“Sam,” I say before he hangs up. “I wish it was you instead.”
5
“Romeo, Romeo”
Then
It was the summerRomeo and I learned that if we chugged a big enough glass of Coke, we could burp the alphabet song fromAtoZ. We were fifteen. Our voices had dropped a while back. Mine happened gradually, a change so slow and subtle I almost didn’t notice it. It just went a little lower each day until one morning, I went down to the kitchen and greeted my mom without clearing my throat first, and she turned to me in surprise and said, “Goodness! I thought you were dad.”
It was different for Romeo. There was nothing slow or subtle about it for him. Pretty much overnight, he went hoarse and stayed that way for weeks. Sally kept threatening to take him to the doctor. Every time she mentioned it, Romeo gave me a panicked look, certain he was mere minutes from being dragged to a medical professional only to be diagnosed with a common case of balls dropping.
Each time she mentioned it, I smiled and said, “Don’t worry, Sal. He’ll be all right.”
And he was.
His new voice was husky and deep. It commanded attention and took me a while to work out if it suited him or not. After a few months of paying close attention, I decided it did. I got used to it. I even got used to the fact that when he spoke, I felt the sound in my belly, not in my ears like I used to.
I think it took Romeo longer to get used to his new voice. It was almost as though it startled him. Like he didn’t recognize it as his own. He seemed a little fearful of it and spoke more quietly after it changed. Not just at school. At home too. A soft, throaty purr that seemed to exist on a sound wave all its own.
There were other changes, too, and lots of them. That summer, when I wasn’t with Romeo, I held down the sofa with my full body weight, eating everything I could lay my hands on and refusing to move no matter what anyone had to say about it.
“What are you going to do today, Jude?” asked my mom. “Surely you’re not planning on lying around all day and doing nothing again.”
“I’m not doing nothing.”
“Well, it looks a lot like you’re doing nothing.”
“I’mnotdoing nothing,” I said, curling a bicep and watching in satisfaction as it swelled and made the sleeve of my T-shirt grow snug. “I’m growing muscle.”
“Oh my God, you’re awful,” said Lexi.
“Can you make me a sandwich? Ma? Lex? Come on, I’m dying of hunger here.”
“Sure, honey.” My mom sighed. “How many do you want.”
“Dunno. Just make the whole loaf, I guess. If I don’t eat them all, I’ll take ’em to Romeo’s when I go over.”
Romeo had grown up but wasn’t muscular like me. He was lanky, almost as tall as me for the first time ever, and had a big complex about the size of his feet. In my opinion, it wasn’t so much that his feet were too big. It was that his legs were too long and skinny. Not that I told him that. Jesus no. The last thing I needed was for him to develop a complex about anything else.
Romeo wasn’t loving being fifteen. Being from a different world when you’re a kid is very different from being from a different world when you’re a teen. As a kid, he knew enough to try to hide it when he was around others, but as a teen, he felt the difference more keenly. He was an outsider, and he knew it.
I rang the bell when I got to his house, though I didn’t need to. The door was always unlocked, and even ifit hadn’t been, I had my own key. I only did it so Romeo would stick his head over the balcony outside his window and yell at me. He didn’t disappoint.
“What are you doing? Stop ringing the bell and get inside.”
“Romeo,” I cried as his face creased in disdain, knowing full well what was coming. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” To add a little flair to my performance, I raised the pitch of my voice and shielded my eyes with my hand, casting my gaze around his front yard as I said it.
He disappeared from view and reappeared a few seconds later, leaning over his balcony and throwing a shoe at me. I laughed and dodged it easily, so he threw the other one down too. I caught that one, sniffed it, and was about to tell him how much it stank when he said, “Wherefore meanswhy, Jude, not where, okay? You’ve literally just saidwhy are you Romeo?Notwhere are you, Romeo?Stop looking around like a dumbass when you say it.”
“O vanquished stars! O fairest summer day!” I’m not saying my grasp of Shakespeare was good. It wasn’t. I ad-libbed in a big way. “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore do I love thee thou doth. I mean,whyfore do I love thee thou doth? I bid thee to answer adieu.”
“Adieu?Thee thou doth?Jesus, Jude,” he said, one corner of his mouth quivering as he tried not to smile. “What’swrong with you? Get in here before I change my mind.” He closed his window and opened it again. “And bring my shoes with you.”
I dropped his shoes on the porch as he swung the front door open and let me in.
Romeo’s house was one of my favorite places in the world. Stepping inside felt like stepping into a worn, time-weathered Renaissance painting. The walls were painted dusty blues and burnt ochre. The drapes were made from heavy, vintage velvet and most of the paintings were antique store finds complete with cracked paint and ornate gilt frames. Studies of torsos, hands, and faces that seemed to writhe if you looked at them for long enough. Sally loved beautiful things and saw beauty where most people missed it. She was one of those people who walked through life so lightly it looked like she was dancing, but she left a big mark.
I never asked her about it, and I’ve often wished I had, but my strong suspicion was that she decorated the house around Romeo. To suit him. At least, that’s what it looked like to me. Everything in the house seemed to go with him. The colors, the vibe, it was like Sally understood that he didn’t fit comfortably into the outside world, so she created a world that was perfectfor him.
