Free Don't Worry About the Kids by Jay Neugeboren

was a large prehistoric bird—more deadly and beautiful than an eagle, his bones held together be gleaming black railroad spikes. Julio was flying home, his wings spread to the width of the highway, his eyes bright as emeralds.
    Tony went over his lines, so that, afterward, when he brought Lynne home to Brookline from the dress rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet , he would be ready. O, Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied? he would ask. He saw Lynne lean against her door, smile, take her cue. What satisfaction canst thou have tonight? she would reply.
    He wondered: if he were to tell her he had spent the afternoon visiting his brother Julio in a mental hospital, would that make her like him more? He did not want to be liked because he had a brother who was mentally ill. Still, it pleased him to imagine Lynne asking questions, gazing at him with admiration while he talked about how close he and Julio were.
    You really love him, don’t you? she would say, and he would shrug, modestly. Sure—Romeo and Julio, that’s us , he would reply. Then he would apologize quickly for the bad joke, so that, sensing his embarrassment, she might like him even more.
    He had met Lynne at the Cambridge Public Theatre, where, three months before, they were chosen, along with ten other high school seniors, to serve as apprentices. After rehearsals they would go with the other apprentices to a nearby luncheonette, and often they would stay and talk long after the others had gone. He loved being with her—loved her directness, her sometimes strange sense of humor. She seemed always to say just what she was thinking, without worrying about how it would play to others. And he loved, too, the way her hazel eyes flickered, as if filled with fine gold shavings.
    Tony dressed, looked past the closet mirror, to the window. Below, in the courtyard of their apartment building, Julio had become a small mud-colored lizard. Julio scurried under hedges, leapt to the wall, began climbing. Julio appeared at the window, crawled onto the sill, dropped to the floor, skittered behind the bed.
    After the rehearsal, they rode the train back to Lynne’s home. The train rose from a tunnel into the night-lights of the city, then crossed over Longfellow Bridge. Tony saw Julio slipping down from one of the bridge’s old stone towers, riding the roof of the train like a cowboy, hanging by his ankles, peering upside down into the subway car, grinning brightly.
    The instant they were inside Lynne’s apartment building, Tony’s chest constricted, as if, he felt, the muscles around his heart were drying out, so that the blood had to force its way through. When, on the second floor landing, Lynne turned away to put her key in the lock, Tony touched her arm. She faced him at once, smiling so warmly that he sensed she did want him to kiss her, and yet, his heart pounding, he told himself to wait, to follow through with his original plan.
    â€œO, Wilt thou leave me so unsatisfied?” he asked.
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œWhy not?”
    She laughed and he found himself too surprised to know what to do next.
    â€œThe question’s from the play,” he said. “I was saving it. I was hoping you’d remember—that maybe you would recite Juliet’s reply back to me…” He felt dizzy. “I’m sorry,” he added.
    â€œOh Tony—don’t be sorry—”
    Her eyes seemed nearly transparent, as if made of the thinnest gold leaf. He shrugged. “I just…”
    â€œYou just what?”
    I was just thinking about my brother, he wanted to say. I just love looking at you. I just can’t believe a girl as pretty as you would like me as much as I like you. I just don’t know what I’m doing and I don’t want to put on an act and make a stupid joke from my brother’s name and yet…
    â€œNothing,” he said.
    She smiled and brushed her hair back. He wished he were her hand. He wished