by Jenny Fried
A story for you: two boys get on the train together, and they are not in love. The first boy is very tall, the other is less so. The short boy has bleached his eyebrows with lemon juice, the tall boy does not know yet how to buy clothes that fit him. The short boy still has a secret.
The two boys are standing in the part of the train car that bends, one foot on either side of the shifting floor. They are experienced riders of the train—they do not look at the floor, or shriek, or hold fast to the steel bars along the ceiling. The boy with bleached eyebrows wouldn’t be able to reach them anyway.
The boy with clothes that are too big, and not on purpose, is talking to the other boy about the ocean. He says the word cetaceans, and radial symmetry. The short boy, the boy with ears that he will pierce later, nods softly, considering his secret. There is nothing the boys have not told each other about the ocean. They have spoken before about sea foam, about diatoms and pH and the advantages of jellyfish or bivalves. They have watched the deep sea episode of Planet Earth together very late at night – each can perfectly imitate the voice of David Attenborough, though the short boy’s impression is slightly more perfect. He has, after all, the advantage of a secret.
Did you know, says the tall boy, that lobsters live forever? Did you know very old crabs are filled with blue blood?
Did you know, replies the short boy, that turtles cannot eat plastic? Did you know that a coral polyp could live in space?
The tall boy pulls the short boy in for a hug. It is a beautiful moment. Three passengers on the train decide to clap. The short boy blushes.
We are not in love, he says.
The tall boy lives in a very large house with many cousins. The house is built on a cliff, which is full of cousins too. Sometimes at night the cousins kick the walls of their rooms in the rock. The cousins turn cartwheels and turn the breadbox moldy. They leap into the air and giggle like flying fish. The mothers chase after them.
Franklin! they scream, Gregorina! Isabella!
The short boy has seen this before, even tried, once, to run with the cousins. He could not keep up with them, kept tripping on the salt they threw over their shoulders. The tall boy is technically a cousin but has always stayed in his room at night. He would have a secret too, were it not so obvious that he is afraid of the dark. His bed is built on stilts, six feet, at least, above the floor. He sleeps with a sword tucked under the mattress. It is ornamental, which is perfect for the monsters in the dark.
The two boys have spent most of their time in the tall boy’s room since they were little. They sit on the floor together and roll dice, predict the future of various bony fish. A pair of sixes is rolled, and the coelacanth survives. Four ones and they concur that the New England Cod is doomed. They eat moldy cousin bread and vomit on the floor.
When no other boys are over, the short boy sleeps next to the tall boy in his tall bed. When there are other boys over he sleeps on the floor. They do not talk about this, it is simply understood. The boys, after all, are not in love.
The tall boy has a tall girlfriend who is kind and likes snakes. The short boy has a boy (who is not a boy) who keeps him secret from their parents. The tall girlfriend and her tall boy make out in the penguin exhibit at the New England Aquarium. The boy who is not a boy and their short boyfriend make out in a tunnel they have built out of snow. They make out in the school as well and also in the swamp. The tall boy pays deference to this making out. He has only, after all, made out in front of penguins.
On the train the tall boy doodles on the other boy’s arm. He has brought a fat black Sharpie, in case of emergencies. He is drawing eyebrows on the short boy’s arm, angular and rounded, bushy and thin. The train jerks from side to side, and though the tall boy is very good at riding the train, his sharpie still wobbles. His eyebrows are crooked, they zigzag, and they are full of shaky lines. The short boy will have to hide them from his parents. The short boy gives the tall boy his arm to try again. The tall boy is grateful. He still needs much more practice.
The short boy has very kind parents. It is astounding. His parents are so kind. They feed him eggs when they are needed in the morning. They do not make him learn to drive.
There is a leg on the old, round table in the short boy’s house that the cats all like to scratch. There are fewer cats than the tall boy has cousins, but only by a few. The cats stand in a line patiently to scratch the table leg. It is the short boy’s job to manage the line, to take the cats out to the garden. If the line gets too long, the table leg will break. He is always taking cats by their scruff into the garden. Sometimes, once he has finished, he stands in line at the table leg too. It is not fair, he knows, to the cats who he has taken outside to make room, but it is hard work having a secret. When he is done with his chores, the short boy picks splinters out from beneath his nails.
The short boy is simply trying to keep the peace. The cats and the table do not get along. The tall boy and the boy who is not a boy do not get along. He is always taking someone out into the garden.
I simply think, said the tall boy, sitting in between the nettles, that we don’t talk enough about how the coral reefs are dying.
The short boy sighs. It is time, he knows, for his David Attenborough voice.
It is the danger, he says, of ocean acidification. Some algae, though, remain quite pleased.
And truly, the tall boy nods, I wish the best for them.
I’ll remind you, of course, that you cannot know any of this just by looking at them, though you can know that one boy still has a secret. It is a danger of secrets, that their presence can be sniffed out. The tall boy must know, of course, that something is wrong, but he does not betray himself. It is beautiful to behold. He does not betray himself the same way that he rides the train. There is such confidence in his stance, in the way that he crosses his arms. He has never been more confident about anything, for he knows the short boy so well. He has watched him chase his cousins. They have sat together in the garden. They have sat together on his stilted bed.
You have seen the short boy on the train before, but always by himself. Without the tall boy, he likes to sit by the window. He looks out the window even underground, when there is nothing to see but dark concrete walls. He is on the train before you, and after you as well. You did not realize then how short the short boy is, without the tall boy, or maybe it was just that he was sitting down. You remember, though, the certainty that he was not going anywhere, just there to ride the train.
The short boy clears his throat. He passes his secret from one cheek to the other, flattens it against the roof of his mouth. The tall boy gets a text from the cousins. They are having a party tonight, if he would like to come, no need to bring his own salt. It is very kind of the cousins. His salt is always empty.
The cousins are having a party, says the tall boy. My mother will pay if you would like to come.
The short boy is unsure. The boy who is not a boy despises cousins. They once caught a cousin on their roof and beaned it with a plum. The two of them would make out on their roof, he is sure, if it wasn’t for the cousins.
I’ve been meaning to tell you something, says the short boy.
Three passengers applaud. The short boy does not explain, this time, that they are not in love. The passengers, he knows, will believe what they want to.
The cousins won’t mind, says the tall boy. They will cartwheel just the same.
The short boy runs his fingers over the eyebrows on his arm. He lingers on the thinnest pair. He looks down at the floor of the train. It’s bad form, he knows, to watch your feet, but he watches them anyway.
Remember, he says, what I told you about the swamp?
Yes, the snake skin that you saw, and the mud and making out.
There was more, the short boy says, but I didn’t tell you that.
A frog? A rotten tree? A snapping turtle? The red tide?
No, the short boy shakes his head, about the making out.
The passengers are listening closely. They are leaning their heads and opening their ears. They are passing notes in semaphore and chomping at the bit. It is astonishing how open their ears are, the stretch of all their ear drums. The passengers are starved for juicy gossip. Their mouths are dry, they have been for so long. The boys, they are sure, are in love. The secret, they are sure, is soon to be spilled.
The tall boy does not understand. He has, after all, only made out in the penguin enclosure. Was it wet? he asks, did they have chapped lips?
There was a mattress, says the short boy, a mattress with a stain. I lay on my back and I could see through all the clouds.
Oh! The tall boy shakes his head. He is sure now that he must pay deference. Was it slow? he asks. He is getting excited. Were there fireworks? How beautiful? How deep?
The short boy is speaking slowly. He is looking at his feet. It was ok, he says. I was ready just to kiss. I lay on my back and I closed my eyes and I imagined it was over.
The tall boy slaps him on the back. Was it warm? he asks, was there algae? Do you remember the salinity?
I asked to stop I think, he says. The mattress was so loud.
The passengers applaud. The tall boy does not understand.
I always thought, he says, that it would be me first.
The short boy is quiet. Once when they were younger, he and the tall boy had gone swimming in a creek. He had opened his eyes underwater and seen the dark shell of a snapping turtle, its open mouth below him. He slept next to the tall boy that night, afraid that the floor might open up beneath him, a vast and snapping beak. He remembers falling asleep in the tall boy’s arms, how certain he was that bed was safe.
The tall boy’s phone buzzes again. Tonight they will go to the cousins’ party with all the other boys, and the short boy will fall asleep on the tall boy’s floor. It is decided already, though they have not spoken about it.
Did you know, the tall boy asks, that some cousins are fish?
The short boy looks out the window of the train. You watch, as he does, the walls of concrete outside, how fast they flash by in their steady gray blur. The short boy slowly shakes his head.
No, he says, I did not know that.
Jenny Fried is a trans writer living in North Carolina. Her work has appeared previously in Strange Horizons, the /tƐmz/ Review, Wigleaf, and other magazines. Find her online at https://jennnnnyyyyyy.github.io/.