Rebel at Spruce High

“Yeah, I left all my childhood friends I grew up with.”

“I think it did a number on you. Maybe more than any of us want to acknowledge. I think a part of you might … resent me for taking you away from your community.” His eyes drop to a box of things I still haven’t unpacked, sitting outside my closet. “And yet again leaving Chicago for New York. And finally leaving New York for … well, for this small Texas town you can’t even find on a map, within arm’s reach of Houston and Austin and San Antonio.”

“Must be a really long arm,” I mumble.

He finds my sarcasm funny, giving one breathy chuckle. Then he comes into my room and sits on the edge of my bed, his eyes dancing around, taking in the walls as he gathers thoughts. “The thing is, son, I want good people in your life. Not like the rich kids you got twisted up with in New York. Or the street punks in Chicago. If you believe this Toby is a good, well-meaning person … then I think that just might be the sort of friend you need.”

“That makes one of you.”

“As for your mother … you know she loves you. She cares for you in her own way. We’re just concerned about seeing the same pattern of behavior play out here that played out up in New York.” His mustache twitches with irritation before he looks over at me. “We don’t want a repeat of that, Donovan. None of us do.”

I avert my gaze, thinking about that night that should never have happened, when my friend decided to take us all out in his dad’s BMW for a joyride. It wasn’t our first time to do something reckless together, but it sure was our last. And after a school year full of bad choices, playing with my trust-fund friends’ money, and narrowly avoiding the inside of a jail cell, that joyride was the nail in my carefree coffin. And that’s an especially comical way to say it, since what he ended up crashing his dad’s BMW into was the rear of a parked hearse. Thankfully, no one was inside—alive or dead—but it sure made for an entertaining scolding. “Is that what you want?” shouted his father an hour later on that very curb. “To end up in the back of a hearse? Dead? My Harvard-destined son and progeny? A disgrace, you and your hooligan friends!”

I think I was the hooligan friend to which his father referred. Everyone always thought a certain way about me because of my look—lip ring, band shirts, spiky hair, torn jeans, chains … I always gave people the impression that I was up to no good. But most of my troubles came from just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have a strange skill in bringing out peoples’ worst, it turns out. I’m like a demon of mischief, inspiring it everywhere I go.

Half of my attire—including said lip ring—was left behind in New York. My parents made sure to figuratively scrub me clean like a dirty dog before we stepped foot here in Spruce. I guess they didn’t want me tracking in any mud … into a town that’s full of mud from one end to the other. But who would I be to question my parents’ logic, other than their trouble-wreaking son?

“Don’t relive it,” my dad tells me suddenly, as if he knows where my mind just went. “You have a fresh new start here.”

Yeah, I keep hearing that. Fresh new start. New faces. On and on my parents keep insisting, yet still I’m haunted by the roaring of a car engine, my spoiled friend’s laughter, and the sound of crunching metal that ended my life up there—that precious BMW squishing its face into that hearse’s ass.

There’s a pun somewhere in there I’m too exhausted to find.

It’s a miracle I’m still alive.

My father says a few more gentle words, finishing with, “We love you, son,” at the door, then leaves me be. I always marvel at how he has to say “we”, as if all too aware how seldom my mom says it herself.

It’s after midnight when I put away my drawing pad, take a hot shower, then drop onto my bed. Sleep doesn’t come easy. The moon is perfectly visible through the window, bathing me in pale light, and I can’t stop thinking about Toby. I saw him peering at my notebook with curiosity, and the way his lips subtly parted in awe as he took in my drawing.

Yeah, I caught him looking at me changing in PE, too.

I notice the way that boy notices me …

And the thought of his eyes on my body has my heart racing.

I slip a hand down the front of my shorts. We’re in the locker room again. He keeps looking at me. I sneak a look at him. And in the privacy of my imagination, our bodies crash together, nothing there to stop us. His hands fumble for my chest, my hands lock around his back, and when our lips touch, we become one.