The Water Boy

Jonny pushed the creaky door open. The building had been abandoned many, many years ago; before that, it had been some sort of factory, maybe a brewery. But it was so long ago that Jonny wasn't even alive when it was last in use, at least commercially.

He spent most of his time in this building. It was a quiet place where he could escape from all of the people in the world and just be with his own thoughts in peace. His favorite spot to sit was in a room located on the second floor. There was a small window in the room – the only window in the entire building, in fact – which Jonny loved to sit by and look out of.

The view from the window was almost nonexistent. The land around the building mostly looked like a barren wasteland, but it wasn't the land he liked to look at anyway. Since most of the grass had died a long time ago, the long stretch of dirt was perfect for the neighborhood kids to play in. During the spring, when the dirt was actually mud, the little kids would build mud castles and sculpt mud pies. During the summer, the older kids dominated the field and used the space to hold baseball games.

These games were held almost every afternoon, as long as the sun was shining – and sometimes even when it wasn't. As long as there were no hurricanes or tornadoes, those boys were out there playing baseball. The teams almost always consisted of the same people. Sometimes a few of the boys were on vacation with their families, leaving one team slightly shorter than the other, and in those cases they would switch a few people over just to even the numbers.

Since the teams were mostly the same each game, the boys all had certain positions to play. The boy who pitched for the team which called itself The Slings and Arrows of Outrageous Fortune (The Arrows for short) also doubled as the team's captain. He had bright, blue eyes, thick, curly, cinnamon-brown hair, and a seemingly vast pool of knowledge regarding every single subject one could possibly know about. The team name, which was actually part of a quote from the play Hamlet, had been his idea. From what Jonny had gathered during months of watching these boys play the year before, this boy's name was Chris.

Chris had grown a few inches since the previous summer. He now stood taller than most of the other boys on his team and looked lankier than ever before. The ripped jeans he wore just barely hid his bony ankles. He was still rather pale, but after a few weeks in the summer sun his skin would brown.

Jonny eagerly climbed the steps to the second floor. Today was the date of the first baseball game of the summer. A few of the boys were already in the field, but when Jonny checked before entering the building, Chris had yet to arrive. He wanted to make sure that he had his position by the window set before Chris showed up.

Most of the boys were in the field when Jonny finally sat down. He scanned the crowd and almost instantly noticed Chris – not that he was hard to notice, of course. Chris knelt down at the pitcher's mound, decked out in a plain white t-shirt which made him look a little tanner than he actually was. Jonny liked this shirt on Chris. It was loose enough around the neck that Chris's collarbone showed, but it was tight enough in the back that the fabric clung to his shoulder blades, which Jonny could clearly see now as Chris hunched over.

Jonny knew it was superficial to be so fascinated by someone who he only knew on a physical level (not, of course, the physical level his teenage hormones would have liked,but a physical level nonetheless). He knew it was creepy to sit in the comfort of the abandoned building every afternoon and watch the boys play baseball until the sun went down with absolutely no intention of ever interacting with the boys in a normal way. Yet, despite what he knew, Jonny continued to make his way up to the second floor and to the window every day that the games went on.

The sun shone particularly bright on this day. Most of the boys were drenched in sweat before the game even began. It felt hotter in the building, Jonny thought. He opened the window to let some cool air in, though it was not as much help as he would have liked.

After half an hour of the game, the boys decided it was time to take a much needed break for water. Some of the boys who lived nearby ran to their houses to fill buckets of water from their garden hoses. In the meantime, the other boys sat down and waited. Some tried to find shade, but with the lack of trees, the task was impossible to accomplish.

Chris circled the pitcher's mound for a while. Jonny watched him, keeping his eyes on Chris's shoulder blades, then his collarbone, then his shoulder blades again as the tall boy turned, then his collarbone...

Chris stopped walking. He wiped some sweat off his forehead. Jonny was just enjoying the view of Chris's shoulder blades through the white t-shirt when suddenly the t-shirt wasn't there anymore and the shoulder blades were bare, covered only by pale skin. Chris discarded his t-shirt in the dirt by the side of the building. He stretched, and Jonny held his breath as Chris's head tilted back, his gaze pointed at the general direction of the window.

No no no no no, Jonny thought to himself, no no, don't look up here. Don't look up here, and put your shirt back on; you're killing me! No no no no no...

But it was too late.

“Hey!” Chris called. Jonny tried to sink down, but Chris was clearly talking to him and him alone; there was no way that Chris hadn't seen him. “What are you doing up there?”

“Just... just watching,” Jonny replied. He peeked out to see that Chris was squinting up at him.

“You should come down and play with us.”

“No thanks, I quite like it up here.”

“Well, what are you doing up there? You're just sitting and watching us?”

Not quite, Jonny thought, sinking in his seat, no, I wouldn't use the word 'us,' no.

“Yes.” A long silence followed, during which he wondered if Chris hadn't just decided to leave without saying anything else. But then, several moments later:

“Is it because of the shade? Is it cooler up there?”

“I think it might be hotter, actually,” Jonny yelled out the window. Chris made a sort of laughing noise.

“What? Why are you up there if it's hotter, then?” he asked. Jonny groaned a little. This was not the way he wanted his first conversation with Chris to go. “Come down here. Wouldn't want you to get overheated.”

“I'm fine, really.”

“It's hot enough down here, I would know. If it's hotter up there, you'll no doubt pass out. Just come down and at least get some water, all right?”

That almost sounded like... concern... Jonny peered outside once more. Chris had his hand over his forehead to shield his eyes from the sun, though he still had to squint. Jonny meant to answer, but was prevented by the fact that he hadn't actually made up his mind yet.

“We have people bringing buckets 'round. Just get some water so you don't pass out. Please?”

Jonny stared for a while at Chris's exposed chest, and decided that if he was going to make a fool of himself (which would certainly happen no matter what), he may as well make a fool of himself while standing a few feet away from a shirtless Chris.

“I'll be down in a minute.”

Chris flashed Jonny a wide grin. He went to grab something off of the ground at his feet, but Jonny didn't see what the object was. He backed away from the window and raced out of the building.

Before he could even make it out of the door, he heard someone shout, “Catch!” and was promptly hit by some flying object. The person who had shouted started laughing, and as Jonny tried to recover from the attack, he saw a figure with curly hair reach down for the object. It was a baseball glove.

“Yeah, OK, I wouldn't want you on my team anyway,” Chris said with a smile. “You can't even catch.”

“I couldn't catch even if I had been expecting it.”

“It's OK. Come on.” One of Chris's large hands found its way to Jonny's back, and he pushed Jonny along.

Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, Jonny thought, it wouldn't be good if you die before you have a conversation that's not weird. Although, if you pass out, maybe Chris knows CPR...

“Do you know CPR?” Jonny asked. He cringed a little as Chris laughed.

“Actually, my mum's making me take a class next month.”

As they walked back to the group of boys, Jonny noticed that the other boys had returned with the buckets of water, and carried several water bottles in addition.

“Chris!” someone shouted, and a water bottle flew through the air in Chris's direction. Luckily, Chris was much better at catching than Jonny, though it did require removing his hand from Jonny's back. Chris opened the bottle hastily and took a long sip. Jonny watched as some of the water missed Chris's mouth and dribbled down his neck.

Then the bottle was being offered to Jonny, and Jonny could do nothing but stare at the bottle in shock.

His lips touched that, Jonny thought, I can't drink from that!

“I don't have any weird diseases, promise,” Chris said. “Come on, drink so you don't pass out. You look like you're going to collapse at any minute.”

Jonny glared at Chris with a look that said, You don't even know. But he realized what he would have to do, and so he accepted the bottle with a shaky hand. He tried to imitate Chris's move from before and took a large gulp. The water went down just fine (he even spilled less down himself than Chris had) until he really thought about what he was doing. His lips were touching the bottle which Chris's lips had also touched just moments before.

Jonny spluttered, pulling the bottle away and spewing a bunch of water onto the dirt. He coughed a few times and felt Chris's hand on his back again.

“OK, OK,” Chris said, patting Jonny's back a bit. “Well, we don't want you to drown, either.”

Jonny looked at Chris, who kept his hand planted between Jonny's shoulder blades. Another boy – most likely the boy who threw the bottle to Chris – approached the two.

“Who's this?” the boy asked, nodding in Jonny's direction. Jonny realized at this moment that Chris had no idea who he was. Chris would surely come to the same realization at any moment and consequently learn that Jonny was just some creepy kid who liked to watch them from the small window of the building.

“Erm,” Chris began, and he took his hand off of Jonny's back to point it at him. This is the end, Jonny thought, goodbye Chris, it was nice tasting your saliva... “Jonny, right?”

Jonny's spine stiffened. He had no idea how Chris could have stumbled upon this sort of information (though, of course, Chris was incredibly intelligent and seemed to know everything – except CPR), and briefly he wondered if he was the only creep around. The other boy looked at Jonny expectantly, and Jonny shook himself out of his stupor and nodded his head feebly.

“Jonny goes to school with us,” Chris told the other boy.

“Oh. Is he playing?”

“No,” Chris said with a bit of a laugh. Jonny figured he should have been insulted, but he was too busy admiring Chris's smile to care. "He can't even catch."

“Oh.”

The other boy seemed to have lost interest at this point and walked away. But only a minute later, he and several of the other boys returned with the buckets of water, some of which were now empty. A few of the boys set the buckets down by Jonny's feet.

“If you're not playing,” the boy who had spoken before said, “then you're water-boy. Think you can handle that?”

“Of course he can,” Chris answered. Jonny watched him in awe. “As long as he doesn't try to drink it.”

None of the other boys laughed, they just walked away once more, but Chris turned to Jonny with a smile and his eye twitched in what Jonny supposed was a wink. Jonny continued to stare at him in awe, but Chris must have thought Jonny looked nervous.

“Hey,” Chris put his hand on Jonny's back for the third time and leaned in, “it's easier than catching, promise.”

Jonny gave him a smile as the skin under Chris's hand started to tingle and his heartbeat sped up. Chris rejoined his team moments later, leaving Jonny to admire his shoulder blades as he walked away.

One thing Jonny noticed during his time as the water-boy that afternoon was that watching Chris became much easier when Chris was only a few hundred yards away. The little details about him (his collarbone and shoulder blades, for instance) were far clearer from this distance. Jonny had to look at what was happening during the rest of the game from time to time to not appear too suspicious, but since the other boys' attentions were focused on the game anyway, he could stare at Chris for long increments of time without worry.

Then, as a bonus, every time the boys stopped for a break, Chris would walk over to grab a drink, and he would say something cute and smile at Jonny. It almost felt like a friendship forming. When the boys finished playing several hours later as the sky turned purple and Chris asked if Jonny would like to continue his profession for the rest of the summer, Jonny did not hesitate to say yes.

It would be a good summer, indeed.