Lying in his room, a thin square of hot sunlight burning his thigh, Joel felt unmoored. He had a body of sorts, an impossible heavy thing, but he had no conscious will, no desire to eat or drink, no idea how he had ever done anything as strenuous as walk or bathe or breathe. He had heard of people being broken by grief, consumed by it, but he had never realized before that so much of grief was guilt: guilt for not doing more (not doing anything) to help the people who needed you, back when helping could have been done. Guilt, and beneath it, a sadness at realizing you were more alone than you had been before. And then fresh guilt, for thinking of yourself and your own sorrows when someone else was dead on a slab.
He found himself slipping, quite unwillingly, into a memory he thought he had dammed and drained and forgotten. Apparently not. A decade wasn’t long enough to obliterate the sort of summer he’d had back when he was Dylan’s age: the delirious hot afternoons, the bitter fall that followed. How hopeless, how embarrassing, to think he could ever put those days behind him.
There was that guilt again, reminding him how he only ever thought of himself. Perhaps. But anything was better than thinking of the present.
The announcement had come in early June, a few months before the start of Joel’s senior year. In addition to their summer practices, the Bison would now play exhibition games to raise money for the football program. The team, still suffering after the injury and then graduation of Troy Clark—their once-brilliant star of a running back—had failed to even qualify for play-offs in the past season, but the town was enthusiastic about these new games. Maybe, the men at the bar murmured, playing in the heat would put some spine in those soft boys.
Joel had worked for two seasons as an athletic assistant on the football team—one of the gangly nerds who’d picked up towels and squirted water into players’ mouths on the sidelines—but he had retired before the start of his junior year. He wanted to devote more time to his tennis game, Joel had told the coaches, but this excuse had sounded flimsy even to his own ears: tennis practice began in the spring, long after the end of the football season.
The fact that Troy Clark had graduated the spring before Joel quit the team was definitely, certainly, entirely coincidental. Never mind that from Joel’s two seasons on the sidelines he remembered Troy’s every “Thanks,” and “More water,” and once (miraculously) “Can you get the knot out of these laces?” Never mind that Joel remembered every time Troy’s startling green eyes had settled on his own, every glimpse of the soft brown hairs of his thigh when Troy had stepped from the showers. Surely, Joel assured himself, other boys felt a similar thrill in moments like these. Surely there was nothing wrong with him.
Now, if Joel could only feel those same thrills when he was with his girlfriend then they’d really be in business.
His girlfriend, who through coincidence (pure coincidence) happened to be Troy’s sister. Practical, hardy Starsha Clark. Because surely the relation was a coincidence. Joel hadn’t seen Troy in a year but he was still dating her so obviously he loved her. Obviously.
By the night of the Bison’s first off-season game, Troy was (according to Clark) living in Rockdale, an hour away, with a scrawny beautician who wasn’t good enough for him but who was apparently as good as he was going to get. No hope of seeing him at the game, then? Joel had almost asked her, stopping himself just in time.
The turnout at the game was larger than anyone had expected. The people of Bentley arrived with a display of spirit that dwarfed the baffled contingent from Franklin who had come to watch their own boys, the Hornets, pummel the Bison from the first whistle. Seated in the stands, Clark slipped her hand from Joel’s to cup her palms around her mouth and bellow “Defense, goddammit!” in a hoarse voice that drew more than a few stares. He dispensed apologetic smiles on her behalf.
This was romance, he supposed. Three years together, and Joel and Clark were made for each other. They’d both lost a parent. They both loved tennis. The fact they never touched above the wrists simply spoke to the purity of their devotion.
In the second quarter, Joel made his way to the bathroom. He spotted his brother and Luke Evers ignoring the game and pacing the edges of the end zone. How small Dylan had been in those days. How his head had barely fit his Bison cap.
Joel was nearly to the cinder block toilet when a cackling laugh reached him from inside. Joel froze, hesitated, but it was too late. Ranger Mason, the old bane of Bentley High, emerged with a crooked smile on his chapped mouth.
Ranger was a loathsome young man. He had been a Bison himself, had graduated in the same class as Troy Clark but, unlike Troy, Joel seemed to see him everywhere. Ranger Mason wasn’t as big as his younger brother, Garrett, would become a decade later but he was still menacing enough that evening to send a squelch of bile up Joel’s gullet. Ranger was dressed in one of his seven shredded Slipknot T-shirts that reeked of sweat and stale smoke. Joel spotted a new tattoo on his neck: a raw red snake winding down his jugular.
Next to Ranger stood feral little Jason Ovelle, looking much the same as he would a decade later, when Joel would watch him get arrested in this very same parking lot. A wispy mustache, thin arms, teeth all crowded in the front of his mouth like a muskrat’s. His face lit up at the sight of Joel. He knew there was about to be a show.
“Whitley!” Ranger shouted. “We was just thinking about you.”
Joel took a step back. Was there anything more terrifying than the thought that these two might have been discussing him?
“Where’s your team spirit, son?” Jason asked.
“I’m giving the team room to grieve. They’re going through a tragedy.”
“Ain’t you clever tonight?” Ranger’s smile revealed a dry gum. He scrutinized Joel for a final second, glanced at Jason. The boys exchanged subtle, almost imperceptible nods: they’d come to some consensus. Joel’s stomach tightened.
“Speaking of tragic, Whitley,” Ranger said, turning back. “How is Miss Clark doing?”
“We hear she’s real lonely these days,” said Jason.
Joel felt a sudden flush of panic. “She can take care of herself,” he said, and regretted it immediately.
The two boys guffawed. “She must be doing that a lot, dating you.”
Jason took a step forward. “Is it true you used to sniff our straps after the games?”
“That’s disgusting,” said Joel, who had.
“That’s what we said when we heard about it.” Ranger shook his head. “You need help, Whitley.”
Ranger reached out a hand to stroke Joel’s cheek. Joel flinched. “You need to get out of my fucking face,” Joel said, and heard his voice crack.
He backed away. They followed him. Why weren’t they letting this go like they usually did? What had he done to bring this on?
“Listen, Whitley,” Ranger said, all tender sympathy. “We’re progressed around here, ain’t we?”
“We’s in the new millennium,” Jason agreed.
“Exactly. The millennium. So we don’t give two fucks how you get your rocks off. But we got some goddamn standards in Bentley, alright? We’ve got rules of comportment.” Ranger drew himself up to his full height, puffed out his chest. His nipple peeked through a hole in his shirt. “You keep your private life private around here, you hear me? Because, Whitley, I saw you at your job the other day and I got to tell you—you’re starting to show.”
Joel didn’t think about what he was doing. Looking back a decade later he suspected he could have saved himself a great deal of hurt if he’d just taken a breath and walked away. If he had brushed Ranger off, let the man grow into the tragic fuckup he was destined to be.
Instead Joel succumbed to a lifetime of fear. It was rage, he told himself later, indignity, but deep down, he knew the truth. Not that it did him any good.
That evening at the stands, Joel took a step forward, drew back his fist and swung it at Ranger’s face, all because Ranger was right about him. Pity.
The blow hardly connected—Ranger was already turning back to snicker at Jason when Joel began to swing and so his nose avoided what would have been a nasty break. But Joel’s knuckle still cracked against Ranger’s cheek, tore loose a piece of skin. No one had warned Joel the pain in his knuckles would bite like a bear.
Ranger staggered back. He pulled up his own fist.
A pair of kids from Franklin High started to cackle in the shadow of the stands. Jason, suddenly looking panicked, murmured something urgent in Ranger’s ear.
Ranger spat out a mouthful of blood. He all but shimmered with rage. He whispered something to Jason, and the smaller boy took off jogging. Already Joel was realizing the magnitude of his mistake.
In a soft voice, with something approaching tenderness, Ranger said, “You are going to regret that, you little fucking faggot.”
Joel didn’t weep—he remembered that much. He remembered the way his knuckles throbbed, the way the crowd of feet visible beneath the walls of his toilet stall had swollen throughout halftime, remembered the grumbles as people tugged at the stall’s locked door. He ignored them. He couldn’t face another soul.
All his hard work—the twang he’d wrestled onto his voice, the stiff gait he’d spent hours practicing in front of the mirror to keep his hips from betraying him—had it accomplished nothing? What sort of future could possibly await him?
Slowly, as the little crowd shuffled out of the restroom at the start of the second half, as the sun began its endless descent and the toilet began to swell with the hot last light of the summer day, Joel forced his fear down his throat. He would have to try harder. What choice did he have? This would be his life, he realized: trapdoors, tripwires. He would always be a little frightened and a little angry, would always be conscious of the eyes appraising his every move. The men at the Egg House, the women at church, his classmates at school: he had so many people to fool if he wanted to be safe in this town. If he wanted to retain a little dignity, a little decency. If he had any hope of being loved.
He didn’t think about Ranger’s promise of revenge. He thought only of Dylan and Clark and his mother, of the people he held dearest, and of the pain they would feel if they ever were to learn how extensive his lies had always been, how crooked his heart. How humiliated they would be to have wasted so much time believing in a boy so broken. Do you love me? Clark always asked on the phone, every night before bed. More and more every day.
He rubbed his knuckles. He would have to be more careful in the future. He couldn’t risk losing control like that again.
Though God in heaven, some days all Joel wanted was an excuse to lose control.
And then Joel opened the door of the stall and saw a man standing alone at the urinal, his profile trembling in the brassy light. It was none other than Troy Clark.