Disclaimer: Jonathan Larson owns; I'm just borrowing the characters to express my teenage angst.

WARNING: This chapter contains both f-words.

Roger paused outside of a Catholic elementary school and told us to wait here, he would be right back, then jogged inside, leaving Mark and I standing out in the middle of what would inevitably be one of the last warm days that autumn. Already the leaves were turning. They fell as we walked, spiraling onto the sidewalk as though solely extant--though they no longer truly were--for the purpose of being crushed satisfyingly beneath our sneakers.

Roger said they had named it 'Fall' for "attention deficit people who can't be bothered to watch the sidewalk." After saying that he had offered his hand and hauled me to my feet. I didn't bother explaining that where I grew up, the trees were green year-round and 'winter' occurred on a few rainy days, a single digit scattered between November and March.

Outside the school, I climbed up onto the railing and sat; Mark fidgeted. "What's he doing?" he muttered, peering into the school. "We could get in trouble for this. Collins--"

"Even if Roger does something stupid, we're out here. We don't know," I told Mark. He went on fidgeting for a while, until Roger emerged from the school. He had a little girl in tow, and was giving half-answers around a mouthful of what looked like a cigarette.

"Are you smoking?" Mark asked, incredulous. "Around a kid?"

"It's a lollipop," the girl replied. "It's green."

To demonstrate, Roger stuck out his tongue, squishing it to frame the candy. He kept his mouth open until Mark ceded and apologized. Then, with a self-satisfied grin, Roger said, "Collins, this is Sarah. Sarah, say hello."

She muttered "Hi" to the back of Roger's knees. "Oh," he said, oozing sarcasm, "yeah, Sarah, you're really shy." To which point she stepped out from behind him and practically shouted, "Hi!"

Roger laughed. "There ya go. Okay. On we go." He grabbed Sarah's hand and walked on, leaving Mark and I no choice but to follow. When I shot him a questioning look and jerked my head in the direction of the girl, Mark explained, "She's Roger's little sister." Roger couldn't answer, too busy listening to his sister chatter on about why she hated nuns.

Mostly, at Roger's, we hung around. He gave his sister a sheet of music and told her to learn it, at which point she disappeared and piano notes filled the house. "You babysit?" I asked. It seemed so poor a choice. Roger could barely take care of himself. It also said a lot about his parents. They had no idea that their son was a pot-smoking, emotional tornado.

Roger shrugged. We were pausing in a rehearsal of our Drama scene to nab the unhealthiest snacks in the house: Coke, and Roger's stash of licorice. "Someone's gotta give a damn," he said.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means my parents didn't want her and they aren't exactly hiding that. Turns out they only thought they wanted us." He tilted the bottle and drank, trying to fool himself drunk. "Nobody gives a damn about my sister. That's not fair."

"You give a damn," I told him.

Roger sighed. When he answered, it was with an air of regret. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I give a damn." It wasn't until later that I realized why Roger cared so much: no one had cared about him. No one had shown him love when he was a child, and he could not adjust to the idea, now, that he had her and he had Mark and me. Roger was incapable of understanding that he had value. That fascinated me.

I picked up a framed photograph displaying the Davis parents and six single-digit-aged children. "Is that you?" I asked Roger, pointing to the boy in the photograph.

Roger glanced over my shoulder and laughed. "It look like me?" he asked. "That's Pete. That's me," he said, pointing to the little baby on his mother's lap.

"Aww, Baby Roger," Mark said. He stood on tiptoe to ruffle Roger's hair. Roger squirmed and acted as though he didn't like it, but he was smiling.

"So where are they?" I asked. "Who are they?"

Roger looked again at the picture. He pointed, as he did so naming his siblings: "Pete, Marcy, Frankie, Theresa, Anne. They're all, like, not here. Like working or in college. Marcy still lives here but she's out with her boyfriend." Roger made it clear that he did not want to discuss his siblings. I didn't push him or ask why, but needless to say, I wanted to.

We rehearsed. Around six o'clock we started cooking, as was Roger's responsibility, a process slowed by Roger's pauses as he held up two measuring spoons and asked his sister, "If this is half a teaspoon and this is a quarter or a teaspoon, what part of a teaspoon do I have?"

To which Sarah, after hard thought, answered, "Three-quarters."

"Good. Work. This." He pointed. She did.

There is something about Roger that fascinates me. He makes no sense. He is both a very good person and a very bad person. Roger loves his sister, and tries to make sure no one knows. He slacks off, draws on his nails during class, and has almost all A's. He wants to talk about life, the future, debate morality with our history teacher; he wants to smoke and fornicate (in his words) and play his guitar. On the first day of history class, Mrs. Jones told us, "Just learn what it says in the book, guys. Just learn that."

"Including," Roger wanted to know, "its propaganda, racism and inaccuracies?"

"Yes," Jones said. "Welcome back, Roger."

He smiled. "I've missed you, Jones."

"And I you."

Yet by the end of this class, Roger was asking why he couldn't "frolic in mindless erotic abandon". He exudes confidence and lives on the brink of tears. I find myself drawn to him. He's like fire. I know that I should stay away. I know I should detach myself fully, only notice him in the cafeteria queue as 'that weird kid from history', but I can't. I want to be near Roger. Be his friend.

Roger is, I think, extremely insecure and terrified of anyone discovering his insecurity. In the midst of this chaos is Mark, which makes him fascinating. Mark is tiny, quiet, shy; Mark is a stereotype. He's also brilliant, and I think Roger almost stops that coming out. He stops Mark expressing himself.

"Col, Col, Col," Roger said, tapping my arm. We were in his room, sitting on the floor with an open bottle of beer. "Col," Roger said again, "you're gone."

I blinked. "Huh?" Yeah, I was gone. I had wandered into an alternate reality in which I admitted to Roger and Mark, as I wanted to, that I was gay. Following that, in my dream, we were able to be friends, real friends, honest with one another, and now that he trusted me, I was able to help Roger ease off pot. He smoked a lot. Much more than I did.

Roger pointed to the beer. I handed it to him; he drank and handed it to Mark, who handed it back to me. Roger laughed. "I forgot, Mark, you're good," he said. "Sorry."

"Your dad's gonna kill you," Mark mumbled. "You shouldn't do this."

"And yet," Roger said. He took the beer from me and drank. "Collins is drinking." I hardly was. I wasn't as buzzed as Roger. The strange thing is, I don't think Roger was buzzed. He was using alcohol as an excuse. His inner crazy was coming out, and that scared me. "I love you, Mark," Roger said. I froze. Roger loved Mark? Roger and Mark were… were… they were? This was my daydream come true. I could tell them the truth, and-- the dream ended when Roger very sloppily kissed Mark, then laughed. "I love you, man," he giggled. "I'm so fuckin' drunk."

There was a lull, and in the quiet moment the sound of a footstep on the stairs. Roger sat up straight, like a rabbit in danger suddenly on the brink of motion. His tension quieted Mark and me. "Shit," Roger whispered. "My parents're home." He set the beer on the floor and stood, motioning for us to do the same. He opened his window. "Get out," he said.

"What?" Mark asked.

"Out," Roger repeated. "Go. Quick!" He motioned, as though sweeping us through the window with his hands. "Go, go!"

So we did.

---

I spent the next evening with my dad. We had been in Scarsdale for a month and decided to have a celebratory evening, which I hesitate to call a party because it mostly involved the two of us sitting at the table with the radio playing, eating Chinese take-out and playing scrabble.

"Are you enjoying school?" Dad asked. He spelled out meter for the first word and jotted down his score.

I added thermo- and said, "It's okay. Pretty easy, but a few good teachers. Jones, for history."

"How about math?"

Strange things happen to the brilliant sons of math teachers. My father taught at community college, constantly complaining about his students. I grew up around quadratics and logarithms. In Freshman year, I took Calculus; that spring I passed the Advanced Placement tests for both AB and BC. Sophomore year the school assigned me to Statistics. By junior year, I had exhausted math options. They made me a teacher's aide.

"He's awful," I said. "Cool person. Draft-dodger. But he doesn't really get how to teach." Dad nodded: he knew. "How's school for you?"

"Oh, they're all the same, Thomas."

We talked. We sat at the table and talked about school, college, friends. That moment from my first day of school in which I had been a rebellious teenager irked by parental restrictions, was well into the past now. It was nice. But the truth is, despite not talking about that moment, I felt its presence. When Dad told me not to come out here in Scarsdale, he told me to live alone. I hungered for intimacy, my arms ached to hold on to someone. My heart needed a city, somewhere fast where no one knew you and no one cared.

And so, unbeknownst to my father, I had a slew of college applications under my mattress. I had Mark and Roger, for whatever they were worth, but I would leave them in a heartbeat for New York, Los Angeles, Berkeley, whichever university would take me. I was getting out of the oppressive closet of Scarsdale.

---

Jones let us leave ten minutes early to find him on Monday. As we wandered through campus, Mark trying to avoid looking at any of the stoners and ditchers, I asked, "Why do you do this?"

"Do what?" Mark asked, honestly confused.

"This. All this. Looking after Roger, chasing him down so he'll attend class. Mark, what's your life like?" I realized, sadly, that I did not know.

Mark shrugged. We were near the back of the school, headed for the art building where Roger had offered me a quick smoke on my first day. "It's not worth discussing," he said. "My dad still hasn't forgiven me for deciding against Confirmation, my sister is suddenly a moody beast and my mother… she's just my mom. Pretty boring."

There are two sets of stairs; one is direct, hugs the science building and is only big enough for two small people side by side. Mark went ahead, which is why Mark encountered the stoners as he emerged from the covered stairs. "Hey, it's Cohen," someone said.

"A ha, ha, hey, fag."

Mark kept his head down and hurried on. If the slur made his heart go numb as it did mine, he did not show it. "Hey, wait up."

"Please don't--"

There is no purpose in pleading with bullies. I know that. I know that because I've taken basic psychology courses, but when facing a bully, I don't know how I would act. Being tall and thickly built has its advantages; people seem to think my body is composed of kevlar. Mark, small, scrawny, shoulders turned in, made himself a target. Begging a bully at all is begging him to hurt you.

I thought Mark didn't know. He did. Otherwise, he might have protested when shoved to the ground. "Hey, come on," I said. "This isn't worth it." Psychology classes explain why people do the things they do. They don't explain how to stop them. That takes intuition and experience; I was equipped only with the former. Even bullies know better than to kick kevlar.

"I think it is." He was smaller than Mark, with thick spikes in his hair and a T-shirt three sizes too big for him.

"I think it's not."

On the bright side, we found Roger. On the darker side, Mark is on the ground getting kicked and someone obviously already found Roger, whose cheek had swollen and bruised a horrible green-purple color.

"Fuck off, Davis."

Roger grabbed the kid and wound his hands into his shirt. "You touch him again, you die. Understand?" he asked.

"Ha, ha, like I'm scared of you."

Roger smashed his fist into the kid's face. Then he threw him against the building and in the instant it took to turn away forgot him entirely. "Mark?" Roger offered his hand; Mark took it and pulled himself up. "You shouldn't be out here," Roger said, brushing the dirt off of Mark's back. I found myself feeling a sudden tightness in my throat, a sense of moral injustice, and almost wanted to tell Roger to let Mark alone, let him stand up for himself. He wasn't badly hurt; maybe without Roger, Mark might not be so shy. He might have other friends, friends who were not freight trains headed for a crash.

"Collins, you okay?"

"Yeah."

Mark pulled a paper packet from his pocket, one of those chemical-soaked napkins handed out at restaurants, and swabbed clean his arm, which had been scraped in the fall. There wasn't too much blood, but the scab would be huge. "You need one, too?" he asked Roger.

"He wasn't hit," I said.

"Oh, I didn't mean…" Mark looked from Roger to me and to Roger again, then muttered something incomprehensible and returned to his arm.

I asked Roger, "What happened to your face?" He shrugged and said he fell off his skateboard.

Mark didn't love his life, that much I knew. But in that moment, when Roger refused the napkin and told me he had fallen off his skateboard, Mark aged and grew sad. That's the moment in which I knew Mark was more than unhappy, but either unhealthy or gay. He had attached himself to Roger, to this protector, and lived to dispel as much of his anger and pain as possible. Either Mark was trying to live through Roger, express the teenage angst he kept buried deep, or he was in love.

I don't know if I should have stopped being friends with them or tried to stop them from their inevitable explosion. I did neither. I waited. I wanted to see what would happen next.

TO BE CONTINUED!

Reviews are lovely.

A few notes: yes, Jews have Confirmation. It isn't Orthodox, so if you went to Yeshiva you probably didn't learn about it. It's reform and comes from the belief that a thirteen-year-old is not old enough to be considered an adult. However, it is an additional ceremony to the Bar or Bat Mitzvah, not a replacement. I am Jewish, and I Bat Mitzvah'd. Really, I do know what I'm talking about.

Collins is supposed to be from Los Angeles, which is why he has never seen a real autumn.