Peripheral Visions: Take the Long Way Home

Peripheral Visions: They coalesce in the soft blur of darkest shadows and take shape in the corner of your eye. But you won't see them coming... until it's too late.

Take the Long Way Home

"How are things in Gayville today?"

It was Zeke, of course. That little prick had had it in for him since eighth grade. Emory sighed to himself but didn't look up from his Spanish homework.

"Get a little over the weekend?"

Now Zeke's shoes came into Emory's field of vision. He was sitting on the floor of the hallway, book in his lap, going over vocabulary words in preparation for the test that morning. Picking up Spanish again had been easier than he would have thought, considering how long it had been since he'd studied the language.

Then again, he'd become fluent in French and Portuguese, so he had that going for him. And best of all... or rather, worst of all, Emory thought, as his eyes strayed to Zeke's tennis shoes... his 17-year-old brain was crammed with neurons, making learning easier now than it would be later in life.

Zeke kept yapping. "Why are you sitting on the floor?" his irritating voice queried. "No place else for a fairy to land?"

Emory still refused to look up, but he shut his book and got to his feet... faster than he meant to, actually; another miracle of his teenage body.

Zeke, startled, took a step back. "Whoa, now!" he cried, a look of glee coming across his face. "We're getting uppity, are we?"

"We're getting ready for a test, that's what we're doing." Once he chose to look at Zeke, Emory had no problem holding the boy's gaze.

Zeke belched, then blew air into Emory's face.

A cackle of laughter came to their ears. "What did he have for breakfast. Emory?" It was Clayton's voice.

Then Clay was standing to Emory's right. With Zeke pressing from the left, Emory was feeling boxed in. Words from that old song came to him: Jokers to the left of me, clowns to the right...

"Step back," Emory said, his voice hard.

"Oh, yeah?" Zeke asked, smiling his idiotic smile. "Or wh – ?"

Without looking, Emory brought his foot down hard on Zeke's in a colossal stomp; Zeke stopped speaking, his words cut off with a howl of pain.

"Did you have a question? I couldn't hear over all the screaming," Emory said as Zeke hopped around on one foot.

"What the fuck is wrong with you?" Clay asked, no longer smiling.

Emory swiveled to look Clay in the eye, as he'd done with Zeke. He didn't say anything in reply. He didn't need to: His stare said it all. Clay nervously took a step back.

Emory walked up the hall, shaking his head.

Kids, he thought.

***

The Spanish test was a breeze, though Emory got the distinct sense that Mrs. Jade would have been happy to see him fail it.

English class was no more welcoming to Emory – or to anyone else. Mr. Doddering walked around the classroom, returning essays and making sarcastic remarks. To Janie he said something about sentences as vacant as her head. To Mark he said something about trees being killed for papers that were nothing but nonsense words strung together. To Penelope he said something about pretty turns of phrase that were as superficial as the makeup she wore too much of.

He let insults flutter down along with the pages as he made his way up one row of desks and then down the next.

"I'm not Jack, I'm Dix," one of the Fletcher twins – Dixon, obviously – told Mr. Doddering.

"It doesn't matter, when you both handed in virtually the same essay." Mr. Doddering started to move on.

"Why'd this get an F?" Dix asked, sounding angry.

"Because that's the grade plagiarism deserves."

"This isn't even my paper!" Dix said.

"They're the same essay; they get the same grade; what's the difference?" Mr. Doddering said. He was a hulking man, more like a bear than a person. Now he stood by Emory's desk. "And you," Mr. Doddering said. Emory's paper fluttered down, missed the desk, and hit the floor. Emory glanced down and saw the grade: B+. "You have the handwriting of a girl," Mr. Doddering told him, and walked on. "Pick that up," he tossed over his shoulder. "No littering in my classroom.

***

"So how was the Spanish test?"

Emory looked up from his bagged lunch: A sandwich made with white bread, a slice of baloney, a slice of artificial cheese, and a leaf of lettuce, all smeared with mayonnaise.

Clay seated himself next to Emory, setting his tray down with a bang. It was pizza day. Clay had bought two slices.

"Smells good, doesn't it?" Clay asked, glancing at the sandwich in Emory's hand. "Better than Zeke's belches, right?"

Emory turned his attention back to the book he'd left lying open on the table. "Don't you have a clique of jocks to go hang out with?" he asked, taking a bite of the sandwich, then setting it down and opening the book.

"What you got there? Social studies?"

"Most interesting subject of all," Emory said, finding the assigned reading. "The nature of democracy. Why it's fragile. Why it won't last even anther half century."

"What?" Clay looked over Emory's arm at the page. "It says that?"

"It does if you read between the lines."

Clay kept quiet long enough to eat half a slice of his pizza. Emory was grateful not to have to listen to his juvenile stupidity for a few seconds.

Someone was suddenly standing next to Emory, throwing shade over the textbook. Emory knew from the dull brown trousers that it was Mr. Burke. Looking up, Emory saw that Zeke stood next to... actually, more or less behind... Mr. Burke.

"I need you in my office," Mr. Burke told Emory.

Zeke sneered at Emery from behind Mr. Burke's back.

"What for?" Clay asked. "Is Emily here in trouble?"

"That's none of your business," Mr. Burke told Zeke.

"How about me? Can I ask?" Emory said. "Or is it none of my business either?"

"Yeah, you broke my foot," Zeke said. "You're in big trouble now."

"You mean when he stepped on your foot this morning?" Clay asked Zeke, looking past Mr. Burke the way he'd looked past Emory a moment go to get a glance at the social studies book. "You want to tell me that broke your foot?"

"He assaulted me," Zeke said.

Clay laughed. "The only assault I saw this morning was Zeke crowding Emory into a locker and then spitting in his face."

"I never spit on him!" Zeke said. "I just belched!"

Mr. Buke had shifted his attention from Emory to Zeke. "You did what?"

"He spit in Emory's face and called him a little faggot," Clay said.

Mr. Burke glanced back at Emory. "Well, he got that right."

"That's how you talk to people?" Clay asked, a change suddenly coming over him. He seemed older all of a sudden, authoritative, in control of the situation.

Mr. Burke just as suddenly seemed unsure.

"Emory was trying to get away, and Zeke was moving around to block him. That's when Emory stepped on his foot," Clay said. "It's not like he meant to."

Mr. Burke looked at Zeke. He seemed reluctant. "Is that true?" he asked.

"Hey," Clay said, still putting on an air of authority. "I was there. I saw it."

Mr. Burke looked at Clay for a moment, his look puzzled but also calculating. Then he told Zeke, "I don't think we should pursue this."

"Yeah," Clay said, "maybe not."

Mr. Burke's shoulders stiffened as he walked away, but he didn't stop or look back.

Zeke gave a look of distaste to Clay. "What's got into you? Sticking up for him? What for?"

Clay smiled at Zeke. Then he said, with sarcastic cheer, "Fuck off, Zeke."

"Yeah, guess I'll leave you two lovebirds alone."

"Say that again, you'll get the other foot broken," Clay said, not bothering to look at Zeke as he prowled away angrily.

Emory frowned at Clay, who smiled back at him. "Well?" Clay asked. "Aren't you gonna say thanks?"

"Thanks," Emory said. "Thanks for having a dad who's a senator, parents who have a lot of money. Thanks for being popular, being somebody no one wants to fuck with, not even Mr. Burke. Thanks for deigning to stick up for me, but I don't really need you to. And now I'm gonna finish my homework."

None of that fazed Clay. "How come you always do your homework at lunch?" he asked. "And study in the hall before classes start?"

"What's it to you?" Emory asked.

"You know," Clay said, "you're different that you used to be."

"How would you know? We're not friends."

"We used to be. And I've known you since... forever," Clay told him. "But you're not yourself anymore. What happened? Why are you different all of a sudden?"

Emory gave Clay a narrow, distrustful look. "I study at lunch and before classes because I work nights," he said.

"You work? Where?"

"No place you guys hang out," Emory said, shifting in the chair to that his back was to Clay. He focused on his book.

There was a moment of silence. Emory figured Clay was eating more pizza. Then he heard Clay say, "We're not all that bad, you know. You don't have to hate us."

I don't hate you, Emory thought, but he didn't see the point of saying it out loud. All he had to do was get through another year of this... a year and a couple of months... and then he could...

Can what? he asked himself. Then: Or can I?

Clay finished his lunch, picked up his tray, and sought out his usual table. Emory glanced up to see Curt, Yancey, Drew, Mark, Dale, and Raf across the room, making a place for Clay, razzing him about eating lunch with Emory, using words like "queer" and "gay boy."

Clay just shrugged and razzed them back, his words lost to the ambient buzz of the lunch room.

"All in good humor, I'm sure," Emory muttered to himself.

***

The next morning was almost a repeat, only worse. Emory was sitting on the floor, finishing his Spanish homework, when not one but three sets of tennis shoes appeared in his field of vision.

"So, the school nance-scot wants to play rough," Mark's voice rang out.

More idiocy. Emory shut his book with a snap. He was in no mood. This morning had already been a shit show, with his parents screaming at him for an invented transgression their neighbor had reported to them. Mr. Waverly was a mean son of a bitch, and the only thing he liked better than bullying his wife was blaming Emory for anything that went wrong – or even for things that had never happened. Emory's bedroom window was only a couple meters from that of Mr. Waverly and his wife, and Emory had almost forgotten what it was like to hear Mr. Waverly scolding and insulting the poor woman in an abrasive, abusive voice late at night. Worse, he sometimes heard her weeping. Not lately, though; it seemed that Mrs. Waverly had gotten fed up and left him, at least for a few weeks.

But her absence meant that Mr. Waverly needed a new target, and Emory realized he shouldn't be surprised when he had shown up at seven that morning, banging on the door to their house and demanding that Emory's parents pay him money to get his car fixed. He claimed that Emory had keyed the car, ruining the paint job.

"Why would you do that?" his mother had screamed, while his father began a harangue about the family not having money to pay for Emory's petty crimes. "You'll have to pay for that yourself," his father declared.

"First of all, if anyone actually keyed his car," Emory had told them, "it wasn't me. It was probably his wife."

"My wife loves me!" Mr. Waverly shouted. "You don't talk about my wife!"

"I sure won't, except to say good for her that she left you. It gets boring having to listen to you yell at her every night."

"I never yell at my wife," Mr. Waverly declared.

"You only yell at her, except when you're slapping her, you fucking pig," Emory shouted back. He stepped right into Mr. Waverly's face. "Good for her she ditched your no-good abusive ass." Even though, he knew, she'd be back. Mrs. Waverly always returned to her monstrous husband.

"You don't talk to your elders that way!" Emory's father said, his voice rising. "You apologize right now!"

"How about he apologizes for lying about me?" Emory spun to look his father in the eye. "How about you apologize for swallowing every lie he tells about me? And never even asking me about it?"

Emory didn't even look at his mother as he walked across the living room, snatched up his jacket and backpack from the chair, and then headed for the door.

"Out of my goddamn way," he told Mr. Waverly, who was still standing on the porch, his face white with fury.

"You punk!" Mr. Waverly screamed. "You see how he is?" he added, turning to Emory's father. Then, turning back to Emory, he added: "You better pay for my goddamn car!"

"I said outta my way or I'll key something, all right – your ugly fucking face!" Emory snarled, and Mr. Wavery backed off in a hurry.

Emory walked to the street, then made his way to where Mr. Waverly's car sat. Walking around the car, he called out, "I don't see one single god damned mark on this car. You wanna come see for yourself. Dad? Mom? Or is it too damn much trouble for you to do anything but take this shit-heel liar at his word?"

Emory walked back up the sidewalk and paused in front of his own house, glaring at his parents and Mr. Waverly. "Fucking idiots," he snarled, before walking on, headed to school.

And now, forty-five minutes later, this: Three stupid punk kids here to try and intimidate him for upsetting the usual order of things – for standing up to Zeke.

Emory got to his feet with the same swift ease that had surprised him a day earlier. He gripped the book in his hand and surveyed the three boys who had surrounded him. There was Mark, who had spoken a moment ago; there was Glen, a hefty boy who, like the others, played football; and there was Zeke, of course, hanging back and laughing to see his bigger friends pressing in on Emory.

Only, Clay had been right about what he'd said the previous day at lunch. Emory wasn't the same as he had been. Holding his Spanish book by the spine, hefting it like a brick, Emory asked Mark, "You ever been hit in the nose with a textbook?"

"Huh?" Mark blinked. Whatever he'd expected Emory to say, it wasn't this.

"These cardboard covers are stiff and sharp and hurt like a son of a bitch," Emory said, adopting the tone of a lecturer. "Your nose would break so bad you'd have two black eyes for a month."

"Hey, you better back down," Glen said.

Emory glance at the husky boy. "You know what I love about anatomy?" he asked.

"You like guys' dicks, that what," Zeke heckled.

Emory didn't spare Zeke so much as a glance. "There are about four dozen vulnerable places on your body. And they're all in easy reach. You want a guided tour? Or you want to take a fucking step back?"

Glen stared at him. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What's wrong?" Emory echoed. "What's wrong is, I'm trying to study for my goddamn Spanish class and you three losers think you have something to say to me. Here's the deal: You have got nothing to say to me. Nothing. And I have nothing to say to you. The next statement I make will involve broken bones. Wanna keep this lively discussion going, guys? Or are we done here?"

"I wouldn't test him on that." Clay was standing nearby, looking from one to the other of the boys and grinning.

"Not worth it," Glen muttered, turning and walking off. Mark looked confused, but he followed Glen. Zeke stared after his friends, then shot an accusing look at Clay. "Traitor," he said.

"Child," Clay told him. "Grow up."

Zeke retreated.

"I have to thank you again?" Emory asked.

Clay held up his hands. "Hey," he said. "I just thought somebody should warn them. Before you actually did break any bones or get some broken yourself."

"I wouldn't worry about that," Emory said.

"Yeah? You got a black belt in karate or something?"

"Aikido, actually," Emory said.

"Oh, you do?" Clay's expression was mocking, disbelieving.

"Yes, I do," Emory said flatly. "And I also have three more sentences to translate before class starts." Emory sat on the floor and opened his book, then picked up the notebook he'd left lying next to his locker.

But Clay didn't leave. He sat down next to Emory.

Emory ignored him and scribbled out translations of the last three sentences: "Gloria's father has a goat." "Juan's brother said he was going to Europe." "Nestor and Beatrize are novios!"

Shutting the textbook again and setting it and the notebook to the side, Emory looked at Clay, who still watching him.

"What?" he asked.

"What?" Clay said back to him.

"I'm so sick of this stupid shit," Emory said.

"Homework?" Clay asked.

"All of it. High school. Adolescence. People. All this homophobic garbage."

"So – you really are gay?"

"Hell yes, I'm gay," Emory said. "But it might have been nice to be able to figure it out on my own. You fuckers are the reason I didn't come out until I was thirty."

Clay blinked and flinched – actually flinched, as if Emory had taken a swing at him.

Emory realized what he'd just said. "I mean..." He shook his head. "I don't want to talk about this. Not with you."

"You never used to stand up for yourself," Clay said. "You just pulled back and got quiet. It makes me sad to see it. Made me sad to see it," he amended. "But I figured if you were just gonna swallow it..." Clay shrugged. "And anyhow, you always acted... I don't know. Like you hated us."

This again? "I never hated you," Emory said. "Well, Zeke maybe."

"No, I kinda think you hate me, too."

Emory started to say something; he didn't even know what. But then he stopped and caught his breath.

"What's that?" Clay asked, brow furrowed, watching him closely.

"I don't hate you. Sometimes I want to. But I don't. I just..." Emory shook his head.

"Yeah?" Clay asked.

A moment hung between them.

"I don't hate you," Emory said. "But I don't want to be bullied by you."

"Bullied? You feel like we're bullying you?"

"What would you call it?"

"Giving you shit," Clay told him. "Like we give each other shit, like we give everybody shit. You get along better if you'd play along."

"Oh, really? It's just a matter of boys being boys?"

"Well, sure it is," Clay said.

"Yeah," Emory said. "And if gets better, right? But it won't. All of life is high school. And 'just giving shit' to someone? It's not so friendly when it's..." Emory stopped himself again, and bit back his words, clenching his teeth and holding his breath.

"Go on, say it," Clay encouraged him.

"Except it's different with me, isn't it?" Emory said. It wasn't what he'd almost said a moment ago, but it was true. "Because you all know I'm different than you. And I know it too, but I don't even know what that means yet."

"But you just said – "

"Yeah, I know. Never mind." Emory reached for his book. "I've gotta go."

Clay's hand shot out and came to rest on Emory's thigh. "Wait."

Emory looked at the hand, then looked at Clay with an arch expression. "Something you want to tell me, Clayton?"

Clay pulled his hand back, looking appalled. "I didn't – that wasn't – I just need you to tell me something."

Emory looked at him.

"Something's different," Clay said. "I mean... really different. What's going on?"

"Why do you care?"

"Because I... I think it has something to do with me."

Emory snorted. "Right."

"There's this way you act lately... but it's not even that, there's this way that you look at me..."

"Don't worry, it's not puppy love," Emory said.

"Just let me ask... you feel bullied? And – but, you don't hate us?"

"No." Emory hesitated. "And I certainly don't hate you, Clay. But I do wish you hadn't suddenly decided we weren't friends any more."

"When did I do that? I thought you were the one who..."

"Beginning of sophomore year. Maybe even some time in freshman year. I'm not sure any longer. But we used to be friends... best friends since third grade... and all of a sudden..."

Clay looked stricken all over again, this time with sadness. "I know," he said quietly. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry not to be associated with the school fag? I don't blame you." Emory sighed. "It's not your fault It's just a shame, that's all." He started to get up again.

"Hold on!" Clay's hand was on Emory's leg again. This time Clay didn't pull back; he kept his hand in place, pressing Emory down, keeping him where he was. "I'm sorry," Clay said. "I don't want you to hate me, or anyone. And good for you that you're pushing back, but these guys aren't gonna accept it. It might help if you tried some humor, tried to joke back..."

"It's not funny. I don't see the joke. And a joke is never really just a joke, is it? Underneath the smiles and laughs, it's always there – this need to hurt someone. That's what I don't get." Emory shook his head. "I don't have time for this. I don't have patience for it."

Clay looked at Emory desperately, as though there was something else he wanted to say but he didn't know how.

Emory felt a twinge of pity. But what could he tell Clay? That he was sorry for him? Sorry for how things had... or rather, would work out?

Maybe that was exactly what he should say.

"What the hell," Emory muttered. "Nothing else makes sense anymore, and none of it probably matters in the end." He leaned closer to Clay. "Listen," he said, confidentially. "You want to know the truth? It's fucking crazy, but about three weeks ago I heard about..." He hesitated, then began again. "I went to sleep one night. In my bed. In my home. Next to my husband... yes, my husband," he repeated, at Clay's shocked look. "The man I've been with for thirty-three years."

"What?"

"I went to sleep at the age of sixty. And I woke up... here. At the age of seventeen. Living with those bug-nuts crazy people who called themselves my parents. Having to come here to school every day. And it's only March of junior year. Christ help me. How am I gonna get through another year of this? How am I gonna get through another forty-three years of a life I already lived?"

Clay stared at him. "You're serious."

"Goddamn right I am."

Clay shook his head, smiling, "And you never used to cuss, either."

"Sign of the times," Emory told him. "Times to come, that is. It's who I am now. I don't belong here. I don't understand how it's possible, or why it's happened." He looked closely at Clay. "You believe me?"

"Are you telling the truth?"

"Yes," Emory said. "Yes, I am. I think I'm in Hell. Seriously, I think I must have died and gone to Hell. And you..." Something flickered across Emory's face.

"Me?" Clay's eyes were riveted to Emory's. There was a look of something taut, something fearful, on his face. "What about me?"

Emory shook his head, "Never mind," he said.

***

Emory went home that night, after work, to angry parents. There was nothing new about that; they were always angry: Angry at him, angry at each other, angry at the world. But his father had inspected Mr. Waverly's car and seen for himself that the man was lying when he said that someone had keyed it – lied when he had blamed Emory.

"Yeah, that's the first time you've ever bothered to check his bullshit stories," Emory said.

"You watch your language. And yes, he was lying, but you were still disrespectful to him, and to your mother, and to me."

"Off with my head," Emory said, before walking up the hall and into his room. He shut the door behind him and, blessedly, they left him alone.

***

It was Saturday. His shift at St. Vincent de Paul started in the morning and went through late afternoon.

Emory was sorting endless boxes of donated clothing and stacking them in piles – some needed laundering; some were unusable; men's clothing went in one pile, women's in another – when Clay appeared. "Hello?" he called, leaning into the shop's back room.

Emory glanced up. "What do you want?"

Clay shrugged, grinning at him.

Emory didn't return the smile. "Is there no one up front to help you?"

Clay stepped into the back room. "I'm not here to buy anything. I get my clothes at a real store."

"Sure you do." Emory bent back to his task. He'd had to wear castoffs, secondhand clothing, and hand-me-downs all his life until he left home and launched his own life. Even then, he wore sturdy, practical clothes – not cheap, but nothing that cost boutique prices, either.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean – "

"Look, I'm busy." Emory kept on working.

Clay crouched next to him. "Take a break."

The two looked at each other. That desperation was on Clay's face again.

"What?" Emory asked, surrendering to the situation.

"Were you telling the truth?" Clay didn't need to elaborate.

"Yes," Emory said. "Just like I told you. I don't belong here... or anyway, all the memories I have in my head, they shouldn't be there. Forty-three years of memories."

"And what happens to me?" Clay asked.

"How would I know? It's not like I kept in touch with you, or with any of..."

That wasn't true. There were a few people Emory had stayed in touch with, and a few more he'd gotten back in touch with thanks to the advent of social media.

"It's not like I really kept track," he said.

"But you know." Clay wasn't asking. Somehow, he'd guessed... or he'd known it all along.

"You're not... I mean, you're just you, right? Seventeen? No memories of your life in the future?" Emory asked.

"No, none. But I'm sixteen, though," Clay said.

"Right, your birthday isn't until..."

"April 4."

"Still a week away. Well, happy birthday."

"I really need you to tell me."

Emory shook his head, his lips twisted in a smile that was half grimace. "Tell you what? That life is short? How are you supposed to understand that when you're sixteen? When your whole life, everything you've ever done, has taken place in a space of time that... when you're older... won't seem very long at all? Am I supposed to tell you that when you die, no matter how many years have passed, they won't be enough? It all goes by too quickly? There are years, even decades, when you feel bored shitless, time drags on without end... and yet, at the same time, it all goes by in a flash? Or maybe I should just tell you that it's enough... life's enough... if you just live and let live. Time's too precious to play stupid games about who's on top, who's in charge, who has to listen, just because. Take care of your own business and stop trying to tell others what they should do or who they should be."

"Maybe I just want you to tell me what happened," Clay said.

"What for?" Emory snorted. "So you can live with knowing it? You ever read the story about how the gods gave us the gift of forgetting the future, so that we didn't have to know the end of the story? Know it, worry about it, let it rot our lives as we obsess about our diminishing days?"

"I need you tell me," Clay repeated, his voice quiet.

Emory studied him. "All right," he said. "You don't quite make it to sixty."

"Because?"

"Does it matter?"

Clay sighed. "I guess not."

"And you're not the first. Helen... you know her, right? She's the first. And then it's Hector. The other gay boy in our class. Well, except he dropped out this year, right? It was this year, wasn't it?"

"He didn't come back after Christmas break."

"Yeah. Well, he's nineteen when he dies in a goddamn hotel room."

"Selling himself?"

"Seriously?" Emory snapped. "That's where you go?"

Clay's eyes dropped to the floor.

"He dies doing coke with some rando."

"Some – what""

"Random hookup."

" 'Hookup?' "

"And then nobody dies for a good long while, at least not that I hear about. I mean, Glen falls asleep while driving and ends up in a wheelchair. That happens when he's, like, twenty-four or something. But he doesn't die."

"Shit."

"And then it's Ricky."

"Ricky?"

"Clean-living Ricky. Cancer. So stupid, so fucking wrong. But, yeah, he's in his forties when it happens. And then Boris, and then Penelope... goddamn opioids."

"I thought you said you didn't keep track," Clay mumbled.

"I wasn't trying to. But I hear about these things."

Clay put his face in his hands.

"I'm sorry," Emory told him. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I should have... I should have just left. The minute I woke up here, remembering so much that hasn't happened yet... I should have just left. Instead of trying to follow the same path, only do it better this time... what a goddamn bore. What a hopeless mess. It would be better if I just went off and tried something totally different."

They sat together for a long moment.

"It's just that... I keep waiting, hoping I'll wake up in my old body, in my old life. People like to fantasize about being young again... it's not what you'd think should be."

"I hear that," Clay sighed.

"You're here, now, in the middle of it. But, man... you'll forget. Twenty, thirty years from now... you'll think this was a golden age in your life. But I never forgot it. I hated going through this part of my life the first time around, and I hate it worse now. I keep wondering it there's a shortcut, some way to skip me back to where I ought to be. But I keep having this terrible sense that I'm stuck... that I have to take the long way home."

It had all come out in a rush.

Emory sighed. "Forty-three years. It's like a life sentence. Hell, that's exactly what it is: A life sentence, My same old life, all over again. Do I change it? If so, how? Do I try to make it the same as it was? If so... how? Do I just let go with the flow, see where I end up?"

Clay raised his head and looked at Emory.

Suddenly they were both laughing.

"It's just too goddamned stupid to believe," Emory told him. "But this is how it is. I don't know how or why, but here I am. What am I gonna do about it? What is there to do?"

Clay had been slouching, curled into himself. Now he straightened up. "You're right," he said. "You were always different. And it wasn't because you're gay. You're just..."

"Not like anybody else," Emory said. "You think I never noticed that? Yeah; I noticed. So did all of you."

"Maybe that's why you're here," Clay said. "I mean, if anybody's gonna have a life like something out of a movie, it's you. Right?"

Before Emory could think of something to say to that, everything changed. He wasn't in the back room of the St. Vincent DePaul store any longer. He was in a darkened room, standing in front of a dresser with a mirror. The reflection showed a rectangle of bright window with black lines running across it... blinds, slightly open. Blue light filled the room, shadows pooling in the corners. There was a bed in the reflection, too. A bed, and someone in it.

Emory turned and saw an old man lying there.

Not old; ill. He had a gaunt, taut, wasted look. He was bald, and his eyes were closed and sunken into dark hollows. It took a moment, but Emory recognized Clayton.

Emory turned back to the mirror and leaned toward it to get a good look. He was himself again, a man of sixty.

He'd come back to his own life, in his own time...

But, no; not quite. Clay had died three weeks ago, the day before Emory woke up to find himself re-living his own younger days.

This wasn't Emory's youth, but it wasn't quite the time he'd left, either. This was Clay's death bed. He must have died at home, with some kind of hospice care.

What the hell, Emory wondered. Why was this happening?

"Emory?"

Emory turned back to Clay, whose eyes were now open and watching him.

"I'm sorry," Emory said... meaning, for trespassing. For the many lost years. For the way they hadn't stayed friends. For the cruel twist of Clay dying so... not young, but well before he should have. "I don't know how I got here," Emory added.

"I have to thank you," Clay said, his voice hoarse and ragged.

"For what?"

"What you told me all those years ago. When we were still kids in high school. You thought if I knew my life would be so short, it would haunt me... distress me... it was the opposite. What you told me woke me up, gave me a sense of urgency, got me to plan my life. And also, to accept opportunities, take chances, try things... open my horizons, open my mind..."

"Well, hell, Clayton. You could have just gone to a good liberal arts college like I did," Emory smiled.

The joke disappeared into the room's blue air. Clay was still talking. "It was what you were saying: Something about taking the long way home. Spending your whole life in a way you didn't want to. What a waste that would have been. My dad wanted me to follow in his footsteps, and I... I remember thinking how easy it would be, with the connections and the money he had. All I would have to do was find the find the right messages. Dust off and repeat the same old songs my dad and his colleagues were always singing. No..." Clay's eyes widened, then he shook his head. "That's not really it, though. The secret... the shortcut... was to find the right enemies. Invent the right stories. People will believe anything you make up if you wrap your lies around their fear and feed it back to them. I remember thinking how effective it would be to build my brand around scapegoating.

"But then you told me those things," Clay continued. "It made me stop and think. It made we ask why I should do something to please my old man when I knew I was gonna hate it... and that hate would spill over in so many ways. I decided to do what I wanted to. If the old man listened, then he listened. If not, then... his loss. And you know something... I stopped resenting other people." Clay sighed, deeply, as though catching his breath. He nodded. "I started thinking about how to live my own life, instead of thinking about how, when I became a senator like my dad..."

"You'd pass laws that hurt people like me." Emory nodded. "I never understood why you became the person you did. Why you took such pleasure in creating laws that were so deliberate about how they hurt people just for being... themselves."

"I did that?" Clay took a frail, shuddering breath. "I can imagine. For years, I wanted to get back at you."

"For what?" Emory asked. "For being gay?"

"For being someone I couldn't be friends with any more."

"That's a strange grudge," Emory said. "And it was your own choice, not mine. As far as I was concerned, we were still friends."

"Yes. My own stupidity. My own lie to myself... my own fear, really. I saw some of the others making you an outcast, and I didn't want to be an outcast along with you. I followed along..." Clay wheezed and laughed weakly and wheezed again. "Some leader I would have made."

"You were a leader for a long time. Almost thirty years in the senate," Emory told him.

"I was?" Clay shook his head. "Maybe in some other version of my life. A life I can almost see. It's like a dream; I've forgotten it, but I can still feel it... feel what it was like..." Clay sighed, his breath rattling. "I didn't like it."

"I don't think I'd have wanted your life, either," Emory told him. "I don't think I would have wanted to live inside your reasons, your deeds... your skin. Not with all that hate, all that cruelty."

"But not this time," Clay rasped, his eyes growing bright. He smiled; it transformed him. The dying man seemed to light up, become himself again for a moment. "This time, I lived... I live my own life instead of trying to take life from others. I found so much joy. I found so much richness. I don't even mourn that it's ending so soon. I had a better life... I had a good life... because of you. What you told me."

Emory nodded with comprehension. "It was you. That's why I woke up as my own younger self... But how? How did you do it?"

"I don't know," Clay said. "That was some other life. I don't know what I did to make things change. Wished hard enough. Cried long enough. Prayed to the right gods. I don't know. Maybe it was some combination of impossible things that converged and brought us back together... just weird luck, not me at all. But I'm glad it happened."

"No. There was a reason," Emory said gently. "You were the reason. It was all so that you could live the life you regretted not living...

"Maybe." Clay was still smiling. "You thought you'd done something terrible, and I remembered all these years how sorry you were about it. But what you did was free me... free me to become a good man who made his own life what he wanted it to be."

"Clay." Emory stood by the bed, wanting to take the hand of his boyhood friend, wanting to give him a hug, but Clay looked so frail that Emory was afraid to touch him.

Light began to leak into the room. Sounds from outside started to penetrate the walls.

Wait, Emory thought. Is this a dream? Am I waking up?

***

He was himself, waking up next to his husband of thirty-three years.

He walked downstairs and prepared a cup of coffee while his husband slept.

He activated the aarovadis and looked at the day's headlines.

"Funeral set for philanthropist," the New York Times reported.

"Clayton Anthony Remancourt," he mumbled aloud, scanning the text. "Age fifty-nine. Swan's Neck, Minnesota. Son of Sen. Archibald Remancourt..." He paused. Son of a senator; not a senator himself. A philanthropist. Someone who had made a fortune in the financial side of the tech sector. Someone who had poured millions into charitable organizations, but also political causes. Gay rights. Social justice. Founder of a super PAC that backed candidates in opposition to the extremists of the 2020s.

Emory scrolled away from the newspaper article and started doing some research. Almost an hour later, when his husband joined him at the table with his own cup of coffee, he looked up and said, "Do you know America is still a democracy?"

"You don't say," his husband told him.

"Kirsch never became governor of Texas. He lost that election.He never ran for president. He never won any office," Emory said. Thanks to Clay's super PAC he thought.

"Who?" His husband blinked sleepily at him over the rim of his coffee cup.

"Women can still hold jobs, can still go to university," Emory said, dazed with joy. "It's not illegal to not be an evangelical. Corporations don't own their workers."

His husband laughed. "Honey, it's too early for... whatever this is." He got up from the table and went to the kitchen counter.

"No, but..." Emory sat back in wonderment, bedazzled by the way the world had changed.

By how the world had not gone wrong.

"Maybe it wasn't just Clayton," Emory said to himself. "Maybe there really is a purpose to the universe, to how it's supposed to evolve. Maybe it really is supposed to arc toward justice."

His words were lost in the noise of his husband moving around the kitchen, making toast, getting jam out of the fridge and plates out of the cupboard. His husband leaned over his shoulder and kissed him on the cheek. "Can't hear you. What's that?"

Emory turned his head, kissed his husband back, and said:

"It's a beautiful life."

"It sure is." His husband shuffled off again as the toast popped up, golden brown and fragrant.

"It's a beautiful life," Emory repeated to himself. "And it's a beautiful day." Grinning, grateful, he bowed his head and thought of Clay.

"Thank you," he said.

Next week we venture beneath the skin and into the very mind of a man seeking to reclaim the love of his life. An impossible task? An unreachable dream? Perhaps, but so too might be those most hopeful of words: "Let None Put Asunder."