Boy Toy

by Barry Lyga

  The combination of hours and my parents' revelation make the ballgame seem a million years away. I feel like a dick for the way I talked to Rachel. I want to plug the phone back in and call her, but she probably wouldn't answer if she saw my number on Caller ID.

  Rachel's not the only one I need to talk to. There's Zik. It doesn't matter how much of a bonehead he is. Zik has been my truest, most steadfast friend, and has never, ever questioned me about Eve. He deserves everything I can give him and more. And I disappointed him without explaining why. Not that I really understand it myself.

  I close my eyes. I see the ball sail by again. It's not a flicker—it's worse because I can control it.

  I am not only broken; I am also a piece of shit.

  I drive over to Zik's house. Lights are still on inside. I ring the doorbell and brace myself.

  Mr. Lorenz opens the door. He sneers when he sees me, which means absolutely nothing. He sneers every time he sees me; it's possible Zik hasn't said anything to him about the game.

  "Whattaya want?" Mr. Lorenz asks, as if I'm a Jehovah's Witness or a kid selling magazine subscriptions and not the guy who's been his son's best friend for a million years.

  "Is Zik home?" Duh. Asswipe.

  He shouts "IKE!" over his shoulder and then walks away, leaving the front door open. This is the Lorenz family version of an invitation to enter.

  I carefully make my way down the hallway toward Zik's room. I say "carefully" because I once accidentally turned a corner in Zik's house and saw his mom in just her skirt and bra, a sight I'm not at all eager to revisit.

  Zik's door is closed and loud music pumps from within. He once told me that he blares his music so that he has an excuse not to listen to the rest of his family.

  I knock, but nothing happens.

  I knock again.

  "Go away!" Zik shouts from within. Maybe he knows it's me. Maybe he's in there with Michelle?

  Nah. Not a chance. Zik never brings Michelle to his house. He's too embarrassed by his parents, and who can blame him?

  I pound on the door. Zik shouts again for me to go away.

  "Zik! It's me! Come on, man! Open up!"

  I knock again and decide to hell with it. I open the door, praying that Zik isn't naked or jerking off or something.

  He throws something at me as soon as I open the door. I duck and a copy of The House of the Seven Gables smacks into the door frame. Good thing it's a small book.

  Zik stares at me from his bed, where he's sitting. "Thought you were my dad," he mumbles.

  Zik's room is a testament to the Lorenz DNA and Zik's own strange mutation thereof: WWE posters, a naked pinup from Playboy, a Barry Bonds poster, and—weirdly—a giant chart of the periodic table of elements. I can barely hear myself think over the relentless thud of hip-hop bass.

  "So."

  "So," Zik says back to me.

  "Can you turn down the music?"

  He stares at me for long seconds, then, with an aggravated shrug, grabs the remote and mutes the stereo.

  We watch each other for a while.

  "My parents are getting divorced." I don't know why I say it. I guess it's safe. But it's strange to hear it in my voice, coming out of my mouth.

  He sighs. He doesn't want to feel sympathy for me, but he can't help it. "That sucks."

  "It gets worse. My mom was fucking around on my dad."

  That gets his attention. His eyebrows shoot up and, in spite of himself, he leans forward a little bit. "No shit?"

  I shake my head.

  "How long?"

  "Since around ... since around the time I went to court."

  Zik whistles. My head swims a little bit. There. Now it's real. I've told someone else. It's real.

  "What are you gonna do?"

  I shrug. "I don't know. Go to college. Get away."

  "Must be nice," Zik says, his voice clogged with anger, pain.

  "You'll get out of Brookdale, too..."

  "I never wanted to get out of this town! I like it here." He's up in my face now and I take a step back in shock. He what?

  "Zik. Dude." I lick my lips. The pain on his face is almost too much to take. I don't get it. "You always talked about getting out of this place."

  He laughs, a single, short bark. "Yeah—this place." He gestures to encompass the entire house.

  We stare at each other. I always thought ... I always thought he hated Brookdale as much as I did. I always thought he wanted to run away like I did. I never knew...

  "You never told me!" I complain.

  "Well, there's plenty of shit you never told me, either!"

  And it's true. It's so true. All those years of loving Zik because he never asked about Eve ... I never realized, I never understood. It was his job as my best friend not to ask.

  But it was my job as his best friend to tell him without being asked.

  "God." I rub my eyes. I can't believe this.

  "You're the one who's wanted to run away ever since the trial and the case and the newspaper stories started," he says. "That's all I've heard you talk about, is running away from here. But that's not gonna do it, J. Because you can run away from a place and from people, but you can't run away from what happened."

  "I know." My voice a hush.

  "Do you? Are you sure? Because you still look like you're running away from something, not toward something. Because you're afraid."

  "I'm afraid? What about you? You've been with Michelle so long that you can't even—"

  He comes right up to me, close enough to kiss, leaning in, his breath hissing. "I love Michelle. Don't forget that, asshole."

  And here's the thing: I know that's true. I know Zik loves Michelle and Michelle loves Zik. Hell, I've seen it. But it's high school. It's not real love, or at least you can't be sure it's real love. Real love is messy and complicated and brutal. It's been tested. Zik and Michelle have never been tested by anything more than being separated by a couple of classes.

  "You don't know—" I stop myself. You don't know what it means to be in love, I was going to say. But there was more. God, that wasn't from me. It was

  —I told you I loved her—

  It was Mom

  —told you I loved her and you said that—

  —You're a child—

  I start shaking. I almost said it to Zik. Almost repeated what my mother said to me all those years ago, when she was telling me I couldn't love Eve. When she was getting ready to start cheating on her husband.

  "Oh, Christ, Zik. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." It spills out of me and once it starts, I can't stop it, like with Rachel. I can't stand up; I use the wall for support, but it's no good. I start slipping, sliding down the wall, my hands scrabbling for purchase like a hamster digging in its cage, my vision fading. "I'm so sorry. I'm sorry..."

  Zik grabs me under the arms and keeps me from collapsing. "Come on, J. You OK? You need me to call 911?"

  He gets me over to the bed and helps me sit down. His lips are moving, but I'm not hearing him. I'm just hearing him say, "I love Michelle," and he does. He does; I know that's true. I know it like I know Rachel loves me. I know it's true. It's all true. Everything my mother told me was a lie. Everything. Everything I told myself was a lie. All my life, I've been waiting to be old enough, waiting to grow up and get away, imagining that it's only when you're old enough that you know what to do or how to do it or what's right and what's wrong.

  But I have known something else all along. Something critical. My mother, the prosecutor, the reporters, Coach, Roland ... All of them adults and all of them full of shit.

  We can know what love is. It's adults who have forgotten, so they cling to their poor substitute and yell at kids who dare to live with real love. Pure love. Love without compromise or distraction. Hell, when you're a kid you've got all the energy and all the free time in the world. You'll never have the chance to devote more to love ever again in your life.

  "I'm sorry I let that pitch go by." Tears stream down my face. If I
could take it back, I would. If I could face the Heat again, I'd swallow my hatred for "the team" and for Kaltenbach. I'd smash that ball right down the Heat's throat for Zik.

  And Zik is my best friend. He sits next to me on the bed and punches my shoulder hard, not cutting me any slack just because I'm crying. "We would have lost in extra innings," he says. Neither of us can know that, but it's a comforting fantasy.

  "Zik, man, I'm sorry. I really am. I will never let you down again. You're my best friend in the world—"

  "No, I'm not. Not any more."

  It takes me a minute to realize what he's talking about. And when I do, it makes my heart feel like it's made out of pure sunlight.

  Chapter 24

  My Graduation Day, My Commencement

  I drive home, wishing I had a cell phone. Wishing, wishing, wishing.

  The house is dark and it's past midnight. Rachel's off work by now and on her way home. I call her cell and get voice mail.

  "Hey, Rache. Hey. It's, uh, it's Josh." That was stupid. Of course it's Josh. She knows my voice. She sees my number on her cell. "I wanted to apologize. Again. I'm, uh, I'm getting a little better at it, I think.

  "Look, Rache, I have some stuff to work out. I hope you're still willing to talk to me when I'm done. If I can still talk, that is. I guess that didn't make much sense. Sorry—it's late, and you know how I'm such a baby about sleep.

  "It's just that ... There's some old business. I talked to Zik and there's shit going on with my parents and it made me realize some things. Some things that I never took care of, that I never finished. So I'm going to do it. I'll talk to you later."

  After that masterpiece of description and explanation, I sit and stare at the phone and wonder if I should call her again. But I think I've reached my idiocy quotient for the rest of the year in a single day, so I decide to hold off.

  Then I throw myself onto my bed and sleep.

  ***

  For a few hours.

  My dreams are many and horrifying and forgotten when I awake, which would normally be a good thing with such dreams, but not today. Today, their horror leaves me with a sense of pervasive dread, a terror that lingers just beyond conscious thought and recollection.

  I think it's the fear that comes with having made a decision.

  Mom has gone to work. In the kitchen, Dad's finishing up his breakfast. He looks at the clock. "You're going to be late to school."

  "Not going in," I tell him. "I'm taking a mental health day."

  He doesn't find it funny. He just nods gravely.

  I can't just stand here and watch him finish his breakfast. Not now that I know. "Hey, Dad?"

  He puts his dishes in the sink. "I really have to get going to work. We'll talk about it later, OK?"

  "OK..." I watch him leave and I can't help wondering if what I'm seeing on the outside is what's on the inside, too. He can't possibly be so placid and accepting, can he?

  But you know what? It's not for me to tell him how to deal with this, any more than it's for him to tell me how to deal with my own problems. I'm an adult now. It's time to stop running.

  In my bedroom, I fire up the computer and use a search engine to find the state sex offenders database, which takes all of ten seconds. It's a simple, bland page with a state seal and some legal blurbage and a link to the database. It can't possibly be this easy.

  I click through and get a page that lets me search by first and last name or zip code or position in the education system. I know that Eve can't be a teacher anymore—she's forbidden. I type "Evelyn Sherman." There's a drop-down menu for the type of offense, but I'm not sure of the difference between "Child Sexual Offenders," "Sexually Violent Offenders," "Sexually Violent Predators," and plain old "Offenders."

  And there it is. An address in Finn's Crossing, not forty-five minutes from here. She was never in Brookdale at all. God, all these weeks of freaking out every time I looked around...

  There's a fuzzy, grainy picture of her, unsmiling, clearly taken in prison. It's a jolt to see her after all this time. I'm surprised that I feel nothing but the jolt. I expected more. But then again, the picture is so bad and so out of focus and so poorly lit that it's tough to tell that it's even her.

  I print out the address and directions from Google, then go to the car.

  It's a short drive. I think about Dr. Kennedy.

  He always wants to know about my anger. Which is funny, because I rarely get angry around him. I rarely get upset at all. Days and weeks go by during which I get pissed off by things, and things bother me, but then when I go to see him, it doesn't seem like any of that stuff matters. I just relax in the comfortable chair and talk to him and I can't get worked up about most things. It's like I've spent all this time preparing a speech and when the time comes to deliver it ... I realize I have nothing to say.

  I think that drives him a little bit nuts. He must be able to sense the anger or something because he always asks about it. And I can never explain it to him.

  One time he said, "Look, this is going to upset you, but I'm going to ask it anyway: Who are you angry at? Are you angry at Evelyn Sherman for abusing you or at yourself for letting it happen?"

  The question didn't upset me. I hemmed and hawed and managed not to answer it. But he had hit the target. Actually, he'd hit the back of the target. Dead center, but wrong side, if that makes any sense.

  I don't know if it does make any sense. I also don't particularly care anymore. I'm ending this. Today. Now.

  The address from the website is for a rundown apartment complex in Finn's Crossing. It's on the opposite side of the town from where the Four Musketeers had dinner before prom, a billion years ago.

  The parking lot's nearly empty. What if she's not home? It's early in the day. Wouldn't she be at work? Does she work? I don't know. I guess I'll find out.

  Before I leave the car, I get my bat from the trunk. It feels heavy and lethal in my hands. I can do some serious damage with this, and not just to a baseball or a pitcher's ego.

  Her apartment is on the third floor. I tell myself not to count the steps as I trot up them, but I can't help it: fifteen total. Meaningless number. It's not my age. It's no one's age I know. Fifteen...

  I find the door: 3D. I stand in front of it, calm and at peace. I feel fine. I'm not flickering. I'm not shaking or nervous. I'm just ... here. Just standing here with the weight of the bat and the bud of the doorbell in front of me.

  I ring the bell.

  Wait.

  From within: "Hold on!"

  My throat catches at the sound of her voice.

  The door opens and...

  And...

  Ah. Ah, Jesus.

  "Josh?"

  I start shaking. I can't help it. She's still gorgeous and I realize how lucky I am—it's like I get to see her for the first time ... a second time. Only this time I'm old enough and wise enough to appreciate it, unlike when I was a kid. She looks no older, no more worn, no worse for the wear of prison. Her hair is shorter, but those eyes are still eternal and luminous and endless.

  She takes a step back. "Josh please no Josh don't please—"

  The bat, I realize. I step into the apartment with her and she takes another tentative step backwards, fear radiating from every pore. I'm tight and hyperalert, my nostrils flared, my eyes darting everywhere. "Is George here?" I ask.

  She stares at me.

  "Is George here?" I'm close to shouting now. Not quite there, but knocking on its door and stomping on its welcome mat.

  She's unable to stop staring at the bat. She shakes her head in tiny jerky motions.

  It's like I've been wearing one of those heavy lead aprons you wear at the dentist's office when you get x-rays ... and suddenly someone comes in and whisks it off. My breathing returns to normal—and I hadn't even realized how erratic it was until just now.

  I lean the bat against the wall. Eve gulps loudly.

  "Is it OK if I come in?" I ask.

  ***

  "
It's been a long time," she says, sitting down on the sofa across from me.

  I recognize most of the furniture. The room, though, is smaller and dingier than in the old apartment. There are videogame machines hooked up to the TV, so I guess they're still married. I sit in the easy chair and have a brief, potent flicker of Eve and me in this chair together, the chair rocking back and forth, back and forth ... Did she ever tell George? Does he sit in this chair, unknowing, unaware that he's sharing it with the ghost of his wife and her lover's lust? Does he know that I've made lo—fucked his wife on almost every piece of furniture I can see?

  "Yes, it has," I say after too long a pause. She's gazing at me expectantly. He who brings the bat to the party gets to dictate the discussion, I guess.

  But it's like going to Dr. Kennedy's. I suddenly have nothing to say.

  We sit in silence for a few moments. She's wearing jeans and a lemon-colored tank top. I can see the outline of her bra. She looks hurried and distracted. She looks beautiful. The pull—the lust—that I feel at this moment is destroying me. It's more powerful and more potent and more real than anything I've ever felt around Rachel. And I know now, in this moment, that Eve has ruined me for any other woman. I'll never be able to be with anyone else.

  "Josh, I don't want to upset you..."

  Exactly like being with Dr. Kennedy.

  "...but there's a restraining order in place." She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. "I'm not supposed to be this close to you."

  "You were never supposed to be this close to me," I say, and I have no idea why.

  But it's like I've hit her with a Taser; she jerks and sits up straight, a wounded look on her face, in her eyes.

  And then she bites her lip and looks up at the ceiling, and I realize what she's doing. She's counting to ten. Or reciting a poem in her head. Or doing calculus. Dr. Kennedy prescribed the same "medicine" for me: some sort of mental distraction that's supposed to calm me down when I get angry or hurt or upset. Looks like therapists all use the same bag of tricks.