Free Night Kites by M. E. Kerr

think you know what AIDS is?”
    I’d heard dozens of jokes about AIDS. (What do the letters GAY stand for? “Got AIDS yet?”… Did you hear about the new disease gay musicians are coming down with? BAND-AIDS … What do you call a faggot in a wheelchair? ROLLAIDS.) I remembered they’d touched on AIDS briefly in health class. Mostly gay men got it. Some drug addicts got it, too.
    “How could Pete get that ?” I said. I remembered something about people getting it from blood transfusions. I remembered Pete always gave blood during the Red Cross drives. But how could you get it giving blood?
    Dad was taking a gulp of his scotch, putting the glass down, crossing and uncrossing his legs.
    “Erick,” Dad said, “we have to think about Pete now.”
    “That’s who I am thinking about!”
    Dad put his hand up to hush me.
    “We just have to think about Pete. We’re not going to judge him. We’re going to support him.”
    “Okay,” I said impatiently. “Okay.” But I’d caught the word “judge.”
    So I sat there, waiting for Dad to continue.
    “Apparently,” Dad began, “your mother is the only one in the family who really knows Pete well.”

Chapter Nine
    “I GUESS I REALLY screwed up your weekend,” Pete said as he let me in the door the next morning.
    “It was headed in that direction anyway,” I said.
    At noon I was meeting Jack, Dill, and Nicki at the Central Park Zoo. Then we were going to walk up Fifth Avenue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Dill’d heard there was a pool with fountains in there, where we could all have lunch…. I hadn’t even met Nicki’s eyes that morning.
    I’d said only that Pete had picked up the virus he’d had in France last summer, that I was going to take him a Sunday Times and stay with him for a while.
    “You want some coffee, don’t you?” Pete said. He walked into the kitchen to pour us some. “How was the Springsteen concert?”
    I left the Times on the hall table. I described the mob scene at Madison Square Garden, Springsteen’s raps between numbers, and how he’d finally wound up doing John Fogerty’s “Rockin’ All Over the World” as his last encore…. I told Pete to thank whoever it was in his Great Writers’ Discussion Group for getting us the tickets.
    Pete had his back to me. He was getting cream from the refrigerator and sugar from the cupboard. “It’s the Gay Writers’ Discussion Group,” Pete said. “Last night Dad said what do you discuss? I said we discuss gay books. Dad said is a gay book a book that sleeps with other books of the same sex?”
    Pete laughed, so I did, too.
    He looked even thinner than when I’d last seen him. He had on rust-colored corduroys, a white shirt, old Nikes, no socks.
    “Dad can’t stand the word ‘gay,’” Pete said. “When he hears it, his face squishes up like a bird dropped something white out of itself down on Dad.”
    We were both smiling while we carried the mugs of coffee into the living room and sat down. Pete had The Phil Woods Quartet on. He loved jazz, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan. Anything I knew about jazz I’d learned from Pete.
    He crossed his legs and looked over at me with a shake of his head, said, “Well, Ricky, this is sort of a variation on that joke about the gay guy trying to convince his mother he’s really a drug addict. You’ve probably heard it.”
    “Or one like it,” I said. The jokes I’d heard were never about “gay guys.” They were always about “fags,” “fruits,” worse.
    “How’s Dad taking this?” Pete asked me. “I couldn’t really tell.”
    “He’s worried about your health. I am, too.”
    “I don’t mean my health.”
    “I think he’s hurt.”
    “Because I told Mom I’m gay but not him, hmmm?”
    “Yeah.”
    “And you, pal? I was planning to tell you.”
    “When I grew up, or what?”
    “I don’t blame you for being pissed off, Ricky. I was waiting for the right time.”
    “You act like you had a crime to confess or