Gone, Gone, Gone(49)

He gives me this small laugh. Is he as uncomfortable as I am? Craiger. “That’s cool.”

“And I have to go home,” I say. “I should take the train. I don’t want to fly by myself. Y’know what? They need to leave my city alone. Ima tell them. LEAVE MY CITY ALONE!”

The boy wraps his arms all the way around me and we’re dancing, twirling around, spinning spinning spinning. He is warm and smells like deodorant. My cheek is wet but I don’t think I’m crying. I think it’s his sweat.

He says, “You are soooooo drunk, kid.”

“I’m a virgin.”

He says, “Oh . . .”

“Fuck me.” I push my forehead into his chest. “Fuck me f*ck me f*ck me, I don’t want to die a virgin. It’s not fair. It’s not fair not fair, don’t let me die a virgin. I could drop dead at any moment.”

He says, “All right, kid, it’s time for you to try someone different. You’re not coming home with me tonight. Too young.”

“I’m not too . . .” I grab on to him. “Take me home with you!”

“Off, kid.”

But I don’t let go.

We’ve switched to a different song. I know this one. I listened to it over IM one time when Craig sent me the link and I said, Im dancing around like a drag queen, and he said, so am I.

“Dance with me,” I say. I would whisper it but he would never hear me. It doesn’t matter. He’s never going to hear me there’s so much news—noise, I meant to think noise—and this is a room full of other boys and I’m too small, no one’s ever going to see me. “I’m small because I have cancer!” I scream.

He pushes me off. “Kid, cut it out, that’s not funny.”

He pushed me too hard. I’m on the floor. He doesn’t offer his hand. He’s gone. I’ve hit the ground hard and it hurts. Someone kicks me and it hurts. Did I hit my head? My stomach hurts. I’m not small enough because I haven’t disappeared. Where are Shawn and Tino? Who cares, neither of them looks like Craig.





CRAIG

CODY WANTS TO SHOW ME EVERYTHING HE’S MADE since he’s been here, and it’s more than I can believe, canvas after sculpture after canvas. Some of the pills he’s taking must have switched on some artistic thing in his brain. I know I’m bitter and angry and this is probably a horrible thing to think, but it totally feels like every time someone goes to any kind of rehabilitative place, whether it’s for drugs or abuse or attitude or whatever their problem is, they all come out artists. Everyone’s a f*cking artist now.

And I want this to be evidence that Cody’s changed enough that I don’t have to love him anymore. He wasn’t an artist when I loved him. So.

And then he turns to me with that big smile, that I just won a soccer game smile, the second his mom leaves the room, and he’s going, “I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” and his voice is so soft and beautiful and exactly what I remembered, and there’s his hand on my knee, and it feels like his hand and it feels like my knee, and even though we’re in this awkward dorm that looks like a hospital room, I’m with the same boy who’s been in my room, my room, my room, my bed.

“I missed you too,” I whisper, because I did, and because I’m really not sure I believe in falling out of love, and because Lio was so mean and so drunk.

And now Cody is kissing me.

Shit, he’s kissing me.

His hand is on my cheek, his fingers just centimeters away from my earlobe, and his other hand is in his lap, curled into the loosest fist.

His eyes are closed.

I pull back a little. “Cody . . .”

He watches me.

“I missed you,” he says.

I nod a little.

He scrapes his finger against the edge of his desk, drawing up splinters of wood underneath his fingernail. I don’t want to watch but I do anyway because it looks like it hurts.

He says, “I always had this fantasy that you’d just show up one day. I used to imagine it. I’d be sitting in class or therapy or something, and you’d appear in the doorway, here to rescue me.”

I nod a little.

I should tell him to stop scratching his desk.

“I missed you,” he says again.

“I missed you too,” I whisper.

And I missed his hands and his hair and . . . everything about him is the boy I poured into me, the boy I wanted more than I’d ever wanted anything.

He says, “I always kind of hoped you were waiting, like those wives when their husbands go off to war. That’s so stupid.”

“I was waiting.”

“Then who’s the guy?” he says, in the back of his throat.

I don’t know what to do, so I just say, “He’s Lio.”

“Then what the f*ck happened to waiting?”

The fact that I am afraid he is going to hit me right now should tell me everything I need to know. It doesn’t. But I can close my eyes and see Lio, so angry so drunk and so stable and so right now. And so willing to listen.

“I stopped,” is all I can say, because it is the only truth.

There’s no reason. It’s just what happened. I stopped waiting because that was the part of the story that came next for me.