The arm that was hanging up his shirt lowers slowly to his side.
I say, I don’t know what you need to do to snap out of it, but I wish you’d figure it out already.
He stares at me. I’m about to turn to go, then I say, That camp was awful, and you shouldn’t have sent me there. And I know you hated that I was at the funeral, but it was worse for me having to be there. This will always be harder for me than for you, so get over yourself.
I turn to leave and say, Good night,
and walk out and through the living room and up the stairs and into my room.
Two days later I’m watching TV and Dad comes into the living room. I can hear him walking up, but I’m watching so I don’t turn until I feel his hand on my shoulder. He looks at me and opens his mouth like he wants to say something.
After a second he looks down, gives my shoulder a small pat, and walks out of the living room.
I turn back to the TV.
Then sometime in March.
We’re at dinner. It’s quiet like it has been for a long time.
Mom’s still shooting her glances at Dad, but the disappointment there has become something else now. Almost like anger.
Mom says, Toby, what time does your choir concert start?
I know for a fact Mom already knows it starts at seven thirty tomorrow, that Mom is saying this just to have sound and conversation at dinner because that is what dinner should be like. Because she still hasn’t stopped trying after six weeks.
Toby says, Seven thirty.
Mom says, What are you singing?
Toby pokes a fork into her salmon.
She says, A bunch of southern spirituals.
Mom says, Southern spirituals?
Toby says, I dunno, Mrs. Deringer likes that stuff. Like a lot of old slave songs, I think.
Mom says, Well, that sounds interesting. What songs?
Toby chews slowly. I can tell she knows what Mom’s doing and doesn’t like being a part of it.
She says, One’s called “O Won’t You Sit Down.”
Toby almost sighs it out, trying to make it as clear as possible that she doesn’t want to talk about it.
Mom says, Well, how does it go?
Toby chews. Swallows. Takes a sip of milk. Swallows.
She half sings, half mutters:
O won’t you sit down? Lord, I can’t sit down.
She stops. Mom looks at her expectantly.
Toby rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to sing the next line.
Dad half sings, ’Cause I just got to Heaven, gotta look around.
Toby stops. She blinks, forgetting to look annoyed.
Dad looks up, also surprised.
Then his blank, deflated face turns into the faintest smile.
He says, I used to hear that one on the radio growing up.
Everyone frozen.
He says, Jeez, it must be decades since the last time I heard that.
He barks out a laugh, awkward, like he’s forgotten how.
Mom smiles, slow. I watch it spread over her face.
Toby starts giggling, and something in the room, some heaviness I’ve gotten so used to I don’t notice it anymore, lifts away, just for a moment. Dad chuckles a bit, his fork held out, speared piece of fish forgotten at its end. I watch a little juice drip off it right before Dad looks at me, smiling through his tiredness, eyes meeting mine for two seconds. Most of me doesn’t want to smile back, but it’s already there, familiar in the way things are even after missing them for so long.
And maybe that’s what starts it.
Dad and I don’t talk about it, not directly. At least not yet. And as the weeks go on, I think about how we still have a long way to go. How it might be a long time before we’re totally okay.
There are days I wake up angry, days where I don’t want to let go of that anger. Days where I can see Dad is nowhere near where he should be, where I don’t want to be around him and can’t wait to get out of the house for good. Those days we just sort of avoid each other.
But other days I can tell my anger is going away a little bit at a time on its own. Just a little.
Maybe it’s that small bit of normal at a dinner in March that starts it, that spreads to the rest of me, makes me less tired, less numb.
But the next time I’m at Ronald’s after school and his mom comes home and turns her searching eyes toward me, she finally seems to find what she’s been looking for.
Her smile grows wider this time, and she walks into her bedroom without a word.
I’m walking to my locker after French.
Madame Girard seemed to take Sean’s death pretty hard. Not because she knew him, really, but I think because she doesn’t know how to react to one of her students just dying.
I sit at his desk now. The first day back I walked toward my old desk, then just dropped my books down on his instead. Madame Girard looked up right as I sat down slowly into his chair. She blinked twice, eyelashes brushing her reading glasses, then looked back down at her papers. No one said a word about my new seat.
The room looks a little different from this point of view. I like thinking that this is what Sean saw every day.
My old desk is empty and abandoned.
I’m walking back to my locker and the halls are filled with kids rushing to get out, a different kind of rushing than the kind that comes during the day, when they’re just going to their next classes.
They still hurry during the day, but hurrying because you have to feels different from hurrying because you want to.
Right now there’s a real energy to the place: kids want to get out of here and go home, hang out with friends, whatever.
But I’m not in a rush.
I open my locker and put my French book in. I’m looking at the other books, thinking which ones I have to take home for homework, and then my eyes just turn themselves to the inside door of the locker.
Sunrise on Mill Point Beach. I stare at the drawing for a long time, the ocean mirroring the sky, the bursting clouds, the colors blending into one another, the two seagulls that got me a zero for the day in Art. I’m lost in this picture when I realize there’s someone standing a few feet away, facing me. I turn.
Victor doesn’t react or even say anything at first. He just looks at me.
He came back to school yesterday. He was already in Biology when I walked in. My heart skipped but I didn’t slow down, just walked to my stool, watching him. He never looked up at me as I walked by. I spent the period burning a hole into the back of his head with my eyes.
I stare back now and raise my eyebrows slowly. There’s no fear anymore when I see Victor. There’s only a low sort of anger, still there but unshaken, like the stuff that settles at the bottom of a bottle of dressing. My ears feel normal.
Finally he says, Hey.
I say, What.
He winces, just a bit.
He says, I didn’t think you’d be at your locker right now.
I don’t understand what he means by this and I don’t know what to say. So I just stare at him, breathing as long and slow as I can.
Victor glances down, away from my glare, and hesitates a bit. He walks over to me.
I tense up. Both my hands close slowly into fists.
He says, Here.
And I see that there’s something in his hand. A piece of paper.
I look at it. Then back at his face.
I say, Fuck off, Victor,
and start to turn back to my locker.
He says, Please.
He holds the paper farther out toward me. His face looks pained.
He says, Just . . . take it.
Something about the way he’s looking at me convinces me to.
So I do.
The second the paper is in my hand, he turns and walks away. Fast.
I watch him disappear around the corner into the next hallway. He doesn’t look back.
After a while I look down at my hand. It’s a small piece of lined noteb
ook paper, folded three times. The edges are perfectly straight. I unfold it slowly.
In the very middle of the note, in thick black ink, Victor has written,
I’m sorry.
I stare at the words. I look up again, at where he was standing. Then I run after him, hurrying the way he went.
I see him at the far end of the next hallway, and I rush to catch up to him. A teacher yells out in a bored voice not to run, and I ignore her.
Victor turns when he hears my footsteps.
I slow down, stopping a few feet away from him.
Then I realize I don’t actually know what I was going to say to him.
There are so many things I want to say. I want to tell him that I hope he gets held back and has to repeat freshman year. I want to ask him what it was like to have Ronald punch him in the face in front of everyone. I want to ask him when he first realized he was in huge trouble. Was it when the school board called their emergency meeting, or before that, when the news started picking up on the YouTube video? Or was it when he first heard Sean was dead? Did he guess what had happened and that he was connected?
I want to blame him for Sean’s death.
But.
There’s a part of me, small but persistent, that gets that that’s not really fair. I don’t totally get why, and I don’t really want to care about being fair anyway, but that stupid small part of me stops me from saying it out loud anyway, stops me from making everything Victor’s fault.
So instead I just say, Why were you such a dick all year?
Victor doesn’t say anything for a long time. He looks really uncomfortable. It makes me feel a little better.
Then he says, I don’t know.
His answer makes me angrier.
I say, I never did anything to you.
He says, I know. It’s not like I hated you or anything. You were just . . . an easy target.
I stare at him. He looks away.
He says, And then it became a habit.
He clears his throat. He looks miserable.
He says, And then it sorta got out of hand.
Slowly, I feel my hands opening, and realize I’d been clenching my fists again. My face relaxes a bit, my jaw unlocks. I stop pressing my lips together and breathe slowly.
I watch Victor for a while, and after a few seconds, I notice my anger’s blocked by something. He’s just standing there, tensed but not meeting my eyes. I get the weirdest urge to laugh, even though nothing’s really funny, at all.
But mostly I just don’t want to be around him anymore.
He looks up but I’ve already turned away. There’s nothing more to say.
I left my locker open.
There are still lots of kids walking around when I get back, so no one’s really noticed. I reach in to grab my backpack and realize there’s something in my hand.
It’s Victor’s note. I look at it for a minute.
I’m sorry.
Then I fold the piece of paper back the way it was, three times, and put it in my backpack.
My eyes flick back to the locker door. Carefully, I take down the drawing of Mill Point Beach and put it in my backpack too. I take the backpack and shut the locker.
I walk slowly down the main hallway.
Kids pass me on either side, so eager to get out, but I walk slowly.
Through the double doors, into the sunshine of midafternoon, first bit of spring warmth.
Across the entranceway and lawn, around groups of kids huddled together making plans, through the pack of diesel engines and past Ronald’s bus, beyond the track field and the early runners, across the street, and onto the middle school’s side lawn.
I say, Hey, Toby.
That voice is strong and almost cheerful. I smile at her.
She smiles back and picks up her bag.
For a moment we look at each other. I think about all the times she’s had my back, even at the worst times.
She says, Colin’s been avoiding me.
My smile gets a little bigger, just barely. I have her back too. It makes me happy.
She says, Like he won’t even make eye contact. Weird, right?
Her voice sounds kind of sarcastic and she’s giving me this look.
I say, Maybe he’s not into girls.
I put my hand on her head and ruffle her hair.
Toby giggles and moves her head out of the way.
She says, Let’s go.
And we walk home.
Damien. You first, of course. You’re my husband, best friend, biggest cheerleader, and strongest advocate. When someone asks what I do, you force me to add that I’m an author. Thank you for that.
To Brianne Johnson, a Hermione-grade witch who amuses herself by putting all that power toward literary representation. Lucky for me.
To Liz Bicknell. Not everyone gets to work with a dream editor, someone who brings together graceful expertise with vigorous enthusiasm, who is equal parts talent and champion.
To Zack Clark, who saw something salvageable in an early draft and gently nudged me to smooth it down. Some of my favorite tiny moments in this book are due to him.
To Matt Roeser, whose cover design made me sort of flip out for three months. To Tracy, Phoebe, and Allison, for their endless help and patience with a first-time author. To the full Candlewick team, everyone who worked behind the scenes to put this thing out. It means more to me than you know.
To countless friends and family members who lent their support, their random bits of advice, their insights on how teens affectionately insult one another, or just their excitement. There are too many of you to name, but: Yono and Britta Mittlefehldt; the Butvicks, Mahers, and Blacketts; Sally Pell; Nate Manske; Nick Manske and Summer Dinh; Elisa Mason; Jacquie Osman; Chris Uhland; Rachel Younger; Aruna Jahoor; TJ Martin; Becky Amsel; Marquise Lee and Paul Blore; Jonah Detofsky; Donald Harrison; Melissa Nguyen; Brittany McCulloch; Clint Brody; Angelina Hemme; and three or four thousand others.
To I’m From Driftwood (https://imfromdriftwood.com), which I’ve worked with, and to The Trevor Project (www.thetrevorproject.org), which I’ve admired: two excellent nonprofits that work tirelessly on behalf of LGBTQ youth and adults.
And to my parents and Damien’s: Nurit and Dave Mittlefehldt, and Kathryn and Bill Butvick. So many gay kids have to wonder what true support looks like, but we never did. It looks like this.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2016 by Rafi Mittlefehldt
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, taping, and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.
First electronic edition 2016
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number pending
Candlewick Press
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visit us at www.candlewick.com
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