The Stonewall Boy

          There wasn’t much interesting (much less remarkable) about my high school years. I was reserved, skinny, and I managed to make only one friend—real friend—in that entire stretch. His name was Joey, and he was cursed. 

          We met in English 2, 5th period, but we didn’t speak until world history at 7th. Really, he spoke to me. I wasn’t in much of a habit of speaking to others back then. Not unless they spoke to me first. 

          He whispered to me: “What do you know about shrimpboating?” 

          Admittedly, I was too stunned to respond. That, and I was too invested in the class to want to. “Nothing,” I whispered back. 

          His face dropped like an anchor. 

          “What?” 

          “What?” 

          I snipped, “Why are you looking at me like that? What’s your problem?” 

          He shrank back a little. “Sorry.” 

          “Come on. What do you want?”

          I don’t know what compelled me to ask. Usually I’d have dropped it. Usually I would’ve left it at ‘nothing.’ I guess he just had this air to him. He was a little unique. Unique in the sense that he and I stood out together in a crowd of everyone else. I’m not sure if there are words to explain it any clearer than that. 

          He was really interested in things of the sort. Food, boats, the sea, all of it. Truthfully, even though he was ditzy and almost dumb as hell sometimes, he knew his stuff. I’d never met anyone else who wasn’t just willing but eager to learn thermodynamics for the sole purpose of making a better cake. He was almost like the DaVinci of the culinary arts. I’d never seen anything like it. Truly. 

          He was spectacular. 

          That first interaction eventually developed into a string of interactions. We became go-to partners for group work and practically inseparable within the school walls. Some days I wouldn’t bother to go if he wasn’t there. He wouldn’t bother to go just because he had no interest in it. He was almost a little hedonistic in that way. It wasn’t easy living he sought, but it was certainly a life of some sorts. He wanted to move out to a houseboat when he got the chance to. Honestly, I kinda hoped he would. I’d have liked to have visited him out by the sea, taking in the salty coastal air. I don’t get out to the coast much. Actually, I only recently revisited the beach for the sake of writing this piece. 

          I can never sit by the sand without thinking of him. 

          Now, when he and I were in senior year, he revealed to me a secret—one that he’d never told anyone. Well, he hardly did it of his own volition. I found him puking and chalky-faced in a janitor’s closet and forced him to explain.

          He asked me to not make a big deal out of it, so I didn’t. I kept my worries to myself, assuming that they were unfounded. Hoping that they were unfounded, really. We continued on as we had before, but he slowly began to act more and more different. Some days he hardly seemed like himself. 

          He wasn’t quite a husk—he was still something but it wasn’t fluid like humans usually are. His skin slowly began to crust over—brittle white stone, almost the consistency of dry clay—and his eyes slowly grew milky. It was a little sickening to watch, but I couldn’t bear the weight of leaving my friend to rot. 

          One time, I went over his house, just as we’d planned previously, but when I came into his room, he was just sitting there, staring off into space—seemingly empty-minded. I knocked on the doorframe a few times, trying to grab his attention, and he still did not reply. He didn’t show any signs of having even processed the sound. 
“Joey? Joey?” 

          Then he slowly jolted back to life, like an old car battery after being jumped. He remained slow and senile, only replying to half of everything I’d say. The other half he simply wouldn’t hear. 

          “What’s been going on with you lately? Is it…? You know…?” 

          “No, I’m fine, I’m fine. I promise.” 

          I knew he was lying. He was never very good at it. I just couldn’t bring myself to say anything. It’s his life, I told myself. If he wanted help, he wouldn’t have shut me down. That’s what I thought.

          Though his condition only got worse with time. Eventually, his legs calcified and he had to be hospitalized. I went to that hospital to visit him almost every day—walk him around the courtyard, ask him about his day. He never seemed to get better. Not until one day. 

          “I think I want to receive treatment,” he said solemnly. “They said it was possible, but it’d take a long time. And it’d be a grueling next few months.” 

          “Oh! That’s great! Why wouldn’t you want to take that?” 

          His bottom lip quivered a little before he spoke. I mean, he didn’t speak. He tried to, but nothing came out. All he could bring himself to do was drag his eye to mine, exhausted, beaten down. 

          “Why wouldn’t you get treated?” 

          “I—” 

          He couldn’t bring himself to tell me. I already knew the answer. 

          “Are you serious? This could save your life. This could change everything! This could—” I couldn’t think straight enough to find another example. “I’ll never understand you. You could have it all. You could be great! I mean, not even that. You are so so talented and you just want to give up? You want to curl up and die before you even get a chance to live? What about that houseboat, huh? I thought you were gonna go live out at sea! I thought you were gonna—!” My anger curled up like a ball of thorns in my chest and crawled up into my throat. “I can’t believe you! I can’t believe you’d even think about doing this to me! You’re my only friend, for fuck’s sake!” I dropped the handles of his chair and stormed back through the hospital. As far as I was concerned, he could roll himself back. 

          That was the last time I got to see him. I mean, before he was too far gone.

          The last time I ever laid eyes on him was on his deathbed. It hardly looked like Joey at all. A chalky, ashen husk, coughing through labored weezes. There was no light behind his eyes, which were now marble orbs sunken into his skull. He couldn’t hear, smell, or feel much of, if anything. They theorize that he died in complete nothingness, just as he lived. 

          It filled me with a complex sort of dread. The kind that you can only get in the face of total hopelessness, knowing that things could’ve been better. A nuclear core built up in my chest. His cheeks were sunken and dark bags swelled up around his eyesockets. 

          Almost compulsively, I murmured, “Please just pull the plug…” 

          His father nodded silently, and the doctor nodded back with a soft and sorrowful sympathy on his face. 

          And then, for the first time since we had met, he looked at peace. His granite limbs finally dropped, flaking slightly around his joints. 

          I don’t know what made me think of him, much less what made me think to write about him, but his story means something to me, and he was never going to tell it himself. I just wish that maybe, just maybe, he could’ve. And I hope that someday this story means something to someone else. Whether it be good or bad, I can’t say. As long as it means something. 

Luther Redding is a young-adult writer with the sole dream of taking part in a contemporary renaissance. He has yet to be officially published elsewhere, but a flash fiction piece of his is due to be released in April for the Orichalum Tower Review.