Gone, Gone, Gone (15 page)

They’re both speaking in these really quiet voices, but it doesn’t sound like they don’t want us to hear. They’re standing in the middle of our kitchen, after all. It sounds like they’re being gentle with each other.

Lio nods, looking down.

“We’re worried about you.”

He shakes his head.

“Do you want to call Adelle?” She takes out her cell phone. She must have his therapist’s number in her phone. I bet if I had a therapist, Todd would have her number. I don’t need to feel jealous right now.

He says, “No. Really, I’m okay.”

“All right.” She gives him a big hug. “Michelle’s okay too. We love you.”

He nods and watches her go all the way down the driveway until she gets into her car. His hand holds on to that bag so tight.

In my bathroom downstairs, he washes his face and brushes his teeth and changes into his own pajamas. He gives mine back, folded neatly. If they didn’t smell like smoke, I’d guess they were clean.

I feel like I’m on a sleepover back when I was a little kid, with a friend—usually Cody—and sometimes he’d get homesick in the middle of the night and have to be picked up. I remember praying before we went to sleep that he’d still be there when I woke up. It was sort of a toss-up, but I really hated when he left. And it meant there was always this anxiety hanging in the air before we went to sleep. Will he stay or won’t he?

I think I really, really want Lio to stay here, to make it through the night, for us to make it through the night, but I can already feel him slipping away. I think his sister coming was bad for him, because now his mind is back at that house and not here with me. And really there’s only room for one of us to be this distant, here, and the last thing I can do is hold on hard enough for both of us.

And we haven’t even closed our eyes. We haven’t even left for separate rooms. It’s barely ten.

He sits down on my bed and pets Sandwich.

To fill the silence, I say, “There’s no way we’re going to find all of them. It kills me. No matter how many we find, it’ll never be all. It’s never going to be how it was. There will never be as many.”

He says, “Maybe it can still be special even if it’s not as much.”

There’s something significant about this, and I don’t know what to do with it.

He clears his throat. “Your brother hates me.”

“He doesn’t. He’s just wary with people he doesn’t know. He was sort of trying you out. Like a dog. I’m not sure my dad liked you much, but he’s weird, ignore him. He’s a principal. Automatically predisposed against people with funny hair.” I sit down next to him. “You okay?”

He nods.

“It’s just that Todd’s protective of me. He just doesn’t want me to . . . you know. That again. With Cody. You okay?”

He nods again.

“I know you told Jasper you are. Are you really? Are you worried about . . . do you want to talk about the boy who got shot?”

He’s still alive. They found a tarot card by him. Death, of course. Even I have to admit that’s some scary shit. But he’s still alive.

He says, “Michelle’s safe now. It’s like lightning.”

“Definitely.”

He rubs his eyes.

Kremlin howls at my feet. I say, “Quiet, you. See, this is why you don’t want to sleep down here, Lio. They’ll all keep you awake. Good thing I don’t sleep.”

“Can I ask you something?”

I put my hand on top of his head because it feels right. Really, because it feels like he needs it. He’s shaking. “Of course.”

He’s just so little.

He says, very softly, “I wish we were alone in this room right now.”

Is that what he wanted to ask me? But that wasn’t even a question. I look at Kremlin, and at Sandwich batting at her tail. “Do you . . . want me to put them upstairs?”

“It wouldn’t help.” He plays with his fingers. “I wish my sister weren’t here.”

“What?”

“I wish she weren’t here in this room right now. With us. Or my brother. Or your parents. Or Cody.” I don’t like the way he says Cody’s name. I hate that I don’t like the way he says Cody’s name. “Or the sniper. I wish we were alone.”

I want to touch him more, but now I don’t think he wants it.

He looks up at me. “What are we doing, Craig?”

Fuck.

I say, “It’s
just that I think it might be too soon for me.”

And then we have that conversation neither of us wants to have, because neither of us wants to believe the things I’m saying or to think that they are important, and he has had such a long day and he looks like he’s about to fall asleep, and I probably look like I’m about to cry, and we both want each other, I know it, and here we are sitting around telling each other why we can’t have each other and all I want to do is be an each other for once.

What does that even mean, “each other”? Each other what?

How is it that he’s been pissed on by the universe again and again and again and here he is, eyes blue and wide and right on mine, waiting for me, and he’s scared out of his mind by some sniper, telling me that he doesn’t care, that he wants to work through all of this with me? How can he do that, and here I am with one bad boyfriend, pulling my hands back into my sleeves and saying
I won’t I won’t I won’t
?

But I would be the thing to break him. I would say the wrong thing or pull at the wrong seams or kiss him at the wrong times or let him get sick and he would fall apart. He would become completely fucked up. I would ruin him. And I cannot do this again I won’t I won’t I won’t.

And we say all the things we both already knew. We still don’t know each other very well, what have we shared, a few awkward kisses, a few fantastic kisses, some secrets that we gave up keeping secret from anyone a long time ago? A few arguments and a few funny conversations? A long-buried passion for
Bananas in Pyjamas
?

And so we get it all out, or I get it all out, and he sits and he listens. And I’m saying it all. I’m still in love with Cody, and it’s very possible that the only reason I’m interested in Lio is because he is small and in pain and a little fucked up, and we both know it, but we didn’t need to say it out loud, and here we are having this conversation. And I can barely hear myself think or hear him be so quiet because there are way too many fucking other people in this room with us, screaming that they’re angry or they’re thirsty or that they do or don’t love me anymore, shaking at the bars on their cages and threatening to break out or in. They’re all I can hear. And Lio won’t say anything.

I think I will be taking Cody out on everyone around me for the rest of my life.

And every part of me wants this to work but knows I’ll hurt him more if I try. I don’t think we can date because I don’t think either of us could handle a breakup right now, and maybe that is enough reason to stand around with my hands in my sleeves forever and ever.

And so now I’ve said it all. It’s out there in the open. We’re not anything. We’re barely even friends. We’re two boys in one house, back in our own clothes, about to retreat to our own rooms. Except mine isn’t even a room, more like a fortress.

But I touch him because I can’t help it. And he lets me. And he moans, so quietly, in the back of his throat, and it is so good to hear him make noise, and I want to touch him, and I do, and I’m not talking anymore, and for a second I’ve stopped hurting him, but every time I pause to breathe or move my hand or look at him my brain starts spinning again and won’t stop. And the footsteps upstairs are making me realize that in a minute we’re going to have to stop and get separated because my parents are not going to let us sleep in the same room, even if we want to, which we don’tdowant, and I don’t want to start something and be interrupted. I don’t want him to leave in the middle of something, because I think I would honestly break into pieces, and this is why I cannot do this.

And he starts to go, and then I’m saying, “Lio, please. Lio, let’s do this. Let’s not do the bad parts and do the good parts. Lio, please, we need to cling right now.” Forget that I’m not ready, forget that I’m waiting for some revelation or some epiphany or something to snap in my brain, kiss me, kiss me, kiss me.

He looks at me. “Everything’s fucked now.”

It doesn’t have to be fucked, we just have to
never stop kissing.
I say, “I really, honestly, know. Everything in the whole world is fucked and I really want to give it a try.”

He takes a breath. “You just want to fix me.” I don’t think that I said that bit out loud, but it sounds so true that it makes my stomach curl up, and I feel humiliated for everything I am.

But he didn’t say it mean.

I say, “I want to love you.” I don’t love him. But this is so true. I really, really want to.

“We’re fifteen,” he whispers.

I say something Cody used to say to me whenever I’d say we were too young and that this couldn’t be real: “So, we still have our hearts.”

But I don’t know what that means. My heart doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere. It’s trapped in place. I just don’t know where that place is.

Lio lies down next to me and rests his head on my chest for a minute.

My heart is here with Lio for a few seconds. Then it’s beating funny again. Too slowly.

He whispers, “Go to sleep.”

But I don’t sleep, I never sleep, and now I’m crying a little from thinking about sleeping, and I’m so sore and so entirely exhausted, and we kiss a little, but I still want to cry, and he says, “Do you want me to sing you a lullaby?”

And it’s so beautiful, and afterward he whispers in my ear, “You’re
going to have to push harder than that to get rid of me.”

He squeezes my hand.

He says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

But now he’s gone.

C—

I hope you know how badly you’ve fucked up my life.

Can you just email me back? Like, I know it’s three in the morning and you’re probably asleep, but what the fuck, why did you stop emailing? Fuck you, Cody. Fuck you.

You know maybe someday I want to have a real relationship, did you ever consider that? That at some point I might want something in my life that doesn’t revolve around this never ending cycling fucking fear that the guy is going to die any second, of a gunshot wound or a fucking self-inflicted gunshot wound or of grief or of cancer. Maybe I actually want to move on from our little fucking eighth-grade whatever and actually because Jesus how fucking lame is it but no matter what I still want you. I’m not moving on because I want you. And I’m not getting over you because I don’t know
what the fuck happens after I get over you and I don’t want to be left here alone again, okay? Maybe maybe I want someone to stick around, because being the one left behind fucking blows, and I get that it’s not like you’re having an easy time either, but you should at least have the decency to answer my emails, because it’s thanks to me that you’re even at that school and not dead right now, did you even think of that? Did you ever thank me for taking care of you all that time?

I love you, you fucking idiot, and I love you crazy and I love you sane, so will you please answer my emails? That’s all I’m asking from you, I’m not asking for your love or your brain or your fucking future although, let’s be honest, I’d take them all, I’d take them all and I’d keep them safe, just like I’ll keep you safe even though I don’t think I’m supposed to have to do that, I don’t think that’s how relationships work, one person taking care of the other one all the time, but damn it I’ll do it, Cody, but you have to answer my emails. You fucking have to. Fuck you, Cody, answer me. ANSWER ME. I JUST FUCKED EVERYTHING UP FOR YOU AND YOU WILL NEVER EVEN CARE.

Love,

C

I don’t sleep.

I don’t sleep.

Breathless, awful, impossible, I don’t sleep.

I don’t sleep.

LIO

I KNEW IT WASN’T GOING TO WORK OUT. AND I KNEW
why, too. Because I’m Cody-lite. When there’s still the possibility, no matter how small, of Cody-real, what am I good for?

This mattress is hard and rubbery. I can’t get it out of my head how much this room smells like him. And cat pee, a little, but it really smells like him.

I need to move on. The problem is, I don’t know anyone else. Even before I moved, Maryland meant Craig.

This is so pathetic. Maryland so far has been a boy who doesn’t love me, homework, and six dead bodies.

God, I sang him a lullaby.

I can’t believe that. I don’t
sing for anyone but my dad anymore, and only then when he’s drunk after some work party and his
L
s sound like
Th
s and songs come pouring out of me before I can stop them, like some kind of battle cry.

Adelle would have a field day with me right now. Maybe I should start seeing her three times a week now that I’m in love.

I think once you start going to therapy three times a week, you’ve made some sort of terrible transition. I think that’s the difference between “a little fucked up,” in a concerned, endearing tone and “fucked up” with raised eyebrows and a slow head nod.

Craig would probably like that. It probably brings me closer to turning into Cody.

That isn’t fair of me to think, but I don’t care right now.

Maybe all that bullshit about how you never forget your first love is true. Maybe Craig will go through his whole life taking little wounded puppies and trying to mold them into a Cody that he can save. Maybe that’s what happens when you get your heart broken.

But I’m
not
just some wounded puppy. I’m not. And I’m not going to let some boy make me all about things that happened to me because that’s how he knows how to see me. Shitty things happened to me, and they happened, and I’m dealing. I’m fine with being wounded, but not to prove a point. I’m not an archetype. I’m fifteen fucking years old.

I sit up and look out the window. It’s stopped raining now, and the moonlight’s glaring through the tree branches. The dark is so heavy that I don’t think it can be disturbed. Maybe that’s why there haven’t been any overnight shootings. The night would muffle gunfire like a pillow.