After their naked adventure, Dill met Kirk in the library quite often. Now that Dill had someone to spend time with, he wasn’t as aware of the others there. He liked Kirk, and Kirk seemed to like him. Dill had the passing thought that Kirk only liked him because he didn’t know anyone else in town, but as the days passed and Kirk kept coming back, he decided he needed to be less paranoid, less down on himself, and just enjoy their growing friendship.
Dill had never answered Kirk’s question about whether he was gay. He wasn’t ready to.
It was a week later that Kirk came in with some news. “I read about a youth center in town. It’s pretty new. Maybe we could check it out. I do like the library. I like to read here. I like meeting you here. I never know how much clothing you’ll have on.”
Dill blushed but laughed with Kirk and said in rebuttal, “You, either!” The boy was irrepressible and had great charm. “A youth center sounds like fun, though.” Kirk continued. “They have a lot of stuff to do there. Have you been?”
Dill shook his head. “I heard something about it, but I guess I’m stuck in a rut. I just come here and read.” What he didn’t say was he always felt embarrassed going places alone. Other people took their friends with them. He didn’t like to say he had no friends. Made him look bad, he thought, and he didn’t want to look bad to Kirk.
“Well, it’s time you get unrutted. Uprutted? Out of your rut, in any case. Let’s go.” Kirk got up and stood waiting, so Dill stood up, too. He was happy to go and happy Kirk wanted him along when he went rather than simply going on his own. If nothing else, it proved Dill’s worries were for naught that he’d be dumped as soon as Kirk had time to look elsewhere for friends. Kirk could easily have gone to the center on his own. He hadn’t.
Dill was amazed by what he saw in the center. This town had never had anything like this. It obviously had been designed by someone who knew and liked kids. He and Kirk wandered around, looking at everything in sight. And then, when Kirk had said he wanted to try shooting some pool and Dill had said he’d get with him later because he wanted to keep looking around, Dill came to where the picture was hanging, and he saw it.
He was stunned. What he saw in the picture were the two boys he’d seen that day he’d been at the mill. He’d thought they were alone, that he’d been the only one there other than the two boys, but someone else had been there! Someone had painted what he’d seen. Had he himself been seen as well? He kept staring at the picture and visualizing the scene, and he realized the perspectives were wrong. The view in the picture could have been painted only from where the mill itself would have been between him and the painter. He would have been hidden from the painter. But the boys! There they were, and as he looked at them, seeing them brought back in force the arousal he’d felt that day.
Which was only his first shock. The second was when Micah walked up behind him and said, “Some picture, huh?” Dill turned around and found himself facing one of the two boys on the blanket that day, one of the boys he’d seen naked running and jumping into the pond.
“It’s you!” Dill said, dumbfounded.
“Huh?” Micah said, confused.
“In the painting! It’s you!”
Micah was the one dumbfounded at that point. How did this kid know that? He’d never met Dill. Had Jordan been talking? No, he was sure he hadn’t done that. Then how did this kid know?
“What are you talking about?” Micah asked.
Dill suddenly realized what was happening. Dill was a very perceptive kid. And a nice one, too. If Micah was acting surprised and confused, then he must have thought no one knew about him and his friend being the ones in the picture. And just that quickly, Dill realized that to tell him what he knew—how he’d come to recognize Micah—could only be done by revealing he’d been there as well. This had suddenly become an awkward situation for both boys.
Dill stared at Micah, and Micah stared at Dill, and both seemed to realize at the same time that Dill was aroused. Dill suddenly began to blush, and Micah at the same time started to smile. “Hey,” Micah said gently. “It’s OK. But I think you and I have to talk. OK? Let’s go where we can have some privacy. By the way, my name is Micah.”
“And I’m Dill.”
««« »»»
Going off to talk privately didn’t happen the way either Micah or Dill expected. Instead, as Micah was leading Dill to a private sitting area, they bumped into Kirk, who was looking for Dill. This put Dill in an awkward position. Right then, Kirk was really important to him. Kirk was the friend Dill had been wanting for a long time. He didn’t want Kirk to think he was being ditched for another boy. He could see in Kirk’s eyes that was what he thought was happening. So, he decided, what’s the harm? Kirk already was aware of his liking to take his clothes off. If that came out in the talk he was going to have with Micah, well, so what? He already knew!
The problem, of course, was Micah. Micah was worried about one boy he didn’t really know finding out he was one of the boys in the picture. He didn’t think it was fair to Jordan for that to happen, either, although Jordan, being who he was, was much less concerned about that juicy bit of gossip getting out than Micah was. But now another stranger was here, and Dill was asking him if he could come along, that he was a friend and that it was OK with Dill.
Micah was thinking how to say that Kirk couldn’t come along when who should come looking for him but Jordan. And before anyone could say anything, Dill blurted, “You’re the other one!”
So that meant, eventually, Jordan was invited to join the upcoming discussion, and Micah realized he might just as well include Kirk because Dill would certainly fill him in later, anyway, and if he was there, maybe Micah could convince him to keep the secret that was looking more and more like a box whose lid just wouldn’t stay closed.
They decided to talk in the GLBT lounge. It was less crowded today, while the other areas of the center were doing a bang-up business. When they entered the room, there were only four boys there, sitting together and talking. Jordan recognized them immediately and waved.
Parrish waved back, and so did Josh, who stood up and asked the new group to join them. Micah rolled his eyes. If he was going to talk to Dill about the painting, how could he do it in this setting?
Dill seemed amused, too, and grinned at Micah. He shrugged his shoulders. Micah found him likeable. Micah liked kids with a sense of humor, and Dill was proving he had that.
Introductions were made, and then Parrish, one of the youngest there, started talking about finding out who was selling meth in the town to kids and inviting the others to help. He showed the picture he had to everyone. Each took a long look and passed it to the next guy. It came to Dill last. He held it, looking at it as Parrish told his story.
Finally, when Parrish was done, Dill looked at him and said, “This guy looks familiar.”
««« »»»
Dill was used to being alone. He was not used to being the center of attention. Yet at heart, he was an outgoing kid. He’d missed having a lot of friends. He’d thought he’d been culled from the herd because somehow other kids suspected he was gay, yet here he was with a whole group of boys, and they appeared to him to be paired off. He was pretty sure about Jordan and Micah; he’d seen them on the blanket. Jack and Josh, whom he’d just met, were sitting on the couch holding hands. And Peter and Parrish, the youngest pair there, almost looked attached at the hip.
Dill felt like he belonged here. And that made him feel more expansive. He felt he could talk to these guys and say anything, and they’d understand. It had been so long since he’d felt this way that all his inhibitions were rapidly deserting him.
He felt if he was going to talk about the police artist’s picture, he needed to put it into perspective. And he wanted to do that. He wanted to talk and be part of this group, be the center of everyone’s focus for at least a short time. He hadn’t been the center of anything recently.
He was part way through talking about going to the library often—to seeing the other regulars there, to thinking the older teen who scowled a lot sort of looked like the guy in the picture Parrish was showing around—when he realized he could kill two birds with one stone. Because, if he told about getting naked, which would be both embarrassing and exciting, he could then get into how he’d seen Micah and Jordan at the mill, and by doing that take some of the embarrassment away from Micah and Jordan. They hadn’t been the only ones naked at the mill that morning. And this was really what they’d come into the lounge to discuss!
So he segued from seeing the guy in the library who might or might not have been Parrish’s guy in the picture to going upstairs and getting naked—he blushed when he said it but got it out OK—and then coming downstairs how he’d met the Scowler on the stairs coming up to see what he was doing up there. If indeed he was the guy in the picture, then maybe Dill had been wrong, maybe the guy had been going upstairs for some other reason and decided not to when he knew Dill had seen him going there.
Then he told about seeing the guy’s moped at the mill that night, the night before he saw two guys on the blanket at the mill the next morning, the guys in the painting hanging outside. This time, he didn’t say it was Micah and Jordan, just the way he hadn’t said Kirk had joined him in his naked antics in the library.
The other boys were rapt by Dill’s tale. When he was finished, there was silence for a few seconds. Then Jordan, after a confirming glance at Micah, said, “That was me and Micah on the blanket at the mill. We’re the ones in the picture hanging here.”
“If we’re coming clean, then I was naked upstairs in the library with Dill,” announced Kirk. “We didn’t do anything but dance around. We didn’t know each other then.” He smiled at Dill, who felt a sudden warmth in his chest.
“So what do you think?” Jack asked Parrish. “Tell your father? Pick this guy up?”
“He’s my uncle,” said Parrish. “But yeah, I suppose so.”
“Wait,” said Josh. It was the first time he’d spoken. There was a quiet intensity to him. When he spoke, people always paid attention. That’s what happened now.
“You said your uncle thought there were a number of people involved: a supplier, a middle man and street pushers. He’s caught some pushers, which hasn’t stopped the problem. He thinks you’ve seen the middle man, briefly. If he’s right and Dill’s right, then we should think a moment about the moped at the mill in the middle of the night.”
“What about it?” asked Jordan, as caught up listening to Josh as the rest of them were.
“Well, the way Parrish told it, the police think the supplier is very shy. They think it’s possible the middle man doesn’t even know who he is. That would mean that the supplier must use a secret drop to leave the meth, a place known to the middleman, where he has to go to collect it. It can’t be dropped where just anyone could find it. So, what better place than the mill?”
“So you think they’re using the mill as a drop?” Peter was feeling excited. Maybe they could give John a tip and prove they were as good as or better at this stuff than John was.
“Well, maybe. But I think something else is more likely, and I have a reason to think so. Even better, from everything that’s been said here today, I think maybe we can identify the supplier.”