Chapter Three

“We talked about that gay cancer happening in New York and San Francisco today. In bio,” Charlotte said at dinner. “Like a hundred people have died already and they still can’t figure out what’s causing it.”

“It’s not cancer,” I said.

“Might as well be,” my father retorted.

He snorted back a chuckle, pleased with what he considered a sense of humor.

“They found out it called AIDS now.”

“And who is they?”

“The CDC, Dad.”

“The CDC,” he laughed, “You think those quacks know what the hell they’re talking about? Why don’t they just tell those faggots to stop sticking their dicks in monkeys and save us the trouble of spending millions of dollars trying to save them.”

“You know, I think I read something about it starting with pneumonia. Isn’t that right, Char?”

Mom, sensing trouble, attempted feebly to distract from the real issue seated at the table. Even I wondered what would compel my sister to bring a subject like that up around my Dad, as if by now she couldn’t predict how he’d react.

“Pneumonia is a symptom, yeah,” I answered. “But only as a result of the disease.”

“You know, Shelley called me the other day and said a friend of hers caught it in Seattle. I guess it just wears you down to nothing but skin and bones. And he’s got all these scabsappearing all over his body. What an ugly mess, that—What did you say it was again?”

“Acquired Immune Deficiency Something. Syndrome.”

“You seem to be paying a lot of attention, boy.”

“I mean, I live in America,” I grumbled. “It’s kind of impossible not to hear about it at this point. Besides, we talked about it in class today, too.”

“Shouldn’t they be teaching you kids something useful in school? I swear the education system these days is going to hell,” Dad put down his fork and spoke through a half-masticated pork chop. “It’s gay cancer—That’s it. That’s all there is to it, and it’s God’s way of saying they brought it on themselves. What else is there to talk about? Except for the fact that these faggots can finally stop rubbing their lifestyle in decent folks’ faces.”

He snorted, taking another bite. I hated how he ate. Every family dinner was like an episode of the Twilight Zone and all my character could concentrate on is the sound of his teeth grinding with every chew, or how disgusting it was to watch hear him burp through wet lips at the table like a pig.

“I’ll tell ya, choosing a dirty lifestyle like that? You’d think it would’ve happened sooner. Actually,” he declared, hitting both elbows on the table and pointing knife in my sister’s direction to emphasize his point, “Next time one of your liberal, tree-hugging teachers wants to discuss gay canceryou just tell ‘em their dying off is a sign of the times. If they wanna breed like animals, they can go breed some animals in the woods.”

“I suppose you think that’s really clever,” I said, putting the spotlight on myself as flatware clinked onto plates.

Fuck.

“Got something you wanna tell us, boy?”

“Marcus, don’t.”

I cocked my head in suspision at my mother, attempting to determine who she was trying to protect. Dad stared daggers at me, hands gripping the edges of the table like a predator stooped low and still, priming a vicious attack on his prey.

“Who are you to tell an entire marginalized group of people that they deserve to go to hell? You don’t get to make that decision.”

My mother again, “Sam. Stop it.”

“Quiet! He’s obviously got something on his mind. You think you’re smarter than me, huh? Tough guy?”

“Who said anything about being smarter than anybody else? Not me, I didn’t. But I’m entitled to my own opinion, I hardly think that ma—”

“That’s right! That’s exactly what you are. Actually, that’s all you are. An entitled little shit.”

“Why don’t you have another drink, Dad.”

He was standing now, knuckles turning white as though trying to break the table in half. “You’re seventeen years old, little boy. What the hell do you know? Nothing.” He pointed a finger in my face. “You don’t know anything.” He poked a thick finger into my collar. Fire ignited in my belly. “And you don’t get to run your mouth under my roof spouting out bogus opinions just because you feel ‘entitled.’‘Cause let me tell ya somethin’. If you do, you’re only hurting yourself. But I’m happy to play that game if you keep it up.”

“Just because I don’t think your president should be ignoring an epidemic—that’s spreading by the way—and all you can say is I’m entitled? People are dying, Dad. Human beings. And they can’t figure out how to stop it.”

“My president? Let me tell you something, mouth. You’re under my roof. That makes him your president, too. So you better show some goddamn respect while you sit at my table eating my food. What’s it gonna be, huh?” he continued poking me under the shoulder, harder and harder. “What’s it gonna be? Answer me, boy!”

“Stop fucking touching me!” I wailed in repetition. “I can’t fucking take this shit anymore!” My cries were guttural and heaving, each tear falling like a sledgehammer breaking rocks. “I can’t take it! Mom, I can’t take it!”

She looked terrified, trading open-mouthed glances from me to my father. I wanted to rescind my part in the conversation, just eat my food stare idly past the bulk of my father and out to the yard. I wanted to dive headfirst into the light of our blue pool and never come back. Anger, as it turns out, leaves little time for one to think things through.

“I’m gay too, Dad! Do you think it’s because I’ve been out there fucking chimps? Do you really wanna see me rot into nothing because you don’t feel like researching a disease? Jesus Christ, I’m your son!”

Striking with the sinister reflexes of a cobra, he lunged for me where I sat, pulling me backward from the neck and spilling me into a pile on the floor. With merciless rage, he forced me to the fall and lifted, blocking my esophagus with crushing pressure. My own fragile hands reached up in to pry at his grip, which was useless. A voice from behind my ear told me to scratch at his face, flailing my legs helplessly where they dangled eight inches off the floor. A spray of blood registered the punch on my face.

“You already lost one eye, are you ready to lose the other?”

“Dad! No!”

Hearing Charlotte scream brought tears to the eye Dad was talking about, which was at the moment watching another fist raise high into the air. I never understood how someone could get knocked out so easily after being hit. It seemed so easy in the movies. I suppose, then again, so did sex. With the second punch completed and my vision blurred enough to terrify me, he slammed me into the marble floor. The expensive area rug was no relief to the blunt force trauma, and there was little time to consider how much I may have actually enjoyed it. Was it only possible, or merely inevitable that I would find myself again in this position? Here, on the floor. I’d always tell myself it would never happen again. But as history would prove, that was never true.

Turning over, belly to the floor, I attempted to crawl away. A thick glob of blood spilled over my lips and onto the rug, though I couldn’t feel it happening. And I wondered only for a second how Mom would be able to get the stain out. Stomping his foot onto my back, Dad held me in place and I braced for what might come next.

I refuse to die.

Charlotte continued to scream, fingers clenched at her temples as Mom attempted to pull her out of the room. But she resisted, tearing away from Mom’s hands and running for my Dad. She lunged onto his back, which she used to do in jest as a little girl, and used her small hands to scratch at his face. He threw her off with blind aggression, and she hit the floor, this time screaming in pain. Only then did our mother react, bounding across the room to push him away from us at his chest.

“Marcus! Look at what you’re doing!”

He shoved her away with one arm to berate me.

“You wanna be a little cock-suckin’ bitch? Then you better get the hell out of my house! Go out there and get AIDS, you faggot bitch!”

Mom was angry now, but not for me. She pounded his chest repeatedly, screaming about their marriage. She couldn’t do it anymore. And he could go back to the secretary he’d been fucking in Seattle. She said she was done.

“And so what if Sam is gay! And you’re gonna start hurting you daughter now, too? Are you trying to take out the only two kids we have left, you son of a bitch!”

Charlotte crawled over to me on all fours, wiping tears and mucus from her face, cradling my head between her legs. I looked up at Charlotte, who was looking at our parents, and the room began to spin. I thought he’d finally done it, he’d finally killed me. And I thought about the one I killed, Allen, whose voice told me to stop giving in. And that’s what I said, just before passing out, tasting blood in my mouth like chewing on steel.

“It’s not my fault.”

I woke up in a bathtub, naked and surrounded by floating ice cubes. The water dyed pink from blood. The skin on my back had split in some spots, either from broken glass or just being tossed so hard into the ground. Mom was next to me on the floor, gently wiping my face clean. Charlotte sat on the toilet sobbing quietly. When I tried to speak, I could only manage to burble through the fluids collecting in my throat. Mom told me I’d lost a molar, but my jaw wasn’t broken. She’d stitched my lip and a half-inch laceration in the brow of my left eye, the glass one.

She was wearing the yellow gloves she used to wash dishes.

“Sweetie, I need you to tell me. Have you…done anything, that might be making you sick?”

I shook my head and began to cry. My mother was asking me if I had AIDS. Somehow that hurt more than coming out. And at least now that was over with.

“Okay,” she said, removing the gloves. “It’s okay…”

She ran her fingers through my wet hair. My head felt hot, heavy like the first day of having the flu.

“You hate me,” I said, spitting more blood. The crying worsened and my head responded with an exploding headache.

“I don’t hate you,” she whimpered. “You’re still my son.”

Mom slept next to me in bed, tending to me as I groaned and writhed in feverish lucidity. She’d wake up, crush hydrocodone into a small glass of water for me to drink. A cool washcloth moistened my forehead uncomfortably while the narcotic took effect.

“I wanna go home,” I whimpered. “Please, I wanna go home.”

“You are home. It’s okay. It’s okay.”

She continued to hush me and lull me back into sleep. The pill was effective most of the night, but in my delirium, I can still recall crying out for Allen.

“Where is he? Please get Allen.”

“He isn’t here, baby. He’s not here anymore.”

The sheets were soaked in sweat by morning, small smears of blood clumped on my pillow. I felt rough, puffy and swollen as though from a bad hangover. Mom was gone, her spot occupied by a gossip magazine and a mussed newspaper. Throwing my feet over the bed, I mentally prepared to stand up. My back was sore. I felt like I’d been in a car accident.

A heavy lump turned over in my stomach and I heaved forward stumbling to the bathroom, making it in time to only vomit blood onto the tiles. I continued retching into the sink until red wine transitioned into battery acid. Footsteps padded quickly through the hall, and Charlotte appeared, half dressed. Her face paled at the blood as though she’d seen a ghost.

“Oh! Mom! Get up here! Here’s bleeding!”

Rounding the banister in her robe, she called up, “What do you mean? Did his stitches break?” She jogged up the steps and into the doorway, where she confused us with a sigh of relief. I spat out the last of what bile came up and dry heaved into tears.

“He’s fine, he just swallowed a lot of blood last night and it sat in his stomach,” she said, moving past Char to rub my back. “You don’t have to go to school today if you don’t want to.”

I wiped my mouth on my sleeve, nodding until I remembered my conversation with Leon and began to reason with myself. I wasn’t sick, and I’d been beat up before, so I could handle this. Once the headache passes, there’s just soreness. And that I could find a way to have fun with in lieu of wasting razors.

“No, I wanna go to school. I don’t mind.”

“There’s no rush. I can just as easily make a call.”

“I’ll just take a hot shower, get some food in me, and I should be fine I think. Maybe you can just give me another one of those pills. And I’ll take some ibuprofen with me for later.”

“Are you sure,” she put her hand under my chin. “Have you thought about what you’re gonna tell people?”

Even now, the truth wasn’t an option with my mother. But she was right. I didn’t want to bring any more attention to my appearance anyway, and there would probably be questions.

“No one knows me,” I said. “I’ll just tell anyone not wearing a jersey it was football practice. And anyone in a jersey, I’ll just say I do boxing.”

It was ridiculous, but honestly who would know the difference. Mom didn’t look convinced, and I recognized her concern. She didn’t want questions, women pulling up in the drive writing things down on a clipboard.

“It’s a big school,” I offered. “I doubt anyone is gonna bother asking anyway.”

On a personal level, I’d hoped that wouldn’t be true.

“Okay,” Mom said, eyeing me with uncertainty until I smiled. ”Okay. Well, you’re in luck because I made your favorite again.”

“French toast?”

“That’s right. So get yourself in the shower, and I’ll have it ready for you when you come down.”

As I turned on the water, Mom stuck her head back in.

“Sam?”

I hid my grimace at the twinge in my neck as I turned.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

When she shut the door, I struggled to strip of my underwear, then began my inspection. Looking in the mirror, as I had many times, I asked myself who the hell I thought I was. This time was bad. My neck was black and purple, as was half my face. Heart-shaped lips, already full before, now fat and pulpy. A large bruise was forming on my lower back across the buttocks where my Dad had rendered me useless.

A place for everything, and everything in its place.

Ripping a towel from the closet, I climbed into the shower to let the hottest water tolerable cascade over my wounds. Seeing my faults in physical form, and going over the circumstances that led to them, brought me to my knees. I looked like Aunt Shelley’s friend, trapped in a body, in a mind, in a home that was continually rebelling against me. How long does a body have to suffer before all that’s left is the emotion behind it. My eyes were the favorite part about me. I missed having a blue eye to pair with the green one I had left, both were gilded with flecks of hereditary mutation. I used to think it made me special. I used to think my eyes made me the exception. But crying in the shower, eager to eat French toast and drink some coffee, I realized Dad was right. About privilege, I mean. I held the towel over my face, thinking as I screamed, privilege is the most dangerous weapon a person can have.

The narcotics, and under the false pretense of contentedness, allowed hours to spill over me. I wondered if I was even learning anything. In just under a week, I had been pummeled, drowned, drained, set ablaze. Overwhelmed with context. Too much, that is, to absorb late 17thCentury nobilities or mathematical proofs. It was a wonder how anyone could possibly consider thinking about anything other than what was happening beyond the walls of institutionalization. High school, prison, the psych ward of a mental hospital; different versions of the same thing that inevitably happen, even to the best of us, in various stages and no particular order. Some of us seemed only to cross items off the list faster, leaving no trace of evidence to suggest that we might actually have been trying our best.

If one were to open pull open the drawer of a metal filing cabinet, skim through the tabs of folders labeled in black ink where a person’s name would be, and select a series of lives at random, the reports would likely look close to identical. Monozygotic twins with a shared history of performing at mediocre level in school, history of self-harming, dissociative and borderline traits, probably a history of some minor drug and alcohol abuse. Notes scribbled in slippery ballpoint detailing a random lineage of prescribed medicines, including but not limited to: Valium, Nembutal, Doxepin, and finally the 9thWonder of the 1980s called Lithium. Matching brain chemistries ranging from numb, to stupid, to a diet rich in enchanted sodium and back again. One would surmise that all these people are identical in their personalities, shared territory to begrudgingly haul through the years and years until the remedy cycles into their undoing. Suppression. Oppression. Salt. Each a respective conflict standardizing the faces of restless Americans into a singular polished concept.

In theory, institutionalization, albeit after decades of abuse and civil rights procedure and evolution of criminal law, is designed to “correct” abnormal behavior. But the guidelines secured to promote heathy individualism fail because they are linear. Just a vehicle shuttling one problem from Point A to Point Z.

Sitting on the bleachers after school, high up by the commentator’s box and looking into the chalk-marked yards of a football field, I realized that the standardized conflict shouldn’t be linear at all. The perspective, rather, should be hard to visualize. A sphere. Edges rounded into a shiny silver collateralization of all the things at stake. The cluster of girlfriends sitting at the bottom rung of bleacher seats clapped and cheered when their jerseys performed some miracle on the green. Next to the water cooler, pretty girls in short skirts stretched and helped each other bend into impossible positions, readying their bodies to practice steps for a new Homecoming routine. Number 7, Leon, bulky in his helmet and shoulder pads, kicked up dirt with his cleats. A vibrant, untouchable force running to and fro, sweating crimson under the heat and insulation. Watching the boys butt helmets together, hands firmly planted on the other’s nape, building one another up, it was surreal to witness such youthful optimism in motion. They were living in the moment, pulling up a fallen teammate with a hard grip and heaving biceps. In a few years Bruce Springsteen would write a song that would hit close to a thought they perhaps never had the chance to consider while it was happening, that this might be the moment of their lives. Glory at the risk of concussions and torn ACLs and chanting from the coliseum.

Though I was alone in the stands, camouflaging my purpose there by hiding in the shadows, I wondered if it were possible to have a moment like that. One moment so grand in scale that it would make one hundred years’ worth of other memories pale by comparison. And would it prove to be worthwhile the highlight reel of one’s life comes spinning to an end. It struck a pain in my heart to wonder if I’d even realize it had already happened. Now? Or sometime in the future. But it was the way Leon looked at me this very evening, hustling out of the locker room with 15 other boys, that made me feel an urgent sensation of capability.

I hadn’t seen him most of the day. Our class schedules differed sometimes especially before there was a game, and I learned it was easy to miss a person in the rotating hallways of academia. Still, he’d asked me to watch him practice, and I hoped he would remember wanting to see me. So, I waited around back, standing restively against the victory bell. He came jogging out as the double-doors slammed open in a testosterone-induced parade, slowing down and falling out of line as he walked up to me. Removing his helmet, I greeted him with a sheepish, swollen grin. A moment passed as he got closer, his own smile falling into a comprehending sigh below disquieted eyes. He kicked at the grass and pursed his lips.

I said, “Hi,” through raspy vocal cords. He looked up at me with furrowed brows, moving gloser to say, “Why is it every time I see you it’s like Empire struck back all over your entire day.”

It was impossible not to laugh, which helped me gulped down a sob, already embarrassed by my appearance and subtly regretting my presence there. A voice called in the distance, the coach beckoning his quarterback to his responsibilities.

“On my way, coach!” he yelled without looking behind him.

“Get your ass down here, Robbie. Now!”

He reached out. “Come here,” he said, wrapping himself around me like a fitted shield. I felt heavy in his arms, started to cry.

“It’s just… My dad. He can be…”

“I know. I’ve been you before.”

I felt his fingers in my hair.

“Watch me practice and we’ll talk right after.”

I pulled away, looked at him long enough for his finger to wipe a tear away from the purple and blue of my face, then watched him turn around and walk away.

-------

While the rest of the team “hit the showers,” Leon was ordered to do a couple laps for making the team wait for, what I considered to be, not even two minutes. And I got the feeling our coach had spent some time in the military himself. Rounding the final yards, coach told him bring in the water cooler and get showered up, and finally left the field to its illuminated tranquility. When I felt it was finally safe to descend the bleachers and not get Leon into more trouble, he stripped off his gear and walked over to the fence. I met him on the opposite side, ready to explain myself, but he stopped me.

“Got any plans tonight?”

“You’re lookin’ at ‘em,” I said, ignoring whatever discussion my mother had planned for me at home. But there was nowhere else I’d rather be that right here, and as far away from home as possible.

“Terrific,” he panted, out of breath. “Well, in that case, wanna help me with the water cooler and come inside? I wanna show you something.”

-------

We talked up the hill and through the evacuated parking lot: me apologizing for making him have to do laps, him saying it was worth it for what he had in mind. I held the water cooler myself so he could haul his pads up without any added distraction, then followed him into the darkened gymnasium and down a concrete stairwell into the locker room just past the coach’s office.

“Am I allowed to be in here?” I asked.

“I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said shooting me a scheming smile. “Coach is gone, only person here is a janitor and he’s still working the other part of the school.”

He caught my unease as I crossed my arms, looking around at the benches and piles of dirty towels.

“It’s okay, I’ve done this enough to know the routine. Besides, the old cleaning man is probably fiddling with a needle in his arm as we speak. I would know, it’s why Isaac’s dad fired him.”

Leon opened a locker and pulled out a beat-up duffle bag, stripped off his sweaty shirt and tossed it on the ground. In his duffle, he dug around for a moment before pulling out the baggie of coke and held it out for me with a key.

“Wanna do a bump?”

“Can you show me how?”

A tingle of nerves trickled through my system, anxious but excited to try something new. He laughed when I inhaled the white powder from the tip of his key, watched my eyes widen like the engine of a Ferrari shifting from zero to 60 in no time flat.

“Holy shit,” I said and watched him snort his own bump.

“Yeah,” he rasped, “Thank you class of ’81!”

He handed the bag back over to me, along with his key, and walked into the showers where the sound of a gushing faucet splashed through the silence. When he walked out, he stopped at the bench and stripped off his shorts, only briefly revealing a jock, which he stripped off almost immediately. He looked over at me, resting one foot on the bench to untie his shoe, then the other and removed his socks. My jaw had locked as I watched, dumbfounded, at Leon’s unabashedly fluid movements. I wasn’t sure if I was more terrified or turned on or both, but something was happening inside my own body that relayed the message, I liked what I saw. As I tried to memorize him from head to toe, dark hair growing down from his naval. Muscles hard in the some places, soft at others. The kind of body in a person I’d been waiting to see all my life. Because it was him, and it was right now, and it was unusual compared to all the things I had considered to be wrong in my life up until being in this room alone with him.

As he walked to the showers, he cocked his head as if to say, follow me, and I did. And I noticed he had bruises in places similar to mine, but probably from football. The elongated scar that crossed the broad of his back, was certainly not. Identical scars appeared through the hair on his buttocks, slithering onto his left thigh.

At the entrance of the showers, I leaned heavily against the pained cinderblocks, gripping the edge with an expectant hand, trying to wrap my head around all this uncertainty. My thoughts raced in lights and colors, trying to filter out the right words to say. Something perfect. Something that would mean something to him, and once I knew what that was, I was sure he’d understand it like no one else could.

“Silence is golden,” he said, again reading my mind. “Don’t be shy, look as much as you want.”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” I quipped.

“Is that what I’m being? Nice?”

His lips widened into something new. He wasn’t scheming, he wasn’t being cordial. And he was right, he wasn’t being nice. He was becoming something else altogether.

“Well, I suppose… I mean, you’re being, a friend. Whatever you are, I like it. Whatever it is, I think it’s beautiful. Even if it hurts, I appreciate it.”

He continued to soap his body, washing over the scar on his thigh, turning so I could see.

“You know what I think?” he said looking over his shoulder, “I think you see people. You’re always in your own head, watching everybody pass you by. But that makes you a part of it, you know? The world. More than all the other people too busy and self-involved to see past what will inevitably end up as nothing more than instant gratification. But not you. I can see the machine in your head working overtime to capture every moment. Trying to memorize every shape. Every line. I bet you see things nobody else can see. And that’s pretty amazing.”

“Or maybe I’m just quiet.”

“Anyone can be quiet. Everyone isquiet one way or another. Whether they like it or not, if you get my meaning. It’s in the quietness that your ideas, the way you see the world, are screaming the loudest. What do you see right now?”

“You.”

“What about me?”

“I can see that you’re taking a shower. I can see that you’re naked. And…” I shrugged nervously, “I think you want me to watch.”

“Because you like watching. Right?”

I nodded.

“Did I do the right thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Letting you see me like this.”

“Only if it’s what you want too.”

“Well, then tell me what you see.”

“I see the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen in my life. And I see that me watching you? I…think you’re getting off on it.”

“I am.”

I shuffled in the entrance. He was growing hard in front of me. There was a fire in my belly. He was shameless, I was voyeuristic. Things have a funny way of working out.

“Are you?” he asked, and began to stroke himself.

“What?”

“Getting off on it?”

“I want to.”

“You really think I’m that beautiful?”

“I think that…I barely know you, but there’s a chance there’s nothing you could do that I wouldn’t want to be a part of. Every future you that hasn’t happened yet already exists in my mind. And that’s how I see you. Every mistake you’ve ever made. Everything that’s ever made you sad. Everything that makes you laugh. And the way you’re looking at me right now. All the things that make you who you are. I can feel that.

“It’s like, you’re reaching inside me. And it hurts so much that it’s, you know, beautiful.”

Maybe it was the coke talking, or my nerves, or just being horny, but I wanted his love so badly that I wanted to cry. Instead, I laughed, held up my hands around an invisible camera and pushed down on the shutter.

“I like watching you, yeah,” I continued. “And I like seeing you. I have to. Because…because you make me feel real. Seeing you makes me feel capable.”

“Come here.”

I paused before starting to remove my shoes, but he stopped me.

“No. Just as you are. Come here.”

I walked into the showers where he stood, steam permeating the room. Me, trying to not get my clothes wet. He held out his hand.

“Just let go. Come see me.”

He pulled me closer into the stream, held my face in his hands and kissed me.

“You are capable, Sam. You’re capable of everything. And my purpose here is to show you that. You deserve to live right here.”

He put my hand on his heart.

“And you deserve someone good to live inside there.” He crossed an X over my own pounding chest. “You can let me in.”

He moved my hands across his chest, then down to the small of his back. He guided me through his happy trail. He was already hard, told me to reach under him. See him with my hands.

Once on my knees, he lifted my face under the chin with one hand. The other he used on himself. He looked in my face the entire time, said he wanted to be inside me.

“I’m getting close. Open your mouth. Wider.”

He adjusted his stance while I closed my lips around him. He moaned, then released. And I swallowed in his scent, his taste, his DNA. A taste unlike anything I’d been shocked to know before. Like inhaling saltwater under a heavy swell.

Let’s go swimming…

There was nothing more reassuring than driving through the Los Angeles surrounded by the hills moving like waves. Tiny fires meandered up and down the layers of trees, people’s homes and office buildings lit up bright against the night sky. My open hand cut through the rushing air of the car’s open window. From the passenger seat of Leon’s 1970 Chevelle, I was able to see California personified. Every curve in the road, every bend, every lush green mountain shaped the lines of a boy who was sitting right next to me. I wore his letterman’s jacket, shared the menthol cigarette from a pack he kept in the glove compartment. Stevie Nicks broke through the cool crooning of Marvin Gaye, and Leon howled at the moon as he turned up the radio.

We were en route to the middle of nowhere, as far as I knew. Wherever that was, Isaac lived there. After getting wet in the locker room, Leon gave me a fresh t-shirt and a pair of denim shorts stowed away in his locker. His car looked hectic under the area lights, a sudden burst of red drawing the eye across a sea of blacktop and dark sky to where it waited alone in the parking lot. He opened the door for me, and I sank into the butter-soft bucket seat. Climbing in at the wheel, he stuck a key in the ignition but failed to turn it. Instead put his hand on mine, kissed me first on the lips, then at the cheekbone under my destroyed eye, and told me I was beautiful too. A gargantuan silence filled the space between his thoughts and his tongue, but it was an expression I knew too well to feel afraid of what he’d say next.

“You’re perfect to me, too.”

With that he took my hand, placed my fingers around the key, and guided me to turn the ignition. It was the first time I’d started a car since leaving the party, the one where my older brother and his band of new rowdy Army buddies had fed me the alcohol. The kind anyone else starts off drinking, the one you acquire a taste for. I’d always thought of myself as a good kid until that night. Now, singing Edge of Seventeen at the top of my lungs, I thought maybe I could be good again. Though I wasn’t allowed to drive for a few several hundred days, turning the key felt like a fresh start. There was a teenager still inside me who thought that it was possible to live forever. It was possible that life might have more to offer than one stupid mistake. Where Allen’s story ended, mine had begun. And I would live with that forever, but by cultivating the sorrow into something much more intricately designed. Freedom, a concept so wildly misinterpreted by my guilt and my faults, suddenly reappeared in the form of a fast car driving with reckless abandon into the constant unknown of variable futures.

Zooming through the streets, some mauled by the history of past blazes, it was decided that taking the scenic route would be best. Leon was cool and in control, accelerating at speeds miles high above the speed limit. A silver rosary dangling from the rearview mirror swung like a malfunctioning compass and putting thoughts of broken glass to rest. Horns honked and beeped as we passed in the wrong lanes, jolting upward at the occasional speed bump or divot. Seedy looking bodegas passed by in a blur similar to an unfocused Polaroid picture. Working girls strutting their corners toed spike heels into the street, flicking their cigarettes at us and spitting expletives into the wind. The Hollywood sign shone bright in the sky, playing hide and seek with tall buildings that couldn’t know any better. When I put my hand on the inside of Leon’s thigh, lighting a joint with the other, he gazed at me with something like pride.

“Are you happy?” he asked.

“I think so,” I said with a laugh. And then, “I know I am.”

Pulling into the driveway, the house waited in complete darkness. The street light at the top of the hill was out, setting a scene for the kind of TV movie you’d see late at night on Halloween. Killing the engine, Leon got out and led us past the front door, guided only by moonlight. A rickety wooden fence on the east side of the house remained unlocked, creaking open with an asphyxiated breath.

“Spooky,” I said.

“Hm? Oh, yeah. That lights been out forever. Guess no one cares to replace it.”

“So this is Isaac’s place?”

“Mm-hm.”

“Have I seen him around school before?”

White gravel crunched under our boots as we kicked past weeds and rusted beer cans until the screen door of an enclosed porch swung open with startling unpredictability. The striking of a match illuminated a face from the depths of the porch. A cigarette between his lips pulled the flame into a bright red cherry. Exhaling a cloud of sulfurous smoke, he asked who was there.

“Hi, Mr. Matheson. It’s Leon, just stopped by to see Isaac.”

“Who’s your friend.”

“This is Sam. He’s new in town. Thought I’d show him around.”

The face disappeared, leaving a trail of smoke into the darkness. A light switched on from inside the house. Mr. Matheson reappeared, looking gaunt and pale. His beard was unkept and longer than I considered necessary. He’d been sitting on a Hayneedle lawn chair drinking cheap whiskey, presumably from the bottle. Wiping his nose, he squinted at me behind Leon, sizing me up for some reason I couldn’t understand but made me feel guilty anyway. Then he stepped aside, pointing to a sliding door leading to a kitchen.

“In the basement,” he said, and shuffled bare feet back to the company of Old Grand-Dad.

“Nice to meet you, sir,” I said, attempting to be coherent enough from the fading glow of my high. What was left of it made my head feel like a hollow wind tunnel. The kitchen was unfortunate looking. Linoleum ripping under the round kitchenette, dishes in the sink, soup cans empty next to a spattered stove. Leon walked to the fridge, looking over his shoulder at Isaac’s dad, whose head had slumped down into the posture of man losing a game against the bottle.

“Here,” he whispered, and handed me two PBRs. Taking another two for himself, he opened a stained pressed wood door at the apex between kitchen and living area.

“After you.

Something stopped me from moving. Was I afraid, or just paranoid from the dope?

“It’s ok, Isaac is cool. He’ll like you.”

That night, I took the first step down the carpeted stairs, taking my time holding the banister bolted to dark wood paneling. There was music competing against what sounded like the news. Cigarettes and dope had left a permanent mark on the stuffy interior. First I saw the girl, curled up on the couch in her cheerleader’s uniform, and I realized I’d seen her before. At school, most recently at football practice this evening. Then there was another boy, sitting on the floor, head laid back on a couch cushion. A beat passed as I took in the sight of him, realizing he was completely nude, skinny in some places, others not so much. Pubic hair thick around an erection he was currently massaging. The girl, consumed in her tabloid magazine, seemed to not even notice. Not wanting to interrupt, or at the least have a new acquaintance become angry with me, I started back up the stairs.

“He’s jerking off!” I mouthed, motioning with my hand like a game of charades.

Leon laughed, said “Good for him! It’s okay, he won’t mind. There’s no secrets around here.”

He started down after me, and I kept going. The boy heard us and looked up, unfazed by our presence, and said, “Just in time!”

Coming all over his chest with a declarative moan, he laid his head back and sighed.

“One of those for me?” he asked, “I was going to get one after I got off.”

Leon handed him a beer, rustling the hair on Isaac’s head.

“Thanks, man.”

“Hey, so, this is the one I wanted you to meet.” He pointed over at me. “Isaac, this is Sam. Sam?” He drew me in under his arm. “Thisis Isaac.”

“Hey man, welcome.”

He stood up, wiping his hands on a nearby t-shirt, then extended one to me. We shook hands. I blushed, could feel myself getting excited again.

“Make yourself at home,” he said with a flourish. “Obviously!”

The girl on the couch stood up, tossing the magazine lazily onto the couch.

“Don’t forget about me.” She feigned a pout and wrapped her arms around me in a deep hug.

“Right. This is Allison Olson,” Leon dryly. “Come on, Al. Give the kid some breathing room.”

“Jerk,” she winked.

I was bemused by all the weirdness. People don’t act like this, right? Is this how it feels to be close with someone? Shame was insatiably controlled in my world until today, but it was fickle here. It was as if these people were taking every thought considered about the teenage dream, all the exploratory notions of one another’s body, and making it a reality. Fickle as it was, shame was evolving instantly, a capricious seed planted into my head confusing what was normal and what shouldn’t be considered wrong.

“Hey, where’s Patricia?”

“She’s coming over with Scotty,” Allison said. “After supper with his parents. He made her promise. Not that I’m sure a promise like that would do any good.”

“It might,” I blurted. Allison toed behind the naked host like a ballerina, wrapping her arms around his wet chest. “If she ate their supper, I mean.”

She nuzzled broodingly into Isaac’s neck, her brown eyes pierced into mine as she ran a French-tip through the speckled hair on his chest, gathering what deceptively appeared as the sultry emissions of a hot summer day.

“Not what I meant,” she glowered and slipped the finger into her mouth.

No one spoke as Isaac kissed her on the mouth. I cleared my throat as a man spoke through the black and white television regarding a number of AIDS related deaths and a Canadian flight attendant.

Finally, Leon buckled over with laughter and his friends followed suit.

“Aww, he’s cute, Leon!” the girl cackled. “He’s still got that baby-faced innocence about him.”

Don’t we all?

“He’ll catch on soon enough, I think,” Leon replied and kissed me on top of the head. “You guys wanna do some rails before Patricia bogarts it all?”

It was agreed that Patricia had a “nose like a hoover,” which meant we were presented an opportunity primed for a head start. Isaac said there the mirror was in his room and he needed to throw on some laundry anyway. Running my toes over the long carpet, the three filed into a dark hallway and I thought of a tormented Catherine Deneuve being groped by all those ghostly hands groping out of the walls in “Repulsion.” I stared stupidly at the hard-on jutting out of the gym shorts I was wearing, considering how obvious a presence it was just moments earlier, resigned myself to a feeling these people didn’t mind at all.

“Hey!” I called, trotting into the hallway. “Then what did you mean?”

There was light coming from under a door. Opening it to what would be Isaac’s bedroom, both boys were snorting lines off Allison’s breasts. Leon, covered his knows on the way up, handing me a rolled dollar bill. Taking it absentmindedly, I asked again.

“What did Allison mean?”

“She meant we’re up to no good, man,” Isaac retorted. “You wanna rail or not?”

“Lit. The fuck. Up.”

Patricia crossed her arms in disgust.

“Did you even fucking save any for us?” she demanded.

There was a certain amount of difficulty caring what she had to say. In Isaac’s backyard there was a large empty swimming pool, a trampoline substiting for water. We were playing a game in which Allison lay curled up on the net and we’d try to launch her as far as possible into the air. Between gulping breaths, Leon told Patricia to shut up, that there was more where that came from. The girl wasn’t wrong, though. My whole body did feel lit up like a glorious Christmas tree. And I had an irresistible urge to talk about anything.

Scotty lingered behind his girlfriend, and I got the feeling he was on his own. Judging by the all-American aesthetic of an Ivy League legacy, I felt it was appropriate to assume this wasn’t his choice crowd. Drugs and girls with high ponytails had a funny way of bringing people together. And, as it turned out, he was in luck. It wasn’t necessary to save any blow for him or Patricia, piecing together bits of information and concluding Isaac was a drug dealer.

“He graduated last year,” Leon eventually confided. “Barely.”

The flippant comment he made earlier about whether or not I’d seen him at school made sense now. He was only there to sell drugs, and probably made a point to show up under the camouflage of large crowds: lunch, dances, afterschool specials. Commencing out of high school was reportedly due in large part to a kind of Kennedy-charisma. As a personality, Isaac had dazzled faculty and student body alike, often wearing ties knotted at the collar of tattered Oxford shirts. Had it not been for his lack of trying, he could have graduated with honors, received scholarships to any school he desired. I studied his face with anthropological curiosity. For someone with the brains to contribute so much potential, why would he choose to here, ashing a cigarette into an empty beer can in an empty swimming pool?

Scotty hauled the case of PBR outside, terminating the acrobatics by joining us on the trampoline. Three’s a crowd, and all that. Patricia crawled over to me, laying her head in my lap. A new bag of powder fell through the air landing on her chest. Someone produced a key. And over the course of one night, between key bumps, incessant cigarettes, the murky haze of brown liquor swirling between our teeth, I divulged all my secrets to a group of strangers. When I wasn’t distracted by AC/DC grinding from the radio beneath us, they asked me questions I’d be too excited to answer. My thoughts were running wild against a jaw that clenched like a clam shell. My brain was flexing in new places, raw meat sautéed on high heat.

At first the questions were easy, their curiosity about me drawing suspicious conclusions to irrational thoughts.

They’re all gonna laugh at you.

“Where are you from?”

“Seattle.”

“Why did you move here.”

“Dad made me.”

Inhibitions played tug of war with my desire to fit in. It was starting to feel like I’d never fit in anywhere. Then he asked me.

“What happened to your eye?”

Looking up from my hands, I suspired an expression of frustration. It wasn’t as though I’d never encountered an acquisition like this before. In fact, I expected it. Always. But hearing it out loud never ceased to paralyze me. I could taste blood on my lips. Before me, a machine of intermingled bodies moved sequentially into position. Patricia glanced at me before slapping Isaac hard on the shoulder.

“It’s called tact, Isaac. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

“It’s ok,” I interjected.

By now the group had shuffled into attention, eager for the details of what was sure to be a grim story.

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to, Sam. It’s none of our business.”

“He knows that,” Leon said with a subtle nod. A near-inscrutable smile I’d come to learn as my own flashed across his face, telling me I was safe to tell my story.

“But don’t you think—”

“It was a car crash,” I said.

Patricia’s opposing hands went up, and I had the floor.

“It was…a terrible accident. And it was all my fault, because that’s what they wanted. Because, there was no other option. It was one of those things that happens right when you think things are finally going your way, like you’ve made the all the right choices and there’s nothing in the world that could result in that kind of blame. Because no matter where I am in life, I am always going to be the exception. Except if a person were to actually believe that, they’d be so fucking wrong.”

Taking myself by surprise, I didn't cry. But my voice expelled by an undercurrent of embarrassment. A thought had me in its grip, that I couldn’t shake: I couldn’t remember the last time anyone asked me if I was ok.

Stephen King’s elevator doors opened, unleashing to rush of blood I’d conceded to withholding in an isolated, lonely place in the middle of nowhere. There was a story to tell, and people who wanted to listen. Words collapsed past reality, taking us all on a journey through thick fog and onto the road where I killed my brother. I spoke into the ground, and in the company of strangers, started at the beginning.

The door shut with a mild click, which at any other time would have been unnoticeable.

At just after 6 a.m., however, even the slightest sounds hit the walls like ricocheting bullets. Pausing in the entryway, taking a moment to lean against the sun-warmed wood and glass of the front door, I chose to not be afraid of the potentially nightmarish repercussions of disappearing for hours past curfew. It was decided then, with my head leaned back and my eyes closed in a gloaming high, that whatever happened would still have made my mistake worthwhile.

I tiptoed up the stairs, subconsciously mimicking the sturdier spots that didn’t creak in the stairs of our old house, and poured myself into bed. Up in my own airy bedroom, off to sleep away a buzz in the middle of the day, Leon would be doing the exact opposite. With one hand on the wheel and the other hanging over the window and tapping on the car door with his thumb, he’d bumble through Laurel Canyon, then past Dana Point, and explore the homes nestled within the hills of Orange County. He would take his time, mixing business with pleasure, the guise of a nonchalant joyride staking out for something we wasn’t sure of yet. But when he saw it, he was sure he would know. As my head hit the pillow, I closed my eyes, laced my fingers into a ball and curled into myself, praying as I drifted into a sea of dreams, “I hope he’s thinking of me.”

As my liver filtered out toxins and my body wrestled with a REM cycle in sweat-drenched sheets, a hand was rustling me awake. With a complicated groan, I pulled the sheets closer to my chin. Then I startled up at the thought my dad would be leering over me, ready to finish what he started. Instead I found my mother seated next to me with a glass of water, looking tired in her terry cotton robe.

“Here,” she said. “Drink this.”

With some relief, I happily guzzled down the water, felt the stream of it trickle all the way down to my belly. The icy cold splash was a shock to my system, simmering the drug-swollen ventricles. My head felt like a wrecking ball too heavy for my neck to support.

I managed to cough out a request for more water and Ibuprofen.

When my mother returned, we sat in exhausted silence for a minute. My body was rank with sweat and smoke, and I was having trouble concentrating.

“I was worried about you,” she finally said.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“I suppose it would be hard to blame you.”

More silence filled the space between us.

“I made a friend,” I tried.

“It shows.”

She’d brought coffee as well on the second round. Finally handed me a cup from her tray, cream and sugar the way I liked it. There was something new in her face that I couldn’t read. It wasn’t anger, but it wasn’t disappointment either. It was more like she was in pain. Her focus went to the Juliet window, white with morning sun. Again, she placed an ever-soft hand on my arm.

“Your father and I are separating.”

I sat straight up, the pulse in my temples pounding hard at the sudden burst of mild activity.

“Mom, I—”

“No,” she cut me off. “It’s ok. Your father and I have been having problems for a while now. I won’t go into detail, but you know as well as I do that he isn’t the father you need. But I don’t know what to do either.”

Her voice cracked into a sob and she covered her mouth, closed her eyes around falling tears.

“I don’t understand you, Sam,” she said wiping her nose. “A mother should know her child better than anyone else in the world. But I’ve wrestled for months in the dark to understand my feelings toward you. And I’m so tired, Sam. And I’m so angry. And I miss your brother so much.”

My head and my heart exploded in heavy mercury. My face felt hot enough to evaporate the stream of tears falling involuntarily over my lips. The salt burned on my tongue.

“But I can’t do it anymore, Sam. I just can’t.”

She was starting to scare me. I couldn’t tell where this was going. I couldn’t tell if she hated me or love me.

“I can’t continue to blame you for what you did. Partially because I know how much you blame yourself. But also because there’s nothing you, me, or anyone else can do to repair what’s happening right now.”

Pangs of guilt pulled me into the past, the hospital. Coming to, my mother pushing away from Aunt Shelley to scream in my face. Her bloodshot eyes, congested from crying, begging me to answer the question: “Are you happy now? See what you did? Are you happy?”

I was reeling, couldn’t even tell if the words sobbing out of me were coherent enough. But what I wanted to say was I was sorry, that I wish it’d been me that died. That I hated myself beyond comprehension and I tried to fix things when I slit my wrists that time in the bathtub. Because I missed Allen too.

Allen was good. I’d always thought he was better than me, because I looked up to him. Suddenly, after all this time, my mother was the one who wanted to talk about it with me. When I had finally caved, given in to the question of what happened and told a group of people only hours earlier that I was the one who insisted on driving us home that night. When I snuck out to be with my brother, be his great surprise to introduce to his new buddies. He told me to go easy, I told him I could handle it. He was already drunk, and I cannonballed in. Had to show everyone how grown up I was, how the good kid who always raised his hand in class could finally act his age. Allen wanted to sleep it off, but I insisted on taking us home, my drunken marijuana-high making me impervious to the laws of nature. And, there was always Dad’s car, which had to get home or it would be curtains for both of us. So I carried Allen over the rain-shiny blacktop to the ugly green Chevy, dropped him in the passenger seat. Got in to drive, and started the ignition.

Half awake, Allen bobbed his head against the window. I turned the radio up on high, something to keep me focused. But nothing stopped the car from veering in and out of the solid center lines. Nothing, not even god, could stop the car from hitting a truck driven by a city worker head on, ejecting the man through the windshield. God certainly wasn’t there when the car I was driving flipped over a guardrail, and made its chaotic decent into a forest heavy ditch. God wasn’t there to save anyone from my mistake, Stephen Hicks, husband and father of two; not Allen Kessler, 19, and recent Army recruit; not Sam Kessler, 15, charged as a minor for vehicular manslaughter.

My mother was holding me now, wrapping me into her shoulder as I sobbed and stained her robe with mucus and wails of shame.

“I’m sorry, Mommy.”

“I’m sorry, too, Sam.” She held my head out in her hands, and looking hard into my eyes. “You’re still my son. Do you understand? I wish I could take away your pain. I should have been there for you instead of blaming you. But I’m here now. It’s the only way we’re gonna make it. You are good, Sam. You are a good person.”

You are good.

You are good.

You are good.

There was no way of telling, at the time at least, that my presence at the Matheson household was not incidental. Just like the clutter of tubes and wires and copper gizmos piled on and under Isaac’s desk, peeking out from under the bed, could not be considered anything more than eccentric fuckeree to the naked eye. Understanding the truth about a person’s bedroom is how I learned about context.

Because, you see, before Leon had parked at the curb in front of my house, before he said he loved me and couldn’t understand why, before we stared at each other with pupils the size of UFOs, and before leaning in to kiss him with pipe-swollen lips, a conversation happened in whispers before I followed them down the dark hall. Someone would say something like, “Well, what do you think?” And another would respond, “Does he scare easily?” Then somebody would go, “I can use him. Make sure he keeps his mouth shut.” Next, I would barge in, trying to make sense of a joke about a girl’s eating disorder.

I saw the books, the crudely drawn images of AK-47s like black voids ripped open on white sheets of paper. I saw all the tools. And none of it occurred to me, none of it made sense. Because they were just things. Filler for the peripherals to blur, giving me just enough information to tell me I was daydreaming in the real world with everyone else.

Lambs will sleepwalk into their own deaths because they’re content to believe their shepherd would never do something like slit their throats open, drain out their blood, peel back their skin and eat them where they lived. Vulnerability, like youth, is synonymous with potential. The potential to fail. The potential to succeed. The potential live. The potential to take life. The potential to change the world with bullets that fire back.

Lawn sprinklers gushed over freshly mown lawns. The roses were thriving, delicate blooms of red and pink petals crowned over thorns. The breeze was cool, and the sky above us a perfect blue. Leon idled the car, looking complicated and pensive.

“I love you, Sam Kessler. I don’t know why or how, and even after so little time. But I do. I thought somehow that would be easier to say, but it was so much bigger out here in the real world. If you could unzip my body and crawl inside, I’d let you. I’d let you make me your home.”

Staring into his statement, watching his knuckles turn white against the steering wheel he couldn’t take his eyes off of, I unhooked my seatbelt and leaned in to hold his face in my very own hands. I kissed him deep, rolling my tongue delicately over his. His eyes were closed. Mine were not. And he was crying.

“I’ll see you soon?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said. As I opened the door, I reached my body over hug him. And I whispered in his ear, “We’ll kinda stick together.”

Before he drove away in the direction of whatever his home was that day, he called out to me.

“What song what playing?”

“What?”

“The song that was playing when you crashed the car. What was it?”

I blinked, blindsided but not baffled. This was a new one. No one ever bothered asking and I never thought to tell. Rather than read into how and why he would ask a question like that, and because I really was quite tired, I decided to respond with the truth.

“Don’t Fear the Reaper,” I said, and walked away.