by Sasha Hibbs
“I wanted to make sure he made it here. I can’t stay, Autumn—”
“Are you kidding me? You’re leaving?” I asked, my leg dangling out of the car, ready to get out.
“If my parents find out—”
“After this, don’t you think they are going to find out anyway? Didn’t you say the attackers were some guys on your team that did this to Sean? Wasn’t your car there? Don’t you think they’ll put two and two together? He could’ve been killed tonight. This is so much bigger than your parents finding out you’re gay, or mine finding out I, no, we lied.”
Jay gave me a distant look. “You’re right. My car was parked where they could see it. I hid, but I guess it doesn’t matter … they probably knew it was me. I hid thinking at least I wouldn’t be found out, that my secret would stay with me because Sean would never betray me. He’s better than I ever deserved.”
I jumped as someone rapped against my window. I turned to see a security officer.
“You’re going to have to move the car. You’re blocking the entrance.”
“Sorry. Of course. We’ll move it now. Thank you,” I said. I pulled my leg back in the car and shut my door.
“Get out, Autumn. I’m not staying. I can’t. I just can’t. It’s over,” Jay said. I could see tears well up in his eyes.
“Look, Jay. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry about everything. I would’ve kept your secret if for nothing else, Sean’s sake. But there is no hiding this now. If you’re not coming with me, I have to go.”
I paused and gave him a few seconds, hoping he would come around and grasp the gravity of Sean’s situation and the hate crime that happened tonight as being more important than what society thought of him. He looked resolved and continued to stare out of the windshield.
“Fine, Jay. I have to go,” I said, getting out of the Audi, slamming the door shut. I started to walk away, but I heard Jay roll down the passenger side window.
“Tell Sean I love him. Tell him I’m sorry I didn’t do anything to protect him. Tell him, please tell him that he’s been the only happy and real thing in my life,” Jay said. He stopped as tears spilled from his eyes. In that moment I truly felt sorry for him. “I could be myself … only with him. Tell him I said thank you. Tell him I said to take care of himself. Will you?”
I sighed. “Jay, if you come with me, you can tell him yourself. There’s still time to make this right.”
Jay gave a sad laugh. “I envy you.”
“What?”
Jay’s bottom lip quivered. He waved a hand back and forth between us. “You and I make sense. We are what society wants. Pretty girl, pretty boy, surrounded by pretty things destined to have a pretty life. And yet. here we are … college football hopeful with dreams of a professional career in love with the beaten boy who will forever bear the scars of our relationship.”
He didn’t have to say it. That ugly, welted, bleeding word engraved into Sean’s chest resurfaced in my mind.
“And there you are … so smart, beautiful like a porcelain doll in love with a boy whose scars mark his face like a badge of his poverty. But the difference between us is you are braver than I could ever be.” Jay closed his eyes. I imagined the shame and pain of his words washing over him. “When you go up there, tell Sean I love him and no matter what becomes of this, continue to be brave and fight for your fighter, because in the end I am too cowardly to fight for mine. All I can do is what I do best—hide.”
“Jay—”
He rolled the window up, silencing me as he drove away. I pulled my iPhone out. 10:01 p.m. This wasn’t going to be an easy call to make, but as I dialed my dad, I knew it was time to face the music. As the phone rang, I walked through the sliding glass doors.
“Daddy?”
“Autumn,” he said, answering on the other end.
“I’m okay, but I’m at St. Patrick’s Hospital. I need you to come pick me up, and there’s someone I need you to meet.” My stomach turned.
“What’s going on, Autumn? Were you in a wreck?”
I could hear the level of panic rise in his voice which only made me feel worse for lying for weeks on end.
“No, I wasn’t in an accident. Jay’s fine. I’m fine. It’s one of my friends, Daddy. I’ll see you soon. I have to go.”
“Autumn—”
I hit end. He was going to be livid. I asked the triage nurse where Sean’s room was.
“Are you with that group of boys that just came in? Are you okay? Why don’t you come over here and sit down so I can take your vitals?” she said, flicking her gaze from my hands to my face.
I looked down to see Sean’s dried blood on my hands and smeared across my shirt.
“No, I’m fine. Really. I tried helping him. Can you please tell me what his room number is?”
“Oh, honey. He isn’t in a room, yet. They’ve taken him back for surgery. But first, come with me. You need cleaned up. We can’t have you walking around a hospital with blood on your hands.”
I wanted to find Daniel and Mickey, but I knew she was right.
“Hey, Sue?” the nurse yelled over her shoulder to a nurse wearing scrubs littered with baby panda bears. “Watch the triage for me? I need five minutes.”
“Sure,” Sue answered.
I followed the nurse into the employee bathroom where she instantly snapped on a pair of latex gloves.
“Do you have any cuts that you’re aware of? Abrasions? Any disruption of skin integrity?” She turned the faucet on and lathered her gloved hands up with what I presumed to be antibacterial soap.
“Uh, no. Not that I’m aware of.” I glanced back down at my hands.
“Let me assess to be sure.” She grabbed my hands and held them under the warm water.
I watched the blood mix in with water swirl down the drain. She turned my hands over and inspected them, my wrists, forearms, until she seemed satisfied there were no skin tears.
“Did you come into contact with blood anywhere else?”
“No. The blood was from what was on his shirt and I only held it with my hands.”
“Okay,” she said as she ripped off a brown paper towel and handed it to me to dry my hands off with.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Your friends are in the waiting room just down the hall, take a left, and it’s beside the chapel. The police are on their way here to get statements. I’m sorry this happened to your friend. This can be a cruel world.”
“Is he going to be okay?” I asked as we walked out of the bathroom.
“Well, honey, I’m not a doctor. I’m a nurse. But between you and me, they’ll immediately take x-rays to make sure there are no broken bones. And then I’d say the doctor will more than likely debride the dying tissue surrounding the wound, stitch what is well approximated as can be, and then give him intravenous antibiotics and a tetanus shot. Other than the scars, he’ll live.”
“Thank you.”
She gave me an empathetic smile before we parted ways. As I walked down the hallway to where I was hoping to find Daniel and Mickey, the night’s events ebbed and flowed in my mind. Poor Sean. That anyone could do that to him was inconceivable to me. He didn’t deserve that. No one did.
As my shoes clicked against the hard tiled floor, I thought about Jay. Those moments leading up to him leaving the hospital validated to me that he truly did have feelings for Sean. He was willing to give him up, run and hide, to save face. That was punishment enough and Jay would have to live with it. Once my father arrived, I would have to tell him what happened, especially where the police were going to be involved. But I would beg him not to tell Jay’s parents. Jay, in a sad tragic sense, was a victim too.
But this wasn’t ten years ago where the gossip mill would start churning the minute something happened. No. We had a much more refined, well-oiled machine this decade. Something that was probably already alerting people like wildfire that Sean McGregor was in the hospital, had been beaten up, was well on its way. What parts of the
story that were true and what parts were false would only lie with those of us involved.
We had social media, a tool that could be as useful as it was harmful.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“He wouldn’t tell me,” Daniel said as I walked into the waiting room. “I want to kill those assholes who did this to him.”
Mickey looked up as I came to a halt a couple of feet away from them. Fortunately, we were the only ones in the room. I parted my lips to speak. There were so many things I had to say before my dad arrived, before the police arrived. But there was a look on Mickey’s face that made the words I wanted to say stick in my throat.
“You know Jay?” he asked.
“I didn’t know he was the one Sean was dating.”
He stood and rolled his shoulders back, as though trying to ease the pent-up tension or to brace himself for confronting me. My gaze flickered to Daniel. Sitting down, slumped with defeat, Daniel held his head in his hands. I looked back to Mickey.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Yes. I know Jay.”
“Your car wasn’t at the boiler plant. You rode with him?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.
“Yes.”
I could see an avalanche of realization build in his eyes. He was figuring it out.
“Were you really inviting me over Sunday?”
“Mickey, please,” I said, but my words faltered. “Let me explain.”
“I don’t think you have to.”
I took a step closer to him, but he backed up. I watched as he balled his fists up at his side.
“Mickey, I’m trying. I really am. I was going to tell my parents about you tomorrow—”
“Just in time to meet them? Are you kidding me, Autumn? No”—he let out a disgusted laugh—“I was kidding myself.”
I flinched at his words. It took everything I had in me not to break down crying, but this wasn’t about me. It was about Sean, about Daniel a few feet away from us waiting in agony for his parents to get here and the doctor to come out and tell them Sean was going to be okay. But nothing would erase the nightmare of this night.
I drew my voice down to a whisper. “Mickey, I wanted to tell my parents about you so many times. I simply didn’t know how to. Jay and I came up with a way for him to see Sean. But I swear to God, I didn’t know it was Sean. I didn’t. And my parents thought he and I were dating so during those times I would come to see you—”
“Wow.” He let out a sarcastic laugh. “You’re a real piece of work, Autumn.”
“Mickey, no. Please don’t say that. I never meant for things to happen like this.”
“How could I ever trust you again?”
I could see the anger and doubt swirl in his eyes. They pierced me with accusation. And I deserved every lash, every mark, every emotion that I’d caused in them that made me want to take him in my arms and promise to never hurt him again.
“I’m so sorry, Mickey. I was so far in I had no idea of how to dig myself out. But I made up my mind tonight to tell Jay that we had to come clean with our parents because I was tired of hiding and lying to them.”
“I get it,” he said. “You’re ashamed of me. So predictable.”
“That’s not fair—”
“Isn’t it? We’ve been dating for weeks now. You’ve been to my house several times, to my fights, we have class together. There is no part of you that makes me want to hide our relationship from society. But it’s what I don’t have that makes you ashamed to have me meet your parents.” He shook his head in disgust. “Money.”
“I don’t care about money, Mickey. I don’t care what everyone else thinks. I didn’t understand you at first, but I do now. I want to be with you. I was afraid my parents wouldn’t approve and they’d take me away from you. And, please, Mickey. Please don’t shut me out. I’m so sorry. Jay said if I told my parents about you, he’d break up with Sean. I never meant for you to get hurt, but I didn’t want Sean to lose Jay because of me.”
He flicked his gaze to the floor.
“Looks like that plan worked out,” Daniel said, looking up at us.
His words hurt, but I couldn’t blame him. Daniel was angry, wanted justice for his brother. He had no one to lash out at, but I’d stepped in to be the punching bag. I deserved no less.
“I’m sorry, Daniel,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper.
“That and a handful of shit gets you the same thing—nothing. My brother’s going to sport fucking scars on his chest for the rest of his life and all you can say is you’re sorry?”
“Stop, Daniel. You’re angry, man. But Autumn’s not the one who did it.”
“Mickey, please believe me. I was going to tell them. I was—”
“I don’t know, Autumn. I just don’t know…”
“Autumn?”
I heard my dad’s voice behind me and I panicked. I couldn’t go back and make things right. It was too late for that. Mary knew all along my lies would catch up to me. But I had now. This moment. And I seized it. Before I turned around to look into the face of my punisher, I ran up to Mickey and threw my arms around him. I didn’t give a damn that my father was standing in stunned silence behind me. I surprised Mickey by throwing myself at him and I used it to my advantage.
“I love you, Mickey.”
I pulled his lips down to mine and kissed him like it would be our last.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Up until the events of Friday night, I thought I had seen my parents angry. I remembered their looks of astonishment when they received the news I decided to graffiti the side of the school. They berated me for what felt an eternity. I felt their disappointment in my actions for several days. But never had I witnessed the full extent of their wrath and discipline. I had never done anything to induce it, therefore I had no idea it existed.
There was no way for me to lie my way out of what happened and my indirect involvement. As my dad drove me to the police station to give my statement, I started from the beginning. I told him about how Mickey was at the scene when I painted the side of the school. I went on to tell him that Mickey was really smart but needed encouragement to come to class and that Principal Oliverio came to me asking for my help to get Mickey to apply himself. From there I told my dad how I began working with Mickey in Honors and how that led to my growing attraction. It couldn’t have been more awkward or painful to disclose that information to my dad of all people. I left out the fights. I had already crossed a line, but to tell him about the illegal fights would be committing relationship suicide. I told him about Daniel and Sean, how they were Mickey’s best friends and how I came to know them. I cringed when I told the truth about Jay, how the both of us concocted a plan to see the people we wanted using each other to do it.
I could see a tic work in his jaw as he clenched the steering wheel. He didn’t have to voice his anger, it was tangible.
After giving my statement, we drove home. I wondered for the longest time if he was going to speak, but once he did, I realized he must’ve been taking his time to try and gain control of his anger.
“Autumn, I consider myself a good father. I do not ask for much. I have only ever expected you to do well in school to ensure as much of a chance as possible, for a successful future in college. I ask that you do not bring shame down on our family. I have so few rules that I cannot fathom how you could do this to your mother and me.”
The more he continued, the more I could hear his anger rising.
“Since meeting this boy you’ve been in trouble with the school, snuck out, lied, and tonight, I had to take you down to the damn police station to give a statement regarding a boy, you tell me, that has been dating the boy that for weeks now, you’ve been telling your mother and me you’ve been dating. And it’s all been a lie to date another kid who obviously is so sketchy you felt you had to hide him from your mother and me.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it? In all of this I have to say th
at I am most impressed that you’ve managed to keep this farce up for as long as you have. I could never juggle so many lies.”
That stung, but I expected no less.
Dad pulled in to our driveway and parked the car. Turning the ignition off, he said without looking at me, “We’ll finish this conversation inside.”
Inside … where my other attacker awaited. There was no use in prolonging the inevitable, doing so got me into this mess in the first place. I got out of the car and trailed in behind my dad, dreading each step that took me closer to a place where I knew held no sympathy for my and Mickey’s cause.
I knew my dad called my mother while he was waiting for me to finish my statement at the police station. I took a deep breath and followed my dad into the dining room where my mother waited for us both. I met her narrowed gaze as my father went to stand behind where she was sitting. He was going to support everything she had to say while I had no time to prepare a good enough defense in their eyes to allow me to continue seeing Mickey.
And I started to panic.
My mother clicked her nails against the polished table.
“Your father and I give you everything, Autumn. You have a cell phone. A car. We don’t expect you to work at a job. You have all the luxuries a girl your age could want. And you repay us by lying? By getting involved with a shady character? And where did that get you?”
“Mom—”
“No!”
I jumped at the shrill sound of her voice.
“It was one thing to do what you did at the school … but tonight a boy ended up in the hospital. You had to give a statement to the police, Autumn. The damn police!”
“I’m sorry,” I said as tears started to well in my eyes at the thought of what happened to Sean. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”
“Well, it did, didn’t it?” Mom said, her teeth clenched.
“It’s not like Jay could be honest with his parents and tell them he is gay. And like you all would give Mickey a chance—”
