Chapter Two

In the last few days of their winter break, Chris and Jonathan found themselves running out of things to be entertained by. It was too cold outside to do much of anything, at least for them, and movies became dull after the first five views. Ever since Jonathan had turned eight years old, every single board game in the house was missing at least half of the pieces, if not mostly all of them.

But playing video games never grew old. They stowed themselves away in Jonathan's room all of Wednesday and most of Thursday. Racing games, football games, and even one wrestling game, which Jonathan insisted was a gift from his grandmother. Chris rolled his eyes, then made a joke about men rolling around on the floor together. Jonathan laughed, but he was a little apprehensive about it.

“We're gonna have to find something better to do tomorrow, I think,” Jonathan said after beating Chris for the third time in a row on one of the tracks in the racing game. “I never thought I'd say this, but I don't know if I can handle playing games anymore.”

“Yeah... Oh! But tomorrow night you're gonna have to entertain yourself, because I,” Chris pointed to himself, “have a date.”

“Seriously? Why didn't you say anything earlier? And who?”

Chris grinned so widely that Jonathan was frightened a little. “James.”

“Well, why the hell didn't you say anything earlier?” Jonathan asked again. “Geez, with the way you drool over him I'd have thought you'd have plastered it on a billboard or something.”

Chris shrugged. “I don't know, I just... Hm, I have to keep reminding myself that he asked me- and that's another thing! He asked me, which is insanity and so much more unbelievable.”

“I don't think it's unbelievable,” Jonathan sincerely replied, and Chris shot him a briefly bewildered look. “Listen, I'm happy for you. On the other hand, I think since you waited so long to tell me, you now have to help me think of what to do tomorrow night when I'm all by my lonesome.”

“You could, um... write a book.” Chris furrowed his eyebrows and stared at some unseen obstruction in the middle of the room. “That's a ridiculous idea.”

“It's at least a start.”

“What would you write about?” Chris interestedly asked, twisting around in his bean-bag chair and crossing his legs. Jonny paused for a while, trying to think, but came up short in the end.

“No clue,” he sighed. “OK, next idea.”

“Tap dancing.” Chris immediately said, surprising even himself with his quick response. Then he once again gave a questioning look to the monster. “I don't think you're going to get any good ideas any time soon.”

“I don't think so, either,” Jonathan laughed. He stretched his legs out and over the edge of his bed, lightly gripping his mattress. “Is there anything for us to do in your room? Even sitting, whatever, I'm just tired of being in here.”

“Hmm...” Chris stood up and paced around the bean-bag chair for a bit. Jonathan patiently observed his movements. Then Chris stopped and snapped his fingers. “Ah!”

Without any further explanation, he left the room, and Jonathan decided to follow him. Down the hallway they traveled, until they reached Chris's room at the end. Jonathan was always surprised at how clean Chris kept his room, even though there was really nothing surprising about it. Jonathan still kept his room clean without constantly being forced to, he didn't really see how it should be different for Chris.

In any case, Jonathan had little time for pondering; within seconds of entering the room he was hit with a rather large piece of fabric. He caught it just in time and realized it was a plain white sheet. After making this ascertainment, he looked up to find Chris holding a similar sheet and smiling vaguely.

“Can you explain this to me?” Jonathan asked as he held the sheet up.

“Jay,” Chris began in a most serious tone, “this is going to sound... completely and utterly wacko, but... well, something I've always wanted to do... You see, since I'm the youngest, my brothers were all older- duh- and since they were older, they never wanted to do anything with me. And with my parents being the boring, stiff people they are, I never really got to do much of the fun little kid stuff that... well, little kids do. You know?”

“And how does this tie in with the sheet?”

“One of the things I've always wanted to do was...” Chris lowered his head and sheepishly continued, “build a fort.” Chris briefly glanced at Jonny a few times, but he kept his head down. “Is that stupid?”

“I don't think that's stupid at all,” Jonathan excitedly replied. “In fact, I think it's kinda cool. I never really did much of that stuff either, since I don't have any siblings, and Devon was never into stuff like this. He always wanted to play cops and robbers.”

“Cops and robbers?” Chris laughed. “That sounds brilliant, can we play that too?”

“Listen, you're laughing now, but if you want to, I would seriously consider it.” Jonny looked down at the sheet of his hands and thought for a moment. “We need chairs.”

Chris froze for a second, temporarily in disbelief that Jonathan was going along with the whole thing. He quickly snapped out of it, though, and brightly exclaimed, “Right!” He swooped past Jonathan and down the hall. When he returned a few minutes later, his arms were clad with even more sheets.

“Those aren't chairs,” Jonathan plainly stated.

“I know, we're going downstairs,” Chris replied. “Come on.”

Chris turned and left again, and Jonathan grabbed the sheet he'd thrown on Chris's bed then exited the room. In the kitchen he once again met up with Chris, who had taken the liberty of pushing the table up against the far wall and positioning the leftover chairs in various locations around the room.

“Wow... you work pretty quickly,” Jonathan said, announcing his presence to Chris.

“I'm a man on a mission, Jay.” Chris didn't stop, he didn't even look up; the path he was set on was a thousand times more important that truly acknowledging Jonathan. “I don't slow down for anything.”

“Do you need some help?”

“That would be greatly appreciated, yes. Thank you.” Chris moved the last chair into position and walked over to the pile of sheets on the table. Jonny was soon next to him, and together they stretched out one of the sheets over four of the chairs. “Ahh, looking good already!” Chris remarked as he stepped back and admired their progress.

It only took a few more minutes for them to spread out the other sheets over the rest of the chairs, though it would have taken significantly less time if Jonathan hadn't bumped into and knocked over a chair halfway through their task, causing them to basically start over. But it wasn't so hard for them to redo their past work, and there were only a total of six chairs that needed to be covered, thus they finished in a relatively decent amount of time.

“Chris,” Jonny cooed as they slid underneath the newly built fort. “We are so awesome at making forts.”

There wasn't much room for them to fit, but they managed. Jonathan folded his legs against his chest, while Chris sat cross-legged beside him.

“We certainly are. I can't believe it's taken me sixteen years to do this.” He moved his head around and admired the fabric architecture for a while, then suddenly his eyes lit up and he turned to Jonathan. “Oh man, next time Ty comes over I am so doing this again!”

“Aw, that's a great idea,” Jonathan politely smiled. “I'm sure he'd love it... you know, even though he's too young to really do much of anything.”

“Hey, it will be a great father-son bonding experience,” Chris said, completely making it up as he went. “And you can join, too, if you want.”

“Well, thank you for the invite, but I don't think I'll be joining you. This was fun, sure, but I think once is enough for me.”

“Oh, Jay, you're such a boring person.” Chris stuck his tongue out when Jonathan opened his mouth in shock. Jonathan resisted the urge to roll his eyes, when suddenly Chris shot up into the air and flung his arms out, sending the sheets flying across the room, except for the one that landed on Jonathan's head. He gave a satisfied sigh and said, “Yeah. Good times.”

“Great,” Jonathan said through the sheet with faux eagerness, “now we get to look for something else to do.”

“Well, Jay, we can start by cleaning up.” Chris grabbed a handful of the sheet and freed Jonathan of his temporary prison. “I wonder what your mum would think if she knew we did this?”

Jonathan stood up and began to move the nearest chair out of the way to make room for the table. “She'd probably think we'd gone mad.”

“I think we may have,” Chris voiced. He joined Jonathan in the quest to return the kitchen back to its former state, and once they were finished they collapsed in the living room and began to formulate ideas for other entertainment.

They ended up silently staring into space for a good twenty minutes or so. Jonny nearly dozed off during that time, but Chris was wide awake, his mind racing with thoughts of the next evening and his body tingling with nervous anticipation.

What would he wear? What could he wear? Mostly he only owned plain t-shirts, nothing really fancy. He'd left all that stuff behind when he moved in with Jonathan and Penny. Then there was the question of what to do with his mop of hair. He couldn't keep it, certainly, because it was just too much hair. And maybe, by some ridiculous set of standards, that would be the deciding factor for James.

“Jay, wake up,” Chris urged as he shook Jonathan's arm. Jonathan hadn't actually been asleep, but if he had been, Chris's rough movements would have more than woken him up.

“What is it?” Jonathan groggily replied.

“I need your help!”

“With what?” Chris pointed one of his slender fingers at the curls laying on his scalp. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”

“Could you, like, help me cut my hair?” Chris asked with big, pleading eyes. “Please, Jay? Please?”

Jonathan rolled his eyes, but ultimately agreed. He had to search for ten minutes in the bathroom before he finally found the scissors, though. Once he did, he told Chris to stand over the sink, but Chris didn't think that was such a good idea.

“It'll all get stuck in the drain,” he reasoned, “and there is quite a lot of it to get stuck, too.”

“Fine, then what do you suggest we do?” Chris swirled his eyes around the room for a while, looking for some sort of idea. He seemed briefly to find one in the general direction of the trash can, but quickly shook his head.

“Maybe I should just leave it,” he sighed. “Do you think James will care?”

Jonathan went to move his hand and place it on Chris's shoulder, but he stopped himself from doing so, as it would have resulted in Chris being stabbed by the scissors. He chose instead to lift his other hand and rest it reassuringly on Chris. “Chris, if he asked you out when your hair looked like this, I don't think he minds it.”

Chris crinkled his nose and twisted his mouth to the side. “What if he changes his mind?”

“Then do you really want to be with someone who'll leave you because your hair is too much?”

“I guess not,” Chris quietly replied, his head lowered and eyes pointed at the ground. He felt some movement of air, but didn't bother to look up as Jonathan reached out and grabbed a small chunk of Chris's hair. Moments later, the hair was being shoved into Chris's face, held up by Jonathan's hand.

“Come on, then, you very well can't go out missing a big lock, can you?” Jonathan said. Chris looked up at him with hopeful and thankful eyes and smiled. “But, well... you know, maybe he won't like you without all that hair.”

Chris's face immediately fell, the smile wiped off as quickly as if some windshield wiper had glided over his face. “Oh, I never thought about that,” he said in a gravely voice.

“And now it's too late,” Jonathan unhelpfully added. He rubbed his fingers together, Chris's hair still between them, and pondered what to do next. He decided just to toss it into the trash, and the trash can seemed satisfied with that. It was looking a little hungry for garbage.

“Yeah...” Chris took a slow and deep breath, and Jonathan wasn't sure for a moment if he was going to ever stop inhaling and just let the damn air out. But he did soon enough, then continued, “Oh, well. At least... I don't know. Hmm, I guess at least it'll be easier to maintain.”

“That's the spirit!” Jonathan exclaimed, clapping Chris on the back with his sans-scissors hand.

Chris smiled wistfully and waved a hand over his head. “Let's get the rest of it off, then.”

Ten minutes later, Chris looked like an entirely new person. Jonathan ran a hand through Chris's now one inch-long hair to make sure he'd gotten all the loose strands out. Then Chris ran up to the mirror and turned his head to each side, admiring the fine work Jonathan had done.

Silent at first, he spun around and threw himself at Jonathan, wrapping him into a tight embrace. “Oh, thank you so much, Jay!!”

Jonathan returned the hug and said, “Ah, you're welcome. I could be a barber, don't you think?”

“You would make a fantastic barber, my coiffeur man,” Chris said into Jonathan's ear. “Do you think James will like it?”

“If he doesn't, he's crazy. I did an amazing job.”

Chris backed away a little and stared at Jonathan, smiling as a wave of excitement rushed over him. He slowly brought his arms back to his side and let out a nervous laugh. “Is it tomorrow night yet?”

“Soon enough,” Jonathan replied.

“I'm holding you to that,” Chris warned, wagging a finger at Jonathan. There were a few long seconds of silence proceeding, then Chris fidgeted a little and said, “I think I'm gonna go back to my room now.”

“Would you mind if I joined you?” Jonathan asked. “There's not much else to do.”

Chris waited a moment before answering, looking a little taken aback and conflicted. But in the end he agreed, and the pair made their way into Chris's room for the second time within a few hours. Chris cautiously sat down on his bed after closing the door behind them.

“There's not really much to do in here,” Chris said as he noticed Jonathan having a look around.

“I see that,” Jonathan replied. “What do you do in here? You seem to be up here quite a lot.”

“Um...” Chris thoughtfully paused. He ran his eyes over his walls for a bit, then gestured to one of them. “I just kinda sit here... and read.”

Jonathan turned his head to see the wall Chris had referenced. It was almost completely blocked by an oversized bookshelf, which was crammed with numerous books. Jonathan's eyes involuntarily widened and his jaw even dropped a little.

“That's a lot of books,” he quietly remarked. To himself he wondered how he could have never noticed the enormous shelves before, considering that he'd been in Chris's room quite a number of times in the past.

“Yeah... I like to read,” Chris said in an almost ashamed tone.

“How come you never mentioned it before? You have, like, a million books, geez.” Jonathan stood over by the bookshelf and scanned the titles. There were so many there, some that he'd actually read, but most he had never even heard of before. “I would say that I'd let you borrow some of mine, but it looks like you already have all the ones I own.”

“It is a pretty big collection, yeah. And... I don't know,” he shrugged, “I guess I just never really felt the need to mention it.”

“Well, now I know what I can get you for your birthday.” Jonathan turned away from the shelf and headed towards Chris's bed. He sat down on the edge and watched as Chris stared longingly at his nightstand. “Is something wrong?”

“Huh?” Chris quickly looked up at Jonathan, his eyes appearing rather sad and empty. “Oh, no... everything's OK. I'm just... a little nervous still, I think, for tomorrow.”

“Oh. Well, don't be, you'll do fine.” Jonathan smiled reassuringly, and even though Chris acted like it helped, he still looked like he was missing something. But Jonathan thought he figured it out once Chris spoke again.

“Those aren't even all the books I own,” he muttered. “I have more in my locker at school, I think some are under my bed...” His voice grew even softer as he continued, “and the ones I left at... my parent's house.”

“Wow. That's impressive.”

Chris gave an unenthusiastic shrug. “It's something to pass the time.” He looked down at his hands and frowned. Jonathan felt extremely sympathetic, but he wasn't sure what he could say, if there even was anything for him to say. But he wanted to somehow assure Chris that not everything in life was bad, so he settled on moving over to Chris and giving him a warm hug. Chris wasn't expecting it, but he gladly accepted Jonathan's kind gesture, even though he found that there was a tiny portion of him that wished Jonathan wouldn't act like he was part of Chris's family now.