Short Stories - Chapter 15: Chapter 15

"Jesus," I breathed, putting a hand on my chest after Callie grabbed my arm from behind, scaring the shit out of me.
"You better be in study hall today," she said. "I've got some tea that's too damn good to spill over the phone."
"Why don't you just tell me now?"
"Because Isaac's not here, dipshit," she said, as if it were obvious. "Study hall. Be there."
"Okay," I nodded. "I will."
When my phone started buzzing in fourth period, I pulled it out of my pocket with a roll of my eyes, figuring it was some random number calling me. But then I saw that the caller was Isaac, and it was so unusual for him to call me in the middle of class that I didn't hesitate to pick up.
Mr. Harrow's eyes zeroed in on me as soon as I pressed the phone against my ear, but I ignored him and said, "Hey, what's up?"
"Mr. Matthews—"
But I put my hand up to stop him so that I could hear what Isaac was saying. A question: could I come to the 200 building's hallway?
Again, I didn't hesitate, this time because I was almost sure I could hear something off in his voice, even if it was slight. Something had happened.
"I'll be there," I said, and he hung up. Then I looked at Mr. Harrow, who was still glaring at me with his arms crossed. "Sir, can I go to—"
"You want to distract my class and ask to leave?" He scoffed as I began to rise. "Sit down."
So I ignored him entirely, grabbing my backpack from the floor and wordlessly leaving the class. Mr. Harrow didn't call after me, and I knew he wouldn't call administration, either. His policy was: if you want to waste your education, that's on you.
As I crossed the school to the 200 building, my pace kept increasing on its own until I was flat-out jogging and had to tell myself to chill. Isaac hadn't sounded like he was in a state of emergency.
I saw him right away; he was on the floor, sat up against the lockers, staring at the wall in front of him. What told me there had been trouble was his chair. It was a few feet away from him, knocked onto its side.
"What happened?" I asked as I approached. Isaac turned to look at me, and I could see that he was teary-eyed.
"Exactly what you think happened," he said, his voice weirdly empty. "Calum saw an opportunity and he took it."
I was almost surprised. Calum hadn't laid a hand on Isaac in weeks—the sticks and stones were usually reserved for me. But then again, he was Calum Berkeley. He was a pure-blooded-bully, and he'd known what he was doing—everyone knew the 200 building hadn't had working cameras since before we were born, so it was the perfect place to get stoned and hook up and, in this case, harass someone. It was unexpected, but not shocking.
I righted the wheelchair, tossed my bag to the tiled floor, and slid down the lockers next to him. "Talk to me."
He huffed, his hand rubbing his neck, as a lone tear tried to escape his eye, but he wiped it away before it could so much as reach his cheek. "I don't—I don't care that he pushed me. That's what bullies do. If I got upset every time I got shoved . . ."
He bit his lip hard. "I care that for a solid five minutes, I couldn't get up, no matter how damn hard I tried. The chair fell on my leg and I was . . . I felt trapped. It's hard not to stop and think: god, I'm helpless. And not just now. Ever since I lost my leg, I've been so fucking pathetic. I needed you to get me home that night, I needed you to help me pay my doctor's bills, I need people to hold doors for me, I need my mom to drive me to school . . . I can't do anything for myself.
As he spoke, his tears fell. Not all at once, and not many of them. Just a few that dropped one at a time, getting halfway down his face before they were wiped out of existence.
"There's only so long a guy can try to convince himself that's he's not useless, you know? The more you deny it, the harder it hits when something like this happens and it comes crashing down all at once that you're absolutely fucking helpless. It was . . . a long time before I called you. Not because I felt embarrassed, but because I didn't even see the point. I gave up on trying to get the chair off my leg and wanted to just lay there and accept the fact that I'm completely hopeless on my own. And it felt good for a few minutes. For a while, I felt like I was finally seeing myself for what I really am.
"But that good feeling went away, and I got the will to get the chair off and sit up. Maybe that's where it's supposed to get better, but all I could think about—all I can think about—is the fact that this is the rest of my life. It's never going to pass. What happens when I have kids, and something bad happens in the middle of the night? A fire, or—or someone breaks in, or something. What if the time it takes me to get my leg on is the time it takes for something bad to happen to them? What if . . ."
But his voice was failing, so he stopped. He leaned his head back against the locker and raised his eyes to the hallway's stained ceiling.
I wanted to devise a perfect response, where I answered to everything he'd said, disputed each argument, and made him realize that he was wrong—that he was nowhere near useless. But he'd just given me the truest version of him—those inner insecurities that we often tried to hide. It was raw and real. So my answer had to be raw and real, not some calculated response crafted for the sole purpose of proving a point.
I leaned my head into his shoulder. There was a moment of silence, one that I broke when I muttered the words, "I wish you could see what I see when I look at you."
I felt him shift slightly, so I continued, a little louder, saying whatever came to mind. "You survived that crash for a reason. You're here to prove the world wrong and make others see that people in your situation are more than their disability . . . that disability isn't even the right word to describe you. You're . . . I think you're only as strong or weak as you tell yourself you are. Now," I pushed to my feet, then beckoned for him to follow suit. "Up you go."
He looked up at me, confused, and I crossed my arms over my chest. "A wise man once told me that if I treat you like you're defenseless, others will, too. Though he never mentioned that you'd start believing it yourself. I'll always be here to, you know, metaphorically lift your wheelchair for you, but the rest is on you. Come on; up."
That finally got a smile from him. I must have said something right, because I could see his resolve returning right before my eyes. He used his arms and his good leg to push himself up onto the wheelchair without too much of a struggle. I grinned at his success, kneeling down and crossing my arms on his knees.
"See?" I said. "Easy."
I saw something flicker in his eyes. His only response was to lean forward and kiss me.
My immediate surprise had me frozen on the spot, and the contact was gone before I could recover and respond. My expression must have been pretty funny, because Isaac was clearly amused, an unapologetic smile on his face. "You good?" he asked.
I nodded rather stupidly. "I'm good," I breathed, my voice sounding hollow, my lips tingling like crazy. I finally broke out of my stupor enough to smile and, laughing softly at myself, said, "Really, really good."
That was clearly enough of a sign for Isaac, because he pushed his lips against mine again, and this time, I didn't hesitate to kiss him back.
Everything seemed to just fall perfectly into place. I didn't have to think as I sat up on my knees so that we were closer, pushing my hands into his hair. He held the back of my neck with one hand and my shirt with he other, and he used his grip to pull me into him, kissing me hard and deep and making my brain short-circuit.
I would've gone on, completely forgetting where we were, had he not leaned back to look at me, smiling like I hadn't quite seen him smile before. It was small, but it reached every corner of his face and gave a new light to each and every feature.
I bit my lip in a failed attempt to control my own smile. "Okay, then," I said. "Cool."
"Cool," he laughed.
I glanced around the empty hall. Knowing that I had absolutely zero chance of doing anything even mildly productive for the rest of the day after that, I said, "You down to ditch?"
He grinned. "Are you kidding? I'm dying to get out of here."
"Then we'll get out," I said, standing up.
I moved to push his wheelchair, but he said, "Don't even think about it."
Helpless my ass, I thought. "That's more like it."
"Where's your car?" Isaac asked when we got to the parking lot.
"Home," I said, as if it was obvious. "I walked today."
". . . Why?"
"Because I wanted to."
He scoffed. "You're weird."
"Hush," I said. "You want ice cream?"
"Honestly, Ryan, sometimes you ask the dumbest questions."
Laughing, I said, "Ice cream it is."
We walked right out of the parking lot, unnoticed by the sleeping security guard. Our town had a serious sleeping-on-the-job problem.
I led him in the direction I knew would take us to the ice cream parlor. It wasn't a far walk, and we kept easy conversation going the whole way through, laughing and smiling and blushing and flirting nonstop.
At one point, I noticed that Isaac was the slightest bit ahead of me, so I picked up my pace a little to pass him. Then he pushed himself faster still, getting ahead again, and I sped up, and he sped up, and I sped up, until I was flat-out running.
Isaac was surprisingly fast in his chair, and I found myself having to legitimately sprint to keep up. We were head-to-head, racing down the sidewalk and laughing the whole way through.
I saw victory up ahead, however. An incline. Isaac may be fast, but no way was he going to keep up on an uphill slope.
I was right. I left him in my tracks on the way up, letting out a victorious whoop when I reached the top. I'd failed to consider one thing, though: there're two sides to every hill.
I was halfway down when I heard a whoosh and Isaac flew past me, middle fingers in the air, singing, "We're soooaaaring, flyyying, there's not a star in heaven that we can't reach!"
I tried to catch up—while, I should mention, laughing my sorry ass off at his little display, which made things significantly more difficult—but it was hopeless. I had nothing on those wheels.
Isaac hadn't thought it through either, however. Because he didn't stop when he reached the bottom—Newton's law of inertia made sure of that. He kept on going, and would've probably rolled right onto the street if I hadn't ran like the devil was on my tail to stop him.
I grabbed at the handles of his chair and pressed my heels into the pavement, stopping him with several yards to go. Isaac and I were laughing like absolute maniacs, panting after all of that effort and giggling uncontrollably and probably getting weird looks from people passing in their cars.
"Hey . . . Isaac?" I practically wheezed, holding my stomach with one hand and wiping under my eyes with another.
"Yeah?"
"I think . . . I think we passed . . . the ice cream place," I said, and we only laughed harder.
It was a while before we got to the shop. First, we had to calm the hell down, which was an adventure on its own. We were both in that giggly mood that made it almost impossible to stop laughing, because even mere eye contact could set us off again.
And when we managed to return to normal-human status, we were both fucking exhausted. I draped myself over the armrests of his chair, forcing him to rest his arms on my stomach as we both breathed heavily. Somehow, racing down the sidewalk had managed to drain two athletes.
Then there was actually getting to the shop. From what I could tell by my surroundings, we'd passed it by quite a bit. Perhaps getting back wouldn't have been so difficult if I hadn't refused for the first several minutes to get off of my little bed, causing Isaac to try—without any shred of success—to roll the two of us back uphill.
We finally got moving when I got my lazy ass up, and ten minutes later we were ordering from Scoop City, the cute little shop known for its delicious, inexpensive ice cream and its mega pastel aesthetic. It was pretty crowded inside for such a small space, but then again, that's how it always was.
"I'm paying," I said as the cashier prepared our ice cream. "Dibs."
"Incorrect," Isaac quipped, pulling his wallet out of his pocket.
I pushed his hand down. "Try me."
With a roll of his eyes, he gave in. "Fine."
The cashier came back, handing us both our ice cream. As I pulled the cash from my wallet, Isaac yelped in pain and gripped at his right leg. I turned quickly in concern, asking, "What's wrong?" right as he shoved a $10 bill across the counter.
I gaped at him. "You conniving little . . ."
He blew me a kiss and took his change smugly.
There were no free tables in the shop, so we took one outside. I had a cookies and cream cone and he had a vanilla cup, which led to a ten minute long cups vs cones debate that there was no clear winner of.
"It's weird," he said after a few minutes of idle conversation, his eyes scanning his surroundings curiously. "I had no idea this place was here."
"Well you've only been here two months," I reminded him.
"Almost three," he pointed out. Damn. I'd known this kid for nearly three whole months. A quarter of a year.
"And yet I'm just now finding out that you're the kind of boring-ass bitch that gets vanilla ice cream."
"Hey!" he protested. "Vanilla is the king of all ice creams. Not like that try-hard Oreo bullshit."
"This Oreo bullshit," I argued, "has more flavor in one cookie than your entire cup."
To prove my point, I offered him the cone. He tasted it, shrugged, and said, "Mediocre at best."
I scoffed indignantly, and he held up a spoonful of his ice cream for me to try. I opened my mouth—if he was going to force me to eat vanilla, he was going to do all the work—and soon regretted that decision when, at the last second, he flicked his wrist up, trailing ice cream from my mouth to my nose.
"You are the worst kind of human," I groaned, but we were both laughing.
"Where to now?" he asked when we finally left the shop after thirty minutes of teasing, chatting, and holding hands under the table.
"I was thinking we could go hang by the lake?" I said. "You know, in a totally heterosexual, unromantic way."
Isaac nodded. "As long as we don't do anything gay."
"Oh, for sure, bro," I said. "No homo. Like, at all."
"Perfect."
The walk to the park was a good deal longer, because it was closer to the edges of town, where the houses got nicer and the grass got greener.
"Weren't we supposed to meet Callie?" Isaac brought up as we settled down by the shore of the lake.
"Whoops," I said carelessly as he got out of his wheelchair to sit in the grass next to me. I couldn't bring myself to feel bad. On my priorities list, going out with a pretty-much-perfect boy trumped Callie's gossip by a good deal.
"And we're missing practice."
"Aw, darn," I said sarcastically; basketball was even farther down on the list.
Isaac chuckled at my lack of remorse. "I hate to be that kid," he said after a few moments, "But I procrastinated real hard on the macro project, so do you mind if I . . .?"
"Go for it," I said. We had an economics project due tomorrow, and I was pretty sure Mrs. Pragsburg's wrinkly self didn't like Isaac any more than she liked me, so there's no chance that he'd get away with turning it in late.
He reached up and pulled his bag from the back of his chair. Mine was on the grass next to me, and I opened it to pull out a book, figuring I may as well read while he went at it. The book was Life of Pi by Yann Martel—one I'd read about a hundred times and planned to read about a hundred more.
Isaac laid on his stomach as he worked, his books scattered at and around his arms. I rested with my head on his back, holding the book above me and stretching my legs out in the grass.
We stayed like that, in that exact position, for a long while. We worked in silence that was never once uncomfortable, him focused on his work and me entranced by my book. I didn't even realize how much time had passed until I noticed that the sky had lost its brightness and the park had begun to empty.
I decided to put the book down and shifted so that I was on my stomach, too, with my chin on Isaac's shoulder. I watched as he wrote, my eyes scanning over his work. His essay was really good—better than anything I could write.
"Smart boy," I murmured, and I could see the corner of his mouth curve up.
"You know," he said, "You make it very hard to concentrate."
"Oh, come on," I laughed indignantly. "I've barely said a word."
"You don't have to."
"Well I can't stop being irresistible," I said, earning a laugh. "So maybe it's time to give it a rest. Watch the sunset with me."
It was more of a request than a demand, but he didn't need to be asked twice. He sat up and put away his books, and when he turned around to face the lake, his eyes rounded.
"Damn," he whispered. "That's the prettiest thing I've seen since I moved here."
I coughed into my fist.
"Second prettiest."
We sat with our shoulders touching, talking softly to each other as we stared at the sight ahead. As the sun sank lower, our conversations got heavier. Somehow, we ended up on topics like my years in the foster home system, his deadbeat dad, my separation when I was a baby from my sister, and the loss of his brother. It was weirdly open, and though I usually didn't like talking about those things, I found that sharing my feelings with Isaac felt less like carrying a burden and more like ridding myself of one. He was a good listener, and the way he described things—events, his feelings—only served to make me like him more. There was just something about the way he spoke that I absolutely loved.
We learned that we'd both battled depression for a while. Though, he'd won the fight much sooner than I had—we figured that was because he'd had his mother through his tough times, while I'd had virtually no one.
I hadn't expected things to get so serious, but in those last rays of light the sun would offer, I showed him my scars. They were so faint that even I struggled to see them—much too light to be noticed by anyone who wasn't looking.
Isaac lifted my hand, pressing his lips gently to my wrist. "Never again, okay?"
I nodded, intertwining my fingers with his. I could honestly say that those days were behind me.
As the last of the light disappeared and the stars began to show themselves, we laid back in the grass, still shoulder-to-shoulder, still holding hands. We were quiet, but my heart was pounding. I wondered if he could hear it.
"Hey, Ryan?"
"Hm?"
"I really like you."
If he couldn't hear my heart before, I was sure he could now. Swallowing hard, I rolled onto my side, propping my head up with my elbow. "I really like you, too," I said. "But I'm figuring you already guessed that."
He grinned. "Just a little."
I glanced down at his lips, then at his eyes again. If he just leaned up or I just leaned down, we'd be doing exactly what we both wanted to be doing—and knew the other wanted to be doing.
"You know," Isaac muttered, "I think we broke the 'no homo' rule."
"Just a little," I teased.
Neither of us made that little push. We were both waiting for the other to do it.
Until Isaac laughed to himself, muttering, "This is so stupid," and took hold of my chin, bringing my face down to meet his.
It was the best feeling. Relief, after hours of tension built through flirting and touching and wanting without acting.
I had a full body reaction. Soon enough, gone was any concept of taking it slow. Soft was overrated.
In all fairness, he wasn't trying very hard to hold back, either. When I parted my lips, any restraint disappeared on his part, and I let him take over. I let him kiss me hard—I wanted him to kiss me harder. So I pushed forward, hovering over him, running a hand down his side, throwing caution to the wind.
His hand dipped down my back, getting slowly lower. My blood was burning, my brain was completely blanking. My body screamed for contact, and when I dragged my teeth against Isaac's bottom lip, I got it as he arched his back, pressing his chest against mine.
He grabbed fistfuls of my shirt, pulling me closer still. I was too overwhelmed, losing my hold on my nerve as he moved his lips beneath mine, so I pushed my face into the curve of his neck, kissing along the side of his throat and then pressing my forehead against his shoulder, trying to catch my breath.
He was breathing heavy, too, and I felt every quick rise and fall of his chest. My body relaxed until I was laying half on top of him, one of my hands at the hem of his shirt, just barely brushing the skin underneath.
"We definitely broke the rule," I said.
"Ohhh yeah," Isaac agreed.
"Tell me, is there anything you're not good at?"
"Rock paper scissors," he admitted randomly. "I'm absolutely awful. Lose every time."
I laughed, pushing myself into a sitting position. "Let's play, then."
Grinning, he sat up as well, making a fist with one hand. "Fine."
"What are the stakes?"
"If I win, you have to kiss me."
I was definitely okay with that.
"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot!"
He kept his hand in a fist, and I sprawled out my fingers. Rock vs. Paper. "Bitch," he murmured, and I laughed, gently pulling his face toward mine and planting one on him anyways.
When I pulled away, my hand was in the scissors shape. "You won, fair and square," I said. "Just payin' my dues."
We left soon after that, walking to my house, which was closest, heading straight to my car so I could drive him the rest of the way home. I wished like crazy that I could just come inside and stay with him. But my dad would kill me—I'd already forgotten to mention I'd be out late to begin with—and I would like to live long enough to maybe do this again sometime. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face as I walked away from his door after what had to have been my best night for a long, long time.
I found Callie by her locker on Tuesday morning and prepared myself for a reaming as I tapped her shoulder.
She looked over, her eyes narrowing when she saw me, and turned to face me with her hands crossed over her chest. "So now you're here?"
"Listen," I said, rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly. "I left during fourth period yesterday. I was busy."
"Oh?" she said. "I don't suppose Isaac was with you?"
"He was, actually."
"And what were you two doing?"
I grinned, and that was all she needed. I swear, we had some kind of telepathic connection.
Her mouth fell open. "For real?"
"For real."
I could see her trying to hold back her smile. "Fine," she said stubbornly. "You're excused."
This time, both Isaac and I were present at study hall during fifth period, which Callie was clearly pleased by.
"Jesus Christ," she breathed, her voice quiet, the moment I sat down between her and Isaac. "You entered this room less than twenty seconds ago and my hairs are already standing up with the electricity your sexual tension is causing."
"Oh, shut up," I said, even though I felt it, too. Just like I'd felt it in third period as soon as I saw Isaac sitting at his table. His back had been facing me, but he'd turned as I entered anyways, doing that disgustingly attractive lip-bite-smile thing he always did.
I wanted nothing more than to reach over and hold his hand right now—it was there, inches away on his lap. But Westview had a lot of growing to do before it would be able to handle an openly gay couple. So I shoved my hand into my pocket.
I could tell Isaac had noticed my struggle, because his eyes met mine and he rolled them—not at me, but at the fact that we couldn't be like that pair on the loveseat ahead of us, all cuddled up.
He gave me a fleeting smile before turning back to Callie. "So, what's all the fuss about?"
She rubbed her hands together excitedly. "I told you about my dad's snobby work dinner, right?" We both nodded. "Like I said, Calum's mom was there. She didn't say anything interesting. Hell, I don't think she spoke at all. But, everyone had their worker IDs on their collars. Do you know what her last name is?"
"Uh . . . Berkeley?" I said.
"Wrong!" Callie clipped. "That's her maiden name. But that wasn't the name on her ID. So I asked her about it after the dinner—in a non-suspicious way, of course, being the actress I am—"
"Want me to pull out the video of you playing a shrub in Into the Woods?" I teased.
"We do not speak of the past, Ryan," she said pointedly. "Anyways, what she told me was that she remarried not even a year ago, during last summer. Calum and his sister kept her name, but she hyphenated. The name? Berkeley-Anderson."