When Everything Is Blue

by Laura Lascarso

  “Where’d you go this afternoon?” he asks, like we’re not in the middle of a game.

  I press the ball into his chest, thinking how if it weren’t for this ball, it’d just be him and me, chest to chest, skin on skin. Wouldn’t that feel good? Amazing.

  “I went to see Uncle Theo.” I clear my throat and back away. Distance helps.

  Chris looks surprised, like that wasn’t the answer he was expecting. “How is he?” he asks, passing me the ball.

  “Good.” My mind drifts back to my uncle’s flirtation with the handsome nurse, and Chris takes advantage of my distraction to score on me.

  “You letting me win, Wooten?”

  “No,” I protest and steal the ball back and score on the next round.

  “I hate it when you and Tabs fight,” Chris says. He must be thinking about earlier that afternoon. Maybe because he doesn’t have any siblings, Chris is super sensitive to any conflict between us. Usually our fights are pretty superficial, bickering more so than fighting, but that one in Chris’s kitchen kind of cut to the bone.

  “Yeah, me too,” I tell him.

  “She felt bad after, if that makes it any better.”

  “A little bit.” I wonder if I should say something to her or just let it ride.

  “She didn’t mean it,” Chris says.

  “Yeah, she did, but that’s all right. I’m sure Tabs would like for me to be more like you.”

  “How’s that?” Chris asks, perplexed.

  “You know, friendly, outgoing, popular. Whatever it is you do to get you in the cool club.”

  “I’m in the cool club?” Chris asks.

  I roll my eyes at his presumed ignorance. “Obviously.”

  “Then you must be in it too.”

  I shake my head. “I’m on the fringe. They only put up with me for your sake.”

  Chris squints at me. “You really believe that?”

  “Um, yeah.”

  I take advantage of his thoughtful expression to steal the ball and score on him. We play like that for a while. I become increasingly aware of Chris’s body when he happens to brush up against me while trying to get the ball or make a run. The slick swish of skin against skin and the heat that radiates off him like a furnace, prickling the hairs on the back of my neck and sending a shiver down my spine. The smell of his sweat and the way it beads up on all that exposed honey brown skin like water droplets on a waxed car.

  I’m about to go for a three-pointer when Chris bats the ball out of my hands. We both go running for it and end up getting tripped up on each other’s ankles. I land on the concrete and Chris lands in the grass. My shoulder burns like I just ate it in skateboarding.

  “Shit, T, sorry about that.” Chris lends me his hand and pulls me up. He turns me around to check out my raspberry and brush off whatever dirt and bits of gravel are stuck in it. Meanwhile, a car rolls up to the curb. The passenger window goes down, and I see Dave in the driver’s seat. I’m mildly irritated that he keeps coming by here unannounced. He slows to a stop in front of Chris’s driveway. I jog toward his car and lean into the passenger side, hoping I can get him to move along before shit gets weird.

  “Hey, Theo,” Dave says with a smile that seems way forced.

  “’Sup, Dave?”

  Dave makes a point of looking over my shoulder to leer at Chris. “You need a third to make this a roast beef sandwich?”

  I glance back at Chris, who’s gripping the basketball with Herculean strength, the tendons in his wrists standing out, biceps bulging, face stormy and scowling.

  “Probably not a good idea.”

  Dave shakes his head. “How can I even compete with that?”

  I sigh, feeling guilty and confused and sorry for Dave in that he wants more than I can give him, and I, of all people, should know how shitty that feels.

  “Listen, Dave.” I run my hand through my hair, remembering when he cut it for me and taught me to shave, and then, how to give a proper blowjob. That was nice of him, and I hope after all this we can still be friends, because I do like hanging out with him. “You were right. My heart’s just not in it. I don’t want to play games or lead you on.”

  “Are you saying you’re done with me?” Dave asks. The smile is still there, but it looks frozen, covering up something else. He’s hurt, probably a little pissed too. Dave moistens his lips, and for a moment I think maybe I’m making a mistake. Dave was good at making me forget about Chris, if only for a short amount of time.

  But I’m not going to be like my dad and take what I want because I want it and not think about how it might affect the other person.

  “Yeah, I guess I am.”

  “That’s too bad.” He sighs. “I liked you, Theo. Despite your bullshit, I really did.” Dave shakes his head like he’s disappointed in me, turns away, and focuses on the road. “Ah well. Adios, Papi.”

  I back away from his car just as he peels off down the road, which is kind of juvenile but not that surprising. My first breakup, I reflect. I take a deep breath, trying to shake off the weight of what I’ve just done, hoping Dave gets over it in a day or two and we can go back to being friends. When I come back up the driveway, Chris is bouncing the ball with a little too much force for it to be casual. He also won’t look at me.

  “What was that about?” he asks tightly.

  “You don’t want to know,” I tell him, which is the truth.

  Chris palms the ball in one hand, presses it gently against my chest, gazes up at me with his warm brown eyes. He looks a little sad, or maybe it’s just the way I’m feeling. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  We finish the game, and I end up winning because Chris is distracted and grumpy. I want to ask him what’s wrong, but I’m afraid of what I might uncover. I fantasize about just pinning him against the wall with my bare chest against his and kissing him, not a sweet kiss either, but really jamming my tongue in his mouth and bucking my hips against him to make it real for him and find out once and for all if it’s just my imagination or if he’s feeling it too. There’s a moment where we’re standing in the shade of his house, drinking down our Gatorades, when I have the opportunity, but when I glance over at Chris, he’s lost in thought, which makes me think about all there is to lose, and like a punk, I chicken out.

  WTF, Part 2

  MY MOM greets my sister and me on the morning of our birthday with a Puerto Rican birthday cake, which is like a pound cake drenched in rum with a meringue topping, garnished with strawberries. She started making it for us after my dad and her divorced. I suppose living with an alcoholic, she took every precaution.

  I tell my sister happy birthday, and she does the same for me. Neither of us apologize or even bring up yesterday’s fight, but I can tell she feels bad about it, and I do too. I tug on her ponytail on her way out the door, and she elbows me in the gut—hard—before running off to catch a ride with her friend Lizbeth.

  “You want me to take you down to the DMV after school?” Mom asks. “I can take off early today.”

  “I was thinking to just have Chris take me.” I haven’t asked him, but I know he probably would.

  “He’s a good friend,” she says with a soft smile. “I’m glad you have each other.”

  “Me too.” I didn’t have too many friends before Chris. Other than my sister, I didn’t want to play with anyone else. My mom worried about me always being by myself. Like she was raising a future serial killer. Turns out I was different, maybe because I’m gay? I don’t know. More likely I’m just awkward as hell. I should tell my mom I’m gay—she’d be cool about it—but I’m pretty content to keep it to myself for a little while longer.

  “You’re getting so big,” she says softly and brushes the hair out of my eyes. I haven’t done much with it lately, and I’m afraid it’s gone feral again.

  “Only on the outside,” I assure her, and she laughs.

  “On the inside too.” She nods, looking pleased with herself. I’m flattered that she thinks she did an all
right job raising me. All my good qualities I attribute to her.

  “Have a happy birthday, baby.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” I lean down and kiss her cheek, then plop a piece of cake on a paper plate for Chris on my way out. He’s already waiting for me at the top of his driveway. I’m balancing all my stuff, including his slice of cake, so it isn’t until I hand it over that I notice the skateboard resting under his foot. He pops it up so I can see the underside of it.

  “Happy birthday, Killer.” His voice is a little husky, like it gets whenever he’s feeling sentimental.

  “Is that a Bruce Lee Fury deck?” I ask, astonished and pleased and unworthy all at once. He nods. “For me?” I ask, just to make sure because, wow.

  “Yep.”

  I drop my stuff and kneel down to inspect it closer. I didn’t think they made this deck anymore. One of my favorite skateboarders, Paul Rodriguez, used to ride one just like it. I’d always thought it looked sick, but I haven’t talked about it in ages. Chris must have remembered.

  “Where’d you find it?” I ask him.

  “The UK.”

  “Must have cost a lot to ship it over.” Not to mention the Tensor trucks and Bones 100 wheels, which are my preferred brands for skateboard hardware.

  “I’m sponsoring you.”

  “For what?”

  “The Plan Z tour. I want to see you compete.”

  Ryanne mentioned it when we were surfing in Sebastian. I’d loosely considered entering, but then thought better of it. A lot of the entrants will be pro or semipro. Total badasses. I’ll look like a total goof compared to them.

  “I don’t know, Boss. That’s some stiff competition.”

  “You’re the competition, T. I want to watch you land a sick trick and then tell everyone you’re my biffle.”

  “Biffle?

  “Best Friend For Life. Tabs taught me that.”

  I smile. “And if I land on my ass?”

  He shrugs. “Then you’re just some kid who needed a ride.”

  I smile, knowing he’d never do me like that. “I’ll think about it. I’m going to need to practice, though. You going to drain the pool for me?”

  “I was thinking park might be your best bet.” Park is a mix between street, pool, and vert, short for vertical, or in other words, half-pipe—the big kahuna. Park is basically a little of everything, where style and originality count for more than being able to execute a standard book of tricks.

  “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  Chris drops the board and rolls it over so it nudges my ankle. I kick it up, like I’m He-Man picking up his Power Sword. I pull Chris into a one-handed bro-hug. “Thanks, Chris,” I utter into his still-damp-from-the-shower hair.

  “You’re welcome, buddy.”

  When we pull into the school parking lot twenty minutes later, I’m riding high. Maybe it’s because I basically ate sugar for breakfast, or maybe it’s because of my new kick-ass skateboard, or the fact that Chris said he’d drive me to the DMV after school. Life is looking up for Theodore Wooten III when we arrive at our lockers. But once there, I notice something’s off right away. The vibe is strange. Our friends are all weirdly quiet, with their eyes glued to their phones. And I have this sensation that everyone’s looking at me, only when I’m not looking at them. My paranoia must be reaching an all-time high.

  “Something’s up,” I say to Chris and immediately search the halls for Dave. I’m not sure why, instinct maybe, but he’s nowhere to be found.

  Chris says what’s up to Corbin, who barely acknowledges him, so Chris goes up to him. “What’s going on, man?”

  Corbin’s shaggy, reddish-brown hair is mostly covering his face when he glances over at Chris, then me. He opens his mouth to say something, then shakes his head. “No way, man. It’s not gonna be me.” He shuts his locker and hurries away in the opposite direction.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I notice people passing by us, giving me way too much attention, some smiling and laughing. A football player actually points in my direction and bumps his buddy. Then they both start laughing their asses off. I glance down at my shirt, wondering if there’s a sign stuck there, then run a hand through my hair. I’m still self-accessing when my sister comes storming up to us.

  “How could you do this to me, Theo? On my birthday?” she roars, her face an ugly shade of pissed.

  “Do what?” I ask, while at the same time thinking I don’t want to know.

  Tabs purses her lips and glances between Chris and me. Whatever it is, it’s bad, if even my sister is hesitating. She takes a deep breath and pulls up her phone, enters her password, and turns it toward me, her posture ramrod straight, her arm stiff enough to clothesline someone.

  I can’t see what she’s talking about—there’s an overhead light bouncing off her phone and creating a glare—so I take it out of her hand to examine it closer. Chris comes up and peers over my shoulder.

  And then I see it.

  Holy shit, it’s bad.

  It’s fucking terrible.

  When I first started going online to look at skating and surf videos, my mother warned me to be careful what I searched for because there are some things I won’t be able to unsee. The picture on my sister’s phone is one of those images I’ll never be able to scrub from my mind. I know immediately Dave must have taken it. No one else has had me at this angle—on my knees, head back, eyes closed, with a mouthful of cock.

  Cocksucker.

  Uncle Theo’s words come back to haunt me, only this time I’m not laughing.

  “Who sent you this?” Chris asks my sister. He’s snatched the phone from my hand and squeezes it as though the force from his fist alone could cause it to disintegrate.

  “Who didn’t?” she says, and then only to Chris, maybe so I won’t hear, “It’s too late. It’s everywhere.”

  “Who took this picture?” Chris glances at me, then each of our friends, trying to find the guilty party.

  My vision blurs and my breath comes up short. I lean back against the lockers. The metal cuts into my shoulder blades as I struggle to keep from collapsing. It’s overwhelming, what this means. I’m out, like, naked in the middle of the hallway—no, worse, because it’s Dave’s cock filling my mouth, and the picture is so candid, you can tell I’m enjoying it. Damn, that shit is personal. Something’s been taken—no, stolen—from me, my most personal, private thing. And that thing has been smeared all over the walls to be judged and ridiculed by everyone who sees it.

  “Fuck,” I mutter. The oxygen has been sucked out of my lungs, and I can’t get it back. Our friends are silent, eyes darting from me to Chris, perhaps seeing how we’re going to react. My sister demands her phone back, and Chris absently hands it to her.

  My sister says something else shitty to me—what it is, I can hardly hear or process—then storms away. The only person who comes into focus is Chris, still demanding to know who sent this, and I can only figure he means whose cock is in my mouth. And I realize even the way I look at Chris is incriminating me and probably him too. I have to get out of here. Right now. I abandon my backpack completely and drop my deck at my feet—not the new one Chris gave me, which is safely stored in his car, but my old trusty that I don’t care if it gets abused. I hop on my magic carpet and skate blindly down the hallway. A teacher calls out to me, but I kickflip a curb onto the walkway, sprint through the lawn, and drop my board on the sidewalk off school grounds. I pump my legs until I’m flying, hardly bothering with stop signs or traffic. My anger and adrenaline fuel me until I don’t even realize how far I’ve gone.

  I’ve been violated, outed in the worst possible way. Only Dave could have done this, but why? Spite? Anger? Jealousy? What an awful, hateful thing to do, which makes me question everything I thought I knew about Dave and what we did together. I feel cheap and dirty and used and stupid. So fucking stupid. Betrayed. The list goes on and on.

  It’s not that I’m ashamed of being gay, or even sucking off
Asshole Dave—yeah, the name is back. It’s the complete and utter violation of my privacy and having that on display for everyone at Sabal Palm High to judge and hate on. It’s the same reason I never show off my skateboarding tricks until I’ve practiced them to perfection.

  I hate looking stupid.

  I need to focus on something constructive. I check my phone for the address of the nearest DMV. It’s too far to skate, so I pull up the city bus routes and make my way to the nearest bus stop. There’s a young mother there with three kids under the age of five. The baby’s crying and the middle one keeps trying to totter out into traffic, and the oldest one looks like he’s tired of the bullshit. I wonder how she got to this place of having three kids and waiting on the bus, which, let’s be real, in South Florida kind of sucks. And then I figure that somewhere along the way, a man must have betrayed her, kind of like my own dad betrayed my mom, kind of like how Asshole Dave betrayed me, and even though I don’t know her, I can relate to her struggle, so I offer to keep her one kid out of the street while letting the other one mess around with my skateboard and she tries, in vain, to get the baby to stop crying. But the baby keeps on screaming because life is hard, and even this kid, at six months old, knows it.

  Crack Really Puts Things in Perspective

  IT TAKES forever to get to the DMV, and then there’s a line. A loooong line, and the people who work here are slow as hell and don’t seem to mind stretching out the process. I guess they get paid either way. First there’s paperwork. Then the written test. More paperwork. Then it’s another hour of waiting for the driving test, and I’m jacked up on soda and candy from the vending machine, my only source of nutrition, when the woman behind the counter finally calls my name.

  “You can pull your car around back,” she says.

  “My what?”

  “Your car. You need to have a car in order to take your driving test.”