by Marie Sexton
“Fine,” he said at last. “Just do whatever the hell it is you need to do.”
The doctor examined him at last, but not until he and the nurse had stopped to put on the stupid rubber gloves. They took X-rays and ran a slew of tests, all the while giving him that look. It was the same look he’d seen thrown Cody’s way at school. The same look people had started to give him. He flashed back on his first conversation with Cody about it, and the way Cody had said, “It’s an STD. You even know what that stands for? Sexually. Transmitted. Disease.”
Nobody bothered to ask him if he’d actually had sex with Cody, or if Cody could possibly be infected. No. In a town as small as Warren, there were no secrets. One of the nurses or the receptionists had undoubtedly recognized Cody. Maybe she even had a son or daughter at Walter Warren High School. Somehow, she knew the rumors, and rumors were all it took to make those telltale rubber gloves come out.
Rumors were all it took to make his dad sit on the other side of the room, his jaw clenched tight.
In the end, they told him nothing was broken. They prescribed some mild painkillers, bed rest, and plenty of fluids, and gave his father a list of things to watch for in the coming days, then sent them home.
Nate sat in the passenger seat, an ice pack from the ER over one eye even though it was already swollen most of the way shut. His dad had a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. Nate didn’t think he’d ever seen him so mad.
“There was never a girl, was there?”
Nate closed his one good eye and leaned his head against the passenger window. “No.”
“You told me you were in love.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not! Whatever this is—”
“I know what I feel, Dad.”
“You and Cody—” His words ended in a strangled choking sound.
Nate felt like he should apologize, but for what? For loving Cody? He wouldn’t apologize for that. “I know you’re disappointed. I know you’re probably surprised. I was too, but—”
“Do you realize the risk you’re taking? You could catch AIDS!”
“Not from Cody.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Dad.” He had to force the words past gritted teeth. “One of us would’ve had to have had sex with somebody else in order to catch it. Somebody who already had it. Somebody other than each other—”
“Shut up!”
Nate turned to look at his dad, stunned at the venom in his voice. “We don’t even do what you’re thinking about, and even if we did—”
“I said shut up! I don’t want to hear about the sick things you do! I can’t even look at you right now. I can’t—” He shook his head. “We’ll talk about it later. Once I’ve had a chance to talk to your mother. To calm down a bit. I don’t know.”
Nate was surprised his dad’s rejection didn’t hurt more. He felt like maybe he should cry, but he was out of tears, his heart a cold, hard lump inside his chest. It was just as well, anyway. Bad enough that his dad knew about Cody. Best not to have him think Nate a pansy too.
He went to his room as soon as they got home and stayed there, curled on his bed, listening to his dad’s voice rise and fall as he talked on the phone. He wanted to talk to Cody, but there was no way that could happen. Not yet, at any rate.
He eventually fell asleep. He awoke in the darkness and slowly got to his feet.
He hurt even worse than he had before.
He surveyed the damage to his face in the bathroom mirror. His left eye was swollen shut, the other a livid shade of purple. His upper lip was split and swollen. Bruises stained his face from his forehead to his jaw. His rib cage hurt like crazy. Trying to pee brought tears to his eyes, and seeing the blood in the toilet was scary, even though the doctors had told him it might happen.
He changed into clean sweats and a T-shirt and peeked out his bedroom door. The house was dark and silent. His dad was in bed.
He snuck downstairs. It was two o’clock in the morning, but who knew when he’d have another chance? He took the phone off the cradle and crept into the pantry, closing the door behind himself. His heart pounded as he dialed Cody’s number. It was entirely possible Cody’s mom would answer. It was possible she’d yell at him for waking her up, or for getting her son in trouble, but he had to talk to Cody.
Cody picked up before the second ring. He didn’t even say hello. Just, “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
“I’m peeing blood, I can’t see out of one eye, it hurts to breathe, and my dad isn’t talking to me.” That about covered it. “How about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Now you’re the one who’s lying.”
Cody made a sound that might have been a laugh. “My mom’s actually being pretty awesome about the whole thing, but I feel like shit. This was all my fault—”
“Don’t be stupid. It wasn’t your fault. We just weren’t thinking—”
“If I had fought harder—”
“You did the best you could.”
“It wasn’t enough.”
It sounded like Cody was trying hard not cry, and Nate closed his eyes, holding his aching ribs. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’m fine. They let me off easy, to be honest.”
“I’m glad.”
“I’m not,” Cody said. Nate wanted to protest again, but Cody didn’t give him a chance. “I have your calculus book.”
Nate laughed, then regretted it. It made his ribs hurt. “A bit of late homework is the least of my worries.”
“Nate, listen to me. We have to cool it. We can’t let them see us together. You can’t drive me to school anymore. You can’t sit next to me in social studies—”
“Stop. Please. I’m not having this conversation right now. I wanted to hear your voice, but I don’t want to argue.”
Cody sighed. “Okay.”
“I love you.”
“Oh Jesus,” Cody whispered, like some kind of prayer. “Nate . . .” Cody never said the words back. Nate had a feeling he’d never said them to anybody in his life. It didn’t matter. He knew well enough how Cody felt. Even if he hadn’t known already, he could hear it in Cody’s voice.
“I’m supposed to stay home for a day or two, but I’ll see you Friday, at the latest.”
He felt Cody’s reluctance in the silence that stretched between them. Nate understood. As tenuous as it was, the voice on the other end of the phone felt like the only thing they had.
“Cody?”
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Okay. See you Friday.”
Nate snuck back into the kitchen and put the phone on the cradle. He made a peanut butter sandwich, which he washed down with a glass of milk before going upstairs, brushing his teeth, and crawling into bed.
Despite everything, he felt better.
Cody’d been on the receiving end of ass-kickings before, so when he showed up to school on Tuesday with a black eye and a split lip, he was prepared for the curious stares and the whispers and the occasional snickers as the story of his humiliation spread through the student body.
What he didn’t anticipate was the way a small but fierce group of people suddenly seemed to rally in his defense.
It started in PE, when two boys who’d never seemed to notice him before made a point of saying hi in the locker room. One of them even went so far as to ask Cody to be his partner in tennis. Cody was too stunned to do anything more than agree.
In metal shop, Jamie Simpson’s younger brother silently picked up his project from the table he’d shared all year with Tom Watson and Billy Jones and carried it over to the open spot next to Cody. He didn’t say a word the entire hour other than to ask Cody to pass him the pliers, but his steadfast scowl seemed to speak volumes.
The two Jennifers from Orange Grove stopped by his locker during a passing period, both of them looking embarrassed. “Ni
ne on two’s bullshit,” one of them said quietly. “I don’t care what they think you did.”
They went back to ignoring him after that, but they seemed to be ignoring Brad and Brian and the rest of the Grove boys who’d been in the gang just as much.
At lunch, Jimmy Riordan and Amy Prescott, who had apparently become a couple at some point in the last few months, tracked him down and invited him outside for a cigarette with them.
“I would have warned you, if I’d known,” Jimmy assured him as they smoked in a recessed doorway behind the gym, where they were sheltered from the wind. “I mean, a couple of weeks ago, Larry started making noise about teaching you a lesson now that Logan wasn’t around to protect you, but I thought he was just talking out of his ass like he always does.” He shrugged, ducking his head in embarrassment. “He hadn’t said anything since then though, so I figured he’d forgotten about it. But I feel like an ass now for not telling you.”
Cody wasn’t really sure how he was supposed to respond. He settled for, “It’s cool. It wasn’t your fault.”
“How’s Nate?” Amy asked.
Cody took a drag off his cigarette to buy him time. He couldn’t get the image of Nate’s bloody, bruised face out of his head. Then again, it felt like some kind of betrayal to Nate to admit how bad they’d beaten him. “I imagine he’s pretty sore today,” he said at last. “But he’ll live. He should be back at school later this week.”
“That was just a chickenshit thing to do,” Amy said. “Nine on two? Is that true?”
“Yeah,” Cody reluctantly admitted. “It’s true.”
It made him feel like more of a wimp, having to talk about being beaten up, but as the day wore on, he grudgingly accepted that it was working in his favor. For the moment at least, whether or not he and Nate were gay seemed to have taken a backseat to the fact that it hadn’t been a fair fight. This was Wyoming, after all. Two men beating each other up in the name of some backward idea of honor was one thing, but kicking the shit out of somebody who was vastly outnumbered? That apparently stank of cowardice. In a week or two, every student at Walter Warren High School might go back to calling him and Nate fags, but in the meantime, nobody was going out of their way to pat the bullies on the back. Lance Donaldson even stopped him after math, hanging this head a bit.
“I never should have gone along with it,” he said. “Brad and Brian— Well, they made it sound more like they were just gonna scare your friend. I didn’t really expect them to take it so far.”
It wasn’t quite an apology, and Cody wasn’t sure he would have accepted it anyway, but he had to give the guy points for effort.
The last surprise came from Christine Lucero, who found him at his locker at the end of the day and threw her arms around his neck.
“Oh my God, my brother is such an asshole.”
Cody could only stand there, stunned. Christine had always been decent to him, but she’d certainly never hugged him before.
She finally let go of him and stood back to meet his eyes. “Are you okay? Is Nate okay?”
“Uh—”
“Listen, I have the car today because Larry’s at wrestling practice. How about if I give you a ride home?”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I know I don’t need to, but I want to. Besides, you practically live next door.”
“Practically next door” was a bit of an exaggeration, since she lived in the more respectable part of the trailer park, but it was also true that it wasn’t much out of her way. It occurred to him that she might just be leading him into another ambush, but he decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. Her disgust with her brother seemed genuine enough.
She led him through the parking lot to a gigantic, four-door Buick that had definitely seen better days. The upholstery on the ceiling had been stapled back into place every few inches, and hung in pillow-like squares between the staples, reminding him of the inside of a coffin.
“I’m sorry about my brother,” she said as she started the engine.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I know, but still. I honestly don’t know what his problem is. I mean . . .” She sighed and backed out of the parking space, not speaking again until they were headed toward the parking lot exit. “He hates living with our mom, and he’s constantly saying how he’s gonna go live with our dad. But our dad don’t want us now any more than he did when we were kids, and I think it just makes Larry so mad that he doesn’t know what to do. It’s like the only thing he can think of to make himself feel better is putting other people down.”
Cody frowned, considering her words as they turned toward the trailer park. “I guess I hadn’t ever thought of that.”
“You should hear him at home. He’s always going on about the ‘niggers’ and the ‘spics’ and the ‘ragheads’ and the ‘fags.’ I mean Jesus, like it ain’t bad enough we’re trailer trash, barely making rent most months, then he has to go talking like that and make us look worse? And then to team up with those assholes from the Grove, as if they’re his friends. As if they don’t make fun of him when his back is turned. They don’t like him any more than they like you. Only difference is, he kisses their asses.” She kept one hand on the steering wheel and with the other, reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette. She put it between her lips and pushed the car lighter. “You know why he hates you so much?”
Cody blinked, wondering if he was really supposed to answer that. “Because, uh, well . . .” He was debating how wise it would be to say, Because I’m gay. It felt like everybody knew by now anyway, but it still seemed scary to say it to anybody but Nate.
The lighter popped, and she pulled it out and held it to the end of her cigarette. “Two reasons,” she said as she returned the lighter to its plug. “One: I think it pisses him off how you don’t care what anybody says, you know? Like, he’s trying so hard to make you realize he’s better than you, in his mind at least, and you refuse to acknowledge it. And for some reason, he really needs for you to acknowledge it. And then when you and Logan started being friends . . .” They turned into the trailer park, and she slowed down, inching over the speed bumps. The car’s shocks were shot to hell, and the back bumper slammed down onto each bump as they passed, no matter how slow she went. “Larry was always trying so hard to impress Logan, and the harder he tried, the more Logan didn’t care, you know?”
“Uh, no. I had no idea.”
“And that’s kind of the second reason he hates you, I think.”
“Because Logan and I were friends?”
“Well, yes and no.” They drove under the tracks, and she stopped next to his mom’s Duster. She threw the car in park, unhooked her seat belt, and turned to face him. “He’d kill me for saying this, but I almost think he had a crush on Logan. I mean, he’d never admit it, but Larry tried so hard to impress him, and it was almost too much. Like, there was this desperation there that I never quite understood. I’m starting to wonder if maybe he’s more like you than he wants to admit.”
Just when he thought she couldn’t surprise him more, she went and said something like that. “You’re saying you think Larry’s gay?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged, looking as if she regretted having said so much. “Maybe not. Maybe he’s just desperate to fit in.”
They fell silent. Outside, the wind blew through the trailer park, rushing across the bare plains. He could hear raised voices from inside Kathy and Pete’s trailer.
“It explains about Nate, though,” Christine said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I invited him over one night before homecoming, when Larry and I were having a party. Took him into my room—”
Cody’s heart clenched at the thought.
“—but he just freaked out. Went running out of there like somebody was chasing him.”
“So, nothing happened?” He wondered if she could tell how much he hoped that was the case, not because there was anything wrong with Chris
tine, but simply because he hated the thought of anybody else being intimate with Nate.
“He told me it was some religious thing, and then when he went to homecoming with Stacy, I thought maybe he was Mormon.” She laughed and shook her head. “First time that’s ever happened to me.”
“You mean, first time a guy’s told you no?”
“Exactly.” She frowned and pushed her cigarette butt out the narrow crack in the window.
Cody pulled out his own pack of cigarettes, just so he’d have something to fidget with. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Doesn’t it ever bother you, all the things people say?”
“You mean everybody calling me a slut?”
It seemed odd that he was the one blushing, but he nodded. “Yeah.”
“Does it bother you? They talk about you just as much.”
Fair point. He wanted to tell her no, but he felt like he owed her the truth. “It does sometimes. I try to pretend I don’t care, and sometimes I can ignore it. But yeah, it still pisses me off.”
She turned further toward him, curling one knee under her on the bench seat. The car continued to run, the engine a soft hum that couldn’t quite drown out the shouting from Pete and Kathy’s trailer. “It bothers me too, but not for the reasons you probably think.”
She stopped, chewing her lip, and Cody waited.
“It’s just unfair, you know? Logan probably had sex with half the girls at our school, and that was okay. Nobody ever had a bad thing to say about him. Brian Anderson’s the same way. Brad Williams—hell, the day after I had sex with him, he quit talking to me altogether. Went from calling me twice a day and inviting me over and buying me little presents and telling me he loved me to pretending I didn’t exist, just like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Ever since then, he and Brian snicker every time they see me, like somehow I should be ashamed of screwing them, but they don’t need to be ashamed of screwing me.”