I glare at Dad, neither of us blinking.
I think for a second about staying at that camp for another four or five months. I think about all the rules, about Pastor Landis, about the other scared, sad kids. I think about repeating ninth grade and being a year behind all my friends, and how much I would hate that. And I can’t help it, it almost makes me change my mind.
But I think about what Ronald’s mom said.
I open my mouth to say no, I’m staying and I don’t care what happens, and then my eyes flick over his shoulder.
Sean’s mom is a few feet away, walking toward us cautiously, like she’s not sure what she’s seeing. Behind her is Sean’s dad, keeping his distance, watching his wife helplessly. He looks so old.
This close I can see the details of her black dress, her veil that doesn’t quite cover the puffy red eyes. Those eyes are the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, but there’s something just behind them, mostly blocked by grief but still just visible: something hard that scares me.
Dad follows my eyes and turns around right as Sean’s mom says,
What’s the matter here?
Her voice is raspy, dried out from sobbing.
Dad is quick:
I’m so sorry, Mrs. Rossini, Mike was just leaving.
She says, Leaving.
In a kind of distracted way. She glances at me, and I suddenly realize what the look in her eyes is. It’s the same thing I see in Toby sometimes.
Dad says, Yes, of course, we weren’t planning on bringing him. He walked from home.
She looks at me just a bit longer, then back at Dad.
Dad says, I’ll drive him home now. I’m so very, very sorry for the disrupt —
She cuts in, What disruption?
Dad raises his eyebrows but doesn’t know how to answer.
Sean’s mom says, Is he back from that camp now?
I blink. The question is so unexpected. Dad seems taken aback too for a second, but he recovers quickly.
He says, Just for now, yes.
She says, Then he’s going back?
Her voice changes with this, becomes lower. Out of nowhere I think of Madison, my friend Kris’s cat back in Sheboygan Falls. Madison really liked Kris’s mom, rubbing up against her legs and meowing softly whenever she came home. But she hated Kris. Kris didn’t really like her back and would pull at her tail until Madison’s meows would get lower and lower. Like a warning.
Dad senses it, too, and hesitates before he says, Yes, probably for a longer time.
Sean’s mom glances back at me just for the quickest fraction of a second, but I see it again: the something else in her eyes, the something harder taking over and covering the sadness.
She says, My son is dead.
Her voice is almost a whisper but still it’s the only sound, cold and powerful.
She says, I would . . .
She trails off and looks away. We all watch her.
Nothing happens, and I think she’s just going to leave it at that. But then she whispers:
I would trade anything in this world for him to be here.
She looks up, turns her gaze to Dad, then to Mom. Mom shrinks back from that look.
She says, And you, you still have your son. What for? You could spend as much time as you wanted with him, but you’re going to send him away instead.
She speaks every word slowly, carefully, quietly. Mom looks back, terrified.
Mrs. Rossini says, Do you know what I would do if Sean were still here?
Mom and Dad look back, frozen.
She says, I would love him.
There’s just quiet after this. Then she turns and walks back toward Sean’s dad. He reaches out an arm to put around her shoulder. She shoves the arm away and walks past him without a glance.
His face sags as he watches her go. He stands that way a long, long time.
Then, slowly, he walks after his wife.
Mom stares after him with an expression I can’t read.
Dad looks lost. He gazes at nothing for a moment, then seems to notice the people at the funeral. Almost everyone is watching us now.
Dad’s face turns red and he mutters, Jesus Christ.
Mom turns around at his voice slowly, as if coming out of a daydream.
Dad says, Okay, let’s go.
He starts to move.
Mom says, No.
Her voice is small, quiet.
Dad stops and stares at her. I look at her too. Neither of us knows what to say. Mom still has that unreadable expression, something I’ve never seen before.
She says, Mike hasn’t gone to see the grave yet.
Dad’s eyes widen and his face turns redder.
He says, Are you joking?
Mom says, No.
And her voice is a little stronger now. She looks back at Dad steadily, but there’s still fear in her eyes.
He glances back at the crowd by the gravestone.
Dad says, They’re watching —
Mom says, They’re watching us make the same mistake Sean’s parents made.
Dad winces a bit.
He says, But they all . . . they all know, Caroline, they’ll all say —
Mom takes a step forward right up to Dad, eyes still on his so she has to tilt her head back a little and says,
Ffffffuck — What they have to say.
It comes out like that, pushed out through all those F’s so that it pops at Dad, at all of us, the rest of the sentence not spoken but hissed with more force than I’ve ever heard from Mom even in her angriest, and her eyes are so intense and wild, and the fear is there even more.
And I realize that fear isn’t of Dad but for me.
Dad stares back, mouth barely open, breath held.
Mom says, Mike is going to see Sean’s grave.
And something in Dad gives. I can actually see his face and shoulders sag, hopeless, helpless. His breath lets out slowly in a low moan.
He tries to say Okay, but no sound comes out.
Mom turns to me.
She says, Come on, Mike,
and holds out her hand.
I realize I’m shaking.
I climb over the fence in a kind of clumsy way and jump to the ground on the other side, feet making a soft thud on the mushy grass, and I take Mom’s hand.
Mom leads me toward the grave site. Her steps are quick and regular.
Mine are halting at first, but then they fall into rhythm with Mom’s.
There are still a few people there. I don’t look at them. Sean’s grave is ahead and I look at that.
Mom pulls me along by my hand, and for just a second I remember what it felt like when she lifted me with that same hand into the breeze from Lake Michigan and the Milwaukee sunset.
Then she stops, still several feet from the grave and the black rectangular hole in the ground.
She stands behind me, hands on my shoulders.
She whispers, Okay, sweetie. Go ahead.
And I feel the gentlest nudge.
I stand there for a second.
Then I walk forward.
The hole gapes wider as I get closer. The gravestone is fresh, clean, white marble.
It says SEAN MARCUS ROSSINI.
I trace each letter with my eyes, taking in each curve in the engravings. I think about the years of wind and rain and ice and heat that will smooth out the sharp points, fill the letters with hardened dirt, make cracks that snake across the words and eventually crumble and destroy this thing that looks so solid and unbreakable.
But right now it’s fresh, the gravestone and mahogany casket and the sweet smell of the earth and perfect angles of this rectangle hole, everything’s fresh except the only thing that matters.
I look down into the hole, at the wood that’s still visible under a few clumps of hand-dropped dirt.
And I say good-bye to Sean.
School isn’t so bad.
Everyone knows everything, I can tell as soon as I get there Monday.
But I already knew they wo
uld.
A few kids snicker when they see me. There are whispers too, trails of them that I can just hear when I walk past.
A lot of kids stare at me in the halls or in class, kids I don’t even know, and for the most part I ignore it. I ignore a lot about school, because it’s easier just to think about nothing.
But sometimes I do look, and what I see in the eyes staring back at me isn’t always bad. There’s some curiosity.
And, just once, a faint smile. Just enough for me to notice.
Ronald seems different.
It’s Tuesday. He’s walking with me down the hall to Biology.
He did the same thing yesterday, with some of my classes too. I mean we used to walk together if we were going in the same direction, but since I got back he’s been doing it even when his classes are in some other wing. Right now I know he has PE and the gym is way at the other end of the school. I don’t ask him about it, though.
He says, You think it’s going to be hard catching up in Ferguson’s?
I say, I guess.
I’m kind of distracted though. Victor was out yesterday, and I haven’t seen him yet today. But if he’s here today, he’s in my Biology class.
Tristan and Fuller were here yesterday, but they both ignored me the whole day. I didn’t mind.
Ronald says, Cool.
It takes me a second before I realize his response doesn’t really make sense. I glance over, and he seems kind of distracted too. He’s looking around, but not at me. Like he’s expecting something. He’s been doing this a bit lately.
While still looking at him, I say, But she told me after class yesterday that she’ll let me do the tests I missed as homework.
Ronald says, Yeah.
We pass a couple older kids in the hall and Ronald clenches his books tightly. He relaxes his grip when they’re past us.
He says, Okay, well, good luck.
I was still watching him so I hadn’t noticed that we arrived at my class. My heart kind of skips a beat, which makes me feel a little dumb.
I’m not afraid of running into Victor. I just really don’t want to see him.
But Victor’s not there.
His lab stool stays empty the whole period.
Fuller sits next to it. He never looks over at me.
I relax a bit and go back to thinking about nothing.
Jared acts like I haven’t been gone. At lunch he talks the same as he always did, and there are a couple times while I’m eating that I almost forget I was even away.
I catch Ronald sneaking looks at me, his mom’s crease in his forehead. He tries to act natural if I look his way, but I still see it.
I look over at Tristan and Fuller eating by themselves at their usual table.
I say, Is Victor Price sick?
Ronald raises his eyebrows.
He says, Dude, you don’t know?
I look at him.
Jared takes a sip of his Arizona Green Tea and says, Victor was suspended indefinitely.
I put my sandwich down.
Jared says, The school board had an emergency meeting last week after the accident. The YouTube video Victor posted was a large part of it. He took it down pretty soon, but of course everyone had already seen it.
Jared unwraps his Kit Kat and flattens the wrapper, creasing it neatly. He breaks the chocolate into the four long sticks, then takes his knife and chops each stick into five square-sized pieces, arranging them in a grid on top of the wrapper. He takes the corner square and pops it into his mouth.
He says, The board voted on a new zero-tolerance bullying policy, effective immediately. There were a couple news stories about it.
I just stare at Jared, who alternates Kit Kat pieces with sips of tea. I don’t know what to say, so I look at Ronald.
He has a bit of a smile on his face. I look up and see the faint cut above his eye.
I tell all this to the counselor.
We’re supposed to meet a couple times a week, just a few minutes before school starts. Her name is Miss Dobbs-Shannon, hyphenated like that. She’s kind of young, has long straight hair, barely reddish but mostly brown. She’s all right.
The counselor was Principal Huston’s idea. That’s the main principal, not the assistant principal, Mr. Whitman, who’s kind of an idiot.
Mrs. Huston called me into the office my first day back. I was in Art again, and it was the same office aid girl who came and got me when I called Mr. Kilgore a dick.
Mr. Kilgore just stared at her when she knocked and walked in, dressed in loose clothes again, glossy lipstick, hair dyed red this time, and told him she had a referral to bring me to Mrs. Huston’s office.
Then he sort of threw a hand into the air and said, Knock yourself out.
On the way there she asked me, You call someone else a dick?
Principal Huston’s a large woman with bushy black hair and a carefully pressed black pantsuit. I’d never been in her office before. She got right to the point: she talked to my parents and thought it’d be a good idea for me to meet with a school counselor for a little bit because of the incident.
That’s the word she used, incident. Like Jesse from camp.
She said my parents agreed and I was to start the next day.
I said, Which parent did you talk to?
I just sort of blurted it out and for a second I thought it probably sounded rude.
But she said, Your mother.
So Wednesday morning I tell Miss Dobbs-Shannon that school’s not so bad.
She says, What about the rest?
I say, The rest?
She says, Home, your weekends, hobbies, anything else you do aside from school.
I think about this.
I say, I guess it’s fine.
She says, Fine?
I say, Yeah.
She says, Does everything feel normal?
I say, No.
She says, Are you sleeping?
I don’t say anything.
She says, Is that a no?
I say, I’m sleeping a bit.
She says, But not enough?
I say, No.
She leans back in her chair and studies me a bit. She does that sometimes. Usually it means there’s something she’s going to say that’s important and she’s thinking about how to word it.
She says, Michael, you went to a conversion-therapy camp for two weeks. When you get back, you immediately find out Sean has died, and right away you come back to school. And you’ve only been back a couple of days.
I look at the ground. Blank hard no-color carpet, cheap stuff they fill schools and offices with.
She says, You’ve been through a whole, whole lot in a very short amount of time. And everything’s “fine”?
I breathe out through my teeth and lean back.
I say, This is stupid.
Miss Dobbs-Shannon doesn’t react to that. She looks at me a bit and then says, Maybe you’re still numb, Michael. Maybe that’s why school isn’t so bad.
I don’t say anything.
Maybe I am numb.
I spend a lot of time at Ronald’s house.
It’s not really on the way home from school, but I just take the bus with him and we hang out for a couple hours, mostly just eating snacks and watching TV.
His mom comes home and always smiles when she sees me. There’s something behind that smile, a kind of searching look. The first day I came over, she smiled at me and asked,
How are you doing?
but low, almost under her breath, not like a regular greeting but like she really wanted to know.
Ronald said, Mom.
In a kind of warning tone. She just smiled at me again and walked off into her bedroom to change.
Sometimes Jared comes over too.
He still acts like everything’s normal but that’s just Jared. Nothing really fazes him.
The only time he said anything about what happened the last month, besides telling me about Victor getting suspended, was at lunch i
n the first week. Not on the first day but maybe like Wednesday.
I’d just sat down and he was already there. Ronald was still in line getting Salisbury steak.
Jared says, Do you have to repeat the year?
I look up, blinking. It takes me a second before I figure out what he’s saying.
I say, No. Mrs. Huston says I can do most of the makeup work during the year, but I’ll probably have to come for a bit of summer school because the district has some rule about attendance.
Jared says, Oh. That’s dumb.
I don’t say anything, just nod. I’m going into myself again. I can feel my mind drifting off, thinking about nothing.
Jared takes another bite of his sandwich and says, Did you want it to work? At the camp?
I’m already pretty deep in my own head and Jared’s voice sounds far away, not important, but some part of me registers his words, and the question is so unexpected it draws me back, like waking from a dream because someone calls your name.
I look at him hard and for the first time he seems very alert and attentive, even though he’s not quite looking at me. He’s stopped chewing.
I say, Yeah. I did.
Jared chews again, slowly.
I say, I really did.
Jared chews. Pauses. Swallows.
He says, I don’t think that kind of thing ever works. So don’t sweat it.
I just look at him and watch the alertness sort of fade away until he’s back to his usual unfazed self.
That was the only time he brought it up.
Miss Dobbs-Shannon says, You look tired again, Michael.
I say, Can you call me Mike?
She says, Of course, Mike. I’m sorry. You look tired.
I say, I have to wake up early for these sessions.
She says, You haven’t been sleeping anyway.
I stare at the table.
She says, There’s something you haven’t been telling me.
I stare at the table.
She leans back in her chair and looks at me.
She says, When you’re ready.
Dad doesn’t speak much.
It’s not like before, right after New Year’s when he seemed too angry to know what to say.
This time it’s more sad. Deflated. Like at the funeral, after Mom said what she said.
When Mom or Toby says something to him, he just mumbles without meeting their eyes. Or sometimes he doesn’t respond at all.
I don’t say anything to him. But sometimes I watch him.
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