Chapter Twenty-Five

The white static on the black screen looked like a furious blizzard as it grew in size and took shape in front of our eyes. The particles seemed to cluster together until it became one bright light beaming from a large stadium post. The dark night sky behind it was the perfect backdrop for the warm, yellow glow it transformed into as Ken's mind recreated a memory for the rest of us to see.

The sound of white noise dissected into parts and each cheer roared as the excitement of a crowd filled the treatment room around us. Ken's face was peaceful, his lips turned up in a content smile, and I wanted it to stay there so my heart would not have to feel the pain I knew was coming. Just like before, the image seemed to drip and melt as he looked around inside his own head. Nothing could take a firm hold in this place, only form for a second and then fade away as he took in something else.

Bright green turf beneath cleats, stretching and rolling for yards and yards. White painted lines and perfectly drawn numbers keeping track of the yards as the tiny bits of rubber mulch lifted and flew from the soles of the cleats in front of him. He was chasing someone, his chest expanding, his legs moving quickly, and I could almost feel the way his body was built for this as I watched through his eyes the view from inside his helmet.

His hand was outstretched on the screen and in the chair, reaching for the jersey in front of him, pulling his opponent back. Together they got tangled, their bodies colliding and rolling as they slid along the turf. I realized I was holding my breath—out of fear or excitement, I wasn't sure—but my heart was pounding and my head felt light. Ken's body was rigid in his chair. The smile from before was gone and already I saw a tear slipping down his cheek and into his hair. He knew what was coming.

Ken reached his hand out, an offer to help up the kid he'd tackled as he pulled himself up from the ground, but the boy's voice was hateful and full of venom as he shouted, "Don't touch me, fag!"

The players on the field melted into the ground right in front of us and the colors swirled together like a rainbow spilled into a sink and slipping down the drain. I glanced at Damien. His hand gripped his chair tightly as he watched Ken twitch beside him.

The screen above them went black again and the white static gathered like stars in the sky. Music played somewhere in the distance and the sound of a whispering voice faded in. Ken answered, "Just another minute." We were outside now, behind an old brick building. Cars were parked in the lot some distance away and the only light emanated from the windows far above. Ken turned his head to look at another boy, dressed in a tux, leaning up against the bricks. He smiled shyly and Ken took his hand. "Dance with me."

The boy in the tux smiled. Ken tugged him closer and in the darkness, he took him into his arms. Their bodies swayed to the song playing in the background. The world at the fringes of his memory was lifting and falling like the acoustics of the song. It was a beautiful memory. As the dance ended, Ken kissed the boy, closing his eyes and virtually shutting us out, but we didn't need to see what was happening to know that this kiss meant something to him.

"Ken?" A girl's voice called and suddenly his eyes opened and he widened the space between him and the boy in the tux.

"Over here," he answered. "We were grabbing a drink." He pulled a silver flask from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it out to a beautiful girl in a sparkling pink dress. She giggled and the sound of it made the image on the screen flicker as if the scene was switching from fairy tale to horror. She wrapped her arm around him and he looked at the boy with so much sadness in his eyes I could feel it on my skin. It hurt, so why was Ken denying who he loved?

"There you are," another girl practically cooed as she joined them behind the building. The boy in the tux pulled her close and Ken looked away so fast the image on the screen couldn't keep up. The colors distorted into a wet oil painting yanked from the easel too soon.

Ken's mind had dragged him back to the field, only this time he wasn't playing. He was a little boy, his legs dangling from the metal railing as he watched the cheerleaders dancing in front of him. "Ken, get over here. Don't you want to watch the game?" A man that looked so much like Ken it had to be his father appeared when Ken turned toward the voice.

The world tilted as Ken tipped his head to the side, maybe trying to work out why his watching the cheerleaders was making his father angry. As he slid from the railing, the stadium morphed into a small living room and the sounds of the cheerleaders were overrun by giggling girls at some sort of slumber party. The dangling feet were now bare and the small toes were a bit older but still childlike.

Pink paint was being applied, stroked from the nail bed to the tip in small, short strokes. "There, Ken. It looks pretty," a cute girl with familiar features told him, her hair wrapped up in curlers and a bright gloss applied to her lips. The other girls giggled and took pictures with their phones.

A door opened in the distance and as Ken looked up, family photos were visible on shelves and hanging on the walls, sports memorabilia filling the spaces in between. "Look, Dad," a young Ken said playfully as he wiggled his toes.

His father's face paled, the color draining as if someone had pulled large plugs on the bottom of both feet at once. His mouth formed a hard line and the cute, innocent toes stopped wiggling immediately, knowing that a dire mistake had been made. "What have you done?" Ken's father barked. Keys hit the counter so hard they slid off and clattered to the floor. The giggling stopped.

Ken was jerked from the floor by his arm and the room stretched and shifted as the scene changed. Ken was on his feet, pulling his arm away. Now at eye level with his father, he was at least a teenager. His father's hair was greyer now, but his face wore the same angry scowl. "Why did you break up with her?"

"It wasn't working out!" Ken yelled, the image vibrating as if it might shatter from the anger and frustration expressed in his words. Her. It wasn't working out with her. "I tried to tell you we didn't have anything in common before you insisted I take her out, but you wouldn't listen to me."

"Do you know what people will say?" His father raked his hand through his hair. For a second it looked as if he might actually show an emotion other than anger, but then his fists found his hips and he shook his head. "You haven't been with any girl longer than two dates. It doesn't look right."

"Dad . . ." Ken started, but the words seemed to get lost. I found myself holding my breath again. Everything inside me wanted him to shout the words—to tell his dad his truth and be free, but the look on his father's face told me that wasn't safe. Finally Ken said, "Dad, I'm gay." His dad lunged for him and we all gasped. Ken raised his hands to protect his face.

Without any warning this time, the vision on the screen changed to a series of collisions, helmet to helmet, helmet to ground, football to face. Each blow caused my body to jump, my muscles to flinch, and my stomach to roll. I thought I was going to be sick if it lasted one second longer.

Suddenly the whole screen lit up, white and bright. Ken was inside some sort of machine and then sitting behind a desk, staring at a doctor in a white coat. The doctor pointed to an image on the illuminated board on the wall. "He's suffered another concussion. That's his third in two years. But there is something more alarming on the imaging." The doctor stood up. "What I'm worried about is this area right here." She pointed to the small white dots clustered on the left side of Ken's brain.

"What is that?" Ken's father leaned closer.

"We need to do some more tests, but I believe it is a demyelination disease." The doctor waited for Ken and his father to process what she'd just told them.

"Demyelination disease?" Ken asked, his voice unsure.

"Yes. Ken, I think you might have MS."

Ken's father studied the images, his eyes bouncing around as if he could find some answer in the grayscale photos. Meanwhile the darkness started closing in. It was pin-holing our view of the moment. What kind of father doesn't reach for his son? What kind of father doesn't ask questions?

Just when I thought I might suffocate from anxiety I felt for my friend as he sat, emotionally alone, in the doctor's office that was ironically filled with too many people, his father spoke up.

"Could this disease be causing him to be gay?" Ken's father couldn't even make eye contact with the doctor. "Maybe if we fix it that will change." He looked up at Ken, almost hopeful, as if a disease that would take his athletically gifted son and eventually rob him of the ability to do even the simplest things for himself was somehow a blessing—the answer to the prayers he'd been sending up to the heavens.

I'd never heard a boy cry the way Ken cried. Nothing was holding him back as he broke wide open in the chair before us. How had he found the strength to go through it again? I'd only seen it once and I knew I'd carry it with me forever. I wanted to go to him and hold him. My own fears and repulsion to touch were forgotten when all I could think about were the razor-sharp edges those words possessed, and the way his father had so carelessly slashed them through the air as if his own son had not been standing in their path.

"I'm here." Damien said. I watched through my tears as he reached out and set his hand on Ken's arm. Ken reached across his body with his free hand and tangled it in Damien's sleeve. He held on to him as if he were afraid he might fall into that darkness again—as if Damien was his only lifeline.

Ken turned to look at his father and saw tears streaming down his face. His body distorted like a mirage in the distance as the heat rising off the hot pavement warped the view. He was now looking into an old mirror in a run-down bathroom. Ken was his father, only much younger. His hair was cut short, his face clean-shaven. Maybe he was a few years older than Ken was now.

"Hurry up. I think we need to get out of here." Ken's mouth moved as the words fell out of it. His hand reached up and ran along his cheek. The stall behind him opened and another young man stepped out. His eye was swollen and his lip was cut. "Fuck."

"They're going to kill me." The young man held a wad of toilet paper to his lip. "If they come after me, you should just go."

"Fuck that. I'm not leaving you. We've been friends since second grade, Luke. I'm not going to let some group of homophobic assholes keep us locked in here. We can make it to my truck. Trust me."

"What?" Damien asked, clearly as confused as I was. Ken's father was protecting a gay friend? Why not his own son? What had changed?

"Hale, there are a lot more of them then there are of us." Luke tossed the wad of toilet paper into the trash can.

As Ken's father pushed the bathroom door open, the barroom materialized slowly. Foot by foot the picture of a small-town, back-roads bar appeared, along with the men who turned to watch the two boys coming out of the bathroom together.

Ken was shaking in his chair so violently now that I could hear it clattering where a screw must have come loose. His hand, tangled in Damien's shirt, was fisted so tightly his knuckles were white.

Every step into that bar was a step into the lion's den and Ken's father and his friend Shep were wearing fresh meat. They walked the gamut and pushed through the thick front door to escape out into the night. As soon as the door shut behind them they began to sprint. Hands slicing through the air in front of Ken's vision, he headed for an old truck painted only with gray primer at the far edge of the parking lot. He turned around once, when he heard Shep fall, a sickening mixture of shredded skin and shuffled gravel grinding against the rough blacktop. He was on his feet in just a few seconds, but they never really stood a chance.

The bar door swung open again and as Ken's father pulled at his friend's shirt, desperately trying to urge him forward, the party of hate and homophobia spilled out into the lot.

"Just leave me. They want me, not you," Luke said, blood trickling down his chin from the split lip.

"I won't," Ken answered as his father.

"We don't want any fags around here." The man practically spit the words from his mouth. His lip was swollen, too, and for the first time Ken looked down at his bruising knuckles. One on one he could take the guy, but out in the middle of nowhere and clearly outnumbered, they were in trouble.

The screen filled with flashes of old newspaper articles, letters tucked into drawers unfolded by tiny hands. This history of this night had been chronicled, but had he ever really put those pieces together? Flashes of hushed conversations and then a sleeping boy and shouting parents in another room. The yells morphed back into those at the parking lot.

"Come on," Ken insisted. He turned around and headed cautiously toward his truck again. They didn't make it very far. We watched in horror as the mob surrounded them. Everything happened so fast. As the first blow hit Ken in the face, Luke was dragged off into the field at the edge of the lot. We listened as Ken cried out the words his father must have cried out that night. He cursed the men and threatened to get even, but as the attack went on and we watched Ken's head snap back and volley side to side in his chair, his spirit broke and he begged them to let his friend live.

When they finally let his father's body drop and sped away in their cars, he crawled out to the spot in the field where the trail of blood, broken beer bottles, and crushed crops lead to his friend. Even in the dark he could see his body tangled up on the barbed wire fence. He was stripped of his clothes, except for his boxers, and beaten to death. Ken looked away from the nearly unrecognizable face and down to the soil at his feet. Carved into it were the words God and Texas hate fags.

Ken dug his hands into the soil as he sobbed. Each time he grabbed at the dirt it became harder to grip until we realized he was somewhere new. The darkness around him wasn't the open space of a field of crops, but the peaceful bedroom where a young Ken slept, his dad kneeling by his bed, his head hung in sadness. "I'm so scared," his father whispered. He looked up to the ceiling and folded his hands in prayer. "Dear Lord, please don't make this road a hard one for my son. I couldn't protect Luke and I won't be able to protect him. I love him. Telling him I accept him being gay feels like telling Luke we were going to make it to my truck." He choked up. "I was wrong. I won't lead him to his death. It's not him I can't accept, it's the people of the world who'd rather have blood on their hands than let someone live a life they don't agree with." He cried quietly, his body hunched over his sleeping son and shaking with his grief. "They'll kill my boy."

Ken reached out his hand and for a moment I thought he was going to be able to touch his father, but the floor gave way and everything slipped from the screen, turning it back to black. 

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