Go Your Own Way (18 page)

It took a week for Lennox to find the courage to sit with Will at lunch again. For days, he stayed away, watching from across the room. The boy he’d first met had all but vanished. No more smiles or sarcastic remarks; the explosion of light that always seemed to flare from Will was gone. Instead, he was sullen and distracted, his eyes bleary and cushioned by a sleepless bruise.

Lennox slid onto the bench beside him and tucked his arm around Will’s waist. Will didn’t say anything. Instead, he slammed his fingers down on the calculator buttons and growled. Lennox tangled his leg around Will’s calf and moved his hand to Will’s thigh.

“Stop.”

If Will expected his command to be followed, he didn’t react to Lennox kissing his neck. Will shuddered and tilted his head so that Lennox could have better access, even as he jabbed at the number keys again.

“I’m trying to—
stop
.”

“I’ll stop if you let me blow you right now.”

“Which means you wouldn’t be stopping at all.”

“Sure it does. It means this—” Lennox sucked hard on the same spot again, “won’t be happening because my mouth will be busy with this.” He pointed at the front of Will’s jeans and nipped his jaw.

“It will not. Stop pestering me so I can figure this damn prob­lem out.”

Lennox sighed and settled his chin on Will’s shoulder. He glanced at Will’s notebook, saw problem fifteen written down and scanned the long stream of pathetic calculations. Pre-calculus, by the looks of it. Will’s answer was wrong. He hadn’t even copied the problem correctly.

“That’s supposed to be the inverse of cosine,” Lennox said. He pointed to the top of the page. “It’s almost impossible to get a problem correct when you don’t copy it down right.”

“Shut up.” Will elbowed him, and then flipped to the next blank page in his notebook and wrote it down again slowly, his eyes on the textbook page. “There. Happy?”

“Ecstatic. The answer’s arc tangent
x
plus the square root of
x
over the inverse of cosine.”

Will froze. “It is not. You’re bullshitting me.”

“If you don’t believe me, look it up in the back. All the odd problems have answers in the back.”

Will eyed him for a moment, and then flipped to the back. He stopped at the answers section, found the assignment and ran his finger down the page to number fifteen.

Lennox beamed as he read the answer over Will’s shoul­der. “Told you.” He blew in Will’s ear and ducked the swat that followed.

“How did you do that? Did you do that in your
head
?”

Lennox shrugged and snatched a few fries off Will’s tray. He dipped one end in ketchup and the other in his cup of chocolate pudding. Beside him, Will flipped a few pages forward, and then back to a different section.

“Answer that one.”

He let the problem materialize in his head, let the numbers order themselves and fall into their patterns until—

“
X
sin
x
cubed in parentheses times
x
minus an eighth. Also in parentheses.”

Will swore.

“What? It’s not hard.”

“Bullshit, it isn’t hard.” Will flipped back to his assigned section as Lennox started standing fries up in his pudding cup. “And don’t make a joke about that. I’ve been trying to figure all of this out for a
week
. Teach me. Right now.”

“Blow me. Under the table. Right now.”

“Fuck off.” Will scowled. “Teach me or blow yourself.”

“Is that confirmation of a blow job for helping you?”

“What do you think?” Will poked him in the cheek with his pencil. “Teach me how to do these problems before lunch is over.”

“A tall order like that definitely deserves a blow job,” Lennox mumbled. Will’s boot heel slammed down on his toes. “
Fine
.” He tucked his arm back around Will’s waist, and ignored the elbows trying to knock him away. “First,” Lennox said as he plucked the pencil out of Will’s fist, “you always separate these before you start on the derivatives…”

For the rest of lunch, Lennox walked Will through the first three problems of his assignment and watched him as he worked through the other six. This effort took half as many pages as his other attempts had and a lot less time. Will beamed as he snapped his book shut at the bell.

“Thanks,” he said as the other students hustled to the trash line. “These guidelines are… thanks.”

Lennox nodded and finished off his milk. It was all he’d bought for lunch. To his surprise, Will didn’t get up. Instead, he sat beside him with a curious look on his face.

“You’re not as awful as you think you are,” Will told him.

“What makes you think I think I’m awful?” Lennox countered. Will watched him, his eyes soft in a way that made Lennox nervous, as if some part of himself was being smuggled away in Will’s eyes. “Our next book thing is coming up. Why don’t we go to my place this afternoon and, uh, work out a few more problems?”

“Not if it’s anything like last time,” Will said. “I can’t. I’m going to the hospital. My dad—I can’t tonight.”

Will walked away, but his frown hung in the air as Lennox dumped his tray. He couldn’t let Will spend another evening at a wretched hospital in a room with someone who didn’t have the faintest idea that he was there. That wasn’t any way to spend time, even if it was his father.

He hurried to catch up to Will, who was halfway up the stairs when Lennox fell into step beside him.

“We’re working on it tonight,” Lennox said. “It’ll give you a break from a sterile environment. Help you forget a little. Work on those blow job lips.”

“But—”

“He’ll understand,” Lennox told him as they stopped at the top of the stairs. “You’ve got your own life to keep living. A nice dick to start sucking.”

Will made a face. Before Will could tell him no again, Lennox headed back down the stairs with the late bell. Weight training was slow that afternoon. Roxanne kept pestering him about where he and Will stood, but Lennox ignored her. When that didn’t work, he dropped a dumbbell on her foot. By two o’clock, he was ready to escape her and the rest of the class, but by the time he made it to Will’s locker, he wasn’t there. Lennox checked all the usual hot spots where people stopped to talk, but the cafeteria and the student parking lot held no sign of his dirty blond head.

His truck was still there, though. Lennox headed back inside. He’d already checked all of the places in the school Will frequented. He passed the band room but paused when he heard music coming from inside: notes from the piano that nobody else ever touched. They were random plucks: some were sharp hits and others light presses. Lennox ducked inside. Mr. Robinette’s door was propped open, but the blinds on the window between the band room and his office were pulled. Lennox snuck past and into the storage room, where he found Will sitting on the bench, one elbow on the keys while his other hand tumbled back and forth between an A flat and an E.

“Just an A,” Lennox told him from the doorway. “Add a C sharp and you’ve got an A chord.”

Will sniffed and moved his thumb to the B key instead. Lennox chuckled. “Other way,” he said. “Here, like this.”

Lennox played the chord and looked over at Will. He was startled to see tears in his eyes again. Had something happened since lunch? If he’d gotten a call about his dad—a call like Lennox had gotten three years ago—

“Why can’t you talk as beautifully as you play?” Will asked. He wiped his nose on his shirt collar and a few more tears fell. “My dad would like you then. He’d love to get out his old g-guitar and play with someone, but I c-can’t play a note that doesn’t sound l-like a fart.”

“Right.” Lennox looked away as his insides twisted. Instead of speaking, he began to play. It wasn’t anything special or some­thing that he had memorized from years of practice. It was chords, movement, everything he didn’t know how to say.

Will watched him, followed the soft dance of his fin­gers over the keys as he dropped his cheek onto Lennox’s shoulder. Lennox played until his fingers cramped, until Will’s tears were embedded in the fabric of his shirt and Lennox didn’t have to swal­low past the walnut that had caught in his throat. He stopped when Will sat up. He wasn’t crying anymore; a peaceful smile tilted the corners of his lips. Looking at it made Lennox’s lungs hurt.

“You have a beautiful smile.”

It was out before Lennox could think about it, and it the chees­iest thing he could ever recall saying to someone. Who wanted to flirt with a boy who used a cheap line like that? Maybe he’d skip paying the water bill this month and buy himself a filter to go between his brain and his mouth instead. So what if Will’s smile lit up all of the little parts of himself that kept drifting past?

“Didn’t think you were that cheesy,” Will mumbled. He hic­cupped as he wiped his face, but the smile lingered as their eyes met. Lennox saw something in Will’s gaze that was so unbear­ably real he had to look away. Right then, Will’s eyes made Len­nox want to grab the nearest pair of mallets and shatter those green eyes until the realness poured out of Will and away from both of them. It was worse than guilt cementing his teeth together when he tried to apologize and more difficult to see than the dan­ger he faced every day and night.

“I’m not. I just—we’re still blowing each other at my place, right?”

Will wasn’t listening. He was watching Lennox. What felt like a cramp worked its way up into Lennox’s throat. This boy was mesmerizing. Not even someone out of a dream compared to him because he’d never given himself the time to dream up a boy—a real, living, feeling boy with worlds and thoughts swirling through his mind.

Their lips met softly as their foreheads pressed together. It was a simple kiss, gone before either of them seemed to realize it had happened, but the tension in Lennox’s chest eased. He cleared his throat, stood up and shook himself. When had he ever kissed someone like that?

“My place then,” he said. He had to get away from here, to right himself. Will was turning into an anomaly, but still… Len­nox couldn’t bring himself to leave him—to let him go to that miserable hospital room on his own. “My lips, your dick. A real party. Ready?”

That was better, the way he always talked to boys he was interested in.

Will stood up with his backpack, but the tears were back and Lennox didn’t have any idea what to do. The door eased open and Mr. Robinette looked in curiously.

“Was that one of you playing?”

“Playing what?” Lennox said. He glanced at Will and then Mr. Robinette before making up his mind. “Come on. I’ll drive.”

He unhooked Will’s keys from where they hung on his back­pack and ushered him out past Mr. Robinette’s curious look.

Did Lennox have a license? Will was jolted out of his seat as they hit a pothole and careened toward a mailbox. He didn’t think so. At the last moment before they crashed into the mailbox, they swerved back into the road and continued to the motel. If it had been a longer drive, Will would have said something, would have thrown the gear shift into neutral and stalled the engine. His truck jerked as Lennox pulled into the lot and tried to shift into reverse. It wasn’t easy to drive a stick shift. Will had spent all of last summer learning how in an abandoned parking lot by the old grocery store. His dad had laughed so hard he’d barely escaped fracturing a few ribs.

Will sniffed and wiped at his streaming eyes at the memory of his dad. Memories might be the only part of his dad he would have from now on. No late nights watching extra innings or early mornings at the store in the summer with just the two of them working and joking around. All he would have would be a life full of reminders that his dad wasn’t present.

Lennox bounced the truck into the visitor’s spot. He got out and came around to Will’s side, jerked the door open and unbuckled Will’s seatbelt. The gesture surprised Will, and not just because he didn’t remember putting it on. Lennox was acting as a parent would, maybe even a sibling. Like someone who cared.

“Come on, Osborne.”

The door shut behind him and Lennox’s arm settled around his waist, but it wasn’t groping or diving into his back pocket for once. His arm was steady and warm. These little gestures—soft moments and touches—kept Will wondering. Lennox struggled for words in ways Will had never known anyone to do before. Physical actions and touches seemed to be the best way for Lennox to communicate what he didn’t know how to say. Or perhaps he didn’t want to say it. Will thought he cared, saw so much more that shifted like clouds across the sun where Lennox was concerned. Lennox couldn’t bring himself to say he liked Will, not to Will or to himself, it seemed. Even Will wasn’t sure how to say that out loud yet.

Will’s stomach churned as the door shut behind them. The last time he’d been here… he didn’t want to think about it. Nothing seemed to have changed since then: a messy bed, a new batch of crumpled taco wrappers, a larger pile of laundry. Behind him, he heard something being dragged across the floor. Lennox wedged the trunk into place as Will let his backpack fall onto the bed. He stood there, arms crossed, shifting from one foot to the other. Lennox cleared his throat.

“I’m just gonna…” Lennox flipped his thumb over his shoulder and ducked into the bathroom.

A door creaked closed and Will was alone, or as alone as he could be in a place with paper-thin walls. The muffled staticky voices from a television sputtered through the wall. Behind the bed, he heard the soft hum of several voices talking; behind him, he heard the clink of a toilet lid. Will was almost shocked a place like this offered a separate bathroom for each unit. For a moment, he let his eyes drift around the room. He didn’t feel right sitting on the bed after what had happened last time, but he couldn’t linger in the doorway and let his mind wander to that wretched hospital room either. Back to the tubes and—

No
. He wasn’t going to think about that right now. He should never have to think about that.

One of the drawers on the dresser wasn’t completely closed. Will hesitated and listened for a sign of Lennox coming back into the room. If he saw Will going through his belongings, he might very well toss him out again. Ben’s still, solemn face popped into his mind with a tangle of tubes hanging all over him. He needed a distraction, something to force his mind to not see his dad. Will pulled the drawer open.

It rattled a little and almost fell out of the dresser. Will caught it and looked inside. Apples, oranges, a few bananas starting to turn brown. Nothing exciting. He closed it, glanced toward the bathroom, and then opened the next drawer, and then the two at the bottom. Every drawer was filled with food. Store-brand cereals, bags of chips and cookies, boxes of fruit snacks and gra­nola bars. Anything that didn’t need to be refrigerated or frozen. Lennox had seemingly given no thought to organization, so Will straightened up. After a few minutes of rummaging, the cereal boxes were in a line, the little pouches of fruit snacks made a small heap in a corner and the bananas were on the dresser top so they wouldn’t spoil so fast. Only when Will was finished did he realize Lennox would notice. Part of him hoped he would, that they could blow up into a big fight that would give him plenty of gnawing, angry thoughts to fill his head with in the coming days.

Lennox still hadn’t returned. Will looked around for something else to do, something else to organize. The little fridge, a guitar and that enormous copper pipe parallel to the wall.

VooRRR vooRR—screek!

Will whipped around at the sound. A car engine roared to life and then the clutch screeched again. He shook himself and took a few deep breaths. It was just someone revving their car. No guns or bullets or anything to harm him. His eyes fell on the trunk holding the door closed.

He shouldn’t. If anyone went through his room, he’d never look at them the same way again. This trunk was all Lennox owned, and, considering the lack of personal items around the room, everything—clothes, pictures, books—had to be in that trunk.

Will kneeled down, gave the bathroom door a guilty glance and opened the trunk. The hinges creaked as the lid thudded against the wall. Immediately, a wave of flowery scent hit Will’s nose. He sneezed and shook his head before peering in. Laundry soap maybe. He couldn’t imagine Lennox wearing perfume.

The trunk was as messy as the dresser had been, but the con­tents were what he expected. This was everything per­sonal Lennox owned. The top layer was a tangled heap of freshly washed clothing, if the smell was any indication. Will frowned and yanked them out. He’d fold them. Karen threw her clothes in her drawers too, and he couldn’t stand it. If anyone ever tossed any of his nice shirts into a heap like this, he’d scream. Will piled the clothes and took a tally: a handful of mismatched socks; six pairs of underwear; half a dozen T-shirts; two pairs of jeans; and a well-worn pair of Batman pajama bottoms. It was a sad wardrobe, not even a fifth as much as his own.

Heaped under the clothes were a dozen or so books, some with cracked spines and others with wrinkled covers and pages. Will pulled them out. If he was honest, he’d taken Lennox for a porn magazine sort of guy, but these were novels.
Treasure Island, Lord of the Flies, The Hobbit,
and then a dozen well-worn
Goosebumps
paperbacks. Beneath these was a small stack of comic books, none of which Will recognized, and another stack of CDs. He left those alone in favor of rummaging through the dirty polo shirts and crumpled notebooks buried underneath.

“If you’re looking for lube and condoms, they’re in the nightstand.”

Will knocked his elbow against the lip of the trunk. Lennox stood beside him, his eyes on the neat stacks next to the door. He had come back so quietly that Will hadn’t noticed.

“I didn’t realize you’d be so eager today, Osborne. But really, I don’t mind prepping you myself.” His tone was cocky, but he was flustered and Will didn’t need to guess why.

“—unless you’re into fingering yourself. I’d still rather get to enjoy the show—”

“Lennox.” He rubbed his elbow and waited to be thrown out. His face grew warmer with each new image. For the first time in three weeks, Will’s belly sparked with heat.

“—and once you’re all stretched and wet and moaning, I could just slide right in—”

“Lennox!” Will meant to apologize for going into Lennox’s trunk without permission, but Lennox didn’t seem mad, a little flustered perhaps, but not angry. Lennox examined the piles before circling around Will. He pressed his back against the strip of wall between the door and the window and slid to the floor beside Will.

“I suppose I’ll have to settle for you organizing this junk instead,” Lennox said. He rested his forearms on his knees and watched Will. Will waited for Lennox to explode or to throw him from the room, but the other boy stayed quiet.

Carefully, still watching Lennox, Will reached back inside and pulled out the polos: one sky blue, another white and the third navy. In seven weeks, he’d never seen Lennox wear any of these. He couldn’t imagine Lennox in something as stiff and formal as a polo.

“Lancaster uniform,” Lennox said. He reached forward and twisted the sky blue polo around until Will could see an emblem denoting a large L over the right breast. Will examined at the other polos and saw the same crest.

“Why do you still have them?” Will asked as he folded each shirt and set it aside with the rest.

Lennox shrugged. “They’ll be good to sleep in when it gets colder.”

Will glanced at the small pile of clothes. Reusing his uniform shirts made sense when he had so little to wear. Will dug through the remains in the trunk, but he couldn’t help watching Lennox out of the corner of his eye. He still had so many questions on the tip of his tongue. He didn’t know how to begin putting together all of the little pieces of the puzzle Lennox had dropped since September.

“Why did you leave?” At Lennox’s confused look, Will added, “Lancaster, I mean.”

If anything, Lennox’s expression became more confused. It was almost as if he viewed Will’s interest in him as mysterious as Will found Lennox’s life.

“I was kicked out,” Lennox said. “That’s why I’m here now.”

“How long were you there?” Will pulled the notebooks out of the trunk. He set them on his lap and straightened out the spiral wires that had snagged together. Lennox had never been this forthright about himself. If he kept asking questions, Lennox might keep talking. More importantly, Lennox might understand that Will was willing to listen to him, and maybe then Lennox would hear him too. Lennox dug through his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a purple lighter. Lennox inched the door open as much as the trunk would allow and lit a cigarette. The smell of smoke drifted into the room for a moment before sweeping out the door.

For a while now, Will had caught the scent of cigarettes on Lennox’s clothing, but he’d hoped it wasn’t true. Other kids at school had parents who smoked. The smell lingered on their clothes and their backpacks. The smoke stank like evaporated sour milk and hung in the air.

“About a year.”

“Sorry?”

“I was at Lancaster for a little over a year. After I left juvie.”

Lennox took a long drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke through the cracked doorway. Will’s stomach jolted. A juvenile detention center. Even Otto hadn’t managed to get sent to one of those yet, despite years of attempts: blowing up mailboxes with cherry bombs, hurling desks across classrooms, shoplifting candy from the gas station near their old middle school. Otto had a long list of broken rules trailing behind him, but he’d still never worn handcuffs. A place like Lancaster must be a last resort for kids who were troublesome, a place for rich parents to send the kids they didn’t have time for. Or both.

“I didn’t kill or rape anyone, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Lennox scowled at him and took another drag on his cigarette.

“What? No, I didn’t think—”

“You did,” Lennox said. “Everyone does when they find out.”

It wasn’t the first time Will felt guilty for making an assumption about Lennox. More and more he was becoming aware not only of himself, but of others who did the same. Mrs. Martinello had given up quickly during their guidance appointment when she’d seen Lennox’s ankle monitor. Nobody came up to speak to Lennox or sat with him during lunch. They all stared and whispered; a few, like Michael Patterson, even commented on Lennox being in prison, but nobody stopped to just talk with him. Everyone treated Lennox like a monster, and he did everything in his power to feed that image. But was that ankle monitor a reason to accept all the judgment, rejection and isolation? Was it a good enough reason to believe the worst about Lennox as everyone else did?

“Sorry.” Will bit his lip and picked at the spiral on the top note­book in his lap. The coil was squashed and the top end had been ripped free of the pages. “Why were you there? You don’t have to answer. I’m just curious.”

Lennox flicked the ash from his cigarette and smiled the stran­gest smile Will had ever seen. It wasn’t kind, but it wasn’t cruel either. Will couldn’t explain it. The only thing he could say was that it wasn’t how a smile should be.

“Bunch of reasons.” Another long drag of smoke crept outside.

“Like?” He was pushing his luck. Lennox had already revealed more in the last ten minutes than he had in almost two months. He would only let Will see so much before he slammed another door in his face. Still, Will pressed forward. He wanted to know more, to share this understanding with Lennox even if he could never experience it on his own. Lennox had met him halfway in that empty classroom, and now it was Will’s his turn to try to do the same.

“Theft, vandalism, assault and battery.” Lennox took a slower drag, blew out through the cracked door and then rubbed his eyes.

Will’s spine went rigid. He must have heard that wrong.

“You—you’re just pulling my leg.” The notebooks in his lap slid to the floor.

“Nah, I want to pull your dick, though.”

“Seriously?” Will knocked Lennox’s hand away from his lap, their fingers catching.

“They knocked the shit out of me,” Lennox said, a dark laugh in his voice. “I was only returning the favor. Unlike them, I didn’t have a fancy lawyer for a father.”

Bitterness slithered into Lennox’s voice as he spoke. Will didn’t know how to react to this revelation. His own father would never have let that happen; his own dad would have done every­thing in his power to protect him from a juvenile prison. His gut wrenched as he tried to picture it, to imagine a father—his dad—having to watch him be ushered away in handcuffs in some cold court room, to see his only child locked away for defend­ing him­self. Had Len­nox’s dad tried? The way Lennox spoke about him seemed to say he hadn’t, but Will couldn’t imagine any father being so care­less. Surely, Lennox’s dad had done his best—had still been around long enough to try. Lennox took another drag on his cigarette. Was this how Lennox had felt earlier when he’d started crying? So sunken into an unknown that he couldn’t move?