Chapter Text
September 1984
“So your name’s Link?”
The little boy with the nut-brown hair looked up from where the outline of his unicorn was nearly filled with meticulously shaded purple crayon. He blinked away the intense concentration from his mind and pulled the tip of his tongue back from between his lips. The other first-grader who had asked the question regarded him from the neighboring desk, his aquamarine eyes wide under blunt, dark-blond bangs. The friendly-looking ox on the construction paper in front of him was scribbled over with red and orange lines that seemed unrelated to the animal in question.
Link dropped his eyes back to his desk and tightened his fist around the crayon. “Yup!” he chirped. He pressed the slanted tip back down to the page, but before he could continue his painstaking work, the other boy spoke again.
“I’m Rhett!”
Link knew who Rhett was; everybody did. It’s hard not to notice the kid who was already a head taller than everyone else, who ran the fastest on the playground, who charmed the pretty Miss Locklear with his cleverness. He was the envy of all the other boys. Link was naturally cautious — even at the age of five he instinctively understood that some kids were going to be the popular ones, and that made them dangerous. Still, his mother had raised him to be polite.
“Nice to meet you, Rhett,” he replied. He finished filling in the beast’s purple body and glanced up to see the boy still gazing at him with the corner of his mouth quirked up in amusement. Rhett seemed entirely disinterested in the coloring assignment that was meant to be their punishment, whereas Link strongly believed it was necessary to do as good a job as possible. He had no idea what had possessed him to deface his desk with a naughty word after seeing Rhett do the same, but something about the boy’s beguiling grin had made him want to impress him. And now that the deed was done and the punishment doled out, he needed to be absolved of the crime before the guilt ate him up from the inside out.
“Link’s a weird name,” the blond boy observed.
Link let out a quiet sigh and stared down to where his unicorn pranced in profile. The empty white circle of its uncolored eye stared back. Here it comes, he thought.
Sure enough, Rhett asked the expected follow-up question. “It short for somethin’?”
Link set down the purple crayon and picked up the black one. “Yup.”
There was a silence, then Rhett prodded, “Well, what?”
The smaller boy pressed the black crayon into the small white circle. “Lincalian,” he said softly.
“Lincallian?” Rhett’s soft drawl stretched the second syllable.
Link ducked his head in a nod, then risked looking up. It made him feel bolder that Rhett hadn’t laughed. “It’s not my first name, though,” Link explained. “My full name’s even weirder.”
Rhett’s mouth formed an O of excitement. “What is it?”
Link felt the confusing mixture of embarrassment and pride that always accompanied this conversation. “Carolus Lincalian Neal.”
“Golly!” Rhett giggled. “You sound like a prince or somethin’.”
Link smiled. “Well I ain’t one, that’s for sure.”
“I’m just plain ol’ Rhett James McLaughlin.” The boy’s tongue tripped slightly on the last name. “Named after a racecar driver. Who’re you named for?”
Link looked back down and began to move the crayon in tight spirals, filling in the unicorn’s entire eye with a slick, uniform black. “My dad,” he muttered. “The only thing he ever gave me. I never met ‘im.”
He glanced up in time to see the flash of pity on the other boy’s face. It felt like a sliver of ice in his heart even though Rhett quickly masked it with a polite smile. Far worse than having a weird name in small-town North Carolina was living in a home without a mother and father joined in blessed, Christian matrimony. Link didn’t understand the circumstances of his birth — his mother deemed it a subject to be postponed until the magical age of “older” — but he had picked up enough hints from relatives to know it was nothing good. He’d gathered that his father’s role in his creation was a source of great shame for his family.
For his part, Link had no memory of the man, though his daydreaming mind often conjured fantasies of a superhero, spy, or rocket scientist. He was sure that some great need had caused his father to abandon him and his mother and never contact them again, and one day he would find out what it was.
The unicorn’s eye was now filled in and gleamed like a chip of obsidian. He picked up a red crayon and colored in the hooves, going over and over the same spots until they were shining crimson. He felt Rhett watching him but refused to look up. Finally, the pressure of the other boy’s gaze relented and Link looked over to see Rhett bent over and scribbling green in the general vicinity of his animal’s feet.
He realized he missed Rhett’s attention despite having just rejected it. He studied the boy’s narrow profile for a moment and then piped up, “You know he’s supposed to be blue, right?”
“Huh?” Rhett raised a brow at him.
Link felt his cheeks heat. “That’s Babe. You know, the blue ox? Paul Bunyan?”
Rhett regarded his artwork for a moment, then shrugged. “Well now he’s a… a fire bull! They’re cooler than Babe. Very dangerous. They run through the prairies in a big stampede, tramplin’ villages and burnin’ down all the farms and stuff.”
Link giggled. “That is pretty cool.”
“Yeah. You don’t wanna make ‘em mad.” Rhett abruptly switched gears and folded his arms, leaning over and appraising Link’s neat handiwork like a buyer at an art gallery. “You’re good at coloring,” he said, then added almost as an afterthought, “We should be friends.”
Link felt a tremor through his chest, like the physical equivalent of the sound an old door makes when it creaks open. He licked his lips, uncertain. “You got loads of friends.”
“Nah. No one with a cool name like yours.”
Rhett was still leaning toward him. He smelled like fabric softener and freshly cut grass and was beaming at Link with the wide, winning smile of a boy who knew he was likable and was used to getting what he wanted. And for some reason, right now he wanted Link.
As Link looked at him, he became aware of a faint glow emanating from Rhett’s immediate vicinity. It was a golden light, as if the sun were shining on his face, even though their desks were far from the sunbeams that came through the windows. Link blinked and stared and the glow seemed to intensify, shimmering on Rhett’s long eyelashes and giving him a crown of gold like the halos in the picture books about Jesus and the saints. It was a warm, welcoming light with tinges of forest green and honey, and it swelled and undulated with the boy’s inhalations.
Link didn’t understand it, but he knew it made him feel safe. He was sure he wanted to stay close to that light.
He carefully set down his crayon and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips. When he looked back up at the other boy, the light was gone, but the feeling of safety remained. Rhett, still waiting for his response, seemed oblivious to what had just happened.
“Okay,” Link said. “We can be friends.”