I Know You're Out There Somewhere

By Joe Baumann

Kyle Filburn appears to have a picture-perfect life. He's entering his senior year, in a relationship with a great girl, on his high school's three-times-straight state championship soccer team, and an art professor from the local university has invited him to show and sell his work in his gallery.

But a chance meeting with a midfielder from a rival high school creates cracks in this picture-perfect life. Kyle develops feelings for this boy, throwing him into confusion. What does he want? And with whom? And when an anonymous patron starts buying his art, Kyle starts to wonder whether he should really be pursuing art school rather than athletics.

It becomes crystal clear that this picture-perfect life no longer reflects who Kyle is or who he wants to be...but what does that mean for Kyle?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep Hearts YA
• Release date: Dec 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9780463429679

Joe Baumann

Joe Baumann’s fiction and essays have appeared in Passages North, Third Coast, Electric Literature, and many other journals. His debut short story collection, Sing With Me at the Edge of Paradise, was chosen as the inaugural winner of the Iron Horse/Texas Tech University Press First Book Award. He possesses a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and lives outside St. Louis, Missouri. He can be reached at joebaumann.wordpress.com.

Book preview

I Know You’re Out There Somewhere

Joe Baumann

Copyright © 2022 by Joe Baumann

Cover design copyright © 2022 by Story Perfect Dreamscape

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Developmental editor: Craig Gibb

Proofreader: Harry F. Rey

Published December 2022 by Deep Hearts YA, an imprint of Deep Desires Press and Story Perfect Inc.

Deep Hearts YA

PO Box 51053 Tyndall Park

Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B0

Canada

Visit http://www.deepheartsya.com for more great reads.

For everyone trying to figure things out

Chapter 1

What are you thinking about? Molly says. Kyle Filburn lays next to her, her carnation-pink top sheet draped over them. She turns onto her side, facing him and blinking.

Not much, he says.

Is everything okay? A strand of hair catches in Molly’s lip, but she doesn’t move to pull it away.

Kyle likes Molly, he really does. Her body is slim and gold, tinted like the surfers he sees on television when there aren’t any major sports to air on ESPN. She makes him laugh, and when she complains about not knowing what she wants to do with her life, he listens. But lately, he’s been having confusing dreams about football players and Hollywood actors. He’s tried to take control of these nightscapes, to transform the hard-abbed, GI-Joe-chested bros into girls like Molly, but to no avail. And no matter how hard he tries, he gets just as distracted by the male runners that skitter around downtown Viterbo as he does the girls in halter tops and short-shorts licking melting ice cream from drippy cones they buy at the Freezie Queen.

He is saved by the sudden, far-off rumble—not an earthquake; God, no, not in Viterbo, New York—of the garage door. Kyle leaps up despite the mewl that comes from Molly as he darts to his clothing gathered in a neat heap on the floor. She sighs and rolls her eyes at him.

You know my mom doesn’t care, right?

Kyle shakes his head as he pulls on his boxer briefs. I just don’t want her to catch me naked, okay?

Well, slow down. You have plenty of time. Especially if she’s bringing in the groceries.

Molly is right; her house is a three-story maze. It would take her mother plenty of time to even get to Molly’s third-floor bedroom, tucked in the corner farthest from the garage.

Can you at least put on, like, a bathrobe or something? Kyle says. Although he’s cinched on his jeans and is working on his T-shirt, she’s just lying there, the top sheet draped at her stomach. Kyle pictures Molly’s mom barging in, seeing her daughter naked, and immediately trying to murder him, chasing him down the hall with a knife from the butcher block.

A bathrobe? Molly laughs. I’m not eighty, Kyle.

Sorry.

I mean, I do have one.

Kyle releases a dry laugh and searches for his shoes, which have tumbled under the bed. They’re butted up against a plastic container into which Molly has jammed all her old stuffed animals. A pink teddy bear’s face is squashed up against the side of the tub like a prisoner trapped in a cell, its nose turned down like an anteater’s. Like her bed, which is all shams and quilts, Molly’s walls are stripped bare, painted a minutely disturbing mother-of-pearl. She doesn’t even have the bulletin board tacked full of photographs of friends that Kyle has long thought to be ubiquitous amongst his female classmates. No posters, no nothing. It’s like she lives in an institution.

He puts on his shoes without mentioning the animals.

No chance you’ll stay for dinner, huh? I bet I can get my mom to order pizza from Ferlingheti’s.

This gives Kyle pause. He can’t remember the last time he had a slice of Ferlingheti’s pizza, which was featured in an issue of Food and Wine just a few months ago, a hidden treasure beyond the Michelin eateries of the city. Well beyond, in fact; nearly a four-hour drive upstate.

My mom likes to have dinner with us when we’re all three free at night, he says. She’s not working tonight. He doesn’t add at the gas station because he doesn’t need to. Another thing everyone knows about him: his mother has, for several years, worked a second job at the Pump ’n’ Go, one of only three gas stations in Viterbo. All of them are on the outskirts so people can forget not just that they exist but that there are people poor enough to need to work at them.

Molly blinks and rolls onto her side, facing away from him. Fine, she says. Whatever.

Kyle shoves his left foot into his sneaker. The material near the big toe is fraying; he can feel that he’s going to bust through it any day now, but his mother can’t afford both new tennis shoes and soccer cleats.

Molly sits up and starts to gather her own clothes, then stops. Does your mom know about me? she says. My mom knows about you.

Of course she knows about you. She knows we hang out.

That’s what we do? Hang out?

He hears the faraway sound of Molly’s mother opening and closing kitchen cabinets. The noise is muffled, like a subwoofer on a car two blocks over.

What would you call what we do?

We’re having sex, Kyle. It’s not just hanging out.

Okay. He pushes his right foot into the other shoe. This one has a flap of rubbery material hanging off the sole like a lolling dog’s tongue. He thinks about ripping it off, but he doesn’t.

Kyle can see their shared reflections in Molly’s floor-length mirror. Her nudity and the nut-brown color of her summered skin is a stark contrast to his white T-shirt and jeans.

She leans over him and cups his cheeks, turning him by the jaw to face her. I’m not asking you to marry me or anything. I’m not stupid.

Okay. He feels a flare of shame, but doesn’t apologize or say he’ll stay.

She gives his cheek a light pat. Just plan for dinner sometime, all right?

All right.

She kisses him on the nose. Now, fine. Sneak away. Take the stairs on the right. You’ll end up in the side yard, where you left your bike. She’ll never see you, if that’s what you want.

Kyle nods, but as he leaves, he thinks that he has no idea what he wants.

The hallway, despite its narrow creakiness, is full of doors: three on each side of the pitched hallway, and they’re all closed. The ceiling in Molly’s room swoops downward toward the crown of her bed, leaving maybe two feet of clearance when they’re groping at each other; too much wild bucking and someone’s going to get a hairful of popcorn ceiling. —One of them, Kyle knows, leads to the house’s fourth bathroom, not exactly an en-suite for Molly, but the closest thing to. It contains a jacuzzi tub and double vanity. Somewhere along the hall is also the door to Molly’s mom’s mysterious office that is perpetually locked the old-fashioned way, with a huge brass key that her mother keeps on her person at all times. When he asked what that was about, Molly shrugged.

A single door at the end of the hall leads to the side staircase, tight and spiraled and wooden. The walls are a rich cream, and on each floor, a tiny pocket window peeps out into the New York afternoon. Kyle feels like a damsel in a tower as he trundles down, padding carefully, as though there’s a chance a dragon, or Molly’s mom, will hear his progress and stop him at the first floor. The stairs continue down into the basement, which contains not one but two well-stocked wet bars despite the fact that Kyle can’t remember a time when Paula Krebs threw a party. He and Molly once pilfered a mid-list bottle of rum and got wrecked when her mother was out of town doing something or other in California. Thank goodness for the third-floor bathroom’s distance from the rest of the house, because the next morning it reeked of vomit, deposited there by both of them in equal measure. They’d played rock, paper, scissors to see who had to suffer the trek down to the kitchen in search of saltine crackers.

In keeping with the castle theme, the door to the side yard is heavy and thick, the wood dark and lacquered. When he pulls it open, he expects a cavernous yawn; but the twentieth-century hinges are well-oiled and quiet. He is blasted by afternoon air. A few fireflies are already bopping through the massive scroll of the Krebs backyard, home to an in-ground pool that Molly never gets in but spends ample time lolling next to in one of the expensive chaises. The pool is overlooked by a high deck and a panoramic window that peeks into the kitchen.

Kyle climbs atop his bike, a rusting ten-speed that he toppled earlier into the forsythia bushes that line the right side of the house, careful not to squash any of the blossoms as he lowered the handlebars. The ride across downtown Viterbo to his neighborhood will take him a good thirty minutes, and he knows he’ll be drenched in sweat by the time he’s there, but he tells himself it’s good cardio, keeping his legs warm and attuned for the soccer season ahead.

He hears a whooshing sound and then footsteps: Paula Krebs, muscling her way onto her back porch. Kyle freezes like a caught rodent, waits, and listens for the sound of Molly’s mom slipping back inside. He hears nothing at first and feels like he’s in a tense scene in an action film where villain and hero both seem to know the other is nearby, but neither will admit it or do anything about it. His breathing tightens, his entire body tingling with non-movement.

Paula Krebs shuffles inside, the screen door clattering behind her.

Kyle bolts.

He wheels along the narrow streets of Gateway Park, the enclave where the largest houses are isolated from the rest of town by a huge gate at the subdivision’s entrance. It swings open at Kyle’s approach, the old African American who works the sentry box offering him a wave as he zooms by. Kyle doesn’t know his name, but he tips his head, smiles, and raises a hand in return as he swings out onto the road and pumps his legs.

He heads downtown. Kyle wasn’t lying about dinner with his mother and sister, but he did leave earlier than necessary. He wants to hit Pixels ’n’ Things to see if the newest P.K. Darington graphic novel is available yet. Todd Masterson, the owner, said the shipment was supposed to arrive today, but sometimes things are a bit slow in Viterbo, which has a somewhat-surprising cohort of passionate graphic novel fans. This is largely thanks to the writing and art programs at the local university, a small liberal arts college. Before Kyle became buddy-buddy with Todd, he twice missed the boat on the newest issue of Grime, they were gobbled up by the college kids so fast. Todd doesn’t let that happen anymore.

Downtown Viterbo—two blocks of two-story buildings surrounding the county courthouse—is like something out of a sand-blasted gilded age: bleached brick architecture, power-washed sidewalks, little patios outside the gastropubs and greasy spoons cluttered with one too many iron tables. Even in the upstate summer heat, pedestrians walk in sauntering loops, and Kyle has to hop off his bike and walk it along the sidewalk, squeezing between walkers heading in the opposite direction. He can hear music pumping out of some of the open second-story windows, loft apartments that students rent on the cheap, jamming two—and sometimes three—people into studio spaces with no walls or doors except those to the bathroom, sometimes even then makeshift.

Pixels ’n’ Things is situated between a dusty Chinese buffet whose front lobby is littered with quarter gumball machines that appear to not have been touched in a dozen years and a tiny art gallery run by one of the painters who teaches at the university, currently in between shows. The bare milk walls vibrate with emptiness. Kyle props his bike next to the door to Pixels ’n’ Things; he’s never worried someone is going to steal it. The rust gnawing at the frame makes it look diseased, like it suffers gangrene or leprosy, and maybe it will fall apart mid-theft, the seat disintegrating under the pilferer’s ass or the valve stem of the rear tire flaking away like dead skin.

The shop is empty except for a bored-looking college student slumped behind the glass display case where the really expensive stuff is stored. He doesn’t flinch at Kyle’s presence, remaining curved over his comic book, shoulder blades poking up like vulture wings. He’s skinny, probably weighing less than Kyle despite his three or four year advantage in age. Thick plastic glasses, red, slide down his nose. Kyle watches him press them back up each time he turns a page.

Pixels ’n’ Things only has three rows of comics and graphic novels, one devoted to the more mainstream stuff that Kyle doesn’t know much about: X-Men, The Amazing Spiderman, Superman, all the Stan Lee stuff that has become popular thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There’s a rich history there that Kyle knows he should care about, but he simply can’t bring himself to be moved by stories of those heroes. Even the Batman comics, where things apparently get really dark, don’t stir him at all.

Then there’s the middle aisle with its graphic novels: Maus and Persepolis still as popular as they’ve ever been. Kyle wants to buy these en masse, but they’re way too pricey, so he satisfies himself by wandering down the aisle, plucking up one book at a time and simply spraying through pages, feeling their thickness and weight and color beneath his fingertips. He feels at the glossy covers like he’s a blind man reading Braille. Sometimes he pictures his own name in those raised, colorful letters, the hard line of the capital K glimmering and oversized, the Y dipping like a cat’s tail across the page, the fluted L, the Pacman-mouth little E chewing at the air. He flutters over what might be on the cover: something simple and monochromatic or maybe something flashier, busy with color and motion, perhaps a still from the middle of the narrative.

He saves the third aisle, farthest from the bored cashier, for last. This is the home of the lesser-known novels and comics, some of the artists local. Todd has made arrangements with the university to carry the work of some of the students so long as the school gives him free advertising in their newsletter. Many of these titles are cheaper, both in price and production quality (a few are even hand-drawn, numbered on the back cover in the order they were made), but there are plenty of gems, including Kyle’s favorite, the work of P.K. Darington. Kyle read Darington’s MadLight trilogy, about a woman named Madeline who wakes up one morning with glowing bones and the ability to manipulate light in amazing ways, in two days. And he gobbled up the standalone graphic novel Harpsichord, which was made into a blockbuster movie that was nominated for a Golden Globe or two, in a single night. But his favorite is Darington’s Grime series about two men living in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Kyle’s not sure what it would take for Todd to move P.K. Darington’s work over to the first aisle, where it really and truly properly belongs amongst the giants of the industry. Every time a new issue comes out—there are twenty-three, not counting the one due any day now—they sell, and fast. Plus, the series has been optioned by HBO, which has only increased buzz and sales. Todd doesn’t even have to hang the promotional poster the publishing company sends with the shipment. He often gives these to Kyle on the sly; they cover his bedroom like a scroll of pixelated wallpaper, hung between his Moody Blues posters.

A quick glance tells him the new issue of Grime isn’t in—or if it is, Todd hasn’t yet made it available. He takes a look at the guy behind the register, who hasn’t moved from his crouched, gargoyle-perched-on-a-cathedral pose. If he really wanted to, Kyle could probably slip several copies of whatever caught his fancy up his shirt and walk right out and the clerk would be none the wiser. The thought does give Kyle a brief tingle of intrigue, the salacious taste of doing something wrong just to do it, to see if he can get away with it, but then he thinks of Todd, uber-tall and gangly and kind to him, and can’t bring himself to dig into his profit margin even remotely.

He thinks of going up and asking if Todd’s around, but Kyle can imagine the scene: the boy rolling his eyes, withering and annoyed at being wrenched from his reading, the quick sojourn into the stock room, the inevitable announcement that Toddy isn’t around whether that’s true or not.

So, Kyle leaves. He’ll wait until tomorrow and hope that Todd’s around and that, if he has stocked the newest issue, he’s set a copy aside.

His bike is right where he left it. As he hops aboard, straddling the banana-swoopy seat, the door to the art gallery next door rushes open and a voice calls his name. Kyle feels a pinch in his stomach.

Micah Zeoller is standing outside the gallery door, propping it open with one foot, the other tapping the sidewalk in menace. He’s wearing his ubiquitous brown fisherman sandals, which Kyle has always thought of as way too plain and unfashionable for a painter—shouldn’t he be wearing vintage sports jackets and cowboy boots, his hair angled up with pomade like he’s something out of the 1980s?—but there’s really nothing fashionable at all about Micah Zeoller, even in that fashionable-because-his-clothes-are-not way: he’s decked, today, in a white Hanes T-shirt whose collar appears to have been nibbled on by some small woodland creature, a pair of way-too-loose jeans that swallow his lower body, and, of course, the sandals (which, to Kyle’s horrified realization, are the only thing distinguishing their outfits). His height—maybe barely five-five—makes everything about him slightly gnomish.

Haven’t seen you in a while, Mr. Filburn.

Kyle is always caught off-guard by Micah Zeoller’s voice, how deep and stirring it is, evoking James Earl Jones. Some men, he knows, manufacture that depth, creaking their voice down to places it otherwise won’t naturally go, but Micah’s isn’t touched by any of that strain. Baritone is his normal, comfy zone. The only time his voice rises above a middle C is when he’s plastered on red wine, which Kyle saw once, last summer, during a showing for the university’s visiting artist, to which Micah had invited Kyle with such zeal and frequency that he came even though he missed a house party thrown by the then-captain of the soccer team on whom he’d harbored a confusing, weird crush. The paintings on display at the show had been strange abstract things, fuzzy squares with rounded edges crashing into one another like cells under a microscope caught in a teeny-tiny traffic jam. Micah had stumbled up to Kyle and laid a hand over his shoulder, sloshing merlot in a tiny glass down to the floor, and said, Passionate things, aren’t they?

Passionate?

These, yes. The paintings. You can feel the life moving through them. Dan Vogel is a revelation.

Kyle had nodded. To him, the paintings looked like something a fourth grader might do.

Well, Mr. Filburn? Micah says, foot still pattering up and down like he’s striking the pedal on a grand piano. What have we been up to in the final weeks of summer?

Kyle avoids Zeoller’s eyes. He’s supposed to be working on his art; that’s the right answer, even if it’s not the truth. Ever since his freshman art teacher recommended him for Zeoller’s summer program for teenagers, Micah has pestered Kyle about his craft, kindly taking him under his wing and offering Kyle periodic work when shows are on the horizon, paying enough that Kyle could buy a set of good Derwent pencils and a few Prismacolors.

Drawing, Kyle says, fingers digging into his bike’s handlebars.

Drawing what?

Just some sketches.

In the planning phase still, huh?

I guess.

Well, you know my offer still stands, yes?

I know.

Micah crosses his arms. Kyle is always slightly disturbed by just how hairy his forearms are, the steel-wool blackish gray so thick he can hardly see Micah’s skin. It gives the tiny man a wolfish quality. And you’re aware it’s a good one, yes?

Kyle nods. He knows that even university students—even the best ones, with control and precision and an understanding of line and composition, all of which