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The sudden image of a hummingbird came to mind and Thomas blinked as he glanced down at the phone number. It was the city’s area code but he didn’t recognize it. He had gotten this phone after Open Season and it was decided under the guidance of his therapist that he pick and choose what contacts to log rather than transfering all of them. “S-sorry,” he said, anxiety twisting his stomach. “Who is-”
“It’s Danny,” the peppy voice said immediately. “Danny Boyle? From the Garden’s Flowers?”
Thomas blinked. Now he understood why he thought of a hummingbird. The Garden’s Flowers was a “meet and greet” for the mentorship program that Thomas had been placed in as part of his probation. He’d been to four of them, but during the last one there had been a new boy, a strawberry blond jock who seemed determined to actually meet every single person. He had immediately liked Danny, even if Danny’s enthusiasm and closeness had alarmed him at first. Despite that rough start he had given the other teen his phone number when asked before the end of the night and felt guilty every time he turned down the invitations to join Danny and some of the other boys their age. He hadn’t heard from them in months though, long before-
“Oh, hey. Yeah, this is Thomas.”
“Hey,” Danny said, somehow managing to sound even more enthusiastic. “Uh, so listen! You know how O’Hare will foot the bill for milestones if you are part of the program?”
“Sure,” Thomas agreed, uneasily. He had been in the program when he had turned sixteen and eighteen. Three weeks before both birthdays, he had gotten an email claiming to be from the leader of the Clovers with offers to pay for whatever kind of party Thomas had wanted. Jake had told him to email back and say that he was okay and would be doing something private. His sixteenth birthday was when he had met Finnegan and— He shook his head to clear it. “What about it?”
“Well, my eighteenth birthday is tomorrow-”
“Happy early birthday,” Thomas said immediately, distracted when his eyes fell on the error in the code and he typed in the correction.
“Thanks,” Danny said, something shifting in his tone but it was right back to the peppiness as he continued. “Anyway- I wanted- I’m having a- Friday, um, I guess you would call it a sleepover, technically? But it’s gonna be in the penthouse in a hotel at the city center, and it’s really cool, and it has a giant TV, and we’ll have all sorts of gaming systems, and pizza, and snacks, and drinks and the awesome mall is just around the corner, and-”
“Breathe,” Thomas said automatically when he heard Danny’s voice starting to strain in the effort to keep going without pause.
Danny took a deep breath and laughed, a sound that made Thomas’s stomach twist in a weirdly good way. “Thanks. But yeah, it’s pretty much two nights of boys-only hanging out with no adults to tell us to go to bed.” He paused. “I mean technically, we’ll be the adults since O’Hare’s only rule is that I could only invite people who were eighteen or nineteen. But you know what I mean, right?”
“I do,” Thomas agreed, sitting back as the game ran the code and gave him the celebration screen of passing.
There was a pause.
“Soooo,” Danny said slowly. “Are you free?”
Thomas blinked, staring blankly at his screen. “Wait- you’re inviting me?”
Danny laughed again. “Yeah, dude! Why would I call you to tell you about it if I wasn’t inviting you to come?”
“I-I-” A wave of dizziness came over Thomas, his throat tightening. “I don’t- You actually want me there?”
“Yes, of cour-” Danny’s laugh cut off suddenly. “Wait,” he said slowly, suddenly confused. “Thomas, did you think we didn’t want you to come hang out with us before?”
Thomas swallowed, the desire to crawl under his desk and cry suddenly feeling like a completely rational decision.
“Oh man,” Danny said when Thomas didn’t manage to answer, his voice suddenly serious. “Oh, fuck. Thomas, I’m so sorry! If I’d known that- I would have called you directly before now to personally ask you to join us if I had known- No. No, I really want you to come! It’s going to be fun and I want you there!”
The tightness in Thomas’s throat loosened enough for him to speak. “You said Friday?”
“Yeah, this Friday,” Danny said. “I know it’s super short notice but… I want you there. Seriously. My brother and his friend Marcus are going to pick everyone up and get our stuff into the hotel while we hang out at the mall Friday around noon, then we’ll head up for pizza and video games in the evening and it’s pretty much hanging out until we check out on Sunday. …So?”
“Yeah, um,” Thomas said, his head still spinning. “G-give me a second. Let me just check with my aunts.”
“Sure, I’ll wait,” Danny agreed immediately.
Hands shaking as he muted the phone and removed the headphones, he got up from his chair. Acutely aware that his face was burning, he ran out of his room towards the kitchen where he had last seen his aunts together.
“Thomas O’Malley, what have I told you about running in the house,” Ceri demanded as he skidded into the room, looking over her shoulder from the sink. “We have- Tommy?”
“Are you alright, baby,” Jessi asked, drying her hands as she crossed the narrow space to reach for his forehead. “Your face is red.”
“I-I’m fine,” Thomas told them, pushing her hand down and feeling his face go even hotter. “Uh- Do you remember the guy I told you about last Spring? Danny?”
“The hummingbird,” Ceri asked, smirking. “Yes, we remember him.”
Thomas’s ears were now burning too. His shoulders scrunched up to them. “Well. Uh, he’s on the phone-” He did his best to ignore how both their faces lit up. “And he’s actually having a- he called it a sleepover? At a hotel for his birthday this week and he invited me to come along. He said they’re going to hang out at the mall at the city center then it’ll be at a penthouse until Sunday and-”
