Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Jesus Christ,” says Arnold. Kevin looks down at him expectantly. Arnold just shrugs back. “It’s hot,” he says, by way of explanation. Kevin says nothing. It is hot.

The top three buttons of his shirt are undone. He’s not wearing his undergarments. This might be the furthest he’s come to undressed in front of other people in over a decade and he feels uncomfortable. It’s indecent. He’s sweating like, in Arnold’s words, a pig in heat. Kevin doesn’t ever quite follow what Arnold says, but he’s found that Arnold is almost always right.

It’s funny, how difficult not following rules is. He was a bit foolhardy, in retrospect, to think that you can undo everything you’ve learned over the past two decades in two months.

Arnold was breaking rules without even realising long before he became a Prophet. It’s not particularly difficult for him to do whatever he feels like doing. Kevin finds himself intensely, shamefully envious of him. Envy isn’t an alien emotion to Kevin, but the rush of affection is. Kevin thinks, I’m a little bit in love with you, Elder Cunningham, and is so overcome with affection that he ruffles his hair. Arnold thinks nothing of it. He is so grateful to have found Arnold, and is taken aback by how unlike himself he sounds. Kevin has never really felt grateful for anything.

Kevin goes back to digging, ignoring that his companion is leaning heavily on his shovel and making a noise that sounds suspiciously like a snore. Number seventy-three, do not retire after your companion. There’s something about the task that’s making him feel melancholy. The dirt keeps falling right back into the little trench and his hair is greasy and falling in his eyes. It’s never done that before. He needs a haircut. He makes a mental note to ask Nabulungi if she knows anyone who knows how to cut hair, and he feels his back stiffen at the thought of anybody cutting his hair other than his second cousin twice removed, or something, who has cut his hair in the exact same way since he was six years old. The same way it details in the mission regulations. Never mind a stranger who doesn’t speak the same language. Number seven, cut your hair regularly. He thinks about his second cousin, Aunt Helen, then his brother, and then carefully, slowly, doesn’t think about his parents.

What was it that Elder McKinley used to say? Kevin looks up over to the building site, where he knows that Elder McKinley and Elder Thomas are planning on building the Church, and finds Elder McKinley looking back at him as if he heard Kevin’s thoughts. Kevin smiles at him across the way. He thinks Elder McKinley might smile back, but he turns his head quickly to say something to Elder Thomas.

Oh, right. Turn it off.

Easy for him to say, Kevin thinks bitterly. Turning it back on is his problem. He’s not even sure if he has another setting. He’s just – Kevin Price. And Kevin Price is a good boy.

***

When Kevin Price is nine years old, he falls out of a tree. This is the most rebellious thing he will do for ten years. His knees bleed through his trousers and his wrist swells to twice its bony size where he crushed it with the weight of his body on wet ground. He cries, and he doesn’t understand this sensation, because Kevin Price has never really felt pain before. Kevin is a good boy. Kevin always does what he’s told.

Jack says, “Kevin, are you alright?” and Kevin says yes, and tries to stand up. His raw palms sting as he pushes them on the ground. He yells as his wrist burns and he’s never heard the sound that comes out of his mouth before. “You might have broken something,” says Jack. “I’ll go and get Dad.”

Kevin sits on his own in the mud. It feels like he’s going to be there forever. He knows that God is always with him but that doesn’t stop him from feeling like he’s all alone. This isn’t true, because he knows exactly what his forever life is going to be. His mom and dad tell him all the time. He knows that in his forever life, Kevin Price will not be alone. As long as he’s a good boy.

His trousers are damp with blood and dirt and he stares at the red patches on his knees. The skin is peeling on the heel of his hand and Kevin touches it with his forefinger. It hurts. Even though he’s a whole nine years old, Kevin feels small. The woods make noises. It’s too warm.

After an eternity, Jack and his Dad find him. Kevin holds his pudgy little hands into the air, and his father frowns down at him, head blocking the sun. Kevin stops crying. He looks at Jack, because Jack is nice to him, maybe Jack will help him up and stroke his hair and kiss his wrist better. Kevin is friends with a girl at school called Suzy who has soft orange hair, who insists that you have to kiss where it hurts before it gets better, because her mommy told her so. Kevin’s mom has never kissed Kevin better because Kevin doesn’t ride bikes or trip on curbs. Kevin Price doesn’t climb trees, but he did it anyway. Jack looks away.

“That was very naughty of you, Kevin. How many times have we told you not to climb trees?”

Kevin can’t remember his parents ever telling him not to climb a tree. He supposes maybe he forgot, because Mormons can’t lie. Sometimes – sometimes it feels like there are a lot of rules that Kevin is already supposed to know, as if he should know all the secrets of the universe by instinct. He doesn’t. Kevin feels hot and stupid. He lowers his arms.

“Sorry, Father,” Kevin says. His dad tuts at him and cocks his head.

“You should apologise to Heavenly Father, not me. Remember to confess in your prayers tonight. You’re nine years old now. You have to work for Heavenly Father’s protection. Now get up.”

Kevin tries, and cries out in pain again. His wrist hurts.

“Dad,” says Kevin, holding his limp wrist up with his other hand. “Look. It hurts.”

“That’s Heavenly Father’s way of punishing you for breaking the rules, Kevin.” His dad looks at him sadly. “You’re usually such a good boy.”

“I am!” cries Kevin. “I just. It looked like fun. I saw some boys at school do it.”

His dad bends down on his knees and puts his hand on Kevin’s shoulder.

“Heavenly Father puts temptations on Earth to test us. As long as you follow the rules, He won’t punish you. It’s quite simple, Kevin.”

Kevin nods. “I won’t break the rules again,” and at the look on his Dad’s face, he adds, “I promise.”

“You need to get home, now. You are filthy. Just look at your hair. Good Mormon boys like you don’t fall out of trees and get covered in mud. Now your mom has to clean up after you.”

He helps him up and Kevin walks unsteadily back to the house. He’s not crying anymore, but he’s feeling a new sensation stirring in his stomach. His face burns.

***

Kevin gets a call from his parents. It’s inevitable. He’s been waiting for it for weeks and had somewhat assumed that they would never talk to him again.

You’re a good Mormon boy, they’d said. Good Mormon boys follow the rules. Kevin didn’t say much of anything over the phone, because there wasn’t anything he could say to his father to make the situation any better, and he’s always been so difficult to talk to, so his father put his mother on. She had obviously been crying.

“You were such a handsome boy,” and Kevin doesn’t miss the past tense. “Always did as you were told. And now you’re living in sin and we know it’s because of that Cunningham boy. We’ve spoken to his parents for you.”

“And what did they say?” Kevin feels tired and heavy. He pinches the bridge of his nose until it hurts.

“They told us to get out of their house. We thought maybe he had just been confused, you know we hear these stories about him at Church, and we hoped that you would be a good influence on him, being the – the way you are, but now we know he wasn’t raised properly. Some people are just lost causes.”

Kevin bristles.

“Arnold is my best friend.”

Kevin can feel his mother sighing. “We never thought you could be so easily influenced. You were blessed, Kevin, and now you are betraying God’s wishes. The Mission President told us about the – colourful display of those Ugandan people.”

“They’ve been baptised. They are as much a part of the church as you and I are.”

“Well,” the tone is familiar and snippy, “I’m not sure how much longer you will be a part of the church, with the way you and your – your best friend – have betrayed it.”

Kevin doesn’t know what to say, so he says, “I love coffee.”

There’s silence, and Kevin isn’t used to people not wanting to hear what he has to say, so he says, “I love coffee, and I love sleeping in until I want, and I love not wearing my undergarments or a tie because gosh, it’s hot in Africa, mother. I love my mission companion and I like spending time apart from him. I love – I love cursing, and I love dancing and I still love God.”

“It’s because of – it’s because of those people there isn’t it? The Cunningham boy and the Ugandans and we even heard that there is – that your leader prefers the company of men.”

“I don’t care,” says Kevin. “I couldn’t care less.”

“You can’t just make a new Church. You’ve always been pompous, but you aren’t God.”

“Yes, well. Neither are you.”

“Kevin,” his mother says, “you have turned out to be such a disappointment,” and Kevin hangs up the phone.

He stays in the hallway until it gets dark and he starts to hear movement from outside the hut. He expects the phone to ring again. It doesn’t.

It’s Kevin’s turn to cook dinner, so he makes his way to the kitchen and prays to Heavenly Father that nobody is there to see the look on his face. He washes the vegetables and yesterday’s dishes in the same water. He wonders if anyone will choose to say grace today, and hopes they don’t. He isn’t feeling particularly grateful for God’s gifts.

Elder McKinley comes through the door with the sound of the bell and smiles his trademark smile, with all of his teeth, when he sees Kevin.

“Elder Price,” he says, voice full of song. “We missed you in class today.”

“Sorry,” says Kevin, and he really means it. The kids are a handful on the best of days. “My parents called.”

“Ah,” says Elder McKinley. “How are they?”

“Oh, they’re fine,” says Kevin, and begins to cut the vegetables. “Never been better.”

“That’s good,” says Elder McKinley, airily. “Would you like any help with dinner?”

“No, thank you. You should sit. I imagine you’ve had a long day.”

“Mm,” he says, and sits down on the dining chair with flourish. “I love the kids, don’t get me wrong. But I’m not particularly good with them.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Kevin says, cutting in quarters. “You just need to loosen up a little.”

“What, you want me to – drink coffee and, and, curse and leave the mission hut after curfew?”

“Maybe,” Kevin shrugs. “You are very uptight,” he says with the confidence of somebody whose opinions are usually taken as law.

“You’re one to talk,” Elder McKinley says with a bite.

“I’m working on it,” and he can hear Elder McKinley snort from across the room.

“The Mormon poster-boy, Kevin Price,” he says quietly. “We heard so much about you. We knew you’d stir our mission up a bit, but you really are quite exceptional.”

Kevin cuts his hand and yells fuck! Loud enough to make the villagers blush twenty minutes away.

Elder McKinley is over in a flash, standing too close and hovering his hand over Kevin’s fist.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“There’s blood on the vegetables,” says Kevin, and immediately bursts into tears.

It’s one of the most embarrassing moments in Kevin’s living memory. He is not a pretty crier. There’s a lot of snot and his face is screwed up and he gasps as he tries to speak. Elder McKinley grabs his wrist and pries his fingers apart. He tuts. He goes to the cupboard and pulls out the first aid kit, tears open the antibacterial wipe packet with his teeth and starts to clean the blood off his hand without a word.

“I am not a boy,” says Kevin.

“I know.”

Elder McKinley’s voice is soothing, in rhythm with the soft, sweeping motions of his hand.

“And I am not a good Mormon.”

“Yeah,” says Elder McKinley. “I know that too.”

Kevin, to his mortifying surprise, cries even harder. Elder McKinley leans in, conspiratorially, and whispers ever so quietly, “Fuck them.”

He is so close to Kevin’s ear that his breath sends shivers throughout Kevin’s body. The sensation is new and exciting.

“You cursed,” Kevin exhales shakily, then hiccups. “Now you need to sneak out with me after curfew to go get coffee.”

“I’m not even wearing my undergarments right now,” says Elder McKinley indifferently. Kevin can feel himself burn bright red. He hiccups again. Elder McKinley’s hand is cold on Kevin’s hot skin. His fingers are still clutched around Kevin’s wrist.

“What about dinner,” says Kevin. “There’s still blood everywhere.”

Elder McKinley shrugs. “We’ll just throw the vegetables out and say they were spoiled. It won’t be the first time it’s happened.”

He lets go of Kevin. He can suddenly breathe in a way he didn’t know he wasn’t doing before.

“Thank you,” says Kevin, inspecting his bandaged hand, and he really means it.

“Move over,” says Elder McKinley, and bumps his hip into his. “I don’t trust you with the knives anymore, clumsy.”

Kevin watches him prepare dinner dumbly. He’s feeling all sorts of feelings, but he squashes them down by staring at Elder McKinley’s hands working. He feels Elder McKinley’s eyes on him after a while and realises that he’s being weird. He turns his head, and decides to set the table.

Kevin is not a good Mormon. This much he’s known for a while. But he’s not sure what he is instead.

He tries to remember the last time he indulged in a hobby that wasn’t scripture, or proselytising, or something Church-approved. He can’t. He thinks of his mother sat on her chair knitting scarves for the five of them. He tries to force his mind to go blank. He can’t do that anymore, either. And Kevin hates not being able to do something. He tries to recite verses in his head but his hands start shaking again and so he stands, glaring at plates, until there’s a hand on his forearm.

“Hey,” says Elder McKinley. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah,” says Kevin, but he doesn’t believe him. Belief is the core of Kevin Price, and he doesn’t know who he is anymore. When he looks in the mirror and sees the curl of hair on his forehead and his skin that is darker and darker by the day, he doesn’t recognise himself. He doesn’t even wear a tie anymore.

“You are,” says Elder McKinley, gripping his arm a little harder. “And you are important,” and for once in his life this doesn’t make Kevin feel any better.

“So are you,” says Kevin, and he doesn’t mean to say it but his head is foggy and he’s finding it hard to connect his brain to his mouth. Elder McKinley’s mouth falls slightly open.

“Thank you, Elder,” he says and his hand slips away to finish serving food. The other Elders arrive and fill the room with idle chatter and that is the end of that.

***

Kevin finds himself pleasantly numb to most things these days. Sunburn is a given. He gets used to hunger. He squints less in the sunlight. When there’s news of another villager getting sick, he convinces himself they’ll get better. He even removed the giant spider from the bathroom that made Elder Neeley cry with an air of cool indifference.

There’s still some things, though, that he can’t turn off. Like thinking about his family. He is constantly trying to convert the time difference, unwillingly imagining what they’re doing right now. Jack returning from his mission. The outfit his sister might have chosen to impress everyone on her first day of high school. The new sermons his father has given. That sort of thing.

Or the way that the other Elders don’t seem to like him very much. He understands why – he’s abrasive and needy, his personality is too big, and their first impression of him was the worst mistake he’s ever made in his life. He also thinks (not that he would ever admit it), that they might be a little jealous of him. Kevin is tall and dark and handsome, he knows this. He’s charismatic in a way that he knows some of the others will never be. They must think he was popular in high school while they were getting bullied or whatever, that he was prom king and maybe played sports. None of it is true, but he understands that’s the image he puts across. He faked it until he made it and now even that’s come crashing down around him and he doesn’t know who or what he is, anymore. But he knows that to a lot of people he’s always going to be Kevin Price, Mormon poster boy, the Church’s darling and always the best looking person in the room. Even when he’s not really a Mormon anymore, the Church is one hair away from kicking him out entirely, and the bags under his eyes and the lines around his mouth make him look too old.

He tries to get them to like him, tries to be as helpful as possible, but this ends up annoying everyone even more. He does things like rush forward to grab plates off Elder Thomas and drop them on the floor, or be so eager to help someone drag a cart full of the Book of Arnold to the village he walks straight into a tree. And then he gets more flustered and even more acutely aware of how people stiffen when he walks into a room, and then the more he tries to please everybody. He tripped over his own feet helping Elder McKinley carry a sack of potatoes and they spilled all over the floor. Elder McKinley had shrugged and announced to the room, “he tries too hard.”

Kevin had been horrified, which made Elder McKinley laugh, and that made Elder Church and Elder Davis laugh, and it wasn’t until Arnold bounded in, as energetic as usual and his voice hysterical over nothing, that Kevin felt like he could breathe again.

And that brings him to the Problem of Elder McKinley.

Kevin was being annoying and needy and getting under everyone’s feet, but nobody actually talked about it, and that was just fine with Kevin. The only person who doesn’t seem to care about this particular elephant in the room is Elder McKinley. Kevin finds this quite unfair, because Elder McKinley has his own, huge and sparkly elephant and Kevin never says anything about that.

Elder McKinley doesn’t tense up around him. Elder McKinley gets bugs out of his hair for him and plays cards with him when Kevin looks particularly morose. Elder McKinley does things like call him out in a room full of people and put his arm around him in a companionable way while he teases him about how he looks less than perfect that day or he said something particularly conceited.

He wonders if it all has something to do with Kevin’s little melt-down in the kitchen. He thinks it probably is. If Elder Church had found him, would it be Elder Church who didn’t act afraid of him? Would Elder Church be friendly with him the way Elder McKinley is? Maybe it’s because he opened up, maybe he has to allow himself to be vulnerable in front of other people instead of cooping himself up inside a small room, controlling his breathing until he feels like he can put on his best missionary smile again. Maybe it’s just Elder McKinley.

He stops his work for the day to hide under the shade of a tree. He takes a long gulp of water. “Hello,” says Elder McKinley, who appears next to him, apparently with the same plan of hiding in the shade. The tip of his nose is bright red. Kevin has to fight the ridiculous, childish urge to bop it with his finger. Kevin hands over the water bottle wordlessly. “Nice day, isn’t it?”

Kevin snorts. “I’d like to think we’re a bit further in our relationship than making small talk about the weather.”

Elder McKinley goes very still, and Kevin is suddenly filled with a squirmy sensation, and the familiar flushed feeling he’s always gotten when he thinks he might be wrong about something. His bandaged hand itches.

“Yes,” says Elder McKinley. “I suppose we are.”

Kevin smiles without any intention to do so, and Elder McKinley smiles back. He’s got kind of crooked teeth that Kevin has never noticed before.

He passes the water bottle to back to Kevin. Kevin doesn’t know what to say, so he talks about Arnold. Arnold, and the concept of him, is a great ice breaker.

“So, Arnold has definitely been breaking curfew rules. Last night he didn’t get back until sunrise, when he woke me up by being the most ungraceful person I have ever had the misfortune to meet in my life.”

Elder McKinley snorts. “So we’re substituting weather talk for gossip?”

“Absolutely,” says Kevin, and wiggles his eyebrows a bit. “He even left his undergarments. A bit of leverage over Arnold is certainly never a bad thing. Maybe bring him down a peg or two.”

Elder McKinley laughs, truly laughs, in a way that Kevin has never heard him do before.

“And you don’t need bringing down a peg or two?”

“Well, that seems to have become everybody’s new personal mission,” says Kevin, flippantly. “No need for you to make a habit of it, too. Did you know that Elder Thomas has banned me from any and all board games?”

“That’s because – and I know this for a fact, Elder Price, do not pull that face at me – that you flipped the board when you went bankrupt in Monopoly and stormed off for a full half hour.”

Kevin glares at him. Don’t remind me, he thinks, but doesn’t want Elder McKinley know he’s embarrassed about it, because Elder McKinley already knows too much.

“All ego aside,” - Elder McKinley gasps, clutches his chest, and rolls his eyes – “Arnold is the one who needs to be brought down to Earth. He saved the day, created a new religion, became a prophet, and got the girl. That has to go to your head a little bit.”

“Yes,” says Elder McKinley, “but you’re Kevin Price.”

Kevin looks at him. “Thank you?”

Elder McKinley smiles that smile again, with the teeth, and Kevin is torn between feeling like he’s being made fun of and preening.

Then Elder McKinley does something that is both frightening and exhilarating, as everything in Uganda has turned out to be. He leans forward, suddenly, and puts his hand on Kevin’s face. Kevin stays very still, like he’s afraid of startling an animal, and is surprised by how cold his hand feels against his very warm cheeks. He is probably bright red and flustered, and he’s finding it very hard to look into his eyes like a normal person, and then Elder McKinley digs his fingers into a spot above Kevin’s eyebrow and rubs really, really hard.

“Ow!”

“Sorry,” Elder McKinley grins, not looking very sorry at all, “but you had dirt on your face, and it was really quite annoying.”

It’s all very confusing for Kevin, trying to untangle of the pieces of his brain and organise them and then tangle them all up again in a way that works for him. Kevin, he has been told, is either the greatest person to ever exist (Arnold) and therefore his pride is not unfounded, or it is very clear that he is the least popular missionary there (everybody except for Arnold), which frustrates and upsets Kevin in a way that he hasn’t felt since he was in middle school. He doesn’t know where Elder McKinley fits in. Elder McKinley seems to admire him and hate him several times a day. Sometimes, he even acts like they might be friends.

Instead of the questions he should be asking, which involves a lot of ‘why’ and ‘personal space issues’, he wonders compulsively if Elder McKinley touches other people the way he touches him. He tries to side eye him from afar, and monitor his behaviour around others, acutely aware of how strange it is to be acting this way. But once, Kevin found Elder McKinley staring back at him with an alarmingly dark expression, and a vaguely smug smile, and then Kevin spends a lot of time not looking at Elder McKinley at all.

***

It’s Arnold who makes him talk about it, because Arnold is Arnold and he loves to talk.

“My parents wrote me a letter,” he smiles at Kevin when he enters the room. Kevin is freshly bathed but he already feels sweaty again. It’s been horribly humid recently. He blinks droplets from his eyes.

“That’s nice,” he says, and sits down on the end of Arnold’s bed, peering over his shoulder. “Did you tell them about Nabulungi?”

“I did!” says Arnold, bouncing Kevin on the bed with enthusiasm. “They didn’t believe me at first. I think they’re just happy that I’ve finally – you know. That a girl likes me.”

“Any girl would like you, it’s just that Nabulungi is the first girl who you’ve actually let get a word in edgeways.”

Arnold kicks him and almost knocks Kevin off the bed, giggling when Kevin’s arms flail.

“I think there was a compliment in there,” says Arnold. “Besides, when was the last time a girl liked you.”

Kevin clutches his heart. “You wound me, Elder Cunningham.”

“Anyway,” Arnold says. “They said that your parents paid them a visit.”

“Oh,” says Kevin, deflating.

“Yeah,” says Arnold.

“They – they might’ve said something.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Kevin sighs. He doesn’t really know how to answer that question without making himself look like a bad friend, or without opening up to Arnold and letting him see a little into the hot, dark, sticky hole inside him.

“They said some things,” says Kevin, “that I don’t want to talk about.”

“Yeah,” Arnold brandishes the letter, “I gathered that.”

Kevin is silent. He doesn’t want to have this conversation, but if he has to, he’s glad it’s with Arnold. The memory of Elder McKinley’s fingers on his wrist is still fresh. When it’s quiet, if he closes his eyes and tries really hard, he can almost feel the impression on his skin.

“Apparently I’m a terrible influence,” Arnold sighs. “Mom was very nice about it. But that’s what your parents told them.”

“You are a terrible influence,” says Kevin, and doesn’t like the look on Arnold’s face. “That’s not a bad thing. I’m glad you are. You already knew that.”

Kevin wonders, not for the first time, whether the – The Incident, and Arnold, and his book, was such a good idea after all.

“They think we’re under the influence of Satan,” says Arnold. He looks proud. “My Mom told them where to go stick it.”

Kevin laughs. “Yeah, they told me that too.”

“They’re worried about you,” and Kevin is oddly touched. “And so am I.”

“There’s no need to be. I’m fine.”

“Someone needs to be,” Arnold shrugs, and touches the bandage on Kevin’s hand.

“I’m fine,” says Kevin.

“They don’t sound like very nice people.” Kevin stares at him. “In fact, they sound like they’re kind of horrible.”

This is the first time anybody has ever said a bad word about his parents. He feels a little bit like throwing up. They are perfect Mormons, a perfect family. They are admired, envied, imitated. Their children are well-groomed and just as good at being Mormons. Jack is district leader in Canada. They run bake sales and teach at Sunday School. His father reads verses at sermons.

“Yes,” says Kevin, like pulling teeth, “Yes, they are kind of horrible.”

“I’m sorry,” says Arnold. “That sucks.”

“It does,” and Kevin starts to laugh until he can’t stop. “It really, really does.”

He feels like he’s about to start crying again. It’s ridiculous to feel so embarrassed in front of Arnold, because Arnold screamed louder than everyone and refused to get off the rickety chair he was standing on when that scorpion managed to get in the hut but still cried until he tired himself out in Kevin’s arms when Elder Michaels killed it. Arnold cries over anything. Arnold is completely, unabashedly unashamed of himself. Kevin doesn’t understand it. Kevin is kind of afraid of it.

“You never have to talk to them again, if you don’t want to.”

“I miss them,” says Kevin. “And that’s ridiculous, right? I mean – they are, they’re truly horrible, all the time, but I miss them so much.”

“That’s okay,” Arnold says. “They’re still your parents. Of course you miss them. They were your whole life.”

Now Kevin’s started talking, now he’s saying what he’s barely allowed himself to think, he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop. He feels wrong. He feels like his skin is too small for his body.

“They’ve never – they say they love me, but I don’t think they mean it. They love the attention I get. They love being praised for my achievements. But they don’t – they don’t love me. They never read me a bedtime story, or kissed my forehead, or asked how I was feeling. And I miss them.”

“It’s okay,” Arnold places his hand on Kevin’s knee. “It’ll pass, with time.”

“I don’t know what to do,” says Kevin. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

“You are here to make a paradise planet,” says Arnold. “Remember?”

“It’s just – it’s a lot of responsibility. I’m not – I’m not a good Mormon. I’m not, I’m not a good person.”

“They aren’t the same thing,” says Arnold, clearly choosing his words carefully. “You know that.”

“I can’t do it. Arnold, I can’t – I can’t do this -” and then he can’t breathe, and there’s a pain in his chest that wasn’t there before, and he feels so sick, and, and. His vision blurs. “I can’t be here anymore, I need to go home, but I don’t have a home to go to. I shouldn’t have come here. This whole mess is my fault, I did this, I ruined everyone’s chances of going to Heaven, oh God, Arnold –“

Arnold looks stricken. Kevin feels confused and disoriented. He clutches Arnold’s arm and he can’t stop concentrating on this feeling, the truth that he knows, that the hole inside him is getting bigger and bigger and it won’t stop until it swallows him whole.

“Uhm, oh Gosh, Kevin, we need to calm you down. I don’t know what to do.”

“Me either,” croaks Kevin in between gasps. “I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe.” He repeats it, over and over again, until Arnold shoves his head between his legs without warning.

“Yes you can, you can breathe. You’ve done it a million times. It’s easy. Count with me,” and Arnold starts to count, one two three, one two three four. He rubs his hand on Kevin’s back and Kevin starts to see the details of the hardwood floor and his lungs fill with air.

“Good, that’s good,” Arnold soothes.

Kevin doesn’t understand what just happened, only he understands entirely, and he aches all over.

When Kevin starts to breathe normally he’s so tired that he falls asleep in Arnold’s bed holding his hand. He wakes up without dreaming to the sound of Arnold snoring and his heart hurts with gratitude and a swirl of emotions that he doesn’t recognise but feel a lot like shame.

***

Kevin’s parents are so angry that he climbed the tree that they said that he would have to wait for his wrist to heal by itself, because it was God’s way of teaching him a lesson. It doesn’t seem to be healing, and he is horrified that God hadn’t forgiven him yet. He wears his jumper with the end of the sleeve balled up in his fist so nobody can see his wrist. He pretends he’s left handed and his handwriting is even more illegible than it was before. Nobody can know that he sinned. He won’t lie, because he’s a good Mormon boy, and Mormons don’t lie. He just doesn’t want anyone to know that he did something wrong, so he figures if he hides it, then nobody will ask him about it, and he won’t have to lie.

He panics when it’s time for gym class. They usually have it indoors, where he can wear his sweater, but it’s such a lovely day outside that Mrs Montgomery decides they should play outdoors. It’s too hot to wear his sweater outside. Kevin finds quite suddenly that he’s forgotten how to breathe.

He dawdles so he’s at the back of the other children swarming around the doorway, and then turns to an inquisitive Mrs Montgomery. Kevin is not the kind of boy who is last for anything.

Kevin explains to her what happened, in his polite and matter of fact way.

“So I can’t play baseball today. Can I maybe stay here and do my homework instead?”

“Kevin,” says Mrs Montgomery, “when did this happen?”

“On Saturday,” Kevin explains. Today is Thursday.

“Can I see it?”

Kevin freezes. He doesn’t know why he didn’t expect the question.

“Um,” he says, but Mrs Montgomery is already lifting up his sleeve. He sees her lips tighten and her nostrils flare. See, he thinks sadly. Now she knows you gave in to temptation and Heavenly Father is mad at you.

“Kevin -”

“I didn’t mean to!” Kevin says. “I forgot that I wasn’t allowed in the tree and it looked like loads of fun, I saw how tall it was and I thought, I bet I can get up really really high and see really really far, but then I fell. I couldn’t go as far as I thought.” Mrs Montgomery lets his arm go. Kevin looks at his shoes. He doesn’t want to get yelled at again. “I’ve never climbed a tree before.”

“That’s okay, Kevin. I know it wasn’t your fault.” Kevin really likes his teacher. She speaks softly and is always nice and gives you hard candies at the end of the week if you get enough stickers on the star chart. And Kevin always gets enough stickers on his star chart. This is why he feels really bad telling her that she’s wrong. Kevin hates being told that he’s wrong. It’s one of the worst feelings in the whole entire world.

“It was my fault,” says Kevin, “because I broke the rules.” He leans in towards Mrs Montgomery’s kind face, and whispers, “I figured it out. I fell out of the tree because I had false pride. That’s why I’m in so much trouble.”

Mrs Montgomery opens her mouth, then closes it again. Kevin feels cold all over.

“Has anybody looked at your wrist, Kevin? A doctor?”

“No,” says Kevin. And because he is a good Mormon boy, and good Mormons never lie, he explains, “God will heal it when I’ve been forgiven.”

Her kind face doesn’t look kind at all. Kevin knows that look. She’s angry because her mouth is pressed so tightly that it looks like she doesn’t have any lips, and she is unusually quiet. He braces himself.

“We are going to see the Principal. Come along, Kevin.”

Kevin walks shamefully behind her, staring at his feet the whole time. He has never been to see the Principal before. Only naughty boys and girls get taken to the see the Principal when they won’t be quiet when they’re told or when they pull on somebody’s hair, or chew gum. He is surprised when his teacher takes his little hand into her big one.

“Hello,” she announces when the Principal opens the door. He frowns down at Kevin, too. “Kevin here has hurt his wrist falling out of a tree at home and needs to be taken to the hospital.”

The Principal bends down, and asks to see his wrist. The lights in the office are bright and the room is very small. Mrs Montgomery clicks the door behind her, and stands by the handle. Kevin is suddenly very frightened. He is not going to cry again, although his eyes sting from the force of keeping them in. He doesn’t want to get in any more trouble than he already is.

“No,” says Kevin. He didn’t know he was going to say that until he said it. He feels very light headed and he’s forgotten that he needs to breathe. The Principal reaches out to his sleeve anyway. Kevin snatches it away. “No. I think – I think I’m being punished enough, and I shouldn’t get in any more trouble!”

The Principal and Mrs Montgomery look at each other over Kevin’s head. He’s not stupid. He knows that grown ups can have conversations with their eyes.

“You aren’t in trouble, Kevin,” the Principal says. “We just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Kevin stays quiet, and holds his wrist as far behind his back as possible.

“Please, Kevin, sweetie, we just want to help. You’re in pain.”

“I will be okay when Heavenly Father has forgiven me,” Kevin says.

The Principal says, “Okay, Kevin,” and then turns to Mrs Montgomery. “Shall I call his parents?” and Kevin shakes his head so hard his brain rattles.

“No!” says Kevin, before he realised that the Principal wasn’t talking to him. Speaking out of turn. He bristles with that sick, hot sensation again.

“I think it’s probably best if we don’t call them just yet.”

They call for the school nurse, instead, who takes one look at his wrist, prods it, and nods at Kevin’s teachers.

Mrs Montgomery and the nurse take him to the hospital, in the end. He sits in the back of the car and pretends he can’t hear his teachers whispering. Kevin doesn’t want to go with them, but he does, because he has been taught to always respect his superiors. It’s white and loud and he hates it. There are lots of strangers who poke at him and pull at his arm and he even has to sit in a scary room on his own while everybody watches him from a screen. They say there’s a machine that is taking his picture. Kevin figures it’s probably part of the punishment.

They say that’s he’s broken it, and they put this hard glove thingy on it which they call a cast. It’s purple. It’s huge and his jumper won’t even fit over it.

Kevin’s parents are furious when he comes home. Because he is a good Mormon boy, he never lies, and so he tells them what happened and his dad’s face goes bright red, and he says a lot of words that Kevin doesn’t understand and this frightens him. They send him to his room for the rest of the night, and he reads his scripture with such ferocity that he doesn’t remember any of it when he’s finished.

The next day, when he sullenly walks into class with his huge purple arm, he is the most popular person in the room. Some of them get black felt tip markers and draw on it. Suzy, who is the nicest girl he’s ever met, kisses it, because that’s what makes it better when you get hurt. Kevin knows that only Heavenly Father can stop it from hurting when he feels that it is right to do so, but it makes Kevin feel warm and happy anyway.

Four different people eat with him at lunchtime. At the end of the week, Kevin beats his personal record of eleven stars on the sheet with seventeen stars.

***

It gets a little better, and then a little better after that, too. Sometimes it’s worse. Mostly, it’s just a whole different world.

The weird sticky hole inside him is still there, but Kevin finds that if he ignores it, it might just go away. He wonders how long it’s been there, but decides not to open that can of worms.

He mostly wants to be left alone. He finds himself displeased in the company of others, feels prickly and almost hateful, watching other people be normal and not screwed up in the head. They are just the way they are, and they’re fine with that. It’s infuriating. Kevin wishes, more than anything, that he could wake up tomorrow as a different person, with a different life, and find himself happy.

Once they settled, and tested their strengths and weaknesses, Elder McKinley drew up a new rota, with respective roles given to each Elder. Arnold, of course, is the exception this. Arnold can do whatever he wants, as long as he continues making the Book. Elder Church, being the biggest of them all, does most of the manual labour. Elder Thomas, who is more personable than most, becomes a makeshift counsellor and agony aunt. Elder McKinley is in charge of building the church, with Elder Michaels and Elder Neeley as his subordinates in making the plans and fetching supplies. Elder Davis will be mostly helping out Gotswana at the doctor’s office. And as for Kevin, he has him working with the children, and by extension, their parents, too. Daily teaching of maths and spoken English, how to read, and on Sundays, they’ll learn about God.

“You’re a great teacher,” says Elder McKinley, with a shrug, when challenged on his choice.

“I’m not,” says Kevin. “I’m no good with people, anymore. You must know that I’m better suited to something else.”

“Well, you are the best at it, out of everyone,” and Kevin hates the sparkle in his eye so much he feels his fists balling.

“Stop it,” says Kevin. Elder McKinley looks up at him from his office desk and puts down his pen. “Don’t do that. I’m not a child.”

“Okay,” says Elder McKinley. “But if it means anything, you really are the best teacher here. And somebody needs to watch out for those kids.”

“It doesn’t mean anything, no. I’m not a good role model. There’s nothing I can teach them.”

Elder McKinley is staring at him, now, and Kevin wishes he had the willpower to look away from his gaze and leave.

“That’s not true,” he says. “You must know that’s not true.”

“It is true,” says Kevin, sullenly. “I’m no good for anyone. Swap me with Elder Church, or something. I’m strong, too, and I’ll do just as good a job as him, without – acting like, you know, around a bunch of kids who don’t know any better. I’m a liability, and you know that. Don’t let me ruin a bunch of children’s lives.”

Elder McKinley won’t stop staring at him, fingers laced under his chin.

“What happened to you?”

“Uganda,” says Kevin mildly, feeling anything other than mild. He is hot and tired.

“You know, for someone who insists he’s not a child, you spend a lot of time acting like one.”

“For someone who isn’t attracted to men, you spend a lot of time acting like you are.”

Kevin knows he’s made a mistake even as the words are tumbling out. He doesn’t understand why he has to be so hot headed. Elder McKinley raises his eyebrows.

“A low blow, Elder.” He picks up his stack of papers and starts shuffling them. “If I were you, I’d leave now.”

“No,” says Kevin, and remembers how soothing the Elder’s hands felt. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, probably not,” Elder McKinley agrees. Those soothing hands are shaking slightly. “I’d really like you to leave.”

“No,” says Kevin again. He doesn’t flinch when Elder McKinley stands to meet his gaze at eye level.

“I thought, Elder Price, that you always do as you’re told.”

Kevin bares his teeth slightly. If Elder McKinley is looking for a fight, he’s not in the mood to pretend he’s not, too.

“What is your problem?”

“You,” says Elder McKinley. “You are my problem, Kevin Price.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“For all our expectations of you, all you have managed to be from start to finish is a pain in my ass.”

“What kind of District Leader are you, letting your personal problems get in the way of our mission?”

“Our mission?” Elder McKinley laughs, short and high-pitched. “What mission? You ruined that, rather spectacularly, of course, because you’re Kevin Price, and the Earth spins on its axis for you.”

Kevin is momentarily stunned for words. He’s never gotten into a fight like this before. He feels a mad surge of power, the ability to be intentionally cruel, and wonders if Elder McKinley feels it, too.

He takes a step closer, and puts his finger on Elder McKinley’s chest. His eyes are very blue.

“We all make mistakes. And people are allowed to change, Elder. You of all people should know about that.”

“Stop talking,” says Elder McKinley. He doesn’t back down from Kevin’s gaze. If anything, he makes himself taller. “Not everyone cares about what you have to say.”

“That’s the point!” Kevin shouts, and then lowers his voice. “Nobody gives a shit about Kevin Price. I don’t know anything. I only know the teachings of Heavenly Father and how to disappoint people. Those kids are dying, Elder. And if they’re not, their family is. What am I supposed to do about it? I can’t even look after myself.”

“Oh, stop feeling sorry for yourself,” says Elder McKinley. “You have one little meltdown and you think the world stops. Be the leader, like you were supposed to be. Change things. Swoop in at the last minute and save the day, whatever it is you need to do, be the hero, anything. Sort yourself out.”

“Get lost,” he says, screwing his face up. “You judged me before you even met me. Well, I heard about you before I met you, too. But I don’t go around getting annoyed at you for not acting like I expected.”

“Oh, I imagine you heard all sorts of sordid things about me, Elder. All I heard about for months was how fantastic you are, how once you arrived you would change everything. And you did. But now you’re completely insufferable, and you don’t know the first thing about me. So stop talking back to me and do as you’re told.”

“I know that your name is Connor McKinley, you are twenty years old, from Nevada. You have two younger sisters called Evelyn and Harriet, your grandparents died before you were born. You took tap dancing lessons until you were thirteen. You know first aid. You prayed for your mission to be somewhere in Europe. You’re afraid of moths and clowns creep you out. You alphabetise everything.” Elder McKinley doesn’t say anything. Kevin smiles. “And what do you know about me? Other than me being the exceptional Kevin Price?”

“That’s not fair,” says Elder McKinley. “You don’t talk about yourself.”

“You’ve never asked.”

Kevin finds himself breathing heavily.  Elder McKinley’s chest is heaving, too. He can feel it under his fingers. Kevin pushes him away and takes a step back.

“Okay,” Elder McKinley says.

“Okay?” says Kevin.

“Okay, Kevin. Maybe you’re right.”

They stand there like that, too close, with too much eye contact.

“Okay,” Kevin agrees.  Elder McKinley moves away and sits back down at his desk. He clicks his pen.

“Will that be all, Elder?”

Kevin isn’t done, but he can be for now.

“Yes, I suppose so. Connor.”

He nods at him and looks back down at his papers. It is a clear dismissal, and for once, Kevin takes the hint.

Kevin’s back is turned and he has one foot out the door when Elder McKinley says, “For the record, you are the most suited for the job. I’ve been watching, you know. You’re a natural leader. And you’re not as screwed up as you think you are. I’m not changing the rota.”

Kevin smiles to himself all the way back to his room and doesn’t have the energy to figure out why.

***

It’s not that they argue a lot, per say. They just argue more than anybody else. Not that anyone else really argues, come to think of it. Not like they do, bickering over anything and everything, from the rota for the day to the finesse of another chapter of the Book of Arnold, or what they’re having for their evening meal. Kevin knows that people tense up when either one of them enters the room while the other is there. And Kevin isn’t too sure that their flimsy doors will hold up to much more slamming. Since they started, they haven’t been able to stop. Sometimes, Kevin worries he’s addicted. The hurtful things that flow out of his mouth feel so good when they’re out there, and hearing it echoed back to him is pleasurably painful. It’s so different to anything he’s experienced before, their strange relationship. Kevin just wants to keep pushing, to see how far they can go before they break.

“What is your problem with him?” Nabulungi asks one day. She has been teaching Kevin how to braid her hair and she’s sat in the v-shape of his legs.

“Who?” says Kevin, because even if Mormons can’t lie, that doesn’t mean that they can’t avoid the truth.

She tuts at him. “Don’t play stupid. I have enough stupid to deal with,” she says, and Kevin knows she’s talking about Arnold. It makes him smile.

Kevin shrugs even though she can’t see it. “I don’t have a problem with him.”

“You are always at each other, bickering. It’s annoying.”

Nabulungi is like a breath of fresh air. She is blunt and raw in a way like nobody else he’s ever met, because all he’s ever known is tight-lipped smiles and clean, white shirts.

“I don’t know what the problem is,” says Kevin. “There just is one.”

“You’re stupid,” says Nabulungi, and Kevin may or may not tug on her hair a little harder than necessary.

“You’re nosy,” Kevin says.

It’s cooler than it is most days here, and Kevin is incredibly grateful.  He even put his tie on, but he’s starting to look weirder with it than without it. 

“But then sometimes you stand so close to him and laugh so loudly. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Kevin knows that it doesn’t. He’s vaguely annoyed that Nabulungi is bringing it up before either he or Connor.

It’s like he can’t help himself. Connor makes him feel so many emotions that nobody else does. Ones that he can’t put names to, only experiences as physical sensations. He’s sort of like an odd rash that you can’t stop looking at and poking instead of leaving it alone like you should.

Kevin’s always had good self-control. Too good self-control.  Then Uganda happened and the heat frazzled his brain and he ended up with another man’s blood on his shirt and in his mouth and the Book of Mormon shoved up his – well. He’s been sort of having a constant breakdown ever since the plane landed.

“Before I knew you,” says Kevin.  “Back in America, I never cared about anyone else. I only cared about myself, and God, and nothing else mattered.”

“I don’t think I would have liked you very much,” Nabulungi says, but she shifts a little so her back presses further into Kevin’s chest.

“No,” says Kevin. “I don’t like me very much, either.”

“I like you now, stupid,” she says. “You are a mess. You are very interesting.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a good thing. It was – easier, before. You know. I mean, look at Connor. I was always so pleasant, and my only goal was to make myself the most likeable, most enviable, person in the room. Now it’s like I’m going out of my way to make him hate me. I can’t help it.”

“Exactly,” says Nabulungi. Kevin ties her hair off and she feels it from behind, then nods approvingly to herself. Kevin preens, but only a little. “Messy and interesting. You other white boys are so nice, it’s boring.”

Kevin hooks his chin over Nabulungi’s shoulder and thinks about this for a while. He’s been called many things in his life, but interesting isn’t one of them.

“Anyway,” says Nabulungi, “how long has he been Connor, and not Elder McKinley?”

Kevin pinches her sides and she shrieks until her eyes start watering. It suddenly occurs to him that he’s actually having fun, and then he’s laughing, arms wrapped around her stomach as she tries to squirm away.

“Hey white boy,” she murmurs. Kevin mock whispers, “What?”

“He’s watching us,” she says.

Connor is, indeed, watching them. Even from this angle, he looks vaguely disdainful. Goosebumps run up his arms and he can feel himself go bright red. He’s very glad that Nabulungi can’t see his face. Their eyes meet and Kevin looks away first. He tightens his arms around Nabulungi’s waist and she tuts at him.

“Stop it,” she says, “you’re doing it on purpose again.”

“No I’m not,” says Kevin, still watching the stiffness of Connor’s shoulders out of the corner of his eye. “Wait, doing what?”

“You know,” she waves her arm. Connor stands up abruptly and stalks off in the general direction of the hut. Kevin makes to stand up, too, but Nabulungi grabs his wrist. Kevin inevitably thinks about Connor’s fingers pressed tightly into the tiny bones there. “Don’t.”

Kevin relaxes. “Sorry,” he tells her, and she turns around to look at him. “I told you, I can’t help it.”

“Yes you can,” says Nabulungi, in the same matter-of-fact tone that Kevin uses. “All of your choices are your own.”

They stay there until the sun begins to set. She takes his hand and they walk back to the hut with their fingers interlocked. Nabulungi is nice, Kevin thinks. She’s the nicest person he’s ever met, and Kevin has spent his entire life around Mormons. She is the living proof Kevin needs; you don’t have to be polite to be a good, caring person. Arnold is so lucky to have her, and the thought of the two of them makes his heart swell. He’s like the Grinch. His heart was all shrivelled up and then he met Arnold, who made his heart grow to three times its size.

He kisses her on the cheek goodbye and waves her off from the doorway. It’s dark in the hut – the other Elders must have retired to their rooms already.

He kicks his shoes off at the door and loosens his tie. The room smells faintly of onions and he realises that he spent so long talking to Nabulungi that he missed dinner.

“Hello,” says Elder McKinley, and Kevin almost jumps out of his skin. “A little edgy, are we?”

“Elder,” Kevin nods to Connor who is standing by the door to the hall. He’s pretty sure the last time they spoke was about the merits of adding the romantic comedy genre to the Book of Arnold, so he’s a little confused by the tone, and why was Connor glaring at him and Nabulungi in the first place? He can glower all he wants, but Connor isn’t usually the one to prod first. He moves to go through the doorway but Connor throws up an arm to stop him. “I’m tired, Connor. Can we do this another day?”

“No,” says Connor.

“No?”

“No. I can’t believe you’re just going to go into your room and sleep next to Arnold as if nothing happened.”

“But – what are you talking about?”

“I saw the two of you! On the hillside.”

Kevin frowns. They’re stood very close, and Kevin takes a step back.

“Me and Nabulungi?”

“Yes, you and Nabulungi. Obviously. Does Arnold know?”

“Does Arnold know what?”

Connor makes a frustrated sound and rubs his hand over his face.

“Are you honestly this dense? Do you need me to spell it out for you?”

“I guess so.”

“Does Arnold know that you and Nabulungi are – you know. Together?”

Kevin blinks. Then he laughs, but this only seems to make Connor’s expression tighten.

“Oh – no. I mean, yes, he knows, but that’s not –“

“Are -” Connor suddenly looks very nervous – “is it that the three of you are…?”

“Heavenly Father, no.” Kevin is having a really hard time to shake the laughter from his face. He leans over Connor to flick the light switch and sees that Connor’s face has lost most of its hard edges and he just looks mostly hurt. It makes Kevin stop laughing. “No, we’re not like that. At all. Nabulungi was just teaching me how to braid her hair.”

“That’s not what it looked like to me.”

“She’s just my friend.”

“That’s not what friends do,” says Connor, with air quotes around the word ‘friends’. “Trust me.”

“I do trust you,” says Kevin.

“If you’re – with her – then you’re a terrible person-“

“Why do you care? You think I’m a terrible person already.”

“That’s not true,” says Connor, quietly.

“What?”

“I don’t think you’re a terrible person,” says Connor, louder.

“Oh,” says Kevin.

“Yeah,” Connor says.

Kevin can feel Connor’s breath on his face. He can count individual freckles. His head has that foggy feeling again.

“Besides,” says Connor, “you’re the one that has a problem with me.”

“I don’t have a problem with you.”

Connor scoffs. “Sure. Because you’ve been nothing but nice to me.”

Kevin thinks. He’s not sure if he’s ever been nice to Connor without Connor being nice first. It’s like he’s pissed off until proven complimented.

“I want to be,” Kevin decides to admit. “I’m just not sure how.”

“You clearly know how to be nice to Nabulungi,” Connor snaps.

“I suppose so,” says Kevin.

“And Arnold. And Elder Thomas. And Elder Church. And the kids at school. And – and everyone. Apart from me.”

Connor looks smaller. Kevin could have sworn they were almost the same height, but now he’s a whole head above him.

“I’m sorry,” says Kevin.

“You’re always sorry, eventually,” Connor shrugs. “But you never change. At first I thought you were the problem, that you had some – issues, or something. But then I realised it was just me.”

“I do,” Kevin grits his teeth. “I do have some – issues.”

Connor looks at his face for a long time.

“We all have issues,” says Connor. “You should keep them to yourself.”

“I’m not so good at turning things off.”

“Sure you are,” says Connor, and grabs his hand. Kevin startles. Connor traces the scab on the back of his hand with one finger. “Remember?”

“I remember.” Kevin feels uncomfortable.

“You might not like me, but I know you like Arnold. If there is anything going on—” Kevin opens his mouth but Connor shushes him. “If there’s anything going on between you and Sister Hatimbi, then you need to tell him.”

Connor turns on his heels and moves to walk away. Kevin is annoyed that Connor got the last word.

“I like you,” Kevin blurts, and Connor stops in his tracks but doesn’t turn around. “I do like you. I think that might be the problem.”

Connor stands with his back to him until he leaves Kevin alone in the doorway, watching him walk away.

***

In a frustrating turn of events, Kevin actually is quite a good teacher.

He likes children in a way that none of the others do. They seem to make the other Elders uncomfortable, which Kevin doesn’t think he’ll ever understand. Kids are so easy. Kids are all make-believe and all-knowing. They don’t have motives, they simply just are.

They seem to like him more than the other Elders, too. Kevin has grown up, but he hasn’t grown up that much. He likes attention. He doesn’t think he’ll ever not like attention. Kevin knows how to command a room and get people to listen to him, which as it turns out, is an excellent quality to teach a group of unruly children mathematics and English and life skills. Unfortunately, Elder McKinley might have had a point.

The other Elder that the kids like is Arnold, of course. Arnold looks and sounds funny – bless him – and gesticulates in big ways and adds sound effects to Kevin’s stories. Kevin’s favourite part of the week is Sunday School, which involves weekly retellings of Star Trek episodes to teach the children various moral lessons. Kevin has never seen an episode of Star Trek but it turns out he makes an excellent Captain.

Arnold is making spaceship noises that involve a lot of high-pitched beeping and whooshing sounds, two of the youngest riding on his shoulders, while Kevin talks about evil alien overlords and how they’re going to use the power of friendship and teamwork to defeat them, when a little girl called Kamali raises her hand (one of Kevin’s finer moments, he must say, was the lesson of turn-taking) and asks him what’s the difference between the telepathic, telekinetic alien overlords and God.

Kevin says, “Well, that’s a good question. God loves everybody, but the aliens only love themselves.”

“Mafala loves everybody, too.”

“That’s right. He does. That’s what makes him such a good leader.”

Kamali thinks about this for a while.

“Do you love everybody, Elder Price?”

Kevin, instinctively and without warning, looks at Arnold, and then his eyes flicker over to Connor helping to build a fire. He looks away as quickly as he looked over.

“Yes, I do. I love you especially,” and then proceeds to tickle her stomach until the handful of other children who aren’t waiting patiently for a ride on the spaceship climb all over him, wanting a turn. 

There’s a boy in class, Kamirakwo, who is a little older than the others and isn’t very patient because of it. He scowls at the younger ones as they laugh loudly and crawl over Kevin and Arnold. He’s difficult, takes longer to learn than the others, and doesn’t like to speak English. Kevin, who has first-hand knowledge of difficult people, asks him what’s wrong.

“Why should we love everybody?” Kamirakwo asks. “Some people are horrible.”

Kevin knows what he means.

“Well, we are all made in God’s image, even bad people. And we should love and be grateful for all of God’s gifts.”

“Men murdered my mother,” Kamirakwo tells him. “If God wants me to love them, then God needs to be better.”

Kevin doesn’t know what to say, because he believes, deep down, that Kamirakwo is right. There are some real rotten alien overlords out there that he needs answers from God for.

There are so many things that he could tell Kamirakwo right now, he could parrot his father with ‘God has his reasons for everything’ and ‘Heavenly Father punishes as he sees fit, and it is not up to us to do God’s work’ or maybe ‘God tests our faith in him with terrible circumstances, but that only makes our faith stronger’. He doesn’t tell him any of these things because even if Kevin’s devotion to Heavenly Father is wavering, right now he is still a Mormon, and Mormons don’t lie.

Kevin gestures for him to come closer and puts his arm around his small shoulders, and turns their backs to the class.

“I’m going to tell you a secret,” Kevin whispers, “but you have to promise that this is just between me and you, okay?”

Kamirakwo nods. “Okay,” he says.

“Thank you,” says Kevin. “The secret is that God is whoever, whatever you need Him to be. If you want those men to be punished, God will do that for you. If you want those men to be forgiven for their sins, God will make them redeem themselves for what they did and He will forgive them once they have proven themselves to Him. If you need to be angry at God, yell into the sky. If you need His help and guidance, all you have to do is pray."

Kamirakwo’s eyes soften and he nods.

“Thank you, Elder Price,” he says, and turns to play with the others. Kevin stares at his shoes for a long time before he turns and dismisses class.

Kevin is quiet for the rest of the day and Arnold gives him a funny look but Kevin waves him off with his hand. He eats dinner with the rest of them very quietly and only smiles when Connor kicks him under the table and says “turn that frown upside down, Elder, and eat some more rice.”

Kevin falls asleep that night repeating Bible verses over and over and over again until the buzzing in his head has settled down into a dull ache.

***

His wrist never quite seems to set properly after he fell out of the tree. He imagines, at fifteen, that if his life had been different and he hadn’t made the mistake, he might have been a better person. He’s often flustered and embarrassed when girls ask him to open a bottle for them and he can’t, and gets his only B in Gym class, where he can’t swing a bat or a racket in the same way as the other boys. He’s naturally athletic and excels at track and swimming, but can’t help but feel the burn of his classmate’s eyes as they watch him try to hit a ball with the same conviction that he feels.

He doesn’t have many friends but he has a lot of admirers. Kevin only knows the difference later in life. His faith puts people at arm’s length and he finds it difficult to listen to what others have to say, not because he finds them boring but simply because he doesn’t care about what other people think. He wonders if anybody knows, and figures they probably don’t care either.  School is a distraction from God. It fills the days between Sundays. He learns all of the history and literature he needs at home or at temple anyway. There are so many Godless people in classes with him, and his father tells him that they are distractions sent by Heavenly Father and Kevin learned his lesson about that already so he stays far away from them, even if they’re talking loudly about Disney movies or sharing gossip about people he can’t stand. One time a lovely looking girl asked him to hang out with her and her friends at the mall after school. She had very blonde hair and very dark eyes and Kevin pretended he felt nothing when he saw the hurt look on her face when he said no.

Kevin isn’t really one for taking big leaps, or risks, or anything like that. He’s never been to a party or made new friends that his parents didn’t introduce him to and he’s never tried any new foods or visited a different country.

He worries that he’s boring but he sees the look in people’s eyes when he talks to them, like he hung the moon. One day he hurts his wrist playing baseball so badly that he ends up red-faced in the nurse’s office and he decides that he’s going to prove them right. His mission training starts in the summer and he’s going to be the best missionary ever, he knows it.

The girl with the very blonde hair and the very dark eyes notices the bandage on his arm and says, sympathetically, that she heard what happened and she hopes he feels better soon.

Kevin, in what will later stick out as one his worst moments, asks her, do you believe in God?

“No,” she says, looking less confused than she should, but it’s not like Kevin isn’t vocal about his Mormon upbringing.

“I feel sorry for you,” says Kevin coldly. “Because you won’t be going to Heaven. No matter how nice you are, Heavenly Father will still punish you.”

He pretends he can’t hear her watery voice call his name as he walks away from her. She never talks to him again. Kevin is glad.

He goes to the training centre in summer. He starts brushing his teeth three times a day and smiles at himself in the mirror until he’s perfected it. He is praised beyond belief. His mission is going to be incredible, he knows it the same way he knows that God is real. Kevin Price is going to change the world.

***

“Knock knock,” says Connor, and Kevin smiles at him from his bed.

“Hello, Elder McKinley,” he says.

“Hi!” says Arnold enthusiastically. He jumps up from his bed and knocks his knee into the bedpost. “Fuck,” he says, clutching it, and then looks at Connor, mortified. “I’m sorry, uh – fudge, I mean, I said fudge, right? Ha ha!”

Connor shrugs his shoulders. “Elder Price curses all the time. He’s a bad influence, I see.”

“Bullshit,” says Kevin, and he’s pleased when Connor laughs.

“Besides,” says Connor, “our Prophet sets the rules, right? I’m pretty certain you of all people don’t need to worry about breaking them.”

“I guess,” says Arnold, like this is a novel idea, as if he hadn’t been setting the rules for the past five months. “But I really should be setting a good example, right?”

“You do,” says Kevin, hotly, “you’re the best. You don’t need to change a thing.”

Arnold turns red and Connor looks away from a moment, before turns back to them both with a composed face. Kevin remembers a conversation – the three of you, you aren’t?

Whatever. It’s none of Connor’s business, anyway.

“What do you want?” says Kevin, and hates the way it comes out.

“I don’t want anything,” Connor says, the corners of his mouth turned down.

“Okay,” says Kevin, “then why are you here?”

Arnold kicks him.

“He gets grouchy,” he shrugs apologetically at Connor.

“I’m well aware.”

They all sit quietly and uncomfortably until Connor says, “well, have a nice day, Elders,” and leaves.

Kevin can feel Arnold’s eyes on him. He opens his mouth, but Kevin has already left the room.

“Connor,” he says, and catches his arm from behind. Kevin can see the sigh in his shoulders.

“Elder Price,” he says. “You are impossible.”

He turns round to look at Kevin, and Kevin wonders how he always ends up with his face inches away from Connor’s on a semi-regular basis.

“Yeah,” says Kevin.

“I’m not going to – I’m too tired to argue today.”

“Never stopped us before,” says Kevin, and he sees Connor’s mouth quirk out of the corner of his eye.

“True,” says Connor. “So what are we fighting about?”

“Me being a jerk?”

“Rings a bell,” Connor says.

“I don’t know – I don’t know why.”

“I know. I shouldn’t take it personally, right?”

Kevin, ever honest Kevin, says, like an idiot, “No, you should.”

Connor takes a step back. Kevin winces.

“Are you capable of spending one entire day without being horrible?”

“That’s not -” he reaches out to touch Connor, who recoils – “that’s not what I mean. That came out wrong.”

“You have a habit of that,” says Connor. “You always lie in a way that looks like you’re telling nothing but the truth.”

Kevin doesn’t know what to do with that.

“I meant,” Kevin takes a deep breath and doesn’t look Connor in the eye, “That it is personal. It’s only you. It’s only ever been you.”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“No,” says Kevin. “But it is the truth.”

The light in the hallway is dim and there are no windows so even when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, there’s the illusion of an evening. Kevin takes another step towards Connor.

“You’re an idiot,” says Connor.

“Yeah,” Kevin agrees. “And you’re – prickly.”

“Have you looked in a mirror recently?”

“No,” says Kevin, “I just assume I always look good.”

Connor laughs, really laughs, and Kevin smiles back.

Kevin, in one of the impulsive moves he makes sometimes and tries not to think about for too long after because it’s already happened and there’s nothing he can do about it now, steps forward and pulls Connor into a hug.

“What,” says Connor, stiffly, arms by his sides.

“Shut up,” says Kevin, and presses his nose into Connor’s shoulder.

They stand like that, for a while, and Connor never moves his arms but he does tilt his head, pressing his cheek into Kevin’s hairline.

“Thank you,” says Kevin, pulling away.

“No problem,” says Connor, looking at him curiously.

Kevin shrugs. He feels better. He liked the way it felt, to hold something warm and hold it fondly. Recently, he’s only wanted to break things.

“What did you come in our room for, anyway?”

“Oh!” Connor says, “Right. Well, Afiya and Kiho got engaged.”

“That’s awesome,” says Kevin. “We should keep working on building the church, speed it up, so they can get married in it.”

“That comes later,” Connor waves his hand. “Tonight we are having a party.”

“Really?”

“With alcohol,” and Connor hums in that amused way he does when he breaks rules.

“Oh,” says Kevin.

“I know,” Connor says. “It’s going to be so much fun.”

Connor leads him out of the hallway by his hand and details the plan, gleefully, even though he was mad at him five minutes ago. There isn’t much of one, other than who’s going to cook and who’s going to wrangle everyone into performing some music, if they can’t get Nabulungi’s second-hand radio to work. It feels good, though. To plan something fun, not church related, but Kevin is overwhelmingly nervous and he can’t put his finger on why. He feels like he’s going to prom or something, and is afraid he’s going to get drunk just by being near alcohol and his parents will find out and he’ll get punished.

So he says, to Arnold, later while everyone else is dancing and laughing and eating, “fuck it,” and takes a long, long drink from the bottle while Arnold cheers and yells “chug, chug chug!”

“I’ve always wanted to do that,” says Arnold, with that wistful, dreamy look of his.

“Me too,” says Kevin, and takes another swig.

Everyone is so happy that it’s bound to rub off on Kevin, too. He feels lighter and looser than he has in a while. Like he was suffering from a terrible backache that he didn’t realise he had until it was gone. Connor would call that ‘the stick up his ass’ and the thought of it makes Kevin laugh to himself.

There is a lot of shouting and it’s hard to hear anyone but he dances with Nabulungi until the music turns slower and it starts to feel a little bit weird for their bodies to be pressed so close together, so he takes her over to a hiccupping Arnold. When he looks up he expects to see Connor’s dark eyes watching him, the way they did yesterday, and probably the day before that, but he finds Connor not looking at him at all. He is talking to some of the villagers whose names Kevin doesn’t know, because they’re more their age, and Kevin only really knows the children and their parents here. It suddenly occurs to him that Connor has friends in Uganda. Whole parts of his life that Kevin has no idea about. He knows that everybody here has huge chunks of secrets from before, that maybe aren’t secrets but just things never shared, but everybody knows everything in Kitguli. He can’t stop staring at Connor’s mouth and how it looks, playing with a smile that Kevin has never seen before. It bothers him.

“You could just talk to him,” Elder Church appears next to him. Kevin jumps, belatedly. “You know, like a normal person.”

Kevin thinks he’s going to say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ but instead he says, “We do talk. All the time.”

Elder Church snorts.

“Yelling isn’t talking. Staring at each other while the other one isn’t looking is not talking.”

“It’s hard,” says Kevin, unable to stop himself. Elder Church doesn’t know all the dark and horrible things inside of him, that sticky blackness that everything gets caught in, and it’s nice to just have an open conversation with somebody who thinks he’s halfway normal. “For me. To make friends.”

“That’s what you think this is?” says Elder Church. “Making friends?”

“What else would it be?” says Kevin, confused. Elder Church pats him on the shoulder absent-mindedly.

“You’re already friends.”

“I don’t have any friends,” mourns Kevin. “Apart from Arnold, and Nabulungi, but they have each other. I don’t have anyone.”

“You’re – are you okay?”

“Not really,” says Kevin, and if Kevin never knew when to shut his mouth before he definitely didn’t know how hard being drunk would make it. “Sometimes I think I might be going insane and I have no one to talk to about it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Elder. You can talk to anyone you like about it. We are all your friends. Elder McKinley is already your friend. I’m your friend. Look, here we are, being friends, talking about it.”

“You’re – you consider me a friend?”

“Oh my gosh,” says Elder Church, and it always takes Kevin a moment too long to realise when somebody is getting frustrated at him. “You really are as big of an idiot as he says you are.”

“Oh,” says Kevin. “You know what, you’re right. I’m going to talk to him.”

“Maybe you should talk to him sober,” Eder Church says behind him. Kevin is already halfway towards Connor when he realises that Elder Church might have had the right idea. But then he doesn’t understand why Connor, being the metaphorical dead horse that he keeps beating into the ground, continues to get back up. And he trusts that Connor will get back up again, if Kevin screws up. He’s drunk. He’s drunk for the first time ever. As far as he’s concerned that’s a pretty good excuse for trying to talk about, well, feelings.

When his feet have taken him as far as he can go, and Connor looks at him, and the two boys who he’s been talking to look at him, Kevin opens his mouth like a goldfish and has absolutely nothing to say.

“Elder Price,” Connor smiles at him, after a moment. “This is Ouma and Taamiti. They’re helping me build the church.”

“Nice to meet you,” says Kevin. It takes a moment of awkward silence to realise, alarmingly, that they don’t actually know who he is. His reputation usually precedes him. “I’m Kevin. Kevin Price. Elder Price.”

“You have never had alcohol before, have you?” laughs the one who Kevin thinks is Taamiti. “Cute.”

Connor, alarmingly, grabs Kevin’s nose and wiggles it.

“He sure is,” says Connor.

“He has also never been drunk before,” they both laugh. Kevin hates feeling like he’s being laughed at. What he hates more, though, is feeling like Mormonism is being laughed at.

Connor must see the look on his face because he hits his arm and says, “Stop it, don’t worry. They’ve been baptised.”

Just because they’ve been baptised doesn’t mean they’re Mormons. Being a Mormon is sort of an all-or-nothing kind of deal. They don’t know. They don’t know anything.

“I want to talk to you,” says Kevin, eyeing the two boys carefully.

“Later,” says Connor, doing that waving him off with his hand thing that he does all the time. Kevin, feeling wound up again, huffs off and moves back towards the main camp.

“That went terribly,” sighs Elder Church and Kevin glares at him. He passes him the bottle. “Drink more. It helps.”

It does help. He forgets all the things he hates about himself (mostly), how awkward he feels around other people (kind of), and Connor (only not at all, actually). He dances. He dances badly, rotating kids taking turns to dance on his feet, dances with Arnold, who as always, makes Kevin feel like less of an idiot by being a bigger idiot. He congratulates Afiya and Kohi at least three times, forgetting that he’s already congratulated them, and they give him smiles that are just as warm as they were before.

He’s swaying slightly with Kamali on his shoulders, watching the fire crackle, and he knows that he’s too drunk to be handling small children but she’s got a pretty good grip on his hair and nobody else seems too worried about it.

“This is fun,” he says to no one at all. Kamali says, “Fun is fun,” and it makes Kevin laugh so hard she almost falls off his shoulders.

“Good girl,” he tells her.

His eyes drift over the scene in front of him, watching Elder Neeley and Elder Michaels try to remember old school dances, and spluttering when they kick up dust. He watches Mafala’s easy arm resting around Arnold’s shoulders while they whisper something together. He sees Nabulungi serving food and sneaking bites off of everyone’s plates. Elder Church and Elder Thomas are playing what looks like snap, but a very slow game of snap where sometimes they only remember to say wait, wait, snap, after they’ve already played two more cards. Afiya and Kohi are kissing in a way which Kevin would previously have stuck his nose up at as inappropriate, but today it just makes him feel warm and happy.

“Hello,” says Connor, when Kevin notices him walking towards him.

“Hello,” says Kevin. He jiggles Kamali. “Say hello, Kamali.”

“Hello,” she says, and she sounds suspicious.

“This is Elder McKinley, remember?”

Connor waves stiffly. Kevin always forgets how awkward he is around children.

“Kamali, would you mind if I borrowed Elder Price for a while?”

“Yes.”

Connor bites his lip. Kevin thinks it’s adorable. But Kevin thinks everybody is adorable. Probably because of the wine. Kamali is being extra adorable right now, because at some point she chose Kevin to be her favourite, and chose herself to be appointed as Kevin’s favourite, and Kevin is reluctant to let go of her.

It isn’t until Kevin remembers that he wanted to talk to Connor, and Connor says, “But I’d really like to dance with Elder Price. You’ve been dancing with Elder Price all night, it’s been making me quite jealous,” that Kevin wants to be alone with him.

“No,” says Kamali, gripping his hair tighter.

“Come on, Kamali, remember our lesson about sharing?”

She yawns. It is way past her bedtime, anyway. It’s way past their bedtime, back when they had a bedtime.

“I promise I’ll give him back,” says Connor, and Kevin takes her off his shoulders, and smiles when she falls asleep on his chest. Connor looks like he wants to say something, but doesn’t. 

Kevin pulls a face which he hopes is apologetic and goes to find her mom. She is also fairly drunk, and looks surprised that she has a daughter at all when he hands her over. She holds her like she’s the most precious thing she’s ever been given. Kevin feels proud, but he’s not sure of what.

He half expects Connor to have moved on by the time he gets back but he’s still glued to the spot, hands in his pockets, looking incredibly awkward.

“Wanna dance? I love this one.”

Connor narrows his eyes. “You have never heard this song before in your life.”

“You don’t know that.”

“It’s in Swahili.”

“I run in very multicultural circles,” says Kevin. Connor laughs, slightly hysterical, and grabs his hand.

The party is dwindling down, less people dancing and more people stretched out lazily on blankets or soft chairs, but it doesn’t occur to Kevin until about twenty minutes too late that people might be watching them.

They’re mostly tap dancing, Kevin tripping his own feet while Connor laughs at him, and then it gets messy and Kevin sops caring what his arms are doing because well, he’s having a good time. There are moments, when they are stood far too close – really, really close – and Kevin, and his big, drunken mouth, tell Connor his eyes look like fireflies.

“My eyes are blue,” says Connor, brushing off the moment like Kevin hadn’t just said the most monumentally weird thing he’s ever said in his life.

“I know,” says Kevin, and untangles himself from Connor’s grip. “I know lots of things about you,” and then his legs proceed to wobble and Connor catches him. He sighs.

“Come on,” he says, tucking himself under Kevin’s arm to prop him up. Connor is surprisingly strong – Kevin isn’t exactly small.

“You are surprisingly strong,” Kevin says.

“You’re drunk,” Connor laughs, leading him away. “And heavy.”

Kevin sings softly to himself, some hymn or other to pass the time and Connor’s hair tickles his cheek. Connor is leading him somewhere that Kevin doesn’t know where, and he thinks about how his parents would feel, watching their drunk son being taken somewhere dark and secluded in the forest by a strange man. He snorts.

“Here we are,” says Connor. Kevin blinks. It’s dark but they’re by the water and the moon is reflecting off it giving the illusion of light.

“Where are we?”

“This is my favourite spot,” smiles Connor, proudly. “I found it when I got lost.”

“It’s beautiful,” says Kevin, a little breathlessly, and then he’s hit by nausea again. “Satan has power over the water, you know. This is very rebellious of you,” and then he hiccups so violently he sees stars.

“Okay, okay, here you go,” says Connor, placing him a little ungracefully on the grass then plodding down next to him. “It’s cute, isn’t it?”

Kevin nods, then regrets it as he feels his brain knocking into his skull a moment later.

“Ow,” says Kevin, leaning on one elbow and clutching his head with other.

“Drama queen,” Connor says and scratches the back of Kevin’s head lightly, for a moment. “You’re a mess, did you know that?”

“So I’ve been reliably informed,” Kevin mumbles.

“If you’re going to throw up, go do it in the river.”

“Too far,” says Kevin, swatting at nothing. “Too far away.”

“How much did you drink?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me. How are you?”

Connor blinks. “I’m fine, Elder Price. Do you need some water?”

“No. No, I need you.”

Kevin hardly finds it in himself to feel embarrassed. He probably won’t remember this tomorrow, anyway.

“Kevin?”

“Hm? Oh, right. That was.”

“Kind of a creepy thing to say.”

“Yeah,” Kevin sighs. Connor’s eyes are wide and bright.

“You wanted to talk to me.”

“Did I?” says Kevin. Connor whacks him round the back of the head. “Jesus, okay. It was more of a – spur of the moment kind of thing.” 

“Right,” Connor says. He’s sat cross legged, head bent down to be more on level with Kevin’s. “Spur of the moment. That’s a big thing for you.”

“What does that mean?” Kevin asks, even though he knows exactly what that means. “I wanted to ask you to be my friend.”

“What?”

“Look,” says Kevin, not feeling anywhere close to sober enough to have this conversation. “I don’t – I don’t know what we, what this is.”

“Yeah, well. Me either.” Kevin shifts on the ground. It’s so quiet, none of the sounds of Kitguli follow the winds this way. “We’ve been through this, haven’t we? You’ll decide you hate me one day and tolerate me another, and sometimes, God forbid, you act like you actually enjoy my company.”

“That’s not very nice,” Kevin frowns. “That’s not very nice of me, is it?”

“No, it’s not,” Connor snorts. “Are you – are you pouting?”

“No,” Kevin says, and sucks his lower lip behind his top teeth.

“What is with you? You’re the most, how can you be so self-aware and just – be okay with it.”

“I have a hole inside me,” Kevin tells him, and puts Connor’s hand on his chest. Connor pulls it away.

“Kevin, why do you have to make everything weird?”

“I really like you,” Kevin says. “That’s what, that’s what I was going to tell you. Earlier.”

“I’m tired, Kevin. I’ll keep – I’ll keep doing, what we do. But you have to, um.”

“No,” says Kevin. “No, listen.” He closes his eyes. “I want, I want to be around you all the time, and I don’t. I can’t, I’ve never, before. It’s difficult.”

“Sure, everything is so hard for Kevin Price. Tell me more.”

“Don’t call me that,” Kevin snaps. “My name is just Kevin. I hate it when you call me that. You say – you say my name like it’s an insult.”

“Sorry,” says Connor. “Sorry, I won’t. Of course you’re Kevin, just Kevin. I never meant that, you know.”

“No, I get it. I’ve spent more time with Kevin Price, Mormon poster boy than anyone. People think I hung the moon,” he gestures to the sky. “Thought I hung the moon.”

“I wouldn’t be that surprised to find out that you did,” says Connor, and Kevin stares at him with his mouth open.

“That’s – that’s a really nice thing to say,” says Kevin. His elbows give way and then he’s flat on his back, wincing. Connor lays down next to him. “You get defensive very easily.”

“Maybe,” admits Connor. “Kind of have some – you know. Emotional baggage.”

Kevin laughs. “You have no idea.”

“So what – what did you mean? About – wanting to be around me all the time?”

“Um,” says Kevin, running a hand over his face. “The fighting, I mean. I’ve been thinking about it a lot tonight and, well, it’s just that you’re. You.”

“What are you talking about it?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin says, frustrated that his words are coming out back to front. “You’re addictive.”

Connor looks like he’s been slapped.

“Oh,” he says. He stares up at the sky and doesn’t say anything else.

“I think I’m probably pushing you away, on purpose.”

The back of Connor’s hand touches the back of Kevin’s. It jolts up his arm, all the way to his shoulder.

“So stop pushing,” says Connor, as if it’s as simple as that. Maybe it is. They lay side by side, for a while, unusually grateful for Uganda’s heat. “What are you so afraid of?” he asks after a while, but Kevin has already fallen asleep.

***

There’s a letter in his parent’s handwriting sitting on his pillow. Kevin is sat on Arnold’s bed with his hands linked together under his chin, determined to win the staring contest.

“I don’t care about you,” he tells the letter. The envelope ignores him. “I mean, what could you possibly say that I haven’t already heard?”

The envelope remains passive, unopened. Its blue ink commands Kevin’s attention, draws his eyes to the swirl of the K and P.

“I mean, what’s the occasion? It’s not Christmas or Easter or my birthday. So this isn’t some token card or something. So you can only have something important that my parents wanted to tell me. Which is probably exactly the opposite of what I want my parents to tell me. So why would I open you?”

He wishes the envelope would give him a sign: to read or not to read?

“You’re only going to tell me, you’re a disappointment Kevin, you’re worthless without your achievements, blah blah. Maybe I’ve been officially excommunicated. But wouldn’t that come from more official channels? Maybe they’re trying to give me a heads up, or something.”

Kevin’s curiosity is getting the better of him. He’s leaning further forward.

“Oh my gosh, what if somebody died?” He’s leant so far forward that he could hear the envelope if it whispered. It doesn’t.

“I hate you,” Kevin tells the letter, with feeling, before he reaches over to grab it.

At least on the phone, he only had to hear it once. Now he can read it over and over again and then again some more later and really commit the words to memory.

Arnold comes back from his shower with his stupid big goofy smile, when he sees Kevin sat on the bed clutching the letter. His face falls.

“Oh, buddy,” says Arnold, and sits down next to him.

“It’s fine,” says Kevin. “It’s nothing I didn’t already know.”

“Just rubbing salt into the wound, huh?” Arnold’s hand is moving in small circles on Kevin’s back.

“You could say that. I think they were just, I don’t know, getting some stuff off their chest.”

“Maybe you should do that, too. Write back to them. Tell them to get lost.”

“Might as well,” Kevin sighs. “They’ve all but told me I’m on my own. I think the longer I stay here, the closer I get to losing them forever.”

“So you have to make a choice,” says Arnold. Kevin can’t even find it in his heart to be mad at him. He’s a soothing person to be around. He is the calm in the middle of the storm, albeit a very loud and reckless one. He would pick Arnold over anything, but he’s not sure if he’d pick him over being alone and poor and homeless.

“I know that,” says Kevin.

“So. What are you going to choose?”

“It’s not that simple. I have to think about it.”

“I respect that, pal,” Arnold shrugs. “But isn’t that all you’ve been thinking about?”

Kevin rests his cheek on the top of Arnold’s head.

“Maybe. Kind of. Sometimes I think – the only reason why I’m still here is because I have nowhere else to go.”

“I’m not asking you to leave the Church,” Arnold says. “I’m asking you to leave your parents.”

“It’s the same thing,” says Kevin. “I can’t have one or the other.”

“I think that you should. Leave them. I mean it’s your choice, but.”

“But what will I do when I leave?”

Kevin doesn’t know where he will go. He’s been trying not to think about it, but they’re only going to be here for another year and a half, which isn’t that long when you think about all of the years that are going to follow. He doesn’t have a job lined up. He has no money. He has no place to go. He doesn’t have any family who will help him or friends who will put him up if he leaves the Church and help him get back on his feet.

But on the other hand, he’s had a taste of freedom and he doesn’t think he’ll be able to give it up. To stuff all that has become of Kevin Price back into a clean pressed shirt and a tie and glue him to a pew. He is coffee and sunshine and late-night talks and long mornings and loving to all things, of all shapes and sizes, to all faiths and beginnings and endings. A lot of him is Uganda, and a lot of him is Arnold, and the rest of him is everything he’s worked so hard to change about himself. Even if he did go home, now, his family wouldn’t recognise him. He’s tanned and has flecks of blonde in his hair and he fills up less space in the room than he used to.

But he’s also got that hole, dark and sticky, inside his chest that can’t be filled no matter how much he absorbs. And that only started opening up after the Arnold Incident and losing his faith. Didn’t it?

“Well, we’ll be together, won’t we?” says Arnold, matter-of-factly. “I’d do anything for you. You’re my best friend.”

Kevin thinks about this for a while. Arnold lets him be quiet, which is a rarity, and it makes the moment feel heavy and somewhat monumental.

“We’ll – we’ll move in together? Like, no parents?”

“Sure we will,” says Arnold. “We can live somewhere dirt cheap, you know, anything will feel like a blessing after living in a hut. We won’t even need air conditioning.”

“And we’ll get jobs?”

“Of course, buddy. I’ll be a struggling children’s author and you’ll be – what will you be?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it before. I was just always going to be, you know. Super Mormon. I’ve never really excelled at anything else.”

“That’s not true,” says Arnold, sitting up and swivelling to look at him properly. He takes Kevin’s letter out of his hands and places it on the bedside table. “You could be, I don’t know, a social worker. Helping people. You’re good at that. Or – or a motivational speaker!”

Kevin sits up straight and looks Arnold in the eye.

“I could be a teacher,” says Kevin. “You’ll be a struggling children’s author and I’ll be a teacher.”

“You could read my stories to the class!”

“That’s what we do now,” says Kevin, slowly, thinking. “And we’re pretty good at it.”

“We’re an awesome team.”

Arnold is smiling at him, always smiling, and Kevin smiles back.

“You’re the best best friend I could have asked for.”

Arnold shrugs, like Kevin’s words mean nothing, but Kevin knows they mean everything to him.

“Took you long enough to figure it out.”

“It did,” says Kevin, and he pushes Arnold’s shoulder.

“So?”

“So what?”

“Sooooo, what are you going to do?”

Kevin thinks. “Nothing,” he says. “I like – your way sounds much better than the other way.”

“That is how I became a prophet,” says Arnold like it’s the most serious thing in the world. Kevin laughs. “Stop laughing, it’s true.”

“I know,” says Kevin. “I’m not going to write them back. They don’t deserve my time.”

“Good,” says Arnold. “Wanna burn the letter?”

“You know, I really do.”

They throw it into the campfire later that night and watch as the paper quickly disappears. Some of the other Elders have joined them, not knowing what they were doing or why they were doing it but it felt important. Connor turns up a little while later and sits down in between Elder Davis and Kevin.

“What’s the occasion?” he asks.

“Oh, nothing special,” says Kevin, and bumps his shoulder.