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  But before I felt anything, there was a shot!

  Chad grabbed my shoulder and pulled me down with him. “Get back!” he yelled to Toby, who reversed himself around the counter. Chad and I stayed pinned down with our hands covering our heads until nothing else happened and we heard car tires peeling out.

  Chad looked up. “Holy crap.” The window was shattered. Broken red glass covered the floor.

  “You two okay?” Toby asked, wheeling around the corner.

  Chad nodded. “Apron?”

  I nodded too. But my heart had been knocked out of its socket. I tried to take in a breath, but I couldn’t fit it in. Toby looked okay, but Chad’s eyes were darting around like a flashlight.

  “Was that a gun?” I asked, getting to my knees.

  “A rock, looks like,” Toby answered, leaning over his tire to grab it. He held it up, a rock the size of his fist, with something written on it: Get out fags. Chad stood, but Toby ordered him to get down again. “There might be another one.”

  Chad ignored him though and walked to the door with glass crunching beneath his perfect white sneakers. Then he swung it open and yelled things I would be grounded for life for if I ever said.

  After a few more swears, he shut the door. “They’re gone. Those pieces of scum.”

  “I’ll call the cops,” Toby said, rolling over crunching glass and around the corner again. I stood, but blood was pounding so hard in my lip I could barely close my mouth. The ice was on the floor.

  Chad looked at me. “Man, I’m sorry about that, Apron. You sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded, even though my shaking had turned into shivering. I suddenly wished Johnny Berman were here.

  A door next to the couch opened to a set of stairs and Mike standing at the bottom of them. His wet hair was pulled back into a ponytail and he was wearing jeans and a blue jean button-down shirt, way more open at the top than my dad ever wore. “What just happened?” he asked, his eyes wide. “Is everyone okay?”

  Chad nodded. “Our fans came back.” His voice was shaking now too.

  Mike’s mouth tightened and his eyes landed on me. “Apron?”

  “Oh. And we found a little stray,” Chad said. The truth was, Chad wasn’t much bigger than me.

  Mike crunched toward me, crinkling his blueberry eyes into a worry. He smelled like an Ivory Soap commercial. “Did they get your lip?”

  I shook my head. “I tripped, outside. Before.”

  Mike looked confused but moved on to Chad. “Are you bleeding anywhere?”

  “Nothing,” Chad answered, holding up his hands to prove it.

  “Where’s Toby?”

  “Right here,” he said wheeling out from around the corner. “Cops are comin’.”

  Mike sighed. “What else can happen today?” None of us answered. But it was a good question.

  Chad leaned down to pick up a shard of glass.

  “What are you crazy?” Mike yelled, slapping his arm fast enough for the glass to drop and shatter all over again. “You two get upstairs,” he snapped, pointing to us. “Toby and I will take care of it. Last thing we need is for either of you to start bleeding again.”

  A knock on the door startled us all. Through the windowpanes, two policemen were waiting. Chad started toward them, but Mike caught his elbow. “No.”

  “I was the one who saw it,” Chad pleaded.

  “Take Apron and go upstairs,” Mike ordered him. “Now.”

  Chad stepped back and sighed, letting Mike open the door. “We meet again, officers,” Mike said, trying to be funny but sounding sad instead.

  “Come on, Apron,” Chad said, and we started up the steep stairs. Toby must have wheeled over and shut the door behind us because then it was darker, and Chad was climbing the stairs so slowly in front of me I could count ten throbs in my lip before each one of his steps. At the top landing, he leaned over. “Well, I won’t miss those,” he said out of breath.

  “You’re moving?”

  “Biggest move of all, my teenage runaway,” he panted. Then he turned and stepped in through a doorway. I ran up the rest of the stairs and followed him into an apartment.

  13

  Melita, domi adsum!

  Honey, I’m home!

  “Welcome to our humble home,” Chad said.

  There was a small kitchen to the right, and a couch and TV in front of me. It smelled like asparagus had been cooked recently. Pictures of Mike and Chad were everywhere, some big and some small, but in all of them they were hugging each other way closer than normal men. I was glad no one from school could see me. Suddenly I wondered if maybe Mrs. Perry had thrown the rock; she and Eeebs, screeching off in their Cadillac.

  Chad walked over to the kitchen and put together another bag of ice, then handed it to me with a paper towel.

  “Thanks,” I said, lifting it up to my lip, feeling the burn right away this time.

  He walked passed me to a closed window and craned his neck to look down through it. After a minute he gave up and walked over to the brown leather couch. “Sit,” he said. I did, in a brown leather chair, while Chad kicked his shoes off and lay back. “Bet you wish you’d just kept the key.”

  “Do you know who it was? Who did that?”

  “Just some kind soul who wanted to tell us how much they love us,” Chad sighed, like I was born yesterday. Like I didn’t know what the rock said.

  “Oh. Okay,” I was mad now. “And I’m sure it had nothing to do with you and Mike being—”

  Chad picked his head up, daring me. I couldn’t say it though so he did, “Gay?”

  Blood flew up my cheeks. “Sorry,” I said, pressing the ice on my lip, embarrassed for being so rude.

  “Sorry for us, or sorry for you?”

  “Them,” I said in a deeper voice than I knew I had.

  Chad stared at me, but I stared at him harder, ignoring the ice burning through my lip. After a moment, his face softened and he nodded. “Okay,” he said, dropping his head back again.

  I sighed quietly, trying not to let him hear it. “But did you do anything to them? Before? Like, were they fighting back or anything?”

  Chad chuckled. “You don’t have to do anything for some people to hate you, Apron,” he answered, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re just not old enough to know that yet.”

  “Guess what. You don’t have to be old for some people to hate you, either,” I said.

  “Touché,” Chad pointed at me. But I knew the kind of hate he was talking about was deeper than anything I had ever felt. Even from M. Last year a boy named Edward Carter moved to Falmouth and had two dads. One of them picked Edward up from school every day, like a mom, and the other one went to work like a dad. They even wore rings like normal people. Some parents had tried to get Edward kicked out of school. They blocked Principal Parker’s car with signs that said, “No queers! Not in here!” And one of them was Mrs. Perry. But Principal Parker sent out a note saying that Edward was staying. He didn’t, though; he left at Christmas.

  Chad jumped when Mike walked in. “You guys didn’t see anyone?” he asked.

  “Nope.”

  I shook my head.

  “That’s what I told the police,” Mike sighed. “All right. Next problem,” he walked over to me. I was that problem. He put both hands on my freckles and angled my face so he could see my lip. “Ow,” he said. “Do you think you need to go to the emergency room?” I shook my head, which was hard to do in his hands. Then he crossed his arms and stared at me. “Do you wear glasses?”

  “Asked her,” Chad said.

  “Uh-uh.”

  Mike stepped away. “So what are you doing here?”

  I told him about Reverend Hunter’s key. Chad pulled it out of his pocket and threw it onto the coffee table.

  “But you didn’t have to bring it all the way here, you know,” Mike said.

  “I didn’t want you guys to get in trouble again. You said it was your last chance.”

  Mike and Chad sho
t each other a look.

  “Well, thanks, Apron.”

  I nodded.

  Then there was a pause. A long pause. I stood up.

  “So I’ll see you later,” I said, turning for the stairs.

  “Wait, how are you getting home?” Mike asked.

  “Bus,” I said, as if I took the bus home at night all the time. As if my dad wouldn’t ground me for doing that too.

  “Does your dad know you’re here, Apron?” Mike asked Chad, not me. Chad made a face and Mike lifted an eyebrow.

  I shook my head. “But it’s okay.”

  Mike flapped his arms down. “I have to be at the theater in ten minutes,” he told Chad, as if Chad had just asked him to drive me home.

  “I told you we should have waited for the Reverend,” Chad said, adding a cough. “I told you we’d get in trouble.”

  I shouldn’t have come. “It’s fine—”

  “It’s just that, it’s final performance tonight,” Mike sighed, flustered, walking to the closet and taking out a jean jacket. “Can your dad come get you, do you think?”

  Suddenly I wanted to get out of there as much as they wanted me to. “I’ll call him,” I said starting for the stairs again. “From the bus stop.”

  But Mike stopped me. “No. You’re not doing that.” He looked at Chad who shook his head in agreement. Then he wiped off the phone before handing it to me.

  No one was home.

  “No answering machine?” Mike asked, looking nervous.

  I shook my head. I had overheard M telling my dad that she needed one now, though, so that her friends from Brazil could leave messages all wrong in English. My dad said he’d think about it, which meant yes.

  “Well, you’re just going to have to keep trying him, then. Chad’s right, we’re kind of responsible for you.”

  I was about to tell him I’d go wait for my dad in the hospital, but Chad sat up. “Oh let her stay,” he said. “I need a little girl time anyway. Go away, Mikey.”

  It was nice, the way Chad smiled at me.

  “Hold on, Chad,” Mike said, annoyed. Then to me he said quietly, “You sure you don’t mind staying here with Chad? He’s going to need to rest, and there’s really not much to do.”

  “No, I don’t mind,” I said.

  Chad smirked at Mike.

  “Okay,” Mike nodded. Then he walked over to Chad who lifted his hand. Mike took it and the two stayed like that, in a frozen handshake. “And you stay put,” he ordered him quietly. He let go of Chad’s hand and turned toward the stairs.

  “Say hi to that whore Mary,” Chad called after him. “Tell her everything’s all right, yes, everything’s fine.”

  Mike waved back and then he was gone.

  14

  Bis pueri senes.

  Old men are twice children.

  “What kind of animal should you never play cards with?”

  “I don’t know,” Chad answered.

  We were still in their living room, having gone downstairs once to find the window covered up with garbage bags and masking tape in a thick X. Toby had made me give him our number so he could keep trying my dad, too. And later, he yelled up, “Got him, he’ll be here around eight.” Then said,“Adios amigos” and left. Chad and I had already made macaroni and cheese, except Chad hardly ate any and I was so hungry I had three bowls of it. That was when Chad said he better start making the bouquets for the wedding tomorrow, so we brought up the flowers, ribbons, and scissors, and got to work.

  “A cheetah,” I said.

  “Good one,” Chad nodded. Already I had told him at least ten jokes. I didn’t even know I still knew them. But there they were, hiding somewhere inside my brain.

  Chad only had two faces; happy or bothered. If he wasn’t smiling, his face was frowning, like that was where it was normally set. Once in a while he went to the bathroom and stayed there for a long time, sometimes flushing the toilet twice. So I snooped around while he was in there. A few pictures of Marilyn Monroe were on the walls, but the rest of them were all of Mike and Chad with their arms wrapped around each other, on a lobster boat, or in a restaurant. I wanted to ask if people had stared at them when they posed like that. But I didn’t. Usually not talking around someone made me nervous, but with Chad it was just normal.

  “What do kids in seventh grade do now?” he asked one time, after another trip to the bathroom. “Are you on to heavy drug use yet?”

  I was finding out that Chad said stuff like this once in a while, too, usually after coming out of the bathroom. But they were just things he said, not things I was supposed to answer.

  “Seventh grade was the first time I fell in love,” Chad said, laying back down on the couch and smiling. “Chris Baladucci, spitting image of David Cassidy.” He asked me if I had a boyfriend. I said no, but told him about Johnny Berman anyway.

  “What does he look like?” So I told him blond hair, blue eyes, nice smile, and then realized I could have been talking about Mike.

  “Sounds dreamy. Has he tried to kiss you yet?”

  “No,” I said. But my cheeks got hot anyway.

  “Bet he will. What about word problems? Do they still do that? Bobby has seven bras and Jeffrey has four, so how many do they have all together, kind of thing?”

  I told him we learned that in first grade. He asked what we were learning in social studies and if we had sex ed yet. “No,” I said. “Next year.”

  “Well, it’s boring. I used to cut that one.” He picked his head up and grinned at me.

  I wanted to ask if that was why he was gay. Maybe if he’d gone to the class he would have turned out normal. But instead I told him that we got suspended if we cut classes more than three times.

  Right after eight o’clock, when we were watching Cheers, something knocked on the front door. Chad looked over at me before starting down the stairs. I followed closely behind. “Who is it?” he asked at the bottom. But we both knew who it was. You could see my dad’s red head through the window. I lifted my hand up to hide my lip.

  “I’m looking for my daughter,” my dad said, his voice muffled through the door.

  Chad flipped back the lock and waved him in. He wasn’t wearing his wedding clothes anymore, just his same old khakis and green button-down. He nodded at Chad, glanced around at the flowers, and then shot me a look. Bad news was coming and my stomach knew it.

  He turned to Chad. “Dennis Bramhall,” he introduced himself, extending his hand. “Thanks for keeping Apron.”

  “Chad,” Chad said shaking it. He looked like a ninth grader next to my dad.

  They both turned to me.

  “Let’s go, Apron,” my dad said. When I dropped my hand down, his face folded. “What happened to your lip? Did someone hurt you?” He stepped toward me. “I saw the window?”

  “No, Dad. I tripped outside. On a ladder.”

  My dad didn’t look like he believed me. He turned back to Chad, who sunk his hands into his pockets. “We didn’t think she needed to go to the hospital, otherwise—”

  My dad sighed hard enough to growl. “Let’s go, Apron.”

  I picked up my backpack still on the couch and walked toward the door. “Thanks, Chad,” I said quietly. But it came out wrong, like it was Chad’s fault that my dad found me.

  “It’s been real,” Chad said sadly. “See you, Apron.”

  “Thanks again,” my dad said. “And here.” He was trying to hand Chad some money, but Chad put up both hands. “No, no,” he said. “I should be the one paying you. She’s like a dictionary of jokes. And she makes a mean bouquet,” he smiled.

  My dad nodded, no smile, and flashed a quick look around the room. I was so used to the flowers I couldn’t even smell them anymore. All I could smell now was my dad’s sharp look. “Okay then,” he said, disappearing out the door. “Come on, Apron.”

  Chad looked worried, but I shrugged like I was used to getting in trouble, then I waved and followed my dad.

  Outside, we walked to our car with
out talking.

  “How’s Grandma Bramhall?” I asked in a small voice when we were both inside.

  My dad wrapped his hands around the steering wheel.

  “Fine, Apron,” he said. “You knocked the wind out of her, but they let her go as soon as she got to Maine Med. Margie and I brought her home in time for that trunk show she wanted to get to. But you have a lot of explaining to do. You shouldn’t have left with those boys, Apron.” He looked at me. “You have no idea who they are. Look at their window for Christ’s sake. They aren’t the type to be hanging around with.”

  “They’re really nice,” I said. “I helped them decorate the church for a real wedding tomorrow.” I realized my mistake and waited for him to get mad, but instead he shook his head.

  “Well, you were supposed to stay there.”

  “I was there for two hours, dad. Reverend Hunter had to go somewhere so Mike and Chad took me home. And then I forgot to give them back Reverend Hunter’s key so I came here and they wouldn’t let me take the bus home by myself. I tried calling you. Where were you?”

  He paused. “Getting married,” he said, starting the engine and backing out of the parking spot.

  An elevator dropped in my stomach. “What?”

  He put the car in gear again and told me they went to the courthouse right after dropping Grandma Bramhall off at Mrs. Finn’s trunk show. M was still in her wedding dress because she said she wouldn’t take it off until they got married. And my dad said she meant business because he had never seen her cry like that.

  Mr. and Mrs. Haffenreffer were their eyewitnesses and my dad tried to call Reverend Hunter’s office, but got the answering machine telling him what time Sunday Service was and to go with God, so he decided maybe Reverend Hunter had taken me out for an ice cream. And the courthouse only had a 5:35 appointment left, so sorry, Apron, but it seemed the best choice at the time.

  My dad told me all this without looking at me once. I didn’t look at him, either.

  “Apron?” he said finally, turning to me at a red light. “It was a rough day for Margie.”

  I looked at my empty wrist. If I hadn’t broken my bracelet, almost killed Grandma Bramhall, smashed my head into a vase, and split my lip open, today would have been a rough day for me, too. “Nemo sine vitio,” I mumbled. No one is without fault.