Shit, shit, shit. What am I supposed to do? What’s Ken going to do?
I tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night, and I left early enough to be at school before the gates opened, before the sun was even up. I waited in the library in the nook I knew Ken liked to sit. I waited anxiously, terrified, looking out the window at every student as they came into school. I’d grown to love this place and the people here, despite all the shit I still loved it, and I was terrified.
“Alexander?” a voice called out from behind me.
I turned around, it was Kenneth. He was blatantly out of dress code wearing black jeans, an American Idiot t-shirt, and a black leather jacket, carrying his backpack in his hand.
“Ken, what are you doing?”
“You’re not supposed to be here Alex, why did you come to school, I told you not to, I told you not to,” he seemed flustered and angry.
I got up and walked towards him, “Ken, buddy, what are you doing, what’s up, talk to me.”
“I told you not to be here, I fucking told you not to come to school!” he was shouting and pacing, grabbing his hair.
I put my hand on his shoulder and spoke as calmly as I could, “Kenneth, just sit down, take a deep breath and talk to me,” he pushed my hand away, “Ken. Please, it’s me, just calm down, breathe, and just talk to me. Okay? Please?”
“You weren’t supposed to fucking be here, Alex!” he shouted, his eyes wide and crazed, but beginning to well with tears.
“Kenneth,” I said as calmly as I could, “please.”
“I just can’t fucking do this anymore, Alex, these fucking people, these fucking girls, I don’t deserve this! And they don’t deserve to be happy when I’m miserable, when they made me miserable. Alex, they’ve forced me for years to live a life of utter loneliness, and rejection after rejection after fucking rejection, I’ve never even kissed a fucking girl. Fucking sluts!”
“Ken, please, just breathe, calm down.”
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down! I’ve done everything right, I’ve tried so fucking hard, and I’ve gotten nothing for it, nothing! They deserve to suffer for it.”
“Suffer? What are you talking about, Ken?”
He gripped onto his backpack.
“Ken, what’s in the backpack? Tell me what’s in the backpack,” I pleaded.
“Retribution.”
“What?” I asked.
“I’ve suffered too much, I’ve been such a good guy for too long. Fuck them, fuck the friend zone, fuck those stupid fucking cunt sluts!”
“Ken, Kenneth, please. Would you hand me the bag?” no one else was anywhere near this part of the library, that’s why Ken liked coming here, but that also meant no one was hearing what was going on. I’m terrified in this moment, and I don’t know what I’m doing or what Ken is capable of right now.
“They have to pay for this.”
“Ken, tell me what’s in the fucking backpack.”
“Alex, I’m asking you to go, now, please. Just go.”
“Ken, give me the ba—”
“You weren’t supposed to fucking be here!” he shouted.
“Kenneth Chester. Look at me,” he did, my eyes beginning to tear up too, “please.”
Peace will win, and fear will lose.
He looked up at me and into my eyes, I didn’t breathe for that moment that seemed to last forever. His eyes became glossy as they welled with tears. He slumped to his knees and began to weep with his face in his hands.
I quickly sat down next to him, leaning against a bookshelf and moving the backpack to the other side of me away from him, it was heavy. I put my arm around him and pulled him close, and he cried into my shoulder. Heavy, heaving sobs.
“I can’t do it, Alex, I’m so sorry,”
“It’s okay Ken, it’s okay,” patting him on the back, clutching him for his life.
“The world is just too much with us in it,” he said, taking another sobbing breath.
“What?”
“I just wish I wasn’t here, Alex, I wish I could just kill myself.”
“Kenneth, please, no you don’t. No, you don’t. Because, listen to me, it gets better. It does get better. Two years ago, I never imagined things would have turned out the way they did for me, I never would have. Ken, it gets better, and I can’t say that enough, it does get better.”
He just bawled in my arms until he ran out of tears. And when he finally did, I picked up the bag, stood up, and reached out my hand. I pulled him up and walked with him to the parking lot and to my car, and I drove in the direction of his house.
“Hey, Ken?”
He was staring at his feet, sniffling, “Yeah?”
“I’m hungry, want some food?”
He let out a single breath of laughter and smiled, it was good to see him laugh. I went through the drive-through at In-N-Out, and we ate in the parking lot there. He seemed happy like he just remembered another thing on the long list of things worth staying alive for. After we finished I called his parents and told them about what had happened, they rushed home immediately. I drove Ken to his house and walked him to the door, his parents were waiting outside, anxiously. They looked relieved when they saw me. I handed Ken’s dad the backpack, and he reached for it, but I kept my hand on it and looked at him.
We’ll always be children in our parent’s eyes. Those faint, vignetted memories of our young childhood years are as fresh to them as our current image is to ourselves. To us, being who we are now as informed by our past is all we can be, but to our parents we are that continual amalgamation of infant to adolescent, and sometimes they find it hard to piece together that gap that begs them to ask the question, ‘whatever happened to my sweet little boy?’ That was the heartbreak in the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Chester when I returned Kenneth to them that morning.
“Thank you,” Ken’s father said, his eyes quivering, Ken’s mother sobbing next to him.
I handed off the backpack, and Ken hugged his mother.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her.
“No, Kenny, I’m sorry, we’re sorry too,” Kenneth’s father said as he hugged his wife and son.
Kenneth turned to me and smiled through tears.
“Never again, okay Kenneth? Please. You can always come to me.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Don’t mention it.”
“Thank you.”
CHAPTER 22.
Kitchen Sink/Migraine
I KNEW THAT THINGS were far from being over. I didn’t go back to school that day, I just went home and slept until the afternoon. I drove back to campus after school ended and found Lila. I kissed her right then and there not caring about the PDA, and I told her that I loved her with all of my heart. We sat down, and I explained what had happened that morning and she seemed awestruck.
“Alex, you shouldn’t- you can’t keep doing this Alex. Not for him.”
“What?” I was taken aback. She was upset now.
“You could’ve died, Alex, he’s not your responsibility, and you shouldn’t have dealt with this on your own.”
“Lila—”
“Why didn’t you call the cops? Alex, you could have died!”
“I’m sorry, I know but the police would have killed him.”
“Alex, he could have killed you. You have to tell someone, you have told someone, right?”
“I know, his parents know, and I emailed your dad and I emailed Dr. Kindlon, she’s the school shrink that helped me a lot two years ago.”
“You n
ever told me about that.”
. . . . .
I’d talk to Dan that night, and he’d congratulate me, which I didn’t think I deserved. And then we’d talk more about the road trip that became more real with each passing day. I’d sent an email to Mr. Darcy as well as Dr. Kindlon, who would both contact Ken’s parents about what to do next, and it was finally not just my responsibility anymore. Ken swore to his parents that it would never happen again, and he was quickly scheduled to see Dr. K regularly, with the school’s awareness, keeping silent tabs on his wellbeing. The incident was dealt with quietly and behind closed doors, much like a teenage pregnancy, and the school as a whole was none the wiser. And just like teen pregnancy, prevention is a hell of a lot easier and better than treatment.
. . . . .
When Ken came back to school the next week, I told him that I was the one that reached out Dr. Kindlon, not his parents like he was upset about, I told him about how I tried to kill myself sophomore year and failed, back when I’d wear my hospital wristband like I’d gotten it at Coachella. I told him how Dr. Kindlon was the reason I was here today after I gave in and went to see her. I told him that he could trust her. Therapy ex machina.
“It’s not weakness admitting that you might need help or need to talk to someone, it’s strength,” I told him as I walked him to the door of the good doctor’s office, “you have to go in. But I’ll be out here when you’re done.”
CHAPTER 23.
A Martyr For My Love For You
AFTER A FEW WEEKS of going in to see Dr. Kindlon, I saw a noticeable difference in Ken. In the way he talked, in the way he carried himself, in his smile. And I was so happy for him.
Ken sent me the first thing he’d written in a while.
I’m so close to being done with my sophomore year of high school, but I really don’t care anymore, I just don’t want to go back there for a long while. I’m happy now for the first time in such a long time, and I know I don’t need anyone but myself to be happy.
When I was leaving school today, I saw Livi walking with Toby. She was wearing tight bell-bottomed jeans that went to her shoes (she was either wearing a pair of those brown leather calf high boots or UGGs like she always did), and a billowy white linen blouse tucked into the jeans, with a big leather belt wrapped around her waist. Her golden-brown copper hair was down and reached past her shoulders. She was wearing a pair of big sunglasses; her pink iPhone was to her ear, and an iced whatever from Starbucks was in the other hand. A step behind her and to her right was Toby: gangly, small, and awkward, wearing his signature beret ball cap (which he doesn’t take off indoors) and a preppy polo and jeans; in his hands was a designer water bottle that he was fiddling with. She was uncaring of her surroundings, just talking on the phone, trivially. As I walked by, Toby dropped the water bottle in front of himself, and it rolled in front of Livi’s feet; she stopped, kicked it aside, and kept walking, all the while on the phone. Toby awkwardly picked it up and walked fast to catch up and tag along. What animal has she become? Just another prep school girl; when she wasn’t texting she was on Facebook, her eyes rarely lifted from her phone anymore. That is not the Livi I knew.
I hate everything about you, why did I love you?
Odie et amo.
I still do long for Livi, and I have never felt for anyone how I feel about her. I still can’t stop thinking about her. I just don’t know. I wish I could say that there is a girl for every guy, and that we all have someone out there, and that we will all find love; but that’s not true, that’s just not true. So I need to learn to be happy with myself before I can even start to think about being happy with someone else.
The regrets are useless
She’s in my head.
I’ll never turn back time.
Thinking about her now I wonder if it is really her I love or the idea of her that I created. That girl with the cell phone, kicking Toby aside, maybe that is her, and I just kept pushing that reality harder and harder away. The more I find out about her, the real her, the less there really is; but still I hold the perfect image of her, and I love that still. But I know that’s not her, and even if it was, I’m not with her, and I won’t be. And I move on…
The other day I found out that the group, my group, had a journal, and a secret Facebook group and chat without me. The journal was what hurt the most, because how could they not have known how much I loved to write. This journal, it was passed among them weekly, and each person would write an entry to the others and pass it on to the next person. It sounds so great, and like they’re all so close. Finding out about all of that really hurt, but I’ll move on. It’ll be okay.
Well I guess this is growing up.
April 1st came around, and I opened the letter telling me I’d been accepted to Cal on scholarship, and I knew I was done for the rest of the year, and I knew my parents finally had something to be proud of me for. But, of course, thinking about going to college opened up a whole unavoidable and looming can of worms for Lila and me to talk about. But I didn’t want to talk about it, and I didn’t want to think about it. I just wanted to make the absolute most of the time we had before I graduated. Prom was coming up soon anyway too, and I knew I had to do something grand for this love of my life.
I worked all weekend on writing, preparing, and buying items for a scavenger hunt that I’d send her on around campus on Monday. That morning I got to school early and hid the gifts and notes all around campus and then gave her best friend an answer key in case she got stuck. Dan and I got into a semi-bad habit of not going to many of our classes anymore (last semester seniors and all), but our teachers liked us so we got away with quite a bit. And so, I pretty much had the entire day free to watch her go through the scavenger hunt and make sure things went as planned.
I’ll spare the details of the scavenger hunt because it’s long, so I’ll just say that it was damn cute, and I waited after school by her car with a bouquet of roses for her. She did a good job solving the hunt and arrived by her car with all of her friends.
“Lila, will you go to prom with me?”
“Yes, Alex, I will go to prahm with you,” she said as she laughed and kissed me for the Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram photo op her friends had been waiting for.
She had been elated by the whole thing, and I was over the moon that I could do something like that for her.
. . . . .
The seniors and their dates all took pictures together at Balboa Park before the dance, which was being held in downtown at the House of Blues. I can’t describe how beautiful Lila looked in her dress. I also can’t tell you how ludicrously incongruous it was seeing so many parents taking pictures and sending their freshly made up daughters off to get fucked. But hey, that’s high school.
The dance was a lot of fun, it was really a night for the seniors, and I really felt like a whole unified class, and I loved everyone there, I really did. Especially Lila, who I clutched and kissed as we swayed to “Same Love,” the slow dance of the night.
At the after party, the first I’d really ever been to, what should have been the whole senior class (everyone was invited to this one very generous senior’s giant Mt. Soledad house), was really just most of the populars and their dates to start with. But then more people came, and soon enough I saw the whole grade come together in this way too. I just wish it hadn’t taken until the end of senior year for it to happen.
I shared a joint and a bottle of some flavor of Bacardi with Lila and a circle of the cool kids, passing each around. One of those cool kids, Chris, used to bully me when I first came to Twain, but he wasn’t a bad guy, and he certainly wasn’t now. We all talked about memories and the future. He was going off to USC, others of them to TCU or SMU, and the like; all going to that kind of school for
that kind of person. Chris passed around some cheap cigars to roll blunts with, I pocketed mine.
I remembered a morning on a school bus to a field trip, I had to sit next to him, Chris Justo-Serpa, sitting in alphabetical order. He had been nothing but mean or unkind to me since I’d first gotten to Twin; he and his friends would tease, pick on me, call me names like fag and retard, or just ignore me in the locker room, or at lunch, or just around, as you’d expect him and his group to do. On that bus ride, trapped next to each other for presumably an hour, I listened to music through dollar store earbuds on an old iPod nano, first gen. Sometime into the silent trip, as I changed songs on the small device, Chris tapped me on the shoulder and showed me the screen of his iPod, a new one, with the same song displayed on the screen, as a gesture; he smiled at me, I smiled back. We still went our separate ways though, through the years in high school.
In that circle at prom, he took a pull from the bottle and handed it across to me, and I did the same. We shared a smile that thought of what things might have been like if things had been different, if we’d been friends, if some differences had been put aside, knowing now that there was never any difference between us to begin with in such a small school. But we went our separate ways again.
Lila and I got drunk as well as high (my first time, but not hers) along with the rest of the party, and we held each other and made out in the cold grass, along with the rest of the party. Lila looked at me, and then looked at every other couple hooking up, and in that moment she knew that we were that couple, the one that the others were looking at. We were the unexpected pairing that, once paired, seemed like it should have been so expected. She could see us as the high school power couple that we were, almost comically, like F. Scott and Zelda at their best. But in her heart, she also knew that we possessed that intangible element that is so seldom found in other high school couples (especially on prom night): love. And as we held each other that night and made out apart from every other couple doing the same thing, we were conscious that we were not only a handsome pair but a unique one, distinctly apart from the lesser lights that fluttered and chattered elsewhere. We knew that what we had not only felt special but was special. We also knew that nearly every other couple felt that what they had was love or some form of the same too, but somehow we felt that we knew that our feelings were deeper, truer, and more adult. We could each see that we were holding the person that we could very well spend the rest of our lives with, and then we fucked in my car like every other couple would that night, only we did it knowing that to us, and in truth, it was different; we were in love.
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