So there's two boys, in the first boy's room. The door is closed, the parents are away, and the afternoon is dragging on.

    And they're lying on the bed, listening to metal, loud. And the second boy is gazing at the first, listening to him sing with the CD.

    He's actually sort of lying crosswise on the bottom of the bed, and the other boy's feet are close. Sometimes he puts them on his friend's tummy. Just sort of nice.

    The feet on his belly feel nice. The socks are just clean enough, but still smell like the boy he's dreaming about.

    And the boy, whose room it is, is really rocking with the tunes, moving his feet about. He wonders, in passing, why his friend hasn't pushed them away. But is cool. Everything's cool, this afternoon.

    And so the second boy is lying there, enjoying the tummy rub. Wishing he could talk about things, his feeling. But boys don't do that, of course. So he lies there, with angst growing in his heart, and warmth growing in his pants.

    But the first boy is really rocking away, going with it. It isn't long before his foot slips, and ends up on his friend's jeans.

    "Hay! Watch it! You almost wracked me!"

    The boy at the top of the bed giggles. "Yeah, like ya got one or something!" It's not cruelty, they're always teasing each other.

    But his friend is pissed. "Yeah, like I do!" He pushes the feet off. Mysteriously, the music falls silent. The whole afternoon has suddenly changed, as clouds before the face of the sun alter the light.

    The first boy sits up, drawing the rejected feet to himself. 'Rejected?' he wonders at it. And takes a moment - he isn't used to feelings like this - 'Yeah, it feels like rejection,' he confirms silently.

    He wonders why, though. Not something that should be. Why was it now so important, having his feet on his friend? He was just, well, doing it. More room to stretch out. And sort of friendly, too. Guess it was wrong, he thought with some shame.

    And the other boy lay suddenly alone. His anger was gone as soon as it flared. With guilt at pushing away his own friend replacing the quick violent heat, sorrow at isolating himself from the comfortable touch.

    He knew it meant nothing to his best friend, the gift of that touch. He knew it was just cause he happened to be lying there, taking up valuable real estate at the foot of the bed. And he felt stupid to let himself drift into believing, immerse in the illusion that the massage-waves of pleasure from dancing feet on his abdomen were really closeness, were really sharing. Needy, he thought in deprecation, to feed insatiable, consuming fantasy off a friend.

    But empty fantasies, secret desires were his hobby. Swimming laps in the sea of shame that followed kept the teenage lines of his frame trim, slender. Muscled, heart and body, with a lean, wearing toughness born of steady stroke against the tide of his own hopelessness; paddling endlessly against the dark current sucking him to destruction in the whirlpool of disparate loneliness.

    And what he felt for his best friend in the moist and private places of his heart and body must forever be a secret.

    The first boy rose from the bed, stalked to the window. The yard outside was no different than it always was. Same weeds, same disorder. Moving about helped, and he rocked on the balls of his feet. The blood and electric youth in his limbs coursed, pulsed. It was so easy to understand, to feel. Not like what he found in his chest, though, sometimes. Usually, the times that his best friend was near.

    He cast a quick glance back, to the bed where his friend still lay. Couldn't see his face, though. Not like he might have been crying or anything - boys don't. It just made him uncomfortable that the other boy was mad now. He wanted to apologize, or something. And didn't want to. Didn't want the air to stink with the awkwardness of a male sorrow, ring with painful emptiness for endless moments after.

    It's so hard, he thought. I want to be close, but not scare him off - harder, specially 'cause he's a guy. And worse even, when he takes things so personally. Sensitive. But he halted, tripped up on his self which had made him flee the bed, had him pacing like a lion in front of the bars of the window. Who is the over-sensitive one here?, he mulled.

    Emotional clouds gathered within the bedroom, billowing angst that blocked the sun of companionship. A severe storm pours out its fury, cleanses the land, renewing growth. But the weather here was a still, unpleasant thickness, a hot muggy afternoon in an adolescent swamp. The sort of day that the dirt and stickiness cling, and the stink and sordidness of it all fuses itself to one's very flesh.

    "I'm sorry," they both said. A breeze that wasn't air filled the silence that followed.

    The boy on the bed laughed. "No problem, O.K.? Get back over here. And what happened to the music, anyway?"

    The boy who's room it was grinned, a healthy, innocent expression that harkened in his friend's heart, recalled earlier fresher times, when the weight of love had yet to distort the purity of boys' new friendship. He punched up his pillow, jumped athletically onto the coverlet. And lay a bit more compact this time, diplomatically careful to keep his feet on the bed.

    And yet the music didn't start again.

    The new breath in the room was a quiet one. Disturbed only by the sound of socks against shirt, as one boy slid the feet of another onto his tummy.