be best."
"If you're so unhappy with my car, why don't we take yours?"
Casey and I locked eyes. "Oh, wait," we both said at the same time.
"Shut up," Marty said.
"Where's your car again?" Casey said.
"I get in one fender bender, and I never hear the end of it," Marty said.
"You totaled your car," I said.
"It was a write-off!" Casey said.
Kat Greenwood thundered out the back doors. Her preternaturally shiny hair was up in a messy bun. She had on an oversized purple sweatshirt, so long it almost covered her bck bike shorts, and white sneakers. Her lips were vivid red. As usual, she was texting furiously, managing to do so while speed walking with accuracy.
She climbed in the car. Between Marty and me, there was an extra seat, but she cmbered onto Marty's p. He stroked her bare thigh.
"What's that smell?" Kat said, grimacing.
Rob's cheeks went red. "I'm cleaning it soon," he mumbled.
Rob turned the keys. The engine rolled over twice. Casey leaned forward and gave the dash a smack. When Rob turned them again, the car puttered into neutral. We pulled out of the parking lot, crowded with other students trying to make the same maneuver.
"I think we got booze figured out," Kat said. She gnced at me and slowly smiled. "Plus, Lily's coming over."