“Do you know his dad hurt him for sure?”
I sighed. “Guessing, but it’s a good one.”
The cop fished a card out of a pocket on his utility belt and handed it to me. “If he isn’t up to stopping by on his way home, have him call me directly. Number’s there. Someone’s going to have to help Mr. Gaffin figure out a few things, since he’s not in the right frame of mind to help himself.”
Screaming started up again in the room, and two nurses rushed past us and through the door. “Sorry it took us so long!” one woman with ruby red hair up in a bun said with a big smile. She closed the door behind herself, but it didn’t stop me from hearing, “Fuck you, Uhlig! Fuck you!”
What the hell was I going to do now? I stumbled back until my shoulder bumped the wall. I’d barely gotten to know Angel, and I liked him already. Didn’t want to see anything bad happen to him. Should I just end this? Let him go?
The idea of not seeing Angel again, with his sweet smile that didn’t know whether it wanted to stick or fly away, churned rage in the pit of my stomach. No, I didn’t want to abandon him with a mess I’d helped create. I stormed away from the continued shouting. The policeman gave me a wave and then took deep breaths like he was getting ready for a sprint before he opened the door and went back in the room.
I wandered around until I found a small alcove with a coffee vending machine that I thought was near Angel’s room. My hands shook. I wanted to go back to him, but I wasn’t sure I was able yet. I went through the motions of pushing buttons for a coffee and my mind took off down a dark road, no matter how many times I told it not to go there.
* * *
June 14th, 2002
Last Day of Classes, New Gothenburg Southeast High School
The obnoxious redbell over the door rang to end class for the last time in my high school career. Merit leaned forward and grinned.
“We’re fucking done man! Done. Fuck this place!” His eyes sparkled happily.
“Language,” Mr. Eaton said lazily from his desk, but he didn’t look up at us because he was too busy reading a book.
Merit’s wide smile flashed me a crooked front tooth that I thought was cute, but he was planning to get braces to get rid of because he hated it. He held out his hand, and we shook before we stood from our desks and lazily walked out of the room behind everyone else. We had already emptied our lockers yesterday, so there was nothing to stop for on our way toward the front door, except Creed. He rushed out of the art room as we passed it, with his black messenger bag plastered with band patches and buttons of Gir bouncing against his skinny hip. Merit opened his arms for him, and I was surprised when Creed pressed right against his side, but we were done with this fucking place. We were adults now. We could do anything we wanted.
“How was your last class?” Creed asked us.
“We didn’t do anything,” Merit said, and Creed pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up his nose and managed to appear scandalized. Merit and I snorted out laughter as we walked from the building. I slid my arm around Creed’s shoulders. Merit still clung to his other side. I was the tallest and often found myself between them, but today I understood. They wanted to show off because we didn’t have to pretend anymore.
We were free. My heart thudded fast and I couldn’t hold in a smile.
“I can’t wait to get out of this dump forever,” Merit grumbled.
“We’re almost there,” I said.
“It’s kind of sad that this is it,” Creed murmured as I let them go so we could walk down the front steps of the school. When we reached the bottom, we turned and stared back up at the foreboding redbrick building. Two stories high and home to some of the worst fights I’d ever been in, I was more than ready to be gone. I flipped the old place off.
“This is it,” Creed whispered.
I punched him lightly. “Until the graduation ceremony tomorrow night.”
Merit reached around him and jabbed me hard on the side. “Don’t do that to him.” He glared daggers, and I had to laugh all over again.
“You know, you two could go out on a real date now. No one’s going to be able to do shit to your locker or anything.”
Merit and Creed shared a look that made me definitely feel like an outsider; it was so ooey-gooey and lovey-dovey that I was both envious and disgusted at the same time. “About that,” Creed said.
“Yeah?”
“We’re thinking about going to—”
“Hey, fags!”
All three of us flinched, though we knew that word hadn’t been shouted because anyone had any clue we were gay. Every time it happened, I had a moment of panic we’d somehow been outed. But no, fag was just the most common insult around here. We turned as a group, and I cringed inside.
Peter Gaffin stood behind us, and when we were facing him he strutted around until he was blocking our path. The girl at his side gave him an unhappy frown. He wasn’t very big, but he was mean like a hornet, and he kept stinging until he brought someone down. He was the type of scrapper who would fight until you knocked him out cold. The fucker was fuckable, too, so it didn’t surprise me that he had a tiny blonde in a short red-and-black skirt and barely-there tank top nestled up to his side, though she pouted at him like she wanted him to stop being a dick.
