The Boy I Love (12 page)

“Did you see that?” she said. “He didn't even say good-bye to Sylvie.”

I admitted I'd noticed that too.

“My mother says you can always tell the quality of a man by how he treats little children,” Allie said. I could believe this, because Mrs. Hackett was always coming out with pronouncements like that. Once she'd told us in all seriousness that we should never date men who don't like cats, because it means they don't like what they can't manipulate and
control. I was just about to remind Allie of this when she took me by surprise by bursting into tears.

“I hate him,” she said. “Sometimes I think I really hate him.” And she buried her face in her hands.

I stood staring at her—I knew I had to say
something
. All I could come up with was, “He's not so bad.”

“He is,” Allie said. “He
is
. He acts all nice and then he says just hateful things, and he expects me to laugh about them. And you know what else? I hate him because he's not Tim. Tim never says the kind of things Devon does.”

This sense of helplessness and exasperation came over me at the same time. And I couldn't help saying, “Allie, you barely even know Tim.”

“Oh, right,” she spat. “Not like you do?”

I tried to steer the conversation back a little bit. “But Allie,” I said. “Why are you going out with Devon, if you don't even like him?” I sat down in the spot where Devon had just been. Allie didn't answer. She just kept on crying. So I put my hand on her shoulder and went ahead and said the next logical thing. “Why don't you just break up with him? If you hate him so much?”

As abruptly as she'd started, she stopped crying. She lifted up her head, wiped her nose on her bare arm, and said, “Well, what am I supposed to do then? Who am I supposed to hang out with? You and
your
boyfriend, like I'm some third wheel?”

I took my hand off her shoulder. She would not let the conversation get steered around. And my telling her he was
not
my boyfriend for the zillionth time wasn't going to make a difference.

“I don't know,” I finally said. “Maybe you should find an interest or something.”

“I
had
interests,” she yelled at me. “I had interest in cheerleading and they wouldn't let me on the squad. And I had interest in modeling”—by now she had started yelling, so her mother, banging around in the kitchen on the other side of the screen door, would be sure to hear—“but I can't do that, either. So don't sit there with your perfect boyfriend and your perfect part in the play and your perfect life and tell me to find an interest.”

She stood up and slammed into the house. I heard her mother say, “Allie,” and then pause for a minute, like she wasn't sure if she should come outside and apologize to me, or chase Allie. Then her footsteps clomped off in the opposite direction, after her own kid.

The light outside had turned kind of flat. Any minute my parents would honk their horn in front of the house. My throat filled up with tears. It was my stupid fault Allie thought my life was so perfect, because I hadn't bothered telling her any of my problems. Now she felt bad, and I felt bad, and she was in the house crying while I sat out here very close to the same.

I stood up and walked around to the front of the house. Our station wagon came rattling up the street. Holly and Dad sat in front, looking cheerful, which made me feel even worse for my mother. Not to mention Allie, and me.

It occurs to me that
I haven't said what Finian's Rainbow is all about. In case you're wondering, this Irishman named Finian moves to a pretend Southern state called Missitucky. If the people who wrote this play had decided to call the state North Caroltucky or Mississolina, you could be sure our high school would not be performing it. As things stood, it hit close enough to home to strike me as kind of a risky choice, even if it was written fifty years ago or more.

Anyway, what happens in the play is, Finian steals a pot of gold that can make wishes come true, and this leprechaun Og chases him all the way from Ireland to get it back. At one point the main girl in the play (Sharon, played by Liza Jane Rawls, a senior who hadn't spoken to me a single time) makes a wish, and then this bigoted white senator who's been mean to everyone turns into an African-American man. My mom told me that when her school did it, they just changed the kid
with makeup, but as I believe I have already mentioned, in our production Tyler Caldwell played the African-American version of the senator—no makeup required.

Since Tim had a much bigger part in the play, Tyler and I would watch when he was onstage. Tyler told me how he hoped his ACL would heal in time for him to play baseball in the spring.

“I hope Tim doesn't blow off baseball,” Tyler said. “He's really good.”

“He's good at this, too,” I whispered, kind of wishing Tyler would stop talking. I just wanted to listen to Tim. He was singing this funny song called “Something Sort of Grandish,” with all these nonsense words. Tim made it sound so hilarious and charming, I thought that the only problem with the play would be nobody'd believe Sharon liked Woody better than Og.

Tyler nodded. “It would be cool if he could do both things,” he whispered. But of course there was no way Tim could do two activities that took up so much time, and Ms. Winter had said something about doing a Shakespeare play in the spring, which wouldn't be as much fun as a musical. Maybe Tim would play baseball instead. I thought about what a good athlete he was, and how that was just one of the reasons nobody would ever guess he was gay—yeah, a total stereotype. But now he had chosen theater instead. I knew all about stereotypes and how they were stupid, but I had to admit I worried
that Tim was kind of conforming to the stereotype by giving up sports for theater, not to mention playing a leprechaun. A
singing
leprechaun, who would probably be wearing green tights. I just didn't want to see him get in a situation he didn't want to be in yet. Sometimes I'd sneak little looks at Tyler, wondering if he could guess about Tim, and I realized part of the reason he couldn't might be that he thought Tim was going out with me. It made me feel kind of important, protecting Tim, and almost made up for the fact that he could never be what I wanted.

Still I wondered about the musical theater piece of the puzzle, and later on I went ahead and asked Tim about it. I didn't worry that he would get offended. Lately he and I had been talking about everything. I think it was kind of a relief for him being able to say this stuff out loud.

As usual, we were taking the late bus home to Leeville, sitting all the way in the back. I asked him if he thought his secret was safer when he played football. “It's a stupid stereotype,” I said, “but doesn't that mean stupid people get that idea in their heads?”

“Here's the thing,” Tim said. “Ever since I was little, I loved playing ball. Football, baseball, all of it. I used to sleep with my dad's old college football. But you know, I also thought it'd be fun to be in a play. Everyone's told me forever that my voice isn't half-bad. Plus, I wanted to get out of the locker room for a while.”

I wondered if it was because everyone showers together, but saying this out loud seemed like going too far, so I just said, “Why?”

“Because of all the trash talking. You wouldn't believe the stuff guys say.”

“I've heard plenty of trash talk,” I assured him.

“Well, it's way worse when it's just guys. And in the locker room, it's faggot this and fairy that. This kid Devereaux was on the baseball team for like a week freshman year, and word got out he was gay, and everybody just tortured him. They wouldn't let him in the showers. I thought he'd get hurt, I really did.”

“I know Devereaux,” I said. “He transferred to Cutty River.”

“I don't have a clue if he's gay or not,” Tim went on. “Just someone decided he was and that was pretty much the end. Something about him set off the alarms. You know what I mean? Like that kid Jesse. I keep thinking, if any of those guys knew about me, and then realized we were standing around getting dressed together, well, they'd just kill me. I would picture it in my head, all those fists . . . and . . . plus my friends looking so disgusted. And in theater . . . I don't have to think about it. In fact, I never think about it. And it's really great to
not
think about it, you know?”

I nodded. “It sucks you have to go through that, Tim.”

He leaned his head back against the window and closed
his eyes. “Ever see a TV show called
Friday Night Lights
?” he said.

“I've heard of it,” I said. I didn't tell him I had absolutely no interest in football. He must've already noticed I hadn't been to a single game.

“Well, there was this one episode where the coach's daughter happens to see the assistant coach in a gay bar. So a day or two later she goes up to him and tells him not to worry, she won't tell anyone. And he says to her, his face totally blank, ‘Tell anyone what?' Like it's just too terrible a thing, in the football world, to even mention the word. I kept watching that show, waiting for them to bring up that story line again. But they never did. That was that. You're gay, it's football, it's the South. Keep it to yourself.”

“Well,” I said. “That was on TV. I mean, in real life, there might be a jerk or two. But most of your friends, I mean your real friends, might not even care.”

The bus wheezed and whistled to a stop at the end of my driveway, and the driver flicked out the little stop sign.

“They'd care,” Tim said, instead of good-bye, as I stood to leave. “Believe me, they'd care.”

*   *   *

When I got to the house, my mom's car and trailer were gone. Dad sat at the picnic table, looking over his lesson plan for the next day.

“Where'd Mom go?” I asked, petting Daisy.

Dad put his pen down and took off his glasses. This was a new gesture he had, new not only since he started wearing those glasses but since the farm started really and truly slipping away. Before he gave news that might cause some kind of reaction, he would take his glasses off and stare a minute, maybe to let his eyes adjust.

“She took Brutus over to Knockton Farms,” he said. “They're going to use him for lessons.”

I stopped short, not believing what I'd just heard. Lessons!

“But—but—he's
retired
,” I stuttered. “Brutus . . . the poor guy worked hard his whole life, and now he's
retired
. You can't just send him back to work. Mom said she'd never give any horse to Knockton.” Brutus had been with us almost as long as Pandora—and the awful thought struck me: One of these days I would come home to find Pandora, the only thing I'd ever want to take with me to a desert island, sold to some summer camp or riding school. Sold to some Wilbur Beach ten-year-old who'd taken a passing fancy to horses.

My dad started to say something, but I didn't want to hear it. “I'm going for a ride,” I said, and stalked off toward the stables. Daisy started to follow me, but Dad called her back. I saddled up Pandora and took off down the road. I galloped past Cutty River Landing, past the turnoff for the Old Farthing Road, over through Allie's old neighborhood. I rode till dusk, till the night started cooling off. What I
really wanted to do was ride Pandora someplace where no one could ever take her away. But once the sun went down I began shivering in my short sleeves, so I headed home, realizing with a sob in my throat that there wasn't any such place anymore. Not really.

Back at the barn I already had Pandora out of her tack and was brushing her down before I heard my mom. She was crying again—the sound so muffled and soft, I had to stop brushing to make sure I knew what I was hearing.

Sure enough I found her sitting in Brutus's empty stall, crying. I tiptoed across the hay to sit down next to her.

She lifted her face and wiped her nose on her shirt. “I hoped you wouldn't hear me,” she said.

“I heard you.”

“I mucked out the straw and spread fresh hay,” Mom said. “Then I realized—I'm an idiot!—I realized there wasn't any need to spread fresh hay because Brutus isn't coming back. And then I realized there may never be another horse in this stall again. By this time next year this whole barn might be torn down.”

That was too much for me. My thought had been to comfort my mother, but when she said that,
I
burst out crying. Mom leaned into me and said, “I'm sorry, Wren. I'm truly sorry.”

We sat there for a long time. I tried to focus on the smell of a freshly mucked stall with its good clean straw, and the
snorts and breathing of the horses that we still had left. Sweet manure and fresh straw, the breath and shuffling of our horses.

*   *   *

When I told Tim about Brutus, he didn't say much, just listened and nodded like he understood, and put his arm around me. I made a little note in my head about how this can be the absolute best thing to do for a person who's feeling down. Usually what I want to do is blab on about all the ways everything will turn out okay. But if anyone had told me it would turn out okay, I might have been tempted to punch him right in the nose.

The other night, after Allie yelled at me over at her house, I'd sent her a text saying I was sorry that I'd upset her. She didn't answer, and all week we'd been avoiding each other. When she wasn't in American history on Friday, I remembered that she was skipping school to try out for that movie. Devon sat on the other side of her empty desk, in his usual spot. I guess he'd decided not to go with her after all.

“Hey,” I said to him.

“Hey,” he said back. I leaned over to pull my books out of my bag, and when I sat up I saw he'd plopped a piece of paper in front of me.