He noticed the small things about Justin first.
There was the way that Justin pushed back his hair when his face was sweaty, rubbing his forefinger against his ear and stroking the strands of bright curls flat on his neck. He did this unconsciously, when he thought no one was looking, perhaps when he was standing off by himself by the side of the court, and perhaps when the day was especially hot.
Then there was the way that Justin tied his shoelaces: most people did it the way they were taught; right over left, cross under, make a bow. But Justin tied his laces as if he'd taught himself, stuffing white loops into a knot and patting down the mass in the flash of a moment. His laces would come undone quite frequently if they were tied in this manner.
Oh, and he could not forget the way that Justin looked at a basketball, the way his eyes shone up bright, like he was doing something that he knew that he was good at and that he knew that he was meant to do right. Nick would lay in bed at nights, listening to his parents shouting in the room next to him and his sister tossing in the bed below him, and remember the way that Justin's eyes looked at that particular moment. They would get this uncanny glow to them, this gleam, and the sun would wrap itself around his face and make his face flare white.
Nick knew things about Justin, too. Nick knew that Justin went to the private Catholic school a bike's ride away from the playground at Nick's school, and that he was old for his class because he had a late birthday. Nick knew that Justin wanted to accomplish great things, and one of those great things was not playing basketball for the NBA, though Nick often thought that Justin should try out for the NBA when he was old enough. Justin was so good at basketball that maybe when he reached high school, he'd be asked to try out, and that hardly ever happened because they always wanted older kids to start for the teams.
Nick knew these things because he was good at listening to the things that people say to each other in the hallways at school when they think that no one is listening.
Justin arrives every day at the playground, at exactly three o'clock. Nick has his eight dollar K-Mart watch with Mickey Mouse splintered across the face, so he knows Justin's schedule, and he knows that Justin sticks to this schedule with a religious sort of fervor. Justin wears loose-fitting shirts without sleeves, and black waterproof shorts.
Nick has seen Justin in the field at the back of the playground standing in the grass with only his socks, beating dirt onto his fresh white Nike sneakers. They were expensive sneakers, with the gleam of green that tinged the plastic. When Nick's mother had taken him to Wal-Mart to buy Nick new clothes, Nick had taken a look in the shoe department and he'd searched for the most expensive Nike he could find. He'd found two pairs of Nikes, and both were over a hundred dollars, and he couldn't imagine paying a fourth of the rent for footwear that never had the shoelaces tied properly.
Nick wears his cousin Vinny's sneakers that Vinny had outgrown.
He comes after school to watch Justin play basketball. He tries to be not obvious about his observation: he swings on the tire swing and looks beyond the chain, or he climbs the monkey bars and sits on the top rung and pretends to be tired of playing. He hasn't got any friends at the school, but he doesn't care. Nick prefers Justin's regularity, and Justin's golden look, and the light that passes into Justin's eyes when he thinks that no one sees.
Nick likes to speculate about Justin, too. It sort of keeps him busy. Because sometimes the washing machine breaks down or his mother wants to save on electricity, and they do all their clothes by hand for the week. He does his sisters' clothes, because they're too young to handle it by themselves, and as the radio is going he imagines what Justin must be like off the court. He makes up stories about himself and Justin, best friends they'd be, hand-in-hand talk-about-anything type of friends. He makes up stories about Justin at home.
Justin, of course, has a loving family, and his parents never fight. He has maids to do his clothes for him, of course, and cook for him, and make his bed in the mornings. He has dozens of clothes to choose from, and they are all purchased from high-end stores, and he has so much trouble choosing which outfit to wear for the day that he calls his mother in, who is on her way to work at a high-paying job in the city.
He would say, "Mom, which clothes should I wear today? I can't decide." And she would reply, "Honey, I think you should wear those dark blue jeans and the baggy white shirt, because they look comfortable on you." And she'll maybe pat his head, or something lovingly maternal like that, and leave the room, because she has to get ready for work. She doesn't take a sip from the wine rack on her way out, and she doesn't have to make sure that her apron is starched white before she heads off to her late shift as a waitress, because she works in an office and she doesn't have to keep a record of her tips.
Nick tells his mother to pick him up at exactly three-thirty, and that he has some school activity to attend in the time in between, just so he can watch Justin on the basketball court at exactly three o'clock every weekday, in his sweaty workout shirt and black shorts.
It would have been this way, perfect and regular, for weeks, if Justin hadn't started to make friends at Nick's school.
*
Of course, Justin could never enjoy solitude for long. He needs people. He needs to feel that he belonged to the world, and that the world ebbed through him and beyond him like a great river of friendship. Nick knows this; Nick knows that he could never have kept Justin to himself for long, because Justin has a bright face that is easily seen from distances.
It starts with Clayton, Clayton the rabble-rouser, Clayton who joked that Nick was dark and weak in the halls when he thought that Nick wasn't paying attention. Clayton is the first to be drawn to the brightness that was Justin. Clayton, who is big for a twelve-year-old, and has a stocky face with square jowls, begins to arrive on the court at exactly three-o'clock every weekday, and sometimes he brings his friends.
Clayton challenges Justin to a game, and, because Justin cannot stand solitude for long, he agrees. Nick watches the sweat pour from Clayton's shoulder blades as he pretends to be tired atop the jungle gym, and sees Clayton's arms spread out like wings to block Justin's pass. The black ground beneath their new sneakers swells up to meet them with its intangible glare, and the sun beats hot against their flesh. Clayton sneers as he looks at Justin, and it is a predatory sneer, eager to grasp at the light in Justin's eyes that Nick has glimpsed.
But Justin is too good for Clayton, and Justin maneuvers past him sleek like a leopard. Justin is good enough to play for the NBA, Nick knows. But those dreams are too lofty for Justin, Nick imagines. Justin prefers something more substantial: a house, and a white picket fence, and a dog named Skip, and two children and a wife named Britney that cooks eggs on Saturday mornings like nobody's business.
Justin wins this match-up, of course, because Justin always has to win. That is in his nature.
*
When Clayton returns next week, bringing Jack and Michael with him, Justin stares at him with the light in his eyes, and challenges them to a duel. Nick already knows that he will win, because he has seen it happen many times in his dreams, in the darkness of his simple room with his sister rustling the covers across from him.
They play until the sweat is running from their backs like rivers, and Jack's twelve-year-old body is twitching and hunched. They play until it is painful to play more. They play because they love the game and they are good at it.
Justin wins this game, of course, underneath the pulse of the heavy Florida sun, and the stare of Clayton trying to capture the light in his eyes that only Nick knows about.
"You know," says Clayton, when Justin passes around his sport bottles filled with thirst-quenching Gatorade, and they are sitting along the sidelines catching their breaths, "That kid Nick. The dirty, dark one. He's always here, watching us."
"I know," said Justin, very quietly, swallowing his Gatorade as sweat drips down from his forehead. He is always very quiet; somehow, Nick knew that this would be the way his voice would sound. Quiet so that the world hummed down to listen to it, but loud enough to convey the importance of a shout.
"You know? Well, aren't you going to do anything about it? It's annoying; he doesn't belong here," snarls Clayton, the voice of a pitbull rolling from his throat.
"Let him be," says Justin, and his voice conveys acceptance, and acknowledgment, and Nick's soul swells to meet the expectations that Justin certainly has of him. Justin's voice is dull and pungent, and Nick covers himself with dreams, as he sits by himself atop the jungle gym.
"As long as he's quiet," says Clayton, defeated. Justin always wins. Nick knew that.
*
And so the games would have continued like this, Nick watching, Clayton and Justin battling each other like two fire dragons on the court. Nick sees Justin's quiet anger rippling through his shoulders, and Clayton's noisy will to win, echoed from his lips at the end of every game. The games would have continued like this, for weeks even, if it hadn't been for the bet.
"How about this, Timberlake," Clayton had said. Of course Clayton didn't concern himself with given names. His domain was the impersonal, the frigid, the artificiality of business and circumstance.
"How about what, Keller," Justin had countered, but it was quiet, and not angry. Justin never spoke in anger, never raised his voice, never started a verbal fight. It was the light in his eyes that stopped him, Nick knew. It was the light in his eyes that shone iridescent when the sun hit his pupils just right that curbed his most animalistic of instincts.
"There's this bet. I have a bet," Clayton had announced. His minions, Jack and Michael, had looked up, rubbing the sweat from their necks and drinking from Justin's water bottle before the game was over. Clayton tossed the ball between his hands, taking a firm stance in front of Justin. "I win this game, thirty points, and I get to banish that Nick kid from the playground."
"Deal," Justin had said. A little too quickly, Nick had thought. Nick had thought he'd had Justin's protection. Nick had thought that Justin always won. But what if… what if… this time was different. What if…
He thought of living without these days, without the three o'clocks. He thought of returning to Jane and Aaron and Angel and BJ and the broken house and the washing machine that they couldn't afford to run and the irregularity of his father's visits and the way the lights glinted off the wine rack at eight in the morning and the…
But he swallows. Of course Justin would win. Who was he to doubt it? Just Nick, the dark one, the little one that did not even belong here, on the jungle gym, pretending as if he did not exist.
The game begins. Michael and Jack are on Clayton's side. Clayton is at his best form. He gets the first three shots in the net; he whoops when they swish through air and drop from heaven. The sweat is pouring off Justin's back like rivers of salt. The ball is passed to Michael, and he shoots, and the ball bounces off the rim of the basket. Justin jumps to grab it, hugs it away from him, and jams it through the net. A swish from heaven follows.
The air is pungent and bright, and there is nobody on the playground. The trees above the playground that encircle the structures are tall and stately. Nick looks ten feet down at bark dust, and thinks that the gold bits in the particles match the brightness in Justin's face.
The game stretches past four o'clock, Justin scoring, Clayton scoring, his minions stealing the ball at times. Nick is glad that he has told his mother he will walk home today, but at the same time, he wishes for an easy escape like that.
By twenty after, Justin has twenty eight, and Clayton has twenty nine. Ten minutes more and Clayton manhandles the ball away from Justin, an illegal move in a professional game. Justin stumbles back, his new sneakers that he made to look old slipping against the pavement of the court. But he catches himself, because he is Justin and he cannot fall, and Nick sees the ball fly up into the net, and meet the ground in a successful pass.
Clayton whoops, and hugs his two minions. The sweat pours off Justin's back, and Justin seems to lose a little brightness in Nick's eyes. His eyes seem tarnished. Maybe just a little. But no, Nick blinks, he must be imagining the different shade.
"Run," he hears, as the voice arrives from another continent, and he follows without consciously knowing why, or who told him to do so. He slips down the monkey bars, sliding easily with the sweat surging from his skin like rain. He is slow and awkward, and he is not used to running fast.
Clayton and his minions catch him easily, and Clayton rushes into Nick, slamming him against the metal bars of the jungle gym. Nick feels his head throb, and the world begins to charge before his eyes in unsteady gallops. He tries to put his arms up, to defend himself, but Clayton's fists hammer into his skin like bullets, and the sound is like the ricochet of the gun that his father used when the drug dealers tried to break into their house after a mix-up with debts. Clayton's anger is like the growl of his mother after she swallows Jack Daniels at seven in the morning before tucking the tag of his shirt in and sending him off to school with his spiral notebook.
But maybe, if he can remember the light of Justin's eyes when the sun hits his face just right, he will be able to hold onto the world before he succumbs to it. Just maybe.
But of course, Justin is the only winner in this game, and Nick knows that - oh, does Nick know that, even clearer now that Clayton's fist is slamming into his face.
*
When Nick begins to see the world it is Justin's face that first meets his eyes. He is startled by this vision, and he imagines that he is still dreaming, or perhaps he has died and this is the sort of thing that happens to people in the afterlife.
He reaches up his hand, to touch it, to make sure it is just a fragment of his fantasy, but his hand comes away with something tangible: Justin. Nick would know the feel of his hand, of course, of course, because he has imagined that touch in his dreams.
"Are you okay?" whispers Justin, and of course it is a whisper. It sounds like it comes from far away, but Justin was always far away from Nick, just out of reach. It buzzes against Nick's head, and he tries to block it out. A hand touches his face. "I'm sorry, I had never meant for this to happen."
It is then that Nick realizes that he is not outside by the jungle gym but actually in the school bathroom, the dirty school bathroom with the miniature sinks and tiny urinals and he thinks, Justin shouldn't have to see this; Justin shouldn’t have to see it like this. There is blood on the wall and there are cigarette butts covering one of the urinals, and the water is still running in the faucet of one of the two-foot-high sinks. Justin should not have to see this.
But the light in his eyes reaches everywhere, even through the cracks in the tile of the elementary school bathroom, and Nick should have known this. The weight of the knowledge of it pushes him down, and makes the smile on his face grow harsh and bright. Justin touches his face and his hand is cool and clammy, and says, "I knew you were watching me all that time, I'm sorry."
And all Nick can say is, "Don't be sorry," because he feels the light from Justin's eyes so strong then, and all he can think is the light, the light, the light, those eyes, those eyes, those eyes, so that when Justin kisses him he hardly even realizes that it happened.
But of course Nick knows, because he has known what it would feel like in dreams.