Bonfires

by Amy Lane

  Larx smiled. “’Kay.” And then he was off, trotting down the road like he’d never broken stride.

  Aaron walked up his driveway and through his front door, wondering when he got to tell his son he was having a sleepover.

  Somehow he didn’t think that would go over very well.

  Sparks

  “SO, GUYS, do we have our lab reports all typed and ready to go?” The bell had rung, and Larx stacked the pile of papers on his desk and put a nice big paperclip on them. Tomorrow, Friday, was the test, and then, hopefully, the kids would have the weekend to relax. Larx had never been the kind of sadist who assigned big stuff after school events. How was that fair? Especially when football and cheerleading and drama were some of the things kids came to school for.

  The two boys approached Larx’s desk uncertainly, their work clenched in shaking hands. Fact was, the two of them hadn’t been looking good. Pale, heavy-eyed, with the weight of the world on their shoulders, they had dragged themselves into Larx’s class all week with the air of two staunch patriots being carted to the guillotine.

  Larx was pretty sure that what was going on with Kellan and Isaiah couldn’t be solved with a lab report and a winning score in a football game, but damn if Larx wasn’t going to hope anyway.

  “Yeah, Larx. Here.” Kellan handed him two lab books and the accompanying typed notes, and Larx thanked him.

  “These look good,” he said sincerely. Well, Isaiah wouldn’t accept anything but best effort from Kellan. “You guys, uh, ready for the weekend?”

  They did something then that Larx recognized from his married days. Olivia would want a treat, and Larx—ever the pushover—would be all for it, but Alicia had been the last word. What would follow would be an eyeball consultation, Larx to Alicia and back. If the answer was yes, Alicia would give it. If the answer was no, Larx would.

  In this case, the answer was no.

  “Yeah, all ready!” Kellan replied with false brightness, and Larx prayed for patience.

  “Guys. Is everything okay?”

  That silent conversation again, and for a moment it looked like no would win again.

  “Uh, guys—I’ve got all period. I’m the principal, remember?”

  “Mr. Larx?” Kellan said finally.

  “No,” Isaiah hissed, nudging his arm.

  “It’s scaring me,” Kellan insisted. “She’s… she’s saying all sorts of things.”

  Larx bit the bullet. “What things?”

  “I told her we’d be going to the dance as friends,” Isaiah said, cheeks burning. “She said….” He glared at Kellan. “She made it sound so ugly!”

  “Rumors about us,” Kellan said, and the way he looked at Isaiah told Larx all he needed to know.

  “Those rumors shouldn’t hurt you,” he said, knowing that they would, but knowing that they shouldn’t. “If they’re not true, you know it. If they are true, then she can’t make that truth ugly. Do you understand? All the ugliness—it’s in her soul. It’s not in you guys unless you let it be.”

  A sort of hope flickered across Kellan’s face, and he turned it to Isaiah. “That’s true,” he said wistfully.

  Isaiah blinked hurt brown eyes at him. “My dad….”

  “My folks are….” Kellan shivered. “They’ll be a mess too. But it’s like he said. It’s only bad if we let it be bad to us.”

  Isaiah looked at Larx for the first time in the conversation. “It’s not just the rumors,” he confessed. “She says it like… ‘if.’ ‘If you guys are like this, then I’d have to gut you like a fish.’”

  They both looked ill.

  “It’s violent,” Kellan said bluntly. “I mean….” He smiled like he needed to remind Larx of this. “We’re football players. We get hitting and charging and power stuff, right?”

  “But not this,” Larx said, appalled. “Okay. Guys, look.” He glanced around at the empty classroom and thought hard about how to handle this.

  First things first—the girl was bullying, and that couldn’t be allowed.

  “I’m going to email the district psychologist to come talk to her—and her parents. I’m leaving your names out of it, but it needs to go beyond me. Has she put any of this stuff in print?”

  “No,” Isaiah said. “But she’s said it to both of us—we did what you said, Larx. Neither of us has been alone with her.”

  Larx’s stomach muscles were tightened against the upset. This was not good—not for these guys, not for Julia, and not for the school.

  “She’ll know,” Isaiah said, but not like he was afraid. “She’ll know it was us.”

  “That she will. Which makes what you two do next very important.”

  They looked at him hungrily, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “You’ve got two choices. Choice one: skulk around, act ashamed, stop talking to each other, and live your lives afraid that everything you do is going to draw attention to you in ways you don’t like. And that’s whether the rumors are true or whether they’re not, do you understand?”

  They both nodded, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Nobody had said it. Nobody had used the words gay or bi or two boys in love. But they were all on the same page.

  “What’s choice two?” Kellan asked, obviously not liking choice one at all.

  “Choice two is that you own it. Do you guys think there’s anything wrong with what she’s saying? Or is it just the way she’s saying it?”

  “I hate it that she makes it dirty,” Isaiah said, a level of hatred and desperation in his voice that Larx could well agree with.

  “So if you want to own the rumors before she lets them loose, you could take all her power away,” he said, voice level. “Right now all she’s got is things she can say behind your back. If you can find some ‘Straight but not narrow’ T-shirts, go for it. I understand Target is selling. Join the GSA and talk about how to make people not afraid. We need straight people there, right?”

  He smiled at them, stomach still clenched.

  Kellan’s eyes grew bright and red-rimmed, and he wiped at them with the palm of his hand.

  Isaiah grabbed Kellan’s other hand and pulled in a shuddery breath. “Larx?”

  “Yeah?”

  “We’re not straight.”

  Larx nodded and shrugged, his own eyes a little bright too. “Good for you,” he said, sincerity in his voice. “Good for you both.”

  Isaiah used his free hand to wipe his face, and Larx took the box of student-donated Kleenex and offered it to them both.

  “Pull up a chair,” he said. “We can talk. I’ll write you a pass to your next class.”

  They ignored him, because they were kids. Kellan turned in Isaiah’s arms and began to sob like a child.

  Larx very quietly got up. He paused by the boys and said, “Come get me in my office when you’re ready. I’m going to shut the door.”

  He hated himself for that. Because he wanted to be in that room, hugging and protecting—the father in him demanded it.

  But he couldn’t protect them if he was called to the carpet on sexual assault charges, and of all people, Larx knew that was a real possibility, especially if the boys’ parents weren’t on board.

  Larx had never really considered himself a grown-up before, but as the door snicked shut behind him—locked from the outside but not from within—he heard the cynical sound of covering his ass.

  “YOU DID what?” Yoshi asked, appalled.

  “I let them get their shit together,” Larx muttered. “The door was open, right? ’Cause it was a nice day outside. So I closed the door and left them alone.”

  The guys had come in a half an hour later, pale but composed, and asked for a pass to their next class.

  “Do you want to talk?” he asked delicately.

  “No, sir,” Isaiah said, looking at Kellan for confirmation this time. “We have a plan. Don’t worry. You’ve….” He swallowed and smiled with all the bravado in his young soul. “You’ve been a big help. We’ve got the rest
of it handled. We can carry ourselves like men, don’t worry.”

  Larx opened his mouth to say… everything. That there was nothing cowardly about not wanting the world in their business. That their lives were their own. But he knew that was wrong—wrong that it wasn’t true, wrong to let them think that’s all it was. But Isaiah and Kellan had just shaken his hand and walked away. For a moment Isaiah squeezed Kellan’s shoulder, and Kellan leaned into him, and then Isaiah dropped his hand and the moment was gone. Two football players off to win the big game.

  And now Yoshi was—rightly—reminding him that he might have done too much.

  “I told them they could live in fear and act like they did something wrong or they could own it. I went in with the assumption that they were straight!” he said, defensive, hating himself because he’d been hoping they would come out, hoping it would make things better in the long run.

  Knowing his own life would have been both easier and harder if he had.

  “Look, I’m not saying you were wrong, Larx. I’m saying did you do anything that left you unprotected?”

  “No,” Larx said adamantly. “The door was open until I left them. I told them nothing personal. All of my statements were predicated on them being straight until they said otherwise.” If anyone knew what he could be legally held accountable for, it was Larx.

  “Did you hug them? Squeeze a shoulder?”

  “Draw them into an ancient gay naked tribal dance?” Larx snapped. “No, Yoshi! I can’t protect them if I don’t keep my job!”

  “I’m sorry,” Yoshi said, rubbing his hand over his mouth. “I’m sorry. It’s just so dangerous—I don’t care what the law says. Laws like that are being overturned every day.”

  “Look, you’re missing the point. The point is that girl is making physical threats—”

  “Against two big football players!”

  “Against two guys who play by the rules!” Larx protested. “I ran with the bad kids, Yoshi. Don’t let your sexism blind you to this girl. Kids like her are dangerous—kids who feel powerless especially.” That’s why it was often the girls—misogyny did horrible things to people, and being told you had no power or no say in your life led people to learn tricky, underhanded behaviors to pull whatever power they had.

  Julia was a classic case, which was no consolation at all when she was threatening two kids Larx wanted to ship off to Gaytopia so they could grow up safe and happy.

  “What are we supposed to do about her, Larx? Lock her up?”

  Yes. Lock her up so she can’t take her ugly, spoiled heart out on the innocent children I’m supposed to be caring for.

  “I’ve called the district psychologist and contacted Heather—”

  “Perkins? The head of the board?”

  “Yeah. I told her that the Olson kid is threatening to spread rumors about two football players if one of them didn’t date her, and asked for permission to address bullying at the in-school rally tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Yoshi asked, running his hands through his fine black hair until it spiked up, filled with static. “How’d that go over?”

  “Well, Becky is coming in tomorrow morning for a meeting with the kid and her mother. And Heather said she’s getting back to me. If she doesn’t get back to me by the rally, I’m taking it as a yes.”

  Yoshi let out a growl. “God, Larx, you’re going to lose your fucking job!”

  Larx grunted. “Yeah. Yeah, I just might. But you know what? At least I know the consequences. At least I know what I’m playing for, right?”

  Yoshi sank down in the seat across from him, burying his face in his arms like a fifth grader. “You shouldn’t have to do this again,” he said after a moment. Yoshi had rather dense black eyebrows, and they looked like they were having a war over his eyes.

  “You know my friend? The one who got caught in the witch hunt?” Larx asked, remembering this with such clarity it was like it got beamed into his head by satellite.

  “Yeah?”

  “She lived in fear for a month or two—she did. Taught straight out of the anthology, didn’t make up her own shit. But you had to know Dana. She had this way of introducing literature—like, you lived it. And she was talking about Hamlet one day, and she told me she was losing the kids. This play she thought was just… the be-all and end-all of her subject, and everything in the textbook was dry as dust. And it hit her. ‘What the hell am I here for?’”

  “What’d she do?” Yoshi asked. Well, Yoshi loved Hamlet too.

  “She put the text down and said, ‘Y’all, what do you think of these friends of Hamlet’s? Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?’ and her kids just looked at her. And then she said, ‘Guys! If your friends just told you they were reporting all your shit to your stepdad, how happy would you be?’”

  Yoshi laughed a little. “A point I try to make every year—without the word shit.”

  “Well, this was an inner-city school, Yosh. And most of the kids were entranced. The witch hunters tittered, said, ‘Talk about inappropriate!’ but you know what Dana told me?”

  “What?”

  Larx leaned forward. “She told me that Hamlet was her cross to die on. If she didn’t get this one thing across to her kids, she’d consider herself a failure.”

  Yoshi took a deep breath and nodded. “If we don’t protect these two boys—”

  Larx nodded back. “What in the hell are we here for?”

  THAT NIGHT he had a talk with Christiana while Olivia was on speakerphone.

  “Really?” Olivia asked, but she didn’t sound mad. “You ready to do this again, Dad?”

  “No,” he replied glumly, looking at Christiana. “I’m not. But—”

  “But he can’t let her win!” Christiana burst out. “Livvie, this chick is… she’s evil. I mean, she killed Bruce!”

  “Bruce is dead!” Livvie crackled back, horrified. “Why didn’t anyone tell me Bruce was dead?” Her voice faded, as if she’d turned her head to talk with someone at her end. “Not Springsteen, asshole, my class’s pet snake!”

  Larx and Christi caught eyes and snickered in spite of the grimness of the situation, and Olivia’s next remark was obviously addressed to them. “We’re behind you, Dad,” she said softly. When she spoke, Larx could imagine her wrapping the end of her brown hair around her finger like she had as a little girl when she was thinking. “Daddy, uh, how is this going to affect… you know. That thing you haven’t told me yet because you’re not ready for anyone to know.”

  “You guys!” he complained, mortified.

  “You knew,” Christi said, completely unrepentant. “I told you. You knew.”

  “Yes, but you were supposed to pretend not to until I told you!”

  Olivia’s rich laughter rolled over the phone, warming Larx in spite of his embarrassment. “Daddy, we’re fine with it. We approve.” Her voice dropped then, the voice of the adult he’d raised. “But does he approve?”

  “We’ll know tomorrow,” he said with a sigh. “Every morning, asscrack of dawn.”

  “And all you do is run?” Olivia asked, the wrinkled nose apparent through her voice alone. “Dad… dude. You’ve got to fix that.”

  “Hey, I’m going on a sleepover tomorrow,” Christiana said. “Tonight too, if I can swing it. I’m doing my part.”

  “Good job. I’m proud of you. Now Dad, you need to step up and go get laid.”

  Larx groaned. “Nobody gave either of you permission to grow up. I didn’t sanction this. There will be no meddling with my love life from here on out, do we understand each other?”

  He couldn’t talk anymore. They were laughing too loud to hear him.

  Olivia signed off, and Larx was left in that strangely content quiet of him and his youngest daughter. For a moment he tried to invest himself in his book—a Karen Rose mystery romance—but frankly the lead villain was way too much like his ex-wife. He just couldn’t do it. He set his book down and pinched the bridge of his nose.

  “Dad, she needs to be sto
pped,” Christi said, like she’d been waiting for him to protest.

  “This could have some really shitty consequences for your social life,” he said, because that mattered. You make promises to your children—safety, security, food, a future to the best of your ability to provide. Fun if you could manage it, the occasional Happy Meal, toys not just on their birthdays or Christmases, and big hugs when they broke their hearts. And if you could possibly help it, you promised to not let your social views destroy your child’s chance at a normal, happy childhood.

  Larx had already fucked this up once. He really didn’t want to do it again.

  “My social life is fine,” Christi said, complacent. “Me and Schuyler have made out twice. It was sort of awesome. We may make out again. We may even get to third base—but don’t tell her parents that. The point is, I don’t want Julia Olson up in my face while I’m necking with my girlfriend—or screaming in my face if I break up with her and decide to go for a guy next semester.”

  Larx tried to hear his own thoughts over the squealing of his brain brakes. He partially succeeded. “You and Schuyler?”

  “Yeah. Have you seen her? I mean….” Christi nodded. “Hot. Super hot. I looked up this summer and realized her ass was like… dayum. Anyway, you’re not just making it safe for Isaiah and Kellan—”

  “I never said their names!” he told her, panicked.

  “Dad, please. Don’t worry—confidential, just like Uncle Yoshi and Uncle Tane. But see? You’re making it safer for them too. You’re making it safer for me and Schuyler, ’cause I really wanted to go to homecoming with her but she was too afraid.”

  “You didn’t think to tell me this?” he asked, brain still a little scrambled.

  Her bravura disappeared. “Are you okay with it?”

  “Of course!” How could he not be? “It’s just….” He felt his lower lip wobble. “You’re growing so fast.”

  And this time, instead of rolling her eyes at him like she usually did, she got up and plopped down next to him on the couch, leaning against him while he threw his arm around her shoulders. “I want to be your baby forever,” she said, probably just to humor him. He didn’t care. He needed humoring, this night in particular.