The Thunder in His Head

by Gene Gant

  “Mom. I already had this conversation with Dad.”

  “I know. I’m not sure how to talk with you about this, anyway. I could help you to understand things from a girl’s perspective, but there isn’t a girl involved here, so I don’t know what I can really contribute. Just be careful. And I’m not just talking about diseases and condoms. I want you to be careful of each other’s feelings and try not to hurt each other. Okay?”

  I smiled at her, feeling greatly relieved. “Gotcha.”

  AFTER dinner, I helped Mom clean up the kitchen. Then, as usual, we retreated to our separate sanctuaries, she to her home office and me to my room. Sprawling across the bed, I pulled out my cell and called Dwight.

  He answered after the first ring. “Hey, man.”

  “I got the gift today,” I said. “Dude, you are crazy.”

  “Is that your way of saying thanks?”

  “Dwight, man, this is great.” I turned the game disk over in my hand. “I would have spent the whole weekend trying to talk my dad into buying this for me. Seriously, thanks.”

  “I’m glad you like it. I got your text. We can’t go out Friday night. My team’s playing Hazelhurst, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah. I forgot.”

  “You can come watch me play. Game starts at four thirty. Maybe we can do something afterward.”

  “That sounds good to me. I’ll bet you look good, all suited up in your helmet and shoulder pads.”

  Even over the phone, I could feel him blushing. “Get outta here. You like skateboarding?”

  “Haven’t done it in a while, but yeah.”

  “There’s a skate park over in Germantown. I was thinking we’d go there Saturday and hang out.”

  “Sounds cool.”

  “By the way, I got a job. Starting Monday, I’ll be working with my dad and my godfather. They have this literary agency, and I’ll be doing the run-and-fetch thing for them.”

  “You sound thrilled, man.”

  “I need the money. And my bosses will make allowances for my class and football schedules, so it’s actually a pretty good deal.” Dwight’s tone mellowed. “I can’t wait to see you again.”

  “Yeah. Same here.” The idea of holding his hand and kissing him again was exciting. Damn it, he was cute, and he definitely had a hot bod. Next time I got him alone somewhere, maybe we’d get to be completely naked together. The idea made my heart jump. His voice sounded deeper, more confident over the phone this time. I got this image in my head of a taller, older guy, and that was exciting too.

  “Hey, I gotta go. I just finished practice and I’m about to head home. I try not to talk on my cell when I’m driving because it freaks out my dad and I promised him I wouldn’t do it. And I’ve got a bunch of homework to do, so I probably won’t be able to talk to you again tonight.”

  “Okay. It’ll be hard, but I’ll survive until I hear from you tomorrow.”

  “Good. Hey, Kyle?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got something I need to tell you.”

  My body tensed. “And what is that?”

  There was a pause on his end. I heard him draw in a deep breath, and a second later, he blew it out. “I think I’d better tell you in person, okay? There might not be time after the game Friday, but we’ll definitely talk about it Saturday.” And with that, he said goodbye and was gone.

  I lay there, holding the dead phone to my ear. My brain prickled with annoyance. I hated for people to do that, tell you they’ve got something all-important to reveal, then say they’ll tell you later. Why not just keep your mouth shut until the time is right and then say it? Now I’d spend the next two days worrying over what the hell Dwight wanted to tell me. We’d barely known each other a week. What could be so big or so terrible that he couldn’t just say it over the phone?

  The next hour passed in one long blur. I turned on the television. My brain didn’t pick up a single thing from the show that was on. My thoughts were on the people in my life and the complications they carried around like loads of dirty laundry on their backs. I could feel apprehension building in my chest. It made me restless.

  Ordinarily when I felt that way, I’d go out and shoot hoops, but my hurt hand made that problematic. I picked up my cell phone and went to the Internet. My intention was to surf upcoming sci-fi flicks, but somehow, I wound up in that gay superhero chat room again.

  I hadn’t even gotten my bearings when his first instant message popped up.

  GayGoon: Hey, it’s the hot doc. I’ve been waiting 4 you 2 show up.

  GAYGOON and I had been IMing back and forth via Jabber for about an hour when a text message came through. Our increasingly vivid communication had given me an aching erection, and I figured it was time for me to back off. (Although, truth be told, that was the last thing I wanted to do.) The text presented me with the perfect excuse. I told GayGoon I had to go, he begged me not to, I told him I was about to give myself a hand job and clicked off Jabber without another word to him.

  I pulled up the text message. It had come from ABCD, and the origin phone number had been blocked, so whoever sent it wanted to remain anonymous. It contained only a link. I followed the link and found myself on YouTube.

  The title of the piece was “Footsies.” The video was of me walking rigidly down the street with my backpack over my shoulder while those two bastards yelled their insults at me. My hard-on shriveled in seconds. Damn. That fool with the cell phone had been taping everything. In the video, my fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly, and my body was shaking with the rage I was feeling at the time. They taunted my tremors as fear, and with me continuing to walk away without a response, it looked as if I was indeed afraid of them. Then came the part where the guy stuck his boot in my butt, I froze, and the video ended.

  “Jesus…!” I clenched my teeth, hoping Mom hadn’t heard me. That piece-of-dirt video had probably already gone to every kid at school. God. If people thought I was scared, if people thought I would run away, it would start all over again. The name-calling. The fag jokes. The taunting. I might as well hang a sign around my neck that said “Kick my butt.”

  I turned off the cell phone and stuck it in my nightstand drawer to keep from hurling it into the wall.

  FRIDAY morning, I slid out of bed, showered, pulled on my school uniform, ate the breakfast laid out for me on the kitchen table, kissed Mom goodbye, grabbed my backpack, and walked out of the house at seven fifteen, as always. At Catalina Avenue, I turned south instead of north and walked the nearly two miles down to Highway 65, the main thoroughfare outside our subdivision. There I slipped into McDonald’s, ordered orange juice and a strawberry-banana smoothie, and planted myself at a table in an empty, isolated corner.

  I pulled out my cell phone and played Solitaire as I slowly sipped my beverages. The phone beeped twice as text messages came through. I ignored them. Along with the humiliation over my YouTube debut, a vague anxiety had kept me awake much of the night, the kind of feeling I used to get when I was younger and believed that unspeakable horrors waited in the vast, dark empty spaces of my parents’ house. I had paced my room, trying not to wake Mom, fighting the urge to scream and bang my head against the wall.

  I still felt that way in the morning. There was no way I could deal with school. One wrong word, one funny look from anybody, and I would crack in some gruesome way and get myself suspended. Or maybe what Mom feared most would happen: I’d get arrested. And there were things my body wanted that I couldn’t really name, but they all seemed to be wrapped up in my lingering attraction to Reece. Dwight, as cute and muscled up as he was, just couldn’t give me what I needed at that moment. If I couldn’t be with Reece, I had to be with someone like him, a man as towering and fine as he was. A man like GayGoon. The next moment, I found myself pining away for Dwight. Damn. Sometimes it felt as if my head would implode from all the crazy, shifting feelings I kept having.

  There were times when I wished I weren’t so tall and intimidating, when I wished I w
ere smaller and more attractive, my body more suited for being cuddled. GayGoon made me feel that way last night. He went on and on about how hot I sounded just in the way I texted, and he made comments about the things we could do to each other if we hooked up. When he mentioned how slow his little town was, I asked him where he lived and found out that he was just across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas. Without thinking, I told him I was in Oakland. After that, he really started pushing for me to meet him. Part of me wanted to take him up on it. What could be wrong with just seeing what he actually looked like?

  Mom was working at home today. I hung around Mickey D’s until eight thirty. That was the time Dad usually made it to work. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and hiked over to Dad’s town house. Once inside, I went to my room, stripped down to my boxers, and lay across the bed. I was slowly getting used to jacking off with my left hand. I’d done the self-pleasure thing a lot the past couple of nights. It usually helped me feel relaxed and saner, if only for a little while.

  My Friday passed in a fuzzy, repetitive cycle of masturbating, sleeping, playing video games, and eating. But none of it eased the nagging, undefined impulses boiling through my psyche.

  AT THREE, I cleaned up behind myself, wiping out every bit of evidence that I had spent the day at Dad’s place. Then I took a quick shower. I’d planned to get out of here before Dad got home and hoof it over to Hazelhurst to catch some of the football game.

  I had just stepped out of the shower when the doorbell rang. Cursing, I hurried into my room. Most of the clothes I kept at Dad’s were dirty, and I was left having to dig through my summer stuff. As I pulled on cargo shorts and a T-shirt, the doorbell rang again. I rushed up the hall, wondering who the hell it could be. At the front door, I peered through the peephole and saw Stephanie.

  I opened the door. “Hey, Steph.”

  She stood on the porch with the key in her hand, as if she were just about to unlock the door, and let herself in. I recognized the thick gray cardigan she wore over her turtleneck and jeans; it was one of Dad’s. “Oh, hi there, Kyle. Are you out of school already?”

  “Uh… yeah. I came straight here after I got out.” It was only fifteen minutes after three. The only way I could have made it here from school in fifteen minutes was on a pair of wings.

  Stephanie seemed distracted. “Is your dad here?”

  “No. He doesn’t usually get home until after four.” The odd look on her face was puzzling. “Come on in. You guys got plans for this evening?”

  “No.” She stepped into the living room and shut the door. “Have you talked to your dad?”

  “Not since last night. He told me that we’re gonna visit my grandma this Sunday. Why? Something wrong?”

  “I don’t think so. It’s just that I haven’t heard from him in two days. And that’s unusual. We talk every day.” Stephanie had brought the mail in. She placed it on the coffee table, and then she perched on the arm of the sofa. “I’ve left messages, but he hasn’t returned my calls. And I called the office a little while ago and his secretary said he’d left for the day, so I thought he might be here.”

  Stephanie was trying very hard to look casual, but I could tell she was concerned, and that worried me. “Sometimes he stops off to shoot pool or goes to the gym after he leaves work.”

  “I know. He’ll show up sooner or later.” Her face opened into a bright smile. “Well, I don’t have anything to do right now. Would you like to take in a movie?”

  “A friend of mine is playing football tonight. You remember Dwight? I sort of promised him I’d come to his game.”

  “That sounds like fun. Is it okay if I come with you? My car’s outside. I’ll let you drive us.”

  “That’d be great. The game starts at four thirty. Let me grab a jacket and some shoes and we’ll go.”

  I went to my room, dug around on the closet floor, and found the slim-fit jeans I’d worn on my first date with Dwight. They weren’t in too bad a shape for having lain around in a pile of dirty laundry for several days. I took off the cargo shorts and pulled on the jeans. After slipping into a pair of sneakers, I grabbed my jacket.

  “Okay, I’m ready,” I said as I returned to the living room.

  Stephanie looked me over, one corner of her mouth going up in a knowing smile. “I thought you didn’t like those jeans because they make you look gay.”

  “Yeah, well. They’re growing on me.”

  Seventeen

  HAZELHURST was about seven miles away in a little unincorporated business district called Southern Pines. It sat in what was essentially a patch of woodland, an impressive, three-story Colonial-style building that looked more like some plantation manor house than a school. To the left of the school, further back among majestic, gold-leafed trees, was the gymnasium, and beside that was the athletic field.

  It was almost four o’clock when Stephanie and I arrived in her ancient Jetta. Two yellow buses from Somerset were parked in front of the gymnasium and empty. The team was in the locker room getting suited up. The parking lot was filling rapidly, and people were streaming toward the athletic field.

  As I wove through the lot in search of a parking space, I spotted Dwight’s Corvette in a slot close to the gym. An instant later, Stephanie said, “Hey, there’s your friend.”

  I stopped the car and looked over to where she was pointing. Not too far from the edge of the parking lot, Dwight stood under a covered walkway that connected the gym to the main school building, a big, black canvas bag dangling from his left shoulder. He was holding his helmet and shoulder pads in one hand, which made him look sexier than ever.

  With him was a very slim, very pretty girl about my age who was wearing the Somerset girls’ uniform. The two of them were standing face to face. They seemed rather cozy, leaning toward each other, foreheads almost touching, whispering back and forth between themselves.

  Jealousy shot through my head like a spike. Dwight might not have been the taller, older dude that my body sometimes craved, but he’d said that he liked me. He’d almost stripped me naked on my mom’s living room couch, and after that, we’d practically had sex in my bed. So why the hell was he all in this girl’s face?

  Once again, Stephanie’s psychic powers came into play. “It’s probably not what you’re thinking, Kyle,” she said reassuringly. “She could be his sister.”

  I looked at the girl again. Even in her school uniform, she was a hottie. She wouldn’t look like a sister if you draped her in a habit and dropped her in a nunnery.

  The girl’s shoulders hitched suddenly in a spasm of grief. She put her hand over her mouth, stifling a sob, or maybe a curse. She was none too happy with whatever Dwight was saying to her. He began stroking the side of her face with his fingers, a light, tender motion that, to me, conveyed a lot more than just comfort. Suddenly, he dropped the bag and football gear and wrapped her in his arms, kissing her on the cheek.

  I slammed the gearshift into park and shoved the door open. “Excuse me, Stephanie.”

  “Kyle, wait….”

  I got out of the car and marched across the parking lot toward the embracing pair. Dwight’s face was turned away from me, but he must have sensed my approach. He raised his head and backed a step away from the girl, looking at me. His expression was the kind you might see on someone who’d spotted a snarling grizzly closing in on him.

  The girl looked at him, puzzled by his behavior. She wiped at her eyes with her hand, and then her eyes followed his gaze to me.

  “Dwight, what’s up, man?” I was trying to be all homeboy casual about it, but I could hear the what-the-hell attitude in my voice.

  Dwight’s gaze flitted uneasily, and with great embarrassment, between me and the girl. “Hey, Kyle. Glad you could make it. The game will be starting in a bit.” He gestured toward the athletic field. “Go on out and find a good seat.”

  “Dude. Where are your manners?” I said reprovingly through my forced smile. “You’re supposed to introduce me and this very
pretty little lady.” Dwight’s mouth opened and closed, and for about twenty seconds, that was all he seemed able to manage, because he just stood there, looking as if he wished he could disappear. So I turned to the girl and said, “Hello there. I’m Kyle Manning. Friend of Dwight’s. And who are you?”

  She was looking at me as if she wished I’d disappear. “Excuse me, but Dwight and I are having a private moment here.”

  “Yeah? Dwight and I have had a few of those too. There was this really good one just this past Saturday on my mom’s couch—”

  Dwight stepped up quickly, putting himself between the girl and me. “Vivian,” he said over his shoulder to her, “go find a seat. We’ll talk after the game, okay?”

  The girl frowned at him. “After the game? Dwight, what—?”

  “Vivian, please. Just go.”

  Vivian fixed both Dwight and me with the same withering glare. Then she turned and walked away through the trees, heading for the athletic field.

  I waited until she was out of earshot. “Okay, who the hell is Vivian?” I snapped.

  “My ex-girlfriend,” Dwight replied quietly.

  “From what I just saw, she doesn’t look so ‘ex’ to me. And I could be wrong, but in all the conversations we’ve had, I don’t remember hearing anything from you about a girlfriend.”

  “I was gonna tell you, man. I just had to find the right time.”

  “And I suppose the right time would be after you marry her, huh?”

  “I’m not lying to you, Kyle. Vivian and I aren’t together anymore. We broke up right after Christmas last year.”

  “If you broke up, why are you still hugging and kissing on her?”

  The look on Dwight’s face suddenly became pleading. “Look. This isn’t the way I wanted you to find out about all this. I wanted to do it in a quiet place when we’d have plenty of time to talk. I’ve got to get inside in a few minutes and suit up—”