When I Grow Up (Tales from Foster High)

by John Goode

  Brad

  WATCHING HIM drive off was the hardest thing I had ever done.

  But I was right and we both knew it.

  Hooray me for being right.

  Kyle

  ROBBIE AND Sebastian met me at Nancy’s for breakfast. Still no Gayle.

  “So no dice, huh?” Sebastian asked, sipping his coffee.

  “Nope, he said we were broken up and that was that.”

  “Sucks,” he said, grabbing some sugar to stir in.

  Robbie slapped his arm. “Sucks? Really?” To me he demanded. “So what are you going to do?”

  “What is there to do? He made his choice and, as much as I hate to admit it, he’s right. I’ve been so screwed up about him leaving me that I ended up driving him away. I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

  “And that sucks,” Sebastian added pointedly. “Not sure how me saying that it sucks was inappropriate.”

  “You can’t just give up,” Robbie said, glaring at Sebastian.

  “It takes two to save a relationship, and Brad isn’t interested anymore.”

  “Bullshit,” Sebastian grunted, his eyes on his phone.

  We both looked at him; a few seconds ticked away before he realized we were staring at him.

  “If you tell me that ‘bullshit’ was something you read on Facebook, I’m taking your phone away from you,” Robbie warned, grabbing Sebastian’s phone.

  The way Sebastian pulled his phone away from Robbie was cute. “One, don’t do that. Two, I was saying ‘bullshit’ about Brad. If he wasn’t interested, he wouldn’t have flown here at a moment’s notice.”

  “He has a point,” Robbie agreed.

  “It was guilt. What was he supposed to do? Say ‘fuck off’?”

  “Yeah,” Sebastian said without a second’s hesitation. “Some people come telling me my ex needed me? I would not just tell them to fuck off, I would send them back with several pictures of me flipping the camera off saying ‘fuck off.’”

  “Okay, then,” Robbie said after a few seconds. “Brad wouldn’t have come if he didn’t care.”

  “He cares,” I snapped. “But he doesn’t want us to be together. Caring and knowing that something isn’t working aren’t mutually exclusive things.”

  Robbie opened his mouth to reply when two people walked up to our table.

  They were high school students, and the fact they looked so young to me was like sunlight to vampire. I was barely nineteen, but I felt like I was fifty. They both had these weird grins on their faces as they looked at me.

  “Um, help you?” I asked, concerned.

  “You’re Kyle Stilleno, right?” the dark-haired one asked.

  “Are you serving me a summons or something?” I asked, wondering if they could hire high school kids to do that.

  They both laughed and the blond-haired one said, “I told you he was funny.”

  “Yes, I am,” I said, trying to get whatever this was over with.

  “I’m Jared,” the dark-haired one said, holding his hand out. “And this is my boyfriend Joel.” The blond one waved.

  I shook Jared’s hand slowly. “Okay, cool. Do I know you guys?” I asked even though I was pretty sure I didn’t.

  “I was a freshman last year,” Joel answered. “You wouldn’t know me.”

  “And I just moved here,” Jared said. “My dad is Mr. Fisher, the new principal.”

  The guy who told me to stand up at graduation and tell the truth.

  “I remember him,” I said. “Um, welcome to Foster.”

  They both giggled, and I still had no idea what was going on.

  “I just wanted to say we’re big fans.”

  “Of?” I prompted, expecting 1D or Cody Simpson.

  “See?” Joel nudged Jared. “Funny.”

  “Of you, man,” Jared explained. “If it wasn’t for you, we would have never gotten together.”

  That didn’t make sense. “How’s that, now?”

  “’Cause no one cares about people being gay anymore,” Jared said, and I gave him a look. “I mean, sure, there are always going to be haters, but that’s everywhere. You changed things.”

  “And I have your graduation speech poster,” Joel added.

  “Poster?”

  “Yeah, the AV club made a WordArt poster of it and sold them for a charity drive. They went like crazy.”

  What in the fuck was going on?

  “Wait, people bought a poster of my speech?”

  They both nodded like they were a pair of bobblehead twinks. “How cool is that?”

  It didn’t feel very cool to me.

  “Well, uhm, you’re welcome,” I said distractedly. This could not be real.

  “Do you have any advice for us?” Joel asked. “I mean, how did you make things work with Brad?”

  Something inside me cringed. “You want advice? On dating in high school?” They both nodded. “Don’t. Just don’t do it. I mean, sure, it’s fine to get together and make out and all that, but after senior year, trust me, it’s like a soap bubble and is going to pop so fast….”

  “You know what, boys?” Robbie interrupted me. “It’s been a long morning, and Kyle here has low blood sugar. Can we do this after he eats?”

  They looked concerned, but they nodded nonetheless. “Sure, sorry to bother you, man,” Jared said, backing away.

  “Say hi to Brad for us,” Joel added, and they turned and ran to the back of the diner.

  “Well, congratulations,” Robbie said once they were gone. “If you were trying to do an impression of bitter and jaded me, you pulled it off perfectly. Though I compared high school love to glitter.”

  Sebastian and I looked at him, dumbfounded.

  “Never mind, made sense in my head. The point is, you can’t be that bitter. Those kids are in love, just like you and Brad were… like you and Brad are, and it’s bad enough if you want to give up, but you can’t jump out at unsuspecting teenagers and warn them never to love again.”

  “Why not? It doesn’t end well,” I grumbled.

  “I think you want it to be over,” Sebastian announced out of nowhere.

  “What?” I almost choked.

  “I think you want it to be over because then you know you were right. I think you aren’t fighting because you want it to be over and your own prophecy to come true so you can then use that to make sure you never put yourself out there again. I think you’re scared, and I think this is an excuse for you to be alone.”

  My jaw literally dropped as I stared at him.

  “Because from what everything this one has told me,” he said, gesturing at Robbie, “there’s one question you should be asking yourself, and you’re not.”

  “I didn’t tell him to say any of this,” Robbie assured me.

  “What question?” I almost dared Sebastian to say.

  “What would Brad do?”

  Fuck. I guess it was the day for me to be wrong.

  Brad

  SO I took a shower and had some breakfast while waiting for my parents to wake up.

  My dad was first. He looked worse than I did in the morning, and it was kind of funny. He looked better than when I left—he’d lost some weight, got some color on him… it was kind of weird.

  “You go to sleep yet?” he asked, pouring himself some coffee.

  “Yeah, Kyle woke me up this morning.”

  “How’d that go?” he asked, sitting down across from me.

  “It’s just not going to work out,” I said, trying not to sound like I was pouting.

  “You sure?” he asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Yeah, why?”

  He shrugged. “Dunno, you guys seem like you had it figured out. I would have put money on you guys for the long haul.”

  “Well, that would be wasted money.” Now I was pouting.

  “So then what’s the plan? After getting your car back here.”

  “Well, I could ask Tyler for a job and enroll in online courses to get my basics out of the way?�
�� I threw it out there.

  “And you didn’t do this in California, why?” he asked. In the past I would have expected that question to be asked with scathing sarcasm or judgmental tones, but it was just a question now.

  I didn’t have an answer.

  “I know you said the reason things didn’t work out was Kyle sabotaging everything, but do you think it might have had to do with the fact that you followed him with the plan of just being with him? I mean, that sounds romantic and all, but this is real life, kiddo. Moving cross-country so you can be with someone is fine, but there has to be more to your life than that.”

  I sat there, stunned at his revelation.

  “Anyway,” he said, getting up, “figure something out. You can stay here as long as you have a job and are doing something with your education, but you are not going to sleep and eat here and end up doing nothing. That is not an option.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said a little too bitterly, and he looked back at me.

  “Look, Brad, either you’re an adult and get treated like one or you’re a kid and you get treated like one, but you don’t get to straddle that line anymore. I’m treating you like a man, not some little kid. I am telling you the rules you have to follow if you want to stay here, and that’s it. I’m not going to make you pay rent or pay me back for the car, as long as you’re moving forward. I have your back, but the second you give up and just sit around and mope… then you’re a little kid again and those aren’t rules anymore; they’re orders. Got it?” I nodded. “Good. There’s an opening at the dealership for a salesman too. I don’t think you’d ever take it, but I am putting it out there.”

  “Thanks.”

  He smiled. “Real life can suck, buddy, but you know at the end of the day what makes it all worthwhile?” I shook my head. “Knowing real life can suck, but you still get up, get dressed, and go to work because that’s what grown-ups do.”

  “That makes it better?” I asked honestly.

  “No; it makes life worth it, though, because what you make of even the parts that suck is yours, and no one can take that away from you. Ask yourself this—what do you have that no one can take away from you?”

  I couldn’t think of a thing.

  “See? When you’re an adult, you say, ‘That’s my car because I paid for it. This is my house because I bought it, and this is my life because I made it with my own two hands.’ That makes getting up worth it. Just find something you want to wake up for.”

  “I will!” I said, feeling better than I had in days.

  “Good. And until you do get a job?” I nodded. “Take out the trash for your mom.”

  Some things never change.

  Kyle

  “SO I don’t know what I’m going to do. Any thoughts?”

  My mom lay there, breathing through a tube.

  “No? Well, that’s okay. I’ve heard I am lousy at taking advice.”

  The room was quiet save for the small sounds the machines surrounding my mom made. The operation had been a success, but the doctors had no way of telling how impaired she would be until she woke up. So I sat next to her, babbling, wishing she would open her eyes.

  I was scared.

  What if she was bad? I mean bad, bad? She couldn’t stay on her own, and I had no idea how much a live-in nurse would cost. I mean, I was boned on several levels. Of course, the second I thought it was as bad as it could get, fate reminded me it could get much worse.

  My phone rang, and I saw it was Teddy from California.

  It seemed like a year since I’d last talked to him instead of a week. “Hey, what’s up?”

  “How’s your mom?” he asked, real concern in his voice.

  “Resting” was all I was comfortable saying.

  “Well, I hate to be this guy who makes things worse….”

  But he was going to.

  “Professor Madison’s midterm is Friday, and he wanted me to tell you there are no excuses.”

  Fuck. Even Madison had given me time off because my mom was, like, almost dying, but it seemed sympathy only went so far.

  “You there?” Teddy asked after a few seconds.

  “Yeah, I don’t know if things will be done here by then,” I said, truly realizing how bad things were. “There’s no way to tell how bad she’ll be until she wakes up, and no one knows when that will be.”

  “Dude…,” he said, picking up the smallest inkling of the drama I’d been dealing with all weekend. “You can’t just fly back for the test and then go back?”

  “Teddy, I don’t even know if I’m going back to school.”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding as depressed as I felt.

  “Yeah, but thanks for the call, and I appreciate the information.”

  “Let me talk to Madison. Maybe I can convince him to let you take the test over Skype or something.”

  “It really won’t matter if I’m dropping out, will it?”

  He had no answer to that.

  “Let me know what he says. I’ll try to do something here.”

  “Hey, at least you don’t have your douche of a boyfriend there fucking you up.”

  I felt a protective surge flare up at someone calling Brad something derogatory, but before it got to my mouth, I realized he wasn’t someone I needed to defend anymore.

  “Talk to you later,” I muttered, hanging up before I said something stupid.

  I glanced over at my mom. “Any chance of you waking up now?”

  Nothing.

  “Didn’t think so,” I said, feeling defeated.

  “They say talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence.”

  I stifled a yelp and stopped before I jumped out of my seat. When I looked behind me, I saw Riley’s mother standing there in a long wool trench coat. “Sorry,” I said, holding my chest. “You scared me.”

  “I have that effect,” she agreed. Coming in, she looked around the room. Finally her stare rested on me. “You are Kyle.”

  It was a statement, not a question.

  “And you’re Riley’s mom.”

  As soon as I said it, I knew it was a mistake. She glanced over at me, and I could see the pain in her eyes. Just as quickly as it had flashed, it was gone, and she gave me a weak smile. “I’m sorry. No one has called me that in a long time. I am Dolores Mathison.” She held out a gloved hand, and I shook it lightly. Nodding at my mom, she asked, “How is she?”

  “Better now.” Again I was unsure how much information to share with anyone.

  “So, I heard an undesirable person was trying to extort money from you so she could get help.”

  I nodded.

  “You figured a way around it and still gave one of them money?”

  Another nod.

  “Why?”

  Normally some stranger coming in and asking me questions would piss me off, but she carried herself with such an air of inborn authority that I found myself answering automatically. “Why not? It’s just money. He was my half brother and in a bad place, and I had the means to make his life a little better.”

  “Money doesn’t solve every problem,” she countered.

  “It solves a bunch more than you think when someone is poor. Things like food, a place to sleep, a car—having those things are insurmountable problems when someone’s poor. The solution is just a little money. So I gave him some and hoped he would do right by it.”

  She raised an eyebrow and glanced over at my mom for a second.

  “The money you gave him, it came from the money Riley left, correct?”

  I felt a cold chill in my spine as I wondered if she was here to take the money back.

  “Robbie gave it to me,” I said, sounding defensive.

  She flashed another brittle smile. “Calm down, Kyle. I’m not here to take anything away from you. I did not come off my mountain just to swoop down and attack the locals.”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked. I swear, the question just jumped out of my mouth.

  “A friend asked me a favor, so I c
ame,” she explained distantly as she finished examining the room and sat down on the chair in the corner. “These rooms are so depressing. They need a new décor.”

  I barked a laugh. “The people who are in here don’t care about the décor, trust me.”

  She stared at me for a long time as I held my breath. “You’re right, that was a crass statement for me to make. What I meant was that the people who have to be in these rooms are depressed enough by their situation; the furniture shouldn’t add to their misery.”

  “Not sure what you can do about that,” I said, sitting down on the other chair.

  “I could buy better furniture. After all, it is my hospital.”

  I cocked my head as I ran that sentence back and forth in my mind a few times. “Excuse me?”

  “The hospital. My husband and I built it decades ago for the town. Before this place, there was a tiny clinic that I wouldn’t have trusted to groom a dog, so we made the initial investment. Others followed and voilà! One hospital!”

  I just sat there, stunned. I had never heard someone say something so incredible in my life. “I’m sorry. I guess there would be something you can do. About the furniture, I mean.”

  She pulled her gloves off and folded them on her lap. “So, do you go to school?”

  “UC Berkeley,” I said, still wondering what she was doing there.

  “It’s an excellent school,” she said like we were old friends.

  “I don’t know, only been there a few months, but it seems like it.”

  “You earned a full scholarship based on your academics alone. That is impressive.”

  I had to ask. “I’m sorry, but you seem to know a lot about me.”

  “I do; I make it my business to know things. However, in your case my friend has told me a lot about you. That’s why I am here today, but it seems I was too late.”

  “For?” I asked.

  “I was going to tell Mr. Childs to do the operation despite your father’s protests. I mean, if there was a lawsuit, I was going to have to pay for it anyway.”

  “Wait, what? You came here to help me?”