Free No Signature by William Bell Page B

home? What are you talking about? What’s wrong?” I shook him, trying to pry his arms away from his head, to make him look at me, but he was too strong.
    “Wick, you’re the only friend I have,” he said desperately. “The only one left. Oh god, it’s gonna be all over the school!”
    I sat back on the wooden bench and leaned forward on my knees. I took a deep breath. Go easy, I said to myself. “Look, Hawk, I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. So listen, try to calm down, okay? Take your time and tell me what’s the matter.”
    He still wouldn’t look at me, but his voice had a little more control when he whispered, “The guys found these … sex pictures.”
    I was relieved in a way, thinking, is this all it is? Hawk is ashamed he’s human like the rest of us? I began to feel a little better, as if the universe was heading toward normal. I remembered how Hawk would never join the locker room sex talk, the bragging about girls, the constant trading of insults that the other guys kept up, calling each other fag every few seconds. I also remembered that I was always in on it, telling lies and acting big. “You talk about women as if they were meat,” Hawk had said many times, so many that the guys thought he was some kind of sour-faced puritan.
    I brushed some of the paper bits from his shoulder. “Relax, Hawk. Lots of the guys have pictures. Every guy I know likes pictures of naked women. It’s natural. It’s no big deal.”
    “They were pictures,” came a voice so choked with sobbing that I could barely make it out, “of guys.”
    “What? I thought you said
guys.”
This was really getting crazy.
    He took his arms away from his face, but he still wouldn’t look up. “They were pictures of men.”
    “Let me get this straight, You’re telling me that you had some sex pictures of men.”
    He nodded.
    “So …” My mind began to race over strange ground, the way it does when you’re in unknown territory and you’re trying to find a landmark to get your bearings. “So they said … so they razzed you and said ‘Hawk’s a fag,’ right? Is that why you’re so upset?”
    At last he raised his head and looked at me, straight into my eyes, his own eyes so full of fear they seemed to vibrate with energy. I had never seen his facelike that—terrified, wounded, beaten.
    “Wick,” he said thickly, “I
am
gay.”
    It was like a full-out punch to my solar plexus. I couldn’t breathe. A sick burning fear rushed in where my breath had been. I slowly rose from the bench.
    “Yeah, right. Very funny, Hawk. You’re a panic.”
    But it wasn’t funny. The tears streaming from his eyes and the sobs wracking his body told me more than his words could do.
    I stepped back.
    “Wick, please,
please!”
    Blindly I moved away from him, grabbed my gym bag, tore my clothes from the hook on the wall, backing away as if he was a leper and if I touched him or even breathed the same air I’d be contaminated. I turned and ran.
    The wail of pain chased me through the locker room, slamming off the walls, echoing inside my skull. “Wick!” he screamed. “Wick, please!”

SIXTEEN
    T HE ECHO BECAME THE ROAR of wind punctuated by a low uneven booming, like the irregular heartbeat of a huge beast. I jerked upright, suddenly awake.
    Rain pounded on the roof of the van. The canvas sides of the pop top boomed as they flexed and snapped with each powerful gust of the wind.
    I climbed down from the bed and knuckled the sleep from my eyes. It was still dark outside. I looked at my watch. Two a.m.
    The old man wasn’t there. His bed wasn’t pulled out.
    I drew on my clothes and rummaged around for a flashlight, finding one under the driver’s seat. When I yanked open the side door the wind gushed in, bringing rain. I jumped out and quickly pulled the door closed. Within seconds I was soaked to the skin. I swept the campsite with the light, saw the two overturned lawn chairs, the dead wet ashes of the fire,