Junior year, my first-day déjà vu is dulled by the sense that everything’s different, starting with my car. It’s a silver BMW roadster, my father’s latest acquisition. A week after the Mountain Dew incident, I got back from the beach with Kelly and Tiny (can you believe it?) and found my father in my room, sober, calm, almost shy. He sat on the bed, hesitating a long moment.
Finally, he said, “It is not, perhaps, the American way to be hard on one’s children. I have raised you with discipline. How your Papou raised me.”
I blurted, “How old were you when you left home?”
His eyes met mine and filled, for one instant, with crystal understanding. He walked out. I knew the answer, though. My father left home at sixteen. Never saw his family again. That day was the only time he’d mentioned my grandfather.
He didn’t bring it up again, but a week later, he brought me the car keys at breakfast. For the first time in my life, he stammered. “I shouldn’t have sold… I should … for your birthday.” He never apologized, but the title was in my name this time. That’s the best he can do.
Today, I pull beside a familiar car, Tom’s white Jeep. He’s alone, but I pretend not to see. Avoiding him is less gut-wrenching than being ignored. I slide my backpack off the seat and head for school.
Tom’s behind me. “Nick!”
Why is he bothering me? I keep walking. He runs behind, yelling my name.
“Funny,” I say, finally. “Thought I heard a voice, but no one here’s speaking to me.”
He catches up. “Nick…”
I turn to face him. His hair is short as the day I first saw him in kindergarten. He’s clutching something, the spring Seagull literary journal. He stares at me a moment, not speaking. When I start to walk away, he says, “Caitlin thinks you wrote this.” He points to a page.
“Wrote what?” But I know. It’s my poem, which Higgins agreed to publish anonymously. In the fall edition, there will be two more under my name.
He points again. “This.”
“So? You’re breaking your vow of silence to congratulate me on my writing?”
“So, you wrote it?” When I don’t answer, he adds, “Caitlin doesn’t go to Key anymore. She’s living with her dad. She’s at some special performing arts school.”
It takes me a second to hear that. Then, a minute longer, to understand I’ll probably never see her again. Finally, I say, “That’s great. She loved to sing.” I think I mean it. “That all?”
“You’re not making this easy.”
“Everything’s easy for you.”
“Think so, huh?” He reaches for my arm. I pull away, walking faster. We’re at the chain-link fence that separates the student lot from Key Biscayne High Drive. He runs ahead and blocks the entrance. “Think it’s easy finding out my best friend never told me anything about himself?”
“What are you talking about?”
“This!” He jiggles the paper in his hand. “Caitlin says you wrote this about me, this crap about being alone and not wanting to tell your secrets. She said you apologized, she thought you meant it this time. She told me other stuff too, about you and your dad. How could you not have told me that shit?”
“Um, I don’t know. Why don’t I look at you and your perfect life and just open a vein for your entertainment?”
“My life’s not perfect. You know it isn’t. I told you.”
“It looked pretty perfect from where I stood.”
He thinks about that and, above the anger in his eyes, I see pity I never wanted from him. I turn away. The late bell rings and, except for a few stragglers, the parking lot is silent. “Look, I have to go.” I push past him and walk toward school.
He speaks to my back. “I thought we were friends.”
“Some friend.” I turn. “First sign of trouble, you took off.”
His eyes avoid mine. “You hurt Caitlin. You hurt her bad. That’s all I saw. I didn’t know you were hurting too. I told you everything, and you kept this huge secret from me.”
“If you’d known, you’d just have found a new best friend sooner—someone more your class.”
Tom looks at me like I loogeyed in his face. “That’s what you think? I’m some snob?”
“Pretty much.”
He bites his lip. “Yeah, that’s what Liana’s family thought too. Called me the Golden Gringo, bugged her until she dumped me. But you, Nick?” He turns away, his voice a strangled whisper. “Screw you for thinking that.”
He starts to cross the street, and suddenly I don’t want him to leave. I yell after him, “What do you want, Tom?”
He stops, blocking traffic. “I want things like they used to be.”
“They aren’t.”
He finishes crossing and sinks onto the curb. I follow him. I can’t say why. “I want to forgive you,” he says, touching his hair. “I want you to forgive me.”
I stand over him. “Why? What Caitlin told you—it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t excuse it. You think I’m some mental case who’s not responsible for my actions?”
“No. I don’t know.” He tips back his head, closing his eyes against looking at me. “Maybe it doesn’t excuse it. Maybe it explains it. I don’t know, maybe I wasn’t a good enough friend, but I want to be.”
I watch Tom, leaning back, staring at the sky now. I’ve always known Tom, but I never looked at him, never saw him before now. He was always Tom the athlete, Tom the most likely to … everything. How could I expect him to see me when I didn’t see him?
“I should have told you,” I say finally. “I just… I didn’t want to lay that on you.”
“You were my best friend,” he says.
“I should have told you.” I gesture at his hair. “You did that for Liana?”
“Doesn’t matter.” But he nods. “She said my dating her was a phase, like the long hair. I needed to rebel against my parents with an oye girlfriend.” He runs a hand across his shorn head. “Sure didn’t feel like a phase.”
I sit beside him on the curb. “We’ll start a club, Brothers in Celibacy.” I hold out my hand.
He accepts it, a germ of a smile forming. “To the brotherhood.”
“To the brotherhood.”
We shake. I move away, saying, “She spared your feelings. She really dumped you ’cause you’re ugly.”
He laughs. “Hey, I just want to hang out with you to look taller by comparison.”
“Asshole!”
Tom takes off running, and I follow.