Chapter Text
Joel had been looking forward to going on vacation, is the thing. He’d thought it was going to be fun.
It was to the beach, his mother had told him. Joel had never been to a beach before, not a proper one anyone. She had said there would be proper sand and umbrellas and an ocean you could swim in. She promised him cold drinks and ice cream and lying in the sun.
He’d spent the four hour car trip there shaking with excitement, even as his parents fought from the front seat. He’d sat in the back and thought about how he was completely and entirely certain that this was going to be the best three months of the year. They just had to be.
They were staying at his aunt’s house, only minutes from the beach and left empty in the summer when she visited her children’s families. When they pull into the driveway he practically bounces out of the car, grinning from ear to ear.
The sun is high in the sky, there’s not a cloud above him. On the drive he saw the ocean through his window and it looked wonderful. He can’t wait.
He can already picture it. The perfect summer.
Except that there’s one small hiccup. After they pull into the driveway and unload their bags and Joel gets set up in his own bedroom, his mother tells him to go have fun.
At the beach. Alone.
“Aren’t you guys coming with me?”
Joel looks over at his father on the couch, hoping for some kind of support. He doesn’t even look over.
His mother smiles at him. “We were thinking that you could have your own holiday and we could have our own holiday, you know? I’m sure there’s plenty to do down at the beach.”
“But- alone?”
His mother presses some money into his hand and nods. “You’ll have a great time.”
And that’s the end of that, Joel goes to the beach alone.
It’s beautiful, but even staring out at the crystal blue water, he’s not quite sure it’ll be the perfect summer anymore.
***
He gets a sunburn that afternoon, and the next day, once more exiled from his house, he remembers to wear sunscreen, the chafing of his shirt against his skin a reminder of his past mistakes.
He has a whole day to himself. He has no idea what to do.
He gets a couple looks walking along the shop lined board walk that touches the sand of the beach. He knows what he looks like, a lone thirteen year old lugging a backpack far too big for him.
He glares at them, hopes they think he’s some kind of juvenile delinquent, they leave him alone for the most part.
There are only a few kids his age, all attached to parents or less often friends or siblings. He can’t approach them, they already have it all figured out.
He passes one boy, seated alone on a bench. He has hair the colour of the sandy beach and one of those faces made for pouting. He's reading a book, and as Joel moves his head to try and take a peek at the cover, the boy looks up, making eye contact.
Joel jumps, looking away and lengthening his stride. Even as he leaves, he swears that he can feel the boy’s gaze drilling holes into his back.
He ends up finding the rock pools down by the end of the beach, he spends his day searching them for crabs.
When he returns to the shore for lunch, he checks the bench and finds the boy missing.
He wonders where he went.
***
Joel sees the boy around, after that.
He finds him building a sandcastle on the beach or swimming in the shallows of the bay next to the rockpools. He finds him reading under one of the huge trees or brushing past him on his way into the ice cream parlour.
He sees him around corners and in lines and entering the same shop he’s exiting. Sometimes Joel thinks he imagines him, sometimes he thinks the boy is following him.
As it turns out, summer is incredibly boring alone.
The boy doesn’t seem to have any friends either, and as Joel watches him collect the same shells he would from the shore, he finds himself feeling a strange kinship with him.
Two kids alone on a beach.
A week into their stay Joel is at the convenience store, the little one not the big one, shoved into a small corner of the street. The big one didn’t have the sour gummies he liked.
The bell jingles as he steps through the doorway and the shop’s owner waves at him from behind the counter. Joel has been getting better at making a facial expression back.
He sees the gummies he likes, only one packet left, and makes a beeline for them. Just as he reaches out for them, an elbow blocks his path and a pale hand reaches around him to snatch them from right under his nose.
Joel spins around, grabbing ahold of the thin wrist of his new enemy and setting his face in what he hopes is an intimidating glare.
It’s the boy, the half hallucination Joel has been seeing along the shoreline.
He looks shocked for just a second, before he wrenches his wrist firmly out of Joel’s grip and frowns at him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Joel asks him harshly.
“Me?” He says, incredulous. “These are mine, you’re the one attacking me.”
“They are not,” Joel tells him. “I was here first.”
The boy takes a step away from him and towards the counter, which won’t do. Joel steps in between him and the clerk watching them.
“You’re being ridiculous," the boy says. “I grabbed them first. Finders keepers or wherever. They get new stock in on Tuesdays anyway, you won’t have to wait long.”
“Yes,” Joel agreed. “Finders keepers, and I found them.”
The boy clutches the packet close to his chest, and steps towards him. For a moment, Joel thinks he’s going to punch him or slap him or something equally as terrifying, but he just shoulders past him, pushing him out of the way and making a b-line for the counter.
“I’m not having this conversation with someone who is as much of an idiot as you are.”
In the brief moment of closeness Joel notices that the boy is a little bit shorter than he is. Smaller in general with his skinny limbs and too big T-shirt.
Then, he processes the boy’s words.
Joel has never been particularly articulate, historically scoring low in his reading levels and never seeming to be able to tell people what he means.
His mothers voice echoes in his head. Just use your words Joel. Just speak to me. No one will want to talk to you if you don’t say what you mean.
None of this has been helped by the lifelong stutter that he convinced himself he finally vanquished last winter.
The stutter is back now, with a vengeance. He splutters, choking on his words, and it takes him a full five seconds to realise they’re not leaving his throat at all, stuck there like something has lodged itself between them and his lips.
The boy places the bag of sour gummies on the counter and Joel lays a hand on his shoulder. He’s trying to stop him, probably, even as the clerk is already picking up and scanning the packet.
The boy doesn’t even look behind him.
“Don’t touch me,” he says, and there’s real venom in his voice.
Joel drops his shoulder, taking an involuntary step back.
The boy pays with two coins from his pocket, when the clerk takes them, there is no change. The boy takes the packet and turns, leaving the store without even glancing back at Joel.
And Joel can’t believe he ever liked the boy on the beach. Not when he has been so clearly evil this entire time. A devil in angel's clothing with his skinny legs and thick books and sun bleached hair, while all along he was a gummy stealing thief.
He glares at the door, still swinging shut. Forget it, he doesn’t need a friend this summer.
For the next week whenever Joel sees the boy he makes sure to frown extra hard.
***
The summer remains boring and hot and distinctly not perfect. Every day seems to stretch longer than Joel expects it to and he quickly finds himself running out of places to go. There’s only so many times you can lay on the shore and let the shallow waves wash over you before you get a bit sick of the sand in your swim shorts.
Today, Joel had been banished from the house earlier than most days. Usually his parents let him stay in bed until at least nine or ten, but at seven thirty sharp his mother had knocked on the door to inform him that they wanted the house to themselves and he needed to be gone by eight.
He’s sick of it to be honest. His parents aren’t amazing to talk to but at least they’re someone.
Even as he was kicked out Joel had time to make himself a sandwich for lunch today, saving his money so that he could buy a proper ice cream today, one of the ones with a waffle cone and two different flavours, instead of the little kid ones.
He got chocolate and bubblegum. He got chocolate because he always gets chocolate and bubblegum because the ice cream parlour just introduced it as a new flavour and he figured he may as well try it out. It’s not as good as chocolate and the flavours clash a little but Joel is enjoying it, something about the two being so starkly different appeals to him.
It’s just as he’s deciding he likes the flavour, leaning down to lick a drip from the side of his cone, just as he’s looking up at the clear sky and wondering if today could be a good day after all, that Joel trips.
It’s not a big thing, not at all. It doesn’t send him flying, doesn’t end with him laying with bloody knees and scraped elbows on the pathway. But there’s a small rock, and he stumbles, reaching out to grab the bench next to him, and in doing so he drops his ice cream.
He watches it fall in slow motion. Waffle cone. Double scoop. Chocolate and bubblegum, a terrible combination that turned out better than he could have imagined. He reaches to catch it, achieves a spear of brown and blue along his palm, and can only stare as it lands scoop first on the ground.
Today sucks.
Joel was kicked out of the house far too early and it’s too sunny and he knows it’s going to be even hotter today than yesterday and he doesn’t have money for lunch now and has to eat his stupid sandwich. And he’s going to spend another day bored and alone at this stupid beach except this time he won’t have a double scoop ice cream with a waffle cone.
Joel decides that he doesn’t like being on holiday one bit.
He slides onto the bench he’s still holding onto, pulling his knees up to his chest and resting his head on them, feeling the heat of the sun on the back of his neck, already damp with sweat.
He can feel something bubbling up from his chest, pushing through to the back of his throat and begging to be let free.
Don’t cry, he thinks furiously. Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
His eyelashes are damp. He hates this.
He doesn’t hear footsteps approaching which makes sense, it’s a busy day on a busy street, but he does feel the movement of the bench when someone sits down next to him.
Surely they can see he’s going through something? Wouldn’t they have the decency to leave him alone?
He would sit up to tell them this exact thing, except for the fact that there are at least two tears on his cheeks right now and this stranger is under no circumstances allowed to see them.
The stranger moves closer. Why would anyone sane move closer to someone they don’t know on a public bench? Maybe they’re not sane. Maybe they’re like a murderer or a child kidnapper. Is there another kind of kidnapper?
“Hey,” says a small voice next to him. “I saw that you dropped your ice cream.”
It is, distantly, familiar. He can’t bring himself to care all that much.
“G-go away.” There's that stupid stutter again.
The (maybe) stranger stops moving closer.
“I was wondering if you wanted some of mine.”
And okay hold up Joel definitely recognises the voice. He knows this person.
He gives himself a full ten seconds to collect himself from the safety of his curled legs, carefully sneaking a hand into his fortress to brush the tears from his face, before sitting up and looking at the person next to him.
It’s the lonely boy. The evil one who stole his sour gummies, who had spoken so harshly last time. Who is holding out his ice cream cone with a nervous smile on his face.
Joel apparently looks at him for a moment too long because the boy retracts his arm and his offer with it.
“It’s fine if you don’t want any,” he says stiffly. “I can go.”
But Joel reaches out and grabs ahold of the boy’s wrist before he can pull back any further.
It’s a light touch, barely his fingers curving around it, but the boy flinches and Joel lets go like he’s been burned.
“No,” he says. “I do want some.”
The boy, despite his flinch, holds it out again. “It’s mint choc chip, if that’s okay.”
“I noticed,” Joel says, not realising it sounded rude until a couple seconds have passed and it’s too late to take it back.
His fingers brush the boy’s as he takes the ice cream from him, he doesn’t react which he takes as a good sign.
Not that he wants there to be a good sign, considering he hates the guy.
“You stole my gummies,” he tells the boy before taking a lick of the ice cream. Choc mint has never been his favourite but he can admit he sees the appeal, the mint making it seemingly even colder on his tongue, a relief in the hot sun.
The boy’s expression, previously open, shuts down. Guilt roars its head in Joel’s chest.
“I didn’t steal anything from you. They were never yours.”
Joel licks the ice cream again. It’s even better the second time. “They so were, you saw me reaching for them.”
“If you’re going to call me a thief you can give me back my ice cream.”
Joel cradles it closer to his chest, careful not to get it on his shirt.
“Come on,” the boy beckons imperiously.
Joel really wants more of this ice cream.
“Fine, I’ll drop it. I just think it was mean.”
The boy sighs, reaching into the satchel bag slung across his shoulder and taking out a packet of the sour gummies. He takes one out and hands it to Joel.
“Here,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Does that make up for it?”
Joel looks down at it in his hand. “It’s only one.”
“Well, I’m not giving you another.”
“Is that the same packet?”
The boy looks at him. “Obviously not, I bought a new one yesterday.”
Joel puts it on top of the ice cream before taking a bite and eating it along with a dollop of mint. It tastes weird. He likes it.
Joel hands the ice cream back to the boy. “Okay then,” he says. “Thanks.”
The boy takes another of the gummies from his bag and sticks it on top of the ice cream. He does the same thing as Joel.
“Good, right?” Joel asks.
The boy grimaces. “It’s weird, but good.”
Joel can’t help but smile at him. “That’s what I thought.”
And then the boy doesn’t reply to that, just keeps licking his own ice cream, and Joel looks down to see that a droplet of green has landed on his swim shorts, and he doesn’t quite know what to say at all.
They’re silent, he hears a seagull down by the ocean, looks over to see it harassing a young couple with hot chips and a small child.
Neither of them are saying anything.
“I’m Joel,” Joel tells the boy next to him. “Just by the way.”
“I’m Scott,” he replies, which suits him, weirdly. Joel doesn’t usually think of names as things that suit the people they belong to. “You’re here on holiday, right?”
Joel nods, even though Scott isn’t looking at him.
“Where are your parents?”
“Back where we’re staying, or somewhere in town, or on the beach. They don’t really tell me.”
“You’re not with them?”
“They don’t want me to be.”
Scott looks over at him, then. Joel notices that his eyes are the same colour as the far out ocean, the part near the horizon. It’s a weird thing to notice. Joel’s mother told him once that he wouldn’t notice something outside of himself if it walked up and slapped him in the face.
So there, Mum.
“I live with my grandmother,” Scott tells him. “Just a twenty minute walk from here. She doesn’t like me being in the house when school’s off so I spend my time here.”
It’s a peace offering, even more than the ice cream or the gummy had been. Joel takes the olive branch.
“I always see you around, you never seem bored even though you’re not with other people.”
Scott shrugs. “I don’t mind not being with other people.”
“But it’s boring.”
“Not for me. I find things to do.” Scott gestures to his bag. “I bring books.”
“What book are you reading?” Joel asks, genuinely curious. He remembers trying to catch a glimpse of the boy’s book the first time he saw him.
Scott balances his ice cream in one hand and opens his bag with the other, pulling out a thin paperback with a page dog eared two thirds of the way through. It’s a different book to the one Joel first saw him with.
“Howl’s Moving Castle,” Scott says. “I started it yesterday afternoon.”
Yesterday afternoon. It would take Joel weeks to get that far through a book.
“Isn’t that a movie?” He asks.
Scott frowns. “Maybe, I don’t watch many movies. The book is good though.”
“What’s it about?”
Scott perks up at that. “It’s really cool. It’s about a girl, Sophie, who gets cursed to turn into an old woman. She goes looking for a cure and finds this Wizard guy called Howl in a castle that walks around.”
Joel remembers going to his friend Nate’s house late last year, where he spent the winter trying to spend as much time in the houses of people with better indoor heating than his own. Nate had had a huge DVD collection taking up an entire shelf in his lounge room. There had been one of them sitting out on the coffee table depicting a moving monstrosity of metal and smoke against a backdrop of blue sky and white mountain peaks.
It had looked awesome, but in the end Nate hadn’t even liked movies all that much anyway and they spent the day looking at his toy car collection. Joel didn’t mind the cars, but he couldn’t help but think they could have had the movie in the background at least.
“That sounds like the movie I heard about. The poster had a walking castle on it.”
Scott nods enthusiastically. “The descriptions in the book are really awesome. I’d love to see them in a movie I think.”
“Everything is better on a screen,” Joel agrees.
Scott’s shoulders drop slightly and he frowns at him. “I don’t think so.”
“What?” Joel asks, genuinely shocked by this. “Why would you want to imagine it when you could see it instead?”
Scott shrugs. “Sometimes my imagination is better. Movies make things boring.”
Which is like, so objectively wrong. Obviously.
“No they don’t,” Joel says. “No way. Movies make things look so awesome.”
“My brain makes things look awesome.”
“Not as much as a movie does.”
“Whatever,” Scott says. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t really get to watch movies much anyway.”
“What?” Joel asks. “Why not?”
“My grandmother doesn’t like them at home, she thinks they’re too loud. So I don’t think I’ll get to watch the movie any time soon.”
You can watch the movie with me. The words bubble up in Joel’s chest and he shuts his mouth before he is allowed to say them. He remembers that this boy took his gummies and didn’t even give him an apology (even if the ice cream kind of felt like one). Surely he doesn’t want to watch a movie with him, cool poster or not.
Instead, he says, “I guess it’s a good thing you like reading then.”
“I guess so.”
Silence falls between them, Scott continuing to eat his ice cream, Joel staring down at the sand at his feet.
He knows that if one of them doesn’t say something soon the moment will be over. Scott will go back to passing him on the pathway or playing a hundred metres down the beach. They won’t speak again. He will lose his chance.
Chance at what?
Scott finishes the ice cream and uses the paper towel that had been wrapped around it to wipe his hands, a motion Joel has never bothered with. He’s always been more than happy to lick the last of the sweet cream off his fingers.
“I need to get back home for lunch,” Scott tells him, beginning to stand up. “Have a nice day.”
He’s leaving.
“Thanks for the ice cream.”
Scott just shrugs, smiling a little shyly. “It was nothing.”
Then he turns away back towards the path and begins to walk.
It’s all too fast, too much for Joel to process. One second Scott is right there on the seat next to him and the next he’s three steps away, not even close enough to reach out and touch him.
It’s too far, too quick.
“Wait,” Joel says, and Scott stops, turns to look at him.
“Yeah?”
“Do you want to watch the movie with me tomorrow?”
Scott’s brow furrows. “At your house?”
“Yeah, we have it I think.”
“Okay then.”
Joel sits up straighter. “Really?”
“Yeah, sure,” Scott says. “Can I meet you here tomorrow morning?”
“Okay.”
“See you then,” Scott says, smiling at him.
Joel watches him leave with his mouth slightly open. He almost can’t believe it worked.