Safe Read online

  In the washroom, I saw that the right side of my face looked as awful as it felt. I tried to remember all the things the paramedics had done to test my ankle. While it was sore, if I remembered what they did right, it probably wasn’t broken. I wasn’t ready to give myself a medical degree yet. I’d have to get it examined. Any hopes of a baseball career ended by Frank Boyer and his goons? Not if I could help it.

  Jack got some tape and ice from the locker room, and wrapped my ankle. After all these years of sports, you learn to do stuff like that. It didn’t hurt a lot less after he pinned the tape and ice in place. I could put more pressure on my foot, but I wasn’t walking normally. I swallowed another couple pain pills.

  He drove my car to the paper as I insisted. I thanked him again for rescuing me.

  “You okay with what I told you earlier?” I asked as we parked by the newspaper building.

  He said, “We’re still friends. I always want to be friends. But I don’t want to talk about it, not yet. I gotta get used to it, okay?”

  I agreed.

  “Ah, I kind of did want to ask what was with that woman, ah, grabbing your junk?”

  I shrugged. “Guess she likes me.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Wednesday 5:04 P.M.

  People in the halls at the paper stared at us. Singleton took one look, listened to a couple of seconds of explanation, and called the police, paramedics, my parents, and Jack’s parents.

  I talked to my dad very briefly. He said, “Stay put. We’ll be right there.” Not a difficult command to obey.

  While waiting for police, medical, and parental figures to arrive, I filled Singleton in. Jack sat with us.

  After I told him everything, Singleton told us that he had talked to Kyle’s parents. He said they didn’t seem to have any idea what kind of life their child led. “They seemed…” He hesitated. “Different.”

  “Different how?”

  “I went to where they live. It’s that mobile home park between Jurupa Avenue and the Santa Anna River. You know, down among all those warehouses where it floods in heavy rain years? It’s been there since at least the fifties and looks it. The interior of their trailer might have been last cleaned back then.”

  “Wow.”

  “They were subdued but cantankerous. Stunned that their son was dead, and angry at the school for I’m not sure what crimes. They want to blame everyone but themselves. I talked to a few of the neighbors. The Davises were party people, out all hours, away for weekends at motorcycle rallies and races. The rare times they were home, loud music blasted everywhere. People didn’t want to complain because Mr. Davis was one mean son of a bitch.”

  “Kyle had to live with that, double wow.”

  “It must have been tough. They told me they didn’t think Kyle would commit suicide. So then I mentioned the possibility of their son having been murdered. They thought that was possible, but they had no idea who could have done it.”

  Singleton had asked them if Kyle left the house many nights, especially on weekends. “They didn’t directly answer. They just kept saying Kyle was a good kid. They may be completely oblivious. They were happy about the pet store because that was finally getting him out of the house. They were glad to let him go.”

  “Weren’t they suspicious when he didn’t come home Sunday night?”

  “They told me he’d called and told them he had to stay over with a sick animal. He’d done that before so they didn’t think it was odd.”

  I asked, “Did they say if he ever looked beat up?”

  Singleton said, “They said no. Kyle must have played it careful in the orange groves, or, more likely, they never noticed.” Singleton had also been looking into Frank Boyer’s life. He’d visited the home, talked to the parents, even found out Wendy’s last name. “The parents don’t care what happens to Frank at this point. Since Monday evening, he hasn’t lived at home. They think he lives with her.” He searched through a notebook. “Her name is Wendy Lakeworth. Frank’s nineteen so he’s of age. I’m going to talk to her.”

  “I want to go with.”

  “You are talking to the police, talking to your parents, probably stopping at a hospital, and then going home.”

  “I found out important stuff. I’m not just going to go home and hide like a kid.”

  “You are a kid, and you’ve gotten hurt because of this. I can’t be responsible, and I don’t think it’s going to be your decision.”

  “I’ll only talk to people with you around. I’ll be more careful. I can handle myself.”

  He pointed to my disheveled condition.

  “I can.”

  “Only because Jack saved your ass,” Singleton said.

  At that moment the police showed up. Minutes later my parents and the paramedics arrived at the same time. While the medical people worked, I told the whole story to all of them. To tell the truth, I was getting pretty tired. I wished the pain in my head and side would stop.

  The two detectives were the same as Singleton and I met with yesterday. The cops didn’t look pleased to learn the information. Besides the obvious physical evidence, Jack was there to back up my story about the attack.

  When Jack’s dad showed up, he swore at the paramedics although Jack wasn’t hurt that much. Jack’s dad claimed he wasn’t going to pay for any medical bills because he didn’t call for help, and that they, whoever he thought ‘they’ were, were going to pay for his kid’s bills.

  Mom and Dad thanked Jack and his dad. His dad grumbled. Jack told me we’d talk later. He and his dad left.

  My dad wanted Frank Boyer and his cronies arrested. Mom was angry enough I think she could have been easily convinced to have them executed on the spot. After what I’d been through, at that point, I’m not sure how much I would have disagreed with her. The police promised to bring them in. They went to investigate.

  Mom gave Singleton a pretty severe tongue-lashing. I tried to say a few things, but she was pretty mad. Dad seemed more reasonable, but I guessed that was mostly because he wanted to wait until we got home to deal with me.

  We stopped at the emergency room on the way home. After a couple more hours of hospital stuff and hovering parents, I was deemed fit for travel and while sore in eight million places, not seriously injured. I got a walking cast that went from the bottom of my foot to my knee. They gave me pain meds and told me to keep ice on and off my ankle at regular intervals.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wednesday 8:32 P.M.

  Home was nuts, and I felt like crap. I got a long grilling about what I’d been up to. The only thing that made them go slightly easy was that I was in such obvious pain.

  My dad said, “I want you to cooperate with the police fully. I want no more of this nonsense. You could have been killed by those hoodlums.”

  He had his glasses off and rubbed his eyes, a sure sign he was upset and unhappy. He talked almost nonstop for thirty minutes, being sure to restate what he wanted numerous times. I was kind of glad he kept talking because I was pretty much talked out. I wasn’t mad at them. I didn’t want to fight with them. I sat on the couch with my left foot propped on a hassock.

  Mom pretty much joined in with Dad, except for forays to get more ice for the packs on my face and ankle. She also made me a grilled cheese sandwich and brought it to the living room on a tray with a glass of milk. I ate about a quarter of the sandwich and drank half the glass of milk.

  My dad mostly paced around the room, lecturing, questioning. I kind of wished he’d stand still. My mom alternated fussing over my injuries, getting near tears, or joining my dad in, as she put it, “Getting to the bottom of this.” At least she stayed still, mostly sitting on the edge of the big reclining easy chair. Once in a while I heard music from my sisters’ room where they’d been sent after poking worried faces into the living room after we got home.

  When they gave me a chance, I tried giving reasons for my behavior. Starting out, I was a little scared. Part of it was the adrenaline rush
was wearing off, and I realized how close I’d come to getting the crap beat out of me. Mostly it was because I’d never had an intense blowup like this with them before.

  I knew they were scared for me and worried. They’d never had to come to school because I was a discipline problem or my grades were bad. In baseball I played by the rules and worked hard and didn’t do immature stuff like throw tantrums. I listened to my coaches and no matter how dumb I thought they were, I didn’t talk back. I won trophies, and my parents were proud. My parents made me work summer jobs and random odd jobs during the year to earn spending money. My parents and the neighbors trusted me enough when I was eleven to let me babysit for their kids. The parents I sat for always asked me back.

  My room was reasonably neat for a teenager. Even at my most obnoxious stage around the last half of eighth grade, my mom just laughed at me. My dad had gotten mad a few times, but I’d never yelled back or smarted off. I think like a lot of gay kids, I feared my parent’s rejection so I tried to be a perfect son. At the moment, I just wanted everything to stop.

  I wanted Kyle not to be dead. I wanted to shut my eyes and return to Monday morning.

  Then my dad asked the question that was like the minuscule seismic shift when the final grain of sand moves an infinitesimally small bit and the delicate balance of nature is tipped and the earthquake is unleashed.

  He asked, “Why do you care so much about this boy’s death?”

  They had the heat on against the slight California winter chill, but I suddenly felt very cold and very small. My eyes got teary.

  “Why?” my dad demanded.

  My mom stood up, walked over, and sat down next to me. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  My dad gave her an odd look then turned to me.

  My mom took my hand. Her eyes held mine. My dad sat in the big recliner.

  “Whatever it is, Roger,” my mom said, “it will be better if you tell us. If you’re in trouble, we want to help. If you’ve done something wrong, we’ll help you make it right.”

  My dad asked, “What’s going on, Roger?” His tone had lost most of its gruffness.

  This was my chance, the perfect opening, handed to me, but I was more scared than I’d ever been in my life. I said, “I haven’t done anything wrong.” My thoughts flipped through the thousand scenarios I’d dreamt up for the moment I’d tell my parents. This wasn’t one of them.

  My mom’s brown eyes gazed at me sympathetically. I glanced at my dad. He looked mostly confused.

  I said, “Mom and Dad.” I couldn’t stop a tear from falling, and I was angry at myself about that. I swiped the back of my hand across my cheek.

  I shivered for a moment. My mom patted my hand. Finally, I shook my head, cleared my throat, and sat up a little straighter. “This is really important. I’m a little scared.”

  “You don’t have to be frightened of anything,” my mom said. “This is your home. We’re your parents, and we love you.”

  “How can we help, son?” my dad asked.

  I think it was the gentleness of how he spoke that made the difference.

  I whispered, “I’m gay.”

  Silence reigned for the first couple seconds. I could hear my sisters quarreling about who got to use the phone next.

  Finally, my dad said, “You play baseball. You can’t be gay.”

  My mom said, “Are you sure? You’ve dated girls.”

  I struggled to my feet, swayed. My ankle throbbed. My hand gripped the back of the couch. I didn’t want to be sitting down. My mom reached out a hand to help me, but I gave her a brief smile and stood on my own.

  “I’m sure. I’ve known for a long time. I didn’t choose to be this way. It’s just me. It’s not like I want to start wearing dresses or anything.”

  My dad looked kind of relieved when I said this.

  I continued, “You didn’t do anything wrong bringing me up. It’s not like that. I wanted to tell you because you’re the two most important people in the world to me, and I couldn’t keep lying. This connects to Kyle. I think he was gay. I think he was killed because he was gay. I think he was a lonely frightened boy who had nobody to turn to or talk to. I don’t want to be like that. I’m not like that. I feel bad for him. Nobody at school even cared that he died.”

  I sat back down.

  A long, exhausting discussion followed. My mom asked me a ton of questions about if I’d been molested or not. Then they asked about who’d I’d been hanging around with at school and whether somebody had influenced me somehow to be gay.

  Their questions began to tumble out more rapidly than I could answer, and I didn’t know to respond to some of them.

  I was getting frustrated but didn’t begin to lose it until my dad suggested I see a therapist or maybe the family should go to one.

  I said, “I’m not unhappy because I’m gay. The problem was because I felt I had to keep it a secret. You can go see a counselor, but I don’t need to.”

  My dad got pretty upset at my tone and started to raise his voice. Mom jumped in and asked about Kyle. She wanted to know if I was involved with him.

  “He wasn’t my friend. I barely knew he existed. If you’re asking did I have sex with him, the answer is no.”

  “Is Jack gay?” my dad asked.

  “I have no idea.” I was reasonably sure Jack was straight, but even if I knew the answer to that, discussing the sexual orientation of my friend was not something I was going to get into with my parents. It was none of their business and ultimately none of mine either.

  “Have you had…?” My mother didn’t finish the question.

  Honesty about what I am was one thing. Talking about my sex life was too much. I said, “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  My dad said, “If you have, I hope you’ve been careful.”

  “I know about condoms.”

  My dad switched the subject back to Kyle. “If he got killed because he was gay, it could happen to you. What if other kids find out?”

  “I’m not going to hide, but I’m not going to make an announcement in the newspaper.” I didn’t think it was a good idea to tell them Jack and Darlene already knew.

  They strongly advised against telling anyone, and they strictly forbade me to have anything else to do with investigating Kyle’s death.

  After about an hour, my mom said, “We’ll discuss this more later. Your father and I have to talk about it. You must be exhausted. You should get to bed.” She gave me a small hug and asked if I needed help with anything. After telling her I was fine, I left them in the living room.

  In the bathroom, I checked myself. I had bruises on my face and parts of my torso. I touched my left cheek but stopped instantly because it hurt. I took a couple of the pills the doctor had prescribed, undressed, and got in bed.

  I was worn out emotionally and physically. I was pretty proud of being able to be honest and standing up for myself. I thought my parents were reasonably okay with the news. At least nobody talked about throwing me out of the house.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Thursday 7:00 A.M.

  When I limped into the kitchen the next morning, my mom gave me a big hug. My dad patted me on the shoulder. I figured those were good signs. They both looked like they hadn’t slept much. I got hugs from my sisters. They began to hover, but fortunately had to get to their school bus.

  As I walked out the front door my mom said, “We want you to hurry home, dear. We have a lot to talk about tonight.” I hoped that wasn’t a bad sign.

  My grandmother was due later tonight as well. She’d take a limo from the airport in Los Angeles the way she always did. She could have flown in to a closer airport, but she said she liked to see the lights of the city as she flew in. That’s why she always took a flight that landed past sunset.

  School seemed unreal. I struggled along in my walking cast. I got a lot of sympathy from my friends when they saw I was hurt. None of them seemed to know about the gay angle, but all had heard about Frank’s atta
ck, and that Jack and I had won.

  An amazing amount of strangers asked what happened to my face. Seems everybody wanted to hear details about the fight. I pretty much ignored the kids I didn’t know.

  A few teachers glanced at me furtively. My swollen and bruised face was hard to miss. One or two asked quietly if I needed anything, but most just ignored it.

  I stopped in the newspaper office at noon. When I walked in, Bert and Ian were fighting about whether or not some movie they saw over the weekend was up to the standards of Fellini or Warhol. When they saw me, Ian got all sympathetic about my wounds.

  Bert wanted to know every detail about what happened, why the fight started, who hit who, and why, and if I was going to get police protection.

  In the corner, I noticed Steve listening intently to everything we said.

  Darlene marched in, sized up the situation, and attempted to shoo the inquisitors away.

  They persisted. Bert asked, “How come you’re bothering with Kyle’s death?”

  “It’s not like you’re a real reporter,” Ian said. “For a guy used to doing sports, you’re awful involved. What’s going on?”

  I wasn’t about to confide in them about myself, but I thought Kyle deserved the dignity of honesty in death. “I think Kyle was gay, and he died because some kids are homophobic, and I don’t think it’s right, and whoever did it should be caught and have to pay.”

  “I told you Kyle was a homo,” Bert said.

  Ian laughed.

  Darlene picked up a textbook someone had left on a nearby desk. She slammed it down as hard as she could. “You use a homophobic slur again, you’re off the paper.”

  Bert said, “You don’t have to get huffy. I said Monday that he was a loser.”

  I wanted to slug him.

  “Why not just let it be?” Ian asked. “The kid’s dead.”

  Steve said, “That’s mean and that’s cruel.”

  Ian opened his mouth to begin some crack, but the look of fury on Darlene’s face stopped him before the first syllable could escape.

  Ardis came in muttering at her camera. She stopped fussing for a minute and said, “You guys heard? The cops are around asking kids questions about Kyle Davis and where people were the night of the murder.”