He turned around, walking the long block back home. As if sensing his mood, Gate threw itself open, the hinges protesting loudly in the still afternoon. Vines didn’t reach out to greet him this time; no tendrils wrapped themselves around his arms. Nothing breezed gently over the ends of his hair. Instead everything in the yard curled back in on themselves, the leaves trembling as if the wind had rushed in after him.
His footsteps thundered up the walkway, his eyes trained on the open front door. Gavin wondered if the entire house was waiting, on edge, for him to storm inside. It had to know what his reaction would be, that he’d be furious. If anyone else had stumbled on them, he and Delilah would have looked like any other pair of teenagers making out in a park.
But what House had done was crazy. Trees didn’t wrap themselves around people; branches didn’t twist into a person’s clothes like the hands of some jealous girlfriend. Someone could have walked by and seen the branches up his shirt, forming a gloomy cave over them, and then what? How would that look? Someone would have found out.
Things had been fine with House when he’d left this morning—quiet. Just like they had been the last few days. And now that he thought about it, maybe things had been too quiet.
Like it had been waiting. Plotting until he’d left to meet Delilah.
In a rush, he took the steps two at a time, harder than he’d usually walk anywhere in House. Even when angry, he never stomped; it felt disrespectful. He never slammed drawers or dragged chairs across the floor, always careful of his feet or his voice. But right then, he didn’t care. He wanted to be mad. It felt good to be mad. He was going to scream and yell and put a stop to this insanity before something bad really happened. He was suddenly worried that House could hear him in the music room or anywhere and may have been punishing him for more than just having a girlfriend. He knew it was impossible, but his paranoid brain seemed intent on replaying every conversation and thought he’d had over the last few weeks.
He stepped into the foyer and listened; it was his turn to wait now. Gavin kept his gaze on the floor, on the same rug that had covered the entryway for as long as he could remember. He’d raced Matchbox cars here, read countless books, and built Lego skyscrapers so tall he’d needed a chair to stand on. The soft beige and blue pile was normally a comfort—the pattern so familiar he could sketch it by memory—but it felt like a stranger in this moment. Everything did.
Gavin could still remember every one of those times he played by himself while House looked on. He never asked about the voices he could hear outside, the sound of laughter coming from kids who were probably his age. Sometimes he would see them through a window as they rode their bikes past Front Gate, or find a ball that had rolled from a neighboring house and stopped at the curb.
Once he’d seen a group of kids in a yard on his walk home. Over dinner he talked about what they were doing, how they were playing, and the next day after school, a trampoline had appeared in the backyard, already assembled and standing in the dewy grass. He’d stepped outside, blinking into the slanting light, positive he must be imagining it. Was it his birthday? A holiday he’d forgotten? He didn’t think so.
Screen Door had given him a little push, nudging him down the steps and out into the yard, and Gavin realized the trampoline was for him. A gift. House had given him a present for no other reason than it wanted to see him happy.