Page 42 of Exchanged

Or have I? I think of the crushing guilt I feel each time I imagine Dad and Emma sitting around the dinner table without me, the house quieter without my oboe playing. How Dad will have to hire someone else to work at the shop. How going to college feels more like abandoning my family than moving on to something bigger.

I think of how, when Dad caught me scrolling through the University of Washington’s website last year, he’d gotten unreasonably angry, like a switch had flipped inside him.

“So you’re too good for the U.P. now?” Dad had asked.

I hadn’t known what to say, hadn’t known where the question came from or why there was so much resentment in his voice. But maybe he was making the connection Garrett just did: His wife left him, and soon his son would do the same.

I’m reminded of all the times my college plans have come up over the last few years, how Dad and I get so tense that we forget how to talk to each other. He becomes forceful and authoritarian, and I become compliant and resentful.

I don’t say these things to Garrett, and I can tell he doesn’t expect me to.

“Why did you want to know how I came out?”

He sits, staring at the leaf in his hands, not saying anything for a long time. When he speaks, his voice is clipped, like it takes extra effort to control it. “Everyone at my old school knew about me. I came out as a freshman, and it wasn’t a big deal. Big suburban school, you know? There were tons of out people, especially on the speech and debate team.”

My hands have begun shaking, so I clutch the stone ledge.

“I had dated girls first,” he continues, “so when I came out as bi, a lot of guys on the football team assumed I just didn’t know what I wanted, like I wasn’t allowed to want both.” He looks at our hands next to each other on the ledge, looks at my face. “I usually know exactly what I want.”

I swallow. “I was kind of wondering about that,” I admit. “With the Nassib jersey in your room and Dana.”

He closes his eyes and blows out a cheekful of air. “God, what a shitshow. Enzo, I don’t even know what happened. I didn’t even like her. One day after practice, Evan told me she was into me and that if I didn’t want to screw her, there was something wrong with me. So when she asked me out, I just kind of went with it because I didn’t want people here to start calling me gay. I used her to go back in the fucking closet, and I’ve felt shitty about it ever since. It was a huge relief when she broke up with me the other day.”

I think about Garrett and this town, about how he needed to date a girl he didn’t like in order to feel safe. How this place made him become less of himself to fit in.

“What about your parents?” I eventually ask. “Were they cool with it?”

“For a while I decided I’d just date girls. Easier than having to come out and everything. But then I met someone, and for the first time, I really thought about coming out. Before I could, though, my parents found some stuff on my phone—”

“They go through your phone?”

“You know how parents are.”

I’m pretty sure Dad wouldn’t go through my phone. “And then what happened?”

“It was fine. They were fine with it.” He attempts a nonchalant shrug, ending the story, but I can tell there’s more.

We sit there in the gathering dusk, the quiet stretching long and soft. It’s not awkward this time. The silence feels necessary, like it’s cementing something between us.

“We should head back,” I eventually say, realizing the trees at the edge of the pit have been swallowed by darkness.

We retreat through the tunnel and back over the cracked pavement of the road. A cold drizzle begins, but I don’t walk faster, afraid that the moment we leave the Caving Grounds this thing happening between us will disappear, like a house sinking into the ground beneath it.

He trusted me, felt safe sharing this part of himself.

Back in the forest-reclaimed neighborhood, I stop near the first staircase we climbed. “You shouldn’t come back here alone,” I tell him. “There actually are a lot of places that could cave in if you don’t know where you’re going.”

“You figured it out as a kid, so I’m sure I’d be fine,” Garrett says. Then, “Thank you. For all of this.”

“Always.” I’m not sure why I choose that word, but it’s the one that comes out. A promise.

We make our way through the thicket, over the downed oak, and along the barbed wire. Then we are back on Main Street, the Caving Grounds already fading into the gloom behind us, Irontown’s shadow self sinking beneath a heavy sky.

That night, I sit at my desk and open my laptop, and I find myself browsing the website of Burton-Clark Conservatory in Los Angeles, which has remained in my bookmarks bar for a year. I read about the music classes listed in the course catalog, browse the faculty biographies, and consider the application timeline that is already underway.

Then I move over to my Casio, put on my headphones, and compose. I write the gloom and decay and magnificent color of the Caving Grounds, the feeling of all those staircases that lead to nowhere, the sense of loss and mystery. I write the way I felt with Garrett sitting on that ledge, how something in me opened up with him.

“You don’t want to be like your mom,” he had said.