Love Rules

by Marilyn Reynolds

  Cars line both sides of the street near Robert’s house. Robert and some other guys are standing in the driveway, drinking sodas, or beers, I’m not sure which. Conan pulls over to the curb.

  “I’m not going in,” I tell him. “I can’t.”

  “Have it your way,” he says, all quiet and calm.

  He pulls away from the curb and drives me home. He leaves the engine running while I get out of the car, then backs down the driveway. Wilma comes running to greet me. Only the lamp by the front window is lit, meaning no one is home. I’m relieved.

  I try again to read the Alice Walker book. I skip around in it, trying to find something of interest. So far, all that holds my attention is the title, The Way Forward Is with a Broken Heart. Am I on the verge of a broken heart? Conan and I have never before raised our voices to one another. I never once, until tonight, felt as if we were on opposite sides. How could he pretend such nasty harassment of Kit was only a joke? And there’s a nagging thought in the back of my mind—like why was his family so cold to me. Maybe they’ve never even heard of me. Maybe he doesn’t care enough to bother telling his parents about me. Maybe I don’t know Conan as well as I thought I did.

  I call Kit. Check e-mail. Nothing. I’m channel surfing, mindless, when the phone rings. I jump for it, hoping it’s Conan.

  “Lynn?”

  The warm, deep voice I hoped to hear isn’t there. Instead it’s the light, whispery voice of Frankie.

  “Oh, hi Frankie,” I say, trying not to sound disappointed.

  “Is Kit there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, she’s not with Star.”

  “I called her house just a few minutes ago. No one’s there. Maybe she went somewhere with her parents,” I say.

  “I’m worried about her,” Frankie says.

  “Why?”

  “I just know how hard it can be, everyone laughing and saying

  mean things.”

  “Well, maybe she’s at that coffee place in Pasadena,” I say.

  “We looked.”

  “Who?”

  “Me, and Star, and Jerry . . . Can you think of anywhere else she might be?”

  “Barb ’n Edie’s?”

  Frankie laughs. Well, it’s not exactly a laugh. It’s more like a sarcastic snort.

  “I’m sure she wants to hang out with the rah-rah crowd tonight.”

  “I don’t know where else . . .”

  “If I come get you, will you help me look for her?”

  It’s not like I have anything else to do tonight so I agree to go. I give him directions to my house and then change out of my gold sweatshirt. School colors on game night no longer appeal to me.

  I’m watching out the window when Frankie pulls up in a VW bug. The old kind. I grab my purse and meet him in the driveway.

  “My chariot,” he says, reaching across and opening the passenger door for me. The upholstery’s torn and there is no headliner.

  “Some chariot,” I say.

  “A diamond in the rough.”

  “Whatever . . . I don’t even know why we’re doing this.”

  “Because she’s our friend, and we’re worried. At least I am.”

  We drive by her house to see if anyone’s there, but it’s dark. We go to the big park, up in the ritzy section. The gates are all locked, but we climb over the lowest one and look around. No sign of Kit, but the shadows of trees reminds me that there’s one place we haven’t looked. We drive back to my house and walk through the gate in my backyard. There she is, sitting cross-legged at the base of the walnut tree.

  “Oh, my God!” Frankie says, running across the yard to her. He leans down and grabs her arms, runs his hands across her wrists and inner arms, then sinks down beside her. He rests his head back against the tree, eyes closed. I sit across from them.

  “What is with you?” Kit says to Frankie.

  “I’ve been worried. Are you okay?” Frankie asks, looking intently at her face.

  “Yeah. I’m pissed, but I’m okay.”

  “Good,” Frankie says. “Pissed is good. . . When no one knew where you were I started thinking . . . worrying that . . .”

  “What?”

  “I just thought you could be really depressed, or . . . ”

  “Or?”

  “Or, you know . . . want to . . . hurt yourself.”

  “You don’t need to worry about me getting all stupid and suicidal.”

  “It’s not like it doesn’t happen,” Frankie says.

  “Yeah, well it’ll take a lot more than those little pricks to make me want to off myself.”

  I laugh, glad to hear Kit talking strong again. Kit laughs, too.

  “Oh, sure. It’s funny now, in your backyard. But once those guys start in on you, they may not let up. It can get depressing. Just promise me you’ll always talk things through. Even if you feel alone, you’re not alone,” Frankie says. He scoots over next to Kit and gives her a big hug. She leans her head on his shoulder.

  “Thanks,” she says. “Thank you, too,” she says to me, as I scoot over next to her on the other side.

  The three of us sit talking about all that’s happened. Kit says her dad and my mom are going in to see Mr. Maxwell first thing Monday morning. They’re going to demand an apology for us, and a five-day suspension for Brian, Justin and Anthony.

  “That’ll mess up next week’s football game,” I tell her.

  “So?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I’ve been really hoping we’ll get to the championship play­offs,” Frankie says.

  “Like you care about football?” Kit says.

  “I care about half-time.”

  “I don’t want my dad to make a big deal out of this,” Kit says. “For once I’m on my mom’s side.”

  “I’m with your dad. They should be suspended and we should have an apology. It’s so unfair that we got punished and they’re big heroes!”

  We talk about tonight’s game, how jazzed those guys were. I tell them about being escorted out of the game, and how I refused to go to the party, and how important the party was to Conan. I don’t tell them about trying to introduce myself to Conan’s family, and how weird that was. I guess I’m hoping Conan can help me make sense of it all.

  I wonder what Conan’s doing. Is he still at the party? Is he paying attention to any of those girls that always flirt with him? Will he end up taking someone else home? Maybe he’s called.

  It’s cold, which gives me an excuse to go back to my house and get beach blankets for us to wrap up in. Kit and Frankie go into her house to make hot chocolate.

  I rush through the door, see the blinking answering machine light, and make a lunge for it. It’s for Mom.

  I get the blankets and leave a note telling Mom I’m at Kit’s. Wilma’s all hyper from being alone in the house for so long, so I take her back to Kit’s with me. She drags her frisbee along. Kit’s brought a thermos of hot chocolate and three cups back to the tree. Frankie tosses the frisbee for Wilma. I swear she shows off whenever there’s anyone new around, catching high throws, running circles around the yard with the frisbee in her mouth, then dropping it right at Frankie’s feet. Finally I call her to me, thinking Frankie may be tiring of the game. She lies beside me on the blanket, her head resting on her paws.

  We warm our hands on our cups of steaming chocolate. Take little sips. Savor the warmth. Frankie breaks the silence.

  “Have you ever thought about it?”

  “Thought about what?” Kit says.

  “Suicide.”

  CHAPTER

  19

  It is late now. The streets are quiet. Frankie talks in a low, steady voice.

  “I’d always been hassled, all through elementary school. I didn’t understand why. I wanted to be friends with everybody. The girls would let me jump rope with them at recess. I was good at it, but the boys teased me all the more when they saw me doing ‘Double Dutch’ and ‘Ice Cream Soda Delaware Punch.’ Some�
�times I’d make friends with another boy, maybe even play with him after school. Then the others would start teasing him too, and he’d stop being my friend.”

  I try to remember Frankie from elementary school, but I can’t. He probably went to a different school. The thing is, I can remember a boy named Timmy, how he got teased all the time, and how I hardly ever thought about it, one way or the other.

  “They used to call me names, like Sissy-boy, and Girly-boy and Fag, and sometimes someone would give me a push. But by the time I was in seventh grade, the names were worse and so was the physical stuff.”

  “Was it everyone? All the boys?” Kit asks.

  “No. But it seemed like it at the time. Once some guys grabbed me and shoved me into a trash can. I was fag-trash, they said, and they kicked the can over with me in it. A custodian came and helped me out, but kids were standing around, laughing.”

  “That sucks,” Kit says.

  “Yeah, well, most people didn’t think so,” Frankie says.

  He goes on talking about his experiences, but my mind is wandering. I’m remembering something I don’t want to remem­ber. In the sixth grade, Timmy and I worked on a project together, one of those papier-mâché maps that shows mountain ranges. We painted in streams and desert areas. We weren’t exactly friends, but we turned out the best map in the class and we had fun doing it.

  One day at recess some of the boys were taunting Timmy. There were five of them, with Timmy in the middle. They were yelling and laughing and they wouldn’t let him get away. I stood watching, not liking it, but not doing anything either. Timmy looked at me, like can’t you help? But I just stood there. Pretty soon a teacher came and broke it up.

  I wonder why didn’t I try to help? I could at least have said something. But I didn’t. Then the map project was over, and Timmy and I didn’t sit together anymore, and we hardly ever talked after that. Thinking back on it now, I feel sort of sick, and ashamed. I wonder whatever happened to Timmy?

  “ . . . Every day . . . Every day before I left the house, I armored myself against both pain and joy . . . I transformed myself into stone.”

  Because of my wandering mind, it takes me a while to figure out that Frankie is now talking about his freshman year at Hamilton High, but finally I get it.

  “. . . older guys who lived to hassle me. Fudge-packer, queenie, that stuff. I was stone. My armor was strong. Even so, they kept it up. One day they caught me after school. They shoved me behind a big dumpster, took my shoes off and threw them in the dumpster, took my pants off and . . . stuff . . .”

  “What stuff?” Kit says.

  “Just stuff . . . stuff that crushed my armor.”

  “Like rape?”

  “Not exactly. But . . . it wasn’t nice. Let’s skip the details,

  okay?”

  Frankie’s talking so softly that Kit and I have to lean in to hear him.

  “I ran home. No shoes. No pants. Trying to stay in the shadows. I hid in the garage for a long time, cold and shivering. I had to wait until all the lights went off in my house and I knew my parents were in bed. I couldn’t let my dad see me like that . . .”

  His voice trailed off and we sat silent, breathing in the peace of earth and grass and the thinking tree.

  Frankie told us that after the pants and shoes incident, he quit going to school. He left in the morning as if he were going to school and then walked around in different neighborhoods every day.

  “When you’re just standing on a street corner, that’s when the truancy cops get you. As long as you keep walking, they don’t pay much attention.”

  He’d walk for an hour or so, then sneak back into his house after his parents had both gone to work. He watched old movies on cable—Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and other big Hollywood musicals. He rented videos of his favorites, so he could watch certain dance routines, over and over again, mimicking their steps until he knew exactly how it all went together.

  “I was happier than I’d ever been. I was lonely, but that was nothing new. I’d been lonely for as long as I could remember. At least I felt safe.

  “The school would call home. I’d erase the message and go back to my dance routine. The mail would come, I’d rip up anything from school and throw it away. It was great, while it lasted.”

  “How long did it last?” I ask.

  “About two months. Then someone finally got hold of my dad

  at work.”

  “It took two months? If I’m home for a day someone calls my mom at work.”

  “Yeah, well, I’d started cutting class fairly often back in the seventh grade. It was hard, you know—some days I just couldn’t make myself go to school. So when I got to high school, I knew to put down phony numbers on my emergency information. They’d call, get a wrong number, and forget about it for a while.”

  “But two months . . .”

  “Someone in the office got smart and looked up my old records from elementary school, before I’d learned to lie.”

  “Then what?” Kit asked.

  “Then my dad went crazy, yelling and screaming. My mom went on a two week crying jag. The three of us went to school for a conference. It was with Mr. Cordova. That was back when he was still a counselor, before he became a Vice Principal. My parents kept asking why, why, why, hadn’t I been attending school. I couldn’t tell them. Mexican boys don’t tell their Mexican dads guess what—I’m getting beat up because I’m gay. I mean I’m the son my dad waited for, after three girls. He’s this macho construction crew boss and I’m going to tell him I’m too cowardly to go to school?”

  “You weren’t a coward. You were being ganged up on,” I say.

  Frankie shakes his head. “Even if there’d only been one little guy, I still would have been afraid. That’s how I am. I’ll never fight. And if I’d run away from TEN guys, my dad would still have thought I was a coward.

  “Mr. Cordova was cool, though. Maybe he had an idea why I’d quit going to school. He advised that I go to Sojourner. God! With all those hoodlums? I wanted to do Independent Studies, but my dad wouldn’t hear of it. He jumped at the Sojourner idea. Thought it might toughen me up.”

  Like I said earlier, Sojourner has this reputation for being overrun with gangs, druggies, delinquents and tramps. Now that I’ve been on the campus a few times, I know that’s not true. But

  it must have been a horrible prospect for Frankie to face.

  “My parents were acting like they’d spawned a Charles Manson. Like I was the scum of the earth for opting out of school. My dad kept stomping around and spouting off about what a stupid little twerp I was, and how could he have ended up with me. Maybe they’d made a mistake in the hospital because he couldn’t believe I was really his son.

  “My mom just cried. I wanted to run away, but I didn’t have anywhere to run to. I was not going to go to a place where I’d be picked on even more than I had been at Hamilton High. I thought about it a long time. It needed to be fast and sure. I didn’t have access to a gun. I didn’t trust pills. I ended up going to the drugstore and buying a pack of old fashioned straight edge razors.”

  “You were going to kill yourself?” Kit says.

  Frankie nods.

  “But why?” I ask, knowing as soon as the words are out of my mouth I’ve asked a stupid question. Like he hasn’t been talking non-stop for hours about how miserable his life was.

  Frankie doesn’t act like I’m stupid, though. He just tells me he couldn’t see any way out but death. Then he starts laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Kit says. “This isn’t funny!”

  “But it is funny, sort of, how one little thing can change everything.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like I’ve got this thing all planned out. I know to slit my wrists deep up the vein, not across, the way you see in old movies.”

  “I don’t watch that many old movies,” Kit says.

  “Yeah, well I do. Trust me on this one, they don’t show the right way to slit your
wrists.”

  “This is morbid,” I say.

  “But it has a happy ending,” Frankie says.

  “So anyway . . .” Kit prompts.

  “So anyway, I’ve got it all planned. I’ve thought a lot about my mom. I really love my mom, but she was always crying and it always had to do with me. I thought, I’ll do this and she’ll have one big long cry, and then there won’t be anything to cry about anymore. But I didn’t want to do it in the house, where she’d be cleaning up the mess. The bathtub would have worked—just rinse the blood down the drain, but then maybe she’d never want to take a bath in the tub again. A hot bath is one of her few pleasures.”

  “Enough with the details!” I say.

  “I’m a detail guy. That’s why I’m good at choreography.”

  “Whatever,” I say.

  “So ANYWAY . . .” Kit prompts again.

  “So ANYWAY, I decided to do it in the backyard. The yard is my dad’s responsibility. He could clean up my dead, bloody mess. I liked that idea. So it’s after dinner—fried chicken which, if I’d been ordering my last meal wasn’t my favorite, but it wasn’t bad.

  “The folks are watching TV, the one thing they do together without my dad yelling and my mom crying. I get the bag with my package of razors, go into the backyard and assume a cross-legged yoga position. I take the package of razors out, crumple the bag, and toss it on the ground. I rip the cellophane wrapping off and toss it in the other direction. Dad can clean that up, too. I take the razors from the package and line them up on my pants leg.

  “I’m sitting there thinking about death, how peaceful it will be, free of worry. I’ve picked up a razor and lowered it to my wrist, searching in the dim light for exactly the right spot, when my dad yells out the door that I have a phone call. This is weird, because I have no friends. No one, I mean NO ONE ever called me. I ask who it is. He doesn’t know, just get my butt in there and answer it. So now I’m stuck. If I cut right then, he’d be out before I could die, demanding that I answer the phone. So I picked up my razors and very carefully placed them in that little watch pocket thing in my jeans, and went to the phone.”

  “So was it an angel, calling to save your life?” I ask.