Showing the Depths of One’s Soul #2
“Back in ten!” Reynaldo wasn’t big or athletic, but boy was he cute. A thing that fellow student Ilia Kirov had noticed, because how did you not notice dark, glossy curls framing enormous brown eyes, even if neither boy realized they were gay.
“I’ll come help you!” Ilia said, and he left so fast Reg had to take his place holding the butcher-paper table skirt in place for Renee Clemmons, the purple-haired upperclassman who had spearheaded much of the fundraiser.
“Oh my God,” she muttered, wielding the tape with superb competence. “Why can’t they just kiss and come out and stop making our lives miserable!”
“It’s not that easy,” Reg chided gently, although for him it had been almost a given. His parents had sheltered enough kids in their basement, though, for the whole family to know how lucky they were.
“I know it’s not,” she said. “But for heaven’s sake, it’s the art club. I mean… you know. If any club is rainbow friendly it’s the art club.”
Reg chuckled. “Well, you know, for some of us it really is the art.”
Renee cocked her head and raised her eyebrows, reminding Reg disconcertingly of Adelle. “Are you sure, Mr. Royal? Really?”
Anthony’s rumbly, unapologetic laugh elicited an impudent smile from Renee, and she waved him off. “Go talk to your boyfriend—let me work!”
Still chuckling, he turned to Anthony.
“Wow,” Anthony said, shaking his head. “She’s something.”
“Yeah, that kid is gonna rule the world,” Reg agreed. “As soon as she teaches Reynaldo to spell.”
Anthony laughed again and then looped his muscular arm over Reg’s shoulders, casually, like a friend would, and Reg’s vision went dark as he forgot how to breathe.
Anthony’s voice purred pleasantly in Reg’s ear, and Reg had to consciously pull air into his lungs to track what he was saying.
“What a fun event! Now come on—show me your art!”
Reg almost stumbled and then recovered. “Don’t you want to see the kids’ art? Or have a cupcake? Or—”
“Oh my God!” Anthony laughed. “Registrar, come on! I mean, I would have come if you’d asked me to mop the floors, but seriously, I really want to see your—oh.”
With unerring accuracy, Anthony had been heading for the centerpiece of the floor, and Reg found himself parked in front of his own paintings while Anthony stared at Reg’s soul on display.
“Oh wow,” Anthony breathed, reaching out toward a picture of a man sitting on the back of a truck under a starry night sky, a guitar perched on his lap, his silhouetted face turned toward a pale moon as he apparently sang out his soul. “This is lovely. What is this?”
“It was in the news,” Reg mumbled. “His friend was trapped in a canyon with some other folks, and all the musician could do was play music so they knew they weren’t alone.”
“Oh geez. Wow.” Anthony put his hand over his mouth, hiding what may have been a luminous smile. “That’s beautiful. What medium did you use?”
“Well, I did it digitally first,” Reg said, showing a smaller version, printed on a high-resolution printer, “but I wanted to show the kids the difference in mediums, so I took the concept and reworked it in acrylic.” He grunted.
“You’ve seen my apartment. There’s not enough ventilation for oils, although I’ve already sacrificed the rug. ”
“You should have a studio,” Anthony said dreamily. “One room, open to the light. You should be able to do this for a living, have shows, teach seminars. This is so good….”
He trailed off and bent down, staring at a picture of a golden retriever frolicking through a field of grass stubble, an older man walking behind her.
The style was impressionistic, the overlying mood that of a hazy golden afternoon, but every brush stroke—it was in acrylic—brought more and more color into the bucolic scene.
“You just did this!” he said. “This is Catherine the Great and Bailey’s dad!” Reg’s parents’ new tenants.
“Yeah,” Reg mumbled, and knew his cheeks were turning red. “I mean, you know. A dog.” He sighed. “Not that Chance’s snake isn’t awesome. Or all the cats.”
“But you’d like a dog,” Anthony said. There had been dogs at the reunion, but they’d belonged to Proctor and Laure.
“Well, thanks to Connor I have a dog. Sort of a nephew,” Reg told him happily. “All of the licks on the face, none of the poop.” It was time to change the subject. “Speaking of, is the snake gonna poop?”
“The snake is gonna poop,” Anthony told him dryly.
“A little prodding—and a call to an exotic animal vet—pretty much told us the snake was going to be okay. Marcus is on Muffin watch for the next few hours, which is good. I think it makes him feel useful. We were advised to maybe let her go an extra couple days between feedings, since this meal is so much bigger than her usual prey.”
Reg let out a sigh. “Oh my God, were we lucky,” he said. “Can you imagine if we had to tell Chance his snake died?” He shuddered.
“I notice you don’t have any Muffin portraits on the wall,” Anthony said, and Reg shrugged.
“Well, we’ve only had her for two weeks. Give me some time. She’s a very handsome snake.”
Anthony cocked his head. “Is there any creature you don’t love?” he asked, and there seemed to be something serious in his eyes.
Something Reg couldn’t look away from.
“I had a bully in the seventh grade I’m glad I don’t have to talk to,” he said truthfully. Braeden fucking Robertson. Reg hadn’t been a fan.
Anthony’s mouth turned up at the corners, and the room seemed to whirl, centripetal force pushing them closer and closer and….
A student’s shrill squeal sliced through the spinning room, and Reg stepped back quickly. He was supposed to be a grown-up here!
“Wow,” he muttered. “Renee. That was loud.”
“Shit!” Adelle Barerra’s snarl echoed through the hard space of the stucco and tile cafeteria. “You bastards can’t come in here. State law says you can’t come in here. This is a school function, and you are not allowed on school grounds.”
Reg’s spine snapped straight, and he and Anthony shared startled glances. Anthony’s mouth shaped the words, “What in the fu—” but Reg knew exactly what was going on.
Renee Clemmons scooted over to where they stood, in the center of the floor but far enough away from the door to hide behind the corkboards and shelves displaying the art.
“ICE,” she whispered. “They were lurking outside the school all day. The sheriff kept saying they weren’t, but look at them!”
“They’re wearing masks,” Anthony said softly. “They’re not supposed to be able to do that anymore. Do they have a warrant?”
“Has it mattered?” Reg replied bitterly. “Renee, are they asking for anybody in particular?”
“Reynaldo,” she whispered.
As she said it, the leader of the contingent of masked men demanded loudly, “Hand him over, lady, or we’ll invade your entire little art show!”
“He’s not here, officers,” she said, and Reg couldn’t have been the only one to hear her disdain dripping on the word “officers.” “He didn’t show up for school today.
” There was something odd about the man’s voice—perhaps it was muffled by the mask over his face, the one he wasn’t supposed to be wearing anymore?
But there was a flat sound to his vowels, a sort of suppressed accent.
And Reg and Renee met eyes, and Reg knew his job.
“Stay put,” he murmured to the girl. “I was never here.”
Slowly, making his way from the back of one corkboard to the other, while Adelle, an unarmed woman, faced off with several big men wearing tactical gear and armor, Reg slid into the shadows of the cafeteria and down a corridor leading outside.
Oh thank God, the cafeteria door had been propped open to promote a cross breeze. Just a few more steps, a few more… and there he was, in the breezeway, heading toward the outside entrance to the art room.
“Where are we going?” Anthony asked him, and Reg whirled and almost fell.
“You weren’t supposed to follow me!” Reg hissed. “You were supposed to stay inside and claim plausible deniability!”
“Well, you didn’t tell me that!” Anthony snapped, irritated. “But I wouldn’t anyway. What’s our plan?”
Reg grunted. “I’m parked in the little two-slot parking lot next to the art room. Nobody knows about it—it’s for custodians, and it’s not accessible from the front.”
“Ooh, sneaky,” Anthony said. “While you go out the back, I’ll go out the front. Make a big noise.”
“How do you plan to do that?” Reg asked, horrified.
Then, “Never mind. I’d rather you didn’t—all those guys are armed, and if I have to tell your dad you need to be bailed out of jail…
.” Reg put his hand to his mouth, horrified.
“Oh God. Anthony. Your gun license. Your business. You can’t be loud on the way out. You could lose your livelihood!”
Anthony stared at him for a moment, and his expression went soft.
“Yeah, Reg. But people are disappearing in those camps. Ninety percent of the people ICE is abducting are American citizens without so much as a parking ticket, and they’re disappearing.
We can’t let that kid go with those guys.
It’s immoral.” He grunted. “And besides, how do we even know they’re ICE?
There was something fishy about those assholes. ”
“I know,” Reg muttered. “But you’re right either way. Look, let’s get the kids out, and maybe you can sneak out with me and we’ll get you to your truck later. You can’t do any good in jail.”
With that, he yanked open the door to the art room and was startled to see the two figures in the corner of it, by the butcher paper, jerk apart, as though startled in the act of doing something….
“Oh,” Reg said, staring.
“Oh God,” Reynaldo said, covering his face with one hand and keeping the other arm wrapped around Ilia’s neck.
“It’s fine,” Ilia squeaked, burying his face against Reynaldo’s neck. “We’re not doing anything.”