The interlopers were due to invade on Thursday. That was cutting it a bit fine, Dylan thought. School was due to go back next week; wouldn’t the principal of the Primary school have things to sort-out before then? Ah well, not his problem and none of his business anyway.
His mother warned him that they wanted him there, they were going to need his help. It was going to be a busy day.
“Oh joy! What am I going to get out of this?”
“You get our everlasting gratitude. Come on, Dills. You’re a part of this family. Sometimes we all have to do things that we’d rather not.”
“Sometimes? Seems like most times it’s me.”
“Ah, you poor wee thing!”
“It’s all right for Dad. Why isn’t he going to be here to help?”
“You know very well. Your father will be at work, working hard to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads.”
“And everyone else’s!”
“Not everyone, just family. They’d do the same for us. Paul is my brother. Would you refuse to help your brother if he needed it? Don’t answer that.”
She said, the night before, that they were catching the 10am ferry sailing from Wellington. They’d be in Picton by 1.30, so they should get to Kaimoana around 4 o’clock. Dylan immediately started making plans to be elsewhere around 4 o’clock, but his father said no, he was to be there and waiting for them.
He had work to go to himself, there was a contract that he couldn’t afford to lose, so Dylan had to be there to help his mother and the girls. (‘Hah! Like they’re going to be any help!’)
The furniture truck was arriving mid-morning and they would unload everything in the driveway in front of the garage. Dylan would help move the beds and anything obviously needed in the bedrooms inside, and get them set-up. After Paul and Sarah got there, they’d sort out what they needed and everything else was to be stored in the garage.
The cars would have to sit out in the car-port for the next few months. Dylan was glad, for once, that he didn’t have his own car yet – there’d be nowhere to keep it.
It was nearer to 5 than 4pm when they arrived. The car pulled up, out the front and the family all went out to welcome the new arrivals. Almost all the family; Dylan didn’t go out, he went to his room and lay on his bed with his guitar. He wasn’t going to welcome them, as far as he was concerned, they weren’t welcome there.
None of them were welcome, especially not the brat who was moving into his room. Dylan knew how annoying kids could be, he used to be one.
Actually, when he thought about it, there was exactly the same age difference between him and this kid as there was between him and his brother – 3 years. Dylan and Jude got along well-enough these days, but it wasn’t always like that, and it wasn’t the same. Jude was his brother and, while 16 is not too far away from 19, there’s a huge difference between 16 and 13. Thirteen was just a kid, a mere child. Sixteen was old enough to get married, with parental consent. Well it was!
Not that he was ever going to get married anyway; but he could.
Despite the head-phones, he could hear the excited voices outside his window. So, even though he didn’t want them to be there and wished that they weren’t, he had to sit up and have a look.
Yeah, that would be Paul. He could see the family resemblance; Paul looked like a male version of his sister, Dylan’s mother. They were both tall and thin with graying hair and long, serious faces.
Fancy having a school principal in the family! He was glad that he didn’t go to the Primary School anymore. Though, he supposed, it could be handy, if uncle liked him. The kids would give him a hard time though.
That was his Aunt Sarah. Oh yeah, he did remember her. She was small, much shorter than her husband, and very, very blonde. Her hair was almost white. She must’ve been quite a looker when she was a girl.
That was their girl, Emmy. She was, what, 15? She had the blonde hair too, and she was taller than her mother already. Emmy was a looker. She was gorgeous in fact – really beautiful, with her blonde hair, deeply tanned skin and lithesome young body. She was going to be a sensation in their small town where the boys had known all the local girls for so long that they were almost like sisters, kind-of.
Cousin or not, Dylan would be right into something like that, if he was into girls. He wasn’t into girls at all, except as friends. Dylan was gay. No-one knew that, but he was.
So, where was the boy? Did he take after the pretty mother as well? Or, was he more like their sober-sides father? Dylan stood up for a better view, but he couldn’t see the kid anywhere out there
Maybe they didn’t bring him? Maybe they’d left him behind in a boarding school, or something? That’d be wicked cool if they did. It would sort the living problem nicely and he wouldn’t be complaining. He hoped that they had.
He still wasn’t going out to welcome them. He lay back on his bed and fingered his guitar. He could wait and first impressions were important. If the kid was with them, he was going to start by laying down the rules so there’d be no doubt about whose room this was.
“Dills. Dills! They’re here. They’ve arrived.” Emma, his youngest sister, burst into the room.
“Yeah, Emma. I know that, thanks.”
“He’s in here, William.” She turned and looked behind her. “This is Dylan and this is your new room.”
‘Blast!’ Dylan lay back and looked up at the ceiling and not at the kid coming in to the room. “Okay,” he sighed. “Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. This is not your room, it’s my room. I’m letting you in here because I have to – no other reason.
Keep yourself, and all your stuff, on your side of the room and don’t, ever, cross over that line. Don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you and don’t talk to me. Understood?”
He rubbed his eyes with the heels of both hands, sitting up as he did. He moved his hands away, opened his eyes and looked at the boy standing there. His eyes opened wider and his mouth dropped open. “Wow!”
The most amazing, the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen in his life, stood there looking around the room. This boy was beyond beautiful. He was absolutely perfect. Better than perfect! He was a dream come true. Amazing.
Okay. Maybe, obviously, he shouldn’t have been quite so fast in deciding that he didn’t want to know this boy.
He stood quietly looking around the room and he looked like a vision, the perfect picture of a beautiful boy. His trim little body was slight and slender. He was dressed in, sockless, red sneakers with black laces, tight-fitting black shorts and a baggy red t-shirt.
His visible, flawless, skin, legs, arms, neck and face, were all a deep, golden, rich-tan colour. His eyes were emerald green and his full lips a dark pink, almost red.
The most amazing thing about his appearance, apart from the perfect proportions and general cuteness, was that his bob of dark blond and golden hair was almost exactly the same colour as his skin. It was hard to tell at a glance where the one stopped and the other started.
He had a very clean look about him too. Presumably, his teeth would be white. Dylan couldn’t see that at the moment, the boy was not smiling. He wasn’t scowling either; his face was blank and expressionless, like a porcelain doll. Like a perfect porcelain boy-doll.
William’s own bed and dresser stood by the windowless wall in the otherwise-bare one third of the room which was divided off from the rest by the strip of masking tape across the carpet and up the far wall to the ceiling.
Dylan was feeling a bit guilty now. He’d been too fast to judge the boy, deciding that he didn’t like him before he’d even met him. Also, that wasn’t very welcoming was it? Also, he didn’t really need all the space that he’d partitioned off. The boy, William, would need some room to move.
“Umm. Yeah. Hi, William, I’m Dylan.”
William turned his gaze on him for an instant, still with no expression on his face. He turned around and walked out of the room.
“Bugger!”
Now Dylan was feeling bad. Should he go after him and tell him that it was okay, they could share the room? No! To hell with him. Embarrassment gave way to anger.
‘Who does he think he is anyway? I’m not crawling to him. It is my room and I make the rules. He’s just a kid and I’m the almost-adult here. He can come back and then we’ll sort it out. And, wow, he’s gorgeous! I never expected that. Why didn’t someone tell me?
He lay on his bed, playing his unplugged guitar, but not thinking about it. He was just going through the motions while his mind was on other things. What he was mostly thinking was, ‘Wow.’
William was his cousin, he was only 13, and he was the most beautiful boy he’d ever seen, the most beautiful boy in the world, and he’d driven him away. Bugger.
He was really going to have to fix this, but how? Okay, he could live with him in his room. The boy was a joy to behold, but he still needed to keep the upper hand here, it was his room and he was the oldest.
So, he waited, but the kid didn’t come back. He’d have to eventually, wouldn’t he? Yes, of course he would. This was where his bed was.
Grace came calling him. “Dylan, you have to come for dinner. There’s a barbecue in the back-yard and you have to come right now.”
“Okay, Grace. I’m coming.”
He got up, checked himself in the mirror, flicked a brush over his hair, and then went through to the back-yard. Everyone was out there. They were all his family, he guessed.
“Dylan! There you are, at last. Boy! You’ve got tall.” His Aunt Sarah stood up with a smile. “Come down here and give your old aunty a kiss.”
“Aww!” he blushed. “Do I have to?”
“Yes, of course you do. It’s how we embarrass you – it’s in the aunties’ handbook.”
“Oh, all right then.” He bent and did what he was told, with a red-faced grin.
“Good boy, thank you. It’s lovely to see you again.”
“Nice to see you too, Aunty. Really nice.”
“Of course it is! That’s your Uncle Paul there, flipping burgers.”
“Hey, Uncle.”
“Hi, Dylan. I see that I’m not the tallest in the family anymore.”
“I guess not.”
“That’s Emmy there, with your sisters,” Sarah continued. “She’s 15 and she’ll be in your class at school.”
“No she won’t. I’m 16 and I’m in year 12.”
“So am I,” said Emmy. “They put me up a year. Hey, Dylan.”
“Hey, Emmy. You’re a brain-box then?”
“Well, sort of. Not as much as Wills though and they haven’t put him up – he wouldn’t go.”
“Where is Wills?” his mother looked around. “He was here a minute ago.”
“He’ll be back,” said Paul. “Come and help yourself here, Dylan. I don’t know how much you eat. Quite a lot by the look of you.”
“You’ve got no idea,” Dylan’s mother said. “Dills has got hollow legs.”
“Dills?” Emmy grinned.
“Yes, Dills. It’s our family name for Dylan.”
“Oh, that’s too much! We call William, Wills. Wills and Dills,” Emmy laughed.
“Shush, Emmy. You’re embarrassing him,” Sarah smiled. “That’s my job, not yours.”
Dylan filled his plate, not too much, and sat in the shade to eat it. The spotlight went off him when his father arrived home from work and they all greeted him.
Emmy came over and sat next to him. She didn’t know where William had gone, and didn’t want to talk about him anyway. What was the school like? He decided that he liked this cousin and they chatted comfortably.
William came back and met his Uncle Tony. Dylan felt jealous as he watched his father and his cousin talking, laughing and joking. They looked like they were getting on well.
He didn’t stay long. They’d finished eating so William and the young girls, Grace and Little Emma, went off for a walk somewhere. They were probably going to show him the neighbourhood.
‘Oh well,” Dylan thought. ‘They’re all just kids anyway.”
Unfortunately, he was not treated as a kid – more like a workhorse. While his mother and Emmy cleaned up the dishes, the men, Sarah and Dylan all got busy moving everything out of the driveway.
Sarah directed operations and the others carried some things inside and stacked the rest in the garage. Once that was finished, they sat around having a beer. Dylan didn’t want one. He’d seen the mess that Jude got himself into and he wasn’t interested. He’d rather have coke. Emmy had a beer.
Dylan went inside and had a shower. He had to use the main bathroom now. He normally used Jude’s en suite, but that was Paul and Sarah’s now. He went to his room and lay on his bed, waiting for William, but the kid didn’t come back. He waited and waited, but he didn’t show.
Dylan drifted off to sleep. He woke during the night; it was 2am, the light was still on and William wasn’t there. He got up and went to the toilet. The house was all quiet and dark, no-one around at all.
On the way back, he looked into the living-room. Maybe William was sleeping on the couch in there? He wasn’t. So, where would he be? Sleeping with Mummy and Daddy?
He went back to his room, turned off the light, climbed into bed and went back to sleep.
When he woke, next morning, the other bed was still made-up and empty. He got up, dressed and went to the kitchen for breakfast. William was there, already eating with the girls.
“Morning everybody. Hey William.”
He ignored him.
When Dylan sat down with his cereal, William quietly got up and left the room. How long was he going to keep this up?
A long time, apparently. William was around for most of the morning, laughing and talking to everybody. Everybody except Dylan that is, he ignored him.
Dylan tried talking to him a couple of times, but got no response at all, so he gave up. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need him anyway, he had friends.
Later in the morning, he left and went to see what Brodie was doing. Brodie’s mum was always good for lunch, he often ate there.
He drifted around town for the rest of the day, caught up with a few people, ate dinner at Fern’s place, and then they went to Joyce’s to watch some DVD’s.
It was nearly midnight when he got back home. The house was all in darkness. The drapes were still open in his room. He peered closely at the other bed, and then switched the light on. William was not there again.
Where would he be? There were no spare rooms and his bed was in here. Dylan sighed, closed the drapes, turned out the light and went to bed.
When he came out in the morning, his Aunt Sarah was alone in the kitchen, drinking coffee and doing the crossword in the morning paper. “Good morning, Handsome,” she smiled. “Sleep well?”
“Yeah,” he grunted. He helped himself to coffee and sat across from her at the table.
“Well, you’re a box of birds in the morning, aren’t you? How are you coping with William sleeping in your room?”
“Umm. Aunt Sarah, I think there’s something that you should know. He hasn’t been sleeping in my room.”
“He what? But. . . Where’s he sleeping then?”
“I don’t know. He hasn’t slept in there at all.”
“What’s going on, Dylan? Have you boys been fighting?”
“No. yes. No. I don’t know. William hasn’t spoken a word to me since you’ve been here. It’s my fault, I know that. I wasn’t very nice to him.
When he walked into my room, our room, I told him that he was not welcome there, and he was to stay over on his side, keep his mouth shut and not touch my things. I was wrong, and I feel really bad about it.
I’ve tried to apologise, but he won’t listen. He won’t even look at me and, as far as I know, he hasn’t been back in the room. Can you talk to him? Tell him that I was wrong and I’m sorry? He is welcome and I can share the room with him.”
“Oh William!” she sighed. “He can be a stubborn little swine. Thank you, Dylan, and, yes, I certainly will be talking to him.”
“He won’t be in trouble will he? That’s not what I wanted, I’m just worried about him.”
“Well don’t stop worrying yet! I’ll deal with him. Where is he now?”
“I don’t know. Probably with the girls, out the back.”
“Right then. Leave it with me.” Sarah went out to the back to find her son.
Dylan gulped his coffee down, and then he made himself scarce for the day. It wasn’t that he was scared of the kid or anything, he just thought that it might be easier on him if he wasn’t around while they sorted things. After all, he was a teenager and no teenager likes being embarrassed in front of his peers.
He spent the day hanging around with friends. Emmy walked past when they were down on the Esplanade, she had a couple of girls with her and greeted him in passing.
‘Wow. Didn’t take Emmy long to make some mates. I wonder if William will be as quick to make some too?’
He returned home in the late afternoon and went into his room. William was there, lying on his own bed and reading a book. He didn’t look up when Dylan came in.
“Great! You’re here. Sorry if I got you in strife with your mum, I was worried about you. Sorry, too, for the way I greeted you when you first got here. That was wrong. Can we start again?”
William silently rolled over and lay with his back to him.
“Okay, so we can’t. I am sorry, William and I’m ready to be friends whenever you are.”
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