Sprout

lasted even longer this time. Then, quietly: “Well, let’s just go then.”
    “Go where ? Go how ?”
    “Anywhere. Anyhow.”
    See, that was the difference between me and Ty. He just wanted to run away. But I had to have a destination. I had to know where we were going.
    Oh, and there was a man in the car.
    “It’s like thirty below,” I said, staring at the man across fifty frozen feet of barren parking lot. “Where are we gonna sleep? What are we gonna eat?”
    “We’ll go south.” Ty’s voice was stronger now. “Texas. Galveston or Corpus Christi or Laredo. All the way south. We’ll sell your dad’s car for a couple hundred bucks and sleep outside and wash dishes for food. We’ll learn Spanish from the guys in the kitchen and hitchhike down the Gulf coast of Mexico, end up in the Yucatan peninsula climbing to the top of some Mayan temple.”
    “How do you know so many border towns?” I said, still staring at the man, who was staring back at us. “And how do you know there are Mayan temples in the Yucatan? And how do you know the Yucatan is a peninsula , for God’s sake?”
    “Don’t, Daniel. Don’t make one of your random comments to change the subject and don’t treat me like an idiot. We can do this. You and me. Together. We can do whatever we want.”
    “What is he doing in that car? Does he think we’ll just walk over to him? Ask him if he needs a teenage boy to do some yardwork or if he’ll buy us beer or something?”
    “Who are you—that guy? In the Buick?”
    “Don’t you know what he’s doing here, Ty?”
    “Why the hell would I know anything about that guy, except for the fact that he’s dumb enough to drive a Buick?”
    “He’s here for us , Ty. You—and—me . That’s what he’s doing here.”
    “What are you talking—oh.”
    “Yeah: oh .”
    Ty stared over at the guy in the Buick. He was far enough away and his windows were dirty enough that we couldn’t see much more than an outline. His face could’ve been made out of bits and pieces of old dinner plates for all we knew, his scalp could’ve been covered with hundreds of shards of green glass bottles in lieu of hair, but we could see still tell exactly what he was.
    “Is that what happens to you? When you’re gay?”
    See, kids, this is why grammar is important. Did Ty’s you really mean one , as in any gay person, or did it really mean me , as in the only gay person in the car? Did Ty’s you mean that if I dropped the car in gear and pointed us towards Texas that he’d stick with me, through Galveston and Corpus Christi and Laredo and all the way down the Gulf coast of Mexico? Or did Ty’s you mean that he’d wake up one day, realize what he was doing with me had more to do with his dead brother and his evil S.O.B. of a father and his general sense of being lost and alone in a world that didn’t care if he lived or died, and that he’d be the one to ditch me , leaving me stuck in the Mexican equivalent of Carey Park with Spanish skills that, well, weren’t quite as good as Ian Abernathy’s?
    “We—” I stopped, split the pronoun; two letters became four. “ I won’t turn out like that,” I said, “because I have you .”
    Ty continued to look at the guy.
    “Let’s just go home, Daniel,” he said finally. “He’s giving me the creeps.”
    The sense of a ticking clock grew louder during the last couple of weeks of the semester, and I wasn’t the only one who heard it. Ty started calling me in the middle of the night, but, because the phone was right outside his dad’s bedroom (I hope you don’t think Mr. Petit ever went cordless) all he could do was breathe heavily into my ear. If my dad was home that’s all I could do too, because every room in our house was right outside my dad’s room, and if my dad was at Mrs. Miller’s, then, well, I’m not going to tell you what I said. And no , it’s not what you’re thinking (that is, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking). It’s just that there was such a plaintive quality to Ty’s sighs, such an overwhelming mixture of need and fear and, yes, lust, that I found myself saying things I never should’ve said. Offering him things I could never give him. Making him promises I had no way of keeping. And the more outrageous my promises, the more his breathing seemed to calm down. I would hear his sighs and I would try to picture him curled up on the floor with the phone pressed to his ear, but it was always Holly I saw,