Kieran & Drew (14 page)

Having said that, the fun Toby had promised him hadn’t really materialized thus far. They’d stopped for burgers, and now they were just driving. He had no idea where to.

He turned to Toby. “Hey, Toby?”
No answer.

He attempted to raise his voice above the grungy thump of the speakers. “Hey, Toby!”

 

Toby glanced at him and reached to turn down the dial on his stereo. He grinned at Kieran apologetically. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Say, where are we going, anyway?”
“We’re going to have a little fun and relieve some stress.” Kieran frowned at that. “Okay, so… again, where are we going?” “You know Whiddon Avenue?”
All too well.
“I’m familiar, yeah.”
“Well, at the end of that street there’s this little cul-de-sac, right?”

“There is?” He’d never been further than that kid Thompson’s house.

“Yep.”
“Okay, so… what’s in this cul-de-sac?”

“The grittiest, most derelict and broken-down house you’ll ever see.”

That sounded unlikely. Whiddon Avenue was a decent enough looking area, and he couldn’t imagine there being a shack standing amidst the run-of-the-road, middle-class houses complete with mail boxes and rose bushes. “You’re sure?”

Toby glanced over at him, a grin lifting the corner of his mouth. “Oh yes.” He raised his chin toward the windshield. “We’re almost there. Look.”

They passed the row of houses that lined either side of the road, which eventually hooked right, and just as Toby had said it would be, there was a cul-de-sac, tucked away and hiding. There were only three houses. One had a For Sale sign that looked as if it had been there for a long time. The second looked as if it might actually be occupied. The third, half-hidden amongst the overgrown lawn and trees, was a house that had been clearly abandoned and showed signs of having been damaged by a fire.

It wasn’t quite the haunted house out of your typical horror film. If anything, it reminded Kieran of the scene out of
It’s a Wonderful Life
, where George Bailey and Mary Hatch threw rocks at the decrepit old Granville house that would be their future home.

They pulled up outside of the burned-out house, and Kieran unbuckled his seatbelt slowly, watching as Toby climbed out of the car and closed the door behind him. He followed suit, struggling with the door handle for a second before getting out and rounding the front of the car to stand beside Toby.

“Now what?” he asked quietly.

Toby nodded up at the house, and Kieran followed him through the front gate that hung on its hinges, toward the back of the house. He watched as Toby bent at the waist and snagged up a couple of large pebbles that sat in one of the cracked clay flower pots sans flowers. A surprised laugh slipped from Kieran’s lips and he smiled.

“Seriously?”

 

Toby put the pebbles—which were more like small rocks, now that he looked at them—in his hand. “Let’s smash some shit.”

Kieran laughed, his spirits lifted, and turned the rocks over in his palm. He could do this. Harmless destruction—breaking something that was already broken, he could most certainly do. “Hells yeah.” He grinned. “Is this where I wish for the moon?”

Toby’s nose wrinkled slightly and he looked at Kieran strangely, but his mischievous grin was still firmly in place. “What?” he laughed. “I wish for the moon, then you throw a lasso around it and pull it down.”

 

Toby snorted. “Oh do I, now?”

“Then I’ll swallow it.” He grinned and lowered his voice to whisper conspiratorially. “And it’ll all dissolve, see, and the moonbeams will shoot out of my fingers and toes and the ends of my—”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Toby laughed.

Kieran felt himself flush and laughed nervously as he looked down at his hands and the rocks he held. “Nothing, it’s just a, um… never mind.”

Toby raised one eyebrow in question, an expression that was something between mocking and amused on his face, and shook his head briefly before pointing up to a blacked-out window on the first floor. “How’s your aim?” He glanced at Kieran, smirked, and then looked back and threw the rock. A sound of shattering glass echoed in the yard a millisecond later.

Kieran hunched his shoulders and quickly covered his smile with his hand. He’d never done anything like this before. He couldn’t help but glance around to see if they’d drawn attention to themselves, expecting to be yelled at any second, but it was just the two of them. Toby laughed at him.

“Your face,” he snickered.
“I can’t believe you just did that.”

“Why?” Toby swiped his tongue over his bottom lip and threw another rock. It was at a ground floor window this time, and was already partially broken, with black streaks ringing the frame where flames had surely once licked at the brickwork. “Your turn.” Toby lifted his chin at him, taking a step behind him.

“I don’t know.” But even as he said it, he was turning the rock over in his palm, reluctantly excited about throwing it.

 

“Come on. If you break a window, then I have to buy you lunch tomorrow at school.”

Kieran bit his lip. Lunch in the cafeteria,
with
someone? He felt himself nod, the idea too seductive to his inner loner, and he raised the rock shoulder high and threw it hard. The sound of breaking glass made him gasp, and then laugh a second later. He turned to Toby, who nodded with approval and raised his hand, palm up. Kieran laughed and high-fived him without hesitating.

Toby threw another, looking pleased with himself. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”

 

Kieran grunted as he threw another rock, which missed its mark, crumbled, and bounced off of the stone wall. “Sure does.”

 

Toby moved to stand behind him, his voice suddenly right behind Kieran’s ear. “Do you know what happened to this place?”

Kieran’s breath faltered slightly, feeling Toby’s breath behind his ear and a hand resting at his waist. “I didn’t even know these houses were here.”

Toby snorted. “This part of Whiddon Avenue isn’t too popular.” “I don’t see why. I mean, obviously it could use a little TLC, but—”

“There was a fire.” Toby pointed over Kieran’s shoulder at where the black smudges outlined and licked upward around the windows on the first floor. “See?”

Kieran looked at the top half of the house. It looked pretty desolate. “Man, that had to suck; to just lose half of everything you own like that?”

“You have no idea.”

Kieran frowned and glanced over his shoulder but then started as Toby took his wrist, the one that still held a rock, and raised it up. “Did-did you know the people who lived here?”

“Nah, I heard about it from my brother. It happened years ago.”

Kieran allowed Toby to hold his wrist up while presumably he was scanning for an unbroken window. “The people got out okay though, didn’t they?” he asked, frowning slightly. Though he knew that what they were doing didn’t strictly make them good citizens, it never occurred to him that it could be inappropriate or disrespectful—that it might
matter
.
“There!” Toby spoke, excitement obvious in his voice.

Toby suddenly angled Kieran’s body, putting both hands on his waist and turning him a step to the left. He pointed up over Kieran’s shoulder to a window that was completely blacked out with dirt and soot, but was otherwise intact. His hands went back to lightly touching Kieran’s waist, distracting him and making him swallow nervously.

“Break it,” he murmured into Kieran’s ear.

Kieran closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, it was to the sound of shattering glass. He’d thrown the rock without thinking, without even
looking
. He gasped quietly when Toby’s arms wrapped around his waist from behind. Toby was laughing.

“A married couple lived in the house. They got out fine….” He answered Kieran’s previous question. “But their baby died.”

Kieran felt himself suddenly start, knocked out of whatever stupor he’d—however briefly—just been in. “What?” he whispered, something rising up the back of his throat.

Toby didn’t seem to notice his sudden shift and lowered his voice as if telling a ghost story, his grin suddenly seeming unkind. “You just smashed the baby’s window.”

Something horrible slammed into Kieran, and he looked back up at the small window that was now broken. A sensation came over him that he hadn’t felt in years: he wanted his dad. He wanted to cry and he wanted his dad.

He violently pushed Toby away, and it took him a few seconds to be able to say anything at all. “You
jerk
!”

 

Toby backed up a step, holding his hands up but still laughing. “Oh my God, you should see your face!”

He felt mortified. He felt as if he’d just been tricked into being someone he didn’t want to be and now he was stuck. “I can’t believe….” He couldn’t even finish the sentence, and instead turned around and began to walk away. He was pulled to a stop, however, by a firm grip on his hand. He looked back to where Toby had a hold of him. “Let go,” he ordered.
“Oh come
on
, Kieran. It was a joke.”

“You mean nobody actually died in there?” he asked hopefully. Toby let go of his hand and raised one shoulder sheepishly. “Well, no. I think a kid died, but—”

Kieran turned away with an angry shake of his head, but Toby took two large steps to stand in front of him, holding him by the shoulders.

“Hey, I lied about the window, okay? I don’t know if that was the baby’s window, it could be the fucking
bathroom
window for all I know.”

“And that makes it better?”

Toby let go of Kieran’s shoulders and dug his hands into his pockets. “You were actually having fun up until that point, weren’t you?”

“Well… yes. But I didn’t know—”
“And you were smiling. I got you to smile.”
“Yeah, but-but that was before….”

“Then I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry. I thought you were having a good time.”

Kieran chewed the inside of his cheek. His skin felt warm and itchy, and he felt uncomfortable with the fact that he couldn’t decide if he was overreacting or justified in walking away. Either way, Toby looked a little embarrassed and a lot disappointed.

He sighed. Maybe he was just being a total dork. “Can we take off?”

 

Toby brightened slightly. “Yeah, sure, do you want to go to the—”

“Can you just drive me home?” He could walk it no problem; it’d only take him twenty minutes or so, but he was suddenly feeling weighed down with disappointment, and he desperately wanted to wash the dirt from the rocks off of his hands.

Toby’s shoulders slumped before he lifted one in a casual shrug. “Sure, whatever.”
K
IERAN hadn’t really been paying attention to his surroundings; instead he was staring out the passenger window blindly as they drove in silence. He only came back to himself when he realized Toby was slowing to a stop. He squinted into the dark and vaguely recognized where they were. It was nowhere near his house.

Kieran looked at Toby, who was unbuckling his seat belt and turning off the stereo. Toby glanced at Kieran, that sheepish look back in place.

“I asked you to take me home.”

“Yeah, I know….” Toby ran a hand over his scalp, scratching his head and ruffling his own hair before letting his hand fall to his side with a sigh. “I just wanted to….” He shrugged. “Hang? Just for a little while.”

“We did. We hung out; you pissed me off, and now I want to go home.”

 

Toby said nothing; he just bit his lip and glanced away. Kieran felt himself growing impatient. “Am I talking to myself over here?” “You don’t have to get all prissy.”

 

Kieran’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. “Excuse me?” He almost laughed.

“I’m trying to talk to you here, but you’re—”
“Oh my God,” he muttered, shaking his head.
“Can-can I just tell you something?” Toby asked.

Kieran barely refrained from rolling his eyes, and feeling tired and disappointed and no better than he had a few hours ago, he looked out of the passenger window and shrugged. “Say what you like, but then I’m walking home. Okay?”

“This was supposed to go a lot better.”
“What was? What is ‘this’?” He looked back at Toby, confused and irritated, the fight drained out of him. “I thought we were going to hang out like friends do or something. But then you were all….” He gestured at his own waist, feeling dumb. “With your hands, making me think something else. Next thing I know you’re laughing in my face. What’s that about? Are you making fun of me?”

“No! No, I guess… I guess I’m just a little messed up.”

Kieran softened slightly at seeing how Toby awkwardly toyed with a loose thread in the hole over his knee in his jeans. “You’re not… you’re not ‘messed up’. You’re
confusing
.”

Toby cut a glance to Kieran and offered an apologetic shrug. It wasn’t actually an explanation.

 

“What did you want to tell me?” Kieran reminded him.

“Oh, that.” Toby cleared his throat. “I ah….” He broke off, laughed a little. “No way to say this without sounding like an idiot. I… I like you.” He cringed. “Fuck, that sounded juvenile.”

“Well, no.” Kieran frowned, trying to make sense of what he was saying. “But, I mean you like me as a friend, or….” He didn’t need to finish the sentence; Toby’s withering look was answer enough.

“You mean in a—in a gay way.” Now who sounded stupid? Toby’s snort confirmed his previous thought. “Yeah, in a ‘gay way’.”

 

“Oh. Okay then. Uh….”

 

Toby winced. “Look, I know I’m not
Drew Anderson
….” There was no attempt to hide his obvious dislike of Drew.

“
Drew Anderson
isn’t Drew Anderson,” Kieran murmured. “What?” Toby asked, sounding confused.

Kieran took a deep breath and shook his head. “Nothing, nothing. What were you saying?”

 

Toby stared at him a heartbeat and then sneered. “Jeez, that guy’s got you twisted around his finger, hasn’t he?” he asked, his lip curling. “No.” Kieran shifted uncomfortably, aware of the lack of authority in his voice.

“No?” Toby budged sideways, throwing his arm over the back of his seat so he could lean a little closer. “So if I tried to kiss you, you’d let me?”

Kieran’s head snapped to the side to look at Toby, and unconsciously he wet his lips. Would he? “I don’t know.” He looked at Toby again, swallowing when seeing him leaning in. Fortunately—or unfortunately, Kieran wasn’t sure—the stick shift was in his way.