Fourth and Long Read online

  “What the hell is happening?” I asked out loud. The harsh short ring of the second bell, which signaled all dawdlers had better move it along or risk being marked late, made me jump. From the room nearest me, a middle-aged man in a tweed blazer stuck his head out. I recognized him as Mr. Nagler, my Biology teacher.

  “Mr. Somers, will you be joining us today?” He held the door open and gestured me into the classroom. I could hardly refuse. “Don’t you have somewhere to be, Mr. Davis?”

  Brad flipped Nagler the finger behind his back and mouthed, “Catch you later,” before strolling down the hall like he owned the place.

  I stumbled into class, still in a bit of a daze. Someone laughed as I tripped over the garbage can. Yeah, definitely a dream, then, like those ones where you show up naked to school or work or wherever. But this was the most vivid dream I’d ever had; the room even smelled like our old science lab, a combination of disinfectant and formaldehyde. Instead of desks, the classroom had workbenches, with four stools to a bench. Since this was my fantasy, I found my spot empty—second bench from the front, right on the aisle.

  “All right, all right, I know you’re all waiting for the results of the final exam.” Mr. Nagler began walking down the aisles, handing back papers after the class had settled. He had been such a hard-ass and everyone hated him. “I’d like to remind you that this was worth 40 percent of your final grade. I’m sure some of us will be seeing each other again in summer school.”

  I swiveled back and forth on my stool, only half listening. I could not remember ever being so consciously aware of dreaming before. But I supposed it actually made sense now; my anxiety over attending the reunion had brought back all sorts of memories I had done my best to forget. It wasn’t surprising that I would dream about this time; even Coach had to be part of it; after all, who came to a class reunion in gym shorts? I laughed in relief.

  “Something funny, Mr. Somers?” Nagler stopped beside me.

  “Uh, no, sir.” I looked up at that big head perched on such a scrawny neck and immediately remembered the gut-wrenching fear that I hadn’t passed this class and would lose my football scholarship. Two decades ago, I’d been on a course to flunk Nagler’s fifth-period Biology class until, with three months to go until graduation, he suggested that I get some tutoring. Even knowing how it all turned out, I still found myself holding my breath as he now slapped the test down in front of me. A big red “B” stared up at me.

  “Good job, Mr. Somers,” he said quietly before moving down the aisle. “It looks like a little hard work pays off.”

  The boy seated at the workbench in front of me turned around and smiled shyly over his shoulder. His dark eyes glinted mischievously behind his glasses. “Jake,” I breathed. He winked and turned back around, leaving me speechless and staring at the back of his shiny, spiky brown hair. He seemed so real, like I could just reach out and touch him. I thought I could even smell his cologne, even though his cheeks were baby smooth and he certainly didn’t need to shave. It hit me then; every guy I’d ever dated had been modeled after Jake, small and slender with penetrating dark eyes. Why had I never realized it before? Probably because I did my best not to think of Jake and everything that had happened senior year….

  Oh, God, now I remembered the torture of sitting behind him in Biology. He had short hair, almost as short as my brush cut, and I would stare at that soft, exposed neck and worry that I was going to hell. Just a glimpse of profile as he turned his head would be enough to get me hard, and I’d spend the entire hour embarrassed and terrified of being caught. All that confusion, the horrible fear that something was wrong with me, the secret longings I didn’t dare to think about came flooding back in an instant.

  I didn’t hear a word said for the rest of the class. In that way of dreams, time flew by until suddenly the final bell rang and the class was dismissed. Even then I lingered, waiting for something to happen. What did I do now? I kept expecting to wake up or shift into another scene from my past. From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of Jake crossing the parking lot just outside. He had always been quick to disappear after school, mostly to avoid getting beat up, I found out later. I hesitated a moment but then did what my feet told me—I followed.

  Jake and I only lived two blocks away from each other and walked the same route home most days unless I had a late practice, yet we might as well have lived on different planets for all our worlds collided. I stayed on my side of the sidewalk and he stayed on his. In high school, any difference makes you a target, and Jake was a bigger target than most. It wasn’t as if he did anything to attract attention, but the rumors had starting swirling the moment he arrived as a freshman, and he had never denied them. I had been terrified to speak to him—me, the star quarterback, intimidated by this skinny runt who barely came up to my chin. Not so much because of what my friends might say if they saw me hanging with the school’s only openly gay boy—although I do have to admit that was part of it—but because of the way he made me feel.

  Even after he volunteered to tutor me for Nagler’s class and I discovered what a smart, sweet guy he was, we never spoke outside of Monday and Wednesday afternoons when I would sneak over to his house after school, careful not to be seen. Those two days became the highlight of my week—better than practice—but I never admitted that to myself until much later.

  Most days, just like now, in fact, I would walk a few paces behind him and on the opposite side of the street so that I could ogle his cute little bubble butt without being too obvious. On this day, he wore a blue and gold striped rugby shirt and faded jeans with a Walkman clipped to his belt. The jeans hung loose on his thin frame, and he walked with a bounce to his step, completely wrapped up in the music piped through his headphones. I found myself smiling at the sweet innocence of it and hoped I wouldn’t wake up just yet.

  I never admitted this in therapy, but sometimes, when I was feeling particularly low and spiteful, I would blame Jake for the state of my life; for awakening something in me which would otherwise have remained slumbering. But even as I thought it I knew it was unfair and untrue. Everything made me horny at that age; girls, boys, hell, just flopping around loose in my boxers was enough to give me a boner. But Jake had been the first real boy I fantasized about. At the time, I hadn’t handled it very well, though it occurred to me now that in fact if it hadn’t been for Jake I might now be married to Trish, with a parcel of children, and even more miserable than I currently was.

  My fantasy seemed to be sticking close to reality. I even remembered this particular day. What had ever possessed me to do something different then, I never knew, but almost involuntarily I found myself doing the same thing now and called to Jake across the street. He ignored me, or didn’t hear me with the earphones on, so I ran up behind him and touched his shoulder. He jumped about a foot in the air and would have fallen if I hadn’t reached out and grabbed him by the back of his shirt. I watched the fear leave his face, to be replaced with uncertainty. “Hey,” he said, draping the headphones around his neck.

  My stomach fluttered at the sound of his voice, light and soft, just as I remembered it. Standing as close as I was, he had to tilt his head back to look at me. I must have been grinning like an idiot. “Are you okay?” he finally asked. “That was some wipeout you took earlier.”

  “Yeah, fine.” My voice actually cracked. “I, uh, I just want to thank you. For helping me, I mean. I realized I never said it. I never would have passed without you.”

  Jake’s smooth cheeks turned pink, which I found adorable. “That’s okay, man. I guess you don’t need a tutor anymore, huh.” He looked down at his feet, and we both stood there awkwardly. I waited for the offer I knew would come next. “Um, want to come in and play some Super Mario?”

  Moment of truth, Somers. Twenty years ago, I had said yes and started in motion the events I had spent a lifetime trying to forget. Suddenly I wished that this wasn’t just a dream, that I really had traveled back in time and had the power to chan
ge things. What would I do differently? I honestly didn’t know. Jake noticed my hesitation and bit his lip. “Or not. You don’t have to.”

  “No! I want to.” Just like the first time, I really meant it. After so long, I still couldn’t believe he was real and standing before me. Or not so real. I had to remind myself that he was only a figment of my imagination. He would be gone as soon as I woke up, and I couldn’t bear to see it end so soon.

  We walked in silence to his house and climbed the rickety stairs to the front porch. The screen in the storm door was torn, and the interior door was so warped you had to give it a good kick in the bottom right corner to get it open. “Um, it’s just us,” Jake said as we dropped our backpacks in the front hall. In the few months I spent with him, I’d learned that Jake’s mom was a single parent and they didn’t have much money. She worked as a nurse and took as much overtime as she could; consequently she wasn’t home all that much. “Want something to drink?” Jake asked, grabbing two cans of cream soda from the fridge without waiting for an answer then leading the way down into the pine-paneled basement where we usually had our tutoring sessions.

  The first time I’d stepped into this basement, I hadn’t known what to expect. I think I had been half afraid and half hoping he would make a move. But of course I hadn’t understood that at the time. All I knew was that he made me nervous. I’m sure he had seen the fear on my face. “It’s okay,” he had said. “Nobody has to know, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  And they never did. True to his word, Jake never said a thing. At school we continued to ignore each other, although in the classes we shared it became harder and harder not to look at him. The more time I spent with him, the more he fascinated me. He seemed so normal. He had hopes and dreams like everyone else. He wanted to be a doctor and had already been accepted to a prestigious university on full scholarship. After the first week, when he hadn’t hit on me at all, I even began to relax. He was a good teacher, patient and even-tempered. He never called me dumb like my dad always did, or said I should try harder, like my teachers. He only encouraged me to do my best. We discovered a common love of video games and The Simpsons, and I found myself staying later on tutoring nights so we could sit on the couch and play Super Mario after our study session finished.

  “Does your mom know?” I had finally asked after a couple of sessions, when I got up the nerve to ask.

  “About me being gay?” Jake didn’t seem upset by the question. “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t set out to tell her, you know. But when you come home with ‘Fag’ written all over your backpack, what am I supposed to say? She was pretty good with it.”

  I thought about my own parents and how my dad would sooner see me dead then admit his son, his only child, was queer. To cover my absence, I had told my parents I was staying after school to weight train, and if my dad wondered why, after a couple of months in the gym, I hadn’t bulked up more, he never asked.

  I parceled out my questions over our tutoring sessions in case he thought I was too interested. This was back in the days before personal computers, when the Internet was still inaccessible to most and there was no LGBT section in the bookstore. Those of us confused about sex had no place to turn to except each other, and Jake was the only gay person I knew.

  Another time I asked him, “Doesn’t it bother you that everyone at school knows?”

  Jake had been quiet, thinking. “In a way I’m glad it’s not a secret. It sucks, don’t get me wrong, it really sucks sometimes, but now that it’s out—that I’m out—I don’t have to pretend anymore. I figure if I can get through this I can get through anything.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if there’s any place more vicious than a high school.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I told him.

  Jake rolled his eyes. “That’s because you’re popular. You’re hot, you’ve got a gorgeous cheerleader girlfriend, and you practically run the school. You’re the guy every guy wants to be.”

  I found myself blushing. Did Jake really think I was hot? Then reality set in and I shut down that sudden spurt of pleasure. For the first time, I wanted to tell someone how much of a lie my life was. School—football, in particular—was my escape from an abusive father and indifferent mother. If anyone would understand, it would be him.

  “It’s not true, you know,” Jake continued quietly. “The rumor about me and Derek McCartney.” He stared straight ahead at the television, not looking at me. For a minute I considered pretending not to know about the story of Jake trying to suck Derek’s dick in the locker room, but Jake wouldn’t believe that. Everyone in school had heard some variation of the tale. “It was actually Derek who came on to me, whipped it out right there and asked me to do it. Only someone walked in, so he made up that story. His parents pulled him out of school right after, so of course he wasn’t around to confirm or deny.”

  Wow. Derek McCartney was gay? My head had still been spinning from that juicy tidbit when I heard Jake say in a small voice, “The funny thing is I’ve never even kissed a boy.”

  Now that had been a revelation. Setting down my controller, I turned to him. “Then how did you know?”

  “I just knew. I’ve never really been attracted to girls.” Jake shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t watch Bloodsport twelve times ’cause I’m into martial arts.”

  “Van Damme? He’s a little old, isn’t he?”

  “But what a body.”

  I was a little shocked, mostly because I had seen that movie at least three times myself and had thought the same thing. Jake laughed at my discomfort. “Okay, maybe Johnny Depp, then. Yeah, Johnny Depp in Cry-Baby, when that single tear runs down his face.”

  I found myself smiling now at the memory.

  “Hey, Somers, stop your daydreaming. Are we playing or what?” Jake’s voice recalled me to the dream I was in the middle of. He had fired up the Nintendo and now tossed me a controller. “As a reward for all your hard work I’ll even let you be Mario this time.”

  “Gee, thanks,” I replied with a touch of sarcasm as I settled into the well-abused couch cushions. Jake plopped down beside me. I was a bit rusty as the first screen came up and I re-acquainted myself with the old-fashioned controller. Considering this was my fantasy, I should have been all over this game, but I suppose some allowances have to be made for reality—it had been nearly twenty years since I’d played Mario, after all.

  “What’s wrong with you, dude?” Jake said with a laugh not five minutes later, when I gave up. “You suck today.” He got into game mode and readied his Luigi for play, leaving me free to watch him.

  I didn’t know what to say. Really, I just wanted to look at him, memorize every detail before I woke up again. “I bet you’re happy to be done,” I finally commented, breaking the silence. “Soon you’ll be out of here.”

  Jake shrugged. He did that a lot, I recalled. “I suppose. I’ll miss my mom.” His lips curled up at the corners. Jake had a gap between his front teeth, and I’d discovered he was self-conscious about it. He always smiled with his lips closed, which made him seem shy and drove me crazy. That smile still haunted me, I realized. He shot a glance my way. “And maybe a few other people.”

  Me? A warm feeling spread throughout my chest. Had he ever missed me? Had he ever forgiven me? Not that it mattered much since I had certainly never forgiven myself. Still, I found myself wondering what would have happened if things had gone differently, if I had been just a little stronger.

  “It’s a little scary too, though, don’t you think?” Jake asked.

  “It wouldn’t be the future if it weren’t scary.”

  “Oooh, deep.”

  I punched him lightly in the arm. “You were always the bravest person I knew.”

  “Were?” Jake raised a brow at my slip up.

  “Sorry, are.” Sure, there was an air of vulnerability about Jake that had always called to me, but he wasn’t a victim. He had a tough exterior—scrappy, I think you’d call it. When he said he didn’t care what other peopl
e thought, he really didn’t. I had both admired and envied him for that.

  “Me?” He snorted. “Brave? Hardly.”

  “I see what you go through every day. That can’t be easy. But you do it. You don’t hide.”

  “Not much choice. Mom couldn’t afford to move to a new school district. Besides, one more week and I’m free. I think I can handle one more week.”

  Thank God it was Jake’s turn at the controls because there was no way I would be able to concentrate on the game. I couldn’t stop watching him. Had he always had those freckles across his nose? There were a dozen things I had never noticed before, and believe me, I had looked; the large hands that seemed too big for his body, the way he chewed on his lower lip as he concentrated. He was just so… full of life.

  If I remembered correctly—and how could I not since every moment with Jake was permanently etched in my mind—any minute now he would turn his head and catch me staring. He’d see the look in my eyes and he’d know. And then he’d kiss me. And I, like an idiot, would freak and run and not see him again until it was too late, until he was battered and bloodied in the parking lot on prom night.

  I must have made a sound or something, because just as I had replayed it so many times in my head, Jake hit the pause button and looked at me. He blushed self-consciously. “What? Do I have a booger or something?” he joked, but the smile slowly faded, replaced by a question in his eyes.

  He gave me lots of time to move away, but I didn’t—couldn’t. I was as paralyzed now as I had been twenty years ago. Despite myself, my legs tensed in preparation to flee. “Stay,” I silently urged. “It’s just a dream. Don’t fuck this up like you did the first time. You know you want this. You’ve always wanted this.” I let myself relax, and when finally his lips brushed mine, this time I kissed him back just as I’d always wanted to.