Page 6 of Getting It Twisted

“I just thought you’d make something of yourself,” Mom says, “now that you don’t have that awful boy nipping at your heels anymore.”

I choke on a mouthful of food.That awful boy . . .

“Danio,” Jessie says, fighting to get her words out. “Wh-Who does she mean?”

I force the food down my throat and swallow thickly. “Nathan. She means Nathan.” Because curse the day my mother would ever take his name into her mouth. My dad was even worse. I’ve never seen him so angry as when he found out Nathan was gay. God forbid his son would have a faggot for a best friend.

Jessie giggles. “But Nathan isn’t awful.”

“At least you cut your hair.” Gillian nods at my hairstyle: a short undercut with a messy, longer part at the top. It isn’t new though. I cut my signature shoulder-length hair off when I left college four years ago. “Did you hear about his mother?”

“Yes.” I stare gloomily into my plate, hoping she’ll drop the subject.

“It was just as well if you ask me. Bad seeds the lot of them, those Antlers. Her father used to lurk around downtown, clearly drunk or high off his mind. Did you know?”

“Mom,” I say, clenching my hand around my barely used spoon. “Why did you invite me again?”

She pins me with a cold look. “Don’t be smart with me, Daniel.”

“I’m not. Remember?” My sarcastic smile makes her mouth purse as if she’s eaten something sour, and she turns her attention back to my sister.

“I’m remaking your old bedroom into a rehab room for Jessie. This is your chance to retrieve any items you might miss. Most of it is junk, of course.”

“Of course,” I say between gritted teeth. Never mind that I might not be in the mood to revisit my old room, but explaining why would only invite my mother to bring up my past again.

And so, after dinner, I walk down the corridor to my room.

Not much remains of the state I left it in two years ago. My bed, desk, and art supplies are all transferred to my new bedroom in the two-story house George inherited from his grandmother.

What remains is the bookcase I neglected to bring and the stuff in the closet I haven’t laid eyes on in years. The very thought of opening that box of worms has my heart pumping harder in my chest.

Most of the shelves are filled with artwork I drew when I was young. Animals. People. The view outside my window. But there’s other stuff too, like a coal pencil sketch depicting two boys holding hands, standing on top of a hill that overlooks the city.

Under the sketch is a plastic folder of Polaroids. An invisible hand squeezes my heart at the sight.

The first photo is of the two of us. Nathan makes an exaggerated grimace for the camera and holds up two fingers in the peace sign, arm slung over my shoulders. Nathan with his studded belt, dyed hair, and silver earrings, and me with my long dirty-blond hair and baggy T-shirt. Another photo is of me alone, perhaps from the same occasion. My eyes are half-liddedand dazed as I exhale a cloud of smoke from the joint in my hand.

Then come the class photos. Why my mom made sure to save them I can only guess at. Perhaps she still had faith in me back in middle school.

The fifth-grade child version of myself glares impassively at the camera, mouth downturned in a frown. I look so depressed it’s almost funny. Experiencing it, however? That was far from fun. Dark thoughts of harming myself came almost daily, and I was invisible even to my parents. Especially to my parents.

The difference between my fifth- and sixth-grade photos is so striking I have to do a double take. From one year to the next, my eyes are noticeably brighter, the corners of my mouth upturned in a smile. It’s as if the hard dark shell of me has cracked. What happened between those two years to cause a change so fundamental?

Nathan. Nathan happened.

Two months into the fall semester of sixth grade, a new boy waltzed into the classroom. Backpack askew over one shoulder, he had a toothpick in his mouth and a messy mop of dark curls for hair. He looked utterly bored, lacking the nerves you’d expect from a transfer student. There was a thin-boned sharpness to him, and a jaded look in his eyes that the rest of us lacked. It made him seem older than his age. Mature in an unsettling sort of way. A twelve-year-old kid was not supposed to have seen as much as he had.

His gaze swept over the classroom and landed on me. I might have imagined the way his eyebrows lifted or the minute twist to the corner of his mouth. Or maybe he knew, even then, that all it would take was for him to sit next to me during recess and ask, “What’s that you’re drawing?,” and we’d be joined at the hip for the following six years.

Even in the school photos, his striking features and boyish charm are plain to see. Not that I noticed at that age how stunning he was—at least not in that way. But other people’s reactions to him were impossible to miss.

How he placated the teachers when he hadn’t done his assignments on time. Or how he blamed one of the school’s bullies for pulling the fire alarm during math class when the culprits were none other than me and him. His ease in charming people when he had the mind for it. When hedidn’thave the mind for it, well . . . Let’s just say his looks couldn’t help him with everything.

He was a dick to everyone else but not to me, and that was dangerous for a kid who’d never had anyone pay him the time of day.

I was too shy and bookish to make other friends. George tried to take me under his wing, but his one-year-older jock buddies found me weird and withdrawn.

Nathan did what George could not. Nathan in turn had his own peculiarities, and we fit together like two jagged, leftover puzzle pieces. Him outgoing and reckless and endlessly bored. Me with a head full of ideas and a rebellious fire in my heart that Nathan happily stoked. Before long, we were burning in it, and that fire lasted for six whole years.

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