by P. E. Ryan
“What about your dad?”
“Forget it. He doesn’t want to talk about it at all.”
Sam nodded. “Maybe it’s too upsetting.”
“Of course it is. But I mean, we never talk about it. And he took down all my mom’s pictures. It’s almost like she never even existed. We haven’t been out to the cemetery since, like, a month after she died.”
“Well, what do you want him to say?”
“Anything! He could say that he misses her. He could say it totally sucks that she died. Anything. But he just sits around, in a stupor. Plus he gets drunk almost every night.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I totally yelled at him tonight, and I shouldn’t have because he was sober for once, but I’m tired of pulling all the weight around the house, you know? Why should he be drinking that much?”
“Maybe because he thinks he needs to unwind,” Sam said.
The connection between his pot smoking and his dad’s drinking had apparently never crossed Charlie’s mind before. For a moment, his face leveled off to no expression whatsoever. Then Sam saw his jaw muscles tighten. “What’s he got to unwind from?” Charlie asked sharply. “He isn’t working. He never even leaves the house.”
“I don’t know. He still might feel like he needs to unwind.”
“I didn’t tell you about this so you could stick up for him.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying maybe he has a reason. Like you do.”
“He’s got no reason to never talk about my mom—as if she didn’t exist.”
“Well…have you talked to him about her?”
“I can’t! He’d get too upset. He’d start crying or something.”
So, Sam thought, maybe that’s what needs to happen. But he didn’t say this because he didn’t want to make Charlie more irritated than he already was. It was obviously a touchy subject.
“I’m just really sick of things the way they are,” Charlie said, staring at his hands. “What a freakin’ night.”
“So are you going to tell me what happened to your car?” Sam asked, suddenly remembering the damage. “Nice car, by the way, except for how it’s all banged up.”
“Thanks. That was just…vandals.”
“I thought you were going to say Kate did it, or your dad.”
“No, no, no. It’s totally unrelated to all that.” Charlie got up and smacked his hands together. “Listen, it feels kind of strange, telling you all this. I mean, we’re not exactly friends anymore, right?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “That was…a bad situation.”
“Well, you did it, not me. So you ought to know. I’m still in the dark about that one.”
“We could be friends again,” Sam said cautiously. “Couldn’t we?”
“Not unless you tell me what happened. I mean, how can we hang out together if I don’t know what happened? Do you know how much time I spent wondering what the hell I did?”
“You didn’t do anything,” Sam said. “It was me, not you.” He got up and started walking—but there was nowhere to walk but across the room, and then back again. He shoved his hands down into his pockets. “Could we maybe start over again? From this point? Start being friends again, and just forget about all that?”
Charlie shook his head no. An awful silence fell between them. But a few moments later, he exhaled and said, “Maybe. But you’ve got to admit, that’s kind of weird.”
“We’ll just take a big eraser to it,” Sam said. “We’ll be like strangers. New planet, new friendship.” He held out his hand. “Nice to meet you.”
Charlie looked down at the hand, then back up at Sam’s face. “So what were you so upset about, when you came running past the basketball court? You looked like you were out of your mind.”
Sam lowered his hand.
“Remember? All that blabbering about leaving home and never coming back? What was that about?”
It was amazing that the events from earlier that evening had been able to recede to the back of Sam’s mind. He’d barely given a thought to his mother, or Teddy, or Justin, from the moment he and Charlie had stepped into the Danforth house. He’d been completely absorbed by what Charlie had been telling him. But now his own predicament came flooding back. “We don’t have to talk about that,” he heard himself say in a weak voice.
“Man, where is your head? I just spilled my guts to you! And now you’re not going to tell me what’s going on?
How could he, knowing where the conversation would lead? “No.”
“You’re serious?”
“Yeah, I’m serious. I don’t want to talk about it.”
Charlie opened his mouth, but then just let it hang there without speaking, staring at Sam. “Get out of here,” he said finally.
“What do you mean?” Sam asked, feeling his stomach tighten.
“I mean get out of here. I can’t be your friend, Sam. I can’t be friends with someone who’s going to clam up about himself, who isn’t going to trust me with what’s going on in his life—especially not someone who already blew me off once.”
“It’s not about trust,” Sam said.
“Whatever. That was a nice brand-new friendship. It was great for about two seconds. But it’s over. Get out.”
“You’re kicking me out?” Sam asked. “After dragging me all the way out here?”
“I didn’t drag you anywhere. You wouldn’t have come if you didn’t want to. Just get out. You can sleep on the porch, and I’ll drive you back in the morning, but I don’t want you in here.”
“Charlie, that’s not fair.”
“Fair? I think it’s totally fair. It doesn’t feel too good, though, does it?”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t. You know all about me, but I don’t know a damn thing about you.”
Sam looked around the empty room, as if it were filled with people and he were searching for someone who was on his side. “Come on. Don’t do this.”
“Out!” Charlie snapped. He pointed toward the glass door.
There was nothing to do but leave.
15.
(Would you shut up and tell me?)
Charlie paced the floor of the empty living room, furious.
What the hell was wrong with Sam? How hard could it be just to talk about what was going on? Granted, Charlie had clammed up around everybody in his life for the past year or so, but he would have been open with Sam, if they’d stayed friends. At least he thought so. He might not even be in the mess he was in with Derrick Harding if Sam hadn’t trashed their friendship so abruptly. But then, he’d had that thought before, and he knew it led nowhere. He heard the echo of Kate’s words: You have to take some responsibility for your actions. You have to own some of this.
What made him really mad, though, was that, out of the blue, he and Sam had had what felt like a solid chance of putting their friendship back together, and yet Sam couldn’t even meet him halfway in their attempt to mend things. Charlie was angry at himself for opening up to someone who had turned into a sponge, soaking up other people’s personal stuff and never giving anything back. That wasn’t friendship. That was leeching. Maybe Sam, who was slated to be the new editor of the Cernak Fountain when school started up again, was turning into some kind of gonzo investigative reporter, collecting information. Charlie pictured an exposé about his life splashed across the front page of the first issue: BASKETBALL STAR TURNS POTHEAD, FIGHTS WITH DRUNKEN FATHER, LOSES GIRL.
He walked over to the sliding glass door at the back of the house and saw that Sam wasn’t on the back porch. For a moment, Charlie wondered if he’d just left—if he’d hoofed it back through the palm scrub and was standing out on A1A now with his thumb raised, trying to hitch a ride…somewhere, since he didn’t want to go back home.
Why didn’t Sam want to go home? What had happened? It was eating at Charlie, and the very fact that he cared made him even angrier. Then he spotted a dark shape, far out on the beach: Sam, sitting cr
oss-legged, facing the ocean. To hell with him, he thought. But that suddenly brought back to his mind the stupid game he’d come up with the night he was stoned on the basketball court. Smacking the ball against the wall, trying to hammer out every person in his life. The black eye he’d given himself. Maybe he wasn’t quite the island he wanted to be.
After thinking about this for a few minutes, he grunted, grabbed the canvas tarp off the floor, and pulled open the glass door.
He felt the warm air move across the sweat that coated his arms and neck. The sand was an eerie shade of blue, almost neon, ribboned with wet streaks and stretching on for what seemed like miles. He followed the trail of Sam’s footprints, and he cleared his throat to announce himself as he got closer, but Sam just kept facing the distant, rolling whisper of the surf. He’d taken off his running shoes and socks. They were sitting beside him.
Charlie kicked off his own shoes and unfolded the tarp. It was stiff with dried paint, but it would be better than sitting on damp sand. He sank down onto half of it and smacked the other side. “Sit on this before you soak your jeans.”
“They’re already soaked.”
“Well, sit on it, anyway.”
Sam didn’t move.
“You know,” Charlie said, “you’re not going to be able to stay here.”
“So you own the beach now?”
“No, I mean here.” He pointed at the sand. “This spot will be about six feet under water when the tide comes in.”
“Oh,” Sam said. “Duh. I know that.”
“Well, just sit on the damn tarp, would you? I know you’re angry. I’m angry, too. Let’s clear the air, and then we never have to talk again, ever. Okay?”
Sam looked over at the empty stretch of tarp. He looked up at Charlie. Then he lifted his body and scooted like a crab several feet to the left until he was sitting on the tarp. He dusted his hands together and refolded his arms over his knees, staring back out at the Atlantic. “So clear the air.”
Charlie just breathed for several moments, trying to control his anger. “I really need you to tell me one thing. Just one thing.”
“What,” Sam said flatly.
“Why did you stop being my friend?”
“You really want to know?”
“I’m telling you I want to know.”
“Because of Chris Kovan.”
Charlie’s mind drew a blank. “Who’s Chris Kovan?”
“He used to go to Cernak,” Sam said, still staring forward. “He moved to New Mexico last year.”
Tall and loud, Charlie remembered. Used to work in the school store. “The gay guy?”
He heard the air rush out of Sam’s mouth. “Yeah. The gay guy. Nicely put, only that wasn’t what you called him when he was still living here.”
“What did I call him?”
“A fag.”
“Well, so what? Wait a minute…were you friends with that guy, or something? I never saw you hang out together.”
“We didn’t. I hardly knew him. Neither did you. We just saw him sitting in the commons one day, and you said, ‘That guy’s such a fag.’”
“What’s that got to do with us?”
Sam’s bare feet were sticking out beyond the end of the tarp. He gouged his heels into the wet sand. “I didn’t want to hear it, okay? It offended me.”
“Well…” Charlie’s mind jumped from thought to thought, wanting to say the right thing. “It’s not like I’m a racist or anything.”
“I’m gay,” Sam said suddenly.
“No, you’re not.”
“What do you mean, no, I’m not?”
The response had just fallen out of Charlie’s mouth. It seemed impossible that Sam was gay. He didn’t talk gay. He didn’t act gay.
“I know what I am. I know what I like. I could lie to you and say I’m confused, or bi, or whatever, but I’m not confused. I’m gay. I’ve never said that to another living person, but there it is. And it’s the truth.”
“Just slow down. I told you I’ve been smoking pot, okay. But you don’t have to try to one-up me with this gay thing.”
“See how good I am at hiding it?” Sam said, turning to look at him. “You had no idea. The day you made that comment about Chris Kovan, I think I even made some comment back. Something like ‘Yeah, he’s a real homo.’ I shouldn’t have, but I did, because I didn’t want you or anyone else to know what I was. But it told me how you feel about gay people.”
“So you’re mad at me for saying that?” Charlie said, digging his own feet into the sand. “You’d never said anything about it before, so how was I supposed to know? I made a crack, I said a dumb thing. Okay. But it’s not like you were a black guy and I said something racist to your face.”
“No, but what if I were a black guy who looked white? You could have easily said something. And that would have pissed me off, too.”
“This is like science fiction,” Charlie said. “I mean, what if I make a crack about alligators around some guy on the basketball team, and then he unzips his human suit and he’s really an alligator? Is that my fault? I mean, how am I supposed to know something that’s a total secret from the world?”
“I don’t know,” Sam said, looking down at his hands clasped together over his knees.
“So you ended our friendship over that? Without even telling me what I’d done wrong?”
“No, that was just part of it,” Sam said. “There’s more.” He hesitated. He looked at Charlie, then looked away again. Instead of telling him what the ‘more’ was, he said, “I feel like a total freak around my family now. And something awful happened tonight. That’s the only reason I stopped when I saw you. I was just really upset about something.”
“You obviously want to tell me about it.”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“Don’t tell me what I don’t want to hear,” Charlie snapped. “That’s what you did the last time. Or you assumed it, without even giving me the chance to react. I want to hear!”
“My mom and dad are split up. Did you know that? My dad’s living up in Ponte Vedra Beach with this guy, David. They’re a couple. Like, a couple. And my mom isn’t too happy about it, as you might imagine. She’s got this awful boyfriend, Teddy, who’s practically moved into our house, and he’s always making these homophobic remarks, and the other day she asked me point-blank if I was gay, and I told her no. I lied to her face.”
“Wait a minute,” Charlie said, trying to keep up. “You’re telling me your dad’s gay?”
“Yeah. Isn’t that a riot? Can’t you just hear the talk? Sam Findley’s dad’s a homo, and he’s turned Sam into one, too. There’s all kinds of twisted stuff going on over at the Findley house.”
“Whoa,” Charlie said. “Why don’t you stop putting words in everybody’s mouth and just tell me what happened? I mean, tonight. What happened tonight that had you so freaked out?”
“I’m such a dumbass,” Sam said, and rubbed a hand against his eyes.
“It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right! I met this great guy a couple of weeks ago, and we went out on a date tonight. Can you imagine that? Me, on a date? I’ve never been on a date with anyone in my whole life. And Justin—this guy—he seemed to really like me. And so—this is going to totally gross you out…”
“Shut up,” Charlie said. “Just tell me.”
“We were kind of…making out in his car, in my driveway. And my mom saw us.”
“Wow. She saw you? With this guy? Like that?” Charlie’s own problems suddenly seemed a little less earth-shattering compared to all of this. But he made himself say, “It’s not the end of the world, Sam.”
“I flipped out!” Sam cried. “I didn’t want her to see us, and I didn’t even want to look at Justin, so I shoved him, and practically fell out of his car, trying to get away from them both. I just ran. How pathetic is that? Why would he ever want to talk to me again? He’s got to think I’m the biggest freak in the universe. And my mom’s
probably thrown all my stuff out into the front yard by now.”
“You know,” Charlie said, “you’ve got a real bad habit of thinking you know everything that’s in other people’s heads. It’s probably not as bad as you think.”
“It’s worse,” Sam said. He sniffed and lifted his head. He stared out at the water. “Do you have any idea what it’s like, screwing up so bad that your whole life just feels ruined?”
Charlie sat quietly for a moment. He pinched the front of his T-shirt and snapped it away from his chest, stirring the warm air. He said, “Let’s walk.”
They carried their shoes. Charlie carried the tarp, thrown over one shoulder. They walked out as far as they could, until the coastline was nothing but a string of tiny, scattered house lights and their feet were splashing through the water; then they followed the waterline.
He wanted to tell Sam everything now. He talked about his mom, her illness, how slowly she’d gotten sick, and how quickly she’d slid downhill. He didn’t cry as he spoke, and he realized how good it felt just to be saying it out loud: His mom was gone, she was never coming back, and it made him sad every day of his life.
“You know,” Sam said, “you should just be up front with your dad. Tell him you want to talk about her. Tell him you want to go out to the cemetery.”
“I know I should. But he’ll get so upset. And he’ll probably start drinking even more.”
“So he gets upset. As far as the drinking goes, that’s got to be dealt with anyway. He should get some help. But it’s normal to be upset when someone dies, right?
“Yeah.”
“So you have to talk to him. He can’t read your mind.”
“Thankfully.”
“I can’t read it either.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning, you still haven’t told me what really happened to your car.”
“Well, that’s a whole nother story….”
