truth

It was freshman year. I was at one of those senior parties that my sister had dragged me too. She was always taking me to those kinds of parties, because her friends were amused that she was actually willing to drag her fifteen year old brother around.

“My friends love you,” She said on that specific evening where she sat in the drivers seat, looking at me sideways where I was in the passenger’s seat. “The people at the party should too!”

She had no idea what she was talking about, really. She didn’t know what I knew that – the juniors, and even seniors, did in fact like me, but unfortunately for her, me tagging along was bringing down her rep. No one liked a kid brother tag-along, no matter how “chill” he was. Most of the time, I didn’t even want to be at the parties anyway. I wasn’t big on drinking or doing drugs, and that was all anyone ever wanted me to do when we were at those parties. “Here do this!” “Have a sip of that.” It was all old, and to be perfectly honest, I just wasn’t that interested.

I’m not even sure what was different about that night. Maybe things just changed when I saw you at that party, the only other freshman in the midst of a group of upper class men. You were more liked among them than I was (of course), so I wasn’t surprised to see you there with a red plastic cup in one hand, and a sloppy grin plastered over your face while you hung onto the the precious words of one of the all-star football players.

You weren’t even an athlete, but you could pretend to know what they were talking about so that you could keep their attention for more than two minutes at a time.

There was one girl at the party who wouldn’t leave me alone. I’d seen her at school before, but I wasn’t sure what year she was, or even what her name was. Yet she followed me around at that party, getting me to keep downing drinks while she talked my ear off about everything she could possibly think of. And all the while we were wandering around I kept passing you and your posse of new older friends, each time your cup was being refilled or you were laughing hysterically at some retarded joke you felt obligated to find funny. “Hey Sam, here, you’re done with that, so finish mine.” The girl poured her drink into my cup, and I sipped. By that time, I was finding out what it was like to be drunk. The room wasn’t so much spinning as it was falling in and out of focus, and I felt in in my head more than in my legs, and I still found it hard to walk in a straight line as I excused myself from her presence in league to find a bathroom.

Instead of a bathroom, I found myself in a closet. I slammed the door as quickly as I could before she could see my misdirection and attempt to assist me in finding the right door.

My head was beginning to spin by then; the room was going around and around, and I stumbled as I continued to back into the depths of the closet. I was so lame, hiding from a girl who was probably just hoping to make a new friend. But she’d been so drunk, and so annoying… who knew what she was going to try and get me to do while I was in the similar intoxicated state.

My heart was beating, and my breathing was getting more and more staggered, when the door of the closet opened and shut quickly, and someone slipped into the room with me. You, slipped into the room with me.

I knew it was you instantly, but I don’t know how that was. You turned around, and let out a loud hysterical laugh letting me in on the fact that you were way past tipsy.

“Oh, ha ha” You laughed, and looked at me cowering in the back. “I thought this was the bathroom? What the hell!” You smiled, instead of turning and leaving like I expected you to, and came closer to where I was standing.

“Oh,” I said, because it was the only thing I could even think of to say in the first place.

“I’m Max”

I knew that already, of course. I’d been hearing people call out your name all night.

“Okay,” That was the point where I should have inserted my name. But I didn’t, and instead I began to move towards the door to leave. I wasn’t really in the mood to get roped into babysitting you when I was drunk enough myself.

“Hey, where are you going?” You gently grabbed onto my arm and tugged, keeping me from reaching my arm out to grab the door knob. “What’s your name?”

I felt my face grow warm and I avoided your eyes. “Sam,” I said.

“Sam, gimme a kiss.”

I looked up then, and my head swirled from the sudden motion. Your face wasn’t in focus, but I could see your smile and the glint in your hooded eyes. “Uh…what?”

“Fuck, no, nothing like, gay or anything. I’m not like, gay, if that’s what you’re thinking. Just on the cheek.” You raised a finger and tapped your cheek to show what you meant, but I still stood there blankly because I didn’t know why something like that was even coming out of your mouth.

“Uh -”

“like this!” You then leaned in and pecked my cheek. I could feel your breath against my face, riddled with alcohol and cigarette smoke. “See? Totally harmless!”

I widened my eyes, and felt my mouth open slightly in surprise. My cheek burned where your lips had been.

“Come on, I like your face!” How could I refused someone like you? You, who had everything you ever wanted, and got everyone to like you?

I leaned toward you. Your cheek was exposed and you were still smiling slightly. But then at the last minute you turned your head so that the kiss I’d directed to your cheek hit your mouth. Our lips collided and for a split second and I let my eyes fall closed before I ripped them open and pulled away from you in surprise. Your smile had left, and I could see your cheeks darken in the light that was pouring from under the crack in the door.

You pushed passed me without a word, and stumbled through the closet door back to the party, leaving me to wonder what the fuck had just happened.

When I finally willed myself to leave the closet, I went through the kitchen of the house, out the back door into the yard, and promptly vomited my entire stomach into the rose bushes at the side of the garden.

We never talked after that. I never caught your eyes, nor did I make an effort to talk to you. You were the same. And so was I, I guess. But regardless, we didn’t even exchange glances.

Until the end of that year, that is. I was walking to third period Biology, my head down slightly, and books tucked under my arm because I didn’t have time to stuff them back into my bag. I heard someone mutter “fag” under their breath in a more than audible whisper as I passed the first floor boys’ bathroom, and I ducked my head further to avoid the eye contact while the laughter and snickering ensued. I was the kind of person who tried to avoid the conflict rather than engage myself. As I passed the person who’d spoken (a loud, outspoken jock who made his life mocking everyone he can in contact with), he stuck out one of his legs, causing me to trip on his over-sized shoe.

I didn’t hit the ground, but the contents of my arms clattered to the floor of the hallway. I bent to gather them up, and my eyes automatically shifted towards to the pair of skinny, toothpick legs clad in ripped, gray jeans directly in my line of sight in front of me.

It was strange. I hadn’t spoken to you since that party in freshman year, yet there you were, bent down to my level, and picking up my Algebra book while I avoided looking at you in my humiliation. The bell rang, and the hall almost immediately emptied out as students filed into class.

We were alone. Everything was quiet and my cheeks were burning with more intensity than they had ever before in the past. I met your eyes for the first time in months, and you smiled, brushing hair away from your face before standing up and walking away. It was like at that moment, everything was clear, like if I was wiping the condensation from a car’s window after a night in the cold.

Those few seconds of eye connection told me more about my own feelings for you than the that kiss, however that may be. My stomach plummeted as I watched you walk away, and my cheeks remained hot even though the moment was over. While I was kneeling in the empty hallway, late to Bio, I was already thinking of ways to see you again, and feel a connection between us again. Any connection again. I needed it.
And then we were friends, and I don’t know how that happened. We slept through the end of freshman year and through all of sophomore year as though it didn’t matter – nothing was registering in our minds expect the connection that was slowly developing between us. It was weird, and almost unreal in a way. We started living in a world where there was no need to be away from each other.

Going into junior year was smooth, on weekends we were able to steal moments alone when your parents were out of the house, or when my mom had an overnight business trip. I memorized the freckles that spanned across your nose, my hands learned the lines of your face and the curve in your back as though they were my own. You smuggled vodka from your dad’s liquor cabinet and we sat in the park behind your house while you sipped and I watched your face contort at the bitterness of the taste, then take one myself and nearly spit it across the grass. The stars winked above our heads and we just stayed silent because there was no need for words. Mouths and hands moving together with emotions were worth more than the vibrations of our vocal chords, but once as you finished off a bottle of Smirnoff that my my sister had bought for us, you let words slip from your lips, and you told me that this was how you felt alive.

At the end of that year you leaned against the dirty brick wall behind our school, an unlit cigarette hanging from between your full lips and your faced tilted downward towards ground as you tried to light it with a flimsy pack of matches you’d found lying on the ground on the way to school that morning (your lighter had been dead for at least a week, and I remember how you’d tossed the spent, useless plastic out into the street to be run over by trucks and unsuspecting cyclists). One match struck against the side of the cardboard pack: broken. You threw it to the ground, while a curse word tumbled from your lips. As it landed, the match scattered among the others you’d wasted.

I supported myself against the same wall, leaning only a foot or two to your left, further into the abyss that is the area behind the school: past the crisp, red leaves fallen from the late fall maples, there was a steady stream of trash leading from the garbage cans in the corner, towards the opening of the alley, where kids sit in their illegally parked cars and launch soda cans and empty bags of chips from the windows of their vehicles. No teachers or figures of authority have ever set foot in this forbidden teenage sanctuary – they’re scared of being over powered by the kids who wear all black, the kids who scribble in their journals while the Iliad lecture rages on. The kids like you.

One more match, and the smoke glowed. You gripped it between your fingers and let your wrist hang limp, the first curls of gray smoke pouring from your mouth and nostrils. Your head hit the bricks in the wall as you rolled your head like a swivel on your neck to gaze in my direction, one of your legs bent to rest your foot against the wall. Hazel brown eyes found my flat blue ones, and you locked me in a stare that I found myself wanted to shy away. Extracting your hand that had been lodged deep inside your hoodie pocket, you held out the box of cigarettes and the matches. I extended a scrawny, weak arm and took them from you, reaching into the box and pulling out a small papery stick of death. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking as I did so – I was standing there, and you were giving me your full attention for at least this moment. I was used to your attention; I was used to being the only thing in range to focus on – like then, when there was nothing else around other than the cigarettes and the pack that I took great care to hand back to you so that my fingers brushed against yours lightly in the exchange.

And just like that, we were one. We were we.

On the last day of summer before college, you said you wanted to take a road trip in stead of going to college. You said that I should come with you, but I was looking forward to starting fresh with a NYU journalism course. So you went alone, taking nothing with you but a wad of money stolen from the top drawer of your dad’s dresser, and an old backpack you used to use on school field trips. And I was worried about you. I was worried about the people you’d meet and the things that you got yourself into, and I was terrified of what would happen if you found someone more interesting and more willing to drop out of school than I was.

But then you called me from the border of Colorado and Kansas, and you told me how you’d just gotten off an abandoned highway; how you’d gunned your old car as fast at it would go as though you were in a NASCAR race, and you were neck and neck for the lead. You told me that the sun was setting in front of you, the temperature of the air was dropping, and for the first time since you left me, you felt alive.