(no subject)
Title: A Little More Room To Live
Pairing: Travis/William
Rating: Suitable for those over the age of sixteen.
Summary: High School AU. Travis is used to not fitting in. It doesn't mean he likes it.
Note: Based off a prompt in bandom_hc. It may have been my prompt, nobody can prove anything.
Warning: Vague references to eating disorders.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and does not reflect real lives or relationships.
Moving wasn't Travis' idea. He was all set to stay in Geneva, get through the next couple years of school and figure out what he was doing. Except his dad got a job in some town that Travis had never heard of, and it was like he just decided to bring Travis along for the hell of it.
Travis tried every tactic he could to get out of going; all his threats and shouting and pleading didn't do any good. It all boiled down to either go with his dad and his stepmother to some bullshit place where he didn't know anyone, or stay in Geneva with his mom. His mom had made it clear that she wouldn't be happy with him staying.
He made one last desperate attempt to get out of this bullshit by saying that he'd go stay with Matt, but his dad pointed out that Matt's family had enough to deal with already, which Travis couldn't exactly deny. He was stuck, and he was pissed.
"You can hide in my closet or something," Matt told him while he was doing last minute packing. "My mom never checks there."
"Pops would find me in five minutes."
"Yeah, I guess," Matt said glumly.
"This is bullshit," Travis said.
"I'm gonna write my number down again. Text me."
"I've got it in my phone already."
"I'm still writing it down."
"Okay," Travis said. Matt scribbled down his number, which Travis already had three copies of in various places, and passed it over.
"You think you'll get back for fuckin' Christmas at least?" Matt asked. "Or summer vacation? You can't stay there forever."
"Depends on whether Mom wants to have my ass around by then," Travis said. "We'll see."
The move was a nightmare. His dad drove for sixteen hours a day, the U-Haul barely hanging on to the back bumper. Both Travis and his stepmother tried to say as little as possible to each other in the hopes of avoiding an argument. As a matter of fact, the whole car was mostly silent. Travis' stepmother stared out the window or at the map, and Travis guessed she was saying, It's for the best to herself; he'd heard her saying it over and over and over again while this shit was going on. She wasn't happy about moving either, but she was still doing her united front thing. His dad looked at the windshield and didn't ask for directions. Travis stared out the window or at his phone, and he didn't know what the fuck was going on.
By the time they got to the new place, Travis was so sick of both of them that he was glad to throw his shit into the room that had been designated for him and lie down on the bare mattress (it was two in the morning and he wasn't going to put a bed together now). He listened to his father and stepmother arguing in closed, trying to be quiet voices, free to talk now that he was out of sight. Travis texted Matt in the dark, hoping his spelling was okay, going to be a long year.
*****
He started school a couple days late because of the move. He was sort of hoping that he could get out of going to school altogether, that his dad had forgotten to enroll him, but that didn't happen. If Travis heard it once, he heard it a million times, that his dad didn't raise an idiot and he was going to get through school and have the opportunities that his dad never got.
His dad always seemed to forget that school had never taught Travis one goddamn thing.
He got to his first class late through a combination of sleeping through his alarm and getting lost on the way over. When he finally manages to find the classroom (Government starting at eight in the morning, oh great), all the heads swivel to face him when he walks in the door, and all he sees is a sea of white kids.
"Getting off to a good start, Mr. McCoy," the teacher said, and Travis thought, Well, fuck.
It wasn't like he'd particularly enjoyed school back in Geneva, but he was used to it and it was used to him. He'd stopped worrying about standing out back home and just tried to get along. Now it was gone and he was still the same, too tall and too chubby and not white enough and not black enough and just too there.
He crammed himself into a free seat and tried to keep his head down.
*****
Two weeks into the move, his dad had to take a pay cut. From what Travis could work out, it was because business had been bad, everyone had to take a cut, there was nothing anyone could do. It kicked off an argument between his dad and his stepmother that lasted all night and into the morning, and then his dad started looking for a second job.
It went without saying that Travis was going to have to look for something himself. His stepmother was already poring over the want ads over her coffee in the morning, but Travis wasn't about to plonk himself down and ask her for help finding anything.
He dropped off an application at Walmart, which was probably the best bet. On the way back to the house, he passed a tattoo parlor, stuck in between two nondescript storefronts. The lights came on as he passed it, which was the only reason he noticed it in the first place. The sign was small and hard to read.
When Travis turned fifteen, he'd celebrated by lying about his age and getting a spray can tattooed on the inside of his forearm, to remind him of the important things in life. He'd spent hours in the parlor while the guy was working on him, fascinated by the soft buzzing noise of the needles and the crazy portraits on the walls. There was something kind of beautiful about it, turning people into artwork.
He pressed himself up to the window and tried to peer inside, but the windows were tinted or something and there were signs with lists of rules blocking the way. He could see some people moving around inside, but that was it.
Someone yelled, "Hey," from inside and he moved off, heading back to the house and the homework that he didn't want to do. He took out his phone and texted Matt, i found a tattoo place.
Five minutes later, Matt wrote back, you get anything done?
Travis wrote, didnt get in the door. cockblocked.
Matt wrote, sucks to be you.
Travis wrote, tell me about it.
*****
Sometimes he started the day with the best of intentions, that he was going to pay attention and impress everyone with the depth and breadth of his insight, but what usually happened was that the ADD would kick in and he'd lose the thread of what the teacher was saying entirely, so he wound up doodling on his notebook through classes.
It took like a minute before he realized that his name was being called. He looked up and said, "Yeah."
"Travis, would you care to share your thoughts on what I just said?"
"I would," Travis said, "but, you know, there are ladies present."
The guy in the desk next to his snickered. The teacher said, "You better have some thoughts next time around. Pay attention."
"Right," Travis said. It took five minutes before he was drawing again, trying not to look down at the notebook.
*****
He'd packed his lunch the night before based on ease of refrigerator and cupboard access, and it had seemed okay last night, but now applesauce and Ritz crackers didn't seem that appealing. But the smell of the cafeteria made him gag and he didn't really have the spare cash anyhow, so he took his brown paper bag towards the front steps, figuring he'd eat what he could and toss the rest to the birds.
He was halfway there when he heard someone say, "Hey, what the fuck are you looking at?"
He paused. There was a group of guys who he'd never seen before hanging out by one of the lockers. He started to move on, but one of them said, "Yeah, you, freak show, what are you looking at?"
Sometimes his mouth was a little ways ahead of his brain. Which was why he said, "I don't know. Right now, I think I'm looking at a talking asshole."
"What'd you say to me?"
"I don't like to repeat myself," Travis said. "Haven't you got better things to do? Like, I don't know, fuck your mom?"
That was all they needed. He couldn't put up much of a fight against all of them, and it didn't take long before he was on the floor, trying to keep his hands over his head and not start yelling.
By the time they got bored, his whole body was throbbing. He'd fallen onto his lunch and squished it flat, and he could feel a puddle of applesauce spreading against his jeans. He waited for a minute until he was sure it was safe to get up and dragged himself into the bathroom to inspect the damage.
His right eye was swelling, his mouth and nose were bleeding, and the ache in his arms said that they'd be mottled purple with bruises in an hour or two. He clamped a paper towel over his nose and held it there for a second. He figured the whole thing could have been a lot worse.
He heard the bathroom door swing open and flinched preemptively, because he was so fucked if whoever it was came back to finish the job. Luckily it was just one kid and he responded to Travis' flinch by flinching back. Travis threw the bloody paper towel into the trash. "Knock first," he mumbled.
"Sorry," the kid said, and then, "Dude."
"Yeah, I'm real pretty," Travis said. "It's okay."
"Okay," the kid said doubtfully. Travis started to wash the blood off his face, hoping that would effectively end the conversation. It seemed to work, because the kid went off to the urinal and left him alone. Travis spat into the sink and ran his tongue around his mouth experimentally, seeing if he had any new holes.
The kid came over and started washing his hands, glancing sideways at him. "You sure you're all right?"
"Been worse," Travis said. He suddenly realized that he'd forgotten to pick up his squished lunch. The janitor was going to have a hell of a time later on.
"You're bleeding all over the place," the kid said with a note of alarm.
Travis glanced at the mirror. His nose was gushing blood again. "Aw, fuck." He started to reach for another paper towel, but the kid got there first, handing him a wad. Travis muttered, "Thanks," and put it over his nose.
"You've got to hold your head back," the kid said. "Like -" He frowned and then demonstrated.
"Don't want to swallow any blood."
"Maybe you should go to the nurse or something," the kid said.
"Fuck the nurse. I'm okay." Travis took the towels away from his face, put them back just as a safety measure.
"All - all right," the kid said. "You're…Trevor, right? From English?"
"Travie," Travis said automatically, even though he'd been thinking for a while that he had to get away from that nickname now that he was almost grown. "Travis."
"Travie," the kid said. "I have the desk next to yours, I think. I'm Bill?"
"Hey," Travis said. Bill had hair that looked like a spectacularly drab tropical bird, strands moussed beyond an inch of their lives and sticking out all over. There were tiny, angry-looking zits scattered along his jawline and over his chin. "I don't really pay attention in that class."
"Yeah, I noticed. You draw all the time. Did someone beat you up?"
"No, I did this to myself," Travis snapped.
"Oh," Bill said. He looked at the faucets. "I guess I should have guessed that."
"You never know," Travis said. "Am I still bleeding?"
"Drop the - the thing," Bill said. Travis lowered the paper towels. "I think you might be okay."
"Good." Travis threw the wad at the trash. "What time's it now?"
"I don't know."
"Guess I should get to class then," Travis said. "Uh, thanks. For the…"
Bill shrugged at him. "It's - it's fine. See you around, I guess," he said, and turned around.
*****
At Walmart, they put him in the stock room, so he spent three afternoons a week opening boxes and counting how many crock-pots were there. It wasn't the worst shitty job he'd ever had; the dishwashing gig he'd had back home had him wanting to puke every single day, so he figured things could be worse. He was meant to be just being trained, but his supervisor had been working for fifteen years and just didn't give a fuck anymore, so Travis was mainly left to his own devices.
He got shit done, even though he wasn't sure how well he did it. Whenever he thought about just wandering out and smoking in the parking lot or tearing open the action figures and fucking around with them, Pops' voice started up in his head, shit about work ethic and trying to get ahead, and the guilt always won out.
The action figures were pretty fucking cool, though.
He spent a lot of time trying to multi-task to keep the ADD at bay. He went through the car seats and digital cameras and bikes and hammocks, scanning them in and putting them in the bins, trying to keep focused and ignore the lonely gnawing feeling at the back of his head. He was going to save his paycheck and use his employee discount on one of the laptops, one of the nice ones. That seemed like a good plan to have.
*****
Travis was halfway to the door when he heard someone say, "Faggot." It wasn't directed at him; it was coming from down the hall, so he poked his head cautiously around the corner to see what was going on.
"Saddle Creek motherfucker," someone was saying. It was one of those kids that Travis never learned the name of. He had the quiet kid from English - Bill - cornered by one of the lockers. Bill was glancing around, looking for nonexistant backup.
"Conor Oberst is a great songwriter," he offered finally, faintly.
"Why do you care about that, queer?"
Bill's face was a mixture of oh God panic and just get this over with martyrdom. Travis ducked back around the corner and made stompy noises with his feet, like he was coming from a long way away.
"Hey, Mr. DiGrazzi," he said loudly, because DiGrazzi was the only teacher he could think of that seemed vaguely threatening. "I need to talk to you about the assignment? Can you come here so I can show you it? I really need help." His voice bounced off the walls.
He heard a clang and then scuffling noises from down the hall. He checked back; Bill was kneeling down and picking his books up. He looked up and met Travis' eyes before Travis could move on. Travis gave him a curt nod, jerking his chin downwards. Bill looked like he was on the verge of saying something, but instead he dropped his eyes and grabbed the last book off the floor, hustling away on coltish legs.
*****
Matt texted him, this day sucks.
Travis wrote back, why?
it just does
try kicking the couch
no couch here
what do you thnk chairs are for dumbass?
*****
Travis only noticed that something was going on when everyone sat up straight around him. The teacher said, "Everyone choose a partner. You're going to pick the scene that best describes Fitzgerald's main theme from the list on the sheet, and present it together. This is due next week, so you'll want to get started right away."
The classroom mumbled and buzzed, chairs scraping on the floor. Travis thought, shit shit shit shit, because he hated group assignments violently and there seemed no way to get out of this. He scanned the classroom and then noticed Bill's hair out of the corner of his eye. He turned around.
Bill looked at him, playing with his pen. "Do - do you want to pair up?" he asked. "Unless you've got someone already?"
"Yeah," Travis said, feeling relieved. "Yeah, that's okay."
"Okay," Bill said. "Good. Uh, I don't really know what I want to do yet." He motioned at the photocopied sheet.
Travis was sort of glad he didn't bring up the whole thing from earlier, because then Travis would have to talk about how Bill had seen him all fucked up, and he didn't want to do that. He ran down the choices on the sheet, silently, and then pointed. "The tea party."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He'd read the book before, one summer when he was thirteen, and he'd gotten obsessed with the scene with Gatsby and Daisy, Gatsby knocking clocks over and Daisy in tears over shirts. "It'll work."
"Okay," Bill said. "I kind of want to get this done as soon as possible - when do you have study hall?"
"Fifth period."
Bill sucked his teeth disapprovingly. "I've got it in third. Maybe - you, y'know, you want to come over to my house after school to work on this?"
Travis looked at him.
"I don't know, maybe at lunch, too. We could do it at lunch."
"No," Travis said. "No, that's okay. I have work after school most days. But Thursdays are all right."
"Okay," Bill said. "I'll write down my address. You know how to get to Sycamore?"
Travis shook his head.
"I'll write my number down too. It shouldn't take too long, I finished the book."
"Okay," Travis said. Bill scribbled something down on a piece of notebook paper and handed it to him. The teacher said, "Okay, that's enough, talk after class," and the chair scraping started up again. Travis put the paper in his pocket.
*****
Bill's house was this big white two-story on the other side of town. It was like something out of a fifties sitcom: garden in the front, big trees in the back yard. The girl who answered the door looked almost exactly like Bill.
"Hey," Travis said. "Your brother in?"
She looked at him and then yelled, "Billy!" over her shoulder before wandering off, leaving the door open. Travis took it as an invitation.
A small brown ball of fuzz dashed into the hall while Travis was knocking the dirt clumps off his sneakers, and before Travis could decide if it was a beagle or some weird terrier mix, its tongue was hanging out happily and it had jumped up on his jeans.
Travis was sentimental about dogs, he couldn't help it, and before he knew what he was doing he was playing with the dog's ears and crooning, "Dog, dog, dog, hello, fuzzy doggie," at it. The dog gurgled blissfully at him.
"Radley, get down," Bill said, sounding pained. Travis looked up and saw him rounding the corner. "God. Sorry. He's a pest."
Travis decided not to mention that he'd just been baby talking to the dog. "Your house is hard to find," he said.
Bill shrugged. "I thought I wrote everything down okay…you want to just get started? I've got the book upstairs."
"Your place, your rules."
Bill's room was at the end of the hall on the second floor. Travis hadn't really thought about what it was going to look like, except maybe supposing it would look like his old room, with clothes and shit on the floor. There were clothes on the floor, tossed on top of the computer desk and the bed. There were posters of skinny white boys with guitars all over the walls.
"It'll look nicer if we did some fancy shit with it," Travis said.
Bill looked up from his notebook, where he'd been scribbling down ideas. "Like, pictures?"
"Yeah. You got posterboard here? It'll look like a cartoon. Panels."
"Would they accept that?" Bill said doubtfully. "I think everyone else is just standing up and presenting."
"Boring as fuck," Travis said. "This'll be better. Captions and pictures and everything."
Bill frowned and considered. "I could write the captions on the computer."
"Okay," Travis said. "Here, I'm thinking the first one'll look like -" Bill handed him the notebook. Travis made a rough doodle of Gatsby, skinny ankles sticking out of a puffy suit.
"Yeah," Bill said, warming up to it. "Like a movie or something."
"Cartoon."
Bill shrugged. "Hey, you think you can do the talking next week?"
"Why, you get stage fright?"
Bill looked offended. "Please. No. It's just the stutter. You know. They're not gonna understand me."
"Huh?" He'd noticed that Bill hesitated sometimes between words, longer than a natural pause, but he'd figured it was just him being quiet. "You stutter?"
"Well, I -" Bill blinked at him. "Yeah. It's worse when I have to talk in class. You didn't notice?"
He shrugged. "I don't pay attention to much."
"Oh. Oh. Well, okay." Bill drummed his fingers on his knees. "See, I think the main theme is how he idolizes her, he's built her up to be this perfect creature. And he's trying to prove himself to her, because, Radley, go away."
Travis turned around. The dog had somehow made its way into Bill's room and was sniffing at Travis.
"He pushes the door open with his damn nose," Bill said. "He's worse than my little sisters. Bad dog."
The dog licked Travis' hand. "Be nice," Travis told Bill. "He's just visiting."
"You think he's cute now," Bill said. "That's how he tricks you."
The dog lay down by Travis' side and put its head in his lap. "He likes me."
"I can't get any privacy up here," Bill said. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
Travis scratched the dog's ears and thought about how to answer. He had half-brothers and half-sisters all over, back with his mother or with Pops' other exes, and he hadn't seen any of them for a while. "Yeah," he said finally. "But right now it's just me."
*****
Travis had left his good art supplies back at the house, so he planned to go back over the weekend and put the thing together. The supplies had cost several shitty dishwashing paychecks' worth and he was nervous about bringing them out, but he figured he had it in him to get at least one good grade.
He lay on his stomach on Bill's bed, carefully filling in the panels while Bill typed on his computer. The plan was to print out the captions, cut them up and then tape them to the posterboard, The trouble was that they both tended to get lost in what they were doing and Travis was a little concerned that the images wouldn't match up to the text.
"What about this," Bill said, twisting around. "'Gatsby ignores reality to try to capture an idealized past, to find his perfect girl -"
"Except she's not perfect."
"I guess. But he thinks she is."
"Yeah." Travis frowned down at the posterboard.
"I'll be glad when this is done," Bill said. "I've got about six hours of math to do still. I'm going to be lucky if I pull in any As this year."
"Besides this one," Travis said. "This is an easy A. Hey, look at Daisy." He held up the paper and waved it around.
"She looks like she could be in a video game. I like it."
"That's the point."
Bill typed some more. "You don't have any algebra pointers you want to lend me, do you?"
Travis snorted. "Dude, I'm fuckin' failing every class I have. You don't want to ask me for pointers."
Bill stopped typing. "Ha ha."
"Not a joke."
Bill turned around completely this time. "You're failing everything?"
"I guess so. I haven't checked."
"But you're not stupid," Bill said, like that was the only possible reason he could come up with.
"I know that," Travis said. "Doesn't mean my grades are any better."
"Well, you have to study, right? Get the homework in?"
Travis shrugged. "I told you, I have trouble paying attention. It all sounds like bullshit after a while."
"You can't just fail everything."
Bill sounded genuinely distressed. Travis shrugged and said, "I can probably pull in a couple Cs by the end of the year."
"But what about your future?" Bill said, and Travis burst out laughing. "It's not funny."
"Is too. You sound all fuckin' serious."
"I don't," Bill said, but turned back to the computer.
By Sunday afternoon they had something put together. Travis was putting his paints and markers back in their cases while Bill stowed the posterboard in a safe place. Travis straightened up and was about to say something like, Hey, it wasn't the worst weekend I've ever had, but Bill had this look on his face like he wanted to say something.
"I was thinking," he said. "My stepfather keeps saying that I've got to buckle down, and my mom works late, and Courtney's too young to really understand any of the stuff they give me to do, and I thought -"
"This story's getting real long, Bill."
"You want a study partner? Like, one day a week or something."
"A study partner."
"Yeah. You know. I could use another pair of eyes."
"I'm not much for the studying," Travis said. "You'd be better off getting a tutor."
"Where? Everyone is this fuckin' place is an asshole," Bill said, and his voice came out sharp. "I'm not - you seem smart, and if you could help me I could help you."
"I never asked for help."
"Well, no, but you know what I mean."
What Travis was thinking was that he didn't want to be some white boy's charity project. "I don't think I'm really for real failing everything," he said. "I can get my own work done."
"I'm not going to do your work for you," Bill said. "It's just like - I believe in paying people back."
Travis thought, Oh yeah. So it is all about you.
"You don't have to," Bill said. "It was just an idea I had."
"Out of the goodness of your heart, right?"
"Not that. Just - it wouldn't take that long. I type fast." He looked sort of like a kicked dog.
Travis thought about this very carefully.
"Can I use your computer?" he said finally.
Bill looked at him. "If you want."
The project was an easy A.
*****
Bill insisted that it was just a studying thing, and it seemed like he was serious. Travis came over once a week and went up to Bill's room and he always found him comfortably ensconced on the bed, surrounded by textbooks and off in his own world somewhere. Conversation was minimal, although sometimes Travis caught him looking like he really wanted to say something.
Travis wasn't sure of how to proceed. He started out kind of trying, goaded on by Pops' voice in his head. He fiddled around with algebra problems and wrote dates in the margins of his History textbook. Except that was a lot less attractive than Bill's shiny gray computer, and before long he was using the study session as a pretext to email Matt and google Bad Brains lyrics. If Bill disapproved he didn't say anything about it.
Travis got the email a couple minutes after he logged in. Matt always typed like he was late for about five different appointments. This time around, he wrote, dude this is so gross. You need to see it!! and then there was a URL that Travis didn't recognize, something that looked like Barnyard Fun or something.
He clicked the link.
"Oh, damn," Travis said when the pictures started loading.
There was a rustling sound behind him. "What?" Bill said.
"Look what my friend back home sent me," Travis said. "I got no idea where he finds these things."
Bill put his book down and peered over Travis' shoulder. "Oh, dude. Dude."
"This can't be real," Travis said. "You get arrested for that shit."
"Is that a flamingo?" Bill said. "Why do they have a flamingo?"
"This is a real fucked up farm right here," Travis said. "Flamingos and shit."
Bill laughed. "They don't look like they're having much fun, I don't think."
"Dude, I feel sorry for the horse most of all. That is a bored-ass looking horse."
"Billy?" someone called outside the door. "You two okay in there?"
Bill immediately froze. "Yeah, Mom," he said over his shoulder. "Travie just told me a joke." He fixed Travis with a please don't rat me out look.
Bill's mother was tall and pretty and very proper. She'd let Travis in a couple times, smiling politely with tired eyes, and he'd thought she looked like someone with too little time and too many kids. Travis said to the door, "I'm being really funny, ma'am."
There was a long enough pause that Travis knew she was thinking that they were full of shit, but she just said, "If you need a break there are leftovers in the fridge," and then her footsteps receded. Travis shut down the browser.
"I almost got your ass busted," he said conversationally.
Bill shrugged. "I told you. No privacy up here."
"I can, you know," Travis said. He wasn't sure why he was embarrassed but he was. "I'll tell Matty to stop it with that shit."
"Dude, I want to send that website to some people. I'm going to traumatize them," Bill informed him, wide-eyed. "I know this kid back in Chicago, he'll never be the same."
"You got a sick mind," Travis said, but he pulled the browser back up and started writing to Matt, I was using these eyes, motherfucker.
Continued here.
Pairing: Travis/William
Rating: Suitable for those over the age of sixteen.
Summary: High School AU. Travis is used to not fitting in. It doesn't mean he likes it.
Note: Based off a prompt in bandom_hc. It may have been my prompt, nobody can prove anything.
Warning: Vague references to eating disorders.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction and does not reflect real lives or relationships.
Moving wasn't Travis' idea. He was all set to stay in Geneva, get through the next couple years of school and figure out what he was doing. Except his dad got a job in some town that Travis had never heard of, and it was like he just decided to bring Travis along for the hell of it.
Travis tried every tactic he could to get out of going; all his threats and shouting and pleading didn't do any good. It all boiled down to either go with his dad and his stepmother to some bullshit place where he didn't know anyone, or stay in Geneva with his mom. His mom had made it clear that she wouldn't be happy with him staying.
He made one last desperate attempt to get out of this bullshit by saying that he'd go stay with Matt, but his dad pointed out that Matt's family had enough to deal with already, which Travis couldn't exactly deny. He was stuck, and he was pissed.
"You can hide in my closet or something," Matt told him while he was doing last minute packing. "My mom never checks there."
"Pops would find me in five minutes."
"Yeah, I guess," Matt said glumly.
"This is bullshit," Travis said.
"I'm gonna write my number down again. Text me."
"I've got it in my phone already."
"I'm still writing it down."
"Okay," Travis said. Matt scribbled down his number, which Travis already had three copies of in various places, and passed it over.
"You think you'll get back for fuckin' Christmas at least?" Matt asked. "Or summer vacation? You can't stay there forever."
"Depends on whether Mom wants to have my ass around by then," Travis said. "We'll see."
The move was a nightmare. His dad drove for sixteen hours a day, the U-Haul barely hanging on to the back bumper. Both Travis and his stepmother tried to say as little as possible to each other in the hopes of avoiding an argument. As a matter of fact, the whole car was mostly silent. Travis' stepmother stared out the window or at the map, and Travis guessed she was saying, It's for the best to herself; he'd heard her saying it over and over and over again while this shit was going on. She wasn't happy about moving either, but she was still doing her united front thing. His dad looked at the windshield and didn't ask for directions. Travis stared out the window or at his phone, and he didn't know what the fuck was going on.
By the time they got to the new place, Travis was so sick of both of them that he was glad to throw his shit into the room that had been designated for him and lie down on the bare mattress (it was two in the morning and he wasn't going to put a bed together now). He listened to his father and stepmother arguing in closed, trying to be quiet voices, free to talk now that he was out of sight. Travis texted Matt in the dark, hoping his spelling was okay, going to be a long year.
*****
He started school a couple days late because of the move. He was sort of hoping that he could get out of going to school altogether, that his dad had forgotten to enroll him, but that didn't happen. If Travis heard it once, he heard it a million times, that his dad didn't raise an idiot and he was going to get through school and have the opportunities that his dad never got.
His dad always seemed to forget that school had never taught Travis one goddamn thing.
He got to his first class late through a combination of sleeping through his alarm and getting lost on the way over. When he finally manages to find the classroom (Government starting at eight in the morning, oh great), all the heads swivel to face him when he walks in the door, and all he sees is a sea of white kids.
"Getting off to a good start, Mr. McCoy," the teacher said, and Travis thought, Well, fuck.
It wasn't like he'd particularly enjoyed school back in Geneva, but he was used to it and it was used to him. He'd stopped worrying about standing out back home and just tried to get along. Now it was gone and he was still the same, too tall and too chubby and not white enough and not black enough and just too there.
He crammed himself into a free seat and tried to keep his head down.
*****
Two weeks into the move, his dad had to take a pay cut. From what Travis could work out, it was because business had been bad, everyone had to take a cut, there was nothing anyone could do. It kicked off an argument between his dad and his stepmother that lasted all night and into the morning, and then his dad started looking for a second job.
It went without saying that Travis was going to have to look for something himself. His stepmother was already poring over the want ads over her coffee in the morning, but Travis wasn't about to plonk himself down and ask her for help finding anything.
He dropped off an application at Walmart, which was probably the best bet. On the way back to the house, he passed a tattoo parlor, stuck in between two nondescript storefronts. The lights came on as he passed it, which was the only reason he noticed it in the first place. The sign was small and hard to read.
When Travis turned fifteen, he'd celebrated by lying about his age and getting a spray can tattooed on the inside of his forearm, to remind him of the important things in life. He'd spent hours in the parlor while the guy was working on him, fascinated by the soft buzzing noise of the needles and the crazy portraits on the walls. There was something kind of beautiful about it, turning people into artwork.
He pressed himself up to the window and tried to peer inside, but the windows were tinted or something and there were signs with lists of rules blocking the way. He could see some people moving around inside, but that was it.
Someone yelled, "Hey," from inside and he moved off, heading back to the house and the homework that he didn't want to do. He took out his phone and texted Matt, i found a tattoo place.
Five minutes later, Matt wrote back, you get anything done?
Travis wrote, didnt get in the door. cockblocked.
Matt wrote, sucks to be you.
Travis wrote, tell me about it.
*****
Sometimes he started the day with the best of intentions, that he was going to pay attention and impress everyone with the depth and breadth of his insight, but what usually happened was that the ADD would kick in and he'd lose the thread of what the teacher was saying entirely, so he wound up doodling on his notebook through classes.
It took like a minute before he realized that his name was being called. He looked up and said, "Yeah."
"Travis, would you care to share your thoughts on what I just said?"
"I would," Travis said, "but, you know, there are ladies present."
The guy in the desk next to his snickered. The teacher said, "You better have some thoughts next time around. Pay attention."
"Right," Travis said. It took five minutes before he was drawing again, trying not to look down at the notebook.
*****
He'd packed his lunch the night before based on ease of refrigerator and cupboard access, and it had seemed okay last night, but now applesauce and Ritz crackers didn't seem that appealing. But the smell of the cafeteria made him gag and he didn't really have the spare cash anyhow, so he took his brown paper bag towards the front steps, figuring he'd eat what he could and toss the rest to the birds.
He was halfway there when he heard someone say, "Hey, what the fuck are you looking at?"
He paused. There was a group of guys who he'd never seen before hanging out by one of the lockers. He started to move on, but one of them said, "Yeah, you, freak show, what are you looking at?"
Sometimes his mouth was a little ways ahead of his brain. Which was why he said, "I don't know. Right now, I think I'm looking at a talking asshole."
"What'd you say to me?"
"I don't like to repeat myself," Travis said. "Haven't you got better things to do? Like, I don't know, fuck your mom?"
That was all they needed. He couldn't put up much of a fight against all of them, and it didn't take long before he was on the floor, trying to keep his hands over his head and not start yelling.
By the time they got bored, his whole body was throbbing. He'd fallen onto his lunch and squished it flat, and he could feel a puddle of applesauce spreading against his jeans. He waited for a minute until he was sure it was safe to get up and dragged himself into the bathroom to inspect the damage.
His right eye was swelling, his mouth and nose were bleeding, and the ache in his arms said that they'd be mottled purple with bruises in an hour or two. He clamped a paper towel over his nose and held it there for a second. He figured the whole thing could have been a lot worse.
He heard the bathroom door swing open and flinched preemptively, because he was so fucked if whoever it was came back to finish the job. Luckily it was just one kid and he responded to Travis' flinch by flinching back. Travis threw the bloody paper towel into the trash. "Knock first," he mumbled.
"Sorry," the kid said, and then, "Dude."
"Yeah, I'm real pretty," Travis said. "It's okay."
"Okay," the kid said doubtfully. Travis started to wash the blood off his face, hoping that would effectively end the conversation. It seemed to work, because the kid went off to the urinal and left him alone. Travis spat into the sink and ran his tongue around his mouth experimentally, seeing if he had any new holes.
The kid came over and started washing his hands, glancing sideways at him. "You sure you're all right?"
"Been worse," Travis said. He suddenly realized that he'd forgotten to pick up his squished lunch. The janitor was going to have a hell of a time later on.
"You're bleeding all over the place," the kid said with a note of alarm.
Travis glanced at the mirror. His nose was gushing blood again. "Aw, fuck." He started to reach for another paper towel, but the kid got there first, handing him a wad. Travis muttered, "Thanks," and put it over his nose.
"You've got to hold your head back," the kid said. "Like -" He frowned and then demonstrated.
"Don't want to swallow any blood."
"Maybe you should go to the nurse or something," the kid said.
"Fuck the nurse. I'm okay." Travis took the towels away from his face, put them back just as a safety measure.
"All - all right," the kid said. "You're…Trevor, right? From English?"
"Travie," Travis said automatically, even though he'd been thinking for a while that he had to get away from that nickname now that he was almost grown. "Travis."
"Travie," the kid said. "I have the desk next to yours, I think. I'm Bill?"
"Hey," Travis said. Bill had hair that looked like a spectacularly drab tropical bird, strands moussed beyond an inch of their lives and sticking out all over. There were tiny, angry-looking zits scattered along his jawline and over his chin. "I don't really pay attention in that class."
"Yeah, I noticed. You draw all the time. Did someone beat you up?"
"No, I did this to myself," Travis snapped.
"Oh," Bill said. He looked at the faucets. "I guess I should have guessed that."
"You never know," Travis said. "Am I still bleeding?"
"Drop the - the thing," Bill said. Travis lowered the paper towels. "I think you might be okay."
"Good." Travis threw the wad at the trash. "What time's it now?"
"I don't know."
"Guess I should get to class then," Travis said. "Uh, thanks. For the…"
Bill shrugged at him. "It's - it's fine. See you around, I guess," he said, and turned around.
*****
At Walmart, they put him in the stock room, so he spent three afternoons a week opening boxes and counting how many crock-pots were there. It wasn't the worst shitty job he'd ever had; the dishwashing gig he'd had back home had him wanting to puke every single day, so he figured things could be worse. He was meant to be just being trained, but his supervisor had been working for fifteen years and just didn't give a fuck anymore, so Travis was mainly left to his own devices.
He got shit done, even though he wasn't sure how well he did it. Whenever he thought about just wandering out and smoking in the parking lot or tearing open the action figures and fucking around with them, Pops' voice started up in his head, shit about work ethic and trying to get ahead, and the guilt always won out.
The action figures were pretty fucking cool, though.
He spent a lot of time trying to multi-task to keep the ADD at bay. He went through the car seats and digital cameras and bikes and hammocks, scanning them in and putting them in the bins, trying to keep focused and ignore the lonely gnawing feeling at the back of his head. He was going to save his paycheck and use his employee discount on one of the laptops, one of the nice ones. That seemed like a good plan to have.
*****
Travis was halfway to the door when he heard someone say, "Faggot." It wasn't directed at him; it was coming from down the hall, so he poked his head cautiously around the corner to see what was going on.
"Saddle Creek motherfucker," someone was saying. It was one of those kids that Travis never learned the name of. He had the quiet kid from English - Bill - cornered by one of the lockers. Bill was glancing around, looking for nonexistant backup.
"Conor Oberst is a great songwriter," he offered finally, faintly.
"Why do you care about that, queer?"
Bill's face was a mixture of oh God panic and just get this over with martyrdom. Travis ducked back around the corner and made stompy noises with his feet, like he was coming from a long way away.
"Hey, Mr. DiGrazzi," he said loudly, because DiGrazzi was the only teacher he could think of that seemed vaguely threatening. "I need to talk to you about the assignment? Can you come here so I can show you it? I really need help." His voice bounced off the walls.
He heard a clang and then scuffling noises from down the hall. He checked back; Bill was kneeling down and picking his books up. He looked up and met Travis' eyes before Travis could move on. Travis gave him a curt nod, jerking his chin downwards. Bill looked like he was on the verge of saying something, but instead he dropped his eyes and grabbed the last book off the floor, hustling away on coltish legs.
*****
Matt texted him, this day sucks.
Travis wrote back, why?
it just does
try kicking the couch
no couch here
what do you thnk chairs are for dumbass?
*****
Travis only noticed that something was going on when everyone sat up straight around him. The teacher said, "Everyone choose a partner. You're going to pick the scene that best describes Fitzgerald's main theme from the list on the sheet, and present it together. This is due next week, so you'll want to get started right away."
The classroom mumbled and buzzed, chairs scraping on the floor. Travis thought, shit shit shit shit, because he hated group assignments violently and there seemed no way to get out of this. He scanned the classroom and then noticed Bill's hair out of the corner of his eye. He turned around.
Bill looked at him, playing with his pen. "Do - do you want to pair up?" he asked. "Unless you've got someone already?"
"Yeah," Travis said, feeling relieved. "Yeah, that's okay."
"Okay," Bill said. "Good. Uh, I don't really know what I want to do yet." He motioned at the photocopied sheet.
Travis was sort of glad he didn't bring up the whole thing from earlier, because then Travis would have to talk about how Bill had seen him all fucked up, and he didn't want to do that. He ran down the choices on the sheet, silently, and then pointed. "The tea party."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." He'd read the book before, one summer when he was thirteen, and he'd gotten obsessed with the scene with Gatsby and Daisy, Gatsby knocking clocks over and Daisy in tears over shirts. "It'll work."
"Okay," Bill said. "I kind of want to get this done as soon as possible - when do you have study hall?"
"Fifth period."
Bill sucked his teeth disapprovingly. "I've got it in third. Maybe - you, y'know, you want to come over to my house after school to work on this?"
Travis looked at him.
"I don't know, maybe at lunch, too. We could do it at lunch."
"No," Travis said. "No, that's okay. I have work after school most days. But Thursdays are all right."
"Okay," Bill said. "I'll write down my address. You know how to get to Sycamore?"
Travis shook his head.
"I'll write my number down too. It shouldn't take too long, I finished the book."
"Okay," Travis said. Bill scribbled something down on a piece of notebook paper and handed it to him. The teacher said, "Okay, that's enough, talk after class," and the chair scraping started up again. Travis put the paper in his pocket.
*****
Bill's house was this big white two-story on the other side of town. It was like something out of a fifties sitcom: garden in the front, big trees in the back yard. The girl who answered the door looked almost exactly like Bill.
"Hey," Travis said. "Your brother in?"
She looked at him and then yelled, "Billy!" over her shoulder before wandering off, leaving the door open. Travis took it as an invitation.
A small brown ball of fuzz dashed into the hall while Travis was knocking the dirt clumps off his sneakers, and before Travis could decide if it was a beagle or some weird terrier mix, its tongue was hanging out happily and it had jumped up on his jeans.
Travis was sentimental about dogs, he couldn't help it, and before he knew what he was doing he was playing with the dog's ears and crooning, "Dog, dog, dog, hello, fuzzy doggie," at it. The dog gurgled blissfully at him.
"Radley, get down," Bill said, sounding pained. Travis looked up and saw him rounding the corner. "God. Sorry. He's a pest."
Travis decided not to mention that he'd just been baby talking to the dog. "Your house is hard to find," he said.
Bill shrugged. "I thought I wrote everything down okay…you want to just get started? I've got the book upstairs."
"Your place, your rules."
Bill's room was at the end of the hall on the second floor. Travis hadn't really thought about what it was going to look like, except maybe supposing it would look like his old room, with clothes and shit on the floor. There were clothes on the floor, tossed on top of the computer desk and the bed. There were posters of skinny white boys with guitars all over the walls.
"It'll look nicer if we did some fancy shit with it," Travis said.
Bill looked up from his notebook, where he'd been scribbling down ideas. "Like, pictures?"
"Yeah. You got posterboard here? It'll look like a cartoon. Panels."
"Would they accept that?" Bill said doubtfully. "I think everyone else is just standing up and presenting."
"Boring as fuck," Travis said. "This'll be better. Captions and pictures and everything."
Bill frowned and considered. "I could write the captions on the computer."
"Okay," Travis said. "Here, I'm thinking the first one'll look like -" Bill handed him the notebook. Travis made a rough doodle of Gatsby, skinny ankles sticking out of a puffy suit.
"Yeah," Bill said, warming up to it. "Like a movie or something."
"Cartoon."
Bill shrugged. "Hey, you think you can do the talking next week?"
"Why, you get stage fright?"
Bill looked offended. "Please. No. It's just the stutter. You know. They're not gonna understand me."
"Huh?" He'd noticed that Bill hesitated sometimes between words, longer than a natural pause, but he'd figured it was just him being quiet. "You stutter?"
"Well, I -" Bill blinked at him. "Yeah. It's worse when I have to talk in class. You didn't notice?"
He shrugged. "I don't pay attention to much."
"Oh. Oh. Well, okay." Bill drummed his fingers on his knees. "See, I think the main theme is how he idolizes her, he's built her up to be this perfect creature. And he's trying to prove himself to her, because, Radley, go away."
Travis turned around. The dog had somehow made its way into Bill's room and was sniffing at Travis.
"He pushes the door open with his damn nose," Bill said. "He's worse than my little sisters. Bad dog."
The dog licked Travis' hand. "Be nice," Travis told Bill. "He's just visiting."
"You think he's cute now," Bill said. "That's how he tricks you."
The dog lay down by Travis' side and put its head in his lap. "He likes me."
"I can't get any privacy up here," Bill said. "Do you have any brothers or sisters?"
Travis scratched the dog's ears and thought about how to answer. He had half-brothers and half-sisters all over, back with his mother or with Pops' other exes, and he hadn't seen any of them for a while. "Yeah," he said finally. "But right now it's just me."
*****
Travis had left his good art supplies back at the house, so he planned to go back over the weekend and put the thing together. The supplies had cost several shitty dishwashing paychecks' worth and he was nervous about bringing them out, but he figured he had it in him to get at least one good grade.
He lay on his stomach on Bill's bed, carefully filling in the panels while Bill typed on his computer. The plan was to print out the captions, cut them up and then tape them to the posterboard, The trouble was that they both tended to get lost in what they were doing and Travis was a little concerned that the images wouldn't match up to the text.
"What about this," Bill said, twisting around. "'Gatsby ignores reality to try to capture an idealized past, to find his perfect girl -"
"Except she's not perfect."
"I guess. But he thinks she is."
"Yeah." Travis frowned down at the posterboard.
"I'll be glad when this is done," Bill said. "I've got about six hours of math to do still. I'm going to be lucky if I pull in any As this year."
"Besides this one," Travis said. "This is an easy A. Hey, look at Daisy." He held up the paper and waved it around.
"She looks like she could be in a video game. I like it."
"That's the point."
Bill typed some more. "You don't have any algebra pointers you want to lend me, do you?"
Travis snorted. "Dude, I'm fuckin' failing every class I have. You don't want to ask me for pointers."
Bill stopped typing. "Ha ha."
"Not a joke."
Bill turned around completely this time. "You're failing everything?"
"I guess so. I haven't checked."
"But you're not stupid," Bill said, like that was the only possible reason he could come up with.
"I know that," Travis said. "Doesn't mean my grades are any better."
"Well, you have to study, right? Get the homework in?"
Travis shrugged. "I told you, I have trouble paying attention. It all sounds like bullshit after a while."
"You can't just fail everything."
Bill sounded genuinely distressed. Travis shrugged and said, "I can probably pull in a couple Cs by the end of the year."
"But what about your future?" Bill said, and Travis burst out laughing. "It's not funny."
"Is too. You sound all fuckin' serious."
"I don't," Bill said, but turned back to the computer.
By Sunday afternoon they had something put together. Travis was putting his paints and markers back in their cases while Bill stowed the posterboard in a safe place. Travis straightened up and was about to say something like, Hey, it wasn't the worst weekend I've ever had, but Bill had this look on his face like he wanted to say something.
"I was thinking," he said. "My stepfather keeps saying that I've got to buckle down, and my mom works late, and Courtney's too young to really understand any of the stuff they give me to do, and I thought -"
"This story's getting real long, Bill."
"You want a study partner? Like, one day a week or something."
"A study partner."
"Yeah. You know. I could use another pair of eyes."
"I'm not much for the studying," Travis said. "You'd be better off getting a tutor."
"Where? Everyone is this fuckin' place is an asshole," Bill said, and his voice came out sharp. "I'm not - you seem smart, and if you could help me I could help you."
"I never asked for help."
"Well, no, but you know what I mean."
What Travis was thinking was that he didn't want to be some white boy's charity project. "I don't think I'm really for real failing everything," he said. "I can get my own work done."
"I'm not going to do your work for you," Bill said. "It's just like - I believe in paying people back."
Travis thought, Oh yeah. So it is all about you.
"You don't have to," Bill said. "It was just an idea I had."
"Out of the goodness of your heart, right?"
"Not that. Just - it wouldn't take that long. I type fast." He looked sort of like a kicked dog.
Travis thought about this very carefully.
"Can I use your computer?" he said finally.
Bill looked at him. "If you want."
The project was an easy A.
*****
Bill insisted that it was just a studying thing, and it seemed like he was serious. Travis came over once a week and went up to Bill's room and he always found him comfortably ensconced on the bed, surrounded by textbooks and off in his own world somewhere. Conversation was minimal, although sometimes Travis caught him looking like he really wanted to say something.
Travis wasn't sure of how to proceed. He started out kind of trying, goaded on by Pops' voice in his head. He fiddled around with algebra problems and wrote dates in the margins of his History textbook. Except that was a lot less attractive than Bill's shiny gray computer, and before long he was using the study session as a pretext to email Matt and google Bad Brains lyrics. If Bill disapproved he didn't say anything about it.
Travis got the email a couple minutes after he logged in. Matt always typed like he was late for about five different appointments. This time around, he wrote, dude this is so gross. You need to see it!! and then there was a URL that Travis didn't recognize, something that looked like Barnyard Fun or something.
He clicked the link.
"Oh, damn," Travis said when the pictures started loading.
There was a rustling sound behind him. "What?" Bill said.
"Look what my friend back home sent me," Travis said. "I got no idea where he finds these things."
Bill put his book down and peered over Travis' shoulder. "Oh, dude. Dude."
"This can't be real," Travis said. "You get arrested for that shit."
"Is that a flamingo?" Bill said. "Why do they have a flamingo?"
"This is a real fucked up farm right here," Travis said. "Flamingos and shit."
Bill laughed. "They don't look like they're having much fun, I don't think."
"Dude, I feel sorry for the horse most of all. That is a bored-ass looking horse."
"Billy?" someone called outside the door. "You two okay in there?"
Bill immediately froze. "Yeah, Mom," he said over his shoulder. "Travie just told me a joke." He fixed Travis with a please don't rat me out look.
Bill's mother was tall and pretty and very proper. She'd let Travis in a couple times, smiling politely with tired eyes, and he'd thought she looked like someone with too little time and too many kids. Travis said to the door, "I'm being really funny, ma'am."
There was a long enough pause that Travis knew she was thinking that they were full of shit, but she just said, "If you need a break there are leftovers in the fridge," and then her footsteps receded. Travis shut down the browser.
"I almost got your ass busted," he said conversationally.
Bill shrugged. "I told you. No privacy up here."
"I can, you know," Travis said. He wasn't sure why he was embarrassed but he was. "I'll tell Matty to stop it with that shit."
"Dude, I want to send that website to some people. I'm going to traumatize them," Bill informed him, wide-eyed. "I know this kid back in Chicago, he'll never be the same."
"You got a sick mind," Travis said, but he pulled the browser back up and started writing to Matt, I was using these eyes, motherfucker.
Continued here.