Noggin (22 page)

We took an elevator down to the ground floor, and Cate told me to close my eyes, which I did because, at that point, there was no telling what was about to happen and I couldn’t stand the thought of ruining the surprise.

“Okay, open up!” Kyle shouted.

We were in the center of a beautiful green courtyard. There were flowers all around the edges, reaching up to the windows of the first floor. I looked up and even though it was cool out, the sky looked like a bright blue triangle, shaped by the sides of the buildings around us.

“You’ll notice, Travis, that there are Easter eggs all around you,” Kyle said.

I did notice. There were bright plastic eggs scattered all around the yard, the grass just short enough not to cover them completely. I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I had to ask how they’d done all this.

“We had all night. You go to sleep at, like, six p.m., dude,” Kyle said.

“Yeah, but the costumes and the eggs and the Christmas candles. I just—”

“We’re not done, Travis,” Cate interrupted. “In each of these eggs you’ll find something special. Not candy, though. These eggs are magic.”

“I don’t think I can really get to them.” I felt a little defeated, like I was screwing this all up.

“Hey!” some guy in a suit shouted from the sidewalk. “You guys can’t be on that grass. What’re you doing?”

“We have permission,” Cate said.

“From whom?” he asked.

“From God,” I said.

“What?” He wasn’t amused at all.

“I’m dying.”

“Oh.” He looked down at the wheelchair and then up at our faces. “Okay.”

“Happy Easter,” Kyle said, waving as the man walked away.

“I think I want down,” I said. “Can you help me?”

They did and I lay there in the grass, looking up at the blue triangle and then over at each of them. Kyle walked over and grabbed a purple egg, opened it, and unfolded a tiny slip of paper that was inside.

“What’s it say?” I asked, not even able to lean up to see him all the way.

“It says:
Travis, do you remember that time we beat the final level of Zelda and we both teared up?
”

“It was
you
. I didn’t cry. I never cry. Read me some more.”

Cate opened a pink egg and began reading.

“Do you remember that Halloween when I locked you out of the car in that grocery store parking lot when those kids were throwing eggs at you?”

I did remember that. And even though I was laughing with her and Kyle, I need you to know that those hooligans could’ve put one of my eyes out.

Kyle started reading another note before I could say anything.

“Do you remember that time Seth Martin heard you talking about how dumb he was?”

They kept on like that for a while, and we laughed and told jokes and made fun of one another. But that’s why they were there, I guess. Even though I was almost gone, they were still there to remind me that I wasn’t quite dead yet. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded just closing my eyes right then and letting go. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Just dying right there with your two best friends helping you remember everything you loved about being alive?

And that’s how, five days before having my head sawed off my body and carefully placed in a cryogenic freezer in the basement of the Saranson Center for Life Preservation, I got to have the best day of my life. Isn’t that something? Isn’t that the greatest thing you’ve ever heard? I bet most people don’t even get one person who cares about them that much. And me, I got four of them. Yeah, maybe I got a bad deal the first time around. Sure, it wasn’t fair to be dead at sixteen. But you know what? At least I got to live every single second before they finally turned off the lights.

I woke up with Cate’s elbow stabbing me in the ribs at about three a.m., the house dark and cold. There was a blanket on us—evidence that someone else had come home and quietly left us to sleep side by side on the couch.

“Cate,” I whispered, gently pushing her away from me.

“Hey. What time is it?”

“Three in the morning,” I said.

“Oh shit,” she said. “Your folks home?”

“Blanket came from somewhere.” I sat up and stretched a little, and wiped the sleep out of my eyes.

“You feeling better?” she asked.

“I am. Cate, I—”

“You’ll walk me out?” She got up, walked over to the window by the front door, and peeked outside.

“Sure.”

“I don’t see your dad’s car. It’s the same one, right?”

“Yeah. Weird.”

“Travis?”

“Yeah?”

“Why isn’t your dad home at three a.m. on a Tuesday?”

“I don’t know. He’s been working really late since I’ve been back.”

“Could he . . . never mind.” She sat back down and yawned. I liked it when she looked sleepy.

“You think he’s having an affair or something?”

“No. Forget I said anything. Your dad is not that kind of guy, Travis.”

“I’m sure everyone who’s ever had a cheating father has said the same exact thing.”

We sat there in the dark for a few minutes. We could hear neighborhood dogs barking somewhere, and we looked at each other with surprise when we heard a car drive past. It wasn’t my dad. When she got up to leave, Cate pointed at me with this funny look on her face, like she was trying to end this quiet moment in the dark before things got uncomfortable.

“I’ll see you after Christmas.”

She was going to spend the holidays at her grandparents’ house in Dallas. She hated Dallas. She said the lack of cowboy hats and Wrangler jeans made it seem like it had misrepresented itself to the entire world. She didn’t like things that weren’t what she thought they’d be. But who does?

I walked her out to her car, and just before she opened
the door to climb inside, I leaned into her and kissed her cheek. No doubt, Jeremy Pratt’s body was doing things that Travis Coates’s body had done many times before in that very same spot, but she suddenly held up both of her arms and shouted, “Hey, whoa . . . what?” She was definitely caught off guard, but she was also laughing a little.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

“No. I am. Wow. That’s happening, isn’t it?” She looked down to my, you know, my . . . umm . . .
space invader
.

I quickly covered the front of my jeans with both hands. She started laughing and I joined in, knowing full well that even in the dim moonlight she could see how red my face had turned.

“It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have fallen asleep. Hell, I shouldn’t have even stayed.”

“I love you.”

“I think Jeremy Pratt does too.”

“I’m sorry, Cate. I really am. I just . . . this is so hard.”

Then we both laughed, and she sat down in her car and let the door hang open. She peered up at me with those eyes she used to get just before she cried. I felt like shit. I deserved to feel that way too.

“I’ll talk to you when I get back, okay? Can we just talk when I get back?”

“Yeah. Merry Christmas.”

•  •  •

They say you can fall out of love with someone just as easily as you fall into it. But is that also the case when the person you love dies? Do you have to fall out of love with them so you can fall in love with someone else? If that’s the way it works, then I could understand why Cate was taking her time, and I could at least respect her for not telling me something just because I wanted to hear it. You don’t have to tell someone you love them if they already know it in every molecule of their body. I’d known it in two bodies, and no matter what anyone says, it isn’t something that goes away.

Christmas Eve arrived quickly, and I still hadn’t seen Hatton since that day at the arcade—only talked to him on the phone a few times. After my little freak-out I wasn’t sure I could blame him for keeping his distance. I think maybe the Travis Coates Experience isn’t all that entertaining when it gets too serious. I’d basically tweaked out like a junkie in front of him and, well, I’m sure it wasn’t too fun to watch. Leave it up to me to suck the fun out of a building full of games and prizes.

And Kyle? Kyle had been busy with a mess of his own. After coming out to his parents and sister had been such a relief to him, he decided he’d just go ahead and tell a few college friends of his too. But his roommate, Evan, hadn’t reacted the way he’d expected. He said it gave him the creeps and asked Kyle to move out. You always hear about these kinds of people—parents and friends who can’t accept someone being gay and who treat them
like they’re less human because of it—but listening to Kyle talk about it made me feel so angry and defeated. Now he was staying with his parents until he could find a new place.

“You know what it’s like, Travis?” Kyle said to me on the phone. “It’s like being in the only group of people still left that it’s okay to make fun of . . . that it’s okay to call unnatural.”

“Not the only group,” I said.

“Oh. Right. I guess you
do
know what it’s like.”

“Well, technically mine was by choice. I chose to be a . . . whatever I am.”

“Cryogenic American?” Kyle said.

“Exactly. Know what, man? Screw that Evan guy. People like him are few and far between, right? Maybe try to see it that way. At least he’s in the minority.”

“There’s more of them than you think,” he said. “Audrey’s pissed because her boyfriend keeps telling her they should pray for me.”

“Pray for you to do what?”

“I dunno. Change? Pray me straight. I tried that. It doesn’t work.”

“That Matt Braynard’s a tool anyway. He’s always walking around school like he owns the place.”

“It really bothered Audrey. Said she might break up with him.”

“Well, it sounds like Hatton’s prayers were answered,” I said.

•  •  •

My parents managed to make Christmas morning in my house feel the same as it always had. We had the fireplace on, and there were twinkling lights wrapped all around the tree and down the rails of the staircase. Mom even got up early to make pancakes shaped like Santa heads (yes, I see the irony). And Dad? He was on the back patio having his one recurring Christmas gift from my mom: a single smoke from a pipe he’d had since before they met. He’d promised to quit before they got married, and she’d promised that he’d get to smoke one pipe-full on every Christmas morning for the rest of their lives. Outside.

Mom would always tell me not to be tempted by my father’s bad habits, and we’d always laugh and eventually eat our pancakes around the kitchen counter. I could smell the sweet smoke soaked into his clothes and, in a weird way, that’s how I expected every Christmas for the rest of my life to smell. Not like holly or peppermint or gingerbread. But like my dad’s tobacco.

After breakfast we sat on the floor like always, and my mom passed out the gifts from under the tree. We had a long-standing rule that everyone in our small family would give only two gifts, big or small, expensive or cheap, to everyone else. Once our four were lying in front of us, we took turns, youngest to oldest, opening them one by one.

“Feels like socks,” I said, unwrapping the soft package.

It wasn’t socks. It was a green and black scarf. I’d actually asked for this after seeing it in a store one day. I wasn’t even trying to hide my scar anymore—there was no use—but I’d grown accustomed to wearing all the ones Mom had bought me. I immediately and expertly tied it around my neck. Next it was Mom’s turn. She started with one that I’d gotten her and she was tearing up before she’d even gotten all the paper off it. She paused.

“I don’t even want this if it’s a million dollars,” she said. “If I can just have you here every Christmas till I’m dead, then I don’t need anything else.”

“That’s nice, Mom. But I didn’t keep the receipt,” I joked.

“Travis! I love it! I absolutely love it!” She held the terry-cloth bathrobe to her chest and then out again, examining the embroidered initials on the front.

For Dad’s turn he chose a gift from me as well. When he opened it to find a black T-shirt with a large green Space Invaders alien on the front, he started laughing.

“This’ll show those cherry-chomping sons of bitches.” Man, my dad really hated Pac-Man.

When I opened the first gift from my dad and saw that it was a skateboard, I was sort of stunned. I hadn’t told them about that day at Hatton’s.

“How’d you know?”

“I was clueless what to get you, so I stole Hatton’s number out of your phone and asked him. It was the first thing he suggested. Will that one work okay?”

“Four wheels and a deck. It’s perfect.”

Mom opened a sweater from Dad, and then he did the same from her.

“We went shopping for these together,” she said. “When you get old, it’s just easier that way. Okay, Travis. Now open mine.”

I’d guessed that it was a book, but I was wrong. It was actually a tablet loaded with games, movies, music, and TV shows. I was speechless. I hadn’t even seen one in person, only on television a few times.

“Mom, this is . . . wow. So cool. How much was this?”

“Don’t ruin this for me.” She held up her phone to take a photo of me holding it.

After they each opened their other gifts from me—a gift certificate to a spa for Mom and a book about Bob Dylan for Dad—it was time to open my last present. It was from my dad, and it was money. I knew that much. One of his gifts was always an envelope with two hundred dollars inside. But this time he handed me a stack of five envelopes, each with my name written on the front in the exact same way.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Couldn’t quite break the tradition after you left,” he said. “Thought if you ever came back, you’d find a good use for it.”

“So this is . . . a thousand bucks? Dad, come on. That’s ridiculous. What am I going to do with all this? Here, take this back. I can’t take this . . .”

“Hell, I haven’t gotten to do this for a long time. Merry Christmas, Travis,” he said, not even pretending to listen to me. “Promise to use it for something fun, okay?”

Christmas night ended in the most perfect way possible. Around the time my dad and I were beginning our third or fourth consecutive viewing of
A Christmas Story
, there was a loud knock at the door. I opened it up to find Kyle and Hatton standing there with huge smiles on their faces. They said I had two minutes to get my shoes and coat on and meet them in the driveway.