End of the Innocence (7 page)

“Fucking bitch,” he said under his breath as he made his way to the door.

Someone in the back of the restaurant shouted, “And stay out, asshole!” which got some people laughing and then clapping. By the time he slammed the door behind them, the entire place was clapping and hollering at him as he got into his car out front.

“Can we go, please?” I heard Kyle ask softly behind me. I turned with a smile, about to ask him why, since these people were so obviously on our side.

The front of his vest was soaked with both of our drinks.

He looked like he was about to start crying when he added, “I haven’t even paid for it yet….”

“Do you want me to get a towel or something?” I asked as I turned toward Gayle, who was making sure Mr. Wright was truly gone.

“Brad, please,” he said, on the verge of losing it. “I just want to go.”

I slipped off my jacket and handed it to him as he got out of the booth. “Okay, come on.” He huddled into it, trying to cover the fact it looked like he had just said “I don’t know” on a Nickelodeon show. Gayle saw us walking past her. “You boys don’t have to leave,” she said, concerned.

“That was epic,” I said to her as Kyle hurried out. “Thank you.”

She looked at Kyle, who made a beeline to my car. “He okay?”

I nodded. “He doesn’t do well with attention,” I said, opting out of explaining that his new clothes were ruined.

Her face got serious for a moment. “He does know there are more people like that asshole in Foster than people like me, right?” She phrased it like she was asking if Kyle knew, but I knew she was actually asking me. I nodded. “Take it from me, everything passes. You two always have a place here. That’s a promise.”

I gave her a hug; it was nice to know there were some people on our side. “Thank you, Gayle. You rock.”

She hugged me back. “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” I gave her a confused look, and she laughed. “It’s from a play. It means there is more to life than what you expect it to be. Foster is not the world. Things out there do get better.”

I nodded, not sure what she was talking about but not wanting to get into it with her. “I better get.”

“Go on, tell Kyle it will be okay,” she called after me.

It was a nice sentiment, but I doubted he’d believe it.

K
YLE

I
HUDDLED
in his car, miserable.

I could say I was mortified, but, honestly, the word was not strong enough to convey how horrible I felt at the moment. I was heading into a panic attack, so I began to list all the different ways I could say how I felt. Abased. Abashed. Belittled. Disgraced. Humiliated. Ridiculed. Shamed. By the time I got to vexed, Brad slid into the driver’s seat.

“You okay?” he asked. I knew he was concerned, but he had just asked the stupidest question I had ever heard in my life.

“I just want to go home,” I answered, trying to keep the thunderous waves of emotion that were rolling around in my head away from my mouth. I wasn’t mad at Brad, but he was here and asking me questions he knew the answer to, and that was enough to set me off.

“Kyle,” he said softly, “you can’t let people like that get to you. There are always—”

“
Take me home
!” I screamed, unable to stop the words or their volume. I imagine if I had pulled a gun on him, he would have the exact same look on his face he did at that moment. In a much more subdued tone, I said, “Please, Brad, just take me home.”

Without another word, he drove me home.

If you are curious, I did feel like shit for treating him like that, because he hadn’t done a thing to warrant it, but there was just no way to stop myself. I felt like I was falling apart. Falling apart has always been something I did by myself. I didn’t want him to see me cry because some pop got spilled on my fucking clothes. I mean, just saying it like that showed how stupid it was. I was going to cry because my clothes were wet? It wasn’t about the clothes, and it wasn’t about the embarrassment of some redneck humiliating me in public.

It was something worse than that.

“Do you want me to come in?”

I looked up, and we were in front of my house.

I shook my head and began to get out but stopped myself. I turned to him, and I could see the confusion and fear in his face. “I love you,” I said quickly. “And I am not mad at you, and you didn’t do anything wrong. I’m just broken.”

I went to slide out of the car, and he grabbed my hand. “Then be broken with me,” he pleaded.

I squeezed his hand back and then pulled away. “I just can’t right now, Brad, I’m sorry.”

And then I ran in my house like a fucking bitch wearing one glass slipper who knew in about ten seconds she’d be wearing a flour sack. My mom sat in the living room with some friends. I ignored them as I rushed into my room and slammed my door. I could imagine what my mom was saying. “Ignore my daughter; it’s that time of the month.”

I started to rip the clothes off before I realized I still hadn’t paid for them. That shocked some sense into me, and I slowly took them off before I tossed them into the corner. The vest was ruined; I was pretty sure the front was silk or something. The shirt was stained. I had no idea if it would come out, but I did know I couldn’t bleach it or the stripes would fade. Finally I gave up and just left everything all sitting there.

Grabbing a towel, I ducked into the bathroom and turned on the shower.

I waited until the water was just this side of scalding before crawling in. I just sat in the tub and watched the pop drain out of my hair as the inevitable tears began to fall. So like I said before, it wasn’t the clothes, and it wasn’t the humiliation that drove me to cry. It was something much worse.

See, I cried because I should have known what had happened had been coming at me. None of it should have come as a surprise. This is what happened when I dared to be happy in my life. When I stuck my head out of my turtle shell and dared to smile, fate made sure to lay the smackdown to remind me I was not allowed a life like everyone else. Good things didn’t happen to me, and that was for a reason. I wasn’t allowed to be with a great guy without getting attacked at school for it, I couldn’t own good clothes without them being ruined, and I wasn’t meant to go to parties like normal kids were. Not me, that wasn’t my lot in life.

Like another gay blond victim said, “We seem to be made to
suffer
. It’s our lot in life.”

It didn’t matter if I got out of this town or if Brad and I ended up working out. I was always going to miserable because that was the only way Life wanted me to be. As the water fell on me, I decided to just stop fighting it.

By the time I got out, my phone had three missed calls from Brad and two voice mails. I was too far into my funk to actually talk to him, so I just tossed the phone onto my dresser. Then I fell into bed and hauled the covers over my head. I didn’t care if I ever got up again. I fell asleep for a while and then heard my mom open my door, talking on the phone. “No, Brad, he’s already asleep.” Her voice faded away as she closed it behind her.

The next time I woke up, it was morning because the sun was streaming though my windows like the beginning of a fucking Disney movie. You know that really bright and aggressively cheerful sunlight that tries to get you to do dishes with cartoon bluebirds and shit? Yeah, well, that was what I saw when I poked my head out of my covers. Like every other Emo Teenage Groundhog in the world, I knew an overly cheery sun meant eighteen more years of misery. I promptly ducked back under the covers. Before I fell back asleep, I jumped up and locked my door.

Then I went back to my blanket coffin.

I woke up when my mom tried to open my door. She knocked twice. “Kyle, are you up?”

“Feel sick!” I yelled from under my covers. “Not going to school.”

I could hear her sigh on the other side, but what could she say? I was acing all my classes, and before this whole gay thing, I had been a model student. If I wanted to cut a day or two, she really couldn’t scream at me; I had a few banked by now. “Did you tell Brad that? Because he’s outside waiting for you.”

Fuck.

I threw on some clothes and unlocked my door. My mom stood there, and I could tell she was forcing herself not to laugh out loud at the way I looked. “Did you go to bed with wet hair?”

I touched the top of my hair and could feel most of it standing straight up. One look in the bathroom mirror showed me I looked more like a troll doll than I cared to admit. I threw water on my bed head until it calmed down before walking to the front door. I swung it open and saw Brad leaning on his car with his phone in hand. He broke into a huge smile when he saw me walk out. When he saw I wasn’t dressed, his smile broke.

“I’m not going,” I said as he walked over to the door.

“Kyle!” he half whined. “Come on, you can’t let them—”

I had heard this too many times already. You can’t let Them get you down. You can’t let Them win. You can’t let Them make you the victim. I had heard every single motivational statement about being gay and not letting assholes do this and that to me, and I was sick of it. “I’m not letting them do anything,” I said, cutting him off. My skin felt like it had been pulled too tight, I was so upset. I still wanted to scream out loud, I still wanted to break down and cry, and I didn’t want to be having this conversation. “I just need a day off. One day to collect my thoughts.”

“Well, then we take a day off,” he said quickly.

“Alone.”

Damn, I sounded like a dick.

“Please, Brad, I am in a foul mood, and if you were here I would just take it out on you, and I don’t want to do that. Just let me be miserable for a day, and I will be okay. I promise.” He looked at me like his puppy had just died, and it was killing me, but I knew how my mind worked. I was in the mood to beat myself up, and Brad wouldn’t let me, which would just lead to me beating
him
up. And neither one of us wanted that.

“It feels like you’re mad at me,” he said. His eyes were bright green, and he looked like he was on the verge of crying.

“I swear,” I said, walking closer to him so I could hug him. “I am not at all mad at you. I am just having my period.” He cocked his head questioningly, and I kissed him on the cheek. “I just can’t handle it today. Tomorrow I will be back bright and early, ready to be spit on and kicked and everything. Just give me one day to lick my wounds, okay?”

He put his arms around me, and I felt a chill go through me as if the rest of the world faded away and it was just the two of us alone in the middle of nowhere. And though I longed to stay safely under the Brad force field, I knew I had shit to work through in my head, so I took a half step back and gave him a smile. “I love you.”

“I love you too!” he answered with the same exuberance a dog does when it wants to jump up on you but knows it can’t.

“Call me when you get out of practice,” I said, backing toward the door, not wanting to turn my back on him.

“Can I call you at lunch?” he asked, and it just broke my heart.

I nodded. “Call me at lunch.” I walked inside, hating the expression of abject sorrow on his face but knowing I was doing the right thing. He raised one hand to wave at me as I closed the door. As I leaned against it, I let out a sigh. That was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

“You wanna talk about it?” my mom asked after a few seconds.

I forced back the automatic sarcasm that came flooding to my mouth, because she was really trying to help. “No, I just want to sleep,” I said, heading back to my room.

“What happened at the diner?” she asked to my back.

“Just another day in Foster!” I yelled back as I slammed my door.

And that was how my day was supposed to end. Me falling into my bed and waiting for life to pass me by, at least this one day of it. But as with the best laid plans of mice and men… that didn’t happen.

A little over an hour later, I heard the front door open and my mom talking to someone. I ignored it since her friends came over any time they felt like it. But as I listened, the voices got closer and closer to my room until the door came swinging open.

Robbie stood there in the door frame like a vampire waiting for permission to enter my room. My mom was right behind him, not looking anything close to happy. “He said he knows you,” she said.

“He knows me,” Robbie said, walking slowly into my room. “He just won’t admit it out loud.” He tossed my backpack off my chair and sat down like it was his own personal throne. “We’re good,” he said to my mom, clearly dismissing her.

“He’s okay,” I said to her before she exploded on him. She did not take her eyes off him as she closed the door.

“I am far more than okay, but we will let that one slide,” he said, looking around the room slowly. “I love what you’ve done with the place; postapocalyptic Target, right?”

I buried my head in my pillow. “What do you want?”

“What I want is the cast of
Magic Mike
to be my personal love slaves, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.” He paused and then asked. “Is that what happened when you got a bucket of water thrown on you?”

I looked up and saw him looking at the pile of clothes I shed last night. “I’ll pay you back,” I said, groaning.

“Right, so this is what happened at Nancy’s?”

I sat up. “What did you hear?”

“I heard there was an asshole at the diner, and Gayle almost shot him. So what, did he throw something at you?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it,” I pleaded with him.

“Did he spit at you? Try to hit you?” he kept asking.

“Please, just drop it.”

“Did he try to drag you into the middle of the street and tie you up to the back of his car?” His tone had not changed a bit. The same kind of sarcastic, conversational tone he’d had when we talked in the store still was there, but there was a new coldness under it. I stared up at him, and he sat, expressionless, watching me. “Did he try to tie you to a fence and throw rocks at your head while he made you recite the Lord’s Prayer?” I shook my head “no” slowly. “Then I guess it wasn’t that bad a day, was it?” He stood up, walked over to the heap in the corner, and kicked at the clothes. “Get up, get dressed, and meet me outside.” He paused before he opened the door. “And put the clothes in a bag or something.”