During every class for the rest of the day, Roy inhabits Nathan's mind, surrounded by whiteness and emptiness. It is perfect to think of Roy and nothing else, to dwell on Roy's image and think nothing at all. Roy will teach Nathan algebra, and Nathan will study Roy's shoulders and arms. The thought makes Nathan's mere arithmetic seem tedious and small. He stares at the flaked paint and rust on the iron posts that support the canopy outside. The clock spitefully crawls. Mr. Ferrette scratches the blackboard with fevered chalk. He occupies a fraction of Nathan's mind.

On the bus home Roy remains quiet, almost somber. Nathan sits behind him again but this time there is some change. Roy faces the bright world beyond the windshield. The very set of his shoulders denies any knowledge of Nathan. Nathan accepts the fact quietly. Fields wash by the windows, the motor roaring and groaning as Roy shifts gears with strong, sure motions. When he drives the bus to the back of the yard, under the pecan tree, he still stares straight ahead. A warning is evident in his quiet; Nathan presses for no attention. In the yard under the spreading pecan branches, Roy waits while Nathan gathers his books and hurries out of the bus, mumbling a goodbye that is barely returned. He does not ask whether Roy will come to his house tonight. Breathless, discomposed, he flies through the kitchen past Mom's flowered skirts (in which she is still studying how to be invisible) through the cloud of Dad's cigarettes (where he is already vanishing in the television's blue aura). Nathan climbs the stairs to his room and closes the door behind him.

Supper comes and goes. Nathan finishes his homework at the desk, from which he can see the lighted square of Roy's window. Now and then Roy's shadow passes the bright frame. Nathan sits quietly over his books. He studies his math a while, hardly concentrating, until he hears footsteps on the stairs.

When the door opens Roy is holding his algebra book before him like a shield. He grips the cover, which features a series of black and purple triangles on a field of burnt sienna. Roy's expression makes Nathan immediately cautious. "I told you I was coming over. Did you forget?"

"No." Nathan stands.

"Can I come in?"

"Sure."

Roy enters and cautiously sits on the bed. He sets out his books in a way that designates a place for Nathan beside him. The math book falls open. Soon Roy is writing in his firm hand on the notebook beside Nathan's thigh. He denotes equations in letters and numbers, illuminating each in pencil as he describes their arcane meanings and functions. Roy speaks to Nathan as to a peer and not as to a younger boy. Algebra is simple. You learn to work from both sides of the equation, to find the answer implied by circumstance. He sets out problems that become increasingly clear, reading from the math book about the price of yellow and green ribbon in Mr. Sawyer's department store, about the number of nickels in $1.97 if there are four quarters and six dimes. Finding a solution for the problem, as Roy explains it, requires a peculiar and inexorable logic. Enlightenment comes to Nathan at the same time that Roy's presence begins to have its usual effect on him. The principles of algebra break over Nathan like day. What has not before been known—the undiscovered element in any circumstance—may be ferreted out, exposed to light. Nathan watches Roy's hands on the pages, his brows knit together as he reads. There is an unknown here in this room. X and Y hang in the air between them.

Roy lets Nathan solve a word problem himself, leaning close to watch and explain. Again with his nearness comes that field of magnetism that possesses Nathan. Roy watches calmly from his side of the equal sign. He has moved close now, his breath touches Nathan along the soft of the throat. No logic can explain such warmth. Roy sets down his pencil and Nathan touches the veins on the back of Roy's hand. The contact shocks them both. Roy is quiet Shy, like Nathan. But neither hand moves.

Roy leans close till his forehead brushes Nathan's, dark hair tickling, his eyes downcast. The rhythms of their separate breathings merge into one river. No other sound intrudes as they lean against each other, skull to skull. Nathan feels the unknown rising in them both, its message plainer than either can fathom. Roy cups his warm hand against Nathan's neck. Roy's breathing deepens, reaches inside. Now both his hands are trembling.

Roy is starved for closeness. Nathan leans against him, since it seems it is warmth that he craves. But the effect is out of proportion; it is as if he has cracked Roy's shell. Roy makes a sound as if he is taking his first breath.

He pulls Nathan down to the mattress, unmindful of textbook and papers beneath. His weight is delicious and full. Their breathing changes together, and they press against each other, warmth exchanged for warmth, as Roy sighs into Nathan's hair.

In the quiet wake of the moment, the sounds of the house clarify and isolate themselves. Mom washes dishes in the subterranean kitchen. Dad dozes through the weekly Hawaiian detective series in the living room. Out in the world the wind is blowing leaf against leaf, an insistent whispering with a scent of storm. "Does this make you feel funny?" Roy asks.

"No."

"It makes me feel funny."

"Well, maybe it makes me feel a little funny too. But I don't care."

"I don't care either. I just wonder why." He lies on the bed watching the ceiling. "Do you like me?"

"Yes." Nathan can hardly lift his eyes from the soft chenille.

"Do you like me a lot?" There is something frightened in the question. Roy's body has become rigid. It is as if he is denying the words as they emerge.

Nathan speaks suddenly, with violence, against Roy's shoulder. "I like you a whole lot. I really do. And I want you to like me the same way."

"I do," he says. Saying so much has apparently surprised him; he stands from the bed adjusting his pants, asking if Nathan wants to walk outside away from the houses. In the dark. Nathan spares no breath for an answer but falls in beside him down the corridor, descending the back stairway to the kitchen, pausing while the shadow of Mom retreats into the dining room, the unknowable rooms beyond. At the back door Roy's hand hovers over Nathan's. Fresh air from the night spills over Nathan. Roy steps into the inky quiet and Nathan orbits him.

Mom's dim voice calls out, "Where are you going, Nathan? Nathan?"

"Outside." By then the night surrounds him.

Roy runs and Nathan follows, into the waist high weeds behind the barn, into the flood of moonlight that pools within the pokeweed and broom straw. Roy is laughing from deep inside his chest, and he runs ahead into the white, glowing world. Nathan follows at his slower pace. The twinned houses dwindle behind, and the shadow pines rise up toward the stars. Nearing the pond, they descend the slight embankment leading to the watery Up. Roy pauses at the edge, touching his sneaker to the waterline. He checks to make sure Nathan is following, then kneels with a sycamore branch, drawing a line in the pale muddy pond bottom. The moonlight records the motion perfectly, they can see everything. Clouds of mud rise in the water from the tip of the stick.

"I like this place at night."

Nathan stops near Roy's elbow. "It's quiet."

"There's a cemetery over yonder." Roy points with the stick. To a thickening of shadow.

He shivers. "A real one?"

"Yeah. With great big tombstones. There's a lot of them, with angels and statues. They look pretty spooky at night."

"Can we go there?"

"You sure you want to? Your mom might get mad if we stay out too long." "I want to."

Willows, arrow arum, and cattails grow to the edge of the pond, and royal fern and honeysuckle overhang the glimmering water. Branches crack underfoot, pine needles protesting. Roy's passage is quieter than Nathan's, his feet somehow lighter. He lifts aside limber branches with an easy hand, holding them over Nathan's head. The path through the darkening trees is washed with light, and the substance of Roy moves through it dense and shadowed. Nathan hurries behind Roy, drawing audible breath after audible breath. The pond spreads a hush, the trees lift their branches, the stars and moon bum. Between is a blackness the eye fails to fathom.

The cemetery gate and iron fence form out of nothing, within a circle of trees at the top of a rise of land. Roy opens the iron gate and shows Nathan the rust stains on his palms. The two are silent as they move into the enclosure, overgrown with weeds. Tombstones, some toppled, and the leavings of wreaths impede their passage. The ground gives off a clotted, dank smell. Roy is breathless. He passes his hand along eroded marble in which letters are carved. Nathan studies the words but fails to read them, so Roy leans close and whispers, "This one says, Sarah Jane Kennicutt, Her Father's Favorite Daughter. The Kennicutts used to own all this land, that's what people say. There were two Kennicutt plantations, one right around here that burned down, and another one off in the woods."

"Then why is it Poke's Road?"

Roy shrugs. "Poke's Road goes for a long ways. It must have been some Pokes on it, once upon a time." He is leaning against Nathan. "I'll take you to the end of that road one of these days. Way off in the woods where it's overgrown and nobody can use it."

Nathan nods, but is rendered speechless by touch. Roy grips Nathan's arm and leads him to another grave over which looms a guardian obelisk. The shadow of the granite shaft passes across Roy's face, and his expression is inscrutable. Something in Roy's stance lays a field of silence around them both.

Now both Roy's hands touch both Nathan's arms. He watches Nathan with a new quiet. It is hard for Nathan to be conscious of anything but the touch of those hands on his arms, the texture of tough skin and strong fingers. Nathan makes one sound, throaty and startled, like an animal giving a single warning. Roy exerts the slightest pressure.

His body is full of curves beneath the clothes. Nathan leans against him, as Roy slightly smiles. He kneels in the grass and brings Nathan down with him. The two are trembling and huddle together in the dark of the grave.

The sweetness of the moment lingers. The salty smell of Roy's body rises out of the shirt that he unbuttons and slides over his shoulders. Moonlight glitters on the slight sweat of his chest. A calm deliberateness engulfs him. Nathan eases the worn jeans down Roy's thighs. Air pours against Nathan's skin as Roy strips away his cotton tee shirt. Nathan shivers with the chill.

Roy embraces the slighter boy and their warmth multiplies, their bodies shuddering and yet clinging each to the other, dressed only in white underwear in the shadow of the granite marker. The warmth makes chromosomes sing. Roy says, "Now we're buddies," with a tone of deep relief in his voice, and Nathan mouths the words soundlessly, watching the North Star over the pond. He wonders what a buddy is and whether he is the only one Roy has. He is farther from home than he has ever been. Roy cradles him as if he will never let go. "Bats fly around here sometimes. You can hear them making that squeak noise."

"Do you hear any now?"

"No. I don't hear anything except you. But this is the place for bats, ain't it?" Roy surveys the surrounding tombstones as if they are his estate. He talks about them quietly as Nathan rests against him. "This thing is called an obelisk," he explains, and Nathan pretends to learn this as a new fact. "It's something people in the old times would Put on a grave. This grave belongs to Frederick Kennicutt. He was kin to my greatgrandaddy.

Nathan knows nothing about his own greatgrandaddy. He simply watches Roy mouth the words. "Come on."

They uncoil and creep quietly through the tombstones in their undershorts. Along a rise of land they climb, to a place where the black pond is visible below. Up there is a statue of a plump baby wearing a robe, with stubby marble wings sprouting from its shoulders. Roy stands large and shapely beside the angel baby, Roy more radiant than the stone in the same fall of thin moon and starlight. The sight of Roy encumbers Nathan so that even his gaze feels heavy; Roy is like an immense gravity and he is pulling Nathan toward him without any effort. Again Roy yields to Nathan's hands, gives way to touch. Nathan bends his knees and Roy rests on the ground beside him, above him. Nathan is breathing into the hollow of Roy's collarbone and Roy is laughing softly, reasonless.