Because Lio says so few words, every single one has deep, metaphorical, cosmic significance in my life. And my words are like pennies.
I talk to the mouse very quietly on my way back to my locker. I think I’ll name her Zippers. I’m not sure why. I’m never sure why I choose the names I do. Maybe I should let Mom handle all of them, although she’d probably name this one Princess or something.
I should ask Lio what he’d like her to be named. Or where he got her. He doesn’t know about the deal I have with my mom, and I feel no need to tell him.
I set her cage on top of my books.
Lio’s there a minute later. He bites his thumbnail and fusses with his hat. His hair’s still a mess, but it has nothing to do with the cancer. He’s just sort of a psycho with his hair.
“My therapist says I’m a little fucked up,” he explained to me one time, when I barely knew him, and that explanation terrified and intrigued me all at the same time. He sniffled and rubbed his nose. “Yeah.”
Once I told him therapy is bullshit and he seemed offended, so I don’t tell him that anymore, even though I still believe it.
“My animals are gone,” I tell him now.
He looks up.
“Someone broke into my house last night. They broke the windows and left all the doors open, and all my animals left. They just ran out the doors or something . . .”
He watches me. Sometimes he does this, looks at me when I’m in the middle of talking, and it’s like he’s interrupting without saying a word, because I can’t think with those eyes all blue on me. I can’t think of anything else to say, and it makes me want to cry. Usually I can handle this, because I’m only talking about my brother or a class or my day. But right now it’s a little more than I can stand.
I need Lio to say something.
But he doesn’t. He reaches out and touches the tip of my finger with the tip of his finger.
Bing.
I swallow.
He says, “Did you look under the couch?”
Even stuff like that sounds profound from him, and I hate that all I can do is nod while I’m trying to get my voice back, because I always like to give Lio more of a response when he talks to me, since it’s so hard to get words out of him.
“Yeah,” I say eventually. “We looked under the couch.”
“I’m sorry.”
Lio’s never seen my animals because he’s never been to my house, but he’s heard enough about them. Plus there are pictures of them all over my locker. I touch a Polaroid of Jemeena, this excellent hamster I had who died a few months ago. I couldn’t bring myself to get any more hamsters after her.
I look at Lio.
I haven’t been to Lio’s place either. He says it’s still full of boxes, because their apartment is so big that they don’t even notice them taking up space. I think he’s just used to his old tiny apartment in New York.
“I need to put up posters after school,” I tell Lio. “Will you come help me?”
He nods.
“Thanks.” The bell goes off and I close my locker door. “I hope they’re still alive.”
“It’s not cold yet.”
He probably wouldn’t say that if he’d gone a whole night with wind pouring into his house. Getting out of the shower felt like a punishment. I say, “I know. They could probably have survived last night, I hope. What if maybe someone stole them off the street? I hope not.” I breathe out.
He nods a little. “We’ll find them.”
We start walking to class, and this girl passing us waves to Lio, this tall blond girl with glasses and a pretty smile.
I say, “She’d be really hot if she were a boy.”
Lio watches her go and nods slowly. I wish I knew what that meant. It would be something else to think about.
Todd is at my locker after second period. He substitute teaches here sometimes, so it’s not that weird to see him, even though I didn’t know he was working today. The substitute teaching thing isn’t his real job. Really, he works nights at a suicide hotline, which pays even less than substitute teaching. He’s taking classes to get his masters in environmental science. Then he’s going to save us all before the world explodes.
He holds up a paper bag. “You forgot your lunch.”
This is why people need sleep. “Thanks,” I say. I bet Mom made him bring it to me. She’s pretty intense about lunch. She still packs mine every day, because she wants me to get a lot of vitamins or whatever. I usually end up giving half of it to Lio and eating chips instead. I’m not going to tell Todd that.
“You doing okay?” he asks.
“What?”
He says, “Just checking in,” and he gives me a hug with one arm and then leaves. I open my lunch bag like I think there’s going to be some explanation of why he was so affectionate, I guess because I wish it were something better than because he feels sorry for you and your lost animals. But it’s just an apple and a sandwich and a bag of walnuts. I rip off a bit of the apple for Zippers and stuff everything else into my locker before I head off to my next class.
Lio is against the wall, standing with some girls that he is half friends with. It’s probably hard to be friends with a kid that quiet, but I wouldn’t know, because it’s been very easy for me to be whatever Lio and I are.
He smiles at me with the corner of his mouth when I walk up. I give him the smallest little kick above his shoe.
“Has Lio been entertaining you with his witty banter?” I ask.
The girls look uncomfortable, like they think maybe I’m being mean. Lio looks away from me, but his smile is a little bigger now. Heh. I couldn’t even tell you what any of these girls looks like, or whether I’d like any of them if they were boys.
Silver Spring is a half city in the same way Lio is a half koala. Lately they’ve been developing it more and more—sticking in Whole Foods and rich hippie stuff like that, and they started redoing the metro station so it’s easier to get downtown, which my parents say doesn’t matter because there’s no way I’m riding the metro alone until I stop tripping over my feet and talking to strangers. But I guess it’s okay as long as I’m with Lio. I didn’t ask.
We’re at the Glenmont station now, me and Lio, to put up signs. MANY MISSING PETS. DOGS, CATS, SMALL ANIMALS. PLEASE CALL. REWARD.
FOUR DOGS
FIVE CATS
ONE BIRD
THREE RABBITS
A GUINEA PIG
I don’t know what I’m going to do about a reward. The mouse Lio gave me makes tiny chirping noises in my backpack. I make sure she’s safe in there, and she gets another bit of apple for being so good all day.
In the corner a man plays a harmonica, but he has an empty guitar case in front of him to collect money. He looks sort of like Lio—very small with big hands, a little grungy.
Lio isn’t exactly grungy, but he’s definitely more hardcore something than I am. At least, he’s into ironic T-shirts—the one he’s wearing now has a picture of a football with SOCCER over it—and jeans that sit too low on his hips. Usually black ones. I’m either preppier or lazier. I still wear the kind of clothes my mom said looked good on me when I was ten. Except I’ve grown nearly a foot since then, so I look older than fifteen, but I feel younger, and I think that’s a big source of trouble for me.
It’s five o’clock, and this is the last station we’re covering today. Our hands are sore from stapling up posters, and we’re still a little red because one of the guards at Shady Grove yelled at us and asked us if we had a permit or something. At every other station, we were left alone. It figures. I’ve never met a nice person at Shady Grove, ever.
We go up the escalator and into the outdoor area underneath the awning. “We could catch a bus,” Lio says, though I don’t know why, because I assume we’re going to get on the metro and go back to Forest Glen, where I live, and he already said his dad would pick him up, no problem. I would be excited about the idea that he’s coming home with me if it didn’t mean that he was goi
ng to see my house without animals, so I made up some lie about how my parents don’t let me invite friends in when they’re not there so we’ll just have to wait on the porch until his dad gets there, and I think maybe he knew I was lying and maybe he thinks I don’t want him there. But it’s just because of the animals. That’s all it is.
It’s just that I haven’t invited anyone in for a really long time, I guess.
Anyway, there’s no reason either of us should catch a bus.
Then he says, “We could get on a bus and go really far away.”
I put my hand on his back. “Like New York?”
“Like outer space.” He stiffens a little under my hand, so I take it away.
I try not to think about it, but I really don’t know what I’m doing with Lio. I guess we’re friends, sort of, except we don’t really talk. We’re the closest either one of us has to a friend, because I can’t stand most people anymore and Lio left all the people who were used to him in New York, and it’s pretty damn depressing until you consider that I really like being with Lio, and I hope he likes being with me. And we do spend a lot of time together. I don’t know if Lio’s into boys. It seems like a stupid question, because I don’t know what difference the answer will make. The question isn’t whether he’s into boys. The question is if he’s into me. I know lots of gay boys, after all—I’m in drama club—but here I am without a boyfriend.
It’s starting to get dark. If the clocks had changed already, it would be Todd-coffee black out here by now. I guess we’re lucky.
There are two guys, definitely older than us, slumming on the gate that separates the metro station from the church. Actually, they’re not slumming. One of them is sitting on the gate and the other is swinging it back and forth, like he’s rocking him to sleep. Except they’re laughing.
A part of me loves Glenmont. I love the water tower here so much more than the one back at Forest Glen, which is short and fat and always looks like it’s watching everything. Here, everything’s dirty in a beautiful way. Grimy, I guess, is the word I’m looking for. Everything’s covered and maybe protected by a layer of grime. I wish we went to school here instead of in Forest Glen, where all the houses and schools are tucked into little neighborhoods, like we have to hide. My school and my house are both in that one part of town, so it’s like I can’t ever get out of it.
“There’s no way the animals would have gotten this far,” I say. “They don’t even know how to ride the metro. We should just go home and look there.”
So we head back and get off the metro at Forest Glen and start walking toward my house. Todd’s car is in the driveway. There goes my home-alone excuse.
“My brother can drive you home,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Dad’s coming at five fifteen.”
“Oh.”
“And it’s, um, a little past five fifteen.”
I guess that’s good, because I don’t think either he or Todd would really enjoy being stuck in a car together. Lio isn’t known for responding well to normal social cues, never mind Todd’s neurotic ones.
I guess I should invite Lio inside while we’re waiting. That’s not a big deal. It’s just into the kitchen.
Lio says, “Craig.”
I look up as he scurries under a bush and comes out with a little white kitten. Sandwich.
She’s the newest of my animals. I was at the vet picking up antibiotics for Marigold, and she was there in a little box with four sisters, her eyes begging me, hold me hold me hold me, and I’ve never been able to resist that, ever, and now I take her from Lio and I have her. She’s home. She didn’t go far. She was just waiting for me.
She mews.
“Yours?” he asks.
I nod, because I’m not sure I can talk right now, or that I could say anything but Sandwich’s name if I did. She’s so dirty, and little bits of sticks cling to her. She looks up at me and mews again. I pet her cheek with my thumb, and then I give Lio a big smile.
He strokes her head for a minute, then says to me, very quietly, “Happy?”
I nod.
He leans in and kisses me.
It’s soft and small. It’s 5:20 p.m.
My parents decide we need to have BLTs with our pork chops in honor of Sandwich’s return. It’s weird, because we usually eat in front of the TV, but now we’re all sitting at the table together, and it’s so quiet without the news in the background or the animals underfoot.
Sandwich paws at my shoelace.
My father has this way of chewing that makes it look like a job. It’s like he’s considering every muscle in his jaw every time he uses it, like he’s constantly reevaluating to make sure he’s working at the right pace and pressure. When he was sixteen—only a year older than me, but when I imagine it he always looks twenty-five—he was a big-shot football player who got sidelined with a major head injury and had to do rehab and staples in his head and all of it. He and Lio should start a club of people who shouldn’t be alive, and Mom and I can start a club of people who shouldn’t be jealous but are, a little, because we will never really understand. My ex-boyfriend could be in that second club too. Or maybe he’s my boyfriend. This isn’t the kind of thing I want to think about.
Anyway, Dad says he recovered all the way, and Mom didn’t meet him until years afterward, so we have to take his word for it, but whenever he does something weird like chew like a trash compactor or leave his keys in the refrigerator, I always picture these football-shaped neurons on his head struggling to connect to each other.
I can’t believe Lio kissed me. Well, I can, but I think it’s weird that he asked me “Happy?” first. If I had said no, would he have kissed me? Was it a reward for being happy, the same way I reward him when he talks? Was he thanking me for being happy?
It’s been ten months since my last kiss. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve really been happy, but ten months is a good guess.
Todd rubs the skin between his eyes. I think his head is still bothering him.
Mom didn’t have any luck finding the animals, but we’re going to go back out tonight after dinner and keep looking. Mom says if Sandwich was out there, safe, the others must be too.
Dad says, “It’s probably for the best.”
I frown.
He says, “This isn’t a barn, Craig. Maybe now you’ll get out of the house, hmm? Start going out with your friends again.”
“I don’t have any friends.”
“Are there any nice boys at school?” he says, in that way, and I guess I should be thankful that he says this no differently from how he asks Todd about girls at work, but I’m not, I just want him to pretend I’m a eunuch or something, especially since I pretty much am at this point, anyway.
Mom gives him a stern look. “We’ll find them.” She looks at me. “You know, your friend could have stayed for dinner.” Now she’s totally giving me a chance to tell her that Lio’s more than a friend, and I have no idea what to say. The fact that my parents are entirely okay with my homosexuality makes talking about it kind of difficult, because when you’re gay and single the only thing you have going for you is imagined shock value. The reality is that it’s pretty boring to be like, hey, parents, I’m gay, and there’s absolutely no reason for you to give a shit right now.
So I just say, “That’s okay,” and concentrate on cutting my pork chop.
And to be honest, calling Lio my friend seems wrong, probably because I don’t remember, really, how to have friends. That sounds so pathetic, because I used to have friends, but then I had a boyfriend and sort of ignored everybody, and then after the boyfriend exploded I stopped being fun and started blowing people off when they asked me to hang out. It’s not like everyone hates me, and I have people to talk to in classes but not once we’re out in the halls, those sorts of friends. And I spend a lot of evenings here with the animals, and they were enough, in a way my parents could never appreciate and could barely tolerate.
Now what? Now I don’t know,
I guess maybe Lio’s my new animal. And Sandwich, of course. And Zipper. I should make a picture book about us or something. Two teenage boys and two animals—this is the 2002 version of the blended family.
I can’t believe I’m thinking of him as a familial candidate. I mean, come on, I barely know the kid. What do we even do together? Sometimes we go skateboarding because, I don’t know, I guess we think we’re eleven. He smokes clove cigarettes and I pretend I don’t hate the smell. We drink Slurpees and . . . we do stuff like push each other on gates, I guess.
I wish I knew what was going on.
I really can’t get into this right now. I probably shouldn’t have kissed him back. But I’ve sort of wanted to kiss him ever since I saw his fucked-up hair that day in Ms. Hoole’s class, and really since the conversation right after, when he told me he cuts it when he’s nervous, and I immediately wanted to know everything in the whole world that makes him nervous, and everything in the whole world about him.
I should have invited him to stay tonight. He’d fit well into this silence at the dinner table. I think it’s bad when I’m allowed to dwell in my head for this long. Someone should be dragging me out into conversation, but usually it’s someone on TV and tonight there’s no TV.
It’s not that we don’t get along—my parents and my brother and me—it’s that we don’t have a whole lot in common, and we all have these different ideas of how to use this house and this family. My dad wants a house full of books and rousing dinner-table discussions about whether or not Lolita was a slut. My mom is already talking about arranging a Secret Santa thing among the four of us, won’t that be fun? My brother wants this to be his airport, his temporary base in all his running around, complete with full-service restaurant and four-dollar massages, and he’ll pay for us by the hour, no problem, if we will just treat him as well as he deserves. But we never do, even I know that.
And I want something to take care of.
We listen to Dad squeak his knife around for a minute. It’s brutal. Todd clears his throat, then he stands up and turns on the radio. He plunks it down in the center of the table like it’s something for us to eat.