patch where her thighs shadowed together. A Celtic design circled her belly button. On her shoulder, there was a heart in a cross of melting ice. Above her breast, a square of barbed wire opened on a colorless heart suspended like the moon in mist.
He touched his erection. That was crossing a line. He didn’t want to become a pervert like the ones in the newspaper.
He steadied himself and moved away. He put the rake, the clippers, the bucket, and the plastic bags in the shed. He ran upstairs and grabbed a towel from the hamper and pulled off his shirt. He lay on his bed. He pushed down his pants and was gasping as soon as he started. He panted, seeing her in the bed, over him. The second time the pleasure was stronger.
He was hungry. He went downstairs and ate, and then put on his rollerblades.
The night was cool. He soared along the asphalt, the wheels swishing and skittering over dead leaves. He enjoyed hitting cracks, the instant, intuitive repositioning of his body. He raced through parking lots, jumping concrete dividers, and swept across empty streets. He reached the park along the lake and followed the path, picking up speed.
The boy was with the fishermen again, staring over the water toward the glow of the oil refineries on the far shore. One of the fishermen murmured to him, and the boy replied in a low voice. The men laughed.
Justin pivoted on his rollerblades and passed again, but by then the boy had turned, clearly realizing he was being watched — his face flushed, charged with anger.
Justin looked around as if he’d been deciding where to go, and skated off. The strength and angularity of the boy’s bones lingered in his mind, like something he might have seen on a field trip — a savage fossil behind museum glass, a set of prehistoric jaws beneath a light.
JUSTIN LEARNED THE boy’s name at school. Clay Hervey. No one knew anything about him, and Justin didn’t divulge where he lived or that his father had left and never returned, abandoning him and his sister. Clay was in his homeroom, sitting in the back corner, his hands loose on the table, the skin scuffed off their knuckles. In place of his middle fingernail was clotted flesh.
The teacher introduced him and asked him if he wanted to say something about himself.
That’s okay, he told her, his voice like a man’s but soft, faintly hoarse.
Nothing? she asked.
Nah, he said, with the distant gaze of a soldier on parade.
How about where you’re from?
Maine.
Thank you, Clay.
You’re welcome.
Justin wondered if Clay knew, as Justin’s father had asserted, that he wouldn’t be here for long.
In the hall, Clay carried his books in one battered hand, his muscled arm slack. He kept his eyelids low, his focus somewhere between the floor and the horizon. Girls watched him. Boys edged away, trying to decide whether they could mock him. He was six foot two and had the hard, cooked-down muscle of a man, not the bloated bulk of young athletes.
After a week, kids started calling him weirdo behind his back. Girls who’d smiled at him and been ignored muttered creep or psycho.
In gym, the boys played basketball — shirts against skins. Justin scored two points. He and Clay were shirts. Clay intercepted passes, loping across the floor to feed the ball ahead. He probably didn’t play often. Justin had seen other athletic kids who weren’t good shots and didn’t want to look bad work the defense like this.
The skins were rallying, and Dylan, their best player, kept blocking shots violently. He intercepted and threw a hard pass, and Clay lunged for the ball and caught it.
Dylan moved in to keep him from dribbling or passing. He was the largest boy in the grade, taller even than Clay, towheaded and so pale veins shone beneath his skin. He had a black belt and told stories about karate tournaments, and when he rammed his sweaty armpit into players’ faces on the basketball court, they didn’t retaliate. He tried this now, but Clay twisted away, the ball between his hands, his forearms parallel to the floor. Dylan closed the gap, and Clay swung back, his elbow catching Dylan’s solar plexus — a hollow sound like a drum. Dylan’s knees hit the floor. Justin felt the vibrations through the soles of his sneakers.
Between classes, kids talked about how Clay had braced with his foot, dipping his knee inward the way a boxer drives a punch. Dylan hadn’t been able to stand up for ten minutes and was now announcing that he’d get revenge. In the hallway, as he was walking away from his girlfriend, Melody, Clay came up behind her.
Hey, he said. That was all the other kids heard. He leaned in and whispered something in her ear. Though she had the black hair and olive complexion of a Cajun, she turned red from her hairline down. She hurried to her next class, clutching her books to her chest.
Before lunch, Dylan found her at her locker, and as he lowered his head to speak to her, she backhanded him. Like he was a bitch, kids would later joke. He retreated, the imprint gathering in the stung, red skin.
Dylan found Clay in the cafeteria and squared off.
What did you tell her?
The truth. I heard what you said in the locker room. Why don’t you own up?
Clay’s words had the same low, gravelly restraint as when he’d spoken in class.
The lunch monitor was calling other teachers, not wanting to get between them by herself. Dylan made a fist and moved his shoulder back. Clay hadn’t budged, hadn’t even lifted his hands.
You’re a liar, Dylan said, his voice suddenly whiny.
If I am, take me down. Prove it.
The lunch monitor was shouting, moving her arms as if directing traffic. Dylan walked away.
Over the next few days, everyone agreed that Dylan had bragged about what he’d done with Melody at the New Year’s party in an upstairs bedroom, and one afternoon, in the lockers, a group of boys led by Melody’s brother pushed him down, punching and kicking him.
Kids began gravitating to Clay, walking next to him between classes and sitting with him at lunch. He shared little about himself, keeping his answers simple: he was from Maine; neither the economy nor the weather was much up there, so his family came south. People repeated this. Justin told it to his father one evening, and his father sighed.
Son, Louisiana isn’t exactly Silicon Valley. I wouldn’t trust a word that boy says.
But Clay’s reputation grew: his natural prowess in sports, his simultaneous competence and indifference in class, his modesty and adult disregard for most of what went on around him. Occasionally, he passed Justin in the hallway, and they nodded.
One afternoon Justin left his rollerblades in his locker and timed his departure with Clay’s. Heading home? he asked.
Yeah, Clay said, and extended a hand. Hey, man. I’m Clay.
Justin.
They shook hands. Clay’s irises were brown at the edges, green spreading raggedly from his pupils — small pale stars whose brightness eclipsed the rest.
I’ll
