DAN

We'd lost track of time, and failed to pick Chloe up the moment school ended. We got her home, of course, though I honestly would've preferred throwing her out the window to rid myself of her bitching halfway there. And being the –… I don't even have a word for this betrayal, predictable though it may have been— that she is, she immediately ratted us out, and we starting getting chewed out.

"I pay good money to send you to that school," –money I'm sure you don't have to spare, of course— "and you go and cut class? I've spoken to your instructors: they say this is far from the first time. What the hell are you thinking, Daniel? Are you really feeling like such a rebel to risk your education and your family's reputation?"

Phil and I were sat down next to each other, though further apart than I'd like after our little escapade this afternoon. Dad was towering over us, speaking melodramatically in his loud booming voice; Mom was sitting behind him, filing her nails and generally disengaged; Chloe was god knows where, probably hiding in her room like the coward she is. I stared straight ahead at nothing, defiant and determined not to listen to what this bellowing man had to say. I caught Phil out of the corner of my eye, head turned down to avoiding my father's glare. Yes, we'd both done wrong, theoretically; but I wanted to reach out and take his hand, run my thumb over his bony knuckles and lift them to my lips to kiss them, sooth him –but I couldn't. I couldn't let my Mom or Dad know –especially in their present anger— what we'd done in detail: the city, the park, the kiss –all they had to know was that we'd teamed and cut out of our classes after lunch. They didn't need to, and didn't want to, know anything else.

Dad ran his red and sweaty palm over his redder and sweatier face, exasperated by his own exasperation. I'd done nothing since coming home but coolly sit and pretend to listen, and he was a gullible man when it came to my behavior. I was a creature of black-and-white in his eye, an angel or devil, and more often the latter. But despite my earlier misbehavior, now I seemed to be in a pliant state –played purposely, so he'd notice and be fooled by it. He seemed to be winding down; I looked forward to heading back up to the quiet of my bedroom.

"There's a banquet this Saturday," he started ominously, catching half my attention. I brought my eyes to almost meet his face; Phil's head lifted slightly, though he remained in submission. The fact that his gentle nature urged him to submit to this well-tailored beast of a man fanned a fire in my heart. "Here's the deal for you two. Daniel, you need to behave yourself, and socialize for once instead of holing yourself away like you always do. You're destroying the family's image with your social ineptitude. And you-" He turned to Phil without sparing him the dignity of his own name. "If you're going to stay here the next few months, you need to make a good impression on our friends and colleagues. They know that situation you've come from, but they're a ruthless bunch and won't show leniency for your behavior."

"And if they can't behave themselves?" Mom asked, as if scripted to prompt voicing of a decision my father had made prior.

"Then…" He seemed less uncertain, more pausing for dramatic effect, and I was all but all ears. "Then he won't be staying with us longer; and by Sunday evening he'll be back where he came from."

My heart dropped to my stomach, but the sudden heaviness couldn't help me from rising from my seat in a fit. "You can't do that!"

He pressed me back down into my seat with a heavy hand on my shoulder. "I can and I will, if it's called for. In the meantime," he gestured to Phil, "to your room. And you, son, there's too many nice things of yours in your bedroom, and it'd be dumb to send you there. Until further noticed, you'll be locked out of there, and will sleep on the sofa, here. Off with you now. Saturday's not long from now –in these next five days, you may want to get your act together in advance –both of you."

I couldn't sleep. I tossed and turned on the sofa, and grit my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut, instead. This wasn't fair. I couldn't let my parents send Phil back. In part, my worry was of fear to lose him: we seemed to be moving toward something more than friendship, and I didn't want that ripped away so suddenly, when he made me happy like no one could. That was the more selfish reason. Otherwise, the probably more substantial part, was from knowing how unhealthy an environment the school was –from what little he told me, seemed too much like a prison!— and I couldn't send such a sweet soul off to be broken further. Would he be able to get away at eighteen, in a few months, were he sent back now? If so, where would he go? He was bright, and though apparently (though not all that apparently) damaged, fully functioning, and could survive given the proper start. Would they just open their gates, 'Be free, now,' and send him on his way into a world he didn't entirely understand (as someone his age ought to survive)?

There was no doubt in my mind that I was falling quickly in love with him. Should he stay through the end of the school year, I'd be eighteen then, too, and we could escape together. We could work part-time and go to college the other part-of-the-time, and start our lives like any young couple could. That was all we would need: a head start, with a small apartment and a budding education, and a job or two each at nine dollars an hour. It wouldn't be easy; we'd scrape along, but we'd get by. But if he were torn from me any sooner, what hope could I have to salvage that dream?

I couldn't stay down here, and needed to see him. I headed upstairs and briefly checked to find that my door was indeed locked –great. I went to his door, the bedroom next to mine, but heard speaking inside. I pressed my ear to the wood to hear it more clearly, and yes, he was talking. A monologue to himself, it seemed, until I realized –I'd know the sound anywhere, and from a hint dropped in his speech— that he was recording a video, speaking to a camera, and indirectly an audience. His voice was unusually cheerful for how poorly the evening had gone, but maybe he was more thinking about our afternoon together –I hoped so. He was talking about it anyway, at which I couldn't contain my smile.

I moved to sit with my back to the door, smile softening as I just relaxed into the sound of his voice.

And then something hit me.

I knew that voice, and from sometime before we'd met.

I turned and knocked quickly on the door, scrambling to my feet before he could open it up. "Dan?" He looked tired, but smiled.

"Hi." I shifted my weight from foot to foot anxiously. "Mind if I come in?" He didn't answer verbally, but stepped aside and gestured me in, yawning. I noticed his shirt lift a bit as he stretched his arms over his head, and I tried not to blush at the pale sliver of skin revealed at his hips. I looked around the room. It was the same as I'd seen it before he'd moved in, obviously hesitant to make it a bit more homely for himself. I wish he could relax here, it being his home right now as much as it was mine. I wanted him to know it.

"What brings you here so late?"

I hadn't even noticed the time until he asked, and saw on the clock that it was near midnight. I brushed the hour aside. "I, uh, I heard you talking."

"From downstairs?" He seemed worried the whole house could hear him rambling (in the most wonderful sense) to a camera. I was quick to settle him.

"No, I came… I came to see you." I hid my reddening face for a moment. "I heard it through your door, but barely. I did… Do you have a YouTube channel?" He nodded mutely, unsure of what I might've been getting at and maybe afraid I would judge his response. "How long for?"

"A few years..?" he mused, more at ease now. "Been posting for four years, I think?"

"Can I see?"

He nodded again and brought the site up on his computer. I looked it over. The name rang a bell, but not any recent one, so I searched deeper. I quickly glanced over a disproportionately small subscriber count for his number of videos. "I make videos, too," I mentioned, almost in passing, as I determinedly searched my mind for an answer to correspond with what I saw here. Taken aback for a moment by my own stupidity at not trying this first, I went to the list of videos themselves, and sorted to see the oldest ones first. And that's where it all came back. I felt my eyes burning, though not watering, and I turned to him.

He looked a bit perplexed at my reaction, not knowing he'd made some of the first videos I'd watched, one of the primary reasons I'd wanted to make my own in the first place. It made me a bit sick to know that in as short a time as I'd been doing this myself, I had more than double as many viewers as he had, when he'd been my idol for a time. And he was an idol I'd forgotten for a time. He didn't know any of that, and at that moment, it seemed silly and sentimental to explain. So I didn't.

I showed him my own channel, and he wanted to watch some of my videos, which he laughed at and seemed to enjoy. We went back to his channel and watched some I hadn't seen, though far from recent, because he said those were some of his better ones. They were all set in his small bedroom at Arlington. He sat as a shining light in the center of a cloud of gloom. That was when the tears came, learning of his experiences there, told in the most optimistic ways but unable to completely hide the dreariness of the situation. But even now, watching, looking back, he was smiling. God damn it, if I wasn't sure before, I was more than certain now: I loved him. I loved him like I'd never loved before, and hoped to never love again.

We stayed there watching old videos all night, and when the sun started to rise on the other side of the house, the dim light peeking through the open window, he pecked my cheeks. He didn't seem to mind my immediate rosiness. "Maybe we could make one together sometime."