The Boy I Love (8 page)

“You've got no business bringing him here,” Dad was yelling at my mother. He doesn't get mad too often, but when he does, look out. I could feel my face go red, and on top of everything else I thought that if only I were a more loyal friend, I would be witnessing this all alone instead of with Tim standing beside me.

“Please,” Mom said, her voice full of tears. The man who must have brought the horse stood off to the side with his arms crossed, staring down at the ground like he wished he were anyplace else in the world. I guess the horse was lame, because its back leg was bandaged and Dad was yelling about vet bills.

“You think you're doing this animal a favor,” he finished, “but it's going to end up out on the street along with the rest of us!”

I figured Tim had heard enough. I touched his elbow and said, “Come on.”

We walked across our west field toward the barn. Tim didn't say anything and neither did I. When we got to the barn, I brought him straight over to Pandora. She looked over her stall door all calm and at home, like she couldn't imagine ever living anywhere else. Last year Mom had gotten an adoption offer for her and turned it down. “I
won't give away Wren's favorite horse,” Mom had told Dad, by way of argument. She had said the same thing when someone wanted to adopt Sombrero, even though he was actually
her
favorite horse, which Dad knew as well as I did. The way Mom loved her horses was one of the things he loved best about her, and I figured we must be in deep trouble for him to be hollering about it.

Pandora snuffled her nose at my pocket. Usually I would have brought a sugar cube or carrot for her. “Sorry, girl,” I said, and ran my good palm over the tiny white mark between her eyes, then pressed my nose into the space between her nostrils, the softest thing in the whole wide world.

Tim petted Pandora's neck. “She's beautiful,” he said. I could tell he didn't plan on saying a word about what we'd just seen, and I felt grateful for that.

“All the horses are beautiful,” I said. “They're bred to be fast and strong and beautiful, and people just want to throw them away when they can't make money anymore, or if they don't perform the way they wanted them to. If it weren't for my mom, these horses would be bottles of Elmer's Glue or cans of Alpo. She's not being irresponsible. She just wants to save them.”

Tim didn't say anything. He just kept petting Pandora's neck in a way that showed he wasn't used to horses at all. I introduced him to Brutus, and also Sombrero, whose back was kind of sweaty, with marks from a recent currycomb, so
probably Mom had been riding him that afternoon. As we walked by the tack room, I noticed Dad had left one of his rifles leaning against the wall. This is the kind of thing that infuriates my mother, so I went in and took the key from her desk. “Mom won't let him keep these in the house,” I told Tim as I put the rifle back in the gun case with the others. I had to hang it up one-handed on account of my bandages. Even though my hand had stopped hurting so bad, it made doing the most regular things just a little bit more difficult.

“Wow, look at all those rifles,” Tim said. “My parents don't have any.”

“Dad doesn't hunt,” I said. “He just likes to shoot at targets that he sets up in the woods. And he says cleaning a gun always helps clear his mind.”

We walked outside to see who was in the paddock, and I pointed out different horses. “That horse is named Birdie, but she used to be called Sunday Best. She ran the Kentucky Derby and won a bunch of other races, but then she got soft-tissue injuries and wound up here.”

“Doesn't seem like a bad place to wind up,” Tim said.

For some reason this made me feel like crying, so I tried to change the subject. “You sure were funny in rehearsal today,” I said.

“You already told me that on the bus.” He sounded so nice when he said this. Like he wanted to remind me he knew I was sad, and that was okay. “So,” he said, turning
things back to my life, the last place I wanted things to go. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“No,” I said. “It's just me. How about you?”

“Older sister. Kathy. She's at Duke.”

We walked out a little bit to the top of the hill and sat down. It was a good view. To one side you could see our house, and the driveway, and various horses grazing. To the other side you could see Cutty River Landing, all those brick houses and their shiny pool. “Look,” Tim said. “You can see my house from here.”

“Really? You live at Cutty River Landing?” He tried to point out his house, but they all looked the same, so it was hard to see which one he meant. I tried to imagine what it would be like, living down there in one of those brick houses, with maybe just a dog or a cat, and all the bills paid so you never had to hear your parents fight.

Finally it hit me, that it was weird I hadn't said anything about my parents fighting. So I said, “Tim. I'm really sorry you had to see that before. With my mom and dad.”

“That's okay,” he said. “You should hear my parents sometimes.”

Again, he sounded so nice. He
was
so nice, I found myself saying, “We're having some problems with money, if you couldn't tell. Hanging on to this place.”

Tim put his hand on my shoulder for a minute. The weight of his palm there, and the weight of what I'd just
said, pressed down on me in opposite ways, both of them so emotional I worried I'd start crying.

“Don't tell anyone,” I said. “Okay? I don't want to talk to anyone about it just yet.”

“I won't,” Tim said. “You can trust me, Wren, I promise.”

I lay back in the grass and Tim's hand dropped off me. He lay back too, and the two of us just stared up at the blue sky, wispy little white clouds floating up there above us. The worst of summer's heat had passed, and while it still felt warm, there was the tiniest little breeze moving things around. It was so pretty I could almost stop thinking about my parents fighting.

Tim pushed up on one elbow and looked down into my face. I looked back at him. His blond hair hung off his forehead, and I saw every single freckle, plus the flecks of green and gold in his blue eyes. I wondered if he was about to kiss me. Of course if he did, it would bring about all sorts of problems. But you know what? I didn't particularly care. My whole heart felt clutched up, beating hard. This boy might be about to kiss me, a boy I liked. I didn't even want to think about how much I liked him. If Tim kissed me, today would be the day of my first real kiss, and nothing else would matter, not even my parents having a big fight over a new horse and Dad saying we were all going to end up on the street.

Looking back on this moment, I believe that Tim really
was thinking about kissing me. He even leaned in a little closer so I could feel his breath on my face, soft, like he was trying to hold it. I thought about closing my eyes but I didn't, because I wanted to know what it looked like when a person kissed you on the lips.

But instead of kissing me, Tim said, “Wren, can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” I said. It surprised me how disappointed I felt. My heart did not want to slow down. Tim pushed off his elbow and lay back down beside me. We went back to watching clouds again, long enough for me to wonder if he'd changed his mind, or fallen asleep.

Then he said, “Do you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Sure,” I said. Tim had come to the right place. I am good at keeping secrets. But I had this sinking feeling that he was going to tell me he liked Allie.

But that's not what he said at all. In fact, when he did speak, I couldn't be sure I heard him right, because it sounded like, “I think I like guys.”

“What?” I said.

“I think I like guys,” he repeated. This time he sounded kind of sorry he'd said it.

“What do you mean, like them?”

“I think I'm gay. I mean, I know I am.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I just do.”

Now, this had never crossed my mind in regards to Tim—nothing about him was like what I thought about when I thought about a gay person—and yet it made perfect sense. I can't say why, exactly. But it was like a window shade being snapped up and letting the light in. Everything just lay out clear before me and fell into its proper place. Which doesn't at all mean that I wasn't let down. At the same time I felt kind of flattered, that he would share this big a secret with me.

I tried to think of what to say next, and asked if there were someone particular he liked, hoping it wouldn't be Devon.

“No,” Tim said.

His voice sounded a tiny bit strained, like maybe he wished he hadn't said anything. Even though I felt like something truly wonderful had just been snatched away from me, I knew he had told me this as a friend. Because he trusted me, just like he said I could trust him. So I said, “Well, that's okay, Tim. I'm glad you told me.” I turned my face to look at him, but he kept staring up at the clouds.

“I never told anyone before.” His face looked sad.

I said, “I'm honored.”

He turned toward me to see if I was kidding. I stared back at him, trying to look as sincere as I possibly could. This was the first time anyone had told me he was gay, so I didn't know the etiquette. All of a sudden Tim did what he hadn't done before: He kissed me. He grabbed my face and
kissed me full on the lips, with his mouth closed, and then he kissed me again.

“I knew you would say that,” he said. “I love you, Wren. I truly do.”

I probably don't need to tell you that this moment did not match up with my previous fantasies of a first kiss, not to mention the first time a boy telling me he loved me. So I couldn't help it: I burst out laughing, and after a moment so did Tim. He got to his feet and held out his hand. I took it, and that's how we walked back down to the house—holding hands, the sun shining all around us.

*   *   *

Tim borrowed Dad's bike, and we rode over to his house at Cutty River Landing. I waved good-bye at the end of his driveway, then pedaled on home. Mom was waiting for me out front to remind me of all the afternoon chores I'd left undone. Dad's Jeep was gone. So was the horse trailer and, to my surprise, the horse. Never in my life had I known Dad to win an argument like that one. Mom's face looked red and puffy. I wondered where the horse had gone. I never had to think about that before, what happened to horses that Mom didn't save, because she always did—save them, that is.

I didn't have the heart to complain about anything, just walked out to the barn with her and set right into polishing tack. It was kind of awkward with my bandaged hand, but Mom just watched me without offering to help. She sat on
top of her crowded little desk and said, “Tim seems really interested in you, Wren.”

I naturally tensed up a little at this, but then decided Tim was a better topic of conversation than the horse that got sent away. “We're just friends, Mom,” I said. I wished I could tell her the truth, but certainly didn't plan to break my promise to Tim, even though Mom wouldn't care about it one single bit, and she certainly wouldn't tell Devon Kelly, or anyone else at Williamsport High.

“Well,” Mom said. “He seems very nice. Your grandfather would have called him the right sort.”

For a second I stopped scrubbing the bit. I knew how much she missed her father whenever things got hard. “Mom,” I said, giving up on my idea not to mention it. “I'm really sorry you couldn't keep the new horse.”

A funny kind of look came into her eyes, one I'd never seen before. Almost like panic. It scared me a little. “That horse,” Mom whispered. “That horse is the least of it.”

I felt a terrible sort of emptiness open up in my stomach. For as long as I could remember, my parents had been scrambling and scraping to hold on to this place. But they always did hold on. I knew that two of Mom's biggest donors had lost a ton of money in the stock market, but somehow I thought that we'd still get by. Maybe I never thought life would get easy, but I never dreamed we'd truly lose the farm. Because how in the world could I ever live anywhere
else? This place was
my
place, my home, as much as if I'd sprung from the tall grass by the river.

Mom must have seen the look on my face, because she said, “This isn't for you to worry about, Wren. Dad and I will take care of it. We'll find a way to work it out.”

It took all my strength not to yell at her.
Not for me to worry about? Who was she kidding?
But then I noticed she seemed to have all these new lines around her mouth, but she also looked as sad as a little kid, young and old at the same time. My mother was the most softhearted person in the world. All she ever wanted to do was take care of things that couldn't take care of themselves.

“Mom,” I said, wanting to give her a little gift, “I need to tell you something about Tim.”

“What?” She blinked at me like she felt a little afraid of what I might say.

“He's playing Og,” I said. “The leprechaun.”

Mom smiled at this, but she didn't light up the way I hoped she would. Later on I called Allie, but she didn't answer the phone, so I just lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Tim. I remembered that flyer from his church, about gay ministers, and all the things I'd heard Devon say right in front of him. I wondered what Tim was doing, and if he felt weird about having told me. Hopefully he wasn't worried at all, or wishing he hadn't done it. Somehow I would find a way to let him know for
sure that I would never give his secret away, not to anyone. He might have other things he needed to worry about, but that sure wasn't one of them.

*   *   *

When I got downstairs the next morning, my dad was waiting for me in the kitchen. He had his binoculars around his neck and a wide-brimmed hat on his head. Going-for-a-walk clothes. Sure enough he told me, “Go on up and change. You and me are going for a walk.”