Lost Boys of Fairweather High

Chapter 4

Dinner was my favorite. Macaroni and cheese, not from the blue box, but homemade, with extra cheese crispy and browned on top. And pork chops, baked with that special crust that my mother made with bread crumbs and an array of spices that she and she alone knew. And green beans. I loved green beans. I don't know why, I can't explain it, but green beans are the bomb.

I ate rather listlessly, too nervous to even enjoy what I was eating. My mother watched me out of the corner of her eye, even though every time I looked up, she seemed to be concentrating on her plate or something outside the kitchen window, still I felt her looking at me. I knew she wanted to ask me what was going on, but she kept to her boundaries.

“I made dessert.” There was that lifting at the end of her statement that sounded as though she was trying to lift my spirits, like it was a tasty bribe. As if she was really saying, if you cheer up you can have all the banana pudding you want. She didn't even have to say it was my favorite. I knew what it was Made with real Nilla wafers, not the store brand kind, those tended to fall apart when they soaked up the pudding.

I smiled half heartedly and looked back at my plate where I had inadvertantly made an L out of two of the green beans. Oh dear god, I was going a little overboard. I stabbed the two offending beans with my fork and ate them unceremoniously. It was too much for me to handle. Suddenly I felt my whole dinner was about to come up. And while it's my favorite going down, one of the worst things I hated, I mean the worst thing ever was throwing up. I know, I know, nobody likes to throw up, but I had a deep paranoia about it. I ran to the bathroom at foot of the stairs and slammed the door and dropped to the floor in front of the toilet, slamming the lid up and looking into the porcelain bowl. I'm not gonna throw up. I'm not gonna throw up. Saliva filled my mouth to signal, that indeed I was. And I did. Afterwards, I leaned back against the wall and rested my head on the roll of Charmin. Hmmm. I don't know about squeezably soft, but it was pillow soft for sure. My heart ran a mile a minute. I tried to take several deep breaths but the smell almost made me throw up again. I inhaled through my mouth. I reached up to the vanity sink and grabbed the tube of Crest and squeezed a dab on my finger. I was glad it was just the regular flavor and not one of the new fandangled flavors that they created, you might have seen something about it on The Apprentice a couple of years ago, something like mint vanilla. The episode centered around the two teams trying to promote the new flavor. Okay, okay so I was a tv junkie, but anyway, this was just a regular tube of Crest extra whitening with the normal toothpaste flavor. It was enough to get the rank taste out of my mouth and I just sat there, rubbing my tongue over my teeth.

My mother knocked on the door, tentatively. “Nick? You okay, honey.”

“Yeah.” I croaked through a mouthful of foamy toothpaste. I pulled myself up from the vanity and stared into the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and swollen. I turned on the water and spit into the sink. What was going on? I remembered when I first started to crush on Ryan. I hadn't come out yet. I hadn't told anyone about him. Not even Trina. Keeping the secret, ducking out of rooms or hallways when I saw him coming, denying even the possibility that I liked him, all of it twisted me inside to the point of what I was looking at now. But this, Trina knew about him and all but threw me at him. And I didn't have to hide the fact that I was gay from my mother. She knew all the lurid details about me and Ryan. Ryan's mother had painted me as the blackest demon trying to convert her precious son. That was how my mother found out I was gay. I felt so small and deceitful in not telling her, but she had risen to the occasion, and I have to say, ripped Mrs Slater a new one right there in front of me, afterwards taking me in her arms and guiding me away as Mrs Slater screamed that I was going to burn in hell and die of AIDS. I heard my mother take several deep breaths and I'm sure it took everything in her to press on and not turn back and launch herself at Mrs Slater.

She opened the door and I felt her hand on the back of my head. “Look at me.”

I opened my eyes and caught another glimpse of myself in the mirror. All the color had drained from my face excpet for my black eye which stood out like a... well a black eye. I turned towards my mother. She smiled touching first my chin and then wiped a tear from cheek.

“You know, when I was your age, there was this boy, Jimmy Turner. I had the biggest crush on him. He was sort of a bad boy, he smoked, he drank, he did everything that parents warned their daughters about.” She paused, with this far away look in her eyes. “We were at this party and he was sitting by himself and I remember going up to him. I'd had something to drink, it wasn't much, but it was enough to make me go up to him. He tensed up right away, his back shooting straight as an arrow and his hands gripped the side of the chair, so hard his fingers turned white.” She laughed, almost to herself it seemed, and she had a finger in her hair. twirling the ends. “He looked at me, so afraid and then he looked straight ahead and I followed his eyes and there was Christopher. Your father. It was the first time I'd seen him. He was so handsome and it seemed all the world was centered around him. I looked back at Jimmy and I could tell from the look in his eyes that he knew what I was thinking. It was enough to bring a tear, just one, but a tear all the same to his eyes. As if the secret, not even spoken, was out. I grabbed his hand and we sat there most of the night, both of us, looking over at Christopher, just watching him. I think I fell in love with him that night, even though I didn't even know him, even though I wouldn't even speak to him for another 3 months I think, but I knew that he was The One.” She smiled and there was a blush to her cheeks, like she was embarassed to be reliving this childhood memory in the downstairs guest bathroom with her gay son. “Jimmy Turner was the truest person I ever knew. Even though he kept this one secret from everyone, he was truer to me than anyone, even your father, back then.”

For a moment, just the barest of moments I was expecting a bomb to be dropped. Jimmy Turner is your real father. I looked at her expectantly, mentally playing a drum roll. Here it comes.

“Jimmy hung himself our senior year. Everyone speculated, but nobody really knew why. I think it was because he couldn't get around the fact that he couldn't be honest with everyone. He tried. I watched him struggle with it. He was so good. And everyone liked him, even with his bad boy image. But that one thing just twisted him up inside to a breaking point. Being gay, back then, it was hard. I'm not going to say it was harder, but there were no openly gay famous celebrities, no talk show hosts, no gay channel, no gay tv characters. All you saw on tv were hate crimes in the news. It wasn't harder to accept he was gay, not for him, but it was harder for him to think others would accept him. He was surrounded by people but so alone.”

I reached out and hugged my mother.

She hugged me back fiercely. “You remind me of him.” She pulled back from her hug and wiped at my face. “Anyway.” She wiped her eyes and smiled again. “I didn't mean to get all after school special on you. I just want you to know, that I love you. No matter what. No matter who.” I thought she was leaning into hug me again till she straightened back up holding a can of Lysol air freshener. That just made me laugh. She took my hand and dragged me out of the bathroom and sprayed abundantly till I was gagging on the scent of vanilla. She turned on the bathroom vent and pulled the door closed behind her. “Now about that banana pudding.”

We ate it in the living room, watching Boston Legal. My mother has a secret thing for James Spader. His character was something of a rogue and womanizer which I found, for some reason a bit offensive, but he always redeemed himself in every episode for having a conscience and spoke so effortlessly and effectively for whatever client he had. After Boston Legal, my mother left me the reomte and headed to bed. I watched reruns of Friends and Family Guy and then dragged myself up to bed. I tapped a few keys on the keyboard and the screen came back alive.

I paused as I saw the conversation I had had with Lucas still on the screen. I thought I had logged off. I sat down and reread it. There was a last line after I had left.

SOCCit2me: Okay... I'll see ya in school.

Habit forced me to save it to my USB flash drive. Plus I had to share it with Trina. I encrypted it and sent it toTrina in an email. I plopped down on my bed, sinking into my comforter. If she was still awake, she'd be responding any minute.