Weight of Silence(11)

“Got it.” Gavin mimicked locking his lips with an imaginary key.

“I mean, I think Rachel has a clue or two, but….”

“It’s cool, really. Each of us in his own time, man. Honest.”

“Thanks.” Jace liked this short-hand with Gavin—being able to talk about something without actually talking about it.

“You cut your hair.”

“Yeah, I needed to.” He’d let it get too long, too shaggy. Now it was only about an inch from his scalp—enough to keep his head warm, but not enough to grab.

“So you are cool with Thanksgiving?” Gavin asked, sounding unsure for the first time in the conversation.

“Yeah, of course.” He was more than okay with the time they’d spent together and the things they’d done. It was all the crap afterward at school that was turning him inside out.

“Good, awesome. So I guess I should let you mingle and stuff.”

Jace stifled a groan. “I am so not in the party mood tonight. I only came downstairs because my mom guilted me into it.”

“Moms are good at guilt. I think the nurses give them a handbook on guilt when they pop their first kid.”

“No kidding.”

“So if you’re not into the party, you want to hang out?”

“Won’t your date miss you?”

Gavin grinned. “Nah.”

The downstairs of the house was full of people, and taking Gavin upstairs to his bedroom—even to talk—would look kind of odd. They’d be too easy to find on the porch. The solution struck him. “Wait here a sec,” Jace said.

He dashed down the hall to the front closet, saying hello to various neighbors on his way. He grabbed his own winter jacket, and an extra for Gavin. The guest jackets had been stored in his parents’ master bedroom downstairs, but he didn’t remember which one was Gavin’s. When he returned to the kitchen with the two coats, Gavin gave him a dubious look.

“You’re not afraid of the cold, are you?” Jace asked.

“Not afraid, no, but I am genetically predisposed toward warm, tropical weather.”

He tossed the thicker of the two jackets at Gavin then put one on. “Trust me?”

“I hate it when people say that.”

Gavin put on the coat. He zipped it to the neck then closed every snap. Jace almost offered him snow pants and a wool hat too. He led Gavin out the patio doors to the deck, then into the yard. The air was crisp, on the cusp of being too cold for Jace. He liked snow and cold weather and winter—unlike his companion, whose teeth were chattering by the time they’d trekked to the back of the yard.

Their father had built the tree house for his kids when the twins were seven. Dad was so proud of it too, with the solid walls and floor, the windows with real glass and the carpet scraps he’d nailed down. Keith Ramsey wasn’t the most handy guy when it came to home repairs, but he knew his way around wood and nails, and he liked to build things on occasion. The tree house was water tight, and even though they’d stopped playing in it years ago, Jace still occasionally used it as a private place to think.

He climbed up the ladder and pushed the floor hatch open. After he hefted himself up, he peered down at Gavin, who hadn’t moved from the ground. “You coming?” he asked.

Gavin gave the wood ladder a shake. “Is it safe?”

“Perfectly.”

“If I fall and break my neck, it’s your fault.”

“Noted. Now come on.”

Jace scooted to the metal box in the far corner of the cold tree house. He and Rachel always left a few things up here, including a deck of cards, a pair of walkie-talkies and a flashlight. The flashlight bulb was dim, the batteries probably about to die, but it would do for a little while. He shined it around while Gavin shimmied his weight off the ladder and onto the floor. Jace closed the hatch, which did little for the icy air. Their breath puffed out in white vapor clouds.

Gavin gazed around at years of magic marker drawings on the walls. The tree house was only about six by six, so they didn’t have a lot of maneuvering room, and they ended up sitting next to each other, backs against one of the walls. The hard floor made Jace’s backside ache almost immediately, but he ignored it and blamed it on the cold.

“This is really cool,” Gavin said. “I’d have killed for a fort like this growing up.”

“Every kid on the block wanted to play with us after this thing was built. There’s nothing like a tree house to make you the most popular kids in the second grade.”

“And there’s nothing like being the poor, non-white kid to make you the least popular.”

Jace’s smile froze at the odd comment. Gavin said it with such amusement that he thought it was a joke, but some truth clung to the words. Jace really didn’t know much about Gavin. He knew Gavin had a hard time sitting still for long periods of time. He knew what Gavin’s mouth tasted like.