Feast of Sparks

Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Eight Years AgoThey always went to the abbey in Buckfast for Mass because Jennifer liked the beauty and splendor of it, and also because it meant they could do their shopping right after. Today, she let St. Sebastian roam around the grounds of the abbey while she went to the supermarket, promising to be back in an hour to pick him up. If her voice was stranger than usual, he didn’t pay it much mind. She always seemed distant and sad when the Guests were in town. Probably because their very presence was calculated to remind one of the money one would never have.

After checking to make sure his eyeliner was still only artfully smudged and not crying-girl-at-the-club-smudged, St. Sebastian scuffed his way through the throngs of summer tourists crowding the abbey’s grounds, and made his way to the cemetery, which was shady and abandoned by virtue of the huge trees and shrubs hiding it from view.

He pulled out his phone—a Christmas present from his grandparents and the nicest thing he owned—and turned on some music. He tried lying in a grave-free patch of grass, but had to retreat from the July sunlight after only a few minutes. Finally, he settled against a tree-shaded gravestone, which was a very romantic and cool thing to do, in his opinion. He’d made it through three songs and was possibly on the way to a nap when he felt a tap on the bottom of his foot. Like someone had gently kicked his shoe.

He opened his eyes to see Auden Guest standing over him.

“Nice music,” Auden said softly.

St. Sebastian turned it off.

Heat gathered in his face and in his belly—an erratic, unfamiliar heat. He decided it was because he was embarrassed Auden heard his music, heard the songs that meant so much to St. Sebastian, the angry, lonely lyrics and the charging refrains. That was private, as far as St. Sebastian was concerned. That was as good as looking in someone’s diary.

And maybe nobody could tell merely from listening to it that St. Sebastian was unhealthily preoccupied with a green-eyed American girl and a hazel-eyed prince he’d once kissed when he was twelve, but they’d certainly be able to guess if they saw the title of the playlist. A playlist he’d painstakingly transferred from his old iPod to his phone because it was something he needed with him always—at home or at school or in the odd hours after church and before his mother was finished with her shopping. It was a record of every ache, every angry longing he’d had for Proserpina Markham and Auden Guest that day, and St. Sebastian wasn’t sure he was proud of those aches. Nor how he’d memorialized them in playlist form.

Not that Auden Guest probably even recognized any of the songs. With those glasses and that f*****g tie, he looked like a boy who listened to classical music on purpose. Like a boy who could tell if a performance of Dvořák was inspired or lifeless, like a boy who had a favorite jacket to wear to the symphony.

This made St. Sebastian feel very surly. He frowned up at Auden, who had summer sunlight cutting angles across his firm jawline and turning the column of his throat into a shaded chiaroscuro that was very upsetting to look at.

Auden was just upsetting to look at in general.

This made St. Sebastian even surlier.

“Aren’t your parents waiting for you?” St. Sebastian asked, his meaning clear. You’re not welcome.

Which hopefully hid the real meaning, which coiled and coiled in St. Sebastian’s mind and belly like restless snakes.

I’m scared of how welcome you are.

Auden was unfazed by St. Sebastian’s hostility. It was something St. Sebastian remembered from that summer, how cool and haughty Auden could be, how aloof and bored, while St. Sebastian flared with every emotion under the sun. It was beyond infuriating, because all things seething and saturnine eventually burned off like fog, but arrogant dispassion could roll across galaxies unabated and arrive at destinations light years later, still potent with condescension.

So Auden just looked amused by St. Sebastian’s lack of welcome when he said, “They’re holding court in the abbey still. I escaped because I wanted to find you.”

St. Sebastian, who usually had a response to everything, had no response.

Auden didn’t seem bothered by this. “You have something in your hair,” he said, and before St. Sebastian had the chance to react, Auden was doing the unthinkable and kneeling down in such a way that he straddled St. Sebastian’s legs, getting grass stains on the knees of his trousers and also bringing his stomach so close to St. Sebastian’s chest that Auden’s tie rustled against St. Sebastian’s shirt like the wing of a silk bird.

Auden wrapped long fingers around St. Sebastian’s jaw to hold him still and then carefully extracted a loose blade of grass from St. Sebastian’s hair. It was the closest St. Sebastian had been to another person he wasn’t related to in a very long time, and that had to be why his heart was hammering and why it felt like there was a hook buried deep in his chest and Auden was pulling on it . . .

Auden didn’t move, kneeling over St. Sebastian and keeping his face held tight in his fingers. He glanced at the blade of grass with an odd sort of smile and then tucked the blade of grass into his pocket.

St. Sebastian blinked at him.

“My family is at Thornchapel for the summer,” Auden said, his eyes raking over the boy he had pinned against a gravestone. “You should come visit.”

It was that peremptory, lordly tone—not we should hang out, not it’d be cool to see you, but the invitation that St. Sebastian could come to Auden—that broke through St. Sebastian’s shock. He shook Auden off so violently that any other boy would have fallen on his ass; Auden, of course, only rolled gracefully to his feet and stared down at St. Sebastian with a curled mouth.

“Or don’t come visit,” Auden said, looking entertained by St. Sebastian’s expression.

That finally pushed the angry, embarrassed, defensive words out of his throat. “All of a sudden you want to be friends? After we haven’t seen each other any other time you’ve come back here?”

“Oh, St. Sebastian,” Auden said, giving him an expression of pity and private amusement. “I always see you.”

And St. Sebastian didn’t have an answer to that either.