Chapter Text
Gary sat in the swimming pool in his back garden. Which was nothing fancy. It was the single same inflatable kiddie pool they'd had for ages, and the thing stood barely two feet high. Still, it was the thought which counted. That and the fact there even was the opportunity for him to sit there, eyes closed, basking in the sun.
Life was good. Life was easy.
School was out and he had finally made it to the summertime.
Which meant no more responsibilities for the next few weeks. No homework, no tests, no having to sit in a chair hopelessly failing to pay attention all day when there were so many distractions, impressions, thoughts popping up in his head all the time. No more struggling to stay focused in the here and now. No more making the teacher mad at him whenever they’d ask him a question and he, inevitably, would not know whatever subject in their text book they’d arrived at.
None of that mattered now. It was in the past. By some miracle he had survived all of primary school. He’d never have to answer to those teachers again.
An entire summer of freedom was ahead, with no set expectations he would fail to meet.
Which was both a relief and an annoyance. Not seeing the teachers was great. Having an endless sea of time and not enough action to keep him occupied, not so great.
At least there was one friend he could always rely on.
“Here,” Andy announced himself. Not looking, Gary reached out a hand, and he received an um bongo in return. He patiently waited for more boons, but nothing came. He did glance aside then.
“What, no snacks?”
Andy took his place beside him, lowering himself into the shallow pool of water while opening his own drink. He shook his head before trying a sip. “She’s cutting up more fruit.”
Gary groaned. Maybe life wasn’t that great, after all.
All the other kids in their class were making good use of their summer. Katie said she was going to Blackpool. Shane and his brothers would visit Alton Towers, Camelot and Thorpe Park in July alone. Karen would spend over an entire month somewhere in Europe - France or Italy or something, he forgot.
Meanwhile Gary would be stuck here all summer, since his mum still had to work. It was so unfair.
Andy looked back to the house, then leaned in conspiratorially. Gary mirrored him without even consciously thinking about it.
“I brought biscuits from home,” his friend confided. “As well as some tapes from my cousin’s horror collection. Like The Evil Dead. Alien. Some weird looking werewolf movie.”
He perked up at this. Finally, some excitement. Something to boast about approximately a million years from now, when school would start again and everyone would be comparing notes on who had just spent the best time off. At least he and Andy would have a thing or two to talk about - something worthwhile.
“You’re the best.”
Andy nodded, looking pleased with himself.
“I even thought to switch the covers. We can pretend we plan on watching E.T. or Grease in case your mum wants to know.”
Gary nodded. So that was their afternoon, all settled. He took a sip from his own juice. Leaned back, happy to be outside and feel the sun on his skin for a bit.
It itched a little, the way his mum said meant it was time to reapply sun lotion. He didn’t feel like moving, though. He felt good right where he was. With the sun beating down on him, a friend by his side, music drifting into the back garden from the kitchen window, where someone was cutting up fruit for them to eat. Maybe he would like some, after all. Maybe with a scoop of ice cream and chocolate sauce on top.
Experiencing some weirdly detached sense of self, though not in a bad way, Gary suddenly sort of reevaluated where he was and realised how perfectly happy he felt. Right here. In this spot. With the prospect that soon his mum would come out and then need to leave, and eventually he and Andy would go back inside and watch those movies, stay up later than they’d be allowed to since there’d be no adults around to stop them or school to wake up early for, and it was the summertime, and they were free.
He intended for himself, made the secret pledge to best enjoy these moments to the fullest, before summer would come to an end.
After which life would return to normal. And the both of them would be heading back to school. Whichever way that would turn out.
Andy let out a happy sigh. He seemed more than happy to leave things as they were for now and sit in quiet enjoyment, side by side in the small kiddie pool in the back garden. But now Gary’s thoughts had started churning and gnawing at him, which of course meant he had to speak his mind about the entire matter.
“Hey, so. What do you reckon things will be like?”
Andy slightly turned his head towards him. “Huh?”
“Y’know, with school. The big secondary.”
“Oh,” the other said, sounding casually surprised and as though he hadn’t granted that quickly nearing future a single moment of thought until the question had been posed. “I dunno. Much of the same, I guess.”
Gary frowned. It was hardly the answer he had hoped for.
“Don’t you think it’ll be, I don’t know, different?”
Andy drank the final bit of his juice pack, taking his time to try and extract even the last gratifying drop before continuing that conversation between them both.
“Different how?”
“I dunno... Just, different.”
“From what?”
“I don’t know,” Gary said, getting at least somewhat worked up with the other’s confusion, when he had hoped for nothing but immediate understanding and agreement. “Different from what we’ve known so far in school.”
“Well, pretty much the entire class is making the move with us. Or do you mean, ‘cause we’ll be learning new stuff?”
“Obviously we’ll be learning new stuff, Andy. I meant more like, just by being in secondary school now. In high school. Like real teenagers. Don’t you think that’ll mean something?”
“I guess…” the other pondered, and they returned to silence for a bit.
Gary splashed some water on his face to cool down. Well, now he started feeling stupid. Maybe he shouldn’t have brought it up. Or at least worded it differently, so that his thoughts could have made more sense when spoken out loud, and maybe then Andy would’ve understood him straight away. But that never really worked out for him. Trying to say stuff, really say it as he intended, often got complicated, especially the more he thought about it and the more he really wanted to make himself clear. That never seemed to work out. So mostly he found just doing things as they came and seemed right to him to be the more straightforward path to follow. Even if that kind of acting before really thinking method often got him in trouble. This stilted kind of miscommunication was hardly any better. Made him feel like some kind of idiot, like-
“Gary, what do you think we’ll be when we grow up?”
The sudden question startled him right back into the here and now. Some direct input to keep him occupied with a new response to give.
It was an improvement from the previous subject, while still in the vicinity of whatever it was Gary was trying to put into words. He himself still couldn't put a finger on what it exactly was and why it mattered so much to him. But it was a lead for him to follow. And maybe get closer to whatever it was he needed to get to the bottom of.
“I don’t know,” he leaned into the hypothetical. “But I want it to be something important, and to make loads of cash. So I can get us a bigger swimming pool. And a trampoline. And maybe a car.”
Andy laughed, and Gary started feeling better already. Previous worries were already starting to fade into the background, soon to be forgotten about entirely.
“This pool isn’t too bad,” the other reasoned, and nudged Gary’s leg with his own. It wasn't a vast distance to cross for two not-quite-kids-anymore in a still-kid-sized tub. It had served them well throughout the years but yeah, they were definitely starting to outgrow it. Once they both hit puberty, there would be no longer be the space for a second person without getting uncomfortably close to one another.
Andy didn’t retract his leg from where it touched Gary’s. It was nice.
“I think I’d want to become some type of athlete. Like a boxer. Or a rugby player. Or one of those wrestlers you see on tv.”
And just like that, they were back on the same wave length. Those options seemed exactly right for Andy. Gary could picture him as any one of those, easily. A complimentary role for himself somewhere in that future came to mind much easier, once he had this initial idea to further build upon.
“Well, then maybe I could be your manager. I could choose what teams or opponents you’d best compete with, and help you sell merch and stuff.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Then we could go all across the world like that. Once we’re adults and can do whatever we want. You and me. And it’d be like one big party, which would never have to end.”
Andy smiled a big, toothy grin at the thought. “That sounds nice.”
“It would be.”
It really would. It'd be like one long, endless summer, with no one to tell them what to do or how to live their life. Gary found himself looking forward to it already. What had he been worried about, again? The details were already getting fuzzy, and he felt more than happy to let them go. What would be the point in worrying anyway when it was a beautiful day, and he had Andy by his side, and he was starting to understand that maybe life could forever be like this.
“But first we get through secondary.”
Oh, right. That had been it. The unpredictability of those years still to come. But even that would be fine. Gary knew whatever good or bad thing would cross their paths, they would get to face it together. And surely the older he became, the better his life would get. The previous chapter had been closed and sealed off. Secondary would be a huge new step, the last one before becoming an adult and getting full independence. He quietly wished these next few years would be the best of his life.