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

MARK

I woke up grinning. I was on my back, like I always sleep--Roger sleeps on his side, which seems strange to me. How can he sleep with his lungs crushed? He probably doesn't sleep, just drifts through a hazy high. I do sleep, and I do it on my back. That day I awoke, opened my eyes, and felt my grin spread across my face until I could barely keep my eyes open.

I was only happier to get into the bathroom before Cindy. No waiting in the hall, no bouncing in the hall with my legs crossed! The day seemed determined to be perfect. She didn't even pound on the door while I brushed my teeth for the full two minutes.

There is a certain degree of risk involved in wearing blue jeans. My father doesn't like them: he says they look sloppy. I'll never forget his expression when he first saw Roger. He looked him over from head to toe, taking in torn jeans, wallet chain, and the fresh blood at his elbow (from a baseball game at school) and looked as though he might be ill. Ever since he's referred to Roger as either "that Davis boy" or "your sloppy friend."

I owned a pair of blue jeans, anyway, from my last birthday. Roger's advice was to ask for the jeans, a coonskin cap and a Bowie knife. Actually, I'm not completely certain that was advice. I certainly ignored it, and now owned a pair of blue jeans which I had worn a grand total of two times: the first on my birthday, when I zipped myself into the cliché-teenage pants with a tingle of ecstasy, as though these trousers had the ability to decrease my social awkwardness. Cindy said I looked like a male prostitute because, continuing her quotation, I kept swinging my ass around.

The next time I tried wearing the jeans, quite unwisely to temple, my father pulled me aside and hissed that if did not take off those ridiculous pants right this very instant he would strip me in the temple loos and make me wear my boxers to the service. I wasn't wearing boxers, but I understood the threat. No need to appear before the entire congregation and listen as the whispers began again. Fuck Nanette Himmelfarb, I did not make a move on her at her Bat Mitzvah, she cornered me in the boys' restroom and put her hand down my pants.

And I swear before G-d, that's all that happened.

Anyway, my jeans. They were nothing like my friends' jeans. Both Roger and Collins had blue jeans. Collins' were worn in so that the material was fairly flexible. Roger's were worn to the point that the thick, stiff denim was floppy as--well, I said 'old underwear'. Roger said something else. He wore bright patches, 1970s-style granny squares over torn knees, an iron-on patch on his back pocket. He had more than one pair, each distinctly unique but very much Roger.

And that day, I decided to brave the pants. I shivered as the cold, rigid material encased my legs. I had yet to derive pleasure from wearing the pants, but maintained a buoyant hope that this was because thus far these pants and inappropriate uses of the sexual organs had been strongly linked. Nevertheless, I pulled them on feeling like a knight preparing for battle and zipped myself in.

Over that I pulled on a nice button-down shirt, no need to press my luck, and a sweater. I brought the scarf up to my nose first and inhaled deeply. Mmm… The smell was like pieces of Roger, with different smells at different times: nicotine and honeysuckle, boysweat and hair. The mohair tickled my nose. He had called it about 15 per cent mohair, and the scarf was very soft against the sensitive skin of my neck.

I strode into the kitchen with my chin a little higher than usual. "'Morning, Mark," is how my mother told me that the pants were acceptable.

"Hi, Mom."

"It's nice to see your eyes for a change." Her gaze lingered on me for a moment, then she turned away and returned to the counter. It occurred to me that at seventeen, I should have been either making my own lunches or buying them in the cafeteria, but I saw no reason to do so. Mom said she didn't mind, and I doubt I could make a pastrami sandwich as well as she did. I doubt anyone could make such a good sandwich!

I blushed. "May I make a phone call?" I asked. I didn't need permission as a rule, but making a call at seven a.m. was out of the ordinary and my parents seem unable to realize that if I'm on the telephone, I can't talk to them. They begin asking questions and my options are to either answer and be talking with them when someone answers, or ignore them and get lectured for being downright rude.

Mom frowned. "Who are you calling so early?" she asked. "It's barely seven o'clock, Mark."

"Roger Davis." That was how I referred to him in front of my parents. They didn't care for Roger, so I was unusually formal in referencing him. "I have a math test tomorrow and I wanted to ask him to help me with some studying." It was a lie. The test existed, but Roger had not tutored me in ages. But Mom bought it and approved, so I dashed into the hall and dialed.

"Hello?"

"Hi, may I please speak to Roger?" I hate telephone calls. When I was small, my parents would call to me to answer the phone and I never did it right. I was either not introducing myself properly or being too informal or coughing. Eventually I pieced together a proper sentence: Hi, you've reached the Cohens, this is Mark speaking. I felt like an answering machine every time I said it.

"Wait a moment." The telephone was covered, then, "Roger! Who's calling you so early?"

"Ask me if I care," Roger retorted. Into the phone he said, "Hey," like he knew it was me.

"Hi." I had so much to tell him. First there was my big news, the reason I awoke grinning like a mad fool, and then, less important but equally pressing, the issue of my jeans. Did I want to tell Roger about my jeans? Maybe I would wait and see if he noticed. I definitely wanted to meet him before school. It was February, so our AP classes, including first period, were much more strenuous with review. "Can you pick me up?" I blurted.

He groaned. "I don't like driving this early." I could hear why: he sounded half-asleep.

"No, no, it's okay, you can walk me."

"Walk you to school?" he asked.

Was he high? "Is that okay?"

"Uh… sure. Any reason?"

YES! Yes, a thousand reasons! Well, all right, three. But three amazing, really excellent reasons! Three perfect reasons, three indisputably amazing reasons! "No."

"Well then I'll see you in a little while, okay?"

"Yes."

"'Bye, Mark."

"'Bye, Roger."

My heart was pounding. This day kept getting better and better. I was flying. Nothing could go wrong.

I am thirteen. Roger is twelve. We're sharing a desk in English class. I'm trying to listen to our teacher give us a lecture on The Witch of Blackbird Pond; Roger, not in the least interested, is doodling. He's made a row of boxes. Roger's an awful artist, but he has a wicked wit and I crane my neck just slightly to see what he's inking into the comic.

Roger catches me watching him. He gives a little grin with the tip of his tongue poking at me and covers the page. I slump back and listen to an explanation of Puritanical society. She's discussing church attendance, how in small towns everyone knew who did and did not go to church and what that meant to people who believed in Puritanism.

Roger's elbow digs into my ribs and he pushes over his comic. It's great: a group of sheep stand next to a fence. Three subsequent boxes show different sheep leaping over the fence, wearing graduate caps and carrying diplomas in their mouths. The grass is etched green on the other side. Clever, Rog. The final box reveals that the opposite side of the fence is a slaughterhouse.

We giggle and are caught. "Mr. Cohen--Mr. Davis. Share the joke, please."

The teacher is challenging us. I'm about ready to hold up Roger's comic for the entire class. It's brilliant. In this moment, I love Roger, his ink-smudged fingers moving across the page, the way he grins like he owns the world. I love his arrogance. This is not romantic love, this is the love of a person I wish to be, lanky limbs I wish were mine to twine and stretch and trip over, slithering green eyes with a steady stare.

I'm so busying admiring my friend, I barely hear him say, "Well they're a bunch of morons, aren't they? All the Puritans. I mean they're just inviting Murphy's Law."

"What's that?" I wonder aloud.

"Muphy's Law," says Roger, his voice loud enough for the entire class to hear him clearly, "states that anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

I returned to the kitchen just as Cindy stumbled in through the back door. At first I assumed she had been taking out the garbage or something. Morning is a horrible time for chores, before a person is fully awake and so is likely to trip, but a closer look at my sister told me this was more than garbage. She had grass in her hair and her clothes were dirty and disheveled.

Mom went to her immediately. "Cindy," she said, relieved, and pulled my sister into a hug. When she drew back, she slapped her across the face.

I jumped back, terrified. My parents don't hit. I had received my share of spankings, some more deserved than others in my opinion, but I'd never been beaten or smacked around and neither had Cindy. That girl got away with murder. Of course, she usually managed this by blaming things on me. Nevertheless, even when she was caught out, Cindy was grounded, not hit. She was grounded for staying out past her curfew, for coming home with booze on her breath. She was never hit, though, nor was I, precisely the reason I had my back against the wall.

Mom didn't say a word and neither did Cindy, at least until Dad showed up. He was the one who demanded, "Where have you been all night?"

"Out."

Out? All night!

"Where?" Dad repeated. "What did you think you were doing? You might've called, we were worried sick!"

Cindy tossed her head and snorted. "Please," she replied. "You're both well-rested, you didn't even know I was gone until this morning. Why d'you think you're so pissed? It's just 'cause you're crappy parents."

I was shocked. I had never heard anyone speak to her or his parents that way. I could imagine Roger giving lip--he does to teachers constantly--but never blatantly disrespectful, especially to parents like mine! Mom and Dad were good parents. They loved us and did their best for us. Sure, sometimes Dad's best left me in tears, sometimes Mom's best left me feeling completely misunderstood, but they tried.

"It's not their fault you snuck out at midnight to see Tristan Stern!" I snapped.

I meant to defend my parents. Already my heart was thrashing about, unable to believe I had spoken up, but when my parents turned to me I thought it would snap free. "You knew about this?" Dad demanded.

Mom said, "Oh, Mark," then sobbed and sank into a chair.

Through the window, I saw Roger waiting in front of the house. I had forgotten all about him, caught up in Cindy's arrival.

"I didn't know anything," I squeaked. "I just… I… I knew that… that Cindy and Tris…"

"You're grounded," Dad said. "You're grounded for a month. No seeing Tom or that Davis boy, no going to the movies, no shopping." He was addressing me, but after my friends' names he seemed to have forgotten that. I never went to the movies or went shopping, unless Mom dragged me. "Nowhere but school and home, nowhere."

My mouth fell open. "But I didn't do anything," I protested. "You can't punish me for something Cindy did!"

"I can do whatever I want! You can't! You can go to school, come home, and study, that's it! Do you understand, Marcus?"

"No, I don't," I admitted. "I don't understand," I continued, on the verge of tears, "why Cindy misbehaves and she gets away with it and I do the slightest thing and you spank me or ground me! And I didn't even do anything!" I was furious, terrified, and the two made me tremble. Before Dad could recover sufficiently from my outburst, I shouted, "And now you can't do anything because I'm going to school!"

Roger saw immediately that something wasn't right. "What's wrong?" he asked, and reached out a hand. My heart stopped dead. Much as I wanted him to touch me, with that special touch he has that spreads warmth and comfort and can bring a grown man to his knees, my father would probably ground me further for being gay.

"Not now," I muttered.

"Okay." He looked as though someone had canceled Christmas, but he accepted it. Roger began walking. I walked beside him, watching my feet.

A couple of blocks later, I told Roger, "I really do love this scarf." It was the closest I could muster to an apology at the time. Everything that had happened that morning swirled in my head, shouting and pounding and pulling my lips into a frown. I knew I was trembling. My stomach revolted. I needed, and knew I needed, to hold together until we reached school. Collins would help me. He would make sense of this! I kept asking myself, was I right to stand up to my father? Was I disrespecting him? Was it right that I had disrespected him, since he was treating me unfairly?

"Mark, what's wrong?"

I shook my head. "It's nothing.

Roger planted his feet firmly against the pavement. "Mark, it's not nothing. What-- is this about that night at my house?" he asked. For a moment I could not remember what he meant, then it came flooding back: Roger and I, on the floor of his bedroom, Roger toying with my hair absently as I babbled about nothing important. Nothing happened. We sat and talked, and that was about it until Mr. Davis came in and lost his temper.

"No," I said. "I had forgotten all about that. Just drop it, Roger, I'm fine."

He shrugged. "Okay." Something in his face wanted to cry, but he kept quiet. "Well… this is for you," he said, offering me a package wrapped in stiff brown paper. "For your birthday," he added.

"Oh," I said. My birthday--I had forgotten. I had assumed that Roger had forgotten, though three weeks ago he gave me a hug. I once asked Roger what he wanted for his birthday. He said he wanted a hug.

"You can open it," he added. "If you want to."

"I'll, uh… yeah…"

Roger's knitting skills were progressing more rapidly than I would have guessed. "Jeez, Roger, you didn't have to…"

His face fell, if possible, even further. Without intending to, I think I had effectively destroyed him that morning. "You don't like it?" he asked.

"Like--no, Roger! I love it, it's great." I couldn't decide if I loved or hated it. He had knit me a sweater--a sweater! An entire sweater! For someone as butch as people think Roger is, he can be a real girl. It was a neat design, bright red and sedate yellow in the same yarn as my scarf, with stripes that grew progressively smaller as the sweater reached its neck. I dropped my backpack and pulled on the sweater. "It's a little big," I admitted, "but I love it! Thank you."

I did not love it. I had mixed feelings for it. But Roger needed me to love it, so I said I did and I hugged him. "You're welcome. Oh, and these." He handed me three small, thin cylinders, ink cartridges for my mock fountain pen. "I thought they could get you through your play."

"Oh!" Of course! In all the commotion of the morning, I had completely forgotten. "Roger, you'll never guess, I finished it!"

"You--what? Mark! Your first play!" Again with his strange femininity, Roger pulled me into his arms and hugged me. "So, when do I get to read it?" he asked. "I get to read it, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course." This was just what I needed. My day brightened with Roger's enthusiasm. "Here." I fished the notebook out of my backpack. "You're the first."

Roger took the notebook and clutched it to his chest, as though it was a cherished possession instead of a beat-up dog-eared spiral-bound. "I can't wait," he told me.

TO BE CONTINUED!

And believe me, it's going to get much more dramatic. evil grin