Go Your Own Way (22 page)

On Monday morning, Will pulled into the school parking lot. Natasha was in the lot, along with Roxanne and Aaron. They closed in around his door as soon as he shut the engine off.

“Is it true?” Natasha demanded as Will slid out and pulled his dad’s baggy jacket tighter. “Did you two really, you know,
do it
?”

“Do what?” Will asked. He fitted his backpack over his shoul­ders and headed for the side door. It was too cold to linger out here, and so windy it seemed that each gust took some of his hair with it. If he stayed out here much longer, he’d be bald before the bell. “Why are you idiots waiting out here in the cold? You’ve got frost on your nose hair.”

“It’s not that bad,” Aaron said, though he shivered a little and tightened his windbreaker. “Word’s all over school that it’s true.”

Will frowned and kept walking. His friends followed. “Well? Is it?”

“Is what
what
?” Their vagueness was infuriating. After a week­end spent without Lennox, sitting at his father’s bedside, Will was grumpy. No distractions on one side and no good news on the other. More and more, Will was realizing that the real waiting room wasn’t the one down the hall. It was that lonely hospital room with his dad. The more he sat there, the more it was like sharing a room with a corpse. A corpse would never wake up and he didn’t think his dad would either. Will stopped outside the door. “I have no idea what any of you are talking about.”

“Well, he isn’t limping or anything. I’m sure he should be limp­ing if they did.”

“Did
what?”

Will turned to stare back at Natasha who had stopped several paces behind them. A few more cars pulled into the parking lot as she tilted her head to one side and gave his figure a critical sweep.

They all exchanged looks and then spoke at once.

“Jack says you had sex with Lennox!”

“Ruby Watson said he bent you over in your truck bed—”

“And you didn’t come home, so Allison thinks—”

Will’s mouth fell open. He couldn’t bring himself to think about how such a rumor had started, or how someone had figured out where he’d been. Did it count as sex if they hadn’t been inside of each other? Will thought it did, or should, but it was weird to think about. Right now, at least, wasn’t the time to make that decision.

“Go boil your heads.”

“Jack Smith said his mom said Karen said that—”

Will shook his head and cut Roxanne off. “No, stop that sen­tence right there. That’s just a long list of bullshit and you all know it. It’s like that dumb game we played in elementary school where we’d start with a simple sentence and whisper it to the next person until it got back to Mrs. Baker. Rumors change with every person who repeats them.”

“Then why didn’t you come home Friday night?” Natasha asked with a wide grin. “I came by and you weren’t there. That part’s true.”

“Where I’ve been for weeks now,” Will shouted. “At the
hospi­tal
. At my dad’s bedside. What the hell is wrong with all of you?”

He stormed away before any of their guilty looks could reach their eyes and didn’t talk to them for the rest of the day. His insides twisted with guilt now and then, but he pushed it down. He was allowed to lie. They shouldn’t be listening to those ru­mors, or believing them, and they definitely shouldn’t ask about them. He had more important things to deal with.

Besides, Will still wasn’t sure what to call their relationship himself. Were they boyfriends or exclusive? The very thought of Lennox sharing himself with another person bothered Will more than he cared to admit, but Will couldn’t bring himself to ask. If Lennox said no, if he slipped away, then what?

For the rest of the week, Will spent a lot of time on his own. Lennox hung around him during classes a little bit, but he seemed distant and distracted. Instead, Will went to the hospital and sat beside his dad’s bed after school, alone except when Karen came in on her breaks and after her shifts to wake him up. It wasn’t comforting, but it was quiet there. Silence was all he expected from his dad anymore, and part of him wished that silence was gone too. Life would be easier without that hospital and that last vestige of hope.

On Halloween, Natasha and Roxanne finally caught him long enough to apologize.

“All right,” Will said after they had finished and were putting their instruments together. “I wasn’t mad for that long. I just have a lot I’m trying to figure out and I’m not sleeping a lot.”

“Not even when—”

Natasha gave Roxanne a look and she shut her mouth.

“Not even when he’s naked and panting under me, you mean?” Lennox chuckled as they all turned around. Will hadn’t heard him sit down. “Yeah, I hear the rumors just like everyone else.” He clicked a pair of drumsticks together in his hands and met Will’s eyes with a teasing look Will had never seen before. Or maybe he’d never given himself the chance to notice it. He smiled a little. “It’s always nice to be part of a half-true one. Though I’ve got to say, you won’t be on top of me unless you’re riding my dick.”

Will lifted his chin. For a week now, he’d listened to the var­ious rumors about himself and Lennox. They had started as a sim­ple sex rumor. Then it had escalated to a frenzied romp in a back alley and progressed right into him being fucked from behind in the bed of his truck. The fact that none of his friends both­ered to say they didn’t believe any of it had kept him away from them until today.

“You better get used to me riding you into the bed of my truck then, McAvoy. I don’t like lying around like a sack of pota­toes.” Lennox grinned and gave him a quick wink. Will flushed. Were they flirt­ing right now? That had to be what this feel­ing was, this secret exchanged in words that meant lit­tle by definition and everything through the truth wrapped in them.

“Everyone, time to get to work. We’re trying a new piece today.” Mr. Robinette came in from his office with a stack of sheet music and passed it around. “And a word to all of our seniors: You have scheduled follow-up meetings with your guidance counselors for November. I’ve got those to hand out, too.”

Everyone murmured as they were given their music and the hand­ful of seniors were given their appointment time slips. Will took his and tried not to smile. The eighth of Novem­ber during pre-calculus. He wouldn’t mind miss­ing that after how much trouble it was. For a few weeks, he’d managed with Len­nox’s help, but that help had stopped in recent weeks and it had only taken a few lessons for him to fall behind the class.

Lennox was quiet as the music was passed around. Will took the sheet with his name on it and handed the last few back to the percussionists, hoping it would stop the racket of pattering drumsticks. They were always hitting something. The carpeted floor, the soles of their sneakers, the drums, each other. Except Lennox.

He always sat by himself while the other five horsed around.

But everyone stopped as Mr. Robinette rolled the piano up to the front and parked it beside Will and Natasha.

“Lennox, this one’s for you.” Mr. Robinette waved a few pages of sheet music at Lennox, who flipped through the stack fruitlessly. “Come on.”

“I don’t play piano,” Lennox said immediately. “You’ve lost your mind?”

Everyone whispered. Otto snickered and elbowed the boy beside him.

“By trusting you to potentially lift this class to another level? Yeah, probably.” Mr. Robinette lifted the wooden cover and put the music on the music rack. “Give it a shot.”

A few people laughed, doing nothing to hide it. Will spun around. Lennox was tense; his eyes darted from Mr. Robinette’s hopeful gaze to the snickering people to the piano. His expression changed at the sight of the keys. It was as if Lennox wanted to play, was ready to lose himself once more in music, but some­thing held him back. Will glanced around at the people gig­gling at Lennox. His classmates never acted like this when it came to Lennox. If anything, they curled up like roly-polies and tried to hide. Yet the idea of Lennox playing—of being tender and thoughtful—was enough to make them snicker.

“Go on,” Will said. “Shut them up before I have to. And we both know I’m useless in a fight.”

Lennox flicked his tongue ring against his teeth.

Click click click.

“If you learned to close your hand, you’d have one hell of a left hook. That slap had me seeing spots.” Lennox passed the rest of the sheet music to Otto and stood up.

Everyone murmured as Lennox took off his leather jacket and sat on the bench.

“Whenever you’re ready, Lennox.” Mr. Robinette scooped up his baton. “You lead, and we follow.”

Will picked up his trombone, but his eyes stayed on Lennox. Lennox breathed, his fingers settled on the keys and then the music began. It was unlike anything Will had heard since Lennox had played before, just as beautiful and mind-churning as what had poured out of Lennox last time. It was remarkable, and Will was so busy trying to figure it out, he forgot to come in on his mark.

He wasn’t the only one. All over the band room, people were staring at Lennox. Only Otto came in on time, and it was with a resounding cymbal crash in Will’s ear.

“Brass, that’s your bar!”

Everyone tried to pick up the pieces, but Lennox was a huge dis­traction. An hour later, nobody seemed to believe what they heard, but Lennox’s playing grew stronger with each restart, and mur­murs continued down the hall and along the corridors for the rest of the afternoon.

Natasha questioned Will extensively over lunch, but he didn’t offer a lot. Yes, he’d heard Lennox play before. No, he wasn’t saying more than that. By the time chemistry class came around, Will was glad to be rid of them and anxious to see Lennox again. But he wasn’t there. For the rest of the week, Len­nox didn’t show up for school, even though Will waited outside each morn­ing. Rumors started pouring out of the walls. By Friday, half the school was convinced Lennox was actually a wealthy spy, masquerading as a student to gather information on various teachers. Roxanne seemed to believe most of the wild sto­ries, and Will was certain she’d started half of them, but he left it alone.

Will spent Friday night and all of Saturday at the hospital. Ben, despite still being comatose had begun to blink, and sometimes his fingers moved. Even though Doctor Carson and Karen considered it a positive sign that he would wake up soon, Will couldn’t bring himself to believe them. It was just natural reflexes. If he was going to wake up, he would do something more than twitch his eyelids. Sunday was Will’s day to help at the store. With his dad gone, he’d started picking up a few shifts to help Marty with their annual winter jersey orders for the county’s school and recreational basketball and hockey teams. He shut down the store at six and was halfway to the highway when he turned around.

He’d seen nothing of Lennox in six days. Anything could have happened. If what he’d heard outside the motel that night was any clue, that anything could be the last thing Lennox ever did. Will drove back through town and turned down Thomas Street and into the motel’s cracked lot. One car was there: a busted-up Camry as old as he was with a lawn chair crunched under its right front tire.

He backed his truck into the visitor space in the corner and then darted across the lot to Lennox’s room.

“Lennox? It’s Will. Are you—” The door flew open and Lennox yanked him inside.

“What are you
doing
here?” Lennox shut the door.

“You haven’t been in school,” Will said. He bit his lip. Nothing new or different was in the room, except for a dark water stain around the floor-to-ceiling pipe. Lennox kicked the little heater under the window and it gave a sputtering gurgle before falling silent. Will shivered and eyed the three shirts he could see poking out from under Lennox’s jacket. November had brought a rush of cold that normally didn’t appear until after the holidays. “I was… worried. After last time—those men outside. I thought something might have happened.”

“No. It’s just me. And her.” Lennox flipped his thumb toward the wall. “Everyone else is wherever today.”

“Oh.” Will shifted from one foot to the other. It was silly to come over here. Lennox was fine, had more than proven he could handle life on his own, but still… “I missed you.”

“Is that why you’re here?” Lennox eyed him and kicked his heater again. It sputtered, and then hummed weakly. A blast of warmth brushed Will’s legs. “Can’t you miss me somewhere else?”

“Probably. I’d rather not miss you at all. Like, ever. But I did. Our, um, English thing is due next week. For
1984.”

“We haven’t started that book yet,” Lennox said, but he moved closer. Will backpedaled until he legs hit the dresser. “Hi.”

“Hey,” Will whispered. Lennox’s hands settled on his hips. “So can we pick a day to work on it?”

Lennox groaned and rested his head on Will’s shoulder. “You’re ridiculous. I’m
flirting
and you’re—” Lennox waved his hand and turned away.

“What? You could still kiss me.”

“While you talk about working on our English project?”

Will flushed. “Well, it’s—we need to pick a day, okay? Karen’s been on me about telling her things in advance since… ”

“Right. Monday’s fine.”

“I can’t, I have newspaper club. What about Tuesday?”

Lennox shook his head. “Can’t. After school I have—”

“Detention,” Will finished, but Lennox only shook his head.

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Lennox’s arms curled around his chest as he paced away from Will. “Job interview, actually.”

That was nothing to be ashamed of; if anything, Will admired it.

“That’s great,” Will said. “I’m sure you’ll get it.”

Lennox shrugged. “It’s a waste of time. I’ll be out the door before I finish saying hello.”

“You don’t know that,” Will said, but clearly Lennox did. He tugged up the leg of his jeans and flashed Will his ankle monitor.

“I damn well do know it,” he sneered. “Seventeen times I’ve applied, and the only calls I’ve gotten were the ones I didn’t apply for in person. Half of the ones I showed up in person for turned me away without letting me apply because of this.” Lennox pointed at his face and Will thought for a moment that he meant his piercings. But those could be taken out and nobody would notice the holes unless they looked closely. No, Lennox was gesturing at his brown cheek and glaring.