“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“It was about me,” Matt said, sipping the last of his juice box.
“He didn’t start it,” Sully felt the need to defend his friend. “He just made a comment.”
“One of you better tell me,” Matt said.
Sully sighed. He looked at Chris. Chris made a motion and Sully said, “I just... He asked what was wrong with you? He noticed you were bad off. So I told him you... weren’t yourself and all. And he just said something...” Sully tried to make it funny. God he wished he was with Balliol right now. “He said something sort of... Balliolesque!”
“He said it was your fault that Andy died!” Chris snapped.
“Chris!” For the first time Sullivan Reardon was angry at him. Why couldn’t he shut up sometimes! What good was saying that doing anyone? Look at the pain in Matt’s face.
“It wasn’t like that,” Sullivan said, flashing an angry look at Chris, who winced this time. “He just.. I told him that you felt like it was your fault and he said that it was true that Dave came for you because of what you’d said.”
Sully couldn’t make it sound good, “That you had some part in it.”
Matt gasped a little, then Sully said, “But no one’s saying that what happened is your fault. Everyone’s saying that Dave is responsible for his own actions. And some people,” he said looking at Chris, “should shut their mouths. I have to go now,” he added taking his tray with him as he left the table.
Chris waited a few moments because he wouldn’t make a scene, he waited until Sully was leaving the cafeteria and then he said, “Sully!”
Sully wheeled on him: “Why did you do that? Why do you always have to get on your high horse and do that? Matt didn’t have to hear that, and I didn’t have to backpedal and explain everything. Just like you didn’t have to jump all over Balliol this morning just because you heard something you didn’t like.”
“I’m sorry,” Chris said, looking pitiful and hurt. “I didn’t know. I didn’t—”
“You didn’t listen,” Sully snapped. Then he turned around and walked away..
Everything was wrong right now. Everything. He has seen the look on Matt’s face when he’d shouted, “He said it’s your fault Andy died...” He could still hear his own voice shouting that.
Everything was reeling for him. Sully had never shouted at him. People didn’t shout at him. He didn’t make mistakes, not usually. He felt so bad. He wanted to cry. Literally wanted to cry.
“I should go back in there,” Chris said to himself as some little freshman was walking down the hall. “I need to go back in there and be with Matt.”
But he knew he’d already fucked it up.
Sully was glad his mother wasn’t home when Chris came over because it meant he didn’t have to let him in. He could sit in his room with his glasses on, the ones he only wore when writing, and look down at him. Chris rang the doorbell one more time and pivoted on one leg waiting for Sully to come down before he jammed his hands into his jacket pockets.
Chris Powers filled him with such a riot of feelings. He was so angry at what he’d done today as well as other things that Sully had never allowed himself to be angry about until now. But it was Chris Powers down there. The Chris Powers who once had the power to melt him with a single gaze. Who still did if Sullivan was honest. Chris Powers the star of the school who looked so good in a uniform and who he had almost made cry today What was wrong with him? As he’d heaped it on Chris that was the wonderful thing, the look on Chris’s face, how he was hurting him, how he was hurting him now. God, Sully, what’s wrong with you? Why does it feel good and horrible to hurt him, like worrying a wisdom tooth? Chris made him so mad. But Chris made him feel like no one else did. But Chris looked so good down there, with those sideburns, in those jeans, and Chris was his to look at all he wanted, and to touch. To touch and to be touched, Chris’s body against him, his legs twined with his, Chris the close and constant friend. Chris who had chosen him out of everyone. All of these emotions, all the urges pulsed through him as he went downstairs and let Chris in.
Chris stood looking at him, flashing like a chameleon though it was just Chris. Chris the jock, Chris the Adonis, Chris his lover, the mouth that went to his, the legs that locked with his, Chris his friend, his other best friend.
“I’m sorry,” Chris told him. “I know. I get carried away sometimes.”
“I get carried away too,” Sully said. Sully had been drunk on hurting Chris. He’d been in love with the power over him, the tears that had sprung up in his eyes. God, how could he do that to Chris? How could he? He pulled him by his wrist inside the house and closed the door.
“Chris, Balliol is my friend. You have to understand that. He’s my best friend in the world.”
“What am I?”
“You’re my boyfriend,” he told him, but it wasn’t tender. He was sharp about it.
“You and Balliol don’t intersect. Are you supposed to be the only friend I have?”
“No.”
“Or maybe I can only borrow your friends, be friends with your friends. You said something once that almost separated me from my best friend. I almost lost Balliol. The one thing that shoot out did was bring us back together. I don’t want you starting anything with him. I’m serious, Chris.”
Chris didn’t say anything.
“How do you think it makes me feel when my best friend and my boyfriend hate each other, when you say things about him?”
“I’ll bet he says things about me.”
“I’ll bet he does too,” Sully said. “But not around me. I wish you—I wish—”
Sully let out a breath and put his fingertips to his head.
“It just hurts my head when you do that, Chris. All right?”
Chris nodded.
They were silent awhile.
“This is our first fight,” Chris said.
“I know,” Sully said.
“That makes us a couple.”
“I think we’ve been a couple for some time.”
“I never thought about it though,” Chris said.
“Does it freak you out?”
“A little,” Chris admitted. “I didn’t know where we stood until just now. And... I think you’re right. I think I am jealous of Balliol.”
“I would never do the stuff we do with Balliol. Plus, Balliol would kick my ass if I even suggested it.”
“Have you told him?”
“Christ, no!”
“Do you think we should chill out?” Chris said. “On the sex stuff.”
“Do you want to?”
“What do you think about it?” Chris asked.
“We could go around this pole all day and get nowhere.”
“But I want to know how you feel about it.”
“I don’t think about it,” Sully said.
“Oh,” Chris said. “I do. Just recently.”
Sully cocked his head and looked at Chris. He put his hands on Chris’s face. He hadn’t shaved. He kissed his mouth. It was wet. Chris kissed him back a little. Sully pulled away, still holding his face in his hands, wanting him right now, wondering when Mom would be home.
“Don’t think,” Sully told him, and kissed him again.
Father Jim kept an office at the end of the main hall. It was always open and students, Mason had never been one of them, came and hung around him. Usually they were the campus ministry staff. They ate his candy and listened to his jokes. Kids came with questions, and he gave them answers.
Matt Mercurio leaned on Father Jim’s door and said, “Do you have a minute?”
Father Jim looked at the other boys and then said, “I think I need to talk to Matt.”
“How are you?” the priest said, “after everything?”
“It doesn’t hurt much. Anymore. I think I need to confess.”
“All right. Close the door.” He reached for his stole.
“Do we have to have a grille or a net or something like that?” Matt asked him.
“No, that’s not necessary,” the priest smiled and crossed one leg over the other as he fit his stole over his shoulders.
“In the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
“Amen,” Matt said.
“Do I need to tell you how long it’s been since my last confession and stuff like that?”
“Well, you could. Maybe you should.”
“I think right before I got confirmed. So... four years ago.”
“It’s been awhile.”
Matt shrugged. The priest grinned indulgently.
“So, why are you here now? What do you need to talk about? You know God just wants to hear you talk, get what’s on your chest off, clear you up.”
Matt nodded.
“God’s already forgiven you. You just have to accept that forgiveness.”
“I was mean to Dave Riley,” Matt said. That was the most important thing. There were other things he did that he knew were sins, but he wasn’t going to give them up. They weren’t the issue right now, and he really didn’t think God cared too much about them. This was different, though.
“I was mean to Dave Riley, and I think it was because I was mean that he did what he did, and killed Andy Rathko.”
The priest just looked at him.
“What I’m saying,” Matt told him, “is that if I had been better, then maybe someone would be alive now. Maybe some of us wouldn’t have gotten hurt. I’m saying that I got what I deserved when I got shot in the arm. If he’d been a little closer it would have been the heart. It was right for me. It should have been me instead of Andy.”
“Don’t say that,” Father Jim told him.
“But it’s true.”
“Of course it isn’t,” the priest told him. “Look, Dave Riley had problems, and none of us can be blamed for them. Not even him. Evil’s in the world and sometimes things happen. You see?”
For the first time Matt looked at the priest and thought, I don’t believe you.
“But evil’s in me,” Matt said. “I feel it.”
“That’s concupiscence. Remember sophomore year, sacrament class? Our tendency to sin, Original Sin. That’s what Jesus is all about, and what the sacraments are about.”
“Then can you take it out of me?”
“Only God can do that. I can absolve you. For God.”
Matt shook his head.
“No.”
“What?”
“I don’t want to be absolved,” he said. “I don’t want it... cleaned up and cleared up. I want to…” Matt shook his hands, and then pounded his chest. “I want to own up to it.”
“But you didn’t do anything.”
“Yes I did! I did. I hit. I called him—names,” Matt finished lamely, not able to repeat what he’s said to a priest.
“I treated him like trash. Don’t tell me I didn’t do anything!”
Father Jim was silent for a moment, debating what to say next, and finally he settled on: “Well, then I’ll give you a penance.”
“All right!” Matt’s voice was weary.
“Be kind to one person everyday.”
“And?”
“There has to be an and?”
“Yes,” Matt said desperately.
Father Jim blew out his cheeks and then said, “Do you want an old fashion penance?”
“Is there anything wrong with an old fashioned penance?”
“Go to the chapel everyday, and just pray an Our Father and a Hail Mary. You know the Hail Mary, right?”
“Yeah,” but Matt realized then that he didn’t.
“And resolve in your heart to do better. You’re a good person, Matt.”
The priest grabbed his shoulder. He traced the cross over him, “May God bless and restore you in the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
Matt shook hands with the priest and then headed out of his room down the hall.
He felt as if absolutely nothing had been accomplished.
Balliol did not come to Sully’s house often. He didn’t come, because Tina Reardon didn’t like him and he didn’t like her. He wasn’t sure which came first, but both were there, so what did it matter?
Sullivan came back to the large house on Metcalf Avenue. He’d forgotten the huge foyer you entered, with the portrait of Balliol’s mother over the fireplace, the family paintings that lined the walls and marched up the winding stair to the second level of the house. It was like a museum except that there was something casual about the Balliols’ place. It wasn’t dirty. It wasn’t unkempt and a great deal of the house was empty. But you got the feeling that you could slide down the polished oak banisters unpunished and, in fact, Sully had.
They were eating in the solarium and Sully said, “I forget that you’re Black.”
“How do you do that?”
Sully gestured all around the large room, the sun was coming through the skylight.
“Black people have money too, Sullivan,” Balliol told him.
“Yes,” Sully allowed. “But... I always thought you were, I don’t know, different Black people, a different type of a Black person.”
“I am. I’m a Black person with a Scottish father who has a fortune and an English mother who grew up in Manchester. You’re going to ask something white and silly, aren’t you?”
Sully pursed his lips and said, “I just always thought that it didn’t matter to you, being Black. that you wouldn’t think of me as a white person. That white guy.”
“But you are a white person, Sully. Nothing wrong with it.”
“But—”
“What the hell are you getting at already?” Balliol took out a cigarette. “You’re being odd and roundabout.”
“Do you like Mason better than me because he’s Black?”
“What?”
“I said—”
“I know what you said,” Balliol told him. “But why would you say it?”
“Because it’s true. Because Addison said—”
“Oh, Jesus!”
“Addison said that Black people like to be around other Black people, and... you and Mason are really good friends. You’re best friends with him. In the time I was gone you two became best friends.”
Balliol considered this.
“Well, that’s true enough,” he said at last. “And probably for the reason you said. Mason’s not just another Black person; he’s the only other Black person in this school somewhat like me, who has my life. Who lives in a world where everyone is white and.… I’ll admit, likes it.
“Sully, you don’t understand. If I do go out in jeans and a tee shirt on the bus and leave the credit cards at home, I meet all of these other Black people I don’t have a thing in common with, and they talk to me about people like us, and they talk to me about white people. They talk... the way they talk, they’re always second or third best and white people—you people—are always something other... Usually something better. To me, they’re just part of my world. I honestly don’t think I’d know what to do if I lived in a world with nothing but Black people. I have this sort of white life, and I like it. And Mason’s the only other person I know in that position.”
He looked at Sully, “But that doesn’t mean that you’re second place. It just means you’re not my only friend anymore. There are things that Mason knows... That I could talk to him about that I couldn’t talk to you about.”
“You could,” Sully said. He hated the way he sounded as soon as he’d said that.
“I could,” Balliol acknowledged. “And I probably have, but I’d have to explain them and with Mason I don’t even have to explain. He just knows. It’s good to have someone who just knows. The same way Chris is like you.”
“What?”
“He is,” Balliol said. “He is your other best friend. He shares something with you that I can’t. I don’t know what it is, but you two do.”
Suddenly Sully wanted to tell him everything. He wanted Balliol to know.
If he could find the words. If he could shape the sentences. If there wasn’t this gulf between what was happening with him and Chris, and his voice and the rest of his waking world.
Balliol had a sober look on his face when he asked, “Did you and Chris patch stuff up?”
“Yeah,” Sully said with a smile. “He came over and then we talked a little. I told him he needed to stop starting stuff with you—”
“Thank you.”
“Since you stopped talking about him.”
“Well, not really.”
“But at least not around me. I think you guys would like each other if you got to know him.”
Balliol shook his head, “I doubt it.” He put the thought away and went on with a sober look on his face.
“You look preoccupied,” Sully said.
“Well that’s not a bad word for it,” Balliol told him. “Preoccupied is, in fact, a very good word for it. Would you believe for one of the first times in my life I can’t think straight? I’ve thought of being a Hilton and when school’s all over just throwing up my hands and saying fuck it, spending lots of money, doing crazy things.”
“You could.”
“Me and Mason have already discussed it.”
“You’re running off with Mason?”
“Well, I could do that,” Balliol said reflexively, “but I was really thinking because Mason’s rich.”
“He is?” Then, “Well, I guess he is.”