72 Suburbs in Search of a City

Uwah wah wah
It been a while, ne?
This has been written for months but Beta computer is totally pwned at the moment.

So yeeeeah. Unbeta'd. Im so sorry. It probably full of lumps and scary use of punctuation. But I reeeally wanted to post it. Ah, how alarming.

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Theodore Schwartz sat in his pyjamas on his the doorstep. Someone in an effort to be comforting had got him a blanket from one of the fire truck, but it was of the itchy wool variety, so he had just left it folded on his lap.

His mother's roses were burning. Not any kind of metaphorical burning either, they were just kind on fire. They had been that way for about 20 minutes.

He had been sitting on the floor right before he discovered it. The floor he had been been laying on up till then was cold and hard because he had ripped up his carpet up a few months ago, because Spooky kept complaining it smelt like cat pee.

Tinkle. 'Cat tinkle' had been the exact words. Theodore smiles a little to himself at this point because only Spook would say 'tinkle' with a straight face,

Theodore blinked what had he been thinking about? He had gotten distracted. Fire, right, that was it. How could he forget? It was still happing 30 feet away from him, now with several people yelling over around. Most of the yelling seemed to originate from a woman in her thirties. There is a cliché line used in romance novels about having curves in all the right places. That wasn't this woman. She was almost a full circle in places, like a ginger Marilyn Monroe in a fireman's coat.

Fire, right things were on fire. Things were smoky. His brain was smoky. He was thinking about what he had been doing when he discovered. He had been lying on the floor, looking up. His room was mostly dark but there was morning sun filtering in between the mini-blinds, making dappled bars of light. The smoke from his joint would lazily float up toward the gyprock ceiling almost invisibly unless it drifted into a beam of light, every shade of silver at once, curling and stretching, and floating out of sight again. It was brilliant, why was there so many poems about flowers, and other girly outdoor things but none about smoke, he thought taking another drag.

Spook should write a song about smoke he had thought. If anyone could do it, spook could. Spooky didn't even use an instrument when he wrote like most of the others at school did. He couldn't, he had never bothered to learn any. He'd just start humming or whistling and somehow a song would form. He didn't write a lot though, because he said he could never put words in without it starting to sound like a different song.

Theo had been wondering, what Spooky's song would look like whistled through a mouthful of smoke into one of these beams of light. Probably better than anything else imaginable, Spook had such a talented mouth.

Spook was- Hey, hold on a minute. Who turned off the sun? Theodore Schwartz frowned, the sunbeams were gone. That sucked. Had it gotten cloudy? Sighing, he sat up careful to avoid knocking over the ashtray, and pulled the blinds up and opened the window.

Smoke, formless and shapeless and grey. Instead of rushing out of his room like usual it was rushing in like really fucking unusual. Theo blinked, crushing the joint into the ashtray, figuring if he the smoke was doing weird things, than that batch was a little strong to be smoking at 8 in the morning.

Unless something really was on fire. Which as it turned out, it was.

Which brought him back to here. The doorstep, surrounded by, various people shouting and various plants smouldering.

"Kiddo, why don't you back up a little more?" One of the yelling people was talking at him. "Get out of the way of the smoke; it's making your eyes all red."

Another voice this one familiar behind from behind him this time, "Yeah, let's go. Just as good of a view from your room Theo."

Theodore smiled; he knew Spook would show up. He must have heard about the fire on the radio. "That was fast."

"I biked over. Not that I wasn't planning on showing up later, It is Sunday after all. But I don't think with all this your Mum will really notice that your tutor is three hours early. Let's go" He reaches out to grab the others elbow, but Theodore pushed him away, giving Spooky warning eyes. Spooky hated warning eyes, it reminded it him of when he use to act up in public when, and Susan, his step-mother would give him the wide evil-eye that every child know means "Stop it, your embarrassing not only but yourself as well.". Even when it came from stoners, sleepy bloodshot eyes, somehow he still felt shame.

He follows Theo's taller form upstairs into his bedroom. Theo's bedroom was painted that elusive shade of dark blue Theo like because it looked so different in light and shadow. Theo likes to look at things as if they were somehow suddenly an art-form. Spooky didn't think Theo even realised that it was a bit unique, so perhaps everything was just wasted.

And in any case, didn't Theo already have the track and the soccer team to keep him occupied anyway? Spooky clicks his tongue and moves toward the window, dropping his bulging shoulder bag on the floor beside him. Keeping his back turned to Theo; he takes the slightly wrinkled daisies out of his pocket, and stuffs them in an empty Pepsi can on the windowsill.

"Tada!" He annouces presenting the can with a flourish. "I'm glad you are not on fire."

Theo looks back at him bemused, "I am glad I am not on fire either.". There was a long silent moment before Theo takes the can and places it on the shelf of his CD rack.

It seems to Spooky, that there was a lot that was being left unsaid here, he just wasn't sure what. He could have said something about being worried, about wondering if Theo had left a cigarette unattended it. He didn't, instead going back over to the window and looking out and the ruckus below.

"It looks like half the neighbourhood is sitting in their yards watching, your flowers burn." He leans out half out the window, letting his pale arms dangle.

Theo shrugs on a ratty grey jacket, shuffling over to look out the widow himself.

"Who is that?" Spooky points idly at a wiry, blonde guy across the street, which appeared to be currently arguing with a sleepy looking dark haired guy.

"Uh, Liam something-or-other. I think last name starts with a S."

"Huh. He totally pings on my Gaydar." Spooky says in a bored tone. It reminds Theo of middle school, and sitting in the cafeteria with the other jocks, comment loudly on who they thought were virgins, (regardless of the fact that they all were.).

Theo does not say this, mostly because he is curious as well, "Liam, really? He works in a law office I think. Didn't you say that lawyers where asexual or some such thing?"

"Doctors and Lobbyists too. Still there is something off about him, don't you think?"

Theo thought there was quite a bit off with his neighbour. He remembered walking to school one morning, and Liam was struggling to get his blue hatchback started. Liam had looked over and told him to "Stop being so fucking young and carefree." and then resumed kicking the snow off his tires, half-singing curse words under his breath.

This had been pretty much his only interaction with said neighbour. Spooky was right, there was something different about him. He mostly kept to himself with the exception of the Carey's, in the next house down. It was like he was half adopted into their family. His mother had said that before the Carey's had kids, they had the three of them use to sit in the back of a old broken-down pick up that someone had left in the wooded lot behind their house, drinking Fanta soda-pop, and vodka. The girl and Liam would get silly and sing show tunes well into the night, and Jack would just laugh and laugh at them...

All the trash and abandoned things in the empty lot had been cleaned up when the funeral home guy bought it, the Carey's had kids, and Liam had kicking and screaming went to work at some kind of law office.

"Hey, hey. Watcha' spacing out about?" Spooky is standing nervously by the widow look at Theo.

"Nothing," Theo replies, because unless they are axe-murders, hicks, or hippies that you thought were witches when you were little; neighbours kinda made for boring small talk. Classmates and teachers made for much more interesting gossip anyway. "Did you see the fight, between Kyle and Tommy's cousin, Friday?

"Theo, I'm 5'5". I haven’t seen a fight since grade school." Spooky rolled his eyes, trying to suppress a smile. "All I see are you Jocks standing in a circle yelling."

"Hey, once the basketball and rugby teams get there, we other jocks are out of luck at seeing anything too. I wouldn't have gotten as good a view it as I did if I wasn't in study period in the library. They were like, two feet from the glass doors. It's was pretty intense."

"How come you don't pick any fights, Theo?" Spooky was sitting on the windowsill now; leaning back to see if there was any interesting clouds outside.

"Cause I don't have a reason to. Do I look like an angry person to you? Half the time, anyone is picking on me at school, I just smile and nod, because I am too zoned out to give a shit." Theo nudges the ashtray on the floor with his feet to accentuate this point.

"And then you fail everything and need a tutor." Spooky retorts, but not unkindly.

"Yup. Besides isn't stereotyping to say I fight just because I am a jock. You don't pick fights either." Theo immediately regretted saying this.

"Why would I have a reason to? I don't need to need people more excuses to try and kick my ass. As it is high school has given me the reflexes of a cat. I am the master of ducking, and dodging things people throw at me. Then there was the time Eric-The-Tall tried to punch me in Home Ec, but I side stepped and he punched one of the fridges instead." He pauses to offer a sideways grin.

The conversation gets like this sometimes. It is the kind of the happens when one party is socially obligated to beat up the other one, but instead pays him to teach him grade 12 English, and makes out with him instead. As a short dork, who wears pastel coloured clothing, and stares at people a lot Spooky is allowed to be gay. Theo as a sports star, whose is fun at parties, gives weed to the freshmen, and has great hair is allowed to have a girlfriend and to mock Spooky.

Which so long as they are in public, he does.

Theo is considering making a dive for his joint, because surely it can't hurt, at this point in the situation, however it is at this point that the bedroom door open, and a laundry basket is kicked in.

"Bring out your dead," a female voice echoes lazily, as Theo sister kicks the laundry basket further into the room. She bangs a spoon, against a sundae glass, full of milk before repeating "Bring out your dead."

"Pat, stop quoting that movie, your killing it." Theo complains, "And why is there milk in the sundae thing?"

"All the cups are dirty." Patty shrugs. Patty being short for Cleopatra, however no self respecting kids want to be referred to as Theo and Cleo, everyone is made to call her Patty except Mrs. Schwartz, who thought that the rhyming names would be cute. "Why is Spooky-Spoo here already?"

"Because your brother is so dumb, I am going to need like a thousand to get him ready for Midterms. He's is Hopeless" Spooky says, sitting down on the end of Theo's bed and sighing overdramatically.

"Hopeless," the thirteen years old nodded in agreement her blond pony tail bobbing behind her. "Absolutely hopeless."

"I'd like to take a moment to remind you all that I am still in the room.”Theo complains, chucking an armful of dirty shirts at Patty.

"Unfortunately." She huffed, tossing the shirts to the basket and kicks it back out off the room, shutting the door softly behind her.

"Spooky-Spoo. Spoo? What's a Spoo? It sounds unhealthy." The boy on the bed frowns, flopping backwards.

"Dunno," Theo shrugs, looking at down at his socks, "I think she likes you or something. I told you to stop lending her your old movies and musicals. She thinks’ your enigmatic and avant-guard now. "

"So call a lawyer and sue me." Spooky chuckles under his breath "Sue me, what can you do me. I-"

"Whatever." Theo says cutting him off as he flops down on the bed beside him. "I'll tell to knock off the pet names. Does it bug you though?"

"What?" the reply, somewhat muffled by a yawn.

"When people call you Spooky.’Cuase really your only a little creepy once people to know you?"

Spooky laughs "I am not Spooky? I have been Spooky so long that I am no longer Jimmy either." he rolls over so he is somewhat on top of Theo, and their noses are almost touching. "So tell me, Who am I"

"Name you?" Theo asks, feeling his eyes cross from trying to focus on Spooky's face. It was a bit hard to focus on anything really. It felt all the nerves in his body had migrated to only the places where Spooky was laying on him. Also, he was flushed, fighting the urge to shiver in a rather girly way and could not longer remember what day it was. Love and lust didn't feel so much like poetry as it did a weird disease. One that made him notice things like Spooky hair, which had been dyed a stop sign red color this week, was glowing around the edges in the light.

"Name me?" Spooky repeat almost uncertainly. He stayed close to the others face not wanting Theo to see anything but him.

"Can I call you 'mine'?" Theo tries to say jokingly, but his voice has gone all funny. Actually the world has gone all funny and vaguely perfect at the same time. Somewhere at the back of his mind Theo wonders if the fire trucks have left yet but then Spooky is kissing him. Somehow it they end up rather entangled, with Theo now on top and with quite a bit tongue and hair touching going on. Theo has somehow lost a sock and, Spooks shirt has gone awry.

Theo fumbles, his hand finally grabbing the pull cord, and the mini-blinds fell back down over the window with a clatter. Theo smiles, looking at the now dappled light falling on Spooky face. It's heartbreakingly beautiful.

The worst part, Theo thinks, will be answering his mother when she asks what he learned today.

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Was that okay?
being Beta-less is feels like being naked somehow.
Please review, and tell me if i can improve