by Dakota Chase
“He’s not at home? Mom, I don’t know where he is! I’ve been trying to call him since this afternoon, but he won’t pick up and he hasn’t called me back. I didn’t even know he’d been released until I got to the hospital today!”
“Billy’s mother said you were the one who brought him into the hospital. You didn’t tell me that on Saturday night, Jamie. Start talking, and don’t you dare stop until you’ve told me everything.” She sat down at the table, leaned her arms on the surface and stared at me, lips drawn into a tight line. She meant it. I could either spill my guts or sit there all night. When she looked at me like that, I knew she’d get every word out of me, even if she had to pull them out of my mouth with a pair of pliers, one at a time.
I was too tired, too shaken over the incident with Robbie, to resist.
“Okay, okay. You’re not going to like it, though,” I said, sighing heavily.
She sighed too. “Jamie, what are you worried about? Have I ever turned my back on you when you’ve told me the truth? You’re my son. I love you. Nothing you tell me will ever change that.”
I looked up at her and saw the truth of it in her eyes. In that moment I knew this was the right time. The past few days had been so hard on me, with all the ups and downs. I was scared and confused, and I needed her support, if she’d give it. Making up my mind, I nodded and reached for her hand.
“Mom,” I said, deciding to keep it as simple as possible. “I’m gay.”
“Oh, I know that, hon,” she said, patting the back of my hand with her free one. “Now tell me about Billy.”
“Wait—you know? How could you know?” I gasped, feeling as if I’d been sucker-punched. “Who told you?”
“Nobody, dear. You’re my son. I know you better than you think I do. Besides, Jamie,” she said, rolling her eyes, “your laundry doesn’t put itself away, you know.”
My laundry? I quickly went through the roster of things I kept in my dresser drawers. Batteries, a couple of old comic books, a rubber-banded stack of baseball cards… oh, no. The magazine I’d borrowed from Billy, the kind a guy didn’t buy for the articles. She’d found it.
She’d snooped through my things!
She was a mom, I chastised myself. That’s what they did best. It was my own fault. I should have known better than to keep stuff like that where she could find it.
It was f-bomb time again, although I had the good sense to say it silently, inside my head.
“It’s okay, Jamie. As long as you’re careful and happy, that’s all that matters to me,” Mom said. “That young man who dropped you off, the one with the Mustang, is he…?”
“Yeah. His name’s Dylan, and he’s really nice, Mom. You’ll like him,” I said, as if we’d had this type of conversation all the time. I think I was in shock. I couldn’t believe coming out to my mother, the moment I’d dreaded for so long, agonized over, lost sleep over, had gone so smoothly. I was almost insulted that she hadn’t put up a fuss over it, that she’d figured it out on her own. I almost felt cheated.
“What happened to Billy the night you took him to the hospital, Jamie? Were you doing drugs? You need to tell me.” Her voice was stern again, and I realized why she’d been so upset. She thought I was a stoner.
“No! I don’t do that stuff, Mom. You know me; I can’t even take Tylenol without getting an upset stomach,” I said. “Billy had a date that night with an older guy. I didn’t want him to go. In fact, we’d argued about it. But then we made up, and he said he’d call me after his date. He didn’t, though, and I got worried.
“Dylan drove me to see the guy Billy had gone out with. He—” Here came the hard part, and I tried to figure out how to tell her without using the s-e-x word. “—he said he’d left Billy at a motel, over in Chester. We went out to find him, and…. Mom, it wasn’t pretty, okay?”
“What do you mean?” she pressed. Obviously, she wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily. I swallowed hard and told her the rest of the story, up to and including my last argument with Billy.
“HIV! Oh my God, Jamie! Does his mother know?”
“I don’t know. They must know that the hospital tested him for it, but I don’t know if they’ve gotten the results yet.”
“I don’t understand. Billy wanted to become infected? Why? Why would he do something like that? Oh, no…. Jamie, you don’t do anything like that, do you? You don’t go around with strange men—”
“Mom! No! Of course not! I’ve never even…. Jesus, Mom! Do we have to talk about this now?”
She bit her lip, looking hard at me. “Okay. Just tell me you don’t believe the same way Billy does. Tell me you’re careful. It only takes a condom, hon, and I’ll buy them for you if you need me to—”
“I am! Or… I will be when I finally….” I shook my head, not wanting to finish my sentence. “Mom, please. I can’t handle the thought of you buying condoms. I don’t even want to hear you say the word, okay? It’s freaking me out. But Billy, well, that’s why I’m so upset over it! I can’t understand it either, and neither can Dylan.”
“Is that where you got those scrapes and bruises? At that motel?”
“No,” I said, sighing. I told her about the car hitting my bike, and before I knew it, I’d told her everything else too, including my date with Dylan and my meeting Robbie in the parking lot.
That last part made Mom blow a gasket. “He threatened you! We’re going to the police and filing a report, Jamie. I mean it. Your father must be spinning in his grave over this!”
I swallowed hard. My dad, the cop—I tried not to think about him, or what my life might have been like if he’d lived. “No, no police, Mom. Please. He didn’t do anything to me, and I don’t have any witnesses. Besides, I’m not out to anybody else. I don’t want the whole town to know, okay?” I was practically begging. I was under enough pressure already.
“Okay, okay. But”—she jabbed her finger onto the table, emphasizing her words—“if he comes near you again, all bets are off. We’ll go straight to the police. Understand?”
“Yeah. I understand.”
“Good. I’m going to call Billy’s mom back and tell her you don’t know where he is.”
“Mom, Billy’s folks aren’t the best parents on the planet. They don’t care—”
“She sounded like she cared, Jamie. She was crying on the phone.”
I hesitated. It wasn’t what I’d expected to hear. “Crying? But when I called to ask where Billy was on Sunday, Billy’s dad acted like he couldn’t care less!”
“I don’t know about his father, Jamie, but his mother is very upset.”
Maybe I’d misunderstood the whole thing. Maybe there was more going on than Billy had told me. Was his mother really concerned about him? Had those been lies Billy told me to make me feel sorry for him? I didn’t know anymore.
“Do you have any idea at all of where he might be?” Mom asked, drawing me back to the conversation.
“Not really. I guess I could call Dylan. We could drive around to the usual places—the mall, the school, maybe the arcade. See if he’s there,” I said.
“Okay, good. I’ll call Billy’s mom and dad and let them know.”
Speaking of dads, I thought, now was as good a time as any. “While we’re talking about stuff, Mom, I wanted to talk to you about Doug.”
“Jamie, what goes on between Doug and me is—”
“Please don’t say it’s none of my business!” I said, looking her square in the eye. I tried not to sound angry, but I probably didn’t do a very good job of it. “This open dialogue crap works both ways, Mom. He’s a drunk, he’s a deadbeat, he treats you like shit, and I don’t understand why you let him stay here!”
“Watch your language, young man!” she said. “I’m still your mother, and you’ll respect me, understand?” She leaned back and looked at the ceiling for a few minutes before speaking again. When she did, her voice was soft and she sounded like a young girl. “He wasn’t like this in the beginning.
I thought I loved him. He was good to me, good to you.”
“He’s not.”
“I know. He started drinking and lost his job, and then… I keep putting it off. I keep telling myself that he’ll change. That he can be the man he used to be,” Mom said. She shook her head, slapping her hands flat on the table. That was mom speak for “this conversation is over.”
“I’ll talk to him, Jamie. I promise.”
That was all I was going to get from her, and I knew it. It wasn’t the answer I wanted, but it was better than nothing.
When I stood up, she hugged me, and I felt like a five-year-old who knew everything was going to be okay because Mom would take care of it. The feeling dissipated when she let go, but had been nice while it lasted.
I dug into my pocket for my cell phone and dialed Dylan. He answered on the first ring.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Hey. What’s up? Everything okay?” God, it was good to hear his voice, even though I’d only left him a short while ago.
“I came out to my mom.”
“Oh, God. How’d she take it?” I could hear the worry in his voice—he thought it had gone badly, and I was calling to cry on his shoulder. It felt great to have good news for a change. The stuff with Billy could wait a few minutes.
“Actually? A lot better than I thought. She already knew, and she was cool with it. At least, that’s what she said. She asked about you.”
“About me? How’d she know about me?”
“She saw you dropping me off. My mom’s got eyes like a freaking hawk.”
“She’s good with it? Me and you, I mean.”
“Seems to be. Just told me to be careful and then spent a few minutes making me extremely uncomfortable while she lectured me on safe sex.”
I heard Dylan snort over the line. “Been there, done that, with my dad. For girls, I mean, not… you know.”
“I know. She offered to buy condoms for me, Dylan.”
That time he laughed out loud. “Oh, man, I so want your mom to be my mom.”
“Yeah, she has her moments,” I said dryly, wondering if Dylan’s opinion would change if he knew she’d married a scum like Doug, then feeling instantly sorry for thinking that way. My mom was a good person; she’d just made some lousy choices, that’s all. She was human, just like the rest of us. “Listen, are you doing anything now?”
“I was going to crack the books. Why?”
“Billy’s gone missing again.”
“Again? Jesus, Jamie! He’s making a habit of that, isn’t he?” Dylan said. I could hear the irritation in his voice. No wonder. He’d already played the game of Find Billy with me.
“Yeah. I was sort of wondering if you’d mind driving me around to look for him. His mom called my mom, and now—”
“I’m on my way.”
Just like that. Annoyed or not, he was still going to drop whatever he was doing and drive over, and I felt a wave of relief and a spark of excitement over seeing him again. Yeah, Dylan was definitely a keeper, I thought. I only hoped he’d want to be kept.
Chapter Fifteen
I CLIMBED into the Mustang yet again, settling back and buckling up. “Thanks for coming back, Dylan. I’m not on my mom’s insurance, and she refuses to let me drive without her in the car. It sucks.”
“Not a problem. Is that her?” Dylan asked, craning his neck to see past me toward the house.
“Yeah. She’s spying on us.”
“Don’t look now, but she’s coming over here,” Dylan said, sounding as though he wasn’t sure if he should wait for her or gun it and screech away from the curb before she could reach the car.
I twisted in my seat just in time to see my mother bending down to rap her knuckles on the window. Dylan hit the button, sliding the window down as I slumped back into my seat and groaned, “Mom, what do you want?”
Mom stuck her head into the car, ignoring me. “I wanted to meet your friend.”
I groaned again, louder and longer this time. Was there a handbook out there somewhere for mothers that listed the top ten ways to mortally embarrass their kids? If not, my mother really should write one; she’s an expert on the subject. “Fine. Mom, this is Dylan. Dylan, this is my mother,” I said, keeping my eyes glued to the dashboard, not wanting to look at either one of them.
“Hey, Mrs. Waters,” Dylan said. I saw him give a little halfhearted wave out of the corner of my eye.
“It’s Mrs. Stevens, actually. You’re Dylan?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Don’t keep him out too late, Dylan. You both have school in the morning.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dylan said, at the same time I moaned, “Mom!”
“Stay away from that Robbie person. I don’t want Jamie anywhere near him. Understand? I’m trusting you with him, Dylan.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Dylan replied dutifully, as I muttered under my breath, “My life is over.”
“All right, then, play safe, boys,” she said, ducking in closer to peck me on the cheek. “Remember, it only takes thirty seconds to avoid a lifetime of trouble.”
Oh, God! At that moment, I wished that the Mustang had an ejector seat so I could press a button and escape into orbit. She should’ve just thrown a handful of condoms at us—it would have had the same effect. I was mortified. There was a line a mom shouldn’t ever step over. She’d not only crossed the line, she’d led a freaking parade over it, complete with marching bands and floats.
Then again, I knew she was thinking about Billy, and probably not 100 percent convinced I didn’t share his point of view regarding HIV. I was astounded she’d let me out of the house at all rather than chaining me to my bed. After all, in one breath I’d told her that I was a homosexual and, in the next, that my gay best friend was trying to get himself infected.
Heck, I would have chained me to the bed if I’d been her.
She trusted me. It was nice to know, even if she did embarrass the hell out of me from time to time, like tonight.
“Sorry,” I said as Dylan pulled away from the curb. I noticed he was careful to check his mirrors for traffic before pulling out, used his turn signal, and kept well below the speed limit. I understood it was a show of responsibility on his part. He wasn’t about to give my mom any reason to go gunning for him, I guess. “She gets a little bit carried away.”
“Dude, that was the weirdest five minutes of my life.”
“I know. Me too.”
“Where should we start looking for Billy?” Dylan asked. I guessed he wanted to change the subject, and I didn’t blame him one bit.
“I don’t know. We can try the arcade, the diner, maybe Home Depot. I don’t think we’ll find him at any of those places. Billy’s smart. If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be.”
“What about Robbie-the-A-Hole’s house? Don’t you think Billy would have gone there?”
“I have no idea where he lives. Billy never mentioned the address.” I let my head fall back against the headrest in defeat. “This is a waste of time. Billy knows people I don’t know. Men I don’t know. He has a ton of exes, and I’m sure there are a few who would be happy to take him in for a couple of nights.”
Dylan shrugged. “Let’s look anyway. We can at least tell your mom we tried.”
I nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Okay. Let’s give it a try.”
He headed in the direction of the downtown area. We cruised Market Street, looking for a parking space, and found one in front of Baker’s Dozen, the donut shop.
“Downtown” was a ridiculous name for the single block of stores and offices that lay in the dead center of town between the park and the school, but that’s what everyone called it. We didn’t have a movie theater, or a Walmart, or a museum. What we did have was a collection of tiny establishments with names like Food Village (supermarket), Clips and Snips (barbershop), Frankie’s Fun Stop (arcade), Trash or Treasure (second-hand shop), and the ever-popular Good Eats Dine-In (the diner where my mom worked). In between t
hem were a string of offices like Max’s Taxes (accountant) and Pop’s Pub (the bar Doug usually got crap-faced in). I seriously thought if your business didn’t have a sickeningly cutesy name, the zoning board wouldn’t allow you to open up shop.
At one end of Market Street was the police station, and I could never pass by without wondering what it would have been like if my dad had lived and was still a cop. Passing it always left me a little sad, even though my dad had died when I was too young to remember him.
The other end of the street was anchored by the West End Bank and a tiny post office. Dylan and I walked up and down both sides of the street, ducking into the shops that were still open, looking for Billy. We checked each aisle in the supermarket, every booth in the diner, and every machine in the arcade.
We even did a drive-by of Home Depot, although the store had been closed for an hour and the parking lot was practically empty. Billy wasn’t there, either.
Dylan drove slowly up and down the residential streets, wasting gas and time, but when he finally dropped me off in front of my house, we’d come up empty handed. There was no sign of Billy anywhere. It was as if he’d disappeared off the face of the planet, again, just like I’d thought.
BILLY WASN’T at school the next day either, although I hadn’t expected him to be. I was really worried about him, and angry too. Disappearing without a phone call, without even a text message, was getting to be a habit with him. It upset me a lot. I’d have never gone AWOL without letting him know where I was or when I’d be back. What kind of a friend did that?
Not the kind of friends we were, or so I’d thought. Evidently, I’d been wrong.
I decided that, when Billy did come back, he and I were through. I was officially resigning from the William Prichard-Everest III Fan Club. Billy could get bent, as far as I was concerned.
The day was made worse when Dylan wasn’t in school either. When I called him, he hadn’t sounded like himself. He told me he was sick, but I didn’t believe him. Something else was going on, and I wondered if it had anything to do with me.