rock

by Anyta Sunday

  “Maybe a little.” He slips his T-shirt over his head. “Did you know aquamarine is thought to cure the poisoned?”

  I do know this. I also know it’s a beryl mineral and ranges from 7.5 to 8 on the Mohs scale—I like to think I’m an aquamarine in strength of soul and mind, but I fear I break too easily. “If you’re ever poisoned, Jace, I’ll kiss you better.”

  He laughs. I laugh.

  We ride that wave home.

  chert

  When I wake up, I’m in my bed and Jace is plastered over my back. I can feel his breath falling in regular intervals on the collar of my T-shirt. His arm is around me but a touch lower than usual. My morning wood is practically poking his forearm and it feels great.

  I wiggle down but I only make the situation worse. Now his morning wood is pressing against the back of my balls. So much for escaping to the bathroom without waking him. I roll my shoulder back so it hits his chest.

  Jace jerks out of sleep, throwing his hands up so fast he bashes the greenstone against his teeth. “Huh? What?”

  “We’ve got school,” I tell him.

  He rolls over to check the clock and groans. “Do we have to?”

  “Yep. I’d rather get ready now than have Dad come in and yell at us.”

  Especially since we’re in the same bed.

  Not that anything’s going on under the sheets, but it can’t look good. What would Dad say? Would he freak out? Would he take it in stride?

  It isn’t like we’re related, after all.

  Jace leaps out of bed like I’m holding a hot prong to his backside, and zips to his bedroom. I pull my shit together and am ready a half-hour later. Jace leaves his room at the same time, stuffing a notebook into his backpack.

  It’s been a while, so I scowl at him.

  He scowls back. And then it’s off to school. Annie is away on a field trip so it’s just us. I head to the bus stop and Jace stops me halfway down the driveway.

  “Hide in the backseat and I’ll drive you.”

  I bite my lip. He’s snuck me out a few times, and every time it’s an adrenalin rush. I freak out thinking he’ll be pulled over. “Sure,” I say, and head for his hatchback. Like always, we part ways at school and don’t look back.

  Ernie and Bert meet me in the gym with fist bumps and high fives.

  Ernie slings an arm around my neck in a headlock. Bert yells out, “Who’s got the Coop?” Ernie shouts back, “I got the Coop.” Their voices echo in the locker room, eliciting sniggers from our classmates. With a playful shove, Ernie lets me go. We’re dressing into sports gear when Bert pins a look to Ernie which can only mean they’re about to gang up on me. I have a feeling I know what it’s about. They want me to tag along at the school dance coming up. I’ve avoided it the last three years. Ernie and Bert gesture to all the guys in the changing room.

  “Everyone’s going to be there, dude. You gotta come to this dance. It’s our second to last year of high school! We might actually get lucky this year.”

  Someone snorts and Bert narrows his eyes on the culprit. “Shut up, Frank.”

  “So will you?” Ernie continues, and Bert in his infinite wisdom adds, “If you don’t, people might think you’re scared of the girls. Or that you’re a fag.”

  The last few years have proven their mouths are bigger than their ass holes for all the shit that comes out of them. But this is cutting close to home, and heat is rising to my cheeks. I stutter and stuff on a sneaker, yanking the laces tightly. I don’t dare to look at them. Put your other shoe on, tie it up, get into the gym.

  Ernie crouches to my level. His eyebrows look like one long black caterpillar. “Are you?” he asks quietly, and when I don’t—can’t—say anything and work the second sneaker, he swears. “Shit, you are.”

  He hasn’t spoken particularly loud but the guys in my class seem to have a gossip radar stronger than my grandmother’s. The changing room grows eerily quiet. A few shuffles, someone zipping a bag, and the sound of feet as someone leaves, but the rest is mute. Ernie and Bert are staring at me but the other guys’ gazes are fixed on the walls, the hooks, or the cubbyholes. Their ears strain, anticipating whatever’s coming next.

  I don’t give it to them. Won’t.

  I stuff my clothes into my bag, push past Ernie and Bert, shove the bag into a cubby hole and walk out of there as calmly as possible.

  No one says anything during gym. Near the end Ernie tries to grab my arm, but I shake him off. When it’s time to change back into my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, I zone out until it’s just me and the wood-paneled corner of the room.

  English class comes next. Whispers stir, and guys avoid looking my way. Girls glance at me furtively, curious and sympathetic.

  I scribble harder, concentrating on the text in front of me until the words pop out from the book and don’t make sense. I’m living in a cocoon of heat, and I’m just wishing it to blow over. I never admitted anything. They don’t know.

  First break comes, and I hole myself up in the library. The whispers will stop soon. I’m not cool enough for this to be big gossip. By lunchtime, half my class will have forgotten.

  But they haven’t. Everywhere I look, someone looks back at me. My toes tingle with the first signs of panic but I steel myself against it. It’s just a rumor. Stupid rumors. And no one is being a stupid dick about it anyway. At least not to my face. They all just leave me alone, give me a wider berth than normal, a berth that is swollen with their whispers. It’s like the telephone game, where each whisper gets exaggerated, until he might be gay becomes he loves to take it up the ass.

  Ernie and Bert are speaking in hushed tones at our brick wall in the courtyard. Bert shrugs and gestures for me to come over there, but if I do, I’m telling them this is all their fucking fault. Then they’ll have all the proof they need that they’re right. I am a fag.

  I grit my teeth, twist away from them, and scan the courtyard for a new place to sit.

  My gaze falls on a familiar figure perched on a bench in the middle of the courtyard.

  A skateboarder whizzes past me and jumps onto a low ramp, twisting and landing steadily.

  My view opens up once more, and there’s Jace sitting next to Darren and some other dude he hangs out with. Darren is talking to him, and the way he’s hunched and leaning in has me holding my breath. Whispers louden and tighten around me like a rope. I can’t move.

  Jace frowns and glances over his shoulder toward Ernie and Bert. His mouth moves but I can’t lip-read what he says.

  A warm panic stretches up my calves like little shots of electricity. I want to retch.

  Jace leaps up from the bench, and the pained expression on his face tells me he’s heard the whisperings too. The way he swiftly moves toward me tells me more. Not only has he heard, but he knows it’s true.

  My throat aches and my vision blurs with tears. I struggle to blink them back. The sun makes the moon on Jace’s shirt glint, and his eyes beg me not to run.

  That’s when I realize I’m reeling back from him. I’m not ready to have him know. Not like this. I shake my head. Go away, go away, go away!

  When he keeps coming, I turn on my heels and run through the whispering courtyard, behind the back of the school, and over the soccer fields to the far corner, which is void of life and traps me with chain-link fences.

  “Shit.” I kick at the fence and it rattles.

  Panic sweeps through me harder and faster. I need a stone. Need to calm down. I need a bloody stone!

  My breathing is strangled and my chest hurts as I drop to my knees and feel through the grass for a rock, a stone—something. Blades of grass slice through my fingers as I comb the ground. My sight is blurry and a tear drops onto the back of my hand. I smear it on the grass and continue to hunt.

  I grit my teeth shakily, to stop myself from doing any more of it. Get it together. So what he knows? He was going to find out eventually.

  “Cooper!”

  It’s his voice. He’s found me. />
  Like I didn’t want him to.

  Like I hoped he would.

  He’s across the soccer field, jogging over.

  I search desperately for a stone, digging into the soil like it will unearth my peace. When it doesn’t, I sit on my haunches and stare at my empty, dirty hands.

  “Cooper,” Jace says again, standing before me wearing a worried frown.

  “I can’t find one,” I say. He drops to his knees in front of me, shuffles forward and pulls my hands so I’m kneeling too. He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me tightly.

  “Are you okay?” he asks against my hair.

  “Yeah, no, I mean, whatever, right? Just rumors.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Fine,” I say and draw away from him to search the ground. “It’s true.”

  Jace breathes out heavily and helps me look. After a few minutes, he shakes his head. “Stuff it,” he says and stands up, pulling me with him.

  “What?” I say.

  He balls up his fist and presses it into my open palm. “I’ll be your rock. Do you think you can handle that today?”

  I squeeze his warm fist. His pulse—or is that mine?—beats under my finger.

  I’ll never look at his hand the same. It will always remind me of this day, this humiliation, this anger, and this exhilarating wave I’m riding that’s drawing me closer to something I’ve only dreamed about.

  I need to be honest. I look up at him and swallow. “I’m sorry, Jace.”

  “Why? You haven’t done anything wrong.”

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry because you weren’t meant to be the last person to know, to be told by a bunch of losers. You were meant to hear it from me. I wanted to tell you last night at the river.”

  He sucks in his lips and nods before looking through the chain-link fence to the busy street. “You want to go home?”

  “Cut school?”

  “So what?”

  “Okay. But I’m supposed to be at Mum’s the rest of the week.”

  “I know,” he says as we head across the field. “Let’s go there then.”

  limestone

  “So this is what your room looks like,” Jace says, taking in the single bed, the desk littered with books, and the thirty toolboxes stacked against the back wall. I use the toolboxes to compartmentalize my rocks and keep everything in order. Each is labeled according to the month and year it represents, running all the way back to when I was two and picked up my first limestone.

  Jace stands in the middle of the room, and I wonder if he’s imagining me studying or playing computer games at my desk, trying and failing miserably to do push-ups on the round red rug, coming in wet from the shower with only a towel wrapped around my waist, jerking off to the thought of him under the bedspread—

  You wish!

  I turn on music to fill the silence but I keep it low so we can talk.

  The springs in my mattress squeak as Jace sits on my bed. His reflection stares back at me from the photo I have of Mum, Dad, Annie and me that’s on my desk.

  “I have a confession,” Jace says and I startle, standing up from my chair. It swivels in a full circle behind me before bumping against the desk.

  “Confession?”

  Jace bites his bottom lip and pushes off from the bed. He walks around the room, touching the dresser and studying the stones I have on display. He looks at me through the large square mirror above the dresser. “I wasn’t asleep when you left my tent that night.”

  I pause. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean,” he says, turning around and leaning against the drawers, “I shut my eyes when you dragged your sleeping bag out. After a few minutes, I snuck out and . . . well, I overheard you and Annie.”

  “You were spying on me?”

  He folds his arms and looks ashamed. “I was curious what you were up to.”

  “Curious?” I have no thoughts of my own, and I scramble to accept what he’s telling me.

  “I wondered what you were doing. I thought I might scare you for a laugh. Pounce on you or something.”

  “Pounce?”

  Jace winces and chuckles. “Trust you to focus on that poor choice of word.”

  I don’t know what I’m saying but I start speaking. “So there wouldn’t have been any pouncing?”

  Pushing off my dresser, Jace struts toward me. He shrugs as if he’s answering his own question. “If you want there to be pouncing, there can be, okay? Plenty of it. In fact, let’s start now.”

  Jace touches my chest and pushes me onto the bed. I barely process what’s happening when he leaps on me, pinning me to the mattress. His greenstone slips out from the collar of his shirt and hangs at my throat. “So you’re gay,” he says, and this time I’m aware of what he’s saying. I detect an undercurrent of anger. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Because it’s you. You’re the one I’m attracted to. You’re the one that makes my heart go berserk.

  When I don’t answer, he rolls off me. I instantly miss his weight. Miss his focused stare boring into me for answers.

  “As you can see, I’m okay with it. Did you think I wouldn’t be?”

  “No,” I say, and it comes out croaked. What I really need to know is if I’m projecting feelings that aren’t like that.

  But of course they’re not. I’ve seen his porn stash after all. He’s told me he’s interested in Susan. I can’t even believe the warm lie that he’s faking all that because he’s afraid to come out—because why would he be? He’s okay with me being gay, and he knows his parents are okay with it too. Nothing’s holding him back. Because he doesn’t harbor any secret feelings toward you.

  I still want to ask. I want to know.

  Don’t destroy the illusion that he cares for you above and beyond a friend. You like imagining that one day he’ll realize he wants you and ravage you like the hero in a corny romance—

  “You can tell me anything. Just want you to know that.”

  We exchange looks. “I have nothing else to tell. That’s it. My big secret, exposed. If you want to put some distance between us, I’ll understand.”

  Jace sits up. “What the hell?”

  “I just mean—”

  “I know what you mean. You think I’m worried you’re going to jump me?” He laughs. “You’ve had plenty of opportunity already. Why would things change now? Besides, the whole stepbrother thing.”

  I laugh. “Yeah. Stepbrothers.” And because I can’t help it, I add, “Not technically, though. Even if we were stepbrothers, it’s not like we’re related.”

  Jace’s gaze flashes to mine, and his breath hitches. “I guess. Not really related. Not by blood.” For a second, I think he’s going to lean in and say something else, but he frowns and makes an abrupt change of topic. “I asked Susan to the dance. She said as long as I don’t barf all over her, she’d love to go with me.”

  “Romantic.” This comes out stonily.

  Jace laughs. “You going this year, brother?”

  Brother? What the hell is that? “I’m gay. Who would I go with?”

  He shrugs. “You should go anyway. Stand up for who you are, show them you don’t care what anyone thinks.”

  “Would you do that?” I ask. “If you were in my shoes?”

  He’s quiet for a long time. “Okay, maybe it’s a stupid idea. I just . . . But you’re right. It’s harder when it’s yourself.”

  The front door shuts, and we scramble out of bed. “Mum’s home.”

  “Should we hide?” Jace whispers. “Duck out the window?”

  I smirk and open the door to the hall. “Mum?”

  She appears a few seconds later, a bit flushed. Paul’s lingering at her bedroom door, pulling nervously at his orange tie that matches his hair. He waves, accidentally flicking his tie into his face. He flattens it and silently laughs at himself.

  “What are you doing home so early?”

  “Kind of got outed at school. Needed to recuperate.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, dear. Should I make some tea?”

  “Nah, I’m fine.” For the most part. I glance from her to Paul. “Jace and I are going to get an ice cream and sit in the park.”

  “Are you sure—?”

  “Yep.” Her mouth twitches into a smile. She brushes past me and stands in front of him.

  “This is Jace,” I tell her, and before she starts wondering exactly why he’s in my room, I add, “He drove me home.”

  “My God, you look just like Lila,” she says.

  “He’s taller,” I say as Jace says, “I’m taller.”

  We grin.

  “You have her hair, eyes, nose, mouth, everything except how broad you are. That looks like . . .” She cocks her head and hums. “Well,” she continues eventually. “You’re one handsome guy.”

  “Mum!”

  “Not as gorgeous as you, dear,” she says. I groan.

  “Just stop,” I say. “Go back to the hunk in the hall.”

  It’s her turn to redden. Now we’re even.

  When she’s gone, Jace laughs. “Your Mum’s all right,” he says, and beckons me out of my room. “Now, I believe you said something about ice cream?”

  alabaster

  Ernie and Bert call me over the next few days. If I described what they wanted as a stone, it’d be alabaster, a translucent stone for forgiveness.

  On the third day, I pick up the three-way call. I’m sitting on my single bed staring at my toolboxes. “What?”

  “Dude, we totally screwed up.”

  “Bert-time,” Ernie says.

  “Shut up,” Bert says. “You’re not making this any better!”

  “Fine. We screwed up big time. Better, Bert?”

  “I don’t know, ask Cooper.”

  “We’re sorry. We were just surprised that you dig dudes. We don’t care.”

  Bert says, “No, we don’t care. Anyone who does care will see why I play defense.”

  “You gonna tackle them, Bert?” Ernie asks. “That imagery is so gay—hey, maybe you’ll like it, Coop?”

  “If this is your way of apologizing,” I say. “You suck at it.”