Changing Jamie Read online

  “Yeah. It ain’t easy.”

  “Did you know for a long time? How did you know?” he asked, reaching over and pulling his guitar onto his lap. His fingers tapped the keys, the monotone clacks reminding me of the clicking of the pen the day before.

  Might as well be honest, I thought. I didn’t have anything else to lose. “I was about twelve, I guess. One day I just realized that when all the guys were looking at girls, I was looking at them.”

  “Just like that? Didn’t you ever wonder if you were… you know, a freak?”

  Ouch. “I don’t think I’m a freak, Dylan.” Control the temper. Bite back the hostility. It was an honest question, and I didn’t think he meant to be insulting.

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Jamie! I just meant feeling different from everyone else. Didn’t you ever wonder why? Why you?”

  “I am the way I am. I’m not any worse than anyone else, but I’m not any better either. Just because I happen to like guys doesn’t change who I am inside. That’s all there is to it,” I said, mollified that he’d apologized. “It did take me a while to admit it to myself, and another long while to accept it.”

  “Does your mom know?”

  “No,” I said vehemently, shaking my head. “I want to keep it that way too. My stepdad is a dick. I can do without the extra grief from him.”

  “I get it. Well, I better be getting home. My dad will have a stroke if I’m not back in time for dinner.” He stood up and unplugged his guitar. I followed him to the front door.

  Things had definitely not turned out the way I’d hoped they would. I just didn’t know what to say to him anymore. Funny, but I knew right then I was over my crush. From that moment on, he’d be just Dylan to me, a nice guy who knew my innermost secret.

  I only hoped he was a man of his word.

  Dylan pushed past the screen door, then stopped and turned toward me. “See you Monday, Jamie. Can we get together after practice again? In the library?”

  “Sure. See you Monday.” I was kind of surprised he still wanted to study with me. I guess I’d figured that even with a gay uncle, he wouldn’t want to spend time with me, now that he knew. Then I realized he’d trusted me first. I figured that should count for something. I’d keep his secret, and he’d keep mine.

  I watched until he got into his car and pulled away, and then slowly closed the door.

  Chapter Seven

  IT WAS a little past four in the morning when the front door slammed shut and heavy footsteps stomped down the hallway. I came awake suddenly, startled out of a deep sleep by the noise, popping up in my bed like one of my preferred breakfast foods. Doug was home, and from the sound of things, not in a good mood.

  Great! Just what I need! I groaned. I lay back down and rolled over, pulling the pillow over my head. I didn’t want to hear it. Not in the middle of the night and certainly not after the day I’d had.

  After Dylan left, I’d tried to do some homework, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around the algebraic equations. Nothing made sense to me anymore—not the numbers, not my life, nothing. I spent the rest of the day watching movies and trying to figure out why I’d come out to Dylan. Why had I said yes when I’d had every intention of saying no?

  Did I subconsciously want to come out? Or had being Dylan’s tutor been too much for me to handle? Was that it? Had I gone temporarily insane? I didn’t know for sure. I was just grateful he had taken it as well as he did. The situation could have gotten ugly fast.

  He had flat-out asked me, without bothering to beat around the bush. I hadn’t offered the information. He’d said he asked because I hung out with Billy. Was that the only reason? Had Billy said something to someone? I didn’t want to believe that Billy would have outed me when he knew I wasn’t ready. He was my best friend, right? Even Billy, as self-absorbed and attention-hungry as he was, wouldn’t have done that, right?

  The real question, the one I kept coming back to, was why had Dylan asked me? If he was as comfortable with it as he said he was, then why did he need to know in the first place?

  I had a ton of questions and no answers.

  Then there was Billy. He’d had his big date with Robbie-the-Hunk last night. If my nerves weren’t jangled enough for one day, he had to add to it by disappearing off the face of the earth.

  I’d stayed up until three thirty waiting to hear from Billy. The clubs in Chester closed at two, which meant either Billy had gone home with Robbie-the-Hunk, or he’d wrapped his car around a tree on the interstate. He hadn’t called and he hadn’t answered his cell phone when I’d given in and dialed his number.

  Even when he’d gone home with a guy to spend the night he’d always called or messaged me. Except for tonight, and it was driving me crazy.

  You’re being stupid, I told myself. Maybe his cell phone was off. Maybe his battery died. Maybe he forgot to call, went to sleep, and didn’t hear it ringing. Maybe the moon was made of bleu cheese and underwear models would serve me breakfast in bed tomorrow.

  Hey, anything is possible, right?

  This is ridiculous. You’re not his mother. He doesn’t have to call you every time he farts, I thought, punching the pillow, shoving it back under my head and trying to go back to sleep.

  Doug was still stomping around, bumping into the walls in the hallway, rattling the pictures Mom had hung there. I heard him go into the bathroom, heard the familiar sounds of him puking his guts up, and hoped he’d pass out with his head in the toilet and drown.

  I wasn’t that lucky.

  I heard him tramp into the bedroom, heard something, probably a shoe, hit the wall.

  “Darlene! Wake your lazy ass up! I’m sick!” he bellowed, slurring badly. “Darlene! Do you hear me? Get up!”

  That bastard! Mom was exhausted; she deserved to sleep and not have to get up to take care of a forty-five year-old deadbeat drunk at four o’clock in the morning.

  I lay on the bed as stiff as a board, listening hard, terrified that I would hear a slap, that he would hit her. He hadn’t before, not that I knew of, but I was always afraid he would, and I wasn’t sure what I would do if he did.

  He quieted down. Mom must have gotten up and done whatever it was she did to get him settled and into bed. After a while, I could hear him snoring.

  I don’t know why she put up with him. It was just another question for which I didn’t have an answer. Was she lonely? Was she scared? I felt that way too. Most of the time, in fact, but you didn’t see me bringing a loud, obnoxious dickhead home to live with us. I was going to need to have a talk with Mom soon. It probably wouldn’t do any good—I’d tried before—but it couldn’t hurt.

  I NEVER heard from Billy on Sunday morning. By Sunday afternoon, I was ready to climb the walls, worried half out of my head. I’d called his folks, who not only didn’t know where he was, but didn’t seem to care. Instead, his father sounded annoyed I’d interrupted their lunch.

  He’d suggested I call that friend of Billy’s, the one with the bad haircut and the waitress mother. Then he’d hung up.

  Jerk.

  The friend he’d been talking about was me. I’d call myself, but I didn’t think I’d want to talk to me.

  I hung up and decided to give Billy another couple of hours before I called out the Marines to look for him. By “Marines,” of course, I meant me.

  Doug was hungover—big surprise. That meant no noise, no Guitar Hero, no breathing too loudly. Mom was supposed to be off from work, but she’d picked up a shift for another waitress and had left before I woke up.

  I spent part of the day locked in my room, forcing myself to finish my homework. I wasn’t a star student. I didn’t delude myself into thinking I’d get an academic scholarship, but I thought if I could at least pull off a 3.0, I could get into the local community college. With Pell grants and maybe a student loan, I could take a few classes each term. Get a job, an apartment. A life.

  Later that afternoon, when I still hadn’t heard from Billy, I decided I needed to at leas
t try to find him. My best bet was to mosey on down to the Home Depot and have a talk with Robbie-the-Hunk. I grabbed my keys and wallet, shoving them both into the pockets of my cargo pants, and slipped past Doug and out the front door.

  I slammed it behind me as hard as I could, and hoped the noise would make Doug’s head explode.

  The store was a couple of miles from my house, an easy ride through mostly residential neighborhoods. My mind was spinning like the spokes on my wheels, racing with every possible, horrible fate that might have befallen Billy. He could have been mugged, beaten, and left for dead in an alley, or taken by a serial killer. Maybe he’d been drugged and sold into white slavery. Hell, for all I knew, he could have abducted by aliens.

  I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, too absorbed in the grisly fates for Billy that my mind concocted at lightning speed. A horn blared, a car clipped the back fender of my bicycle, and the next thing I knew I was flying through the air. I landed hard, rolling a few times before I stopped and sat up, dazed, scraped to hell and back, but still basically in one piece. There was a lump already rising on my forehead, but I didn’t think it was serious. I hadn’t blacked out, and I knew my name and where I was—I figured that was a good sign, at least. I’d be fine, but unfortunately the same couldn’t be said for my bike. It was DOA. It lay in pieces, scattered across the road.

  When the car hit the bike, I was thrown free, but my trusty steed was dragged under the car’s tires. It lay in a twisted heap, bits of savaged metal twenty-five yards away.

  The car never even slowed down.

  Remember a while back in English class when I commiserated with Dylan and the times in life when nothing short of the f-bomb would suffice? This was one of those times.

  Except I didn’t hiss it under my breath like Dylan had. I screamed it, good and loud, as I limped over to where the largest piece of my bike’s carcass lay on the asphalt. “Oh, man. This sucks!” I gave the bike a hard kick, as if the hit and run were the bike’s fault.

  I heard tires crunch on the gravel behind me, and for a moment I wondered if the hit-and-run driver had returned to finish the job. When I turned, I was surprised to see Dylan getting out of his Mustang.

  “Holy shit, Jamie! What happened?” he asked, trotting over to me. “Are you okay, dude?”

  I nodded, too upset to speak. Together we stared down at the wreckage, sharing a mutual moment of silence for the untimely death of my only means of transportation.

  “Did the guy take off?” Dylan asked, peering into the distance as if he might spot the bastard who’d left me for dead on the side of the road.

  “Yeah. The asshole never even slowed down.”

  “Oh, man. You’re bleeding, Jamie!” Dylan said. Were those beautiful eyes of his filling with worry and sympathy, or had I hit my head harder than I’d thought in the accident? I chose to believe the former.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, swiping at the blood trickling down my face from the scraped lump on my forehead. It was true enough. I wasn’t bleeding to death or anything, but it was nice to think he was concerned.

  “Well, come on. Let’s load the bike into my trunk and I’ll give you a lift home,” Dylan said, toeing the remains of my bike.

  “Yeah, okay. Thanks.” Maybe it was his sympathy, or that he was the closest warm body, but I unloaded all over him. “God, this sucks! It wasn’t bad enough that my stepdad came home drunk again last night, or that Billy disappeared off the face of the earth, but did that jerk really have to use me as a crash dummy?”

  “Whoa…. Billy disappeared? Nobody knows where he is?”

  “He totally pulled the Invisible Man act. No trace of him anywhere. His parents don’t know where he is and don’t care; he hasn’t called, hasn’t messaged—nothing. I was heading down to Home Depot to put the thumbscrews to the guy he went out with yesterday to see if I could track Billy down, but now….” I waved at the bike in frustration. “I just can’t catch a freaking break!”

  “No problem. I’ll run you down there,” Dylan said, hefting my bike up and carrying it to the car.

  “You don’t need to do that. I know how tight your schedule is, man.”

  Dylan opened his trunk and stuffed the bike in, slamming it shut. “It’s cool. Come on, get in,” he said, walking around the car to the driver’s seat. He slid in, looking as if he’d been born to drive a muscle car. Dylan and the Mustang fit together perfectly.

  I opened the passenger door and poked my head into the car. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I can walk….”

  “Yeah, right, and bleed all over the highway. Maybe we should go the hospital instead, Jamie. That knot on your head doesn’t look so good.”

  “No, no hospital,” I said, “but a lift to Home Depot would be great. Thanks.”

  I slid into the bucket seat, closing the door and buckling up. In truth, now that the shock had worn off, I could feel the pain starting. My neck hurt, my head throbbed, my legs ached… suddenly I felt as though I’d been, well, hit by a car. I kept my mouth shut, though. Finding Billy was more important to me than going to the hospital for a Band-Aid.

  Dylan scrounged in the glove box and came up with a couple of tissues and a small bandage. I used the vanity mirror to clean up as best I could. It wasn’t ideal, but at least I no longer looked like an extra from the set of The Walking Dead.

  We made the drive to Home Depot in near silence. I didn’t know what I’d do if Robbie wasn’t working. I needed to find Billy. I was convinced the feeling I’d had in the earlier part of the week, the one where I felt something was terribly wrong, had to do with him.

  That feeling had felt nothing like it did now. Then, it had been as if something was just off kilter; now, as we pulled in to a slot in the parking lot and I stared up at the brick face of the building and the clutter of tractors, fencing, and barbeque displays, it changed.

  In short, I was scared out of my mind.

  Chapter Eight

  “DO YOU know where this guy works?” Dylan asked as we entered the store. I hadn’t expected him to come in with me, but I was glad he had. I was hurting, distracted by worry for Billy, and grateful not to be alone.

  “Yeah, in the paint department,” I answered, leading Dylan in that direction.

  We threaded our way past shoppers pushing carts and employees driving forklifts, my head nearly swiveling like an owl’s as I scanned the store for Billy’s familiar bright red head.

  I didn’t see Billy, but as we walked into the paint department, I saw Robbie-the-Hunk behind the counter. He was operating the mixer, watching it shake a can of paint up and down. Dylan and I hung back until he finished and handed the can off to the waiting customer.

  “That him?” Dylan asked, whispering in my ear. I could smell spearmint gum on his breath and, hurting or not, worried or not, wondered what it would taste like to kiss him.

  Immediately, I mentally slapped myself. Bad, Jamie! Bad! Dylan was a friend, sort of, and that’s all he’d ever be. I really needed to get over this obsession. I’d thought I had, but evidently, I’d been fooling myself.

  “Yeah. His name’s Robbie.”

  “He looks a lot older than Billy.”

  “He is.”

  Dylan gave a soft, derisive snort—his opinion of Billy dating an older man, I guess. He was probably right too. I certainly hadn’t been crazy about the idea either. I nodded at him then led him over to the counter.

  Robbie’s back was turned, busying himself with something on the other side of the counter.

  “Hey, Robbie,” I called, trying to get his attention. I could almost swear he froze for a moment before turning around and leaning back against the counter, arms folded across his chest, a big smirk painted on his face.

  “Hey. Can I help you?”

  “Remember me? I’m a friend of Billy’s. I was wondering if you knew where he was.”

  “Billy? Billy who?”

  Now, that was a response I hadn’t expected. It made me instantly angry
, outraged that this a-hole in the cheap jeans and running shoes had the balls to deny he knew Billy. He’d been out with him just last night!

  “You know damn well who Billy is!” I yelled. Several shoppers turned in my direction, but I didn’t care.

  “Keep your voice down!” Robbie hissed, taking a step toward me.

  To my amazement, Dylan stepped between me, the counter, and Robbie’s six-foot body. Dylan had his game face on—I’d seen it before, every time he toed the starting line in a race. It was the face that said Get out of my way or I’ll run right over your butt. “Back off, man. He’s only asking you a question.”

  I didn’t want to look like a wuss, even though inside I was shaking like one of Robbie’s paint cans. I stepped around Dylan, planted my hands on the counter, and leaned in. “You’d better remember him, and quick. Store management wouldn’t like to hear that you’ve been dating customers, and the police aren’t going to be thrilled that those customers are underage.”

  “I didn’t do anything he didn’t want me to do. He knew what he was getting into—hell, he asked for it!”

  Oh, God. Those words were a red flag if ever I’d heard any. “Where is he? He hasn’t been home since he left for his date with you at Throb over in Chester. When did you last see him?”

  Robbie’s lips thinned into a white, angry line. “You tell anybody about this and I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?” Dylan asked. He matched Robbie in size, if not age, and I realized he could be pretty intimidating when he wanted to be. I was suddenly glad Dylan was on my side.

  “The last time I saw him was at the Starlight Motel over on Highway 27.”

  Well, this just got better and better, didn’t it? I turned away, not sparing him another word or glance. He wasn’t worth it.

  “What did Billy see in that jerk?” Dylan asked, as we left the building and headed for the car.