Chapter Four
Call Me Dad
Hilary woke to Trenton’s bulk blocking out the faint morning light. “Hilary.”
Again, it startled him. “Christ.”
“I can order the cab.”
“Give me a minute.”
Hilary stumbled into his clothes, still half-sleeping, and accepted the paper bag Trenton put into his hands. “What’s this?”
“I can drive.”
Hilary didn’t think that was a good idea. “She’s temperamental.”
But the car purred to life under Trenton’s touch, annoying Hilary still further. He didn’t see why everything was progressing so smoothly. “How’s your back?”
“Fine.”
“Fuck off.”
Trenton might have smiled again—annoying. Hilary opened the bag and then understood why it was warm. It was a breakfast burrito, freshly made, steam still curling up from it. He supposed that was worth putting up with a little annoyance, especially once he tasted it. “You can cook?”
“A little.”
A little meant scraping eggs out of a pan that were only partially burned. This wasn’t like that. “I hate false modesty.”
Trenton’s expression was its usual neutrality, but Hilary had the sneaking suspicion the boy was enjoying himself. “Okay.”
It didn’t take long to get to the bike at school, which meant he ran out of time to say anything he might have wanted to say—though he wasn’t sure what that was.
Trenton leaned over the car, just kind of standing there. There was a morning mist, and it was already collecting on the boy’s eyebrows and hair. “I finish at six,” Trenton said. “Can you do math then?”
It felt weird to be offered that. Like he should have been the one asking instead, and it made Hilary kind of shy. “Yeah.”
Trenton pushed off the car’s roof. The boy didn’t say goodbye, just unlocked his bike and pedaled off, an ogre commuting to work.
Hilary could have gone home. Instead, he went to the studio.
It felt like it had been a long time since he’d done that, even though it hadn’t been.
His mother would be there soon to open the morning class, but for now he was alone.
He gave the floor a quick wipe, then decided to do the bar, and then the mirrors too.
That had always been something he’d done, but not recently.
Lately, he’d just been running away. He pulled out a mat from the ones in the corner and began to stretch.
Things were tight, of course, joints and muscles showing irritation at their neglect, but there was too much time and practice in them to be angry for long.
“Oh,” his mother said when she came in. “Smells like lemon. You must have been busy.”
He stood and realized he’d been waiting all morning, maybe since last night, to say it. “I want to teach classes again. Like I did in the summer.”
She paused in the act of pulling off her scarf, a little surprised, but mostly by his intensity. Then she smiled. “I knew you’d like him.”
Usually, it was Albert who specialized in non sequiturs, but Annette liked to pull random shit out of the clouds too. “What?”
“I was hoping to do a Seniors class some mornings,” Annette went on as if nothing had been said. “If you can take over the beginners’ class Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, I can make a go of it.”
It was something she’d talked about before.
Ballet for Fogeys, his father called it.
Annette didn’t plan to charge for it. Even for the regular classes, she didn’t ask for much.
She was classically trained, and had danced on some famous stages, but her prices never reflected that.
It was why Hilary drove the Shitheap, and why his clothes were mostly castoffs.
But the older he got, the more he loved her for it.
In their kind of town, none of her students could have afforded standard studio prices. “I can do it.”
She ruffled his hair. It had been a while since she’d done that as well. He leaned into it a little and realized she looked older these days. When had that happened?
Trenton showed up that evening at six on the dot, which was confusing because Hilary had thought the shift itself was over at six with twenty or so minutes stacked atop that for the commute back.
It was why he hadn’t yet been listening out for the door, so when Trenton set a mug of tea down on the desk, Hilary nearly shit himself. “Christ!”
“Do you not like this tea?” Trenton asked, feigning ignorance. “Your mother said you did.”
“Can’t you knock?”
“The door was open.”
“Then call my name or something!”
“Hilary,” the boy said, as if that would work.
Hilary sighed.
They set themselves up at the kitchen table. A bad idea, as it turned out, because it opened them up to comments from the peanut gallery.
“Look at this,” Albert said, coming up to smack his back. “I didn’t even know you could read.”
“Har, har.”
Albert leaned in, always ready with the comedy routine. “What a nerd. Should I give you a swirly? You have a swirly-inviting face.”
“Blame your genes.”
“My genes wouldn’t have made you so handsome. It was obviously the mailman.”
“I’ve never looked like any of our mail carriers.”
Albert squinted, then changed angles, then made a kind of straining sound like he was trying to poop before finally finishing with, “If you say so.”
Trenton was the one who finally put an end to it. “I think you’re bothering Hilary.”
That had Albert roaring his appreciation. “I like this kid,” he announced after slapping his back numb. “Call me Dad, Trenton.”
Trenton didn’t so much as blink. “Please let us study, Dad.”
“Right you are, son.”
They covered a lot of ground, though it didn’t seem like it. Because every time he seemed to figure out a problem, Trenton would present him with another that would just have him staring blankly again. But they worked through a lot of pages, and then suddenly Trenton said, “That’s it for today.”
It was just after ten. They’d taken a couple of breaks to shovel down some food and to piss, but it wasn’t nearly as late as Hilary expected.
It had him panicking a little. “You’ll come tomorrow though, right?
Or do you have to work again?” They were only a little over halfway through the material, and he didn’t feel comfortable with any of it.
“I have work, but I’ll come again.”
There was no mention of the time Trenton was investing into the tutoring, and none either about the other end of the bargain Hilary was meant to be upholding.
He followed the boy to the door to get his keys, but was refused again. “I have my bike,” Trenton said.
“It’s late.”
“It’s only a ten-minute ride from here.”
Annette had also followed them to the door. “Text us when you get back, so we don’t worry.”
Trenton didn’t seem to know what to say to that. “I don’t have Hilary’s—”
Hilary grabbed the boy’s phone to put in the number, but not fast enough. Annette was appalled. “He cooks you breakfast and teaches you for hours on end, but you didn’t even bother to give him—”
“He has it now, doesn’t he?”
She shook her head. “You’re worse than your father.”
Albert popped his head into the hall. “There’s someone worse than me?”
Annette leaned in to peck his cheek. “Only sometimes.”
As promised, Trenton was back the next day, and an hour earlier, even. It meant being surprised again—though in the shower this time. When Hilary reached out to grab the towel from the toilet tank, he had it handed to him by an enterprising ogre.
Hilary seriously would have cracked his head open on the porcelain if a surprisingly quick Trenton hadn’t grabbed his arm to keep him standing. “Hilary,” the boy said, remembering his directions in time.
Hilary put the scowl onto his face at full blast. “You’re doing this on purpose. I know you are.”
Trenton’s face was serious business, but his eyes weren’t. “I did knock, but I guess you were singing too loudly.”
Hilary refused to be embarrassed. He was the one who’d nearly gotten killed, after all. “Get out.”
They completed even more problems than the previous day—more than Hilary thought he could do in a row without straight-up dying.
But by the end of it, he still didn’t feel comfortable with the material, or like he knew anything.
He was prepared to keep going—to stay up all night breaking his teeth on it if he had to, but he couldn’t force Trenton to do the same.
At ten o’clock, the boy once again closed the book.
It brought out a new level of Hilary’s desperation. “If you give me a list of examples—some page numbers—”
But Trenton hadn’t stopped because of that. “You’re fine. You don’t need to do any more.”
Hilary certainly didn’t feel fine. He’d managed the last few problems with minimal help, but not well or confidently enough to declare himself finished. “I don’t think—”
“We can do a few more in the morning to warm your brain up,” Trenton compromised. “But it’s better to sleep now. Your body needs rest more than it needs studying.”
It was the kind of thing Annette would have said, and Hilary couldn’t help but disagree.
All the sleep in the world wouldn’t help him if he had no clue what he was doing while awake.
But after five hours of help, he couldn’t argue.
Between the dance and the two days of studying, he’d really screwed up Trenton’s weekend.
The boy was working and tutoring from morning to night, but he showed no resentment.
Then again, Trenton never showed much of anything at all.
When they emerged from the room, they found Annette had already set up the couch.
It had Hilary feeling a little better, thinking they’d have more time in the morning for studying that way.
Maybe that was why he slept as well as he did—a little too well, it turned out.
Trenton didn’t wake him early. Instead, they did only about fifteen minutes of math problems. Only a warm-up, after all.
“The exam’s first period, so we’ll be able to get it over with,” Trenton said, as if that was a good thing, and went to the kitchen to make breakfast.