A history teacher. An out, outspoken history teacher. The kind of history teacher we never would have had. But this is what losing most of your friends does: It makes you unafraid. Whatever anyone threatens, whatever anyone is offended by, it doesn’t matter, because you have already survived much, much worse. In fact, you are still surviving. You survive every single, blessed day.
It makes sense for Tom to be here. It wouldn’t be the same without him.
And it makes sense for him to have taken the hardest shift. The night watch.
Mr. Nichol passes him the stopwatch. Tom walks over and says hello to Harry and Craig. He’s been watching the feed, but it’s even more powerful to see these boys in person. He gestures to them, like a rabbi or a priest offering a benediction.
“Keep going,” he says. “You’re doing great.”
Mrs. Archer, Harry’s next-door neighbor, has brought over coffee, and offers Tom a cup. He takes it gratefully.
He wants to be wide awake for all of this.
Every now and then he looks to the sky.
We reach midnight. Tariq can’t keep up with all the comments. Even with Harry and Craig on their phones, also answering, there are too many people to thank one by one. Tariq had thought it would slow down as it got late, as people started to go to bed. But he hadn’t been counting on it becoming so global. As people go to sleep in New Jersey, they are waking up in Germany. Australia’s heading into the afternoon. Tokyo, too. Because of the pink-haired blogger and all the other posts that have echoed out, word is passed on and passed on and passed on. Rachel hastily put together a Facebook page, and it already has fifty thousand fans.
Tariq is exchanging chat messages with someone from the site that’s hosting the feed, making sure there’s enough bandwidth, when he hears an engine gunning behind him, like a truck passing by.
There’s a shout:
“FAAAAAAAAAAGGOTS! DIRTY FAAAAAGGOTS!”
Then laughter and cheers coming from the car that’s making the noise. Everyone turns, and the car rolls through the parking lot, turns around for another pass.
“YOU’RE NOTHING BUT FAAAAAGGOTS!”
Because of the spotlights, it’s hard to see outside of their circle, hard to see anything besides headlights and a blurry head leaning out the passenger window. Tariq feels himself freezing. He knows these guys aren’t going to get out of the car, aren’t going to come over here with all the cameras going and the police officer and so many witnesses. But still, his instinct is fear.
Harry and Craig hear it too. Craig flinches at the sound, and Harry is a mix of amused and pissed. He refuses to take drunk shitheads seriously. He watches as the police officer halfheartedly takes a few steps away from the taped-off area, tries to get a better view of the car. But it’s already speeding away, point made. Harry’s father is asking Tariq and Smita if they know who it was, if it was kids from the high school. But neither of them know. Mykal asks around.
Harry gestures an M for music, then indicates that Tariq should turn it up. Tariq’s planned his playlist well—there’s not a ballad within earshot at this time of the night. Instead it’s all Lady Gaga, Pink, Kylie, Madonna, Whitney, Beyoncé—the gay Sirens, here to lure you away from sleep and onto the dance floor. Tariq’s found an “Express Yourself/Born This Way” mash-up, and as he turns it up, Harry convinces Craig to dance with him. If they’re going to be faggots, they’re going to be dancing faggots. Dancing, kissing faggots.
Tariq’s pulse is still racing, but he lets the music take off the edge, take him away from what just happened. He starts to sway along, show some moves, imagine this is their club, their space, their domain. Smita gets into the groove, too, and even Mr. Bellamy starts to dance in a grown-up kind of way. Tariq can’t believe it when Mr. Ramirez and Mrs. Archer, the coffee-bringing neighbor, start to sing along. They probably know the songs from Glee—who knows? The police officer now on shift is the only one not joining in, but Tariq is pretty sure there’s some Zeppelin later in the mix for him.
It’s crazy, because Harry is feeling fully conscious again. Is he completely tired of kissing Craig? Oh, totally. They’ve both been tired of it for hours at this point. But that’s the challenge, to get through all that. If you’re running a marathon, you’re not expecting to find pleasure in every step. The music is helping, reminding him that the time after midnight can be used for things other than sleeping.
He feels something hit his back, and at first he doesn’t understand what it is. It could almost be Craig’s hand, marking the beat. But then the second egg hits him right on the side of his head. He hears it breaking beside his ear. Feels the shock of it, the slime of it. Another hits his leg. His instinct is to recoil, to turn. But luckily Craig is there, right there, to reach his hand up to shield him, to reach up his hand to remind Harry to stay where he is. The yolk is beginning to run down his face, down his neck. Craig tries to wipe it away, as Harry’s father shouts something, goes running into the darkness beyond the lights. The police officer is on alert now, talking into his radio. Smita is hurrying over with a towel so Craig can get the egg off Harry’s face. (No one else is allowed to touch them, lest it be construed as “propping.”) Tariq is stopped cold for a second, looking in the direction Mr. Ramirez went, wondering what he should do. He looks at his computer, and the feed comments are going crazy, everyone asking, What was that? What’s happening? So now he has something to do, and stupidly he finds himself calling out to Harry and Craig, “Keep kissing!” Because that’s what he needs to see right now, that’s what everyone needs to see. But Harry is shaking. He can’t help it—he’s shaking. He can’t believe what happened, and knows he shouldn’t be embarrassed, but he is. He feels reduced, ridiculed. By shitheads. He can smell the egg, smell it on his skin. Even though Smita’s dampening the towel with bottled water now so Craig can get it all off, he can still feel it on his skin, the shock of its impact.
His father comes back empty-handed, says something to the police officer. No way to tell who it was. They ran away on foot. Could have gone in any direction. Mr. Ramirez thinks it was more than one kid. But it was hard to tell in the dark.
Craig feels Harry shivering. He holds Harry closer, feels the egg stain on the back of Harry’s shirt. Craig makes a C sign with his hand—clothes—and points to Harry. Mr. Bellamy understands and offers Harry a hoodie. Harry is shivering harder now, and Craig has to hold the back of his head, to make sure he doesn’t shiver away from him. Harry holds out his arms so Craig can help him put on the hoodie, one arm at a time. It feels strange to be dressed in this way, but he’s grateful for the warmth.
It’s over, he tells himself.
But it’s not over. Not yet. Because now there are voices in the dark. Voices getting closer. And pinpoints of light—flashlights. It is 12:23 in the morning, and people are coming to be here, coming to help. They saw what happened, and they can’t stay in their houses. Not just Harry and Craig’s friends. But their friends’ parents, too. Jim from the tech crew has sped over with more lights from his basement. There have to be at least a dozen people. Then more than a dozen. Smita’s mom is here. Two more police officers. And a man Harry’s never seen before walks up and goes straight to Mr. Bellamy, saying, “I’m staying right here with you.” They wear matching rings.
The site becomes a hive of activity. Jim puts up more lights so the lawn can be seen more clearly. And whereas before when people watched, they did so in conversational clumps, now they make a line, a wall, between Harry and Craig and the outside world. Protecting them.
The whole time, the music hasn’t stopped. “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” is pumping through the air. Harry senses Craig coming alert to something. He looks off to the side and sees the two figures coming closer.
Craig’s mother. His oldest brother, Sam, a senior at the high school.
They head right to Craig, and Craig’s mother asks him if he’s okay.
He nods slightly.
“Sam was watching, and he came to get us.”