The rest of us followed.
I kept the box with the wolf of stone in my lap.
And Joe. Joe just said things like I like it when things blow up in movies like boom and stuff and What do you think happens when you fart on the moon? and One time, I ate fourteen tacos because Carter dared me to and I couldn’t move for two whole days.
He said:
Maine was Maine. I miss my friends but I have you now.
That’s not even funny! I’m not laughing!
Can you pass me the mustard before Kelly uses it all like a jerk?
He said:
One time, we went to the mountains and went sledding.
I suck at video games, but Carter said I’ll get better.
I bet I can run faster than you.
He said:
Can I tell you a secret?
Sometimes I have nightmares and I can’t remember them.
Sometimes I can remember all of them.
The table went quiet, but Joe only had eyes for me.
I said, “I have bad dreams too. But then I remember I’m awake and that the bad dreams can’t follow me when I’m awake. And then I feel better.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”
I PASSED all my finals. Fuck Stonewall Jackson.
pretty boy/fuck off
MY MOTHER met the Bennetts halfway through summer at one of the Sunday dinners. She was nervous, like I’d been. She ran her hands along her dress, smoothing it out. She curled her finger in her hair. She said, “They seem so fancy,” and I laughed because they were and they weren’t.
My mom smiled anxiously when Elizabeth hugged her. Later, they were in the kitchen drinking wine and Mom giggled, her face a little flushed with drink and happiness.
THOMAS WORKED from home. I never understood what he did exactly, but he was always on the phone in his office late at night, calling people in Japan or Australia, and always early in the morning with New York and Chicago.
“Finances,” Carter told me with a shrug. “Money something something blah blah boring. You can’t die on this level, Ox. It’s too easy.”
ELIZABETH PAINTED. She said that summer she was in her green phase. Everything was green. She’d spin a record on the old Crosley and say things like “Today, today, today” and “Sometimes, I wonder,” and then she’d begin. It was always a controlled chaos and every now and then she’d have paint in her eyebrows and a smile on her face.
“Apparently she’s good,” Kelly told me. “Has shit hanging in museums. Don’t tell her I said this, but I think it all looks the same. I mean, I can splash paint on a canvas too. Where’s my money and fame?”
I WALKED down the dirt road after work and Joe was waiting for me. “Hey, Ox,” he said and he smiled so very, very big.
SOMETIMES THEY had days where I wasn’t allowed to go over. Two or three or four days in a row. “It’s family time, Ox,” Elizabeth would say. Or, “We’re keeping the kids in tonight, Ox,” Thomas would say. “Come back on Tuesday, okay?”
I understood, because I was not part of their family. I didn’t know what I was to them, but I forced the hurt away. I didn’t need it. I had too many of my own to add more on top. They didn’t mean it in a bad way, I didn’t think. I’d find Joe waiting for me on the road a few days later and he’d hug me and say “I missed you,” and I’d follow him home and Elizabeth always said, “There’s our Ox,” and Thomas always said, “You all right?” Then it would be like nothing had happened at all.
I’d lie in bed those nights, lost in my thoughts, hearing far-off sounds I would have sworn were wolves howling. The moon was fat and full and lit up the room as if it were the sun.
THEY NEVER came inside my house. I never asked and neither did they. I never really thought about it.
“YOU STILL cutting out early today?” Gordo asked me one humid day toward the end of August.
I looked up from the alternator repair I was doing. “Yeah. Registration. Already.” I’d brought a change of clothes so I didn’t go stinking of metal and oil.
“Your ma’s working?”
“Yeah.”
“You want me to go with?”
I shook my head. “I got this.”
“Junior year. It’s tough.”
I rolled my eyes. “Shut up, Gordo.”
“You going to take that pretty boy with you, papi?” Rico shouted from across the shop.
I flushed, even though it was nothing.
Gordo’s eyes narrowed. “What pretty boy?”
“Our big boy has got himself some prime real estate,” Rico said. “Tanner saw them out a couple of nights ago.”
I groaned. “That’s just Carter.”
“Carter,” Tanner sighed, his voice all breathy.
“Carter?” Gordo asked. “Who is he? I want to meet him. In my office so I can scare the shit out of him. Goddammit, Ox. You better be using fucking condoms.”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “Make sure you get the fucking condoms instead of the regular ones. They’re better. For the fucking.”
“Ba-zing!” Rico cried.
“I hate all of you,” I muttered.
“That’s a lie right there,” Tanner said. “You love us. We bring you joy and happiness.”
“So you’re fucking him, then?” Gordo said with a scowl.
“Jesus, Gordo. No. We were getting pizza to take back to his little brothers. We’re friends. They just moved here. I’m not into him like that.” Though I didn’t think it would be that hard to be. I did have eyes, after all.
“How’d you meet him?”
Nosy bastard. “They moved into the old house next to ours. Or back into the house. I don’t know quite which yet. The Bennetts. Heard of them?”
And then a funny thing happened. I’d seen Gordo pissed off. I’d seen him laugh so hard he pissed himself a little. I’d seen him upset. I’d seen him sad.
I’d never seen him scared. Of anything.
Gordo didn’t get scared. Never once since I’d first met him when my daddy took me to the shop one day and Gordo had said, “Hey, guy, heard a lot about you, what say you and me go get a pop out of the machine.” Never once. If asked, I would have said Gordo didn’t get scared at all, even if I knew how ridiculous that sounded.
But Gordo was scared now. Eyes wide, blood draining from his face. It lasted ten seconds. Maybe fifteen or twenty. And then it was gone like it’d never been there at all.
But I’d seen it.
“Gordo—”
He turned and walked into his office, slamming the door behind him.
“What the fuck?” Rico asked succinctly.
“Jealous prig,” Tanner muttered.
“Shut the fuck up, Tanner,” Chris warned, glancing over at me.
I just stared at the closed door.
“I’M SORRY,” I told Gordo later. “For whatever I did.”