“I GOT it from his room, because his room is in my house and everything in this house is mine.”
- Fenn Houghton
THE NEXT DAY, while Elias was waiting to catch the bus, a black Mustang pulled up and stopped in front of him. The door flew open, and grinning at him from behind a pair of shades was Dylan Mesda.
“Get in!” he said.
“Dad told me to get Dad’s car,” Dylan said as they whizzed out onto the highway. “I mean Fenn told me to get Tom’s. And he said I should pick you up.”
“Where are we going?”
“I dunno,” Dylan shrugged at him. “I don’t feel like doing homework. I don’t feel like doing anything. Wanna drive to Chicago?”
“We can’t!”
“You’re right,” Dylan said. “we can’t. Especially since we’re going East.
“I missed you,” Dylan told him. “I miss all three of us. I fucked that up so bad!”
“No, you didn’t,” Elias said. “It was just life. Just the way things happened.”
“I feel like the two of us let you down,” Dylan said.
“No need to go back over that,” Elias told him.
“But what happened to the two of you?” Elias said.
“Whaddo you mean?”
“You know exactly what I mean,” Elias said.
“I hope he’s still my friend,” Dylan said. “I know he is.”
“Was he your boyfriend?”
“You know he was,” Dylan said.
“But not totally,” Elias said. “Not all the way.”
As they drove in silence, Elias said, “Do you know what I think? I think that you are hoping things go back to how they were, but how they were probably wasn’t as great as you remember it. “
He expected Dylan to do what grown ups did, to say, “Really, kid, is that what you think?”
But he didn’t. So Elias continued.
“I think things can be better. Eventually. But you just have to let them run their course.”
Elias felt treacherous because for those weeks he was with Dylan, that were turning into months, he treasured how it was just the two of them. It had been like that once, and it wasn’t that he didn’t want anyone else around, but it was great to have Dylan to himself, to spend the night with Dylan and share his secrets. Fenn had been right. There was much Dylan had to tell him, and much he had to say too. Neither of them had been raised by their mothers. What was more, Dylan had experienced his mother in a painful way. She had come into his life for a short time, and then left him one day.
“I knew it was her,” Dylan said. “I loved her so much. I was her special friend. I would come out to see her and she would give me presents. And she was in my life and… I loved her, Eli. I really did. And I thought she loved me. And then one day she just left. She left and never came back. The same as she did the first time.”
Whenever he told this story his voice would start out normal and then begin to quiver, and then suddenly his mouth would shut like a trap. Elias would not touch him. He knew how galling that would be, to offer Dylan pity when he was in a place like this.
“I have to think that really fucked me up,” Dylan said. “That was when I started doing fucked up things. And I mean, I’ve done some fucked up things.”
Dylan never detailed those. Elias was old enough to know that Dylan had lost his virginity at a very young age. He was sure it had been to Lance, but that he had done other things since Lance. It would be years before Dylan told him with any great detail the nature of what he had been doing. When Elias learned he wasn’t horrified. He was, however, frightened, terrified that someone that close to him had endangered himself in so many ways.
“I’ve always needed to be touched,” Dylan said. “I’ve always needed someone to want me. Cause that bitch doesn’t.”
Then he chuckled, “I am a regular Freud.”
He added, “And maybe I’m ungrateful. Because I am loved. My dad loves me. Fenn loves me.”
Elias knew that dad meant Tom and Fenn meant Fenn. He knew that Dylan loved Fenn if not more, than deeper than he loved Tom. He started to understand why.
“My mother, the woman who gave birth to me, if she loved me, she didn’t want me, and she wouldn’t keep me. Fenn isn’t any blood to me at all, and he always wants me.”
“I think that’s the reason you are the way you are,” Elias said.
“How’dya mean?”
“You want to love everyone,” Elias said. “You are the most affectionate person I know.”
“You mean the sluttiest.”
“Don’t do that,” Elias said, suddenly angry. Dylan sat up.
“Don’t make fun of what I’ve said and twist it around,” the younger boy said. “You want to protect everyone. You love everyone. I hear the stories about you. And other boys. I’ve heard other guys you’ve been with talk about you.”
Dylan went red.
“They never talk about you the way they talk about guys who used them or treated them bad. They always talk about how gentle you were, how loving, how much you really care for all the people you’ve been with.”
Dylan started to say something sarcastic like, “So I’m the talk of the town,” but chose to say nothing.
“And you’ve always been loving to me,” Elias said. “Maybe it’s because you know what it’s like to be loved. As much as you know what it’s like to be left.”
“I never thought about that,” Dylan said, smiling. “And I never thought of myself like that.”
“You should.”
“Eli,” Dylan sat closer to him and bumped his shoulder, grinning at him, “You always make me feel good about myself.”
“Well… you’re welcome. I guess. I mean, you should feel good abour yourself. Don’t you?”
“Not really.”
“I think I’d make a good wife,” Elias said.
“What?” Dylan spluttered. “What the fuck?” he laughed.
“I was just thinking that’s what I would do. Find a nice guy and remind him how good he was and just… support him, Nurture him.”
“Who would nurture you?”
Elias shrugged.
“I feel nurtured enough,” he said.
They sat together in Dylan’s house, very quiet, and then the kitchen door opened and they both stood up. Elias went ahead of Dylan into the kitchen. Todd was coming in with a bag of groceries.
“Eli! Are you staying for dinner?”
Elias looked at Dylan and Dylan nodded, bumping the younger boy with his elbow.
“I’ll call my parents.”
As Elias went to the phone, he heard Dylan and Todd talking over the rustle of the paper bag while they took out groceries, and he heard Dylan say:
“Stop it, Todd. Eli’s still just a kid.”
Elias strained his ears to listen, but Paul had answered the phone and his father was saying, “Elias? Elias?”
So he remembered why he had called and stopped eavesdropping.
Elias saw Lance at the grocery store that weekend. He was a bagger, and Elias felt stupid for thinking about how good Lance looked as a bagboy, how handsome he was in that read apron,
“How you been, Eli?” Lance asked earnestly.
“Good, I miss you.”
“Yeah, I miss you too,” Lance said as he bagged his groceries.
“I was away a lot,” Elias said, and realized this wasn’t exactly true. It was Lance and Dylan who had been away.
“Yeah,” Lance said. “High school is like that. Try not to lose your friends.”
Elias watched Lance putting cans in the paper bag and he said, “You and Dylan were my friends.”
“Ah,” Lance brushed that off. “You got plenty of other friends.”
“I don’t,” Elias said. “Not really.”
“Oh,” Lance looked startled and a little stupid, He has stopped working. He shook his head his head rapidly, coming back to attention, and said, “Well, neither do I. Not really.”
“I’m going to Dylan’s house after I take this home,” Elias said. “Maybe you could come over.”
Lance looked sheepish. He looked about two feet tall, which for someone almost six three, was a feat.
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” Lance said. “Besides, I’m kind of busy right now. I have a lot of stuff going on. You know. Looking at colleges and stuff.”
Lance read off the price, “That’ll be forty twenty three,” then said, “that’s a horrible thing to say to someone you care about.”
“Well, you’re saying it to my dad’s ATM card,” Elias told him, and swiped it.
“I wish I could hug you,” Lance told him.
Elias didn’t know what to say.
“I will see you again,” Lance told him. “Do you need a drive up or anything?”
“No, I took Bennett’s moped.”
Elias wanted to say other things. Lance’s brow was heavy and his eyes looked troubled. But in the end he waved, smiled bravely, picked up the paper bag and left the store.
Later, when he got to the house, Dylan’s cousin Laurel was there with his stepsister, Maia, and Laurel said, “Some people look like the cat who ate the canary, but you look like the canary that just got swallowed.”
“Well, it was a long trip,” Elias said and realized this was a little bit of a lie. “I didn’t know Dad would send me out for so much.”
“When I was a little girl,” Laurel said, “every Saturday, Mom and I would spend the morning cleaning house, and then, in the afternoon, we would walk to the store downtown, and then we might take a cab bag. Damn I hate the grocery store. And cleaning.”
“I would never let Tara go to the grocery store without me,” Maia said. “I mean, you never know what she’s going to get. And you can’t just be like, would you remember such and such? Cause she won’t.”
Elias looked between the two girls and realized they weren’t going to go away, so he said, “Dylan, I need to talk to you.”
“That’s a cue,” Laurel realized, standing up and motioning for Maia to do the same.
“You all don’t have to leave,” Dylan said.
“Of course I don’t have to leave,” Maia said, “but I will go to Dad’s office.”
Laurel shrugged.“I was going to the kitchen. I still am.”
“Well, I was going to say let’s go to the study,” Elias said. “So that means we’re all leaving the living room.”
“Which is fine with me,” they heard Fenn call from the kitchen. “The last thing I need is ten teenage feet tracking dirt across my carpet.”
They obeyed, splitting up, but Elias heard Maia mutter, “Fuck this ratty carpet,” as she headed upstairs.
When they were in the library, Dylan did not bother to close the door.
“What’s up?”
“I saw Lance at the grocery store.”
“Is he alright?”
“I don’t think so. I’m really worried about him. Would it be bad to visit him?”
“No,” Dylan shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t. Maybe we both should.”
Then Dylan said, “Maybe you should.”
Elias opened his mouth.
“He might appreciate it more if it was you. You know, just you there for him. Since you care so much.”
“Are you mocking me?”
“No,” Dylan said, seriously. “It’s just Lance knows I love him and maybe he’d feel really good it you just went over there on your own. Is he really bad off?”
“He just looked so sad. And so troubled.”
“I think it’s that girl.”
“Girl?”
“Yeah.”
“But I thought you all were…” Elias shrugged, “… you know?”
“Lance is my oldest friend,” Dylan said. “And we were more than friends. But we were never really boyfriends. Not until we weren’t. We just… started stuff with each other. Stuff that was really close and really intense because we are really close and really intense. But Lance has always had a girl. Never the same one. Never very successful. I mean, he’s fucking gay. And… I’ve had other people too.”
“Like who?”
Dylan looked different. Less open. The wall that Dylan lowered so often was coming down.
“It doesn’t matter.”
Elias realized he actually didn’t want the door lifted. He didn’t want to know.
“I was only asking,” Elias said, “cause I’m getting to that age.”
“What age?” Dylan said with stubborn stupidity.
“The sex age,” Elias said.
“That’s crazy. You’re fourteen.”
“Almost fifteen.”
“Well that’s a child who will be a child next year.”
“You’re being a hypocrite.”
Dylan looked at Elias, honestly irritated.
“How is me looking back on stupid things I did and telling you not to be a slut hypocritical? If I pretended to be something I wasn’t, I would be a hypocrite. But you know just what I am.”
Elias didn’t know what else to say. He knew what he wanted to say. He knew he wanted to touch Dylan, to feel his skin, to hold him. To kiss him maybe. And as he saw Dylan holding himself, stiff as a mannequin, he knew that wouldn’t happen.
