White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  And then his lips touch mine, and my heart rockets up, down, up, and a Pandora’s box inside of me springs open, releasing every treacherous emotion I’ve spent the past weeks trying to incarcerate. My guts twist in both directions at once, air pushing out of my lungs, until I feel myself starting to tear in half. I push him back as hard as I can, fresh tears springing to my eyes, and my body trembles all over. I can hardly speak. “Don’t. Fucking don’t, Sebastian. You have no right.”

  He stares at me, wide-eyed—looking scared and lost and ashamed—and I watch him struggle to say something. “Rufus. I … I d-didn’t—”

  “You know how I feel—how I felt about you,” I whisper abjectly, my skin pulsing with the memory of his touch. “Maybe you were experimenting, or maybe I was just a rebound from Lia, I don’t know, but I had feelings for you. You know that, and you’re taking advantage of it, and that’s so messed up!”

  “How can you say that?” His mouth drops open. “How can you even think that?”

  “How can I think anything else?” Tears come faster than I can wipe them away. “I loved you. I still love you, you fuck—You can’t do this! You broke my heart and now you want to play with the pieces? It’s messed up and I won’t let you. It’s not fair.”

  I always thought it would feel good to get these words out, and yet I feel just as bad as ever, my misery a subdermal tattoo that cannot be removed. I try to tell myself the satisfaction will come eventually; but then Sebastian bends forward over the steering wheel, burying his face in his hands—and when his shoulders start to shake, I realize that he’s crying. Choked, gulping sobs fill the Jeep, and I slowly petrify, caught in the crossfire of vindictiveness and shame.

  Is this what I wanted?

  I can find no words to say while he weeps into his hands, and so I just sit there—stiff and hot and embarrassed—and watch my fingers like maybe they’ll do something to save me. Sebastian speaks again at last, his voice a tiny, broken whisper. “He knows.”

  “Huh?” I look up.

  “He knows,” Sebastian repeats mournfully, his face a quivering wreck of fear and distress. “He knows. About … about me. About us.”

  “I don’t … Huh?” I think about the BMW cutting us off on the race to the highway; it seems evident that my brother escaped the gunfight at the So-Not-Okay Corral, and maybe Sebastian is afraid he recognized the Jeep when he hit us—deduced that we were the noisy spies who instigated the night’s second round of fireworks. “Do you mean Hayden? Because I don’t think—”

  “My dad.” He cuts me off with a convulsive breath, cheeks wet with tears, and I stare at him uncomprehendingly. “My dad … he kn-knows about us.”

  “What?” I still don’t get it. “How?”

  “He knew I’d been hiding something. He thought it was drugs.” A dull, ironic laugh escapes from him, clogged with nightmares, and he starts trembling. “All the stuff I’d been lying about since February, the way I’ve been acting since … since we broke up? He knew something was going on, and he thought it was drugs. It’s one of his big issues, and when they found white rabbits on campus at the university in the spring, he really went off the deep end.” Sebastian pauses, staring down at his knuckles where they blanch in his lap. “Tonight he finally … he searched my room.”

  “No.” My blood runs cold just imagining it happening to me—my mom reading the bawdy notes that Lucy and I scribble back and forth in Ms. Gibson’s class, the mortifyingly erotic poems I wrote about my student teacher from freshman English, the browser history I still haven’t deleted from my laptop. I’d sooner roll down a freaking dune of dirty hobo glass.

  “He found those pictures of us from the photo booth in Montpelier,” Sebastian continues. “I was at Jake’s place all day, helping him set up for his party, and when I came home to pick up my speakers, Dad was waiting for me. He had the … the photos, and when I walked in he, he just—” His voice stops, and he takes another breath, swallowing twice. “He started shouting. I’ve never seen him so mad before, Rufe. It was like … he was looking at me like he didn’t know who I was—like he didn’t even want to know.”

  Sebastian starts to shake all over, weeping uncontrollably, looking smaller and more vulnerable than I’ve ever seen him.

  Clearing my throat, I ask, “So what happened?”

  “I ran out.” His voice cracks. “I was so scared, Rufus. For real, I’ve never been actually scared of my dad before tonight, but … if you could’ve seen him…” He shakes his head. “I panicked. I just turned around, ran out of the house, and drove away. He’s been calling and texting for hours, and I’ve been too afraid to even check the messages.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know.” He looks over at me like a terrified little kid. “What if he kicks me out? He’s really serious about church, and he’s always making my mom change the TV channel if there are gay guys on it … What if I go home and, like … and it’s not my home anymore? I don’t know what to do!”

  Wracking sobs shake him all over, and I slide across the seat, pulling him into my arms. He collapses against me, pressing his face against my chest, and we stay like that for a long time. Holding Sebastian again feels wonderful and gut-wrenching all at once, and I try to keep my mind clear—try not to fall through the big trap door over my heart—but question marks swarm in the air, deafening and distracting, and when his tears finally ebb, I have to ask. “Sebastian, why did you still have those pictures?”

  He had insisted on keeping the strip of photos from our date in Montpelier—those four little frames of us making out in an oblivious state of hormonal euphoria—and up till now I’d just assumed they’d been destroyed along with anything else that might remind him of our relationship.

  “Are you serious?” Sebastian straightens up a little so he can look me in the eye, a pathetic, wrung-out smile on his beautiful face. He wrestles his mouth open, but no sound emerges, and he has to try again. “I was going to keep those forever,” he whispers. “I look at them all the time, so I can remember how … how freaking awesome that day was—how actually happy I felt for the first time in forever.” Then, apparently determined to say all kinds of things that make no sense, he continues, “Rufus … fuck. Don’t you understand? I’m in love with you.”

  Suddenly, I’m back on the ground behind the gas station, winded and dizzy and totally disoriented. “I don’t … I don’t think … You can’t—”

  “I knew it that afternoon,” he barrels ahead, afraid of losing his nerve—or maybe just afraid of letting me finish. “Actually, maybe I even knew it before we started dating—when you told me about the time you donated your birthday money to the Humane Society in the third grade. I thought it was so cute, and so … amazing. You’re funny, and you’re interesting, and you’re hot.” He blinks, shyly. He actually looks shy. “The reason I looked for you tonight, the reason I wouldn’t let you ditch me, is because you’re literally the only thing that made me happy, and I treated you like shit.”

  “Sebastian…” I can barely breathe.

  “I’m so sorry,” he goes on, his voice wavering again. “What I did was totally messed up. It’s just … I kept telling myself that we were only fooling around, and that it wasn’t serious, but when you said you loved me … when you said it first—”

  “Oh,” I say faintly.

  “I had to either say it back, or run the other way.” He wipes his eyes again. “And because I’m the world’s biggest chickenshit, I ran. I couldn’t even tell you to your face that I wanted to break up, because I was afraid of what I’d really say if I tried it in person.”

  My head starts spinning again, the recent past turning upside down so fast I can’t keep pace with it, all my bitter certainties suddenly called into question. I’ve fantasized about this moment so many times—Sebastian tearfully admitting he’d actually loved me all along—but I can’t remember any of my lines. “But … but, I mean. You went back to Lia. You told her you loved her.”
>
  “That was the second shittiest thing I’ve done to anybody. I wanted to believe it, so I told myself it was true, but the second we were official again I knew it was a mistake. Lia … we used to work, but now we can’t even be in the same room without fighting.” Pleadingly, he searches my eyes. “I did so much stupid shit, and I know I hurt you, Rufe, but please let me make it up to you. I’m not asking you to … take me back or whatever. I know how pissed you are. But can we please maybe just start over? Can we please go back to being friends? That’s all I’m asking.”

  I swallow hard, my skin alive with some feeling I can’t define, and try to sort out my words … but I have no speeches left; my pride still demands its pound of flesh, but the rest of me has lost the will to collect. From the moment I held him, or maybe from the moment he kissed me—or maybe even from the moment I left Lucy’s house with him in the first place—I’d already started giving him a second chance.

  “What if I do want to take you back, though?” I whisper, even more nervous than I was that time I asked him if he had a condom. More nervous than the first time we saw each other after our kiss in Mr. Cohen’s classroom.

  I’m not good at this stuff. I don’t want any more bruises on my heart—but I no longer have the strength to pretend that I’m okay moving on without him.

  He just stares at me like he’s afraid to trust what I’m saying, and so I pull him haltingly closer. And press my lips to his.

  20

  It’s my first breath of air in six weeks. We kiss desperately, struggling through the gap over the center console and tumbling into the backseat, my wound screaming in protest as it scrapes across the rough upholstery. Sebastian’s shirt pops a stitch as we fight it over his head, and then I lose myself in the thrill of being with him again. The night is a hunter, stalking us with realities we still have to face—Sebastian’s parents, his friends, my friends—but we forget them all, clinging to each other and finding the rhythms I’d once thought were gone for good. Reality can wait.

  Later, with his mouth nestled against the curve of my neck, after we’ve cleaned ourselves up with the last of the McDonald’s napkins, he murmurs softly, “I love you, Rufus.”

  “You told me that already,” I point out, but I’m grinning like an idiot, because hearing it again is amazing.

  “Get used to it.” His fingers creep along my sternum. “I’m going to say it over and over, because I can’t believe how good it feels. I love you.”

  “I love you, too.” It does feel good.

  “And, you know.” He props himself up on one elbow, peering down nervously. “I guess … there isn’t really any point in my trying to keep it a secret anymore. You know? I mean, my dad knows, so it’s like the shit’s already hit the fan. How much worse can it get?”

  It takes just a moment for his words to sink in. “You mean, like … are you thinking about maybe telling people? About us?”

  “Why not?” He gives an indifferent shrug, but fear squirms furtively in his eyes all the same. “I mean, if he kicks me out, everybody’s gonna know anyway, right?”

  I struggle up onto my elbows, too. “Are you sure, though? I mean … all I wanted was for us to be together—to be real and stuff—but you don’t have to … maybe we should wait and see how things go with your dad, before—”

  “Rufus. I think I have to. Now or never, you know. It won’t get easier, and … I don’t want to lose my nerve again.”

  Judging by his pallor, I’m not sure he even has the nerve to lose, but I don’t say so; instead, I put my hand on the firm planes of his chest, the smooth, brown skin warm and wonderful to the touch, and smile. “We can start easy—my friends first. And, you know, don’t freak or anything? But my mom figured us out pretty much immediately.”

  It’s an optimistic speech. The fact is, the future is still a terrifyingly blank slate. If Sebastian’s dad really does kick him out, where will he go? He might be sent to live with relatives on the other side of the country; he might be dumped at a boarding school, like Eric Shetland; he might even be told that he can just kiss his financial support for college good-bye. There are about a million brick walls our current happiness could smack right into, fates that would obviate both his intentions and his nerve—but I choose to block them all out. I don’t get a lot of Happy, and I want to enjoy it while it lasts.

  Our peaceful moment is shattered right on cue by the sudden, loud ping of my cell phone, which fell from my pocket when we barrel-rolled into the backseat. I fish it out from a pile of debris in the footwell, take one look at the display, and shove myself upright. It’s a text from April.

  It’s over. The cops are letting me go home.

  * * *

  Five minutes later, we’re back on the highway, heading into the city again. It looks deserted, streetlights burning like candles in a cemetery, and Sebastian rolls the windows down to let cool air into the cab of the Jeep. I’m wearing one of his lacrosse jerseys, which he found wadded up in his trunk; it smells a little gamy, and it’s covered in wrinkles—but that’s still way better than being covered in blood, so I keep my mouth shut. Besides, wearing a shirt with his name on it feels really significant at this particular moment, and I pull it tight so that the letters press against my back.

  “By ‘over,’” he says, raising his voice to be heard above the slipstream of misty wind rushing by, “does she mean over over? Like, as in, they figured out who did it, and she’s officially off the hook?”

  “I’ve got no idea.” I glare at my phone in frustration. “She didn’t write anything else, and now she’s not answering my messages.”

  “Do you think they could’ve arrested Hayden? Like, maybe they caught him fleeing from the strip mall after the shootout, and found some kind of evidence in his car connecting him to what happened to Fox and Arlo?”

  “Maybe.” I can’t fend off a pensive frown. “You still think he did it?”

  Sebastian cocks his head. “You don’t? I mean, the dude is clearly homicidal, Rufe—and you had him figured for the killer even before he started trading bullets with a biker gang.”

  “I’m the last person who needs to be convinced that Hayden is a psycho,” I aver, “but you heard him back there—he thought maybe Lyle was behind it all.”

  “Or maybe he just didn’t want to admit to a bunch of armed drug dealers that he was out trimming their payroll for them. Would you go up to a guy like Lyle and say, ‘Hey, bro, I just killed two of your boys! What do you think about that?’”

  “No, but I only ever use the word ‘bro’ ironically,” I answer and net a dirty look in response. “Seriously, though, why would Lyle care? Fox and Arlo weren’t exactly his buddies and, as far as he knows now, they’d both been cheating him—whoever killed them just saved him the trouble. And even if Hayden wasn’t thinking that far ahead, he obviously also wasn’t even close to being afraid of Lyle. You saw him: He wanted those dudes to think he was this big, tough badass that they shouldn’t mess with. If anything, you’d think he’d act like maybe he was the killer, just so they’d take him seriously.”

  Sebastian is unmoved. “None of that means he didn’t do it.”

  “Okay, how about this: Apparently, my brother has a freaking gun. So why weren’t Fox and Arlo shot? Why were they both killed with knives?”

  “Knives are quieter.”

  “Okay, I’m going to ignore how creepy that sounded? And just point out that Fox’s death didn’t need to be quiet. Apart from April, who was unconscious, they were alone in the house, the place is practically in the middle of nowhere, Fox’s music was blasting so loud we could hear it from the driveway, and there were fireworks going off all evening. Even if one of the neighbors did hear a gunshot, they’d have just assumed it was some asshole celebrating Independence Day in his driveway or something.”

  “That’s still not—”

  “My brother isn’t a subtle guy,” I interrupt with authority, “and Fox wasn’t nearly as tough as he acted. If Hayden pulled a gun o
n him, Fox would’ve pissed himself and paid the dude back. And if Fox was stupid enough to call Hayden’s bluff, my brother wouldn’t have put the gun away so he could pick out a knife—he’d have either gone right ahead and shot him or, more likely, just stomped on his skull till it exploded like a fucking water balloon.”

  Sebastian thinks about this for a moment, looking for a counterargument; but he knows the players even better than I do, and he has to realize that I’m right. With a troubled sigh, he finally concedes. “Okay. Fair enough. So where does that leave us?”

  “I don’t know.” I look out the window, watching the fog thicken as we draw nearer to the water again. “Back at square one, I guess.”

  I’m still pondering this—thinking about Race and Peyton, the only remaining suspects we haven’t spoken to a second time—when we pull up in front of the police station again. It’s a destination we’ve gambled on, hoping against hope that we can catch April before Peter and Isabel take her home, and so I’m relieved to see her standing outside—alone. Leaning against the building’s brick frontage, away from the lights of the overhang, she is at first only discernible in the darkness by the orange glow of a cigarette she holds in the fork of two fingers.

  “Hey,” I call out softly, after Sebastian has parked the Jeep and we’re approaching her through the shadows of the almost empty lot. She still looks pale and drawn, but far more relaxed than she was when we first dropped her off. “What happened in there? Where are Peter and your mom?”

  April drags on the cigarette for a long moment, the ember glaring as she evaluates us with strangely careful eyes. As she exhales, she pushes a hand through her auburn locks and states, “They’re still inside. Talking to the cops. Or to the lawyer, maybe—I don’t know. She’s a total bitch, by the way.”