Gone, Gone, Gone(25)

Todd puts his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this.” He lowers his voice. “Though you brought it up.”

“Well, yeah. I’m thinking about it.”

“Look,” I say.

Todd shifts a little so he’s in front of me. “What?”

I aim my flashlight at a bush. “There’s something moving.”

He says, “Let me handle it.”

“It’s not going to shoot me.” I approach on my hands and knees and make kissing noises. “Hey, baby baby, come out?”

He mews a little and comes out. Holy shit, it’s Shamrock. He’s as cute as I remembered.

“Todd, it’s Shamrock!”

He breathes out. “I’m so glad we found one.”

And, for a minute, Shamrock is my whole world. It’s like when I adopt them for the first time, and for a second all I have to do is keep a little animal clean and fed and warm and that is enough, and this kitten needs nothing else from me but love and there is nothing my love won’t fix for him. I can hold him against my chest and tell him I love him and there you go, he’s purring. That’s all he needs. His fur is so soft. “Thank you, Todd,” I say.

One dog.

Two cats.

Three rabbits.

A guinea pig.

I have this weekend friend. He’s only my friend on the weekends, because we don’t go to the same school and we don’t care enough to track each other down. But on Saturdays we have karate together, so after that we usually get Slurpees or something. His name is Mansfield, which is one of the most unfortunate things I’ve ever experienced.

He’s not very good at karate, either. I don’t know why he’s in my class, but there are only six other kids in the class with us, so maybe they’d feel too bad about dumping him. Anyway, it’s not like I’m great at karate. We’re probably the failure class and no one cared to tell us, but I still like doing it. It keeps me from being an angry young man, I guess.

After class we pack up our shit and I ask him if he wants to walk to the 7-Eleven, and he says, “I don’t know, Craig. I don’t know if this is the perfect week to be walking around looking for a Slurpee, you know?”

What the f*ck?

I say, “Come on, it’s like half a block.”

“It’s right by a gas station.”

“Yeah . . . ?”

Mansfield looks at me. “Come on, Craig, don’t play dumb. That’s where everyone’s getting shot: gas stations and parking lots. I don’t want to die before I have sex.”

“So I’m home free, then.” I give him this big smile, and Mansfield looks at me with this face, and it’s so worth him thinking I’m straight if it makes him this jealous of me. Heh. I mean, he could always be jealous of the fact that I’ve slept with a boy, too, or also that I own him at karate, or that I’m not too afraid to get a Slurpee, but this is easier.

So I think, whatever, I’ll go get a Slurpee myself, it’s not as if I really value Mansfield’s company. But when I walk out of the karate studio, there’s my mom, station wagon idling in front of the place, and she says, “Craig, come on, hurry into the car.” Jesus Christ. It makes me want to wear fluorescent pink clothing and jump up and down. I need to send Lio to her, to tell her exactly what my chances are of getting shot. Next to nothing. Next to nothing. This is all so stupid.





LIO

I DON’T THINK THERAPY ON FRIDAY HELPED ME. I probably should have sucked it up and talked about the sniper. Maybe that’s what I needed. Maybe that would fix me.

My dad is on the phone with one of my faraway sisters. Jasper and Michelle are at the mall buying Chrismakkuh presents. They asked me if I wanted to come. I don’t know why I said no. I like the mall. I never buy anything, but I like to walk around and look at people.

My therapist has been on me about that, lately, how I always say no to things I would like. I don’t think I’ve ever had a drink on an airplane because I always say, “No thank you, I’m fine,” too quickly to consider something. It’s ridiculous that these are the problems that my dad pays so much for me to talk about.

My real problem is that Craig hasn’t answered my email.

I should probably do some homework, but I have a hard time convincing myself that homework really matters. I haven’t done any reading for a class since middle school, but I still get As on all my papers.

It’s depressing that those As are, so far, the entirety of my success story. When I was nine, I thought I would drop out of school and join a band and travel all over the world. And now here I am, and whether I do my homework or not, graduation has started to look inevitable. I got out of dying from cancer, but I can’t get out of graduating from high school.

Maybe I’m destined for a middle American life. That’s probably why my twin got killed off. Your average desk bitch doesn’t have an identical twin.

This doesn’t explain why I’m gay. This doesn’t explain anything. God, I need to shut up. Or maybe say some of this stupid shit out loud so it will go away.

I sit up.

I should probably tell my therapist this, except she’s not supposed to listen to me say this bullshit stuff. She’s paid to weigh in on my bullshit stuff. I don’t need perspective on this. I don’t need to be told that all of this comes down to twin guilt.