End of the Innocence Read online

  Like another gay blond victim said, “We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life.”

  It didn’t matter if I got out of this town or if Brad and I ended up working out. I was always going to miserable because that was the only way Life wanted me to be. As the water fell on me, I decided to just stop fighting it.

  By the time I got out, my phone had three missed calls from Brad and two voice mails. I was too far into my funk to actually talk to him, so I just tossed the phone onto my dresser. Then I fell into bed and hauled the covers over my head. I didn’t care if I ever got up again. I fell asleep for a while and then heard my mom open my door, talking on the phone. “No, Brad, he’s already asleep.” Her voice faded away as she closed it behind her.

  The next time I woke up, it was morning because the sun was streaming though my windows like the beginning of a fucking Disney movie. You know that really bright and aggressively cheerful sunlight that tries to get you to do dishes with cartoon bluebirds and shit? Yeah, well, that was what I saw when I poked my head out of my covers. Like every other Emo Teenage Groundhog in the world, I knew an overly cheery sun meant eighteen more years of misery. I promptly ducked back under the covers. Before I fell back asleep, I jumped up and locked my door.

  Then I went back to my blanket coffin.

  I woke up when my mom tried to open my door. She knocked twice. “Kyle, are you up?”

  “Feel sick!” I yelled from under my covers. “Not going to school.”

  I could hear her sigh on the other side, but what could she say? I was acing all my classes, and before this whole gay thing, I had been a model student. If I wanted to cut a day or two, she really couldn’t scream at me; I had a few banked by now. “Did you tell Brad that? Because he’s outside waiting for you.”

  Fuck.

  I threw on some clothes and unlocked my door. My mom stood there, and I could tell she was forcing herself not to laugh out loud at the way I looked. “Did you go to bed with wet hair?”

  I touched the top of my hair and could feel most of it standing straight up. One look in the bathroom mirror showed me I looked more like a troll doll than I cared to admit. I threw water on my bed head until it calmed down before walking to the front door. I swung it open and saw Brad leaning on his car with his phone in hand. He broke into a huge smile when he saw me walk out. When he saw I wasn’t dressed, his smile broke.

  “I’m not going,” I said as he walked over to the door.

  “Kyle!” he half whined. “Come on, you can’t let them—”

  I had heard this too many times already. You can’t let Them get you down. You can’t let Them win. You can’t let Them make you the victim. I had heard every single motivational statement about being gay and not letting assholes do this and that to me, and I was sick of it. “I’m not letting them do anything,” I said, cutting him off. My skin felt like it had been pulled too tight, I was so upset. I still wanted to scream out loud, I still wanted to break down and cry, and I didn’t want to be having this conversation. “I just need a day off. One day to collect my thoughts.”

  “Well, then we take a day off,” he said quickly.

  “Alone.”

  Damn, I sounded like a dick.

  “Please, Brad, I am in a foul mood, and if you were here I would just take it out on you, and I don’t want to do that. Just let me be miserable for a day, and I will be okay. I promise.” He looked at me like his puppy had just died, and it was killing me, but I knew how my mind worked. I was in the mood to beat myself up, and Brad wouldn’t let me, which would just lead to me beating him up. And neither one of us wanted that.

  “It feels like you’re mad at me,” he said. His eyes were bright green, and he looked like he was on the verge of crying.

  “I swear,” I said, walking closer to him so I could hug him. “I am not at all mad at you. I am just having my period.” He cocked his head questioningly, and I kissed him on the cheek. “I just can’t handle it today. Tomorrow I will be back bright and early, ready to be spit on and kicked and everything. Just give me one day to lick my wounds, okay?”

  He put his arms around me, and I felt a chill go through me as if the rest of the world faded away and it was just the two of us alone in the middle of nowhere. And though I longed to stay safely under the Brad force field, I knew I had shit to work through in my head, so I took a half step back and gave him a smile. “I love you.”

  “I love you too!” he answered with the same exuberance a dog does when it wants to jump up on you but knows it can’t.

  “Call me when you get out of practice,” I said, backing toward the door, not wanting to turn my back on him.

  “Can I call you at lunch?” he asked, and it just broke my heart.

  I nodded. “Call me at lunch.” I walked inside, hating the expression of abject sorrow on his face but knowing I was doing the right thing. He raised one hand to wave at me as I closed the door. As I leaned against it, I let out a sigh. That was the hardest thing I ever had to do.

  “You wanna talk about it?” my mom asked after a few seconds.

  I forced back the automatic sarcasm that came flooding to my mouth, because she was really trying to help. “No, I just want to sleep,” I said, heading back to my room.

  “What happened at the diner?” she asked to my back.

  “Just another day in Foster!” I yelled back as I slammed my door.

  And that was how my day was supposed to end. Me falling into my bed and waiting for life to pass me by, at least this one day of it. But as with the best laid plans of mice and men… that didn’t happen.

  A little over an hour later, I heard the front door open and my mom talking to someone. I ignored it since her friends came over any time they felt like it. But as I listened, the voices got closer and closer to my room until the door came swinging open.

  Robbie stood there in the door frame like a vampire waiting for permission to enter my room. My mom was right behind him, not looking anything close to happy. “He said he knows you,” she said.

  “He knows me,” Robbie said, walking slowly into my room. “He just won’t admit it out loud.” He tossed my backpack off my chair and sat down like it was his own personal throne. “We’re good,” he said to my mom, clearly dismissing her.

  “He’s okay,” I said to her before she exploded on him. She did not take her eyes off him as she closed the door.

  “I am far more than okay, but we will let that one slide,” he said, looking around the room slowly. “I love what you’ve done with the place; postapocalyptic Target, right?”

  I buried my head in my pillow. “What do you want?”

  “What I want is the cast of Magic Mike to be my personal love slaves, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.” He paused and then asked. “Is that what happened when you got a bucket of water thrown on you?”

  I looked up and saw him looking at the pile of clothes I shed last night. “I’ll pay you back,” I said, groaning.

  “Right, so this is what happened at Nancy’s?”

  I sat up. “What did you hear?”

  “I heard there was an asshole at the diner, and Gayle almost shot him. So what, did he throw something at you?”

  “I really don’t want to talk about it,” I pleaded with him.

  “Did he spit at you? Try to hit you?” he kept asking.

  “Please, just drop it.”

  “Did he try to drag you into the middle of the street and tie you up to the back of his car?” His tone had not changed a bit. The same kind of sarcastic, conversational tone he’d had when we talked in the store still was there, but there was a new coldness under it. I stared up at him, and he sat, expressionless, watching me. “Did he try to tie you to a fence and throw rocks at your head while he made you recite the Lord’s Prayer?” I shook my head “no” slowly. “Then I guess it wasn’t that bad a day, was it?” He stood up, walked over to the heap in the corner, and kicked at the clothes. “Get up, get dressed, and meet me outside.” He
paused before he opened the door. “And put the clothes in a bag or something.”

  “I am not in the mood to go anywhere,” I told him.

  “Oh good. Because I didn’t ask you,” he replied. “Five minutes. Then I am throwing water into your bed.” He closed the door, then opened it again. “That was not a joke.” And he was gone.

  “What the fuck?” I asked myself as I got out of bed. I had no idea what had happened beyond the fact that I was confused.

  In less than five minutes I was outside, carrying the ruined clothes in a plastic grocery bag.

  He stood smoking in front of a lime-green VW bug with the top down. Normally I would have said a lime-green any kind of car would be extremely gay, but somehow the bug worked for him. He offered me the pack in his other hand. “You smoke?”

  “Uh, no,” I answered, waving them off.

  “Good, don’t start. They are an ugly, ugly habit.” He tossed his cigarette away and got into the car. I got into the passenger seat, although I had no idea where we were heading. He turned off the loud house music that had started the minute he turned the key in the ignition. “Buckle up,” he ordered as he backed the car out of its parking space. “This is the only neon green car people can’t seem to see coming a mile away. Already been in two accidents in it. I’m just waiting for the front end to fall off one day.”

  I slowly put the seat belt on as I examined the car’s structural integrity.

  We headed left on East Avenue, traveling farther out of Foster instead of toward downtown. “Where are we going?” I asked after a few minutes.

  “To the past,” he answered cryptically and lit another smoke.

  “I doubt you can get this thing over eighty-eight miles an hour,” I mumbled, looking out the window.

  “That’s cute, McFly. Very topical,” he said, turning the music back on. “I speak fluent nerd.”

  I settled in and stopped talking.

  My thoughts began to wander as I waited for us to end up wherever we were going. If you’d asked me if I would end up driving in the car of a guy I had just met to the surface of Mars, I would have told you no way. But here I was trusting someone based on nothing more than the word of my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend that the guy driving was to be trusted.

  “Hey,” I said, sitting up suddenly. “Tell me about Jennifer.”

  He gave me a quick glance to see if I was joking. “What about her?” he asked cautiously.

  “Why doesn’t she hate me?” I asked, getting to the heart of the matter.

  He laughed at that. “Oh, she did. Trust me. She hated you both something fierce.”

  “So then why the one-eighty?”

  He paused for a moment. “You mean three-sixty.”

  “No, if she did a three-sixty she’d end up in the same place she started. A one-eighty is ending up facing the opposite way,” I explained to him.

  He did a slow double take and then shook his head. “You really are a complete brain, aren’t you?” I nodded but prompted him to continue. “Well, she was obviously thrown by the whole ‘My boyfriend is now gay’ thing, but I talked her down from climbing a water tower.”

  I didn’t get the reference, but I figured it out enough to know she had been mad. “What did you say?”

  He kept his eyes on the road as he began to explain. “I told her that in towns like Foster, being gay was akin to being a vampire, and not the sparkly kind. Which means you hide yourself deep underground or risk a pack of villagers trying to hunt you down with pitchforks and torches and burn you alive.”

  I was about to comment on the fact he mixed his Dracula metaphor up with Frankenstein, but in the end, a monster was a monster.

  “So I explained to her that if Brad had the guts to come out in front of everyone, then the least she could do is try to imagine what it must have been like to force himself to be something he wasn’t for so long. When she didn’t like that, I told her to imagine she had to pretend to like girls for the past eighteen years and see how she felt about it.”

  I was equally impressed and humbled that he had our back even before he knew us.

  “So why haven’t I ever heard of you before?” It was something that had been bugging me since Jennifer introduced us. I was under the impression that there were no gay guys in Foster at all. Yet here was what could politely be referred to as an openly gay person, and yet he had never been mentioned before.

  He glanced once and then again at me like he was waiting for me to add something else onto my question. “Okay, really?” he asked. “You really want to ask that?” I nodded, and he sighed. “Well let’s count down the reasons, shall we? One, because the world does not start and end in Foster High. There is a lot going on in this town that doesn’t get mentioned during study hall. Two, it isn’t exactly like you have your finger on the gay pulse of North Texas, so the fact you have never heard of me before isn’t as shocking as you make it sound. And three, I keep mainly to myself when I’m in town. Hanging out on Second Street getting wasted at the Rodeo Club is not my idea of a good time.” He looked over at me. “That cover it?”

  “Do you know Mr. Parker?” I asked, and his expression immediately went sour.

  “Pick another question. I am not answering that one.” It was the first time I heard real anger in his voice.

  “Wait. Mr. Parker is pretty cool. What’s wrong with him?” Which, of course, was the absolute wrong thing to ask.

  “Little Ms. Parker is everything that is wrong with this town, in my opinion. Walking around like he is Foster’s most eligible bachelor when he is as gay as any three guys I know. If guys like him came out and told people they were gay, there would be a lot more people realizing we are as normal as everyone else.” He raised his knee up to steer as he lit another cigarette. When the car weaved a little, I reached over and steadied it.

  “He did come out,” I said as he flicked his ashes out the window.

  Robbie grabbed the wheel and gave me a long stare. “When?”

  “When they were threatening to kick Brad off the baseball team. He came out and spoke for him, pretty much told everyone he was gay.” I was confused because I knew it wasn’t like that was front page news, but nearly everyone in town seemed to know what had happened. Maybe Robbie really did keep to himself.

  “And who made him do that?” Robbie asked after a few seconds of seething silence.

  “Um… my mom, I think,” I reasoned, since I hadn’t asked her.

  “Who’s your mom?” He now sounded suspicious.

  “Um, Linda Stilleno. You just met her. She went to school with him.”

  He seemed to digest that news and then shook his head. “Doesn’t matter. Tyler Parker is an asshole, a total closet case. I want you to promise me that you will never count on him to back you up.” The look he shot me was dead serious. “I mean it,” he added. “He is only on one person’s side: his own. I don’t want you to get caught up in all that straight-looking jock camouflage because deep down, he is a self-loathing SOB and will stab you in the back.” He tossed his smoke out the window. “End of story.”

  I settled in and decided not to say another word.

  We ended up out in the middle of nowhere, which is a feat since most of Foster was nowhere to begin with. On a stretch of road that went even farther nowhere stood a little dive bar. It looked like every other dive bar within fifty miles of Foster—all wood, no windows, more like a chicken coop with delusions of grandeur. Weeds pocked the dry, dull dirt all around and made the bar even uglier. I almost choked when he pulled into the “parking lot.”

  “Did you bring me out here to harvest my kidney or something?” I asked, half joking.

  He gave me a half grin to match my half joke, I had a feeling. “I bet other people find that sarcastic wit just oh so cute.” He turned off the car. “Yeah, I brought you here. Don’t judge a book by its cover.”

  “You show up, practically kidnap me, and bring me to what I think every serial killer’s hideout looks like, and I
am not supposed to judge?” I shot back, slamming my door. “So far I am the dumb blond in every horror movie I’ve ever seen.”

  He spun on me with a passion that shocked me out of my funk. “Look, you want to live in New York or West Hollywood and have that attitude, great. But until then, try to remember you live in Mayberry, and that means not everything is nice and shiny like you see on Queer as Folk. So before you start throwing around attitude, learn a little first. Got it?” I wasn’t sure what had pissed him off so much, but I nodded nonetheless.

  I really was going to lose a kidney.

  He stalked around back and knocked on the door, which looked like the kitchen exit with a few trash cans and empty crates. “If you can’t say anything nice, do me a favor and just fake it, okay?” he asked quietly. I nodded again, still not sure what I had stumbled into. Robbie pounded again.

  A few seconds later, the door half opened, and I could see an older man’s face peeking out. “Robbie?” he asked in shock. “What the hell you doing out here so early?”

  “Guided tour,” he quipped, jerking a thumb at me.

  The old guy looked at me and shook his head. “You and your newbies.” He closed the door, undid the chain, and opened it all the way. “Well, come in, if you’re coming.”

  We walked into a small diner-style kitchen with a stove on one side and an industrial dishwasher on the other. As soon as the door closed, I took a look at the guy who had let us in and almost choked when I saw the rifle in his hand. He explained as he reracked it by the door, “Sorry ’bout that. Can’t be too careful when someone comes knocking this early.”

  “Tom, this is Kyle,” Robbie said to the man.

  “Howdy, Kyle.” He put out a huge paw of a hand. “Welcome to the Bear’s Den.”

  I looked around the small kitchen as I shook his hand and asked, “This is what, now?”

  He laughed and led me through the kitchen with a hand on my back. “This is where we make what little food we serve.” We passed through two swinging doors, like the ones in an old western saloon, and walked into a huge bar. A pool table stood in the corner; there was a jukebox, and between the table and the jukebox, a space had been cleared out to make a small dance floor as well. What caught my eye, though, were the pictures on the wall. There had to have been a hundred of them; the first—and from their sepia tones, the oldest—ones were black and white and grainy while others were Polaroids and 35mm. The newest were digital photos printed out from a computer. They were all guys, almost all of them were young, and they all had a slightly bewildered look on their face.