The Importance of Being Kevin

by Steven Harper

  “You think they’ll cut you off forever?” I asked.

  “Oh Jesus. I don’t know. It’s not that simple. There’s Emily, and they’ll be worried about me going to the media if they cut me off entirely.”

  “Would you?” I said. “Go to the news?”

  “I don’t know.” He jabbed at his ice cream. “The Morses aren’t like the Kennedys or the Hiltons. We don’t live in the spotlight. But a family fight over the Morse heir being gay? That’d be a bloody steak in a piranha tank. The company’s reputation would suffer, and my parents don’t want that. It’s always about the company.”

  “I’m nobody,” I said. “So no one would care about me being gay except maybe at school, but I’m already a loser there who—”

  Peter grabbed my shoulder. “You don’t understand, Kev. If this gets out, they will care because you’re my boyfriend. They’ll want to know all about you. How you got on probation, why your dad went to jail, where you live, what kind of grades you get. They’ll want to know how we met, why we’re together, and they’ll talk about whether or not it’s okay for me to see someone who’s only sixteen. And they’ll want to know if you had anything to do with Les.”

  A chill went through me. The thought of my picture behind a newscaster with the word Raped scrawled across my face rushed through my head. I felt dizzy, but I only said, “I thought you said it was legal for us to—”

  “It is,” Peter said. “But lots of people won’t care what the law says. They’ll make judgments about you, about us. And they’ll let you know. I’ve already gotten hate mail over Les.”

  “You have?” I said, startled. “How? That only happened yesterday.”

  “People post it on the company’s social media pages. I haven’t read much of it.” Peter let me go and slumped back in his chair. “My lawyers go through it, hoping they’ll find some clue to the real killer. It’s a lot of ‘you’re a rich snot who thinks he can buy his way out of trouble’ stuff.”

  I looked guiltily down at my sundae. That was pretty much what Dad and I had said to each other last night… and a small part of me still wondered if it was true. I glanced around uneasily. “Aren’t you worried that reporters will recognize us now?”

  “Nah. Hat, sunglasses.” Peter pointed to his own face. “Besides, they aren’t expecting to see me here. And I’m not a movie star or anything. I mean, the average guy on the street wouldn’t recognize Bill Gates or Sam Walton.”

  “Who’s Sam Walton?”

  “See? He’s the guy who owns Walmart. The reporters think I’m at home. A strip-mall ice cream shop isn’t on their radar. I’ve got bigger shit to worry about than random reporters.”

  I shook my head. Peter lived in a totally different world than me. It wouldn’t occur to me to keep a cap and sunglasses in the car as a disguise. It wouldn’t even occur to me to have a car.

  “You’ve got one less thing to worry about,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about your mom and dad finding out about us.”

  “Kinda,” Peter snorted.

  It took a minute to make myself brave enough for what came next, but I did it. With a deep breath, I slid my hand across the table toward him. The rough cast iron grazed my fingertips. “How about we try this?”

  I took his hand. There, in shade and sunlight on a public sidewalk, I took it.

  Peter started to pull away, but I gripped harder. “Don’t let go,” I whispered. “Just… hold on.”

  Half a moment passed. I tried to read Peter’s eyes, but they were hidden behind the sunglasses. Then Peter squeezed my hand and kept holding it. With his other hand, he went back to eating his sundae. I swallowed once and did the same. People passed by us on the sidewalk, and I flinched, expecting a nasty word or worse.

  Nothing happened. Most ignored us. Peter continued to hold my hand, and I held his. A few people flicked their eyes our way, then went straight ahead as though they hadn’t seen anything. Nothing to see, nothing to notice. None of their business. It was tremendous and terrifying at the same time. I felt like I might fly away, soar into the bright sky with Peter, both of us weightless as feathers made of air and sunlight.

  We sat like that, hand in hand, eating cold ice cream on a hot summer day, hiding from reporters in plain sight, scared about the future and happy with the present, poor rich guy and rich poor kid. Peter and me. Me and Peter. I didn’t want it ever to end.

  But it finally did. We reached the bottom of our paper sundae cups, and Peter checked his phone for the first time. I suddenly remembered I still had Les’s phone in my pocket. After everything that had happened with Emily and Peter’s mom, I’d forgotten I’d grabbed it—and that I hadn’t told Peter. Now I felt weird about saying anything. After that perfect moment, I didn’t want to bring up the murder again. It would just make us both unhappy. Besides, the whole point of the phone was to get rid of it, something Peter hadn’t had a chance to do with everyone watching him. But no one was watching me. Later I’d have lots of chances to dump it, and I could surprise Peter by telling him I’d taken care of it for him.

  “We’ve got a couple hours before evening rehearsal,” Peter said. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Let’s go to my place,” I said. “My dad’s working, and we can be alone.”

  That came out a little different than I’d meant it, but the words were already hanging there between us. We could be alone. Peter nodded, and we got into his car.

  ACT II: SCENE V

  KEVIN

  THE TRAILER exhaled hot air and the smell of paper. I flushed as Peter came in behind me. Home was hot, stuffy, and embarrassing, especially after Peter’s marble palace, and I suddenly didn’t want him here, seeing it again, reminding him this was where losers lived. But he was already inside, acting like I didn’t live in a puke pile.

  “I like all the books,” he said. “Reminds me of Emily’s room.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered. “You want something to drink?”

  “I’m good.” His hands were in his back pockets, and he was examining some of the titles on Dad’s junkyard shelves. “Man. John le Carré. Ian Fleming. Alice Walker. Hal Borland. Whoa.” He took down a thin book and flipped through it. “Encyclopedia Brown. I remember these books from third grade. I don’t think I ever figured out a single solution, but I always tried.”

  I turned on the box fan and tried to crank the windows farther open. The room cooled a little. “Yeah, Dad reads everything. He picked up the habit in… when he was away, and he kept it up after he got back.”

  “Huh.” Peter put the book back. “So.”

  “So,” I agreed and touched his face. It was nice to do that. My boyfriend. He was my boyfriend. I kept coming back to that thought, like a puppy finding the same treat over and over. “How are you holding up?”

  “Been a hell of a day,” he said with a little laugh.

  “Your parents had no idea you’re gay?” I said.

  “They knew, but they didn’t want to admit it, and I didn’t want to talk about it. Did yours suspect before you told?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “But my mom left like four years ago, and my dad was… gone… so they didn’t know me very well.”

  “Why did your mom leave?” Peter asked.

  “Fuck if I know.” I dropped onto the couch, and Peter dropped beside me. He was wearing shorts, and his knee rubbed warm against mine. I remembered the last time we sat there, half wrestling, half making out. That was a memory I would keep forever and take out for walks on lonely winter nights. “I sort of want to ask her and sort of don’t want to know. In case it was… you know… something I did.”

  Peter stroked my hair in a way I liked a lot. Every time he touched me, I shivered a little. “You’re a sweet guy, Kev. It wasn’t anything you did. It was her. Adults are stupid sometimes.”

  Weirdly, I wanted to defend my mother. She wasn’t stupid—I was. But she wasn’t here. Most of my memories of her were when she was angry at me or at Dad. How could I mis
s her or care what she thought about me? But I did. For some reason right then, I remembered sitting in the living room of the little apartment she’d rented after Dad was sent away. A hot bowl of microwaved SpaghettiOs sat in my lap. The bowl was green with a chip in the rim. I ate from that bowl almost every day. I was watching cartoons while Mom was talking on the phone in the kitchen. Gray rain pattered against the windows, but I felt warm and safe with my bowl and my cartoons and my mom in the next room.

  Now she was gone. She didn’t know I was gay, and she would never know. Screw her.

  “Anyway,” I said with my leg still pressed against his, “you kinda changed the subject. Your parents didn’t really know you were gay? Sure sounded like your mom knew.”

  His face became sober. “Mom and Dad pretended not to know and hoped the whole thing would go away. I mean, you aren’t my first boyfriend.”

  I sat up straighter. “You told me about that. The older guy. He was a gardener?”

  “Gary. Yeah.” Peter sheepishly rumpled his hair. “We didn’t do more than hang out and kiss a few times. It probably would have gone a lot further. I sure wanted it to. But my mom caught us. The next day he was gone. Mom wouldn’t talk about it, and I was too scared to ask.” He gave a weird little laugh. “I guess it’s not something you talk about with your current boyfriend. You’ve had boyfriends, haven’t you?”

  “No.” This conversation was getting weirder by the second. My chest constricted again. Peter had kissed other guys besides me. I knew that, but I hadn’t known it. Not until now. It was easier to pretend there hadn’t been anyone else but me, even though he’d talked about dating someone else during Two Truths and a Lie on the very first day of rehearsal.

  Maybe that’s how Peter’s parents felt.

  The thought that I had something in common with Peter’s mom, the bitch who’d slapped me, creeped worms all over my skin. I wasn’t anything like her.

  “You’re shitting me.” Peter turned sideways on the couch and stared at me. “No boyfriend ever?”

  I wished he would drop it. “No.”

  “Jesus.” He ran the back of his finger down my cheek, and it made me shiver again. That I liked. God, I was all over the globe. “You’re the most gorgeous guy I’ve ever seen, and you’ve never had a boyfriend.”

  That made me feel better—until I saw the bruises on his knuckles. Those hands had smashed Les’s face. The memory of skin and bone smacking together echoed like dropped stones on my head, and for a tiny moment, I was swinging my own fists and feet against Robbie, watching his scared face. Hot-and-cold shudders went over me. I tried to push the stony memories aside, but they weighed me down and mingled with thoughts of Peter going to jail. The pressure pushed me deeper into the couch, made me heavier than granite. I was sinking, dropping, falling into the center of the earth.

  “You okay?” Peter asked. His voice came from far away.

  “Sure,” I said, but a long pause followed. My tongue was heavy, and I wanted another gulp of whiskey. Then I got pissed off… I mean really pissed off. Anger burned red and scarlet and crimson hot. I slammed my fist on the cushion. “Fuck no. I’m not okay!”

  Peter jumped a little but didn’t move away. I didn’t look at him. My jaw was clenched, and I kicked at a pile of books on the floor. They scattered like frightened butterflies. The tiger was roaring in full voice.

  “I’m fucking scared, Peter Finn!” I snarled. “I’m scared all the time. No, I’m ball-shriveling terrified. Aren’t you scared about going to jail?”

  Peter closed his eyes. “Every second. I can’t stop thinking about it. Even when I’m onstage, pretending to be Jack, I can’t stop thinking about it. Jesus, don’t shout at me. I’m freaking out as it is.”

  Those words cracked me, and the red anger drained out. Mostly. A coal of it still glowed inside, but deep enough that it wouldn’t burn Peter. I didn’t want to burn Peter.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’m just…. Do you think you’ll end up in prison? I mean, you’re rich, Peter Finn. Can’t you… bribe the judge or something? Get him to drop the charges?”

  Peter gave a weird bark of a laugh. “Everyone expects that. And man, I’ve thought about it. My parents talked to the lawyers about it. And if you ever repeat that, I’ll deny I said it, no matter how I feel about you. But we can’t buy our way out of this one. It’s because we’re so rich.”

  “You’ll have to walk me through that,” I said.

  “Look,” Peter said, “if we were middling rich, nobody would care what happened in a trial. But because we’re the Morse family, everyone figures we’ll try and buy my innocence, and that means a bazillion people will microscope-watch every step of this process. If I go on trial, we won’t have a chance to bribe the janitor, let alone the judge.”

  “Would you do it if you could?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Peter crossed his arms. “Hand over a pile of money and all this goes away. Wouldn’t you?”

  It sounded more and more like Peter had done it and was forgetting to lie. “I don’t have a pile of money to hand over.”

  “It’s unfair.” Peter pulled his knees up to his chin. The saggy couch creaked beneath him. “He deserved to die after what he did to you, and now that he’s dead, I’m going to prison, even though it wasn’t me. Les gets away with another crime.”

  Or not. God. The whole thing was killing me. Which wasn’t the best way to put it.

  With a sigh, Peter pulled out his phone and checked it. “Nothing.”

  “From your parents?” I guessed.

  “Yeah. Mom must’ve told Dad by now, but they haven’t texted or called or anything.”

  “How pissed do you think they are?”

  Peter gave that bark-laugh again. “Dad’s probably throwing shit against the wall. Mom is walking in circles, waving her arms and trying to come up with a plan. Mom always has to have a plan.”

  “What kind of plan?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not there.” He sat up straight, and a wild look came into his eyes. “What if they really throw me out forever?”

  “That’d be super shitty,” I said slowly. “Do you think they would?”

  Peter put his head in his hands. “Mom was mad enough to slap you. She could do anything.”

  It put swiss-cheese holes in my heart to see him that way, and I hurt for him, even though his mom had slapped me. In the short time I’d known him, Peter was always the powerful one—tall and strong and untouchable—but here he sat, small and scared and not knowing what to do next.

  “Hey.” I put my arm around him. “You’ve got me, Peter Finn. I know it’s not much. Hell, it’s nothing. But we’re together. Right?”

  Peter’s head came up. “You’re not nothing, Kev. God, I don’t know what I’d do without you.” He leaned over and kissed me, and all my breath slid away. Would that ever change? I hoped not. “Eleven.”

  “If your mom has a plan, we should have a plan,” I said at last. “Do you have money?”

  “Some.”

  “How much?” I asked this partly out of practicality and partly out of curiosity.

  He looked genuinely mystified. “I don’t know.”

  “How do you get ahold of it?” I pressed. “Can your parents stop you from getting it?”

  “Oh. I don’t…. Let me think.” He took out his phone. “I have a debit card for the household account when I need stuff, but there’s my own account too. Let me check.”

  This was clearly something he had never thought about. It was weird—I never had more than a dollar at a time, but Peter had so much he never thought about it. How could you lose track of everything you had?

  Peter tapped at his phone and swore. “They’ve locked me out of the house account,” he reported. “And my credit card has been canceled. I can’t touch the family money at all.”

  That made me a little cold inside. “But they haven’t cut your phone off,” I pointed out.

  “Not yet,” he agreed. “Does yours still work?”
/>
  I reached into my pocket and touched Les’s phone by mistake. A little bee sting went through me. For a second I thought about pulling it out and showing it—without Dad there, we could do whatever we wanted with it—but my fingers moved like little robots over to the phone Peter had given me. I didn’t want to talk about Les’s phone right now. Peter might get pissed off again—this time at me—and I didn’t want to deal with that right now. It’d be easier to chuck the phone and tell him about it afterward. Better I had it than him, that was for sure, in case the cops got a warrant to search his house.

  I pulled out my new phone and texted Peter a heart emoji. The symbol popped up on his screen with a happy little ping.

  “Still works,” I said.

  “They probably don’t know that I gave it to you yet,” he said. His face was growing hard, like setting cement, and I was glad I had kept Les’s phone to myself. He didn’t need the stress. “Hold on.”

  I leaned over, trying to see. My stomach clenched for him. “What’s wrong now?”

  He frowned at the screen as his thumbs moved over it. While he was doing that, I slipped Les’s phone out of my pocket and shoved it under the couch.

  “I’m checking my own bank account,” Peter said. “It’s only in my name, and I’m an adult, so—ah-ha! I’m still in. They haven’t found a way to touch it.”

  “How much is in there?”

  “Not a lot,” Peter said with a grimace.

  “How much is not a lot?”

  “Couple hundred thou,” he said. “Counting the bonds and CDs I got when I turned eighteen.”

  I couldn’t help it. I burst out laughing.

  Peter gave me a look. “What’s that for?”

  “Couple hundred thou,” I echoed. “Fuck me.”

  “Okay, okay.” Peter flushed a little. “But you know what I mean.”

  “I can show you how to live until you turn twenty-one,” I promised. “A couple hundred thousand will buy three or four of these trailers and a lot of ramen.”

  He laughed. “Long as I can have a Quarter Pounder once in a while and internet with gay porn on it.”