chapter eleven (part one): UNDER WATER
“GUYS, CAN I SAY SOMETHING?”
April had sneaked up on them along with Easter and Addison’s driver’s license. The sun even penetrated the cafeteria through the long ground level windows. Usually it was just fluorescent light in here, but now they could see the verdant evergreen bushes, the pea green leaves coming out on the trees. Sully was speaking, Mason turned from his contemplation of the trees and its accompanying desire to cut school and run away.
“Say away,” said Mason.
They were not alone. This was a whole table of old friends, loosely connected clans. But this end of the table had belonged, for some time to Mason and Tommy and Addison and now Balliol and Sullivan Reardon.
“I was really down a few nights ago, and you all were there for me.”
They looked at each other. Addison was making room for Seth to sit between him and Corey and Chuck.
“No, I mean it,” Sully went on. “I was in such a bad place and... Especially you, Tommy. Thank you.”
Tommy beamed at him. The guy was innocence all over. “You’re welcome, Sully. That’s what friends are for.”
Sully no longer held center stage at that corner of the table. They all broke off into their individual conversations and bickerings, moanings about what homework was due, how long Addison had to work at the gas station tonight and what the use of a driver’s license was without a car.
“You can borrow my truck,” Tommy said. “You know that.”
And so with the conversation being scattered, when small things had to be discussed, things you didn’t want everyone to hear or pay attention to, that could be done.
“Tommy, I’m serious,” Sully murmured. “Thank you. No one ever did that for me. I think Balliol would but... I don’t think I give him the chance. I used to think the reason we fell out was because he was insensitive, but I think it’s the opposite. I think he was so sensitive to my... needing to be untouchable. But you don’t seem to care about how proud someone is.”
Tommy blinked.
“I’m not insulting you. That’s a good thing. I mean, you don’t let my embarrassment get in the way of your being a good person.”
“It’s what—”and then Tommy stopped.
“What?” Sully said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything. It was silly.”
Sully gave him a half grin.
“You were going to say, “It’s what Jesus would do.”
Tommy colored.
“You were,” Sully nodded, and played with his empty milk carton. “Well, maybe it is. I hope it is. If that’s really what Jesus would do maybe I could believe in him again.”
“Oh—” Tommy opened his mouth, shut it, and said, “I’m going to stop trying to say all those cliché things like, ‘God really loves you’. Or—”
“Listen,” Sully put a hand out to silence Tommy. “I don’t give a fuck what anyone else says about you, you’re the real deal, Tommy Dwyer. Don’t let them put you down for what you believe. You’re my friend? Well, I’m your friend too.”
Sully put out his hand to Tommy.
Mason and Balliol stopped talking to each other at once, and turned to watch their two friends, and then they pretended they weren’t watching, and looked at each other, watching Sully and Tommy from the corners of their eyes.
Tommy shook Sully’s hand.
“He’s not usually like that,” Balliol said to Mason.
“Like what?”
“Forward,” Balliol explained. “Confident.”
Sully had changed.
On their way out of the cafeteria Matt stopped them. It was a jarring shock even though all he said was hi. Sully had been feeling comfortable for the first time in days, glad to be with friends and healed after his experience with Chris. But he couldn’t stand to see Chris.
“I just hadn’t seen you in a while, Sully,” Matt said. “You know with lunchtime Mass and everything. How are you guys?”
They all said something and Matt said, “Sully, are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
Matt cocked his head and looked genuinely worried. “You sure?”
“Yeah, already.”
“All right…” Matt’s tone was suspicious.
“Balliol, can I talk to you a second.”
Sully looked at Matt and Matt said to him, “No, Sully, it’s not about you.”
Sully colored and Balliol gestured to the others that he’d join them later. Mason was the last to go and Matt said:
“It really isn’t about Sully. Even though I don’t think he’s okay.”
“I think he fell out with Chris.”
“I think so too. Chris won’t talk about it, though.”
“You try to make him?” Balliol was amazed.
“A little,” Matt shrugged. “Sometimes. You know, it’s hard to get stuff out of guys.”
“I gotta question for you?”
“Okay?”
“And you can say no if you want to.”
“See, Matthew, when you give a disclaimer like that it makes me want to say no right away.”
Matt grinned and Balliol said, “It doesn’t involve nudity or sex?”
“Not anymore.”
“What?”
Matt laughed and punched him in the shoulder. “You know how every year at graduation they have that ceremony where the seniors
are supposed to pass their torch to the next class—”
“Ouch, that hurt,” Balliol said, rubbing his shoulder. “Yeah. You’re supposed to get something like... your football, or your sweaty socks—”
“I was going to use my jock strap—”
Balliol raised an eyebrow.
“And then you pick a junior who you give the thing to and tell him how you’re passing the torch,” Matt said.
“Or passing the jock strap. Yeah. It’s kind of corny.”
“Oh,” Matt said in slightly defeated tone.
“What?” Balliol said.
“I was hoping that you would be the junior I passed it on to.”
“What?”
“Yes,” Matt said. “You don’t have to, but—”
“No, no,” Balliol said. “I just... I didn’t expect... We... we haven’t always gotten along and... But... Yes, I’ll be glad to do it.”
Matt’s face lit up.
“Balliol, thanks.”
“Only, Matthew?”
“Yes?”
“When you select the symbol...”
“It won’t be my jockstrap!”
“Thank you so much.”
The pool was beautiful to Sully. No one would understand. Only a swimmer would understand and he didn’t talk to them because they had made it to the teams and he hadn’t. This year he hadn’t bothered to try out. How did you tell people who were in when you were out that you loved this too? How did you hold your head up when you were part of the dork sport? So Sully came to the pool when it was open late in the afternoons now and again to be by himself because no one else wanted to come.
It smelled like chlorine. It smelled like mustiness. The locker rooms especially.
Swimming alone was better than being in any of the school water sports. Sully knew that now, and he knew he really had no business on those teams. He choked up for some reason when he did try outs. He didn’t want to compete. He remembered for just a second Corey Mather’s body, chopping the water with powerful strokes. He was the best swimmer. It was a lie what they said about Black people. What turned into the choppings of a muscled six foot body became gliding, gliding like a fish. He was beautiful in the water. He cut through it like a living knife in butter. Some people were beautiful swimmers that way. Corey had shown up one day while Sully was doing laps in the pool, and Sully hadn’t seen him until he’d come up for air later on, wiping his hair and the water from his face.
“How do you do that?” Corey asked im.
“Do what?
“Cut through water like that? You look like you’re flying.”
Sully didn’t know what to say.
“You’re better than you were at tryouts,” Corey told him. “Maybe you’re better this way. Just you and the water.”
Sully smiled and nodded.
“I feel like I’m flying,” Sully murmured to himself as he ascended the diving board. That should have been his answer to Corey, but as often happened, he found the right response long after the person who was talking to him was gone. The right response always came sooner or later. Usually later.
The water, like liquid, like silk giving way all around him, cloaking him, exposing him, the light on the blue water. Yellow light. Cold light, butter light. The feel of warm wetness from the heated pool. The splash, the drive, the drive, the thoughtlessness of it. Just the being. If he could keep swimming forever and ever he would discover something. He would know something. He would know what scientist in laboratories were trying to discover and what mystics fasted and prayed their whole lives for. If he could keep swimming...
Smelling of chlorine and dripping, he padded into the locker room. The shower water was hissing and then not hissing, and then out of the water came a small body. It was several inches shorter than his. Brown like Mason’s, brown like Corey’s. Or Balliol’s. But smaller and possibly better. Sully admitted that it had to be better. This body was perfectly knit and black hair went all up and down the perfect arms and chest, the sex, the thighs. He was toweling himself and singing and Sully, who had come out of his peaceful and chaste solitude, was tipped over into lust as his head started to throb and his erection violently popped up. The other boy looked up at Sully.
Who is he? Sully’s mind said. Sully didn’t know where his towel was. His Speedo was still on. The boy smiled at him and then, just for a second, looked down. Or was he imagining it. Sully felt like the earth was tipping over. His eyes rolled back and stung. He’d never felt this disconcerted, like he’d become the chlorine water. It seemed, though the boy looked at him for a second, that the look kept going, that he was the naked one and the boy was pretty. He was very, very pretty, but when he smiled there was something wrong in it... The smile would not stop. The smile would not stop suggesting.
Then it was over. Sully was back in the world again. He shook himself, got his towel and went to the showers to rinse off. He wouldn’t take off his Speedo and shower completely nude. He’d just rinse off and go. He had to go. He had to go quickly.
“Oh, you mean Justin Reily,” Balliol said.
Mason, flopping down on the bed with last year’s yearbook and a large white one no one had ever seen added, “and generally referred to as Sweet Thang.”
“Why do you call him sweet thing?” Sully asked clinically.
Mason looked dead at him and said, “Because he’s the gayest thing at Saint Vitus. And given that we go to an all boy’s Catholic high school...”
“That’s pretty damn gay,” Balliol concluded.
Mason opened the white yearbook.
“I’ve never seen that one,” Sully said.
“It’s not out yet. It’s not even finished. It’s a dummy yearbook. Andy Rathko was on yearbook staff and he let me borrow it.”
Mason never got nervous talking about Andy. He always talked about dead people as if they’d just moved away which, Sully supposed, they had.
“Now, let’s see,” Mason murmured, opening the yearbook. “This will have the most recent information.... Um... Justin, Justin. Justin Reily. No relation to Dave Riley.”
“I guessed that.”
“You can never tell,” Mason said. “Drama club… Well, we guessed that. Stage Crew. Newspaper. Get out! The Big Brother program.”
“That’s right,” Sully said. “Next year we can be Big Brothers!”
“Fuck that,” Balliol dismissed it.
“I think we should.”
“I think we’ll get back to you on that one,” Balliol told him.
Sully leaned back on the wall and shrugged.
“Big Brother program,” Mason murmured. “Can you imagine who Justin Reily’s little brother would have to be?”
Balliol assumed: “The gayest kid in the freshman class? And I don’t pay attention to the freshman class, so I don’t know who that could be.”
“I think Addison used to do a routine of Justin.”
“I love Addison,” Balliol said, stiffening suddenly. “But not his routines. Every time someone tries to impersonate one particular gay person they do this long lisping cliché, and I don’t know any gay people, so I can’t say. But it seems wrong to lampoon a group of people just because you don’t get them. Or because they scare you. Which is is probably more the truth than anything.”