92: brave
When I am sixteen, Robbie and I drive to pick up his cousin from middle school. She's fun, but a bit of a drag. She loves the most depressing, overwrought music, and dresses like a clown's funeral, and the friends she brings along are monsters, all staring eyes and desperate attempts at wit. But we love her; and it's the last day of school. I can still remember the sweet and wild taste of that, even after all the years between. It's become my favorite day.
The kids have almost all gone home before we get there; it's stragglers, lonely kids, a few desperate to find the party or make it. When Shawna approaches the car, she has such a look of trepidation in her eyes that I get worried immediately.
"Hey, can we do something special? It's his last day of school and I don't think he's ever gone out. I don't... I know you don't like kids," she says, with a hateful nod toward me, and I laugh. I love kids, too much to say so, and too wrapped up in maturity and its appurtenances to admit it. The girls in the backseat are all reaching toward her like octopi, calling her name and laughing, stoned, begging her to just get in.
"Do I know that kid?" asks Robbie, the set of his chin already fascinated. I roll my eyes and run one hand down his thigh, impatient to get wherever we're going and stop this unending driving around. We've been done with school for four hours, but it's Robbie: New car, newfound independence. He's got to drive around town showing off to all the little girls and boys and cousins and sisters and brothers, so they know he's on the go.
Through the window, the kid's nothing; just an awkward guy with a fairly hideous haircut and clueless fashion. I arch an eyebrow at Shawna, and she nods. "I know. But he's... You have to meet him. I mean, the shit he says." She shrugs elaborately, and I nudge Robbie: Out of the car, across the lot, right into the kid's face. He looks terrified, but something in his apple cheeks and suspicious eyes strikes at my heart. There's something strange about a day so early, when the angle of the sun is wrong and everything is too bright, or not bright enough. There's something wonderful about the last day of school no matter what age you find yourself.
Shawna climbs into the backseat with the girls, and they predictably ooh and ahh over some inane middle school story. Some girl kissed some boy or some boy kissed some boy and it was like so whatever. She's like their doll, parroting their fashion and half-baked philosophy back at them, and they love her best for it. I do too. I wish I'd been half as self-possessed, or exhibited as much wry humor as she does with every eyebrow crook and one-shoulder shrug. Her hands move as she speaks, like birds.
Across the lot, Robbie's finally got the kid on his feet. They're discussing something seriously, swinging their hands back and forth like we do, Robbie and I; on late night playgrounds or down in the dry culverts, with cars rushing by just above our heads. All the promises made, while the rest of them are drinking stolen beers or smoking pot, telling nonsense stories or playing songs, nonsense music.
The kid grins wisely, daring beyond his years for a moment and more attractive for it, as he shakes his head up and down, then side-to-side. Robbie's beautiful back bends in disappointment, but he won't let go. He pulls insistently at the boy's hands, urging him forward, but his shoes don't move. In the backseat, the girls are getting restless, and Shawna calls out to them, abortively, one hand across her mouth. I tell them to shut up, and continue to watch. His hair moves like a dream in the hot breeze, across the bright tarmac, and I imagine I can catch a bit of their conversation.
He wants to save this boy, I can tell. Save him from fear and worry, and show him the greater world. He wants to tell him the way we want to tell them all, that it gets better: it gets easier. Newer harder things take their place. That strength takes nothing from you that wasn't already being taken. He needs this poor kid to remember that, I can tell.
But I want it too, now, seeing that need written across the muscles of Robbie's back and down the turn of his neck, as he grows more intent still. He's begging, but the boy won't know that. He will think the faces that we show are less somehow than the faces that we mean; he will assume that when Robbie walks back to us, defeated, that he won't linger in Robbie's mind, or mine, and we won't talk about him later, and wonder if he's going to be okay.
I'll ask the boy's name as we're spinning in place, sending ourselves dizzy, hands clasped on arms. And I'll ask again when we fall down, laughing, piled on top of, around, between. The boy's name was James, and he's moving away. This was our last chance, to save him. Robbie will rest his head on my stomach, or I'll rest mine on his, and listen to the gentle tectonic gurgles of his body. If I'm feeling brave I will run my palm down his chest to his stomach, run my fingers lightly across him, like a gentled animal. And if he's feeling brave, he'll let me. My hand will raise goosebumps on his gypsy skin. I will call him Robin, and he will call me Jamie, and we will whisper and be brave together.
And when it's time to go home, and we've brought everybody home in his stupid car, he'll lean across and kiss me tasting of cigarettes or beer, and I'll run my hand across his head, and my fingers through his hair, and we'll grin with a secret, and he'll let me go. It's enough to keep them guessing, I'll say to myself, but I won't believe it. I'll watch his car drive away into the night, streetlights running their fingers across the hatchback and the moon roof delicately, without leaving a mark, and when it's gone I will nod, the spell complete. I have watched him disappear, I'll nod to myself, and this means he will come back to me.