“I worked on this for a year; we aregoing! And youlikeBarry,” was the last thing Sam heard Mrs. Thompson say. Then the voices were replaced with the sound of car doors opening and closing, and the thrum of the Mercedes’s engine pulling them down the drive. He didn’t think anything of it—the Thompsons argued all the time, about nearly everything—but he did wait for Jake for an increasingly embarrassing twenty minutes before resignedly going back into his own house.
He started making himself dinner, checking his phone for messages at shorter and shorter intervals while trying to tell himself it was fine. Of course it was fine. High school parties started late, that’s all it was. The gnawing sense of dread in his stomach was from the Hot Pockets he ate when he got home, probably. Nothing to worry about.
It was about an hour later that Jake pulled into the driveway, honking the horn to announce his arrival and immediately giving Sam quite a lot to worry about.
The car he was driving was the first problem. It was not the little green car Jake usually tooled around in, which had been two of his siblings’ before it was his, and their grandmother’s before that. Nor was it his mother’s frankly enormous car, whichJake was very occasionally given leave to drive if, for example, he needed to transport a huge number of PTA file boxes to the front office on Lauren’s behalf.
No, that night Jake was behind the wheel of his father’s maroon 1966 Jaguar E-Type convertible. Sam knew it was a 1966 Jaguar E-Type convertible because he had never heard Jake’s father talk about itwithoutrattling off its full name, and Jake’s father talked about that car alot. Once, when Patrick had happened past the house on a walk while Sam and his family were out front doing yard work, they’d all stood and chatted for a few minutes. After he’d walked away, David had muttered, “Good Lord. You’d think that car was his mistress, the way he talks about it,” and Mara had let out a shout of laughter before slapping him on the arm and telling him to watch what he said in front of his daughters.
Jake should not have been driving the Jaguar. Jake should not, based on his father’s general vibe and energy and also explicitly stated rules, even have been looking at the Jaguar. The car had its own special bay in the garage, its own dedicated rags and shammies, its own set of tools and polishes and oils no one else was allowed to touch. Patrick had joked more than once—enough times Sam himself had heard him say it—that he loved it more than any of his family members.
So it was worrying, to say the least, to see Jake sitting behind its wheel in Sam’s driveway. But not as worrying as—after bursting out of the house and running over to the driver’s side window to demand, “Okay,howare you driving the Jag?”—catching the smell on Jake’s breath. Sam knew he was drunk from the first whiff, even before he started talking.
“Oh, I took it,” Jake said, glassy and blank. “Juuuuust took it. Why shouldn’t I take it! He’s never going to like me anyway.” His gaze focused on Sam and sharpened as he beeped the horn,suddenly grinning. “Anyway, come on, get in! We’ve got a party to get to.”
“Jake,” Sam said carefully. “I think maybe you should get out? So we can talk about, um. Whatever’s…going on…first? It seems like maybe you’ve been drinking, and?—”
“Oh my God, are you really going to do that?” Jake complained, pulling a face. “Be Mr. Responsible? Right now? You don’t have tobabysitme, Sam, you know.”
Sam had felt, even then, that this was below the belt. It was especially rough coming from Jake, who knew that Sam resented how much time he spent left in charge of his sisters, and who was not typically prone to saying anything harsher than, “I’m so sorry to tell you this, I really am, but you are, in point of fact, off-key.”
Jake must have been surprised by it, too, because he blanched, and his face fell, and he sounded genuinely remorseful—agonized, even—when he said, “Sam…sorry. I’m sorry. I’ll get out.”
True to his word, he turned off the car and got out, and Sam made his first mistake of the night: He did not immediately snatch the keys out of Jake’s hands. It didn’t occur to him that it was an option to do so, although it would later, and he’d spend a long time kicking himself for not having done it. This was, at least, a productive mistake: More than once in the years since, Samhastaken the opportunity to remove car keys from the hands of someone overserved, and he’s fairly certain he’s saved a few lives that way.
But that night Sam was too young to understand the mercurial nature of the drunk, the way rationality comes and goes across their internal landscapes like so much wind. So he didn’t take the keys, or insist that Jake come inside, or leave the Jaguar safely in the driveway, or call his parents, or Jake’sparents, or anyone. Instead he peered down into Jake’s eyes and said, “Whathappened?”
“What happened,” Jake repeated, vacant, leaning back against the car and tapping his fingertips against his thigh. “What….happened.” A pause, and then, in an oddly bitter tone for something Sam would have thought would be good news: “Well, I got into Juilliard, first of all. That happened. Early decision. Got the letter today.” His lip curled up into a slight sneer as he added, “Hooray for me.”
“Jake, that’s great?” Sam wasn’t able to keep the confusion out of his voice. “I mean, isn’t it? It’s what you wanted, right?”
“It is what I wanted.” Jake’s voice was hollow; wobbly. “What I want. It is.”
Sam waited for more. When nothing came, he asked, tentatively, “So…what’s the problem, then? Do your parents not want you to go or something?”
“Oh, no, they’re thrilled,” Jake said, and then his face twisted and he added, “Werethrilled, anyway. It’s soprestigious, you know. Great bragging rights with the artsier circles they move in, and they’ve already had one kid go through one of Ivies, so, you know, it’s all gravy, right?!” There was an edge of hysteria entering his tone that didn’t match the words, but Sam still wasn’t ready for the abrupt non sequitur: “Listen, I seem gay to you, right?”
In spite of the circumstances, Sam—who had still, after all, been a teenage boy—smirked. “Well, yeah. I’d guess you seem gayer to me than you do to most people, even.”
Jake would have laughed at that, usually; he didn’t. Instead, he pressed: “Sure, sure, but I mean. My vibe. My affect. It’s not, like, particularly heterosexual, right?”
“Ah,” Sam said, half-afraid it was a trap, but, “No, I wouldn’t describe you like that, personally.”
“Right!” Jake threw his hands in the air. “Nobody would! Because I’m not! And I thought it was, you know, one of those things we don’t talk about in my family, because it’s inconvenient, or uncomfortable, or whatever. Like Uncle George’s pills, or Mom’s ‘tennis instructor,’ or that whole weird thing with Aunt Elizabeth’s job!” He scrubbed one hand over his face, laughing wearily. “Turns out my dad just…didn’t know. No idea. Had never picked up on it once.”
“Oh, God.” Already knowing it must not have been good based on…well, everything, Sam asked again: “What happened?”
“Oh, you know,” Jake said, in a fake-cheerful tone so played up it bordered on singsong. “First he made a comment about how I’d have to be careful at a school like Juilliard, and how we’d have to have a talk about the realities of the world, because I might attract the attention of a certain kind of man and not know what to do. And then my brother said, ‘I think Jake knows exactly what to do with the attention of that sort of man,’ and everyone laughed, except my dad, who said, ‘What?’ and I said, ‘What?’ and he said, ‘What did he mean?’ and then my sister said, ‘Jesus Christ, Dad, do younotknow Jake’s gay?’” Jake sighed, heavy and hard. “And then, uh. It all got a little…shouty.”
Sam winced. The Thompsons, he knew, could really shout; more than once he’d heard them from his own backyard. He’d often wondered if that wasn’t what had driven Jake to find the hidden spot behind the hedge in the first place: hunger for somewhere that no one was yelling.
Sam’s own parents had been very low-key when he came out to them. To his deep and secret shame, Sam felt they’d been a littletoolow-key. It’s not like he’d wanted a blow-up fight, but “Okay, kiddo, pass the bread” had been a bit of a let-down. Hisfather had said it in the same tone he would have used if Sam told him he was thinking about getting a burrito for lunch.
He did not, obviously, say any of this to Jake. He also did not say what he should have said to Jake: “Oh no, that’s terrible, I’m so sorry! Why don’t you come inside and tell me all about it.” If he had just said that, they could have gone into the house, and Sam could have swiped the keys when Jake dropped them on the counter, and they could have waited until their various parents got home to deal with the Jaguar, which would have remained safely parked. Mr. Thompson would have been angry, probably, but Mr. Thompson was nearly always angry. It wouldn’t have, say, altered the course of both of their lives.
But instead, because he was a teenager, and an idiot, and panicking, what he did say was, “Shit. Well. I mean. At least now it’s all out in the open?”
Even years later, Sam doubts he’ll ever forget the way Jake turned to look at him, the long, still moment they spent staring at one another. Jake looked empty, blank, and then briefly his eyes closed and his face creased in devastation, making Sam wonder if he was replaying the whole incident in his mind.
