Page 7 of Jacob Michaels is Not Here

I didn’t respond verbally. Instead, I smiled and scooted my seat back, making the legs scrape against the linoleum unpleasantly. Ernst didn’t hesitate as he climbed up and sat on my knee. Oma cast a disapproving glance over her shoulder and shook her head as she began piling a plate high with the heavenly concoction she had whipped up for breakfast. Doing her best to not slap the plate down on the table, Oma set the breakfast in front of Ernst and me before shaking her head once more. I picked up my fork while Ernst grabbed a strip of my bacon and began nibbling at it happily. It had taken a few years for him to sit at the table with me, under the watchful eye of Oma. He had become less fearful of showing impropriety when it became clear that Oma wouldn’t say anything while I was around. Ernst was my friend. Oma let it slide.

“You two are thicker than thieves, ain’tcha?” Oma stated blandly as she made her own plate.

Ernst nibbled nervously and looked up at me, and I just gave him a wink.

Lucas never liked meeting anywhere we might be seen by the other kids we went to school with each day. Being a naïve, mostly sheltered country kid myself, I assume it was because I was a theater kid and he was a football player. It was a personal “head-slapping” moment for me when I realized the actual reason behind his secretive behavior. Of course, when Lucas and I had first started hanging out, I thought we were becoming just friends. I had known that I was gay…or, at least, I had a pretty good idea. Lucas hadn’t indicated that he was gay when we started becoming friends, so it never crossed my mind that anything besides friendship was developing. Later, when we kissed for the first time, I had an Oprah “Ah-ha Moment.” Obviously, he was gay—or gay-ish, which were the only LGBT terms I understood at the time—and wanted more than friendship. Knowing this, he wanted to keep the fact that we hung out a secret, even though I was not out of the closet to anyone except Oma at the time. I had just been too dense to understand what was unfolding before my very eyes. Lucas, of course, had been much quicker at figuring things out than I had been. He had always been smarter than me.

“We could go down to the bowling alley,” I suggested as we walked along the shore of Lake Erie, beyond the woods bordering Oma’s property. Lucas was skipping rocks sporadically, and I was collecting interesting pebbles in my pocket. We were fifteen and should have had more exciting things to do. “We could go see a movie or something. Ernst said he would show us some more tricks if you want.”

Oma wasn’t aware, but I had introduced Lucas to Ernst within days of becoming friends with him. I had known that he would be able to keep a secret. Just as I had suspected, and though Lucas had been gobsmacked by the appearance of a Kobold, he had kept his lips shut. He and Ernst had taken to each other after Lucas’ initial shock wore off and they always talked at least a little bit every time Lucas showed up to hang out. Lucas stayed clear of the house, though. He hadn’t wanted Oma to see him. We always met at the edge of the yard or down by the lake. But Ernst would always at least say “hello” to Lucas before the two of us left to do…whatever it was we decided to do.

Lucas’ reply was slow to come, “I like just being out here.”

“Okay.” I shrugged and bent down to grab a rock so black and shiny that it looked like obsidian.

Shoving the rock in my pocket, I turned to watch Lucas skip another one across the eerily calm surface of the lake.

“The play was really good,” Lucas stated as he slid his hands into his pockets and stared out at the lake.

“Thanks.” I smiled widely. “Oma took me to Toledo afterward last night. We got burgers and milkshakes and saw a movie and…it was kind of cool, I guess.”

Lucas smiled, still looking out at the lake.

“I mean, it was kind of stupid, too.” I backtracked. “I kind of just wanted to hang out with the cast. Grandmas, right?”

I sighed as though the weight of the world was on my world-weary fifteen-year-old shoulders. Cool kids don’t feel happy about spending time with their parents or grandparents.

“I think it’s cool.”

Surveying Lucas’ face for hints of a lie as he looked out at the lake, I found none.

“It was cool,” I confirmed.

“Mrs. Wagner seems really nice.”

“You never come inside…”

“I know. You were an amazing Professor Harold Hill.”

“When in Rome.”

“Ohio?”

“Close enough.”

“Don’t let an Iowan hear you say that.” Lucas laughed. “They’ll be fit to be tied over in I-Oh-Way.”

“We’re both going to be in trouble with a capital ‘T’.” I teased.

Lucas smiled crookedly as he turned his gaze from the sun-sparkling water and looked at me. I did my best not to swallow down whatever it was that was making my belly feel the way it felt as he looked at me. His blonde hair seemed to practically glow in the spring sun. His eyes looked even more like jade than they usually did. Puberty was having its way with Lucas—in all the best ways. His jaw was becoming sharper, stronger. His baby fat was being shed, and days playing football was making him lean and muscular. But none of that accounted for what hid behind the jade of his eyes. Kindness can be exercised, but it can’t be learned. Lucas was intimately familiar with the concept.

“You’re really funny.”

I shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Lucas mimicked my shrug with a small chuckle.

“I don’t know.” I had to keep myself from shrugging again.