Bobby's figured out some things since John's been gone.
The first thing is that no one's going to make him clean up John's side of the room. That's good, because he doesn't want to. He's left the bed unmade, the dirty socks scattered on the floor and the half-assed attempts at homework on the desk. When Scott comes in to inspect the rooms he just looks at John's stuff and doesn't say anything.
The second thing is that he's going to have to clean it up, eventually, because this is probably going to be his room for a long time. When he graduates he'll get a bigger bed and the room to himself when he's home from college. He'll have to get rid of John's stuff then. He thinks it can be a graduation thing, like the way girls pack up their stuffed animals and put them away.
He keeps half expecting to come back to the room and find everything gone. There's a window, and all the kids know ways around the alarms, or at least they used to. One night he couldn't sleep until he got up and found the spare cigarette lighter in the pocket of John's jacket hanging in the closet and put it under his pillow.
There are thumbtacks around the ceiling where he hung up Christmas tree lights last year. John wouldn't help, but he seemed to like them once they were up, lying on his bed in the darkness looking at the glow of the lights and playing with his cigarette lighter. Bobby hasn't put them up this year, even though for the first time he's actually staying for Christmas.
Last year he really wanted to. A lot of the kids stayed and he thought it would be fun to hang around with John and play in the snow and not have to deal with family. But then his parents came up with this big skiing vacation thing, and they'd already bought tickets, and it wasn't like he could either not go or bring John with him.
Because that would have seemed like John was his boyfriend or something, and no. He's heard some of that for spending so much time with John. Everybody's careful what they say in class when the teachers are listening, but he's heard it. It doesn't matter, any more than it matters when people make nasty jokes about what he can do with Marie, because it's not true.
At least, it's not true about Bobby. He doesn't know about John. He doesn't really want to think about it.
Now he's staying, and there's no John and no Christmas lights, although there is Marie. He's bought her a Christmas present. He went out shopping with the other kids at the mall, and bought stuff for his parents and his brother to mail home, and then started looking for something for Marie.
Jubilee nudged him with her elbow and pointed to a display case of cigarette lighters, and he does know why; Marie's always trying to light her cigarettes with matches while she's wearing gloves and he thinks one of these days she's going to catch them on fire. He gets it, so he's not sure why he put his hands on the glass of the display case and wanted to smash it or hit somebody or break something people could see.
He smiled and said he doesn't want Marie to think he likes her smoking. Jubilee shrugged and believed him. Sometimes he wonders if people hear him at all. He doesn't feel quite real. Marie smiles at him when she sees him and brushes his hands, feather-light, but what does that prove?
Bobby hasn't told people why he's staying over Christmas. He thinks they figure it's because his parents won't have him home. He knows that earns him some sympathy, and knows it's misplaced, and he still can't tell people the truth.
He talked to his mom on the phone, and she asked him to come home, and said it was okay. She said they wouldn't even have to talk about it. It could just be a regular Christmas, sitting around the tree with cocoa and presents.
But it's not okay. It isn't okay that Ronnie called the police. It isn't okay that his mom looked at him when he froze her tea solid like what he could do wasn't cool or special but a symptom of some kind of dread disease. It isn't okay that she says they love him anyway, like they would if he were handicapped or doing drugs.
"Bobby goes to a special school," he can hear his mother saying, just that little flutter in her voice telling her neighbors it's not really a school for the gifted, "and we're just so proud of how well he's doing. He's going to college next year, you know."
They never used to have any doubts.
So it's not okay, but he can't say that to Marie, when she's never going to see her parents again and his come to visit and send him cookies in the mail. He lets her think they've thrown him out, and feels guilty when she's nice about it, and also a little happy, which he thinks is awful. He knows his problems aren't anything like hers.
Sometimes when he can't sleep he gets out of his bed without turning the light on and crawls into John's. He can lie there and pretend that John's just in the bathroom and any minute he's going to come back and climb into bed, push Bobby over to make room, and fall asleep hanging onto Bobby like a little kid.
The bed still smells like him enough to pretend, but it won't, eventually. Bobby thinks that'll make it easier to strip the sheets off the bed and put John's clothes in a box and put them up in the attic where Scott's putting Jean's. He knows that's still pretending, as if John's ever coming back for his shoes, but he can't throw them away. Scott won't make him, and no one else cares.
Sometimes when he can't sleep he goes and stands outside Marie's room and wakes her up by sending a streak of frost creeping across the floor and up the frame of her bed. She pushes the door open ever so quietly with bare feet and frost in her hair. They go and sit on the stairs where it's dark, and he kisses the palms of her hands through her gloves.
He's thought about taking her back to his room. She'd kiss him through his clothes and rub up against him, and he could kiss everything he wants to except the curve of her neck and her lips that are pale without lipstick. But it's weird having her in his room now, even in the daytime. She looks at the other side of the room and he doesn't know what she's trying not to say.
They don't talk about what happened when the school was raided. She's all into their self-defense classes now, like hitting someone hard enough would have changed what happened. He's learning to drive, and that's normal enough; maybe he'll never have to run away in the middle of the night again.
He hopes Marie goes to the same school as him. She'll be a year behind, and a year is a long time, but Bobby wants to think they've got something they can hold onto. Sometimes she sits in his lap and he presses his face against her shirt to feel her breathing and thinks he could kiss her faster than she could pull away.
He wouldn't do that. John would do that. John would end up down in the infirmary gray and twitching like Logan did that night. Marie would yell and throw things at John when he got better, but she'd probably forgive him, because people forgive John for things. He can always get away with anything.
Bobby can't, because everyone trusts him to be responsible. He's the one who puts out the fires. There are still scorch marks on the dresser and in the shower stall and on the windowsill. But Marie's always just careful enough with matches. Sometimes he watches her fumble with a matchbook, her fingers in cotton gloves almost brushing the flame, and he wants the fabric to catch. He wouldn't let her get hurt. He just misses freezing fire.
The third thing Bobby's figured out is that he may be kind of fucked up, but he thinks he'd have to be a lot more fucked up for anyone to notice, so that's okay. Sometimes when he can't sleep he reminds himself that if he doesn't get a grip, he'll have to have a long conversation with Professor Xavier about his feelings, and he makes himself lie there with his eyes closed until suddenly it's morning and everything looks brighter.
He's got his college applications mailed, and he's bought his Christmas presents, and he's doing okay in school, and he's going to take Marie to the mall on Friday and hang out in the food court and look at the big Christmas tree surrounded by fake snow. He knows the snow isn't real, but there are carols playing and Marie's gloved hand in his, and she seems fine with puffy warm snow.
It's like when he was ten and pretended to believe in Santa Claus, because it made his parents happy. He holds on to Marie's hand tight and pretends just as hard as he can.