Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1)

by Jamie Mayfield

  “Mr. Barnes, is everything okay?” I asked tentatively. Looking at me for a long moment, almost as if he were trying to decide if he could trust me, he finally spoke.

  “Last night when I got home from work, I had an e-mail,” he started and took a deep, shaky breath. Not wanting to be overheard, he got up from behind his desk and shut his classroom door. “A guy I’d dated in college, someone I cared about very much, died yesterday. He had cancer, but his treatment and his ability to fight the disease were encumbered due to AIDS. He just deteriorated so rapidly; it’s only been a year since he was diagnosed.” Falling back into his chair, Mr. Barnes put his head in his hands. “It’s incredible to me that just a few years ago, we were happy together, and now he’s dead. I’ll never be able to tell him what that time in my life meant to me.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. I couldn’t help myself.

  “I’m sorry about your friend,” I said, having little idea what else to say in order to comfort him. With that small gesture of affection, he seemed to come back to himself. Clearing his throat, he sat back in his chair, pulling away from my consolation.

  “We have to be careful,” he said, suddenly wary, and of course I knew it was true, as the school administration would use any reason they could find to either fire him or expel me. Walking to the door quickly, he opened it again and said quietly, “Thank you for your thoughts, though; I appreciate that.”

  Taking my cue from him, I went back to my seat in front of his desk. We talked for the next fifteen minutes about mundane things like schoolwork and what he had planned for upcoming art projects, neither of us touching the subject of his friend again. I wished there was something I could do for him, but I knew there was nothing, just like I would be inconsolable if something happened to Jamie.

  Then a thought came to me, something I hadn’t considered before. I hadn’t gotten a call, a letter, an e-mail, hell, even a carrier pigeon from Jamie since he’d left nearly a month ago. It was unfathomable to me that they could be keeping him so heavily guarded that he couldn’t send me an e-mail from the library, or even a coffeehouse. Jamie was a bright and gifted guy. If he could, he would’ve found a way to communicate with me. That meant he wasn’t able to get any kind of message to me. The thought scared me more than any nightmare I’d had since he’d left.

  The rest of the day passed with excruciating slowness. I wanted to get home and do some Internet searches on Richard’s computer. Jamie’s name, some of the usernames he’d used for various things, anything that might help me to get a read on where he was, or more importantly, how he was. I felt ashamed that I hadn’t done it earlier, that I hadn’t thought about it before. I’d been so preoccupied with my own problems, my own depression, that it hadn’t occurred to me Jamie might be having the same issues or worse. I guess in the back of my mind, I’d just consoled myself with the fact that in San Diego, he wouldn’t have such a hard time with being gay, even if anyone did find out. California seemed to be a pretty gay-friendly place, and right now, it might as well have been a whole world away.

  I felt so selfish.

  Those thoughts consumed me throughout that period and into the next. I was barely able to answer when called upon in class, because I was so focused on how it could’ve escaped my notice that I hadn’t heard from the boy I loved more than anything. The constant reminder that I hadn’t even spared one passing thought to Jamie’s silence made my stomach churn. Finally, during the middle of fifth period, I asked Mr. Butler for the bathroom pass because I was pretty sure I needed to vomit.

  He took one look at my face and handed me the pass without a word. I must have looked as bad as I felt.

  The hall was empty as I made my way to the boys’ bathroom just around the corner from Mr. Butler’s classroom. It didn’t occur to me to be scared that I was unprotected in the hallway. I’d just made it into the stall when I dropped to my knees, my stomach lurching precariously. A light sheen of sweat had formed on my forehead, and I knelt there, waiting.

  It was a few minutes before I realized I wasn’t actually going to throw up. Lifting myself off the floor, I turned to sit on the toilet, breathing deeply, trying to control the rolling in my stomach. I refused to believe that Jamie just didn’t want to contact me. His last words to me, the ones that maintained a constant vigil in my heart, had been “Never forget that I love you.” No, if Jamie were even remotely capable of sending me a message, he would have. That led me to only one conceivable conclusion: that he wasn’t able. The fear of that thought radiated through me, right into my bones.

  Standing up with a sigh, I turned the lock and caught the stall door as it opened. I was just about to step out into the main part of the bathroom when the far door opened with a bang and a group of boys walked in. I didn’t even think. I just closed the stall door as quietly as I could and re-engaged the lock.

  “Hey, Carter.” My heart pounded at the sound of Brad Mosely’s voice, clearly recognizable even over the sound of the faucet. He was talking to Ryan Carter, one of his buddies from the football team who was only slightly smaller than he was. Silently, I prayed they would leave before the bell rang and more guys came in between classes. Things could get really ugly if there were a group of them.

  “Are you still going to ask Emma to homecoming?’

  “Yeah,” the second boy replied, and his voice sounded almost surprised. “That was the plan, right? Try and get her out of her funk over that Mayfield guy. Besides, your sister’s nice. It wasn’t her fault she got messed up with those fags.”

  My heart pounded faster.

  “I just don’t want to see her hurt again. That kid really did a number on her. She cried for a week after he left town. I don’t know if it was because he left or because she figured out that he’d lied to her, but she’s been a wreck ever since. I can’t help but wonder, if that damned McAllister hadn’t screwed things up for them, maybe they’d have had a shot. No wonder his parents threw him away and put him in foster care.”

  Jesus, did that moron really think Jamie would have married his sister? Though I did feel a little bad for Emma; we had used her and lied to her in order to protect our secret. She hadn’t deserved the way we’d treated her.

  I was still thinking about Emma Mosely when I realized they’d stopped talking. Instantly, my heart began to hammer in my chest. If they realized I was there and got me out of my hiding place, there was nothing to stop them from beating me to death in the boys’ bathroom of Crayford High School. Like a cornered animal, I started frantically trying to think of ways to get out of there undetected, but of course, there weren’t any.

  Looking under the stall door would have been foolish as well, because they would see me and most likely pull me out by my hair. God, I hated feeling like such a victim all the time. The room was absolutely silent as I counted the beats of my own frantic heart, trying to wait them out.

  With quiet desperation, I considered throwing the door open and trying to take them off guard in order to make a run for it when I heard the outer bathroom door open. Their footsteps receded to the hallway outside as the door banged shut again. I sat in the stall, breathing hard, completely unable to believe I’d let my guard down like that. Had they found me hiding in there, I would’ve ended up in the hospital or worse.

  On shaking legs, I finally exited the stall.

  The rest of the day seemed unbearably long.

  As soon as I got home that afternoon, I headed straight up to Richard’s office, feeling decidedly more confident about using it than I had when looking for answers to why I was gay. The door was open and I walked in, sitting calmly in Richard’s office chair. I hit the button on the computer and sat waiting for it to boot. On the way home from school, I’d decided the horrible feelings I had about not searching for Jamie sooner were counterproductive. I needed to focus on the task at hand and be furious with myself later, when I was alone late at night trying to piece my life back together.

  Finally the desktop came up, and I opened up
an Internet browser. I clicked in the search box and started to type the first thing that came to mind: “Jamie Mayfield.” To my surprise, as I started typing, his name auto-filled into the box. There was only one reason why the search box would already know Jamie’s name. My heart warmed at the thought that Richard and Carolyn cared about him, about us, enough to look for him. Apparently, they cared more than I did. Whoever it was had already been searching, maybe starting as soon as Jamie left.

  The tears rolled down my cheeks before I could stop them.

  “Jamie, I’m so sorry,” I whispered, finally allowing myself to grieve over my loss, my mistake, even my current situation. I sat with my face in my hands for a long time, just trying to get it all out. It was an impossible situation with impossible odds. How would I ever find Jamie? Wiping my face, I finished typing his name and began my search because I had to find him. I just had to.

  Over a thousand results came up.

  Taking a deep breath and blowing it out through my teeth, I settled back in the chair to go through the results. A lot of them were social networking sites; a few were sites that people used to connect with old school friends. I clicked through link after link, searching for any sign of my Jamie.

  Two hours later, I’d found none.

  I heard the front door open, and a few minutes later Richard came into his office as I clicked on yet another link. A beautiful blond boy came up on the screen under the heading of James Michael Mayfield III. Again, it wasn’t my Jamie. Sighing, I was about to close the search result window when Richard stopped me.

  “You should save your search results so you don’t waste your time looking at the same sites next time,” he remarked as he grabbed a book off the shelf.

  “When I went to search for Jamie’s name, it was already recognized by the search engine. Have you been looking for him too?” I asked, mostly out of curiosity but with some measure of gratitude as well.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I know how much it means for you to find him, but I haven’t been any more successful than you have. I’m hoping that after a time, his name will show up on a sports team or an academic team somewhere and we’ll be able to find him. I also checked with Hal down at the post office. I saved his daughter’s life after she was stung by a bee and went into shock. He said their forwarding address was San Diego, but he could lose his job if he gave it to me. Hal and his wife have five kids to support; he couldn’t take the chance. Of course, I tried searching the white pages for San Diego first, but there are dozens of Mayfields, and none of them were ‘Mitch’.”

  At least we knew they’d told me the truth, and he really was in California.

  “All I can hope is that sometime over the next eight months, I can at least get some idea where he is. It’ll make the search easier when I finally get there,” I said offhandedly, and then realized exactly what I’d just revealed. I looked up at Richard, who was eyeing me speculatively.

  “So you do plan on going, then? I had a feeling you would,” he said with a sigh. “I can’t say that I agree with your decision to go, all alone with only a high school diploma to support yourself.” I started to argue, and he held his hands up, cutting me off. “But I know it’s something you need to do. Just don’t be surprised when we try to talk you out of it. I wish…. I just wish it weren’t so far away. There’s only so much Carolyn and I can do from that kind of distance if you get in trouble.” It was the first time he’d ever talked about wanting to keep in contact after I left their care. In the nearly seven years I’d been with them, I’d never seen another foster kid they’d taken in contact them.

  “But,” he continued, “you’re going to need to wait eleven months to start your journey, not eight.” I looked at him, confused.

  “I graduate in June, that’s eight months! The only reason I’m staying now is to finish school and save up some money so I can go and find him.”

  “Yes, you graduate in June, but you don’t turn eighteen until August,” he reasoned. “No one is going to rent you a place to live; they may not even hire you for a job until you’re of age. Carolyn and I would be negligent if we let an underage boy in our care just leave, Brian.”

  He was right. More than anything, what concerned me was that I might not be able to find a place to live. I couldn’t just sleep on the street. Considering that, I decided I might be impulsive about going halfway across the country to find Jamie, but I couldn’t be stupid about it. I needed a well-developed plan.

  So while the other kids shunned me at lunch, I worked on my plan.

  While the other kids participated in their afternoon sports, I worked on my plan.

  While the other kids went to football games and school dances, I worked on my plan.

  One of the first things I did was find the branch of Jamie’s father’s company located in San Diego. In a sudden burst of inspiration, I dialed the office and asked for Mitch Mayfield. I hung up before the transfer completed, but that solidified the fact that they’d indeed made it to San Diego. Jamie’s father was working in the San Diego office, so they had to live within driving or train distance. I checked with an Internet mapping software, which gave me a likely geographic search area. Cross-referencing that with local schools, I narrowed it down to a smaller area. That was where I would start once I arrived.

  Having a place to start was great, but I also needed money. Monday morning, I walked into every store on our local main street looking for a job. I could stock shelves, move boxes, work the counter, or do anything else they needed as long as it paid. Unfortunately, no one was interested. Even the stores with help-wanted ads in the windows passed over me as soon as they read my name on the application. I went to the mills outside town, I went to every junkyard, every fast food place, every place where I thought I was remotely qualified to work. None of it mattered.

  “I can understand the kids at school,” I told Carolyn the following Saturday morning. “The kids don’t know any better, but the adults?”

  “Nothing spreads gossip faster than a church full of women, honey,” Carolyn said, trying to comfort me. “I’m sure the preacher has been doing his fair share too, all in the name of God, of course.”

  “I have to find work, Carolyn. I can’t go to California with”—I began and reached into my pockets—“a dollar fourteen and my school library card.” I slumped down into a chair at the kitchen table and opened the newspaper that had been discarded there. Grabbing a pen, I went through the classifieds to see if there might be a job I was qualified for, but most of them required some kind of training. My disappointment mounted as I passed over ad after ad without circling any.

  Hours later, I was lying in bed, staring at my picture of Jamie. My love for him burned in my chest, then in my throat, and finally in my eyes. From almost the moment I’d come to live with the Schreibers, no matter what went wrong in my life, Jamie had always been there for me. And now that everything was wrong, I didn’t even know where he was. All I wanted in that moment was just to talk to him, to get some kind of message from him to know he was okay. If I was completely honest with myself, I wanted him to hold me. I wanted to hold him. I wanted for us to weather the storm together, like we were meant to.

  “I love you, Jamie. I miss you so much,” I whispered to his image in the darkness.

  AFTER another unsuccessful weekend of job hunting and Internet searches, Monday morning came with depressing swiftness. I was another week closer to graduation, to my birthday, to the time when I needed to be on a bus to California—but if I couldn’t raise the money, I would never see Jamie again. I couldn’t let that happen. Maybe if Jamie had only been my boyfriend, I could’ve let him go and gotten on with my life, but he wasn’t. Jamie was my whole world.

  School was surprisingly uneventful, and I should’ve known then that it had been far too quiet. There were no taunts in the hallway, no snide remarks during class, not even an attempt to take my lunch. It wasn’t until I was running down the north hallway, late for my last class of the day, th
at I finally found out why. As I reached the end of the hallway nearest the gym, I saw Mosely leaning against the wall, and instinctively I turned and walked in the other direction, my head down and my shoulders hunched. I felt, rather than saw, him follow, and I got the horrible suspicion he’d been waiting for me. My heart started to pound a little harder as the adrenaline flowed freely though my body. Looking up at the gym doors, I saw two of Mosely’s friends coming toward me, but by then it was too late.

  It took all three of them to get me into the equipment room, and I was fighting so hard they almost had to carry me there. For the rest of my life, I will never forget the hatred in their eyes.

  15

  “BRIAN….”

  “Brian…. Can you hear me?”

  The voice penetrated the darkness first. There was a faint beeping sound around the edges of the voice, something almost otherworldly, and at first I didn’t recognize it. I concentrated on the voice instead; it reminded me of love, of home. As my consciousness started to return, so did the blinding pain, and I moaned breathlessly in reaction to it.

  “Brian…. Can you squeeze my hand?”

  I became faintly aware that someone was holding my hand. Oh God, it couldn’t be….

  “Jamie,” I moaned, only the sound was muffled, like my mouth just wouldn’t work right.

  “Brian, don’t try to talk. It’s okay; you’re going to be okay….”

  My heart swelled, and I wanted to open my eyes, I wanted to see him, but I was so tired. Doing the only thing I could think of, I squeezed his hand with a surprising lack of strength, and he squeezed right back. God, there was so much I wanted to tell him, so much I wanted to ask him. And suddenly, I was terrified to go back to sleep, because if I did, he would disappear again. I tried again to open my eyes, but they were still too heavy.