#bsc fanfic 2013

[tosybelle-blog]

By and Hay’s Excellent Adventure--Part IV

I settled up the bill that morning while everyone else cleaned and loaded the car. I came back out triumphantly. “Hey guys, guess what,” I called. They were done loading and basically just waiting for me, so no one really responded. “The owner wanted to compliment us. She said we were the cleanest, politest, quietest teens she’d had come through for a while.”

Jeff piped up, “Yeah, because we did all our fighting and screaming out in public.”

I ignored that and went on. “Anyway, when I told her we were headed to Ogunquit, she called up a friend of hers who has a motel up there. He’s giving us a deal: a set up almost exactly like we had here, only with three queen-sized beds, for the price of one room. Sound good?”

We had made sandwiches again and we took them into town, eating them on the sand of the beach in my dream. I must have turned bright scarlet when I realized where we were, but if anyone noticed, they didn’t say anything. This time I made my own sandwiches and labeled them with my name with Vanessa’s Sharpie. The ham and turkey with cheese on white definitely tasted better than the peanut butter the day before.

When we were done eating, we scrambled back up the beach and through town to the parking lot where we left the car. Haley stopped in one store and came out with a travel pillow, while Jordan and Adam picked up a few souvenirs. I hadn’t bought anything, but I wasn’t really upset about it. I had enough memories to last me a lifetime.

As we arranged seating for the car, Hay announced that Jeff was going to drive and that she was going to take the passenger’s seat. “What about your turn?” Jordan asked her.

She didn’t look directly at him, addressing the whole group instead. “I did most of the driving around town, and I’ll do the same thing at Ogunquit if you’d like.”

Jordan was relentless. “Yeah, well, what happened to my turn in the passenger’s seat?”

Hay turned on him, eyes blazing. “You forfeited that when I punched you in the face,” she spat.

Jordan recoiled as if she’d hit him a second time. He climbed into the middle seat with Adam, while Vanessa took the back. I looked after Jordan for a moment, confused, then sat down next to Vanessa. Jordan was directly in front of me and directly behind Hay.

I guess that Jordan decided that Hay was off-limits after that comment, so he turned his frustration to an easier target: me. My head was where he wanted to put his head, and we kept knocking them together; somehow, that was completely my fault. If I turned around to talk to Adam, I was in his personal space. If I spoke to Vanessa, I was “too loud.” It didn’t matter what I did or didn’t do, Jordan found some excuse to snap at me.

After twenty minutes of near-constant snarking, Hay turned the radio off. “You know something, Jordan Pike?” she said. “You are a miserable human being, and you’re making the rest of us miserable too. I have a song for you.” She began digging through her knapsack, searching for the right CD. A few minutes later, she came up triumphant and put it in the player. She then began fiddling with the player, searching for the right song.

When happy, upbeat music finally started, she cautioned us, “Not this part...wait until I tell you to listen. This thing doesn’t have a button to skip through to the middle of the song.”

Jeff flicked his eyes over at her from the road. “Nobody knows how to make drama like you do, huh, Hay?” he asked sarcastically. “You tell him you’re going to insult him through song, and then you drag it out over five minutes just to make the tension worse.” Hay flicked him off.

“Okay, here you go. No, wait for the chorus. The chorus is about Jordan.” I listened to the music, surprised to find it was a CD I’d never heard before. A couple of people were discussing how one had been laid off, and then started singing about it. It sounded like it might be from a musical, but I wasn’t familiar with it.

Finally, the chorus began, and Hay began to sing along. She has a very nice singing voice, but she doesn’t share it too often. “It sucks to be me,” she sang, “It sucks to be me. It sucks to be broke and unemployed and turning thirty-three. It sucks to be me.”

Vanessa leaned forward from the back seat. “This is Avenue Q, isn’t it?” she asked, delighted. Hay nodded, and I shot Vanessa a questioning look. “It’s a musical,” she responded, “Like Sesame Street for adults. Sex and drinking and unemployment and cursing. Sounds awesome. I’d love to go see it sometime.”

Hay grinned. “Me, too.” The song continued on, talking about why it sucked to be a variety of different characters, and Hay continued to sing the chorus. At the end of the song, it changes to ‘It sucks to be you.’ By then, we were all laughing, even Jordan.

When the song ended, Hay moved to stop the CD player. “Wait!” Vanessa cried, “There’s another song I want to hear.” She climbed into the middle seat, between Adam and Jordan, causing both of them to yell at her. From the middle, she leaned forward and whispered in Hay’s ear. Hay smiled and Vanessa leaned back, settling in between our two brothers. “This one’s dedicated to Adam,” Vanessa said sweetly.

Hay began flipping through the songs. “For some reason, they’re not in order on the CD, so give me a minute to find it.” She would listen to thirty seconds of the song and then name it and skip to the next. “Everyone’s a little bit racist...Fantasies come true...For now....”

I leaned forward from the back seat. “They’re in alphabetical order.”

“What?” She stopped the CD for a moment and looked at me.

I spoke a bit louder. “The songs...they’re alphabetical.”

Hay thought about it for a moment. “Oh, you’re right. I wonder how it got recorded that way.” She skipped through the CD silently for a moment, guessing where she’d find the song Vanessa had requested. Finally it started blaring from the speaker. “Vanessa, will you sing Trekkie for me?”

Adam groaned. “First you let her pick out a song for me, and then you let her sing? I’m never getting in a car with you again, Haley.”

Hay grinned like the Cheshire Cat and started singing. “The Internet is really, really great.”

“For porn!” Vanessa yelled.

“I’ve got a fast connection, so I don’t have to wait...”

“For porn!”

I don’t think I have to tell you how the rest of that song went. Adam blushed furiously. I think he was even more embarrassed in the car than he was the day that Mom had caught him using the family computer to surf for pictures of naked women. He buried his head in his hands. Vanessa put her arm around him as she sang one of the choruses. “The Internet is for porn, the Internet is for porn. Me up all night honking me horn to porn, porn, porn.” He shrugged her off.

When the song ended, Vanessa was laughing so hard she was gasping for air. Hay repeated one of her character’s last lines, “I hate the Internet!” and then joined her.

Jeff spoke for the first time in a while. “Hey, guys,” he said, “Sorry to interrupt the party, but we’re getting low on gas. Probably should have filled the tank before we left. Anyway, I’m going to pull into that service station up ahead.”

We rolled up to a gas pump. Jeff ran inside to use the bathroom, which I figured was the real reason we had stopped. Adam and Vanessa wandered off to a little ice cream hut that was on the edge of the service station. I paid for the gas and then came back out to pump it.

Jordan climbed into the back seat and was digging in the trunk for a bag of snacks we had misplaced. Hay was hanging out of the car as I filled the tank. I turned to her. “Where’d you get that CD from?” I asked her.

She grinned a high-watt grin. “From one of the stage crew,” she said, “He was singing the songs backstage all the time. I made him lend me the CD and I made a copy.” Hay scooted out of the car and came up beside me. “You know, I have some songs on that CD that are for you, too. Two of them.”

I put my arm around her as I waited for the pump to stop. “Oh, really?” I asked.

She gave me a hug but didn’t respond. After a minute, she wiggled loose. “I feel like ice cream,” she said.

I squeezed her shoulder. “You feel like Hay to me, but whatever.”

Hay laughed. “You want some ice cream, too?”

I shook my head and removed the pump from the tank. She ran off to where Vanessa and Adam were chowing down on ice cream cones. Jordan came out of the car, looking perturbed. I walked toward the building, intent on a bag of chips, and Jordan followed, right on my heels.

He tailgated me straight into the building and while I was inspecting the chips, he stood right behind me. “May I help you?” I asked him finally.

Jordan released a breath that sounded like a hiss. “Do you have to flaunt it?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

His expression looked pained. “Your relationship with Haley. We know you guys are together...you gotta rub it in our faces this whole trip?”

Suddenly, a couple of pieces of information clicked together in my brain. Adam had come on the trip because he wanted to spend time with me. Jordan had come on the trip because he wanted to spend time with Haley. Adam had tried to warn me. I bristled, though I wasn’t quite sure why. “I’m not dating Hay,” I said in a low, irritated voice.

“Oh, right. You are so full of shit.” Jordan rolled his eyes. “You think I’m blind and deaf? I saw you guys just now. You’re all over each other.”

I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation again. I sucked in a breath through a clenched jaw. “We are not dating.” I looked around the convenience mart. No one else was there except the bearded, scary-looking dude behind the counter. “We’re just friends. You ever see us kiss? No. Because we’ve never kissed!” By this point, I was yelling right into Jordan’s face.

He took an involuntary step back. “And why should I believe a word you say?”

I pounded my hand down on the shelf in front of me, causing it to vibrate. “Because I’m fucking gay, okay?”

Jordan reeled back from me in surprise, probably as much at my venom as at my statement. I grabbed a bag of chips off the shelf and walked over to the checkout. Jordan ran back out the door and I saw him climb into the car. I plopped some money down on the counter, and the counter guy looked down at me as he gave me my change. “Good for you, kid,” he said, “I’ve been with my partner for almost ten years. Coming out’s always the hardest part, but it’s better than living a lie.”

I gave a noise that was half laugh, half sob and ran out the door myself. I sat down on the ground around the corner and began to sob full on, loud, choking noises that wracked my whole body. Luckily, I quickly cried myself out. I was just sniffling and wiping my eyes when Jeff appeared beside me. “Everything okay?” he asked.

I looked up at him. “No,” I replied, “but not any worse than normal.” My chips had fallen to the ground and I picked them up. Somehow, in my haste, I had grabbed low sodium, flavorless baked chips. Ew.

Jeff began to speak but stopped, shaking his head. “We’re ready to go when you are.” I jumped up and ran ahead of him to the car, rubbing my eyes with my hand, hoping to avoid any further conversation that I definitely wasn’t in the mood for.

When I got to the car, Jordan was in the way back. Hay, Adam and Vanessa were in the cooler, dipping their hands in among the ice to wash off ice cream spills. I climbed into the middle seat on the other side from them, right in front of Jordan. He looked up at me. “Did you mean the last thing you said?” he asked, his voice a little unsteady.

I looked back at him. “Yup.”

He didn’t change expression, and I could see he looked like he was fighting back tears. “Okay. I, uh, well, I just needed to know.”

I forced myself to smile at him. “Well, now you do.”

***

When we started off again, I was behind the driver’s seat, with Vanessa sitting bitch between me and Adam. Adam had originally intended to sit in the back, but the vibe Jordan was giving out was enough to make him change his mind.

Although no one but Jordan and I knew what had happened, everyone could feel that something was different. Hay found a CD that was mellower and put it in the CD player. She and Jeff started talking about their overlapping musical tastes in a low voice. Vanessa pulled out her camera and started taking pictures of us all in ‘our native environment’—everyone except Jordan, that is. When she’d pointed the camera at him, he’d grabbed it from her and thrown it into the front seat. Hay retrieved it undamaged, and Vanessa figured out that it was best to leave grizzly bears alone, no matter how fun they might be to photograph.

An hour passed uneventfully. Vanessa had put her camera away and was reading The Bell Jar. Adam was staring out the window, munching on a bag of Funyons that I could smell from the other side of the car. Jordan was either asleep or just completely uncommunicative. When Hay’s latest CD ended, she started digging around in her bag for something new. I put aside the crossword puzzle I’d been half-heartedly playing with and leaned across Vanessa into the front seat. “Hay, you got the CD from Grease?” I asked.

She frowned at me. “Yeeeeeessss....”

“Put it in? Please?”

Jeff took his eyes off the road for a moment and glanced at me. “What’s this, By? You got a thing for Olivia Newton John or something?”

I shook my head at him, making a terrible face. “Ew, no. It’s actually a recording from our school production last fall. Hay played Rizzo.”

Vanessa pinched me on the shoulder and I moved out of her personal space. She continued my plea. “Come on, Haley, put it in.” Hay shook her head and glared at us both. “Jeff, help us out here. She was the star of the show. You’ve got to hear her.”

Jeff grinned at her and peeked out from behind his sunglasses. “Better put it in, Hay. They’re not going to quit until you do.”

Hay threw her hands up. “I know when I’m beat. I’ll put it in if you play Tom Lehrer later.” I gave her a bewildered look. “Oh, don’t give me that face. I know you have at least one of his CDs in your bag. I’ll give you fifty bucks if you don’t.” I just continued to look at her, my expression unchanged. “Ugh! I hate when you do this to me, Byron. I’ll get you back one of these days.” She removed a CD case from her bag and put it in.

We listened quietly for a while. During one of the songs where Haley wasn’t singing, Adam piped up and asked, “You going to do the musical again next year, Haley? I hear they’re doing Guys and Dolls.”

She shook her head violently. “No way. I wouldn’t have even done Grease if...”

Even Jordan was staring at her now. I finished the thought. “...If I hadn’t dared you.”

All the eyes except Jeff’s turned on me. “What?” Vanessa said, confused.

I shrugged. “We started daring each other to do stuff about a year ago. Stupid things that didn’t really affect anything.” She’d dared me to spell my name wrong on an assignment I’d turned in; Bryon Pike had gotten a 100 percent and the teacher hadn’t noticed. I’d dared her to use a certain spicy adjective in her next writing assignment; she’d managed to work it in successfully. “After a while, the dares started to get bigger. I dared her to try out for the play. She auditioned for Patty Simcox and got Rizzo.”

Hay was blushing a bit. “The teacher said I was the only one with the sass to pull it off, which I think is an insult.”

I waved that off. “It was a compliment and you know it.”

We grew quiet as Hay as Rizzo started singing, “Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee.” When that ended, Jeff changed lanes and then pulled his sunglasses onto the top of his head. “So, Haley, if someone dares you to do something, do you have to do it?”

She turned and looked at him, an ‘oh, shit,’ look in her eyes. “Depends on who’s daring. I do have to do whatever By dares me to do. It’s a matter of pride. Plus, I know he’ll give me shit about it for the rest of time if I don’t.”

Jeff let that hang for a second. “Well, what if I dare you to do something? Do you have to take the dare?”

Hay’s eyes got even wider. “Depends on what it is, I guess.”

“What if I dare you to kiss Jordan?”

Everyone in the car snapped to full attention, waiting for an answer for that question. Nothing happened for a moment, except that Hay turned to face forward as if she were internally debating and didn’t want the rest of us to see. Jeff checked the rearview mirror and met my eyes. And in that second I knew that he knew exactly how Jordan felt. Whether Jordan had told him or he’d picked up on the clues, he was in on the secret.

Hay turned back around. “Vanessa!” she barked. “Switch seats with me?” I could see some tension around her eyes, like she wasn’t really sure she was making the right choice, but the tone of voice told me she was determined to follow through on this. She knocked everything off the middle seat of the front bench, where the seatbelt is broken. Vanessa climbed in between Hay and Jeff, trying really hard not to kick Jeff or otherwise force his attention off the road. After this was accomplished, Hay did the opposite, climbing between me and Adam, and Vanessa scooted into the passenger’s seat and buckled back up. Hay looked at Jordan in the backseat, eyes now as determined as her voice, and joined him back there.

Three sets of eyes were glued on the back seat; one watched intermittently as the road conditions allowed. Hay froze for a moment, then put her arms around Jordan’s neck and pulled him close. Jordan’s eyes grew like saucers, and his expression said he doubted she was actually going to kiss him until the second it started. The kiss went on for just a fraction of a second longer than I would have expected; by that time, Jordan’s hands had found their way to her shoulders. Hay pulled back and for a second she smiled, but before Jordan’s eyes opened she turned it to a scowl. While he watched, she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand like he’d left a bad taste on it, and then climbed back into the middle seat, looking at Jeff from the relative safety between me and Adam. “Satisfied?”

Jeff grinned and pulled down his sunglasses. “Oh, yeah,” he said, trying not to laugh.

Jordan’s face was bright crimson. He picked up a magazine and pretended to be fascinated by the article in front of him, but he wasn’t fooling anyone. Adam and I looked at each other over Hay’s head. I gave him a questioning glance and he nodded, with the silent implication of, “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”

Hay settled into her new seat and buckled her seatbelt. We were all pretty much looking at her still, and it was her turn to blush again. “Just for the record....I hate you all,” she said.

***

Ogunquit was so not what I was expecting. In some ways, it wasn’t much different from Camden; in other ways, they were nothing alike. Let’s just say that Camden was so much more...conservative. Adam took a look around as we drove down the main strip and turned to me. “Byron. You picked the gayest town on earth.”

I looked in the same direction he had and saw two guys holding hands walking down the street, passing another pair of men doing the same. I shrugged. “Hay picked it out.”

Adam cocked his head at her. “Haley. You picked the gayest town on earth.”

Hay looked helpless for a second. “I read this book,” she said for the second time in two days. I suddenly started picturing a book: How to Get Your Best Guy Friend to Come Out Already. She’d picked this town as some kind of message to me.

I must have blushed because suddenly several sets of eyes were on me. Vanessa leaned over the seat. “What’s the matter, Byron?” she asked. She was the only one looking at me who didn’t know. “You got a problem with ho-mo-sex-u-als?” She dragged it out in a Mr. Rogers kind of way.

Hay spoke under her breath. “Yeah, a jealousy problem,” she quipped. Adam laughed, but I think only he and I heard her. Vanessa looked at us like we were crazy—which, admittedly, had been her look for most of the trip. She then picked up the map and started studying it.

“I think this town’s pretty cool. I like any town that’s this accepting of everyone,” Jeff piped up. He turned onto a side street and then into a parking lot. “Did you guys see that teen club back a couple blocks? It’s said it’s ages sixteen to twenty. We have to go there one night.”

Hay threw her hands up, glad to have found an ally. “I know, right? I saw that in the travel guide. Vanessa, you got a state ID?”

Vanessa nodded. “I had to get one last summer so I could get a job. Thank goodness, right? I’d have to kill you all if you went into a club—even a lame, alcohol free one— without me.”

We all tumbled out of the car and looked around. “So, this is Ogunquit,” Jordan said, like he’d been expecting something grander.

Vanessa looked at him. “This is a parking lot. All the good stuff seems to be that way.” She pointed back toward the main drag.

“Well, then, let’s go that way.” Jordan seemed to be taking charge for the first time since we’d left home, and, being surprised and a bit bedraggled, we let him.

As we followed Jordan, Hay turned into a walking guide book. “So there are two parts to Ogunquit. This is the village. Pretty much everything I was interested in is here in the village, but I hear Perkins Cove is beautiful.” She paused for a minute as we passed another gay couple. In a low voice, she continued. “The village is also home to Ogunquit’s very active gay social scene.”

“We hadn’t noticed,” Adam joked as we passed maybe the third gay-themed business in a couple blocks.

Obviously, tourist season was not in full blast, or even a trickle, but we still got a feel for the town anyway. Just about everyone we passed said hello to us. Like we did our first night in Camden, we just browsed shops and went inside in ones and twos. Hay dragged me into one of the gay-themed gift stores and made me look around with her at all the kitschiness. Some of the items were typical to what you’d find in a regular gift shop, with a unique Ogunquit twist.

“Oh, look, By, you have to have this!” Hay squealed. It was t-shirt that read ‘I went to Ogunquit and all I did was come out’ in rainbow letters. Even though I protested and vowed to never wear it, she picked it up and went to check out. By the time she and I left the store we were both laughing hysterically.

Adam and Jordan were once again sitting on a bench, not shopping, when we came out. Hay was silently shaking with laughter, half doubled over. I was laughing so hard I was crying. Jordan quirked an eyebrow at us. “Something hit your funny bones?” he asked.

I was having trouble breathing, but I managed to start calming down a bit. “Show them the shirt, Hay,” I said.

She was gasping for breath herself. “Are you sure?” she wheezed, looking at Jordan and then back at me. I nodded and she pulled the shirt out of the bag, which I had made her carry. It was folded with the message on the inside. “I bought Byron a present to celebrate him making history this trip.” With that, she shook the shirt out and showed it to them.

They both took a look, and did a double take. Adam started to laugh right away. Jordan looked uncomfortable. “You sure you want everyone to know like this?” he asked.

I studied him for a moment. “Well, I wasn’t planning on wearing it out to dinner tonight or anything. But yeah, I want to tell people. I’ve been gay for eighteen years. It’s about time I accept that and let other people accept it too.” Jordan’s expression changed, and suddenly he looked guilty. “I was planning to tell you, you know. Just not like it came out. And I’m sorry I got so worked up.” Adam and Haley exchanged a look, like they might be missing something, which, of course, they were.

Jordan ducked his head and rubbed the back of his neck, still looking guilty. “No, that was my fault. I shouldn’t have assumed anything. Next time I’ve got a problem with you, I’ll come and talk to you about it instead of letting it build up like that, okay?”

I grinned at the rare show of humility. “To be fair, this was totally an imaginary problem with me, wasn’t it? All in your head?”

He started to protest, but when he realized I was kidding, he grinned back. “You son of a bitch,” he said.

I shook my head in mock disgust. “Don’t talk that way about your mother, son,” I said. Adam joined the two of us, putting his arms around us both.

“Aww,” Hay said, stuffing the shirt back into the bag and jumping in front of us, holding a fake camera to her face. “Where are Vanessa and her camera when you need her?”

“What about me and my camera?” Vanessa came up behind Haley. She took a good look at us triplets, still embracing, and shook her head. “Oh, my God. You three are so gay.” Hay looked around in surprise, hoping no one who might be offended heard Vanessa, but no one was near, not even Jeff.

Jordan looked at Adam, and then over at me. “Nope, just one out of three,” he said. I gaped at him for a moment, and then we all started to laugh.

Vanessa looked at him in surprise. “Wait, what?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

The whole story probably would have come tumbling out, for the third time in as many days, if Jeff hadn’t come racing out of one of the stores down the block and shouted at us as a group. “You guys. You have to come see this swimsuit in here. It’s got piano keys all over the ass! Come on, guys!”

Nothing like Jeff on a shopping spree to provide a good distraction.

***

We finally managed to drag Jeff away from the shopping, but not before he’d bought us all matching Ogunquit t-shirts. “I’m bound and determined to wardrobe everyone,” he’d said.

Hay had held hers up to her front. “We should all wear these on the way home. It would freak people out.”

We stopped at a takeout Chinese restaurant and placed an order, which Hay then held steady with her feet as we hunted down our motel. It was a little farther out of town than the other motel owner had made it sound, but other than that, she’d been spot on in her description. I’d gotten us checked in and we took our delicious-smelling food inside, leaving our bags in the station wagon.

Hay set the food down on the small table in the corner of the room and we all swarmed it. Every last morsel of watercress and every piece of rice was gone before too long. I looked mournfully at the empty containers. “We should have ordered more,” I moaned.

Jordan tossed a bag of potato chips at me. “Here, you can have these,” he offered.

Hay looked at the snack. “Nothing like barbecue chips to go with Chinese barbecue chicken,” she snickered.

Adam opened the door. “Hey, who’s going to help me unload the car?” he called over his shoulder as he walked out. Everyone but me followed. I quickly ate up the chips before Jordan changed his mind and then joined them.

It only took us a few minutes to bring in the bags, and then we scattered. Adam and Jordan went outside to take a look around. Jeff had turned on the television and was watching the news, with Vanessa providing commentary. I had no idea where Hay had gone—to the bathroom in the girls’ room, I assumed. I took out my crossword puzzle and tried to finish it. I was missing enough letters to drive me mad.

Some time passed. Vanessa went to use our bathroom. I tossed the puzzle aside in disgust. “Seen Hay?” I asked Jeff, who was now engrossed in a game of Wheel of Fortune. He merely shook his head. Since I’d last seen her headed into the other room, I went to the door and opened it without a second thought.

The room was dimly lit, and for a moment, I wasn’t sure what I saw. I stepped a little farther into the room and squinted. The only light burning was a small lamp on the far side of the bed. It illuminated a back, leaned over the bed, head bent forward. He was kneeling on the bed, over someone else; the other person lay face up on the bed, her arms around his neck. Her shirt was hiked up under her breasts, and his hands were caressing her bare back. Their eyes were closed and they only noticed each other as they kissed on and on. I backed back out of the room without either one of them noticing.

When I was back in the other room, I closed the door quietly behind me and then pushed up against the door, my heart pounding. Jeff looked at me quizzically. “You okay over there?”

I wanted to scream at him that, no, I was not okay. I had just seen my brother making out with my best friend. All I wanted was to erase that image from my memory. I shook my head, less in answer to his question than to clear my head. “Got any brain bleach?” I asked.

Jeff blinked. “Uh,” he answered eloquently. I forced myself away from the door and joined him on the bed. “You going to tell me what’s going on?” he added.

I reached across the bed and took the remote from next to his thigh. “Nope.”

Adam came in from outside, carrying a big bucket of ice, which he dumped unceremoniously into the cooler. I was holding the remote but just fidgeting with it. “Byron…you’re as white as a ghost. What’s the matter?”

I shook my head again. Jeff cocked his head to one side. “Don’t bother; I haven’t been able to get a peep out of him.” He reached over and took the remote back from me, wrestling it out of my hands. “Something spooked him in the other room though.”

Adam looked like he was going to continue the questions, but the bathroom door peeked open and Vanessa’s face appeared in the crack. “Haley?” she called.

Jeff looked at Adam, then at me, then back at Vanessa. “Absent,” he replied.

We could only see a sliver of Vanessa’s face, but she looked decidedly uncomfortable. “Can you go get her?” she whined.

“No,” I piped up. “She’s, um, busy.”

“Please?” Vanessa pleaded. “I need something from her.”

“Vanessa,” I said, starting to lose my patience a little bit, “I am not going to interrupt Haley right now. Is there anything any of us can help you with?”

Her face clouded over. “Not unless any of you has a tampon,” she snipped.

Jeff, Adam and I looked at each other. “I don’t know about the others, but I’m not in the habit of carrying those around,” Adam told her.

Vanessa scowled. “Well, Haley is, and if I’m not mistaken, she probably has a whole box of them in that oversize purse of hers. So if you’re not willing to go stop whatever’s so goddamn important that she’s doing, could you at least bring me some goddamn tampons!?” She slammed the door shut behind her.

Jeff looked at us. “Are we going to get Haley’s purse?” he asked.

I shook my head. “It’s in the other room, and like I said, she’s busy in there. More than my life’s worth to interrupt her now.”

Jeff and Adam looked at each other, probably wondering what exactly was so taboo that I wouldn’t interrupt it. “Guess one of us is going to have to go buy some tampons,” Jeff said slowly.

Without a word, Adam and I turned to each other and shook a fist three times. Jeff stared at us until we slammed our fists down, in unison, into our other hand. I kept my fist rounded, but Adam laid his flat. “Paper covers rock. I win!”

I grumbled under my breath as I grabbed the car keys off the table. “I’ll come with you,” Jeff offered.

As I was pulling on my shoes, Adam picked up the remote control and started flipping channels. “Seen Jordan?” he asked.

“Yeah, I have,” I said, and then walked out the door, causing Jeff to run to catch up.

***

I had barely pulled out of the parking spot when Jeff turned to me from the passenger’s seat. “Okay, spill,” he demanded. “What was Haley doing in there that’s got you so worked up?”

I eased out of the parking lot and drove a short way before I responded. “She was on the bed with Jordan.”

Jeff raised his eyebrow. “Were they...?”

I let out a breath. “No, thank God. But they were about a minute from second base.”

He watched me for a moment, and I tensed up even more at the visual inquisition. Finally he spoke. “Well, that’s a good thing, right? Honestly, I might have only been around you all for four days, but I can see she basically clings to you. I’m glad you two have each other, but it isn’t really healthy for you to be everything to one another, right?” He paused, looking straight ahead for a moment, making a pained face. “Oh, my God, I sound like my therapist.” A funny little laugh escaped his mouth.

I glanced at Jeff briefly, concerned. He pulled himself back together and looked at me again. I took a deep breath. “You’re right, though. Remember, I said yesterday, I worry that she’s always alone when I’m not with her. But her and Jordan...well, just two days ago, she punched him in the face! She called him a miserable human being not twelve hours ago. And just now, she was letting him feel her up. It’s just not like her, you know?” Jeff shook his head and made a ‘hmm’ noise and I continued. “I’ve been hanging out with Hay for three years, and in that time, she’s never had one date. Lots of guys asked her out, at least that first year, so she could have gone on dates and had boyfriends, and she never once said yes to any of them. So for her to turn on a dime like that...it just concerns me, okay?”

Jeff smiled kindly. “I understand. I just think it’s not maybe as big a deal as you’re making it out to be. Haley knows Jordan. She’s known him about half her life. Maybe she figured out about his year-long obsession with her. Or maybe he told her, I don’t know. Maybe she just figured she was ready for something more than a hug from her best friend, and he was right there. Whatever. In any case, is it really a bad thing if she gets together with Jordan?”

I thought about that for a minute. “No,” I said slowly, still mulling it over, “It’s not. I think I just rather would have found out by one of them telling me rather than catching them in the act.”

He laughed a little, and then turned sober. “I hate to even say this, but I think there’s a little more to it than that. I’m only saying it because I’m your friend, but could it be possible that you’re a bit jealous? Not necessarily of Jordan kissing Haley specifically, but that they have someone to kiss at all?”

And damn him, he was right. That was definitely the hardest part of being in the closet: you can’t just find a guy, like Hay had suggested I do, and have a good time. Because someone will definitely find out and then everyone will know. And anyway, I didn’t know any other gay guys to even find and get together with. I blushed, grateful that it was dark, and pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four hour grocery.

I went to get out of the car when Jeff put a hand on my arm. “Hey, Byron?”

“Yeah?” I turned to him. Jeff spent a moment trying to get the words out, and then shook his head. He looked away and bit his lip. I could tell he had lost his reserve again. “Hey, no worries, Jeff. Whatever it is, you’ll tell me when you’re ready. Anyway, you were right. Maybe you should just revel in that for a moment.”

Jeff grinned with his mouth, but his eyes looked sad. “What was I right about?” he asked.

I smiled for real at him as I climbed out of the car. “Everything. What else?”

***

By the time Jeff and I got back, Haley and Jordan had rejoined the crew and Vanessa had been rescued from the bathroom. I handed her a box of tampons and she just grunted. “You owe me big time,” I told her.

Adam and Jordan were on one bed, and Hay and Vanessa were on the other. Vanessa opened the box and dug out a tampon, which she handed to Hay. “Thank you,” Hay said, stuffing the extra in her pocket. Vanessa tossed the box aside and they went back to the magazine they’d been poring over when Jeff and I had come in the door.

Jordan was sharing a bag of chips with Adam and watching a hockey game on television. Neither he nor Hay gave any sign that they knew that I’d walked in on them, or any sign that they’d even done what I’d seen them do. I looked over at Jeff, who shrugged at me. There wasn’t any room left on the beds, so we sat down at the table in the corner. “Adam? Can we borrow your cards?” Jeff asked. Adam jumped off the bed and pulled out box of two decks, which Jeff then shuffled together. “Okay, By, you gotta teach me the secret behind that spite and malice game so I can kick everyone’s ass next time.”

I shook my head at him. “I suck at cards.”

“So? We’ll suck together.” He handed me the deck. “You deal.”

We were only halfway through the game when Jeff started yawning. He turned to the group as a whole. “So. Sleeping arrangements? We could stick to the same rooms we had last time. Or we could let Jordan and Haley have the single room and the rest of us bunk up in here.”

Absolute silence followed that statement. Hay dropped the magazine, her face blazing scarlet. Adam and Vanessa stared at Jeff, confused. Jordan’s mouth dropped open. I ducked my head, trying not to get involved. After a moment of crickets chirping, Hay found her voice. “What the hell are you talking about?” she asked, looking venomous.

Jeff smiled at her. “Oh, come on, Hay. Byron walked in on the two of you.” So much for trying not to get involved. I burned as bright as Hay and looked at the carpeting. Even so, I could feel a couple faces on me.

Hay jumped up and ran into the other room, slamming the door behind her. Vanessa looked questioningly at Adam, who nodded at her, and she followed Hay into the other room, calling after her. That left the four of us guys alone in the room together. I still had my eyes on the floor.

Jordan looked over at Jeff, looking like he was going to give him hell, but then stopped and grinned. “What the hell, Jeff?” he asked, not sounding upset, but rather giddy.

Jeff took a look at Jordan’s stupid goofy grin and chuckled. “Sorry, dude. Was it supposed to be a secret?” he asked.

Jordan got control of his expression a little bit, but he still looked happier than I’d seen him in a long time. “No. At least I don’t think so. I mean, Haley said that she isn’t sure what this is, but I think that just means that we aren’t officially dating or anything.”

Adam thumped Jordan on the shoulder. “So what exactly are we talking about here?” he asked.

Jordan’s smile turned mushy again. “Second base,” he said.

Adam looked impressed. “Whoa, dude. How did this happen? You were about her least favorite person on earth earlier today.”

“The power of an apology, maybe? Either that or I’m just that good of a kisser.” All three of them smirked.

I shuffled a foot around on the floor and inadvertently caught Jordan’s attention. “Hey, Byron. You and me are cool, right?”

I finally looked up. “Yeah. Why wouldn’t we be?”

He looked a little embarrassed. “Well, Jeff said you saw me and Haley while we were....”

I shook my head, lowering it again, hiding behind my hair. “It wasn’t exactly my favorite image, and I’m going to need a lobotomy to get it out of my head, but that’s alright. I’ll get over it.” I scuffed my shoe around some more. “But I gotta tell you, man. You hurt her and I’ll kill you.”

Jordan laughed. “I’d expect nothing less out of you.”

***

I wish I could say Hay was as easy going about what happened that night as Jordan was, but I couldn’t. Not even close. And for some reason, she held me entirely to blame for everything.

I found that out the hard way the next time I saw her, after everyone was showered and dressed the next morning. Vanessa came in to get some breakfast. She discovered the milk had soured, so she and Jordan ran to buy some more from the grocery. Adam was styling his hair and Jeff was munching dried fruit and watching PBS kids. I knocked on the door to the girls’ room, and when I didn’t get an answer, I went in.

Hay was on the bed, flipping through a notebook of some kind. I sat down next to her and put my arm around her, just like any other time. Only this time, she shoved me hard and knocked me off the bed. “Ow! What the hell, Hay?” I spit as I sat back up, rubbing my arm where she’d shoved me. Suddenly I was glad she hadn’t punched me like she’d done to Jordan. She’s got strong arms.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” she asked, putting the notebook aside and standing over me.

Oh, crap. “Can you be more specific?” I asked.

She leaned in closer. “I mean, spying on me and Jordan last night.”

I sputtered. “I was not spying on you. How was I supposed to know that you guys were in here together? Isn’t there some kind of code for that? Like leaving a sock on the door knob or something?” She leaned in even closer, her eyes blazing. “Okay, okay. Bad joke. But honest, I just walked into the room, saw you two on the bed, and walked back out. No spying intended. I wasn’t even going to mention it to you.”

“But you told Jeff.”

I hung my head. “Yeah, I told Jeff. Listen; imagine if you walked in on me kissing your brother.” She involuntarily shuddered. “See? I had to tell someone. And he talked me down a little bit. But if I’d known he was going to blurt it out like that, I wouldn’t have.”

The outside door to the other room opened and Vanessa and Jordan returned. “We’ve got milk!” I heard Vanessa call. Haley whirled around and stalked out the door, leaving me behind without a goodbye. By the time I’d gotten off the floor, brushing off my butt (and my pride) and made it into the other room, she had a bowl of Lucky Charms and milk. I walked in through the door, and she walked back through it without acknowledging me, slamming it behind her again.

Jordan quirked an eyebrow. “What’s with her?” he asked, nodding toward the still vibrating door.

I picked up a box of Cap’n Crunch and poured a bowl. “She’s mad about last night.” Jordan wrinkled his brow. “Not about what happened between you. But about how everyone found out.”

Jeff looked chagrined. Jordan moved to join Hay next door, but I physically stopped him. “Don’t. Wait ten minutes before you talk to her.”

He looked irritated. “Don’t be a know-it-all, Byron. I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

I let him go but shook my head. “Forget that I’m your brother for a minute. Forget I’m a guy. Just think of me as Haley’s best friend, okay? When she’s this upset, she needs some time to calm down. Otherwise, she’ll say something you’ll both regret.”

Vanessa interjected. “He’s right. When I went in there last night, she tore me a new hole. Even though I didn’t make out with her, or ‘Peeping Tom’ her, or share her news with the whole world,” she said cheerfully. Jeff and I both winced at the phrasing, but she plowed on, unabated. “After a few minutes she calmed down and apologized for it. And then we worked together to come up with as many insulting names for men as possible, in alphabetical order. We got stuck at Q.”

I ignored the second half of that statement for the time being. “Anyway, Jordan, trust me on this one. Eat your breakfast, and then go talk to her. And I do think it should be you who talks to her anyway, even if that makes me sound like a know-it-all.”

We all ate quietly for a while with Sesame Street as our only sounds. Finally Jeff put his bowl down. “Couldn’t come up with a Q?” he asked Vanessa thoughtfully.

***

After we ate, Jordan went into the other room, and a few minutes later, he led Haley out to join us. He had one hand gently on her back, guiding her, and she looked unsure of herself. Jordan made a joke with Vanessa, still standing there with his fingers on Hay’s shoulder blade, and when Hay realized that no one was going to make a single comment to her, she visibly relaxed a bit. Jordan noticed and eased his hand around her shoulder, pulling her closer to him. She looked up at him and smiled her thousand-watt smile.

Despite the fact that it wasn’t beach weather, we’d decided to spend the morning at the beach. When we’d managed to find a news broadcast, they’d said the temperature was supposed to go down for the next couple days, meaning that this was the closest we were going to get to a “nice day” in Maine in April. We all put on our windbreakers and hoodies and piled into the car.

The beach was ridiculously beautiful, even though it was maybe fifty degrees outside. We spread out a picnic blanket, and I swear, we all regressed to being seven and eight for a couple hours. We built sandcastles and tossed a ball around.

By lunch time we were covered in sand, sunburn and windburn. I ate the last of the ham in a sandwich and then took a walk down the beach alone. When I got far enough away that I could barely see everyone else, I came across a pier, one of those decorative ones that isn’t used for boats or fishing. I sat down at the end of it, staring out to the sea and thinking about everything that had happened so far this trip.

I didn’t even hear Hay come down the pier, despite the fact that it must have creaked many times over. She sat down beside me, far enough away that we weren’t touching, but reached her hand out to poke me in the side. I didn’t acknowledge her; I wasn’t ready for her to intrude on my thoughts. Finally she scooted a bit closer, still not touching me, and spoke my whole name. “Byron?”

“Hmmm?”

She looked at me and I could tell I was annoying her. But I could also tell she felt like she deserved it. “I’m sorry about before,” she said.

I still didn’t look at her, but I finally spoke. “You know I’d never purposely do anything to hurt or embarrass you.”

Hay sighed. “Yeah. I know. I overreacted.” She put her hands into her lap and grabbed the bottom of her hoodie, twisting it over and over. “This is just something I haven’t really done before. Getting close to a guy in this way, I mean. I just wanted time to think it over and maybe even enjoy this relationship or whatever it is.” She chuckled a nervous chuckle. “I also was afraid that you’d be unhappy about this.”

I shook my head. “I just want you to be happy. Even if that means you’re letting my doofus brother slobber all over you.” She let go of her hoodie long enough to smack my arm. “Ouch! You already bruised that arm earlier today. Leave it be, will ya, Hay?”

She smiled a real smile but her hands went back to the jacket. “Do you really mean that? I was afraid you’d be, I don’t know, jealous or something.”

It was my turn to chuckle. Still looking out over the water, I responded. “Jealous of Jordan for getting to kiss you, or jealous of you for having someone to kiss?” Hay’s mouth twitched, and she looked like she was about to say something, but I plowed on. “On the first, no, sorry. Gay, remember?” She smiled. “On the second? Yeah. Definitely.”

Hay smiled, a little sadly. “Well, what about Jeff?”

“What about Jeff?”

She laughed a hollow laugh. “Remember when I told you that I knew you were gay because you didn’t hit on me? Well, I had that fact confirmed for me by the way you kept staring at one of the guys in my algebra class. You are so transparent when you like a guy, Byron.” She patted my knee. “So I know you like Jeff.”

I threw my hands up. “So what if I do? He’s straight, Hay. Remember, the ex?”

She waved that away. “Trust me on this, By. Jeff likes you, too. Maybe even more than you like him.”

My cheeks grew warm as I remembered Jeff’s arms around my body. “Weren’t we talking about you, here?” I demanded.

Hay laughed again, a little happier this time. “What’s there to talk about anyway? I came, I saw, I made out.”

I turned to her finally, leaving the calming waves of the ocean on the edge of my vision. “Yeah, but why now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just what I said: why now? I’ve been your friend for three years, and in all that time you’ve never even been on a date. And you could have, so it’s not like you were just waiting around for some guy to ask you. If I remember correctly, even that guy in your algebra class that I had a huge crush on asked you out.” She laughed again, back to sounding fake. More ‘ha-ha’ than her silent, happy laugh. “So I just don’t get it. Why not go out with some of those guys?”

The sky had started to darken with clouds, and now her face did the same. “Maybe not enough time had passed,” she said, sounding sad and lost.

I grabbed the arm closest to me. “Not enough time had passed since what?” I demanded.

Hay tore my hand off her arm with her free hand and scooted away from me, scrambling to her feet. “You’re really going to make me say it?” she asked, now adding angry to the sadness. “This is payback for outing you, isn’t it?” she accused.

“Say it, Haley.”

She backed away from me, down the pier. “Dammit, Byron. Please. Let it go,” she pleaded.

I shook my head as I got to my feet. I didn’t know exactly what she was going to say, but I knew it was big. “Not until you say it.”

She started to cry, angry, hurt tears. “I was raped,” she said in a voice just above a whisper.

In seconds I had my arms around her and she put her head on my shoulder. She cried soundlessly for a few minutes, and then wiped her face on my jacket. “I’ve never said that before,” she told me.

I eased up on the hug and put some distance between us so I could see her face. I didn’t say a word, but my expression said, “Talk about it.”

She read it right away. She pulled out of my arms and started walking back down the pier as drops of rain began to fall. “Do you remember a girl Vanessa and I used to hang out with named Diane?” I fell into step with her and shook my head. “I didn’t think so. She was more my friend than Vanessa’s. Well, she had this brother. Three years older than me and Diane. Gorgeous. His name was Dominic.”

I thought about that for a moment and remembered a Dominic Dumschat who was two years ahead of me in school. Hay was right. He was gorgeous, but more than a little arrogant. I nodded or her to continue.

“Well, the summer before high school, Vanessa and I went over to Diane’s to hang out. Dominic was there, and he started flirting with me. When we left, he followed me out of the house and asked me out. Vanessa said I shouldn’t do it, but I said yes.” She sniffled. I found myself wishing I was one of those people who carried tissues in his pocket. “The first two dates were okay. On the first, he kissed me goodnight. It wasn’t my first kiss, but it felt like the first one that counted, you know?” I knew exactly what she meant. “On the second date, he drove me home in his car and he reclined both our seats back and kissed me for a while. I was so thrilled because here was this cute senior making out with silly little freshman me.”

She stopped for a moment. Jordan was running down the beach toward us, holding an umbrella. He was still far enough away that he couldn’t hear. The rest of her story came out in a tumble of words. “But on the third date, he took me in the backseat. I was thinking, maybe we’ll lie across the seat and mess around like we had the night before. And that’s how it started.” She started to cry again. “But when he hit second base, I panicked and told him to stop. He told me not to be a tease. And then he pulled out a condom....” Hay was crying too hard to go on, but she didn’t really need to, anyway. I had the picture. More of the picture than I wanted, in fact. Suddenly, I knew that if I ever saw Dominic Dumschat again, I’d kick his ass.

Jordan joined us a moment later. “Everything okay?” he asked Hay, looking at me like I was the cause of her tears.

I answered for her. “I just told her a really sad story that ended with a dog getting hit by a car. I cried the first time I heard it, too.”

Jordan may be many things, but stupid is not one of them. He didn’t believe a word I said. “Um, okay,” he said, knowing that something more was going on. He moved to put an arm around her again, but she sidestepped him. He looked hurt and confused at the same time.

I caught Hay’s eye. “You got some tissues in that huge purse of yours?” I asked. She nodded, slowly, her tears subsiding again. “I’ll go to the car and get them for you.”

She caught my hand. “No. Jordan, do you mind? Please?” He nodded, unhappy, and took the car keys from her. After he was out of earshot, she continued the story, picking up ‘after.’ “Vanessa and I got into a big fight over it. That was the day you walked me home. She basically told me it was my fault.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. “She told you it was your fault you got raped?”

Hay looked up at me over her shoulder. “Well, I didn’t say the word. I told her Dominic had gotten ‘handsy.’ She said you should expect nothing less with a seventeen year old and that she’d told me not to go out with him. I think she was really surprised when I cursed her out.” She started walking to where we could see Vanessa, Adam and Jeff smashing the sandcastle we’d worked on for hours.

I followed. “She wouldn’t have said that if she’d really known what happened.” Hay nodded, and she started walking directly in front of me. Probably so that I couldn’t see her face. “You’ve really never told anyone this before? Not even your mom?”

A head shake. “No,” she said, her voice muffled by the wind and the rain, “I didn’t want to get in trouble. My mom would have never let me go out with Dominic. Too old. So I told her I was hanging out at Diane’s when we went out.”

Jordan met us, holding Haley’s purse. She had stopped crying but her face was wet from tears and rain, so she pulled out a tissue anyway. Jordan watched her intently as she wiped her face and stuffed the tissue in her pocket. “Thanks,” she said, grinning at him. Jordan smiled back, and Hay reached out to take his hand. He looked shocked and pleased as he squeezed her hand and they walked back to our crew. I followed, a few steps behind, wishing I had a tissue for my own face.

***

We had planned to leave the beach and take a walk that afternoon, but the weather had different plans for us. We went back to the motel, tired and wet, and in some cases, emotionally drained. Hay begged off and went to the girls’ room to take a nap, while Vanessa decided on a hot shower and also retreated to the girls’ room. The four of us guys all looked at each other, not sure what to do with the next couple hours. It’s not as if there were too many options.

We played a few rounds of bullshit with the cards before we got bored with that. Vanessa had rejoined us by that point. I got up to use the john, and when I came back, Jordan and Vanessa were gone. “Emergency chocolate run,” Jeff explained.

Adam flipped on the television and the three of us vegged in front of the set for about an hour. I looked at the alarm clock between the beds and blinked. “They’ve been gone a long time for chocolate,” I commented. Jeff and Adam exchanged a look. “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.

“Oh,” Adam said, like the thought had just occurred to him, “Jordan might have decided to maybe let Vanessa drive the car around for a while.”

I sat bolt upright. “What?”

Jeff was extremely casual about it. “She mentioned that your parents had never let her try driving in the rain.”

Internally I was screaming. Both Jeff and Adam were watching me closely, so I took a deep breath. “Oh.” They stared at me, waiting for me to blow a gasket. I turned my back for a second and took another breath. “I’m going to go take a shower,” I said, barely looking at them.

I walked calmly into the bathroom and turned on the shower. I was pretty sandy and gross, but I mostly just wanted to get away from them. As I washed my hair, I thought hard about how other people saw me. There’s one thing I’ve never understood. They tell you not to give in to peer pressure or worry about how other people think of you all the time while you’re growing up. But at the same time, they tell you to do this or that to make yourself look good or fit in. We wear deodorant and say please so we don’t offend others. There comes a time when you can’t have it both ways.

Old Byron would have flipped out that Jordan was letting an unlicensed driver behind the wheel of the car. New Byron, whoever he was, wanted to say, “Screw them. If they wreck the car, it’s on them. I have nothing to do with it,” and let it go. I wasn’t sure that New Byron was so much better.

I turned off the shower and looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look any different than I had a week ago. Same long brown hair. Same blue eyes. Same face that probably needed a shave. Yet I felt different. Older, maybe. More mature. Definitely more honest.

Jordan and Vanessa were back by the time I came out of the shower. “Bring me any chocolate?” was all I said to them.

[tosybelle-blog]

By and Hay’s Excellent Adventure--Part V

By the time Hay woke up and joined us, sleepily rubbing her eyes, it was nearly five. While they were out, Jordan had stopped at the teen club and discovered they opened at six. We decided that, since it was still raining, we should go that night.

Vanessa jumped up and dragged Hay into the other room to start the long process of making themselves look exactly like they looked when they left the room. (I’ve never understood why it takes girls quite that long to get ready.) Adam turned on the television again and he and Jordan settled in to watch a crappy old action movie. I looked at my brothers and Jeff. “Not that I’m going to change yet, but what exactly do you wear to a club?”

Jeff was getting ready to take a shower. “The same thing you’d wear to a dance at school.”

“Yeah, but what do you wear to a school dance?”

Jeff looked up from his duffel, grinning, ready to make a joke. Then he saw my face. “Are you serious? You’ve never gone to a dance?”

I shook my head. “Not since middle school, when we all went in packs and everyone wore jeans and t-shirts.”

Jeff stared. “Your school must have had some casual dances. Why didn’t you and Hay just go one time, as friends?”

I bent over my suitcase and didn’t answer that. Adam looked up from the television. “Not really his scene,” he said.

Jeff continued to look at me. I didn’t look up from digging through my clothes but I felt myself blush. “Loud music. Crowds,” I said, as if that explained it all.

“You’re going to be in hell tonight, aren’t you?”

***

Jeff came back out from the shower, hair still dripping, a tiny, thin motel towel wrapped around his middle. I had given up on my clothes—what the hell did it matter what I looked like, anyway—and was trying to remember a magic trick an uncle of mine had once taught me to perform with a deck of cards when Jeff walked, essentially naked, across my field of vision. I out and out stared, but luckily, Jeff didn’t notice. “Okay, By, show me your clothes, and I’ll dress you for tonight.”

Adam looked over and raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you’d better dress yourself first,” he suggested.

Jeff ignored that and leaned over me to fling open my suitcase. “You basically wear the same thing every day, in different colors,” he observed. What could I say to that? It was true, even if I hadn’t noticed it before. “You must have a black t-shirt in here. Ah!” Jeff exclaimed as he removed a clean black t from the bottom of the suitcase. “Wear that with your cleanest jeans. Forget the shirt over it. You’ll fit right in.”

I tucked the shirt under my pillow. “Thanks,” I mumbled, trying really hard not to make any contact with any part his body. This was difficult, as he was basically breathing over my shoulder. His hips, barely covered, were right behind mine. I urged my body to stay rigidly still, but it was a losing battle.

Jeff straightened up at that moment, thank goodness, and grinned. “Any time, good sir.” He looked over my brothers, still lounging on the other bed. “Either of you two want me to dress you also?”

Jordan didn’t look up. “No, thanks,” he said idly, “I’ve been dressing myself since I was three. Been picking out my own clothes for almost that long, too.” Adam snickered and the two of them high fived. I wasn’t sure if that was a joke at my expense or not, so I ignored it.

Jeff rolled his eyes fondly. “Good to know. I was thinking your mommy packed your suitcase for you.” He grabbed a pair of boxers off the top of his duffel and reclaimed the bathroom.

While he was inside, I took off my shirts and pulled on the t-shirt Jeff had put aside. As I pulled all my jeans together to look at them, Jordan caught what I was doing. “Are you actually going to take his fashion advice?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.

“Yeah, so?”

Jordan sat up straight and stared at me. “So, everyone...” He would have continued, but Adam leaned over at that moment and whispered in his ear. Jordan’s face took on an ‘a-ha!’ look for a moment, and he smiled. “Oh, now I get it.”

It was a second before I got it, too. “Adam!” I exclaimed.

Adam played innocent. “What? Was it a secret?”

I chose a pair of jeans and threw them down on the bed. “Get a billboard, why don’t you?” I grumbled.

“Naw. I prefer to tell people in person. It means I get to see you be horrified over and over again.” He smiled to let me know he was teasing, but went on anyway. “Jordan, go get Haley. I need to tell her, too.”

“She already knows,” I threw out, without thinking.

“Vanessa? How about the check-in clerk?” I took a playful swing at him, purposely missing by a mile.

Jordan was more serious about the whole thing. “Well, why don’t you just tell Jeff already?” he said in a low voice, despite the hair dryer whirring in the bathroom, mindful that the walls were not exactly soundproof.

I blanched. “What purpose would that serve?”

The blow dryer stopped, and he inched toward me and began whispering. Adam came closer, also, so he could hear. “Dude. The guy was just all over you.” He shook his head, despairing of me. “I thought you were gay, not stupid.”

“You must have imagined that.”

Adam shook his head. “Nope, I saw it too. There’s only one reason a naked guy climbs all over you, and that’s because he’s into you. Explains a lot.” He picked up a can of soda and drank from it. “Like the issues he had with his ex.”

I was going to reply to that when the bathroom door opened. Jeff stepped out, neatly dressed in dark jeans and a bright yellow t-shirt, his hair blown dry and carefully styled. “Bathroom’s free!” he called cheerfully, oblivious to the conspiring going on in the room.

I jumped up and grabbed my jeans. “I’ll just be a moment,” I said, grateful to be free of that conversation.

***

I’ve discovered that I like to bury my head in the sand and pretend things don’t exist. For a couple of years, that’s how I treated my sexuality. And then when I finally admitted to myself that I had to be gay, I didn’t tell another living soul for about another four years. And I only did that because Hay told me that I was ‘transparent.’ Otherwise, I probably would have played straight at home until the day I fell in love and had to come out. There are probably hundreds of other examples too.

The teen club was pretty much exactly what I’d expected. There was a bar serving soda and juice and water, and a couple tables where small groups could sit and rest while they drank or ate crappy, overpriced food. There was a disco ball and strobe lights and black lights, and the music was played by a bored-looking DJ and was far too loud.

The girls had gotten all dressed up and made up for the occasion. Haley was wearing a dress she’d brought along because she’d known about the club for weeks, and a pair of heeled sandals. I realized I’d never seen her wear heels before. Never really had reason to, I guess. Vanessa was wearing Hay’s favorite skirt with a tank top and her favorite Doc Martens. It was a strange combination, but thoroughly Vanessa. She’d gone back to her black eyeliner, though not as thick as usual, and she’d paired her red lipstick with Hay’s lip-gloss.

We’d gotten there right as they opened and were the first ones in. It was a Thursday night, but the guy who took our cover charge told us that the local kids were also having spring break, and the club would probably be packed before too long. And he was right.

Jordan and Adam went straight over and staked out a table, and as soon as I was done staring at everything, I joined them. Jeff snagged a bottle of water right away, while the girls went to talk to the DJ. Within fifteen minutes, all the tables were full and people were actually starting to trickle onto the dance floor. Hay and Vanessa were among the first kids out there, and they were soon surrounded by a huge group of girls, all bouncing along to some song I vaguely recognized but couldn’t even have begun to name.

I watched everyone dancing and stared. There were plenty of people dancing in groups, but pairs were also starting to form. Girls danced with boys, and with other girls, arms wrapped around waists or necks, lost in each other. After a while, more boys were up and dancing. There were even some guy-guy pairs out there, enjoying themselves. While I’d been staring, Adam and Jeff had disappeared into the fray. I couldn’t see Jeff anywhere, but Adam was on the far edge of the dance floor, half dancing, half trying to talk to a couple of girls he’d met.

I glanced over at the other side of the table, where Jordan was still sitting. “No need to babysit me,” I told him, shouting so he could hear me. “I’ll be fine here by myself.”

He shook his head. “I’m going to wait for Haley to come back,” he shouted back. “See if I can maybe get her to dance with me for a while.” Jordan grinned and went back to watching the dance floor—more specifically, watching Hay.

The girls were the first to take a break. Jordan saw them coming and rose to meet them, grabbing Hay gently by the elbow. He whispered in her ear and she nodded; I assumed he was going to get his dance, but instead the two of them went to the bar, where it was a little bit quieter, and he bought her a drink. Vanessa joined me at the table. “You going to sit here all night?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I’ll dance later.” Vanessa shrugged back at me, picked up Jeff’s water bottle, still sitting on the table, and finished it for him.

Just when I thought I was going to have to try to have a shouted conversation with her across the table, a guy at the next table rescued me. “Cool boots,” he called, pointing at Vanessa’s Docs.

She grinned at him and turned around. “Awesome eyebrow ring,” she replied.

And that was that. I was back to being all alone, watching the dance floor. Adam was still dancing with the two girls on the far side, and after a while, Jordan and Hay popped up on the other side. He had his hands on her waist, and she was holding him stiffly around the neck. He said something to her and I saw her laugh and relax. By the next time I did my sweep and came to them, his arms were wrapped around her whole back and she had her head rested on his chest. There wasn’t an inch between the two of them. Good for Hay.

It was then that I felt a tap on my shoulder. “Hey,” a familiar voice said, next to my ear. A head rested on my shoulder. “Come on and dance.” It was Jeff.

I tried to look at him, but he was too close to my face. “I don’t like to dance,” I said.

Jeff dismissed that idea. “Phooey. Everyone likes to dance. You need to expand your horizons more. Try new things. It’s Come on Eileen! Who doesn’t like this song?” Before I knew what was happening, he came around the front of me, grabbed my hand from my lap and pulled me out of my seat.

Once I was up, I let him drag me onto the side of the dance floor. I figured we’d go join Adam and his new friends, but instead he took me to a third corner, about as far away from both Adam and Jordan and Hay as we could get. There were several other guys dancing in that area, but we were further away from the speakers, so it was quieter. The guys—and they were all male—had formed a little group similar to the one Hay and Vanessa had been dancing in earlier. They were bobbing and swaying and not really doing any serious dance moves. I found I could easily copy them and not feel too out of place.

We danced on the edge of the mini mosh pit for the next couple numbers, and then a number of the others stepped off the floor, for drinks or to relax. I found myself alone with Jeff, sweating and thirsty. He put his arm around my shoulder. “Come dance with me,” he said.

I laughed and fanned myself with one hand. “I thought that’s what I was doing.”

“No, you were dancing in a group. I want you to dance with me.”

I don’t know what made me say yes. Maybe it was the heat exhaustion or the fact that everyone around us was pairing up. Or maybe it was the fact that the song was slower. What I do know is, the black lights were reflecting on his eyes, and he looked so sincere and sweet when he asked. And I just wanted to touch him so badly that even dancing there, in front of everyone, sounded like a good idea.

So against some level of better judgment, I buried my head in the sand again. Jeff put his hands on my hips and I reached up and laid my hands flat on his shoulders, stiff and formal, the way the girls back in middle school did. I spent the next few minutes focused on two things: trying to keep a pillow of air between me and Jeff and trying not to step on his toes. When I realized he was just shuffling his feet back and forth, I did the same. My senses were in overdrive; every brush of his skin against mine, or even my clothes, made me tingle. I could smell his hair products mixed with sweat, both his and mine.

I spent so much time worried about what I was doing with my body that I didn’t even enjoy the dance. After a while, Jeff leaned over with a small grin. “Hey, can I get some eye contact here?” he asked. I looked up at him, my heart pounding and my brow furrowed. “What’s the matter?” he asked, moving one hand to my shoulder.

I didn’t answer. At that point, the chorus came on the song again, and without waiting for my response, Jeff moved his hand off my shoulder. He brushed the hair out of my eyes, tucking it behind my ears, and then ran his fingers down to my chin. I should have seen the kiss coming, but I didn’t. Jeff put his other hand on my back between my shoulder blades, pulling me in, and kissed me gently. I was shocked for a moment, but then instinct took over and I was kissing back. My hands found my way to his hips and the small of his back, pulling him even tighter. But when I finally realized just what was going on, I backed up and released him. “Jeff, what the hell?” I asked, still backing up.

Jeff’s face clouded over and he looked confused. “I thought...” he started, but I didn’t wait for him to finish. I took off, through the dance floor, past the bar and out the door. It had gotten dark while we were in the club, and the street lights were all blazing as I barreled across the street. I kept walking down the sidewalk, toward the car. I don’t know what I was planning on doing, as I didn’t have the car keys or a jacket or anything else to wear over my t-shirt and it was definitely not t-shirt weather.

***

I was about halfway back to the car when I became aware of footsteps closing in on me. Someone was running in my direction. The footsteps slowed to a walk, and Jeff fell into step behind me. I knew it was him but I didn’t look in his direction. Although I was outwardly calm, my brain was in hysterics.

I turned a corner and as I did so, Jeff caught my arm. “I’m sorry,” he called, sounding anguished. “I just thought...” he said again.

I turned to look at him. “You thought what?”

He bit his lip. “I thought you were gay,” he finally said in a small voice.

“I am,” I said, wondering where this was headed.

Jeff looked down at his feet, still holding my arm. “So you just don’t like me then,” he mumbled, barely loud enough for me to hear.

I looked at him and years’ worth of words came tumbling out. “No, that’s not it. You have no idea. I definitely like you. I’ve wanted that kiss for a long time.” I felt a flush creep up on my cheeks, but I was glad to have said it and gotten it out.

Jeff pulled me so I was facing him. “So what’s the problem, then? Why are you so mad at me?”

I exhaled, blowing the hair out of my eyes in the process. “I’m not mad at you. I’m mad at myself.” He gestured with his free hand, urging me to go on. “See, I’m kinda a late bloomer. A pathetic, gay late bloomer.”

Jeff’s brows knitted together for a moment as he thought that over. Suddenly his eyes lit up and he smiled. “That wasn’t your first kiss, was it?” he asked, sounding amazed.

I tore my arm free from his grip and started walking toward the car again, horribly embarrassed. Jeff caught up to me and walked beside me for a few steps before he spoke again. “Really, your first kiss with a guy?”

“My first kiss ever.” No sense in hiding it now.

Jeff’s face crinkled. “No kidding.” He relaxed a little but kept going. “Well, what was the matter with it? Not grand and romantic enough?” He was mostly kidding, but I could feel a sense of seriousness behind it. It was clear on his face that, if he was my first kiss, he took that very seriously and hoped he—and the kiss—was good enough.

I turned to him again but kept walking. It was too cold to stand in the dark part of the street without moving. “The kiss was amazing. I couldn’t have imagined a better one.” Not that I hadn’t tried over the last few nights. “I just didn’t see it coming. I wasn’t prepared. I felt like I wasn’t ready.”

Jeff laughed. “You can’t plan for everything, By. Some of the best things in life are what you don’t see coming, believe me.” He grabbed my arm again, stopping me in my tracks. His hands were warm on my skin, which was covered in goose bumps. He ran one hand up and down my arm, warming it up and giving me another kind of goose bumps. “See?” I shook my head, about to say more, but he stopped me. “Okay, how about I give you a do over. Ready? I’m about to kiss you now.”

Despite the tension and angst, I laughed. “Jeff,” I began, but he leaned over, undeterred, head tilted to one side. I tilted mine to the other and our lips met, carefully and delicately. He wrapped his arms around me, pinning my arms to my side, but I slowly worked one up his back, running it across from side to side. This kiss was a little longer and quickly became much more intense than the first one. Still, I had to admit, Jeff was right. There was nothing like the surprise of the first one. When he broke the kiss, Jeff stayed where he was and looked at me. I finally opened my eyes and smiled at him.

After a moment he let me go and we started walking again, side by side, my shoulder against his arm. “If it makes you feel any better,” Jeff said, “that was my first kiss with a guy, too.”

I draped my arm around his shoulder, happy to be the one making the first move for once. “Yeah, I was wondering about that,” I commented, “because you talked about being with a girl.”

He leaned over a bit and put his head on top of mine as we walked. I’d walked like that with Hay before, but since she’s shorter than I am, it had always been the other way around. I kinda liked it this way. “Yeah,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “Yeah, there have been a couple girls. Only one that I went that far with, but a couple that I dated or messed around with. And don’t get me wrong, I liked them well enough, and there was definitely something going on down in my pants.” He chuckled hollowly as he raised his head. “But I don’t know. I’ve never quite felt like this.”

I needed to hear it. “Like what?”

“Like I needed someone as badly as I needed air.” I turned to look at him, stunned. He smiled, despite the fact that he was now the one angsting. “I know I’m being melodramatic. But this is the first time I’ve been happy in a really long time. And I know getting away from Vista and all the drama and crap there has helped, but it’s more than that. You’re not the first person to just stare at me, but you’re the first one who did in a way that made me just want to run over and jump you.”

“Jump me in a good way or bad way?”

Jeff startled and turned to look me. I smiled wryly, and he knew I was kidding. He grinned back. “Believe me, if we’d been alone on this vacation and I’d known you were gay from the start, I probably would have done this on the first night. Who knows what would have happened by now.”

I put my head on his shoulder and he put his head back on mine. It was much slower going that way, but we were barely moving anyway, kept warm by each other’s body heat. I plugged ahead with the conversation; now that we’d actually starting talking, I was afraid of what would happen if we stopped. “How did you know?” I asked, “About me, I mean.”

“Well, the staring was a big hint,” he said, playfully squeezing my hand on his shoulder, “and then I had this conversation with Haley about you, and she said to give you time to come around. That was after I came in and you were sitting out at the car on the first night. But I was the bathroom in that gas station when you and Jordan were fighting about Haley. Those walls were paper thin. Jordan had already told me how he felt about Haley, so I was ignoring you two, until you started shouting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you shout before, so I knew it was important.”

We’d reached the car and I considered that for a moment. Jeff tested the door handles and found that, just as we’d thought, the car was locked. “Well, what are we going to do now?” I asked. We couldn’t go back in the club unless we wanted to pay again, since we hadn’t had our hands stamped on the way out—or at least, I hadn’t.

Jeff looked at me over the car, his head cocked to one side. “I have an idea.” He grabbed my hand and dragged me over to a souvenir shop that was open late, probably because it doubled as a bodega or convenience store. Jeff fell into an animated discussion with the clerk, who promptly showed him a thick beach blanket with a waterproof bottom. Jeff bought it and took it back to the car. I laid the blanket on the hood of the car and climbed up onto it, and Jeff sat down on my other side. We pulled the blanket over ourselves but found we barely fit underneath it together. I practically had to sit on Jeff’s lap for the blanket to go over us both. Not that either of us minded.

We sat leaning against the windshield, wrapped up in the blanket and each other’s arms. There were so many other things I wanted to know, needed to understand, but for now, I just wanted to be there, under the Maine sky, with a guy who liked me as much as I liked him. Maybe more.

***

Jeff had stopped and talked to Adam on his way out of the club, so everyone knew we’d left. He had told Adam that we would meet them at the car later, so we simply sat there under the blanket, talking about nothing important. But as the time went by, I started to retract myself. It wasn’t that I didn’t want the others to see us, exactly. First, I suddenly understood how Hay felt about me accidentally walking in on her and Jordan. This part of a relationship was so tenuous, so delicate, so new, that I wanted to keep it all to myself. You couldn’t even really call it a relationship yet. It wouldn’t even have come as a surprise to just about anyone on the trip, but I still wasn’t ready for them to hear that what they had predicted had actually come to pass. Then there was the one who would actually be surprised. I had to find a way to tell Vanessa in my own way, on my own time.

But I’m not sure Jeff knew what was going on. We could hear footsteps approaching and Adam and Jordan singing “Mmmbop” at the top of their lungs. I only wished I knew what had prompted that—and had a video camera to record them. Instead, I pulled my arm back from around Jeff and scooted over a bit so that we were touching, but not so personally. Friends, not lovers. Jeff saw what I was doing and turned to me, hurt, about to say something. Before he had a chance, Hay saw us and shouted, “Hey, there you two are!”

I jumped down from the car to greet them, leaving Jeff looking wounded behind me. “You guys have fun?” I asked, hugging myself. It had gotten even colder while we’d been under the blanket.

“A little too much,” Hay replied. Her cheeks were rosy from cold and she was visibly shivering. “Why the hell didn’t we bring any jackets?”

For some reason, Vanessa was holding Haley’s purse. “Mind if I get the keys out?” she asked. Vanessa was wearing the least clothing of any of us and she was stamping her feet for warmth. Hay simply waved at her and Vanessa reached into the side pocket, removing the keys. She tossed them to me. “I know the others aren’t drunk, but they’re sure acting like it. You get to drive.”

Jeff was still sitting on the hood. He’d wrapped the blanket around himself completely and was staring at me. I could read his expression clearly—why was I acting like the last few hours hadn’t happened? I smiled at him and reached a hand out. “Join me in the front?” I asked, trying to telepathically get him to understand.

He unrolled himself and jumped down from the hood onto the other side of the car. “No, I’ll sit in back,” he said irritably, not looking at me, dragging his blanket behind him.

Oh, fuck. This wasn’t good. We’d only been on kissing terms for a couple hours and I’d already pissed him off. What the hell was the matter with me? “Oh. Okay.”

Vanessa climbed into the front seat with me and everyone else got in the middle. Adam looked over the seat at Jeff, who was curled up into a ball. He’d thrown the blanket to the far side of the car instead of covering up with it. He raised an eyebrow at him but Jeff didn’t notice. Instead of commenting, like he wanted, Adam got sucked into a squeaky voice contest with Jordan and Hay. Vanessa was right: it really did seem like the three of them were more than a little drunk. But maybe they were just high on life. That’s something I needed a little more of.

When we arrived back at the motel, the girls ran straight inside. I blocked Hay’s door of the car, forcing Jeff to come out the far side behind Adam and Jordan. When he did, I snagged his arm. “Help me with something, okay?” I asked as the other two followed the girls.

Jeff tore his arm away. “I’m going inside.”

“Jeff, wait. Let me explain.”

He’d slammed the door before I even finished talking. I realized I once again was locked outside without a key. I hammered on the door and it was a moment before Adam opened it. He looked at me and I realized my face must be showing exactly how I felt. “What’d you do now?” he asked.

I felt like slamming the door too. Adam was the only one in the room; I could hear Jordan talking to Hay and Vanessa in the girls’ room. Jeff must have been in the bathroom, which meant he could hear everything. I spoke up. “Something wonderful happened and I made an ass of myself as usual. Hopefully I can redeem myself later. Let’s just leave it at that.”

***

A night of sleep, even a crappy one, can make all the difference in terms of perspective. I woke up after a night of tossing and turning with a plan. First, I needed to get Vanessa alone and talk to her. Then I needed to make some sort of grand gesture to Jeff to show him I wasn’t embarrassed of him, or this “thing” we were starting, or whatever he might think. Okay, so it wasn’t a very well thought out or detailed plan, but it was a plan none the less. It gave me purpose.

Jordan was already hogging the bathroom by the time I got up, but I had to pee really badly. I knocked on the door to the girls’ room, desperate for a free bathroom. Hay answered the door in her pajamas, her eyes half open and her hair still messy from sleep. “Bathroom?” she asked. Sometimes it bothers me the way she can read my mind, but not so much this time. I nodded and she opened the door wide. Vanessa was already primped and ready to go, so I ran straight into the bathroom and did my business.

When I came back out, Vanessa was out at the car, digging around for her camera. Hay was sitting on the bed, waiting for me to finish so she could use the bathroom. I came out and sat next to her and started talking before she could jump up. “Hay, you gotta help me.”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “And what can I do for you this time?” she asked.

I lowered my head and ran the hair back out of my eyes and over my forehead before looking back up at her. “I have to come out to Vanessa,” I told her.

Hay lowered one eyebrow and left the other one up. “Have to? Look, By, I know I told you need to be more honest with yourself and others, but that doesn’t mean that you have to let the whole world know by the end of spring break. You seriously can wait until we get back to Stoneybrook and then tell her when the time is right.”

I got up from the bed and paced the room a few times before I replied to that. Hay watched me with concerned eyes. Finally I threw my arms up and turned to her, stopping in my tracks. “No, I really do need to tell her. The sooner, the better.” I took up pacing again.

Hay stood up and put a hand on my shoulder. “Stop it; you’re making me dizzy. Sit down.” She forced me back onto the bed. “What the hell is the matter with you? I’ve never seen you this antsy before. Did something happen last night?”

I turned to look at her. “No. Yes. Something. Nothing. Everything.” I shrugged at her, still confused about it all.

She smiled gently. “I take that as a ‘Yes, but I’m not going to tell you about it.’ I hear ya. Just do me a favor—let me know what’s up before I walk in on the two of you the way you walked in on me, okay?” She squeezed my shoulder and then got up. “My turn in the potty. Listen. Let me think about the Vanessa thing for a while and I’ll get back to you.”

***

We packed up some more sandwiches—all peanut butter this time, as we were out of everything else—and hopped in the car. Haley was bound and determined to walk on a seaside path called Marginal Way, no matter how cold it might be outside. And it was definitely colder than the day before.

Even with the overcast sky and gray ocean waves, the view was gorgeous. Vanessa brought her camera out right away and snapped picture after picture. She made Jordan and Hay pose together in about seventeen different spots—not that they really minded. Hay was obviously getting more comfortable with the idea of a relationship with Jordan. She even let him kiss her in front of the rest of us.

We had already lapped the whole path by lunch, but we’d decided to do it a second time after we ate. Everyone was in a great mood except Jeff. While the rest of us were eating and discussing the present for my parents, which we still hadn’t picked out, Jeff sat at the end of the picnic table. He picked his sandwich apart but didn’t eat it. He let the pieces fall to the ground, crumbled. Whenever someone tried to engage him in conversation, he gave one word answers and said ‘hmmm’ a lot. Eventually, everyone just stopped talking to him altogether, although we all kept stealing glances at him.

When lunch was over, I gathered the garbage and tossed it away. Vanessa even photographed me as I threw a sandwich baggie into the trash can. That was when Hay grabbed the camera from her. “Give me that. It’s time for a picture of you.”

Vanessa lunged for the camera, but Hay tossed it to Jordan, who held it out of Vanessa’s reach. “I don’t want you to take a picture of me,” she whined.

“But you look so great with your new hair and makeup. Don’t you want at least one photo of it before you decide to dye it black again?”

Vanessa thought about that for a moment. “Okay, one photo. Just one. And then I get my camera back.” She sat down on the table of an empty picnic table, the ocean at her back, her hair whipping to the side. Jordan aimed the camera at her and she smiled a small shy smile and looked out away from him. Click. He handed her the camera back and she shoved it in her pocket, looking embarrassed.

As my brothers razzed Vanessa about her romance novel pose and Hay snickered, I took a look at Jeff. He was still sitting on the end of the table where we had eaten, a blank look on his face. Based on the bags under his eyes, he’d slept even worse last night than I had. I worried intensely about the lack of expression. I wasn’t sure if he was half asleep or if he was feeling depressed again.

Adam took a long drink from a nearly empty bottle of cola and then tossed it in the trash can. “Are we ready to move on now?” he asked.

“No, not yet,” Hay was wearing the backpack that day and she slung it back down onto one of the picnic tables. “I have a dare for By first.”

She had my attention, and everyone else’s, too. “What?” I asked, instantly suspicious.

Hay grinned in a way that I really didn’t like. “I dare you to get up on the table and announce your secret to the world.”

I stared at her. “Secret?”

She stared back at me. “You know exactly what I mean. I want you to climb up on that picnic table there,” she pointed, “and make a proclamation to the whole town of Ogunquit.”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Is this payback for me making you try out for Grease?” I asked her.

She smirked infuriatingly. “No, this is payback for making me buy that bustier and wear it to school.”

I’d forgotten about that. “Oh, yeah.”

“You have a choice. You can either get up on the table and make your announcement, or I can lord the fact that I am the queen of dares over your head for all of time.”

Well, I only had one option there. I looked at each of my friends standing there: Adam, looking highly amused; Jordan, slightly confused; Vanessa, her head cocked to the side, brow furrowed; Hay, her smirk widened to the point that I suspected it was hurting her face. Even Jeff had looked up, although he was still blank eyed and expressionless.

I steeled my resolve and climbed up on the table top. As I stood there, I saw some joggers come around the corner. If I managed to get the words out of my mouth, it really would be telling the world. Ah, but who cared? Tomorrow, we were heading back home. Joggers hearing my secrets were the least of my concerns. I needed to focus on Jeff. Once we returned to Stoneybrook, he’d be leaving for California. I needed to find a way to get him to forgive me before then. And I thought this was a start.

I found my balance on the table, which was a little bit rickety. I opened my mouth as my face blazed. Everyone was staring at me, even the joggers. “My name is Byron,” I yelled, “and I’m gay!”

I quickly climbed back down before anyone could say anything. Hay gave me a huge hug, but she was laughing. “You sounded like you were at an AA meeting,” she pointed out.

I shrugged at her. “Thanks for your help,” I whispered in her ear as I gave her another hug.

She let me go and smiled. “Any time. What are friends for?”

I looked at Vanessa, who no longer looked concerned, but rather curious. After a moment, a smile grew across her face. “Leave it to you to make such a big fuss over such a non-announcement,” she said with a shake of her head.

“Non-announcement? You mean, you knew?”

Vanessa grinned more. “Nope. I mean that it’s just not a big deal. Who cares, right? I mean, ‘If you were gay, that would be okay.’”

Hay was hugging Jordan when Vanessa said that. “Avenue Q!” she called. She picked up the lyrics there, singing. “‘I mean, ‘cause hey, I’d like you anyway. Because you see, if it were me, I would feel free to say that I was gay!’”

I looked back to Vanessa, who was starting to laugh. “You know what?” I asked her. “I’m going to hug you.”

She backed up and shook her head again, looking horrified. “No way. You most certainly are not.”

“Yes, I am. Get back here and let me hug you!” I chased her quite a ways down the path before I cornered her and gave her a big hug with her arms pinned to her side. She screamed bloody murder but it was all for show; when I let her go, she gave me a brief hug back.

Adam had grabbed the camera and snapped a picture of us. “Blackmail!” he sang, holding the camera up. Vanessa snatched it back and glared at him, but you could still see the smile in the corners of her eyes.

Jordan and Haley followed behind him, snickering a little. Jeff was still at the table, expressionless, but he sat up a little bit straighter. Hay turned to him. “Come on, Jeff, you’re missing all the fun!” He got up and moved toward us at an extremely sedate pace. Hay dropped Jordan’s hand and rushed to Jeff, grabbing his hand and dragging him over to the group. “You okay?” she asked him.

He shrugged at her. “I slept like shit last night,” was all he said. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and looked at the ground.

Adam looked over at him, concerned. “Did you even sleep at all? I swear that you spent half the night sitting up.” Jeff shrugged again. “Well, let’s keep moving. We’ll tire you out so bad that you’ll have no choice but to sleep tonight.” Adam looked over at me and raised an eyebrow. I couldn’t read his expression exactly, but there was something about it I didn’t like.

***

After we’d walked the path at Marginal Way a second time, Adam suddenly ‘remembered’ again that we’d never bought a gift for Mom and Dad. I think it was an excuse not to walk the same path a third time. The six of us headed back down to the main drag and took a look at the shops. “Let’s split up. We’ll be able to cover more ground.” Jordan was in full dictator mode. “If you see something, make note of it and we’ll all meet back here in an hour to decide on what we’re going to buy. Sound good?”

No one really had a good argument against what Jordan had said, so we all started walking one direction or another. Adam, Jordan and Hay went left, and I ended up going right with Vanessa. Jeff listlessly followed us, not really looking at anything. I didn’t get too worried about him until I saw that. Until that, Jeff had spent the whole trip obsessed with looking into every store. Now, he didn’t even have a smart ass comment to Vanessa trying on every hat in one store, or a life-sized stuffed seagull that sang.

When we exited an antique shop where Vanessa had really liked a birdbath she thought might suit Mom’s garden, I decided I had to do something. The next shop was a semi- punk women’s clothing shop. “I don’t think we need to look in there,” I commented.

Vanessa smiled. “I’m going to go inside and peek around anyway. I need a few shirts. You mind waiting out here for a minute?” I shook my head at her as Jeff sat down on a nearby bench and closed his eyes. She popped into the store and I sat down as close to Jeff as I dared.

“I’m sorry about last night,” I started. He kept his eyes closed and didn’t reply to that, and at first I wasn’t sure he’d even heard me.

Finally, without moving, he responded. “Which part?” he asked, his tone slightly accusatory.

I turned to look at him. “You know which part. I don’t regret our talk or being close to you in any way. I just wasn’t ready to share that with anyone else. For one thing, I had to come out to Vanessa before she saw me sitting in your lap.”

He didn’t reply directly to my statement, but he did look at me for the first time all day. “All I know is, I poured my heart out to you. That was something that was really hard for me to say. And then, just a couple hours later, you turned your back on me.”

I thought about that for a moment, trying to see things from his point of view. “I’m sorry if I did that,” I answered. “That certainly wasn’t my intention. I never want to do anything to hurt you.” He didn’t reply, so I screwed up my courage and went on. “I’ve never done this before—a relationship that was more than friends. I don’t know what I’m doing, so I’m bound to make mistakes. I need someone who’s willing to forgive me when I make them and teach me the right way.”

Jeff had been watching me with those blue eyes of his through all of this. “I don’t know, By,” he said seriously. “There are some things you just can’t teach.”

That stung more than I think he intended it to do. I looked away, hurt. But I had to admit, he wasn’t lying.

All my life, I’ve been afraid of a lot of things. I usually get past them eventually, and then I realize that whatever I feared wasn’t so scary after all. But I miss a lot of living in the time it takes me to figure that out. In this case, I didn’t want to wake up in my forties and regret what happened when I was eighteen. So even though my instinct was to get up and walk away, I turned back toward Jeff and took a deep breath.

“You’re right,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. “There are some things you can’t teach. But there are also some things you can’t deny. And I can’t deny any more that I’ve had feelings for you since before I had words for them. I never thought I’d have the opportunity to act on them, but since I do, I’m not going to let it slip through my fingers. You’re too important.”

Jeff’s expression didn’t change at all through that. I reached out one hand to his chin, rubbing my thumb underneath his jaw. He put his hand on mine, and at first he was going to bat or pull it away. Instead, he closed his eyes and leaned forward and I kissed him. My other hand found his shoulder and worked its way to the back of his neck. Jeff pulled me closer so we were sitting sideways on the bench. He broke the kiss and then started back again without pause. I had forgotten we were on a bench on the main thoroughfare, kissing in front of the entire town of Ogunquit. And Vanessa.

I don’t know how long she’d been watching before she spoke up. “Oh, my God,” she said. Jeff and I instantly pulled apart, like we’d been caught with our hands in the cookie jar. “You’ve only been out an hour and you’re already trying to convert Jeff. And making out in front of some very amused shopkeepers.” She snickered. “I don’t have all day and we have a gift to buy. Are you two coming or what?” With that, she strode off as if she saw sights like us every day.

I stood up and brushed off my butt. I held my hand out to Jeff. “Ready?” I asked, meaning more than just the obvious. He grinned, looking happier than he had since our time under the stars, and I pulled him off the bench. We started down the path after Vanessa, our hands still entwined.

***

Well, the three of us didn’t find anything that we thought Mom and Dad couldn’t live without. Jeff did discover yet another t-shirt for his sister Gracie, and Vanessa bought herself some souvenirs. We met back up with the others, tired and pretty hungry. They had obviously been waiting for us. “Any luck?” I asked Adam.

He shook his head. “Nope. But I guess Haley has an idea. She wouldn’t bring it up until all of us were here.”

Hay jumped off the bench where she’d been sitting with Jordan. “Give me all your coins,” she demanded.

Jeff raised an eyebrow. “Yes, o majesty,” he said as he dug in his pocket.

Jordan looked over at him from where he was still sitting. “You sound like you’re in a better mood,” he observed.

I looked at him as I handed Hay fifteen cents, wondering how he was going to respond to that. “I found something even better than a night’s sleep,” he said, smiling. Vanessa made a gag face and stuck her finger in her mouth. I poked her.

“What’s that all about?” Jordan asked, looking at Vanessa.

She grinned. “Let’s just say, I got almost as much of a peek as Byron did the other day,” she said sweetly, patting him on the shoulder. Jordan glanced over at Adam, who caught on pretty quickly and was trying not to laugh. Jordan still looked confused.

Hay shoved all the coins she had gathered in her pocket and bounced over to Jeff. “Does that mean what I think it means?” she asked. Jeff simply shrugged at her, so she turned to me. “By?” I didn’t reply, but I could feel the blush creeping across my face, followed by a grin. “Oh, my gosh!” Hay threw herself on me and gave me a hug that nearly knocked me over. She’s about 110 pounds, so I’m not sure how she could have so much power behind her. “Listen. I have to go make a phone call. But when I get back, I need to hear all about this.” She let me go and rushed away, still talking over her shoulder. “Major gossip session!”

Adam shook his head. “Where does she get all that energy? She should bottle some and sell it.”

“I don’t know, but I like it,” Jordan said, smiling. He then turned to me, the smile fading. “You really are gay, aren’t you?” he asked.

I sized him up, not sure how serious he was. “Yeah, I really am,” I replied. “Did you think I made that up for fun?” I teased gently.

Jordan smiled back, a little sadly. “No. But I thought you told me that because you were mad at me for that comment about you and Haley.” He shook his head. “I realize how dumb that sounds now.”

Adam had been watching this exchange with a little trepidation. “Don’t worry about it, dude. It took me a little while to get used to it, right, Byron?” I nodded, remembering how worried I had been after I’d told him. “We’re human. It takes us a while to deal with change.” Adam paused and looked at me. “Although, I guess you being gay isn’t actually a change.”

I shook my head. “I’ve known I was gay since I was, like, nine. I’ve had half my life to get used to the idea, and I’m just now coming out.” I sat down next to Jordan on the bench and Jeff came up on my other side to sit with me. He’d been mighty quiet during this part of the conversation. Jeff laced his fingers through mine, silently, and I squeezed his hand. “If it took me that long to get used to the idea, I can’t expect you guys to be one hundred percent okay in ten seconds, can I?”

Vanessa leaned against a light pole a short distance away. “You can’t all be as cool as I am about this sort of thing,” she said. Adam had a flyer or paper of some sort in his hand and he rolled it up and bopped her with it.

He then turned to Jeff. “So, Jeff, does this,” he gestured to our hands, “mean you’re out too? Do you feel the need to stand on a tabletop and shout like my insane brother over there?”

Jeff shook his head. “I honestly don’t know what I am,” he said, sounding sad about it. “No labels. Let me sort through a few things before I get back to you on that, okay?”

Jordan nodded at him. “That sounds good to me,” he said thoughtfully. “Not that it really matters, anyway, right? We’re all just people, no matter how any one labels us.”

“Or how we label ourselves,” I added.

Adam studied me for a moment. “Yeah. Sometimes, that is the worst part.”

Hay came bounding back up at that moment. “Okay, Pikes!” she announced. “You all have been booked for a sitting with Stoneybrook Professional Portrait Studios for a session in June!”

Jordan gave her a quizzical look. “Wait, what?” he asked.

“I figured out what your parents would probably like most, and that’s for you all to stay the way you are and not grow up. Next thing you know, you’ll all eight kids be scattered across the country, working in different jobs, getting married, having babies.” Adam shuddered a little at the thought of that last one. “And so I thought it would be perfect if, in thanks for the assistance they gave in letting us go on this awesome trip, you sit down for a family portrait. All ten of you.”

I had to admit, this was a pretty awesome idea. Although there are plenty of photos of our family, and even a few of all of us together, we’d never all sat down for a portrait session together. The last time we’d had a professional picture taken had been before Margo was born, and she’s almost fifteen. My mom had vowed never to do it again, but we were all so much older and less needy (in some ways) now, so it would probably work much better than it had when I was two.

I could see the others were feeling much the same way about it. Adam grinned, and even Vanessa looked happy. Jordan looked at Haley with adoration. I had been worried about the two of them when I’d first seen them together, but I didn’t worry so much anymore. Jordan clearly treated her gently, and I knew he was so happy that she’d actually considered him that he was going to go forward slowly and carefully. He might not have known about her past, but he respected her enough to go at her pace.

Hay stood next to Jordan and put her hand on his shoulder. “Can I have my purse back, please?” she asked. Until then, I hadn’t even noticed he was holding her bag. Quite a big step for a guy who didn’t want to carry some sunscreen less than a week ago.

It looked like I wasn’t the only one growing up.

***

When we arrived at the hotel that afternoon, Jeff climbed straight onto the bed and fell asleep on top of the blankets. I noted right away that he chose the bed nearest the bathroom, right where I had been sleeping since we’d arrived in Ogunquit. I waited until I was good and sure he was asleep, and then I just looked at him for a while. So much had happened in the past twenty-four hours, and I just needed a moment to reflect. Jeff’s hair hung across his forehead as he breathed slowly and rhythmically. I brushed his hair back and headed outside. I retrieved his beach blanket from the car and covered him up with it. Jeff didn’t even stir. I was beginning to think Adam was correct when he said Jeff hadn’t slept at all the night before.

I joined Adam and Jordan in the girls’ room. My brothers and Haley were playing spite and malice again. It looked like they were gambling for nickels. They were getting worse and worse every time they played cards, I swear. Vanessa, on the other hand, was looking through one of Hay’s magazines. I sat down next to her and she put the magazine aside, her expression thoughtful. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey, yourself. What’s up?”

She shrugged. “Not much. I was thinking about what you said earlier.”

I furrowed my brow. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

Vanessa traced a design on the bedspread. “When we were talking about me and Devon.”

Ahh. Yeah. I raised an eyebrow and waited for her to go on. After a moment, I realized she was waiting for me to talk, so I plunged ahead. “I don’t know Devon,” I told her, “but he’s so not who I pictured you with.”

“So who did you picture me with, then?”

I thought about that for a moment. “Well, I don’t have a specific image in mind. But I’m seeing someone who I could have a conversation with. Someone who could sit down at the dinner table with the Pikes and not be too out of place.” Vanessa looked up from her imaginary drawing. “Can you imagine inviting Devon over for dinner with our whole family?”

Vanessa shook her head. “No, not at all.” She smiled over the image. “Honestly, I started dating him because he was the first person to ask me out. And then I stayed with him because I liked having a boyfriend and someone to hang out with.” She shrugged at me. “Does that make sense?”

I nodded. I could understand that completely. I could see myself doing the same thing—if Jeff hadn’t been interested in me, I might have found myself in the same position in college. “Yeah, I get that. But in the long run, it’s a pretty lousy basis for a relationship.”

She nodded back at me. “I’ve been thinking about that myself. And I think I’m going to break up with him when we get back.” She pulled the magazine back out and flipped to the confessions page. “Devon’s not a bad guy, but he even creeps me out sometimes.”

“Are you sure you’re going to break up with him?”

“Yep.”

“Good.” I smirked at her. “Now I can tell you how much Devon reminds me of Pugsley Addams.”

Vanessa stared me. “No, you’re wrong,” she said.

“What are you talking about?” I replied. “Devon looks exactly like Pugsley Addams.”

She shook her head, looking amused. “He doesn’t look like Pugsley. He looks like Uncle Fester.”

I thought about that for a minute before I realized she was right. And then I started laughing. To my amazement, Vanessa started laughing with me.

My brothers and Hay looked up from their card game. “What the hell is going on over there?” Adam asked.

Vanessa caught her breath. “I’m just giving Byron a lesson in the Addams’ Family tree.”

The others just stared. After a moment, Jordan said, “Some days, I don’t get either one of you two.”

***

About an hour later, our stomachs were grumbling so loudly we could hear each other. The others headed out to the car and I went to wake Jeff. He had kicked the blanket off and he lay on his side, uncovered—much the same as he had been when I’d covered him in the first place. I sat down beside Jeff and put a hand on his back. “Jeff?” I called, “You ready for dinner?”

He didn’t reply. I looked at him; he was out cold. I lay down beside him and pulled my arm across his chest. My face came right at Jeff’s neck, so I snuggled up right behind him. “Jeff?” I repeated. He stirred slightly and I could tell he was starting to wake up just a bit. I pulled right up next to his neck and kissed it lightly a few times. Jeff didn’t open his eyes, but he was clearly awake after that. He grabbed my hand and I pulled; he used the leverage to help him turn over. I put my forehead next to his and watched as he opened his eyes and looked into mine.

“Hi,” he replied with a small smile, and then kissed me. We would have stayed there for a while if my stomach hadn’t rumbled again. “A little hungry, are we?” he teased, running his hand through my hair.

“A lot hungry.” I had my hand on his cheek and I ran my thumb down his lips. He kissed the tip as it went by. “We were going to head into town for dinner. You need a few minutes or are you ready now?”

He kissed me again. “I’m ready now. Like I said earlier, a little bit of you is better than a full night of sleep.”

I beamed at him. “That is the best compliment I’ve ever received.”

I sat up and offered him a hand, which he gladly accepted. We stood up together and Jeff ran a hand through his hair, which was quite messy. “Do I look alright?” he asked.

“To me, you always look alright. But I’d understand if you want to run a comb through that before we leave.”

Jeff grinned. “Okay, sounds good. I’ll meet you outside with the others, okay?” He pulled me in for one last kiss before he headed into the bathroom.

I went outside to join the rest. “He coming?” Vanessa asked.

I nodded. “Quick bathroom stop and he’ll be out.” I was grinning from ear to ear, I know, and the others were all looking at me.

“What is with you?” Adam asked. “Do I want to know what went on in there just now?” He sounded mock-horrified, but he was smiling.

“Naw,” I replied, “You don’t really have to worry, though. We’re rated PG.”

“For now.”

My grin faded. “Yeah, but we only have ‘for now,’” I replied. Thinking about how Jeff would be heading back to the West Coast in only two days put a damper on my cheerful mood.

Hay made a concerned face and grabbed my jacket sleeve, ready to say some words of condolence. Before she could even start her thought, Jeff tumbled out of the motel. “Ready?” he asked, sounding happier than I had heard him since he was a kid.

Vanessa smirked at him. “Uh, yeah. We’ve been waiting for you for the last ten or more minutes, so I’d say we’re ready.”

“Well then, why haven’t you gotten in the car yet? It’s not exactly stand around in the darkness weather.” Jeff shivered and pulled his windbreaker tighter.

Jordan had the keys, so he and Hay got in the front. Vanessa climbed into the back, and Jeff and I took the middle row. Adam looked at the set up and then at Vanessa, who had done something funky with her jacket and looked weirder than usual. “Why do I always get paired with you?” he asked her, leaning over my shoulder from the outside of the car.

Vanessa put her face up against the car window and blew, the way we had when we were kids. “Get yourself a girlfriend and that will stop,” she advised. Adam glared at her. “You could sit in the middle with the Gay Wonders, you know.” Now Jeff and I glared at her too, but I scooted over next to Jeff so Adam could sit on my other side. Not that I really needed too much inducement to sit next to Jeff anyway.

I turned the topic to something really important as Jordan pulled onto the highway. “Where are we going to eat, anyway?” I asked.

Hay leaned over the back of the seat. “We never did get to Barnacle Billy’s. It’s supposed to be legendary.”

No one could come up with an argument against that, so that’s where we went. Jeff looked at the menu in the window and shook his head. “Lobster. What is it with lobster around here?”

Adam laughed. “Well, we are in Maine.”

Jeff wrinkled his nose. I leaned over and looked at the menu. I didn’t see a single thing on it Jeff would eat. As he continued to inspect the menu, I looked up and down the street. There was a salad bar a few doors down. Vanessa and Jordan had already gone inside Barnacle Billy’s and Adam was about to follow. Hay was still looking at the menu with Jeff. His expression was one just this side of disgust, while Hay looked excited.

I grabbed Jeff’s hand and pulled him away from the menu. Hay turned around to watch us. “I think you’d have better luck over there,” I said, pointing at the salad bar.

He looked at me, then back at the menu at Barnacle Billy’s. “I can grab something to go after we leave here,” he commented.

Hay shook her head. “Sit around starving while the rest of us eat? That’s nuts. Why don’t you and Byron go eat at the salad bar while we eat here?” She grabbed the handle of the door and opened it. “We’ll meet you guys in about an hour, okay?” And then she was gone.

I looked at Jeff, whose eyes were shining. “I guess it’s just you and me,” I said.

***

A salad bar isn’t exactly a romantic place to eat, but I was about to take what I could get at that point. After we filled our plates, Jeff and I sat down at the table. Despite how hungry we were, neither one of us started eating right away. I watched as he arranged and rearranged his silverware and then spread the salad dressing across his plate. He caught me staring and stopped, looking at me, concern growing. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

It was then I realized I was faking a smile, and he could see right past it. I shrugged at him and picked up my fork. It didn’t work on Jeff, though. “C’mon, By, talk to me,” he said.

I stabbed some salad and lifted it up to my mouth, but I didn’t eat it. “I dunno,” I said, “I feel like we’re just getting started here, and I want to be excited about that. But then I realize we’re going back to Stoneybrook tomorrow, and then you go back to California the next day, and then we’ll be over before we even get to start.”

Jeff continued to watch me without saying a word. I ate my forkful of salad and took another before he spoke. “You know, I don’t look at it that way,” he said quietly. “I figure this trip is just a beginning. I’ll be back for the summer. My dad gave me the choice of whether or not to come. I wasn’t going to, but now I have a good reason.” He put down his fork and reached across the table. I put mine down also and took his hand with both of mine. “You remember what I said about how confused and unhappy I’ve been recently?” I nodded. “One of the many, many things my shrink advises is that I find reasons to want to keep going. At first, I was seriously just going from week to week because I wanted to see what happened next on 24.” I couldn’t help but smile at that, just a little. “But now I plan to make it through the next couple months waiting to see you again.”

His face was so earnest. I let go of his hand and reached out to his jaw, cupping it in my hand. “Let’s not make it a couple months,” I said, starting to smile for real, “There are phone calls and emails and letters…”

Jeff smiled back at me and picked up his fork. We ate in silence for a while. Once our plates were empty, he took the thread back up. “I only have one question,” he said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. What do we call this?” Jeff gestured to the restaurant as a whole.

“You mean, us?”

“Yeah.”

I thought about that for a moment. There was a large part of me that just wanted to plow right ahead. I had come so far so fast—why not go back to school and not just tell people I was gay, but that I also had a boyfriend? But I couldn’t just think about myself in this. And Jeff…well, Jeff didn’t even know what he was. I didn’t think it was really fair to him to call this a relationship and put a name on it, even if that’s what he was looking for. “Remember what you said about labels? Maybe we should just take things as they go and not worry about naming anything.” He grinned.

We refilled our plates and sat back down. After a little while, I put my fork down again. “Can I ask you a question, now?” Jeff put some salad in his mouth and nodded. “What was going on with you and Hay earlier this week?”

He swallowed. “What are you talking about?”

“The first couple days we were on vacation,” I began, “You and Hay were all over each other.” I chuckled. “I thought you liked her.”

Jeff put his fork down and laughed, a loud, hearty laugh, like I hadn’t heard him make in years. He reached over and patted one hand. “Haven’t you ever heard the expression, ‘If you wanna be my lover, you gotta get with my friends’?”

“Jeff?”

“Yeah, By?”

“Do me a favor? Never quote The Spice Girls at me again.”

He laughed again. “For you? Anything.”

***

Jeff and I ate far too much at that salad bar, even though the place was vegan and there wasn’t a bacon bit in sight. We came stumbling out, groaning exaggeratedly, and waited for the others to reappear. When they did, it was not from Barnacle Billy’s but from a shop down the way. Vanessa spotted us first.

“Jeff! Jeff!” she shouted, “You’ve got come look at this shop.”

Jeff perked up and looked over at me. I nodded at him, understanding, as he walked away. I have no idea what was so interesting, but as Jeff got to the front of the store, he sped up. I plopped down on a bench, much the way Adam and Jordan had been doing all during the trip. My brothers were actually on a similar bench some ways down the block. While I wanted to go join them, I literally felt like I couldn’t get off the bench. Damn salad bar.

Haley appeared out of the store and stopped to talk to Jordan. He pointed down the block toward me, and Hay walked in my direction. The night was fairly cold and she had her hoodie pulled tight around her. Those silly, purple heart sunglasses were on top of her head. She smiled as she headed toward me. “Everything okay?” she asked as she sat down beside me.

I smiled back at her. “Yeah, actually. Jeff and I had a good talk. We plan to stay in close touch. He says this is a beginning, not an ending.”

“Jeff’s a smart guy.”

“Yeah.” Jeff and Vanessa came out of the shop. He was waving his arms while he spoke, making exaggerated hand gestures. The two of them stopped to talk to our brothers, then crossed the street and headed into yet another store. I shook my head, amused.

Hay was watching the exchange. “You’re starting the adventure of your life,” she commented.

I turned toward her. “And so are you, if you stick with Jordan after this trip.”

She smiled a funny, twisted little smile. “Yeah. I think I’ll tell him I’ll be his girlfriend. At least, for now.”

Something about her tone made me pause. “For now?” I asked.

She wrinkled her forehead as she frowned and looked away from me. “Yeah. You’re leaving me, both of you, at the end of the summer. Like I said, you’re starting the adventure of your life.” She pulled her hands up into her sleeves and slid her arms all the way up into the body of her jacket; I think she put her hands in her armpits to warm them up. “You’ll leave me back in Stoney-fucking-brook, all alone, and have such a good time you’ll forget all about me.”

“Hay.” I put my arm around her lump of hoodie and squeezed. “You are the best friend I’ve ever had in my life. I might not always be able to be with you, but I could never, ever forget you. You know that my sister Mallory went off to boarding school a million years ago, right?” I asked. Hay nodded, then put her head on my shoulder. She was crying a little bit again, but just a few sniffles and dripped tears. “Well, you remember Becca’s sister Jessi, too, and how she’s a ballet dancer in New York? She and Mal are best friends, and they haven’t lived in the same town in more than seven years. But they still get together when they’re in the same town, and they talk on the phone and email all the time.”

Hay sniffed and rubbed her eyes on her shoulder. “Point taken. But…”

“No buts!” I tightened my grip. “First, I’m going to need you more than ever after I leave. “Who’s going to keep me sane when my roommate turns out to be a psycho or I have trouble with my classes?” She hiccuped but didn’t otherwise reply. “Second, you can see how crazy Jordan is about you. If he could, he’d take you off to college with him.” I firmly believed that to be true.

Hay finally looked at me. “Yeah, but you won’t be there. You’ll be in North Carolina and Jordan will be in Florida. Adam’s going to be in Ohio. And I have to do another year at Shithole High School.”

“And then, the next year, you’re going off somewhere else too. Besides, what about Vanessa? You two seem to be getting closer. And what about those friends you made when you were in the play?” Hay’s arms reappeared from her sleeves and from her purse she pulled a tissue, which she used to smear around her mascara a bit. “I’m not going to dare you, but I want to suggest you try out for the musical again this year. Not just because it will be other people for you to hang out with, but because you have a talent and I hate to see it buried.”

Hay started to speak, but before she could form a word, Jordan appeared over her shoulder. I hadn’t even heard him come up. “Hey, guys,” he said as he took in the situation. Hay took one last swipe at her raccoon eyes and shoved the tissue in her pocket. “Why is it, whenever the two of you go off on your own, Haley always ends up crying?”

She looked at him. “It’s not By’s fault, Jordan. You’ve got a hot mess for a girlfriend, I must tell you. There are days I just feel so bipolar.”

Jordan focused in on a single word. “Girlfriend?” he repeated. Hay just nodded and held out a hand to him. I retracted my arm and he pulled her up and gave her a kiss, one that lasted longer than I was comfortable with. I ended up averting my eyes and retying both my shoes, despite the fact that neither one of them needed to be retied.

When Hay and Jordan were finished, I stood up from the bench. He had his arm around her and without a word, the three of us walked down the block. Adam and Jeff were standing by a lamppost. Jeff saw us coming and called to Vanessa, who appeared from a doorway. The three of them met us halfway, where Jeff’s hand found mine. The six of us walked back to the car in a companionable silence.

***

We left fairly early the next morning; it was going to be a long drive back and we wanted to make more stops than we had on the way there. We’d gone full circle on the drivers, so I found myself back in the drivers’ seat. Vanessa climbed into the back and promptly went to sleep among the luggage. Adam sat next to Hay and Jordan, which was a brave choice with the way they’d been acting. They’d had their hands on each other all morning. In fact, in the car that morning, Hay was curled up into a ball with her head on Jordan’s lap, and he was running his hands through her hair as she fell asleep. While I was happy for them, I couldn’t help but be a little nauseated. It was like they never turned off.

The car was packed; we’d eaten breakfast and used the bathroom. Still, I didn’t start the car just yet. I didn’t want to say goodbye to the trip and to all the progress we’d all made along the way. There was something magical about it. When I first got in the car, I thought maybe it was something to do with Maine. Vanessa had said something about Maine soothing the soul. Maybe that was it.

But sitting there, playing with the rearview mirror as an excuse to not drive off just yet, I realized I was wrong. This is going to sound really cheesy; I’m sorry in advance. I just couldn’t find a better way to explain it. The magic wasn’t Maine—it was us. I looked over at Jeff, sitting in the passenger’s seat. He was wearing his dark jeans, a white undershirt with nothing over it, his new hiking boots and his sunglasses on the top of his head. But the best thing he was wearing was a smile, a real one, not one of the fakes he had been producing on the way to Maine. And this smile was directed right at me.

I started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. Jeff turned on the CD player and put on my Beatles CD—the one we had listened to on the way up. He turned back to me as the music started and we headed back south toward Connecticut. I thought Jeff was going to say something, but instead he just held out his hand. I took one hand off the steering wheel and took his, squeezing it firmly. He pulled both hands toward him and kissed mine and we drove on toward the rest of our lives.

***

Epilogue

I wish I could say that road trip changed everything. It didn’t. Although I felt like a new person when I arrived back home, things quickly fell back into life as I knew it. There was laundry to do and chores to take care of and unfinished homework to attend to. I was working on calculus when Jeff’s plane back to California left the next day.

But some things definitely did change for the better. That evening before I went to sleep, there was an email from him, saying he missed me already and couldn’t wait to come back. I shot him a response talking about school and how I didn’t want to go back. And when I checked again in the morning, Jeff had already replied to that one.

So even though I was still the last one out the door, as always, and I still had trouble getting my locker open or paying attention in gym class, I felt a lot better about myself while it was going on. I stood up a little taller, brushed the hair a little farther out of my eyes. I don’t know if anyone else could see the difference, but I knew. And that was what mattered.

I was on my way to physics when I saw Jordan and Haley walking the other way, holding hands. I called a hello to them and kept walking. I knew he was introducing her to some of his friends, and now she’d have a life sometimes. There would be days when she’d be too busy with Jordan to hang out with me. I was glad for her.

After my morning classes, I carried my lunch bag into the cafeteria, to my regular table. Adam was already there—he must have been the first person in the lunch line, because he almost never beats me to the table. I sat down beside him. “How’s your day been so far?” he asked.

“Hell. They should just let us graduate right after spring break. It’s not like any of the seniors are paying attention anymore.” Adam nodded and took a swig from a water bottle.

I started setting out my lunch, something I take very seriously. By the time I was finished, the table was starting to fill up. Jordan and Shane were at one end, talking about something that Mr. Obrecht had done that morning in their math class. Robby sat across from Adam and they picked up a conversation. Once again, Dan Reiber sat down across from me, and once again, he wasn’t about to have a real conversation with me. I wasn’t particularly worried about it.

I took a bite of my sandwich and looked up just in time to see history unfold a couple tables over. Vanessa, who was wearing her most normal jeans and a gray long sleeved t-shirt that said, ‘Everyone has the right to be stupid but you’re abusing the privilege,’ walked up to the table, where her old friends Charlotte and Becca were sitting. She leaned over and spoke to them in a low voice. I saw the two of them look at each other and shrug, and Vanessa joined them at their table. She caught me looking at her and gave me a glare for a few seconds, but it quickly turned to a grin. I smiled back at her.

Dan saw me smile and gave me a hideous expression. I realized I was once again looking over his shoulder and smiling. That’s apparently all it takes to set him off. I looked down and took a bite of sandwich, silently willing him to let it go. He didn’t get the message. “What are you doing over there? Having silent daydreams about my dick again?”

That got everyone’s attention. Usually, I either ignore a comment like that, or let someone else answer for me, but not anymore. Before Jordan or anyone else could respond, I looked Dan straight in the eye and put my sandwich down. “Don’t flatter yourself. You are so not my type,” I replied.

Dan looked confused for a moment, but the rest of the table burst out laughing. “Way to go Byron!” Robby called. Adam gave me a high five.

Yeah. I was going to be alright after all.

[tosybelle-blog]

By and Hays Excellent Adventure--Part III

When we got back to the motel, Hay locked herself in the bathroom of the girls’ room and refused to come out. She said something about drowning herself in the bathtub. Vanessa rolled her eyes, but Jeff’s expression was more serious, more thoughtful. “She’s not serious, is she?” he asked, concerned.

I shook my head. “Not if she only says it once.”

Jordan, meanwhile, had retired to bed, ice off his eye but a towel from the bathroom over it. “Shoulda bought a steak for that,” Adam teased, but Jordan just groaned. “He’s going to milk this for all he can,” he said to Jeff and me as he left Jordan under the covers. “Come on, let’s get out of here and go do something for a while. Leave the sulkers be. Vanessa?”

She popped her head into the doorway between the rooms. “What?”

“We’re going to town. Wanna come?”

Vanessa shook her head. “I’ll stay and babysit. Get Jordan more ice. Make sure Haley doesn’t give herself a swirly in the toilet. Referee round two if necessary.” She paused, and then added, “I’ll take pictures.”

Adam chuckled. “You’re one of a kind, thank goodness. We’ll bring back some dinner.”

Jeff drove us back down into Camden, with both Adam and I crammed into the front seat with him. “So, what are we going to do?” he asked as Adam turned the radio off.

Adam and I looked at each other and shrugged. “Wander around. We’ll know what we’re going to do when we see it,” he said vaguely.

I leaned over Adam so I could see them both. “We can get an idea of what to buy Mom and Dad, but Vanessa has the money so we can’t purchase now. Let me know if you see anything, okay?”

We left the car in a different parking area and wandered the other way this time. We’d gone past maybe two stores when Jeff saw something he just had to look at and ran into a store. He kept that up every couple of stores, leaving Adam and I amused, but not nearly as enthusiastic about shopping as he was. Sometimes, we’d follow him in and browse around, but after about an hour, we camped out on a bench for a breather. I spotted Jeff get into a conversation with a couple of other kids—whether they were locals or other tourists, I couldn’t tell. The discussion got animated and they dragged Jeff off, with him shouting he’d be back in a bit.

Adam laughed. “Typical Jeff. Walks into a strange town, makes friends, charms people.” I smiled, secretly wishing I had that skill as well. As soon as Jeff was out of sight, Adam turned to me. “I think you were trying to tell me something earlier?” he said, his expression earnest.

The smile dropped off my face quickly, and I’m certain I turned pale. “Yeah,” was all I said.

“And judging from all this build up, it sounds like it’s something pretty big. You going to spit it out?”

I had to tell him, and now, with the two of us alone, seemed like as good a time as any. “Yeah,” I repeated. My hands started to shake a little and my mouth grew dry. I wiped at it as an excuse to avoid eye contact. I was really hoping I could do this without crying. Hadn’t we had enough tears for two days already?

I thought about how brave Adam had been to tell me he was sorry and he missed me. That might not have seemed like much, but to Adam and me, it meant everything. I had to say it, in order to complete that bond. I looked him square in the eye, and in a small but clear voice, I said, “Adam, I’m gay.”

“Oh.”

This was not the response I had expected. All expression went out of Adam’s voice and face. It was as if someone had turned the lights off behind his eyes. He looked away, taking a gum wrapper out of his pocket. Something to fiddle with. Something to take his attention off me.

I started to panic. “Say something,” I demanded. “Tell me what you’re thinking. I don’t care if it’s ‘I hate you and I never want to talk to you again.’ I just need to know where I stand with you.”

Adam looked down the street. “Think we should get pizza for dinner? I think that’s something even Jeff will agree to eat,” he said, scouring the block for a pizza place.

“Adam!”

“I don’t know what you want, Byron. I don’t see how this changes anything. I mean, you’re still you, right? So why should this make things between us any different?” He ran his hands through his hair, looking frustrated. “Look. This does not change anything between you and me. But it’s a shock. So give a guy some time to process, huh?”

I nodded slowly. “Thank you,” I said.

“For what?”

“For being you. For not letting this change anything.” I sucked in a breath. “For making it so easy to come out for the first time.”

Adam whirled around on me. “I’m the first person you told?” He sounded shocked. “What about Haley?”

I smiled. “I didn’t have to tell her. She just knew.”

He grinned too. “Got good gaydar, huh?”

We got up and walked down the street in the direction Jeff had disappeared. At the corner we’d last seen him rounding, we stopped to see if he was visible. The only young people we saw were two girls, probably a couple years younger than Adam and I. They saw us looking in their direction and I guess they thought we were looking at them. They started giggling and got up to come our way. “Oh God,” Adam said under his breath as they walked over. They were the type of girls who wear too much make up and not enough clothing. The taller one had a pair of giant hickeys, and each one had a lit cigarette.

“Hey, you guys twins?” the taller one asked.

Adam smiled at them, always looking for a chance to flirt with any girl. He’s said before he uses the ‘throwbacks’ as practice for the ‘good catches.’ Disgusting. “Nope. We got another brother. Triplets.” The girls looked at each other and giggled even more.

The shorter one jumped in. “He as cute as you two?”

Even though I had absolutely no interest in girls at all, and in these girls specifically, I felt myself blushing when she said that. I don’t get called cute too often, even by juvenile delinquents. “Well, we’re identical, so...” I said, letting the idea dangle.

Still more giggling. “Well, if you guys are looking for a date, we could probably hook up. If your brother wants to come, we’ll find him a friend.” Before I knew what was happening, the shorter girl grabbed my hand and wrote MIA, 555-3828 on the back of it. “Call me, Cutie!” she said as she and her friend disappeared back down the way they had come.

Adam’s mouth dropped open and he stared at me for a moment. I looked at my hand, disgusted. She’d used red Sharpie. That was going to take days to come off. “Man,” Adam said, starting to laugh, “Now I see why Jordan and I can’t get any dates. You’re one of those gay guys that all the girls want. Probably all the girls we ask out are sitting there thinking, ‘I wish it were Byron asking me out. He’s dreamy!’” He slugged me playfully in the shoulder.

And at that moment, I knew Adam was right when he said things weren’t going to change between us. I held the hand out to him. “Here, write down the number. Maybe you and Jordan can get dates with them. They’re obviously desperate. They’re not in any place to say no.”

Adam smirked. “Those two? I wouldn’t touch them wearing latex gloves. No telling what kind of diseases they might have. You might want to wash that hand thoroughly.”

I wrinkled my nose at the image he had put in my head. “That’s definitely in my immediate future plans,” I said.

Adam looked thoughtful for a moment. “Anyway, I think Jordan’s got a thing for a specific girl,” he said, carefully, “to the point where I actually think he would turn down dates with girls other than her.”

“Danielle?”

“No, someone else. Look, it’s just a theory. I have no proof, so I’m not going to say any more.” He blew out a puff of air, and his voice took a slightly regretful tone. “Don’t tell him I said anything, okay?”

I nodded. “You have my word. As long as you don’t tell him about me.”

Adam looked straight at me. “I wouldn’t do that. That’s your story to tell, not mine,” he said.

“And what story is that?” Jeff ran down the road from the other direction, joining us just in time to hear the end of the conversation. I blushed furiously, much worse than when Mia had called me cute.

Adam elbowed me. “Aren’t you going to tell him?” he asked. I shook my head, confused. I had barely managed to get through telling Adam I was gay. Can you imagine if I’d had to come out and say, “Jeff, I’m gay, and I have a lustful crush on you?” No way. “Aww, he’s shy,” Adam said with a chuckle. “I guess I have to tell you...”

I thought my heart was going to stop. It looked like Adam was going to wait no more than two minutes before betraying my trust. “...Byron is totally the Mack Daddy of this car trip. Look at that! He was totally flirting with a couple girls and one of them gave him her number.” He grabbed my hand and held it in front of Jeff’s face.

Jeff looked confused. “Oh. I, uh...” He stopped and looked me over. I didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, I pretended to be fascinated by a sign on a nearby lamp post. “There’s a lot more to this story, isn’t there?” he asked, still looking at me.

Adam answered. “More than you know,” he said, smiling and putting his hand on Jeff’s shoulder. “Listen, pizza for dinner sound okay tonight? I think we passed a parlor a ways back, right when you discovered that hat with the stuffed bird on top...”

***

We arrived back at the motel to discover that at least one of our crankpots was feeling a little better. Jordan’s eye was swollen and red, but he and Vanessa were sitting on the floor, playing a furious game of spite and malice with the cards. They were teasing and laughing and calling each other cocksuckers and douchebags in the most loving fashion imaginable. They actually stopped a hand in the middle when we opened the door with the pizzas, making a bee line for the piping-hot boxes, still cursing as imaginatively as they knew how.

I picked up two slices of pizza—one off the everything pie and one off the mushroom half of one of the other pies. Gently I carried them to the other room, where Haley was sitting alone on her bed. She’d changed into her pajamas and was bra-less and makeup-less, and she’d pulled her hair up sloppily in a clip. None of us had eaten lunch that day, and I knew she could smell the pizza. Yet she remained rooted to the bed, her eyes and mind somewhere else altogether. I sat down next to her. “Mushroom?” I asked. She turned to look at me finally, and I could tell she’d been crying recently. Again. After a moment, she reached for the pizza slice and took a bite, using the food as an excuse not to talk. I wasn’t going to let her get away with it. “What’s the matter, Hay? If you’re worried about Jordan, he’s fine. He looks like he’s a lot better off than you are right now.”

She swallowed and looked at me. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she said finally.

I nodded. “We all feel like that sometimes,” I said, thinking about Jeff screaming on the top of Beech Hill earlier.

Hay didn’t really respond to that. She’d pulled the blinds wide open in the front of the motel room. The car was parked outside her window, the late afternoon sun reflecting off the windshield. “While everyone else is eating, let’s go fugitive. We can take the car and run and run. We’ll never go back home. Thelma and Louise!” She chuckled and shook her head. “No, wait, Elmer and Louise!”

“Hay...” I had finished eating my pizza and wished I had brought more slices. This was looking to be a long conversation. “You can’t run away from your problems. You know that, right?”

She sighed. “It works for a little while,” she said, sounding particularly sad and inexplicably young. “Besides, you’re a fine one to talk, Mr. In-The-Closet.”

I smiled at her. “You know I listen to you and take what you say to heart, right? Even when you’re drunk and preachy?” Hay looked mildly put out and opened her mouth to reply, but I cut her off. “I told Adam.”

She leaned forward. “You did?” she asked, delighted. “What did he say?”

“He said it didn’t change anything. And then he made jokes about it.” I shrugged as her expression became dark. “That’s a good thing, Hay. It’s how he shows love. Really, I didn’t feel insulted. I was laughing along with him.”

“Whatever. You guys sure are weird.”

I shifted as my stomach grumbled. I hoped Jordan and Adam had left some pizza. “Last night, you told me I need to face my problems. You’re right and I’m going to try. I’m going to slowly find my way out of the closet at my own pace, okay?” She nodded, looking truly happy for the first time since we’d left Beech Hill. “But do me a favor, alright? Take your own advice. Whatever reason you had for coming up with this road trip, whatever you’re trying to run away from, you need to deal with it.”

Hay looked shocked for a moment, but tried to cover it. “You know why I suggested this trip,” she said, irritated, “so we could get away from our brothers and sisters for a while.”

“Bullshit. Yeah, that’s the reason you gave me. But you have some other reason too. And while you have good gaydar and knew what my problem was, I have no idea what’s eating you.” I sighed. “I hope someday you’ll tell me, just like you had hoped I would tell you I was gay, but that’s your choice and I respect it.” Hay opened her mouth again, but then shut it firmly. I could tell I wasn’t going to get anywhere else with her tonight. And what can I say? I was hungry. Time to end the deep thoughts and get back to the food. “So that’s why we can’t just take off fugitive. That and I don’t want to be known as Elmer.”

Hay grinned at me. “Would you rather be Louise?”

***

Luckily, there was some pizza left when I finally coaxed Haley to join the others. Unfortunately, it was all mushroom. I grabbed the whole box and Hay and I sat on the bed next to where the others, done eating, were all playing spite and malice together. Jeff had never played the game before, and he wasn’t doing too well. “This would be more fun with gambling or drinking,” he grumbled.

“Wouldn’t everything be?” Vanessa quipped.

By the time Hay and I were done eating, they had just about finished their game. I’d been egging everyone on during the game, but Hay had remained silent and subdued. When Jordan finally won the game and the cards were being shuffled, she finally spoke. “You guys ever play Mao?” she asked.

We all responded in the negative. “Oh, you have to let me teach you. It’s ridiculous.” No one had any better ideas, so Vanessa handed Hay the cards and she and I joined the group on the floor. Once we had sorted out how many decks were shuffled together, she began dealing out six piles of cards. I started to ask how the game was played. She stopped, looking me in the eye, and said, “Talking during deal. Penalty card.” I opened my mouth, stunned, but said nothing. Instead, I picked up the partial pile and she smacked yet another card down in front of me. “Picking up the cards before the dealer picks up. Penalty card.” The cards went back down in a hurry.

We all silently watched her deal and then set the rest in a pile in the middle. “Okay. There are two rules I can tell you. First, the object of the game is to learn the rules. Second, play starts on the dealer’s left.” She flipped over the first card and looked at me expectantly.

Well, let’s just say that Mao is an extremely frustrating game for someone who always follows the rules, as it’s hard to follow that which you don’t know. First, it took me ten minutes into the play to realize the game was similar to crazy eights, only with a bunch of goofy rules added in. I’d play a queen of hearts and get penalized for not saying, “God save us,” but I wouldn’t know if you were supposed to say that for a queen or a heart or what. Hay obviously enjoyed giving us penalties for rules only she knew. In fact, I think she enjoyed it just a little too much.

Surprisingly, Jordan caught on to the rules very quickly. Adam played the three of spades while Hay was drinking her soda and not watching the play. Jordan grabbed a card off the pile and tossed it at Adam, yelling, “Failure to say three of spades!” Hay grinned at him, and his ears turned pink.

With all the penalty cards we kept drawing, the game took quite a while. Even Hay, who as the dealer didn’t receive penalties, was having trouble getting rid of her hand. I finally found myself with another queen of hearts as the only card in my hand, with a four of hearts as the top of the discard pile. I laid it down and called, “God save us! Mao!” and the game was over.

Jordan laughed as he and Adam tried to sort out the decks. “That game was wicked, Haley!” he said, oblivious to the fact that, other than penalizing him, she hadn’t spoken to him directly all night. “You have to write down all the rules for me so the guys and I can play that on the team bus sometime.”

She shrugged. “I can write ‘em out for you, later, if you want ‘em.” She looked away, and I couldn’t see her expression, but she sounded a little embarrassed. Strange.

Vanessa had gotten up during all this and started moving around the liquor bottles. “Anyone else for a drink?” she asked.

Adam and Jordan both jumped up to join her. “None for me, thanks,” Hay called as she took a single deck and laid it out for solitaire.

Jeff also shook his head. “Maybe I can get through the whole day tomorrow without crying like a baby if I don’t drink tonight,” he joked. He had sat beside Haley on the floor, and kept peeking to see what cards she was dealing. She smacked at his hand, sending cards flying. The two of them laughed.

Vanessa turned to me, and to my own surprise, I heard myself saying, “Yeah, alright.”

Apparently, this was to everyone else’s surprise, too. “Really?” Vanessa said, stopping in mid pour to look at me. Everyone else seemed too stunned to talk.

I nodded slowly. “Really. But make it mostly juice and just a little bit alcohol, okay?”

Adam and Jordan, standing beside her, started to relax. I guess I just sounded a little more like myself. Still, Adam poured me a little bit of vodka and a whole glass of orange juice and then held it just out of my reach. “You sure?”

I smiled at him. “Adam, I’ve had a long fucking day. Can I just have the goddamn alcohol already? Before I really do change my mind?”

He started to say something, but then he grinned back at me. After he handed me the drink, he joked, “Somehow, Byron, I’ve always pictured you with something a little fancier or fruitier. Like a martini or a mimosa or a cosmo or something.”

“I have no idea what most of those are,” I admitted. I took a sip and then looked at the glass like it had personally offended me. “You guys actually like the taste of this?”

Jeff was watching me from his seat on the floor. “It grows on you,” he said, looking amused.

Vanessa had drained her glass already. “Oh, look, Pa,” she said, putting her arm around Jordan, “Our little boy is growing up. His first real drink of alcohol!” He shrugged her off but didn’t seem too irritated.

Everyone eventually turned to other activities. Vanessa turned the TV on and poured herself a second drink, sitting down to watch a rerun of South Park. Adam and Jordan joined her and found themselves laughing at the antics of a bunch of kids who cursed almost as often as we did. Jeff had taken Hay’s deck of cards and was dealing some complicated solitaire game. Only Hay was watching me as I sat on the other bed and sipped the nasty screwdriver. She met my eyes and gave me a little smile, but her eyes were shiny and bright. I couldn’t tell if she was happy that I’d broken a rule—in my own way, on my own terms—or if she was crying again. It had definitely been a long fucking day—and a hard one, too. Harder for some of us than for others.

***

Well I can’t say that the alcohol gave me any of the pleasant side effects it’s known for, but I guess you have to drink more than a thimble’s worth to get those. But on the upside, I woke up without a hangover. (Not that I’d really expected to have one, of course.)

Everyone else was still asleep when I woke up. We’d agreed to a late start so we could all enjoy our sleep, but I knew once I was up, I was up for the day. By unspoken agreement, I’d been given the spot in bed closest to the bathroom both nights. It’s a long running Pike family joke that I have a bladder the size of a walnut. Even though it’s no longer true—I think I was about six when I stopped wetting the bed—it still pops up on regular occasions. And sometimes, like this, I actually don’t mind.

I showered and got dressed while everyone was still asleep, then crawled back into bed with a bowl of Lucky Charms. Hay loves Lucky Charms. She says that the marshmallows make her feel like she’s camping, which is pretty weird. But then, the longer I was on a road trip with her, the odder I was beginning to think Hay was.

I was just beginning to ponder that fact when Jordan began to stir. He rolled over from one side to the other so that he was facing me. I grimaced as I caught a glimpse of his eye, purple and swollen. Adam was right. He had one hell of a shiner. It became even more noticeable as he opened his eyes and looked at me.

Jordan blinked a few times, struggling to get his eyes to focus. “What time is it?” he asked. I shrugged and spooned more cereal into my mouth. He sat upright and looked at the alarm clock between the beds. “Eight thirty. And you’re already up and dressed?”

I shrugged again. “Couldn’t sleep anymore,” I said, slurping some milk up from my spoon.

He looked at me funny, and I couldn’t blame him. He’s normally the first one up and moving, and Adam and I have to make a bit more effort to wake up. Jordan threw off the blankets, narrowly missing my cereal, and rolled out of bed, just wearing his boxers. He wandered into the bathroom and peed with the door open. I rolled my eyes at him fondly as he came back out, scratching his shoulder, and gathered up some clothes. “If the others wake up and want to take a piss while I’m in the shower, tell them to just come in. But don’t let ‘em flush!”

Jordan may be the triplet with the least amount of hair and the least fussy way of dressing, but he takes the longest time in the shower of anyone in my house—and that includes my teenaged sisters. By the time the shower turned off, Adam had gotten up, thrown on a pair of jeans, and was fixing himself a bowl of cereal. I’d eaten two bowls myself and was throwing away my garbage.

Adam sat down in the empty chair, looking down at his bowl as he ate. I turned back from the trash can and was startled as Jeff rustled in the bed. He was lying on his back, one hand under the pillow, the other palm up next to his side. When Adam had tossed off the blanket, it had left Jeff half uncovered. He wore a pair of pajama bottoms that had ridden low in his sleep. His torso was bare, and I followed the curve of his shoulders down his arms and back up. I found myself staring as his chest rose and fell with his breath. He shifted again, bringing his hand onto his chest, and smiled in his sleep. I smiled too.

“Oh, my God,” Adam said. I turned around to find him watching me. He looked from me to Jeff and back to me. He cocked his head to one side and looked at me like I was crazy. “You have it bad, don’t you?”

“Shhhh!” I grabbed his arm and pulled him over toward the door between our room and the girls’, as far away from Jordan and Jeff as possible. “Tell the whole world, why don’t you?”

Adam chuckled. “You keep staring at him like that and the whole world’s going to know, anyway.”

I sighed and looked down at the carpet. “Look, it’s a hopeless crush. Not only does Jeff live on the other side of the country, but he’s also straight. I figured it was better to stare while he’s asleep than when he was awake.”

Adam looked over at Jeff and smirked. “Can’t argue with that, can I?”

At that point Jordan came strolling out of the bathroom. He eyed the two of us, smushed up against the door. “What are you guys doing over there, making out?” Adam and I sprung apart, trying to appear innocent but doing the exact opposite. “You know incest is illegal, right?” Jordan snickered as he crossed the room. He grabbed a bag of chips and turned on the TV, hitting the mute button right away.

A talk show episode blathered on, and without the sound, it was hard to determine exactly what the guests were talking about. I guess it doesn’t really matter with Jerry Springer, though. By the time Adam and I came over to sit on the bed by Jordan, a fight was going on between a skinny, short girl and a taller, overweight woman wearing too much make up. “Hey, look, Adam, it’s Mia and her friend!”

Adam snickered but Jordan just looked at us like we were insane. “We met these two girls last night...” Adam started. He grabbed my hand and thrust it toward Jordan. Despite my scrubbing it the night before and thoroughly again that morning, the bright red was still on the back of my hand.

Jordan guffawed and Jeff stirred, opening his eyes. “What’s so funny?” he mumbled. Jordan looked guilty but didn’t answer. Jeff sat up and stuffed both the pillows from the bed behind his back. He looked blearily at the three of us, like he expected to see someone else laughing while he slept.

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty.” Adam smiled at Jeff and then at me. I smacked him on the back of the neck where Jeff couldn’t see. Jordan saw, though, and he gave the two of us a strange look and moved a few inches away from us, as if he was trying to let Jeff know he wasn’t a part of whatever business we were getting into.

Jeff didn’t notice any of it. “Girls up yet?”

I shrugged. “If they are, we haven’t heard from them yet.”

Jeff grinned. “We should go wake them the way they woke us up yesterday.”

Jordan faked a shudder. “Vanessa...in the morning...not pretty.”

Jeff waved that off. “I’ve got sisters, too. I’ve seen everything.” He slid out of bed and pulled his pajamas back up. Not bothering with a shirt, he tested the door to the girls’ room and discovered they hadn’t locked it on their side. “Anyone coming with me?” I jumped up to meet him. Adam threw on a shirt and after that, Jordan followed, a little reluctantly. Jeff swung the door open, and when we were met with no response, we moved en masse into the other room.

Hay was sitting with her back to us on her bed, brushing her hair. She obviously hadn’t heard the door open, so when we all appeared, we startled her and she threw her hands up. The hairbrush clattered between the night stand and the bed. Hearing the noise, Vanessa popped out of the bathroom, her eye make up half done. “You guys beat us up today!” she said, pouting her best mock pout.

“Nah, not really,” Jeff sat down on the end of Hay’s bed while she fished her brush from behind the dresser. “I think I’d make quite a statement if I went island hopping like this, hmmm?” He modeled his sagging cotton pajamas for the girls. They laughed, but I actually wouldn’t have minded if he dressed like that all the time.

***

Jeff took his clothes into the bathroom, and while Vanessa finished her makeup, Hay gathered up the Lucky Charms. “By!” she exclaimed, shaking the cereal, “You ate up half the box!” She picked up a disposable bowl from the pile my mom had given us and poured herself some breakfast and sat on the chair, while Adam and Jordan took the bed. Jordan turned the sound back on the television and started flipping stations.

I sat sideways on the arm of the chair, with my butt right next to Hay’s arm. Jeff came out of the bathroom, some dental floss still hanging from his mouth. He was wearing a long- sleeved gray t-shirt and his khaki shorts from the other day. “Anyone seen my chapstick?” he asked, his words slightly garbled.

Adam turned away from the television. “May I state the obvious and ask if you’ve checked your pockets?” he queried.

Reaching into his pocket, Jeff came back out with a handful of condoms, the ones we had bought on the way up. “Oh!” Hay exclaimed, putting her spoon into her bowl, “I was wondering where those went.”

Jordan put down the remote. “Pass those over here,” he called, “I didn’t get to see them before.”

Jeff handed him the pile. “Can’t believe I slept with those in my pocket the other night and didn’t lose any,” he commented.

Jordan set them all on the bed. Jeff grabbed some granola and joined him and Adam. “So how were you going to split them up, one for everyone?” Jordan asked.

Jeff looked at Hay and me. That hadn’t been our plan, but no point in not sharing now. They were just for fun, right? We weren’t going to actually use them. “That’s right,” I said.

Adam jumped up from the bed and picked up one of the bottles of liquor. We’d been storing them in his suitcase, wrapped in the paper bags, when we weren’t using them, to keep housekeeping from spotting them. He removed the bag from the almost empty bottle of Captain Morgan and threw all the condoms inside.

Jeff leaped up from the bed and headed into the girls’ room. “Vanessa!” I heard him say as he pounded on the door to the bathroom, “We’re sharing condoms out here. Come join us!”

I felt Hay start laughing at his phrasing. She put her cereal down and put her hands over her mouth, making an “I can’t believe he just said that!” face. Adam and Jordan each raised their eyebrows. Jeff came right back. “I got her attention. She’ll be right out.”

When Vanessa was made up, we all gathered around the bed and took turns reaching into the bag. Hay looked at her bright green condom and sighed. “Think these things are actually useful?” she asked. “Will they prevent pregnancy and STDs?”

Vanessa had the music-playing rubber. “I don’t know,” she said, reading the instructions on the back to herself, “I can’t imagine that something that plays music as you’re getting some would be much good. They probably spent more time on the music technology than the not-breaking technology. Not really useful for me anyway. Devon’s kind of loud during. Wouldn’t hear a thing.” She tossed the condom packet on the bed and went to get something to eat.

My brothers and I all looked at each other. “You’re having sex with Devon?” Adam asked, voicing the concern all three of us had.

Vanessa picked up the bag of chips Jordan had been eating for breakfast. “Well, yeah,” she said, and then got a good look at our faces. She instantly got mad. “Don’t you dare go all big brother on me. I’m not Margo or Claire. I’m nearly seventeen years old. I’m a whole fourteen fucking months younger than you are! You know that you were having sex at my age, and if you weren’t, you were sure wishing you were!” Vanessa’s face was flushed, and she was clenching the chips so tightly that I heard a few break.

Adam and Jordan looked at each other again. I knew they were thinking that, at least on the last bit, she was right. Vanessa is only a year younger than we are, and this time last year, the two of them had been planning on whom they were going to take out once they got their licenses and how far they were going to go with them. I sighed. “Vanessa,” I said in my calmest voice, “I’m not actually worried about you having sex so much. You’re a big girl and you can take care of yourself for the most part. My worries are that you’re being safe. And of course, there’s Devon...”

“What about him?”

Yikes. I’d never heard her be so defensive before. “Well...I’m not his biggest fan. He kinda gives me the creeps, to be honest. I’ve never heard him say a word, for instance. Every time he sees me, he just stares at me.” Pugsley Addams, I thought to myself.

She sighed. “Yeah. Even my friends say that. But I like him, okay?” She put the chip bag down and sat on the floor, the wind out of her angry sails. I jumped up and sat down with her, and Hay joined me. Jeff had been trying to stay out of the conversation and had been digging around in his duffel. He finally came out, triumphantly holding his chapstick. He perched on the bed, as far away from the rest of us as possible, looking awkward.

Jordan spoke for the first time in a while, and I was surprised by what he said. “I think, Vanessa, that the main thing is that you remember your ‘first’ forever. I just hope someday that if I’m ever lucky enough to find a girl who will make love to me, it’s someone I’ll remember fondly for my whole life. Maybe I’ll even get lucky and I’ll still be with her when I’m eighty. Maybe Devon is that person for you. But if he’s not, I hope it won’t bother you sometime in the future. Say, when your own daughter is old enough to ask you about your first time.” Vanessa frowned at this but didn’t say anything.

Jeff inched closer, until he was sitting cross-legged on the bed. We were all quiet for a moment before he spoke. “I gotta tell you all. When my ex and I first started dating, she was kinda pushy about the whole sex thing. I eventually figured out, she was just desperate to lose her virginity. She didn’t want to be the last one of her friends, right?” He was nervously twisting his fingers as he spoke.

Vanessa interrupted him with a wave of her hand. “Let me guess. You didn’t give in, keeping your virginity intact, and she just went out and lost hers with some gross boy that was way beneath her.”

“No, no, no.” Jeff gave her a look. “What was that, the plot of some movie you saw? No, I totally slept with her. And totally regret it now. Not just because I let her pressure me into it. Mostly because it wasn’t right. I just wasn’t that into her.” He let his gaze move away from the mass of us on the floor and up higher, as if he were sorting through painful memories.

We were all quiet for a moment again, all lost in our own thoughts. Hay finally broke the spell. “Jeff?” she said. He looked at her. “If you don’t mind me asking, is that why you broke up with her?”

Jeff broke eye contact and looked down at his shoe. He suddenly noticed the graffiti Vanessa had made on it the day before and frowned, though I think more at the memory than at his boot. “Yeah. No. Sorta. Not really.” He chuckled. “It was really complicated,” he added, almost unnecessarily. Hay nodded.

I jumped up off the floor. “Well, is everyone ready to go?” I asked, desperate for a subject change.

Adam jumped on the topic. “Let’s make some sandwiches and take them with. They’ll be good for a couple hours before we’re ready to eat again.”

Everyone started moving around, busily packing sandwiches or filling water bottles. I watched them all go and realized one of my hands was clenched. I opened it and realized I’d never really taken a look at my selection from the paper bag earlier. I was holding the glow-in-the-dark condom, the one Hay and Jeff had been fighting over in the car. I looked over at the two of them making peanut butter and honey sandwiches together and laughing. Hay wiped a bit of peanut butter on Jeff’s nose.

I stuffed the condom in my pocket and kept my hurt to myself.

***

We parked our car at the dock and rode the ferry out to Islesboro Island, where we managed to rent bikes. Not too many rental places were open this early in the season, but we got lucky and there were just enough left. I had volunteered to hold the bag this time, and it was weighted down with enough sandwiches and water bottles that I felt like I was going to fall back off the bike. Of course, I was also carrying Hay’s massive bottle of sunscreen and her giant pharmacy of a purse. I had gotten a glimpse inside when she’d made me put the whole thing in the bag, and I saw every type of pill imaginable, bug spray, calamine lotion, and a thousand other things. She caught me looking and grinned sheepishly. “My mom,” she said, as if that explained everything. Although, in this case, it kinda did.

We biked for almost two hours straight before we stopped at a little grassy space. I opened the backpack and laid out the food, sorting sandwiches by filling. There was flurry of sandwich grabbing, and by the time I got done laying out drinks, all that was left was peanut butter on health-nut bread. How did this keep happening to me, exactly? I took the two peanut butter sandwiches and looked at my friends. They were scattered, Jordan and Adam sitting next to a stump, Vanessa over by the path, sunning herself. Jeff and Hay were sitting right next to the food, so I went over to join them.

They were sitting at such an angle that finding a place where I could see them both was awkward. I ended up back to back with Hay, the way we usually sat on her bed at home. She laughed when I sat next to her, and adjusted her angle so we were leaning on each other. “By,” she said in a sing-song voice, knocking her head into my neck, “You are the peanut butter to my jelly.” She opened her sandwich and inspected it. “Or should I say honey?”

Jeff shook his head at the two of us. “Nope. Byron would be a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on white bread. All American.” I frowned, not sure that was a compliment.

I was even less sure when Haley replied, “No, no. Not grape. Plum, maybe. Something that looks like grape, so that when you take the first bite, you’re really surprised.” She and Jeff both laughed.

I stiffened. “Can you guys stop talking about me like I’m not even here?” I asked, a little irritably.

I saw Jeff look at Hay, but I couldn’t tell from his expression what kind of silent conversation they were having. Jeff turned to me. “Well, then, Byron, what kind of sandwich are you?”

I grimaced but answered anyway after a slight pause, long enough to convey my contempt. “Pastrami on rye with provolone cheese, mayonnaise, tomato and a pickle.”

Jeff grinned. “That’s about right. That’s All American. And meaty.” He took a big bite of his sandwich.

Hay looked around. “Adam would be a club sandwich. There’s a little bit of everything on that, so you’re not surprised by what flavor you get.” She shifted and looked the other direction. “Vanessa would be a herring sandwich. Something that looks weird, so you might not want to try it, but it might actually taste good once you do.” Finally, she turned back to Jeff. “And you, Mr. Schafer, are home grown vegetables on hand-made wheat bread. Healthy. Organic. Crunchy.”

Jeff beamed at her. “You’re a Fluffernutter sandwich. Ridiculously sweet. So sweet, some people don’t even want to try and don’t know what they’re missing.”

I wanted to vomit. What did Jeff, the health food guru, know about Marshmallow Fluff anyway? “What about Jordan?” I asked, simply to get them to stop praising one another.

Hay let out a puff of air in a half-laugh. “I don’t know. I don’t want to taste him and find out.”

“He’s not that bad, you know.”

She took another bite and spoke with her mouth full. “Weren’t you the one saying, just yesterday, that he’s been an ass his whole life?”

I didn’t answer that. Jeff took up the thread. “Isn’t there some kind of lunch meat that’s tough to chew, but people love it anyway?” He said ‘lunch meat’ with the same tone of voice people used when talking about torture implements.

I thought about that for a minute. “Corned beef?” I suggested.

“Right. Jordan is corned beef,” Haley laughed, then added, “with cabbage!”

***

When we were done eating, the girls spread out in the grass, complaining of stomachs too full for bike riding. They almost instantly fell asleep, using their hoodies for pillows. Adam and Jordan were still off by the stump. I heard several phrases and realized they were talking about the school baseball team, on which they both play. Jeff was sitting down next the girls and it looked like he might join them in their nap. I, on the other hand, had to get up and get out. “Jeff, I’m going for a walk. Want to come with me?”

Jeff looked surprised, but nearly jumped up. “Sure!” he said, eagerly.

We let Adam and Jordan know where we were going and took off down the path. It forked a short way down, and we took a left, vowing that if we came any further on bicycle, we’d go right. We were barely out of sight of the camp when Jeff turned to me. “What’s with everyone?” he asked.

I was suspicious. “What do you mean?”

He eyed me calmly. “You know what I mean. This trip isn’t even half-way through and it’s been drama the whole way.” He took a sip from his water bottle. “Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ve caused a fair share of it. But everyone’s just so at odds with one another and themselves. You and Jordan get into it. Adam tells you he’s keeping your secrets. Vanessa’s off sleeping with some creepy guy and we all get to hear about it. And don’t even get me started on Haley.”

I skipped all his other concerns and went straight to the last. “She’s not usually this bad,” I said, finding a rock at the side of the path and kicking it to see how far it would go. It careened off the path and out of sight. “You remember how she used to be, right? She was so outgoing. Everyone’s best friend.” Jeff had moved away right before Haley moved to town, but they’d met a few times and he definitely knew what I was talking about. He nodded. “The summer right before she started high school, something changed. The group of girls she was really close with—Vanessa, Charlotte, Becca, Danielle—it just sorta fell apart. I don’t exactly know what happened. Neither Vanessa nor Hay will really talk about it. Charlotte and Becca and some girl named Natalie hang out a lot these days. I have lunch with them, so I see them sometimes. Danielle runs with a faster crowd, mostly jocks and cheerleaders. She hangs out with a few of Jordan’s friends. Vanessa ended up with what everyone calls the ‘literary set’ because some of them write poetry or short stories about death. Really, they’re just emos and Goths and wannabes.”

I had started rambling by this point, but since Jeff was still following, I went on. “And Hay...well, she ended up alone. And since I was pretty much alone, too, we kinda latched on each other.” I kicked another stone, but this one didn’t move. I shrugged and went on with the story. “I know something’s bugging her. I think it has been for a long time. I actually talked with her about it last night, or at least I tried to. She keeps insisting that nothing’s wrong.”

Jeff gave a brief chuckle. “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is how you’re ever ‘pretty much alone.’ You’ve got a built-in group of friends in your brothers.”

“Yeah, and that’s nice and all,” I sighed, “but you’ve seen how we are. When we were little, I started to feel like I was different from them. It keeps getting worse as we get older. They play baseball. I run track. They go on double dates. I go over to Hay’s house. They go to a party with drinking and weed. I stay at home with a book. See what I mean?”

It was Jeff’s turn to shrug. “But if you really need them, they’re there for you. Who else but Adam and Jordan would keep your secrets for you?”

I stopped in the pathway and thought about that for a moment. “Hay,” I said finally, and after another pause, “and I bet you, if I asked you to.”

Was it just me, or did he blush a little bit when I said that? Hard to tell with his skin tone. “You’d do the same for me,” he said, and I nodded. “Let me test you on that. Can I tell you something that no one in Stoneybrook knows, except my mom and stepdad? And have you keep it a complete secret?”

“Of course. You have my word.”

He started walking again suddenly. I was so surprised I had to break into a trot to catch up. “So you know I haven’t come to Stoneybrook for spring break since I started high school. Always had things to do with my friends out in California, you know. And my mom was never very happy about that, but she understood. Well, this year I wouldn’t have come either. But my therapist thought it would be good for me. He said I should ‘get away’ for a while, whatever that means.”

Even though I was horribly confused, I nodded and he kept going. “Remember how I said it hadn’t been a good year inside my head? Well, that’s an understatement. And a couple weeks after Christmas, I think my brain just completely imploded. I went nuts. My dad had to call the cops because I was holding a razor blade to my wrist and threatening to slit it.”

My mouth dropped open, and I reached out and put a hand on Jeff’s arm, stopping him in his tracks. “Oh, my God,” I murmured.

“Yeah,” Jeff said vaguely. He noted the hand on his arm with his gaze but turned back to looking me directly in the eye. “I spent a couple of weeks up in the loony bin before my shrink decided I was ‘no longer a threat to myself or others.’ But he keeps me drugged up, and this trip is the longest I’ve gone without seeing him since I got sent away.”

I released my hand. “Are you...okay now?” I asked tentatively.

“Yes and no. I’m not going to cut my wrists any more, if that’s what you mean. But Dr. Anton says we have ‘a lot of underlying issues to deal with’ before he considers me ready to end therapy. He says I’m ‘running from myself.’ Sound like anyone you know?”

Yes, it did. I knew he was referring to Haley, but he could have included me in that as well. I nodded. “Your secret is safe with me,” I told him.

He smiled. “I knew it would be.” We started walking again and were silent for a few minutes. He then turned to me. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

“Does a bear shit in the woods?”

He chuckled. “Track team?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah. I wasn’t good enough to make varsity baseball, but I wanted to get out and exercise. And the track team takes everyone. I think I like it because, even though you’re competing against the other runners, you’re really competing against yourself more. You’re trying to beat your best score, your best time.”

Jeff nodded as well. “Makes sense. Okay. What about this ‘biomedical engineering’ thing? How’d you pick that out? I’d always had you pegged for a career working with people. Maybe kids.”

Hay had said the same thing when I told her what I was going to study, and for some reason, that put me on the defensive. “It’s a good career,” I said, rubbing my hand over my head and smoothing my hair a little bit. “It’s stable. There’s a demand for it. And it pays well.” I brushed a leaf out of the back of my hair.

Jeff looked slightly confused. “So what does a biomedical engineer do?” he asked.

“Really depends on what direction you want to go with it. I looked into companies that are working with computer models of DNA to try to figure out how our genes work. But other companies are creating medications. I could help cure the common cold. Or cancer.”

Jeff chuckled mirthlessly. “And that’s what you love to do, huh? Where your passion is?”

I stopped and looked him straight in the eye, and he held my gaze. “I don’t know,” I admitted, nervously running my hands through my hair again. “I just know it’s something that I could do. Something I could be good at.” I sighed and put my hands down. “I like the idea of lab work. There are rules. There are protocols. There are procedures.”

This time he reached out and touched me, a gentle hand to the shoulder. “Life isn’t like that,” he said.

I nodded again. “Not much is. Love. Friendship. There isn’t a written set of rules, so I don’t know when I’ve broken them. And sometimes, it feels like things that come so easily to everyone else are much harder for me. Maybe they just got a rule book and I didn’t?”

Jeff shook his head. “Nope. Nobody gets the rules to this, and everyone’s rules are different anyway. What’s right for you might be wrong for your brothers and vice versa. You just have to learn through trial and error.”

Without thinking, I put my hand on top of his and squeezed it. “So, life is just one giant game of Mao, then?”

“Yeah. Except that there’s no dealer to hand you a penalty card when you make a mistake. Unless you get arrested or God smites you or something.” I finished with his hand and he slid it free. I imagined that he was letting his fingers travel down my arm, but that was probably just the only way to get his hand loose. I checked his expression for signs that I should have been penalized, and there were none. He just looked earnest. “Honestly, outside the obvious, I think that there’s not too much ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ in life. Just a series of choices.”

I thought about that for a moment. “So if I choose to go into biomedical engineering and then I hate it....”

He grinned. “You just change programs or schools. Or if you’ve already finished, you do it for a couple years, save some money, and go back to school. You’re eighteen. No one expects you to map out and plan the rest of your life now.”

“Good. Because I barely even have the rest of spring break planned. Never mind my whole life.”

***

By the time we got back, the girls were up and everyone was waiting for us. “What were you two doing?” Hay demanded.

Jeff patted her on the head. “It’s called talking. You should learn it. It’s a useful skill.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

We mounted our bikes and took off, but instead of heading farther down the trail, we headed back. We turned in our bikes after four hours of riding and had half an hour before the next ferry.

Tired, we all plopped down on a single bench, meant for maybe four people, tops. Vanessa found that infuriatingly funny and stopped a passerby to take our picture. After she had her camera back, Vanessa jumped off the bench (we all instantly scooted around, closing in the hole where her butt had been). With her second wind, she began taking artsy shots of everything, including extreme close-ups of some bird poop.

The rest of us all sat on the bench, listlessly watching her. Hay leaned over on me, putting her head on my shoulder. Jeff leaned over on her, putting his head on top of her head. I staggered under the combined weight and nearly fell off the end of the bench. “You guys are killing me here,” I moaned as I regained my balance. “Can’t you lean the other way, Jeff?”

Jeff pretended to ponder that. “I would,” he finally said, “but I don’t think Adam would appreciate me cuddling with him in public.” Adam smirked.

Yeah, but I don’t appreciate you cuddling with Hay in public, I thought. “So, instead you make a Haley sandwich?”

“She doesn’t particularly seem to mind.”

Hay’s eyes were closed, and she didn’t move as she spoke. “What is it with the three of us and sandwiches today, Pastrami and Veggies?”

Adam and Jordan leaned over from the other side of the bench, wearing identical expressions of confusion. Jeff laughed. I shook my head but couldn’t help a small grin. “Whatever you say, Fluffernutter.”

***

For our last night in Camden, we decided to step out a bit. We put on our nicest, cleanest clothes and found a seafood restaurant that wasn’t too fancy or expensive. It was a Tuesday night, so they weren’t too terribly busy. Still, our waiter didn’t look too thrilled to see us. It didn’t help that when we came in, Vanessa was talking a smidge too loud, Hay was riding Jeff piggyback and Adam was playing Jordan’s head like a bongo drum. We must have looked like a sextet of morons.

Once we sat down, we simmered down. We were seated at a round table. I had a girl on either side of me and Jeff directly across the table. I don’t even know why most of us even picked up the menus: it was definitely going to be five orders of lobster. Jeff pored over his for a while before deciding on broiled fish.

After the orders were placed and steaming cups of clam chowder were delivered, Adam put his spoon down before he started eating. “So we’re leaving Camden tomorrow?” he asked. “Where are we headed after that?”

Hay’s mouth was full, so I answered. “Ogunquit,” I said. “It’s about two hours from here.”

“Ogunquit,” Jordan repeated, “Funny name.”

Jeff was playing with, rather than eating, his chowder. “What’s in Ogunquit? More hiking and biking?”

Hay had finished her soup, so she picked up the thread. “Yeah, there’s a great path called the Marginal Way that we have to do. It’s really short but pretty. Lots of beaches. We wouldn’t be able to swim but we might be able to sunbathe. There’s other stuff too.”

Jordan smiled at the generic-ness. “‘Other stuff.’ Way to be specific,” he teased.

Hay shrugged, looking mildly irritated. “I read this book,” she said, as if that explained it all.

Jeff took another look at his uneaten soup and put his spoon down. “I’m not eating this,” he said, pushing it away. “By, you want it?”

I was half way through my cup and not about to say no to that. The chowder was delicious. “Sure!”

Hay pouted. “No fair!” she cried, “He’s not even finished with his, and you’re giving him more?”

Jeff smiled. “Weren’t you the one who said he eats more than all the rest of us combined?” he asked Hay sweetly. I aimed a kick at him under the table and he laughed.

***

When we finished eating, the girls, who had been whispering in the car on the way to the restaurant, insisted we stop at the drugstore next to Jeff’s liquor store. We all entered the store, but Hay and Vanessa ran to the back of the store while the rest of us perused the small assortment of food. Adam and Jordan loaded up on candy and chips, while Jeff picked up some dried fruit. The four of us finished and sat outside, talking shit for another ten minutes before the girls came out, loaded with bags. I could see a couple chocolate bars in one bag, but I could also see makeup and hair dye. Oh, Lord.

Jeff drove us back to the motel, with the girls sitting all the way in the back, giggling and gossiping. I sat beside Jordan in the middle row, drifting into sleep even though the journey was short.

Jordan woke me with a poke to the side when we arrived. “We need to carry you in?” he asked, not unkindly. I scooted out of the car, yawning furiously.

The girls disappeared into their room, shutting and locking the door between our rooms behind them. Adam pounded on the door for a moment. “No hanky panky!” he yelled. The only response he got was giggles.

I lay on the bed, my eyes closed, as the others had a furious discussion. “By?” Jeff called, “We have to finish off the alcohol before we go. If someone gets pulled over, we can’t have any open containers. You want?”

I covered my eyes with my arm. “No,” I called, “I’m asleep.”

And although I wasn’t at that moment, within five minutes, it was true. I stayed asleep for a couple of hours, until a female voice started talking right over my head. “Think he would sleep right through me cutting his hair? We could just trim some bangs; get the hair out of his eyes....”

It was Vanessa, and I could hear her giggles and smell the alcohol on her breath. I didn’t open my eyes. “Don’t even think about it,” I mumbled.

I heard Hay’s voice from the other room. “Any of that rum left?” she asked.

One of my brothers answered from the vicinity of the other bed. “Nawww. But there’s a little bit of vodka.”

Vanessa moved out of my personal space. “Fuck yeah!” she cried. “I claim that.”

I sat up and blinked my eyes open. Hay grinned at me and came over to sit next to me on the bed. “You sure you don’t want me to trim up your hair?” she asked, holding out a pair of shears.

“Yeah, right.” I blinked again and rubbed my eyes. “You’d probably just butcher it anyway.”

“You sure about that? You see what I did to Vanessa?”

I took a good look around the room for the first time. Adam was the only one sitting on the other bed. He looked as tired as I felt. Jordan and Jeff were nowhere to be seen. Vanessa had her back to me as she picked up the whole bottle of vodka and put it to her lips. She then turned around and I almost could not believe what I saw.

When Vanessa had run into the other room a couple hours before, her hair had come half-way down her back and was a faded-out black color. She hadn’t cut it in quite a while, and the ends were thin and dry and straggly. Now, her hair was trimmed up just below her shoulder blades, with layers cut in. It was dyed to match closely to her roots, making her hair all one color, except for some caramel highlights. Her makeup, which was normally thick and dark, now had a lighter touch. I could see she had blue eye liner and shiny lip gloss. It was very different from her usual style, but she looked so much more like the girl she had been before she’d gone to high school. Of course, the almost-empty bottle of vodka sticking out of her mouth ruined some of the look, but overall she looked amazing.

I gave Hay a thumbs up and she lit up like a candle. She drew up onto the bed and leaned against me, her eyes half closed. I gave her a hug and she snuggled in closer, putting her face right next to my ear. “I can still trim your hair up,” she whispered.

“Try it and die,” I replied.

***

Jeff and Jordan came in shortly afterward, and we all went to bed. Four hours of biking and a little alcohol had tired everyone out, so we all drifted off quickly. I slept in the spot closest to the bathroom again, with Jeff on the other side of the bed. It was best that I was so tired—I didn’t even stop to think about how close he was.

My conscious mind might not have thought about Jeff sharing my bed, but my unconscious mind definitely did. I don’t usually remember my dreams, but I recall one from that night clearly. Jeff and I were at the beach in Camden, only it was summer and we were getting ready for a swim. The sun was shining and it was ridiculously warm. We ran out into the water, waves splashing over us, running and playing and laughing. I ran away from Jeff down the beach in ankle high water when I tripped and landed on my hands and knees.

Jeff came up behind me. “Let me help you,” he said, reaching for my hand. I gave it to him, waiting for him to pull me up. Instead, he sat down beside me in the spray and pulled me into a sitting position next to him. His arms wrapped around me tightly and we lay down, embracing. It’s embarrassing how much of my romantic repertoire comes straight out of old movies. I guess that’s just what happens when you’re eighteen and you’ve never even kissed a guy. Just as we were about to have our From Here to Eternity moment, I awoke with a start.

I’m still not sure what woke me to this day, but I remember distinctly thinking that I must still be dreaming. Or hallucinating. Or maybe I’d died and gone to heaven. In any case, I awoke to find Jeff’s arms wrapped around me. He was sleeping partly on his side and partly on his stomach, with his one hand under my waist and his other arm draped over my chest as I lay on my side. His head was inches from mine, his breathing slow and steady in my ear. This was as close to spooning as I’d ever seen two people do.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Yet at the same time, I felt like some kind of practical joke was being played on me. Maybe Adam had told Jeff about me, and Jeff was playing some kind of prank? Was I maybe being filmed?

Or maybe the explanation was even simpler: maybe he was dreaming about his ex, or some girl back home, or even Hay, and I just happened to be there in the bed with him. An unknowing substitute.

Whatever the explanation, I had to do something. Even though I wanted to stay there like that to the end of time, with Jeff breathing on me and holding me gently, I was afraid of what would happen if my brothers woke up. Even more so, I was afraid of what would happen if Jeff woke up and realized what was going on.

I gently removed his arm from over my side, holding it a bit longer than necessary and enjoying the strong feel of his hand, caressing one knuckle. Jeff slept soundly, not even stirring as I moved the hand up next to his chest. I then rolled over so I was facing him, my back inches from the edge of the bed. I scooted his other hand closer to his body. I had to stifle a laugh as I realized that I’d put his hands together, and gravity had taken over on the top one. It looked as if Jeff were praying, fast asleep in the bed.

I looked at the clock. Too early to get up, but I knew I wouldn’t sleep anymore. Not with Jeff snuggled up on my side of the bed. And quite frankly, between being startled awake and the shock that had followed, I was too keyed up to even think about sleeping any more.

I pulled some clothes on and grabbed the keys to the car. I was halfway into town before I realized that I hadn’t grabbed a key to the motel. The doors were the kind that automatically lock behind you when you shut them. There wasn’t much I could do about that except hope someone was awake when I got back.

The car pulled into the parking lot of a donut store I’d pointed out our first night in town. I went inside and ordered two dozen donuts, several coffees, a couple of chai lattes for me and Hay and a muffin for Jeff. I’ll admit that I ate three donuts before I left the parking lot, but other than that, I drove straight back to the motel. After knocking tentatively several times, I realized that no one in either of our rooms was up yet. And I didn’t have the heart to wake them. So I climbed onto the hood of the car and watched the traffic going down the road. To make the time pass, I counted red cars. I was up to twenty-seven when the door to our room opened.

Jeff stood in his pajama bottoms and bare feet in the doorway. “There you are!” he exclaimed. “I got a little concerned when I woke up and you weren’t anywhere in the room. What you doin’ out here?”

I shrugged. “Went for breakfast. Forgot the door key. Ate about half the donuts.”

He smiled briefly, and then held the door open. “Coming?”

I grabbed the coffees, now lukewarm, and balanced them on top of the donuts. I rolled the top of the muffin bag and stuck it in my mouth. “Oh, God. Let me help you with that,” he said. He disappeared for a moment and reappeared with the room key in his hand. Jeff grabbed the donuts from the hood of the car and scooted ahead of me back into the room.

Adam and Jordan were still asleep, so we quietly put the donuts on the dresser. I had drunk my latte already and I’d eaten six donuts, so I headed into the bathroom to brush my teeth. When I came back out a few minutes later, Jeff had the muffin bag open. “Cranberry?” he asked.

“Healthiest thing they had. You okay with that?”

Jeff inspected the muffin. “Looks pretty good.” He took a bite. “Tastes even better.” He finished the muffin as I sat down on the bed in my white t-shirt and jeans, with a blue and white striped shirt in my hands. Jeff looked at me. “Thanks,” he said, “for thinking of me.”

I looked back at him and an involuntary shiver ran through me. I quickly looked down at my shirt, fiddling with the collar. “No problem. Glad you liked it.”

Jeff tossed the muffin bag in the trash and turned to me. “By,” he said, but just at that moment, Jordan started to stir. I looked up at Jeff questioningly, beckoning him to go on, but he shook his head and sighed. “Never mind.” He picked up his jeans and headed into the bathroom, leaving me feeling as if I were missing out on something important in that conversation that never happened.

[tosybelle-blog]

By and Hay’s Excellent Adventure--Part II

We stopped one last time, about two hours before we expected to arrive in Camden. The last few minutes before we’d pulled over, there had been a furious flurry of conversation in the car. Should we wait another two hours for lunch? Should we eat while stopped, or eat while we were driving? Who was going to drive next, and where was everyone else going to sit? Despite all the discussion, everything was cordial and no more than the normal amount of cussing went on.

When we pulled over, Hay practically scrambled over Jordan in an effort to get out of the car. She’d missed the last stop and had been doing to potty dance for the past twenty minutes, much to Jordan and Jeff’s amusement. I didn’t really have to go, so I waited until Jeff and Jordan were out of the seat and took my time moseying over into the middle row and out of the car. The day had been overcast until a short time ago, when the sun had finally come out in earnest. Jordan had been chosen to drive next, so he’d been nominated to fill up the tank. He’d run inside the service station, as had Vanessa, but everyone else had followed the huge painted sign on the side of the building, proclaiming the bathrooms to be around the back. I decided I might as well ‘try,’ so I followed them.

The restrooms were two dinky little single stall rooms that opened up to the back side of the service station, one for each gender. Adam had obviously beaten Jeff back here, or Jeff had peed first, and fast. In either case, Jeff was sunning himself, leaning against the building with his eyes closed and his face turned toward the sky, almost smiling. I joined him, a few feet away, standing ramrod straight against the building, feeling two kinds of warmth, only one from the sun. I almost said something, but decided that would ruin his moment. Instead, I just stared at him, finding his pose unbelievably sexy. Neither one of us moved until the toilet right behind us flushed. I jumped and Jeff opened his eyes. “Oh. Hey, Byron,” he said, and I realized he hadn’t heard me come up. I wondered whether the toilet had startled him, or whether I had.

A few seconds later, Adam came out of the bathroom. “All yours, man,” he said to Jeff, “but look out, they’re out of paper towels.” He emphasized this by wiping his hands down the front of his jeans. Jeff nodded as he disappeared inside the foul smelling little room.

Adam looked me over briefly, a weird expression on his face. “What’s with you?” he asked. I shook my head, not knowing what he meant. There were so many different ways I could have answered that question, and I was sure Adam didn’t want the answer to most of them. Adam scrunched up his face, not liking my answer, and walked off.

The toilet on the other end of the building flushed and Hay came out, looking relieved. I looked around and didn’t see anyone else waiting. “Think it’s safe for me to use the ladies’ room?” I asked her.

Hay nodded. “Yeah. Seriously, other than not having a urinal, it’s really not that different than a men’s room. I don’t know why they don’t just make them both unisex.” I ducked inside and she called after me. “I’ll stand guard just in case.”

I did notice one big difference between this bathroom and the men’s room Jeff was currently in. Well, two, actually. 1) It smelled a lot nicer. 2) There were actually paper towels in stock. I made a mental note to bring some out for Jeff.

I did my business quickly and washed my hands. As I did so, I took a look at the dispenser next to the paper towel holder. This was something we didn’t usually have in the men’s room. I looked at the bottom row of products, the standard tampons and maxi pads. Not too interesting when you live in a family that’s half girls. The top row was a lot more fascinating. I dried my hands and looked the machine over for a little while.

A bang came on the door. “Everything okay in there, By?” Hay called. I guess I couldn’t blame her. I had been in there for quite a while. I unlocked the door and opened it, peeking out at her.

“Hay. You got any quarters?”

“What for? Didja get your period or something?” Sometimes Hay has a weird sense of humor.

“Haaaaaay. Come in here and look at this.”

She looked around nervously, like she didn’t want to be caught hanging out in the ladies’ room with me. Only Jeff was out there, and he’d gone back to sunning himself. “What do you want?” she demanded when she finally came in. I just pointed at the machine. “Yeah, like I never saw one of those before....Wait a minute.” She started giggling as she saw what I had seen. The whole top row of the machine was full of condoms. And not just any condoms: fun, novelty condoms. One claimed it played music. Another was marked so you could ‘measure your guy up.’ A third was coconut cream flavored, and there were several others. All of them were seventy five cents a pop. She started laughing her silent, happy laugh and went back to the door.

“Jeff!” she yelled as she opened it back up. “You got some quarters? I’ll pay you back if you’ll lend me a few.” I heard Jeff say something but didn’t catch what it was. “Thanks,” Haley called and then came back inside. She grinned at me. “He’s going to go break a five. He must think we’re crazy, holed up in the women’s room together.” Her face darkened quickly. “Either that or he thinks we’re fucking in here.”

I gulped. Oh. Yeah. That. “Look. I told my brothers for a long time that we weren’t dating. They just never believed me.” I put a hand on her shoulder. “After a while I decided to just save my breath, you know? You know how they are. ‘Pussy this’ and ‘pussy that.’”

“Because girls just love when you call them pussy.”

“Right.” I wanted to say more, give her more of an apology. But there was a knock on the door. I almost asked who it was, but then I realized how awful it would sound if it weren’t Jeff on the other side, when a guy’s voice came out.

Hay hadn’t locked the door and Jeff opened it. “What are you two doing in here?” he asked curiously. He came in and closed the door behind him. “Oh, I see.” Jeff had discovered the machine also. He had his left hand in the pocket of his cargo shorts and he shuffled the quarters around, making a furious clinking sound as he looked the prophylactics over.

“You broke a five?” I asked him. Jeff nodded, not looking away from the machine. “We got enough quarters for six of these things.”

Hay grinned. “Condoms, Byron. You can say it.”

I ignored her. “Jeff, we’ll pay you back.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s cool. If we split the money, we can each get two.” He pulled his hand out, holding a handful of quarters. We put coins into every slot and bought one of each. By this point we’d been gone for a lot longer than we’d planned to stop and I was surprised that no one had come walking in on us while we were hanging out in the bathroom. I stuffed all the condoms in my pocket and we hurried back to the car.

We caught Vanessa rounding the corner as we ran back. She gave us a questioning look. “Hey guys. We ate while we were waiting for you. I’m going to go pee and then we’ll be ready to go. Did you guys buy everything you needed to?” She looked bewildered when the three of us shared a goofy grin. Vanessa strode past us but continued talking over her shoulder. “You guys are in the middle row, because I claim the back!”

***

We quickly climbed into the car, with Haley volunteering to sit bitch. I opened the cooler to find out that Adam and Jordan had eaten most of the sandwiches. I grimaced. “We’ve got baloney. You okay with that, Hay?” She shrugged and reached out for one and I dropped a couple in my lap. I dug through everything else. “Let’s see what else we have here, since Jeff doesn’t like lunch meat, or white bread. Granola bars? Carrot sticks? Yogurt?”

Jeff leaned over Haley, and she pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her sandwich on them. “Let me look,” Jeff requested. After a moment, he came out with a bag of rice cakes and the carrots. “This’ll do.”

I briefly got out of the car to let Vanessa in, and then I belted up for the next leg of the trip. Adam plugged his IPod into the radio as Jordan started the car. Something loud and incomprehensible started blaring. Haley put her knees back down and kicked me in the side of the foot. “What flavors of yogurt do you have?” she asked, but her mouth kept moving. Though I didn’t understand what she was saying, she gestured wildly toward my crotch, and then pretended she was blowing up a balloon. Jeff laughed.

Vanessa looked over the back of the seat. “What are you three doing?” she asked suspiciously. Jeff gave her a “who, me?” look, for the first time reminding me of the boy he’d been when we were ten. Vanessa glared at us for a moment and then put her ear buds in and lay down in the back seat, closing her eyes.

I pulled the condoms out of my pocket and we started silently swapping them around. Hay and Jeff started to gesture and wordlessly fight over the glow in the dark condom. I kinda dropped out of the conversation and watched the two of them go. Jeff had been a lot happier and much more fun ever since I’d told him that Hay and I were not a couple. Watching the two of them gesture, fake menacingly, and throw condom packages at each other, I suddenly understood. Jeff had a thing for Haley.

Well, why not? Like I said, she was smart and fun. And even a gay guy can tell she’s cute. She’s got shaggy blonde hair, a heart-shaped face and sweet dimples. She has a nice figure, too, with soft, round curves that were accentuated by the fitted t-shirt she wore. If I weren’t a homosexual, things between us might have been quite different.

That said, though, I felt my heart drop. My best friend...my only friend. And my childhood friend, my first crush, whom I already knew would be in my dreams that night, all grown up and sexy. Flirting with each other.

I withdrew from Hay’s side and retreated to the window. Feeling a bit like Jeff had looked earlier that morning, I looked at the scenery whizzing by the highway. Hay and Jeff started laughing, and I felt the first tears drop from my eyes and roll down my face.

Jordan caught Hay as she gathered up all six condoms and tossed them directly into Jeff’s face, while he tried to defend himself with one hand. “What the hell are you guys doing back there?” he asked, sounding amazed.

Adam turned around and took in the situation, and then chuckled heartily. “What’s this? Condoms? How old are you guys, seven?”

Haley looked at him, faux seriously. “I dunno, Adam. I don’t think seven year olds should be playing with condoms.”

“Apparently, neither should seventeen year olds.”

Jordan smirked. “Where did you guys get those?” he asked as the car changed lanes, passing the slow driver in front of us.

Jeff grinned. “Byron found a condom dispenser in the ladies’ room.” He tossed one of the packets at Adam, who caught it with one hand.

Adam turned the condom over and over in his hand. “And what was Byron doing in the... no. Never mind.” He flipped the packet over one more time, and then started reading aloud. “Sex on the Beach. Coconut cream flavored fun for her.” Jordan snorted. Adam turned to him. “You ever use a fun one like this?”

Jordan didn’t take his eyes off the road. “No, but now that I know they exist...”

Vanessa’s voice came up from the back of the car. “You’d have to find a girl willing to sleep with you first!” Adam and Jeff, not expecting the outburst, turned to each other and burst out laughing. Hay giggled and then looked over to see my response. But I didn’t move.

Hay elbowed me. “Earth to By. You okay over there?”

I was still crying. I didn’t turn away from the window, but I shook my head no. Haley seemingly took it to mean that I was trying to clear my head. She grinned at me and leaned in my direction for a moment, touching her shoulder to my arm.

Jeff looked my way, seemingly concerned, but didn’t voice that out loud. Instead, still looking at me, he said, “Maybe he’s just imagining how he’s going to put his share of the booty to good use.” Making a little dance groove with his arms and neck, he added a porno-movie sound effect, “Bow-chicka-wow-wow.”

Nope. Never. I was going to die a big, gay, virgin loser.

***

The town of Camden was just as beautiful as we had imagined it was going to be. Things had settled down after the condom incident, and I had pulled out a battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird and read until Adam’s death metal started to give me a headache. Then I just stared out the window again for a while. Hay had produced a string out of nowhere and proceeded to teach Jeff how to play Cat’s Cradle for a while before proclaiming that he sucked at it. She’d then climbed into the back seat to whisper with Vanessa. Jeff, Jordan and Adam started discussing baseball, each supporting a different team he “knew” was going to win the Series this year.

But when we drove into town, everyone fell silent. Except Jordan driving the car, we all looked out our side windows, seeing the quaint town and gorgeous scenery. Adam tried to pretend like he wasn’t staring like the rest of us. “Huh. Is this all there is to town?” he asked, but we all ignored him.

We found a parking lot off a shopping strip and pulled in. It was too early to check into lodging for the night, but too late to really get any serious activities in for the day. By general consensus, we agreed to spend the day wandering around the commercial district. We had to start with a clothing store, as our uninvited guests had all packed as if we were going to Florida. We found a store that met their needs and they picked up a few long sleeved shirts and jackets. Jeff, who only had his flip flops, decided he needed a pair of real shoes also. Haley had discovered a couple of things she wanted to look at in among the clothes, so Jeff, Vanessa and I found a place a couple doors down that sold shoes.

When we got inside, Jeff zoned in on a pair of hiking boots that were lightweight enough for everyday wear. I caught the price and quirked an eyebrow at him. “Don’t worry,” he said, waving away my concerns. “I actually need a new pair anyway. Sometimes, I like to go hiking at home. I’ll call Dad. He’ll cover it as a birthday present for me, no sweat.” He looked out the front window at the rolling hills that were the town’s backdrop, his brow furrowed and his eyes seeing California. “I think he’ll just be happy to think I’m actually getting out to do something, anyway.” With that, he took his bag and left the store in a way that indicated the subject was closed. Vanessa trailed behind him. The two of them left me standing there, feeling horribly confused.

Most of the stores we popped into after that were either touristy junk or way expensive, but we had fun looking. Or at least most of us did. I noticed that Adam and Jordan just kinda plopped themselves on a bench on the sidewalk, claiming exhaustion, while the rest of us shopped. I hit them up on an idea that I thought would make them happy, and they each willingly gave me twenty bucks. I ran back to Jeff and the girls.

“Vanessa,” I said, “I got the guys to pool up their money for a gift to Mom and Dad. You want in? It’ll be easier to find something they’d actually use if we all chip in.” She nodded and volunteered to take all the money in a pocket in her purse. I fished out twenty five dollars of my own and added it. I was surprised to see Hay and Jeff both hand money over also.

Hay was smiling. “By. If your parents hadn’t let us have the car, we wouldn’t have been able to go. My parents just want a box of fudge and another of saltwater taffy. Easy. I’ll wait until the last day to get those. And Matt won’t care if I bring him home anything.”

Jeff watched her and nodded. “Right. I’m just going to pick up t-shirts for everyone, so that’ll be no trouble. So let’s go shop for your parents, and we can stop at that big t-shirt place on the way back.”

We shopped around for a while but didn’t find anything for Mom and Dad, though Jeff hit the mother lode in t-shirts. When we got back to Adam and Jordan, they were whining about wanting dinner and being tired of sitting on the bench, so we decided it was time to move on. “Can we go get the motel now?” Adam asked, and with us all being tired and hungry, we agreed.

We all climbed back into the station wagon, with Hay behind the wheel. She’d seen a motel just outside of town that claimed to have the cheapest rates, and she was bound and determined that, if it had vacancies, we were going to stay there. We’d just driven back onto the road we came in on when Jordan asked a good question. “What’s the sleeping arrangements?”

When it was going to just be the three of us, we’d decided on one room with two beds. The girls would share one, and I’d take the other. I knew there was no way we were going to be able to get away with just one room now.

The motel was run down but clean. Not part of a chain, it appeared to be family owned and operated. As the one with the credit card, I went inside and had a talk with the desk clerk, who was also the owner. I explained our crew and asked what rooms she had to accommodate us. I left a few minutes later, smiling and bearing two room keys.

Everyone was milling around, draped on the car, looking half dead. “Right,” I said, getting their attention, “We have two rooms. One has two twin beds. The other, two queen sized beds. Meaning, most of us are going to have to share beds.”

Vanessa nodded. “It would make more sense to be put me and Haley in the little room and you guys in the big room.”

The other guys all had some response to that. Jordan snorted. “I am NOT sharing a bed with you,” Adam yelled, not directing it at anyone in particular. Jeff just stared at his feet.

I looked at them, trying to smooth things over. “Look, I’m not exactly thrilled about it either. But we can’t afford to spread out any more than that. Maybe, if it gets too awkward, the girls will agree to swap with a couple of us on the last night?” I sent pleading eyes to Hay and Vanessa, who just looked amused by the whole thing. “Anyway, Adam and Jordan, you guys share a room. This can’t be that different.”

I tossed Hay a room key. With various assorted grumbling from my brothers, we all grabbed our bags and found our rooms. They turned out to be adjacent and even had an internal door that opened so we could share them. I tossed my bag on one bed and Adam tossed his bag on the other. Jordan stuck his on the dresser, and Jeff put his on the chair that was in the corner. We looked the room over. “We’re going to be here for three nights,” I said, eyeing the beds, “So how about we rotate beds? Each night, we’ll share the bed with someone different. That way, if anyone is having trouble, it’s only one night.” No one argued, so I went on. “The lady at the front desk told me about a great place for dinner. Are you guys as hungry as I am?”

The motel owner was right. The restaurant, which was on the edge of town and didn’t look like much from the outside, was excellent. Their specialty was lobster rolls, so that’s what most of us ordered. Jeff found a salad served with grilled fish that made him happy. The conversation was cheerful and mostly revolved around the next day’s plans for a hike. We settled the bill and started drifting toward the front door. The girls stopped at the bathroom, and Adam and Jordan headed outside for an imaginary sword fight, the continuation of one they’d been having for a couple years now. (Vanessa and I had just gotten used to them looking like idiots in public on a regular basis.) I turned to say something to Jeff about it, but he’d disappeared.

Hay and Vanessa showed up before he did. “Seen Jeff?” I asked as Jordan stuck his “sword” straight through Adam’s chest, causing Adam to crash to the ground.

Hay smiled at the action going on behind me, as Jordan put his foot on Adam’s “dead” body and declared himself the victor. “Yeah. He said he had a stop to make and he’d be back in a few minutes. Thought he was going to stop at the little boys’ room, but he went outside.”

Adam popped up off the ground and dusted off the back of his shirt. “He went that way,” he said, pointing to two little shops standing next to each other. One was a drug store, the other a liquor store. I quirked an eyebrow, wondering which one he was in.

I didn’t have to wait long. Jeff reappeared from the liquor store with a couple of paper bags that I knew didn’t hold nectarines. When he got close enough to whisper, I looked at him. “What...” I started, “How...”

“Shhhh.” Jeff reached out and put his hand briefly across my mouth, causing my thinking to go fuzzy. I had to resist the urge to grab the hand and kiss it. What the hell was wrong with me? “Not now. Let’s get back to the motel.”

***

We opened the doors between the two rooms and everyone gathered on the two beds in the guys’ room. Having been chastised once, I hadn’t spoken since we’d left the restaurant, but I’d developed a funny feeling in my stomach. I wasn’t sure if it had more to do with the alcohol or with Jeff touching me. Maybe a little of both.

Hay picked up my line of questioning. “How’d you get these?” she asked as Jeff pulled out a bottle of rum and a bottle of vodka.

Jeff grinned. “Fake ID.”

Vanessa was intrigued. “Really?” she said, “Let me see.” Jeff fished out his wallet and pulled out a driver’s license. Vanessa looked it over and then flashed it toward Haley, who also inspected it. “Wow, Jeff. This is pretty good,” Vanessa said, awed.

Jeff took the ID back. “Yeah. I paid a lot for it, so it better look pretty real. They were able to take all my real information and just make me a couple years older.” Adam gestured for a look, so Jeff passed the card on to him and Jordan to inspect.

Jordan wasn’t looking at the license, though. He was looking at the booty. “I think we have orange juice in the cooler, and I know we have Coke. This is going to be fun.” He caught me watching him and looked me in the eye. “Aren’t you glad we came along now, Byron?”

Adam had given Jeff back his ID. “Oh, you know him. Mr. Party-Pooper-I-don’t-let-a-drop- pass-these-lips.” He gave me a playful punch to the back of the arm. “Don’t mind Byron,” he said to Jeff, “He just has no idea how to have a good time.”

Hay looked over at me and bit her lip, waiting for me to say something and stand up for myself. Instead, I just looked at a stain on the carpet, wishing I was somewhere else. Hay crinkled her brow and for a moment, I thought she was going to yell at my brothers again. She went for a different tack instead. “What’s this stuff taste like?” she asked. “I’ve never tried either one. Usually, By and I just have some beer or wine, don’t we, By?”

“Usually.” That was a good one. We’d once gotten ahold of a box of wine coolers at a party her parents were throwing, and that’s the most I’d ever had to drink. I looked up and caught her eye, and she smiled at me.

Jeff answered her question. “It’s pretty nasty, in my opinion,” he said as he grabbed hold of the bottle of rum, “but you get drunk a lot faster this way.”

Vanessa jumped up and ran to the bathroom, reappearing with four drinking glasses. “There are two more in our room,” she said, and Adam grabbed those. They set all six glasses on the counter. Jeff had opened both bottles and set them next to the glasses.

Jordan found the coke and O.J. and added them to the collection. He’d decided to play bartender. “Who wants what?”

“Screwdriver!” Vanessa volunteered. Jordan made one up for her and then put together three rum and Cokes for him, Adam, and Hay.

Jeff grabbed the bottle of rum and poured himself a small serving at the bottom of his drinking glass. He looked at me with a grin. “What’s your poison, Byron?” I shook my head.

“Come on, Byron, live a little!” Vanessa said from right behind me. She’d already started in on her screwdriver and I could smell the vodka on her breath.

“No, thanks.” I grabbed my book off the top of my backpack and headed outside. Jeff gave the others a concerned look and followed, leaving his drink untouched on the counter.

I sat down on the hood of the car. Hay’d backed it into the parking space so we could unload more easily, and the hood faced away from the building. You could see a lot more stars out here than you could back in Stoneybrook. I put the book down and leaned up against the windshield. It was too dark to read and I really wasn’t in the mood, anyway. I heard Jeff come up behind me and take a seat on the other side of the hood, so close he was almost touching me. I didn’t take my eyes off the stars. Jeff picked up the book.

“To Kill a Mockingbird! I read that in eighth grade or something. Boo Radley is pretty cool.” I didn’t answer, didn’t look at him, yet I could feel his eyes on my face. He put the book back down. “What’s bugging you, man?”

I let out a sigh. “You have no idea how much I hate that question,” I said in a low voice.

“What?”

I turned to look at him for the first time. “There’s just so much shit you can take, you know?” I said, “Only so much crap. Doesn’t matter what I do. I’m still going to be the straight arrow. I’m still going to be the odd man out.” I wasn’t making much sense, and I didn’t care. At least I hadn’t started crying, which is what I felt like doing.

Jeff shrugged. “You don’t have to be, you know.” He inched a little closer, and even in my bad state, my skin thrilled as his arm brushed mine. “You could come inside, join the party. Be part of the group.” He sighed himself. “Sometimes, the odd man out makes himself the odd man out. Know what I mean?”

I wrinkled my forehead. “Yeah, but then I’d just be the drunk odd man out. I’d rather not do something just because everyone else is doing it, you know? I’ll get drunk when I want to get drunk.”

Jeff nodded. “Okay. I can respect that. You change your mind, you know where the booze is.”

“Yeah. Thanks, Jeff.”

He stopped after he hopped off the car and looked at me seriously, dead in the eye. “You ever need anything else, Byron, you just let me know. You don’t just have the one friend, okay?” And then he was inside, leaving me confused beyond belief. I was getting used to that when he was around.

***

It had gotten cold quickly outside, and even with my jacket on, I still felt it. I got in the car and turned on the dome light. Hay’s blanket lay forgotten in the far back, where she’d left it when she’d changed clothes so long ago. I was having a hard time believing that was less than twelve hours before. It felt like half my life had gone by in one day. I’d aged and become someone’s forty-year-old dad.

I’d been reading for quite a while when Hay came out and joined me. Her demeanor told me she’d had enough alcohol to loosen her up quite a bit. It doesn’t take much for her, though. She’s a bit of a lightweight.

She’d climbed into the back seat with me, on the opposite side. When I didn’t immediately acknowledge her presence, she came up next to me and tried to unwrap me from the blanket. I sighed and put down the book, letting her snuggle up next to me for warmth. She wrapped the blanket around us both.

“By. You mad at me?”

I hugged her. “Nope. Just not really my scene, you know?”

Hay wrapped her short arms around my middle and squeezed back. “What’s not your scene? Relaxing with your friends? Enjoying yourself?”

I put my head on top of hers like I’d done earlier in the day, wishing I could get calm enough to get back to that place we’d been in back then. It wasn’t working. “Lay off, Hay. Please.”

She fell silent for a moment and I enjoyed the feel of body pushed up against mine, the warmth she brought to the equation. Then she started speaking again. “You know what your problem is?”

“No, Hay. I have no idea what my problem is. Please tell me. I’m dying to know.”

My sarcasm didn’t deter her at all. “You need to let loose every now and then. Do something against the rules. The world won’t end if you don’t always do the right thing.”

I made a noise that was half-laugh, half-sob. “Right,” I said. The problem with being part of a herd—one of eight, one of an identical set of three—is that you always have to find ways to distinguish yourself. Claire’s the baby, so she acts silly and childish. Margo’s the cheerleader. Nick’s into sci-fi and nerdy things. Vanessa’s the poet. Mallory is the responsible, mature one. Jordan’s the jock and Adam’s the social director. But who am I if I’m not the one who always does what I’m told? I don’t just want to be ‘the gay one.’ Especially now. “Well, what am I then, if I’m not the ‘perfect one,’ the ‘good one’?”

She wiggled loose from my grip and looked up at me. “Human?” she suggested.

I grunted in a way that indicated that I thought she was crazy. Hay had no idea what it was like to be me. None at all. She’s only got one brother, and the two of them are so different as almost to be polar opposites. She never has to worry about who she is.

“No. Really. You should try it sometime. Just chill out, find yourself a guy and have some fun.”

A chill ran through me as she spoke. I backed away from her, into the car door. “What did you say?” I asked, shocked.

Hay was confused by my tone. “I said, find yourself a guy and—”

I didn’t let her finish. I pumped the door handle and jumped out of the car. “What do you mean, a guy?”

She looked shocked for a moment, and then followed me out, blanket spilling out onto the ground. “Oh, come on, By. I’ve known you were gay for a long time. Probably since before even you did.”

I gaped at her. She knew? She knew? So why had she never said anything? I knew the answer to that one without even asking. She had been waiting for me to bring it up. She probably thought the fact that I kept it from her was just another sign I had no balls. “I doubt that,” slipped out of my mouth as I processed. “I’ve known I was gay since before I knew what gay meant. Almost half my life.” It was the first time I’d ever said I was gay out loud, and even though I was worked up, that felt pretty good.

She laughed a little and sat back on the edge of the car seat. “Dude,” she said, “I don’t get you. Why don’t you come out already? You could have at least told me. I don’t judge you for anything else you do that you think is so wrong, so why would your sexuality make the slightest bit of difference?”

I squished up next to her and she scooted to make room for me, but I didn’t look at her. “If I told you,” I said sadly, “then that would make it real. I’d have to be gay. I couldn’t pretend to myself anymore.”

“Oh.” Her voice was starting to sound sleepy. She reached over and tousled my hair. “You really are screwed up, aren’t you? You’re scared of taking away a label you consider your identity, and yet you’re sitting here, denying a really big part of yourself.”

“Yeah. I guess I am.”

We sat quietly for a moment before she spoke again. “Ready to go back in and join the party? I won’t try to get you to drink anything. Everyone’s playing poker for potato chips, and they suck when they’re drunk. You could really clean up.”

Maybe that’s what Jeff meant about the odd man out making his own bed. I could have stuck around inside, even if I didn’t want to drink with the others. “Just one more question.”

She picked her blanket off the ground and shook it off. “Yeah, what?” she asked.

“How exactly did you figure out I was gay, anyway?” I just had to know.

She stood up and reached out a hand to pull me out of the car. I flipped the dome light back off and then accepted. “It had to do with how we first started hanging out. We were together all the time, you were a teenaged boy, and yet you never hit on me. I decided that you were either gay or damaged goods. And you were just too nice to be damaged goods.” She grinned.

I gave her a hug. “Hay, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

***

Hay had been right. My brothers and Vanessa were inside playing poker on the floor. None of them was too drunk; they were just a little more exuberant and happy than they normally were. If I had to guess, I’d say they’d had two drinks, tops, and then stopped.

Jeff, on the other hand, had clearly not stopped. He was curled up in the fetal position, his eyes closed, still hugging his empty glass to his chest. Since he wasn’t clearly moving or breathing, I gave him a poke in the arm. Just to make sure he was still alive, of course. He opened his eyes. “Oh, hey Byron,” he said, slurring the words more than a little, “‘Dja know what? They should promote Captain Morgan to Major Morgan,” he told me and then started to giggle.

Vanessa rolled her eyes. “That’s the fourth time he’s said that,” she said. She picked up the new cards Adam had dealt her and then a gleam came over her face. She dumped a single serve bag of potato chips onto a paper plate that sat next to the deck of cards. “I’m all in!” she shouted. Jordan and Adam dropped their cards in disgust. Vanessa has a terrible poker face and they knew they were beat. She gleefully gathered up the pot and turned to Hay, who was sitting on the edge of the dresser. “You want back in on this one?”

“Sure. By?”

“Why not?” I left Jeff giggling to himself and played a couple hands. Even though the others were all wasted, I still lost. I suck at poker.

Before too much longer, we were all starting to yawn. Hay and Vanessa gathered up their “winnings” (Hay had eaten most of hers already) and said their good nights. My brothers and I brushed our teeth, sharing the sink, and then Adam and I headed out while Jordan used the bathroom. We looked at Jeff, lying there on top of the covers, fully dressed. Without speaking, we both went over to him. I sat him upright with some effort and Adam removed Jeff’s shirt.

Jeff opened his eyes again, only this time, instead of giggly and goofy, he looked sleepy and sad. “I miss my mom,” he said.

Adam looked at me over Jeff’s shoulder in a manner that said, “Here come the crazy drunk ramblings.” “Well, then,” Adam said, turning back to Jeff, “You should have stayed in Stoneybrook with her instead of coming with us.”

“No, no, no,” Jeff waved a hand. “I miss how it used to be when I was little. How when I was sad or scared, she could just give me a hug and take all that away.” He looked Adam in the eye and patted his shoulder. “She can’t do that anymore, you know?”

Adam looked at Jeff like he was crazy, but I nodded. “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. Jeff smiled and closed his eyes again.

The bathroom door opened and Jordan stepped out. “Next!”

Adam jumped up from the bed. He crumpled Jeff’s shirt and tossed it on the floor. “Schafer. You think you can stop thinking about your mom for long enough to get your own pants off? I’m nice, but I’m not that nice.”

Jeff laughed a little. “I’ll just sleep in ‘em,” he called, his eyes still closed. Jordan pulled back the covers on the other side of the bed, and I just rolled Jeff over to the bare patch of bed. He fell on his side, back in the fetal position.

Jordan covered Jeff up and then wrinkled his nose. “I’ll sleep with him tonight,” he volunteered, “but if he ralphs on me in the middle of the night, I’m going to kill you two in your sleep.” I nodded and grabbed the trash can from the corner of the room. It was full of soda cans and chip wrappers, but it was better than nothing.

***

Luckily, Jeff didn’t need his barf bucket that night. It was about nine when the girls opened the door between our two rooms and came barging in. They were a little too perky for that time of day, especially considering when we’d gotten to sleep and how much they’d had to drink. Vanessa came to the front of the room and starting flashing the lights on and off. Haley shook me. “Good morning!” she chirped. “Beech Hill Preserve waits for us! Get up and get moving!”

I smacked at her with one hand. “Cut it out, Hay!” She grinned and moved on to shaking Adam on the other side of the bed. When she let him go, he flicked her off and rolled over, covering his head completely.

Jordan was already sitting up, watching her progress. “Better not shake Schafer over there,” he warned. “He’s probably already got a giant hangover. No sense in making him dizzy to go with it.”

Jeff groaned and pulled the pillow over his eyes. “Why did I drink so much?” he moaned, muffled by the bedding.

“Because you were missing your mom,” I said as I rubbed my eyes and climbed out of bed.

“What?”

The girls and Jordan looked at me funny. I shrugged. “That’s what you said, anyway.”

Jeff pulled the pillow back off his eyes, but covered them with his hands instead. “Like I make any sense when I’m wasted.”

I pulled a shirt on. “Like I’d know. Never seen you wasted before.” I picked up my jeans from where I’d left them folded on the chair the night before. “First dibs on the bathroom,” I called as I strolled inside.

It was a while before everyone was ready to go. Hay had found Jeff some aspirin in her purse and he’d managed to pull himself together enough to shower and get dressed. Vanessa had refilled the cooler with ice, and we’d had a breakfast of granola bars and yogurt.

While we sat around eating and gabbing, I took a chance to look everyone over. Hay had put a headband in her hair to keep it out of her eyes, and she’d set a pair of kids’ purple heart-shaped sunglasses on top of her head. She wore a pair of low-rise jeans that dragged on the ground and a short-sleeved, heather gray t-shirt that ended mid-butt. She’d set her purple hoodie out to wear when we started hiking.

Vanessa’s hair is long and thick, and she’d pulled it back into two braids. She’d dyed it black sometime back, but the roots had grown in a couple of inches, showing the natural chestnut. She wore a pair of black cargo pants and a red oversized t-shirt. Normally, she wore pale face makeup, lots of eye liner and blood red lipstick, but today she’d gone au natural. It made her look a lot younger, but a lot prettier, too.

My brothers and I obviously all look pretty much the same, so we’ve learned to distinguish ourselves through our dress and hair. Jordan wears his hair short, especially in the warmer months, and he’d recently shaved it all off and was letting it grow back in. He wore a pair of cargo jeans, similar to Vanessa’s pants and almost as baggy, and he’d paired it with a shirt proclaiming him to be a Yankees fan. Adam’s hair is a bit longer and nondescript, and he wears his clothes tighter than Jordan and I prefer. He wore a fitted white t with a pair of jeans that, in his words when he bought them, “show off his ass.” My hair is long and hangs in my eyes, partly because I hate getting haircuts and partly because it gives me something to hide behind. My style of clothing is a little more preppy than my brothers, and sometimes I think I take more care in what I wear. I had on a yellow t-shirt with an orange collar and a matching orange button down shirt and a pair of khakis.

And of course Jeff looked amazing. I think he could have worn burlap and I still would have thought so. He had pulled out a pair of dark-wash jeans that managed to look baggy and yet tight all at the same time, and he paired it with a white shirt that made his skin look even more tanned than he had the day before. He’d put on his sunglasses, hiking boots and new windbreaker and he was ready to go. Actually, I think he’d put the sunglasses on even though we were still inside because it was the equivalent of throwing the pillow over his face. The lights were obviously still bothering him and he occasionally moaned and looked sick.

***

The drive to Beech Hill Preserve was pretty quiet and short. Hay drove, and Jordan sat shotgun, reading her directions and aimlessly flipping through radio stations at a low volume. Jeff was slumped in the middle row, his knees drawn up to his chest on an odd angle and his eyes closed. Unbeknownst to him, Vanessa was drawing flowers and hearts on the bottom of his boots with a Sharpie.

Adam and I were in the back. I was watching the scenery pass when I felt an elbow to my side. “Hey,” Adam said in a voice just above a whisper. Clearly, he didn’t want Vanessa and Jeff listening in.

“What?”

He cleared his throat a little, looking furtively at the other two on the other side of the seat. “I just wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”

I became instantly uncomfortable. “For what?” I asked.

“You know, for razzing you last night.” He looked away. “For always razzing you.”

I shrugged. It was just part of our triplet banter, right? I was used to it by now. “It’s okay,” I told him.

“No. It’s really not.” He fidgeted and I could tell this conversation was difficult for him. “We’re supposed to be a team, you, me, and Jordan. And somewhere along the way, it became a pair, me and Jordan, in a war with you.” Adam audibly sucked in a breath. He’s not usually big on what he calls “that feelings bullshit” and I admired the way he plunged ahead anyway. “I miss when everyone called us ‘the Pike triplets’ and couldn’t tell us apart.” A pause and he looked back over at me finally. “I miss you.”

Suddenly I understood why he’d hijacked the trip. We were all three going to different schools, in different states, in the fall, so we only had so long to be ‘the Pike triplets’ together. “Even though I always do what’s expected of me?”

“’Specially because of that. It’s just you.”

A few minutes went by in silence. Adam assumed that his warm, fuzzy moment was the end of the conversation. But I felt there were a few more things we needed to cover. “I’m not going out with Haley,” I said.

He startled. “What?”

“Hay and I are not dating. We’re just friends.”

Adam looked at me cockeyed. “Okaaaaaaaaaaaay....” His voice oozed sarcasm.

“No, really.” I was bound and determined to get him to believe me this time. “She’s just my best friend. I’ve never even kissed her.”

“Seriously?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And it really bugs her when you guys joke about us fucking in the back of the car or whatever.”

Adam looked remorseful for a second, but then his face clouded over. “It bugs her, but not you?” he asked.

I shrugged. “Yeah, it bugs me. But if you remember, when you guys first started making the jokes, I kept telling you they weren’t true. After a while, I just let it go.”

Adam shifted his eyes to the side, and I could tell he was trying to remember that. “I just always figured you were embarrassed,” he said slowly, “Like you never thought you’d be the first one of us to swipe his V-card or whatever.” He grinned. “So we’re back to it being a three way race.”

I had to smile at that, but I didn’t let it deter me from everything else I had to say. “There’s just one more thing you should know,” I said seriously.

Adam’s grin faded instantly. “What?”

My courage was beginning to fade as well. “Well, I...I’m...I...”

“We’re here!” The car came to a stop in a parking lot. Adam and I had been so busy talking that we hadn’t even noticed that we’d arrived at the park. The others were starting to pile out of the car, and someone opened the back door to dig in the trunk. Our conversation was now wide open.

“Shit!” I moaned, disappointed that the moment had come and gone. I knew Hay was right and I needed to tell people about it. That I’m gay, I mean. (See? I’m even having trouble writing it down.) And since Adam was being so forgiving of my differences, I’d thought it might be a good time.

I wasn’t exactly ready to get up on top of a picnic table and shout it to the world. But I’d decided to tell at least my brothers while we were on vacation. If Jordan felt the same way Adam did, it would be a weight off my shoulders, and maybe next time they had a sword fight, I could be the one standing there, proclaiming victory.

Adam’s brow was furrowed and he looked at me dead seriously. “What were you going to say?” he asked.

I shook my head at him. “Later.” He nodded and we climbed through the trunk to the exit.

Jordan had a backpack that he was planning to carry, and he was offering us all the opportunity to stick things in it: wallets, water bottles. He was having an animated discussion with Hay, who was trying to get him to carry a giant bottle of sunscreen. “I’ll look like a total girl!” he wailed.

“It’ll be in your backpack! No one will see it unless one of us asks to use it! And then you’ll look like a total good guy for carrying it.” She spotted us from the other side of the parking spot. “Adam! By! Your brother’s being a big baby!”

“So what else is new?” Adam asked, and he bumped my shoulder with his fist and then went to go smooth things over.

***

After Adam agreed to carry the backpack, sunscreen and all, we took off down the trail. Jordan had been teasing me a bit for slathering sunscreen on my face and then wearing a hat, so Adam challenged him to a race and they took off down the path way far ahead of the rest of us.

Vanessa had brought a camera and was snapping photos of everything. She got one of me and Hay standing on a bench with our hands over our eyes, looking out into the sun. She snapped Jeff looking for four leaf clover. She even managed to get a picture of when Jordan tripped and splattered along the path.

By the time we reached the top of the hill, we were all walking together again. The hill isn’t very tall, but the land around it is low, so you get quite a view. Vanessa had chosen Beech Hill because one of our guide books had mentioned it was where “the mountains met the sea.” A hush fell over all of us. The only sounds were nature sounds, birds, insects, and the wind, and the sound of Vanessa’s camera.

After a few moments, a half-whisper came out from over my shoulder. “It’s like looking at God,” Jeff said. He raised his arms up to the sky and screamed a wordless yell. We all stopped our sightseeing and stared at him. The yell continued for a bit longer than we were comfortable with, and all of us started to look at each other, feeling awkward. He took a breath and continued to yell. “I’ve found a reason to live!” he shouted at no one in particular. Then he started to cry.

“What is this, spring break or emotional breakdown time?” Jordan asked under his breath. I was wondering the same thing.

Hay put her arm around Jeff’s shoulder and pulled him into a hug. He put his head on her shoulder and wrapped his arms around her neck, sobbing so hard he was having trouble breathing. Hay gave me a panicked look and I opened my mouth, and then closed it again. Instead, I took a big step over and joined the two of them, throwing my arms around them both. My head was right next to Jeff’s, and I spoke to him in a low voice. “It’s okay, man,” I soothed. “Just let it out, okay? We’re here for you.”

As I was finishing, I felt a set of arms wrap around me also. Adam sighed as he pulled the group of us together even tighter. Not to be left out, Vanessa came around the other side and threw her arms around the party. “Come on, Jordan, group hug!” she called.

Jordan shook his head. “Naw, too gay for me, thanks,” he said, but he was smiling.

Jeff gave one last shuddering sob and then wiped at his face with the one hand he could reach. “Okay,” he said hoarsely. “You can let me go now. Please.” We all slowly disengaged. Jeff’s face was red and he looked really embarrassed. “Sorry,” he said.

“No need to apologize,” Adam said breezily. “We all have our moments, right?” He opened Jordan’s backpack and shuffled through the water bottles. Vanessa had labeled them all with initials on the cap, with her Sharpie marker. Adam pulled out the one labeled S and Jeff accepted it gratefully.

Jeff sat down on the ground just off the path and took a big swig. “Yeah,” he said slowly as the rest of us joined him, “but most of us don’t lose our fucking heads in one of the most beautiful places on Earth.”

“No, some of us just throw temper tantrums in the back seats of cars and then sulk for a couple hours.” Haley sat with him, and Adam tossed her water to her. She caught it with one hand.

Vanessa squatted. “Some of us go on vacation with our brothers just so we can get away from crazy boyfriends,” she said.

I joined them, waving away Jordan’s offer of my water bottle with one hand. “And some of us walk out of a perfectly good party because we’re not in the mood to drink,” I added.

Jeff looked over at me. “And some of us get so drunk we miss the fun. Maybe you’ve got the right idea, By.” He called me by my nickname. I’m not sure why it felt so personal. Maybe because only Hay ever used it. “I don’t know. Sometimes, I just gotta do things to get out of my own head. It hasn’t been a good year up in there.” His facial expression indicated he had more to say, but he stopped and kept it to himself.

***

We sat for a while, drinking water and eating fruit snacks, but after a while, Vanessa started complaining about needing to pee. We all stood and dusted ourselves off.

Jeff led the charge down the hill like a man on a mission. By the time we were halfway back to the car, we were all tired, hungry and more than a little cranky. The random sniping began almost right away. Hay yelled at me. Jeff snarked at Jordan. Vanessa shouted at Adam. We reached the parking lot a sullen, resentful bunch.

Vanessa was into full-on whine mode. “Why isn’t there a bathroom out here?” she shrieked, squeezing her knees together in a dramatic fashion.

Adam threw his empty water bottle at her, bouncing it off her chest. “Use this!”

She made a kissy face at him. “So sweet, your concern for me.” Then she grabbed the bottle and inspected it. “I’d need a funnel to make that work,” she mused. Adam stuck his tongue out and looked disgusted at the image, but the two of them climbed into the middle seat of the car.

I opened the trunk and then tossed Hay back the keys. She missed them and they went under the car. She got down on her hands and knees and fumbled around for them. “You throw like a girl,” she sniped.

“Yeah, well, you can’t catch.”

Jeff came around next to Hay to help her search. A few moments later, he came up triumphant and handed the keys over.

Jordan opened the shotgun door and got back out. “What’s taking so long?” he bellowed.

Jeff shrugged and climbed into the trunk. “Life,” he mumbled as he bypassed me and moved to the backseat. I looked after him, confused.

Jordan came over and saw me sitting on the tailgate. “What are you doing?” he asked. I took a sip of water and said nothing. Actually, I was trying to restrain my temper before I got into the car and said something to someone—anyone—that I’d really regret. Jordan narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to answer when someone asks you a question?”

I looked away and capped my water. Hay appeared around the corner, watching the two of us with a wary eye. Jordan didn’t notice her; his eyes were focused on me. He took another step in my direction. I didn’t really worry about him, because was just as cranky as the rest of us and just itching for a fight. I figured I’d let him get his words out and not give him a response. It usually works pretty well, but not so much this time. “You know what your problem is?” he asked me.

Oh, God, not this again. Why does everyone think they know what my problems are? I stared at my hands and felt a few tears sting my eyes. The lack of sleep and everyone else’s bad attitude was rubbing off on me. “Are you crying?” Jordan asked, incredulous. I wiped at my eyes with my hand. “Oh, shit, you are such a girl sometimes,” he shouted. “Why do I even bother with you when—”

He was interrupted by a sudden movement. Hay flew around the corner and slugged Jordan hard in the face. And with that, pure chaos erupted.

Jordan screamed. Vanessa and Adam hopped out of the car, followed by Jeff, who had scrambled into the middle seat first. I shrank away from Hay and Jordan as Jordan’s nose began to bleed. His hands flew to his face. Hay just stood there, with a small, satisfied smirk on her face.

“What the hell did you do?” Adam asked, completely amazed. “Haley?”

She shook herself, but the smirk didn’t go anywhere. “I hit him!” she yelled, “and I’d do it again!”

Jeff and Vanessa each grabbed one of her arms and pulled her back away from Jordan. Hay shook them off. Her face crumpled like she might cry and she put her hands to her eyes for a moment, and then retreated to the car, slamming the middle door behind her. Jeff flashed his eyes at Adam, who nodded, and Jeff climbed in after her.

Jordan had sat down on the tailgate next to me. I jumped off and gave him space. Adam took my seat. “How bad is it?” he asked, prying Jordan’s fingers away from his nose. Jordan moaned and Adam grimaced. “Yuck,” he said, shaking his head. “Hey, Vanessa, go grab me some napkins from the glove compartment, okay?” She nodded and ran off. “Pinch your nose, dude, and hang on a minute.”

Vanessa returned with the napkins and Jordan put them to his nose. He groaned again and I blanched. “Are you okay?” I asked timidly.

Jordan looked at me venomously. “Oh, fuck you, Byron,” he said, spitting blood down his shirt as he spoke. “Go sit in the car with your little girlfriend and leave me alone, okay?”

I instinctively backed up a step, but I didn’t go any farther. Vanessa spoke up. “Adam? What else do you want us to do?”

“Nothing, okay? Just get in the car. We’ll be ready to roll again as soon as his nose stops bleeding. Byron, you and me in the front seat, alright? Vanessa, you okay sitting back here with old Blood and Guts?” Vanessa nodded and Adam let her past him into the trunk.

I walked the long way around the car to bypass Jordan and hopped in the passenger’s seat, not really in the mood to drive. Hay had pulled her hoodie over her head and was turned around in such a way that I knew that she was not in the mood for discussing anything with anyone. Jeff leaned in toward me. “What’s the matter with her?” he asked, genuinely concerned. He used the proximity to give me the car keys.

I shrugged. “Obviously something, but I haven’t been able to get it out of her yet.” We’ve been too busy working on my alleged problems, I thought bitterly to myself.

***

We decided to stop a grocery store on the way back to the motel, to fill our cooler back up. Adam ran in and bought some ice, which he took back to Jordan, waiting in the car, cursing under his breath. Vanessa ran straight to the restroom. That left Hay, Jeff and I to do the actual shopping.

As soon as we were alone, I grabbed Hay’s arm. “You didn’t have to punch him that hard, you know,” I hissed.

“Yes, I did,” she growled, her face clouding over. “He’s been a colossal shit for two days straight. I’ve had it.”

“He’s been an ass for eighteen years straight. What’s your point?”

We stood there glaring at each other in the cereal aisle for a moment, until Jeff, who’d been spectating nervously, broke the stalemate. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m starved. Can we go ahead and shop already?”

Hay stared at Jeff like she had forgotten he was there. “Sure,” she said, turning pink a little. “Let’s get some food.”

I realized I was still gripping her arm. Embarrassed, I let it go and gingerly patted her shoulder. “Yeah. Um, breakfasts? We’re in the right aisle.”

Jeff smiled at me and gave Hay a little hug. He said something into her ear which made her laugh and blush even more. She walked away from him and over towards where I was inspecting cereal boxes. I could hear her muttering under her breath. “Like I said, gay guys and damaged goods....”

“What?”

“Nothing.” She picked a box of Lucky Charms off the shelf and threw it into the cart, a little harder than necessary. She was obviously still upset, but whether it was directed at me, or at Jordan, I couldn’t be sure.

***

By the time Vanessa found us, we were in the deli. We had picked up cereal, milk, bread and snacks and were looking at sandwich fixings. As we’d shopped, most of the anger and awkwardness had fizzled, and Hay and I were able to have a normal conversation again. Jeff had thrown some granola, soy milk, multi-grain crazy-health-nut bread and sweet potato chips into the cart, but we didn’t really mind too much.

I stood in front of a display of lunch meats, looking over the selection. Jeff came up behind me. “Hey, Byron, did you want—”

“Shhhh!” Hay hushed him. “He’s in his element. Watch. This is like something off the Discovery Channel.” Jeff fell silent and stood next to her as she narrated. “Here we have the American Teenager-us Boy-us, in his native habitat,” she said in her best fake Australian accent. “Isn’t he a beaut?”

Jeff started laughing. “That is the worst accent I’ve ever heard,” he told her.

“Oh, believe me, I can do worse.” She put her hands up to her eyes like a pair of binoculars, and went back to Crocodile Hunter mode. “Watch how he surveys the prey before deciding which will be chosen. This is an important decision and not to be taken lightly.”

I reached out and picked up several packets of turkey and ham with one hand, and flicked her off with the other. She was undeterred. “The American Teenager-us Boy-us has his own special way of communicating. See how he shows his affection with the use of a single finger?”

I finally turned around. “Affection?”

Hay shrugged. “Hatred bordering on rage?” she suggested.

I laughed and hugged her. “You know I can’t stay mad at you.”

Jeff laughed again. “You two are nuts,” he opined. He then thought for a second before asking, “Haley, if the native habitat of the American Teenager-us Boy-us is the deli aisle, then what am I?”

She appeared to contemplate that for a while. “You’re a rare subspecies known as the Californian Teenager-us Boy-us, which is more at home in the sprout and tofu aisle,” she finally commented.

I raised an eyebrow. “Do grocery stores have sprout and tofu aisles?” I teased.

“They do in California,” Hay declared, even though she’s never been there. Jeff shook his head at me.

Vanessa came back to the cart at that point with a pack of American cheese. “What are you freaks doing over here?” she asked. Without waiting for a response, she surveyed the cart. “Jeff, what exactly are you going to put on your sandwiches?” she asked.

We’d already had this discussion. Jeff eats pretty much organic, and just about anything he would have liked on a sandwich would have gone bad pretty quickly. “Peanut butter,” he answered, “Peanut butter and honey.”

“Well, great. Let’s get some and get out of here. I want to see how bad Jordan’s face looks,” Vanessa said, just a little too gleefully. Hay cringed, but Vanessa didn’t see it.

***

When we arrived back at the station wagon, Adam was leaning against the driver’s side door, looking nonchalant. “How’s your hand, Haley?” Hay scowled at him, but he smiled at her. “Don’t worry. Jordan was totally asking for it. I’m just surprised you’re the one who walloped him.”

Jeff chuckled and opened the trunk, throwing in the boxes of cereal. I opened the back door and opened the cooler, which Adam had already filled with ice. Vanessa handed me the perishables a few at a time.

As I worked, I looked over the front seat at Jordan. He was folded up in the passenger’s seat with a baggie of ice over the bridge of his nose and his left eye. He’d picked up my baseball cap and pulled it down over his face. Jordan was pretending to be asleep, but his breathing told me he was hearing every word we were saying.

Hay looked fretfully over Adam’s shoulder into the car. “I didn’t break his nose, did I?” she asked him.

Adam shook his head. “Nope. But you gave him what’s going to be one hell of a shiner. He’s going to have a fun time explaining that one: ‘My brother’s female best friend kicked my ass.’”

I noticed, gratefully, that he didn’t say girlfriend. Hay gave him a wavering smile and then climbed into the back with Jeff, who gave her another hug. “Let’s go home,” she said, and I wondered whether she meant the motel or Stoneybrook.

[tosybelle-blog]

By and Hay’s Excellent Adventure--Part I

Haley Braddock is pretty much my best friend. Well, let me rephrase that. Haley Braddock is pretty much my only friend.

Oh, sure, I count my own brothers as friends, but that’s mostly by default. We shared a womb, so we’ve always liked to spend a lot of time together. But these days, they’ve grown kinda tiresome. They only talk about two things: 1) girls and 2) how they’re going to get into those same girls’ pants. Gets pretty boring after a while, especially since neither one of them is getting anywhere with the second.

And I do have other friends. It’s just that they’re mostly Adam and Jordan’s friends, and that I’m only on their friends lists because we’re a trio. If Robby or Shane or Dan were to list their friends, with their best friends at the top, they’d list Jordan and Adam near the top somewhere. Then they’d get to the end of the list, and go, “Oh, yeah, and Byron, I guess.” In other words, when they call the house, they’ll ask for one of my brothers and then maybe invite me along on whatever shenanigan they’re planning to pull, but they never ask to speak to me.

But Haley is different. And I don’t just mean because she’s a girl. I know lots of girls, and I’m related to quite a few of them. Hay is about the only girl I’m not related to that I feel totally comfortable with. We get together three, four times a week. We tell each other pretty much everything. It’s really nice to have a confidant who doesn’t judge and doesn’t turn around and tell everyone else in your family.

One day a couple weeks before spring break, I was hanging out in Hay’s room again. We always go to the Braddocks because 1) there are fewer people there, so it’s quieter, and 2) her parents trust us enough to let us hang out in her room with the door closed. There aren’t many rules at my house, but one of them is pretty simple. No sex, no drugs, no alcohol, no tobacco...in the house. Mom and Dad know they can’t control what we do all together, so they’ve resigned themselves to just restricting any signs of it in the home where it could corrupt younger sibs. So even though Hay and I aren’t doing anything we couldn’t do in the rec room surrounded by a couple brothers and sisters, we aren’t allowed to be alone anywhere in the house. Because Hay’s parents were smart enough not to have a whole mess of kids, they are better able to monitor their kids’ relationships. So they know it’s safe to leave us alone. Hay and I are pretty standard nerd straight arrow goody-goodies. Neither one of us has ever tried pot or anything stronger, and we’ve never had enough alcohol at once to make us more than buzzed. We’ve never even smoked a cigarette. And since we tell each other a lot, I know that she’s never made it past first base with a boy. Nope. Hay and I were not doing anything in her bedroom that wouldn’t pass my parents’ test.

Mostly we just sit around, do our homework, and talk. About school, about our goals, about stupid shit. She spends a lot of time complaining about her little brother Matt. At this point, he had just turned fifteen and thought he was God’s gift to women—or at least, teenaged girls. He was like all three of my brothers combined, at least in Hay’s eyes. So I got to hear all about what he was up to now. How he lorded his social life over her. How much time he spent hogging the bathroom. Other general complaints about how badly it sucks to have younger siblings. She tells me because she knows I can relate.

I couldn’t even tell you what exactly she was complaining about this day. I know, I should pay better attention, right? If you’d asked me right after the conversation, I could have told you. But it’s not so important any more. So forgive me.

In any case, when Hay was done with her complaint, she turned to me. We were sitting back to back on her bed, so she basically turned her head over my shoulder so her mouth was right next to my ear. “By,” she said, throwing aside the textbook she’d been half- heartedly “studying” while bitching about Matt, “How come you never complain about your brothers and sisters? I’ve only got one and I complain all the time. You’ve got seven and I never hear you whine about them at all.”

I shrugged, feeling her whole body move up and down with the movement. She was putting pretty much all of her weight on my back. “I dunno,” I added unnecessarily, giving myself time to think about it. “I guess that they’re all so annoying all the time that that would be all I ever talked about if I told you how they were. I would totally annoy the shit out of you.”

She laughed and turned back around, jostling me with her other shoulder—completely on purpose, mind you—as she did. “Like you don’t already?” Hay picked up her math book and opened it to her current assignment, but she didn’t pick up her notebook or pencil. Hay always plays with her homework for at least half an hour before she starts it. “Do me a favor. Make me feel more normal. Tell me one obnoxious thing one of your brothers or sisters has done recently. Something that just totally pissed you off. What is the most annoying thing a Pike kid has done in the past week?”

I threw aside my novel, knowing I couldn’t get any further with my reading assignment until she got what she wanted. But I also know I couldn’t actually answer her last question. I knew instantly what the most annoying thing my brothers had done recently was. I’d come home from Hay’s house two days before and come up the stairs. I’d stayed for dinner, so it was later than usual and dark when I got home. When I walked past Jordan and Adam’s bedroom, two voices yelled and a hand yanked me into the room.

“Hey!” I’d shouted, but within seconds both of my brothers were on top of me, fake beating me senseless. This is how they show love, so I’d ignored it and fought my way out of the pile. With my back to them, I’d shaken myself off and silently cursed them.

“Where the hell have you been?” Adam had asked me. I’d just shrugged, not yet turning around. Despite the fact that they were only playing, they’d managed to split my lip.

Even with him on my other side, I could feel Jordan giving me stinkeye. “Robby called and wanted us to come over and play some football. We’d promised to come by as soon as you came home. But you took your sweet-ass time getting home and now it’s too late.”

I wiped a bit of blood off my lip and finally faced them. “I was with Haley. Dinner, you know...” I’d let the sentence trail off. Adam and Jordan had looked at each other. Adam’s irritation subsided and he began to grin.

“Awwwright Byron!” Adam slapped me on the back. “Pussy!” He grabbed my arm and made like he was going to twist it behind my back.

I didn’t correct him. I didn’t point out that the closest I’d ever gotten to “pussy” at Haley’s house was when the Braddock cat sat in my lap. I had tried that at first, and Jordan and Adam had just taken every denial as a sign that they were right. So I’d given up. And honestly, letting them think I was getting something they weren’t gave me a little leg up on them. Very little, but still.

But I definitely couldn’t tell Haley that story. Like I said, I tell her almost everything. Even so, a guy, even a best friend, needs some mystery about him.

(Oh, and for the record, my brothers aren’t always complete fuckwits. Just most of the time.)

I snapped back to Haley’s room. No, I wasn’t going to tell that one to her. But because, you know, I have so many brothers and sisters, I definitely had another story to tell.

I shifted again. “Um, well, okay. You know how Nick and I have an agreement, right? The private time agreement?” She nodded, still facing the other way. I felt her neck muscles move between her shoulders. “The private time agreement” was something that Nick and I had come up with when we’d agreed to share a room some seven years ago. Originally, it was to allow us each some peace and quiet in a household where those things don’t really exist. Then we’d hit puberty and it had, uh, taken on a different purpose. “Well, Nick usually takes his time while I’m here. Easy, right? So I always tell him when I’m coming over so he knows when he’s free to use the room.”

“So remember late last week when you forgot you had a dentist appointment and I ended up going straight home instead of helping you with your Macbeth essay?” I didn’t wait for her to answer. “I went to my room and knocked. But I guess I didn’t give Nick enough time to answer. So I went in and there he was on the bed...”

Hay snickered. “Jacking off?” she finished the sentence.

It was my turn to look over my shoulder. “Yup. But that’s not the worst part.” I felt her silently laughing as I continued the story. “He pretended like nothing was going on, pulled his shirt down over his, uh, you know, and left the room. Probably to the bathroom to finish. But he left behind his, um, stimulation material, I guess you could say. And you’ll never guess what it was. Some kinda, uh, catalog.”

“Victoria’s Secret?”

“Oh, hell, no, Hay. Way worse. I guess catalog isn’t the right word. It was one of those ads you get in the Sunday paper. I think it was a Wal-Mart ad. Ladies in granny panties and full figured bras.”

“Dude, Byron. I said annoying, not disgusting!” For the first time in about an hour, she finally moved off my back. She stretched out across the bed and rolled with laughter. Hay has two types of laughs—a mildly amused laugh, which is loud and you can hear from the other side of the house, and a really happy laugh, which is silent and makes her whole body shake. The latter was what she was doing now, and tears were rolling down her face. “Oh, my God,” she said, when she got her shit back together and was able to speak again. “We need to get the hell out of this town for a while.”

I had picked my novel back up and turned my back toward the wall while she was calming down. I was hoping to finish the chapter before she started begging for more embarrassing stories about my sibs. Even this new direction in the conversation wasn’t going to prevent me from my assignment. “Hmm,” I said, a noncommittal response, hoping to head her off before she really picked up steam. Sometimes, Haley can really get off on wild ideas and tangents.

“No, By, I’m serious.” She sat up and turned to me, folding her feet up under her and trying her best to look serious as well. “I’ve had my driver’s license for almost three months now. And you’ve had yours for, like, a year. We never get to really go anywhere or do anything though. You think we could go on a road trip? Spring break?” I still didn’t respond, so she leaned forward a bit and waved her hand in my face. I blinked but didn’t dignify it with any other response. “I could even try to get...the car.”

“The car” is actually Haley’s car. Her parents had given it to her on her seventeenth birthday, when she passed her driver’s test. It’s a really nice used car, a much nicer ride than just about anyone we know drives. Problem is, because the car is so nice, Hay’s parents are almost scared to let her drive it. Even though she’s a really good driver, they’re afraid that she’ll crash it. I think I can count on one hand how many times I’ve gotten a ride from her, and I’ve been in the car almost every time she’s been behind the wheel.

“Oh, the car, huh? Good luck.” Sarcasm oozed in the statement.

She shoved me with both hands and laughed a short, loud laugh. “Come on, dude. Think about it. We’d have a whole week to drive and wander and discover something new. We could go anywhere! The beach, the mountains, you name it.”

Okay. She’d distracted me from my reading, but I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of knowing that right off. Why couldn’t we go on a road trip? Mom and Dad had let Adam and Jordan take off with our car last summer for a week. And Hay’s parents are pretty cool about stuff like that. I would have been really fun to drive somewhere, just the two of us. We’d never really gone anywhere on our own, without a whole passel of friends or siblings around.

“A road trip? Huh. I’ll ask my parents,” I said nonchalantly over my book, not lifting my eyes off the pages.

Haley shrieked and hugged me, squeezing my arms up by my side and bringing the book closer to my face. “Great! Ask them tonight, and I’ll ask mine.” She let me go, her eyes sweeping over the room and settling on her math book. She lifted the text, found her assignment again, pulled her notebook and a pencil out of her school bag and settled down to do her homework. I flipped a page in my book, satisfied that I would actually be able to finish the reading before I went home.

We worked silently for a few minutes. Suddenly Hay lowered her pencil and began looking at me. Through the corner of my eye, I could see a mischievous glint to her gaze. “What,” I said. It wasn’t really a question.

“Soo....stimulation material. I heard about Nick’s. What do you use?”

I didn’t answer, really. I just shifted the book to one hand and flicked her off with the other.

“Okay, never mind then. Next time I’m in your room, I’ll just look under your mattress.”

I turned a page in the book and looked at her over the top. “I’m too smart to leave it under the mattress,” was all I said.

***

I love my parents, but sometimes I think they are the most unreasonable people on earth. I’d waited to talk to them about Haley’s idea until after dinner. Generally, my siblings sort of scatter after dinner. Someone’s usually out on a date, or with friends, and most of the rest of them head upstairs to do homework or downstairs to watch something on television. It’s the best time to talk to Mom and Dad about anything serious, especially if you volunteer to help with the dishes. Mom always appreciates the help, but they know right off you’re about to ask for something. So, it’s not always ideal if you want to spring something on them you don’t think they’ll go for. But I didn’t think this was a request they’d say no to, so I just went for it.

I was putting away the last of the dishes while Mom and Dad sat down with cups of coffee. When the last plate was back in its home, I turned around. My parents were facing the other way, but I saw them glance at each other. “Byron,” Mom said after a moment of me trying to figure out how to begin, “if you’ve got something you want to ask permission for, get it over with so you can get out of here and give your dad and me some private time.”

Okay. That put me more at ease. I grabbed a cola out of the fridge and sat down next to them. “Um, so you know spring break is coming up, right?” Suave, genius. Mom and Dad just looked at me. I opened the cola can. “Well, Haley and I were talking. We wanted to have an adventure this year. Now that we both have our driver’s licenses, we were hoping to take a road trip. Leave on Sunday and come back Saturday, so that we have plenty of time to work on homework and catch up on our sleep before we go back to school.” Now Hay and I hadn’t talked about the last part, but it made sense, and I thought my parents would be more likely to go for it if they could tell we were being our regular, responsible selves.

I saw Mom and Dad look at each other again, but this time I was looking at them face on, and I didn’t really like what I saw. The two of them have this habit of having whole conversations with their eyes, without having to say a word. Since I’m the ‘quiet, observant one,’ I’d long since come to study and translate large chunks of this secret language of theirs. And most of what I was seeing was negative.

“Byron,” Dad said, sounding like he was trying really hard not to sigh, “Sorry. I don’t like the idea of you and Haley alone in a car. Especially not for a whole week.” He took a sip of coffee, like that was the end of the conversation.

I tried my hardest not to break straight into whining. “Why not?”

Mom looked at Dad for a second, and when he took another sip of coffee, she answered. “Sweetie, you are a boy. Haley is a girl. You’re teenagers with crazy, mixed up emotions and hormones. Just not a good idea.”

I sighed. “Mom. I can assure you, nothing like that will ever go on between me and Haley. She’s my best friend, not my girlfriend. We’ve hung out together just about every day for the past three years, and I’ve never even kissed her.”

Mom raised her cup and took a drink. Why do they always start with the coffee just when I want them to say something? “Come on, Mom. Dad. I’ve never been a problem. I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, I don’t do drugs. And I certainly don’t have sex with Haley. The worst thing you could say about us is that when we get together, we curse like sailors.” Mom raised her eyebrows, but didn’t say anything. “You know you can trust me, right? I’m a good kid.” And it was true. Since I’d hit high school, I hadn’t been grounded once, nor had I had a detention. I was mostly in honors classes at school and I was in the top five percent of my class. I’d gotten an early acceptance to college sometime back and was on the path to higher academic success. I was good with my younger brothers and sisters, and for the most part we got along.

Another eye conversation started as both Mom and Dad took another drink from their coffee. These mugs were starting to seem endless. Just when I was about to give up and tell Hay the plan was off, Dad put his mug down. The sound it made indicated it was empty. “Okay, Byron, you make a valid point. I have no reason not to trust you...yet. Despite that, I still stand behind my original statement. I don’t like you and Haley alone in a car for the week. However...if you were to find another person, and all three of you went together, I’ll give you permission. Pending the approval of the Braddocks and the other kid’s parents, that is.”

I jumped out of my seat. “You mean it?” I asked.

Mom nodded. “Of course. We let Adam and Jordan go off last summer with a couple of guys, didn’t we? If you can put together a trio that we approve of, there’s no reason you can’t do the same.” The front door slammed shut and Adam and Jordan, who had been out with some guys, were back home. Mom raised her voice so that the newcomers could hear her. “And unlike all the other teenage drivers in the family, you have yet to get a ticket or hit something.”

“Aww, Mom,” Jordan said, coming into the kitchen to scam some leftovers, “I still maintain that cop was all wrong when he gave me that ticket. I was doing the speed limit, I swear.”

Mom turned in her seat as Adam followed Jordan to the fridge. “Jordan. You were given a ticket for doing fifty in a thirty-five zone. No radar machine, or cop’s eye, is going to be that far off.”

Adam pulled a cold chicken leg out of the fridge and bit straight off of it as Jordan scowled. “Why did this topic even come up?” Adam asked, his mouth full.

Dad got out of his chair and closed the wide-open fridge. Adam was holding the whole plate of leftover chicken by this point, and Jordan had the makings of salami sandwich, except the bread, which he grabbed from the counter top. Dad shook his head. “Weren’t you guys just out for pizza? And didn’t you have huge snacks just before that, right when I was coming home?” He didn’t wait for an answer to his own question, but instead turned toward me. “So. This road trip. I assume you’ll be needing the car.”

In our family, “the car” is a battered old piece of shit Honda Civic that feels like it’s as old as I am. My parents bought it when my oldest sister Mallory turned seventeen, and it’s meant to be shared by all the teenaged Pikes. Right then, with Mal off at college and my sister Vanessa not turning seventeen for another three months, it was a car that Adam, Jordan and I shared. Most of the time, one of them drove it, simply because they had more social engagements than I did. We had to schedule carefully over the summer, when anyone sixteen or older in the family was required to hold a job. Most of the time last summer, I had just walked to work. It was easier than fighting with my brothers, who could beat me up, or Mal, who could turn on the waterworks.

“Wait. What?” Jordan put down the slice of bread he had been lovingly slathering with mustard. Adam, his mouth now totally full of chicken, knew better than to say something right away. He’s choked more than a few times trying to talk with that much food in his mouth. But he shot me a death glare.

I ignored them both and turned to Dad. “Well, Hay’s trying to get her parents to let her take her car, but I doubt they will. So if you’re okay with it, yeah, I’ll need the car.”

“No way. Uh-uh. Totally unfair.” Adam had managed to swallow his chicken. He turned away from me, toward Mom and then to Dad, who was still standing by the fridge. “He’s taking the car for spring break? For a road trip?”

“Yeah, that’s crazy!” Jordan chimed in. “What if one of us wants to use the car then? Like what if I have a hot date with Danielle and need the car?” Adam snickered, and I had to try really hard not to do the same. Danielle is this old friend of Vanessa’s, and Jordan’s been trying to get her to out with him since she was about thirteen. She’s been telling him ‘no’ for just as long.

Mom sighed, good naturedly. “Then you’ll just tell Danielle the same thing you would tell her if Byron had the car just for the evening. Either reschedule, walk, or your dad or I will drive you.” Both Adam and Jordan groaned. “It’s the same thing that Byron had to do, and Mallory too, when you two took the car last summer.” Mom stood up and glanced at Dad, and all three of us triplets knew the conversation was over. “Make sure you two clean up your dishes tonight—Byron already did the dinner dishes and I don’t want to find any in the sink in the morning. Good night.”

Adam and Jordan turned on me darkly. I tried to smile at them, but it didn’t last long. “It’s the same thing Byron had to do when you two took the car last summer,” Adam repeated, raising his voice so that he was making a terrible parody of Mom.

Jordan glanced at him briefly and turned back to me. “Yeah, but you know that Byron couldn’t get a date with Danielle if he wanted one.”

I picked my forgotten can of cola off the table and took a swig. Suddenly, I understood why Mom and Dad do that with their coffee. It keeps them for blurting out the first thing that comes into their heads.

It didn’t work for me. “Yeah, and neither could you, and you want one.”

I have never run from the kitchen so fast in my whole life.

***

Once I managed to get free from Adam and Jordan, I found a cordless phone and went to my room. Nick was in there, doing his homework...or actually, staring off into space and ignoring his homework. I touched him on the shoulder. “Nick. Nick. Earth to Nick.”

He slowly shook his head and returned to normal. “What?” he said, instantly irritated that I had interrupted his “studies.”

I held the phone out and pointed to it. “Will it bother you if I make a phone call?”

“Yes.”

I scowled a little bit, but stepped back out into the hallway. My two youngest sisters were having an argument in the room they share with Vanessa. Even with the door closed, I could tell exactly what it was about, and I had no doubt that Haley would be able to hear it too. I ducked down the hallway further. Mom and Dad’s room door was closed. Adam was in his room, and he was one of the last people I wanted to see at that moment. (Bet you can’t guess who the other one, who was downstairs watching television, was.) Finally, I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. It was a little too early for anyone to be getting ready for bed, but I still probably wouldn’t have too much time. I dialed Hay’s number from memory. Her father answered, recognizing my voice, and got Hay right away.

“Hello!” She sounded fairly excited. Hopeful, I think.

“Hello, yourself. So how did it go?”

“Fifty-fifty. Mom said I could go, but she said I couldn’t take the car.” Surprise, surprise. No biggie, though. Byron to the rescue.

“Don’t worry about it. Not only did I get permission, we also get to take the Pike-mobile.”

A long, incomprehensible shriek came from the other end of the phone. I held it away from ear until I was sure she was good and done. Because of this, I missed a fair chunk of what she was saying.

“...and we are just going to have the best time ever!”

“Whoa, slow down Hay. There’s just one catch.”

She sure sobered up fast. “What?”

“We have to find a third person to come with us.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and then she repeated her last statement. “What?”

I started fiddling with things on the counter nervously while I spoke. Makeup. Zit cream. “My dad has this thing about teenage hormones. I guess he figures the only way to prevent us from doing something that could cause you to come home pregnant is make sure we have a chaperone.”

She giggled. “Us? Really?”

“Yeah. Crazy, huh?” Wow. This seemed a lot more amusing to her than it did to me. What was going on here? “Listen, Hay, I have to run. But think about someone we could invite along who would be safe. I’ll see you in school tomorrow.”

“I’ll think about it all night. Night, By.”

“Night.”

***

I’m not a morning person. I’m usually the last one out the door in the morning. Sometimes, my brothers threaten to leave me behind and make me walk. I always let them drive in the morning. I’m sure by now you’re guessing that the reason that I haven’t had any problems driving yet is because I almost never get to drive. It’s a factor, I’m sure. But there’s also the fact that I don’t do things like drive fifteen miles over the speed limit (Jordan) or park in no parking zones (Mal) or drive with my head out the window, yelling at “the ladies” (Adam).

In any case, I was half asleep when I got to my locker. I was still fumbling with the lock when a bouncing, squealing figure zoomed up behind me. I didn’t even have to turn around to know who it was. “Hey, Haley,” I said while yawning.

“Morning, By! Guess what? I came up with the perfect person to come on our trip. Even though I’m really sad that it’s not going to be Hay and By’s Excellent Adventure....” she faded out and looked at me impatiently. “Oh, for shit’s sake, Byron! Give me that!” She yanked the lock out of my hand and unlocked it for me.

I looked at her, feeling the sleepiness leave my body. “Should I be concerned that you know my locker combo?” I teased.

“Focus, dude. Talk about spring break now. Worry about me digging through your school books and dirty gym socks later.”

I put my backpack away and took out my calculus book and notebook. Haley shifted her school bag from one shoulder to the other in a very impatient manner. Sensing her irritation, I took as long as humanly possible to gather up my calculator and a couple pencils. Finally I turned to her and smiled. “So. Who’s your idea of a good chaperone?”

“Vanessa.”

I started walking down the hallway, not waiting for her to follow. “Vanessa? Are you kidding?” I asked over my shoulder, incredulously.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my sister. It’s just that she’s so...weird. When we were younger, she spoke in rhyme for a couple years. She hasn’t done that since she was maybe twelve, but she hasn’t become any less strange since then. (I’m really not one to speak though, since I think most of my sibs probably say the same thing about me.) Vanessa and Haley used to be really close, but they’d had a falling out right before they both started high school. Hay had left the house crying, and I’d followed to make sure she was okay. We’d gotten to talking, and next time she’d called the house, she’d asked to speak to me. It had weirded me out at first, but I’d quickly realized how good a friend she was. Even after Hay and Vanessa made up, she’d continued coming by mostly just to see me.

Hay wrinkled her nose at me. “Think about it!” she yelled down the hallway as I hurried away from her.

***

I hate when Hay tells me to do something and then I do it, but it seems to happen a lot. I spent more time thinking about my parent’s request and Haley’s idea than calculus, or gym, or any of my other morning classes. Other than being strange, Vanessa was an ideal candidate. My parents couldn’t complain about her, and they’d believe her when she said that Hay and I had behaved. Plus, it would be good to see Hay hanging out with someone else. When I wasn’t with her, I might be out with my brothers and their friends, but I knew Hay spent most of her time alone. I’ve got no idea why. She’s bright and funny and charming and full of energy.

I was on my way to lunch when I spotted her heading the other way. Hay has lunch right before I do, and she was on her way to gym class. She’s of the opinion that it should be illegal to force people to run a mile right after making them eat cafeteria food. I must say that I agree.

“Hey, Hay!” I called across a group of cheerleaders, including my sister Margo. I flashed her a quick smile as I waded past her and her friends. Hay was juggling her lunch bag, the latest novel she’d been reading, and a few other odds and ends, trying to stuff them back into her backpack. She looked up sharply, and then grinned.

“So...?”

“So it sounds like the best idea. I have lunch with her next. I’ll ask her, okay?”

Hay’s face lit up like a jack-o-lantern, and she smiled just as large. “Oh, By, I just love you! This is going to be the best spring break ever!” She zipped up her backpack and threw her arms around me briefly. “Call me tonight! See you later!”

***

The cafeteria was already crowded by the time I got in. Most of my brothers and sisters buy their lunches, but Margo and I prefer to pack ours. Margo because she’s the pickiest person on the face of the earth, and me because I basically just think cafeteria food blows. Most of my friends were still in the lunch line, so I took a detour from our usual table and headed over to the corner. The literary set was all over here, and Vanessa was talking to a freshman boy who looked like Pugsley Addams, only less cute. I’d seen her with him a few times before. I stood behind her, hoping for a lull in the conversation. Pugsley stopped talking almost instantly, in the middle of a thought, and just stared at me. After a moment, Vanessa turned around and gave me her best death glare. “Yeah?”

“Hi, Vanessa. I was hoping to ask you a favor.” Had it been anyone else, I would have sat down beside her to ask the question. But Vanessa and Pugsley didn’t seem to welcome my presence, and I had a feeling that would just make it worse. So I went on. “I don’t know if you heard that Haley and I are taking a road trip for spring break. Mom and Dad want us to find a third person to go along with. Do you want to come? Hay and I will pay for all the gas, and I’m sure Mom and Dad would pay your share of everything else.” Actually, I wasn’t so sure of this, but I left it there anyway. If my parents were going to insist upon a babysitter for me, then they were going to have to pay for one, same as when we were kids.

Vanessa’s expression didn’t change. “Now, why would I want to do that?”

I sighed. This was going to be harder than I thought. “I don’t know. I thought maybe you’d just like to help me out and get away from Casa Pike for a week, pretty much free of charge. Hay and I haven’t decided where we’re going. There might me something out there that would make great poetry...a graveyard or whatever it is that appeals to your poetic soul these days.”

Pugsley continued to stare at me like I was a moron. On quick inspection, it didn’t look like my pleas had had any effect on Vanessa, but on a second look, I could see that her eyes were smiling, even if the rest of her face wasn’t. “I’ll think about it. Can you leave me and Devon alone now and go back to your table of Neanderthals? Thanks. Bye.”

Devon, huh? Nope. I was still going to call him Pugsley in my head. “Okay. Let me know when you make up your mind.” I walked away smiling. I knew that Vanessa was just putting on a show for her friends. If she’d really not been interested, she would have found a couple of really choice insults to cut me down to size. Vanessa is the only person I know who can swear at you without actually swearing.

I set my lunch down a few seats away from where Adam and Jordan normally sit. Across from me was Dan Reiber, a big football jock and one of Jordan’s best friends. “What are you so happy about?” he asked, putting one of those dinky little straws into a ridiculously small carton of milk. Dan usually buys about seven of those milks to satisfy his thirst.

I just shook my head, letting my smile fade. Dan is one of those people who doesn’t ask a question like that and really mean it. Had I actually told him what was so great in my life right then, he would have made one of two jokes: 1) something really not funny, involving a threesome—never mind that one of the girls going along was my sister—or 2) said something about fags and their hags.

Dan has two insults in his life: gay and retarded. Everyone and everything is either one or the other. Or if he really hates them, both. He even calls people he likes retards and queers. It’s really annoying. I just want to buy him a thesaurus and teach him a few new insults.

In any case, sometimes he focuses in on certain people and decides to make their lives living hell for a few months. Charming, huh? Back during our freshman year, he caught me staring off into space one day in the changing room and thought I was staring at him, or more precisely, his dick. He wasn’t too terribly original in choosing his insults: Queer-on Pike was his favorite. After the joke stopped being funny to anyone besides him, he just called me “Hey, Fag” for another year or so until Jordan convinced him to stop. Even so, he still occasionally makes jokes about me wanting his dick. But he’s so not my type.

Okay. I guess I better rewind a bit. Remember how I said there are a few things I didn’t even tell Haley? One of them is how accurate all the hateful jokes were. Though I would never, ever stare at Dan Reiber’s dick, he was right about one thing. I am gay.

I’ve known for a long time, even before I knew what “being gay” actually was. See, there was this boy. He was best friends with me and my brothers. I didn’t know what it meant when I always wanted to be with him and near him. I didn’t realize that my brothers felt that way about girls sometimes. It wasn’t until a couple years later when I learned what the term meant and inside my head said, “Oh, so that’s what I am!” But by that time, the boy had moved away, and we’d almost completely lost touch with him.

Since then, there have been a few other boys that made me feel good about myself, but none of them seemed to like me the way I liked them. Not that I had ever said anything to them about it. What if they’d been straight? It would have been like Dan Reiber all over again, only this time it wouldn’t just have been one idiot explaining a vague notion. It would have been someone with a whole conversation he could relive for the others. It would not have been pretty.

So basically, I’m a coward. I’ve decided that, for the next few months before I head off to college, it’s better just to hang out with my best, female friend, let my brothers think I’m screwing her, and hide who I really am.

Yeah. A big, gay coward.

***

Once we were alone together, Vanessa agreed to come along for our trip. And not only did Mom and Dad agree, they were thrilled. I think it was that 1) I had volunteered to spend time with Vanessa and 2) she wasn’t going to be moping all over the house for the whole break. In fact, they were so happy that they gave the two of us a nice chunk of change to put to toward our expenses. If we budgeted carefully, it would be enough for a single motel room for almost every night of the trip. Dad even handed me a credit card on his account in my name to use to secure the rooms and in case of emergency. I really needed to thank Hay for all the brownie points she had gotten me with my parents.

Hay’s parents had also provided some money, and all three of us each had some spare funds set aside. I was planning to use all my birthday money—as I finally turned eighteen four days before we left—and maybe then some. We’d counted and budgeted and set aside money for every activity we knew we wanted to do, and left some for things we hadn’t planned out. Hay had thrown out a bunch of adjectives for how she wanted the trip to go, but her favorite one was EPIC.

Even Vanessa got excited. She was the one who suggested where we should go in the first place. We gathered in Hay’s bedroom with a bunch of road maps, deciding on two towns a couple of hours apart we just had to see. We would spend a couple nights at each, but we hoped to leave everything wide open beyond that. The entire state of Maine lay in front of us, really.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men. All it takes is one force of nature to change the path you’re on forever. In this case, there were two forces, and their names were Adam and Jordan.

***

I woke up ridiculously early on that first Sunday of spring break. Vanessa, Haley and I had decided to leave at the butt-crack of dawn, but I was up before the alarm even went off. That was probably for the best. Nick is a bear if you wake him when he doesn’t need to be up. Honestly, though, in the mood I was in, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. Still, I turned the alarm off and crept out of the room.

Except for the types of things we would need that morning, Vanessa and I had packed our bags the night before. We had agreed that I would shower first and go downstairs to eat breakfast while Vanessa used the bathroom. Hay and Vanessa were going to eat on the way there and I was going to take the first shift driving. We wanted to go the whole six hour trip today, with me taking the first half and Hay the second, and then have the whole day ahead of us to enjoy.

Hay arrived early enough to make it clear that she, too, had gotten moving early this morning. She was already full of pep and zest, and she’d greeted each Pike she’d come across with a big hug, even Mom and Dad, whom she’d thanked profusely. When Vanessa was ready to go, I shoved the last of a waffle in my mouth. Dad went out to pull the car out for us, and Mom presented us with a large cooler—the one we used to take on picnics—full of snacks, drinks and sandwiches.

As Hay, Vanessa and I went outside, we were surprised to see that our family’s station wagon was sitting there. I gave Dad a questioning look. “Uh, Dad, where’s the Civic?”

Dad gave me an odd look. “With the number of you going, I thought it would make more sense to take the wagon. You’ll be able to spread out more.” I looked over at the girls, who looked just as confused. There were three of us. How much more room did we need?

Mom, Dad and my youngest sister Claire helped us load up the car. Margo and Nick were still asleep, and Jordan and Adam had called late last night and asked to stay over at a friend’s. We weren’t going to be gone for too long and we really didn’t have too much to take, so we were done pretty quickly. Hay’s high was wearing off and she climbed into the middle row with a blanket, intending to take a nap for the first part of our journey. Vanessa took the passenger seat. Dad cleared his throat, and I was waiting for a last minute lecture, a repeat of the night before when he’d sat all three of us down and given us the “rules.” But his words were not what I expected. “Aren’t you three going to wait for the rest?”

***

Oh, no. Oh, no, no.

I’m not sure how exactly this happened. But when the car took off forty-five minutes later, there were six of us belted in. Hay had moved from the middle row into the rear facing seat, where she was silently sulking. Vanessa had taken out a book and was furiously ripping pieces off a muffin, shoving them soundlessly into her mouth. I was behind the wheel, rigid with anger. And in the middle row, sensing our irritation and annoyance, were Adam, Jordan, and Jeff Schafer.

Jeff Schafer. Oh my God. When we were ten, he was my best friend. Yeah. That best friend. His mom still lived in town, and though he visited her often, for the last few years we just hadn’t been able to get it together. Either he’d come to town while we were out of town, or he’d been free only while I was working. I hadn’t seen him since we were thirteen or fourteen. I remembered that he and Jordan had spent some time together last summer and that he and Adam had run into each other at Thanksgiving. But we’d barely hit puberty when I’d last spoken to him. And these days, he was looking good.

Jeff’s hair is blonde and looks like just stepped out of a windstorm, and he has this adorable spray of freckles across nose. When he showed up at the house with my brothers, he was wearing a white wife beater under an unbuttoned shirt of blue and green plaid. The blue in his shirt brought out the sparkly ocean blue of his eyes. He completed the outfit with a pair of faded, lived in cargo shorts and flip flops, and a silver thumb ring on his left hand. He was maybe a few inches taller than I am, but he carried himself better, making him look much taller.

My childhood crush standing on my front step, carrying a duffel and looking sexy as hell? Yeah. I was barely able to form a coherent thought for the next few seconds. Or minutes. Or longer. Which is probably how Adam and Jordan were able to talk the three of us into letting the three of them into the car.

Like I said, I don’t really know how it happened. All I do know is that one of my brothers told Dad that Hay and I had okayed the other two triplets joining our trip. And I, of course, really hadn’t. Half the reason for going on the trip in the first place, at least for me, was to get away from the two of them for a week. Even while I’d been wracking my brain trying to think of someone to bring along before asking Vanessa, I’d never even considered asking either of them once. Both Hay and Vanessa were looking toward me, hoping I would speak up and tell the other guys they couldn’t come. But I’ve never been one for making a scene. And Mom and Dad looked so hopeful, probably at the prospect of having only three teens in the house for the week. Not to mention how tongue-tied I was, looking at this beautiful specimen of manhood that had just appeared in front of me. So I let the girls down, and I could tell that, in addition to being mad at Adam and Jordan, they were mad at me.

Some spring break adventure this was turning out to be.

And Jeff? Well, he’d had the good sense to look embarrassed when he’d realized that he hadn’t actually been invited on the trip in the first place. All I caught was that he’d run into Jordan and Adam the night before, and they’d mentioned how they were leaving for the week first thing in the morning. Somehow, this had led to them inviting him to join us, and his mom had given him permission. I took a look at him in the rear view mirror. Jeff was gazing out the window on the passenger’s side, looking pained. I couldn’t tell more than that from a quick glance.

Jordan was sitting bitch. Either oblivious to the tension in the car, or trying clumsily to cut it, he piped up, “It’s deathly quiet in here. Can we get some music playing, please?”

Music. That was actually a good idea. Not wanting him to get his way too much, I answered without taking my eyes off the road. “Yeah. Music sounds good. But I’m making a couple rules first.” The groans sounded almost universal. “First is that, since so many of us can drive, we switch drivers every two hours. Whoever drove last gets to sit in the passenger’s seat. The rest of us can sit wherever the hell we want, as long as we can do it without fighting. Sound fair?” No one said anything, so I took that as a yes. “How many drivers do we have?”

Jordan nudged Jeff in the ribs. “Schafer. You got a license?”

Blinking, Jeff turned away from the window. He looked like he’d been pulled out of an epically bad daydream. He said the first words I’d heard from him since, “Good morning.” “Yeah. For a while now. In California, you get your license when you turn sixteen.” He turned back to the window.

“Great. Five drivers then.” I put on my blinker and slowed at a stop sign. “Second. Whoever is in the passenger’s seat has to play navigator, but also gets to pick the music. Vanessa, you got something in mind?”

I’d done this deliberately. Vanessa has a great collection of CDs designed to annoy. She also has an IPod full of songs guaranteed to make the most cheerful person in the world want to slit his wrists.

While Vanessa shuffled through her duffel bag, I heard the commentary from the middle row. “What do you think this is, school? Fuck, Byron. It’s a goddamn road trip. Who died and made you the god of making rules?”

Haley’s head popped over the top of the seat for the first time in several miles. She stood up on her knees, leaning over the middle seat with her head between Adam and Jordan’s. “You assholes did when you invited yourselves along. No one asked you to come. And Vanessa and By and I had already decided on some rules before that, so if you don’t like them, you can get the fuck out of the car and walk home. Because I like rules and I especially like any rule that you two hate!” By this point, she was practically screaming.

Adam leaned forward, away from her. “Dude,” he said in a spooked voice, looking at me in the rearview. “Your girlfriend’s crazy.” At that moment, I was a bit inclined to agree. This was something new for Hay. There was a crazed look in her eye, her face was beet red, and tears streamed down her face. While I’d seen her cry before, it had never been like this, with so much emotion behind it.

I didn’t dignify Adam with a response. Vanessa had selected a CD and popped it into the jury-rigged system that played through the car’s old tape deck. Janis Joplin came pouring out of the speakers as the car’s occupants fell silent again. Hay sat back down, crying much in the same way she laughs. Jeff’s eyes never left the window. Vanessa flipped a page in her book and took a swig of coffee. And Adam and Jordan looked at each other, both trying to decide if they wanted to take Hay’s advice and jump out of the moving car and both looking sorely tempted.

“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose,” Janis sang from the tinny car speakers.

Oh, yeah. This had to be the worst start to any road trip in the history of the world.

***

We were all silent and fretful for a while after that. Vanessa’s CD was a mix CD, and after Bobby McGee, I couldn’t even begin to tell you what most of the music was, because I didn’t recognize it. Vanessa was still reading. Adam and Jordan had discovered the cooler and were munching grapes. Jeff hadn’t moved a muscle from the window, and I’m pretty sure Hay had cried herself to sleep. We were about three songs in when we hit the highway. I merged going north.

A moment later, Jordan leaned over Adam, watching the car’s progress. “What are you doing?” he exclaimed. “Byron, you’re going the wrong way.”

I kept my eyes on the road, tense at all the traffic this early on a Sunday morning. “No, I’m not.”

“Did you fail geography? Florida is south of here, man. You’re going north.”

Vanessa and I exchanged a look, and she nodded. She put down her book and turned around, looking at our brothers. “Florida? What do you mean, Florida?” she asked. “We’re going to Maine.”

Adam and Jordan gaped. “Maine?” Jordan echoed. “Maine? Who the hell goes to Maine during spring break? What’s the matter with you people?”

I had finally gotten to a comfortable position on the highway and put on the cruise control. “Maybe next time, you’ll find out where the car is going before you invite yourself along.”

A small chuckle erupted from somewhere else, and I had to check around before I realized it was Jeff. “Oh, my God,” he said, turning away from the window. Our eyes met briefly in the rearview before he turned to my brothers. “You guys are priceless.” He was still chuckling, but that one look at his face told me that he wasn’t really happy. His eyes looked sad and lost. “You tell me we’re going to go to Florida. It’s going to be me and the guys, just like the old days. And then we get in the car, and not only are there girls going— no offense, Vanessa and Haley—but I find out we’re not actually on the guest list. And now, we’re going to Maine, of all places.” He shook his head and turned back to the window. “Maine,” he repeated, as if he couldn’t believe it. “What’s in Maine?”

Despite the fact that the question was obviously rhetorical, Vanessa answered him seriously. “Mountains,” she said. “Mountains and the ocean. Sometimes you just need to go somewhere that soothes your soul, you know?”

Jeff turned away from the window for the third time and met Vanessa’s gaze. “Yeah, I do know.” He looked up to the roof of the car, as if it might hold the answers to all life’s questions. “Okay,” he said, flashing a brief smile that actually looked like he meant it, “Maine.”

***

We stopped at the two hour mark for a pee break and driver switch. Since Vanessa wouldn’t be driving during the trip, I volunteered to give up my turn in shotgun and let her keep the seat. Adam, who had won a game of rock, paper, scissors with Jordan, was going to drive next. Jeff had turned down an offer for the wheel, and Hay was still sleeping restlessly in the back and we hadn’t wanted to wake her.

She was awake, however, when I came back from the john. “Need to stretch your legs?” I asked, climbing around the luggage to join her. Hay shook her head and pulled her blanket even tighter around her. All that was visible was her face, which was puffy from dried tears and sleep. I sat close to her and put my arm around the lump of blanket. “Hay. I’m so sorry.”

I felt her shrug. “I know.” Her voice was hoarse and still sounded a bit wavery. She lifted a blanket encased arm and wiped at her face. “I don’t really blame you. You can’t be held responsible if your brothers are little bastards. Or if you don’t have the balls to stand up to them.” I sighed but didn’t say anything. She was correct, after all. After a moment she finally turned and looked at me. “I just wanted to get away from myself, you know? And having them here is the exact opposite of that.”

I met her gaze. “Believe me, I know.” Hay put her head on my shoulder. I went on. “Remember what you called this trip back when we first put it together? Well, I’ve got a different name for it: By and Hay’s Bogus Journey.”

Hay made a happy noise for the first time since the boys had shown up. She closed her eyes and relaxed into me, but her stomach made angry sounds. “You haven’t eaten anything today yet, have you? What are you in the mood for?”

She shook her head. “Nothing right now. Just stay right where you are, okay? I need this more than I need breakfast.”

I closed my eyes, too, and put my head on top of hers. We sat like that for a few minutes, and I might have fallen asleep if it weren’t for a pounding on the window. “What are you fuckers doing back there?” Jordan shouted, his face up against the window.

Another voice, more garbled, responded, “You got that right. Fuckers.” Both Adam and Jordan started to laugh. I squinted my eyes more tightly shut and pretended not to hear either of them. From the way Hay tensed, she was doing the same.

The front passenger car door was open and Vanessa had been sitting in the seat, stretching her bare feet out the door, enjoying some weak rays of sun. “You guys are absolutely charming.” She pulled her feet back into the car and placed them on the dashboard.

I still hadn’t opened my eyes. “Vanessa, can you pass the rest of the muffins back here for Hay?” I called as Adam and Jordan settled into their seats, still chortling.

Haley sat upright as Vanessa passed the bag back to Jordan. Jordan placed the bag on the seat between us, and I grabbed it up. There were two muffins left, and I peered into the bag. “Blueberry or bran?” I asked.

“Yuck.”

My brothers were getting antsy. Adam threw the car into drive and laid on the horn. “Yo, Schafer!” he shouted out the open window. “Let’s get moving.”

Jeff appeared, not from the gas station, but from the dinky little market across the parking lot. He was carrying a small paper bag and ducked his head as he ran between the parked cars over to us. Taking a quick glance to see where everyone was sitting, he ran to the door next to the open seat and quickly climbed in. “Sorry,” he said, not really sounding apologetic at all.

The door was barely closed when Adam peeled out of the parking lot, just a little faster than necessary. Vanessa started telling him off, smacking him several times with the map. Jordan put ear buds in and turned up the volume loud enough to compete with Vanessa’s anime soundtrack. Once the others were distracted, Jeff turned around. “Uh, hey guys,” he said in a low voice. Hay and I turned toward him. He lifted the bag up, like it was a peace offering. “Nectarine?”

Haley looked at me, and we had a brief, wordless conversation which ended with me shrugging. I was getting more like my dad every day. “Sure. Thanks.” We wiggled apart and sat at opposite ends of the seat, our knees facing towards each other. Hay kicked the blanket off and accepted the bag, pulling a nectarine out of the bag and then handing it back to Jeff. “If you’re going to give any to By, you’d better take yours first. He eats more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

I kicked her sandal with the toe of one of my Converse. Jeff nodded. “I seem to remember that.” He pulled out a nectarine himself and took a bite. When he was done chewing, he looked at us expectantly, but didn’t say a word. Instead he handed me the bag and used it as an excuse to break eye contact.

I grabbed a nectarine but didn’t eat it. “Uh, it’s been a long time.” I said to Jeff as I spun the nectarine around and around. I watched the fruit instead of his face.

“Yup.”

Hay’s eyes darted back and forth between us for a moment. She opened her mouth, and then closed it. She took another bite of nectarine and exhaled loudly. I could tell that she was finding both of us, with our amazing communication skills, extremely frustrating. Both Jeff and I looked at her. She smiled an infuriating little grin as she swallowed. “So, Jeff. You’re a senior, right? Got plans for next year?”

Jeff shrugged. “Probably the community college. My grades are okay but not that great. Plus my dad...” he trailed off, looking briefly pained. “I dunno. I guess I just haven’t thought about it too much.” Another bite of nectarine and a pause while he chewed. “What about you two?”

Hay cocked her head to one side. “Well, I’m just a junior, but I’m thinking about being a professional sign language interpreter. They’re in big demand for courtrooms and schools and all sorts of places. But another part of me wants to do something Indiana Jones-y, like archaeology or anthropology. Once I decide what I want to study, I’ll decide where to go.” She shifted around a bit. “But Byron got an early acceptance to Duke for the biomedical engineering program.” Hay loves saying that. She says it makes me sound like a cyborg.

Jeff stared at me as if Haley had said I was going to be going to Hogwarts or outer space. “Wow. What are you, some kind of super brainiac?” I ducked my head, feeling my face flush.

“Seriously. Why do you think I do as much of my homework with him as possible? I’m always hoping some of that will rub off on me.” Hay’s attention drifted back to her nectarine, which was dripping down her lap. She enacted a furious feeding frenzy, leaving behind just the pit, and then looked at me. “Look at this. I am going to need to change before we get there.”

It was my turn to shrug again. “Change now.” I suggested. “Or you can see what kind of filthy-ass gas station Adam pulls into in a couple of hours.” I still didn’t look up. The nectarine, rotating in my hand, was getting sort of mushy. I finally took a bite.

Hay stared at me, horrified. “Change in here, in front of your pervert brothers?”

I didn’t move. “They’re a little busy.” It was true. Jordan had a magazine in his lap—if I’d had to guess, I’d say soft-core porn, like Maxim or Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition— and was focused in on that and his music. In the front seat, Adam was dealing with a slight case of road rage, only it was directed inside the car. Vanessa had taken to singing along to the soundtrack playing. Only problems with that are 1) Vanessa can’t sing and 2) she didn’t really know the words, so she was making them up by phonetically sounding out the Japanese. Had he not been driving, it would have been pretty neat to see Adam’s head explode. I figured it wouldn’t be too much longer before someone would have to intervene or the car would end up crashing into the median, with multiple casualties.

I finally looked up as I directed my attention back to Haley. “You’ve got the blanket, don’t you? And you know I won’t bother you. Can she trust you, Jeff?” My eyes flickered onto him for the first time since he’d handed me the nectarine. He was following the conversation by leaning his head onto the seat behind him and turning it at an angle. His eyes were half open, and he looked both sleepy and distant. And yet, still cute as can be. Damn.

Jeff shook himself and then met my gaze. “Yeah. No problem. I’ve got this window. I can count the number of red cars that we pass while you change.” Even though he was talking to Hay, this statement was made while looking directly at me. I felt an involuntary shiver go through my body.

Hay’s eyes ping-ponged again, and then stopped on me. She eyed me critically for a moment, but I wasn’t able to read her expression. Then she vaulted out of the seat. She’d tucked her bag over in one corner, and it was still accessible. She dug through the clothes, pulling out a skirt and t-shirt combo that’s one of her favorites, and then zipped the bag back up. I grabbed the blanket and handed it to her. “Want me to hold it up for you?”

She shook her head. “Naw. I got it. Just scoot over and give me some room, ‘kay?”

I wiggled over into the far corner of the seat. Jeff made a big show of turning to the window. Hay put the blanket down, and, just as I thought she was going to do, threw her new clothes on over her old. Then she covered herself in the blanket and started maneuvering underneath it to remove her jeans and shirt. I turned and looked out the window also, to give her an extra element of privacy. Jeff’s head was right next to mine, and with us both looking out the window, I could see his profile. He turned a little in his seat and looked at me again. “How long have you and Haley been going out?” he asked in a low voice, soft enough that I barely heard him.

I shook my head and whispered back. “We’re not dating.”

Jeff looked straight out the window again. When he spoke, he sounded confused. “Oh?”

“She’s just my friend. My best friend. Pretty much my only friend.” I didn’t know why I was telling him this. “We basically just have each other, so we’re pretty close.” Jeff raised his eyebrows at that but didn’t say anything. Desperate to change the subject, I squinted into the lane of cars next to us. “One!” I yelled, startling Jeff a bit.

Vanessa turned the radio down and turned around over the seat, looking irritated. “One what?”

“Jeff and I are counting red cars.”

“Oh.” She raised her eyebrows. “Do I want to know why?”

Jeff looked at her. “No, you really don’t,” he said. She laughed. It was the first time I’d heard Vanessa laugh about anything in a long time. It was a really nice sound.

About this time, Haley emerged from the pile of blanket and nectarine-juicy clothes with an amused look on her face. “Hey, Vanessa?” she called, letting her mess drop temporarily to the floor, “Do you mind changing CDs? I think I’ve heard all the Japanese I can take for one day. I hate not knowing what the song is about.” I sent her a telepathic thank you as she turned to me and gave a mischievous little grin.

Jeff was starting to open up a little. “You know what I hate?” he asked, looking at Haley this time, “When the song’s in English, and I still don’t know what it’s about.” Hay laughed and I nodded in agreement.

Vanessa smiled. “Okay, okay. Let me see what else I have, alright?”

I beat her to it. “Here,” I pulled a CD case out of my back pocket and handed it to Jeff. “Try this one, Vanessa.” The case and CD were unlabeled, and after Jeff handed them to her, Vanessa looked at them, and then me, suspiciously. “Oh, just put it in. Don’t you trust me?”

She shook her head. “No.” But she put the CD in and pressed play. Slightly cheesy, pop-py sixties harmonica music started playing, followed shortly by the John Lennon singing “Love Me Do.” Vanessa quirked an eyebrow at me and Jeff turned his head to the side, like he was suddenly realizing I had three nostrils or something. Even Adam gave me an odd look in the rearview mirror.

I shrugged. “What?” I asked, playing innocent. “Everyone likes the Beatles, right?”

Hay answered on behalf of the car as a whole. “Yeah,” she said as she finished stuffing her dirty clothes back into her duffel, “but most of us don’t carry the Beatles in our butt pockets.”

I felt myself turn a little pink despite not having done anything wrong. I guess I just hate having so many people stare at me at once. “Back up plan? I didn’t think we could stand to listen to Vanessa’s music for four hours straight. I’m surprised it took me this long to pull it out.” Vanessa crumpled up a muffin wrapper and a napkin and threw them at me. I ducked and they bounced off the side window, landing in among the bags.

The trip was actually starting to feel like it might be fun. Maybe.