***
FOUR YEARS AGO
***

Graham has been coming to “practice weightlifting” three nights a week, most weeks, for a couple years now. Monday, Thursday, and Friday. I meet him under the moon each time. Sometimes, he will bring me packaged snacks from Society, and sometimes he brings fruit or flowers from his garden.

Recently, I stole some chiseling and boring tools from the stonesmithing workshop, and I helped Graham turn some of the bigger rocks into weights that he can load onto an old iron bar he dragged here from his house. I’ve spent the better part of my free time for the past few weeks carving the smaller ones into what he calls “free weights.”

Lately, we have been spending the latter half of his workouts sitting by Maricella Torres’s grave and talking. He tells me about school, which differs so greatly from my own schooling. About the terrible lunches they serve on plastic trays, and the bell that rings to alert students when it’s time to change classes or leave. I tell him about Gravediggers and my apprenticeships. I tell him about Uncle, about my family, about nature.

“Hey, Inchworm, c’mere,” he says, and plops down on Auntie Maricella’s plot, leaning his back against her headstone. He’s finished for the night, all the rocks he moved around back where he found them, iron bar tucked neatly away behind my old friend oak tree. Sweat sticks a few of his wild curls to his forehead, and his torn-up, sleeveless t-shirt is plastered to his neck and chest. I hear his breathing slow and become shallower as he cools off.

Before I sit across from him, I unpin my cloak with bare hands and throw it around his shoulders. It looks silly because it’s backwards; the hood folds stupidly under his chin like a fat, funky scarf.

“It’s hot, Inch!” he says with a dumb grin, but he doesn’t take it off.

“Yes, Graham,” I say, “but you’ve sweat a lot. The temperature’s cool tonight. You just don’t feel it yet. It won’t be good if you’re all wet outside at night.”

He pulls a dramatic pout, and I can’t help but laugh. It twists his face in such an ugly way that it’s cute. An alarm bell sets off in the back of my mind at that thought, but I ignore it.

“Listen to this,” he says, and fishes his phone out of his pocket. A long cord is tangled around it, and he fumbles to unwind the knots before handing it to me. The cord splits off into two slightly smaller ones, which end in thick plastic nubs.

“Huh?” I say.

He shakes his head and smiles at me. “I forget how much stuff you don’t have. Grandpa says Grandmother was like that, too, except there wasn’t nearly as much technology for her to wrestle with. He said she was floored by the freezer and the doorbell.”

He takes the phone and holds it out so I can see it. On the screen is a picture, some words, and a collection of symbols. “This is the album cover - you know what albums are, right?”

“I know what music is, Graham,” I say. “Gravediggers don’t live in a cave.”

He grins sheepishly and says, “I never know what you will or won’t know! I bet you’re talking about a record player!”

“I mean, yes. The Grave has one in the big office building where the phone is. But we have a radio, too.”

“Okay, well, this one is Play,” he points to a right-facing triangle. “It turns into a Pause button once you hit it. And this is Next and Back. That’s the artist name, and that’s the song name.”

“And the little cord?”

“Headphones. Earbuds. They’re little speakers for your ears. So you can listen without bothering anyone else.” He pops one into my ear unexpectedly, and I yelp. He laughs and hits Play.

“This is Rihanna,” he says. “She’s super popular. And she’s hot.” I laugh, but then I wonder, if I had been the eldest daughter I was supposed to be… Would I have lived in Society and gone to school, listened to Rihanna? Would I have been hot, too?

I grimace, because I know I wouldn’t have been. I would have lived a miserable life, crammed into a body that isn’t mine and ostracized and abused by Society-citizens. I know I’m loved and happy in Raildusk Grave. I shake the thoughts from my head. I’m proud to be the eldest son of the Gravedigger-Way family, and proud to be a Gravedigger. And more importantly, I am here with Graham, and we are supposed to be having fun and hanging out and listening to Rihanna.

Suddenly, his smile drops into wide-eyed seriousness.

“Hey, Inch,” he says. I wait. “Come with me to the house. We can listen to more music and have a snack. And we could go online and listen to anything I don’t have on CD or saved to my phone.

He stands abruptly, grabbing my hand with his huge, warm one. He catches my cloak as it slides off him with his other hand and smoothly pins it back on me in a swift motion. Before I know it, he’s dragging me back through God’s Blind, laughing and dodging sticks on the ground. I can already see where a desire path has begun to form from his frequent visits to the cemetery. Music still plays in the earbuds, one for me and one for him, a second link between us. We’re connected at the ear and the hands.

We reach the edge of the forest, and he pauses the music. He reaches to my face and slips the bud out of my ear. I feel his large palm graze my cheek as he pulls away, only to remove his own and drop the whole contraption, wires and all, back into his pocket. Then he runs to the gate and hops it, only to unlatch it from the other side and swing it open for me to cross. For the first time in my life, I set foot one toe, a single inch, a centimeter outside the safety of God’s Blind and Raildusk Grave.

He plods across the garden and digs under a potted plant on the porch, and boldly I follow. A silver key flashes in his hand, and he points to the back door of his small house. Grabbing my hand, he presses the key into my palm and says, “Would you like to do the honors?”

***
PRESENT DAY
***

Graham enters the house quietly. The lights are off, and he worries that Miles might not have actually come back. He asked Miles to take more risks than he’d already taken. He knows what it means should Miles be accused of trespassing.

When he flicks on the light, movement stirs at the kitchen table. Miles lies with his head on his arms, shifting as his sleep-addled brain connects to the waking world.

He lifts his head, blinking blearily at the door. “Mmmph,” he grumbles. As his eyes adjust and his head clears, “Graham,” he whispers. Something like sorrow and concern tug at the corners of his mouth. He stands, and steps toward Graham.

The duffel bag Graham hastily packed drops to the floor with a thud. Graham drops to his knees with a louder thud.

Miles reaches Graham, and wraps his wiry arms around Graham’s broad shoulders. Graham reaches his own arms around Miles’s waist, and sobs.

It is hours, seconds, minutes, days, before Graham eventually stands and grabs his bag with one hand, and Miles’s with the other. He leads them to his childhood bedroom, the one where they spent countless nights listening to music and eating snacks pilfered from the kitchen. They sit on his bed, like they used to. Dusty moonlight filters in through the curtains, and the quiet chirp of insects tells them they have some time left before daybreak.

Graham leans his shoulder against Miles’s and says, “I wasn’t sure you’d come wait for me. When they come - your family - I won’t let you get in trouble. I’m sorry for making you stay. But I’m grateful you did.”

Miles sighs, bumping his shoulder against Graham’s. “I said, ‘Anything.’”

“Inchworm, I don’t know what I’d do without you. I really don’t.”

“You seem to be doing fine without me in the city.”

“Right now I’m with you, and I still don’t even know what I’m doing. What am I supposed to do?”

“You probably won’t have to do much of anything. My family will arrive soon. It’ll just be Uncle Daniel, actually, and he’ll take care of it all since he’s next-of-kin and a Gravedigger direct descendant. Unfortunately, since you’re the grandson, you won’t have as much say in the proceedings as you would if you were, say, a son or a sibling.”

Graham’s eyes widen. “Did you say Uncle Daniel?”

Miles turns to him in surprise. “Yes, of course. Daniel Torres Gravedigger-Buono. That’s Old Torres’s son. He was Auntie Maricella’s firstborn. So he’s the one to arrange all the funerary stuff.”

“He’s Grandpa’s son?!” Graham exclaims.

“But - but it’s Uncle Daniel. He’s really fair, so I’m sure he’s going to make sure you’ll still have a say in it,” Miles adds hastily.

“He’s your uncle?!” Graham exclaims.

“Well, not by blood,” Miles says, and swears he hears Graham let out a tense breath of relief. “It’s just how we call each other. Every Gravedigger is my Uncle or my Auntie. All the kids in the Grave call each other Cousin.”

“I see…” says Graham.

“I can’t believe you didn’t know your mother had an elder brother.”

“I don’t know much about my mom. Grandpa doesn’t - didn’t - talk about her much, just to her. I’d heard him speak to someone called Daniel once, when Grandmother died, but I didn’t know we were related. It didn’t sound like they were on good terms.”

“Hmm… Uncle was my father’s lover. My parents died when I was young, and Uncle promised to help take care of me alongside my grandfather. Uncle Daniel is like a second father to me.”

Graham twists suddenly and faces Miles, gripping his shoulders tightly in his hands. His face is serious and surprised.

“Your father and Daniel… my Uncle. They were lovers?”

“Of course,” says Miles. “Is that so shocking?”

“They’re both men!” says Graham in disbelief. A look like wonder begins to spread over his face.

Miles shrugs under Graham’s heavy hands. “So?”

“Wasn’t he married?”

“Uncle? No. He never married. And marriage for a Gravedigger is about maintaining the lineage without inbreeding. Lovers marry all the time, but it’s not necessary. It’s mostly reliant on familial compatibility. If the person you love can’t have kids with you, you can’t marry them. But you can certainly still love them. Besides, we’re raised by our families, but also by the Grave as a whole. All the Aunts and Uncles take care of all the kids.”

“What about your mother? Didn’t she mind?”

“Father loved Mother deeply. Uncle respected that, and he loved Mother, too. Just not like that. Mother loved Uncle like a brother.”

“But it was okay?” Graham says. “It was okay for Daniel to love your father?”

“I don’t see why not,” Miles says.

Graham is crying again, but these are different tears than those earlier, that fell weighty down his cheeks, laden with grief. These tears now are of surprise, and of relief from a burden he did not know he could set down.

“Miles, Miles,” Graham says with hitched breaths, and crushes Miles to his chest, inhaling the soft, woody scent of his dark hair. “My Miles, Inch, my Little Inchworm.”

Miles doesn’t think, only grips the strong arms that wrap around him, and breathes in the smell of sweat and pine and city air that envelops him. Oh, he thinks. I see now.

“Your Miles,” he says with wonderment.

“I didn’t think I would ever call you that. My Miles, My Inchworm.” Tears streak Graham’s face, while Miles smiles timidly. “In my head that’s what you’ve been. For years, now. I told all my friends in the city I have a little inchworm in the country rooting for me.”

Miles is smiling ear to ear, warm and sleepy in the solid embrace. “You can’t tell them my name. They’ll curse you with it,” he says.

Graham frowns. “No one will curse you. I won’t let them.” He sighs. “I can’t tell them your name, Miles, because you’re a boy.”

Miles finally understands Graham's questions, his tears. He thinks to the impending arrival of the Gravediggers, of Uncle Daniel, only a scant few hours away.

“But it’s okay, right?” Miles says. “For you to love me?”

Graham grips Miles tighter. “It’s okay. It’s a good thing.”