“Are you sure you don’t mean you’re over our friendship?” Abbey asked.
“Abbey, what are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“No.” I stepped closer to her. “Tell me why you would say something like that.”
She took a deep breath and slowly her eyes met mine. “This is the first time in almost a month that I’ve seen you outside of school, and now you can’t wait to hightail it outta here.”
The past month blurred through my mind. Jess had been over almost every day after school. I told Abbey and my mom she was there tutoring me for finals. I wasn’t the best student, and Jess was really smart, so it wasn’t hard to convince them that were true.
It was hard lying to Abbey’s face because I’d always been honest with her, but this I couldn’t tell. Not yet.
“I’m sorry I haven’t been around much,” I said. “I needed the extra help to get through finals.”
“I like Jess. She’s my friend, too, but lately there doesn’t seem much room for me anymore. It’s like she’s your new best friend.”
I took another step toward her. “You’re my best friend. No one else. You know that.”
Tears welled in the corners of Abbey’s eyes, and they rolled down her face. “I’ll never have another best friend but you. You don’t have to worry about that.”
“Neither do you,” I whispered.
Abbey wiped the tears from her cheeks. “I’m sorry if I’m acting like a baby, but I miss how we used to be. I’ve been thinking a lot about when we were younger. You know. What our lives were like.”
“I think about those days sometimes, too. I bet most kids didn’t do half the things we did.”
“Do you think life was better back then?”
I folded my arms and leaned against the counter. I drew in a breath. “It was different. We were kids. What the hell did we know besides everything, we thought? But we couldn’t see past the day in front of us, at least I couldn’t. I acted like there was nothing worse in the world than having a mother who wasn’t home in time to eat dinner with me, or to clean my cuts every time I fell. I wish I knew then that things would work out. She’s happy. Her life is good now. Franklin turned out to be a decent man.”
“But what about with you?” Abbey asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Did everything work out with you?”
I forced a laugh. “Geez, Ab, I don’t know. Even now I can barely see past the day in front of me, but we’re graduating next week. Off to college, a new life.”
“Not for me. I’m going to community college. I have to stay here. Nothing’ll change for me.”
“You can transfer after two years. It won’t be that bad. You’ll meet new people.”
“Yeah, other degenerates who couldn’t get into a real college,” she said.
“Hey.” I grabbed hold of her. “Stop putting yourself down. There’s nothing wrong with community college.”
“You got into Illinois State.”
“Just barely. But it doesn’t matter. Franklin can get you a job. You’re eighteen. Your mom can’t stop you from getting a job. Between work, school, new friends, you won’t be home a lot. And there’ll be an empty room at my house if you need it.”
“My mom hates that I’m going to community college. She had this big fantasy that I’d attend some prestigious school and meet an intelligent boy and we’d both become doctors or something.”
“Forget her. I’ve been telling you that since we were kids.”
“Yeah,” Abbey said softly.
I pushed myself off the counter and stepped into the middle of the kitchen. “Hey.” I turned to Abbey. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about with this whole college thing.”
“What’s that?”
“Boys. More specifically, college boys.”
Abbey crossed her arms. “You’re not gonna give me the same boy talk you did when we got to high school, are you?”
“College boys aren’t like high school boys. High school boys are sloppy. A girl knows exactly what they’re up to before they even open their mouths. But college boys are smart . . .”
“Not community college boys,” Abbey interrupted.
“Stop it. There’s nothing wrong with community college. A twenty-year-old boy is a twenty-year-old boy no matter what school he’s at. He’s experienced and preys on girls like you.”
“I’m not as naïve as you think. I know when a boy’s lying to me. I’m not the same as when we were kids. I know I’m still small, but I’ve grown up.”
“Grown up. Right. That’s why you called me in the middle of the night cuz you heard a chair move.”
“Shut up. I thought there was a ghost in my basement. Even grown-ups are afraid of ghosts.”
I laughed. “Sure.”
“Stop laughing. You can leave if you want to. It’s fine. I’m not afraid anymore,” she said.
“No. I’ll stay.” I slung an arm around her shoulders. “Come on. We can put in a movie.”
“What should we watch?” she asked.
We looked at each other.
“Meatballs,” we answered in unison.
ABBEY’S ROOM WAS dark except for the glare from the TV. I folded the pillow Abbey had given me in half to give my neck better support.
“Are you okay on the floor?” she asked.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“You can come up here with me,” she offered.
“Your bed isn’t really built for two anymore. I’m fine.” I tugged the blanket over my chin and laughed at the scene where Bill Murray dances a wacky version of disco moves.
I lifted my head to check on Abbey, who was quiet during her favorite part of the movie. “Why aren’t you laughing?”
“Huh?” she responded.
“Every time we get to this part, I usually have to tell you to shut up because you’re laughing so hard.” Abbey appeared distracted. “Are you even watching this?”
“I’m watching it. I guess I’ve just seen it so many times it’s not that funny anymore.”
I watched her closely before putting my head back down. “Then next time we’ll watch something else.”
Later, when the movie was coming to an end, Abbey asked if I was still awake.
“Barely,” I answered. “Why?”
“I’ve been thinking about our Hideout a lot lately,” she said.
It’d been a while since we talked about the Hideout, and a sense of uneasiness webbed through my body. The credits on the screen were rolling. I picked up the remote lying next to me and turned off the TV. I rolled over onto my side to face Abbey in the dark room.
“What is it, Ab?” I asked softly.
“Do you ever think about the times we spent at the Hideout?”
We had discovered the Hideout one summer when we were eleven years old and spent a mere couple months there, yet the place had become, and remained, a significant part of our lives, a part of us.
“Sometimes,” I whispered back.
“Do you ever think about Derek?”
I turned onto my back. “I don’t know how to think about our days at the Hideout without thinking about Derek. So I try not to think about that time too much. It’s too sad.”
“You think anyone else besides us gets sad when they think of him?”
“I don’t know.”
“I wonder if anyone else misses him the way we do.”
“I hope so. Everyone deserves to be missed when they die,” I said.
Abbey propped up on her elbows and turned to me. “You’d told me when it happened that he probably did it because life was too painful.”
“I said that?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“Well, you did.”
“What the hell did I know? I was just a dumb kid,” I said.
“You know Derek was younger than we are right now when he killed himself?”
“Just a kid,” Abbey said. “But he seemed so much older to me at the time.”
“It’s because we were so young.”
“I know his step-dad was hitting him, but—”
“Beating him,” I corrected. “All those bruises. That’s a beating.”
“I wished he’d told us. Maybe we could have helped him.”
“Maybe,” I whispered.
“Do you think his life would have gotten better for him?” Abbey asked.
“Ab, there’s no way for me to know that. There’s no way for anyone to know that. Derek had to choose to live, to keep going . . . keep fighting.”
“But sometimes you get tired of fighting,” Abbey said in a tight whisper. “You think his pain is gone now?”
“I hope so,” I answered.
I buried my head into the soft pillow. My eyes grew heavy. I imagined Jess’s face pressed against my pillow next to me. Abbey’s last words, “I wonder what it felt like,” lingered in my head until I fell into a deep sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
THE FIRST RAY of sunshine peeking through the curtains woke me. I pushed myself off the floor and glanced around the room. Abbey was buried underneath a sea of disheveled covers.
I extended my arms over my head and twisted my body in a sufficient morning stretch that knocked the kinks out of my stiff muscles. I quietly folded my blankets that were rustled across the floor, picked up my pillow, and gently placed both on the foot of Abbey’s bed.
I crept across the room, careful not to make a sound, and cracked the door halfway. I quietly slipped through the doorway and lightly shut it behind me.
The house was still. I wasn’t sure if Abbey’s mother ever showed up last night. I knew Abbey’s aunt was suffering from a terrible illness, and it was possible her mother needed to stay the night.
I rushed out of the house and into my car.
I UNLOCKED MY back door and stepped into the quiet house. I assumed Jess was still sleeping, until I found her sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Fruit Loops. She was wearing nothing but a long black-and-white button-down flannel shirt of mine that fell to just above her knee.
“What are you doing up so early?” I asked.
“My stomach woke me up,” she answered. “I was famished. What took you so long?”
I folded my arms and leaned against the wall. “I couldn’t leave her.”
Jess swirled her spoon around the edges of the bowl. “I figured you couldn’t. Are you hungry?”
“I am crazy hungry.”
“We didn’t take the time to eat much food last night, but we sure worked up an appetite. Wanna share?” She held her spoon out to me.
I nodded and pushed myself off the wall. I sat down in the chair beside her. “This one’s my favorite.”
“It was either this or Mini-Wheats,” she said.
“My mom eats the Mini-Wheats.”
“What does Franklin eat?”
“Bacon.”
Jess laughed. “Just bacon?”
“The man is a bacon-eating machine. It’s pretty gross, actually.” She trapped a spoonful of Fruit Loops and lifted it toward my mouth.
“Open wide,” she said.
I opened and she placed the spoon in my mouth. The cereal crunched loudly in my ear with each bite. “Thanks.”
“I stayed up as long as I could last night . . . just in case.”
“I’m sorry. I had planned on calling you after Abbey went to sleep, but I think I fell asleep before she did. It was a strange night.”
“That’s a phone call I’d never expect to get, about a chair moving.”
“That’s because you don’t have Abbey as a best friend. Anything’s possible with her.”
“Did you tell her I was here?” Jess scooped up more cereal for me, and I held her eyes as my mouth covered the spoon.
“No. I couldn’t tell her that. You know that,” I said, watching her as I slowly chewed the food in my mouth.
“Why not?” she asked.
“I already told you why. She’s not ready to hear this.”
“Or maybe you’re not ready to tell her?”
“No. She’s not ready.”
“Why do you think that?” Jess dropped the spoon into the bowl and drops of milk spilled onto the table.
I straightened in my chair and folded my hands across the table. “Because she’d want to know why, and how, and she’d have so many questions that I won’t have the answers to because I don’t know why I’m this way. Do you? I mean, do you know why you like doing the things we did last night with me, and not with a boy?”
Jess shook her head. “I don’t know. I never really thought about why I didn’t like boys because I knew about gay people. I have a gay uncle and one of my neighbors growing up was gay. My parents explained it to me when I was little. So I knew what being gay was, and it wasn’t long before I figured out that I was gay. Couldn’t you just tell Abbey you’re gay?”
“There’s more to it than just knowing the name for what you are. Even if she knows what the words means, she won’t understand.”
“Sure, she might be shocked, but being as close as the two of you are she’d understand. She’d have to. You can’t think she’d stop being your friend.”
“It’s not that.” I focused on the puddle of milk on the table. “I know she won’t stop being my friend, but she’ll be hurt by this somehow. I know it. She’ll analyze our entire friendship, trying to figure out at what point I started being gay, but didn’t tell her.”
“Started being gay?” Jess slowly smiled. “When does a person start being gay?”
“I don’t know. When I started noticing girls, I guess. She’ll want to know when I knew and why I didn’t tell her at that point. She’ll take this personal when it has nothing to do with her. She’ll feel like I was lying to her by keeping this from her.”
“Do you think you’re lying to her? Do you have a guilty conscience?”
“Maybe I do.” I dropped my forehead onto the table.
Jess rubbed my back. She laughed a bit as she rested her chin against my shoulder. “You’re putting too much pressure on yourself. Relax. It really isn’t that big of a deal.”
I looked at her. “That’s easy for you to say. Your parents went to Woodstock. They’re worldly. The rest of the people in this town are the opposite of worldly.”
“I remember how pissed I was coming here my sophomore year. I wanted to go back to California and be with my old friends and my old house and the beach. The only thing that made this place tolerable was you. I’d already had my eye on you when I saw you in the halls one day. You pushed some guy, who was making fun of Abbey, into the lockers. I was watching you for a long time. You didn’t know it, but every time I saw you in the halls, I’d pretend to drop something or tie my shoe, anything that would let me stop and watch you.”
“How come you never told me this before?” I asked.
“I told you I had a crush on you. What’d you think people do when they have crushes?”
“Write really bad poetry,” I answered.
Jess laughed, softly at first, and then more rambunctious.
“Why are you laughing so hard?” I cocked my head. “Did you write really bad poetry for me?” I scooted my chair closer to her and poked her sides. “You wrote bad poetry for me, didn’t you?”
She responded with the same contagious laughter.
“Oh my god. You did.” I tickled her sides. “You wrote really bad poetry for me. Let me read it.”
“No,” she yelled, while still laughing. “Stop tickling me.” Her body twisted in my grip.
“Is it really bad? How bad is it?” I asked, still prickling at her skin.
We laughed until Jess couldn’t catch her breath, and I pulled away. I stood up and lifted her onto the table. I stepped into the space between her legs. “I was hoping you’d still be sleeping. On my way here, I fantasized about ways I could wake
you.”
Jess cupped her fingers lightly around my neck. “And what way was your favorite?”
I lightly kissed her mouth, neck, and throat. “I’ll show you.” I lifted her off the table, and she wrapped her legs tightly around my body as I carried her to my bedroom.
“I’m sorry I was acting all insecure last night. Asking you dumb questions,” she whispered in my ear.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m gonna have lots of fun putting all those insecurities to rest right now.”
“I NEED TO go home.” Jess zipped up her jeans and pulled a Nirvana T-shirt over her head. I loved the way the shirt fit perfectly over her full breasts and flat stomach.
“What?” I popped up from the bed. “You mean you’re not staying tonight?”
She smiled. “Relax, horndog. I’ll be back, but I need to show up at my house for a little bit this weekend. My mom’s cool, but she’s not that cool.”
I wrapped my arms around her waist as she stood inches from me, finishing getting dressed. I wrestled her down to the covers and rolled on top of her and cradled her head under my forearms. I stared at her with my face only inches from hers. “You are so beautiful.”
“You always say that,” she said.
“Because you are.” I kissed her, but she pulled back. “What’s wrong?”
“Sometimes you act so serious, and then other times you act like all you want is sex.”
“Hey.” I kissed her shoulder. “I am serious about us. I love you. I want to be with you as much as I can. What’s wrong with that? But I want sex only from you, if that’s what you were worried about.”
“I don’t know what I meant by that. You’re just such a horndog sometimes . . .”
“But only for you. I promise.”
She smiled. “Forget I brought it up.”
“It’s forgotten. So, when will you come back?”
“Tonight. I’ll eat with my parents and then spend the night here again. It’s Saturday. Wanna go out?”
I buried my face into her neck. “I want to stay here with you in this bed all night. I’m a horndog remember?” I playfully barked like a dog.
Jess laughed and twisted herself out from underneath me. “You are crazy.” She pushed herself up.
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