Under the Dusty Moon (14 page)

The thing was that I really liked Shaun. I did. He was gentle with me. He was sweet, when he wasn't making fun of me for being a lightweight. He asked me questions and laughed at my jokes and was for sure the only guy I knew who regularly wore sunscreen.

You invited yourself over
, I thought to myself as we cruised along a lot faster than I would have liked. You invited yourself over, so he's going to think that you want to have sex with him. That you're ready.

Are you ready?
I asked myself as I rang the dinger and got off the streetcar.

Are you ready?

I had absolutely no idea.

I
walked as slowly as I could, but still, a few minutes later I wound up at Shaun's door. I'd been there once before. When he and I were in the same drama group at school we'd rehearsed our
one-act
play at his place. It was me, Alexis, this girl Allison who acted like she was too good for everything, Shaun, and a stoner friend of his, Sammy, who was so
perma-baked
that he couldn't even open his eyes all the way. We'd done a modern retelling of
Alice in Wonderland
, where Alice goes a party and gets roofied. It didn't make a ton of sense, which I guess is what happens when five people try to write a play all together.

I recognized the Christmas wreath that looked like Santa's head hanging on the door. The wreath had been appropriate enough when we'd met to practise our play back in December, but now it seemed more than a little unseasonal, even though someone had taken the care to stick a little pink cocktail umbrella into Santa's beard. I stared at that tiny umbrella, willing my heart to slow to less than a million beats per minute before I knocked on the door.

When I finally realized just how long I'd been standing there, I rang the bell. A minute later, a little boy, about nine or ten, answered the door. He had to be Shaun's brother, with matching red hair and freckles he looked almost exactly like a
mini-Shaun
, minus the shaved head.

“Shaun's upstairs,” he said, opening the door just enough for me to squeeze my way inside.

“Cool. Thanks,” I said, bending down to unzip my
four-years
-old
knee-high
gladiator sandals. They'd belonged to one of Mom's friends originally, who paid too much for them when they were first in style. They'd only been handed down to me once they'd been worn practically to death, but I figured there was a decent chance the style would come back in again eventually since it seems like nostalgia is the new black these days. Besides, they still looked kind of sophisticated and cool, even if they were on their last legs. Or, at least they would have, if the zipper hadn't gotten stuck halfway down.

The right sandal came off, no problem, but I was midway down my calf when the zipper refused to budge any further on the left.

No biggie
, I thought, zipping downward with slightly more force, and wishing I had two good hands to work with. Nothing. I tried to press the zipper tight at the top with my cast and tugged even harder down with my right hand, but still the stupid thing wouldn't move. I started to panic and tugged the zip tab up, hoping to unstick it, but the flimsy piece of metal broke off in my hand. I shoved the little tab into the pocket of my shorts — cutoffs that were, I only noticed then, riding up on my thighs. I quickly adjusted them, hoping that
mini-Shaun
wasn't looking, and then started trying to jiggle my foot free of its sandal prison.

Why the hell had I worn these things today? They only made my calves look bigger, I realized now. In them, I was practically a mutant. And the straps seemed to tighten around me the more I tried to shake them loose. Which I realized was totally impossible, but didn't stop the vision I had of having to amputate my foot just to get me out of these stupid sandals.

“You down there, V?” Shaun called down a minute later when I still hadn't gone upstairs to meet him.

“Yeah,” I said, with more than a hint of anxiety in my voice. “Just, uh, my, uh … just give me a minute.”

Mini-Shaun
finally looked up from the couch where he was parked to stare at me. “I don't think that's how you're supposed to do it,” he said.

“Thanks for the advice,” I said, as a bead of sweat rolled from my forehead down to my chin. “Can you —?” I asked, pointing to my foot.

“What?” his eyes were back on the screen. I only realized now that he had a PlayStation controller in his hands.

I'd reached peak embarrassment with my horrible
hand-me
-down gladiators and didn't care anymore about trying to play it cool. “Could you come here and pull this thing off my foot?”

“Fine,” he said, not at all fazed by the request. He paused his game and lumbered over to me, his feet landing heavy on the shiny hardwood floors as he dragged himself over like a bear who'd been shot with a tranquilizer dart.

“Thanks,” I said, sitting down on the floor and stretching out my foot. “Just pull.”

“This thing's like a prison for feet,” he said, eyeing the dozen or so straps running up my leg.

“Yeah, exactly,” I said. “So, on three, all right?”

“Whatever.”

“Okay,” I said. “One, two …”

Shaun appeared at the landing looking down just as I called out “three.” He was halfway to saying something like “What?” or “Huh?” when
mini-Shaun
wrenched the sandal prison from my foot. The leather straps dragged across my skin, leaving
bright-red
chafe tracks behind them.

“Ow!” I tried to stop myself from crying out, but the sound was out of my mouth before I'd even realized what was happening.

“Whoa,” Shaun said. He'd somehow made it down the stairs in the time it took his brother to pull the offending footwear off of me. “You okay?”

“
Uh-huh
,” I said in a tiny, squeaky voice, “no problem. Thanks, uh …”

“Miles,” Shaun said, nodding at his brother, who'd already reclaimed his spot on the couch. “That looks like it hurts. Your foot, I mean.”

“Nah. It's cool, really,” I said, even as the red scrape marks on my foot throbbed even brighter.

“Let me get you, like, something medicinal.” He smiled and walked back toward what I assumed was the kitchen.

I wondered if I should follow him or if that would make me look too clingy. I decided to hang back. I'd just barely recovered from the sandal incident, I reasoned, and needed a second to relax just to keep from bursting out in
stress-hives
. I walked halfway and then paused to check out what game Miles was playing. It was an RPG I didn't recognize.

“Mind if I watch?” I asked, sitting down on the arm of the couch where he'd stationed himself.

“Whatever,” Miles said, not taking his eyes off the screen.

“Hey,” Shaun called, “do you like gin? It's, like, all my parents have.”

I'd never had gin. It seemed kind of like an
old-lady
drink, but I definitely wasn't going to say no. I was glad I'd finally weaned myself off my painkillers since I could still hear Mom's lecture about my night with Lord Windermere in my head.

“
Uh-huh
,” I said, “sure, that's cool. Oh, I almost forgot, I saw
Pure Joy
!”

“Oh man,” Shaun said, popping his head out into the living room. “Did you love it? It's so good.”

“Oh my god, yeah,” I said. “So freaky. It was awesome.”

“Totally,” Shaun said, ducking back into the kitchen.

I looked back at Miles's game.

“What are you playing?” I asked.

“
Dragonfury Infinite
,” Miles said, and I realized I'd heard of the game before.

“Oh yeah, cool. That's an Archford game, right?” I said, naming the same developer that made
Lore of Ages
.

“
Uh-huh
,” he said, his eyes never leaving the screen. If that trivia had scored me any points with him, he wasn't showing it.

Shaun came back into the living room with two drinks in his hands. “Gin and juice,” he said, handing me what looked like a tall glass of OJ.

“Now remember, Miles. It was, like, the gin goblins that took it, okay?”

I laughed, but then I started looking around the living room. The whole place was stacked with old books that were practically falling all over each other. It'd been tidier the last time I'd been here, but I liked the mess better. The whole place had a
scatterbrained-professor
vibe to it now, and it relaxed me.

“You want to take these upstairs?” Shaun asked, elbowing me gently in the side.

“Sure,” I said, “sounds good.”

Shaun ruffled his brother's hair. “Our secret, right?”

“Whatever,” Miles said, turning his full attention back to the game.

“All right,” Shaun said, gesturing toward the stairs. “Let's go. Oh, maybe you should take your sandals with you, you know? I'll, uh, grab your drink.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, forgetting for a moment that I was supposed to be an invisible visitor.

I grabbed my busted gladiators and followed him up, staring at the back of his head and his shirt as he climbed the stairs. His hair was growing in again, a little fuzzy crop of orange that stood out all around his head. He was wearing some goofy shirt from a bait and tackle shop in Florida. The back had a giant marlin wearing sunglasses with the tagline
MASTER BAIT (& TACKLE)
. He'd cut the arms off and his biceps and the back of his neck were speckled with freckles and sweat.

The house was definitely warm, it was one of those old Toronto houses that didn't have
air-conditioning
. It made me feel a little less bad about the fact that our tiny apartment is always such a sweat box.

He turned around when we got to the top of the stairs. “Oh man, I totally forgot to say it. Happy birthday!”

“Thanks,” I said, turning almost as red as my feet had been a few minutes before.

“Come on,” Shaun said, leading me into the second bedroom on the left, “this is my room.”

I walked in and he shut the door behind me. And it wasn't that I wasn't expecting him to, but there was something about the little click as he closed the door that seemed definitive and maybe just a little bit terrifying. His walls were covered in posters layered on more posters — bands and movies — and behind them I could see that his walls were painted a dark teal.

He sat down on his bed — it wasn't made, the covers lay somewhere in a pile at the foot of it — and he patted the spot beside him. The bed looked like sex, and so did he, and I put my sandals down on the floor and climbed in after him.
It's fine
, I told myself.
It's totally fine. This is what everyone does. Mom's done it, and so has Gran. Just sit down
.

He put his arm around me and kissed the top of my head. “Oh, wait,” he said, scrambling to get up. “I almost forgot your birthday present.” He rummaged around in the drawer of his desk across the room. The desk itself was so piled with crap — dirty clothes and empty bags of chips — that it was impossible to imagine that he ever sat down and worked there. “It's here somewhere,” he said. “Oh yeah, here it is!” He held a card that looked completely handmade high in the air for me to see.

“This is for me?” I asked. It was covered with
magic-markers
scribbles and looked more like a toddler had made it then a
sixteen-year
-old guy. Apparently Shaun had been practising his regressive art style, too. “What is this, child labour?”

“You like it?” he asked proudly. He'd drawn a teddy bear holding a bunch of balloons with
HAPPY 17TH BIRTHDAY, V
!!!! scrawled over top of it all.

“It's perfect,” I said, laughing. “You're such a weirdo.”

“It took you this long to figure it out?” he asked.

“What can I say? I'm a slow learner.”

“So … open it!” he said impatiently. He really was acting like an
over-sugared
preschooler. Kind of like Mom, actually. Was this really all for my benefit?

I opened the card and two tickets fell out. For some show, I assumed. Some super obscure band he knew I'd love because of course I was
so cool
. How much longer was it going to be before he figured out that I really wasn't?

I picked them up from where they'd landed the bed.

FAN CON CANADA: SATURDAY GENERAL ADMISSION

No. Way.

I was going to Fan Con.

I really was. With Shaun.

“Are you serious?” I said, my eyes practically bugging out of my head.

“You ever been? It's, like, the coolest thing.” He stopped himself. “I mean, it's pretty cool. Like a million people go. There's comic stuff and gamer stuff and horror stuff.” It was his chance to turn red. “It's kind of nerdy, I know. But I thought you might want to go with me.”

Tickets to the biggest convention in Canada. For my seventeenth birthday. From my dream guy.

“Yeah,” I said, “that sounds …” It sounded perfect. “That sounds pretty all right.” I couldn't fight the goofy smile that was spreading across my face. “I'll totally go nerd out with you. That sounds awesome.”

“Happy birthday,” he said again, putting his arm around me and slowly guiding us both into lying down on his bed. He was warm, he was so warm it was almost too much.

And everything about the moment was perfect, especially Shaun. He rubbed my arm, and I nuzzled my head under his chin as he purred,
cat-like
, but I still felt on edge.

“Is it okay if we don't have sex?” I blurted out.

“Huh?” he said, sitting up to look at me.

“I don't … I mean, the tickets are amazing. Really, it's so sweet. And I don't want to go home or anything — I can't, seriously — but, like,” I took a deep breath, “I just don't think I'm ready. I don't want to have sex with you. Tonight, I mean. I do, like, eventually. Just not tonight, okay?”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay. I mean, that's cool. You can still stay over. But, um, is there anything I could do to make you, you know, change your mind? It is, like, your birthday and all.”

“Yeah,” I said, staring down at my now mostly healed feet, tucked up on the bed near a discarded
T-shirt
. “I know.”