Don't Tell

He did his trademark dive off the dock, a modified flip into a cannonball that slammed a green wave into my face. I fought to tread water, pointlessly wiping at my eyes with wet hands while he surfaced, laughing as he took a clumsy, partially underwater, bow. As he came up, hair and shirt soaked and plastered to him, I slapped a handful of water into his open mouth, cackling as I started paddling away from my sputtering friend. I deliberately swam with lazy strokes, careful to always let him feel like he was just one strong kick away. Lee was a slower swimmer than me, mostly because he was so much smaller. He didn’t like to be humored for it, but that didn’t mean I didn’t do it anyway. When we shared our twelfth birthday a month ago, people had confused him for someone’s kid brother, wandering into the big kids’ party for free cake. I remembered teasing him about it for nearly the whole party. He said the cake tasted better once I’d scraped it off my face.

When I hit shore, the wet sand sent me tripping and sliding my way into a haphazard run. I only got a few steps before Lee speared me in the back, sending us crashing into the drier grit away from the water’s edge. He was yelling something about “doom” and my “impending demise,” but Lee was never a particularly good fighter. He’d never fought anyone but me. By the lake, we were a tangle of flailing limbs and hooting laughs, shouting wrestling holds and grunting with effort we really didn’t mean.

Lee was always like this; always trying to solve things with a wrestling match, a fistfight, or a game of bloody knuckles. My dad said that he was probably trying to make up for his size, trying to prove to everyone, even me, that he was tough enough. He didn’t need to be babied. I only half agreed with him, mostly because fighting Lee was too fun a game to think of any other way. I think he just had a lot of balls.

           I was first to give up. Laughing had sucked all the air from my lungs and I went limp, gasping for mercy, slapping the sand with my free left hand. Lee, whose entire body was occupied in an attempt to twist my right arm around my back, crowed in victory and took a place in the sand next to me to bask in his triumph. He launched into the requisite speech on how he’d been “holding back” and I let him drone on, his voice lapping against my cheek like the water on the shore we’d left behind. That was Lee, full of anything and everything but only occasionally the truth.

We lay there gasping for a while, staring up at the dim, overcast sky as thin rays of sun slipped through the wall of cloud cover to stripe the lake. I could hear the soft rhythm of the water just below us and the wind cooing in the trees. We were only maybe half an hour from my house, 35 minutes from Lee’s. Despite the distance, it was our lonely island, inside and out, only the two of us in a tiny universe. Together we’d etched into every grain of sand; gripes about school, hopes for a sibling, and wishes for a future with a place for us both. It was where I told Lee about my dad moving out of state for a new job and where Lee told me that his mom was sick with something that wouldn’t get better. It was where we laughed and cried and pretended a game of Manhunt would fix everything.

Today, the lake was where I rolled over on top of Lee and pushed my mouth into his.

We stayed like that, frozen; where Lee couldn’t tell me I was a freak and push me off, where I didn’t have to pretend I’d had been joking and laugh it away. Lee would take any excuse; he’d get mad and punch me in the chest with his little hands until I sputtered a giggling ”Uncle” under the rain of blows. It would all go back to normal after that, like I’d never crossed this line. We’d just pretend it never happened. I waited for it to play out with my mouth on his, with my hands pushing into the sand, Lee completely still, and my eyes screwed shut, tight against his answer.

I wasn’t 100% on how long kisses were supposed to last. It wasn’t something I really considered, and I hoped that there would be some sign as to when to stop. We stayed there until my breath ran out, my arms shaking from more than the ache of holding myself over Lee. I had to give up, break the spell, and, I rocked back onto my knees to look down at him, face already fixing on a smile I only kinda felt.

The beginnings of the smile died as soon as I looked at him. Lee wasn’t startled, he didn’t look scared or mad or even surprised. He was just looking at me. The words in my mouth, the laughing words that would make everything normal again, turned to dirt and I choked on them. “L-,“ was all I could get out before his foot crashed into my chest, sending me backward into a little explosion of sand. As I slowly rolled over to get up, I could see Lee breaking for the tree line, running like his life depended on it. He was running from me.

I stayed there for a moment, sprawled in the sand, watching him run. It was like watching a car crash on TV, slow motion, forcing you to pay attention to every detail. Lee’s feet stained brown as he crossed from sand to dirt, the tree line like a barricade that offered him safety from the monster behind him, from me.

Numb, I could only mumble out the desperate frenzy that started to well up in my chest. “Don’t tell,” I whispered it out in a strangled rasp, fighting back tears and screams. Saying it made it worse, saying it dragged me off my feet and sent me charging to the trees after him, screaming, “DON’T TELL, DON’T TELL, PLEASE, PLEASE DON’T TELL.” He didn’t turn around. At a dead sprint he careened down the dirt path like a runaway train. I could catch him if we were running straight, my legs were so much longer, but he’d had a head start and I kept slipping on the leaf litter, still screaming my pleas at his back.

Pelting after him, all I could see ahead was my life collapsing. Lee would tell his parents, make them know that I was a freak who kissed people for no reason. He’d never want to see me again. His parents would tell mine after that. Dad would look down at me and just shake his head, and Mom would tell me she was disappointed in the tone that meant she was mad. The kids at school would find out somehow. We’d stop playing together and I’d stop getting invited over for sleepovers on their birthdays. They’d stop coming to my house to play on the trampoline I got for Christmas. They’d forget all about who I was before.

I’d just be the freak.

As it all came apart in my head I could feel the tears welling up. Lee wouldn’t be with me to deal with it all. No more shared birthdays, no more weekend barbecues, and no more Leeson Elter diving at the lake. I ran faster, letting the panic move me. I couldn’t lose Lee. Everyone else I could live without. I could live with knowing that no one else would be able to forgive what I’d done, but losing Lee would officially make me the worst kid who ever lived.

At a sharp turn, Lee tripped, skidding off the path and into the underbrush with no way to slow down. Low branches and thorny limbs tore my arms and legs as I vaulted off the path after him. Lee was directly ahead, ducking through trees and barely avoiding collisions with boulders and logs, hardly in control as he crashed down the steep hill. As I flailed after him I watched Lee’s shirt suddenly catch on a branch, his body spasming in sudden stop, lifting his feet clear off the ground. Still half-running, half-sliding down the incline, I found I couldn’t stop myself. I tried to slow down but I hit him at full tilt. I could hear something tear as we went sprawling together, down the side of the hill and into the gully below, smashed together too close, tangled together again.

           Though spongy from dead leaves and ferns, we still made a solid thump as we landed. I got the worst of it. Lee landed on top, an elbow driving out my breath and leaving me dazed and groaning. For a moment, it was almost if we’d gone back in time, history had righted itself. I could almost believe the soft ground was sand; we were back on the beach and instead of running, Lee had rolled us over and started hitting me as I pretended to laugh. I could almost hear the threats and dark promises as I lay there in pain, could almost believe that Lee, now on top of me, was just tired of punching and yelling over my lame joke in the same shrill voice I had expected.

Lee stirred above me.

Before I could speak his fist came down, faster than I could catch it or turn my aching head. The right was followed by the left, one after the other, over and over, in a rhythm that left my ears ringing and snapped my eyes in and out of focus. At first I let him have the hits, hoping that it would make us even, hoping that he’d forgive me and go back to normal if I just took my punishment. But the fists didn’t stop. Eventually I had to fight back, grab his wrists, scream at him to stop, to just listen for a second. I needed him to talk to me and every fist kept coming with the same silence.

We stayed like that for a while, struggling back and forth, me trying to hold on to him while he tried to tear himself away. The forest around us was still, silent in the face of our little rage. As I held on, the fire went out of him slowly, the jerking and twisting dying down as Lee tired himself. When he finally went still, with his wrists still caught in my hands, he was silent. His head was bowed, eyes fixed on the ground, shoulders heaving with exertion.

“Lee?” It was all I could say, looking up at him from my place on the ground, still partially pinned by his weight. Leaning over me, for the first time I could see the cuts and bruises that spotted him from the chase. The same injuries probably dotted my own skin. His sleeve was torn, the cloth, wet from out time in the water, had given when I hit him, shredded by the branches. Lee’s slim shoulders were bruised badly, but it was the sudden hint of bright white that drew my eyes down. I could see a strap at the top of his shoulder, leading down to a band that disappeared into the remains of his shirt. My mind scrambled to understand, struggling to ask so many questions as my eyes searched for its purpose.

I could feel Lee’s eyes watching me look, feel the way his shoulders shook and I could hear the way his breath came in strangled coughs that told me tears were running down his face. He was weeping, openly; like his whole life was ending and as I watched him I started to understand what was happening. I started crying too.

“Wh-y, why are?” I groped for an explanation, for the lie that I only half grasped. My best friend, the one I begged for, laughed with, needed more than anyone, was  becoming more and more a stranger. Lee looked up at me, through tears that did what words couldn’t. He always kept his shirt on when we went swimming. He was so much smaller and thinner than me, than all our friends. His voice stayed so much higher when mine had started to fall. It came slowly, a million different moments, like drops of water sliding down a window as we bet which one would reach the bottom first. In the end, the drops always seemed to run together, joining into one.

He wore a band across his chest that was already becoming so much different than mine.

Lee looked at me like he was dying; like this was the last time we were ever going to see each other. Lee’s eyes stared into mine, “Please, don’t tell.”