Anything Could Happen

by Will Walton

  For Mom and Dad, who carry me in

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Let me tell you about the first time I knew for sure I was in love with Matt Gooby.

  We were in church. Reverend Greene was winding down her annual September 11th sermon, saying, “Hold fast to that which is good,” her blond bouffant wobbling as she leaned toward the congregation with a pleading sincerity. “Our eternal home,” she said, “is really only just half a step away from any of us. And the moment when it comes time to take that half step—we can’t know when, obviously—but chances are it might not be pretty. Chances are the timing won’t feel right. And, folks”—I loved that she addressed us all like that—“I’m just trying to be straight with you, but the time to hold fast to that which is good is now. It wasn’t yesterday. It’s not nine years from now. It’s not when we retire. Or when we graduate. It is now. That which is good is now.”

  Everyone was dead quiet then. Just a few creaks coming up from the saggy wooden pews. I tried not to look around because I got the sense that maybe some people were crying.

  “So take the hand of the person next to you.” Reverend Greene smiled. “And grip down. Go on, grip down on them hard—it won’t hurt ’em!”

  A couple of chuckles throughout the sanctuary, the tension slightly cut. Mom, on my right, grabbed my hand so hard my knuckles shot off a popping sound. Then she leaned in close and whispered, “I love you so much, my Tretch.” When she pulled back there was some wet left on my face, and I just thought, Good grief, Mom, don’t cry, and shrugged my shoulder to my cheek to brush it off, planning to make a face at Matt or roll my eyes while I did. Something to show him that I was, you know, over it.

  But when I glanced over at him I saw that his eyes were shut so tight, like he was determined not to open them. And his left hand was gripping the edge of the pew so hard. Hold fast, I thought, and then, Hold fast because life is fast, which seemed like a logical conclusion.

  That’s when he slid his right hand along the edge of the seat, found mine, and squeezed. It sent this gentle buzzing feeling right up the back of my neck, and with it not a complete thought yet, but the essence of a thought, the kind that gets lost between bigger, louder thoughts. The kind of thought that’s barely louder than a feeling itself.

  His thumb slid into the pocket of my hand. Or maybe it clamped down over my throat, square over the Adam’s apple. Or maybe it plunged straight into my chest. I don’t know. Reverend Greene was inviting us now to close our eyes for a moment and meditate, and like that was the cue, Mom’s hand let go, and all around me was the dull sound of hands dropping or being dropped.

  Matt’s hand did not let go.

  I closed my eyes. I felt everyone else on one side of me—my mom, my dad, and my brother. And on the other side—Matt, whose smile with the gap in it made me want to hug not just him but his entire world close to me, who somehow in that moment made me believe that bringing both his and my worlds together could happen, like there wouldn’t be any struggle involved.

  You’re in love, Tretch—the thought came to me as Reverend Greene called the meditation to an end, saying, “Oh Lord God, please help us to hold fast to that which is good—which is everything—in this lifetime.” When she said, “Amen,” I let go of his hand. Physically, I mean, I let go of his hand.

  The rest of me held on.

  Now it’s over three months later, nearing the end of December.

  I’m still holding. On to what, I’m not entirely sure.

  Today in school, during last-period math, a note gets passed around.

  It says Tretch Farm + Matt Gooby inside a little heart.

  Matt and I just kind of shrug it off. The joke is old. It doesn’t really matter to us, not even when we hear snickering, not even when Mrs. Cook intercepts the note from Spencer Finch’s clenched hand at the front of the classroom.

  Mrs. Cook asks me to stay behind after class. She doesn’t ask Matt because, like most everyone, she assumes Matt is gay because he has two gay dads. (He isn’t.) She also believes I’m some hero for being his friend, I think.

  “Now, Tretch,” she says. She has on these weird puffed sleeves under a pair of corduroy overalls. “I know how something like this must feel.” She scratches a red spot on her arm. “But I think this kind of joking has gone on long enough.”

  You’re right, I think. It has.

  “You’re a good kid who doesn’t deserve to have these kind of”—she moves the scratching to her chin—“accusations being hurled at you.” She sends spit flying with her enunciation of “accusations,” and I’m hit.

  “I know it must upset you,” she says.

  Well, not that badly, I think, wiping my face.

  “And it must upset your parents.”

  It would, I guess, if they knew.

  “So I’d be willing to get to the bottom of this if you wanted.” She holds up the note and I recognize the handwriting immediately. There’s no need to get to the bottom of anything.

  “Bobby Handel,” I say. “That’s Bobby Handel’s handwriting.”

  Mrs. Cook’s eyes get big. Her nostrils flare.

  “But don’t say anything,” I plead. “Please.”

  “But, Tretch, I want to—”

  “I know you want to help, Mrs. Cook. But, honestly, Bobby Handel’s dad and my dad—”

  “Are business partners. I know.” She nods sympathetically.

  “Right,” I say. “So I just try to keep the peace.”

  “But, Tretch, the school has a zero tolerance policy for bullying.”

  “I know, I know.” I hold up my hand. “But it’s not really bullying, Mrs. Cook. You know?”

  Mrs. Cook puffs out her cheeks, mimicking her sleeves. Then she sighs. “I guess, if you say so.”

  “Plus,” I say, “it’s winter break now. Nobody’s even gonna remember this little note fiasco when we get back.”

  She nods, then smiles. “Well, tell your family I said have a merry Christmas, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Mrs. Cook.”

  “Oh, and your grandparents, too!”

  “Oh, I will.” I stand up and pull the desk into place.

  “Will you be seeing them over break? Your grandparents?”

  I turn around again and force a big smile. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be sure to tell ’em for ya.” My backpack rests lightly against my shoulder, all my textbooks stowed in my locker for the break. I give Mrs. Cook a final wave, and I am outta there.

  Matt is waiting on me in the hallway when I emerge. I pretend not to see and walk right into him, nudging him against the water fountain.

  “Whoops, sorry,” I say, pressing a little closer before pulling away. Just because, in that moment, I can.

  “Hey, hey, what’s the big idea?” He lands me a flat tire on the back of my sneaker, so I have to stop and readjust. “What’d the Cookster say? She ask you about the note?”

  “Yeah. She wanted to do something about it. I told her no harm, no foul.”

  “Bobby Handel write it?”

 
; “Yessir.”

  Matt cracks a smile. “Tretch Farm,” he says. “Sticking up for bullies since the playground days.”

  “Like a champ.” I pump my fist in the air. We’re walking down the hallway toward the exit, past rusted lockers and piles of discarded papers. “Matt, in approximately nine steps we will be freed from this place for an entire winter break. How does that make you feel?”

  “It makes me feel—” He takes one giant step forward and kneels in a runner’s pose. “Pyow!” He lights off in a dead sprint, barreling through the double doors of Warmouth High. As soon as he’s down the front steps, he turns around and gives the building the middle finger. Two middle fingers, actually.

  “Matt!” I say.

  “School’s out, baby!” he cries.

  Mom always says, when she hears someone talking smack about the Goobys or about gay marriage being legalized and stuff, “What people do in the privacy of their own home doesn’t bother me.” But talking about the Goobys still makes her kind of uneasy, I can tell. That’s how I’ve been Matt Gooby’s best friend for a year and a half now without ever going over to his house.

  As if staying away from Matt’s dads could stop me from being who I am.

  I mean, it’s a little too late for that.

  A lot of the time, I try to picture the worst thing that could happen, if the word got out about me. Like the whole town of Warmouth exploding in a bright red fiery flame caused by rioting civilians who’ve finally discovered my big gay secret. Or my family might implode—like a submarine when it gets too deep and the pressure’s too high.

  I imagine telling them. I play the scene out in my mind. We’ll be in our living room, hardwood with the Chinese-print throw rug, the record player, the TV, and the coffee table (minus the glass vase I knocked over that time I was practicing my dance moves). Mom and Dad will be there, and Joe, too.

  “Mom and Dad, I am—” I will say to them.

  Then I’ll flake out. “—so hungry. Is there anything to eat?”

  “Sure, Tretch. Check the fridge. I just bought some turkey.” Mom will be wearing her turtleneck, the color of darkened Pepto-Bismol, Dad his hunting jacket. I will look at its camo print and hear the sound of duck calls in my ear and feel guilty. Mom will be sitting on the couch, Dad in his easy chair. I won’t focus in on either of them, but instead on the blank spot on the coffee table where the glass vase once sat. Mom’s never noticed it missing. Dad neither. I’ve always thought that was weird.

  “Tretch, is something wrong?” Mom will ask.

  “Yes,” I’ll say. “There’s something I’m not telling you.”

  “What, Tretch?” Dad will lean forward in his seat. “What is it?”

  “I practice dance moves when you guys leave the house. I choreograph dances as a hobby.”

  “Oh,” Dad will say. “So that’s all that thumping I hear coming from your room sometimes.”

  “Once when I was practicing I knocked over the vase that used to sit right there on the coffee table.”

  “Oh.” Mom will shrug. “We’ve noticed that was gone for a while.”

  “We just assumed you or Joe got hard up for cash and sold the thing on eBay.” Dad will chuckle. “It didn’t mean a thing anyway, just a cheap wedding present.”

  “I’m gay,” I’ll say.

  They’ll stare blankly. And then I’ll hear a pop! And another. The walls will shake and then stop, and I’ll realize—we’re in the submarine, and the pressure has gotten too great. The walls are going to cave in and crush us. We are going to die. “What’s happening?” Joe cries. A window breaks: one, two, then three. “Save yourselves!” I shout to Mom and Dad and Joe, and they obey, jumping out the windows as the walls come straight at me.

  Yes, I’ll think dramatically, it’s better this way.

  But, truthfully, it wouldn’t happen like that.

  Nope.

  Truthfully, Mom, Dad, and Joe would willingly go down with me. They would go down with me any day. No matter what I do, or say, or whatever person I could be, or might be, or am. That’s what makes it so hard to tell them. That they’ll suffer it all for me. The sideways glances at church, at the grocery store and PTA meetings, the shoves in the locker room (“What you looking at, faggot?”), the insults that somehow fly right past me but I fear would peg each of them smack in the gut. They would quietly break friendships with everyone in town who spoke gay slurs, who were anti-gay, anti-Gooby. They might stop church altogether. They might feel the need to move. They would suffer it all and never breathe a complaint.

  Because they love me.

  “What you thinking about, Tretch?” Mom will ask me.

  And I’ll say, “Nothing, Mom.”

  Meanwhile, I feel like all my thoughts are shooting out from my eye sockets like slides on a projector screen: Matt haloed by the sun coming in through our English class window; Matt’s dads dropping him off at school, and Matt introducing me; Matt reaching for my hand that day in church and keeping it there; Matt getting into the shower after gym class; Matt lying in my bed as I do homework at my desk, my heart feeling so full, sometimes so full I can’t sleep at night, sometimes so full it aches, like I’m being stepped on.

  She can see them all.

  Or maybe she can’t.

  I mean, if it’s not all that obvious to Matt, then maybe it’s not all that obvious to anyone.

  “So what are you doing right now?” A hot fog shoots from Matt’s mouth as we cross the road to Barrow Street in our first hour of winter break.

  “I don’t know. What do you want to do?”

  “Okay.” He grabs my shoulders, looking me straight in the face, which makes it hard for me to not imagine kissing him. “Here’s what I was thinking. One, we should go get hot chocolate and celebrate exams being over.”

  “You want to go to Mabel’s?”

  “Yes.” Matt smiles. I know what the smile means, too. Amy Sinks works at Mabel’s Drop-In & Dine, the best place to get hot chocolate in town. (Supposedly the secret is that they mix in Cool Whip and half-and-half with the cocoa powder.) She’s only fifteen like us, but somehow she’s been working there since September. Joe says they’re probably paying her under the table. (“Sweet,” Matt said when I informed him of this, like it made her some kind of undercover cop.)

  I’ve always known Amy Sinks, and for as long as I’ve known her, she’s been beautiful—and I mean that in the “drop dead” sense. She’s got this long dark brown hair that’s curly at its ends (naturally, too) and bright, December-birthstone eyes. I can remember the first time Matt saw her. It was only the second day of eighth grade, his second day in town, and we were sitting at a lunch table all by ourselves in the cafeteria when she walked by with a couple of her friends. She was laughing and shaking her head, making her curls bounce.

  Matt nudged me and asked, “Who is that girl?” And I said, “That’s Amy Sinks. Her dad owns the gymnastics place in town. Sinks’s Young-’n-Fit.”

  Matt laughed. “What’s it called?”

  “Sinks’s Young-’n-Fit,” I repeated. I guess that’s a pretty weird name for a gym for kids, but by that point it had never occurred to me to question it. Basically every kid in town goes to Sinks’s Young-’n-Fit when they’re little. If you’re a girl, you usually take ballet lessons. If you’re a boy, you do gymnastics.

  “Pretty funny,” Matt said. “But she does look fit.” I turned and watched Amy Sinks swinging her hair.

  “Yeah, I guess.” Already I felt jealousy like a hot dry coal warming my stomach.

  Nowadays, the coal’s not really all that noticeable. I mean, it’s there. I can still feel it. But now it’s just kind of a dull lump, something I carry around.

  “So what’s the second thing?” I ask now. We’re walking along Barrow Street. “You made it sound like you had two things.”

  “Oh! What are you doing tonight?”

  I shrug. Truth: Even if I did have plans, I’d cancel them in a moment if he asked me to. “I don’
t know. You got a plan?”

  “King Kong is showing at the Old Muse tonight.” He leans toward me and claps his hands. “You gotta come. It’s the 1976 version with Jeff Bridges. So cheesy, but so good.”

  I crack a smile. The Old Muse is an old theater in Samsanuk that Matt’s dads moved down from New York to restore. Now they show all these ancient, artsy, and foreign movies there. I’ve actually never been, but Matt tells me about it all the time. He always ends up saying, “You gotta come sometime, man! Get your parents to bring you!” Samsanuk’s a little bit of a drive, though, about thirty minutes away, which is far enough for Mom and Dad to conveniently tell me no every time I ask them to take me. Joe went once with his girlfriend, Melissa, and when he got home I asked him to tell me all about it. “It was really cool,” he said. “I liked it a lot.” But he didn’t say anything about the movie, or whether he’d seen Matt’s dads there.

  “That sounds incredible,” I say now to Matt. And it does. I can’t think of anything I’d like to do more.

  We talk about exams for a little bit. Matt is worrying about his geography grade. “Aw, come on,” I say. “You know you did fine.”

  “Maybe not this time, though, Tretch.” He sounds like he’s really in doubt. “But no matter!” He spreads his arms out as he jumps over a frozen puddle. My heart leaps a little as he does. “Because it is winter break at last!” He spins around like Ebenezer Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol, then pounces off the curb into an empty parking space, beneath the sign that reads FOR EXPECTANT MOTHERS. Across from us, Warmouth’s downtown scene is revving up, people going in and out of stores, emerging with bags and boxes, spending big money.

  Mabel’s Drop-In & Dine sits on the corner by the crosswalk. As we swing in and start rubbing our hands warm, Matt immediately scans the place for Amy Sinks. I remind myself that my version of what’s happening is not the same as the real version of what’s happening, and I need to switch over to the real version quick. For your sake, I remind myself. This is for your sake, Tretch.

  Mabel’s is practically empty, except for a few high schoolers I recognize but don’t know, some nervous-looking ladies with shopping bags in their laps and scarves around their heads, and an old man—one of my granddad’s friends. I look at him and nod as Matt and I seat ourselves at a booth. The old man tips the brim of his hat and winks. Matt catches me nodding and looks over his shoulder.