The North Woods were near impossible to traverse in the dark, even with a lantern, but there was no alternative; there was only moving forward. It took longer than usual to reach the creek, but she got there eventually.
“Oriana!” she whispered in the darkness. “Are you there?”
Frogs croaked in the dark, crickets chirping in between, but there was no other sound. Ella peered into the darkness, anxious, her eyes straining. “Oriana,” she called, a little louder.
A light flickered in the distance, and her heart leaped as the dot grew larger and larger, until Oriana appeared through the trees, carrying the blue lantern.
“Ella,” she said, surprise in her musical voice. “What are you doing here?”
Ella hoisted her pack on her shoulder and stepped toward the creek. One more step and she’d be in the water.
The point of no return.
“Ella...” Oriana warned.
Ella looked at her. Her skin glistened in the lantern light, and her eyes, her face, every part of her was beloved to Ella. She’d shown her kindness when she’d so desperately needed it. Given her hope when she had none. Made her laugh when she’d thought she’d forgotten.
She stepped forward, the water rushing around her ankles. “I love you,” she said, wading farther into the water, her skirts clinging to her legs. Ella crossed the creek, pulling herself up onto the opposite bank, standing in front of Oriana, who grasped her arms as if she couldn’t quite believe she was there.
Ella closed the space between them, her lips brushing against Oriana’s. Her eyes drifted shut, Oriana’s arms wrapping around her tight. She never wanted her to let go.
“I am yours,” Ella whispered as they pulled apart, their noses bumping together.
Oriana smiled, and all around them, gold dust spun from the water, surrounding them in a glittering halo, and Virgil leaped at the cloud, trying to catch it with his teeth.
“And I am yours,” Oriana said. “Always.”
* * * * *
THE SECRET LIFE OF
A TEENAGE BOY
BY
ALEX SANCHEZ
Tidewater, Virginia, 1969
“En garde!” My sister, Delia, and I jab and clink butter knives. She’s fourteen. I’m sixteen. Our black-and-white TV blares a rerun of The Fugitive, about a doctor falsely accused of murder, and we’re having a sword fight to the death—anything to break the boredom of the steamy, hot summer afternoon.
Drill sergeant Mom is in the kitchen making ice-cold limeade—a ruse to keep us troops cleaning and doing house projects during our alleged vacation. Today’s chore is polishing the silverware, and we’ve gotten giddy from the fumes. Delia plunges her knife at my chest. I sputter, stagger, hit the carpet. Thud. I lay lifeless when the doorbell rings.
Wanda, our mud-colored dachshund, leaps off her tattered pillow and waddles to the living room, barking to rally reinforcements. I spring up from the dead. Delia and I scramble past each other. On the front porch a young stranger has appeared, like a genie conjured from a magic lamp.
He’s lean and sinewy, looks like he’s college age with sideburns and an anti-war T-shirt. A roguish mop of sandy blond hair curls over his ears, and—
Delia gasps. “He’s got an earring.”
I blink along with her. No guy wears an earring in our edge-of-nowhere southern Virginia coastal town. He’d be guaranteed to get gawked at. Called names. Or worse.
Wanda is up on her hind legs, peering out the screen door, tail wagging. Delia huddles behind my shoulder, hiding the wine-colored birthmark on her neck, and whispers in my ear, “He’s awfully cute.”
Pretending not to hear, I sidle up to the door. For a moment his gaze holds mine. His eyes are blue with little sparks of green, and something in them makes me blush.
“Hi, sorry to bother y’all.” His voice is soft and lilting, and his smile gleams as bright as one of the Monkees’—Davy or maybe Peter. “My car broke down and I wondered if you could please call a mechanic for me.”
“Um, sure.” I swing back toward the hallway phone, bumping past Delia. Mom comes out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth, and Delia explains what the stranger wants.
While I’m on the line with Bubba’s Texaco, our genie bends down and coos at Wanda through the door’s wire mesh. She dances from one foot to the other to the rhythm of her tail. She’s in love.
I twist the phone cord, my fingers trembling a little. The guy is cute.
“Bubba’s sending his son, Charlie,” I tell Mom, hanging up the phone.
She’s prepared a tall glass of iced limeade for our guest and whispers to us her contingency plan. “Julio, wait outside with him, but be careful. Take Wanda with you.” Mom has learned from TV that a stranger at the doorstep could easily be a convict escaped from the nearest chain gang. “Delia, you stay here and help me finish with the silver.”
“Can’t the silver wait?” she protests. “I want to go talk with him, too.” Her eyes signal me for help.
She and I are best friends. I know that’s unusual for a teenage boy and his sister, but for us it feels natural. We’re almost always together. Tromping through the marsh behind our house collecting cattails. Riding bikes to the drugstore soda fountain. And mostly, living in her room. Listening to the radio. Dancing to American Bandstand. Daydreaming about any place but here.
“Mom,” I argue, “I doubt an ax murderer would wear a T-shirt that says Make Love not War.”
“We don’t know anything about him,” she says in her made-my-mind-up tone.
I debate whether to stage a solidarity strike for Delia. Outside the door, our possible lunatic killer has shaken off his flip-flops and taken a seat astride the porch steps. The sunlight makes his earring sparkle. I shrug at Delia, rake my bangs back in the wall mirror and push open the door.
Wanda instantly toddles past me to sniff and lick the guy, her tail whipping a million miles an hour.
“Hey, there, pup.” He laughs and takes her head in his hands and kisses her forehead in the same place I sometimes do.
“The service station is sending a mechanic,” I say and hand him the limeade.
“Aw, thanks, man. It feels like a hundred degrees out here.” He presses the cold glass against his forehead. “My name’s Cliff, by the way. Cheers.”
“I’m Julio.” I lean on the porch railing and while he gulps his drink, I study his earring. It’s a tiny diamond stud.
“You like it?” he asks. “You’d look good with one.”
My face warms. “Not around here. You’d get jumped. Where you from?”
“Raleigh. I was going to NC State but I got sick of all the lectures and papers and sitting on my butt. It’s like that ad—you only go around once in life, you’ve got to grab for the gusto.” He lets Wanda lick the cool moisture from outside his glass. “You ever heard of A Midsummer Night’s Dream?”
“Naw—oh, wait. Maybe on TV. Is it like Shakespeare?”
“Yeah. We did a campus production. I was Puck. You remember the elf? He’s like the lead.”
I nod yes, mostly remembering the TV actor’s legs. He wore these tights that showed his every muscle while he leapt around sprinkling dream dust on people while they slept, so they woke up in love.
“Everybody said I was great,” Cliff continues. “The school paper said I should be on Broadway. And I thought, heck, why wait? Follow my heart, you know? I packed up my car, grabbed my guitar and New York, here I come. You ever been?”
“Not yet. I want to.” It’s my dream. I tell him how Delia and I joke that we’re going to run away there like those kids in that book who hide at the museum, sleep on an antique bed and fish coins from the wishing fountain. Our favorite TV show is That Girl, where she leaves her hometown for Manhattan. To escape. To become somebody.
I’m still blabbering when Cliff glances at the
screen door and breaks into a goofy face—eyes crossed, tongue poking out.
Delia laughs from inside. She’s changed into her yellow sleeveless turtleneck, rolled up high. The color makes her sunny face look even brighter. She’s so pretty but she doesn’t see it. Too many kids have picked on her for that stupid birthmark.
“Cliff’s on his way to New York,” I tell her, and her face grows even brighter.
“Really?” She tells him how last summer we wrote to the tourist board for brochures, and the day they arrived we practically carpeted her bedroom floor with all the glossy maps and pamphlets, plotting our escape and the adventures we’d have. She wants to be an artist. She already draws great. I want to be a writer, but there’s nothing to write about here. Nothing ever happens.
While she’s yakking I look at Cliff. His eyelashes are as long and curly as a young girl’s, but his jawline is strong and handsome.
He catches me looking at him, and I instantly glance away, blushing again. I’m a chronic blusher.
“Delia?” Mom calls from the living room. “Let the boys talk and come help me, please.”
“Yes, Mother.” Delia rolls her eyes and tells Cliff, “Just call me Cinderella.” It’s one of her standard laugh lines.
Cliff obliges. “Nice to meet you, Cinderella.”
In the quiet after her leaving, he scratches Wanda behind her ears, sitting with his legs spread wide, like Dad always reminds me a guy should sit. But I always forget.
“You’ve got nice eyes, you know that?” Cliff tells me.
I turn away, certain my cheeks are on fire.
He chews the last of his ice. When I look up again, I notice his peace-symbol ring.
“Um, you want more limeade?” I ask.
“Naw, thanks, but I gotta pee really bad. Can I use your bathroom?” He slides a hand across his jeans to the crotch, and I strain not to look.
“Sure, yeah, um, I better ask Mom first. She’s scared you might be a kidnapper or something.”
“You never know, man.” Obviously, he’s playing, but his twinkling gaze makes me wonder: Is he telling me something?
He pins me with his grin and it feels like he’s seeing inside me. When he hands me his empty glass, his fingers brush mine, and a current rushes through me.
I nearly trip on the doorway threshold as I hurry inside. My whole body is tingling. From the kitchen comes the rattle of silverware being put away. I lean against the wall to steady myself. Does he suspect about me? Is he making fun of me?
“What’s the matter?” Delia asks, coming out and seeing me. “Something wrong?”
“No, nothing. Nothing.” My double “nothing” obviously means something. I haven’t been able to tell her about me yet. I haven’t said it aloud to anybody, not even myself. But I’m pretty sure she knows. She’s always sharing her Tiger Beat magazines with me, and when I asked if I could tear out the color picture of Bobby Sherman without his shirt, she only gave me a sideways look. Some days I want to throw open the window and just shout it out for the whole world to know.
“Julio?” Mom calls from the kitchen.
I put a finger to my lips for Delia to keep quiet and yell back to Mom, “Can he come in to use the bathroom?”
“No, señor.” She appears in the doorway, flashing her dark Cuban eyes at me. “Not till your father comes home.”
“But he needs to go really bad.”
“Then show him out back.” She means the azalea thicket between our backyard and the marsh. It’s where Delia and I used to play hide-and-seek, and explorers, and pirates, where I would sneak up on her and pretend to capture her, and she would squeal with glee.
“Mom, you’re being ridiculous,” I start to say when an idea stops me cold, and I do an about-face. “Okay.” I check myself in the mirror again and dart back outside.
On the porch Wanda is lying on her back, her paws paddling the air while Cliff rubs her chest. Her black lips stretch in something like a grin, and I feel as restless as those paws.
“No offense,” I tell him, trying to calm my breath, “but Mom says you can’t come inside till Dad gets home. You can pee out back, though, where I go in emergencies, when the bathroom’s busy. I’ll show you.” I don’t give him a chance to hesitate. “Come on, Wanda.” I skip down the front steps, and luckily they follow behind.
Halfway toward the side of the house, a guy shouts in singsong from the street. “Hey, girly boy!”
It’s Butch Becker, hot-dogging past on his bike. Ever since grade school he’s made fun of how I walk and talk, leading to four shoving matches, two full-on fights, one black eye (mine) and one bloody nose (his).
Mom says to ignore him. She always tells me I’m too impulsive, that I need to learn to control my emotions. Meanwhile she’s the one who sobs at movies, and yells at us, and who eloped with Dad when she was sixteen.
I decide she’s right. I shove Becker out of my mind, refusing to let him derail me, and keep walking.
“Over there,” I tell Cliff, pointing across the backyard to the azalea bushes. They’re head high and thick with leaves. Without daring to look at him, I announce, “I gotta pee, too.”
As I lead him into the underbrush, the branches close in after us, hiding our tracks. Twigs crackle beneath our flip-flops. The ground smells moist and rich. Soon we’re out of view of the house. My heart thrums with excitement. What if he truly is a kidnapper? What if he takes hold of me and tries to do something? What if he’s too strong for me? Cicadas cling to the pine trees surrounding us, whirring as loud as police sirens.
In a cave-like clearing barely big enough to fit us, I turn and face him. The sun streaks through the canopy overhead and dapples his soft golden hair. His shoulders seem heroically broad.
I swallow the knot in my throat. I want him to capture me. Throw me to the ground. Press his body against mine. Rub his face on my cheek.
It’s a scene I’ve imagined a million times. While smoothing my hand across the bare-legged underwear model on page eighty-eight of the Sears catalog. When Mr. Kelsey, my PE teacher, got on all fours on the mat to show us wrestling moves. Watching Robert Conrad, the twinkling-eyed star of The Wild Wild West, wrap an arm around the waist of a prairie schoolmistress.
Cliff squints at me with a confused look. Maybe I should let him pee first. Then a grin tugs at his mouth. He knows my thoughts. He’s had them, too.
My body hurtles out from under me. My arms vine around him. Touching him. Feeling him. I dig my hands into his back and burrow my face in his shoulder. Breathing in his scent. Of lime. Of sweat. Of guy. My senses are alive with him.
His body tightens at first, but then it softens. He’s holding me. In his arms.
I look up. His gaze locks on to me. And I think, There’s someone else like me. I’m not the only one. I want to kiss him; I want him to kiss me. I press against him. A huge feeling swells up inside me. Like a geyser about to burst. It’s too much: his warmth, his touch. I can’t do this. I shouldn’t be doing this.
I pull away. Spin a one-eighty. As I run toward the yard, branches scrape my face and sides like a tangle of outstretched arms drawing me back. I stumble on a root, trip, fall, pick myself up again.
I break out onto the open lawn as if I’ve just run a hundred-yard dash. I bend over and rest my hands on my sweaty knees. While drawing in deep drafts of air, I attempt to stop my world from spinning.
Why did I do all that and not kiss him? He must think I’m the planet’s most confused and immature kid. And he’s right. I should just keep running. Into the house, into my room. Hide in the closet till he leaves. I whirl around and, startled, leap nearly out of my skin.
“Sorry,” Delia says, steadying the little wooden tray she’s carrying. “Mom thinks he looks hungry.” She leans across the toasted sandwich and glass of milk. “Are you going to run away with him?”
“I wis
h,” I say and dust off my cutoffs. I’m tired of wanting to escape. I’m tired of feeling alone in the world, even with Delia. I want to be with a guy. Somebody like me.
“I think you should go with him,” she whispers like a conspirator—like she doesn’t merely suspect about me; she knows. “I can tell he likes you.”
My skin tingles with fear and excitement as Cliff steps out of the azaleas. I expected him to be angry, but he’s smiling his Monkees smile. I look down at the grass, feeling even more immature. And Wanda trots ahead of him, her nose twitching toward the sandwich.
“Mom made you a snack,” Delia tells him.
“Wow, is she always so nice to kidnappers?”
“You’re our trial run,” Delia says.
“I’m going inside,” I mumble, unable to look at him.
I turn away, take a step and get twirled around as Delia loops her arm through mine.
“Come.” She’s handed Cliff the tray and steers us toward our rusty ancient swing set.
The contraption is nearly as old as we are—a single swinging carriage shaped like a cradle, with two wood-slat benches facing each other. Even though it was made for little kids, Cliff is slim enough to squeeze into a seat while Delia helps him balance the tray.
“Man, this is good.” He chomps into the sandwich as though he hasn’t eaten all day, and then holds it out to us. “Want a bite?”
Delia and I decline. We already know Mom makes a groovy-good chicken salad—sweet with mayo and pickle relish. I’ve learned from her how to make lots of dishes.
While Cliff is eating, Delia pumps him with questions: What do his parents think of him going to New York? Does he know anybody there? What’s he going to do for money?
He says his dad thinks he’s nuts but his mom gave him a little cash to tide him over; he’s got a college friend who’s home for the summer in Brooklyn; he can always make money as a waiter.
All Out--The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages Page 19
