jason fix it naow good luck keith’s POV

I scream. He pushes Phil to the ground and out of the way up against my legs, and slugs Coy right in the face. I yell and Phil gets pushed again, back behind me as I get out of my seat. I grab Cam’s hair in my fist and yank, hoping to throw him into the back, but he doesn’t move. He draws his arm back and punches Coy again, who hits his head against the steering wheel. I get in between the two of them and grab Cam’s fist, managing to hold him back, my fingers wrapped around his clenched fist. My arm is shaking.

“Get out of my way.” His voice is low and deep and loud, sounding older than his years. Phil stays pressed to the door, staring, his hands over his mouth like a damsel in distress, not doing much. What could he do? Cam would just hit him. He’s not looking at us, but at Coy. Worry flares up in me, but if I turn around, Cam will hit me too. I can hear Coy breathing hard. Cam tries to throw a punch with his left hand and I catch it, struggling to hold him back.

In a clear, confident voice, I hold my head up and say, “Why are you so mad?”

He growls at me, yanking his fist back and then pushes it forward again, hoping to catch me off guard. “Get out of my way,” he says again, his hair falling across his eyes. He tries to toss it back like an irritable pony, but it goes nowhere. He looks nothing short of murderous, his nose all scrunched up, his teeth bared like a wolf. A very skinny, sick, weird wolf.

“Why are you mad?” I know Phil is right here and I know this is potentially putting myself in danger but, come on, this kid has arms like spaghetti, I’m sure I can hold my own. “He isn’t yours, you know.” I smile now, needing to piss him off more than I’ve ever needed anything. He’s seething. “I kissed him too.” That’s certainly something; he looks shocked for the first time in a long time, his mouth opening just a little, his eyebrows shooting up. “With tongues and everything, he asked me to, he asked us both.” I leave out the point of the bet, because he doesn’t need to know.

He wrenches his fist back and this time I can’t catch it and he punches me in the side of the head, his painful bony knuckles making my vision shake for a moment or two. I sob angrily and shove him back into the back of the van, following him as quickly as I can. I hear Phil move behind me just as Cam grabs the front of my shirt, pulling me close. His teeth are bared, the tips of our noses almost touching. His breath smells like cock. “You’re lying,” he hisses.

“Nope.” My neck and head hurt a lot, and my eyes are watering. Right now, fucking with his head is more important than hurting him physically, so I just take it. “He did that thing where he taps his tongue against each of your teeth, isn’t that great?”

He hits me across the face, not quite a slap, not quite a punch. It doesn’t hurt too much, not as much as the punch to the head did. I think he got me right in the temple that time because my whole body is throbbing, not in a good way. “Shut your fucking mouth.”

“Blondie over there is yours now, so Phil is up for grabs, right?” I don’t want him, of course, but I don’t mention that either. All this omitting is getting me in a great mood, besides my injured boyfriend, my injured noggin, and my mentally-injured ... what’s Phil? A friend, I guess. “I know you love him, you know. He won’t let you pop his cherry, but he seems more than eager to let someone else do it.” Another lie.

He smacks me so hard, I don’t think I’ve ever been hit that hard in my life. I fall over, grabbing at my head because it feels like fireworks of pure horrible are going off in my head. I sob, feeling very pathetic, unsure of why I’m so damn weak. I guess I’m not that much bigger than he is, and I’ve never been in a fight in my life, not ones that weren’t with him. He kicks me in the side, and then I hear a voice. “Cam, stop it.”

I haven’t heard Shelf talk in a while, and for a second, I don’t recognize him. “What?” I recognize that, that’s Cam.

“Stop it, you’re over reacting.”

Cam goes quiet, and the van dips as he gets out. “Sorry.” I hear him whisper. Since when does he give in like such a pansy? Since he started getting laid, I guess.

“It’s alright,” Shelf tells him. Why does he never sound very ... enthralled? He never sounds much of anything, the only time I’ve really seen him being anything other than bland was when he had his hand down his pants that one time when Coy and I were making out.

I was doubled over and now I sit up, peeking at the two of them, standing just outside the open door of the van, kissing. Raising a hand to my head, I don’t feel any blood. I hate it when things hurt a lot but aren’t bleeding, so no one will believe you. I turn around and stand up, shaky, and stoop back to the front of the van where Phil is standing over Coy, curled up in the driver’s seat. “Oh, Jesus,” I put my hand on his shoulder. He has his face buried in his hands. “Coy, are you okay? Coy?”

He sits up, looking so unhappy that it’s almost impressive. There’s blood on the back of the seat – the rental guys are gonna give us shit – and that’s what I see first, before the black eye and split eyebrow.

“Oh, fuck, fuck,” He looks so devastated, the poor boy, oh god. “You poor thing, you poor thing.” I don’t know what else to say. I kiss his eyebrow, thick with mottled blood, and he flinches. My lips are covered in blood and I kiss him on the mouth, so worried and mad and so everything that I don’t know what to do. “Does it hurt?” I end up asking.

“Mmmhhhmmm.” He nips at my lower lip before leaning back, holding both my hands tightly in his, as if I’ll run away when provoked. You’d think we’d been through a damn hurricane, all this tragedy and quiet words, when in reality it was just one very angry noodle-armed boy that can mysteriously pack a punch. “I can’t see very well out that eye.”

“Well, no kidding.” I want to kiss it, but I don’t think I should. I kiss his cheek. “I’m really sorry.”

He shakes his head. “It wasn’t you, I made him.” He looks by me to Phil, standing next to me, hands holding each other and hovering nervously near his chest. “I’m really sorry, Phil.”

“Me too,” I say, remembering what I’d said to Cam. I drop my voice, worried that he’ll hear this though he’s occupied with Shelf. “I'm sorry I lied to Cam, I don't know why I did it I can't believe he got so mad -"

"It's fine." He's gone a little red. "Just leave it."

I look back at Coy. "I'm so sorry, I can't believe he hit you so hard, that's almost impressive."

He grins, but doesn’t look too pleased. "It's not impressive, you skank. You're gonna have to drive now."

"Anything." I kiss his forehead, and he blushes demurely, the effect ruined by the blood and purple-ish eye. I know that black eyes aren't as bad as they look, and are just the most dramatic things ever. He got one when we were little at one point, I don't know the year or anything, and it healed on it's own and everything. Oh, he just looks so sad. I tell him I love him and he says it back and we switch seats, Phil getting settled in between us.

As soon as Coy starts the van up, Phil gives a forlorn cry.

"What?!" I think he's hurt, at first. Speaking of hurt, I think I need some aspirin.

Tears well up in his eyes as he looks at me, holding up his walkman - or what's left of it. One of us must have stepped on it: the cover has been cracked and broken off at the hinge, the CD inside intact, but probably scratched. “Oh jesus, sorry.” I don’t know what else to say. “I’ll buy you a new one, I promise.”

He sets the broken thing down in front of him, rubbing at his eyes. “I’ve just had that one for a long time, that’s all.”

“I’m really sorry.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Everything sucks after that. We stop at a gas station to buy Coy one of those ice pack things, but they don’t have any, so we have to go into this dirty little grocery store to find one. He sits sullenly in the passenger seat with the back reclined, holding the ice pack over his eye in hopes of making the swelling go down. He mumbles once in a while about how ugly he looks, rifling through the photos he took yesterday in the camera.

The sky still remains a light whitish-grey, refusing to rain or do anything other than make this day gloomier. Birds swoop overhead, dipping and diving in the wind as if they were roaring down water slides, chirping and cawing down to us in glee. The landscape remains more or less unchanged, boring like the rest of what we’ve driven through to get here. Fields and farms and plants and rivers and mountains and hills get boring after more than a week. I just want to go home.

Coy falls asleep, all tucked up in a big sweater he found in his suitcase, the camera and ice pack sitting forgotten on the dashboard. Phil nods off soon after, his headphones around his neck though they’re connected to nothing, his head resting on Coy’s armrest, jostling with each bump in the road. It doesn’t seem to wake him up, but then again, not a lot does. Shelf has fallen asleep in the back, arms folded under his head, legs kicked up against the back of the trunk. I expect Cam to be asleep too, but though I can’t see him, I know he isn’t asleep because Shelf is lying alone. Why isn’t Cam all curled up with him?

I hear a skritch-itch-kitching and recognize it after only a few seconds. Stretching my neck to look in the rear view mirror at a different angle, I see Cam behind my seat at the back, his sketchpad lying across his knees. He has his hair tied back in ... what looks like a belt, actually, with a pencil held tightly in his fingers, scratching furiously at the paper. I can’t see exactly what’s on the paper, but he’s looking up and down every few moments, back and forth between the paper and something or other. Probably Shelf.

Cam and I don’t speak, so I’m alone for hours. I turn the stereo off and listen to nothing other than the hum of the engine and the constant scratching of Cam’s pencil. Not once do I hear him use an eraser, but it’s hard to tell what an eraser sounds like. Either way, it seems impressive. He’s as good of an artist as he is a jackass, and that’s really saying something. The van rolls and bumps down the road at over a hundred kilometers an hour, but it feels like it’s the scenery moving instead of us, just like in those old movies where the landscape was painted on a canvas that just scrolled by a stationary car in front of a fan. It feels like that now, just like that. I swear we’re getting no closer to Lomoni, like we’ll never get there. I want to go home so badly.

My head has settled down a little, the pain reduced to a low throb rather than its previous explosions of pain. It’s just throbbing now, like your average headache. I look forlornly over at Coy, his head tipped back on the headrest, his bottom lip drawn down in a quiet snore. His eye is dark and almost unrecognizable as him, black-ish purple all the way around the eye socket, right up to his eyebrow, still red and dark with blood. Even in his sleep he looks mildly unhappy, and I pray he isn’t in pain. What horrible luck that poor boy has. If he’d been sitting a few inches back, if he’d been just a little quicker, he would have gotten away with just a sore face. Can’t believe he got so hurt, I hope it just looks worse than it is. I can’t stand him being in pain, and the fact that it’s Cam’s fault just makes it worse. That jerk.

Everyone stays asleep for a long while. Coy wakes up a couple hours later, rubbing his eyes out of habit, then recoiling in pain. I give him a sympathetic look and he smiles sleepily, ruffling his hair back. He opens the glove compartment and gropes around inside it, eventually finding the pad of paper from yesterday along with a pen. He must see that Phil’s asleep, because he writes “good morning” on the paper and holds it up to me. I mouth “good morning” back. He flips the page and writes “let me get this straight” on it, taking up the whole thing. I nod, waiting. On the next page, he writes “Cam loves Phil.” I shrug, hesitant, but end up nodding. Flipping the page, he writes “I love you.” I nod vigorously in response, smiling at his childlike cuteness. He’s adorable. “Cam is getting laid, and that’s gross.” Biting back a laugh, I stick my tongue out in a way that shows how repulsed I am. Coy smiles and stifles giggles of his own.

He rests the notepad on his knee and writes something on it, taking a little longer than with the other ones. I flick my eyes back to the road after a few seconds, but as soon as I do, he finishes his message and holds it up. I look out of the corner of my eye, not wanting to cause an accident. “Before the horrible incident, last night was incredible,” it says, and he’s doodled a little heart with happy eyes and a mouth next to it.

I try not to blush, looking back at the road. I whisper now, sure that it won’t wake Phil up, not caring if I wake Shelf up. “You sure?” I’m referring to the part that he seemed to have problems with.

He sets the notepad on the dashboard with the other things, opting to talk out loud now that I am. “Assuming we’re talking about the same thing here, then yes, I’m very sure, now shut up about it.”

I grin at the road ahead, realizing that just talking to Coy has made this day seem better, just his voice and his brain. “You’re such a boy.”

We don’t say much for the next few hours. I’ll assume that Coy’s feeling the same twisted, weird, not-quite-right feeling that I am in the pit of my stomach, a combination of the weather and the cabin-fever of being stuck in the van for days on end. What presses down on us above all that, the main cause for this feeling of dread, is that the next city we’ll come to is Lomoni. Coy pulled out the map before we left Wilmington and though we didn’t tell any of the other boys, Lomoni was the next big city. They might know already.

I’m not completely sure what will happen, to be honest.

Shelf wakes up in a bit, making Cam shoves his sketchpad under one of the suitcases to hide it. I don’t know why he doesn’t want Shelf to see his drawings, but he definitely doesn’t. He crawls over to Shelf and gets on top of him without a word, kissing him hard enough to smack his head back down into the floor of the van. His hands burrow into filthy blonde hair – he hasn’t showered since the day we met him, god only knows why, now that he has the means to do so – and from my angle it looks like he’s trying to just suck his face right off. Shelf’s hands latch onto his back in what looks like a painful grip. Cam, being Cam, doesn’t care.

I look away. Phil continues to sleep at Coy’s side with his mouth open, hair sticking up where it’s pressed against his armrest. Pity for him bowls me over with surprising force, enough to make tears start prickling at the back of my eyes. I shouldn’t have kissed him, I realize now. It was ... irresponsible, to an extent. Using a situation for personal gain. He’s just a kid, and clearly not doing too good. How long he’s sleeping now tells me he didn’t get much sleep last night, and I hate the thought of that, of him lying awake in turmoil.

The sky continues to churn above us, Phil continues to sleep peacefully at our side, the faithful lapdog. Coy’s fingers rub through his hair, flattening and then messing it up again as if he were petting a puppy. Phil doesn’t wake up, dead to the world, lost in dreams that I pray are better than reality, in which his childhood love has his tongue down a boy’s throat. I don't know what he's going to do, I don't. Sleeping in his own bed, having some time alone or with his family, that will help. Cam – to my knowledge – is currently staying with Lauren back in our city, but his parents live in Chicago, and he should too. He can go back there, away from Phil. That'll help.

The van is going fast enough that I almost miss it. That big green sign that says “LOMONI.” We’re there, and the thought of that makes my heart leap into my throat. Possibilities run through my head like movie-strips. Cam could stay here, you know. Why didn’t I think of that one? He could stay here with Shelf and be homeless, whore themselves out as a pair to people on the streets. It’d be a good, albeit depressing life for him. He would be okay with it, most likely. He’s practically a hobo now anyways.

Lomoni is a big city, packed to the brim with people. A sky train track laces around short and tall buildings, clean and dirty ones, around the whole city. It sounds like a very efficient form of travel – I’ve never been on one, our town is far too small for a sky train or subway or train at all – as long as it isn’t anything like that one episode of The Simpsons. Now that we’re here, I don’t know where we’re going. I look over at Coy, who looks just as lost as I am. “Lunch?” he suggests. From the back of the van, Shelf gives an enthusiastic yelp, which I take as a definite yes on lunch Looking back at the road, I scan for somewhere to eat, sick of fast food. I should get to know this place anyhow, Coy has always said he’s wanted to move here. Something tells me that he won’t want to after this, not if it reminds him of Shelf and this whole mess.

As I turn down street after street, crawling through busy traffic, Coy gently shakes Phil awake. “Hey,” he whispers. “C’mon, get up, we’re there.” He has a hand on his neck.

The way Phil mumbles “Home?” as he’s just waking up is heartbreaking.

“Nah,” Coy smiles, petting his hair as he straightens up, rubbing his head where it was pressed to the armrest. His fingers touch Coy’s and he jerks back, red in the face. Kissing us can’t have helped his jittery nature any. Cam and Shelf get their tongues out of each others faces and sit back, both looking pleased. I bet Shelf is more pleased at the prospect of restaurant food.

Coy finds this little place nestled in next to a library called the Oops! Cafe, but it takes us forever looking around to find a parking spot anywhere in the area, so we park far off and just walk for a while. Coy and I lead the way down the sidewalk, fingers laced through one another's, watching people curiously. Phil is sort of beside us yet sort of behind us and then behind him is Cam and Shelf, also holding hands. “Man,” I whisper to Coy, stretching up to reach his ear. “This place is impressively-good-looking-scruffy-boy central, huh?” His eyes follow the same guy as mine do, walking by us in the opposite direction.

“Yup. Wanna move here right now?” he leers, giggling.

“All in good time,” I say, squeezing his fingers. We’ve already enrolled in university classes back home anyways, but I don’t mention that, nor do I mention my reluctance to leave Brandon miles and miles behind me in another city.

The Oops! Cafe has flowered curtains and china-cups lined up on the window sills. A bell over the door jangles as we step inside; Coy holds the door open for the four of us who huddle in the doorway in front of an empty waitress’ podium. Pine tables covered in flowered cotton table cloths dot the dining room, most empty, a few occupied by couples or the elderly. Noises of clanging pots and a faint sizzling emits from the kitchen at the back, along with a delicious yummy egg-and-toast smell.

A pretty woman with short, dark hair arrives at the podium, counting us, grabbing five menus from its depths. “Right this way!” she says, walking with us into the table-area. The restaurant, as I said, isn’t very crowded, so she has no problem pushing two tables together to accommodate all of us. Shelf and Cam take one side, Coy and I take the other, and Phil sits at the head between Shelf and I. I can’t help but feel guilty about him being the lone one out so often. I offer my seat up, but he declines politely.

Looking through the menus, we see this is definitely a quaint breakfast-lunch sort of place that we are almost too late for. Since nerves have effectively ruined my appetite, I order minestrone soup. Coy gets a tuna sandwich – I wrinkle my nose at that; tuna is not my closest friend – Shelf gets lasagna, and Cam and Phil both just order drinks. When the waitress comes back to take our orders and menus, she asks about Coy’s eye, expressing predictable concern. He looks pretty beat up, but I’m a little creepy and I can’t help but think that he looks rugged and lovely some how. She asks what happened and Coy, full of sparkles and charm, just says: “Disagreement.” He misses Cam’s scowl.

Coy’s knee touches mine beneath the table, then he slips his right foot towards me ‘till it bumps my left foot. He likes being close to me, I think, because he usually initiates things like this in places where hand holding would be awkward or just too honeymoon-ish, like now. I don’t mind one bit. I feel weird when we’re apart anyways. I think of that night before we left, the first night in years that I’ve spent it in a different room than Coy. The thought of not sleeping next to him makes my stomach flip. How co-dependent.

“So,” Coy begins, and just from that tone I can tell he’s starting The Dreaded Conversation. “What’s here for you in Lomoni?” He doesn’t add a name to tell who he’s talking to because he looks at Shelf, who catches his gaze and looks back.

“Oh, not a whole lot.” His voice is still somewhat foreign to me, not literally. He’s just a quiet guy. “A cousin of mine offered to put me up for a while, until I get on my feet.” The waitress appears breifly, bringing us drinks; water for Shelf, Coy and I, Sprites for Cam and Phil.

I stare at Cam, who’s looking intently at the ice twirling around in his glass. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, but he isn’t smiling or anything. “That’s good,” Coy says with cheer that might be false. I adjust my temporarily dorky glasses and look around the walls of the Oops! Cafe at the various paintings and photos, all either landscapes or sea-side city scenes. I like them. “You’ve been ... great.” He hesitates, maybe not sure of what word to choose there. “Have you hitchhiked a lot?”

“Sort of, I guess.” Again with the reluctance to talk about himself. “No other way of gettin’ around, really. Never for this long, though.”

“What’s your real name?” Phil asks, and all of us look at him, his chin in his hand, his elbow on the table next to his bubbling glass of Sprite. Shelf sips at his water, the glass seeming almost too delicate for his thick hands. He fumbles with it for a moment, but doesn’t spill. “Richard Passions.”

Coy holds back a laugh that ends up coming out like a loud snort. The couple a few tables over looks at us, and Coy waves an apology, mouth hidden behind his hand. Shelf looks at him, apparently not offended by the blatant mocking of his hilarious name. “I thought you didn’t know?” I say. He looks at me. “How did you get the name ‘Shelf’?”

He smiles a sunny five year old’s smile. “I remembered a few days ago, but I didn’t think any of you would care.”

“We would have!” I laugh, deciding to be nice to him, even if he’s kind of disrupting the whole Cam-Phil thing. It’s not completely his fault, after all.

“And when I first got on the streets, I ended up getting a ‘job,’” He uses air quotes on ‘job.’ “Carrying junk for this skinny old hobo. He didn’t ask my name, but ended up calling me ‘Shelf’ and it just stuck.” That’s a nice story, I think to myself, but I don’t say it out loud. Funny how he’s telling us all this now, sort of a last minute thing. Our food arrives quickly, and we eat. I keep a close eye on Cam, sipping almost sullenly at his drink, the striped straw stuck in the gap between his front teeth. He didn’t say a word about Shelf’s name or that little snippet he revealed about his past. Maybe he’s already been told? They ARE sleeping with each other Their elbows are touching right now.

We don’t take long to eat. While we do, we chat idly about the city and older menial things, the conversation staying between Coy, Shelf, and I, Cam and Phil still as silent as stone. When we’re doing, the dark-haired waitress returns to ask us if we’d like anything else and when we decline, she lets us pay and leave. Stepping outside, we find an eerie chill whistling on the wind and the clouds continue to hang low over our heads like foreboding anvils. We walk quietly back to the van but when we get there, Coy stops us from going in. “Shelf.” He looks at said boy, holding hands with Cam once more. “Where’s this cousin of yours?”

He lets Cam’s hand go and he fishes into the back pocket of his filthy cut-off jeans, producing a small, torn piece of lined paper. “1613 Laval Crescent? Yeah, I think that’s right.” He looks around, not unlike a confused bird. “Can’t be too far from here.”

“I’ll get the map,” Coy offers, unlocking the doors, hopping into the passenger seat. Turns out, the map we have does show Lomoni in some detail – it’s a relatively major city around here – and after searching and just a bit of arguing, we find Laval Crescent, on the west side, not too far from here. Probably a five minute drive. Off we go, with Coy driving, claiming that he can see fine now. He seems to be driving okay, but that boy would say anything to preserve his masculinity for one reason or another. He’ll cook wearing a frilly apron and put clips in his hair, but he won’t let me drive, or, y’know, stick my fingers in his ass. I guess he’s weird like that. Cam and Shelf sit in the back, absolutely all over each other. I haven’t heard them say a word since we left the cafe, but they could be talking quietly. Phil sits between the front seats some more, the ever-faithful lapdog, his legs crossed, fallen discman lying over his ankles. He’s looking at it. The buildings around us fade to residential houses, not too-fancy ones, but not slums either. There’s a lot of townhouses. Laval Crescent is nestled into the side of a mountainous hill, driveways steep to accommodate that. It’s small, quaint, surrounded by dying pine trees showering needles onto damp, rotting roofs. 1613 is a big blue house with white trim and what appear to be non-functioning shutters on the second floor. Isn’t too bad.

Shelf seems giddy, but that could be due to Cam sitting in his lap. We pull up just outside the driveway on the street because Coy told me that he finds it rude to pull into a stranger’s driveway. He switches the engine off. We sit for a couple seconds before Shelf scoots towards the left door. Cam follows quickly, opening it for him. They step out, pine needles crunching under their feet. Cam shuts the door behind him but my window is open so we can all hear them talk.

He sounds choked up. That surprises me, but I don’t know why. “You’re really leaving?” He pauses. “Uh, staying?” His nasal, annoying voice isn’t suited for sadness. Anger is its forte.

“I have to.” I’m turned around in my seat, watching, as are Phil and Coy. Shelf cups his hand around Cam’s jaw – Cam covers it in his own, nuzzling against it.

“You can stay with me,” Cam murmurs, almost too quiet for us to hear. “I live in Chicago, but it’s nice, you’d like it -”

“It isn’t you, babe.” Fondness in his voice is overpowering, but so is the sense of pity, the talking-to-a-four-year-old. Does Cam hear that? “It’s not you, I promise.”

“Then what?” He looks at him, eyes shining. “I can take care of you, feed you, you’d have a big house ...”

“That would be nice, yeah ... But I’m not the guy for you.”

Quickly, I look at Coy. He seems as surprised as I do. I can’t see Phil’s face. “What d’you mean? I thought ...” Cam trails off.

“You’re great, don’t get me wrong.” He rubs his fingers over Cam’s jaw, slipping his hand down his neck. “You’re smart, funny -” His voice drops, but not low enough to get our of our earshot. “- amazing in bed.” Cam smiles, looking somehow endearing. “But I’m not the guy for you.”

“What does that mean?” The sadness is slowly fading from his voice, he’s becoming frustrated. “You’re making my decisions? I say I like you, I say you’re the one I want!”

“Cameron, you’re just a kid. I’m sorry, but you are. And I know you’re already in love, even if you don’t.”

The broken discman makes a crunching bump as it falls from Phil’s legs to the floor.

“What?” Cam’s voice is back to it’s unnaturally docile tone.

“Phil.”

Coy and I turn to look at Phil so quickly that I almost hurt my neck. He’s sitting between us still, his hands over his mouth. Cam hesitates for a few moments. I don’t think Phil is breathing. “He has nothing to do with this,” Cam says coldly. Not disagreeing.

“He has everything to do with this.” Shelf argues, still calm. “I’m sure you like me, and I like you, but ... you and him ... you have to do this, I have to go."

“What? Why?!” You don’t even know him!” He’s angry again. “Don’t leave because of this bullshit, you’re just making fucking excuses!”

“I am not. Listen, before I was ...” He hesitates, sort of gesturing to his clothes. “... like this, my family was big and rich, and I was arranged to marry a gorgeous girl ... I don’t remember her name. And she loved me more than anything, but when I was about fourteen, I fell in love with this beautiful Latin stable boy that lived on the grounds. The girl I was arranged to marry begged me not to leave, but I did.” He pauses, catching his breath. “Now, there was nothing wrong with this girl. She was pretty, talented, smart, wealthy ... But I ran off with the stable boy, who turned out to be a very good looking deadbeat. So, here I am. Homeless.”

Cam’s mouth is open a little, his eyebrows raised. “Really?”

“No.” Shelf slips his hand down Cam’s arm to hold his hand. “My family lived in Utah, they left me at a carnival when I was seven. I just needed to make a point.”

From beside me, Coy huffs angrily.

“Look,” Shelf’s voice gets softer. “You have to love what loves you, alright? That kid,” he makes an aimless gesture at the van. “is who you should be with, not me. I’ll just mess you up in the end.”

For almost a half-minute, Cam is silent, looking down at his hand in Shelf’s. He looks up, finally. “You’re calling Phil a princess?”

“Something like that,” Shelf smiles, leans in, and kisses him. Cam’s bony little hands move on auto-pilot, fluttering up to Shelf’s arms, holding him tightly as if that would make him stay. If I were more of a stranger to these boys than I am now, I might think that from the way Shelf’s hands are cupping his face, this was a post-proposal kiss, not a goodbye kiss. He moves back slowly and Cam is left for a few seconds with his eyes closed, mouth partly open. Neither of them do anything for the longest time, just standing there in each other's hands. Coy and I look at each other, and I mouth the words “oh my god” to him. He nods.

Shelf is the next to speak. “I have to go.” His voice is barely above a whisper as his right hand goes to his front pocket. “Thank you for the drawing, I’ll keep it forever,” and with one last touch to Cam’s hair, he trots up the driveway. When he’s at the front door, he knocks and is let inside by a willowy blonde woman after a brief hug. They go inside and the door is shut behind them, and we never see Richard Passions again.

No one talks or moves for the next five minutes. Cam stands on the road next to the van, staring at the house as if he’s hoping that waiting long enough will make Shelf realize his mistake and return. He doesn’t come back. Cam slides the back door open and climbs in, shuts it behind him, then flops down sort of horizontally with his head near our luggage, his cheek resting on his own backpack. Coy doesn’t start the van yet, and I notice that Cam is looking at Phil. Right at him.

I stay quiet – I’m almost scared to breathe – and lean forwards a bit, trying to see Phil’s face. He’s looking back at Cam, those heavy, recently useless headphones around his neck, touching the underside of his chin. His face is pensive, emotionless, just staring, with his hands resting limply in his lap, his back bowed in teenager’s bad posture. “What?” he says, and it seems so loud.

Cam, with his cheek squished up, his hair strewn across his face and neck, he doesn’t move even at Phil’s voice. For a little while he just looks at him some more, then says, “What?” in return, which doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Phil says ... well, all he can say, I suppose. “Sorry.” He doesn’t look phased at all, he doesn’t look anything. Is he, on the inside? He’s never been too good at hiding what he’s feeling, so I’m not sure why now is so different. Does he honestly not feel anything at all? This could be big, Shelf is out of the picture, Cam’s vulnerable. It could mean something, and I bet he knows that. Cam didn’t say – and has never said – that he wasn’t in love with Phil, to my knowledge. As of recently, he hasn’t been directly mean to him, just ignoring him, and that isn’t bad. “Yeah, sorry.”

‘Sorry’ was a good thing for him to say. It was partly his fault that Shelf has left, right? That’s what he said, ‘love what loves you.’ So wise for a man in a tank top. Cam is still just lying there still, staring at Phil. Coy starts the engine up, the sound of it seeming like a roar after so much quiet talk. After a second, he turns the van around in a circle, leaving the cul-de-sac and Shelf behind us. It’s unspoken that we’re heading home, finally, we’re heading home.

We’re down the street before Cam answers Phil. “Me too,” he says quietly, turning over onto his back, his hands laced and clasped over his concave of a stomach, wrists on his pelvic bones. And he leaves it at that.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

We drive forever and ever. I sit in the passenger seat up front, staring at the map spread out in front of me, tracing our route home with my index finger. It’s such a long way, to think that we’ve made it this far is astonishing, I’ve never been this far from home. Returning will take a while, almost as long as it took to get here, and that’s a horrible thought. I just want to get home, I’m sick of this, sick of the worry and the restlessness and the numb legs.

Cameron sleeps on and off, lying like he was with his head on his backpack, his hands over his stomach. When he isn’t sleeping he’s just being sullen. It’s like his soul is gone, just sucked right out of him. He isn’t even angry, he isn’t sad. Neither of them are. Phil looks sullen, quiet, not saying a word, but he’s thinking, clearly thinking. He’s got this contemplative look, staring down at Coy’s feet. What’s he thinking about? Cam, doubtlessly. How could he not be thinking about that? He was just told that the boy he loves might love him back. That’s big, isn’t it? What if Cam told Shelf that he loved Phil, for one reason or another? Farfetched, but not completely unrealistic. You never know how much he told him, and now with him gone, we probably never will.

Coy tells me he plans to drive all night. At eight thirty in the evening, we stop at a gas station just outside Wilmington and buy five bottles of energy drink and three cans of pepsi, as prepared as we can be to stay up. If he falls asleep at the wheel, we all die, and that would do no one any good. He says if he gets tired, he’ll pull over and sleep to be safe. He just really, really, wants to get home, and I don’t blame him.

It’s pitch black now. The dim light of the stereo says it’s ten forty-two, and it’s warm and womb-like inside the van, just dark and dark and dark, no light coming from the moon. I look at Coy, barely able to see his profile, but he looks a little tired. One of the cans of pepsi is set between his thighs, about half empty. As far as I know, the boys are asleep, Phil curled up half-behind Coy’s seat, Cam somewhere in the back, too dark to see him in his grey-black clothes. “How’re you holding up?” I whisper to Coy, not wanting to wake them after such a traumatic day.

“Alright,” he says with a yawn, scratching just behind his ear. “You can go to sleep, you know. I promise I’ll stay up.” He turns to me and smiles, I think. It’s very dark. His poor eye looks pure black.

“No, no, no, I’m not tired!” I say defiantly, only lying a little bit. “Just lonely.”

I take my seatbelt off and stand, knees nearly buckling under me. I step over Phil’s head, worried for a second that I’ll fall on him, but I make it to Coy’s seat. He lifts his hand off the steering wheel for a moment, letting me pass under his arm, and I sit down in his lap, curling my toes around his armrest, bare feet cold now that’s it’s night. He’s warm and his hair is un-straightened and falling wavy-ish over his shoulders and down the neck of his partly-open shirt. I take the can of pop from between his legs and put it in the cup holder so I don’t spill it.

“Whatcha doing?” he looks down at me, an amused little smirk on his lips. I raise my hands and start playing with his hair, smoothing it down, curling it around my fingers like it’s ribbon.

“Oh, nothing, just ...” I bring a curl of hair to my mouth and I kiss it briefly “... enjoying your company.”

He laughs that boyish laugh of his, so appreciative. “You are a creepy, creepy little boy,” he tells me, but even as he does, he’s leaning down towards me.

“Keep your eyes on the damn road!” I hiss a second before he kisses me, which means he isn’t listening to me. We’ll fuckin’ crash, I know, but I just kiss him back because he’s beautiful, and no one says no to anyone beautiful. His upper lip is rough with stubble that feels both unpleasant and endearing at the same time, and he takes a breath in when our lips are barely touching, freezing the spit on my lips, making me shiver. “Watch the road,” I whisper again, my eyelids heavy.

I hear a loud noise and jerk back, sure that we’ve crashed. My heart is hammering in my chest, pounding in my head, but when I see that the van is still moving smoothly over asphalt, the road ahead marked only with headlights, I realize that it was a noise from the back seat. A dark figure crawls up from the back – the darkness of the night makes my head scream ‘murderer!’ despite the complete impossibility of that, because it’s just Cam – and touches Phil somewhere, I think it’s his shoulder. He wakes with a start, murmuring quietly. Cam is sitting on his haunches next to him, his hair pulled back into a loose, haphazard ponytail using his belt again. I can’t see his face, nor can I really see Phil’s.

He sits up on his elbows, rubbing his face. “What izzit?” he mumbles, voice deep with incoherence. He sees Cam and leans back a bit, letting his head rest against the stereo and cup holders.

Cam hesitates. Our only light is the glow of the headlights, and in that I can make out sharp angles of his face, part of his nose, his chin, his neck. I watch his adam’s apple bob when he swallows. “I’m sorry.”

I don’t move an inch, I give no indication that I’m listening, but Coy grabs my thigh and squeezes it hard enough to leave welts, I’m sure. Cam must know Coy’s listening, at least, because the van is still moving and not crashing.

It takes Phil a few beats to answer. “What?”

“I’m sorry.” Cam repeats. He’s looking down, I think. Unsurprising. “You have to forgive me.”

There’s a half minute of silence after that. I can hear them breathing, feel the hard beat of Coy’s heart against my arm, see the residual glow of the headlights illuminating Phil’s chest and neck. “Why?”

Cam seems to have an answer all prepared. Is that what he’s been doing this whole drive? Planning this conversation? He can’t actually be apologizing, what is he doing? “I know what I did was wrong, I know everything I’ve ever done was wrong, but I want to be with you, I swear.” He pauses a moment. “I’m so. So. Sorry.”

Is he sincere? I can’t tell. It’s too close, he’s such a diabolical little bastard, he could be a fantastic actor for all I know. Two possibilities here: He’s being honest and really loves Phil and wants to right his wrongs, or his source of getting laid has left and he’s in search for a new one to play with until he gets back home. I don’t know which one I want it to be. “Please, please, forgive me,” he says again, quieter.

This time, it’s Phil’s turn to answer quickly. “No.”

Coy’s grip on my leg tightens.

“No,” he says again. “You’re lying to me. Again. You – you always do this.” He squirms and sits up, drawing his arms around his knees. “You won’t ever be who I want, you know that, don’t you? He -” The tone he says this in is unmistakable, he’s talking about Shelf. “- is gone, but you’re still just listening to him. You don’t mean any of it.”

“I do, I promise!” He gets closer. “Kevin ...”

“Don’t,” he snaps. “You’re making an ass out of yourself.”

Cam just sits there.

“Go to sleep.” Phil says before lying back down, turning over on his side.