WHEN I walked (so to speak) into the auditorium, I was one of the first ones there. On purpose. I took a seat in the middle of a row around halfway back, slid my crutches under my seat, and hoped I would be noticed as little as possible.
It turns out that was a big mistake all the way around.
A huge miscalculation on my part.
The stage was getting crowded: Nate’s parents, Michael and Susan, and his sister, Kristen, were front and center, alongside some minister who I thought might have been the minister at Mrs. Jonson’s church, a couple of reporters with cameras, Ms. Hernandez, some guy I was pretty sure was the school superintendent, a couple of policemen, and a few others, although I had no idea who they were.
When everyone was in and as settled down as they were ever going to be, Ms. Hernandez tapped a couple of times on the mic to get everyone’s attention and thanked us all for coming. After the usual welcome back for the year let’s make it a great year study hard support our teams, rah, rah, rah, blah, blah, blah stuff… she put on her serious face and started.
“As you know,” she said, “our school, and each and every one of us as individuals here at Eisenhower, suffered a tragic loss over the summer when one of our own, Nate Jonson, was killed in the tragic shooting at a club… at the gay club, Pacific Coast. And another one of our own, Collin Williams, was there with him and was severely wounded.”
It felt like all eyes quickly turned to me when she mentioned my name, and the room went silent. Until the small group of jocks and jock wannabes sitting behind me began whispering and trying not to laugh.
Seriously.
They were laughing.
At me. And at Nate.
At us.
At the very idea of us.
Ms. Hernandez continued.
“Along with Nate’s family, we mourn Nate’s tragic loss….”
Another round of smothered laughter and fist bumps followed, and then one of them whispered, “But nobody mourns him more than Collin boy… am I right?” leading to a slightly louder round of laughter, although one of them, to my surprise, whispered, “Enough… knock it off….”
Ms. Hernandez glared in our general direction to try to stop it and then continued.
“Nate was much loved here at Eisenhower. His smile lit up the classroom, and his quick wit and friendly attitude made him a joy to be around.”
Here I could only shake my head at the hypocrisy and bullshit lies. Nate wasn’t popular; he was intentionally invisible to most of the other students except for me and a few friends in drama club. In fact, if he hadn’t been… if what happened hadn’t happened, he’d still be just another student whose name nobody could remember.
And that’s when it all started.
Pictures of Nate were shown on a screen onstage: a baby picture, one from an early birthday party, one of him in a Halloween costume dressed as Peter Pan, his junior class picture, and then, a picture from drama club of the two of us standing next to each other.
We were smiling.
We were happy.
So damn happy.
I tried not to, and I knew what was going to happen if I did, but I began to cry. I could feel my shoulders jerking and shaking as I tried to control myself. I knew half the people in the audience were watching the pictures of Nate, and the other half were watching me.
And then from behind me, the pig-faced football player whose name I could never remember started in making little kissing noises into my ear.
Then he whispered just loud enough for me and the other jocks to hear:
“Awwww… miss your boyfriend?” I turned around to face him, at which point he grabbed his crotch and smirked, telling me, “I can give you what you need if you miss him that much.”
At which point I lost it. I totally and completely and 100 percent lost it.
I reached around to punch him across his zit-covered pudgy little piggy face, but because of the angle I was sitting at, I couldn’t get it right and ended up giving him more of a kind of half-assed slap than any real kind of punch.
Which made me feel even worse.
The jocks started slapping one another in the same pathetic way and started laughing. And couldn’t and wouldn’t stop.
I got up to try and run out, but because I had stupidly planted myself in the middle of the row, I had too many people to climb over with my crutches to make any kind of graceful exit.
“Excuse me, sorry, excuse me, excuse me, sorry…” all while trying not to fall over. Or start crying again.
Everybody was watching.
And then as hard as it is to believe, and I have a hard time believing it myself, it got worse.
Way worse. Like this can’t really be happening to me worse.
I was about to get out the door when Nate’s mother, Susan, who had been sitting onstage quietly crying as Nate’s praises were sung and his pictures were shown, actually stood up like in some bad movie, grabbed the mic, and started screaming at me.
“Where are you going, Collin?” she yelled. “Can’t handle your own guilt? I didn’t want to be here in the first place, and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. This is your fault. He changed when he met you. You changed him. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t turned him gay and dragged him to the club that night.”
I should have kept moving, but for some reason I couldn’t. I had to hear what she had to say.
“It’s your fault… it’s all your fault… he’s dead because of you… I should have stopped you. I never should have allowed you to become friends, much less invited you into my home… I failed to protect Nate”—at this point I think Principal Hernandez tried to stop her, but she was not to be stopped—“but you’re evil and all of you should stay away from him before he turns you and leads you into temptation…. I know who you are, Collin, I know who you are, and I vow to never let you do to anyone else what you did to my Nate….”
It was at this point that Nate’s father grabbed the mic from her in an effort to quiet her down, and I got out of there as quickly as I could, which wasn’t nearly quick enough.
It was a nightmare. A nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from. Susan’s screaming, the jocks laughing, all eyes on me, and it didn’t stop.
And all I could do was cry, laugh at how ridiculous it all was, and wonder deep down if she was right.
Maybe it was my fault. Maybe I did get Nate killed.
Oh, Nate.
I made it out of the school as fast as I could, but as soon as I made it out the door, everything suddenly began hurting. My shoulder. My hip. My leg. My head. Even my brain.
Every part of me was in pain. And when I got to the parking lot, I realized I didn’t have a way home.
So I texted Ziggy. He came. He always did.
I tried telling him what happened, but I couldn’t get it all out. But he knew anyway.
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I should have warned you. That bitch Susan has it out for you big-time. She thinks you used your wiles on her sweet innocent son and turned him gay. She blames you for him going to the club and blames you for not getting killed instead of Nate. Michael knows it wasn’t you, that it wasn’t your fault, but he’s never been able to stand up for himself when Susan is… going off. And as for Kristen, she’s drowning in her own guilt and refuses to take sides at all.
“To be honest,” he went on, “I’m kind of relieved we did break up. Their lives are so messed up right now….”
“I know the feeling,” I said quietly, passing him back the joint he’d handed me the moment I got in the truck.
“Look, I know I’ve never said much to you about any of this,” he said. “And I know that before any of this happened, we weren’t really friends, and I know we probably never would have been if, well, you know. But I wanted to tell you that, well, you’re a cool guy. I don’t know if I could handle what happened like you have. Total respect for you.
“And I want you to know this, man. I know things are rough and maybe you’re feeling a little alone right now, and I know you miss Nate, but whatever it is you’ve got going on, I’ve got your back. Text me anytime like you just did. Call anytime, whatever. Okay?”
“Okay.” And I smiled at him. And whether he’d said it because he felt guilty, or whether he actually liked me, I took him at his word. And I told myself that at least I had him in my corner.
Along with his words, the high helped to push away the worst of what I was feeling. A little bit, anyway. After taking me to Sonic for a vodka slushie, which helped even more, he dropped me off at home.
I figured it would be just me and Clark.
Instead Mom and Dad were there waiting for me with painfully concerned looks on their faces.
I knew they knew what had happened.
And that there was no way I’d be able to get away and get up to my room without talking about it.