The Others - 11. Chapter 11: I'm Matt and Adam

I almost got to school on time, I was only five minutes late. Normally, you could get into trouble for being late, but because my mom called me in sick yesterday, I’m still officially sick today according to the school system. That is until I go to the Principal’s office to say I’m better and back at school. The teachers can’t mark me down for being late.

At the first break and I’m on my way to the cafeteria with Sam walking next to me when I suddenly notice Codey is in the hall as well. Sam, of course, doesn’t notice him. “Sammy,” I start my sentence. I almost never call her Sammy and I don’t know why I do now, but she seems to like it. “I’ve got to go to the restroom. It could take a while. You can go on, I’ll catch you up later.

She nods and walks away, leaving me alone there with Codey in the crowded hallway. I walk towards him and tap him on the shoulder.

He turns around abruptly to face me. “Hello?”

“Hey Codey,” I say with a smile. “Can we talk?”

He nods his head a little anxiously.

“Follow me,” I say and walk outside, constantly checking to make sure he is still following. Now comes the hard part, I'm thinking. I don’t know how much his mother told him about me and I don’t know what he knows about me. The group I call the others are very well known throughout the school, so maybe he recognised me. Still, I can’t have him mentioning my name to his dad. There are many more Adams than me, of course, but I just don’t want to risk my dad getting the idea that something isn’t right. I sit down and wait until this cute boy takes a seat across the table.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I assure him. “I talked to your mom yesterday.”

“Oh, she did mention you,” Codey responds, still confused. “Matt, right?”

“That’s me,” I say with a smile. I intentionally stay silent for a few seconds, which felt more like minutes. “I really don’t know how to do this. It feels... awkward.”

Codey giggles. “It does, yeah.”

“I don’t know what your mum told you, but the reason I talked to her in the first place is because I noticed you looked a bit down. I don’t like people to feel sad, so I started to think of ways to make you happy. I know it’s not my job in the first place and I can understand you think this is a bit odd, but I just couldn’t leave you alone like that.”

He looks around nervously, he’s definitely not used to this amount of attention. I almost make the mistake of inviting him home, but I stop myself. I should’ve thought this through, every time I do something without thinking of the possible outcome, it goes wrong. I need to see Codey alone to have him trust me, but I can’t invite him home because I don’t know if my brother saw him. I don’t think so, he would’ve told us, but it’s not worth the risk. I can’t go to his house either, because I don’t know if my dad will be there. Another option could be to invite him to Sam’s, I’m sure she would like to meet someone new, but I don’t know him myself yet, and he thinks I’m called Matt. Shit, how can I solve this stupid problem.

“Thank you, I guess,” he says softly and I realise I’ve been thinking about this for at least a full minute.

“Oh god. I’m so bad at this,” I mumble. “Why am I here in the first place?”

For the first time since I asked him to follow me he looks me directly in the eyes. “I appreciate it, you wanting to help me. I don’t think I can be happy though, but thank you for trying.”

“Nonsense. All you need is a little fun.” And all I need is to find out why my dad left. But is that the only reason I’m here with this cute and innocent boy? If it is, should I feel bad? Or should I feel worse if it isn’t? Argh, I hate question marks.

“What do you mean?”

“You have to get out there, do some fun things, enjoy life,” I immediately regret this last part, “and I will help you with that.” I smile.

“How?”

“I don’t know yet,” I admit. “But I’ll come up with something. Do you have a mobile phone or something?”

He takes out an old phone and shows it to me.

“Fine,” I say. “Add my number,” I tell him and give him my phone number. I ask him his, so I can avoid any further conversation. No one ever thought it would be this easy to get the number of a cute boy.

I shake his hand, to make sure he thinks it’s a formal friendship, that my only intention is to help him. I don’t know exactly what my intention is, but I know it’s not only to help him. I go back inside, to my friends.

The others, I correct myself.

“You sure needed some time alone,” Todd says when he sees me. “But I think we should call ourselves lucky you’re even in school.”

I smile at him. “Todd, I want to ask you a question. What if I’m actually in a house with abusive parents? What if I want to go to school but they’re keeping me away?”

“But that’s not the reason you’re never with us.”

“True, but maybe something else is going on. Something I don’t want you to know. Am I not allowed to keep secrets from my friends?” It’s almost like he cringes at that word, friends. “I’m sure you guys keep secrets from me.” I don't get to see or hear Todd’s reaction because my attention is drawn to Seth. It’s almost like he's looking at me with guilt in his eyes. He probably has his own secrets he doesn’t want us to know about. I notice that I left Todd speechless and I can’t keep from grinning about that.

“But friends are here to help you, Adam,” Neil says. Woah, I didn’t expect him to say that. I really hate the unexpected.

“Oh, I’m not saying I need help, there isn’t a problem at all," I reply looking at him. “I’m only saying you should not draw conclusions without trying to see things from another perspective.”

“Anyway,” Neil says. “We were just talking about a party Brian is throwing. Are you going to come?”

“I don’t know. When is it?” I ask.

“Not next Sunday, but the one after.”

“Sure, I think I’ll be there.”

“Nice,” Neil says.

“It’s to celebrate that the year is almost over,” Brian adds.

Oh shit, I almost forgot about it. We only have two weeks of school to go and then I can finally leave. I can have the adventure I crave for.

“Adam and Seth, are you sure you don’t want to join us on our vacation? I know everything is booked etcetera, but I’m sure we can fix something?” Marc asks all of a sudden.

Both Seth and I shake our heads. I don’t know why Seth doesn’t want to join them, but I know I prefer my own trip. “Maybe I’ll join you guys next year,” I say. “But I’ve got some things to take care of this year."

I slide my phone out of my pocket while the others are busy talking… what about, I don't really know. I’m with them every day I’m at school, but I never pay attention to their conversations. I don’t know how they can just talk about nothing, because I bet they have their own problems to worry about. How do they have time left to talk nonsense?

I text Codey: “Hey man, I thought I had to text you now whilst I still dare to, else I might just not do it. I am hoping you maybe want to, I dunno, go for a walk or something today? I’d like to just talk and be outside, because the weather is nice today. What’ya think?” Okay, is this too friendly? Should I try to be more… um… formal? Should I act like I want to be his mentor or something?

I manage to hide my phone when Sam tries to see who I’m texting.

“Who’s that?” she asks with a smile she clearly doesn’t mean.

“No one,” I say. I can see she’s hurt because I don't want to tell her and I wonder if maybe she thinks that what we have between us is a relationship. That would be a very bitchy move, to like trap me into something she thinks of as a relationship. It got me thinking, are friends allowed to kiss each other? She was kind of right, you know, if it feels good, then how could it be wrong?

I do like boys and I’m pretty sure I am not able to ever love a girl, but I still like kissing her and being close to her. Am I weird?

I get a text message back. “Hey Matt. I’d like to. Where do you want to meet?”

Knowing that Sam will probably walk with me until we reach our bikes, I decide to respond with: “Meet me at the mall. I don’t know how late you’ll be done with school, so let’s say 4 o’clock?”

I get a message back saying “Okay” and with that, I know I won’t speak to him again until I meet him later. I really should make sure no one is going to find out about my little lies, but I really made it difficult for myself; there are way too many ways to get exposed. My biggest mistake was my name. But again, there really wasn’t anything I could come up with when Sandra asked me my name.

I get to the mall just before 4 o’clock. I sit down on a bench right in front of the entrance and well, I actually feel a bit nervous. How am I going to make sure he believes that I just want to help him? How much did his mother tell him about meeting me? Bah, I really hate it when I don't know everything the people around me know, I like to be the one pulling the strings. For example: did she tell him that she told me what had happened to him. I don’t think so, because I think he wouldn’t come today if he knew I know about him. I wouldn’t ever like others to know my deepest secrets.

But then again, I’m not even sure he will show up today. He could easily bail out on me, if he did I wouldn’t confront him with it. If he doesn’t want to be here, I’m okay with that. I’ll find another way to find out about my dad. Sandra seemed to like me, so I can always go to her and tell her Codey didn’t want my help. She won’t like me going behind her son’s back, but if I can convince her it’s for his own good, maybe she’ll listen.

Never mind, there is Codey and boy he’s very handsome. I always thought of him as cute, but never as good looking. But now, as he’s walking towards me, trying to look normal but with a grin from ear till ear, I can feel my heart melting. I quickly ignore the feeling though, because that’s not why I’m here. I need to know why my father left me and that’s what’s going to happen. “Codey!” I greet him.

“Matt, how are you?”

“Let’s go for a walk,” I say as if he didn’t know that was the plan. “I’ll warn you, I want to help you, but you gotta tell me what’s going on with you. Think of me as your shrink.” I smile at him.

His good mood evaporates a bit, but something is keeping him at least a little bit happy.

“But a friendly shrink,” I add.

“I will,” he promises.

We’re walking from the parking lot to the nearest street. I chose a street right in the middle of an average neighbourhood, the kind of place where no one is about, only the people who live here sometimes use the street.

“So, I noticed you first while walking through the hall. You looked a little down, that’s why I decided to… uhmm,” I try to look a little embarrassed. “I decided to watch you for a few days. Just to see if you made a habit of being sad.” I look at him. “And you did. That’s why I decided to follow you home,” I lie. “And then I met your mother, from then on you know everything I bet.”

“Not really,” he says, his voice almost too soft to hear. “My mom never told me what you guys talked about.”

Please, Codey, don’t make this too easy. It has to be a challenge for me. “About you,” I smile. “She kinda caught me looking through your window and she invited me in. She told me you had reasons to be sad.” I know some people would’ve added that she didn’t say exactly what those reasons were, so as to force him to explain them himself, but I’m not going to do that. That’s not because I don’t want to lie to him, hell, I lie to everyone. No, I learned you should always give the least information as possible. In this case, if I told him his mother didn’t tell me what exactly happened to him and for some how he discovers his mother did, then he would know I lied. We don’t want that, do we? It would make it so much harder to find out about my dad.

“I… um, I never talk about it to others.”

“I think you should,” I say and I don’t even have to smile again, because I'm still smiling from my last comment. “We can sit down here,” I say, pointing at a bench. It’s almost like I preselected this exact route just because there was a bench halfway down the street. Wait… I did! That’s my thing: always prepare things so nothing could go wrong.

“Okay,” he says. We sit down and it doesn’t take long for him to realise I’m not going to say anything else. I want him to tell me exactly what happened. “I don’t have a father anymore.” He is silent for a long time. “Actually, I do,” he corrects himself. “But my real dad died when I was very young. My mom met another guy and he’s been great with me ever since. But, I liked my dad, we really shared a lot. His best friend is the father of my best friend,” he swallows when he says that. “A few years ago my best friend got hit by a car and went into a coma. He never came out of it.”

I notice how he managed to avoid saying that his best friend is still alive, but in a coma. He made it sound like his friend is dead, but I can imagine it feels like that.

“I miss him,” Codey says and breaks down. I am surprised he managed to keep from crying during the whole time he was telling me about it. He rushed it though, probably afraid of breaking down in tears and not being able to finish the story.

But shit, I have to comfort him now, but how do I do that? I awkwardly put an arm around his shoulders, I can feel him tensing up when I touch him, but he quickly relaxes.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs.

“Don’t sweat it,” I say. “You gotta let it out. It helps, believe me, I know,” I say. That last part is not a complete lie.

It's like I'm telling him I’m experienced with feeling sad. Now he relaxes completely in my hold and lays his head on my shoulder. He’s still crying and I’m tracing circles on his back with my fingers. “It’ll be alright,” I comfort him. Secretly I like this a lot. I could make a habit of comforting this boy, that I know for sure.