The Between Years

expected the same to happen now only he had run dry of opportunities.

    When he climbed upstairs, he wanted to head straight for his bedroom, so he could crawl under the covers, bury his head under the pillow, and sleep away his sadness. But he paused when he saw light shining from Kenny's room and heard a buzz of music travel into the hall. He had all but forgotten about the boy until then. Part of him didn't want to bother because he knew that he could do nothing right for the boy and that anything he said or did would only raise his ire.

    But he loved the boy too much to give up on him. For him, one point had remained constant: he would fight to his death to help his son through any trial he was facing. If that meant absorbing further abuse then so be it.

    So he approached the door, sucked in a deep breath, and pressed it open. Inside, he found no one. The room had undergone yet another makeover, but Kenny was nowhere to be seen. Randy supposed he'd entered the room at the wrong time, or that Kenny had deliberately eluded him once more. If the latter was true, he didn't care for the mind games, but he reminded himself that Kenny held the upper hand in their relationship.

    A sweet scent like incense wafted through the room, while a ceiling fan sliced the air. The walls had been painted dark red with white and blue streaks of pain splashed across it. A stereo sat in the corner, playing a Hedley CD. When Randy stared down at his feet, he saw that he was standing on a hardwood floor and preferred no carpet at all over the ass-ugly green carpet Kenny had had when he was twelve-or a few days ago in Randy's time. However, a white rug sat in the middle of the floor and Randy approved of his taste.

    Kenny owned a beautiful brown, wooden desk with a DELL laptop on the surface. The desk itself blocked the closet where he used to hide his junk food. When he noticed a stack of paper beside the computer, he thumbed through it and found that Kenny had been writing a novel. He wouldn't have time to sit down and learn what the novel was about, but he was breath-taken with pride to find that his son wasn't afraid to be creative. It instilled in him a hope that perhaps Kenny had regained some of the self-confidence that his schoolyard bullies had obliterated.

    The urge to skim through Kenny's desk drawers was too powerful to resist, and he now realized why parents were always so unabashed about doing it. Still, he felt some pangs of guilt because he knew a boy's privacy was sacred and that he'd hated when his parents had done it. But the urge consumed him. So he glanced over his shoulder to make sure Kenny wasn't approaching, and opened the top drawer.

    Inside, he found a pack of cigarettes. Du Maurier. With them, he found several Bic lighters. He picked up the package, opened it, and found white cylinders with brown filters inside. His heart sank at the sight. Hadn't he had the smoking conversation with him? (And if he hadn't, he certainly wouldn't know!). He wanted to believe that Kenny would be too smart to pick up such a habit, particularly with modern understanding of tobacco use, not to mention the constant public campaigns against it. Besides, smoking accompanied by his weight problems was certainly a recipe for disaster, and Randy felt a renewed concern for Kenny's health.

    Beneath the cigarettes, he found a stack of skin magazines, which he didn't want to lose sleep over given that he'd owned his share of dirty magazines when he was young. His father had found them underneath his dresser-one one of their treasure hunts that Randy had hated-but he hadn't given him the third degree over it. Having explained that young men are often curious, he simply called it a rite of passage.

    But when he looked closer at the stack, and sorted through them, he realized that the magazines were different from the ones he'd snuck home. These were Playgirl and All Boy magazines. One cover boasted an issue full of campus hunks and the other claimed to be a double issue of twinks. As if further convincing were necessary, he flipped one open and saw various pictures of young, trim men sporting impressive erections. At first, Randy thought that the magazines were only to satisfy a youthful curiosity, but the more he rooted through them, the more he realized that Kenny owned no other kind of skin magazine.

    What would make Kenny want to do something like this? He wondered. And why? Whatever the reason, Randy knew that he could not deny the