On the way home we discussed our now postponed plans for a honeymoon. I’d taken two weeks off from school without pay; one the week before the wedding, the other for the honeymoon the week after. We didn’t want to get married around any of the holidays, and during the baseball season would have been awkward. It had simply been easier for me to be off work for two weeks in October. We were a famous enough couple that all the kids and parents at school knew I was gay. I’d even invited a few parents and former students to the wedding.
Because of Ethan’s death I wouldn’t feel right leaving so quickly. There were too many connections past and present. We could put the honeymoon off indefinitely. We had been scheduled to be in Paris for the first three days and in New England for the fall colors for the last three.
The limousine pulled up to the penthouse. As I exited, I noticed a teenager sitting on the three-foot-high brick wall that lines the north side of the semicircular drive up to Scott’s building. The kid wore baggy black pants, a lengthy and overlarge T-shirt, and an open jacket. He was smoking a cigarette. I didn’t recognize him as one of the building regulars. I peered closer. It was one of Scott’s nephews. He spotted us, eased himself off the wall, and slouched over. He sported a pronounced scowl. Halfway to us he flipped the still-lit cigarette onto the pavement and didn’t bother to crush it out. He jammed his hands into his pockets. He was Scott’s oldest brother’s fifteen-year-old, middle son. His parents had not come to the wedding.
I remembered him from our only visit to Georgia, when Scott’s father had been seriously ill. The boy had shown up at his grandfather’s farm in a beat-up, old, red pickup truck one afternoon with a couple other cousins to see their famous uncle Scott. The kid had brought the same scowl with him that afternoon. I didn’t remember his name. He had buzz-cut black hair and an unblemished, pale skin. The kid was six feet tall and maybe 170 pounds. From that summer visit, I remembered him giving a couple of fleeting smiles. They would have been pleasant but for the constant scowl lurking at the edges of his mouth. When the scowl wasn’t lurking but blazing forth, it made him look as if an overfertilized piece of produce had been jammed up his ass.
I tapped Scott on the shoulder. He looked in the direction I pointed. He smiled widely when he saw his nephew. “Donny,” Scott said. He held out his hand, and they shook briefly. The scowl disappeared for several seconds. I noticed his hands tremble before he stuffed them back into his pockets.
Scott asked, “Did your parents change their mind about coming to the wedding?”
“Uh, no.”
“They aren’t here?”
Donny shook his head no.
“Do they know you’re here?”
Another head shake.
“We better get upstairs,” Scott said.
Donny’s only luggage was a smallish, black backpack. As the elevator doors closed, he announced, “I’m not going back.”
“Donny, you hungry?” Scott asked.
This time we got a nod yes.
“First, we’re going to get you fed. We’re going to call your parents to assure them you haven’t run off to join the circus, been kidnapped by aliens, captured by fire-breathing dragons, or trampled in a rhinoceros stampede. Unless one of the above is true, and this is just a stop on the way?”
For his attempted humor Scott got a you-must-be-nuts look. Then Donny restated, “I’m not going back.”
“How did you get here?” I asked.
“I got plane tickets over the Internet with my parents’ credit card number.” Bragging now. His voice included the occasional squeak of a teenage male whose voice hasn’t finished changing. “A friend’s older sister drove me to the airport in Atlanta. I took the train from O’Hare to downtown Chicago. I knew the wedding was today. I got here too late. Even though I showed my ID, they wouldn’t let me in. They said IDs were easy to fake. So I walked here. The guard tried to make me go away. So I had to wait out near the street. This was the first time I traveled by myself. I’ve never even been on a plane before.”
It was late and it had been a spectacularly exhausting day. I wasn’t really up to dealing with him, but I wasn’t about to go to bed before I found out what the hell was going on. I gazed carefully at Scott. He was still beaming at the kid. Was he missing the snarls Donny made little attempt to conceal?
In the kitchen Donny sat at the black marble counter. He dumped his backpack at his feet. From the refrigerator Scott pulled out cold chicken, dill pickles, mayonnaise, mustard, olives, celery, carrots, milk, and soda. He got rye bread from the cupboard and a glass from the cabinet over the sink. The kid began shoveling in great gobs of food even before Scott had everything out.
“They didn’t feed you on the plane?” I asked.
Donny shook his head, then gulped half a glass of milk.
“What happened at home?” Scott asked.
“Lots of stuff. Teenage stuff. I thought about killing myself.”
When I hear about teens and suicides, especially the unexplained deaths, I always suspect a gay connection. Statistically gay teens are 30 percent more likely to try suicide than straight kids. I was willing to condemn Scott’s older brother and sister-in-law on general principles, although, for the moment, I was prepared to keep this to myself. This wasn’t a good time to start criticizing the in-laws. Yet. Scott said he’d gotten over the fact that some of them had chosen not to show up at the wedding, but I suspected it still bothered him. How could it not?
“Why did you think about committing suicide?” I asked.
I got half a snarl and, “Shit happens.”
The kid continued eating most of what was put before him, including what was left of the half gallon of M&M’s candy ice cream in the freezer. Obviously, he wasn’t going to starve himself to death. After he’d wolfed down half the contents of the refrigerator and cupboards, he was no longer pale and trembling.
“Have you talked to your mom and dad since you left?” Scott asked.
Repeating the lament of countless legions of teens before him, Donny said, “I can’t talk to them. They won’t listen. I couldn’t think of what else to do, so I came here.”
“Whatever’s wrong,” Scott said, “I know your mom and dad would not want you to be dead. They’d want to try and help.”
“You don’t get along with them. They don’t like you. You can’t talk to them. Why should I have to?” The soothing burr of Donny’s Southern drawl did nothing to make his responses less of a whine, less combative, or more charming or easier to listen to.
“But I’m not going to kill myself over it,” Scott said.
“I can’t talk to them,” Donny reiterated.
Scott said, “We need to call them and tell them you’re safe.”
“I won’t.”
“You know if you don’t, I’ll have to.”
“I don’t care. I’m not going back. Can’t I stay here with you?” These bits of defiance and bravado and pleas were delivered in ascending tones of hostility, mixed with whining and indifference.
I thought most of his attitude was driven by fear of rejection. We knew little about his home life, but I’d seen the same thing at the school I teach at. A kid’s home is awful, but the mix of rejection, indifference, and poor parenting rarely leads him or her to embrace a hand held out in concern. Hollywood movies and television might be able to get warm, fuzzy endings from caring teachers intervening with troubled teens. Unfortunately, the reality I’d seen seldom worked out so easily, neatly, or warmly. The rejection and indifference from a parent is seldom monolithic. The hand of love has been held out to the kids and then betrayed them. What rules many of these kids’ lives is the betrayal they feel. Even stronger is the uncertainty about if they will ever have or deserve the unconditional love of a parent. I said all this to Donny. When I finished, he said, “Huh?”
Scott said, “We will help you. We care what happens to you, but we will not put up with teenage hostility or whining. You ran all the way to us for a reason. Because you are here does not mean you are in control.”
“I could leave. I could run away again.” But he didn’t move.
“Yes, you could,” Scott said, “and that’s a type of control. You stated you wanted to stay. We’d like to have you. There would be rules here for however long you would stay. There are always rules. I am not going to hold you down and make you call your parents.” The kid nodded. “Sometime tonight they need to be communicated with. If necessary, I’ll call them. They undoubtedly have the police looking for you. To not call would be criminal and cruel.”
Donny focused his eyes on Scott.
Scott said, “Why don’t you tell us what caused you to run away?”
Abruptly the kid began to cry. As the tears fell, he said, “I’m not going to cry. They can’t make me cry.” I handed him a box of tissues. After several minutes, he drew a deep breath, gave an enormous snuffle, and told the story. “Sometimes my dad hits me. This year most of our fights were about my being on the basketball team. My dad always wanted me to play sports. I was the MVP on every basketball team I played on in junior high and so far in high school. He was always more interested in how I played than I was. I had some injuries this year.”
I sometimes wondered about teenage athletes with major health problems. Did some of them incur the injuries simply to get rid of the pressure?
“What does your mom do when he hits you?” Scott asked.
“She’s scared of him. I’m not going to hide behind my ma. I’ll be as big as him soon. I’ve tried to run away before. I’ve left for good now.”
“Was there something specific that happened in the last day or so?” Scott asked.
“We had a big fight. Practice was supposed to start last week. I refused to go. He never called me a wimp to my face, but I heard him say it to Ma one night. Then they found pot in my room. He really hit the roof. I had only a tiny amount. I never use it. I was holding it for a friend.”
I almost laughed. Scott said, “Don’t give me that holding-it-for-a-friend bull crap.”
Donny looked startled and frowned. After a moment he resumed, “Okay. I smoke a little. My friends are kind of wild. Then one time my parents caught me with a girl. They were supposed to be out till late. They came home early. Nothing happened with the girl.”
Scott raised an eyebrow.
“I swear.” Donny held out his hands palm up. “Honest. I really wanted to date her brother. He’s a year ahead of me in school. That’s why I came to you guys. I hoped you’d be sympathetic.”
So, the kid was gay. A reasonably big deal, but not as big of a deal as it might have been a few years ago, although he was from rural Georgia. From what I knew of Scott’s older brother, Donny’s father, he would be hostile to the news.
Throughout Donny’s narrative, in the back of my head I kept getting a niggling little feeling that something wasn’t right here. I sensed there was more of “Are they buying this?” in his recitation than a need for affirmation or a desire to be comforted and helped. I could have been wrong. I’d taught teenagers a long time and listened to a lot of truth and lies. His tale of woe didn’t sound quite right to me, but I didn’t know what it was about what he was saying that I didn’t trust.
I said, “Some of your other relatives are in town. Some are staying in that hotel. Why didn’t you go to them? You could have waited outside the reception and caught people as they were leaving.”
“Why are you questioning me? I didn’t do anything wrong.” He was rapidly moving beyond thinly veiled hostility and whining to blatant defiance.
Scott held up a hand to me. He asked Donny, “Why didn’t you ask the guards at the doors to the reception to get one of us or one of your uncles, aunts, or your grandparents?”
“I didn’t, okay? I just didn’t. You’d think you’d want to help me.”
I was moving beyond willing to help a kid in trouble to being fed up to the gills with the little snot.
“Why should we?” Scott asked. At least Scott’s questions were beginning to indicate less than an infatuation with this possibly toxic teenager.
“I think I heard what happened in the washroom to that guy,” Donny announced.
I was thunderstruck. I thought I caught a hint of a smirk on the kid’s face. That pissed me off. I didn’t think Scott caught it, and I couldn’t be absolutely sure that’s what I saw, but I was now even more suspicious. Was this a big slip in the heat of anger or a planned revelation, or evidence of overwhelming emotion in the face of unexpected death?
Scott said, “Are you okay? Did anyone try to attack you?”
“No. I’m okay.”
“You know he’s dead?” I asked.
“Yeah, I had to sneak around the guards to get out of the hotel. I heard them telling people why they couldn’t leave.”
“How’d you get out?” If the kid had been able to sneak out, certainly the killer would have been able to do so as well.
“I pretended I was with another family. I hung close to some teenagers who had nothing to do with the wedding.”
I said, “Very slowly and carefully, tell us the exact sequence of events from when you entered the hotel until you left.”