I cracked up and pul ed Griffin away from a bush of foxtail burrs. Those things were impossible to get out. This was not a very Normal thing to say, and I liked that. Stil , shape-shifters. You had to be careful.
“And I don’t mean like Pat Robertson’s God, like someone trying to sel you something so your soul goes to the good place. More like actual God.
Who is like a tree, or al trees, maybe. Who doesn’t care if you’re queer, like us.”
I stopped walking. I’m basical y out and everything, but. Adults. Not everyone is so okay with things. So I kinda meekly pointed ahead at them.
They were walking maybe ten feet in front of us.
“They’re adults in Central Phoenix. I’m pretty sure they know what queer teens look like.”
We started walking again, and soon we found that we could hear each other from opposite sides of empty 27th Street, which was silent except for occasional dog barks and bird chirps. He was on the west side of the street, saving the east side and the rare shade from trees to me. The street was this cool hodgepodge of old farmhouses, some with untended desert landscapes, others showcasing English gardens in the middle of the desert. Behind shrubs and gates sat secret gardens that you could sometimes catch a glimpse of from the right angle. A few artists displayed mosaics that expressed gratitude,
or joy, or peace, or Black Lives Matter. Praising health care workers. I loved it here.
“You out?” he cal ed from the opposite side of the street.
I shrugged. I was, though perhaps not at the yel ing-across-the-street level of outness. I was selectively out. At school with friends, yes. My mom knew, my grandma didn’t. That sort of thing. No need poking the angry bear. Or, in this case, the Pentecostal bear who occasional y spoke in tongues.
“We moved here from Pinetop a few months ago,” he said. “Great timing, right? I got like two months at my new school before it shut down. Me and my dad. It was so not okay up there.”
That made sense to me. He’d been al closeted up for so long, and now that he could, he was wearing his queerness on his sleeve. Because he could.
Griffin was veering left and right, like a prisoner on his one daily outing, which I suppose in a way he was. I stopped to let him sniff and then water a tal succulent that sat in front of a short peach fence. Daxton stopped too, and he crossed over toward where I was. I looked behind me, wanting to make sure there was enough room to give him distance.
“That makes sense,” I said. “Do you like it here?”
He nodded. “I like my high school. School for the Arts, you know it?”
My eyes lit up. “Oh, cool.”
“Yeah, my dad did okay on that one. He’s like NASCAR Dad with a heart of gold. It’s total y weird.”
We lingered as our dogs sniffed near each other, and the two adults were far in the distance now. I pointed, as if to say we should hurry up, and he shook his head and said, “It’s Caj.”
I wasn’t sure I should, because people don’t like being corrected. But I took my chances.
I said, “Um. It’s actual y Kaz. Like with a z.”
He gave me this look like, What?
Which was when it hit me that he meant their little dog-walking brigade.
Was caj. As in short for casual. And I thought, Why do I even speak, ever?
This is why I should join a monastery. So I nodded like I hadn’t just made a fool of myself, and then I played the scene back in my head and realized that
there was no way to avoid it, so I giggled. And he giggled. And that made the awkward feeling pressing against my chest go away.
“Hel o, Kaz with a z,” he said. “I’m Daxton with an x. And other letters.”
I’m sure he could see I was blushing, but I hoped to god most of the red was under my mask.
We made a plan to meet up to walk the next day, and somehow, I didn’t spend the entire day obsessing about conversation topics.
Who am I kidding? Of course I did.
—
The next day was one of those rare rainy days, when the sky sags in the corners, where it goes foreboding gray and you kind of know you might be in for a monsoon. We walked alone, just the two of us, and while I felt a little like Yoko Ono breaking up the Beatles, I liked it better this way.
He wore a black and red mask with the word love in cursive al over it. I wore a hospital-issue blue paper one. This seemed a little descriptive of the difference between me and Daxton.
What I longed to do was take my stupid mask off. Mostly because maybe it would get him to do the same and al ow me to see Daxton’s ful face.
Without seeing his mouth, it felt like I was stil missing this essential part of who he was.
I pul ed at my mask dramatical y.
“Damn. I wish we could take these off.”
“Tel me about it,” he said. “But my dad has diabetes. He’s high risk. I definitely can’t.”
I sighed, defeated. “Yeah. My mom works in a hospital. She’d kil me if she found out. On the plus side, at least I wouldn’t die of the pandemic.”
As we waved to the old lady with the German accent who sat on her porch in the mornings with her cats, Daxton said, “Do you ever get tired of yourself? Like, real y tired?”
I stopped walking. Griffin pul ed toward the cats, but my mind was on what Daxton had just said. I stared at him. Yes, of course I did. But this
seemed like a trap. Like something a Normal says to make you let your guard down, and then they pummel you with it.
“I don’t know.”
He had stopped walking, too, as I guess he needed time and space to ponder my bril iant comment. Then he said, “Wel . I sometimes think, like. I can never leave my brain. It’s always talking, twenty-four-seven. I’m so sick of me.”
And I thought, Yes! Me too! But I didn’t dare say it. So instead, I nodded a lot as we strol ed down different sides of Pinchot, and he shared things that were way too personal for me to ever say loud enough to be heard fifteen feet away, things about his mom’s death, and his dad crying softly behind closed bedroom doors after. I watched him, wondering what it would feel like to be confident enough to share private stuff like that, and this little part of me wanted to say something about when my dad left two years ago, my mom told me we had thirty days to mourn, to cry and be sad, and then we had to be done. But I wasn’t Daxton, and there was no way those words would ever breach my lips. So instead I nodded a lot, and said “yeah” and “right” a bunch of times, and when we got to my house, we paused, I did a meek little wave, and he wiped sweat off his forehead with the bottom of his tank top. Despite the cloudy day, it was already pretty hot. I tried not to stare at his bare bel y button and the smooth musculature of his torso. It was weird. I had now seen that but not his mouth. I wondered if the first time I saw his actual mouth, it would be like the first time seeing Nimo naked.
“I’m sorry if the things I say make you uncomfortable,” he said as his shirt sadly dropped back into position.
I swal owed. I shook my head fast.
“They don’t?”
“No, I. Like the things. You say.”
He gave me two thumbs up. “Okay. Cool.”
Griffin pul ed toward the front door, and I held tight because I had to say something. It was kil ing me to keep not saying everything.
So I said, “You are, out of your head, the way I am. In my head.”