After a few weeks, him and Lance went outside to hike in the hills around the center. It felt good, after being stuck inside all those beige rooms. It was kinda crazy and Damon wasn’t about to admit it out loud, but by that point Lance was his boy. He liked the way Lance laughed big and loud when Damon said something funny, how Lance leaned back in his chair and rubbed his palm over his shiny bald head like he was tryna get a genie to pop out. He liked how Lance’s voice was this low, rumbly drawl that vibrated over the airwaves to Damon and made him chill. How he was built like a NFL lineman but didn’t need to talk about it. How he didn’t give a fuck if Damon messed with the little office shit on his desk, the paper clips or staples or whatever that those teachers were always so worried about. And when he asked Damon questions, he actually cared to listen to the answers.
They hiked along a trail that humped over round hills covered with tall yellow grass. Trees popped up along the edges of the hills, and beyond them a few thin clouds stretched over the San Francisco Bay. The pale blue sky was everywhere. It made him squint and bow his head. His blue nylon basketball shorts hung past his knees and the sun hit the brown-blond hairs on his shins and made them shine. As he stomped down the trail of packed brown dirt, dry grasses slapped his legs. The Timberland boots Lance had loaned him laced up to his ankles and made his feet look bigger than they were and basically he was cool with that. There were no girls there, anyway, so it didn’t really matter how he looked.
When the trail narrowed, Lance told Damon to go ahead. As they walked, the air was so quiet he could hear Lance breathing behind him. Their feet beat a rhythm on the dirt. Damon’s thumb twitched for his iPhone, but his iPhone wasn’t there.
Birds talked to each other over the sky and the wind rustled all the dried-up spears of yellow grass and whispered through the leaves and branches of the green trees ahead. Every now and then something invisible shivered the grass—a snake or a mouse or whatever. The hills looked all meadow-like and still up on the surface, but there was all kinds of shit going on underneath, down in the dirt and the roots, that most people never bothered to know.
All that quiet was starting to fuck with his head. “Man, I’m not built for this exercise shit. Think it’s time for some Doritos,” he said, glancing back to grin at his boy.
Lance smiled but stayed quiet, letting Damon know to do the same. So Damon cracked his knuckles and kept going. He was hot and sweaty now, T-shirt sticking to his chest, sweat in his eyebrows and dripping down the back of his bare neck, where the glossy tag of his shirt flooded and became a cool square pressing on his skin. The muscles of his legs and ass were burning. His feet ached in the arches. His mind buzzed with boredom. In a minute, this endless trail and these invisible bugs humming in his ears and these little grasses swatting his legs were going to start pissing him off.
Lance had told him once that when he felt like this, he should try to pay attention to his own breath and, like, watch it travel in and out of his body. At first Damon had laughed at this idea, like how did you watch breath that was invisible, but Lance had said, Just use your brain, picture it—like smoke. Damon had smirked at the smoke part but Lance was dead serious on this. Like red-hot smoke going out, cool blue smoke coming in. Hold it in your lungs. Ride it. Watch it. Now let it go. So now, on the trail, Damon tried it. Watched the smoke suck into his nostrils and lungs, caught it there, held it, then watched the smoke stream slowly out.
He kept on walking and watching his breath. And then he was ready to talk.
What he told Lance—which he’d never fully told anyone else—was the truth about what his father did to him.
Damon’s dad was a big shot. Big like Damon, with light blue eyes and light brown eyebrows and light brown hair cropped close to his head. A big-time corporate defense lawyer in San Francisco. He gave thousands of dollars to the school foundations and fire and police groups every year, and went to the charity auctions and bought paintings and spa packages and shit, and got his name printed up on all the little flyers. He was loud and funny and throwing bills and opinions all over the place, and everybody loved him or was scared of him or both.
The last time it happened was the night before Damon got arrested for Nick’s party.
When school got out that afternoon, Damon drove by 7-Eleven for a couple bags of Cheetos and Rips and some ninety-nine-cent AriZona Iced Teas. Then he went home, which was a mini-mansion tucked between the freeway and a hill where people let their horses graze. It was early, and his parents were both at work. So he dropped his backpack on the floor and sat down on the leather couch in the great room, emptied his Sevvies bag on the coffee table. He’d opened one of the Cheetos in the car and it was already down to Day-Glo dust. There was dust on his fingers too that he licked off and wiped on the couch. He sat back with his legs spread wide, stayed like that for a minute and ate, sprawled out, enjoying all the space.