by Andrew Smith
I was scared and ashamed at the same time.
It was like watching my house catch fire, but I couldn’t look away, because how many times do you ever get to see a house burn down?
Paul unbuckled Bosten’s belt and slipped his hand down inside my brother’s jeans. Paul started kissing my brother’s chest and belly. Then he pulled Bosten’s jeans and underwear all the way down to his feet.
Then, after that, I’m not going to say what happened. It’s because what happened next wasn’t ever about me. It was about my brother and Paul.
I knew I had to get out of there and leave them alone and never talk about it to Bosten.
Let him and Paul do whatever they wanted to do. It wasn’t my business, and I shouldn’t have been there. I suddenly felt so sad for Bosten, like I was hurting him or I was doing something wrong. But I didn’t even think Bosten was doing anything “wrong” with Paul. It was just surprising to me, I guess.
Just then, Bosten opened his eyes and looked right at me.
I turned and ran.
And I know Bosten yelled something. There was a kind of urgent and pleading sound behind me, but I couldn’t hear anything anymore, except my feet crashing through the brush, slipping on slick spots of mud and leaves.
I just ran.
I was stupid to think I might outrun Paul Buckley.
When he caught up to me from behind—I couldn’t hear him at all—he pushed me, square between my shoulder blades; and I fell, face-first, into a tangle of thorny blackberry vines.
It hurt.
My hands and wrists started bleeding, cut with little slashes from the thorns, and I was completely out of breath. I turned over and saw Paul standing behind me. He had a crazed look on his face. His cheeks were red, and his stomach and chest pumped nervously.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
I didn’t know what to say. I was so scared that Paul was going to do something crazy.
He took a step toward me. His neck was bulging. He looked like he could explode. Paul punched the air and kicked the brush next to my feet. He screamed,
“WHAT THE FUCK, STICK?”
I stared directly into Paul’s eyes, but neither of us backed down and looked away.
I felt the tickle of blood running from my wrist down toward my hand.
“I … I’m sorry, Buck. It’s … I didn’t…”
Paul ranted, “What did you see? What did you see?”
I didn’t want to answer him.
“If you say anything about this to anyone, I’ll fucking…”
Then he took another step toward me, leaning heavily on one leg. He was going to kick me. But by that time, Bosten had caught up to us.
“Hey! Cool it!”
Paul glanced back, then he relaxed.
Bosten had gotten his clothes back on, but his shirt hung open, and his belt dangled, unbuckled and jangling. He carried Paul’s basketball sweatshirt with him.
Bosten looked at me, but quickly turned his eyes back on Paul.
My brother looked sick, worn-out. Pale. He fired an angry look at Paul. “What did you do?”
Before Paul could say anything, I answered, “I tripped. Buck didn’t do anything.”
Paul looked down, and Bosten handed him his shirt. “Here,” he said.
Paul slipped it on and turned around, making it obvious that he didn’t want to look at either one of us.
It was so quiet.
The three of us seemed frozen in place.
“I’m sorry, Bosten.”
My brother shrugged.
“For what?”
“If you guys would have told me to leave you alone, I would have left you alone.”
“I know that.”
Paul stood, facing away from us. He pulled his hood up over his head. He rubbed his eyes, then put his hands in his pockets.
Bosten reached out for me. “Come on. Get up.”
“There’s blood on my hands.”
“Let me see.”
He fumbled at buckling his belt, and gave me an embarrassed kind of smirk as he straightened his clothing. Then he kneeled down and began pulling the dried vines from around my ankles.
“It’s not too bad,” I said. I held my palms up in front of me, turned them over. The cuts stung, and the sleeves of my flannel had bloodstains around the cuffs.
“Here.” Bosten grabbed my hand and grunted as he pulled me to my feet.
“They’re ringing the bell,” Paul said.
I couldn’t hear it.
Mrs. Buckley had a big brass bell hanging outside the back of the house. She’d use it to get Paul back inside.
I followed them. Paul never once looked at me the whole way back to his house.
Not one of us said a word to one another.
Mom and Dad were sitting in the living room with Paul’s father when we got to the house. Mrs. Buckley waited at the door, sweeping her arm down the hallway with instructions for us to clean up for dinner in Paul’s bathroom.
She noticed the blood on my hands and sleeves and stopped me, alarmed and looking so soft and concerned.
“Stark! What happened to your arms?”
Paul and Bosten froze in the hallway.
“Oh. We were just playing around and I fell in some blackberries.”
“It looks awful!” she said. “Paul, bring the Bactine out here.”
She put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me inside the kitchen, toward the sink. She ran the water, testing it with the back of her arm. I watched as it ran over her peach-fuzz skin. Then she turned to me and began unbuttoning my shirt.
I thought I was going to pass out.
This was the most insane day I could ever imagine.
Actually, I don’t think I ever could have imagined it.
“Let’s get this off you, honey.” Mrs. Buckley pulled my shirttails up out of my jeans. My dick was so hard, I thought she must have noticed, but I couldn’t say or do anything. I felt like a fish, just lying there, yawning my useless gills.
She balled my shirt up and dropped it on the kitchen counter. Then she gently grabbed my arms and began bathing them under the warm flow of water, stroking my skin, cleaning away the dried blood and dirt.
Mrs. Buckley turned the water off.
“You stay there, Stark. I’m going to throw this shirt in the washer. I’ll be right back.”
I followed her out with my eyes.
Bosten and Paul stood behind me with the first-aid spray.
And Paul said, “Please don’t say anything, Stick. I’m sorry I got mad.”
He sounded weak.
I whispered, “Why would I say anything? Why would I do something like that to my own brother? You’re my friend, too, Buck.”
Bosten stared down at his feet and shook his head.
Mrs. Buckley came back in, carrying a towel and a clean sweatshirt for me. It was one of Paul’s basketball sweats. She toweled off my arms and sprayed my cuts with Bactine.
It stung and smelled good at the same time.
Then Mrs. Buckley handed me the sweatshirt. “I’m certain this will fit you. You’re just as tall as Paul.”
Paul and Bosten quietly stared at me while I put it on.
DAD AND MOM
Paul had his own color television set in his bedroom.
The Buckleys even had a special cable service that let him watch R-rated movies. I’d never heard cussing or seen naked breasts on television before I watched TV in Paul’s room.
After dinner, our parents all played cards and drank. Dad and Mr. Buckley were already drunk when they came back from fishing, anyway. I was glad for that because I was still worried that Mom would say something after we got home about how disrespectful I was to her in front of Mrs. Buckley.
And that would most likely mean I’d spend the night in the spare room.
Sometimes, Mom and Dad forgot things when they’d had enough to drink.
So the three of us watched television with the lights off in
Paul’s room. It was hard for me to pay attention, though. My brain was too full of other stuff.
Mostly, I wanted to talk to my brother.
I sat on the floor, cross-legged, in front of the television. Paul and Bosten were up on the bed. Paul had his arm around Bosten and leaned his head against Bosten’s cheek. They rubbed their bare feet together. I heard him say,
“It doesn’t matter what we do or say in front of him anymore.”
And I tried not to listen.
* * *
One time, while we were watching a comedian, I heard Bosten say, “Don’t!”
And then they both laughed and wrestled on the bed.
But I did not turn around to see what it was that he was telling Paul to not do.
I wished I could just disappear and leave them alone.
* * *
Mom and Dad took the Pontiac home that night.
Bosten and I drove back home together in the small car.
It started out awfully. Neither one of us knew what to say; and it had never been like that between us before. Never in my life.
Bosten didn’t even look at me once.
Finally, when we got out onto Pilot Point Road, I said, “So. Are you gay or something?”
Then he looked at me. The reflection from the rearview mirror made a white band right across his eyes.
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
I wondered if it mattered. What that meant to me.
“And Paul?”
Bosten laughed a little. “Duh. What do you think?”
“Well, I’ve seen him with so many girls all the time.”
I was glad he smiled. Then he cleared his throat and said, “To be honest, I don’t know about Buck. Maybe he just likes … well, doing it. I can’t say for sure. We knew for such a long time that we wanted to, but we were scared. It took me so long to talk him into trying anything with me in the first place.”
“It looks like he’s adjusted to it pretty good.”
Bosten grinned and shoved my shoulder.
“How long have you guys been doing this?”
Bosten pulled the car over on the side of the road. He turned toward me and put his knee up in the space between our seats. For the first time in hours, he finally looked comfortable. Like my brother, Bosten. It made me feel so much better.
We could see the water.
“It started happening last summer.”
“Oh.”
“Is that all you want to know?”
I chewed on the inside of my lip. “It’s kind of weird. I … uh. I don’t think I’d like for it to happen to me.”
Then Bosten laughed for real. “Ha-ha … you are such a dumbshit, Stick! It doesn’t happen to you. It’s just how I am. Believe me, I know you’re not gay.”
“I get a boner every time Buck’s mom looks at me.”
“Ha-ha! Everyone sees it.”
I had to swallow. “They do?”
“Heh … I thought you were going to bust your zipper in the kitchen tonight.”
I felt myself getting hot, turning red again.
“You don’t have to worry. I mean, about me saying anything about you or Paul.”
“I know that, Stick.”
“And it doesn’t matter to me about it. Just next time, tell me to leave you guys alone.”
“Shut up.”
“What’s it feel like, being in love with someone?” I asked.
“It feels really good, Stick. Like how things are always supposed to be.”
I wondered if I would ever feel that way.
If anyone might ever feel like that about me.
Bosten started the car. I rolled down my window. It was very cold now.
“Bosten?”
“What?”
“What if they find out?”
He knew what I meant. Mom and Dad.
“You know what Dad said to me yesterday morning? When I was in the room, he said, ‘Sixteen is old enough that you can get out any time you don’t want to put up with this house. And I won’t chase after you.’ But you know what? I think he would kill me, Stick. I almost thought he was going to kill me over Ricky.”
“Are you scared?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t want nothing bad to happen to you. You have to be careful.”
Bosten put his hand out, and I held it.
* * *
We didn’t need to say anything after that.
It’s just how things were.
Everything else could change and go crazy.
But not that.
* * *
Next time we went to the Buckleys’ for dinner, I watched television in Paul’s room by myself.
* * *
Mom didn’t forget to tell Dad about me.
And he was mad because Bosten and I took so long coming home.
“Where do you get that mouth?” he said. “Where do you get that goddamned mouth, talking to your mother like that in front of Joy Buckley?”
He pulled me by my neck. His fingers were claws into my flesh, and he threw me over his chair. But he didn’t use his belt, only his hand, slapping, stinging like wasps, eating my flesh. He yanked Paul’s sweatshirt entirely off me. I thought it would choke me, but it came free and Dad threw it across the floor.
I saw Bosten standing there, watching.
He had to.
That was the rule.
Then Dad pulled at my pants. And he beat my back and legs. He punched me, too, and his hand made a sound that was higher and meatier than the sound his belt would make.
I couldn’t help but cry. I was not as tough as Bosten.
I could never be that strong.
My tears felt good and clean, like the water in Mrs. Buckley’s sink, and they made a dark circle on Dad’s chair. When he was finished, he pulled me up by the back of my arm and marched me down the hallway toward my Saint Fillan’s room.
Dad didn’t have to stop for me. I knew the rule. I won the race.
“Good night, Mom,” I said.
And I added, “Good night, Bosten, I love you.” And I almost choked on my words, I was crying so hard, but it felt like winning a game when Bosten said, “I love you, too, little brother.”
Then I was pushed onto the cold cot in that dark room. Dad stripped the last of my clothes away. He locked the door.
And this was how everything in the world ever was.
* * *
Sometimes Bosten talked about running away.
He had a dream of California.
When we were small,
when Bosten still played,
we liked to play California,
and we would drive on freeways
smoking pretend cigarettes with our arms out the windows.
We believed
boys like us could make our own rules in California.
But I told him I could not run away with him.
I thought they’d put me in mentally retarded school
in California,
and I would miss Emily
too much.
* * *
When he was in grade nine, Bosten really did run away.
He was gone for four days.
I was terrified
he was dead.
The police came every day.
He’d gone to Seattle.
When they brought him home, two things happened:
I begged him to promise he would never leave me,
and Dad beat him to exhaustion
and locked him
in this same room.
* * *
It was so cold in there I could not sleep.
EMILY
Bosten went off to school. Paul Buckley came and gave him a ride in the morning when I was downstairs getting dressed. If I thought about them being alone together, I would imagine bad things, and I felt that wasn’t fair for me to do. But I was jealous because I knew my brother was in love, and I was afraid that Paul was going to take him away from m
e.
And what else did I have without Bosten?
I didn’t get a chance to take my regular Sunday night bath, but it didn’t matter. They had to let me out of the room to go to school, and my hands still smelled like Mrs. Buckley’s soap. As soon as Mom said I could come out, I ran to the bathroom. I didn’t use that pail during the night, because I knew it would sit there the whole day while I was at school, and I’d have to clean it out when I got home.
So I held myself and ran, naked, down the stairs to the basement so I could piss in a toilet just as soon as I heard the key turn in the lock.
I almost didn’t make it.
Things like that happened a lot at our house.
* * *
I wore my Steelers cap.
I carried a book bag with my things for school, a sack lunch, and my every-Monday-morning-laundered gym clothes, rolled up perfectly, the way Mr. Lloyd showed us he wanted them to be. On the outside, a T-shirt with S. McCLELLAN (8) showing, written in black marker, wound tightly around the green shorts, white socks, and athletic supporter.
That was another thing they made us do: wear jocks. Mr. Lloyd would check that off every day, too: which boys were wearing their jocks, and which boys weren’t.
For Mr. Lloyd, gym grades depended on two simple things: wearing jocks and taking showers.
I realized, in eighth grade, that physical education was far less about fitness than it was about fitting. And how could a kid with only one ear ever be expected to fit in with everyone else, even if he did wear a jock and take his showers every day?
I never understood what jocks did for boys other than make us follow rules. They were supposed to protect our balls, Mr. Lloyd explained, but I’d seen at least a hundred guys who wore jocks and got hit in the balls, and it always seemed to hurt just as bad as if they had their balls hanging out and fully exposed. I mean, a shot to the balls is a shot to the balls, pretty much no matter what you’re wearing.
Well, I guess an exception could be a suit of armor, but you can’t shoot free throws in one.
Twice per year, the school would line up all the boys so they could weigh us and check our height. Mr. Lloyd would write that down, and the entire class period of boys’ gym classes would have to wait in line, by last names, wearing only our jocks, for our turns to have this important information recorded in Mr. Lloyd’s book.
