Alex met Eric on their first day of kindergarten. Coincidence and Mrs. Haines put them together. She chose this year to experiment with an alphabetical seating arrangement which made Alex and Eric—Ford and Forrest respectively—desk neighbors.

Their friendship was similarly coincidental. During recess, Eric leaned over to Alex and whispered, "If you give me one of your Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, I’ll be your best friend."

Immediately recognizing the value of such an offer, Alex gave Eric the peanut butter cup. And so they became friends...and stayed friends through Mrs. Haines, Mrs. Williams, Mr. Oakley, and Mr. Bernsell. Their parents even became friends, if only for the few minutes it took to pick up or drop off their kids.

In the middle of third grade, when he felt he was old enough, Eric asked Alex to Spend the Night at his house. Alex, pleasantly surprised, quickly accepted, after it had been cleared through the proper parental channels.

The evening passed by quickly but uneventfully. Alex and Eric played video games, ate cheap double-handled popsicles, chased frogs, and burned Jiffy Pop. Eric’s mother, a chronically polite woman, coordinated sleeping quarters: Eric would sleep on the floor and Alex could sleep in Eric’s usual bed. At first reluctant and confused, Eric agreed and Mrs. Forrest left the two to sleep.

As soon as Mrs. Forrest had left the room, Alex volunteered to switch with Eric. Eric insisted that his guest should have his bed. Alex was silent, searching for a solution.

"Why don’t you sleep up here with me?," he finally asked. "The bed is big enough for both of us."

"Okay," replied Eric.

Eric crawled up into the bed, laying down on top of the covers.

"No, silly!," Alex protested. "You hafta sleep here under the covers with me. I wont bite you."

"Okay," Eric again replied. Somewhere in the back of his mind he pictured his mother convulsing at the thought.

Eric fumbled his way under the covers. Both he and Alex were dressed only in their too-short pajama bottoms because of the unseasonably warm March night. As Eric got under the covers, Alex was waiting with open arms.

"This is how my mom sleeps with my dad," he explained. Eric lay with Alex’s arms around him. They lay face-to-face with their foreheads touching.

"Kiss me," Eric asked.

"What?," Alex asked, not believing he had heard correctly.

"Kiss me."

"Boys don’t kiss other boys. Boys kiss girls."

"Who says?"

"I don’t know. But I heard boys don’t kiss boys."

"We’re friends, right? So kiss me. My mom kisses my dad. Their friends."

Alex blinked twice, trying to understand this strange information. Seeing nothing wrong with it, he closed his eyes and stuck his lips out in a puckering charicature of a kiss.

Eric giggled. "No, dummy! I’ve seen my sister do it. You gotta open your mouth when you kiss. It’s called smooching. Keep your eyes closed. Here..."

Eric eased forward and kissed Alex on the lips, gently at first. After a moment of awkwardness, he opened his eyes and pulled away.

"How’d it feel?," Eric asked.

"I don’t know. Kinda weird. Not bad."

"Here. This feels really good." Eric reached across the bed and started making Alex feel...really good. His face scrunched up.

"Do you want me to stop?," Eric asked, his hand suddenly stopping.

"No...yes...I don’t know...," Alex stuttered.

"I’ll just keep doing it until you tell me to stop. Okay?" Alex nodded his agreement.

And so the night passed by. Alex and Eric explored their bodies a little bit more, then fell asleep, arm in arm. It had been a good night and they slept soundly.

The morning came with a rude wake-up call from the usually polite Mrs. Forrest.

"Wake up. Both of you. Alex, you have to go. Right now. I’ve already called your parents."

Confused from his recent slumber and the harsh words she was saying, Alex was unsure about anything except that familiar feeling that he was in trouble. Bad trouble. He pulled his pins-and-needles arm out from where it had been wedged by Eric’s body. Both of them were very much awake now.

"Okay, Mrs. Forrest," Alex whispered. "Is everything okay?"

"No, everything is not okay," she hissed. "Eric and I need to talk about something important. Please just change out of those pajamas and wait in the living room for your parents."

An acidic, rust-flavored dread filled his stomach. Alex exchanged a weary look with Eric, whose eyes were so wide he looked like Wile E. Coyote just before the anvil hit. He left the room.

From the living room, Alex could hear few words, but flinched as each one hit his ears. He somehow felt Eric was taking the blame for something he had done. In his limited life, one of the worst things he had yet experienced was being yelled at by one of his friend’s parents. But now he understood that having his friend punished for something he had partially done was even worse.

Ugly phrases floated out of the room, phrases like, "so embarrassed," "how could you?," and the worst, "never again!" Briefly, Alex heard Eric’s plea, "…but why—" which was quickly cut off by his mom. All this time, Alex tried to imagine what it was that they had done that was so wrong. The only thing that he could think of was that the fussy Mrs. Forrest was probably angry because her son had not slept on the floor like she asked him to.

The verbal assault ended with a door slam and high heeled footsteps receding down the hallway. Alex had expected a verbal lashing himself, but when his mom came several minutes later, Alex left alone, locking the door behind him.

Safely in the car, Mrs. Ford turned to her son and put a hand maternally upon his head. "So what was that all about?," she asked, burning to know the answer. She had received a disturbing phone call from Mrs. Forrest ten minutes earlier saying only that "something had happened," and that she "had to pick Alexander up right away." After she had confirmed that everyone was physically okay, she got off the phone and jumped into her car, her mind racing with concern.

"I don’t know, Mom. Mrs. Forrest totally flipped out this morning when she woke me and Eric up. She yelled at Eric for, like, five minutes. I think she was angry ‘cause he didn’t sleep on the floor like he was supposed to."

"Where did he sleep?"

"In his bed with me."

She quickly pieced together what had happened. Her face grimaced as it always did when she had to explain something very confusingly adult to her children.

"I think I understand why she was mad, sweety," she started. "Do you see at all why she would be mad if you and Eric slept in the same bed?"

"No, Mom. Why?"

She hesitated, searching like a diplomat for the right words.

"Tell me!," Alex insisted.

"Well, do you remember what I told you about your Uncle Cliff? And his roommate Jim?"

"You mean that they’re gay? Yeah, I remember."

"Well, Alex, some people think that kids shouldn’t even know what gay people are or what gay people do. I think Mrs. Forrest is one of those people. She thinks that you sleeping with Eric might give him...I don’t know...ideas about being gay." She was flushed now. Talks like this always made her uncomfortable.

"But don’t Cliff and Jim have sex? Isn’t that what makes them gay?" Mrs. Ford sometimes hated having a kid that could be so smart; it complicated her world. "I mean," Alex continued, "me and Eric didn’t have sex..."

"It’s Eric and I, honey, and I know you didn’t have sex. Mrs. Forrest probably just jumped to conclusions."

"I don’t like her, Mom."

"I’ll call her when we get home to find out what happened." She paused. "Alex, just so you know, I’m not mad at you at all, okay? I don’t think you did anything wrong. You’re just kids. And it’s okay if you want to sleep in the same bed as your friends."

They drove home, talking about everything else. The topic of Elvira the new puppy in the Ford household was a popular one.

When they arrived home, Mrs. Ford made the awkward but necessary call to Mrs. Forrest. She did it when she knew Alex was in the back yard playing with the new pup.

The call went worse than she had hoped. After she hung up, she went outside to meet Alex.

"Can I talk to you for a minute, honey?," she asked.

"Sure, Mom. What’s up?"

She sighed before proceeding. "I called Mrs. Forrest just now. She was pretty upset."

"About the sleeping thing?"

"Yeah. About that. I have some bad news, too. She doesn’t want you and Eric to see each other for a while."

"Whadda you mean? I can’t go over to his house?"

"No, honey, not for a little while at least. For just a little while, she just wants you and Eric to see each other at school. Then when she’s ready, it might be okay for you guys to see each other after school and on the weekends."

"But, Mom! That’s so unfair..."

"I know, Alex, but it was the best I could do. She’s a very strange woman. Her views are very different from mine."

After a few more fruitless protests, Alex walked trudged to his room. Almost every day after school meant the beginning of his play time with Eric. This new banishment would be torture. Alex though of his friend across town and knew it could only be worse for him.

Monday slugged around. On his return to school, Alex saw Eric on the playground and ran across the field to greet him.

"Hey, Eric!," Alex shouted.

Eric, shoulders slumped and head down, looked up briefly with a look of dread. He saw his friend and immediately looked to the ground. Alex recognized the flash of guilt in his friend’s eyes. He ran up next to Eric.

"Hi, Alex," Eric droned. "Sorry about the other night." He would not meet his friend’s eyes.

"No problem. My mom told me why your mom flipped out so bad. Seemed pretty stupid to me."

"Yeah, I guess so. My mom can be kinda weird. She says you can’t come over any more."

"My mom told me. But we can still play at school, right?"

"Sure, if you wanna."

"Of course, dummy. Wanna race?" They both took off running.