End of the Innocence (31 page)

I blushed as I put my coat up next to his. “Sorry. I didn’t eat before I left.”

He looked at me strangely. “You really just came over on Christmas Day to make sure I was okay?” I nodded. He gave me a small grin. “Queer.”

He laughed as I pushed him down the hall.

They had made enough food to feed the Russian army. I just thought Mrs. Aimes had overestimated her cooking abilities until Kelly explained that all the people who had been invited over for a Christmas meal had canceled. Most were from their church and had called only that morning to say they weren’t going to make it, knowing the food was already cooking.

“They sound like assholes,” I commented as we sat upstairs in Kelly’s room, waiting for the food.

He nodded. “Yeah, but they’re church assholes, so it matters to my parents.” He sounded bitter as he turned his computer on.

“Um, what are you doing?” I asked as it booted up.

“Checking my e-mail,” he said without turning around. “That okay?”

Kelly checking his e-mail wasn’t even close to okay with me, but I couldn’t just push him out of the way.

His mailbox was full of hate mail. The subjects had “fag,” “queer,” or “burn in hell” in them. I was shocked, but he just went on deleting them one at a time. “How do they know your e-mail?” I asked, not believing how many there were.

“Someone posted my e-mail on one of the links. It’s been like this for a while now. I like to clear it out every couple of hours before my mailbox goes insane.”

My mouth dropped open. “That is just a few hours?”

He looked back and nodded. “I checked it before I went outside to get those things down.”

“Who does this crap?” I asked myself, not even aware I had asked it out loud.

“I used to,” he said, turning his computer off. “If this was anyone else I probably would have been one of these guys. Hanging dildos on a front porch? That’s pretty funny if it isn’t happening to you.”

I looked him in the eyes. “Do you really think it’s funny?”

He looked down. “I would have a couple of weeks ago.”

We would have continued to talk about it, but his mother called us down to eat. If there is one thing you can always count on with teenage boys, it’s this: No matter how important a football game or a conversation or anything else may seem, we can always pause for food.

B
RAD

A
COUPLE
of days before the new year, Mr. Parker took off.

He had hit it off with the guy his mom set him up with, but then something happened, and the guy went back to California. Less than an hour later, Mr. Parker followed him. I woke up to a semi-intelligible voice mail that said he had screwed up and was going to get Matt back, and could I handle the store for the next day or so, in case anyone had any returns. After that he said if he didn’t come back, I should leave the store closed.

I had started Christmas break without a job, and now I was running a sporting goods store. Not bad for a guy who couldn’t pass history without his boyfriend coaching him.

When I called Kyle and told him what had happened, he said he already knew. I asked him how he knew, and then he admitted having had something to do with it. He told me how Tyler had come over to his house drunk because Kyle’s mom and he were friends from school and he’d needed a shoulder to blubber all over. Kyle had found him passed out on the couch. They had a talk about love and what a person should be willing to do to get it, and the next thing he knew, Mr. Parker was racing to the airport to catch a flight.

I should have known better than to expect something positive to happen in Foster without Kyle’s fingerprints all over it.

“I remember a time in the distant past where you just wanted to be invisible, and now you’re making grown men race across the country? What do you call that?” I asked over the phone as I opened the store.

“Mad skills?” he answered, which made me crack up.

With Kyle’s help, we kept the store open up to New Year’s Eve without incident. A couple of people asked where Mr. Parker had taken off to, and we just told them he had a family emergency out of state. We ended up spending the night at Kyle’s house, sitting in his huge oversized chair as the ball dropped. As I kissed Kyle at midnight, I had one of those things where you just figure stuff out. An epitaph or whatever.

Anyway, suddenly it hit me that, barring a huge fuck up on my part, this was the person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

Now I know you’re going to say something like, “Brad, you are barely eighteen, and Kyle is the first guy you’ve dated. How can you be so sure that you can make a statement like that?” For those people out there who have not gone through that moment yet, let me assure you. When you know, you know.

I had always lived a life about wanting and wanting more. I had always felt a pull inside me that was never satisfied with anything I knew, which was one of the many reasons I wanted out of Foster. I wanted more than this tiny town in the middle of nowhere, more than these same blank faces I knew, just
more
. It wasn’t like I was biding my time so I could go out and have a lot of sex or whatever. I just felt an urge that made me want what I didn’t have yet.

It had been there every time I kissed Jennifer; it had been part of every home run I hit. There hadn’t been a moment in my life up to this point that wasn’t colored by that wanting for more in some way. I had always assumed it was because I couldn’t be myself in Foster, or that I had known deep down I would someday want to be with a man, but I had been wrong. What I felt had nothing to do with that.

I hadn’t been searching for more. I had been searching for Kyle.

When I was with him my heart slowed, my breathing became normal, and my mind just settled. I didn’t feel drugged or sleepy when he looked at me or kissed me: I felt complete. Sitting there in that chair with him in my lap, I realized I didn’t want to be at some party or in Time’s Square or anywhere else that didn’t include Kyle next to me. And if for the next sixty years we sat in a chair like this and kissed the New Year in, then I was looking at sixty incredible years.

He had to have sensed me staring at him, because he looked at me and asked, “What? Do I have something on my face?”

I shook my head and kissed him again. I was going to tell him what I’d suddenly understood, but we had all the time in the world, and I didn’t want to freak him out with all that. So we kissed and started the New Year in a perfect way.

K
YLE

W
AY
faster than I thought possible, the last weekend before school started arrived.

In some ways it felt like we had just got out of school yesterday; in others it seemed like a year ago. I had tried to get over to Kelly’s more, but between taking care of Tyler’s store, spending time with Brad, and getting ready for school, I had no time left.

I hadn’t even been really aware how close the first day of school was, until the UPS guy woke me up the Friday before our first day back.

I wasn’t even sure who he was until he handed me his clipboard and made me sign. I scribbled something and handed it back to him. He stepped to the side and revealed a box that came up to the middle of my thigh. “All yours,” he said, walking away.

“Wait! What?” I asked as he got into his truck. He waved and drove off, leaving the box on my doorstep. I went to move it, and it barely budged. “What the fuck?” I asked out loud. I looked at the return address. The box was from Robbie’s store. For a second, I thought it might have rocks in it but rejected that idea. He’d never pay for shipping just to be mean when he could show up at my doorstep and do that in person. I pulled the tape off the box and looked inside.

It was filled with clothes. It was a box filled with neatly folded clothes with an equally neatly folded note on top. I sat there on my front step and began to read.

Dear Princess Aurora (look it up),

Before we get into the sappy shit, let’s go over a few reasons why you’re wrong. One, you’re like five and a half years old, so you know nothing about life—keep that in mind whenever you think about talking out loud. Two, you’ve known me like fifteen seconds, which means you know nothing about me. Three, because I said you are wrong. Four, see number three.

I in no way want you to look at these clothes as a backhanded admission that you might have been a little right. These clothes count as your second wish granted. The first was me agreeing to be your fairy godmother, of course. Your third and still unspoken wish is still under consideration.

Your last year of school is when everything changes, and no, this is not a speech that has anything to do with your changing body; ask Brad about that. Everything changes because you are standing in the wings of what will be your finest performance.

Real life.

High school is just a really long dress rehearsal about who you are going to be. Now, of course, some people are background characters (you) and some are just born stars (me), but everyone has to play their part to the fullest because I assure you, there is only one show. Since this is your last chance to practice, I am providing some wardrobe for you. And again, that is all this is, not me even considering your words might have some merit. So there.

In a few months you are going to get to exit this town stage right and never look back. That means you have to start dressing like a real live boy and not run around in red shorts and that idiotic cap with the feather in it. If you didn’t laugh at my Pinocchio joke, then you have no hope of understanding earth humor, my alien friend.

By the way, I don’t hate all straight people. I hate all stupid people, and the difference is not only negligible but sometimes nonexistent.

So, anyway. Enjoy the clothes and have fun at school and don’t run with scissors and all that crap. If you are waiting for me to ask you to come back to work, then you have another thing coming because you were in no way right, and I was in every way not wrong. Just saying.

The Indigo Fay

(You’re so smart, figure
that
out!)

I had never hated anyone I liked so much in my life.

With some effort—okay, a lot of effort—I hauled the box into the apartment and on to my room. Then, with unadulterated glee, I began rummaging through it. There were shirts and sweaters and jeans and slacks and on the very bottom four different pair of shoes, none of them sneakers. There were blazers and ties and suspenders and… well I’m sure you don’t need an itemized list, but it was pretty fucking cool to me.

I spent the rest of the morning tossing my old clothes out of my closet and replacing them with my new ones. Not only were these clothes way cooler than anything I had ever owned before this, but they were literally more clothes than I had ever owned, period. At some point, I was slipping blazers on over shirts because I had run out of hangers and refused to set them down where they might become wrinkled.

When Brad came over to pick me up for lunch, I was still trying to find room for everything. He just stared at everything in amazement and asked, “Did you rob an A&F when I wasn’t looking?”

“Robbie,” I explained, changing the shirts around so they were sorted by colors.

He scratched his head. “I thought you guys were, like, fighting.”

I nodded, placing the ties next to the blazers I thought they went with. “I think this is his way of apologizing or him trying to convince me I was wrong. Either way…
clothes
!” I screamed.

He laughed and sat down on my bed. “I can see that. Hmmm, maybe I should have bought you clothes instead of that phone.”

I looked over at him with a fake panicked look. “My phone?
My preciousss
?” I pulled the iPhone out of my pocket and clutched it close to my chest. “My precious.”

He burst out laughing and held his arms open to me. “Come here, Gollum.”

I fell into his arms and forgot about everything else for the next couple of days.

The next time I was able to find some free time for myself was the Sunday before school started. I was setting out clothes to wear when I remembered.

“Kelly!” I realized I still hadn’t talked to him about going back to class.

I changed and hightailed it over to his place. By the time I knocked on his door, it was late afternoon. His dad opened the door, and the look on his face warned me I was the last person he wanted knocking on his door. “What?” he asked bluntly.

“Is Kelly here?” I asked, trying to keep the sarcasm out of my voice. Honestly, did Mr. Aimes think I had another reason to be there?

“It’s a school night,” he said, not looking like he was going to budge. I almost said something along the lines of “Kelly’s not twelve. He doesn’t have a curfew.” But I avoided confronting Kelly’s dad as much as I could.

“Well, technically not yet,” I pointed out. “This is still vacation time.”

His eyes narrowed in anger, and he looked like he was going to yell at me, but Mrs. Aimes screamed from inside the house, “Just let him in!”

He sighed and stepped aside. I tried to keep the smugness out of my expression, but I’m not sure I pulled it off.

I climbed up the stairs and paused in Kelly’s bedroom doorway. He sat at his computer, staring. “Hey,” I said, closing the door behind me.

He turned the computer off and turned around to face me. “Why am I not surprised to see you here?”

“So, I had an idea,” I said, ignoring the agitation in his voice.

“Again, why am I not surprised?” He looked two parts exhausted and two parts pissed. The combination was scary.

“So you are probably all weirded out about tomorrow, with good reason!” I added quickly when I saw him begin to get angry. “I mean, who would want to walk into school after all this? But I had an idea how to make it better.”