Vegas Boys

Another week passed, and winter was finally arriving. November in Vegas was more like September everywhere else, but it was a drastic temperature drop from the sweltering heat of summer, and some nights it got down to just twenty or thirty degrees farenheit. No one around here had ever really seen snow before--and even rain was slightly unheard of. Vegas weather mostly just varied between hot and dry to hotter and drier.

Because of this, Vegas natives had a tendency to overreact to unusual non-desert weather. It was kind of amusing, really, because Brendon was right: everyone freaked out over rain, and kids at school told stories about Christmas' spent elsewhere, when they had actually encountered snow, like it was something to brag about. It seemed so strange and backwards when I thought about it: they spoke of rain and snow and ice in excited whispers, but strippers and hookers and casinos were mentioned off-handedly--to Vegas kids, Sin City was almost mundane.

And Brendon was a true Vegas boy. I was sitting on the front steps on my porch doing my homework on a Saturday afternoon (because it was only sixty degrees and pleasant outside, for once) when Brendon called my name and I looked up to see him making his way aross my yard, all bundled up in a big puffy coat and a scarf.

I couldn't help it, I laughed at him.

"What?" He frowned down at me, squinting against the bright sun that was just beginning to set behind my house, the wind whipping his dark hair about his face and fluttering the fringed ends of his scarf.

"I don't know," I muttered, grinning to myself as I flipped my notebook shut and set it aside. "It's just that whenever the temperature's below about eighty, all you crazy Vegas kids suit up like you're about to do some Alaskan ice-fishing, or something."

Brendon pretended to be offended, looking down to examine his outfit. "I'm not suited up," he defended himself indignantly.

"You're wearing a scarf."

"So?" He paused to swing the end that was hanging down across his chest over his shoulder glamorously. "It's a fashion statement."

I rolled my eyes. "Because you're such a fashionista."

"I am," he agreed, with such a dignified expression that I cracked up. He allowed himself a smirk. "So, anyway..." he began, clearing his throat and shoving his hands into the pockets of his over-stuffed winter coat, "before you started making fun of my clothes, I was going to ask you if you wanted to go to Big Lots with me."

"Big Lots?" I frowned, obviously confused, but his expression remained neutral. "Why Big Lots?"

"Well..." Brendon trailed off and scuffed the end of his nerdy black dress shoes against the steps I was sitting on. He was uncomfortable, avoiding my gaze and clearing his throat multiple times compulsively. "I need to go buy some furniture, and I was hoping you could help me pick some out...because I'm a dude and I'm straight, so my interior design skills are pretty much automatically shit--"

"Why are you buying furniture?" I asked. I felt like I had missed something here.

He sighed and looked away, back towards his own house, which was empty at the moment. It was obvious that I was missing something, and that he wasn't exactly looking forward to letting me in on what was going on here. "Because all my parents are letting me take is my mattress and a few of my instruments."

"...Letting you take? Take where?" I stared at him, but he was looking away, and his expression was pretty unreadable anyway. "What, are you moving out?"

Brendon finally met my gaze again, and he let out a little humorless half-laugh. "Yeah, actually."

I just stared at him some more. I had only made the guess on a whim--I hadn't actually thought it was possible. "You're moving out?" I repeated stupidly.

"...Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck, grinning sheepishly.

"Why?!" I demanded, horrified.

Brendon sighed and bit his lip, and then sat down on the steps beside me. "Well," he began, balancing his elbows on his knees and casting a resentful glare over towards his house again, "because my parents are pretty much throwing me out."

I gaped at him, dumbfounded. "But...why?!" was all I could get out.

He sighed again, but it was more like a moan this time; he let his head hang low between his knees, and grabbed his hair with both hands, massaging the back of his head wearily. When he finally raised his head again, he looked more exhausted than I had ever seen him before--drained off all the youthful energy that I was so used to from him.

He avoided my gaze. "I don't know, Kelsey," he said in a low murmur, and he didn't even bother to try and seem like the usual happy-go-lucky Brendon I knew and loved. "I've been having problems with my parents for a while--you know that. And then I...I said some stuff that kind of upset them."

I studied his face for answers, but there were none to be had there. "Like what? What did you say?"

He just shook his head a little, swallowing. "I told them...I told them I didn't want to do the Mormon thing. And they're pissed about the band. They want me to quit."

"But you won't," I hoped. I knew how much it meant to him, and how much it meant to the other guys--and how much it meant to me, even.

He shook his head again, and looked me in the eye for the first time since we'd began this conversation. "No. I won't."

-----

I let out a little shriek of surprise as Brendon scooped me up from behind and dumped me unceremoniously into a bright orange plastic Big Lots shopping cart. He smiled innocently at all the middle-aged moms who turned to glare at us disapprovingly, and waited until most of them had looked away before winking at me and pushing me, in the cart, past the school supplies to the furniture section.

I had extracted as many details as possible from him in the car, but he clammed up every time I tried to ask about the actual conflict that had led up to the getting-kicked-out, and I could tell that he was purposely oversimplifying what he did tell me. I wasn't sure if it was because he was ashamed or just still too upset to talk about it.

But despite his nervous stammering of the same statement over and over again ("they're pissed about the band, they want me to give two years of service to the fucking church and I won't, that's all"), despite the anxious glances he kept shooting me when he thought I wasn't looking, despite the way he would just avoid my gaze and eventually fall silent every time I tried to ask--despite all of this, it never occurred to me that maybe he was hiding something from me.

And maybe it should have.

But all the worries I'd been harboring for him during our long, solemn exchange in the car disappeared as soon as we entered Big Lots, because he was suddenly the old Brendon again.

After he had thrown me into the cart and manuevered around all the afternoon shoppers, he ran as fast as he could, pushing me in the cart, towards the furniture section. He had built up so much momentum that even when he tried to stop ten feet in front of a huge tweed sectional couch, the cart kept going, and his shoes left black marks on the big white tiles as he dug his heels into the floor to try to stop me and the cart I was in. He managed to slow it down enough that it just barely bumped into the back of the couch, and we both laughed hysterically for about five minutes straight, until a rather agitated employee came over and asked us primly if we needed help with anything.

"Yeah," said Brendon seriously, his laughter ending so abruptly that it just made me laugh harder. He gave the employee--"Tim," judging by the name tag--his paranoid psychopath stare, complete with a slack jaw and eyes so wide that, I swear, they would have fallen out if you smacked him in the back of the head hard enough. "I've got this terrible rash on my left testicle, I think you should have a look at it--" He paused to reach down and start undoing his fly.

"Uh, sir," interrupted Tim, half-shielding his eyes, as if the sight of Brendon's package could pose a potential hazard to his vision. He then went about stuttering out some generic plea, and Brendon rambled for a few minutes about how badly the rash itched and burned, and did he think mayonnaise would help?

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't help you," Tim concluded firmly.

"Oh," sighed Brendon, feigning disappointment as he zipped his pants up (that was as far as he had actually gone). "Okay, then. Thanks anyway."

Looking extremely weirded-out and maybe even a bit traumatized, the employee hurried away before he could be subjected to further harrassment. Brendon and I waited until he had almost reached the check-out lanes to start laughing.

"God, Brendon," I complained as I climbed out of the shopping cart. "I swear, I can't take you anywhere."

"Hey, he was asking for it," said Brendon defensively. "He interrupted our shopping cart drag racing."

I just rolled my eyes at him. "Lets just find some bargain furniture, okay?"

"O-kay!" agreed Brendon cheerfully, snapping his fingers.

"...So, what do you need again?"

"Hmm..." He considered this for a moment. "Well, I have a mattress, but I'll probably need a bed to put it on, because otherwise the rats might chew my face off while I sleep. Because believe me, there will be rats--"

"I believe you," I interrupted, grimacing. "So...bed. What else?"

Brendon counted off on his fingers. "Uh...dresser. Arm chair. Couch. Coffee table. Kitchen table. Kitchen chairs. Refrigerator. Microwave. Stove-slash-oven. Dishwasher. Washing machine. Dryer--"

I groaned, running a hand over my face. "So, basically...everything."

"Everything but a mattress, yeah."

I frowned as I thought about that. "You're only taking your mattress?"

"That's all my parents would let me take."

"...They wouldn't let you take your own furniture?"

"Well..." Brendon looked down and shuffled his feet dejectedly. "Technically, it's not mine. I mean, it's been in my room all my life, but...my parents paid for it."

"And they want to keep it, because...?"

"They're making my room a guest bedroom," he said bitterly. "They're perfectly happy to be rid of me."

"That's not true," I told him, but I wasn't entirely sure that was true.

Apparently, he wasn't either, because he just snorted and looked away.

"Well, I'm not happy," I said, taking a step forward to wrap my arms around his waist. "I'm gonna miss living next door to you. I might actually have to get off my ass and drive somewhere to go get my Brendon fix now."

He chuckled humorlessly and kissed the top of my head. "I know," he said, lips moving against my hair. "I won't be able to walk to school with you anymore."

I hadn't realized that yet, and something in my chest suddenly throbbed in pain. My heart, I guess.

"It's okay though," he reassured me, stepping back and tilting my chin up so that I was looking him in the eyes. "I'm gonna drive you, okay? I'll pick you up in the morning and drop you off after school."

"That's a lot of trouble," I mumbled. The apartment he was going to move into on Friday was at least a fifteen-minute drive from our current neighborhood.

"Nah. And even if it is, you're worth it." He grinned and ruffled my hair playfully, and of course it made me smile. He was good at that.