Steve Nickelson was in the parking lot, getting something from his trunk. As we approached, he had a weird look on his face. I knew it was because Ben and I were with Toby and Albie. Then, as we got closer, the look turned to a smile.
“Hey, guys,” he said.
“Hey,” Ben said, and I saluted.
We continued on in silence toward the car.
“You know, the way Steve and all of them are so nice,” I said, “there’s something menacing about it.”
“Nice? When is Steve Nickelson nice?” Toby said.
“He’s almost always nice,” I said.
“Yeah, if you’re on the inside,” Albie said. “Otherwise, he’s a flaming prick. And not in a good way, Toby.”
Toby said, “Thanks for clarifying.”
“But wasn’t Steve nice to you after the guy …” and then I realized this might be a delicate area. I mean, Ben told me about how Steve hung out with Toby after the gay speaker came in, and if I’d been publicly gay, I might have been free to talk about it. But since I was supposedly straight, I had to watch what I said so that I wasn’t (A) too knowledgeable about gay things or (B) insulting to gays. It was exhausting. Don’t try this at home.
“Yeah,” Toby said. “For like a week after that football guy spoke, he was all over me. I was like his pet. Like, oh, look, how cute. A homosexual of our very own. And then he was, like, gone. I haven’t talked to him since, and he ignores me in the hallways if I say hi.”
I was having trouble thinking of Toby in quite the same way ever since I saw him leave the woods after Robinson. I just was having trouble … picturing it, exactly. Toby, first of all, was like the least sexual person in the history of the world for me. Too skinny and spiky haired and quirky. And Robinson was the least talkative person ever. No personality at all. What did they talk about? Did they even talk? Maybe that’s how it worked at Natick: Take what you can get. So far, I had made getting laid at Natick an impossibility for myself, so who was I to say?
We got into the car in our previous formation: me and Ben in the back, Albie driving, Toby shotgun. I had no idea where we were going as Albie pulled Sleepy out of the parking lot and onto Green Street.
“Give me a hint: Does this trip have anything to do with the end of the world?” I asked.
Albie and Toby looked at each other as they pondered the correct answer.
“In a way, yes,” Albie said.
“Oh, good,” I said. “I’m sorry in advance, Ben.”
“Hey, I’m here on my own volition,” Ben said.
Even though I liked hanging out with Steve and his posse, I was equally happy spending time with Albie and Toby, a fact I hid from my jock friends — except Ben. The few times we walked as a foursome, Ben didn’t seem to give a crap what people thought of him hanging out with Albie and Toby. It made my opinion of Ben even higher.
Five minutes later, Albie turned on his right turn signal and we pulled into a place called Dowse Orchards.
“Huh,” I said. “I was not expecting this.”
“No. Me neither,” said Ben.
“How is this related to the end of the world?” I asked.
“Well, if the world was going to end, an apple orchard would be a reasonably good place to camp out. Food, shelter of the big trees,” Albie said.
“Ah,” I said. “Of course.”
Albie broke into a rare smile. “I didn’t say it was the BEST place to be should the apocalypse hit. That would probably be a cave stocked with nonperishables and enough ammunition to survive the inevitable postapocalypse riots.”
We walked over to the farm stand where the owners were selling apple cider.
Toby said, “Hi, my name is Bailey Hutchinson, and I am an apple enthusiast. Might we pick apples at your orchard?”
It took everything I had not to laugh.
The woman, maybe forty, with curly brown hair and lots of freckles, smiled. “So long as you pay for ’em, I don’t care what the heck you do here,” she said. “Want a picking pole?”
“Indeed,” Toby said. “Indeed we do.”
“And a couple of buckets?”
“Four, please,” Toby said.
She studied us before turning around and getting us four buckets and a pole with what looked like a birdcage on top of it.
“Now, you look like nice boys. You behave, hear?”
“I promise. I’ll keep an eye on them, or my name isn’t Bailey Hutchinson,” Toby said.
We each grabbed a bucket and headed back to the orchard, the smell of apples suddenly lodged in the back of my throat. I’d never really noticed that apples had such a sweet smell before.
“What possible trouble could people get into at an apple orchard?” I asked as we passed through an open field.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” said Albie. “Haven’t you heard of apple gangs?”
This cracked Ben up, and Albie seemed pleased.
“Absolutely. There are drive-by apple throwings. It’s a dangerous world.”
“Not to mention the terrible things that can happen when rival gangs wear the wrong colors. Like if the Golden Deliciouses wear red, or the Honeycrisps wear green,” said Toby.
“I wonder what they’d call an apple orchard gang?” I asked. “The MacDaddies? Like Mac-Intosh? That’s not bad.”
“Eh,” said Toby. “We can do better. You don’t like the Golden Deliciouses?”
“Would you be offended if I said that sounded really gay?” Albie asked.
“I would take it as a compliment,” Toby said, and Ben laughed again, so I did too.
“Are we forming some kind of apple gang now?” Ben asked.
“Sure,” Toby said as we reached a clearing with a bunch of picnic tables. All around us were groups of trees and signs about what harvests were available and where to find them.
“The Apple Dumpling Gang?” Ben asked.
“What the hell is the Apple Dumpling Gang?” asked Albie.
Ben said, “The Apple Dumpling Gang. Wasn’t that like an old movie or a cartoon or something?”
“It does sound kind of familiar,” I answered. “I like it. We’re the Apple Dumpling Gang.”
Toby giggled. “It’s perfect. Scary, but not too scary. Cartoonish, but not too cartoonish. Sexy, but not too sexy. You don’t mess with the Apple Dumpling Gang.” He struck a pose, his arms crossed in front of his skinny chest, and attempted a serious, menacing expression.
“Yeah, but what does our gang do?” Ben asked as we approached a sign for Jonathan apples.
“We maintain order among the different apple breeds,” Toby explained. “We make sure the Jonathans and the McIntoshes don’t get into it. And, of course, we defend our territory. This, friends, is our territory.”
“I want the pole,” I said.
“I figured Toby would say that,” Albie said.
I turned crimson.
“Come on, be nice,” said Ben, which made my face and neck flush even more.
“Oh, please,” Albie said. “You should hear the things he says to me.”
“It’s true,” Toby said, turning around from where he was standing guard, defending our territory. “I’m horrible to him. And he deserves it.”
“You guys are like an old married couple,” I said. “Are you sure you’re not gay, Albie?”
Albie put his arm around Toby. “If only. Wouldn’t this be a nice trophy wife or husband or whatever? The only problem is that I find boys about as attractive as I find hamsters.”
“Yes, if you don’t dig hamsters, that’s a problem,” I said, looking over at Ben, who was smiling at me. And I got the idea he was thinking the same thing I was: We’re nice, comfortable straight guys. That’s cool, right?
Ben and I went and actually picked apples, which wasn’t super-exciting, exactly, but was mildly entertaining. We took the pole, and it was fun trying to get the apples high up in trees to fall into the birdcage thing. We succeeded about half the time.
“I’ve never had a
gay friend before,” Ben said, and my heart skipped a beat until I realized he meant Toby.
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, I have. But it’s the same. People are people.”
“People are, people are,” he said, and I cracked up because he was so adorkable — Ben the apple orchard philosopher. I could get used to walking through apple orchards with Ben.
We came back with a whole bucket full of Jonathan apples and found Toby and Albie filling their buckets with shiny red and green fruit. “Nice job protecting our territory,” I said.
“Thanks,” said Toby.
Just then an old lady walked by. She smiled at us. I smiled back. Then Toby stepped forward, crossed his skinny arms again, and tried to look tough. The woman looked at him, did a double take, and walked away, shaking her head.
That made Ben howl. I definitely had never heard him howl, but I guess something about Toby scaring away an old lady from our gang turf was funny to him and he doubled over. That made me laugh, of course, and soon we all were, and I kind of felt sorry for the old lady, but mostly I felt like it was hard to breathe because I was laughing so hard.
“Stop,” Toby said, once he recovered and went back into character again. “You’re killing our reputation as gang members. We’re the toughest gang in this entire apple orchard, and you can’t show weakness.”
Albie kept laughing, and Toby picked up an apple and kind of tossed it at him. It hit Albie in the forearm hard, though.
“Hey!” he yelled.
Albie picked up the apple, and Toby started running. So Albie chucked it as hard as he could, but he couldn’t reach the sprinting Toby.
“You need someone with an arm,” Ben said, and he picked up an apple and threw it high and far. Toby was now facing us, a good one hundred feet away, and the apple was in the air for a long, long time. Toby watched it as it approached and stuttered in his shoes, unsure of which way to dodge. He was still standing in the same spot what felt like minutes later, when the apple smacked him on the shoulder.
He fell over. Which just about made us die laughing.
I grabbed a bucket and ran over to Toby, who at first was afraid but then got it — I was going to protect him. Apples started flying in both directions as infighting overtook the once solid Apple Dumpling Gang. I took one from Ben on the shin, and it really hurt. But I got him in the back, and he yelled, “Shit!” and even though we were involved in a painful apple fight, we kept throwing. Fortunately, none of us had real good aim.
“Boys! Excuse me! Excuse me! Boys!” the woman yelled, running up the hill toward the clearing. “Stop this right now! You will pay for all those apples, you know. Are you crazy?”
“We’re sorry, ma’am,” Toby said. “We apologize. There was a gang war.”
It took everything I had not to bust out laughing again.
It cost each of us twenty-one dollars to pay for the apple carnage. We wanted to take some home, but the lady confiscated them and told us never to come back. I couldn’t help it; my face got red from getting yelled at, but also from having the most fun I’d had in an afternoon, maybe ever.
Back in the car, we just drove around for a while, not sure where to go. Then Albie reached into his pocket and pulled out one shiny Jonathan apple.
“Hungry?” he asked us.
“How’d you do that?” I asked, wondering when he’d had time to pocket an apple.
“Oh, I have four of them,” he said, patting his megalarge pockets. “Next time you won’t laugh when I tell you to watch Survival Planet.”
“So a guy gets into a terrible car accident, and his body is okay, but he’s brain-dead,” Ben said.
“What kind of car was it?” I said, turning my head to look at him. He punched me in the arm.
We were lying on his floor, studying. Him philosophy, me World War II.
“So he’s brain-dead, but his body — fine. At the same time, another guy gets into a separate accident. His body is totally mangled, but his brain is intact, totally fine. There’s a transplant. The healthy mind and the healthy body are merged. So who is the person?”
“James?” I asked. Ben didn’t even look over and punched me again.
I rubbed my arm, closed my eyes, and pondered. I’d never had conversations like this with a friend, since Claire Olivia wasn’t the philosophical type. This was like exercising a muscle I hadn’t ever used before. I liked it. “I guess the mind,” I said at last.
We were facing opposite ways, our heads near each other, close enough that I could not only hear Ben’s breathing but sync mine with it. “So you think you are your mind?” he asked.
“I think so. I mean, the body gets told what to do by the mind,” I said.
“Yeah, but if you didn’t have a body, you wouldn’t exist.”
I had to think about that one for a second. Could I be just a mind without my body? The idea made my head hurt, but in a good way.
“So you think you are your body?” I asked him.
“See that? You’re doing the Socratic method without even trying,” Ben said.
“Cool beans.”
He laughed. “This is the kind of conversation people have in the movies when they’re high.”
I nodded. My voice sounded pinched when I spoke, and that made me think maybe I was high, in a way.
“Have you ever been?” I asked.
“High?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Once,” he answered. “You?”
“Yeah, a couple of times. Medical marijuana has been legal in Colorado for a while now, so it’s easy to get. I didn’t really like it, though.”
“Yeah,” Ben said. “I like my brain to be in control.”
“Because you are your brain,” I said.
“I didn’t say that.”
We laughed. I could hear his head move, so I turned my face to the side. Our eyes met. His were literally a foot away from mine, and I got this amusement-park feeling in my stomach, this whirling, tumbling, delightful sensation in my gut. I felt suddenly disoriented, like I was seeing his eyes for the first time. They were pale blue and kind, like a lazy Sunday afternoon nap. I felt at home looking at him from so close, and his eyes, they were open. To me. They were letting me in.
I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. I couldn’t tell him, but this, this was better than sex. Or at least better than the one time I’d had sex, sophomore year with Clay.
“That Hitler. He sure annexed most of Europe,” I said when the silence finally became too awkward.
Ben laughed and looked away. “Philosophy’s more interesting,” he said as he went back to his book.
“Agreed,” I said.
Later that night, not yet quite asleep in my bed, I realized that I couldn’t go even one more minute. I hadn’t jerked off since the night before I left Boulder, and now it was October 21. Seven weeks. Given my usual schedule, that was six weeks and five or six days too long.
I crept out of bed, careful not to wake Albie, well aware that my boxers were totally bulging. Some guys joked about jerking off while their roommate was asleep, and some even talked as if they knew when their roommates were “slapping the salami.” But I was as likely to do that as I was to become a serial cat murderer. I needed my privacy for this kind of thing.
The bathroom was empty, so I took the stall farthest from the door, closed the toilet seat, and sat down. Lotion would have been good, I realized. But there was none. So spit would just have to do.
I thought of Ben’s shaggy brown hair, the way his mouth curled down at the bottom and made every smile that much more rewarding, the way he used language, the way his voice sounded when he said “perchance.” I imagined us naked together, writhing. That was the stuff, that was …
The bathroom door swung open. I froze, throbbing below, literally seconds away from the finale. Even though the door was closed and no one could see, I felt like I’d been caught.
“Yo,” the voice said. “Who’s in there?”
“None of
your damn business,” I grumbled.
“Colorado! Nice,” said whoever it was. I couldn’t tell. It didn’t matter. “Takin’ care of business.”
For a moment I thought he knew exactly what I was doing, and then I realized he meant taking a crap. I didn’t understand why anyone would talk to somebody else while in a bathroom stall to begin with. It’s a private thing, you know? So I didn’t answer, and when I started hearing sounds I didn’t want to hear, I flushed, waited five seconds, and got the hell out of there.
I’d have to find a place sometime very soon to finish myself off. This wasn’t healthy for anyone.
“SO POLONIUM TURNS into lead. Cobalt turns into?” I asked Clay. He was sitting on my bed and I was sitting on my desk chair, really wanting to sit on my bed with him. I didn’t think of myself as a shy person, and it wasn’t like Clay was so incredible that he made me feel starstruck. I just couldn’t quite figure out a way to get there without seeming insanely eager. Without his finger on my thigh, I was suddenly a little unsure.
He looked at me blankly, and I couldn’t help it. I had to laugh.
“So do you actually not know this?”
He looked hurt. “Know what?”
“What cobalt turns into? The difference between alpha and gamma radiation?”
He averted his eyes and I could see that his feelings were hurt. “Clay. What’s up? Because, like, I don’t mind having you over here, but I’m not that excited about talking about chemistry. Seriously, you’re going to be an engineer. Don’t you know this stuff already?”
Clay hadn’t looked back at me yet. He was glancing around my room.
“When my dad was our age, he lived on a reservation for a while,” he said.
“Huh?”
“My granddad used to teach. So they moved a lot and for a while they lived on the Cheyenne reservation in Montana. I always liked it when he talked about that. It was like watching a movie in my brain.”