Under the Rainbow

by Celia Laskey

  I can feel a blister forming on the outside of my right pinkie toe, where the seam of my sock rubs against the inside of my shoe. “Hang on,” I say to Avery as I fish a Band-Aid out of my backpack. I lean down and unlace my shoe, then peel off my sweaty sock. I try to stand on my shoed foot but lose my balance and wobble until the bare one touches the dirt. As I’m fumbling to get the Band-Aid out of its wrapper, something glides across the top of my naked foot, something warm and smooth, like a leather belt left out in the sun. The hairs on my arm stand up and I jerk my foot off the ground, which makes me lose my balance again.

  “What?” Avery says, swinging her flashlight toward me, the light catching the very end of a brown, scaly tail with what looks like a piece of corncob attached to the tip.

  “Oh, fuck.” Rattlesnakes did not come up in my search for “nocturnal field-dwelling animals.”

  “Oh my god oh my god oh my god,” Avery says as she follows the snake with her flashlight. “What are we supposed to do?”

  I contemplate googling “how to escape a rattlesnake,” but before I have a chance the snake lunges and Avery screams, almost dropping her flashlight. In the wobbly light I watch, transfixed, as the snake clamps its mouth around the head of a small cottontail rabbit and struggles to get it down, making me gag a little bit. While the snake is preoccupied, Avery and I take a few careful steps backward, then turn and sprint.

  “Fuck your rule,” Avery says, “I’m walking next to the road from now on.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Dude, we just watched a rattlesnake kill a rabbit. We could literally be next. We’ll be able to see a car coming from a long way off, and we can just duck in the prairie grass when it gets close.”

  “Fine,” I say, shuddering at the feeling of the snake slithering over my foot.

  After a few minutes of walking in silence, Avery asks, “How mad do you think Karen will be when she figures out we’ve run away?”

  “Honestly, I think she’ll be more worried than mad.”

  “I dunno,” Avery says. “Every time she looks at me, I swear I can, like, viscerally feel her disappointment emanating from her eyeballs and seeping into my bones.”

  I roll my eyes. “I think you’re imagining it, the same way you imagine that she wishes you were a lesbian.”

  She crosses her arms. “You think Karen is so perfect. It’s different when she’s actually your mom.”

  “I know she’s not perfect, but you’ve got to admit she’s a hell of a lot better than my dad and Nancy.” Nancy being my evil Baptist stepmom. I contemplated leaving them a coming-out note before I left, then decided against it, knowing their reaction would probably entail turning a blind eye at best and hateful rejection at worst.

  Sometimes I wonder if I’d even have to run away if my mom hadn’t died. I like to tell myself she would have loved me no matter what. She took me to the public library all the time and let me read whatever I wanted. Once, when I was about ten, she let me check out The Catcher in the Rye. They didn’t have it in the school library because it had been deemed “obscene.” Jan the librarian gave my mom total side-eye and said, “Is that really what you want your son reading?” My mom just rolled her eyes and said, “Don’t be such a prude, Jan.” The last book she ever took me to check out was What’s Happening to My Body? “I won’t be around when this starts happening to you, and your father sure as hell won’t talk about it, so you better read it now,” she’d said.

  Two years after she died, when I was thirteen, my dad met Nancy at a potluck. She’d brought a pot of baked beans that weren’t even cooked through all the way, but my dad told her they were the most delicious beans he’d ever had. My dad is a Baptist now, too. When I was growing up, we went to church every Sunday because that’s what you did, not because my parents had any great belief—my dad would yawn and pick hangnails through half the service. But three months into dating Nancy, he got baptized in Pastor Jim’s backyard aboveground pool—a pool they had for that specific purpose. I stood next to my dad and put a supporting hand on his back as he plugged his nose and fell backward into the water. I studied his face as he emerged, trying to see if he really felt born again, but he had the same fixed half smile, the same unoccupied gaze he’d had ever since my mom died.

  These days he just goes along with whatever Nancy says. And Nancy says homosexuals are worse than animals, because at least animals know you have to procreate with a member of the opposite sex. I showed her some articles about the gay penguins in Central Park Zoo, but she dismissed that as “liberal nonsense.” After AAA came to town, she blamed them for every bad thing that happened: Dylan Ivingston’s death, Barb’s Boutique struggling to stay open, even coming down with the flu—all the task force’s fault.

  Nancy and my dad know I don’t share their political beliefs, but I don’t think they ever suspected anything about my sexuality. They know I dated a few girls, and it would never occur to them that you can date girls and still not be straight. I don’t think they have any idea that AAA has become my surrogate family, either—or they don’t want to have any idea. One time, when I was riding in the passenger seat of Karen’s car, my dad pulled up next to us at a red light. He looked right at me, then at Karen, then back at the light. For days after that my stomach would drop whenever I saw him, but he never said a word about it.

  “So tell me the plan again,” Avery says. “For how we’ll get on the bus.”

  “There’s always some weirdos hanging out in Greyhound stations. We’ll just find someone who looks like they’re hard up and give them fifty bucks to sign our Unaccompanied Child Form.”

  “What if the Greyhound people ask for ID? Won’t they notice that the weirdo’s last name doesn’t match yours or mine?”

  “We’ll say they’re our legal guardian.”

  “What if they ask for papers to prove it?”

  I google “how to prove legal guardianship” and WikiHow confirms Avery’s suspicion. Instead of telling her she’s right, I say, “God, Avery, we’ll figure it out.”

  “Don’t act like I’m ridiculous for being realistic. There are a million unknowns ahead of us, like how long we’ll be able to stay in my friend Scout’s pool house without her parents noticing, if Scout will even be able to keep her mouth shut, if someone will recognize me and tell Karen or Steph, if we’ll be able to get jobs under the table, if we’ll be able to go back to school, if—”

  I throw my hands up. “We’re taking a risk! There aren’t any guarantees. We can question every little thing until we turn around or we can accept the unknowns and plow ahead.”

  As if to punctuate my words, what can only be described as a spine-chilling scream cuts through the air. Avery and I freeze, exchanging wide-eyed stares as we grab each other’s arm. Then another scream echoes toward us. We crouch down and swivel our heads, looking for the source. It’s hard to tell if it’s coming from close or far away.

  “Motherfucking motherfucker goddamn it all to hell,” Avery whispers, rocking back and forth on her heels. “I knew it. I knew something terrible was going to happen. I just didn’t think it would be us hearing Satan murder a child.”

  “I’m sure that’s not it,” I say, even though my heart feels like it’s trying to knock its way through my ribs.

  Another scream pierces our ears. This time I try to really listen despite my fear. The noise doesn’t sound quite human. More like a machine, or an animal. I google “animal scream” and one of the first results is for a barn owl, with a white heart-shaped face and two perfectly round black eyes that look like they were hole-punched into its head. I click a YouTube link and after a few seconds, a scream almost identical to the one Avery and I just heard plays through my speakers.

  I hold my phone in front of Avery’s face. “It’s okay, it’s just an owl.”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “It sounds different to me.�
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  We wait to see if another scream will come from nearby, but all I hear is a chorus of chirping crickets.

  “Even if it is just an owl . . .” Avery stands up and scuffs her sneaker in the dirt. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do this, Zach. I’m not brave enough. And I can’t disappoint Karen again. One year isn’t so long, then I’ll be back in L.A.”

  I cross my arms. “Yeah, you’ll be back in L.A. And I’ll be stuck here.”

  “What about college? Just two more years and you’ll be gone, too.”

  “You say that like it’s a sure thing. No one in my family went to college, my dad can barely make our mortgage payments, and you know my grades last year were complete shit.”

  “Well, if you work really hard for the next two years, maybe you can get a scholarship.”

  I blow a forceful gust of air from my nose. “It’s not that easy, Avery.”

  She throws her hands up in the air. “Why the hell not?”

  “You grew up in L.A. You have no idea what it’s like to grow up in a town like this. To grow up queer in a town like this.” My voice breaks. “I don’t know if I’ll make it another two years. I really don’t.”

  “What do you mean, make it?”

  I take a deep breath and start to explain. About a year ago, right after the task force showed up but before I’d come out to Ramona, the two of us were invited to a party at Billy Cunningham’s house. Billy is a wide receiver on the football team—it was unusual, to say the least, for me and Ramona to be invited to one of his parties. But Ramona had recently had a growth spurt in a particular area and we figured one of the guys wanted to see if she would let him get to second base. She hoped it was Seth Braun, whose nickname “Tight End” didn’t only refer to his position on the team.

  At the party, as I was talking to Avery for the first time, Karen came on the news—though I didn’t know who she was then—and Billy did this disgusting pantomimed blow job routine that cut our conversation short. Then Seth took Ramona into the guest room, leaving me with no one to talk to, so I escaped upstairs and wandered around Billy’s empty bedroom. Above his bed, there was a poster of Tom Brady mid-throw and the opposite wall was covered in baseball hats for all thirty-two NFL teams. Just as I was about to leave, a football player named Connor appeared in the doorway with two plastic cups. He was the one guy on the team who always smiled when passing me in the hall instead of giving me threatening looks or ignoring me.

  “Saw you come up here and thought you could use some company,” he said. “Now that your other half is busy.” He handed me one of the drinks and sat on the bed.

  “Thanks.” I sat down next to him and took a swig of what turned out to be straight whiskey.

  “What’s the deal with you two anyway? You’ve never . . . ?” He trailed off and smiled, then started bouncing his leg up and down, making the whole bed shake.

  “No, we’re just friends,” I said.

  “To be just friends with a girl who looks like Ramona, you must be . . .”

  “What?”

  His leg bounced faster. “I dunno.”

  “Okay.”

  I looked at his leg and he stopped shaking it. “You must be, like . . . not interested.”

  “Not in her, no.”

  “But you’re interested in other girls.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about—” He coughed, once. “Guys?”

  I looked at him sideways. How the fuck?

  He pulled his phone out of his pocket. After a few taps and swipes, he tilted the screen toward me. It was my secret Instagram account. Specifically, my post about being bi.

  A hot flash snapped through my body. “How did you find this?”

  He bolted across the room and closed the door. Then he walked toward me, a determined look in his eyes. Before I could move, he lunged at me, grabbed my face, his hands shaking, and shoved his tongue into the corners of my mouth. I leaned back farther and farther until I was lying down, then rolled out from under him. “Connor . . .” I sighed.

  “What?”

  “I just . . . I don’t think I see you that way.”

  His face went red. “Don’t you want to fuck everyone? Isn’t that the point?” He straddled me and unbuckled his belt, pushing his jeans down. His erect penis loomed in front of my face. “It’ll be our secret,” he said before pushing himself into my mouth. Billy walked in as it was happening and I tried to yell for help, but I couldn’t get out the words, since I was choking on Connor’s dick. I know Billy saw the look in my eyes, though. I know he understood what was going on, but he just backed away and closed the door.

  Over the next few weeks, the scene looped through my mind like it was running on a track. I deleted my apparently-not-so-secret social media accounts, paranoid that Connor would show someone. Whenever I saw him at school, he still smiled at me like nothing had happened, but right underneath the smile was something menacing. “What’s going on with you?” Ramona kept asking, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. I was full of shame—that I didn’t know what to call it, that I hadn’t done more to stop it, that I was who I was. One night I swallowed a huge handful of Tylenol. I woke up in the hospital, and before I even opened my eyes I overheard Nancy say to my dad, “I told you we should have made him come to church with us. If he believed in God, he wouldn’t have done this.”

  “Jesus, Zach,” Avery says, lowering herself to the ground. “I’m really sorry. Did you ever tell anyone?”

  I shake my head, sitting down next to her.

  “Do you ever think about doing something like that again?”

  I nod.

  “But you think in L.A. you won’t think about it anymore?”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  Avery sighs. “Okay. Yeah. You need to get the fuck out of Big Burr, I get it now.”

  I pull a piece of prairie grass out of the ground and tie it into a knot. “I don’t want you to do this just because you feel bad that I tried to kill myself.”

  “It’s not because I feel bad, I promise. I’m in a position to help, and I want to.”

  I tie another knot in the long piece of grass. “What about Karen?”

  “I think she would actually understand, if she knew the whole story. If she were in my position, she might do the same thing.”

  A tentative smile curls the side of my mouth. “So we’re really doing this?”

  She nods once, decisively. “We’re really doing this.”

  I grab Avery’s hand and we stand up, then I feel it again: that whooshing sensation. My scalp tingles. I turn on my flashlight, but it’s too dark to see anything. There’s a pulsing noise in the air, like a heart beating through a distant stethoscope. It gets closer. Then a different sound joins in: soft, buzzy chirps. A cloud moves out of the moon’s way and the sky brightens. Avery and I exchange a glance: Is this the beginning, or the end?

  A gust of air washes over us and I tilt my flashlight upward as the sky becomes spotted with the bodies of hundreds of birds in flight. We laugh in relief, spinning in circles as we watch them. They must be migrating south to Mexico or some other warm place. I had no idea birds migrated at night. I start to google it, then make myself wait, awed by the spectacle. They’re not flying in a V, but in a dense cluster of dizzying momentum, shape-shifting into different configurations: tadpole, mushroom, speech bubble, hourglass, expanding and contracting in an undulating rhythm. I wonder how they’re able to move like that—like a singular organism, their wings beating to the same pulse. How they know exactly where to go. I close my eyes and imagine myself as part of the greater whole, finally, my heart matching the beat of everyone like me as I shape-shift into something new.

  I hear a rushing noise like a car approaching, but when I open my eyes I don’t see one. I wonder if it’s just the birds, but a moment later I feel a slight
breeze from movement nearby. The high-pitched whine of screeching tires invades my ears. It goes on for a few full seconds, then it’s followed by a heavy thud and a metallic crack. A rolling noise, then another, smaller thud. I look around for Avery, but don’t see her. I’d sensed that she’d drifted away from me while we were watching the birds, but I hadn’t really been paying attention, caught up in the fantasy of my new life.

  “Avery?” I call out, but she doesn’t answer. My breath catches in my chest. I look to my left, where the noises came from, and can barely make out the white dashed line in the middle of the road, and a dark, hulking shape with a shiny black surface ever-so-slightly reflecting the wan light of the moon. A car. How the fuck did we miss a car? The lights must have been broken, or a drunk driver forgot to turn them on, or a dumb teenager was looking for a thrill. If the lights had been on we would’ve had to notice, even if we were looking up at the birds. As I walk closer, trying to see beyond the dark windows to who’s in the driver’s seat, the tires screech again and the car peels out.

  Only then do I see Avery lying on her back in the road, her head turned away from me and one of her legs splayed out to the side like a rag doll’s. A scream rises from a subterranean place within me. I run to Avery, but stop short, afraid to touch her. The leg that’s splayed out to the side is split open, a jagged tear from the hip to the knee, and I realize I’ve never seen the inside of someone’s body before. The fat and muscle look like large curds of cottage cheese messily stuffed into a red fishnet stocking. My throat spasms and the sky seems to tilt. I lower myself to the ground and look away, willing myself not to puke. But all I see when I look away is Avery’s blood, branching into rivulets that follow the grooves in the road.