The crowd starts to murmur as the news cameras all pan back to me quickly.
Dom’s eyes widen and his jaw drops. As a matter of fact, my whole family looks like I’ve just stripped on stage and started shaking my groove thang for everyone to see. Well, everyone except Otter. He already knew; though I don’t think he saw this coming.
Bear, though?
I think Bear might have just shit himself. Literally.
Yikes. And gross.
And over the rustling of the crowd, I finish: “Change starts with us. It starts now. And I challenge all of you to make a difference. Do it before it’s too late. Do it before it won’t matter anymore. Do it, so that one day, we can look back and say our generation was the one that cared for all others with open arms, that we discovered the key to no more hate was not a matter of politics or war, but a matter of acceptance. Thank you, and congratulations to you all.”
I step down off the pedestal into shocked silence.
And then, much to my surprise, the crowd roars in approval.
I am stunned when they get to their feet.
I am near tears when they stomp their feet and shout my name.
I leave the stage.
And, thirty minutes later, my name is called so I must return.
“Tyson James Thompson.”
The audience is loud again, but none more so than my family. All of them, every single one, are on their feet, screeching and howling and screaming. Creed pounds his chest and bellows my name. Otter has that crooked grin on display and is shouting something I can’t quite make out. Bear is tucked in at his side, still looking shell-shocked, but his lips are moving, even though I can’t hear him at all.
Dom, though? Dom is smiling, his eyes suspiciously bright. I am handed my diploma, and I smile for the flash of the camera as I shake the superintendent’s hand. As the flash dies, I see Dom wipe the back of his hand across his eyes. I’m going to give him so much shit later for that, the big softie.
Well, if I don’t get murdered first for outing myself to the graduating class of Seafare High. Probably not the smartest thing I’ve ever done. I probably should have thought it through a little better, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Make all of the haters out there see that a tiny little fifteen-year-old smartass could cause a sort of chaos. Interesting reaction, though. I was expecting to have rotten fruit thrown at me. People don’t seem to carry that with them anymore to public speeches. Hurray for me.
We throw our caps into the air and the ceremony is over and the crowd starts to pour onto the field to find their loved ones, to hug them, to congratulate them, to tell them it’s almost time to move out because didn’t they know their parents were going to convert their bedroom into the new entertainment room?
I’m jostled in the crowd. My back is patted. My hair is ruffled. Some people glare at me. Others avoid me completely. People I don’t even know shake my hand. I’m pretty sure that hottie junior wrestler named Jake grabs my ass and grins at me. He slips a piece of paper into my hand and winks as he walks away. His phone number. Good Lord. I’m a fucking rock star. Sort of. I hope no girl throws her panties at my face. That’d be weird. And disgusting.
The crowd is too much. I can’t see where I’m going. I don’t—
“Tyson!” My name is thundered. A deep voice. A voice I love. “Ty!”
There’s a discarded folding chair, knocked over. I upright it and stand on it. The crowd mills around me. I’m as tall as them. Taller. And once I’m up, I can see him, towering above all the others, sweeping his gaze from side to side, his shoulders tense. He looks like he’s getting ready to knock everyone to the ground to find me.
I call his name and he turns to me. Immediately he moves. Everyone gets out of his way. He doesn’t take his gaze from me, and when he’s only feet away, I jump. He catches me. I wrap my legs around his hips and he wraps his big arms around me, crushing me to him. One hand goes to the back of my head, and I lay my cheek on his shoulder, scraping my nose against his neck. I can feel his heart racing in his chest.
“Are you mad at me?” I whisper in his ear.
He shivers. “No. Not for this. Not ever. You… are you sure?”
I nod into his neck.
He sighs, though it sounds like relief. “Okay, Ty. Then it’s okay. For you. For me. It’s all okay.”
And even as everyone moves around us, for that moment, there’s only me and him. Of course, though, it doesn’t last.
Our family finds us, and Dom sets me on my feet and there are tears poured on me and around me. I am pulled into hug after hug. I’m told it will be okay. I’m told everyone here loves me no matter what, they love me just the same as they did before. Not that I doubted that. Not that I thought it would change. Creed tells me he’s convinced now that JJ will probably be gay too, given that almost every male he knows likes to suck cock. Anna slaps him on the back of the head as JJ asks what cock is.
Otter’s one of the last, and he hugs me too, picking me up and spinning me around and around and around, like he did when I was a Kid. I try to beg off, knowing his leg isn’t as strong as it was before that car accident years before, but he holds on tight. “I’m very proud of you,” he whispers in my ear. “So very, very proud. And your brother is too. You just… hell, Kid. You kind of caught us all off guard with that one. I thought you were going to wait to say anything?”
“It’s who I am,” I say, as if that should be enough.
He nods as he sets me down. “I know. And you won’t hear me say otherwise. You’ve…. Bear’s just going to be Bear. You know that as well as I do.”
Speaking of. “Where is he?” I ask, looking around. My brother isn’t with the rest of them.
Otter shakes his head. “He’s waiting on the sidelines, over by the bleachers. Said he wanted to talk to you alone when we were done here.”
Oh, fuck.
Dom comes to stand beside me. “I’m going with him,” he says, looking defiantly at Otter. He sounds a bit angry “He’s not going by himself.”
“I think this is between Bear and him,” Otter says kindly. “Dom, Bear’s not going to do anything stupid. You know him. He just needs to talk this out with the Kid before he can make it click in his head. That’s just who Bear is.”
Dom snarls in frustration, but Otter’s right and we all know it. I’m the one who made the choice to come out like I did, and therefore I’m the one who has to deal with the consequences, whatever they may be.
Besides. It’s Bear. I’m not scared of Bear.
Well. Maybe a little. It is Bear, after all.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “This seemed like such a good idea when I had it.”
Otter laughs ruefully. “Given yours and your brother’s histories of ‘good ideas,’ you would think one of you would realize you shouldn’t always do the first thing that pops into your head.”
I scowl at Otter. “I’m not anything like Bear! And besides, if we didn’t do the first thing that comes into our head, then we’d sit there thinking about it, and you know what happens when Bear allows himself to think too much.”
“Which he’s probably doing now.”
“Fuck,” I say again.
“Fuck, indeed,” Otter agrees. “Probably should get this over with, Kid. We’ve got dinner reservations in an hour. If I know your brother at all, you’re going to need at least that long.”
“Gays take forever,” Creed complains. “Jesus, now there are three of them. It’s going to take hours for anything to happen, and when it does, it’s going to be done in song with a choreographed dance number that’ll end with glitter cannons fired into the air.”
“I like glitter,” JJ says quite loudly. “I used to eat it. That and glue.”
“He did,” Creed says. “By the time we would catch him, it looked like a drag queen exploded on his face. And our walls.”
“And why don’t we eat glitter and glue anymore?” Anna asks her son.
“Because you said it makes my p
oop look like abstract art,” JJ says. Quite loudly. “And Dad said that no one would pay to see my glitter bombs in a museum.” He is his father’s son, make no mistake about that.
People we don’t know turn and stare at us. We stare back. Eventually, they turn away. People are so weird sometimes.
“You sure?” Dom asks me. He’s holding on to my arm like he doesn’t want me to leave his side.
I sigh. “Yeah. Better get this over with. It’ll be fine. Bear’s gonna freak, we’ll probably yell at each other, and then we’ll go have hummus like we always do.”
“Vegetarian food is so gross,” Creed mutters.
“I hate it too,” JJ mutters.
“Be nice,” Anna says. She must have thought I couldn’t hear her over the crowd because I heard her follow it up with, “Me too.”
That family, I swear. I’ll keep them in my prayers.
“Better go now,” Otter says. “Just go easy on him. Okay?”
My hands are sweaty. “Did you tell him the same thing?”
Otter grabs me in another hug. “Of course I did,” he whispers harshly in my ear. “You belong to me just as much as he does. This is just… hard for him to hear. He remembers what he went through figuring out he was gay, and he’s just worried about you.”
“I’m not Bear.”
Otter laughs and pulls away. “You are. More than you could ever know.”
Yeah. Probably more than I care to know.
We having fun yet? it asks me.
I turn to leave. Dom stops me. “You sure?” he asks again. He looks so worried, the big oaf.
I smile up at him. “I’m sure. Besides, looks like someone is waiting for you.” I point behind him to where Stacey waits on the sidelines. Dom frowns as she waves at him. She looks unsure, but I don’t have time to think about her right now. One thing at a time.
“But—”
“It’s fine. It’s just Bear.”
“That’s what worries me.” He lets me go.
THE SUN is starting to set off in the west, and I can only see the shadow outline of Bear through the crowd as he stands against the fence, facing away from me. It’s a struggle to put one foot in front of another, but somehow I manage.
It’s just Bear, I scold myself.
It’s just Bear, I reply.
Well, shit. I really should have thought this through a little bit better.
People slap my back as I walk through the crowd. Someone shakes my hand. An older woman I don’t know hugs me, and there’s a fleeting smell of a cache of roses, and for a moment, I think of Mrs. Paquinn. It hurts, and I have to swallow past the lump in my throat, but knowing her like I do, she’d probably be laughing her ass off right now, insisting on being present for whatever conversation is about to take place between Bear and me. Sure, she’d have a smile on her face, and her eyes would have been shining bright with mischief, but I’d have felt the strength in her grip, her hand squeezing my own to let me know that it’d be okay. Because she knew it’d be okay. But she’s not here.
I push through the crowd.
Otter’s right. I saw an opportunity to make a statement, and I took it. Like I’ve done my whole life. It’s part of who I am. It’s part of who we are.
This is my brother. This is Derrick. Bear. The one in the world I trust the most. The one in the world I love the most. I can’t stand the thought of disappointing him, though I don’t think I did. I don’t know. There’s a bright ringing in my ears, and my skin feels like it’s crawling. My breath holds, but just barely.
I reach the fence on which his elbows rest. He watches the sun as it sets. It’s scary how much we look alike. Sure, he’s older now, but only by a little (though I give him so much crap for being close to thirty; it’s the end of the world as you know it, I told him a little while ago with great glee. Pretty sure that’s when the hairline starts to recede in this family. He didn’t find that to be very funny). He looks as he always has. Like Bear.
Except that he doesn’t turn to look at me.
I wait too.
“I remember, once,” he finally says. “You were… five… I think…. Maybe. I don’t know. Some age. It was after she left, at least. I know that much.”
We don’t need to say out loud who she is. We both know.
“You were at home, with Mrs. Paquinn, while I was working at the store. There was an announcement over the intercom, saying I had a phone call. Somehow, I knew. Even before I got to the phone, I knew something was wrong. I don’t know how I knew. I just did. Of course, my mind took it in a billion different directions. I thought maybe the apartment had burned down. Or that Mrs. P had….” He stops. Takes a breath. “That she’d gotten sick.” Oh, Bear. “Or that she’d come back out of the blue and wanted to make things different again. Wanted to destroy what I’d somehow managed to cobble together. I think that’s what I was expecting the most. Her. I think I always knew she’d come back at some point. I don’t know why I was so surprised when it finally happened. But… that doesn’t matter now.
“So, I knew I had a phone call and everything from plague and fire to meteors and infestation ran through my head. I ran. As soon as my name was called, I ran. And through every doomsday scenario I had running through my head, I thought to myself, just let him be okay. Just let him be okay.”
“Papa Bear, I—”
“Hush, Kid,” he admonishes softly without looking at me. “Let me finish.” He takes a deep breath. “It was Mrs. Paquinn on the phone. I asked her what was wrong. She asked me why I sounded like I was crying. That she was sure I had snot running down my face and I was probably really embarrassing and she’d have to shop in a new grocery store because she didn’t want to be associated with the guy who runs crying down the frozen foods aisle.”
Oh, Mrs. P. That sounds just like you.
“I asked her what was wrong. ‘Can’t I just call to say hi?’ she asked me. I told her she’d never done that before. ‘Traditions have to start somewhere,’ she said. ‘There should be a first time for everything.’
“‘So you’re just calling me to say hi?’ I asked her. I was pretty sure I was about to explode.
“‘Well, no,’ she said. ‘But you need to take a deep breath before you defecate your work khakis. That would be extremely embarrassing for you.’
“I very calmly asked her then what was wrong. She told me I needed to stop yelling.” Bear paused then, gripping the fence. Finally, “You’d fallen down. Outside. On those shitty steps of those shitty apartments. Your knee had caught the edge of one of the steps just right and had split open. You were at the hospital, getting stitches.
“I panicked then, I think. I don’t really remember it all that well. I drove to the emergency room, sure I’d get there and find that you’d had your leg amputated or that you’d gotten gangrene.”
“Or SARS,” I say, a small smile on my face.
“Or SARS,” he agrees. “I got there, and wonder of all wonder, you were sitting on the edge of one of the beds, looking down at your knee with this look on your face, like you were completely and utterly fascinated by the little black threads. I stood by the door, just watching you. Taking you in. Every piece. Every part. All of it was still there. Your knee was a little red and swollen, but it was still there.
“You must have heard me, because you looked up and said, ‘Hi, Bear! I fell down and cut myself. It bled a lot, and that was gross, but I’ve been sewed back together, and I think deserve some ice cream now.’ You got up from the edge of the bed. Walked over to me. Took my hand. You looked up at me and asked me why I looked so pale. I couldn’t really say then that it was one of the first times I knew you were more than a brother to me. It hit me then that what I was feeling, all the horrors in my head, were what most parents must go through when they get a phone call like that.”
“You took me for ice cream,” I tell him. I remember that much, at least.
He smiles distantly. “Yeah. I did. And now you’re here. Now you’re… you. It’
s funny, isn’t it. You were up there, on the stage, being braver than anyone else I know, and all I could think about was the scar. That little scar on your leg.”
“It’s certainly ruined my chance of becoming a kneecap model,” I say.
“You sure?”
I know what he’s asking. “Pretty sure.”
“You haven’t… tried… anything? Right?”
“Tried what?”
He turns red. “You know.” He mimes something that looks like he’s petting a giraffe. Or molesting one.
Oh sweet Jesus. He better not be—“Bear, are you asking me if I’ve had sex?”
“You’re damn right I am.”
I look at him in horror. “We’re at my graduation!” Shoot me. Please. In the face.
“I don’t give a flying fuck where we’re at! You better not be a whore, Tyson!”
Oh boy. Here we go. Here’s the Bear I know. “Please tell me you’ve lost your mind. It’s the only rational explanation that would make sense for the words coming out of your mouth.”
He looks at me for the first time since we started speaking and his eyes go wide. “Have you?” he demands.
“Why, of course, Bear! Just last week I got to have a twelve-way with the varsity wrestling team. Boy, do they know how to pile-drive, I’ll tell you what!”
“I… you… I swear to God, Tyson….”
“You asked me if I’ve had sex! I tell you I’m gay and that’s the first thing you want to know? You need to go back to therapy. I’ll call Eddie. Clearly, you have some unresolved issues.”
“I… kill….”
I know his brain is already misfiring. Prepare for an Epic Bear Tirade In T-minus three.