What They Always Tell Us (19 page)

“Yeah, I’m sure. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“Okay, but I’m ready to leave, too,” Nathen says.

That’s a wise idea, James thinks.

“I don’t mind dropping James off,” Clare says, smiling. “Really. Stay a little longer and have some fun.”

“Okay,” Nathen says, eyeing them suspiciously.

Clare drives him home in her Acura. She’s a careful, slow driver. This used to drive James nuts, but now he is glad she is cautious. It allows him to calm down and collect his thoughts. In fact, just sitting next to her calms him.

“You okay?” she says.

He nods. “I can’t believe I hit him.”

“I know,” she says, at first sounding all serious, but then she fails to suppress a giggle.

“Shit, it’s not funny,” James says.

“I know. But Greer deserved it. He’s deserved a good punching for a long time.”

“I guess he was just being drunk and stupid, like you said.” Though even
he
knows that those are not good excuses. Greer is always drunk and always says stupid stuff. James would expect such bullshit from someone else, but not from a friend. A supposed friend—to both him and Nathen.

When they reach James’s house, Clare stops the car and they sit there in the silence.

“Thanks,” James says.

“Thanks for what?”

“For taking me home. And for, I don’t know, just being there. I feel like such an ass.”

“Don’t be silly,” Clare says.

“I’m so ready to fucking graduate,” he says, as if that will solve everything.

“I know.”

He feels, all of a sudden, the urge to kiss her. Maybe because it’s so soon after Valentine’s Day. Maybe because he knows what it’s like, kissing her, and because it always felt good. Maybe because he just needs to. But he knows that would be a bad move. Friends. They have to remain friends.

“Well, I better go in,” he says.

“James? Don’t let what Greer said bother you, okay?”

“I won’t,” he says, though he knows it
will
bother him, if he thinks about it. He’ll just have to try to erase it from his memory. And he’ll have to call Greer tomorrow and apologize, which kind of stinks because, if anything, Greer should apologize to
him.
Still, he hopes he didn’t give him a black eye or anything. Maybe everyone will have been too drunk to remember the fight and what was said. Maybe by Monday all will be forgotten and forgiven. Maybe.

He smiles at Clare and gets out of the car, and then walks to the front door without turning back. He’s home well before curfew, but his parents are already in bed, either asleep or watching TV with the lights off. Upstairs, he sees the light of Alex’s room under the crack of the door. He goes to his own room and undresses and crawls into bed, turning the lights out. Soon he hears a knock. “Yeah,” he says.

The door creaks open. The hallway light allows him to see that it is Alex. “Why’re you home so early?” Alex asks.

“Because I was tired,” he says, hoping that will settle the matter.

“Did Nathen drop you off?”

“No,” James says. “He stayed.” He knows he should leave it at that. But something—that voice in the back of his head, that buzzing sound—makes him add, “He was hitting on some girl or something.”

“Oh,” Alex says. “Well, I’ll let you sleep.”

In the darkness James tries to look at Alex’s face, as if searching for a clue, some secret sign that his interest in Nathen goes beyond friendship. But Alex, after a brief pause, shuts the door, leaving James alone in the dark. James shuts his eyes and wills sleep to come to him, but for a while he tosses and turns, the sound of Greer’s shrill voice echoing in his head like a warning.

That Monday at school things are understandably weird between James and his friends. He apologizes to Greer during lunch, before Nathen gets there. Greer doesn’t look scarred or beaten up at all, just some slight reddishness on his cheek, and he brushes James’s apologies off.

“No big deal,” Greer says. “Besides, I was a jerk. I’m sorry, too.” But James can tell some damage has been done. It’s like all of the unspoken, underlying division between them keeps growing and growing.

Nathen finally joins them with his tray of food. He’s mostly clueless, though he asks, a few times, if something happened at the party. “You sure you guys didn’t fight? You guys cool?”

“We’re cool,” Greer says.

“If you say so,” Nathen says.

James considers telling Nathen the truth, but what good will that do? It will just upset and embarrass him. But, at the same time, shouldn’t he get a chance to defend himself? Because what Greer said is clearly bullshit.

The bell rings and they all scatter to their classes. Nathen sits across from him, as usual, during AP English. Valerie Towson sits in the front row, taking notes like a robot. If she weren’t so quiet and so harmless, James would feel a lot of rage directed at her for getting into Duke already. Preston said she only got in because she’s black, but James knows she’s smart, deserving. Maybe, just maybe, they’ll continue being classmates next year.

Mr. Harris is lecturing about Jane Austen and satire and comedies of manners and social expectations of women in eighteenth-century England. Whenever he asks a question he almost always answers it himself, so it is easy for James to zone out. He glances at Nathen, and though he tries not to think about it, he can’t help pondering what Greer said at the party. Is any of it even possible?

Last year, in his American government class, Mr. Wiley would frequently break the class into groups and assign them debate topics about current political events and issues of the day, one group taking a pro viewpoint and the other taking the con. Once, the class had debated gays in the military. No one had wanted to take on the pro view, even though Mr. Wiley had told them, again and again, that their individual viewpoints didn’t matter. They just had to research and argue and convince Mr. Wiley of their assigned position. Still, no one had wanted to even
pretend
to be on the pro side of gays—except for Mary Beth Hastings, who was always going on about animal abuse and how the president sucked and how eating meat was inhumane and how recycling was a moral imperative. So it became Mary Beth against the rest of them, saying how gays were no different than you and me, and that they could serve just as well as any other man and woman, all the while putting up with hoots and under-the-breath comments from the guys (and some girls) in the class. James had felt bad for her, but after class he didn’t give the topic much thought. He didn’t know any gays, so what did this have to do with him?

Even now, most of the gay people he knows about are on TV shows, funny and witty and sophisticated characters who live in big cities. Or else they are like the guy who cuts his mother’s hair, or that male nurse from their church—what’s his name?—men who seem more like women to James, with their girly way of talking, their constant hand gestures, their wide-eyed expressiveness and glued-on smiles. They’re like friendly extraterrestrials, harmless but totally foreign.

Nathen is nothing like any of those guys. Nor is Alex, now that he thinks about it. They aren’t girly at all. So what could make Greer think they’re homos? Is there something James can’t see? Sure, neither of them has girlfriends or seems interested in acquiring one anytime soon, but so what? That doesn’t mean a thing. Hell, James doesn’t want a girlfriend either, and he knows
he’s
not a homo.

Near the end of class Nathen glances over and stifles a yawn and rolls his eyes, then smiles. It’s that smile again, that look in his eyes of total happiness. No homo would smile like that, never.

When James gets home from school, he notices a strange car parked near Henry’s house. It’s not exactly in front, but sort of between Henry’s yard and the house next door, as if it is undecided about which house it is visiting. The car’s not a Mercedes but a navy blue BMW with darkly tinted windows all the way around. James walks to the mailbox and steals glances at the car. He can’t tell if anyone’s in it or not, and he can’t see the license plate in the back.

Again, there are no letters from colleges today, but James is almost relieved. No news is good news, as they say. Besides, he knows it’s still too early.

Inside, he drops his books in the kitchen, grabs a bottle of Gatorade from the fridge, and sits in front of the kitchen window, spying on the car. A few minutes pass, and then Mrs. Burns pulls up in her Volkswagen. James sees Henry dash out from the passenger side and run up the walkway to the front porch. He bounces on his heels, like he has to pee. Mrs. Burns makes her way there, and James notices that she stares at the BMW. But instead of letting her gaze linger, she unlocks the front door and the two of them head inside.

Soon, he sees Alex pull up in his Honda. Alex is in his track clothes, carrying a gym bag and his book bag as he comes through the kitchen door.

“Oh, hey.”

“There’s another weird car in front of Henry’s house,” James says.

Alex sets his stuff down and joins him at the table. “You mean that BMW?”

“Yeah. I can’t tell if anyone’s in it.”

Just then, someone opens the driver’s-side door. It’s a man in shades, with wavy brownish red hair with too much gel in it, wearing a suit without a tie.

“Who is that?” Alex asks.

“How should I know?”

They watch the man hesitate and then ease the car door shut. He looks around, west and east, as if watching for traffic. Just then, James sees Mrs. Burns come outside and stand on her front steps. The man sees her and they stare at each other, saying nothing.

“She’s shaking her head,” Alex says.

James sees that. He can also see her saying something—not shouting exactly, but with force, as if she’s issuing a warning.

The man moves forward a bit, but Mrs. Burns says something that stops him in his tracks. As if suddenly embarrassed, the man moves back to the car, gets inside, and starts the engine.

Mrs. Burns crosses her arms and continues to stand protectively on the steps, until finally the car drives off. James thinks about trying to get a glimpse of the license plate number, but the car is gone too quickly. Finally, satisfied that the car is gone, Mrs. Burns goes back inside.

“That was weird,” Alex says.

“Totally weird,” James says.

“Who do you think that was?”

“I have no idea. Maybe an ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah, maybe.” Alex peers out the window, and James studies him, like if he looks at him long enough Alex will reveal something about himself, will open up. But then he thinks some things are better left unexplored, unsaid. And maybe this applies to Henry and his mother, too—maybe they should stop being nosy, suspicious.

Just then Alex turns and notices him staring. “What?”

“Nothing,” James says.

February gives way to March, and the weather gets a little warmer and springlike, though a nip in the air lingers. The month passes slowly, but nothing really happens besides the usual—school, practice, waiting for that letter from Duke. Tennis practice intensifies as the days go by, so James stays at the courts until four-thirty, sometimes later. During practice some days, he glimpses the cross-country team across the soccer practice field in the smaller stadium. He can make out Alex, his lanky frame and clipped haircut, going through the drills with his teammates. He looks, amazingly, like he belongs there—he looks like an athlete. But besides that, he and Alex only really see each other at dinner, and by then they are exhausted by full days.

Finally, the first day of April arrives. April Fool’s Day. That day, some members of the senior class—including Preston, of course, but not James—sneak out to the parking lots during lunch and soap the windshields of a bunch of the junior class’s cars with lame stuff like
SENIORS RULE
! and
JUNIORS SUCK
! When James gets home, he sees that Alex’s car, thankfully, is clean of any soap smearing. Maybe they avoided Alex’s car on James’s behalf, or maybe he just got lucky.

After dinner that night James sequesters himself in his room. Spring break is just a week away, and James is looking forward to a reprieve from the toil of tennis practice and the boredom of school. When his phone rings, he lets the machine get it. He’s on his bed reading
Great Expectations,
too lazy to get up and answer it. Besides, it’s probably someone he doesn’t want to talk to, which includes most everyone these days.

At first there is dead air. But then a familiar voice says, “James?” There is a pause, then the voice continues: “It’s me, Alice. I…I don’t know why I’m calling.” For a moment James thinks it’s Preston or Greer pranking him, because the voice sounds odd, too high-pitched for Alice. Then the voice, after a pause, begins again: “I guess…I just wanted to talk.” The voice cracks then, and then he knows it is Alice, not a joke at all. She starts crying, right there on the phone.
Oh, great,
he thinks. But there
is
something different in her voice. She doesn’t sound hostile and bitter and ready for a fight. She sounds sad, scared, vulnerable. Alice quits crying, sniffles, and gathers her faltering voice. “I know I’m the last person you would want to talk to,” she says. “But, I really…I really wish you’d pick up. I swear I’m not calling to…to, uh…Well, I’m calling as a friend.”

James picks up. “I’m here.”

“Oh,” she says, sounding surprised but relieved.

“What is it?” he asks, not trying to sound short but knowing he does.

“Listen, I’m sorry to call like this. But, you were always so easy to talk to. And…I don’t know.” She starts crying again.

What can he do but wait and listen?

Finally, she gathers herself and says, “Sorry. I’d rather talk in person. Can you, like, maybe meet me after school tomorrow?”

He wishes they could chat now, not later. “I don’t know. Tomorrow’s real busy. I have tennis practice and then I have some shit to do.”

“Please, James? I won’t take up much time.”

She sounds so sad and needy, he can’t deny her. “Okay, fine,” he says, feeling totally put out and annoyed.

“Thanks,” she says softly.