See You at Harry's (5 page)

When the bus stops at our driveway, I get off first and start walking. I don’t wait for Holden, knowing I’m supposed to pretend I don’t notice him. As soon as the bus pulls away and the sound of the engine drifts off, I turn to face him. I don’t know what I’m going to say, but when I look in his watery eyes, I keep my mouth shut. There’s a welt on his left cheek. He walks right by me, past the front walkway, and around the side of the house. I follow, keeping the same distance he put between us on the bus. He disappears into our neighbor’s yard and into the pine-tree cave.

When I reach the cave, I stand outside, waiting to be invited in. Waiting and waiting.

“Go home,” the cave says.

I bend down to peek inside. His forehead rests on his knees so I can’t see his face. But I can tell from the sound of his cracked voice that he’s been crying.

“No,” I say.

I wait some more.

“Fine,” he finally says.

I bend down and crawl in. The familiar smell welcomes me. I sit next to him and look up at the hundreds of crisscross branches above us. They’re like interlocking fingers protecting us from the world.

“Well,” he says quietly, “how was
your
first day?”

I sigh and think about the rush of my first day of middle school. It was pretty much like any first day of school, except that it was in a new place with twice as many people and every time I had to change classes, at least one person pointed at me and someone else would say The Line in a high-pitched, fake-Charlie voice. When Ran was with me, he acted like he didn’t hear anything. I figured I should follow his lead, since no one knows better than Ran how to deal with people giving you a hard time for stuff that is out of your control.

“As expected,” I finally say. “You?”

“Pretty much.”

“How many people said it to you?” I ask.

“Six, I think. You?”

“At least.”

He shakes his head, and we’re quiet for a while. But it isn’t our usual comfortable quiet. I know the words I need to say aren’t the kind we can share without speaking.

“Holden?” I finally say. “Why do you sit at the back of the bus if those jerks do that to you?”

He rubs out the design he was making in the needles with his fingers. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m not Charlie.”

He shakes his head and leans back against the tree trunk, closing his eyes.

“Why do they hurt you?” I ask, leaning next to him.

He’s quiet for a long time, then he finally sits up again and puts his back to me. His shirt is covered with needles and pieces of bark.

“I think you know,” he says.

I watch the curve of his back rise and fall. I want to touch him and feel his breathing, but I’m afraid I’ll feel the hurt. And it seems like a private thing he doesn’t want to share. Or maybe he’s just protecting me from it.

I think of Sara’s words again and Charlie’s singsong echo.

“It’s not a good reason,” I say.

“No?” He finally turns to me, and I can see the truth in his tears.

“I don’t think it is,” I say. “People are so stupid.”

He smiles a little. “So you don’t care? That I’m . . . you know.”

I roll my eyes. “Why would I care? Why should anyone?” But I wonder why neither of us can say the word.
Gay,
I think.
You’re gay.
I know what that means. But I don’t know how he knows he is, or how it feels, or why people hate him because of it.

“Fern,” he says. “You’re not like anyone. Other people, they don’t get it.”

I shrug. “They’re idiots.”

Holden puts his arms over his bent-up knees and rests his chin on them. “Yeah.”

“We have to do something. We could tell Mom and Dad.”

“No. Can’t you see Mom marching down to the school and causing a scene? And Dad would . . . I don’t know what Dad would do. Try to teach me how to fight or something. Be a man. They’d want to know
why
it happened. And then we’d have to talk about me being . . .” He pauses and pulls at the rubber on his shoe.

“You can say it,” I whisper.

Slowly, he looks up at me. I search his eyes and give him the tell-me stare. He breathes in and out a few times.

“Gay,” he says.

I put my hand on his knee. “It doesn’t matter,” I tell him again. “It doesn’t change anything.”

He moves his leg away. “It’s one thing telling you, but I just don’t think I’m ready to officially come out yet, you know? I know Mom will be fine with it. But Dad . . .”

“They love you. They can help.”

“I don’t need anyone’s
help,
” he says, moving even farther away from me.

I lean back against the tree and breathe in Christmas again.

“Yes, you do,” I whisper.

My mom always thought I’d be a good friend. A hero, like the
Charlotte’s Web
Fern. I would like to be Holden’s hero. I really would. I would like to stay his Phoebe forever, so he always has someone to come back to. But when he moves away from me this way, I feel like he’s taking a step toward leaving us for good.

B
ACK AT HOME
, Sara and my mom are in the kitchen, blasting Grateful Dead tunes and making homemade pasta while Charlie sits on the counter, playing with a ball of dough. There are bits of dough in his hair.

“Ferny!” he yells when he sees me.

“Hi, honey,” my mom says, easing a long sheet of dough out of the machine. “Could you set the table?”

“How was school?” Charlie asks, all serious.

My mom folds the pasta and starts to feed it back into the machine. “Oh, right! How was it, Fern? Did you like your classes?”

Sara eyes my outfit. “I take it Holden helped you get ready?”

I look down at my shirt, which I admit is a bit more dressy than what I’d normally wear. Holden forced me to buy it when we went clothes shopping for school.

“What?” I ask her.

“You’re twelve, not twenty.”

I give her a sneer.

“Snake!” Charlie yells. He holds up a dough snake and makes it wiggle through the air.

“Nice, Charlie!” my mom says, forgetting all about me. “What’s his name?”

I grab the stack of dishes and bring them to the table. Instead of going back to the kitchen, I go to my room and spread my homework out on my bed and get to it.

I’m almost done when I hear Charlie’s squeaky voice.

“Hi, Ferny,” he says, standing in the doorway.

“Hey, Char.”

“Wanna play?”

“I’m doing homework.”

“I can help.”

“I don’t think so.”

He steps into my room anyway. He’s holding Doll, who’s wearing one of his old worn-out onesies that is way too big for her. Charlie walks over to the foot of my bed and sets Doll down so she’s staring at me.

They wait.

I try to ignore them, but Charlie does this loud breathing thing that drives me crazy. Also, Doll kind of freaks me out with her permanent surprised smile and dirty face.

“Are your hands clean?” I ask.

He holds them up, his fingers spread wide. They’re still a little wet.

“OK.” I move some of my books out of the way, and he climbs up.

“I wanna go to school,” he says.

“School is overrated.”

“Huh?”

“Look. All little kids want to go to school. And kindergarten is pretty great. But it just goes downhill from there.”

“Oh.”

“Enjoy your freedom, bud.”

“OK.”

He helps me put all my books in a pile, then picks up Doll and follows me downstairs for dinner.

My dad is working late, so it’s just my mom and us. He tries to get home for dinner a few nights a week, but lately it happens less and less.

Charlie has separated out all the vegetables from the pasta dish my mom made. He stares at the colorful piles and tells them why he does or doesn’t like each one.

“You mushy,” he says to an overcooked slice of zucchini.

Holden keeps his head down, close to his plate. He’s managed to cover up the welts pretty well. Holden is a master of covering up zits and other imperfections with Sara’s old makeup. When Sara was fourteen, she went through this whole makeup stage. She and her friends would have makeup parties and teach each other how to use it. This drove my all-natural mom nuts. She even tried to get them to give each other temporary henna tattoos instead, but none of the other parents would allow it.

One day when Sara wasn’t home, Holden and I decided to play dress-up with her stuff. I was about eight and he was ten. We sat on the floor in the bathroom with the carrying case Sara kept all her makeup in spread open between us. I pointed to each color I wanted to try, then Holden decorated me. I loved the way the powder and lipstick smelled. When I was all done, Holden held out a tiny hand mirror we found in the case. I looked at my Barbie face and laughed. Then I grabbed a blush brush and put some on Holden’s cheeks. We were laughing so hard, we didn’t hear Sara come up the stairs and down the hall. She stood in the door with her mouth open, hands on hips.

“What are you guys doing!” she screamed. “That’s my stuff!” She stomped back down the hall. Holden and I looked at each other and laughed, but we started to put away the makeup.

Before we were done, my mom came upstairs. She looked at me, but she stared at Holden, and I remember how ashamed he seemed. She gave us a lecture about playing with Sara’s things without asking and how makeup wasn’t a toy. The way she towered above us as we sat on the floor, she looked so big and different. And I felt so small. When she left, we finished putting everything away and looked at each other guiltily. We stood at the sink and quickly washed our faces and then went to our own rooms until it was time for dinner.

Halfway through dinner, my dad asked me what was wrong with my eyes. I rubbed them and some mascara came off on my finger.

“It’s my makeup,” Sara said.

My dad nodded and smiled at me. “Playing with your sister’s stuff?”

I shrugged.

“I think you’re much prettier the natural way,” he said.

It was the first time he said I was pretty. Maybe it was the first time anyone said I was pretty. I looked across the table at Holden and noticed that his cheeks still seemed red from the blush I’d put there. I touched my cheek and nodded at him carefully to try to let him know. He got the hint right away and got up to go to the bathroom. My dad watched him go.

“I wish you wouldn’t let the kids play with that junk,” he said to my mom.

“It’s not junk,” Sara said. “And Mom didn’t
let
them. They were sneaking around while I wasn’t home.”

“Well, whatever,” my dad said, still looking at my mom. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t see why dad cares,” I told Holden later. I’d found him hiding out in the pine-tree cave after dinner.

“He thinks I’m weird,” Holden said. He wiped his cheeks again as if the makeup were still there.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because I was playing with makeup.”

“So what?”

“Boys aren’t supposed to.”

“That’s stupid,” I said. “We were just having fun.”

But he didn’t answer. He just wiped his cheeks again and turned away from me.

Now, sitting at the table watching Holden hide his face, I finally get it. Even then, he knew. And now he’s the one who’s afraid. Maybe even ashamed. I study my mom as she twirls pasta on her fork. She’s pretty open-minded. So is my dad. I’m sure if Holden told them, they’d be supportive. But he stays quiet. So I do, too.

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, Holden and I go out to wait for the bus again. Holden teeters at the edge of the road, kicking stones across the street. I join him, imagining that the tiny pebbles are the heads of the jerks who hurt him. Pretty soon we hear the far-off squeal of the bus brakes.

I feel Holden stiffen beside me. “Yeah. You know what? I’m out of here,” he says. “Wanna come?”

Yes, I do. But it’s only the second day of school.

“Where?” I ask lamely.

“Who cares?”

“What about school?”

“Overrated.”

I wonder what Ran would do. He’d probably tell me that running away doesn’t mean the problem won’t just be waiting when you come back.

The bus brakes sound again. One more stop and we’ll see the top of it crest at the hill beyond our house.