Don't Let Me Go

by J. H. Trumble

  After school, Adam came over and hung out with me while I attempted to study for finals. I kicked back on my bed and struggled through some notes, scanning page after page with no idea whatsoever what I’d just read. Eventually, I gave up and turned my attention to Adam. He was seated at my desk, clicking around on the University of Texas Web site. I watched for a while. Then I found myself thinking about Luke again, what he was doing, if he was okay. His dad had taken his computer. Petty. Why didn’t he call? I thought about his little brother, Matt, and I was glad he had at least one ally in the house. Did his mom know yet? Was she friend or foe? Questions, but no answers. I returned to the notes and tried to focus. Four more days and it would be Christmas vacation, and that meant not seeing Luke. I had a bad feeling and couldn’t shake it.

  “You’re staring at nothing again,” Adam said.

  “This is impossible.” I tossed my spiral to the side. “Did you see the look his dad gave me?”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  I stared at the ceiling and he climbed onto the bed next to me and took the notes. “You want me to quiz you?”

  “I want to call him so bad, you know, just to know he’s okay.”

  He shuffled through my notes. “Chemistry. God, I hated this stuff.”

  “I just feel so guilty being here with you, and he’s there all alone. It’s just so damn unfair.”

  “Okay, no chemistry.” He dropped the notes on the floor and linked his fingers with mine. “Can I ask you something?”

  “What?”

  “Do you wish you were with him right now?”

  That stopped me. Because that’s exactly what I was wishing. Not in the way Adam was suggesting, but the wish was there. I knew what it was like to have your spirit crushed. I’d been there, more times than I could count.

  You’re gonna march your ass into that counselor’s office tomorrow first thing and change your schedule back, or you can forget your fucking piano lessons.

  I’m done with you.

  Adam didn’t understand. How could he? I bled for Luke. That was all.

  “No,” I said.

  “You hesitated.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.” He let go of my hand and slung his arm over his forehead. “Nate, if you have feelings for him—”

  “I don’t.”

  My cell phone woke me. I’d dozed off. I couldn’t have been asleep more than half an hour. It was still daylight outside. Adam got my phone from the bedside table and looked at the screen. “It’s Luke.”

  I sat up and grabbed the phone, answering the call even as I cleared my throat. “Luke? Are you okay?”

  He spoke in a whisper. “Don’t wait for me outside tomorrow, Nate. My dad says if he sees you with me again, he’ll get a restraining order against you. And then he’ll have you arrested if you get anywhere near me. Please, just meet me at my locker tomorrow.”

  “Okay, Luke. It’s okay.”

  “I have to go. I’m in the bathroom. He took my bedroom door off. Can you believe that?”

  “Oh, Luke.”

  “I’ll see you in the morning. I’ve got to go. I love you, Nate.”

  “I love—” But he’d already hung up. I ended the call, avoiding Adam’s eyes.

  Chapter 49

  The first bell had already rung and still no Luke. I kicked his locker. Danial looked irritated that he hadn’t kicked it first.

  “He’s not coming,” I growled, kicking the locker again. “That bastard’s done something to him.”

  Danial rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Let’s give him another minute. If we’re late to class, so what.”

  I leaned back against the locker above Luke’s and banged my head on the metal door. “We never should have let him go home.”

  “We didn’t have a lot of choice, Nate.”

  “We always have a choice.”

  And then Luke was hurrying around the corner, dragging his backpack, his face flushed.

  I met him halfway. “You had us worried half to death,” I said, taking his backpack and carrying it the rest of the way to his locker.

  Luke spun the lock. “My dad’s doing this on purpose. He’s getting me here late so I can’t hang out with you.” He yanked on the lock, but it refused to release. He slammed the heel of his hand against the locker.

  I watched him spin the dial again and knew there was something he wasn’t telling us. He yanked, but the lock held firm. “Dammit,” he growled, banging the locker again.

  “Here, let me do it,” Danial said. They switched places and Luke gave him the combination.

  “What’s going on, Luke?” I asked.

  Danial released the lock and opened Luke’s locker for him. Luke dug what he needed out of his backpack and shoved the rest into his locker. He stood up and looked at us, his face glum, defeated. “We’re moving.”

  I had expected bruises, something broken or bleeding; I hadn’t expected that. I huffed and ran my hands through my hair, looking wildly at Danial. He pinched his eyes closed and let out an angry breath.

  “He can’t move you because you’re gay,” I said to Luke, knowing good and well that his dad could do just that.

  “He’s not,” Luke said. He stared at his feet. “He’s been commuting to Odessa for months. Mom wants to keep our family together. She’s already turned her practice over to her partners. We already have a house and—”

  “What? Yours isn’t even up for sale,” I said. And then it clicked. This wasn’t something his parents had cooked up in the middle of the night to punish him. This move had been planned. And he’d known. For how long?

  He sniffed. “Mom didn’t want the Realtors showing it until after we moved. Dad’s company is selling it. The movers come the day after Christmas.” He said the last in a small, little-boy voice, and then as if the revelation had emptied him of any substance, he slid down the lockers and sat heavily on the floor, then looked up at me. “I don’t want to go.”

  Danial sat down next to him. I felt like all the air had gone out of me and I sat too. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

  Luke’s face was flushed. He tugged at the collar of his hoodie some, then pulled it over his head and wadded it up next to him. “I didn’t want to mess things up. I kept hoping Dad would hate Odessa and change his mind about the transfer, or that Mom would hate Odessa and tell him she wouldn’t go.” He hugged his knees to his chest and slumped over them.

  I wanted to say something, anything to make things okay, but all I could think was Odessa. An image presented itself in my mind, an image of cowboys and pickup trucks and oil rigs and dirty men in orange jumpsuits and hardhats. Nowhere in that picture could I place Luke. Nowhere.

  “Gentlemen, get to class. You’re already late.” I looked up to see Mr. Wolf standing at the end of the hallway. There were only a handful of students around, all of them hurrying to class. I hadn’t even heard the tardy bell ring.

  Danial reached out to give Luke a hand up. “Come on, bro,” he said.

  I followed behind, shouldering Wolf as I passed him. “Nate,” he said, grabbing my arm, but I shrugged him off and continued down the hallway.

  It had been impossible to spend more than a few minutes with Luke each day, and the isolation seemed to be draining him of life. And me, I had been blowing my finals, and I knew it, but no matter how hard Adam had tried to keep me on track, I couldn’t concentrate. I stared at my blog, sometimes for an hour at a time, but I didn’t have the heart to write anything—hadn’t in weeks. I found myself pouring over Luke’s comments, seeing them in a whole new way now, though I couldn’t say exactly in what way. Just that they felt different in light of everything that had happened. Adam was quieter than usual, something that registered with me in a distant way, like driving down the highway, getting from point A to point B, but not really aware of anything in between, of the road, the traffic, the exits. Just going through the motions, stopping, starting, changing lanes, all as if on autopilot.
He’d been all I could think about when he was in New York, but now, with him safely here, all I could think about was someone else. I knew Adam wanted more of me; I could feel it in the way he looked at me sometimes, or kneaded my shoulders or my bare feet, or the way he fingered the pendant I was wearing again, rubbing his thumb across his name as if to remind me he was there. Or when he locked the door and dropped to his knees in front of me. I wanted to give myself to him, but I hung limp in his hands and in his mouth, unable to respond to him for the first time ever, unable to let go of the feeling that this time belonged to Luke, that I owed Luke that. He only had a few days. There would be time for Adam and locked doors later.

  As the week unraveled, so did Luke. On Wednesday, pale and with bruised-looking skin under his eyes, he said he wasn’t allowed to be alone with his little brother anymore. All doors in his house, except for the bathroom doors, had to remain open at all times. That pissed me off more than anything his dad had done so far. Even hitting Luke had been done on impulse. This was something far uglier. When his mom got back Wednesday evening, I’d had hopes that things would improve for Luke, but on Thursday he reported that nothing had really changed—still no computer, no cell phone, no door. His mom earned double what his dad earned, and allowing him to discipline the boys without interference must have been her way of letting him protect his pathetic masculinity. I thought it was a copout of the worst sort, and I didn’t much like her after that. But Luke defended her. “She doesn’t know about me, or what happened, and I’m not telling her.” Matt had promised to keep his mouth shut too. I thought he was wrong, they were both wrong, but I could no more control their relationships than I could control the one between myself and my own dad.

  We ended the week with a holiday program in the auditorium. The band played, but Luke didn’t play with them, as if he were already gone. Danial and I saved a seat for him, both of us acutely aware that this might be the last time we’d see him. It was sixth period, and in another hour and a half we’d be dismissed for a two-week break. Luke looked frighteningly bleak when he came in and collapsed into the seat between us. I reached over and took his hand. It was hot. He closed his eyes and just breathed.

  I looked across him at Danial. He shook his head and shrugged, a worried crease deepening between his eyes.

  Juliet wiggled into the seat on the other side of Danial just as Mr. Thornton began blathering onstage about appropriate concert behavior, as if we were going to jump on our seats and throw popcorn during the performance like those gremlins in the movie. Get on with it already, I thought.

  Luke’s hand twitched in mine, the flush in his face extending all the way down his neck giving him color, but in the wrong way. I could see the muscle in his jaw working as if he were grinding his teeth. “I have to go to the bathroom,” he said suddenly. He got up and stumbled over Danial, Juliet, and several other students to get to the aisle, and lurched from the auditorium. Danial started to get up. “I’ll go,” I said.

  Luke was already puking his guts up when I got to the bathroom. I got a wad of paper towels and wet them in the sink. I flushed the toilet when he was done, gave him some wet towels for his mouth and held the others to his forehead.

  “Damn, Luke, you’re really hot. You’ve got a fever, man.”

  He gagged again and emptied his stomach of whatever bile was left. I pressed the wet towels to the back of his neck while he drooled and spit in the toilet. “Sorry,” he sputtered.

  I flushed again and helped him get cleaned up. “Let’s get you down to Ms. Ellingson’s office. You need to go home.”

  Even as I said it, I knew that was the last place Luke needed to go. I wanted desperately to put him in my car and take him home with me where Mom and Grandma and I could take care of him. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  The nurse’s office was located in the main hallway, just across from the registrar. Luke was weak and starting to tremble all over when we left the bathroom. I put his arm over my shoulder and supported him around the waist.

  “How long have you had this fever?” I asked as we made our way to the main hallway.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t feeling so great this morning when I got here.” He folded himself into me a little more. “I’m so cold.” I tightened my arm around his waist, trying to transfer some warmth to his feverish body.

  “What the hell?”

  Startled, I looked up to see Luke’s dad and Mr. Wolf just outside the registrar’s office.

  “Get away from my son.” He crossed the distance between us in three long strides and yanked Luke by the arm. Luke stumbled into a bench along the wall and sat down hard. Then his dad was in my face, his fists balled up at his sides. “I warned you to stay away from him,” he spat at me, so close to my face I could smell the garlic he’d had for lunch. My own fists clenched. All I needed was a reason and an opportunity. It seemed I had both.

  Mr. Wolf wedge himself between us, his back to me, his palms up in a defensive position. “Calm down, John.”

  “It’s your job to protect my son.” Mr. Chesser punctuated each of the last three words with a jab in Mr. Wolf’s chest.

  And then Luke was up and at his dad’s side, wobbly but holding his own. “Nate was just walking me to the nurse’s office.”

  Luke’s dad turned on him and held up a forefinger in his face. “Stay out of this. I’ll deal with you later.”

  But Luke didn’t stay out of it. “Why are you here anyway?” he asked, visibly angry.

  “Withdrawing you. Now sit down!” his father shouted in his face.

  I still hadn’t said a word, but I saw Luke swoon and lunged for him. The second I was out from behind Mr. Wolf, his dad was on me. He shoved me hard, sending me sprawling into one of the tin knights that decorated the school. It clattered to the ground. Mr. Wolf was on one knee with Luke, his radio out. It squawked, and he called for another administrator. As I got to my feet, the nurse opened her door, then hurried toward Luke. The school receptionist and librarian had stepped out too. Both looked shocked and uncertain what to do. The receptionist ducked back into her office.

  I barely registered Danial and Juliet at the end of the hallway as I threw myself at Luke’s dad, propelled by years of secrecy and shame and fear and anger. He stumbled back in surprise and I drew my fist back. I wanted to smash his face. I wanted him to pay for every stripe he’d laid on his son’s back, for every insult he’d ever carelessly thrown at him, and maybe I wanted him to pay for what my dad had done too. I didn’t know. I only knew I wanted to hit someone just then. Before I could throw my fist, Danial was there, checking my arm and holding me back. My chest heaved. “You bastard,” I spit.

  “You queers are not getting my son,” he said coldly. He ran his fingers through his thinning gray hair, smoothing it back into its tight-ass style, then straightened his tie. I hated him.

  Mr. Thornton was stalking toward us, heaving with the exertion and his own anger. “Get him out of here,” he shouted. I shrugged off Danial, and then shrugged off Mr. Wolf when he tried to lead me away to his office. I could get there on my own. Danial followed. At the end of the hall, we both stopped and looked back one last time at Luke. He was still on the ground, the nurse’s back shielding his face from us. I turned away and walked on.

  Neither Danial nor I heard from Luke that night or the next. Adam tried to get me to go shopping on Market Street. The tree was up in the green, lights were strung across the streets, holiday music was playing through speakers, and it was finally cold enough for heavier jackets and scarves. But I just couldn’t generate any holiday spirit. Christmas was four days away, and I couldn’t have cared less.

  Finally, Luke called. It was Monday night, late. I knew from his whispering that he was calling from the bathroom again. I told him how worried I’d been and he explained that he’d spent Friday night in the hospital with a high fever and an IV in his arm. He’d tested positive for swine flu, but the worst seemed to be behind him now.

  “I wish
I could have come to see you,” I said.

  “It’s okay. Mostly I just slept.”

  We were quiet for a minute. There was so much I wanted to say that I couldn’t say anything, kind of like those people who’d tried to flee the fire in that nightclub and got all smushed up in the doorway and no one could get out. They’d died. I felt like if I couldn’t squeeze a word through soon, they’d be lost forever too.

  “I wish I could be there with you right now,” I said, finally.

  “Me too.” His voice was so soft I could barely hear him.

  “Does your new school have a marching band?”

  He didn’t answer right away. When he did, his voice was choked with emotion. “Yeah.”

  I swallowed hard and tried to make my words come forth steady and hopeful. “It’s gonna be okay, Luke,” I lied. “You’re gonna make new friends, you’re gonna—”

  “I’ll have to go back in the closet, Nate,” he whimpered. “I don’t want to.”

  Chapter 50

  Christmas Eve limped in cold and rainy. I was so depressed I stayed in bed until my head pounded from being in a prone position so long. Finally I got up. I started to take some ibuprofen for my headache but decided I wanted to feel the pain. It was a small tribute to Luke.

  I brushed my teeth, but I didn’t bother doing anything with my hair or changing out of the T-shirt and soft flannel pants I’d slept in. Maybe I’d just wear them for the rest of the school holiday. What did I care?

  Mom handed me something to eat downstairs, but I wasn’t hungry. She watched me play with my food for a while. “He’s going to be okay, Nate.”

  I looked at her dully and shook my head. “Mom, he’s moving to the redneck capital of the world. He won’t stand a chance there.”

  She chewed on her lip. “He’ll be okay, Nate. In another couple of years, he’ll go to college, and everything will be different.”