Page 59 of The Sun
“Okay?” I said, letting him know I was still there.
“His brother told his friends. The kid doesn’t know my name, so it’s just going around that Travis is gay.” Brandon’s jaw ticced, and his nostrils flared. “Mussaffer was talking about it after church, all the guys from the team were laughing, saying they were gonna beat his ass.”
The only sound was the hum of the tires over the pavement. I didn’t know what to say.
“They were calling him a fag and all kinds of shit.” He choked on the words, then took a hard left onto the highway that ran alongside the beach.
My stomach sank as I recalled a headline from the news a few weeks prior where a guy in Birmingham had nearly been beaten to death after he left a gay club. The guys who jumped him didn’t even know him. As much as I wanted to believe the kids I went to school with wouldn’t be so cruel, I couldn’t. Fear and hate do a lot of crazy things to people.
“Did you tell Travis they know?” I asked.
“Yeah. Yeah. He said he’s not worried.”
“You don’t think he’d ever tell?”
“No.” Brandon shook his head. “That’d be admitting he’s gay, wouldn’t it? And that wouldn’t be safe. Not here.”
I felt helpless, and I hated it. Brandon was a good person, but for a gay teen in small-town Alabama, it didn’t matter how good you were. And that broke my heart.
We parked by the skeleton of the pavilion. The headlights shined over the dunes, attracting gnats and moths while the engine idled. Brandon sat, gripping the steering wheel and staring through the windshield while I simply watched him.
Momma always said life breaks everyone, but watching Brandon, I thought maybe it wasn’t life but hate that broke people.
I placed my hand on his shoulder in a silentI’m here.
“I need to get out,” he said.
“Let’s take a walk.”
With a nod, he cut the engine.
I followed him onto the sand-dusted boardwalk. The moon that night was swollen and low, casting a silver haze over the dunes. We slipped out of our shoes when we hit the beach and walked in silence past the high-tide line and right to the water. Brandon stood in the surf with his hands in his pockets. The ocean shimmered under the moonlight. Waves rolled in and out, crashing around my feet.
In the dark, Brandon was nothing but a silhouette against the expansive sea. His shoulders sagged while he stared off, looking for answers he knew he’d never find. “What sucks the most,” he said, “is that I laughed. I forced myself to laugh when they made fun of him and called him all those names. I said he was sick because I was scared.” Exhaling, he faced me. “I said the person I was falling for was sick.”
The muscles in his jaw tensed. Tears built in his eyes, and a dull ache formed in my chest. I didn’t know how to fix this. I worried that Brandon’s life would always be a myriad of lies and regrets, pretending to hate the things that he loved and love the things that hated him.
I rubbed a hand over his arm. “It’s okay.”
“It’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay because I’ll never be able to be myself. I’m scared shitless, Sunny. Every day, I worry someone’s going to find out. You know,youthink a guy’s attractive and you look at him a little too long, it’s not a big deal. But me? I’ve gotten into the habit of counting to two and forcing myself to look away, so no one suspects. I have posters of swimsuit models in my room. Playboys under my bed just so I look the part. You know, the part of the straight guy. I thought maybe if I dated a girl I could make myself be straight. After all, I’ve heard people say it’s a choice for so long I thought, hell, maybe it was. Maybe I was just fucked up and chose to be gay. So, I dated Valerie. And when she told me she loved me, I felt like shit for leading her on. I played with her heart to try to protect myself. That’s messed up.”
Waves crashed around us. “It’s not.”
“It is. Because I would’ve done it to you. I would’ve kept on dating you as long as you would’ve let me, knowing it would go nowhere. Had you actually liked me, I would have hurt you, Sunny. I don’t want to hurt people, especially not good people. But I’m so fucking scared if I don’t keep up an act, people will find out.”
As hard as he fought it, a few tears eventually rolled down his cheek. I wrapped my arms around Brandon and laid my head on his shoulder. “No one will find out. I promise.”
My father had forbidden me from being with the person I loved, and society had forbidden Brandon from loving the person he wanted to.
Life didn’t seem fair. To be honest, the older I got, the uglier life seemed.
15
Elias
Bam Bam came running down the dark beach, sand kicking up from his feet. The long chain that hung from his jeans jingled. “Sorry I’m late, man.” He panted when he leaned over his knees to catch his breath. “Practice ran over.” He looked like a typical stoner. Baggy jeans. Chain wallet. A tie-dyed Phish T-shirt, and he was in a band that played nothing but Led Zepplin covers.
“It’s fine.”
