Chapter Text
This was stupid.
Joe was just trying to get the mail. That was it. He just wanted to walk to the mailbox at the end of his driveway like any normal person would, on any normal day, doing a completely normal thing. Except, nothing felt normal anymore and Joe had this feeling that everyone on this street was determined to remind him of that.
Joe had barely noticed the kids across the street playing in their front yard when he stepped outside, but he hadn’t given them much thought past that. There were three of them, maybe twelve or thirteen, younger than him but not by much, at least. He’d kept his head down, focused on the mailbox, on just getting to the end of his driveway and back without incident.
“Hey!” one of them called out. “You’re that new kid, right?”
Joe’s shoulders tensed, but he kept walking. Almost there. Just a few more steps.
”Hey, we’re talking to you!”
He stopped. Turned. The kid who had called out was grinning, but something about it felt off to Joe. Happiness, even in others, was something that felt foreign to Joe these days. The other two kids had stopped as well, their attention fixed on Joe now. The afternoon sun beat down on them all, hot and heavy, and Joe thought maybe this is what standing under a spotlight might feel like. He felt queasy.
”Yeah,” he muttered. “Just moved in.”
”From where?” one of the other kids piped up now.
”Ohio.”
This answer seemed to amuse the kids as they all snickered with each other, trying to contain this bubbling laughter that only made Joe want to flee.
”Why’d you move?”
The question hit like a fist to the sternum. Joe’s throat tightened. “My dad got a job here.”
”In the middle of the year?” The first kid’s grin only unsettled Joe more. “That’s weird. People don’t usually move in the middle of the year unless something happened.”
Joe could feel it building in his chest now— that awful pressure, that burning behind his eyes. His mom’s face flashed through his mind. The hospital room. The yellow curtains in the kitchen that would never be in any kitchen of theirs again.
The kids didn’t notice.
”What happened?” the third kid pressed. “Your parents get divorced or something?”
”Did you get expelled?”
”Is your dad in trouble?”
The questions came faster, sharper, and Joe felt himself cracking. He could feel the tears threading to well, hot and humiliating, and he knew—oh, how he knew—that if he cried here, now, in front of these kids, it would follow him. He wouldn’t just be the new kid. He would be the new kid that cries when you ask him questions. The new kid with a dead mom. The new kid with no friends. The new kid that couldn’t even unpack the boxes in his room because that would mean accepting this place as his new home.
“I have to go,” Joe managed, his voice cracking despite his best efforts.
He turned and walked—away from the mailbox, yes. He’d forgotten about the mail entirely, but away. Away from the kids. Away from their questions. Away from their stares. His feet carried him not toward the house, because he couldn’t go back inside. He couldn’t face those boxes stacked in the rooms waiting to be unpacked, his mom’s handwriting on the labels in neat black marker. Kitchen — plates and mugs. Living room — family photos. She had helped pack what she could, before she got too sick to leave the bed, back when they’d thought this move would be a good thing, a fresh start, a new adventure.
Joe’s vision blurred. He blinked hard, stumbling through the gap in the fence into the backyard. The grass was overgrown, brushing against his jeans as he walked. The lawn service wasn’t coming until next week, his dad had said.
Everything was “next week” or “when we get settled” or “once things calm down”, but Joe didn’t think things were ever going to calm down. Nothing would ever feel settled. Everything would just going to keep being this. Hollow. Wrong. Lonely.
His chest felt too tight. He needed to sit down, to breathe, to not be here. Honestly, he didn’t want to be anywhere. If he could, he just wanted to disappear for a little while.
That’s when he saw the shed.
It was set back against the fence line, half-hidden by an overgrown lilac bush. Joe had never noticed it before. Not that that was surprising. He hadn’t spent much time in the backyard, hadn’t really spent much time anywhere except his room. But right now, it looked like exactly what he needed. Somewhere to hide. Somewhere to catch his breath without anyone watching.
The door was unlocked. It creaked when Joe pushed it open, and the inside smelled like dust and old wood and soil. Garden tools hung on the hooks along one wall. Bags of potting mix were stacked in the corner. A workbench ran along the back, cluttered with terracotta pots and hand trowels and—
A boy.
Joe froze.
The boy was sitting on a back of soil like it was a chair, one leg folded under him, a paperback book open in his lap. He looked about Joe’s age, despite looking smaller, with reddish-blond hair that fell across his forehead and a striped t-shirt that had seen better days layered over a long sleeve shirt despite the summer heat. He glanced up when Joe entered, his eyes flicking from Joe’s face to the open door behind him and back again, taking it all in with a quick, assessing look.
“Sorry,” Joe said immediately, his voice still shaky. He wipes at his eyes quickly, hoping it wasn’t obvious, and if it was, that maybe it just looked like allergies. “I didn’t know anyone was—”
“It’s okay,” the boy said simply.
Joe hesitated. The boy was looking at him. Not staring like the kids across the street had stared. Just looking. Noticing. Joe could feel that his eyes were probably red, that his face was getting blotchy. The boy would ask what was wrong. People always asked. Then Joe would have to explain or make something up or—
“You can stay if you want,” the boys aid, glancing back down at his book. “I don’t mind.”
Joe blinked. That was it? No questions? No “are you okay?” or “what happened?” Just… an invitation. Permission to exist in this space without having to explain himself.
Something in Joe’s chest loosened, just a little.
“Okay,” Joe said quietly, and let the shed door fall closed behind him.
The boy was already looking back down at his book, his posture settling into something that looked almost practiced. His shoulders curved inward, one hand holding the pages open while the other rested against his knee. Joe stood there for a moment, feeling uncertain. The boy had said he could stay, but now that he was staying, he didn’t know what to do with himself.
He glanced around the shed. There wasn’t much in the way of seating except for the other bags of soil stacked against the wall and an overturned crate that looked like it might collapse if he so much as breathed on it wrong. Joe moved carefully, slowly, and sat down on one of the soil bags. It crinkled under his weight but held.
The quiet settled around them. It wasn’t uncomfortable, just present. Joe could hear the boy’s breathing, steady and even. He could hear the rustle of pages turning and the shuffle as the boy played with the corner of the book and flicked the pages under his fingers. Outside, faintly, he could hear the kids across the street still laughing at something. It felt distant, now. Separated from him by the shed walls and this strange, careful quiet.
Joe took a breath. Then another. The tightness in his chest was easing. He wasn’t okay, he didn’t think he’d be okay for a long time, but he wasn’t falling apart, either. He was just… here. In a shed. With a boy who had offered him space without asking why he needed it.
”I’m Joe,” he said after a while, not sure if the boy wanted a conversation but feeling like he should at least introduce himself.
The boy looked up, blinking behind his glasses like he’d forgotten that Joe was there. “Oh. I’m Patrick.” He gestured vaguely in the direction of the fence just outside of the shed. “I live next door. The blue house.”
“Cool,” Joe said. Then, because Patrick had been so matter-of-fact about it, “I just moved in. Next door. I mean, here… not here, not this shed, the house, obviously. Or I guess maybe the shed? It’s my backyard, I think…”
A small smile tugged at Patrick’s mouth, “Yeah, it’s your shed. The couple who lived here before let me use it. I read out here sometimes. It’s quiet.”
“Oh.” Joe swallowed. Quiet. That word hung over him, threatening to bring back those feelings that Joe was desperately running away from. “I can… I’ll leave. I didn’t mean to… interrupt.”
“You don’t have to leave.” Patrick’s voice was quiet but certain, like he was stating a simple fact. “There’s room.”
And just like that, Joe felt something shift. Not fixed. No, Joe didn’t think anything would feel fixed for a long time—but different. Like maybe, just maybe, this new place wasn’t entirely terrible. Like maybe he’d found something here, in this dusty shed, with this quiet boy who didn’t ask him questions.
“What are you reading?” Joe asked, because the silence felt less heavy now, less like something he had to endure and more like something they were sharing.
Patrick held up the book so that Joe could see the cover. To Kill a Mockingbird. “Summer reading. For English. I wanted to get it done early.”
Joe recognized it immediately, not just because it was a classic, but because he’d gotten that very same summer reading list when his dad had registered him at the high school last week. “That’s on my list, too.”
”Yeah, everyone has to read it before sophomore year.” Patrick’s nose wrinkled slightly. “It’s not bad, I guess. But I want to finish it so I can do other stuff.”
There was something about the way he said it. It wasn’t quite a complaint, but it wasn’t quite neutral either. It made Joe curious. “What other stuff?”
Patrick’s expression shifted. Not a smile, but close enough, like he’d been looking for permission to stop reading. “I’m reorganizing my CD collection. I had it organized by genre first, and then alphabetically within each genre. But, I think chronologically makes more sense, the band’s organized in the genre chronologically, and then the individual albums organized by release date.” He gives a sigh here, “But it seems like it might be harder to navigate if I’m looking for something specific.”
Joe felt something stir in his chest, something that wasn’t the hollow ache that had been living there for weeks. Interest, maybe. Or just surprise that someone would care that much about organizing CDs. “That’s… actually kind of cool. How many CDs do you have?”
And just like that, Patrick came alive.
He set the book aside more deliberately, not carelessly, but with clear intent. Like this was just the excuse he had waited for to put it down. His whole body language changed. His hands started moving as he talked, gesturing in quick, precise movements. “Maybe two hundred? I’ve been collecting since I was a kid. My mom got me a CD player a few years ago for my birthday and I just—“ He paused, his gaze flicking somewhere near Joe’s chin before darting away again, “I really like music. Like, a lot.”
“What kind of music?” Joe asked, settling more comfortably on his soil bag. The tears felt far away now, the questions from the kids across the street already fading into background noise in his thoughts.
“Oh, all kinds. But mostly punk, and hardcore, and—wait, did you know that there’s this whole Chicago scene? Like, Local H, and The Smoking Popes, and Hum—“ Patrick’s voice picked up speed here, his words tumbling over each other. “And then there’s stuff from other places too, like Jawbreaker from San Francisco, and The Get Up Kids from Kansas City, and—do you know Cobra Verde?”
Joe’s breath caught. “From Cleveland, right?”
”Yes!” Patrick’s eyes went wide, and for a second they met Joe’s directly before skittering away again. “You know them?”
”Yeah, I—“ Joe swallowed past the tightness in his throat, but this time, it wasn’t from grief. It was from something else. Something almost like hope. “I’m from around there… outside of Cleveland. I saw them play once, I went with my cousin…”
Patrick leaned forward, his hands clasped together like he was physically holding back his excitement, “That’s so cool. I’ve never seen them live. I’ve not really seen much of any band live, I want to, but my parents don’t like the idea of me going to shows in the city by myself, and neither of my siblings share the same… excitement for loud music, so they don’t want to go with me.” He shrugged, but there was no real disappointment in it, just acceptance. “What were they like live?”
And with that, Joe found himself talking. Really talking, for the first time in weeks. For the first time since they moved. For the first time since his mom died. He told Patrick about the show and how packed it was, how hot it was inside the venue, and how his cousin had lifted him up so he could see over the crowd because he hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet. He told Patrick about the way the whole room had moved together, about the energy of it, about how his ears had rung for two days after.
Patrick listened with this intensity that might have been unsettling if it wasn’t so clearly genuine. He didn’t interrupt, didn’t look away—well, he looked away from Joe’s face, but his attention never wavered. When Joe finished, Patrick immediately jumped in with his own stories, not of shows, but from record stores and finding different CDs to put into his collection. One minute, Patrick was talking about having found a rare import of a Naked Raygun album at his favorite record store, and then the next, they were just… talking. Trading band names back and forth like currency, discovering overlap in their tastes, and debating whether pop-punk counted as real punk or if it was its own thing entirely.
Patrick’s voice got louder when he was excited, Joe noticed. His hands never stopped moving, as if he were trying to paint pictures in the air of the album covers he enjoyed and the concert venues he’d only seen in magazines. He talked fast, jumping from topic to topic in a way that might have been hard to follow if Joe wasn’t genuinely interested, genuinely trying to keep up.
For the first time in weeks, Joe forgot about the empty house and the boxes that hadn’t been unpacked. He forgot about the kids across the street and their invasive questions. He forgot about feeling so alone.
He was just a kid in a shed, talking to another kid about music.
When Patrick finally seemed to realize that he needed to stop and breathe, there was a beat of silence. Then, Patrick ducked his head, his cheeks flushing slightly. “Sorry. I talk a lot about music. I’ve been told I can be… intense, about it.”
”No,” Joe said quickly. “No, it’s—I like it. It’s intense, but, in a cool way? I like music, too.”
Patrick glanced at him—another one of those quick, darting looks. “Yeah?”
”Yeah.”
A small smile tugged at Patrick’s mouth. “Cool.”
The quiet settled between them once more, not uncomfortablely. It was the kind of silence that felt like something had shifted, like they’d found some kind of understanding. Patrick picked his book back up, and Joe was about to ask him about another band to give him a reason to put it back down when a voice cut through the air.
”PATRICK!”
Patrick’s head snapped up, his eyes going wide. “Oh no.” He fumbled for his wrist, pushing back his sleeve to look at a digital watch with a cracked face. “Oh no, no, no—“
”Patrick, dinner!” The voice came again, female and insistent, drifting over from the direction of the blue house that Patrick had mentioned earlier.
“I was supposed to—“ Patrick was already standing, the book tumbling from his lap onto the ground, “I’m so late, she’s going to—I’m sorry, I have to—“
Not a single sentence was finished as Patrick fumbled for his things, moving towards the door with these quick and jerky movements, but he did take a pause, just long enough to glance back in Joe’s general direction, “See you later, Joe!”
Then he was gone.
The shed door banged open as he bolted out into the yard. Joe watched through the doorway as Patrick navigated those overgrown bushes with a practiced ease, clearly having made this route a hundred times before. He disappeared around the lilac bush, and Joe could hear the faint sound of him calling back to his mom, apologizing, his voice getting fainter as he ran toward his house.
Joe sat there in sudden silence. The shed felt different without Patrick in it. Emptier, maybe, or just more like what it actually was: a dusty garden shed that smelled like soil and old wood. He looked over at the soil back where Patrick had been sitting, trying not to think of the way his own mother used to call him in for dinner. The way he would race home before the street lights came on, and the way his mom would tell him that he smelled of “outside”, and to wash up before dinner.
The book was still there.
To Kill a Mockingbird, laying open and face-down, the pages bent slightly from the fall. Patrick had been so panicked about dinner that he’d completely forgotten to pick it up.
Joe reached over and picked it up carefully, smoothing the pages back into place. There was a grocery receipt tucked inside as a bookmark, and Joe slipped it more firmly back where it had been—page forty-seven. A good start for just the beginning of the summer, he supposed. He closed the book and ran his thumb over the cover.
He should return it. Patrick would probably need it, especially if he was trying to get his summer reading done early. Joe supposed he could just leave it in the shed, on the potting soil bag that Patrick used as a chair. Patrick would probably find it.
Or.
Or he could hand it to Patrick directly. He could make sure he got it. That would be the responsible thing to do, right? The neighborly thing. It wasn’t like Joe had anything else to do tomorrow anyway. His dad would be at the hospital again, and the house would be empty and quiet and full of boxes that neither of them wanted to unpack.
Was that what this was, though? A kind gesture? Or was it just an excuse?
Joe turned the thought over in his mind as he stood up, the book held carefully in both hands. Patrick had said “see you later” like he’d meant it. Like it was a given that they’d see each other again, not a polite thing you said to someone you’d just met and would probably avoid from now on.
At least, that’s what Joe wanted to believe. He wanted to believe that he’d found something here, in this shed, in that conversation about music and CDs and bands that nobody else at his old school had even heard of. He wanted to believe that Patrick’s invitation to come back was real.
The book felt solid in his hands. Real. A reason to come back, whether he needed one or not.
Joe took a breath and headed for the door, tucking the book under his arm. Tomorrow morning, he decided. He’d return it tomorrow morning.
And if that was just an excuse to see Patrick again—well, maybe that was okay.