I smile tentatively at her. She frowns, suddenly spooked, then turns back to Hoyt. “Will you play dolls with me?”
Hoyt shoots me a quick self-conscious look, clears his throat, then lowers his voice to a whisper. “How about … you go play with somethin’ else right now, since I’m hangin’ out with my buddy, and I’ll let you play Candy Castle on my fancy Xbox all day tomorrow?”
Gemma shrugs. “‘Kay. Bye, person,” she says on her way out.
“I told ya his name!” Hoyt calls out after her, then laughs. He hops off the bed and shuts his door, then returns to his spot. “She’s a firecracker sometimes.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Dolls …?”
Hoyt burns me with his eyes. “One word of that to anyone and you’ll be the one wettin’ yourself next.”
I crack a smile, then face the TV, too.
Later, Hoyt’s mother calls out that food’s ready, and I seem to be invited to the table like it’s no big deal that there’s another mouth to feed. I just assume Hoyt has his friends over randomly and often enough that it’s never a problem to add one more seat. Also, no one seems to care that I’ve got dried paint stains all over me, which further strengthens my inkling that no one minds how anyone or anything looks in this house, except for maybe Hoyt himself. His mother is short and stocky with a round, featureless face. Her wavy blonde hair frames two permanently tired eyes. “Hi there, Toby,” she greets me in a drone when Hoyt introduces me. His stepdad isn’t here, and as we all eat, I get the fast impression no one in this house waits up for him, whoever he is.
The sun has long since fallen and crickets are chirping outside his cracked-open bedroom window when, sitting side-by-side at the foot of his bed playing a first-person shooter on his Xbox that Hoyt insisted on introducing me to, he finally asks, “So you want me to take you home after this round?”
I don’t want to overstay my welcome. That’s yet another thought I never dreamed I’d be thinking in relation to Hoyt Nowak. “Sure. Or I can just walk.”
“Nah. I’ll drive you.” When both of our in-game characters get surprise-bombed, ending the round prematurely, Hoyt peers at the side of my face, thinking something over. “Alright, so I don’t wanna make this weird or anything—”
“If you have to preempt whatever you’re saying with that …”
“—but do you want to just crash here for tonight?”
I can’t help but wonder if I magically summoned this situation into my life, just by wishing that I could find a place to disappear for a while to collect myself. A place where I wouldn’t be treated as something special. A place to get away from the sticky gossipy fingers of the town. A place no one would find me.
This is exactly that place. And while Hoyt isn’t a hero by any stretch of the definition, he’s the last person anyone would expect me to be with.
“I take the weird silence as a ‘yes’,” announces Hoyt, hopping off the floor and heading over to his closet. “I got an air mattress folded up in here and a set of sheets. Y’know, for when the boys stay over,” he throws in, like I need an explanation. Our two dead characters lie side-by-side next to a half-destroyed wall on the TV. I watch as the camera slowly pans around them, text on the screen telling us to press A to start the next round. “And look, if you want to avoid your family for Thanksgiving as well, that’s fine, but don’t expect any kind of impressive spread over here. Also my stepdad’s a piece of shit, but if you’re here for Thanksgiving, he’ll probably behave. He gets weird and quiet around people he doesn’t know. He’s like a large, dimwitted cat. Also, you can take a shower if you want to finally get those paint stains off of you. I take it you got clothes in that backpack of yours to change into …?”
“Why are you being so nice to me?” I ask suddenly.
Hoyt puts the mattress on the floor and attaches a small pump to it. “Nice? I’ve always been nice to you, Toby-Tobes.” He starts inflating the mattress.
“But you’re being actually nice,” I clarify. “At school, in front of people, you’re … kind of a pompous asshole. Sorry. And you put me down all the time, or demean me, or toy around with me in front of your dumbass friends. Sorry again. You’ve been doin’ stuff like that to me since we were kids. I fell back a grade because I …” My emotions get the better of me, and a bubble of anger comes up. “I had to repeat seventh grade because you and your friends kept picking on me. You made my life a living hell.”