Openly Straight (9 page)

Ben stood and grabbed a bat. I stood too, and walked with him.

“Yeah. Of course, there’s plenty of other stuff about Toby. I mean, he’s not the most sensible person of all time,” Ben said.

I was going to let it go, but I decided if open conversation was the thing at Natick, why not go for it? “Isn’t that homophobic? Like a gay stereotype? Like all gays are flighty?”

“No, it’s a fact. It has nothing to do with him being gay.”

“Okay, it just sounded like it could be homophobic, like the one gay kid is not very sensible,” I said, crossing my arms.

“One guy in the on-deck circle, Colorado,” Steve yelled. “C’mon!”

I moved back but not before Ben leaned in toward me. “Last year, the fire alarm went off in the middle of the night. It was January and freezing out, and everyone bundled up and went outside while they checked things out. And out comes Toby in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, with an honest-to-God bow and arrow. Everyone’s staring at him, and he’s saying: ‘There are probably wolves out here. I’m not going outside in the pitch black without some sort of protection.’ The idiot nearly got frostbite, and Mr. Donnelly had to break the drill and go in and get him pants and a jacket.”

I tried to think of some comeback. I had nothing. Ben saw it and smiled this great, goofy smile, with his two uneven front teeth sticking out just slightly under his top lip.

“Okay. Not so sensible,” I said, allowing myself to smile back.

I grounded out in the fifth inning, and then, in the seventh, I came up with us leading by one run with two runners on base. My heart was pounding in my ears, and as I approached the plate, I kept saying to myself,
Don’t screw up. Don’t screw up.

“Let’s see it, kid,” Steve yelled, and I could hear the team clapping for me.

I took a deep breath, stepped into the batter’s box, and raised the bat.

The first pitch was perfect, right over the plate, and I concentrated as hard as I could to swing level so it wouldn’t be a high pop-up like the last one. The contact felt good, clean, sweet, and the ball jumped off my bat in a way it hadn’t before. I swung all the way through and then started running as the ball screamed past the pitcher’s glove.

It went into center field, hitting the grass just in front of the outfielder, who dove for it. He scooped it up on a short hop and threw as hard as he could to home plate. The throw was too late, though; I was on first, Ben was on third, and Standish was across home plate, giving us a 9–7 lead.

I could feel the applause in my bones, my joints, this reverberation of sound and celebration. I smiled as wide as I could remember smiling. Steve yelled, “Outstanding, Colorado. Outstanding.”

When our half of the inning was over, I sat on the bench, watching the final at bat by the senior team. They got a runner to first, then someone grounded out and the next guy popped out, and suddenly we were one out away from winning, with a runner on second.

The guy who stepped up to the plate, I remembered, was not that good. He had struck out one time, and another time he hit a weak ball to third base. We were going to win and I was going to be part of the celebration, and this alternate universe I had chosen just couldn’t have been more surprising, or better.

Steve lobbed the ball over home plate. The guy looked up at the ball as it hit its apex, and then he started his swing.

He hit a soft grounder, this one to Steve, on the pitcher’s mound. Steve caught the ball in his glove, turned, and tossed underhand to Bryce, who was waiting at first base with his glove outstretched.

It was like tunnel vision then, because I saw it happening.

It seemed like the ball hung in the air for minutes. I saw the concentration and the despair in Bryce’s face as if he were right next to me, not across the diamond. Almost like I could taste the sweat dripping from his forehead.

The ball hit the pocket of his glove, and Bryce moved his glove slightly, like he was trying to close it. But his muscles must have miscued, and he pulled his arm back instead of closing his hand into a fist. The ball jumped out to the edge of his glove, and I watched his face fall as he couldn’t seem to figure out how to make this simple play happen.

The ball fell to the ground, the runner crossed first base, and the other team’s bench exploded in cheers because they still had life.

I watched Steve walk over to first, staring at Bryce. I couldn’t see his expression, since he was facing the other way, but Bryce bowed his head, and Steve knelt down and swiped the ball up like he was a teacher snatching an exam off the desk of a cheating student. He
walked back to the mound, muttering to himself. The rest of our infield was yelling at Bryce, and it was the first time I’d seen a crack in the unity façade since getting to Natick.

Only Ben wasn’t screaming. He just stood at third base, his arms crossed, his head down.

The next batter hit a double, scoring a run to make it 9–8, us. The batter after that hit a towering fly ball to right. Kenny had no chance to catch it as it sailed over his head. Two runs scored on the home run, and the seniors won the game, 10–9.

It was quiet on the bench as we packed up our things. The deflation was palpable, like tar had settled over all of us, and we were trudging under its weight.

“All you had to do was close your glove,” Rodriguez said finally. “Just close it. We win. What’s wrong with you? You can’t close your glove? You need a new hand or something?”

“Now all year we get to hear them jaw it out,” Steve said. “It’s on you, Bryce. We didn’t lose. You lost.”

It occurred to me that there were two labels that mattered more than almost any other at Natick: winner and loser. Why did they care so much? And why didn’t I?

I watched Bryce, who didn’t look only pained; he looked devastated, like someone would look if you told them their parents were killed in a car crash.

“Leave him alone,” Ben said, his voice quavering. “It’s just a softball game.”

Bryce walked off then, trudging off with his bat bag slung over his shoulder and his head bowed so heavily, it looked like you’d need
a crane to lift it. Ben followed him, and I felt torn, wanting to go with them, but afraid that if I did, I’d lose my standing with Steve. So I continued packing up my stuff and walked back to the dorm silently with my teammates, who seemed to be lost in the fog of a celebration that never quite happened.

Later
that night after dinner, while Albie and Toby were playing scanner pong and I was reading about the building of suburbs in 1950s America for my Monday morning history class, a chirp from the scanner piqued my interest.

“Can you repeat?” said a male voice.

A female voice said: “Disoriented black male, outside Natick School. Can we get a car out to check on the situation? Over.”

“I’m on it,” said a male voice, and then static.

“Awesome sauce!” Toby yelled, and he jumped to his feet, spilling his Red Bull on the carpet as he jumped. Albie grabbed him by the shirt.

“Slow down, Detective Pollard,” Albie said. “It’s late. I don’t want to miss curfew. Plus, this one sounds dicey.”

Toby put his hands on his hips. “Racist! Besides, I don’t know who this Detective Pollard you speak of is,” he said. “I am Ryan Giles, famous crime reporter … with a mustache.” And then he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a fake mustache, which he stuck on his upper lip.

“You have a fake mustache in your pocket?” I asked.

He nodded, like this was a normal thing to have. Albie didn’t say anything, so I figured he might have one too. Yeah.

“We’re not going,” Albie said. “Now sit down and drink your Bull.”

Toby sat, sulking, his arms crossed tight across his chest, like a little boy denied cotton candy at the fair.

“It’s probably some Joey Warren kid. Maybe he swam across Dug Pond. He thought he’d swum back and forth and was back at Joey, and now he’s disoriented because the campus looks all different,” Albie said.

“He’s a spy,” Toby said. “His disguise is … well, he’s disoriented as a disguise.”

“Yeah,” Albie said. “I’m sure he disguised himself as black, seeing as there are SO many black people at Natick School. This way he wouldn’t stand out.”

I was only half paying attention to the Albie-Toby circus. My mind was buzzing. What if it was Bryce? He looked pretty down at the softball game; it didn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I excused myself and hurried over to Ben and Bryce’s room. I knocked on the door.

“Oh, hey,” Ben said. He was wearing a red flannel bathrobe, sweatpants, slippers, and black horn-rimmed glasses. If he wasn’t obviously seventeen and built like a truck, he could have been a middle-aged English professor.

“Hey.” I fidgeted my fingers and couldn’t look him in the eye. “Is, um, Bryce here, by any chance?”

“No,” he said. “I’m actually a little worried about that.” I could see creases around his eyes.

I said, “You know how we have that police scanner? I just heard something about a disoriented black male or something outside Natick School.” I wondered if it sounded racist, equating that with Bryce.

But Ben instantly sprinted off down the hall, in his robe and pajamas. I was too stunned to go after him. I looked at my watch. It was 10:45, and Saturday night curfew was in fifteen minutes. Hopefully Ben could find Bryce — if this was, in fact, Bryce — and get him back on campus within that time, not to mention before the police got involved.

I stood by Ben’s door for a moment and then I went into his room. Ben and Bryce had made their room kinda comfy, like a home. One desk was lit by this old-looking lamp, like something out of an antique shop. Under the lamp was an open copy of Walt Whitman’s
Leaves of Grass
. Ben’s, I figured. In front of that desk, instead of a typical wooden chair, was a cushioned burgundy chair with a high back. On the wall next to his desk was an Escher print, the one with a never-ending rooftop staircase where all these hooded men are ascending and descending in pairs and it appears they could do so indefinitely and stay in the staircase loop. On the opposite wall, above Bryce’s desk, was an Albert Einstein photo.

I sat down in the burgundy chair. Plush. Comfortable. I could smell a faint tinge of garlic; it wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

Five minutes later, an out-of-breath Ben returned, looking panicked.

“He’s not in the library. He’s not anywhere around the quad. I don’t know what to do here. Help me figure out what to do,” he said.

“Okay, okay,” I said, standing and pacing the room. “Where do you think he went? He looked really upset after the game.”

“Well, wouldn’t you have been? He dropped a ball, for Christ’s sake. He didn’t kill anyone! The guys made him feel like dirt. Lower than dirt.”

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said, feeling defensive. “I thought it was terrible the way they treated him.”

Ben seemed to take that in. “It’s worse than that, though.”

“Worse?”

“If I tell you something, do you promise …”

“A hundred percent,” I said. “You can trust me. I promise.”

He swallowed and took a deep breath. “Bryce has this big problem with depression.”

“Ah. That makes sense. How he was at the party,” I said.

He nodded. “He definitely has a problem and he hates taking those pills. Says they make him feel weird. Anyway, over the summer, his folks back in Rhode Island took him to a doctor and they diagnosed him as clinically depressed. I wasn’t completely shocked, because I’ve known him a couple years now and he can get pretty dark. But this year, it’s been different. Like scary different.”

He sat down in his chair and I sat down on Ben’s bed.

“A couple nights ago, he just sat there in bed, staring at the same spot on the wall for hours at a time. I’d wake up and there he was, still staring. I’d go and sit next to him, and it was like, no response. I told him I was going to get the school nurse, and he begged me not to do that. He said he was scared they’d lock him up. That’s his biggest fear. So I didn’t do anything, and maybe I should have. And then the
softball game, and it’s just, this is not good, Rafe. Not good. I’m really scared.”

“Okay, well, we’ll go look for him.”

Ben was staring out the window. “There’s more,” he said. “Bryce has two strikes already. Twice now he’s skipped curfew. Both times on weekends. He just totally disregarded the eleven o’clock curfew and sailed in around one
A.M.
And you know, three strikes and you’re out here. Coach Donnelly let him know that the next time he’d be suspended, or worse.”

We both looked at the clock on Ben’s desk. It was 10:56.

“Shit,” I said.

“Yeah,” responded Ben. “He has a car. He could be anywhere.”

“C’mon. I have an idea,” I said, standing and leading him out of the room.

“So he’s somewhere, maybe messed up, and he’s missed curfew, or he’s, like, in trouble,” I explained to Toby and Albie.

“We should just tell Mr. Donnelly,” Albie said crisply. I could see he was not comfortable with Ben in the room. To Albie, I guess, Ben was simply another jock. “This is too serious to mess around with.”

“This could get him kicked out,” said Ben. “No way we’re telling Donnelly.”

“Look,” Albie said, “I’m sorry. And Bryce is a nice kid. But I don’t see how this has anything to do with me. Us.”

Everyone was quiet. The awkwardness was palpable. So was the static from the scanner.

Toby was staring out the window, as if he was deep in thought.
“He’s like me,” he said, breaking the silence. He still had his fake mustache on.

Ben and I looked at each other. I raised an eyebrow, and Ben shook his head.

“Bryce isn’t gay,” he said. “I happen to know him really well, and he’s definitely not gay. He won’t stop talking about girls sometimes. It can actually get annoying.”

Toby frowned. “I mean, he’s different, like me. He’s different, and that can be really, like, depressing. Really depressing.” He turned to Albie. “Remember last spring?”

Albie nodded solemnly.

“That could have been me. I was, like, so close to running away from here, it’s not even funny.”

We all considered that for a moment. I thought about what Mr. Scarborough had asked me, about coming out being a big deal. Hearing about how even Toby had felt depressed about being different made me realize that maybe it was a bigger deal than I’d thought. For everyone.

“That sucks,” Ben said. “Sorry.”

“Well, it’s not exactly a bucket of ice cream to be different around here,” Toby said, a little vehemence in his voice.

“A bucket of ice cream? Who puts ice cream in a bucket?” Albie said.

“Shut up, Albie,” Toby said.

“You shut up,” he replied. “And put your shoes on. We have a mission to accomplish.”

Sneaking out of East wasn’t that difficult. Donnelly, aside from being an enemy of grammar and the minister of disinformation at Natick, was notoriously lax about security, occasionally leaving the front door unlocked after curfew, not setting the alarm, that sort of thing. And everyone knew about the window to the first-floor bathroom. It was fairly easy to open, and so long as you didn’t mind landing momentarily in a shrub, and didn’t mind, later, shimmying around the shrub and hoisting yourself up, it was not an issue.

Toby went first, being the only one of us who had actually done this before. Ben wasn’t a rule breaker, I was new, and Albie, well, Albie would have been happy to spend every night of his life in our room or the TV lounge. Plus Toby was agile, so hoisting himself up and out was not a problem. I found it pretty easy too. Ben helped Albie from the inside, and Toby and I caught him on the outside.

Once we were behind East, we snuck around the floodlights and out to the parking lot. It was cold inside Sleepy. Ben and I took the back, and Toby sat up front with Albie, the fake mustache hanging precipitously from his face.

Albie turned on the motor, opting to leave the headlights off until we got out of the parking lot. But then we had no idea where to drive.

“I know his favorite diner,” Ben said. “It’s twenty-four hours.”

“That sounds like a good place to start,” I said.

Toby pressed his fingers on his mustache like he was thinking deeply. “Crime reporter Ryan Giles thinks we need to develop a secret plan….”

“Shut up,” I yelled. “What the hell is wrong with you? This is a real person we’re looking for here.”

Toby removed his mustache and put it back in his pocket. “Sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I like joking too, Toby, but let’s just get serious for half a minute, okay?”

“Sure,” he said. “That was dumb. Stupid. I’m a retard.”

“Enough,” Albie said. “We love you. You’re not dumb.”

“That’s right,” I echoed. “You’re loved.” And as I said it, I instinctively wondered if Ben would judge me. But when I glanced up, the creases on Ben’s forehead told me he had more important things on his mind.

Ben directed us to Sparky’s, a diner in downtown Natick. We parked on the main street, jumped out of the car, and headed in. It was loud. The jukebox was playing some rock ballad from before we were born, and groups of high school kids were hanging out in the booths. Probably Joey Warren kids.

Every time I saw someone with dark skin, my heart jumped, hoping it was Bryce. It never was. Ben checked the bathroom but came back alone. Bryce just wasn’t there.

We drove in silence down the semifestive streets of downtown Natick, looking for any sign of him. None.

I looked at my watch. It was 11:20.

“What do we do now?” I asked.

No one had an answer for that.

“Bryce liked going to Boston,” Ben said.

Silence again, finally broken by Albie. “Did you call his cell?”

“No answer,” said Ben, who bit his lip.

“Because Boston is a big place,” Albie continued.

“I know,” Ben said, annoyed. “I know. It’s not gonna work. It just feels hopeless going back now. I mean, he’s out here somewhere.”

“I guess we need to go to …” Albie said, hoping someone would fill in the blanks so he wouldn’t have to say it.

“I’d say the police and then the hospital,” Ben said, his voice full of fear.

I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. It seemed like the right thing to do. He didn’t seem to mind, so I left it there for a few moments, just to let him know I cared.

The police officer we spoke to at the station claimed he didn’t know anything about a Bryce Hixon being picked up. We drove to the hospital and pulled up at the emergency room, each of us wondering which was best: to find him there, or not.