“Doubtful, if that name keeps following you around for the rest of your life,” I say.

“I bet y’all anything. I have faith.”

“Faith is just arrogance disguised by God,” Skinny-Dave says. It’s exactly the kind of thing you expect to hear from a pothead.

Me-Crazy pulls out a few fireworks from his pockets—which, you know, we can all agree is insanely dangerous—and he taunts Baby Freddy with them.

“Let me see those,” I tell Me-Crazy, cutting in front of Baby Freddy. I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t just stand by anymore when someone’s life was being threatened. I don’t want to know what Me-Crazy had to do to convince someone to sell him fireworks.

Baby Freddy asks, “Do you think we can use Thomas’s roof to set these off? Our fireworks will be higher than everyone else’s.”

I invited them all to Thomas’s rooftop party on the ninth, although if they don’t come it’s not much of a party at all because Thomas doesn’t seem to have any real friends outside of us. Without them it would just be him, Genevieve, and me.

“His neighbors would be up on the roof too,” I say. I think all roofs are out since Skinny-Dave, higher than a pothead on the moon, almost sent a firework blasting straight into someone’s window last year.

We decide ground level is best and set up. Fat-Dave stole his mother’s cooking lighter; he ignites the first firework while we’re all still dangerously close to it. Luckily it soars and explodes in bursts of yellow somewhere above the twenty-seventh floor of Skinny-Dave’s building.

We chill back, eating honeybuns and drinking Arizona teas, while Fat-Dave sends more of his fireworks zooming and whistling and exploding into the air.

Thomas finally joins us. He doesn’t say a word, just grabs a honeybun and watches the show. I haven’t seen him since yesterday morning when I left his house. There was zero sleeping during that sleepover and my body’s clock is thrown off now. But it was worth it to be able to play hangman on the wall over his bed, to act like we were spies while we tiptoed from his room to the kitchen so we could warm up Hot Pockets without bothering his mother.

Fat-Dave offers me the lighter. I really wish Genevieve were here to hold my hand right now. There are four fireworks left and I choose the small orange one because the other three look like explosives, and shit, that would suck if they were. I ignite the wick, and the firework takes flight. In that moment, I wish my existence were as simple as being set on fire and exploding in the sky.

13

HEARTLESS

   I’ve been keeping Thomas company during his “Big Job-Hunt Saturday.” Things haven’t really been going in his favor. His mom told him about an assistant job at this barbershop on Melrose, and even though he didn’t really want to sweep up curls while barbers told crude stories about the women they’ve slept with, he was still bummed when the position had been filled. Worse, it was some smug kid who proudly rinsed a razor as Thomas was being turned away. Afterward we went to a flower shop. Thomas thought it could be a nice meditative place to work, but the florist worried about Thomas’s flighty résumé. As did the baker, the fruit-stand guy, the art studio owner, and lastly and perhaps most insulting, the twenty-year-old who didn’t think Thomas could bring any depth to his start-up business.

I mean, anyone who thinks you need depth to wrap presents for a pet’s birthday is a fucking depthless idiot.

“Fuck it all, Stretch,” Thomas says now. He throws his remaining résumés in the trash, spitting on them all, which hardly seems called for, but I’m going to let him have his moment.

“You didn’t actually want any of those jobs,” I say.

“Yeah, but what if something amazing opened up for me by trying out something I would never go for?”

“There are plenty other jobs to apply to.” I wish Mohad were hiring at Good Food’s.

“Maybe I can be a pool boy.”

“Or a lifeguard,” I say. “Or a swimming coach. I’ll be your first student.”

“You don’t know how to swim?”

“Nope. Never really had to know how to, though it would’ve been nice considering how I almost drowned last summer.”

“How the hell did that happen?”

“The water was really cold and I thought I would throw myself into the deep end instead of slowly torturing myself by starting at the shallow end,” I say, the panic of that day carrying me away, like an undertow, before I laugh a little. “It was stupid to think I was tall enough to stand up in seven feet of water.”

“Pretty stupid, Stretch. What were you thinking when it was happening?”

“I was thinking about how I’d like to draw a comic where the hero is powerful but can’t swim and finds himself drowning.”

“You weren’t thinking about your family and friends? The afterlife? Maybe how you should’ve taken swimming lessons as a kid?”

“Nope.”

“You’re heartless,” Thomas says. “Is this big drowning scene for the comic you lied about letting me read?”

“I didn’t lie! I just keep putting it off because—you know what, follow me.” I don’t want to be marked as a liar, so we head back to my apartment. I search for my Sun Warden comic as Thomas waits out in the hallway, and I decide I don’t want to read this with him on his rooftop. I leave the comic on my bed and open the door. “Get in here,” I say.

“I thought you don’t like letting friends come over.”

“I’m changing my mind in five, four, three, two . . .” I hold off on the last second because Thomas isn’t calling my bluff. “Come on, don’t make me look like an ass.”

Thomas steps inside.

I watch his eyes as he takes in the apartment. I’m immediately self-conscious about the apartment smelling like wet laundry like Me-Crazy once said it did. I can’t tell anymore. The first time Baby Freddy came over, he immediately searched for the bedroom—not a big challenge—to see if he could catch a glimpse of the bed we all slept in. The concept was just so weird to someone who had his own bedroom. Brendan never judged, thankfully. And Thomas isn’t judging now either. He moves past Eric’s video games and over to my collection of comics before turning back to me. “I want your Batcave.”

“Shut up, you have your own room.”

“I’ll trade you.”

“If you don’t mind rooming with Eric, it’s a done deal.”

We shake on it.

Thomas picks up the Sun Warden comic, and we sit down on my bed, reading it together. It’s crazy rewarding seeing someone laugh at jokes I doubted anyone else would find funny. He’s also really impressed with this panel where Sun Warden launches a series of fireballs into the ruby eye of a cyclops, who’s dual-wielding mountainous swords. I worked so damn hard on getting that right. He reaches the last panel where Sun Warden must decide on saving his girlfriend or best friend and then looks up. “Spoiler?”