Eye to Eye

Isaac checks his phone. No message, no call. A few minutes later, he checks again, just to make sure Vin hasn’t messaged him. He has the sound on, so he should absolutely hear if there’s a call or a message, but he still checks just in case. Every few minutes.

His typical Saturday morning cartoons don’t hold his attention nearly as well as normal; he cannot stop his mind from running over every possible thing that might go wrong. He remembers how mortified he was last time they hadn’t communicated enough information, so he tried to go down the whole list: he made very sure to give Vin a text message with his address, he agreed that they would meet up at 11 o’clock for lunch and then head to the movie, he made sure Mom said it was okay if he wanted to spend the night…​wait. He didn’t ask if Vin actually wanted to spend the night. He berates himself for his forgetfulness, but at this point, he feels like calling him would just be annoying, so he just has to live with his mistake, as much as it burns.

Finally, during the last commercial break of his last cartoon, his phone makes a gentle, high, hollow blue tone indicating a text message. He darts for his phone so fast that he startles his mom, who laughs as he checks what it says. The phone goes off again, even while he’s turning it on to see:

Vin: Be there in about 15

Vin: I’m excited! :)

Isaac quickly texts back,

Me: Me yoo

Me: Me too

For a fleeting moment, he desperately hopes that Vin won’t make fun of him for making that mistake, but Vin hasn’t really ever done anything like that before. …​Wait! he thinks. I can text him!

Me: Do you want to spin the night?

Me: Mom says its ok

The wait for Vin’s response takes at least three subjective eternities.

Vin: Sure! Lemme ask

Another interminable minute passes.

Vin: Yes! Want me to bring anything?

Vin: Games or cards or something?

Me: Ok

Me: We have cards

Vin: I’ll bring something fun :)

Vin: See you soon

Me: See you son

Me: Soon

He puts his phone down on the coffee table and sighs, irritated at himself. His mom goes into the kitchen, coming back shortly with her cup of old coffee freshly microwaved. Isaac remembers the first (and only) time he asked to try her coffee; it was the day he learned just how annoying a burnt tongue feels (he still hasn’t figured out, however, how anyone could possibly find coffee to be good-tasting). As she sits down, Isaac takes a deep breath and sighs heavily. "Mom."

"Yes?"

"Why can’t I ever talk right?"

"You just did right now, honey."

"You—​no, Mom, I, that’s not what I meant!" He slaps at her in playful frustration. She just laughs her musical little laugh and carefully sips at her coffee; Isaac knows better than to mess with a person who is holding tongue-scalding coffee. When she puts the mug down on her little mosaic-tiled coaster, Isaac continues, "I mean…​why, wh-when I talk and when I write, why is it always…​why do I sound stupid?"

His mom waits a moment to respond. "I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I don’t think you sound stupid. Can you give me an example?"

Isaac picks at his thumb. "In math class, a boy made fun of me for my stutter. Everyone laughed with him."

"Did he, now." She inflects it weirdly, not like a normal question.

"Yes, Mom. And then the teacher gave him detention for it."

"Well, good. Hopefully the boy realizes how extremely rude and uncalled for that is."

"But why do I have to do that? Why do I keep stuttering? And then when I write, it always sounds s-stupid."

"Isaac, dear," she says, placing her well-manicured hand on his knee, "We’ve talked about this before. Everybody has certain things that they are good at, and certain things they are not as good at. You just happen to have certain things that you’re extremely good at, and some things that you’re just okay at. It’s okay if you stutter. There are famous baseball players and even some singers who stutter. It’s no big deal."

"I know, Mom," he says with growing annoyance, "but…​" He searches his brain for any possible reasoning he can use to back up the way he feels, but all he can come up with is, "…​but it’s not fair."

"I know, dear. And elephants don’t have fins."

The out-of-left-field comment stuns Isaac just about as much as trying to imagine an elephant with fins does. He’s left speechless, completely unsure as to how to comment on that. Eventually, he looks at his mom with confusion written across his face.

She looks down and catches his eyes for a moment; he feels a deep, empathetic compassion and love underneath a light layer of amusement. As he looks down, she continues, "But is it fair to the elephant that fish swim faster?"

As Isaac ponders her words, she continues, "But the fish swim faster because they need to, in order to survive. The elephant lives its life unafraid of almost any predator. I mean, what are you gonna do if an elephant sits on you?"

Isaac busts out laughing. "They do that?!"

"They do!" she replies. "I saw it on a documentary a few days ago. If a lion or something tries to attack them, they will try to scare it off, or they might try to gore it with their tusks, but really…​sometimes they just sit down and think about things. On top of whatever tried to hurt them. Thbblt!" She makes a 'raspberry' sound with her tongue as she smooshes her fist downward into her other hand.

The very idea sends Isaac into a giggle fit; by the time he’s done, he has to take off his glasses to wipe his eyes. Ms. Brooks gets up to go to the restroom, and Isaac realizes only too late that he never got a straight answer from her.

He loses himself in the distraction of cartoons for a while; before he realizes it, though, the doorbell rings its copper-green tubular bell ding-dong! throughout the living room. Isaac practically leaps off of the couch, scrambling to get his footing as he runs to the door. He unlocks the deadbolt (with a much less satisfying thock than Vin’s door) and opens the door to reveal Vin, dressed in a pair of white chinos and a crimson red t-shirt. Behind Vin, Isaac sees a black convertible leave the curb and head down the street. Immediately afterward, Isaac’s eyes are drawn to what Vin has brought with him: propped up against him on one side is his electric keyboard and its stand, while his other hand grips a pillow that seems to have some other objects stashed deep within. Isaac looks up and meets his eyes, where he finds a heady brew of eagerness, excitement, friendliness, and Vin’s signature bundle of emotions tied up tightly in the back of it all.

"Heya, Isaac!" he says with a grin, the friendliness and eagerness swelling within his eyes.

"Heya, Vin," Isaac responds, grinning uncontrollably. He can feel his own giddiness echo through the link, and even at that, it’s a strong feeling.

After a short, awkward moment, Vin looks down at his keyboard. "Hey, you mind helping me get these in? They weren’t too easy to drag up here, think I mighta scratched the keyboard a little bit."

"Oh! Um, okay, Vin." Vin hands Isaac the piano stand, which is lightweight, if a bit unwieldy to carry. Vin follows in with his keyboard and pillow, turning and gently swinging the front door shut with a graceful pivot of his foot. Isaac catches a glimpse of his shoes, which are very different than before: on the top, they are a red color that closely matches his shirt, and the bottom part is a fresh, clean white that goes with his pants. There are a few black accents on various parts of the back of the shoes, as well.

As the boys make their way in, Ms. Brooks comes back around the corner from the restroom. "Oh, hello, Vin! Good to see you — and I see you’ve brought some entertainment."

"Yes ma’am, I brought over my keyboard. I wasn’t sure if Isaac had a piano-type thing at home, so I figured, why not?" He puts his pillow down on the couch, using both hands to maneuver the long keyboard. "I mean, if that’s okay. I dunno if, if there’s room or anything to put it up, or whatever."

"Tell you what," she says, "let’s just place it over here in front of the fireplace for now, and if we get a chance to enjoy it, we’ll rearrange things to make it work. How does that sound?"

"Great, ma’am!" he responds with a smile. Isaac’s mom helps him set the stand up, and Vin gently places the keyboard on top, where it stays in place on little rubbery pads. He looks at one side, rubbing his fingers lightly along the surface of the keyboard. "Hm. I don’t see any scratches. Nice." He nods at his keyboard.

"So," she says once they’re finished, "we have a little time before we need to get going, so how about we get you settled in and such first?" Turning to her son, she says, "Isaac?"

"Yes, Mom?"

"Why don’t you give Vin a tour, so that he can know where everything is?" She asks the question with a certain smile on her face, one that Isaac knows means more than just happiness, but he’s at a loss for what else lies behind it.

"Yes, ma’am," he replies, his heart stepping up the tempo a bit. He’s never had to give a tour before; where to begin? He looks around hesitantly, unsure how to go from what is essentially the middle of the house in any sort of logical order.

After a few agonizing moments of indecision, Vin offers, "Uh…​so you wanna just start from the front door, maybe?"

Isaac looks at Vin, and then the door, and exhales the breath that he didn’t realize he was holding. "Yes, Vin. I wanna just start from the f-front door." He walks over there, Vin in tow, as his mother breaks off to the living room couch. When they reach the door, though, Isaac realizes a critical flaw, though. "Oh, um, wait," he requests as he opens the front door. "This is the porch," he says as he steps outside for a moment with Vin, "and then it has, um, a swing on it over here, and some plants."

"Okay," Vin says with a large smile on his face. Isaac glances at his face for a quick moment as he turns to go back inside, and feels a wave of amusement from Vin’s eyes.

"And this is the entry hall," Isaac continues as Vin closes the door again, "and then over here is the, um, is Mom’s office. She has a real office — I mean, she goes to work, but she does things from here sometimes, too." Isaac watches as Vin peeks his head into the room. It has a nice hardwood desk and classy leather swivel chair; various shelves on the walls with either rows of books or rows of pictures and knick-knacks, depending; a few chairs that clients can sit in; and a large globe on a stand in the corner. Isaac used to ask his mom about all kinds of countries that he would choose randomly from the globe, and they would research them and find out what things looked like in each of those countries. He’s not sure why he ever stopped doing that — there were still dozens of countries he hadn’t asked about.

They go forward into the main room. "This is the living room, but it’s not like the Living Room at school."

Vin frowns. "There’s a living room at school?"

Isaac responds, "Yes, where w-we go in the morning--" It suddenly dawns on Isaac that Vin is a gen-ed student, and probably has no idea what Isaac is talking about. "I mean, um. It’s—​it’s the room that I go to in the morning at school. My homeroom." The homeroom where all the different kids go, he laments to himself.

"Really?" he asks. "That sounds cool. Maybe tell me more about it later, after the tour, yeah?"

"Yeah, Vin," Isaac says with a relieved smile. "Um…​so do you want to go to the bedrooms, or to the kitchen next?"

Vin looks both directions. "I mean, the kitchen is just right there, so let’s do that."

"Okay, Vin." They walk through the kitchen door to the right, where Isaac says, "And then th-this is the kitchen. And then over here," he walks across the room to the adjoining dining area, "is the kitchen table. Um, here is the backyard." He opens the sliding glass door out to a relatively small, plain backyard, with two pine trees taking up a decent amount of the available space. There is a stone bird bath on a pedestal between the two, and a floral garden along the back fence. A small path with large flat stones leads to and around the bird bath, as well as along the sides of the house to the water hose and to the gate leading to the front yard on the other side. The rest of the space available for grass is rather minimal. "It doesn’t have a pool or, or a swingset or anything. I have a blow-up pool, but it was for when I was, um. A little kid." The series of admissions leaves Isaac with that same feeling of being small that he felt over at Vin’s.

"Eh, I didn’t bring a swimsuit, anyway, heh," Vin says. "It’s nice. I like it."

Isaac feels like he should say "thanks," but it’s not really his backyard, or at least, he didn’t do anything to deserve the thanks. He ignores it instead, going back inside and heading to the bedroom hall. "Okay, and then th-these are closets on the right side of the hallway, and, um, those are pictures." He motions to the gallery on the left wall of the hallway.

"Hm," Vin says after examining them for a moment, but he makes no other sounds or anything.

They reach the end of the short hallway, where it splits off in two directions with a doorway in the middle. "And then here is the bathroom, and then…​there is my bedroom down this way, and then th-there is Mom’s bedroom down that way." He points down the hall to the left and right, respectively. "Um…​do you want to see my bedroom?"

Vin grins, "Sure, yeah!"

"Okay," Isaac replies, another rush of some excited emotion hitting him, though it’s hard to tell if it’s excitement, anxiety, or something in-between. He opens his door and goes into his room; other than the unmade bed, everything is in perfect order, as pleases him. He goes counter-clockwise around the room, as the door opens up to the left side of the room anyway: "Um, this is my dirty clothes hamper, and then I put my phone on this, um, table in the corner so I don’t turn it off and go back to sleep…​"

"Okay," Vin says, "that’s pretty brilliant. I’ve done that on accident a few times, not gonna lie."

"Mom m-made sure I started doing that," Isaac explains. "Um, this is my bed. It’s not as big as your bed."

"Well," Vin points out with a shrug, "You’re not as big as me. It’s a curse, I tell ya. I mean, look, can you touch your ceiling fan when you stretch?"

Isaac looks up at the quickly-moving blades of the fan. "No, Vin." Vin raises his arm and allows the blades to brush against his fingertips, making Isaac gasp. "Careful, Vin!"

Vin laughs as the fan continually clicks against his fingernails for a moment before putting his arm down. "It’s fine, the fan doesn’t hurt unless you just, y’know, decide to stretch fully and stick your fingers way up in there. Which I’ve done. And it hurts." He laughs a bit, shaking a hand in imaginary pain. "Don’t be tall. It’s not as cool as it sounds."

Isaac spends a moment marveling at the fact that Vin is tall enough to have that problem, something that Isaac would never have even conceptualized as an issue for anyone. "Um, oh, and this is my dresser," he says, continuing the tour, "and then th-this is my closet." Isaac’s eyes go back to his dresser, where his sunglasses sit in the place he usually leaves his regular glasses.

"What’re those?" Vin asks, breaking Isaac out of his thoughts. Isaac sees that Vin is talking about the three large plastic cubes on the closet floor. Each one measures around two feet on a side, and each side is a different-colored jigsaw puzzle piece, fit together to create brightly-colored puzzle cubes.

"Those are my toy boxes," he replies. "The left one has my dinosaurs and things, and then th-the middle one has stuffed animals and teddy bears, um, and the one on the right has stuff for, um, for swimming and the beach."

"I thought you didn’t swim," Vin says.

"I don’t swim, or, and I don’t go to the beach."

"Oh. Fair enough. But wait — you had a blow-up pool, right?"

"Well, it was, it’s not very deep, so…​" Isaac suddenly realizes what all he has said, and adds quickly, "Um, by the way, I don’t, I don’t play with any of those anymore." He’s not a kid, after all.

"Eh, suit yourself," Vin says with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. "I still have all my toy dinosaurs somewhere around in the closet."

"You had toy dinosaurs, too?!" Isaac asks, instantly interested.

Vin laughs, "I mean, doesn’t everybody? Man, I used to have epic dino battles."

"You boys about done with the tour?" Isaac’s mom calls from the living room. "It’s about time for lunch, if we want to eat before the movies."

Vin looks down at Isaac. "Hey, thanks for the tour. I like your house."

"Thank you, Vin," Isaac says, though he immediately realizes his inconsistency.

"All right," Ms. Brooks says once the boys are back in the living room, "what are we going to fill up on?"

"I could eat a whole pizza, myself," Vin says with a nod.

"And I don’t doubt that one bit," Ms. Brooks says, looking him up and down. "A growing boy of your height needs an extra fuel tank just to keep up. But…​I was thinking maybe not pizza for lunch. Maybe something a little less greasy. Actually, you know what? If we want to head over to the mall now, there’s a really nice Chinese restaurant there. Would that be okay with you boys?"

Isaac instantly knows what he wants the moment his mom mentions Chinese. He exclaims, "Yes, Mom!" at the same time Vin replies, "Nice!"

"Well," she says with her head slightly cocked, "that was easy. Isaac, go get your shoes on, and we’ll head out."

Isaac runs into his room and comes back with his socks and shoes, as well as the sunglasses. As he slips his socks on, Vin remarks, "Were those the socks on the bed?"

Isaac pauses. "Yes, Vin. Those were, um, these are the socks that were on the bed."

Vin nods. Isaac unstraps his shoes and puts them on as Ms. Brooks explains, "He likes to lay out the clothes he’s going to wear for the day; he just hadn’t put on the socks, yet."

"Gotcha," Vin says. Isaac stands up just in time to see his mom staring at Vin for a moment. She glances over at Isaac, and as their eyes meet for a fleeting moment, Isaac feels the sort of feeling he gets when he sees someone else get pushed.

It’s gone just as fast, though, replaced by good old-fashioned readiness. "You all set?" his mom asks.

"I’m all set," he responds with a nod. They head over to the door in the kitchen that leads out to the garage, but the moment she opens the door, Isaac cries, "Wait!"

"What? Did you forget something?" she asks him.

He walks past them and looks at Vin. "This is the laundry room, and this…​" he says with a grunt as he turns and opens the stubborn door behind him, "is the garage."

Vin gets a look on his face like he’s fighting against smiling, but he finally snorts out a long laugh and responds, "Cool, cool," through his laughter. Isaac isn’t sure what’s funny about a tour, but it’s just one of the many things that he knows are inexplicably funny to other people. He notices a large smile on his mom’s face, too, and it just makes him turn red and shut up. They get in the car, Isaac in the front and Vin behind him; as the garage door opens, Isaac slips off his regular glasses, puts on the sunglasses, and prepares for the day out.

They arrive at the mall parking lot and enter directly into the restaurant, where they are seated almost immediately; the lunch crowd is rather thin, even for a Saturday. The moment Isaac finds his way in, he is almost completely blinded by the change in light level from the bright late-August sun into the dimly mood-lit restaurant. He nearly bumps into Vin when they stop at the host counter, in fact, prompting him to take the sunglasses off and put his normal lenses on.

They find a way to a corner booth at his mother’s request, and Isaac sneaks into the corner seat facing away from the door, his mother hemming him in with Vin sitting across. He reaches for his silverware to put the napkin in his lap, but remembers that he’s just been carrying around a pair of lenses in his hand this whole time. "Mom?"

She looks over and takes the sunglasses without waiting for the request. "Remind me to stop by a store and pick up a case for you."

"Yes, ma’am." Isaac catches Vin staring for a good couple of seconds at the sunglasses as Ms. Brooks squirrels them away in a safe spot in her purse.

"Good day, h--" is all the waitress is able to say before Isaac screeches, jumping a good foot off the bouncy booth cushion.

He immediately claps both hands over his mouth and mumbles, "M’m smmy, M’m smmy…​"

As the waitress begins to apologize for her own part in the crime, Isaac’s mom just rubs his back without looking at him. "Sorry about that, he’s a bit jumpy sometimes. You’re fine. I’ll have a water with lemon, please."

"I’ll have a Coke," Vin states.

"I’ll have a Coke," Isaac repeats.

His mom looks over at him. "Bring him a water."

He scoffs. "Mom! Please?"

"Fine, but you have to make a choice: you can have a soda here, or you can have one at the movies. Which one?"

He pouts and mutters, "The movies."

"One Coke and a round of waters, then, please."

The server takes jots it down. "Any appetizers to start?"

"No," Eileen responds, "but I may order some additional small bites with the meal."

As the server leaves, Isaac finishes draping the napkin neatly, evenly, and wrinkle-free across his legs. As a silence drapes itself across the table, his mom looks to Vin. "So. Vin. Tell me a little about yourself."

Vin looks at her with raised eyebrows, but he waits a moment to start speaking. "…​Oh, uh, I mean, I’m Vin, I’m almost 14, I…​I mean, whaddya wanna know?" He laughs a little laugh, one that Isaac is beginning to recognize as not a laugh of happiness or humor.

"Well, Isaac has told me a couple of things about you, but it is notoriously difficult to get information out of him unless I ask him directly. So, I thought maybe I could learn a bit more about who’s hanging out with my son. Who my son really likes to hang out with." She directs the last part of that line to Isaac.

"Mommmmm!" Isaac groans, shrinking in on himself. He’s unsure exactly how much extra meaning she imbued in that comment, but he knows it’s intended to make him feel embarrassed, and so it does.

She continues, "So it sounds like your family is from New England, I’d wager the New York area. Have you been here long?"

"Oh!" Vin replies, eyes going wide. "Uh, wow, usually nobody knows that. Is, is the accent really that bad?"

"Honey, no, it’s fine, but your whole family has the same accent either way; it’s pretty easy to tell."

"Heh, yeah, I guess so. Um, yeah, so we moved down here a couple o' years ago, I guess I was in, what, 6th grade? Yeah, like right near the end of 6th grade. So, I guess about one and a half years now." He nods in punctuation.

"Okay. Do you like it down here?"

"It’s…​hot." He and Ms. Brooks share a laugh as Vin pulls his collar away from his neck in dramatic fashion. "Nah, it’s pretty cool down here. I got a lot of friends, the school is pretty okay, I guess, all that. Oh, but sweet tea is gross, no offense."

Isaac’s mom lets out a genuine laugh at that. "It’s definitely an acquired taste. But then, so is diabetes." Vin laughs with her. Isaac, for his part, hasn’t found a single thing they’ve said funny, yet; he just keeps watching the tennis match, wondering how they seem to automatically know when to laugh or not.

The waitress arrives with the drinks, and Isaac takes a sip of water. It tastes about the same as from the filtered water at home, which he’s used to drinking. It’s no Coke, but it’ll do for now.

"Are you ready to order?" she asks in a high-inflected voice, one almost too high for Isaac to tolerate well.

"I would like the shrimp with vegetables, please," Ms. Brooks requests. "I’d also like to order an extra side of broccoli." She looks to Isaac. "You’re welcome to share the broccoli."

"Okay, Mom."

"And you?" the server asks Isaac.

Isaac looks to his mom, silently pleading. She looks down in his direction, not at his eyes, and says, "Go ahead, dear."

His heart rate kicks up a notch, having to interact with a complete stranger. "Um…​I would like the sweet and sour chicken, please."

"White, brown, or fried rice?"

He takes a moment to prepare a response, though he gets the same kind every time they have Chinese. "White rice, please."

She finally moves on from him to Vin; Isaac closes his eyes and begins to rock a bit, hands planted at his sides on the seat, and he retreats into his own world to try and clear the stress out of his system. By the time he’s ready to come back out into the real world, the server is gone.

"So what do you like to do with your free time?" she asks Vin.

Vin takes a long slurp of Coke and replies, "Well, mostly I play a lot of basketball; I’m on the A-team at school, so gotta keep my practice up. Other than that, though, I like playing piano a lot — I took lessons when I was younger, but haven’t gotten back into them since the move. I mostly like playing old video game songs, though, heh."

"Like what kinds?"

"Oh, stuff from like the old days, like from a lot of Squaresoft RPGs, like Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy, Xenogears…​"

Ms. Brooks blinks a few times, a small smile on her face. "Wow. I had friends who played some of those when they came out. I wasn’t really ever into video games, myself but…​I’m surprised someone your age even knows those existed."

"You serious?" Vin says with a sharp upward inflection, cracking his tenor voice a bit. "That was like the golden age of gaming! All the stuff that comes out these days is just more shooting games or just a buncha pretty girls to look at. Wee." He rolls his eyes on the last word.

"You really are an old soul," Ms. Brooks says with a slow nod. "Most boys your age would just say, 'Those old games didn’t have enough guns or pretty girls.'" She lowers her voice a bit and affects a strange way of pronouncing the words when she says the pseudo-quote. Isaac has heard people do this once in a while; it makes sense when someone is imitating a specific person, but was she trying to sound like a teenage boy? If so, it really didn’t work. At all.

"Heh, I guess," Vin replies. "My dad has a whole collection of old Nintendo systems, from the NES all the way up to the Gamecube. He kinda stopped after that, but yeah, I grew up on the 'classics', I guess. I mean we had a PS3 growing up, and we got a PS4 now, but yeah."

Ms. Brooks nods slowly again, but doesn’t respond to that. A moment later, she instead asks, "So what do you want to be when you grow up? Are you trying for NBA star?"

Vin rolls his eyes with a grin and flicks his hand out, as if brushing something away. "God, there’s no way I could make it that far," he says. "I know a buncha kids at school all think they’re gonna be the next Lionel Messi in soccer or Michael Jordan for basketball or whatever, but I mean…​put it this way: I’m no good at math, but I know what a one-in-a-million shot looks like, heh."

"So then what are you looking to do?"

"Eh, I’ll probably follow in my dad’s footsteps and go into oil and gas. Lotta money there."

"…​You do realize that requires a lot of math, right?"

Vin stares off a moment. "…​Oh."

"Well," Ms. Brooks says with a musical little chuckle, "I hear that Isaac rather enjoyed tutoring you in math. Perhaps you two could make an arrangement out of things. It would be good for him to help others out a bit more; he has a lot to offer the world."

"Mommmm…​" Isaac groans again, wishing he had a large jacket or something to wrap around himself and cocoon away from the attention.

"Not gonna lie," Vin admits, "he’s better than the teacher. I seriously think my grades went up like 20 points from what he taught me."

She reaches over and squeezes Isaac’s shoulder lightly. "Did you hear that, dear? You are better than his teacher is at teaching math. That’s my super-intelligent son, right there."

"Mmmmmm," he responds, not even bothering to put the vowel in this time. If he had something to eat, this wouldn’t be nearly so bad.

"So how did you and my son end up being friends?" she asks, making Isaac’s mind go back to that day — and his heart drop into his stomach.

"Oh, uh…​" Vin stammers, "…​well, we met in gym class, which, I mean, it’s gym class so there’s only so much you can really do there, yeah? But anyway, I decided to hit up the piano rooms after school since none of my other friends are musical, so I was just gonna hang there and mess around on a real piano for a while — my keyboard is good, but there’s something just, I dunno, better about a real piano, yeah? — but yeah, so I was sittin' there playin' one of the actual classics I know, and then I went to go get a drink o' water and I straight-up accidentally bowled Isaac over with the door. Totally didn’t see him, and then just whack!" Laughing, he adds, "I felt so bad!"

Ms. Brooks gasps lightly and turns to Isaac. "You didn’t tell me about that!"

Isaac decides it’s best to just put the napkin over his head and lay his head on the table.

"Were you okay?" she asks him.

"Yes, Mom," comes the muffled reply. "It didn’t hurt."

"So anyway," Vin continues, "we got to talking and all, and then I went to the restrooms and the water fountain. I come back, and he’s sittin' there, playing the song I was just playing, like he had known it all his life, but — surprise! — he was playing it because he heard me playing it! Once! So of course I’m all like, 'No way,' and he just rattles off the amount of measures he knows already and all this and I’m just like, poom!" He completes his thought with the universal gesture for "mind blown."

Plucking the napkin off of Isaac’s head, she says, "Isaac has always loved the piano. We tried lessons for a few weeks once, but I think he hated the teacher; we stopped going pretty quickly. Either way, I thought about getting a piano for the house, but it’d have to be full-sized to be worth it, and, well, space and money." She shrugs. "Maybe someday."

"Yeah, but — he literally heard the song once and then played it. Has he always been able to do that?"

She doesn’t respond for a moment; Isaac looks up to see her staring forward, not at anyone in general. "No, actually, I had no idea. Isaac, you never told me you could do that."

Isaac isn’t sure what to say in response, here. He finally settles on, "You didn’t ask."

"I--" His mom pauses. "I guess I didn’t. Honey, that’s incredible! That is a very impressive talent!"

He buries his head in his arms on the table. "Mom, I don’t want to talk about it."

She makes a noise as if she were going to say something, but no words follow it. Isaac hears her let out a sigh, instead. "Well, maybe since Vin was so nice as to bring his full-size keyboard over, you might show me what you can do once we get home."

Isaac contemplates it. "Okay, Mom. I don’t wanna talk anymore."

A long silence follows his request, but he doesn’t pick his head up to see why. Eventually, his mom responds, "…​Okay. I’m going to go to the restroom and wash up." He hears the shiff of his mother sliding off the booth and heading away.

A few moments later, Vin asks in a quiet voice, "You, uh, you doin' okay?"

Isaac adjusts his position where his nose is resting on his arm and he can see Vin’s shirt. "Mom m-makes me feel…​I don’t know. I don’t like it when she talks about me."

Vin laughs. "I don’t think any kid likes when their parents talk about them, yeah? God, I hate it when Mom goes on and on about how many trophies I’ve won or whatever. It’s like, Mom. Just shut up."

Isaac snorts at the idea of Vin looking at his mom and saying that. He sits up and puts his napkin back where it needs to be. "I’m hungry."

Vin’s eyes go wide. "Me too," he says with particular emphasis.

Shortly, his mother comes back and sends the boys off to wash their hands prior to lunch. They both head to the restroom; Isaac figures he may as well pee, so he occupies the stall. After accidentally getting pee on his pants more than once while standing to pee, he has since sat down, just to be safe. He does so, thinking about the fact that his mom didn’t know about his piano playing skills. I thought she knew almost everything about me, he ponders. Maybe she doesn’t know about him being gay yet; maybe she doesn’t know about his ability. He really hopes she doesn’t. He’s not sure why he doesn’t want her to know, but it’s a definite desire.

When he goes to wash his hands, Vin is already drying off; he waits for Isaac to finish up, and they walk back to the table together to find the food already waiting for them. The smell alone is enough to raise Isaac’s spirits. The boys scramble into place, Isaac almost before his mom can move out of the way, and everyone begins their meal.

Isaac’s beginning, of course, is to survey and plan how he’s going to balance his food out. There is plenty of sweet-and-sour chicken for him to eat, more than he could probably finish even if he had nothing else, but there’s no reason to worry about that: there is more broccoli and rice than he could finish, either — not that he had a large appetite to begin with, but Chinese food restaurants always gave humongous proportions — so he’s got all his needs met.

While he’s checking everything out, his mother spoons a large chunk of rice onto his plate, followed by a good amount of broccoli, which she piles on the side, but it cascades over his chicken.

That is an unforgivable trespass.

"MOM!" he cries out, slapping the table. "You’re messing it up! I can do it!"

"Isaac Alexander Brooks," his mother intones in that special tone of voice reserved for the severest of warnings, "you will not throw a tantrum at this table or we will cancel everything today. You will treat me with respect, and if you have a problem, you will state it nicely." Every word she says is cut short and rapid-fire, like a hail of bullets. "Do you clearly understand me?"

Isaac remains silent as he rearranges his broccoli not to be sitting on top of his chicken.

"Isaac?"

He happens to finish placing the last piece of broccoli in an acceptable location right when she says that; he responds, in a meek, sullen voice, "Yes, ma’am. I clearly understand you. I’m sorry." He doesn’t repeat it, mostly because he doesn’t really feel it. It’s important to say, but she is clearly the one at fault.

"Good. Now, enjoy your lunch."

Isaac sits and cools off for a moment; food doesn’t taste as good to him when he’s angry. He watches as Vin takes entire large chunks of meat from his dish and shoves them in his mouth, puffing out a cheek as he gnaws on them and washes them down with a large swig of Coke. The smell of food, along with watching others eat, finally reignites his appetite; he chooses the best-shaped piece of sweet-and-sour chicken, stabs it with his fork, dips it very lightly in the sauce, and eats it, doing the same with two more pieces before deciding if rice or broccoli should come next.

Rice is almost the opposite flavor of the sauce in his mind, so he goes for the rice next, eating three fork-fuls of rice (thankfully, the rice is sticky, or it would just end up a frustrating mess). Finally, he chooses three decent-sized pieces of broccoli and eats those.

He loses himself in his eating ritual, enjoying every bite for its numeric conformity and its flavor. He contemplates that it’s a good thing rice isn’t any bigger, or he’d feel like he had to count it; as is, it’s small enough to count as just a substance, not individual things, to him. Chicken, rice, broccoli. Chicken, rice — 

"It is really interesting watching you eat," Vin remarks.

Isaac stops, suddenly hyper-aware of his surroundings and his actions. "Um…​why, Vin?"

Vin darts a glance over at Isaac’s mom and then back to Isaac’s plate. "I dunno…​I just noticed that you just go in circles, basically." He shrugs. Isaac sees his mom, who had stopped eating while Vin was talking, take another bite of shrimp.

"Oh. I like to eat things in threes. Three chicken, three rice, three broccoli." Isaac begins to feel very exposed; he braces himself for Vin to call him an idiot, or crazy, or--"

"And you like to eat three things, too," Vin points out. "Broccoli, rice, chicken." He ticks them off on his fingers. "Interesting." He nods with that "not bad" frown. With a smile, he adds, "Heh, no wonder you’re so good at math. You basically eat it."

"…​You can’t eat math, Vin. It’s numbers."

"But you eat numbers of things," he retorts.

"But things aren’t math."

"…​All right, you win this one," Vin says with a smile and shrug. He glances again over at Isaac’s mom before looking back at his food and grabbing another bite.

Isaac glances at his mom as well, wondering why he keeps looking at her; she’s just eating her food. Looking back at Vin, his curiosity gets the better of him. "Um, do you have a way that you eat?"

"Me?" Vin asks, and then grins. "Yeah, whatever’s close to me goes in my mouth, basically." To illustrate, he spears the nearest chunk of meat and shoves it into his mouth, smiling as he chews.

Isaac laughs at the absurdity; he meets eyes with Vin and feels a mutual flow of amusement and that feeling that he’s felt from Vin before, the feeling that most often happens when he looks at Vin’s eyes in the piano room, or after he came out to Vin that night. Even his mom laughs her tinkly little laugh at the moment.

He finally takes a moment to look at what Vin is actually eating, but he doesn’t recognize it. "Um, what are you eating?"

"Oh," he says with a mostly-full mouth. "Um, one thec, thorry." He covers his mouth with his hand until he finishes chewing. "Orange beef."

"Eww!" Isaac exclaims.

Vin’s eyes fly wide. He laughs, "Why? What’s wrong with that?"

"It’s sweet."

Vin frowns at Isaac for a moment and shakes his head. "Um…​what? Why does that matter?"

"Meat isn’t supposed to be sweet."

"But sweet and sour chicken is," he says with his palms facing the ceiling.

Isaac stops and looks at his food. He’s certain there’s a reason one of them is gross and the other isn’t. There has to be. He thought that was the reason. Orange chicken is gross, too, right? he reasons.

The prolonged silence is broken by Vin snorting a small laugh. "Sorry, I didn’t mean to break your brain. My bad."

"Vin?" Isaac’s mom asks quietly.

"Yes, ma’am?"

"Can you choose your words a little more carefully?"

"What?" he asks; Isaac is also at a loss for why those words were somehow "incorrect." Suddenly, Vin’s eyes go wide. "N-no, no no, that’s not—​it’s just something we say at school when, y’know, someone like, can’t figure something out, or they…​i-it’s not like that, I promise."

"That’s fine," Ms. Brooks replies in a smooth, calm voice, "but just be aware of how your words can sound." She says all of this while looking at her plate, deciding a spot to gracefully slide her fork and pick up another bite.

"Yes, ma’am. Sorry." Vin looks down at his food, his fork still in his hand. He glances quickly at Isaac, who has just enough time to feel an overwhelming wave of adrenaline through his body before Vin looks back down at his food. Isaac can see that he is breathing more deeply than he usually does, like he just finished a short sprint.

The conversation goes still for a long moment, Vin pushing his food about on his plate, Ms. Brooks eating as if nothing happened. Vin takes a deep breath, sneaks another glance at Isaac’s mom, and then offers to Isaac, "So, did you want to try a piece?"

"But it’s gross. I had it at school."

"Isaac, Isaac, Isaac," Vin says, shaking his head slowly. "School food isn’t real food. Just give it a try." He forks a remaining chunk and deposits it on Isaac’s plate.

Isaac looks at it with suspicion. He takes his finger and scoops a tiny bit of the sauce, just to make sure. He tastes it and finds it similar to the sweet and sour sauce: sweet at first, then tangy, with the sort of feel he might get from a minor 6th in an open chord. …​Hm, I never realized that before, he considers. Still, beef isn’t really his favorite food, since it’s so stringy and hard to chew. But Vin said it’s pretty good…​

On an impulse, he takes the entire thing with his fingers and pops it in his mouth. The beef is surprisingly tender; he’s never had meat that just fell apart in his mouth like this. It’s actually quite good, even though it’s sweet, tangy, and…​well, meat.

Isaac chews on it for a while; it wasn’t exactly the right size for his mouth. When he finishes it, Vin asks, "So? Whaddya think?"

"It’s good, Vin," Isaac nods, licking the sauce off his fingers.

His mom, meanwhile, has been staring silently at both of them. "Okay, I was going to make a comment about using silverware instead of your fingers, but…​Vin, you just got Isaac to try something that he said he didn’t like. I…​I have no words for this moment."

"What, is that not usually a thing?" Vin asks with a light laugh at the end.

"If I told you all the times that Isaac has stubbornly refused to try something he has decided against, he would either melt of embarrassment or kill me."

"I wouldn’t kill you, Mom!" Isaac gasps.

"And do you think you would actually melt?"

"…​No. That was an exaggeration."

"Very good."

Isaac grumbles wordlessly under his breath.

Eventually they all find themselves tapped out, and the waiter brings the check over, along with a fortune cookie for each person. Isaac snatches his from the tray and carefully unwraps it so as to preserve the structure of the cookie. He carefully pulls the sides apart, cracking the cookie in the middle and removing the message within: "Tell them what you really think, or nothing will change." He ponders it for a moment, but nothing comes to mind currently that he "really thinks."

Vin opens his cookie by putting half in his mouth and yanking it off the other side. The fortune decides to go with the piece in his mouth, so he carefully slides the fortune out as he keeps the piece still; Isaac is secretly glad he didn’t accidentally eat the fortune. Vin quickly munches the cookie half and then reads out, "'The best prophet of the future is the past.' Hm. Interesting."

Ms. Brooks holds hers up and reads out, "'You don’t need strength to let go; you need understanding.'"

"I always like to think the fortune cookies actually mean something," Vin says with a nod. "I have no idea what, but they do."

Ms. Brooks shrugs. "What does yours say, Isaac?"

He reads it off. His mom suggests, "Maybe it knows about your meeting."

Isaac groans more loudly at that. "Mmmmmmm…​I don’t want to go to the meeting."

"What meeting?" Vin asks.

"Annual review for special education purposes," she states matter-of-factly. "And why not, Isaac? This will be the first time you get to have a word."

"But I don’t want to talk to all of the…​people." Teachers, counselors, Mom, directors, specialists…​adults.

Ms. Brooks ignores his complaint as she tucks her credit card into the tray with the bill and leaves it on the edge of the table, where the server comes by quickly to pick it up. Vin reaches back into his pocket to take out his wallet, but the moment she sees it, she flicks the idea away dismissively. "I got this."

"No no," Vin responds, "I got cash for the day."

"I’ll take care of lunch, if only because I’m still amazed you got Isaac to eat something new. You can pay for your ticket and snacks at the movie; how’s that?

Vin grins. "Yes, ma’am. Sounds good."

Shortly, they pay and head out. Isaac puts his sunglasses back on for walking around the mall. He occasionally gets a look from passers-by, but all he ever feels from their eyes is a momentary curiosity, nothing like the derision he gets from the kids at school. Besides, it’s brightly-lit enough that he can easily see where he’s going, and the milling crowds of people are a bit easier to ignore; this way, he doesn’t end up with them in his head.

They make the short trip to the in-mall theater and walk up to the box office. Vin asks Isaac, "Hey, what movie we watching?"

Isaac realizes that every single time he’s gone to the movies, it has been with his mother, and she has chosen the movie. They’ve been mostly okay (the romantic ones get kind of boring), but Isaac hasn’t ever actually chosen a movie.

His mom speaks up, "I did some research last night and picked a nice one: The Hardest Thing. It’s a high school comedy/drama, good reviews. I know you might be more into action movies and explosions, but those don’t work for Isaac very well."

Isaac’s irritation gets the best of him. "Mom."

"Yes, hon?"

"Stop talking about me. I can do it."

"I’m just trying to make sure that Vin understands better."

"But I can do it, Mom. Let me talk about myself, Mom." He adds, as an afterthought, "Please."

"Where did this little act of defiance come from?" she asks with a raised eyebrow.

Thinking back to what Mr. Guthrie said, he throws a desperate gambit out there: "I am thirteen years old, and I can advocate for myself."

His mom stops and stares at him for a moment. He flicks his eyes up to hers and, though his own determination and irritation don’t seem to echo back to him, he feels a wash of other strong emotions: a burning, tough sort of sensation that reminds Isaac of when someone says that he’s wrong about a math problem; the feeling Isaac gets about his glasses when he has to leave them somewhere, like in the gym locker; an impatient irritation like when someone keeps getting questions wrong in class. But rising quickly through all of that, there is a bubble of pride, coated in amusement, swelling up and pushing the others underneath. He averts his eyes just far enough downward to break contact, but he doesn’t back down.

"You know what, Isaac?" She pauses, scaring Isaac into thinking she’s about to take them home. "You’re right." Isaac looks up at her in surprise, and notes that the pride and amusement have pushed everything else out of the way by this point. "You can 'advocate' for yourself. …​Sometimes. I am still your mother, though. Don’t forget that."

"I won’t, Mom." How could he? He’s known her for years.

After an awkward silence and a good bit of moving up the decently quick line, Vin asks, "So, then…​what kind of movies don’t you like to see? Well, other than action movies."

"I don’t like to see hor-ror movies, or girly movies, either, or sometimes comedy movies."

"Really? Why not comedies? I love comedies!"

Isaac stays silent for a moment, unhappy with the answer to the question. "I usually just don’t think th-they’re funny." They also tend to remind him about how many times other people think things are funny and he just doesn’t get it.

"Hm. Well…​hopefully this movie goes okay."

They get their tickets and head over to the concessions. Isaac is quite full from lunch, so even his favorite candies look almost sickening. This, however, doesn’t seem to stop Vin in the slightest, who orders a large popcorn and Coke. Though the idea of eating anything is out of the question, Isaac was promised soda at the movies, and he isn’t about to let his mom forget that.

"Mom."

"Yes?"

"I would like a Coke."

"Okay, but you’re only getting a small. You don’t need that much sugar."

Vin butts in, "Wait, just get another straw. You don’t gotta buy another drink; that’s expensive, yeah?"

Isaac’s mom responds, "Are you sure, Vin? I--"

"MOM." Isaac barks it out forcefully and decisively. "I can advocate for myself!" He doesn’t look at her, instead just staring at the drink in Vin’s hand.

"This must be a 13-year-old thing," she mutters under her breath. To Isaac, she says, "Go ahead."

Isaac fills in, "I don’t want to drink all of your drink, Vin. And, um, it’s your drink." Isaac continues to look at the drink, making no attempt to meet eyes with his mom. He’s practically bristling with irritation about her making him look like a child in front of Vin…​even though he realizes in the back of his mind that he’s never felt that way before. Well, it’s irritating me now, he figures. I’m not a baby anymore. Meanwhile, the idea of sharing a drink with Vin seems somehow taboo, that sharing a drink with a non-family member is almost in the "naughty" category in his mind; he’s honestly surprised that Vin would just share so readily.

Vin shrugs lightly. "I can’t finish this whole thing anyway. Look, it’s like the size of my head. I’d be peeing every 3 minutes." Sparing a glance at Isaac’s mom, he quickly says, "Um, sorry, ma’am."

Isaac’s mom smiles and replies, "Well, you have a point."

Vin nods. turning back to Isaac, he says, "Just go grab another straw. It’s cool."

Isaac does so, his pulse quickening even at the thought of it. On the pragmatic side, Vin’s absolutely right; on the moral side, the side that Isaac never quite fits into the right way, it just feels…​weird. Exciting.

They make their way into the theater and climb up high into the back seats, where there is a clump of three together almost directly in the center. Vin leads the way, sitting on the right, with Isaac in the middle and his mom to his left. Isaac carefully pokes his straw into the lid and looks at Vin. "Can I have a sip, Vin?"

He looks at Isaac with frowning eyebrows but smiling lips. "My man, you don’t gotta ask. Just drink." As if to demonstrate, he leans over and takes a long pull of soda.

Isaac tentatively reaches over and drinks from his own straw, unsure as to why he feels so hesitant. Regardless, the Coke is refreshing, and after he’s done, he sits in glowing happiness, both for the fact that he’s finally been allowed a soda, and also because he’s sharing something with Vin. Maybe I should keep that part to myself, he considers. Maybe he might think I’m weird if I say that out loud.

Things die down and get quiet as the previews come on, mostly a good chunk of romantic comedies — the worst kind — and a few action/adventure movies starring kids or teens. Some of them look vaguely interesting, but Isaac might consider watching them at home later on, where the volume can be lower. Finally, the lights go low, and the movie itself starts. Isaac whispers to his mom for his regular glasses so he can see better, and she trades with him.

The movie itself starts out normally enough. the protagonist is a 14-year-old going to his first day in high school. Then the audience meets his best friend, complete with flashback of how they met. Though the main character is not different in the same ways that Isaac is, Isaac can definitely feel the same way he does when he is super awkward around new people, and when he says things he doesn’t mean.

There are actually plenty of moments when Isaac finds himself laughing at the antics in the movie, though there are times when Vin and his mother laugh where he doesn’t see the humor; during those moments, he just gets to look up and see Vin’s grinning face, still a worthy use of time. All in all, he finds it a very enjoyable experience watching a good movie with his mom on one side and Vin on the other. He takes a sip of Coke and smiles at nothing in particular.

At one point, he looks down to take another sip, but the straws have moved themselves to where they’re both pointing straight up, next to each other, in no discernible fashion. Isaac freezes, unsure which straw was his. He knows better than to interrupt a movie, but this is one of the few times he actually gets soda, so he’s taking advantage of it as much as possible. He finally taps Vin on the shoulder and whispers, "Vin." Vin leans over as if to listen. "I don’t know which straw is mine."

Vin straightens up and turns to see the predicament. Isaac watches his face for any indication he might need since they can’t be loud, but Vin just shrugs. "I dunno," he whispers back.

Isaac stops to process for a moment or two. "Vin."

Vin leans again. "Yeah?"

"What, um, which straw do I use?"

Vin looks down at the cup. Isaac sees a small smile slowly creep up one half of Vin’s face, when suddenly Vin takes a straw and whips it out of the cup entirely, placing it delicately in the empty armchair drink holder to his right. "Use that one," he whispers, pointing to the remaining straw.

"But--!" Isaac sputters, accidentally using his voice. He cups a hand over his mouth, looking around to see if anyone noticed; nothing. Back to a whisper, he says, "but…​what will you use?"

"It’s fine, go ahead."

A loud "SHH!" comes from two rows down, and Isaac presses his lips shut.

After a moment of silence, he looks back at Vin one last time before taking a drink. He catches Vin looking down at him for a quick moment as he sits back up. Right after Isaac finishes, Vin picks the drink up and takes another huge swig, straight from the same straw. As he puts the drink back down, Isaac is dumbstruck, but Vin just keeps watching the movie as if nothing out of the ordinary just happened. Isaac tries to do the same, but he spends more than a few minutes processing what just happened.

Eventually, Isaac just accepts the fact that he’s sharing a straw with Vin out of the same drink. That means that Vin’s lips touched the straw, he reasons, at the same place mine did. He decides not to take that thought to its logical conclusion, considering the uncomfortable tightness in his underwear even considering it that far. He darts his eyes to his mom and to Vin, and, satisfied nobody is looking, uses the "pocket" method to adjust himself.

The movie goes on; by this time, the protagonist has met a group of burly bullies and caused trouble for himself by saving another kid from their wrath. Isaac finds himself very interested in the other kid, though for reasons Isaac cannot quite figure out until the character later states that he has Asperger’s. Isaac is familiar with the term, having heard it assigned to multiple of the kids in the Living Room. Isaac is fascinated with the idea of someone "different" being in a movie. He wonders if the actor is also like that, or if he’s just playing a character like that. Regardless, the amount of Coke he’s had, mixed with the bullying scene taking place in a bathroom, reminds Isaac that he has to go.

He excuses himself and heads to the nearby restroom, getting halfway there before he realizes he forgot the sunglasses. He keeps his eyes downcast, just to be safe, and goes to a stall to do his business. While there, he thinks about the character with Asperger’s. He wonders if he was getting bullied for being different, and if so, was it the Asperger’s? Was it something else? He has red hair; maybe red-haired people get bullied more, he considers. The movie wasn’t clear on exactly why, just yet. Isaac realizes that he might actually miss the reason, but missing a part of a movie is better than peeing yourself in a movie theater.

He comes back and settles in, and, following the habit he has developed over years of watching Saturday morning cartoons with his mom, he leans his head to the right and wiggles in to get comfortable. It takes him over a minute to realize that the normal routine involves his mother being to his right, though, and right now she’s on the wrong side for this routine. Isaac’s eyes fly open and he inhales sharply, realizing his critical mistake: this is Vin’s shoulder! He quickly picks his head back up and looks up at Vin; Vin gives him a sidelong glance, but goes back to paying attention to the movie. Isaac freezes, paralyzed with conflicting thoughts about the moment.

I was just lying on Vin’s shoulder. I made a very big mistake. I was thinking about Saturday morning, and this was supposed to be Mom. But it’s Vin, and now I just did something I really didn’t mean to.

But…​he didn’t react to it. He didn’t say anything when I did it, and he still isn’t. He has to know that I was laying on his shoulder, so if he knows, then he would probably have said or done something. Does he just not care? Vin would say if he cared, right? But we’re not supposed to talk in the theater, so maybe he’s being quiet. But he could have said something, and he did look at me, which means…​Okay, he has to know that I did it, so he just either doesn’t care, or he’s being quiet, but he didn’t do anything when there was a lot of time to do something, so…​so he has to just not care.

And that settles it; Isaac decides, slowly, to put his head back down on Vin’s arm. He waits for a response or reaction, but nothing happens. Taking a deep breath, Isaac glances up one last time toward Vin’s face before going back to the movie. Secretly, he’s thrilled that Vin doesn’t care, because the very idea of doing this sends a rush of euphoria through Isaac. He sits there, watching the movie, enjoying everything about that moment, for a few minutes longer…​before reality is shattered by one of the worst sounds in existence.

The three jagged, buzzing shrieks that signify the sound of a fire drill going off rip through the theater. Isaac immediately screeches as his body and brain go into survival mode; he claps his hands over his ears and screams again; before he closes his eyes, he catches a glimpse of the strobe effect of a fire alarm on the screen, but it makes no difference to him whether it’s a movie or real life, just as it doesn’t matter whether it’s a drill or a real fire. He would rather burn to death than be subjected to that sound.

Immediately he feels a large pair of hands clap over his ears, almost completely muffling out the sound, just as before. The sound quickly dissipates; through tear-filled eyes, Isaac sees that the movie has already changed scenes to outside the school. He realizes that he was just screaming at the top of his lungs in a movie theater, and his fight-or-flight response is still in full gear, so he quickly stands up and scrambles past Vin to run out of the theater.

He goes out the door and around the corner, making it only a few steps farther before his legs give out and deposit him against the wall. He tucks them in closely and wraps his hands around them, trying in vain to hold in the screams that are pounding at his brain, begging to be released.

Just as he begins to throw his head backwards into the wall just to feel something other than the inferno inside, he feels the wind rush by him and hears his mother’s voice on his left side, "It’s okay, honey. It’s okay." He feels one small, delicate hand pressing on his back and another rubbing his left arm, when a mismatched large hand starts doing the same for his right. Up, down. Up, down. "It’s okay, Isaac. It’s okay." He hears his mother’s voice, and it anchors him; the full-lunged screeches become frustrated squeals, then an insistent whine, and finally just full breaths in and out through his nose. He can feel the tears dripping off of his face and hitting his pants.

When he has finally calmed down enough, his mother says, "I am so sorry, Doodlebug; nothing that I read told me there would be a siren in the movie. I had no idea. I’m so, so sorry."

He knows that it would be best to say, "It’s okay," but he cannot summon the strength to form even that sentence. He opens his eyes and stares down at the ground, unfocused, unthinking, completely raw from the meltdown and panic attack. He rocks slowly back and forth, essentially rubbing his own back against his mother’s hand in the process.

"Vin," Ms. Brooks says, "I must say…​I was very impressed with what you did back there. Do you have experience with people with sensory processing difficulties?"

"Ma’am?" he asks, pausing for a moment before adding, "Sorry, I…​don’t know what you mean."

"Isaac has a sensory processing--" she begins, but she stops suddenly. "Isaac, may I explain to Vin about sensory processing disorder?"

Isaac doesn’t react to her question, but Vin takes up the slack, anyway. "Oh, you mean like, dealing with the fire alarm sound or explosions or all that. Sorry. Um, I mean I knew someone a long time ago, but I didn’t really know a lot about it until I, uh, met Isaac. I guess I was kinda interested in it, so I read up on it."

"Oh really." She inflects the words in a weird way, one that Isaac has heard but hasn’t yet parsed. "Well, your reaction time was amazing, and you seemed to know exactly what to do."

Vin, who is sitting cross-legged on Isaac’s other side, shrugs. "We figured out that it worked pretty well during the school fire drill. I mean, at our school, not the movie. Well, you know what I mean, heh." He laughs that small laugh he often punctuates his sentences with.

"Oh; was there an issue with a fire drill?"

"Yeah. Uh…​did Isaac not tell you about that?"

"It wouldn’t be the first time I was left out of the loop." Isaac’s neck and ears feel warm at the mention of not telling her everything.

"Oh. Right." Vin pauses, leaving an awkward silence amongst the three, though all this time, there have been people walking by on a regular Saturday at the mall. Isaac can’t even bring himself to wonder if they’re looking at him.

Some unknown amount of time passes until he is completely still and finally able to communicate. The first thought that enters his mind and leaves his mouth is, "I’m sorry. I made you miss the movie."

"It’s okay, my man," Vin says in his smoothest tenor voice. He places his hand on Isaac’s shoulder and squeezes lightly. "I promise. It’s totally fine."

"I’m sorry I screamed in a movie theater," he adds.

This time, his mom replies, "Like I said, it was my fault for not knowing. You had no way to know. Don’t worry about it." After a period of silence, she asks, "There is still a little bit of movie time left. Would you like to go finish it? I’m sure they’ll let us back in."

Isaac shakes his head. He would really like to know more about the Asperger’s character, but the very thought of going back into that room tightens his chest in panic.

"Well," she replies, "then we’ve got some extra time to do things. How about we go get a case for your glasses?"

"We can go get a case for my glasses, and then, or, for my sunglasses, Mom."

Isaac stands up, puts on his sunglasses, and together they walk down the vast halls of the mall. As they pass the various stores, Vin stops to look out at one of them; Isaac follows Vin’s gaze to a place called "Doxen’s Naturals"; the logo has a cute cartoon wiener dog with an exaggerated wink on top of it. "Oh, hey," he says, still looking out, "Hey, uh, you think we could stop in real quick? I wanted to pick up some catnip for ol' Mack. If not, that’s cool."

Ms. Brooks looks over in that direction. "Wouldn’t you rather pick it up from a Pet Shack or something? It’ll be a lot more expensive from here."

"Oh," he says, turning to her. "Yeah, yeah that’s fine. Thanks." He gives her a big grin at the end of it, making her smile a bit, as well. Isaac, however, keeps walking, ignoring their interaction; he’s more lost in his own world, fighting equal parts guilt and frustration for his episode at the theater.

The others catch up to Isaac and wordlessly continue with him until his mother directs the trio to an eyewear store; they spend a few minutes picking up the different cases and letting Isaac examine them for their weight, texture both inside and out, and ease of opening/closing. The act itself is soothing to Isaac, and he loses himself in the analysis of each of the cases. Eventually they choose a nice leather-looking one (after the texture passes muster; even though it looks like leather, it has a softer, foamy sort of feel to it that Isaac likes) and head out, Isaac feeling much more centered and calm from the visit.

Once outside the shop, his mother takes his glasses carefully out of the side pocket of her purse and places them in the container, letting him know that he needs to put it in his backpack the moment they get home. Their next stop is a bit longer of a walk, but they make it to Pet Shack, where Vin immediately says, "I’ll be done in a sec. I know basically where it is." With that, he lopes off down the center aisle in that graceful, bounding way that he always does, never seeming to run out of energy. Isaac watches him until he darts around a shelf and out of sight.

Having lost track of the object of his fascination, Isaac glances around to get a better idea of his surroundings. The store isn’t heavily occupied, which is of small comfort to Isaac as he is assailed by sharp barks, whines, tweets, squawks, and the like. These, of course, come from various displays around the area full of potential pets, both young and old, furry or not. The shelves running down the middle of the store hold various pet essentials, labeled things like "CAT" or "BIRD" for ease of searching.

He catches sight of a side display near the entrance, one that most people would normally see on their way in, were they looking at where they were going. This is where the cats for sale are kept. Fascinated, he heads over to the wall, where a few of the animals yawn, stretch, and look at him. Most of them are adult cats, at least to Isaac’s reckoning. The six cats here range across the spectrum in regards to hair length, color, facial shape, and general attitude.

He kneels down to get eye-to-eye with a Siamese-looking cat in a lower cage. Curious, he takes his sunglasses off and locks eyes with the cat to see if he can feel anything. The cat stares back at him lazily, and Isaac gets a feel of interest from it shortly before it stands, stretches again, and sits down near the front of the cage. He slowly reaches out a finger, still concerned that it might suddenly decide to bite him, but when he gets close, the cat starts rubbing its head on the bars near his finger. Isaac finally gathers the courage to touch the cat; it immediately stands and rubs the rest of its body across his finger, turns around, sniffs it, and rubs its face all over Isaac’s index finger.

Isaac laughs a bit, half nervously, half excitedly. The cat looks back at him, and Isaac feels a strong pulling feeling, one similar to what he felt from Juan. He would ponder it more, except that the cat suddenly bends over and starts licking a spot on its tail.

Isaac decides to see if the other cats are as friendly. He stands and goes to a smaller black-and-white cat, who stays curled up in the corner, looking at him but making no move. He gets almost the opposite feeling from this cat, a sort of spiky, pushing sensation in his brain. He decides to leave that one alone and check out a particularly fluffy calico cat, who stands up the moment he pays attention. The cat walks up close, but doesn’t come to the bars. He looks in its eyes and feels that yellow, fuzzy fear and nervousness that comes with uncertainty. He puts his finger into the cage slowly, and the cat stretches its neck out to sniff at it.

"I’m not going to hurt you," Isaac says in a voice he hopes comes across as soothing. "I just want to pet you." When he says this, the cat looks over at him, and they just stare at each other, fuzzy uncertainty meeting hopeful friendship back and forth.

After a moment, the fuzziness seems to dwindle a bit, and there’s a feeling that to Isaac’s mind equates to the way he felt when Vin first slid his shoes under the bathroom stall door. The cat stands, walks slowly to Isaac’s finger again, sniffs it, and nudges its face across his finger just a tiny bit.

"Wow," a nasally alto voice says from behind him, making his heart and lungs jump. "She’s never actually rubbed against anyone before."

Isaac turns around to see a store associate, a roundish woman with wavy blond hair down to her shoulders, standing next to both his mother and Vin. Isaac feels himself flush deep red in embarrassment; how long were they there watching me? he wonders with growing mortification.

Vin laughs and adds, "Yeah, he did the same thing with Mack, my ol' cat. He just picked him up and Mack was all like, 'Okay, sure.' Stayed there for a minute. He never does that for strangers. I think he’s like the Cat Whisperer or something."

Isaac tucks his head low and puts his sunglasses back on, standing next to his mom. He runs his hands through his hair and asks, "Can we go?"

"Sure, Doodlebug. I think we’re done. Have you paid yet?"

"Yes, ma’am," Vin states with a quick nod.

They exit the store. "All right, boys, where to?"

Vin looks at Isaac, who looks at Vin. Curiosity, hope, indecision, a little bit of concern. Isaac hopes that Vin cannot feel the residual giddiness that Isaac still has from the movies…​or the exhaustion from the meltdown. Vin finally says, "Well? Whaddya wanna do?"

Isaac shrugs. "I don’t know."

"Well, I don’t have all my steps in for the day," his mom points out, "so if you wanted to go check out some of the stores, I’d be fine with that."

"Whatcha think, Isaac?" Vin claps a large palm on his shoulder.

"We can go check out some of the stores, Vin. Mom."

They spend a good while walking about and checking things out; Vin does most of the directing, darting into clothing stores here and there to check out the fashions, or walking with wonder into electronics and gaming stores and the like. Isaac would normally just busy himself on his phone on trips like this, where his mom would be shopping for half a million different things from as many shops, but Isaac enjoys his time in the moment, for the most part.

The last stop they make is at a toys and games store, somewhere Isaac has a bit more direct interest. He takes his time admiring the various science gadgets and toys, hovering a bit longer at the dinosaur section, though he knows he’s too old for that — and that his mother wouldn’t buy him more dinosaurs at this point, anyway. Besides, most of what they have there are the typical carnivores — tyrannosaurus, velociraptor, etc. — when Isaac was a lot more interested in the really big ones: the titanosaurs, like Argentinosaurus. Incidentally, that dinosaur is the reason he knows of the country from which its name derives. He doesn’t particularly care where the country is; he knows it’s somewhere in South America, but geography isn’t nearly as interesting as animals that could grow to almost 100 tons.

He takes a look at the other offerings in the store, coming across some fun science toys, like the old plasma ball where the pink lightning bolts follow his fingers, or the 3D Pin Art, where you push things into it and make a 3D impression in the hundreds of little pins. Isaac has always had a love-hate relationship with those things; it’s very soothing to watch the pins fall down row by row as you drag the device off of a table, for example, but the noise and the feel of the pins on his skin can both get quickly over his tolerance levels.

He finally comes across one of his absolute favorite toys, one that he had when he was younger: the Newton’s Cradle. Five polished metal spheres, well-weighted, each hanging in a perfect row, and the sheer satisfaction of the clack that they make back and forth, methodically, metronomically, is simply mesmerizing to Isaac. The only reason he doesn’t have one now is because he managed to tangle up his first one within the second day, and he dealt with it very poorly. Granted, it was years ago, but old stresses die hard for Isaac.

Still, he gingerly reaches out, plucks one ball from the edge, and lets it fall back, watching the clack-clack of the two outer balls alternating as the inside ones just ignore it. He stares forward at it, feeling the clack from each side as if it were a gentle tap on the corresponding temple of his head, and the repetitiveness of it nearly puts him in a trance.

Shortly, though, he catches movement out of the corner of his eye and spots Vin walking toward him. Vin says, "Oh, a Newton’s Cradle! Dude, my old science teacher had one — before Rudy tore it up, the jerk."

Isaac smiles at Vin’s story and goes back to watching the toy, which has lost very little momentum.

Vin reaches out slowly towards it. "Ooh, can I show you a trick I learned on it?"

Isaac studies Vin’s face for a moment and feels excitement from him, definitely the "Show-and-Tell" kind of excitement Isaac would get when he wanted to show something off. "Yes, Vin," he says, slowly bringing his hands inward to stop the motion.

Vin takes both balls from both sides, leaving just the one in the middle alone. "Okay, now…​" he says and then lets go of both sides. Both pairs of balls bounce off the middle one perfectly, leaving it completely unmoved under the assault of all the others. "I call it 'The Superman'!"

Isaac watches the display with an amused grin. The middle ball did seem totally like a Superman fighting off people from both sides. "Coooool," Isaac says breathily as he watches.

"Oh, oh, and here’s another one. You know the X-Men?"

Isaac nods, "Yes, Vin." He didn’t read the comics, but he’d seen the cartoons enough.

"A’right, so…​" He picks up two on a side, and one on the other; when he lets go, it creates the illusion that a ball is teleporting to the left and right of the center one. "The Nightcrawler!" he announces with gusto.

Isaac laughs, tickled at Vin’s ridiculous enthusiasm and delighted by the neat trick.

"Boys?" his mother calls out. "You ready to go? It’ll be dinnertime soon, and I was thinking we could have a good home-cooked meal."

"Mom."

"Yes, Isaac?"

"Can I get this?"

She sighs through her nose. "No, dear, you broke your last one in two days."

"I know…​"

"And you were upset for a week about it."

"I know, but Mom…​"

"No, Isaac. Come on, boys, let’s go."

Isaac sullenly grits his teeth and follows along, but he doesn’t put up a fight. He still wants Vin to be able to spend the night, and nothing is going to screw that up for him.