I miss you.

  I mean, I wasn’t sure whether to tell you or not. But then I thought, I hope you are missing the SHIT out of me, so I figured it would be better to say it and get it out of the way.

  You were right. I came over to your place last night for Soccer Wednesday, and your dad and I sat on the couch and watched detective shows. I know this is stupid, but I sort of like detective shows. All you do is turn off the part of your brain that worries about today or tomorrow and turn on the part that wonders who did it. I never figure it out, but your dad is pretty good at it. I came downstairs again tonight, and he got home with a bag full of electronics.

  On the one hand, I feel bad—I just sucked up a bunch of his money. But he said he doesn’t have to feed you anymore and shrugged like that wasn’t hard on him at all when I know it is. So I figure it’s a tradeoff. I sit and watch detective shows with him, and he gives me a way to talk to you.

  Except it’s better than that, because we both like the thing we’re doing for the other person, right?

  I’m fine.

  I thought you’d want to know.

  I mean, my body’s still banged up, and there’s nightmares. I keep waking up thinking I can smell that place. And my temper is, like, short. Like, shorter than recess when we were little kids. Like, I’ll rip the face off of anyone in my grill, short—and part of that is because I’m still banged up and because pooping is still a world-class event and you don’t get a gold medal in it, you just get a reminder that somebody got to touch you some way you didn’t want them to.

  And that sucks.

  Lulu tried to give me a hug from behind today, and I screamed bloody murder, and she cried. Then I had to hug her and sit with her for an hour and I felt like shit.

  Okay. So that sucks too.

  But I got your key chain and your card and the stuffed flamingo. Why a flamingo? I don’t care. I loved it. And I want to say partly… don’t keep buying me things, but I love them so much. I guess I’m still a little kid. Presents, man. They do it for me.

  Anyway, you can send me emails again, and don’t forget to text and shit. I’m on your dad’s data plan. He says it’s unlimited, and you know something?

  Your dad bought me a phone so I could talk to his son, my boyfriend.

  I’m still wrapping my head around that.

  I need to tell my folks. I mean, they know. They figured shit out. They keep telling Matty to shut up, and Matty deleted all your emails and got suspended from the computer. Mom made him stay after school in the computer lab to work on his finals.

  I can’t even gloat, man.

  I don’t know what the hell happened to my brother, but that’s not even him anymore.

  By the way, tell Amara to text me at the new number too. I didn’t realize how much I’d miss her until she was gone. I mean, I won’t even notice Jimmy Durreson is gone for summer vacation, but I think you, me, and Amara need to watch scary movies on the computer and text together, you know?

  Somebody told me they did that.

  I’m hoping it helps me get over being scared.

  I keep remembering all you did to keep me safe, mijo. And when I try to feel better, feel safer, I just get scared for you.

  So text me asap.

  Email me when you can.

  Your dad says you’re traveling around a lot right now on the big bus, and he’s worried because your clothes were old and your shoes were old, and he didn’t have a chance to set up a bank account for you, so he’s doing all of that.

  And I keep thinking it’s a good thing you have him to worry about all of that, because you probably haven’t noticed your toes hanging out of your shoes and your shirt rotting off your neck and the shorts that your waist is too small for and your legs are too long for.

  I notice those things.

  They make up my dreamy boy, right there.

  But your dad’s right.

  You still need to dress better.

  Nobody needs to know you’re my dreamy boy but me.

  I love you. That didn’t change. I mean, the whole world flopped on its head and died like that fish my dad caught camping, but the loving you didn’t change even a little.

  Isn’t that weird?

  Yeah, that’s weird.

  But it’s true.

  So know that all those moments we had that were quiet and perfect, even though you’re in a whole other place, those things are still in my heart.

  I’ll try not to freak out so much when Lulu startles me. I’m afraid I’m gonna turn around and backhand Agnes if she does the same jumping thing, and that would feel awful.

  Take care of my dreamy boy.

  Kelly

  Long Beginnings

  SETH STARED at his laptop as he sat in his college dorm, his heart pounding in his chest.

  Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God…. Kelly wrote him.

  And Matty had deleted his emails, like Seth’s dad had texted the night before.

  And Kelly was getting better—but not all fine like he said. And he hurt, but he was trying. And he was spending time with Seth’s dad. And he missed Amara—Seth pulled out his phone and patiently sent Kelly’s new contact info to Amara before he could forget.

  She’d asked him about Kelly, and then she’d asked him about the bruises on his throat, and then she’d stopped asking when he’d just looked at her helplessly before disappearing into his head.

  Amara really was smart.

  The day he bought the flamingo, he hadn’t had enough allowance to eat. They were rehearsing at a college campus, doing a special workshop for the new students of Bridgford, which paired them up with a senior in the music program at a prominent UC. They rehearsed together, played together, performed together, and the idea probably went, the incoming student would be inspired and reassured—oh, hey, this person got through school, they could too!

  But Seth’s “buddy” was a super-competitive blonde girl who seemed constantly irritated that Seth knew his material so well.

  So when it was lunchtime, she went to go bitch to her friends and her teacher, probably, and Seth ate lunch with Amara, so grateful that she was on this trip too that he could almost cry.

  Even more so because he had no money for lunch. He’d already spent his allowance on the key chain and the cards and the flamingo and the mailers. This was day four since he’d left home, and they were fed one meal a day while on the trip.

  He’d have to wait for dinner, and while that didn’t usually bother him—Kelly and Matty had kept him fed through his first three years of high school anyway—it was apparently pissing Amara the hell off.

  “Why aren’t you eating?” she whispered, looking sideways at her own buddy. Apparently they made college-aged flutists insanely hot here, and Seth’s heart had hurt a little for his friend, who got awkward around cute guys in the worst way.

  “Not hungry,” he lied, and she handed him an apple off her plate.

  He bit into it ravenously and then smiled like he hadn’t been that easy to catch.

  “Try again,” she muttered. “The truth this time.”

  “You are not my mother,” he said through a full mouth, and she gave him a look that Kelly’s mother would have been proud of. “Fine. I have no money. Happy?”

  She frowned. “Your dad gave you money before you got on the bus. I saw that. Did you lose it?”

  He shrugged. “Spent it.”

  “Don’t make me come over there and beat you,” she said with a perfectly straight face.

  But she was trying, so he gave in. “I bought Kelly some stuff. He’s… he got hurt. And he needed something reassuring. Because, you know, I left before he got out of the hospital.”

  She stared at him and handed him her pudding without blinking. “Four days? It took you four days to bring this up? No wonder you were out to lunch. Oh my God, Seth. That must have sucked. Did you get hurt in the same fight?”

  “No,” Seth said.

  She waited for him to say something else, cocking her head.

  He smiled back, faraway. “Can I use your spoon?”

  She handed him the spoon and waited some more. “I ignored it when you got on the bus,” she said.

  “I appreciate that.”

  “I was grateful because I wanted a friend.”

  “I appreciate that too.”

  “You left your boyfriend in the hospital and looked like you should have been with him.”

  Seth thought of Kelly, the way he’d been brutalized in that dank shithole of a room, and something must have shown on his face.

  “He was hurt worse,” she said softly.

  “Way worse,” Seth told her. “But he’ll be okay. He should be home by now. I just….” He grimaced. “I wanted him to know I love him.”

  “I don’t think he could doubt that, even for a minute.”

  “Amara, I left. My mom left when I was five years old. She died in a car accident that I’m pretty sure wasn’t her idea, but my dad and I were pissed at her for the next four years. Because even if it’s not their fault, you still get mad that they’re gone.”

  Amara looked at her plate disconsolately. She’d eaten her sandwich and given Seth her fruit and her dessert, and she was eyeballing her chips, he could tell.

  He reached out and put her hand on her chips. “I’ll save some bread at dinner for tomorrow,” he told her, untroubled. “It was worth it.”

  She shook her head. “I’ll buy you lunch tomorrow, you dingus. And for the rest of the week. And if you ask me nice and don’t be too much of a moron, I can show you how to buy stuffed animals for way cheaper at the campus store. Wait until your dad sets up your bank account and card. You’ll be able to eat and spoil Kelly, I swear.”

  Seth smiled at her then, as bright as he’d been able to summon since Kelly had disappeared. Oh God. Had it really been a week ago?

  “Thanks,” he said softly. He peeled the lid off the pudding and began to eat. Yeah. He’d been hungry. He could admit it now.

  So getting back to his dorm room to “rest,” as the counselors called it, had been his chance to check his laptop and see if maybe, maybe this time, Kelly had been able to answer.

  Getting Kelly’s email had been even better than the apple and the pudding.

  It had fed his soul.

  And he couldn’t wait to send an email back.

  Heya, Kelly.

  I hated leaving you. I need you to take a selfie if you can, so I can imagine you in my dad’s apartment and not in the hospital.

  That would be good.

  I’m not sure if I told you, but we’re doing an internship this summer before we start actual school at Bridgford. It’s like permanent summer camp for band nerds.

  I’m supposed to be partnered with someone who can teach me, but after lunch, the teacher pulled me aside and said I was the best violinist here and then gave me a bunch of first-chair work to practice instead of the second chair I’d learned all semester.

  I wish they’d find someone who wasn’t here during the summer to play first chair, because this shit is really hard, and I only had the practice room for an hour today.

  I wish you were in the practice room listening to me play.

  Anyway, I’m glad you got the presents. I’ll probably only be able to send you cards for a little while, but you deserve presents every day.

  Maybe have your little sisters warn you. Tell them it has to be a Kelly rule now. They have to say they’re there.

  You can write me anytime about healing. And about being scared. And about what it takes to feel better.

  I won’t tell anyone.

  And I’ll try to remember to tell you about my day.

  Amara gave me lunch today. Even her pudding. She was sorry you were hurt too, but I didn’t tell her how bad.

  That’s private. And yours.

  Anyway, it’s embarrassing how long this letter took me. I’m going to take pictures of my dorm room and the campus now so I can text them to you.

  That way you won’t feel cheated.

  I love you

  Get better.

  Seth

  KELLY RESPONDED the next day. And the next. And the next. It became a rhythm. Wake up and text Kelly. Lunchtime, check his phone. Right after class, check his email. If Kelly hadn’t written him back, he’d write him something anyway.

  It got Seth through the summer, and a performance in which he knew there would be no friendly faces in the theater because his dad was working overtime, and Kelly…. Kelly didn’t say anything, but Seth hadn’t seen a lot of pictures outside his apartment.

  He’d asked Kelly for pictures of his art, but Kelly had replied Nothing good to draw. It’s all horror movies here.

  And Seth hadn’t known what to do about that.

  He had his own horror movies. He understood. But he needed Kelly to not be living there anymore, and he wasn’t sure what to do from a hundred miles away.

  His hands started to shake every time he checked the email, because he wasn’t sure what minefield of Kelly’s pain would be laid out in an email for Seth to stumble through.

  He wasn’t sure what made him break. But in early September, something about Kelly’s last email did the trick.

  Dear Seth—

  So I watched that video you sent me a thousand times. Your performance was amazing, and I know you told me that the music was really hard and you didn’t have any time to learn it, but that’s not what I heard. I heard you make God cry with your violin, and I was so proud of you.

  I think it’s funny that you have to work so hard to find words for all your letters. I wonder what you hear in your head when you’re going about your day. I hear words, all the time, telling me what I have to do and how I have to act and how I can not be weird and how I can not choke the crap out of my stupid brother.

  And you hear emotions but no words. And all the emotions are in your instrument. I’m thinking you need to tape your practices more often, so it’s like I am there.

  I liked watching that freaky movie with you and Amara. With the little video windows, I could watch you jump when you got scared, even though you were really quiet about it. I might have missed that little jump if we were together, unless we were touching.

  I forget that you have reasons to be startled too.

  Your dad came home sad again last night, and before he could turn on the TV, I texted my dad and suggested maybe a meeting. Lulu came down and watched our detective show with me while they were gone, and when our dads came back, your dad had ice cream.

  I stayed the night on the couch, and he told me in the morning that I could crash in your bed anytime I wanted to.

  I tell you, mijo, it was like I could smell you on the sheets.

  I miss your touch. I miss seeing you smile. I send you pictures and we Skype, but it’s not the same as having you hug me and make it all better.

  I was trying to tell the stupid rape counselor this the other day, and she got mad and said that I was supposed to be talking about my FEELINGS about being touched. And I told her that I WAS telling her about my feelings, because I WANTED to be touched.

  By you. I wanted your hug so bad, I cried.

  I can’t talk no more, mijo. Your dad is about to come home, and I know you’ve left the college and are trying to settle into the new place now. And I’ll be honest—I just can’t. If I was your violin, I’d be making all the oceans cry today, and you don’t need that.

  I’ll write you again tomorrow, Seth.

  Today is just too hard.

  Kelly

  SETH STARED at his computer on a Friday afternoon and felt his heart thump in his throat. Kelly needed him.

  So he went to the one person he knew could help.

  “Sure,” Amara said, not even flinching when he went charging into her dorm room. The boys and girls were supposed to be off-limits from each other, but everybody knew they were besties and Seth didn’t try to grope or leer. He just came in to talk, so they treated him like a pet. Nobody cared if your dog saw you take your bra off under your T-shirt. He didn’t either.

  “Sure what?” Seth asked, almost frantic.

  “Well, it’s Friday,” she said. “How much money do you have in your account?”

  He grimaced. “I’ve been trying to save,” he said, because he knew where this was going. “I don’t have enough for a train ticket—”

  “That’s no problem,” she said, looking at her computer. “Remember, I get a decent allowance. I got you a ticket from the nearby Amtrak in two hours. If you can get an Uber there, when should I get you a return trip?”

  Seth thought about it, thought about the risk of someone finding out he was there. Thought about getting there late Friday night and coming back late Sunday. “Sunday night,” he said promptly. “Last train running. I’ll be on it.”

  “We have curfew,” she argued. “I’ll get you back Sunday afternoon. Dammit, Seth, you can’t get yourself kicked out by going home.”

  “He needs me,” Seth said simply. “I don’t have words. If I had words, I could write him a symphony in email and text him all the best things. But I don’t have words. He needs me.”

  She sighed and tilted her head back. “Three o’clock train. It will get you here at six. Curfew’s at eight. I want to hear everything, okay? You need to tell me why you’re so worried. But not now. So go pack.”

  What was there to pack? His violin and two changes of underwear? Seth looked at his backpack again and decided on jeans and some shirts. And his hoodie, the new one with the school’s logo.

  And then the car was there, pulling up through the long drive to the small private dorm, and he was in it. He tried to take pictures on his way out so he could show Kelly what his life looked like now.

  He’d never felt so ill-equipped, so inadequate, to be loved by somebody at that moment.

  Kelly needed him, and all he could manage was a weekend.