Page 11 of College Town

And the very best thing about Tommy – well, one of the best – was that when he wasn’t politely yes ma’aming and no siring the adults, once he got past his initial shyness, he was an absoluteterrorof a kid, and Lawsonlovedit.

He elbowed Lawson hard, right in the ribs, so that Lawson squeaked. “Dude, shut up.” His brows pinched together, and Lawson could see where he’d have forehead lines when he got older from scowling. “I got plenty of nutrients. Do I look malnourished to you?” He lifted both arms,look at me, and the sleeves of his baggy sweater slipped down to his elbows, wrists and forearms spindly as the slender legs of a newborn fawn.

“Well,” Lawson said seriously, straightening his glasses. “Yes.”

Tommy huffed in outrage, and shoved Lawson so hard he nearly fell off the bench. Then he swiped a handful of Cheetos for good measure.

Dana snorted across from them. “Oh my God, Tommy, where have you been all his life?”

Lawson whipped his head around to shoot her adon’t you darelook. She’d never outed him to anyone, and he didn’t think she’d start now; no, her smile was warm and amused, and she added, “He’s always needed someone to knock some sense into him, and I can’t hit hard enough.”

“Um,” Noah said, where he stood awkwardly at the end of the table. “Tommy, are these your friends?”

The same girls who swooned over Mark Walton would go on to swoon twice as hard for Noah Cattaneo, and Lawson could see why from day one. He was head and shoulders taller than his brother, and broader in every dimension, with the sort of facial symmetry sought after in boy band members. His hair was a shiny chestnut, like Tommy’s, but he wore it closer cropped, nearly buzzed, and he looked like the sort of kid that high school coaches were already scouting for varsity football teams. All the hallmarks of a kid who could have swaggered across campus, sneering at anyone he deemed a loser, stuffing smaller kids in lockers and cracking nasty jokes at others’ expense.

But he had the same liquid brown eyes as Tommy, and his smile was nervous and uncertain and saidplease like me, and Lawson found that he was able to, quite easily.

“Dana’s my friend,” Tommy said, deadpan. “Lawson is the court jester I tolerate.”

Lawson cracked out a startled laugh, chest swelling with warmth and light. Because though it was an insult, Tommy’s gaze cut over, and the corners of his mouth twitched upward, and it felt more like a secret than cruelty.

Dana pulled out the empty chair to her left and patted the seat. “You can come sit by me, Noah.”

He did, and when he murmured athanks, his cheeks turned pink.

~*~

It took two whole weeks for the Cattaneo twins’ story to come out: hinted at in fits and starts by Noah, while he went pale and rubbed at the back of his neck, and finally revealed in full, in a very flat voice accompanied by an uncomfortable little shrug by Tommy when Lawson tried to invite him to Stardust Roller Rink for Eastman Middle Night.

“Everyone goes, not just me and Dana. We take our own rollerblades, but you can rent skates for free on Middle Night if you’re not afraid of catching gangrene and losing both feet.”

“What? Gangrene, that’s not how…” Tommy sighed and shook his head, and glanced away down the sidewalk as they walked toward the buses. “Whatever. I’ll…” The shrug. “I don’t know if my mom will let us come. She’s been…” A fidget of his backpack strap.

Lawson was trying to watch him only in his periphery, trying not to stare, but he turned his head when he caught the shift in his voice. The way he went airless, and uncertain; that clench of pain low in his throat. “What?” he prompted, as gently as he knew how.

The shrug came again, and Tommy took a deep breath that he let out in a rush. After, as if by rote, without any emotion, he said, “You know how we moved here from New York? Well, the reason was because my dad died, and my mom got scared, and moved us all the way out here, and now she’s really overprotective of us, and wants us to come home right after school. And.” He stalled out, and chewed at his lip.

Tommy’s hand swung along at his side, small and curled-tight and lonely-looking.

Lawson said, “Hey, man, that’s okay. Even if you can’t make it, I still wanted to invite you.” When Tommy glanced over – brows lowered, skittish – he offered his best smile, and after a beat, Tommy’s brow smoothed, and he returned it, crookedly.

Later that night, Lawson tried and failed to prove that he could skate backward, landed hard on his butt on the polished wood of the roller rink, and felt his face go up in flames. Mark and his friends laughed and whooped as they flew past, and Dana shot them the bird before she offered Lawson a hand.

When he was upright again, he turned, face still hot with shame – and then hot for another reason, when he saw a familiar pair of figures at the carpeted bench that ran the length of the rink. One tall, one short, both with brown hair gleaming green beneath the neon lights. Both were in the process of tugging on pairs of shitty rented skates, but Tommy paused, and caught his gaze, and grinned, still a little crooked, but wider this time, eyes big and black in the dimness of the room.

“Oh,” Lawson murmured, before he could catch himself. “They came.”

Dana dug her knuckles into his spine. “Don’t just stand here. Go tell him hi.”

He did.

~*~

The Cattaneo twins attended each monthly Middle Night at Stardust after that.

As far as destinations went, it was a truly horrible one. Save the glass-smooth wood of the rink itself, everything was covered in black carpet patterned with glow-in-the-dark squiggles that reminded Lawson of the opening sequence ofSaved by the Bell. There was a snack bar that served roller hot dogs, soft pretzels that weren’t very soft, and nachos slathered in fluorescent orange cheese. On the far side of the bar was the arcade, where you could play air hockey, skee ball, Ms. Pac-Man, or Mortal Kombat. There was a dining area, and a ball pit for little kids; a Whack-a-Mole whose moles you couldn’t whack back into their holes, not even when you broke the padded hammer – Lawson learned that the hard way and got bitched out by the teenager running the snack bar for the night. The whole place reeked of Velveeta and kid sweat. Lawson had caught rotavirus theretwiceover the years.

He loved it.

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