Sam doesn’t know how long he stood there, lost in watching Jake. But he knows that when Jake stopped dancing and opened his eyes to find Sam standing in front of him, he didn’t do any ofthe things Sam would have done in his shoes. Sam would have jumped, or screamed, or yelped, “Jesus Christ! How long have you been here?”
Jake only widened his eyes very slightly. He looked Sam over, assessing. Then he smiled, pulling his headphones down to hang around his neck.
“Well, hello,” Jake said. His voice was light, amused. There was sweat patching his shirt in a few places—why, exactly, did Sam find that so attractive? “I’m pretty sure you weren’t in here when I started.”
“Um,” Sam said, blinking up at him in amazement, looking for the words. “That was… You were… I mean, it wasincredible. Holy shit. Wow.” Then, his brain catching up to what Jake had actually said, he quickly added, “And no, you’re right, I wasn’t. Or, I mean, I was, but I was, uh.” He gestured up at the tech booth, feeling himself flush as he finished, “Probably would have been less creepy if I’d just stayed up there, right?”
“Oh, no, absolutely not.” Jake folded gracefully down to sit on the edge of the stage, his legs dangling into the orchestra pit. “Just staying up there would have beenwaycreepier. Much better to announce yourself.”
“In that case,” Sam said, with a sheepish little shrug. “Hi, and sorry to crash your breaking and entering with…well, with my breaking and entering. And, uh. I’m Sam?”
Jake laughed, shaking his head. “Jake. No worries on the B&E—we’re in a mutually assured destruction situation now, right? And I already know who you are. I’m, like, almost one hundred percent sure you’re my back-door neighbor. You’re on Park Lane, yes? Your family moved in this summer? The house with the big red roof?”
Sam stared at him, stunned. The idea that someone like Jake had the faintest idea that Sam existed, let alone where helived,was so novel that it took him a beat too long to say, “Yeah…yes. My parents call it the Red Roof Inn, actually.”
He regretted saying this immediately—there was nothing cool about quoting your parents’ jokes—but Jake laughed again. Then, his tone going low and amused, he said, “I thought so, but don’t worry. When I heard someone say the other day that you lived inside a secret speakeasy underneath the pizzeria, I didn’t breathe a word of the truth.”
Sam winced, putting a hand to the back of his neck. In only a month it had become second nature to lean into the rumors, to double down on any pushback he got with an even more outlandish fib. But from that very first conversation, part of Sam thrashed and kicked at the idea of lying to Jake.
Also, though Sam wouldn’t understand this until he was much older, it was kind of a relief the way Jake seemed to know from minute one that it was all so much bluster and nonsense. A squirming, uncomfortable sort of relief, maybe, but a relief all the same.
“Yeah, I feel kinda bad about that one,” he admitted. “For one thing, I’m sure people are making it weird for the staff at that pizza place. Do you know I’ve never even been there? We’ve only lived here a few months, and my parentsreallydon’t like takeout.”
This time when Jake laughed, it was more a snort of amused disbelief than anything. He hopped easily off the stage as he said, “Wow, man, our parents arenotthe same. But it’s fully insane that you haven’t been to Perry’s. A slice of their pepperoni with a root beer float is one of life’s greatest pleasures.” Glancing up at the tech booth, he added, “What were you doing up there, anyway?”
Sam made a face. “I have to learn how to use the light board before dress rehearsals start, because I told everyone on stagecrew that I learned how to use one running a bunch of raves with a guy named Carl T. Danger?—”
Jake wrinkled his nose. “God, really? Like in that episode ofTeen Terrors? And they believed that?”
“A little too well,” Sam said, with a guilty glance up at the booth. “I’m kind of afraid I’m going to end up ruining the fall musical.”
“That,” Jake said, grinning, “would honestly be very funny. If nothing else, we’d all get to watch Mr. Thornapple’s head pop off.” Mr. Thornapple was the high school’s drama teacher, and tales of his temper were so legendary that even Sam had heard a few of them. “Don’t worry, they haven’t even cast the thing yet, and once they do that there’ll be at least three weeks of fighting about the sets and the costumes and the blocking and the props. Also, if you stay here much longer, the night janitors’ shift will start, and they’ll catch you for sure. Come get a slice at Perry’s with me instead.”
“Oh,” Sam said, blinking. He hadn’t expected this, and wasn’t prepared. When he said, “Are you sure?” his voice was high and reedy, and he immediately wanted to sink down into the floor.
But instead of tightening into mockery, Jake’s expression warmed and softened. He closed the space between them to slap a hand on Sam’s back and started pushing him towards the door. “Dude, yes. Of course I’m sure. It’swrongthat you’ve been living here for months without eating at Perry’s—in fact, it’s illegal. Refuse my offer at your own risk, but don’t come crying to me when the cops pull you out of class and force-feed you mozzarella sticks in front of a jury of your peers.”
“Oh, okay, I get it now,” Sam said, as Jake led him out into the sunshine. “Itlooksall shiny and expensive, but this is actually the school fromMatilda.”
Jake burst out laughing, and then started talking about how the students in the film should have staged a revolt roughlyforty minutes earlier than they did. “I mean, you have a moral obligation, don’t you think? To do something when your principal is holding assemblies to torture your classmates? And why don’t any of the parents care about their precious children being shoved into the tetanus closet? Seriously, somebody should have sued.”
They talked the whole walk to Jake’s little green Volkswagen, and then the whole drive to Perry’s Pizzeria, which was less a restaurant and more a quaint, plexiglass-windowed roadside shack. Jake pointed out a small sign on the back wall, which looked like it had been hand-painted by someone’s grandmother and did indeed read,perry’s pizzeria: a slice of our pepperoni with a root beer float is one of life’s greatest pleasures.
The pizzawasamazing, piping hot and oozing cheese over a paper-thin crust, the pepperoni perfectly spicy. It slowed the conversation for the handful of minutes it took them to demolish a whole pie between them, but Jake picked up the last dropped thread the minute he finished eating and they were off again, chatting back and forth the whole way home.
Sam wondered once or twice if it was a date, but he didn’t dare to ask. It couldn’t be one. Jake didn’t try to kiss him, or say anything suggestive at all. He didn’t even take Sam home; he instead drove them back to his own house, and showed Sam a spot behind the hedge at the back of the yard. To Sam’s amazement, there was a little retaining wall back there made of stacked cinder blocks, which could serve as either a step up or a makeshift seat. When Sam climbed over the fence, he found a similar setup behind the hedge on his side.
“No choice but to be friends, then, is there?” Jake said. “It’d be such a waste, otherwise. See you around, Sam.” Then he waved and walked back to his house, and Sam whistled to himself as he returned to his own, turning the word “friend” over and over in his mind.
THREE
NOW: MARCH
“Jake!” The word bursts out of Sam’s mouth, startled and pitched a few octaves higher than his normal speaking voice, in the same moment that Jake whispers, “Sam?”
They stare at each other, and, on top of everything, Sam suffers a moment of horrible gratitude for whoever wrote the stupid Kiss of Death review; he’s glad the deli is empty right now. He’s not sure what he’d do if he had to manage this with a fifteen-person line, hunched old Mr. Schecter somewhere at the back hollering that they better still have whitefish salad left when it’s his turn, even though they’ve never once not had a serving of whitefish set aside for him in thirty years. Pulling it had been the very first thing Deb had tasked him with when Sam started working here in his late teens, and after meeting the man only once, he’d understood why she’d described it as “critically important for my sanity and yours.”
Hell, Sam can’t be thinking about old Mr. Schecter right now; he needs tofocus. His mind is always doing this to him in the least convenient moments. He swallows, and squares his shoulders, reaches within the suddenly churning, writhing core of himself and grasps desperately for something to say.
