Chapter Text
The open door policy at Evan’s house meant that there were always kids his age coming or going, stopping over for dinner, for a quiet place to do their homework, or even just a place to crash and play video games. Sometimes they stayed the night—though Evan’s dad Steven made it a policy to have them call home to let their parents know where they were, even if they weren’t comfortable enough to go home. That was more a legal thing than a moral thing, though.
He’d been accused of kidnapping once or twice in the past and he wasn’t looking to be accused of it again.
It wasn’t some religious quest of his or anything—Evan’s family wasn’t like that. They were just... socially conscious. Well, he wasn’t. But his parents. They were under the impression that teenagers would make better decisions if they were given options.
Evan wasn’t so sure about that, but it wasn’t his house, and he wasn’t the type to bitch about it. He wasn’t sure his dad would listen even if he did.
It was kind of difficult being the balanced, well-adjusted kid of the neighbourhood safe house for teens looking for shelter from whatever was going on at home, but Evan had installed a lock on his door when he was fourteen, after his Gameboy had gone missing one day, and he’d also bought himself one of those fucking awesome fire escape ladder things that he kept stashed under his bed. It made sneaking out at night a fucking breeze.
The old drive-in outside of town played classic movies every Sunday night, and Sunday nights were pretty busy back home. Evan had a theory that tensions at the other kids’ homes skyrocketed as the work and school week loomed threateningly ahead, and lots of kids sought shelter to finish up their homework, or more often than not, just fuck around on the PlayStation.
It was just a theory, though. Evan’s dad had instigated a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy around about the time he started the whole calling home thing.
Anyway, Evan didn’t play well with others. Or, really, they didn’t play well with him. The vast majority of his peers thought Evan was strange, antisocial (which was kind of true, but whatever), and a bit of a freak. If it wasn’t for the fact that his father was kind of a town hero (back in his own youth, Steven had been the star quarterback, and now he was the high school football coach), Evan had no illusions. He’d be beaten up, bullied, swirlied, and locked in random lockers every day of his life.
It was the sort of thing you expected when you hit your growth spurt at fourteen and nothing much happened. He’d never filled out, ending up as small and graceless as a baby deer, with the huge brown eyes and spattering of freckles to prove it. It was kind of one of the tragedies of his life, not that he was counting.
It wasn’t all bad, though. Sure, he was a hundred pounds soaking wet, prettier than a guy ought to be, smarter than he ought to be too, and his dad was a jocky football hero with a heart of gold who regularly filled Evan’s house with the very sort of predators who liked to pretend he didn’t exist. But Evan’s life had its upsides, too, like Sunday nights at the drive-in.
There was a loose board in the wooden fence that ran along the back of the drive-in where Evan could ditch his bike and slip through, and usually, Trent met him there.
Trent was a bit of a freak too, but he was the purposeful kind. He’d always been that tall, awkward kid with the bad, home-styled cut that looked like his mom’d just popped a bowl on top and trimmed around the edges. He’d rebelled against that around about fifteen, and by sixteen, his hair was a tangled, dirty mop, matched only by the patchy scrub that grew beneath his lower lip and along where his sideburns ought to be. He had a thing for oversized t-shirts with nasty sayings on them, and on the particular Sunday when everything started going to hell, he was wearing one that said “I fucked my feminine side.”
He was always classy.
“Night of the Living Dead next week,” he said when Evan slipped through the fence. He was grimacing around the soda straw between his lips.
“What? You love that shit,” Evan said, rolling his eyes and stealing the Pepsi for a sip.
“Everyone loves that shit,” Trent said, sighing. He was propped up against one of the birch trees that lined the back of the drive-in. “Zombies are like, some sort of popular cult phenomenon or something these days. Whole place’ll be crowded with hipsters.”
Evan wrinkled his nose, already trying to think up somewhere else to spend next Sunday night. It was a little bit ironic that his house was an open-door place for everyone except for him. “Get Miriam to invite us over,” he said. After all, Miriam was Trent’s semi-girlfriend, wasn’t that the sort of favour you asked of semi-girlfriends? Evan wouldn’t really know, he’d never had one.
“Dude,” Trent said, eyes going wide. “That would be so weird.”
“She’s your girlfriend, that means you’ve got some sort of claim on her couch and her Xbox, I’m sure that’s a rule.”
“We’re not dating!” Trent looked horrified. “We just... hook up sometimes.”
“Oh.” Evan’s shoulders sunk a little. The worst part about living in a small town—other than the people—was the lack of entertainment options. “Bowling?”
Trent didn’t answer, just fell to the ground with a groan and lay there, squinting up at the sky through the trees. Sighing, Evan went to the nearest speaker box, flipped it on, and glanced up at the screen. They were playing Casablanca. What a fucking surprise; they were always playing Casablanca.
“With the whole world crumbling, we pick this time to fall in love,” Lisa said on screen, and Evan wouldn’t admit to anyone that he was a little bit fond of this movie. Not even under torture. It was such a cliché.
“At least it’s a double feature,” he grumbled as he slid down the tree trunk to sit propped up against it. Trent just grunted in reply and slurped at the ice at the bottom of his cup.
*
It started to rain on the bike ride home, which figured. Evan got sick far too easily and he was just asking for a massive lung infection, peddling through the pouring rain the way he was.
It tapered off before he got to his street, just a flash shower, and Evan kind of liked the aftermath of it, when the streets shone like they’d been freshly oiled, reflecting all the streetlights and the shadows.
He was soaked clear through and shivering, but Evan still got off his bike to walk it the last little bit because he liked watching the ripples his shoes made as he walked through the puddles.
His house was dark, all tucked in for the night, and Evan was quiet after he slipped through the front door, locking it behind him. Yeah, they had an open-door policy, but they weren’t stupid.
He toed off his wet shoes and shrugged out of his sweater before padding through the kitchen and up the stairs. Evan kept the key to his bedroom on a string around his neck and he tugged it off after he made a quick stop at the bathroom. He wasn’t sure if anyone was staying over or not, though he had paused by each of the two guest rooms to listen for breathing.
It didn’t matter anyway. He locked his bedroom door behind him, tossed his wet sweater onto his computer chair, and tugged his damp t-shirt off, dropping it to the floor. His jeans were too tight to begin with, but wet, it was practically a magic trick to get them off, and it took a good deal more squirming, tugging, and cursing to get them off than he’d care to admit.
Flushed, panting, and exhausted, he was too lazy to find pyjama bottoms and instead just crashed in his underwear, staring up at his ceiling in the hazy glow of his lava lamp until he’d caught his breath.
His mind wandered, black and white flashes of Casablanca over a backdrop of everyday things until he slipped into sleep, his hair drying in curls around his face.
He hated when it did that.
*
It was the lazy trail of headlights on the wall that woke him some time later, because Evan was a very light sleeper. The fact that they’d stopped, still centered on the wall and lighting up his board of doodles before going dark sort of threw him off, because that meant someone had parked right outside.
It didn’t necessarily mean anything bad, of course. It probably had nothing to do with his house at all.
The soft knock a few seconds later derailed that hope. Nothing good ever came from knocks on the door at—he rolled over, squinting at his clock before fumbling for his glasses—3:27 in the morning.
The knock came again, harder this time, and Evan sighed, rolling out of bed and landing awkwardly on his knees. He fumbled for a pair of pants, grabbed a sweater—not the wet one, thankfully—and was still tugging it over his head when he got to the door. He flicked the lock and tugged the door open while simultaneously pulling his sweater down, and then he froze.
He knew the guy on the step, though the impressive swelling that shut his right eye and left a harsh pattern of bruises all the way down to his mouth—split lip and everything—did a pretty good job of nearly making him unrecognizable. Still, Evan was pretty sure he could recognize him anywhere. The guy was kind of a legend.
Connor Jackson had transferred to Kennedy Heights when he was sixteen and spent the next year being quiet, reclusive, and strange. There were all sorts of rumours about him—he’d been expelled from his school in the city for pyromaniac tendencies, for breaking the quarterback’s arm, for bringing a gun and a hit list to school, some people said. Others said he’d tried to kill himself and been sent away from wherever he’d come from and its bad influence to live with his father after his mother had had enough of him. Whatever the truth was, Connor had never tried to set the story straight, and when school had started up a few weeks before, Connor just hadn’t shown up. Rumours about why were almost as rampant as why he’d come to town in the first place. Most people assumed he’d been shipped off to Juvie, and no one had seen him since.
“Is Coach Lee here?” he asked, hunching his wide shoulders and shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie. Evan just blinked and stared, because he’d never heard Connor speak before, and the soft hint of Southern accent threw him off. He’d sort of expected something harsher.
“Uhm,” Evan said, not at his most eloquent, and Connor flinched a little, turning away.
“I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean—”
“Evan,” his father said suddenly from the stairway. “Let the boy in!”
Evan stumbled back, worried that Connor would repay his rudeness with a switchblade or something—there were rumours of that too—but Connor just glanced up at Evan’s father before ducking his head again, blond hair falling into his eyes.
“I’m really sorry, sir,” he said, voice soft and rhythmic. “But the cops sent me here, said I can’t sleep in my car anymore. It’s alright if you—”
“Come in and shut the door, son,” Steven said, ushering Connor in and closing the door behind him. Evan had inched back to the stairs, making his escape, and he could hear his father droning on about hot chocolate or a snack, asking Connor if he needed anything, reassuring him that they had room for him to stay for a day or two until they could figure something out. All the usual bullshit without asking anything that Evan wanted to know the answers to.
When he glanced over his shoulder though, it was to find Connor watching him go, his head tilted curiously, and that just made Evan dash up the stairs faster, thanking his lucky stars for the lock he’d put on his door.
*
The thing about wearing contacts to school is that it meant having to force them in, fumbling and disoriented, at an ungodly and early hour before stumbling downstairs for breakfast, and it sucked. Still, it was better than the alternative, which was going to school wearing his stupid glasses, which really didn't go with the look he was trying to pull off. Besides, he had gym today, and gym was a bitch when he couldn't see.
Evan was not a morning person, and even the kids from school who showed up and spent the night knew not to speak to him before he got at least half a cup of coffee. His morning ritual included shoving his contacts in his eyes, whether they wanted to be there or not, shuffling down stairs and making grabby hands until he managed to get a hold of a mug, fill it with blissfully hot coffee, and find a chair at the kitchen table.
He sipped, swallowed, grimaced at the burn, and repeated a few times before Evan was conscious enough to focus on the fact that Connor was sitting across from him, eyebrows raised, watching him like he was a special on the Discovery Channel.
Evan cleared his throat, fought the urge to make sure his hair wasn't standing up or something, and said, "Coffee?"
"Yeah, it is," Connor agreed with a slow smile, nodding once.
"No, I mean." He waved a hand at the coffee machine. "You can have some, if you want."
"I got it. It's okay."
Evan took another sip, glanced back after a moment, and saw that, yeah, Connor was still watching him. His cheeks flushed a little bit and he said, "I'm, uhm. My name's Evan."
"Evan Lee, yeah," Connor said. When Evan shot him a suspicious look, he said, "We had art together?" with a small shrug.
"Oh." Evan frowned, trying to recall art class from the year before, but all he got was a haze of tempera paint and frustration. He'd hated art class because his teacher Mr. Sorensen had hated everything Evan had wanted to do.
"Yeah." Connor looked away and Evan felt awkward. He got up just for something to do and found a box of Poptarts. For a moment, he considered toasting them, but that would take ages, so instead, he sat back down and slid one across the table to Connor.
"Here," he said. "Strawberry. All those new kinds are disgusting."
Connor smiled a little in thanks and took it. He took a careful bite, like it might be poisoned or something, and really, like Evan was going to stoop to Poptart poison.
He shoved the last half of his Poptart into his mouth and, still chewing, grabbed his backpack. "School," he said, mouth full.
"You want a ride?"
Evan blinked at him slowly, and said, "Uh, no, s'okay."
He wasn't sure what would be worse, getting into a car with Connor, who was certifiably weird, or the jerks at school seeing him getting out of Connor's car in the parking lot.
Connor's cheeks flushed and he ducked his head, mumbling, "Sure," and Evan felt like an ass.
Hitching his bag up higher on his shoulder, he slammed out the front door before the feeling could settle.
*
Evan walked, and he arrived just as first bell rung, which meant the hallways were a teeming mass of hormones and awkward, gangly teenaged bodies. He was like a fish swimming the wrong way up a rushing river or something—similes weren’t his strong suit. The point was, however, that getting to his locker was a quest of epic proportions, and when he finally managed to duck out of the crush and take shelter at his destination, he was winded and his mood was more than a little foul.
He was digging around in the bottom of his locker when Trent appeared, looking half asleep.
“Dude,” he said in greeting. “Gotta do me a favour.”
“And what would that be?” Evan asked, before grunting with triumph and yanking his chemistry homework out from the very depths of his locker. He shoved it in his binder, the one barely clinging to life and a strip of tattered duct tape, and finally turned to Trent, who was grimacing at his reflection in the little mirror Evan kept stuck to the inner door of his locker. He was trying to pick something out of his teeth, and that was just nasty, so Evan slammed the door shut with a well-aimed hip-check and said, “Seriously? I’ve got to get to chem. In like, two minutes. What do you want? I’m not doing your math homework.”
“No, this is even worse, beyond the scope of math homework.” Trent’s eyes were wide with panic and he’d given up on whatever was stuck in his teeth, hunching closer and hissing, “Organized sports, man. Tryouts tonight, after school, and I need a partner.”
Evan cracked up, because seriously. Trent had to be joking. Even if he actually believed for a second that Trent would ever dream of trying out for any of the sports teams, he knew for a fact that he’d never drag Evan down with him. It would be punishment for whatever team it was; Evan was not the most athletic student at Kennedy Heights.
“Shut up!” Trent snapped. “Seriously. Tryouts, and you have to tryout in pairs, it’s completely ridiculous.”
“Okay, even if I took you seriously—and that’s a concession I’m unwilling to make at the moment—all the sports teams already had their tryouts, and none of them involve partners.”
Trent grimaced, turning sickly pale, and sidled closer, dropping his voice another level, and said, “Cheerleaders are holding tryouts hoping to get some guys on the team.”
Evan’s expression of shock, dismay, and hysteria was relegated to a startled squeak, and before he could start laughing again, Trent grabbed his arm desperately and said, “Miriam’s on the team, and she promised I’d get to touch her boobs if I tryout. You’ve got to help me.”
“You’re serious,” Evan said, after a long moment in which the final bell rang and the only other students left in the hall were those dashing to make it to class. He was late; that was nothing new. “You’re fucking serious.” He stared at Trent with the horrified fascination of someone watching a car wreck.
“Please,” Trent said, widening his eyes. “You owe me, dude.”
“For what?”
“For Sara Michaels.”
“You can’t think I still owe you for that,” Evan hissed. “Seriously, any debt I owed you for that was gone after I did your math homework for a week last year when you broke your arm, don’t even—”
“You broke my arm,” Trent said desperately. “It was your stupid idea, and—”
“And an accident!” Evan interrupted. “And it doesn’t matter! You getting Sara Michaels to dance with me in the eighth grade is not worth trying out to be a fucking cheerleader with you! Not only would it completely shred any street cred I’ve got—”
“Which is none.”
“—I haven’t got an athletic bone in my body! I’m a walking toothpick! No, wait, I’m not, because toothpicks are a whole lot more coordinated than I am! I regularly trip over my own feet. Besides, purple isn’t my colour.”
“Dude. Evan, dude. Boobs.” Trent was wheedling, and Evan took a deep breath, rubbing at the tension between his eyes, focussing on the letters on today’s t-shirt. Talk Nerdy to Me.
“Fine,” he said, because he thought there might be some friendship rulebook that said ‘thou shalt not prevent thy friends from touching boobs’. Or something. “But you owe me.”
Trent beamed at him, punched him in the shoulder in celebration, and then said, “Shit, I am so late.”
By the time Evan made it to chemistry, he was five minutes late, and got detention because of it. Sadly, it was a lunch time deal, not after school, so it didn’t give him a convenient out and was just another source of irritation.
*
He met Trent in the parking lot after school, shouldering his back pack filled with far too much homework, and of course Miriam was there. She was short, curvy, and cracking her bubble gum impatiently, so he didn’t hold them up as they made their way to the football field where tryouts were being held.
There was a football practice going on, and when Evan saw it, he stopped dead. “Oh wait,” he said numbly. “I can’t do this.”
“You better not back out now,” Miriam snapped, and Trent give him those same wide, desperate eyes.
“My dad’ll kill me, and not even metaphorically. Actually kill me dead.” He could see his father over supervising the hulky footballers, doing warm up exercises across the field.
“He won’t,” Miriam said calmly, digging her long nails into the tender, exposed flesh of Evan’s forearm and hauling him over to the clustered group of cheerleaders. “He’ll appreciate you taking an interest in football that won’t get you killed. Probably.”
“I have no interest in football,” he said faintly but no one heard him.
There were four other guys who’d somehow been enticed into showing up for this and Evan was pretty sure that all of them, save one, were just doing it for the chance to get close to girls. The one in question, Kyle Spencer, was on nearly every sports team that didn’t involve team play. Swimming, golf, track and field, gymnastics... it was kind of ridiculous. He was tall, chiselled, blond, and intimidating. He’d probably stand a good chance of tossing around the girls and catching them again. His partner, however, Howard Daught, didn’t stand a chance. He was weedy and stooped, on the debate team, and staring at Sara Michaels like he stood a chance in hell.
Because yeah, Sara Michaels, subject of Evan’s eighth grade fantasies, was a member of the squad. She was petite, gorgeous, and super sweet, and when she saw Evan there, she smiled at him and said, “Evan! I didn’t know you were athletically inclined!”
Before Evan could even stammer a reply, Trent was elbowing him in the side and wagging his eyebrows, and Evan slunk away to stand beside the other two males who were trying out for the decidedly female squad—both of whom were definitely from the basement-dweller delegation.
The girls led them through a few easy cheers then sent them off in their pairs to practice. It was hell. Evan shook his pompoms, shouted the ridiculous words (“sitting on a bandstand, beating on a tin can, who can? We can! Nobody else can!” Seriously?), and waved his arms about with a respectable level of fake enthusiasm and a plastic smile.
After the allotted practice time was over, they performed—again, in pairs—and Evan was pretty sure that the girls watching them like hungry hawks would do the responsible thing and not choose him. After all, he tripped over his own feet twice and seemed to lack the coordination to move his hands and his feet at the same time.
“We’ll post the results on the bulletin board tomorrow morning,” Candace Leery, head of the squad, said when the tryout was over. “Thanks for coming out.”
It was all rather anticlimactic but Trent was pleased, and Miriam was too, if the long, involved, disgusting kiss she gave Trent was any indication.
“Gross,” he declared, and Trent flashed the middle finger over Miriam’s shoulder.
*
Trent had gone off with Miriam, which left Evan walking home alone. It sucked, but the rain from the night before had cleared up and it was a pretty warm evening, so he didn’t mind so much.
He was startled when his father pulled up beside him. Still, Evan climbed in, shoving his back pack in the back seat
They drove in silence for a moment and then his dad said, “So. Cheerleading, eh?”
Ignoring the heat rising to his cheeks, Evan tried to shrug it off. “Yeah. Trent wanted to try out and needed a partner.”
He could feel his dad looking at him but Evan refused to look back, and instead stared pointedly out the window. Luckily, his dad dropped the subject. “So, I thought you should know. Connor will be staying with us a while.”
That got Evan’s attention and his head snapped around to stare. “Seriously? Why? What happened?”
“It’s not really my place to say,” his dad said evenly. “But his options are limited and honestly, I can’t believe the kid has been living in his car for as long as he has.”
“How long has that been?” Evan asked, fiendishly curious for any tidbit of information.
Steven looked at him for a moment and then pulled into the driveway. “Long enough. He’s got nowhere to go, and he’s been through hell. I’m going to need you to help him out, okay?”
Evan wanted to pull the sullen route, to cross his arms and sulk and ask what he could do when his father wouldn’t even tell him what was going on, but instead he just nodded, glancing out the window. Connor was there, on his hands and knees, pulling out the dead bodies of Evan’s mom’s petunia beds. His hands were dirty, his hair dishevelled, and a streak of soil marked the spot he must have rubbed at on his neck.
“He just needs somewhere to stay,” Steven said quietly.
Evan undid his seatbelt, gathering up his bag, and said with a shrug, “You can’t save everyone, dad.”
After all, he hadn’t saved Mia, but Evan didn’t remind him of that. There were some things that they didn’t talk about in his house, and Mia was one of them.
Whatever Connor had done was apparently another one.
*
Some of the guys from the football team came over after dinner. They didn't just use Evan's house as a kind of shelter from negative choices, they also just used it to hang out, shoot hoops in the driveway (at least someone used the basket his dad had installed for his 12th birthday), or play video games in the living room. Evan had disappeared into his room as soon as he'd gotten home, spent a few hours working on his math homework, read a page or two of Watership Down for English, and then gave up. He texted Trent but the bastard didn't answer-- which meant Miriam was probably putting out like she'd promised. Evan logged into SKYPE, logged out again, and then hopped on Facebook. He updated his status with "Bunnies will never be literature" and then went back to staring at his ceiling.
Finally, when he was so bored that his contacts were drying out in his eyes, he went downstairs, rubbing blearily at them and blinking in an attempt to rehydrate. He grabbed a Coke from the kitchen, leaned a hip against the counter, and stared out the window. That was just as boring.
Sighing, he turned to find Connor frozen in the doorway, looking startled, like he hadn't expected Evan to be there. It was Evan's house, damn it.
"Hey," he said, just as a wave of cheers and shouts came from the living room. Evidently the guys from the football team were playing NHL 11.
"Uh. Sorry. Didn't know-- I didn't realize you were home." Connor shifted on his feet, glanced over his shoulder, looked altogether skittish and twitchy, and didn't seem capable of deciding whether it was worse to be alone with Evan in the kitchen, or closer to the jocks in the living room.
"Yeah. Homework." Evan took a sip, not looking away from Connor, and then made this massive, life-changing, difficult decision with the impulsive disregard for consequences that he was known for. Well, it kind of felt like that. What he said was, "So, I have an XBox upstairs. If you want."
Connor's eyes narrowed and his shoulders hunched defensively. He tore his gaze away from Evan's and ducked his head, and Evan explained, "I mean. If you want to come play. Unless you'd rather…" He waved his can of Coke towards the living room vaguely, just as someone scored-- or didn't score-- and a chorus of groans and insults rose up.
"God no," Connor said quickly, his cheeks flushing, as he shook his head. "That would be-- yeah, sure. Yes."
"Right." Evan shook his hair out of his eyes, grabbed another Coke for Connor, and led the way upstairs. He wondered what the hell he was doing, breaking his personal rule against inviting people other than his friends into his room. But it wasn't like Connor was quite like the other kids who stayed here from time to time-- okay, Connor was nothing like that. He was all restless energy crammed into a wide-shouldered, tall, and solid package. He was an unknown quantity who could be a murderer or a pyromaniac or some other sort of freak-- not that Evan didn't have his moments of playing with matches.
Maybe that made him even more dangerous than the kids Evan's father regularly associated with. But Evan glanced in at the bruisers playing hockey in the living room, regularly pounding the shit out of each other, and he just couldn't feel it. Connor was awkward as fuck, yeah, and he was strange, and he stared a lot like he was trying to figure Evan out-- no one got to figure Evan out, he was as complicated and unique and special as a snowflake, damn it-- but he wasn't dangerous. And Evan was so, so bored.
At least it would be a break in that monotony.
He unlocked his door, hung the key back around his neck, and Connor watched him but didn't comment on the fact that he'd locked his door just for a trip to the kitchen.
Inside, Evan ran a quick, critical glance over his room, kicked a few embarrassing articles of dirty clothes under the bed, and then said, "So, uh. This is my room. You can sit wherever." He turned the TV and the XBox on, grabbed the controllers, and said, "Left 4 Dead okay?"
"Sure." He smiled a little, crooked and kind of charming. "I've never played, though."
"It's okay. You get a gun and shoot loads of zombies." Evan shrugged. "Pretty easy." He wondered, very briefly, if perhaps convincing a teenaged delinquent to play Left 4 Dead, with its lifelike blood and guts and glory, was a good idea, but then he shrugged it off.
Besides, Connor really sucked. If grabbing a machine gun, holding the trigger, and spinning in circles was a technique, he had it down perfectly, but he really ended up shooting himself in the feet more times than he got the enemy. Evan didn't mind, though. Unlike certain freaks of his acquaintance (Trent), he didn't take the game or its online play as seriously as he could have. Besides, it was fucking hysterical.
"Hey, so," Connor said after a while, glancing sideways at Evan while the game reloaded. "Sorry about--"
"It's okay," Evan said, smirking. "Trent shoots me all the time, I'm used to it."
"Uh, no. I meant, sorry about… I know it must suck-- your dad said I'm going to stay awhile?"
Oh. "Oh," he said, blinking, shifting gears from zombie apocalypse to real life. "Right. No. It's fine. I don't care. Not a big deal, like I said."
"Kind of a big deal for me," Connor said softly, looking away again. He fidgeted with the tab on his Coke before finally popping it. "Anyway, uhm. I don't know how long they'll let me-- how long I'll stay, but." He wrinkled his nose, cleared his throat, and said, "Your dad says I've got to go back to school? He talked to my dad, and that was the deal they worked out."
"Your dad? He doesn't want…" He trailed off awkwardly.
"Uh, no. He doesn't want anything. But your dad said… school. Anyway. Your mom got me a backpack."
"Dude, I am so sorry," Evan said quickly, and Connor turned to stare. "Uhm. Is it really… ugly? She's got this… weird sense of humour and thinks that, like, there's some sort of irony in ugly things?"
"Uh, no." He shook his head, looking carefully amused. "It's fine. I just… was worried that you'd get shit from it?"
Evan stared at him blankly for a moment and then said, "No one gives me shit, they love my dad."
Connor laughed, all dry disbelief. "Seriously? That's what you think?"
"No, it's true. Sometimes they push me around a bit, but generally I’m invisible." He shrugged. "I don't care."
Connor went quiet, studying him and making a low, thoughtful sound at the back of his throat. "Okay. Well. I just wanted you to know, I'll try to… you don't have to, you know. Whatever happens at school, it's none of your concern, you don't have to… feel obligated or anything."
Evan smiled a little, puzzled, and said, "What's going to happen?"
"Same shit that always happens," Connor replied with a shrug. "Just don't get involved, okay?"
"Why would I?" He didn't mean to come off like an asshole, but he was honestly curious, and Connor just smiled, a wry, cold twist of his lips as he ducked his head, hiding behind a mop of tousled blonde hair.
"Why would you?" he echoed quietly to himself, and Evan was just as confused as he'd been to start.