Okay, okay, so I read Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and just had to write something for it.

Actually, that's not true -- this was for a class assignment. Awesome, right?! So it has been beta'd by -- get this -- my professor. This will never cease to amuse me.

Oh, and there is some Rowdy/Junior if you squint... If Rowdey is gay (and doth protest too much), he's so deep in the closet he doesn't even know. And now I probably will end up writing post-book fic of them getting drunk and making out or something. Because that's just how my brain works. But I wouldn't have started down this path if it hadn't been an assignment! XD

Whether

It was a warm day for spring, even with snow still on the ground. That was the sort of thing he always noticed at funerals, what the weather was like. He kept a tally on a piece of cardboard backing he'd ripped off the back of some guy's favorite swimsuit model catalogue – raining, snowing, windy, flat cold, cloudy, warm, hot, humid.

The summer after he'd defaced the calendar, the guy had gotten drunk and driven himself into a tree. Then there was the first, vaguely guilty mark, almost as an afterthought. Cloudy.

No one had ever seen the tally. It was a private thing, something that lived in the back corner of his bottom desk drawer beneath his collection of Casper comics (which were only slightly less of a secret), and some day he would burn it. Pay his final respects to all the dead that way. Or maybe he would be buried with it. Whichever came first.

Today would be another mark down for Warm, but that was just the weather. These burials always felt the same – like a preview for a crappy movie that you were going to be tricked into paying to see no matter what. And so what if that made him so angry he cried a little sometimes, huh? So what?

There was something different about this funeral, though. Something that kept him back, hiding in the woods, instead of loitering around the edges of the people dressed in black.

Something that had just run full-speed into him. Junior – or, he was probably going by Arnold now, fucking white kids' school – stumbled back and they both hit the ground at the same time.

He wanted to snap, Watch where you're going, or something. But he just sat there, staring at the scrawny kid who used to be his friend. There was less anger than usual for him, for a funeral, but just as many tears, and he couldn't really figure out why. He hadn't even known Mary all that well.

"Rowdy. You're crying."

I know that, asshole. He gritted his teeth.

"I ain't crying," he said. "You're crying."

Because that's the way it should have been. Junior should have been the one with his face all streaked and wet, not him. Wasn't, but should have been – like most things.

Junior put a hand on his own cheek and felt around, like he thought his skin might be numb or something, and said, flatly, "I can't remember how to cry."

And what was he supposed to say to that? Your traitor ex-best friend's sister is in a box in the ground and he basically says he can't feel sad enough about it to make his eyes leak – this from the kid who always cried, and always got beaten up for it, and always cried some more. What was he supposed to say to that?

Fuck, he thought with a little gasp as more tears rolled down his face. Then he felt stupid, and sure that this was the gayest thing he'd ever done.

"You're crying."

"No, I'm not."

"It's okay," Junior said. Still flat, still dull, still numb. "I miss my sister too. I love her."

"I said I'm not crying," he managed to snap. And he was trying to stop. Deny that it's even happening for long enough and eventually it would stop, if he could just be numb enough, to all of it…

"It's okay," Junior said again, and reached towards him.

He jumped when Junior's hand touched his shoulder. Even though he knew it was supposed to be some clumsy kind of there there it happens (which it always seemed that people only did in the comics he read, and not the real world), he didn't like the way it felt.

Unexpected. Warm, for spring.

He didn't realize he was trying to punch Junior until he'd already missed. And maybe that was embarrassing, because he never missed, but it was only one thing on top of a couple others. Maybe it was even good that he had, since there was no danger of feeling guilty about something he hadn't actually done.

And maybe, and maybe, and maybe – a whole new, confused list of tally marks, only he didn't think these were the kind he would be able burn.