First Flight (2 page)

“Let’s get you in the house, okay? And we need to get you some water, too. I wonder if you’ve got salmonella. Mom might know, but she’s at work.” Jesse moved toward Chris, who lurched forward onto his hands and knees, his body curling up tight as he was wracked with dry heaves.

Yes, Chris decided, death would be a mercy. It would be so much better than this deep, wrenching pain that came with bitter slime at the back of his throat. He coughed and curled up, hoping that Jesse would come over and kill him.

“Come on,” Jesse said, leaning down and getting hold of his arm. “You need to come inside now, okay?” Chris was shivering, whether from reaction, fever, or just the breeze over his sweat-soaked clothes, Jesse didn’t know.

His eyes mostly closed, aching and miserable, Chris stumbled along beside the other young man as they made their way upstairs.

“I’m not trying to make you feel bad, but you really need a shower,” Jesse said, coming to a halt in front of the door to the upstairs bathroom. The sour smell of vomit made him wrinkle his nose as he turned on the light. “It’ll help you feel better, too.”

“Okay.” Shower. The thing in the big trough that was like rain without clouds or wind.

Jesse started the water, then turned and helped Chris out of his soggy pajamas. “All right. I’m going to go get a glass, a towel, some dry PJs, stuff like that. I’ll be back as soon as I can. You get clean and warmed up.”

“Mm.” The hot water felt good running over his skin, helping to ease the knots in his belly and to take the chill off. He stayed under the spray until Jesse reached in and took his arm, helping him out to stand dripping on the bath mat. Once he was mostly dry and in clean pajamas, he curled up in his cot and fell into an exhausted sleep.

Chris woke in the dimness of Jesse’s room. “Jesse?”

“Hey.” Jesse’s voice came from somewhere behind him. He turned over, teeth clenched tightly together. Other than another wave of cramps, he seemed to be all right.

“Are you feeling better?”

“Okay.” Jesse was sitting in the chair in front of the flat panel that glowed in the dark. He could see a picture of a man on it, parts of the man covered up by boxes, one of which began to blink as he looked.

“Good, glad to hear it,” Jesse said. “You should drink some more water.”

Water
. Yes, that sounded very good. His mouth was sticky and dry, his throat raw. “Water,” Chris said. He sat up slowly, then looked around. “Water?”

“Oh, crap, I took your glass downstairs. Hang on and I’ll go get you some, okay?”

“Okay.” Chris watched him go, then looked at the flat panel again. The blinking box was covered up by another one, and then another, and then nothing more. He looked at the man instead, wondering if he was alive, and if so why he was on (or in) the panel. Then he wondered if he was important, important to Jesse. The thought of him being important to Jesse made him feel strange, but in a different way than the eggs had.

“Here we go,” Jesse said, coming in. “I would have been back sooner but Mom made some soup and brought home some more crackers, so she made me bring up enough for an army.” He carried a tray with a couple of bowls, a square white thing, and a couple of glasses of water on it. “Well, enough for us, anyhow. Here. Careful, it’s hot.”

Chris took the bowl that Jesse offered him, setting it on his knees. “Spoon?”

“Yeah, here you go.” Jesse handed over a spoon and a piece of paper towel. “Here’s the water, too.”

“Water.” It tasted good, better by far than the eggs. He drained the glass, then held it out, gasping as he did.

“Slow down,” Jesse said, taking the glass back. “You’ll make yourself sick again, and you don’t want that.”

“Water,” Chris said, plaintively, then burped.
What had that been?

Jesse smothered his laughter at the look on Chris’s face. “I’ll be right back.”

He stirred the soup, then lifted a spoonful and blew across it as Leanna had demonstrated at
dinner
. It was warm, salty, and tasted almost as good as the water had. Chris was careful to use the spoon, but it seemed terribly inefficient.

Jesse came back with two glasses of water, and the two of them spent the next few minutes eating. Chris finally gave up on the spoon and picked up the bowl and sipped from it, though he turned away from Jesse as he did.

“It’s okay to drink soup like that,” Jesse said, leaning over and bumping his hand against Chris’s shoulder. “Just don’t use your fingers. Here.”

Chris turned back and took the crackers that Jesse held. “Okay.”

Jesse glanced at the panel, grumbling and sighing. He touched the rounded block that made clicking sounds, then pulled the long flat thing with buttons on it toward himself. “Didn’t have to be a bastard about it,” he mumbled.

“Okay?” Chris scooped up noodles with half of a cracker.

“Yeah, more or less,” Jesse said, but Chris didn’t like the sound of his voice. “Oh, hey. I talked to Betsy and Tanner, today. They both said they’d be thrilled if you’d like to come work in produce, but they don’t wanna do an under-the-table thing. We’re gonna have to figure out how to get you some ID, which will probably take a couple of weeks.”

“Oh.” Chris ate some more noodles, watching Jesse as he poked at the flat thing with buttons with one hand and stirred his soup with the other. “Okay.”

“The other thing is….” Jesse turned away from his desk and looked at Chris for a few moments. “The other thing is, you kind of need some more vocabulary. ‘Okay’ is good, but you’re gonna need to know things like ‘potato’ and ‘mango’ and ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and ‘right this way.’ And I’m kind of worried about you eating stuff that you shouldn’t, like Dad’s leftovers. Why’d you eat them, anyhow? Weren’t they moldy?”

Chris just shook his head and finished his soup. “Okay.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought you’d say,” Jesse said, smiling a little. “Don’t worry about it, okay? Do you want some more soup?”

“Okay.”

Chapter Two

“
T
HERE
he is,” Jesse said, waving at someone in a hooded sweatshirt. “Hey.”

“Hi,” Kevin said, glancing at the guy beside Jesse. “Who’s this?”

“Kev, this is Chris. Chris, this is my good friend, Kevin Woods. Chris is staying at our house for a while.” Jesse waved back and forth between the two of them.

“Yeah?”

Chris held out his hand and tried a smile, even though he didn’t think he liked Kevin. The little voice inside him was silent, but even the silence seemed disapproving. “Hi.”

“You’re pretty short,” Kevin said, keeping his hands nestled in his pockets.

“I guess so,” Chris said, keeping his hand out. Jesse had said he was kind of short, earlier, when they were buying clothes. In his mouth, it had sounded like nothing special; in Kevin’s, it sounded like something was wrong with him.

“Kev, come on. Be nice.” Jesse shifted over and nudged him with an elbow.

Kevin finally reached out and shook Chris’s hand, briefly and limply. “So why’re you staying at Jesse’s?”

“Because Jesse—”

“It’s kind of an exchange-student thing,” Jesse said, glad to hear his explanation sounded smoother than he thought it would.

“Exchange student?
Oh,
is this that guy you said you had to keep an eye on ’cause he was sick instead of coming over and watching a movie with me?”

“He had food poisoning,” Jesse said, rolling his eyes at Kevin’s offended tone. “He was seriously sick and my parents were at work.”

Kevin shrugged at Jesse’s words, but all he said was, “So where’re you from, Chris?”

“He’s from Manitoba,” Jesse said, picking the first place he thought of. “Winnipeg.”

“Huh.” Kevin gave Jesse a funny look, then turned his attention on Chris again. “You don’t have much of an accent.”

“I’m sorry,” Chris said, looking at Jesse. Maybe he’d know where he could get an accent, whatever that was.

“I’m not that disappointed,” Kevin said with another shrug. “C’mon, the movie’s gonna start soon.”

C
HRIS
took a deep breath as he followed Jesse through the doors into the back of the store. The smells out front were always fascinating, but they changed beyond the doors, into something altogether different. There was the scent of earth, of things that were food and things that were past being food, scents that made the little voice whisper about
gathering
and
saving for later
. “Jesse?”

“What?” He glanced over his shoulder.

“Jesse, the smells….” Chris inhaled again, closing his eyes. “They’re like the store, but more.”

“Yeah, I know, it smells kind of like stuff going bad back here,” Jesse said, waving at the boxes of fruit and vegetables that sat off to their left. “Come on, the breakroom is this way.”

“Okay,” Chris said, following him once more.
Going bad
wasn’t what he meant, but he didn’t quite know how to tell Jesse about the little voice or the things it suggested.

“This is the breakroom, and you can put your stuff in my locker for now, okay? The employee bathrooms are right over there, through the door helpfully marked by the really obvious sign.” Jesse pointed across the room. “Once we ditch our stuff, we’ll find you an apron, and then you and Betsy can get on with your day.”

Betsy. Chris remembered her from one of the previous trips he’d taken to the store with Jesse—a round woman just about the same height as himself. She’d seemed kind of rough, but she’d shaken his hand, smiled at him, and hadn’t said anything about him being short. “All right. I will work in produce, which is fruit and vegetables, yes?”

“Right,” Jesse said, sliding the key into his lock and opening it with a metallic pop. “And I’ll be up front, at the checkout. I’m usually on lucky number eight, if you need anything.” He traded his jacket for his apron, then put his lunchbox on the shelf.

“Okay.” Chris put his jacket on the other hook, then watched as Jesse made sure he had his keys, closed and locked the locker, then put his apron on. “You look important.”

“Important? I guess so,” Jesse said, looking down at himself. “I’m just a cashier, though. If you want someone important, you want Betsy or Tanner. Anyway, the aprons are over here.”

Ten minutes later, Jesse handed him off to Betsy.

“All right, Christopher, just make sure that all the fruit and veggies look okay, toss out any that fall on the floor, and just make sure everything stays nice and tidy, okay?”

Chris nodded at her. “Okay.”

“Great. If you have any problems or questions, just ask me, okay?”

“Okay,” Chris said, nodding again.

The day was not okay. He had no problems with the produce, other than getting strange looks when he took the “bad” things into the back and put them aside… but the people who came into the store!

There was the woman who wanted strawberries, and when he led her this way and that through the bins and displays, she’d called him a dummy. Then there was the man with the two small children who shouted and ran and threw grapes at one another; and the other man who complained about the broccoli; and the woman who was disappointed in his lack of conversation on the topic of cantaloupes.

By the time he was free for lunch, he was more than ready to go back to Jesse’s room and
stay
there.

“Hey, Chris,” Jesse said, sitting down beside him. “How was your morning?”

Chris shook his head and ate another bruised strawberry.

“That good, huh?” Jesse unwrapped his sandwich and took a bite. “Well, you can go home whenever you’re ready, so that’s okay. I’ll be home about four thirty.”

“Okay.”

And that was life, for the newly expanded Swanson family. Jesse and Chris went off to Meyer’s Market, where Chris puzzled and unnerved patrons and staff alike. They ate lunch together, Chris went home after, and Jesse followed in the late afternoon.

Between times, Jesse took him all over: to the movies, out with friends, and sometimes just out on long aimless drives with the windows down and the music up. For three months, everything was almost perfectly normal.

Chapter Three

“S
O
WHAT
’
S
the real story behind Shorty?” Kevin’s voice was sharp.

“‘Real story?’ There is no ‘real story’. And his name is Chris.” Jesse shrugged and wondered where the conversation was headed. He rubbed his thumb across the back of his phone and wandered toward his bedroom window.

“Yeah. Right.”

“There isn’t!”

“Sure. Except for the one where you’re mackin’ on him, right?”

“‘Mackin’ on him’?” Jesse laughed and shook his head. “I haven’t heard
that
in years.”

“But you didn’t say you
weren’t
.”

“Because I was busy being distracted by that word,” Jesse said, rolling his eyes. “And no, I’m not doing
anything
with Chris except hanging out with him and going to work and stuff.”

“Stuff? Stuff could be anything.”

“I just meant, y’know, going to the movies and driving around and watching TV and, I dunno, stuff. You know, like a friend?” He rolled his eyes again and turned away from the window. Trust Kevin to try to make being
friends
with someone into a felony.

“A
boy
friend?”

“What is
wrong
with you? I’m not going out with Chris!
You
are my boyfriend. I’ve never cheated on anyone before and I’m not going to start now.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes!” He sighed and checked his watch. “Look, how about if I come over and show you everything I’m
not
doing with Chris?”

“Well….”

“Just you and me, all alone.” It had been a while since they’d spent any time alone, so Jesse was pretty sure it’d be the perfect step toward reconciliation. And if not, at least they’d both get something out of it.

“Okay. Yeah, okay, twenty minutes?”

“Thirty. I need to make a stop first.”

“A stop? For what?”

The suspicion in Kevin’s voice was beginning to get on his nerves, but he pushed the irritation away. “For a couple of things that’ll make our evening a
lot
more fun. And slippery.”