End of the Innocence Read online

  I was trying to catch my breath, standing there staring at him. I had just finished practice half an hour earlier, and I was more out of breath now than I had been running laps.

  He let out half a laugh before stopping himself. Since there was nothing I had just said that was funny, I frowned, which made him laugh even more. He held a hand up as he really started laughing. “I’m sorry, but that was the first time you’ve really yelled at me, and it was to tell me you love me.” He guffawed some more. “I’m just thinking that all that screaming was the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard.” And then he just burst out like a hyena.

  I had to admit, it was kind of funny.

  “Well, you drive me crazy,” I said, trying not to laugh.

  He looked up, and I saw him almost crying, he was laughing so hard. “Yeah, I saw the crazy part.”

  “Shut up,” I said quietly, but I was smiling.

  He shook his head as he tried to stop laughing. “Give me a second.” His hands were on his thighs as he tried to get his breath. “Okay… almost.”

  I sighed as I waited for him.

  He stood up and looked me. “One, you knew I was crazy when you kissed me, and if you didn’t, that’s on you. Two, I’m sorry, but there isn’t a number because I cannot wrap my mind around why someone like you would go out with someone like me, so I can’t help you there. And three, what you did to Kelly is exactly what I am terrified of, and you saying you’ve actually done it to someone is like admitting you’re Freddie Kruger or something.” He walked over to me and put his arms over my shoulders. “But I’m glad you told me.”

  I pretended to be mad, but he saw right through it.

  “You can pout all you want, but you know everything I just said was the truth.” He kissed my cheek. “So? Fight over?”

  I couldn’t hold it and let out a huge grin as I grabbed his waist and picked him up. “You are so lucky I love you,” I said, sitting him on the hood of the car. “So I never dated Kelly, and you get I do love you?” He nodded. “Good. Because that wasn’t even what I wanted to tell you.”

  His smile dropped.

  “I know you are on the fence about it, but I need to go to this party.” I couldn’t read his expression, but that was nothing new. “Kelly stood up for me today, and he practically begged me to go.” I leaned my forehead against his. “I totally understand if you don’t want to go, but I wish you would.”

  I felt him lean into me, and I held my breath as I waited for him to answer.

  “Then we go,” he whispered.

  I looked up and saw him smile back at me. “You’ll go with me?”

  He rolled his eyes as he said, “I suppose, if I have to.”

  I began to tickle him, which turned into feeling him, which turned into kissing him.

  I laid him back on the hood of my car, and I felt him move under me.

  “Were you serious about the whole sex thing?” I asked after a few minutes.

  “I think so,” he offered.

  “Because if you did, I mean if you want to….” I took a deep breath. “Kelly’s parents have like five empty rooms. We can take one of them over and lock the door.” I leaned in and kissed his neck. “No parents, no interruptions.” I felt him sigh as I moved up to his ear. “Just you and me….”

  “You promise no one could walk in?” he asked, pulling my mouth off him.

  I nodded. “We wouldn’t be the first people who had sex at The Party, you know?”

  He put a hand over my mouth. “I have heard enough today about who you have and have not been with. If you want to—”

  “Do you?” I asked, interrupting him.

  He hesitated and then nodded.

  “You mean it?” I asked a little too eagerly.

  He laughed. “Yes, yes I want to.”

  I had to kiss him. No words could have expressed how excited I was.

  And that was how we ended up going to The Party.

  Something I don’t think I will ever stop regretting as long as I live.

  Part Two

  Death of The Party

  KYLE

  OVER the next couple of days, a lot of things began to percolate to the front of my brain. Brad wanted to go to the party, which meant I needed to go, and, if I was going, that meant I needed a bunch of talking mice who knew how to sew.

  Or I needed to beg Robbie for more clothes.

  I was more inclined to obtain a grant to teach rodents how to manipulate a needle and thread before I actually went back and admitted to myself and to him that he had been right about me needing to face The Party head-on. Of course, I wasn’t going for the reason he thought I should go, but I had a feeling he was just going to smile and nod and give me that look every adult gives kids when they disagree with them. That “Oh, isn’t that cute! The baby can talk and wants to give his opinion. How adorable” look.

  Sigh.

  Today was Wednesday and The Party loomed ahead on Friday. That meant I had little to no time to grovel my way to some new clothes. I breezed through the day at school trying not to think how horrible it was going to be begging for new clothes. Brad noticed I was off, but he left it alone, no doubt thinking it was me trying to adjust to learning about him and Kelly. The thing was, I wasn’t surprised they’d fooled around. If anything, knowing they had and that Brad had treated Kelly like crap helped explain a lot of things.

  Kelly Aimes behaved like a complete asshole unless you looked at his actions from the perspective of him being a spurned lover. At some point, I actually started to feel sorry for him. It wasn’t like I could blame him for having a crush on Brad. I mean, have you seen my boy’s ass? There was just no way the average human could spend more than a few days around him without getting at least a little crush on him.

  But I have to be honest, I had absolutely no idea how to deal with this information.

  I was just now almost getting my mind wrapped around the fact that Brad actually liked me; trying to expand that thinking to include the fact he liked me more than another person was just too much for me. The way my brain works is that me up against any other person in the world for someone’s affection is always going to end up with me losing. There is no way anyone, much less Brad, would pick me over anyone else, even Kelly.

  For some reason I half expected Kelly to come by and sit with us at lunch, but it was just the four of us, Jennifer explaining the progress of the Prom Committee to Brad as Sammy and I ate in silence.

  “So, you decided on that party?” she asked me quietly.

  I nodded. “He wants to go, and I’ve never been before. It could be fun,” I said in a voice so pathetic I didn’t even believe it myself.

  Sammy laughed. “You sound so convinced.”

  I stifled the groan of anxiety I felt about the party, making sure Brad couldn’t hear me. “I am not going to know a soul; there will be all the popular people, and then me, sitting on the couch looking at my watch every fifteen minutes. You know what the worst part about that is?” I asked her. She shook her head. I held up my wrist. “I don’t even own a watch.”

  She burst out laughing at that.

  We both feigned innocence when Jennifer and Brad glanced at us. I elbowed her as they went back to talking. “You’re going to get us busted!”

  “I’m sorry. I was just imagining you looking at the freckles on your wrist,” she said, smiling. “But it does sound horrible, though.”

  And then The Idea hit me.

  “You should go,” I said, almost jumping up in excitement.

  She gave me a look I imagined I would get if I had offered her a fresh bowl of cow manure. “You’re kidding, of course.” I was surprised her words didn’t drip acid into the concrete and leave pockmarks like alien blood.

  “No! It’s genius!” I said, ignoring her complete and utter disdain for the suggestion. “Look, the whole point of us going— Well, I’m not clear on the whole point, but Jennifer seems to think me going is important. She said something about standing up and prov
ing that different isn’t bad. Am I right?” She nodded hesitantly. “So then why does that have to stop with me and Brad? Why can’t it include you and Jeremy and everyone? If we want to make a statement, everyone should show up. The way to make it The Party is to make it a party for everyone.” She didn’t say anything, but at least she wasn’t arguing anymore.

  “Look, we’ve been here four years just like them, and the only people who go to that damn thing are them.” I nodded toward Jennifer and Brad. “Let’s show them they have been wrong this entire time. What are they going to do? Call the cops?”

  “Kick our asses?” she countered.

  “Not if there are more of us than them.” I gave her a smile, and I saw her eyes light up. “Forget the party… let’s call it Occupy Foster.”

  “No more 1 percent?” She was grinning now.

  “No, let them keep their 1 percent. I just want to show them the other 99 percent.” The Idea felt right. Well no, not right, it felt very, very Wrong, and that felt completely Right. If Jennifer thought Brad and I showing up would make a statement about equality, then let’s make a real statement.

  “Do we tell them?” she asked me, looking at Brad and Jennifer.

  My first impulse was to say no, but I knew that was the wrong approach.

  “Hey,” I said, leaning forward toward Brad. “Isn’t Friday night your D&D night with the council of nerds?”

  He squinted and frowned at me, because he knew I knew Friday was D&D night. Though he liked his role-playing group, he didn’t make it public knowledge. “Yeah, why?” he asked, trying to play off being a D&D nerd like it was no big deal.

  “Did you tell them you weren’t showing up this week?” I knew he hadn’t.

  “Um, not yet,” he replied, hesitating, not really sure about the presence of a trap, but not really sure about his safety, either. He looked the same way a stalked deer might look before it ventured into a clearing. “Why?”

  “Well, I was thinking. This whole ‘going to The Party’ thing is about us showing your ex-friends how wrong they were to disinclude people for various reasons, right?” This time I asked Jennifer. She nodded slowly, no doubt sharing Brad’s building sense of impending doom. “So then, why don’t we bring them to the party too?” Neither one of them even blinked. “In fact, why don’t we bring a lot of people? Like Sammy and her drama friends, the library guys, heck, anyone who wants to go.”

  Brad’s face remained neutral, but Jennifer automatically rejected it. “But they weren’t invited,” she tried.

  “So? Neither were Brad or me, for that matter.” Jennifer winced microscopically; she did not like where this was going.

  Sammy chimed in. “Didn’t you say it wasn’t that kind of party? That people just showed up? So what if we all just showed up?”

  You could see the wheels turning in Jennifer’s mind as she tried to find words that wouldn’t come out sounding like she was insulting us. “I am just saying, I have no problem bringing people I know to a party, but strangers who I don’t know at all—”

  “I know the drama crew,” Sammy interrupted her. “And Brad obviously knows the library guys.”

  “Brad,” she said, looking over at him desperately. “Help me out here.”

  He glanced at me, and I saw him smile. Then, turning back at her, he shrugged. “I’m with them. If we’re going to do this, why not do this right? We aren’t talking about posting an open invite on Craigslist. We are just saying to invite a few of our friends who would never get to go.”

  “Do you know what they would do if all those kinds of people showed up?” she asked.

  “What kind?” Sammy asked. I imagined fog coming out of her mouth, the tone was so cold.

  “I mean, people who normally don’t go,” Jennifer added quickly.

  “No you didn’t,” Brad said, not giving Sammy the chance to get started. “And we know it,” he said in a softer tone. “Look Jen, you were right. Those people are assholes, and we both knew it when we were part of the asshole group. It’s time to shake things up. Let’s do this right and invite everyone who never got a chance to go. You wanted to make a statement, let’s make one.”

  She shook her head. “You do know most of the people there will just leave.”

  “Let them,” I said, resisting the urge to just leap up and hug Brad because I was so proud of him. “We’ll have our own party.”

  She looked at the three of us and then laughed. “Okay, I know when I’m outvoted. But I would suggest not telling Kelly.” She thought for a second and amended that to “No. Don’t tell a soul. If word gets out, everything will be over before it starts. The only way this works is if we all show up out of nowhere.”

  I was about to say something when Sammy burst out with, “Wait. So you’re going to go along with it?” She stared intently at Jennifer.

  She thought about it a second and nodded. “Yeah. I mean, I was trying to make a statement, not ruin the whole party, but if we have to ruin the party to make the statement, fuck it.”

  “Wow, you really aren’t a bitch.” As soon as Sammy said it, she clasped both hands over her mouth. “I am so sorry, that was mean.”

  Jennifer laughed. “I am a bitch, born and bred.” She looked at Brad and smiled. “Maybe it’s time I aspire to be more than that, huh?”

  And that was how The Party became The Event.

  Sammy told her friends and swore them to secrecy, and Brad talked to Andy, Jeff, and Mike, who, of course, turned him down. It took him the better part of an hour to convince them he wasn’t setting them up, and he really wanted them to come to an actual party. Finally I had to cut in and talk to them in a way they would understand.

  “Look, guys,” I said, interrupting Brad. “This is your moment. You have the opportunity to show everyone else that you are real people and are cool. Or you can refuse and spend the rest of your high school life as Morlocks.” They got the reference, but Brad looked at me, confused. “Subterranean race of mutants that live under New York.” To the guys, I continued, “Or you come out of the dark and become X-Men. That’s your choice. But you don’t get to complain later and tell your friends you never get invited anywhere. This is your invitation. Take it or don’t, but you lose the right to bitch about it forever.”

  The one with the curly hair—Jeff, I think—asked me, “Are you going?”

  I nodded.

  “We’re in,” he said, speaking for all of them.

  Brad looked dumbfounded. “Just like that?”

  The one with black hair, Mike, said, “Well, we didn’t know Kyle was going. And he made the very cool X-Men reference.”

  Brad shook his head and wrote down Kelly’s address. “Don’t spread this around, okay? It’s kind of a surprise.”

  The biggest of the three—that one was Andy—took the paper and added, “Who would we tell?”

  I saw Brad had forgotten who he was talking to.

  “Well, just make sure you’re there no earlier than nine. No one shows up early,” he added as we were leaving.

  “Should we bring something to eat?” one of them asked.

  He shook his head and looked over at me. “I am so blaming you if this goes south.”

  I just smiled and gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You worry too much.”

  Turns out, we did not worry enough.

  BRAD

  I AM a lousy liar.

  You would think that wouldn’t be the case since I spent most of my life pretending to be someone I’m not, but it was true. When it came to lying, I sucked. I think it was just the fact I only had so much space in my head to keep Fake Brad running, so there was just no room for me to learn how to lie about little things. I also think subconsciously it helped people believe there was no way I could be lying about my sexuality if I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about a surprise party.

  So when Kyle and I left the library, it was just a matter of time before I broke.

  The last few periods, I kept to myself, which wasn’t hard since
I hadn’t been let back into the pack of popular guys who sat together. For once I didn’t mind because I knew they were talking about The Party, and that was a subject I needed to stay away from. So by the time school was over, I found myself half sprinting to practice before someone asked me whether I was going or not.

  I slammed into Kelly because I was too busy looking behind me.

  We both crashed back onto our respective asses, stunned from the impact.

  “Hey,” I said, getting up quickly. “Practice,” I added, pointing at the gym.

  He scrambled to his feet and grabbed my shirt before I could take off. “Hold on, I need to ask you something.”

  Damn.

  I turned back toward him. “What’s up?”

  Please don’t ask me about The Party. Please don’t ask me about The Party. Please don’t ask me about The Party.

  “It’s about The Party,” he said.

  Fuck.

  “Um, okay,” I said, looking for an escape route.

  “You’re coming, right?” he asked. The emotion in his voice made me feel uncomfortable because it just reminded me of how shittily I had treated him in the past. I nodded, keeping my mouth shut. “And you’re not bringing anyone, right?”

  Fuck. Fuck!

  “No. No I’m not. Who told you I was bringing someone? Why would I do that? I mean… what?” The words came shooting out my mouth like verbal diarrhea, and I just couldn’t stop them. “Whoever told you that is wrong, really wrong. I mean why would I lie? What was the question again?”

  See what I mean? I was never going to be James Bond.

  “I just wanted to make sure,” he said, confused by the vocal explosion of words. “So we’re good?”

  “Good. Great. Perfect. Yeah—” I forced my mouth shut before “okey-dokey” escaped.

  “Cool,” he said, mentally taking a half step away from me. “Uh, you okay?”

  I nodded and commanded my mouth to stay shut.