Tell Me It's Real

by TJ Klune

“Hey, at least it happened. I’ll take that over it never happening at all.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Everything’s going to be okay. You know that, right?”

  I did and I didn’t. I couldn’t figure out which was louder. I gave the easier answer. “Sure, Sandy.”

  He didn’t believe me. “If it’s not, then we’ll figure out a way to make it okay.”

  “You’re way awesome, you know that?” He was. Probably the most awesome person to ever have walked the face of the earth. It was pretty much a given that I’d have been a psychotic wreck without him.

  “I do know that.” He grinned. “I’m glad you can say it out loud. You should probably tell me numerous times every single day from here on out so you don’t forget it.”

  “You’re not that awesome.”

  He kissed my hand. “I pretty much am.”

  “Maybe you can talk to him,” I said without thinking. “You know what he’s going through.”

  His forehead creased. “Because of my parents?”

  I winced. “That was an asshole thing of me to bring up. Shit. Sandy, I’m sorry.” I tried to sit up but he wouldn’t let me, pressing down against my chest, holding me still.

  “Do you really think that would help?” he asked.

  I shrugged, keeping my mouth shut so I didn’t break the world in half with my stupidity.

  He stroked his fingers through my hair again. “You know, I don’t think that would be quite what he needs. As a matter of fact, I would think you would be the one more experienced in this than me.”

  “My parents are still alive,” I pointed out, feeling like an ass saying the words out loud. “I don’t know loss like you do.” Though that might not have been the complete truth. Sandy’s parents had been like a second set for me, and their loss was a palpable thing for a long while after they were gone. I had grieved for them like they were my own.

  “They are,” Sandy said lightly, letting me know he understood what I was trying to say. “And they’re going to be around for many, many more years. That’s not what I am talking about, Paul. You may not know what it feels like, but you’ve seen it firsthand. You’ve been through it just as close as anyone else can say.”

  “Sandy….”

  “Hush, baby doll. Let me speak.”

  I nodded, reaching out to hold his hand in mine.

  He took a moment before he spoke again, staring off into space. “I remember when I first heard they were gone. Do you remember where we were? It was fifth period. Mr. Cuyar’s AP English class. We were talking about Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find, about all these different angles the story could be inspected at, and all these interpretations, every word meaning something other than what it says on the page. What did it mean when the grandmother said this or what did it mean when the Misfit said that and I remember thinking, why can’t the story just be the story? Why can’t the words just mean what they mean? Why does everything have to mean something else?

  “But then the door opened and the principal was standing there, along with the guidance counselor, and I remember them looking around the room, and I knew something was wrong the moment their eyes hit mine. I knew. Once they found me, they didn’t have to look anywhere else.”

  I REMEMBERED this, of course. It was a day forever ingrained in my head. I might not have remembered the specifics that he could, but when those people had walked into the room, it had gotten just a tiny bit colder, the expressions on their faces slightly grim, as if they were trying to hold back but it was leaking around the edges. They had whispered quietly to Mr. Cuyar, a small, unassuming man who lived for the written word and little else. His eyes had widened briefly and his hand had come to his mouth, but he hadn’t looked at the class, hadn’t looked out to Sandy. I think if he had, we both would have known right away.

  The guidance counselor had beckoned to Sandy quietly, and the whispers started in the class, little snorts and giggles, people already speculating what this fierce little gay boy had done to get pulled from class. Maybe it was the makeup he wore around his eyes; maybe it was the cigarettes he smoked in between classes. Whatever it was, something had happened, and one of the bigger idiots grunted the word “faggot” as Sandy stood up. Several people laughed at the obviously bracing wit of their social leader while I prepared to launch myself at him, to smash my fists into his face until he cried out for me to stop. I knew something was wrong and it was scraping against my skin and I wanted to make someone bleed.

  Sandy had seen this (he saw everything, I learned early on) and pressed his hand down on my shoulder as he walked, pausing briefly to apply pressure in a clear message of down boy, stay down. I can handle myself. They’re nothing. They’re nothing to me. His hand trailed down my arm, and I didn’t care then who saw. I didn’t care what names they called me. For that one moment, I didn’t give a fuck. I grabbed his hand and intertwined our fingers together and squeezed. I made him feel me. I made him feel the pressure, the heat of my hand. He flashed his gaze down at me and twitched his jaw, and we knew then, I think. We both knew what was coming, though maybe not how encompassing and complete it would be. He was already struggling to hold himself together because we both knew.

  I tried to get up to follow him because I was going to be damned if I was going to let him go through this alone, my raging little diva in skinny jeans, fat sneakers with frazzled laces trailing behind, a white belt slung low on his hips. I thought he was beautiful, and part of me, some secret part that I never let out much, wished I could fall in love with him and only him because it would make things easier. It would mean I wouldn’t have crushes on the jocks who wouldn’t even look at me aside from passing disdain as if I was something they’d found on the bottom of their shoes. I didn’t want to want them, but I did. I wanted to want my best friend, but I didn’t.

  But that didn’t mean I wanted to let him go it alone.

  So I tried to follow him, but he shot me a look that I wouldn’t recognize until years later as Helena coming forward, that hard-core bitch who didn’t take shit from anyone. That look said to sit my ass down. That look said to stay where I was. That look said he loved me and he would need me soon, but he needed to take these next steps alone.

  He looked so small standing at the front of the class. And then the principal put his hand on Sandy’s shoulder and they disappeared through the door.

  Twenty minutes later, they came back for me.

  “He needs you now,” the guidance counselor whispered to me as I joined them in the hall. “All he wants is you. Your parents are here with him, but he won’t talk to anyone else. He says it has to be you.”

  “You should have brought me the first time,” I snapped at her, forgetting, for a moment, that I was a fat, gay sixteen-year-old who didn’t have a chance of survival in these halls. “You should have told me to come with him.”

  There was no response.

  I heard them before I saw them, my parents and Sandy. I heard my mother’s sweet, quiet whispers. I heard the low, consoling rumble from my father. But most of all, what I heard was him. Sandy.

  “Paul,” he said, his voice broken. “Please just get Paul. All I want is Paul.”

  “He’ll be here in a moment,” my mother whispered. “Oh, honey. Oh, sweetheart. I am so sorry. I am so sorry that this is happening.”

  “Paul,” he said. “Please. Where is Paul?”

  “Sandy?” I cried out, scared of what was happening. I didn’t even think of death at that point. The worst thing my mind could come up with was that Sandy was going to be moving away and that I’d be left here behind without him, alone. A shadow of my former self. He’d been by my side for as long as I could remember, and now he was going to leave me? I was going to be trapped here without a single ally?

  He snapped his head up, and his gaze was wild and lost as it found mine. For just a split second, it didn’t look like he recognized me or even recognize
d where he was. I’d never seen that look on his face before, and I would never see it again, but for that moment, he didn’t know. It passed though, and he shot up from his seat, tearing out of my parents’ calming hands. It took only a second for him to crash into me, his little body shaking as he huddled in my arms, burying his face in my chest, leaking tears onto my shirt. I didn’t even look up at the adults watching us. As much as they knew more about the situation, and as much as they knew more about the world, they didn’t matter right then. They didn’t exist. I wrapped my arms around him and led him out the office and down the empty halls, classes still full on either side of us.

  He didn’t ask where we were going because as much as he was shattering in on himself, he trusted me to take care of him, trusted me to take him away and make sure he could float away. He clutched at me, his hands digging into my sides, and for once, I was glad of my bulk because I was able to shelter him from everything.

  I led us out the front doors, the spring heat slapping against us, hot and clean. I half walked, half carried him to my old Honda Accord near the back of the parking lot, trying not to think about the reason why my best friend was like this. I had an inkling, a faint idea, but it seemed so cosmically bigger than the two of us that I couldn’t grasp it, I couldn’t bring its fuzzy edges into sharper focus.

  He whimpered when I opened the car door and tried to gently put him in the passenger seat. I didn’t think he was going to let me go. I gentled him down a bit further, saying quietly that I was there, that I was with him, that if he let me go for just a second, I’d get us out of here and we’d go wherever he wanted. It never crossed my mind, not even once, to take him back to his house. Regardless of how much I didn’t know, I knew at least that it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. There was a reason his parents weren’t there. There was a reason why they weren’t the ones holding onto him right now.

  He finally loosened his grip as if I’d gotten through to him, and he let me close the door and walk around the front of the car. I could feel his eyes on me the entire way, watching me as if I would disappear should he look away. When I got in the car, he curled his hand in mine tightly, to the point that I had bruises for a week after. I didn’t let him go.

  I took him home. To my home, though he was over there enough it might as well have been his too. Enough of his stuff had accumulated in the nooks and crannies of my room and vice versa. I never needed to bring a change of clothes when I stayed over at his house because there was always something of mine there. I didn’t know if that was going to happen anymore, and a little piece of my stoic armor broke off as I helped him out of the car.

  I took him to my room and locked the door behind us to keep the world at bay for at least a few hours. I laid him on my bed and was going to spoon him from behind when he turned over, tears on his cheeks, eyes squeezed shut tightly. I gathered him up in my arms and pressed my forehead against his, trying to pull him into me as hard as I could so that he’d feel me there, that he’d feel the pressure, the heat, the sweat, the salt.

  “Paul,” he whispered. “Oh, Paul. It’s bad. It’s so bad.”

  “I know,” I said, because I did, even if I didn’t know specifics. “But I’m here. Okay?”

  He trembled. “You’re not going to go away?”

  I almost hesitated with my answer, because could any of us ever make a promise like that? Could any of us actually keep that promise? But if I hesitated, he would have seen it. He would have known. “No,” I said. “No I’m not going away. Not now. Not ever. It’ll be you and me forever.”

  “I’m lost!” he cried. “Oh God, I’m so lost. You have to find me! Please, Paul, you have to find me because I’m so lost.”

  I could feel the shudder that roared through him then because it caused my own arms to shake. He was twitching like he was seizing, and I panicked when he started making little choking noises in the back of his throat, like he couldn’t catch his breath, like his body had sunk into full-blown panic and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. I did the only thing I could think of doing: I rolled over on top of him, crushing his body with mine, covering him completely like I was anchoring him to the world even as it broke.

  All the air was crushed out of him, so much so that he couldn’t take in another breath to allow the sobs to come again. He stared up at me with those big eyes of his, our foreheads touching, our noses brushing together. I waited until I knew it was just starting to get uncomfortable for him, when I knew he needed to take a breath, and then I shifted slightly and he sucked in air and let it back out, warm against my face.

  His gaze never left mine when he said, “They’re dead, Paul. My parents are dead.”

  “I know,” I said, my voice rough. “I know.”

  “What’s going to happen to me? I don’t have anyone else. I don’t know anyone else.” Panic started to fill his eyes again. “There’s no one. There’s no one else.”

  “There’s me,” I said, pressing my lips against his forehead. He shook underneath me. “There’s me, and there will always be me. I’ve got you. I’ll catch you. I’ll worry for you. You’re not lost. You’re not lost because I’ve found you.”

  And he cried then, a soft sound that caused me to ache. He wrapped his arms around my neck and pulled me down and cried into me. I let him, because it was what I said I’d do. I let him break because it was what he was entitled to.

  He moved in with us that very night and he stayed until we went off to college. There were good days. There were some bad days. Some nights got to be too much for him and I would hear a soft knock on my door through the haze of sleep and he’d slip in through the shadows and crawl into my bed. Sometimes I held him. Sometimes we kissed, though it never went beyond that. It was not meant to be sexual. It was meant to be comfort, and I let him take from me all he could.

  He was my best friend, after all. I’d have given him anything.

  “WITHOUT you, I don’t think I would have made it,” Sandy said, after a time. His hands were still in my hair, though they’d stilled from the memory.

  I sighed. “You may be giving me a bit too much credit here.”

  “Only because you never give yourself enough. Seriously, Paul. How you underestimate your own worth is beyond me.”

  “I’m humble?”

  He snorted and began to play with my hair again. “I’m not sure that’s the right word for what you are.”

  “Meek?”

  “Hardly.”

  “Gregarious?”

  “Only when intoxicated.”

  “Epic?”

  “Most days, sure, but not quite.”

  “I’m running out of ideas,” I said tiredly.

  Silence.

  Then: “You’re a lighthouse.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “That’s the best way to put how I think of you, I guess.”

  “That’s… weird.”

  He rolled his eyes. “It’s poetic,” he said, slapping the top of my head lightly. “Lighthouses are there to help ships see through the dark. To keep them from running aground. That’s what you do, Paul. You’re like the beacon in the dark.”

  “You’re a poet, and you don’t even know it,” I told him, feeling slightly uncomfortable with his words. I wasn’t like that at all. I didn’t deserve that kind of praise. I was just… Paul.

  He moved his hands from my hair and cupped my face, not allowing me to turn away from those knowing eyes. “Without you,” he said fiercely, “there would have been no me. I was lost, and you found me. Vince might get lost too, and he’ll need you to find him. He’ll need you to be the anchor. He’ll need you to be the light. He’ll need you.”

  “I don’t….” But I didn’t want to finish that.

  “You will,” Sandy said, hearing it anyway. “You know how and you will.”

  I THOUGHT about going to the hospital again, or calling Vince, but I wasn’t sure I’d be welcome either way. I settled on sending him a text, though I didn’t know if he’d g
et it in the hospital if his phone was turned off. It felt woefully inadequate to send him a message that said if he needed me, to call me, but I didn’t know what else to say. It took me almost an hour to compose that masterpiece, and when I finally convinced myself to send it, I regretted it the moment I hit send, wishing I could take it back. I almost sent him another message, but I knew it would be followed by another and another, so instead, I tossed my phone onto the nightstand and fell back onto my bed and lay there in the dark.

  Sleep was long in coming and when it came, it was thin and restless.

  My phone ringing woke me later, just before midnight, pulling me from a hazy dream where I couldn’t move because I was stuck to a sea cliff, shining a flashlight into the water, ships bearing down on me at high speeds, waves crashing, winds blowing. I didn’t even look at the screen before answering, convinced it was part of the dream.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Paul?”

  “Sure.” I couldn’t tell who it was in my sleep-deprived mind.

  “It’s Darren.”

  This cleared me up right quick. “What happened?”

  “She’s gone. Two hours ago. It was faster than they thought it would be.”

  “I’m… sorry. Are you okay?”

  He sighed. “Yeah. I’m not calling about me.”

  “Vince.”

  “Has he called you?”

  “No. Is he there with you?”

  “No. He took off a while ago. He looked… wild. Confused.”

  “And you let him go?” I said, anger in my voice. “You let him drive away?”

  “We couldn’t stop him,” Darren snapped. “Not without it resorting to blows. He exchanged words with our father and… it didn’t go well.”

  “Where did he go?” I asked, getting up, planning on finding my keys.

  “He said he wanted to go to his home, but I’m at his apartment, and he’s not here. I don’t think he came here at all.”

  “His home? Where else could he have gone?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you’d heard from him.” He sighed. “Shit. I don’t know where else he could be, unless he went back to Phoenix for some reason.”