“This is fun,” Sam says. “But tiring. I really feel it in my legs.”
“Yeah,” I say. I look at his legs then, which are muscular, a fuzz of dark hair tracing down his calves. “If you keep playing, you might be pretty good one day.” He’s so close I can smell the sweat on him. It’s kind of gross, but also not.
“So you started playing that summer, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say. That summer. He said those words calmly, like he didn’t mean anything, but I feel that squirmy chill you get when someone confronts you.
“With Nick, right? Mom told me he plays, too.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I saw you with him at that Homecoming game.” Again, he says this like he’s just stating a fact.
“Yeah,” I say, feeling embarrassed all of a sudden, though I’m not sure why.
We’re both quiet for a bit. Sam seems different now, free from the watchfulness of his family. Calmer. Looser. Like he feels comfortable asking me more questions—questions I don’t want to answer.
“Nick doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,” Sam says.
I want to try and say something—to deny it, to defend Nick, to make Sam feel better. But he’s right. And then I can’t believe it—I look at Sam and tears are falling from his eyes. I’m frozen, unsure what to do. But he sniffles and wipes his eyes and takes a deep breath, and then another one. “I’m sorry,” he says.
“It’s okay,” I say. I think of the other day, at Sam’s house, how his eyes looked sad.
“Sometimes things hit me. Like, bam, I start crying. Or I shake. It’s like I can’t control my own body.”
I nod. “I know the feeling.” Like right now, my belly is doing little flips. I fiddle with my racket’s strings, hoping that will calm me down, because it does during my matches. But it doesn’t now.
“That day,” he says.
That day. There’s only one day. I sit there, my back pressed into the chain-link fence, bracing myself. I grip the frame of my racket tight.
“My bike got a flat tire,” he says.
I could stop him right now. It’s like when you find out that someone talked about you behind your back. You don’t want to know what they said. But you have to know.
“I got a flat tire,” he says again calmly. No more tears. “Right near the cemetery. I fell off the bike when it happened. It was like a blowout. I was like: It serves me right. After what happened to you.”
Three years later, I can still feel the cold of the soda exploding on my back. I can still feel the pebbles digging into my knees. I can still hear Faggot! And Sam’s laugh.
“I never made it to the mall. I had to turn back around and walk. It was so hot. Remember that?”
“Yeah,” I say. Where was I when Sam was walking, I wonder? At home yet? I must have been. In my room, enjoying the AC. Or maybe in the bathroom, washing up my scrapes. Safe.
“I walked with the bike along the road. Sweating. Getting thirsty. There was hardly any shade. So I try and go as fast as I can, but it’s like I never make any headway. I finally get to that street that intersects Skyland. The one where if you turn left it goes down a hill, past the Nissan dealership. I forget the name. Anyway, I see there’s a lot of shade down there. All these big pine trees. I just need a moment out of the sun. So I walk my bike off Skyland, to where the trees are. I just stand on the side of the road in the shade.”
He pauses and then takes a swig from his water bottle. I watch his Adam’s apple as he gulps, then look away. I drop my racket beside me, because my hands hurt from gripping it so tightly.
“My therapist says I can talk to him about all this stuff. But . . . it’s weird, telling stuff to a stranger, you know? I can’t talk to my parents about it. They just want . . . They just want to . . . to forget it. Especially Mom. I can’t talk to Beth, either.”
“Why not?” I say.
“I don’t know. I want to. But I think she’s scared of me. The way she looks at me. The other night, she . . . Never mind.” He looks away.
“You can tell me stuff,” I say. And I mean it. But I also hope he doesn’t want to tell me anything else.
He still stares off. “Thanks.”
A breeze blows through, causing one of the tennis balls to roll away a little. The shrubs rustle behind me, a soothing sound. But then Sam starts speaking again: “I was standing in the shade and then this white truck comes down the street.”
My heart flutters. It’s like I was just walking along peacefully and then suddenly I tripped.
“This truck slows down and pulls up next to me. It’s Rusty. I mean, I didn’t know it was Rusty then. But it was him. He says, ‘Hey, kid, you okay?’”
The same thing happened to me, I almost say, but I don’t. I can’t.
“At first I didn’t say anything, but he kept looking at me so I told him I was fine, just hot.”
“Then what you doing out here in this heat, Superman?”
“My bike got a flat.”
“That’s too bad. You need a lift?”
“Nah, I’m okay.”
“You sure? I can put your bike in my truck bed, get you home lickety-split.”
Sam pauses and I look up at him and he’s smiling in a weird way—the way you’d smile at something stupid.
“That phrase, ‘lickety-split.’ My dad used to say that. That’s weird, isn’t it? But I remember him saying that and it calmed me down. And I was so hot and tired. So I said okay. He puts my bike in the back, and I get in the passenger seat. I tell him I live in Pine Forest Estates, just up the road a bit, I’ll show him. ‘Buckle up,’ he says, smiling at me. I guess right about then I knew he was weird. Right when I clicked that seat belt, it’s like I knew. And I could have unclicked right then, before he drove off, I could have jumped out and run off and ditched my bike. But he started the car and I froze.”
A little gust of wind blows across us again and I close my eyes. For a second I wish Sam would say that he yanked the door open then. That he ran. But I know that this isn’t the way the story goes.
“Anyway, I tell him to take a left but he goes right. I said, ‘No, I live the other way. You should turn around.’”
“‘I know where you live,’ he said.”
“‘You do?’ I asked, but he just drove on. Looked over and smiled at me again. But not a friendly smile, you know? ‘Roll your window up,’ he said.”
“I rolled it up. I thought he was going to turn on the AC but he didn’t. ‘You’re going the wrong way,’ I said again. He didn’t say anything at first. It all happened so fast.” Sam pauses.
I open my eyes then. I think he’s going to stop. My heart’s still pounding, because I know the worst is still to come. Sam’s still leaning back, his hands pushed against the cement, really close to mine. I could slide my hand over and touch his, and comfort him, but I don’t. Boys don’t do that.