“I don’t know what he’s going to do.” I shrug. “I stopped there.”

Thomas thinks for a moment, looking back down at the panel. “Maybe SW could somehow split himself in two, like he taps into a new power because of his exposure to the celestial kingdom. He could save Amelia and Caldwell in one go and then split himself more times. You know, to destroy the dragon with everyone blasting their sun-shots at once . . .”

Thomas continues the story for what seems like another ten minutes, and I pull out a notebook and draw a rough sketch of the diamond-tailed basilisk he wants me to include. When he talks about giving the basilisk the ability to shape-shift into an old man with Alzheimer’s who can’t recall his villainy, I cut him off and ask him to remind me about that idea for Issue #2.

I’m still writing when he goes to the bathroom to piss, but when he comes back, he’s different. I’m mortified that he saw something embarrassing, like my mom’s bras, or maybe our hamper just fucking smells. Whatever it is, he isn’t going to say anything. He would never do anything to make me uncomfortable, but he doesn’t realize I can’t sit here and ignore it so I just ask him what changed.

“What happened?”

“The bathtub,” Thomas says. “It got me thinking . . .” He doesn’t have to go on. The image of someone’s dad killing himself will do this to a person, to anyone. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Who found him, Stretch?”

“My mom,” I say. “I don’t know why he did it, Thomas. My mom says he was never completely right in the head, like he had a bad temper and stuff, but I feel like he must’ve had some other life we didn’t know about that drove him to do what he did . . .” I stare at my lap, desperately trying to remember everything good about my dad instead of getting pissed and sad again. “We didn’t even go to his funeral because how do you look at someone who wanted to get away from you?”

Thomas sits down beside me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. We don’t say anything, at least not for a couple minutes, and he tells me about how he still wonders about his own dad. He recognizes that it’s different—my father committing suicide, his abandoning him but probably alive—but it’s still a loss; it changed everything. He doesn’t really have a lot of great memories of his dad, except for this one time when his father took him fishing, but Thomas can’t help but think about experiences they could’ve shared, like driving lessons, hockey games, and sex talks.

“You think we’ll be screwed without our dads?” I ask.

“I think we’ll be screwed trying to figure out why they ditched us without explanation, but I have hope for us,” Thomas says. “Well, I’ll have hope for you after I teach you how to ride a bike and swim. You’re going to keep me busy, Stretch.”

I smile in spite of myself. His arm is still around me. None of my friends would ever comfort me this way. It’s kind of, sort of, definitely different. I’m hardly heartless like Thomas joked. He knows it too.

14

4 a.m. THOUGHTS

   Genevieve comes home tomorrow.

Finally.

She’s taking a taxi from the airport and she’ll be expecting me to be outside her building when she gets there. And of course I’ll be there. I haven’t seen my girlfriend in three weeks and I miss her a lot. I think it’s the anxiety of seeing her that’s keeping me awake long after everyone is asleep, even Eric whose double shifts are finally laying him out an hour after he gets home.

I sit up and stare outside the window. It’s dead out there.

I have something I want to talk about but it’s not the kind of talk I can just have with anyone. It has be the right someone, but that right someone is the reason I need to talk in the first place. I draw instead because putting thought to page helps, it really does.

I draw quick sketches of different things my friends like: Fat-Dave likes wrestling games where he can imagine he’s someone fit; Baby Freddy loves baseball more than football, which his father wants him playing instead; Brendan loved being someone’s son instead of someone’s grandson; Deon loves fighting; Skinny-Dave just needs a blunt and a staircase to pee in and he’s good; Genevieve is at her happiest when she’s in front of a canvas, even on the days she can’t finish; and finally, Thomas likes boys.

Just as no one ever had to tell me that Skinny-Dave loves blazing, or how Brendan is falling down the black hole of drug dealing because his parents are in jail, I don’t need anyone—even Thomas himself—to tell me he’s gay. I think he might even like me, which makes zero sense because surely he could do better than a kid with a chipped tooth who’s straight and taken.

The thing is, I’m scared for Thomas. Maybe my friends won’t care if he ever does decide to tell us, but what if they do? What if they can’t accept he’s just as naturally interested in other guys like how Me-Crazy and Deon are prone to fighting? What if they try to beat something out of him that won’t go away?

I tear out the page from my sketchbook.

I take one last look at my drawing of Thomas kissing a tall guy before I crumple it up.

PART TWO: A DIFFERENT HAPPINESS

1

HIS HAPPY BIRTHDAY

   We’re in the elevator riding up to Genevieve’s apartment, her luggage under my arms. She’s pressed up against me and says, “You got to come next year. The instructor taught me so much on shadowing you could use for your comics and also . . .” Her confidence in our future should put me at ease, and it’s a reminder that I’m doing everything right. We could get stuck in this elevator right now and I won’t freak out, even if she wants to keep rambling on about art camps and colleges and neighborhoods we’ll move to and other grown-up shit.

She goes inside her apartment to double-check that her father’s not home before inviting me in. She catches me up on who were her friends out there, how much she hated pissing in the woods one day during a long hike, and then tells me, “I have a surprise.” I follow her into her bedroom and she pulls out a ten-by-ten painting from her suitcase.

She finished something.

It’s a dark-haired girl with silver binoculars gazing up at the attic window of a house. Instead of finding worn and forgotten furniture, she finds a starry universe boxed into the corners of the attic and a glowing constellation of a boy reaching out to her.

“Holy shit, I love this.”

I’m sitting down to admire every last detail when she takes it away from me.

She sets the painting down and straddles my lap. She takes off my shirt, plays with my growing patch of chest hair, and skims my jawline with the tip of her finger.