To Bring Him Home and Other Tales

Chapter 1: The Boys-1

Chapter 1: The BoysMonday, October 19, Fletcher

“Narnia?”

“Narnia,” Fletcher Constantine Smyth said, feeling embarrassed that here he was talking with this beautiful boy, who he had been dying to talk to since August, and what was he talking about? Kids’ books. And he was angry at himself for being embarrassed. “Yes, The Chronicles of Narnia are one of my all-time favorites. I was crazy about them from when I was eight—when my father died—until I was eleven, when my mother remarried. My dad was reading them to me right before he died. I even wrote C.S. Lewis a fan letter.” After gently pointing out Lewis had died years ago, in 1963, his mother had assured him that burning the letter would guarantee the ashes getting to heaven. “I guess I’m still crazy about them; I read them over and over—well, all but The Last Battle, when Narnia comes to an end, and almost everybody goes to heaven. I started Tolkien then, another one of my all-time favorites. I can recite passages from both—I mean, I still reread them every year.”

Sam MacTorain, the beautiful boy, sat sprawled in an overstuffed armchair in the third-floor library study nook where they had agreed to meet. Fletcher studied him as he scribbled Fletcher’s answer to what are your favorite books, one question from the list of questions their English 101 class had come up with for the portrait interview assignment. The beautiful boy was taller than Fletcher, maybe six inches taller, clocking at six feet. He seemed even taller, as he was long-legged and lanky. The last of the mid-October light streamed in a tall window, cutting pale white rectangles on the tile floor. Sam glowed—briefly, so very briefly—a trick of the light, of the shadows? The light shifted, faded, a cloud passed. Fletcher blinked. Sam looked like any other eighteen-year-old boy, albeit beautiful. But the lights—just like in his dreams.

“All right. Recite,” Sam said, sitting up and leaning closer.

Fletcher quickly finger-combed his bright-red hair and cleared his throat. With his eyes closed, he recited a short passage from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

“Tolkien?”

Hating that he was blushing, Fletcher recited a paragraph from The Fellowship of the Ring: what Frodo saw from the top of Cerin Amroth, as he looked out into Lothlórien.

Sam whistled and clapped. “I’m impressed, Fletcher. Really.”

Fletcher stared at Sam, trying to decide if the beautiful boy was serious or was making fun of him. He shrugged. Better to be positive, and how would he ever know, anyway? “I used to dream of Narnia and Middle-earth,” Fletcher said, feeling very shy. He almost told Sam that, on rare occasion, he had prescient dreams, too, of real people before he met them, like the man on the other side of the fence of the house where Fletcher used to live in Durham. The man’s face, his hands: all luminous. The man had moved next door a few months later. The week before classes started at UNC Greensboro, back in August, Fletcher had dreamed again, this time of a boy with dark, dark eyes, light bronze skin, and dark-golden hair. His face had been glowing.

* * * *

Fletcher hadn’t paid much attention the first day of English 101 when Dr. Crawford called roll, until she got to the M’s and called out Samuel MacTorain. MacTorain, like the rain, call me Sam, had been the answer. Then, Grimsley High School, here in Greensboro. At the sound of his voice, a sound edged with light, Fletcher had quickly turned and stared. There was the boy in his dreams, and he was glowing, just like in his dreams. No, that was impossible. Fletcher shook his head and turned away, but not before the two boys had made eye contact, and not before Fletcher’s heart had turned over. He knew if he kept staring that not only would he attract way too much attention, and miss his name being called, but he would fall into the deep dark well of those eyes and not even care. He made himself stare at Dr. Crawford’s name on the whiteboard, scrawled right over English 101, Section 12, just in case someone happened to be in the wrong class. Everyone had laughed when a few minutes later a sheepish blond-haired boy had snuck from the back row and out the door, with Dr. Crawford assuring the boy it happened all the time, really. Fletcher decided he was going to like this tall woman with a thick dirty blond mane of hair, which made it all the more embarrassing that he could barely say here when she got to the S’s., Hillside High School, in Durham, and yes, Smyth is pronounced the same as Smith.

Fletcher told no one what he thought he had seen or what he had dreamed. The last time he had—about the next-door neighbor glowing—the neighbor and his entire family had disappeared. Another neighbor had called 911 when she saw the open front door and had walked in and found the house not just empty, but empty as if they had been taken between one moment and the next. An almost-full cup of coffee, a newspaper and reading glasses marked the man’s place at the table. A turned-on TV, a shower still running, fresh Fancy Feast seafood dinner in the matching cat food and water bowls, another cup, a muffin for the wife beside her husband’s place, a bowl filled with granola and milk and raisins, a pot of coffee in the Mr. Coffee machine.

Tons of police had crawled all over the house, inside and out, no clues, nothing. They had asked Fletcher, Paul, and his mother endless questions: what they had seen or heard and when? Fletcher had been very disappointed when Paul had refused to let him or his mother speak to any of the reporters from the local TV stations, Channels 5, 11, and 50. The local public radio reporter, from WUNC 91.5 FM, really wanted to do a news story on yet more North Carolina weirdness. Paul had turned them all down. Quoting This Haunted Land didn’t help.

* * * *

“Fletcher? Earth to Fletcher, come in?”

“Oh, sorry, I zoned out. Next question.”

“Your family. Describe them.”

“Paul—my stepfather—watches me,” Fletcher said, not looking up, and not sure why he had said such a thing to a boy he had only just met, no matter how beautiful he was, no matter how much Fletcher was sure he had seen him glowing, more than once, a pale rose-gold light diffused under his light bronze skin. Which was, of course, impossible. Maybe this was his desire talking. He so wanted to touch this boy, kiss him, and hug him. Now, he wanted to run away before it was too late—too late for what, he wasn’t sure. Fletcher stared down at his English 101 notebook open on his lap. Fletcher had mentally cringed while Dr. Crawford was explaining the particulars of the assignment, which involved interviewing an almost-total stranger, observing the stranger’s habitat, so to speak, and then introducing the stranger to the class, using a personal artifact as a prompt.

But this was Sam, the beautiful boy. The boy he had wanted to talk to since August, the boy in his dreams. When Dr. Crawford had announced the pairings for the assignment, Fletcher had almost walked up to her after class to beg her to change him, but he didn’t. I can’t be scared forever, I can’t. And here he was.

“Watches you? That sounds creepy,” Sam said, as he wrote in his notebook.

“Yeah, I guess.” Fletcher shrugged. “He’s been watching me since he married my mother, when I was eleven. That’s how it feels to me, anyway.” Fletcher looked up, feeling again as if something had pulled his head up to stare at Sam. Why was he telling this boy anything—no matter what the damn assignment was? He swallowed what he had been about to say next: his mother had disappeared, too. She had become a ghost when she remarried, faint, vague, grey, and fading, fading. He missed her.

“What does your stepfather do?”

Fletcher hesitated, feeling even more fearful and torn. He had never really talked to anyone about his parents, alive, dead, or step—especially step—to anybody. Other kids, and the occasional teacher, had asked, and his replies had been as short as possible. “A management consultant. He goes around telling companies how to be more efficient. Right now, he and my mother are in Eastern Europe, the Czech Republic. And he has secrets.” Why did I say that? My God, his eyes, his skin. Fletcher’s heart turned over again. As if a switch had been flicked on and off, the rosy-golden light had reappeared, this time outlining Sam’s ears, burnishing his fingers. Bright golden fires appeared in Sam’s dark, dark brown eyes. Fletcher rubbed his eyes, looked away, looked back. Perfectly normal. No fires, no lights.

I must be going crazy.

“Secrets? What do you mean?” Sam asked as if nothing had happened, his head c****d to one side.

“Locked rooms. In the house here, and back in Durham, he had the attic made into an office and the door is always locked. What’s the next question?”

“About your mom—no, and I should probably have asked this first. Where do you live, where’s home? You don’t live on campus, right?”

“Here, in Greensboro. We moved here back in June. Corner of Edgar Alley and Carr Street, off Tate. Three blocks from UNC Greensboro. There’s not much to say about my mother anymore.” Not much, he thought, except how much he missed her and how much that hurt.

Sam looked up again, his face, his smile bright. Literally bright, then the sudden flash was gone. “Carr Street? We’re neighbors: I live over on McGee. That is so cool.”

Fletcher felt his face get hot and red. He had so wanted this to happen: to be attracted to someone who was attracted to him (unlike all those boys in high school he could only look at, and sigh over)—and now, when it seemed to be happening, he wanted to run away like a frightened deer.

“Your mother—what does she do?” Sam asked after too long a pause.

“She helps my stepfather mostly. Looks after the house.” Fletcher made himself sit still. He made himself answer the rest of the questions—pets, travel, hobbies, life themes—and he made himself ask the same questions of Sam. His parents traveled for work, too, school consultants, no, they didn’t watch him, they were out of town, too. They were in Scotland. They went to Scotland all the time.

“Good stuff. That was fun,” Sam said, closing his notebook. “Habitat observation next, huh? My habitat first? Tomorrow? We can do pizza?”

Fletcher gulped. “Sure. Which house on McGee? What time?” I can’t be scared forever, he told himself again. Ican’tIcan’tIcan’t.

“Go down Edgar Alley, turn on McGee Street, third house on the right. Six? Call me if you’re going to be late,” Sam said, looking down at his notes. “Here’s our phone number—it’s the landline. I don’t have a cell phone.”

“You’re kidding,” Fletcher said. “I don’t have a cell phone, either.”

Sam laughed. “We must be the only two eighteen-year-olds in the country who don’t have cell phones. I don’t even have a laptop. I use the labs. I have to take a break every hour I’m there and wear latex gloves. Allergic to some metal in them. C’mon, I’ll walk you out.”

“My stepfather said I could have a cell phone when I could pay for it myself. I had a job this summer at the public library, but I didn’t make enough. I do have a second-hand laptop. It’s ancient. Let’s take the stairs down.”

Sam sighed. “I borrowed one from a guy I knew in high school. I did something wrong. His laptop kind of melted. My parents were furious. Well, I’m this way,” and he pointed into the tunnel to the Elliott Center.

“I’ll be there at six. See you tomorrow,” Fletcher said quickly and waved as he headed out the front door. Sam was the first person he had told about not having a cell phone who hadn’t laughed. Maybe that was why Dr. Crawford had put them together. She had asked everyone to turn in contact cards back in August. He wished they had kept talking about—anything, the news—New Jersey had become the fourteenth state to recognize same-s*x marriage, or the school shooting in Nevada, utopia. Tomorrow, Fletcher thought, I’ll be ready with a list of topics. He shook his head as he walked home. He had never heard of metal allergies, but that sounded really weird.