Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1) (22 page)

Richard walked up to the house with me and held the door while I went inside. I could hear Carolyn in the kitchen, most likely making dinner by the smell of frying chicken that permeated the room. A couple of pans banged against the counter as she called to see if it was Richard who’d come in. Then the oven door slammed, and she came into the front room.

Her gasp caused me to look up.

“Brian, what happened?” Swiftly she walked over and put her hand on the uninjured side of my face, gaping in horror at the stitches and the bruising. I met her eyes, and I could tell by her expression that my pain clearly showed on my face.

“They know,” I said softly, and she nodded, picking up on my meaning faster than Richard had. After she’d taken inventory of my injuries, she kept looking over at Richard in a way that made me think she was desperate to talk to him. I’m sure she wanted to know how they could help me. I also knew they couldn’t.

“I’m going to go lie down,” I said, heading for the stairs.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can with some pain meds for you. You don’t appear to have a concussion, so you can sleep if you want,” Richard told me over Carolyn’s shoulder as she hugged me gently.

“I’ll bring you up some soup when Richard gets back with your pills, okay?” Carolyn asked, and I shrugged, turning for the stairs.

I took them slowly, the pain in my back and leg making the climb almost physical torture. Finally, I got to my room and took off my sneakers and jeans. It was the first chance I’d had to assess my injuries alone, and I was surprised by the amount of damage Mosely had caused. There was a large, angry bruise on my leg from where he’d kicked me. In the full-length mirror on the back of my door, I saw that almost the entire lower half of my back was black-and-blue from where I’d landed on the stairs. My face was banged-up and stitched. It looked like I’d been in a car accident, not a schoolyard fight, if you could even call it a fight.

Leaving my T-shirt and briefs on, I crawled very carefully onto the bed and arranged myself on my stomach. Normally I didn’t sleep on my stomach, but I didn’t want to put any pressure on my back. As I turned my head so the left, undamaged side of my face pressed against the pillow, I found myself looking at my only picture of Jamie. It had been taken at the youth retreat we’d gone to earlier in the summer. We were standing in front of our tent with an arm around each other’s shoulders, and our smiles couldn’t have been bigger. In the picture, we were flanked by two guys we’d thought were our friends, until they showed their true bigoted colors. Their presence was like a shadow over us, but I didn’t have the heart to take a pair of scissors to it. I’d framed it after he left because it had hurt so badly not to see him every day. Looking into his beautiful face, I was almost thankful he wasn’t here with me, because I couldn’t stand the thought of Mosely and his friends hurting Jamie too. So I would shoulder the pain for us both, and hope that wherever he was, he was safe.

14

M
Y
ROOM
was dark when I awoke stiff and sore after a fitful sleep. Glancing at the bedside table, I saw it was a little past eight, which meant I’d only slept for a few hours. It just made me more tired. I struggled out of the bed and walked slowly across the hall. Even going to the bathroom hurt, and I wondered briefly if the fall had bruised a kidney or something. My steps were heavy and uneven as I made my way back to my room and sat cautiously on the edge of the bed. I’d just made myself comfortable again when Carolyn came in with the medication from Richard and a glass of ice-cold lemonade.

“How are you feeling?” she asked quietly, as she checked my stitches and then stroked my hair. It was such a sweet, comforting gesture that I felt myself moving into her touch.

“Like I got hit by a truck,” I admitted after swallowing the pills and taking a swig of lemonade to wash them down.

“Richard told me about your meeting with the principal.”

I nodded; there wasn’t anything more to be said. Senior year was going to be pure hell, but there was nothing that could be done for it, so I might as well settle in for the long haul. I had a promise to keep to Jamie, and no one was going to keep me from it—not those bigots at school, not even Richard and Carolyn.

I would find him.

C
ARRYING
my brown paper bag into the cafeteria, I kept my eyes open and my head down. It hadn’t taken long to learn not to buy my lunch at school as my tray would invariably end up on the floor, my lunch splattered next to it, and I’d get detention for the disruption. At least with the brown-bag lunch, the jerks who gave me the worst time had to fight harder to get it from me before they took my “fagwich” or chided me about how good I was at sucking the crème filling out of my snack cake. It was all so childish. Why did they think I was so different from them?

Taking my customary seat at the empty table closest to the emergency exit, I sat with my back pressed against the wall. It was always like that no matter where I was—my back was against the wall. Whether I was in the hallway, in the bathroom, even there in the cafeteria, I couldn’t leave myself unprotected. I opened the bag, took out the contents, and ate quickly, knowing my stomach would be unsettled through my next class but also not wanting to give the people who sought to hurt me any time to get at my food. Finishing up the can of pop, I looked around the cafeteria, and my attention was drawn to a group of girls on the other side of the room. Karen, Emma, and a few others were staring at me. Of course, I was used to the looks by now; I just wondered what it was they were pissed off about today.

By keeping my head down and paying attention, I’d finally pieced together the story over the last three weeks since the school year began. Emma had seen Jamie kiss me on the lawn in front of his house, and she’d been shocked because she’d truly believed they had a future together. She’d also been disgusted that she’d been even remotely intimate with a queer, and she’d poured her heart out to her brother, Brad. From that moment on, Brad Mosely had been on a quest to restore his sister’s honor and destroy my life in the process. It seemed Emma had played the
poor me
card almost to a fault, and the worst part about it was that I actually felt sorry for her, even if her brother was ruining my life.

I really felt bad for Brenda as I glanced up and saw her sitting alone at a table not far from Emma and Karen. It seemed with Emma’s newfound infamous popularity, she’d forgotten that she and Brenda were supposed to have been friends, that they were both supposed to have been wronged. Instead, because Brenda and I had only gone out once during the summer, her compassion was denied. She looked up suddenly, and our eyes met. Where I thought I would see anger or resentment, I saw only sadness.

The one thing I couldn’t figure out, though, was how Brad Mosely had known about the tree house and that Jamie and I had made love. The only people who knew about that were gone—well, except old Preacher Moore. The man’s sermons on homosexuality were still full of fire and brimstone, and he was not too fond of me, so I guess it was possible he was the source.

The old preacher had probably been the one to expose that most intimate detail of my life—so much for preaching about love and turning the other cheek.

Without Jamie around, Mosely and his friends had come after me because I was the reason for the betrayal, so of course I was the bad guy. The fact that I was gay increased their hatred to almost intolerable levels.

I just had to survive until graduation.

Richard and Carolyn had been beside themselves worrying about me since the incident on the stairs, and I had mixed feelings about that. I was thrilled that they’d become the parents I’d needed all of my life. They loved me and wanted to protect me, treating me like they would if I were their own son. I’d never really felt that from them before; mostly I’d felt like a burden to them, a kind of substitute for what they had lost. I could have felt that way because I was scared of opening up to them just to be disappointed, or maybe I’d only truly started to appreciate them when the going got to be so hard. On the other hand, I felt guilty for worrying them.

I tossed the lunch bag into a nearby garbage can and, being careful not to get too close to any occupied tables, left the cafeteria, and headed for the art room. True to his word, Mr. Barnes had kept his eye on me while I was at school. He’d stopped several verbal attacks since the start of the term, guys who asked if I wanted to suck them off or girls asking if I had AIDS. I had ignored them all, staying focused on my work so I could graduate and get the hell out. Deep down, I knew I could just quit and get my GED from the state, but if I was going to be on my own soon, I had to lay the best foundation I could so I’d be employable. College was out of the question, not only financially but emotionally. It just felt like I couldn’t get my life started until Jamie was back in it.

There were still twenty minutes until the start of the next class, but I wasn’t surprised to see the art room door open. Mr. Barnes always left the door open for his students. Even without our shared nature, he was still the best teacher I had, and I’d found myself coming to art class earlier and earlier each week in order to talk to him. He was the only other gay person I knew; he was the only one who understood. At first, I thought that talking to him, being seen with him, would make things worse.

Until I realized things couldn’t get any worse.

“Hi, Mr. Barnes,” I said as I took my customary seat in front of his desk. He looked up, and the circles under his eyes were unmistakable, and his short brown hair, which was usually neat and stylish, looked a bit disheveled. I couldn’t help but notice that he appeared tired and maybe even upset.

He put his fingers under his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

“Hello, Brian,” he said with an attempted smile. It was a failed attempt, but it got me to my feet and to the front of his desk. He’d done so much to protect me. I wanted to help him, but I wasn’t sure if he would let me because he was worried about how it would look to other people since he was my teacher.

“Mr. Barnes, is everything okay?” I asked tentatively. Looking at me for a long moment, almost as if he were trying to decide if he could trust me, he finally spoke.

“Last night when I got home from work, I had an e-mail,” he started and took a deep, shaky breath. Not wanting to be overheard, he got up from behind his desk and shut his classroom door. “A guy I’d dated in college, someone I cared about very much, died yesterday. He had cancer, but his treatment and his ability to fight the disease were encumbered due to AIDS. He just deteriorated so rapidly; it’s only been a year since he was diagnosed.” Falling back into his chair, Mr. Barnes put his head in his hands. “It’s incredible to me that just a few years ago, we were happy together, and now he’s dead. I’ll never be able to tell him what that time in my life meant to me.”

I put my hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t help myself.

“I’m sorry about your friend,” I said, having little idea what else to say in order to comfort him. With that small gesture of affection, he seemed to come back to himself. Clearing his throat, he sat back in his chair, pulling away from my consolation.

“We have to be careful,” he said, suddenly wary, and of course I knew it was true, as the school administration would use any reason they could find to either fire him or expel me. Walking to the door quickly, he opened it again and said quietly, “Thank you for your thoughts, though; I appreciate that.”

Taking my cue from him, I went back to my seat in front of his desk. We talked for the next fifteen minutes about mundane things like schoolwork and what he had planned for upcoming art projects, neither of us touching the subject of his friend again. I wished there was something I could do for him, but I knew there was nothing, just like I would be inconsolable if something happened to Jamie.

Then a thought came to me, something I hadn’t considered before. I hadn’t gotten a call, a letter, an e-mail, hell, even a carrier pigeon from Jamie since he’d left nearly a month ago. It was unfathomable to me that they could be keeping him so heavily guarded that he couldn’t send me an e-mail from the library, or even a coffeehouse. Jamie was a bright and gifted guy. If he could, he would’ve found a way to communicate with me. That meant he wasn’t able to get any kind of message to me. The thought scared me more than any nightmare I’d had since he’d left.

The rest of the day passed with excruciating slowness. I wanted to get home and do some Internet searches on Richard’s computer. Jamie’s name, some of the usernames he’d used for various things, anything that might help me to get a read on where he was, or more importantly, how he was. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t done it earlier, that I hadn’t thought about it before. I’d been so preoccupied with my own problems, my own depression, that it hadn’t occurred to me Jamie might be having the same issues or worse. I guess in the back of my mind, I’d just consoled myself with the fact that in San Diego, he wouldn’t have such a hard time with being gay, even if anyone did find out. California seemed to be a pretty gay-friendly place, and right now, it might as well have been a whole world away.