The Boy I Love (16 page)

Mom laughed. “I've had that same thought, Wren.”

Dad put down his fork and said, “It's just ignorant people looking for excuses to be hateful. That's all.” He picked up his fork to start eating again, then paused. “Why were you looking at an antigay website, anyway?”

“Tim showed it to me,” I said. “His church sent it to him. They're mad because gay people are allowed to be ministers.”

Dad pushed his plate away like something very serious had happened. He said, in his sternest voice, “So is Tim trying to tell you that it's wrong to be gay?”

My father's face looked electric and somber at the same time, like a serious line had just been crossed. And I felt a surge of love. At the same time it seemed unfair that my parents felt this way when I didn't even need them to. It was hard to know what to say. In that moment I sure didn't feel like lying.

Just like in the old days—with her horses, and with Daisy, and with a hundred other things too—it was my mom who saved the day. “Joe,” she said. “Tim doesn't think it's wrong to
be gay. He doesn't think that at all. Does he, Wren?” I could tell from her face, looking all calm and understanding. All this time I wondered why she didn't know, she
did
know. She just knew better than to say anything.

“No, ma'am,” I said. Being from the North, my mother doesn't usually expect me to call her ma'am. But in that moment I wanted to do some little thing that showed how much I respected her. “He sure doesn't think it's wrong to be gay.”

“We get it,” Mom said. “You don't need to say another word.”

And everyone went back to eating.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, Allie wanted nothing to do with me. She started hanging out with a couple of kids who used to go to Cutty River, a girl named Ginny and also Jesse Gill. Part of me hoped Tim would notice that Allie was friends with Jesse, which would prove she was trustworthy and could be told the truth about us. Another, less generous part of me wanted things to continue exactly as they were, me with Tim—everyone including Allie thinking we were a couple—and Allie off with her new friends.

“I ran into Allie's mother today,” Mom said to me one afternoon. We were in the barn, forking fresh hay into the stalls. Mom had adopted out two more horses, and I almost hated being in the barn as it emptied out one by one. At the same time I made myself go out there at least once a day,
to make sure Pandora was still right where she belonged. I shoveled the last forkful of straw into her stall, then climbed in with her. I wrapped my arms around her neck and buried my face in her mane. Obviously Mom wanted to talk about Allie. If she'd wanted to talk about her mother, she would have just called her Julia.

Mom stuck her head into the stall and said, “She says Allie's been having a really hard time at Williamsport.”

“Well,” I said, “I haven't been seeing much of her these days.”

“She said that, too.”

“Mom,” I said. “It's not like I've deserted her or anything.” Then I felt super guilty saying that, because I guess I had deserted her.

“I know that, honey. It's just, things have been going well for you. Have you thought about that? You've made new friends, you've got Tim. You've got a part in the play. And for Allie, nothing has gone the way she imagined it. She feels lost.”

I told Mom how Allie had acted when she found out about the farm.

“Maybe you just took her by surprise,” Mom said. “People don't always say exactly the right thing when they hear bad news, you know. Especially fifteen-year-old people.”

Pandora let out a soft nicker, like she agreed with Mom. I lifted up my face. “So what do you think I should do?”

“You should give her another chance,” Mom said. “Obvi.”

I rolled my eyes at Mom's attempt to be one of the girls, and she laughed. As if I would ever take her advice on how to handle my friends.

*   *   *

“Mom says I should give you another chance.”

This might not have been the most tactful lead-in. Allie looked up from where she sat on the curb waiting for her bus—the early bus, since she didn't have an after-school activity. I figured I could get to rehearsal a little late. Our performance was coming up in just one week, so we'd been running straight through the play, and my song didn't come on till toward the end of Act 1.

“Funny,” Allie said. She had a book open in her lap and looked back down at it instead of at me. “My mom says the same thing about you.”

I sighed and sat next to her. She tapped her pencil on her book, like she felt impatient for me to leave. “Well,” I said, “maybe we should both listen. We've been friends a long time, you know. And I'm really sorry you're having such a hard time.”

At this her head shot up. She had her hair in a ponytail and had wiped the makeup off her face, so she looked more like the old Allie than I'd seen her in a long time. Not to sound like my dad, but she looked so much better this way. I wished she'd stop messing herself up with all that extra effort.

“Who says I'm having a hard time?” she said. “I'm not
having a hard time at all. Things are great. Really great. I'm so glad to be rid of Devon. And Ginny is a much cooler girl than I ever realized. She cracks me up every day. Jesse, too. And . . .” She started tapping her pencil again, and I could tell she was racking her brain for something else that was great.

“Okay,” I said. “I'm glad you're not having a hard time.”

“Thanks,” she said. “So. Have you figured out where you're going to move?”

I stared at her for a minute. Her face looked tense and empty. If she cared about me at all, if she had any idea of what my family was going through, you sure couldn't see it from the way she acted.

“No,” I said. “We haven't figured out where we're going to move. But thanks so much for asking.” The bus pulled up with a great wheezing and hissing of brakes. Allie snapped her book shut and shoved it into her book bag.

“Well,” she said. “Thanks so much for forgiving me. I really feel better now.”

“You're welcome,” I said.

We both stood up, and Allie marched past me. I watched her get onto the bus and thought about standing there until it pulled away, but what was the point? The only thing I could do to make Allie like me again was prove that Tim was not my boyfriend, and at this point that might not even do any good. And honestly, I couldn't think what she could
do to make me feel better about her and the fact that she would dump me forever over a boy she'd barely ever spoken to. Which as far as I was concerned was just the beginning of things she'd done wrong. I decided then and there I was going to stop trying.

A small flock of Canada geese who couldn't be bothered migrating squawked as I walked past the retention pond. I thought of the old Allie, and all the fun times we'd had, and how we used to be able to talk about anything. It was hard not to wish for that girl back, because I had so much to tell her.

My parents got an offer
on the house. It came out of the blue because they hadn't officially been trying to sell it yet, but the lady from Knockton Farms told some rich friends how we were having trouble, and it turned out they'd been looking for a piece of property to buy for their son, who was a chef. He wanted a place near town with a big old house and a lot of land where he could cater weddings and such. There was all kinds of complicated information that I knew mostly from hearing my parents fight about it. Nobody told me anything directly, but what I gathered was that the offer was for way less than we owed on the house, so the bank had to approve it. It seemed to me that if the bank was willing to take less money than we owed, why not just reduce the amount we owed and let us keep it? But as I found out on a more and more regular basis, life just didn't work that way. Meanwhile Mom had brought our barn cats
over to Knockton, but we still had ten horses and possibly a whole lot less time than we thought to figure out where we were going to flee to when all this finally ended.

Mom and Dad fought pretty much round the clock. Mom's face had turned this constant shade of red, and anytime I woke up during the night I could hear her rattling around the house—she'd pretty much stopped sleeping altogether. She'd also lost a whole lot of weight, while my dad—who had a tendency to eat under stress—put on about fifteen pounds. It was like the weight moved off her body and onto his.

To drown out the sound of their fighting, and because
Finian's Rainbow
was mere days away, I sang my “Necessity” song all the time. I couldn't wait to perform it onstage. In the play, Annie Leonard started out singing, “What is the curse that makes the universe so all bewilderin'?” Then I came in and sang, “What is the hoax that just provokes the folks they call God's children?” After that Elizabeth Claire Zimmerman sang, “What is the jinx that gives a body and his brother and everyone around the runaround?” And then we all sang “Necessity.” I had one verse that I sang all on my own, my solo, and it went like this:

My feet want to dance in the sun

My head wants to rest in the shade

The Lord says go out and have fun

But the landlord says, “Your rent ain't paid!”

So you can see how in addition to being something I had to practice, the song felt relevant to our home life, to the point where one morning at breakfast Mom came right out and asked me to stop singing it. “At least all the time,” she said, kind of apologetic, when she saw the hurt feelings on my face.

I felt like saying I'd stop singing when she and Dad stopped hollering at each other, but she looked so fragile that I bit my tongue. Mom was spending hours and hours on the telephone, trying to find other rescue groups to take her horses. But they all had the same problem: When people needed to start economizing, the first place they started was charitable donations. Especially charitable donations to animals. That morning Mom picked up the phone to start making her calls before I even left for school, and I'm sorry to say that she forgot to say good-bye to me.

Daisy walked me down to the end of the driveway and waited with me until the bus came. She was the only member of our family who didn't know what was going on, and I envied her.

*   *   *

We were going to have four performances of the play: Thursday night, Friday night, a Saturday matinee, and Saturday night. Each performance would be packed, because as I have said, people from all over the area came to Williamsport High productions.

As the week began I made a decision that nothing—not Allie scowling at me in American history, not my parents fighting, not even the fate of all our horses—would let me feel anything except excited about this being the week I performed in my first Williamsport High School play. Do you know how many other sophomores were singing solos? None, that's how many. And do you think my parents stopped for a single second to feel proud about this? No, they did not.

On Monday, after school but before rehearsal, I hung out for a bit on the stone wall by the football field with Tim, Caroline Jones, Tyler, Devon, Rachel, and Jay. Us girls and Tim sat on the wall, while Jay and Devon stood there wearing their football gear for practice. Rachel chatted away with Devon, looking like she couldn't believe her good fortune. I almost had a flash of sympathy for him when I thought how Allie had always saved her adoring glances for Tim. It was hard to blame him for dropping her for someone who actually liked him. Anyway, in the midst of our various conversations, Caroline happened to mention the cast party, which was going to be at her house.

“Are your parents going to be there?” Devon asked.

“Well, of course they are,” Caroline said. “They're not going out of town the weekend I'm starring in the school play.” Really Liza Jane Rawls, who played Sharon, was the star of the play, but I did not point this out to Caroline.

Devon frowned. “But they'll make themselves scarce, right?”

“What do you care?” Caroline said. “The cast party is for the
cast
, Devon, not the football team.” A couple of those geese flew overhead, squawking away.

“Caroline Jones,” Devon said, in a mock Southern accent. “You have been sitting there talking about a party in front of us for nearly five minutes. Are you telling me we aren't invited?”

Caroline turned a little pink. “Well, of course you can come,” she said, pointedly looking at Jay and Rachel, too. “But my parents are going to be there, and if you're thinking of drinking, that's your own business. I don't drink anymore.” She looked over at me when she said this last part, and I found myself putting my hand over my palm. I hadn't even attempted to go to another party since the bonfire. But surely my parents wouldn't expect me to miss the cast party of my very first play? There wouldn't likely be a bonfire at Caroline's house, anyway. And I never did get around to telling them she was the one who pitched me into the fire.

*   *   *

On Thursday morning my aunt Holly called my cell phone while I was waiting for the bus.

“Hi, Wren,” she said. “I'm just calling to say I can't come this weekend. I'm really sorry. You know I've been looking forward to seeing your play.”

The bus pulled up at the end of our driveway. I got on
with the cell phone still to my ear, not answering Holly and barely nodding my head at Jim, the bus driver. Being rude to everyone, in other words. I walked all the way to the back of the bus to where Tim sat eating a packet of little powdered doughnuts. He moved his bag to make space for me.

“Wren?” Holly said. “Are you still there?”

“I'm here,” I told her.

“Your dad said he'd videotape it for me,” she said. “Not the whole thing, obviously, but your song.”