Chapter Fourteen
The next day Adam was a bundle of nerves. He journaled for two hours before having to get up and move. His mom set about cleaning the guest room top to bottom, washing sheets and vacuuming. Adam tried to help, but after the fourth time of getting in her way, she banished him to the living room. He felt like his skin couldn’t contain him anymore. He needed to see Ru. And if he couldn’t he would start throwing things.
“I just want everything to be perfect for Ru.”
“It will be,” his mom assured him. “You just have to let me finish picking up. Do you have any homework?”
“No.” Adam always finished it in study hall if he could.
“Why don’t you go for a run,” she suggested. Great suggestion, only there was like a foot of snow on the ground, and it wasn’t even November yet. “Josiah, take him to the community center.”
Adam’s dad looked up from the paper he’d been thumbing through all morning. He seemed to study Adam for a second and then nodded. “Get changed.”
“I don’t know...,” Adam began, feeling itchy and irritated.
His dad shooed him upstairs. Adam put on his running things, new pants, dry shoes and socks, in some weird fog. Ru just needed to get here, because Adam was going to go nuts without him. By the time Adam got back downstairs, his dad had changed too, and then they were off to the community center. The place had a giant, half-mile indoor track on the second floor. It always smelled like cleaner and rubber since the actual track was made from recycled tires. Adam liked the bounciness of it.
His dad hadn’t even had time to strip out of his coat before Adam abandoned him and took to stretching. But Adam let him set the pace, and together they ran. A little over a year ago, his dad had first brought Adam here and told him they were going to run. Adam had laughed then, feeling it some grand joke. At the time he had been in his pissy teen stage, angry at the world, wearing black and writing on brand new clothes to ruin them just because he figured if he was angry all the time, the rest of the world should be.
And then his dad had shown Adam what it was to run. Sure, Adam could outrun him now. His legs were longer and well used to moving for long periods of time, but his dad kept up better than Nate ever had. When Adam bumped up the speed, his dad pushed to match, and they just kept going. Others came in and set slower paces; some just walked, staying to the outer edges while they flew by. He and his dad never really talked when they came there. This time was no different.
When Adam got tired, his dad pushed him to keep moving. Someone handed him a bottle of water, and Adam gulped it down but didn’t stop. He never knew how it was his dad could run so long. Did he go on lunch break from work? How was it he could make even Adam, who was used to running for hours a day, work so hard?
Sweat was pouring off Adam, and his lungs burned by the time his dad eased them into a slow, just-above-walking pace. They headed to the showers, and Adam realized he had been so out of his head before coming that he hadn’t packed a bag of clean clothes. Yet his dad stood there with a duffle, already showered and changed, handing over the bag with a small smile.
“Do you need more?” his dad asked quietly, about the running, not the clothes. What he was really asking was “Is your head clear yet?”
It wasn’t until that moment that Adam realized he needed the track more than it needed him. “I’m okay. Sorry about this morning. Sometimes...”
Sometimes he just didn’t feel normal in his own skin. Adam threw on the clean clothes and followed his dad out the door. If he wasn’t going to run for football or for track, he was still going to have to run, if just to keep sane.
Instead of going home, his dad took him to lunch. They sat near the fireplace at the restaurant, waiting for their sandwiches and soup. His dad smiled and looked happy to be there. When the food came, they ate in silence, enjoying the meal and letting it recharge their worn bodies.
When Adam pushed away his plate, his dad picked up the bag he’d brought in with him and pulled out a book. “I want you to read this, Adam. Not because you have to write a paper or because your teacher requests you to read it. I want you to read it because these very things may happen to you.”
Adam took the book from him and flipped it over to read the back. It was a book about a gay guy who had been bullied about being gay until he committed suicide. And suddenly Adam didn’t want to know the story because it scared him.
His dad put his hand over Adam’s. “You don’t have to take it to school with you. You can just read it at home. But I want you to read it. And if anyone starts to do to you things like what happened to this boy, you need to come to me right away, okay? Don’t leave your mother and me in the dark.”
Adam nodded and glared at the book in his hand. They went home, but it was just after one, so there were still hours before Ru was to arrive. He wasn’t answering any of Adam’s texts, and Adam had nothing to do, so he sat down and began to read the damn book. It was horrible. A train wreck in slow motion, yet he couldn’t stop reading and comparing it to his life. He’d seen some of those very same things happen to Bas; some had even happened to him. Adam feared for the young man in the story, even knowing what was going to happen.
When Bobby died, Adam cried. He thought about Bas and some of the other kids who never really fit in. Not everyone could coast like Adam had been. And really, why should they? Adam had sort of lived in this fantasy world where nothing could touch him, until he met Ru, even when guys like the Jockstraps bugged him.
Adam realized Ru would probably not fit in either. With his painted black nails, skater-punk hair, and infectious loud laughter, he’d be alienated, teased, bullied. No wonder he let himself be so alone. He had no idea of the horribly unforgiving world that would just eat him up.
Adam cast the book aside, knowing he would never forget Bobby’s story and how it had opened his eyes to things he had worked so hard to ignore. He thought of all the things he should have done—should be doing—when some of the other kids started to bother Bas. But he still had that odd gut-wrenching fear.
Dinner was silent. His mom made chicken and steamed veggies with a light curry sauce. It would heat up well later when Ru’s plane finally landed. They didn’t talk because Adam still had too much going on in his head from reading that book. There were things he wanted to ask his parents and yet didn’t, because he didn’t want to know.
The best thing about being a teenager is really thinking that you know everything and can conquer anything. The worst is finding that it’s all a lie.
His mom and dad headed to bed just after ten. Adam sat up, watchingTeen Wolfand thinking it was pretty hard being just a teen; add becoming a wolf once a month, and the average guy would be screwed. He must have dozed because a hesitant knock jolted him awake like a shot from a cannon. He jumped up and headed to the door.
Ru stood there, looking like himself again, only tired, backpack and guitar case in hand. Adam motioned him inside, and Ru waved to the car idling at the end of the drive, which then drove off. After Adam closed the door, they just stood there for a moment, staring at each other. He was memorizing the edges of Ru’s face, his pretty slanted eyes, the long lashes, thick lips. Adam leaned forward, and they kissed. Just like each time before, it was like angels singing. Perfect.
A minute later Adam was crying, clinging to Ru like he was all he had left in this world. Ru whispered soft words that really didn’t make any sense since Adam was so lost in his own head.
Here Ru was in front of him, and yet Adam was terrified of anything happening to him. He had fallen hard. The sort of things he read in books about meeting that person and just finding that you can’t even see the world beyond them anymore—those stories had always seemed so dumb when he’d had to read them for school. Fantasy. Until now.
