The boy turned to me as I passed, motioned my way with his hand, and said, “Walk with us.”
I turned and followed, like an obedient dog, all the while my heart pumping like I had just been threatened with a painful death rather than just walking with a bunch of strangers. I walked alongside the boy, behind the group of adults, my thump-thumping heart making it hard to hear and harder to breathe. The adults up ahead chatted with each other, and we two non-adults lagged behind.
He didn’t say anything for a while, which actually kind of helped, because it made me feel like maybe he didn’t think it was so weird that I wasn’t saying anything. But as the silence stretched on, I thought maybe it was getting rude, so I gulped, decided to pretend I was someone who could conversate, and pointed to the teen boy’s dog.
“Doodle?”
“Labra,” he said.
“Me too. I mean, not me, mine. Is. Griffin,” I said, and somehow I knew he knew I meant the dog. You never give out names with dog people, because who remembers people names?
“Squirrel,” he said back.
I raised an eyebrow. “You named your dog Squirrel?”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see him lob his head around. He had shoulder-length hair the color of hay and tanned skin. His face was so thin it made me think of those vises in shop class, and I imagined his face in there getting squeezed, which was not nice or charitable but sometimes my brain goes to weird places. “My dad,” he said. His voice from behind the mask was honeyed in that way that other queer kids sometimes talked, that way that made you kind of know it’s okay, you’re not going to get jumped. “He thought it would be funny at the dog park to yell ‘Squirrel’ when calling our dog, and all the other dogs would be like, ‘Where’s the squirrel?’ Dad joke.”
I grimaced and laughed despite myself. “Oh no he didn’t.”
“You know that thing where you think, like, One good thing about the pandemic is I’ll get to spend more time with my dad. And then you do and you’re like, Yeah, no.”
As we turned east on Earll, our dogs pulled toward the church with the perfectly manicured green lawn Griffin enjoys writhing around on. We let them lead, and soon we had that weird moment when two dogs simultaneously squat, while you wait there, both holding an empty poop bag and avoiding eye contact.
And the guy, whose name I still didn’t know, said, “Do dogs think we are mining them for their incredibly valuable poo?”
I was like, What?
He continued. “I mean, we house them, we feed them, we take them out, and when they poo, we collect it.”
“Huh,” I said. Wondering for the first time if maybe this kid was not so much a Normal.
“Daxton,” he said.
“I thought you said Squirrel?”
“No, my name.”
“Oh. Kaz,” I said.
“Good to meetcha, Kaz. Meet us again tomorrow?”
Against my better instincts, I said yes. And I admit that I felt the slightest jolt of joy, imagining more conversations with the cute, queer boy who said not Normal things.
—
The next morning, after finding them on the corner of 27th and Earll, we paired off again, me and Daxton lingering back.
“Who are the adults?” I asked. “Are they your mom and dad?”
He laughed. “I wish. No. I just saw them walking one day and I went up to them. They were really nice and invited me to walk with them, so I did.”
I couldn’t imagine doing that. But I could totally imagine Daxton doing it, and being totally normal about it.
“Cool,” I said, meaning it.
Griffin pulled on the leash and I let up some, allowing him to peer around the oleander bush where, once a few years ago, he saw a small, brown feral cat. For the zillionth time in a row, it wasn’t there, but I knew he’d expect to see it tomorrow. He’s a very hopeful dog.
Then we walked some, six feet apart, both lost in our own thoughts.
“I think the pandemic is like God’s way of telling humans to go to their room,” he said, as we passed the house with the aqua and orange tile mosaics assembled on the mailbox and the concrete side wall.
I cracked up and pulled Griffin away from a bush of foxtail burrs. Those things were impossible to get out. This was not a very Normal thing to say, and I liked that. Still, shape-shifters. You had to be careful.
“And I don’t mean like Pat Robertson’s God, like someone trying to sell you something so your soul goes to the good place. More like actual God. Who is like a tree, or all trees, maybe. Who doesn’t care if you’re queer, like us.”
I stopped walking. I’m basically out and everything, but. Adults. Not everyone is so okay with things. So I kinda meekly pointed ahead at them. They were walking maybe ten feet in front of us.
“They’re adults in Central Phoenix. I’m pretty sure they know what queer teens look like.”
We started walking again, and soon we found that we could hear each other from opposite sides of empty 27th Street, which was silent except for occasional dog barks and bird chirps. He was on the west side of the street, saving the east side and the rare shade from trees to me. The street was this cool hodgepodge of old farmhouses, some with untended desert landscapes, others showcasing English gardens in the middle of the desert. Behind shrubs and gates sat secret gardens that you could sometimes catch a glimpse of from the right angle. A few artists displayed mosaics that expressed gratitude, or joy, or peace, or Black Lives Matter. Praising health care workers. I loved it here.
“You out?” he called from the opposite side of the street.
I
