“Yep,” he goes on. “There’s my real key. Actually, they’re both my key. I did give up drinking recently. But … I also gave up my heart. To Lance, the man behind Spruce’s latest fashion boutique. Lance, my man, my heart, my buddy, my partner. Phew!” Chad lets out a slightly manic chuckle. “This sure does feel good. Maybe Trey’s on to somethin’ here. I don’t wanna live in a cage any longer. You all deserve to know how amazing Lance is, and how deeply in love with him I am. And how freeing it is to just … turn that key. And I don’t know who else out there needs to hear this,” he adds, his eyes dancing across the room, “but if you need help, or you got a key you don’t think you can turn, a truth you can’t tell, you just come and speak a minute with me. I’m the dang king of keys. Back to you, Trey, my friend.” And with a quick handshake, Chad takes his seat next to Lance in the front row, except now I notice they are considerably cozier.
And as Trey continues the sermon, I drop my eyes to my lap in thought. What sort of cage have I kept myself in? Maybe I ought to take the advice I gave my mother and really strive to do better, no matter where I am, or who I’m with. Toby might be looking at Spruce as his own cage, trapped among its people, blind to the rest of the world out there. What if I’m his key? What if he’s mine?
The other possibility is that I’m dead wrong. I haven’t heard from him at all. For all I know, he’s bursting with inspiration at his house, painting and drawing and creating. For all I know, he’s told himself a hundred times this week that he made the right choice, that he’s better off without me, that he’s free now.
Maybe I was his cage.
How arrogant of me. To presume he needs me.
When we leave the church, I feel empty. I take a seat on a nearby bench that’s swallowed in the shadow of a large tree and wait for my parents to finish up socializing. I am definitely not looking forward to the ride home where I’m sure my mom will have a bunch of lovely things to say about my harsh words to her.
The crunching of gravel and dirt beneath shoes makes me lift my eyes. It’s Hoyt, who stops a few feet in front of me, hands in his pockets, his stony, uncertain gaze averted. He doesn’t speak.
I squint at him, annoyed. “The hell you want, Nowak?”
He doesn’t respond. After a breath, he takes a couple of calm steps my way, then drops onto the bench next to me, appearing deflated. His eyes are stuck on the ground, unblinking. It’s clear he’s deeply bothered by something, but I can’t begin to wonder what it is. He isn’t saying anything. He isn’t looking anywhere but the ground. I am totally disarmed by his strangeness.
Inexplicably, I find myself speaking more sensitively when I try again. “What’s going on?”
“Toby was staying at my house this week.”
At once, I’m armed again. “Like hell he was.”
“I know. It doesn’t make sense. He had some problem at home and needed to get away. We just kinda ran into each other. Wasn’t a plan or anything. Total coincidence.” He still stares downward as he talks to me in a listless, absentminded voice. “But everything … kinda went wrong yesterday. I think he’s back home now. He left his backpack, so I went and dropped it off at his house in front of his gate this mornin’. Left before anyone saw me. Hope he got it.”
I continue to frown at the side of his face, waiting for his point or purpose in saying all of this, whether it’s true or not.
Then he sighs and confesses something else: “It was me, not Julio. I pushed the punch bowl over. I was aiming for you.”
I stare at the side of his face, stunned.
“Yeah,” he mumbles, likely sensing my fury. “Sorry.”
Yeah, sorry? Is he serious? “You realize I’m on strike two now because of that? Because of you? One more strike and I’m kicked out of Spruce High for good, and I can’t get kicked out of another damned high school.”
“Don’t ask me why I did it. I really don’t know. Could’ve been a bunch of different reasons, I guess. I think somethin’ is, like …” He lets out an odd, lifeless laugh. “Somethin’ is way wrong with me. I feel like something’s been wrong with me for a long … long time.” He runs a hand over his face, shakes his head, then resumes staring at the ground, troubled by whatever’s on his mind, which is clearly all-consuming.