True Letters from a Fictional Life (20 page)

Okay. It's now 3:30. There was a lot of choosing words and staring out the window. No moose out there tonight, by the way. I should probably actually send this letter. Hate to break the streak, though.

Nighty night.

James

The next morning I stayed
up in my room until I heard Derek's
beep-beep
from the driveway, then I ran down the stairs and shouted “later” back at the kitchen as I flew out the front door. Derek had in-school suspension for punching Mark, so I promised to get him a couple of books in case they let him read. In the library, I grabbed him a couple by Vonnegut, his new favorite, and found him in the main office, waiting to hear where he'd be spending the day. Mark was slouched not far away, arms folded, half-asleep.

“Hey, man,” I said.

No response from Mark.

“Hey, Mark!” I called.

He raised his eyebrows and turned slowly toward me.

“Hey, can you give me the other letters back now?”

He just stared at me blankly.

“Whatever letters you still have. Can I have them back? It's not like they're going to surprise anyone at this point, right?”

He squinted at me, shook his head, and turned away again.

“He's wicked hungover,” whispered Derek.

Of course he was. I'd have to come back and ask him again later.

I went straight to English, my first-period class that day. Breyer was reading the
New York Times
on his laptop, and he grinned as I came in. “Hey, it's your fifteen minutes of fame, James!” He rapped the screen with a pencil. “Front page of the paper.” Four other kids were already in the room, none of them my good friends. One of them managed a weak “hey” and a smile.

Without even throwing my backpack on a chair, I crouched next to Breyer to see my story. It was a photograph of the star center for the Boston Bruins, his arms raised after scoring in overtime, his eye blackened. I smiled and shook my head.

“He has more teeth than you, but still. There's a resemblance. Wait, there's more.” He toggled screens to a blank document and typed:

A few things:

(1) I'm sorry you got punched. But the black eye does sort of suit you.

(B) If anyone gives you trouble today, I will pick up where Derek left off.

I chuckled nervously.

A group of kids walked in loudly and then fell silent when they saw me.

Breyer typed,
Come by for ten minutes during lunch?

I nodded and muttered, “Yeah, yeah.”

Hawken waltzed in just then. “Hi, Breyer.” He ruffled my hair as he passed. “Looking good, Liddell!” Everyone cracked up and started to breathe normally.

I don't know if kids had warmed up or woken up or calmed down or what by the end of first period, but they started to speak to me in the halls between classes. Kids on my soccer team stopped to ask questions I knew they knew the answer to. A couple just patted me on the back without a word. The baseball team's best pitcher grabbed my arm as I passed him. “That's messed up, James. Mark hitting you. It's messed up. I've never liked that kid. No offense, Hawken. I got a black eye once when I was a freshman. Took like two weeks to get better.”

Farther down the hall, two sophomore girls stopped us and insisted on inspecting the damage. They offered to put glitter makeup on my black eye. “It'll make you feel better.”

“It'll make me get hit again.”

Hawken asked to see the glitter options. They dug five or six bottles out of their purses, all with ridiculous names. “This one's called No Nonsense and this one's called So Maintenance.”

“See, this has always been a big question for me,” Hawken sighed. “Am I more No Nonsense or am I So Maintenance? I can never decide.”

Theresa appeared just then. “This one,” she said, pointing to the blue glitter. “It'll bring out your eyes.”

“You think?” Hawken inspected the bottle. “Liddell? Second opinion?”

“Yes. The blue.”

“OK. Ladies, next time, when I have more time, I will take the blue. Thank you.” The girls looked disappointed but they laughed, packed up their bottles, and took off.

“Listen, James,” Theresa said, putting a hand on my arm. “Can you come over to my house after school? Kim's going to be there.”

“Yeah, sure, I guess so.”

“Perfect.” And she started down the hall.

“What about me?” called Hawken. “I get no invite?”

Theresa turned. “I thought we were hanging out later on, like, at seven?”

Hawken shrugged. “Yeah. But I want to hang out, like, now.”

Theresa continued down the hall, waving over her shoulder.

“You guys are going to talk about me, huh? That's why I'm not invited.”

“Yeah, probably. Can you give me a ride over there?”

Breyer was scribbling on student essays when I found him during lunch. “Oh, good,” he gasped when I walked in, and he slumped in his chair. “Rescue me from these. How you feeling?”

“Fine.” I closed the door behind me and sat on a desk in the front row. “But you knew that I got hit before you saw me. How did you hear about it?”

“Facebook.” He laughed when he saw my mouth fall open. “No, the copier. It's an amazing contraption: it spits out double-sided, stapled, hole-punched copies and enough corrosive gossip to make you never want to work here again.”

“Word travels fast,” I said lamely.

“Small school in a small town.” He shrugged. “Tough place to keep secrets. When I first moved here, an old timer gave me some sound advice.” He dropped into a Vermont accent. “You might as well tell everyone everything 'bout yourself right now, because what we don't know, Christ, we'll just make up.”

“Yeah.” I laughed. “It's true.”

“And is what I heard true?” He inspected his pen as he spoke. “Did Mark punch you because he suspects you're gay?”

“Yeah.”

“Has he explained what's given him that”—he hesitated—“impression?”

I shifted on the desk and stared out the window. “I started hanging out with this kid a few weeks ago. Dating, I guess, this kid. And this kid is a boy. He goes to another school.”

Breyer laughed in relief and looked genuinely happy. “I'm not laughing at your predicament. I just thought we were going to have to tiptoe around the big question. I'm glad you feel okay talking about it.”

“I'm getting there.”

We talked for a bit about how Derek and Hawken were handling it.

“And you're okay at home? You spoke to your folks?”

“My mom's upset, I think. I mean I know she's upset. My dad—better. Surprised and all, I guess, but I don't know why, he was a little less shaken up by the news. It's funny. As much as I was scared to come out, part of me figured that everything would get better when I told the truth. But now that some of what I feared is actually happening, now that I'm actually getting hit and cursed at, I keep thinking: it was supposed to get easier. Coming out was supposed to make life easier.”

“Well, you can always count on some people to be human and others to be monsters, right? That'll never change. That should never surprise you. So practice the smile that you're going to flash when other kids insult you. Arm yourself with a few clever one-liners. Remember Atticus Finch from
freshman year? Carry a handkerchief in your back pocket so you can wipe the spit from your eye.”

I smirked.

“I'm serious. This is the big fight you've been reading about. It's going on all around you. Right now. It doesn't matter whether you feel courageous. Make them believe you are. You win this one by acting like you're a happy, calm, strong kid, even when you don't feel that way.”

The bell to change classes rang.

“Have you spoken to Aaron?” he asked.

“Yeah. Well, no. Not really. I need to talk to him, I guess.”

“And listen to him. It would do you both good.”

Hawken dropped me off at Theresa's after school. Kim was already sitting at the kitchen table when I walked in the front door.

“Whoa,” I said. “You got here fast.”

“Last period free,” she explained. She gave me the kind of tight-lipped, nervous smile that I'd seen a lot over the past few weeks.

I checked my messages. Nothing from Topher. “How's Topher?” I heard myself ask. “I mean, everything's okay with Topher? With Topher and me, I mean? If something's up . . .”

Kim got up and hugged me. “You are ridiculous. Topher is fine. You guys are fine. But look at your poor eye.” She kissed me on the cheek.

Theresa came into the kitchen behind us. “This isn't about Topher.” She put her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me down into a chair. “It's about you and me, and I asked Kim along because I know you guys get along, and she'll be able to keep everyone cool and . . .” Theresa waved her hands, trying to find the words.

“Well, cool and on the path to a good friendship again,” said Kim. “That's all this is about. You and Theresa were such good friends for so long, and it would be terrible if all that ended over some . . . misunderstandings.”

“Oh,” I said, brightening. “I thought you had awful news. Yeah, I'm all for staying friends. I know I haven't handled everything great recently, but it's been pretty confusing and stressful. I never wanted us to stop being friends.”

“Exactly.” Theresa put a glass of water in front of me and sat down across the table. “It's been confusing and stressful for me, too, James.”

I nodded emphatically. “Totally. I can imagine.”

“And you know, you do stupid things when you're confused and stressed. You think you're doing the right thing—”

“Oh, believe me. I hear you. I know.” I was about to list half a dozen examples from my own life over the past six months, but Theresa kept talking.

“Sometimes you do something stupid, and . . . and you can't take it back, and there's nothing you can do about it, and even saying sorry sounds just completely inadequate.”

I stopped nodding.

She reached into a bag looped over the chair, pulled out six sheets of paper, and placed them in front of me. My handwriting. “I'm so sorry, James.” She turned away from me.

My phone dropped from my hand onto the ground. I wanted to be sick. “You said you didn't do it,” I whispered, and then a little louder, “You
swore
you didn't do it.”

No response.

I stood up. “Why couldn't you come clean when I asked you the first two times? Why didn't you just tell the truth when I asked you point-blank?”

“Okay,” Kim interjected. “I think this is where I come in to help you both stay on the sunny path back to friendship.”

“Screw that, Kim,” I said, without turning from Theresa. “Do you have any idea what the last few weeks have been like for me?”

“I said that I'm sorry.”

“Why aren't you crying this time? There have been tears every time I handle something badly, and now when you tell me that you went out of your way to humiliate me and hurt me—”

“I was trying to help you!” she yelled.

“No yelling,” said Kim.

“Help me? Are you out of your mind?”

“The only two people I mailed letters to were Hawken and Aaron. No one else.” She tapped the stack of letters. “I actually thought you and Hawken would be great together. And Aaron, I figured you could at least be friends. He needed
to hear what you wrote, anyway.”

She had lost her mind. “Theresa, you broke into my desk and stole the most personal things I've ever written. And you probably read a lot more than what you took. What kind of twisted logic makes you think that's okay?”

“Because I knew you were lying to me. It was the only way I could know for sure that what I knew was true
was
true.”

“Oh, that makes a ton of sense,” I scoffed. I pictured myself lying under Mark's bed in the dark, listening to his dad's phone call. I slouched in my chair, crossed my arms. “Are there more? Do you have any others?”

No, she didn't. She promised. No one spoke for a while. There's a clock in Theresa's kitchen that actually ticks. I'd never noticed it before.

“Well, look,” Kim said. “A lot's been shared much more quickly than I think anyone was prepared for. Maybe it'd be good if I just summarize the concerns I've heard from each of you.”

I couldn't help smirking. “Kim, have you taken a class in this?”

She giggled. “I watched a YouTube video on mediation last night.”

When she finished reviewing our points, she asked if either of us had anything to add.

“I just want to be friends again,” said Theresa.

Kim looked at me for a response.

I let out a long breath. “Can you give me a ride home?” I asked.

As we reversed down Theresa's driveway, Kim said, “You know, she really does just want to be friends again, James.”

“If you'd read my letter to Hawken, you'd understand where I'm coming from. It was a crazy thing for her to do. Totally crazy.”

“Agreed. But she
was
a little crazy at the time. She's back to normal Theresa now, right?”

I shook my head. “Remains to be seen,” I muttered, flipping through the letters Theresa had returned. One to a cute boy in my tenth-grade math class. One to Mark from last summer, forecasting prison in his future. Four more to teammates and classmates, filled with nasty abuse that I'd never have been able to take back. It could've been worse—Theresa could have royally screwed me—but I wasn't about to thank her.

When I arrived home, my mom was sitting at the kitchen table, typing on her laptop. “Hello!” she sang without looking at me. Clearly she was trying to be cheerful. “How was your day?” I'd prepared myself to grab an apple and head straight up to my room without speaking to her, but instead, I guess we were just going to pretend that nothing had happened.

“Good,” I replied, scratching beneath my black eye. “My day was fine. You?”

“Busy. You?”