Autoboyography
Page 69

I felt better when I said it over and over—please let her be okay, please let her be okay, please let her be okay—and maybe that’s why it always made sense to me later, when Sebastian said he felt better when he prayed. I knew I was helpless, but it still felt like my good intentions had power, that they could change the trajectory of whatever had happened to my sister.
I’ll forever remember the calm that washed over me. I kept chanting it to myself, and went and hugged Mom while the saleswomen ran around hysterically, and my calm transferred to her, and we just stood there, breathing in and out and silently believing that she was nearby somewhere while security barked orders through their walkie-talkies and the saleswomen checked every back room. We stood there until Hailey popped out of a dusty clearance rack in the very back of the store, wearing an enormous, proud grin and yelling, “HAILEY WON!”
There have been other times too. The feeling that there is someone warning me away from the ocean on a day the beach is eventually closed for dangerous riptides. The soothing relief of being so upset about something and, in an instant, being able to stop looping through the catastrophic scenarios and breathe in and out—wondering what it was that put the spiraling panic on hold and reminded me to unwind. Sometimes they’re small moments, sometimes they’re big, but I’ve always felt they were just part of being human, of being raised by thoughtful humans.
Still, being raised by thoughtful humans doesn’t explain what happened that Sunday afternoon. Breckin and I went outside, Frisbee in hand. It was amazing out—seventy-four with no wind, no clouds. The weird marine layer that hovers until lunchtime had evaporated, and the sky was this unreal blue, the kind every tourist notices and mentions. Breckin’s bright green Frisbee cut through it, back and forth between us. We dodged people on the lawn, apologizing when the Frisbee landed at someone’s feet or—once—hit their shin. We started with the sun to our left, but as we threw, and chased, and caught, I ended up with the sun directly in my eyes.
I’m probably romanticizing it now—in fact, in my more atheist moments, I know I’m romanticizing it, though in other times, I’m less sure—but in hindsight, I see the pattern of our game as this looping, meticulous Spirograph. With each of Breckin’s throws I caught, I shifted in a matter of precise degrees: ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, until I had rotated exactly ninety degrees from where I began.
Everyone has a gait, as unique and recognizable as a fingerprint. Sebastian’s gait was always upright, unhurried, and careful: each step as even as the one before. I knew his shoulders—wide, muscular—and the way his head sat on his neck—chin up in a sort of graceful bearing. I knew that he walked with his right thumb tucked loosely into his palm, so that it always looked a little like he was making a fist with his right hand while his left hand hung at his side, relaxed.
And there he was, but backlit. None of his features were visible, just his walk, coming toward me.
Breckin threw the Frisbee, and my wide, searching eyes caught the heart of the sun, and the disk sailed straight past me.
When the bright spot finally dissolved from my vision, I looked past Breckin again. The figure was closer now, but it wasn’t Sebastian after all. It was someone else with great posture, chin up, a loose right-handed fist.
A close match, but not him.
I remember learning in biology in eleventh grade that the neurons that signal pain, called C fibers, actually have some of the slowest-conducting axons. The sensation of pain takes longer to get to the brain than nearly any other type of information—including the conscious awareness that pain is coming. The teacher asked us why we thought this might be evolutionarily advantageous, and it seemed so simple at the time: We need to be able to escape the source of pain before we’re debilitated by it.
I like to think this is how I was somehow already braced against the pain of realization. In this case, the blinding sunshine reached me first, warning me of the painful signal ahead—hope. Reminding me that of course it couldn’t be Sebastian. I was in LA. He was somewhere else, gathering souls. Of course he wasn’t there.
He is never going to be here, I thought. He is never coming back.
Was I okay with it? No. But missing him every day for the rest of my life was still easier than the fight Sebastian had: to stuff himself inside a box every morning and tuck that box inside his heart and pray that his heart kept beating around the obstacle. Every day I could go to class as exactly the person I am, and meet new people, and come outside later for some fresh air and Frisbee. Every day I would be grateful that no one who matters to me questions whether I am too masculine, too feminine, too open, too closed.
Every day I would be grateful for what I have, and that I can be who I am without judgment.
So every day I would fight for Sebastian, and people in the same boat, who don’t have what I do, who struggle to find themselves in a world that tells them white and straight and narrow gets first pick in the schoolyard game of life.
My chest was congested with regret, and relief, and resolve. Give me more of those, I thought to whoever was listening—whether it was God, or Oz, or the three sisters of Fate. Give me those moments where I think he’s coming back. I can take the hurt. The reminder that he’s not coming back—and why—will keep me fighting.
I picked up the Frisbee, tossed it to Breckin. He caught it one-handed, and I hopped side to side, elbows out, reenergized. “Make me run for it.”
He lifted his chin, laughing. “Dude, watch out.”
“I’m good. Throw it.”
Breckin jerked his chin again, more urgently. “You’re going to hit him.”
Startled, I tucked in my elbows, wheeling around to apologize to whoever was there.
And he was there, maybe two feet from me, leaning back like I might in fact elbow him in the face.
Losing control of my legs in an instant, I sat ass-down on the grass. He wasn’t backlit anymore. There was no halo of sun behind him. Just sky.
He crouched, resting his forearms on his thighs. Concern pulled his brows down, drew his lips into a gentle frown. “Are you okay?”
Breckin jogged over. “Dude, are you okay?”
“W-w-w—” I started, and then let out a long, shaking exhale. “Sebastian?”
Breckin slowly backed away. I don’t know where he went, but looking back, the rest of it was just me, and Sebastian, and an enormous stretch of green grass and blue sky.
“Yeah?”
“Sebastian?”
Oh God. The sweetly cocky grin, the joke everyone can be in on. “Yeah?”
“I swear I just imagined you walking from clear across the quad and thought God was giving me some life lesson, and not twenty seconds later you’re standing right there.”
He reached out, took my hand. “Hey.”
“You’re supposed to be in Cambodia.”
“Cleveland, in fact.”
“I didn’t actually know. I just made that up.”
“I could tell.” He grinned again, and the sight of it set about building a scaffold around my heart. “I didn’t go.”
“Shouldn’t you be in Mormon jail?”
He laughed, sitting down and facing me. Sebastian. Here. He took my hands in his. “We’re working out the details of my parole.”
The banter fell away in my head. “Seriously. I’m . . .” I blinked, light-headed. It felt like the world was too slowly coming into focus. “I don’t even know what’s going on.”