Ridge City Mall is far away. It takes about two hours to walk there, past long rows of evenly spaced paper box factories, then around a few tricky corners filled with crisscrossing, unexpected traffic. You then walk over a small highway with a very narrow shoulder, past a sickly sweet smelling Tootsie Roll factory and a lone Pizza Hut, until you hit the mall itself. Sometimes Kyle walked all the way there, but today he was going to splurge, spend some money, take the bus.

Kyle had three hundred dollars in his pocket. For half a year he had stashed away the money his parents gave him for lunch, hoarding it in a heavy black box with a lock his grandfather gave him on an early birthday. The night before, Kyle had counted all his limp and dirty twenty dollar bills, feeling their texture with dreamy, absent satisfaction. Surely his parents had noticed his drastic weight loss, but they had said nothing.

The people on the bus do not look at him. They are mostly old ladies, and if they aren’t, they might as well be. It takes awhile. Kyle thinks about what he wants to buy, things he’d be embarrassed to ask his parents for. Bikini underwear, for instance, in bright colors. Sexy clothes. Kyle wants to buy sexy clothes , tight clothes. Clothes that show he has a body. Kyle is very skinny now, but tight with slender muscle; he hasn’t been eating lunch, but he’s been working out all summer. Sometimes at night he goes into the backyard and strips naked. As he looks at his body in the moonlight, Kyle pretends he is being filmed for a nude scene in a movie. Hi is sure someone is watching him, but he doesn’t know who. An older man probably. An older man might want him.

After getting off the bus, Kyle went directly to a small clothing store at the far end of the mall. The store rarely had any customers. On his trips to Ridge City, Kyle always found himself drifting to this store because Joe, the store manager had actually started talking to him a few months ago. Joe was in his late thirties, probably, a little goofy looking with glasses and big white teeth and slight acne scarring on his cheeks. To compensate, he apparently worked out every day, because his solid body was ostentatiously attractive, especially in contrast to his affable, plain face. Joe smiled when he saw Kyle come into the store, and he swung his heavy body lightly over the counter.

“Hey, kiddo,” Joe said. “You gonna buy something today or just look around?” he asked.

“Probably just look,” Kyle said, barely able to look at Joe walking ahead of him. “But I might buy something.”

“What do you want to get?” Joe asked, as he stared at Kyle from behind.

“I’d like to get some underwear,” Kyle said quietly, over his shoulder.

“Oh, really,” Joe said. “What kind of underwear?” he asked.

“Um…I don’t know. I thought…maybe…some bikini underwear?” Kyle hoped that Joe didn’t laugh.

“Bikini underwear?” Joe tried to laugh but started to blush. Kyle turned around and hugged his skinny torso with his arms. Joe shifted his weight restlessly from one leg to another and stole a glance at Kyle’s lower body from the front, whip-thin in tight blue jeans.

“Yeah. I saw this show on TV where the guy was wearing red bikini underwear, and I liked the way he looked,” Kyle said shyly, his words tumbling out fast.

“Who was wearing it? What show?” Joe asked, his hands on his hips, leaning forward slightly, looking right into Kyle’s shifting eyes.

“Um, I think it was an old episode of ‘Melrose Place.” The guys are cute,” Kyle said.

“Okay,” Joe said. “Let me get you what you want.”

As Joe walked slowly to the underwear section, he was almost certain Kyle was staring at him. Joe smiled. He was turned on by the attention and touched by Kyle’s need. Months before, Joe had sensed Kyle’s loneliness, and he recognized it as similar to his own at an earlier age.

“Here you go, try these,” Joe said, passing an underwear package to Kyle. He smiled and rubbed his big hands together. “They get good-looking guys to pose for those things, huh?” he asked, cocking his head and sidling closer to Kyle.

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “They’re pretty cute.”

“You know, if you turn the package over, you can see what that same guy looks like in the underwear from the back,” Joe said.

“I know,” Kyle said, too quickly. He looked mortified, and Joe patted him on the shoulder, placatingly.