notes: Thank you again to Jamie (it bears repeating cos she was very encouraging)
disclaimer: still don't own them
The first day that his dad missed stopping by (after morning class, while the guys hit the gym before lunch), someone else came. Hamilton looked up to see a lanky, sallow boy hovering irresolute in the doorway of his room. He was staring intently at Hamilton.
Hamilton had no idea who he was. "Hey."
A single, jerky nod upward, and the boy came in. He dropped onto a chair. His eyes ate Hamilton up.
Hamilton put the Rawley College magazine aside. It was disconcerting, to read accounts of races won by the JV team, to know he'd been there, and to remember none of it.
"Is it true you've forgotten everything?" the boy demanded harshly.
"Everything since starting at Rawley." Ham wondered if it was any of this stranger's business. Of course, it might be. This could be his best friend, for all he knew. If it were, though, he would have shown earlier, and come over with Ham's dad. He peered at the stranger.
"Summer session?"
"Including summer session, yeah" Hamilton growled. "Look, who are you?"
The boy looked shaken. "I'm Jake."
"Jake." Hamilton studied him. Under a veneer of stilness, Jake was wound up as tightly as a metal coil. Hamilton felt a connection to him, like he could feel the conflicting urges, to bolt or to get closer, in his own body. He couldn't explain the connection. "The coxswain?"
"Uh, yeah" Jake said awkwardly. "Your mom told you about me, huh?"
Actually, no. Hamilton sat on the side of his bed. There had been a photograph of the JV crew in the school magazine. Jake had been the one in the hoodie. His mom might've told him about Jake, he supposed. She'd talked for hours, trying to spark off him memories. "Are we friends?"
He saw a flicker of hurt before Jake controlled his expression again. "We're best friends."
"Oh, sorry." It sounded lame but he said it anyway. "I can't remember."
"Yeah."
Jake rolled his shoulders and cleared his throat. "We're on crew." He looked at the door longingly. "We like the same movies and TV. We so don't like the same music."
"Not a fan of Third Eye Blind" Ham contributed.
"And you don't like Sarah McLaughlin."
Ham pulled a face. "God, you're into that? Chick music."
"Yeah, well. It helps me get chicks." Jake leaned back in his chair, a swagger in his voice.
He probably needed all the help he could get, scrawny runt. Hamilton wondered how he was doing with the ladies. Which would be worse: forgetting losing his virginity, or still having it and not knowing? "Do I have a girlfriend?"
Jake's good humour ebbed. "No." His voice was flat.
After a minute, Ham realised he wasn't going to be hearing stories about Sindys and Barbies he'd loved and lost in his missing year. "So. What else do we do?"
"We play, like, a ton of computer games."
"Oh." Ham had spent years doing that alone. He had pretty mean hand-eye coordination. He pitied Jake.
"- and I always win" Jake was saying.
Always? Well, computer games were what Ham did because he had no people around. In the last year he'd had people; his thumb must've gotten rusty. Or something. "How'd you get so good?" he asked politely.
"Oh. You know. Computers are my thing. Like photography is yours."
Hamilton's mouth fell open. Photography was art. Art. The way he felt about it was intense. He struggled to make the composition right, make it reflect the image in his head. He wasn't sure he had the words to talk about it. His successes and failures in photgraphy were something he brooded about. The clambering to an ideal point of view alone, the skulking to get a candid shot, none of it was part of the cool guy image he'd planned in the runup to summer session. Beauty, light, form. None of that belonged in guy talk as he understood it. He'd overheard the kids from Edmund High. The talked about baseball and chicks. The guys at Rawley talked about status symbols and chicks. Somewhere, he'd seriously messed up his plan to Be Like The Other Guys. "I talk to you about photographs" he said doubtfully.
"Yeah. It's cool." Jake picked up the school magazine and fidgetted with it. "We hang out in your dark room sometimes while the pictures are developing."
Ham had an idea in his head, cool shadows, relaxed voices, comfortable silences. "You gripe about the chemical smell."
"You remember!" Jake's chair scraped the floor as he jumped up.
Ham reached for the memory but it was gone. "No."
He intended to remember though. Right now he felt like - it was hard to explain. One of his earliest pictures (that he still thought was any good) was of a brunette child at the gas station. She was playing dressup; three necklaces, lost in her mommy's frock, lipsticked to clown face. The mommy whose wardrobe she'd raided would be furious. The way the shot worked out, the focus was on plump toddler feet sliding toward the toes of high heel sandals. That was how Ham felt. He was stepping into someone else's shoes. It didn't help that the someone else was him.