“Exactly!” Thomas nods at me, like he’s surprised that he’s found someone who gets him. “Where’s Genevieve today?”
“Hanging with her other boyfriend,” I say.
“Aww. Is he nice?”
“He’s a bit of a tool, but he’s built like Thor so there’s not a whole lot I can do. Nah, she’s going on an art retreat in a couple of days and needs to go shopping for some craft tools and luggage. Tomorrow is her birthday and there’s all this extra pressure to make it seriously awesome since we won’t see each other for another three weeks afterwards.”
Man, three weeks without Genevieve. Fuck that in the face.
“You should paint her nude, Titanic-style,” Thomas suggests.
“I don’t think I could get anything done with breasts in my face. I’ll revisit that idea when I’m old and have seen enough of them.”
Back at the block, we get a game of manhunt going. Nolan volunteers as hunter and everyone breaks up. Thomas launches into a sprint one way while Brendan goes the other; I follow Thomas, not wanting to be found early like yesterday. Good thing too, because Thomas makes the rookie mistake of running through the lobby of Building 135—right past a security guard. Before the guard can chase us, I lead him to the staircase with a broken lock, and head up, fast. We stop off on the third floor, open the hallway window, and climb out onto the rooftop—where there’s an old generator and all the stuff we roofed.
From up here we can see the second court, the middle of three. There are dark brown picnic tables and the jungle gym where we used to play Don’t Touch Green. We see Fat-Dave running from the third court. He’s out of breath and gives up. Nolan tackles him and boom, man down.
Thomas isn’t even paying attention.
“Nice treasures,” he comments, crouching over to pick up a broken yo-yo. He tries spinning it, but the yo-yo detaches from the string and rolls into a headless Barbie. “So how long have you been dating Genevieve?”
“Over a year,” I say. I pick up an old GameCube controller, spinning the wire over my head like a lasso before throwing it back down on the pebbles. “I’m lucky it’s been that long. She didn’t hate me when I gave her reason to.”
“Did you cheat on her?” His tone becomes matter-of-fact. “When I started checking out other girls on the street, I knew I wasn’t completely into Sara anymore.”
“I didn’t cheat. My dad died. Well, he committed suicide and that put me in a bad place.” I don’t talk about this a lot. Sometimes, because I don’t want to; other times because my friends don’t like dragging death and grief into things.
“Sorry to hear that.” Thomas sits on the ground and stares at some empty bottles. Nothing fascinating there, but I’m guessing it’s less awkward than looking me in the eye. “I don’t get why you thought Genevieve would break up with you.”
“There’s more to it,” I say. My eyes wander to the curved scar on my wrist.
“Tell me who you are,” Thomas says.
“What?”
“Tell me who you are: stop hiding. I’m not going to sell your secrets, Stretch.”
“Didn’t you just sell out your friends yesterday to win over my friends?”
“They’re not my friends,” Thomas says.
I sit down across from him. Before I can change my mind, I hold my arm out so he can see the smiling scar, two words that don’t fit together. From his angle it’ll look more like a frown, but he shifts next to me, leans over, and wraps his hand around my arm. He pulls my wrist closer to his face, inspecting it.
“No homo,” he says, looking up at me. “It’s weird how it looks like a smile. A happy face without eyes.”
“Yeah. That’s what I always thought, too.”
He nods.
“I kept blaming myself for not being a good enough son, and my mom swore he killed himself because he was unhappy, and it just got me thinking I might be happier dead, too . . .” I trace a nail over the scar, left to right, right to left. “So I did this as a cry for help, I guess, because I didn’t like the bad place I was in.”
Thomas traces the scar too and pokes my wrist twice. His fingers are dirty from the yo-yo and other crap on the roof. But now I see; he’s added eyes with two dark fingerprints above the scar. “I’m glad you didn’t do it, Stretch. Would’ve been a waste.”
He wants me to continue existing. I want that too, now.
I pull my arm away and fold my hands on my lap. “Your turn: tell me who you are.” His eyebrows meet in the middle, like he’s considering the possibilities of who he might be. When he doesn’t say anything, I ask, “Childish question, but what do you want to be when you grow up?”
“I think a film director,” Thomas quickly answers. “Though you’re probably catching on that I don’t have a whole lot of direction in life.”
“I wouldn’t say that, but I wouldn’t not say it either. Why a film director?”
“Been interested in it since I saw Jurassic Park and Jaws as a kid. I bow down before Spielberg, whose directing made dinosaurs and sharks even more terrifying.”
“I’ve never seen Jaws.”
Thomas’s eyes widen like I just spoke in Elvish. “I would gouge out my eyes and give them to you if it meant you could see the magic that is Jaws. Spielberg does this awesome thing at the end where—actually, I won’t spoil it for you. You’ll have to come over and watch it sometime.”