I laugh. “Perhaps.”
“I’ll lend you his novels and plays, if you like.” His tone feels covert. Boys share school texts. This is different. This is menacing text.
“I would love that.”
The wordlovehangs in the air. A provocation. He skips around the cracks a little faster. He’s anxious. Also buzzing with life. I thought he was just another boring schoolboy. How wrong I was. “Want to know a secret?”
I smile. I love secrets.
“That abhorrent man with the bouquet of raw vegetables outside the theater. Did you see him?”
“Of course. It’s not every day you see a man with crazed eyes and a bouquet of molding celery.”
He’s giddy with clandestineness. “That man’ssonis Wilde’sboy.” He pauses. “Wilde is a bugger.” He allows the wordbuggerto waft like smoke. “A sodomite!”
“I know what a bugger is.” I hesitate. “I don’t love the word.”
“The Marquess of Queensberry, what a silly title. What does it even mean? The man is frothing at the mouth over his son’s infatuation with Oscar. I overheard my father and his friends discuss it. They called Wilde and Bosie and their ilk vile menaces to society.”
I adopt an authoritative voice. “Menacing. Menaces. Mendiosus.” I laugh. “Latin conjugation with Professor Hatcher.”
“Who I suspect is also a bugger.” He wields the word like a weapon.
“I think your father is jealous.”
“Jealous?”
“Your father, his friends, our classmates, their lives are all so predictable. Exceedingly dull. And no one is having more fun on this planet in this moment than Oscar Wilde.”
“Did you just insult my father and all my friends?”
“I—”
I’m prepared to stammer out an apology when he claps his hands together gleefully. “Where have you been hiding all this time?”
“In plain sight.” I tap dance on the street. I’m not sure I knew what loving myself felt like before tonight.
“We must be friends. I can’t tell the other boys the things I want to.”
“Like?”
“Like how much pleasure it brings me to watch all our insipid parents cheer for Wilde and turn his plays into such ravishing successes, when all the while he’s everything they claim to loathe in the world. Isn’t it wonderful?”
“My father isn’t cheering him on. He likely doesn’t know who he is.”
“Good for him.”
“Nothing good about him.” I hiss the next part out. “If you think your parents are awful, trust me, my father is worse.”
“Is that so?” I’m used to competition from classmates. Everything at school is designed as competition. “My father eats with his mouth open.”
“Mine whips me with a belt when I make a mistake.”
“Oh.” He bites his lip. “Mine spanked me as a child, but never a belt.”
“My father has only visited me once since I arrived at school when I was ten.”
His face falls in shock. “You’ve only seen him once in the last seven years?”
