He heard his mom take in a little breath. "You mean a fight-fight or an argument?"

"An argument," Kyle clarified.

"Do you want to talk about it?" his mom asked.

"No. It's about a girl. I don't want to talk about it."

"Okay ... wel ... you and Jason both are stil young. You're both growing. You're both changing." That wasn't what Kyle wanted to hear.

"Have you taken some time apart, like I suggested?"

"Yeah," Kyle said, thinking about having left the club for a walk. And look what had happened. Instead of helping, this conversation was only adding to his anxiety.

"Look, I've got to go," he told her.

"Wel, just remember, you're both having new experiences that might change you and your relationship."

"Mom, I've realy got to go, okay?"

"Okay, honey. I love you."

"Love you, too." He hung up and returned outside.

Nelson was finishing his cigarette. Jason was waiting beside him. Kyle asked Nelson for the keys and crossed the parking lot to the car, even though it was broiling.

He turned on the engine and cranked the AC ful blast. A moment later Jason climbed in. Kyle didn't look over at him. They both sat silent, listening to the whir of the air-conditioning til Jason said, "I'm sorry, Kyle. I made a mistake, okay?"

Kyle squinted his eyes at him, refusing to give in. "I need to be able to trust you, Jason."

"You don't trust me?"

"How can I after last night? How do I know you realy want to be with me?"

Jason gave a shrug. "I'm here, aren't I?"

Kyle shook his head, unconvinced.

"Do you want to break up?" Jason asked. "Is that it?"

Kyle stared at Jason, stunned. As angry as he'd gotten, the thought of breaking up had never entered his mind.

"No, I don't want to break up!" A shudder ran down his spine. "Do you want to break up?"

"No." Jason shook his head.

Kyle probed into those deep brown eyes that held such power to both anger and move him. He thought about what his mom had said about being young and changing. And he wondered: Could Jason and he ever possibly make it to twenty years?

chapter 26.

At first Jason had been a little wary about the older guys they'd met at the Half-Way Cafe. He worried they'd be like some of the guys at that bar in New Orleans -checking out Kyle and him as if wanting something. But in fact they'd been just the opposite-they seemed to want the best for the three boys. It had been realy nice of them to buy them lunch and to share their experience.

It amazed Jason that the guys had been together twenty years. It made him feel a lot more hopeful about Kyle and him, especialy after the whole kissing Leah thing.

On one hand he thought Kyle was being unfair for not giving him more credit for walking away from Leah. But he also wished he could somehow convey to Kyle how much he regretted having let Leah kiss him.

He wanted to buy Kyle an apology gift. He'd noticed at the cafe counter that they sold packs of Mexican jumping beans. They looked like they'd make a cool present.

But Kyle held al their cash. He might ask Jason what he wanted the money for. That would ruin the whole sense of a gift. Maybe giving Kyle al the money hadn't been such a good idea. But now didn't seem like the best time to ask for it back.

As they turned back onto I-10, Jason was relieved that at least Kyle didn't want to break up, but it bothered him that Kyle had said he didn't trust him.

Mile after empty desert mile whisked by, and Jason recaled what the two older guys at the cafe had claimed as their secret to staying together: Trust.

Communication ...

"Hey!" He glanced over at the speedometer and saw that Nelson was going ninety. "Take it easy, man!" Kyle leaned forward across the seat. "Are you crazy? Slow down!"

"Chilax, there aren't any cops around. I want to see how fast we can go."

"Not with me in the car," Kyle said firmly.

Nelson took his foot off the pedal. "Yes, Mommy."

Another boring half hour passed before Kyle said, "This is our exit coming up."

They turned north onto US 285, the two-lane highway headed toward Carlsbad. That road was even more monotonous. Out of boredom Jason decided to clock how much time passed before they saw another car.

Fifteen minutes went by. They stil hadn't encountered another car when Nelson slowed and puled onto the shoulder, announcing, "I need to pee." Jason scanned the desolate landscape. There wasn't a building in sight-only scrub, rocks, and sand. "Can't you wait?"

"I vant to pee au naturelle," Nelson replied, coasting to a stop.

"Leave the engine running," Jason told him, "so Kyle and I won't roast."

From inside the air-conditioned car, Jason watched Nelson hike among scrub, cactus, and yucca plants to the top of a smal ridge, where the whole world could see him-if there had been anyone else around. Jason looked down the shimmering hot highway: not a car in sight.

"He's shouting something," Kyle said and roled down his window.

"Woo-hoo!" Nelson yeled in the distance as he sprayed a stream from his shorts, back and forth across the desert. "It's fabulous!"

"He's so weird," Jason said.

After a moment Nelson stopped peeing. He just stood there with his shorts hanging off his butt. Jason roled down his window and shouted, "Hurry up!" Nelson turned to face the car, but rather than walk toward it, he began swinging his hips from side to side, letting his shorts drop and tugging off his T-shirt.

"What the hel's he doing?" Jason turned to Kyle.

Kyle stared blankly out the window. "I think ... he's stripping."

Atop the dune, Nelson kicked off his khaki shorts, peeled off his underwear, and began jumping up and down, stark naked except for his sandals.

Jason blinked, incredulous, as Nelson spun in circles, waving his arms and everything else, shouting and whooping.

Kyle swung open the car door. "Nelson!" he shouted, climbing out. "Are you crazy? There are snakes out there!"

"Only mine!" Nelson laughed, shaking it at Kyle. "Woo-hoo!" He ran in zigzags down the dune, hopping over rocks, yeling, "Try it, it's amaaaaazing!" Jason climbed out of the car, shaking his head in disbelief. Just when he thought the guy couldn't possibly get any weirder ...

Nelson ran up to the car, panting, and grabbed Kyle's hand. "Come on, guys! Cut loose! Jason, let yourself go!"

"Nelson!" Kyle puled his hand away. "Would you please put your clothes back on?"

"Car's coming," Jason said.

But instead of scrambling to cover up, Nelson ran to the road's edge, waving, dancing, and caling, "Yoo-hoo!" The car horn blared as it raced past. In the backseat, a young boy pressed his face against the window, wide-eyed and mouth agape, while the driver, a middle-aged woman in curlers, angrily punched the horn.

That would've been just like my dad, Jason thought, if I'd ever pulled a stunt like this. His old man had always squelched any show of spontaneous letting go on Jason's part.

After the car had passed, Kyle asked, "Can we go now?"

Nelson stood naked, stretching his arms toward the radiant afternoon sun. "You guys don't know what you're missing."

"Dude, put your clothes on," Jason said. He'd never realy paid attention to Nelson's body before. Now, seeing him naked, he couldn't help notice. The guy actualy had quite a nice little body.

Quickly Jason climbed back into the car. This entire trip was making him way too horny.

The sun was already low in the sky when the boys crossed the state line into New Mexico. Soon after, they arrived in Carlsbad.

"We're going to miss seeing the bats fly out of the caverns," Kyle said disappointedly, as Nelson drove from one campground to another trying to find a site.

Unfortunately, al were filed except for the Fam-E-Lee Values Campground, which advertised GOOD GLEAN FUN.

Inside the office Nelson asked the desk clerk, "Do you have sites that have good dirty fun?" The salow-faced woman stared at Nelson's pink hair, her lips unsmiling. "This is a family campground," she said flatly.

"We're family." Nelson smiled cheerily.

The woman handed each of the boys a page of rules. "No loud music. No alcohol. No drugs. If we get any complaints, you're out of here. Understand? Sign at the bottom and pay in advance. We have one site left."

"Isn't she a model of joy?" Nelson remarked as they bounced over one speed bump after another, past RVs and campers, squinting into the afternoon sun.

Their site waited at the very end of the sun-baked road, backed by a barbed wire fence that kept out the vast desert stretching beyond. One side of the site bordered a dry, sandy ditch. The other side housed a white minivan, a family-size tent, and a picnic table, beneath which Jason spotted a lone smal boy, crouching in its shadow.

"Hi!" The boy's hand poked out from beneath the table as the boys climbed out of the car.

"Hi!" Nelson waved back, and muttered to Kyle and Jason, "He's family."

"Shut up," Jason told him. The kid couldn't be more than seven years old.

As the boys began unloading the trunk, Picnic Table Kid crawled out, revealing a tangle of curly blond hair and a ragged T-shirt that read: CAMP LIVING WATERS.

He stared up silently at Nelson's pink hair and then perched a hand on one hip, reading the car's license plate one sylable at a time.

"Vir-gin-i-a. Ith that farther than Utah?" The kid said with a lisp. "We're from Utah."

"Definitely family," Nelson mumbled, assembling the tent poles.

"About two thousand miles away," Kyle told the boy.

A man emerged from the neighboring tent, running a hand through his own curly blond hair as he walked over. "Esau, stop being a pest!" He dropped a hand onto the kid's shoulder and waved to the boys. "Sorry about that. He's got a mouth that won't stop. Just tel him to shut up."

"He's not bothering us," Jason spoke up, feeling sorry for the kid.

"He seems sweet," Nelson told the dad.

"Sweet?" The dad scoffed. "Sweet like a girl! He'd better start acting like a man or he's going to get his ass kicked." The kid's blue eyes burned with shame as he quickly dropped his gaze.

"Now leave them alone," the dad said, and gave Esau a kick on the rump toward the family's tent.

Jason saw Kyle shake his head, sighing. And Nelson mouthed the words, "Ass. Hole." The boys continued setting up camp, while the jerk dad picked on his kid inside the tent next door. It reminded Jason of how his own dad used to torment him nonstop. "How about if we go out for dinner?" he now suggested to Kyle and Nelson.

To his relief Kyle said, "I was thinking the same thing."

"Thank God!" Nelson agreed.

Night had falen by the time the boys drove across the speed bumps out of the campground. "Who the hel would name their son Esau anyway?" Nelson asked. "It sounds like a donkey."

"It's from the Bible," Kyle told him.

"Oh, yeah. Dad seems mighty Christian," Nelson said sarcasticaly.

Jason drove down the town strip, looking for a place to eat. Finaly they decided on McDonald's. Again. After ordering, they chose a booth by the window. They stared outside and unwrapped their burgers in silence til Kyle spoke up: "I bet Esau's lonely. I remember how lonely I used to feel. It's hard growing up different." Jason chewed on his burger, recaling how confusing it had been not to have anyone to talk with about his feelings toward boys. But he didn't want to think about al that now. "How do you know for sure the kid's gay? He can't be older than seven."

"Oh, please!" Nelson dipped a French fry into ketchup. "I knew by the time I was three. Besides, it doesn't matter if he is or not, with that lisp and those curls, he's going to get caled queer anyway. That's what's wrong with our society-if you're in anyway different, you get clobbered."

"I never got clobbered," Jason said and instantly realized that was a huge lie. His dad used to pound him nearly every day. That's how he'd taught Jason to "act like a man," so that Jason wouldn't get clobbered by anyone else.

"Can we talk about something else?" Jason suggested.

Nelson gave an indifferent shrug. "Like what?"

"I don't know." After six days in a car together-and Kyle stil pissed at him-what else was there to talk about?

Kyle stared out the window with a faraway look. "My dad always wanted me to be some sort of superstar athlete. He never accepted me for just me." Nelson raised his arm to play the air violin and dabbed invisible tears from his eyes. "Yes, Kyle. We've heard you kvetch before." Jason had to agree. He liked Mr. Meeks, who was always super-nice to him. But maybe that was because Jason was a star athlete.