twenty-four

“It does sound like a bogus charge. He probably won’t even get jail time. And I bet Adrian just gets off.” Ryan looks disgusted.

“My mom said that it all has to do with intent. Which no one here can prove without anything less than a full confession. As far as I heard, Shawn is trying to say he swerved to avoid a squirrel or something stupid like that, and Adrian is just playing ignorant, which isn’t hard for him, because he is. So, I don’t think either Shawn or Adrian is going to confess to anything.” Cody pulls himself up out of the pool, shaking his hair so he sprays both of us.

“Cody’s mom is a lawyer,” Ryan says, just in case I didn’t know. Which I didn’t. Somehow, Cody just doesn’t seem like a lawyer’s kid.

“A squirrel? Are you kidding me? Everyone knows they were trying to scare him. That’s what you heard, right?” I brush the water out of my eyes.

“That’s what I heard, but it’s only hearsay. The cops know the truck swerved dangerously and ended up clipping him, but no one can prove that they were aiming for him. Unless Ben can remember more of what happened or Shawn suddenly grows a conscience, there won’t be much that anyone can do.”

“Benjamin.” It comes out louder than I intended, and Cody looks over at me in surprise.

“What?”

“Benjamin. No one calls him Ben.” I spit the word out as if it tastes like pickles. I hate pickles.

“I do,” Cody says, grinning at me when I make a face at him. “Anyway, getting Shawn on dangerous driving is better than nothing. And Mom said it’s likely dangerous driving causing injury, which is better. Well, better for you, worse for him.”

“But he probably won’t go to jail?” I can hear the disappointment in my own voice.

“I doubt it. First offense and all.”

“First offense?” Ryan snorts. “You were there last year at the dumpsters when that piece of garbage threatened us.”

“Which we didn’t tell anyone about, so I guess it’s the first offense where he got caught,” Cody corrects himself. “Either way, Mom says he’ll likely get probation but could lose his license for quite a while. For Shawn, that’s like going to jail. The guy lives in his truck.”

“Sounds like a pretty light punishment.” I think he should be in jail for at least as long as it takes for Benjamin to get better.

“No one knows what actually happened. So it depends on the lawyer and the judge. It won’t be for a while. We’ll just have to wait and see. Meantime, at least he’s been charged, and everyone knows it. He doesn’t have as many people on his side of the fence anymore.” Cody dives off the side of the pool, entering the water with barely a ripple before surfacing and taking off full speed, which is how he always swims. He never seems to slow down, never seems to get tired. He was actually offered a swim scholarship to a university but isn’t sure he wants to go because he heard that he’ll still have to actually do his classwork and keep his marks up. Cody just wants to swim.

“This sucks.” It seems inadequate but I’ve run out of ways to say how much I hate this.

“What does Benjamin think?” Ryan asks. His voice is a bit muffled as he’s concentrating on levering his body up and into his chair.

“He’s glad they were charged. He’s mad at himself for not remembering though. He thinks if he could remember more of what happened that the charge would have been tougher.” He had looked so sad that it made my heart hurt. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make this all go away, or better yet, turn everything around so it never happened in the first place.

“Is it too late? What if he remembers later on?”

“That’s a good question. I have no idea. Maybe we can get Cody to ask his mom about that.” Maybe I should get him to introduce me to her. I have a lot of questions.

“In the meantime, we have enough to focus on. My mom brought a whole pile of artwork home last night that we have to go through and see if we can fit it in with the stuff we already have. We also have to think about the second presentation for the council. Mrs. Lee said that there are already too many people planning to come to stick to the sidewalks.”

“They’ll still say no. We can’t prove that everyone is going to come.”

“They can’t prove that everyone isn’t going to come either. And Clare said that lots of people are likely to show up at the last minute without ever even looking at the event page. There could be hundreds of people here.”

“Hundreds? Do you really think that’s possible?” My voice is somewhere between amazed and horrified.

“If you had asked me six months ago, I would have told you that the idea of a Pride parade in this town would be the farthest thing from possible in the whole freaking universe. And now we’re less than two weeks away, and it looks like all kinds of people are going to come. Literally anything is possible these days.”

“Maybe you’re right. I would never have thought I’d be in the middle of this.”

“In the middle? Are you kidding, Jack? You’re right at the front of it. The big boss-man. The rest of us are just following your lead. Except right now I can’t follow you because I have to go home.” He gives me a quick salute and heads over to the change room.

I sit on the edge of the pool and look at the water. They’ll be in here cleaning up any minute now, but for this moment I’m alone.

It means a lot that Ryan left me here beside the water. That he didn’t wait the way he usually does to make sure that I’m safely out of the community center before leaving me on my own. That he obviously trusts me now and believes that I’m doing okay and understands that I don’t want to use large bodies of water for anything but places to think and swim.

I am okay. I keep telling Matthew that, but he won’t cancel my sessions until he decides he fully believes me. Which he obviously doesn’t. But Ryan does. And Benjamin. Even Cody, who is starting to turn into something resembling a really weird friend.

And I think my mother might have started to believe me too. She’s been amazing recently. She had Ryan’s mom over last night and the two of them made rainbow armbands for the security guys to wear. I thought it was crazy to think that all those tough guys would wear them, until I found out that it was Cody’s idea in the first place. Like I said, weird.

I think Mom’s still worried about the distant future, though, and is scared that I’m not going to make it into her idea of heaven. That I’ll be turned away at the pearly gates when they find out I spent my life being attracted to guys. But she seems to be getting closer to understanding the idea that while I’m down here on earth, I’m going to find love and happiness in my own way.

I’ll always have a different heaven from hers. In her heaven, everyone starts fresh, reborn into something better than before. Blind men can see, and the lame can walk…and I would guess the gays become “straight” if they make it that far. In other words, everyone becomes the same. Walking, talking, and flying. I guess because they’re all white-clad angels with wings.

In my heaven, it doesn’t matter what you wear or what you can do. No one cares who you want to love or spend time with. Everyone is accepted for exactly who he or she is and no one even thinks of being anything but kind.

It is all about kindness when you get right down to it, whether you’re in some version of the afterlife or still living this one. It’s the only thing that matters. If everyone just decides to treat everyone else with kindness, it all goes away. Intolerance, disrespect, racism, homophobia, misogyny, bullying, and all the other horrible words we’ve had to invent just to find a way to label the endless crap people seem to feel the need to throw at each other…all wiped out by one simple command. Be kind.

It’s just so simple that I can’t understand why everything is always so complicated.