Stick (21 page)

*   *   *

Emily took me back to her house,
and eventually I worked up the nerve to dial Paul Buckley's phone number. And I knew it was bound to happen, that his mother would answer. I knew them well enough to expect that Paul would not be allowed anywhere near the telephone after what Mrs. Buckley caught him doing. She sounded cold, like a stranger to me, and simply told me that her son was “unavailable.” It made me feel terrible, hearing that tone in her voice, so filled with hurt and anger.

“Mrs. Buckley? Did I do something wrong?”

I waited. And in that time, I thought I probably did do something wrong. Because I knew what had been going on between Bosten and Paul, but kept quiet about it. It wasn't something that needed to be told, anyway. For me, it was a no-win situation; but I still didn't ever believe there was anything wrong about what they did.

How could it be wrong to be in love with someone who is your equal; who you respect and trust?

I could almost feel Mrs. Buckley thinking about my simple question.

“No. You didn't do anything bad, Stark.”

“Okay. I'm sorry if I did.”

“Things will be all right.”

“Mrs. Buckley? Bosten's gone. You don't know where he is, do you?”

“No.”

“If you see him, will you tell him he needs to come home?”

“All right, Stark.”

“And will you please tell Buck I said hi?”

Then she just hung up.

I wondered what she really thought about me.

*   *   *

Emily begged her mother
to ask Dad if I could stay over for dinner. It wasn't difficult, because Mrs. Lohman knew there was urgency in Emily's request. I believed she most likely thought it had something to do with my parents' breakup.

It pretty much had nothing to do with that.

But she told Dad she'd drive me home by seven so I wouldn't have to cross the fields in the dark; and my dad didn't seem to care one way or the other, anyway.

*   *   *

When I got home,
the house was completely dark. Dad's car was gone.

“Are you         going to be okay, sweetie?” Mrs. Lohman put her fingers on my shoulder, stopping me for a moment as soon as I opened the car door to get out.

“I'll be okay, Mrs. Lohman. Thank you.”

“Oh,   Stick, I just feel            terrible about all this.”

I glanced back at Emily with a look on my face that I knew she'd understand:
Please don't say anything about Bosten.

Emily nodded at me.

Then Mrs. Lohman hugged me and kissed the top of my head.

“See you at the bus stop, Em.”

I got out of the car and walked into the mudroom. Alone.

*   *   *

It's hard to explain,
but the house smelled like broken things. Maybe it was the dust from the fractured wallboards, the stillness of the air, the stale cigarette smoke, the kitchen garbage pail that had gone untended for days now. I don't know.

It just smelled
broken
.

I went downstairs, closed myself inside my room, and got my things ready for Monday morning school. I climbed into bed, and, lying there, looked up at my little window. I could see stars, and I pressed my ear to the pipe, but no sounds came at all.

I woke after two in the morning. Dad had come home. I could hear him moving around the house above me. I knew exactly what he was doing. He went into the two rooms in the hallway. Through the pipe, I heard him call my brother's name.

“Bosten?”

Nothing.

Then I heard slow and heavy footsteps, going up the stairs to Dad's room.

*   *   *

I made some toast
and left for school before Dad woke up.

Emily could see by my expression that nothing had changed in the night. We met, like we always did, at the bus stop. I wore my Steelers cap for the first time since taking it off at Aunt Dahlia's house.

We hardly said anything to each other all morning. We held hands on the school bus, but I could sense her nervousness like electricity pulsing through her skin. It wasn't at all an Emily way of acting.  I could tell she was doing the math; that she knew I meant what I'd said about going after Bosten if he didn't come home by Tuesday. And Tuesday was just hours away.

I had everything ready.

I even packed clothes for my brother. And our wetsuits, too.

*   *   *

Over the Easter break,
Ricky Dostal had been liberated from his stitches; and he returned, whole but scarred, to Mr. Lloyd's gym class. In the boys' locker room, while we changed into our PE clothes, he and Corey Barr made it a point to talk crap about me, obviously thinking it would goad me into some kind of rematch with them. But I was too preoccupied with thinking about other things.

We were only allowed four minutes to get our uniforms on, anyway, so how much crap could they talk?

Well, a lot, as it turned out.

Living in Point No Point, it was impossible to have an entirely private life, even if Mom and Dad had always been pretty good at making the McClellans seem so perfect and normal. So, of course, everyone at school knew about my parents' splitting up. In Point No Point, divorces were as commonplace as waking up and finding a unicorn grazing in your yard.

And it bothered me a little that Ricky and Corey tried to pick on me about it. What annoyed me most was that they somehow had the idea that my parents' breakup mattered to me, when it didn't matter nearly as much as other things. I tried ignoring them, but as I pulled my ice-cold gym shorts up over my bare legs, I was already thinking about which one of them I'd punch first, if it came to that.

I guess everything
had
changed.

“Oh,” Ricky said, “and everyone's         saying how      your faggot friend, Fuck Fuckley, tried to cut his own wrists or something. There were police and an ambulance at his house last night. Did you even know about that,          retard? Fuckley's so fucking dumb, he used             scissors to do it.             I heard he almost fucking died.”

That stopped me cold.

“What?”

“Ha-ha!” Ricky elbowed Corey. “You   didn't know? Sorry to break it to you,

    retard.   Your boyfriend's in the psycho ward. Hope you                   and your fuckface brother                 aren't too broke up about being the last dipshits on the planet to know.”

Corey laughed.

At least they didn't know anything about Bosten vanishing. Yet.

And calling Paul a faggot? That was just what all boys in eighth grade called other boys, even ones they liked. As far as I could tell, nobody had any idea about Paul and Bosten being gay. I'm sure I would have heard all about it if they did. I was even more certain that Mr. and Mrs. Buckley would never tell anyone the truth about their son.

Ricky farted and slid his hand down inside his jock to adjust his balls.

I sat down on the bench in the middle of the aisle of lockers and pretended to tie my shoes while Mr. Lloyd stood at the open doors with his blue book of records, shouting, “Let's move it, girls!” and all the boys dutifully and uniformly filed out toward the gymnasium.

The day seemed to stretch and expand. Minutes passed by like wintry weeks. And I couldn't stop thinking about poor Paul Buckley, and how hopeless and impossible everything must have seemed for him to try killing himself. I wished I could say something to him, but I had the feeling that I'd never get to see Buck again. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got at Mrs. Buckley. There was nothing wrong with Paul. He was gay, not suicidal. At least, not until his mother flipped out about the whole thing, threatening to call the cops on her own son just for being in love with another boy.

And it scared me to think about what Bosten was doing, especially if, somehow, he'd heard about what happened to Paul. So I felt even more resolved about my decision to leave.

I tried to imagine what it would have been like, if I could have seen and heard what actually happened upstairs between my father and him, the night Bosten disappeared.

I could wish, fantasize, about my brother fighting back against Dad, just like he'd punched that asshole Ricky Dostal.

*   *   *

Emily sat on the aisle,
and I leaned my chin toward the window. We held hands.

“Stark?” She put her face to my ear and whispered. Still, the bus was so noisy I could barely hear her.

“What?”

“I would like to kiss again when we get to our stop. Just like we did the other day.”

“Okay. Um. Right there on the side of the road? In front of everyone on the bus?”

She pushed my hand.  “Don't be dumb.”

Emily laughed.

“Can you come over to  my house for a little bit?”

“Is your mom home?”

“Yes.”

“Then I guess we can't take a bath or lay down in bed together again.”

I felt kind of guilty about how hard my dick was getting, thinking about doing those things; how close Emily's hand was to my fly.

“I bet my dad's not home. We could do it at my house if you want.”

I honestly was hoping she'd say she wanted to.

“You know we  better not do anything like that now.”

“I know.”

Of course, she was right.

Everything was different, and everything was a big deal now, for both of us.

*   *   *

We kissed in the woods
beside Emily's house until the muscles in my jaw were sore and I was all-over sweaty and felt wet inside my underwear. Emily's face was red and she breathed in shallow hiccups and couldn't talk.

I took her hand. “Come on. Your mom's going to wonder where you are.”

“I love you,  Stark.” She sounded sad. I knew what this was about.

“I love you, Emily.”

*   *   *

And later,
before I went home, she slipped her hand inside my pocket and tucked sixty dollars in there. Her fingertips found the tip of my penis, too, and it almost made me faint.

“You   might need some money,” she said.

“Um.”

I didn't know what to say.

Emily pulled her hand out of my pocket. We stood on the porch, in the cold April wind that blew in from the west.

“And you better take care of yourself, Stark McClellan.”

“Okay.”

“And you better come back.”

*   *   *

Dad wasn't home.

I loaded Bosten's and my stuff into the backseat of the Toyota.

And when I drove away, I thought,

I drive at night

I blow things up

I French-kiss older girls

when nobody's looking

I take baths

and go to bed

with Emily Lohman

because I love her

I love her

I love her

and I steal cars

two days before turning fourteen

so I can drive to California

and stop my brother

from falling

over the edge.

WILLIE

On my fourteenth birthday,
I slept in the backseat of the car I stole, wrapped in a sleeping bag with my head resting on my brother's clothes that still smelled like cigarettes and Paul Buckley's deodorant.

I had parked in the muddy lot behind a gas station, waiting for someone to come and open the place for business. I knew I was somewhere north of Portland, and the Toyota had run out of gas.

Fearing the police, I kept off the main highways as much as I could, but I was almost certain I'd taken a wrong turn after crossing into Oregon and ended up going more toward Canada than California.

A map would probably have been a good idea.

I'd been too afraid to stop at a filling station. I never in my life put gas in a car all alone, and for the past two days I had convinced myself that everyone in the world would be on the lookout for a car thief who was missing his right ear.

So I never took off the Steelers cap that Emily had given me.

I spent most of the first day parked along the Cowlitz River, hungry, waiting for something that never happened.

I ran out of gas on Wednesday night at about ten o'clock. I had to put the car in neutral and push it by myself with the window down so I could steer, all the way into the station. And it rained on me while I did that, so I threw Emily's cap inside the car and just kept pushing, counting the cars that drove past me without so much as slowing down.

Eleven of them.

By the time I got to the station, I was soaked and shivering; and I stripped naked right there in the mud behind a goddamned gas station, outside a place called Scappoose, Oregon, in the dark and rain, so I could slip into some dry clothes and bundle up in my sleeping bag for the night.

I left all my wet things in the trunk.

I hadn't eaten since the day before.

That's how things were going to be, I decided.

After midnight, I sang “Happy Birthday to Me.”

There were only three people in the world I missed: Bosten, Emily, and Aunt Dahlia. So I pretended like they were there, singing with me, even if it felt empty.

The rain sounded like a swarm of bugs trying to eat their way into the husk of my car.

I was scared.

Then I went to sleep.

*   *   *

Willie Purcell
and a girl named April I just naturally assumed was Willie's wife or girlfriend found me there and woke me up by tapping on my window around nine the next morning.

The rain had stopped during the night. The sky was clear and blue.

         “Are you      okay?    You okay, buddy?” Willie kept tapping on the glass, pinching a quarter between his thumb and index finger.

When I opened my eyes, I gave him a dirty look. What would anyone else do? It was just about the most annoying sound I had ever heard and I just wanted him to stop that damned tapping.