I stood at my locker, suddenly frozen, watching Cassie walk down the hall toward me. Her steps were silent and slow, as if life were a movie that edited to enhance an important moment. I could almost hear the soundtrack, sad music that quickened with the rapidly increasing beat of my heart.
I looked down at my shoes, then up at my friend who suddenly stood a few inches from me. I couldn’t look her in the eye. I knew right then that I would feign ignorance.
“Hey,” Cassie said. “Do you ever go to a familiar place, but as soon as you walk in you know something’s different?”
My heart leapt into my throat. I bit my lip to choke back tears. She could feel it. She knew without me even saying a word.
I turned to my locker and grabbed my journal—a plain, red spiral notebook filled with everything that was anythingbut plain. My mind is not something to be reasoned with. It’s often confusing and dark, and it takes twisted turns and ends up in dark alleys. The only way for me to purge out the insanity is to write it down.
I threw the journal into my backpack.
Cassie kept talking, but I wasn’t really paying attention. I answered her with deliberate disinterest. I already knew why the teachers were reserved, perhaps a little gentler than usual, and why the atmosphere was strange this morning.
Mr. Harris was dead. And I knew more than I should.
I followed behind Cassie as she walked to Mr. Harris’ office. It would be empty when we got there. I could have stopped her, but pretending to know nothing seemed so much easier than the truth.
I looked inside at the posters on the painted cinderblock wall behind his desk. Instead of being tacked up with tape or poster putty, Mr. Harris’ posters were framed… like windows into his life.
Stupid posters. Why did he have to be so… So… Why did he have to leave the windows to his life wide open like that? Didn’t he know that it’s safer to keep them shut? And locked. And the curtains drawn.
I fought back the urge to rip the frames off the wall and smash them to pieces.
But the bell would ring any moment. So, I didn’t. I just left Cassie there and plowed through the strangeness of the hallway to where my homeroom class was about to begin as if nothing were different at all. Except everything was different now. Everything was different because I had this huge weight pulling at my chest, a growth in my soul that wasn’t there before.
I sat down at my desk in the front right corner of the classroom. I opened my notebook and doodled the words, “Ignorance is bliss.” This was the first time in my life that I wished I was ignorant.
As Mr. Blake babbled on about “unexpected tragedy” and “accidents in life” and “unexplained yada yada,” my mind drifted off to the phone conversation I had witnessed in my own living room just over an hour—and a lifetime—earlier.
~ * ~
My older brother sat on the couch, still rubbing his eyes, a knit of spittle coagulated in the corner of his mouth from where drool leaked out and soaked his pillow. He was shirtless, as usual. His phone sat on the coffee table, vibrating like crazy, so I grabbed it and tossed it to his lap.
He glared at me.
I walked around the corner but stopped just short of actually going into the kitchen. Something made me stay.
“What, dude?” he asked into the phone, annoyed.
As he listened, my brother’s eyes opened wide, his pupils dilating until he looked like one of those bug-eyed miniature monkeys that are always on the cover of Zoo Books magazine and stuff. He looked ridiculous. I had never seen him so, I dunno… innocent looking?
“Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa.” He ran his hand through his rumpled hair. I listened more intently.
“Jesus, Nick. What the– Dead? Seriously? You’re not effin’ yankin’ my chain?”
My brother flopped against the couch cushions, deflated. I held my breath.
“Christ,” he said. “I just wanted to have a little fun and mess with the queer.”
The word made me bristle.
My brother rubbed his eyes and face. “I didn’t think it would kill him. I mean, I didn’t even see the car actually go off the road. Are you sure they found it actually rolled in the effin’ ditch? We only tapped it. Just… tapped it.”
My heart stopped with my breath. Dead? Queer?
But my brother kept talking, faster now. “Guy shouldn’t have had that frickin’ rainbow sticker on his damn bumper. It’s like a frickin’ target. Jesus. He waltzes in here with his closet wide open, and then he frickin’ turns all these kids gay. For god’s sake, maybe we did the whole damn school—maybe the whole frickin’ town—a favor, right? Right?”
My brother was trying to convince himself of something. Wait a minute… My mind slowly caught up to the words spoken, putting bits together that shouldn’t ever have been broken. Turning kids gay? Oh, no. Oh, god no. Mr. Harris.
I ran to the bathroom, down the hall, away from my brother. I dry heaved over the toilet. My head spun. Tiny lights popped and tingled around my eyes. I felt removed from the world, from my body, from myself.
Mr. Harris was dead and my brother killed him.
I wanted to punch my brother in the face, break his nose, watch as he screamed in shock and horror and pain, as he suddenly knew that he and his friends were murders and I could never forgive him. But I would never have the guts to do it. Sometimes, I’m so weak. I had to leave the house so I could breathe.
I grabbed my backpack and unlocked the front door. My brother just glanced at me, then back down at his knees. He said nothing.
I heard my mom yell from the bathroom upstairs. “Honey! Arthur? You leaving already?”
“Yeah, mom. Bye.” I choked out the words.
“Okay, have a great day, hon!”
Great day. Right.
Instead of waiting for the bus, I walked to school. It was a couple of miles, but I needed the time to pull myself together. I knew I’d have to face Cassie and the others. I didn’t know what to tell them. How do you soften that kind of blow?
~ * ~
I never figured anything out on that long walk to school. Obviously. I just looked Cassie in the face and pretended I was as ignorant as she was. I always take the easy way. I hate that about myself.
I ignored Mr. Blake’s lecture and he let me, because everything was different today. Today I knew that even my love for Cassie was an easy way… because it would never happen, her and me. I had loved her for a long time, but to her I could never be someone more than the best friend. I’d never tenderly run my fingers through her soft hair and slip away into her deep blue eyes. I’d be the hug when she was crying, the shared popcorn bowl, the milkshake at Tony’s Pizza after a football game. That’s all.
Cassie was easy because I would never have to move into that fragile level of a relationship where dreams happen and then shatter. I’d watch her do all that and more with another someone that I could never be no matter how much I wanted it: a girl.
It was strange that no one ever pushed me to talk at Mr. Harris’ meetings. I let them all assume that I was just gay like some of the guys. I guess technically I am gay. But how do you say ‘hi, I’m a lesbian; please just ignore the penis’?
Only Mr. Harris knew what I was going through. He’d been gently encouraging me to talk about my identity, even if just to Cassie. Of course, it would be hardest for me to start that conversation with her. What if she felt like I had been lying to her all this time?
Now Mr. Harris was gone, and my secret with him. Maybe I’d never tell anyone else and take the easy way on that, too.
I sighed so that my body visibly shuddered. Mr. Blake stepped in front of my desk and kneeled down to my eye level. I shut my notebook.
He whispered, “You okay?”
I paused for a brief moment before answering.
“Is anyone?”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR – A poet and fiction writer since she was a child, Melinda K. Bryce has always felt the power of the written word. After studying English Literature and creative writing at Western Michigan and Oakland Universities, she is now a freelance writer living outside of Detroit. She is published in various online magazines and is working on her first novel.