Trailer Trash (20 page)

Nate arrived at the dance with nearly a dozen Mormons, from all four grades. The overhead lights in the gym were out. A mirrored ball hung over the center of the floor. Christmas light had been strung all over the place, and streamers were abundant, but it still looked and smelled like the same gym they all had PE in.

Several couples were already on the dance floor, along with a small group of girls, dancing in a circle. He followed the Mormons to the right, circling away from the Grove clique, but Nate’s eyes met Brian’s for a moment, and then Brian leaned toward Brad and Jennifer, whispering something that made them both look Nate’s way.

Nate’s stomach knotted, some small seed of discomfort wiggling there, almost like a warning, and Nate tried to tell himself it was nothing. So the Grove kids were talking about him. Why should he care? He was the one who’d abandoned them, not the other way around. Maybe he didn’t quite fit in with the Mormons, but at least he didn’t have to worry about them peer-pressuring him into a bottle of Blue Maui, or pushing him toward a few lines of cocaine.

Eventually, the group he was with moved onto the dance floor, Stacy pulling Nate along with them. They danced a few fast dances, Nate feeling awkward and ridiculous, but confident at least that he looked less foolish than Jimmy Riordan, who seemed to be having convulsions on the far side of the room.

And then, the thing Nate had been dreading happened: the slow dance.

Some of the Mormons left the floor. Some of them paired up. A few of them stayed put, glancing awkwardly at each other. His eyes met Stacy’s. He cleared his throat, trying to think of what to say.

“Do you want to—”

“Sure!” She stepped closer, putting her arms around his neck.

Nate had intended to say,
Do you want to get some punch?
He hadn’t intended to ask her to dance, but there wasn’t a graceful way out now.

He put his hands on her waist. She was shorter than him, a bit overweight, but pretty enough, he supposed. They moved their feet a half inch at a time, slowly turning in circles, not speaking, their eyes averted. Nate had no idea what to do with his hands. Were they too close to her breasts? He wasn’t sure, but if he lowered them, they were too low on her hips. His elbows seemed to be sticking out way too far. He glanced at the couples around them and noticed that most of the guys had their hands all the way around their partner’s waists, but then he’d have his hands practically on her ass. Not only that, it’d mean drawing her a lot closer to him than she was now.

They were on their second rotation when he spotted Cody.

He was so surprised, he stopped short. Cody was the last person he expected to see at the dance, but there he was, not only present, but actually laughing like he was having fun. He was standing next to Logan. Of course. Logan always seemed to be near Cody these days. Nate couldn’t help but hate him for it. But as he watched, Logan’s sister walked up and tapped Logan on the shoulder. He turned to talk to her, leaving Cody alone for the moment.

Nate and Stacy kept turning, taking Cody out of his view, but not out of his thoughts. Had Cody seen him? Had he wondered why Nate was here with Stacy? Had he made assumptions about Nate’s intentions or about his exact relationship with her? He turned his head as they neared a complete rotation again, wanting to find Cody.

He was still right where he’d been before, but this time, he was looking at Nate. It was unnerving, and yet, Nate didn’t want to turn away. Cody looked the same as always—in a pair of jeans and one of his least-ratty shirts, his hair beginning to hang in his eyes because he hadn’t had it cut in a while, and Nate stood, transfixed, no longer thinking to keep up his slow rotation with Stacy. She moved closer. Nate noted how warm she felt. How scratchy her dress was against his wrists. She was about the same height as Cody, and with the same black hair, even though hers was longer. She settled her head on his shoulder. And still, he kept his eyes on Cody, wondering if that’s how Cody’s hair would feel too.

His pulse quickened, blood suddenly heading for places below the belt. Nate scooted back a bit, trying to think of other things, not wanting to pop wood while dancing with the good Mormon girl. He succeeded, but he couldn’t stop wondering how it would feel to dance like this with Cody.

He wanted to find out. He knew that with the same surety he knew the sun would rise in the east. Whatever was happening with Stacy didn’t matter a bit. All he wanted was to walk over to Cody. To hold out his hand and pull Cody onto the dance floor.

Not that he seriously considered that an option. They’d be lucky if they managed to get kicked out of the dance before somebody kicked their asses. But still, he kept his eyes on Cody, trying to somehow tell him he was sorry, that he was wrong, that he was an idiot.

Cody turned away and walked out of the gym, and Nate watched as Logan caught up to him in the hallway. Logan was at least six inches taller than Cody, and he ducked his head, leaning close, displaying an intimacy that made Nate’s stomach writhe with jealousy. They talked for just a moment, and then Logan put his arm around Cody’s shoulders, turning him toward the door just as Jimmy Riordan and Larry Lucero passed them. He suspected neither Logan nor Cody saw the way Jimmy and Larry both turned to watch them together as they passed. Logan pulled Cody close, their bodies fitting together like puzzle pieces, and then—

Logan kissed him.

It was brief. Just a peck on the top of Cody’s head, but Nate went cold, all the way to his toes. He felt as if his stomach had somehow fallen past his legs to land on the dirty gym floor.

“Guess the fag got himself a new boyfriend,” Larry said to Jimmy as they walked past where Nate and Stacy were dancing.

And the worst part was, there was nothing in the world Nate could do about it.

It was snowing when Nate left the dance, and for a minute he simply stopped, staring up at the cold sky. Huge, fluffy flakes landed on his cheeks. It should have been dark out, but it wasn’t. Clouds obscured the moon and stars, but the sky glowed faintly white, reflecting light from the streetlamps, making it almost as bright as daytime, except that the entire world had been muted to shades of gray.

“It’s snowing!” he said. He thought he might have laughed with delight if his heart weren’t aching so much over Cody.

The Mormons all shook their heads, chuckling at him good-naturedly. “You won’t be that excited about it when it’s still snowing in March.”

It continued all night, and all day Sunday, and Nate sat staring out the window, going around in circles in his head, arguing with himself endlessly until he thought he was going mad.

Cody’s dating Logan.

No, he isn’t. That’s ridiculous. Logan isn’t gay. You heard him say so himself at the bowling alley.

But boy, he was awfully defensive when Larry Lucero called Cody a fag. He was pretty quick to say that it wasn’t anybody’s business. Maybe it was because he really is like Cody. Maybe he said that to cover the fact that he’s sleeping with Cody.

No. They’re friends. Nothing more.

But he kissed Cody. Right there in the school, with me and Larry and Jimmy all watching.

That doesn’t mean anything.

It means everything.

Nate was glad they only had two days of school the next week. Only Monday and Tuesday to see Logan and Cody in social studies, ducking their heads together across the aisle to talk before the bell rang, both of them chuckling, even if Cody’s smile did look a bit forced.

By Wednesday, the first day of Thanksgiving break, the snow had stopped. The sky was clear and brilliantly, shockingly blue, the wind stronger than ever, so icy it seemed to cut right through every coat Nate owned. There’d been no talk of him going home for Thanksgiving. It hadn’t even been an option before Nate’s phone call home. It was even less of one now, in his mind at least. Still, he knew he couldn’t avoid the subject of his mother for a second week in a row.

Sure enough, his dad knocked on his bedroom door on Wednesday evening.

“Nate?” He’d just come home from work and was still wearing his uniform, his gun belt hanging from his hips. “Time to call your mom.”

Nate was lying on the bed in the darkness, staring at the blank ceiling above him. Howard Jones was spinning on the turntable, telling him things could only get better, but Nate found it hard to believe. He’d spent the last hour trying not to wonder what Cody was doing. Trying not to wonder if he was with Logan. Trying not to imagine Cody touching Logan and kissing him and whispering secrets to him in some dark, distant room.

Nate reached over and hit the button to lift the needle from the record, letting silence fall.

“I have nothing to say to her.”

His dad crossed his arms, resting against the doorframe even though it must have made his gun belt dig into his hip. “Are you okay, Nate?”

“I’m fine.”

His dad rubbed a finger over his mustache. “I know you never wanted to move here. I thought things’d get better once school started and you met kids your own age, but it seems like it’s going downhill. Seems like things are getting worse instead.”

Nate sat up on his bed, crossing his legs, thinking about everything that happened since he’d first talked to Cody behind the ICE cooler.

Could he talk to his dad about it?

He’d dismissed the idea before, but then again, he didn’t have much to lose. “I don’t belong here, Dad. I don’t fit in anywhere.”

“Oh, I’m sure it isn’t that bad.”

Of course he’d say that. His dad had no idea how claustrophobic Walter Warren High School was, with its tight cliques.

The bed shifted as his father sat down next to him. “What happened two weeks ago that made you want to sneak downstairs and call your mom?”

“I was going to ask her to let me come home.”

“Well, I figured that much. But what I’m asking is, what happened that night to make you want to go home right then? We’ve been here since August, but something happened this month that made things worse.”

Nate fidgeted with the hem of his jeans, debating. It all started with Cody. “I did something . . .” He shook his head, trying to come up with a way to tell his dad about it without actually telling him anything at all. “Something maybe I shouldn’t have.” But whether he meant letting Cody touch him and kiss him, or whether he meant pushing Cody away afterward, even he couldn’t have said.

“Are we talking about something illegal? Or . . . breaking rules?”

“No.”

“Cheating on a test? Stealing? A prank that went wrong?”

“Nothing like that.”

“Did you get in a fight?”

Did he? It almost felt like it. “Not really, but . . . an argument, maybe.”

“With somebody at the dance?”

“With the only real friend I have.”

“Ah.” He patted Nate’s shoulder. “Well, these things happen. Friends argue sometimes, but it’ll be okay. You’ll see.”

“It wasn’t okay with you and Mom.”

“That’s different.”

“Why?”

His dad took a deep breath, tilting his head back to stare up at Nate’s bedroom ceiling. He didn’t answer though.

“Somebody else answered the phone at our house.”

His dad blew out a puff of air. “Yeah, that’s what she told me.”

“He’s living there, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Who is he?”

His dad’s shoulders slumped. The answer came out a growl. “Greg.”

“Greg who?”

“Greg Merriman. They met at the gym.”

The gym? Nate thought of all the times his mom had come downstairs with a smile on her face and her workout bag slung over her shoulder, telling him she’d be back in a couple of hours. “All this time, I thought you were the one who had the affair. But it wasn’t you, was it?”

His dad leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. “No.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“She begged me not to.”

“But . . .” It seemed so feeble. So ridiculous. She’d torn their family apart, and yet his father had let Nate put all the blame on him. “That’s why you wouldn’t let me stay in Austin?”

His dad stood up, still staring at the ceiling as if it held some kind of answers. “I don’t want to talk about this again. We’ve been over it a thousand times—”

“But you never told me the truth, did you? Well, I want the truth now. No more lies. No more treating me like a little kid.” Even if he felt like one, at the moment. “Was it because Mom didn’t want me to know about the affair? Is that why I couldn’t stay?”

“That was part of it.”

“What was the rest?”

“Greg wanted . . . Well, he didn’t want . . .” He paced as he talked, as if searching for the right words. He ended up at Nate’s dresser, eyeing the frame of the mirror. Nate had wedged snapshots into it when they’d first arrived—one of the tennis team, a couple of him and his parents together as a family, some of friends from Austin—but he’d taken them all down in the past week. His dad frowned, eyeing the empty spaces where the pictures had been as if he couldn’t quite believe they were gone.

Nate watched his dad’s face in the mirror. “Greg wanted what, Dad?”