“Jesus,” Cody gasped at last. “That was—”
“Seriously hot?”
Cody laughed. “I was going to say it was pretty shitty of me, considering you’re the one with the birthday.”
Nate chuckled, adjusting his jeans over his own erection. They still had plenty of time before curfew, and Cody had never left him hanging for long. “How about this for my present: next time I ask you to dance—”
“Yes!” Cody laughed, pulling him into a kiss. “I promise I’ll say yes.”
Despite Nate’s nonchalance about their relationship, Cody knew they were playing with fire.
He’d already gone more than half the school year without anybody starting a fight with him. That was a record. He figured he’d skated through the first half of the year because of Logan’s friendship, but that wouldn’t save him now.
Still, Cody was used to the adversity. He’d been pushed around for most of his life. He knew when to put his head down and keep his mouth shut. Just a few more months and he’d be done with Walter Warren High School forever.
But Nate . . .
Nate changed everything. He may have thought he was being subtle, but he gave too much away. He stood too close. He touched Cody too often. His smile said just a bit too much.
For himself, Cody didn’t mind. He was used to the rumors, and immune to the word “fag,” even though it made Nate grit his teeth. But he had a sneaking suspicion Nate had never been in an actual fight in his life.
It’d be a miracle if that was still true by graduation.
Nate continued buying magazines, even though most of them regurgitated the same bullshit every time. Yes, even straight people could get AIDS. It seemed ridiculous that this simple truth still counted as news, but it did. The U.S. News & World Report from January and a Newsweek in February both sold the same tired advice: be more careful who you sleep with, and use a condom. The most helpful bit of information arrived a few days after their makeshift dance, when Nate brought him a New York Times dated February fifteenth.
“Not quite fresh off the presses, but fresh off the truck that brings the New York newspaper into the back reaches of Wyoming, I guess,” Nate said.
There, beginning on the lower half of the front page and continuing for more than a page afterward was what they’d been searching for—“Fact, Theory, and Myth on the Spread of AIDS.” For the first time, there were real-world questions with real-world answers. “Can the virus spread through oral sex? Federal epidemiologists suspect it can because the virus is present in semen and vaginal secretions and thus might enter the cells of the body through cuts or mucous membranes in the mouth or throat. However, they have not documented any cases.”
Cody read the article start to finish three times.
But while poring through magazines and newspapers, Nate and Cody had been looking for one other thing: a place to go. They kept hoping to find a casual mention of homosexual communities in places other than San Francisco or New York, but they never did. If the articles were to be believed, one might actually think gay men only existed in two cities in all of America, but Cody knew that couldn’t be true.
“Forget the magazines!” Nate finally said one day in early March, throwing one across Cody’s living room. “We just need to pick a place and hope for the best.”
The next day, he brought a giant atlas of the United States to Cody’s house, and they sat at the kitchen table and began flipping through its pages.
“What’s between Chicago and Wyoming?” Cody asked.
“South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa.”
“Not Nebraska,” Cody said. “Only difference between Nebraska and Wyoming is they got more corn.”
“South Dakota doesn’t sound much better.”
“Okay. So what’s Iowa like?”
Nate shrugged, smiling at him. “I have no idea.”
The very next day, Cody ditched PE and spent the hour in the school library.
A quick run through the card catalog turned up several books with entries about Iowa. Two in particular seemed promising, and Cody waded into the aisles, trailing his fingers over the spines of the books as he searched. Once he had a stack in his arms, he settled at one of the desks along the wall and flipped to the pertinent pages.
What he saw took his breath away. Some pictures showed only fields, and some showed rolling hills, and some showed towns and small cities, but in every single case, he saw nothing but green. Miles and miles and miles of green grass and green fields and towering, deciduous trees. He’d never seen so much green in one place in his life. After growing up in the barren, wind-swept plains of Wyoming, where the only green around was dusty sagebrush and a few wind-beaten pine trees with their branches all growing on the leeward side of the trunk, the sight of so much lush vegetation was mind-boggling. Almost miraculous. It looked cozy and rural, and yet Chicago was only a few hours away. Based on the pictures, Iowa winters could be harsh, but that didn’t scare him a bit. Not after living in Wyoming. Just the promise of all that green come springtime was enough to make him want to pack up and move the very next day.