My mom said I had no choice. I had to go back to school. So I went.
DeMarco was waiting for me outside the school. “Good to see you, Code. The look’s improving. Not much, but it shows some hope.”
I was wearing my father’s old hooded sweatshirt, the one he used to wear when he worked in the garden on cold days. I had seen other kids at school wearing something like it.
“Ready for day number two?”
“Not really.”
“Listen. Just try your best to stay under the radar. Don’t draw attention to yourself.”
“Easier said than done.”
“Listen. I know the ropes.”
“You mean because you’re black?”
“Yeah, but I’m also gay.”
I must have looked puzzled.
“I like other guys.”
I shrugged. I understood what he was saying. It was just that he was the first gay person I had ever met, and I was trying to sort things out and make sense of the new information. I figured my best bet was to not overreact to anything that surprised me. But I guess I looked a little stunned.
“I’m assuming you’re not of the same persuasion?”
“Being black and being gay does draw attention to me. People want to get on my case. So I have to learn to deflect the bad stuff. I have to make sure it all bounces off me. Now, if you hang out with me, you’re gonna get some of the flak yourself. Might be another strike against you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, first you show up here after crawling out from under a rock. Then you piss off some white-girl vegetarian by talking about hunting. Now you hang out with an openly gay guy.”
“I still don’t get it.”
“Well, if you hang out with me, people will start thinking you’re gay too. So what we have here is a gay Bambi killer from the sticks.”
It took a while for it all to sink in, but when it did, I started to laugh. The laughing felt really good. I guess I was a bit loud, because that got us some eyeball attention. But then DeMarco started to laugh as well.
And I felt that maybe my second day of school wasn’t going to be so bad.
I asked DeMarco a few more questions about what he meant by “under the radar,” and it began to sink in. “So what you’re saying is that I need to be under the radar but not completely off the grid.”
He grinned and said, “Now I think you’re starting to get the hang of it. Pretty soon we’ll be able to shake those pinecones out of your hair and you’re gonna fit right in.”
With a bit of DeMarco’s coaching, I got to all my classes, lay low and made it through the day. After school he had to go to his job, so we parted ways and I promised him I wouldn’t drink from any form of public water trough on my way home.
But as I walked off toward the apartment and another visit to the hospital, I heard some people taunting DeMarco. There were three of them—heavyset guys with attitude. I recognized one of them as that creep Austin. DeMarco was trying to get past them, trying to pretend they weren’t there, as was his style. They had names for him, names that sounded nasty.
My life in the woods had made me physically strong. You also develop a strange confidence in yourself in tough situations where you need to get physical. Sometimes there’s no one around to help you, so you need to be prepared.
Austin and his goons had blocked DeMarco’s path as he was walking down the sidewalk. DeMarco was smiling, though, and doing some kind of little dance as he spoke to them, acting like it was all a joke. But then Austin shoved him hard and knocked him down. That’s when I decided to get involved. I broke into a run and put two fists in front of me as I smashed into Austin and hammered him until he fell. He hit the ground hard, and I came down on top of him.
I expected Austin’s two buddies to come at me so was surprised to find DeMarco grabbing my arms and pulling me up. “No, man. Not like this. Don’t be stupid,” he said.
Austin’s friends hung back, but I could tell they were ready to pounce. “Just a little misunderstanding,” DeMarco said to them.
The door of the school opened and a couple of male teachers headed our way.
“C’mon, Cody, let’s get out of here.” DeMarco tugged at my sleeve.
Austin was on his feet now. He looked at me and then DeMarco. “Faggots!” he shouted, and then he spit on DeMarco. The teachers were yelling something, but Austin and his two friends were on the run. DeMarco tugged at me again and started running in the opposite direction from the other guys. I ran with him until we were a couple of blocks away, and then we stopped to catch our breath.
“Not the way to play the game, Caveman. Thanks for coming to help, but you fight back against a dog like that and he comes back to bite you another day when you’re not looking.”
The next day I was summoned into Mr. Costanzo’s office. There sat Austin and a cop and a man who introduced himself as Austin’s father and pushed a business card into my hand. His old man was a lawyer. You could tell Costanzo didn’t like the situation any better than I did. Austin’s father did the talking and then turned to the police officer, who seemed as uncomfortable with the whole scene as Costanzo.
The cop said, “Cody, you’ve been charged with assault. Do you understand what that means?”
I didn’t really, but I was thinking of DeMarco, my only friend in this insane place, and I figured if I tried to explain what had happened, he’d get drawn in. “I understand,” I said.
The policeman, a kind of no-nonsense guy in his twenties, walked me out to his car and put me in the backseat. Driving me to the police station, he said, “Just doing my job, kid.”
I was questioned by a detective in a suit, but I didn’t really have anything to say except DeMarco’s words: “It was a misunderstanding.” In the end, the detective just got frustrated and said, “I’ll see if your friend’s father is willing to drop the charges. But people will be watching you. You’re not off the hook. If this happens again, if there is a pattern here, then we get serious. So keep out of trouble.”
The same cop who had brought me in took me home and explained to my mother his version of what had happened. After he left, my mom gave me a hug. Then she looked me in the eye and said, “I’m sorry. We haven’t prepared you for any of this. We have to get you back home.”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “I can take care of myself. We can’t leave until Dad gets better.”
But when we visited him at the hospital that night, he was on some kind of medication that made him sleep, and he didn’t look like he was on any road to recovery. My mom and I just sat there silently for two hours.
A man in a white coat walked in and introduced himself as Dr. Musgrave. He said that he had taken over my father’s case. “I believe we are on the right path here,” he said. “It’s a pretty serious regimen of medication, but it’s necessary. It’s going to take some time.”
“But he looks worse, not better,” my mom said, looking over at the pale face of my father.
“The medication is attacking the cancer cells, but it’s also pretty hard on the healthy cells.”
Mom looked like she was about to cry.
“How long will he have to stay here?” I asked.
“I can’t say,” Dr. Musgrave answered. “We have to wait to see if the treatment is working.”
“What if it doesn’t work?” I asked.
“Then we try something else,” he said. It wasn’t the answer I was looking for.
Dr. Musgrave got up to go. He looked at me and then at my mother. “I won’t lie to you. He may be in for a rough ride. He’s going to need both of you to be strong.” And then he left.
I wanted to express the anger and confusion I was feeling, but I didn’t have the words to do it. I wanted to find someone or something to blame for making my dad sick and ruining our lives. But I didn’t know who or what. So I ended up blaming myself.