Free Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig Page A

in fact I’d done everything I could think of to make her feel better about it. Micah, Ti, and I had put together a care package for her before the school year started: pictures of the four of us she could hang in her new locker, a mix for her iPod of songs that would remind her of things we’d done together, and special ringtones of our voices she could program into her phone. I’d told her a million times how much Riverside would suck without her, how much I would miss her when she went to Dumas, but I hadn’t said any of it to make her feel guilty ; I’d done it because I thought she’d want to know that it would be hard for me, too, that I wasn’t happy to see her go.
    How could she have misinterpreted my actions and intentions so extremely that when she talked about them to Kaz, I came across as a selfish, manipulative jerk? Could I have really made her feel so self-conscious with my lame joke about throwaway ponies that she believed I would judge her for making friends at Dumas? Clearly she had made friends there, and, just as clearly, she’d kept them from me with the same ease that she’d lied about still having her job at Old Mother Hubbard’s. Or was Kaz the manipulator? Had he talked her into seeing my actions in the worst possible light as a way to drive a wedge between us?
    Either way, I was beginning to learn there were a lot of things my girlfriend had concealed from me recently, and it was making me start to wonder if I knew her anywhere near as well as I thought I had.
    When January was still missing on Monday morning, the halls of Riverside decorated with fliers bearing her brightly smiling face and a plea for information, I decided I needed to track down the girl with pink hair. Something must have prompted January to quit her job, and I was determined to find out what it was. “Pink” was starting to sound like the only one who might have the answers I wanted.
    Micah and I had only one friend who could drive, Mason Collier, and even though he was a total asshelmet, I had no choice but to beg him for a ride to the Dumas Academy after school. Mason was one of those guys who believed firmly in a social hierarchy predicated exclusively on athletic accomplishments, and he considered the fact that he was built like the Incredible Hulk to be a sign from God that he was meant to be at the tippy-top of the pecking order. If it weren’t for the fact that I’d broken Riverside’s record in the 200-meter dash for the men’s JV track team the year before, I doubted Mason would even bother speaking to me.
    The trip out to Dumas took only twenty minutes, but it felt like forever. Mason filled every second of the drive with a running monologue about how awesome he was and about how, if I wasn’t a total faggot, I would join the snowboarding club that winter. He said it in a joking way, like he wanted me to laugh and promise to join the club in defense of my manhood, but a cold, dreadful feeling slithered out of my heart and up into my mouth nonetheless.
    If and when Mason learned the truth about me, what would he say then? Would he remember this moment with embarrassment? Would everyone remember the times they’d said stuff like “that’s so gay” and “don’t be a fag” in my presence, and suddenly be unable to look me in the eye anymore? Would they even care how it made me feel? Just how different would my life be if the truth got out?
    When Mason pulled to a stop outside the massive brick pillars that marked the entrance to the Dumas Academy, I threw five bucks at him for gas and then fled the vehicle. From the gate to the front doors of the school was nearly a quarter mile, but I enjoyed every minute of the brisk air and total silence.
    For an institution with a small and highly selective number of students, Dumas turned out to be a rather enormous complex of buildings. The campus sprawled over several acres of rolling,