nose. “Sweet, sweet tobacco!” he said with a sigh.
More like sour! Maybe Jace could just hold his cigarette until it
burned down. Together they leaned against the brick wall next to the gas
station’s entrance. Jace stole little glances at Victor as he puffed away. A
hint of dark stubble shaded his chin, but he didn’t seem too much older
than Jace. “What school do you go to?”
Victor stared at a distant streetlight. “I don’t.”
“Already graduated?”
“No.”
“Oh.” Jace covertly checked him out. The army jacket was hanging
open, some sort of concert T-shirt below, but it was too loose to tell what
sort of body Victor had.
“I take it you’re still in high school?” Victor asked.
“Yeah. Senior. I’ll graduate in the summer.”
Victor smirked. “That’s usually how it works.”
Ugh. Coolness meter dropping to critical! Jace took another drag,
wishing they made these things in bubble gum flavor. At least this time
he managed not to gasp or wheeze, but now he was desperately trying to
think of something that didn’t sound lame. “What sort of career path are
you planning on?” What the hell? Now he was channeling his father!
Instead of answering, Victor looked over at him and nodded at the
cigarette. “You don’t have to pretend. It’s already cool that you got me
these.” He held up the pack. “I’m assuming you don’t want them?”
Jace shook his head, dropping the cigarette on the ground and
grinding it out with his foot. He felt like giving up and going back inside,
but he still felt oddly drawn to this person. Victor had gotten what he
wanted and would soon disappear back into the night, but before he did,
Jace wanted to know who he was. Instead of trying to play it cool
anymore, he simply let loose. “Who are you? I don’t get what you’re
doing here or why you were wearing that mask. And if you’re not in
school, then how old are you, because you make it sound like you
dropped out. If you did, what are you going to do?”
Victor exhaled, watching the smoke on the air before he grinned.
“I’ll give you three questions. One at a time. I promise to answer them
truthfully, although it will probably be the last time I’m ever honest with
you.”
Jace shook his head. “This is so weird. You’re weird.”
“Three questions. Take it or leave it.”
Okay. Jace didn’t need long to come up with the first one. “What’s
your name? Like your whole name.” This way he could ask people about
him, could maybe find him again.
“Victor Nathaniel Hemingway. And no, I can’t write, so the name is
very ironic.”
Can’t write anything, or can’t write prose? Jace shook his head. Only
two questions left. He wanted to know how old Victor was, and if he had
dropped out of school, but if he played it right, he could figure out both.
“If you were still in school, what grade would you be in, if you would be
in a grade at all?”
Victor snorted. “Clever.”
“Thanks. Uh, you have to answer.”
“If I hadn’t dropped out of high school, and assuming I had the
money and inclination, I’d be a freshman in college now.”
A year older than he was, then. The last question was probably the
most burning, although Jace wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.
Maybe it was as superficial as his appearance, or maybe because he was
actually interesting, but Jace wanted to give Victor the benefit of the
doubt. The answer to the next question could make it very hard for them
to be friends. “Were you going to rob me?”
Victor flicked away his cigarette, turning to face Jace and leaning
against the wall. “I don’t know.”
“You said you’d be truthful.”
“I am.” Victor’s lips twitched. “I was thinking about it before I came
in, yeah. But then I didn’t.”
The revelation made Jace feel threatened. “Are you armed?”
“You’re out of questions.” Victor looked him over and frowned.
“But no. I’m not armed, and I wouldn’t have hurt you. I just would have
grabbed something and ran. Would you have chased after me?”
“I don’t know,” Jace said, relaxing a little bit. “How fast can
werewolves run?”
“Pretty damn fast.”
Jace laughed, and soon Victor joined him. This was all so surreal, but
he liked it.
“So tell me something about you,” Victor said.
A sobering request. What was there to say? High school student with
a job at a gas station. That’s all Jace’s life was. Victor already knew
everything about him. Except one thing.
“I’m gay,” he blurted out.
Those mismatched eyes searched his. Victor didn’t ask if he was
serious or kidding. He didn’t even look surprised. Jace was used to
feeling like he’d known everyone for their whole lives, because in many
cases, he had. Now, for the first time, he felt like someone knew
everything about him, even though he couldn’t possibly.
A semi-truck pulled into the parking lot, breaks hissing as it came to
a stop in front of the pumps. The trucker hopped out and waved.
“I have to turn on the pump,” Jace said, heading for the door.
“I’m going to take off,” Victor said.
“Oh. Okay.” What else would he do after Jace dropped a bombshell
like that?
“Thanks again for the smokes.” Victor pushed off the wall and
headed across the parking lot toward the street.
Jace watched him a moment, his stomach sinking, before he turned
and opened the door.
“Hey!”
Jace spun around. Victor was halfway to the pumps, hands stuffed in
the old army jacket. He nodded in Jace’s direction. “You want to go
trick-or-treating with me?”
“For real?”
Victor shrugged. “I like freebies.”
“Okay!”
Victor grinned, spun around, and headed into the night. Jace stared
after him until he noticed the trucker looking less than patient. Then he
hurried inside to authorize the pump. Once he had, he noticed the
werewolf mask still sitting on the counter. At least Victor wouldn’t be
robbing anyone else tonight.
* * * * *
The front door of the house creaked loudly, or so it seemed in the
heavy silence. At half past two in the morning, Warrensburg had gone
from sleepy to stone dead. Jace hadn’t seen another car on the drive
home. The woman who’d come to relieve him from duty hadn’t seemed
surprised that Dan was absent. Apparently it had happened before, even
without someone there to run the store. Jace was much too tired to worry
about any of that now. He was heading up to his room when the hall light
switched on.
He blinked against the brightness. His mother stood at the top of the
stairs, illuminated like an angel by forty watts worth of heavenly light.
“There you are,” she whispered. “Did you just get home?”
Jace nodded, trudging up the stairs to her. “One of my coworkers
bailed on me. It was either stay late or abandon the store.”
Serena nodded her understanding, but the worry on her face didn’t
disappear.
“I’ll be fine,” Jace said. “Five hours sleep is enough to get me
through the day.”
“You could stay home.”
This took him aback. His mother had a razor-sharp instinct for when
he was playing sick. Jace hadn’t missed a day of school in his life
without good reason. Of course, skipping tomorrow would mean not
being able to ask around about Victor. He glanced down at the
Halloween mask in his hand, drawing his mother’s attention to it.
“Is that what you’re wearing this year?” she asked.
“No. It’s my friend’s.”
“Greg?”
Jace didn’t answer the question directly. “I need something that
compliments it. What goes with a werewolf? A dog catcher?”
His mother smiled. “Are you asking me to make you a costume? And
here I thought you were growing up too quickly.”
Jace chuckled. “You don’t have to make something. You never had
to. Everyone else’s parents bought things off the rack.”
“Oh, but I loved making costumes for you and Michelle! We weren’t
being cheap, you know. It usually ended up costing more.”
“And they were usually better,” Jace said wistfully. It did seem like a
long time ago. “Except for the year I wanted to be He-Man, and you
made me go as a generic knight.”
Serena raised her eyebrows. “It wasn’t He-Man. You wanted to be
the girl version.”
“She-Ra? Really?” Jace broke out into a grin. “That’s right! I guess
that should have been your first hint.”
The worried expression returned to his mother’s face. Obviously she
still wasn’t comfortable with the subject. “You should get some sleep,”
she said.
Jace stayed where he was. “I’m still me, you know. Nothing has
changed. I just like guys.”
“It’s not that.” Serena pressed her lips together.
“What then?”
She took a deep breath. “I worry. That’s a mother’s job, but now I
worry even more. Being gay is a big deal to a lot of people. I’m
concerned about you getting hurt. All it takes is one stupid person—”
Serena shook her head, unable to continue.
“I’ll be careful,” he said. “I promise.”
“I also think about the sort of life you’ll have. I always pictured you
with a wife and children. I can let go of that, but I want you to have
someone.”
“You and me both,” Jace murmured.
“Do you think it’s possible?”
“Yeah, I guess.” Jace shrugged. “At least I hope so.”
“Good. Life can be hard, but every burden is easier to bear with
someone at your side. That’s what I want for my baby. Someone to
watch out for him.”
Before Jace could respond, his mother wrapped him in her arms. She
kissed his cheeks, then his forehead, before wishing him sweet dreams.
When he was alone again, he went to his room and sat on the edge of the
bed. He stared down at the werewolf mask before putting it on. In the
reflection of the bedroom window, he could just barely see himself, the
eyes of the wolf blue now. He blinked, sighed into the latex, and pulled
off the mask.
Two more days until Halloween. Two more days until Victor. Jace
flopped over onto his side and with his clothes still on, allowed himself
to dream.
* * * * *
“Victor Hemingway,” Jace repeated.
Across from him at the lunch table, Greg was hammering a plastic-
wrapped sandwich with his fist, smooshing it down. This was his daily
ritual. Ever since he was a kid, he preferred his sandwiches as
compressed as possible. This did nothing to change the flavor, but he
claimed the texture was better. As Jace watched him devour half of it in
two bites, he wondered if the procedure was really about getting more
food into his mouth at once.
“Mm-mm,” Greg said as he chewed, shaking his head. After he
swallowed he added, “Never heard of him. Why?”
“Just wondering. He showed up at the store last night and—” And all
kinds of things, but luckily Greg seem preoccupied by his own thoughts.
“What are we going to do for Halloween?” he asked between bites.
Uh oh. Jace hadn’t thought of that. He couldn’t remember a
Halloween without Greg. Now he couldn’t picture one with Greg tagging
along. Jace barely knew what to expect as it was. “What did you have in
mind?” he asked.
“Angie was saying we should drive to Kansas City, check out some
of the big haunted houses. We haven’t done that since junior high.”
“With your dad.” Jace smiled at the memory. “That was fun, but this
year I was thinking about doing my own thing.”
Greg looked incredulous. “Like what?”
“Well, I have to work,” Jace said. In truth, he planned on asking to
leave work early, but he still had to be there because the gas station was
the only place where Victor knew to find him. Not for the first time, Jace
wondered if he was being na.ve. Maybe Victor had only been joking. It’s
not like they exchanged phone numbers or made solid plans about when
and where to meet.
“You can’t get the night off?” Greg asked. “Angie was planning on
bringing her little sister.”
Oh. Right. “Bummer,” Jace said, sounding unconvincing even to his
own ears.
“You’d probably like her if you met her,” Greg said.
“Maybe some other time. I’ll be working part of the night, and it
would suck if you guys had to hang around waiting for me.”
“I guess so.” Greg tackled his chips, looking sullen as he ate them
one by one instead of inhaling them.
“Sorry,” Jace said.
“It’s okay. Really. I’m just trying to figure out if I can get Angie to
ditch her little sister. It’s a nice long drive out there and back, and Angie
will probably want to rest her head on my lap.” Greg leered suggestively.
Jace laughed. His best friend had been a horndog ever since they
were twelve, dragging Jace along to check out his dad’s stash of Playboy
magazines, or channel surfing soft porn movies during their sleepovers,
desperate for a glimpse of boob. It sounded like Jace would have been
cramping Greg’s style by tagging along, which made him feel a lot less
guilty.
When they were headed off to their separate classes, Jace caught
sight of his sister in the hall and made his way over to her. He’d slept late
and skipped breakfast, so this was the first he’d seen of her. He made the
two-word inquiry that he’d been putting to anyone who would listen.
“Victor Hemingway.”
Michelle shrugged and shook her head, but the person walking with
her—a freckled-faced girl named Julie—looked thoughtful and said,
“Wasn’t that the weird guy with the long dark hair?”
“Could be,” Jace said. “You know him?”
“Not really.” The tip of Julie’s tongue appeared in the corner of her
mouth for a second. “Wait, wasn’t he the one who got kicked out of
school?”
“I thought he dropped out,” Jace said.
“No, I’m sure he was kicked out because… because…”
Jace was practically salivating.
“Because of some big deal. I can’t remember.”
“Do you think you can find out?” Jace said. “If you do, come find
me. Or better yet, call me. Same number as my sister’s.”
The girl’s cheeks flushed. Oops! Jace grinned nervously, then turned
to Michelle.
“My brother, boy detective,” she said. “What’s this all about?”
Now Jace’s cheeks grew warm. Luckily, nothing was lost on his
sister.
“Never mind,” she said. “Come on, Julie. We’re going to be late.”
Jace would explain later, but no doubt she had figured out most of it
