Page 5 of A Little Campfire Blues

I’d never been a very daring kid. I didn’t mind getting dirty; I’d come home a filthy mess and hose off in the yard so as to not track muddy footprints on Mama’s floor. She appreciated it so much she installed a hook beside the hose and kept a towel hanging on it for me, knowing Roman, Axis, and I were always getting into something.

A block from Mr. Feely’s store was the neighborhood park, filled with playground equipment we outgrew by the time we were ten. There was a little pond behind it, though, the site of many of our misadventures. We’d score lines on the inside of weathered pieces of bark we found curled on the ground, keeping track of how many frogs we each caught and who caught the biggest. To the victor went bragging rights until the next frog-catching day, and occasionally, the last cookie in the Ziplock bag, if we’d saved any back from lunch.

Some would call the kind of childhood I had idyllic and even rare in an era of online game play, TikTok, and other social media, but we’d made use of those things too, just in the cold months, when it got dark early and getting wet meant risking a cold and being stuck in bed, separated from one another.

We’d always hated being separated. From the time we met in third grade until the night everything had fallen apart between us, we’d been the best of friends, and later, more than friends, curiously exploring the attraction we’d felt for one another without jealousy or shame.

Or at least that’s what I thought until Axis lashed out at me after I’d stormed into his garage and interrupted a profanity-laden practice session between him and his guitar. I should have seen the signs that he was already pissed. Should have paused and asked him what had him upset. Instead, I launched into a long, bitter tirade about the latest indignities I’d experienced at the hands of Jamie and Jerek Lindstrom, the twins who’d grown up at the end of my block. Two pains in the asses who’d seen it as their life’s mission to make my high school days hell because I was different.

I knew they were just parroting the bullshit their parents spewed. Mrs. Lindstrom had made more than one comment to my mom about the way I dressed, my mannerisms, the makeup I wore, and later my piercings, once I’d been old enough to get them. She’d complained that my folks shouldn’t indulge me by using my chosen pronouns, they/them, or allow me to continue running around, confusing people about what gender I was. Mom, never one to mince words, had blistered her with a scathing comeback about how people might be far happier in their own lives if they learned to keep their noses out of other people’s business.

Of course, Mama, being Mama, peppered it with as many profanities as Axis had been using the last time I’d seen him.

She’d also asked Mrs. Lindstrom how her husband’s business was recovering after the IRS audit that had seen more than half of their property and equipment seized amid the scandalous revelation that the accountant he’d been having an affair with had not only cooked the books but made off with a chunk of money that was never reported as revenue.

She’d stormed away in tears, and a part of me had wanted to be happy about that, but all I’d felt was crushing frustration. Who I was shouldn’t have been fodder for gossip or complaints from anyone, not when I’d never harmed a soul by beingmyself. Hell, I went out of my way to avoid the people I knew had a problem with me. I never went looking for trouble or confrontation. Most times, I didn’t even stop when people whispered, stared, or threw something at me, though I had gotten up in Jamie’s face the day he’d ‘tripped’ and dumped his whole tray, including an open chocolate milk, in my lap, staining my white mesh top with chocolate and spaghetti.

To this day I didn’t know what I was actually going to do, face to face with him looming over me, taunts spilling from his lips while I dared myself to hit him. I didn’t even know how to throw a punch, but Axis did. One moment I was alone, and the next he was there between us, and Jamie was on the ground with blood gushing from his nose, his blue shirt splattered with it.

A shirt for a shirt, Axis declared before catching my hand and kissing me right there in front of everyone.

It was a hell of a coming out for both of us.

Which is why it had come as such a blow less than a year later, when he’d stood there in that garage and read me the riot act for being too sparkly and in everyone’s faces with my appearance. What had prompted those words I’d never know, not when he’d been begging me just a few days before to help him apply a smokey-eyed look before he got on stage. He’d asked for shimmering purple highlights along his cheekbones too, wanting to stand out while he was playing with his band.

Funny, but when I looked back on that night, the thing I remembered most was that his eyes lacked the excitement they usually did before a gig. I’d tried to ask him about it and the foul mood he’d been in afterwards, as well as why he hadn’t been playing lead the way he usually did.

Drop ithad been his only response, right before he’d suggested we go to IHOP for red velvet pancakes. Talk about a decadent treat, especially when he’d fed little bites to me while we’d been snuggled up in the booth together, waiting for Romanto arrive. I’d agonized over whether to accompany him to the out-of-town swim meet he’d been competing in or stay and see Axis play. In the end, Roman had ended the debate by telling me to stay, since his folks would be at the meet with him, while we both knew Axis would have nobody.

It wasn’t that they disapproved of him playing; it was just that they’d never viewed it as more than a hobby.

If I’m going to go see a concert, then dammit, I’m gonna go see a real band where I know what the hell they’re singing about.

I doubted Axis knew I’d heard that whole conversation, from the start, when he’d tried to give his father a ticket to the show, to the end, when he’d stormed out telling his old man that one day people would be lining up for the chance to see him. He’d kicked the screen door closed while his old man had been bellowing about not slamming doors. Was shocked he hadn’t opened it just to slam it again; he’d been that pissed. Which was why I’d let him get halfway down the block before I’d chased after him. He’d been silent all the way to the pond, where he’d whipped stones at the water until every living thing had been chased from the spot by all that splashing.

After he’d calmed down and kicked his shoes off, we’d sat with our feet in the water, the legs of our jeans rolled up, while he’d complained about no one taking him seriously.

Not his folks, not his music teacher, not his older brother, not even his grandparents, who’d been the ones to buy him his first guitar.

I play my ass off! If I spend any more time out in the garage practicing, I’ll have to move my bed out there just to get some sleep. I’ve bled on those strings.

I know, I’ve bandaged your fingers.

Yeah. But it’s still not enough.

And burning yourself out is gonna be? Making yourself hate something you love is gonna be? You can’t make him care! Why can’t it be enough that Roman and I think you’re amazing?

You’ll never get it.

Then explain it to me in a way I can.

I can’t.

Why not?

Because maybe I don’t know why nothing I do is ever good enough for him.

Sometimes I wondered if he’d ever found out or even gone back home to make peace with the family he’d left behind. Had he left them a note? Because Roman and I hadn’t received anything from him before he’d vanished, the only thing we’d been told when we’d knocked on his door was thatthe fuckerhad left with his band.

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