Personal Effects (25 page)

“You’re disgusting. Stay away from me.” The door! Get it open!

“Even if you don’t believe me, if you want to leave, please, just let him have his letters,” she pleads. “It would mean so much. . . .”

I get the door open and stumble out into the hall, Celia’s voice and then Will’s trailing behind. I can’t breathe. Need air.

The front door is heavy, and it swings all the way open when I full-body yank on it, slamming into the wall and rattling as I struggle to make it through. Have to get away. Pounding blood in my ears. Burning throat. Fuck.

I crash into a body, hard and tall and rushing at me, so we both sort of collide and rebound, tottering for a moment on the porch.

“Whoa,” says a deep voice near my ear. Strong hands grab me and lift me up midfall. “Hey, you OK?”

“Yeah, sorry,” I say, reaching out to push off. Need to keep moving.

“Matt?”

“Huh?” I look over my shoulder as I hurry down the steps. Curtis. My legs revolt, locking. I grab the banister, barely able to keep from falling.

“Careful, man,” he says, hands reaching out to grab me again.

“Get the fuck away from me!” I stumble backward, my feet searching for solid ground. “Don’t touch me!”

“OK, OK,” he says, hands up in front of him. “Just calm down.”

“I don’t wanna calm down. You’re a bunch of liars!”

“Hey. I haven’t said anything yet. And you don’t even know me.”

“And I don’t want to. There is no way . . .” Pressure in my ears.

He reaches out a hand, palm up. Big hand. Fingers spread wide, palm pinkish and light compared to the darker skin of his arm and the back of his hand. “Let’s just go back inside and we can talk, OK?”

Anger surges up, ripping through me, making everything burn hot and red, turning me. My fist already hard and ready. “Why, so you can tell me some more lies? Fuck off.”

“You’re so much like your brother.” He looks up to the sky, his long neck prominent as he swallows.

I am hurtling toward him, my whole body arching behind the swing of my arm. The impact never comes, and before I know it, I am turned, head forced low, facing the ground. Curtis’s pulling my arm behind my back, and I can see in my head how he grabbed the swinging arm and turned me. I kick and fight, but in no time, he has me on my knees with my head almost touching the sidewalk, my arm pulled back as far as it will go. I try to kick out, and he pulls my arm harder until I think it’ll pop out of the socket.

“I told Theo to tell you,” he breathes in my ear, too close. I try to yank free and he leans pressure on the place where my arm meets my shoulder. “Goddammit, cut it out. I don’t want to hurt you, Matt.”

I stop struggling, waiting to catch my breath.

“I told him to tell you, but he was so afraid that you might react badly. Wonder where he got that idea.”

I push back against him. I can’t make any words come, and I need to get away, or I’m gonna puke or cry or something. My stomach hurts. My arm hurts. And there’s a panic rising up to strangle me. I push back again, trying to kick at his legs. He pulls me closer until his chest is pressed against my back.

“Just calm down and I’ll let you go,” he says into my shoulder.

It’s too much. He’s too close. Fuck. Let go. He has to let go. Don’t touch me. I can’t make my mouth work.

“I told him to tell you.”

Without warning he loosens his hold and pushes me away from him, so I spin toward the street and stumble before I find my feet. When I do, he’s standing there facing me, obviously ready if I come back at him. The way he looks at me makes me stop. I take a couple deep breaths, and so does he, relaxing his stance, but not totally relaxed. I watch him. He doesn’t even look like a faggot, maybe his clothes, maybe, but he’s strong, and he’s big. He doesn’t sound like a faggot. His hands look strong, not girly at all. No way. No way was T.J. . . . with . . . no way.

“You’re lying,” I spit out finally.

“Fine,” he says, shaking his head and grabbing his bag off the sidewalk. “If that’s what you want to believe, fine. Go home to Daddy. Keep believing you knew your brother. Fine by me.”

He’s halfway up the steps when he turns around and looks at me. “I loved him.” His face contorts through an evolution of emotion ending in a gulping sound. A deep breath and he skewers the center of his chest with one rough finger. “And he loved me.”

He presses his fists to his eyes, growling out a terrible sound, fury and pain. Then he smooths away all the anguish with his long fingers. Mask back in place, he waves toward the house a couple of times and then sags. “If you want to hear about who your brother really was, come on back, or call. But if you ever take a swing at me again, I’ll break your arm.”

It’s only once I’m back at the car, wiping the puke from my mouth with trembling hands, that I realize — I left my backpack in the house.

M
ORNING COMES WAY TOO SOON
. A
T FIRST
I’
M PISSED AT
having to leave the hostel for the lockout period. But once I’m out in the air, it’s better than being in that dark, claustrophobic room. I snag a table outside the coffee place away from the crowds at the farmers’ market a block up. It’s a little wobbly and not all that comfortable, with the woven metal of the chair cutting into my butt and legs, but it lets me sit in the perfect balance of sun and shade, eat my fancy bread, sip my too-strong coffee, and try to make my head stop for five fucking minutes.

I barely slept last night. When I did, I dreamed of T.J., but not my T.J. I dreamed of some other T.J., who was weird and wrong. In one dream, no matter how many times I yelled or got right in his face, he couldn’t hear or see me. In another, every time I grabbed at him, pieces fell off in my hand.

After I’ve torn through the first mini-loaf of bread, butter melting before I can get it in my mouth, my stomach and nerves start to settle. The caffeine starts to do its thing.

There’s one clear thought drowning out all the others: I need my backpack. I have to get it back.

They’ve probably already looked through it and found everything, including the one letter I didn’t read — and I know I should just kiss it all good-bye, that they’ll never give it back, even if I asked, but I can’t. I want it. I want it all.

My brain keeps chanting that I need to get my bag back, with everything inside, like if I don’t, I’ll die. And I might. The burning awful hole in my gut might really, eventually, get so big that internal organs fall out or get eaten away.

First, above everything else, Shauna’s money is in there. What’s left of my money is in my wallet in my pocket, but the backup from Shauna is in the small pocket at the back of my bag, and I’m gonna need it to get home.

Second, and almost as important, I need the letters. If I could just read them all again, I could make sense of this. Because there has to be something in them I missed that would make this make sense. I mean, how could I have misread them so badly? If they’re telling the truth, why didn’t Curtis ever mention Celia, his sister, in his letters? Why do so many talk about Missy and Will? Are there two Wills, or did Will used to be with Missy? So many of them talk about Zoe. And not like she was just someone else’s kid he knew.

If I had the other bag of letters from home, and I could find Will’s and Missy’s, and even Celia’s letters — ’cause if she’s telling the truth, she had to have written him, too, even if I don’t remember any letters signed
Celia
— if I could just read them again, would they make more sense? When I get home and dump that bag out, will I find all of Celia’s letters, and find in them everything I needed to know not to get this so totally wrong? Or did Celia not write on purpose? ’Cause I know I didn’t read all of the other letters, but I’d have noticed if there were some from her in that other bag.

I push the coffee aside, too strong for my acid stomach.

And after last night, there’s no way they’re gonna give the letters back. It’s over. I really should just get on with it. Leave. Go home. Just at the thought of it, the hole gets bigger. And what about the money?

My cell vibrates on the table. I don’t need to look at it to know it’ll be Shauna again. It’s totally uncool that I promised to call her last night and then never did. Bitch-ass move, in fact, but I can’t talk to her. I can’t even try to explain to her how much the world has fucking changed since my message yesterday afternoon.

I rub my eyes and wait for the telltale beep that means another unanswered voice mail. Not long after the beep, it beeps again. A text.

I flip the phone open and hit the center button. Shauna’s text pops up. Worried. A plea to call. I can’t. After a bunch of tries to write a meaningful text in return, I finally text back:
All fine. Call 2mr.
I shut the phone off. The first part’s a lie, but I’m hoping to keep the promise.

People come and go all around me. Families. Kids. Couples. College students. Old people. A lot of them carry flowers and snacks and bags of stuff from the farmers’ market.

The tables around me fill and empty and fill again, people moving the tables and chairs and jockeying to claim them as soon as they are empty. I just sit there. No one talks to me, though some people glare like they’d like me to leave.

I get caught staring at this one guy. The side of his neck and face are covered in tattoos, his earlobe stretched around a black ring, leaving a gaping dime-size hole, so you can look right through it and see his neck. It creeps me out, but I can’t look away. When I realize he’s staring back, I tense, but he just smiles and asks if I’m using the extra chair at my table.

Then Tattoo Guy waves at someone, and I follow the wave. Two people hurry across the street. A short guy with funky glasses waves back, dodging cars. The guy with him is tall, with really long curly hair. I can’t stop staring at the tall guy. Except for the clothes and the obvious lack of tits, I could have thought woman, maybe even pretty woman. But even from across the street, I knew he was a guy.

Tall Guy laughs. The others whisper things that make him laugh more. He flips his hair over his shoulder and then snaps his head to the side to stare directly at me. I can’t look away. One of his eyebrows arches slowly up over a wicked smile. Before I realize, I am up and out of my chair and halfway down the block, laughter trailing behind me.

OK, so, gay guys. I get that, them, fine. The clothes. The way they move. Tall Guy’s hair and, well, everything. Obviously gay. Once I heard his voice, I knew for sure, but even before talking, just that something that says “gay guy.” OK. But Curtis? T.J.? No fucking way. T.J. was strong. He liked hiking and fixing cars and was a big guy. He was in the freaking Army. He wore T-shirts and jeans. His hair was pretty short. He didn’t even own any mousse or gel or anything. He never wore jewelry. He hit harder than anyone I’ve ever met, except Dad. And he was so fierce. He dated girls. Didn’t he? In high school?

“Matt?”

I look up at the unfamiliar voice to see Curtis leaning against a car parked just down from the hostel. My feet stop before I can make them keep going toward the front door. Then I remember the hostel is still in lockout time.

“Can we talk?” he asks, still leaning against the car.

“Nothing to say.”

“Just a few minutes, then I’ll go.”

“Why?”

He rubs his hand over his face before answering my question. “Because there are some things I want to say. Because I wanted to apologize for my part of last night and make sure you’re OK. Because I thought you might like this back.” He reaches into the car through the open window and pulls out my backpack.

I put my hand out for my bag. He holds it close to his body and inclines his head toward the little park across the street.

“Just a few minutes,” he says again, so much like what I was planning to say to Celia just about twenty-four hours ago.

Once we’re settled on separate benches in the shade of the trees, I wait for him to start.

“This is nice,” Curtis says, looking around him. “I’ve never noticed it before.”

I shrug. I like it here, too. But no way I’m gonna tell him that.

Curtis stares out at the street and then down at his hands, hanging loosely between his spread knees. His right hand is all banged up. Red and swollen with scrapes all across the knuckles. Looks a little like my hand after the fight. His chuckle makes me look up from his hand.

“I, uh”— he touches the first two knuckles —“I went a little nuts after you left last night. Beat the hell out of the wall.” He shrugs and covers his right hand with his left. “I’m sorry about last night. I could have been less . . . confrontational.”

Damn straight, he could. He could have just left me the fuck alone. But I guess he could have been more in my face, too. He could have hit me. I might have, would have, hit him, if he hadn’t stopped me.

“Having you show up like that. And then coming home to find you tearing out. It was just, well, too much. I . . .”

He stops talking. I can see his body rippling with tension or anger or something, but not like last night, not like he’s gonna hit me or anything. Then, without saying anything else, he reaches down and grabs the backpack and swings his arm out to me.