Ya chewed me up and ya spat me out
The foolish boy that I am
So I chose to wander around and around
And make myself a man

I thought the world could be changed by
A good song and smile
But its been this way such a long time
So maybe I’m wrong

So long ago it must be
You're still the one that's troubling me
And still so far, so far away
I sat with a tear in my hand on a day so long ago

Inside I am an ogre
With the simple thoughts of a child
I say what I think and I need to be loved
But I guess that's not your style

So long ago it must be
That you're still the one that's troubling me
And still so far, so far away
I sat with a tear in my hand on a day so long ago


-Keane




Gustav remembered it like it was yesterday.


He could still taste the lightning on his tongue and smell the rain as the fog-colored clouds rolled inexorably in from the west. He’d always loved that sort of weather, when the filtered light and the expectant wind made the whole world seem like it could still be wild, beneath the flimsy veneer of civilization. But today he felt anxious, unsettled; he remembered ever afterward thinking that maybe he’d got some lightning caught inside him, and it was bouncing around in his fingers and toes, making his nerves jump unpleasantly.


Georg had not been at school that day. Maybe that was what had set Gustav so on edge in the first place. Georg almost never missed school—his mom was very strict about that kind of thing, just like Gustav’s mother—and on the few occasions he had missed he had called Gustav to tell him he was sick or he had a doctor’s appointment or whatever. Gustav had never asked Georg to call and keep him up to date on his life schedule or anything; it was just something Georg had started doing at some point after he and Gustav had become inseparable at school. Like Georg was afraid Gustav would forget about him if he went missing for a day without explanation.


Well, now that had actually happened, and Gustav certainly hadn’t forgotten Georg. In fact he’d been troubled by his friend’s absence all day; by the time school let out that afternoon he was jumpy with worry. Once he’d gotten home he’d wanted to ask his mom if she could drop him by Georg’s house to check on him, but she had been in an inexplicably foul and distracted mood and Gustav thought it wise not to push his luck too far. But no one at Georg’s house was answering the phone and he was really starting to get concerned.


He’d gone out into the garden to escape his mother’s stormcloud only to find real ones beginning to gather, and he wished powerfully, and not for the first time, that he were just a bit older, just by a few years, so he could leave his house on his own and be trusted not to get lost or kidnapped. Then he could just go to Georg’s house himself.


He hated being too young.


The first signs of thunder were mumbling over the river when Gustav glanced up from where he sat slumped on his front stoop, alerted by a noise at the gate.


There stood Georg, leaning heavily on the gate with his fingers laced through the chain link, his shaggy hair whipped crazily in the wind. He was staring straight at Gustav through the diamond-shapes in the fence.


Gustav jumped up, blinking in surprise.


“Georg!” he said, hurrying down the walk to open the gate. Enormous green eyes stopped him before he could lay a hand on the latch; they were red-rimmed and bloodshot, puffy around the edges. He looked terrible.


“Georg?” Gustav breathed, barely audible in the gusting storm-wind. “What’s wrong? Are you alright?”


For what seemed a very long time, Georg did not answer, just stared through the gate at Gustav. Then, suddenly, the reddened eyes cleared and Georg blinked quickly several times. And then tears started to fall down already-stained cheeks.


“Everything’s wrong,” Georg rasped, his voice snapping along two octaves. It had been doing that a lot lately, Gustav had noticed, but never so roughly before. “Nothing’ll be right now.”


Gustav’s eyes went wide in fearful confusion, and the sight of Georg crying set his hands back in motion. Unlatching and opening the gate, Gustav watched Georg’s fingers slip out of the links and his arms flop uselessly to his sides. The older boy weaved on his feet, but did not move otherwise.


“Georg, are you sick?” Gustav prodded, frightened by his friend’s strange lethargy. Georg just looked at him and sniffled like he couldn’t remember how to speak, and, frowning, Gustav put out his hand and took Georg’s. “Come on,” Gustav coaxed, tugging lightly, and Georg came inside the gate without resistance, staring down at his feet as if afraid he might fall if he didn’t watch them.


“Let’s go inside.”


~~~~~~~~~~


Georg might have been a year older than Gustav, but he wasn’t yet past the age where a glass of milk and some cookies could go a long way toward mending a hurt. Gustav watched him carefully, ignoring his own glass and plate, as Georg took another cookie and nibbled it peacefully, swinging his legs beneath him. His feet almost touched the ground these days when he sat in kitchen chairs; it made Gustav just a little jealous, knowing that he’d probably never be tall enough to touch the floor.


In the next room, Gustav’s mother was on the phone with Georg’s. Her voice was low and firm and fast; Gustav couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it sounded serious. It was the tone of voice she sometimes used with Gustav’s father when he came home from work too late, while Gustav lay awake in his dark room listening to the echo of her voice floating up from the heating vent beneath his bed.


After a moment, Georg must have realized he was being watched, because he glanced up with a surprised expression. He smiled a little around the edge of his half-eaten cookie.


“Did I miss a bunch at school today?” he asked, his voice much calmer-sounding and back in its appropriate register, which made Gustav relax.


The younger boy shook his head. “Not really. Some theory exercises and a composition assignment…I can give it to you.”


Georg smiled broadly and munched down the rest of his cookie in two bites. “Will you help me with the theory stuff? I’m already behind, I haven’t understood it all week.”


Gustav nodded solemnly, eyeballing Georg askance while absently deconstructing a snickerdoodle. “Will it be okay with your mom if you stay over to work on it?”


Immediately Georg’s face fell and his legs below the table stilled. He became very interested in his hands clasped in his lap.


“Does your mom know you’re here?” Gustav pressed, repeating the same question his own mother had asked a half hour earlier. Then, Georg had been incapable of answering, but now it seemed he was just unwilling. He squirmed in his seat and finally raised his eyes to Gustav’s, guiltily.


“I didn’t tell her,” he muttered. “I just…I wanted to come see you. I needed to get out of the house. She spent most of today crying, and when my mom cries…” In his eyes the sentence ended with I cry, but he didn’t say it, only reddened a bit in the cheeks and set his feet swinging again. “Anyway, she didn’t even notice I’d left. She probably wouldn’t have ever noticed if your mom hadn’t called her.”


“Your dad would have noticed,” Gustav said firmly.


Georg’s face went very red, then, and his voice cracked again when he immediately replied, “No. He wouldn’t.” The fierce look in his eyes took Gustav aback.


He was just about to ask Georg what he was mad about when his mom came back into the kitchen, looking upset. Gustav was starting to get uneasy, again; first Georg was mad, and now his mom was. What was going on?


“Boys,” she said briskly, “After you’re done there, will you put your dishes in the sink, please, and then go clean up the living room? You left some of your school things in there, Gustav, and Georg, I washed up the shirt you left here last time. It’s in the laundry basket on the sofa.”


“Yes, ma’am,” both boys chorused, Georg with, typically, much more enthusiasm, and his competitive grin made Gustav finally break down; his lips curled up in a little smile.


“Thank you,” Gustav’s mother continued. “Georg will be staying over tonight, if that’s okay with you two.” Her pretty face finally softened and she smiled at them, a playful sort of smile that helped calm Gustav back down.


Georg practically bounced in his seat as he and Gustav yelled “Yes, ma’am!” in tandem, again, and this time it would be impossible to say which boy was more excited.


~~~~~~~~~~


Dinner seemed extra good that night—Gustav’s mom fixed both of the boys’ favorite dishes, and let them have as many helpings as they could possibly hold. Gustav was about to fall out of his chair laughing at Georg’s account of the Great Composition Class Dragonfly Affair (Gustav could never hope to tell that story half as well as Georg could) when suddenly they all heard the sound of the front door being closed. Soft, cheerful whistling preceded Gustav’s father into the kitchen.


“You all sound like you’re having fun in here,” he commented, leaning down to kiss his wife and smirk at the two red-faced and grinning boys in his kitchen. “Looks like I’m crashing a party.”


Gustav rubbed the tears out of his eyes, though he couldn’t seem to stop smiling. “Yeah, and it’s a good one, too.”


“Well, then, mind if I join you?”


Georg moved around the table and took up the empty chair at Gustav’s elbow, letting Gustav’s dad set a place for himself near Gustav’s mom. While the two adults went to the stove under the auspices of getting food—really they went over there to talk without being overheard—Georg leaned close to Gustav and said, in a conspiratorial tone of his own, “Your dad won’t mind me staying over tonight, will he?”


Gustav blinked at him. “I’m sure he won’t. Mom already said it was okay.”


Georg looked a bit uncertain, but didn’t say anything else, just fished around Gustav’s plate with his fork, nibbling bits that Gustav couldn’t finish.


“I might have still been eating that,” Gustav said slyly, amused.


Georg looked up at him with big eyes, and put another forkful of potatoes into his mouth innocently.


Gustav just laughed.


Having dinner when Dad was home was always special; he worked late so often that sometimes Gustav was already in bed when he came home. He didn’t talk a lot, not like Georg’s father when Gustav went over to visit, but just by being there he seemed to liven up the house. Gustav couldn’t help thinking as he listened to Georg and his dad debate football that dinner like this was a million times better than dinner when Sis was here. No endless joking about Gustav’s youth or shortness, no condescending eyerolls whenever he said something, just Georg somehow holding his own with the adults’ conversation, while still sitting next to Gustav and periodically checking to see if he’d made his younger friend laugh. When he succeeded he always seemed pleased.


Why couldn’t Georg have been his brother? He’d trade his stupid sister for Georg any day.


Luckily she was out on a date or something (Gustav’s mother said “school project” in a way that suggested she didn’t believe that for one second) so it was just the four of them: two parents, two brothers, good food, and laughter. Gustav felt for a second the deepest feeling of comfortable normalcy, and could almost forget completely about how strange it actually was for Georg to be here.


But the feeling didn’t last long. When Gustav’s dad finally finished eating, everyone got up to take their plates to the sink and Gustav’s mother ran water to wash them.


“You boys want to wash dishes for me, tonight?” she asked, rather rhetorically, Gustav couldn’t help feeling. He fought the urge to pull a face.


Georg, however, jumped at the chance, grinning broadly. “Yes, ma’am!” he piped, pulling over the little kitchen footstool and positioning it in front of the sink. He smiled at Gustav. “Here, Gustav, you can stand on it this time.”


Now Gustav really did scrunch his face up. Neither one of them was tall enough to reach the sink, really, and Georg was just trying to make it easier on his friend, but Gustav hated to be reminded that he was still just that little bit shorter than Georg.


He opened the cabinet to retrieve a dishrag, but suddenly felt a big, warm hand on his shoulder, and glanced up at his dad, who wasn’t smiling or frowning. That concerned Gustav. With a smile or a frown you knew what you were going to get, but when Dad looked like that you could only wonder what was going on.


“Actually, Juschtel, would you mind coming with me a second?” he said softly, glancing over at Gustav’s mom. Something happened in the air between their eyes. She immediately smiled down at Georg and moved to stand beside him, saying that she’d wash and let him rinse.


Gustav glanced back at them as he and his dad left the kitchen, to see Georg watching him go with a frightened expression.


They only just went into the livingroom, which gave Gustav a pretty good indication that he wasn’t in trouble; trouble got handled in Gustav’s parents’ bedroom, where the little-used but still-threatening paddle was kept.


“Sit down, son.”


Gustav did, perching nervously on the edge of the couch. His dad sat down on the floor in front of him, looking up at him steadily. The look in his eyes put butterflies in Gustav’s stomach.


“Dad, what’s wrong?”


Gustav’s dad smiled a little and patted Gustav’s leg. “Don’t worry, Juschtel, you’re not in trouble or anything. I just…I wanted to talk to you. You’re not a baby anymore, Gustav, and sometimes it’s hard for me to remember that, because it seems you were just a baby yesterday. But you are halfway a grown-up, so I know that there are things you need to understand because it’s not right to treat you like you don’t know what’s going on.”


Narrowing his eyes a little in thought, Gustav sifted through those statements carefully. Gustav’s dad always encouraged him to use his head, so he’d had lots of practice decoding his dad’s somewhat cryptic talks. He ventured a guess as to what his dad meant.


“You mean…about why Georg is here?”


Smiling again, Dad nodded. “That’s right, son. Did he say anything to you about it?”


Gustav wavered for a moment, wondering if the information Georg had divulged to him was meant to be a secret between them. His dad’s eyes were very serious, though, so Gustav decided it was best to be wholly truthful.


“He said that he hadn’t told his mom he was coming over. He needed to come visit me because she was crying a lot, and…well, I don’t think he likes it very much when people cry. It makes him sad, too.”


Dad nodded again. “But he didn’t say why she was crying?”


“I didn’t want to ask. He was really upset.”


For a long moment, Gustav’s dad lowered his head, thinking. Finally he looked back up and sighed.


“Gustav, Georg’s parents are getting a divorce. You know what that is, don’t you?”


Gustav nodded slowly, digesting the revelation and starting to feel his stomach grow heavy. Several of the kids in his year had parents who had gotten divorces, and the ones who had been old enough at the time to still remember it seemed not to want to talk about it very much. It wasn’t a good thing; of that Gustav was positive. “They won’t live together anymore, right?”


“More than that, they won’t be married, anymore.”


That statement did more to drive home dread than any suspicion Gustav had yet entertained. Gustav had been raised with his parents’ strong ideas about marriage. The concept of being married and then suddenly not being married just wouldn’t fit into Gustav’s head. So he blurted the first question that came to him.


“But then they’ll live in two different houses—where will Georg live?” A split-second fantasy of Georg coming to live with Gustav flitted through his overactive mind, but he knew better than to get his hopes up about it.


Surprisingly, Gustav’s dad smiled toothily. “Oh, don’t worry about that, son—Georg will still live with his mom, probably in the same house since it’s also her medical office.”


Gustav felt mildly relieved at this, but he still didn’t understand the situation any better. “Why are they getting a divorce?”


His dad’s smile faded. “…That’s a very hard question to answer, Juschtel. In fact, I don’t know the answer. Neither, probably, does Georg. Georg’s parents may not even know. Sometimes moms and dads live with each other so long they stop being friends, or they start fighting all the time. Then they’re unhappy and they can’t take care of their kids they way they should; maybe they realized that it wasn’t good for Georg if they fought constantly, so they decided to be apart so they wouldn’t fight.” He leaned forward a bit urgently, gently putting his hands on Gustav’s slender shoulders. “But I don’t think you should go asking, Gustav. If Georg knows why his parents are divorcing then he may choose to tell you, but you’ll probably only make him sadder by reminding him of it.”


“…Like when sis cried every time she saw a puppy after Lacy died.”


“Yes, just like that. I think it might be better if you just help Georg to go on like normal, keep him from thinking about it too much. He might get distracted and have trouble on his homework, and you can help him with it. He came here today because being at home upset him, and he may feel like coming here again if he gets sad at home, so it’ll be your job to cheer him up, okay?”


Gustav nodded immediately. He thought he understood why Georg had come here; Georg always got depressed when his friends or family did. If Gustav was going to be responsible for making sure Georg didn’t get depressed from now on, then he thought he was up to the task.


“Good,” Dad said, patting Gustav’s shoulders again. “I know you’re strong enough to help Georg, son. He’s going to need a lot of cheering up for awhile.”


Gustav looked intensely into his father’s eyes, feeling a bubble of fear rising up from his toes, vague and unformed. Suddenly he felt an overpowering need to hug his father, and his skinny arms were twined around Dad’s strong neck and shoulders before Gustav could second-guess the action. For a half an instant, Gustav’s dad stiffened in surprise, and then his big arms and hands enveloped his son in a comforting, if confused, embrace.


“Gustav?” Gustav felt his cheeks warm a bit in embarrassment. Such spontaneous hugging was not standard behavior around his father; it wasn’t a rule or anything, had never been explicitly forbidden in any way, but it was just a tacit understanding in the house.


But Gustav couldn’t help it. Nor could he stop the words that mumbled grudgingly from his mouth. He was terrified to say them, but he had to.


“Dad…you and mom won’t get a divorce, will you?”


Gustav heard and felt his father’s sharp inhalation. “Oh, Juschtel…no, son. No.”


“Not even when mom and you argue sometimes?”


Dad’s hug tightened a fraction. “Son, all moms and dads argue, just like you argue with your sister or even with Georg. It doesn’t mean we’ve stopped loving each other. And it doesn’t mean,” he added with heat that both frightened and reassured Gustav, “that we’ve stopped loving you. It doesn’t mean we want a divorce, no. Your mama and I love each other very much, even when we fight.”


Gustav held on a moment longer, feeling the truth of his father’s words in his tone and in his touch. Then he nodded shallowly and swallowed down the lump he felt knotting halfway up his windpipe. He let his dad go, and scratched at the side of his nose in residual chagrin.


“Why don’t you go see if you can help your mom and Georg finish up the dishes, okay?”


“Okay, Dad.”


As it turned out, Georg was just drying off the last pan and Mom was emptying the sink and wringing out the dishcloth. She smiled brightly down at Gustav when he came in, and trailed the damp pad of her thumb over his cheek fondly.


“You and dad have a nice talk?” she said solicitously. He nodded, his thoughts making him solemn. She brushed back an errant curl from his forehead with a light tsk. “You’re getting shaggy again, kiddo. How about we cut your hair this weekend?” Gustav pulled a face and, grinning, Mom glanced sideways at Georg. “How about you, Georg? Is your mother alright with you having hair that long?”


The older boy caught the look and his eyes went wide. He hopped down off the dishwashing stool immediately and came to stand near Gustav as if hoping his younger, smaller friend could somehow protect him.


“S-she said I could keep it as long as I wanted it,” he mumbled, looking horrified at the thought of losing his unruly nut-colored mop. Gustav knew what his mom didn’t: Georg’s hair was one of his prized possessions. He’d been wanting to grow it long since forever, since before Gustav had met him, and had only just received his mom’s permission last month to skip his haircut. Prior to that Georg’s dad had always forced him to keep it clipped pretty close, but Georg had complained to Gustav on multiple occasions that he could never be a proper guitar player without hair long enough to swing around. Privately Gustav thought Georg’s hair would never be useful for that—it seemed disinclined to grow, or at least to grow long, as it was forever growing back on itself, curly rather than straight—but he couldn’t deny that he rather envied the freedom. Long hair in the Schäfer household came only after ear piercings and tattoos in the trifecta of Things Unacceptable on Respectable Young Men.


Out of sympathy, Gustav bailed his friend out. “Seriously, mom…are you guys done with the dishes? Can we go now?”


Gustav’s mom laughed and flicked some water at Gustav. “Alright, alright, get out of here. Homework!!” she yelled after their bolting figures. Gustav’s bedroom door slamming was the only reply.


~~~~~~~~~~


In a sense, they were doing homework…in the sense that Gustav had his books out and open to the right pages, and he and Georg both had pieces of staff paper in front of them with two measures each of half-hearted scribbled notes. In the sense of them actually working on the homework, well…suffice it to say that Gustav’s most recent comic acquisition was infinitely more engaging.


They lay near each other on his bedroom floor, stretched out on their stomachs. Georg bumped his toe idly into the carpet as Gustav reverently thumbed through the best bits of his new X-Men edition.


“And here there’s a really sweet panel of Wolverine jumping, hang on, lemme find it…” Gustav muttered, deep in concentration, flipping a few more pages. “Ah, here it is! See? He’s jumping clean off this building, slowing his fall with his claws…” Gustav was overcome by the sheer coolness.


“I dunno,” Georg replied, peering closely at the panel in question. His voice held the appropriate degree of respect due a character of Wolverine’s caliber, but also expressed some healthy skepticism. “I always thought Nightcrawler was cooler, myself. I mean, look here—” he pointed “—he’s jumping from just as high, he took this guy out with his sword, and he doesn’t even need to slow his fall, all he has to do is teleport.”


Gustav frowned severely. “His tail is points against him, though, he can just grab onto something if he starts to fall. He’s basically un-fall-able.” He couldn’t get round the teleporting thing, though; few things were cooler than that.


“Plus he’s German.”


“…Yeah, but he’s Catholic.”


“True.”


Gustav went back to skimming the book he’d already read four times, becoming so engrossed in the bright arrangements of colors and ink that it was several moments before he realized Georg had stilled his fidgeting leg. Gustav glanced over to find his friend looking at him in an unnerving way.


“What?”


Georg looked down for a second, as if glancing at the comic book again, but Gustav could see his eyes weren’t focused on it.


“What did your dad talk to you about?” Georg finally replied, sounding sheepish. It was a bit nosy to ask, but Gustav and Georg were not in the habit of being untruthful with each other. It wasn’t in either of their personalities to keep secrets except in serious circumstances.


Gustav wondered whether this counted as one of those circumstances. He looked down at the comic book too, likewise not seeing it, and tried to decide what to say.


But Georg answered for him. “Was it about my mom and dad?” he said, his voice soft and rough.


Gustav looked up at him, saw the same weird, empty look in his friend’s eyes that he’d had earlier that afternoon standing outside Gustav’s front gate. Gustav felt a little panicked, again, but he nodded. “He told me…” Wait, wasn’t he supposed to be helping Georg forget about the divorce? He shouldn’t be bringing it up!


“They’re getting divorced,” Georg finished bitterly, lowering his head and scowling. Gustav winced. Definitely shouldn’t have brought it up. Now he didn’t know what to say.


“Yeah,” he replied lamely. “He told me.”


“That’s why my mom was crying this afternoon. Drinking, too. She fell asleep on the couch with a bottle in her hand, and…” Georg stopped short.


Gustav grimaced again, reaching out and touching Georg’s shoulder lightly. “But you came here. It’s alright here.”


The older boy turned his face up to Gustav’s again, looking desperate. “Are you sure your parents don’t mind me being here? I’m already gonna be in enough trouble with my mom for running away…”


Gustav picked at an errant thread on Georg’s sleeve as he took a deep breath and answered, “They’re not mad, Georg. My dad said you should come here, if you ever want to. He said…you could be happier here, sometimes.” No, that hadn’t sounded quite right. “I mean, that if you’re ever, you know. If it’s ever like today. You can come here.” He grinned tentatively. “And I’ll cheer you up.”


For what seemed like a very long time Georg just looked at Gustav, his eyes never leaving his friend’s face, and then he relaxed a little and briefly rubbed at one eye. The other one looked brighter than normal.


“Thanks, Juschtel,” Georg finally said, his voice suddenly deep. It took Gustav by surprise, especially since he’d sounded so much like his dad when he’d said Gustav’s nickname.


The younger boy wrinkled his nose. Dad using that nickname was one thing, but Gustav wasn’t sure he wanted Georg to. He wanted Georg thinking of him as an equal, not like a little kid. Not like everyone else.


But Georg’s lip curled when he noticed Gustav’s minor grimace, and his eyes lit up, and Gustav didn’t have the heart to scold him for stealing the nickname. He was supposed to be cheering Georg up, after all, and right now Georg looked happier and more calm than he had all evening. Sure, that gleam in Georg’s eye meant that now he would never let the nickname die, not when he knew it annoyed Gustav so, but Gustav thought that he could probably be okay with that given enough time, if Georg just kept smiling.


~~~~~~~~~~


Those first few months had been hard. It was, perhaps, a blessing that later, when Gustav made any passing mention to events occurring that year, Georg wouldn’t be able to recall them. For him that time became a blur; he didn’t remember almost failing Elementary Theory, he didn’t remember getting very sick in February and nearly having to go to the hospital. When Gustav once mentioned that day Georg showed up at his gate (carefully for fear of triggering unpleasant memories), Georg only vaguely remembered going to Gustav’s house. His face would knot in confusion for long minutes, but he just didn’t recall most of the same things Gustav did from that year.


But out of the blur one thing was never lost. Once Georg had started calling Gustav “Juschtel” he never once lapsed. He never did use it often, not even as often as Gustav’s father did (and, slowly, over the years, stopped doing), but long after Gustav’s family had abandoned the nickname, Georg still used it whenever he most needed Gustav’s sincerest attention. It was like a codeword, something you could say to activate a hidden lock on a door—when Georg said it, Gustav’s ears pricked and his entire focus shifted to Georg. It was never a conscious thing. It was just that Gustav learned to recognize with acute clarity when Georg most needed him, and when Georg was at his lowest, his saddest, and most in need of cheering up, he always wanted Juschtel there to do it.


Gustav thought of his memories as crystals, pure moments of time frozen forever in his soul. He liked taking photographs because they were the closest he could get to manufacturing these crystallized scenes for himself. Deep in his heart, he cherished these precious gems like a dragon hoarding treasure, viscerally afraid of losing any one of them, and nothing could recall so many different, powerful memories as hearing Georg say his nickname. “Juschtel” carried with it every memory from the first—that stormy day when the lightning flavored the air—to the car accident when he was twelve and Georg got pinned in the backseat and couldn’t get out, to the time Gustav went to get his tonsils taken out and Georg was convinced that something would go wrong, to Georg’s first date and Gustav’s first rejection, to the sweaty summer night in the woods, just before their first tour, with mouths and whispers in the dark spilling secrets that they had been holding onto for years.


“Juschtel,” he would say, and Gustav could not keep himself from looking at Georg, and knowing, with the weight of the lifetimes behind them, that Georg loved him in that word.