Sprout

think she took the pink one from?” Ty whispered, and I was about to say I had no idea when he hissed, “Ian Abernathy?”
    And there it was. The thing about Ty that scared the crap out of me. The sudden shift from playing to real life. The hatred in his voice was so sharp I was surprised it didn’t puncture my eardrum. It was just so specific. I mean, it was a pink phone—it was obviously a girl’s. Why not say Ruthie’s name, or any of the 250 other girls at BHS? But no. He’d gone straight for Ian, who’d never once picked on Ty, but who picked on me all the time, and got us both detention. It wasn’t just random hatred, I mean. It was jealousy .
    Suddenly I was completely sober. I know you’ve heard that expression before, and I know you also probably know it’s impossible, at least from a biological standpoint. But it was true. The wobbling stopped, the blurry parts at the edge of my field of vision snapped into focus, and I no longer had any desire to sing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” The pink phone on the other side of the river swelled in size till it was as big as the proverbial side of a barn. I couldn’t miss it if I tried. But just before I squeezed the trigger the barn door opened and there was Ian’s face, staring at me with that pleading, helpless look he’d given me yesterday in Ruthie’s car. Just say it , that look said. Say it so I don’t have to .
    Ty didn’t speak. Just breathed in my air.
    I pulled the trigger.
    Click.
    I pulled the trigger again.
    Click.
    Click. Click. Click.
    The—
    gun—
    wasn’t—
    loaded .
    It seemed like there was an earthquake then, but it was just Ty. He was laughing so hard his whole body was shaking, and a moment later, when the sound of my imaginary gunshots faded from my ears, I heard it too. Shrieking peals of laughter so loud and uncontrolled they dropped Ty to his knees.
    “Oh—my— God! ” He grabbed his stomach as though someone had kicked him in the guts, but he still couldn’t stop laughing. “The—look—on—your— face! ” He extended an arm, cocked a finger. “Blam!” he said, and fell forwards on his hands and knees in the mud, laughter and snot coming out of him in equal amounts. After what seemed like forever he managed to sit back on his heels. “Jesus, Daniel. You didn’t think I’d bring a loaded gun on a joyride , did you?”
    I dropped the gun on the ground, reached for Ty’s shirt instead. Grabbed a fistful and hauled him to his feet. He was still laughing, was barely able to stand up. And there it was. That other side of Ty. The side that trusted me so much he didn’t even realize I was about to punch him in the face. So I didn’t punch him in the face. I kissed him instead. Kissed him with some screwed-up mixture of anger and desire that made me wish I could eat him instead. Chew him up into little pieces so he could never pull a trick like that again, but also take him inside me, so he could never get away.
    God , it was a good kiss.
    A long time later he stepped back from me. All the humor was gone, and the anger, and everything else. The gun, the river, the cold sliver of Kansas sky: all gone. There was just the two of us—and a lot of itch ivy.
    It says something about us, that even through a couple of liters of rum-n-cola and the acute hormonal press of our sixteen-year-old bodies, neither of us was willing to lie down in it. We set off upstream, had to stop and take a couple of kissing breaks, but soon enough we came across another fallen cottonwood. You might’ve thought lightning had split it down the middle, leaving those charred blackened edges on the trunk, but once again I knew it was the hand of God. He’d laid out this nuptial bed for his two favorite sons. The tree had lain exposed for so long that the heartwood was soft and crumbly, kneaded like pie dough between our fingers. It would have been nice to pretend we were the first people to use it as a bed, but there were a half dozen cans and bottles scattered around, and a copy of Entertainment Weekly from June 2006.
    “Hey! The Devil Wears Prada got a B.”
    May God strike me dead if that wasn’t the last thing I said before I lost my virginity—for real, I mean, and not some half-assed groping in the janitors’ closet at school.
    Afterwards Ty lay on his back and I lay on top of him. He stared up at the sky, one of his arms curled around me, under my jacket but over my T-shirt. I thought he was watching the clouds or