Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 02:28:47 -0700 From: Rich H Subject: When the World Changed, Part 2 Here's the next chapter of this story. I'll note again (shameless plug) that I've also written the story "Seal Rocks:" which is in this High Schooi section on Nifty as well. If you like this story (which is admitted fly getting off to a slow start, as least so far as sex scenes are concerned - but be patient a little), you may also like that one. The story here, as with Seal Rocks, is fictitious, and no real person is depicted. If it's not legal for you to read this story, please don't. I reserve all rights to this work, and all that legal stuff. Having killed the buzz with all, that, I hope you enjoy the story. When the World Changed Part 2 By the time he got home that afternoon, he had managed to put things out of his mind. He spent about twenty minutes at Jocko's, under the usual hostile gaze of the owner, Mr. Jokopoulos, as he browsed the latest comics on the rack near the door. Mr. Jocko, as he was called, was disliked by almost all the kids in town (with the exception of his two teenaged granddaughters, both of whom were reputedly sluts). He was rude and condescending, and constantly suspicious that they were all "juvenile delinquents," as he sneered at them. How he came to run a soda fountain that catered to teenagers was a complete mystery. He always seemed to have a special dislike for Brady. But Brady ignored it, because he wanted to look at the comic books, and Jocko's was the one place in town that carried them - even if he could rarely afford the ten cent purchase price. "This ain't a library, kid," Mr. Jocko snarled at him after a while. "Buy something or get out." Brady chose the latter, being sure to place the comic book he had been reading (a really interesting Spider Man) back in the rack so all could see before he left. No shoplifter here. He knew Jocko would love to pin him with something like that. Brady pedaled his bike hard down Main Street, past the post office, and veered across between cars in front of Larry's Hardware to head home. His family rented the back portion of an old three story house just south of the stores on Main Street. It was in fact the servant's quarters for a large nineteenth century mansion home, but Brady hadn't realized that at that point. He turned onto the narrow side street that ran off Main Street along their house, and into the yard in back. His mother's car was parked there, unusual for a Friday afternoon. She was normally at the drycleaner's store she managed up at the north end of town until 6 or so. The sight made him vaguely nervous. Was something wrong? His immediate thought was for Trent. Though war was an abstract subject to him, he had watched the evening news enough to know that Trent had gone to a very dangerous place, to do very dangerous things. When he was about to ship out, the previous winter, he had sent Brady a letter, telling him much he loved Brady, and lots of other stuff that made Brady feel uneasy. It ended with, "Never forget how proud I am of you." Brady had wanted to challenge Trent about this. He didn't want a goodbye letter, as if Trent was going to die. He wanted Trent to come home whole and safe. It was the first time he'd been seriously frightened for his brother; Trent had always seemed invincible to him. He'd been the dad for the whole family as long as Brady could remember. But, like so much else in the house, the subject was one not to raise directly. So Brady spent his whole reply letter talking about all the things he wanted to do with Trent when he got back - being sure to use "when" as much as he could. He ran to Grouch, their big mongrel dog, who was on his lead that was screwed into the tree next to his doghouse, for a lick or two of greeting. "Hey puppy," he said in response to the dog's joyous barking. Grouch had a nasty habit of breaking free, even off a choke chain, and vanishing into the woods for a day or two. He'd return, covered in mud (and sometimes animal blood), and Trent if he was home would scold him brutally. Grouch never minded Trent disciplining him - once when Grouch had returned tottery after being hit by a car, Trent had carried him on foot to the vet's at the other end of town, and when the vet proved to be out, had dressed the animal's wounds himself. Trent could go after Grouch with a blowtorch, and Grouch would take it gladly. "Brady, come in," his mother called him from the kitchen door. She didn't look unhappy or anything, that was a good sign. He pushed Grouch's forepaws off his chest, rubbed the dog's head briefly, and turned for the house. He felt warm all of a sudden - maybe the bike ride had made him sweaty. His mother smiled at him as he entered. "Leave your shoes outside, they're covered in mud. Were you back in the woods above the lake again?" "Yeah," he said with a smile, before the memory of what he'd done back in the woods above the lake returned to him. He felt himself blushing again, and looked down. "Just me and Kenny - we were, you know, exploring, and all . . ." He wanted to change the subject. "Are you OK? You're home early." She smiled more broadly. Her teeth were bad - the legacy of years of smoking unfiltered Chesterfields and ignoring dental work in favor of things for her boys. Brady always felt a little guilty seeing that, she was still so pretty otherwise. "Mr. Turley brought me the mail at the store, and I thought I'd come home to meet you after school. Sal" - the old Italian guy who did tailoring at the store - "is watching things." She held out a large embossed card. "Congratulations, Wilson freshman." Brady's eyes widened as he read the elaborate script. "The Board of Overseers of The Wilson School and Headmaster Dr. Alvin O. Leeds are pleased to announce the recipients of competitive scholarships to The Wilson School for the 1967-68 Academic Year: Mr. Timothy Derrivacchi, of Ossining, New York; Mr. Evans Hollander, of Hagerstown, Maryland, and Mr. Brady Conover, of Cullingstown, New Jersey." The school seal - a depiction of a man sowing seeds before a glowing sun, with a Latin motto whose meaning Brady couldn't possibly understand encircling the picture - filled the bottom half of the sheet. Brady read the card twice, blinking rapidly. He realized his mother's hand that held the card was trembling slightly. He looked up. Her eyes were shiny. "I am so proud of you, doll baby," she whispered in a cracked voice, and she embraced him. He hugged her back, staring into space over her shoulder, trying to make sense of it all. He was thrilled, but scared at the same time. Could he possibly do this? "But - but what's that mean? What does the scholarship cover, do we know?" His mother stepped back and ran her hand over his cheek. "I talked to them already. It covers everything. Tuition, room, board, books. Even your laundry expenses. All we need to do is clothes." He looked out the kitchen window over her shoulder as she hugged him again. The lake was two houses down. He had skated there every winter, with floodlights illuminating the scene at night and fires along the shore. It was tricky sometimes getting to the thick ice after lacing up your skates, through the shallows where it was thin and crusty. Your foot might break through. When would he ever do that again? Across the lake stood the hill with the high school just over its crest. He had always imagined being driven down that hill in the bed of a pickup truck, part of a victory parade after a Cullingstown football game, just like his brothers had done, waving to everyone in the town (and especially Mr. Jocko - he always liked to envision the look on the old man's face when he became a local hero) and basking in the glory. That was what he knew, what was familiar and understood, what the limits of his ambition and dreams had been. Now, suddenly, a new wider world yawned open before him, but one that required him to sever himself from everything he knew. I'm only 13, he thought, this isn't fair. I shouldn't have to choose like this. Not yet. The prospect - the opportunity, and its costs - It filled him with equal measures of overpowering joy and paralyzing fear. He felt himself start to cry, almost. His mother pulled back and took him by the shoulders. "It's what you want, isn't it? You applied and did all those tests." Brady swallowed once, hard. He was acutely conscious of fate pivoting on a very small point. "Yeah, sure," he said, quietly. "I'm just not sure I can." "Of course you can. We can. It's all being paid for. I asked the school. As long as you keep a B average - that's an 80 in their system - you'll keep the scholarship. You're so smart, Brady, you know that. You'll do so wonderfully." "I - I mean, can we really afford it, I guess. The costs and all. I'll have to wear a coat and a tie and stuff every day, and I don't have anything like that. And - and there's probably lots of other things to pay for . . . ." He tried to think of something but couldn't. "Brady," his mother said, her voice now sharper. "There are always going to be a hundred reasons not to do something, and if you only look at them, you'll never do anything. If it's the right thing to do, you do it. If you want this, do it. Don't worry about those things. That's my job, and Trent's and Hal's, to worry about that. They're going to be so proud of you, doll baby," she whispered, her voice cracking now as she pulled him back into her arms. She felt suddenly very thin, fragile. Old. "And so would your daddy. He'd be so, so proud." There was a glass of water in the table. He stared at it for about five seconds as his mother regained her composure. The sun refracted through it and cast a small splash of color across the plastic tablecloth. His chest filled suddenly, and he hugged his mother tightly and let out a whoop of joy. The world was open wide before him, ready for conquest. His was the mastery. The rest of the day passed in a haze. They went into the lawyer's office that occupied the rearmost room of the main house, next to their rooms, where the only telephone was, and dialed Hal's dormitory to tell him the news. Someone at the pay phone there in the lobby promised to get a message to him when he returned. Brady's mother called her brother and sister to tell them. Aunt Ellen, with whom Brady's mother seemed to have had a simmering rivalry that dated back to their childhoods, was cool but congratulatory. By contrast, Uncle Greg was effusive, demanding to talk to Brady and rambling on for a good five minutes about how great it was and how he'd help him buy suits and school clothes. Brady clutched the heavy jet black receiver to his ear and tried to be polite. He didn't want their help, or his mother's. She was the one who needed the help, Uncle Greg should help her. They went through Trent and Hal's closet, and he tried on the sport jackets that were there to see if they fit him. They weren't perfect, to be sure, but they'd do. Brady was already taller than either of his brothers, so sleeve length was an issue. "Sal can make them look like brand new for you," his mother assured him. Then Brady had to figure out how, and when, to tell his friends. He'd never thought of this aspect of going away to school. Summerton was only the next town over, after all, it really wasn't going away at all. Fifteenn miles - he'd biked it enough to know by heart. But now it hit him: he was going to leave. He wouldn't be in school with his friends any more, or be there to play and hang out any more. The casual daily interactions, meeting in the woods or at Jocko's, getting together in someone's house or back yard on a moment's notice, would be over. Gone. They'd go on without him. Everyone he knew. He'd never be in one of those football parades. The enormity of the change he was committing to in his life kept hitting him from unexpected angles. But what would he gain in exchange? He imagined himself as a grown up - cultured, rich, privileged in ways he didn't quite specifically pinpoint, but not living in a tin roofed half- house where the only phone was in an adjacent office and the only bedroom heat came through a grate from the kitchen below. Maybe someday he'd own one of those farms he mucked out stables at now. And when he did he'd be kind to the kids from town who would show up looking to earn a little money by doing stable work, or moving hay bales into the loft, or picking berries and fruit with the migrant workers. Kind like they'd been to him, only better. He might be free. That night, Mr. Glendon called to congratulate Brady. The lawyer's office was cold and dark - rain had come with the nightfall and the weather had turned nasty. "I'm the freshman football coach for next fall, so I'm looking forward to seeing you play for us. A lot of the boys won't have any experience, so I'll be looking to you for some leadership out there." Brady felt warm all over from that. Mr. Glendon then spoke to Brady's mother for a long time, after which she similarly seemed to glow from within. She insisted on their going out to dinner, a rare treat that made Brady by turns embarrassed and proud. "Going out to dinner" for them meant driving to the nearest rest area of the New Jersey Turnpike, going in the back way from the local roads so they didn't have to pay the toll, and eating at the Howard Johnson's. He had roast turkey like it was Thanksgiving, and his mother insisted on telling the waitress that he was going to Wilson, and they all made a fuss over him, and he felt embarrassed and proud again. They gave him a free piece of cherry pie to commemorate the occasion. It took him a long time to get to sleep that night. He imagined Trent and Hal's reactions, and his life at Wilson and the neat people he'd meet there, and all the deep mysteries he'd learn that weren't part of the Cullingstown High experience. He was moving into a new world, whose contours he couldn't even imagine. So, of course, he saw them as uniformly wondrous. He didn't even touch himself to get sleepy, but finally drifted off with fantastical fantasies playing out in his head He had planned to meet Kenny the next morning to go back up into the woods again, but the weather remained miserable. They checked in briefly by phone just after Brady's mother left for work in the morning, agreed that the weather stank, and Brady settled into the couch to watch cartoons. He couldn't concentrate on them. Trepidation, pride, longing for his brothers, thoughts of his father, the ache of anticipated partings from his friends, the thrill of the unknown ahead, all boiled around inside him, until he threw off the wool blanket and paced the low ceilinged living room aimlessly for a while. The TV kept losing the station, and he had to jiggle the channel knob to get it to come in clearly. Sonny Fox on Channel 5 was being more jerky than normal, and he eventually flipped to an old movie on Channel 9 whose plot he had no interest in following. Around 11 he flopped down on his bed to jerk off. He found it hard to concentrate on anything, even his growing hardness, without fantasies of Wilson School intruding. Only when he thought of Kenny did his mind and body abruptly focus. The memory of Kenny's glowing torso, the feel of his bare skin against his lips for those few endless seconds, the look on his face as he'd climaxed while Brady had stroked him, sent Brady into a frenzy within moments. He vividly imagined kissing Kenny, embracing his bare body, feeling his hands all over him, and he shot copiously all over himself, allowing himself to cry out loudly since nobody was at home. He must have dozed off for a while after that. He woke to the sound of someone pounding on the kitchen door downstairs. He yanked on a T shirt and his pants and stumbled down the narrow back stairway. Kenny was soaked. The rain had gone clean through his wool jacket and hat. He shivered as he entered, stamping his feet. "God, man, how long does it take you? I was dying out there, it's so frickin' cold." Brady lit one of the burners on the stove to heat the kitchen and hung Kenny's jacket over one of the chairs - one he'd tried to saw in half when he was two, leaving a number of shallow scars across its top rail. He vaguely remembered his father calmly coming down in the early morning and stopping him, without any fuss or scolding. He remembered the hands, and the soothing tone of voice, but not the face or any other physical feature. It was his favorite chair, he always sat in it. Kenny stood near the stove for a couple of minutes, relating a new update on Suzie Kerner, which was really just an extended rehash of previously delivered information. Brady half listened. He knew he had to tell him. "So," he interjected when Kenny paused to catch his breath, "I got some news when I got home yesterday." He pulled the card from Wilson School from the rack on the counter below the china cupboard and handed it to Kenny. Kenny read it for a long minute. He looked up at Brady. "So, what, you're gonna go be a Wilson wuss?" That was the local kids' disparaging name for Wilson students, who they surmised must all be wusses - "faggy," was also frequently used - because they were (everyone just knew, so it was never debated) rich snotty brats who were spoiled and looked down on everybody who didn't wear stupid blazers to class every day. Brady hadn't expected this reaction; he thought Kenny would be happier. "B - but it, it's, well, it's an opportunity, you know. To, you know, learn and - and -". "And turn into some kinda faggy wuss, is what it's an opportunity for. Why you doin' this?" "I - I won this like competitive thing, OK? A, a scholarship, and all. There were kids from all over, and I won. It's an opportunity. I can, y'know, make something of myself, and stuff like that." "And you won't here? Shit, Brady, you're the smartest kid in school already. They been wantin' to have you skip like 2 grades for a while now. You don't need this to have opportunities. You're gonna go to like college and all an' I'll go be a plumber like my dad. You're already better than we are." "I'm not better," Brady protested vehemently. He didn't want to be better, or different. He was acutely conscious of how other kids looked at him. He wanted to fit in, to not be the sore thumb - the kid with no dad, the brainiac, the tall fast kid, the necessary target of every guy who wanted to prove how tough he was by taking on the biggest kid he could find. He just wanted to be Brady. "I'm just me. You know, different, like everybody is." Kenny snorted. "Yeah. Different." He yanked his jacket off the chair and pulled it on. "You're like deserting us, this is bullshit" "C'mon, Kenny, don't go, OK? I - I don't want . . . .please don't." Brady felt himself close to tears. Kenny looked at him hard. Brady was stunned to see him also wet eyed. "I trusted you, Brady." "Huh?" "You know. Yesterday. I trusted you. I trusted you not to go calling me a faggot and - and, like, leaving." "I'm not leaving," Brady answered, though he knew that wasn't true. "I'll just be in Summerton, and I'll be home on weekends" (though he had no idea if this was true, either) "and - and you can come by on your bike anytime and we can do stuff there." He had said this all quickly, in one long pleading breath; now he paused to inhale. "And I trusted you too, yesterday," he added in a low voice, as if someone might overhear. "I never did anything like that before, and - and I don't want you goin' round calling me a faggot or a wuss or anything either." Kenny regarded him for a long moment, his eyes very hard. "So you still wanna jerk off again? With me, and all?" "Sure." Brady blushed, realizing that he'd just jerked off and wondering if he still smelled of it. "A lot. I - I can't do it now, 'cuz my mom might be back, um, for lunch and all. She does that on weekends sometimes" (another lie - he'd just come, of course, and was incapable of further arousal for at least a short time, though the idea of doing it again with Kenny already had him tingling). "But, you know, we can go to the clearing and all again, right?" Kenny snorted again. "Not today - you dumb or somethin' ?" "No, I know not today. I mean, you know, in general. Right?" Kenny's face softened. Brady thought he looked a little sad. "Yeah," he sighed. "In general." He shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. "An' we got till like September, too, right?" Brady nodded, smiling. Kenny looked out the kitchen window for a second. "OK," he finally said. "Is Wonderama still on?" "Sure," Brady replied, feeling more relieved than he wanted to let on. "If I can get the TV to work." He turned it on and stood over the large cabinet for a few seconds as it started warming up. "It's kind of dumb today, though. Maybe there'll be some cartoons." Their TV was an old black and white one that took about 30 seconds to warm up enough for a picture to slowly emerge. When it did, it was snowy and indistinct. Brady started fiddling with the channel knob, trying to cock it just right so the signal would come in better. "Screw that," Kenny said after about a minute of watching Brady's vain efforts. ."Let's go watch it at David's. He's got a color TV anyway." "OK." The prospect of watching a color TV was always welcome to Brady - it was exotic. "He's really gonna call you a wuss, though, when you tell him. A lot of the kids are. You know that, right?" "Yeah, I guess." Part of him was resigned to this fate, but a growing part was defiant. Fuck them if they weren't happy for him. Kenny was right, he was going to make something of himself and his life, and if the other kids didn't like it who cared. Let them call him a wuss, he was still the biggest kid in his class. And the fastest, and the strongest, and the smartest. Why did they all pick on him all the time? The notion that he'd just denied the notion that he was different, or better in so many ways, didn't occur to him. He wanted to be Brady - all the things he knew he was and was capable of - and at the same time not be conspicuous. Maybe that's it, Brady thought. Everybody there will be so special that I won't be obvious any more, I can just be like normal. David Cole did indeed call him a wuss, and lots of other things, when they got to his house. But it was with a subtle smile, the sort of backhanded compliment that only middle school boys can offer to each other through their hurled insults, and Brady heard the subtext and appreciated it. By Monday, it seemed the whole town knew about Brady, and he was for a few brief days a local celebrity, being stopped on the street by adults he didn't even know and congratulated. His mother basked in the glory directed at him, Hal called to praise him to the skies, and he even got a very quick response letter from Trent telling him how great it all was. Even Mr. Jocko stopped being deliberately nasty to him, though his glare remained hostile whenever Brady went into the soda fountain shop. Then it receded, as those things do, and life continued through the end of the school year and into summer much as it always had. Cullingstown didn't make much of 8th grade graduation, so aside from a short pseudo-ceremony the last day of school (which his mother attended, dressed to the nines and teary eyed), his middle school career came to an anticlimactic end. He worked two farms that summer, mucking out stables and exercising horses at one and doing more general chores at another - baling or pitching hay, picking strawberries or tomatoes alongside the migrant workers, whose Spanish he vaguely understood now thanks to the course he'd taken at school, sometimes plowing up rows of potatoes (and noting where the best ones were, so he could slip back into the field at night and take a fifty pound bagful for the family to eat next winter). He was up before dawn each day to bike out to work. But he would usually be done by around 4. That left him free to meet Kenny or other friends in the woods, and to explore more and generally play. His private explorations with Kenny remained at about the same level - they'd jerk each other off maybe once every other week or so, back in their clearing, and Kenny remained utterly uninterested in any other sort of intimacy. That continued to bother Brady, though the prospect of doing anything aside from coming furiously from Kenny stroking him filled him with trepidation. He wanted it, but it scared him at the same time. More than once, after he and Kenny had fondled each other, he'd go home and wash his genitals with rubbing alcohol, trying to clean some nameless terrifying thing off himself. He fought the nagging suspicion that he was, or was turning into, a faggot. He didn't want to be one. Just the word sounded so awful. But he admitted to himself how much he wanted to touch Kenny - and not just his cock, and not just because doing that got Kenny to jerk him off, either. He found himself imagining kissing Kenny, touching him all over. The idea of sucking Kenny's dick came to him, too, though the precise mechanics of such an act were unclear. Did you suck on it like a straw, or did you lick it like an ice pop? While the fact that he was thinking of these things bothered him on some levels, he was fine with it mostly. He just had to be sure no one knew, ever. This wasn't anything new for him. He'd spent his life holding his feelings - his fears, his embarrassments, his problems - inside. His brothers, even Hal, were much older and too often absent for him to rely on them for help or advice (though from what he could tell, their attitudes on this particular subject wouldn't be helpful in any event), and his mother was so obviously burdened herself that he had long ago resolved never to put his own problems on her shoulders. He had long since resolved he would never let her see that anything was wrong with him, she already had too much to worry about. At least he was bringing in some decent money that summer - almost $90 a week - which made paying the bills easier, and allowed his mother to scrounge up a couple other suit jackets and slacks for him from second hand stores. He worried that he'd look second hand somehow, and not fit in, but he kept that too himself too. So hiding his maybe being a faggot was no big deal, compared to all that he'd hidden already, for so long. It was natural for him. And he was deeply convinced it was the right thing to do. He had no idea how fucked up he was making himself. The summer was typically hot and humid. Brady felt like he was losing weight daily as he sweated buckets in the barns and fields, though his continued growth more than made up for any loss of body fat. Dr. Perkins measured him at just over 6 feet in July, when he had the physical that Wilson required for his entry, an achievement that excited him almost as much as getting into Wilson had. He towered over most of his friends now. Kenny was a good head shorter. Brady also began sprouting a little peach fuzz on his cheeks, bright red in color, and began shaving. Every day he felt more like a man - lean, sinewy, strong. For once he was actually tan, though it was a farmer's tan that ended mid-bicep and just below his neck. His hair bleached out to a streaky blond, the reddish roots giving a subtle texture to his thick locks, which he didn't bother to cut much of the summer. That got him a lot of grief from people like Mr. Jocko, who started calling him a "damn hippie", and teasing from some friends about how he was trying to be a girl. He knew he'd have to cut it for school - they had a dress code and all. But he'd let it go until then. Besides, Brian Jones had long blond hair, too, and he was definitely cool. Late August is a desultory time. Most of the crops - the hay, the berries and tomatoes and the other truck crops - are in, the apples aren't ripe yet, and the sultry heat settles thickly over the countryside. Nothing moves fast, even though mad activity looms just over the horizon, on the other side of Labor Day - the start of school, apple harvesting, autumn planting, all the farm preparations for winter. The world hangs suspended in a held breath, waiting for the signal to begin the next act. Brady was lying in the clearing next to Kenny, their shorts pushed down to their ankles, wiping his brow after having just come violently. His hair was matted across his forehead and partially covering his eyes. The grass they lay on had dried to a crinkly brown over the course of the summer. Kenny was smoking, heedless of the fire risk this presented, and idly staring skyward. They both knew that time was growing short, though neither had said anything about it. Brady rolled onto his stomach, being careful to avoid the wetness between them, and stared at a single dandelion just above his head that had refused to succumb to the heat like the grass had. The closer his departure to Wilson came, the more scared he got. He'd never been so conscious of the quiet rhythms of the summer, of the companionship of his friends and the familiar comforts of Cullingstown. He had even enjoyed his farm work that summer. The new world before him now felt less like a burst toward freedom and more a cliff dive into blackness. He glanced over at Kenny and felt suddenly like he might cry. He seemed to feel that way a lot, lately. "So," Kenny asked as he blew out a long drag from his Marlboro, "you packed yet?" It was the first time he'd raised the subject since Brady had told him about the scholarship. . Brady swallowed hard. He kept his gaze on the dandelion. "No, I don't move in till after Labor Day. The seventh, I think. And class doesn't start till the next Tuesday." He heard Kenny shift onto his side to look directly at him. "So what d'you do for five days, sit around and jerk off?" Brady smiled quietly. "I like jerking off." "I mean it, what's the point?" "Dunno. I guess to get us moved in and like have a chance to get settled. Get to know my roommate and stuff." "Who's that gonna be?" "No idea. You find out when you get there." Kenny blew out more smoke; the scent stung Brady's nostrils. "He'll probably be some rich twerp." Brady smiled again. "That's OK, I'm a poor twerp. Together we'll make one normal twerp." "Asshole." "Fuck you too." "So you got like clothes? Coats and ties and that kinda shit?" Brady turned to look at Kenny, surprised by his sudden interest. "My mom got me some stuff, and I'm using some stuff of my brothers'," he said. "Sal altered everything so it fits right. I saved enough to buy a school blazer, too. You don't have to wear one, just a jacket and tie and stuff, but I thought it'd be cool to have one." "Christ, you're already turning into a wuss." Brady hadn't really wanted to discuss this, but he was getting angry. "Why do you care about this crap all of a sudden anyway?" "I don't care." Kenny said dismissively, crushing the butt into the grass. Brady instinctively eyed the spot for a second to make sure it was truly out. "Just asking. Don't I get to ask?" "Sure - sure, sorry. I just - I kind of don't want to seem like a total freak there, OK? So, so I figured, the blazer, it'd be a good thing, y'know? I'd kind of fit in more, and all." He paused. "I - just don't do this wuss crap, OK? I don't need it." He paused a moment. "I'm already scared enough." "Then don't do it. Stay here with us." Brady heard how quickly, and vehemently, Kenny said it, and that made it all the harder to hear. "You don't have to go, man." He didn't. But then, yes, he did. He couldn't let this pass by. He shook his head slowly. "No," he said, not intending the word to sound as sad as it did when it came out. "I have to go. I said I would. I have to try." He shrugged. "Who knows, maybe I'll fuck it up and be back by winter." "You won't fuck it up, you never fuck anything up. You got a perfect fucking life." Brady almost laughed at that line. Kenny had two happily married parents, a little sister, a big house out in the new development where the Perrine farm had been with a pool in back, cool clothes, a big heated room with a record player, a private phone line, and a color TV big enough to launch airplanes off. "This isn't fun for me, y'know. Leaving, and all. It's scary. I don't know what's gonna happen. And, it, like, hurts to leave, too. And - and I don't mean to, like, hurt you, or anything, either." "Hurt me? You think this shit hurts me? Like I'm in love with you or something?" Kenny particularly sneered as he said the word "love". "Jesus Christ." He stood and yanked his shorts up. "I'm not the fucking queer who's going to some faggot school, man. I'm not the one who's being all high and mighty and better than everybody else. I'm stayin' here, I'm loyal to my - my hometown, and all, and I ain't ditching all my friends to go be some prep school pussy. You're doing that. You think I give a rat's ass about that? Or you??" Brady felt his heart tighten. "Kenny, c'mon - " "Fuck you." He pushed through the bracken and disappeared. Brady stayed behind in the clearing for about another half hour. First he cried, then he swore. Then he stood up, dressed, and ritually tore every square inch of the sparse dry grass up with the toe of his sneaker, turning the entire place into a dusty chewed up mess. The dandelion he dispatched with a particularly vicious kick, sending its frizzy yellow head flying into the bushes several feet away. He ripped branches off some of the bushes, gashing his hands in the process, and threw them about. He wished he had a match, or an axe or a shovel or something. He was sweaty and winded by the time he'd destroyed as much as he could, and stood panting to survey his work, tears and snot running down his wet face and streaking the dust that had settled on him. He spat extravagantly into the middle of the clearing and turned to the path, vowing never to come back as long as he lived. He worked extra hours the next two weeks, until after dark, and spent nights at home. He wasn't in a mood to see anybody. The cut was made, the limb chopped off. He cried a little most nights. He listened to WABC in his room, on a clunky clock radio, well past midnight, memorizing the AM hits, things like "Light My Fire" and "I'm a Believer". How he stayed awake at work during the day was a mystery he wasn't conscious of. Some nights his mother let him play Sgt Pepper on the record player downstairs. He appreciated her not asking him why he wouldn't go out, even to the store. He was, once again, and as always it seemed, alone.