The Book of David (23 page)

I was racing down the front porch steps, pulling my keys out of my pocket when I heard a voice call my name. I stopped and turned around.

Jon was standing on the front porch. He had yelled my name loudly enough that it must've broken through the haze. Then he softly said a single word, but I just shook my head and got into my truck. It was while I was pulling out that I realized I could barely see the road because I was crying. Something inside of me was breaking into tiny pieces. I sat at the top of Jon's driveway, ready to turn out onto the street, but not moving. I wiped the tears out of my eyes. I roared like we do in the locker room. I banged on the steering wheel until my fists were red. Nothing would cover up Jon's last word echoing in my ears:

“Please.”

I roared again and pulled out of the driveway. I drove directly to Tyler's house and ran onto the porch, banging on the
door with a fury that threatened to shatter the windows. His little brother answered. I shoved the door open and pushed him against the wall, knocking his glasses crooked.

“Where is the sonofabitch?”

He was frightened. “Who? Who?”

“Your fucking brother!” I screamed it at him. Full force. I saw tears form in his eyes. We were all just going to cry our eyes out today.

“Physical therapy,” he stuttered. “He . . . he had to go to physical therapy.”

I pushed him away and ran back down to my truck. My phone was in my bag, and I didn't dare turn it on. I didn't want to know if my parents had seen this bullshit yet. I was gasping for air as I sped toward home.

When I saw Dad's truck in the driveway, I knew they'd seen it. Dad never stays home on any holiday except Christmas and Thanksgiving. He wasn't here because it was Veterans Day. My stomach was in knots, and when I opened the door, I hit my hands and knees and barfed again. There was nothing left to throw up. I was empty. I wondered if I could stand up. I wondered if I could physically walk into the house. Something in me at that moment realized that all of this was over.

I had nothing left to lose. It was gone as soon as Tyler had clicked Upload.

My dad and mom were sitting at the dining room table with Dad's laptop. Tracy was sitting on the couch. When I stepped inside the front door, they all looked up at me. Mom was crying.

Dad stood up and pointed at me. “How could you?”

“Dad, I can explain—”

“Explain? You can explain this? No, I don't think you can. I'll be damned if any son of mine is gonna be a fag.”

“Boyd, please! We discussed this.” Mom jumped up and ran over to me, wrapping her arms around me. “Honey, we love you. We just need to pray. We need to pray that God will forgive you.”

“Forgive me?” I asked. She pulled me toward the couch where Tracy was sitting. Had she seen this video too?

Mom knelt and tried to pull me down on my knees. “Boyd, come pray with us.” I pulled my hand away. “Oh, honey, it's going to be okay. Pastor Colbert called this morning.”

“Pastor Colbert saw it?”

“Oh yes, my little fruity football star. He called
us
. The
pastor
called us. His daughter woke up to a text message with the video on her phone.” Dad pounded both fists against the dining room table, making the laptop bounce.

“Amy?” It dawned on me that this meant Monica had seen it. Monica. What was I going to tell her?

“Boyd!” Mom stood and grabbed both my cheeks in her hands. They were cold like ice against my skin. “Pastor Colbert
said there is a good counselor we can take you to who can help you not be confused.”

I stepped away. “I'm not . . . confused.”

“Oh, so you
know
you're a homo? How can you kiss that little fag like that? I keep watching this video, and—”

“Stop it!” Tracy stood up and screamed at Dad. Her eyes were as red as her face from tears and frustration. “Just shut up! You're so mean. Jon is nice. And stop yelling at everyone.” She ran out of the room. I followed her, slowly climbing the stairs.

“Don't think this is the end, buddy!” Dad yelled after me. “This is just the beginning. No fags allowed in this house. You think the coach at USC is gonna keep you on after this little stunt? You'll turn it around or I'll turn you around. I'll ship you off to military school for your last semester—”

There was a lot more, but I don't remember what it was. When I got into my room, I sat on the bed and saw everything like it was the first time. Has the area rug on the wood floor in my room always been tiny stripes of orange, red, blue, and green? How did it get there? I'd never noticed how many books there are on the shelves over my dresser. Did I read all those books? How did that happen?

How did any of this happen?

Tyler. Jon. That's how this happened. I turned on my phone. As I waited for it to power on, I pulled this journal
out of my bag and tossed it onto the bed. I looked up and saw Tracy standing in the doorway.

“What's that?” she asked.

“A journal,” I said.

“You write in it?”

I nodded.

“What do you write?”

I stared at her for a second. She waited. “Whatever I want,” I said. “I write about who I really am.”

Slowly, she walked over and sat down on the bed next to me. She reached over and slid her hand into mine. We sat there for what seemed like a long time. When the phone rang downstairs, I jumped a little. Tracy stood up and kissed my cheek, then walked into the hallway and stood at the top of the stairs. We could hear Mom's voice downstairs.

“Hello? . . . Oh yes . . . Mrs. Statley, no, I do not wish to discuss this with you. . . . No. No, I do not. . . . That is not my problem. Your son is sick. He has influenced our boy in his sin, and he needs to ask God for help and get his heart right with the Lord. . . . No, I will—No . . . You keep your boy away from my son.”

The tears were streaming down my face again by the time she hung up the phone. I turned around and walked back into my room.

Sometimes the only thing left to do is cry.

And write it all down.

My phone keeps jumping and buzzing. There are almost twenty-seven text messages from a lot of random people. They're all about the video. Some of them are calling me a variety of names:

Fag

Fairy

Homo

Fudge packer

Cocksucker

Queer

Sissy

Several are from numbers I don't recognize congratulating me on “coming out.” I have three voice mails from numbers I don't recognize.

I don't have a single text or call from Tyler. Or Monica.

I just got one from Jon:

Please. I can't do this without you. I love you.

And Monica just pulled up in the driveway.

She was actually nice about it. I was half expecting her to slap me when I stepped out on the porch. Dad's truck was gone when I got outside. I'm sure he's at the Deadwood Lounge, drinking beers and trying to forget that he has a fag for a son. Monica saw me staring at the empty space where Dad usually parks his truck.

“I'll bet he wasn't happy about this at all,” she said.

I sat down on the top porch stair. “Nope.” She sat down next to me. We stared out at the trees for a while. It was quiet. Our neighborhood is strangely silent during the days. Big homes, huge trees, everybody at work. Green and ghostly.

“I think I sort of knew.” When Monica spoke, I'd forgotten she was there somehow.

“Knew what?” I asked.

“That you were . . . with Jon.”

“I'm not
with
Jon.”

When I heard her sniff, I looked over at her and there were tears rolling down her cheeks. She quickly tried to wipe them away.

“I'm not crying because I'm upset with you,” she said. “I mean, I wish you would have just told me, but I feel so bad for you and Jon. It's just . . . here . . . I mean . . . it's so . . . hard.”

“There is no ‘me and Jon.' ” As I said it, I felt something twist inside of me, a sharp pain in my chest. My voice sounded like a stranger's, cold and hard around the edges.

Monica wiped her face again and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “Then that's gonna be even harder,” she said. She stood up.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Home.” She smiled at me, the smile that I'd loved so much on the dance floor at homecoming two nights ago.

Suddenly the tears were in my eyes again. “I'm sorry,” I choked out. “I'm so sorry, Monica.”

“You know, there was always some part of you that I knew I couldn't have,” she said. “I'm disappointed about this—don't get me wrong—but it feels good to know that there wasn't something I was doing wrong.”

I stood up and followed her over to her car. She opened the door, then turned around and gave me a big hug and reached up on her tiptoes to kiss me softly on the mouth. “Don't keep that part to yourself for too long,” she said. “You won't be happy until you give it away.”

After her taillights rounded the corner, I stood in the driveway for a long time and cried.

I cannot live like this. I had to walk through cameras and microphones this morning to even get into the building today.
Fucking Tyler was standing inside at our lockers, and when I walked up, he yelled, “Hey, dude. Heard you're switching sports from football to baseball. You catching or pitching these days?”

I almost slammed him up against the locker, but the whole reason I'm even at school today is so that I can play in the semifinals this weekend. If I don't play, I could lose my scholarship. And I will not let Tyler take that away from me.

When the alarm went off this morning, I woke up like somebody had fired a gun. For a second, before I remembered what was going on, I felt okay. Then it all fell on me like a ton of bricks. I rolled back over in bed and decided I just wouldn't go back to school today, but Dad threw open the door, like, two minutes later.

“Get your ass up,” he barked. “You're not hiding out in your room. If you miss practice, Coach won't let you play this week.”

I sat up and swung my legs down so my feet hit the floor.

“You'll be lucky if he lets you play at all. Now, I've been thinking about this. You need to tell everybody that it was just a joke. That you guys were just fooling around. Or maybe drunk. Whatever you think will make more sense . . .”

He was still talking when I closed the bathroom door and turned on the shower.

The principal made the news teams stay fifty feet away from the school entrance, but when they saw me park, they
rushed over and swung the cameras and mics into my face. I had to battle my way through these guys in blazers and too much makeup until I got within fifty feet, and one of the school security guards told them to back off. They shouted questions at me all the way through the front doors.

After I successfully didn't pound Tyler into the floor at our lockers, I walked toward the English room, and Mrs. Harrison met me at the door. She pulled me over into the alcove by the stairs and gave me a big hug.

“This will be okay,” she whispered.

I felt like I was going to throw up again. “No, it won't,” I said quietly.

“You look at me.” She took my face in her hands. “I have had you in class for four years. You have never backed down from a challenge yet. I'm not saying it won't be hard, but you can do it.”

I nodded, but I don't feel her resolve. I feel numb. I can't believe this is my life.

Jon just walked in the door. He's five minutes late, and he looks like he hasn't slept at all. I'm sure he wasn't in the pool this morning. He just handed Mrs. Harrison his hall pass and sat down. I can feel him looking at me, and I can't look. My eyes are welling up again, and I can't

I'm at home now.

And I'm fucked.

When I was writing in English class and Jon walked in, Tyler fake coughed “faggot,” and the whole class burst out laughing. Something inside me wouldn't let that go. I stood up and turned around and grabbed Tyler by the shirt. I heard the fabric tear as I picked him up and hurled him onto the floor. His right knee hit the desk as I did, and he screamed like I'd stabbed him.

I wish I had. I wish I'd kicked him in the teeth and just kept kicking him until he could never scream again.

I got sent to the principal's office. He suspended me for fighting for the rest of the day and tomorrow. I can't play in the playoffs this weekend.

Tyler is ruining my life. Where does this end? When does it get better? How does it get better? This feels like the most hopeless thing ever. I hate myself for ever even thinking about my secret, much less writing it down in this stupid-ass journal. How can I make all this stop?

I just want it to end, but I know that it won't.

Mom just had to pry Dad off of me. I think he just gave me a black eye. We were watching the news to see what the
cameras got this morning. Dad was on his fourth beer since getting home.

Roger Jackson's profile of me is supposed to come out in the
Gazette
tomorrow, and Channel 7 had him on tonight. They played a clip from the video—the one where my face rolls toward the camera—and interviewed him about me. He told them that I'd be missing the first game of the playoffs this week. As the anchors were asking him all these questions about the future of “gays in high school athletics,” they played another clip of the video with Jon pulling me in for a kiss. Dad yelled and stood up and threw his beer can at me. It hit me in the chest, and then he jumped on top of me and slapped me so hard, my nose started to bleed.

Tracy screamed and ran upstairs. My mom had to pull my dad's hair to get him off me for a second. I ran up here to my room.