Chapter Fourteen

The next day at school, Daniel had a question.We had just finished taking the history test, which I was actually feeling pretty good about, and he was waiting for me by the door.

"Hey," he said as I walked up to him, "so about the movie tomorrow. Do you want me to invite Charles?"

The question took me by surprise; Daniel kept to himself so well that I hadn't even considered the possibility that he'd think of turning this into a group outing, let alone the possibility that Charles might come along. Several thoughts assaulted me at once. Would Charles think I made Daniel ask him so I wouldn't have to? Would Charles even want to go? How would he react to Daniel and I going in the first place? I suddenly realized I knew just as little about Charles' feelings as he knew about mine. Neither of us had been telling the other anything.

Maybe it was finally seeing that, maybe it was just that I wanted to carry on my careful show of indifference, but I responded with a simple shrug. "If you want to."

"Okay, great," Daniel replied. He hurried out the door and down the hall, off to his next class.



I was nearing my locker at the end of the day, and I got there just in time to see Charles' back as he walked away. Lannie Sanders was by his side - they were holding hands. I tried not to stare.

Daniel popped up from his bottom-row locker. "Hey, Adam," he said.

"Oh. Hi."

"So Charles can't go," he reported. "He said he's busy."

I had a feeling I knew what that meant. Charles had Lannie now, and I had apparently lain claim to Daniel. I didn't feel like I'd come out on top on that one.



Once I got to know him, though, Daniel actually turned out to be a pretty interesting guy. After the movie, he had asked if I wanted to see his comic book collection. I still wasn't thrilled at the prospect of spending my Saturday with Daniel, but it hadn't been nearly as bad as I'd thought it might. Plus, I didn't have anything else to do.

Daniel's collection was extensive by my standards, but he kept insisting it was nothing, that I should see his older brother's. "He moved out about a year ago," Daniel told me, "but he's got just boxes and boxes full of comics. Probably worth thousands." He showed me his issue of Wolverine #131 which had had been pulled off store shelves after it was noticed that a racial slur in one of the panels had slipped past the editors. So Wolverine was just a little bit anti-Semitic; didn't see that one coming. By the time I left, I had actually started to enjoy myself.



At school on Monday, Charles and I found ourselves alone at our lockers. We mumbled our hellos, and set about gathering up the day's necessities. "So," Charles said, glancing at me, "how was the movie?"

I was surprised by how the question sounded. There was still a forced politeness to it, but it was the first remark without some underpinning of contempt I could remember from either of us since this situation began. I wondered how good of a weekend he'd had.

"It was okay," I said, feeling a little more comfortable myself. "Pretty standard superhero movie."

"I still have to see it," Charles stated. It would have been easy to infer that he was asking me to go with him, but I knew that wasn't the case. This was just small talk now.

"I think you'd like it," I told him.

"Cool. Well, have a good day."

"Yeah, you too."

And I think we both meant it.



And that was how things stayed until graduation. Charles and I still talked - we didn't shut each other out - but we never made plans to spend time together, never saw each other outside of school. We had different things going on now. He had his new friends, I had mine, and we both understood that was the way things were.



Now, sitting beside Charles in my apartment, I wondered if he was thinking about any of that. Our conversation had focused itself only on the good times, the times before everything had fallen apart. We'd eventually turned on the TV to some standardly unfunny sitcom that I don't think either of us was really interested in, and we sat in silence. Just what it might be that was going through Charles' head had me wondering, and, at the same time, had me worried.