Children of the Knight (54 page)

S
OMEHOW, Hollywood Boulevard looked even sleazier to Lance as he and Jack strolled up and down the always-busy thoroughfare, dodging the tourists, gazes roving for any sign of Mark. The boys were attired in their usual tunics, Lance’s green and Jack’s scarlet-red, leather pants and knee-high leather boots, and Lance sported his trademark golden circlet around his head to restrain his lengthening tresses, which now spilled halfway down his back.

Maybe it was all he’d learned from Arthur about right and wrong, but now he saw so much wrong around here, so much that seemed almost designed to corrupt kids like him: the tattoo and piercing parlors, the sexy billboards, the bling, the sordid little hookah places, not to mention stores like Frederick’s of Hollywood and Victoria’s Secret. It all reeked of temptation and pleasure and greed. He actually felt a little dirty just being out here.

As they ambled down the street, Lance also discovered just how big a celebrity he’d really become. People stopped and gawked. Cameras and phones flew up, and pictures were snapped. Everyone wanted to chat and get his autograph. Some just wanted to shake his hand. Jack’s too.

Two teen girls, dressed in unbelievably short shorts and practically nonexistent halter tops, recognized Jack as “the buff one with the abs” and batted their long lashes at him very flirtatiously, each grabbing one bicep for a group photo. As the picture was snapped, one girl yanked up Jack’s shirt to display his abs. Jack blanched in surprise. Afterward, the girls made sure to thumb their numbers into his phone before swishing their hips in departure.

Had the circumstances not been so grave, Lance would have laughed, but Jack was so engrossed in his fears for Mark that the irony of two pretty girls hitting on him went over his head. It was nothing new, anyway. Jack had told him hot girls in high school had been all over him because he was a buff football player, even when he was a freshman, but he’d never told them the truth, at least not until his own father outed him to the entire school. After that, the hot girls merely eyed him with disdain and disgust as though it were
his
fault they’d flirted so shamelessly with him.

As the boys passed by the famous Chinese Theater with its lavish, ornate architecture and handprints-of-the-stars concrete entryway, a double-decker Starline tour bus rolled to a stop near the parked cars. They could hear on a loudspeaker, “And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the world famous Chinese Theater and, oh look! We have a celebrity sighting, ladies and gentlemen, right over there.”

Lance wasn’t paying too much attention as he glanced disinterestedly at the handprints embedded within the concrete beneath his soft leather boots. He didn’t care at all about celebrities and didn’t even know who most of these people were, anyway. He was just trying to keep his head down, appear inconspicuous, and
not
be noticed. But then he heard the tour guide continue, and he froze in place.

“It’s Sir Lance and Sir Jack,” the female voice squealed excitedly, “of King Arthur’s Round Table! You’ve seen them on the news and the Internet, cleaning up our city.”

Lance grabbed Jack and pointed at the bus. Everyone was leaning out open windows or over the top deck railing snapping pictures with their phones or cameras. Both boys stared in amazement, hearts in their throats, fixed to the spot like wax statues.

“Let’s hear it for Sir Lance and Sir Jack!” one of the tourists shouted, and the entire bus erupted in applause and more shutter snapping.

Lance felt numb and wished he could just disappear into the sidewalk. “What are we supposed to do?”

Jack shrugged. “I don’ know. Wave?”

And so they waved, and smiled, and waved again, as more pictures were snapped before the bus finally trundled on down the boulevard and left them behind.

Unfortunately, the tour guide’s “outing” them drew many of the tourists perusing the foot and handprints, and suddenly admirers young and old again swamped the boys, smothering them by turns with selfishness and affection. More snapping of pictures, more girls hanging all over them, more glad-handing.

Lance felt oddly exposed in this crowd, as though the crush of people knew his innermost fears and insecurities, and he desperately wished to be somewhere else, anywhere else. Jack, he could tell, was equally squirmy, but his days as a football player had somewhat prepared him for this kind of shallow adulation.

Two tween girls who couldn’t have been older than twelve, and dressed even sluttier than the two who’d accosted Jack, roughly pulled Lance in front of the theatre and flanked him for a picture. The moment their friend raised the camera, the girls each planted a kiss on the boy’s cheek. Lance was certain that photo would show his face turning crazy-ass shades of red, and rather than feel flattered, he felt almost queasy.

These two then slipped Lance their phone numbers on a tour bus brochure one girl had scooped off the ground. They told him if he wanted a girlfriend, he could have them both,
at the same time!
That made Lance blush three shades of scarlet, and even Jack shook his head in disbelief as the two giggled their way down the street.

“Aren’t they a little young to be hoes?” Jack commented dryly.

“A little?” Lance exclaimed, shaking his head in disgust, his stomach churning with unease. Before Arthur, he would’ve taken such behavior as normal for girls today. But now he recognized it as another symptom of adults poisoning children at a young age.

As they continued down the boulevard, Lance gasped and pointed to a Metro bus cruising slowly past in the heavy traffic. Plastered across the side of the bus was an enormous ad for
Channel 7 News
. It displayed a massive headshot of him! The ad proclaimed “Get the latest on Sir Lance on Channel 7 News.” And beneath the picture was written, “Is He Dating Anyone Special?”

That last part actually made him gag. “My God, Jack,” he choked as the bus rolled past them. “Is that what we’ve become? Just another reality show?”

Jack just nodded, his mind on Mark.

Somehow that bus really disturbed Lance, numbing his body with shame and a deep sense of failure. That kind of exposure, that “who’s he dating” crap, was exactly the sort of thing Arthur was fighting against. Were they losing their battle after all? Would the next thing really
be
a reality TV show about them?

Lance shook his head in dismay and observed his silent, brooding friend standing tautly at the corner, brushing back dark, untamed curls, anxious eyes roaming. So big and strong, so toweringly beautiful, so capable and athletic, and yet so sad. So lost and weak and helpless without Mark.

Is this what it means to be in love
, he wondered? If so, love looked pretty scary
and
painful. Maybe that’s why he’d steered clear of it his whole life. As he eyed Jack, he realized that maybe he’d just been too fearful of
whom
he might fall for, so he never let himself get close enough to anyone to find out. He’d made sure never to even
look
at anyone, male
or
female, that way so he wouldn’t give them any ideas.

Despite his best efforts, however, he’d often found himself at school sneaking surreptitious glances at this girl or that guy, noting the way the hair draped or the muscles flexed, and then he’d shoved it all down deep inside where it couldn’t get out. At least until the next time he’d peeked from beneath his sheltering hair and had thoughts he didn’t want to have because they confused him. Because they brought him back to
that
time… back when he was six. Back when he’d lost his virginity.

“You like that, don’t you, my little fag boy…?”
came foster dad Richard’s breathless and sexually excited voice whispering from the charred ash heap of his memory.

Lance shuddered, despite the warmth of the sun, as the searing pain that had torn open his small, young body again ripped its way through his consciousness.

No, not lost. When his virginity had been brutally and grotesquely and humiliatingly stolen from him, and his innocence along with it….

From that moment on, he’d never trusted anyone, never allowed a single soul into his emotions, or into his heart.

Until Arthur came along.

And then Mark.

And now Jack.

Watching Jack morosely search up and down the busy street, Lance felt a chill ripple through him and sweat break out on his forehead. He so desperately yearned to reach out and take Jack’s hand in his and just relish the warmth of that basic human contact. The intense desire scared him so much he began to tremble.

Jack turned his eyes on him, and Lance felt weak in the knees. He must’ve looked ill because Jack asked, “You okay, Lance?”

Lance gulped and nodded, shaking off the deadweight of his past and the confusion of his heart. They had to focus on Mark. “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s keep looking.”

Jack eyed him with uncertainty but nodded and continued down the sidewalk, Lance by his side.

Jack stopped a few creepy-looking guys along the street wearing long overcoats and asked about “Blue Eyes,” but they hadn’t seen him “since he got all famous on TV.”

“Blue Eyes?” Lance asked as they left one of those creeps behind in a shadowy alcove and strolled past junky tourist shops.

Jack nodded, all roving eyes and uncertain steps. “You never give your real name on the streets, especially to dealing scum like them.”

Lance nodded. “You got a nickname too?”

Jack just nodded, his eyes scanning every face they passed. But he didn’t answer.

“Well?” Lance asked.

Now Jack stopped and looked sheepishly at Lance. He raised his right arm and flexed the massive bicep. “Great Guns,” he whispered, embarrassed.

But Lance just squeezed the bicep. Rock hard, as always. “It fits,” he said, trying to ignore that little shiver tingling up his back.

They continued the search up and down the boulevard, stopping more often than they liked for their fans. Everyone, it seemed, wanted a photo with the two most famous boys in the world, and all the adulation began to wear them down as the day wore on.

After checking a few more of Mark’s old haunts, Lance wearily suggested they get something to eat. His stomach had become a growling lion.

“Not hungry,” Jack mumbled, disconsolately. “We gotta keep looking.”

Lance stepped in front and put both hands on Jack’s chest to stop him.

“Look, Jack, you gotta take care of yourself. For Mark. You heard him in his letter. You’re his hero.” He found himself blushing as he said it.
You’re mine too.

Jack stopped and quickly dropped his gaze to the dirty sidewalk, to the star of some actor Lance had never heard of. Jack’s body hitched with emotion, and Lance feared he might start bawling right there on Hollywood Boulevard.
That
would be hard to explain to all their fans.

“Mark gets so depressed, you know, Lance?” Jack said, gazing helplessly into the younger boy’s eyes as Lance squinted against the harsh sunlight. “Without me and you and Arthur… he’ll go back to the smack. I just know it.”

He sounded so stricken and guilty and lonely that Lance’s heart ached, and his own anxiety about Mark swelled. The mention of Arthur also brought back the knife to his soul that were those hated words, “
Anyone can carry the banner
.” His stomach lurched at the memory. Forcing himself to focus on Jack, he placed a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“We’ll find him, Jack. I promise.”

Jack’s handsome face dissolved into a mosaic of twisted pain, and Lance quickly pulled him off the sidewalk and into a small hollow between buildings so they wouldn’t be as likely to be noticed. Jack’s shoulders shook with emotion.

“Mark feels worthless, Lance,” he stammered, almost choking on the words. “He said so in his letter. You saw it. God, I love him so much it hurts, and he doesn’t even know that!” His eyes pooled with shimmering anguish, and Lance’s own heart seemed to pull into his throat. “Why couldn’t he see it in my eyes like you did?”

Lance just shook his head, struggling with his own fears and haunted by his past. He hadn’t been a loner his whole life just to avoid his conflicted feelings and all their complications. No, he’d always felt deep down that he just wasn’t
worthy
of anyone’s love. Not him. He wasn’t that special. He was just… well,
nothing
. That nothingness he’d fueled his whole life now rose within him and took on the massive proportions of a Greek god straight out of Olympus, except now that god wore Mark’s soft, delicate, shy, and ever-so-sad features.

And suddenly Lance understood.

Mark had felt the exact same
way, and that’s why he ran. He didn’t
believe
he deserved to be loved, just like Lance didn’t believe it about himself. But Mark
did
deserve love—oh my God, did he ever! He’d accepted Lance with all his screwed-up history and contorting emotions and uncertain sexuality and had kept Lance’s secret when he could’ve used it against him. But Lance had never
told
him, had never told the other boy he loved him. That he
was
worthy of love.

Jack wasn’t the only one standing in that alley with guilt painted on his face in permanent ink.

Lance gently placed his hands on Jack’s thick upper arms and locked his green eyes on the damp brown pools of the other. “He couldn’t see it, Jacky, cuz he didn’t think he was worthy,” he said almost in a whisper. “I guess we can only
see
the love we think we’re good enough to have, and he didn’t think he was good enough to have any, from anyone.”

Tears of remorse cut little pathways of pain along Jack’s cheeks to pool at the edges of his lips before dropping silently and sadly to the ground at his feet. He nodded, comprehension rising like the sun and enlightening his face with the truth.

Jack understood, because he felt the same way about himself.

Lance just wrapped his arms around Jack’s shoulders and held the older boy tightly, letting their individual pain and guilt melt together like chunks of ice dissolving into each other beneath a hot summer sun.