by Winter Page
Rain,
Thanks so much for letting me stay this weekend. Didn’t know you could drink that much! Anyways, I went home early this morning to get clothes. I’m going to have to face the music sooner than later. See you in Spanish!
Hugs and kisses, Clare
I rubbed my eyes, puffy from crying. I didn’t remember crying. But then again, I didn’t remember drinking. And it was clear I had done plenty of that. I made myself coffee before stepping into a scalding shower. The hot water flowed over my limbs. It was then that I started shaking.
A few brief snippets of memory flashed through my mind at a time. A glimpse of Clare’s hair. The taste of shots sliding down my throat. Kissing Clare good night. They all mashed together into a Technicolor collage of a weekend I would probably always wish I could remember. Only one thing definitely stuck out about it—an Eiffel Tower shooting up off a two-dimensional plane.
I had told Clare I was trans. And she hadn’t remembered it the next morning. I would put money on that being the reason why I had been drinking. I slid to the floor of my shower, hugged my knees to my chest, and cried. I cried because she didn’t remember. I cried because my parents still weren’t home to care. I cried because I had been in a stressful situation and done the one thing I promised myself I would never do. I cried because I had acted just like my dad. And I cried because there were seven new messages from Brad. I didn’t know what they were about. But I was terrified I might have drunk texted him back.
God only knew what I could’ve told him. When I got out of the shower, I turned my phone off. I didn’t want to see what Brad had to say. At this point, I didn’t even know if it mattered anymore. I hoped it didn’t.
SCHOOL WAS a zoo. Apparently, a big party got busted, and ten seniors had been arrested over the weekend for various charges, including DUI, underage drinking, and a few counts of date rape. I hung close to Clare when we entered the cafeteria, scared of what we would find. Cam had her arms around Brad, comforting him, I assumed. Her eyes bored into mine like fire, shooting daggers in my general direction. It wasn’t until I sat down that I realized it wasn’t me who she had been glaring at. It was Freddie who had walked in behind us.
Shauna was only too eager to spill all the good gossip to Clare and me as we sat down at our usual table.
“Brad’s friend Mark had the party of a century this weekend. It makes the biggest party we’ve had this year look like a kid’s birthday. There were at least six dealers at the party. Nothing heavy like meth, but they had ecstasy, roofies, pot, acid, painkillers, and I heard a few rumors about coke.”
Clare’s lips pursed as someone handed her a scribbled list of the kids who had been arrested. She showed the list to me, making a point of jabbing a finger at one name in particular on the list.
The waiter from the pizza joint. The guy who provided roofies to most of the high school boys in town. Clare smiled grimly and mouthed karma to me. I nodded.
Freddie looked like he hadn’t slept in days, his cheeks hollow and bruised with sleep deprivation.
Shauna leaned in closer to us to whisper, “Freddie is the one who called the cops. A girl overdosed, so he called 911. When the police got there, they found like three other kids overdosed. He saved their lives. But in the meantime, he’s going to be known as the kid who narked.”
Freddie glanced over at us from the lunch line, and I sent him an encouraging smile. But he didn’t meet my eyes.
Brad got up to meet him in the middle of the cafeteria, and I flinched for Freddie.
“You actually thought you had a right to show up to school today?” Brad screamed, the veins in his neck standing out starkly. Cam put a hand on Brad’s bicep to steady him. He shook her off.
Shauna leaned over to me one last time. “Brad’s little brother, Cory, was one of the kids who overdosed. And his older brother was the one dealing ecstasy. It’s a miracle Brad didn’t get charged with anything. God knows how hard it must have been for him to find someone sober enough to drive him home.”
Clare inhaled sharply and turned her eyes on Shauna. “But Cory is only fifteen. How in the hell did Brad manage to get him into a senior party? I mean I know Brad’s his brother and all, but still. There’s a reason freshmen aren’t allowed to come to the big parties!” she declared fiercely.
Shauna nodded. “Exactly. Brad is the one who got him in. Jesus, that’s got to be one helluva family dynamic. Oldest child supplies middle child’s habit. Middle child gets youngest child into a party where oldest child then gives him access to what youngest child uses to overdose. This is why America is failing as a country.” She shook her head in disgust.
I turned my gaze back to Freddie.
“You are one low son of a bitch to think you can walk back into my school like this,” Brad yelled.
I scanned the crowd. No teachers in sight. And it wasn’t like Freddie could respond or try to get help. Then he would really be forever labeled a narc. Instead, he just stood there, clenching and unclenching his fists. Even though Freddie was taller than Brad, Brad had a definite weight and strength advantage over him.
Everyone, including me, waited anxiously on the edge of their seats. We were all anticipating something. But none of us knew what.
And then it happened. Brad punched Freddie hard in the gut, and as Freddie doubled over, Brad slammed his fist into his face. Freddie obviously was having problems breathing. Brad obviously didn’t care, and obviously wasn’t done. Brad kneed Freddie mercilessly in the groin.
I wanted to do something, anything, but I swear my body was stuck in place. So in other words, as I watched my friend get pummeled, I didn’t do anything. I really was on a roll with this whole inaction thing. No one moved to stop Brad.
And then it got weird.
Clare sprang from her seat at the same time Cam did. You would expect Clare to go to Freddie, and Cam to Brad. Except the exact opposite happened. Clare threw herself at Brad, giving him a huge restraining bear hug. Cam grabbed Freddie by his shirt and pulled him away from Brad, her hands pulling desperately at him to make him stand upright.
Clare eventually had to literally jump onto Brad piggyback style to get him to stop thrashing. I watched her lips brush against his fiercely, talking him down desperately.
I clenched my fists to keep my own anger from running away with me. I never knew I was the jealous type until then. But the longer I saw Clare draped all over Brad, the deeper the pit in my stomach sank. I couldn’t take it. I tore my gaze away from them and focused my stare on Cam and Freddie.
Freddie looked utterly in shock. Cam was pounding her fists against his chest. I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but she was crying like he had died. He eventually grabbed her wrists and held her there. She looked up at him, her hair falling carelessly around her face. Freddie’s thumb ran over the back of her palms. I saw his lips move before he pressed them to her forehead. Cam closed her eyes, tracks of tears silently streaming down her cheeks. She folded in against him, and he hugged her. His nose was bleeding and his eye was already starting to puff up.
Even though his entire body must have been in terrible pain, he still held her. I watched them carefully. It was an interesting show in the social dynamics of human beings. The entire cafeteria was taking it all in avidly right along with me.
Freddie and Cam had known each other since they could walk. I thought back to all of the idle touches they shared at lunch, from Freddie brushing her hair back to Cam stealing food off of his plate. Everyone else had known that they had a thing, but they had apparently never admitted it to themselves or to one another.
I wanted to say that as I saw them, Freddie softly stroking her hair and back to calm her down, that I felt happiness for them. But I didn’t. All I felt and all I saw was the pain Cam had put him through.
She had left him the minute the opportunity presented itself. She hadn’t thought about him or how it might affect him. She just left without a second glance back, not even a good-bye.
; And yet, Freddie had still waited for her. He knew that Brad was higher on the social ladder and that Cam had left him behind to try to climb that social ladder. But he didn’t care. He’d waited for her all the same. So when she finally came back to him, he comforted her.
And there he was. Right out in front of God and everyone in the whole school, holding her. Consoling her. Probably whispering to her that it would all be okay.
That’s all love is, though, isn’t it? Someone always gives more in a relationship, and someone is always taking all they can get. It really does beg the question of which one was which in my own relationship with Clare. What were we each looking for in a relationship? More important, however, was the question of what were we taking from each other.
I turned my gaze back to Clare and Brad. She was off of him now, standing in front of him, staring him down.
All I could decipher from their body language was that Clare was really upset with him and that Brad was just as upset with her. Clare tossed her hands up in frustration and exasperation. Brad ran his hands through his hair and eventually held his hands behind his neck in that jock-y way guys do. Clare pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed heavily, her shoulders bobbing up and down. They kept talking, and I continued to observe and make assumptions that I shouldn’t have made.
But that didn’t stop me from doing it.
Because when I looked at them together, I saw the history. They were each other’s first kisses under a tree in a park after he made fun of her. They had watched each other literally grow up. Brad presumably had no idea Clare was a lesbian. But then, Clare probably didn’t know she was a lesbian, either.
No matter what crappy blackmail he’d pulled on her, and no matter what twisted crap he’d forced her to do with him, the fact remained that their history together was important.
History always means something to people and to everyone around them. Even though Clare and I were in a newer relationship, she still had no idea the depth of my secrets or how much of my past I was keeping from her. Not that I’d tried to keep it from her. Or at least, she didn’t remember that I had tried to tell her any of it.
Guilt overwhelmed me, taking over all of my senses and drowning me in a twisted agony of lying to someone I was falling in love with. I was going to throw up if I stayed here any longer, watching the rawness of everything around me.
When I realized that I truly couldn’t handle it, I stood up. I imagine a few people turned to watch me leave. A lot of people didn’t, though. I walked out of the cafeteria without looking back. I brushed past a teacher who was sprinting toward the cafeteria. And I didn’t look back.
Just like Cam, I didn’t look back.
Eighteen
BRAD GOT suspended for three weeks. He was due back Friday. As in tomorrow, Friday. I hadn’t talked to Clare since the fight in the cafeteria.
She left me three voice mails the first week, sent me fourteen texts, and six e-mails. The second week, she left one voice mail, five texts, and two e-mails. She didn’t leave me anything on the third week.
It was probably for the best, anyway. Clare deserved to be with someone who could be honest with her. Someone she could trust completely without the worry of hidden secrets. She was the kind of person who needed someone to steady her, to be a rock for her.
And I was the kind of person who needed someone to be steady for me. Being with her was like tying two sailboats together in the middle of the ocean during a hurricane. When neither of us had anything to hang on to, we sank. If one of us went under, so would the other.
In those nearly three weeks of separation, Cam and Freddie had finally gotten together. Good for them. Freddie would balance Cam out nicely. He was good at being her rock. I was starting to suspect he had been there for her a lot longer than any of us knew.
In my absence, Clare had thrown herself back into cheerleading. The other cheer parents hadn’t taken action to actually kick her off the team, and I doubted anyone would be able to beat her out for the job of head cheerleader fairly. She had been captain three years straight for a reason.
Everyone was whispering around the school about her now notorious drinking binges. Clare was developing a reputation for getting absolutely wasted at every party she went to. Not like that overtook her main reputation, of course. She was pretty well known as the class gay.
But, to her credit, she was owning it and not taking crap from anyone. If we were still dating, I would’ve been 100 percent proud of showing her off to the rest of the school. Then again, I also wouldn’t have let her drink as much as she apparently was.
And as for me, I hadn’t really done anything revolutionary or life changing in the past three weeks. Other than throwing myself into my art, I hadn’t spectacularly remodeled my identity. No, all of my thoughts were going into brush strokes, lighting, and saturation values and all of that stuff that nonartists don’t really give a crap about.
My grades surprisingly weren’t suffering. In fact, they had gone up, if only very slightly. I can’t say it enough. Art was where I channeled all of the emotions and numbness of the recent drama.
I didn’t even know what to call what had happened between me and Clare. There was no formal breakup. I just stopped talking to her. So I guess it would be accurate to say it was me who bitch-froze her out. It was for the best, though.
I wasn’t what she needed. And I was afraid of what would happen if I told her the truth. I had no idea how she would take it. The one time I told her, she was probably too drunk to decipher left from right. Honestly, that night still remained mostly lost in the fog of all the drinking I had apparently done that weekend.
There were a lot of reasons I had stopped talking to Clare. All of them seemed perfectly justifiable in my head at the time. And they were still valid in my mind going on three weeks later.
I was convinced I was doing the right thing for both of us. I refused to admit that it was because I was afraid. Afraid of myself and afraid of the truth. Once again, I had backed myself into the closet. Except now, I had no intention of ever coming out of it.
So it was that, Thursday afternoon, I was once again holed up in the art room after school.
I didn’t hear her footsteps. She had a way of being light on her feet at all times, like she was ready to run from us all at any second. I was too intent on my canvas to see her. I had my ear buds in, blasting music into my skull, almost making my jaw rattle along with the beat.
I was almost done with the painting. It really was beautiful, and it was very clearly the best painting I had ever done. It was my favorite memory of all time, committed to canvas. Of course, it had to do with Clare. When an artist takes inspiration from something that means a lot to them personally, it usually turns out pretty well. And if the artist adds emotions on top of that personal significance, the end product is pretty much guaranteed to be fantastic.
She tapped me on my shoulder. I jumped about an inch off of my stool in surprise. I looked up into turquoise eyes, and a chill washed over me.
Very deliberately, I set my palette and brushes down on a nearby counter. I padded over to the sink and washed my hands—which was a bit of a project since I was painting in oils. I had to pull out the paint remover to get it out from under my fingernails. The whole time, she just stood there, still. Waiting.
When my hands were finally clean, I took my ear buds out carefully and paused my music. I was out of delaying tactics.
Reluctantly, I looked up at Clare. Her hair was straightened, hanging down her back in a smooth veil of blonde. It looked as soft as it always did. Since the cafeteria, though, her face had gotten harder and colder with every passing day.
How was I still managing to convince myself that our being apart was for the best?
My canvas was turned away from her and I was glad she couldn’t see it. It would’ve hurt too much if she had. I breathed deeply and leaned against the paint-smattered counter.
“What?” I said icily.
Clare just loo
ked at me. Then, “Wow. You really are a bitch, aren’t you?”
Her tone of voice was poisonous. But her words hurt like a punch in the gut. I forced myself not to wince outwardly. This was better for her. She was leaving for college in a few months, anyways. It wasn’t like we would last that long. I was protecting her from being further hurt.
Still, I didn’t want her to think that the person who helped her get through finally coming out had been lying to her all along.
“Yep. I am,” I said.
I really was a bitch for doing this. I gritted my teeth. For the best, for the best, for the best. The words chanted through my head over and over again.
She turned toward the door, and I started to exhale in relief. But then she stopped, whipped around, and glared at me venomously. “You know, I really thought you cared about me. But I guess you lied about that the entire time.”
I blanched at that. Darn it, I was trying to prove to her that I hadn’t lied to her the entire time. That was the whole point of not talking to her.
As the ramifications of what I had done started to sink in, Clare resumed walking to the door. I panicked. I didn’t want to lose her. I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t.
“Wait!” I called out.
She kept walking.
I snatched my painting from the easel and took off after her. I stepped directly in her path in the hallway. She sidestepped me, but I grabbed her wrist. She twisted away from me defensively, her mouth opening to no doubt tell me off. And then her angry glare found the painting.
Her breath caught, and she just stared at it. Her hand went limp in my grasp as she stopped struggling. I saw the tears well up in her eyes.
“I cared about you, Clare. I still do. But I just couldn’t keep hurting you. I’m not the kind of person you need. You need someone strong, someone who can be steady for you. Someone like—”
