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And my mother’s crying. Again.

Last year, when I was first diagnosed with HIV, my mother cried a lot. When she finally stopped crying, my parents took me to Disney World. It was pretty cool. Even though we lived in Miami, we hadn’t been in years because my sister, Carolina—who’s nine, now, eight years younger than I am—had been too young to go on many rides before that. I didn’t think about why we went, that I was like one of those Make-A-Wish foundation kids who wants to see Mickey before he dies. It hadn’t totally sunk in yet, you know?

Even though I felt fine, Mom made me ride in this wheelchair we rented. In a stroke of brain dead-itude, I went along with it. There were tons of gimpy kids there, and we got to go right to the front at every ride. The line for Space Mountain was, like, two hours, but we shot up front and I stepped out of my wheelchair and got on. When the Disney guy let us ahead of this one family that was waiting, the dad turned to his son and said, “Don’t you hate people like that—rent a wheelchair just to go first.”

Mom started crying then, too. She yelled at the guy, “You should thank God you have healthy children. My son has HIV. He’s dying.” And all around, people who’d been happy and smiling started looking afraid or away. It ruined the whole trip.

That was the first time it really sank in that I was going to die. Me. Die.

Die.

We haven’t gone back to Disney since then and, if I did, I wouldn’t ride in a stinking wheelchair. I don’t need one. I’m no poster boy, and I am nowhere near needing to see Mickey. Besides, they’re making some big gains in AIDS medications. I could live twenty years, maybe. Maybe longer.

Or maybe not.

I don’t have AIDS yet, anyway—that’s the first thing anyone needs to know about me. I read all these books about it, and I know all about T-cell counts and viral loads, but the bottom line is: I was diagnosed with HIV a year ago, and I still feel fine. I’m not on meds yet. I’m hanging in, living with it. My doctors say if I keep doing what I’m supposed to, maybe they’ll find a cure before I even get really sick.

So this year we didn’t go to Disney. In August, before we moved here to Podunkville, Florida, we went to New York City, and my mom and Aunt Maria took me to see this Broadway play called
Rent
. It won a lot of awards, and it’s about people with AIDS. Of course, of all the musicals in New York, we had to see the one about AIDS. The people in the play, they’re all junkies and homosexuals, and they’re dealing with the fact that they’re going to die, like, tomorrow. Aunt Maria hated the show because 1) It had loud music with electric guitars and stuff, which interfered with her sleeping; 2) It was depressing; 3) She said, “None of these people are like you, Alejandro. You are an innocent victim.” I guess she meant because the people in the show were in what you’d call high-risk categories. Still, I think everyone with AIDS is an innocent victim. Most of the people I’ve met with HIV
are
in those higher-risk categories, and who cares? I don’t think anyone deserves to get sick or die. I mean, I wouldn’t wish this disease on Clinton Cole, much less some innocent homosexual.

Clinton Cole is what DC Comics would call my nemesis. He’s Joker to my Batman, Green Goblin to my Spidey. Since we moved to Pinedale, people have pretty much been assholes. But Clinton’s, like, the uber-asshole.

The first weeks of school, it seemed like any time I turned a corner, everyone dove together, whispering. Did they think that because they were whispering, I didn’t know they were talking about me? And the people who don’t whisper walk right past you in the hall, looking down, pretending not to see you. I try not to get mad at those people, because I remember I used to do it myself before. When you see someone in a wheelchair or missing a leg or something, you don’t want to seem like you’re staring, so you look away. Which I now know is worse. And a lot of people backed up close to the wall when I walked by. The up side (if you’d call it that) was, I didn’t have any trouble getting through the halls because no one would touch me.

But then there were the people like Clinton. People who didn’t care what I heard or thought. When I walked into the cafeteria the second day, he stood up and said, “Go back where you came from, fag.” And you could tell everyone was with him. Since then he’s been doing all kinds of other crap. He wore a surgical mask one day to Government because we sit next to each other. I think he’s one of the people who left threatening notes in my locker, though I don’t know for sure.

We moved here for Dad’s job. We’d lived in Miami all my life, and it wasn’t perfect, but it was better. I had some friends, like Austin and Danny, and other guys I hung with at school. Sure, a few people were weird, but not as many. And even though I stopped playing baseball when I got diagnosed, I was on the debate team. I made it to State with my original oratory last year, and I was going to try again this year.

Then Dad’s company wanted to start an office here in Pinedale (Why here? Hell if I know), and they transferred him. I knew my parents didn’t want to live here in the sticks, where there isn’t so much as a Target, much less a mall. We have to drive to Gainesville to find a doctor who knows how to deal with me, and there are for sure no AIDS centers here. Without me, my parents probably wouldn’t have come here. They’d have choices. Dad could get a different job. But Dad had to stay with the company to keep his health insurance. We’re pretty much uninsurable as new patients because of me.

And you know what the debate team at Pinedale is? Two guys who gave me the evil eye when I walked through the door. I walked right back out. It’s not even worth trying to make friends in Pinedale.

And now I’m here in the hospital, listening to my mother crying because one of these rednecks thought I wasn’t dying quick enough and tried to take me out early. But he didn’t finish it off, so I’m here.

I hear my mother moving around, and I keep my eyes closed, so she won’t know I’m awake. I can’t deal with any more crying right now.

But when I close my eyes, it’s like I’m there again. This morning. The sun streaming through my windshield. The baseball bat, the broken glass. The outline of some guy—the guy who attacked me.

And now I’m here, face aching, and the rest of me just numb. Numb.

Monday, 11:00 a.m., principal’s office, Pinedale High School

CLINTON

“Where’s Mr. Runnels?”
What the hell are cops doing here?

“Come with us, son,” the shorter cop says.

You know what I hate? When people think they can call you son or boy, just ’cause they’re older than you. I’m not your son! I want to shout. I have a father! Still, I remember what Dad said about cops: “Always be respectful. A cool head and the word
sir
will get you out of many a situation, my boy. I know.”

“Yes, sir.” I follow them into Runnels’s office. I start thinking maybe I ought to ask for my mother to be there. I mean, I didn’t think there’d be cops. Are they supposed to question me without my mother there?

But I decide, nah. Why get her all involved? It’s just a prank. But considering it involves the homo, she’d be trippin’ if she knew. “Throw the book at him,” she’d probably say. I’m still hoping to get this over quick.

So I follow the two cops into Runnels’s office and sit down on another green plastic chair. One of the cops—the short guy who called me son—sits at Runnels’s desk. The other one, a tall, skinny guy, sort of wanders around the room. The short one looks familiar. I wonder where I’ve seen him before. Then I remember. He was one of Dad’s poker buddies back then. They used to come over our house Wednesday nights to play cards and drink beer. Couple times, Dad even let me sit with them and tried to teach me to play. Tried to teach me to cheat for him too. But I was too stupid to do it right. I was eight or nine. For years they did that. Mom hated it because they messed up the house. And this guy—they called him Junior—he and Dad had lots in common. I feel myself relaxing. It was the right thing, not calling Mom. Everything’ll be fine.

But it’s the tall cop talking now.

“I’m Officer Bauer, and this is Officer Reed. We want to ask a few questions. Okay? We’d appreciate your cooperation.”

I nod. I don’t say I’ll answer them. “Yes, sir.”

“You know a guy named Alejandro Crusan?”

“Sure. Alex. He’s in my trig class. Government, too. I’ve got to sit by him because our names both begin with C.”

Act casual
.

Officer Bauer looks up when I say that. “You don’t like sitting next to him?”

“Well … look, they say he’s not a fag or nothing, though I’m not too sure. It’s just, you never know what you could catch, being around someone like that. I mean, what if he sneezes? Or bites someone?”

I figure now I’ll get some big lecture about how I can’t get sick sitting by him. Wouldn’t be the first time. Instead, the tall cop looks back at Dad’s friend.

Dad’s friend—Officer Reed—says, “Well, sure. I can see how you’d think that. I mean, it’s a real serious illness he has.”

“Exactly. It’s not that I don’t feel for the guy, just—”

“You don’t want to get sick.”

“Right. Or my family to get sick either.” I can tell Officer Reed is sort of seeing my point, so I keep going, trying to talk my way out of it. Lots of people agree with me. They’re just too scared to say it. “I mean, why should we all have to be exposed to that? They told us before he came here that you couldn’t get sick, just being near him. But I don’t believe it for a minute. I mean, what if he cuts himself? He doesn’t have those purple, blotchy things you always see on people with AIDS on TV. But still, there’s all these molecules and particles and things, junk in the air. And what about dust mites?” I remember once, they told us in science class that dust is all people’s skin and junk.
Excuse me
, but I don’t want
that
guy’s skin particles on me. “And did you hear about some people who say they got AIDS from a dentist? They said that couldn’t happen either. I figure better safe than sorry.”
Okay, stop now
.

I remember this time in grade school … well, I bite my pencils. And once this guy, Trevor Dornau, thought it would be funny to stick my pencils in his ears, so I’d be eating his earwax. What if Crusan thought it would be funny to spit on my pencils? Or even bleed on them? Could happen.

“Understandable,” Officer Reed says. “So you must think it’s a bad idea, them letting Alex go to school here?”

“Right. I mean, maybe if they’d put him in one of those plastic bubbles or something. I saw a movie like that once on TV—this kid went to school in a space suit. But they wouldn’t have anything that high-tech in Pinedale. Or maybe he could take classes at home, on television or something. Don’t they do that?”

Both cops are nodding.

“I mean, when you think about it, why’s he have to go to school anyway? He’s just going to…”

I stop. The cops aren’t nodding anymore. I guess it
is
kind of cold to say he’s just going to die.

“Anyway,” I say. “That’s what I think.”

I look at the bulletin board behind Officer Reed’s head and try to relax, so I think of Alyssa. I saw her yesterday after school, but from a distance. She had on my favorite shirt of hers, a pink one with these sort of thin sleeves you can see her arms through. Damn. I take a deep breath, and I can almost smell her. The perfume she wears is like the little white flowers on the bushes behind our house.

“And did you tell anyone else you felt this way?” the tall cop, Bauer, asks.

I snap to. They know I did. That’s why they’re getting on me. “Sure. I had to tell Mrs. Gibson, my Government teacher. I tried to at least get moved to a different seat.” Figures the two classes I have with Crusan are the only two where we sit in alphabetical order.

“Who else?”

“Mr. David, my trig teacher. Him, too.”

“And what did they say?”

“Mrs. Gibson was real snotty about it.” After I say that, I think I should have maybe put it different. But I remember how Old Lady Gibson looked at me, like people do when they think you’re
stoooo-pid
and they’ve got to talk slow so you’ll keep up. I hate when people look at me that way. “I mean, she said there was nothing to worry about. She blew me off. David was better.”

“What did Mr. David say?” Bauer asks.

I don’t want to get Mr. David in trouble, so I say, “He understood. He’s got kids that go here. But he said he couldn’t really do anything about it, and maybe my parents ought to talk to Runnels. I mean, Mr. Runnels.”

What Mr. David said, actually, is that he would take that little Cuban out himself, if he could.
And
he moved my seat.

“And did they?”

“Did they what?” I’m still thinking about Mr. David.

“Did your parents talk to Mr. Runnels?”

“My mom, she took their side in the whole thing. She’s like that. Liberal.”

“What about your father?” Officer Bauer asks.

I look down. “He didn’t say anything.”

I look at Officer Reed, thinking maybe now’s the time he’ll say something about how he knew my dad. But Bauer says, “So what did you do then?”

The way he says it, I bet he already knows about the notes I left in Crusan’s locker, telling him to get out of Pinedale. I did the notes on the computer. I didn’t think they could trace them, but maybe they did, somehow. And yesterday, after Melody got back from spending the night there and was talking about how she was going to go back again next week, I got a little crazy. I rode my bike over there and chucked a rock through the window. I didn’t think anyone saw me, but now I’m here, and I don’t know what’s up with the cops and everything. Are they going to make me pay for the window? Call my mother? I didn’t think of any of that when I did it last night. I was just upset about Mel. I wanted him gone, and no one was doing anything about it. No one could do anything, even though most people I talked to agreed with me, people like Mr. David, who said, “It stinks that one person’s rights interfere with everyone else’s. But that’s the way things are in this stinking country.”