Archive of Our Own

It’s a small town in the north of California, and they’ve got little gas stations that glow in the rain and long winding roads that disappear in the fog and the promise that winter will never be very difficult. 

He didn’t pick it out on his own. Really, he didn’t have any say at all. He was finishing his fourth year of high school in an unknown town. No friends, no family except his parents, no idea of the world he had been dropped into. But he was trying to finish his final year, and it wasn’t about droughts or the mild winters or even the overly specific directions every single Californian seemed to find it necessary to give. It was about keeping his head down, allowing the fog to swallow him, pretending he cared very much about going to San Francisco on the weekend. 

He kept his head exactly that way-- down-- for the first few months of school. He found a rhythm, the heartbeat of his new life, the tempo to which his loneliness kept time. He read in the mornings before school, and he liked the idea of it better than the real thing. In his mind, he was sitting there pulling apart pages, falling into a life that was not his own. The reality: sleepy eyes, numb fingers; it was homework, not a pleasure read; someone tripped over him as he flipped a page. These were the mornings, and this was the place he had come to. 

It was beautiful in a very California way. Palm trees where they just looked trashy, faux-European architecture-- what kind of European, no one could say, but it was decidedly European-- toned bodies, yoga pants and a light jacket in winter, pine trees next to palm trees; dusty, then wet, out of place. 

He felt like he could not connect with the reality of the space he was given. His room was bare, simplistic, modern. The front of their house was pink, ugly; the more he stared at it, the more it depressed him, especially at dusk when the sky was darkening and the only source of anything bright was that awful house with its frosting-paint. Painful, the way it looked. Tacky and colorful-- like what he instinctively felt Florida must be like despite never having been. The house was depressing, and it was made worse by the bright blue Hearst Castle style pool in the backyard. It made him feel like he was standing over a graveyard, not ready to examine his sins. 

All the other people at school had similar houses. The nicer ones tended to be more muted colors: some stone, darker, more like the houses from where James had come. But it was more common than not to see houses like the inside of an Easter Basket. Pink, eggshell blue, light green like the sea had swallowed white-out and seaweed. Orange and yellow were more common an hour or two away, closer to the beach. He hated the colors dispassionately, felt like they were cake decorations not homes. But he couldn’t be angry at the way the place was. Instead there was a dull, sick feeling in his chest whenever he stared at the house at dusk. 

His mother called him from the kitchen. He ate with his parents quietly after they said grace. Both his parents spoke about work, and James mentioned something about school. It was such a meaningless thing that he hardly remembered what he said after he’d said it. 

Then his mother said, “I heard there was a football game tomorrow?” 

He paused, fork halfway to his mouth. “How did you hear that?” 

“Shannon told me.” 

Shannon was a gossip and a liar, a chatty mess if he ever saw one, but he wasn’t about to insult his mother’s best friend, so he swallowed his bitterness and said, “Yeah. There’s a game.” 

“Are you going?” 

“No. I thought I’d just come home.” 

“Isn’t your friend on the team?” She filled her plate with a second helping of mashed potatoes. Licked her knuckle and pushed the plate back to the center of the table. “The handsome one?” 

James stared down at his food, felt his father’s eyes on him. “Which one?” He knew which one. 

“The one you worked with on that project.” 

“Cris?” He asked, mortified. “Mom, he’s not my friend. He’s... he-- we worked on a project together. Once.” 

“Well, he came over that other time too. I don’t know why you’re getting yourself all worked up about this. Really, James.” She passed him the mashed potatoes disapprovingly. 

“What? I-- I’m not getting worked up, Mom. And what other time? It was once.” 

His father went on eating, quietly and suspiciously. 

“When I made iced tea.” 

“Mom, you always make iced tea. I don’t remember another time he came over.” 

“Really, James. That time I made iced tea and he offered to help you clean the pool shed.” She made an aggravated expression, and her neatly drawn eyebrows almost moved. 

He knew he was caught. “Right,” he said reluctantly. “Well, we’re not friends or anything. We’re not close.” 

“But he is on the football team, right?” 

James’s father looked up from sorting his green beans and carrots. “Who?” 

“Cristiano. Honey, we’ve said it a hundred times.” He went on sorting his vegetables, nodding amicably. She turned back to James. “He’s on the football team, isn’t he?” 

James looked at her very seriously. “He is the football team.” 

Very soon after that, he made a polite excuse to leave the table early so he could lay on his bed and stare at the ceiling. He shut his eyes so he could be away from the little pink house with the green and brown patchy grass, the tacky pool, the fences that didn’t keep anything out but kept everything in. He was away for a moment and dipping into the past: polite, imploring eyes, asking Are you lost? 

And he had replied, equally politely, “Yeah, first day” with no expectation that it would start what it had started. 

Then there was the This has to be a secret and the way his hands shook when he kneeled in front of the other boy. It was disgusting the first time, and there was no other way of putting it. How do you lovingly let someone pull your hair and fuck your throat? You kneel and moan and let the vibrations of your every sound intensify his pleasure, not your own. What a stupid way to be, on his knees for someone else, not giving a shit that something sticky was hitting the back of his throat and he was expected to swallow like he swallowed the words he was longing to say. How do you lovingly let someone pull your hair and fuck your throat? You worship them. 

They had something else too, some unspoken connection that their secret had forged. They would look at each other and, in that look, there was silence. There was knowledge. There was the quiet acceptance of their similarities, their differences, how they felt. What they did and what they failed to do. 

There were three versions of the other boy that James could not arrange logically in his mind: The first version of Cristiano was who he was around his friends. Beautiful, complete, half-hidden. He was streaking like a bullet across a field, alive in the sun, transformed into complete and utter gold when he smiled. Surrounded by everyone and their expectations. The second version of Cristiano was more complex. It was the boy he was when they were having sex. At the very beginning, careful. At the very end, loving. And all the moments in the middle-- he was hard, demanding, stern. Mysterious and unrelenting. 

And then there was James’s favorite part, who he was when they were in private, speaking not fucking. This was the kind of boy that he was: throwing the cover over James’s head when his sister knocked on the door, touching James’s wrist lightly while they worked on their project, laughing impatiently in his ear. 

James loved these parts independently and altogether. He just couldn’t quite get a clear image of what these parts meant altogether. He loved a puzzle he hadn’t yet put together. He couldn’t help but be drawn to the pieces as they were scattered and colorful and helpless. 

The difficult part wasn’t loving him. It was making sense of the world around him and making sense of himself. It was trying to keep half his soul a secret when everyone else paraded theirs around like a badge of honor. 

+ 

Back at school, and he was starting off his morning with Calc homework, mindlessly scribbling down problems, numbers, solutions, and marveling at how easily his hands could work without his mind. The schoolyard was empty except for a few underclassmen who couldn’t catch the bus. It was a nice atmosphere, cold enough for a light jacket, quiet and beautiful. It made his lungs burn with peace, and it was the kind of place that made him lonely, the kind of place that made him want to be good. 

Then there was movement near his right shoulder. He turned slightly, not quite looking up but not dropping his pencil to touch paper either. 

“Tonight?” It was a question, but it was never really a question. It was tonight. Insistent and stubborn as if tonight was the night that needed to work, and if it didn’t work, he wouldn’t budge James. He would move the night itself to a time more convenient. Nature would have to spin its webs around his plans, not through them. 

James looked up at him now, and there was no wild feeling of being out of control, like he was running faster than his legs would allow. It was just heart-stopping silence, a brief moment in which their eyes met and something like familiarity set in, as if, yes, I was meant to look at you. I was meant to do nothing but look at you. 

“Where?” 

Cristiano looked around once. His faithful followers were nowhere to be found; only one of them stared at him now with faith-filled, glorious eyes that would not, could not look down until he was given permission. There was a reverence to James’s gaze whenever he laid eyes on Cristiano, a holiness with which he operated, as if he were reaching out and touching something precious. 

“Can I pick you up?” he murmured. 

“Parents will be home.” 

“Right. Climb out the window and walk to the corner. I’ll have my car there.” Cristiano narrowed his eyes slightly and smiled. He was so distant. Even when they spoke, even sometimes when they touched, he was far, far away. 

James nodded. There was an ache in his chest because Cristiano was the sort of boy it was dangerous to be around because you wanted to be him without the expectations and you wanted to be with him without the shame. The kind of boy James always wanted to be around, the one he always wanted to kiss into his neck. The kind of boy that walked away saying Don’t Tell. 

Before Cristiano walked away this time, James said, “Good luck” and the other boy turned around. 

“Are you coming?” 

He hesitated. “My mom thinks we’re friends.” 

Cristiano checked over his shoulder. “I see.” 

“I told her we were jus--.” He was stumbling over his words, speaking too quickly and then too slowly. Felt like the words were molten gold slipping down his throat when all he wanted was to push them the other way. “I told her that-- w-we were just... “ He opened his mouth helplessly and looked at Cristiano. 

Then that smile appeared, the one he reserved only for James. He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back and said, “It’s okay. You could come to the match, you know. You don’t have to stay at home because she thinks we’re friends.” 

“It’s dangerous,” he said. “F-for you.” He made a fist with his right hand as if this would steady something. “Soon she’ll be inviting you over for iced tea every weekend.” 

Cristiano’s raised his eyebrow delicately. It would have been innocent on anyone else. “Is that supposed to scare me, James?” 

The other boy grinned, cheerfully and a little sadly at the same time. “I think it probably should.” The gold was loosening in his throat; he almost felt like he could scream. “One second it’s iced tea, the next it’s her barging in my room without knocking...” He trailed off. 

“I see,” Cristiano said again. “Too close for comfort. I understand.” 

James sat up abruptly, knocking one of his books to the ground, and Cristiano bent to pick it up with a gentle, dangerous smile. “Not too close to comfort.” He winced. “For comfort. I meant-- for comfort. It’s not. I don’t have a problem being close.” 

The minute he said it, he felt like his words had grown wings and flown right off the tip of his tongue. Betrayed him. He shook his head, disbelief spreading over his features like blood spitting strands through water. He hadn’t meant that. He hadn’t meant that he wanted-- 

But Cristiano just laughed under his breath. He was very good at treating things like a game. “Tonight then,” he said, and then he glanced one more time over his shoulder to make sure no one was watching. He slipped away quickly and quietly as he always did, the same way he slipped out from between the covers. The same way his feet landed on the carpet, like he could steal through the night like a ghost. 

James was alone, and let his hand work at the Calc problems while his mind chewed on the differences between silences. There was the silence now, the lightness of the morning, the way the fog descended, rubbed shoulders with him before spreading, hiding, unfurling like the smoke a dying candle gives off. There was the silence at the dinner table when his mother was out with friends, when it was just him and his father, and the silence was weighty because they looked at each other, chewed, asked a single question and chewed their way through half-answers. Other silences: in class, before falling asleep, in the middle of the night when he was trying to open the window without waking his parents. The silence between him and Cristiano when they were still panting, the way only their fingers seemed to communicate in the darkness, the terror-filled silence when they were nearly caught in Cristiano’s room. 

Not all silences were equal, he thought, not by a long shot. 

+

James could hear Cristiano’s Spanish music drifting slowly and methodically away from his car, as if it was trying to reach out and possess James and say, There is something sorrowful about me too. James held up his hand in silent greeting and popped open the door. The breeze nipped at his neck, and he folded himself into his jacket, reaching over to quickly shut the door on the cold behind him. 

“Hey,” Cristiano said calmly, naturally, as if picking someone up in the dead of night was something he did often with everyone. This was nothing special. James was just another friend, another night, another boy with pretty lips. But then he turned up the music and he sat back in the driver’s seat, and he looked at James with a smile that made everything certain. It was something he could not express in words, but that smile took James away from the little pink house and the tacky pool and the way the pool toys bobbed in the bright water at night. It was so depressing, knowing where he had come from and what he had come to but not yet where he was going. 

He folded his hands on his lap and returned the greeting, and they stayed quiet like that for a long time while Cristiano navigated the dark neighborhood. He rolled down his window, let the music filter out until it felt like the night was a wire and the music was dancing lightly along it. 

When they finally spoke, it was because there was a stop sign, and the car in front of them blew right past it, and Cristiano muttered dirty words under his breath, made them sound pretty, like he had invented them purely to enchant the night. 

Then, not stopping, as if his next sentence had everything to do with the car in front of them, said, “What about the Calc homework? Did you do that? Did you get to that last problem on the derivatives worksheet?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned smoothly and kept going, “And the game? Have you decided if you’re coming or not?” 

James was slower in responding. He rolled down his own window. “Finished the homework at school. The last one was difficult. Took me two tries.” The breeze tickled the side of his face, and he turned to face the dusk. “And I don’t think I’m going. To the game. I know what you’re afraid of, and I don’t want to make that a reality.” 

Cristiano shrugged. He didn’t speak. 

This was the trouble with communication. With connection. With being around other people. It was not enough to stay quiet and it was not enough to speak, and then it was too much to stay quiet and too much to speak. Everything had a curious weight in the presence of another person. There was so much James wanted to say. He wanted to reach out and say I am alone here, and he wanted to tell Cristiano about the little pink house and the rows and rows of brightly colored houses next to his, and he wanted to talk about his real home too and how he felt like an exile, like a stranger, a foreigner. 

He wanted to talk about his hot and muggy home, the vast, sprawling poor suburbs. The way the sun beat down on his neck. The breeze wasn’t anything like this. If there was breeze at all, it carried the heat with it. He wanted to talk about the boring little city, overshadowed by the neighboring areas. Nothing special, nothing too pretty to look at, but it wasn’t that awful pink house, and he didn’t feel like such a stranger in his own skin. At least he owned himself there. At least he didn’t feel so foreign for being unable to open his mouth and speak. 

There were so many things he wanted to say, but he couldn’t get it out. Every time he opened his mouth to speak about his loneliness, he got this awful picture of himself: a spoiled, whiny, ungrateful brat. He couldn’t stand to hear his voice twisted like that, so he stayed quiet. Silent. No, not all silences were equal. 

They drove until they reached the outskirts of the city and the roads got flatter and smoother and the breeze was picking up. The music seemed louder now, and James could pick up the words despite the static. 

“What is it like being here? Being so far away from home?” 

James liked it best when Cristiano spoke to him like this, not adoringly like he sometimes did. Just normally. As though they were equals, as if he was just genuinely curious to hear what James had to say. But the trouble with communication was that he could not always say it. He just felt it. 

“In some ways it’s alright.” 

“But in most ways?” 

James looked at him wearily. “I don’t want to sound ungrateful. It’s nice here. It really is. It’s just not...” He faltered. “It’s different from home.” 

“It must be strange,” Cristiano said. He reached over to turn down the music. “To be separated from your home.” 

“Like tearing your soul right out of your body,” he said quietly, staring straight ahead. The road was dark, lit only by the headlights of Cristiano’s car. They passed a barn, sleeping cows in a field. 

“I don’t think I’d feel that way about this place. Leaving it, I mean. Some nights are beautiful, but I don’t think it’s part of my soul.” 

It was strange hearing him say the word soul. Talking about it was too intimate, too spectacular. This kind of conversation belonged to James’s mind, not to the world around him. Not to reality. 

“Then it’s not really your home, is it.” He wasn’t sure he meant it as he said it, but after the words had left his mouth, he realized the truth and the weight they carried. No wonder some people wandered their entire lives. No wonder some people were so restless. No wonder they could watch a hundred million sunsets and never feel right with the world. There were beautiful places and then there was home. 

Cristiano was quiet. He turned into a gas station parking lot, and they parked in an empty spot in front of 7-Eleven. The store was whirring, buzzing with neon light, a flickering, contrived mess in the middle of the night. It felt like the last place on earth. 

“I guess not,” he said finally. “You want a slurpee?” 

Another word that was strange to hear come out of Cristiano’s mouth. It was wonderful and indelicate, and James found himself half-laughing as he said, “A what?” 

“A--” He cut off. “Wait here.” 

James sat alone in the car. He reached over and toyed with the radio, then the keys, then he looked to the windows of the convenience store and watched Cristiano stand in front of a machine, filling two cups to the very top. It was an icy liquid, such a bright, violent red that James feared it would stain his insides. 

He listened to the night, and it seemed to listen back. The grass whispered softly to the breeze. The sounds of the night tangled with the sounds of his breathing, and when he exhaled, the evening sang sweetly with him. The whole convenience store seemed to thrum with excitement, electricity. It buzzed with the joy of being alive, and James half-hated it because the sickening brightness of it all reminded him of his little pink house and the large blue pool and all the colors that felt unreal. 

Cristiano returned. Opened the door with a giant smile as bright as the neon lights of the sign in the store’s front window. He passed one of the plastic cups to James. Settled into the driver’s seat and sat there for a minute, smiling to himself. He licked red ice from one of his knuckles. 

He looked like he was going to say something profound about how happy and wonderful everything was, something about how the night was full of possibility and wonder and how something supernatural or heavenly was at work tonight. 

Then he turned to James, pointed at the plastic cup, and said, “Slurpee. Can’t believe you’ve never had one.” 

+

Those were the early days, before they ever visited an art museum and before their tires rolled over broken glass. Before James met the devils Cristiano was fond of, before, just before. There was a pattern of Befores and Afters in James’s life. Before he met Cristiano and After. Before That Night and After. Before and After, like a lullaby. 

They drank slurpees in Cristiano’s car and watched the sky darken. They watched sunsets and held hands and stuck out their tongues to see how the drinks had changed the color of their insides. They compared scars and talked about home. Sometimes, when James’s parents were sleeping, they snuck into James’s room and looked out the window at the white statues guarding the pool. 

James went to one of his games and then another, and then his mother asked if they were friends, and he looked down at his hands once before saying, “Yeah, I guess we sort of are.” He ignored his father’s suspicious glances, listened only to the heartfelt joy in his mother’s voice when she said, “Yes, finally. Finally you’ve got someone.” 

And he did have someone, someone all to himself. Even if Cristiano belonged to himself and everyone else at school, James knew that some part of that unattainable boy was grounded by the pink house and the pool with the statues and the boy who sat in his room and thought about Escape. 

And then came the beginning of the Afters. It all started with the museum and the part of Cristiano’s life that James did not know or understand and would never fully know or fully understand. 

Sometimes when he thought about the Afters, he thought about the very first Before. The way their eyes met, and James saw this tiny glimmer of interest in Cristiano’s eyes, and he lacked the confidence to tell himself “Yes, that was something. This is something. This boy likes what he sees.” But some part of him acknowledged that spark, bowed to it, not caged but smitten. 

What happened to set off the string of events that would become the Afters was this: they walked into an art museum. Or rather, James made a quiet comment one day about how they were so hidden that they were too hidden. “What about your friends?” he’d asked. He distinctly remembered asking about the friends because he saw them sometimes, the ones Cristiano really liked. They lurked around school, quiet and lonely when they weren’t all together. He didn’t speak to them at school. None of them spoke to each other, but they were always there when James was just leaving or just arriving. They would peer into his car or give him a funny look, and Cristiano would hurry them along as if nothing strange was occurring at all. 

But James wanted to know them. They were a part of Cristiano’s Private Life, this second version of his soul that he kept locked away, reserved only for a few. There was the aloof one with pale skin and a slightly worried expression, as if he spent his time looking up the stock exchange or something terribly sensible like that. There was the strong one. He looked bulky, handsome, tough. And the third who always lurked behind the others, the one who stared the longest at James as he tried to approach Cristiano’s house unseen. He was blond with freckles, eyes that should have been innocent. 

James wanted to know them the same way he desperately wanted characters from books to be real when he was loneliest: desperately, hopelessly. There was a reverence to his desire. 

Cristiano was very good at saying no to many things, but sometimes James got this tone in his voice, and that was too much. That just crossed the line, and he didn’t know how to handle it, so he said yes, yes of course. And they walked into an art museum to meet the other boys. 

Cristiano introduced them quickly. “Iker,” he said, gesturing to the one who looked like he’d never been young a day of his life. Sergio was the bulky one. Fernando, the one with freckles. Iker nodded, Sergio smiled. Fernando grimaced and muttered something under his breath so littered with cuss words and slang that James stood there for a moment, unable to comprehend and not sure he wanted to. 

“Hi,” he said amicably. The other boys stared at him for a moment, then looked back at Cristiano as if to say is this a joke? And then they moved on. Went to explore Egyptian art, Sergio tugging on Iker’s arm and Iker shoving him off and saying something about the cameras, which didn’t register until much later. James could see it in their eyes. He was a mumbling, stuttering, nervous wreck, and they were beautiful. Like filthy swans emerging from something great and terrible. 

James watched Sergio poke the glass case in front of him. 

“Ignore them,” Cristiano said. He put his hands in his pockets. “They’ll come around. They’re just not used to meeting new people.” 

“So-- what, it’s the four of you and no one else?” 

Cristiano nodded. 

“They seem nice.” 

“No,” the other boy said, as if this was very important, “They are not.” 

And James, because he didn’t understand, pointed down the Egyptian hallway. “Old Kingdom?” 

Because he was desperate and because it was the four of them and him-- not the five of them; there was a bolded sense of separateness-- James tried very, very hard to connect with the other boys, but he just didn’t know how. He didn’t know where to put his hands or how to move his mouth. The air around him was suddenly very hostile. It wouldn’t fill his lungs without a fight. 

He thought Iker might be the nicest because he seemed the most adult and because he’d irritably forced the other boys to move on without him. Cristiano was watching an informational video on the opposite side of the hall, headphones plugged in and everything. It was just the two of them-- James and Iker-- so he tightened his fists at his sides, dragging the courage from where it was lodged in his gut to firmly in the center of his heart. 

“This is interesting,” he said, gesturing to the work. It seemed safe enough. The sentence was neither inflammatory nor remarkably interesting, but it was capable of sparking some kind of conversation. 

A muscle tensed in Iker’s jaw. “Art,” he said, turning to look at the other boy, “is a singular experience.” He gave him a horrible, withering stare for at least fifteen seconds straight before he turned back to the painting. 

Mortified, James backed away slowly without a word. He didn’t know where he was going, but he was walking very quickly toward-- the exit? No, the bathroom. He splashed cold water on his face, breathing too quickly. He stared at himself in the mirror and willed himself to hate Iker and the rest of them, but he couldn’t. He only hated himself. 

The door opened. The tiles on the floor were suddenly very interesting until he recognized Cristiano’s presence. There was a quiet “Are you alright?” 

James nodded, and only then did the hand land gently on his back. 

Cristiano waited a moment for James’s breathing to slow and then his eyes hardened. “Who do I have to kill,” he said reasonably. 

“No one.” He laughed softly. “I promise. No one. I’m just being stupid.” 

“You’re never stupid.” Their hands were touching. James could feel his pulse. “When I said there were four of us, I meant it. There were only four of us.” 

It took a second for that to set in, and when it did, James felt his heart ache. “They don’t seem to know how to respond to change.” 

“They’re fast learners.” 

So it began there, in that moment, as they walked down the hallway. James pointed to something random in the hallway, just something in the Greek section that struck him as interesting, and he wanted to be able to say “This is interesting” without hearing about singular experiences, so he took that fateful half-step, paused, and said, “I like that.” 

He moved on, and Cristiano did not. He stared at the case as James began to move forward. One, two, three, and then James turned around with a half-smile and said, Aren’t you coming? Aren’t you coming? Like a dream. And then Cristiano finally did follow him, but the After was already decided. 

+

James was wrong about many things, but if there existed in the world degrees of wrong, he was wrong-est about the other boys. They seemed nice. That was what he had said. That they seemed nice and, looking back on it, when he was sitting in the back of Sergio’s car, squished in the middle between Cristiano and Iker, he realized that nice was such a colorless word. It rolled off the tongue as easily as saliva was produced in a quiet room when swallowing would be deafening. It was just too easy to mean anything, especially in relation to these boys who were sharp and beautiful and mean. 

Iker leaned away from James as if he was diseased. He stared out the window, every so often looking up to shoot daggers into the back of the driver’s seat. Sergio was chattering amicably on about something-- after spending a number of hours with them, James realized that he was always chattering on and on and on; he could talk someone to death. But the words that came out of his mouth were whimsical and lovely, and James didn’t know him or what he was talking about half the time, but he still had to bite back his laughter. 

He wanted to speak to the other boy, to just speak up and make a joke, connect and be normal. But he knew the kind of look he would get. Sergio was lovely to watch, to listen to, but James knew the minute he tried to transform that fondness into a friendship, he would get the same look that seemed tattooed on their eyeballs: Him? Why Him? 

So Iker shot his disapproving looks and Sergio went on speaking and driving-- although he seemed to devote far more attention to the verbal bit-- and Fernando went on muttering horrible things under his breath that James couldn’t even fully make out-- too quiet, too jumbled-- and Cristiano reigned them all in when he had to. 

“Sergio, a right up here. No--” Cristiano cut himself off as Sergio zoomed by the turn. 

Iker smacked the back of the driver’s seat hard with the palm of his hand. “What the fuck,” he said, low and menacing. “Could you fucking drive for once? Jesus fuck, I swear you want to hear yourself talk more than you want to get us places.” 

“What am I? Your designated driver?” 

Fernando put his feet up on the dashboard. “Why the fuck would you be our designated driver? Honestly if I wanted to die I’d just spend five minutes talking to Iker.” 

“Nice one, dipshit,” Iker snapped. “Because talking to me for five minutes would totally kill you.” 

“I’m allergic to tweed, fucknut.” 

“Deathly allergic? Remind me to buy some more.” 

Fernando turned around in his seat and whacked Iker violently with his jacket. Iker made no move to protect himself from the weapon. He just looked out the window, bored. When Fernando was finished, he turned back to the front, and Iker stopped looking out the window. 

They went on talking, and James wanted to shut his eyes. There was something that connected all of them: somewhere north of love and south of hatred; somehow, those lines met up at a very specific point that defined their friendship, and James was beneath it all, looking up and admiring with the same kind of reverence as when he had first asked to meet them. 

Finally, after driving for awhile, Sergio said, “I’m bored.” There was silence, and then the atmosphere shifted. 

For the first time since they’d met, Iker addressed James of his own free will: “Where do you live?” 

James told him. 

They went ninety when they should have been going sixty. Fast cars and faster boys, the way Sergio lit a cigarette and let it dangle out the window. The way the boys leaned out of the car to watch James enter the small pink house. It felt bad and delicate, and James wanted to do it a thousand times over. 

Cristiano walked him to his door, and he apologized slightly nervously for the day, but James’s ears were ringing, so he missed part of it, just shook his head and said, “It was wonderful. It was. I had a really... I had a really good time.” 

“I’m glad.” 

James looked at them. Iker was watching, bored, from the backseat. Fernando was messing with the window controls, rolling them up and down and back up again, all the while staring at James without blinking. Sergio was laughing about something. He gestured to Cristiano and James outside, and Fernando quit his window game to laugh violently, so it must have been something horrible. 

James tore his eyes away and mumbled something about having to get inside. His mother was probably watching from the window, and he didn’t want her to see the tenderness with which he looked at Cristiano or the way the other boys turned that tenderness into foolishness. 

“Wait,” Cristiano said uncertainly, as James turned to go. He was biting the inside of his cheek, like part of him was in chains. “This was why.” He gestured to the car. “Because they’re like this, and you’re--” He looked at James helplessly. 

“Because they’re interesting,” James said. “And I only became interesting when I started fucking you.” 

“That’s not true,” Cristiano said fiercely. “I didn’t mean that. I just mean that you love quietly.” 

“And how do they love?” 

Cristiano shrugged. He looked over his shoulder at the car. As if they were hyper-sensitive to his gaze, the other boys softened, straightened, and stared back. 

He looked to James. “They love their private rebellions better than they’ll ever love people, and that is why I love them, and why I feel alone when they love me back.” 

“You can’t feel alone when someone loves you back.” Which really meant I feel alone because no one loves me, but that sounded too whiny and too pathetic and too... just too much. 

“Yes, you can,” said Cristiano, looking at him-- no, really. Looking like you wouldn’t believe, like his eyes were open for the first time and for everything before, they had been shut. “Look at you. You are loved and lonely.” 

“No. Just the second.” 

“No,” Cristiano argued in a frustrated tone. “That’s not what I said. I said you were loved and lonely. When someone says they love you, you don’t get to argue.” 

“An argument isn’t a privilege. I can do it if I want.” And then he realized what was happening, and all at once, he went limp and nearly fell over, and later he would get a slightly guilty feeling because love shouldn’t be about validation. It shouldn’t be “you love me, so there’s relief in my bones,” but that was how it felt. It was, I can relax now. I can breathe now. 

Cristiano smiled. “An argument isn’t a privilege, no. But this.” He just paused, and in the silence there, his words -- “this”-- seemed to encompass everything: the time, the space, their existence. “Knowing you is a privilege.” 

Sergio honked. He yelled something out the window, but the roaring in James’s ears drowned it out. 

“No matter what,” Cristiano said, a sense of urgency stealing over him, as if Sergio’s words-- whatever he had said-- meant something more to him. 

“Fine,” James said. “Alright.” He couldn’t find the words. Nothing was enough. Everything was too much. 

He turned around and went inside and dreamt of little marble statues and paintings that couldn’t walk away. 

And in his dreams, Cristiano said, “I love you.” 

And James shook his head, staring down at his hands. They were covered in blood. “No,” he said. “I don’t know the meaning of the word.” 

+ 

It was two nights later when they saw each other again. Cristiano was pacing around his poorly-lit garage, and James was distracted, tripping over his own feet every few steps because he was looking around. It was bare except for the plastic rack of trophies, all bearing Cristiano’s name, all polished and shining. 

“Ignore those,” he said carelessly, moving forward to grab James’s hand. “Come over here. I have something for you.” 

“Wait-- I.” There was something wrapped in white cloth on a wooden chair. “What, that? For me?” 

“Yes,” Cristiano said proudly. His eyes were shining as bright as the trophies. “Open it. Come on. Hurry up. Open it.” 

“Alright, alright. I’m opening it.” He knelt down in front of the chair. Wiped his hands nervously on his pants. “Okay.” He pushed aside the soft white covering and beneath it was even softer marble, the most exquisite copy of the little Greek sculpture from the museum. It’s mouth, it’s eyes, the taut muscles and the dramatic S-curve of its body. It was all there. It was all perfect. 

He sat there and stared, rubbing his fingers over the little scratches and grooves. 

“Do you like it?” Cristiano asked impatiently, rocking back on his heels. 

“Do I like it?” he echoed, looking up. “It’s absolutely-- It’s perfect. How did you get it so perfect? Were they selling copies in the museum store? I mean, it’s just. It’s perfect. It’s beauti--” 

“Copies?” he interrupted. He looked upset. “What do you mean-- copies?” 

“Like...” he gestured helplessly. “You know. Like a replica. Most replicas look like plastic.” 

“A replica,” he repeated. “Why would I get you a replica?” 

James looked at the small sculpture in his hands and then at Cristiano and then back at the sculpture. And then back at Cristiano, the blood draining from his features. “What do you-- they’re not-- they were selling this?” 

“No,” he said calmly. “I stole it.” 

“What. No.” He collapsed into the chair behind him, and the sculpture banged him hard on the hipbone. His head was spinning, and he leaned forward to put his head between his legs. “Why would you steal this?” It was the wrong question to be asking, but he couldn’t force any other words past his lips. 

Cristiano crouched down so that he was level with James. He put his hand on the other boy’s back. “It’s okay,” he said, patting him gently. “I took it because you said you liked it, and I wanted you to have it.” 

“Oh my god,” he groaned. “I can’t breathe. Oh my god. I like the Eiffel Tower too, but that doesn’t mean I want you to uproot it and bring it to fucking California.” 

“The Eiffel Tower,” Cristiano said thoughtfully. James couldn’t see him, but he knew that he was smiling. “Now that one I might have to get a replica of. I could do it full size, maybe. Be a bit harder though.” 

“Oh my god,” James said again. He looked up, and Cristiano was still smiling, remarkably calm. “How did you steal it? Is someone after you? Why did you do this? Are you going to sell it? Is someone going to buy it from you? How much are you selling it for? Are you art thieves? Is that what you are? Are you and the rest of them art thieves? Do you drive around and steal art from people? Is that why Iker hates me? Because I don’t look like the sort of person who would steal art? I’m not, for the record. I am not the sort of person who would steal art because the thought of being chased by people being terrifies me, and the thought of being in prison for God-only-knows-how-long terrifies me even more. Oh my god. I’m going to prison. I’m going to go to prison. I’m an art thief. I’m--” 

Cristiano put a hand gently to his mouth. “James,” he said quietly, and James fell silent. “You are not going to prison. You did nothing wrong. I am not going to prison because I did everything right. Sergio, Iker, and Fernando were in on it, and that’s all you need to know. You don’t have to worry about anything.” 

“Fuck,” James said quietly. 

Cristiano touched his hand. “I just wanted you to know that I-- I was listening. I’m here. I.” He faltered. “Love you.” 

No. I don’t know the meaning of the word. 

James touched the statue’s lips. “They’re going to notice it’s gone.” 

“Let me worry about that,” he said. He waited for James’s breathing to slow. “Want to go for a drive?” 

James shut his eyes and nodded. The worst part was that he didn’t feel like something had been lost. He didn’t feel like he no longer knew Cristiano. It was the same boy in front of him, with different eyes and tainted hands, but the same boy nonetheless. He was kind and patient and secure, and he held on to James’s back when he couldn’t breathe, and that was the sort of boy he wanted in the world-- the kind who did stuff like that, who held onto his back when he felt like a puzzle splitting apart. 

He was still the same wonderful boy James had worshiped from the start, the one who cared so much about Distance and Safety that he didn’t speak to his best friends at school. 

Later, after the fast drive and the wind whipping all around them and after James called his parents and said he was staying with a friend, too exhausted to drive himself home-- after, after, After-- he fell into bed beside Cristiano, and the other boy opened the window on his ceiling, and they stared at the stars, barely visible in the city light. 

“You can’t just take things,” James told him softly. 

Cristiano shifted. “I know,” he said. “I don’t know why I do it. I mean, what kind of disrespectful piece of shit do you have to be to walk into a museum and steal what is there for everyone to admire? You gotta be pretty fucked up to do something like that. But there I am-- I can see myself. There I am, walking in with a mask and taking what isn’t mine.” 

“Can’t you stop? Can’t you give it back?” 

“Once things are taken-- even if you return them-- they don’t come back the same.” 

“But I didn’t hurt it,” James said quietly. “Maybe my fingers smudged it. But I didn’t hurt it.” 

Cristiano brushed his fingers against James’s jaw. “That’s not what I mean.” 

“I know.” 

Cristiano looked up at the sky. “I wish I knew the constellations.” 

James fell asleep quickly, while Cristiano talked about the different shapes and how one was forming a straight line and was that Aries and was Aries even a real constellation or was that just for telling your future and personality and shit? And did James believe in his zodiac sign? Had he ever been to a palm reader? 

But James was already too far gone into sleep to answer, and Cristiano quieted himself, and James dreamt of constellations growing and consuming themselves and growing again where their jagged teeth had once destroyed. Bright, shiny, and then they weren’t stars anymore; they were glowing brighter and fading into modern lights. The city, rain against the asphalt and the tired lights that illuminated it. He was running. 

+ 

Knowing what he knew, it was strange for James to sit in the same car as the other boys. Cristiano was the same because James’s feelings preserved him, despite his actions. But the others boys were now-- they were different. James didn’t worship them from afar as he once had. He now had the nerve to look them in the eyes, to think quietly to himself, I know exactly what you are, and then that word-- even quieter in his mind-- thief. 

Fernando was the worst, by far, and they all knew it. He sat, always beside Sergio, slouched against something with a horrible expression on his delicate features. He would have been something pretty, and he still was something pretty, but he was always covered in purple and black bruises. Some yellowed. The skin around his knuckles was bloody and peeling. He was always sneering at James, always saying something awful about the way he was dressed or the way he followed Cristiano around. If he wasn’t so awful all the time, he would have really been something to look at. 

But, James thought, he was something pretty to look at anyway. 

“James,” he said, kicking the car door open. They were at In-N-Out, a burger joint James had never heard of before moving, and being in public seemed to bring out the worst in the blond boy. “Do you know what a burger is or do we have to describe that to you too?” 

Cristiano walked by and bumped Fernando’s shoulder. “Do you want me to fuck you up?” 

“No,” Fernando said rudely. “But if you don’t, it’s going to be a little anticlimactic.” 

Iker walked by. “Do you ever shut the fuck up.” 

James agreed that it was sort of anticlimactic to walk into In-N-Out with a fully intact Fernando and a slightly pissed off Cristiano, but it was nice finding a booth anyway, and they all sat together like they were friends or something. Cristiano picked up the shakes, and Iker picked up the fries, and Sergio picked up the burgers, and while they were getting the food, Fernando just stared across the table at James, chewing on a toothpick he’d found in his pocket. 

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “You’re a very simple boy, so maybe I should repeat it: do you know what the fuck a burger is?” 

“I’m not sure what your problem with me is, but I--” he cut off. He didn’t know where to go after that because staring at Fernando was like running into a brick wall. There was nothing there. There was nothing underneath the harsh exterior. There was only the harsh exterior. 

“You what?” He sat back, grinning. “You having trouble formulating a sentence there?” His foot hit James’s under the table. “You wanna know my problem with you? You’re too damn sweet. It’s like looking at a lump of corroding frosting. I just want to fucking wipe you off the counter, you know? I just want to wipe you out.” 

James didn’t know what to say. “Does frosting corrode?” 

Fernando was revolted. He opened his mouth to speak, but the trays arrived, and the other boys slid in, and Cristiano gave him a death stare. 

“What are you boys talking about?” Sergio asked cheerfully, rubbing his hands together. He passed out the burgers, bit into his, moaned lovingly. 

“Glad you’re having a sexual experience with your food,” Fernando said, nodding to him. He was normally nicest to Sergio. “And me and James were just chatting. We’re pals now.” 

Cristiano sighed into his food. 

“We were talking about frosting,” James said plainly. He bit into a fry. 

Iker pressed a finger to the space between his eyebrows and sighed very loudly. 

“The fuck’s your problem?” Fernando spat at him-- not literally, thank god, James was right across from him. “Did they put tomatoes when you said no tomatoes and now you’re having a migraine because you’re forced to eat tomatoes?” 

“I’m allergic to tomatoes, so jam a fucking rod up your ass?” 

“At least I don’t already have something up my ass,” Fernando muttered into his burger. 

“I Am. Allergic. To. Tomatoes.” 

“Got it.” He crumpled up his wrapper. “God al-fucking-mighty. Everything has to revolve around your goddamn allergies. You got your burger with no tomatoes, now can you shut the fuck up about your allergic reactions to everything, or do we have to go back to that time with the shellfish?” 

“You were supposed to tell me that there was shellfish in the pasta. How fucking stupid--” 

“Boys,” Cristiano said quietly, and they fell silent. 

“He owns their asses,” Sergio explained to James. “Just like he owns yours.” 

James frowned at that, but he didn’t say anything. Just looked down at his burger and bit into it and wondered why he felt uncomfortable being owned. It was supposed to be a pleasant constriction, being someone’s someone. 

“I don’t own him,” Cristiano said. He set his burger down. “He is his, and I am mine, but I love him, and you will respect that. Contrary to popular belief, love can be taken away, and I will take mine from you if you don’t start respecting this.” 

Fernando made a sound at the back of his throat. “He’s frosting.” 

Cristiano just looked at him, and Fernando shook his head regretfully, looking away. His bruises were garish under the bright lights. He looked like Misery, and James was touched with pity, concern, wonder. 

Fernando stared back for a moment longer, and then he nodded slowly. “Fine. Fine, you love him. But I’m not acting like his fucking grandma with presents and shit. I’m not gonna be nice.” 

“You never are,” Iker said with a pained sigh. 

“Have you ever acted like you’re less than eighty years old, you fucking shitdick old man.” 

Iker threw a napkin across the table. “Are you done? Really? Shitdick? Funny because shitdick is actually the term that perfectly describes my penis when I took it out of your mom last night.” 

“Fuck off,” Fernando said happily. “Did you just attempt a joke about my mother? Are you trying to blend in with the youths?” 

“I am a youth,” Iker said, wounded. 

This was when James loved them-- loved them like Cristiano loved them, distantly and separately with a crooked part of his heart that grew soft for angry things. He loved them when they were speeding down an empty road and he was sitting in the back seat terrified, and he loved them when he pictured them creeping through an empty museum at night, and he was afraid of them when they smiled. Most of all-- more than loving-- he wanted to be one of them, but in order to be one of them, he would have to stop loving distantly. He would have to set aside the crooked part of his heart and love more completely. But he wasn’t capable of that when they would not accept his love. 

Later, James went back to Cristiano’s, and the statue was still sitting carelessly in the garage. It was thousands of years old, and it was sitting in the goddamn garage with a sheet over it like that would protect it from anything. Cristiano looked at it like he was very sorry, but there was a glint in his eyes that followed the silent apology that led James to believe he wasn’t fully sorry. And in order to be truly sorry, one has to be fully sorry too. People can’t deal out half apologies and expect that to stretch all the way to an angry person’s forgiveness. 

“I don’t know what to do with this,” Cristiano said honestly. “I thought I would just give it to you and everything would be fine.” 

James stared at the ground, forcing himself not to roll his eyes. “What do you normally do with stolen goods?” 

Cristiano shrugged. “Sergio takes care of it. He sells it or...” He waved his hand vaguely. The pleasure clearly wasn’t in the sale. He didn’t steal things to sell them. He stole things to steal them. 

“So can we ask Sergio to deal with this too?” 

Cristiano looked at it a little sadly. “You don’t want it?” 

“You’re asking me if I want to keep a thousand-year-old stolen item just sitting on my dresser?” 

Cristiano considered it. “No.” He folded his arms over his chest. “No, I guess you’re right. We’ll have to do something about it.” 

But they didn’t. Not right away anyway, because it didn’t seem important. James thought it would seem more important to him than it did, but he was just plain distracted. School was still important, grades were still important, hiding his true self from his family was still important-- But something extended like a shadow over all this importantness, and that was his relationship with Cristiano and his fascination with the other boys. 

They were thieves, he told himself. So what? They were beautiful. They were interesting. They were so fascinating they didn’t seem real, and he almost didn’t want them to be real so he didn’t have to acknowledge that he was real too, and he was so far beneath them. 

There was real life, and then there was this alternate reality with Cristiano and the other boys where everything was beautiful and everything was lost in the fog. It was dark drives on dirty evenings, dropping James off before things really got interesting, shouting out the windows into the night-- but there was this part too: the separation anxiety the next morning, school and loneliness, bells and pretending. 

None of them could be whole without the others, but there was sacrifice in connection too. James saw this and would gladly be consumed. 

But the only one who really wanted him in return was Cristiano, and this was enough. His hand rested on James’s chest as he slept, as if even in his most vulnerable pause, he was there to protect. When James looked at him sometimes, there was such a rush of affection in his chest that he felt dizzy, that he wanted to sit down for a moment and say Can I un-know you for a second? Just give me a chance to breathe. But that’s not what love does or what it’s supposed to do. It’s not supposed to give someone a chance to breathe. 

So he was there in the dark, half lost in love, thinking back sometimes to the little marble statue that made darkness much darker. What were they going to do with it? When were they going to get caught? It had been days, and there was only a small article in the paper about movement in the museum, the shifting around of pieces during a routine rotation -- and the loss of an artifact. 

What were they going to do with it? Where would it go? And if it didn’t leave, would they have to? And did it matter? Did any of it matter if he was in love? Distantly, he told himself that of course, of course it mattered because goodness mattered. Simply put, stealing wasn’t good, and James so badly wanted to be good. So that’s what it came down to, when he considered the weight of their actions and their inaction: what mattered more? Being good or being in love. It didn’t seem possible to have territory in both lands. 

They were all sitting together in a well-lit fast food joint, and Sergio was licking ketchup off his knuckles and Fernando was watching him with angry fascination and Iker was checking his email on his cellphone, looking disgruntled and smudged. 

“What are we going to do about it?” James said. He had the article clipping tucked in his pocket. 

“About what.” 

Cristiano was at the counter picking up milkshakes, so Fernando could be rude. 

“The--” He flattened the article on the table. “This.” 

Fernando scanned the paper. “What, the job from a week and a half ago? Fuck.” He scratched his pale chin. “They think it’s lost. So what? Let them think it’s lost. By the time they figure it out, they won’t be able to trace anything back to us.” 

Sergio surveyed him calmly. “James,” he began, like he was speaking to a child, “We know what we’re doing. We knew they were going to be rotating the exhibits that night.” He rubbed the tattoo behind his ear thoughtfully. “This is going exactly as we want it to, so there’s no reason to worry.” 

He, at least, had taken Cristiano’s words to heart and treated James like a human being-- a small, defenseless human being but a human being nonetheless. He acknowledged that James was not one of them but an offshoot of one of them, so he practically counted. And practically counting was good enough for James. 

Despite this small victory-- of counting-- there was still the small matter of stolen goods. The object, the article, the mess-- all of it was almost entirely forgotten because James was looking at Sergio and Sergio was looking at James, and he practically counted. It was almost like mattering for real. 

Cristiano set the milkshakes down. Strawberry for James, Vanilla for himself, Chocolate for Iker and Sergio, Mocha for Fernando. He passed them out, dusted off his hands, and sat down, looking brightly around at the rest of them, misinterpreting their weary, annoyed expressions. 

“What? I got everything you asked for. Did you want fries too because I asked if you wanted fries, and you said you’d already had enough, so that’s your fault if--” 

James slid the article forward. “I’m still worried. I know it’s going according to plan, but I think we should at least consider-- I don’t know. Giving it back. Selling it. Something just to...” He looked down at the table, suddenly sick with shame. “...Just to g-get it off our hands.” 

Fernando rolled his eyes, but he didn’t make a joke about James’s stutter, and Sergio just pursed his lips. 

“I agree with James,” Iker said, shocking them all into silence. He read and deleted two more emails while the rest of them stared. Finally, he set the phone facedown on the table and looked up. “I agree with James,” he repeated. “He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing, but even he can see we need to get rid of it. Think about it. How many times do we keep something we’ve taken?” 

Taken, not stolen. Not borrowed. Taken. 

“Never,” Fernando said, looking at Cris. “That’s our rule.” 

“Fuck off,” Cristiano said bitterly, shifting in his seat. His wrist brushed the edge of the table, the soft sleeve brushing against a gum-spattered, sauce-stained dark corner. “You kept that watch Sergio took in San Diego. Iker kept the books we took in Santa Cruz--” 

“They were antique,” Iker cut in. 

“And Sergio kept the antique coat we stole in Sacramento, so it’s not just me, alright? You’re just taking it out on me because this is the--” 

“Biggest thing we’ve kept,” Iker interrupted again. Cristiano didn’t say anything, but he poked his milkshake moodily. “A watch? A few antique books? A coat? Nothing compared to an ancient artifact.” 

Iker looked mainly at Sergio and Fernando, and James understood what was going on. It really was just the four of them, and that’s how it was going to be for a very long time. He could fool himself into thinking he counted, could fool himself into thinking he was one of them for real, but it would always be an illusion. Just a pretty lie he told himself in order to be completely connected to Cristiano’s life in any way he could, to be wrapped up entirely in his life, thinking maybe it could consume him whole-- Cristiano’s way of being, that is. His aura, his sense of self. James wanted it to destroy him, thinking maybe if it killed him, he would finally be part of it. 

Iker spoke again: “We all agreed to take it, and we all took it. But James is right. They’re going to understand that it wasn’t just misplaced, and that will happen very soon now. And once it does, they’re going to check security camera footage. They’re going to check tickets. They’re going to see who went in and who went out. They’re going to interview security guards. They’re going to call nearby stores and get their security footage. This isn’t just breaking into some rich guys house because he has a Van Gogh. This isn’t walking into a convenience store and seeing how many bags of chips we can fit under our jacket.” 

They were quiet. Hearing the reality of the threat from James had done nothing, but hearing it from Iker, who only dealt out realities, was much more frightening. This wasn’t just stealing. It was a crime pulsing with life, something that was bound to attract attention, and maybe, just maybe they were in over their heads. The object was the size of James’s forearm, maybe slightly longer. The lips were the size of his thumb. It was going to kill them all. 

“Fine,” Sergio said, as if he was thinking the same thing. “So, what? I sell it? We take it back without them noticing?” 

“They’ve probably doubled the security,” James murmured, but no one paid any attention because they weren’t thinking. They weren’t used to being afraid. James was afraid all the time; he knew fear. It was his old friend, his constant companion, whether he was speaking or eating or just sitting on his bed and thinking. There was always fear. There weren’t always people, but there was always some panic, a wave of the future that was pressing in just a bit too hard. 

They should have listened to him. Iker dealt realities, Fernando dealt torture, Sergio dealt false smiles and wicked humor, and Cristiano dealt something much softer that James could not yet identify. But none of them understood fear. Now that they felt it, they allowed it to blind them to things that should have been obvious. 

“Sure,” Cristiano said, eager to please. He pulled the newspaper closer, and suddenly he was in business mode. Pen in hand, clicking it rapidly, he was a dream drawing a map and pointing, and they were angels around him, ignoring technicalities. They drew it like they must have drawn it the first time. He marked arrows and corridors and spoke about exits, and James could see the glaring mistakes, the wide-openness of the plan. 

But it was decided, and who was he to rip it away? They were the experts. They broke into houses nearly every night after they dropped him off. They knew. Better. They were. Better. 

He said, “What should I do?” 

And Cristiano said, “Stay home. This isn’t for you.” But it was gentle and kind and protective in a way that wasn’t condescending. 

But still, James pressed further. “I can’t sit at home wondering what’s happening, knowing that I’m partly to blame.” 

And oddly enough, it was Iker again who came to his rescue. As if he understood, he nodded in James’s direction and said, “He can drive.” 

+ 

So they were driving later because James needed to practice, and Cristiano’s hand was on James’s thigh, and he was getting nervous behind the wheel, so finally he pulled into a gas station and started rambling about slurpees, and Cristiano kissed him on the mouth like it was the only way to breathe, and James kissed him back like he never wanted to breathe again. 

“Please don’t go,” he said thickly. “I have this awful feeling that nothing is going to be okay.” 

James looked at him and said, “I know.” 

Cristiano didn’t know what to say after that because he could tell the other boy had made up his mind, so he just kissed him again, and they stayed there for a long time until James was biting the inside of his cheek and murmuring things about not wanting to drive home. He didn’t want to go home, and he didn’t want this moment to end, and he didn’t want to think about that stupid marble sculpture with the lips like hardened lilies. 

But they did drive home, half mad with desire, and they were in Cristiano’s bed later, and James was murmuring “God, god, God” over and over again, and Cristiano bit his shoulder and said, “He’s not here tonight. Just me.” 

James drove home with the windows rolled down, and he brushed shoulders with the night. His mother was up in the kitchen with the blinds drawn shut when he opened the door, and she stood up and looked at him very seriously, and he understood without any words that he had worried her. 

“Sorry,” he said, feeling distant. “I should have called. I was with Cris.” 

“What’s going on,” she said, her voice hollow. 

He was aching all over because he couldn’t explain. “What are you talking about?” 

“You never did this before. You always used to call.” 

“I thought you were happy. I’ve never had friends before.” 

She brushed back his hair, and he felt like a child again. “I’m happy that you have friends, but I worry about you all alone in the dark there.” 

“I’m not alone. I told you. I have friends. I’m with them.” 

“I know,” she said. “But I worry when you’re alone like that.” 

+ 

They drove over broken glass because something had broken behind the museum, and Fernando kicked the back of James’s seat, snapping at him for the noise it made and for the damage it probably caused the tires. Sergio got out noiselessly and checked them, gave a thumbs up through the window. Fernando shut up, and they all got out, and James remained in the car, alone and in the dark. 

“I’ll be here,” he said. “Hurry up.” 

“Fuck off,” Fernando muttered as he snuck to one side. 

Cristiano brushed James’s hand, and the warning was still in his eyes, but he dared not give a longer goodbye because they would meet again. 

James rolled the windows down and relaxed against the driver’s seat, and he tried not to think about his mother worrying about him alone in the dark, and he tried not to think about where his goodness had gone. But they weren’t there to destroy or to take. They were only there to return what was not theirs. 

When they returned, they were victorious, and the fog almost swallowed their smiles whole as they quietly shut the door behind them. They loaded themselves into the car silently, and they waited to celebrate until James was speeding down a dark road far, far away, and only then did they roll down the other windows and yell into the night. 

Cristiano was in the passenger side, and James would never forget the way he smiled when he said, “We’re safe,” and then James’s name like it was a prayer. And, seemingly of equal importance and significance, the boys’ in the back smacked James’s seat and spoke to him without confusion at his presence. It was no longer Why Him? in their eyes. It was just you, as if they could someday love him too. 

In the weeks after that, James saw less and less of his parents, and his mother’s worry became a distant concern of his, as distant a concern as checking in and attending weekly mass and finishing homework that wasn’t due until the end of the semester. It was something he could worry about later. He was polite but dismissive with her at home, and his father was always watching him with suspicious eyes. 

The little pink house became more than suffocating. It was Suffocation itself. He couldn’t even look at the statues surrounding the bright blue pool without wanting to run far away, and the minute he pulled up to the Pinkness and had to step away from his friends, he felt lost. 

He understood, more than ever, the separation anxiety that gripped them when they pretended to be strangers at school. Once he felt that connection, once he was able to laugh with them and love them, he was obsessed. He threw his whole self into the relationships, so when the boys were away, his Self was too. 

He quickly became their driver, and Sergio was only too happy to give up this job, so James went around to each of their houses and picked them up, and then they drove all together to Iker’s house where they Planned. First James picked up Sergio because they lived closest together. He always came rushing down the wooden steps with his bag in one hand, slamming the rickety door with the other. A stream of Spanish curse words always followed him, sometimes the sound of banging, something being thrown against a wall. 

“My mom’s cooking,” he explained, shrugging. Or another time it was, “My dad left again, and my mom’s trying to burn all his stuff.” Or “My dad’s back, and he’s trying to un-burn everything we burned before.” 

But whatever was happening, it was clear that his household was as bright, vibrant, and downright terrifying as he had the potential to be. 

Next was Fernando, living in some kind of angry shack that looked like it probably didn’t have all four walls. The garden crept right up to the door, and he had to brush aside tall weeds and scratchy grasses to make his way to James’s car. There never seemed to be anyone else at home until one day Fernando was pushed out of the house by a mean-looking hand. A bag was thrown out after him. He trudged angrily to the car with the bag slung over his shoulder. 

Then there was Cristiano, and James knew his house well. It was well-lit and warm, modest and tiny and buzzing with activity when everyone was home. James loved going there because everyone loved each other so much. Cristiano’s mother and siblings were kind and close. They were nowhere near as hostile as Sergio’s parents, as distant as James’s-- and whatever it was that Fernando’s parents were, they weren’t like that either. They were just kind. The sort of people James always dreamt existed in the world. 

But it was Iker that James, again, related to the most. His house was giant and imposing, white with violet trim. The garden was pristine. No mater how many times they rolled up to it, they always all sort of sat there in awe for a moment before jumping out. 

“I hate those hedges,” Fernando said angrily. “They’re so even.” 

“That’s how hedges are supposed to be,” Sergio said, shooting him a dirty look. “You can’t just hate something for being the way it’s supposed to be.” 

It apparently wasn’t about the hedges at all because Fernando looked at him and said, “Don’t start with me.” 

Everything in the house was distant and untouchable. James didn’t even want to step on a carpet for fear an alarm would go off somewhere. But Cristiano strode through, nodding to the butler, and he led them all to Iker’s room upstairs. It was a wide-open space with a large wooden desk facing a circular window. The bed was pushed up to the side of the wall, covered in books as if that was its sole purpose. 

Iker was always alone and always reading. Sometimes they heard movement in the rest of the house, and Iker looked up, surprised. “Did you hear that? Is someone home?” There was something hopeful and childish when he asked those sad, old questions. 

“No,” Sergio would tell him calmly. “It’s just the way the house moves.” 

And they would return to the map laid out in front of them. 

James could never think too hard about what they were doing, could never listen too closely to what they were planning on taking because then the raw feeling in the pit of his stomach settled into place, and he couldn’t shake it for a very long time. He remembered one time, when he was driving all the boys back to their respective homes-- first Iker, then Cristiano, then Fernando, and finally Sergio-- and it was just him and Sergio driving around. 

Sergio asked him, quite suddenly, “What is it that you want? I mean, I don’t understand. What is it that you really want out of life?” 

They were at a red light, and James looked at him, too confused to formulate an answer. “What do you mean?” 

“I mean exactly what I said. What do you want? I don’t understand you, and I want to.” 

“I don’t know,” James said, and he hit the gas. Later, after he took a turn too quickly: “To be good.” 

Sergio laughed. “Then what the fuck are you doing with us.” 

James shrugged, imagining that the night was alive and willing to eat them raw. He would have been content to just sit there and let it happen, to let the inky black of the sky bleed in through the windows and devour. 

Sergio shook his head. “Man, the very first time you picked one of us to talk to...” He drifted off as they rolled up to his house, and he sat there for a moment, looking up at the dark windows and the rickety wooden door. “You should have picked me, not Iker. I’m a lot nicer.” 

James tried to smother a smile. “I was scared of you,” he said very quietly. “I think you could fit one hand around my neck.” 

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t try. Iker would.” 

At the time, it was funny, so James laughed, and Sergio laughed, and then he got out of the car and trudged up the stairs, pausing once at the door to turn around and wave before disappearing inside. To James, the night was nothing but victorious. The weeks were blissful and golden. They had gotten rid of the cursed object, Cristiano still loved him, and Sergio was beginning to. He was finally part of something meaningful, and the meaningful nature of their activities and their relationships gave him meaning. He was something more than himself. 

James waited in front of the house for a second. The light went on in the front room. Everything was quiet for a moment, and then there were thundering footsteps and wild yelling in Spanish. James picked up a few words about “...any idea what time it is? ... every goddamn night... could you possibly... next time, you’re out.” James left at once because it seemed like something he wasn’t supposed to hear. 

It was much of the same back at his house. The pink place was bright with lights when he pulled up, and he knew he was in trouble. He cursed under his breath and walked inside with an apologetic expression, but his mother wasn’t having it. His father was suspicious and quiet in the green armchair, and his mother was pacing around the living room yelling at him. 

“Do you have any idea what we sacrificed to be here? Do you have any idea what we do for you? And you can’t even spend five minutes with us on the weekend? Or, God, if that’s too much to ask, just check in every few hours, so we know you’re not dead in a ditch somewhere. What happened to you? You used to respect us, and then--” She rounded on him. “You know what? Maybe these friends of yours aren’t a good influence on you.” 

He didn’t know what to say, so he just looked at his father and then back at his mother and said, “I’m not dead in a ditch somewhere.” 

His mother opened her mouth to yell at him again, and he made a pained expression. His father sighed, and they both turned, going quiet. 

“James,” he began, his voice tired and distant, “You need to check in with us, otherwise your mother worries. If you don’t, we’ll take away the car.” 

“You can’t,” he said firmly. “If you do, I’ll lose them. They’re the only friends I’ve ever had.” Then, pathetically, “Please.” 

His father blinked. His mother paced. “Go to bed, James.” It was one of them or both of them who finally gave the order. 

He walked to his room and shut the door behind him, and he fell asleep sometime between his father’s half of the argument and his mother’s counter. He dreamt of tires screeching over broken glass and Sergio asking over and over again, “What is it that you really want?” 

+

The last few weeks of school were full of jobs that James didn’t understand and homework finished in the early mornings. Sometimes Fernando met him over near the flagpole and he threw his bag down, glaring at James like they still weren’t friends, but then he would launch into something like, “I don’t understand the math homework, and I need your answers, and also I hate Sergio.” 

And that’s where it would end, with this vague proclamation of hatred. James would hand over his homework, and he would look at Fernando, and say, “I’m sorry that you hate Sergio,” and Fernando would mutter something rude back. 

Then he would disappear into the spring morning fog with his bag slung over his shoulder, and James would dream about the night in which they could all be together, in which they could all be complete. He spent the days dreaming of the night, and the nights were spent wrestling his moral compass. They were doing bad things. So what? It’s not like he ever saw the stolen merchandise. It was taken, sold, and celebrated faster than he could blink. All he did was drive and love them too dearly to stop. 

May was quickly approaching, and James and Cristiano were racing through math problems at In-N-Out. A mid-afternoon snack, a study break, and then they would go racing into the dark, studying a new home for the next week. Iker was drawing the map, and Sergio was leaning over his shoulder, and Fernando was glaring at the two of them. 

“Have you decided?” Cristiano asked calmly. His voice was smooth, but there was something rough beneath it, some hardness in his eyes that made James bite the side of his cheek. 

“Decided...?” 

“College. You said you were thinking about Santa Clara, UCLA, and Georgetown.” 

“Georgetown?” Sergio grinned at him and leaned over the table to smack his head fondly. “Knew you had it in you.”  

James turned red immediately and ducked his head shyly. “Thanks,” he said, and his heart was in his throat when he looked at Cristiano again. “Not sure. Santa Clara gave me a full ride, UCLA gave me some money, and it would be closer to-- here. But Georgetown.” He shrugged. It was self-explanatory. 

“Probably easier to get classes at Santa Clara or Georgetown,” Cristiano offered, but a muscle in his jaw jumped when he said Georgetown. 

“Anywhere is easier to get classes than fucking UCLA,” Fernando chimed in. He stole the map Iker was drawing and added a line of neatly-trimmed hedges near the box marked IKER’S HOUSE. He passed the map back across the table. 

The boys went on arguing and talking, and Iker chided Fernando, and Fernando spat something back, and Sergio looked back and forth between the two of them like a tennis match was going on. But James could only look at Cristiano and say, with his eyes, I’m sorry if I leave you. 

He knew incompleteness would follow him if he left, but it was his future. His morality was something he could play with. If being with Cristiano took apart his soul because of the things that they did, that was fine. His soul was far less important than his future. But still, he couldn’t look at Cristiano for too long without feeling like something deep in his gut was being twisted. 

They didn’t speak about it when they were alone, but every so often, Cristiano would bring it up with everyone else around, and slowly the other boys began deciding. Iker was going to Berkeley, and they all teased him about becoming a pothead, and he got so offended that his cheeks flushed red. Sergio was going to Sonoma. Fernando was going to community college-- it was implied that money was an issue, but no one ever brought it up. Cristiano was going to USC on athletic scholarship. It was all but James then, and he couldn’t get himself to hit the button. 

But no matter. They had their evenings. He didn’t hate the little pink house at dusk so much anymore, but he liked it better when he was returning late, late in the evening and it glowed like some carnival beast. The future was going to happen at some point, but for now, it was just that: the house, the car, the wind, the boys. Things were going to happen, but they weren’t going to happen just yet. 

It was three nights before the deadline, and James was feeling horrible because everything was creeping up on him, and all he wanted to do was drive around and listen to Cristiano’s Spanish music and pull into a gas station and kiss him on the mouth until neither of them could breathe. But they couldn’t do that because Iker had drawn a map, and where there was a map, there was a crime. 

“I hate that gas station,” Fernando said, as they drove past it. 

“You hate everything,” Iker told him, which meant shut up before I throw something at you. 

“Thanks,” Fernando replied. “I just hate the way it lights up.” 

“You can’t hate things for being different from you,” Sergio said, and it was obvious that he wasn’t talking about the gas station. 

Fernando said, “I can’t deal with you right now.” 

“You never can,” Sergio muttered. 

James looked at him in the rearview mirror, and Sergio was sitting in between Iker and Cristiano, leaning back against the seat as if to get as far away as possible from Fernando who turned around and glared and half-yelled, “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” 

Sergio snapped, “You never deal with anything.” 

“Yeah, because you’re so good at dealing with your issues.” 

“Fuck you. I don’t even want to look at you.” 

James wanted to shut his eyes, but he couldn’t do that without veering off the road, so he held on tight to the steering wheel and flicked on his brights and said, “I don’t want to stay in the car tonight” because everything was too tense and horrible, and he’d never seen them take anything. 

The car was quiet, and then Iker said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea” just as Cristiano swore fluidly under his breath. 

That started a whole new argument and James just kept on driving while Sergio yelled about how none of them ever let anyone do what they wanted, and if someone wanted to come inside while they “took shit,” he should be able to because “people should just be able to do whatever the fuck they want.” Most of it seemed to be directed at Fernando, but it still applied to the conversation, so James nodded at him in the mirror. Fernando was yelling back at Sergio about how “people can’t do whatever they want if it hurts other people. It’s not your right to hurt other people.” And Sergio yelled back, “That’s rich coming from you.” 

Iker and Cristiano were yelling around Sergio’s head, but they were agreeing, so it didn’t make a whole lot of sense that they were yelling at each other, and finally they seemed to realize that they were saying the same thing in different ways, and they aggressively agreed to stop yelling at each other, and then they sat back against their seats and folded their arms across their chests in unison. 

“Fine,” Cristiano yelled. 

“Fine,” Iker yelled back. “I don’t know why I just screamed at you, but I felt like it because your whole thing with James has been pissing me off.” 

Cristiano stuck his head beyond Sergio, and Sergio maneuvered around him so he could still yell at Fernando. “What the fuck is your problem with me and James? I knew you had a problem with it, but every time I asked you if there was a problem, you said no. So whose fucking fault is that?” 

“Your fault,” Iker yelled reasonably. “You’re the one dating him. It’s still your fault. And what was I supposed to say? Was I supposed to just insult the person you love?” 

“You were supposed to be honest with me.” 

“Fine, I’ll be honest with you now.” 

“Fine.” 

Iker took a deep breath, and James thought he was going to start yelling again or go on some whole long rant about how horrible James was, how boring he was, how ridiculous it was that someone like Cristiano had chosen someone like James, but instead he just looked like he did when he thought he heard someone walking around his house. 

“It’s like one person has replaced the four of us. It used to be just the four of us. It used to be that you and me were the reasonable ones, and we took care of whatever messes Fernando and Sergio started, and lately it’s been me cleaning up their messes and you going off to fuck James.” 

Cristiano was quiet. Fernando and Sergio stopped yelling at one another. James kept driving. 

“And I hate being bitter and alone,” Iker said, turning to look straight ahead. “I can be bitter, and I can be alone, but I can’t do both of them together. It just makes me feel pathetic.” 

Cristiano laced his fingers together. He stared intently at the side of Iker’s face. “Iker,” he said, and that was all, but the way he said Iker’s name seemed to solve everything because the other boy looked over and nodded. In that word was everything James had been trying so hard to grasp and to describe. There was such sincerity and delicacy and reverence that he wanted to hear Cristiano say that boy’s name over and over again until he memorized the way his voice sounded when he loved with restraint. 

James rolled up the windows. He said, “Fine. We’ll vote.” 

“I’m not voting,” Fernando said stubbornly. “Because I don’t care.” 

“There’s a better chance I’ll die if I go inside with you instead of just waiting in the car.” 

Fernando shrugged. “I could vote.” 

“No,” Iker said. “You’re not going. It’s too dangerous, and it could compromise all of us.” 

“It’s too dangerous,” Cristiano echoed softly, picking lint off Sergio’s jacket. His eyes remained sad and unguarded from Iker’s words. 

But Sergio shook his head and, even angry, Fernando was going to vote whatever way he did. “James should do whatever he wants. He’ll be careful. He’s not going to fuck anything up.” 

James held his gaze for a moment, and they nodded to each other. “Three against two.” 

They went on driving until the freeway and then they drove the empty road until it was only stretches of farmland. They came to a dark red house with a matching barn, and Iker drew out his map self-importantly and flattened it across his and Sergio’s laps. 

He pointed and directed, and James could hardly hear what he was saying because there was a roaring in his ears that drowned all else out. He heard ill-formed words and vague directions, heard “follow Fernando” and “be quiet.” So he got up, wrapped the keys in kleenex and shoved them in his pocket, grabbed on to the back of Fernando’s shirt. 

The other boy turned around and muttered, “What the fuck.” 

And James just said, “I’m scared.” 

Iker, Sergio, and Cristiano approached. They looked menacing, like they belonged to the night. Fernando took one look at them and one look at James, and he looked like he was about to smile, but he just shook his head a little sadly and said, “You should have stayed in the car,” but he let James hold on to his shirt, and he didn’t complain again. 

It was dark and silent, and then James could hear his own breathing and his own heart beating, and he knew vaguely that he was crossing the line. He had told himself that it was okay to sit back and watch what the other boys did, that it was okay to just sit in the car, that he was still a decent boy because it wasn’t him breaking into houses. It wasn’t him stealing things, taking things. But now suddenly it was him, and he was standing next to Fernando and holding on to his tools while he fiddled with the lock and broke it open. 

They were inside, and it was the most alive and the most dead he had ever felt in his life. He felt like he couldn’t be fully human, crossing the threshold of someone else’s territory with bad intentions. Fernando forced something menacing into his hands, and he looked down at a knife, and he didn’t want to hold it because it terrified him more than the dark, so he handed it back to Fernando who rolled his eyes. The hallway was pitch black, but James could tell he was rolling his eyes. 

They met the other boys in what looked like a living room. James could make out chairs, the shape of a TV, a cat rolling around near the window. Iker motioned for them to move on, and they moved as a unit. Immediately, James could see the holes in the plan, that he really should have stayed in the car in case they needed to leave quickly, that Fernando shouldn’t have broken in through the back door. He should have broken in through the side door instead. They should have met in the laundry room. They should have wrapped James’s heart in something soft to quiet it, not the keys. 

Okay? Cristiano mouthed, and James nodded, but he longed to be back in the gas station parking lot with the dazzling, neon lights where everything felt large and miniscule. 

Fernando was the quietest, so he slipped into the next room while the other boys stood absolutely still. Iker shut his eyes, at peace. Sergio listened, every cell in his body buzzing, feeding off the energy of corruption. Cristiano was looking at James like he was deep in regret. James tore his eyes away and stared at the spot that should have revealed Fernando. 

For one brief moment, Fernando rounded the corner and stood there with the object in his hands. He had such a funny expression on his face, a mixture of horror and delight, and he mouthed Time to go. 

But it wasn’t time to go because then everything was happening too quickly to understand. There was an angry, pained shout, a panicked voice that rose through the house and finally exploded in the shape of a man holding a shotgun. He burst out through the hallway and charged toward Fernando, crashing into him so hard that the two of them flew halfway across the room, sliding and grappling their way across the floor until Fernando’s head hit the piano leg with a loud crack, and Shotgun Man grabbed it like a melon and bashed it against the floor again. 

Blood. James rushed forward, not thinking, and Shotgun pushed him back, and he moved to grab Fernando’s head again, but Sergio moved forward, unafraid, and said, “Please. Please.” His voice was shaking. “We just came to take a fucking antique. We were just going to sell it. I’m sorry. Please. We’ll leave. Just don’t--” 

But he bashed it down again, and Fernando wasn’t awake anymore. 

“You come into my house and you want mercy?” It was clear that he did not have any mercy left to give. 

He turned one last time, and Sergio jumped forward, crashing into him the same way he had crashed into Fernando, but they went sliding the other way across the wooden floor, and Shotgun’s head hit the wall just hard enough to leave him dizzy. Sergio had his hand on the gun, and he moved it quickly just as Shotgun fired. 

Blood, again, and James’s vision went blurry. He felt like he couldn’t stand, couldn’t move. But Cristiano was there in his face, pleading with him, saying, “Let’s golet’sgolet’s go. Wehavetogo.”

He rummaged through James’s pocket and grabbed the keys wrapped in tissues, and he forced James out the door. His vision was still blurry. Every step was painful, and he could see Sergio standing over a body, another one slung over his shoulder. He would only choose to save one that night. They could have called an ambulance. They could have explained that they were playing a practical joke. Maybe they could have saved that man. 

They left with Fernando over Sergio’s shoulder. Iker was shaking, and he put his arm around James as they loaded themselves into the car, and Sergio stretched Fernando across their laps while he took the passenger seat, and he kept looking back over his shoulder saying oh god oh godohgod go faster. 

They were going ninety when they should have been going sixty, and they pulled up to the hospital in a cloud of dust and hysteria. Cristiano’s hands were shaking as he pulled the door open. Sergio pulled Fernando out and raced in through the sliding doors, and people turned to stare at the way Fernando’s skull seemed to cave in. 

Nurses rushed over and pulled him away, and just as Iker and James caught up, Fernando was being taken away from them, and Sergio and Cristiano were being told that they would have to wait. They would all just have to sit and wait. So they sat and they waited and they waited and they waited until Sergio had to stand up and walk around and find a vending machine. He didn’t return for forty-five minutes, so James went to find him, and he found him sitting against a wall with his face in his hands and his back shaking like he was crying. 

He sat next to him and touched his shoulder tentatively, and Sergio leaned into him, and he said, “What have we done. I think we’ve done something really awful. I think we’ve done something really, really awful.” 

“Fernando is going to be okay.” 

“If Fernando is not okay, I will not be okay. If Fernando is okay, that man is dead for nothing.” 

James was very bad at coming up with the right thing to say, so he stood up restlessly and chose something at random from the vending machine. He sat back down and gave it to Sergio and said, “He was going to kill Fernando. Kill him, got it? Kill as in end as in no more Fernando. A choice had to be made.” 

“A choice never would have had to be made if we never went in the first place.” 

“Yes, but we did go, so there’s no point dwelling on that.” 

Sergio sighed. “I know,” he said. “But kill. As in end. That’s what happened to that man back there.” 

And James had nothing else to say, and he’d already used the vending machine as an excuse, so he nodded and stayed quiet and tried not to think about the role he had to play. He remembered what his mother used to say about people who killed. She got to the monster and vile, sorry excuse for a human being comments later. First, it was always a quick glance at the newspaper, an article about a murder, and “Only God should dish out life and death.” 

James remember an unholy night and Cristiano’s words “He’s not here tonight. Just me.” 

They returned to Cristiano and Iker, and they waited until a nurse appeared, taking off her gloves as she walked. “You’d better come quickly. Your friend is waking up.” 

He was sitting in bed, pressed weakly into a pillow. His head was wrapped up in white cloth, and there was a grim smile planted across his pale features. Even his eyes looked gentle for once. 

“Is my head all fucked up now,” he said. 

“It was fucked up before,” Iker returned. 

The nurse picked up the clipboard at the end of his bed, and she asked him a series of questions, and Sergio verified that his answers were correct, and then she turned and said, “He’s lucky.” He’s lucky. “He’ll have to stay here for about a week, maybe a week and a half. Surgery probably won’t be necessary, but we’ll have to wait and see what the doctor says when he comes by. He should be by around six a.m., if you’ll be around....” 

She went on, and James stopped listening. He crossed the room and collapsed into a chair and stared at the ground. He felt like maybe something inside of him had broken because images were flooding back that he had blocked out before. Worrying about Fernando had taken everything from inside of him. Sergio had been right: If Fernando is not okay, I am not okay. But now that his life was no longer the question, James could see past his panic, and what he saw was a body sprawled on the floor, picked apart by his own shotgun. 

Dead? Alive? They could have saved him, maybe, if they had called for help. Dead? Alive? Had they even checked for a pulse? 

+

That week dragged on. James called his parents in the morning, when he should have been waking up for school. He apologized, and they said they were going to take away his car, and he said, “I don’t care. I really don’t care. My friend is in the hospital. He.. got mugged.” 

He got a lecture about walking around unsafe areas at night and not checking in, but otherwise it was all okay, and she said he could miss school because his attendance was near-perfect otherwise. Besides, it was senior year, and had he Decided? A conversation about his friend’s cracked skull quickly turned into a conversation about colleges. 

“Georgetown,” he said, knowing that he had made up his mind a long, long time ago. “You can log in for me and hit the button. I don’t care.” 

She shrieked in his ear, so he made up a lie about the doctor making a sudden appearance. 

He wandered the halls of the hospital until Cristiano caught up with him, and James recoiled from his touch, ashamed and horrified, both at himself and at what they had done. “He’s dead,” he told Cristiano. “That man is going to haunt us.” 

“We had to make a choice.” 

“I know. That’s what I told Sergio. It was an accident. Doesn’t make him any less dead.” 

“I know.” 

“We could have called for help. We could have done something. Was he dead when we left?” 

Cristiano looked him straight in the eye and said, “No, he was screaming. Must’ve bled out.” 

James pulled at his dirty sweatshirt sleeve. “We’re not good people.” 

“No.” 

He wanted to walk away but, more than that, he wanted Cristiano to kiss him into the past. He wanted things to be less bloody and less severe. He wanted to un-know these boys. Why couldn’t they just have been his acquaintances? Why couldn’t he just have normal friends instead of a fucking murder clique? It was over. The reverence was gone. All he could see now was blood. 

“I love you,” Cristiano said, but he was far, far away. 

“No,” James told him. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.” 

He walked down the long, well-lit hallway, suddenly desperate for Fernando’s anger. He knocked softly, heard the bitter What. 

“Nothing,” he said, taking the seat by the window. “Just came to see how you were doing. Where’s Sergio and Iker?” 

“They went to get food.” He stared at James oddly, looking sicker and softer than usual. “You’re all being fucking stupid just sitting around for my head to get better.” 

James shrugged. 

“Any word in the papers?” 

“Should be on the afternoon news. Maybe evening, depending on when he’s discovered.” 

Fernando nodded. “I was just thinking about something.” 

“How awful you were to me at the beginning?” 

“No, I stand by that.” His voice quieted. “I can’t tell Sergio because I know he’s fucked up about... what happened. He told me.” He winced, touched his head lightly with one of his hands. The blood drained from his features, and he resisted the pain button. “I was just thinking about the blood. The--” He was seized by another wave of pain, and he stabbed the red button viciously, a cry spilling from his lips. “The blood, James, “ he said insistently. “You have to make sure it’s not there.” 

A nurse rushed in, and James shook his head, backing away slowly. “What blood? What are you talking about?” 

“On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate your pain?” 

“Six. But if I say ten, will you knock me out?” 

She administered the medicine, tucked him in more carefully. Checked his bandages. Left. 

Finally, glassy-eyed, Fernando murmured, “The piano.” 

Confused and more than a little upset, James left the room and started slowly toward the cafeteria when suddenly the night’s events played over in his mind, and he went cold all over. His fingers went numb. He gripped the edge of his sweater, not sure what to do with himself. And then he set off running. 

Breathless, he found the other boys, planted both hands on the table and gasped, “The blood is still there.” 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Iker was irritably scratching his plate of hash browns with a bent plastic fork. 

“The piano. Fernando’s blood. He checked into the hospital the same night.” 

And then it dawned on all of them that they were going to get caught. They weren’t just going to get caught. They were going to get very, very caught. And it dawned on all of them separately that another choice had to be made, that eventually the police would run tests on the blood, and it might take days, and it might take weeks, but eventually they would find who the pool of blood belonged to, and they would trace it through this very hospital to Fernando’s house, and from there, the rest of them would go under. 

It went from Us or That Man to Us or One of Ours, and it was the most horrible decision they had to make, more horrible than killing that man and leaving him to die. More horrible than stealing anything they had ever stolen. 

Sergio put his head down on the table. Cristiano looked at James. Iker put his fork down and said, “We either wait for it to appear in the news, buy ourselves some time, and try and take Fernando with us.” 

None of them prompted him for the alternate option, but he gave it anyway. 

“Or we get a head start and run now.” 

Again, they didn’t answer. 

“No one is obligated to come, but you are sworn to silence if you stay, or so help me God.” He paused and looked around at each of them. “I will return to wring your neck before the police can get to you.” 

He picked the fork back up, and James could see his hands were shaking. He pretended to be brave and steady and unafraid, but he was just a kid like the rest of them. James shut his eyes and thought back to the very first time he met Iker, and how James had thought he was so mature and that maturity made him the best option to approach first, but really he was just a child, lost in his own coldness and determination.

“If we leave, we leave everything. That means no Georgetown, no UCLA, no USC, no Sonoma. No Berkeley. Before you make your decision, understand the weight of it.” 

Iker didn’t outline that other part for them because they could all imagine Fernando in handcuffs. Being made to look at the pictures of the man who had put him in the hospital, the man who would have killed him if he had the chance. Their futures would be gone. Wiped away. All their hard work for nothing. All those mornings spent doing homework in the cold-- nothing. Nothing. Everything had gone to shit, and everything was turning to nothing. 

James kept his eyes closed, and he thought about when he had first met Cristiano, that very first morning. “Are you lost?” Yes, he wanted to say now, sitting at the table in a hospital cafeteria, brought there by a split skull. Yes, he wanted to say. I am very, very lost, and you brought me here. 

He thought about his worried mother and his suspicious father, and he wanted to sit down with them both at the dinner table and be very distant with them again. Or maybe not so distant. He would take the distance over nothingness, but maybe if he could do it all over again, he would look at them and say, “I love this boy, but I don’t understand the meaning of the word, and he loves me back, but I think he loves this chaos better.” 

No one said anything for a long time. They all picked off Sergio’s plate of garlic fries, watching the news. James bit his nails, and Cristiano looked at James very sadly. There was something about the drought on TV. There was always something about the drought. They would probably all be dehydrated and dead soon, so James didn’t really see the point of reporting every little thing about it. Cristiano was still looking at him. 

Forty-five minute went by, and then it happened. 

A man was found in a house just off the freeway. It was a reddish-brown house with a matching barn, and he had been shot in the gut with his own shotgun. It looked like there had been a struggle, the news anchor was saying. The police were working on identifying what they thought to be the blood of the intruder. There were signs of a forced entry. The police were treating it as a homicide. If anyone had any information, they should call this number. 

They were all quiet, and then Iker said, “I’m going home to pack my bag, grab one of our cars, and then I’m gone. If you’re with me, we leave now.” 

James shut his eyes. He was blinded by panic. All he could think about was the officers coming up to his door and telling his parents your son murdered a man the other night. Your son was playing God. 

“I can’t go home. I’ll need to pack a bag at your place.” 

Iker nodded. 

“I’m in,” Cristiano said at once, but James could tell his heart was aching at the thought of leaving his family. But staying would hurt them more, so he must soldier on and take the pain for others like he always did. Protect, like he always had before. 

But Sergio, who had the most to lose, put his head down and said, “I could turn myself in. I’m the one who did it. You don’t have to leave and ruin everything because of me.” 

“Everything would be ruined anyway,” Iker said. “I would rather live my life on the run than watch my best friend get locked up. And then get locked up with him myself. I’m not going to live behind bars.” 

Sergio played with a loose thread on his sleeve. His features were solemn and handsome and strong, and he nodded once. He was in, but something rotten was eating away at his soul, and James knew he was seeing the man lying there screaming. They could have saved him. They could have called. They could have done something. We didn’t have a choice. You always have a choice. Self-preservation and doing the right thing rarely coincide. 

“We have to say goodbye,” Sergio pleaded. 

James surprised even himself by shaking his head and saying, “He’ll know.” 

So they walked out into the early afternoon light, and it was bright and hot and they felt like they were walking to their deaths. James kept seeing sunlight, blood, sunlight, blood, a man’s eyes wide open, the beat of his pulse. They could have called. They could have saved him. He couldn’t drive, so he tossed the keys to Cristiano again. Sunlight, blood. Sunlight. Too much blood, but they could have-- 

They drove off toward Iker’s house, half-expecting a line of police cars to be chasing them, but it was their paranoia and their guilt that haunted them more than any real threat. They all half-hoped that there would be some terrible, destructive car chase. They wanted to escape from it. They didn’t want to hurt because of it. But they wanted to be pursued. They wanted something to make leaving Fernando behind worth it. 

He was stuck in a hospital bed. He wasn’t even awake for the very bad part, and they were leaving him to suffer. Iker was right about understanding the weight of their decisions. They always had a choice, and in this case, they were choosing to abandon a friend, to cut out part of their soul and leave it to be tortured. 

“He would understand,” Iker told them, after they’d each packed a bag of his ridiculously expensive and clean clothes in neat little Nike bags. He loaded their bags into the trunk and paid his butler extra, handing him a set of directions and a warning that made him understand the seriousness of the situation. 

“He would understand being left behind?” It was Sergio’s incredulous, heartbroken voice from the backseat. 

“He would understand Survival.” 

“This isn’t survival,” James said, buckling up. “This is running away.” 

So they ran. They drove through the afternoon and they drove at dusk. They stopped at a gas station to check their tires, and then they made their way north, and they continued to drive until they lost track of time. They could only measure in how many gallons of convenience store soda they’d guzzled like fuel. They could only measure in soda and guilt and unhappiness. In texts they’d received from Fernando. Starting out innocent, where are you? are you in the cafeteria? And then, as they got farther and farther away, did you guys leave? where the fuck are you? And progressively worse: what the fuck. where the fuck are you. 

this isn’t a joke anymore. someone came to talk to me. you better show up. 

someone explain to me what is going on right now. 

I think they know something. 

They didn’t speak very much as they drove. Iker played quiet music. James read in the backseat. Sergio flipped through newspapers he picked up in the convenience stores along with their food, but he never really read them. Just flipped through and thought about reading them and listened to music and felt horrible instead. Sometimes Iker and Sergio switched off driving. Cristiano remained in the backseat with James, sometimes passing him bags of chips and sodas or pointing to a map. 

Don’t come back. Whatever you do, do not come back here. 

They think I did something awful. I don’t know what to do. 

Sergio lost his mind when he read those, and Iker stopped letting him drive. Cristiano took over when Iker needed to sleep, and they crossed into Oregon. Sergio started rocking back and forth and talking to himself. He wasn’t allowed to hold his own phone anymore because he kept whispering the text messages at night, in such a creepy voice that James felt like he needed to be awake with whomever was driving. To protect the others from what had gotten to Sergio. 

They drove over a bridge, and Cristiano collected all their phones and threw them down. James could see the nameless man’s body in the swirling mass of water below them. Bloody and screaming, he floated to the surface, reaching up with curling fingers. James had this horrible feeling like they should save him, because he wanted to be good and he wanted to redeem himself. 

He remembered the evenings of fast boys and dirty drives, and he was still lost somewhere in those more pleasant memories when they walked into another convenience store and saw their own faces on a TV. Sergio stole a newspaper splattered with information about them, and Cristiano calmly bought chips, sodas, and chocolate. 

The lady behind the counter smiled at them. “What are you boys up to today?” 

“Going to a movie,” Cristiano lied. 

They drove off. They checked into a motel and spent the night. They kept driving. James read the news infrequently because it terrified him but Cristiano and Iker kept up while Sergio rocked in the backseat, seeing blood and the whites of Fernando’s eyes. They kept driving. James got carsick, and he puked up blue candy until Iker pulled into another motel and Cristiano pressed a damp towel to his forehead for two days until they could move again. They kept driving. 

James pressed his forehead against the cool glass of the window. They were going ninety when they should have been going sixty. They kept driving.