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  So male. So…other. The vision made him reel.

  Sebastian’s eyes adored the soft hollow at the base of Trask’s throat. They reverenced the raw strength of his chest muscles, the athlete’s flatness and ridges of his abdominal muscles.

  Scarcely breathing, Sebastian had dared to look further. Between the powerful thighs, Trask’s heavy cock was half-hard. Feeling the beginning of an answering response in himself, Sebastian looked away. But as he did, he caught Trask’s eye. Trask stared back, a half-smile touching his lips. He reached down with his hand and lightly caressed his half-erect penis. The gesture was at once defiant and curiously intimate. Sebastian had stared, slack jawed. Then, Trask reached up and turned off the shower. He reached for his towel and secured it around his waist as he swaggered out of the shower room without looking back. Sebastian had felt the moist air move against his bare legs as Trask swept past him.

  He’d dreamed of the naked giant that night, unformed, submissive dreams of self-abasement and receptive lust, heat and wetness. He’d dreamed of Trask’s hardness, his otherness. But there had been nothing further between Trask and Sebastian, which was right and proper given their relative positions in the school’s constellation. Trask never looked at Sebastian again, and never spoke to him.

  But today, oh today, he’d looked.

  After dinner, there were chores at Williams. The Reverend Dr. Power was a firm believer in the leveling power of manual labor. At the beginning of every school year, each boy was assigned to a duty detail which, among several crews of ten boys each, was responsible for the maintenance of the school property, inside and out. Each crew was supervised by a senior. Sebastian was on the clean-up crew, supervised by Halliday. His job was mopping the front hallway.

  Lost in his thoughts of Trask, dreamily mopping the floor, Sebastian missed Halliday’s approach. He felt a slap to the back of his head sharp enough to bring tears to his eyes. “Wake up, asshole!” Halliday snarled in passing. “Quit slacking! I don’t want to see any streaks on the floor, Sebastian. If there are, you can expect double-duty next week. With me. And we’re doing outside crew. You don’t wanna do outside crew with me, Sebastian. You’ll wish your mother had never had you.”

  Squeezing his eyes tightly, Sebastian mopped the hallway with renewed vigor, re-mopping when boys, deliberately or not, tracked mud across the wet surface. He passed the hour this way as the pain in his head subsided into a dull throbbing. There would be a bump there tomorrow. Halliday didn’t put in another appearance, which Sebastian appreciated too much to find odd.

  Towards the end of the hour, he heard the sound of workboots approaching behind him. He sighed, thinking only of mud on the clean floor, and wondered whether or not he was going to pass Halliday’s inspection before the bell rang for study hall.

  The footsteps stopped. His stomach clenched, his hands gripped the handle of the mop. Turning, he saw that it was Trask, not Halliday, who stood before him, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans. Instead of relief, he felt the supplicant dread of a pilgrim on the holiest soil.

  “Sebastian,” said Trask warmly and softly, as though jocularity were the usual currency of their relationship. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine…” Sebastian stammered. The sound of Trask’s voice speaking his name as though he knew who Sebastian actually was made him dizzy. He still couldn’t bring himself to pronounce Trask’s name.

  The older boy suddenly grinned at him, and Sebastian’s world went white at the edges. Trask reached out his arm and touched Sebastian lightly on the shoulder. The pain of Halliday’s slap vanished from memory. He felt the heat on his shoulder even after Trask moved his hand away.

  “I’ve got a problem I think you might be able to help me with,” Trask purred.

  Anything! Anything! Aloud, he said, “Okay.”

  “I saw you on the field this afternoon.” Trask’s smile widened, and Sebastian felt he might fall into it. “Get some interesting shots?”

  “Yeah…I mean, yes I did,” Sebastian squealed.

  “Get any good ones of me?” Trask smiled languidly.

  Sebastian gaped, and said, “Yeah! I mean…”

  “I know,” Trask said, smiling broadly. “What you meant to say was, ‘Yes, Trask, I did. You’re my hero.’ Right? Am I right?” This time Trask laughed, full and warm and golden.

  Sebastian felt a horrible little giggle welling up in his chest, but before it could erupt and humiliate him one last, terrible time, Trask cut him off.

  “I heard you were handy with cameras and photography and stuff,” Trask continued. “I’m editing the yearbook this year, and I need someone to help in the darkroom. You up to it, buddy?”

  Buddy.

  If Trask had mistaken him for someone else, Sebastian was not going to give himself away. At the very least, his doubts about the existence of God had, by now, completely disappeared. “Yes sir!” squeaked Sebastian. Trask laughed softly.

  “Good man! And by the way, Sebastian? Call me Trask, not ‘Sir’. Better yet,” he said with a lazy smile, “call me Joe. But only when we’re alone. You know how it is.”

  Sebastian felt an odd pressure in his chest, not comfortable but not unpleasant. He knew how it was all right, but for the first time, it didn’t matter. If this miracle friendship was to be kept a secret to protect Trask’s white light from being sullied, he would keep the secret. He would do anything. “Okay…Joe,” Sebastian breathed.

  “Darkroom? After study hall tonight? I’ll get you a pass from the Duty Master.”

  Trask smiled again, and turned on his heel. Sebastian watched him walk away down the hall. Trask never looked back.

  Sebastian wasn’t aware of Olivier coming up behind him until the mop was snatched from his hand.

  “Olivier, for Christ’s sake,” Sebastian snapped. The last thing he wanted was the intruding presence of the school’s fatboy. Olivier placed one hand on his hip, and banged the mop handle against the wall with his other hand. He was furious. “It’s my night off!” hissed Olivier, face the color of summer tomatoes. “I’ve been told to finish your job for you. I have to mop the fucking floor. Your job Sebastian, you fucking slacker!”

  “What?”

  “Halliday, dickhead,” Olivier whined. “I don’t know whose butt you’ve been kissing, but it worked. Way to treat a friend, like I don’t have anything to do myself?”

  We’re not friends, Olivier. We’re just two misfits stuck in the same place. If one of us was cool, he wouldn’t piss on the other if he was on fire. You know it, I know it. And I don’t need any “friends” like you. Not anymore.

  But Sebastian didn’t say any of this out loud.

  Study hall was endless. Each tick of the wall clock was like a drop of water on his forehead. He tried to read his Dickens, but the text kept dissolving, replaced by a pastiche of images: Trask, running. Trask, laughing, his arm flung around Sebastian’s shoulders, both of them suntanned and equal. Trask, scoring a goal in soccer, saluting him like a knight to his lady.

  Miracles, he thought, and sighed louder than he intended, attracting the disapproving frown of Mr. Gladd, the mathematics teacher, who had pulled study hall duty.

  “For God’s sake, Sebastian,” he shrilled. “Stop daydreaming and get to work. Your grades in my class, for one, are appalling. Study hall is not for sighing like some lovestruck Victorian heroine.”

  Sebastian reddened and opened his math text. The study hall tittered. Mr. Gladd smiled primly, knowing that he had picked on a favorite school target and had therefore curried temporary favor for himself with the others. There would be no further trouble from anyone tonight. He sipped his weak tea and smoothed a hand over his sparse gray hair, content that discipline reigned.

  But for Sebastian, the study hall creaked interminably forward, and when his enemy the clock finally granted him clemency from his sentence, his excitement was fever-pitched. As the boys gathered up their books, Mr. Gladd pounded his desk with the wooden paddle he kept with
him always. “Boys!” he shrieked. “Silence! I have two announcements.” The noise died to whispers.

  “Schimkus and Doolan, you are to report to Dr. Power’s office immediately after study hall, to deal with incomplete homework assignments and disciplinary action.

  “Mr. Sebastian,” he continued crisply, turning his haddock’s eyes on Sebastian, “is to report to the darkroom.” He clapped his hands irritably. “Please pick up your hall passes immediately.”

  He could barely suppress a smile at Mr. Gladd’s prissy, congealed grimace when he handed him the pass, co-signed by J. Trask, Jr. Sebastian thought he saw something glitter in Mr. Gladd’s eyes as he took the pass, but he would not realize until later that it had been jealously.

  The darkroom was dimly lit, the red lamp in the corner casting the unfamiliar bottles and canisters into a weird twilight of garnet-red and blue shadows. Sebastian inhaled the pungent chemical smell as he surveyed the walls. They were papered with photographs taken by the photo club, some even taken by Sebastian himself, mostly of boys playing sports. Here and there were images of churches, the school’s sled dogs, boys studying. Photographs littered the floor, some of them cut off at the neck, faces among the debris, smiling tightly.

  Sebastian turned when the door opened slowly behind him. Trask’s face was wreathed in shadows, his powerful body backlit by the naked bulb in the hallway. Gods don’t need faces, Sebastian thought giddily as he steadied himself against a table. He could fill in the face from memory.

  The door closed. Sebastian felt a rush of heat rise to his cheeks, and he was grateful for the soothing red darkness. Trask’s voice was low, and there was an unfamiliar tightness to it.

  “Hey,” he muttered. “Sebastian…”

  Sebastian’s heart began to pound, and he heard the answering blood thunder in his ears. He looked towards the door and realized that Trask had locked it. Trask saw him look, and smiled.

  “You can ruin film if someone opens the door when you’re developing,” Trask said reasonably, advancing a step towards Sebastian. The locked door was like a caress to Sebastian, secure and comforting. He felt his erection growing in his dark blue jeans, pressing against the rough fabric of the denim. Each breath seemed individually negotiated. The pungent, chemical-laced air pressed against his hot face, thick and heavy.

  “So,” Sebastian stuttered. “What are…”

  Trask placed both hands on the boy’s shoulders. Oh yes, thought Sebastian, hands rough from football, from farm work.

  “I saw you watching me, Sebastian,” whispered Trask. “I know what you are. I know what you want. But you have to say it to me. Say it.”

  How can I say it? I don’t know what to say!

  “Say it, Sebastian, right now. Say it, or I’ll leave!”

  “I don’t know what I am!” cried Sebastian. “What do you mean? What do you want me to say?”

  “Fuck you, Sebastian,” Trask said. He removed his hands from the boy’s shoulders, and Sebastian felt cold air rush to the spot where Trask’s hands had been. “Go to bed.”

  “Please,” Sebastian whispered, reaching out. “I…want you.” Sebastian saw Trask smile then, saw all of his beautiful teeth at once. Trask reached over with his jock’s ease, and flicked the light off, plunging the room into complete darkness except for the red safe-light.

  He heard the rustle of cloth on skin. His wrist was grasped tightly and guided below Trask’s waist. Trask’s cock was hot and hard and smooth. Sebastian felt Trask’s fingers wrap themselves tightly in his hair, forcing him to his knees among the snippets of discarded photographs, imprisoned memories of afternoons he could no longer see in the red darkness.

  He cried for two hours, tears of shame, anger, and violation. Afterwards, he had lain in bed, unable to sleep. The night’s images replayed in his brain like a flickering horror film. The pain had been excruciating, and any pleasure that had been taken had been taken by Trask. More bewildering still were the words Trask whispered hoarsely in his ear: awful, foul words, the words he had heard flung at him since he arrived at Williams. But, confused as they were in his mind with the desire which scalded him with its ferocity, the words took on a cunning new meaning.

  “Is that what I am?” he whispered into his pillow. “Is it?” When Trask had climaxed, he shoved Sebastian away from him and began to sob harshly, muffling the sound with his hands. Sebastian, sprawled on the floor, his pants around his ankles, reached out for Trask.

  In spite of the burning pain that seemed, when he moved, to cut him in half, the thought of Trask suffering was more than he could stand.

  On his knees, still supplicant, he murmured the only words that came to mind.

  “It’s okay. It’s okay.” He spoke the way he would have spoken to a frightened dog, or a child who had lost his mother. Mutely, he held out his hands, reaching.

  And then Trask hit him in the face.

  “Don’t you fucking tell me that it’s okay, you little faggot!” Trask sobbed furiously. His eyes, swollen and streaming, flickered to the locked door. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You’re gonna tell me that it’s okay? You? You’re fucking nothing! Do you know who I am?”

  “Trask…” whispered Sebastian. He felt the fire of each finger across his cheek. He felt the imprint of Trask’s heavy football ring above his jawline. Tears stung his in his eyes, and he tasted copper in his mouth.

  “Fucking right! I’m Joe Trask! Fucking right! You made me do this, you little cocksucker! Fucking little asshole. Loser! You’re nothing! I hate you! I hate you for making me do this!” He grabbed the front of Sebastian’s shirt and slammed him against the counter. “Get the fuck out of here you little faggot,” Trask rasped. “And if you tell anybody about this, so help me Christ, I’ll kill you!”

  His fury seemed barely under control, and for the first time ever, Sebastian feared for his life.

  Breathing in shallow hitches, he pulled up his dark blue jeans and fled the room, fled the sight of his brilliant golden soccer-god, huddled in a corner, the handsome and perfect tear-streaked face puffy and red, like a baby monster freshly born and covered with slime.

  The next day, there was a little more green on the ground, and a warm wind blew white clouds from the west. The students at Williams Academy spent as much time as possible outdoors, and there was a barely-contained euphoria in the classroom. Mr. Gladd lost control of his grade eleven calculus class, paddling Schimkus and Doolan afterwards for what he called disruption. He could have paddled the sunlight instead, or looked for a culprit in the crystal blue of the sky, or the white of the clouds. After classes, there were the compulsory sports until dinner. Sebastian had gone to the nurse, who was also the Headmaster’s wife, and asked for a note to be excused from soccer. He wasn’t feeling well, he said. He felt woozy.

  She assessed him coldly, her lemon-sucking mouth puckering with distaste.

  These nancy-boys were an embarrassment to Williams, always trying to get out of the character-building athletics her husband’s school strove so hard to provide. She, for one, saw no reason to make it easier for them to shirk.

  “I think you’re fine, Sebastian,” she snapped. “What you need is a little fresh air and sunlight.”

  Sebastian changed into his soccer gear and trudged out to Oxford Field. Walking was painful. The blood had stopped, but it still hurt. He didn’t tell Mrs. Power. His camera dangled from its vinyl strap, banging painfully against his thigh. Sebastian heard the pounding of cleats as Trask and Halliday came running up behind him. He flinched as Trask snaked out an arm. But Trask didn’t hit him. He slowed to a jog, and clapped his arm around Sebastian’s shoulders. Halliday looked, first at Sebastian, then at Trask, horrified. “Trask! Are you fucking nuts? What are you doing?”

  “Relax, Red,” he said, punching Halliday manfully in the arm. “This is my man Sebastian.”

  “Your what?”

  They were rounding the quad, and Oxford Field rolled open before them like the battlefields of Troy
. Trask smiled down at Sebastian, his eyes shining like sapphires in the rosy bronze of his warrior-prince’s face.

  Trask tightened his grip on Sebastian, beaming heartily. No one saw the fingers dig brutally into Sebastian’s arm, squeeze once, painfully, then release.

  Trask jogged onto the field to a raucous cheer from his team. Sebastian rubbed his arm to take the sting away, and went to his accustomed spot by the chapel to wait. He wouldn’t be called to play today, he knew it. Things would change for him at Williams. The snickering would stop, at least to his face. The catcalls would be for others now, not for Trask’s anointed. No one would risk the divine wrath of the far table, and Sebastian was safe now in its shadow. He felt a flicker of pity for Olivier, the fatboy. And he felt envy.

  A bargain had been struck. The protection of Trask in exchange for his silence. It would be honored by both of them, he knew. Reflexively, he reached for his Nikon, but instead of raising it to his eye, he aimed it at Trask as though it were a gun. The motor-drive sang its sharp report. A few heads turned, but not Trask’s. He watched Trask rocket across the field in a blaze of alabaster and dandelion, sweat flying like a sun shower. Dazzle, dazzle.

  Sebastian shivered in the dying dirty-gold light of the afternoon and thought about the death of gods. Felt a cold like dark winter. Prayed he would be warm before summer.

  Pleasingly

  Matthew Rettenmund

  I never let myself go, I just went.

  Actually, if you ask me, I didn’t really go very far, just spread out a little. I’m not “obese” or “fat” or anything, just soft around the middle, blurred around the edges. I’m… Rubenesque.