Eye to Eye

By: XPud
(© 2018-2019 by the author)

The author retains all rights. No reproductions are allowed without the author's consent. Comments are appreciated at...

xpud@tickiestories.us

Chapter 7

Isaac starts out the next day feeling oddly peaceful; normally his day is guided by the fears and anxieties that dominate his every choice, but the previous day's revelation occupies most of his thoughts. He gets dressed wondering what kind of clothes his dad would wear; as he eats breakfast at school, he is curious whether his dad had a favorite number for his food, too.

When Isaac gets to homeroom, he immediately asks Mr. Coleman, "Are there any, um, things today? Like, drills?"

Mr. Coleman, who is looking out the window instead of at Isaac, replies, "I can check my email, but I'm fairly certain nothing is scheduled today."

"Okay, Mr. Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Coleman." Isaac nods at the window and goes to sit on the couch.

Christian sees him sit down and instantly comes bouncing over to plop himself down next to Isaac. "Duuude! Did you see that Zap that I played on you?!"

"Yes," Isaac replies, wondering why he would even ask that; he was playing against him, after all.

"It was like bzzzap! Boom! And all your little lava babies were toast!" He throws his hands in the air, wiggling his fingers as he slowly lowers his hands to his knees.

"I know, Christian."

"And then, then there was the other time, with my Knight! Just like zoom! Straight through!" He continues to excitedly illustrate the motions with his hands. When Isaac has no response, he keeps going for a while about the different things that happened in those two games, completely ignoring the many other times that he lost -- some of them rather quickly.

Isaac was never one to brag, though, so he stays quiet, instead thinking about his painting and what his art teacher might have to say about it. He thinks, She will probably like it. She says I have good-quality work, so she will probably think the same thing. But...what if she doesn't understand it? Or maybe she will think that I'm weird?

The thought leaves him anxious but for a moment. No, he remembers, she asked me to do this, so if I did what she asked, she won't think I'm weird. That would be mean, and she's not mean. The bell interrupts any further rumination on the topic, so he trudges slowly over to his least favorite class.

He notices immediately that Mr. Guthrie isn't in the classroom, or at least not yet; he is usually in there by that time, though. This gives Isaac mixed feelings -- on the one hand, his routine is already messed up, and it's only first period, but on the other hand...no Mr. Guthrie. Isaac takes a seat at the back table, anyway, since it's farther away from everyone in general.

As soon as he sits down, though, Mrs. Stone clicks up to the table in her noisy heeled shoes and says, "Mr. Guthrie is currently covering another class today, so you'll need to sit in your normal seat for today."

Dismayed, he mumbles, "Yes, ma'am," and heads to his desk, already contemplating whether to put his head down for the class period.

It turns out that things aren't too horrible today, though. Mrs. Stone instructs the class to get the textbook out and open to a story titled "Net Worth." Isaac looks at the stylized illustration at the beginning: there's a group of boys playing basketball and one girl standing out a bit from them, watching them play. The instructions are to read the story and take notes about the mood in each scene. Isaac isn't thrilled about the actual work, but he doesn't mind reading it. At least nothing else important is happening during that part.

He takes his time reading the story carefully, making sure he understands the action happening in each moment. By the time he's done, he feels like he can reasonably explain the plot to someone else, but he can only identify a few moments where the mood is evident, like when the story calls the girl "dejected" at how the boys won't let her play, or things like that.

Isaac finishes a bit early (especially since he is unsure of how to answer the question very well), so his mind begins to wander. He thinks about what he would do if he were in the story, either as the girl (though he'd obviously be a boy instead) or as one of the other basketball players. He's never been very good at basketball, though; the only thing he seems to be good at is getting his glasses smashed into his face by the basketball.

He imagines if Vin were in the story, looking at the picture and estimating how much taller he would be than the other boys. Vin would probably let the girl play, he decides. Maybe he'd beat up the boys if they didn't let her. The thought concerns him a bit; he doesn't like the idea of people getting beat up as it is, but the idea of Vin pummeling someone is unsettling, at best.

As his mind wanders, he imagines how it would be to be one of the players. He has never been much into sports, but he thinks, maybe Vin could help me get better...if he even still likes me. He is torn; he wants desperately to get to PE class, both because he wouldn't be in reading class anymore and because Vin is there, but he is scared to talk to him. What does he say? How does he get himself out of this? Will Vin even accept his apology? Are they still friends?

Isaac hates when people ask too many questions, especially if he can't answer them -- and his brain is no exception. He tries to shut them out of his mind, but they keep popping back up, like a song stuck in his head, but the worst song ever.

"Isaac, please stop tapping your foot." Mrs. Stone places her hand softly on Isaac's desk as she whispers her request. She continues walking, never making eye contact with him as she makes her rounds through the room.

Isaac wasn't even aware of his leg. He glances around the room a bit to see if anyone is looking over at him. Nothing. With a sigh, he goes back to the picture, trying to decide what to do to keep occupied. He doesn't want to think about "Bully Vin" or the incoming conversation anymore, so he instead thinks about the good times. The time in the piano room when they shared the Arabesque. The moment when Vin put his hands on Isaac's to show him the chord in Shevat. When Vin played with Isaac's hair at the keyboard...the moment that Vin brought Isaac closer, naked, face to face, eye to eye...that moment when he caressed Isaac's hair --

Ripped out of his reverie by a sudden, shuddering gasp, he stares forward at the whiteboard, breathing heavily. He realizes that he now has an uncomfortable erection; he looks down and sees that it's not particularly noticeable, but if he stood up, it would definitely be pointing obviously outward. He thinks back to his mom's admonition against fixing the problem in public, but he remembers Vin's trick. Wishing Vin's hand was still in his pocket with him, he reaches in and tucks his pocket underneath his underwear, wincing and shifting a bit at the uncomfortable fabric.

As he does this, he realizes he should probably check to see if anyone is watching; he hopes he's not too obvious about it, since that's the whole purpose of doing it this way, but he still takes a glance around. Right as he finally navigates his hand underneath his penis and starts to slide his hand upward, he catches the eye of an almost shaved-bald boy with hazel eyes who was looking at him, one that he wasn't aware was in this class (not that he really ever paid attention to the people on the class, anyway). In that short moment of surprise, Isaac finally slips his penis free of its trap, grunting a tiny bit at the hyperstimulation of the fabric against his glans.

The boy's eyes widen and he gasps, looking down in his lap with furrowed brows. A kid next to him looks over with the same expression, only with a little smile attached to it, and whispers loudly, "What's the matter? You piss yourself?" A bunch of other kids laugh at the comment, shattering the silence of the classroom.

"What? No, shut the fuck up."

"Alexis!" snaps the teacher. "Watch your language!"

"Sorry," he says without looking at her. He snakes a hand down his pants and messes around inside.

By this point, everyone is talking instead of reading. Isaac quickly looks back at his book, though there's no way he'll be able to get the concentration to actually read anything. He overhears the other boy say, "Did you pop a boner? Hah!" Suddenly, it dawns on Isaac: the other boy felt what Isaac did to himself while he was adjusting. The thought mortifies him. He just made that boy get an erection in class! Now he's going to be made fun of by the other classmates! Warm-faced, Isaac stares at his book with thoughts racing through his mind. Every instinct tells him he should apologize, since he just caused a problem for someone else, but he knows he shouldn't say anything about his abilities. Instead, Isaac sits there, paralyzed, as the teacher tries in vain to get people to calm down and be quiet. He wonders if it would have been better to have worked with Mr. Guthrie today.

The class eventually recovers, but Isaac tunes out for the discussion. Mrs. Stone does not call on him, nor does he volunteer anything. At the end of class, she reminds everyone that tomorrow is library day, and then as perfect punctuation, the bell rings. On the way out, the buzz-cut boy turns and looks at Isaac, but Isaac averts his gaze to the ground; he wishes he could know what the boy was feeling, but it's not worth the risk. Head down, he quickly walks to gym class, his thoughts switching subjects but becoming no less anxious.

He gets to the locker room early as usual, where he quickly takes his clothes out of his locker and heads for the stall. He knows that it would probably be a good idea to have a lock of some sort on his locker, but he always has the worst time trying to get them open; after the second meltdown last year from frustration, he decided it's better to risk it.

He changes into his clothes as he hears the boys crowd in; he listens for Vin's voice, hoping both that he would come over and knock on the stall door, and that he would just ignore Isaac completely. Isaac hates when he feels two different ways at once, which just compounds the entire issue. Why can't I just talk to him and say I'm sorry? he asks himself in frustration.

Saving himself the humiliation and trouble from before, he folds his clothes on the toilet seat and waits until the whistle. As soon as he hears everyone leaving, he quickly opens the door and heads back into the locker room, where he sees Vin, sitting alone on the benches, looking directly at him. Confusion, frustration, fear, desperation, and hurt stare back at Isaac through his eyes. Isaac freezes in the doorway, eyes locked with Vin's.

In a voice much quieter than Isaac is used to hearing from Vin, he says, "Isaac?"

"...Yes, Vin?"

"What did I do wrong?" he asks. Isaac feels a wave of emotion, one that feels like tears, two steps from welling forth.

But Vin didn't do anything, Isaac contemplates. How do I answer him? Do I say 'nothing'? Brandon said he did something, or maybe said that he's sometimes not nice to people like me. I don't know!!

Vin doesn't wait longer for an answer. Instead, he stammers, "A-are you...mad at me?"

That is a question he can answer. "No, Vin."

"Then...why won't you talk to me?"

Isaac hesitates. Brandon scared him, yes, but this is Vin. He needs to tell the truth, especially to Vin. "Because Brandon said, um, that you...weren't always nice to people like me." Even before he's finished saying it, it sounds like an incredibly dumb, insufficient reason; his face feels flush with embarrassment and shame.

Isaac feels a momentary surge of intense anger before Vin looks downward a bit, just enough to break eye contact. Vin takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

"I-I'm sorry," Isaac says, suddenly very fearful. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry --"

Vin shakes his head quickly. "No, no, I'm not...I'm not mad at you, I promise." He flicks his eyes up to Isaac, but looks away too quickly for Isaac to interpret any feelings from it. He stands up, takes another deep breath, and holds it for a moment before saying, "I swear that I would never hurt you. Please believe me."

He hates being lied to even more than he hates being confused, but in this case, if one of them was lying, he would definitely trust Vin over Brandon. "I believe you, Vin."

Vin closes his eyes and mutters through his teeth, "I swear to God, Brandon..." He looks down in Isaac's direction and nods toward the door. "C'mon. Coach is gonna count us absent."

"Okay, Vin." Isaac follows Vin into the gym proper, unsure as to what just got resolved in that conversation, if anything. Are he and Vin friends still? Is everything okay yet? Why is he still afraid of Vin?

The coach sees the two boys and points over to the nearby wall. "You're late! Come on, get in line for the Pacer test!"

Oh, no. Not the Pacer, Isaac laments. He's okay with jogging, though he's no track star, but the Pacer test is just a punishment.

"Okay, boys," the coach's voice rings out across the gym, "by this point you've probably done this at least once a year, so you should know the drill. The recording will explain everything if you don't remember, so listen carefully. Remember, after missing two beeps, you're out. Remember your number."

After he finishes his little speech, he hits a button on his laptop. Over the speakers in the gym, a baritone voice with a slight accent begins the classic speech: "The FitnessGram™ PACER Test is a multistage aerobic capacity test that progressively gets more difficult as it continues. The 20-meter pacer test will begin in 30 seconds. Line up at the start. The running speed starts slowly but gets faster each minute after you hear this signal." There is a short chiming sound, and then, "A single lap should be completed each time you hear this sound." A shorter beep echoes across the gym. "Remember to run in a straight line, and run as long as possible. The second time you fail to complete a lap before the sound, your test is over. The test will begin on the word 'start.' On your mark, get ready, start." There's a sound like a shimmering curtain, and then a music track starts playing that sounds to Isaac like something people would have listened to way before he was born.

Everyone launches off the wall and starts running, easily making it to the twenty-meter line marking the end of a "lap." Shortly, another beep signals the return trip. Back, and then forth. Back, and forth. If Isaac's lungs weren't slowly starting to burn, he might actually find the activity calming, centering; the problem is that the beeps come a little bit quicker after every couple of laps, so that eventually, the boys are either jogging back and forth constantly, or sprinting just to make it.

Isaac starts to flag about thirty laps in, which is better than he remembers doing before. The problem is not that he's completely out of breath, but that the time starts to get faster than he is capable of running. Well, that, and his legs are on fire and everything hurts. By the second time the beep goes off without Isaac at the end of the lap, he gladly walks off to the side to join the growing ranks of exhausted boys on the bleachers, taking a front row seat.

As Isaac pants, catching his breath, he watches the remainder of the kids as they go. Charlie is in there, running like it's his first lap still (though "Dalla" practically gave up on Level 2); grease-hair dropped out like ten laps ago; and Vin is just loping along on his long legs, bounding ahead of the pack (Charlie is somehow keeping up, though). Isaac finds himself entranced watching Vin go almost effortlessly back and forth; he wonders just how far he's going to make it, and finds himself sort of hoping it doesn't stop. He could watch Vin running back and forth all day and be pretty satisfied with the time spent.

Another few kids don't make the cut, and find their way to the bench, including Juan, who comes and sits next to Isaac. "Heh, two more levels than...than last year," he pants.

Isaac looks at Juan, admiring his darker skin tone and the way the light shines off of it. It's not something he would normally notice, but it catches his eye for some reason today. He looks up when he sees Juan's head turn toward him, and as their eyes meet, he feels a heady mix of hopefulness, pride, and itchy skin. He breaks eye contact as he scratches his chest in surprise.

Juan does the same, lifting his shirt to scratch at his chest and abs. Isaac sneaks a peek and can see some muscle tone there as well; his gaze lingers there a bit longer before Juan puts his shirt back down. Juan takes a deep breath and exhales heavily.

Isaac turns back to watch the boys -- mostly Vin, really -- for a while, but Juan starts to fidget in his seat, catching Isaac's attention again. He glances sidelong as Juan rolls his shoulders, taking another deep breath. "It's really hot in here," Juan asks, pulling on his shirt to cool himself.

Isaac doesn't feel very hot anymore, now that he has had a chance to catch his breath and cool down. Maybe Juan just needs another moment.

Not much more time passes, though, before he turns toward Isaac and says, "I don't...feel good."

Isaac looks at him, wondering what he means, and their eyes meet again. Suddenly, the world starts spinning, Isaac's skin itches, and his lungs feel like they're on fire again. Juan's eyes are wide and his chest is heaving; Isaac can feel the air pressing with difficulty through his lungs, leaving Isaac disoriented as he struggles to breathe, himself.

Isaac breaks his gaze away and considers the situation. He has never felt like that before when I looked at him, so that's not normal. He said he doesn't feel good, and he's really itchy when I look at him. He can't breathe -- suddenly it dawns on Isaac. He knew a boy in fourth grade who was allergic to ants and one day, when he was bitten on the playground, his teacher said he had an allergic reaction. Isaac looked it up later and found out the official name: anaphylaxis (he specifically remembers being proud of learning how to pronounce it). The boy had to go to the nurse and then the hospital.

"Are you allergic to something?" Isaac asks, trying to figure out what to do.

"No, I don't think so." His normally raspy voice sounds much more hoarse than usual. He straightens his back and takes another deep breath. "I...I think I'm...I can't breathe!"

Isaac begins to panic; he's never seen someone in this kind of danger before, much less ever have had to do something about it. He looks at the other boys, who are all laughing and pushing each other in the bleachers behind him. He has to do something. Now.

"Mr. Coach?!" he calls out, his voice cracking at that volume. Mr. Coach!!" He gets up and runs over to the coach, ignoring that his legs are still shaky from the test.

"What's up?" the coach asks, looking down at Isaac. "Everything okay?" He looks out to the other people still taking the test. "Keep running, boys!"

Isaac, careful not to look in his eyes, rapidly explains, "Mr. Coach! Juan is asphyxiation -- no, anaflack -- he has an allergy!" Isaac grinds his teeth in frustration at being unable to form the sentence he wanted to say -- and he used to be so good at that word!

The coach looks over Isaac's shoulder. Isaac hazards a glance at his face; he can't tell what the coach is thinking from his mostly expressionless face, but he immediately goes into his office and picks up the phone.

Isaac looks over at Juan, who is hunched over with his hands on his knees, taking slow, deep breaths. By this time, a few boys have moved next to him and are talking to him, while the others on the bleachers stare down at them. The few boys still remaining in the test have stopped to see what's going on; the bad music and quick beeps keep continuing. "Lap 75. ... -beep- Lap 76."

Vin, who is actually breathing pretty heavily, shoots a frowning look at Isaac. Confusion, concern, fear, are met with panic, frustration, helplessness. Vin looks back to see Juan struggling to breathe, and he runs over to Isaac. "What's going on?!"

"Juan has an a-allergy," he says before resorting to his stress whine. He begins leaning his weight from foot to foot and flapping his hands, as if to shake water off of them; it's the best way he knows how to burn off the excess nervous energy he's building up.

"Shit," Isaac hears the coach say from the office. "Nurse isn't there." He comes back quickly and looks at Juan, then at Vin. "Ward," he says firmly, "I need you to run to the nurse's office and see if she's there. I'll call the front office. Go! Quickly!"

Vin looks at the door, but hesitates. Suddenly, he whips around and jogs over to Juan. "Hey," he says, "come on. I got you. Get on."

Juan wheezes, weakly flexing one hand. "I can't," he gasps.

Vin kneels down and carefully scoops an arm under Juan's knees, and Juan flops his arm around Vin's shoulders. Vin braces Juan's back with his other arm and lifts him fairly quickly, even tossing him a tiny bit to reposition himself better. "Hold on," he says, still breathing a bit quickly from the test, "we're gonna go fast, okay?" Juan nods, not looking at anything in particular, and Vin sets off at a run, even with Juan in his arms. He slams his back into the gym door, rolling off of it and dashing down the hallway.

As the gym erupts with excited conversation, Isaac is awash with emotions. He is deeply afraid for Juan's safety, stressed about the rapidly-changing situation, and in complete awe at Vin. He can't help but think about the fact that Vin could carry him like that if he wanted to; the thought creates a complicated tangle of emotions in Isaac's chest. All of that, combined with the noise level in the gym, sends Isaac over to a corner in front of the bleachers where he can sit and rock for a while.

The shrill blade of the whistle cuts through the air a few times as the coach tries to get everyone to calm down and be quiet; he asks everyone to line up and confirm how many laps they were able to complete, but Isaac can't find the ability to do anything but rock for the moment. His eyes unfocus as he focuses instead on his thoughts, trying to make some sense of his clashing emotions.

After some time -- he has no idea how much -- Isaac sees a pair of all-red Nike sneakers stop in front of him. "Hey," he hears Charlie say, "Coach wants to know how many laps you did."

"Thirty-thirt...thirty th-three." He growls at his mistake and runs his fingers through his hair vigorously.

"He did thirty-three!" Charlie calls out behind him, but he doesn't go anywhere. Isaac continues to rock, staring at Charlie's shoes until Charlie asks, "You okay?"

He continues rocking wordlessly, though he feels an urge to apologize. He can't tell what for, though, so he keeps quiet. All he can do is worry about Juan, ignore his continued failure to talk, and try to tune out all the other noise.

The teacher slices the air again with the whistle and declares the rest of the class as free play, heading into his office and getting on the phone immediately. He closes his door most of the way, but leaves it open just a crack.

Everyone goes back to a regular-looking routine, and Isaac is finally able to gain some control in his situation. He sits still, staring at the wall blankly for a bit. He can't quite stop the worry about Juan, though, so he stands up, staring at the gym doors, lightly flapping his hands and whining, waiting for anything -- or anyone -- that could tell him something about what's going on.

"Isaac!" he hears Charlie call from behind him. "Come play ball with us!"

Isaac looks back and sees Charlie, Dalla, and the other boys in a circle. He takes one last look at the door; clenching his fists, he walks to the boys. They toss the ball around to each other, chattering about the event as they do. It helps distract Isaac somewhat, though he looks occasionally over at the basketball court to see that Vin isn't there.

A few minutes later, though, Isaac hears the heavy footfalls of someone jogging up behind him. "Hey, bud, did you want to go see Juan? He asked if you could, and Coach said it's okay."

Isaac spins around at the sound of Vin's voice, his heart immediately picking up the beat. The ball goes bouncing past him, but Vin blocks it with his foot in a way that makes it bounce straight upward; he catches it with one hand and tosses it over Isaac's head back into the circle. Isaac excitedly responds, "Yes, Vin! I want to go see Juan."

As Vin starts to head back to the doors, though, Isaac doesn't follow. "Um, Vin!"

He turns. "What's up?"

"I need my glasses."

"Oh, uh...right. I mean I guess we're not gonna be in gym by the time we get back... One sec." He pops into the coach's office for a moment. When he comes out, he bounds over to the locker room, beckoning Isaac over.

They go into the locker room with plenty of time in class left, so nobody else is in there. Isaac actually feels a little weird being in there at such an odd time, but it's not that different than staying in there extra time or running in early, right? At least, he rationalizes it this way.

Since Vin is the only other person in the room, Isaac has no problems stripping down to his briefs in the locker room itself instead of the bathroom stall. He notices his shirt is particularly sweaty, but there's not much he can do about that; he wishes he could take a bath after the Pacer test, but all they have here is showers. He used to have gym class later in the day, so it was less important that he didn't shower; now he's going to feel sticky and smell bad all day long. The thought makes him seriously rethink his hatred of showers, but he can't get past how bad the water feels on his skin.

Vin, however, strips down and heads into the showers without wasting time. "I'm gonna take a quick shower," he calls into the other room. "We got time." Poking his head around the corner, he says, "The others will probably be in pretty quickly, yeah? You wanna wash off real quick?"

Isaac looks at Vin, then his clothes, them back to Vin. With a huff, he says, "Showers hurt."

"Oh yeah, right. Uhh...I mean, there's no bathtub here, so...I guess I'll just go shower off real quick. Sorry, my man. Be right back." He goes back around the corner, and shortly, Isaac hears the sound of water hissing out of the showerhead.

A tempest of thoughts races through Isaac's mind. Vin is nice, just like before, see? He said sorry. He is still being nice. Maybe Brandon was lying. Brandon was probably lying. He was scary, and scary people lie. I guess regular people can lie too. I wonder what proportion of people lie? Probably most people. I'm still sticky. I need to get dressed. I don't want to dress back in and be sticky and stinky. People might make fun of me. But I really hate the shower water...but Vin is in there right now. I could be with Vin, and...and we'd both be naked... Isaac's heart resumes its earlier tempo at the idea.

Both his desire to be clean and to be with Vin finally win out, and, taking off his briefs, he steps bravely into the open shower area. He approaches Vin, transfixed by the sight of the water cascading down his back, through the groove between his shoulder blades and down his butt and legs. Isaac, already excited, realizes that he is already getting an erection, but he figures that Vin wouldn't make fun of him after what they did already. He hopes.

He finally steps up next to Vin, who jumps slightly when he sees Isaac. "Oh!" he says, "you...came into the showers."

"Yes, Vin." He looks at Vin from the side; Vin does not have an erection, he notices, but his penis is still at least as long as Isaac's is when erect. Isaac tears his attention away and looks at the shower controls, or rather, control: there is only one knob, with markings to show which direction is "on." He slowly turns the knob, only to be greeted by a sudden attack of cold water. He shrieks, jumping backward reflexively.

Vin puts out his hands reflexively when he sees Isaac gets sprayed. "Oh man, I didn't know you were actually gonna...yeah, they attack you first, but the water gets warm pretty quickly." As Isaac waits a safe distance from the cold, wrathful waters, Vin holds a hand under them to test the temperature. "There," he says after a moment, "try now."

Isaac grits his teeth and steps into the shower. Immediately, the feeling is like stinging rain pelting his skin. He squints and tries to ignore the feeling, but he can only stand it long enough to try to get his hair wet before he leaps back out of it, at the verge of tears. "I can't -- !" is all he can manage to say; he rubs his shoulders and arms vigorously to try to scrub away the memory of that feeling.

As he finishes rinsing down, Vin looks over at Isaac. "Hm, is it the temperature?" he asks.

Isaac shakes his head. "No, Vin. The water, um...stings." It's not like bees or ants, but it's the closest word he can figure to explain it.

Vin looks away, down at the floor and up at the showerhead, then just around at different points; Isaac isn't sure what he's looking for, but suddenly his eyes open wide and he looks back at Isaac. Isaac catches the feeling of solving a puzzle from Vin before Vin says, "I got an idea. Come test this out." He cups his hands where the shower water sprays directly into them, and points his fingers slightly to create a much thicker stream of water pouring from his hands, like the spout of a pitcher. "See if that works better," he suggests, standing like a statue in a fountain.

Isaac hesitantly steps up to the new stream of water issuing from Vin's hands. He puts his hand under it; it's no worse than a bathtub faucet, just at a point higher than Isaac. It almost reminds him of the water hose, which sets him giggling; he remembers various times years back when he would play in the water from the hose as his mom would water the flowers, and then water him so that he would "grow big and bloom beautifully" (he was well aware that he was not a flower and therefore would not bloom).

Still giggling, he sticks his head under it, letting the water flow down his head and across his face. He rinses off all of the different parts of his body, and when he is finished, he wipes off his face enough to open his eyes and see Vin staring down at him with a smile on his face. Their eyes tell a story of amusement, relief, comfort, and a complex other batch of feelings that Isaac doesn't get a chance to explore before Vin breaks eye contact.

"You good now?" Vin asks. "We gotta go pretty quick -- Juan is getting picked up by an ambulance soon, so yeah, gotta move."

Isaac gasps. "Is Juan still, can he breathe?!"

Vin turns off the water and heads to the towel bin, grabbing one for himself and for Isaac, saying, "Yeah, he's okay for now, but the principal said they always gotta take allergic reactions to the hospital. The 'EpiPen' that they use isn't enough to fix the whole thing." He tosses a towel to Isaac and begins scrubbing his own hair dry.

Isaac instantly regrets his decision to shower as he feels the sandpaper-rough texture of thin terry cloth on his hands. He does his best to blot the water off himself, but he can't get his back very well without rubbing the towel across his skin. Realizing that Vin is busy with himself, Isaac gets an idea: he lays the towel across the bench in the locker room and lays down on it, rolling to the left and right a bit to make sure to get as much area as possible. The towel isn't nearly as absorbent as his favorite one at home, but it gets the job done.

Vin catches sight of him and laughs. "Well, I guess that works."

Isaac, still naked, lying on the locker room bench, looks up at Vin and laughs with him. He has an impulse to grab the towel and wear it as a cape, but he remembers about the time limit and quickly gets himself dressed, thankful that he manages to have gotten completely dry -- it goes without saying how much a single wet spot in his clothes would bother him.

The two head out of the locker room with their backpacks, since it's near the end of class anyway. Isaac follows closely behind Vin on the way to the nurse's office. Inside, Isaac sees multiple men in uniforms; one of them is questioning a shirtless Juan, who is laying down on a bed.

"...and then I started like, not being able to breathe, and got all itchy, and...yeah." Juan's voice sounds better, but shaky.

The man standing next to him asks, "Do you have any known allergies?" as he clamps a pulse oximeter onto Juan's finger.

"No."

"What's the last thing you ate before the attack?" He looks at the readout on the device, then takes it off, storing it in a zippered pack with all sorts of other devices strapped into it.

"Um, some little candy bars in history class."

"What kind?"

"Snickers, Milky Way."

The man directs Juan to sit up, where he listens to Juan's breathing through a stethoscope. Juan turns and sees Isaac, and a smile blooms across his face as a wave of panic seems to wash over Isaac. He doesn't feel literally afraid, though, almost like the feeling he has in the moments after something has scared him: his arms and legs feel shaky, and his breathing quickens. "Hey!" he says, making the man with the stethoscope jump. "Oh, sorry," he mutters.

The principal, a round man with combed gray hair and circular glasses sees the boys and invites them in closer. "There's my heroes. Vin Ward, and...I'm sorry, what's your name, sir?" he asks in a deep Southern accent.

Isaac, unused to being called "sir," hesitates a moment until he is sure that the principal is talking to him. Looking at the counter, he replies, "Isaac Brooks, sir."

"Well, Isaac, do you realize that you literally saved this boy's life?"

He thinks about the symptoms of anaphylaxis, recalling that it often is fatal without intervention. "Yes, sir."

"And Vin, my boy, you looked like an Army soldier saving a wounded squadmate when you came in here. You saved us all a lot of valuable time." During this, the uniformed man has guided Juan off the bed and over toward a stretcher.

Vin laughs and smiles a little, running his hands through his hair. "Aw, well, you know. Not gonna lie, though, I can feel it. I'm gonna be SO sore tomorrow." He and the principal share a laugh as Vin rubs his bicep and shakes out a leg.

Juan walks up to the stretcher, but he asks the man to wait a moment. Turning to Isaac, he says, "Thank you. I didn't know what was going on -- I mean I probably woulda just died. How...how did you know?"

"I knew because you couldn't breathe, and then you felt itchy, and then you were dizzy, and then, um, I read about anaphylaxis, a-and those were the symptoms."

"You could tell I felt dizzy?"

Isaac freezes. Juan never said he was dizzy; I just felt it when I looked at him! Oh no, now they're all going to ask, and --

"Well, you were kinda swaying back and forth a bit," Vin helpfully points out. Isaac up at Vin, who just puts a hand gently on Isaac's shoulder without looking at him.

"Thank you both, though." Juan holds up a shaky hand to Vin, who takes it and, instead of shaking his hand, pulls him in for a hug with their clasped hands held between them. They pat each other on the back two times each and break the hug; Isaac has seen lots of boys hug like this with each other, though he isn't sure what the difference is between that and a normal hug.

Juan, though, turns to Isaac and offers a hand. "Thank you."

Isaac takes the hand, but Juan walks in for a hug. Isaac follows protocol from what he's seen before, patting Juan on the back twice and saying, "You're welcome, Juan," before backing up and letting go. Juan locks eyes with him for a moment, just long enough for Isaac to see and feel the tears in them. Isaac feels that same post-panic sensation as he looks into Juan's jet-black eyes, but the overflowing gratitude and happiness he feels underneath it all matches up much better with the smile on Juan's face. Juan then turns back and gets up on the stretcher with the man's help; he and the other men wheel him out the front door and into the ambulance outside. Isaac can't watch for long, as the flashing lights bother him.

Right as the ambulance starts driving off, the bell for class rings out through the halls. The principal looks at the clock on the wall and states, "And the nurse gets back from break in two minutes. Of course." He shakes his head. "All right, my two heroes, you need to get to class. Thank you again; you are both remarkable people, and I'm proud to have you at my school." He offers his hand, which is more like Vin's, only the fingers are thicker. Vin takes his hand and shakes it once, but Isaac notices that Vin grabs the principal's hand very firmly. Isaac has a fleeting concern that the principal will either get hurt or mad, but he doesn't appear to show either. He then does the same to Isaac, who much more gently takes his hand -- just in case -- and shakes it once. "See y'all around," he says.

"See y'all around, sir." Isaac replies.

With a grin, Vin adds, "What he said," pointing a thumb at Isaac.

The principal exits the nurse's office, intercepting the path of the school nurse, whose eyes go wide a few seconds into the principal's speech.

Isaac follows Vin into the hallway, wishing he could just stick with him throughout the day, but knowing full well that he has to go to lunch. Before Vin starts walking off, though, he turns to Isaac and says, "Hey. I hope you realize how important you were back there."

Isaac knows that he saved someone's life, that that is an important thing, and that he's really happy Juan is still alive, but he doesn't feel any more important or special than he was before. He doesn't respond, unsure of what to say.

"Isaac. Look at me real quick." The chattering sound of the incoming crowd starts filling the hallway, but Isaac looks up at Vin and is awash with pride, respect, and awe. "Do you feel how it makes me feel that you did that?" he asks. "Juan is a good kid and you saved his life. That's amazing."

"You, you carried him though." The river of kids flows through the hall, ignoring the two of them like rocks in the current.

He rolls his eyes, breaking contact. "We'll discuss who's the bigger hero later, yeah? We gotta go to class."

"Okay, Vin."

"Have a good one!" he says with a smile and a wave, walking backward a bit on his way to the other hallway.

"Have a good one, Vin." Isaac waves back.

Vin smiles one last time at Isaac and heads down the hallway. Isaac, lost both in the crowd and in thought, finds himself in the math hallway before he realizes it, with nothing more figured out other than that Mrs. Davis is here, thankfully. "Good morning, Isaac," she says in her reliable, consistent greeting.

"Good morning, Mrs. Davis," Isaac says to her thin-heeled, shiny dark red slippers, the color of a rich major third harmony.

"How is your day?"

"My day is...stressed. Stressful."

"Oh? Why so?"

"A boy in gym class had an a-allergy, um, anaphylactic a-attack, and then I told the coach, and then he, um, Vin carried him to the nurse." Just retelling it makes his heart speed up a bit.

"Oh, no! Is the boy okay?"

"I think he will be okay, ma'am."

"Okay, good to hear. Well, bell's about to ring, so get on to class, okay? Goodbye, Isaac."

"Okay, ma'am. Goodbye, Mrs. Davis."

After the morning he's had, he's more than happy to sit down and practice math. Mr. Crawford walks by his desk at the side of the room while everyone is working on the warm-up and says, "We'll be working in partners today, but you can stay over here if you want. How many lessons ahead in the book are you?"

Isaac flips open to the page noted on the whiteboard, and then counts ahead through the lessons he's worked on. "Two, sir, and then, I don't know if I did the problems on page 83 right or not."

"Not a problem. I'll check them out when I get everyone else started. Do you want to work in partners today, or stay here?"

Isaac pauses. Today is definitely not the day he wants to work with classmates. "I want to stay here, sir."

"That's fine. Check over your work and see what questions you might have. I'll be back."

"Yes, sir."

As the class gets going, he looks out at everyone working in partners, and for a brief moment, he wishes he were there working with a partner, too, if only to not be considered so "different." He really liked teaching Vin how to work equations; maybe he could help other people, too, and be liked by them. The thought is quickly quashed by his stress levels and anxieties about people in general, though, so he goes back to his independent work.

Isaac finally feels a bit calmer throughout math class, and by lunch time, he's mostly back to normal. Isaac gets his food and is already snacking on apple slices by the time Christian sits down. "Hi, Isaac!"

"Hi, Christian."

Christian stuffs a large chunk of his sandwich into his mouth and starts excitedly talking anyway. "Ithaac! Thith you hear abou the amblanth outhite?" He spits small bits of sandwich on the table as he talks.

Isaac's nose wrinkles at the sight of Christian's half-eaten food while he talks. "Ew. Christian, that's gross."

"What?" Christian says, finally swallowing the bite and stuffing another chunk in.

"Your food. It's gross when you eat and then you try t-to t...talk."

"Oh, like thith?" Christian says, opening his mouth and sticking his sandwich-covered tongue out at Isaac.

Isaac turns and gags. "Ew, ew! Stop!" Isaac pleads, squinting. He's grossed out and it's super annoying, but he finds himself laughing a bit, as well.

"Thtop what?" Christian says with his tongue still hanging out the entire time, causing most of the bite that he was working on to fall into his applesauce. "...Oh." he says, staring at his lost food.

Isaac looks over again, sees the applesauce, and finds himself gagging and cracking up laughing at the same time. "Ewww!" he cackles, gagging again just thinking about it.

Christian finds it just as hilarious and sits with his hands on the table, staring at his tray and giggling incessantly. "I lost my sandwich!" he laments, even while crying a bit from laughter. A couple of people glance at the table, but nobody seems to say anything about it.

After they both calm down a bit, Christian puts his applesauce to the side of his tray. "That's just nasty, now."

Isaac, finally approaching his sandwich again, asks Christian, "Could you throw it away? Please?"

"Um..." he stammers, and looks around on his tray. He grabs his napkin and throws it on top of the nasty mix. "There. I can throw it away later when I get up to throw my other stuff away so that I don't have to get up twice. Okay?"

"Okay, Christian." He goes back to his apples, eating the next three-bite slice.

Once Christian finishes up most of his food, he sits and stares blankly for a moment, but suddenly his eyes light up. "Oh yeah! So did you see the ambulance that was outside earlier?!"

"Yes, Christian," Isaac says, suddenly anxious about saying more.

"What do you, what do you think that they were here for? Do you think that somebody died?!" he asks with wide eyes.

Isaac accidentally looks at Christian's eyes and feels his excitement and wonder, almost overwhelmingly so. He looks down at his hand, realizing that he's been picking at his finger, and replies, "No, Christian, nobody died."

"Oh. Um, how do you know, though? 'Cuz sometimes ambulances show up when someone dies, or if they're gonna die, and, and they can't save the person or whatever so maybe the person they picked up is gonna die still."

"Don't say that!" Isaac suddenly snaps. "He's not going to die!"

"Who? Do you know who was on the ambulance? What happened?!"

Isaac stops, torn between not lying to Christian and not telling him things he doesn't need to know. I don't want him to know about my ability, he thinks, but I don't want to be quiet because then he'll think I'm being mean again. "It was Juan."

"Who's Juan?"

Isaac blinks, not sure how to answer the question. "Juan is a boy in my gym class."

"Oh. Is he gay, too?"

Isaac flushes, embarrassed and frustrated. "I don't know, okay? Stop asking me questions!"

"Oh." Isaac immediately looks at Christian to see if he is going to start crying, but Christian just continues, "Okay. Mr. Coleman told me to listen to people when they tell me to stop talking or asking them questions, so I'm gonna stop, okay?"

He doesn't look like he's going to cry or anything, so Isaac replies, "Okay, Christian. Thank you, Christian."

Christian smiles big. "You're welcome!"

They don't say anything more for a few moments, but Isaac suddenly has a revelation. "Um, Christian?"

"What?"

"Did you know that you asked another question?"

"I did?"
"Yes. And then you just did again right now."

"Oh. I did!" They both laugh about it as the nearby tables cast sidelong glances at them again.

Throughout the rest of the day, Isaac hears snippets of conversation about the ambulance, and dearly hopes that nobody connects it to him; he doesn't want to be known for yet one more thing. Being a "weird voodoo fag mime boy" is plenty enough for Isaac as it is.

Later on, in art class, Isaac carefully gets his painting out of his backpack; it survived the journey mostly unharmed, though a little bit of one corner ends up wrinkled, to Isaac's dismay. He wouldn't care if it were regular homework, but this is art.

He places it on the table in front of him as the teacher introduces the next lesson: "What Is Art?" Her lecture involves showing the class some strange abstract art pictures; the ones by Jackson Pollock remind Isaac of someone rubbing a microphone across a rough surface, or if someone played four songs all over each other at the same time, a horrifying concept to Isaac. The paintings leave him unsettled, but the class doesn't focus on them for long, thankfully.

After the lesson, she has everyone write a short paragraph about whether or not they consider abstract art to be "art," and why/why not, and then continue working on their perspective drawings. Isaac, however, draws a complete blank on the concept, and stares at his empty index card until Mrs. Hobbes walks by, her wild hair bouncing lightly with each step.

"So," she begins as she squats down next to him, resting her arms on the table, "what do you think? Is abstract art, like what you saw, still 'art'?"

"I don't know, ma'am."

She smiles a bit; Isaac darts his eyes close enough to look at her mouth, but he doesn't meet her eyes. "Well, what about this?" she says, indicating his painting. "Is this art?"

He stares at it, wondering why she would ask such an obvious question. "Yes, ma'am."

"Well, it's abstract art, isn't it?"

That gives him even more pause. To be abstract art in Isaac's mind, it had to be something that represented something else, something that wasn't just portraying the image of a real thing. "No, ma'am," he replies plainly.

"No? Why not?"

"Because it's a real thing. The painting is a painting of a song, so it's a real thing."

Her smile grows. "Yes, but most people don't see these colors when they hear that song, so they wouldn't agree with you."

Isaac is silent.

"Also, did you know that people with synesthesia don't see -- or otherwise experience -- the same thing that other synesthetes do?"

"Yes, ma'am, I know, because synesthesia is sub-jective, not ob-jective," he says with obvious spaces between the consonants. "I read about it and how some people disagreed on music keys being, that they disagreed on what color they were."

"Ah," she says with a grin, "the rivalry between Liszt and Rimsky-Korsakov, right?"

"I...think so," he says, though he was never sure how to pronounce their names when he read them. He finds himself surprised at how much she knows; usually people just know more about him than he does about them, but people usually didn't just know lots of things about random topics like synesthesia. "You know a lot about synesthesia."

He catches sight of one of her eyebrows raising in that infuriatingly difficult facial expression he could never replicate, and she responds, "That's because I did a lot of research when I found out what it was. I always wondered why other people didn't think that the letter A was supposed to be orange, not red like it is in that old book."

Both of Isaac's eyebrows shoot up. "You have synesthesia?!"

She stands up, still smiling. "Not chromesthesia as you do with music, but with some things, yes. Now, could you explain your artwork to me?"

Isaac explains, "Um, this is the song that I chose. It's called 'Shevat, the Wind is Calling,' and then, but I call the picture 'Shevat.' These are stars, or sparkles, and then they are when the song goes down at the beginning, um, and this part..." he runs out of steam, realizing how difficult it is to describe a song without hearing it. "I...maybe it would be better if you heard it."

She gives that weird frown again, the one that doesn't involve her eyebrows, and walks over to her desk, disconnecting her laptop and bringing it over to Isaac's table. "Is it online?"

"Yes, ma'am." He navigates on YouTube to the piano rendition of the song. "It's that one, ma'am."

With a small smile, she walks back over to her desk and plugs her laptop back in. "Don't mind me, class; I'm just going to put on some music."

Isaac's heart drops. She's going to play the song out loud for everyone! He doesn't know whether to feel excited or embarrassed, so he ends up feeling both, with a healthy dose of confusion to glue them together.

She leans over to Isaac and says, "When I start the video, I want you to point to the part of your picture that goes with the part that's being played. Could you do that?"

"Yes, ma'am," he says with wide-eyed eagerness.

"Great. Here we go." She steps over to her desk, taps her laptop, and hurries back to Isaac's spot, which is thankfully somewhat close to her desk anyway. As soon as the first notes begin to cascade down, Isaac points to the sparkling field on his painting, leading her on a journey through the first half of the song: the green slashing rains, the golden wind, the tumultuous accompaniment. When it hits the second part, he hangs his head a bit. "I'm sorry," he says softly.

"Why?" she asks.

"That's all I had room to, um, paint."

She laughs a musical little laugh, though it doesn't go with the song that's still playing. "This was far more than enough," she assures Isaac. "Thank you very much for letting me see what only you, in the private theater of your mind, have been able to see. This is beautiful."

Isaac doesn't consider his mind to be a theater, but he doesn't question it. "You're...welcome, Mrs. Hobbes."

"And you're right: this is art, and it is stunning."

Silently, Isaac responds with a growing smile and blushing cheeks.

She takes his painting and pins it up on the wall, in a space between multiple other works that had already been displayed on the walls since day one, most likely from students from previous years. She goes back to her desk and begins working on something, leaving Isaac staring at his painting with a sense of pride that he had not felt for anything he had done before.

Throughout the rest of the day, Isaac finds again the peace and wonder that suffused him at the start of the day; now he knows three separate people with synesthesia, and Mrs. Hobbes put his artwork on the wall, with all the others that made it through the years to be displayed. He did also save someone's life, which was scary, but also kind of exciting. He's not sure why those things deserve the level of recognition he received for either of them, but it does nothing to diminish the pride he feels for what she said of his work, or for how others viewed his deed in gym class. On his way to the piano room, he actually considers for a small moment that perhaps his differences aren't just a "good" kind of different -- which he still doesn't feel, yet -- but possibly even useful.

He walks into the choir room to see Vin with his hand on the piano room door already. He smiles and follows Vin in, who turns in surprise at the sound of Isaac approaching him. "Oh, hey, Isaac! I didn't see ya comin'." He smiles and has a seat on the piano bench.

Isaac expects the slap-and-tap greeting that happened before, but Vin doesn't offer it. Slightly disappointed, Isaac takes a seat next in the chair next to the bench. He looks at Vin, from his big shoes and tall legs to his long-fingered hands, up past his basketball jersey over a red t-shirt, and to his face, with his round-tipped nose, thin lips, flattish ears, and heterochromatic eyes; looking in them for a short moment, Isaac feels a heightened sense of his own pride and wonder mixing together with some sort of anxiety, though with a different fuzziness to it than the yellow nervousness he felt that night. He doesn't understand what that means, but he logs it for later.

"So..." Vin draws out, looking away toward the piano keys, "how was the rest of your day?"

"Good, Vin," he says with a smile.

"Yeah? What happened?" he asks with a smile of his own.

"Um, after I left the nurse, I went to math class, and then he let me work alone. The teacher did. And then, at lunch Christian was trying to gross me out but he dropped his food in the applesauce and it was funny." He giggles through the last part of the sentence, just remembering how silly it was. Vin snorts a laugh through his nose a little bit, which makes Isaac's heart jump. He continues, "And then I made a painting of 'Shevat' in art, I mean, um, I did it for homework and then I showed it to Mrs. Hobbes, and then she told me that it was stunning." He is grinning by the end of his retelling.

"You made a painting of the song?" Vin asks. "Like, how do you mean?"

"I painted what it looks like."

"Oh, you mean like with the synesthesia?"

"Yes, Vin."

"Man." Isaac watches Vin's eyes move about, looking at different things in front of him, but not at anything in particular. "I really wanna see that."

"Oh!" Isaac gasps, "I'm sorry! I didn't know!"

"Hey, it's fine, I didn't say -- you didn't do anything wrong. I mean, she still has it, yeah?"

"Oh, um, she put it up on her wall."

"You mean Mrs. Hobbes put it on the Wall of Fame?" When Isaac looks at Vin in confusion, Vin adds, "You know, the wall that has all the artwork on it."

"Oh. Yes, Vin, she put it on the, um, the Wall of Fame."

"Dude, I took art last year, and I didn't get anything of mine up there. She only picks a few each year, and you already got something up there in the third week of school. Niiiice." He holds out his hand, which Isaac excitedly smacks, following it up with a fist bump.

"Thank you, Vin," Isaac says with a grin. He looks into Vin's beautiful earth-brown and sky-blue eyes and explores the bundle of emotions there; what he finds, though, is that the pride and happiness there quickly seems to dissolve into anxiety again, a greasy sort of nervousness mixed with heavy, cold dread. The grin falls off of Isaac's face as he asks, "Vin? What's wrong?"

Vin quickly looks down and takes a deep breath. "So, I kinda wanted to talk to you about what Brandon said."

"Okay, Vin." Just remembering the moment gives Isaac chills.

"So...okay, so first off, I'm going to punch him so hard for saying anything at all. It's not his place to say a goddamn thing to my friends, especially not...my personal life or history."

Isaac grimaces. "Don't punch him; he might get mad and punch you back."

Vin closes his eyes and pauses a moment as a smile and laugh sneak out. "Yeah, somethin' like that. But I'm bein' serious; that's my story to tell, not his."

Isaac doesn't understand in the least what he means by whose story is whose, or who gets to tell what to whom, so he remains silent. He wishes Vin would look at him so he could understand better, but Vin keeps his gaze elsewhere.

"The problem is that...dammit, I really don't, I..." He sighs. "I'm not ready to talk about it." Isaac notices that Vin's accent seems to get a little stronger as he continues, "Some things happened a couple a' years ago that, that I'm not real proud of. Just...tell ya what. If I promise you that I will never, ever try to hurt you, and if I do, I'll make it up to you...can you promise me that...that you won't be afraid of me?"

For a few long seconds, Vin keeps staring downward; when he finally looks at Isaac, a tidal wave of emotion smashes into a completely unprepared Isaac. He is assaulted by feelings of guilt, of deep hurt, of vulnerability and fear, of burning shame and desperate hope. The feelings themselves are strong enough to bring tears to Isaac's eyes. He takes a shuddering, deep breath and closes his eyes to stop the onslaught. Vin feels really bad, Isaac considers. Did I make him feel that way by being afraid of him? "I promise that I won't be afraid of you, Vin," Isaac says, staring down at Vin's clasped hands. Unable to convince himself that he's not the cause of Vin's hurt, though, he squints his eyes and begins to chant, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Vin, I'm sorry..."

"Look," he says with a catch in his voice, "let's just...let's just forget about all this, okay? It was just a misunderstanding, and my asshole brother can keep his damn mouth shut, and we'll just, we'll just move on like we were before Sunday morning, yeah?"

Isaac stops chanting. He sniffles a bit, but he doesn't respond. Instead, he grits his teeth to prevent himself from chanting again, and he looks up at Vin, who has a small half smile and slightly raised eyebrows. Isaac is prepared to shut his eyes again if the emotions are too strong, but the hurt and shame feel more like an old bruise already, rather than an open wound; there are some brambles of frustration poking out of it, but the anxiety is much thinner now, pushed largely out of the way by relief and...some sort of emotion that is hard for Isaac to parse, a warm sort of feeling, like being wrapped in your favorite blanket and watching Adventure Time in the morning, or the feeling Isaac gets when he looks at all of his clothes lined up perfectly on the bed, just before putting them on. "Yeah, Vin," he responds with a sniffle and a weak smile.

Vin smiles back at him, and the warmth of that emotion flares up for a short moment. "Hey, uh," he says, looking down and reaching for his backpack, "I hate to cut this short, but I promised some friends I'd go shoot hoops today with them. So, uh, catch you later?"

Isaac immediately feels a deep, knotted tangle of emotions ensnare his lungs for a moment. He doesn't really understand them, but they're not good. "Catch you later...Vin."

Vin hoists his backpack up over a shoulder and stands up. He walks by Isaac, rustling his hair and sending chills up his spine. "All right! See you in gym tomorrow, then. Bye, Isaac!"

"Bye, Vin," he says weakly. As Vin leaves the room, Isaac thinks about the black, gnarled clump of emotion, and though he can't quite place the reason why, he really wishes that Vin wouldn't go play games with his friends. It's not necessarily that Isaac wants Vin to stay here, though that would be very nice; it's just that he doesn't want them to be with Vin. He really doesn't understand that, at all -- he's never felt that way about anyone or anything before -- so he tries to ignore it as he calls his mom to come pick him up. By the time she arrives, Isaac is frustrated enough to want to pull his hair. He gets in the car, fully aware that his mother will somehow magically be able to understand how he's feeling, so he tries to come up with a response before she does.

Instead, she asks, "How was your day, doodlebug?"

He knows that if he doesn't answer, things will get bad, so he responds, "Good and bad."

A few seconds later, she responds, "Okay, so...how was your day good?"

He stops to gather his thoughts; if he talked about gym class, it would just make him feel weird again, and he might have to talk about his ability, which he really doesn't want to do. Instead, he replies, "Mrs. Hobbes said that my painting was stunning, and then she put it on the Wall of Fame."

"Wow! That's great, honey!" She smiles big, though she still watches the road. "I'm proud of you!"

He beams at the praise.

"So is everything okay with you and that Vin boy? I know his brother scared you."

Isaac freezes, completely unsure how to answer this one. He eventually settles on, "I don't know."

There is a long pause from his mother. "Do you think you could explain what is confusing you about it?"

Isaac tries his best to put it into words, though it takes a minute to even start. "I think that Vin and me are still friends, and then I promised that I wasn't going to be afraid of him, and then he promised he would never try to hurt me and then that he would make it better if he did."

His mother furrows her brow. "But you said you were afraid of his brother, not him."

Isaac falls silent.

"Are you sure Vin didn't do anything bad to you, or hurt you in any way?"

"No, ma'am. I mean yes, ma'am, I'm sure."

"Okay. You know I'm just worried about you."

"I know, Mom."

"So...why do you think things might not be okay?"

Isaac takes another long pause, mostly because he himself isn't sure why he feels how he does. "He, um. He went to go shoot hoops with his friends."

"...Is that it?"

That's all that Isaac can figure out, anyway. It sounds completely stupid when he says it; why does everything in his mind always come out like a petty seven-year-old said it?! He knows there's more to it than just "Vin is playing with his friends," there has to be...but whatever else there is, he can't figure out words for it. He finally replies meekly, "...No."

"Well, what else, then?"

"I don't know!" he snaps petulantly; he scrunches up in his seat and wraps his arms around his legs, irritated at himself.

His mother just smiles. "It's fine to feel the way you do, Isaac. Don't worry. Everything is still going to be fine between you two. Okay?"

"Okay, Mom." He's trusted her judgment on these sorts of things before, but this time just seems...different.

"So is that the reason that your day was bad?"

"...Yes, ma'am." He feels like a stupid idiot for feeling how he does, which only frustrates him further.

She hazards a glance over at Isaac, who continues to stare forward, directing all of his anger at the dashboard. "Tell you what, hon -- how about you invite Vin over sometime, maybe this weekend?"

He doesn't stop frowning, but he does stop to think about it. Vin...over at my house? But...what would we do? I don't have a keyboard. Or a cat. Or a second floor. Maybe we have cards. He gets another pressing feeling like he got when he first walked into Vin's house, a feeling of being very small, of being somehow not enough. He doesn't know what it means at all, but it spikes his anxiety up when thinking about Vin, especially of him coming over.

"So?" she asks again. "What do you think? We could maybe go see a movie and get a bite to eat."

He considers the idea a little more. He does like watching movies, especially on the big screen (as long as it's not tons of explosions or gunshots, those aren't so fun), and food is, of course, always good. Finally, he replies, "Okay, Mom. I would like to invite Vin over this weekend."

"Great," she says with a smile. "I'm sure he'll be perfectly happy to come over, and then you can stop being jealous that he's hanging out with other friends. You're a friend of his, too, you know."

"I know. I mean, I...I'm not jealous." Am I? he thinks. I know that he has other friends, and they probably play basketball a lot, and I don't really play basketball, so he would go play with them. The thought brings that black tangle of emotions back up, with a little fear sprinkled in. What the fear could be about, Isaac can't figure out, so he puts his thoughts elsewhere before it gnaws at him.

"Of course not, honey." She smiles enigmatically.

As they walk in the door, Isaac puts his backpack down next to the couch and unstraps his shoes. He takes his socks off and puts them in the laundry room; when he gets back, his mother is listening to her phone with a strange expression. Suddenly, her eyebrows shoot up, and she looks at Isaac: complete astonishment and bewilderment flow together with pride and excitement. She looks at her phone and hits a quick button. "Hello, this is Eileen Brooks; you left a message on my phone. ...So I heard! I can definitely make time to meet up. Tomorrow morning? ...Oh, Wednesday would work, sure. Before school? ...Great. And thank you for the news. ...Have a good evening." She hangs up and slips her phone into her purse. "Isaac. You didn't tell me you saved someone's life today."

Isaac slumps a bit and trudges over to the couch, not at all in the mood to have this conversation again. So, he tries his best not to.

"Isaac," she tries again, finding her way to the loveseat, "come sit over here." She pats the cushion.

He slides off the couch and sits next to her, but he continues to look downward. He feels, among everything else today, exhausted. He did run the Pacer test, but he feels more like his brain and chest are twice as tired as his legs.

"Isaac, the principal said that you identified someone having an anaphylactic allergic reaction so that they could get medical help. You literally saved a boy's life."

"Yes, ma'am," he says quietly.

"Don't you feel proud of that?"

Isaac doesn't answer. He's really not sure why he should be proud of it. He is proud of the art he made; it took a lot of work, after all. He's proud of his grades, especially in reading class (though he still isn't sure how he passed it last year...his education plan must have helped him out), since he keeps them pretty high. But all he did was make sure someone lived. He finally asks simply, "Why?"

His mom opens her mouth but says nothing for a moment. "Doodlebug, that's one of the best things you could ever do for someone. That is something to be very proud of. In fact, the parents want to meet you tomorrow to thank you personally."

He shrinks a little smaller. "But I don't want to meet...anyone."

At his mother's silence, he hazards a look up at her, to make sure he didn't make her mad; instead, she is smiling, which throws Isaac off. She squeezes his knee with her hand and says, "You know how when someone does something nice for you, you want to say thank you?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You did the nicest thing that you could ever do for his parents, and they really want to say 'thank you' to you."

Isaac stays silent, but he ponders those words. She continues, "I would want to do the exact same if someone saved your life. You mean absolutely everything to me, and it would...I don't know if I could ever get over it if something bad happened to you. Do you understand what I mean?"

He nods.

"So would you be okay with meeting them so that they can thank you in person?"

"Yes, ma'am," he nods. He doesn't feel important, but if he didn't, he might hurt their feelings.

"Excellent. I'm glad to hear it. Now go run along; I've taken up enough of your time," she says with a grin.

Isaac spends the rest of his evening trying to forget about everything that happened today, if only to let his brain and heart rest from the onslaught of activity today. He beats Christian a few times on Clash Royale, he practices some recently-learned math concepts via the book and by making his own random problems, and eventually he settles in to take a bath after dinner. His mind is pleasantly blank, other than "Shevat" running on repeat in the background, at least until he gets to washing his hair.

Like a conditioned response, washing his hair has become an instant trigger for erection for him; he can't help but think of Vin's hands wrapping the sides of his head, stimulating every nerve, bristle by bristle. He spends a little extra time lathering, imagining Vin helping him out on it, even wondering what it would be like if he did the same thing to Vin; that thought particularly sets his chest on fire and his heart to a new beat.

He finishes with his hair (finally), and decides that orgasm might be a good way to feel some relief from the day. He plays around with his testicles for a bit, realizing for the first time in a while that they're bigger than they were last year, and that they finally seem to have very light, tiny hairs on them now. He can't feel them like the hair on his head, since they're far too thin, but it fascinates him nonetheless. There's also a little more hair coming in at the base of his penis; he reckons that it will probably be a year or maybe more before it looks like the amount that Vin has.

He starts going through the day as he slides his hand gently up and down his penis, not really grabbing skin, just barely touching it like Vin did. Remembering the things they did that night definitely get him going a little faster; thinking about Vin's hands just adds that much more heat to the fire.

He thinks about the shower earlier today, where Vin made the water into something more tolerable for him. That thought fills his heart with childlike glee again, but the sight of the water pouring into his hair, down his broad shoulders, into the groove of his spine, and down across his slender, muscular butt makes Isaac grip himself harder and speed up, sending occasional flares of excitement through his chest and groin.

Then his mind wanders to that moment when Vin carried Juan out of the gym. He is filled with awe at the sight; not because Vin took the initiative and heroically carried Juan, but because he didn't think that Vin was that strong. Sure, Juan's not a very big kid, but Isaac just didn't realize that Vin could do that. thinking of his strength alone is enough to make Isaac's testicles start to move up a bit, but when Isaac once again imagines himself in Juan's place, being carried to safety in Vin's big hands and strong arms, the suddenness of his orgasm makes him involuntarily squint and grunt at the force of his muscles contracting. Each throb sends stars to the back of his eyelids and lights his groin up with pleasure. It doesn't last long, but when it's done, Isaac opens his eyes in wonderment, staring blankly forward at the drain in the tub. He dribbled a good bit of fluid onto his finger, almost more like what Vin did, just not thick or white yet...but he can't seem to find where that first glob, the one that always flies out, went. Normally it finds its way to his face, but he seriously cannot figure out where it flew, and since his eyes were closed, he has no idea where to even look. Secretly hoping that he didn't shoot the ceiling or something weird (despite knowing the unlikelihood of that happening), he cleans up the mess and drains the tub.

That night, he lies in bed, with a jumbled mass of thoughts vying for control: meeting Juan's parents, Vin coming over, occasional thoughts of Vin's arms and hands, wondering what happened with Mr. Guthrie, and a thin little sliver of a thought that, in two different ways today, he felt, if not important per se, at least appreciated. Of all the feelings he experienced throughout the day, that one is the most comforting, and he wears it like a blanket as he falls asleep.

To be continued...