This might be kind of disjointed, Kyle, but I’m pissed. Totally. Like Shrinko said, I have to make choices. I choose to talk to you.
So, there we were, out in the spot in the woods past the cornfields, the place where Donny and Rambo and I go sometimes.
“Shut the fuck up, Donny,” I said to him.
Total loser.
“Fuck you, Carla,” Mr. Mature says back to me.
“I’m not the one who went to the press. What were you thinking?”
“Hey, not my fault.” Donny’s voice goes girly.
“Oh, well,” I say, “some other guy called the reporters? Some other guy blamed Song?”
“You don’t know. You weren’t there.” Now he’s up from the fallen log, the sacred circle of logs around the upright flashlight, the beam going straight up into the canopy of trees. He’s tall enough to be one of those trees. What a waste of a good body.
“And where was that?”
“In the fucking dorm.”
“No shit.”
The stairwell smells of soggy paper bags, the door to the hall opens thick like a vault door, and Jack’s door to the right is black and shiny. No way do I know the dorm. Right. But I haven’t told you that part, yet. That’s history.
“I saw them.” Donny puts his fingers into his black hair, pulled it straight back from his forehead, held on to it like he could pull it off.
“Saw them how?”
It was cold out there. Midnight sucks in the woods on the far side of the cornfields. December totally sucks.
Donny turned his whole body toward me, his elbow still out, his hand still pulling his hair.
“One time Kyle was in the hall, all curled up on the floor and shit, and Song was touching his foot, just sitting there with his hand on the little guy’s foot. It was weird.” Do you remember that? Did you think it was weird?
“Oh, total abuse. I see what you mean.”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re kidding, right? You did this whole thing because Song touched Kyle’s foot?”
“Wait. One time right before curfew I see Kyle slip out of Song’s apartment, make sure the door didn’t slam, look all around.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me. This proves what?”
“Wait! You were the one who told me Song cared too much. You told me he went too far.”
“Oh, great. You went off that? I didn’t mean Kyle, you moron.”
“What do you mean you didn’t mean Kyle?” Donny looked right at me, and I didn’t make a move. “Quit screwing around. Song is a perv, and everyone knows it.”
“Like who?”
“The guys.”
“Why?”
“Think about it. No girls. He’s how old, not married, no dates. He’s a perv or fag. Same thing.”
The beam of light made Donny’s forehead white since he was leaning toward me, his arms out in big gestures, as if his long arms could make me believe him. Loser.
“He’s not like that.”
“Right.”
“No, really, he’s not like that.” At this point, I’m grasshopper, wings tucked.
“How do you know?” Donny stepped toward me. He was so close I couldn’t see his face any more.
I could have saved Jack. I could’ve told him.
“You asshole. You just want to get back at him,” I said.
Startling is a great defense. In Mexico a tiny black-and-white grasshopper has crimson wings. Predators run scared when it startles.
“Do not.” Mr. Mature came back.
“Ever since he caught you, you’ve tried to get back at him.”
“He got me suspended.” Suspension can mess with all kinds of things, like college, like career, like Daddy.
“Yeah, like you had nothing to do with it.”
“I’m out of here.” Donny leaned over and grabbed the flashlight. The beam went sideways, and off he went down the path, the beam of light all crazy in the trees.
There’s nothing like midnight in the woods with no moon and no stars. Awesome. The leaves were down, and I waited so long I could see the gaps in the trees. I waited long enough I could hear nothing, what nothing is.
Out there so long, I wondered if I waited out there long enough, would someone find me? Jack is gone. You’re gone. Taylor is all I have, and she doesn’t get me. I had Jack. Jack had me. He wasn’t after boys. He’s not like that. And he’s not the other kind, either. Since I was eighteen when he did the thing on the couch, and since, anyway, he stopped. He’s no perv.
It was fucking cold out there. The trees out there, round pieces of dark, different than midnight dark, are all secrets. It was just me and those trees. Are you in those trees, Kyle?