I nod. Jogging and singing are my two favorite things, but singing doesn’t make a good recreational activity unless you like being annoying. Which I do not.
“How far?” he asks me.
“Five miles,” I say.
“And how fast?”
I like when Dad leads me. I hate when anyone else does. “Thirty-nine minutes.”
“Way to go, kid.” He puts his hand on top of my hat. His hand is so big that he could palm my skull like a basketball and lift it right off my shoulders. He could tuck it under his arm and bring me with him everywhere.
“I miss New York,” I say. The moment felt right somehow.
He looks at me, his eyes suddenly soft. These are the moments I love best with my dad. When I stop being his boy and I can just be his kid. We stop acting like men. That’s the special part. I think the girls are always his girls.
He says, “You do?”
I nod.
I miss feeling strong and defiant. There’s something about being a NYC native that means you have a lot less to prove.
Dad says, “Was the anniversary hard for you?”
There are a lot of anniversaries he could mean. His and Mom’s, their third since they separated, was last week. My sisters and I took him out for dinner but didn’t talk about it. I think that was exactly what he wanted.
My no-more-chemo thing was actually yesterday, but I think Dad probably forgot about that. It’s a stupid thing to celebrate. My brother died on March 8th, and we always visit his grave and the children’s hospital, and that serves as the day we think about how glad we are that the cancer’s gone.
So I know what anniversary he means.
“No one here understands,” I say.
Dad says, “They had the Pentagon.”
I shrug. It’s not the same.
It’s numbers. Just like chances are Craig isn’t going to get shot, the chances are that if someone died in September 11th, they died in New York, not in Washington, D.C. It’s just numbers.
It makes sense, then, that the way they memorialized it at school wasn’t nearly the production I was expecting. We had a candle-lighting ceremony. The chorus sang a few songs. We missed one period for the assembly, then we trotted on back to class. All I really felt was a nagging feeling I should have signed up for chorus.
I wanted to email a friend back home and ask what it was like at my old school, but I didn’t know how to ask in a way that wouldn’t seem . . . vulgar. So, how was your September 11th?
Jasper calls, “Dad?” from the kitchen, so he smiles at me and gets up. “We’ll talk more later,” he says. “I’m glad you’re doing okay, Li.”
I wonder where he got the impression that I’m doing okay, but actually, I am.
Well, I’m not great or anything, but I’m probably not getting any worse.
Craigy—
Dad and I just had a nice talk about STATISTICS. Facts and figures and such. You know how fathers are. Did yours make you memorize baseball cards?
Washington DC didn’t come off looking so hot.
But you always do.
I can’t send that.
He’d probably be offended.
Or aroused.
And neither of those is really my intention.
Probably.
I hold down backspace.
I should probably make some cancer-kid joke. Those always go over well with Craig. I can’t decide if this is a horrible idea, since I snarked at him for making fun of dead people earlier today.
Generally, I can’t decide if I should feel ashamed about the cancer jokes.
Leukemia, after all the Lifetime movies, begs to be made fun of. It’s so overinflated. Plus it’s been seven years, so at this point, it really does feel like a joke. Like a gross-out story someone told me when I was a kid.
I could say that with full confidence if I didn’t still sometimes wake up from nightmares that make me breathe so hard I throw up. But they are less and less frequent every year.
Cancer is just a way to be sick in real life, but in movies and stuff it’s shorthand for he was young and beautiful and pure and then he got sick and he suffered and he had poignant last words and he died. And I can tell myself that’s what happened with Theodore, though it’s not entirely accurate. His last word was “water” and he died before he could drink it. You can make that beautiful, if you want. But the reality is, he was a thirsty forty-pound boy, and he died whining.
And the beautiful tragic death is obviously not how it worked out for me. So, way to fuck up, leukemia.
But the idea that this shitty disease sanctified our lives really bothers me. I wasn’t brave. I wasn’t a fighter. I was the one who responded to Jasper’s marrow transplant. I was a statistic. And so was Theo.
The bottom line is, cancer happens the exact same way other things happen: It does, or it doesn’t. But it never means anything.
Okay, cool, but this isn’t writing my email to Craig. And, hey, guess what? This isn’t about Theo.
Craigy—
Sorry about all the bad stuff.
Be well.
Lio
PS Your animals are safe. Promise.
I hit send before I can stop myself.
CRAIG
I CAN’T SLEEP. I WRITE EMAILS.
I can’t believe I’m writing to Cody. That after all of that bullshit and mindfucking I put myself through about not writing to Cody before he emailed me, now I’m doing it. It’s his turn. The way I was supposed to keep from going crazy was I was going to only email when it was my turn, because then I wasn’t crazy, then I wasn’t needy, I was just being polite, I was just being fair, it was my choice whether or not to respond, mine. And here I am writing back to an email he never sent. I’m writing to him because he’s ignoring me.
I knew it. I knew all along that I would keep
coming
back.
I’m that boy.
C—
Didn’t hear from you today, Cody. You doing okay? How’s school?
Things are okay here.
I pause and stare at what I’ve written. Well. I’m clearly the fucking master of conversation. I should teach lessons or something. Lio could pay me a hundred fucking dollars a week to learn to perform that kind of brilliant wordsmithing I demonstrated right there.
I keep typing. If I stop to think, that’s when I start crying or otherwise get fucked.
My animals escaped. We’ve found some—remember Sandwich? and Kremlin? I sent you pictures, you remember—and it’s hard and kind of scary. No one is giving up, so pray for them, okay? Hey, I wanted to apologize for always making fun of you when you prayed. Really, I thought it was cute the whole time, I just thought you liked being teased, I don’t know. I’m stupid. But it helped me sleep when you wished that I would. I mean prayed that I would.
I hope school’s going okay. Did you get into that art class after all? I’ll come up there and bash some skulls together or something if you need. If that would help.
I ran into your mother at the grocery store the other day. She had a bag of avocados, said she’d tell you hi from me next time you called, but I said she didn’t need to because you were still emailing, but I kind of hope she said hi for me anyway. Also, are we still emailing?
Love,
C
I put my head down next to my keyboard. Kremlin wants to know what’s wrong.
“I have a broken heart,” I tell her.
She whines a little.
I say, “Yeah, I know. I don’t like it either.”
Cody . . .
I’ve known Cody since I was six. We used to play together because we lived next door as toddlers, and even though he moved away before we were really aware of each other, our moms stayed friends so we saw each other a lot for those forced play dates, and eventually we begged for play dates every day. We were the exact same height when I was in first grade—like, to the centimeter. We thought that was really cool. Of course, by the time we started ho
oking up, I was practically twice his size. But when I was six, we were perfectly matched and it was great.
I’m not huge, though I guess I must look really tall next to the boys I keep . . . doing things with. I’m tall enough that people always tell me I should play basketball (though when you’re black, you only have to be like five foot ten before people start asking) but not the kind of freaky tall where I have to worry about how high doorways are. It’s not really a big deal, so it’s weird that it keeps being this thing that I think about, although usually I think about it in terms of Lio’s smallness rather than my largeness, and maybe that means something, but probably not, because it has nothing to do with Cody.
Anyway, when Cody grew up, or I grew up and he stayed small, he turned into some kind of a big deal—a fantastic soccer player, a huge smile, a personality that seemed like it must have eaten bits of other people’s to get that big, like a very hungry caterpillar. He was so much more than alive. He always was.
Our first kiss was in fourth grade for me and fifth grade for him, when we were playing hide-and-seek. I said if I found him in less than two minutes, I got to kiss him. I don’t remember what happened if I didn’t. But I found him in a minute and forty-two seconds, roughly, and he was inside this old chest that holds all these old clothes that my grandmother draped all over herself before she died, and I pulled him out of the chest and he was shrouded in turquoise and gold and I kissed him.
We waited until I turned fifteen because even we thought it was a little weird to have sex at fourteen, and he was sixteen and really not okay with having sex with a middle schooler, so that was the summer before ninth grade for me, and the summer before tenth grade for him, and he was almost sixteen, and that was our summer.
It was so ours, that whole summer.
It was awkward and difficult and painful at first, but he loved me and we were really gentle, and then it got good. Really good. It got closer to the movies than antiseptic health class told me it ever could.
So fuck health class and fuck the preachy advice your parents give you, because sex didn’t ruin our relationship.
It’s not that.
Although I can see, from an objective standpoint, that maybe I was too young, but is that really the point at all? Why the hell should I see things from an objective standpoint? I’m not objective, I mean, this is my life.
And if we stop having sex, the terrorists win, right?
I guess Lio would say that, statistically speaking, I was too young, since he’s so crazy about numbers, and I’m sure that means that, from his perspective, I should have waited, because his whole fucking life is about how many other people are doing things. I’m sure he’s a virgin. I’m sure he’s waiting until he’s exactly sixteen and seven months, which I think is the average age, but I think it’s a lot higher for gay boys, eighteen or so, because it takes us longer to realize and find each other and, I don’t know, wax off all our body hair or something.
But I didn’t have to go through any of that with Cody because I guess we were made for each other and too young to have a lot of body hair.
He’s a junior now. It’s crazy to think about that, to think that actually right now, maybe he’s thinking about college and SATs and stuff. Do they even talk about college at his school? Do kids from his school go to real college? Because it’s not exactly a real school. I mean, it’s called a school, a residential school, but it’s pretty much a mental hospital with classes.
At least that’s how I imagine it. It isn’t like I’ve visited him, and is that the part that’s important? That I haven’t visited him, even though he’s asked, he’s said fuck you fuck you Craig get up here goddamn it get here now, and is it important that I haven’t gone, or is it more important that that isn’t a real invitation? Is it more important that Cody is there or that he’s here in my head?
I think the part that’s important is we kissed in my parents’ attic when we were nine and ten.
That was great. And the summer before freshman year, the summer of 2001? That was a great summer. And then everything got so fucked up. I guess what happened is that the terrorists won.
My city, Silver Spring, isn’t technically a city in the legal sense of the word, according to the internet. I’m not sure why. Downtown, where I almost, almost, am, looks like most small cities, in the way that it’s a pretty rundown place, but with some tall buildings, and it has a general feeling of blue and brown. The streets are beautiful at night because of all the fast food places and the little liquor and wine stores. It looks like Christmas every night here, with all the brake lights and streetlights, and even along the highways, because you can see the lights from the hotels and churches. But on the edges of all of it, where the light almost, almost, but doesn’t quite hit, the dark is very deep, darker than any of the places in the whole world that I’ve ever been.
These are the kinds of things you realize when you stare out your window all night, waiting for an email that doesn’t come, listening to Sandwich whine for food even though there’s still some in her bowl. I have this brutal headache, and I know I need to go to sleep, but right now sleep feels as impossible as holding my breath all night.
I wonder how many people are getting shot over these few hours. All over the world, how many people are getting shot tonight, in this weird time between October 3rd and October 4th?
It turns out, no one was shot, at least not in our area by a single long-range bullet, the news says this morning. But that’s not even important, because the front page of the newspaper has an article tying all the shootings together, and there is, guaranteed, a sniper.
I read the word “sniper” and it’s like a bell in my head, ringing and ringing with the realization that everything is about to get really weird.
My mom drops me off really close to the front door of my school, like I’m six or something. “Just to be safe,” she says, and she gives me an extra kiss on each cheek. “I love you.” She doesn’t roll down the windows, even though it’s not as cold outside as it has been and the leaves are falling and it already smells like Halloween. October has a smokier smell than September, like there are candles burning in pumpkins the whole month.
Before I get out of the car, she says, “Craig, maybe we should stop hunting for the animals for a while.”
I look at her.
And my brain stops CodyCodyCodying just long enough to think, two dogs, three cats, three rabbits, one guinea pig.
She says, “Okay, honey, I’m sorry. God, don’t ever make that face at me again.” She hugs me, but I don’t know what face I’m making, because I didn’t mean to make a face. Maybe my normal face is just a really sad face, and how shitty would that be?
But the point is that I’m not going to stop looking for the animals, because they are mine and they are counting on me.
When I get out of the car, all these teachers and parent volunteers sweep in and form a pod around me until I reach the building. It’s claustrophobic and annoying and I’m fifteen and I can take care of myself.
I’m doodling in American Civilizations when Mr. Spavich sets aside his lesson plan and says, “Okay. Do you want to talk about what’s going on?”
We all look at him like we don’t know what he’s talking about.
“Are your parents afraid to pump gas?” he asks. “All of a sudden, that seems like a risky activity, doesn’t it?”
We don’t look at each other.
Mr. Spavich says, “Guys. It’s okay to be scared.”
Marisabel says, “If we’re scared, the terrorists win. Isn’t that what everyone said after September eleventh?”
“This isn’t terrorists,” Lio says under his breath. He’s sitting next to me, wearing these fingerless gloves that make him look like a badass. After his email last night, I have no idea what to say to him. And I guess he’s forgiven for kissing me, but I guess I still have that headache.
Dennis says, “Well, my parents are paying my brother to pump gas for them, which is kind of d
isgusting. Like, it’s all well and good if he’s the one who gets shot, we get it.”
“There are articles online, now,” Marisabel says. “Like, ‘How Not To Get Shot While Pumping Gas.’ People are getting paid to tell us how to not get randomly shot.”
Lio writes AND HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT in big letters on his notebook. Next to it is a scribble from his English class—fucking Kafka climaxed too early—that makes me smile. I chew my knuckle so I don’t laugh, and he notices and gives me this fantastic grin, though I’m not sure he knows why I’m laughing, and I think that’s okay. I think it’s this thing that’s okay, here in the middle of everything.
“Craig?” Mr. Spavich says.
Fuck. I look up.
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Thoughts?”
So I say my first thought. “I think it’s really disrespectful and stupid to compare this to September eleventh.”
Mr. Spavich says, “Oh?”
I bet American Civ had a field day last year, with September 11th. God, how can I even think things like that? I should be arrested. How many awful thoughts do you need to have before you count as a terrorist?
Lio whispers, “Numbers,” but like he’s talking to himself, not to me. It’s still enough for me to get my bearings.
I clear my throat. “Yeah. I mean . . . we just had the anniversary, and already we’re looking for our next big tragedy? This doesn’t compare at all. And how many people died in the Pentagon?”
“One hundred and eighty-nine,” Mr. Spavich says.
Damn. That sounds so low. I thought it was more than that, and it throws me for a second, but then I remember what the Pentagon was and what this is and everything comes back faster and harder. I say, “But, yeah. A hundred and eighty-nine people versus six from a sniper? Like, a life is a life. . . .”
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