Difficult Material Notice: I really don’t like these sorts of “warnings” but also I don’t want anyone to get knocked back because of tough material. So this is just a reminder to any readers (sincerely grateful to have you here btw) that this book contains difficult and potentially triggering themes that are going to surface from time to time.
The book is a queer coming of age story. It’s about: coming out and being out, childhood sexual trauma, family rejection, alcohol abuse, falling the fuck apart, self-harm, chain-smoking, suicidal ideation and suicide.
Suicidal ideation and suicide disproportionately impact the LGBTQ+ community. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts please reach out to any of these resources. I was a volunteer crisis counselor for The Trevor Project, and I assure you the folx who pick up those calls are so sincerely glad that you have called.
We are in this together.
~sky
Chapter 5.5
Casey picked Daniel up as planned on January 3rd, his flight was an hour late though, which was a long wait for Casey, who had parked at the end of the runway at 8:30 and watched every plane land, hoping to spot the Alaska Airlines 9:15 arrival coming in early, but it wouldn’t touch down until 10:10. When Daniel was finally back in the bus, Casey pulled into Spanish Landing across the street so they could hug and smoke, which turned into a mini make-out session, the only one they would get tonight. Daniel was exhausted, and they both knew he had to open the café at 6 am, so Casey walked him to the boat and said goodnight. Daniel found Ballina in perfect condition, even the sheets smelled clean. No surprise there, he laughed, Casey was just like that.
The boys agreed on an early morning moped ride 2 days later. This plan gave Daniel time to get sorted and settled back into work and San Diego, and Casey the opportunity to not seem clingy.
Two days later Casey showed up at their planned meeting spot 10 minutes early. The morning was cool and it was still dark out. He sat on his moped at the far end of the restaurant parking lot, bundled, and lodged in the shadows cast from an overhead light. Feet up on the moped, smoking. It was comfortably quiet, with only occasional cars passing, the drone of a medium sized city beginning to wake up in the background. The airplanes at Lindbergh Field hadn't started taking off yet, or landing.
When he heard the distinctive pop of a moped cut through the air, Casey pulled his feet down, and straightening up, looked at his watch: 5:53 am. He smiled, Daniel was getting there early too. Daniel rounded the corner into the parking lot, cutting his engine and gliding the rest of the way, stopping perfectly in front of Casey. Neither of them said a word as Daniel leaned in and kissed Casey politely on the lips. It may have been the most intimate moment Casey had ever experienced, and he felt it too. His stomach rushed up into his heart, then past his throat and into his face, which was tingling and warm. He pulled back and instinctively took a drag on his cigarette, attempting to regain some composure. Daniel reached out for the cigarette, replaying what Casey had just done. Their eyes darted back and forth, hearts racing.
They finished the cigarette together, with small talk but mostly cool and quiet air. Casey leaned down and pinched the cigarette butt out under his foot, then looked up back up at Daniel, “Let's ride” he said, lips curling up. “Should be really nice for an hour, anything you want to see?”
Daniel smiled, “You.”
They kick-started their mopeds and sped out parking lot, down University Avenue towards Mission Hills. Casey knew where he wanted to go, plus he loved riding in twos. Riding in tandem was its own kind of fun. Daniel knew when to ride next to Casey, when to take the lead, and when to follow behind. There was a deep language re-emerging between them.
Circling into Hillcrest, cutting through alleys, looking for traffic, but concerned only about cars and people, not lights or street directions, Casey always finding the smoothest line to follow in the street. On the edge of Mission Hills, Casey stopped in a church parking lot to smoke and talk. They would share this one, too.
Casey nodded with his head toward the buildings behind him as he was lighting the cigarette, “This is where I went to school.”
“You went to a school in that church?” Daniel joked.
“Partly, I guess, well, you know, Catholic school.” Casey paused, turning and looking at the school and church. “It was really weird, I realize now. I mean, then it just sucked, but now, I realize it was actually pretty creepy too.”
“Yeah!” Daniel replied, nodding, “You know I went to Catholic school too. What kind of things did you get in trouble for?”
“Ugh, mostly joke-making, heretical stuff I guess. I never treated Jesus with, I don't know, I guess deference, or I guess the right kind of deference anyway” Casey thought for a second, putting his hand up. “Oh, I got caught smoking once too, in eighth grade.”
“Holy shit” Daniel laughed, smiling and biting his lower lip, then taking a drag of the cigarette and handing it back to Casey while talking over the exhale. “You're hardcore”
“Ha, I wasn't a smoker then, just a troublemaker. I actually got a couple of kids to smoke at lunch over in the bushes next to the church, right there.” Casey said, pointing, “Not so discreet. I left a cigarette lighter in the bushes after delivering my papers that morning. I had a whole plan.” Casey laughed at himself, and Daniel interjected, “Why didn't you just keep it in your pocket?”
“I don't know, I think I liked that I had access to the school while everyone else was still asleep and like I was a spy or something leaving a secret package for later.”
“What happened?” Daniel blurted.
“We got busted right away. There were like four of us puffing a cloud of smoke in the bushes and coughing. The yard nun came right over.”
Daniel added smiling, “The yard nun, wow! So tough, she would make or break recess.”
“Exactly. And this one wasn't totally against me, so I didn't get as busted as I could have, even though the other kids immediately ratted me out.”
“Did they tell your parents?”
“Yeah” Casey answered, trailing off
“Did they rail on you?”
Casey took a second to answer, closing his eyes and then opening them again slowly, “Not really, they seemed more pissed about the lighter and wanting to know where I got it than the actual smoking, or even the getting caught I guess.”
“Were they smokers?”
“Definitely not, that's the funny thing, it's like they had just chalked it up to me being a smoker or something, it was weird. Their attitude was more like, you can smoke if you want to just don't get busted for it at school, and don't burn our house down with a lighter.”
Daniel’s face slowed and sort of lost its animation, like he was trying to understand something. Casey was waiting for Daniel to continue but Daniel was just staring off, and while handing the cigarette back Casey reacted, “What?” Daniel almost hesitated “Well, the way you said don't burn “our” house down, you said it like it wasn't your house like it was just their house.”
Casey answered immediately, pulling his head back, “Well, it is their house. I don't really live there anymore.”
Daniel wasn’t satisfied, “Yeah, but back then, you were only in 8th grade.” Daniel let it hang without finishing, and Casey picked it right up, laughing but feeling defensive and scratching at his face. “So what does that matter?”
“I guess, I don't know” Daniel said, now looking kind of sad and talking more intimately. “My parents have never made me feel like it was “their" house and not mine, but I guess you're right, it is their house.”
They both sat silent and smoked through the rest of the cigarette. The first light was beginning to cut across the sky, and Daniel squinted his eyes as a cloud of smoke crossed in front of his face as he imagined Casey crouched in the bushes, puffing away. Daniel wanted so badly to have been there for Casey back then. He wouldn't have ratted him out, and he would have made him feel at home. His heart ached with all these thoughts of Casey alone as a little boy, the sadness, and now the two of them there, standing on the same blacktop, smoking.
“Okay, I have an idea!” Casey blurted, suddenly looking more like himself and washing the awkwardness away. He was excited again. “Let's ride one of my old paper routes.” Daniel couldn't tell if he was really excited or just trying to get them out of this, but either way it was good shift, so he joined the excitement.
“So awesome! Let's do it.”
“Okay, the neighborhood is really fun and hilly.” Casey was talking with his hands again and making a plan, almost like he had a map in front of him. Daniel was watching how Casey moved from pained back to sweet and adorable in a split second, which was new, and made him feel uncomfortable.
“I'll cut the motor on some of the downhills and just cruise, then you have to start it back up as we’re cresting the hill.”
“Yes, Captain!” Daniel uttered, straightening up his back and saluting, wanting to be back in the moment and back with Casey.
Casey leaned in and kissed Daniel, lips half open, just as intimate as Daniel’s kiss just 10 minutes earlier but so much wetter and more emotional, allowing them to properly pause the conversation that had become unexpectedly raw.
Daniel put his hand behind Casey's neck and held him. He knew that the kiss right there in front of Casey’s old Catholic school, in the church parking lot which doubled as the playground where he had spent his childhood playing and running, released something in Casey, it released something in Daniel too, from some other blacktop 1200 miles away.
They stomped their mopeds on, and in seconds Casey was down the street following a line in his head he had permanently drawn over an entire childhood. He knew every movement of the street. Every cut of the sidewalk. It seemed like everywhere he went turned smooth in front of them, but really he had learned to go only where it was smooth. This was also how Casey had survived his school, and his parents too, with “their” house and “their” cruelty, where they had nearly crushed him. He’d always had a knack for finding the smoothest line leading away.
Daniel fell into Casey's rhythm, following him was easy, his movements were never jerky or unexpected. And even though Daniel had no idea where they were going, Casey had a way of indicating the next move, at least to Daniel which made him feel closer to Casey sort of like he was shadowing him or that some part of them had merged.
Daniel pulled himself up slightly on his moped, not upright so he was standing, but enough that he could feel his own weight under his feet, steering more with his body than with his hands. He felt a bit overwhelmed and needed to feel the weight of his own body. He knew that he had fallen in love with Casey. He didn’t quite know how it happened, you never do, but it did. Maybe while he was away in Seattle, maybe at Dia De Los Muertos, maybe the first time Casey appeared out of thin air at the espresso counter at the Quonset Hut. Either way, it had happened, and now here he was, in love with Casey but also more unsure of him than he had ever been.
As they glided through Mission Hills, Casey mostly remembered the houses he used to deliver newspapers to, turning his head slightly to eyeball exactly where he would throw the papers, onto a porch, over a hedge, on a walkway. He was starting to feel detached too though, more like he was watching himself as a 12-year-old throwing the paper route than the version of him who was actually here with Daniel.
Some combination of the Catholic school blacktop and the conversation about his parents and “their” house, plus being back in his old neighborhood at 6:30 AM on his own paper route, was starting to turn him inside out. The pain he was hiding from childhood becoming too present. So he made his mind unfocus from his heart. It's kind of like unfocusing your eyes while reading a book, you can still see that the words are there, and you know that they make a story, but the details and the drama and the facts and your feelings about them, those go away.
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When Casey got to the bottom of Presidio Drive, right next to the park it's named for, he pulled over at a lookout and turned off his moped. Daniel followed precisely. Both of their ears were freezing and ringing, but then it was also perfectly still. The lights on the freeway far below flowed like water.
“Wow, you really remember the route.” Daniel said as Casey was pulling out a cigarette. He pulled out a second one this time and lit them both before handing one to Daniel without saying anything. Casey wasn't being dramatic or deliberate or anything really, it's just that he had actually unfocused. Casey was having a hard time feeling anything and he used feelings to talk, it was something that made people feel close to him and it was good, but it was also the thing that made him fall apart sometimes, maybe too easily. Daniel noticed, but instead of pushing, he stayed in the flow of the morning and smoked, just letting Casey lead now.
“Let's ride through the park, we can walk around the back of the Presidio and watch the sunrise.”
They rode off, both smoking this time as they did. Within minutes they were parked directly in front of the Presidio. Casey hopped off and sat down on the brick steps, giving peak views to the West. Daniel followed, and after sitting down next to Casey, brought up Christmas.
“I’ve been wanting to ask you about Christmas with your family.” Daniel asked casually, but really, he had been aching to talk about it since they talked on the phone. After Daniel had hung up that night and went back into the family room, everyone was discussing what movie they had decided on. His mom handed him a bowl of popcorn, and his brother’s girlfriend gave him a blanket when he sat on the couch. In that moment, he had realized that Casey was alone on the boat, on Christmas, with no popcorn, no blanket, and no movie, despite the fact that his parents and brothers were only miles away.
Casey answered falsely, like he always did about his family. “Oh, it was great, I got a sweater and a gift certificate to Tower Records.”
But Daniel pushed, “What about your family? Why were you at the boat? I mean I’m glad because I wanted to talk to you and you hadn’t called me so I was kinda worried. Is everything okay? I mean, after you came out and everything.”
Casey fell away, remembering the uncomfortableness of Christmas and how it seemed like everyone tried to avoid talking to him. About how being gay never came up at all. But also about how Barrett had brought up a story from the newspaper about unfolding allegations of serial molestations by a Catholic Priest in San Diego. Curtis said that it was probably a “gaybo” which made their parents freeze and say nothing, even after Barrett jokingly corrected him, “I think you mean fagbo!”
Casey didn’t say any of this to Daniel, it just replayed in his head. He had managed to let it drift past him on Christmas and not think about it, until now, when it just played out in its entirety in his head, he could see the word fagbo in his head, the FAG part was bold, and in red.
Casey was shaking, not enough to see in the dark but he could feel it in his hands, he wanted to smash bottles and throw rocks at the cars on the freeway. He needed to run away. “Let’s climb up on the roof and watch the sunrise.” he said pointing behind them at the big white building. They stashed the mopeds in bushes and scaled the backside of the Presidio, hopping easily up onto its long southern roof where they could watch the sun rising in the east and all the way to the beaches and the Pacific Ocean to the west.
They sat down and Casey immediately lit another cigarette handing it to Daniel before lighting one for himself. Daniel noticed. He thought about how Casey was still there taking care of him but then gone at the same time too, notably gone.
“You okay Casey?” Daniel said, easily, but sincerely, and casually setting his hand down on Casey’s hand. Casey flinched unexpectedly, tensing. He took a big drag off his cigarette and dropped his shoulders.
“No, I'm not, I'm sorry” he said.
Daniel replied softly, "You don't have to be okay, it's alright.”
Casey sat for a while as the air hung between them. And then, while chain-smoking to stay in his body, he finally talked about what happened, saying more than he had ever said to anyone, himself included.
“I had this paper route for nearly three years, and I barely remember it.” Casey stared off like he was pulling the words themselves from the vista.
“I mean, I remember the route, and who got the paper and who didn't. I don’t know, it’s just the other stuff. Like I just can’t really remember most of other stuff from back then, even like my birthdays or vacations or just, I don’t know, everything”
Casey stared off again, seeming lost in the words before continuing. “I started throwing the route when I turned ten as a substitute for my brother Curtis. He had it for three years before that, and when he made the junior golf team, he gave it to me so he didn’t have to wake up early anymore. He showed me where the houses were and how to fold papers.”
Casey looked south back towards the neighborhood, remembering for a moment before continuing.
“He took me up to people's doors the last time he collected payments so that people would know he had handed over the route to me but he couldn't teach me how to throw the route, how to really throw the route. How to ride the route the way we just did. He didn't understand. He never saw the lines or the way the light changed, he didn't know how to miss houses intentionally to keep the right rhythm and get them on the way back. He didn't understand what the houses wanted, or the way the air changed or how to breathe. I guess he didn’t need to get away like I did, he wasn’t running away from anything.”
“Some days I could ride nearly the whole route without any hands. It's hard to do!” Casey laughed, taking a pause and then looking slightly playful. Daniel looked at him but ignored the distraction. He knew Casey was about to let something out, so he waited, dragging on his own cigarette until Casey picked up the story again, having made a small step forward.
“When I finally quit the route, I was different. Everything was different.” Casey glazed over a bit like he had gone back in time but kept talking.
“It's not that I wanted to quit the paper route, but, anyway, I just stopped doing it one day, I don't know, it felt really weird throwing it again today. I mean, I wasn't even really throwing it, but it started to feel like I could actually feel the weight of the papers. I could see where they landed.”
He paused, staring off, they smoked until he started again.
“Jesus, I haven't even talked about this since I was 13, and I didn't really talk about it then anyway. I just said what I had to, to be done with it and not talk about it again. I mean, I talked about the supposed hurting myself, or whatever the threat of it, or the being dramatic about it, or I don’t know. But I never talked about the other thing.”
Casey stopped making eye contact or even looking in Daniel’s direction entirely, and they both just kept looking straight out as far east and away as they could make their eyes go. Daniel wanted so badly to move the foot and a half between them and hold Casey, he was wrecked at even the intimation of suicide, about his own history. And about the distance Casey had put between them in the last 20 minutes. Daniel started feeling like this was a breakup even though that was ridiculous. This morning should have been good, but he felt it. Sometimes, the pain that you hear is just too much like your own, so you stop hearing words altogether because the words don't matter anymore, and all you can hear is the pain and the grief. When you’ve used your own words against yourself, even if you’re better now, and you watch someone you love doing the same thing, it has a way of gutting you.
They sat silently for quite a while, until Casey shattered the air.
“I was molested.”
“I guess.” he added, trailing off and taking a huge drag on his cigarette as Daniel lost the feeling in his own face. Those words in the air, Daniel knew those words too, and he felt his insides folding over and over, trying to dissolve into nothingness.
Daniel had gotten good therapy and dealt with his own molestation, if not completely, at least head-on, and he was actually okay. But he understood the darkness, and he knew how the shame fused to your insides. The numbness that crept into his face helped Daniel too though. Because hearing the word “molested” brought him directly back to his own trauma, but it also brought him back to the recovery mechanisms he had worked so hard to build. He began breathing in and out using a learned pattern, he felt where the pain and tightness were landing inside his body. He sought the aching and went towards it instead of away. Then he visualized joy and elation, and he allowed those feelings to fill his body, then he went back to the pain, and then he felt both at the same time. Then he found himself securely back in his own body, and he exhaled. Opening his eyes, he looked directly at Casey, who was still unfocused and staring away. Daniel knew the answer was to listen. To hear Casey's story without trying to fix it or trying to relate his own experience. Just listen and hear Casey's story so that he had someone to tell it to, finally.
Daniel pulled out his own pack of cigarettes, lighting one for each of them. Handing one to Casey, they made brief eye contact as their fingers touched and they looked at each other expressionless.
Casey stared down at his feet, then dragged his eyes up his own pant legs onto his thighs and crotch. He didn't yet know how to process the part of the molesting that felt good. The physical sensations that matched exactly what he felt when he and Daniel fooled around. And then the part that was bad, the part that made him broken, the part that made him dirty and unlovable to his family. He didn’t want to feel that way, and he didn’t want to be disconnected from his own body, but in that moment he didn’t want to be in his own body either, or even have a body at all. He wondered as he had before if this was why he wasn’t straight, or gay, if this caused him to be bisexual. Whatever the reason, he knew that he saw himself as broken, however exactly he had come to be in that state wasn’t important. In his heart Casey was alone. And he knew that no one like Daniel or Matt would ever want to be with him forever. He had understood this at thirteen, after the molesting stopped, and after he had threatened to hurt himself. He had understood the power of charisma and humor. He had seen that someone like him needed to be useful and make people feel good to be accepted, to be wanted, or to be loved.
Casey sat, smoking in the silence, thinking thoughts and seeing words and becoming sufficiently lost in the brutal story he replayed about himself.
“I get these glimpses of who I was before it happened, and I always just look so different from who I am now. I can’t tell what made what happen, puberty, and high school, and girlfriends, and fooling around with guys, the whole suicide intervention thing, I don’t know. Keeping all of these secrets for so long, in so many different places, from so many different people, my family, and college, and the fraternity, and friends, and teachers, and just everything, and you.”
Casey looked defeated but made eye contact which Daniel held, “Sorry, I don't know what I'm talking about.”
“You don't have to, I'm here.”
“I just, I mean, I see this little twelve-year-old kid out here just throwing his newspapers in the dark, alone. I was so happy out here. I loved the darkness, and riding my bike, and the sound of the papers flying, and throwing them exactly where I wanted. I loved it. I don't know, I mean the paper route, but also I mean just being a kid.” Casey stopped abruptly and started crying into his hands. Daniel pulled his hand up to his own mouth to stop himself from sobbing.
Casey took a breath and willed himself to continue.
“I wrote a note a few weeks before my 13th birthday that said I was going to kill myself on my birthday. I don't think I was really going to or really knew what that meant. But I don't know. Bad things were going on in my head, and me and the guy had stopped having sex, I mean, the priest, he was a priest, he stopped molesting me.”
Casey looked genuinely perplexed about the molesting, about how to talk about it, about what words to use, about how the whole thing was supposed to be talked about, or felt about.
“Anyway, it stopped, and he moved away. I don't know where or why. All I knew was that he was gone. I had already mostly gone through puberty and anyway all the sex stuff and touching or whatever was never forced or bad, I mean, I don't know.”
Casey was struggling to figure out what to say or what words to use.
"I mean, it always felt good, and I know that it was bad, but I never realized the whole molesting thing was happening because he was nice and it wasn't forced or violent, he made it feel normal, which is obviously super fucked up and even though I hid it or kept it a secret, that wasn't really what I was hiding. It was the fantasy thing I was hiding, it's that when he was touching me, I would close my eyes and think about guys I was friends with, not girls, and I couldn't stop. I tried to switch it to girls, but I couldn’t keep those thoughts in my head. I always went back to thinking about a guy, and eventually I would cum, and it was intense, and then I just walled off or blocked out the whole thing out.”
For the moment Casey was back in his body up, and on the roof of the Presidio watching the sunrise with someone who actually cared about him, and that gave him the strength to really talk about this for the first time, but he was exhausted too, and fragile, and his mask wouldn’t last long.
“I don't really remember all of the specifics, other than taking showers at his house and having snacks and sodas that he kept in the refrigerator for me, and then, and then feeling good and after that, after he left, after it stopped, I just changed. I closed myself off on the inside, and I sort of started over on the outside. I knew that I was wrong for liking guys, it was fucked up, it was terrifying. I knew that I was broken, and I knew that people didn't really like me. Until that point, I had never jacked off, I didn't really know what it was. The other guys at school were starting to joke about it but I was totally shut off. It didn't make sense to me sort of. It was practically an entire year before I tried jacking off for the first time. It was good, but it was weird to cum alone too, and after an entire year of not. It was weird to make myself cum, and I felt pretty uncomfortable afterward. But I started to think about girls, so that helped for me to just stay on that side of the wall, like nothing had ever happened, or like I was just starting over I guess.”
Casey suddenly felt self-conscious, deliberately adding, “I mean, obviously, I got a girlfriend at some point, and that was great”
Daniel was present and alert. He saw a vulnerability he hadn't seen in Casey, a vulnerability he didn't see often, at all, with anybody. And he wanted to hear more before it turned off.
“Tell me about the note” Daniel asked
“I'm not sure it needs saying” Casey mumbled, looking away.
But Daniel continued, his voice was steady, “It's so fucking hard, I was 13 too, so it's personal, and you're right. I'm not sure that it needs saying, but I really fucking like you, like a lot. You are complex Casey, and I really fucking like you. If this is too intense, that's okay too, but if you want to talk about it, I want to hear.”
Casey exhaled and kind of shook his head, dragging his hand over his own face.
“I don't remember writing the note at all. I was in a bad place for sure, but I just don't remember it. I don't remember much from back then. I just kind of kept waking up and throwing my paper route. At school, I went on autopilot, telling jokes and giving people things. The paper route gave me money, and I spent it on candy and cokes and shit I gave to other people. I had known all these other kids forever, and everybody liked me, or knew me, or whatever. So I just faked like I was okay. I remember getting in trouble more in school, just goofing off and not paying attention, and then one day, they called me into the Principal’s office, and my parents were there. And my teacher from the year before, who I had liked. And the Principal, who I definitely did not like, and a psychiatrist, who I didn’t know.”
“The teacher, Mrs. Hamm started talking, which is sort of funny thinking about, like why weren’t my parents talking? Anyway, Mrs. Hamm basically said, “Hi Casey” to me and I said “Hi!” back, and she laughed, she was the only one there who understood me. She held up a handwritten note and said, “We found this note you wrote. It's a plan for you to...” and then she choked up. She looked over at the guy I didn't know yet, the psychiatrist, and he nodded at her reassuringly like they had rehearsed everything, which really freaked me out. And then she continued “It's a plan for you to kill yourself.” She looked wrecked. Fuck. Poor Mrs. Hamm, I felt so fucking bad, like I had really let her down. Then it was like nobody else was in the room except me and her, and I really felt bad. I didn't remember the note. I didn't remember writing it or where they got it or anything, but I knew that it was true, and I knew Mrs. Hamm knew that it was true. I leaned forward on the couch I had been asked to sit on to get comfortable, and everyone in the room flinched. It caught me off guard, and I got kind of panicky. It must've shown because the psychiatrist leaned forward and was like, “Hi Casey, my name is Dr. Tom Mandel. I'm a psychiatrist, you can call me Tom. I'm only here to help you, I'd like to work for you.” He kept looking right at me but not in a tough way. I believed him, and I so I just focused on him. “I work for people your age to help them deal with difficult situations and feelings. Because of your age, we all have certain obligations when we find a note like this he said, gesturing around towards the other people in the room.” Mrs. Hamm started sobbing, then she just sucked it in and stayed completely still. “Everyone here cares about you tremendously and they were very worried. As I mentioned, I think of myself as working for you and no one else here. What I would like to do, if you are okay with it, is to spend some time today talking with you privately. Just the two of us, maybe until dinnertime and then for a few hours again tomorrow. You don't have to go to school.”
“Then the room went totally silent for a second until I said “Okay””
Casey put out his cigarette and lit another one, leaning back on one hand slightly and continuing while looking away but not off.
“The problem is I don't really know what the problem is. I don't know who I was before, well, before all the stuff I just told you. I don't remember anything about me before I started figuring out how to make people like me. Maybe I'm looking for something that was just never there to begin with. Maybe becoming broken is the only remarkable thing about me.”
And with just that sentence Casey seemed to leave, like a balloon let go and drifting off. Where exactly to was unclear, but definitely away.
“I think I don't know anything Daniel. I can't tell you how my parents feel about me because I don't know. Not like how I knew that Mrs. Hamm liked me. They've never given me any indication” Casey laughed at himself harshly, shaking his head side to side, “or maybe they have. It's just not what I wanted it to be. They've constantly observed me like I was letting them down but not wanting to get involved or not even consider getting involved.” Casey paused and followed the sound of a siren even though they couldn't see it.
“Some people are indifferent.” Daniel said during the silence.
“Yeah” Casey said, pausing to take in the word before repeating it, “Yeah.”
"That word about sums up my parents, indifferent, or at least about me.”
About to say something, Casey paused as if listening to his next thought for a moment before actually saying it out loud, before seeing if it could live in the world. “They never seemed indifferent about my brothers, though, I'm not sure why I can't just accept that.”
They both fell silent again and then Casey turned to Daniel, re-animating his hands and his voice. “Jesus, it's so fucking stupid, it's so obvious when you're not wanted somewhere.” His eyes squinted off into the distance, “Why has it been so fucking hard for me to just look at it?”
Daniel reached his hand over the top of Casey's and squeezed. Casey squeezed back, let go, and said in a strangers voice, “Thanks, bud.”
The mood wouldn't recover from there. Not from those words. They had become detached, and whatever ashes were left of Casey had blown away.
Daniel didn't know what to do, Casey didn't know what to do.
They rode to the airport to watch the planes land quietly and said what would have looked like appropriate goodbyes to anyone who wasn’t a part of the conversation up on the roof of the Presidio.
Two weeks later Casey left for Joshua Tree. And while the boys still saw each other before he left, it was less, and there was a growing distance. Casey seemed to be trying to figure something out. There was never a problem, but he didn’t really want to have deep talks anymore or hold hands.
Thank you Troy. These topics are so sensitive and tricky for me to just surrender and hit publish. Your comments are sincerely appreciated.
I'm gutted. One of most emotionally charged and searing chapters yet, among so many in this realistic, powerful serial "drop out." Sky, this is GREAT writing.