Chapter Forty-Two Something

I didn’t know how long I spent just taking pictures on the way home, but it was already way into the afternoon by the time I even turned down my street. It seemed that once I was able to figure out what filled the void in my hands, I couldn’t stop myself from using it. I felt like a bird that had been caged all of its life, and when finally given freedom, went fucking crazy. I was taking pictures of everything I saw, and though it seemed frivolous, trivial, and like I was wasting film, I wasn’t. This camera was a precious life force in my hands, just born, waiting to explore the world. And I was its parent, starting to see the world from new eyes. Everything was beautiful. I had talked before about this concept with Jasmine, but I was only regurgitating Gerard’s words, and forced to look through his eyes. His painter’s eyes. I knew he was right, and I did see some beauty in everything, but I could never quite understand why he would drone on and on for hours about one little thing, when I saw it, observed it, and let it pass.

Now I knew why. I had been looking at everything through the wrong mindset. Of course I couldn’t see through his painter eyes – I wasn’t a painter. I didn’t know what I would call myself in that moment; I was still too fresh, too new to have a name forsaken on me yet. I was just taking pictures, and this was the lens I was supposed to see through. And I saw everything.

It was as if I had been blind before, but putting my eye behind the thick lens and pressing the button made the whole world clearer to me. Everything was making sense again, even if there were still random doubts about Gerard, my parents, and the charges that were coming against me, I was too fascinated by taking a picture of the garbage that was strewn all over the street, crossing in front of my path. It wasn’t just garbage to me. It fucking meant something. The candy bar wrappers were blocking my path, blocking my way, and making me not want to step on them – like the cracks in the sidewalk. I wondered what bone I would break in my mother’s body if I stepped on the garbage line as opposed to a sidewalk crack, and I took a picture of my pondering. I snapped images of the trash, before and after, sometimes my foot jutting in the picture. My thoughts were coming at me full speed, crashing together with the slam of the shutter. I couldn’t fucking believe my mind. I had never thought this way before. I had never been this way before. I wanted to run and scream and yell – but in happiness, or something like it. There was this force inside of me, that gnawing urge from before only stronger – much strong. This urge was no longer clawing like it had been before when it did not have a voice. It had a vice to speak through now, and it had been silent for almost eighteen years. It was learning the language through negatives fast, and I had a lot of speaking to do. I felt like Travis when he was on one of his random drug-induced talking frenzies, only this was so much better. This was not from a substance that I was abusing. This was something pure and whole I could hold in my hands – that fucking fit in my hands. I would have something tangible; afterwards I would have something to show for my rant, my crazy fit of hysteria - not just a hangover and an empty pocket where my money used to be.

Though I took pictures and thought like a genius, I was far from mastering my skill at the camera. I could take pictures, but I didn’t exactly know how to get them out of the camera just yet. It was an older model, still taking film, but it wasn’t the normal stuff that I would just drop off at the local store and come back in an hour to get. This was something I would need a dark room for, and that was only something I had seen on TV. I didn’t know where I would get my hands on any kind of expertise in this area to show me the way outside of that infernal box, but I had time to figure that out. I would find a dark room, I would buy more film – I would make it all happen. My main objective was just taking pictures. I could worry about the minor details later.

I had bought the six rolls of film that had been sitting next to the camera on the marked down bin, my anticipation brewing within me. The cashier, an old middle-aged man with practically no hair atop his shiny head had given me a weird look as he rang me in as I practically danced on my toes. He could give me as many weird looks as he wanted. I didn’t care; I was fucking ecstatic. I couldn’t wait to show someone.

I snapped pictures in time with my breath, and thought about risking it all. I wanted to go to Gerard’s place. He had to see this; he had to know that I had found my passion in life. He was the one who was constantly forcing me to find my passion, constantly forcing me to find a will and reason to live. This action of photography was getting clearer by the second that this was what I was supposed to do, this was what I was meant to do. I had already used up one roll of film, and when I went to change it, my fingers just seemed to know where everything was. I didn’t fuck it up at all, and I placed the used rolled in my jeans pocket, patting it securely. I needed a dark room fast, and I knew that Gerard would help me with it.

I took a picture of the fork in the road, one path leading down to Gerard’s street, and the other taking me to my house. I stood there for the longest time, looking both ways, taking pictures as my mind clicked in unison. I wanted to see him badly, but as I looked in the camera in my hand, the film in my pocket, and everything around me, I knew I had too much to lose. I was just starting to find myself, and I knew that I could keep going, keep discovering, and wait until this all blew over. It was going to blow over, I knew it. I had faith in that now. I began to walk down my road, still taking pictures. I was able to snap a clear view of the fork in the road, a distant shadow of a tree in line with Gerard’s side. When I got a chance to name and title these photos, I was going to call that one Indecision.

My heart beat with anticipation. I got to name these photos, these pieces of myself. When you named something, you owned it. I would own my art, myself – everything. I had control over this now. I glanced down at the camera in my hand, and debated naming that to. I wanted to call it something symbolic – like Gerard did with his doves, but I couldn’t think of anything. I didn’t know any famous photographers. I considered naming it Dove or Freedom, but even that I was not satisfied with. I didn’t want to own the camera per se. I didn’t want to take ownership of something that was so free by itself. And so, the camera was left unnamed, and just left to be a simple art form.

As I took a picture of a squirrel in the local park, I wished I knew where Vivian lived. I needed to show the woman who had crushed me at first that I had finally been rebuilt. I had been harboring some deep-rooted resentment for the woman and her foolish notion of hands at first. I didn’t want her to be right, because I didn’t know how I could fix things. Little did I know that passion was not something you fixed. It just happened. It had happened, and her pushing me to keep living while I looked, though aggravating at first, was now exhilarating.

The only time when my constant euphoria diminished was as I got closer and closer to my house. I wasn’t late, but I had this horrible looming feeling in my gut as I started to walk by the tightly packed houses. Some people were outside, gathering lawn equipment or just sitting on their porch, but since it was only about four in the afternoon still, most people were still at work. A few teenagers I recognized from my school were on the other side of the street though, and I could just feel the looming feeling echo through my body as their eyes stared deeply into me. I tried to ignore the sensation, snapping more pictures of flat tires, rusty nails, and beer bottles, drowning out whatever they were saying with constant shutter flicks. My mom’s car was not in the driveway when I got home, and I knew my father was no where close to arriving too. It was Friday night, and usually he went out with his buddies from work. It was hard to tell if tonight he would bother, considering the circumstances, but I didn’t know for sure. I doubted he would want to be at home and would relish in the time with real men, but if his friends knew about my ‘condition’ then I doubt he would want the awkward sympathy.

Most likely, a lot of people knew something about what had been going on with me. It was a relatively small town in the sense that big news fucking spread fast. They probably didn’t have every last detail, but when someone was arrested or taken into custody for some reason, people took note. Especially in rare circumstances, or in ones where people were threatened. What was more dangerous and bigger news than a possible pedophile living down the street? Unless there had been a murder at the same time as Gerard and I had been arrested, then the spotlight would probably stay on us. Even if there had been a murder (a likely thing in Jersey), murders were everywhere. They were so common and heard about on the news that it was almost boring. My circumstance didn’t happen as often; I was more entertaining. No newspapers or anything had covered the story yet, or probably would until they had evidence, but just the fact that there were allegations would get people talking. Even if it had only been a day, not even that just yet, rumors never slept.

Regardless of how my father’s friend would react, I knew he would come home late, tanked out of his mind, yell at me some more, and then collapse into bed. Just the thought of my upcoming night gave me a chill down my spine, but I held the camera tight. It was my new security blanket, since I could no longer take Gerard with me anywhere, or see him when I wanted. My feelings for Gerard were still whole and intact – the camera hadn’t replaced him – it may have even made my feelings for him better.

Beforehand, he and he alone was my passion, my addiction and my source of life. When it was knocked out of me, I had to find something else, or drown in its place. I had found my life boat, my life vessel, and I clung onto it for dear life. My head was above water, and I was extending a limb to dry land every picture I took. Gerard was still my passion, but he had transformed into feeling passion in between us, like the kind lovers had for each other. It was mutual, whereas before it was compulsive. Our relationship had always been whole and meaningful, but now my compulsive urge to see him and be with him had morphed into this hard feeling inside my chest; like he was always there. He was a rock and instead of dragging him around everywhere I went, I now kept him inside me, equal with me. He was no longer on that high of a pedestal. He had his art, and I had my camera. I wasn’t constantly trying to share his art form, because now I had found my own. I was still new at all of it, but I was learning by the second. I was learning to be an artist again, something I always had been, but rejected for the time being. I was feeling creativity within my veins again, more so than I ever felt before. The times when I hid my camera from those who passed and didn’t take pictures, I was thinking about it, and thinking of new ideas. I took a picture of a large rock when I came across one. I saw Gerard in the rock, and I knew it was my favorite picture I had taken so far.

I was an artist again, and just like all artists, I didn’t hate anymore. I didn’t feel raw anger running through me. I felt disappointment and I felt a little mad, but I had a better way of dealing with it. I touched my cheek at one point as I walked, feeling the place where my dad had hit me. The broken blood vessels were still present, especially now that I was no longer blushing. The emotional scarring was more prominent than anything else. I turned the camera around and looked at my reflection off the lens, and suddenly found myself snapping a picture of my face, poised onto that little mark. I didn’t want a photo to incriminate my father. No, that was not why I had taken the picture. I didn’t know why I had at first, until I pointed the camera to the ground, took a picture of that, and then walked forward.

I walked forward into the sidewalk, turning my camera the right way and starting all over again. That had been the last picture on the second roll of film, and I went to change it, letting everything go. I could forgive Anthony, and my father, because they were still the same person. Though I called him Anthony for spite in person and inside my thoughts, I would slip up. I could still hear myself refer to him as my father, and even worse, my dad. I still loved my father, but now, I no longer hated myself – or him – for that. I could even begin to understand why he had hit me; I was being difficult and he had too many negative feelings to deal with, it just sort of happened. I understood why he did it, but I didn’t condone the action in the least. It still left me feeling hurt in more than one way, and I was still utterly disgusted when I thought about it. There was still a huge difference in my mind between understanding and approving. I didn’t have to approve his actions, and as I realized that, I came to the conclusion that he didn’t have to approve mine either. We just both had to accept and respect each other; me for being gay and him for being violent. At that moment, we were both struggling for power, for one of us to prevail over the other. We didn’t have to override the other person and still maintain accuracy though. I had figured that out, and I wondered when he would. I knew I shouldn’t tell him this lesson. There were some things people had to do by themselves.

Once the other film was in, I took more pictures of the ground in front of me, signally how far I had come and how far I still needed to go. I snapped the button compulsively making another favorite picture.

Even as I stepped on my porch and I saw the note pinned to my door, I didn’t feel that raw anger I probably would have felt if it were not for the camera. In fact, I took a picture of the folded up piece of foolscap, my name written on it in childlike script, taped to the door with masking tape.

I knew who it was from before I even opened it, and as my eyes and fingers scanned over the derogatory words written about ass fucking and wrinkly old men, I managed to breathe in and out, crumble the paper up and throw it away when I got inside.

And then I started to take more pictures.

I tried to shrug it all off the dismayed feeling as I captured a leaking facet, dirty clothing hamper, and couch cushions on film, but plaguing thoughts and doubts managed to creep their way through. Artists weren’t perfect, and though I may have been able to flush out my hate, paranoia was right behind me. I knew that Sam and Travis had written the note. It was clearly obvious in the way the childlike font was ‘disguised’. Sam had distinct writing; it looked like the font off of a computer some days. No matter what he did, he always managed to write in the same font, same size, and same way. He had a habit of not capitalizing his letters, but the R. And as soon as I saw the slip once, I knew it was him. Oh, and the references to ass fucking and having shit on a dick helped to identify as well. I wondered how the two teens already knew about what had happened, and the accusations brought up against Gerard.

It was one thing for my dad’s friends from work to know about everything that had happened thus far; they were adults and had finer access to news. They were friends with cops, some of them even cops themselves, and adults talked. They talked a lot, but rarely to their children about matters like this. Even if the parents wanted to tell their teenage son anything, they usually had a hard time getting through. There was a thick mental block in most teens to shut out anything their parents said, especially if it was regarding sex and their safety. We had this invincible quality to us, making us not listening to such things.

In high school, the whole dynamic is different. There are two different worlds, home and school. In school, there were these small societies, cliques, and groups, and they all talked together. That was how kids spread their news and rumors. It took a lot longer to get to us through the food chain, but when we had it, we spread it ten times faster than adults ever could. Teenage existence is based on communication, since we can’t do much else. But we weren’t in school that day; it was still spring break, and though kids still hung out together, the chain was broken. News couldn’t spread as fast during the weekends or holidays, and yet, Sam and Travis already knew. They were some of the worse people to know, and I wondered how much farther this ripple of information was going to go.

Not only had there been gay jokes in the letter, but they were old gay jokes, pointing to an art mishap with paint. A sure sign that the vindictive teens who wrote this letter, had been the same ones that were doused in blue paint that one day. Unlike me, the paint had not changed Sam and Travis, but instead made them think in more complex ways. The note was the first step in their path of destruction, I wondered what else they had up their sleeve, or if it was all talk. Talking was bad enough, I thought. Sam didn’t keep his mouth shut and people always came to Travis for weed. Not only did Sam and Travis have status in rumor-ville, they also had the knowledge that no other teen had of Gerard. They had seen him that day with the blue paint can, they had seen me come out of his apartment, and they had also heard me confess to having guitar lessons from him. They knew too much, and had way too many deadly games to play with it. I knew I was fucked there, as far as rumors went, even if the rape kit did come back with no trauma and Gerard was free of charges. There was the queer by association aspect brought up again, and it was being used with another taboo. I was fucked, but I knew I wasn’t damned.

I put down the camera on the coffee table, remembering the rape kit. I didn’t know when my results would be in, they said it may take awhile, but I still wanted to check the messages. I knew I would be checking them compulsively, wanting to be the first person to hear what I knew had to be good news. Whether my dad was going to believe the good news was another story, but it didn’t matter if he believed it. If Gerard was let go, then everything would be okay. Everything really did seem okay, or at least manageable, by that point.

To my surprise, there were three messages waiting. Feeling my stomach jump with anticipation, I pressed the button and waited. I heard a crinkling sound before a familiar muffled laughter echoed though.

“Sick fuck,” was all the first message said. I knew it was Sam’s voice right away, and my heart fell down into the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t mad, at least not yet, but my heart weighed heavy in disappointment. Sam had been my friend ever since fucking kindergarten and now he was leaving me note and harassing phone messages. Worst of all, as I heard the recording stop, turn around and play another message, this time with Travis’ voice in my ear, I realized something else. Though Travis’ rant was done in one of his metaphorical constant verbal highs, Sam had been completely sober. His voice didn’t lag or drag out, but was harsh and sharp, enunciating everything demeaning in the two words he had uttered. And he could say them with a clear head, he didn’t need to loosen himself up to get his true feelings out. He was wearing them on his sleeve, and blasting them into the phone. He was disgusted by me.

I couldn’t fucking believe what was going on. I was being fucking hounded by my own friends, and I knew there was going to be more from other people once the news had spread like wildfire. Travis had only been my friend since high school, but I still considered him something important. He usually was never as vocal as Sam as far as insults went, but apparently drugs brought it out of him. I went from feeling nothing to so much anger I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t feel like I was drowning though, just like I was choking.

“I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with you,” his message began to play and I could feel my ears bleeding. “If you wanted it up the ass from that old wrinkly shit, then that’s disgusting. You deserve AIDS and anything else you may get. But if you were raped, then fuck, please get decontaminated before you ever see us again. Wait, no. Please don’t see us again. It’s pointless. Just like everything else you may have done with Mr. Old Wrinkly balls.”

I felt my face flush and I had to fight the urge to rip the phone from out of the wall and throw it across the room. I wanted to hate them right then, I really did. I wanted to kill them too, but I wanted to hate even more. They deserved my hate, but as I looked down at the camera, I realized that I didn’t deserve to feel hate. I was a human being; I was an artist. I didn’t hate, I couldn’t hate, and more often than not, I would choose not to hate. Sam and Travis were jerks, yes. I could accept that and believe it. But I wasn’t a jerk with them. I may have been friends with them for as long as I could remember, but I wasn’t like them. Gerard had been able to see that when I couldn’t. I didn’t know I was any different from my friends for the longest time. I stuck by them, followed them, and hide behind their tough exteriors, creating my own. But I wasn’t like them. Gerard had seen the pigeons, rats of the sky, when he looked at my friends that day. When he looked at me though, he saw a dove. A brown dove, but a dove nonetheless. I may have been a teenager like them, tough like them, and had brown feathers like them, but that meant nothing when Gerard broke it all away. I was different than them, I was the exception.

I repeated the word over and over again in my mind. Exception, exception, exception. I looked at the camera, to the letter as I repeated, and realized how right Gerard had been all this time.

I heaved out an angry sigh, clenching my teeth and slowly calming down. I could feel my blood pumping in a more even manner, my temples no longer throbbing. I could do this; I had dealt with worse, and would still be dealing with worse. So what if Sam and Travis had leaked vital and false information to those around me? It didn’t matter. I was not like them, and I was moving on. I had to worry about Gerard, my record, and my rape kit results. I snapped myself back into reality, realizing that there was still one more message.

Hesitant but persistent, I pressed the button and waited, hearing a mere sigh and a dial tone. It was just a hang-up call, but from the sigh on the other end I had a feeling there was more behind it. I tried to scan my way through the incoming call number history, but came up with a number I didn’t recognize. I was about to right it off as someone else who had heard about my story, but didn’t have enough balls (or alcohol) to actually say anything about it when I heard the door bell ring.

I furrowed my brow, wondering just who the fuck would be at my door. My chest tightened a bit when images of Sam and Travis came to my mind, but I shoved them away, knowing that I could face my challenges. I walked over to my door with a heavy, yet determined, heart.

And got the surprise of a lifetime when I opened the door.

I didn’t bother to look through the peephole, and if I had, I may not have even seen the small body in front of me, rather just the top of her bouncy blonde hair.

“Hey…” she greeted unsurely, shifting her weight from side to side.

It was Jasmine, but I almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing jeans and the same navy hoodie she had at the cottage. But that was the thing – we were not at the cottage anymore. All the memories I had had of this girl had been in a secluded area, a trampoline in the background along with art talk and family histories. She had driven me back to Jersey, but I had been too spaced out and worried to really picture her against the city skyline. She didn’t fit there anyway; Jasmine belonged in the country, on her trampoline, and maybe even in the sky.

“Hey…” I uttered back, looking her up and down, trying to comprehend her new image even more. As she stood in my doorway, she looked nervous; afraid almost. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail, stretching the skin on her face and making her wide-eyed expression more visible. She lopped her head from side to side, unsure of what to say and looked around a lot, as if she wasn’t supposed to be at my place. She no longer looked like a kid anymore, but a worried adult. I didn’t like how much stress had aged her, and I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had caused that stress.

“Can I come in?” she asked meekly, her hands buried in her jacket pockets. She stepped forward a little, displaying her question in movements to catch my attention again. I was still adjusting to the fact that I was actually seeing her again.

“Uh, sure,” I agreed, stepping away to the side and motioning with my hand weakly. I didn’t remember the air being so thick.

She walked right in, surpassing me in depth inside the house. She stood in the front hallway for awhile, gazing around at my house and making note of the décor. I still stood in the doorway, the draft coming through and causing her small frame, buried under her baggy clothing to shiver. Seeing her discomfort snapped me out of my daze and I finally closed the door, but still didn’t know what to do next.

“I tried to call,” she said, still looking around and not meeting my eyes. “But no one was home, and I hate leaving messages.”

“Oh, that was you?” I asked her, my head finally able to string together a coherent thought. I felt a huge wave of relief wash over me, knowing that at least it was only Sam and Travis who were being immature pricks. She had just wanted to call me to call me, not to harass. I had gotten rid of her number so fast after she had given it to me, I didn’t bother to commit anything to memory.

“Yeah, sorry,” she apologized, still shifting her weight around. The apology struck something inside of me; Jasmine was always telling me not to apologize, and she had just broken her own rule. Memories or being at Gerard’s place and him doing the exact same thing leaped to the forefront of my mind, and it made my heart ache even more. Why were people suddenly breaking?

“Don’t be,” I insisted, gaining more and more strength and bestowing it on the person who needed it the most. I was still slightly disoriented from seeing Jasmine, but my prior euphoria was allowing me to collect myself, bit by excruciating bit.

Our eyes met for the first time then, her blue ones displaying uncertainty as she smiled weakly at me. I tried to smile back, but felt my face flush with something other than anger and looked down, kicking my foot into the carpet.

“I came over to talk,” she stated suddenly, gripping her words strongly. I looked up again, meeting her determined eyes. “Can we sit down?” She motioned to the couch, and I realized what a bad host I was being.

“Oh, sure, sorry,” I apologized, moving over to the couch that was in the next room by the hallway and removing the newspapers my father kept on it, clearing a spot away for Jasmine.

“Don’t be,” she replied coyly to me, the first joke breaking the air between us.

We both sat down on the creamy peach colouring of the sofa, our backs arched and knees pointed inwards. It suddenly became so silent, I didn’t want to breathe because it made too much noise. She sat with her knees touching, held tightly in place in front of her, her small hands gripping her jeans fabric and rubbing together to ease out tension. She looked down, studying her long thumb nail for awhile, before she finally spoke again.

“What’s going on?”

Her voice was small, yet very strong and determined. There was a vulnerable quality to it, her childlike atmosphere kicking in again. It was almost like she felt she was going to get punished for asking the question, as if it was a topic you weren’t supposed to ask you’re parents about when you were younger. Like sex, only with worse repercussions.

I didn’t answer for awhile, unsure really of what I could say. I didn’t know what was going on in my own head, and I had more details than she did, and probably ever would. I didn’t want to spill my guts about everything that had happened, but I felt it pushing up against the tip of my throat threatening to spill forward. After a silence where we both could barely breathe, she added to her claim.

“People are talking.”

“I know,” I finally answered, my sigh feeling as heavy as the issues we were talking about without exchanging solid definitions yet.

“It’s bad, Frank,” she said, warning me almost. She lifted her eyes from her hands and looked at me. I had been staring at her the entire time, and her sudden gaze threw me off for a second. It was like looking at a piece of art, and then the picture suddenly falling down off the wall, its hook broken and the noise giving you a heart attack.

I didn’t know something that beautiful could break so easily.

“What are people saying to you?” I asked her, getting interested in my own demise. I knew what Sam and Travis were saying to me, but were these the ‘people’ she was talking about? I highly doubted my two druggie friends counted as an entire population. And what exactly was her definition of bad? I knew what kind of shit I was getting, phone calls and personal attacked notes. That stuff was invasive; to my face. That stuff was usually a step down from what others thought, and I could only image how high everything else was above me. I had been in a bubble for so long, at Gerard’s, at the cottage, or in my own house, that I was slowly losing touch with reality and not gripping on hard enough when it came by and left sharp scaring teeth marks in my skin.

“I don’t want to repeat it,” Jasmine stated seriously, disconnecting her eyes and her cheeks growing a slight rose shade.

Fuck, I thought realizing just how deep the scars went. She was embarrassed to say the lies about me. How bad did it get on the outside world? I fought the urge to wrap her in a hug, and settled for shifting closer to her on the couch and sliding an arm around her shoulders, trying to straighten her up from her hunched pose.

“Hey, it’s okay,” I cooed, rocking her slightly from side to side. I could feel her ease under my touch, but it didn’t help for her mental block.

“I still don’t want to tell you.”

She sat up straight, and looked me in the eye. I let my hand drop from her shoulders to her lower back, not feeling the need to save her anymore. She didn’t need to be saved; she was solid and strong, though very small. She could handle what was going on; she just needed the truth to justify everything.

“I don’t want to tell you, because I know those people are wrong. They have to be wrong,” she started again, turning her head away from me and biting her lip in aggravation. “I hope they’re wrong…” she whispered, barely audible.

I wanted to say something, say anything and tell her it was all right, that it wasn’t true, but I couldn’t. I didn’t know what they were saying about me, and I couldn’t lie. I didn’t want to lie, especially to Jasmine. What they were saying about me, at least, what Sam and Travis were saying, was true. Yeah, I had fucked a forty-seven year old artist in the ass. I liked it, too and I was gay. They were spouting the truth, just added a darker and dirtier side to it all. They were focusing on age and gender instead of the real issue at heart. They were incapable of seeing the real issues at heart. Therefore, I couldn’t say it wasn’t true to Jasmine because then I would be lying to her – something I had never done since we first met and spent the weekend together. I had only ever evaded the truth, not giving her little details. She had never asked out right, so I never had to lie. But now, things were changing.

“Frank…” she stated, paused, then started again. “What is going on? Tell me, please.”

In that desolate and fragile moment, I wanted to tell her. She had been the only person at the cottage to understand my obsession with art. She had been the only person to understand me, talk to me, and want to be with me. She said she trusted me, and I hadn’t been telling her the whole truth. I wondered, in the back of my mind where doubts and spiders were kept, if she would still be as understanding as she was that weekend about art, if I told her about my torrid love affair with Gerard, the man she had always thought was my teacher. I looked at her; fucking stared immensely, intensely. I thought of all the events I had shared with Gerard, all of the events that lead up to that fucking moment, rewinding the film in my head. Each day, the painting lessons, Vivian, cigarettes and sex came back to me in a photograph, snapped and preserved in my mind. I had never shown the negatives to anyone before, and I was afraid that once they hit the light of day, they would be ruined. If Gerard and I were no longer a secret in my mind, would we all fall apart? If I told Jasmine everything, would she turn around and turn him in?

I saw her eyes flicker, and I could see her sincerity. She wouldn’t tell. She had no reason to tell, and I had no reason to keep this a secret any longer. There were no such things as secrets anyway, according to Gerard. He had told Vivian about us, having me learn my own lesson in secrecy. Jasmine could be my Vivian once again, like that night we first had sex, and I could tell everything. My photo album of memories began to rewind, going back to the beginning. If this story was going to work, beginnings were crucial. You could never just jump into the middle of a story and expect to understand the events. Everything linked to something else, and when put to a book and flashed by together, they connected. Everything connects, and I started to understand that more and more. My parents and everyone else wouldn’t understand Gerard and I because they came in at the middle; they didn’t know the events to lead up to things, and they weren’t willing to give it a chance. Jasmine had walked in on something she didn’t understand, but instead of running the other direction, she walked into the source. She walked into me, and I was going to let her through.

We locked eyes for the longest time, debating where to go from here. Her pupils dilated and she darted across my countenance, searching me for my next reproach with a final beg. “You can trust me, Frank. I won’t tell a single soul. Please.”

I heard a click inside my head, and I knew I was done rewinding. I sighed deeply, and took her hand for support. For both of us.

“On Sundays, there’s never much to do in Jersey…” I started and the words took over, beginning to play my movie, my story for her, and only her.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14