More Happy Than Not

A couple of weeks later, Collin hands me back my copy of Scorpius Hawthorne and the Hollows, the final book in the series. Inside is a note asking me to check yes or no without a question. But I know what he’s talking about and it doesn’t scare me like I thought it would if this day ever came.

I check yes and slide it back across the table.

Collin reads it, folds the paper into his front pocket, nods and says, “Cool.”

After school there’s a basketball game and I tell Genevieve I’m going to hang back and watch it. She thought it was weird, but wasn’t too bothered by it because it gave her a little extra time to focus on her homework without me calling to distract her. Collin told his girlfriend, Nicole, that he wanted to see if any of the players who made the cut are actually worth anything.

But we don’t watch the game.

I chase him up the staircase to the top floor and, out of breath, I ask him, “Why me? And don’t try and shrug your way out of this one, or tell me I’m cool.”

He shrugs.

I fake going downstairs.

He grabs my arm. “Because I could tell you were different without it being obvious to everyone else you were different, okay? Someone would have to sit down and get to know you to actually figure it out, if that makes sense. And I like what I’ve seen so far. That do it for you?”

“Sure, even if that speech was a bit much.”

“Asshole. Your turn: Why me?”

I shrug, get in his face, and tell him he’s cool. We both look downstairs at the same time to make sure no one’s coming up, and then we turn and kiss.

(AGE SIXTEEN—NOVEMBER, EIGHT MONTHS AGO)

“I’m teaching you how to ride a bike,” Collin says as he wheels over a beat-up ten-speed with a popped chain toward me. “You’re sixteen and officially ten years too old to wait around for your daddy to teach you.” He kneels over and fixes the chain; I can see the skin of his lower back.

“Maybe I’m too old to learn.”

“No, you’ll never get a driver’s license if you can’t even ride a bike. Come on, you can act like it’s Scorpius’s broom. The Red Sprite, right?”

“Sold.”

I get on and Collin tells me the basics. I expect him to hold my back or my shoulder but we’re in his neighborhood and his friends are around. I pedal and fall over, almost banging my head into a fire hydrant. He extends his hand to me and asks, “Any chance I’m forgetting a broom with training wheels?”

Collin has already lost both of his virginities.

He got it on with this girl Suria when he was fourteen, after she gave him a hand job under the bleachers in the gym. Then he let this guy plow him last year when he was vacationing in the Poconos.

I still have both of my virginities to lose. I’ve only gotten as far as groping with Genevieve. I want to take it to the next level with Collin.

We recently tried doing it in a nearby building’s staircase, but didn’t get very far undressing ourselves before we heard someone coming down. The same deal with this abandoned porch up on the balcony a few nights ago, which was really risky, but worth risking, I think. We’ve ventured far away from my block and stumble on to a hiding space behind a wired fence, in-between a meat market and a flower shop, businesses of death and life.

“It smells like dead cow,” I say. “But kind of nice too. Weird.”

“Jesus, do you want me to go get you a flower?” Collin asks, flipping me off. We always flip each other off because it’s how we remain guys, you know. Collin steps over a rusty bike without wheels, leaving me to wonder the next time he’ll try and teach me how to ride a bike, and he wrenches the bottom of the fence until it folds back enough for us to crawl through.

It’s dark out and we’re so far away from our friends on the block and our girlfriends at home. I bet the fucking moon can’t even see us right now. I shove him and he shoves me back. I tackle him against the wall, unbuttoning his shirt, and it’s all condoms and awkward memories from there.

It’s chillier today, so we can’t have sex when we go to our spot. We decide to leave a physical mark instead. I borrowed some cans of spray paint from Genevieve she had left over from an assignment a year ago. I was happy as hell when Collin agreed to this because it meant we shared something beyond sex.

Collin sprays a black-and-blue world onto the dirty wall. I hear police sirens so I have to think quickly in case they’re coming for us. I streak a green arrow over the world. It looks like the universal icon for boys, which makes sense because we’re men no matter what we do together. Collin adds a crown and makes us kings.

The sirens fade into the distance so we hang around and keep decorating—for lack of a straighter word. He sprays some weird, shapeless creature on the other wall. “Hey, can I borrow a kiss?”

“Nah.”

“Okay, let’s try this again: kiss me or I’ll spray you,” Collin threatens.