I marched through the tall grass back to my car and drove home.

It was kind of sad how beat I was. I guess after hours of lugging things around and having to divert him from anything damaging I had the right to be. But even with all my efforts he had two full arms of sharpie marks.

People stared him down, many of which I knew, so I had an aching feeling I would be hearing about it later.

And the next morning that suspicion was realized.

"So who was the young man you were with at the mall yesterday?" Dad asked from the kitchen table while I made myself some coffee.

"A friend of Callie's from college." I was already prepared for the question.

"From what I heard he was a freaking weirdo." He said through a mouth full of bacon.

"Well you're the one who always says college makes people weird."

"And now I have my proof," he said, but added "and you're still going."

I chuckled, "Works for me."

"I also heard he's kind of a looker."

"Oh god, no, we have avoided talking like this for eighteen years and were not starting now."

He put his hands up in defense, a fork poking out between two fingers, "Works for me. Maybe you should talk to your mother about him. You need to see her at some point you know."

It my fault for thinking my eighteenth birthday would free me from having to visit that woman outside of major holidays, "Yeah, yeah I'll get around to it."

We ate breakfast together, discussing anything but the previous two topics. He asked about my plans for the day and I told him I was going to hang out with Callie so he wouldn't ask any questions.

"Staying the night?"

"Probably not." I shrugged.

"Well just let me know. Think you'll go running today?"

"Nah," I waved off the idea, "it's too damn hot."

"You got that right." He sighed.

We finished and he headed off to work.

I gathered some of my old twin sheets and the guitar I got back when I thought I was going to be a professional singer. If he could really play he would get more use out of it than I would.

I hiked to his house, the bundled up sheets tucked up under an arm and the guitar slung across my back.

He opened the door and peeked out, smiling when he spotted me, "Good morning!"

"Morning. Did you sleep okay?" I can't imagine how he sleeps out here.

"Not bad, got up early and started messing with some of the stuff."

When I stepped through the doorway I could see the extent of his "Messing with". Boxes and bubble wrap were laying in massive heaps.

"Well at least it looks like you had fun." I kicked an opened box.

"Whoops."

"So where would you like to start?"

"I had some trouble with the air mattress."

I went and sat down in the middle of the rubble, "At least you put the rug down," I said looking for the inflatable mattress, "By the way, is your hair damp?"

"Yeah I actually washed it in a creek just over there." He ran his hand through it, sounding very proud as he nodded his head towards the tree line.

"Didn't the, um, elders or whatever, let you wash your hair?"

"Only during the full moon."

"Of course." I said under my breath. I got to work blowing up the air mattress while he messed around with the set of small shelves.

As I did it I noticed that most if his cuts were nearly healed already under the smeared sharpie.

Actually he didn't seem to have any new looking marks, "so you haven't sinned recently?"

"No I have, I've just been tallying them up, I'm waiting for the right time to do the cuts." But based on the tired look in his eye, he was avoiding it more than waiting for it.

"Yeah, I mean it's probably more effective," I said, trying to sound comforting, "the sharpie lasts a lot longer than the cuts do."

"Yeah that's a good point." He said, peering at the instructions

I hopped he decided to lay off the slicing and dicing. It obviously wasn't good for him.

We worked on our respective projects for a while. I played music from my phone to fill the quiet, and I could hear him trying to hum along.

After the bed was inflated I began wrestling the fitted sheet onto it.

"Where do you want this?" I asked.

He looked up, long tendrils of dark brown hair clinging to his neck in the heat, "Just over there."

I put it along the wall with the recliner. Picking up the old blanket I'd left, which was squished into the crevices of the recliner, I folded it neatly on the end of the bed to give it an air of tidiness.

"How's the shelf coming along?"

"Not too shabby." He grunted, locking a piece of wood into place.

I began picking up the trash and piling it in the kitchen. My eyes wondered to the spot where is body used to lay. He must have cleaned the remaining trash because the only remnant was a large stain on the peeling floor.

A shiver ran through me, but as I turned around to the boy with his legs spread eagle on the floor messing with the shelf, I felt oddly comforted.

The scary body I'd found didn't exist anymore. Instead there was just a gawky boy with marker all over him, humming along to a sweet summery song. It made a lot of the scary things in the world seem just as silly.

Then something else caught my eye.

"Hey, you better be careful with the food, you've got some serious ant activity going on over here." I said, admiring the row of black specks making their way across the floor in the kitchen.

He got up and came into the kitchen to investigate. When he saw that I was right he went over to the bag of food we'd gotten yesterday and pulled out a large pouch of jerky.

After tearing the top off with his teeth he walked back and knelt down next to the ants. Digging around in the bag he pulled out a particularly dry piece and crumbled it over them.

"Well that's definitely not going to help."

"Why wouldn't it help them?" He looked up at me confused.

I raised an eyebrow, "I mean help you, silly. If you feed them they'll come back."

"They have as much of a reason to be here as me," he grinned, "I'd think you would know more than most, that sometimes things just need someone to care a little bit."

I blushed, and then snatched the bag of jerky from his hands, "Well we might as well eat this now that you've opened it."

Bolting back to the main room I sat back down on the rug and tore into a piece of jerky.

I noticed my phones battery getting low so I powered it off.

"How on earth will we entertain ourselves now?" I exclaimed in mock despair.

He went back over to the shopping bags and pulled out one of the books we'd gotten. Being that there was no electricity I'd insisted on him buying a few half price books to kill time and catch up on his vocabulary.

"Here," he handed it to me, "read it to me."

"I don't want to leave you doing all the work." I said, refusing to reach out and take it.

"No worries, I'm not exactly a pro at modern language, but if the book doesn't throw me maybe we'll switch off."

So we sat like that for hours, eating teriyaki flavored jerky as I read and he milled around building and cleaning. He occasionally interrupted me to ask what things like jump ropes and debit cards were. Most of which were surprisingly hard to explain, but he didn't argue with any of my vague or confusing descriptions, he just kept on working.

It was strangely comfortable sitting there in the boiling heat, in a rundown shack that now smelled strongly of air freshener, with my back pressed against the recliner. My legs were crossed in front of me, thighs sticking together in the heat, which I hated. I hated being hot and sweaty. But regardless of it, I was pretty happy.

Until I checked the time.

"Shit!" I yelped, jumping up and looking out the window at the slowly dying light.

"What?" He asked, startled.

"Oh this is bad."

"What is?"

I turned away from the window and put my hand on my forehead, "My dad's home from work now."

"So?"

"He thinks I'm with my friend, and if I get home without him hearing a car in the driveway he's going to get suspicious." I'd had a few embarrassing incidents trying to sneak out of the house to prove it.

"Well just tell him you were running or something."

I hated past me, "I told him I wasn't going to."

He stood up, "We'll figure it out, I promise."

But I could tell he didn't have any ideas, and I knew I would have to spend the night in the shack.

**********

Cover art by Anyone_Can_Write