The Boy I Love (21 page)

“Just a minute, Wren,” Mr. Greenlaw said.

I got up from the computer and walked upstairs to my room, then had to sit on my bed waiting for what seemed forever.

“Hi, Wren,” Tim said. His voice sounded hollow and raspy, like he'd been crying. I couldn't imagine Tim crying. “I can't really talk now,” he said.

There were a million things I wanted to ask him. One of those things—did his parents know—seemed to have been answered by this phone call. I had the weird sense that I was calling a home where a death had just occurred.

“Okay,” I said. “I just wanted to check in and, you know, see if you were all right.”

The silence on the other end told me what a stupid thing this was to say.

“Well,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know that I think you're exactly right, exactly the way you are.”

This wasn't the right thing to say either, because Tim started to cry. He cried in choked, deep sobs. I could only just make out him saying, “I'll call you later, Wren.”

“Okay,” I said into my phone, even though I knew there was nobody on the other end. I hung up and stared out the window. By now late afternoon had arrived, and the winter sunlight darkened over the east paddock. And for the first time that day I noticed something very strange: There were no horses there. Not a single one.

I ran to the windowsill and looked out. I had a good view of the entire paddock, and my eyes searched the treeless expanse as if a horse might magically appear. Never in my life had I seen it empty, except during hurricanes.

I took the steps three at a time, then lurched outside. Empty. In all the drama of the past few days with Tim and Allie and the party, I had not had a thought for one second about our farm and the horses. And now look what had happened. It felt like a bad dream, a terrible dream, the worst dream in the world.

By now I could hear my mother's voice calling to me. I
ran away from her, out toward the barn. I could hear her behind me, and my father, too. One of them might have said, “Don't worry, Wren,” but that didn't help. I didn't trust them anymore. I truly believed they could have sold her, given her away—my horse, Pandora.

I slammed into the barn, my chest heaving. The familiar rustling from Pandora's stall greeted me, and she shuffled around and wound her neck out toward me the way she always did. I thought I might die from relief. As I ran to her, I saw we still had four horses left, including Sombrero. But at that moment Pandora was the only one I cared about. I slammed myself into her stall and wound my arms around her neck, burying my face in her dark-brown softness.

My mom and dad clattered into the barn, both of them out of breath. Now I got why they hadn't been mad about the thing with Devon.

“Now I get why you took me to get my license,” I said, my voice muffled but fierce. “You needed to keep me away from the house while the horses were taken away.”

I didn't look their way, just listened to the silence. Finally my mom said, “I'm sorry, Wren. We were going to talk to you about it tonight. I know I should have told you. It was just . . . it was so hard for me, honey.” Her voice broke. “It was so hard for me to do, to let them go, and I knew that I couldn't hear any arguments against it. You know? I just had to bite the bullet and do it. I had to let it be done.”

“Who took them?” I said.

“A rescue group. A national one. This woman came down from Kentucky, and she's going to distribute them to other rescues in different states.”

Mom started rattling off which horses were going where in this weird, robotic voice, like she'd been going over and over it in her own head, trying to convince herself it would be all right. When she said that Sir Lancelot was going to a retirement center up north, I finally took my face away from Pandora and looked both my parents in the eye.

“Sir Lancelot isn't the only one who's going up north, is he?”

My parents shook their heads. I had this weird feeling, like I was the adult and they were the children.

“So it's true. We're moving to New Hampshire. It's a done deal.”

They both started talking at once, their words running over each other, saying how it wouldn't be such a bad thing, how we would be living in a nice house on the campus, and we would take Daisy with us, and I would get this first-rate private-school education for free. Listening to them, I almost felt like my head would explode. Finally I screamed at them, at the top of my lungs, “Stop it!”

Pandora shied in her stall, and the other remaining horses pawed their hooves nervously. Mom and Dad just stood there, staring at me.

“Stop it,” I whispered, ashamed of myself for scaring the horses. “Stop it and just go away.”

“Wren . . . ,” Mom said.

“Go away,” I hissed, my teeth clenched, still regretful but fully prepared to yell again if I needed to.

The two of them shuffled out of the barn. I hated how defeated their footsteps sounded. Daisy stayed behind, her tags jingling nervously outside the stall. I let her in when I knew my parents were a good distance away. The two of us—Daisy and me—collapsed in a heap in the corner of Pandora's stall. We fell asleep and didn't wake up till it was dark outside, and my mother came back to bring me in for dinner.

“I don't want any dinner,” I said. “Please leave me alone.”

Mom didn't threaten or cajole or even plead with me. She just turned and walked away, those same sad footsteps. Daisy felt bad for her, I guess, because she scratched at the stall door until I gave up and let her out, and she ran to catch up with my mom. I sank back down onto the straw, wondering if anything would ever go right again.

*   *   *

It wasn't easy staying out in the barn, I will tell you that right now. Part of me wanted to give up and go have dinner, then climb the stairs to the comfort of my own bedroom. In the old days I would have found a way to get to Allie's house. Just a few days ago I would have gone to Tim's. But
as things stood I didn't even have my phone with me, and I couldn't get any closer to running away than huddling in Pandora's stall. At least this way I'd know if someone came to get her.

I got a couple of old Indian blankets from Mom's office and hunkered down in the corner of Pandora's stall, wrapped up in the itchy wool and trying to imagine what my life in New Hampshire would be like. I bet they didn't have a drama program at that school, at least not as good as Williamsport High's. And how weird would it be to
live
with all the kids you went to school with? For example, I sure felt glad Devon and Rachel didn't live anywhere close to us right now. I closed my eyes and tried to let a picture form of what next year would hold, but it just seemed so foreign and odd, nothing would come into my head at all.

*   *   *

I must have dozed off again, because the next thing I knew I was sitting straight up in the dark, my heart pounding a million miles a minute. Something had woken me up. I knew that immediately, though it took me a few seconds to register where I was. Pandora's shuffling and snorting gave me a pretty good idea, and also let me know that whatever noise I'd heard hadn't been a dream. Somebody was in the barn, moving around. I could hear hands against the wall, the sound of someone making his way in the dark.

The light went on in my mom's office, casting a pale
shadow down the aisle of the barn. A few triangular slats of light made their way into the stall with Pandora and me. My heart slowed down a little. Probably it was just my mom, sneaking down to check on me. I felt a sudden flood of shame and guilt. Pulling one of the blankets over my shoulders, I got to my feet and headed toward the tack room.

The door had been left open, and something about the footsteps inside—heavy and furtive—made me pause. They didn't sound like my mom's. For one thing, whoever it was fumbled around like he didn't know where anything was. And also, it sounded like a man. I don't know how, it just did.

I flattened my back against the wall and sidled toward that open door. In my head a million thoughts raced, what I would do if there really was an intruder in there.
Daisy, you damn Hellhound, where are you and all your scary snarls when I need you?
I decided I would peek in, figure out who was there, and if the person looked sinister, I would bolt as fast as I could toward the house, screaming at the top of my lungs. Best plan I could come up with.

I heard the drawer open in my mom's desk, and then I heard the person cross the room and fiddle with keys. My whole body froze solid. Only one thing in there needed keys to open. Dad's gun case.

I decided not to bother peeking inside, just pushed off my heels and ran. But out of the corner of my eye I saw
the person turn to see me sneak past in the shaft of light. A startled blond head. I skidded to a stop. Then I turned around and crossed the threshold of the office, where Tim stood, Dad's old Winchester clutched in his hands.

“Tim,” I said, surprised at how clear and sharp my voice sounded after all the sleep and fear. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

He blinked at me. Never in my life had I wished so badly for a moment to turn out to be a dream. I didn't know what to do. I knew I needed to get that gun away from him, but I didn't know how. It was so scary and so surreal. Tim, except for the rifle, looked perfect. He had on blue jeans and a flannel shirt under a big raglan sweater, and his hair looked mussed but the way a Hollywood stylist might muss it to make him look even cuter. He looked like the world's most perfect broad-shouldered, sun-streaked, all-American boyfriend.

“You're the only one I know who has guns,” he said simply.

“Tim,” I said, my stomach clutching up. “Please. There's nothing in the world you need a gun for.”

He stood there, thinking on this. He looked down at the rifle. It looked weirdly natural in his hands. I didn't think it was loaded, but on the other hand, Dad wasn't always as careful as he should be about things like that. Thankfully, at that moment Tim had it pointed at the outside wall. If he pointed it in the opposite direction and it went off
accidentally, it might go through the panels and hit one of our last remaining horses.

“My parents know,” he said.

“I could tell,” I said, “when I called.”

“Do you know what they're fixing to do? Send me away to this place where you learn how not to be gay.” He said this and then just stood there, looking hopeless.

“How can you learn not to be gay?” I said.

Tim just shook his head. Reaching out my hands for the rifle, I stepped toward him. He backed away, clutching it to his chest.

“You don't even know how to use that,” I said.

“Don't have to aim,” he said. “Just put it in my mouth and pull the trigger.”

My spine turned to ice. “Tim,” I whispered. “This is one moment. One single second in time. Please don't do this. If you can just wait for this moment to pass, things will get better. I know they will.”

He snorted, like this was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. I took another step toward him. It might have been my imagination, but he seemed to relax his grip on the gun. So I took another step.

“Think of the play,” I said. “Think of singing, and acting, and throwing a ball around, and everything you love. Think of me,” I said, my voice rising with desperation. “You don't want to die, Tim.”

“But that's the thing,” he said. “I do. I would rather die than have to live like this the rest of my life. None of that other stuff even matters. It sucks so bad, Wren. I can't even tell you, I can't even describe it. I hate myself and I hate my life, and I can't change anything. I don't want to change, and I don't want to stay this way. I can't think of anything else to do but die.”

All the while he spoke, he lowered the gun bit by bit, and his grip loosened. Before I had a chance to think about it, I took one huge step toward him and grabbed the gun. I ripped it out of Tim's hands, and he reached out and tugged back, and guess what? It went off, with such a sharp retort that we both went flying, tumbling into the bales of hay stacked against the wall. The rifle skittered across the floor and landed in a corner, leaving me and Tim on the other side of the room, his weight pinning me to the ground. He looked at me for a second with an expression I never could have imagined on him, this look of pure rage. Then he grabbed my head in his hands and kissed me, hard, on the mouth. He kissed me with his eyes closed, and his lips open a little, exactly the way I'd wanted him to kiss me that first day back in the fall.

And I kissed him back. I kissed him back with all my might. I put all the love I had for him into that kiss, all the longing, all the wanting. Maybe they wouldn't have to send him away to some un-gaying camp. Maybe I could do it for them, for him, for everybody.

Tim pulled away from me but still kept his hands on my face. He stared straight at me, looking a little bit more like the boy I knew. Something in his expression had softened, though when he spoke his voice sounded fierce.

“Wren,” he said, “I love you too much to love you. Do you understand what I'm saying? Do you understand what I mean?”

I nodded. And I didn't say it, but hoped he knew, that I also loved him too much—no matter how I wanted—to ask him to be something that he simply never could.

*   *   *

The gunshot woke my parents. Lights were turned on, and robes grabbed; frantic footsteps along with a jangling and ferociously barking dog made their way across the lawn that wouldn't be ours much longer, to the barn that was on its way to being emptied of horses. My parents found me and Tim there, kneeling on the floor, clinging to each other, both of us sobbing as if the world had ended, which—in its own way, for both of us—it certainly had.

I remember that night in
a lot of different ways: some sad, some less sad. For example, I can't help but feel that's when my mom got her spirit back. She was the one who ran and flung her arms around Tim and me, weeping with happiness to find us both alive, while my dad emptied the Winchester and then checked every other rifle in the case before locking it and stuffing the key in his pocket. I knew in that moment none of those rifles would be coming north with us.