“GUYS, CAN I SAY SOMETHING?” April had sneaked up on them along with Easter and Addison’s driver’s license. The sun even penetrated the cafeteria through the long ground level windows. Usually it was just fluorescent light in here, but now they could see the verdant evergreen bushes, the pea green leaves coming out on the trees. Sully was speaking, Mason turned from his contemplation of the trees and its accompanying desire to cut school and run away. “Say away,” said Mason. Th...

“No,” Sully said. “I don’t. I’m gay, and you’re gay—” “Don’t say that,” Chris was flustered. “It’s... Look, I’m going to college in a few months, and you’re going to be a senior and we have to move on. I’ve been hearing that a lot of people fall into this at this time of life. You have to understand that—” “You’re nuts.” ‘No, I’m not.” “I love you.” “Not really,” Chris tried to explain. “Yes,” Sully said. “Really. I love you.” “Don’t say that.” “I love you.” “Don’t tell ...

They had been going to the optional school mass for about a week. Every few weeks there was a school mass that all the kids had to attend, but there were also optional masses in the chapel, around lunchtimes, twice a week. Father Sanders was the priest there. Chris had never gone, though he’d been thinking about it. He knew his dad went to Mass during the week sometimes at Saint Patrick’s with Seth McKenna’s father. “You know, you don’t have to come if you don’t want to,” Matt told him. “I ...

“HOW LONG DO YOU THINK until it happens?” Mark said. Rick’s forehead was pressed against Mark and he murmured under the comforter, “Until what happens?” “Until they know. Until people know. Until...” Mark Powers pushed himself up from the warmth of the bed with its thick comforter, with Rick Howard’s heat. He sat up in Rick’s room and looked down at the other man. “All of my life I’ve never had any secrets, any real secrets from my friends, but I haven’t told them about us ye...

“It’s been a long time since it’s been just you and me,” Addison said that night in Mason’s room. “No Tommy. No Seth, no Balliol—who’s great by the way—but just us.” “Whaddo you think of Sullivan?” “That’s random,” Addison said. “Not that much, really. He’s okay. I suppose. But... He’ll never be with the four of us. “There are four of us?” “You, me, Tommy and now Balliol. It’s funny, because Seth really isn’t in our group. It’s like he’s my friend, and he’s your friend, but he’s no...

“You look preoccupied,” Sully said. “Well that’s not a bad word for it,” Balliol told him. “Preoccupied is, in fact, a very good word for it. Would you believe for one of the first times in my life I can’t think straight? I’ve thought of being a Hilton and when school’s all over just throwing up my hands and saying fuck it, spending lots of money, doing crazy things.” “You could.” “Me and Mason have already discussed it.” “You’re running off with Mason?” “Well, I could do that,” Ba...

“I don’t want to talk about it.” “It was about me,” Matt said, sipping the last of his juice box. “He didn’t start it,” Sully felt the need to defend his friend. “He just made a comment.” “One of you better tell me,” Matt said. Sully sighed. He looked at Chris. Chris made a motion and Sully said, “I just... He asked what was wrong with you? He noticed you were bad off. So I told him you... weren’t yourself and all. And he just said something...” Sully tried to make it funny. God he wi...

The first woe has passed… But there are two more to come. —Revelation 9.12 “I’M FEELING BETTER NOW,” Matt said, sitting up in the hospital bed and immediately crying out. “Yeah, you sound better,” Sully remarked. Matt Mercurio tried to smile at him and at Chris. “Thanks for coming, guys. Do you know I can leave tomorrow? I won’t be throwing the ball around for a while.” He tried to smile again. ...

MASON DARROW- crazy, sometimes seemingly vain and bewildered by the world around him, he is the steady center who holds his best friends together. ADDISON CROMPTLEY and THOMAS DWYER- Mason’s best friends since childhood. They all attend Saint Vitus Men’s College Preparatory High School LINCOLN BALLIOL- their schoolmate and heir to the Balliol fortune. He has the heart of a lion; he just hasn’t learned to prove it until now. SULLIVAN REARDON- his best friend, a poet, a writer… a...

NONE OF IT MADE ANY SENSE. Afterwards it was difficult to connect it to anything else. For a very long time it was hard to say if it happened in the morning or the afternoon. In Matt Mercurio’s mind it was night and the whole sky was black except for a blood red sun. It happened in the late morning. First lunch period. They were laughing and showing off new clothes, swapping stories after winter break. Hardesty and Chris Powers had broken off into a wrestling match and Dick Rathko was talkin...

“Oh, good, they get on my nerves. I’m sorry Sid,” Keisha said. “They’re too white for me. I feel like I should be eating cornflakes and mopping the floor in pearls and high heels like Donna Reed.” “I don’t think you’ve ever mopped a floor,” Sidney told her. “in or out of heels.” Keisha cocked her head to think about this, and then said, “No, I think you’re right. I tried once. But the soap was actually floor wax. That was a disaster.” “Sit down, Mom,” Mason dragged his mother to the cou...

“From what the report says,” Mark told him, “he wasn’t crying out that much, and Rick, if their parents couldn’t even tell, how could you?” “I could have. I could—” Rick looked for something he could have done. “Well, you heard what Kerch said about Jedd. What if it was lots of students saying that day after day? I could have stopped that. That could have led up to what he and that girl did.” “Laura Wyler was weird too,” Sully said. They all looked at him. “She was,” Sully said. “Yo...

“HOW ABOUT YOU GET OUT of my way, Riley!” Matt Mercurio snapped, coming down the senior steps of Saint Vitus and slamming into the boy. “Dude, are you even a senior?” Mercurio demanded. “I’m talking to your pimply face, are you?” Mason Darrow was in the main hall of the school and he didn’t hear anything, but he saw. He saw Matt Mercurio being a bully, as he was to people he could bully, and he saw some other football players, all lounging on the stoops or the sides of the senior porch,...

There was a knock at the door, and Rick looked up from the homework he was grading. People didn’t come to visit. The knocking was more insistent and Rick looked around the house realizing it wasn’t anywhere near close to clean. He sighed, resigned, and got up to answer the door. “Rick, I have to talk to you,” Mark barged into the house. Rick stared at him, a riot of emotions, most of them unhappy, running through him. Mark stopped, looked around and said, “This place is a mess. It c...

Saint Patrick’s was crowded for High Mass, but everyone was more or less in their usual seats so it wasn’t hard to find Joel. Seth, of course, was not there. Mark was pretty sure Seth didn’t even believe in God. When Mass began Mark tried to pay attention, tried to be reverent, tried to lose himself in the service. He’d always been serious about church even if, in his own mind, he wasn’t the greatest Catholic. And he needed to be serious right now. He needed to pray. But even when he prayed...