The door opened with a treacherous little creak. His dad was standing framed in the doorway, still and startled. Elliot dropped his spoon.
There was no way it looked innocent. His dad was watching his sixteen-year-old son with a twenty-year-old tattooed guy. Neither of them were wearing shirts. They had clearly been just about to make out. Everything was terrible.
“I can explain this,” said Elliot.
“I’m gonna go,” said Jase.
He fled. Elliot glared at him for this treachery but had to admit that he would have liked to flee too.
“Do you want a terrible pancake?” he asked his father.
“No,” said his dad, but he came over and sat at the kitchen table instead of leaving the room, which was such unusual behavior that it terrified Elliot.
He could not help but wonder if he was going to get kicked out of his house, and then he thought that he would have to go back to the Borderlands. He couldn’t go live with Jase, that would be insane and he didn’t even know if Jase would want him to, and he wasn’t trained for anything in this world.
It was almost a relief, having the decision made for him.
“I didn’t think . . .,” his dad said slowly. “That you were . . . like that.”
It was news to Elliot that his dad thought he was like anything. Had he noticed the photo of Serene, listened to the few things Elliot let drop? Elliot found himself staring at his father, feeling as if he were trying to glean clues about a complete stranger. His father was looking the same way at him, but with an added distance: as if he might look away, bored, at any time.
“I like girls too,” said Elliot. “But Jason’s my boyfriend.”
“That’s not what I meant,” his dad said. “I meant . . . how you were, with the singing. You looked . . . happy.”
Elliot stared at the spoon on the floor. “Did you think I was never happy?”
It was possible that his father had never seen him happy before, had thought of him as nothing but a bitter-eyed, bitter-tongued ghost child among all the ghosts of his memories.
“I don’t know,” said his father. “I never thought about it, I suppose.”
“Great,” said Elliot. “That’s just great.”
“I don’t care about that person being a man,” his father told him. “That doesn’t matter to me.”
“What does matter to you?” Elliot asked. His dad didn’t answer, and Elliot picked the spoon up off the floor. “Listen,” he said roughly. “I’m thinking about not going back to school this year. I mean—I could go to the school here. It might be better for me, to stay here, to live a—a more ordinary life. The other school’s pretty intense. I’m not sure about this, but I was thinking about it. What do you think?”
He looked over at his father. His father wasn’t looking at him. He was looking at something Elliot couldn’t see.
“I think you’ll go back,” said his father, at last.
He stared off into space for a while longer, then got up and walked away. Elliot poured his pancake batter down the sink.
An ordinary parent would have been more trouble, he thought vaguely, remembering Serene’s mother lecturing her. He would have had to answer questions: about how they met, if they cared about each other, what the age difference was. A real parent would have needed to know Elliot was not in a bad situation.
Elliot did not even know why he was surprised. Elliot had been in bad situations before. He remembered being out playing when he was a little too old for a babysitter and yet a little too young to be left alone for the long stretches of time he was left alone for, and breaking his wrist. Dad had come home and found Elliot white-faced and clutching his wrist on the stairs, and driven him to the hospital, and paid for Elliot’s care. He’d done all the right things. He just hadn’t said anything: asked Elliot what had happened, scolded Elliot for putting himself in danger. He hadn’t cared.
Now he’d accepted that Elliot had a boyfriend, Elliot hadn’t been punished or hurt, hadn’t been subjected to the cruel unfairness of Jason’s Uncle Joe. But Elliot knew Joe loved Jason: knew Joe had liked Elliot, more than Elliot’s own dad had ever liked him.
Elliot had lost count of all the ways that people could betray you, out of love or indifference. He didn’t know which was the worst way to be betrayed. He sat down in a kitchen chair, put his head in his hands, and felt sick.
He knew one thing. His father thought he was going back, so he was staying.
Elliot stayed. The day he was meant to go back, he did not go.
He leaped up and packed his bag to go halfway through the day, then forced himself to unpack. He went and leaned against the window, looking out on buildings like strange square traps and the glaring eyes of electric lights, and he thought about never seeing mermaids and never writing all the peace treaties he’d dreamed of. Then he reminded himself of a life without computers, without electricity, without college, a life where he would be absolutely trapped. He was not going to choose something so stupid.
He crossed over to the mirror, picked up the picture of Luke and Serene, and said: “You don’t even want me there, you’ll be much happier without me,” because that had always been true of Luke and it was true now of Serene too, Serene who didn’t love him and didn’t want to deal with the awkwardness and inconvenience of his love. “It’s better this way,” said Elliot. “And if I came back—you’re probably both going to die. I’d be stranded and you’d be dead.”
They were soldiers. This way, Elliot would never know if they died.
He put the photo down. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “You’re not going to die. I don’t know why I said that.”
If he stayed here, he would not be forced to worry about his friends being killed. He would be a normal kid in school, with a real life ahead of him, and with somebody who wanted him there. This was the right choice.
He went over to Jase’s, but Jase was not there. Alice was, though, and they played video games for a couple of hours until Elliot felt less like he was about to explode out of his own skin and run for the Border.
“You okay?” Alice asked. “Did you and Jase have a fight?”
“No, nothing like that,” said Elliot.
He answered quickly because it was true, but Alice clearly didn’t believe him. “You’re a lot to handle.”
“I know,” Elliot said, nettled. “Jase doesn’t seem to mind all that much.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Alice looked wary, as if she did not want her roommate’s boyfriend having a tantrum in her direction. Elliot leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “I have to go. Thanks for being kind to me.”
The next day, he called up the local school and pretended to be his dad so he could get information on enrolling. He tried to work out which of his classes to catch up on.