One. Deux. Tre. Read online

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  Standing at Charlie’s locker waiting for him to return from Ms. Roundtree’s office in all his caramel-colored glory was Mitchell. Mitchell dressed in all-black majority of the time. It wasn’t a statement of any sort, the way many teenagers made it, or at least this is what Charlie had gathered over the years. He just preferred black. Mitchell was significantly taller than Charlie, one of the many things he found so attractive about his best friend. He was neither popular nor quite the pariah that Charlie had become. Still, befriending Charlie their freshman year had done not one positive thing for his social image.

  “Hey, babe,” Mitchell spoke from across the hall. The ‘babe’ endearment had started off as a joke between the two of them, back after the spin-the-bottle incident. The two had both been teased mercilessly as to when they were finally going to just together. Mitchell liked it because he liked when people had a reason to talk about him. The rumors humored him. Still, even over a year later, hearing it pass through Mitchell’s lips still took Charlie’s breath away a little bit.

  “What’s up?” Charlie asked, avoiding eye contact. He did that a lot when he left Ms. Roundtree’s office. Something about the intimate setting made him feel terribly vulnerable upon his displacement from the chair across from the guidance counselor’s desk. Even with Mitchell, the only person he ever really showed himself to, there was a hesitancy he could not explain.

  “Nothin’ much. What about you?”

  “Going home . . . -o” Charlie snickered as he pushed his chemistry textbook to the back of his locker and pulled forward his calculus book to slide into his bag. He pulled his copy of “The Catcher in the Rye” out from his messenger bag first and slid it into his locker to make room. He’d read the entire book the night before, and finished the accompanying essay. There was no need for it, now. Yet, as he went to place his calculus book in his bag, Charlie caught sight of the note sitting squished in the bottom of his bag.

  Kill you, faggot.

  Wednesday.

  “Let me walk you,” Mitchell insisted, closing Charlie’s locker for him and reaching for his hand.

  Then came the obligatory skipped heartbeat. A part of Charlie wanted to let him, just so that they could walk hand-in-hand through their suburb and back to his home. Although Charlie knew how unfair that would be to Mitchell. Mitchell’s house was clear on the other side of their neighborhood. He’d have an extra thirty-minutes worth of walking from Charlie’s home if he were to joint him.

  Charlie swung their hands back and forth for a minute, smiling up at his best friend. It was nice to feel like someone wanted to protect him. It was nice to feel like not everyone disliked him the way all the other kids in their school did. Still, Charlie knew that nothing bad was going to happen. He knew he’d be fine. Mitchell did enough for him, at least in Charlie’s opinion. To further trouble him was needless.

  Charlie pulled Mitchell closer by the hand, and then stood on his tippy-toes to give him a peck on the cheek. Though Charlie was a bit too embarrassed to look at his best friend’s face and see, Mitchell’s cheeks flashed a temperate shade of scarlet.

  “I’ll be okay,” Charlie told him without looking up again. He squeezed Mitchell’s hand and walked past him out the doors of the Adkins High.

  As Mitchell turned toward the door to watch Charlie saunter off, he noticed Bethany the Elderly Custodian emptying a pale of garbage into a cart she pushed around the halls.

  “He’s very cute,” Bethany said with a smile.

  “He is,” Mitchell agreed, smiling at Bethany as he took off past her.

  Mitchell ventured his own path two blocks through the suburb in the opposite direction. The whole two blocks, Mitchell berated himself for not going with Charlie anyway. His stomach turned and twisted into knots until he could take it no longer. Before he could talk himself out of it, Mitchell took a 180-degree spin and dashed back off in the opposite direction. He sprinted, the clump of guts inside of him feeling heavier-and-heavier with each stomp of his feet against the pavement.

  However, just as Mitchell could have sworn he was gaining ground on his friend, a car horn honked in three quick staccatos.

  Falling forward, Mitchell’s face smacked against the pavement.

  A thud from afar synchronized with the one that came from Mitchell’s own fall.

  He was too late.

  Charlie

  A heart monitored beeped at a steady frequency as Charlie slept through the noise of it and the shuffling and whispers coming from the hallway. To his left, Mitchell sat in a chair, holding Charlie’s hand within his own.

  If you had asked him, Mitchell would not hesitate to tell you that he loved Charlie. He wouldn’t preface it with a heteronormative “no homo, but” or followed it up with “like a brother.” He would just leave it at that. Charlie was his only friend, and had been since they’d met on their first day of freshman year. The love that Mitchell felt for Charlie didn’t have limitations or boundaries or conditions or terms. It was just love in its purest form.

  Often, however, he did ask himself if maybe there was something more to it than his mind had been capable of expanding upon in the past. Once or twice since that party with the infamous spin-the-bottle game, Mitchell had pictured himself in a similar position to that which he’d found himself in with Charlie yesterday: holding hands in the hall as Charlie reached up to kiss him on the cheek. However, in his mind, Mitchell always found himself turning his cheek just before Charlie could reach it, leaving him to plant his lips right upon Mitchell’s.

  He’d never worked up the nerve to make it happen. The feeling he experience when he imagined it was hard to decipher. He stomach felt loose, like something was making room to move around inside.

  Instead, as they sat there in the hospital room, Mitchell stood to his feet, never letting go of Charlie’s hand. It seemed silly what he was readying himself to do, but who knew? Maybe there’d be some sort of magical moment like in the movies, and Charlie would wake up to fall in love with his best friend. Mitchell wasn’t really sure how Charlie felt about him in that way. They were best friends, and Charlie was gay, and they were affectionate. That didn’t, in Mitchell’s mind, necessarily mean Charlie had feelings for him.

  Still, Mitchell stepped closer the side of the bed, and reached down to place a kiss on Charlie’s lips. It was odd, kissing someone who wasn’t prepared to be kissed—the mouth felt different, though not bad. Still the exchanged felt like nothing Mitchell had ever experienced before.

  Despite the fact that Charlie did not wake up, Mitchell still felt magic in the room then. It was as if someone had pointed a magic wand right at him and sparked a fire inside his tummy. Charlie was, after all, the one person with which Mitchell felt most at home. He was the rock Mitchell clung too when the tides grew too intense. He was then, and always would be, Mitchell’s home base.