“Dude,” Jem whispered.Then, into the phone, he murmured, “Yeah, just upset.”
Tean found himself in the kitchen, gripping the edge of the counter so tightly it bit into the heels of his hands.
“Right,” Jem said.“What do you want to do about school?”
“I’m transferring schools,” Daniel said.“They have schools up here.”
Jem sent Tean a pleading look.
Forcing himself to let go of the counter, Tean said, “Daniel, do you want something to eat?”
“No,” Daniel said.His eyes were still fixed on Jem.
Jem mimed a kick at him.
A hint of color came into Daniel’s face, and he muttered, “No, thank you.”
“Okay,” Jem said.“Let me talk to him, and I’ll call you back.”
As soon as Jem put down the phone, Daniel said, “I’m old enough—”
“Hey,” Jem said.
“—to decide who I’m going to be and how I’m going to live, and I’m not going to let that—that homophobic asshole—” His voice rose into a shout that was, improbably, directed at the phone.“—tell me what I can and can’t do.”
“Okay,” Jem said.“So—”
“I don’t have to live there if I don’t want to.They already fucked me up.I don’t have to go back and put up with more of that.”
“Look, buddy—”
“All they care about is what other people think.That’s all that matters to them.What their friends think.What people at church think.They talk about how they love me and how they want me to be happy, but what they really want is for me to be like everyone else, and if I’m not, then there’s always a reason why what I want is stupid or bad or wrong.”
“Daniel,” Jem said.“I’m trying to—”
“Did he say I had to go back?Because you can’t make me.I can stay with friends.If you take me back, I’ll hitchhike—”
“Hey!Boner!”In the wake of the shout, the house was silent.Jem got to his feet.“Just shut up for five seconds, okay?He didn’t say you had to go back.Your parents are upset.Obviously.You ran away, dumbass.You scared the hell out of them.”Jem’s tone shifted to something between disbelief and approval.“And you stole their car.”
For the first time since he’d arrived, Daniel seemed to register disbelief.Then he started to cry again.
Jem rubbed the boy’s head for a moment.He shot Tean another look.Tean filled a glass with water and brought it over to the couch.Scipio—always so thoughtful—squirmed around enough for Tean to sit down, probably because he thought Tean might want to pet him too.Tean pressed the glass into Daniel’s hand, and Daniel managed one sip, and then another.The tears stopped.He dried his face with a handful of tissues.
“All right,” Jem said.“What’s going on?”
“He’s an asshole,” Daniel said thickly.“He’s repressed.He’s so fucking screwed up.And he’s a huge homophobe.”When neither Jem nor Tean took the bait, though, he wrenched another handful of tissues out of the box and mopped at his eyes again.“I was just trying this new eyeliner that Skye gave me, and my door wasclosed—” The word got extra emphasis to convey his outrage.“—and he walked in on me and lost his shit.”
After about two seconds, Jem said, “And?”
Apparently Tean and Jem hadn’t grasped the full extent of the outrage because Daniel levered himself upright and stared at them with a look—Tean was beginning to suspect—Ammon and Lucy had seen before.“It’smyroom.He can’t just walk in whenever he wants.I’m an adult.I deserve privacy.”
“Daniel, it’s not that simple,” Tean began.
But Jem made a buzzer noise and said, “What else?”
The shape of Daniel’s mouth suggested disbelief and, most likely, evenmoreoutrage, but somehow he managed to say, “I told you: he lost his shit.He yelled at me.He issofucking homophobic—”
“Use that word again,” Jem said, “and I’m going to make you look it up in the dictionary.”To Tean, he said, “Wait, do we have a dictionary?”
