“Have you ever hooked up before, Matt?”
“Huh?”
“Before I met you, were you ever—you know—with a girl?”
I shake my head. The sky is spinning, black and spinning, but our knees are touching, this delicate touching, and I think we’re at the climax, at first these smallish bursts over the trees in swift succession, then a barrage of light like lightning strikes above the Hidden Leaf Village, an immortal struggle for the fate of humanity in the hands of one young ninja named Naruto. If I was as brave as him, I’d just plain say it. Tell Stick the truth.
“Not even a blow job?”
He laughs and the panic shifts down my spine through my throat, sharp at the edge, pushing out from inside.
“Staci and me fooled around a bit,” he says. “I mean, I told you about that, but I don’t know, I haven’t really talked to her since school ended. I don’t know if I really like her.”
I must be thinking out loud and he can hear me, with all this talk about us being gay and being with girls and the way our hands are touching, he’s letting me touch him, the tips of my fingers on his skin as I breathe him in and catch a glimpse of his eyes, hoping for a sign. I will be okay, I say, possibly out loud this time.
Then the lights beam bright all at once in the sky, explosions of white with deep reds and spinning blues, and I lift my hand to block out the light, to block all this doubt from messing with my mind, and the sound gets louder now so Stick turns to look and I’m staring at the shaggy waves of brown nestled over his neck, tanned and golden from the summer in the sun. He turns back as the explosions crash through the trees, this chaos behind me, the sound of a horn from the train snaking past our development, piercing through the dark until I slip, I lose my grip and fall into Stick, my hands on his thighs and my head on his chest, collapsing in the heat of his chest. The sweat from his shirt seeps down through my skin, sucking me in, and he pulls me up, sliding my head along his neck, lifting my chin against his chin and my face against his face. I press my lips into his cheek like it’s some kind of mistake. But I linger.
I close my eyes so I can’t see his eyes and my lips wander down his cheek to his lips and he kisses me back for a second, this sweet wetness on my mouth for a single second, maybe longer. Longer. He pushes me away.
When I open my eyes, he’s backing away after pushing me away, but I push forward, knocking his hands away, his arms down to his waist and I lean forward with my face.
And he kisses me, above the chin, missing my mouth then finding my lips, a desperate stab of his tongue through my skin and I can taste it I think but it’s all so overwhelming. My eyes are open and Stick is kissing me. We’re kissing.
I reach out to pull him closer, my hands around his back but he stops me, pulling away and breaking the kiss. He slips from my grip and scrambles to his feet.
“Stick?”
The noise from the train scrapes into my brain, this booming braking over trembling tracks, racing past so fast it slips into my dream like it’s all been a dream but it can’t be, I’m awake. And this isn’t a dream.
“Matt.” Stick’s up on his feet, stepping back on the grass in the lights, it’s so bright out now with the moon and the train and the explosions overhead, cascading in rhythm. He stumbles backwards.
“I gotta go.”
“Wait—”
I try to stand, but my sneakers slip on the grass and Stick speeds into a sprint across the field, rushing away from me. The train clicks past and the horn fades fast and the fireworks stop. Everything stops.
I look up at the sky in the dark with this high and I want to chase after him but I can’t really move.
I can’t believe he kissed me.
I will be okay. Everything.
TWO
The best part about being a monster
Is not caring what happens to yourself.
Having teeth that can break without breaking.
No one wants to be your friend.
THE WORLD IS A BEAUTIFUL PLACE and I Am No Longer Afraid to Die. The greatest band that ever existed in the history of recorded music. It’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s paying attention, but most people aren’t paying attention. Not to me and not to Stick and not to Stick and me at school, I didn’t think, I don’t know what Trevor was suggesting, there’s no way it’s obvious—we don’t walk around town in tight jeans and blue hair and we don’t have earrings, even though I really want earrings, it’s just that it’s a pretty big sign and I don’t want to give signs, I just want to get through high school without anyone noticing so I press the volume thirty-eight times to blast the rest of the track, The World is a Beautiful Place is never loud enough for me.
I know the name is a bit extra, maybe too emo and not hardcore or punk enough like the hip hop stuff everyone in school loves, but I can’t help it, I’m fascinated with the way their songs bounce around in my head, left to right, soft then loud then another level louder with these jangly guitars and whirling percussion, speeding up and up and up like a train down the tracks, this constant building to breaking that spins through your brain when you’re fifteen and gay and you finally kissed the boy you’re obsessed with, you just haven’t heard from him since.
“Matty, what’s taking so long? Your father’s waiting for you!”
I have The World Is on full blast, bouncing off the tiles around the bathroom, all my thoughts about Stick and our kiss before he left and I stumbled home alone.
“Mateo Luis, are you alive in there?”
Mom knocks on the door in rapid succession, pauses half a second and bangs again. I have issues with taking long showers, even when I was little, before I realized it was the only place I could masturbate without my family interrupting.
“Your father needs help putting up the tent.”
Mom gets manic the week of a party, she’s on the weather app 24-7, tracking cold fronts and jet streams and quoting rain predictions like she has a degree in meteorology, but I don’t think it’s supposed to rain so I’m not sure the point of the tent and I don’t know what the rush is, it’s not even noon and we’re on Puerto Rican time which is at least two hours later than normal time for normal people and no one in my family is remotely normal.
“Matty, come on, I have to pee!”
Nico is next at the door, banging on the wood even louder than Mom, and I don’t respond to him either, I try not to feed his constant quest for attention. He’s three years younger than me but he just turned twelve so it’s more like four and I got enough stress with Mom and Dad and school and baseball, I can’t deal with my little brother right now. Especially when I’m thinking of Stick.
I texted him this morning like nothing happened, like I haven’t been thinking of our kiss every second since he left, my first kiss with a boy, or some kind of god taking on human form in the form of Stick, and I must have been out of my mind to even try, high from all the glue and the fireworks and Stick next to me on the grass, touching my skin. I couldn’t resist. I’ll be sixteen next year and I’m fully desperate.
Stick’s real name is Henry, but nobody calls him Henry, and I get why, it’s not a good name and it doesn’t fit his face and he’s been Stick ever since I met him. Not because he’s good with a bat and not for the size of the stick in his pants, not that I have any clue about that, not yet. But Stick is Stick because he’s tall and thin, or he used to be tall when he was a kid. He’s not much taller than me anymore and he doesn’t use his real name.