151 Days (59 page)

T
YLER

“Y
OU
HAVE
to talk to Robbie,” Kyle said, walking back into the shop.

I looked up, confused. “I thought you were going over there to say you were sorry and stuff.”

He nodded and closed the door. “I did, and there is something seriously wrong. He’s packing his shop up.”

That made me pause. “Like in boxes?” I asked.

“Like in moving,” he assured me. “I’m worried.”

I thought about it as I folded uniform shirts, wishing Matt hadn’t taken off. Life had shown I have a pretty bad track record making decisions when it came to Robbie. After a few minutes, I said to Kyle, “I’m not doubting your read on him. I just don’t know if I’m the best person to talk to him about… well, anything.”

He countered with, “You guys seemed okay at the shooting.”

I unconsciously chuckled at the absurdity of that statement. “It was a panic situation, Kyle. I don’t think anything was actually resolved except neither one of us wanted to see someone else die.”

“But you’re the closest thing he has to a friend. He may not think so, but you might be the only person in Foster who really knows him.”

A statement that was as terrifying as it was true.

I assured Kyle I would do something and then brought it up at home with Matt. We were tag-teaming making dinner, and he stopped at the fridge when I brought it up. “What does Kyle want you to do?”

My kitchen was not large enough for both of us to actually stand and do stuff in at the same time, hence the tag-team dance we had worked out in the past few months since he’d moved back. So when he stopped, I ended up bumping into him and almost spilling the bowl of green beans I was carrying. “Um, I think talk to him,” I said, taking a few steps back and putting the bowl down.

Matt closed the fridge door and thought about it for a moment. I really wished he could think and cook at the same time, because I was starving. After a minute or so, he said, “I can’t even imagine Robbie even listening to you. Do you want to talk to him?”

That was the question, wasn’t it?

On one hand, of course I wanted to talk to Robbie about everything that had happened, but on the other hand, there was no way he was going to actually listen to me. After what I had done, why would he? But it didn’t really matter if I wanted to talk to him or not; I needed to talk to him. What mattered was if he would actually listen to me for once.

And I had to agree with Matt. I didn’t see that happening anytime soon.

Like everything else in my mind, I spaced it out and went about my business, waiting for life to tell me when the time was right to make a move. Instead of that happening, Brad came in and told me he wasn’t going to be allowed to take Kyle to the prom, which was about fifteen different kinds of fucked-up. This time I was smart and called Matt to come over and go over the options, but in the end, it really did look like the school was going to get to fuck over the boys one last time on their way out.

After Brad left, I was still pissed and nursed a Coke, bitching to Matt about it.

“It’s not fair.” Which was the most obvious thing in the world.

“It’s Foster. I know you love those kids and all, but were you expecting something different? Because it seems pretty SOP to me.” I gave him a look, and he explained. “Standard operating procedure.” He saw the frown on my face and shrugged. “I dated a military guy—sue me.”

Matt was right, but I didn’t have to like it.

A couple of days later, I got a text from Kyle saying he was heading to Robbie’s, and if I had talked to him yet. I knew I couldn’t keep putting this off. I closed the shop and headed over there, ready to ignore Robbie’s protests until he talked to me once and for all. When I got in, I heard the tail end of one of Robbie’s rants.

“—color you have in mind? Particular style? By all means, allow me to be your own personal sweatshop.” I said nothing as he came from around the counter. “Or wait, I have a better idea. Why don’t I just find something of Riley’s, and you can—”

That was enough.

“
Robbie
,” I screamed. Both Kyle and Jennifer jumped out of their skin, but he looked almost bored.

“He goes five years without even acknowledging my existence, and now twice in the same month.” He leveled a look at me. “I think I liked being ignored.”

Normally that look would make something inside me wither, but I was done with feeling bad about this. “You kids get on out of here. This is personal.”

Kyle whispered to me, “Take it easy on him.”

But easy was not how this was going to go down.

“Are you insane? Since when do you throw Riley’s name around to make Kyle feel like shit?”

“Am I insane?” he asked, mimicking my voice. “Am I insane? Of course I’m fucking insane, you asshole. This town has taken everything I ever wanted away from me. What am I supposed to do?”

“Get over it,” I said with no humor in my voice whatsoever.

“Get? Get over…,” he sputtered, too pissed to complete a sentence. “You think something like that, you just get over? You think it’s that fucking easy?”

He was trying to bait me, but I wasn’t going to nibble this time. I had done the wrong thing too many times. It was time to stand and fight for once. “I didn’t say it was easy. I said you should try to get over it, which you haven’t. You haven’t made one effort to get over his death, and we both know it. Instead you’d rather walk around town hating everything and everybody as if they were accomplices.”

“
They were!
” he screeched at me. “They did everything but drive the getaway car. Did they try to find out who did it? Did they even acknowledge me as his partner? What were they if not in on it?”

“People who had no idea what happened,” I explained as patiently as possible. “You can blame the guys driving the car. You can blame his parents for locking you out. You can even blame me for being a complete asshole and bailing on you. But you have to stop blaming the town like it’s a living, breathing entity out to get you.”

“What if it is?” he asked, sounding crazier than normal.

“Then I have to assume you want to die too, since you chose to open a store here.”

He froze, my words striking far deeper than I expected.

“Riley died, and that is a horrible thing. You know how I feel about it, but Robbie, what are you doing to yourself? The only reason to stay here is to punish yourself. What are you expecting to happen?”

He visibly got smaller as he began to slowly sink to the floor. He wasn’t fainting. His body just seemed to give up, and he knelt on the ground. “I just want it all to stop. Why doesn’t it all fucking stop?”

I knelt down next to him. “Robbie, do you want to die?” I asked, not sure of the answer.

He looked up at me, tears streaming down his face. “I just want to see Riley again.”

I hesitantly reached out to hug him, and he didn’t scream at me. I held him and said quietly as I began to cry, “I want that too.”

After a while, I dropped him off at his house, telling him to get some rest and that I would be over in the morning to talk.

“Who said I wanted to talk to you?” he asked, none of the normal acid in his voice.

“Who said I cared what you wanted?” I shot back, smiling.

He turned back to the house and unlocked the door. “If you’re waking me up, you better well bring fucking food.” He went in and slammed the door on me.

The next morning I brought donuts and coffee for good measure.

He looked like death warmed over, but he let me in after taking one of the cups from me. “So what is this, an intervention?” he asked, sitting on the couch and lighting a cigarette.

“No, it is a long overdue talk,” I assured him.

“You were a coward and fled. You’re sorry, and if you had to do it all over again you would change it all. Anything I missed?”

“You have to get better,” I said, ignoring the bait. “Are you moving?” Nothing here was packed, but the shop was completely packed up.

“I’m closing down the shop,” he said, opening the box of donuts. “Does this look like I’m moving?” He gestured around the house.

It was nothing like when Riley was alive. There were dishes in the sink, clutter all over the place. When Riley was alive, you could have eaten off the floor in this place. Now I wasn’t sure I should eat the donuts I brought. “It looks like you’ve started using crack, to be honest.” He glared at me, but I waved it off. “Seriously, Robbie, if not the shop, what are you going to do?”

“Why do you care?” he asked me. “Is this about guilt? Because if it is, then just go. I forgive you, and all is right in the world.”

“It’s not guilt,” I assured him.

“Then what? Going for sainthood?”

“I just care,” I clipped.

“Well then, why, Tyler?” he asked, growing increasingly upset. “If you insist on staying and bugging me, I deserve to know why.”

“Because it’s what Riley would have wanted me to do,” I said quickly.

His hand began to shake. “What Riley would have wanted? How do you know what Riley would have wanted or not wanted? Since when are you an expert in all things Riley? You played sports with him, for fuck’s sake. You weren’t really friends. You didn’t even know he liked guys until he walked up to you and told you, so how would you know what he wanted?”

I didn’t say a word, knowing there was no right answer to those questions.

“You want to know what Riley wanted?” he asked, getting up. “You want to hear what he expected from life?” He grabbed an envelope off the desk and stomped back over to me. “You want to know the truth? Here.” He handed it to me. “Read it for yourself.”

I took the letter out and began to read, and I suddenly knew what had been bothering Robbie so much. My legs went out from under me, and I sank into a chair, not sure how to take what Riley had written what had to be years ago. Robbie was right. Riley wasn’t my best friend. We knew each other well enough in high school, but we were never that close. It was only when he tried to reach out and get me to admit I was gay that we became close, and look what that got him. But reading this, I had to come to terms with the fact I might not have known him at all.

“So tell me, Tyler,” Robbie said, waiting a respectable time for me to absorb the letter. “Tell me how to live with that, and I’ll do it. Show me how to get over it, and I will get right on that. You tell me what I am supposed to do with the check that came with that letter.” He leaned toward me. “But if you can’t, then shut the fuck up and leave me alone.”

I handed the letter back to him, my mind struggling to find something to say back to him. Some germ of an idea that could make this even a little better for him. But as Matt joked with me once, I am a bear of very little brains, and long words bother me. It was why I loved Matt and why Brad loved Kyle, because in a very large world, it helps to have someone smarter than you standing by your side.

And then I had the answer.

“So then do what the letter says,” I suggested. He paused, putting the letter away, and gazed at me with bloodshot eyes that looked like they hadn’t closed for days. “You won’t cash the check because you know what he meant it to be spent on, so spend it like he wanted.”

Robbie sighed and put out his cigarette. “It’s impossible. We didn’t do anything, in case… I mean, we never got around to even talking about it.” He fell back onto the couch. “We had barely started talking about it when….”

He didn’t need to say anything else.

“I have an idea,” I said, sitting up in the chair. “One that will make you feel better and honor what Riley wanted. But you have to want to feel better, Robbie. You have to want to stop feeling this way.” He looked over at me with a desperate stare. “You have to stop waiting to die and start living.”

The silence in the room was like nails on a chalkboard to me as I waited for him to say something. I could feel the ghost of Riley there, leaning over my shoulder, waiting to see if Robbie would nibble on my bait. If he didn’t, I had no idea what to do next.

He closed his eyes and asked in a very small voice, “What do you have in mind?”

I could feel Riley slap me on the back in congratulations as I began to outline my plan with Robbie.

The next step was making sure what we were planning was legal and didn’t get the two of us arrested or worse, shot. So a couple of days before the playoffs, when I knew Brad was at practice, I headed over to his dad’s dealership to have a talk.

It had been a long time since I had talked to Nathan Greymark—almost four years ago, to be honest. We had both been sitting on folding chairs in the middle of the Foster High gym, each holding a cup of coffee in both hands so it wouldn’t look like we were going through DT’s as bad as we were. It was after Riley had died, and I decided to climb back into the bottle to forget that one moment he tumbled over the hood of the car and hit the pavement like a bag of discarded meat. Sheriff Rogers had arrested me for my third DUI and gave me a choice: either go to AA or take my chances in a courtroom.

Needless to say, I chose AA.

Nathan had played football for Foster when I was playing for Granada. The only times we ever went up against each other were those rare preseason games where the whole town seemed to pick a side and then become the most obnoxious, rabid fans you can imagine. You’d swear it was the Blue and the Gray instead of two high schools in the same town, the way people got worked up. So the two of us were never friends, but we knew of each other, and we both knew that in a sea of faceless friends who played the game, only the two of us were good enough to get out of town based on it.

And we also knew how crippling having to come back was.

He never said why he was there, but it was pretty obvious that he didn’t think he needed to be there, which meant like me he was being forced. We talked some, shared very little, and after a few months decided that if we were going to drink, we’d best do it responsibly. I hadn’t said a word to him since that last meeting, but the few times we saw each other around town, we made eye contact long enough to acknowledge that we both knew each other and where we knew each other from.