Page 61 of String Boys
“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.
Instead of joy at going to see him, all Seth wanted to do was cry.
That changed, though, when the Uber got him to the train station. Once the train pulled into the station, it wasn’t very far afterward—a five-dollar ride—and Seth was driving through the familiar tree-shaded parts of Sacramento he loved best. It was weird, he’d seen two other cities since he’d left, San Francisco and Oakland, and even though he lived in a sort of poor neighborhood in Sacramento, he’d never appreciated that there were trees everywhere until he saw the good neighborhoods in other places.
He really liked the trees, even if they crumpled the sidewalks sometimes with their roots.
There was a big tree root under the blacktop in the complex of fourplexes he and Kelly lived in—it was so big it felt like a speed bump as the car went over it, and Seth remembered watching Agnes go sprawling over it more than once when she was a baby. As Seth grabbed his instrument and his backpack and went walking up to the chipped stucco of his home, he had a thought that someday they’d have to rip that out and take down the tree. The thought made him sad. Everybody said you learned things and you got better as time went on, but sometimes you just had to rip shit down and start from the beginning.
He tipped the driver—a rather harried-looking girl who had talked about her college classes during the entire trip, making Seth so self-conscious about his free ride at Bridgford and a possible college afterward that he didn’t even want to talk to her—and then turned, wondering which door he should go through first. His dad’s car, a gracefully aging Cadillac that his mom had loved with all her heart, wasn’t in the carport, so he wasn’t home.
Seth realized he didn’t even have his key.
With a dry swallow, he pulled out his phone and texted Kelly.Where are you?
Watching TV at your dad’s place. Why?
Don’t be startled. I’m going to knock on the door.
He’d taken two steps when the door flew open and Kelly launched himself into his arms.
His eyes were all puffy and red and—oh! God!—he was even skinnier than Seth. Seth just gathered him close and held on, like soothing a wriggling puppy, except this puppy was wriggling with tears.
He wasn’t sure how long they stood there, but before he could even think of what to do next, Kelly was tugging him to the open door of his apartment.
“Inside,” he said. “C’mon. Before my brother sees you. Or the neighbors.”
It dawned on Seth that the thing he’d gone running from in the first place hadn’t gone away. He allowed himself to be hustled into his apartment, which looked exactly the same as it had when he left.
Seth took in the curtains, which were still open with the two-inch gap in between, and grimaced.
You’d think that, at least, would change, right?
With a sigh he walked over and shortened the gap by hand, and Kelly snorted.
“You think so?” he asked skeptically, and it took Seth a minute to figure out what he meant by that.
“No!” He turned and opened his arms, and Kelly stepped in again. “No. That’s not why I came here. I just….” He half laughed. “Did you know my dad saw us?”
