Page 145 of The Revenge Game
After I drop Mom off, I drive aimlessly around.
Each turn feels loaded with memories I’ve been trying to outrun. I drive past the 7-Eleven, where we’d get Slurpees after practice, around the corner from where Connor’s dad’s garage used to be. When I finally stop pretending I’m not heading somewhere specific, Coyote Creek High rises on the horizon like a brick-and-mortar accusation of my previous sins.
I park outside the school. Through the chain-link fence, I watch the crowd of teenagers spill onto the quad for lunch. Some things never change. The jocks claim their territory by the vending machines, the theater kids dramatically sprawl on the steps, and there, over by a tree, a lone figure is hunched over a book.
My stomach tightens, remembering how Andrew used to sit curled up just like that, constantly trying to make himself invisible.
I knew what we did to Andrew Yates was wrong. I knew it at the time.
But I kept doing it forfouryears.
And yes, I’d been a teenager, but I still knew right from wrong.
Can I really judge Andrew for making a mistake for eight months when I made a mistake every day for four years?
I can’t forget that what I did to Andrew in high school started this whole thing.
My mind churns as I sit in my mother’s car. But I’m not thinking about high school anymore. Instead, I’m sifting through my memories from the past eight months, trying to work out what’s real.
And I keep circulating back to those moments with Andrew in my apartment. The way he’d sit cross-legged on my couch, completely absorbed in his laptop while Tabitha claimed his lap like it was her divine right. All those evenings spent watching comedy clips with Drew providing his own sardonic insights that made me laugh so hard my sides hurt. The way he looked at me when I was inside him. The way he always curled into me when we slept.
And then there was the moment when we said we loved each other. Among all the fakery and lies, that was my core truth.
And I want to believe it was his.
I finally drive back to my mother’s apartment.
I’ve still got to finish off my class-president speech. I’ve decided to do it as a PowerPoint presentation because after six years in sales, presentations are my safe zone.
But as I open the yearbook, my stomach starts to churn.
Because it’s no longer just a benign piece of memorabilia.
I flip through the pages until I find the Computer Club photo. The caption readsAndrew Yates (President)under a figure in the back row, half-hidden behind someone else’s shoulder. He’s got those thick-framed glasses that take up half his face, so different from his glasses now.
I scan the captions of the photos on other pages, looking for more pictures of Andrew.
A yearbook isn’t a great place for someone with prosopagnosia, but between Andrew’s distinctive glasses and the captions, I manage to find him scattered throughout the yearbook—Academic Decathlon:Andrew Yates accepts first place,Chess Club: Team Captain A. Yates strategizes,Honor Roll: Andrew Yates, 4.0 GPA.
Each photo helps me piece together the boy I tormented, connecting him to the man I fell in love with. There’s one photo from the science fair where he’s actually smiling beside some complicated-looking computer setup. The caption notesJunior Andrew Yates’s revolutionary database project won Best in Show.
I touch his smile.
I remember that science fair. Connor had “accidentally” spilled soda on Andrew’s keyboard right before the judging. Andrew had somehow gotten it working again, his hands steady even as his voice shook while explaining his project to the judges. Was that project the beginning of what became NovaCore, the system that made him a multi-millionaire?
But Andrew Yates is not mentioned on theMost Likely Topage. No one in our graduating class bothered to give Andrew Yates a thought when we were thinking about which of our classmates would have significant futures. Because we spent so much time diminishing him, so caught up in our petty high school hierarchy that we couldn’t spot actual greatness whenit was right in front of us, hunched over a keyboard in the computer lab.
By the time I have to pick up my mom from work, I’ve put together the skeleton of a speech.
I drive the roads to her work, the familiar streets blurring together like my thoughts. Every intersection is loaded with history now. The local swimming pool where I used to volunteer as a lifeguard, wearing that stupid red whistle like a badge of heterosexual honor, deliberately scheduling my shifts when the girls’ swim team practiced so everyone would see me watching them. The Sonic Drive-In, where I’d take girls on dates, always ordering the same burger combo meal because I’d overheard Bobby Ray say real men didn’t eat chicken sandwiches. The back lot of the Baptist church where I’d park early on Sunday mornings, spending those extra minutes adjusting my tie and rehearsing my posture—shoulders back, chin up, each step measured to Bobby Ray’s definition of how a man moves through the world.
It’s like the whole town has conspired to remind me that Andrew’s not the only one who spent time pretending to be someone else.
When I pull up outside the craft shop, my phone beeps with a message.
It’s from Andrew.
Justin, I put something together for you. I’d really appreciate it if you take a look.
