Jerkbait

by Mia Siegert

  I waited for Robbie to leave the room before I scrolled through his Facebook inbox. It wasn’t hard to find a convo with Raiden.

  Robbie: What up beauty? ;)

  Raiden: omg think im still drnk hahahaa

  Robbie: LOL!! Yeah, me too. I dunno about you but no regrets here. ;)

  Raiden: huh? y regrets when we were waisted?

  Robbie: . . . oh. Yeah. i guess that was stupid of me to write.

  Robbie’s text deteriorated with each message. I read everything, scrolling through Imgur memes and Youtube videos until a new message at the bottom popped up, written in perfect text:

  Raiden: I deserved to know.

  Even though it was hard to let things be, I made myself log out of Robbie’s Facebook after one last glance. I couldn’t prevent future messages, but at least his wall would be spared. Then I went into Word so I could try to write something. I only gazed at the unfinished dolphin story. I couldn’t concentrate. By the time Robbie returned from a shower, I hoped the worst would be gone. Especially as he logged on to his computer.

  Periodically, I’d glance at Robbie’s computer wondering what he was doing, or how much worse his Facebook page had become since he came out. But Robbie wasn’t in Facebook. He was in some chat room.

  “Do you mind?” Robbie said, not looking away from his screen. Embarrassed at being caught, I looked away from his monitor, but not for long.

  When Robbie got up to go to the bathroom, I leaned sideways to look at his screen. He was in a chat room for depression. A private window was centered on the screen. I knew I shouldn’t, but I was curious about what my brother was doing to cope. I scrolled to the top of the conversation and began to read.

  Jimmy2416: hey wanna chat?

  hockeylover15: Sure. ASL or something, right?

  Jimmy2415: LOL do people still ask that?

  hockeylover15: No idea. I haven’t used IM in years.

  Jimmy2416: LOL ok 24/m/pa you?

  hockeylover15: 18/M/NJ

  Jimmy2416: ur profile says ur 15

  Jimmy2416: ?

  hockeylover15: Oh yeah. That’s when I made my account. Guess I haven’t updated in awhile.

  Jimmy2416: riiiight. u in high school or college then?

  hockeylover15: High school. I’m a senior.

  Jimmy2416: cool

  Jimmy2416: gotta pic?

  I felt breath by my ear and turned around. Robbie glowered over me. “Uh . . . sorry,” I mumbled and moved back to my computer. “I didn’t see that much. Honest.”

  “You shouldn’t have seen anything,” he said bitterly.

  “I’m sorry.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “So, what’s up with the depressed chat room?”

  Robbie put his headphones on and blasted Robyn.

  Translation: Screw you.

  I kind of deserved that.

  “Hey Robbie?” He didn’t hear me. I cleared my throat and more loudly said, “Robbie?”

  “What?” He snapped as he pulled them off. Now, Ani DiFranco blasted through his headphones. If he was listening to her, he was definitely angry. I shrank back in my seat as Robbie glowered at me. I was pushing it too far. I knew I was. He made a huge sacrifice for me, and I couldn’t leave it alone. Like scratching at a scab.

  I braced myself for a punch and stammered, “What do you think’s going to happen at school on Monday?”

  Robbie looked at the computer again. He rubbed the back of his neck, then scratched through his bleached hair, more subdued. “You probably don’t have to worry. Straight dude who likes musicals is a lot less interesting than the gay hockey prospect.”

  I felt awful for Robbie, and wanted to talk to him more, or something, but I said nothing. Speaking would cheapen that sacrifice. Whatever I said would never be able to equal the kindness he gave me at lunch. I saw Robbie glance at me from the corner of his eye, like he was waiting, hoping, praying, that I’d say something, but I was still mute. I couldn’t give him what he wanted. I didn’t know how.

  Robbie needed help. Robbie was alone, and was pleading for help. And maybe he was pleading for help from me. Or maybe that was me just hoping he was. Wishing that maybe, somehow, through this mess, someone would think I was important, or worth getting to know. That maybe the favorite son would realize the forgotten son was a decent guy. That someone was actually grateful for me.

  But that wouldn’t ever happen. Not when I couldn’t defend myself against a bully and had nothing to offer my brother in exchange for his sacrifice. He wouldn’t be grateful because there was nothing to be grateful for. I would continue to live in his shadow, a disgrace.

  21

  On Monday morning before homeroom, Eric’s group approached. I turned to my locker and watched them out of the corner of my eye. Eric’s fists were balled. Praying they would pass me, I continued turning the lock. I had to pretend I wasn’t scared or else whatever beating I was bound to get would be multiplied.

  There was a clang-bam-bang, the sound of a body colliding with metal. I turned. Robbie was pinned by Eric. Robbie used his tongue to play with his fake lip piercing, turning the ball on the end of the ring around.

  “Heh,” he said with a smirk, lips curling up. “That all you got, bitch?”

  In that moment, I was convinced that Robbie was insane and I’d be peeling him off the ground. Yet, Eric released his shoulders abruptly and shoved past him muttering, “Homo.” Further down the hall, I locked eyes with Durrell for a moment before he turned away.

  “You okay?” I ventured to ask my brother.

  Robbie didn’t answer. He watched them walk away and rubbed his shoulder with his knuckles. His middle finger raised.

  “Robbie?” I tried again.

  But Robbie was gazing into the distance the same way I did when I got lost in musicals and short stories. Maybe he just didn’t hear me. Finally, without looking at me, he said, “I have to be.”

  The bell rang, and Robbie walked ahead of me to World Civilizations. I jogged to catch up with him. This was just the beginning of a long road we’d be traveling on, but Robbie didn’t want a traveling companion. Robbie wanted to go solo.

  I didn’t see Robbie in the cafeteria at lunch. There was an empty chair next to Raiden, like no one wanted to touch it. Robbie’s presence was a ghost.

  I kind of wished he was at the cafeteria. Eating alone really sucked, especially now. I spent half of lunch reading Louise Erdrich’s The Round House before noticing something in the corner of my eye. A bit of blue jeans. I looked up. It was Keisha.

  I closed my book. “Hey. What’s up?”

  “Nothing. I—” Keisha frowned a little. “I’m having a birthday party. Never got a sweet sixteen so I figured spectacular seventeen would do. I wanted to invite you. Robbie, too.”

  “You seriously want to invite us? What about Heather and Durrell and—”

  “Screw them,” she said. “Seriously, it’s my party. Not theirs. And I want you both there.” She paused then. “But if you think Robbie would get teased and try to, you know, hurt himself again—”

  My body turned to stone. “Who told you that?”

  “Heather. Why?” Keisha looked at me then put her hand on her mouth. “I wasn’t supposed to know, was I?”

  “No one’s supposed to know.” My fingers curled over my knees. “If it affects his draftability, my parents will literally kill me. Literally. God, he’d probably actually go through with it if he didn’t get drafted. Shit.”

  Keisha looked at the ground. The whites in her eyes glistened. My stomach ached. I didn’t want to make her cry. “I didn’t mean to yell. I just . . . Robbie’s given up so much for me.”

  “I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sorry. I just—I just wanted you to come to my party. And Robbie, too, of course. I mean, I don’t know. I’m sorry. I probably shouldn’t have said anything.�
��

  I didn’t know how to reply, or how I was supposed to feel. Keisha probably would get ripped on just for talking to me, even in passing, or standing at my table twisting her thick hair like she didn’t know whether she was breaking some unspoken rule—never talk with a friend’s former friend.

  “I want to go,” I said gently and looked Keisha in the eyes. I squeezed her hand, looked at her chipped, purple nail polish. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone this, but my parents want me to monitor Robbie at all times. If I can talk him into going, we’ll be there. I’m not sure I can, but I’ll try.”

  “I hope you can.” She looked over her shoulder and pulled her hand away abruptly. “I need to go.”

  Hurriedly, Keisha scooted back to Durrell’s table and sat next to Heather. Heather turned to her and said something that made Keisha wilt. My fists clenched under the table.

  I thought about Keisha, and her fears of being rejected by her friends. Fears of becoming an outcast, just like my twin. Keisha lacked courage, but was kind. She didn’t belong in that group. She didn’t belong with Heather.

  After finishing my homework that evening, I went through her Facebook. I read her interests section. She liked horses, Harry Potter, and astronomy. I thought for a long time about what I could buy her, but she probably was the type who bought anything she’d want. Material possessions wouldn’t mean that much to her. Handmade, though . . .

  I pulled up Word. It was hard to ignore the unfinished story about the dolphin people. That was the wrong sort of story to give her. I needed to make something special. Something with fluff. I began to write:

  It was late August when Sagittarius leapt from the skies to Earth. When standing in the clouds, he noticed a girl on land. She sat on a rock near a waterfall, playing a pan flute. The music was intoxicating. Sagittarius had thought he had loved once before, but the lady centaurs never had a song with that much emotion, or that much beauty.

  Fearlessly, Sagittarius landed near the woman. He opened his mouth to speak, but the woman was terrified of his half-human, half-horse body. “Please, don’t be frightened,” he begged. “I came from the skies because you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I’m in love with you.”

  “But you can’t be.”

  “But I am.”

  “But how could I love half a man?”

  Crushed, Sagittarius galloped away, head bowed down in shame, trying to tune out the sound of her voice crying, “Wait! Please, come back.”

  But he didn’t turn back. He became ashamed, ashamed of the creature he was. No. The woman could not love a beast. She was too divine.

  Sagittarius dipped his fingers into the trickle of a creek and withdrew a sword made of water, slicing the blade through his body. Cut in two, he now was freed from his body. The human half used his arms to crawl on the ground, delighted that now he wasn’t a creature, a beast, but although he had his mind, he no longer had his heart. His heart was in the horse half, a headless body that galloped over the hills, down ravines, unable to whinny, unable to do anything but obey his heart’s desire and run.

  It took ten days for the woman with her flute to find Sagittarius’s human half on the ground, a trail of dried blood behind him. She turned him over and looked at his broken face. “Will you love me now, even if I have no heart?” he asked, but his voice lacked emotion.

  The woman began to weep, grieved, wishing to undo her harsh words, for now this half-man—all human—had no heart, no emotion, nothing but the memory of being in love and needing to remain in love. She lifted Sagittarius’ emotionless torso and carried him across the Earth, trying to find the rest of his body. To find his heart, his feelings, his love.

  Finally, they saw the body lying down. Without a mind, the horse body ran itself to the point of breaking all four of his legs, quivering, belly rising and falling in shakes. Without a heart, Sagittarius had no sympathy for his other self—find me another body, then I can love you properly.

  But the girl had to remedy this. She cried as she placed the bodies together, sewing their skins together with thread from the long grasses. When she tied the last knot, Sagittarius started to weep, for with a heart, he felt pain at his broken body, his suffering legs that now were unable to move.

  “I do love you,” the girl said, handing him her flute as they kissed. The magic of their kiss formed a gateway to the skies, and without gravity holding him down, Sagittarius lifted into the sky. The girl held onto his tail as long as she could until the hairs snapped and she fell to the ground, crashing into the Earth, and became a waterfall.

  I printed out the story and had to dog-ear the pages since our stapler was gone. I’m not sure what my parents thought Robbie would do with a stapler, and didn’t ask either. At the top, I wrote, “Happy birthday, Keisha,” with a smiley face and signed with nothing special—just a dash and my name, Tristan. Boring, plain. Nothing memorable. But this wasn’t about being memorable. This was about a gift for someone who was kind. Someone who was a friend.

  I folded up the story in an envelope, licked it shut, and doodled a little birthday cake on the front. Then I put the letter in my backpack. I’d give it to her tomorrow, or slip it in her locker if I didn’t see her. I hoped she’d like it.

  22

  It took me a little more than a week to have the balls to slip the story through the vents in Keisha’s locker. Thinking about her was a welcome mental break from worrying about my brother, which was exhausting. But after slipping it in her locker, I cycled through feelings of worry and self-loathing, trembling through the first half of World Civilizations IV. It took a while for me to question whether maybe it wasn’t me that was shaking, but Robbie, sitting in front of me. Mr. Tan left the room and someone coughed, “Fudge packer!” Robbie turned his head. The expression on his face was nothing I’d ever seen before, a sort of anguish I didn’t know existed. I tapped the back of his shoulder and said, “They’re baiting you.”

  Robbie didn’t budge for several moments. Then he turned in his seat and looked at me. “I don’t know how long I can do this anymore.”

  “Do what anymore?”

  Robbie bit his lip, tugging his fake piercing inside his mouth. Then he turned his back to me. His shoulders quivered, like he was waiting for something to happen. An unknown horror he couldn’t share, that only Robbie could feel, could see. I needed to ask him about that, hound him about what was wrong, ask Mr. Tan if we could take a moment when he came back in the classroom, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know how. Maybe I could talk with him at lunch, giving myself a little extra time to figure out the right words to say. A few more hours until I was in a better mindset to deal with whatever answer I would receive.

  At lunch, Robbie was sitting at my table, not eating. “Aren’t you supposed to be gaining weight?” I asked as I set down my tray across from him.

  “What’s the point?” Robbie mumbled. “I’m not going to get drafted.”

  “Oh, come on. They’re not going to ignore you just because you’re gay.”

  “Just wait. You’ll see.”

  “By the way,” I began, “earlier you said something that kind of worried—”

  “Hey, Tristan!”

  Both my brother and I turned to the sound. It was Keisha. She wove through the tables to get to me, hair pulled up in a curlhawk.

  “Hey, Keisha. What’s up?” I tried to look calm and cool even though I wanted to run and scream and do everything I could to get away. Years ago, Heather had told me my original stories weren’t great. The fanfic was fine, but original stuff? Forget about it. It didn’t matter that Robbie said mine was better. He didn’t really read or anything. He wouldn’t know.

  I sucked in a breath and prepared myself for failure.

  Keisha stopped in front of me. I looked at her earrings instead of her face. “I just got your story,” she said, voice fast and excited. My head snapped up and I met
her eyes. Did she like it?

  “Story?” Robbie asked, quirking his brow.

  “You seriously wrote that for me?” Keisha continued, too excited to stop. “That was . . . that was just incredible! It was so good, seriously. You should see if you can get it published or something. It’s so pretty.”

  Warmth spread through my body. I kept my head low to keep from blushing and bit my lip the way Robbie often did. For years, Keisha was just someone I noticed in passing, on stage, but otherwise not at all. I’m not sure how. She just blended into the background when Heather was the star.

  I fumbled over my words, “Well, yeah. I mean, I wanted to do something special for your birthday. Seventeen only happens once, right? I guess I should have waited to give it to you at your party, but um—”

  “Screw that! Then I wouldn’t have been able to read it today!” She gave me a hug unexpectedly. “That’s like seriously the sweetest thing a guy’s ever done for me!” I stood awkwardly before I embraced her in return, not sure whether I should hug back with one arm or two, or how snug I should squeeze her, or where I should even put my hands since she was taller than Heather. I didn’t want to seem disinterested, but I didn’t want to seem clingy or creepy or accidentally grab her ass either.

  Over her shoulder, Robbie made a kissy-face gesture. But rather than nasty mocking, he was beaming. Like he was ecstatic for me. For a few seconds, I could forget he was depressed.

  She finally pulled back, happy, and maybe a little embarrassed, like me. “Just . . . thank you.”

  “I’m uh. I’m glad you like it, Keisha. Really.”

  She shifted her weight from foot to foot. “So hey, I was wondering . . . do you want to sit with us for lunch today? Robbie, too, of course,” she added quickly as an afterthought.

  Robbie shook his head and got to his feet. “Nah, you guys can go suck face on your own. I’ve got stuff to do.”

  “Robbie!” I hissed.

  Keisha laughed and blushed. “Well, I hope I’ll see you both at my party.”