At the Edge of the Universe

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  I felt like an asshole. After everything Calvin had been through, he was still game to take a chance, even knowing how bad it could turn out. And there I was, vacillating. I didn’t know whether it was possible to love and be loved again the way I’d loved and been loved by Tommy, but I thought not finding out might be the most idiotic decision I could make.

  I leaned toward Calvin. He wrapped his arms around me and we kissed under the stars.

  My lips were raw by the time we disentangled. All we’d done was kiss, but it had felt more intimate than trading blowjobs in the car on New Year’s Eve.

  I lay on my back under the stars just grinning, my mind filled with Calvin.

  “Your house is nice,” Calvin said when he’d caught his breath.

  “It’s not my house anymore.”

  “It’s nice anyway. Kind of empty, though.”

  “Yeah, but it’s been empty for a long time.”

  Calvin squeezed my hand, which he’d taken while we’d kissed and hadn’t let go. “How’s your brother?”

  “Okay, I guess.” I hadn’t talked to Renny since our video chat, but Mom and Dad had given me daily updates. “There’s still too much swelling to see exactly how severe the damage is, and it’ll be a while before they’re ready to move him home, though he might make it by graduation.”

  “That sucks,” Calvin said.

  That summed up the situation well. It sucked he’d never walk again and it sucked he’d lost something he loved. It just . . . sucked.

  Calvin sat up and wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his arm. “I should get home.”

  “Right.” We stared at the stars a while longer before I shut off and dismantled the lights. I hated to lose the stars again, but I could turn these on whenever I needed them.

  I drove Calvin home and we made out a little more in his driveway. Now that I’d started kissing Calvin, I never wanted to stop. But we had school the next day and I could see Mr. Frye’s shadow standing in front of the windows.

  As Calvin opened the car door, I said, “Hey, so earlier, did you ask me to go to prom with you?”

  Calvin stopped, turned to me, and smiled. “I guess I did. What do you say?”

  “Can Lua come with us?”

  “Definitely,” Calvin said. “But your lips belong to me.”

  I smiled my best smile. “I’ll let you and Lua fight that one out.”

  204,616 KM

  LUA AND MS. NOVAK WOKE ME up on my birthday with a plate of flaming donuts. They sang “Happy Birthday” as loudly as they could, and when I blew out the eighteen candles, I wished I’d never told Dr. Sayegh about Calvin.

  A week had passed and the cops still hadn’t arrested Coach Reevey. I hadn’t returned to Dr. Sayegh either, but it seemed she hadn’t followed through with calling the police. That’s what I’d wished for, anyway.

  You’d think I would have wished for Tommy to return. It’s not that I didn’t want him back, but after it’d seemed like things couldn’t get any worse—my parents divorcing, Lua’s hand, Renny winding up paralyzed, the universe shrinking—they’d actually begun to get better. I’d begun to think my hard and forceful punishment was nearing its end.

  Which was one of the many mistakes I’d made.

  • • •

  Ms. Fuentes was going over the answers to our homework in physics, and Calvin kept rubbing his knee against my leg. Since the night I’d shown him the stars, we hadn’t been able to stop touching each other.

  “Wanna hang out tonight?” he whispered. I hadn’t told him it was my birthday.

  “Sure.” I suspected Lua probably had something planned for dinner, but I didn’t feel like celebrating. I wanted to freeze the present so nothing else could change.

  Calvin winked at me. “My dad’s working overnight.”

  He let my imagination fill in the rest, and I conjured a million things we could do alone in his house, most of them involving a distinct lack of clothing.

  I was about to tell him I couldn’t wait, when the classroom door swung open. Ms. Fuentes stopped speaking midsentence. Vice Principal Grady stood in the doorway, looking as severe and unhappy as usual. Seriously, I don’t think he’d cracked a smile in his entire life. I was willing to bet he hadn’t even laughed as a baby.

  “Sorry to interrupt, Betsy,” he said, “but I need one of your students.” Grady waited until Ms. Fuentes nodded. “Calvin Frye? Gather your things and come with me.”

  When Grady called Calvin’s name, he sat frozen for a second. He looked at me, then at Grady. My stomach knotted. The crease between Calvin’s eyes deepened. He had no idea what was happening, but I did.

  “What’s going on?” Calvin asked.

  “Just come with me, son,” Grady said. “I’ll explain everything in my office.”

  “Don’t forget we have an exam tomorrow, Mr. Frye,” Fuentes said while Calvin collected his books and bag.

  Vice Principal Grady cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable, like he’d cinched his tie too tight. “He might need to make up that exam another day, Betsy.”

  “We’ll work it out,” she said. Even she was curious, and I hadn’t believed she’d cared about anything other than physics.

  “I’ll text you about tonight,” Calvin said before he followed Grady into the hallway.

  “Yeah. Great.” Though I had a feeling once Grady explained why he’d pulled him from class, Calvin would never text me again.

  • • •

  I suspected Priya ran an entire network of gossipy spies who fed her information like a CIA station agent. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d found a way to tap our phones.

  “Oh. My. God. Did you hear?” Priya had barely waited for us to sit at our lunch table before running toward us and vomiting the latest scandalous news.

  Dustin had asked me if I knew why Grady had called Calvin out of class on the way to the cafeteria, but I’d feigned ignorance. I mean, I thought I knew, but I could have been wrong. I prayed I was wrong. Maybe Calvin was being given a special award or maybe something had happened to his father. I felt like a shitty human being for hoping his father had gotten hurt at work, but I could live with that if it meant Calvin wouldn’t hate me.

  Lua was working her way through a bowl of mac and cheese, holding her fork awkwardly because she couldn’t bend her index finger. It was like a crooked tree branch, gnarled and knotty.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “They’ve cancelled the prom due to an outbreak of nobody-gives-a-shititis.”

  I set my tray down next to Lua. I think she was still pissed at me for trying to force her to accept Trent’s help with her surgery, but living with her while my parents were with Renny had forced us to call a temporary truce.

  “Does it have anything to do with Calvin?” Dustin asked.

  Priya’s eyes grew wide. “How’d you know?”

  “Vice Principal Grady pulled him out of physics.” Dustin had barely taken his seat before digging into his plate of green beans and meatloaf, which I suspected was just the recycled hamburgers they hadn’t sold from the prior week.

  Lua was staring at me, expecting me to answer. “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I’m just as clueless as you are.” Obviously, she knew I was lying.

  Priya rubbed her hands together. The only thing she loved more than cheerleading was dishing juicy gossip. It was like it was her birthday instead of mine.

  “Well,” she said. “Calvin wasn’t the only person removed from class today.”

  My stomach hurt so bad I couldn’t eat. The mashed potatoes cooled on my plate, but I didn’t care. They might as well have been drying concrete.

  “Nishay heard from Darnell that Mr. Gugino pulled Trent Williams out of weight training. He didn’t even let him shower or change out of his gym clothes.”

  Trent? Well, that didn’t make sense. Maybe I was wrong about why Calvin had been called out of class.

  “I wonder why,” I said.

  “Fuck Trent,” Lua sa
id almost at the same time. “I hope someone breaks his fingers.”

  “We get it, Lu,” I said. “He’s an asshole. But he also offered to pay for your operation, so let it go.”

  Since the attack, Lua had begun to dress more subdued. Less rock star and more mopey-emo-teen. Lots of jeans and black T-shirts, which made it difficult to tell whether she was feeling more like a boy or a girl on any given day. I assumed girl that day because her shirt—black with a logo for a band called Slutever, which I was surprised no teacher had forced her to turn inside out—was torn at the neck to reveal cleavage.

  “Offering to fix what he broke doesn’t absolve him of being a dick. In his case, it’s a terminal condition.” Lua folded her arms over her chest, daring me to argue, but I didn’t. Mostly because I wanted to survive lunch, but also because I didn’t want to have to sleep on her floor until my parents returned with Renny.

  “You’re right,” I said. “Forget I mentioned it.”

  Priya waited calmly for us to finish arguing. But despite her outward serenity, I could tell she was practically ready to explode.

  “There’s more?” I asked.

  “Oh yeah.”

  Oh no.

  “And this is the best part,” Priya said. “Brea told me she heard from Avi . . . did I tell you he asked her to prom? He poured hot oil on the grass of her parents’ front yard to spell out the question. Mr. Grant was so pissed. But she said yes, and—”

  Dustin said, “Get to the point,” with his mouth full of meatloaf.

  “Anyway,” Priya continued. “So Avi had to go to the office to pick up his inhaler because he’d forgotten it at home and his mom had dropped it off for him, and he saw police there talking to Calvin.”

  And there it was. Dr. Sayegh had called the cops. I checked my phone again to see if Calvin had messaged me, but his last text was from the day before, asking me if I still wanted to go to prom with someone as screwed up as him. To which I’d replied with a simple “Yes.”

  I considered texting him to ask if he was all right, but there was only one reason I could think of that the police would be questioning Cal.

  “Ozzie?” Dustin asked. He was staring at me. They were all three staring.

  “What?”

  “I asked if you know what’s going on?”

  I shook my head. I’d already done enough damage by telling Sayegh.

  But Lua was watching me, and I knew she’d put it together. I just prayed she didn’t say anything in front of the others.

  Then Lua said, “Probably steroids or something. Isn’t that what you said a few weeks ago, Priya?”

  I could’ve kissed Lua right then. Priya eventually sat down and spent the rest of lunch spinning theories about how the whole wrestling team was likely hooked on steroids, and that’s why Trent and Calvin had been called to the office. Either they’d taken steroids or witnessed others shooting up. By the end of lunch Priya had concocted an entire conspiracy.

  I kept my mouth shut and let her believe her little fiction, because it didn’t matter. The truth would reveal itself eventually, but I could try not to make the situation worse.

  • • •

  Lua turned down the stereo in my car as soon as we drove out of the parking lot. Like the truth, she was a tidal force.

  “It was Reevey, wasn’t it?” she said. “The teacher Calvin was banging?”

  My eyes widened. “How did you . . . ?”

  “It’s not that tough to figure out,” she said. “He was sleeping with a teacher, something happened, he quit wrestling. Any idiot could’ve connected those dots.”

  “Don’t tell Dustin,” I said. “Or Priya.”

  “I won’t,” Lua said. “Did you convince Calvin to go to the cops?”

  I shook my head. The muscles in my face felt tight, and I had to keep blinking back tears. After lunch I’d walked past the office and had seen Mr. Frye’s truck in the parking lot.

  I couldn’t speak. I knew the moment I opened my mouth I was going to lose it and probably get into an accident and kill us, so I pulled into the parking lot of an emergency animal hospital.

  “I told my therapist,” I said, before I broke down crying. My body shook. Tears streamed down my cheeks and snot dribbled out of my nose. I was sobbing so hard I wasn’t even certain Lua could understand me. It took me a minute to piece myself back together, and Lua waited patiently. “I was worried. Calvin’s been acting weird, and he cut himself again and then he told me Reevey used to drug him and I don’t even know what else that asshole might’ve done to him, but I was scared he was going to do something stupid, so I told my therapist and she said she had to report it.” I slammed my fist on the steering wheel. “He’s going to hate me so much, Lua.”

  Lua took my hand and cradled it against her chest. “He won’t hate you.”

  “Of course he will.”

  “Okay,” she said. “Maybe he will.”

  “Is that supposed to help?” I tried to wipe my nose with the back of my hand, but I just smeared the tears and snot across my face.

  Lua sighed. “You did the right thing, Oz. It’s better for Calvin to hate you than be dead, right?”

  “Yeah.” I hung my head. I hadn’t felt so low since the Fourth of July.

  “Christ. You really like him, don’t you?”

  “That’s not important right now.”

  “Of course it is,” Lua said. “If you didn’t like him, you wouldn’t have risked him hating you to get him help.” She dug into my glove box for a wad of napkins. “Being honest with the people you care about is hard. I’m kind of proud of you, Ozzie.”

  “I doubt Cal will see it that way.”

  “Maybe not right away. But give him time.”

  I finished wiping my nose.

  “How do you think Trent’s involved? Do you think he knew?” Lua asked.

  I’d nearly forgotten that Priya said Trent had also been pulled out of class. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t think Reevey and Trent . . . ?”

  “Well, now I do,” I said. But I couldn’t even think about Trent right then. “I just don’t want Calvin to hate me, Lu.”

  “We’ll figure this out. It’ll be okay.”

  “I hope you’re right. I don’t think I can lose anyone else.”

  199,207 KM

  COACH REEVEY WAS REMOVED FROM school the day after Calvin and Trent were questioned by the police, and Calvin didn’t show up for the rest of the week or the following Monday, either. I texted him a couple of times, playing dumb, asking where he was and if I could come over, but he didn’t reply. I’d wanted to go to his house over the weekend, but Lua convinced me to give him time. I didn’t want to give Calvin time. I wanted to see him—I needed to know if he blamed me—which is why Lua was right to tell me to stay away. My feelings were irrelevant. It didn’t matter whether Calvin despised me, only that he was okay.

  It took less than a day for the news that Coach Reevey had also been questioned by the police to travel through school, and the Cloud Lake Herald splashed the story across their front page on Monday. Reevey hadn’t been arrested, though the article suggested it was only a matter of time, but the school had suspended him with pay pending an investigation.

  Calvin and Trent weren’t named in the story—it only stated that Reevey had allegedly been involved in relationships with at least two underage students—but it was easy to piece together that Trent and Calvin had been pulled from class the day before Coach Reevey’s suspension. The biggest surprise was that Reevey had also been abusing Trent, and I wondered how the police had figured it out. Obviously, they’d learned about Calvin from Dr. Sayegh, who’d gotten it from me, but I never would’ve guessed Trent was involved.

  “Dude, Pinks,” Dustin said after physics as we walked to the cafeteria. “Did you know?”

  I’d skipped lunch since the day Calvin was pulled from class in order to avoid this exact conversation. I hung my head as we walked through the halls. People knew Calvin a
nd I were friends, and I imagined them pointing at me and whispering. I deserved much worse for betraying Calvin’s trust.

  “Yeah.”

  “Whoa.” Dustin shook his head. “So was it some Jerry Sandusky rape shit or what?”

  “I don’t know. Calvin never gave me the details.”

  “Sick.” We entered the cafeteria, and I felt even more eyes. “It totally explains why he quit wrestling. And it happened to Trent, too? That’s messed up.”

  I wanted to emergency eject from the conversation. Talking about what Reevey did to Calvin and possibly Trent made my skin crawl, but I hadn’t brought my lunch, so I followed Dustin to the line. As we stood there, Dustin spinning wild hypotheses about what Reevey might or might not have done to Cal and Trent, I spotted a table set up near the far wall. It was draped with a blue cloth and bore a glittery sign that read: PROM TICKETS $32.

  “I’ll be right back,” I told Dustin, cutting him off midtheory. I made my way to the table and waited in line. Our prom’s theme was “A Night to Remember,” which was stupid. It would probably wind up a night most people tried to forget. I didn’t know if I’d even go, but I wanted to see Calvin, I wanted to apologize, and I thought arming myself with prom tickets might get me through his door.

  D’Arcy Gaudet and Thea Castro sat behind the table, a gray lockbox between them. I couldn’t stand D’Arcy, but Thea wasn’t so bad. We’d been in the same geometry class, and I’d let her copy my English homework in exchange for the answers to our geometry worksheets.

  I pulled cash out of my wallet. I’d been saving my pay from the bookstore to fund another trip to find Tommy, but I think Tommy would have understood and approved of me using it for this. “Two tickets,” I said.

  D’Arcy’s lips rested in a self-satisfied sneer. “Who’s your date, Ozzie? Your she-male freak friend?”

  I had to grit my teeth to keep from telling D’Arcy exactly what I thought of her. I was pretty certain the only reason she hated Lua was because Trent had a crush on her. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”