Last Seen Leaving

by Caleb Roehrig

  “Wait … what?”

  “I told everyone, actually. Well, I told one person, and he told everyone, but—” I was cut off when Kaz lunged across the center console and dragged me into a tight embrace. I was enveloped by the scent of laundry detergent, hair product, and rich cologne, and heat spread through the pit of my stomach. Even through his coat he felt warm, and for the first time I put my arms around a cute boy without having to act guarded or nonchalant about it.

  “That’s incredible, Flynn!” he gushed, his cheek pressed against mine. If I was expecting some kind of “toldja so,” it wasn’t forthcoming. “That’s huge! I’m so proud of you—no, wait, scratch that. ‘Proud’ sounds kind of condescending, doesn’t it?” His arms loosened their hold just a little, then tightened again determinedly. “No, actually, you know what? Fuck it. I am proud of you, because it takes a lot of guts to come out. Like, a lot. Good for you.”

  “The light is green,” I said, my throat compressed against his shoulder.

  Kaz let me go and started driving again, his mood buoyant, verging on giddy, and the excitement in his tone was infectious as he said, “Okay, coffee is on me. If I was old enough to buy alcohol, or if I had a fake ID, I’d get us some champagne or something, but you’ll have to settle for coffee. Tell me how it happened.”

  “It was kind of unplanned, actually,” I admitted. I gave him an edited recap of the Big Moment, not ready yet to relinquish his warm attention by mentioning the purpose of the cops’ visit, and concluded with the hair-raising tale of my Gay-Friendly Dinner From Hell. “My dad said something about Glee, and then something about us all going to a Pride march in Chicago as a family thing this summer, and then I went hysterically deaf and blind and had to excuse myself.”

  Kaz laughed. “That’s hilarious—they sound really cool.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said seriously. “They mean it about this Pride march. You know how kids are supposed to be embarrassed about getting driven to the mall by their parents? This is going to be like that, only ten times worse. It’ll be like taking your grandmother to the prom. With drag queens.”

  “I think you’re lucky,” he replied, but I noticed a bit of the spark had left his voice. “Where are your other friends, by the way? I thought you said you told everybody.”

  “I did,” I answered uncomfortably. “Not everybody was as humiliatingly supportive as my parents. My best friend isn’t … he’s not exactly talking to me right now.”

  “I’m sorry.” Kaz was quiet as Plymouth became Broadway and Broadway became Beakes. “Listen, no matter what, you made the right choice. I think your friend will come around, but even if he doesn’t, you’re so much better off living honestly than pretending to be someone you’re not just to fit in.” The blinker made a soft clicking sound as Kaz navigated a left turn onto Main Street, gliding under lampposts and past Victorian-era homes that had been converted into offices. “I know it’s easier to say that than to go through it—trust me—but you’ll never be happy if you have to spend the rest of your life lying to people. And if he can’t accept you for who you are, then he’s not really your friend to begin with. Besides, there’s always a little bit of pain when you grow.”

  As platitudes went, these were very nice, but they didn’t make me feel any better about possibly losing Micah forever. He wasn’t a homophobe. There were two guys in the drama club who were already out and proud, and Micah had never said a bad word about either of them—his problem wasn’t with gay people, but with me, and I couldn’t console myself by saying I was better off without him in my life, because I didn’t believe that was true. Maybe someday in the future I’d be able to look back and think in lame clichés about how lucky I was to have been cut off like a gangrenous finger by my best friend of thirteen years, but that day was not today.

  “I don’t think I’m ready to be that optimistic about it just yet.”

  “I get it. But don’t be discouraged, okay?” Kaz refused to let me wallow in my depression. “I went through it, too, and look at me now!”

  He flashed me a cocky grin that positively dazzled under passing streetlights, and I laughed in spite of myself. “Top of the world?”

  “Top of the world,” he agreed. “Believe me, Flynn—someday you are going to look back and realize that this was the best decision you ever made.” I felt my blood start humming when he looked over at me, his arresting jade-and-copper eyes warm and soft. “Just think about all the things you don’t have to be afraid to do anymore.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as finally saying out loud what guys you think are hot,” he answered mischievously. For a moment, I was sure he was giving me an opening to say, You, duh, so he could pull the car over and we could make out, but then he commanded, “Sexiest male celebrities: Go!”

  “Dave Franco and Colton Haynes,” I confessed, and the weird thing was that it felt kind of incredible to verbalize such thoughts for the first time. I’d spent years bottling up any admissions that might be construed as “gay,” and it was both scary and liberating to finally let those words come out of my mouth. “Actually, pretty much all the guys in the cast of Teen Wolf. Every time they take their shirts off, it’s like Christmas or something. Micah makes fun of me for being so obsessed with the show, and I’ve never been able to tell him that I’m not watching it for the plot.”

  “I thought guys taking off their shirts was the plot.”

  Kaz parked on Washington and we walked from there to the Nickels Arcade, a picturesque passageway with a vaulted glass ceiling that ran between State Street and Maynard. The Arcade housed an eclectic group of local businesses, including an artisanal coffee shop where discerning adults and students liked to hang out. Kaz ordered two cappuccinos from a cute barista with tattooed arms and geek-chic glasses, and we took a seat at one of the tables out front.

  “Here’s to Flynn Doherty, whose future begins today,” Kaz announced, clinking his mug against mine and giving me another adorably giddy smile. “By the way, you never really said why you just kind of blurted it out in front of your parents like that. I … I hope it wasn’t because you felt pressured or anything by what I said on Tuesday?” He winced apologetically, and I shook my head to assuage his guilt, but the Good News part of the evening was clearly over. With a heavy sigh, I explained about the police visit—January’s pregnancy, Reiko’s subsequent bombshell, and even my theory about the hatch marks. When I finished, Kaz was staring at me with wide, troubled eyes, his face pale. “Holy shit, Flynn. That’s … I mean, I don’t even know what to say.”

  “I tried to convince Reiko to go to the police, but she acted like there wasn’t any point. She says there isn’t any evidence, and January never told her who the guy was in the first place, but … I mean, I can’t just drop it. I won’t.”

  Kaz looked down into his rapidly emptying mug with a frown. “I’m with you. But this kind of situation … I mean, it’d be one thing if they’d found her body, and had DNA from the fetus or whatever to compare against possible suspects’ … but if there’s really no evidence—no witnesses, no weapon—what do they have to go on?”

  “Not to state the obvious, but maybe that’s exactly the reason they haven’t been able to find a body. If this guy killed January to cover up what he’d done, he sure as hell couldn’t risk letting the police perform an autopsy.” I leaned forward, closing in on my hypothesis, and felt steel in my veins. “You ever ask yourself how January’s stuff got out into that field in the first place? The last time anyone saw her, she was at Dumas, like ten miles from home. If she really went missing from there, how’d her clothes end up in her own neighborhood?”

  “I have a feeling you’re about to make a guess.”

  “Tammy said Jonathan never came home that night,” I finally announced, the words coming out with heat and relief, “but what if he did? What if he just never came into the house?”

  Kaz’s slanted, dark eyebrows shot up. “You think Jonathan Walker did it?”r />
  “He could have picked her up at school, no problem,” I began intently, barreling ahead with my theory despite the skepticism in Kaz’s tone, “overpowered her, taken her somewhere to kill her, and then dumped her things in the meadow after Tammy was asleep. Or maybe he did it out there—it’s far enough away from anywhere that no one would’ve heard a thing.”

  “So he kills her in the meadow and leaves her clothes for the police to discover, then conceals the body somewhere nobody’s been able to find it?” Kaz gave me a dubious look and I frowned reflexively, embarrassed that I hadn’t thought of that inconsistency myself. “I mean, why not hide the clothes with the body?”

  I shifted in my seat, feeling wrong and disloyal to be referring to January as the body—symbolically giving up on her, reducing her to a thing, an obstacle someone else had been forced to deal with. “You sound like you have a theory of your own.”

  “Maybe the clothes were misdirection.” Kaz rubbed a thumb along the curve of his spoon, thinking out loud. “Maybe someone wanted to implicate Walker—or one of the Walkers—and left her things there to put the cops onto the wrong trail.”

  The idea floated briefly in my mind. Torkelson? Mr. Walker’s opponent in the senate race would probably love to see his competition suspected of murder … but the facts didn’t fit. What politician would rape and then—weeks later—kill his opponent’s underage stepdaughter, just for the incriminating evidence? And Kaz didn’t know yet about the scene Anson had allegedly witnessed in the kitchen. I was sure I was right about Jonathan. What had happened to January was personal rather than political, and there would be an explanation to account for the issue with the clothes; I just had to find it. We were quiet for a short while until I felt I could no longer ignore the other subject that had been eating at me.

  “I don’t understand why she didn’t trust me.” I was staring at the leftover foam of my cappuccino, a frothy glob that clung to the bottom of my mug. “I mean, it kills me that she didn’t give me a chance to help her—and that she told all those lies. That she apparently thought it was better to make me sound like a douche who didn’t care rather than to talk to me about what was going on. Why would January want people to think all that stuff about me, anyway?”

  “Maybe she was lonely,” Kaz suggested softly. “She was separated from all her friends, she didn’t fit in at Dumas, she despised her stepbrother—and she couldn’t talk about any of it with her parents, because they were the ones orchestrating it all. Telling people her boyfriend was an asshole probably got her sympathy and attention. It worked on me. I was always asking how she was doing, when she was finally going to break up with you, etcetera.” He hunched his shoulders unhappily. “It’s easier to relate to a girl with a lousy boyfriend than a girl who got rich overnight and hates it.”

  “I guess.” I still couldn’t tell how to feel about it. Part of me was hurt and angry, but another part of me kind of understood. She’d used me to create a false image for herself; hadn’t I used her for the same reason? And I couldn’t imagine how hard it must have been for her, how much she must have been suffering. How could I hold anything against her, knowing what I did about what had happened?

  We finished our coffee and walked around for a bit, drinking in the cold night air, making fun of the lame, Halloween-themed deals advertised in storefronts along State Street, and talking about things that didn’t really matter. Kaz described interning at his father’s medical practice over the summer, and how he’d accidentally screwed up the filing system so badly they’d needed to hire two temps to sort it out; in response, I told him about the time my mom paid me to stuff envelopes for a day at her real estate agency, and how I’d managed to not only bungle a task that could’ve been accomplished by any well-trained monkey but also proceeded to flood the break room by knocking over the watercooler. He was laughing so hard there were tears in his eyes when we finally reached his car.

  “So…” He put his hands in his pockets, swiveling nervously. “What do you want to do now?”

  It was still early, nearly an hour left before my curfew; not enough time for a movie, but plenty to do what I’d been dying to do all night. My lips were tingling again, nerves fizzing just under my skin. A couple laughed somewhere up the street, and an overhead light made a halo of bronze highlights in Kaz’s dark hair. I felt like he’d been waiting the whole evening for me to make a move, and even though my stomach was twisted up like a balloon animal, my heart thumping as I gazed up at his strong jawline and impishly cocked eyebrow, I was going to do it.

  I stepped close, breathing in his intoxicating scent, my lips parting. I had to stretch onto my toes, angling my face upward to cover the distance, but I made contact, my mouth touching his in a blissful, electric kiss.

  And he jerked away from me, so suddenly he smacked into the Lexus, his expression both surprised and concerned. “Whoa, wait.”

  I blinked, totally confused. “I don’t … What’s wrong?”

  “This probably isn’t a good idea,” he answered, uncomfortable and apparently serious. I stared at him blankly.

  “Are you kidding?” The distant couple’s laughter grew louder, and I suddenly felt as if it were directed at me—only Kaz was clearly not joking, his face tense and his eyes downcast. Insecurity and indignation were suddenly playing tug-of-war in my muddled brain. “I don’t understand. You seemed to think the idea was just fine on Tuesday.”

  “Yeah, I know,” he muttered humbly, “and, like I said, it was a mistake. I shouldn’t have done it.”

  Just like that, the tears I’d been warding off all day punched the back of my eyes and I felt my face grow warm. Struggling to sound in control, I said, “Fuck. You already have a boyfriend, don’t you?”

  “No, it’s not that.” His reply, strangely enough, made me feel even worse.

  “Oh, great. You’re just not attracted to me.” My humiliation felt almost complete, and the tears were rolling now, making me grateful for the darkness. “Why the hell did you kiss me, then? Were you just fucking with me? Was it some game you play where you try to get guys to admit they’re gay?” I was ranting and losing that tenuous image of control, but I couldn’t help myself. In a way, he was partly responsible for my finally coming out; if I’d never felt his lips against mine, if I hadn’t been made aware of what I was missing by staying in the closet, maybe I’d have been more able to bite my tongue in the face of the detectives’ questions. “I cannot believe what an idiot I am!”

  “You’re not an idiot, Flynn,” Kaz stated. He moved closer, as if to comfort me, and I stepped back. “Look, I am attracted to you, okay? Seriously, you have no idea. Why do you think I tripped all over myself apologizing for the fight at the toy store? Why I wanted to talk to you again in the first place?” He ran a hand through his hair. “I’ve been thinking about that kiss all freaking week!”

  “Then what the hell?” I demanded with a pitiful sniffle, tossing my hands up and letting them slap down against my thighs. “What’s wrong with me now?”

  “Nothing! I just … I don’t think you’re ready for … this.”

  “I’m not ready?” I was offended and incredulous. “What the hell does that mean? Don’t I get to have any input on what I’m ready for?”

  “You just came out of the closet yesterday, and you’ve got a lot of turmoil in your life right now. I mean, do you really think you want to jump into, like, dating or whatever? Now?” He let out a breath. “My family is Muslim, and totally conservative. It took everything I had to get up the courage to come out to my mom and dad—I mean, I was terrified that they were going to kick me out, or refuse to let me go to college or something. But what they told me was, ‘Don’t you dare say anything like that in front of your grandparents!’ And then they totally changed the subject. The end. To this day, they refuse to acknowledge that I’m gay—the whole topic is off-limits, like the conversation never even happened!” He gave a helpless shrug and stuffed his hands into his pockets again. “It was so hard
to talk to them after that, about anything. There were so many things I couldn’t say because they’d just completely shut down if I tried. It was awful. I was sort of dating this guy at the time, too, a guy I really liked, and I totally blew it with him because I wasn’t ready. He wanted a relationship, and I was losing my shit! I was terrified that if we went out together one of my cousins—a couple of whom are really religious—would see us and freak, I couldn’t even think about introducing him to my parents, and I was way too mixed up to be anybody’s boyfriend in the first place. I didn’t have anyone to talk to about what I was feeling, about who I am. There was no one who would listen to me, no one I knew who’d gone through it and would just be there for me while I went psycho a few times a day.… I felt totally alone, and what I really needed was a friend. I want to give you that, be someone you can count on for support without any pressure. I mean, you get what I’m saying, right?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I answered emptily, miserable and defeated. I didn’t want Kaz to be my “friend.” I wanted Micah to be my friend, and I wanted Kaz to be … well, something else. Sure, his position sounded all noble, but that was his experience—not mine. How could he decide for me what I could and couldn’t handle? And how could I just turn off all the things he made me feel even when he wasn’t trying? I would never be able to look at him without thinking about how much I wanted to kiss him, and how much he didn’t want to kiss me back. What the hell kind of friendship would that be?

  It was not without a trace of irony that I then recognized how much my situation was like January’s had been: alienated from my friends, unable to talk to my parents, and attracted to a guy who didn’t want me in the way that I wanted him. I was suddenly so depressed I didn’t even have the energy to resent Kaz for flirting with me when he had no intention of following through. If this is how January had felt—even before the sexual assault that had precipitated everything else that happened—maybe I really could forgive her for seeking a little sympathy at my expense.