What They Always Tell Us (12 page)

“Hey, Lex,” Nathen says loudly over the din of the shower. It’s the first time he’s called him that—Lex.

Without thinking, with the water still running, Alex parts the curtain a bit. Nathen is out there, dripping wet, his towel draped around his shoulders but not covering his front. Alex can’t help but see all of him now.

“I’m gonna get dressed. See you out in the lobby?” he says matter-of-factly. He’s just standing there, with no shame, totally naked, like he’s daring Alex to notice him. And Alex does, of course. How can he not look now?

“Okay, see you,” Alex says, then shuts his curtain.

In the shower, the warm water still raining down on him, he looks down at his own dick. And though he should be surprised about it, he isn’t surprised when he sees that it is getting hard. Not full force, but enough so that he knows he has to think about ugly things and ugly people and anything else but Nathen so that it will return to normal. He has to wash his hair two more times before he is ready to leave the shower.

Luckily Nathen is dressed and gone when Alex returns to his locker, but some students have shown up, as well as a few more older men. Alex dresses quickly and leaves.

He sees Nathen down in the lobby, waiting, wearing jeans now and a long-sleeve T-shirt under his jacket. As he gets closer, he fights off a smile. They’ve seen each other naked, he thinks, and it was weird, yes, but not bad weird.

On the drive home, they’re both quiet but it’s not awkward. It’s more like the quiet of contentment, like they can relax and not have to fill the air with bullshit. Alex feels both refreshed and exhausted. He can smell the scent of the gym shampoo and soap filling the car. When Nathen pulls up to this house, Alex isn’t ready to leave the car. He feels like he could sit there in its fragrant warmth and be happy forever.

Monday arrives too soon, opening what promises to be a rough week at school. Midterm exams start on Wednesday and end Friday, and the only good thing is that those days are half days, ending at lunch time. Two exams each day. Monday and Tuesday are full days of last-minute review sessions in every class. The air is filled with panic about trying to remember four months’ worth of crap: cosines and sines; elements, compounds, and chemical reactions; the amendments and the articles of the Constitution; the words in Spanish, with their feminine or masculine forms, not to mention the verb conjugations; and all the nineteenth-century American poems, sermons, short stories, and novels and what their themes say about our great nation and its history. These facts and documents and thoughts even creep into Alex’s dreams at night, creating goofy collages of people and numbers and papers.

Alex sees Nathen a few times on Monday and Tuesday, briefly, in the halls, but nothing more than that. Still, it’s enough to make him feel a boost in his mood amid all this academic hell.

Tuesday, after Spanish and before study hall, he heads to his locker as usual. As he gets closer, people pass him with big grins—people he knows well, and some kids he doesn’t really know at all. One of those people is Lang, who used to be one of his best friends, even if she is a girl, even if she could be snooty and self-centered and obsessed with the way she looked. She had liked him, not romantically, but as her one male confidant, she claimed. “It’s so easy telling you stuff, Alex,” she’d once said, before she stopped speaking to him at all. Walking toward his locker, he thinks for an odd, tiny moment that maybe Lang and other people are going to start being nice to him again, that people are going to start viewing him, once again, as just another student. But then he sees his locker.

Someone has written
LOSER
up and down the locker door—six times, actually. Six rows of
LOSER
, messy but legible renderings in white. It looks, at first, like paint, but once Alex gets close, he knows it is Wite-Out because he can scratch flakes of it off.

Alex stands there, frozen. This wasn’t here earlier, between first and second period, the last time he came by. His locker is in the southwest corner of the school. He always liked it because it was near the end of a dead-end hallway, away from a lot of foot traffic.

He can hear people walking by, laughing or whispering. Finally, he unfreezes and opens his locker. It takes him a few twists on the combination because his hands are unsteady. He takes out a few books and shoves them in his backpack, which is pretty full already since he needs every damn book because of the exams this week.

His backpack feels heavy, like he’s carrying a cinder block in there. The bell rings—he’s late for study hall. He should hurry. But, instead, he turns into the bathroom and goes to one of the stalls. He sets his bag down and sits on the toilet without taking his pants down. He doesn’t need to go to the bathroom. He just wants to sit there. He breathes, in and out, evenly. Because he
can’t
start crying. He can’t let himself get too upset.

He might have expected this kind of thing to occur in October, right after he came back to school. That’s when people made comments under their breath; some golf team jerk named Ben Mutert asked Alex if he wanted him to get him a glass of Drano from the janitor to drink; and he found the occasional notes stuffed into his locker. This stuff lasted, sporadically, for a month. But it’s December now, school is winding down. He thought he had made himself mostly invisible.

He breathes in again and then releases a big chunk of air. So what, he thinks? It’s no surprise almost everyone still thinks he is a loser. This was just a mean, childish, stupid prank. Who cares?

But he still can’t move, because he feels like he might shatter into a thousand pieces if he does. He hates feeling this way, and he hasn’t in a while. He has felt tougher, stronger lately, ever since he started running. He hasn’t felt like the old Alex, but like a newer, better Alex. Maybe it was all an illusion. Maybe he is just a fragile little freak after all.

He sits there until he starts to feel normal again. Like the sting of a slap has receded. Like he has finally come up for air. Then he makes his way to study hall, a good fifteen minutes late. When he pulls open the classroom door, everyone turns to stare at him, and he fights like hell not to turn around and run away.

“Nice of you to join us,” the teacher says to him, and he steps inside.

Somehow, he survives the week. After the locker incident, Alex is almost happy for exams, because they keep his mind occupied. He doesn’t even bother to contemplate who did it. And he didn’t report it to the principal. Luckily, a kind janitor washed it all off that night, so it was gone by the morning. He, of course, didn’t tell his parents about it, didn’t tell James, didn’t tell Dr. Richardson the day after during their session. He didn’t even tell Nathen. He didn’t see what good telling any of them would do. His parents might freak out and complain to the principal and cause a big scene, and Alex didn’t want that. Dr. Richardson, well, what could he do except nod sympathetically and ask him how it had felt? And as for James and Nathen—he was too embarrassed to let them know. He wanted the incident to just go away.

By the time he finishes his Spanish exam on Friday morning, his brain feels dead. But then it’s all over, for two weeks, at least, until school starts back up again in January.

But now what? Sure, he has Christmas to look forward to, though he hasn’t asked for much: a new wallet, a watch, a few books, some money. And then how will he fill his days? He’s not sure if he and Nathen will continue their jogging regimen, but he hopes so. He wants to be ready for the new year. On this Friday afternoon, he thinks about calling Nathen, but he doesn’t. If Nathen wants to run together, he’ll call. If not, well, Alex will just put on his heavy clothes and try to run in the cold outdoors.

His mother rouses him from a nap later, when it’s just getting dark outside. “Alex, remember we have the Mackeys’ Christmas party tonight.”

He rubs his eyes. “Oh yeah.”

“It starts in an hour, so you better start getting ready. You should wear that tailored shirt we got you, and maybe a festive tie.”

“Do I have to go?”

“Of course you do. Besides, it’s just down the street,” she says, before walking away, leaving his door slightly ajar so that the hall light pierces the darkness of his room.

Each year, the Mackeys, from around the corner, host a big holiday party. Mrs. Mackey used to be his principal in elementary school, but she is retired now, and so is Mr. Mackey, who used to be a lawyer. Their kids are grown and living far away, with families of their own, so they have a big empty house. The party is catered, kind of fancy, full of people from the neighborhoods north of the river, the same seemingly tiny circle of doctors and lawyers and bankers and professors that his parents usually spend time with.

Alex wants to stay home. It will be crowded with drunk adults, and he’s bound to run into plenty of kids from school, like Tyler and Kirk. He showers slowly and suits up in his gray wool trousers, the white shirt his mom told him to wear, and a forest-green tie that is speckled with tiny red dots. Down the hall, he can hear James getting ready, grumbling about having to wear a tie. He hears James’s phone ring a few times and imagines he’s making plans for after the party—with Preston or Greer or maybe even Nathen?

“Hey, there,” his father says when Alex walks downstairs. He’s flipping through the mail on the table in the foyer.

James comes storming down the stairs, looking almost identical to Alex in his pants and white shirt, his shiny black dress shoes. But James is wearing a light blue tie, like he’s protesting against Christmas colors. He fills out his clothes better than Alex, too, and his hair is longer and messier.

“Don’t you two make a handsome pair,” Mom says to them, walking downstairs. She is wearing more makeup than usual and smells of her special perfume. She wears a velvety-type black dress, under a red shawl.

“What about me?” his dad says, before kissing her on the cheek. He’s still in his work suit.

“You look as handsome as always,” she says, laughing slightly.

“And you look like a knockout,” Dad says, kissing her on the lips this time.

For a minute it feels like they’re this perfect little family without a care in the world. Maybe they were, Alex thinks, before he went and screwed things up.

James gives a loud sigh and says, “Let’s just go, okay?” Then they make their way outside, toward the party that Alex dreads.

“Alex!” Henry shouts. Henry is standing in one of the rooms at the back of the house, by a table covered with plates of sweets—all kinds of cookies (sugar, oatmeal, chocolate chip, snickerdoodles), a few creamy-looking pies, and a chocolate cake that no one has had the courage to cut into. Alex walks over to him, feeling relieved to have someone to talk to, even if it is just Henry. His parents got sidetracked already by some of their friends, and James vanished right away, so Alex is on his own.

Henry’s mother is standing by him, holding a glass of red wine and talking to some man Alex doesn’t recognize. She looks pretty, even stylish, in a red dress, her skin remarkably tan for winter.

“Hi, Henry. I didn’t expect to see you here,” Alex says.

“These cookies are good,” he says, nudging toward the table.

As if Alex has interrupted something, the man walks away, leaving the three of them alone. “Hi there,” Henry’s mother says, smiling. “You excited about Christmas, Alex?”

He has never really chatted with her before, besides an occasional hello. What does he even call her? He thinks of her only as Henry’s mom. “I guess so,” he says. “I’m just glad school is out.”

Henry continues munching on another cookie.

“Don’t eat too many of those, sweetie,” she says, before sipping more wine.

Alex hasn’t had a drop of booze since he made the team. He doesn’t really miss it, either, though in situations like this—a crowded party full of people he’d rather not talk to—he thinks a little booze might take the edge off. He’s sure some of the other kids here, including James, are sneaking sips from flasks.

Suddenly, Mrs. Mackey walks up to them. “Laura, I’m so glad you could make it! Hi, Henry,” she says. “And look at you, Alex. Isn’t he handsome?” she says.

Alex can feel himself blush. Mrs. Mackey used to scare the shit out of him. She was a stern, no-nonsense principal, and she’s always been tall for a woman. When he was a kid, she towered over them, with her perfectly coiffed gray hair and her tweedy suits. But now that he is older, she just seems like a nice old lady, not someone armed with a yardstick and a clipboard, clip-clopping down the hallways like she was the police on patrol.

“Oh, well, thanks for inviting us, Shirley,” Henry’s mom says. “It’s nice to be included.”

“Of course, dear,” she says. “You’re part of the neighborhood.”

“Well, I’m sure some people wish I wasn’t here,” she says, sort of laughing uncomfortably.

“Alex, let’s go get some punch,” Henry says, grabbing his hand and pulling him away. Mrs. Mackey and Laura continue chatting as the two of them make their way to the room with the punch. Almost instantly, Alex withdraws his hand from Henry’s, but he still follows him.