We Still Live

by Sara Dobie Bauer

“It doesn’t matter,” Isaac said as salt stung his eyes. “I love you too.”

  THE ENTIRE STAFF of Being Frank stared at Isaac as if he had all the answers, but he didn’t—not even close. Isaac was more lost than ever, having put John on a plane the day prior for his extended leave of absence. He was going back to the “nut house,” as John so lightly put it. Isaac had stayed at John’s house the night before and barely slept. The whole house felt wrong with him gone. Isaac had never realized how quiet it was on top of that damn hill.

  “Well.” He congratulated himself on such a strong opening.

  “How’s Janelle?” a mousy girl asked from the back.

  “As far as I know, she went back to Oregon with her parents on Saturday.”

  Anthony, hiding under a hood, nodded to confirm. Isaac hadn’t slept the night before, but Anthony looked like he hadn’t slept in days. Maybe he hadn’t. His best friend was gone—alive but possibly never the same—and here he was, trying to talk about school.

  “And what about John?” Anthony lifted his head just enough to be heard.

  Isaac crossed his arms, visibly protecting his heart. “He’s on temporary leave, getting some help. I don’t know how long he’ll be gone.”

  Collectively, shoulders dropped. From where he stood, Isaac could just make out the snow-covered altar on College Green. He took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. “After all that’s happened, I assume people are going to expect us to shut this down. They might say it would be in poor taste to continue. But I disagree.”

  Anthony flipped his hood back. “You do?”

  “It’s callous of me to say I understand what happened to all of you last June. I don’t. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned at my ancient age—” He tried to smile. “—if I’ve learned anything, it’s that running away from the horrible things that happen to us is a race that never ends. You could run your whole life from the memory of this, but eventually, you’re going to get tired of running, and that’s when you’ll fall apart. If we face this now, together—remember all of it—maybe we can start to heal. And not just us; maybe we can heal the whole school.”

  “That is some idealistic bullshit, Dr. Twain.” Anthony smirked and chewed on the string from his hoodie. “But I can dig it.”

  “Gee. Thanks, Anthony.”

  “With John gone, are you going to fight our battles now?”

  “Tooth and nail.”

  Anthony ducked again beneath his hood. “I want to add John and Janelle to the dedication page since we lost them too.”

  Isaac shook his head. “They’re not lost. They’re just…rerouting.” He blinked at his own word choice. He’d been rerouting for years but had finally reached his destination.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE FIRST WEEK without John was torture. They talked on the phone once, but John mostly just yawned. He was having trouble sleeping, he said.

  The first month without him felt like being slowly crushed by a huge rock. Isaac kept up appearances because he had to. He’d inadvertently become the student’s John replacement—a bigger, blonder, surlier clone of the young teacher they all adored. When Meeks blithely mentioned the word “censorship” at a faculty meeting, for instance, Isaac was the one who started the petition to keep good books in the curriculum, even violent ones. He told John about it during their weekly phone call and received a barrage of kissing noises.

  Over Christmas break, campus shut down for a couple days. Isaac reread John’s novels in a desperate attempt to feel close to him. John might have hated his books—for now—but Isaac turned the pages with a lingering touch as though caressing John’s skin. Everyone was busy, so Isaac spent the day alone. John’s parents called to wish him a “Joyeux Noel,” but he never heard from the man himself. A phone call days later confirmed that John had fought to ignore the holiday because he missed Isaac and his family too damn much.

  To breach the gap, Isaac wrote John letters—disgusting, sweet things and sometimes boring things about the mundane everyday of Lothos. John never wrote back. On the phone, he said he was still learning to trust words again.

  By the second month, Cleo started bringing huge casseroles to work and handing them to Isaac. “You look like Jack Skellington,” she said. He wasn’t eating much. Nothing tasted as good as John’s cooking, and Isaac could barely drink coffee anymore because it never tasted right. More than once, he would think of a funny anecdote and look down and around, searching for John to tell him—but John wasn’t there.

  He and Tommy met several times a week for dinner or drinks. Some nights, they told “John stories;” other nights, when his absence was too heavy, they wouldn’t even say his name. Isaac pretended to care about the close of college football season just to get Tommy to smile, but it didn’t always work. Sometimes, they didn’t speak at all—just sat together, drinking. John was the life vest on their sinking ship, so without him a sorrow oceans-wide lapped at their ankles and threatened to rise.

  Being Frank functioned via stutters, starts, and sprints. As expected, the faculty—Meeks included—had been a bit put out by the students’ decision to keep going with the literary magazine, but one look from Isaac and they’d all shut up. Meeks said he was acting like John, which was the biggest compliment she’d ever paid him.

  However, he wasn’t at all prepared for an invitation for drinks.

  They met at some martini lounge—swanky and brightly lit off the Lothos main drag. Isaac wished he had sunglasses. He also sort of wanted full body armor, unsure of what the hell Meeks would have to say to him. He wasn’t exactly her favorite person at the moment now that he was channeling John. She ordered a gin martini, and he ordered Knob Creek.

  Maybe Isaac wasn’t the only one losing sleep. He very much doubted Meeks had purposely put purple eye makeup under her eyes. With no preface at all, she said, “John won’t be coming back to Hambden University.”

  Isaac’s vision went white. He had to shake his head to regain blood flow. “What are you talking about?”

  “He resigned.” She slurped her cocktail.

  “But—”

  “To be with you.”

  His drink vibrated in his hand, so he put it down. “Oh, my God. What?”

  “Based on the fact that he claims to be in love with you, I would have expected that you came to this decision together.”

  “No, I…” He scooted his drink away. He and John only had fifteen minutes of conversation once a week, but this did indeed seem like something they should have discussed. “He resigned?”

  She ran a hand back over her hair. “Look, I don’t know how long this thing has been going on between you. We are all well aware that interoffice romance breaks the code of conduct. Technically, I could have you fired.” She sank lower in her seat. “But I wouldn’t do that to the students.” She tapped her finger on the base of her glass and looked anywhere but at him. “I’m proud of you, Isaac, and I do not say things like that lightly. You have become an unexpected strength on this campus, to your coworkers and to the kids. With John not coming back, it’s going to be rough on them. They will need you to fill his space.”

  “No one can fill John’s space.”

  “I know. I know, but we have to try. And keep going,” Meeks said. “The school would like to offer you an extended contract, officially.”

  “I didn’t even think you liked me.”

  She calmly sipped her drink. “I don’t. Not really. But, for some reason, you fit here. You’re one of us now. Plus, I think John would be very upset if he came back to find his boyfriend unemployed.” She flipped her hair. “Men. You couldn’t just keep it in your pants?”

  He snorted, and Meeks cracked a smile.

  “Make him happy,” she said. “Or I’ll ruin you.”

  They clinked glasses together and spent the next twenty minutes drinking in silence.

  THANKFULLY, THE THIRD month without John was nonstop work insanity, which kept Isaac’s mind off his missing lover, although he st
ill went on the occasional night run that ended in tears on John’s porch.

  Isaac had made it through finals and the tedious reading of paper after boring paper. He’d also had the pleasure of standing in as guest instructor in John’s creative writing courses, which flickered a creative flame in him he’d thought long extinguished. Maybe he’d even write again, too—someday. But the real chaos was thanks to Being Frank. Once the final favorite submissions had been chosen, editing began. Then, final cover art. Then, arranging the stories in proper thematic blocks. The list of “to do” went on and on, but Isaac’s students seemed more driven than ever to see the project reach its final resounding conclusion.

  Boxes back from the printers, they stood in a big circle, staring.

  “We got to open it, man,” Anthony said.

  Isaac chewed his finger. “Just give me a minute.”

  “It won’t bite.”

  “I wish John was here,” Isaac said.

  “We all do,” said the mousy girl who’d stepped into Janelle’s empty shoes.

  Anthony poked his elbow into Isaac’s ribs. “He’ll be back in a week, right?”

  A week. After all the time apart, and the final week might as well have been fifty years. Isaac often found himself watching clocks, counting the seconds. They’d talked on the phone only last night, John sounding chipper, but hesitant, almost like he was afraid of saying something offensive—or maybe afraid Isaac would finally give up and say, “I’m sorry, John, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life worrying about your mental health,” when truly Isaac’s mental health suffered without him.

  “All right, let’s see these things.” Isaac tore off the blue mailing tape in one dramatic flourish.

  Anthony reached his mitt into the box, hauling out the first-ever copy of Being Frank. He held it at arm’s length and stared. “Shit, man, it looks good.”

  They’d gone with one of the more edgy photomontages, because punches were no longer being pulled around Hambden University. John’s yell-first-think-later mentality had saturated the entire staff, filling the void of his absence with the power of his passion.

  Isaac picked up his own copy. Abstract renderings of College Green shined glossy in shades of black and red, and in the very bottom corner, an eerie rendering of the faces of those lost, buried one on top of the other and including Chris Frank.

  Isaac stumbled when Anthony gave him a bear hug. They both started laughing as other kids flipped through copies of Being Frank, differing emotions flying over faces: happiness, despair, excitement, and fear. So many emotions, but all good, because they were all honest.

  ISAAC REVELED IN the hubbub of John’s house, filled to the brim with people cleaning and decorating for his Sunday afternoon arrival. Adam—who’d shamelessly pinched Isaac’s butt when he walked in—scrubbed the bathroom, while Sasha worked in the kitchen. Cleo obsessively rearranged a tray of beignets, trying so hard to be artfully French. Isaac found Tommy hanging an Ohio State flag in the living room and said, “You wouldn’t dare,” in his most dramatic Broadway voice.

  Tommy grinned. “What?”

  “I’ll burn it.”

  “Man, he has you whipped.” Tommy folded the flag and tossed it on the couch. “I’m guessing you don’t want us here on Sunday so that you can ravish him like a Victorian maiden?”

  “Uh, well.” Isaac nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.”

  Adam swept by—“I called this shit in October”—before grabbing Windex and disappearing back down the hall.

  Cleo snapped her manicured fingers. “The kitchen should be fully stocked with all John’s favorite food and ingredients for cooking his most famous dishes. Plus, coffee, lots of coffee.”

  But no alcohol. John had decided to give up drinking for the foreseeable future.

  “Are the linens clean in the bedroom?”

  Isaac patted her shoulder. “I’ll take care of it, Cleo.”

  “Dr. Twain, everything needs to be perfect!” She flapped her hands before wandering away, talking to herself: “Flowers; I need to buy flowers.” Her rose perfume imitated her shopping list.

  He and Tommy remained.

  “He’s going to be okay this time,” Tommy said. “I can feel it.”

  “You don’t have to convince me.”

  “No. I just wanted to say it.” He took off his glasses and wiped them on his wrinkled shirt. “The house feels weird without him, huh?”

  Isaac chuckled. “You have no idea.”

  “The patter of his little feet.”

  “He doesn’t have little feet.”

  Tommy smiled. “No, you’re right. They look like clown shoes.” He took a step closer and looked both ways. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I sort of love you, man.”

  “I get it,” Isaac said.

  They nodded in sync.

  “Well, I have to go.” Tommy reached for his coat on the back of a chair. “Hot date.”

  “Purple-headed Halloween chick?”

  “Isaac, she has a name. You’ve met her, like, fifteen times.”

  Isaac leaned back on his heels. “I like her nickname more.”

  Cue familiar John eye roll on Tommy’s face.

  Cleo stayed later than everyone else. She and Isaac sat in the living room, drinking tea, discussing the new semester. They tried very hard not to talk about John’s noticeable absence in Ellis Hall. The lack of his presence was like a ghost everybody could see but nobody talked about. It would get better. It had to.

  She left just as the sun sank over John’s backyard, blanketed in glittering, white snow. Isaac watched the stillness of the trees for a while before prepping for some random TV and bed. Big day tomorrow: the official launch of Being Frank. Before falling asleep, he prayed everything would go well.

  THEY HAD A table in the student union, right near the entrance, so yes, it was freezing—but no one could get in without seeing the gigantic banner that read, “Being Frank: Healing through the Written Word.” Meeks had already been by to get her copy, and she had yet to run back in, screaming, so she must have approved of the final product. Anthony had video chatted with Janelle. Despite her exit speech, Janelle did keep in touch with her old friend—and Anthony said she even smiled sometimes.

  Isaac’s sales technique was eye contact. If he could catch a student’s eye, maybe smile, they usually came over to the table. Others rushed past, not even looking, but he couldn’t fault them for their reaction. Healing took strength and time.

  Around lunch, things picked up. They were basically mauled for copies and battered by questions. Kids wanted to know why they’d done it. Why focus an entire magazine on something so awful? Anthony usually spoke up first. He liked to tell people, “It’s about being real. It happened. It was real.” Isaac had a feeling his loud-mouthed star pupil might rule the world one day.

  Isaac was trying to keep the table in some kind of order. As opposed to having magazines strewn all over the place, he fought to keep them in stacks, although it was a battle lost to grabby hands and enthusiasm.

  He was arranging just such a stack when a voice asked, “Can I get a copy?”

  His fingers froze as he looked up to find John standing there. John, pale as ever with those green eyes and cheekbones and slightly slumped shoulders. His John.

  Isaac almost flipped the table in his rush to get to John and lift him up into a kiss. John responded instantly, wrapping his arms around Isaac’s shoulders as Isaac lifted his feet from the floor and kissed and rubbed his nose across John’s cheek and kissed some more.

  Anthony hooted. “Holy shit, you’re gay for each other? I need a picture.”

  John laughed into Isaac’s mouth, but Isaac wasn’t done kissing. He kissed until he remembered that John’s mouth felt like a sun-warmed peach and that he smelled like witch hazel and that he felt small and perfect in his arms.

  He eventually pulled back but kept their noses touching. “You’re early.”

  “I wanted to surprise you. And
I didn’t want to miss this.” He gestured with his hand toward the banner—and all the students who now stared at them, grinning.

  Anthony was the first to move. “Out of my way. Dr. Twain, man, give a guy a turn.”

  With great reluctance, Isaac set John’s feet on the ground, and half the students mobbed him, wrapping him in hugs that shook back and forth with excitement or shuddered, ever so gently, with tears. Isaac caught Anthony wiping his eyes before the youngster exclaimed, “Hey, I’m cool. I’m cool. Look away.”

  Witnessing their scene, students entering the student union stopped and reached for copies of the magazine. Following a final kiss to John’s forehead, Isaac—and the Being Frank staff—resumed position behind the table.

  John picked up a copy and started to read. He flipped a few pages, and Isaac knew when he saw the dedication page, knew the words he read. Although Anthony had suggested they include Janelle and John on that page of acknowledgment, the staff had gone with something more inclusive: To those lost on College Green. And to the ones who lived.

  John wiped his face on his shoulder. “You assholes.” He sniffed. “I told myself I wasn’t going to cry today.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  SINCE NOVEMBER, ISAAC had pretty much been living at John’s house, but with John back, they decided to make it official. Isaac threw his measly clothes collection on John’s bed and opened the closet—which was fit to bursting.

  “Why do you own so many clothes?” he shouted down the hall, noting at least three different pairs of Converse sneakers. He heard the tap-tap of John’s bare feet coming closer and pulled out a frankly alarming shirt with red hearts all over it. “I have never seen you wear this.”

  John plucked it from his hand. “What are you talking about? I just wore that three years ago.”

  “It’s gay, even for you.” Isaac laughed.

  “Hey,” John sang and melted back onto the bed, legs hanging over the edge. “Maybe I’ll have to get rid of some stuff. I’ve never lived with anyone before, remember?”