Jamie pops open one of their boxes and pulls out a king-size candy bar they shoplifted last weekend. He twists it in half and they lean against the wall, gnashing at the toffee and the nougat. When they finish, Jamie takes a deep breath, adjusts the crotch of his jeans, and turns to lean onto AJ, pressing his erection against AJ’s hips.
“Do you feel that?” he says, and smirks.
“Yeah,” AJ responds, and licks the milk chocolate off his hand.
Jamie kisses AJ with tongue, smears of candy still on his lips and stuck in his braces, and rocks his hips on AJ’s in a performed and disembodied way, going through the motions with no regard for what might feel good. AJ coughs into the kiss, and Jamie takes it for a moan of pleasure and fishes his hands up under AJ’s shirt to fondle his breasts.
AJ’s had sizable tits since fifth grade, the only thing about him, he’s certain, which earns him some kind of use value for others, an idea so loudly and consistently reinforced by the lust, envy, and scorn of others that his dysphoria around having them at all won’t surface consciously for another decade. In 2016, when AJ wakes up from his top surgery, his first thought will be, “well, now I’ll have to rely on charm alone.”
For now, AJ thinks, they keep Jamie interested, and it mostly feels good. They’re achingly heavy, and Jamie grabs them like he’s catching a ball, squeezes, pushes them up toward AJ’s chin. This is the way every boy will ever touch them, like he can’t believe his good luck but needs to relocate them skyward like a button mash code to unlock some next level fondling. It’s sloppy, but a welcome relief from gravity, and it’s so easy to just stand there and allow it to happen.
AJ wants to touch Jamie in return, kiss Jamie’s whole body with his clothes off. For some reason, the thought of acting on these things then and there, in the same semi-public way that Jamie acts on all of his desires, does not occur to AJ.
What does cross his mind is an urge to steal tapes. He passively suggests they head over to the mall for some release.
Jamie’s made a wet spot on the crotch of his jeans but tucks himself away and repeats AJ’s words as though they are his own.
“Good idea,” AJ tells him.
The rest of the school is filing back into the building for the last two and a half class periods of the day, and Jamie wipes his mouth and focuses on opening a portal. He holds AJ’s hand because he believes this makes the magic stronger. If a teacher does see them, they’re not going to do anything now that Jamie’s got that serious look on his face. Jamie doesn’t have to take any tests, or even really keep coming to school, and the guidance counselors have recommended private therapists and grief groups but he won’t let anybody try to help him, not even his mother, Eileen. Everybody wants Jamie to talk, so they keep telling him yes, and he hates all of them.
AJ doesn’t ask Jamie to talk, which is how they’ve gotten so close, but AJ wants it just as much as everyone else. He thinks that the trick is to be so reliable that any day now, all this time together is going to add up to something meaningful and Jamie will open up, finally, to AJ and nobody else. The saddest boy in the whole school will tell AJ things about his dad, and say “you’re the only one who understands,” and it will be the single most flattering and fulfilling burden of AJ’s whole life. AJ lays in bed at night and imagines the whole scenario. Sometimes he rehearses the hushed, intimate tone he’s going to respond in.
They figured out the veil and the portals in the first place because Jamie was looking for a spot to set his diary on fire last Halloween, and AJ had been the one to bring him a lighter and show him how to use it. They burned the barely-filled notebook behind the bushes—what could possibly be in there, AJ wondered, as it burned—and buried the ashes under the mulch, and that’s when they saw other transient places in the town, the nothing spots, where nobody lived or worked and nobody wanted to stay for very long, and they could reach out and touch them and step into them and find themselves there.
Jamie tried to use it to go back in time, but it never worked. AJ knew Jamie had tried to go back to September 10th alone, and was never going to ask AJ to go there with him, but he had tried and failed and AJ knew this because one day Jamie got really philosophical about what the portals were and how they worked. People always get deep after they don’t get what they really want, AJ thought.
The boys rip a wound in the world and walk through it together, still holding hands. They exit in the food court behind the photo booths, and separate inside Suncoast Video. AJ peels the shrinkwrap off an anime boxset and slips the individual tapes into his cargo pockets while Jamie dumps a handful of coins onto the counter and asks the clerk how much candy he can get for five dollars in loose change. This takes enough time for AJ to inconspicuously slip back out of the store and appear to be idly browsing bachelor party gags in Spencer’s Gifts by the time Jamie joins him again. They have it down to routine, but this time Jamie takes more than an hour to rejoin. When he does, AJ is running out of excuses to browse the joke book section without buying anything.
“Sup,” Jamie says with forced coolness.
“I don’t get what the thing is about mother-in-laws,” AJ says, closing a book and returning it to the shelves. “What took so long? Are we in the clear?”
“Yeah, yeah, just had to make a side trip.”
They head to the basement level of the mall parking garage and climb through a portal back to school, in time for the procession of SUVs at the front circle. AJ rushes to change out of what he’s wearing and back to the clothes he left home in that morning. When he’s done, he and Jamie meet out front and climb into the back of Eileen’s car for a ride home.
Eileen greets the kids wearing a leather blazer and her hair styled for volume, cinnamon shoulder-length curls. She looks resilient, tired, and handsome. Jamie eyes the luxury jacket with suspicion. He wonders where her cat-hair covered fleece is, her usual abundance of bobby pins coming loose.
“Happy Friday,” she sing-songs, and Jamie crosses his arms over his chest. She turns to AJ and asks him if he’s attending Crystal Sazerac’s sweet thirteen with Jamie that evening.
“Oh yeah,” AJ responds, a soft fog of dread setting into his mood. “I’d forgotten about it.”
Eileen hums along with the radio as she drives AJ home. The two boys wallow silently, slumped down, AJ with his knees pressed against the seat in front of him and Jamie twisted onto his hip, face and shoulders leaning onto the window.
AJ’s mother had not forgotten that the next door neighbor’s daughter was turning thirteen, though she is still at work when he gets home. Set out on his bed is a hideous too-large jumper dress and an already-wrapped present.
Even if AJ wanted to wear girl’s clothing, the things his mom picks out and mandates are humiliating. She still buys him little kid stuff in incrementally larger sizes, with no sense of context, telling him he looks “cute.” The word “cute” feels like an insult for the rest of his life. He puts on the dress, and practically swims around in the garish materials.
It’s no use arguing. His mother thinks his discomfort is an attempt to hurt her. He doesn’t yet know most other children’s parents do not physically restrain and slap them for wanting to dress themselves. This is how he started shoplifting in the first place. He wanted a denim jacket, unisex, well-fitting, so he nicked one from K-Mart. The desire was so practical, but it gave him something he never had before—a secret, a part of his life he could control.