After Alex Died

by Madison, Dakota

  “I think I’m more stunned than anything else,” I admitted as I wiped dust from my backside.

  Sofia glared at Cameron. “Don’t you have your own banner to worry about? I thought the legally blondes were helping you.”

  Cameron stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked uncomfortable on his heels. “Rachel and Renee decided to hang up streamers with Dwayne and Shayelle instead. I think they got a little bored with me.”

  Bored with him? That struck me as odd. In high school he had girls clamoring to spend time with him. I had never heard any cheerleaders say they were bored with Cameron or any of the star athletes. I guess a lot had changed since then.

  “Maybe you can get Dee Dee to help you finish your banner,” Antonio offered.

  “I’m not done with my signs yet,” I stated quickly.

  “Sofia and I can finish your signs. You go help Cameron.”

  Now I was glaring at Antonio and it pissed me off when he gave me a little match-maker’s grin. While I appreciated the gesture, Cameron was not a guy I wanted to be matched with. Not now, not ever. I realized I would have to have a serious talk with both Sofia and Antonio.

  I realized that Sofia, Antonio and Cameron were all staring at me waiting for my answer. “Fine,” I spat and marched over to Cameron’s poster without another word to any of them.

  Cameron quickly caught up to me and said, “You really don’t have to help me if you don’t want to.”

  “I said I would.”

  “Okay.”

  I sat at one end of the empty banner and Cameron sat at the other. “You haven’t even started,” I observed.

  “I know. I wasn’t sure what to write or how to write it.”

  I looked over at him. He was nervously biting his top lip.

  “It’s really not a big deal,” I assured him. “It’s only a banner.”

  “I don’t want to make a mistake.”

  “We bought white paint. We can use it like correction fluid and paint over any mistakes you make.”

  When Cameron looked at me, his eyes held real worry. There was something going on that was about more than just the banner.

  “Since Sofia and Antonio already made a Welcome banner, why don’t we just write Summer Fun with College Bound or something like that?”

  He nodded. “Okay. What color should we make the lettering?”

  “Why don’t we do a rainbow and use all the colors? That would go along with the fun in the title?”

  Cameron actually laughed and I narrowed my eyes at him. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

  When Cameron peered over at me, I could see he was trying not to grin. “The girl who wears all black all the time wants to use all the colors.”

  As mad as I was at him just for existing when my brother no longer did, and as mad as I was for him calling me out on my fixation with wearing black, a small part of me was actually happy to see him smile.

  “Seriously,” he said. I could see some warmth return to his eyes. “I’m glad to see you add a little color back into your life.”

  I nodded. Me, too, I thought. Me, too.

  ***

  The kids loved the party. It could have been the fact that they were starving and there was a lot of pizza. You can never go wrong with pizza.

  Dwayne and Shayelle were siblings, a year apart, and both gorgeous, with lovely mocha skin and beautiful tiger-brown eyes. They could have just as easily spent the summer modeling as working as counselors for the College Bound program. The siblings volunteered to deejay the party and the songs they selected were a big hit with the teens. The counselors seemed to be enjoying the songs too, because most of them were on the dance floor.

  Sofia and Antonio were showing a group of kids some steps to a new line dance. And it looked like Rachel and Renee’s partners, Max and Tommy, had finally gotten the girls to dance with them. Max and Tommy knew each other from high school and were self-proclaimed band geeks, definitely not the type of guys Rachel and Renee would normally go for but their interest in Cameron seemed to have waned a little when he didn’t reciprocate their flirtation while banner making.

  I tried to keep an eye on the six kids who were our responsibility. As I suspected, Ryan and Hunter had gotten Savannah and Grace to dance with them. The kids were doing their best to keep up with some of Sofia and Antonio’s dance moves. Lyle was hanging out with Dwayne and Shayelle helping them deejay.

  That only left Destiny unaccounted for. I scanned the crowd of sweaty teens on the dance floor but I didn’t see her anywhere. I had a moment of panic at the thought of getting fired for losing a kid the very first day of the program until I saw her in the corner of the room talking to Cameron.

  I couldn’t hear what they were saying but their body language and facial expressions led me to believe it was a pretty serious conversation. I saw Destiny wipe away some tears that had streamed down her face and Cameron handed her a paper napkin that she promptly used to blow her nose.

  I hurried over to make sure everything was okay. I got the feeling Destiny had some serious issues she was dealing with and I didn’t really trust Cameron to help her deal with them.

  I was surprised when I approached and I heard Destiny say, “Thanks, that does help.”

  “Is everything okay?” I asked.

  Both Destiny and Cameron stared at me and I suddenly felt like an intruder.

  “I think I’m going to find Lyle,” Destiny announced.

  “He’s helping Dwayne and Shayelle with the music.” I pointed over to the deejay area where he was standing.

  Destiny nodded and then made her way to other side of the cafeteria.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, my eyes fixed on Cameron’s.

  “She was a little upset,” he replied.

  “Yeah, I saw that. What was she upset about?”

  He took a deep breath then exhaled. “The other girls in the group are making fun of her.”

  I crossed my arms over my chest and glared at him. “And you really think you’re the best person to give advice to someone who is being bullied?”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and glared right back at me. “Maybe I am.”

  “Oh, yeah, right,” I scoffed.

  His eye narrowed. “What I said obviously helped.”

  “Why don’t you talk to the girls who are actually doing the bullying and get them to stop? Since you have intimate knowledge of what makes a bully tick.”

  Cameron looked like he was giving it some thought. “I think the two of us need to talk to all of our kids about bullying.”

  I gulped. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go where he was leading. “Just our kids or all of the kids in the program?”

  “All of the kids in the program,” he said decisively.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  He frowned. “I can do it with or without you. I don’t need your permission, or your blessing, but I’d like to have your support.”

  “This isn’t easy for me,” I admitted.

  “Do you think this is easy for me?” he shot back.

  “Easy for you?” I could feel rage start to boil up inside. “Why should anything be easy for you?”

  “You have no idea what I’ve been through,” he whispered.

  “Well at least you’re still here. Alive. Alex isn’t.”

  “There are a lot of times I wish I wasn’t.”

  “There are a lot of times I wish you weren’t either,” I admitted.

  When our eyes met, I could see Cameron’s were filled with pain. It was a pain so familiar it made my stomach clench. It was the same pain I saw in my own eyes when I looked in the mirror.

  “It’s getting late,” I said. “We should probably start gathering the kids and getting them back to their rooms.

  Cameron nodded. “Think about what I said.”

  I wanted to say: How could I not think about it? But I just nodded and turned to walk away.

  ***

  On Sunday Cameron volunteered to ta
ke all the kids in our group to the gym for a volleyball tournament against the second floor. Antonio said he’d take their group, so that left Sofia and I some time to try and get some laundry done.

  “One good thing about having all dark clothes is that you’ve only got one load.”

  I laughed. “I’ve got some white underwear and bras.”

  “Well, that’s dumb. Why not go with all black, just to save on quarters every week in the washers.”

  She had a point.

  The communal laundry room that all the residents shared was fairly small with just four washers and four dryers. We each took two washers and separated our whites and darks into the appropriate piles.

  “So, are you going to tell me what’s up with you and Romeo?” Sofia asked as she threw a bra into her white’s pile.

  “Who’s Romeo?” I asked feigning ignorance.

  She placed her hands on her hips. “You know exactly who Romeo is. Now spill.”

  “First of all, I think you’re mistaken about the whole Romeo thing.”

  “I am not mistaken about the Romeo thing,” she mocked. “That boy looks at you like a love sick school boy.”

  I shook my head. “He’s definitely not looking at me the way you think he is. That isn’t love or lust, it’s guilt. He feels sorry for me, that’s all.”

  “You’re wrong.” Sofia was insistent and it was starting to make me mad.

  “You don’t know the whole story. If you did, you’d know you were way off base.”

  “The laundry is going to take at least 45 minutes, so why don’t you tell me the whole story.”

  That was it. If I was going to let Sofia into my life I would have to tell her the whole ugly truth. Maybe that was the reason I hadn’t made any friends after Alex died and why I had kept to myself during my freshman year of college. I didn’t want to have to talk about Alex’s death and explain all of the nasty details surrounding it.

  We both sat down on the plastic chairs they had placed between the washers and dryers. They were about as comfortable as Hell on a hot day. I felt like I was sitting on a concrete slab but they would have to do.

  “Ever hear of Alex DeMarco?” I asked over the loud sloshing noises of the washing machines. There was something oddly comforting about doing laundry. The monotonous sound of the laundry as it beat against the side of the washer and the faint smells of detergent and fabric softener calmed me and made it easier to say everything I needed to say.

  Sofia thought about it for a moment. “The name sounds vaguely familiar.”

  “He was my younger brother. His suicide made national news.”

  “Why?”

  “Because three of our school’s star basketball players were arrested and charged with criminal harassment following his death. The media called it a hate crime because my brother was gay.”

  Sofia eyes were wide. She gulped but no words came out of her mouth.

  I continued. “My brother killed himself on his 15th birthday, two days after Homecoming. I found him in his bedroom closet. He’d hung himself.”

  I didn’t think it was possible but Sofia’s eyes grew even wider.

  “Alex was a wonderful person. He was one of the funniest people you’d ever want to meet. He could make almost anyone laugh. I thought for sure he’d grow up to be a comedian or a writer because he could tell the best stories. He was a smart kid and extremely creative but other kids just couldn’t see anything but his sexual orientation. He was bullied every day on the school bus, in the hallways, in the cafeteria. Guys made lewd gestures at him and called him derogatory names. Kids taped gay pornography to his locker. Someone even threw a dildo at him in the lunchroom. He told me that gym class was the worst. He said the guys would corner him and yell things at him like God hates fags or Gay boys are better off dead. He was scared that the harassment would escalate and he’d get beat up.”

  A teardrop slid down Sofia’s face and she quickly wiped it away with the back of her hand.

  I continued. “In the first two months of his freshman year, my brother went from being a straight-A student at the top of his class to barely passing. My parents tried everything they could to help him but they couldn’t stop the other kids from bullying him. They even talked to the school principal but he wouldn’t do anything. The school’s football team was on track for another state championship and he expected the school’s basketball team to reach state-champion status as well. The athletes ruled the school and could basically do anything they wanted without reproach. My town was a place where your value was based on how athletic you were.”

  I took a deep breath and tried to compose myself. “The night of the Homecoming Dance was the last straw, I guess. I told my brother not to go. I had a bad feeling about it. But he loved music and he loved to dance. He said he wasn’t going to let the asshole athletes destroy his high school experience. And I guess he didn’t want me to go alone.”

  “They made a video of my brother, dancing and having fun, but they altered it. They spliced photos of men kissing and touching each other then added lewd comments and hate messages. They emailed the video to everyone at school and then uploaded it to YouTube. The video went viral and my brother was horrified. He couldn’t believe that tens of thousands of people from all over the world were making derogatory comments about him, like he was going to Hell and that he didn’t deserve to live because he was gay.

  “Three of the school’s star basketball players were responsible for making and distributing the video. They were also the key players in the harassment my brother faced every day at school.

  “After my brother died the police opened an investigation and the three athletes were arrested. Our small town was completely divided by the ordeal. Half the town thought the boys should have been charged with murder and the other half didn’t think they did anything wrong. One of the boys, who distributed the video but wasn’t actively involved in creating it, testified against the other two in a plea agreement. The story made national news because the three boys all had basketball scholarships to Big Ten schools and the news labeled the ordeal a hate crime.”

  Sofia just stared at me, her face a mask of shock and horror. It was a look I had grown used to and I saw it every time people heard about Alex. “I’m so sorry,” she managed to mutter.

  “Thanks.”

  “I can understand why you wear black all the time.”

  I nodded.

  “So, what does all of this have to do with Romeo? Was he one of the basketball players who got arrested?”

  “He was the one who got the plea agreement.”

  Sofia shook her head in disbelief. “He doesn’t seem like the type. He’s kind of quiet and soft-spoken.”

  “Yeah, well, he wasn’t like that in high school. He was kind of an arrogant jerk. Just like his friends.”

  “I can see that, too. But maybe everything he went through made an impact on him. Experiences like that change people.”

  I shrugged.

  “And I still think he likes you.”

  “Are you kidding me right now? It’s nothing but guilt and shame and maybe even regret.”

  “I know what I see and I can see it in his eyes.”

  One of my washers slowed to a stop and I emptied the contents into one of the dryers, slipped in my coins, and started it up. When Sofia’s washer stopped she followed the same routine.

  “Suppose by some weird twist of fate he did like me,” I said. “And I’m saying this only hypothetically because I don’t think there’s really a snowball’s chance in Hell. But let’s just say if he did, then what? It’s not like I’m going to actually date one of the guys who was arrested for criminal harassment of my brother. Alex killed himself at least in part because of what they did to him. How can I ever forgive something like that?”

  She nodded. “It would be one fucked up situation, that’s for sure.”

  “I’ve dealt with enough fucked up situations for one life time,” I assured her. “I definitely d
on’t need any more.”

  Week One

  Monday morning came too soon. Spending the evening making sure the students didn’t get into too much mischief during their free time made me feel ten years older than them instead of just two.

  I was a little worried about Lyle. I didn’t know if I was projecting fears because of what happened to Alex but I didn’t want any of the other kids to mess with him. I noticed Cameron took a little extra time to make sure Destiny was okay. She seemed to be but that didn’t mean much. My brother seemed to be doing fine right before he hung himself.

  For the first time in two years, I actually felt disgusted looking into my closet and seeing all black. Maybe what Cameron said had gotten to me. Maybe it was time to add a little color back into my life. I was just so used to wearing black that it seemed like second nature to me.

  I joined Sofia and Antonio in the cafeteria for breakfast. Sofia had yogurt and fruit but Antonio had loaded his plate with eggs, bacon, pancakes and syrup. All I could stomach that early was coffee, half milk.

  I watched in awe as Antonio shoveled forkfuls of breakfast foods into his cake-hole (or in this case pancake-hole).

  I was surprised when Cameron took the seat next to me. I glanced over at Sofia and she mouthed Romeo then grinned.

  “Where’s your breakfast?” he asked.

  I held up my coffee cup. “You’re looking at it.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Don’t you know breakfast is the most important meal of the day?”

  “Yeah, well, no one bothered to tell my stomach that. It usually doesn’t wake up until after noon.”

  Cameron took a bite of the fruit salad, yogurt and granola mixture in front of him. Then he said, “I spoke with Dr. Jones about the bullying incident with Destiny. I told her that I wanted to do a presentation about bullying.”

  I almost choked on the sip of coffee I had taken. “I thought you were going to give me a chance to think about it,” I complained.

  “How much time do you need?” he asked. “I think this is important and needs to be addressed.”

  When I glanced over at Sofia, she was looking back and forth between the two of us, her eyes wide. I noticed Antonio was still shoveling food into his mouth, oblivious to the conversation Cameron and I were having. I guessed that meant that Sofia hadn’t said anything to him about the issues Cameron and I had.