Chapter Text
In the spring of 1999, three things happened that made Mike more certain than ever that the world was against him. One was the release of The Phantom Menace, but even that paled in comparison to the others. He was eighteen and extremely angry about all three of them, especially while hunched against the passenger side door of his mother’s car on the way to the bus station on the morning of his departure for the destination that he already despised, sight unseen.
The first stage of the continuously unraveling disaster that was his life was graduation from high school, a party he barely remembered, his second arrest for underage drinking and also that fire somebody set in the neighborhood clubhouse, which his parents blamed him for even though he had nothing to do with it. They acted like he was the only kid who drank with his friends on weekends, like he was so embarrassing and out of control that they didn’t recognize him anymore. He’d been accepted to his first choice school and had a scholarship waiting for him in the fall, but they didn’t care about that, except to hold it over his head as a way to force him to spend his summer with a fucking Wisconsin farm family, a thing Mike hadn’t even realized people did anymore. It seemed as antiquated and cruel as making little kids clean chimneys.
This type of dramatic punishment wasn’t typically his mother’s style, but the whole getting arrested thing had made her psychotic in her belief that if Mike put one more toe out of line he’d be kicked out of college before he could even get there, or at least lose his scholarship. She found this extremely outdated ‘rent your child out to farmers for the summer’ program and told Mike he won’t get a dime of tuition money for the college she was so worried about him getting kicked out of if he didn’t go along with her plan to torture him by making him stay outside the city and away from his friends all summer. Mike could tell even his dad thought the whole thing was a little nuts, but he was letting her do it, so what good was he.
“You’re really gonna make me listen to this?” Mike said. His mom had the car radio on some shitty pop station. Cher was singing about heartache and loneliness. “Right now, on top of everything?”
“I’m not driving you to open heart surgery,” his mother said. She was tense, gripping the wheel with both hands and scowling at the road. Mike had to wonder if she was regretting this insanity, now that they were ten minutes from the bus station. “Though I could be,” she added, her voice tighter and meaner, too. “In a few years, if you keep it up.”
“What’s ‘it’? Graduating from high school? Having friends? Partying for one summer before I go to college--”
“Partying, yes. That. That’s over. That’s why-- And if I go home and look in that hall bathroom and find a single drop of green dye anywhere you’ll be glad you’re already in another state.”
Mike scoffed and ran his hand through his hair. He’d dyed it bright green last night, spontaneously, while smoking a cigarette in the house, because what more could his parents do to him now that his time with the farm family was booked? There was no worse case scenario, and he wanted to scare the farmers by showing up looking like a punk.
“I didn’t make a mess,” Mike said, though the bath mat had some new green accents. “Thought you weren’t even gonna say anything.”
His mother just shook her head and pressed her lips together as if she was resisting further comment. She’d knocked on Mike’s bedroom door at eight AM, opened it without waiting for him to answer, took a long look at him and told him to get ready, let’s go, not offering a single word about the fact that his hair was suddenly green, as if she could beat him at this game, too.
“God,” Mike said when the bus station was in sight up ahead, his leg jiggling madly and his hastily packed duffel bag hugged to his chest. “Mom. Seriously. Are you really doing this to me? C’mon, just. Think about how fucked up this is for a second.”
She shook her head, the half-pitying thing at the corner of her eye disappearing when she turned to look at him. He shouldn’t have cursed, though she’d never cared too much about that. She was a therapist and usually pretty cool about shit. This farm thing was so extreme, and Mike realized now that he’d always counted on her to go back on it once the departure date got close enough, but here they were, and she was looking at him like she really expected him to get out of the car and board a bus to Orfordville, Wisconsin in ten minutes.
“We don’t even know these people,” Mike said, starting to whine as she pulled up to the station. He was freaking out but didn’t want to show her how scared he was, though maybe if he cried she’d call it all off.
“I’ve spoken to them on the phone, and they’ve been fully vetted by the organization.” The pitying thing only half-resurfaced on her face before she blinked it away again. “Mike. You’ll be fine. Stop giving me that look. You brought this on yourself. God.” She touched the bridge of her nose and shut her eyes for a moment. “That hair.”
“Fine,” Mike said, his voice wobbling a little when he threw open the passenger side door. “Off to get murdered by psycho rednecks then, I guess. Have you seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? You and Dad should watch that tonight and think of me.”
“Dramatic,” his mother said, reaching over to pat his cheek. Mike leaned away and glowered at her. He had one foot outside the car, his heart pounding as he gave her a last chance to spare him from this nightmare. It was mid-May but the mornings were still on the cold side, and he was shivering in the thin leather jacket he had on, a prop from one of his old movies that was supposed to make him feel tougher, like the hair.
“What if I promise not to drink all summer?” he said. “For real.”
“You already tried that. I don’t like this crowd you’ve been hanging out with the past year--”
“Jesus, just because I’m not hiding in the basement doing nothing but watching Star Trek with Rich--”
“Mike, we’ve already had this fight!” She tried to touch his arm and made a huffy sound when he vaulted himself out of the car, out of reach. “This will be good for you,” she said, leaning down onto the wheel and craning her neck to maintain eye contact. “Your perspective is skewed. You can’t start college with this mindset, it wouldn’t go well.”
“Whatever, great. Thanks for nothing.”
He slammed the car door and started to walk away, knowing she would shout after him. When she did, he was almost mad enough not to turn back.
“What?” he snapped when he did. She was standing just outside the car with the driver’s side door open, a bus already honking at her because she was parked in a loading zone.
“Honey!” she said. “Just-- Do you have Jim’s phone number, the one I gave you?”
“It’s in my wallet.”
“And change for the pay phone, if you have to call him from the station in Janesville?”
“Yes, god.”
“He should be there waiting when the bus pulls in, if it’s on time, three hours from now--”
“You told me all this already!”
“Call me when you get to there, okay? The bus should get to Janesville at one-thirty, then it’s about a half hour drive to their farm, I think.”
Mike groaned at the word ‘farm.’ He pictured himself kneeling in hay and manure while having to milk cows, though his mother had said something about it being a fruit farm when he was half-listening, not a dairy.
“This is the worst,” he said, mildly, because his mom looked sad, like she was finally worried about putting him on a bus and leaving him in the hands of backwoods strangers all summer.
“I’m sure you’ll forgive us when we pay for your college education,” she said.
“I got a scholarship!”
“For two thousand dollars, Mike, and we’re very proud of you, but that’s a fraction of what one semester at that school costs and you know it.”
The driver of the bus that was idling behind her car blared his horn again. She scowled at him, then at Mike, then sighed and waved.
“Be careful,” she said. “This summer is so important. Your future is at stake, Mike.”
“Christ.” Mike rolled his eyes and gave her a single, angry wave. “Bye.”
“Don’t forget to call!”
She whirled toward the bus driver who was still laying on the horn and made an exasperated gesture before darting back into the car.
Mike headed for the station, his shoulders pulled up toward his ears against the chill in the air. He looked back at where his mom had been and was startled to see her car was already gone, the bus that had been honking at her parked in its place. He stopped walking and stared up at the front of the Greyhound station, which was as uninspiring and crummy looking as he’d expected. He could go anywhere, he thought, heart pounding. He was eighteen, and he had a little money from working concession at the movie theater during his senior year. He needed a lot more than that to pay for college, though, and this shitshow was his parents’ condition for doing that, so he bit the bullet and boarded the bus they’d bought him a ticket for, to fucking Wisconsin nowhereland.
The bus was crowded, and Mike communicated his disinterest in speaking to any fellow passengers by hunching up against the window and frowning out at the passing scenery while his headphones blasted Barenaked Ladies, music that usually cheered him up but was failing to do the job. He wasn’t actually into the punk scene, though some of his friends were. Before his senior year he’d mostly hung out with fellow theater dorks and his best friend Rich, who’d graduated two years earlier along with most of Mike’s old D&D buddies, leaving Mike to flounder in geek society alone. Last summer changed everything, because Mike finally filled out enough not to look like a scarecrow with a too-big nose and creepily intense eyes. He got a girlfriend, then another girlfriend after the first one left for college. The intense eyes worked to his advantage now. He’d even made out with a guy over the holiday break, when his friend Tim took him to a legit adult house party out on Lake Michigan. There had been freely available coke and everything, but Mike was too chicken to snort it. He just got wasted on vodka and beer, kissed a guy whose name was either Wilson or William, and felt like his grown-up life as a bisexual filmmaker who had real world experiences outside of the suburbs was finally starting.
Maybe he’d gotten a little cocky about that in his last semester of high school, but who didn’t? He switched out the CD in his player to some angrier music that he liked less, but it didn’t make him feel better. His stomach was all twisted with nerves. He hated meeting new people, even with the confidence that the past year had given him, and had no doubt that he’d have nothing in common with a bunch of farm town people. The family he’d be staying with had four teenage kids, but that was all Mike knew about them, as he’d refused to listen whenever his mother tried to describe this experience as something he could possibly enjoy. He was picturing four thick-necked guys with bad teeth who liked to hunt and thought gay people should burn in hell, though one thing he had listened to was his mother’s insistence that she’d intentionally had him matched with a non-religious family.
His eyelids got heavy once the bus was out of the city and passing through seemingly endless Illinois farmland. The bus would make four stops in other nothing towns on the way to Janesville, but at least he wouldn’t have to change to another bus at any point. He pretended to sleep, his head beginning to hurt from how tense his jaw was. He couldn’t stop picturing what the next three months of his life were going to be like, in increasingly awful shades of boring, humiliating, and lonely. The old lady who’d been sitting next to him since they left Chicago got off at the second town they stopped in, and Mike curled up with his boots on the seat she’d been occupying, facing away from the window, not wanting to see more fields or distant barns. He felt sorry for himself, and also like he was at the start of a horror movie for real, opening credits flashing over moody bus riding scenes as he made his way toward the hell that awaited.
At some point he really did fall asleep, and he was surprised by this when he woke to the feeling of the bus stopping. He hadn’t gotten much rest the night before, had sat up chain smoking with the window in his bedroom open after dying his hair, daring his parents to catch a whiff and come in to try to tell him he was breaking the rules. They were breaking the rules, sending him away like this. He sat up and rubbed at his sore neck, squinting out the window to see which town they’d stopped in. His heart dropped when he saw that it was Janesville, his almost-final destination.
Listlessly, he stood. He clutched his duffel bag to the front of his chest and moved down the aisle toward the door in a sluggish, zombie-like stagger. The bus driver was standing outside smoking a cigarette and chatting with another passenger who’d just disembarked. They both ignored Mike as he stepped outside and had a look around. The Greyhound station here looked just like the one back in Oak Forest, but the surroundings were far more grim. As Mike had expected, Janesville was a whole lot of nothing with a single main street flanked by buildings that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a movie about the old West, but this wasn’t where he’d be staying, only the bus stop nearest to the even tinier town where he’d be trapped until summer was over.
Mike stood outside the station with his duffel bag, feeling almost drunk, and not in a good way. The light was too bright, and it was warmer here than it had been in Chicago. He was sweating a little under the leather jacket after a few minutes of standing in the sunlight feeling lost, and he noticed people staring at him. Maybe it was the green hair, or the spiky silver studs on the shoulders of the jacket, or his red plaid pants. One of the guys staring at him was a tall, stoic-looking man with a reddish beard who was standing beside a beige pickup truck in the station’s small parking lot. He lifted his hand when Mike met his eyes.
“Mike?” he called.
Mike was tempted to say nope and turn around to get on a bus going elsewhere. He made himself think about college, and how soon he’d be living on his own in the city, in a dorm but still independent, and how at that point his real life would begin. He just had to get through this shit first, so that his parents would pay for that real life head start.
“Hey,” he said, walking over toward the man who was presumably his host, farmer Jim. He had small, wide set eyes, and his teeth looked kind of fucked up when he smiled, big surprise.
“You made it,” Jim said, putting his hand out for Mike to shake. “Whoa. Cool hair.”
“Oh, um-- Thanks.” Mike felt flustered already. Jim looked kind of stoned but seemed friendly enough. Mike didn’t want to be rude. It wasn’t this guy’s fault Mike was in this situation, it was his mother’s. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“You betcha. Hope the trip up was okay?”
“It was fine, um. I fell asleep, so. It passed quickly.”
“Great. Hop on in and we’ll get a move on.”
He gestured to the pickup. Mike went for the passenger side door, and only when he was inside the truck did he notice that there was also a back row of seats inside the truck’s cab, and that a pissy-looking teenage boy with spiked-up blond hair was sitting behind the driver’s seat. He looked like wanted to be there as much as Mike did.
“Hello,” Mike said, feeling awkward when the kid just stared at him without smiling.
“Hi,” he said.
“That’s my son, Jay,” Jim said, buckling himself into the driver’s seat.
“Stepson,” Jay said.
“That’s also accurate.” Jim cleared his throat and started the truck. “Jay, this is Mike, our guest.”
“I know,” Jay said, and then “Hi,” again, less snottily.
“Mike is eighteen, same as you,” Jim said, aiming his gaze at Jay in the rearview mirror.
“You told me already.”
Jay fidgeted and crossed his arms over his skinny chest. He was wearing a giant t-shirt with a puking cartoon character on it, and its size only emphasized the fact that he was small for eighteen, short and underweight-looking with sharp cheekbones. He caught Mike looking at him in the rearview and lifted his lip a little, revealing the gap between his crooked front teeth.
Great, Mike thought, staring out the passenger side window when nobody tried to continue the conversation. Had Jim hired him for the summer to be a friend to that little prick? Jay was wearing a ball chain necklace that was tight enough around his pale throat to look like a choker, and a black cuff bracelet with studs not unlike the ones on Mike’s jacket. Maybe he was trying to look tough and not farmer-like for this unfortunate encounter, too.
“So Chicago, huh?” Jim said when the silence in the truck cab had gotten uncomfortable.
“Yeah,” Mike said, not sure what he was supposed to do with that statement. “I’ve lived there all my life. I’m going to college there, too, in the fall. In the city, though. I grew up in the suburbs.”
He made himself shut up and hugged his duffel a little more tightly to his chest. Jim was nodding to himself as if he needed a moment to process that information.
“I grew up in the suburbs, too,” he said. “Outside Toronto.”
“Oh, you’re from Canada? Neat.”
Mike felt stupid for that remark and was pretty sure he’d heard Jay make a scoff-type noise in the backseat. He glanced back there and saw Jay staring out the window, looking pissed off about having to be there, which was potentially just his default expression.
“My wife grew up here,” Jim said. “Farm country, you know. But I love it. We grow mostly pumpkins, apples, and cherries. Summer is a busy time. We do a lot of tourist business in the fall.”
“Sure,” Mike said, thinking of driving out to pumpkin patches in rural Illinois with his parents and his sister when he was little, going on hay rides and drinking hot cider. “Makes sense.”
Everyone went quiet again. Mike stared miserably out the window at all the passing fields, many of which just looked empty to him. Houses and barns loomed in the far distance, and the motionless quiet of them felt like a threat not to come any closer. Being in the country had always made Mike feel pinned down and exposed. Even the cloudless stretch of sky overheard felt too big.
“You see the new Star Wars movie yet?” Jim asked.
“Oh god,” Mike said, relieved that at least he had something to say about this. “Yeah. My friends and I went at midnight last week, the day it came out.”
“So did Jay,” Jim said, nodding toward the backseat as if Mike might have forgotten where Jay was located.
“It sucked,” Jay said.
He sounded like he was still mad about it, like maybe this was the reason for his bad mood. Mike could relate, sort of, though he’d always been more of a Trek guy. He’d been excited for the whole prequel trilogy, and watching Episode I on opening night with his friends as that excitement deflated more and more felt like being pranked. Rich at least got a laugh out of how bad it was, to the point that he was almost thrown out of the theater. The rest of them were genuinely depressed afterward, and a few were even still in denial that it had been a huge disappointment. Mike had gone with his nerdy friends, the old group reassembling as people returned home from college for the summer, and the whole thing had been such a big deal for them that his parents hadn’t even objected to him breaking his otherwise strict post-arrest confinement for what was supposed to be a truly special occasion.
“It was godawful,” Mike said, looking up to meet Jay’s eyes in the rear view mirror. “I’m still kinda shocked by how bad it was.”
“Haven’t caught it yet myself,” Jim said, sounding proud of this fact.
“You knew it was going to be bad,” Jay said to Jim, bitterly, as if Jim was now telling Jay he’d told him so. “I thought-- I don’t know why I thought it wouldn’t totally blow. I mean, my expectations weren’t that high. But, like. Jesus.”
“How does a movie like that even happen?” Mike said, turning toward Jay. “You know?”
Jay nodded and uncrossed his arms. He held Mike’s stare, studying him.
“Lucas must be senile,” Jay said. “Or maybe he was always a hack.”
“Other people had a lot to do with the first trilogy actually turning out good.”
“I know,” Jay said, as if he was offended by the suggestion that he might not be aware of this. “Jim said you’re going to film school.”
“Yeah, I start in August. Are you in college yet?”
“Jay’s taking a year to think about his options,” Jim said.
Jay sniffed and crossed his arms over his chest again, turning back toward the window. He didn’t speak for the rest of the drive.
After what felt like a long time, they pulled off the highway and onto a dirt road that lead to a house Mike could see in the distance. It looked giant, and painted signs on the property directed cars to a public lot and pumpkin patch. There was a faded red barn in the distance, and they passed a corn field with a wooden HAUNTED MAZE sign hammered into the ground outside the rows of tall, still-green stalks.
“We don’t get many tourists on the property until late September,” Jim said as they pulled up to the house, which was bright white with two stories and a big wrap-around porch. Three girls were sitting on the porch’s front steps, bunched together and smirking like they were about to play a great joke as they watched the truck pull up, all of them staring into the passenger side, at Mike. “After Halloween we retheme everything for the Christmas crowd,” Jim said, droning on about the farm’s business while Mike ignored him and surveyed the three girls.
A short, blond woman about Jim’s age came out onto the porch when they’d all climbed out of the truck. Mike stood near it and eyed the girls. They were all watching him like they were waiting to be entertained. Jim came to stand beside him and waved at the woman who was coming down the steps. He was stiff and sort of jokey in his movements, like they were putting on a play for Mike’s benefit. Jay lingered in the shadows of the truck somewhere.
“Goodness,” the blond woman said when she shook Mike’s hand, looking up at the green hair and smiling in a pitying way, like wasn’t it cute that he’d tried to shock them with something innocuous. “We’re so glad to have you. I’m Kathy. Welcome to our home.”
“Thanks.”
Still clasping his hand, Kathy cut Jim a look that Mike wasn’t sure how to interpret. She released Mike and stepped aside to peer at the girls in a knowing, worried way. Mike’s relatives had started to refer to him as someone who was going to break hearts, which he found as offensive as it was flattering, like not being an invisible nerd anymore was inevitably going to turn him into an asshole who easily disposed of people.
“These are our daughters,” Jim said, and the girls stood one by one as if they’d practiced this or were in some kind of Disney musical intro number. They all had red-blond hair and big, light-colored eyes. None of them really looked anything like Jay. “Jocelyn’s the oldest,” Jim said, gesturing to the tallest and prettiest of the three, who had dark eyeliner and a short haircut that made her look older than seventeen. “Jillian’s fifteen and Jessica’s thirteen.” He pronounced their ages deliberately, as if he expected Mike to understand without needing to be told that he would not lay a finger on any of these girls.
It was comical in a way that reminded Mike of camp cinema, because the younger two girls were looking at Mike like it was hilarious that he was here and like they had some kind of evil plan for him, while Jocelyn looked like she felt sorry for him. They were all wearing tight jeans and tiny shirts. Jillian had her long hair in braids, but otherwise they didn’t look like farm girls.
“Nice to meet you,” Mike said, and Jessica snorted like that was a dumb thing to say.
“Your jacket is cool,” Jillian said. “It looks vintage.”
“It’s, uhh--” Mike looked down at himself. “It’s kind of a movie prop, actually.”
“Mike makes movies,” Jim said. “Did you bring your camera?”
“Yep.” Mike hoisted his duffel, as if to demonstrate the weight of the small handheld video camera that was in another bag inside.
“What kind is it?” Jay asked, appearing at Mike’s shoulder in a way that startled him a little.
Mike told him, not sure the specs would mean anything to him. Jay nodded to himself and looked glum, then dashed into the house without looking back.
“C’mon in,” Kathy said, waving for Mike to follow. “We’ll get you settled.”
The house smelled good, like polished wood and something that was baking in the kitchen, which they passed on their left as Mike followed Kathy up the creaking wooden staircase to the second floor. She took him to the first room on the left, where Jay was seated on one of two twin beds that were pushed against opposite sides of the room. The walls were covered in movie posters that were taped up between shelves and bookcases packed with movies, books, and toy-like knick knacks. Mike spotted a Gremlins figurine and noted an original trilogy Star Wars poster on the far wall.
“You’ll be staying in here with Jay,” Kathy said, walking over to fluff the pillow on the twin bed across from the one that Jay was seated on. Mike’s bed was on the right side of the room, below a Pink Flamingos poster that he found surprising.
“Just until I leave for the summer,” Jay said.
“Mhm,” Kathy said under her breath, still fluffing.
“I’m going to Vegas for the summer,” Jay said, staring at Mike like he expected Mike to doubt this information for some reason. “My dad lives there. My real dad. We’re just working out the details, but I’ll probably leave in June. Just in a few weeks. So you’ll have the room to yourself soon.”
He was blushing, saying all this. Mike just nodded, relieved to hear that he wouldn’t have to share a room with this dork for long.
“Well, we’ll see,” Kathy said, muttering this as she turned from the bed. She gave Jay a look and put her hands on her waist. “I’ll just let you settle in up here, Mike. Maybe you’d like a shower after the bus ride?”
“Uh, sure,” he said, feeling weird about the idea of being naked in this strange house. “Maybe in a sec.”
“I’m making a snack downstairs if you’re hungry, and we have lemonade and soda. Feel free to come down and have something whenever you’re ready. Jay, you can show him where the bathroom and everything is, yah?”
“I think I can handle that,” Jay said, deadpan.
Kathy waved her hand in his direction before leaving the room, as if to subtly tell him to stop doing something. Mike put his duffel bag down on his bed and shrugged the leather jacket off, then felt bad because he kind of stank after sweating on the bus during his nap. He put it back on, feeling Jay’s eyes on his back.
“What are you gonna do in Vegas?” Mike asked when he sat on the bed, facing Jay.
“Just help my dad out with his routes,” Jay said. “He’s a professional driver. Like, taking famous people from the airport to their hotels.”
“Ohh, cool. Who’s the most famous person he’s--”
“Shaq, probably. My dad said he was nice. Also Al Pacino. I don’t really care about celebrities, though.”
“Oh?” Mike said, confused. He looked down at his knees and picked at a piece of loose thread on his pants, which were a thrift store find also originally purchased for a movie costume. “What do you, um. What are you into?”
Jay looked around pointedly at the movie posters.
“Movies,” he said, flatly, like an accusation. “I don’t have a camera, though. I did for a while, this old one from my grandma, but it broke. And I used to rent them out from the AV room at school, but. Now I’m not in school.”
“Do you want to go to college?” Mike asked, though he had the feeling it was a sensitive subject.
“No,” Jay said. “You can’t teach creativity.”
“Oh.” Mike realized this was a dig at him going to film school but wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do about it. Nothing about this sour little shrimp inspired him to want to fight.
“I’m just saving up,” Jay said vaguely. “Working out in Vegas will help a lot. It’s not like they pay me for anything here.”
“They?”
“My parents. My mom and Jim. This place is a lot of work. But I’m out of here after this year. They just need my help in the fall when we get all our business.”
“Just for one more season?” Mike said, hoping Jay would get his reference. “Like Luke Skywalker?” he prompted when Jay just stared at him.
“Exactly,” Jay said, and then he fell over onto his bed with a groan, his face buried in the blankets. “Sorry,” he said, voice muffled.
“For what?”
“Nothing.”
Jay launched himself off the bed and toward the door. Only then did Mike notice he wasn’t wearing loose jeans but extremely long, loose jean shorts, with white socks and faded red converse. As soon as he was through the doorway he spun on his heel and poked his head back into the room, clinging to the doorframe and staring at Mike.
“Want me to show you the bathroom?” he asked.
“Sure.”
“It’s right there,” Jay said, pointing at an open doorway across the hall. “And all my sisters use it, too, so. Good luck.”
He departed then, jogging down the stairs. Mike felt overwhelmed and tired, and spent some time just sitting on the bed, examining all the movie posters: Terminator, Jurassic Park, several Nightmare on Elm Street ones, a Friday the 13th and Eraserhead. Between the posters, the walls were papered with smaller pictures and flyers, including some kiddie stuff like stills from The Muppet Show and old Garbage Pail Kids trading cards. On the wall near the end of Mike’s bed there was a small door that looked like it probably lead to an attic crawl space. It was padlocked, which Mike found both funny and creepy.
He heard footsteps on the stairs while he examined some books on Jay’s desk, his heart sinking when he saw how many of them were about filmmaking. He felt ambushed, like his mother had sold him off to this family to be a friend to this weird kid who apparently thought he could run away to Vegas to avoid the whole situation anyway. Mike turned and startled when he saw all three sisters jammed into the doorway, looking in at him. The youngest one laughed and ran away.
“Can we see your video camera?” Jillian asked. She had a kind of manic glee that seemed to be her constant expression, as if she was always doing the setup for a joke.
“Sure,” Mike said. He walked back over to the bed to unzip his duffel, and shuffled it out of sight as best he could when he saw his balled up boxers and socks scattered haphazardly throughout the bag. He’d had sex with three women but still felt weird about girls seeing his underwear. He dug the camera out and held it up for their appraisal.
“Jay will be so jealous,” Jocelyn said.
“You should let him use it,” Jillian said. “He’d pay you, probably.”
“Uhh.” Mike looked down at the thing in his hand. “Well, what. He makes movies?”
“He used to,” Jocelyn said. “He’ll tell you about it.”
“No, he won’t,” Jillian said, giving her a look like she was crazy.
Jocelyn made a disapproving noise, gave Mike a final look and tugged Jillian away by the sleeve of her shirt.
“Our mom made cookies!” Jillian called as she was dragged away, then a door slammed down the hallway.
Mike sighed. Jocelyn was hot, but he didn’t feel like it would be a problem to avoid flirting with her. She seemed kind of otherworldly and only interested in him as a curiosity. He could usually tell right away if he had a chance with a chick or not.
He closed the door so he could change his shirt and put on deodorant. He still needed a shower, but wasn’t ready to strip down for one yet. It was possible his hair dye hadn’t set fully and would get green gunk all over the floor of these people’s shower. He was just pulling a new t-shirt on when he heard the door opening behind him.
“Oh,” Jay said, hesitating there. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Mike smoothed the shirt down over his chest and tried to convince himself he smelled less bad now. “Can I use your phone? I said I’d call my mom when I got here.”
Jay didn’t have a phone in his room, so Mike had to use a portable one that sat on a charger in the family room downstairs, which was big with high ceilings and a huge stone fireplace, its windows facing the porch and the front of the property. Mike’s mother answered on the first ring.
“So it seems okay?” she asked, speaking quietly, as if the farm family might overhear.
“Uh-huh,” Mike said, glancing across the foyer hallway at the kitchen to make sure none of them were lurking in earshot. “Just. Ughh. They grow pumpkins.”
“I know that. I told you that.”
“Right. Did you, like, intentionally try to match me with some filmmaker kid?”
“Huh? What's that mean?”
“The son is like-- Never mind. I’m fine, I’m here. I should go eat cookies with them.”
Mike’s mother took a deep breath and exhaled. He could picture her nodding to herself and thumbing at the notepad she kept by the kitchen phone.
“Just be polite and helpful,” she said. “I know you will be.”
Mike grunted. He knew he would be, too, for all his complaining. What choice did he have? Being an asshole would only make things worse.
He said goodbye to his mom and sauntered into the kitchen, feeling like an alien when they all looked up at him from where they were gathered around the cookies, at a big island in the center of the room, which was impressively huge but also warm and cozy, with another fireplace and a wood burning stove in addition to the more modern components. Jay eyed Mike from over the cookie he was nibbling as he approached, and Jim poured him a glass of lemonade. Jillian was seated at a bar stool beside her mother, and the other two girls were elsewhere.
“I’ll give you a tour of the property in a bit,” Jim said after Mike had thanked him for the drink and plucked a cookie from the plate. He’d had this kind before but couldn’t remember the name for them. Something a little spicy and chewy. “Are you, uh. Comfortable doing chores?” Jim asked.
“Sure,” Mike said, though he barely lifted a finger at home and couldn’t even keep his room clean. “Like, um. Watering the crops?”
Everyone laughed at that, pretty hard. Mike tried to laugh, too, at himself, but he felt like an idiot.
“We have machines that do the watering and fertilizing,” Kathy said. “But those need overseeing and maintenance, and pest control is a big job.”
“There’s a lot of pruning and thinning to do at this time of year,” Jim said. “Weed management, of course. Harvesting, too, later in the season, and packing. Jay can take you through the whole chore routine.”
“Okay,” Mike said, eying him. “I guess I’ll be taking over for you once you’re in Vegas?”
Jim and Kathy exchanged a look, and Jillian frowned, rearing back a bit before turning to Jay, who wasn’t looking at anybody.
“Oh,” Jim said. “Is that. Happening?”
“I told you guys,” Jay said. His ears were bright pink. “Nobody believes anything I say.”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Kathy said. “Jim. Go ahead and show Mike around. Jay, go with them.”
“Why?” Jay asked, before wilting at the warning look his mother gave him. He sighed and threw a half eaten cookie back on the plate. “Fine,” he said. “But there’s something I want to record that comes on at five.”
“It won’t take that long,” Jim said, reaching over to squeeze Jay’s shoulder. Jay stepped away and went over to a hat rack on the wall near the foyer to retrieve a red baseball cap with no logo. He put it on backward before walking out of the house as if they should follow him.
“It’s a hard time for him right now,” Kathy said, quietly, to Mike, as if he was a fellow adult who would commiserate with her for having to deal with her difficult child.
“Mom,” Jillian said, giving her a wide-eyed look of disapproval.
“Let’s go!” Jim said, so loudly and with such awkward forced cheer that Mike laughed, thinking he was intentionally trying to be funny. Jim didn’t crack a smile, just beckoned for Mike to follow him out of the kitchen.
“So you all have ‘J’ names,” Mike said, not sure how else to change the subject as he walked with Jim around the front of the house, following Jay toward the barn, where Mike could see a collection of massive farm equipment taking up most of the interior.
“We’re all J’s except Kathy,” Jim said. “Ironically, it was her idea.”
“They’re all, um. Yours? Your daughters?”
Mike wanted to apologize for the awful phrasing, but Jim just laughed without looking at him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Jay is, too. Not biologically, but. I married his mom when he was a baby.”
“Ah,” Mike said, not sure what he was being told. Ahead of them, Jay disappeared into the shadows of the barn.
“He’s a sweet kid,” Jim said. “He’s just in a bad mood today. Don’t take it personally.”
“Okay.”
Mike felt bad for Jay. Both of his parents were confiding in a stranger who’d just arrived about his mood. Mike would be fucking mortified if he found out his parents had talked about him like this to someone they’d just met. He was sure his mom at least talked about him with her friends, discussing her many concerns and maybe even bragging about him sometimes, when school stuff went well. Having a therapist for a mother was a curse. She’d threatened to put him in treatment after the first underage drinking incident and again after the second one, before she came up with this far worse plan.
Inside the barn, Jim showed Mike around and Mike attempted to listen, nodding along and already bored. He was more interested in Jay, who was climbing on the equipment while Jim spoke, trailing them around but not saying anything.
When they left the barn and Jim talked about the build outs they did for tourist season, Jay perked up a little. In addition to the corn maze, they did hay rides and had plans to try to do some kind of haunted house in the barn.
“I have some ideas about how it could be done,” Jay said. “But it would be an investment.”
“Yeah,” Jim said, sounding uncertain. “We have a scary mode after dark in the corn maze, in October. Jay and his friends will hide and jump out, to scare people.”
“They’ll all be off at college this year,” Jay said, bending down to snap up a weedy-looking flower that had apparently offended him. He looked at it and then threw it. “So we need some other plan if you want to have that sort of attraction.”
“Agreed,” Jim said. “We’re still thinking about it. Maybe Mike can help us. I guess you probably know about that stuff, huh? Special effects, and costumes--?”
Jay and Jim both looked at him expectantly. Jay quirked his mouth like he was trying not to laugh, and Mike wasn’t sure if it was at his expense or not.
“I guess so,” Mike said. “I’ve done some gore stuff for my movies. Probably not really the market you’re aiming for, though.”
“No,” Jim said. “It has to be family friendly. Even if it’s a little scary.”
Jay moaned under his breath and walked ahead of them again, toward the pumpkin patch.
Mike liked walking among the pumpkins, which were still small but already cute, looking like faintly enchanted objects among the vines. After a quick look they moved on to the orchards, were pretty and smelled good. Jim picked an apple and offered it to Mike, warning him that it would be underripe.
“Edible, though,” he said. “Won’t hurt ya.”
Mike took a bite and thought it tasted pretty good, kind of sour. He watched Jay climb up into a tree like a kid to get a better one. He seemed to like scaling things. Maybe being so small and light made it fun.
“Here,” Jay said, holding an apple, ten feet up on a branch. “Catch.”
He dropped it, and grinned when Mike managed to snag it. Jay was right that it tasted better than the other one had. Jim put his hands on his hips and stared up at Jay.
“Why don’t you show Mike the pond and stuff,” he said. “I gotta check on the pork.” He looked at Mike. “You eat pork, right?”
“Sure,” Mike said, surprised his mother hadn’t gone over all this. Maybe she had, and Jim was just double checking. “I eat pretty much anything.”
“Good to hear. Jay?”
“What.”
“Did you hear me? Show him the pond and the property boundaries. You have time before your show.”
“It’s not a show, it’s a movie. And yes, I heard you!”
“You know how to swim?” Jim asked, turning back to Mike.
“Uh-huh,” Mike said, again surprised this wasn’t covered in his intake papers or something. The whole thing seemed kind of distressingly casual.
“Good,” Jim said, and then he turned and headed back for the house, leaving Mike with Jay, who was still in the tree.
Mike stared up at Jay, blinking a lot, afraid some bit of bark or leaf debris would be dislodged by Jay’s presence and drop down into his eyes. The sun was bright, too, making him squint, and the day had grown hot. Out here, it finally felt like summer was a reality, still just around the corner but inevitable.
“What’d you do?” Jay asked, looking down at Mike but not moving from his perch.
“Huh?” Mike said.
“To end up here. You’re being punished for something, right? Must be.”
“Uhh. Yeah. At my graduation party, we all got drunk. No big deal, pretty standard stuff, but some idiot set a pool clubhouse on fire and then the police showed up and arrested everybody who was still there. They said we were lucky not to be charged with arson. The best part is that me and the guys who were still there were trying to put out the fire with this garden hose and buckets of water from the pool. The people who just bolted before the cops showed up got away with it, including the guy who started the fire. Man, fuck that guy. No good deed goes unpunished. I guess that’s the theme of my summer, yeah.”
Thus ends my narration, Mike thought, feeling stupid for delivering a whole monologue while looking up at Jay and flinching with the fear that he was going to end up with some tree debris in his eye.
“Sucks for you,” Jay said. “Stuff like that is why I don’t drink.” He bounced a little on the branch he was sitting on and flicked an apple without dislodging it. “Do you actually want to see the pond?”
“Yes,” Mike said, annoyed by him.
Jay swung down from the tree and dropped in front of Mike with a grunt. His cheeks were flushed from the effort of climbing, and he had dirt on his jaw, where Mike could see now that he had some fuzzy blond facial hair growing in patches that only made him look more childish. Mike didn’t mention the dirt, just followed him to the pond.
“What are your haunted house ideas?” Mike asked when they were standing at the edge of the pond, which was way bigger than Mike had expected, abutting a thickly forested area at the back of the property.
“All my ideas would require some fairly substantial infrastructure inside the barn,” Jay said. “Which they can’t afford, so. I’m trying to think about it more realistically. Which is depressing.”
“Sure.” Mike knew about that from making movies during high school, but he wasn’t going to say so. Jay obviously had several chips on his shoulder, and not having access to filming equipment seemed to be one of them. “I bet the maze thing is fun,” he said instead. “Jumping out and scaring-- People.” He’d barely stopped himself from saying ‘hicks.’
“Sometimes,” Jay said, staring at the murky surface of the pond. “But that’s all over.”
“‘Cause your friends are leaving for school?”
Jay shrugged and adjusted his hat, pushing his bangs back before squashing it over them again.
“I kinda told them all to fuck off, also,” he said. “At the end of high school. So I don’t really give a shit. Honestly I might just stay in Vegas if my dad can get me a route. I’m so sick of the midwest. Have you been to L.A.?”
“No,” Mike said, glad he didn’t have yet another thing that this kid didn’t. “I’ve never really been anywhere. Except to, like, the Dells. And we went to Disney World in Florida once. And I’ve been on a school trip to New York. Oh-- and another one to D.C., when I was in middle school. But that’s it.”
Mike felt stupid for listing his travel history. He’d just wanted to be accurate.
“I’ve only been to Chicago and Rockford,” Jay said, smugly, as if he’d won this round for being the lesser fortunate eighteen-year-old yet again. “No place else outside of Wisconsin.”
“Not even to Vegas?” Mike said, realizing as he spoke that this was unwise. “To see your dad?”
Jay cut Mike a look like he was surprised by his sudden turn toward assholery. It was an expression Mike was familiar with. He tended to be gentle with people, until he wasn’t.
“No,” Jay said. “He hasn’t been out there that long.”
“Ah. I see. Well. Should we head back?”
They trudged back to the house in silence. It was a ten minute walk, and Mike kept thinking up benign questions to ask, then saying nothing because Jay was his host and he should be doing the work of conversation. At first he thought Jay was being intentionally rude because he resented having Mike in his space, even for just a few weeks before he left town, but when Mike looked over at him Jay seemed to be in his own world, deep in some troubling thought.
“So what’s fun to do around here?” Mike asked, having a feeling he knew what Jay’s answer would be.
“Nothing,” Jay said. “There’s a movie theater in Beloit, twenty minutes away, and a video store. Orfordville is just this farm and ten others just like it. And the high school, I guess. A church, the bank. We’ve got a town library but it’s pretty much a joke.”
“I guess you have to make your own fun,” Mike said.
He didn’t mean to be suggestive, but Jay gave him a look like he was a pervert or something.
The family had a single desktop computer in Jim’s office, which was a cluttered space downstairs, behind the family room. Jay plonked himself down there while Mike hovered uncertainly. Jim’s office walls were covered in landscape paintings, many of them unframed and some of them of a fantastical nature. Jay checked his email while Mike examined the artwork, then invited Mike to log in to his own AOL account to do the same.
“Maybe later,” Mike said. “Guess I’ll take a shower now, before dinner.” He could smell the pork Jim was smoking out back, and it was making him hungry for a real meal.
“Okay,” Jay said, jumping up from the computer chair. “Come with me. I’ll find towels.”
Mike had the impulse to make a joke like Jay was offering to take a shower with him, but he resisted it. He’d gotten comments from his friends that his sense of humor was about eighty percent gay jokes. He sort of wanted to tell them it was because he wasn’t straight, but he wasn’t even sure that was the reason, and so far had kept that information just between himself and that one guy he’d made out with, someone he would never see again.
Jay departed the second floor entirely after giving Mike an armload of clean, somewhat threadbare towels and telling him he’d better lock the bathroom door to keep his sisters out. Mike did so, but he still felt overly vulnerable as he stripped down to nothing in the bathroom, which had just one small window up toward the ceiling, over the tub. The water in the shower was on the cold side even after he tried to adjust it. Maybe there was some trick to it that Jay could tell him later. He took his time anyway, surveying the many girly bathing products that were lined up along the rim of the tub. The whole bathroom had a teenage girl-ish scent, like walking past a Bath and Body Works at the mall and getting a whiff of a hundred different fruit and flower scents all at once. Alongside the row of Herbal Essence and L’Oreal hair products was a sad looking bottle of Pert Plus that Mike assumed was Jay’s. He used it to wash his hair and was relieved when no green dye leaked out as he rinsed it. For soap he selected a bottle of body wash called Fresh Cucumber Lime. It was that or use the gross looking bar of what smelled like Irish Spring, which was so melty and intimate-seeming that even to touch it would have felt like a violation of Jay’s privacy.
Something about washing up among the smell of ladies’ products put Mike in a good mood, and he surveyed himself in the mirror as he combed his wet green hair back with his fingers, a towel wrapped around his waist. It was possible that this was the best he would ever look, and with college right around the corner he felt preemptively giddy about his sudden good luck. He’d spent most of his adolescence feeling like the awkward, shy weirdo he’d resembled until the past year, and he still felt that way sometimes, but it was easy to pretend otherwise now that he looked like maybe he could win a bar fight.
He dressed in the clean clothes he’d brought into the bathroom with him and exited feeling uncertain about what to do or where to go next. Jay’s bedroom was empty, and he could hear the girls’ voices in the backyard when he cracked the window between the two beds, which looked out on a flat part of the roof that overhung the porch. Mike considered this would be good smoking territory, though he was wary of actually getting addicted to cigarettes. He’d just been smoking them recently to seem less like his old self, while drinking with his friends and at other times when he felt like being disgusting and nihilistic.
After snooping around Jay’s room a little more and finding nothing especially interesting, except that he apparently had a subscription to Entertainment Weekly, Mike put on his shoes and headed downstairs. He was about to walk outside to join the others in the yard when he noticed Jay sitting alone in the family room, on the floor in front of the family’s TV, which was pretty old and crappy looking, built into a large wooden cabinet. Some 80’s movie featuring motorcycles was playing.
“What’s that?” Mike asked, walking in to sit on the couch.
“It’s called Easy Wheels,” Jay said, not taking his eyes off the screen. “I actually can’t believe this is on TV. It’s pretty bad so far, but Sam Raimi wrote it with his brother. I was just curious.”
“You’re recording it?”
“I record everything I can find that I’ve never seen before. Especially stuff I’ve never even heard of. Sometimes this kind of stuff will play once on cable and never again. Most of it sucks, but I’ve found some rare gems.”
Mike had to withhold a snicker at the corny way Jay said ‘rare gems.’ Jay glanced over at him as if he’d sensed this.
“Do you like Sam Raimi?” Jay asked, mumbling like someone had forced him to ask.
“Sure,” Mike said. “Army of Darkness and all that. I probably watched that a hundred times as a kid.”
“Me too,” Jay said. He looked different when he smiled, teeth and all. He had the same soft greenish eyes as his sisters, but his were smaller and deep set, squinty. “In seventh grade I literally watched it every day after school.”
“Why?” Mike asked, laughing.
Jay’s face fell. He shrugged and looked back at the screen again. Mike settled in on the couch and decided to keep him company. The movie was incomprehensibly stupid, but they both got a few laughs out of dumb dialogue, and Jay looked over at Mike’s shoes to grin in a companionable way a few times.
“Bruce Campbell produced this,” Jay said when the credits rolled.
“Oof,” Mike said. “Gonna assume he lost money on it.”
“Yeah. Do you like him?”
“Of course. Doesn’t everybody?”
“Most of the people I went to high school with didn’t even know his name.”
“Ah.” Mike withheld a comment about hicks and shrugged. The sun had started to go down while the movie played, and nobody had come looking for them yet. “People in high school are stupid everywhere,” he said when Jay glanced up at him. He was still sitting on the floor, his shoulders hunched forward under that giant shirt.
“Who are your favorite directors?” Jay asked.
Mike groaned at the question, which made him think of his college acceptance essay. It had stressed him out so much that he was still bitter that his parents thought he didn’t deserve to have some fun after getting accepted with scholarship money and everything.
“I dunno,” he said. “Speilberg, when he was good.”
“You didn’t like Saving Private Ryan?”
“I mean, yeah, I did. I’m talking about Hook and that shitty Jurassic Park sequel. Why’d he do that? Why do these guys make shit when they don’t have to?”
“I dunno, but Hook came out before the original Jurassic Park.”
“I know that.” He’d actually forgotten. “But you know what I mean?”
“Obviously,” Jay said, crawling up onto the other side of the couch and tucking his legs under him. “I mean, that Star Wars prequel. I guess Lucas just likes money.”
Mike agreed with that assessment, disappointing as it was for someone who already had mega millions. They talked for a while about the specific crimes of Episode I, and laughing about a few of the worst ones with Jay felt cathartic after just being bummed about them with his other friends, aside from Rich, who’d known it would suck. Jim came to find them when it was getting dark outside and dinner was ready. Mike had heard Kathy and the girls coming in and out of the kitchen’s side door to get dishes and things to set the table, but he’d otherwise lost track of time while complaining about Star Wars.
Jay was in a better mood at dinner, and Mike wanted to credit himself. They ate outside, though the temperature was plummeting after sundown. It felt festive, with tiki torches lit along the railing of the back porch, where they all sat a big wooden table.
“What are your movies about?” Jocelyn asked after Mike had been grilled about more mundane things: did he have siblings, where would he go to college, did he root for the Bears?
“Uhh,” Mike said, playing with his fork and feeling all their eyes on him. “Various things. They’re usually comedies. I’ve done some documentary-type stuff for school.”
“Documentaries about what?” Jay asked.
“A historic building in the neighborhood near my school.” He decided not to mention that he’d implied in the movie that it could be haunted.
“Sounds boring,” Jessica said.
“I’m sure it wasn’t,” Kathy said, though the polite smile she gave Mike made him suspect she was thinking the same thing.
“Do you like Blink 182?” Jessica asked, ignoring her mother.
“Don’t answer her trick questions about music!” Jillian said before Mike could open his mouth. “She’s a little snob.”
Jessica smiled like this was a compliment.
“She’s like me,” Jay said. “She appreciates the classics.”
“Hey, me too,” Mike said. “The Beatles are pretty much my favorite band.”
Jessica and Jay looked at each other and started laughing into their hands.
“The Beatles are great,” Jim said, without enthusiasm, forking at the mac and cheese on his plate. He seemed tired.
“Better than Oingo Boingo,” Jillian said. She shuddered dramatically as if it pained her to even say their name.
“Oingo Boingo is not my favorite band,” Jay said. “Not even top ten.”
The siblings argued about music and Mike tuned them out. He’d never been sensitive about his musical tastes and had been laughed at plenty by his friends back home for his Beatles fixation. He stirred mayo-coated cole slaw around on his plate and wondered what everybody was doing, back home without him. The hottest girl in their loosely assembled friend group had been giving him signals since the morning after the fire. She thought it was hot that he’d stayed to try to put it out, also that he’d therefore ended up in jail, even though she was one of the people who’d been there when it started and ran when they heard sirens. He wished he had a cell phone. His parents were making him wait till college and even that was just a maybe. He wondered if he should email that girl, though he knew it was pointless. She wasn’t going to make the drive out to Orfordville for his dick. He would have been lucky to get a blowjob on a dull night back when he was easily in reach.
He was more bitter about the fact that being here had ruined his plan to maybe try a few things with guys in the city during the summer, before college. The school he’d be attending was an artsy private college where he assumed there would be ample opportunity to slip into the dorm bed of a dude or two, and he didn’t want to seem clueless among his classmates. He’d never even touched another guy’s dick before, and increasingly thought about wanting to, with some urgency, but he had no illusions about safely hooking up with men here. He doubted he’d even find a woman who would look past the green hair.
Everyone helped clean up after dinner, and Mike tried to fall in to the rhythm that the family seemed to move in, all of them mutely doing their part in a routine way. Kathy showed him the pantry and told him he was welcome to anything in the fridge. Mike felt exhausted by the time the family was settling in to watch TV together, and when they put on Dawson’s Creek he excused himself and said he’d head up to bed.
“Jay will get you up for chores in the morning,” Jim said. “We start at five.”
“Wow,” Mike said, instead of what the fuck. “Okay.”
He was surprised when Jay followed him upstairs. Mike dug his toothbrush out of his bag, and realized as he was pawing through the clothes he’d hastily packed that he’d forgotten to include sleep pants. He normally just slept in boxers, but that seemed too weird here, especially if he’d be crossing the hallway to use a bathroom that he was sharing with three girls.
“Fuck,” he said, not sure what to do about this.
“What’s wrong?” Jay asked. He’d stretched out on his bed and was reading a Maxim with Lucy Lawless in her underwear on the cover. Something about it felt kind of pointed and pathetic, maybe because the top story on the cover was TONGUE TWIST HER.
“Nothing,” Mike said, because it seemed too lame to say he’d forgotten his pajamas or to ask to borrow some of Jay’s, which would be too small for him anyway. “You got a Walmart or anything in this town?” he asked, thinking he could ask Jim to drive him to the store tomorrow.
“Just a Dollar General,” Jay said, his eyes on the magazine.
“How to kiss her where it counts, huh?” Mike said, nodding to the magazine, where this text was printed under TONGUE TWIST HER.
“Oh.” Jay flopped the magazine down onto his chest. “I’m reading this article about prisons.”
“Sure you are.”
Jay rolled his eyes and pulled the magazine back up, holding it so it concealed most of his face. Mike could still see his bright pink ear on the pillow.
Something about this was cute, maybe just the ear itself, and Mike felt newly weird about sharing a room with some guy he didn’t know. He headed across the hall with his toothbrush, resigned to getting into bed in jeans and taking them off once he was ready to shove his legs under the blankets. He wasn’t particularly prudish, but the size of his dick was pretty obvious when he was just wearing boxers, even soft. He didn’t want to seem like he was trying to show off.
When he got back to the room Jay had put the magazine away and was lying on his stomach in bed, writing in a notebook. He still had his t-shirt and jean shorts on but had taken off his necklace and cuff bracelet and stashed them somewhere.
“What’s in there?” Mike asked, pointing to the small padlocked door when he stowed his duffel at the foot of his bed.
Jay looked up and flinched when he saw what Mike was pointing to.
“Nothing,” he said, looking back to his notebook. “Just. Stuff in storage.”
“Huh. That’s a pretty serious lock on there.”
Jay had no comment and seemed to be drawing something now, coloring it in with urgency.
“What’re you working on?” Mike asked, though he knew he should leave the kid alone.
“Nothing-- Look.” Jay groaned and turned onto his elbow to look at Mike. “I’ve never had a roommate before,” he said, with accusation, like Mike should give him a break therefore.
“Me either.”
Mike stretched out in his own bed, which was shockingly firm under his back. He folded his hands behind his head and looked up a the ceiling. There were glow stars and planets stuck up there, faint yellowish shapes against the white.
“So, just--” Jay said, scrambling up to a seated position and snapping his notebook shut. “I know I won’t even be here that long, but maybe we should have rules.”
“Sure. It’s your room. Lay ‘em on me.”
Jay blinked at Mike like he was unfamiliar with the expression. Maybe he was just thinking about his rules. Mike half expected him to tear a page out of the notebook and hand them over in written form, maybe with a space for Mike to sign in agreement.
“I don’t like to talk about what I’m working on,” Jay said. “That’s rule number one.”
“Okay,” Mike said, not sure why he was offended by this statement. He didn’t want to hear about Jay’s ideas anyway. He was just being polite. “Fine by me.”
“And obviously--” Jay glanced at the open bedroom door and jumped up from his bed, hurrying over to close it. He turned to Mike with his back against the door, flush-faced. “No jerking off in the room,” he said, still quietly.
“Um, no shit,” Mike said. “You think you have to tell me that?”
“I don’t know anything about you. Just to be safe, I thought I’d--”
“I’m not gonna jerk off in front of you, dude,” Mike said, just to see him blush even harder.
It worked, and Jay did a little snarl thing, too, lifting his lip and wrinkling his nose.
Cute, Mike thought, again, surprising himself. Jay was not his type in any respect.
“And don’t leave your clothes all over the floor,” Jay said, as if Mike had already done this. There were a few balled up near his duffel at the end of the bed, only because he wasn’t sure if he was welcome to toss his dirty clothes into the hamper by Jay’s dresser. They hadn’t talked about how laundry was going to work.
“Fine,” Mike said.
“Do you have any rules for me?” Jay asked, still lingering at the door.
“Let’s see.” Mike tapped his chin and looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. He wanted to say something funny but wasn’t feeling especially sharp-witted at the moment, too tired and weirded out by settling into this whole experience. “Never feed me after midnight,” he said, thinking Jay would appreciate the Gremlins reference.
Jay’s grin came slowly.
“But it’s always after midnight,” he said.
“I love that part,” Mike said. “In the sequel.” He sat up with his arms outstretched and made a monster noise, as if he was a gremlin who’d just burst through a bank of security monitors.
“The sequel is probably one of my favorite movies of all time,” Jay said.
“I saw it three times in the theater. I was obsessed.”
Jay’s family had it on VHS, and they decided to watch it together in the morning, after chores. They talked about movies for a long time, Jay sitting on his bed and Mike stretched out on his side in his own bed, facing him. While they talked Mike heard the other family members coming up the stairs, the girls going in and out of the bathroom, water running, and gradually the rest of the house went quiet.
Mike was falling asleep, but he liked talking about movies and the sound of Jay’s dweeby nasal voice enough to fight his exhaustion. He let his eyes drift shut, and when he opened them again the room was dark and Jay was getting in bed. Mike wondered dazedly if he’d changed out of his giant shorts and into those sleep pants right there in the room, and if they should have rules about when and where to get dressed. Mike was still in his jeans, on top of the blankets.
“How long was I asleep?” he asked.
“I dunno,” Jay said. He pulled his blankets up to his chin and rolled toward Mike’s side of the room. “Ten minutes? It’s almost midnight.”
“Jesus. And we have to be up at five?”
“Yep. I usually take a nap after lunch.”
That’s adorable, Mike thought, almost said, and then: oh no.
Jay’s face looked cute on the pillow, and talking and laughing with him about movies had made Mike’s stomach kind of fluttery. He considered how stupid would it be if he developed a crush on this shrimpy farm boy and almost laughed at the idea. He supposed it didn’t matter much, since Jay was leaving in a week or two. The stakes were low. Mike could even indulge his impulse to flirt a little, if he felt like it. If these people had a problem with it they could send him back to Chicago. It was certainly too late in the summer to line up another farm family willing to host him, and Mike would rather be on lockdown in his room in the city for the next three months than here, even if these people were nice. He was pretty sure the novelty of their niceness would wear off after a few days of getting up at five to do farm work.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” he asked when Jay didn’t roll over to go to sleep.
Jay snorted and recoiled in shock at the question.
“Look at me,” he said. “You think I have a girlfriend?”
“I mean. You could.”
“No, I couldn’t. Believe me. Girls don’t look at me. Or if they do, they see a mosquito. That’s what this one girl said to me, sophomore year. I asked if she wanted to go to a movie with me. She said, ‘What? Are you serious? You’re like a mosquito.’ And everybody laughed. And then that became my nickname for the rest of high school.”
“Damn,” Mike said, wincing.
“Yeah. I’m not the kind of guy girls like. I’ve accepted that. I don’t even try anymore.”
Hmm, Mike thought.
“What kind of guy do girls like?” he asked, lifting his head off the pillow to prop it in his hand. This conversation had awakened him.
Jay groaned as if the question disgusted him.
“You know,” he said, flinging his hand in Mike’s direction. “Your kind.”
“Which is what?”
“Tall! First off, and-- Fuck you, I’m not gonna list everything. You’ve had girls, I’m sure.”
Mike felt himself grinning and knew he should be less smug. He was enjoying himself, suddenly.
“A few,” he said. He thought about suggesting he’d had a guy, too, because it would be funny if the first person he came out to was this little pumpkin farmer with his Maxim subscription and lingering high school nerd angst.
“Well, congratulations,” Jay said, mumbling this hatefully. “I wouldn’t get any ideas about my sisters, by the way.”
“I don’t have any ideas.”
“Yeah, right. Every single one of my friends eventually got obsessed with Jocelyn. It’s fucking annoying.”
“Is that why you told them all to fuck off?”
Jay looked surprised, as if he hadn’t expected that Mike was actually listening to what he said or remembering any of it.
“No,” Jay said. He rolled onto his back and fidgeted under his blankets. “We should go to sleep. You’re gonna be dead on your feet tomorrow.”
“That’s probably true,” Mike said. He sat up in bed, suddenly not in the mood to sleep, and dug under the mattress where he’d stashed his cigarettes. “You mind if I smoke?” he asked, holding the pack up, trying to be cool in a way that he hoped Jay wouldn’t see through.
“Um, yes?” Jay sat up, too, as if he was going to physically put a stop to this. “You can’t smoke in here.”
“Alright then,” Mike said, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll just pop out to the roof, in that case.”
“What are you-- Why?” Jay asked, looking so stricken that Mike couldn't help finding him cute again. “Why would you smoke? That’s so stupid.”
“I know,” Mike said, pushing the window open. It was chilly outside, and he could already see tons of stars. “Don’t worry about me,” he said, hoisting himself up onto the windowsill.
“I’m not worried. It’s just so pointless.”
“I like to do pointless things sometimes.”
Mike swung his legs out through the window and scooted onto the roof. His heart was beating fast, from the sudden cold across his bare arms and the thrill of being on a roof, also from trying to scandalize Jay. He could already see that doing so was going to be his only source of fun here, and for the first time was a little bummed by the thought that Jay wouldn’t be in town for much longer. He lit his cigarette, looked up at the stars, and tried not to smile around his first inhale when he heard Jay scrambling out onto the roof behind him.
“Want a drag?” Mike said when Jay sat beside him and wrapped his arms around himself, looking ornery.
“No,” he said, snarling at the cigarette before squinting out at the yard again. “That’s disgusting.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Mike blew smoke out through his nose, could see Jay peeking at him from the corner of his eye. “These stars are pretty amazing,” he said, gesturing up at them with his cigarette. “Is that the fucking Milky Way?”
“Yes. I used to have a cool telescope.”
“What happened to it?”
“An ex-friend of mine stole it.”
“Jesus,” Mike said, stopping himself from remarking on how rough Jay seemed to have it, social life-wise. “You think he still has it?”
“No. He probably sold it for drugs.”
“That’s fucked up. Did you tell your parents?”
Jay made a sort of low growling noise under his breath and drew his knees up to his chest. He folded his arms over them and rested his chin there.
“I didn’t want it to become a big thing,” he said. “And I couldn’t prove he took it. He denied it, of course. But I know it was him.”
Mike wasn’t sure what to say about that. He dragged on the cigarette, feeling like he might just stay up until five and then sleep later, after chores. He could hear a train whistle in the distance, and could feel goosebumps rising on his arms.
“Jim seems cool,” Mike said. “And your mom, too. Are they strict? Anything I should make sure I definitely don’t do?”
“Like smoking on the roof?” Jay said.
It was such a perfect dry delivery that Mike laughed. Jay shushed him but also smiled like he was proud of himself.
“Yeah, like that,” Mike said, stubbing the cigarette out against a shingle. Jay wasn’t wrong that it was pretty fucking stupid. He’d done it back home mostly to fit in with his friends, like some afterschool special cliche.
“Don’t curse in front of my sisters,” Jay said. “Or my mom, obviously. But Jim doesn’t care about stuff like that.”
“Canadians seem pretty chill in general.”
“I guess. Every year they all go up there to visit his parents and I have to stay here to run the farm.”
“Seriously?” Mike said, recoiling.
“Yes.” Jay’s eyes got bright, as if Mike’s obvious shock pleased him. “I know, right? Isn’t that the most fucked up thing?”
“It really kind of is. Wait, but. When did this start? Surely not when you were a little kid.”
“No, his parents used to come down here to see us. Then I was old enough and they were like, Jay is free labor, let’s go on international trips without him.”
“Damn, dude.”
“Yeah, you can say it. My life sucks. That’s why I’m trying to leave. But they guilt trip me. I do everything around here. Oh, Jay, who will do the corn maze? Who’ll repair the irrigators? Which is not even legal for me to do, by the way. Who’ll drive to Madison to put up flyers? I had to do that last year. Business is bad. I need to get out of here before they pull me down with the sinking ship.”
Jay was agitated after this outburst, breathing a little heavily. The air around him seemed to vibrate with tension. Mike wanted to offer him a back rub, but that would be too forward.
“Man,” he said. “Hope you’ll get to have some fun in Vegas.”
Jay just nodded to himself, his hands balled up in fists over his knees. He looked troubled by the thought of leaving, too.
The conversation went dead after that, but Jay still sat next to Mike on the roof until Mike got up to go inside. Jay followed him in, and almost as soon as Mike had his head back on his pillow he was asleep. He woke up some time later and remembered to take off his jeans, stuffing his bare legs back under the blankets after he had. Jay was a tiny lump under his blankets, turned away from Mike’s side of the room.
At one point Mike woke up again, sure that it was time for chores, but Jay was still fast asleep. Mike had accepted too many lemonade refills at dinner and badly needed to take a leak. When he squinted at the clock on the wall over Jay’s desk he saw it was just a little after three in the morning.
Not willing or able to wait, he slipped his jeans back on and padded quietly across the hall to take a piss. When he was done he self-consciously splashed some water on his hands, as if someone might be listening and judging his hygiene. He dried them on a frilly peach-colored hand towel and startled when he heard a noise that at first seemed to come from out in the hallway. He was glad he’d bothered to put the jeans on, then confused when he heard another footstep-like creak, not from the hallway but overhead.
“What the hell,” Mike muttered to himself, staring up at the bathroom ceiling and listening to what sounded like someone taking the occasional, cautious step in the attic.
He supposed it might be Jim or Kathy doing some kind of hobby up there. Nobody had mentioned attic access to him. The sounds went quiet, as if someone had realized Mike was listening, and he felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
He wasn’t really scared, though. He was even grinning. Could this place be haunted? It was certainly old enough, and if not he was pretty sure he could find some other legit spooky locales to shoot footage for his fledgling ghost hunting show thing. It was kind of a joke, kind of not, like his documentary about the historic building in Oak Forest. He played a kind of exaggerated character version of himself in the movie, and had done some comical historical reenactments with Rich, who could make anything funny.
Jay seemed to be into spooky stuff, too, with his haunted house project ideas and slasher movie posters. Mike crept back across the hall, covered in goosebumps and kind of excited about the following day, to his great surprise. Maybe he could do a little film project with Jay before he left town, if they had time.
He was already beginning to hope Jay wouldn’t actually leave town, because the summer could potentially resemble some kind of fun if he stayed. Mike slipped out of his jeans while keeping an eye on Jay’s bed, to make sure he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of Mike in his boxers. Though maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing, actually.
**