Archive of Our Own

His childhood bedroom is as he remembers it; no changes, nothing at all, except for a thin smear of dust across all the flat surfaces that tells Saps no one has been in here for some time. A small part of him had believed, after he’d left for college, that Ish would have dismantled his room somehow. He could see a home gym, maybe. Or an office. A library. Some sort of drastic refurbishment. But Ish hadn’t done anything of the sort. He’d left it all the same. Walking inside makes Saps feel nearly haunted, as though he’s stepping backward through time. 

But Saps walks inside anyway. Across the threshold. The portion of creaky flooring that still squeaks, all the childhood books he’d once loved still lined up and color-coded on his shelves. Old posters from bands he doesn’t listen to anymore, old concert tickets on the corkboard he’d once been so thrilled to attend. He sets his suitcase down by the foot of his bed and stares, blank, unseeing.

Here he is: he’s home. 

It’s only then that Saps starts to consider what comes next. Really, after everything, what could possibly come next? 

What Saps doesn’t want to tell you: unlike all of his friends, he doesn’t have a job lined up after graduation. College came and went and he’s right back where he started with nothing to show for it except one diploma, rolled safely inside its cardboard tube, a couple suitcases full of clothes, and a 3.4 GPA that’s not exactly good enough for anything at this point. A handful of medals from his time running track, but fewer medals than he’d hoped. A lot of good photos of him and his friends at college — film snapshots of their college bar of choice, doing stupid shit in the dormitories, a keg stand that went well, a keg stand that went poorly, first dates with sorority girls who ghosted him, shitty food at their shitty dining hall, lining up in their caps and gowns to walk across the stage and then poof! All gone, all over. All those pictures now stacked inside an old shoebox where Saps might look at them in the future, but probably won’t, as is the fate of most film photos. 

To be clear, he’d spent a lot of time applying for jobs. He’d started off dreaming big; the economics degree had to be useful for something, right? But no one had told him that he needed to start his dreaming in freshman year, fall semester, applying for internships that coming summer; and no one had told him either that an internship would be his ticket for a return offer; and no one had told him that his university’s Finance Club had selective applications, that he needed that first internship just to get his foot in the door; and by the time he’d learned all this for himself, it already felt too late. Goldman Sachs wasn’t in his future. Nor was any other large banking firm or hedge fund. That was it. Time got the jump on him. Doors closed. 

So what next? There were a whole set of mid-level places he could try his hand at. He could do data analysis (nightmarish) or policy analysis (hideous) or work in government. He could aim for a nonprofit somewhere; he could abandon all stability and go for some kid’s start-up. But the more he thought about it his senior year, the more he realized he didn’t want any of that, not really, not at all. He wanted something else. 

He couldn’t name it for himself: that unknowable grasping thing he wanted. He just had this ill-set feeling that something was missing within him, and he wasn’t sure when it had gone missing in the first place. He only knew that it was gone, whatever drive he’d had, that hard-hot ferocious pulse inside him, that heartbeat that pushed him all through high school, that unrelenting want. 

He’s home. He wants everything and nothing. He is right back where he started. 

But Saps is complaining too much. There are good things about being back in his hometown. Such as:

“Holy shit.” Snowbird looks at him like he’s seen a ghost. “Wait, you’re actually back?”

“Hell yeah,” Saps says, trying to smile. “Back for the summer.”

“Holy fuck,” Snowbird says, and his face splits into a grin. “Get over here, man, what the hell!” 

They hug. Snowbird slaps him on the back twice, then lets go, his arms on Saps’ shoulders, sizing him up. It occurs to Saps that they haven’t seen each other in four years. Last he heard, Snowbird was going to community college a couple hours away, working full-time; the shoe store at the mall won’t manage itself. He makes decent money, he’d texted Saps a year or two ago, and honestly, it’s a solid enough job, so why quit? Going out of state for college felt stupid for him. 

“Gotoga and I have had this running bet if you were going to move back,” Snowbird tells him. He’s taking his lunch break early, and they’re sitting on a bench outside the mall. Wispy summer air floats past. People chatter, laugh. A group of teenage girls flutter by in athleisure, clutching Alo bags. Saps wishes he had brought his sunglasses. “He was pretty convinced that you were like, never coming back here, but I guess I win, now.”

“Nah, man,” Saps says. “I think I was always coming back.”

“The group chat’s been totally dead.” 

“That’s on me. I kinda went AWOL for a bit.”

“Yeah, I know,” says Snowbird. “So like — graduated now? Degree and everything?”

“Still working on yours?”

“I’m doing two classes a semester,” he shrugs. “I’ve got a year or two left, I think. Just that full-time and classes don’t really work out well together.”

“Yeah. Damn.” 

“It’s all good, though.” Snowbird, more so than any of Saps’ friends, has the ability to smile at anything. “Got any summer plans?”

Who knows? Ish is away for the next month at least, so Saps has the whole place to himself — not that that’s saying much, given the size of the condo and all the memories attached to it. He’s got access to a car again, though. It’s not the greatest car in the world, but it means he can go anywhere in the world that he wants. Yet here he is again at his old summer hangout spot. This strip mall that’s expanded trifold since Saps has been here last. 

“Not really,” he says. “Any suggestions?”

“Oh, yeah,” Snowbird grins. “I can put together a whole list. You been to the drive-in?” 

“It’s open again?” 

“Yeah, last summer, they do a whole bunch of shitty slasher movies on Fridays. It’s great. And there’s this sick new bar downtown that I haven't been to yet, it opened a few months ago — I was thinking about texting everyone, we could go one of these weekends.” 

“I’d be down,” Saps says. He squints up at the sun. “Pretty much everyone is back for the summer, then?”

Snowbird glances at him, puzzled. “You haven’t heard?”

There are a lot of things Saps has not heard. “Heard what?”

“Literally everyone’s back,” Snowbird shrugs. Hot summer sun, bleeding them both dry. “Even Flux flew in yesterday.” 

There are a lot of things that Saps doesn’t want to tell you about Fluixon. 

He catches a glimpse of him the next day, at the coffee shop downtown. That, too, is like seeing a ghost in the worst way; the fact that Saps doesn’t recognize him at first, startles, has to double-take like a moron to make sure what he’s seeing is real. That is Fluixon, only his hair has grown out: longer, artfully styled, shining black beneath the warm light. Something about him is sharper, cleaner. His style is different; gone, seemingly, are the silly branded T-shirts of his teenage years, the washed-out jeans, the scuffed shoes. He’s in black now, a leather jacket despite the heat, a bag slouched over his shoulder. When Flux turns to push his way through the door, his eyes catch on Saps, and for a second all they do is stare at each other.

Saps raises one hand.

Flux looks at him, expression unreadable. He raises a hand back, then turns away. 

Later, in the tiny parking lot behind the building:

“Hey,” a voice says, and Saps doesn’t need to turn to know who’s speaking.

“Hey,” Saps says. “Long time no see.”

“Ha,” Flux says. “Yeah, I know.”

“You look…” Different? Older? Hotter? “Good.” 

“Thanks,” says Flux. Then lighter, almost teasing: “Wish I could say the same to you.”

“Alright, fuck off,” Saps says. It’s so easy to feel himself smile, as though all the years between them can collapse away in an instant. “I take it back, then.”

“Yeah, yeah.” The corner of his mouth, tilting up. “I’m sure you do.” 

They stand and look at each other, this time close enough to reach out and touch. Flux has grown a couple of inches. He’s not nearly as scrawny as he used to be. His frame has filled out more so that he reads as adult rather than teenager. Saps would be willing to bet a lot of money that he doesn’t get carded much, except for the youthful roundness to his face that might make a bartender pause. He’s wearing sunglasses. Has Saps ever seen Flux in sunglasses before? It’s strangely hard, now, to summon the old Fluixon to his mind. 

And what of Saps? His hair is longer, but he’s stuck with the same platinum white as always, a part of his personality now. He’s taller. Hopefully more broad-shouldered than he was at seventeen. He hopes he looks older, though it’s hard to tell himself. He goes back through old Instagram photos and old Snapchat memories, sometimes, and it feels like he’s always the same, same face, same eyes, and nothing ever seems to change.

“So,” Saps says. Condensation from iced coffee slips, slick and wet, against his palms. He shifts his weight back and forth. 

“So,” Flux parrots.

Is there anything he can possibly say to Flux right now?

“Want to go bowling?” Saps tries, and so they do. 

The bowling alley is a couple blocks away from the mall on Elm. Gotoga worked here one summer in high school, so they used to go all the time to steal his employee discount. Saps almost offers Flux a ride before he sees Flux fish for his keys, and oh, he does have a car now. He no longer needs a chauffeur everywhere like in high school, when he was still waiting for permission to get his permit, when he was under curfew every night. His car is understated; a little black thing. Saps wonders if he bought it himself.

“I did,” Flux says, after the latest round of strikes and spares. “I saved up my whole junior year for it, actually.”

“Huh.”

“I’m pretty good with money. And I’ll need it for grad school, anyway.”

Saps pauses. “Grad school?”

Flux raises a brow. “For architecture?”

“Wait, really?”

“Do you not see anything I post?” 

Saps has made a habit of avoiding Instagram these days. Instagram and LinkedIn alike. “I’m kind of on a social media hiatus.” 

“Weird,” Flux says. “Er. Yeah. Cornell, actually.” 

“Wow.” 

“It’s whatever.” Still, he preens in that sort of way; he knows going to an Ivy League is a big deal, and he’s aware of how impressive it is. Saps wonders why he’s pretending to play it down. “Your turn, by the way.”

Saps hefts the ball and sends it spinning down the alley. Six pins clatter to the polished floor, getting swept away by the lane machine. The last four are split into a group of three and one, far to the left, impossible to knock down with just one bowling ball. Still, he tries his best, but the ball goes flying through the dead center, clattering against the back wall without knocking another pin down.

Flux clicks his tongue and looks up: the score flashes overhead. Saps is still winning, though not by much. “Bad aim.”

“I’m trying my best.”

“Try harder?” Flux offers.

“Your turn, then.”

“Fine,” he says, as haughty as ever. The ball he’s selected is purple and blue; he sends it spinning down the lane in one clean line, where he manages to knock over eight pins. The remaining two wobble but stay upright. 

Flux lets out one delighted laugh. The noise of it ripples all through Saps like a shockwave. “I didn’t think that would work.”

Grudging, though Saps is trying not to be: “You finally learned how to bowl.” 

“I wasn’t ever that bad.”

“Yeah, you were.” 

“I guess I was,” and Flux sits back down. He sips at his water and glances around, then straightens up so he’s not slouching. It’s a Wednesday afternoon; no one is at the bowling alley except for one group of post-retirement parents, sharing a beer pitcher between them, and another group of middle-school aged kids with the bumpers up on their lane. 

An old memory flickers to his mind: their little friend group, giggling, fingers greasy and stained from onion rings and ranch. Watching Flux roll gutter ball after gutter ball. One set of purple eyes, glaring, holding a middle finger up to Gotoga. Saps getting up, taking the ball from his hands and bowling in his stead, strike after strike after strike, until Thomas went that’s cheating, you can’t always have Saps bowl for you, but it didn’t matter because Flux was winning at that point, winning and smiling in that flushed pleased way that made Saps’ heart flutter. 

“You’re staring at me,” Flux says.

Saps looks away, back towards the pins at the edge of his vision. “I was just thinking how weird it is to be back here.” 

Flux laughs. “All the decorations are still the same.”

“Yeah, they really gotta change some of this shit.” 

“I don’t know, I kind of like the tacky neon signs everywhere.”

“Even the one that looks like a dick?”

“What would this place be without one extremely phallic neon sign?” Flux says dryly. “It would lose all its charm.” 

“Nah, it would still keep some of the nostalgia.” 

“You’re right,” Flux says, with more certainty. “It is weird to be back.” 

The music overhead changes from seventies synth-pop to something more upbeat and modern. The two feet of space between them feels like an uncrossable, unmappable distance. They’re laughing the same way they used to, but it feels different now, askew and off-set. Flux’s eyes keep glancing over to Saps, then flicking away again. 

Once upon a time Saps had been able to read his expression so well that Flux had accused him of mindreading. It was his own secret power: how he could know, intimately from a single glance, what Flux was feeling or thinking. How he’d been able to flash his best friend a look, and Flux would respond in turn, knowing perfectly what the other wanted. 

They’d once spent every waking moment together. Now after nearly four years of silence, Fluixon feels like a stranger all over again.  

The two of them had first met in middle school, when Saps was twelve and Flux was eleven. Flux had moved to town a few months earlier at the start of the school year. He was the youngest of four, and he was an odd little mystery. Saps heard whispers about his family every so often, but he figured it was all the boring usual gossip — there were a dozen new kids every year in their suburban middle school. Everyone gossiped about them for the first month or so, before they got bored, and the new students became boring themselves, and the rumor mill took a different course. 

But Flux was different. He was the only one to share the same seventh grade science class as Saps, and the only one unlucky enough to share a table with him in October, during the frog dissection. 

They sat there: holding scalpels, staring at each other through the formaldehyde smell.

“Hi,” Saps said, because he was friendly and nice and everyone knew who he was anyway, so introducing himself was just a formality. “I’m Saps.”

“I know who you are,” Flux said. 

“Well, I know who you are,” Saps said. “Fluixon Aculon. Isn’t that kind of a crazy name?”

“It’s de’Aculon,” Flux corrected.

“It still rhymes. What kind of parents give their kid a rhyming name?”

“Why are you being such a dick?” Flux snapped.

“Because I got stuck with you instead of with my friends,” Saps muttered, which he knew was an impolite thing to say. But Saps could afford to be impolite; he was teetering on the edge of middle school popularity in such a way that he was starting to believe he was invincible. Besides, he was irritated, listening to Pili and Evbo laugh on the other side of the room, peeling away frog guts to the open air, poking around at all its grayish inner organs. He was petty. He wasn’t being nice. 

“I’ll make you a deal,” Flux said. He was still holding his scalpel, and Saps thought for one second of how he would look dissected: all the blood and guts and gore. “Clearly you don’t like me and I don’t like you, so let’s get this over with as fast as possible. You do the dissection, and I’ll do the report.”

“Ew,” Saps said. “Do I have to?”

“Yes,” Flux said. “Because I told you to.” 

That startled Saps, and it surprised him in a way he was almost never surprised anymore. 

“Okay,” he said, “Deal.” 

They sat together at lunch. Flux was quiet. He had a lunch packed from home: carrot sticks and fudge-striped cookies and a sandwich. He picked at it methodically, spent half his time looking around at the cafeteria instead of at Saps. He was nervous, Saps recognized. He was in a new place at a new school with a new hierarchy, and he didn’t know where he was supposed to fit in, but he recognized that at the moment he was at the bottom end of the totem pole. Saps wondered what his previous school had been like. Maybe Flux had been super cool there?”

“I wasn’t,” Flux informed him. 

“You’re weird,” Saps said. 

“You’re being an asshole,” Flux said. “One of these days you’ll grow up and get over yourself.” 

“I’m trying to be your friend right now,” Saps scowled. “I’m doing you a favor.”

“I don’t want to talk to you if you’re going to be mean.”

“Fine,” Saps said mutinously. “Then sit in silence. See if I care.”

They sat in silence. Until: 

“Want to pair with me for the next lab?”

Flux didn’t have to think about it. “Deal.” 

So they paired together for the next dissection: cow eyeball. White-pale corneal liquid flooding from its glassy, unseeing iris. Flux was amazed, poking through each peculiar layer of skin, watching the clear retina pop away from the back of the eyeball. He fished it out with tweezers, and Saps said, “That’s really fucking cool, actually.”

“Shh,” Flux said. “Don’t get us busted for swearing.” 

“Dare you to eat it.”

Flux looked at him as though he was insane. “No. You eat it.”

“I don’t want to eat it, that’s gross.” 

“You’re the one who dared me!”

“Because I thought it’d be funny,” Saps complained. “I’ve never seen someone eat a cow eyeball before.” 

“You know,” Flux suggested, sly, “I bet you could get Snowbird to eat it.” 

Saps thought about it for a second. “I bet I could, too.” 

“I have money,” Flux said. “Put twenty dollars on it?”

“No, that’s too much. Let’s start with ten and go up from there.” 

In the end it took forty-five dollars and sixty cents to convince Snowbird to eat it, or at least to put it in his mouth, and it was then — watching him spit-cough over the sink, laughing with Flux, laughing so hard that his stomach hurt, the whole room reeking of formaldehyde, the silver glint of dissection tools lighting up the world in white — that Saps thought they were going to be best friends forever. He was certain of it, at that point. He knew it the same way he knew the sun would rise: irrevocable, always. 

The front yard shines heavy with dew, soon to be burned away by the rising sun. Summers are brutal here, their valley town surrounded by burnished yellowing hills, but the mornings are as cool as ever. Saps gets up, makes himself coffee, looks out onto the world. He’s had this view memorized for as long as he can remember. 

Last night, after bowling, he called Ish, who said he was on a research trip in Europe — something to do with old ruins from the Ottoman Empire, some archival work at Anadolu University. They chatted for a bit; Ish would be coming home at the end of June. It gives Saps a month and a half by himself, living alone, in a way that feels again like he’s still a senior in high school, puttering around the empty condo, feeling so adult by himself. He didn’t realize until a couple years later that he shouldn’t have ever been so alone.

He texts Snowbird: working lol but im free at 4? Gotoga says summer camp is evil this year but i’m free at 5. Thomas doesn’t respond to his messages, and neither does Pili or Gray or Micro, which means they’re all probably still asleep. He thumbs open Flux’s contact, but startles at the last time they’ve texted each other. Two and a half years ago. After three months without any texts back and forth, Saps had sent a photo of a band poster on the wall of a college bar. u used to listen to these guys right? Six days later, Flux had answered: not rly lol. 

He types out a message, then deletes it. 

With nothing better to do, Saps starts going through his closet. Might as well clear out the last of his old life, the last of his memories. Get a fresh start, before Ish comes back to town, before Saps really does start to feel like a teenager again. There’s a lot of things that he remembers distantly, and he spends a while sitting in the nauseating sentimentality of it all. His high school track and field sweatshirts, all the running gear, the old sneakers that he’d thought were too sentimental to toss at the time that he packed for college but looking at now, should all probably be thrown into a garbage bag. A lot of old clothes that don’t fit him anymore — does he need his middle school uniform? What about his elementary school uniform? He probably doesn’t need his old binders full of notes from science class, all the old laboratory reports when he and Flux had taken apart frogs and cow eyeballs and starfish and wet, slimy squid. He stacks them all in a row beside his dresser, and then spends a while turning through each page, too caught up in the nostalgia to look away. 

His handwriting had been a total mess in middle school. Even he can’t understand it; he can only understand the way he wrote his name, SAPARATA, one big swoop through the S. But Fluixon’s handwriting had always been neat and slender and cramped, this odd blend between cursive and print where some letters connected and others didn’t. Saps touches one finger to the page and immediately feels silly for doing so. 

What else is there? A lot of sentimental knick-knacks that he doesn’t need — the rock sculpture he’d built as a kid, old sheets and bedding, his childhood blanket, that stuffed animal he’d slept with until he was eight years old. And then, furled at the back of the closet, he reaches in and feels his fingers hit paper. 

Saps had forgotten about the map. 

Well. He’d almost forgotten. 

Touching it now feels wrong in the same way that touching something at a museum feels wrong, even if there’s a sign telling you to do so. The paper hasn’t worn at all; it’s still the same sturdy map of their hometown and all the surrounding areas. When Saps unfurls it, puts four textbooks on the corners to press it down, the vision feels like being thrust back in time. 

He and Flux had made it together at the end of eighth grade. The two of them had closed themselves in Saps’ bedroom to plot out their future, which was mapped on a fifty-mile radius from their hometown. One tiny corner of the map reached all the way to the closest lake; the other end of it reached into the vast desert around them, sparse towns and suburbs dotting mountains and hillsides. Flux had a list of places he wanted to visit eventually. They were all national parks or monuments or stretches of open wilderness, mostly, which Saps found incredibly boring. 

“You hate camping,” Saps said. “You hate the outdoors.”

“It’s for life experience,” said Flux, annoyed. “We wouldn’t have to camp anyway. We’d just drive there.”

“There’s no good cities on this map,” Saps said, annoyed. “I feel like there would be nothing to visit at all.”

“Pick a random spot,” Flux said. “Anywhere at all.”

Saps closed his eyes and stabbed at the map. His index finger landed on a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. Flux looked it up and said, “These guys apparently have the world’s biggest ball of yarn.”

“That has got to be the most dogshit adventure of all time,” Saps sighed, but he still marked it down. 

They marked out the whole circumference of their lives like that. Little places known for nothingness, distant towns known for their Fourth of July parades and not much else. It was hard to live in the middle of so much — endless concrete streets and sidewalks and leafy trees — and realize how far you were from anything real. No one came to their city for tourism, anyway; they weren’t a state capital, weren’t a college town, didn’t even have a good university close by. Their downtown was a place where people commuted in for work and then left at 5pm. You could drive for thirty minutes and still be in the suburbs. It made Saps feel awfully lonely to think about, but looking at the map and all that open space made him feel better, especially with Flux beside him. 

“One of these days I’ll get a car and we can actually drive out to all this shit,” Saps said. 

“Good luck getting your license,” Flux said, but there was a note of hope in his voice, and Saps felt good, it was good to make him sound that way. Already, they’d known each other for a little over a year and Saps had the growing feeling that he enjoyed making Flux happy: less pessimistic, less doubtful. It was hard being friends with someone so stubbornly introverted, who couldn’t care less for any of the things Saps liked doing: hanging out with friends, shooting the shit, playing video games in Schpood’s basement and shouting so loud that Schpood’s mom had to tell them off. Flux much preferred this, the comfort of Saparata only.  

“Just one other person,” he’d said, and then he flushed dark. Saps wasn’t sure if he was ashamed or just blushing. “I just like hanging out with you, I guess.”

“Well, good,” Saps said. “Because I like hanging out with you too.” 

He takes a photo of the map: their glittery yellow stars sprinkled across miniature roads and pathways. He opens Flux’s contact: remember this? But he doesn’t hit send, at once too ashamed, too aware of how childish it is. 

As a teenager, Saps had always thought that their home city was too big, but as an adult, it abruptly seems too small. How is he running into Flux everywhere? He sees him at the mall all the time, chatting with Thomas and Gray in front of the doors to Sephora; and then he’s at the gas station, eyes catching Saps’ from across the aisle, and then the two of them are standing next to each other before glass refrigerators of energy drinks, a bad Top 40 hit playing overhead, both of them feeling as though they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“Are you stalking me?” Flux says lightly. “Be honest.”

“I’m not stalking you. Are you stalking me?”

“I don’t have the willpower for that,” Flux says, and he grabs a drink from the fridge seemingly at random before turning on his heel and heading away.

Saps, like a dog, follows after him. “Since when did you drink Redbull?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Since college.”

“I thought you hated energy drinks.”

“I did,” Flux says. “But caffeine addictions will do terrible things to a man.”

“Who are you and what have you done with Flux?”

Flux doesn’t laugh. He only walks across the aisle from Saps, pretending to peruse the rows and rows of protein bars. Their eyes meet from across the aisle, the lower halves of their faces obscured. 

“Tell me something cool that happened in college,” Flux says. 

“I won a 5k,” Saps offers. “Placed in first. They gave me a medal.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Tell me something cool that happened for you.”

“I dropped acid,” Flux says. “Had the worst trip of all time, according to my friend.”

Saps blinked. “Holy shit.”

“I was convinced that my parents were going to break down my dorm room door and arrest me,” Flux says. His eyes crinkle up, like he’s smiling. “But I also had a pretty terrible tripsitter. Maybe if I’d had a different person hanging out with me, I would have felt better.” 

There is no world, no world at all, in which Fluixon is the kind of person to do drugs in a college dormitory room. For as long as Saps has known him, he’s always been so nerdy and anxious, so introverted, so withdrawn. He can’t quite imagine Fluixon being the kind of person to willingly take a tab of acid by himself, or even with someone else in the room. Wouldn’t he hate the vulnerability of it? Wouldn’t he hate the feeling of being out of control?”

“It turns out, “Flux says in response, “A lot of things are a lot less scary once you do them for the first time.”

“That sounds like the worst fucking self-help book motto of all time.”

“And would you believe it? Most of life is like that, so I’ve found.”

“Was that the craziest thing that happened for you in college?”

“The craziest?” Flux doesn’t even have to think about it. “No, of course not.”

“So what was the craziest thing?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m afraid your delicate sensibilities might be offended by the sort of things that I did over the last four years.”

“Okay, dude, you don’t have to posture.” It’s so teenage of him to play at being so grown-up. Saps is reminded of himself at sixteen, how he’d bragged about underage drinking to everyone on the basketball team just to show off. “Either tell me or not.” 

“It’s a secret,” Flux says primly, and again, he picks a protein bar seemingly at random before heading to the front. They pay for their items separately, then stand on the concrete. Freeway, highway overpass, eighteen-wheeler making a wide right turn. Pale blue sky without any clouds. Summer heat is brutal this year; heatwaves day after day. Saps is in a sleeveless white tank. Flux is in black, though he’s still as pale as he used to be. 

“What were your plans for today?” Saps tries.

“Snowbird and I were going to see a movie,” Flux says. “I’m buying snacks for him. I don’t actually like energy drinks.” 

“What movie?”

“No clue,” Flux says. “I’m not a movie person. But I figured I should hang out with people before I move out permanently.”

Saps pauses. “Permanently?”

“I mean… yes?” Flux tilts his head at him. “I’m moving to New York, Saps. And then ideally staying there, or going somewhere else, but I’m not planning to come back here.”

“Ah.”

“I thought you were planning the same?” 

“Oh, it’s…” Complicated, he wants to say, before feeling embarrassed at how little he has planned for himself. “I’m not sure, actually. I’m feeling out my options, I guess.”

“Oh,” Flux says. “Right.” 

A beat.

Then Flux asks, “You don’t have a job yet?” 

“I’m debating what I want to do,” Saps says, and an old flare of injustice flickers inside him, though he keeps his tone light. “At least I’m not doing grad school. It could always be worse. I could be in for massive amounts of debt.”

“My program is fully-funded,” Flux says, cold. “And that’s not a very nice thing to say, you know.” 

“Oh,” Saps says, feeling cold in turn. He thought Flux would joke with him, not take it personally. “Oh, shit, dude, I didn’t mean —”

“It’s fine. I know what you meant.” 

They stand in silence. Flux checks his phone, then fires off a few messages. “Snowbird just got off work. We’re gonna meet at the theater in a bit.”

“Have fun.” 

“You could come, if you wanted.” 

Something strange and awful twists inside Saps’ chest. “Sure,” he says. “I’ll join.”

They’re planning to watch the newest Marvel movie. Saps knows enough about Marvel to understand the barebones of it, but Flux hasn’t watched the last dozen or so movies, and the night ends with the three of them sitting on cold pavement outside, Snowbird and Saps talking over each other to try and explain while Flux goes mhm over and over until, “It really doesn’t matter that much, you know?” 

“It was kinda terrible,” Snowbird agrees. “The CGI is absolute dogshit.” 

“There’s an A24 movie coming out in a month or so,” Flux says, checking his phone. “It looks horror-esque.”

“You don’t even like horror movies,” Saps says, feeling mystified.

“I’d go see it with a bunch of people,” Flux shrugs. “Maybe we could go opening night or something. I know Thomas wants to see it.”

“Thomas and I were gonna hit up this board game bar downtown next weekend. They’ve got like, themed craft cocktails or something cool.”

“Oh, sick.”

“You wanna join? We need at least four people for a solid game of Catan.”

“I’m not really big into board games anymore,” Flux says. 

Snowbird glances, puzzled. “You can still hang out with us, though. Saps, you can totally tag along too if you wanted. I was gonna ask Gotoga —”

“I’ll see,” Saps says, “I should be free.”

Snowbird cracks a smile. “Cool. I’ll see you then.”

He waves, and disappears into the night. His absence leaves Saps and Flux alone again, standing beside each other. Saps looks over to Flux: not into board games? He feels baffled enough to say aloud, “What even happened to you?”

“What happened to me?” 

“You’re like —” Saps makes an inarticulate gesture. “You’re acting very high and mighty.”

“I’ve always been this way.” 

“Not like this.”

“Well, I’m very sorry that our personalities don’t align anymore,” Flux says, an edge to his voice. “God forbid I grow up a little bit.”

“I just don’t understand why you’re acting like you’re someone that you’re not.” 

Flux sucks in a sharp breath, but doesn’t respond. He only looks off into the dim blue sky, expression hard and pinched. “I’m not that different, Saps.” 

Saps blurts out, “Remember the map?”

A beat. Flux twists to look at him, head tipped to the side.

“The map,” he echoes.

“The like, stupid thing we put together before high school. All the places we were gonna visit.”

“Oh,” Flux says, “I — vaguely, I think. Did we do that?” 

“We could go to a bunch of those places,” Saps says, feeling his heartbeat quicken inside his chest. “Now that we have cars, a lot of them are like — driving distance from us. Like a roadtrip.” 

“With all the love I have, Saparata, I don’t want to do a roadtrip this summer.” 

“Humor me,” Saps says, feeling pathetic. 

Flux looks at him hard and long. For a second Saps is afraid that Flux will say no. After all this time, his gaze still has the power to fell Saps in half like a log.  

“Sure,” Flux says at last. “I’ll text everyone. We can make it a whole thing.” 

So it becomes a whole thing. Two weekends later, everyone piles into Thomas’s car — he has the biggest car, which is his parents’ old minivan, and can fit seven people if they all squish. Flux takes the front seat before anyone can argue, which leaves Saps and Snowbird in the middle, and forces Gray, Micro, and Rotation into the back. Flux is on aux, and his music taste is surprisingly good — a mix of indie rock and old eighties songs, and Saps says this is your stuff? and Flux says a friend of mine put me onto it. 

Later, at a gas station for snacks and refueling, Flux tells him conspiratorially, “It’s my ex-boyfriend’s playlist, actually. I don’t really listen to much music.”

“Oh,” Saps says, the news like a gunshot. 

“But he’s cool about it,” Flux shrugs, “We’re on good terms.”

“Damn. Sorry about the breakup.”

“Oh, it’s fine. We both knew it was a fling anyway.” 

“Tell me about him?”

Flux laughs, wry. “Which one?”

“Which one?” 

“I mean, there were more than a couple. You’d have to specify which person you’re talking about.”

Saps can’t help it; he laughs too. It’s so like Flux to posture in this way. “You’re so dumb. Is there a story there with this specific guy or not?” 

Flux can’t help himself from grinning either, and he says, “Maybe once we get to this stupid ball of yarn, I’ll tell you about it.” So, at the ball of yarn, while half of their friends are off reading the tiny brass plaque and the other half of them are smoking a joint in a far-off cornfield, Flux tells Saps about his third boyfriend, in his sophomore year of college — third? Saps says, and Flux says, well, there were a few more people, but nothing serious, obviously — who was part of an indie band, who met Flux after the show, who invited him out with the rest of his stoner friends, and it was a blurry, hazy relationship that lasted until December, when Flux decided he wasn’t cut out for lead singers of indie bands and dumped him before finals week. 

“Heartless,” Saps says, almost in amazement. “Cold as fuck.”

“Hey, you were worse.”

“There’s no way I was worse. Before finals week?” 

“Remember that one girl?” Flux snaps his fingers, “Oh god, what was her name — she was like, blonde I think, she was a cheerleader —”

“I don’t even remember,” Saps mumbles, except he does remember, and the memory embarrasses him. “Hey, it was the week before Valentine’s Day. It wasn’t actually Valentine’s Day itself.”

“Dumping someone on the eleventh is equivalent to dumping up with them on Valentine’s Day.”

“Not at all!”

“It’s okay to admit you were a total dick in high school,” Flux says demurely. 

Saps laughs, because it’s true. He was a jock and an asshole; he was popular, which made him even worse. There was a point in high school where everyone wanted to either be his friend or to be him, and Saps sometimes felt like he was coasting high above everyone else, on a different plane of existence. He’d been hot shit, is what he’s trying to say. The kind of kid who people voted as Homecoming King, the kind of kid who got voted as Prom King alongside his date whose name he can’t quite remember. Saps is now grown-up enough to admit that it got to his head, the ego of it all. He can’t imagine how everyone put up with him. 

“How are you on good terms with him if you dumped him right before finals?” Saps asks at last. 

“I have no clue,” Flux says. “I think I’m just lucky that he’s so nice.” 

He stands up, brushes off his pants. He offers Saps a hand; he’s smiling, slightly, and it makes something in Saps’ heart stutter-kick, coltish, wild, youthful. “Let’s go look at this stupid ball of yarn.”

They go to look at the stupid ball of yarn. It’s multicolored and enormous, over two Saps’ tall. It sits in the middle of an enormous gazebo that’s been constructed around it. The yarn itself is thick and chunky. Saps wonders what they do when it rains.

“I could do something like this,” he says aloud, and Thomas, overhearing him, laughs.

“But you didn’t,” he says. “Alright, are we ready to go?” 

On the drive back, Saps and Flux sit in the middle row; Snowbird has been promoted to the front seat and to aux. Ignoring the chatter coming from Rotation and Micro in the back, Saps looks over to Flux. “You got around in college, huh?” 

“So I did,” says Flux, unconcerned. “Does it bother you?” 

It does bother Saps, is the thing; it bothers him more than he wants to admit, and he isn’t sure why it bothers him so much, the idea of Flux dating other guys. It isn’t as though he’s ever had a claim to Flux in that way. Except it feels like he did, at times. A part of him had loved the knowledge that he was the one Flux went to: Flux’s best friend, Flux’s only friend, really. A jealous, possessive part of him had enjoyed the closeness, the trust, that unfettered open intimacy. 

“No,” Saps says, though it takes him a while to respond. “It’s just — crazy to imagine you dating someone.”

Mildly, Flux says, “Ouch.”

“Just that like, you were so —”

“I know whatever you’re going to say is going to be rude, so you can just spare me —”

“Nerdy,” Saps says, fighting a grin. “So — so bookish.”

“Introverted,” Flux sighs. “Loser. Lame. Pretentious. Insufferable. I can keep going, if you want.”

“You’re still a lot of those things, don’t worry.”

“It’s alright,” Flux says nicely. “You’re still an egotistical dick.” 

“Hey, I’m proud to be an egotistical dick.”

“Even more proof of my point,” Flux says. The rest of the car ride lapses into quiet, each of them staring out their respective window. Afternoon light is shimmering fragments of gold. It spills over them, highlighting the planes of Flux’s face, the tilt to his jaw, the curl of hair that falls over his forehead. Saps closes his eyes and thinks for a moment: of holding him, of that same shattered light against his hands, of the feeling of Flux’s hair curling into his hands, and something in him feels angry all of a sudden, anger at something he can’t name — the fact that he doesn’t have something, or that he did have something and no longer does — then startles awake to realize they’re parked in front of someone’s house, and someone’s clambering out of the minivan, as he’s groggy and still figuring out where in the world he is. 

“Hey, sleepyhead,” Flux says lightly. “Good morning.”

He had been dreaming, and had been close to grasping something — he isn’t sure what, but it was right there in his hands. What was it? Something to do with Fluixon, he thinks, but then staring at Fluixon, at how removed he feels, at this stranger living in the body of his old best friend, he isn’t sure that he had dreamt of Fluixon at all. 

At the end of tenth grade, Flux and Saps sat outside the football field together, high up on the metal bleachers. It was graduation; Flux’s older sister was graduating, and Saps had tagged along because Flux had asked him to, and he never said no to Flux, not anymore. Everyone had just thrown their caps into the air, clutching diplomas in their hands, and Saps and Flux applauded politely out of obligation. Saps had met Cynikka once, but she was a senior and had her own friend group; he could barely spot her now, somewhere in the first few rows, chatting with the girl beside her. 

One of these days they were going to graduate on this field too, Saps said, and Flux made a little noise. Graduation, then, felt so far off. There were so many things coming up beforehand: SATs and ACTs and college applications and for Saps especially, track and field recruitment, visiting colleges, meeting with prospective coaches, thinking about scholarships and essays and AP exams. It made Saps feel giddy and crazy; it made Flux dour and pessimistic. 

That summer, Flux was working at the library. Saps was working at the shoe store with Snowbird, who, back then, was just a regular in-store assistant like Saps. But there was still so much free time in the summer. Every door was open to them. 

“Think your dad’s gonna be home this summer?” Flux said at last, as the crowd around them flooded down the bleachers, began to collect on the field. Camera flashes and photographs. Boys hopping on each other’s shoulders, gowns unzipped and open, grass-stained heels and sneakers. 

A hot pearl of shame beaded inside Saps, one that he’d been trying to quench for a while. “Nah. I don’t think so. You know we’re not like, close like that.”

“Just wondering.”

“We’re fine,” Saps said. “It’s like, cool and shit. Do you know if Red and Ender are staying this whole summer?”

Flux let out a little laugh. “Definitely not. I think Ender would rather kill himself than live at home again.”

“At least your house will be a little empty, yeah?”

“Well, not really,” Flux said. He never quite elaborated, but Saps knew there was something Flux was hiding; he was always hiding something when it came to his family. Saps could guess, based on the little details that Flux had dropped over time. Some messy relationship between him and his fathers; some messy divorce; something that made Flux go quiet and guarded whenever anyone tried to pry, so that on more than one occasion, Saps had stepped in to tell someone to shut the fuck up, what the fuck is your problem, why are you being weird as shit? And the person would back off, and Flux would look at Saps in that way: relieved, and flattered, and grateful, the strength of it so much that Saps sometimes felt he would do anything, anything at all to make Flux look at him in that way forever. 

Saps stretched his legs out. It was hot as fuck here in the bleachers. He’d hit a growth spurt in the last few months. Now, he was a full head taller than Flux, and his suit pants didn’t reach his ankles in the way they should. He looked gangly and scrawny, like he was too small for his own frame. Sometimes he felt like he was wearing someone else’s body. 

“The good thing is that my house is like, always empty,” Saps offered. “So we can always hang out there.” 

“Yeah,” Flux agreed. “Better than mine.” 

“I still have to visit you sometime,” Saps said. “I’ve never even seen your house before.” It was technically a lie — he did know what Flux’s house looked like. He lived on Oak Avenue in a nice two-story house on a street full of nice two-story homes. He was a couple blocks away from Saps’ elementary school and a ten minute walk from the strip of stores and restaurants that marked their neighborhood’s downtown. It was a nice place to live, all things considered. Saps had just never been inside Flux’s house before. He’d never even met his parents. 

Flux’s face did something funny. “It’s just ‘cause I’ve got Cynikka and my dads. They’re always around.” Then, a peace offering. “Maybe one of these days I can show you around, though, whenever they’re gone.”

“That’d be cool.” 

Waves of family passed by them. Everyone had wreaths of flowers and money around their neck. Flux was scanning the crowd; Saps said, “Are you looking for Cynikka?”

“She’s somewhere around here, probably.” 

“I’m avoiding my parents,” Flux muttered. “They keep texting me.”

“Why didn’t you sit with them?”

“I’d rather die than sit next to my parents for two and a half hours,” Flux said. “You’re the best thing I’ve got.” 

“Let me know if you need a bodyguard,” Saps said, meaning it all the way. 

Flux smiled, but it was weak. He moved closer, and without warning, their legs pressed together in one long line. They were close enough that Saps could feel the heat of Flux’s body beside him, and the sensation did something strange to him, this slow-burning heat that fizzled through him. He wasn’t sure what to do with the warmth inside his chest. He looked over at Flux and saw him staring, determinedly, across the field. 

Saps’ heart pounded double-time. His whole body felt strange, surreal, too warm, overheated in his suit pants and shirt. As if in a dream, he reached over and found Flux’s hand. Pinky curled over pinky. Saps, now, was looking across the field too, as their hands shifted, as their fingers laced together.  

Flux made a minute movement, then tightened his grip. He moved their palms down, underneath the bleachers, where the gesture was hidden from sight. 

They sat together like that, pressed up against the other, holding hands in pure silence. 

And a flicker of another world passed over Saps in that moment, a great pale white shadow over the two of them — what could be, what they could become. 

Then Flux startled. He let go as though he’d been burned, and he shook himself as though shaking off water. He stood up and said quickly, “I have to — I should go.” 

Saps’ words came clumsy and thick. “You sure?” 

“I really should go,” Flux said, “I shouldn’t — I’ve been avoiding them. They’ll be mad at me. I should go congratulate Cyn.” 

“You can,” Saps started to say, “Wait, we can —” But Flux was gone, moving down the bleachers with his head ducked, shoulders hard and tense, shoving his hands into his pockets. Saps wasn’t sure what he had been about to say, even years later when he thought about it. He thought for a while that some part of him was going to say we can hide, come with me. For a while he’d thought he meant it: he’d do anything to hide Flux, or to save Flux. That of course Flux could come with him, because where else was Flux meant to go? 

Over the rest of June, they knock off two more places on Saps and Flux’s old map: an enormous sculpture of a spoon (boring, only a twenty minute drive) and the old town in the state capital, rows and rows of old-timey wooden buildings with wooden sidewalks and cobbled streets, meant to imitate some ancient Gold Rush town. They have little kid activities, like panning for gold in a stream; they have black and white vintage photobooths, where everyone crowds into a stall so all the photos turn out blurry and awful: squished together, someone’s face hidden behind another person’s arm, someone’s hand reaching into frame, someone laughing and pushing someone else out of the way. They all stare at the strips for a while until Thomas says, “Who’s keeping them?”

“I vote to cut them up,” Gotoga says. “It’s more even that way.”

“Whoever’s most in frame should keep them,” Flux says. 

“You’re only saying that because you’re the most in frame,” Snowbird says, which is true. “I think we should bracket off and do rock-paper-scissors, and the last two winners can keep them.”

“I think whoever paid for gas on the way up should keep them,” Saps says suddenly, and everyone groans, because Saps had paid for gas and it was, of course, easily the most equitable solution. So Saps keeps both of them, and then because he’s kind, he follows Gotoga’s original suggestion and splits them up: two strips of four photos each, which means Gotoga and Snowbird and Thomas and Rotation each get one square. Saps is left with one full strip of photos, which he hands to Flux. 

“Here,” Saps says. “You can keep this one.” 

Flux looks strangely astonished at the unbroken, untorn strip. “Are you sure?”

“I’ve got enough photos, I don’t really need these ones.” 

As though mystified: “Since when have you been selfless?”

“I’ve always been super nice and kind,” Saps says. “Have I not been nice and kind to you?” Flux looks at him dubiously for long enough that Saps rolls his eyes. “Don’t answer that.” 

They turn down the street, and Flux holds the photo strip delicately between his fingers before slotting it into his back pocket. He puts his hands in his leather jacket; it’s too hot to be wearing it, but Flux doesn’t look bothered at all. He’s fidgeting with something in his pocket, which makes Saps think of all the times he would catch Flux messing with himself: picking at his nails, at his skin, making himself bleed in the middle of class, to the point where Saps had started carrying around little packets of tissues for whenever he noticed it. They’d be sitting at the lunch table, and Saps would poke his thigh, then pass over a tissue packet, and Flux would accept his help all without saying a word. 

The most he’d ever said about this newfound habit of Saps’ was after school in junior year, as they were both walking home. Two toddlers screaming in the park. Flux’s backpack, too heavy for him to carry, full of his Latin and calculus textbooks, so that Saps had started another newfound habit of holding his hand out at the lockers, waiting to take Flux’s books from him. They were walking, and Flux said, “Why do you do all of this for me?”

“Do what?” Saps said, and at the time, he’d meant it genuinely. 

“Oh,” Flux said, and he blinked fast, turning his head away. “Nothing, I guess, I was just… wondering.” 

Saps wasn’t sure himself why he did all of this for Flux. He was close with Thomas and Snowbird and Gotoga; he was best friends with Evbo and Baablu and Pili; he liked hanging out with Schpood and everyone else on the basketball team; he knew all of them, and he knew their quirks and habits, but he didn’t care about them in the same way he cared about Flux. 

Back to the old town, anyway, to Saps and Flux walking side by side down mottled wooden planks, past storefronts and kitschy signs and bric-a-brac walls, to Flux saying out of the blue:  

“Tell me something interesting about college.” 

“I feel like college was just like, super regular for me,” Saps shrugs. “I thought about joining a frat but that seemed kinda stupid, and all of them were total dicks —”

“Like looking in a mirror?”

“You wish,” Saps retorts automatically. “Nah, it’s also like, you have to pay fees, and rush seemed like a nightmare. Plus we had this huge hazing incident in my sophomore year and I was like damn. Thank god I never did any of that.”

“You know, I dated a frat guy once,” Flux offers. 

Now it’s Saps’ turn to stare, again, because nothing seems stranger to him than the idea of Fluixon willingly socializing with the sort of person to join a fraternity. “What the fuck?”

“He was nice,” Flux says, which doesn’t align with anything Saps knows about frat culture. “He bought me coffee all the time.”

“Is this a liberal arts college thing?” Saps tries. “I mean — every single frat guy I knew was like, deeply homophobic.” 

“Everyone at my college was strangely nice about it,” Flux hums. “Perks of a tiny campus, I suppose, is that you’d get ostracized if you were an asshole. It was nothing like high school here.” 

Saps frowns. “Were people weird here?” 

With unusual venom, Flux says, “Are you fucking blind?” 

Maybe Saps is. He thinks about that for a long moment, turns it over in his mind, but comes up with nothing but terrible, uncomfortable uncertainty. He supposes he’d sort of known that Flux was — well — even when they’d never talked about it ever. But Saps thinks that he would have noticed if people were cruel. Wouldn’t he have noticed? Or wouldn’t Flux have told him? 

Flux is talking over all his spinning thoughts. “I mean, people were awful. About my dads, and my family, and Ender especially, and it was —” He laughs, but it comes out mean and hard. “I guess it was a me thing, though. Because you were just… you. I don’t think you ever saw it.” 

“Oh,” Saps says, shame coiling inside him. He was ablaze with it. “I’m so sorry, dude.”

“It’s not your fault.” 

“But still. I could have — I should have done more. I could have protected you more.” 

Flux smiles, thin. “That’s very nice of you to say, Saparata.” 

“Whenever you use my full name, I feel like I’ve done something wrong.”

“Well, have you?”

They’ve stopped walking, now, underneath the last inches of shade from the awnings. Rows and rows of parked cars are lined to their left; the rest of the old town stretches behind them. No stores are down this way, only penny crushing machines and vending machines and the alley for the bathrooms. Flux has his arms crossed, folded over his chest as though uncomfortable, and he’s looking at Saps in the same way he looked at Saps that first time they’d ever spoken: scalpel in hand, on the verge of peeling Saps’ muscle and sinew away from his sternum. 

Saps is surprised at the steadiness of his own voice. “I mean, I’d hope that if I did something wrong or said something awful, you’d tell me to my face instead of being all bitchy about it.” 

“I’m not bitchy.”

“You’re a total bitch sometimes, and you know it.” 

“Yes, but I’m usually trying to be a bitch then,” Flux says harshly, but his voice goes quiet. “I’m not now. I just thought — I thought you’d understand, now, what it was like. What it is like.” 

He’s looking at Saps, hard and cold but undeniably afraid. 

And what can Saps possibly say? He’s never been able to be open about it, not in the same way that Flux has always been. It strikes him then that he’s envious of Flux, and he’s been envious for a while now. Simultaneously, the envy makes him sick. It’s easy to feel jealous when you don’t know what life is like on the other side of things. 

“I’m sorry for ghosting you,” Saps says suddenly, which isn’t what he means to say, it’s just what comes out. “I wanted to talk to you all the time, I just. I just lost touch.” 

“It’s okay,” Flux says. “I ghosted a lot of people too.” 

A beat. 

“I never stopped caring about you,” Saps says. “You know that, right?” 

Flux takes a breath. “Let’s head back. I’m sure everyone is wondering where we’ve gone.” 

In the car ride, Saps catches him turning the photo strip over and over in his hands. In one of the photos, Saps and Flux have been mistakenly pressed so close together in the booth that they’re squished all the way to one side; and Saps’ hand is reaching out, but his hand also appears as though it’s reaching down, so that if you cover Thomas and Gotoga and Snowbird and Rotation from the photograph, it might look so terribly intimate, just the two of them, just Saparata and Fluixon. Their eyes finding each other, caught in a split-second of contact, immortalized in black and white forever. Flux tucks the photo into a pocket within his bag, and Saps never sees it again. 

In the summer between his sophomore and junior year of high school, Saps got a girlfriend. 

He’d had a couple of flings before, but this girl was different, stuck around longer, felt more serious. She was nice. She was pretty. She did musical theater and was part of their school choir. In sophomore year, their high school choir had placed in some sort of competition, and so she’d traveled to Washington DC to perform there, which she told Saps all about late at night, sitting on a park bench after a movie, the last of their lemonade slushies melting in their hands. She was kind, Saps thought, and she had this glowing radiance to her that was undeniably beautiful — how soft she was, how gentle, how when they kissed it made Saps feel good about himself. 

“That sounds really nice,” Flux said, eyes focused down on his homework. 

“It’s really nice,” Saps said. He was laying on his back, staring up at his ceiling, glittering all over. “Is it crazy to think about marrying her?”

“Yes,” Flux said. “You’re sixteen.”

“People get married at sixteen, though.”

“Insane people.” 

“Hey!”

“Saps, you’ve been dating for a month.” 

“And it’s been the greatest month of my life,” he said, feeling dreamy. 

Flux took a short, frustrated breath, scribbled something out — for the life of him, Saps would never understand why Flux chose to do SAT tutoring over the summer — but did not respond. Saps sensed irritation coming off him, palpable and vivid. He pushed himself up and stared at his best friend’s back, where he sat turned away towards the window. 

“Is there…” Saps trailed off. “I don’t have to talk about her if it’s like. I dunno. Not cool with you or something.” 

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Flux said. “I’m happy that you’re happy.” 

Saps had, at this point, gathered that Flux was different. He didn’t mean it in a bad way; it was just that Flux didn’t seem to have the same investment in romance that Saps or any of the other boys at school did. Where they were busy thinking avidly about love, Flux didn’t care about getting or wanting a girlfriend. He had other things on his mind, he said. He had strict parents. He had grades to maintain and AP classes to take. 

Some small part of Saps felt guilty; maybe it was cruel to rub something like this in Flux’s face, or maybe it made Flux feel awkward, or maybe Saps was being an asshole. He kept quiet. He texted his girlfriend a few days later, who said it sounds like maybe he’s jealous? But jealous of what? Saps’ attention? Saps was good at dividing attention. He’d done it with all his various friend groups and clubs for the last several years. He gave more attention to Flux than almost anyone else. 

But Flux was in a worse mood than usual that summer. It turned out that he didn’t choose to do SAT prep; his parents had pushed it on him, same with the enormous handful of AP classes he was slated for that fall, same with the 4.0 GPA it took increasing amounts of effort to maintain. He would say things like how college couldn’t be worth this. Like how he wanted to go anywhere, do anything else. Leave town and never come back. When the school year started, they would walk back home together on the days Saps didn’t have track practice, and Flux would stick his hands in his pockets, trudge through a carpet of wet red-orange leaves, and he would say, “Are you free tonight?” 

“Yes,” Saps said most of the time, but sometimes it was a maybe, and then at times it was a no. Whenever he said the latter, he could see something dim and dark break apart in Flux’s eyes, and it made him feel awfully guilty and shameful, and he would be at the diner with his girlfriend or the theater or the park and would thumb through his phone to text Flux: wish you were here. 

“It’s weird that you say things like that,” Flux told him once, early afternoon, the first week of October. It was a sweet crisp fall, the first windy day in what felt like years. There was a party that evening that Saps had been invited to at Evbo’s house. Saps had passed the invite along to Flux, but it wasn’t Flux’s scene. He’d said no, almost immediately, but he was still here at Saps’ house, watching as Saps rummaged through Ish’s locked liquor cabinet that he’d found the key for several years ago. Flux was sitting on the kitchen counter, messing with his nails. 

Saps slid the tissue box over automatically, and Flux held the thin material to his finger, bloodflowers blooming through the tissue. Then he frowned. “When I say what?” 

“That you wish I was there.”

“I mean, I do, is the thing, sometimes I do wish you were there.”

“And is that not weird to you?” 

Was it? Suddenly anguish again rinsed over him, and Saps was abruptly self-conscious of himself. But more than that, he was shamefully self-conscious of Fluixon, of his entire existence, of the way he knew Flux so well, of how closely he and Fluixon were tied. It struck him that he preferred Fluixon’s company over his girlfriend’s. That, too, made him feel awful. Saps didn’t want to be the kind of person who was cruel to a girl. 

Flux’s words rattled him. At the party, Saps poured himself too much to drink. He was waiting for her to arrive, and she had texted that she was there, but Saps couldn’t find her in the crowd, and he couldn’t find where she’d gone, and Schpood was cornering him to talk about the upcoming track competition and Saps was thinking about Fluixon the whole time, that look in his eyes, how he’d perched on the kitchen counter and watched Saps with something like raw envy in his eyes.

Was Flux jealous of him? Was that it? 

“You didn’t come and say hi,” his girlfriend was saying. They were in a back corner, dark and too-loud. “You didn’t text me back.”

“My cell service is shit,” Saps lied. 

“That’s just not true. Mine is working fine.”

“Let me get you a drink,” Saps said, because he wanted to be kind. 

Or was Flux jealous of her? 

She was saying something about his friends; did he know who was hosting? Yeah, Saps did, Evbo was on the track team with him, he was good at relays. That’s so cool, she said, when’s your next meet? Saps knew the date but couldn’t summon it; it was sometime in the coming month, he’d sent it to Flux in their texts, he could just go and find it really quick. You and Flux are really close, right? Of course they were close; Flux was his best friend. Saps had known him for five years at this point. She’d met him, right? 

“I have,” she said patiently, “And he’s lovely, but can we — could we talk about something else? Do you want to dance? We can dance —”

“Hang on,” Saps said, “What’s wrong with Flux?”

“Nothing,” and quickly she said, “Sorry, it’s just, don’t you ever think that you talk about him too much?” 

“What?” 

“It’s always Flux this, Flux that, Saps,” she laughed, but there was a thin edge of insecurity to it. “Sometimes I feel like I’m dating two people at once.” 

“He’s my best friend,” Saps said, suddenly mutinous. 

“Yes, but I don’t care about that, I care if you care about me! And it feels like you don’t, sometimes.” 

Saps was mean. He was popular and petty and he knew it. He was drunker than he wanted to be. And he was angry enough to say, “Sometimes I really don’t fucking care about you, then, is that what you want to hear?” 

Her face cracked apart. In her eyes was that same dim dark thing, breaking apart, and Saps realized he’d been too loud, the music splintering through his ears. She sucked in a deep breath and her voice didn’t wobble when she said, “You don’t get to speak to me like that.” 

“Don’t be mean to my friends, then.” 

She stepped back, and her laugh came out like a scoff. “We’re done, okay? You’re a total fucking asshole.”

“Then fuck off,” Saps said, “Fuck you, actually,” and he was out. 

Cold orange autumn night. Wet pavement, thin shimmer of mist. Walking unsteady through the streets, then paranoid if he looked drunk — did he? — passing the turnoff for the condo, the long dark walk, moving towards the light. Streetlamps shining yellow moonlight onto him. He imagined that each one was a spotlight, and he was walking through and through, breaking between stages of life until he reached a better future, a better dream. He was walking somewhere, he figured, and he didn’t know where he was going until he looked up. He was at Fluixon’s house: two stories, colonial architecture, a raw brick wall. A neat row of hedges lined the front walkway. 

Saps picked his way into the back garden. Leafy flowers, old tomato plants decaying and yellowed. Fallen leaves crunching beneath his feet, an apple tree with two fruits still clinging onto the branches. The lights in the dining room were on, and the curtains were open wide enough for Saps to peer in. Flux was at the dining table, saying something that Saps couldn’t hear; he was shouting at someone who looked exactly like an older version of himself. He was furious, Saps recognized, and he had this feeling: go to him, save him, help him. 

let me in, Saps texted. 

He watched Flux collapse down at the table, fuming, face hot in shame and anger. He scrolled his phone underneath the dining table, read the message, and his face transformed: in shock, in desire, in anger, in want, as he forcibly smoothed his expression over into something placid. 

where are u, Flux wrote back. 

outside. let me in. 

upstairs right window in the back. use planters to get on roof 

Saps followed his instructions. In hindsight, climbing while drunk was a bad idea; his shin was now bleeding. He didn’t feel any pain. It took a very long time for the light to turn on while Saps pressed careful fingers to the weeping yellow fluid on his leg, and then the window cracked open. Flux appeared radiant. He was saying, jaw dropped in amazement, “What the actual fuck are you doing here?” 

Blankly, Saps said, “I think we broke up.” 

He wound up curled in Flux’s bed. He’d never been inside Flux’s room before. He was charmed by the entirety of it: the band and anime posters on the wall, the comic books lined up still in their original plastic covers alongside the wall, the collection of Hot Topic figurines on his bookshelves, the whole set of Rubix cubes in various sizes on his bedside table that Flux shoved away into a drawer and said hastily, “It’s messy, I didn’t think you would — sorry, it’s all a mess right now —”

“It’s so cute,” Saps said, mesmerized, “It’s so you.” 

Red-faced, Flux sat on the edge of the bed and looked at him. “You’re really drunk.”

“I’m like, super sober,” Saps said, “Totally sober. The most sober I’ve ever been.”

“Please be quiet,” said Flux, pained, “My parents will hear you.”

“Your parents seem like they really fucking suck.”

“Be quiet,” Flux hissed, glancing towards the door, then back to him. “What happened? You — you broke up?” 

Saps told him the whole story, spilling from him like water. Flux listened like an angel; he was so nice and kind about it. He was nodding along. He was saying things like oh, I’m sorry, and oh, that’s awful, and he made Saps feel better just by existing. He was listening as Saps rambled on and on, and he never interrupted, he never made Saps pause, he only sat and watched as though drinking the sight of him in. And before long Saps was pausing too, feeling dizzy and swoopy, looking at him. 

“Your eyes are so purple,” Saps said quietly. 

“Your eyes are very hazel,” Flux noted. 

“They’re so purple. Why are they like that?”

“I was just born with them.” Flux edged away. Saps pressed closer. “Why are your eyes like that?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes they look green in the daylight.”

“They do,” acknowledged Flux. “But they look brown right now.”

“It’s a good color combo,” Saps said. 

“Green and brown?”

“Green and purple.”

“Like the Joker?”

Saps shuddered. “No. Why would you say that? No, like us, like our eyes, like they go well together. Right?”

“Right,” said Flux slowly. “I guess they do.” 

“Sometimes I think that you’re my best friend of all time.”

“...thank you?”

“You are my best friend, right?”

“Yes,” Flux said, patiently, as though talking to a child. “I am.” 

“Am I your best friend?”

“Yes, you are.” 

“Okay,” Saps said. “Good. I’d better be. I don’t want anyone else to be your best friend. Only me.” 

Flux’s eyes flicked between his. Saps became aware how close they were, how mesmerizing Flux’s face was from this close up: the shape of his nose, the point to his Cupid’s bow, the darkness of his lashes. In his eyes he had speckles of a dozen darker colors, almost black. Like a galaxy, Saps thought. He looked like a nebula. He looked like outer space. 

“Your leg,” Flux said softly, “You’re bleeding.”

Saps had forgotten entirely about the scrape along his shin. “It doesn’t hurt. I can’t even feel it.” 

Flux vanished into the hallway. He came back with bandages and hydrogen peroxide, and he knelt at the foot of the bed while Saps watched. Flux didn’t look up to meet his eyes, and his hands were careful, delicate, so much that when Saps winced, Flux startled back and said, “Sorry, did I —”

“No, it just stung, it’s okay.” 

“Bleeding all over the place,” Flux said, trying to smile, “Ruining all my sheets. What am I supposed to do with you?”

“Sorry,” Saps murmured, and only then did the events of the night really, truly hit him. Like a kid, he pulled his legs to his chest, felt the hot throbbing sting of the wound, felt Flux’s fingers on him like a ghost. The world was spinning around him too fast for Saps to see anything clearly. He had the sensation of falling from a great height. 

“Saps,” Flux said quietly, “Saps,” more wounded, and he lapsed into silence. 

“I think I’m heartbroken,” Saps whispered. 

“It’s okay,” Flux said, “It’s okay. Let’s just sleep, okay? We can sleep and everything will be better in the morning.” 

They fell onto either side of Flux’s bed. Saps was sweating and too-warm, and he woke up in the middle of the night reaching out blindly, and the body across from him made a muffled, sleepy noise, and Saps pulled that body in close without thinking. 

In the morning, his head ached; last night existed only in flashes, dimly-lit memories that pulsed across his brain. He was now curled up, facing Fluixon, watching him sleep. He had pale freckles across the bridge of his nose. Had Saps ever noticed them before? There were so many details to Flux that he’d never learn, never memorize. He wanted to learn everything, he thought. He wanted to dissect him. Pull him apart. Hold the glossy retina of him up to the light and see what shone through. 

They didn’t speak of that night ever. Saps knew he’d been drunk, and he remembered enough of it to be shameful at how he’d acted, at how his first serious relationship had ended, at how messy he’d been. And he thought Flux was kind to not bring it up, to allow Saps to make his stupid mistakes on his own, to not reignite that shame, to avoid scalding him further. 

There are more gold stars left on the map. But summer is running out, and Saps only has access to his car for a few more days before Ish comes back and starts to use it too. So in the last weekend of June, Saps reaches out to the group chat — but everyone is busy except for Fluixon, who has no summer job and no plans except for apartment hunting in New York and planning his future dream apartment. So it winds up being just him and Fluixon in Saps’ little car together, driving north. 

This destination was Flux’s original choice, back when they’d first put the map together: the corner edge of a national park all the way north, where the desert gives way to thick vast forest, where trees begin to blot out the sun. Saps parks the car after paying ten dollars for a park pass. Wind is gone here, noise closing around itself. 

“This is nice,” Flux says quietly. “It was a good idea to put this one on the map.”

“We’ve got a lot of places left to hit, though.”

“We have the rest of summer.”

“When do you leave?”

“August,” Flux says. “My lease starts August first.”

“So less than a month,” Saps says, and a pang goes through him. “You have a place, then?”

“It’s not ideal, but yes. I technically have a place to live. I did a video tour, had the landlord walk me through.”

“Roommates?”

“You think I could live with roommates?” Flux says dryly, and they both laugh. 

“You didn’t have them in college?”

“For a bit,” Flux admits. “But then I tried my best to get singles as a junior and a senior, so I guess I’m not used to them.” 

Saps had roommates the whole way through university. The first two years he spent living on campus; the last two years he was in an apartment, which was cheaper than the university’s housing fees, and he’d lived in a duplex with two girls and one guy, and then an apartment with one friend who later stopped being his friend. Most people wanted to live alone, but some part of Saps was bad at being alone. It made him feel listless and lost. It made him feel young. 

“I’m excited,” Flux says slowly, without much excitement at all. “I think it’ll be good to have a real place for myself.”

Thinking of Ish, Saps says, “It’s not always that nice to be alone.”

They keep walking. Trees yawn, enormous and vast, overhead, branches interlacing, blocking the light, so that the further they walk the further it feels they’re going into the mouth of some enormous creature, green and mossy, the real world falling away. It’s silent except for birdsong, the sound of their footsteps, the noise of their breathing. At last they pause, where the trail loops around and leads them back the way they came. 

“Sequoias,” Flux says. “This one is supposed to be the tallest tree in the whole forest.” 

They stare up, and up, and up. 

“Wow,” Saps whispers, and all the noise swallows itself, vanishing whole. 

It’s only a tree, really. One large, vast tree, bigger than any tree Saps has ever seen before. Still he feels impossibly small beneath it. 

“This is why I like architecture,” Flux says quietly. “Being able to create something so beautiful that it makes you feel small.” 

“I never knew you liked architecture,” says Saps. 

“I didn’t think I would, either. But it’s like viewing the world as a puzzle. I had a professor who told me that — that every building is a composition of space, of money, of time, of environment, of the world around it, zoning laws and the like…” He trails off. His face has gone distant, dreamlike. “It’s a game, almost, to figure out how you can fit in the one space it feels like you weren’t ever meant to be in.” 

“It sounds really cool.” Saps means it genuinely, and Flux huffs a short laugh. 

“I’m being silly,” he says. “It’s just work and math, a lot of the time.”

“I hope I get to see some cool building you design at some point.”

“Me too,” Flux says. 

“And it sounds nice,” Saps says, gaze falling down to the pine needle floor, a soft carpet of brown. “To have something that you’re so passionate about.” 

“What about you?” 

What about him? 

“I don’t know,” Saps says. He scuffs the toe of his shoe into the dirt. “I don’t think I’ve found that out for myself yet.” 

At least Flux doesn’t offer him any platitudes. Nothing like you’ll find it or you still have time. It’s a kindness to not be told those things. He just stands there, hands folded neatly behind his back, looking upward as Saps looks down. 

Night draws itself over them, sweet and purple. They pause for dinner at a fast food restaurant in the middle of nowhere, and then pause for gas. Now twilight has emerged, sun dipping low, stars scattering themselves overhead. The drive back is longer than Saps thought it would be. Music plays over the car radio; Saps idly wonders if this is Flux’s ex-boyfriend’s playlist or something of his own creation. He’s never heard this song before. 

At the edge of the city: one enormous freeway, cutting through the world. Flux says, “Want to pause for a bit?” And Saps has never been one to turn Flux down. 

The freeway overpass they wind up on edges over ten lanes of highway, a glittering ribbon of black that leads all the way through the desert to Canada and all the way down the mountain range to Mexico. If Saps drives on it for twelve hours straight in either direction, he’d find himself in a whole new country. He used to think a lot about that fantasy at times. There was a whole dream about doing a roadtrip to Disneyland when they were in high school; there was something else about going to San Diego, or Los Angeles. But they always stayed where they were, in the valley, heatshimmer rising like liquid from the pavement. Why had they stayed? Why hadn’t they done anything at all to leave? 

Saps parks the car. He and Flux get out in silence and wait there, and slowly, after what might be hours, they sit in the darkness, only the black shape of the other person’s body to guide them. 

“Are you excited?” he asks Flux. “For grad school?”

“Very,” Flux says. “And scared, but mostly excited. Are you excited?”

“For what?”

“For whatever the future has.”

“I think I’m more scared,” Saps says, and he laughs, feeling sorry for himself, “I know it’s dumb, but I feel like I spent all my time in college, especially this last year, thinking about graduating and how excited I’d be to finally leave. And now I’m out, but I just miss it so bad.”

Flux nudges his shoulder. “Doesn’t that mean it was good, if you miss it so much?”

“But now it’s over,” Saps says morosely. “I didn’t even get to do half the things on my bucket list.”

“Like what?”

“I never did the polar plunge. It was a big thing, every spring semester in January. And every time, I was just too cold to actually get in the water.” 

“And?”

“We had a glass blowing class. I also thought that was cool as shit, but I could never fit it into my schedule.”

“At least those are both things you can do now,” says Flux. “I’m sure they do a polar plunge everywhere in the world except here.” 

“Did you have anything on your bucket list?” 

Flux considers it. “I never really put one together. I guess I wanted to get my degree, and I did that… I made friends, I went out, I went to a Halloween party, I went to a Rocky Horror shadowcast, I got called on stage during a drag show even when I was so fucking shy about it…” He pauses, and his smile wavers. “I feel like I did almost everything I wanted to do.” 

“That’s good. Right?” 

“And I’m happy,” Flux says. Then, more determined: “I’m happy with that.” 

“Yeah,” Saps says, hollow. “Me too.” 

Night world moving on. Wind cool and buzzing. Their legs dangle over the edge of the overpass. Saps stares down at the sea of speckled lights, seventy miles an hour, blurring beneath them. 

Abruptly, Flux says, “You asked me about the craziest thing I did in college, once.” 

Saps barely remembers that conversation. But he nods. “Do I get to know your deep, dark secret now?” 

Flux’s lips twitch up into a smile. “It’s a funny story, sort of. But there was actually someone in one of my classes who was almost just like you.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Same shitty dye job —”

“Hey!”

“Same attitude, same vibe… he played guitar, actually, now that I think about it. That was the one big difference. You were never that bad. But he ran track, and he was a long-distance runner too, and we, ah, we got to know each other pretty well.” 

“Oh.” Saps tries to joke: “So you replaced me, basically?” 

Flux’s smile fades. “I guess I tried to. It didn’t really work.” 

“So… what’s the craziest thing, then?”

Flux laughs humorlessly. “That I dated him on purpose because he was just like you?” 

Saps stills. His stomach curls inward. 

“Because, you know,” Flux says, conversational, “I used to have the world’s biggest crush on you.” 

In the black night, Flux’s words strike Saps like a blow to the face. He blinks, once, unsure of what to do with this information; unsure of why Flux is telling him now. Feeling stupid, he manages, “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Flux says. Slow and measured. “Funny thing, really. I thought you were completely aware of it the whole time, but I also hoped that you were completely oblivious, because, obviously, I was just… following you around everywhere, desperate for you to like me too.”

“Oh,” Saps repeats. His heart is pounding double-time. “Well. I think I was oblivious. If that helps.”

“You were just so cool,” Flux laughs dryly. “Everyone in the world wanted to be your friend, you were popular, you were hot, you were funny… you were everything in the world I wanted to be, really, and for a while I kept thinking — well, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to have you or to be you. But I figured it out, after a while.” 

“I wasn’t that cool,” Saps says, ignoring how Flux said hot, ignoring how some electric burst sparks to life inside his chest. “I was kind of a dick in high school.”

“Yeah, you were. That was unfortunately one of the things I liked the most, though. In that weird, messed-up way that you like something you’re not supposed to like.” 

Saps risks a glance over at him. His legs swinging from the highway overpass, Flux is staring down at the flickers of cars passing beneath them — headlights slicing through thick night, vanishing over the hill. Red tail lights set his face aglow. His arms hooked over the railing, Flux hasn’t looked up at him once. 

“I guess it’s silly to say now,” Flux says dispassionately. He gestures with one hand. “But you were the guy who made me realize I was gay. So. Congratulations, I guess.”

“Oh,” Saps says, that time in an entirely different tone. 

“I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” Flux mumbles. “I mean, I told myself I was going to die with this secret.” 

“It’s not — it’s not bad,” Saps hastens to say. “That’s just life. I mean, I had my fair share of horrible crushes, it wasn’t like — you know what I mean.” 

Flux doesn’t listen to him at all. As though in a trance, he says, “I suppose I thought that I’d leave and I’d get over it. That I’d get out of the suburbs, and I’d go to college, and I’d have a good four years by myself, with no one I knew. So I could start over, so I’d get over it. Get over you, and this overwhelming possession you had over my life, because for so long it was only you, Saps, it was only ever you. 

“And I did, for a bit. I had a good time. I did everything I ever wanted, everything I was too stupid and immature to do in high school. You know, all the parties I skipped because I thought I was better than you all, because I thought I was smarter, more talented, because I thought I had a better future in front of me, because I thought you were all so small and grimy and little. But I did all of that in college and way more, and I worked things out with my parents, and I worked things out with my siblings, and I got into the best architectural school in the country, and then… Here I am, all over again, right back where I started, as a completely different person, and,” He chokes on his next breath in, which makes Saps’ heart clench, “And the worst thing about it all is that I’m still not over you. I come back and I see your face and it’s head over heels, all over again. I’m thinking about you all the time, and dreaming about you —”

“Dreaming?” Saps repeats quietly. 

“And spending every day with you, just like I used to. I’m starting to think that maybe I haven’t changed at all. Maybe I’m still the same person I was at eleven, just as afraid and shameful and small, and that’s who I’ll always be. Some little kid following around his idealistic crush like a puppy.” 

Silence falls. Cars veer beneath them, the low droning there and then gone, specks of light like stars winking out of existence, each its own little life invisible and unknown to them. Overhead, grayish clouds move thick and slow, blotting out the night sky. Saps’ own breath is unsteady. He’s never heard Flux sound like this, ever, ever before. The noise washes him up from the bottom. 

His voice unfamiliar to him, strange to his own ears. “You have changed, though.”

“Ha,” Flux says. “Have I?”

“A lot,” Saps says. “So much that it feels like I don’t even recognize you, sometimes.”

“Hm.” 

“You just seem like a completely different person to me now,” Saps says, small. “I don’t know what to do with you at all. I don’t know — I don’t know what I’m feeling, Flux. I don’t know any of this at all.” 

“You don’t have to feel anything,” Flux says, but Saps can tell that he’s bracing himself. “I think I’m only telling you this so that I can — let go. Or try to let go.” 

“But I don’t — I don’t want you to let go.” 

“Isn’t this just sad?” Flux bursts. “We’re twenty-two, Saps, we’ve got the whole rest of our lives in front of us, even though everyone says that the best part of our lives is already over at this point, and we’re both just — clinging to it? Isn’t it sad to feel like the same fucking person, after all this time?” 

“It’s just me who’s the same.” 

“You aren’t, though.”

“...aren’t I?”

“You’re — nicer,” Flux says. He tries to smile, but it comes out looking weak and watery. “You’re a little more grounded. You’re less of an asshole jock and you’re more just a normal person.” A beat. “You don’t get everything you’ve ever wanted, anymore, and I think that’s done a lot of good things for you.”

“Yeah, but that still fucking sucks,” Saps says, and now the anger is curling forth in him; it’s so hard to be told this is a good thing for you. “I fucked everything up, Flux. I don’t have a job, and I missed all my opportunities to get an internship or experience or anything that would help me get the job in the first place, and I can’t go back in time and un-do it. Like, fuck, I thought I was so cool in high school, I thought I was on top of the world, but I come back here and none of that popularity matters at all, yeah? I’m afraid that was it. I’m one of those kids who peaked in high school, which is just — pathetic, right? It’s just pathetic to be stuck here. Same house, same bed, same streets, and I’m terrified that I am the same person too, that I haven’t changed at all, that I still can’t do anything right.” 

And he’s terrified of more than that. He’s scared of admitting to his own fear, scared to admit to his own desires and his own wants, scared that when he says it aloud it’ll be over, because doesn’t he love Flux too? He has loved him, in his own way. He didn’t know what it was or what to call it back then, though. He didn’t have any language for it. He just had all this shapeless pink-white desire blooming inside him, all formed in one person’s image. 

Has he ever said that aloud? Has he ever told Flux that he loves him too? 

“You know,” Flux says. His breath catches, “I dreamed of hearing that from you for so, so long.” 

“Flux,” Saps says. In his voice it sounds like a prayer. 

“And after — everything,” Flux says, “After everything, after that night, I hoped… I thought, maybe…” 

He trails off. Sucks in a breath, looks up to the sky, blinking quick as though afraid to cry.

“But it was so hopeless,” he says at last. “I knew you didn’t love me then. I figured I’d gotten what I wanted for a moment, and that was all I’d ever get.” 

“That night?” Saps echoes. 

“I mean —” Flux’s breath catches in his throat. “Do you even remember?”

Remember what? 

Flux tells him this. 

A graduation party. Post-high school, post-diploma, mid-May. Someone’s parents out for the weekend. Invites sent through text message and over Snapchat. Pulling up to a nice two-story house, everyone spilling out the front, holding tight to Flux’s hand — he’d made Flux come with him, of course he had. One good party, he said, you have to, come on, it’s your last chance. And Flux had followed him, like a dog trailing after his owner’s heels. 

Inside: crowded. Sweating. Walls wet with condensation and heat. A vase shattering in the kitchen, someone shouting how their parents would kill them. Saps and Flux had gasped, then laughed, and Saps pressed his drink in Flux’s hands and said come on, dude. I’ll watch you. I’ll take care of you. 

“You’re so romantic when you say that to me,” Flux said dryly. 

“I try my best,” Saps agreed. “I’m like your guard dog.”

“That is certainly one word for it.” 

“Do a shot with me.”

“I’d rather watch,” Flux said. “Go on. Take your damn shot.” 

So Saps grinned and did. Flux watched him with this warm amusement, eyes swallowed in darkness, and Saps felt for a moment like really showing off for him. He wanted Flux to be impressed by him, wanted to glow in Flux’s vision. 

“Is that supposed to impress me?” Flux said, unamused.

Saps was still smiling. “Doesn’t it?”

“You’re a freak,” Flux said, before his attention turned. “I think I just saw Thomas — stay here?” 

Saps meant to stay there while Flux vanished through the crowd to say hi to Thomas, but then Schpood caught his arm, and he got roped into a conversation, helping Schpood carry in the keg from the back of his pickup truck, and then he was chatting with Evbo and Baablu and Pili, and all of a sudden Rotation was there, asking where Thomas and Snowbird and Gotoga were, and Saps was looking around, saying something about how Flux was with them, right? And he stilled, realizing he couldn’t see Flux anywhere. 

Shit. Where had Flux gone? Saps turned around in a full circle, looking for him; but in the flickering lights he couldn’t see Flux’s head. Saps was absolutely certain he would be able to pick Flux out of any dark room, out of any dark crowd. He definitely wasn’t in the mass of people dancing, that was for sure. He pushed his way to the kitchen — liquor spilt and sticky underneath his feet, Pink Whitney smell in the air. Whole world shuddering around him. Vertigo. Have you seen Flux? 

“Who?” someone said. 

“Oh my god, you fucking morons,” Saps muttered, and the next person said: “No, I thought he left?”

“He wouldn’t leave without me —”

“Bathroom?”

The bathroom line went down the hall. Saps didn’t give a fuck; he went to the door and pounded on it, and a girl’s voice shouted from inside: fucking occupied, asshole! Saps turned around, looked into the backyard; beer pong and someone upside down over the keg, laughing, beer foaming up and over, no Flux, no Flux anywhere. He turned on his heel and went upstairs. 

It was quieter in the upstairs hallway. Noise dimmer and lights lower. Someone was making out in one bedroom; someone else was making out in the coat closet. The upstairs bathroom was locked, and Saps knocked once, then again, and then: “Dude, open the fucking door, I know you’re in there.” 

A beat. 

The door opened. Saps didn’t know how long it took. 

“Holy fuck,” Saps said, catching himself against the sink. “I knew you were in here.”

“Hi,” Flux said. There was a red solo cup perched against the mirror; Flux’s own eyes were hazy; Saps wondered how drunk he was. Probably very. “It’s you.”

“It’s me,” Saps agreed. He leaned against the glass shower divider; his head was spinning. For a second he was afraid he would throw up; bathrooms had a way of bringing out the drunkenness in him. The lighting was low and gold, breaking over both their heads in beautiful fragments. 

“Sorry for running away,” Flux said after a moment. “It’s just — loud. It’s loud down there.”

“I know,” Saps said. He tried for a smile. “Loud as fuck, really. And terrible music, too.”

“Absolutely awful,” Flux agreed. 

“We can — we can leave, if you want.”

“I’m fine,” Flux said. “We can stay.”

“Oh, I meant the party,” Saps said. “Not like, the bathroom. We’re chill in here.”

“I knew what you meant,” Flux said. 

“Are you having fun?”

“In here?”

“Well, duh, in here, but like. The party overall.”

“It’s okay,” Flux shrugged. “I don’t feel bad about missing any of them.” 

“I missed you at all of them,” Saps muttered. “You always say no. I’m really happy you’re here, actually. I want you to have fun.” 

Flux took a long sip from the solo cup. Looking around at the mid-century decorations, the brass sink faucet. “Isn’t it weird? This is like, the last time we’re going to see half these people ever.”

“It’s crazy,” Saps agreed. “I mean — I dunno, I don’t even want to think about it.”

“Think about what?”

“Graduating. Fucking — fucking moving across the country, I dunno. You’re gonna be on the East Coast. Isn’t that weird as fuck?”

“I guess so.” 

“Because like — we’ve never been so far away from each other.”

“Saps,” Flux said quietly, and nothing more. 

“I just feel like I’m going to miss you. Is that stupid? I think it’s kinda stupid. I don’t really feel that way about anyone else.” Saps was rambling. “But like, don’t tell people I said that, they’ll think I don’t care about them.”

“I’m sure they know you care about them,” Flux said. 

“But I want you to know,” Saps said. He was looking at Flux like this: like he’d never seen him before. He was so drunk that his whole world felt shaky and trembling at the edges. He was seeing double, two Fluixons, both looking at him the same way: afraid. Afraid? Something inside of Saps, some unknowable desirous want, pushed the words out of his mouth. “I mean, you have to know how much I’m gonna miss you. Right? Tell me you know. Tell me you know that I love you, dude.” 

“I don’t…” Flux let out a shaky laugh. “I think you’re really, really drunk.”

“Flux,” Saps persisted. “Tell me.”

“I know you’re going to miss me,” Flux said, and he laughed nervously. “You get really sappy when you’re wasted.” 

“Nooo,” Saps said. “That’s not what I meant. Tell me that you know I love you.” 

“Saps —”

“Please?” 

“I can’t,” Flux said suddenly. “I don’t want to do this right now. Don’t make me do this.”

“But I need to hear it. I know it’s silly, but —”

Without warning, Flux snapped, “Are you fucking stupid?”

He had moved closer now, and Saps had too. The bathroom was small enough that there was no space for air, only each other, and Flux was shaking, hands balled into fists at his side. 

Saps felt something horrible and sharp tear through him. “Did I — did I say something wrong?”

“I don’t understand you,” Flux said, and he laughed, but it was an awful sound, mean and terrified. “I don’t understand you at all. You push, and you push, and you push, and you never accept no for an answer —” 

“I don’t — I — what the hell?” 

“I don’t understand how you say that to me and then act like this!” 

“What the fuck,” Saps said, and now anger was building in him too, “What the fuck are you even talking about?”

“I’m talking about us!” Flux burst. “I’m talking about you and me!”

“Well, what about us?”

“What about us?” 

“You’re — why are you so angry right now? What the fuck did I say? What did I do to you?” 

“What have you —” Flux laughed again. “What haven’t you done to me, at this point?” 

Saps felt lost. He’d never seen Flux this furious before. It felt, almost, like how he’d argued with past girlfriends; except Saps knew when he was being mean, and he didn’t think he was being mean now. 

“I’m sorry,” he managed. It was the only thing he could think to say. “If I said something wrong, or if I hurt you in some way, I’m really fucking sorry, dude, I don’t…” He was tripping over his words now, feeling sick, feeling like he was going to vomit. “I don’t want us to fight. I don’t like this.” 

“You,” Flux said, full of venom, “Sometimes I hate you so much that I can’t even breathe, Saps. Sometimes I think you’re going to fucking kill me.” 

That hot sharp thing, ripping through him. Saps opened his mouth, to say what he didn’t know, and in that moment, Flux surged forward, threw his arms around Saps’ neck, and crushed his lips against Saps’. 

Saps startled. His mind went into shatters, flickers of light and heat and taste: Flux, the sickly sweet punch, the cherry vape he’d hit minutes before, the bitter aftertaste of alcohol, Fluixon, Fluixon’s hands curling into his hair, his own arms around Flux’s waist and shoulders, yanking him inward. All the anger in his body surged forward too, and it wasn’t anger anymore, but transformed into something aggressive and desperate and wild. 

Flux was fire-hot against him, and a senseless heat pulsed through Saps in turn. His heart was beating so hard he could hear it in his own ears, or maybe that was Flux’s pulse, so close to his that they became synchronized in perfect rhythm. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. 

Flux made a small, helpless noise against him, full of need. 

Saps kissed him harder. He was moving before he knew he was moving: backing Flux into the door, one hand cupping the back of his head, the other still at his waist. He was working on pure instinct. Oh, he was thinking feverishly, of course, of course it’s you, of course it’s always been you. One of Flux’s hands fisted into his hair so hard that it stung, and the other grasped for purchase against his shirt, his belt loops, tugging him forward. It was all spit and heat. Everything in the world narrowed to this: Flux’s arms around him, his own arms holding Flux, the bruising hurt of their lips, this frenzied wild hard-pulsing want, this heat, this electric sparkling floating feeling, this — 

“Is anyone in there?” someone called from the hallway. 

Flux startled so hard that he almost punched Saps. They froze, silent, staring at each other. Flux’s chest rose and fell rapidly. His hair was wild and unruly, lips pink and spit-slick. Saps was certain he didn’t look much better. Still in that moment Flux was the most beautiful person he had ever seen. 

“I,” Flux said quietly, “I didn’t…”

“Hello?” someone shouted again. They knocked twice on the door, two sharp bangs that made Flux flinch. “Can I use the fucking bathroom?”

“One second,” Saps shouted back. “Let me piss in peace, dude!”

“Hurry the fuck up,” the same voice scowled, but the noise faded. It was only them, one set of best friends, blinking owlishly, purple and hazel eyes unable to look away. 

“I didn’t mean that,” Flux said, small, “I didn’t mean to say that.” 

Numb, Saps said, “How long…” But he faltered, and the words fell away from him before he could say the rest. 

Flux’s eyes were wet. He blinked hard and fast. Saps had his answer right there. 

Then Flux sucked in a breath. “We can both just forget about this. Okay? This was a stupid, stupid drunk mistake, and we weren’t — neither of us were thinking, okay, and it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all.”

A mistake? 

And, striking Saps like a blow to the chest: it doesn’t matter? 

Voice awful and tiny, Saps said, “What are you talking about?”

Flux’s expression shattered. His mouth opened, then snapped shut. He moved faster than Saps could reach for him, and he wrenched open the bathroom door and left.

Saps wavered for a horrible second. Someone in the hall was staring at him, staring at Flux’s retreating back; and all at once it was too much, too loud too sharp too hot too awful to think, and for the first time Saps realized that there was nothing more he despised in the world, nothing that frightened him more, than the idea of Flux hating him. It was unbearable, atrocious, venom ripping through his bloodsystem, through his heart. 

He couldn’t have it. He couldn’t have this. He couldn’t have Flux, and he wanted him more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. 

Nausea rose in his throat, and the next thing he knew he was on his knees in the same bathroom, bile stinging his throat and sinuses. In the morning he remembered very little, perhaps nothing, of that night. 

did i do something insane last night, he texted to Flux — alert but hungover with the foreboding sense that he had, somehow, done something awful. The anxiety wouldn’t leave his system until Flux responded: 

no i don’t think so
did you black out? 

yeah i think i did 

well you were fine. nothing happened 

okay yippee

And Flux did not respond. 

Saps thinks about that night for hours, sleepless, feeling sick all over again, long-lost memory tearing at the illusion of his younger self. He doesn’t remember it the way Flux describes it to him, the way Flux speaks about it: halting, slow, as though dredging up a memory he’s attempted to forget. Was Saps in the bathroom that night? He must have been, because there was gossip about him and Flux after that evening — though when wasn’t there gossip? Back then, the two of them had been attached by the hip. Best friends and partners in crime; Saps&Flux, no separation between the two of them. Where Flux went Saps went; and where Saps went, Flux went. Of course there was gossip. There always was. 

But the bathroom? Had he been there? Had he really kissed Flux like that? Had he backed Flux into the door, worked hands through his hair, kissed him for so long that everything else vanished? Had he forgotten that? Would it be possible to forget something like that? 

How could Saps forget that? 

In his freshman year of college, Saps tried to make a habit of maintaining all his friendships from back home. He had the group chat with everyone — Flux, Snowbird, Pili, Gray, Micro, Thomas, Snowbird, Gotoga, everyone in the world — and for a while, it was pretty active. Everyone was sharing photos of their dormitories, chatting about classes, complaining about evil professors. Saps sent a lot of photos of his college campus, the clubs he was thinking about joining. Random shit like his stats homework, all that. But after a while, it became clear that what they had in common was the fact that they attended high school together, and not much else. And they grew quieter and quieter over time until, somewhere in December, no one had sent anything in the group chat for weeks, and Saps came to the slow-burning realization that some part of his life had already ended and he wouldn’t be getting it back. 

He still talked with people one on one, of course. He talked with Flux. For a while, he and Flux were still best friends, like always. Saps would call him late at night and wander the evening-lit streets of campus until the moon rose fat and white overhead, until all the stars smattered across the sky appeared like crushed diamonds. He’d stand underneath streetlights with his phone held to his ear as he and Flux talked about anything and everything — adjusting to college life, complaints, memories from home. 

“Were you serious about going abroad?” Saps asked him once. 

Flux was quiet; Saps wondered if he was falling asleep, on the other end of the line, because his voice was dusky and hoarse when he said, “Going abroad?”

“I was just thinking about the whole stupid thing we did,” Saps said. “Like with the map and shit.” 

“Oh,” Flux said. “I don’t know. I guess it seems kind of stupid now.” 

“Right,” Saps said. “I guess it’s kinda childish.”

“I liked it, though,” said Flux. “It was fun to put it together.” 

Had this part of his life ended too? He and Flux spoke less and less frequently every day. They used to send each other messages all the time: photos of their coffee, their homework, their dorm rooms, classrooms, random posters around campus, events, plates of food at the dining hall, drunk nights out, blurry snapshots of life being lived. Until days went by, and Saps realized he hadn’t texted Flux in a week, and Flux hadn’t texted him either. 

One day they stopped, and neither of them picked the habit back up. 

Saps got an on-campus job as a tour guide, and spent the summer touring prospective students around. He didn’t return back home until college ended entirely. He thought about home less. He thought about Fluixon less. Whenever he thought about Flux, some raw open wound in him started to bleed — something was missing, he thought, he had missed something. Something was absent from him. It was the one piece of his life that hurt to think about, so Saps trained himself out of thinking about it. 

Flux, seemingly, did the same. 

He doesn’t see Flux for another week. In that time, Ish comes home — they hug, and Saps tries not to feel awkward, tries not to see his father as just another fellow adult instead of his parent — and they go out for dinner at Chili’s, which used to be Saps’ favorite restaurant, and now makes him feel kidlike and small. Ish wants to know about everything he’s missed that summer, so Saps offers the barebones of it all: going around town, visiting a bunch of cool spots, the strip mall, the movie theater. In turn, Ish tells him about the archival research he did: old pottery shards, old frescos in buried funeral mounds. Saps tries to find any amount of enthusiasm in him, but it vanishes when he gets back home, hides away in his room, and hears noise outside: dishes being washed, glasses clinking, sounds of life he’s unused to. 

“It’s not that bad, right?” Snowbird says a few afternoons later: ice cream and fries outside their favorite diner, the one they frequented all the time as teenagers. 

“Nah, it’s fine,” Saps says. “It’s just been a weird fucking summer.”

“Tell me about it. I feel like it was so normal without you and Flux here, and now we’re like… all back together again.”

“He wants to move out,” Saps says slowly. “Like, permanently leave.”

Snowbird doesn’t seem to understand the gravitas of the scenario. “But don’t you want to do the same thing?”

But I think I love him, Saps wants to say. But I think I need him with me. 

“I do,” he says at last, “It’s just that it’s all coming true, and it doesn’t feel real yet. It just doesn’t feel real.” 

At the week’s end, though, he catches Flux on the main downtown street, wandering with Thomas in and out of antique stores. In his hands he’s holding something small: a little brass bird, turning it around and around in his hands. Thomas waves to Saps across the street, nudges Flux’s shoulder, and Flux startles as though he’s a prey animal catching sight of his predator. 

Saps crosses to join them. “Hi.” 

“Hey,” Thomas says. “Are you joining us for board game night?”

“Depends. Are you going to force us all to play Risk?”

“I’m not that mean,” says Thomas. “The bar downtown, remember? I think Snowbird sent you an invite a while ago.” 

“Oh, right,” Saps says; from so long ago, which had been derailed by all their other plans, all the gold stars around town. “Yeah, I’ll be there, why not?” 

“I even convinced Flux to join.” 

“I was always going to go,” Flux says. 

“You said you didn’t like board games anymore,” Saps recalls. 

Thomas frowns, but Flux beats him to it: “Listen, Saps, it’s nice to see you, but Thomas and I were just —”

At the same moment, Thomas speaks: “You can definitely join us, though —”

They both cut themselves off and give identical, irritated glances to each other. Flux takes a deliberately deep breath. “You can tag along, if you want.” 

“It’s totally fine,” Thomas waves a hand. “I have work in a bit, anyway.” 

Saps wonders how much Flux told him. The ease of his response, and the agreeableness, makes him think that Thomas knows more than he’s letting on; and it frightens him, how vulnerable it makes him feel. Still, the three of them hang out in amicable silence by the smoothie store for the next half-hour while Thomas and Flux talk about whatever internships they did last summer: some aerospace engineering work in Orlando, Flux’s internship at a firm in New York City. Then Thomas says, somewhat regrettably, “I really do have to run now, sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Flux says, with remarkable ease. 

It leaves the two of them sitting across from each other on uncomfortable metal chairs. Flux twists the straw around in his cup; ugly, scraping plastic sound, the last dregs of strawberry and lime at the bottom of a clear cup. He avoids looking up at Saps when he says, “How’s the last week been?” 

In lieu of an actual response, Saps says, “You haven’t texted me at all.” 

Flux gives him a brief smile. “I was busy.” 

“Right,” Saps says. “It’s just that, you know. You’re leaving in three weeks. And I kind of want to see you before you leave forever.”

“I’m not leaving forever. I’ll have to come back for holidays all the time.”

“Or else your parents will kill you?”

“Pretty much,” Flux agrees. 

They toss their smoothies in the trash and walk slowly to the parking lots in the back alleyway, the narrow expanse of concrete blessedly free of people. Flux pauses at the door to his car, parked around the far corner by the back fence, keys dangling from his index finger. “Well. This is me.”

“Right.”

Neither of them move. 

Something sharp and beautiful pierces through Saps, cleaving him open. “Flux, I just —”

“Hm?” 

Pink summer afternoon. Pollen floating in the wind. His mouth tastes of summer. Flux looks like summer. Saps could say anything, but all his words escape him. He has nothing left to do, nothing left to say. He only has this. 

He manages, “You know that I love you, right?” 

Flux’s jaw tightens. He takes a tiny step backwards. “I know.” 

“And it’s not — I’m not just saying that.”

“I know.” 

“And I dream about you too,” Saps says, “I dream about you all the time.” 

Flux’s face crumples, and — on instinct, on raw stunning want — Saps leans forward and kisses him. 

Flux makes a small, sharp noise against him, as though all the breath has exited his lungs. His hands brace against Saps’ chest for balance, then hold tight. Sweet yellow sunlight floods over them, and for a moment, Saps thinks he’s never felt this warm before, has never wanted anything so much. 

But it’s over in an instant: too short to be anything like that night so long ago. When they part, Flux is staring at him as though he’s never seen Saps before in his life, eyes flicking across his face, as though attempting to commit every part of this vision to memory. 

“Sorry,” Saps says, and he backs away. 

Flux raises a hand to his mouth, then lowers it, dazed. 

“I shouldn’t have — that was stupid. Sorry.” 

The corner of Flux’s mouth twitches up into a weak smile. He doesn’t say anything. He only looks down, and his face does something odd, as though he’s not quite sure how to react. “It’s, um. It’s fine.” 

“I’m sorry,” Saps says, needing Flux to know, “I’m sorry for everything. For all of it.” 

Flux’s mouth opens, then closes, gone speechless. 

Saps feels afraid. His words come out of him in a jumbled rush. “It’s just that you’re leaving so soon. And I couldn’t let you leave again without doing that, without remembering it.”

Flux wavers. “I just don’t know what you want from me.” 

Saps doesn’t know either at this point. He doesn’t know what’s left for the two of them. Dating? Together? Flux is leaving, so they’d have to do long distance, and what then? Could they? 

“You want to do long distance?” Flux says, and he laughs, though it isn’t funny. “Really?”

“I know it’s stupid,” Saps tries, “I just —” 

He cuts himself off. He takes a breath and tries again. “Is there anything wrong with just trying?” 

Flux’s chest rises, falls. His face twitches again, and Saps feels something great and terrible yawn inside him, a gaping mouth that’s suddenly realized it might be starving forever.

“I don’t know if I could bear it,” Flux says at last. “Getting what I’ve wanted all this time, and then having to leave it, just like that.” 

“So don’t leave me,” Saps says. He wants it to be that simple, and in his mind, it can be that simple. “Don’t leave me behind.” 

Flux’s face crumples. Saps doesn’t need to reach for him; Flux doesn’t need to move. They just fall into each other, the same way they’ve always held each other: Flux’s arms around his waist, Saps’ arms around his shoulders, Flux’s head tucked into the crook of his neck, Saps’ chin resting on top of his head.  

In his arms, Flux feels so alive and unshakeable. His breath hitches against Saps’ chest. It’s almost too hot to bear the closeness of another person, but Saps thinks that he’d like to stay like this forever. Holding Flux in this way, both of them wanting terribly, wanting something that it might be too late to have, or perhaps knowing that whatever they have might not last. It’s a scary thing, to see the end of it all so close to them. How frightening it is — how quickly the end can approach without either of them realizing. 

Saps thinks he might never forgive himself for this: how naive he was, how immature, how self-centered. How long he waited — because if he didn’t wait, he might have had all this for so much longer. 

But wouldn’t that, then, have made it so much worse to let go? 

Flux’s hands grasp at the back of his shirt, and for a second Saps thinks that he’s going to let go. But he only fists his hands into the thin fabric and holds on tighter.

They stay like that, holding each other, holding on. 

Senior year of high school. Whitish pale winter. As cold as winter could get for them regardless — it was all pale and windy days and sometimes, the occasional spatter of rain that made everything feel icy and cold. They were waiting for the bus, sharing the same umbrella. Flux was fidgeting with the hem of his shirt; a thread had come loose, and he was unwinding it slowly, pulling away and fraying the fabric. Saps was holding the umbrella, sneakers soaked through. The bus was taking forever to come. They were talking about something or nothing: Saps’ girlfriend (or one of the girls he wanted to be his girlfriend). College dreams. Early decision acceptances for their classmates. The future, bright and spiraling open. 

The bus came. They sat together, looking out the same window. Flux was so warm against him, enough to heat through his rain-soaked clothes. Together, without needing to speak, they got off on the same stop, turning down the street to Saps’ house. 

“Pick one,” Saps said once inside, looking through his collection of VHS tapes. “We can always do Treasure Planet again —”

“You always pick that one. Just put Planet Earth on.” 

“I hate the one with the tarantulas.” 

“So put on the whale one. It’s just background noise, anyway.” 

Whales swooning, singing to each other in the periphery; thick blue arctic ice filled the old box television, which was on its last legs. Everyone had a flat screen TV except for Saps, though no one knew that except for Flux. They sat in comfortable, pleasurable silence together; finals were coming up, but neither of them wanted to study. Before long they were chatting again, fully ignoring the calculus sets on the coffee table, Saps stretched out on the sofa and Flux cross-legged on the floor. 

“I might roadtrip out to college,” Saps was saying. “It’s just the Midwest. That’s not that far of a drive.”

“A couple of days, maybe.”

“Further than I’ve ever driven.” Saps thought about it. “But someone would have to come with me.”

“Me,” Flux said. “I’d go with you, obviously.” 

“But you’d have to drive all the way back, and my dad would kill me if I let someone else drive the car. Also, you don’t even have your permit.” 

“I just need to turn eighteen,” Flux muttered. “I’m only a few months away.” 

“It’s gonna be cool as fuck when you can drive,” Saps agreed. “Think of all the places we’ll be able to go.”

“The mall,” said Flux dreamily. “I can finally drive myself to the mall.”

“We could go up to Copper Hill.”

“Isn’t that a makeout spot?”

“I guess,” Saps said. He pinked. “But like. You know what I mean.” 

“We could go to the aquarium.” 

“One of these days we can go as far out as possible,” Saps said. “To where the earth ends.”

“Didn’t you pay attention in physics?” Flux said, laughing. “I don’t know if you know this, but the earth doesn’t actually end. It’s a circle ”

“But there has to be an endpoint somewhere,” Saps said. “Otherwise it just — it just keeps on going forever and ever, yeah? At some point it has to stop.” 

Flux tipped his head and blinked; it was almost catlike. “What if I don’t want it to end?”

“Isn’t that scary, though? That there’s never any end at all?”

“Death?” Saps offered.

Flux shuddered. “I don’t want to think about that.” 

Saps didn’t make him think about it. He was thinking about the map, that silly thing they hadn’t touched in almost two years, thinking about where it cut off at the edges — corners to the north, south, east, west. All the places where, at least for their map, some company had divided the world, cut off parts of it, squared their whole home state. This was a silly thought, Saps knew. Of course the world continued past the paper edges. But something about how neatly all the space could be divided made him feel sick. 

It was that easy, to draw all these arbitrary lines and borders to the vastness of it all. Like a way to solve a puzzle of space and time and environment. A map was only one method of understanding what couldn’t ever be understood. 

The enormity of it overwhelmed him suddenly. Saps felt he was staring down something much larger, much more terrifying than he could process. 

“I want to go to the end of the world with you,” he admitted. 

As a child, his face was so much softer, so much younger. This memory of him was nothing like the sharp-eyed, reticent Fluixon that Saps knew now as an adult, the Fluixon who had returned after four years and was entirely different. The Fluixon in his memory was precisely as Saps wanted to keep him. Both of them in love and so afraid of it. Both of them beloved and so unknowing of it. 

“So take me there,” Flux said, as though he knew what Saps couldn’t yet say aloud, what Saps didn’t yet know about himself. “Take me to the end of the world with you.” 

And Saps would. As far Flux wanted him to go.