by Dale Peck
And then one night he showed up. The moon was full, or almost, and Ty said the forest was like a black and white Tinker-toy planet, all lines and shadows, nothing flat except for the glittering frosty ground. A wild smile framed his chattering teeth and his cheeks were tinted pink like an orphan in a Dickens novel who’s just about to die of tuberculosis. He hadn’t put a coat on because he was afraid the zipper might wake his dad but he didn’t care, it was exhilarating, he said—“Yes,” he said, “I know the word ‘exhilarating’”—and a part of him had wanted to stay out there all night, wanted to clamber over the moon-dark shadows of the trees until he melted into them and disappeared. But another part of him—the stronger part, he said—had wanted to see me even more, and so here he was.
That was the only time we ever had sex in a bed. Afterward he looked out my window through the lattice of vines for a long time. I thought he was contemplating his walk home until he said, “Your dad’s the stump man? I always thought he was apocryphal. And yes,” he added with a sigh, “I know the word ‘apocryphal.’ ”
After that, all that was left was the janitors’ closet.
Don’t think this was some huge coincidence or something. The janitors’ closet was pretty much notorious at school. I mean, one time Ian turned the knob, only to find the room already occupied. Fortunately the guy was a jock, and he and Ian touched fists like, Yo, bro, wassup? “Just here for a smoke,” Ian said, flashing his pack, which looked like a wadded-up washcloth after two years in his pocket. “Guess we’ll take it outside.” There was even a rumor that one of the custodians had gone up to a pregnant senior and said, “I hope you plan on naming him Lenny,” and tapped the nametag on his chest to make sure she knew what he was talking about. How the teachers never figured it out is anybody’s guess, and how Ty did is equally mysterious, since he was even more out of the loop than the faculty.
“That floor has more jock jizz on it than the locker room. This is as close as I’ll ever get to lettering.”
The closet was just smells at first: bleach and Lysol and that magically repulsive substance the custodians sprinkle on teenage vomit. There was a single lightbulb, some thirty- or forty-watt thing that hung down off a frayed cord, and when you pulled the chain the room seemed to get darker rather than lighter. Drying string mopheads hung from hooks like scalps mounted on a lodgehouse wall, plastic gloves were folded over an iron pipe like a line of severed blue hands. We got into a push-pull match to see who would be in charge. A pole slid to the floor, a half-empty plastic bottle tipped over and rolled around with a hollow, sploshing sound. I felt Ty’s hands on my butt. “It’s my turn,” was the last thing Ty said to me before the door opened.
“It’s my turn” was the last thing Ty said to me.
“Sprout!” came the familiar, conspiratorial whisper. “I knew you’d come—”
Ian Abernathy broke off, stood there blinking as if he was the one who’d just been in the dark, not us.
“Ty? What are you . . . ?” He trailed off again. “Sprout? What is he doing? Here?”
Oh, but it was worse than that. So much worse.
“Ian! What the heck are you doing?”
Ruthie Wilcox poked her head around the corner of the
Ruthie Wilcox poked her head around the corner of the door. I saw that she’d dyed her hair black, frizzed it up into an Amy Winehouse beehive, and immediately felt guilty for noticing.
“Well well well. The truth finally comes out.”
The fact that we were actually in a closet seemed lost on Ruthie. Or, who knows, maybe not. She kicked a bottle of borax and said,
“Time to come clean, Sprout. What’s the deal with you two? Are you in love or what?”
I should have looked at Ty, right? Not at Ruthie, with her smug, smiling (and, to be fair, not at all condemning) face. Not at Ian either, who looked even more guilty than if it’d been someone opening the door on him. I should’ve reached for Ty’s hand the way he reached for mine, but the truth is I didn’t even feel his fingers. Didn’t hear him scream “Yes!” until after I’d said,
“Um, duh. We’re just fucking.”
Did I just write that? So much for this book ending up in a high school library. Which is kind of ironic when you think about it, since that was one of our favorite places to have sex.
The lightbulb in the closet wasn’t strong enough to reveal who blushed most deeply between me and Ian and Ruthie. But I’m pretty sure it was me. Only Ty didn’t blush. His face turned so white it looked blue. Without a word, he pushed past me and ran from the closet. All three of us watched him run down the hall, and first Ian and then Ruthie turned to me to see if I was going to go after him.
I didn’t.
The sound of Ty’s shoes squeaking on freshly waxed terrazzo grew fainter and fainter; a door crashed open, and then the squeaks were gone.
Not to be outdone, Ruthie put her hand on her stomach and sighed dramatically.
“So? Eee tell you the news? I’m preggers.”
This is the last part!
“Did you disappear,
or were you just misplaced?”
—Sleater-Kinney
He’s gone
He’s still gone
It’s times like this when all the things you learned in school, all the science and history and civics and above all the language, seem completely useless. I suppose I could use a word like inadequate or insufficient, but when you’re taking the time to say how you feel, when you’re putting it all on the line, exposing yourself, you want to make sure you get it exactly right. I’m not going to fake it, or water it down. This is too important. This is love, and love lost, and I’ll tell you straight up: no words are equal to the task.
And don’t misunderstand me. This isn’t how I feel. These words. This is just me saying that I don’t know the words to say how I feel. That’s, well, that’s another blank page, like the previous chapter. Feel free to draw a picture on it, or write something yourself. Maybe about me, if you think you understand me, or about yourself, if you think that’s easier. Maybe you want to write an ending for Ian’s story, or Ruthie’s, cuz God knows they each deserve a book of their own at this point. But I have no idea what to put there. The only thing I want to put there is Ty, and Ty’s gone.
I mean, is it worth saying that I miss him? Is it worth saying that I cried? That I went to all the places we went together, that crazy hole we dug, the pond where his brother drowned, the tree where we had our first kiss? The river where we first had sex, the nidus, Carey Park? That I even went to his dad’s house? Walked right past that “Trespassers WILL Be Shot” sign and pounded on the door so hard that the
God Bless Our Home
And CURSE the Homes of Sinners!
sign fell off its hook and broke on the ground? The man who opened the door wasn’t what I expected. On the one hand, I mean, he was: crewcut, white shirt buttoned to the collar, drab polyester pants. What I didn’t expect was that he would have Ty’s face. His chin, his cheekbones, his eyes. His defiant, frightened stare, which took me in from my Nikes to the Yankees cap I’d used to cover my hair and saw me for the sinner I was.
“Yes?”
“Is Ty—” I began, and he cut me off.
“No,” he said, and closed the door.
Yes; no. Opposites, right? The far ends of a line that should contain everything between them, like New York and California. Yet here I was in Kansas, smack dab in the middle of the country, and it seemed like I could reach out with my right and left hands and grab either coast and wad the whole damn continent together like a single sheet of paper. Throw it away and start over. Or, better yet, leave everything blank.
And here we are again.
I don’t know what to tell you. You want to know how it feels? Turn back to the beginning of this book and read all the way through, and when you get here go back to the beginning and do it again.
Then do it again.
And again.
Again.
When you think you finally understand—or when, like me, you just don’t have the energy to go through it one more time—then, well, go ahead and turn the page.
Homily to honesty
Mrs. Miller said she’d pick me up at four in the morning to drive us to Topeka, but neither she nor my dad mentioned anything about him coming by too. But he was there on the loveseat at 3:30, cheeks smooth, hair parted and combed, pants sporting the same ironed crease Mrs. Miller’s had. He nodded towards a Kwik Shop cup surrounded by a small mountain of sugar packets and creamers.
“I brought you coffee. I hope there’s enough sugar and cream.”
“I take it black,” I said, which is completely not true. “You showered just for me?”
“Can’t go to work with yesterday’s armpits.”
“You found a job?”
“Flegler’s. The vacuum cleaner plant down by Yoder. But”—my dad waved me silent—“I didn’t come here to talk about me.”
I sipped at the black coffee, which tasted like a mechanic’s driveway. “Mmmm.” I sipped again. “You come to wish me good luck?”
“According to Janet you don’t need luck. She says you’re the best she’s ever had. Best she’s ever seen.”
“Aw, golly gee, Dad—”
“I come to offer you some advice, so you don’t blow it.”
“I—” I shook my head. “Whatever. Speak.”
“You’re not mad at me for dating Janet. You’re mad at me for getting over your mom.”
“I thought you said this wasn’t about you.”
“It happens, Sprout. You get over people. Even when you don’t want to.”
Again I opened my mouth for a wisecrack, again I closed it. “And your advice?”
“You’ll get over him.”
I blinked. “You mean this is about Ty? Not the contest? You’re worried about my love life?”
“Not your love life. Your life, period. Janet tells me you’re about to flunk out of eleventh grade because you refuse to do any work.”
“I think Janet—”
“Mrs. Miller.”
“I think your girlfriend—”
“Fiancée.”
I shook my head. “Are you trying to make my brain explode? Jesus Christ, Dad, you get a job, you get engaged.” I sniffed the air. Dust, a little damp seeping in from outside, the coffee in my hand. That was it. “Are you sober too? Is it the Rapture?”
“No, Sprout, it’s not the end of the world. And that’s what you need to realize. It’s just a breakup.”
“It is not a breakup, Dad. He’s gone. He’s disappeared. Don’t you get it? No one knows where he is.”
“He’s a teenager, Sprout. Teenagers run away. He’ll be fine.”
“It’s been three weeks.”
“It is not your problem.”
“He is not an it. And whose problem is he? Who’s looking out for him? Who’s looking for him, period?”
It would’ve been easier if my dad’d gotten mad, or gotten desperate. It would’ve been easier if he’d been drunk. But he was calm and sober as a Unitarian minister.
“You can’t save him, Sprout. He’s not your mom. And even if you did save him, it wouldn’t bring her back.”
As if on cue, lights appeared in the window. There was the sound of cracking ice as Mrs. Miller’s car shattered frozen puddles in the driveway. I took a deep breath. The conversation was over, but even so, I felt like going out with a bang.
I pulled the front door open and a blast of frigid air swarmed past me into the room.
“You feel that, Dad? That’s winter. And he’s out there somewhere. You’re telling me not to worry about him. Telling me to think about myself, my future. But who’s thinking about his future? Who gave him something to look forward to? To work for? To live for?” I put my coat on. “His brother killed himself because he couldn’t see a future. And you want me to worry about winning some contest? Getting my grades in gear so I can get into a good college, get a scholarship, let you off the hook for drinking up my future? I’ve let you off the hook for the past four years. You should be ashamed of yourself.”
And then I grabbed my stuff and headed outside.
The heater was blasting and the inside of Mrs. Miller’s car smelled as dry as sawdust, and after a moment, when she didn’t put the car in reverse, I clicked my seatbelt, but she still just stared out the window. The shadowy forest, nothing more than vertical bars of black and gray; the hoary stumps, lined up like wild-haired moai staring out from the past; little bits of window glinting like winking eyes through the net of vines covering the trailer. Once upon a time the only meaning these things had for Mrs. Miller was what I gave her, but now she had her own history, her own associations, with my house, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking about as she stared out at it. Was she thinking about me, I mean, or about my dad?
The car was so hot I could feel my eyes tearing up, so I turned the heater down a couple of notches. Mrs. M. started at the sudden silence, turned as if she’d just noticed I was in the car. For once I didn’t think she was being dramatic. She really did seem surprised.
“Your dad—” She stopped when she saw the dictionary. “Your dad says good luck.” She placed her hand on the battered book in my lap as tenderly as if she were touching a barely healed wound. “You know you can’t bring this in, right?”
I tapped the dashboard clock, which read 4:01. “It’s almost four hours to Topeka. We’d better get a move on.”
She took Highway 61 up to Salina, picked up I-70 heading east. I had to turn around to see the sign
HUTCHINSON 65
that I’d passed twice now, once with my dad and once with Ty, but it seemed to have less significance this time around, not more. The sun rose directly in front of us and the world became tricolor: black smears of shadow and white sheets of snow and swathes of golden field. The ruler-straight lines of cedar windbreaks and the double-backed trails of cottonwoods following streambeds reminded me of the trees in my forest, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the river where Ty and I had first had sex, but what I found myself wondering was: what path had he followed? Had he taken the direct route represented by the cedars so he could get away as quickly as possible, or had he chosen the cottonwoods’ meandering path, as if he wanted someone to catch him before he got too far away? And why, whenever I contemplated this question, did my mind always flash on that Buick in Carey Park? Why did I feel as though I’d all but pushed him in the trunk and slammed it closed and watched it drive away?
Mrs. Miller didn’t talk during the entire trip. Didn’t even ask perfunctory questions like “Are you hungry?” or “Do you need to use the restroom?” but when we got to Topeka, she pulled me aside before sending me into the gymnasium where the contest was being administered.
“I did a little research,” she said. “Your mom was working full-time when she died. You were entitled to social security benefits that your dad never applied for. You can still get them—all of them, retroactively. It comes to about $30,000. It’ll pay for school if you stay in-state, and if you go for something private it’ll at least get you on your way.”
I stared at her in confusion. “Why are you telling me this now?”
Mrs. Miller nodded at the gym. At the five hundred students seated at long rows of folding tables and the judges walking between, the kids clutching their sharpened pencils, the monitors clutching cups of coffee, the big clock hanging above everything, its red digital letters set to
1:00:00
She looked back at me. “I can’t help but feel that I had something to do with what happened. That all the mixed messages I was sending you about when it is or isn’t okay to say you’re gay somehow made you think your sexuality was something you should hide to protect yourself. The truth is, that’s how it gets power over you. Not when you’re open about it, but when you have to spend all your energy keeping it secret.”
It took me a moment to realize what she was really saying.
“You mean Ty, don’t you? You think I couldn’t say I loved Ty because I was too scared to show him—or Ruthie, or Ian—who I really am?”
“You weren’t scared, Sprout. You were protecting yourself. But sometimes when we think we’re protecting ourselves, we’re really hurting ourselves. And sometimes the people around us too.”
A voice from the gym called out: “One minute warning. Places, please.”
Mrs. Miller put her hand on my shoulder, turned me towards the open door.
“I want you to forget what I told you when we first started. Everything I told you. What’s good writing. What’s bad. What you should say. What you shouldn’t. Write what you want to write. Say what you have to say. Screw them,” she said, nodding at the panel of judges seated at the far end of the room. “Screw me. It’s your life, not ours.” She gave me a little push, as though I were a four-year-old ballerina too scared to venture on stage. “Go on, Sprout. Take off that cap and let the world see just how green your hair really is.”
“My cap?”
Mrs. Miller pointed to the top of my head.
“Oh. Right. My cap.” And I took it off, and Mrs. Miller looked like she was going to faint.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m Sprout, not Samson. My strength doesn’t reside in my hair.”
I took a seat at the first empty place I came to. There was an envelope in front of me, and a small stack of blue composition notebooks, and I was instructed not to open either until time was called. I lined up my pencils. One of them had a green smudge on it, but this didn’t make me think of my hair. It made me think of Ty’s skin, and I had to resist the urge to lick it.