All he wanted was Seth’s battered denim couch.

  And air-conditioning.

  And his boy’s dreamy smile.

  “I’ll deal,” he said with a shrug. “What’re they gonna do? Shoulder me to death?”

  The guy already had the phone up to his ear, and he shook his head now, even as one of Castor’s goons let out a cackle. But Kelly, he had home on his mind.

  He squared his shoulders, because he was nobody’s bait, and started outside.

  Under the Yellow Moon

  SETH WATCHED the door close behind Kelly and wished like anything he could go with him.

  He didn’t want to be there, arguing with his dad anymore.

  “Dad—”

  But his dad wasn’t standing with his hands on hips, angry like he had been. He was looking at the door instead, his hand on the back of his neck like he had a headache.

  “Dad?”

  “Seth, you can’t stay here for Kelly.”

  Seth swallowed, feeling betrayed. He thought his dad would…. Never mind. “You don’t understand about Kelly!” he cried out. “I thought I’d have until June!”

  “You have until next week!” his dad reiterated. “The bus leaves next week, and I promised them I’d get you on it. You get on that bus and start the tour, and end up in Bridgford and a whole new life.”

  “I don’t want a new life!” Seth hated the thought. “I like it here. I like it with you.” And with Kelly. The words hung between them, unsaid, unheard.

  He thought.

  His father sighed and dropped into the kitchen chair. “Seth. Son. Hear me out. All the way. This is important, because I want you to know. I do understand about Kelly. Do you think I haven’t been there? I had college offered to me on a platter, and I chose your mother instead. And I don’t regret that decision. I don’t.”

  Seth was going to say, “Then why are we having this fight!” but then it hit him.

  Sunk in.

  His father was comparing Kelly to Seth’s mother.

  Oh.

  “Then why…?” He couldn’t say it, he was so stunned.

  “I’m not asking you to make that decision, son.” Craig looked up and smiled at him, the soft smile that Seth remembered from when his dad got back from rehab. From those moments getting ice cream. From birthdays, when his father surprised him with something important and music related. From the times he brought takeout and sat in his recliner while Seth and Kelly sprawled on the couch and they all watched TV together.

  The smile that said his father loved him.

  Seth’s breath caught.

  There was something important going on here.

  “I’m not asking you to choose,” Dad said again, softly. “There’s iPhones and texting and emails and Skype. There’s me going down to visit you and bringing Kelly with me. There’s you coming home for holidays and you and Kelly having time to yourselves. I love you, Seth. If Kelly’s the person you want, I don’t want to take him away from you. But I want you to have the world too. Is that so bad? This is a way for you to have the world at your feet, son. If you want to take Kelly on that ride with you, I’m fine with that. I’ll help.” He swallowed, his eyes growing red-rimmed. “I’d be proud to help you become the man you’re growing into. Every minute you let me be your dad is a blessing I don’t deserve. So think about it right now, and ask yourself. Can you do it with my help? If you know you’re not leaving him for good? If you know you have support—at least my support—here at home? Is that something you think you can do?”

  Seth stared at his father, his mouth open, trying to find something, anything to say.

  What came out was stupid and obvious and painful.

  “How did you know?”

  Seth’s dad let out a strangled half laugh and gestured to the plain brown curtains that came with the apartment and mostly sat there and gathered dust unless he or his dad remembered the vacuum attachment on odd cleaning days. They were open about two inches, because the pulley was broken and blocked, and they never seemed to shut on their own.

  “Do you guys think you’re invisible? Like, you tried to pull the curtains so I can’t see what you’re doing?”

  Seth stared at the gap in the curtains in horror. “Uh… uh… I mean… uh….”

  His father laughed softly. “You were young. And in love. I’m right? In love?”

  Seth swallowed and nodded. “You saw the right thing if you saw that,” he said.

  His father’s smile… gah! Seth would remember it forever. “Well, it was obvious, even if I didn’t get the X-rated version,” he said. “You two—the way you look at each other.” He grinned then, like he was inviting Seth in on a joke. “It was so sweet, I totally needed insulin. You guys are like buttercream frosting. It’s gross.”

  Seth laughed, embarrassed, and sank down on the arm of the couch, relief pulsing out his body.

  “So gross,” he agreed, remembering when Matty had used that word, and it wasn’t funny at all. But this was his father, and his father had just given him… well, everything.

  His father had told him it was okay.

  That he was loved.

  And that his father loved Kelly too.

  “What if…?” Seth swallowed, and listened for the sound of Kelly’s footsteps up the stairs. Shouldn’t he be back by now? “What if Kelly and I… I mean, what if we don’t make it?”

  His dad stood and ventured toward him, arms out a little. Seth nodded, and Craig Arnold stepped into his space and held him, tight, like he had when Seth had been a little kid and his father had been safety and kindness and all the things they’d lost but found again.

  “I can’t say it’ll last for sure,” Dad whispered. “But I can do what I can to help you guys, okay? I know Kelly’s been nagging you to do this too. Imagine how badly he wants an opportunity like this. He loves art more than anything, Seth. Except you. You’ll hurt him if you don’t take this chance. He knows it. I know it. Please. Sleep on it. Talk to him when he gets back….”

  They both pulled apart.

  “Shouldn’t he be back already?”

  Seth nodded, and worry slammed down on him like a jackhammer. “Want to walk to the store? We can just sort of… make sure he’s okay.”

  Dad nodded, and they both grabbed their phones and keys and went off into the night.

  They walked quickly, avoiding the vacant field for the same reasons Seth and Kelly avoided it in the daytime. Yuck! By the time they’d gotten to the gas station, they were jogging.

  Seth saw it first—a bag full of sodas, lying by one of the gas pumps. There was a quart of ice cream in it, vanilla, lying on its side and melting onto the pavement, and a two-liter plastic bottle of root beer rolling fitfully nearby.

  And a bag of ice, halfway to water, on the pavement right next to the pump.

  “Oh God,” Seth whispered. “Kelly. Dad?”

  Dad already had his phone out and was calling Kelly’s parents. Seth ran into the gas station, where a grizzled guy with a lot of tattoos was looking outside in alarm.

  “Did you see him?” Seth asked. “Kid my age? Straight hair, bangs? Big brown eyes?”

  The guy nodded. “Sweet smile? Yeah. I called the cops about ten minutes ago. He walked outside and that group of hooligans, they just surrounded him. I said it looked like assault, and then they just grabbed him and disappeared. The kid was hollering for help and the damned cops haven’t gotten here, and—”

  “Kelly Cruz,” Seth told him, crying, not caring. “Tell the cops his name is Kelly Cruz and he’s a good boy and—oh God!”

  “Seth!” his father was calling him as he ran, but Seth couldn’t think about that now, because Kelly, his Kelly, with the laughing brown eyes and the dimples in the corners of his cheeks, who could talk about blowjobs while he was drawing a picture of their friend that looked like an angel—he was out there… in the night. By the shitty vacant field with the terrible things that Seth didn’t want touching his skin.

  Seth ran straight to the vacant stores, and it wasn’t that he didn’t hear the ruckus inside—it was that he didn’t care.

  “The cops are coming! The cops are coming!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, not caring if it was true or not, just caring that whatever was going on stopped. He crashed through the boarded-up front door, surprised when it opened without a problem, and arrived just in time to watch the last of the gang disappear out the back door of the empty, vacant 7-Eleven.

  “Kelly!” he called, his eyes adjusting to the total darkness. He pulled out his phone and fumbled, not finding the flashlight function because his fingers were shaking too hard. Instead he just used the light from it to look around, and that’s how he saw him.

  Lying on a filthy mattress in the corner, on his side. His pants down around his ankles. Blood on his backside. His face buried in the piss-sodden flocking spilling from the split seams while he sobbed.

  “Oh… oh God. Baby.”

  Seth crouched down next to him, ignoring the filth, the smell of pee, the smell of shit.

  “Go away,” Kelly rasped, and Seth was crying too hard to take exception.

  He wouldn’t want Kelly to see him like this either, but he couldn’t leave.

  “Baby,” he said instead, sinking to his knees. “C’mere.”

  “Don’t let them see,” Kelly begged. “My mommy and daddy… don’t let them see….”

  His voice rasped weakly, broken, and Seth would see the choke marks against his skin in his nightmares for years.

  But he couldn’t see them now.

  He could just see his bright, beautiful boy, still alive. Still breathing. Bruised and broken, but still good.

  “C’mere,” Seth whispered again, pulling him into his arms.

  “Don’t go nowhere just yet,” Kelly said. “Next week, okay? But not now.”

  And Seth broke down and sobbed, holding his boy in his arms, not escaping, not going anywhere else but here, because he’d never forgive himself if he left Kelly now.

  SETH DIDN’T remember the call to his dad, but it must have been pretty bad, because there were ambulances and fire trucks and cop cars pulling up by the time his father crashed through the door to the vacant store, Xavier Cruz at his heels.

  Seth had pulled up Kelly’s pants by then, because Kelly had begged him to.

  “Don’t want them to see,” he rasped. “Can’t see. Dirty.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” Seth told him. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You’re not dirty.”

  “Don’t touch me. Dirty.”

  But Seth ignored him, settling Kelly into his arms, cradling him like he used to cradle Agnes when she was too tiny to even smile.

  Their fathers burst through the door, and Seth just held him tighter and cried.

  Xavier squatted by them. “Oh, mijo. My boy. What did they do to you?”

  “Daddy….” Kelly’s voice broke, and Seth was crying so hard by then he didn’t remember anything else until the ambulance got there and they pried Kelly out of his arms. Seth tried to get in the back of the ambulance, but his own father stopped him.

  “We’ll go in the morning,” his dad said, looking at Xavier, who was sitting by his son. “We’ll be there in the morning,” he said more clearly. “Call us if you need anything.”

  Xavier nodded, looking wrecked and hurt. “Tell Linda,” he said. “Tell Linda—I’ll call her when we know.”

  “Why not tonight?” Seth asked, his voice cracking. “Dad, why can’t I go? Why not tonight?”

  His father grunted. “Because the police want to talk to you first.”

  Seth didn’t remember much about that. Far away, there was an ocean. He’d never been to the ocean, but he liked to dream about it. There was a violin playing such music, it could only mean salt air and the crashing of waves and heartbreak and struggle and triumph and joy.

  Seth went there in his mind, listened to that music, and let his mouth move on its own.

  HE WOKE up early the next morning, disoriented, only to realize that he’d fallen asleep next to his dad, on top of the covers of his dad’s bed. His dad had managed to get him out of his wretched clothes and into a clean pair of sleep pants, and after that….

  Seth remembered holding on to his father, as if holding on to the mast of a ship in a storm, and sobbing until he couldn’t breathe.

  Sometime in the middle of that, his dad’s phone buzzed. “It’s Linda. Xavier says Kelly’s going to be okay, and we can visit in the morning.”

  It was probably the only thing that let him sleep at all.

  He’d managed to get up and pee and brush his teeth when Linda banged on the door.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, as frazzled as he’d ever seen her. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Agnes is sick—summer cold. She was whining for soda last night, and that’s what Kelly was going to the store for and….” She took a deep breath. “I can’t take her to the hospital like this. I can’t. She’ll pick up every bug known to man, and then she’ll be in the hospital, and Kelly will be, and—”

  Seth’s dad came out of the bedroom wearing his jeans over his boxer shorts, his powerful chest bare. “Linda?” he mumbled, scrubbing at his dark blond hair. “What do you need from us?”

  She almost started to cry. “I’ll take Seth, Craig, but could you stay with Agnes? She’s upstairs, asleep, and her fever just broke, and….” She wiped the back of her hand under her eyes, and Seth realized it was the first time he’d ever seen her without makeup. “I just want to see my son, but if you can’t help, I have to stay here!”

  “Yeah, of course. I’ll be up in ten. Seth’ll be waiting by the car. Don’t worry about it. We can help.”

  She swallowed hard and wiped her eyes again. “You two…. Seth, did you really scare off the people attacking Kelly? Javi said you saved his life and—”

  “I told them the cops were coming,” Seth said, staring at her. “I was lucky. They could have turned on me.”

  “Oh God.” Seth’s dad had turned the color of old mashed potatoes. “Seth? Oh my God!”

  “They were hurting him,” Seth said, not seeing the problem.

  “Of course,” his dad whispered. “Of course you’d see it that way.” He seemed to gather himself. “Linda, I’ll be up in ten. Uhm, maybe you and I, after Kelly’s feeling better, we can have a conversation, you know?”

  The smile that twisted Linda Cruz’s mouth was both comforting because it was familiar, and frightening, because it was out of place. “I think it’s long overdue,” she said, giving Seth the kind of glance she saved for Kelly when he’d shirked his chores. Again, familiar, but not frightening.

  But Seth didn’t care either way.

  “Can we stop at a store?” he asked plaintively. “Like Target? I want to get him something. While he’s in the hospital. I’ve got money saved. Is that okay?”

  Linda hugged him.

  No words, and no warning either. Just a solid, hard Mom hug when he seemed to need it most.

  “Yeah,” she said, voice broken again. “Of course.”

  And then she was gone, leaving Seth and his dad to get ready.

  THE DRIVE to the hospital was made awkward only by Matty, who got mad because Seth was in the front, and because they had to stop, and apparently because Seth and Kelly had been kissing in the woods and Matty had been sitting on that information for a month and a half and something like that made a guy mean.

  “Awesome,” Matty sneered. “Another stuffed animal. That blue one he’s got is falling apart. He’s fifteen years old, and you’re gonna keep him a baby, man—great. My brother can be street bait for the rest of his life!”

  Seth ignored him, far away on an alien beach, until Linda spoke up.

  “Seth is bringing him a gift, Matty. If he likes the gift, that’s okay with me. Lay off. What happened to you two? You used to be friends.”

  “Seth knows what he did,” Matty snarled. “It’s his fault this happened. Once word hit the street, everybody knew my brother would bend over for anyone!”

  Seth had to hold on to the praise Jesus bar then, because Linda cut across three lanes of traffic to screech to a halt in the parking lot of a Black Bear Diner.

  “Matty! Not another word—”

  “How did he know?” Seth asked, from the part of him still there. “How would word get out? How would anybody connected to Castor Durant’s gang know anything about Kelly?”

  “Because you two don’t make no secret about being fucking faggots!” Matty snarled. “Everybody fucking knows—”

  “Matty, get out!” Linda ordered, and Seth closed his mouth so fast, he almost bit his tongue.

  “Mom?” Matty was shocked. Shocked and hurt, and Seth wasn’t sorry at all.

  “Your sisters are in the back of the car, and you can’t use either one of those F words here. Not about your brother. Not about Seth. Not about anybody. You shut up, or you be nice about it, or you get out of my fucking car!” She finished off on a shriek, and Seth looked back and saw Matty huddled against the back of his seat.

  “I don’t know the neighborhood, Mommy,” he said humbly. “I don’t even know how to get home.”

  Seth did. Seth knew you took the 29 to midtown, and then took the 8 to the fourplexes off of Carro. But he wouldn’t tell Matty that. Not now.

  Matty had pretty much sicced Castor Durant on him and Kelly.

  Matty, screaming terrible shit in the back of the car, had turned his brother over to the wolves.

  In spite of everything that had happened, until that moment right there, Seth had thought they were still friends.

  But now he knew. Now that he knew how much Matty hated them, he realized that part of their lives was over.

  “Then you know how to stay in the car,” Linda finished, and Seth, snapped back to the here and now, saw her hands shake.

  Kelly’s mother was not okay.

  Matty had betrayed them, and Kelly’s mother was not okay.

  Seth had to live with that information. He had to close his eyes and live with it, counting the seconds until he could see Kelly.