White Rabbit

by Caleb Roehrig

  Lia actually starts laughing at me. “Lyle’s not some dude in a sweater vest making shift schedules at fucking Applebee’s, Rufus. He is a seriously bad guy, and he will turn you inside-the-fuck-out just for thinking you have the right to talk to him!”

  “Fine. But do you know how to get in touch with him?”

  “You’re not listening to me.” Her voice hardens as she grows annoyed by my cluelessness. “Even Arlo was afraid of this guy. Does that tell you anything? I mean, he will literally kill you dead, and it will not bother him one damn bit.”

  “I don’t think he will,” I rebut, sounding far more nonchalant than I actually feel. “Somebody just whacked two of his guys and shut down his business operations in Burlington. He might be happy to help set Hayden up for an arrest.”

  “Or else, you know, firebomb Hayden’s entire neighborhood,” Lia shoots back.

  “Rufus.” Sebastian approaches me, his face taut and his eyes serious, and he takes me by the shoulders. Nostalgic goose bumps erupt reflexively across my bare skin at his warm, gentle touch, and I struggle not to show him how much I like it. “What you’re thinking of doing is insane. Like, legit insane. You say ‘somebody’ whacked his guys—well, what if it was Lyle? What if Fox and Arlo were already dead before Hayden got to them? This dude isn’t gonna thank you for digging into his business!”

  “Lyle wasn’t behind Fox’s death,” I assert confidently. Sebastian tries to speak again, but I cut him off. “Arlo’s plan was to get enough money to lie low until Lyle could cool off, right? Well, if he’d just seen Lyle waste Fox, then blackmailing him over it wouldn’t exactly be a shortcut off the guy’s shit list. It doesn’t even make sense.”

  “You’re just making guesses!” Sebastian glares. “Guys in Arlo’s position turn on their bosses all the time—and they usually wind up just as dead!”

  “Which Arlo would know,” I rejoin, “which is why it makes even less sense that he would try to blackmail Lyle before turning to one of his many rich-ass friends for a loan, if he needed fast cash to get out of town.”

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lia is still laughing, but it’s a sound like someone scraping rust off a drainpipe. “This whole conversation is ridiculous! Lyle is part of a fucking gang, you moron! If you go to him for any reason and start talking about shit that could get him in trouble, he will break your legs off and beat you with them!”

  “No, he won’t,” I inform them both with a reluctant sigh. “Lyle Shetland is one of the few people in this city who actually likes me.”

  * * *

  At some point shortly after the beginning of the eighth grade, I began to realize that the feelings I had for Eric Shetland had gone beyond regular friendship. Believe it or not, it took me sort of by surprise; despite all the jeers and jibes from Hayden and his friends, mocking my more feminine mannerisms, it had literally never occurred to me that I might actually be gay. But the fascinated rush when I was with Eric, the achy longing when I wasn’t … it just became harder and harder to shrug off as the year wore on.

  He was one of my best friends, and I was terrified that my secret might ruin our bond, but by the time spring break rolled around, the pressure inside me had built to a point where I simply couldn’t take it anymore. I had to say something, I realized, or our friendship would self-destruct anyway.

  It was early May before I got up the courage to tell him how I felt. Eric had come over to my house after school, and we were eating homemade pizza bagels and watching The Raid 2 on Netflix, when I finally couldn’t keep it in any longer. Pausing the movie, I turned to him and just blurted it out. “Um. I don’t know if you’ve noticed me acting weird lately? But if you have, it’s because, um, I think … well, I’ve realized that, um, I’m gay?”

  He froze, then looked over at me like he’d never seen me before. “Oh.”

  “Yeah. And … and also. Also. I think, also, that … I like you. Like … Like-like.”

  “Oh.” Eric’s face turned the color of a dead tooth, and a strange sound emerged from his throat. “Uh. Okay. That’s cool. I mean, I’m not like that? But it doesn’t bother me that you are.” He looked fairly bothered, though. “Like, you’re my friend and all, but I like girls. You know? Like-like them. So, um, I’m not … into you. Like that.”

  “Okay,” I said, nodding like a slowly deflating parade balloon. I’d been prepared to hear that, but it still made something come painfully loose in my chest. “I get it. I just, I wanted to be honest with you. Because you’re one of my best friends. At least, I hope you’re still one of my best friends?”

  “Well, yeah, sure.” He inched subtly away from me across the carpet. “I mean, as long as you know that’s all we are. Friends.”

  “Yeah. Of course.” I looked at the space expanding between us. It was like the Atlantic Ocean.

  The next day, I came in to school to learn that Eric had called Cody Barnes the second he’d left my house, and had reported everything I’d said; Cody, in turn, had alerted the entire rest of our class. The hallway was a shooting gallery, people pointing and whispering, popular guys coughing insults into their hands as I passed by, and when I reached my locker I saw that someone had drawn a squirting dick on it in black Sharpie. Things only got worse from there.

  Cody was merciless with his taunting, his cruel names, his nasty jokes. He gave Eric plenty of grief as well: calling him my boyfriend, asking if I’d given him AIDS, and winding him up to the point where Eric finally announced—angry and panicked and apparently deadly serious—that he was thinking of reporting me to the principal for sexual harassment. Because I’d told him I liked him.

  When I bumped into Eric in the hall on the way to our fifth-period math class, he shoved me as hard as he could into a bank of lockers, shouting, “Don’t fucking touch me, FAGGOT!”

  It was the end of our friendship, and in spite of Lucy’s support and April’s unexpected kindness, I still felt like a wad of used toilet paper by the time school let out. I was nowhere near ready to face my mom with the news of my day, so I rode my bike to the park instead, climbing up onto a picnic table where I stared out at nothing for a while. I was so preoccupied with my misery that I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until someone called my name. “Hey, Holt! ’Zat you?”

  Glancing up, I froze. Standing around a cluster of motorcycles in the parking lot was a group of hard-looking adult-type dudes in jeans and leather, their cigarettes glowing in the gathering dusk like the red dots of snipers’ rifles; they exuded that kind of bored hostility that often portends mischief or violence, and I suddenly felt very alone. The tallest of the bikers, his shaved head a shiny, rose quartz dome, was ambling toward me. In a flash, I realized it was Eric’s older brother, Lyle.

  The guy was twenty-one, and even though he had an apartment somewhere in South Burlington, it seemed like he was at Eric’s house more often than he wasn’t. I’d heard about the kind of trouble Lyle got into—vandalism, shoplifting, drugs, fistfights. I knew he’d been arrested before, and that my mom didn’t want me to hang out at the Shetlands’ if Lyle had his friends over, but this was the first time I’d felt afraid of him.

  He closed the distance between us in just a few strides, and I went completely rigid, suddenly sure that Eric had sent him; instead of being reported to the principal, I was going to be stomped into the earth by Eric’s hell-raising sasquatch of a brother, from whom I didn’t have a single chance of escaping on my little three-speed Schwinn.

  “Heard you had kind of a shit day,” Lyle grunted unexpectedly, plunking down beside me on the picnic table. Misinterpreting my startled expression, he added, “Small town. Rumors got nowhere to go but everywhere.” He looked at nothing with me for a moment, while I felt like someone standing on a land mine, waiting for it to go off. Then he spoke again, contemplatively. “I don’t know any homos, but I got nothin’ against ’em. My thing is, as long as somebody’s cool with me, I’m cool with them, you know? And I always thought you were a pret
ty cool little dude.”

  I nodded. Although, truth be told, I’d have nodded at anything he said. Disagreeing with Lyle Shetland was tantamount to suicide.

  “You’re the only one of Eric’s friends I ever liked,” he confided after another moment, surprising me yet again. “E’s a pretty good kid, but he hangs out with all these rich pricks—and wannabe rich pricks—and he’s startin’ to turn into one of ’em.” He looked down at me sympathetically. “You and I got a lot in common, actually. We’re both black sheep, and we both put up with a whole lotta crap, just gettin’ through the day. But only the tough survive, and you got my respect for surviving, Holt.” He stood up, jabbing a cigarette into his mouth, and offered me his fist to bump. “Life slings you shit sometimes, my man, and keeping your head up’s all you can do. So hang in there. You ever get in real trouble, or need some punks beat down, you call me—I mean it. I don’t like a lot of people, and I watch out for the ones I do.”

  And with a friendly wave, he was gone.

  * * *

  Eric got shipped off to some boarding school that summer—ironically enough, to get him away from his older brother’s influence—and with him went the enduring reminder of my Coming Out story’s more sordid details. That suited me just fine, thanks, and revisiting the whole, ugly experience for the benefit of Sebastian and Lia is not a proposition that holds much appeal. Instead, I sum up my connection to Lyle Shetland by saying, “He once told me that if I was ever in trouble and needed something, I could call him. Well, this sure looks like Shit Creek to me, and he’s a guy with lots of paddles.”

  Sebastian gives me a beseeching look. “Rufus.”

  It takes willpower to ignore the plea in his eyes, but I manage it. Turning to Lia, I ask, “Do you know how I can get in touch with him, yes or no?”

  She tosses her hands up and lets them flap down at her sides in disgust, giving up on me. “He and his boys hang out at this dive bar over near the airport—”

  “Lia!” Sebastian turns on her, aggrieved, and she gives him an insolent shrug.

  “What? If he’s got a death wish, I sure as hell can’t stop him.” She turns back to me. “The place is called Smokey’s, or Smoker’s, or the Smokehouse—something like that. It’s in a strip mall off Route 2, behind this old gas station that closed down a couple years ago. There’s a gross diner where they go after last call, right in the same complex. It’s near one of those enormous dollar stores where they sell ugly bullshit and wonky stuff from China that doesn’t work right.”

  “I think I know where you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do,” she replies with insulting kindness.

  “Rufus, this is nuts!” Sebastian is starting to sound desperate. “I don’t care what this Lyle dude told you once upon a time! He is a dangerous guy, with dangerous friends, and you’re asking for serious, murdery trouble if you go to him looking for favors!”

  “You don’t have to come,” I answer briskly, shoving past him and making my way to the door. “You two stay here, lock yourselves in, and hide from Hayden in the dark. Meanwhile, April’s at the police station, maybe about to get arrested for something she didn’t do, and I promised I’d help her. So I’m going.”

  With that, I smack the deadbolt open and step out into the strangling golden mist that fills Lia’s concrete stairwell like quicksand.

  18

  It’s a phenomenal exit line. Unfortunately, stomping off into the night all by myself to go hunt down a kingpin-slash-gang member is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done, and I find myself regretting it before I’ve even made it out of Lia’s side yard. Truthfully, I’m nowhere near as composed as I made myself seem when I was safely inside with the door locked. Way back then, confronting Lyle Shetland was just a notion—a preposterous one, which, through sheer stubbornness in the face of those doubting me, I convinced myself would work; now that I’m actually going to try to do it, every step I take feels like one more scoop of dirt piled into my own grave.

  I can’t even figure out exactly what I intended with my parting remark, which suddenly sounds petty, provoking, and self-congratulatory all at once as I play it back. You two stay here, lock yourselves in, and hide from Hayden in the dark. Did I really want Sebastian to stay with Lia and be safe? Or had I deliberately demeaned his courage so he would follow me? The fact is, I realize, I want both to happen; and no matter which move he makes next, it’s going to be the wrong one, and it’s going to annoy me.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  When I hit the front lawn, the fog is rolling through the neighborhood as thick as grease, reducing the street ahead of me to a lonely smear of eerie shadows and ghostly light. Abruptly, I know precisely which option I really hope Sebastian chooses; and, seconds later, the sound of thumping feet behind me tells me he has in fact picked it.

  “I think maybe you really do have a death wish,” he grumbles when he catches up with me, glowering moodily.

  In spite of how much I was just hoping he’d show up, I can’t resist rising to the argument. “I told you, like, a million times that you don’t have to come with me.”

  “I know what you told me—I told you that I don’t give a shit. You’re not getting rid of me.” His eyes drop to a spot between my collarbones and his tone changes. “Look, I know you’re angry with me. I know you … you hate me, and you’re not going to forgive me. You made that really clear. But this isn’t even about that. If you’re walking into a lion’s den tonight, then you’re not doing it alone. Maybe you don’t care if a drug dealer fucking wastes you, but I do. So, you know. Deal with it.”

  I struggle to come up with a response, but can’t seem to. There are a thousand things I could say here, a thousand things I want to say, but each one is rigged with emotional explosives. Part of the problem is the way he seems to be looking at me, with serious, intimate eyes—the way he used to, when things were perfect; I’m afraid to not be angry, terrified of the slippery slope back into aching need for him that lies just beyond my terribly slender guardrail of resentment … but I’m just as afraid to push him away, because I miss serious, intimate Sebastian Williams so fucking much. And a greedy, lonely, traitorous quarter of my heart loves that he’s looking at me again.

  We make our way back to the Jeep through the dead silence of the neighborhood, the streets as still as a ruined civilization, and I try to shake off the creepy feeling of eyes tracking our progress. Wordlessly, Sebastian pulls away from the curb, heading automatically toward the airport, while I begin to think ahead—wondering what the hell I’m going to say when we reach our destination.

  As if he’s read my mind, Sebastian suddenly asks, “So what’s the plan, anyway? I mean, we just walk into this shady diner where drug dealers hang out and go, ‘Yo, who wants to help the cops arrest somebody tonight?’”

  “I … haven’t exactly figured that out, yet,” I confess, not wanting to acknowledge just how close to the sun we might actually be flying. This is all improvisation, here, one foot in front of the other, and I know I’m putting an awful lot of faith in Lyle’s memory. I haven’t seen him in more than two years, and if he’s forgotten about the little chat we had in the park, this mission will go from Risky to Kamikaze in a heartbeat. “I guess first we just see if he’s there. If he is, we try to get him to notice me so that he’ll say hi, and then we just sort of … you know, bring it up.”

  “‘Bring it up?’” Sebastian’s foot slips off the gas pedal. “You mean, like, ‘Speaking of murdering two of your guys, that’s what my brother did’?”

  “Well, maybe not exactly like that, no—”

  “And what if he doesn’t notice you? What if he doesn’t say hi? What’s Plan B?”

  “Um. We go talk to him, I guess.”

  Sebastian is quiet for what feels like a really long time, and then he says carefully, “I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but that’s even stupider than your last stupid plan.”

  “I know,” I acknowledge glumly. “
But I don’t have anything better.”

  “Oh fuck.” Sebastian’s shoulders slump. “We’re going to die.”

  “We don’t have to go through with it,” I hear myself saying in return. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should just … if we get there, and it seems really scary, we can always back out.” I’m thinking about the previous winter, when I decided to get my ears pierced during my weeklong suspension from school. I made the appointment and biked over to the shop to get it done, took one look at the terrifying gun thing that was about to blast holes in my flesh, and fled outside again with a cold sweat pouring down my neck. “Believe it or not, I don’t actually want to get shot and/or stabbed tonight.”

  “That’s a relief.” He lets out a grunt of friendly sarcasm, then glances over at me. “But what about what Mrs. Covington said, Rufe? You need that money, and if you give up, she might get you expelled. I mean … we have to at least try.”

  My face heats at the reminder that I made him aware of my mother’s poverty—our poverty—but at least his look isn’t pitying; it just seems like he cares. I think again about all the chances he’s taking on my behalf, all the crazy, stupid things he’s been helping me do, and I start to feel ashamed. There’s something I haven’t said yet—words he deserves to hear, but which have felt like a betrayal every time they’ve gotten near my tongue. Like I’d be selling out my pride while it’s still fresh from being flayed alive. But I have to get them off my chest before I start hating myself.

  “Thank you,” I mutter stiffly, trying to sound as formal as possible. “You know, for everything. For driving me out to South Hero and helping me with April, and for … for not making me do this by myself.” It is so hard to say, and I hate how much it sounds like forgiveness—like I’m relinquishing any self-esteem I’ve salvaged from the smoking rubble he made of my heart. “And also for what you said to Hayden, back at the police station. And for this, now. I know I should’ve said it earlier, but I’m … I’m saying it now. Even if I’m kind of doing a shitty job. Thanks.”