Gone, Gone, Gone (6 page)

“You’re right.”

I look at him.

Lio’s really into numbers. He counts when he’s nervous. I’ll put my hand on his back, and he’ll give me this really small smile—
sorry. I’m a little fucked up.

He sighs. “You think you won’t get shot because you’re you.
You
doesn’t get shot. Won’t happen to
you.”

I catch my breath. “So?”

“It’s bullshit.” He shrugs.

“You can’t pretend like I should be out there fearing for my life. Come on. The odds are . . . I mean, four people? Odds were pretty good that none of those would be me, you know that. If we’re playing the odds . . .”

“Be confident because the odds are in your favor.” He clears his throat, like talking this much hurts him. “Not because you’re a special snowflake.”

This isn’t
fair. None of this is fair.

I don’t know if I’m special, but yeah, there’s that heartbeat telling me,
I’m Craig, I’m Craig,
and I don’t think I need to apologize for that. I’m Craig, and Craig is alive. I know that. It’s basically the first thing I know when I get up in the morning, so yeah, I’m not really open to the idea of that changing any more than I’m open to the idea that I’ll stand up and there won’t be floor. Is that a problem? I can’t be the only one who feels this way. I think that’s consciousness, and I think it might be the thing that keeps me from being a sociopath.

“You won’t get shot,” he says. “It’s a numbers game.”

Right now my heartbeat’s all out of whack trying to thrum out,
Why did you kiss me and why won’t you do it again?
But I can’t ask it, I can’t.

Anyway, by the time we get out of class, someone else has been killed. A twenty-five-year-old woman was pumping gas, and someone shot her in the head. At long range, like all the others.

I’m so mad. I’m just mad about everything. I feel like this proves Lio right or wrong but I don’t even know what his damn point is, and in fifth period he barely even looks at me. He just sits there and doodles a lot.

Mom
picks me up after school and there’s Kremlin in the backseat, pounding her paws against the leather, and I cuddle that dog so hard that I’m worried I’m going to rub all her fur off or something, and she licks my face over and over, and she smells funny but I don’t even care.

“The lady who found her was excited to get rid of her, I think,” Mom says. “God, she’s a loud one. I think your dad would have preferred she stayed lost.”

I cover Kremlin’s ears.

Usually, when I take one of the pets out somewhere by himself—like to the vet, or maybe if he’s been sad, out on a special walk—we’re greeted by a whole host of jealous, curious animals as soon as we come back through the front door. It’s weird when only Jupiter and the two cats run up to sniff Kremlin’s legs. It makes it very hard to be happy, when I think that tonight I will be walking so many fewer dogs than I am supposed to.

Then Todd comes down from upstairs and gives me this huge hug. I say, “Hey,” because this is a little weird.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” he says.

It’s like no one would have told him if I’d died at school or something. I say, “What?”

“You didn’t hear about the shootings?”

“Oh, right, I mean, I heard about them, but I wasn’t thinking about them or something.” I want to tell him that
the chances are way better that I’d died in a car wreck with Mom on the way home, but I don’t mind when Todd likes me, even though I sometimes feel like I’m just his good deed for the day.

Dad finally comes home with a stack of papers, rubbing the headache between his eyes. Parents are calling him like crazy, he says, all of them demanding that he promise their kids will be safe, like that’s something Dad can tell them.

We eat a late dinner, and I should do my homework but I don’t, and I should sleep but I don’t, and while we’re sitting around chewing on our cold, gummy pizza, a man is killed crossing the street in Washington, D.C. Wha-pam, long-range bullet, dead body.

I email the boy I shouldn’t instead of the boy I should. Because there is nothing from Cody in my inbox. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

Lio—

I don’t know why you have to be a jackass all the time. It didn’t used to be like this.

Craig

_________________________

Craig—

We didn’t
used to know each other. I’m a jackass sometimes. It’s not really all the time. You’ll deal.

Lio

_________________________

Lio—

I wish you would call me.

I wish you talked.

You don’t think anyone’s going to shoot an animal, right?

Craiger

God, the least Lio could do is answer this one, let me know that the animals are safe, even though why do I trust him to know when I don’t trust my dad to know about his students? The animals aren’t Lio’s job. They have nothing to do with Lio.

LIO

I’M ABOUT TO ANSWER CRAIG’S EMAIL WHEN DAD
comes in. He wants to chat. That’s sort of his thing. Our thing. Though my part is mostly listening.

I’m his only son. It’s stupid to say we have a special bond just because of that, but we do, I think. I think I’m a relief for him, like an oasis among all the girls. We sit and watch football together. I haven’t told him I’m gay, but he’s probably figured it out. If he hasn’t, I don’t think it’s going to be a big deal to him, as long as I assure him we can still watch football.

In a way, my role for him has changed. Now most of the girls are gone, since Mom left and the big girls are at college.
The single-parent situation, even with only three kids here, is hard for Dad. These things mean that I feel now like less of a respite for Dad and more like just another person bearing down on him. So I have to use that bond to our advantage.

Music comes pouring in as soon as Dad opens the door, because my little sister, Michelle, is watching MTV in the living room. My dad shuts the door and the noise blurs out. I don’t know why he doesn’t tell her to turn it down or watch TV that has people wearing clothes.

“Hey, Lio.”

I smile at him.

“How’s school?” he asks me. He peeks under my hat and laughs a little. “Look at your hair.”

“Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me. You’re the one who has to walk around like that.”

“School’s fine.”

“Good to hear.” He aims his gaze toward the living room. “I think Michelle’s having a rough time making friends.”

That doesn’t make much sense. Michelle is bubbly. She and Jasper both—though Jasper had issues at her last school because of some boy dating her and this other girl at once. So she was excited to move. Michelle was apathetic, I think.

“She misses New York, I think,” Dad says. My dad has the collar of his shirt unbuttoned and his tie loose around his neck. He’s gained too much weight. His stomach’s hiding his belt buckle, and I
can see his shoulders move when he breathes, just from climbing the two flights of stairs to our apartment. “But at least Jasper’s happy, and God knows that’s a victory worth celebrating. Did you go jogging today?”

I nod. Jogging and singing are my two favorite things, but singing doesn’t make a good recreational activity unless you like being annoying. Which I do not.

“How far?” he asks me.

“Five miles,” I say.

“And how fast?”

I like when Dad leads me. I hate when anyone else does. “Thirty-nine minutes.”

“Way to go, kid.” He puts his hand on top of my hat. His hand is so big that he could palm my skull like a basketball and lift it right off my shoulders. He could tuck it under his arm and bring me with him everywhere.

“I miss New York,” I say. The moment felt right somehow.

He looks at me, his eyes suddenly soft. These are the moments I love best with my dad. When I stop being his boy and I can just be his kid. We stop acting like
men.
That’s the special part. I think the girls are always his girls.

He says, “You do?”

I nod.

I miss feeling strong and defiant. There’s something about being
a NYC native that means you have a lot less to prove.

Dad says, “Was the anniversary hard for you?”

There are a lot of anniversaries he could mean. His and Mom’s, their third since they separated, was last week. My sisters and I took him out for dinner but didn’t talk about it. I think that was exactly what he wanted.

My no-more-chemo thing was actually yesterday, but I think Dad probably forgot about that. It’s a stupid thing to celebrate. My brother died on March 8th, and we always visit his grave and the children’s hospital, and that serves as the day we think about how glad we are that the cancer’s gone.

So I know what anniversary he means.

“No one here understands,” I say.

Dad says, “They had the Pentagon.”

I shrug. It’s not the same.

It’s numbers. Just like chances are Craig isn’t going to get shot, the chances are that if someone died in September 11th, they died in New York, not in Washington, D.C. It’s just numbers.

It makes sense, then, that the way they memorialized it at school wasn’t nearly the production I was expecting. We had a candle-lighting ceremony. The chorus sang a few songs. We missed one period for the assembly, then we trotted on back to class. All I really felt was a nagging feeling I should have signed up for chorus.

I wanted to email a friend back home and ask what it was like at my old school, but I didn’t know how to ask in a way that wouldn’t seem . . . vulgar.
So, how was your September 11th?

Jasper calls, “Dad?” from the kitchen, so he smiles at me and gets up. “We’ll talk more later,” he says. “I’m glad you’re doing okay, Li.”

I wonder where he got the impression that I’m doing okay, but actually, I am.

Well, I’m not great or anything, but I’m probably not getting any worse.

Craigy—

Dad and I just had a nice talk about STATISTICS. Facts and figures and such. You know how fathers are. Did yours make you memorize baseball cards?

Washington DC didn’t come off looking so hot.

But you always do.

I can’t send that.

He’d probably be offended.

Or aroused.

And neither of those is really my intention.

Probably.

I hold down backspace.

I should probably make some cancer-kid joke. Those always go over well with Craig. I can’t decide if this is a horrible idea, since I snarked at him for making fun of dead people earlier today.

Generally, I can’t decide if I should feel ashamed about the cancer jokes.

Leukemia, after all the Lifetime movies, begs to be made fun of. It’s so overinflated. Plus it’s been seven years, so at this point, it really does feel like a joke. Like a gross-out story someone told me when I was a kid.

I could say that with full confidence if I didn’t still sometimes wake up from nightmares that make me breathe so hard I throw up. But they are less and less frequent every year.

Cancer is just a way to be sick in real life, but in movies and stuff it’s shorthand for
he was young and beautiful and pure and then he got sick and he suffered and he had poignant last words and he died.
And I can tell myself that’s what happened with Theodore, though it’s not entirely accurate. His last word was “water” and he died before he could drink it. You can make that beautiful, if you want. But the reality is, he was a thirsty forty-pound boy, and he died whining.

And the beautiful tragic death is obviously not how it worked out for me. So, way to fuck up, leukemia.

But the idea that this shitty disease sanctified our lives really bothers me. I wasn’t
brave.
I wasn’t a
fighter.
I was the one who responded to Jasper’s marrow transplant. I was a statistic. And so was Theo.

The bottom line is, cancer happens the exact same way other things happen: It does, or it doesn’t. But it never means anything.

Okay, cool, but this isn’t writing my email to Craig. And, hey, guess what? This isn’t about Theo.

Craigy—

Sorry about all the bad stuff.

Be well.

Lio

PS Your animals are safe. Promise.

I hit send before I can stop myself.

CRAIG

I CAN’T SLEEP. I WRITE EMAILS.

I can’t believe I’m writing to Cody. That after all of that bullshit and mindfucking I put myself through about not writing to Cody before he emailed me, now I’m doing it. It’s his turn. The way I was supposed to keep from going crazy was I was going to only email when it was my turn, because then I wasn’t crazy, then I wasn’t needy, I was just being polite, I was just being fair, it was
my
choice whether or not to respond, mine. And here I am writing back to an email he never sent. I’m writing to him because he’s ignoring me.

I knew it. I
knew all along that I would keep

coming

back.

I’m that boy.

C—

Didn’t hear from you today, Cody. You doing okay? How’s school?

Things are okay here.

I pause and stare at what I’ve written. Well. I’m clearly the fucking master of conversation. I should teach lessons or something. Lio could pay me a hundred fucking dollars a week to learn to perform that kind of brilliant wordsmithing I demonstrated right there.

I keep typing. If I stop to think, that’s when I start crying or otherwise get fucked.

My animals escaped. We’ve found some—remember Sandwich? and Kremlin? I sent you pictures, you remember—and it’s hard and kind of scary. No one is giving up, so pray for them, okay? Hey, I wanted to apologize for always making fun of you when you prayed. Really, I thought it was cute the whole time, I just thought you liked being teased, I don’t know. I’m stupid. But it helped me sleep when you wished that I would. I mean prayed that I would.