I Will Be Okay

by Bill Elenbark

  “Ball four.”

  I look up from my book and see the bases are loaded, Nico pacing around the mound as his coach comes out for a visit. Dad takes a seat, but the bulging vein is blue and he looks over at me like he’s about to yell so I jerk my head back to the story. Kakashi flings his chakra-infused kunai into the helium-filled bladder, piercing the skin with the blade and sending the airship tumbling, a last desperate chance to stop its rise.

  “All right, come on Nico, take your time, bear down and get this guy,” Dad says, less shouty this time, but he’s already driven away all the fans from our side of the stands, huddled in a frightened mass at the other end. Mom and Titi are down on the grass in the beach chairs they brought from the car—“No way I’m burning my ass on that metal,” Mom said, and my nieces are running around at the edge of the field, losing their minds in the heat.

  “Ball two!”

  Nico wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist and his face gets smeared with mud. It’s rained all week, ever since the cemetery visit, which seems appropriate. I thought we were okay, or I thought we’d be okay, and even on the ride home Stick laughed when Janice asked if I was seeing the girl Staci “set me up with,” but his texts have been super short and it’s been really long between responses and it’s getting kind of sick to think of him like this, like we’re no longer best of friends.

  “Can you pay attention to the goddamn game,” Dad shouts, glaring at me from the top of the stands and at first I don’t get that he’s talking to me because he hasn’t talked to me all night. “You’re at a baseball game and your brother’s on the mound and you’re sitting there reading—what is that, one of those cartoon books?”

  “It’s a real book,” I say, defensive for some reason, and it’s true—it’s a novelization of an episode of Naruto Shippuden, not manga, not that it should matter, I shouldn’t have to defend myself to him. He never reads. “Mom bought it for me.”

  “Figures,” he says, shaking his head and teetering further near the edge of the row again and I almost want him to fall, tumble to the earth like the Tobishachimaru—break his own wrist in the process. “What, did you give up on baseball for those stupid comics? Pathetic.”

  He’s loud enough that the rest of the stands can hear us, unless they tuned him out already, which maybe they have because he’s like this all the time, his way of “cheering” for Nico and me.

  “Strike!”

  “That a boy, Nico!”

  Dad claps loudly and I don’t know the count or how many outs but I don’t really care—I’ve been here too long and the Tobishachimaru is now plummeting to Earth! Kahyo’s mission has failed but she joins Kakashi’s side and uses her jutsu to throw a chakra-cloaked ice slab underneath the airship, hoping to slow its fall.

  “Smack!”

  The ball explodes off the bat, a long shot deep into center, and Nico’s teammate races back, spinning around as the fence approaches, this tiny 11-year-old chasing the ball like the fate of the tourists aboard the Tobishachimaru depend upon this moment. He reaches out to make the catch and slams into the fence at full speed.

  “Holy shit!” I shout, not even aware as the words leave my mouth and the kid is sprawled out on the grass. The runners tag up then start to race around the bases and Nico’s coach and a couple teammates rush into the outfield, the centerfielder not moving. Dad steps down the stands.

  The Tobishachimaru is falling, not as fast as it was, but there’s not enough water in the air for Kahyo’s jutsu to build enough ice, so the slab keeps melting and the ship keeps dropping in altitude. Kakashi orders Kahyo to continue weaving signs as he focuses every chakra in his body into his right arm, pointing up at the clouds with a lightning bolt to make it rain. Literally.

  “Hey kid.”

  I look up from the book and spot Nico’s teammate getting helped off the field.

  “Hi Titi.”

  “How you doing?” She climbs up to me with her pregnant belly extended and reaches out for a hug. I can smell the shampoo in her hair, like lavender. “How’s the wrist?”

  “Getting better, I hope,” I say, setting the book aside. The coaches and umpires are meeting in a semi-circle near the mound and Dad presses his body against the fence.

  “Let me see.” Titi reaches for the cast, gingerly, but it doesn’t hurt to touch. “You want me to sign it?”

  “Sure.” She fishes for a pen in her purse.

  Stick signed it after the movie, just his name, just “STICK,” and I have other messages like “All the best” or “Get well” or “Try Not to Trip Again” (freaking Nico), but Stick’s name is in big red letters on the inside, close to me.

  “How’s your book?”

  “It’s good,” I say. The game is paused and it’s getting dark all of a sudden and my cast is itching from the heat.

  “Is that Naruto?”

  “Yeah,” I say. It’s not really, it’s Kakashi, Naruto’s sensei, and it’s like a one-off adventure that turned out to be a really good story and I’m right at the ending but it’s a little embarrassing to tell all that to Titi, no way she cares about Kakashi’s mission to the Land of Waves to rescue hostages from a top-secret airship.

  “Which one is it?” she asks. The coaches have moved around Nico on the mound.

  “It’s about Kakashi,” I say, “Naruto’s team leader so it’s different from the stories in the show. Mom bought it for my birthday. I don’t think she knew what to get.”

  Titi laughs. “I never know what to get you either. Hence the gift cards. Of course, if I did know what went on inside the mind of a fifteen-year-old boy that would be a little disturbing.”

  She laughs again and it’s nice for a moment, she always finds a way to calm me. There’s a runner at third and the inning’s still going on I guess—I think this game might be part of an experiment to test whether skin on metal can legitimately melt in this heat. The coach replaces Nico with another pitcher.

  “So what are you doing tomorrow?” she says.

  I shake my head. “Nothing.”

  “You want to do a Titi and Matty day?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, sure. You said you were free, right?”

  We used to have Titi and Matty days all the time when I was little, after Nico was born. I’d get dropped off at her apartment and we’d make popcorn for Disney movies—she still loves Disney movies—and she got me hooked on staying up late and quoting lines from all the classics.

  “What about the girls?”

  “Your mom said she’d watch them for me.”

  “Really?”

  She nods and I glance back at the field. Dad’s crossed the fence to the edge of the dugout, yelling at the coach, I think.

  “What do you want to do?”

  “I thought we could go to the mall—your mom says you refuse to go clothes shopping for school.” I scrunch up my face—I hate clothes shopping—and Titi laughs. “Or not.”

  “I mean, the mall’s okay but could we see a movie, too?”

  “Sure.” She reaches across the bench and touches my knee. “I don’t know if there are any Disney movies out, but we could check.”

  “Great,” I say and I hear my dad screaming, at the coach in front of him, screaming back. “Titi?”

  “Yeah, sweetie?” She turns back, half distracted by Dad’s anger that Nico got pulled from the game. He pushes the coach in the chest.

  “Did Mom say something to you?”

  “About what?” She turns back too quick and now I’m convinced that she knows about Stick and me. She definitely knows. I weave a withering glare in my mom’s direction but she’s over by the fence yelling, too.

  “Nothing,” I say.

  Mom’s horrible with secrets but she didn’t tell Dad because he’s still being a dick to me, in the usual way, and I know he would act different if he knew, the way everything is different now and I don’t want to admit it. Mom tried to talk to me the day after, about what she saw or she thought she saw
, plopping down on my bed with her pressed solemn face, spinning this long pointless story about her best friend in college who hid his “sexuality” from her—she actually used that word, on my bed next to me, and that’s when my eardrums exploded and my face burned to ash, and I couldn’t hear anything else she said.

  “Are you okay?” Titi says, stepping back with blinking eyes and rubbing my head. I love her to death, but I don’t want her to know. Not yet. It’s not that I want to keep it a secret forever, but I haven’t had the time to process it yet and I don’t want anyone to know. Not while Stick isn’t speaking to me.

  “I don’t think I want to go anymore.”

  “Nope, not an option,” she says.

  “I mean it, Titi.” I don’t mean to be mean to her, it’s not her fault Mom can’t keep a freaking secret. I look down at Kakashi, dying to get to the ending. “I’m just not in the mood for the mall.”

  “Well we don’t have to do the mall but we’re doing something.” She reaches for my chin and tilts my head upward. “You’re speaking to a pregnant woman with two young girls that are truly amazing but also insane and your mom’s giving me a pass to spend a Thursday away from them so I’m taking it. You don’t have any say in the matter.”

  Dad yanks Nico from the field, pulling him hard by the arm. It’s been thirty-eight hours since the last play.

  “Okay?”

  I give in. “Okay.”

  She rubs my head again and I’m not annoyed with her, I’m not even pissed, I almost wish I were a little kid again and she could fix all this.

  “I miss my Matty and Titi days.”

  “Me too,” I say and she smiles, her bright white smile and wide blinking eyes. The phone buzzes in my pocket.

  “By the way. What the hell is your father doing?” Titi says.

  Hey. It’s Stick.

  It’s Stick!

  The game’s about to start again but no one’s paying attention because Mom and Dad are breaking into a full-out war next to the field with Nico in between them. Titi hurries down to help.

  The World Is has a concert on Labor Day weekend. You want to go?

  Holy shit.

  “Matt, get your ass down here, we’re leaving!”

  I ignore Dad’s screaming and text back one-handed.

  Yes. Absolutely.

  I stare at the screen and wait for the message to switch to “Read.” Dad keeps shouting at my mom by the fence.

  Cool, Stick texts. It’ll be awesome.

  Holy shit! Stick still wants to see me, or at least see The World Is with me, and Labor Day’s a few weeks away but we’ll have to set up plans and we’ll have to talk to set up the plans so maybe he’s okay now and we could get past all this. We have to.

  “Get your ass down here before I come up and yank you from those stands!”

  Dad steps up on the first metal plank with the vein beaming bright in the dark. I don’t know when it got so dark out. I stand.

  The game starts again, and the crowd cheers a hit and I tuck Kakashi’s Story into my shorts, the Tobishachimaru falling in suspended animation as Kahyo weaves her signs to turn water into ice, the last hope to save them. I glance at my phone, thinking of what to say to Stick to keep him texting, like I want him to be texting, like things are normal between us. I know he’s not mad at me, not completely—it’s more his Mom, and it’s David and Marcus—but he’s taking it out on me and it’s not my fault that my mom interrupted, he should know that. He needs to know that. He needs to know I want to try again.

  “Are you listening to me?” Dad screams.

  I’m not. I don’t want to listen to him ever again. But I think I should wait, make Stick wait for me this time. I put the phone in my pocket and hurry down the steps.

  I will be okay. Everything.

  FOURTEEN

  OUR AIR CONDITIONER BROKE today, or maybe yesterday, I can’t be sure. I couldn’t sleep and I didn’t dream, and I woke up to the sound of Dad hammering on the back patio, just beneath my window, metal on metal and loud leaden cursing like we’re all supposed to be awake at the crack of eleven. I tried to shower but it didn’t take so I biked around Woodbridge in the thick of humidity—not the best idea, but Dad’s been giving me shit about getting a job and Stick’s restaurant isn’t hiring so I biked over to Best Buy to apply but you gotta be sixteen to work there and I won’t be sixteen until next year. Not that I was dying to sell headphones to freaks with bad musical taste but there aren’t many options for a 15-year-old, other than Burger King, which doesn’t pay as well. At least at Best Buy you have a chance for something over the minimum and people won’t shit on you ‘cause their fries are raw.

  And I haven’t seen Stick. We bought tickets for the concert when they went on sale on Wednesday, but we did it separately—from our bedrooms at the same time—and he isn’t texting as much and we’re not hanging out at all and it’s not like it used to be. I kind of can’t wait for this summer to be over so we can get back to normal—Stick and me in school and afterschool and everything that was going to happen between us but hasn’t. I miss him.

  Mom’s still on me about having “our talk,” the one about me being gay or about Stick and me in the basement but I keep ignoring, refusing to speak about anything really until I can figure out what happened between us. I jerked off last night thinking about the concert, the two of us after the show in the field between our houses, sweaty and touching, in the dark by the trees past the train. It’s sick, I know it’s sick, but it’s all I can think about. He just texted me to come over.

  I’ve been biking like a freak, sweat building then pouring off my forehead to make up the time between the Best Buy and Stick’s house because it’s a far ride all of a sudden, with a single hand to steer my bike through the traffic. I park next to the garage, which is open as usual but empty this time and it’s cooler in the shade of the space so I wipe the sweat from my forehead with the back of my arm but my cast is soaked, itching and soaked, and my shirt is a puddle of moisture from my chest to my throat. I should go home and change but I don’t have time to waste. Stick texted me to come over.

  The steps from the garage lead straight into the Turners’ kitchen, a massive space that’s twice the size of our entire first floor and I think I count thirty-eight faces spread around the long table by the windows singing “Happy Birthday.” Stick is next to Jarrett as he blows out the candles on a cake baked to serve that many faces. The door slams behind me.

  “Matty!” someone screams, possibly Sammy—wait, is that Sammy? I step off the steps to move closer.

  “Hey, man, where you been?” Sammy says, and he slaps me pretty hard on the side. Some music comes on and it’s Rihanna I think, or maybe I think everyone is Rihanna, which is pretty clearly racist, and Rhonda smiles at me. I need to not speak.

  “You want some cake?” she asks as I try to catch Stick’s attention, but he’s laughing with Jarrett and she’s pushing me a square of mushed chocolate on a paper plate.

  “So you’re not even going to acknowledge me?”

  I feel a fork to my ribs from behind.

  “I mean, here I thought you’d be excited,” Cara says. “Do you know I know you?”

  “What?”

  “Exactly.”

  Cara’s hair is pulled back and looking sort of goth with blue lips and weird eyeliner and I step up to her by the island at the center of the kitchen, trying to get Stick to notice me. David and Marcus are in the corner laughing, but there’s no sign of any bushy-bearded guys wielding machetes, which is fortunate.

  “Well, you seem distracted so I’ll let you be,” she says. “I was going to ask about your wrist but that’s okay, just eat your cake.”

  She feigns a move away but I reach to stop her, so abrupt I touch a breast by mistake. I pull back.

  “Ohhhkay,” she says. “That was weird.”

  “Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” I say, simultaneously turning red and wiping my hand on my shorts … to wipe away the evidence? Sammy runs
away.

  “You are a really strange kid,” she says. She dyed a red streak into the side of her head, above the ear, a single curl purple-red with a beaded gray choker around her neck.

  “Let’s see the cast. I knew it was broken.”

  She pulls up my arm to inspect and I spot David throwing a headlock around Stick’s neck at the table.

  “What did they say—six weeks?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Six to ten.”

  “It’ll be six, it looks fine,” Cara says.

  “Thanks,” I say, which is a weird thing to say and I don’t know why but she makes me nervous and I just want to see Stick, now fighting back against David with Janice breaking them apart, typical for a family event at Stick’s house. Except that Sammy’s here. And this Cara girl—I mean, woman. I really need to not speak.

  “Oh shit, Matt… come over here,” Cara says and she pulls on my arm—the casted one—then apologizes as she pushes me in front of this tall white guy, reaching out his hand to greet me.

  “Hi.”

  His grip is firm and warm or maybe I’m just warm.

  “Kepler, this is Matt; Matt, Kepler.”

  Cara adjusts the choker, which was twisted a bit around her neck, and Janice and Michaela are now punching on David. Stick hasn’t looked up for me yet. I wonder if I should text him.

  “Are you one of the guys that likes The World Is?” Kepler says.

  I look to Cara and she laughs. “I tell him things,” she says.

  She wraps her arm around his waist and he’s really tall and quite handsome, which is exactly how my mom would describe someone so I’m super lame, but my gaydar is flinging alarm bells through my brain.

  “Your name is Kepler?”

  “Yeah, it’s sort of like ‘Stick’ except, you know, an actual name,” Cara says. Kepler laughs. He’s white, which is weird because I thought she said her brother was the one who liked the band so it must not be her brother, it must be her boyfriend, and I guess he isn’t gay. She has her arm around him, squeezing tight.

  “We’re going to see them in Asbury,” Kepler says. “It’s going to be amazing.”