We were both quiet for a minute.
“Listen,” I said, “I know it seems hard, but if you just explain—”
“Explain what, Frenchy?”
I hesitated. “You know.”
He grabbed the sleeve of my coat. “You can’t say anything, Frenchy. Not a fucking word. I mean it.”
“Yeah, but Stewart—”
“I’m okay. I’ve just got to sort it out. Don’t worry, I’ll sort it out.”
You’re not okay, I thought. But after getting him calmed down, I didn’t want to say anything. I started to walk past him, but he stopped me.
“Promise me, Frenchy. I want you to swear on your father’s soul that you won’t betray us.”
I hesitated again. “I promise,” I said at last, “on one condition—when the play’s over, you talk to somebody.”
“Fine.” He started to let go of me, but it was my turn to grab him.
“No. You promise me, Stewart. I mean it. You promise you’ll get help.”
“Yeah, I promise.”
We continued on in silence to the house. I couldn’t tell if I felt better or worse. Maybe better. But as I followed him onto the deck, I saw him lean toward the house, at his right, away from the ridge across the valley, and cover his left ear. I didn’t follow him inside. I stayed behind to watch the distant towers, watch their red lights come to life, one by one, winking all in a row.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The next morning Stewart picked me up, dressed in full Don Quixote garb. He didn’t smile or even look at me when I got in the car.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“Good morning, Sancho,” he said. His voice was much clearer now, in spite of the prosthetics. All that practice, I guess.
“Halloween’s over, Stewart,” I said as we coasted down the hill.
He didn’t answer.
“Why are you still dressed like him? I thought you were going to sort it out.”
“I am. I will,” he said, waving a hand in front of his face.
“Yeah, it really looks like it.”
“Just remember what you promised, Frenchy.”
I reached up and punched the roof of the Volvo. “Yeah. You too, asshole.”
By lunchtime, half the school was talking about Stewart. He’d only made it through three periods before getting sent to the office. Nobody had seen him since. Standing in line with my tray, I heard all kinds of rumors. He was being sent home. He’d been expelled. Mr. Ruggles had torn off the wig and half of Stewart’s hair in a fit of rage. Ms. Vale had threatened to quit. Mr. and Mrs. Bolger were suing the school.
So you can imagine how surprised I was to see him walk into the cafeteria toward the end of lunch. The prosthetics were gone, but everything else—the wig, the cloak, the armor, even his cane—remained.
The whole cafeteria came to a halt as Stewart strode in. He stood there in the doorway for a moment, peering around at all the gawkers frozen over their trays. Then, without a word, he bowed, sweeping his cloak around to drape the floor before him. The whole place erupted, breaking into a mix of laughter and applause. Everyone loved it.
Everyone except a scowling Mr. Ruggles, who ushered Stewart over to where Eddie Edward and I sat at a nearby table.
“Thought you were getting sent home,” I said as Stewart pulled up a seat next to me.
He shrugged. “We reached an agreement.” He laid his cane on the table.
“You shouldn’t bring that to school.”
“No one knows.”
“So what happened, anyway?”
“I was in AP Calc, just minding my own business. Mr. Goodwin didn’t like the costume. Said it was a distraction. I told him his stupid class was a distraction from my life.”
“Christ, Stewart.”
“Whatever. I apologized. All part of the arrangement.”
“Yeah? What arrangement?”
“Oh, you should have seen it, Sancho. Me and Ruggles, your pal Bryant, and Goodwin. They wanted to bring in my parents too, but I forbade it. It didn’t matter anyway. Ms. Vale came. She told them it was Method acting, that it was all part of my preparation. And they agreed. Can you believe it? They made me take off the nose and beard and shit, but that’s okay. I don’t need that stuff. Until the play’s over, this is it. It’s all Don.”
I shook my head. Method acting. For someone struggling with reality, he seemed to know exactly what he was doing. He had all of them—all of us—wrapped right around his finger.
He blinked a few times, then whispered, “All Don,” again to himself.
For the hundredth time, my thoughts went back to yesterday on the rock. He’d crossed over to a dark place and pulled me with him, and all I wanted was to get us both back in one piece. I just had to wonder how much he really wanted to come with me.
“What are you trying to prove?”
His face tensed, and he blinked once more before putting his head down on the table. For the rest of lunch, he just stayed there like that.
And that became the pattern for the rest of the week—a weird stretch of anxiety wrapped in a layer of calm. Stewart spoke less and less every day. He still picked me up, still took me home, but I could feel him pulling away, sinking more and more into himself. Or rather, Don Quixote, whose costume he still wore. I thought about getting another bag of weed from Ralph to see if Stewart would come around that way, but all I could think about was Bryant’s little lecture about self-medicating. It was stuck in my head now—the bastard had ruined it for me. For good, probably. Besides, Stewart had called it at the very beginning: He didn’t need pot anymore—he had Don. What the hell did I have?
I guess I had Don too. I was always by his side. Even when he stopped talking to me, I was there with him until the moment he dropped me off and headed home each night. I watched every move he made, analyzing every little eye twitch, every little whisper, looking for some sign that it was all about to break for good.
It didn’t help that he showed up exhausted every morning, his eyes all droopy and dark. I asked him why he was so tired.
“Not sleeping much.” He took a slug of coffee from the huge travel mug that had become a morning fixture.
“Yeah? Why not?”
“Working.”
“What do you mean, ‘working’? You mean, like schoolwork?” I guessed he was still failing his classes.
He shook his head and yawned. “Sorting it out. Taking care of it. Taking care of business. Just like we talked about.”
“Yeah, how?”
“You’ll see, you’ll see. Don’t worry, Sancho. I feel much better now. Much clearer.”
“Yeah, you look it,” I muttered, glancing at the dark circles under his eyes.
The only time he came alive was in rehearsals. As soon as he hit the stage, the sullen, withdrawn Stewart disappeared, replaced by the charming Cervantes or, more often, the passionate Don Quixote. It was all there—the commanding dialogue, the fluid moves, the striking voice. Good thing, too. We all felt the need to get back on track, and Stewart’s focus brought us all around. The relief on Ms. Vale’s face about ten minutes into rehearsal the day Stewart returned said it all. By Wednesday the production was humming along with even more energy than before, helped along by the fact that the end was now in sight. And the part we’d dreaded most—going off-book—turned out to be not so bad, forcing us to be more disciplined.
Even as I fretted about Stewart, even as I held on to a promise I worried I had no business keeping, I was enjoying the play more than ever. It had become comfortable now, my own little escape. We all shared in one another’s competency and talent, helped the few who still struggled a little with a line or verse or element of blocking. The set started to take shape as the tech crew became a more regular feature of our rehearsals. Of course, that meant I got to spend more time with Kaela. In fact, when I wasn’t directly involved in a scene, I was pretty much by her side. Since Stewart basically sat by himself now on a stool in the shadows a
nd didn’t talk to anybody, I was free to do what I wanted and—for the first time, really—be my own man.
That’s what I tried to tell myself, anyway. But the truth is, I couldn’t stop being Sancho. Even in the middle of cracking a joke, I found myself glancing toward the wings to check on Stewart.
And then there was Kaela.
“Come on,” she said at the end of Friday’s rehearsal. “The techs are all going out for pizza and then over to my house. Your fanboys are calling for you.”
“I don’t know. Once I start eating pizza, I have a hard time stopping. It’s not good for anyone. Especially for Sancho Junior here.” I slapped my gut.
She reached down and patted my belly. “I think he’s cute,” she said with a grin.
I looked over to where Stewart sat in the wings. His head was down, his arms were folded, and he was swaying a little. Even from here, I could hear him humming “The Impossible Dream.”
I winced. “Tonight’s not good.”
She frowned. “Yeah, that’s what you said yesterday, and the day before.” She followed my gaze over to Stewart. Before the play, she’d always looked at him with adoration. Now there was just resentment in her eyes.
“I know. What can I say? I’m a loser.”
“Well, a lovable loser, anyway,” she said, grinning. She wrapped her arm around mine and started dragging me toward the edge of the stage as everyone gathered their things. “All right, mister, you’re coming whether you like it or not.”
I took a deep breath of her perfume, felt the warmth of her body as she pressed against me, and let myself be pulled. A burst of laughter from Stewart made us both stop. I looked to where he sat, shaking his head, still gazing at the floor. A few other kids stopped to look, but not many. It wasn’t the first time this week he’d done that.
I untangled my arm from hers and stepped back. “Look, it’s not you.”
“Well, of course it’s not, sweetie,” she said. “I mean, come on.” She struck a sexy pose and gestured to herself. We both laughed. She glanced back over at Stewart. Her smile faded. “No, I get it.”
We both looked down at our feet for a moment as the crowd shuffled around us.
“So what’s going on with him, anyway? He’s been acting weird all week. I mean, even for Stewart. He just sits there. And that whispering.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He’s probably just practicing his lines.”
“Like he really needs to. Anyway, people are starting to talk—wondering if it’s starting to get to him. Opening night’s only a couple weeks away.”
I shrugged. “We’re all under a lot of stress.”
She looked back at me, her eyes softening. “Look, I just want to hang out.”
“Me too,” I said, taking her hand. “Don’t worry. Once this is over, I’m all yours.” I tried to hold back a grimace. Christ, I sounded like Stewart.
She glanced back over at Stewart and let go of my hand. “You just better hope I don’t get tired of waiting,” she said, then walked away.
Hell Saturday was heaven for Stewart. He got to be Don for almost an entire day. You could see the difference in him—he smiled when he picked me up that morning and talked to the others during breaks between scenes. Once or twice he even dropped character, something he hardly ever did now. For the first time in over a week, I actually felt relaxed at rehearsal. In fact, I felt so good, I made the mistake of asking him on the way home if he wanted to hang out that night.
“I can’t,” he said, his smile disappearing.
“Um, okay. Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
“Give me a fucking break.”
“Have to work,” he said, blinking a few times in agitation.
“You keep saying that. What are you working on, anyway?”
“You know,” he said. “I told you I’d sort it all out. That’s what I’m doing. I’m right in the middle of something. Something big. Something that will make this all right.”
“You’re bullshitting me.”
“No, I’m not,” he snapped. “How about a little trust?”
We didn’t say much after that. I just looked out my window. It had snowed quite a bit last night. We’d had a few dustings already, but it was always gone by late morning. Not today. In the headlights, I could still see patches of white glowing between the trees and along the stone walls.
“Sorry,” he said as we pulled into my driveway. He kept the car idling.
“Well, how about tomorrow? I’ll come up.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Parents want to go to Bur-lington,” he whispered.
We both looked straight ahead for a while. It had started to snow again, and the flakes were falling fast against the windshield.
“Listen, Stewart,” I finally said. “I know you’re scared by what’s happening. I’m scared too. But spending all this time alone isn’t going to help. When Dad died, I didn’t lock myself away in my room every weekend. And that was because of you. Because you wouldn’t let me.”
“You just don’t know,” he murmured, closing his eyes. I could feel him pulling away again, going off into that little place he’d been carving out for who knew how long.
“Let’s watch a movie or something. Whatever you want.”
He didn’t open his eyes. He just leaned forward until his head was resting on the steering wheel. For a minute I thought he’d fallen asleep, but then I saw him open his eyes.
“Going to Burlington.”
“Yeah, okay,” I said.
I got out of the car to a sudden squall, the snow coming so hard and fast it stung my eyes all the way to the house.
I was outside shoveling the driveway the next morning when the Bolgers’ SUV went by. Stewart wasn’t in it.
Fuck him, anyway, I thought, watching it disappear around the bend.
“What’s wrong?” my mother said at lunchtime, watching me poke at the leftover Chinese takeout she’d brought home last night for dinner. “You’ve been down all morning.”
“Nothing.”
“Is it the play?”
“Something like that.”
“Don’t be nervous, honey. You’ll be great. You’ve just got to really get into the role. You know, like Stewart. I bet he’s not scared at all.”
“Yeah,” I said. “No fear.”
She paused. “I’m so proud of you for doing this. It takes a lot of guts to do what you’re doing. To put yourself out there like that. Your father would be so proud of you.”
I snorted. “Yeah, I can just see him in the audience. The look on his face.”
She smiled. “People can surprise you, Frenchy. Your father always admired competency. Didn’t matter what it was—if you could do something well, you were okay in his book. And if you were brave enough to do the tough stuff, even better.”
I dropped my fork and pushed the plate aside.
“Do you ever think about how things could have been different?” I asked.
She looked away. I traced her gaze to the picture of my father on the wall.
“Every day.” I could hear the rawness in her voice.
“What did we do wrong?”
“Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I could tell he was hurting. I just thought he could handle it. Ever since we were teenagers, he was the toughest guy I knew. I thought nothing could take him down. I never guessed it would be himself.”
I finally looked up. Her face had settled into that old sadness.
“I just feel like we ignored him,” I said. “Abandoned him. Because we were afraid. Or because it was easier.”
“It wasn’t like we didn’t try. We took him to the VA hospital. He didn’t want to go, but I made him.”
“Yeah, they were a real help. Tossing him enough pills to put down an elephant and basically telling him to suck it up. So much for the government. They abandoned him just as much as we did.”
Tears began to well up in her eyes. Shit.
“Nothing was easy abou
t that time, Frenchy. Don’t you remember?” She wiped her eyes. “What’s easy is second-guessing yourself. But it doesn’t change a goddam thing.”
“I guess it doesn’t.”
She came over and put her arms around me. “I just wish you hadn’t gotten there first,” she whispered. “I could’ve kept you away, Frenchy. You should never have had to see him like that.”
There was a long pause. I could feel her awkwardness building.
“Do you want to go visit him?” she said at last.
I shook my head. We’d only been to the cemetery once since the burial. Last August, on his birthday. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how much it totally sucked.
“Me neither.” She got up and walked over to the window. “Not with the snow. Everything’s covered.”
She turned back to me. “But you’ve got to get out of the house, Frenchy,” she said, trying to smile. “You’re driving me crazy, moping around here. Why don’t you go see Stewart?”
I thought about his brush-off from yesterday. How he’d lied to me.
“Yeah,” I said, standing up. “Yeah, maybe I will.”
Stewart’s car was in the driveway next to his father’s Audi. I paused. Mr. Bolger always kept his car in the garage. In fact, he hardly ever drove it unless he really had to. Then I saw bright lights flashing in the garage door windows, which puzzled me even more. Maybe Mrs. Bolger and Stewart had gone to Burlington alone. But why was Mr. Bolger working in the garage and not in his shop?
I went to the side door and looked in, wincing against the torchlight.
It was Stewart, leaning over a fountain of sparks, a heavy apron over his Quixote costume, the locks of his wig sticking out from beneath the welder’s mask. He was hunched over a rectangular metal frame, like a box with no sides. Seeing me, he killed the torch and lifted the mask. I could see the anger on his face.
“Get out!” he shouted. “Out! Out! Out!”
I was so startled, I ducked out of the doorway and walked back to the gravel drive. A second later he came out, slamming the door behind him. He still had his apron on.
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