High School — The Summer Before Senior Year
Jason’s hair fell around him in clumps as I moved the clippers over his scalp. His brown hair was so soft, it could have been from a rabbit or some other small, quivering animal. It almost made me regret shaving it off.
Jason had walked into my trailer that morning with Manson and Vincent in tow, looking as if he’d arrived for his own execution. He had, in a way. The Jason Roth who existed before today — the made-up version, the polite, straight, God-fearing boy he’d been for his parents — was dead.
I’d helped kill him. Today was our method of hiding the corpse.
Turning off the clippers, I tossed them onto the kitchen counter. The trailer was hot as balls even with all the windows open, so I was walking around in my boxers and nothing else. Manson was mixing bleach powder and developer in a bowl, while Vincent was preoccupied sniffing the bright blue hair dye Jason brought with him.
“Smells like Jolly Ranchers,” he said, frowning at the bottle before sniffing it again. He was too high to function, as usual, but I loved him for it. That scatter-brained clown could actually make me laugh sometimes, and that was saying something.
“Try not to inhale this,” Manson said. He used his gloved hands to smear the bleach over Jason’s head. Jason sat there silently, although his leg began to bounce impatiently after a couple minutes.
“Is it supposed to burn?” he said.
“Yep. It’s going to itch like hell too, but don’t touch it.”
He didn’t have much hair left, so the bleach didn’t take long to work. He sat there shirtless, his chest freshly covered with the lines of an unfinished tattoo. I’d hooked him up with someone willing to do it, considering he wouldn’t turn eighteen for another few weeks and most reputable shops would turn him away. But he hadn’t wanted to wait, and I didn’t blame him.
He’d already waited long enough.
“Do you have any beer?” he said as Manson finished up and dropped the bowl of bleach into the pile of dirty dishes in the sink. I wasn’t a messy person, but I fucking hated doing dishes. With my Pops dead and gone, I really couldn’t be bothered. Now that I no longer had to worry about fighting someone about it, I’d let the dishes overflow if I goddamn felt like it.
“Fresh out,” I said.
What I didn’t mention was that “fresh out” included everything. Beer, food — hell, even toilet paper was pretty much gone. My income from working at the tire shop barely covered bills, even in this shithole trailer park. Paying to cremate my father had been a complete waste of the very little money I had left, but Mom had insisted she wanted the ashes. She was getting so much worse living on her own, with no one to look after her. The little affection I had left for her demanded that I at least give her a proper chance to mourn her shitstain of a husband.
But I wasn’t about to bring all that up and have the boys feeling sorry for me.
Then again, maybe it would be better if I did. Because Jason was looking at his own future, and he needed to at least know the truth.
Being true to yourself was all well and good, but there were consequences. Heavy ones. That was why he’d shown up here, looking like he was about to die.
His parents didn’t accept him, and they wouldn’t. They’d given him an ultimatum: give up dating Vincent or get out. Adhere to their rules, repent for his “sins,” and pray to be forgiven. They’d given him pamphlets for conversion therapists, as if he was hooked on drugs and they were trying to get him into rehab. They told him they loved him, and in the same breath, called him disgusting.
Never in my life would I have thought I’d advise someone to keep their head down, but I’d told Jason to do exactly that. He was a smart kid, he had a future, he had potential. He could get somewhere in his life. He had a chance.
But he was giving it up. For us. For Vincent. For himself. He was brave as fuck and foolish as hell. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cheer him on or tell him to get it together, but I didn’t have a leg to stand on. The things I’d give up for Vincent and Manson included my life, so who was I to tell him that he should keep trying to placate his parents?
“Sounds like we need a beer run, then,” Manson said, clapping Vincent’s shoulder. “Come on, let’s go to the gas station. I’ve got my fake with me. Rinse that bleach out in a couple minutes.”
Vincent lurched to his feet, leaving the blue dye on the counter and leaning down to give Jason a kiss before he and Manson left.
Jason’s hands were clasped in his lap, his leg still jiggling rapidly. He stared at a spot on the wall without blinking, his jaw working as if he were chewing on his own anxiety.
“Where do your parents think you are today?” I said.
“They don’t know,” he said. “I just left. Didn’t tell them anything. I packed a bag.” He swallowed, reaching a hand up to scratch his head before abruptly remembering he wasn’t supposed to touch. “I figure when I go back like this…that’s it. So I already got what I needed. Packed up everything that’s mine. I have most of the receipts so they can’t say I stole shit.”
He rattled off his plan like it was nothing out of the ordinary. He was a smart kid, far smarter than I could ever hope to be. He thought things through, but that didn’t mean his thought process was flawless. He was scared, but he was angry too. Fury gave him courage, but it also made him reckless.
The desire to protect him made me reckless too. He was too good, too pure. He didn’t deserve this shit; he didn’t deserve the hateful bigoted vitriol the world was going to throw his way.
“You scared?” I said. The way he was rubbing his palms together made it obvious. It was moments like this that made me wish I was capable of being comforting. I wanted to say something gentle, something that would help. But I had nothing.
He nodded quickly. “Yeah, I’m…” He twitched, sucking in a deep breath. “I’m fine. I talked to Vincent’s parents. They’ll let me stay with them. They were so damn nice…” His fingers tightened on his lap. “I’m going to pay them. They already don’t have much room.”
If I could have, I would have offered to let him stay here with me. But I wasn’t going to be able to hold on to this place for much longer. I was barely scraping by with payments as it was. Within a few months, I’d have nowhere to go either.
Jason flinched, pulling his cell out of his pocket. The incoming call was from his mom, and he stared at it for several long seconds before he sent the call to voicemail.
“Fuck ‘em,” I said. “You know what you want, and it’s none of their goddamn business. Let them fuss over it if they want. They can’t control your whole life.”
Empty words. Food and shelter, when leveraged, could absolutely give his parents control. But by the look on his face, I didn’t think he cared anymore. There was fear in his eyes but not in his voice.
“Fuck ‘em,” he murmured, scratching his cheek because he couldn’t scratch his scalp. He bowed his head, glancing at his watch as he said, “I think I need to wash this bleach out.”
“I got you.” The sink was too full and the bathroom only had a standing shower, so I led him outside. The lot was all dirt, a few crunchy weeds sprung up here and there. The scent of cigarettes and bacon fat wafted from the neighbor’s place as I turned on the spigot, then picked up the hose and urged Jason closer. “Bend over, close your eyes.”
He squatted down, squeezing his eyes shut and bending his head forward. Pouring water over his head, I scrubbed his scalp with my hand as I washed the bleach away. It ran into the dirt, muddy as it pooled around his shoes.
“Don’t be afraid of them,” I said. “This is your life. Your choices. This is you.” I rubbed some crusted bleach off his neck and paused, my fingers splayed over his skin. He didn’t move; he stayed exactly as he was with his head bowed.
When Pops died — it had been three months already, holy shit — I hadn’t grieved for him. There had been no sadness when I woke up one morning and found him dead in the shower, killed almost instantly by a heart attack. If anything, it was a relief to have him gone. Even though it left me in an impossible position trying to afford our bills, I didn’t care.
But doing this, helping Jason crack open the shell he’d lived in for so long, felt like a process of mourning. It was full of sadness for who he’d been, while clinging to hope for what he could be. It was a death, but it was a rebirth too.
His experiences were so different from my own. His upbringing had been gentle. It almost made what his parents were doing even worse. At least with Pops, he’d always been an asshole. I knew what to expect from him. My father had operated on the assumption that he could control people through fear and intimidation, so when I stopped being afraid of him, there really wasn’t much he could do. When I got strong enough to fight back, to hurt him back, things mellowed out around here.
None of that mattered anymore. With my father dead, my ties to my family were all but severed. The only one who remained, the only one who mattered, was Benji. But he wouldn’t be out of prison for years.
As I turned off the hose, I noticed movement beneath the trailer. A young cat, no more than six months old, watched me from the shadows. She meowed, sauntering closer when she recognized me.
“No, no, get out of here.” I snapped my fingers and flicked my hand at her, trying to discourage her. But she trusted me; I’d fed her and her littermates more than enough times for her to know that I was a safe person.
But it wasn’t safe for her here.
“Get!” I raised my voice, stomping my foot toward her and slapping my hand on the side of the trailer. It was sufficient to send her scrambling, tail puffed up as she fled.
“I thought you liked those cats,” Jason said.
“I do. But there’s an old man a couple trailers down that tries to shoot the strays that come through. He thinks it’s funny.” There was a cat I’d trapped and taken to the vet a couple weeks ago that had multiple BBs lodged in him. Seeing it made me sick. I’d happily beat that old man’s lights out if it wouldn’t send me to prison. But I was on my last strike with the cops around here as it was. One little peep out of me and they’d gladly lock me away. “I gotta scare ‘em. I hate to do it, but it’s not safe for them here.”
I’d never understood why some people had such a loathing for cats. There were dozens of strays who made their home around the trailer park, living off scraps and sheltering in discarded trash. Cats were moody, mischievous, independent little creatures, and humans tended to like animals that fawned over them. They tended to like people who did that too. The moment a creature wasn’t instantly submissive, obedient, and compliant, humans called it a “problem.”
“You’re just trying to protect them,” Jason said. “I get it. If they could understand…they’d be glad.”
He stood up, staring at his warped reflection in the trailer’s windowpane. His short hair was now a pale yellow-blond. He ran his fingers over it, touching it lightly, uncertain.
I hoped he understood that I was trying to protect him too. Because I’d seen the cruelty, I’d felt the pain. Every day, I got up and told myself that it was worth it to fight. To survive. To raise a proverbial middle finger to the world and say, “You haven’t fucking killed me yet.”
He’d need to be strong enough to do that. Looking at him now, at the hardness in those blue eyes, I knew that he was. He was strong. He’d survive.
But damn, I wished he didn’t have to do all of that.
Where the hell was there room for the soft boys of the world? Where was there safety for gentleness? Why did we all need to become warriors, to be soldiers, when we were still barely more than kids.
We had nothing but each other. And maybe we could make our own space for gentleness, maybe we’d have to fight every day and we’d never know what “safe” meant. But we had each other.
I slung my arm around his shoulders, directing him away from his reflection and back inside. “Let’s get that dye on you, kid. Come on.”
