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When Curtis was ten, his parents divorced. It was a long, drawn-out process, full of nights spent hiding in his room to avoid the fighting. He doesn’t remember his mom and dad ever being happy; marriage, it seemed, was something adults did out of habit.
“Love’s just something made up in your head,” he remembers his mom saying once, and the stricken look in his dad’s eyes stayed with Curtis long after their marriage died.
Then, when Curtis was seventeen, his parents died, too, and in the midst of the chaos and horror that followed, Curtis had wondered if maybe his mom had been right all along.
//
Edgar finds a postcard with the words Welcome to Tallahassee looped across the front in pink letters, and a girl in a blue bikini waving from under a palm tree.
“Where’s Tallahassee?” Edgar asks. He pronounces it “Tah-lay-see.” Curtis is just pleased he can even sound the letters out; a twelve-year-old who can read in their part of the train is invaluable.
“Florida,” Curtis says. He takes the card from Edgar and turns it over in his hands. There’s a hole punched through where the girl’s face would be.
“Florida.” Edgar nods like it makes sense, frowning thoughtfully. He does this when he wants to look grown-up. Curtis thinks it’s because he’s seen Gilliam do it plenty of times. “Have you been there?”
“Yeah. Once. My parents took me to Coco Beach and I learned to surf.”
Edgar’s mouth twists up. “Beaches have sharks.” He’s been talking to Riley again, the angry old Australian guy who told Edgar the entire continent used to be covered in man-sized tarantulas. “Thank god for the Freeze,” he'd said to a wide-eyed Edgar, “or we’d all be dead.”
Curtis had quietly and succinctly told the guy to fuck off. Meanwhile, Edgar had trouble sleeping for three weeks after that.
“No,” Curtis says gently, “beaches don’t have sharks.”
“But Riley said— ”
“Sharks are only in the southern hemisphere. Florida’s north. You’d be safe.” He reaches out and runs his hand over the top of Edgar’s hair. It’s getting long again, curling over the tops of his ears. Eventually Tanya will take her shears to it, but Edgar never wants to still long enough for her to make any headway.
“You’re lying,” Edgar says. “It’s the ocean. The ocean’s huge. If I ever see it, it’ll scare the shit out of me.”
“Watch your mouth,” Curtis says, but he smiles.
“Well, it’s true.”
“Someday I’ll take you surfing. You’ll love it. I won’t be able to get you out of a wetsuit.”
Edgar rolls his eyes. “That sounds disgusting.”
“I see you’re getting a dirty mouth and a filthy mind,” Curtis says, wrestling him into a hug.
Curtis lies about a lot of things to Edgar, but only because the truth is so much worse.
And besides, he wouldn’t take Edgar surfing in Florida. He’d take him to Oahu, to the North Shore, and watch his face the first time a twenty-foot wave crashed onto the beach.
He wonders if Edgar’s skin would burn bright pink or simply freckle in the sun, or if his brown hair would turn yellow-blond from the salt water.
//
Curtis sleeps in the same bunk with Edgar until Edgar is fifteen. As a child, Edgar couldn’t sleep without Curtis curled around him. In the early years Curtis never let himself drift off until he was certain Edgar was sound asleep, and even then he’d stay awake, the guilty demons swirling in his head gradually fading with each warm puff of Edgar’s breath against his neck. Sleep had become a symbiotic arrangement between them, one that ends when puberty hits Edgar with a vengeance.
Curtis comes to at the sound of Edgar moaning. His heart begins to race; nightmares are always common, but Edgar’s are sometimes particularly violent and terrifying. Curtis learned ages ago that the key to keeping him calm is to speak to him, softly, and say his name over and over again.
“Edgar, hey,” he whispers, petting Edgar’s cheeks, his neck. Sensory grounding. “Edgar, Edgar, it’s all right, you’re okay, I’m here— ”
He pauses, suddenly aware of the hard, insistent pressure against his left thigh.
Edgar moans again, a little higher, a little more breathless.
Curtis drops his hands.
Edgar’s eyes flutter open and he looks hazy for a moment, lost. He licks his lips.
Then he gasps and shoves Curtis away, falling right out of the bunk.
“Fuck,” Edgar hisses. He doesn’t look at Curtis again, just scrambles off down the dark corridor.
“Everything okay?” Curtis hears Tanya whisper.
“He’s fine, don’t worry about it.” He lays back down and stares at the bottom of the bunk above his. There’s still a warm spot beside him on the mattress.
Curtis doesn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
In the morning, Edgar doesn’t look him in the eyes. It takes days before he stops blushing whenever his hand accidentally touches Curtis’s.
They don’t share a bunk again. Curtis tells himself it’s for the best.
His own nightmares start coming back not long after that. He doesn’t tell Edgar.
//
“Did you ever own a dog?”
They don’t talk much about animals. Once, when Edgar was five, a South African woman had told him stories about the cheetah her husband had bought her as an anniversary present. Edgar had been obsessed with the concept of owning cats, even though he didn’t understand that cheetahs and house cats were two very different things. Curtis had never corrected him.
When the woman died a few years later, Edgar stopped talking about cats.
Curtis sets down the socks he’s been darning for the last hour—a skill picked up from Tanya. “Why do you ask?”
Edgar shrugs as he sits down beside Curtis on his bunk. His trousers are too short for him now, as are the sleeves of his henley. Sometimes Gilliam arranges a barter for clothing from further up the train, but there’s less and less to barter with these days. In the meantime, Edgar continues to grow. He’s not particularly tall for a sixteen-year-old, but he’s gotten broad in the shoulders. Solid, strong. Before the Freeze, Edgar would be an ideal soccer player.
“Joseph said he missed his dog. A Newfoundland,” Edgar says. Joseph is an elderly man from Iceland who was once a professor. He likes finding books for Edgar to read.
Curtis smiles. He remembers a next door neighbor owned a Newfie named Boris. “Big suckers. Super friendly, though.”
“He said they handle the cold really well.”
“Yeah, they were bred in Canada for fishermen.”
“Do you think…” Edgar pauses, a tick at the corner of his jaw. “Do you think some of them are still out there?” His voice wavers slightly. It’s the first time in a long time that he’s allowed himself to sound young in front of Curtis.
He doesn’t want to tell Edgar the truth, that nothing is alive outside of the train, not even mammoth Canadian dogs. But Edgar is sixteen now and can handle it. He’s long since learned that the world sucks.
Curtis says, “Anything’s possible. And the answer to your first question is no, I never had a dog. My mom was allergic.”
Edgar looks as if Curtis just confessed something truly tragic. “Did you ever want one?”
He’s never really thought about it. By the time he was at the age where boys coveted dogs, Curtis’s parents were fighting constantly and Curtis had just wanted to be alone. But he thinks if he had a house now and a job and a back yard, he’d have a dog. Any dog. He’d let Edgar pick one out from the local Humane Society and they’d look up stupid names for it on Google.
“Sometimes,” he says.
Edgar’s expression softens as he leans his shoulder against Curtis’s side. He doesn’t say anything else, and Curtis lets himself think a little more about where he’d be now if not for the world ending. He pictures himself in a comfortable, boring job that has good benefits and pays for his modest SUV and the newest PlayStation model. He lives next door to a bright, precocious high school junior who monopolizes said PlayStation and eats everything in Curtis’s fridge and makes Curtis tutor him for his ACTs. Curtis imagines himself with a pretty girlfriend, maybe a co-worker. Edgar would hate her.
He thinks Edgar will skip his prom just to fall asleep on Curtis’s couch while watching a Star Wars marathon. Edgar’s head will be in Curtis’s lap, his hand curled against Curtis’s thigh, and Curtis won’t wake him up, even if it means he’ll miss the best parts of Empire.
He thinks Edgar will insist on enrolling in the local community college after graduation, but Curtis will talk him into applying several states away, because Edgar’s smart enough and needs to realize that there’s a whole world out there he’s never seen. Edgar will hate him for it.
But he’ll get accepted somewhere in Boston or Pennsylvania, full-ride, and Curtis will send him care packages and text messages and pretend he doesn’t miss him every damn day. Edgar will make friends, and the emails and texts will dwindle until Curtis only hears from him once every few months. Maybe another girlfriend will come into Curtis’s life, and he’ll be content. Distracted.
Then summer will come, and Edgar will arrive at home a little taller and a little wiser, handsome like he wasn’t before and smiling at Curtis with secrets in his eyes that Curtis will never know. And Curtis will be so damn proud while hating himself so much for wanting things he can’t have.
The look in Edgar’s eyes will say, I don’t need you anymore.
“I’m going to get out of here someday and go looking for them. The dogs,” Edgar says, voice low like he’s barely aware he’s speaking. “And you’ll go with me.” It’s not a question.
Curtis looks over at Edgar’s folded hands. He reaches out and draws a figure eight on Edgar’s wrist with his index finger. He shouldn’t, but he does it anyway, because Curtis knows he’s not a good man.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I’ll go with you.”
//
He rarely thinks about dying. What they have isn’t living, and death feels like something that has settled around them, waiting patiently like an old woman at a bus stop. Death is constant and tangible, and Curtis has learned to become ambivalent. He’s going to die someday—maybe soon—and it’s not terrifying. It’s simply a fact.
What he does think about is Edgar dying.
“I won’t bring him into this,” Curtis says when Gilliam first hints at a revolution. “He can’t know about it.”
“Is it even possible to hide things from Edgar? I thought he was your shadow,” Gilliam replies fondly.
Curtis shakes his head, his stomach turning cold. He remembers the last attempt at an uprising four years ago; fifteen people were murdered. “He’s too young to be getting involved with— ”
“He’s nearly eighteen, Curtis. Men his age have seen war, fought battles.”
“That means nothing. We’re not soldiers.”
“But we are fighting a war. We’ve been fighting it since Edgar was a child.”
Curtis winces. “He deserves better.”
“Better?” Gilliam frowns. “Better than this train, or better than you?”
“You know the answer to that,” Curtis says as he clenches his hand.
Gilliam sighs. “Change is coming, and Edgar knows it. He’s far too intelligent not to. Either you allow him to fight or he’ll do it on his own without your blessing.”
“He won’t go through with it without me,” Curtis says.
“We need you, Curtis. Edgar needs you. You can’t live in fear anymore.”
Curtis doesn’t care about fear. It’s guilt that keeps him alive. He shakes his head. “He’s like a son to me.”
“Ah.” Gilliam folds his good hand over his knee. “Well, we both know that’s a lie.”
//
Two days later, a Kronole addict picks a fight with Curtis. He’s strung out as hell and thinks Curtis is a bear trying to attack him. Curtis feels sorry for him, but it doesn’t last long after the junkie bloodies his nose. He’s just about the knock the guy out and put him out of his misery, when Edgar comes crashing out of nowhere, fists flying. He slams the junkie to the floor, and the loud crack of the guy’s head hitting metal echoes sickly.
“You fucking Kronohead, don’t ever fucking touch him again, you filthy shit,” Edgar growls right in the guy’s face, his right hand gripping the guy’s jaw so tightly his knuckles turn white. His left hand is around the junkie’s throat.
The guy makes a small choking sound.
“Edgar,” Curtis says, “that’s enough.”
“He would’ve fucking killed you. He doesn’t even know he’s gonna die.” Edgar bares his teeth and squeezes harder. The guy’s eyes roll back in his head.
“That’s enough.” Curtis grabs Edgar by the shoulders and hauls him to his feet. The guy wheezes on the ground as he rolls onto his side, whimpering.
Edgar spins around in Curtis’s arms and shoves him. “Look at you! You’re fucking bleeding!” He flails his hand at Curtis’s nose. Whenever he’s angry, Edgar’s vowels get loose and nasally.
“He didn’t know what he was doing.”
“The fuck he didn’t. And don’t tell me what to do—I’ll be damned if you expect me to sit back and watch scum like that lay a hand on you.”
Curtis cups his nose gingerly. His fingertips come away bloody, but he doesn’t think the bones are broken. “You’re protecting my virtue now?” he asks, and he can’t help his crooked smile.
Edgar snorts. “Right, laugh it up, it’s all a fucking joke. Maybe I just wanted the excuse to have you speak to me, seeing as how you haven’t since the day you holed up with Gilliam for hours.” He tries to sound sardonic, but Curtis hears the hurt in his voice.
It’s true; Curtis has been ignoring him. He doesn’t know how else to broach the subject of a planned uprising.
“You didn’t have to beat up a junkie to get my attention,” Curtis says. “I’m sorry I’ve been...preoccupied lately.” He dabs at his nose, hissing at the sharp stab of pain.
“Christ, you’re making it worse.” Edgar huffs and pushes Curtis’s hands away from his face. He pulls a clean rag from his trouser pocket and begins to wipe at the blood.
“Where’d you get that?” Curtis motions to the cloth. Rarely does anyone carry something so white.
“Early birthday present from Tanya. She stitched my name on it.” He cups Curtis’s chin gently as he cleans him up, bottom lip caught between his teeth. He still has to tilt his head back to meet Curtis’s eyes; Edgar hates the height difference between them, but no amount of growth spurts have allowed him to catch up to Curtis. Curtis likes being taller, though, likes being able to kiss the top of Edgar’s spiky hair with ease. If he wanted to.
“You can tell me, y’know,” Edgar says softly. His fingers skim Curtis’s lips and they taste like blood.
“Tell you what?”
“The shit you and Gilliam are planning.” His eyes track the path of the cloth, which is quickly turning from white to red. They’re close enough that Curtis can see the soft, dark blond fuzz of the five o’clock shadow on Edgar’s cheeks. He doesn’t remember Edgar being able to grow a beard before; he wonders if someone’s shown him how to shave.
He’s a man now, Gilliam’s voice whispers in the back of Curtis's mind.
Curtis swallows and says, “There’s going to be a revolt.”
Edgar’s eyes go wide. “When?”
“Soon. Gilliam wants me to— ” He can’t say the words out loud, not to Edgar. Curtis tries to duck away, but Edgar cups Curtis’s face in his hands and holds him firm.
“He wants you to lead,” Edgar says, and Gilliam, as always, is right. Edgar knows.
Curtis nods.
A slow, nearly silent breath escapes Edgar, like a balloon being carefully deflated. Curtis feels the hands against his cheeks tug him forward, until their foreheads touch.
And then Edgar says the words Curtis dreads hearing.
“Whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.”
I want you to be away from here, to forget I even exist. “You don’t have to. There are others— ”
“Bullshit,” Edgar growls, one hand sliding against Curtis's scalp to scratch through his hair. “I would’ve beat the living shit out of that hopped-up junkie for you. You don’t think I’d fight those front car cunts just as hard?”
“Edgar— ”
“No, fuck you. I make this call, it’s my choice. You can’t just run off and expect me to— ” His voice catches, and Curtis starts to tell him he’s sorry. He starts to tell him everything, right down to the ugly secrets he’s kept since Edgar was a child.
Only Edgar kisses him, and Curtis loses the words.
It’s barely a kiss and more a frantic, slick push of mouths and breath and teeth. Edgar starts to shake as he licks inelegantly over Curtis’s lower lip, and it’s wrong, it’s all wrong, and yet Curtis burns for it, can’t bring himself to think of anything except Edgar and how this kid—this man—deserves to be kissed. To be loved.
Curtis brings his arms around Edgar, fists his hand into the back of Edgar’s shirt. Edgar’s body is solid, strong, but he trembles against Curtis, melting into the kiss like it’s the only thing left for him in the world.
In another life, Edgar would never know Curtis. They would both go about their days oblivious to the knowledge that the other existed. In another life, Edgar would be just as beautiful, but also happy. Free.
“You don’t get to leave me,” Edgar breathes against Curtis’s mouth. “D’you fucking hear me? I go with you. I’ll always go with you.”
Curtis pulls him close and kisses him again, the tang of blood still on his lips.