“It’s not you.” Until he’d said it, I hadn’t thought it was. But now I did.
I didn’t know how to help Calvin. Something was obviously wrong, but he wouldn’t give me a hint as to what it might be. Tommy had always been happy. Even after his dad beat the crap out of him, Tommy would keep smiling, looking for the shiny sliver of gold in the muddy pile of shit. Sometimes his eternal optimism annoyed the hell out of me, but I could’ve used some of it right then.
“Wanna ditch?” I asked. I only had one class after lunch—Latin—and in my four years of high school, I’d only skipped once. With Tommy.
Calvin shrugged. “Where would we go?”
It was a good question, and one I hadn’t considered. “We could catch a movie. Or go to this coffee shop Lua and I like.”
“I don’t know. I’ve missed enough classes already.”
Calvin’s words felt inert. I struggled to think of a place I could take him that would cheer him up, and then the perfect place sprang into my mind. “I know where we can go.”
“Where?”
“It’s a surprise, but it’s not too far.”
Calvin glanced at me, his chary eyes heavy lidded, his lips pursed on one side like he was trying to figure out a way to shoot me down without hitting any vital organs.
“Come on,” I said. “Trust me, all right?”
“I guess.”
It wasn’t the enthusiastic affirmation I’d hoped for, but it was better than nothing.
212,933 AU
SNEAKING OFF CAMPUS WAS BOTH too easy and a letdown. I’d expected Calvin and I would need to go all Mission Impossible to escape, but we carried our roller coaster to the admin building and told Mrs. Niven we were going to put it in my car. She was busy on the phone and waved us past without even asking our names. The security officer had opened the gates to let the students on work program leave, and we drove off campus without a single challenge. Like I said: total letdown.
Calvin didn’t ask where I was taking him, and I wouldn’t have said anyway. He scrolled through my phone while I drove, looking first at my music, then at my pictures. Normally, etiquette says you don’t go through another guy’s photo album, but all of my embarrassing pictures of me and Tommy had vanished with him, and it’s not like I spent my free time snapping dick pics for no one to see.
“Is this your brother?” Calvin turned my phone toward me. A shot of Warren mid-cannonball, about to splash into our pool, filled the screen.
“Yeah. That’s Renny.”
I hadn’t told Calvin much about Warren. There were still so many things about each other we didn’t know. It used to bother me when I read books where the main characters fell in love or became best friends after only knowing each other a short time. I’d complained about it to Tommy once, and he’d said that’s how it happens in real life. Everyone we meet begins as a stranger, so we project onto them who we need them to be until we get to know them. He said we have to fall in love with the idea of a person before we can fall in love with the actual person.
It sounded like bullshit to me.
Tommy and I had known nearly everything there was to know about each other, because we’d grown up together, while Calvin remained a mystery to me, and I to him. We could change that, but it would require talking about all those things we kept not talking about.
“Do you guys get along?” Calvin asked.
I snorted. “Depends on your definition.” Before Renny left, I thought I’d had him all figured out. I thought he was just my jerk older brother whose sole mission in life was to torture me. But then he’d given me that drawing of Tommy, and I had to admit he knew me better than I’d thought, and I didn’t really know him at all.
“Sometimes I wish I had an older brother or sister,” Calvin said. “Someone to scout ahead into the future and report back to me.”
We were driving down a long, empty stretch of highway toward my secret destination. The ocean on our right, Florida scrub brush on the left. It felt like we were driving through a wasteland, without a soul around for miles to spoil the serenity.
“When I started high school, I was terrified of gym class.” I cleared my throat, not sure whether I wanted to tell the story and subject myself to potential embarrassment, but this was how people got to know each other, and I wanted to know Calvin. I wanted him to know me. “I hadn’t really developed.”
“Developed?” Calvin said.
“No hair under my arms or on my balls.”
Calvin cracked a smile. The first I’d seen all week. “Got it.”
“Tommy was the only person who’d ever seen me naked, but we’d grown up together and I didn’t think of him the way I thought of other people. He never made me feel weird.” I kept my eyes on the road, but every once in a while I glanced at Calvin to gauge his reaction. “Renny had told me horror stories about gym. That I’d have to shower and change in front of other guys, and how they picked on kids who were different. So the night before the first day of school, I asked him if it was normal not to have hair on my balls. He told me every guy had hair on his balls by the time he started high school.”
“That’s an odd thing to worry about,” Calvin said.
“You never thought about that stuff?”
Calvin shook his head. “Not really.”
“Well, I did.” Just thinking about it again gave me anxiety like I was right back in that moment. Anyone who says time travel is impossible has never had to relive the memories of past traumas or mistakes. “So the night before the first day of school, I dug the wig and mustache I’d worn for Halloween out of the attic. I’d dressed up as Sirius Black.”
“From Harry Potter?” Calvin asked. I nodded. “Interesting choice.”
“Yeah. Warren went as Bellatrix Lestrange and spent the entire night fake killing me.” It had actually been an awesome night, but I decided to save that story for another time. “Anyway, I cut up the wig and superglued the hair under my arms and all over my junk.”
Calvin covered his mouth his with hand. “You didn’t.”
“I did. And Warren assured me that real guys didn’t just grow hair on their balls, but all up and down their dicks.” Calvin was laughing so hard his ears had turned radish red. “There I was in the locker room, believing that not only did I not have to worry about being made fun of for being as smooth as a sand puppy, but that I’d have more hair than any other guy and they’d all think I was super grown-up.”
“God. Dear God, I’m sorry for laughing but . . .”
I remembered how mortified I’d been after I’d dropped my pants to change—all proud of my long, lustrous fake pubic hair—and everyone had pointed at me and laughed.