First Time for Everything (8 page)

This level of distress scared Joe. Did he need to call the doctor? No, first he wanted to see if he could talk Grandpa Sam out of this emotional state. He sat in the adjoining chair and leaned close. “Grandpa Sam, come on, calm down. Tell me what’s wrong?”

“I never should have left him.” Tears welled up in Grandpa Sam’s eyes.

Joe swallowed with apprehension. He had never seen Grandpa Sam cry before. He whispered one word. “Grandpa?”

Grandpa Sam fixed his intense dark gaze on Joe. “Long ago I also had a warrior, but I let him go. I did not fight hard enough for him.”

This started sounding unreal. Joe swallowed. “Grandpa Sam, do you want me to make you some—”

Grandpa Sam held up his hand. “You cannot let him go. Listen to me. You have found your warrior. He is not of your tribe, but he is yours. Do not fail him. You must hold him here.” Grandpa Sam leaned to tap Joe’s chest. “Hold him here.”

Joe felt like an idiot. He spoke the same word. “Grandpa?” His tongue refused to translate the questions swirling in his mind.

“I know my warrior is long gone, but I still want to find his spirit. Perhaps if I feel his spirit again I will find peace. It’s horrible not knowing what happened to him.” Grandpa Sam gripped Joe’s right hand. “I thought my warrior loved me. He did, but he feared our love. He rejected me. He threatened me, drove me north to this barren hell. Our lands are lush and green, unlike here, yet I came here and created a garden to remember our love. I created children. I loved your grandmother, I did, but she knew I loved someone else more. I tried to seal off that part of my life, but I—I—” Grandpa Sam fell back, gasping for air. He started trembling. His eyes rolled back in his head.

A strange calm settled over Joe. He switched to grip Grandpa Sam’s hands in his hands. “Grandpa, he still loves you. Deep in his heart, no matter where he is in the… the universe, no matter, he loves you. We love you. I love you. Take a deep breath.” He held on tighter. “Hey, come on, I still don’t know everything growing in your garden. What about learning Mvskoke? I need you to teach me. No one else will. Calm down. Breathe. Come back to me. I need you here, Grandpa Sam, I really do. I need you. You understand me. Breathe!”

As he tried not to cry, Joe held on to Grandpa Sam’s cold hands as if he could cure him through physical contact. He willed his life and warmth into Grandpa Sam, begged for any spirit listening to help him.

A soft whoosh flew through the room. Startled, Joe looked up but saw nothing…. Wait. Did he see…? No. No.

His grandpa’s grip tightened against his fingers. He shivered until he sucked in a calming breath. Joe maintained his grip until Grandpa Sam refocused on him.

“Joe, why are we holding hands?” He paused and shook his head. “I fear I started wandering somewhere I am not ready to go.”

Joe almost collapsed with relief. “Grandpa Sam, I think you did, but you’re okay now. Do you want hot tea?”

“Thank you, yes, I’d love Earl Grey.” Grandpa Sam smiled at Joe. “Did Ed like the corn bread?”

Joe blinked back tears before he could answer. “Yes, he did.” He lunged forward and hugged Grandpa Sam. “Thank you.”

“For what, the corn bread?”

Many reasons for numerous “thanks-yous” collected in Joe’s mind. He smiled and shrugged as he rubbed Grandpa Sam’s shoulders. “For everything.”

Grandpa’s serene smile provided Joe all the joy in the world.

Two days later, during his eightieth birthday party, Grandpa Sam beamed the same special smile when Joe stood next to him and kissed Ed’s cheek. The sun stayed in the sky. Nothing burst into flame.

Joe winked at Grandpa Sam before he leaned in for kiss number two.

S.A. G
ARCIA
started writing gay male romance thirty-five years ago. Her writing remained a secret lest her friends thought her a freak. Writing about men inserting tab A into slot B didn’t seem the norm for a suburban female teenager. Reading Gordon Merrick, John Rechy, and Larry Kramer helped her fill in the serious informational gaps. Of course she read those books in her bedroom.

As the years progressed, S.A. still wrote gay male romance, although the stories progressed from lurking in notebooks to hiding on the computer. She wrote fantasies, contemporaries, bodice rippers; she chugged along following her muse.

S.A. never thought any publisher would publish her novels. Now she’s glad she kept the writing faith since three different publishers have placed their faith in her books. When one novel made it onto a few top-ten lists, S.A. kicked aside her doubt.

All this from a graphic designer guilty of two-finger keyboard abuse. S.A.’s life has turned into a fun quandary of too many stories hindered by slow typing skills. She accepts the silly challenge and blunders onward into more trauma, drama, and humor. Above all, S.A. wants to keep up with sexy men who insist on running off with the plots. Chasing them keeps her mentally active.

When not obsessing over how to describe romantic encounters, S.A. enjoys cooking for her beloved of twenty-five years; she endures the experiments with grace. Gardening, traveling, arguing politics, and teaching the house bunnies new tricks provide more fun. Unfortunately the bunnies refuse to answer e-mails.

You can find out more about S.A. at her blog

http://oscarsbruisedpetals.blogspot.com

and website http://sa-garcia.macmate.me/S.A_Garcias_World_ of_Words/

S.A._Garcias_World_of_Words.html

R
ENEE
H
IRSCH

F
ILLED
WITH
the sweaty, inattentive bodies of thirty teenagers, the classroom is approximately as damp and uncomfortable as the Amazonian swamp our geography teacher is trying to tell us about. No one is listening. It’s an unusually hot day in late April, and the entire student body has given up the fight with the school’s ridiculous inoperable windows and are letting our brains slowly melt. Of course, a subset of students has been working on this process all year already. Popular media tells me that this is the case at every high school in existence, and I am not one to argue.

The heat seems to be getting to my teacher as well. He gazes dejectedly at our blank faces and wipes the sweat off his forehead with his right hand, outlining a wrinkle in chalk in the process.

“Okay,” he sighs, “take five minutes to discuss what you just learned with your classmates.”

We all proceed to do no such thing. While chatter at various degrees of enthusiasm (but none concerning Amazonian swamps) spreads throughout the room, I lay my head facedown on my desk, enjoying its cool surface for the brief moment it takes before it, too, is sticky and warm. I feel dizzy. I should have eaten today. Or at least have had a glass of water.

“Heeeeeeeey, Michaaaaaaaaael.”

Peter Bryce’s drawn-out voice is a squeaky fog horn that appears suddenly and loudly right beside my ear. I flinch, sit up straight, and avoid making eye contact as I reply.

“Hey.”

He leans toward me from his seat at the desk in front of mine, having turned around so that he is now sitting backward in his chair. Peter is big, far too big for a thirteen-year-old. His shoulders must be twice the size of mine. He has a wide, freckled face underneath his shaggy blond hair, and every time I see him, I think to myself that probably he didn’t even have to try to get his star spot on the football team. In ten years I expect to see him on every sports channel in existence, and I genuinely hope he will have a nicer voice by then. For the sake of his fans, if nothing else.

He smiles at me and continues in a way that can be described as anything but sincere.

“Sooooooo, are you going to the beach party this weekend, hm?”

I look down at my hands on the table. They make an icky sound as I lift them and ball them into fists. The invitation that was passed around a week ago by the most beautiful girl in class is still lying at the bottom of my backpack, unopened. “I don’t think so,” I say.

“Awww, whyyyyyy?” This long vowel shtick of his is nearing the ridiculous. I pause to think for a moment, and out of the dozen plausible excuses in my head, I go for the one that’s the most boring and the least likely to be believed.

“I don’t have any swimwear.”

Peter just laughs, not even bothering to dignify it with an answer. Whatever. I didn’t lie. I couldn’t have even if I wanted. For some reason I feel obligated to tell the truth whenever I speak, which is one of the reasons I don’t do it very often.

The guy next to Peter, his conjoined-at-the-hip-best-friend Sebastian O’Daniels, looks at me with a wide grin, “You can just go skinny-dipping. I bet the girls would
love
that, Mikey.”

I hate that I flush at the comment.

Peter and Sebastian’s faces keep beaming like it’s a competition. In appearance they are vastly different, Sebastian being more chub than muscle, but they still look alike in some harmonious way. You don’t have to look twice to figure out they belong together. They’ve been like that since we started school. I can recall all three of us, eight years old, sitting on Sebastian’s mother’s velvet couch and playing video games together, but I don’t remember when that stopped. They always played as Mario and Luigi. Me: Yoshi.

“Oh, leave him alone, Sebastian,” one of the girls from the table next to us interrupts. Marina Young scrunches up her face in mockery and continues. “We certainly would love it more than if it was you doing it. Please tell me you plan on keeping on your swim trunks, Seb—otherwise I’m worried I’ll have to skip the party.”

The girl and the friend she’s sitting next to break into laughter; Sebastian O’Daniels’ face goes beet red. He and Peter glance in my direction. Unsure whether it’s best to smile or frown, I twist my face into some undefinable grimace and quietly thank the higher powers when our teacher speaks up in an attempt to recapture the attention of the class. Saved by the bell.

It’s another twenty minutes until class is over, and the moment the clock hits 3:30, all the energy that has been missing during the day seems to return like a lightning strike as every kid in class leaps from their desks and bolts out the door. They leave behind them a glittering cloud of sweat, like an early morning mist. I wait until it’s settled before I get up to leave the classroom myself.

“Mr. Summers,” my teacher says before I reach the door, “you did well on your presentation on the Atlantic Ocean last week.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“You seem to have a good grasp of the subject,” he says. “Though it would have been nice if you had been a bit more involved. Try to work on that, yeah?”

“Sure, I will,” I say, although I have no idea what he means.

“Have a nice weekend,” he says to me as I leave the room.

Outside the school gates, groups of students have gathered in their usual cliques, and in the general chattering I hear snippets of conversations, mostly concerning the best place to buy ice cream and the party this weekend. Farther ahead I spot Peter in a small group, his arm wrapped around his girlfriend’s waist. There’s some eerie quality to the scene, as though what I’m seeing isn’t entirely real, but nobody but me seems to have noticed this strangeness. I walk in a big circle around them in order to head home before he or anyone else has the chance to question me further about my attendance at the beach party. Blocking my way farther down the sidewalk are a couple of boys who have taken the first chance they could get to rip off their school uniforms. They’re bare-chested and whipping at each other with their rolled-up, wet shirts. Crude. I straighten my collar as though to counteract their behavior and hurry past them, wondering if I’m really feeling their eyes on me or just being paranoid.

My mother is the only one there when I get back home. My sister left for college last year, and presumably my dad is still at the office. He and my mother have synced up their daily routine to perfection. He has a normal eight-to-four job; she works night shifts as a security guard. The amount of time they spend together is a bare minimum.

To compensate, my mother makes sure the house is filled at all times with a welcoming scent of food, and with great success, as my father has grown fatter and fatter throughout the years. Today I am met by the smell of cinnamon cookies. I breathe in deeply. Smells like home.

“Hi, honey,” my mother chirps from the kitchen. “What happened at school today?”

My mother has long ago learned that the simple question “How was your day?” would never elicit anything but one-word replies from her children and now makes sure to only ask specifically about the events of the day. “Nothing” is of course not an acceptable answer.

I step into the kitchen, which is a cozy mess as usual. The light blue tabletops are messy with ingredients and leftover batter, and several bowls stand in the sink, filled with soapy water. My mother is licking a spatula while keeping one eye on the oven, one on me. I put my backpack on a chair.

“We dissected frogs in bio class, and Shelly Thompson accidentally dropped one into her lunch.”

A snort of laughter erupts from my mother’s nose. “Oh my God! Did she eat it?”

“No—she gave it to me. I didn’t eat it either, though.” I slide a hand over my stomach, suddenly remembering its emptiness. “Speaking of which, do we have any food?”

My mother’s laugher morphs into a displeased hum. “I keep telling you to eat. I don’t understand why you always forget.”

There’s a faint, warm sensation of guilt in my chest, but my mother doesn’t pursue the issue further. Instead, she starts heating up some leftovers for me and tells me I can have a cookie afterward.

“I see your father made casserole again.” There’s a hint of disapproval in her voice while she presses a complicated series of buttons on the microwave, but then she looks back at me. “Are you doing anything with your friends this weekend?”

“No,” I say, well aware that the sole word won’t be satisfactory.

“No events? Nothing going on?”