Give Yourself Away

by Barbara Elsborg

  March when he was a— Caleb’s eyes widened as he tried to take in what he was seeing, because what he was seeing was impossible. He stopped breathing as his gaze flittered from one picture to another and back again, moving faster and faster, trying to come up with an explanation for what was in front of him.

  March stood at his shoulder and when he brushed against him it kick-started Caleb’s lungs. “I put my mum and stepdad in here when they come to stay. That’s me and my dad.”

  Can’t be real. Just can’t. Oh God.

  Caleb’s heart raced so fast he thought he was going to die. Everything hurt. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t focus. He wasn’t sure how he was still on his feet.

  “I miss him,” March said and for a moment Caleb thought he meant him.

  His arms and legs were tingling. He knew why. Not enough oxygen. He was breathing much too fast, but knowing it made no difference. The air was being sucked not only from the room but directly out of him.

  “That’s my mum. I’d just knocked that ice cream out of her hand.”

  I was there. That little kid next to her is me. You were trying to stop the seagull getting it and, instead, it hit the deck.

  Caleb knew he was safe, but it made no difference. He was going to die. The room shook. No. He shook. Couldn’t March see what was happening?

  “That’s my mum and stepdad getting married in Saint-Malo and me scowling. Not because they were getting married. I had to wear a suit and tie and it was a hot day and I wasn’t happy. That’s one of me climbing in Nepal. Me surfing in Portugal. Mountain biking in Italy. Sailing. Skiing. BASE jumping. Narcissistic much, right?” March laughed but the sound faded.

  “Caleb? I’m trying to distract you and it’s not working. Say something. Look at me. What the fuck is wrong? You’re worrying me.”

  Caleb slowly turned to look at him, trying to see what he’d missed in March’s face, looking for some trace of the boy he knew. But his body was still failing him, his mind tricking him into believing he was tied to a train track and there was nothing he could do to get free, that this time he was going to die. He slumped to the floor and March dropped to his side.

  “Is it your heart?” March asked.

  Yes, but not in the way March meant.

  “Asthma?”

  Caleb shook his head.

  “Panic attack?”

  He managed a nod.

  “Try to breathe more slowly. Breathe out longer than you breathe in.” March took his hand. “What do you need? Shall we get out of this room?”

  Another shake.

  Caleb stared at March. Baxter? Could he be that lucky? Finally?

  Even as joy rushed in, anger overwhelmed it, and Caleb dragged his hand free. He was awash with emotion, pulled in so many directions he couldn’t function.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” March said. “We’ll just stay here as long as you need.”

  God, it’s him. It really is. Ask.

  “B for…Baxter?” His voice was so quiet he could hardly hear himself speak.

  March’s brow furrowed. “How the hell could you know that? You’re panicking because you…you recognized me as a kid? Do we know each other?”

  “I…I…I…” Tye fought for air, gulped after each attempt to speak.

  He wanted to hit March, wanted to hurt him, thump him, strike him. How could this be happening? He felt his face twisting in a scowl. He managed to get to his feet, but he couldn’t move away from the wall.

  March stood up at his side. His eyes widened in concern. “What is it? What’s wrong? Please say something.”

  “I thought…you were dead.” Caleb flattened his trembling hands against the wall. “He told me you were dead.”

  “What? Who told you?” March couldn’t have looked more puzzled if he’d tried.

  Look at me. Know me.

  Caleb didn’t want to tell him, he wanted March to see.

  “He showed me you were dead and told me it was my fault.”

  Caleb watched realization dawn as March’s face blanched, his eyes flaring with the same stunned shock that Caleb was feeling.

  “Did you think I was dead?” Caleb asked.

  “Oh my God.” March stared at him without blinking, anguish in his voice. “Jesus Christ Almighty.”

  March wasn’t touching him now. Caleb wasn’t sure he wanted him to. Anger still bubbled inside him. All these fucking years…if Caleb had looked harder, if he’d taken the risk despite what Jasim said. If Baxter/March had looked harder for him.

  “Why did you think I was dead?” March asked.

  “He gave me a newspaper cutting. The bikes found along with charred remains. Yours. But it wasn’t you, was it?” Caleb gasped, his heart back to hurting as if it were tearing itself apart, trying to break through his ribs.

  “What did you think happened to me?” He raised his fists and hit March on the chest once, twice, kept going. “What the fuck did you think happened to me?” He shouted it time after time, kept hitting March, who did nothing to stop him.

  Caleb’s hands fell back to his sides, still clenched. “Didn’t you look for me? We said… Why didn’t you find me? Oh God, how did you get out of the house? Shit, who died?”

  His legs refused to keep him upright and he slithered down the wall.

  March dropped down at his side. “Tye? I can’t… Oh fuck. Where’ve you been? What happened? Jesus. You’re here? With me? I can’t believe it.”

  He reached for Caleb’s face and Caleb jerked away. March swallowed hard but let his hand drop.

  Caleb stared at him. The intense push and pull of emotion was more than he could bear. He was scared he was dreaming. Scared that he wasn’t.

  “I’m overwhelmed,” March whispered.

  You’re overwhelmed?

  “Tell me what I can do.”

  Caleb struggled to pull himself together. “When I was free, when I had my head straight, I looked for you. I wasn’t supposed to. I’d promised. I’d been told you were dead by two people. One I had reason not to trust, the other every reason to trust. I still shouldn’t have looked. There were huge risks, but I had to see for myself. There was always the chance the newspaper had been wrong, that Liam had tricked me, that what I’d been told by the other person was a lie and you were alive.

  “You weren’t at your house. That was an easy check. I risked one look on the Internet. There was no Baxter Carne.” I am so angry with you. His eyes filled with tears. Oh Christ, my heart.

  “We moved to France after Dad died. Mum wanted me to have her new husband’s surname. I didn’t want to be Baxter to anyone if you weren’t there, so I used my middle name. Oh, Tye.”

  “I’m not Tye anymore.”

  March tried to take hold of his hand, but Caleb wrapped his arms around himself and hugged tight. I’m so cold.

  “I can’t take this in,” March whispered. “I can’t fucking believe it. You, but…your eyes. They’re not green.”

  “Contacts.” Caleb spat out the word.

  “Why?”

  “Because I didn’t want to see myself when I looked in the mirror. I wanted to be someone new. And years of being kept in continual light, or perpetual darkness when I was being punished, meant my eyesight deteriorated. Maybe it would have anyway, but I might as well blame Liam for that as well.”

  “Fuck.”

  March reached for him again then pulled back his hand.

  Caleb was glad. He wanted to get all this out, see if March still wanted to touch him then. See if he wanted to touch March.

  “I didn’t know he’d set the house on fire. He had me wrapped up in his van. I thought you’d come. Even after Liam showed me the newspaper and I knew you were dead, even after Liam showed me what he looked like without his wig and his scar, I still had this hope inside me. I though
t you’d find me and take me away from him. Because we’d promised.” His teeth clenched. “But you didn’t come, no one came, so in the end I had to accept you weren’t alive anymore.”

  Caleb banged his head back against the wall, did it three times before March stopped him. He slid his fingers between Caleb’s head and the plaster, then trailed his hand down Caleb’s arm to his hand, pushed until Caleb unclenched his fist, then threaded their fingers together.

  “I would have done anything for it to have been you who got away and not me,” March whispered.

  Caleb looked straight at him. “There wasn’t one moment when I wished you were in there instead of me. Though I did wish you were with me. A bit selfish.”

  “I can’t get my head around this.” March dragged his fingers of his other hand through his hair. “Why didn’t I know you were free? Have you been in witness protection? Didn’t they catch Liam? Why the fuck didn’t the police at least tell me you were okay? Every time I asked, they said the case was still open but there were no new leads.

  “Oh God, after the house burned down, I rode my bike everywhere looking for you and Liam and the van. The license number you gave me turned out to belong to a Porsche.”

  Caleb took a shuddering breath.

  “When the police came and told me and my parents that human remains had been found, I thought it was you who was dead and I… Oh fuck. But when they did their tests, it turned out to be the old guy who owned the house. They couldn’t tell if he’d been killed or died of natural causes.”

  “That smell?”

  March nodded and rubbed Caleb’s knuckles with his thumb. “Yep. I think Liam killed him.

  “Once I discovered it wasn’t you, I tried even harder to find you because I knew if Liam had wanted you dead, he’d have left you in that house. I don’t know if he thought I was still in there, but once he understood he wasn’t going to be able to find me quickly, he had no choice but to destroy as much evidence as he could and run.

  “So after the remains were identified, I knew he’d taken you somewhere. Another house. My mum and dad understood why I needed to search. I spent weekend after weekend cycling around the countryside with my dad, looking for you, for Liam, for places you might be, but when I started to bunk off school to do it on my own, they put their foot down. They were scared for me, worried Liam would snatch me again.

  “But I looked. I never forgot.”

  He looked for me. He kept our promises. A lump grew in Caleb’s throat.

  “You think I didn’t look? That I forgot you?” March whispered. “I could never forget you. I spent every minute missing you, thinking about you, worrying about you. I put signs on lampposts. I worked with a police artist to make a sketch of Liam. Everyone thought you were dead, that it would be too risky for Liam to keep you.”

  “Liam wore a wig. Under that shaggy blond mop, he had short, dark hair. The moustache was fake. So was the scar. I hardly recognized him when he showed me what he really looked like. He seemed to turn into someone different to the shy, shambling guy who’d offered us those rods. More confident, bigger.”

  “My dad told me the police were deluged with calls. Every lunatic in the country had something to say. The press were relentless for a while, but then someone else took the front page and people began to forget. You and Liam had disappeared into thin air.”

  Caleb shuddered.

  “I never really stopped looking,” March said. “I couldn’t make myself stop. I didn’t want to stop. If I stopped, it meant I was giving up on you. I could never do that. I came back here to work, knowing I was fucking torturing myself, but I felt closest to you here. I suppose I thought that if there was the slightest chance you’d managed to escape, you’d come back here…to find me. I hoped.”

  “I hoped too.”

  March squeezed his hand. “I don’t understand why you didn’t find me when you got free.”

  “I tried.” But not hard enough. Though he had his reasons. Rather, one reason. Jasim.

  They stared at each other and Caleb thought March was trying to see the boy he’d once been because that was what Caleb was doing. March’s dark eyes. That look in them. Oh fuck.

  “It should have been me,” March said. “We had a plan. You weren’t supposed to be the one who stayed. I felt so fucking guilty. I was angry with you.” He groaned. “I was such a mess after it happened. I felt guilty because I was safe and you weren’t. I felt guilty because I was unhappy and I knew it was nothing compared to what I thought you were going through. I felt guilty because, eventually, I allowed myself to give up hope of finding you. Though never entirely.”

  Caleb squeezed March’s fingers. “He liked me best. He loved my eyes. I knew I could distract him more easily than you. It was our only chance. I had to do it.”

  “I was so pissed off with you when you stripped off and stepped into that shower.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  March shook his head. “I did the only thing I could and I’ve hated myself for it every fucking day since.”

  “And punishing yourself too? Is that why you hadn’t come out as gay? Hadn’t found someone to love? Hadn’t wanted to be loved?”

  “I had someone to love and I lost him,” March whispered. “After you’d gone, there was a hole in my heart I didn’t want to fill. I wanted you and I couldn’t have you. If I couldn’t have you, I didn’t want anyone.”

  “Oh God, March.”

  “Where have you been? The longer you were missing, the more people assumed you were dead.”

  “Did you?” Caleb’s voice seemed tiny.

  “I told you, no, but…” March hesitated, “…after my dad died, I was on the verge of falling apart. I couldn’t sleep. I’d lost two people I loved. I was afraid of being closed in. All I wanted to do was cycle around looking for you, knocking on the doors of random houses. My mum eventually had enough and took me out of the country. It was to stop me looking, make me forget, keep me safe. I never forgot. But…” he sucked in a breath and his cheeks twitched, his voice dropping to little more than a whisper, “…I didn’t want him to be hurting you. Part of me wanted you to be dead.”

  March rubbed Caleb’s forearm with his thumb.

  “I knew you’d look for me.” Caleb managed a small smile. “We were the Jedis.”

  “Christ. The clues were there the moment we met and we missed them.”

  “You not liking ice cream and wanting to be a chocolate taster.”

  March chuckled. “Those cones in the cycling proficiency test. The time travel thing.”

  “If I hadn’t seen those photos…would I ever have known? That’s the first time I’ve seen the boy I was.” He gulped. “I remember you trying to stop that gull grabbing the ice cream out of your mum’s hand.”

  “That was the day I got three holes in one at the crazy golf. I was just hitting them wild and you were so careful, lining the shots up.”

  “And you got double my score,” Caleb said. “Freaky bastard.”

  They smiled at each other.

  “I was sure that if I ever did see you again, I’d recognize you at once,” March said. “I feel…ashamed I didn’t know, and yet there was something that pulled me to you.”

  “The tide.”

  March gave a choked laugh.

  “But I didn’t recognize you either. If I’d known your middle name was March, I might have realized in the cave. It’s not exactly common.”

  “Plus your eyes. Fuck it, Caleb. If I’d seen the real color of your eyes. If I hadn’t had those pictures on the wall—”

  “We’d have known,” Caleb insisted. “All it would have taken was the mention of my name. Or I would have seduced Baxter out of you.”

  March laughed. “You were…so perfect. Your smile. The way you looked at me when I stood up for you, as if… Fuck it, now you’re even more g
orgeous.”

  March put his hand around the back of Caleb’s neck and pulled him so their foreheads rested together. They sat in silence for a few minutes until March let him go. Caleb wondered if March had been taking in what had happened to him. Caleb didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew the next question March would ask.

  “When did you get away? How? Did you persuade the police not to tell anyone?”

  “I didn’t get away for a long time.”

  Caleb watched as March frowned, beginning to work things out.

  “Jesus Christ.” March pressed his fist to his mouth, then dropped his hand. “You wouldn’t talk about any farther back than four years. He had you twelve years? Oh fuck, fuck.”

  Caleb couldn’t say “don’t worry, it wasn’t that bad”. Couldn’t say anything because it had been that bad, but March never had to know how bad, in case he didn’t want him anymore.

  “Liam was the one who homeschooled you?”

  Caleb gave a short laugh. “Liam didn’t teach me anything, apart from how fucked up some guys are and the A to Z of gay sex.” Caleb didn’t miss March’s wince. “He gave me plenty of books. Schoolbooks. The right ones for my age. I didn’t realize at the time, didn’t put two and two together, but he was getting them from a school. The room he held me in was part of a boarding school where he was the caretaker.

  “I read everything he gave me. Some books several times. I didn’t have a TV. I taught myself as best I could. Maths, English, history, geography. I structured my time like a school day. I gave up with chemistry and physics and languages. I memorized a pub-quiz book and tested myself—the reason I can babble trivia. I even learned the rules of a load of sports I was never likely to play. I had an insatiable need to learn about everything. I taught myself ballet. I think that did more than anything to keep me sane.”

  “You never told me you wanted to be a dancer.”

  “I thought you’d laugh at me.”

  “I wouldn’t have done that.”