Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover (21 page)

Working at the farm supply store produced several benefits I had not expected or anticipated. One is that lifting and moving heavy bags and boxes helped produce more muscles in my arms, shoulders, and abs than any workout routine could. The more they developed, the harder I worked to keep them by lifting weights during the week. In addition to lifting weights at school, I was also now lifting weights in the basement other nights. I took Sundays off because I was just too tired from working on Saturdays.

Another benefit is that we were starting to earn a little cash. Neither one of us was going to get rich doing the work that we were doing, but Bill seemed a little less stressed to have a little money to call his own. He didn’t spend it, but simply having it seemed to make him feel better. And I guess I can understand how he felt. His entire world had changed, and he probably felt that he had to provide for his own support now, that no one was there to back him up. Of course I was, and my folks were. They had done as much as they knew how to do for him, not just financially but in psychological and emotional ways as well.

Between school and work and homework, Bill was working frantically contacting all of the colleges he had applied to earlier in the fall to inform them of his new contact information as well as his change in circumstances. He wrote one damned good letter, holding back nothing. He outlined in clear detail what had happened and that he was now entirely on his own, and therefore needed any financial assistance their school could provide for him to be able to attend.

He was so busy with school, track, work, homework, his work to secure a college education, and adapting to his new life with us, that there were times I barely saw him, even though we lived together and slept in the same bed every night, our heads mere inches away from one another. I knew that this was likely to be something we experienced in the years ahead as we entered college.

Wherever we were going—and neither of us knew yet—we knew that we were going to go together. We had found each other; there was no way we were going to let go of the other man now. We lived together at the moment, and we were going to live together in college and beyond. And it hit me: we were a couple. Simply hearing the word “boyfriend” had felt so good to me. Thinking of the word “couple” made my toes positively tingle.

A
S
IF
we didn’t have enough going on already, Bill signed us up for something new on Sunday afternoons: each Sunday we drove to the city about half an hour away and took part in a self-defense class offered to victims of assault and abuse. The idea wasn’t to teach you to fight, but to be able to stand up for yourself, defend yourself, and survive.

One thing the class taught me was a very simple concept that was contrary to the entire way I had lived my life throughout high school. The class taught me that, regardless of size or muscles or speed or strength, you needed to project confidence. Bullies were less likely to take on someone who appeared confident and able to stand up for himself. Bullies tended to spot weaknesses in others and take advantage of those weaknesses.

I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that sooner. It made absolutely perfect sense, even though it was diametrically opposed to the way I had lived my life up to that time. I had always tried to emulate a turtle, tucking myself inside my shell for protection. The class taught me to look people in the eye, stand a little taller, walk confidently. And if that failed, it also taught me how to take down an attacker in two easy steps.

At first I grumbled about one more commitment for our very limited free time, but after a month of attending I was gushing with positive things to say about the class and about the experience. There were a lot of women in the class who had been victims of abuse, but there were also several guys our age or a little older. We hadn’t really dared to talk to them much yet. We thought that they were probably gay, but we didn’t know how they would react to two underage guys trying to get to know them. One day soon we were going to just start a conversation and see where it led. All we were interested in was friendship, mutual support, and the assurance you got from knowing that you weren’t the only one of your kind.

At school I tried this whole new “projecting confidence” attitude, and I actually did notice others occasionally looking at me differently. I wasn’t exactly sure how they were seeing me, and I wasn’t quite brave enough to go up and just ask them yet—maybe one day, but not yet.

Even though it seemed stupid to me—okay, I didn’t put it quite that way when he raised it—Bill suggested that I join the track team with him. I personally couldn’t see the purpose. Nor did I have any desire to do that. Granted, Bill and I had gone running several times over the last few weeks. He was a runner and liked to run. The winter had been long and tough for him—me too, for that matter—so when he suggested a run on a warmish late winter day I didn’t argue. I didn’t think I’d be able to keep up with him but surprisingly didn’t do as bad as I had expected.

Bill gave me a couple of tests—he timed me—to see how I did with different scenarios. He told me that they needed one more guy since someone had quit. Gee, thanks there, lover boy. Way to make me feel needed!

We were in our last semester of school. Spring was just around the corner—please, God! It had been a long winter. I was looking forward to graduation and getting the hell out of Dodge. We still didn’t know where we were going. Both of us had received acceptance letters from schools, but so far we didn’t have any overlap. We were both unhappy, since we both agreed that wherever we went, we were going together.

And then finally it happened. After weeks and weeks that felt like years and years, the day came when we each had a letter waiting for us one afternoon from UCLA. It had not been at the top of our lists, but it was one where we were both accepted and it was out of the snowbelt. Southern California! The more we thought about it, the more excited we became.

Bill received the financial aid he so desperately needed. I got some, but my dad’s income, while not huge, was high enough that it knocked me out of consideration for a lot of the aid for which I applied. My parents had been saving for the day I would go to college, so while I was a little freaked about how I was going to pay for everything, they were much less agitated.

Neither Bill nor I had visited the school. Everything we knew about it we had learned from our guidance counselor and from reading online. We had read blogs by people who attended there, and by and large we were impressed. The school was far larger than I had realized at first. I nearly fell off my chair when I read that there were almost forty thousand students at UCLA, about twice as many undergrads as grads. That’s a lot of people. That’s a
lot
of people.

We were both quite surprised—and pleased at the same time—when my mom suggested that we should go out and take a look at the place and see what we thought of it before committing. She made the perfectly valid point that moving twenty-five hundred miles away made it such that we couldn’t just run back home if something wasn’t right. If we accepted their admission offers, we were sort of committing to this for the long haul.

Our school had a midwinter break coming up in a few weeks, so she suggested that we consider going out to Los Angeles to visit the school. She started checking options for getting us there and made contact with the school to set up some appointments for us to get tours, see the place, sit in on some classes, see the dorms, things like that. In typical mom fashion, in less than twenty-four hours she outlined an itinerary with us. She proposed that we fly out on a Wednesday morning. We would have to change planes, which would get us into Los Angeles at about two thirty in the afternoon.

She had researched how we could get to the school using public transportation and had worked out a place for us to stay at low or no cost (I wasn’t entirely clear) on the campus. She had tours arranged for us first thing on Thursday morning, with a full day of activities planned, including attending some classes to get the full experience. She proposed that we use Friday to look for possible employment and perhaps summer housing.

She told us that we had Saturday to explore and to learn more about the city and the area in general, with us flying back home on Sunday. Two days to explore not only the city but also check out employment and possible housing seemed to be an impossible task to me. She suggested that we do as much research in advance as possible so that when we were actually there we could make the most of our time.

We were both a little overwhelmed, so she simply went ahead and decided for us, making the reservations and getting things set up. She also made a bit of a big deal out of talking with us about how we were going to have to go on our own because it would cost too much to fly three adults all the way to California and back. She, of course, fully realized that we had both matured a great deal in the time we had known each other and were quite ready to tackle such a trip. I knew her well enough to know that if she had reservations, she would not be the least bit shy about expressing them.

As soon as she gave us her rundown, we retreated to my room and hugged each other. “We’re going to California!” we whisper-shouted at each other.

“Holy crap!”

“It’s really happening!”

“I’m scared,” I said, stating the obvious.

“I’d be worried if you weren’t. But we’re gonna be together. We’ll go into it together, we’ll get through it together, and we’ll come out on the other side together.”

We didn’t say anything else but simply stood and held onto each other for a few minutes.

The following weeks seemed to race past. Between school, the imminent arrival of spring, our Saturday work at the feed supply store, and our Sunday self-defense training classes, the time seemed to simply shoot past at the speed of light. Word of our impending trip to Los Angeles got around. By that time everybody knew what had happened in Bill’s family and that he was living with us now, so there was less gossip than there had been at first. That plus Bill’s kickass presentation to the student body, and there was little if any suggestion or question about us anymore.

The night before we were due to leave, we tried to figure out what we should pack. Neither one of us had ever traveled anywhere before. We had been born in our little valley and spent all of our lives there. This would be a major undertaking for both of us. I sensed that Bill was as nervous as I was—he was just a bit more restrained in expressing it. We finally decided that we really didn’t need to take that much. We weren’t going to be gone that long and didn’t have need for a lot of clothes. We ended up each packing a backpack with what we needed.

We’d been in contact with a student representative of the school before the trip. He was going to be our guide when we arrived on campus. In one of our e-mail messages back and forth, we’d asked him how we should dress, and he had assured us that we didn’t need to pack anything special, that students on campus were not a dressy crowd. Jeans and sneakers were plenty, so that’s what we wore. We each carried a couple of extra shirts, some underwear, and a book, but otherwise we were traveling light. It seemed so odd to be getting ready to fly all the way across the country and not need to take more stuff, but that’s what we were about to do.

The trip meant that we were going to have to miss work on Saturday, but neither of us was all that upset about being spared one day of backbreaking work. Missing class on Sunday was unfortunate, but it couldn’t be avoided.

On the morning of our departure we were both awake earlier than necessary. We were anxious. Since my mother was the one taking us to the airport we obviously were going to be there plenty early. She was not one noted for waiting to the last minute for anything. We were at the airport with two hours to spare, all checked in at the front counter, and through security and into the inner sanctum. Since neither one of us had traveled before, we didn’t really know what to expect. It was both a bit comforting and a bit scary to go through security and have to take off your shoes, your belt, coats, everything metal.

We were at our gate before our airplane was. We paced, we watched, we felt anxious, we tried to bolster each other’s courage and keep each other’s excitement in check. We watched our plane arrive and a sea of people deplane. (See how fast we picked up on the lingo?) It seemed incredible that so many people could fit onboard one airplane. We may have been first-time travelers, but we were both smart and could follow directions as well as the other people.

We listened carefully to the announcements and went up when our row was called. We moved onboard with all of the other people, trying to take in everything we saw. It seemed like everyone around us was an old hand at travel. When we got to the door of the airplane I apparently looked a little panicked. The flight attendant asked if I was okay. I assured her that I was but that this was my first time on an airplane. She smiled and assured us that we were going to love it. She told us that we had picked a perfect day to fly because the weather between there and Chicago was clear all the way, which would give us a smooth first flight.