Jumpstart the World (11 page)

“Okay.”

Now that I thought about it, Wilbur didn’t ask a lot of questions.

“I wanted to know how you would feel about me taking pictures of you.”

He glanced at the camera hanging around my neck. I’d brought it along in the hopes that we could do something immediate.

“For what?”

“I don’t know. Just for me, I guess. I’m trying to learn photography. I just need a subject who’s … you know … interesting.”

“Interesting as in weird?”

“No. Not at all. Interesting. As in, somebody who looks like they have a story to tell.”

He seemed to like that. I could see the difference on his face.

“Okay. I’ll try it. So long as I get to see the pictures before you do anything with them. And you have to let me really be me. Which is a little more extreme than the way I come to school. And I’ll have to get dressed and made up at your place. I can’t leave home looking like that.”

While he talked, I was having to let go of the idea of getting what I wanted on the spot. It hurt to feel it pulled away.

“When, then?”

“Maybe Saturday.”

“Okay. I guess Saturday would be okay.”

Which still left me with today to fill. But that really wasn’t Wilbur’s problem.

We sat there awhile longer in the corner of the landing, and he didn’t pick up the book again. There was a beam of sunlight slanting down from a high window over our heads, and I watched bits of illuminated dust swirl in it.

“Do you like cats?” I asked after a time.

“I love cats. I used to have a cat. But my stepfather gave her away.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

My problems didn’t seem so big compared to that. So I wasn’t sure whether to say more or not.

“Why do you ask?”

“Oh. I guess I just wanted to talk to somebody because my cat is sick.”

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“Not sure yet.”

“I’m sorry.”

We sat awhile longer. I watched dust swirl. Thinking it was probably always swirling like that. Everywhere. I just didn’t usually see it so clearly.

Then Wilbur said, “If there’s anything I can do …”

I was able to think of something immediately.

*    *    *

Wilbur and I walked all the way to the vet’s office after school. I thought it would be better to walk. Like it would calm me down and tire me out and make it easier to be there.

Or maybe I just wanted to get there as slowly as possible.

I purposely didn’t call ahead because I was scared of what they’d tell me. My gut felt like there must be bad news, and it would be better if I didn’t know.

The woman with the wildly curly hair—who I’m pretty sure was a vet—was standing behind the counter with the receptionist when we came in. They were looking closely at a prescription bottle together. She looked up as I came through the door.

“Hey, you,” she said. Kind of brightly. “Guess whose cat just sat up and drank some water?”

Even if she hadn’t said anything at all, I knew just from the look on her face that I could stop bracing for the worst. I felt myself breathe—really breathe—for what felt like the first time in ages.

She said, “That’s one strong cat you’ve got there.”

I could feel myself smiling too widely.

I said, “Yeah. He’s probably just too stubborn and ornery to die.”

I got to bring Toto home a few days later. Friday. But there was a catch. He needed antibiotics twice a day. And I wasn’t sure I could handle giving that cat a pill.

Of course Frank volunteered to help.

Which was very nice of him. Obviously. And it was just that sort of niceness that I’d always liked in Frank. And the least I could do was be grateful. And I was. In one very real way, I was.
But I had mixed feelings about having him knock on my door twice a day. And I felt like eighteen different kinds of garbage for not wanting to see him.

It’s not that I didn’t appreciate his help. And it’s not like I was judging him for his life choices. It’s more like … If I could just have more time to swallow things. Or maybe have things hit me in smaller pieces. I felt like life was always pushing too much down my throat too fast.

It was giving me serious indigestion.

He showed up for the first pill on Saturday morning. Not long before Wilbur was supposed to come over to get dressed and made up for our big photo shoot. He looked and sounded perkier than I felt.

“Pill time,” he said.

“Thanks.” I had Toto’s antibiotics in my hand. “I’m sorry you have to do this.”

“I don’t mind. I told you I didn’t mind.”

But
I
sort of minded. Having to do this twice a day. And unfortunately, we’d both heard that. In the way I’d said it.

Toto was hiding in a cardboard box in a big kennel cage. Frank and I had set it up that way, so we could always catch him to give him his pill. Frank had carried the big collapsible cage home from work on the subway. I’d put a soft towel in a cardboard carton and stuck the box in there on its side. It didn’t seem fair to not even give him someplace to hide. It was important to him, to hide.

I opened the cage and reached in and pulled the box out, and Frank got hold of the scruff of his neck. Then I held him down in the box by his shoulders and Frank gently opened his mouth and put the pill way back in his throat. Then we just sat there with
him for a minute, with Frank holding his mouth closed and stroking his throat downward until he swallowed.

Toto was a stubborn cat. It took him a long time to swallow.

Frank said, “We’re going to get past this, right?”

I felt a little stunned. I hadn’t known we were going to talk about “it.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Because I don’t want to see our friendship go anywhere.”

“Me neither,” I said.

And I meant it. I really felt it when I said it. Like I was just in a place of remembering how good it felt to be friends with Frank. And like all that other stuff was gone. But I knew better than to think it would stay gone forever. Or even much longer.

“If you ever have questions about—”

“No,” I said. Too fast and too loud. Cutting him off too rudely. I didn’t want to go into anything detailed. “No, it’s not about having questions. It’s not about not accepting you. It’s …”

Yeah. Good one, Elle. Finish that sentence.

“I know what it is,” he said.

Which had to be the most deeply uncomfortable and embarrassing thing anybody had ever said to me. Ever.

Thank God Toto finally swallowed.

“I’ll come back this afternoon,” Frank said.

I was so completely mortified that I didn’t even walk him to the door. I didn’t even say goodbye.

I’ve thought about that a lot since. That simple sentence. I’ll come back this afternoon.

Nothing special about that. Right? No reason to doubt him. People say things like that all the time. You never question it. At the time, it never occurs to you that they could be flat-out wrong.

NINE
Right?

I
walked out of my building with Wilbur, on our way to the park.

He was wearing a tight fishnet top with white pants. You could see his whole chest and shoulders right through the shirt. He was slim but kind of fit-looking, too. And his skin was dark.

Maybe Wilbur was Latino. Or part, anyway. I’d never really thought about it.

He was fully made up, but not in an extreme style. I mean, on a woman it wouldn’t have been extreme. There was nothing exaggerated about it. The long top part of his hair had been pulled back into a tiny short pouf of a ponytail, which made the rest of his hair look sleek and flat. It was a more dramatic look, like when a woman skins her hair back to go formal.

I knew that a big part of my challenge would be to take photos that were about something bigger and more important. Just shooting the fact that Wilbur was feminine for a boy wouldn’t be
good enough. I had to go underneath that. Find something deeper and more to the point.

I just had no idea how.

About a dozen times in the past few days, I’d been tempted to go over and talk to Molly about it. But I kept getting hung up in the idea that Frank might be home. So I guess I was on my own with this. I’d have to figure it out from scratch.

Maybe everybody had to.

Maybe it’s one of those things that can’t really be taught in words, anyway.

We walked down East Drive to around Sixty-seventh Street before ducking into the park near Willowdell Arch. It was already really hot, so we sat in the shade of the dog statue. I was trying to think how you even start a project like this.

“Any idea why there’s a statue of a dog over our heads?” I asked Wilbur. Probably just to have something to say.

I’d seen the statue before. I’d just never bothered to go over and read the plaque and see what it was all about.

“Sure,” he said. “That’s Balto. That Siberian husky who saved all those people in Alaska by getting some kind of medicine through in the winter. You know. A dogsled sort of a thing. He was the lead dog. The musher swears the dog found his way through the storm all by himself.”

I wondered how Wilbur knew all that, but I didn’t ask.

“Wow,” I said. “A dog hero.” Silence. It was time to take pictures. But Wilbur would want me to tell him what he was supposed to do. And I had no idea. “Do you like dogs?”

“I’m a little bit afraid of them,” he said. “I’d be afraid of a big
Siberian like that. My mother used to have a little Yorkie. Pepito. I liked Pepito.”

“What happened to him?” I asked. I was hoping this had nothing to do with his stepfather.

“He died of old age. And after he died, she never got another dog because my stepfather hates them.”

We sat in silence in the shade for a few more beats.

“What feels like it’s missing in your life?” I asked.

It was a weird question. Out of nowhere and not even fully explained. Or at least it should have come off that way. But Wilbur picked it right up. As if he’d been answering questions like that one all his life.

“Maybe feeling like I’m safe,” he said.

“Okay, stand here in the shadow of this dog,” I said. “And I’ll see if I can find a way to see that through my camera lens.”

But I wasn’t even sure how I’d know if I succeeded. That was the problem with a film camera. Until you developed your film, you never knew if you got what you wanted or not.

I had him lean against the base of the dog statue. I liked the way it gave the shots the background of a hero.

“I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do,” he said.

I lowered my camera and looked him right in the eye. “God’s honest truth? Neither am I.” I breathed deeply and thought about Molly. “Just be as close to yourself as you can possibly bring yourself to be.”

Then I looked at him through the viewfinder again, and he was smiling.

“What? What are you smiling at?”

“Nothing. Really. I’m just not sure anybody ever said that to me before.”

*    *    *

Right around the time I was packing up my lenses, Wilbur said this to me:

“I thought you’d be happier now that the cat is okay.”

I didn’t answer right off.

It was pretty clear what he was saying. It was an opening to talk about what was bothering me.

If I wanted to.

I’d been hoping it wasn’t obvious that something was bothering me. But to Wilbur I guess it was.

I wound a whole roll of film back into the cartridge and popped it out of the camera before I said anything.

“If I tell you something, who all are you going to tell?”

“I don’t gossip,” he said.

“Nobody
says
they gossip. People just pass on what they’ve heard and at the same time they continue to think of themselves as people who don’t gossip.”

“When’s the last time you heard me talk about anyone?”

“Good point,” I said.

Another long silence.

Was I really going to do this thing? It felt scary. Maybe even insane. Then again, a better question might be: Was I really
not
going to do it, ever? Hold this up all by myself forever? Not take one single human being into my confidence?

I took a deep breath.

“Turns out he is,” I said.

Now, that’s another one of those statements that’s hardly self-explanatory. I fully expected him to say, first, Who? And, second, Is what?

But it was Wilbur. Wilbur said no such thing.

“I know,” he said.

“You said you didn’t know.”

“I guess I meant more like I didn’t feel the need to say what I thought. I figure what people are can just be their own business.”

We started walking together. Back out onto East Drive.

I never answered.

So, he’d pretty much thought so, too. But I figured I shouldn’t be mad at him. After all, he’d kept his mouth shut.

Maybe I shouldn’t be mad at any of them.

After all, they were right.

“Why does it bother you so much?” he asked. “Is it because you have a crush on him?”

“Oh, God. Is it that obvious?”

“Not obvious, really. I just figured you did.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s why.”

“Okay. Because you don’t strike me as the type who would get all weirded out about a thing like that. I mean, you get along fine with me.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I do.” He was even starting to feel like a friend. “Are you trans?”

“Not really. Not the way he is. I mean, I don’t want to have surgery. I don’t need to be a girl. I’m just this.”

Then we walked without talking for a while.

“I won’t tell anybody,” he said.

“Thanks,” I said.

I’m not the most trusting soul in the world. But I believed him.

We walked the rest of the way home together. Being with him as a friend was starting to feel more comfortable. It was
the last time anything would feel comfortable for a very long time.

Just before we turned the corner onto my street, the shriek of an ambulance hit us, just out of nowhere, and very close. Not like it had come from far away, getting louder all the time. Like the ambulance had just pulled away from the curb and turned on its siren. Right around the corner.

Right on my block.