The Kindness of Strangers (47 page)

The door opened, and Nate was surprised to see Jordan there in the hallway light. Nate sat up. “Did you find Klezmer?”

“No.” Jordan came in but didn’t ask why Nate sat in the dark or turn a light on himself. He closed the door behind him and sat on the bed next to Nate. “Sorry I got you in trouble.”

Oh, great. Nate felt even worse. “You didn’t. It had nothing to do with you.”

“But I heard what your mom said. She let me come here because of you.”

“Well . . . yeah . . . but that’s not why I got in trouble. I screwed up.”

Nate listened to the voices downstairs, Mrs. Ripley’s bug zapper next door.

“So . . .” Jordan asked. “Did you and Mackenzie do it?”

Jesus, was that just an hour ago? Nate shook his head and wondered if Jordan could see him in the dark.

He figured Jordan could when the kid asked, “Why not?”

Nate sighed. He couldn’t tell Jordan the truth—the poor kid had enough issues. “We just . . . didn’t. We were going to, but . . . we messed around and—”

“What do you mean, ‘messed around’?”

“You know . . . we kissed and stuff.”

“Were you naked?”

Blood rushed into Nate’s face. “Yeah.”

“You were both naked, and all you did was kiss?” Jordan sounded so confused that Nate had to laugh.

“Yeah, but we kiss, you know, everywhere, not just on the mouth.” Nate wondered if he’d ever get to do that again. He could see just well enough to watch Jordan touch his own lips with his fingers. He wondered if the kid even knew he was doing it.

When Jordan spoke again, his voice was thick. “Why do you . . . How do you . . . I mean, you do it because you
want
to?”

“Yeah.”

Jordan was silent a long time. “Hmm,” he said, as if he’d been thinking.

“Someday you’ll know what that feels like.”

Jordan snorted.

“Hey, you will. Someday. It can be really good if you really love and trust somebody.” He wondered what girl might someday be brave enough to take on Jordan’s baggage. “Besides, you’ve got a while before you need to worry—” He stopped. He realized how strange this was: him, a wimpy virgin, sitting there next to this
kid,
just a kid, who’d had more sex than Nate might ever have in his life. Nate thought about Mackenzie lying naked in the candlelight. Jordan’d already been there, done that, and hated every minute of it.

“What do you make her do?” Jordan asked.

Nate winced. “I don’t
make
her do anything. We both like it. I wouldn’t get off on forcing her to do something. It’s gotta be . . . I dunno, it’s more like . . . like giving someone a present.” Nate couldn’t believe he’d said that. Like he was some kind of stud or something, and girls were grateful for his gifts. That was a laugh. Especially now. He tried to explain it better. “Try to imagine, you know, how it would be to completely trust someone and be able to say you wanted to stop, or . . . I dunno, change something, and know that the person would listen to you.”

Jordan didn’t answer. The house was now so quiet, Nate wondered if Danny had decided to sleep downstairs rather than share a room with the banished son. Nate liked sitting here with Jordan. He wished he could have protected him back then, before any of those people hurt him.

As if reading his mind, Jordan put a hand on Nate’s knee, their legs still side by side. He rubbed his thumb on Nate’s knee, in a casual, absentminded way.
Wow.
Nate couldn’t remember Jordan ever touching him before. This was progress . . . even if—Nate shook his head and grinned. He loved Jordan, but there was no denying it: The kid was weird.

“That’s what happened?” Jordan asked. “She wanted to stop, and you didn’t get mad?”

Nate wondered if he should let that go. “No,” he admitted. “
I
wanted to stop.”

An energy changed in Jordan; Nate felt it. Jordan spoke in a tiny, hopeful whisper. “And she loves you anyway?”

Nate paused too long, caught on that hope. The pause made it impossible to lie. “Well . . . I think she’s a little pissed, but it’ll be okay.”

Jordan nodded.

“I mean,” Nate tried to explain, “I think it hurt her feelings. I think—”

“No matter what your mom says,” Jordan whispered, “I trust you.”

A warmth expanded in Nate’s chest. “Thanks, man.”

“I feel really safe with you.” Jordan’s voice was pinched, like he was trying not to cry. “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. I trust you more than anyone.”

Nate didn’t know what to say, and he didn’t believe he could speak right then anyway.

Jordan turned his torso and embraced Nate. The spreading warmth unfurled further, into Nate’s face, where it made his mouth twitch and the inside of his nose burn. He felt honored in some way he couldn’t articulate. He hugged Jordan back, amazed that the kid let him, seeing all those times Jordan had shrugged off the casual touches of Mom and Kramble and Reece. Nate wished the kid were his brother, and that none of the bad things had ever happened to him.

In the awkward embrace, Jordan’s hand fell between Nate’s legs.

Nate would’ve let it go as an accident if Jordan hadn’t, quite deliberately, no mistaking it, grasped him.

Chapter Twenty-six
Jordan

J
ordan’s heart pounded so loud he thought it might bust out of his chest like something in an
Alien
movie. Could Nate hear that? He didn’t want Nate to know he was scared. The rushing-water sound screamed in Jordan’s ears, but he could do this. He could make himself do this. This was different.

It didn’t feel different.

But Nate said if you loved and trusted someone . . . And Jordan loved Nate. He trusted Nate. He wanted Nate to know that. And he wanted to be allowed to stay here. And he wanted Nate to know that even if Mackenzie was mad at him,
he
wouldn’t be.

And so even though he felt his Other Self trying to replace the one Here Now, and even though the water sound was so loud it actually hurt him, Jordan slipped off the bed onto his knees in front of Nate.

“Whoa! W-what are you doing?” Nate asked.

And Jordan reached his shaking fingers up for the button on Nate’s jeans. He knew what to do. He could do it. He could make himself do it. Nate said it would be different if you did it because you
wanted
to.

“What the hell are—”

Jordan couldn’t make his voice work.
It’s a present,
he wanted to say.
I want to give you a present.

“Hey, whoa,
quit it
.” Nate smacked Jordan’s hands away and stood up, his legs knocking Jordan off balance, onto his butt.

The water gurgling stopped. Jordan’s pounding heartbeat stopped.

“Jordan, man, you can’t—You don’t—I—It’s not right.”

Jordan scooted away, afraid of the look on Nate’s face in the moonlight, afraid Nate might kick him. “B-but . . . you said—”

“No. That’s not what . . . No.” Nate stood there with his hand on his crotch like he was guarding it.

Jordan had never felt what he felt at that moment. This feeling was worse than any of the other bad things. Way worse. He’d messed it up. He’d messed it up. This was wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. It had felt horrible to try it, but now that he’d messed it up, it felt even worse.

He got on his feet, backing toward the door. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. What had he done? He opened the bedroom door.

“No, wait. Jordan, don’t—”

But Jordan slipped out the door. He knew that he had to leave. That he had done something terrible. He went down the stairs and out the back door and through Mrs. Ripley’s yard and onto dark streets he didn’t know. Running.

Running, running, running until he could hardly breathe. Running until he wheezed for air and thought he’d puke. He wished he could run until he made himself die.

He’d never forget that look on Nate’s face. The way Nate had jerked away from him.

Every time he pictured it, he made himself run harder. He ran until his legs felt like they weighed a million pounds. When he could not run another step, he didn’t stop moving. He kept putting one foot in front of the other, panting, gasping. He walked all night.

He didn’t know where he was. He ducked into bushes or behind cars parked in driveways whenever a car pulled onto the street he walked.

Three times police cruisers crawled right by him.

The sky grew lighter. He snuck through backyards and hid from people letting their dogs out or leaving for work or church or wherever people were going so early on a Sunday. His legs and feet ached, and his stomach growled. He was so thirsty he felt dizzy. Later, as more and more people were out, mowing yards and riding bikes, he could return to the sidewalk and not be noticed. His brain felt slow, like when his mom gave him those shots. His legs went numb, and he kept stumbling. He hoped he looked normal walking around. Or could people tell just from looking at him how horrible he was? Could they tell he’d done that awful thing?

He walked past a woman unloading a car of groceries. She smiled at him as she struggled to her front door with her arms full. Once she went inside, he snatched one white plastic bag from her open trunk and ran. Behind a garage several blocks away, he discovered he’d stolen a can of coffee, a small bag of rice, and two jars of baby food. He slurped down the mushy beets and carrots, then carried the bag with him the rest of the way. He hoped it made him look more natural as he walked along. He took a bunch of wrong turns before he finally made it here to the woods behind his house.

Jordan crouched in the woods looking at the huge house, just as he’d done a million times before. He used to creep into the woods from the driveway after soccer practice and sit here. It would be about this same time, too—around five o’clock, he guessed. He didn’t have a watch to know for sure, but the light seemed the same, hitting the back of the house like a giant spotlight, streaming in the back windows and making long shadows from the tree line where he now stood. He’d stare at the house and picture himself inside it, doing the things he had to do, imagining that it was just a movie, that it wasn’t real.

Now, though, he watched for a different reason. Two police cruisers sat in the driveway. Two uniformed officers strolled through the landscaped yard, looking at the ground among the weedy, overgrown gardens and fountain. Checking for footprints, maybe? Another officer peered in through the windows of the house.

Then the three stood on the tennis court and talked. They talked for a long time, but Jordan wouldn’t move yet. He had all the time in the world. He was never going back.

Jordan leaned against a tree and thumped his skull against the bark. He’d missed something, gotten it wrong somehow. Hadn’t Nate said “if you really love and trust somebody”? Jordan had only been trying to give a present, like Nate said. He’d wanted to give willingly to Nate what they had forced of him, to see if it was different. He thumped his head again, harder, and blinked at the sting it caused.

The cops strolled from the court to the driveway and stood talking by their cruisers. Occasionally they shielded their eyes against the late-afternoon light and pointed to the tree line, but no one bothered to come over. Jordan knew they couldn’t see him. In those other days, after watching the house, he would go inside and look out the windows at where he’d been, expecting to see the boy in the woods, the Other Self he’d left there. But all you could see, looking in that direction was a harsh, bright light silhouetting the trees.

He still had the grocery bag and was thinking about giving the rice a try when the cops in his driveway finally got into their cruisers and drove away. Jordan stood up. He waited five or six minutes, watching cars move along the road. The first moment that no traffic passed, he slipped from the woods and sprinted the hundred yards or so to the back door. He thought of soccer, and he realized it didn’t hurt to run anymore.

At the back door, he knew no one could see him from the road. He peered through the glass at the alarm, but its red eye was shut. He tried the knob. Locked. He looked at the fancy landscaping now overgrown with weeds and selected a long, flat stone that he smashed into the windowpane. He reached through and let himself in.

The second he stepped in the door, the familiar smell—of the carpet, the wood, the cleaners they used, just the smell of
this house
—grabbed hold and shoved inside him. His feet tingled like his legs had fallen asleep as he made himself walk down the hall.

What would happen to this house now? He hated it, the house itself. He wanted it to burn to the ground.

His sucked in his breath. He shouldn’t think that. If his mother did okay in her trial, they would live here again. This was their home. He bit his lip and rewrote the sentence in his head—not
if
but
when
his mother did okay in her trial, they’d come home.

“Home,” he tried to say out loud, but his mouth felt like he’d already been swallowing the hard, dry rice.

He walked down the hall, to the party room and stopped in the doorway. The statue of the naked boy still stood on the glass coffee table. He’d always wondered, as he looked at that statue, who’d convinced that boy to pose naked.