“Never told me what?”
“Nothing,” I say.
There was one night when I told Nick the full story. It was a sleepover, at his house, just the two of us. I remember it being cold out, so this was many months after Sam had vanished, like January or February. We had tried to play tennis outdoors that afternoon, but our hands and ears got cold so we went back to his house and drank hot chocolate and watched TV. Later, we were both in sleeping bags, in the family den, watching a movie. His parents were asleep. Outside, I could see the trees blowing in the cold wind. The movie wasn’t too loud, but loud enough. I looked over at Nick and his eyes were closed.
“Nick?” I said in a whisper. Then, in a normal voice, “Nick.” He stirred, slightly, but his eyes stayed shut. I lay there, wide awake, and watched till the movie ended. Then I turned the TV off.
“Nick?” I asked again. Nothing.
I looked out the living room window. A car drove by, the lights flashing against the wall of the room. Then silence, except for the sound of the trees rustling. After a few minutes I had an eerie feeling that someone was watching me, that someone was out there, about to peep in the window. I waited and watched, my heart thudding, and then Sam appeared, cupping his eyes against the glass. I wanted to scream but nothing came out, and then I woke up with a jolt. I don’t know when I’d fallen asleep, but when I woke I could hear Nick snoring.
I didn’t want to fall back asleep, so I started talking quietly. “That day, Nick,” I said, “this man in a white truck came after me. After I’d left Sam. After we had our fight.” I looked over at Nick again. Still asleep. “He came after me and said he’d give me a ride home, and I knew something was off. So I said no and rode my bike home, and—he followed me.”
I looked at the window again. My heart pounded, like I was actually back on that day, in the hot sun along that road. “I hid in someone’s backyard. He drove by, he didn’t see me, and he didn’t stop. And I went home and I just waited for Sam to come back.”
I looked over at Nick again, hoping his eyes were open, but sort of relieved that he was still asleep. “But he didn’t come back. And then I thought about the man in the truck. Like maybe there was a connection. But I didn’t say anything. I mean, the more I thought about it, the more I thought maybe it was just some adult trying to be nice. I didn’t want to get some innocent person in trouble, you know? So I didn’t say anything about that. It seemed like it didn’t matter.” I let a minute pass, almost lulled to sleep by Nick’s rhythmic breathing noises. My heart was slowing down. “Do you think I did something wrong?”
He didn’t say anything back. But I felt better then, because it was like his silence was all the approval I needed.
===
It rains on Saturday, all day. I feel like I’m trapped in my room. I’m standing at the window as the rain falls outside, when Mom knocks on the door.
“Phone for you,” she says.
I take the cordless from her and she shuts my door. I think it might be Nick, though he never calls the landline, or calls at all—only texts.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Josh?”
I recognize the clipped, cautious voice. “Oh, hi, Sam.” My heart beats faster, but I’m not sure why.
“Do you think you might still want to play tennis tomorrow? Like we talked about last weekend?”
I look out the window again. “It’s raining.”
“But not tomorrow. It’s going to stop soon. Tomorrow’s supposed to be nice.”
“Oh,” I say.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I mean, yeah, sure, I can play.”
“Okay, good.”
We make a plan to meet at the public courts at Bowers Park, at two.
“You can use one of my rackets,” I say.
“It’s okay. I have one. A sporting goods store donated a bunch of stuff to us.”
“Okay,” I say. “See you tomorrow.”
Later, when I tell Mom and Dad at dinner, they’re quiet at first. Dad finally says, “That’s so nice of you.” And then he looks at Mom and I’m not a fool, I can see it. They’re worried.
“I want to be his friend,” I say. And I mean it. I actually do.
===
Just like Sam said, the next day is really nice—clear skies, warm temperatures. A beautiful day in the middle of November.
When Dad and I drive up, Sam’s standing beside his mother’s car with his racket hanging limply at his side. “We’ll come get you at four.”
“Yep,” I say. I get out and walk over to Sam while Dad waves to Mrs. Manderson and then drives off. Sam’s dressed all wrong—neon-yellow running shoes instead of proper tennis shoes—and he’s wearing those mesh basketball shorts that don’t have pockets. You really should have pockets in tennis, to hold the balls. But I guess it doesn’t matter.
Mrs. Manderson sits in the driver’s seat with sunglasses on. “You boys have fun, okay?”
“Sure,” I say. We walk to the court and I unpack my tennis bag. “Let me see that.” I grab Sam’s racket. It’s not a bad one—an older Dunlop model, nice and light. No telling what tension they strung the racket at. I realize all the stuff that matters to me—grip size, racket-string tension, racket-head size—doesn’t mean anything to Sam.
I see Sam looking over at his mom’s car. She’s still parked in the lot, watching us. He frowns. “Just a second.” He walks over and leans down into her window. They talk for a few minutes, before she finally drives off. Sam gets back and says, “Okay, ready to play?”
We start hitting and because Sam’s a total beginner it’s not much of a challenge for me, but that’s not the point. The point is for me to help Sam, so after we hit for a bit I cross the net and show him a few things—like how to hold the racket better, and how he needs to swing through with his stroke and swivel his hips and step toward the ball. I’m just used to doing this stuff now, so I’m not a great teacher. But once we start hitting again, it seems to come naturally for Sam. It’s not graceful, his form is kind of bad, but he starts connecting on shots and playing decently. Which is kind of annoying. Honestly, some guys are always good at any sport. Sam was sort of like that as a kid, from what I remember.
At one point, Sam sprays a ball over the fence and I run to get it. When I get back, he’s sitting against the back fence, in the shade of some tall shrubs that grow outside. We’re the only ones out here now. It’s peaceful.
“This is fun,” Sam says. “But tiring. I really feel it in my legs.”
“Yeah,” I say. I look at his legs then, which are muscular, a fuzz of dark hair tracing down his calves. “If you keep playing, you might be pretty good one day.” He’s so close I can smell the sweat on him. It’s kind of gross, but also not.
“So you started playing that summer, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say. That summer. He said those words calmly, like he didn’t mean anything, but I feel that squirmy chill you get when someone confronts you.
“With Nick, right? Mom told me he plays, too.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I saw you with him at that Homecoming game.” Again, he says this like he’s just stating a fact.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling embarrassed all of a sudden, though I’m not sure why.
We’re both quiet for a bit. Sam seems different now, free from the watchfulness of his family. Calmer. Looser. Like he feels comfortable asking me more questions—questions I don’t want to answer.
“Nick doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” Sam says.
I want to try and say something—to deny it, to defend Nick, to make Sam feel better. But he’s right. And then I can’t believe it—I look at Sam and tears are falling from his eyes. I’m frozen, unsure what to do. But he sniffles and wipes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and then another one
. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I say. I think of the other day, at Sam’s house, how his eyes looked sad.
“Sometimes things hit me. Like, bam, I start crying. Or I shake. It’s like I can’t control my own body.”
I nod. “I know the feeling.” Like right now, my belly is doing little flips. I fiddle with my racket’s strings, hoping that will calm me down, because it does during my matches. But it doesn’t now.
“That day,” he says.
That day. There’s only one day. I sit there, my back pressed into the chain-link fence, bracing myself. I grip the frame of my racket tight.
“My bike got a flat tire,” he says.
I could stop him right now. It’s like when you find out that someone talked about you behind your back. You don’t want to know what they said. But you have to know.
“I got a flat tire,” he says again calmly. No more tears. “Right near the cemetery. I fell off the bike when it happened. It was like a blowout. I was like: It serves me right. After what happened to you.”
Three years later, I can still feel the cold of the soda exploding on my back. I can still feel the pebbles digging into my knees. I can still hear Faggot! And Sam’s laugh.
“I never made it to the mall. I had to turn back around and walk. It was so hot. Remember that?”
“Yeah,” I say. Where was I when Sam was walking, I wonder? At home yet? I must have been. In my room, enjoying the AC. Or maybe in the bathroom, washing up my scrapes. Safe.
“I walked with the bike along the road. Sweating. Getting thirsty. There was hardly any shade. So I try and go as fast as I can, but it’s like I never make any headway. I finally get to that street that intersects Skyland. The one where if you turn left it goes down a hill, past the Nissan dealership. I forget the name. Anyway, I see there’s a lot of shade down there. All these big pine trees. I just need a moment out of the sun. So I walk my bike off Skyland, to where the trees are. I just stand on the side of the road in the shade.”
He pauses and then takes a swig from his water bottle. I watch his Adam’s apple as he gulps, then look away. I drop my racket beside me, because my hands hurt from gripping it so tightly.
“My therapist says I can talk to him about all this stuff. But . . . it’s weird, telling stuff to a stranger, you know? I can’t talk to my parents about it. They just want . . . They just want to . . . to forget it. Especially Mom. I can’t talk to Beth, either.”
“Why not?” I say.
“I don’t know. I want to. But I think she’s scared of me. The way she looks at me. The other night, she . . . Never mind.” He looks away.
“You can tell me stuff,” I say. And I mean it. But I also hope he doesn’t want to tell me anything else.
He still stares off. “Thanks.”
A breeze blows through, causing one of the tennis balls to roll away a little. The shrubs rustle behind me, a soothing sound. But then Sam starts speaking again: “I was standing in the shade and then this white truck comes down the street.”
My heart flutters. It’s like I was just walking along peacefully and then suddenly I tripped.
“This truck slows down and pulls up next to me. It’s Rusty. I mean, I didn’t know it was Rusty then. But it was him. He says, ‘Hey, kid, you okay?’”
The same thing happened to me, I almost say, but I don’t. I can’t.
“At first I didn’t say anything, but he kept looking at me so I told him I was fine, just hot.”
“Then what you doing out here in this heat, Superman?”
“My bike got a flat.”
“That’s too bad. You need a lift?”
“Nah, I’m okay.”
“You sure? I can put your bike in my truck bed, get you home lickety-split.”
Sam pauses and I look up at him and he’s smiling in a weird way—the way you’d smile at something stupid.
“That phrase, ‘lickety-split.’ My dad used to say that. That’s weird, isn’t it? But I remember him saying that and it calmed me down. And I was so hot and tired. So I said okay. He puts my bike in the back, and I get in the passenger seat. I tell him I live in Pine Forest Estates, just up the road a bit, I’ll show him. ‘Buckle up,’ he says, smiling at me. I guess right about then I knew he was weird. Right when I clicked that seat belt, it’s like I knew. And I could have unclicked right then, before he drove off, I could have jumped out and run off and ditched my bike. But he started the car and I froze.”
A little gust of wind blows across us again and I close my eyes. For a second I wish Sam would say that he yanked the door open then. That he ran. But I know that this isn’t the way the story goes.
“Anyway, I tell him to take a left but he goes right. I said, ‘No, I live the other way. You should turn around.’”
“‘I know where you live,’ he said.”
“‘You do?’ I asked, but he just drove on. Looked over and smiled at me again. But not a friendly smile, you know? ‘Roll your window up,’ he said.”
“I rolled it up. I thought he was going to turn on the AC but he didn’t. ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ I said again. He didn’t say anything at first. It all happened so fast.” Sam pauses.
I open my eyes then. I think he’s going to stop. My heart’s still pounding, because I know the worst is still to come. Sam’s still leaning back, his hands pushed against the cement, really close to mine. I could slide my hand over and touch his, and comfort him, but I don’t. Boys don’t do that.
I don’t do that.
“Then all of a sudden, wham! He brought his hand up and smacked me in the face, really hard.” I hear a catch in his voice. “I thought he’d broken my nose. I started yelling, covering my nose, but he told me I better shut up if I knew what was good for me. So I just sat there and kept as quiet as I could. I guess I was in shock. Like this can’t be happening. ‘If you stay quiet I’ll take you home,’ he said. ‘But I gotta run an errand first, okay?’
“I couldn’t speak. He drove on while I sort of sat in a daze, like I was just a regular passenger getting a ride. My nose was killing me but I tried not to cry. Soon he was on McFarland, and then he pulled onto the interstate. I still thought, okay, maybe there’s a chance he’ll do his errand and then drop me at home. But he drove and drove. I was trying to keep calm and not show him that I was scared. I saw cars driving past us, and I made eye contact with a few people. I thought maybe I should open my window and scream or try to signal for help. Because I knew I was in trouble. We’d gone five miles, maybe more. I even thought of opening the door and jumping out. I may have put my hand on the door, near the lock. But he was watching me like a hawk, with that lazy eye of his—that made him scarier. And that’s when he reached under the seat and pulled out a gun. A pistol. It looked real. ‘Not such a Superman now, are you? You try to yell for help or do anything funny, I’ll blow your brains out.’ He said it so calmly. Like . . . like killing some kid was the same to him as swatting a fly. ‘Go ahead and cry, baby. But I’ll kill you if you try anything.’”
Sam stops speaking then. He still stares straight ahead, like he’s in a trance. I want to say something—but what? What do I say to this?
“He kept on driving. At one point he finally pulled off the interstate. ‘What do you want with me?’ I asked. I wanted to know. I wanted it to be over with, whatever it was. He pulled behind a closed-down gas station. I thought, he’s going to kill me here.”
Attempted murder. Kidnapping. Here it all is. I feel like I might puke.
“‘Please don’t hurt me,’ I said. I don’t even know if he could understand a word I said. I was blubbering and trying to choke words out. . . . It was terror. Total terror.”
Right then we finally look at each other. Sam’s eyes are dry, but he looks deflated. It takes all my willpower not to slide my hand over to his. To touch him. To say, “I’m sorry.
” Nothing I could do feels good enough. But maybe he can see how I feel, and maybe that’s enough. I hope it’s enough.
“It was almost a relief when he told me to shut up and get in the back. There was like a little cramped backseat behind the main two seats. No one could sit there comfortably, but he cleared away some stuff. He made me lie down the whole way, with my head near the passenger side so he could keep an eye on me from the driver’s seat. And then he drove off again. He drove and drove. I thought we must be driving hundreds of miles away. It got dark out.”
By then, back in Pine Forest, we were probably being grilled by the police. By then everyone was in a panic. It was hard to believe that all these things were going on at the same time.
“At one point I fell asleep. But then I woke when I felt the truck slow down. I kept my eyes shut. I knew he was watching me. The truck finally stopped. I opened my eyes then. He smiled at me. Not that evil, creepy smile. I can’t describe it. But it was like he was trying to turn into someone different from what he’d been the past few hours. His voice was different, too. I’ll always remember it. He said, ‘Wake up. We’re home.’” Sam pauses, shakes his head. “‘Home.’ Can you believe it?”
Right then I see my mother’s car rounding the bend in the road. Her car lights are on, though it isn’t really that dark yet. “My mom’s here,” I say, but I don’t move. I feel like I’m chained to the ground.
“Yeah,” Sam says, watching as the car approaches.
Even when she parks, we both keep sitting there. I take another sip of water, and then offer one to Sam. He takes it and sips and hands it back to me, and I take another gulp, knowing that I’m drinking in tiny particles of Sam now, the way he was drinking in particles of me. Connected.
“Josh?”
“Yeah?”
“If you don’t want to hang out with me again, I’ll . . . I’ll understand.”
Mom honks her horn. I guess because she’s in a rush, or maybe she thinks we don’t see her. As if on cue, Mrs. Manderson’s car swings into view.
“Why would you think that?” I say.
Sam doesn’t look at me, just shrugs.
We Now Return to Regular Life Page 14
