Jayden poked his thumbnail through the edge of envelope and tore it open in hesitant tugs. The seal was replicated at the top of the letter in dark blue ink, St. John’s Independent School for Boys printed in gothic script underneath. It was two pages, stapled. For a moment, Jayden simply stared at the top of the letter before finally shaking it out.
Dear Master Phillips…
Cunningly, they had folded it so that most of the letter wasn’t visible without unfolding it properly. But the line fell under the first tell-tale sentence, and Jayden’s heart stopped in his chest.
“Oh, my God.”
Darren leaned over his shoulder. “Well,” he said. “I can’t think of many rejection letters that start with ‘we are pleased to inform you.’”
Jayden unfolded the letter, and his heart started again, punching its way out of his chest. We are pleased to inform you…we are pleased to inform you…
A pound sign. A five-digit number. The words full scholarship to the value of…
He dropped the letter, turned, and flung his arms around Darren’s neck. “Oh, my God, I’m going,” he whispered breathlessly. “I’m going, I’m going, I’m going!”
Darren folded both arms around his back, said, “You’re a posh boy now, Jayden,” and laughed.
* * * *
Father brought it home from work on a Friday afternoon. Darren remembered it was Friday, because it had been the first—and last—time that Father had collected him from school, and it had been after his piano lesson. He had arrived in the silver BMW and waited at the school gate, standing out amongst the nannies and the mothers. Darren had been ten years old.
“You’re not a child anymore, Darren,” Father had said. “It’s time for you to stop playing and start learning, especially now Michelle is here.”
In retrospect, it was one of the most stupid things Father ever said to him. In retrospect, Darren was certain that the last time he played, in the childish sense of the word, was long before Michelle arrived, and had nothing to do with having a new baby sister. If anything, a baby sister was an excuse to play again, because once she was two, she completely failed to understand that ‘busy’ applied to Scott and Darren too, not just Mother and Father.
At the time, he had simply nodded, and Father had pressed the case into his hands.
The violin was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. It was new, hand-carved, and doubtlessly a ludicrously expensive gift for a ten-year-old. He had been marched straight from school to his very first lesson, and it had sounded like he was butchering a cat to make brand new strings. He had learned to play on that violin, and even if every string had been replaced a hundred times, and the bow had gone to the happy hunting ground when he was fourteen in an incident involving Michelle, a tennis court, and a volleyball, the violin itself was the same one. A little older now, a little less shiny, a lot less alluring, but the same.
So Jayden was right. When he’d said, “I want you to stop playing that thing,” Darren had known he was making the right call—but it still ached inside to let go. To let go of the last gift Father had ever given him. The last time they’d really said anything to each other. The last time that he had been…okay.
Packing it into its case (also replaced; the first case hadn’t survived second year at St. John’s) had ached in a bittersweet way, because he’d never do it again. Carrying it into town felt wrong, because he never took the violin to town. Why would he? And right up until Jayden’s bus pulled into the high street, there was an impulse itching under his skin to turn around and take it home.
And then Jayden dropped down off the bus and gave the violin case the dirtiest look Darren had ever seen, and the impulse handed in its resignation papers and left the country.
“I thought I said I never wanted to see that again?” Jayden asked tartly, but there was that anxious crease around his eyes again.
“You won’t,” Darren said. “Come with me.”
“I’m not watching you play it again,” Jayden insisted, folding his arms. “No, Darren, listen to me. That thing’s…I know it’s not making you ill, that’s stupid, but it’s making you worse, and…”
“And you need to come with me,” Darren interrupted. “Do it, or I’ll drag you by the hand. In public. With a violin. If we make it to Queen Street, we’ll be lucky.”
“Why are we going to Queen Street?”
“Will you just come with me, already?” Darren rolled his eyes, and Jayden’s stance softened a little. “Ten minutes, and then we can go and be flaming homosexuals in your house, or whatever it is you want. Ten minutes.”
“God, you are so homophobic,” Jayden muttered, but unwound and fell into step as they retreated back down the high street.
“Interesting analysis,” Darren said. “Maybe that’s the root of all my issues.”
“Maybe it is,” Jayden replied, with that haughty bitch expression he did so well. “Maybe you need to learn to accept yourself. It’s okay, Darren. It’s not wrong.”
Darren couldn’t help it. Jayden sounded so much like his late grandmother, he broke the sparring and sniggered into his coat sleeve, losing control and laughing outright when Jayden joined in, and his hand ended up for a small moment on Darren’s elbow, squeezing lightly.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Shoot,” Darren said.
“You’ve been…better. Since. You haven’t had a bad day since…the park,” Jayden said delicately. “Why?”
There was the million-pound question. “I don’t know,” Darren said honestly. “I just feel like…I’ve been jarred. Shaken. Like something ripped all the cobwebs out. I don’t know. Just…different. It’s still there, you know. It’s not gone, it’s just…not quite…everything.”
He hated talking about it for this very reason: he couldn’t explain. He couldn’t put it into words. He wasn’t Jayden; he didn’t have that ability to bend language to suit him and make people understand him. He knew he didn’t, so when Jayden squeezed his elbow again and nodded, like he did understand, it was like being given a tiny bit of light.
Jayden understood him. It was more than maybe anyone had ever done for him before.
“Keep it that way?” Jayden said lowly as they turned into Queen Street, taking advantage of the quieter, lonelier place to kiss Darren’s cheek before letting go of him entirely. “I like you like this.”
“Sarcastic?”
“Smiling,” Jayden said and punched him in the arm. “You’re impossible.”
“And I still can’t believe the boy from the local comprehensive talks like you,” Darren sniped and stopped. “There,” he waved at the trio of shops in front of them. “Pick one.”
Jayden stared at the shop fronts—three charity shops, identical in their shabby, slapped-together look, if not the specific causes and colour schemes—and frowned. “What do you…?”
Darren waited. Not like Jayden was ever dense for long.
“You’re getting rid of it,” Jayden breathed, and then his hand was in Darren’s regardless of being in public. “You’re actually getting rid of it?”
“Yeah,” Darren said, flexing his fingers around the handle. “So…pick one.”
Jayden squeezed his hand hard enough that Darren felt his knuckles creaking, and pointed. “The hospice. You’re…you’re serious?”
“I don’t like that incredulous tone,” Darren said dryly, but in reality, he felt equally odd himself. He was about to let go of his violin. Even crossing the street felt like wading through hip-deep snow, and by the time Jayden opened the shop door, he wasn’t the only one holding on tightly.
“I fucking love you,” he said on the threshold, with that wide-eyed serious face that made Darren want to kiss him, and the anxiety knotted itself up into a tight, sulky ball in his gut. He let go of Jayden’s hand—and it ached—and put his game face on. Mother’s face. That steely, ferociously independent face. The one he wore whenever Father wanted an update on his progress at school. The one he wore
whenever Mother would sit at the kitchen table and listen to his practice. The one that said, I’m exactly what you expect. I’m exactly what you want.
The one Jayden could see right through like a glass window.
Darren stalked away from him, right up to the till, and set the violin case on the wood. “Can I speak to the manager, please?”
The girl’s gum popped, and she pressed a bell under the desk, staring wide-eyed at the case as if he’d produced a suitcase and calmly introduced himself as an IRA bomber. She continued to stare, gum over her lower lip and chin, even when a weary-looking, middle-aged woman emerged from the ‘Staff Only’ door and eyed him dubiously.
“I’m afraid we don’t have any volunteering posi…” she began.
“I’m making a donation,” Darren cut in smoothly and took a step away from the desk and the case. It felt odd to do it. “Violin, bow, and case. Documentation for the violin itself, through the bow and strings have been replaced since then. It’s about six years old, hand-carved Italian. I’d recommend selling it at auction or on eBay. It’s worth at least seven hundred pounds, eight hundred and fifty with the authenticity documents from the manufacturer.”
The woman’s jaw dropped. “I…”
“I would recommend getting it properly valued, but you’d be foolish to sell it for less than seven hundred in any case,” Darren said and stuck his hands in his pockets to quell the urge to reach out and take it back. “Have a good day.”
He turned on his heel before he could say anything else—or the women could, standing in stunned silence—and let Jayden catch his hand again at the door, ushering him out and into the windy street before he could change his mind.
“Stop. Darren, stop, wait.”
Jayden tugged him to a stop at the corner of Queen Street and the high street, pushing him against the brickwork and holding him there, biting his lip in that absent, worried way he had. And yet the smile tugging at his mouth said he wasn’t anxious at all.
“How do you feel?” he asked, and Darren frowned, flexing his fingers. They felt empty.
“Odd,” he said. “Floaty. Twitchy. I don’t know.”
“I feel so…proud of you,” Jayden whispered and took both of Darren’s hands to squeeze them. “You’re shaking.”
“I had that violin for six years. It was the last thing Father gave me. It was…it was everything he wanted me to be.”
Jayden smiled, and pressed a kiss to the corner of Darren’s mouth. “You can’t be your father, though.”
“I know. I just feel…weird.”
“Okay.” Jayden nodded, biting his lip again. “How about we get coffee to go, and head back to mine? I can stop you floating away.”
Darren found a smile inside the shivery oddness that was making itself known, and didn’t let go of Jayden’s hand even when he was pulled by it into the high street and down towards the coffee shop.
The sun burst through the clouds halfway back to Attlee Road, and their shadows wandered hand-in-hand along the fences. For the first time in six years, Darren felt like maybe—maybe—it was going to be all right.
THE END
ABOUT MATTHEW J. METZGER
Matthew J. Metzger is the front for a British-born author dragged up in the south of England as part of a typical nuclear family with three kids, a mortgage, and no dog because a dog would get hair on the carpet. A brief escape to the north to study focused his writing from daydreaming rambles to his first novel, Our Last Summer. It is unquestionably better than the dissertation he produced at the same time for his university degree, but probably not as inventive as the excuses he provided for missing classes so often.
Matthew has since returned to the London area, and therefore lives mostly on the public transport. He suspects that his next few pieces will probably involve homicidal characters on the London Underground. Visit him online at matthewjmetzger.wordpress.com.
ABOUT QUEERTEEN PRESS
Queerteen Press is the young adult imprint of JMS Books LLC, a small electronic press specializing in gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender fiction, as well as popular and literary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. While our preference is for stories with GLBT characters, we publish stories in any YA genre. Visit us at queerteen-press.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!
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