The Before Now and After Then

by Pen Name Publishing

  Dad moved closer into mom, wrapping his arms around her. Lightening flashed in the distance and two seconds later thunder roared to warn the night. The skies opened and began pouring rain, instantly drenching Mom and Dad. They didn’t move and for a second, I thought I might have seen them kiss. Lightening flashed through the sky again, breaking their embrace as Mom turned and ran into the shelter of our house. The door closed behind her as the Porsche revved up and back out into the street, carrying Dad once again back to our old house.

  I walked over and closed my door, locking it so Mom wouldn’t come in. I didn’t feel like being bothered. I turned on the lights, threw my backpack in the corner and took off my clothes, grabbing some sweat shorts and a t-shirt off the floor, putting them on instead. Although my room had a king sized bed, huge windows looking over the lake and a 60 inch TV, it completely lacked anything that would let anyone know it was my room. There were no pictures, no posters and nothing personal whatsoever.

  When Sam and I had shared a room, our walls were littered with magazine clippings, pictures and posters. I kept all of those things, neatly folded, in a plastic box in my closet. Sometimes I thought about bringing it out and looking at everything, but I thought it would hurt too much.

  I turned on my fan, which I always had to sleep with directly aimed at my face, and got into bed. The only thing good on TV was Titanic, which I had seen about 100 times but decided to watch it again anyway.

  Lying back on my bed, the movie faded out into the background and I started thinking about Rusty. I had known I was gay for a long time, probably since I was five or six, but had never really had a crush on a boy before. Actually, that wasn’t true. I had known boys who I thought were cute, mostly Sam’s friends, but I never, ever thought it could possibly turn into something real. This felt different. Everything from Rusty’s smile to the way he gave me the gum to the way he looked at me made me think that he might be gay too.

  I had known other gay kids in school, but I had never come out to them out of fear that being associated with them would bring more attention to me. At my old high school, there had been this one kid named Jared who had tried to be friends with me forever, even cornering me in the bathroom one day where he told me he knew I was gay and that we should be friends. I never spoke to him again. Looking back, I guess I was too ashamed to admit I was gay and tried everything possible to make it not be true, including going on some double dates with Sam. Usually the girls were just interested because I looked exactly like him, so they thought we would be exactly alike as well.

  One day, Sam and I were driving around with Griffin in the back of the jeep, his nose sniffing the wind, when Sam turned to me and said, “I know you’re gay Danny, and I don’t care.” He just kept driving and turned back to the road. “I mean, I care, because you’re my brother, but I don’t think of you any different. I guess I’ve always known.”

  That was the first day we had started making the plan to tell our parents. I often thought if we hadn’t come up with that stupid plan and I had just been confident enough to tell our parents on my own then maybe Sam would still be alive.

  Neither of us really thought our parents would have a problem with my being gay, which they didn’t. They never even talked to me about it again. Instead, they left hidden clues to remind me that they were OK with my being gay. Mom bought me several gay movies and books and secretly put them on my bookshelf. When I randomly discovered them, I tried to watch the movies and read the books, but I just didn’t relate. Sure, it was cool to see other teenage guys like me, fall in love with other teenage boys, but the stories always ended up being about teen suicide or something horribly tragic. My life was already tragic enough. I wanted to read a book about other guys my age who just happened to like other guys.

  This made me think about Rusty again. I wondered about the woman who picked him up from school, assuming it was his mom. I wondered if the kids in the backseat were his brothers and sisters, how many there were and how old they were. I wondered if he had a dad around and if not, where he was. I wondered what his room looked like. I wondered if his bed was small or big like mine. I wondered if he slept in pajamas, boxers, sweat shorts or nothing at all. I wondered a lot of things, including if he were wondering about me.

  And then somehow I drifted back into Titanic, which by now was almost over. I found myself watching the scene where the ship was sinking, the sad music was playing and the old couple was holding each other in their bunk while the mom was reading to her kids. That part always gets to me; people knowing they are going to die before it happens. I always wondered if Sam knew he was going to die before the drunk, soccer mom went through a red light in her mini-van, flipping the jeep and killing all of them. I wondered what music was playing in the jeep at the exact moment it all happened. As bizarre as it was, those small details were what made me the saddest because they made it all seem so real.

  Since the day Sam died, I thought about everything differently. Even watching a movie like Titanic, which we had both seen multiple times, made me wonder if Sam had any kind of recognition the last time he was watching it that it might actually be his last time to watch it. I wondered if the mind was trained to have some sixth sense for death.

  Suddenly, my phone started buzzing from the front pocket of my backpack. I had forgotten I had put it there during my session with Neil. I got out of bed quickly, grabbing the phone and jumping back into bed.

  It was a text from Cher.

  “Hey freak,” the message read.

  “Hey,” I typed back.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Watching Titanic,” I typed.

  “Blows. Hate that movie. They all die except that bitch”

  “Haha.”

  “I’m thinking about coloring my hair.”

  “Oh,” I wasn’t very good at texting. I had really only ever texted Sam and my parents. People thought it was funny when I said I didn’t have any friends and wasn’t very good at this social interaction stuff, but it was the truth.

  “Do you think green or black?” Cher asked.

  “I like the purple,” I answered.

  “Uhhh…it’s burgundy”

  “Oh.” I responded.

  “Oh. What’s that?”

  “What?”

  “Oh.”

  “I like it purple.” I typed.

  “Thanks for your honesty. Wanna hang out tomorrow after school?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I wanted to hang out with Cher but it seemed easier to just say no and avoid having to deal with my awkwardness. The thought of hanging out with someone without Sam made me nervous. I only hung out with his friends if he was there. Otherwise, they would sit in the living room and talk to Mom while they waited for him to come home. No one ever really paid me attention.

  “And I’m not taking no because you’re a pussy and don’t wanna deal,” she typed.

  “OK.”

  “Ughh. You frustrate me. But I love you beautiful boy.”

  The only person who had ever called me beautiful was my mom.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Beautiful boy. It’s my nickname for you,” she answered.

  “Why?”

  “Becuase duh. Gotta go. See ya tomorrow!”

  I scrolled back through the messages for a few seconds, smiling to myself before remembering I had also put my own watch in my backpack. I got both my watch and Sam’s and synchronized both before laying them on my nightstand where I watched their neon hands tick slowly.

  Outside, the storm began to rage harder, sending pellets of hail against my window while the wind whipped our house with tree limbs. I turned the channel just as a rerun of Family Guy was coming on which had been Sam’s favorite show. I turned the channel again, finally deciding on Roseanne. I had seen every episode so many times I knew them by heart. This one was ironically about a tornado. I didn’t really want to watch it, but didn’t feel like falling asleep in silence either. I kept it on and rolled ov
er, listening to the voices I knew so well help me find comfort in my own room, thinking about how fictional characters from television shows felt more like close friends than people I actually knew. From my bed I could see the rain pour over the lake, like a giant fan of drizzle wafting over the water.

  As I started to drift to sleep, I thought back on the day and how much had changed in just twenty-four hours. I had started a new school, made an enemy, made a new best friend and found a crush. It was probably the most normal twenty-four hours I had lived in the last six months. Smiling, I started to fall asleep, but not before wondering what it would be like to run my fingers through Rusty’s thick black hair and kiss his wonderful lips.

  Chapter Six

  The summer when we were twelve, my mom, Sam and I stayed with Uncle Alex for the entire month of June in a house he was renting in St. Barths. Every morning, the four of us would walk down to this little makeshift bakery on the pier and get breakfast. I became obsessed with their delicate lemon poppy seed muffins topped with fresh raspberry jam. I would order four with a hot chocolate and eat them while I dangled my feet from the end of the pier, feeding crumbs to the brightly colored parrotfish swimming below my feet.

  Ever since that summer, whenever Mom knew I was sad or having a hard day, those little muffins would show up in our kitchen.

  After I got ready for school, I walked downstairs and found a plate of four tiny poppy seed muffins and a heaping mug of hot chocolate waiting for me on the kitchen island. The night before, I had just assumed Mom had gone to bed at the same time I had, but she must have left during the storm to go to the grocery store to buy the muffins from the bakery.

  Mom’s laptop sat next to the sink, tuned to Pandora, and she hummed some old Bob Dylan song while she washed the dishes. She must have heard me come in, because without turning around she asked, “Still mad?”

  I sat down at the island and gently pulled back the paper wrapper from my first muffin before smearing the top with a heavy layer of jam.

  “I guess not.”

  Mom turned off the water and turned around, putting her hands on the island. “We were just doing what we thought best,” she sighed. “We just want you to feel like you can talk about it.”

  “What’s it? Sam or the gay stuff?”

  “The gay stuff?” Mom replied, slightly shocked. “I don’t know what you mean by that.” She looked at me with sadness in her eyes while I stuffed the entire muffin into my mouth. It was too early to talk about it. “If by ‘the gay stuff’ you mean the fact that you’re are gay, then yes, the gay stuff.”

  I started layering another muffin with jam. “I don’t feel like I need to talk about it. It doesn’t really bother me.”

  The funny thing about this was that it was true. I didn’t really have a problem with being gay. I didn’t hate myself for it and I didn’t believe I was going to be sentenced to forever damnation in hell. I only had a problem with my sexuality when people like Pat Jones made it an issue. Those were the only times I wished I wasn’t gay and were probably the things I needed to talk about and learn how to handle.

  “And if you wanted me to talk about being gay, why did you send me to Neil? He’s about the straightest therapist you could have sent me to.”

  Mom smirked. “Neil and I have known each other for a very long time. I trust him. I thought you would think he was a nice guy,” she paused, taking a cigarette out of her purse. “I actually thought you would think he was cool.”

  “He is cool, I guess,” I said, swallowing the rest of the muffin. “I’ll keep going to him if it makes you and Dad happy, but let me talk to him about what I want to talk about, OK?”

  “Deal,” she agreed, lifting the cigarette to her lips. It lingered there for a second and then she put it back into the pack. “I shouldn’t smoke so much,” she said, grabbing her purse and keys before walking to the garage. “I think we’d better go or we’re going to be late.

  I decided to leave the final two muffins for an afternoon snack, just in case I had another bad day, and slung my backpack over my shoulder, following her to the car.

  Outside, the weather was beautiful. Even though it had stormed the night before, the rain hadn’t taken away the humidity and instead of feeling like early fall, it felt like early summer. The sun shone brightly through the window, making the soft, blonde hairs on my legs reflect like gold. I always wished I had hairier legs, which to me was a sign of masculinity. Although my legs were naturally somewhat muscular, they were graced with only a dusting of hair. In fact, my entire body lacked an overabundance of body hair, which made me notice it even more on other guys.

  On the way to school, Mom turned off the radio and said she was trying to enjoy silence more often, which couldn’t have been farther from the truth as she lapsed into a sequence of questions about my first day of school. I told her about Cher and lunch and how we had texted the night before. Even though I told her about class with Mrs. Sconce, I chose to not tell her about Rusty and especially about Pat Jones. I was close with both of my parents, but there were certain things I needed to keep to myself.

  I had never wanted my parents to know about my being teased because I knew it would hurt them more than it hurt me. One of my biggest fears had always been that my mom would overhear someone call me a faggot and then realize what I went through every day. I could handle it, but I didn’t think she could. For some reason, it was just as hard to tell my parents about the good things as it was the bad things because they felt so personal.

  I might never even see or talk to Rusty again and when I thought about him, it made me feel so happy yet anxious that I definitely wanted to keep that to myself. I was almost afraid that if I talked about it and made it real in my head, it would jinx it and ruin any chance I might have, which was ridiculous because I knew I didn’t have any chance any way.

  Mom let me off in front of the same brick wall and told me she’d pick me up right after school. “And Alex is flying in tonight,” she said excitedly as I slammed the door, giving her an over exaggerated thumbs up. She started laughing, returning the gesture as she drove away.

  When Sam died, I didn’t return to school for the rest of the year. All of my assignments were sent to our house and they let me finish my junior year being home-schooled. It was easy to look up information and use my notes for tests, so I ended the year with pretty good grades. Before that, Sam had always helped me with my homework. Besides being more athletic than me, he had also been smarter than me. I had thought for years that some secret talent of mine would emerge which Sam didn’t have, but it appeared that I was the lesser twin, because I was still waiting for that talent to appear.

  After I grew accustomed to looking up test answers on the internet and having my notes in front of me for assignments, I had forgotten how difficult real school actually was. While most of the other students were taking advanced placement classes, physics and statistics, I was taking botany and geometry, both of which I could tell were going to be a total struggle. The reality was that I just wasn’t very smart. The only subject I enjoyed in school was English because I loved to read, but when I looked at my English syllabus, I was saddened to find I had already read most of the books listed.

  Our school schedules were split over two days, which they called Gold and Blue days referring to the school colors. Since it was a Blue day, I didn’t have any classes with Cher. I looked everywhere in the hallways for her and Rusty, but didn’t find either of them. Ironically, Pat seemed to be in almost all of my classes and his locker was almost directly across from mine. I avoided him most of the day, quickly walking past him in the hallway without him noticing several times. Thankfully he never seemed to notice me, already having set targets for his attacks that were more important.

  Before lunch, I headed towards my locker and tried to figure out what I was going to do about eating lunch by myself without Cher. All of a sudden I heard her yelling from behind me.

  “Beautiful boy, oh beautiful boy,” she c
ooed, running up and grabbing me from behind. “I missed you so much!”

  I started laughing and turned around. “You missed me?”

  “Yes. And I’ve decided something,” she said, putting her hands on her hips while she slowed down her breathing. “I’m not a runner.”

  “That’s what you’ve decided?”

  “No, you asshole! I’ve decided we’re going to play a game. Do you want to play a game?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said, having no idea what she had in mind.

  “OK. We’re going to play this game where we act like we’ve known each other forever and we’ve always been friends. That way, you can quit talking to me like we just met and you can start talking to me like we’ve been best friends for years.”

  I looked down at the ground, realizing I had been found out. My awkwardness was more obvious than I had realized. Truthfully, I had no idea how to be someone’s friend. I had been Sam’s friend, but that was different.

  “Cheer up, dude. I’ll help you. I know you have no idea how to talk to people. But that’s like, my favorite thing, so I’ll help you become a pro.” She smiled and kissed my cheek. I could smell the distinguishable scent of Clove cigarettes wafting through her hair.

  “OK,” I smiled. I needed to put my backpack in my locker so I turned to walk away.

  “Hurry up. I’m starving for some pizza today.”

  She followed right along next to me. I started turning the lock when I noticed something wedged between the edges by the knob. As I slowly pulled out the mysterious object, I realized it was a piece of Black Jack gum. My cheeks spread with warmth as I started to blush and a smile crept over my lips. I pressed it into my palm, hiding my secret prize.

  He had found me. I quickly looked around, but didn’t see him anywhere in the halls.

  “Come on,” Cher said, leaning up against the locker next to mine, texting. “What’s taking you so long?”