some fun tonight
i have such high hopes all the time.
no hole is too deep! no deficit is insurmountable! i saw a ten-run comeback a few months ago, i can testify to it. there is no clock on this thing, and soon enough no brakes either.
that's mostly apropos of nothing, but anyway, i was supposed to write beatles!fic (which is still happening goddamn it--stuart sutcliffe and speed pills in the bathrooms of german clubs in the late fifties (back when they wore ALL LEATHER), brian epstein and the madness of america and then being stoned for most of 1965, and then the acid--my brain might break, GRANTED), and also supernatural fic based on spooky country songs (the best kind!), which is also happening, but that is future-talk.
for present-talk, i have the latest and (it freakin' better be) the last installment in the alternate universe that will not die. goddamn you teenage fuck-ups and your ingratiating ways!
it's 38564 words. it's a prequel that stands alone. at long last, it's eric chavez's side of the story.
Three Yard Radius
By Candle Beck
When he was twelve years old, Eric Chavez got drunk for the first time with his best friend.
They were sitting in the backyard of Joey Han's house, formed into a loose circle on the grass with some other kids. Music bled from the open windows, party chatter rising and falling like a dying radio in the background. There was an older boy and girl making out in the shadows, her arms twisted around his back and pushing his shirt up, their mouths so wide you could see tongue, and Chavez thought that was kinda gross.
Eric Munson nudged him with the bottle of wine, and Chavez lifted it to his mouth with both hands. It still tasted like really old cough medicine, but his brains felt jelled, this happy sweaty thing happening just under his skin. There were good and bad parts, really confusing, and Chavez figured if he kept drinking eventually it would get either all good or all bad and either way he'd have a better idea of how to deal with it.
Across the circle was the tall kid they'd been warring with all summer. His face still bore faint yellow bruises from when Munson had kicked the shit out of him a couple days after school started, grinding his face into the dirt behind the elementary school auditorium. The kid had his legs folded and pulled against his chest, surfer shag that kept getting in his eyes, making him jerk his head back so regularly it was almost a rhythm. He was rubbing his chin on his knee, talking to a really pretty girl who was at least a freshman, but he didn't look nervous or anything, just kinda dopey and smiling a lot. Chavez watched him, eyes thin. He hated that guy.
Munson leaned heavily against him. His breath was too sweet, too hot.
"Like it?" Munson asked. "'cause I sure do."
"Brand new world," Chavez said in agreement.
His stomach was jumping, only partly from the drunk. Chavez was really excited about this whole thing, the long future ahead of him full of backyards and circles of people and bottles of wine. This was the coolest party they'd ever been invited to.
Then a bunch of kids came barreling out onto the patio, squawking many-headed beast, and Chavez heard, "Parents," then, "Neighbors," but it meant the same thing: adults. There was only ever one play.
Munson had Chavez's wrist and they were moving really fast and Chavez thought he might throw up. His head bounced, the sky slewing wildly back and forth. They squirmed into some bushes and Munson yelped when a branch stuck him, fell hard against the fence.
"Hey," someone said, high-voiced in surprise. It was that kid, that kid they hated.
Chavez rustled leaves out of his hair, trying not to sneeze, and scowled, but it didn't really take. The kid looked stupid, curled up around his knees again, dirt on his face, huge babyish eyes. He was drunk too, plainly swimming through it, and he wasn't a threat to anybody like this.
They were quiet for a minute, eyeing each other with blurred expressions. Then Munson said he might hurl and the kid said he should focus on a single point that didn't move, so Munson put his hands on Chavez's shoulders, told him, "Don't move, Ricky," and stared intently at his nose for half a minute.
After that the ice was pretty well broken. The kid's name was Barry Zito. He could throw a baseball seventy miles an hour. He had older sisters who told him all sorts of good stuff, wicked pranks and how to get over a hangover and how to sneak into movies. He cursed like a pro, even though he was so sweet- and young-looking. He was an entirely different person than Chavez had expected.
They got to talking about pitching. Zito gripped the air, showing Chavez his curveball and his circle-change, his wrist snapping. He knew what he was talking about, dropped the right names and rushed over the right descriptions, and Chavez got excited like every time he met someone else obsessed with baseball, a ready-made comrade.
Chavez got badly distracted by Zito. Munson was slumped against the fence muttering about splinters, and Chavez was supposed to be looking out for him, making sure he was okay. But Munson had always been okay before, and Zito was right there, talking so fast and bright.
Then Zito paused, eyebrows up and his mouth half-open, and Chavez wasn't really thinking about anything, just kinda swayed forward and kissed him like it was the next logical step. The kiss was off-line, bad-angled, shockingly warm and soft, and Chavez could feel Zito's teeth under his lips. A magical feeling went careening all through him.
Just then, Munson got sick against the fence.
Zito jerked back. His hand went to his mouth and Chavez didn't think he'd ever seen anybody with eyes so big before. His head was spinning, and Munson was gagging, coughing, pawing weakly at Chavez's arm. The smell was awful.
Chavez wanted to laugh, but all he could do was gape moronically at Zito. He wondered if this was something that happened a lot when guys got drunk, if they just randomly kissed each other. He felt way too young for this all of a sudden.
Munson spit a bunch of times, making weak disgusted noises. He rested against the fence for a minute, his face clean in the far-away starlight.
Munson said in a shriveled voice, "Truce."
Zito looked at him, his face working and Chavez couldn't read it. Chavez didn't know him hardly at all.
But after a second Zito nodded, said, "Truce," and then his eyes flicked back to Chavez's and Chavez's breath caught in his chest.
It was as easy as that. They ended the war, joined their forces. Forever after, the three of them were brothers in all but name.
*
They got most of the way through seventh grade by cheating off each other and charming their teacher, who called them the Three Amigos after some old movie she said was really funny even though she couldn't remember any of the jokes. Munson had a crush on her, always hanging around her desk and bringing her interesting-looking shells that he found at the beach. He blushed every time she talked to him.
Chavez and Zito rolled their eyes and made fun of him and that was new for Chavez, being able to talk about Eric Munson with someone who wasn't Eric Munson. It'd been just the two of them for better than half his life, growling through the San Diego suburbs on their pretend dirt bikes, playing catch until it was too dark to see, all those epic extra-inning games in the bleachers at the Jack Murph. It had always been "me and you." Chavez didn't usually talk about Munce in the third person.
But Zito fit. Chavez thought it was a baseball thing, probably, and he didn't wonder about it too much. The three of them sat around in their swimming trunks, doing puzzles up in Chavez's attic where the air was so thick and heated it was like a sauna, made them all dopey and slow and calm. They slept on the fold-out couch in Chavez's living room, the three of them strewn and sharp-angled to each other. They snuck out of their houses to meet up in the park past midnight, the one corner where the streetlight bled enough that they could play rundown as silent as mice on the grass.
Then it was Easter, and Chavez trudged along to Mass with his extended family, hair stiff from the stuff his mom combed into it, feet too big for his dress shoes even though he just got them at Christmas. He didn't want to tell his mom because she got her most frustrated when he grew out of things right after purchase and years before his brother Casey could use them. Chavez sat in the pew thinking about his poor toes for most of the sermon; he just wasn't in the mood for this stuff today. His neck was all sweaty under his tie.
After the service his folks were tied up gossiping with his aunts and uncles and Chavez was able to slip away from the mingling crowd. He took off his shoes and ran home sock-footed, keeping to the lawns as much as he could.
Chavez went around back to climb in his bedroom window because his mom hadn't let him put the dirty string with his key around his neck while wearing his church clothes, and found Zito in the backyard. Zito was throwing a dog-ravaged tennis ball against the fence, hollow thunking sound.
"Hey," Chavez said, yanking at his tie. He felt like he had a rash.
Zito was startled, drilled the ball into the dirt. He looked over his shoulder, face stricken and frantic for a second before he smirked.
"Lookit you, fancy boy," Zito said. Chavez threw a shoe at him.
"Shut up, I had to."
Chavez scratched irritably at his neck, raked his hands back and forth trying to mess up his hair but it was like plastic. Zito had his hands in his pockets, eyeing Chavez and looking kinda jittery. Chavez squinted at him.
"I thought you were gonna be hanging out with Munson," Chavez said, and Zito shrugged, his eyes down.
"Yeah, I was gonna. But instead, I came over here." Zito cleared his throat. Chavez looked at the patch of ground Zito was staring at, wondered what the hell was so interesting. "Can we go inside? Is your family coming home too?"
Not having the first clue why Zito was being so skittish, Chavez said, "No, it's cool," and jimmied open the window with his pocketknife, tossing his shoes in before following with himself. He knocked his Millennium Falcon model off the desk as he climbed down, but it didn't break. Zito came in after him, his legs seeming crazy long as he folded his body through the window.
Chavez set about changing his clothes, and Zito kinda shrank back against the door, his face turned resolutely down. His ears were red, like Munson blushing in front of their teacher. Chavez had his shirt off and he was halfway annoyed, thinking Zito was being weird on purpose.
"What's up with you, freak?" Chavez asked.
Zito twitched, still wouldn't look at him. "Put a shirt on, okay?"
Something turned over in Chavez's stomach, and he froze for a second, then mechanically pulled a T-shirt over his head. Zito exhaled, lifted his eyes and he looked really serious, like they were about to fight to the death or something. Chavez was scared in about six different ways.
"I, I wanted to tell you," Zito said. His voice sounded strange, uneven. "Um. I haven't told anybody else."
"What?"
Zito's gaze flitted away, a spooked bird, but then he visibly forced himself to look back at Chavez, his throat moving as he swallowed.
"Ah. Well. I'm gay, Ricky."
A bolt of pure terror flashed across Zito's face as soon as the words left his mouth, eyes bulging and face going momentarily slack. He trembled, went perfectly still, braced as if he were standing three feet from a rabid dog.
Chavez was motionless himself, for wholly different reasons. His chest was tight and his mouth dry and it felt like panic--he didn't know why he would be panicked right now. He was staring at Zito like he expected him to take it back, and Zito was staring at the floor again.
"I'm not," Chavez heard himself saying, and Zito flinched hard, a look of true pain capsizing his face. Chavez shook his head, wished with all his heart he could take that back. He asked fumblingly, sounding moronic, "I mean, are, are you sure?"
Zito nodded jerkily. He strummed, vibrated with tension, cutting fast glances at the open window, the shining day. He wanted to run, Chavez could tell. Chavez could sympathize.
"It's okay," Chavez said. "I mean. It's okay with me."
Zito nodded again, looking sorrowful, looking away. Chavez stepped towards him unconsciously. He wanted to put his hand on Zito's arm, but he thought that might confuse things. Chavez barely remembered kissing Zito behind the bushes all those months ago, a rough edge of heat and then gone, and he didn't want it to come back any clearer than that.
"Are you gonna tell your folks? And, Munce, are you gonna-"
"I don't know," Zito said, cutting him off. "Probably. I just, I wanted--I thought I should tell you first. I can't remember why."
Chavez opened his mouth but nothing came out. He just kinda looked at Zito helplessly, hands closed in fists at his sides. Zito's lips curled in a rueful ghost of a smile, and he shook his head, moved for the window.
"Anyway," Zito said, and climbed on top of Chavez's desk. He shoved his hair back out of his eyes, glanced down at Chavez and then quickly away. "I'll see ya."
"Wait," Chavez said without thinking, but Zito was hiking himself up and out, answering with a break in his voice:
"No,"
and then Chavez was watching him run away across the grass.
*
Zito never did get around to telling Munson.
It was all Chavez could think about for a couple of weeks, Zito being gay and going around with boys and what would people say about the three of them, what would they think? Munson kept getting frustrated with him because Chavez couldn't follow a basic conversation, too worried about letting something slip. It was a sick crawling sensation in his stomach, drilled so far down it was like a secret of his own.
But some time passed, and then they all made the All-Star team and played deep into the summer, traveling farther and farther afield. Chavez was caught up, forgot about Zito liking boys or Munson liking girls (more vocally every goddamn day), every bad thing that happened outside the lines. The game was more important just then.
Zito and Chavez learned to throw sliders. Munson cleared high school fences, three hundred and twenty feet down the line just like the big leagues. They were good, really really good and it was wonderful. Chavez believed it would be like this for the three of them forever, all the way up through the ranks of baseball.
They won the state title, lost at the West regional tournament. Zito ended up on national TV bawling his eyes out, which Chavez couldn't make fun of because he'd been doing the same thing except prudently into his glove.
The bus ride back home was better than twelve hours. Their families were following in a loose convoy of cars and trucks, dejected and pitifully still carrying slogans written in soap on the windows. Chavez and Munson slumped next to each other, playing their Game Boys and not talking to anybody else, all closed up together. Zito sat in the very back with Andy Ruiz, jackets over their laps and only pretending to be asleep, but Chavez was trying not to think about that.
It really hurt, not going the distance that year. Chavez hadn't known it could hurt that bad; childlike was a good word for what he'd been before, and he understood everything much better now. He thought uselessly that he wasn't really interested in growing up if it meant going through stuff like this.
The three of them met up in the middle of the night, the tail end of that summer when the winds picked up and the bushes started to turn the color of rust. They were tired and moody at home, snapping at their families, and none of them could sleep for the dull pain in their legs. Munson had put on two inches that summer; none of them was the same size he'd been when they'd met.
The unremarkable suburban neighborhood at two in the morning was almost perfectly silent as they climbed up their tree, the two-trunk tree that was Chavez's and Munson's oldest common landmark. They had met up there at five years old, swinging by their hands from adjacent branches with the sunlight all broken up through the leaves. Now there were three of them, and they mostly weren't talking. Chavez would always remember it very clearly for some reason, the small hours of that morning a couple weeks before the summer ended, couple weeks after he'd had his heart broken by baseball for the first time, up in that tree with Zito and Munson and the leaves and moonlight and nothing else.
Then life resumed. That is to say, school. Eighth grade was not noticeably different than seventh, except there was more often beer at the parties, or someone's older brother or sister had sold them a ten-dollar joint. It was awesome, a gleaming kindhearted haze and so cool, everything was getting so goddamn cool. It made Chavez feel like the best part of his life was finally starting.
They had a barbeque and bonfire on the beach for Munson's fourteenth birthday in October. The three of them were tight for the first couple of hours, moving as a unit and huddling around Gatorade bottles filled with whiskey and flat soda. Chavez kept his arm slung around Munson's shoulders, a magnetic pulse drawn to the surface of his skin.
Zito wandered off first, drifting over to watch the boys drunkenly skateboarding in the parking lot. Chavez and Munson sat too close to the fire roasting marshmallows jammed onto long wooden matches. Munce always cut right to the chase, as with most things, and made a guttering orange and purple torch of his 'mallow, blowing the flame out when it was good and charred. Munson liked how it got liquid soft on the inside. Chavez was more inclined to take his time, slow rotating with an eye towards golden-brown. It was a pursuit of perfection, which was what Chavez did best.
Munson was talking about the imminent baseball playoffs and how much he wanted the Pirates to kick the holy shit out of the Braves, and Chavez was in general agreement there.
"And I'll tell you what I couldn't physically care less about," Munson said, sticky-mouthed. "Twins-Blue Jays for the AL pennant? It's like the opposite of caring, how I feel about that match-up."
Chavez smirked, sideways eyeing Munson as he licked at the marshmallow goo on his fingers. Chavez's stomach felt weird, too much sugar maybe, and he looked away, into the fire.
"I think you're supposed to pull for the Americans," Chavez told him. "Like, the home team. Right?"
"Minnesota is kinda the same as Canada, though."
"Yeah."
"Anyway, whatever. Long as the Braves lose, I'm pretty happy with it."
Munson's matchstick caught fire without him noticing until the flame bit into his hand, and then he yelped, dropped everything and stuck his fingers in his mouth. Muffled, he cursed, "Fug!" and Chavez started to laugh. He choked on a half-chewed bit of marshmallow, coughed and teared up and now there were all kinds of things wrong with him, hands fisted in the sand.
Munson wasn't much help at all, trying to slap him on the back but Chavez squirmed away, not wanting hands on him just now. He hacked and spat into the fire and he could inhale now, a stinging glassy feeling in his lungs. His head felt split open, fused back together with the two halves not fitting right.
Chavez tipped his head back and located the moon. It was the fifth cardinal point, the other direction you could go. Chavez calmed down.
He glanced at Munson and Munce was grinning at him, peeling open a melting Hershey's. The firelight glinted off the silver-backed paper, incredibly faint reflections.
"You're hella drunk," Munson said, sounding really happy about it. "Here, you want some of this?"
Chavez accepted half of the chocolate bar, and it sagged between his fingers, barely still solid.
"'m not so bad," Chavez mumbled, licking chocolate off his hand. "Just new. It's new."
Munson lifted his eyebrows, nodded. He looked over to the parking lot and Chavez followed his gaze, saw Zito perched precariously on a skateboard, his hands gripped in the shirt of the older boy who was showing him how. Zito was smiling big, motor-mouthing at the kid who blinked back, bemused.
"Barry seems to be takin' to it," Munson remarked.
It tightened Chavez's skin, an unconscious scowl closing down his face. Zito never had a problem talking to people. He never worried that he was gonna get shot down. Chavez felt like being gay should frighten a person at least a little bit, some constant subterranean shudder because it wasn't supposed to be easy, but Zito didn't seem to know that.
"He's takin' to that guy for sure," Chavez muttered, not really thinking about it.
"What?" Munson sounded hazy, half-laughing.
Chavez shook his head, off-balance and upset for some reason, his senses skewing around inside him. He was angry at Zito all of a sudden, for climbing in his window months ago and placing the word gay to fester like an open wound between them. Chavez never used to think about this stuff.
"I wouldn't have made friends with him if I'd known he was gonna turn out a fag," Chavez said, and it felt horrible.
"Wait, are you serious?" Munson asked, his eyes big and muddy-looking, straining to understand. "Barry's gay, really?"
"He, he's just-" and Chavez couldn't think of how to say it, how to explain. It wasn't his problem, not really. He was just getting confused. "I don't know what the fuck he is."
"You-" but then Munson stopped, his mouth snapping shut so fast Chavez could hear his teeth click. He boggled at Chavez for a second, then shifted to gape incredulously at Zito and the skater boy. Chavez looked at the line of Munson's throat, the angle of his jaw, feeling riveted and helpless.
"Did he try something on you or what?" Munson asked eventually, sounding strange and dull. He wasn't looking at Chavez.
"No. No." Chavez's throat shrank down to a pinhole. "That would be really stupid of him."
"Yeah. Whatever."
Munson glanced at him, stormy drunk look on his face. Chavez swallowed, struggled to meet his gaze but he couldn't manage it, eyes darting to the fire once again. After a second, Munson blew out a breath, got unsteadily to his feet. He squinted down at Chavez, glaring in the dim light.
"You shouldn't have said that," Munson said.
"What--which part?" Chavez asked. Munson waved his hand, swaying.
"Any of it. You're a terrible friend."
It hit Chavez like an arrow to the chest. He exhaled, agonized, "Munce," and Munson's face screwed up.
"Not all the time," he said quietly. "Maybe just when you're drunk."
Chavez shook his head but he didn't say anything. He stared past Munson's shoulder, shame burning through him and leaving jagged edges. He thought that he should say sorry but he didn't really want to.
Munson pulled his shoulders up. "I'm gonna go find that Lizzie girl," he said, and then faked a smile. "Don't wait up."
Chavez bowed his head, and didn't answer. He'd ruined the whole goddamn night. He couldn't be trusted on his own.
Munson became an inconstant shadow among others on the far side of the fire, and Chavez stewed miserably by himself for a few minutes, his mood jet black.
Then Zito came back, stumbling and collapsing next to Chavez with a hectic look of excitement on his face, his hair blowing everywhere. There was a fresh scrape on the heel of his hand and all he wanted to talk about was the tattoo the high school boy had, inked around his hard upper arm and so cool and smooth and perfect, just perfect.
Chavez tried really hard to hate him. To his dismay, it didn't work at all.
*
So they were best friends, the three of them, and that worked pretty well for awhile.
They spent most of their time at the park, spent most of their time talking about where they were gonna go once they could drive. There was a string of weekends when they rode their bikes and camped out on the beach, until one night when a bunch of asshole surfers jumped them and got Zito's bag (with his glove) and the sixer of beer that had cost them fifteen dollars counting the courtesy fee for the homeless dude that bought it for them. After that, they relocated for the most part to the den in Zito's unattached garage. They were too tall to sleep all three on a foldout couch now, and so instead Chavez found himself waking up on the floor a lot. He didn't mind. Everything was going to get amazing in the next couple of years.
At school people talked to them like they were an indivisible single consciousness occupying three adjacent bodies. Nobody ever made plans with just one of them. Nobody was friends with one of them without being friends with the other two. Once a girl broke up with Munson (after five weeks, because he went to play baseball instead of going to the beach with her) by telling Chavez, "You guys are so dumped."
Chavez had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He was happy to have a bedrock like Munson and Zito, a default kind of friendship as constant as the sky, but sometimes Chavez wished he could just watch Major League on his own without the two of them hollering along with all the best lines. Sometimes it was tough for him to breathe in Zito's garage, something in the carpet fibers probably.
But then baseball season was starting again and he forgot to care about it. In addition to playing for their own school's team, the Mount Carmel High School varsity coach let the three of them plus Tony Duncan practice with his team. Zito's dad somehow ferreted out Randy Jones's phone number and talked him into taking his son on for pitching lessons, and Zito showed up at the high school field throwing a ghostly knuckle-curve that Munson took monster swings at, almost dislocating his shoulders. Sometimes they lost track of time playing out their insomnia in the shadowy quiet of the park, didn't notice the sun rising until sweat broke out on the backs of their necks.
Eric Chavez was fourteen years and four months old, and one Sunday afternoon he and Munson and Zito were putting together a puzzle in the attic of Chavez's house, where the heat gathered and packed against the beams. They sat on the floor without shirts on, dust getting everywhere, a cardboard box filleted and flattened as a surface for the puzzle. Zito still had long hair back then, and it was stuck to his forehead and neck in shallow curls. Munson hadn't shaved all week and he kept scratching happily at his scruff.
"I'm working on that red boat thing now," Chavez reported, fingers spidering over the spread of upturned puzzle pieces. "So send those pieces over here."
"Roger roger," Zito said. "Where do you think the name jigsaw comes from?"
"Who cares?" Munson asked, scowling as he thumbed together a pair of side sections.
"Well, me for one. You can tell by how I asked, dumbass."
Munson punched Zito ineffectually on the arm, then sniffed loudly, swiping across his nose. Munson was kind of allergic to something up here, but he'd never complained. Munson wasn't really the complaining type.
"They probably cut the pieces with a jigsaw. A jigsaw saw, I mean, the tool," Chavez said.
"But dude, the puzzle predates the power tool, no?" Zito wondered earnestly.
"Who the hell knows?" Chavez answered, starting to side with Munson's opinion of the discussion. Zito was always getting distracted by minutiae, asking trivia questions with answers no sane person could possibly have on file.
Munson blew out an irritated breath. "The fourth corner piece does not fucking exist."
"The rats might have eaten it," Chavez said. Zito looked concerned.
"There are rats up here? The fuck! Nobody said that."
Chavez and Munson smirked at each other. They'd been maybe seven or eight and spending whole weeks at a time up in the attic, until Chavez's older brother rented Willard and then hid rubber rats in their sleeping bags. There had been screeching and flailing and Chavez's brother howling with laughter in the hallway, and since then the rats in the attic had been a legend of their own invention, the villains responsible for every small crime.
"Yeah, they're really big," Munson said, showing Zito his innocent face. "Like, you ever seen swamp rats?"
"No way," Zito breathed out. His eyes were jittering around the room, digging into the dark corners. "Dude. Why are we hanging out up here?"
"Aw, they're all right," Chavez said, feeling weirdly protective of the giant rats that didn't even exist. "We used to feed them bits of cheese and peanut butter and stuff."
Zito's eyes were huge and betrayed, and he shoved his hair back with his hand, leaving a smear of dust on his forehead. "That is gross."
"Don't be a pussy," Munson told him with a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Chavez found himself riveted, gaze stuck on Munson's happy teasing face. "Me and Ricky know how to catch them, and we'll put one on your face while you're sleeping. Then you can be grossed out."
"Dude," Zito said, horrified. "I would seriously throw up all over you."
Munson gave in, grinned big at Zito. Chavez's heart thudded, a disjointed off-rhythm. He flushed with nervousness suddenly, terribly confused and with a scratching hot feeling in his stomach almost exactly like anger.
"So freakin' easy," Munson said.
"What?" Zito demanded, looking over at Chavez like this was somehow all his fault.
Chavez swallowed, shaped his face into a shaky grin. He kept sneaking looks at Munson's bare shoulders and arms, eyes skidding against his will.
"He's screwing with you, Z," Chavez said. "And you're falling for it, because somehow you always fall for it."
"Hey," Zito said, vaguely wounded.
"It's okay," Chavez answered. "It's just how you are."
Munson was nodding, pleased, watching them both with an expression that was almost smug: my friends are fuckin' hilarious. "Like that time when I told you the new drug craze at the high school was snorting Tide powder detergent."
"Oh my god," Zito said, clapping his hands over his face. "You can quit bringing that up any freakin' day now, Munce."
"Not possible, too funny," Munson said, and gave Zito's shoulder a brotherly shake. "Really wouldn't have you any other way, buddy."
Zito rolled his eyes but he was kinda smiling, face turned down. He liked it when they had cause to wrestle or sling arms over shoulders or screw up a carefully gelled hairstyle right before they went into a school dance. Chavez had gotten enough cuffs and hugs from Zito's dad and mom to know where he got it from, which was good because otherwise he would have probably thought it was the gay thing.
That thought got him itching again. Chavez flicked a puzzle piece at Munson, said, "Let's go see if Howie's hanging around the bodega."
Zito concurred, straightening out of his slouch and perking up immediately. Munson sneezed and agreed. They pulled their shirts on, sweat-sticking at once, and clambered down the ladder one at a time.
Howie was the shady guy who bought them liquor and sometimes had schwag to sell too, sometimes misshapen little jays rolled in yellowing paper. They biked down in a tiny flying vee, wind blowing their hair back. Howie was sitting on his usual crate by the dumpster, swigging out of a brown paper bag and muttering at the sky.
Zito did the talking because Zito was the best for that kind of thing, an effortless kinda charm that worked on pretty much everyone. He said, "Jeez, Howie, you look like a million bucks, did you get a tan or something?" and Howie was smiling and confused with his head bumping up and down chicken-like. Zito chattered away, so friendly you just wanted to hang out and play board games with him all day long, and pretty soon Howie was shambling into the bodega with their money crumpled in his hand. Pretty soon he was coming out with two bottles of Night Train and a package of mini donuts that they shared out between the four of them, licking powdered sugar off their fingers.
Then Munson stashed their bottle in his backpack and they rode over to Zito's house so they could get drunk in the garage, where there were couches and soda and a TV and other getting-drunk necessities.
Really happy with how the day was shaping up, the three of them settled in, watching Looney Tunes on scratchy VHS tapes, passing the bottle back and forth. Zito was sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, legs sprawled and his head rolling close to Chavez's knee. They couldn't find the clicker for the VCR (not that they really looked that hard), and so they made Zito crawl back and forth to fast forward through the lame cartoons. Zito didn't seem to mind.
Chavez got good and buzzed, tipping towards Munson. Munson had one hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle, loose grip with his fingers bent and tapping fitfully, and Chavez was staring for some reason. Zito's hair brushed against his jeans and Chavez froze inside his clothes, just for a split second but it still threw him off. He felt like he'd been caught, like he'd walked around the corner smoking a jay and run directly into a cop.
Narrowly avoiding kneeing Zito in the head, Chavez got to his feet and slurred something about the bathroom, escaped into the yard with his head spinning. The sunlight was deepening in color as it set, thick and sticky-looking, stretching out long across the housetops. Chavez went in through the backdoor so he wouldn't run into one of Zito's parents, and shut himself away in the half-bathroom that hardly anybody ever used. There wasn't even soap next to the sink. Muggy orange light came in fractures through the beveled glass of the window.
Chavez ran his hand under the tap, working his fly open with the other. He swiped his damp forehead on the shoulder of his shirt, breathing through his teeth as his mind looped pictures of Zito and Munson sitting shirtless in the moted dust of the attic, their skin shining from the heat.
He pushed that stuff away. That was Zito's fault, that pestering awareness he'd implanted in Chavez's brain. Chavez got a hand on himself and it was girls, soft and curved and sculpted, shiny-lipped, sleepy-eyed, almost all girls except for Zito's face flashing randomly past, recalling the two seconds a million years ago when Chavez had kissed him, the first time he'd ever kissed anyone like it was supposed to mean something.
This was all Zito's goddamn fault. He must have done some infectious gay thing to trick Chavez into kissing him, and ever since, Chavez had jerked off with Zito there, surprise scrawled all over his face, the thin slats of his arms and his pale slanted shoulders. It was just because Zito didn't care who knew he was queer, didn't care how it might screw up other people.
Chavez didn't want to think about Zito. He was leaning hard on the wall, his eyes slitted open and fixed on the warped glass, the dying light all melted and ill-formed. It was dazzling. Chavez's hand was working fast inside his shorts, and he mouthed messily across his forearm braced against the wall, wet bite searing on his skin. He wasn't thinking about Zito.
All of a sudden, he was thinking about Munson instead.
Munson's hands holding a bat, sweeping his palm up the barrel, fingers curled around the knob. Munson pulling off his catcher's mask to show his dirty face, his mouth alone damp and clean, secreting glints of white teeth.
And Chavez thought, no, and then, no no no, because Eric Munson had once cut open both their palms with a shell. They shared blood; it wasn't allowed.
But Munson's hands were hard and rough, almost too rough scratching down Chavez's stomach, sliding under his belt. Munson was clumsy and overeager like he got when he was making out with girls, licking crazily at Chavez's mouth and cheek and throat. Chavez was gasping, terrified, his grip incredibly slick and hot and his hips jerking forward. Images crashed together in his mind, his best friend sucking a bruise at the edge of his hip, Munson grinning up at him and twisting his hand just like this, so tight Chavez felt like he was choking. Then he was canting forward over the toilet with his teeth dug into his lower lip to keep from crying out, finishing on a series of staggered moans.
Chavez slumped, his head rolling on the cool bathroom wall. He was breathing too fast, bolts of air punched out of him, and he could feel his heartbeat in his temples, the place where his wrist was flattened on the window sill. The endorphin rush raged against panicked adrenaline and Chavez thought he might throw up; he kept forgetting that he was drunk.
"No," he muttered to himself, and gathered a wad of toilet paper to clean himself up. His hands were trembling and stupid. "Not like that."
The little room yawed violently to the side. Chavez grabbed for the counter, bracing himself on his hands and staring at his own nose in the mirror.
"That wasn't your fault," Chavez told his reflection. A scared-looking kid blinked back at him, lower lip gnawed to hell and the color gone from his face. Not liking the sight of it, Chavez narrowed his eyes, hardened his jaw, scowled with true determination.
"You're not like that," Chavez said a little louder, and it echoed slightly. He sounded pretty convinced.
*
A few months later, right before school ended for the summer, Zito was pitching to Chavez at the park, Munson roaming the imagined outfield, drifting left and right depending on how Chavez's feet were set, how sharp the angle of his bat. Chavez had been getting taller all season, shoulders spreading out under his T-shirts, and every inch was another fifteen feet he could hit a baseball.
Zito threw mostly curveballs, because he loved to throw that pitch, loved it like breathing, and Chavez and Munson were both in general agreement that if they figured out how to hit Zito's curve, world domination would surely follow. Chavez was dizzy from trying to see the falling red stitches, trying to make Zito move in slow motion. He was short of breath, his back aching dull and good.
Behind Chavez the two-trunk tree caught the pitches he missed. Sometimes they rolled underfoot and he almost fell on his ass.
Then Zito was calling out, "All right, I'm gonna try some four-seams now, so don't dig in too close."
"Fuck you," Chavez said cheerfully. "That inside corner is mine, bitch."
Predictably, Zito threw at Chavez's head, but he was already scooting backwards and taking a huge off-balanced swing, tomahawk-chopping into the ball. To Chavez's immense surprise, he connected, a jarring crack as a flare popped over Zito's head, and a big shard of the bat went whipping towards where first base would have been if they had a first base.
Zito squawked, covering his mouth with his glove and bugging his eyes in shock. "Dude! You could have killed me!"
"I don't have that kinda luck," Chavez said, then shouted, "Munce, did you see that?"
Munson came running in, and they gathered around the speared piece of bat, impaled in the grass. Chavez was grinning, really pleased with himself.
"You know how hard you have to swing to break a bat?" he said, nudging his elbow into Munson's side. Munson rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, and you know how bad you have to miss the pitch?"
"Dude, did you not see that pitch? I was about to take that motherfucker in the teeth."
"That was the intention," Zito agreed.
Chavez smiled joyfully at Munson, tossed an arm around his shoulders. "It was pretty cool, though, right?"
Munson shrugged, making no move to shake Chavez's arm off. The edge of his mouth was curling up, his poker face gradually destroyed.
"So you're gonna buy me a new bat, right?" Munson asked pointedly, and Chavez had totally forgot the bat was even Munson's to begin with.
"Oh, um. Sure. Naturally." Chavez rattled his fingers on Munson's shirt sleeve, eyebrows up. "I mean, I got a birthday coming up."
"Okay, that's not for six months."
"Whatever! I broke a bat, it was cool. Let's focus on that."
Munson gave in, a grin flashing across his face and making Chavez's skin heat, making him realize suddenly that they were very close to each other. He let his arm drop off Munson, swallowing and hoping it wasn't too obvious.
"It was okay," Munson finally allowed. "I've done it before."
"That was off a pitching machine," Zito threw in. "I don't think that counts."
"Who asked you, hippie?" Munson said. "Go get a haircut."
Zito pulled the bat shard out of the ground, shook it at Munson menacingly. "Watch yourself, Munson. I'll stake your vampire ass so quick."
Munson snickered, rocking to let his shoulder bump into Chavez's. He gave Chavez a conspiratorial look, half-rolled eyes, crimped mouth, wanting to get Chavez on his side but Chavez was already there. Chavez had never been anywhere else.
Chavez shifted his weight foot to foot, looking at the sprinklers spraying mist over the lawns across the street. "Let's go get your old aluminum bat," he said to Munson, but Munson shook his head.
"My mom gave it to Goodwill. I told her to put it in the keep pile, but she never listens to me."
Zito sighed. "You killed the game, Ricky."
Chavez pushed him, took the bat shard out of his hand. He still had the bat handle and he fit the pieces together, pressed so the seam was as thin as a hair. He thought about how he'd probably end up shattering a hundred bats, if his life took the course it was supposed to, and this was the first one.
When he got home that night, he stashed the two pieces under his bed with his Little League home run balls and shoeboxes full of baseball cards. He lay down on top of the messy covers and thought about how the bigger he got, the farther the ball went. Eric Chavez closed his eyes, trying to feel his body growing.
He dreamt of Eric Munson that night, dirty face, clean mouth. That was happening more and more often.
He woke up in a haze, sticky inside his shorts and groaning as if he were in pain, but that wasn't it. He didn't hurt, just felt off in a specific sort of way, a dragging slog buried deep in his bones. Chavez fumbled through breakfast, all thumbs and bleary-eyed, and his little brother asked him if he was hungover right in front of their mom, for which Chavez would have to kick his ass later, once he got back on his game.
Biking to school, Chavez almost got hit by two different cars. He felt trailed by black clouds and kinda doomed, kept thinking how much better things had been when he was asleep.
Munson was sitting cross-legged on the low stone wall bearing the middle school's name, and he got to his feet when he caught sight of Chavez, stood ten feet tall with the kids' heads bobbing past his knees. Munson waved, hollered something Chavez couldn't make out but he didn't care. Chavez could hardly see through the sun in his eyes; he crashed into a bike rack and didn't care about that either.
Munson hopped off the sign and came over to him, jaw working on pink gum, blowing out bubbles now and then. His hands were flitting around the way they did when he got overexcited, though he was trying to kick that habit.
"There's asbestos in the cafeteria," Munson told him happily.
Chavez grinned at him, feeling dangerously slow, fifty points lopped off his IQ. "What?"
"Potentially toxic asbestos in the roof of the cafeteria!" Munson grabbed Chavez's shoulders and gave him a shake. "We all might die, but for today they cancelled class."
"No shit?" The day brightened even further, the sun's dimmer switch cranked up to eleven. "The whole school?"
"No, just you and me. Of course the whole school. They're doing an inspection, which, fat lot a good that'll do us after eating the stuff for three years, but whatever, we've survived this long. Let's go to the beach."
Munson let him go, a little triumphant shove as punctuation. Chavez felt unsteady, his body finally waking all the way up, rushing with energy and blood to his fingertips. It made him anxious, too much at once.
Kids were coming back out of the school as fast as they went in, the news spreading in excited hoots and open hands cracking against each other. A stocky boy with dark red hair was tossing his baseball cap in the air over and over, and a few other kids followed suit, the sky filling up. Everybody was smiling.
"Do we have to check in somewhere?" Chavez asked, dazed.
"Fuck it, nobody cares," Munson told him, and half-turned to scan the milling crowd in front of the main doors. "Barry went to get a Coke and then we were gonna go."
"'kay."
Looking back at him, Munson's eyes went thin, still wearing a spectacular grin like he'd found money or hit a walkoff, one of those random moments of total joy. There was this uncomfortable flipped sensation in Chavez's chest, everything turned upside down.
"What's up with you, by the way?" Munson asked. Chavez's eyebrows shot up, his brain freezing for a second.
"I, um, nothing. I'm kinda tired."
"Ah, not just right now. Although I don't know how you're not more excited, this is like the snow day we never had. But no, because you've been moody as hell for awhile now."
"Maybe I've got asbestos poisoning," Chavez said easily enough, even though his stomach was knotting.
Munson snorted. "Excellent. Sue the school."
"Done and done. Soon we will be millionaires," Chavez said in a grand tone, hoping no one noticed how neatly he'd sidestepped Munson's actual question. Sometimes Munson missed stuff like that, and Chavez knew how to distract him, get a little run of banter going and lead Munson carefully astray.
Zito called out as he came over, and Munson looked his direction but Chavez found himself staring at the side of Munson's face, the pulled-taut line of his neck, and that tight feeling in his stomach didn't go away. He didn't know why he kept getting so weird around Munce. It was those stupid dreams, that trick Zito had played that made him act gay sometimes, something. Chavez didn't let himself think about it too much.
They went to the beach. The colleges were already out and the water was astir with surfers and girls in two-pieces. Little kids constructed sand cities for the pleasure of kicking them over. Munson tore off his shirt and shoes and went whooping into the ocean, and Zito followed right behind. Chavez took a minute to gather their stuff in a messy pile and then added his own, his shirt draping across both of his friends'.
Munson and Zito were wrestling, trying to dunk each other as the sun glittered off the waves, their soaked bodies and hair. Chavez let them tackle him without resistance, drag him under and he opened his eyes to the salt burn for the briefest of seconds, just because he didn't want to see anything more today.
*
next
no hole is too deep! no deficit is insurmountable! i saw a ten-run comeback a few months ago, i can testify to it. there is no clock on this thing, and soon enough no brakes either.
that's mostly apropos of nothing, but anyway, i was supposed to write beatles!fic (which is still happening goddamn it--stuart sutcliffe and speed pills in the bathrooms of german clubs in the late fifties (back when they wore ALL LEATHER), brian epstein and the madness of america and then being stoned for most of 1965, and then the acid--my brain might break, GRANTED), and also supernatural fic based on spooky country songs (the best kind!), which is also happening, but that is future-talk.
for present-talk, i have the latest and (it freakin' better be) the last installment in the alternate universe that will not die. goddamn you teenage fuck-ups and your ingratiating ways!
it's 38564 words. it's a prequel that stands alone. at long last, it's eric chavez's side of the story.
Three Yard Radius
By Candle Beck
When he was twelve years old, Eric Chavez got drunk for the first time with his best friend.
They were sitting in the backyard of Joey Han's house, formed into a loose circle on the grass with some other kids. Music bled from the open windows, party chatter rising and falling like a dying radio in the background. There was an older boy and girl making out in the shadows, her arms twisted around his back and pushing his shirt up, their mouths so wide you could see tongue, and Chavez thought that was kinda gross.
Eric Munson nudged him with the bottle of wine, and Chavez lifted it to his mouth with both hands. It still tasted like really old cough medicine, but his brains felt jelled, this happy sweaty thing happening just under his skin. There were good and bad parts, really confusing, and Chavez figured if he kept drinking eventually it would get either all good or all bad and either way he'd have a better idea of how to deal with it.
Across the circle was the tall kid they'd been warring with all summer. His face still bore faint yellow bruises from when Munson had kicked the shit out of him a couple days after school started, grinding his face into the dirt behind the elementary school auditorium. The kid had his legs folded and pulled against his chest, surfer shag that kept getting in his eyes, making him jerk his head back so regularly it was almost a rhythm. He was rubbing his chin on his knee, talking to a really pretty girl who was at least a freshman, but he didn't look nervous or anything, just kinda dopey and smiling a lot. Chavez watched him, eyes thin. He hated that guy.
Munson leaned heavily against him. His breath was too sweet, too hot.
"Like it?" Munson asked. "'cause I sure do."
"Brand new world," Chavez said in agreement.
His stomach was jumping, only partly from the drunk. Chavez was really excited about this whole thing, the long future ahead of him full of backyards and circles of people and bottles of wine. This was the coolest party they'd ever been invited to.
Then a bunch of kids came barreling out onto the patio, squawking many-headed beast, and Chavez heard, "Parents," then, "Neighbors," but it meant the same thing: adults. There was only ever one play.
Munson had Chavez's wrist and they were moving really fast and Chavez thought he might throw up. His head bounced, the sky slewing wildly back and forth. They squirmed into some bushes and Munson yelped when a branch stuck him, fell hard against the fence.
"Hey," someone said, high-voiced in surprise. It was that kid, that kid they hated.
Chavez rustled leaves out of his hair, trying not to sneeze, and scowled, but it didn't really take. The kid looked stupid, curled up around his knees again, dirt on his face, huge babyish eyes. He was drunk too, plainly swimming through it, and he wasn't a threat to anybody like this.
They were quiet for a minute, eyeing each other with blurred expressions. Then Munson said he might hurl and the kid said he should focus on a single point that didn't move, so Munson put his hands on Chavez's shoulders, told him, "Don't move, Ricky," and stared intently at his nose for half a minute.
After that the ice was pretty well broken. The kid's name was Barry Zito. He could throw a baseball seventy miles an hour. He had older sisters who told him all sorts of good stuff, wicked pranks and how to get over a hangover and how to sneak into movies. He cursed like a pro, even though he was so sweet- and young-looking. He was an entirely different person than Chavez had expected.
They got to talking about pitching. Zito gripped the air, showing Chavez his curveball and his circle-change, his wrist snapping. He knew what he was talking about, dropped the right names and rushed over the right descriptions, and Chavez got excited like every time he met someone else obsessed with baseball, a ready-made comrade.
Chavez got badly distracted by Zito. Munson was slumped against the fence muttering about splinters, and Chavez was supposed to be looking out for him, making sure he was okay. But Munson had always been okay before, and Zito was right there, talking so fast and bright.
Then Zito paused, eyebrows up and his mouth half-open, and Chavez wasn't really thinking about anything, just kinda swayed forward and kissed him like it was the next logical step. The kiss was off-line, bad-angled, shockingly warm and soft, and Chavez could feel Zito's teeth under his lips. A magical feeling went careening all through him.
Just then, Munson got sick against the fence.
Zito jerked back. His hand went to his mouth and Chavez didn't think he'd ever seen anybody with eyes so big before. His head was spinning, and Munson was gagging, coughing, pawing weakly at Chavez's arm. The smell was awful.
Chavez wanted to laugh, but all he could do was gape moronically at Zito. He wondered if this was something that happened a lot when guys got drunk, if they just randomly kissed each other. He felt way too young for this all of a sudden.
Munson spit a bunch of times, making weak disgusted noises. He rested against the fence for a minute, his face clean in the far-away starlight.
Munson said in a shriveled voice, "Truce."
Zito looked at him, his face working and Chavez couldn't read it. Chavez didn't know him hardly at all.
But after a second Zito nodded, said, "Truce," and then his eyes flicked back to Chavez's and Chavez's breath caught in his chest.
It was as easy as that. They ended the war, joined their forces. Forever after, the three of them were brothers in all but name.
*
They got most of the way through seventh grade by cheating off each other and charming their teacher, who called them the Three Amigos after some old movie she said was really funny even though she couldn't remember any of the jokes. Munson had a crush on her, always hanging around her desk and bringing her interesting-looking shells that he found at the beach. He blushed every time she talked to him.
Chavez and Zito rolled their eyes and made fun of him and that was new for Chavez, being able to talk about Eric Munson with someone who wasn't Eric Munson. It'd been just the two of them for better than half his life, growling through the San Diego suburbs on their pretend dirt bikes, playing catch until it was too dark to see, all those epic extra-inning games in the bleachers at the Jack Murph. It had always been "me and you." Chavez didn't usually talk about Munce in the third person.
But Zito fit. Chavez thought it was a baseball thing, probably, and he didn't wonder about it too much. The three of them sat around in their swimming trunks, doing puzzles up in Chavez's attic where the air was so thick and heated it was like a sauna, made them all dopey and slow and calm. They slept on the fold-out couch in Chavez's living room, the three of them strewn and sharp-angled to each other. They snuck out of their houses to meet up in the park past midnight, the one corner where the streetlight bled enough that they could play rundown as silent as mice on the grass.
Then it was Easter, and Chavez trudged along to Mass with his extended family, hair stiff from the stuff his mom combed into it, feet too big for his dress shoes even though he just got them at Christmas. He didn't want to tell his mom because she got her most frustrated when he grew out of things right after purchase and years before his brother Casey could use them. Chavez sat in the pew thinking about his poor toes for most of the sermon; he just wasn't in the mood for this stuff today. His neck was all sweaty under his tie.
After the service his folks were tied up gossiping with his aunts and uncles and Chavez was able to slip away from the mingling crowd. He took off his shoes and ran home sock-footed, keeping to the lawns as much as he could.
Chavez went around back to climb in his bedroom window because his mom hadn't let him put the dirty string with his key around his neck while wearing his church clothes, and found Zito in the backyard. Zito was throwing a dog-ravaged tennis ball against the fence, hollow thunking sound.
"Hey," Chavez said, yanking at his tie. He felt like he had a rash.
Zito was startled, drilled the ball into the dirt. He looked over his shoulder, face stricken and frantic for a second before he smirked.
"Lookit you, fancy boy," Zito said. Chavez threw a shoe at him.
"Shut up, I had to."
Chavez scratched irritably at his neck, raked his hands back and forth trying to mess up his hair but it was like plastic. Zito had his hands in his pockets, eyeing Chavez and looking kinda jittery. Chavez squinted at him.
"I thought you were gonna be hanging out with Munson," Chavez said, and Zito shrugged, his eyes down.
"Yeah, I was gonna. But instead, I came over here." Zito cleared his throat. Chavez looked at the patch of ground Zito was staring at, wondered what the hell was so interesting. "Can we go inside? Is your family coming home too?"
Not having the first clue why Zito was being so skittish, Chavez said, "No, it's cool," and jimmied open the window with his pocketknife, tossing his shoes in before following with himself. He knocked his Millennium Falcon model off the desk as he climbed down, but it didn't break. Zito came in after him, his legs seeming crazy long as he folded his body through the window.
Chavez set about changing his clothes, and Zito kinda shrank back against the door, his face turned resolutely down. His ears were red, like Munson blushing in front of their teacher. Chavez had his shirt off and he was halfway annoyed, thinking Zito was being weird on purpose.
"What's up with you, freak?" Chavez asked.
Zito twitched, still wouldn't look at him. "Put a shirt on, okay?"
Something turned over in Chavez's stomach, and he froze for a second, then mechanically pulled a T-shirt over his head. Zito exhaled, lifted his eyes and he looked really serious, like they were about to fight to the death or something. Chavez was scared in about six different ways.
"I, I wanted to tell you," Zito said. His voice sounded strange, uneven. "Um. I haven't told anybody else."
"What?"
Zito's gaze flitted away, a spooked bird, but then he visibly forced himself to look back at Chavez, his throat moving as he swallowed.
"Ah. Well. I'm gay, Ricky."
A bolt of pure terror flashed across Zito's face as soon as the words left his mouth, eyes bulging and face going momentarily slack. He trembled, went perfectly still, braced as if he were standing three feet from a rabid dog.
Chavez was motionless himself, for wholly different reasons. His chest was tight and his mouth dry and it felt like panic--he didn't know why he would be panicked right now. He was staring at Zito like he expected him to take it back, and Zito was staring at the floor again.
"I'm not," Chavez heard himself saying, and Zito flinched hard, a look of true pain capsizing his face. Chavez shook his head, wished with all his heart he could take that back. He asked fumblingly, sounding moronic, "I mean, are, are you sure?"
Zito nodded jerkily. He strummed, vibrated with tension, cutting fast glances at the open window, the shining day. He wanted to run, Chavez could tell. Chavez could sympathize.
"It's okay," Chavez said. "I mean. It's okay with me."
Zito nodded again, looking sorrowful, looking away. Chavez stepped towards him unconsciously. He wanted to put his hand on Zito's arm, but he thought that might confuse things. Chavez barely remembered kissing Zito behind the bushes all those months ago, a rough edge of heat and then gone, and he didn't want it to come back any clearer than that.
"Are you gonna tell your folks? And, Munce, are you gonna-"
"I don't know," Zito said, cutting him off. "Probably. I just, I wanted--I thought I should tell you first. I can't remember why."
Chavez opened his mouth but nothing came out. He just kinda looked at Zito helplessly, hands closed in fists at his sides. Zito's lips curled in a rueful ghost of a smile, and he shook his head, moved for the window.
"Anyway," Zito said, and climbed on top of Chavez's desk. He shoved his hair back out of his eyes, glanced down at Chavez and then quickly away. "I'll see ya."
"Wait," Chavez said without thinking, but Zito was hiking himself up and out, answering with a break in his voice:
"No,"
and then Chavez was watching him run away across the grass.
*
Zito never did get around to telling Munson.
It was all Chavez could think about for a couple of weeks, Zito being gay and going around with boys and what would people say about the three of them, what would they think? Munson kept getting frustrated with him because Chavez couldn't follow a basic conversation, too worried about letting something slip. It was a sick crawling sensation in his stomach, drilled so far down it was like a secret of his own.
But some time passed, and then they all made the All-Star team and played deep into the summer, traveling farther and farther afield. Chavez was caught up, forgot about Zito liking boys or Munson liking girls (more vocally every goddamn day), every bad thing that happened outside the lines. The game was more important just then.
Zito and Chavez learned to throw sliders. Munson cleared high school fences, three hundred and twenty feet down the line just like the big leagues. They were good, really really good and it was wonderful. Chavez believed it would be like this for the three of them forever, all the way up through the ranks of baseball.
They won the state title, lost at the West regional tournament. Zito ended up on national TV bawling his eyes out, which Chavez couldn't make fun of because he'd been doing the same thing except prudently into his glove.
The bus ride back home was better than twelve hours. Their families were following in a loose convoy of cars and trucks, dejected and pitifully still carrying slogans written in soap on the windows. Chavez and Munson slumped next to each other, playing their Game Boys and not talking to anybody else, all closed up together. Zito sat in the very back with Andy Ruiz, jackets over their laps and only pretending to be asleep, but Chavez was trying not to think about that.
It really hurt, not going the distance that year. Chavez hadn't known it could hurt that bad; childlike was a good word for what he'd been before, and he understood everything much better now. He thought uselessly that he wasn't really interested in growing up if it meant going through stuff like this.
The three of them met up in the middle of the night, the tail end of that summer when the winds picked up and the bushes started to turn the color of rust. They were tired and moody at home, snapping at their families, and none of them could sleep for the dull pain in their legs. Munson had put on two inches that summer; none of them was the same size he'd been when they'd met.
The unremarkable suburban neighborhood at two in the morning was almost perfectly silent as they climbed up their tree, the two-trunk tree that was Chavez's and Munson's oldest common landmark. They had met up there at five years old, swinging by their hands from adjacent branches with the sunlight all broken up through the leaves. Now there were three of them, and they mostly weren't talking. Chavez would always remember it very clearly for some reason, the small hours of that morning a couple weeks before the summer ended, couple weeks after he'd had his heart broken by baseball for the first time, up in that tree with Zito and Munson and the leaves and moonlight and nothing else.
Then life resumed. That is to say, school. Eighth grade was not noticeably different than seventh, except there was more often beer at the parties, or someone's older brother or sister had sold them a ten-dollar joint. It was awesome, a gleaming kindhearted haze and so cool, everything was getting so goddamn cool. It made Chavez feel like the best part of his life was finally starting.
They had a barbeque and bonfire on the beach for Munson's fourteenth birthday in October. The three of them were tight for the first couple of hours, moving as a unit and huddling around Gatorade bottles filled with whiskey and flat soda. Chavez kept his arm slung around Munson's shoulders, a magnetic pulse drawn to the surface of his skin.
Zito wandered off first, drifting over to watch the boys drunkenly skateboarding in the parking lot. Chavez and Munson sat too close to the fire roasting marshmallows jammed onto long wooden matches. Munce always cut right to the chase, as with most things, and made a guttering orange and purple torch of his 'mallow, blowing the flame out when it was good and charred. Munson liked how it got liquid soft on the inside. Chavez was more inclined to take his time, slow rotating with an eye towards golden-brown. It was a pursuit of perfection, which was what Chavez did best.
Munson was talking about the imminent baseball playoffs and how much he wanted the Pirates to kick the holy shit out of the Braves, and Chavez was in general agreement there.
"And I'll tell you what I couldn't physically care less about," Munson said, sticky-mouthed. "Twins-Blue Jays for the AL pennant? It's like the opposite of caring, how I feel about that match-up."
Chavez smirked, sideways eyeing Munson as he licked at the marshmallow goo on his fingers. Chavez's stomach felt weird, too much sugar maybe, and he looked away, into the fire.
"I think you're supposed to pull for the Americans," Chavez told him. "Like, the home team. Right?"
"Minnesota is kinda the same as Canada, though."
"Yeah."
"Anyway, whatever. Long as the Braves lose, I'm pretty happy with it."
Munson's matchstick caught fire without him noticing until the flame bit into his hand, and then he yelped, dropped everything and stuck his fingers in his mouth. Muffled, he cursed, "Fug!" and Chavez started to laugh. He choked on a half-chewed bit of marshmallow, coughed and teared up and now there were all kinds of things wrong with him, hands fisted in the sand.
Munson wasn't much help at all, trying to slap him on the back but Chavez squirmed away, not wanting hands on him just now. He hacked and spat into the fire and he could inhale now, a stinging glassy feeling in his lungs. His head felt split open, fused back together with the two halves not fitting right.
Chavez tipped his head back and located the moon. It was the fifth cardinal point, the other direction you could go. Chavez calmed down.
He glanced at Munson and Munce was grinning at him, peeling open a melting Hershey's. The firelight glinted off the silver-backed paper, incredibly faint reflections.
"You're hella drunk," Munson said, sounding really happy about it. "Here, you want some of this?"
Chavez accepted half of the chocolate bar, and it sagged between his fingers, barely still solid.
"'m not so bad," Chavez mumbled, licking chocolate off his hand. "Just new. It's new."
Munson lifted his eyebrows, nodded. He looked over to the parking lot and Chavez followed his gaze, saw Zito perched precariously on a skateboard, his hands gripped in the shirt of the older boy who was showing him how. Zito was smiling big, motor-mouthing at the kid who blinked back, bemused.
"Barry seems to be takin' to it," Munson remarked.
It tightened Chavez's skin, an unconscious scowl closing down his face. Zito never had a problem talking to people. He never worried that he was gonna get shot down. Chavez felt like being gay should frighten a person at least a little bit, some constant subterranean shudder because it wasn't supposed to be easy, but Zito didn't seem to know that.
"He's takin' to that guy for sure," Chavez muttered, not really thinking about it.
"What?" Munson sounded hazy, half-laughing.
Chavez shook his head, off-balance and upset for some reason, his senses skewing around inside him. He was angry at Zito all of a sudden, for climbing in his window months ago and placing the word gay to fester like an open wound between them. Chavez never used to think about this stuff.
"I wouldn't have made friends with him if I'd known he was gonna turn out a fag," Chavez said, and it felt horrible.
"Wait, are you serious?" Munson asked, his eyes big and muddy-looking, straining to understand. "Barry's gay, really?"
"He, he's just-" and Chavez couldn't think of how to say it, how to explain. It wasn't his problem, not really. He was just getting confused. "I don't know what the fuck he is."
"You-" but then Munson stopped, his mouth snapping shut so fast Chavez could hear his teeth click. He boggled at Chavez for a second, then shifted to gape incredulously at Zito and the skater boy. Chavez looked at the line of Munson's throat, the angle of his jaw, feeling riveted and helpless.
"Did he try something on you or what?" Munson asked eventually, sounding strange and dull. He wasn't looking at Chavez.
"No. No." Chavez's throat shrank down to a pinhole. "That would be really stupid of him."
"Yeah. Whatever."
Munson glanced at him, stormy drunk look on his face. Chavez swallowed, struggled to meet his gaze but he couldn't manage it, eyes darting to the fire once again. After a second, Munson blew out a breath, got unsteadily to his feet. He squinted down at Chavez, glaring in the dim light.
"You shouldn't have said that," Munson said.
"What--which part?" Chavez asked. Munson waved his hand, swaying.
"Any of it. You're a terrible friend."
It hit Chavez like an arrow to the chest. He exhaled, agonized, "Munce," and Munson's face screwed up.
"Not all the time," he said quietly. "Maybe just when you're drunk."
Chavez shook his head but he didn't say anything. He stared past Munson's shoulder, shame burning through him and leaving jagged edges. He thought that he should say sorry but he didn't really want to.
Munson pulled his shoulders up. "I'm gonna go find that Lizzie girl," he said, and then faked a smile. "Don't wait up."
Chavez bowed his head, and didn't answer. He'd ruined the whole goddamn night. He couldn't be trusted on his own.
Munson became an inconstant shadow among others on the far side of the fire, and Chavez stewed miserably by himself for a few minutes, his mood jet black.
Then Zito came back, stumbling and collapsing next to Chavez with a hectic look of excitement on his face, his hair blowing everywhere. There was a fresh scrape on the heel of his hand and all he wanted to talk about was the tattoo the high school boy had, inked around his hard upper arm and so cool and smooth and perfect, just perfect.
Chavez tried really hard to hate him. To his dismay, it didn't work at all.
*
So they were best friends, the three of them, and that worked pretty well for awhile.
They spent most of their time at the park, spent most of their time talking about where they were gonna go once they could drive. There was a string of weekends when they rode their bikes and camped out on the beach, until one night when a bunch of asshole surfers jumped them and got Zito's bag (with his glove) and the sixer of beer that had cost them fifteen dollars counting the courtesy fee for the homeless dude that bought it for them. After that, they relocated for the most part to the den in Zito's unattached garage. They were too tall to sleep all three on a foldout couch now, and so instead Chavez found himself waking up on the floor a lot. He didn't mind. Everything was going to get amazing in the next couple of years.
At school people talked to them like they were an indivisible single consciousness occupying three adjacent bodies. Nobody ever made plans with just one of them. Nobody was friends with one of them without being friends with the other two. Once a girl broke up with Munson (after five weeks, because he went to play baseball instead of going to the beach with her) by telling Chavez, "You guys are so dumped."
Chavez had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He was happy to have a bedrock like Munson and Zito, a default kind of friendship as constant as the sky, but sometimes Chavez wished he could just watch Major League on his own without the two of them hollering along with all the best lines. Sometimes it was tough for him to breathe in Zito's garage, something in the carpet fibers probably.
But then baseball season was starting again and he forgot to care about it. In addition to playing for their own school's team, the Mount Carmel High School varsity coach let the three of them plus Tony Duncan practice with his team. Zito's dad somehow ferreted out Randy Jones's phone number and talked him into taking his son on for pitching lessons, and Zito showed up at the high school field throwing a ghostly knuckle-curve that Munson took monster swings at, almost dislocating his shoulders. Sometimes they lost track of time playing out their insomnia in the shadowy quiet of the park, didn't notice the sun rising until sweat broke out on the backs of their necks.
Eric Chavez was fourteen years and four months old, and one Sunday afternoon he and Munson and Zito were putting together a puzzle in the attic of Chavez's house, where the heat gathered and packed against the beams. They sat on the floor without shirts on, dust getting everywhere, a cardboard box filleted and flattened as a surface for the puzzle. Zito still had long hair back then, and it was stuck to his forehead and neck in shallow curls. Munson hadn't shaved all week and he kept scratching happily at his scruff.
"I'm working on that red boat thing now," Chavez reported, fingers spidering over the spread of upturned puzzle pieces. "So send those pieces over here."
"Roger roger," Zito said. "Where do you think the name jigsaw comes from?"
"Who cares?" Munson asked, scowling as he thumbed together a pair of side sections.
"Well, me for one. You can tell by how I asked, dumbass."
Munson punched Zito ineffectually on the arm, then sniffed loudly, swiping across his nose. Munson was kind of allergic to something up here, but he'd never complained. Munson wasn't really the complaining type.
"They probably cut the pieces with a jigsaw. A jigsaw saw, I mean, the tool," Chavez said.
"But dude, the puzzle predates the power tool, no?" Zito wondered earnestly.
"Who the hell knows?" Chavez answered, starting to side with Munson's opinion of the discussion. Zito was always getting distracted by minutiae, asking trivia questions with answers no sane person could possibly have on file.
Munson blew out an irritated breath. "The fourth corner piece does not fucking exist."
"The rats might have eaten it," Chavez said. Zito looked concerned.
"There are rats up here? The fuck! Nobody said that."
Chavez and Munson smirked at each other. They'd been maybe seven or eight and spending whole weeks at a time up in the attic, until Chavez's older brother rented Willard and then hid rubber rats in their sleeping bags. There had been screeching and flailing and Chavez's brother howling with laughter in the hallway, and since then the rats in the attic had been a legend of their own invention, the villains responsible for every small crime.
"Yeah, they're really big," Munson said, showing Zito his innocent face. "Like, you ever seen swamp rats?"
"No way," Zito breathed out. His eyes were jittering around the room, digging into the dark corners. "Dude. Why are we hanging out up here?"
"Aw, they're all right," Chavez said, feeling weirdly protective of the giant rats that didn't even exist. "We used to feed them bits of cheese and peanut butter and stuff."
Zito's eyes were huge and betrayed, and he shoved his hair back with his hand, leaving a smear of dust on his forehead. "That is gross."
"Don't be a pussy," Munson told him with a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth. Chavez found himself riveted, gaze stuck on Munson's happy teasing face. "Me and Ricky know how to catch them, and we'll put one on your face while you're sleeping. Then you can be grossed out."
"Dude," Zito said, horrified. "I would seriously throw up all over you."
Munson gave in, grinned big at Zito. Chavez's heart thudded, a disjointed off-rhythm. He flushed with nervousness suddenly, terribly confused and with a scratching hot feeling in his stomach almost exactly like anger.
"So freakin' easy," Munson said.
"What?" Zito demanded, looking over at Chavez like this was somehow all his fault.
Chavez swallowed, shaped his face into a shaky grin. He kept sneaking looks at Munson's bare shoulders and arms, eyes skidding against his will.
"He's screwing with you, Z," Chavez said. "And you're falling for it, because somehow you always fall for it."
"Hey," Zito said, vaguely wounded.
"It's okay," Chavez answered. "It's just how you are."
Munson was nodding, pleased, watching them both with an expression that was almost smug: my friends are fuckin' hilarious. "Like that time when I told you the new drug craze at the high school was snorting Tide powder detergent."
"Oh my god," Zito said, clapping his hands over his face. "You can quit bringing that up any freakin' day now, Munce."
"Not possible, too funny," Munson said, and gave Zito's shoulder a brotherly shake. "Really wouldn't have you any other way, buddy."
Zito rolled his eyes but he was kinda smiling, face turned down. He liked it when they had cause to wrestle or sling arms over shoulders or screw up a carefully gelled hairstyle right before they went into a school dance. Chavez had gotten enough cuffs and hugs from Zito's dad and mom to know where he got it from, which was good because otherwise he would have probably thought it was the gay thing.
That thought got him itching again. Chavez flicked a puzzle piece at Munson, said, "Let's go see if Howie's hanging around the bodega."
Zito concurred, straightening out of his slouch and perking up immediately. Munson sneezed and agreed. They pulled their shirts on, sweat-sticking at once, and clambered down the ladder one at a time.
Howie was the shady guy who bought them liquor and sometimes had schwag to sell too, sometimes misshapen little jays rolled in yellowing paper. They biked down in a tiny flying vee, wind blowing their hair back. Howie was sitting on his usual crate by the dumpster, swigging out of a brown paper bag and muttering at the sky.
Zito did the talking because Zito was the best for that kind of thing, an effortless kinda charm that worked on pretty much everyone. He said, "Jeez, Howie, you look like a million bucks, did you get a tan or something?" and Howie was smiling and confused with his head bumping up and down chicken-like. Zito chattered away, so friendly you just wanted to hang out and play board games with him all day long, and pretty soon Howie was shambling into the bodega with their money crumpled in his hand. Pretty soon he was coming out with two bottles of Night Train and a package of mini donuts that they shared out between the four of them, licking powdered sugar off their fingers.
Then Munson stashed their bottle in his backpack and they rode over to Zito's house so they could get drunk in the garage, where there were couches and soda and a TV and other getting-drunk necessities.
Really happy with how the day was shaping up, the three of them settled in, watching Looney Tunes on scratchy VHS tapes, passing the bottle back and forth. Zito was sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, legs sprawled and his head rolling close to Chavez's knee. They couldn't find the clicker for the VCR (not that they really looked that hard), and so they made Zito crawl back and forth to fast forward through the lame cartoons. Zito didn't seem to mind.
Chavez got good and buzzed, tipping towards Munson. Munson had one hand wrapped around the neck of the bottle, loose grip with his fingers bent and tapping fitfully, and Chavez was staring for some reason. Zito's hair brushed against his jeans and Chavez froze inside his clothes, just for a split second but it still threw him off. He felt like he'd been caught, like he'd walked around the corner smoking a jay and run directly into a cop.
Narrowly avoiding kneeing Zito in the head, Chavez got to his feet and slurred something about the bathroom, escaped into the yard with his head spinning. The sunlight was deepening in color as it set, thick and sticky-looking, stretching out long across the housetops. Chavez went in through the backdoor so he wouldn't run into one of Zito's parents, and shut himself away in the half-bathroom that hardly anybody ever used. There wasn't even soap next to the sink. Muggy orange light came in fractures through the beveled glass of the window.
Chavez ran his hand under the tap, working his fly open with the other. He swiped his damp forehead on the shoulder of his shirt, breathing through his teeth as his mind looped pictures of Zito and Munson sitting shirtless in the moted dust of the attic, their skin shining from the heat.
He pushed that stuff away. That was Zito's fault, that pestering awareness he'd implanted in Chavez's brain. Chavez got a hand on himself and it was girls, soft and curved and sculpted, shiny-lipped, sleepy-eyed, almost all girls except for Zito's face flashing randomly past, recalling the two seconds a million years ago when Chavez had kissed him, the first time he'd ever kissed anyone like it was supposed to mean something.
This was all Zito's goddamn fault. He must have done some infectious gay thing to trick Chavez into kissing him, and ever since, Chavez had jerked off with Zito there, surprise scrawled all over his face, the thin slats of his arms and his pale slanted shoulders. It was just because Zito didn't care who knew he was queer, didn't care how it might screw up other people.
Chavez didn't want to think about Zito. He was leaning hard on the wall, his eyes slitted open and fixed on the warped glass, the dying light all melted and ill-formed. It was dazzling. Chavez's hand was working fast inside his shorts, and he mouthed messily across his forearm braced against the wall, wet bite searing on his skin. He wasn't thinking about Zito.
All of a sudden, he was thinking about Munson instead.
Munson's hands holding a bat, sweeping his palm up the barrel, fingers curled around the knob. Munson pulling off his catcher's mask to show his dirty face, his mouth alone damp and clean, secreting glints of white teeth.
And Chavez thought, no, and then, no no no, because Eric Munson had once cut open both their palms with a shell. They shared blood; it wasn't allowed.
But Munson's hands were hard and rough, almost too rough scratching down Chavez's stomach, sliding under his belt. Munson was clumsy and overeager like he got when he was making out with girls, licking crazily at Chavez's mouth and cheek and throat. Chavez was gasping, terrified, his grip incredibly slick and hot and his hips jerking forward. Images crashed together in his mind, his best friend sucking a bruise at the edge of his hip, Munson grinning up at him and twisting his hand just like this, so tight Chavez felt like he was choking. Then he was canting forward over the toilet with his teeth dug into his lower lip to keep from crying out, finishing on a series of staggered moans.
Chavez slumped, his head rolling on the cool bathroom wall. He was breathing too fast, bolts of air punched out of him, and he could feel his heartbeat in his temples, the place where his wrist was flattened on the window sill. The endorphin rush raged against panicked adrenaline and Chavez thought he might throw up; he kept forgetting that he was drunk.
"No," he muttered to himself, and gathered a wad of toilet paper to clean himself up. His hands were trembling and stupid. "Not like that."
The little room yawed violently to the side. Chavez grabbed for the counter, bracing himself on his hands and staring at his own nose in the mirror.
"That wasn't your fault," Chavez told his reflection. A scared-looking kid blinked back at him, lower lip gnawed to hell and the color gone from his face. Not liking the sight of it, Chavez narrowed his eyes, hardened his jaw, scowled with true determination.
"You're not like that," Chavez said a little louder, and it echoed slightly. He sounded pretty convinced.
*
A few months later, right before school ended for the summer, Zito was pitching to Chavez at the park, Munson roaming the imagined outfield, drifting left and right depending on how Chavez's feet were set, how sharp the angle of his bat. Chavez had been getting taller all season, shoulders spreading out under his T-shirts, and every inch was another fifteen feet he could hit a baseball.
Zito threw mostly curveballs, because he loved to throw that pitch, loved it like breathing, and Chavez and Munson were both in general agreement that if they figured out how to hit Zito's curve, world domination would surely follow. Chavez was dizzy from trying to see the falling red stitches, trying to make Zito move in slow motion. He was short of breath, his back aching dull and good.
Behind Chavez the two-trunk tree caught the pitches he missed. Sometimes they rolled underfoot and he almost fell on his ass.
Then Zito was calling out, "All right, I'm gonna try some four-seams now, so don't dig in too close."
"Fuck you," Chavez said cheerfully. "That inside corner is mine, bitch."
Predictably, Zito threw at Chavez's head, but he was already scooting backwards and taking a huge off-balanced swing, tomahawk-chopping into the ball. To Chavez's immense surprise, he connected, a jarring crack as a flare popped over Zito's head, and a big shard of the bat went whipping towards where first base would have been if they had a first base.
Zito squawked, covering his mouth with his glove and bugging his eyes in shock. "Dude! You could have killed me!"
"I don't have that kinda luck," Chavez said, then shouted, "Munce, did you see that?"
Munson came running in, and they gathered around the speared piece of bat, impaled in the grass. Chavez was grinning, really pleased with himself.
"You know how hard you have to swing to break a bat?" he said, nudging his elbow into Munson's side. Munson rolled his eyes.
"Yeah, and you know how bad you have to miss the pitch?"
"Dude, did you not see that pitch? I was about to take that motherfucker in the teeth."
"That was the intention," Zito agreed.
Chavez smiled joyfully at Munson, tossed an arm around his shoulders. "It was pretty cool, though, right?"
Munson shrugged, making no move to shake Chavez's arm off. The edge of his mouth was curling up, his poker face gradually destroyed.
"So you're gonna buy me a new bat, right?" Munson asked pointedly, and Chavez had totally forgot the bat was even Munson's to begin with.
"Oh, um. Sure. Naturally." Chavez rattled his fingers on Munson's shirt sleeve, eyebrows up. "I mean, I got a birthday coming up."
"Okay, that's not for six months."
"Whatever! I broke a bat, it was cool. Let's focus on that."
Munson gave in, a grin flashing across his face and making Chavez's skin heat, making him realize suddenly that they were very close to each other. He let his arm drop off Munson, swallowing and hoping it wasn't too obvious.
"It was okay," Munson finally allowed. "I've done it before."
"That was off a pitching machine," Zito threw in. "I don't think that counts."
"Who asked you, hippie?" Munson said. "Go get a haircut."
Zito pulled the bat shard out of the ground, shook it at Munson menacingly. "Watch yourself, Munson. I'll stake your vampire ass so quick."
Munson snickered, rocking to let his shoulder bump into Chavez's. He gave Chavez a conspiratorial look, half-rolled eyes, crimped mouth, wanting to get Chavez on his side but Chavez was already there. Chavez had never been anywhere else.
Chavez shifted his weight foot to foot, looking at the sprinklers spraying mist over the lawns across the street. "Let's go get your old aluminum bat," he said to Munson, but Munson shook his head.
"My mom gave it to Goodwill. I told her to put it in the keep pile, but she never listens to me."
Zito sighed. "You killed the game, Ricky."
Chavez pushed him, took the bat shard out of his hand. He still had the bat handle and he fit the pieces together, pressed so the seam was as thin as a hair. He thought about how he'd probably end up shattering a hundred bats, if his life took the course it was supposed to, and this was the first one.
When he got home that night, he stashed the two pieces under his bed with his Little League home run balls and shoeboxes full of baseball cards. He lay down on top of the messy covers and thought about how the bigger he got, the farther the ball went. Eric Chavez closed his eyes, trying to feel his body growing.
He dreamt of Eric Munson that night, dirty face, clean mouth. That was happening more and more often.
He woke up in a haze, sticky inside his shorts and groaning as if he were in pain, but that wasn't it. He didn't hurt, just felt off in a specific sort of way, a dragging slog buried deep in his bones. Chavez fumbled through breakfast, all thumbs and bleary-eyed, and his little brother asked him if he was hungover right in front of their mom, for which Chavez would have to kick his ass later, once he got back on his game.
Biking to school, Chavez almost got hit by two different cars. He felt trailed by black clouds and kinda doomed, kept thinking how much better things had been when he was asleep.
Munson was sitting cross-legged on the low stone wall bearing the middle school's name, and he got to his feet when he caught sight of Chavez, stood ten feet tall with the kids' heads bobbing past his knees. Munson waved, hollered something Chavez couldn't make out but he didn't care. Chavez could hardly see through the sun in his eyes; he crashed into a bike rack and didn't care about that either.
Munson hopped off the sign and came over to him, jaw working on pink gum, blowing out bubbles now and then. His hands were flitting around the way they did when he got overexcited, though he was trying to kick that habit.
"There's asbestos in the cafeteria," Munson told him happily.
Chavez grinned at him, feeling dangerously slow, fifty points lopped off his IQ. "What?"
"Potentially toxic asbestos in the roof of the cafeteria!" Munson grabbed Chavez's shoulders and gave him a shake. "We all might die, but for today they cancelled class."
"No shit?" The day brightened even further, the sun's dimmer switch cranked up to eleven. "The whole school?"
"No, just you and me. Of course the whole school. They're doing an inspection, which, fat lot a good that'll do us after eating the stuff for three years, but whatever, we've survived this long. Let's go to the beach."
Munson let him go, a little triumphant shove as punctuation. Chavez felt unsteady, his body finally waking all the way up, rushing with energy and blood to his fingertips. It made him anxious, too much at once.
Kids were coming back out of the school as fast as they went in, the news spreading in excited hoots and open hands cracking against each other. A stocky boy with dark red hair was tossing his baseball cap in the air over and over, and a few other kids followed suit, the sky filling up. Everybody was smiling.
"Do we have to check in somewhere?" Chavez asked, dazed.
"Fuck it, nobody cares," Munson told him, and half-turned to scan the milling crowd in front of the main doors. "Barry went to get a Coke and then we were gonna go."
"'kay."
Looking back at him, Munson's eyes went thin, still wearing a spectacular grin like he'd found money or hit a walkoff, one of those random moments of total joy. There was this uncomfortable flipped sensation in Chavez's chest, everything turned upside down.
"What's up with you, by the way?" Munson asked. Chavez's eyebrows shot up, his brain freezing for a second.
"I, um, nothing. I'm kinda tired."
"Ah, not just right now. Although I don't know how you're not more excited, this is like the snow day we never had. But no, because you've been moody as hell for awhile now."
"Maybe I've got asbestos poisoning," Chavez said easily enough, even though his stomach was knotting.
Munson snorted. "Excellent. Sue the school."
"Done and done. Soon we will be millionaires," Chavez said in a grand tone, hoping no one noticed how neatly he'd sidestepped Munson's actual question. Sometimes Munson missed stuff like that, and Chavez knew how to distract him, get a little run of banter going and lead Munson carefully astray.
Zito called out as he came over, and Munson looked his direction but Chavez found himself staring at the side of Munson's face, the pulled-taut line of his neck, and that tight feeling in his stomach didn't go away. He didn't know why he kept getting so weird around Munce. It was those stupid dreams, that trick Zito had played that made him act gay sometimes, something. Chavez didn't let himself think about it too much.
They went to the beach. The colleges were already out and the water was astir with surfers and girls in two-pieces. Little kids constructed sand cities for the pleasure of kicking them over. Munson tore off his shirt and shoes and went whooping into the ocean, and Zito followed right behind. Chavez took a minute to gather their stuff in a messy pile and then added his own, his shirt draping across both of his friends'.
Munson and Zito were wrestling, trying to dunk each other as the sun glittered off the waves, their soaked bodies and hair. Chavez let them tackle him without resistance, drag him under and he opened his eyes to the salt burn for the briefest of seconds, just because he didn't want to see anything more today.
*
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