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He’d do anything to get away from home.
When he was ten, it was the baking club after school. The room was warm; the ceilings were high, like the ones in the town library, high enough that the deer who taught the class wouldn’t hit her antlers against the light fixtures. Angus can’t name the exact reason he liked the class so much—it’s all tied intrinsically together in his head, the food and nice people and wide-open spaces that didn’t make him feel like he was suffocating. One big Nice Experience that got bound up with a bow in Angus’s mind, and left to collect dust when the club got shut down from lack of funds.
Sometimes he has dreams that the deer who taught the class adopted him, and they baked together, and he never went hungry again.
But still, Angus would do anything to get away from home, and here he is. Away from home, sitting in the waiting room to see the principal, crossing his fingers that his grades are good enough to get approved for the school’s new tutoring project. Supposedly, as the bright marker-colored posters on the walls claim, the program is going to encourage a sense of community within our school! Angus doesn’t care what it encourages, as long as it gets him out of his house for a couple hours every night.
He’s picking at a run in his sweater, wondering if he should bother to stop by the dumpsters behind the school and see if the cafeteria threw away anything worth grabbing, when the glass door bangs open and a fox goes falling through, tumbling and hitting the ground with a weird metallic rattling.
Angus stops pulling at the loose thread in his sleeve.
The fox stands up, and brushes off the front of his jacket, making the pins whack against each other again (oh). He’s disheveled, though Angus can’t tell if it’s on purpose or not—whether the ripped-up knees of his jeans and the tousled fur on his head is part of his style, or whether he’s just been in a fistfight. The fox slouches into the seat closest to the door, rummages around in his pocket, comes up with a pocketknife, and begins carefully gouging letters into the chair.
For a few minutes the room is quiet, filled with the gentle scratching sounds of the fox’s knife, and then Angus clears his throat. “You’re going to get in trouble if they catch you doing that.”
The fox shrugs.
Angus waits, decides the fox is probably not going to say anything else, and pulls off his glasses. He’s already cleaned them at least twelve times in the past five minutes, but no reason he can’t give it another go. It’s like his brain is trying to convince him that if he just cleans his glasses one more time, one more nervous little fidget, then everything will be okay and he’ll get approved to tutor and he’ll be, temporarily, free. He works his sweater over a persistent smudge behind the nosepiece and tries to take deep breaths without wheezing.
“What are you in for?”
Angus looks over at the scruffy fox, his beaming face at odds with the death metal pins pierced into his jacket. “I’m supposed to report to the principal about tutoring younger students.”
“Sick,” the fox says, like Angus had said I’m here to save children from a burning building.
When he doesn’t elaborate any further, Angus goes ahead and asks. Nothing better to do, unless he wants to clean his glasses again. “What are you here for?”
“Oh,” the fox says cheerfully. “I stabbed my best friend Mae with a knife.”
Oh.
“Oh,” Angus echoes. “We’re leading different lives.”
The fox flips his pocketknife closed, thankfully, Angus was getting nervous that he was about to end up as this guy’s second victim. If he’s going to die, the waiting room to see the principal wouldn’t be the most dignified place to do it. “Yeah. She got me really good in the side, too, I dunno why they sent me here and not her.”
He heaves up the side of his jacket to show Angus an impressively bloody bandage. Angus grimaces. “You should go to the nurse.”
“No fuckin’ way. If I go to the nurse I have to give Mae fifty bucks, cause the whole thing was we were betting to see if one of us could get the other one in the doctor’s office. And I haven’t got fifty bucks to give her.” He stretches out and props up his boots, one on top of the other. “My dad's got antiseptic and shit back at the house, I’ll take care of it there. I’m hoping it’ll get all green and infected and nasty and then I can show it to Mae and see if she pukes. She pukes so easily.”
“That’s very interesting,” Angus says weakly. He should’ve just gone home.
“Yeah, I know.” The fox displays his mouthful of teeth, like he’s trying to freak Angus out—he’s going to have to get braces for that overbite if he wants Angus to be scared. “I’m Gregg. Hey, want to help me pry open that window? I bet if I got a really great head start, I could get away and the faculty wouldn’t be able to chase after me.”
“Angus. And no thank you.”
Gregg pouts. “Okay, whatever. Want a pretzel? I pinched it off of this guy who shoved me in a locker last week.”
He gropes around in the same pocket that the knife came from and pulls the pretzel out, holding it across the seats to Angus. Well, that explains why this kid smells like baked goods.
Normally, Angus doesn’t go around accepting pretzels from the pockets of foxes who’ve just been in knife fights, but it smells really good. And he hasn’t had food for days. He takes it. What has he got to lose?
Gregg beams. “Good luck with your tutoring, Angus.”
Angus smiles back. Just a little bit. “Good luck with your stomach wound.”
*
Possum Springs has a lot of highschool-attending teenagers, it’s no surprise that Angus doesn’t see Gregg in the halls; he’s probably in a completely different class. Not that he was looking, or anything. Gregg most definitely has been suspended for the knife fight and it would be a waste of Angus’s time to try and find him.
If Angus believed in any sort of supernatural being to thank, he’d be thanking them: he gets accepted to be a tutor, to a tiny sixth-grader named Otis. Otis isn’t exactly happy with the tutoring situation, Angus thinks Otis might be a little scared of him—look, it’s not Angus’s fault that he’s six foot one and built like a water tower. He tries to make up for it by teaching Otis their algebra in a whisper.
It's Tuesday. Tuesdays are Angus’s second-favorite, when he doesn’t have to worry about the empty weekend until three days later, and this is a nice one, sunny with the wind carrying in the barest hints of autumn and yellowed leaves. Angus could live forever in Tuesdays like this where it feels like the perpetual, pleasant warmth of September will hang around, and he won’t have to go to sleep in four layers of pajamas because his mom forgot to pay the heating bill again. Angus takes his worry one day at a time and days like these make it hard to even stress.
He's explaining the function to Otis (again) when something flies through the open library window and bounces off his head.
Angus forgets to whisper when he says “Ouch, what the heck?” and picks the rock up off the open textbook. It’s a large rock. Angus is lucky he didn’t get his skull split open, that would really traumatize Otis.
A paw appears at the window and hitches it up with an awful screech, so the paw’s owner can pop his head inside. “Hi, Angus!”
“Do you know him?” Otis asks.
They will definitely rat him out to the principal if Angus does anything stupid. Angus goes ahead and does something stupid anyway, grabbing onto the collar of Gregg’s leather jacket and tugging him inside. It’s not like he can just leave Gregg dangling halfway out a second-story window—Angus doesn’t even want to know how Gregg got up there in the first place. He says, “What are you doing here? You’re not supposed to be here after-hours!”
Gregg fixes his shirt. “I wanted to say hi. Hey, you got the job! That’s great!”
Angus is going to kill him. “Get out of here before anyone sees you.” He turns around to Otis, whose beak is open wordlessly. “You get a five-minute break, go get a snack from the vending machine or something.”
Gregg waits until Otis has scurried out of the library to lean against one of the bookshelves and grin up at Angus. “I’m so happy I found you! Dude, the knife wound didn’t even turn any weird colors or anything. My dad said it’s gonna scar over and then it’ll fade away, doesn’t that suck?”
“My apologies,” Angus says flatly. “Look, you need to leave or I’m going to get in trouble.”
“You should get suspended too, then we can hang out. Hmm, what could you do? Have you ever graffitied anything?”
Angus feels like he’s not really in control of this conversation at all. “What? No!”
“Dangit.” Gregg plants his boot on the second shelf and hoists himself up to the top, sitting down with his shoes dangling in Angus’s face. “Okay, that’s okay, we can plan something else. Meet me out on the abandoned playground when you’re done?”
“If I meet you in the playground will you let me get back to tutoring?” Angus asks him helplessly.
Gregg nods. “Cross my heart.”
Thank goodness. “Oka—”
“And hope to die.”
Angus waits. Gregg finishes, “And stick a large piece of discarded aluminum siding in my eye.”
He sticks out his paw. Reluctantly—what has he just gotten himself into?—Angus shakes it.
Gregg jumps back down and paces over to the window, wedging his shoulders out. “See you soon, ‘Gus.”
“Please do not call me that.”
“Okay.” Gregg hops up and grabs onto something outside the window; Angus can’t see what it is, but he hopes it’s sturdy enough that Gregg doesn’t go plummeting to his death. He may have mixed feelings about the fox, but he doesn’t want to see him splatted against the pavement. “Bya, Angie.”
He jumps out.
Angus can’t think of anything to do but shake his head, and clean his glasses off again.
*
Angus doesn’t go to the abandoned playground much, not since that kid fell off the rickety monkey bars last winter and broke her back and there was a huge fuss in the town about keeping kids out of condemned areas. Angus feels bad for the girl with the broken back, but hey, there isn’t much else to do in Possum Springs beside break into abandoned places.
The playground was already half-covered in leaves and vines last time Angus was here, and time has done nothing but cover it up even more. The forbidden monkey bars have a weak sapling growing up along their side; leaves dust the top of the merry-go-round, while rust claims the chains of the old swingset. Angus doesn’t know why the playground got left here while the old school was bulldozed—over the years, it’s become a haven for night parties and underage drinking.
Yeah, Angus isn’t surprised that Gregg would want to hang out here.
He brushes the leaf skeletons off the merry-go-round and sits, kicking at the dirt so he can spin in an idle circle. It’s a mystery why Gregg wants to spend time with him—Angus is pretty much the complete opposite of him, Angus isn’t leather jackets and knife fights and stolen pretzels. Maybe Gregg is trying to trick Angus into coming out here and waiting until sundown for him. Yeah. Angus should be too smart to fall for this, he should get up and go back home: he’s avoided it for long enough. Maybe, tonight, he’ll get lucky and his mother will be in a better mood than usual. Maybe the pantry will mysteriously collapse, and Angus won’t have to spend another second trapped in there.
He's brushing off his knees (the trees seem determined to drop more leaves on him and turn him into part of the playground) getting ready to pretend that he’s not disappointed that Gregg didn’t show, when there’s a muffled noise from a tree above him and something very large hits the merry-go-round.
Angus only shrieks a little bit, thank you very much. He’s proud of how quickly he gets his thoughts together. “Why were you in the tree?” Would it kill this guy to just walk into the room in a normal way, instead of climbing in second-story windows and falling out of trees?
Gregg scrambles to a sitting position. There’s a leaf stuck in his ear-fur—Angus is going to be petty and not tell him about it yet. “I got nervous.”
“Most people,” Angus informs him, “don’t climb into trees when they get nervous. I’m very nervous of you right now, and you don’t see me climbing into any trees.”
Gregg looks a little hurt. “Why’re you nervous? I’m perfectly nice. See, look how fluffy I am. I’m like a big cuddly stuffed animal.” His face lights up. “Oh, I forgot. Want some snacks?”
He shrugs off the large black backpack draped over his shoulder and upends it. Angus feels a little pathetic for thinking it, but he’s pretty sure that the amount of food that spills out is more than he’s seen in his entire life. He forces himself not to grab it all and yank it towards himself, and asks “Is all of this stolen?”
“Angie, I’m wounded that you would even ask. I bought all of this for you.” Gregg displays a granola bar about two inches from Angus’s face, like he’ll be able to see proof of Gregg’s honesty on the nutrition label.
“Uh huh. And did you steal the money that you bought it with?”
Gregg drops the granola bar in Angus’s lap, and waves his paw around. He’s very talented when it comes to avoiding Angus’s eye contact. “Steal is such a funny word, y’know?”
Angus sighs at him. If Gregg wants to be his friend, he’s going to have to get used to a little bit of disappointed sighing. Or a lot. “If I eat this, are you going to take it as me accepting your commitment to a life of crime?”
“Of course not.” Gregg grins up at him, dangling his feet off the end of the merry-go-round. “I’ll take it as your commitment to your stomach.”
Angus can’t really argue with that. He peels the wrapper off the granola bar and takes a grateful bite.
Gregg watches him eat for a few seconds, which is kind of awkward, but Angus isn’t going to pass up food just because of awkward. He keeps swinging his legs and kicking them against the side of the merry-go-round with a clang, clang. “You should sit with me and Mae at lunch sometime. Don’t take food from her, though, it all tastes like cat food.”
“Is this the knife wound victim?” Angus asks through his mouthful of food.
“Yeah, she’s my best friend,” Gregg says happily. “She’d dig you. I mean, not in a weird way. I mean, I don’t dig you in a weird way. Uh—” He stuffs a piece of cookie into his mouth and says, “Yeah.”
Angus squints at him. “Huh?”
“Nothing. Just—you should sit with us. That would be really sick. Mae’s kind of intimidating, but she’d—oh! You should join the band!”
Angus wonders if he could take advantage of Gregg’s extremely short attention span and slip a couple snacks into his pocket for later. He doubts Gregg would care, but like, he’s not going to ask. He’s not going to embarrass himself like that, because then Gregg will stop thinking of him as…whatever Gregg thinks of him that makes Gregg want to hang out with him, and he’ll start thinking of him as a sad little sweater loser. “There’s a band?”
“Well, there will be a band. Once we have you. Can you play anything? Ooh, can you scream?”
Angus curls into himself. “Can I scream?”
“Yeah, you know, scream. Like this.”
Gregg demonstrates. It is not pretty. Angus thinks several squirrels just fell out of the trees and died. “See, like that. Want me to do it again?”
Angus hopes very much that he doesn’t. “I don’t know if I can scream,” he says hesitantly.
Gregg leans casually back against one of the poles. “Go ahead and try. Think of something that really pisses you off, that’s what I always do. Get all your anger out through the power of screamo.”
Angus thinks about it. He folds his paws in his lap, then unfolds them uncomfortably again and crosses them over his chest. “Just go for it?”
Gregg nods eagerly.
“Okay,” Angus says.
He lets loose the most gut-wrenching, earsplitting shriek that he possibly can, just because he wants Gregg to think he’s cool. He can admit that to himself. It’s okay to admit that Gregg is way awesome and Angus wants to—to be good in his eyes.
Gregg stares at him with wide eyes when his voice dies out into hoarseness. “Whoa. You should definitely be in the band.”
And then he’s up on his paws and knees, scuttling across the old merry-go-round like a spider set on vengeance. “Yes! Right there!”
Angus leans away from him. “What?”
Gregg sits back, flailing his arms around slightly. Is he having a seizure? “You smiled. I got you to smile! That was great! Do it again!”
“Um,” Angus says, and tries.
Gregg instantly shakes his head in disgust. “Nope, you look like you’re about to unhinge your jaw and eat me. I’ll just have to try and get you to do it naturally again.”
Angus shrugs a little. He’s—not really sure what just happened, or why Gregg looked so brightly happy for a second, or if Angus really doesn’t smile that often (it’s not like he’s keeping count, here) but—Angus thinks whatever it was, he liked it. He really liked it. It made him feel—something. Different.
In that moment, he leans over and plucks the leaf out of Gregg’s fur. Because he can.
*
He’s totally in it for the food.
He’s totally in it for the food. There is zero other motivation in Angus’s mind that makes him sit with Gregg, every day at lunch. It’s because Gregg gives him snacks. Lots of snacks. Good snacks, too, snacks that Angus could never afford (he knows Gregg can’t afford them either, there’s no way all the snacks aren’t stolen, but Angus is working on that with him). He likes Gregg because of the snacks. Because of the snacks!
Gregg’s best friend, the snarky little cat with the bass guitar and the creepy eyes, is absolutely terrifying, and Angus likes her a lot. He’s pretty sure that she wouldn’t hesitate to smack him upside the head with a baseball bat if he hurt Gregg, and Angus can respect that. He’s always respected the kinds of friends that would commit a little first-degree murder for each other.
Every night, it’s as close as Angus will ever get to saying his prayers, when he hunkers down under his blankets and hopes, hopes so hard that Gregg won’t get tired of him. That Gregg won’t look at him one day and see all of his faults and his guilt and his painful little flaws. That Gregg will keep on looking out for him, since deep down, Angus is a little tired of looking out for himself. It would be—nice, to have someone else on his team.
Because of the food. Definitely and entirely, 101% because of the food. Zero other reasons.
He talks to Mae more than he does to Gregg; to Mae, he can talk about Gregg, and Mae always has another story to tell, or another scar to show him from a time when she and Gregg got into trouble. Mae seems to get it, almost, the way that Angus feels like he would do anything if it would just make Gregg laugh and give him a thumbs-up.
She gives him a lot of knowing looks, though. Angus isn’t sure what she thinks she knows, but she certainly seems to have a better clue of what’s going on inside Angus’s brain than he himself does.
Angus thinks he’s maybe not the best tutor in the world. Actually, he’s pretty sure he’s the worst tutor in the entire school, since he just can’t seem to focus on days when Gregg promised to meet him at the abandoned playground after tutoring. Poor Otis. They’re never going to learn their algebra at this rate.
“Angus?” Gregg says, on one of these nights when the sun’s beginning to creep out of the sky and Angus can almost see the stars, winking at him like night lights.
Angus turns to look at him, gliding lightly back and forth on the swing set with his bare feet trailing in the dirt. “Yeah?”
Gregg kicks at the ground, pushing the swing a few more inches into the air. “Are you only friends with me because of the food? I get that, if you are. I just…wanted to know.”
Angus thinks about it. He looks up at the appearing stars like the right answer’s going to be written up there, in the countless constellations that he can’t quite name. He says, “No. I’m friends with you because I like you.”
Gregg’s teeth flash. “Cool.”
“Cool,” Angus agrees, and his shoes hit the ground and he kicks off hard.
*
“Hurry up, Angus!”
Angus ignores her. The air in the cave is already like inhaling soup, he doesn’t need to make himself run any faster or he’ll have an asthma attack all over the place. Up ahead, Mae’s orange shirt is bright, catching the light from her flashlight as she bounces off rocks and hurtles further into the darkness. She’s giggling madly, out-of-breath and trying to mimic Gregg’s unearthly howling that Angus can hear from the depths of the cave. Angus tries to catch up before she rounds the corner, but doesn’t quite make it—she vanishes out of sight, leaving only the echo of her hissing laugh behind.
Cave Tag is like, Angus’s least favorite game of all time.
Tag is hard enough already, why would anyone want to do it in a cave? But here he is, in the cave with the rest of them, because it was Gregg’s idea and, as usual, Angus does stupid things because Gregg grins at him when he does them. Would he be in this stupid situation if Mae had been the one that suggested Cave Tag? No. Angus seriously needs to get his own priorities straight. Staying alive and not dying in a cave and impressing Gregg seem to have gotten tangled up.
It's…dark. Angus knew he should’ve fought Mae harder for the only flashlight. He turns in a circle—which way did she go? Shit, he can’t see anything. He feels for the wall and hits it, begins feeling his way down through the dirt and walking carefully towards where he last saw Mae. Was this the way? Or was that the way? Angus can’t tell what’s forward and what’s backward or hell, what’s upside-down in this cave. This was a terrible idea.
He starts walking a little faster, hoping that he’ll turn a sudden corner and see the shine of Mae’s flashlight, or, even better, the open mouth of the cave. He calls out “Gregg?” and hears it get swallowed by the gaping nothingness around him. Shit. His paws meet wall and wall and more wall, never anything else—he reaches out blindly and tries to feel something, anything else besides this awful cave.
He hates tight spaces.
He hates tight spaces.
He hates this cave, he never should’ve gone in here.
Maybe Gregg is going to leave him here. Angus sits with him every day, he knows Gregg probably wouldn’t leave him on purpose but—Gregg can get distracted so easily. He and Mae could’ve gone off already and left Angus standing helpless in the cave, and by the time Gregg remembers—it could be night. Gregg could go home and leave him here, not even out of malice, just because he’s Gregg and Angus struggles to hold his attention for more than five minutes. Angus is going to be left here, he’s going to be in this cave all night, he’s going to be lost down here and this time there’ll be no one to let him out, no one, he won’t even have the faint hope that his mother will take pity and let him out. Angus breaks into a run, his breath snagging hopelessly in his stomach.
The end of his sweater catches hard on something and Angus turns around too fast, slamming into the cave wall or a large rock, he doesn’t know, he just knows that it hurts, hurts sharply and it knocks his glasses off. He crumples onto his palms and knees and scrabbles around in the dirt, his mom will kill him if he loses his glasses, she won’t buy him another pair. He doesn’t know where they went, he didn’t even hear them hit the ground. He’s probably going to crush them.
“Angus? You in here?”
Angus reaches blindly for the voice, hitting something that feels like fabric. He thinks he might be clutching at the bottoms of Gregg’s blue jeans. “Gregg—”
“Oh, shit. Did you fall?” Angus feels as Gregg steps back and crouches, hears him scuffling around before something cold slides onto his face: his glasses. Angus presses them into his face, and oh, great. He’s officially crying in front of Gregg. Thanks a lot, cave.
Gregg says, “Poor Angus, you dropped your glasses. Are you okay?”
Angus shakes his head, even though Gregg can’t see it in the dark. He can feel how hot his own tears are, matting down the fur on his face. “I don’t want to be down here. I don’t—I really don’t like tight spaces.”
“Fuck, Angus, I’m so sorry.” There’s a little scratching noise as Gregg moves closer to him in the dirt. “Are you going to be okay? Do you need your inhaler?”
Two red little circles of light appear behind Gregg’s head, wide and unblinking. Mae. “Angus? Did you get hurt?”
Angus is about to respond, tell her that he’s fine even though he doesn’t think he is, when Gregg’s arm slides around his shoulders and hoists him up. He’s—incredibly soft. Gregg was right, he’s a perfect stuffed animal. “I’m taking him home.”
“’M fine,” Angus tries to tell him, but Gregg isn’t listening, he’s clearly already got his head set on being protective. Angus…maybe doesn’t mind that as much as he’s pretending that he minds. Just for today, he can show a little weakness in front of Gregg. Just for today.
It’s dark as Gregg helps him into his car (not that Angus needs help, he didn’t even twist his ankle or anything, but Gregg slings his arm around him and helps him into the passenger seat anyway). Mae leaves them to it, saying she’ll get home on her own. She also winks at Angus when Gregg puts his arm around him. Angus rolls his eyes back, not that she can see it from behind his glasses.
“Do you mind?” Gregg asks, his paw on the radio dial, and Angus shakes his head and lets the sounds, of whatever weird streetpunk band Gregg is hyperfixating on these days, wash over him. Angus will never really get music—he had a CD player once, that some relative passed on to him when he was little, but it got smashed years ago on one of the bad nights. Still, he likes that it makes Gregg happy. If something makes Gregg happy, Angus is going to give it a favorable review.
Plus, music means they don’t have to talk; good, because if Angus even started to try and thank Gregg for abandoning his night out to drive Angus around, all of the other feelings for Gregg that he has, revolving around in his head, would surely slip out on accident.
It’s even darker as Gregg veers off the road and turns onto a dirt one. Angus can’t make out any of the road signs (Gregg’s headlights appear to be permanently out of operation) but something about the road feels familiar. Maybe Angus has been on the street where Gregg lives before. It’s kind of a funny thought.
Gregg throws his arm in front of Angus’s stomach to keep him from pitching forward into the dashboard as his car rattles to a pained stop. “Here we are. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Angus nods. He’s very, very aware of Gregg’s nails still hooked carefully into the side of his shirt, like Gregg isn’t quite ready to let go of him yet. “I’m really fine. As soon as we got out of the cave I was fine.”
“Yeah,” Gregg mutters, “that was a really stupid idea. I’m really sorry.”
Angus attempts a casual shrug. It comes across as downright frenetic. “Not a big deal.”
A light comes on somewhere in front of the car, but Angus barely registers it—all he can notice is the way it makes Gregg’s eyes look so round and bright. “It was fun, though, right? Before the cave. When we were just hanging out.”
“It was,” Angus agreed. “I liked it. A lot.”
He feels very strange when Gregg leans forward, tugging gently on the front of Angus’s sweater. It’s almost like being hungry, his most familiar feeling, it’s the same strange kick and swoop of his stomach, the same lightheaded rush that makes his head spin wildly. It claws at him in the same way. It consumes him.
His eye catches on the strange new light source and he turns his head, heart rabbiting in his chest. For a moment he can’t even process what he’s seeing, and then it clicks—he’s staring at his own porch light, in front of his own house. His own house.
His voice sounds frightened and limp to his own ears. “You took me to my house.”
“Uhm.” Gregg sits back, staring down at the filthy floormat, one hand fidgeting with the safety pins at the bottom of his jacket. “Yes?”
Angus adjusts his glasses like that’s going to help, as though he’ll turn them to a certain angle and his own house will disappear from view. He feels the oncoming panic like a storm in his chest; he touches the inhaler in his pocket, tries to ground himself in the solid plastic without pulling it out and using it. “You—You weren’t supposed to take me to my house, I—thought—how do you even know where I live?”
“Oh, I stole the school directory ages ago and looked you up,” Gregg says worriedly. “Is that weird? I promise I wasn’t stalking you, I just—”
Angus pulls his glasses off and cleans them fretfully, comforting himself in the way the world goes blurry. Gregg wasn’t—he wasn’t supposed to see this, he wasn’t supposed to see Angus’s broken-down old house with the messed up window that’s been shattered for years with no hope of getting fixed, with the peeling paint sides, with the obvious hole in the roof that drips on Angus sometimes if he stands too long under it. The guilt overcomes him just like it always does, sickening like bile in his stomach when he thinks, this isn’t the person he wanted to be for Gregg.
He forces his glasses back over his ears and pushes the car door open, ignoring the sharp wind chill that cuts into the warmth of Gregg’s car. “Just leave. Please just leave.”
“But—”
“Gregg.” He’s happy that his glasses are fogging up from the sudden switch in temperature, and Gregg can’t see his eyes well. “Goodnight.”
Gregg is opening his mouth again, but Angus shuts the door on him before any words can get out. The walk up to his front door is frigid, cold air slicing right through his sweater and thin undershirt, a bitter change from how comfortable he felt in Gregg’s worn-out old car. He doesn’t turn around and look back. He doesn’t trust himself to keep walking forward if he saw Gregg’s face again.
He doesn’t hear Gregg start to back down the driveway until he’s inside.
*
On Monday, Angus’s favorite day marking the beginning of another week of not having to be at home for long, he pushes his way through the crowd until he can find Gregg and Mae’s table, tucked all the way back in the corner.
He catches Gregg’s eye, waits for Gregg to stand up like he always does and wave in his usual flailing energetic way that Angus loves so much. It doesn’t come. Gregg catches his eye, turns away, and immerses himself in his conversation with Mae.
For a moment, Angus stands there, stupidly dumbstruck in the middle of the cafeteria, before he turns and walks away.
***
“What is up with you two?”
Angus continues pulling books from his locker and stuffing them into his backpack. He’s been using schoolbooks to avoid this conversation for about three minutes; he isn’t sure how many more books are even in his locker. He thinks he might be taking out books from fifth grade at this point.
Mae groans and bangs her head against the locker’s open door. “Angus. Anguuuus. Seriously. I’m going to like, cough up a hairball if you two keep avoiding each other. I am going to launch into the atmosphere. I’m going to become one of those hammer-y things and drill myself deep into the ground if you guys don’t get it together, really, this is the worst.”
Angus reaches into his locker again and hits nothing but the empty shelf. Damn.
“Come on, man.” Mae follows him as he starts to walk away, zipping up his bag (which now weighs about a billion pounds. This plan wasn’t very well thought-out). “This sucks. You can’t give Gregg the cold shoulder forever.”
Angus is so indignant about this sentence that he turns around. “Gregg doesn’t want to talk to me!”
“Ohmygod. If I’m ever this stupid, just release me into the woods and leave me for dead, really, you’ll be doing society a favor.” Mae tugs on his arm—she doesn’t let go for a few seconds, and resultingly gets dragged on her toes across the ground. “Gregg is all sad ‘cause he said you got mad at him at your house and now he’s trying to give you space. Meaning you are both incredibly dumb.”
Angus frees his elbow from her claws; eight little holes stay behind in his sleeve. “I have to get to class.”
“Just talk to him,” Mae whines. “I saw the way you look at him, these nightmare eyes aren’t blind.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Angus tells her. “I look at him in the same, perfectly normal way that I look at everyone else. I’m looking at you like that right now.”
“You’re looking at me like your heart is about to Indiana Jones itself right out of your chest and splatter onto the floor.”
Angus huffs. Wow, he had no idea that he knew how to huff. Apparently Mae just brings it out in him. “My heart is perfectly fine. And I don’t want to talk about this any more.”
“Fine,” Mae sighs. “You get one more hour of us not talking about it. That’s it. Then it’s more harassment.”
“I can live with that.”
But maybe she’s right.
Angus misses Gregg, though he’s never going to admit that to Mae.
He has learned, over the years, not to get attached to things. Enjoy it while it lasts, because nothing stays forever and chances are, when the nice things are gone, more bad things are going to follow. He keeps the memories like little trinkets in his head, and doesn’t think about them for too long, since the line between nostalgia and crippling depression is paper-thin. Gregg is just another one of those trinkets. At least Angus has the memories, right?
He doesn’t know that it’s a good thing. The memories hurt to touch.
But he still has Mae, and he’d do anything for Mae, which is probably why he’s jogging down the hallway, as fast as he can go without slipping on the floor or breaking into a wheeze. He can still faintly hear her calling for help, growing louder as he turns the corner and finds himself face-to-face with the empty classroom. It’s been locked off-limits for as long as Angus can remember, something about there being a leak in the pipes or whatever that hasn’t gotten fixed—Angus has no idea how she even managed to get in there. Leave it to Mae to find ways to get herself into abandoned rooms. Really, this is how people end up with broken backs.
He's prepared to have to throw his entire body weight at the door to slam it open, but the doorknob turns smooth and easily when he tries it. What the…
“Mae?” Angus calls into the dark room. Did she seriously not try the door before she started screaming for help? He takes a step in. He loves Mae, but that is exactly the sort of thing that she would do.
Something small and dark darts around his legs and the door bangs shut behind him. Even with the noise of it echoing through the classroom, Angus can hear the click as the lock slides resolutely into place.
Okay, what the fuck.
He’s about to try the door, just to confirm that yes, Mae really did just lock him in the abandoned classroom, when something bangs wildly behind him.
Warily, Angus creeps toward the utility closet on the other side of the classroom, half of its door covered with a large desk that’s been pushed in front of it. Maybe Mae got tired of him and Gregg tiptoeing around each other and decided to just lock Angus in here with some sort of wild animal and let it finish him off. He can hear something muffled behind the door, though—sympathy wins out over worry and Angus shoulders the desk out of the way.
The door to the closet flies open and Gregg stumbles out. “She’s insane, she threatened to duct tape my mouth closed if I yelled and warned you what was going on.”
Angus’s poor nerves are really too frayed for this. “Why the hell were you in the closet?”
Greg brushes broom fibers off his head. There’s a large stain soaking into his shoes, smelling suspiciously like bleach. “She’s totally flipped. She dragged me in there and she was like, desperate times, and then she pushed the desk in front of the door and left me there. I’ve been in here since third period, man, I totally missed that history quiz.” He peeks around Angus’s shoulder. “She locked the door, didn’t she. Maybe we can get through the window.”
Angus eyes it. “There’s no way I’m fitting through that.”
“Yeah, and then I’d be dead anyway cause of the drop,” Gregg agrees, and then he leans against the closet door and fixes his eyes down on his bleached shoes. “Sorry. I swear I didn’t plan this with her.”
Angus shrugs the words off. “Maybe if we just wait, she’ll let us out.”
“Maybe.” Gregg doesn’t sound too sure of himself.
Well, nothing to do but wait and hope that Mae has mercy. Angus plops down onto the floor and rests his head against the leg of the desk, closing his eyes against the raging headache threatening to attack his temple.
When he opens his eyes again, Gregg is staring at him. “What?”
“Nothing,” Gregg mumbles. “It’s just that—she told me she’d let us out once we talked things out.”
He sighs. “There isn’t anything to talk about.”
“That’s what I told her! And that’s about the point where she threatened to duct tape my mouth.” Gregg slides down against the door, criss-crossing his legs. “Maybe one of the faculty will come and let us out.”
Angus mutters a noncommittal noise.
They sit there, Angus rubbing at his forehead, Gregg poking at the bleach stain on his shoe, until Gregg speaks again, quietly. “Just, for the sake of us getting out of here, I’m sorry. It was totally weird of me to take you to your house without asking.”
Angus shakes his head. “You didn’t do anything wrong. I shouldn’t have freaked out at you like that.”
“No, no, I get it. I mean, I’ve got eyes, I know I’m not the ideal thing that you want to present to your parents.”
Angus turns his head to face him. “What?”
“You don’t have to sugarcoat it.” Gregg plays with the end of his shoelace, stretching it out and letting it snap back against his toe. “I totally get it. There are like, the friends that you introduce to your family, and the friends you don’t. It’s not your fault that I’m—like this. I probably wouldn’t introduce me to my family eith—”
“Gregg,” Angus says incredulously. “I wasn’t ashamed to have you meet my family.”
Gregg frowns. “What do you mean?”
Angus scoots closer to him on the gross floor—is that really what Gregg thought? That Angus was ashamed of him? “You’ve got it all backwards. It’s not you that I’m ashamed of. I’m not even close to ashamed of you.”
“Angus.” Gregg spreads his hands, indicating himself like he thinks Angus hasn’t memorized every detail of his face. “I am like, a nervous wreck. I am the wreckiest of nervous wrecks. You don’t want your parents thinking you’ve gotten in with a bad crowd, I understand, you don’t have to make excuses.”
“You’re not a bad crowd,” Angus says fiercely, the sharpest tone he’s used in a long time. “You’re the best crowd. If I had good parents, I’d be proud for them to meet you.”
He can see Gregg falter a little. “Oh,” he says, before squinting. “Then why—wait, what do you mean, if you had good parents? Are your parents not good to you?”
Shit. Angus hadn’t meant to say it like that. He hadn’t meant to say it at all. “No, they’re fine,” he mumbles.
“Angus, hey.” Gregg pulls on his hands, bringing them together so their knees press. “They’re not shitty, are they? They don’t—hurt you?”
“Are you crazy? No, they don’t hurt me,” Angus insists.
He can tell, from the second he says it, that Gregg sees right through the lie. “Fuck,” Gregg spits, so loudly that it bounces off the walls and ricochets back to him. “I’ll--I'm gonna fucking—Angus, I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, why didn’t you tell me?”
Angus can’t look at him, not while he’s so angry on Angus’s behalf. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me!” Gregg yells, and takes a deep breath, seeming to try and compose himself. “I mean, it’s none of my business, but it matters. It matters to me if you’re getting hurt every day. It matters to me if you don’t feel safe, it—”
“You were supposed to be separate,” Angus blurts out.
Gregg halts. The middle of his sentence trails off into, “I was what?”
“You were supposed to be separate,” Angus explains desperately. “You were supposed to be the one good thing. I don’t want you thinking of my parents hurting me every time you look at me. I wanted to pretend that I didn’t have a home when I was with you, I wanted—I wanted to pretend that I wouldn’t have to go back home every day, and, and, and I didn’t want you to know because you would worry about me and then it would ruin everything. You and Mae are my friends, we were supposed to—to do fun stuff and hang out and get into trouble and now it’s all fucked up because now I’m just—I’m just me again. I’m just the scarred, messed-up person I’ve always been and I can’t pretend anymore that I turn into some cool, interesting person when I’m with you. I’m just me and I’m stuck that way.”
Gregg doesn’t look like he knows what to say. Angus lets his hands fall back to his sides and waits, though he doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.
“I’ve got scars too,” Gregg says softly. “I’ve got scars on my back from where I got caught in a thornbush. I’ve got a scar on my forehead where I slipped and bashed my head into a table. I’ve got a scar on my side where my best friend got me with a knife. I never asked you to be flawless. How could you—think I’d want that? I’ll always know you’re beautiful. I’ll always know that and you’ll always show me that it’s true.”
Angus is not going to cry in front of Gregg, not again. “But you’ve got scars from having adventures and I’ve got scars from—from getting splinters in my knuckles from hitting on the pantry door. I’ve got pathetic scars.”
“We’re all just fighting, Angus.” Gregg threads their fingers together—Angus thinks his heart stops. “We’re fighting in a lonely little world that’s trying over and over to beat the shit out of us. We’re fighting because our parents hurt us or we want to hurt ourselves or we don’t know how much longer we can take any of this. You’re here and that means that you haven’t let it win. So no, I’m not going to think about your parents when I look at you. Hell, man, I haven’t got any more room in my brain to think of stuff besides you, you’re kind of dominating my entire thought process at the moment.”
“Yeah,” Angus whispers. “Me too, you’re like a—a parasitic brain worm.”
“Fuck, that’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard,” Gregg says, and brushes a kiss onto Angus’s knuckles.
*
They stare at the stars.
On their backs, on the grass, they stare at the stars.
Well, they say they’re looking at the stars. All Angus knows is that there’s a whole universe out there, twinkling in the dark for him to look at, and he spends a whole lot of time looking at Gregg instead.
He doesn’t think about his mother while he’s lying on the grass, looking at the stars.
With Gregg, he’s already home.