“Nope,” I said. “Not at all.” I had no shame. I didn’t need to prove how strong I was. And most importantly—I didn’t like to fight.
A cloud came to block the sun, and Isaiah looked up to the sky. I climbed his arm and regained balance.
Behind us, the girls got up from the bench and bunched under an umbrella together.
The first raindrops splashed our faces, and we ran to retrieve our bikes from their racks. Isaiah threw his leg over his seat and then noticed my teeth chattering. He took off his coat and offered it to me.
I slid into the padded coating beneath the wool, its protection like a blanket. “Thank you.”
“No problem,” he said, rubbing his hands together before strapping them to the bars.
We pedaled down the winding roads, which were quickly turning muddy from the rain. We had to go fast so we wouldn’t drown.
Once we reached my house, we were soaking wet. We left our bikes leaning out front and covered ourselves under the porch roof.
Isaiah was still pushing me around, saying, “Fight me.”
Unrelentingly, I said, “I’m not in the mood.”
And the wood creaked under our feet.
I was sopping wet, and was I ever in the mood, in grade nine, for anything but to stare at nature, or to stare at the wall?
Isaiah jiggled my skinny arm. “You gotta put some meat on these bones,” he said. “So you can wake ’em up if you need to.”
“I think they’re already awake,” I said. “They don’t need me to wake up.”
Oh, I felt so powerless in those years.
I reached for the door to my house, but Isaiah stopped my movement, with a hand around my wrist. And he wrestled me down to the wood of the porch. And then he had me lying underneath him, with one leg on either side of my torso, and he was dripping rainwater off the side of his jaw onto my forehead, his shirt clinging to his body.
He pulled me up fast, when he was done, and I crashed into him, feeling a rush, a buzz from the universe as it moved me, called me to touch his face and lean in to a kiss. It felt natural. It relieved me of all violence, all tension.
But it did not do the same for him. Isaiah pushed me away, eyebrows furrowing like I had caused him great discomfort. “Nick, no.” He was very serious as he took his jacket off me like I was a coatrack and not a person. “I don’t do that.”
There was no room to call it an accident. Isaiah knew already, somewhere deep down. It took so long for him to come around after I did that. He went on his track, making the connections that would get him a job at the Vanderbilt estate. I floundered desperately, looking for one business that would take me, ending up in the back of Mr. Wallace’s shop.
Yes, that was where I belonged. For years, I knocked on my friend’s door, and no one was home. He ignored me in school. I left him letters and got nothing back. I lost my friend.
Three years passed and Isaiah started to reach out again. It was as if the changing of seasons had wiped the memory of my mistake from his mind. We’d just gotten started again when the mobbrought hellfire to Greenwood—otherwise his house would’ve been the first place I went when that was happening.
Where are you, Isaiah? Are you alive? Did you make it?I was wrong to think that if I did nothing wrong, no one would want to hurt me. People want to hurt people for no reason at all. So, all that fighting he taught me was worth it.
Now I know to hold fast to the friends I have because there is the risk I could lose them. I vow to hold them even when I have no arms around me and remember them when I’m held in someone’s arms.
Everyone who’s held me is still holding me, and I’m still holding them too.
Are you alive?I had a mental connection with him too, but only sometimes.I have some stuff to do in New York, but I’ll come back with enough money to surprise you. And leave you jewels, and money, and concert tickets to the Apollo if when I knock, you open the door. I’m so sorry, Isaiah. I’m sorry.
Dreams of Isaiah still ran through my head when I heard the sound of Jay’s door creaking. In the morning light, I saw his father walk into the room and stop mid-journey on his way to the bed when he saw us. He stood over us, clothes in his hand, and stared, stunned at the sight.
I couldn’t move as I opened my eyes fully and looked at Mr. Gatsby. His expression didn’t change. And then, he turned and hurried out, as if he’d forgotten something in the other room.
I got out of bed and threw on my pants and socks. “I’m not supposed to be here.”
Jay was hiding under the pillow, still half asleep. What he mumbled in response was muffled. I prodded him with my arm, and he came up for air, squinting at the light from outside.
“Your father just saw us,” I said.
