For Chasmodai Blue who got the 400th review on Famous Last Words.

She wanted a rave, a slut, and angst for not-the-narrator. I may have failed on the last one.

Infinite.

I took a hit off the pipe and handed it back to Radley. Our fingers touched and I stared at them shiver and turn into waves between us. There was dirt smudged across the tops of his bare toes and the sharp edges of his cheeks – feral war paint blurring out the pale ghosts of freckles. The pipe rested between smiling strawberry lips as he inhaled deeply. I heard the swell of his lungs as the smoke barreled down. His face glowed orange at the intake, a sunset resting in the seashell hollow beneath his eyes.

“Do you ever…” he began and his voice was a whisper that tickled my face and I laughed. My whole body shuddered and shook and I couldn’t stay sitting up. I tilted to the side and landed in the dirt and the grass and the leaves and he joined me as we lay side by side, shoulders shaking as the world melted away. There was nothing behind him. There was nothing around me. There was just the wideness of his pupils and the whiteness of his teeth. There was just the blood red pulpy sweetness of his lips as I placed a kiss on them and told him I loved him. Our hands touched between us. They swam and slid out of my vision.

“I feel safe when I’m with you,” I said. My voice wasn’t mine. I didn’t know where it came from. It was quiet and soft and cracked like a year ago when my body was changing.

Radley turned onto his back and squinted at the stars. Our fingers still touched. He said, “I like looking at the sky. At night. It makes me feel infinite.” When he turned his head to look at me, his eyelashes and eyelids were smeared blue with the touch of the night sky. “I don’t want to feel safe. I want to feel infinite.”

-

Josh has his hands at the small of my back, fingertips sharp as they press into my spine, pinkies tucked down beneath the waistband of my too-big jeans. His chest is slick against my own. There’s a grin on his face as he tilts it up to look at me. The moon kisses his cheeks. I bend my head and do the same.

My long limbs are awkward. I don’t know how to dance. But Josh uses his hands and the rolling of his hips to guide me. There are bodies around us and I feel like we’re all fish caught in a net as we move against each other just trying to be free. I want to start laughing but Josh’s lips are on mine and they catch my sudden burst of happiness and he swallows it whole. His tongue coaxes out more small bullets of laughter till I’m feeling tired and deflated against him, stomach aching, lungs gasping for air.

Wordlessly he takes my hand and guides me away from the writhing mass of people around us and over where it’s somehow infinitely quieter, past the haphazardly set up tents and down to the edge of the river. We sit side by side with our legs dangling into the water. Josh leans down and I watch the stretch of his muscles before he sits back up, his hands cupped with water held gingerly in his palms. I watch the moon ripple against his lifeline before ducking my head and drinking. The water’s cold. It burns my throat and freezes my chest.

Then his hand is wet in mine as he holds it, our fingers entwined. My heart slows to a comfortable crawl. I think I see cut-out blue butterflies in the trees and search the sky for them next, but they’re not there. When I look back down, Josh’s head is on my shoulder. I smile and open my mouth to say words that haven’t formed in my head yet. The sound of laughter across the river stops me.

Squinting my eyes through the darkness, I spot pale shapes of ghosts dancing on the other side. Three soulless bodies hover among the trees. They twist around each other, mouths touching mouths touching bodies. Moans of yeah yeah keep going don’t stop please please echo around us, bouncing off the water and meeting our ears. I look over to Josh and he smirks, shaking his head.

“It’s liberating out here, isn’t it?” he asks me. It must be. I smile back and we get up to walk away. I look over my shoulder once, my eyes pulled by those paranormal visitors. The last thing I see before Josh and I duck beneath a roof of trees is strawberry lips and seashell eyes. My stomach clenches and I hold Josh’s hand tighter. It’s still wet and I take comfort in the feel. He looks back to smile at me. It’s suddenly hard to smile back.

-

Headlights filtered through the trees with each slowly passing car. It lit Radley’s face with blue lights on and off and on again till it edged past our driveway and was gone. It reminded me of the flash of a camera. I thought of the blue flickering of TVs left on in empty living rooms.

Radley’s hunched over burrowed in a sweatshirt that was three sizes too big. He had jean shorts on and one of his skinny legs was tucked beneath him. He was smoking one of the cigarettes we stole from my older sister’s underwear drawer. There was a mosquito bite on his ankle and he kept scratching it. His fingers moved in slow motion. I rubbed my eyes with closed fists.

“Do they still love each other?” I asked.

He shook his head. “My mom says she does. She’s a liar and afraid to be alone.”

“I’m afraid to be alone too.”

The bug zapper buzzed a lullaby and he looked up to me, solemn and serene. “If you’re afraid to be by yourself, why should anyone else want to be with you?”

“My dad’s moving out,” he said when I couldn’t think of a good answer to his question. I felt like we were trying too hard to be the understanding adults that we weren’t. I was afraid to get that way too. He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled. “I don’t want to stay with my mom. I’ll probably go with my dad.”

“Where’s he going?” There was a jolt of fear in my chest. I wanted to reach for his hand but I didn’t. I picked at the grains of sand stuck in the ridges of wood beneath us.

“Maybe out of state. He said he doesn’t know yet. I think he has a girlfriend. He’ll probably go where she wants to go.” The cigarette was shaking in his hand and I reached over to hold it steady. His body sagged against me and it shivered and shuddered as he sobbed.

“It’s okay,” I told him again and again. “It’s okay.” I kissed the side of his head, put an arm around his skinny shaking shoulders.

We were just two little lost boys. Just too lost. I didn’t know what to do.

-

Close to the noise and the lights and the dancing, Josh and I stop again and sit on a rotting log. He watches the dancing with a grin on his face, wanting to go back out there, but he stays with me with our fingers still locked. I look at them – mine long and bony like the rest of my body and his covered in rings. They fit awkwardly together but they fit.

“One of those people back there?” I say to him and he half turns his head to listen, offering me an ear but not giving me his eyes. “One of those people back there across the river? I knew him. I mean, I know him.”

“Do you?”

“Yeah. When we were kids we used to swipe my sister’s drugs and cigarettes and go smoke them out in the cemetery down the road.” I smile as I remember it. I haven’t thought about it in years and there’s the sharp yank of nostalgia in my stomach.

He turns to me and raises his eyebrows. “And here I was thinking you were sweet and innocent. Took me long enough to persuade you to come here with me and it turns out you have a past filled with drug-hazed debauchery?”

I laugh with my head tilted back. It’s the action of a full, jovial laugh but my stomach feels empty as I suddenly feel completely grounded and sober. Josh turns his attention back to the dancers. Nearby, the two girls that are in a tent across from ours dance in their underwear. Their wide hips swing from side to side and they press their foreheads together and smile. I hold on tighter to Josh’s hand. I don’t tell him that Radley was the first person I ever kissed, the first person beyond my parents and my big sister that ever got to hear how much I loved them. In the dark, comfortable stillness of the cemetery, he was the first one to let me show how much I loved him. Images of pale naked bodies across the river flash through my head and I close my eyes.

When I open them, Josh’s standing, pulling me to his feet. “Let’s dance some more. Are you okay to dance some more?”

I nod and he leads me into the fishnet. He guides me again, hands on back and front against front. I look over his shoulder and there he is. There Radley is in just cut-offs and a thin headband tied around his head, a headdress stripped of its feathers. His head is thrown back as he dances with someone whose face I don’t want to see. With his head thrown back, I can see each time he swallows, the muscles jumping in his throat. His eyes have curled back into his head. His feet are bare. There’s mud caked around them like moccasins. He’s close enough to touch but the person he dances with is already touching him. Radley’s hand catches the fingers tracing the goose bumps of his skin and pull them down to those shorts that ride low on his hips. The fingers slip inside. Radley’s hips move in time with the music. His eyes suddenly stop burrowing up into his head and meet mine.

I cling on to Josh and, like a slow dance, I spin us around so I’m looking the other way.

-

“I might send you a postcard or something,” Radley said. The toes of his tennis shoes scuffed at my dirt driveway. “And my mom will probably want me to come visit on holidays, so it’s not like I’ll be disappearing.”

“You have to go?” I asked. I wondered if my mom, who had answered the door when Radley knocked on it, was watching us from the living room window and if she could tell that there were tears on my face even though I faced the road. Even though I faced Radley.

Radley shook his head. “No. I want to though.” He licked his lips and his eyes rolled upward to look at the sky. A plane was flying by, lights blinking on and off in the infinite blackness around it. “I was right. He has a girlfriend. She’s hardly older than your sister. I fucking hate her.”

“Then why are you going?”

“There’s nothing here,” he said. “There’s nothing. No growing. I’m trapped. Don’t you feel trapped? You live on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere. Everyone knows everyone but I’m your only friend. Don’t you feel like there’s way more than this?”

I shook my head. No, I didn’t. No, there couldn’t be because I didn’t want there to be. I was satisfied with this. I was satisfied with him. My hands twitched at my sides. I needed to hold onto something. I wanted a cigarette. I wanted to be tucked behind a gravestone with my sister’s pipe between my lips and laughter thick on my tongue.

Not caring if my mom was watching, I leaned forward and pressed my lips into Radley’s, tasting cigarettes and strawberries. His fingers touched my cheek, warm and soft. I leaned into them till he slowly pulled away.

“Don’t you remember?” he asked, backing away, slowly going down my driveway. “I want to be infinite.”

-

In the tent, I lie curled up on my side, listening to music and singing and yelling and laughter. It shudders through the ground I lie on. Josh is talking to the girls from the tent across from us. They went to smoke in the woods. I was invited, both girls smiling and coaxing, the soft swells of their breasts touching my arm. I laughed and complained of a headache and sent them on their way.

I’m restless. My legs kick out in front of me in time with the music. There are termites and centipedes running along my tibia. I sit up and crawl out of the tent. I jump up and down and they fall down to skitter through the bones in my feet. I can’t stand still.

It’s dark between the trees. They bend together to block out the stars and moon. My hands fumble over the rough bark of oaks and the softness of birch trees. Ferns touch my legs with the tips of their fingers and I shiver as I step around them, afraid to break their delicate green necks.

There’s the rustle of leaves. A person, an animal? The music is so far away.

“Josh?” My voice is tiny and afraid. Afraid to be alone.

A flash of darkness is to my left. I turn and there’s a shadow running at me, mouth open wide and red and gaping with moon white teeth. My arms come up to shield myself and Josh’s name leaves my lips.

“I don’t know what to do,” the shadow says. Willow tree slim fingers grip onto my shoulders, leaving stinging scratches behind when I shrug them away. The shadow takes shape and it’s a person, a boy, young teen fresh and afraid. He licks his lips. He tastes the fear I smell.

“What?”

“I don’t know what to do. I was… We were… I mean, I was in him and he…” He stutters. “Please. I don’t…” He takes my hand in his and I don’t pull away. Blindly, I follow him, tripping over fallen trees and clumps of wet, green moss. The smell of dirt and rotting leaves fills my nose and then we stop.

We stop and Radley is bowing at the base of a tree. “Who are we?” he asks in between halting, gasping breaths. “Where are we?”

He’s naked in a bed of leaves. Back hunched, he’s pale with vertebrae visible between broken glass sharp shoulder blades. I reach down and touch his sweating skin. It’s dotted with bruises and the maroon circles left behind by sucking mouths. Scarlet smiles of scars crisscross his back, his shoulders, the backs of his arms. My fingers splay across his rib cage, fitting like puzzle pieces. His body jerks and he looks back toward me, eyes wild and black infinite orbs.

“Is the window still open?” he asks, worry widening his eyes further.

I shake my head. “I shut it. It’s okay… It’s okay.” I turn from him to the shadow of the boy behind me. He has his arms crossed over his chest in defense. “What’s he on?”

“I don’t know… I... I mean he’s been… All night. I mean, he’s just been all over all night. All over everyone. I saw him smoking something earlier. I don’t know. We didn’t talk at all. I didn’t ask.” I’m angry at him even though I know it’s not his fault. I turn my back on hm.

“Radley? Can you stand up for me?”

His teeth chatter and he nods, gingerly getting up. I take his hand and guide him past the shadow boy and through the woods. He clings to me, watching his feet.

“Is this a hill?” he asks me, staring down at the sea of leaves. “I can’t find the stairs.”

“It’s not a hill. It’s okay. We’ll just take it slow. It’s okay.” His hand is tiny and fragile in mine. I bring them to my lips and just hold them there, smelling smoke and dirt on them. They smell like the calmness of an empty cemetery on a slow summer night.

We’re just two, too lost boys.

-

The postcard came in the mail the second week of school. I held it and turned it in circles back and forth, staring at the scene of a busy city street on one side and Radley’s scrawled words on the other.

I trudged down the dirt road and to the cemetery, reading it the way there again and again.

Hey. Still alive. There are so many people here. All the guys remind me of you. They make me miss you. Dad and his girlfriend fuck at night and I can hear them. I wonder how they’d feel if I brought someone home – someone that reminds me of you and let them hear us? Anyway. Enjoy being trapped. I’ll let you know when I reach infinity. Write back. – Rad

I never wrote back. Where we normally sat and smoked, I took a lighter and burnt the edge of the postcard and watched it float away, orange embers like the leaves. With the palm of my hand, I put them out.

He never told me when he reached infinity. Sometimes I lay awake at night wondering.

Write back, he requested.

I never did.

-

Josh bites his lip, worrying at it. “You’re not a baby-sitter,” he says. “You don’t need to stay here with him. He’s a big boy. He can take care of himself.” I see the jealousy in his eyes and hear it in his voice. I smile at him.

“Don’t worry about it and don’t be mad. He used to be my friend. I can’t just leave him here.”

Radley has my sleeping bag wrapped around his hunched shoulders and his toes dipped into the river. He’s still naked. His legs glow white in the dark. They’re crossed at the ankles and the river washes his dirt moccasins away. I wait for Josh to sigh and walk away before I pull leaves from Radley’s hair.

He’s silent now, eyes glazed over with his head tilted back. He stares at the sky and I lean backward and do the same. After a moment, he joins me in the grass and turns his head to look at me.

“Are you really you?” he asks me. I nod my head. There’s wetness in the corners of his eyes. “I see you. Every face above me is yours.” He laughs and looks back to the sky. “You’re happy now aren’t you?”

I nod my head. I feel admitting this betrays him. “You’re not?”

A long moment of silence goes by. I’m afraid he’s zoned out again – drifted off. I reach out to touch his hand to make sure he’s still there and the river hasn’t greedily taken him away.

“No.” His hand flips palm up and mine somehow melts against his. I look down and our hands blur and shiver and I realize there are tears in my eyes. I quickly wipe them away and let out a small laugh. I can’t think of anything funny.

“How were things in the city? Did you find your infinity?”

“No. It wasn’t the same. It wasn’t how it was supposed to be.”

“How was it supposed to be?”

“Better.”

He rolls over onto his side and stares at me. “You have a boyfriend now. He doesn’t trust me with you.” I nod my head in agreement. “He probably shouldn’t. Remember the first time we fucked in the graveyard and you started talking about the color purple?”

“Because your lips… They were so red they looked purple.” I never told him that before. Those strawberry lips. He smiles and his smile doesn’t reach his eyes, but it touches my frown. I can’t kiss him back.

“I hate you,” he says. “After all these years, I still hate you.”

My chest hurts and it’s hard to breathe. “Why?”

“You were content. You said I made you feel safe. Do you remember?”

I nod. I remember. I sit up and curl my legs up under me. He rolls onto his stomach with my sleeping bag over him, a black cocoon.

“He makes you feel safe now, doesn’t he?” His words are muffled and millions of miles away.

“Yeah.”

He sighs and stands up, dropping the sleeping bag at my side. I look up to him, a silhouette wearing the sky as a crown. For a long moment he stands and then turns on his heels, heading back to the village of tents and the dull throb of music – the heavy rhythm of an aching bruise. “Hey.” At the edge of the trees, he stops and I look to him, expectant but afraid. “You never returned my postcard.”

I look away. “I was trying to get used to myself. I was trying not to be afraid of being alone and you distracted me.”

“Looks like you managed to do it.”

I think of Josh and smile into the river. “Yeah. Thanks.”

There’s silence except for his footsteps walking away. Infinite silence and it makes my ears hurt.

-

Josh is waiting for me when I crawl into our tent. His eyes are curious when I'd been expecting suspicious. His mouth opens but I silence it with a kiss. My tongue creeps carefully inside and he closes his eyes and curls his arms around me. I’m shaking and feeling five levels of desperate. I touch the button on his jeans with one finger and pull away from him just long enough to whisper, “Hold me. Make me… Make me feel infinite.”