Gone, Gone, Gone (5 page)

“Yes?”

“Neither did my friends. But . . . for a long time, we kept comparing. Who was closer to almost dying. Closer to the towers. Trying to beat each other.”

“And you didn’t like that?”

“Proximity isn’t a merit badge. It doesn’t actually mean anything.” I put my snowman back together. This time, I give him a hat.

I waste our last five minutes by thinking about Craig instead of talking. Eventually, Adelle says, “Okay, Lio. I’ll see you on Friday.”

CRAIG

I COME IN FROM FLAMINGO’S NOT-QUITE FUNERAL,
and I spend so much time hugging the animals that it takes me a while to check my email, which is weird, because it’s usually the first thing I do, and then the second thing, and then the third, refresh refresh refresh.

I got an email from Lio. I don’t think I’d know anything about Lio if not for emails and those IMs. But I’m not sure how much he would mean to me if all I saw was the confident, kind of douchey boy who writes these emails and IMs, as much as I like that boy. I don’t know how all the parts of Lio manage to mash up and work for me, but somehow it happens. Somehow the bits and pieces of him
keep coming together in my head again and again, like when you watch
The Wizard of Oz
while playing
The Dark Side of the Moon,
and somehow it all fits together. Even though it’s probably not supposed to.

Anyway, I got this email.

Craig—

Hope your house is a little noisier already. Let me know if you need to borrow a TV. My sister Veronica’s set is still here in some box. She’s too holistic for it now, or something.

But really, I hope it’s louder because there are more animals.

Went to therapy. You’ll be happy to know I’m still a little fucked up. We didn’t talk about DEAD BROTHER this session. Kind of a gyp. Veronica would hit me if she knew I said gyp.

Can I be honest with you? I like talking about DEAD BROTHER with you a lot more than I like talking about him with thera thera therapist (that’s her full name). So if you want to talk about it or whatever? If you ever need a reason to feel depressed or you want to feel thankful for your lymphocytes or whatever, yeah, I can hook you up.

I liked that shirt you wore today.

We can talk
about me getting all cougar (you’re more than six months younger than me, you know) on you if you want. Or we can pretend that it’s just that thing where two gay boys kiss because they’re the only two gay boys around. Like on sitcoms. And then we adopt a Vietnamese baby.

I’m not delusional enough to think this is a sitcom. It’s not like I have wedding bands picked out or something.

See you tomorrow.

Lio

I’m not sure I can deal with this tonight. The self-awareness of it is kind of killing me—how many times did Lio edit this email? It’s so fucking carefully constructed, and that’s not the kind of thing I can handle, so I always just reply as fast as I can without thinking and right now I’m just so tired.

And the part about his brother is the worst, because I’d totally talk to him about it, I’d love to talk to him about it, I live to drink up other people’s problems and pee them out and probably drink them again, knowing me, though it’s not like that turns me on or whatever, but if it did I’d know just the websites because insomnia is ridiculous.

But anyway, no matter how many times Lio says “Yeah, we’ll talk,” the
bottom line is, the kid doesn’t talk, and I want him to, because I’d like to see what he says when he doesn’t edit. I want to see if it’s beautiful, because right now I don’t know.

Or we could . . . use our mouths for other things, is I guess what I’m trying to say. I mean, if that’s easier for him. Or if it’s even possible for me, in my current state of eunuch.

God, I’m so tired, and I don’t know what I want, which is probably why kissing seems like the best option, but it sounds like he doesn’t even want to kiss me anymore, so now I don’t even know. I should go to sleep, I guess.

I check the kennels and the beds again and again, and I pet Caramel for ages until he starts to get really annoyed with me. I should sleep.

That’s my part of me that’s “a little fucked up,” I guess. If we can divide ourselves up that way. I have Cody and the fact that I don’t sleep. And the animals, though I guess they’re all connected or some shit like that. God, I should go to therapy with Lio. I bet she’d have a field day between the two of us. And then we’d get better, because I guess that’s the point of therapy, and then what? And what happens when you don’t get better? I know the answer to that and it’s not something I want to happen to me. Or Lio. Although I guess he probably knows more than I do about not getting better, but the more I get to know Lio, the more I learn that you can’t use
cancer as a metaphor for real life.

I flop down on my couch and turn on the TV. Sandwich walks in a circle on my back like a dog before she settles down. I hear my parents walking around upstairs, shutting off the lights and double-checking all the locks on the doors before they go to bed. The windows are already fixed, because it’s not safe to have all that broken glass around when there are animals.

I can hear my brother getting ready for the suicide hotline job. He likes it, even though the pay is shitty and it’s about people killing themselves. He says he likes to help. My family is all full of beautiful people who care about everyone they don’t know, and then we can’t even get along most of the time. I think it’s gotten to the extent that, if we were going to kill ourselves, none of us would think to call my brother for help first, and isn’t that just the most pathetic thing in the whole world?

The man on the TV talks about a big jigsaw puzzle I can buy for four payments of something—no, three payments of something, special TV offer, I need to call right now. I don’t even have a phone with me. I am a waste of his infomercial. There’s no way he could make money off of me, and I feel really guilty about that.

Also, I sort of don’t understand TV, in that way. Why do ratings matter? Do people get money when I watch their show? What about when I turn a show off in the middle? I guess I’m
not part of that eighteen-to-thirty-five age group, or whatever it is everyone gives a shit about, so it probably doesn’t matter. I barely matter, if you’re looking at numbers—what’s a fifteen-year-old? I can’t even drive. And I’m six months younger than Lio.

I don’t feel six months younger than Lio. I mean, I can deal with my life and stuff. And I’ve had a boyfriend and Lio hasn’t, as far as I know. Or a girlfriend. So really, I’m older in a lot of ways.

I should sleep. It’s been quiet upstairs for ages. I was a wreck in school today. Nearly started crying in algebra just because I couldn’t figure out the next step in this proof, which is really unacceptable behavior. I was falling asleep all through history, and now I’m awake like someone’s electroshocked me.

Cody was older than me too. Nearly a year. Cody Cody Cody. Why didn’t I get an email from him tonight? Usually he emails every night. Every single night, around nine o’clock. And I respond faster than I can breathe.

He didn’t email tonight, for the first time since he’s been gone. I’m trying to act like this is something I’ve just realized while I’ve been lying here watching the infomercial, acting like it hasn’t been chewing on my thoughts ever since I checked my email and it was only Lio. Pretending there’s this vague possibility that Cody wasn’t the first thing I thought about for once.

Damn it.

I
drag my laptop in front of the TV and boot up an old email from him, from a few weeks ago.

Craig—

To die by your side, baby. I heard that song today and it reminded me of

I mean

Still mad at you. Mad at you forever. Fuck you, Craig, fuck you and everything you did.

Love,

C

He’s sent me over a hundred emails, and every single one contains, in some form, usually more than one form, the phrase,
Fuck you, Craig.

And I email him back like my life depends on it. Every. Single. Time.

Because every email he sends has the word “love,” too.

But today no email, so am I supposed to email him anyway? I don’t know what to say. Usually I respond to him. Usually I only email because I need to know that he’s okay. I
never tell him anything real. I don’t want to weigh him down with stuff from here.

“I miss you I miss you I miss you,” I whisper and stupid Sandwich thinks I’m talking to her and stretches her paws all the way out, and her claws come out and dig into my head a little, and damn it, Sandwich, I love you, but this is about Cody.

I want to email him, but if I do I’ll stay up until he answers, I’ll stay up worrying, I’ll stay up freaking out that he’s hurt and wonder why he isn’t screaming at me with capital letters from my inbox. I’ll spend every second I don’t sleep pouring all of me into that computer, and I have animals to feed, animals to look for, animals to pet and hold and love me.

So I sleep a little, and my alarm goes off at five thirty, and I feed the animals, which takes about thirty seconds because there are not nearly enough, but by the time I get to school this girl Caitlin, who only wakes up ten minutes before school starts and brags about it and looks like it, is all, “Did you hear there was another shooting?” in her un-toothbrushed voice.

I say, “Yeah? Shocking,” which is pretty douchey of me, but, seriously? Someone got shot in the world and now this is like the fucking Berlin Wall or some other shit people care about.

“This guy in Kensington. He was mowing his lawn. My dad was mowing the lawn yesterday
! I mean, Jesus, it makes you think.”

I don’t see Lio until after second period. Some days I go most of the morning without seeing him, since we don’t have any classes together until third period, but usually one of us seeks the other one out. It’s nine thirty, and two more people have been shot since I talked to Caitlin. A few people are talking about it, but the news isn’t sweeping the school like wildfire or anything. I heard two of the student teachers discussing it, or I wouldn’t know.

It’s four dead people. I don’t mean to sound like that doesn’t suck. I mean, obviously people shouldn’t get shot. But this isn’t God Bless America anymore, and things happen, people get shot.

Lio has a pink armband on, like now that he’s kissed me he’s fine with the whole world finding out he’s gay. Though I don’t know if anyone else would notice the armband, since it kind of goes with his usual quirky attire, and I don’t know if he was ever in the closet to begin with or if he didn’t advertise it because he’s one of those people who thinks it’s only your business if his cock is in your mouth. Maybe he’s bi. Or maybe he’s one of those guys who thinks that just because he likes guys doesn’t mean he has to be part of some community. I don’t like those guys, to be honest, but that’s really just because I love community.

The rest of him is mostly in black, like usual. He says he wears eyeliner on Halloween but only then. Once I had a wet dream about helping him put it on. I can’t believe I’m thinking about this right now.

“Maybe this is the apocalypse,” I suggest to Lio, instead of “hello” or “thanks for last night” or “what made you think you could do that, but again maybe?” Or “no.”

He raises his eyebrows at me.

If we’re not going to talk about the kiss, are we at least going to talk about the email that talked about talking about the kiss? Correction—am
I
going to talk about the email? Because it’s not like he will. And no. I’m not.

I say, “You know that whole thing about the world ending with a whimper, not a bang? This is actually how it’s going to happen. We get shot until there’s no one left.”

I touch his hand because I’m dying to, all of a sudden. Just a tap with my finger on his palm.

He says, point-blank, “That’s awful.”

“Well, we’d last for a long time, I think. I get the feeling we’d be resourceful and everything.” I clear my throat and take my hand away. “I was just joking around.”

“Yeah.” He slings his backpack over his shoulder like he’s about to leave, but he doesn’t move. He’s staring me down, or up, I guess, because he has to tilt his chin at a pretty wide angle to look at me. And he’s still fierce and frightening.

But I’m angry. “Maybe I’m scared,” I say. “Maybe I’m scared and deflecting.”

“Maybe.”

“Did you consider that?”

He shrugs.

“I mean, Jesus, Lio.”
What am I so mad at him about? I lean against his locker. “I mean . . . I could be scared.” I could be a lot of things and he fucking wouldn’t know, maybe that’s the point.

He starts walking to his next class, or to somewhere, or maybe just to anywhere that’s not here. I jog beside him. He used to run cross-country, and those short legs know how to move.

He says, “You’re not.”

“I’m not what?”

“Scared.”

“Three random people—”

“Four.”

“—have been shot. I completely have a right to be scared. I could be quaking in my boots. Sneakers.”

“You’re complacent,” he says.

A three-syllable word from Lio is enough cause to stop walking, so I do, and he comes to rest beside me. But I can tell he really doesn’t want to stop walking, and he doesn’t want to look at me, and he certainly doesn’t want to talk to me.

At least not about people dying.

Wait, so which one of us is the coward here? Because I would rather talk about people getting shot than talk about him kissing me, and how pathetic is that? Right now I want to crawl back in bed rather than talk about anything real. It’s so much easier to debate and argue over this shit that has nothing to do with us or how we feel. Random people that happen to die in our random city.

I say, “I’m not . . . complacent.”

“You don’t think you’re going to get shot.”

I rub the back of my neck. “Well, yeah. I mean, chances are, I’m not going to get shot.”