by Rachel Kane
“Oh, come on.”
“No. It’s fine. Just get your damned shoes and let’s go to fucking lunch with our folks.”
“My baby!” My mom was holding me so tight I thought she might cut off my air. Patting me, rubbing my head.
“Careful of the bandage,” I said, stepping away from her embrace.
“Good to see you in one piece,” said my dad. He started to hold his hand out to me, like we were going to shake hands, then he grabbed me too.
Huh. I should nearly die in plane crashes more often, if everybody’s going to be so nice to me.
(A shudder passed through me, a momentary flash of terror, I was back in the plane, the tree that would snap the wing was right there—)
I was starting to realize that I couldn’t make jokes about my experience.
Nobody said anything about our fight from a few days ago. It was like someone had reset the clock, and they were back in their blissful ignorance, no idea their son was gay.
It felt unfair and awful, but also somehow comforting, knowing we weren’t going to talk about it.
“I’ve always said those little planes are dangerous,” said my mom. “You always see them crashing on the news.”
“Which reminds me,” said Amanda to me, “you got several calls from reporters last night. I told them you couldn’t talk because of all the pills.”
I shot her a look. I was still stinging from earlier when she’d tried to confront me over Jake.
My phone had pinged on the drive over here.
You’re probably busy or sleeping, the text had said. But call me when you can.
He hadn’t said, I miss you. He hadn’t said, Love, Jake. It didn’t matter. That tiny little message had linked us together. A little reminder that I was on his mind.
Going to see my folks, I’d tapped into the phone. But talk soon. Careful not to say anything incriminating. No heart emoji. No eggplant.
Amanda had seen me texting him. She hadn’t said anything, just sighed and turned her attention back to the road.
“Son, I just wanted to say…” My dad’s voice trailed off.
I felt a creeping dread, like ice crystals forming up my spine.
“Yeah, Dad?”
“Now honey,” said my mom, “we don’t have to talk about it right now—”
“No, no, I do,” he said. “Eli, I don’t like how we left things. You running out like that, then having your sister tell us you were in a crash, it made things clear.”
Holy shit. My dad was actually about to apologize. It might be the first time in his whole life he’d ever admitted to being wrong.
I prepared myself. I was going to be noble. If he could apologize, then I could accept it. Things could go back to normal with us.
“I’m glad,” I said. “I thought so too.”
He nodded. “Excellent. So we can put all that nonsense behind us.”
A pause. “Which nonsense, exactly?” I asked. I could feel Amanda stiffening up beside me.
“That…that gay business. The foolishness.”
“Dad,” growled Amanda. “You promised you weren’t going to do this.”
“I think it’s important,” he said. “What if Eli had died on that mountain? What would we say? That our son had suddenly decided he was a…a queer, and had run away? That it was the result of one bad decision after another? How could we face our friends?”
“Wait a damn second,” I said. My head was swimming again. “I thought you were apologizing for that stupid fight.”
“Apologizing? You were the one who disrupted the family peace with all this! You were the one who insisted on running away to my brother’s shack in the woods, for god knows what reason! I don’t think I have anything to apologize for!”
“Of course you don’t,” I muttered.
“It’s you who should be apologizing! Your mother was so worried, it broke my heart to see it. Look at what you’re doing to her right now!”
My mom was twisting one of the kitchen towels in her hands. Are you sure it’s me stressing her out right now? I wanted to say.
But I wasn’t ready for a repeat of our last fight.
I hadn’t felt this much of a surge of adrenaline since the plane went down.
Everything was very sharp around me. Everything was in such tight focus. Disturbingly sharp. Like I could see details that I had no business seeing.
My head throbbed under the bandage.
“I think I need to go,” I told my sister.
“I can’t fucking believe you,” Amanda said to my dad. “Eli nearly died, and you’re still hung up on the fact that he’s gay?”
You don’t have to defend me. I’m fine. This isn’t too surprising.
I put my hand out to steady myself on the wall. I didn’t want to look weak in front of him. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Your little pansy son passing out from the stress.
I really was starting to get worried, though. “Can you take me home?” I asked her.
“My son isn’t gay!” my dad shouted. “He’s just confused, thanks to all those friends of his! Come to your senses, boy! Stop this craziness!”
We were in the car.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
It had gotten cloudy some time this morning, and a light rain was dotting the windshield. It seemed comforting somehow, watching the spray cover the window, then be cleared by the wipers, then coming back to cover the windshield again.
“It’s not your fault,” I said.
“It totally is. I shouldn’t have trusted him when he said he’d be good and not bring it up. You didn’t need to hear that bullshit right now.”
“I’m going to see Jake today,” I said.
She pressed her lips together, but nodded. “Okay.”
“I’m not doing anything stupid. I need you to believe me on that.”
“I’m sorry for earlier. You don’t need drama from me, any more than you need it from Dad. I just worry, you know?”
I nodded.
Almost like he’d been listening in, Jake sent me a text just then. I looked down at my phone.
I know what happened to your uncle’s book, said the text. Call me when you can.
19
Jacob
Pop was going through the insurance papers that morning. In the background, his little radio was set to the country station. He looked up over his half-glasses at me.
“You need anything?” he asked.
I shook my head and poured myself a cup of coffee. “I got it. You still have that cough?”
“Eh, a little. Fresh air yesterday did me some good.” He still didn’t look well to me, but maybe he was on the mend.
I sat with him at the table, and gestured at the paperwork. “How bad is it?”
“So much damn fine print,” he said. “Marcia said she’d help me with it. I don’t know.”
“Don’t make Marcia do that. After my coffee, I’ll help.”
He scowled at me. “You stay out of it. Get some damn rest. You looked like shit yesterday.”
I fished one of my antibiotics out of the bottle on the table and swallowed it with my coffee. “I’m fine today.”
I wanted to get back to Eli. All night I’d been worried about him. I wished he could’ve stayed the night with me, so I could keep an eye on him…but I understood why his sister had other ideas.
Pop surprised me with a short coughing spell. I started to get him a glass of water, but he shook his head. When it calmed down, he folded up the papers and put them back into the envelope. “You gonna call the reporters back?”
“Fuck no,” I said. Another swallow of coffee. “Bunch of vultures.”
“You need to call that boy,” Pop said. “Tell him not to talk to them either. I don’t want my damn insurance claim denied because he says the wrong thing to the camera.”
I didn’t smile, just nodded. “Yeah. I’ll give him a call.”
“Tell him to send you the doctor bills, too. He’s covered for that. I do
n’t want him thinking we don’t do our part.”
I looked down at my cup. “Let me ask you something about him, Pop. Well, about his uncle.”
“Ron. Good man.”
“Yeah. Eli seems to think his uncle wrote a book up there. That’s the whole reason he went up the mountain, to see if he could find it.”
Pop got up, a little unsteady on his feet, and refilled his coffee. “Book,” was all he said.
“I wondered, were you the one who cleaned out his cabin when he died? Did you see a book?”
He scratched his beard. “That was a long time ago.”
“A couple years. Not that long.”
“He had all kinds of stuff up there. I don’t remember.”
“He told his family he was writing it, it might have--”
“Now I just told you I don’t remember,” he said. “Let it alone. That family never did anything for Ron. Left him to die up there all by himself. That boy is the first person to ask about the man, and he’s two damn years too late. Where was he when Ron died, let me ask you that?”
I sat back in my chair. I wasn’t sure why Pop was acting mad about it. Seemed like a simple question to me. “Sorry, Pop. None of my business, I know.”
“I threw all his shit away, couple weeks after he was cremated. Not a single one of them asked me about it.”
It was something I could tell Eli, at least. Our theory had been right. There had been no book. It was a wasted trip.
Except it wasn’t wasted at all.
“I miss you,” said Eli. His voice seemed so far away on the phone.
He’d taken the news about the book surprisingly well. Or maybe it was just the least of his problems right now.
“I miss you too,” I said. “When can I see you?”
“How about now, right this second?” he asked. “I’ll pack a bag, run away forever. God, that sounds so grown-up, doesn’t it? My parents pissed me off and now I’m running away from home.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” I said. “That’s a lot of bullshit to put up with, not a day after coming back home.”
“I want to come see you,” he said. “But I don’t think Amanda wants to drive me back there…and the doc said I shouldn’t drive myself for a few days.”
“No, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I’ll come see you.”
“Your dad and Marcia won’t mind you leaving town and driving down here?”
I glanced back at the kitchen, where Pop had started looking through aviation ads. “What are they going to do to stop me?” I asked.
“Amanda thinks I’m making a big mistake,” he said.
I froze up a little. “You told her?”
“She’s my sister. I tell her everything. But…it’s not a mistake, right? You and me?”
Something troubled me about the fact that she knew. When it had just been the two of us on the mountain, everything was fine. But life was going to get more complicated, wasn’t it? People were going to find out.
I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to worry. I’d just survived the scariest experience of my life. Having someone know that I’d fallen for Eli wasn’t nearly as bad as that.
Was it?
“It’s not a mistake,” I said. “I’ll drive down. Take me out to one of your fancy city restaurants.”
“Where you headed?” Pop asked.
I’d grabbed my keys off the peg by the door. “Going out,” I said.
“Seeing Marcia?”
“Nah.”
“You ought to,” he said.
I shrugged into my jacket. “What for, is everything okay?”
His eyes narrowed. “That girl saved your life. Dragged me out of bed, told me she was worried about you.”
“Believe me, I’m grateful.”
“You want you a girl like that,” he told me. “Girl who watches out for you.”
I don’t want a girl. Marcia knows that.
“One of these days, Pop.”
“You need to take her out. Get her something. Flowers. Thank-you present.”
Of all the people in the world, I was the last person Marcia would want flowers from. Our friendship was on a pretty even keel right now. She wouldn’t want to mess that up.
At the same time, Pop seemed really insistent.
“All right,” I told him. “I’ll find her something.”
I knew that wasn’t going to be enough for him. He wasn’t going to stop until he’d said his piece.
“She ain’t seeing nobody,” he told me.
“I know.”
“Not good for a girl like that to be lonely.”
“Pop. I get what you’re saying. But it’s not gonna happen. Marcia and I are over. We’re friends. That’s all. It’s all I want, it’s all she wants.”
“You sure? You didn’t see her face when you didn’t call, when you didn’t come back.”
This was the last thing I needed right now, to be pressured about my feelings for my ex, when the new man in my life was waiting for me.
“I’ll talk to her later,” I said. “Promise.”
For a long time, all we did was hold each other. Eli looked rough, and I realized he’d been running his fingers through his hair, pulling on it, tugging on it, until his hair was wildly standing up. He’d been troubled without me, and I felt a little flash of resentment that I’d had to go home without him, that we’d had to be apart when he needed me.
“I missed you,” he breathed.
“It was only a night and a little bit of a day.”
When he let go of me, he fell back onto the truck seat, an exaggerated look of exhaustion on his face. “It was so awful, Jake. I’m not being melodramatic when I say this, I swear, but I just don’t think I can face my parents ever again.”
“You want me to go smack your dad around?”
“Would you?”
Neither of us laughed. It wasn’t funny, just sad.
“I’d say he’ll come around eventually,” I told Eli, “but I don’t know the man. Maybe he won’t. It sucks for you, though.”
“He got one thing right, it’s going to tear my family apart. You should see my sister. She’s caught in the middle of this, being forced to take a side. Who the hell makes people take sides?”
The truck wasn’t moving. I was parked outside his apartment. I didn’t know the city, didn’t know where we were going…but felt a twinge of discomfort, sitting out here in the open with him, where just anyone could see us together, see that my fingers had twined around his.
It had been so different in the woods.
“I can see why your uncle had to get away,” I offered. “Speaking of which, I asked Pop about the book.”
I hated the way Eli’s eyes lit up with hope, knowing I was going to have to crush that hope.
“Really? What did he say? Did he see it? Does he know where it is?”
“He said he cleaned out the cabin and put everything in the trash pit. Two years ago.”
A sorrowful silence filled the cab of the truck. Eli took his hand away from me, and ran it through his hair. He sighed and looked out at the parking lot. “Well, damn. So much for that hope.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wish Pop had kept it. He was so damn weird about it, too. He must have known how your family had abandoned Ron. He seemed like he was still pissed on Ron’s behalf.”
Eli nodded. “Someone ought to be.”
“Are you okay? Do you want me to go home? We don’t have to go out if you—”
“What? No, I don’t want you to go home!”
“Good, I don’t want to either,” I said. “I just thought, you know, with all the fighting and stuff, maybe you’re not up to going out.”
He looked thoughtful. “That’s true,” he said. “I don’t really want to go out. Why don’t you just come in? We’ll order a pizza or something. Do they have pizza out there in the sticks where you live?”
“Pizza…is that the thing you eat with a spoon?”
> He smiled and grabbed my hand again. “I’m so fucking glad you came over.”
Eli’s apartment fascinated me.
My own place was pretty damn sparse. I don’t feel like I need a lot of things to be happy. Marcia picked out the little bit of furniture I had. I had my shelf of my mom’s books. That was about it.
But Eli? He had a damned museum in here.
“I keep most of my books in the spare bedroom,” he said.
“…most?” This room, which must be the living room, was covered in shelves, and every inch of the shelves was packed with either books or movies or toys. There wasn’t really a single square inch of wall showing.
He looked pleased, like his favorite part of someone coming over was that first overwhelming moment when you tried to take it all in.
There was just so much of it. You didn’t know where to look. It was a little disorienting. My eye caught a little scene he’d made on one shelf. Action figures, a girl dressed in silver, robot at her side, both aiming lasers at a tall green monster. I reached out to touch the monster, then pulled my hand away…what if it broke? What if it was valuable?
He laughed. “That’s a scene from Roketto…you probably haven’t seen that?”
“I have no idea what that is.”
“It’s just an anime, this girl discovers she’s half-robot, and has the ability to turn into a spaceship…”
His voice trailed off. Was he embarrassed? I glanced over, and realized he was watching me closely. I understood. It was one thing to fall for someone in the woods, when they didn’t have the props and settings of their ordinary life. But he was showing me how he lived, the things he liked, and was worried that I’d think they were silly.
“How do you keep it all dusted?” I asked.
That made him laugh, which at least was more comfortable than him watching me like that. “It takes a long, long time,” he said. “And this is my couch. Its special feature is that you can sit on it.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “It looks pretty complicated.”
He grabbed my shirt and pulled me down onto it. I thought he was going to kiss me, and god knows I was ready for that, but he winced. “Ooh,” he said, “I’ve got to remember to be careful. No sudden moves, or my skull does a thing where my brain tries to jump out.”
