I kept the gum hidden in my palm and acted like I had finished my business. “I’m ready.”
“Bout time,” she spat, texting as she started walking towards the cafeteria. “I’ve got exciting news for you.”
I didn’t care. I had just found out exciting news of my own. And I had evidence in the form of a piece of gum that I swore I would keep forever and never chew.
Chapter Seven
“Don’t you want to hear my exciting news?” Cher belted out. We were forced to sit inside because sometime during the morning, the weather had changed and ominous clouds hung in the sky foretelling of future storms.
“Sure,” I said.
It wasn’t that I didn’t like to talk. That wasn’t the case at all. In fact, I loved to talk, but mostly just to Sam. Since he had died, I didn’t know what to say and didn’t feel like I had anyone I felt comfortable enough to talk to about my feelings. Neil had said this was an important part of grieving and maybe I hadn’t actually grieved Sam’s death yet, but I didn’t think that was the case either.
When people used the term grieving, I got confused. I knew Sam was dead. It wasn’t like I thought he might walk in at any moment and I would realize the whole thing had been a dream. I had heard that in movies and read it in books, but that’s not how I felt. Actually, I didn’t know how to explain how I felt. The feeling of mourning someone’s death, let alone your own twin brother, was so surreal you don’t even know what the process will be like until you go through it yourself. At the funeral, people said all kinds of clichéd things to me like, “I know how hard it must be,” and “I’ve been through it too,” but they hadn’t. They were liars.
Other people told me it was appropriate for me to be angry at Sam, but this didn’t make any sense to me at all. I understood anger, but about something entirely different.
“Hello in there,” Cher called as she reached across the table and knocked on my head.
“Oh, sorry,” I said glancing down at my pizza as I began picking off the sausage that looked like rabbit shit.
“Where did you go?” she asked, shaking her head, not waiting for my response. “So here’s the deal. My big exciting news is that I’ve decided you get to be my new best friend.”
I smiled and looked up at her.
“Well at least that made you happy,” she said. “And you get to hang out with me tonight.”
Anxiety instantly filled me from head to toe. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to hang out with her. I liked Cher, but the idea of hanging out with someone, alone, was entirely foreign to me.
“I, uh,” I stumbled.
“I’m not taking no for an answer. And if it goes well, you’re going to be initiated into the Fondue Crew tomorrow.”
With mention of the word fondue, I tensed up even more. How could I explain that fondue had been our annual birthday dinner for seventeen years? My heart sped up in my chest. You know in kindergarten when the teacher has you stand on your toes and reach as far as possible, and just when you think you can’t go any farther, she tells you to go even farther, and you do. This was the exact same feeling as my current level of anxiety. Just when I thought it had topped out, it kept going. And I knew I couldn’t tell her why.
“Well aren’t you excited? Tonight you’ll come over and meet my mom and we’ll just hang out and stuff.”
My fingers kept reaching higher and higher and higher. As I was forced to keep reaching, my panic was broken by someone tapping on my shoulder. Turning around, I was shocked to see Pat, standing in front of a posse of cloned fools in football jerseys, lined up behind him.
“Hey lover boy,” he called out.
“Go away Pat,” Cher said. “We’re not really in the mood today.”
“Well Cher,” he mocked, “we’re not really in the mood for your string tits today, but we still have to deal with them, don’t we.”
I thought she would stand up and fight back, but she didn’t. She just sat there, picking at her pizza and I realized why we fit together so perfectly. We were both weak and we were both hurt easily.
“So Danny, I was thinking,” he fake lisped. “Why don’t you come over to my house tonight and the guys and I can line up while you blow us one by one.” A large smiled covered his face and his friends started laughing.
The thing about being made fun of is that inside you want to retaliate, to fight back. Over time I had learned that the people who were good at making fun of me were usually good at control and power and if I fought back, they’d just get tougher and meaner. Inside, the battle they were waging destroyed me. I could almost feel parts of myself shedding away as tears grew in my eyes.
“Whaddya think, lover boy?” he asked, squeezing my shoulder.
I turned back around and put my head down.
Cher stood up, screaming, “I swear to God, if you don’t get the fuck out of here right now, I will beat your fucking ass!”
The cafeteria went silent. Every eye fell on our table.
Pat’s hand squeezed my shoulder one last time and like a hypnotist putting me under a spell, I blacked out.
When I woke up, I was drenched in sweat. At first, I didn’t know where I was, but I had woken up in enough school nurse offices to know where I was by the feeling of the rubber bed sheet under me. As I lay on my back, I looked up at the white ceiling tiles and thought for a moment that their small specks resembled far away stars, until I noticed the decaying corners of the galaxy. The room was still, only slightly disturbed by the faint chatter of two women discussing some reality show about housewives.
I didn’t want to get up. The room was so cool and dark and it reminded me of my grandmother’s house where I could hear the cars going by on the road late at night. It felt perfect in that memory and I felt safe.
After a few minutes, a woman walked in and stood above me. Noticing I was awake, she put her hand on my arm and I flinched at being touched again by someone without invitation.
“You had us all quite scared, Danny. We called your mom and she told us that you have a tendency to faint when you get nervous.”
I just stared at her without saying a word. She was older and had platinum beige colored hair which looked like a wig. On her white smock was a name badge that said “Mrs. Todd. Nurse.”
“Did something upset you?” she asked. I didn’t say anything. I had learned it was always best to keep things to myself. “Your mom was going to pick you up early, but we decided to just let you sleep until the end of the day and then she’s going to pick you up.”
Almost on cue, I heard the bell ring.
“And that’s the last bell, darling,” she smiled.
I pulled my legs off of the bed and stood up, still slightly drowsy. I grabbed my bag and followed her out into the front room where she handed me a small bottle of Gatorade and a package of cheese and peanut butter crackers.
“If you ever need to talk or if anything is bothering you, just let me know.”
She patted my arm again. I thanked her and walked out into the busy hallway.
I’m sure it was just my imagination, but it felt like every person was looking directly at me, knowing what had just happened. I didn’t go to my locker, instead I walked toward the front door, throwing the Gatorade and crackers into a trashcan I passed on the way.
Outside, the rain had stopped but it was still dark and ominous.
I walked over to the brick wall in front of the school and waited for Mom, hoping Rusty would be standing there waiting for me, but he wasn’t.
My phone buzzed in my pocket and after reading the text from my mom apologizing for running five minutes late, I sat down on the wet curb. My butt became immediately damp, but I didn’t care. I watched all of the other kids in the parking lot, lighting cigarettes and driving off together. I wondered what it would be like if I were still at my old school and Sam were still alive. I wondered if we would be getting into the jeep, the seats probably soaked because we hadn’t put the top on that morning. I imagined myse
lf sitting in the back as Sam’s girlfriend Jess scanned stations on the radio until she found the perfect song for the ride, probably something by Britney Spears. But all of that was gone.
I looked down at my watch and realized mom was already six minutes late.
“Is your mom late too?” I heard from behind me.
I turned around and saw Rusty standing above me, looking down, smiling.
I laughed “Yeah, she said five minutes, but it’s already been six.”
Rusty threw his bright green backpack onto the ground and sat down next to me, his leg grazing mine. “Wow, one whole minute more. She definitely can’t be trusted,” he said. I laughed. He twisted and our knees met. I didn’t want to move out of fear I would lose the connection.
“Did you get my gum?”
My cheeks blushed. “Yeah.”
“Good. I was hoping you’d know it was from me.”
I wanted to ask him what the gum meant. I wanted to ask him if he was gay or if he had a girlfriend. It was so unfair how you couldn’t just assume someone was gay and have a crush on them. First you had to find out if they were gay too, because if they weren’t then you might be setting yourself up. I was not going to be one of those guys who fell in love with straight guys. But I didn’t know how to ask him any of these things.
“What are you doing this weekend?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I’m supposed to hang out with my friend, but I don’t know.”
He was silent for a minute. “I don’t really have any friends here yet. We just moved here this summer.”
“I just started school here too.”
“Yeah, I know,” he smirked.
How did he know, I wondered?
He turned, looking at me. “Look, I saw what happened at lunch today and I saw them carry you out. Are you OK? I was worried about you.”
It was almost too much to process. First of all, knowing he saw the whole thing was entirely too embarrassing. And he was worried about me? We didn’t even know each other. Maybe he wondered about me as much as I wondered about him.
“Yeah, I just. I just fainted I guess. I don’t know why.”
“Could it have anything to do with that girl screaming at that jock dude?” he asked. “I’m not trying to pry. I was just sitting a few tables away and I heard the whole thing.”
I didn’t really know what to say. I tried to find my words, but I was lost. Just then, his mom arrived and he stood up, breaking our connection. “Danny,” he paused, “if he does that again, I’m gonna beat his fucking ass too.”
His hand touched my shoulder as he walked away, but this time I didn’t flinch. I watched him climb into his mom’s van and then he was gone.
It was literally the perfect end to the worst school day I had ever had. I sat there on the wet curb, oblivious to each passing minute until my mother’s familiar car finally pulled in to claim me.
“I’m so sorry. I know I’m almost fifteen minutes late,” she said.
“I didn’t even notice,” I whispered as she drove away.
We drove in silence for a few minutes and then she started in with the proverbial questions.
“Are you ok?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m sure.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” she prodded.
“No,” I said.
“Was someone being mean to you?”
I bit my bottom lip. “Mom, why is it that whenever I faint you always ask me if someone was mean to me?”
She grabbed a cigarette from her pack laying on the dash and lit it, rolling down the window. “Well, honey, because every time you’ve fainted it’s happened at the same time that someone is making fun of you. So we’ve just always assumed…”
“Who’s we?”
“Your father and I. And Sam.”
“How do you even know what happened? You were never even there,” I said, accusingly.
She didn’t say anything for a minute, instead, she just let her thoughts roll around in her head. “I just want you to know that I’ve never really gotten involved because we always thought it would be best for you to deal with that stuff on your own. And Sam always assured us that he was there to take care of you. But, now that he’s gone, if it ever gets to be too much and you need my help, just let me know.”
“Seriously, Mom. You’ve never been there one time when it’s happened, so how could you possibly know? How do you even know people make fun of me?”
She remained silent.
And then I got it. I hadn’t been listening close enough.
Sam.
Chapter Eight
I loved elementary school. There was something about it that seemed so safe and small. And even though it became both my battleground and my boot camp, there were many good days too. There is one day, from first grade, that stands out clearly in my mind. It was late October and the weather had just turned cold outside. Leaves littered our walk to school and the smell of Halloween filled the air.
Before lunch, we all sat on the floor in the library and watched the Disney version of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Early on, the teachers and our parents thought it would be best if Sam and I were in different classes, to help us find our own identity. Even though we were all watching the movie together, I could see him sitting up front with his friends while I sat in the back braiding Jeanie Shephard’s hair, which when caught by my teacher, prompted her to humiliate me by saying, “Danny Goldstein, this is not beauty shop!” All of the kids laughed and I looked down in shame.
After the movie, we all walked in a single file line into the makeshift gym turned cafeteria. Instead of the normal fare in the lunch line, we found bowls of tomato soup, peanut butter sandwiches and a small container of milk waiting for each of us at our tables. This was the same lunch my mom made for us on snow days and rainy days, so there was a homey kind of comfort melted into its warmth.
As I sat there with my friends, boys whose birthday parties and sleepovers I had been part of for the past few years, I noticed that one by one, they whispered something to each other and laughed before looking at me. Finally, when it got to James Shilling, he shouted, “Don’t drink the milk, it’ll make you sick!”
I didn’t get it, but I put my milk down immediately anyway. James looked over at me. “You can drink it Danny, you’ve already been infected.” The whole table laughed erupted in laughter.
James held up the milk carton and turned it around, pointing to the word homogenous. “The milk will make you a homo,” he said, laughing. “But since you’re already gay it won’t matter.”
Looking back, I’m not sure what hurt more; the fact that it was the very first time they made fun of me for being gay, or that those boys knew something about me I didn’t already know about myself. Regardless, even though I was so young, I felt betrayed. That was the day I knew it was not OK to be myself, forcing me to hide in Sam’s shadow and become his clone. I would never allow myself to develop my own interests, favorites or even opinions. I felt like a page in a coloring book before any color had touched inside the lines. Just an outline of a picture, giving some definition but not really filled with any kind of personality.
That’s how I felt as Mom and I drove home, the silence between us sealing the truth. When we pulled into the driveway, I looked over at her. “When did he tell you?”
Mom started to cry. “You know Danny, he was always so protective of you. He made us swear we would never tell you we knew.”
It was all coming together. “Wait. So you guys knew I was gay, long before I told you?”
She nodded slowly and continued to cry, staring out into the dark garage.
“So I didn’t even need to come out to you that day,” I said, figuring it out like some sick mystery in which I had been introduced as the main suspect in the last few pages. “I didn’t need to come out to you that day and Sam didn’t need to leave to go to the park. Sam could still be alive.�
�� It was too much. I grabbed my backpack and got out of the car, slamming the door behind me.
I walked inside and saw Uncle Alex standing in the kitchen. He smiled at me, but I just turned and walked upstairs.
Before I could even take my bag off of my shoulder, I could hear Mom and Alex’s whispers in the kitchen. I walked to the edge of the stairs and stood there, listening in the shadows.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said.
“Alice. He needs to be angry. It’ll be OK,” Alex said.
I wondered how people always knew what I needed. I could instantly feel myself being angry at Alex and I hadn’t even welcomed him here yet.
I turned and walked back into my bedroom. Throwing myself on the bed I turned on the TV, trying to drown out the thoughts in my head. Roseanne was on again. I flipped it off and turned on my fan, aiming it right at my face. My mind was reeling. I was thinking about those boys in first grade and Sam and Mom and everyone talking about me, knowing my business before I knew it and how they all decided it was best for me and what I should do and what I shouldn’t do and what choices I should make and all of it was too much.
And Rusty.
“I’m gonna beat his fucking ass, too,” he had said.
In those seven minutes after school, everything had seemed perfect. I closed my eyes and wished I had his number or knew how to get ahold of him, even though I knew I wouldn’t actually call him even if I knew how.
I pulled up my covers until only my face was showing, the cold air of the fan easing me into sleep as I watched my Curious George clock slowly tick…tick…tick.
I was woken up by the sound of my phone buzzing in my pocket and I looked at my clock, noticing it was exactly six o’clock. Pulling out my phone I saw I had five missed calls from Cher. In the last message she told me to text my address to her and that she would be there at 7:30 to pick me up.
I stretched my arms over my head and straightened out my t-shirt which was twisted around my body. Although I didn’t really want to deal with Mom I knew I needed to go and say hi to Uncle Alex. I swallowed my pride and walked downstairs.
The Before Now and After Then Page 5