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  ****

  Ancel

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come over for a little while?” Cindy begged. “My parents are out of town with my little sister. It’ll just be us.”

  Any other night, I would’ve gone with her. Hell, I had gone with her, or girls who were just like Cindy— pretty, shallow, desperate for attention. Going home with girls was nothing new to me. They were warm and soft and would silence the screaming voice of my dad in my head— at least for a few hours.

  But tonight didn’t feel right. Maybe I was just exhausted from the long hours I’d been working at the mechanic’s in town. Maybe it was the look in Rust’s eyes.

  “Not tonight, Cindy,” I replied. I leaned against her open car door as she sat in the driver’s seat.

  “Next time?”

  “Next time.” Although, I wasn’t sure that was a promise I was going to keep.

  I closed her car door and waved her off, watching as her expensive sports car turned the corner down the street. With the zipper on my hoodie pulled all the way up to my throat, I shoved my hands in my pockets and headed back home. Normally I’d walk home through the residential areas of the town— less streetlights, more privacy. But something about tonight drew me back down the main street. Right past the ice cream shop.

  Following the flickering street lights, I made my way down the concrete path along the shops. All were closed now, their signs flipped over and their lights all off.

  No one was around. But, far in the distance, I heard sounds— voices. Yelling.

  I picked up my pace.

  After rounding the corner, I paused. There in the distance were Gary, Kevin, and Justin, all standing together outside the ice cream shop. They were laughing and yelling something I couldn’t hear.

  I walked closer.

  Under one of the street lights, shining down gently on his vibrant, fiery hair, was Rust. Circled around him were my friends.

  “Fag!” Kevin yelled at him. The other two boys laughed.

  That word. One simple, disgusting word and my entire body temperature dropped to that of ice. I stopped walking, shielded myself so I was out of their line of sight. I hid between two of the buildings, watching them still, but covered in shadows.

  Fag.

  I heard my dad’s voice in my head.

  Gary walked up to Rust and shoved him. Rust stumbled back a few steps, then tried to turn away. Kevin was there next, pushing him back toward the other two boys.

  I started to move toward them, but the voices in my head were bellowing.

  Don’t. Stay hidden. They’ll know.

  My dad’s voice was louder than ever.

  Thunder sounded overhead, and I looked up into the sky. The clouds had turned black in what seemed like the blink of an eye. Heavy, deeply colored storm clouds swirled overhead, while brutal winds began to pick up the dead leaves hidden in the nooks of the buildings and make them dance.

  Justin shoved Rust hard, enough force behind it to make him stumble and fall onto the gravel road. They all laughed. Rust looked up at them under the dim streetlight, and I could see small, red scratches on his face from where his pale skin connected with the dirt and rocks. His dark-chocolate eyes shone like freshly blown glass, his long eyelashes damp from wetness.

  Lightning struck something far in the distance. But I didn’t flinch. I wasn’t looking anywhere but at Rust. He stood up slowly, picking up his bag and tossing it over his shoulder. The other three boys continued to laugh and jeer at him. Rust turned and began walking away, but not before I saw a flicker of something in his eyes, a hint of something I was so deeply familiar with— hurt.

  Thunder boomed.

  I pulled my hood up over my head and slipped out from the shadows.

  By the time I reached them, Rust was long gone into the distance. That was good. Someone like him shouldn’t be here for this. What I was going to do tainted people. It drew out blood in more ways than one. It bled out. And Rust had been hurt enough for one night.

  They’d taken the purity and naivety from Rust’s eyes and left him with nothing more than my dad had left me. They’d stripped him of his hope, of the light he carried around. In doing that, even for a second, they’d made my mind up for me.

  I came up behind Kevin, putting my hand on his shoulder. When I pulled back and spun him around, the look on his face swiftly changed from confusion to fright. My fist connected with his jaw, and within a few seconds, he was on the ground. Gary came up next to me, shouting. He took a swing at me. I leaned away, almost thankful for those times spent in a juvenile detention center. I took a step backward, then leaned forward and put my weight into the punch that connected with the side of his face. Gary staggered backward, tripped over Kevin, and then fell. Justin stood off to the side with his hands held up in front of his face.

  Lowering my fists, I looked down at the two boys on the ground.

  I had just wanted them to stop. I wanted to tell them that robbing Rust of that look in his eyes was worse than any crime I’d ever been sent away for, worse than anything their minds could conjure up to do to another person.

  Rust was pure. Rust was good.

  But I knew those words would never slip past my lips.

  Shoving my hands back into my pockets, I walked away. I could hear them swearing at me and scrambling off the ground even as I disappeared into the distance. I followed along the same path that Rust had used, knowing it would take me to the field between our houses.

  Above my head the sky was melting into dark, looming bursts of white, black, and blue. Thunder sounded every few steps I took and the lightning felt like it was aimed at my head. When the first few droplets of rain fell, I was grateful to have my hood still pulled up. When the sky began to pour big, cold droplets of water, I wasn’t feeling as grateful.

  By the time I made it to the field in between Rust’s house and mine, I was in a full sprint. The sky was falling, and all the tears from heaven were falling with it. The crackling of the storm was just warming up as booms of thunder and lightning filled the sky.

  I was about to turn toward my house and run along the line of fences, but something caught my eye. Stopping, I looked toward the middle of the field.

  His eyes were closed, his chin tipped up toward the sky. Outstretched arms reaching for the clouds had tiny streams of water running down his skin. The pale-green fabric of his shirt was drenched, pressed up against his thin body. I could see by the way his raised arms lifted his shirt that the freckles on his face were covering his stomach as well.

  And he was spinning, smiling, dancing in the rain like the storm clouds were reaching out their long fingers and running them through his hair.

  Another crackle of thunder brought me back to where I was standing. I sprinted out toward him, unable to comprehend doing anything else.

  “Rust!” I yelled over the sound of the water beating down on the hard ground and the lightning laughing in the distance. I pulled my hood off my head and stopped a few short feet away from him.

  Rust stopped twirling. He opened his eyes and faced me. The smile he wore would’ve made me stutter if I’d been speaking. He was uninhibited, glorious and in love with his element. Rust was the rain and the sky and the storm clouds above our heads.

  “Rust,” I said uneasily, taking another step toward him. The harsh rain was beating against the side of my face, forcing my eyelids to flicker. “What are you doing out here? You’re going to be struck by lightning.”

  “Ancel.” When he said my name, it sounded like a secret, something spoken in hushed hymns from an ancient book about dreams. His eyes bore into my own when he said, “I already have been.”

  I closed the space between us. My fingers easily slipped into his hair to keep me rooted to the earth. And then I kissed him, and suddenly the world was clear.

  Rust kissed like the ocean kisses the sands on the shore of a beach when the tide comes in. His soft lips opened easily, pressing against my own coyly. He shivered when I pr
essed my tongue into his mouth, and I thought just then I might liquefy.

  One of my hands left his hair and trailed down to rest on his lower back and pull him closer. His small palms pressed flat against my chest, squished tightly between the space of our two bodies.

  Rust tasted like sweet cherry ice cream and rain water. He said my name in between breaths, and I knew each time our lips touched again, that breathing was a waste of air.

  My head was screaming. My heart was pounding. I’d never felt more alive.

  A loud bang shocked us both apart. We looked to the north and saw lightning touch down against the ground. When we looked back at each other, I knew something fundamental had changed inside me. Something big— something unfixable.

  I wrapped my arms around him and gently kissed his forehead.

  “Go home, Rust,” I said. “It’s not safe out here.”

  Rust pulled away and smiled at me in that pure way I knew no one else would ever smile at me. He turned and ran toward his back gate. I watched to make sure he latched it and went into his yard.

  Rust wasn’t safe out here.

  I looked down at the bleeding, scraped knuckles of my scarred hands.

  But it wasn’t because of the lightning.