“Hey, baby,” I say. “It’s kinda late but I still miss youuuuu.”
Shawn and Tino find two sticks and start pretending they’re Luke and Darth Vader. I can’t figure out which one is which.
He says, “Lio.” His voice is really quiet. Is he crying? That’s so sad. I don’t want him to cry when I’m not there. “I need to talk to you.”
“’Kay. Shoot.”
“I’m with Cody right now.”
Before my mouth was on fire from the Jack Daniel’s, and now it feels like I’m chewing ice. “What?”
“I’m at his school. He’s having an open house and I came to see him.”
“Why . . . why did you do that?”
“I don’t know. He’s in the bathroom right now, and I just need to . . .”
“He’s changed. Tell me that. It’s been so long. He’s gone and away and now you’re with me.”
“I’m with you. Listen to me, Lio, I’m with you. I’m just . . . I’m confused, and I didn’t think it was fair not to tell you, and he hasn’t changed, and I don’t know if I’ve changed either.”
I feel my heart rising up my chest. “I’ve changed! That’s not fair! I’ve changed! I’m talking to you! You can’t tell me nothing’s changed when here I am talking to you! Why didn’t you tell me you were going to see him?”
“Lio. Calm down.”
“Listen to me! I’m talking to you!”
Shawn and Tino are all, “Whoa, listen to Lio all noisy.”
“You’re drunk.” Craig’s voice is hard. “This doesn’t exactly count as you being really brave or something.”
“Oh, GO FUCK YOUR BOYFRIEND!” I slam the two halves of my phone together.
He left. He’s with Cody. I went away to New York for a few fucking days, and he goes back too. To his New York. I’m not making sense. But none of this is okay. I can’t ever go back to where I was. I can’t freak out and regress. I can’t do that because there is no going back for me. I can’t use the shit that’s happened to me as an excuse to pretend I don’t have a boyfriend who gets hurt when I freak out, because I didn’t have anything when I didn’t have a boyfriend. I had this city and this city will never be the same and it’s not because of September 11th and it’s not because of the sniper, it’s because of Dad and Jasper and Craig and Craig’s parents and his goddamn brother and Jack and home.
I’m here and the towers are gone and the people are dead and there’s Craig, and he doesn’t give a fuck, and no one he’s given a shit about has ever died, Christ, the boy has five grandparents because one of them got divorced and remarried, and what the fuck does he know about anything, and he and Cody should probably just get together and make out because Jesus they’re both going to be around forever so what’s even the fucking point of cancer boys like me cancer boy cancer boy cancer boy.
“Give.” I hold out my hand. I keep it out until Tino gives me the bottle, and I drink and drink and drink until Shawn pulls my arm away.
“Stop,” he says, and he hits me on the back because I guess I’m coughing. There’s Jack Daniel’s coming out my nose.
“I want to dance,” I say.
Shawn knows a guy who knows a guy who blew a guy and we’re in the club no problem. I chain-smoke until my lungs threaten to catch fire. We have Xs on our hands so we can’t buy drinks. Big deal. We don’t even have any money. And we’re already drunk. Who gives a shit? No one I know.
“Have you heard about the shooting guy?” I ask this boy who’s dancing with me. He’s tall and looks like Craig. Here I go looking for Craig in everyone. This is the beginning of the end. Kiss me kiss me kiss me. He is not a boy. He is at least twenty-five and I like every year of him.
He says, “What?”
“They’re calling him the betro sniper,” I say. “No. Betro’s not a word. Beltway sniper. Not metro. Beltway sniper.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He kisses me.
Someone somewhere is dying right now!
But it isn’t me.
Statistically . . . ugh fuck that I thought I was over that shit.
Statistically, it could be me at any minute.
“Whoa.” I push back from the boy. I’m going to fall over, but he catches me. I thought I was closer to the floor than this. Where are Shawn and Tino? “Whoa.”
“You’re all right, kid.”
The music thrums at my ears and it feels like an attack, and I don’t want it to stop. I feel it and I know it and I anticipate every beat before it happens. This is what my fight song is for. For fending off attackers. I am tough for a reason and it is to fucking destroy the music. I dance hard.
I don’t know this song, but I know exactly what is happening right now. I know exactly what is . . . where are Shawn and Tino?
I put my forehead against this guy’s chest. “Donttouch.”
He says, “What’s up with your hair, huh? You look like a little baby freak.”
“I have cancer.” I stand up and rub my eyes hard. “I’m from Washington, D.C. No, no, I’m not. I’m from Wheaton, Maryland!”
He gives me this small laugh. Is he as uncomfortable as I am? Craiger. “That’s cool.”
“And I have to go home,” I say. “I should take the train. I don’t want to fly by myself. Y’know what? They need to leave my city alone. Ima tell them. LEAVE MY CITY ALONE!”
The boy wraps his arms all the way around me and we’re dancing, twirling around, spinning spinning spinning. He is warm and smells like deodorant. My cheek is wet but I don’t think I’m crying. I think it’s his sweat.
He says, “You are soooooo drunk, kid.”
“I’m a virgin.”
He says, “Oh . . .”
“Fuck me.” I push my forehead into his chest. “Fuck me fuck me fuck me, I don’t want to die a virgin. It’s not fair. It’s not fair not fair, don’t let me die a virgin. I could drop dead at any moment.”
He says, “All right, kid, it’s time for you to try someone different. You’re not coming home with me tonight. Too young.”
“I’m not too . . .” I grab on to him. “Take me home with you!”
“Off, kid.”
But I don’t let go.
We’ve switched to a different song. I know this one. I listened to it over IM one time when Craig sent me the link and I said, Im dancing around like a drag queen, and he said, so am I.
“Dance with me,” I say. I would whisper it but he would never hear me. It doesn’t matter. He’s never going to hear me there’s so much news—noise, I meant to think noise—and this is a room full of other boys and I’m too small, no one’s ever going to see me. “I’m small because I have cancer!” I scream.
He pushes me off. “Kid, cut it out, that’s not funny.”
He pushed me too hard. I’m on the floor. He doesn’t offer his hand. He’s gone. I’ve hit the ground hard and it hurts. Someone kicks me and it hurts. Did I hit my head? My stomach hurts. I’m not small enough because I haven’t disappeared. Where are Shawn and Tino? Who cares, neither of them looks like Craig.
CRAIG
CODY WANTS TO SHOW ME EVERYTHING HE’S MADE since he’s been here, and it’s more than I can believe, canvas after sculpture after canvas. Some of the pills he’s taking must have switched on some artistic thing in his brain. I know I’m bitter and angry and this is probably a horrible thing to think, but it totally feels like every time someone goes to any kind of rehabilitative place, whether it’s for drugs or abuse or attitude or whatever their problem is, they all come out artists. Everyone’s a fucking artist now.
And I want this to be evidence that Cody’s changed enough that I don’t have to love him anymore. He wasn’t an artist when I loved him. So.
And then he turns to me with that big smile, that I just won a soccer game smile, the second his mom leaves the room, and he’s going, “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” and his voice is so soft and beautiful and exactly what I remembered, and there’s his hand on my knee, an
d it feels like his hand and it feels like my knee, and even though we’re in this awkward dorm that looks like a hospital room, I’m with the same boy who’s been in my room, my room, my room, my bed.
“I missed you too,” I whisper, because I did, and because I’m really not sure I believe in falling out of love, and because Lio was so mean and so drunk.
And now Cody is kissing me.
Shit, he’s kissing me.
His hand is on my cheek, his fingers just centimeters away from my earlobe, and his other hand is in his lap, curled into the loosest fist.
His eyes are closed.
I pull back a little. “Cody . . .”
He watches me.
“I missed you,” he says.
I nod a little.
He scrapes his finger against the edge of his desk, drawing up splinters of wood underneath his fingernail. I don’t want to watch but I do anyway because it looks like it hurts.
He says, “I always had this fantasy that you’d just show up one day. I used to imagine it. I’d be sitting in class or therapy or something, and you’d appear in the doorway, here to rescue me.”
I nod a little.
I should tell him to stop scratching his desk.
“I missed you,” he says again.
“I missed you too,” I whisper.
And I missed his hands and his hair and . . . everything about him is the boy I poured into me, the boy I wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything.
He says, “I always kind of hoped you were waiting, like those wives when their husbands go off to war. That’s so stupid.”
“I was waiting.”
“Then who’s the guy?” he says, in the back of his throat.
I don’t know what to do, so I just say, “He’s Lio.”
“Then what the fuck happened to waiting?”
The fact that I am afraid he is going to hit me right now should tell me everything I need to know. It doesn’t. But I can close my eyes and see Lio, so angry so drunk and so stable and so right now. And so willing to listen.
“I stopped,” is all I can say, because it is the only truth.
There’s no reason. It’s just what happened. I stopped waiting because that was the part of the story that came next for me.
He looks so heartbroken, and I don’t know what to do.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. But sorry is all I can be for him right now.
I’m not even doing this for Lio, but for me.
And it sucks.
Cody has to sleep a lot, but he says it’s okay, I can stay, he won’t wake up. He’s a heavy sleeper now. He never used to be.
But he did always sleep, so much. Whenever he was upset, he’d sleep. It was like crying or something.
Until he stopped sleeping and stopped crying. At least I still do one of the two. So does Lio.
I call him. It’s two in the morning, and I’m supposed to be in the guest dorms. I shouldn’t be in this room. I promised the night nurse that I was leaving any minute. I shouldn’t have left Maryland. It doesn’t feel right not to be there now.
Lio shouldn’t pick up. He should be asleep. He should be too scared to talk on the phone even if he is awake, because he’s Lio, and he can’t have gotten better all by himself, he can’t have fixed himself.
And then I hear rustling around and his phone click on.
He fixed himself.
“Hello?” His voice is so tiny and crackly.
Everything I wanted to say to him is gone. I don’t even know what it was, because right now all I know is Lio needs me. He needs me. I can feel it. It’s somewhere in my stomach.
Cody’s crying in his sleep. Shit.
“What’s going on?” I ask Lio, quietly. “What’s wrong?”
“’M throwing up.”
“Ohhhh.” My stomach really does hurt. “Oh. You drank too much.”
“Drank. Too. Much.”
“Where are you?”
“The bathroom. The floooooor.”
“At home?”
“Mom’s.”
“That’s what I meant, yeah.”
I listen to him throw up for a minute. God. He sounds like he’s about to bring up his pancreas.
“Breathe,” I tell him, when I hear him come back to the phone. “Poor thing. Breathe.”
“’M so good at throwing up, put it on a resume.”
It’s hard not to roll my eyes at him sometimes, I swear. “Poor little cancerboy.”
“Kissed someone.”
“Yeah?” I sigh. “I’m not really surprised.”
“Was stupid. All of it so stupid. Did you kiss Cody?”
“He kissed me. Didn’t kiss back.”
He exhales. “I suck.”
Oh. “No, it’s okay. I . . . I kind of like screwing up a little less than you. For once.” Because I’m not angry either.
Because it’s not as if he started this. This whole time, he has been the one reaching out, offering out that shattered heart to me with both hands, like in that ring he wears. And I kicked my feet against the ground and went I don’t knoooooooow, Lio, I don’t knooooow, and what was I expecting to happen? Did I think he’d wait?
But he did. I don’t ever want to give him a reason to stop.
My stomach feels warm all of a sudden.
He waited for me.
He says, “I called your brother.”
“What?”
“I was sad and I called your brother.”
“You’re not going to kill yourself. Don’t say that.”
“It’s his day off. I called him at your house.”
I breathe. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Don’t kill yourself, Lio.’”
“Don’t do it.”
“I’m not gonna. I promised. You know what, Craig? This is love in the time of shit,” he says, and then he’s throwing up again.
“Yeah,” I say. “But love love love love love love.”
I kneel next to Cody and wipe the tears off his cheeks. “Don’t cry,” I whisper to him. “I will always love you. I promise.”
Because I can give him that, but I can never get back to the place where it will mean anything to him. I kiss his cheek to close the door.
Once I’m in the guest dorms, the internet finally decides to tell me, at 3 a.m., that a man was shot six hours ago in Ashland, Virginia.
He was in a parking lot outside a restaurant.
It couldn’t have been me or Lio or Cody, because we’re all out of town. And none of us would have been in Virginia, anyway. It really couldn’t have been Lio, logically. It could not have been Lio.
But
it could have been Lio.
And I can’t get that thought out of my brain no matter what I do. It could have been Lio. We fought and we hung up and what if it had been Lio?
I still don’t believe it could have been me. I don’t know if I ever will. I don’t know if that stupid heartbeat in my head is ever going to shut up enough for me to realize that I’m human even though I am some big bad invincible teenager me me me. But Lio, Lio is human, Lio is a stupid imperfect human with stupid hair who gets drunk and stupid like a heart-aching fifteen-year-old and it could have been him and that is enough reason to be concerned.
This guy who was shot was thirty-seven, but twenty-two years ago he might have been someone’s Lio.
It could have been Lio.
There could have been a sniper in New York tonight.
He could have gotten alcohol poisoning.
He could have choked on a wine cork.
He could have gotten cancer.
It could have been Lio. It could have been Lio Lio Lio Lio Lio.
Nothing else matters. And all of it matters, because everything is in the same world as him. Everyone in the whole world is in this room with him.
But tonight it’s all about him, and the whole world is an incubator to make Lio the best man he can be, and I want to help, and I want to be a hand on him, a good hand, and I
want everything in this whole world to take care of him. And I am going to help.
Though, the truth is, that kid can take care of himself, and I’m sorry but that is the most spectacular fucking thing I can ever remember.
I think about Cody, and this isn’t really a decision, not really. The truth is that it never was.
And this all would have been easier if Cody had changed, or if Cody were still truly unavailable and not just inconvenient, or if there were some tangible, understandable reason we couldn’t be together. There isn’t. And the bottom line is, there isn’t any ending here, not really. He hugs me good-bye, and I can tell he wants to kiss me, and I want to kiss him, too, but I hold up my hand and shake my head.
There’s nothing movie-script ending about this, and I still love him, and in the car I think what if what if. I don’t know if I’ll ever get closure, the way Lio says he did when his brother died. It still sucks that we’re not together, and a part of my life will probably always suck because it’s not happening with Cody, but I’m going home, and I’m going home to Lio.
And he comes straight to my house from the airport, and he runs through my door in that zigzag and I shout, “Run, Lio, run,” and I kiss him in my kitchen like I’ve never kissed anyone in my life. It feels a little hilarious, like I’m trying to sweep his whole body into mine. Starting with hands, then arms, then lips.
Then I take his head between both my hands and say, “Are you okay?”
He isn’t pale or scared or throwing up. He’s looking up at me with that smile that could wake the dead. “I’m awesome.” He yanks my head down and kisses me hard.
Yeah. He’s awesome.
“Do you want to talk about seeing Cody?” he asks me. “Must have been hard.”
I shake my head. “I don’t have anything new to say about him. Want to talk about your Mom?”
“I’m not okay with her.”
I nod a little.
“I hate talking.”
I give him a half smile. I hope I look sympathetic.
He breathes out like I’m such a hard thing to put up with, and then he says, “How about I tell you what color I want to paint my room?”
And there’s that grin again.
After he tells me—dark green—we talk some more and we figure out that what we really want to talk about is how we want to spend every possible minute together until our parents make us go back to school.
Gone, Gone, Gone Page 15
