Way to Go

by Tom Ryan

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  Text copyright © 2012 Tom Ryan

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Ryan, Tom, 1977 Feb. 26-

  Way to go [electronic resource] / Tom Ryan.

  Type of computer file: Electronic monograph.

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 978-1-4598-0078-6 (PDF).--ISBN 978-1-4598-0079-3 (EPUB)

  I. Title.

  PS8635.Y359W39 2012 JC813’.6 C2011-907787-6

  First published in the United States, 2012

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011943726

  Summary: Danny is pretty sure he’s gay,

  but he spends his summer trying to prove otherwise.

  Orca Book Publishers is dedicated to preserving the environment and has printed this book on paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council®.

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design by Teresa Bubela

  Cover image by Getty Images

  Author photo by Andrew Sargeant

  ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS ORCA BOOK PUBLISHERS

  PO BOX 5626, Stn. B PO BOX 468

  Victoria, BC Canada Custer, WA USA

  V8R 6S4 98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  Printed and bound in Canada.

  15 14 13 12 • 4 3 2 1

  For Andrew.

  Things got better when I met you.

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ONE

  Kierce had a rule for every situation, and he never missed a chance to toss them at me and Jay like free candy. There were hundreds of them, but three were carved in stone.

  Rule One: Keep a healthy mind in a healthy body. Kierce worked out every morning, and he tried to read at least one book a month. I could sort of understand the reading thing, but the thought of all that exercise made me sick to my stomach.

  Rule Two: If you want to get rich, you’ve got to do well in school. Study as hard as you party. I was a good student, but I didn’t see how that was going to help me get rich. I could tell you the years each of the provinces had joined Confederation, or the difference between mitosis and meiosis, but I wasn’t actually good at anything. As for partying, well, let’s just say that I wasn’t the kind of guy who was known for holding his liquor.

  Rule Three: Never, ever miss a chance to get laid. Kierce called this one the Golden Rule, and he spent a lot of time trying to follow it, with mixed results. I had a pretty good reason to ignore the Golden Rule completely, but I wasn’t about to tell that to Kierce, or anyone else for that matter.

  If I’d had rules of my own, they would have been more along the lines of, Don’t rock the boat, or, Keep your cards close to your chest. My Golden Rule would have probably been, When in doubt, get scared and clam up. As for Jay, he wasn’t really a “rules” kind of guy. Unless No worries counts as a rule.

  Jay and I had been best friends since before we could talk. There’s a picture of us side by side in our strollers, our moms standing behind us wearing hippie dresses, wooden beads and big sunglasses. Jay is beaming at the camera, and I look terrified. Typical.

  The year we were twelve, he and I were sitting on his front steps when a moving van pulled in next door. Within five minutes, Kierce had strolled over and introduced himself to us as “the best thing to happen to Deep Cove since sliced bread.” It wasn’t long before my dad was calling us the three amigos.

  Until we were fourteen, we told each other everything. I knew that Jay had wet the bed until he was ten, and that Kierce’s parents had gone through a rough patch before moving to Deep Cove. But when I woke up one night feeling horny and confused after a steamy dream about River Phoenix, I decided that some things were best kept to myself.

  By the time I was seventeen, I had a lot of practice at keeping secrets.

  ON THE LAST morning of exams, I sat in the school gym waiting for my grade eleven English final, the last thing standing between me and the summer of ’94. I looked over at Kierce, who was turned sideways, balanced on the back two legs of his chair and flirting with Charlaine MacIntosh, who was doing her best to ignore him. Not that Kierce was the kind of guy to let that bother him. “Rule Seventy-three, Dan. If at first you don’t get laid, try somebody else.”

  Three seats ahead of Kierce, at the front of the gym, Jay was tapping out a beat on his desk with a pencil. He looked pretty cheerful for a guy who hadn’t handed in half of his assignments all semester. I doubted he’d even bothered to crack a book to study.

  Finally the exam was passed out. I skimmed the questions and knew right away I wouldn’t have any problems. I glanced at Jay. He was still smiling, but I could tell by the way he was squinting at the exam and slowly shaking his head that he was screwed. No big surprise, but it was still bad news. If Jay flunked English, he’d have to repeat the year, which meant he wouldn’t graduate with us.

  There was nothing I could do about it, so I turned back to the exam and got to work. After only half an hour, Jay got up from his desk and passed his exam to the teacher on duty.

  After the exam, I met up with Kierce at our lockers.

  “How’d you do?” I asked.

  “Pretty good. I think I might have nailed the tough stuff, but who knows. Jay didn’t stick around for too long.”

  “Yeah. Shit.”

  “Well, what are ya gonna do? Do you think he’s at the Spot?”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  TO GET TO THE SPOT, you had to follow the abandoned train tracks for about a mile or so out of town, until you came to an old railway trestle that spanned a river gorge. If you scrambled down a slope that dropped from one corner of the bridge toward the river, and then hoisted yourself up onto a large cement anchor block underneath, you’d find yourself in a little room, hidden under the edge of the bridge with a clear view down through the trees and the brush to the river below. This was the Spot.

  In the Spot, you felt as if you were both floating above the world and hidden beneath it. It was pretty comfortable—for a concrete slab—and ever since Jay and I had discovered it, a couple of years before Kierce came on the scene, it had been our regular hangout. Lately we’d been going to the Spot less frequently, but Jay still spent a lot of time there, even when Kierce and I weren’t around. There were five kids in his family, and the Spot was the only place he could get some peace and quiet.

  Sure enough, he was there, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bridge, smoking. Kierce picked up a pebble and whipped it within inches of the cigarette.

  Jay made a face of mock horror. “Hey! What’s your problem?” he yelled.

  “Rule Twenty-four: Smoking’s fo
r idiots! So, you finished that exam pretty early. Are you some kind of Shakespeare expert all of a sudden?”

  Jay didn’t answer. He just flicked his cigarette over the edge, stood up and threw his backpack over his shoulder.

  “Let’s get under,” he said.

  Kierce and I followed Jay under the bridge and up into the Spot. Once we were settled, he immediately lit up another smoke. Kierce pulled back and pretended to gag. “Jesus, Jay, you’re gonna give us all cancer.”

  In answer, Jay edged a bit farther away and held the cigarette as far from us as possible. “All right, boys, I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” he said.

  “I bet I can guess the bad news,” I said.

  He laughed. “Yep, I totally shit the bed on that exam. Guess I’ll be sticking around this place for another year. Who knows, maybe I won’t even bother finishing. Maybe I’ll just head out west and make some real money.”

  Kierce rolled his eyes. “Don’t be an idiot, man. Suck it up and finish high school, otherwise you’re just asking for a miserable life.”

  “Maybe there’s some way you can take extra credits,” I said, “I don’t know, summer school or something.”

  Jay looked at me as if I was insane. “Fuck summer school. I’m not gonna piss the summer away in a classroom, reading Lord of the Flies all over again.”

  “As if you read it the first time,” said Kierce.

  “Whatever. Some people just aren’t cut out for school. Life’s about more than books and tests.”

  “Yeah, it’s about getting a hot girlfriend and buying expensive shit,” said Kierce. “Good luck doing either without a high school diploma.”

  “We’ll see,” said Jay, his big smile plastered across his face as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  Jay didn’t seem to worry about his future at all, which amazed me. Sometimes I wished I could be that laid-back. I had good marks, but no more of a plan than he did. I certainly wasn’t as motivated as Kierce, who wanted to be a lawyer. According to him, lawyers made piles of money and spent their free time cruising around on yachts with hot chicks.

  “What’s the good news?” I asked Jay. “You said you had bad news and good news.”

  “Are you kidding me?” he asked. He flicked his cigarette butt and watched it ricochet off a steel girder. “The good news is, school’s out, losers! It’s time to par-tay heart-tay.”

  “Speaking of summer, D-Man,” Kierce said to me, “you gonna make it your mission to get laid before September, or what?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said.

  I couldn’t come out and say it, but I didn’t care about getting laid. Over and over again, I’d tried to convince myself that I was going through a phase; that I just needed to meet the right girl; that as long as I didn’t act on my feelings, or tell anyone about them, then my darkest fears might not be true.

  I couldn’t really be gay. Could I?

  I imagined the whole town, led by Kierce, Jay and my family, chasing me out of town with flaming sticks and pitchforks, waving signs about Eternal Damnation and Adam and Steve. I just wanted to be normal, like everyone else.

  I did my best to shove the problem to the back of my mind, hoping a solution would eventually reveal itself. That would have been a lot easier if Kierce wasn’t so obsessed with my virginity. “Come on, guy,” he said now, reaching out to punch me in the shoulder. “It’s time to step up to the plate. Rule Sixty-two: Seize the day, dude.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m doing the best I can,” I said.

  “I dunno, Danno,” he went on. “You’ve gotta start making some moves. I mean, you’re seventeen, for Christ’s sake! Don’t you want to experience the joys”—he clutched both hands over his heart, rolling his eyes upward and grinning like a moron—“of love?”

  I gave him the finger. There was no point arguing with him.

  “I’ll tell you one thing,” said Jay. “We’ve got two whole months with nothing to do but hang out, chase girls and go to the beach. Sounds like a pretty awesome plan to me.”

  It sounded like a plan to me too. At least, most of it did.

  TWO

  On the first day of vacation, I woke up to the sound of my mom and sister moving around downstairs in the kitchen. I could smell bacon—a big deal in our house, where an exciting breakfast usually meant a choice between Cheerios and Rice Krispies.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Mom said as I walked into the kitchen. She smiled at me from across the kitchen island, where she seemed to be trying to cook something.

  My sister, Alma, looked up briefly from her seat on the other side of the island, where she was flipping through Leonard Maltin’s Classic Movie Guide: 1992 Edition. She dragged that book with her everywhere.

  “All the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, and he walks into mine,” she said.

  Alma was thirteen and obsessed with classic films. She was always quoting stuff from movies nobody else had ever seen. Her room was plastered with pictures of old movie stars like Katharine Hepburn and Clark Gable. Even Orson Welles, chewing on a stogie, glowered down from over her bed.

  “What’s with the fancy breakfast?” I asked Mom. “Is something up?”

  She smiled. “I was just thinking that since it’s the first day of summer and all, I’d try to make a real breakfast for a change. Can’t a mother do something nice for her kids?”

  I sniffed the air. “Did you burn the bacon?”

  Alma looked up from her book and rolled her eyes at me. “What do you think?”

  My mom had lots of great qualities, but her cooking wasn’t one of them.

  “Bacon shmacon,” Mom said, as she pulled the offending pan off the stove and covered it with a plate. “We’ve still got lots of eggs. How do you want them?” She stared down at a carton of eggs as if it had just dropped out of a UFO.

  “This is great, Mom,” I said, “but why don’t you let me take care of it?”

  “‘You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din,’” said Alma.

  Mom happily dropped onto a stool on the other side of the counter as I turned to rummage in the fridge. I managed to find a wrinkly green pepper, half an onion in a ziplock bag, and a rubbery chunk of bright orange cheddar cheese. I passed Alma the cheese and a grater, and started chopping up the veggies, stopping for a moment to heat up some butter in a banged-up old frying pan.

  “Your dad called while you were out last night,” Mom said.

  “Oh, so that explains the good mood,” I said, tossing the veggies into the pan and turning up the heat a little bit. “Were you guys using baby talk again?”

  “It was gross,” said Alma.

  “Give me a break, you two,” said Mom, barely able to keep the goofy grin off her face.

  Four years earlier, the bottling plant in town had closed, putting my dad—and half of Deep Cove—out of work. A lot of families had left town after that, but my parents had chosen to stay in Cape Breton. Now, to make ends meet, my dad worked out west in the Alberta oil fields. Usually he was away for months at a time.

  “He was sorry he missed you last night,” she went on. “Next time he’ll try to call when we’re all here.”

  “Oh yeah, for sure. That’ll be great.” I quickly whisked up some eggs and added them to the pan, giving them a good shake and then adding the cheese Alma had grated. I turned the heat to low, covered the pan and, while I was waiting for it to cook, put some bread into the toaster.

  I felt guilty about it, but I didn’t really mind missing my dad’s call. He and I were about as different as two people could be. He loved sports of all kinds, especially hockey, and I didn’t have an athletic bone in my body. He loved hunting. I was afraid of guns. A tattered poster of Farrah Fawcett was pinned up over the tool bench in his garage. I kept Marky Mark’s Calvin Klein ads hidden in the back of my Royal Houses of Europe encyclopedia. When you got down to it, there wasn’t a hell of a lot for us to talk about.

  Nothing, that is, except my future
.

  Dad may have given up on pushing me toward hunting and sports, but it had always been clear that he wasn’t going to go as easy on me when it came to my plans for life after high school. Whenever I did end up on the phone with him, he’d start giving me suggestions about university programs or jobs he wanted me to consider. So far, I knew he’d be happy if I became a doctor, lawyer, engineer, investment banker or rocket scientist. It didn’t matter that I wasn’t interested in any of those careers. Besides, as he never failed to point out, it wasn’t like I had any plans of my own.

  I wished I did know what I wanted to do with my life—then I would have at least had something to talk to him about—but no such luck. It was easy to imagine living the high life in a big city like New York or London. It was a lot harder to figure out how I’d pay for any of it. I just couldn’t get excited about anything, which frustrated the hell out of my dad. Missing his call meant one less opportunity to disappoint him.

  I pulled the cover off the pan and cut the eggs into three pieces.

  “Voilà,” I said, throwing some toast on their plates and handing them across the counter.

  “What is it?” asked Mom.

  “It’s a frittata,” I said. “It’s kind of like an omelet.”

  “‘As god is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again,’” said Alma, poking her fork dramatically into the air.

  “I don’t know where you learned to cook, Danny,” my mom said, for probably the millionth time. “It sure wasn’t from me.”

  It wasn’t like it was some big secret or anything. With my dad away, and my mom working crazy hours, I’d often ended up in charge of supper. You can only eat so many grilled cheese sandwiches, so I’d taught myself how to cook. I’d learned some things by reading my mom’s rarely used copy of The Joy of Cooking, but most of it I’d picked up from watching cooking shows on tv when no one else was around.

  After breakfast, Kierce and Jay came to pick me up in Kierce’s mom’s van. My family lived in the sticks, outside of Deep Cove, and since I didn’t have my license, I had to rely on Kierce, my parents or my bike for transportation. It was a pain in the ass, and Kierce never let me hear the end of it, but I couldn’t build up the nerve to take the driver’s test.