What Happens After

by Dennis Abrams

  It wasn’t Nate’s idea.

  None of it was.

  It was mine. It was all mine.

  It’s on me.

  It’s not that Nate didn’t like the idea. It’s not even that he didn’t want to actually do any of it.

  He was nervous. Afraid. Worried.

  He was, honestly, scared to death.

  Not that I wasn’t, but I tried my best to keep it hidden.

  Nate was scared that nobody would talk to him, or flirt with him, or dance with him, or even try to kiss him.

  He was afraid he’d be invisible, just like in high school. That even surrounded by other guys like him, like us, it would still be like life at Eisenhower where really nobody saw him.

  It was the idea that nobody would talk to him or dance with him that freaked him out the most.

  Although thinking about it, to be honest, Nate was an awful dancer. Really awful. Laughably so.

  Even now, after all that happened, thinking about him dancing makes me smile.

  But I never let him know how bad he really was.

  I told him he’d be fine, that he’d have a great time. That he was seriously cute, and that hot guys would most definitely talk to him. And hit on him. And dance with him.

  And maybe even ask him home. Although, I told him, he should only do that if he really liked the guy.

  That he didn’t need to do it just because he thought he should.

  But the bottom line is that Nate’s mom was right. Or at least partially right.

  It’s not that I made him gay. I didn’t. I didn’t have to. He came that way.

  But I did push him to come with me to Houston. I did push him to go to the clubs with me. I did push him to come with me.

  Because I was afraid to go by myself.

  I never told Nate any of this, but I didn’t have the nerve to go alone. I needed him to be with me. I always needed him to be with me. I never felt alone when I was with him; I never felt like I had to keep my guard up. I could be myself, and any fears I had were pushed aside so that I could assure Nate all was well. If anyone cared enough to notice, it would have seemed as though I was his protector, that it was my role to keep him safe and make sure he felt safe. But really it was the opposite. He helped keep me safe. He forced me to be stronger than I ever really felt.

  If he hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have gone. If I hadn’t talked him into it, he wouldn’t have gone.

  And our lives would have gone on as they were.

  Instead I’m here, alone. Utterly and completely alone. Lonely and alone. And Nate is gone. My best friend. My only real friend. The only person I could have talked to about what happened that awful night is gone. The only person I could have told about what I was thinking and feeling is gone.

  I miss him so damn much. I miss having him in my life. I miss knowing he was always there for me. I miss his laugh. I miss his texts, which always opened with a “hey, hey.”

  I always smiled when I saw that.

  I miss his awful jokes and the disappointed look he’d give me when I didn’t laugh as much as he’d hoped I would.

  I miss the way he sang under his breath without even thinking about it when we were studying in my room, listening to music.

  I miss the way he knew what I was thinking and feeling before I’d even said a word.

  I miss the way he would complete my sentences. And the way I would complete his.

  I miss when we’d go out somewhere and see a hot guy and the look we’d give each other followed by a whispered ranking of one-to-ten of whether or not we’d sleep with him.

  I miss how similar our tastes were.

  Oh, Nate.

  Which leads to the second thing.

  Big breath.

  One afternoon a few weeks before we went to Pacific Coast, we were hanging out in his room and talking about going to the bars and dating and about other guys. Playing a game: “If you could have sex with person X, would you?” It was a game we’d played before, usually about guys in movies and TV or guys on Instagram—no one that we actually knew or ever would know. But then it began getting closer to home, talking about guys at school. We went back forth, how about Brian, that guy on the football team? How about Tyler that guy in our science class? How about Mr. Jenkins, the teacher of that science class? How about that guy, how about that other guy, how about, how about, how about, yes, no, maybe, absolutely… and I could see his growing excitement. And I’m sure he could see mine as well.

  But then he asked shyly but with a look of… something… in his eye, “How about me?”

  I’m sorry… what?

  “I know it’s something we’ve never talked about, but… you’re my best friend. I like you. A lot. We could just like… practice on each other or something,” he said and then laughed, trying to make a joke of it, but I wondered then and even more so now how much of it really was a joke. “And you know I’ve never been kissed.” At which point he gave me several of his best “come kiss me seductive poses” taken from every bad film he’d ever seen.

  Trying to make me laugh, but at the same time….

  I had been sitting on the floor while he was lying on his bed. I jumped on top of the bed and on top of him, holding his arms down. Still not sure if it was a joke or not, I looked down at him and into his eyes. “Is this what you want?” I said, laughing. “Is it?” But I felt the hardness in his jeans pressing against the growing hardness in mine, and suddenly the atmosphere in the room changed. The atmosphere between us changed. We remained there for a moment that seemed far longer than a moment, hesitating, slightly grinding against each other. I could feel his breath on my face as I leaned down to kiss him.

  And then of course it had to happen. A sharp knock on the mostly closed door. “What are you boys doing in there?” Nate quickly pushed me off him, and I fell back onto the floor with a thud.

  “Nothing, Mom, just messing around.”

  “What did I tell you about keeping the door open? I think it’s time for Collin to go back to his own house, don’t you?”

  And I did, running out of the house as fast as possible.

  Nothing like that ever happened between us again or even came close to happening. We never even talked about it. I’m not sure why. We just didn’t. Maybe it was the moment. Or maybe we were afraid of having another moment.

  Or both.

  But it left me one more item to add to my list of what-ifs. What if his mom hadn’t knocked on the door that afternoon? What if we had actually kissed? What if we had done more? What if we….

  But we didn’t. I didn’t.

  This is not how it’s supposed to be.

  Things are not what they’re supposed to be.

  None of it.

  I’m here. Nate isn’t. And so, what if.

  And what’s totally weird is that, ever since it happened, that thing that drove me to the bar, to the club, has pretty much vanished.

  I was still gay of course. Even I knew that was never going to change. And despite what happened, I didn’t want it to change.

  That thought honestly never even crossed my mind.

  What had changed, what had completely disappeared, was my overwhelming, nearly all-consuming desire to meet a guy. To dance with a guy. To flirt with a guy. To kiss a guy. To do everything I’d ever thought about doing with a guy or to a guy.

  To fall in love and hold hands with a guy.

  To be naked and be held by a guy.

  Or to hold him.

  And to this or that and all the stuff I imagined doing to another guy.

  It’s like I’d closed off, shut the door, and totally powered down that part of me.

  I’ll even admit that for the first time since I learned that I could, I’d pretty much stopped jerking off.

  Even porn didn’t get me off.

  I was a wreck. I’d been totaled. I was driving around my life on two flats, a busted tailpipe, a dented hood, and an engine that sounded like it wasn’t going to last much longer.

/>   And I knew it.

  And yet I stubbornly refused to do anything to get it fixed.

  Hoping, I think, that one morning I’d wake up and everything would be back to normal.

  That I would be fixed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SO, HERE’S where things stood as I began my second week as a senior at Eisenhower High School.

  My shoulder and side were doing a little better, and the pain was manageable. I was still hobbling along on crutches and in a lot of pain from that, but able to get along okay, at least with the help of pot and slushies and the occasional or more than occasional painkiller.

  I’d been publicly outed.

  I’d been attacked and laughed out of a memorial assembly for my best friend, Nate.

  I’d been humiliated and threatened online.

  At school, I was either pitied, laughed at, stared at, or completely ignored.

  Nobody knew how to treat me or deal with me. Nobody knew how to talk to me. Or even wanted to talk to me, because they felt so uncomfortable about the whole damn thing.

  And I thought things were bad before it happened.

  Some people, to be fair, tried to help.

  Principal Hernandez called me into her office the first day after that assembly, to apologize for what had happened. She told me she had spoken to Nate’s mom, and had called the guys who had been sitting behind me and given them “what’s what.”

  Along with a three days’ suspension.

  I thanked her and told her it wasn’t her fault. That it wasn’t really anybody’s fault.

  And then slowly got up and made my way to class.

  The soccer coach did reach out, asking if I’d be willing to keep coming for practices and help him with stuff; he’d make sure I still got PE credit for it.

  I was grateful for that.

  It was, now that drama club was a definite not-a-chance-in-hell, the one place in school where I felt comfortable. I knew most of the guys, and for the most part, they seemed cool with me. Guys who play soccer usually are.

  One freshman who didn’t know any better did start giving me shit, until a couple of the older guys on the team told him to knock it off.

  There was one more guy my age I didn’t know very well; he’d transferred to Eisenhower toward the end of the last school year.

  Vietnamese, I thought. Quiet and, well, kind of cute. Beautiful eyes. Skin that glowed like the light at sunset. Nice body, with a trail going down his abs that, even in my no-sex frame of mind, I couldn’t help but notice. Force of habit, I guess. He stared at me openly, a look I didn’t know how to read—hostile or curious or indifferent?—so I looked away.

  Basically, I just kept my head down and tried to make myself as invisible as possible.

  I guess I was following in Nate’s footsteps.

  Weekdays went like this:

  Get up. Make my way downstairs for breakfast. Have Dad take me to school. Class, class, class, lunch in the café by myself, class, class. Get picked up by Ziggy, smoke a joint on the way to Sonic, slushie with vodka, home, upstairs to do homework, downstairs for dinner, put in some time watching TV in silence with Mom and Dad or go upstairs and finish homework. Sleep, sometimes with the help of some pills Ziggy provided me with, sometimes not.

  But the flashbacks kept coming, and I’m not sure which was worse, the constant worry or even terror that one would hit me, or the flashback itself.

  I could be sitting in class, or walking down the hall, or watching TV, or even sitting on the damn toilet, when suddenly I was no longer there, but back at Pacific Coast. Sometimes it was just a brief moment like a quick film clip playing in my head. Sometimes it would be longer. I’d hear screams. Or gunshots. Or see terrified faces. Or feel the sharp pain of getting shot and the warm bath of my own blood.

  Or Nate. Way too often they’re scenes of Nate.

  Some nights I’d wake up from nightmares I couldn’t quite remember or maybe didn’t want to remember, dripping with sweat. Other nights not.

  Weekends I pretty much stayed in my room, except for meals and hanging out with Ziggy.

  I had stopped watching and rewatching and rerewatching the news reports on what happened that night. I knew them all by heart anyway; every shot, every comment, everything. In some ways, the films of what happened after replaced in my mind the reality of what had actually happened to me. And Nate.

  Maybe that made it easier, made it feel more controlled and distant and not echoing what was constantly replaying itself in my head. It was what happened to them, not to me, not to Nate, definitely not what really happened in the club that night.

  That was something I didn’t want to talk about. Wouldn’t talk about. Still couldn’t talk about.

  Can’t talk about.

  It was mine. Mine and Nate’s, and it felt like, for reasons I can’t fully explain or even understand, something I needed to keep close to me. That talking about it, sharing it, would somehow cheapen it, make it like one of those stories my dad keeps telling me about his days in college, like the one about the time he and his friends had too much to drink and got a flat on a dark deserted road and they had to spend all night in the cold waiting for help.

  I didn’t want, I don’t want, what happened to become one of those stories.

  Or maybe I just didn’t want to talk about it because it was so goddamn awful that it nearly broke me whenever I thought about it.

  Or maybe it was because I missed Nate so damn much.

  I don’t know.

  So I didn’t talk about it.

  I don’t talk about it.

  I don’t want to talk about it.

  I can’t talk about it.

  I won’t talk about it.

  A few weeks after the assembly incident, Laura Dixon came up to me at my locker. We weren’t exactly what I would call friends, but we weren’t enemies either. She was one of the girls who came up and gave me a hug the first day back at school. Quiet, kind of pretty, kept to herself a lot. We’d nod at each other in the hall, say “hi” on occasion, that kind of thing, no more than that.

  She also worked at the school’s news station. I think that’s what she wanted to do with her life, become a TV journalist or something.

  And she asked me if she could interview me for the next week’s show.

  She talked fast, smiling all the time, promising me I didn’t have to answer any questions I didn’t want to, that she wouldn’t ask me anything personal, and swearing up and down that she’d edit out anything I didn’t want shown.

  I didn’t know how to say no or how to explain why I didn’t want to do it, so I said yes.

  And then spent the next three days hating myself for doing so.

  But I went through with it.

  I do try to keep my word, if nothing else.

  Except.

  Nate.

  Trying to look at least halfway okay, I wore my favorite T-shirt, the one that Nate always told me brought out the hazel in my eyes (why did he always tell me that?). And when I walked into the studio, Laura was there to greet me. Thanking me for keeping my word, she showed me where I would sit and introduced me to the cameraman, who turned out to be one of the jocks who had sat behind me at the assembly. Now off suspension, he was taking the class for a more rounded college application.

  He didn’t say a word, but kept looking at me like he wanted to say something. Call me a faggot? Apologize? Something more?

  Was he the guy who had tried to get the others to stop?

  I couldn’t tell.

  Laura could tell I was nervous, but she really had no idea just how nervous I was. She took my hand, which was shaking and sweaty, and told me not to worry, that everything would be fine.

  I didn’t believe her for a second. But whatever.

  And it began.

  Laura: Welcome to this week’s edition of Life at Eisenhower. I’m sitting here with Collin Williams, one of the survivors of that awful shooting at Pacific Coast in Houston. Collin, thank you for ta
king the time to talk with me. I know you haven’t talked about what happened at all, and I know your fellow students will appreciate hearing about your experience.

  Me: (Blank stare.)

  Laura: Um… okay. First off, how are you feeling? You got shot three times, right?

  Me: Yeah. Once here, once here, and once here (pointing at each of the wounds).

  Laura: How is your recovery going?

  Me: Um, fine I guess. Shoulder is getting pretty much close to okay, same with my side. The leg is coming along. I got lucky (long pause), and I should be off crutches by the end of the year.

  Laura: That’s awesome.

  Me: As I said… I’m lucky. That’s what I keep telling myself, anyway.

  Laura: You don’t think you are?

  Me: (Blank stare.) I’m… I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m lucky that I wasn’t killed, I guess, like so many of the others… but (another long pause) at least for them it’s over. It’s done. They don’t have to think about what happened, they don’t have to dream about it, they don’t have to feel anything about it, they don’t have to live their lives knowing that they survived and others didn’t, and they don’t have to talk about it. So I don’t know.

  Laura: (Obviously not sure how to respond. I think she thought I’d give her one of those “I’m just glad to be alive” speeches.) Nate, who… well, wasn’t so lucky, was your best friend. Is there anything about him you think we should know?

  Me: First of all, I know you all think he was my boyfriend, but he wasn’t. Okay? (I could feel myself tightening up and trying not to cry.) He was my friend. He was my best friend. My only friend, really.

  He was smart and funny and sweet and funny… really funny I mean. He could always make me laugh. And he knew it.

  With a look, or a quick response to something I said, I’d be laughing. I miss that so much.

  The sad thing is that nobody in this whole damn school knew it. They didn’t know how giving he was, how caring, that he’d always be there for you.

  You didn’t or couldn’t see what a nice, smart, funny, special person he was. You couldn’t see how all he ever wanted was to be accepted. To be liked. To have friends. No one here was willing to give him the time of day.