CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Mike
Mom thought Thursday night’s dinner had gone swimmingly. I wasn’t convinced.
“You were well spoken, honey,” she’d said. “Surprisingly articulate as well.”
“Uh, thanks, I think?” I questioned.
“No, I just mean you sounded so mature, Michael. That was precisely what Cooper needed to hear.”
“He walked out, Mom. I don’t think it went as well as you think it did,” I’d challenged.
She waved me off. “You’ll see. I still say bravo to you.”
Mom was wrong. Cooper avoided me like I had COVID all day Friday. Holy fuck, they don’t know about COVID. At any rate, nothing had changed between us and I didn’t like it much.
He all but completely ignored me in second period and we sat next to each other for fuck’s sake.
I grabbed his sleeve when students funneled out the door into the hallway after the bell rang, pulling him back into the empty classroom.
Mr. Hicks had already left for his hallway monitor duties in between classes.
“Hey, are we good?” I asked, trying to act calm and cool.
“Yeah, I think so,” he answered.
“You only think so?” I asked, concerned I’d been correct and Mom had misread the mood. “Then how about you help me understand what’s happening, Coop?”
“I heard you loud and clear at dinner, Mikey. I get it now,” he began, nervously watching the open door and the crowded hallway. “I just need more time, is all.”
“What part did you get?” I pushed, being careful to not appear threatening or upset.
“You weren’t forced to give in to me, and you may or may not be gay,” he began. “I think I heard what I needed to hear.”
Cooper was distant and cold, and it broke my heart.
I felt alone in my attempt to get us back on track and wasn’t sure what to say or how to act.
And in that moment I didn’t know how to fucking breath when I looked into his empty eyes.
I’d hurt him somewhere deep and I needed to know how to undo what I’d done.
I was suddenly fearful that I wasn’t in his heart anymore. His eyes proved that much.
I backed away. “You don’t feel the same about me, do you?” I whispered, loosening my grip on his wrist. “I’ve destroyed what we had.”
He couldn’t look at me, a tell-tell sign that he’d checked out and possibly moved on. I’d seen Coop quit on people who had hurt him before, and I knew it took a lot to lose him. Had I done that?
He removed my hand from his wrist. “You took something that I believed in, our friendship to be exact, and you changed it,” he started, choking up. “I trusted in what we had. I’ve never told you this, but I built walls around my heart to protect me from how I felt about you, Mikey.”
“But . . .”
He checked the door again. “I’m not done,” he stated, sounding unlike himself. “And then you out of the blue tell me what you told me?”
“I meant the part about being gay,” I interjected. “This is me, Coop. Why would I lie about something like this?”
“I don’t know. You tell me,” he said. “I see you standing here, and I know you look like you and all, but you are not you. You’re . . . you’re . . . different, Mikey. Something is not right.”
“Because I am different,” I protested. “I’m growing up. I’m almost eighteen. Besides, why would I lie about wanting to be with you that way? I wouldn’t do that to you, Coop. I just wouldn’t.”
He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, probably frustrated by my words. “What happened last Sunday?” he demanded. “If you want my trust then tell me what happened.”
“Nothing happened,” I lied. There was no way I could tell him that I’d suddenly zapped into a parallel dimension. If he was confused now, that news would put him in the loony bin.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Coop, listen to me,” I began.
He pushed me away and stepped around me. “No thanks, Mikey. You either admit that something has changed with you or I don’t want to be around you anymore.”
“Jesus, Coop,” I hissed. “Maybe it’s you that’s changed.”
He was almost out the door but suddenly stopped, spinning around quickly. “Maybe I have,” he stated dismissively. “Maybe I actually want to be what you said I was to you. How about that? But you aren’t gay and you know it. What you are though, is mean, Mikey. That joke you pulled was mean.”
And with that, he left me standing there with my mouth hanging wide open. Cooper had also changed, but this was his world, not mine.
I walked directly out of school after my interaction with Coop. It was Friday and the last day for senior’s, but I didn’t give a fuck by that point.
My cell phone began blowing up about five minutes after I didn’t show up for my class with Jen. I was halfway home by then. After reading a ton of her questions about where I was, why I’d ditched school, and how I could miss her final cheerleading assembly performance, I switched my phone off.
I walked through my front door, tossed my backpack on the floor, and shuffled to the kitchen for a Coke. I was surprised to see Mom had company. A woman I’d never seen before in either universe sat at the kitchen table with Mom. Trust me, I’d have remembered this woman if we had met.
“Hi, honey,” Mom said, twisting her wrist and checking her watch before raising an eyebrow. “Early dismissal on your last day?”
“For me it was,” I said, being careful to tone down the smart-assed comment I had dialed up. “Hello,” I said, to the woman that resembled my mother in the style department but had kicked it up fifty notches.
Mom’s guest wore a ton more jewelry than I thought was appropriate for a human with any sense of style.
She had one or more rings per finger and at least thirty bangle-type bracelets per wrist. But it was her headdress or whatever the fuck she had wrapped around her skull, that made me look away before I stared too long and said something outrageous.
I restrained a need to laugh out loud before returning my attention to her.
A brightly colored scarf with images of neon moons, stars, and galaxies was covering her head and was tied into a knot directly above her forehead.
Pinned below the knot was a ceramic brooch of an eye that was about the size of a saucer.
The eye itself had the illusion of rays of sunshine or bursts of cosmic light coming out of the iris.
Her eyes were outlined in black eyeliner with exaggerated curved lines drawn up and away from the corners of each eye, while her lips were a vibrant orange in hue.
I’d never laid eyes on a more unusual looking person in my life.
She reminded me of an actress that was on a Nick at Night rerun of a nineteen-sixties comedy who played the mother of a witch.
Mom often watched the show because she absolutely loved the mother’s character.
“Michael, meet Druzella.”