Disclaimer: RENT belongs to Jonathan Larson

I haven't been home a half an hour when the call comes:

"Honey, could you watch the twins?"

I sigh. No, I canNOT watch my sisters, Mom, as I am upstairs, I am cross-legged on my bed behind my secondhand typewriter with a fresh new sheet of paper all ready for a fresh new story which, just like all my others, will turn into nothing but pages and pages of dialogue and probably overtake my entire being, anyway, and keep me from focusing in my classes, which doesn't matter, Mom, because I'm still at Thomas King when I'm blatantly qualified to go to St. Francis.

"Ezekiel—"

"Coming!"

I flip off my bed and slam the door on my way out. My feet thud down the stairs; three steps from the bottom my foot latches behind my ankle and I barely catch myself on the banister.

Mom is rushing around the kitchen, coaxing, "In your mouth, honey, not your hair," and balancing Adah on her hip. Davida's in the high chair, not feeding herself. The twins are my youngest siblings. "Ezekiel." Mom hands me Adah.

"Ugh." She's heavy. She's also blonde, like our dad. She's blond and light-skinned, practically a photonegative of Davida, who looks like me.

"Ezekiel's gonna drop her!"

That's my sister Jesse, who I hate more than anything in the world, not just for being a spoiled princess at the proud age of seven and a half, but because she's called Jesse. In the thick of all our good Hebrew names, how did she get a normal, albeit somewhat masculine, name, and I'm Ezekiel?

"I'm not!"

I sit down at the table, anyway, with Adah in my lap. I wouldn't want to drop her. Mom'd have a fit.

Mom tells me, "I'm taking Jesse and Micah—" my only brother, aged ten "—to Janey's party." How do my siblings have a friend named Janey? I don't have a friend, full stop. "Keziah can look after herself."

Keziah. G-d save us, 13-year-old Kaitlin Keziah Cohen, the alliterated, the first daughter, the experiment who by three was using her old Hebrew name and damned the rest of us.

"I'll be back in half an hour, at most. Just keep your sisters out of trouble."

"Can't Keziah do it?" I whine. She glares at me. "Okay, Mom."

"Thank you, Ezekiel."

The moment she's gone, carrying Jesse and hauling Micah by the hand, Adah swivels to face me and says, "Don't hold me."

-

Mom comes home, and I'm out the door before she can say hello.

Once I stumble out onto the lawn, once I've blinked away the sunshine though it's still so bright there's nothing worth seeing (and there wouldn't be, anyway), I realize that I have nowhere to go. Mom calls after me to stay within the community… right.

I guess the funny thing is, I was not born in a gated community. The hospital is outside the gates, and they kept me a while… Once I was released, Mom and Dad brought me here, into the cage. That's where I grew up, inside the cage, and there's something big and scary outside of it.

I wish I knew what that was, most intimately.

It's just a usual Friday afternoon in suburbia. Sprinklers account for most of the activity. The wind moves a few flowers. I watch, thinking about Keziah who can sit and watch this for hours and not get bored, and I wonder how. She compares it to ballet.

I compare it to math class.

"Aah!"

A high-pitched shriek from down the road draws my attention: Roger, who I barely remember from our Bar Mitzvah classes, is playing basketball with that girl. She goes to King, too, we have the same bus stop, but I don't know her name.

I take a step towards them. My sneaker falls on the sidewalk, just outside the polished square of our lawn. I don't really know how to play basketball. I mean, you bounce it and throw it, right? They tried to teach us in P.E. once. My shoes came untied; I tripped, skinning both my knees and elbows.

"Roger!"

The girl, she's loud. So is he, laughing, both of them, and teasing, and I wonder… maybe they don't want me to join? He's behind her now, guiding her hands, his body is practically plastered against hers as he guides the shot. What if she's his girlfriend?!

I stop. I shouldn't—

"Hey Ezekiel!"

Um. Is Roger Davis actually calling me? Roger Davis, dark blond curls and sparkling green eyes and that perfect, perfect smile, actually wants my attention?

Like he doesn't have it in bed every night.

With him? I wish.

"Come on!" he calls, motioning me over.

And suck you off?

My libido has been beyond overactive lately. I do what I can. I mean, I masturbate practically every night, sometimes up to three times in bed alone, plus the shower, and at school or before school if I need it… and still I'm having these dreams, and these fantasies.

Anyway, I jog down the street, noticing that Roger's undershirt is very loose and very sweaty. His hair is plastered down with sweat.

When I'm within range, he tosses me the ball and says, "You wanna play?"

"Um… I'm not that good," I admit.

"Oh, that's okay," Roger assures me. "I was just teaching Maureen—this is Maureen, by the way, my cousin. Maureen, Ezekiel; Zekey, Maureen."

My face flushes when he calls me that. I shake her hand and say, "But everyone mostly calls me Mark." It's a lie.

"They do?" Roger asks.

Nope.

"Yeah. It's my middle name."

Maureen says, "Hey, Mark."

"Okay." Roger says, "So we're just fooling around. You wanna take a shot, we'll see what you can do?"

I shoot. The ball goes way over the basket and thuds onto the roof, rolls down and bounces up high. I jump to catch it, but miss. My face burns.

Roger catches the ball. "Okay, well here, I'll teach you how to shoot a set shot, okay? So stand here…" He guides me back, and I don't protest. "Take the ball. No, here, take it. Hold it out above your head—put your left hand more like that." Roger moves my left hand. "That's good." And I can only imagine where I wish he had guided my hand, and when I wish he had said it felt good, but then I'm starting to move so I stop thinking about that. "Bend your knees a little. Now use this hand for power—shoot."

I jump up and hurl the ball. It goes wide, and I blush again, though the shot was much better.

"Okay." Roger retrieves the ball. "Well, that's a lot better. Umm… you don't want to jump on a set shot, but other than that…"

We play on, until the light begins to fade. The streetlights come on. "I think I'll sit out a while," I say.

"Me, too."

Roger's face falls. He would probably stay out here shooting baskets until he passed out from exhaustion, but he reads on both our faces that it's enough and he nods. "Okay." We head inside, into the kitchen; Roger tossed the ball into a smaller bin beside the rubbish bin, this one filled with sports paraphernalia, mostly balls though I notice a hockey stick and a pair of rollerblades.

"Mark, you wanna stay for dinner?" Roger asks. He's soaked with sweat.

"Oh. Um, yeah, I'd love to, if—"

"Of course. Call your mom, make sure that's okay."

"Yeah."

Of course it's okay. Mom is more than utterly thrilled—her baby made a friend! Oh she is just so proud… I blush, hoping Roger and Maureen can't hear this.

Maureen is sitting on the counter. When I hang up, Roger asks, "So, Mom left us some money for take-out but I'd rather not… Mark, you vegetarian?"

"No."

"Swell." Swell! He says swell! "Cheeseburgers? … oh, no, you're kosher, aren't you, Mark?"

I lie again: "Nope."

"Cheeseburgers?"

I grin. "Sure, I love cheeseburgers."

"Great."

I've never seen anyone actually make burgers before—my mother doesn't make them, and even if she did, I would hardly be interested enough to stay in the kitchen and watch. But Roger Davis twists his sweaty basketball fingers into a big pat of reddish brown meat that looks like a worm orgy. He pries it off into three about equal sections and thumps around each one in turn, the same way he thumped around that basketball, but when he's through each is a fairly flat round.

Roger frowns.

"Look, it's meant for three, they're a bit small, okay?"

I nod, and Maureen and I assure him that it's no problem. Roger grabs a frozen packet of chips and spreads them out to heat on a baking tray and tosses them into the oven.

"So you just moved here?" I ask Maureen, since Roger's busy.

She nods. "I'm staying for… um… probably at least the semester."

"Do you like King?"

"Nope," she admits.

I chuckle. "Me, neither."

"Why aren't you at St. Francis's?" Roger asks me.

"Oh. Well my parents… they're liberals. They're not socialists or anything," I add quickly, in case there's any question. A lot of these people, people in communities like this, they're conservatives. They like the system that let them get way, way ahead. "Anyway, they send us all to public school."

"Oh, yeah. Mark's got, like, what, five siblings?" Roger begins telling Maureen, then he turns to ask me.

I nod. "Yeah."

I've never seen anyone cook like Roger does before. He tossed bacon into a pan and smooshes it flat with a spatula and tosses the burgers into another pan and flips them with the same spatula, then returns it to the bacon until it's time to flip the burgers again. With his free hand he mixes a handful mushrooms around in a pan of butter.

He has three pans working, and doesn't seem stressed at all.

"Mark." Roger nudges me. "Hold this."

I take the spatula for the half-minute it takes for Roger to set three burger buns in the oven, then he's back setting slices of cheese on the burgers. The buns come out and the mushrooms are rolled off onto a plate along with—when the heck did he slice up those vegetables?

But he did.

Roger sets up a make-your-own-burger buffet on the counter, with a bowl of fries at the end, then helps himself and sits down at the table. He's wrapped some paper around his burger to minimize dribbling.

Woah.

I break two Kosher laws with one bite of my bacon cheeseburger, and I'm not sorry.

I decide I like being Mark.

To be continued!

Please review? Pretty please?