Gone, Gone, Gone Page 14

  Lio kisses me good night.

  I don’t sleep.

  Sunday morning, Lio leaves to go home and pack. He gives me a big hug and hands me a note, folded like the last one.

  “I’ll see you in a few days.”

  “Of course.”

  But I can’t fix this gnawing feeling in me that this is the end of something, that this weekend we were playing house and now we are back to real life, back to New York and ex-boyfriends and snipers.

  I wait until he’s gone to open the note.

  CRAIG

  On the inside, a very small heart.

  Home is where the . . . well, you know.

  LIO

  MICHELLE HOLDS MY HAND LIKE I’M HER MOM IN A supermarket. This would be okay, except Michelle looks old for her age and I look young. So people probably think we’re dating. Ugh.

  We pass the enormous blue crab statue and stand in line to go through the metal detectors so we can get x-rayed and inspected and prodded and studied and excavated and all that. Security takes a million years longer than it used to. I have to take off my hat.

  The TSA guys are all giving me funny looks. Do I really look like a terrorist?

  I guess no one knows what a terrorist looks like anymore.

  Maybe leaving is a mistake. I give Michelle’s hand a quick squeeze. It was more for me than for her, but she clings in a way I didn’t expect.

  She puts her bag on the conveyor belt and steps through the metal detector. I keep watching her until she’s all the way through. When we get to the gate, she sits down and wrings her hands.

  “Are you worried about the flight?” I say. We haven’t flown in so long. But driving from New York to Maryland is, we discovered on the move, sort of a bitch. And not an endearing bitch like Craig.

  She shakes her head.

  My phone buzzes, and I check the number. Jack. I hit ignore. We’re boarding any minute, so I dig a pen out of my pocket and write CALL JACK on the inside of my arm.

  “Look who’s so popular all of a sudden,” Michelle says. She’s still attacking her hand with her other hand.

  I say, “You okay?”

  “I want to get out of here. Like, now. Right now. I want to get the fuck out of Washington, D.C., and back to New York.”

  This is Maryland. “I know.”

  She says, “We haven’t seen Mom together since . . . what, Christmas?”

  “Yeah.”

  Michelle doesn’t say anything else about that, and neither do I. She shivers and pulls her jacket around herself. Why do they make airports so cold?

  I look out the window. It’s already dark, and we won’t land in New York until almost eleven. All the lights outside come from the flashing bulbs on airplane wings. They remind me of the candles we put in the windows during the holidays.

  On the TV mounted to the wall, pretty news reporters are teaching us about Halloween safety without even mentioning there might be a rogue gunman still on the loose when the thirty-first rolls around, and then what are we going to do?

  Every day I think, this is the day they’re going to catch him.

  But maybe they never will. Maybe the shootings will just taper out until there are no more. Like Craig’s animals.

  And we’ll never know, and that will always bother us, but it’ll be better than getting shot, or than living in fear of getting shot. Or will we always worry that one day he’s going to come back? It would be really nice to end this, officially. But I don’t know if real life works that way.

  The more I think about it, the more I think that catching the guy sounds like some fairy tale I should have outgrown a long time ago.

  My father said the two gas station shootings were the sniper saying fuck you to the news reports. Those were why he suggested I disappear for a little while. I don’t think he’s afraid I’m going to get shot, but he’s a little scared I’m going to go crazy from worrying about it all the time. I don’t know why everyone assumes I’m going to go crazy at the drop of a hat. It’s not like I’m in therapy because I had a nervous breakdown over losing a toy. But I guess I haven’t been as zen about the sniper as I would have liked, or expected.

  To be honest, I don’t even know how I feel anymore. Tired. Scared. Tired from being scared. Grateful to be getting away.

  I miss Craig.

  Michelle says, softly, “I had a dream about Theodore last night.”

  I glance at her as the news report suddenly shifts. Someone’s been shot. Michelle says, “Shit.” I turn back and watch too, my fingers snapping shut around hers.

  It was in Arlington, Virginia. That’s really close to D.C., but besides that, all I know is that there’s a huge army cemetery. JFK is there. The woman was an FBI agent, and she’s dead. I hope they bury her there.

  God, what do I care if they bury her there? What will that fix?

  Adelle would say, what are you really thinking?

  Everyone in the terminal seems to have squished closer to each other since the news changed from Halloween to real monsters. One hundred heads cocked toward the screen, two hundred hands clutching a bag or a coat or a boarding pass or another person.

  All because of one woman none of us knew.

  One woman is not very many. Nine dead people, total, is not very many.

  But my stomach hurts so hard.

  Michelle gives my hand a pull. “We’re boarding,” she says. Her voice is shaking. “Come on.”

  I call Craig before takeoff. Even though they haven’t made the announcement to turn off electronics yet, the flight attendant watches me, like she thinks I’m going to try to continue this call all the way to New York.

  He says, “Lio?”

  “Uh-huh.” Can he even hear me? I feel so quiet.

  Michelle reads the crash instructions from the seat pocket. I’m in the window seat. She has some fat man next to her.

  He says, “Lio, is everything okay?”

  “Have you seen the news?”

  I hear the click-whump of his TV. He sighs a little. “Sucks.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

  “It was in Arlington, Lio.”

  “I know . . .”

  “Oh, kid.” He breathes out. I kind of like when he does this. I love Crazy Craig, but I love Responsible Craig too. He says, “Don’t worry, okay? I’m in the basement with Casablanca, about to go searching some more because the sniper is far far far away. Are you okay? You sound way shaken up.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Are you in New York?”

  “No, my plane’s about to take off.”

  “I miss you.”

  Something about the fact that he asked me if I was in New York, and I’m not in New York, and then he says he misses me even though I’m here, I’m just not here with him . . . I think I understand for the first time what it means to be in a relationship.

  “I’ll be home soon,” I say, and then we have to hang up. Closing the phone makes my chest twinge so hard I wince.

  “You okay?” Michelle says.

  “I miss him.”

  She rolls her eyes. “You’ll see him in, like, a minute.”

  “I don’t like leaving him here.”

  She shrugs and turns a page in her magazine. After a minute, she says, “You’re the one always saying the chances are miniscule.”

  And for the first time in my life, words come out of my mouth before I can agonize over them. Before I even hear them at all.

  I say, “But this is Craig.”

  I feel something turning in my head like clockwork.

  Craig is just one person. The chances that he will get shot are the same as anyone else’s.

  The hole in the world when he’s gone would be the same size as the FBI agent’s.

  Except . . .

  It wouldn’t be.

  To me.

  I have no way to measure these holes.

  Click.

  Numbers don’t matter.

  Because what if loss is im
measurable? What if all we can do is call a loss a loss?

  What if the FBI agent is worth as much as Craig? What if my brother is worth as much as September 11th?

  There is no way to measure these holes.

  One dead person today is one person who is dead, one whole person who is not around anymore, and that’s horrible. And now, nine dead people are dead forever and ever. That isn’t less than September 11th. It can’t be. Because how could you ever figure out how many people it takes to equal one person?

  Nine people and three thousand people and one hundred eighty-nine people are all numbers that shouldn’t have happened. But they’re not enough to measure a tragedy. We’re not just numbers. Someone loves us.

  I want to get off this plane, but it’s taking off. I’m breathing too hard. I haven’t been on a plane in three years.

  “Hey.” Michelle squeezes my hand. “You’re okay.”

  Did planes always feel like roller coasters? I don’t want to crash I don’t want to crash. I don’t want to die.

  CRAIG

  CRAIGER—

  At Mom’s apartment now. It’s small and smells like cats, a smell I have become familiar with recently.

  The weird thing is, Mom doesn’t have any cats.

  She’s about the same. DEAD BROTHER came up in conversation and she so obviously danced around him, it was pathetic. The sick thing is that I think she’s doing it for me. If it were too painful for her to talk about, that would be one thing. But it’s as if she doesn’t know I’ve been dealing with this for seven years. Shockingly, my life continued when she (and the kid himself, too) wasn’t here. Whatever.

  Any new animals?

  Say hi to Todd for me. Maybe throw in something about how I make you deliriously happy and there’s no reason for him to hate me. I dunno, up to you.

  Just wanted to let you know I got in all right. And also that my chest hurts as if I MAY BE DYING, because I accidentally left my heart on your kitchen counter. I hate when that happens.

  Li

  _________________________

  C—

  Craaaaaigor. My school’s having an open house on Saturday. I guess they want to prove to our parents that we’re not being electroshocked. Come?

  Love,

  C

  My inbox smells like conflicting feelings and guilt.

  Also, why does Lio spell “Craiger” with an -er and Cody spell it with an -or? That’s weird.

  The fact is, I’m going through all our conversations again and again, and I’m pretty sure that Lio and I never made anything official before he left. I wish we had.

  “Mom?” I say.

  She’s sewing. She only sews when she’s stressed. She’s shoving her needle through the cross-stitching fabric like she’s trying to kill it.

  She’s watching the news, even though it’s Wednesday and no one’s been shot since Monday. I told Lio this was a really shitty week to choose to leave, considering the lack of death, so much lack that my parents are actually considering sending me back to school, and he IMed me back with a laugh I could read—im not here to escape anything. I’m not fooled, exactly, but I like that he thinks that.

  But then I start worrying. If he’s just there to hide for a little while, that means he’s planning to come home. But if he’s just there for no reason then what’s going to pull him back?

  I know this is stupid.

  I think this is stupid.

  The news is playing the same footage, showing the same stills of the same places where the same people were shot. They’ve started pulling over and searching every white van that drives by. That’s insane. I’m glad we don’t have a white van.

  Mom says, “What is it, honey?”

  I squirm. She doesn’t use nicknames or pet names for me very often. But I guess she must know them, so maybe I should ask her how to spell Craiger. Craigor. Craiger. Oh, God, is this a metaphor? Or or or er er er.

  I say, “Cody’s school is having an open house. I talked to his mom and she says she’ll drive me up to see him.”

  Mom studies me. “Really?”

  I don’t know why I would joke about this. “Yeah. I could stay overnight in the guest dorms—they have guest dorms or something, Mrs. Carter said—and then come home on Sunday.”

  Mom says, “Craig. I know you miss Cody, but do you really think going to visit him is the best idea?”

  “He’s not going to hurt me or anything.”

  “But, Craig, you had something special with him. And I know that . . . when he had to go away, it was a very hard time for you. You seem so happy now that you’ve made a new friend. I don’t want you to get bogged down in those old feelings.”

  I don’t know how she could figure all that out without realizing how bogged down I still am in those old feelings.

  So I say, “Maybe I could get closure, Mom.”

  “Does Lio know about this?”

  I shake my head.

  She pauses, because she’s waiting for me to say that I’ll ask him before I go.

  I don’t say anything.

  She says, “You’ll miss karate if you’re gone this weekend.”

  “I really don’t care.”

  She glances at the TV. “Where’s this school?”

  “Pennsylvania.”

  “Ugh. Maybe it would be nice to get you out of town for a few days.”

  Lio—

  I had the sudden urge to call you Liodore. Either I’m a freak who spends too much time on IM or all that talk about DEAD BROTHER (am I allowed to use the caps? Are those reserved to you?) got to my head.

  I hope you’re having a good time. You should go to one of New York’s thriving gay clubs. Or something. Don’t kiss any hot men. Though I doubt you could reach them. Maybe on your tiptoes. Do you dance on your tiptoes? Could you? It sounds amazing.

  Craiger

  C—

  I’ll be there.

  Love,

  Craigor

  I really am not planning to do anything with Cody. I’m not, and still it feels like I’m cheating on Lio. On the drive up to Pennsylvania, Paul Simon on the radio, Cody’s mom singing softly along while she twists her wedding ring, I feel like I’m cheating. Does motivation matter for cheating? Because this has nothing to do with Lio. I love Lio. But I love Cody, too.

  And a few days ago, that was okay with me and okay with Lio, but a few days ago, I wasn’t on my way to Cody’s school. And I’m not so dumb that I don’t know this changes things.

  I say, “Am I old enough to fall in love?” Didn’t Lio ask me this same question?

  Mrs. Carter looks at me. “Oh, honey, you’re old enough as soon as you realize there are other people in the world.”

  And she means this as a reassurance, I know it, and I can tell by her hand on the back of my neck, but, oh, God. I don’t know if I’m there. I don’t know. I don’t know.

  And she’s only telling me that because I guess she still thinks Cody and I are together.

  And Lio and I never officially got together. And Cody and I never officially broke up.

  Christ.

  It’s just like Cody said. My heart is alive my heart is alive my heart is alive. I have Lio’s heart. Fuck. What am I going to do with it?

  What’s love when you’re too fucked up to feel it right?

  I think it’s a weapon.

  Mrs. Carter says, “I wonder what these times do to you boys. I wonder so much.”

  We wait in the lobby while the lady at the desk calls Cody’s room. This place looks like a hospital or a condominium.

  I bounce from foot to foot.

  And the doors to the elevator open and there he is. His hair’s a little longer, his clothes a little less wrinkled, his eyes a little more tired than I’ve ever seen. I remind myself he’s on medication, and maybe he’s not himself. Maybe he’s a lot different now.

  Maybe he has a new boyfriend.

  And he whispers, “Craig,” and he ignores his mom and runs to me and pulls me in a
nd hugs me so tightly.

  He smells like Cody. Oh, my God, I missed him so much. He smells like home and like my heart and I want my heart back but I can’t bear to take it from him because I think that he needs it and I think I am so warm in his arms right this second, and I hold my breath and I force myself to stop feeling like a murderer.

  LIO

  FIVE DAYS IN MOM’S APARTMENT IS ENOUGH TO convince Michelle that she never wants to leave, and enough to convince me that I’d be completely fine with never seeing New York or my mother again. There’s nothing like an old home to show you how everything has changed.

  Adelle roped me into doing a phone thing on Wednesday. I ask her why we never talk about the day my mom left. She asks if it’s something I need to talk about.

  Then I tell her about the day my mom left. I cry a little. Then I go into the kitchen for dinner, and Michelle is wearing a pair of Mom’s earrings.

  See, it’s things like that.

  I IM Jack and tell him I’m feeling crappy, and he tells me exactly the same thing Craig did, though I think Craig was joking: go out have fun get wasted

  All right. Fine.

  “I’m going out,” I tell Michelle. She’s making hot chocolate at the stove, which is so domestic it makes me want to puke.

  “Where?”

  “Just out.”

  “Be back by midnight.”

  What the fuck? “I’m going out!” I call to Mom, and I slam the door before I hear her answer. That’s more than she did for us.

  God, why am I here?

  I meet up with some old friends of mine—Shawn and Tino, two turbo-gays I’ve known since seventh grade—and we meet in the park close to Vivo, this new club they insist drives Posh straight into the ground. Shawn has half a bottle of Jack Daniel’s he stole from his father, and I take a small swallow every time it comes my way, which is many, many, many times. It tastes like the time my Mom sprayed Lysol on my sandwich when she was cleaning. Minus the sandwich. After a while, my mouth gets numb enough that I don’t care.

  My phone buzzes. I answer. It’s Craig.