Trailer Trash(90)

It sounded like Cody was trying hard not cry, and Nate closed his eyes, holding his aching ribs. “It doesn’t matter. It’s over. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m fine. They let me off easy, to be honest.”

“I’m glad.”

“I’m not,” Cody said. Nate wanted to protest again, but Cody didn’t give him a chance. “I have your calculus book.”

Nate laughed, then regretted it. It made his ribs hurt. “A bit of late homework is the least of my worries.”

“Nate, listen to me. We have to cool it. We can’t let them see us together. You can’t drive me to school anymore. You can’t sit next to me in social studies—”

“Stop. Please. I’m not having this conversation right now. I wanted to hear your voice, but I don’t want to argue.”

Cody sighed. “Okay.”

“I love you.”

“Oh Jesus,” Cody whispered, like some kind of prayer. “Nate . . .” Cody never said the words back. Nate had a feeling he’d never said them to anybody in his life. It didn’t matter. He knew well enough how Cody felt. Even if he hadn’t known already, he could hear it in Cody’s voice.

“I’m supposed to stay home for a day or two, but I’ll see you Friday, at the latest.”

He felt Cody’s reluctance in the silence that stretched between them. Nate understood. As tenuous as it was, the voice on the other end of the phone felt like the only thing they had.

“Cody?”

“Yeah,” he said at last. “Okay. See you Friday.”

Nate snuck back into the kitchen and put the phone on the cradle. He made a peanut butter sandwich, which he washed down with a glass of milk before going upstairs, brushing his teeth, and crawling into bed.

Despite everything, he felt better.



Cody’d been on the receiving end of ass-kickings before, so when he showed up to school on Tuesday with a black eye and a split lip, he was prepared for the curious stares and the whispers and the occasional snickers as the story of his humiliation spread through the student body.

What he didn’t anticipate was the way a small but fierce group of people suddenly seemed to rally in his defense.

It started in PE, when two boys who’d never seemed to notice him before made a point of saying hi in the locker room. One of them even went so far as to ask Cody to be his partner in tennis. Cody was too stunned to do anything more than agree.

In metal shop, Jamie Simpson’s younger brother silently picked up his project from the table he’d shared all year with Tom Watson and Billy Jones and carried it over to the open spot next to Cody. He didn’t say a word the entire hour other than to ask Cody to pass him the pliers, but his steadfast scowl seemed to speak volumes.

The two Jennifers from Orange Grove stopped by his locker during a passing period, both of them looking embarrassed. “Nine on two’s bullshit,” one of them said quietly. “I don’t care what they think you did.”

They went back to ignoring him after that, but they seemed to be ignoring Brad and Brian and the rest of the Grove boys who’d been in the gang just as much.

At lunch, Jimmy Riordan and Amy Prescott, who had apparently become a couple at some point in the last few months, tracked him down and invited him outside for a cigarette with them.

“I would have warned you, if I’d known,” Jimmy assured him as they smoked in a recessed doorway behind the gym, where they were sheltered from the wind. “I mean, a couple of weeks ago, Larry started making noise about teaching you a lesson now that Logan wasn’t around to protect you, but I thought he was just talking out of his ass like he always does.” He shrugged, ducking his head in embarrassment. “He hadn’t said anything since then though, so I figured he’d forgotten about it. But I feel like an ass now for not telling you.”

Cody wasn’t really sure how he was supposed to respond. He settled for, “It’s cool. It wasn’t your fault.”

“How’s Nate?” Amy asked.

Cody took a drag off his cigarette to buy him time. He couldn’t get the image of Nate’s bloody, bruised face out of his head. Then again, it felt like some kind of betrayal to Nate to admit how bad they’d beaten him. “I imagine he’s pretty sore today,” he said at last. “But he’ll live. He should be back at school later this week.”

“That was just a chickenshit thing to do,” Amy said. “Nine on two? Is that true?”

“Yeah,” Cody reluctantly admitted. “It’s true.”

It made him feel like more of a wimp, having to talk about being beaten up, but as the day wore on, he grudgingly accepted that it was working in his favor. For the moment at least, whether or not he and Nate were gay seemed to have taken a backseat to the fact that it hadn’t been a fair fight. This was Wyoming, after all. Two men beating each other up in the name of some backward idea of honor was one thing, but kicking the shit out of somebody who was vastly outnumbered? That apparently stank of cowardice. In a week or two, every student at Walter Warren High School might go back to calling him and Nate fags, but in the meantime, nobody was going out of their way to pat the bullies on the back. Lance Donaldson even stopped him after math, hanging this head a bit.