My Gift To You

Chapter Twelve: So Cold Without You Here

Not only was he soaked to the bone, he couldn’t see out of his left eye. It made it impossible to drive, but Benji wasn’t about to leave his car at the park at night to get stolen. Though he was probably going five miles an hour, he was staying on the road and somehow managed to get to his driveway.

He might have been crying, but his eye could also have been watering from the punch it had received. Benji took a shuttered breath in and one out. No, he was definitely crying. First day at a new job and I’ll have a fucking black eye. How wonderful. That wasn’t the reason why he was crying, it was the fact that he was clueless as to what to do with himself that caused the sobs. He might have been in love with Billy, but there wasn’t anything he could ever do about it. The kid Benji had fought with didn’t go to La Plata, so that was some good news. Any day now, though, people in the school would carry around the twisted version of why and what had happened. In his case, it would be the truth, but he’d have to act like it was some sick fable.

After shutting off the car, Benji leaned back in the driver’s seat and stared at himself in the rearview mirror. Why did he ever get into that fight anyway? He could have just as easily walked away and have a near picture perfect face…but then that guy would have continued to talk like that. It wasn’t right. Billy was gay, but that didn’t mean he was radioactive waste. No one should have been able to say those things about him and get away with it. It had degraded Billy and had degraded Aaron all in one fowl swoop. The acne-faced freak didn’t see Benji’s fist coming until it had collided with his greasy little face.

His car was a sickly Cadillac, whether everything would fall off around him one day or it would just die of cancer of the frame was anyone’s guess. Benji had his money on the former. Being as old as it was, the radio never shut off when the engine stopped and a door opened. He hadn’t opened a door yet, so he was listening to a local rock station through a small veil of static—he was pretty far away from the satellite now. With right handed formed into a fist, Benji hit the dashboard above the radio and it shut off. He then got out of the car and made his way into the house.

On a normal day there would only be three people in the house: Robin, Sarah, Joel or Benji. Josh was slaving his way through college while the twin boys had barely any time to stay at home before heading off to work. No one ever said it wasn’t tough, but somehow they managed to stay a tightknit family.

Benji met his mother in the small front hallway. He smiled his hello and made sure his left eye wasn’t facing her. She noticed anyway, she always noticed.

“Benjamin, what happened?” This wasn’t the first time her middle son had gotten in a fight, but she was always alarmed and worried every time.

He turned his head away, finding the coat rack to be fascinating. “Nothing, ma, it’s nothing. How are you feeling?”

“Good. I’m just tired.”

With a smile, the latter checked his watch. “Dinner should be ready soon. I’m sorry I took so long getting home. I dropped off Billy’s homework because he was out sick from school today. He made me a drink to help me warm up. It was raining cats and dogs.”

Mrs. Madden put a hand to her son’s face and turned it so she could look at him. “You’re such a sweet boy. Why do you destroy a handsome face like that getting into fights?”

“When ‘shut up’ and asking politely didn’t work…I might’ve broken his nose. I wasn’t going to let him keep degrading someone by saying the things he was saying.” Before his mother could respond, Benji shrugged. “I was sticking up for the little guy. My big heart keeps getting in the way of things. Joel go to work today? Did Sarah get her homework done—how’d she do on the math test I helped her study for?”

“At four o’clock on the nose, yes, and she got an A-. I wish you’d take a day to relax, you’re going to work yourself into an early grave. You barely get enough sleep as it is, I never see you eat a warm meal….”

Benji kissed his mother’s forehead. “I’m not important, ma. You and Sarah and Joel and Josh…you’re all important. Don’t worry about me.”

“I’m your mother, Benjamin, I’m suppose to worry.”

He laughed and went into the kitchen, taking an oven mit from the storage drawer below the oven. He opened the oven door and peered in at the turkey that had been cooking since he had left for school, very slowly and a low temperature. It wasn’t Thanksgiving yet, there was still four weeks until the day, but they had turkey when they knew they could afford it. There was no guarantee that the family would be able to have turkey on turkey day. It was doing well.

After setting an egg timer, Benji shuffled into the living room and collapsed into his father’s favorite recliner, now Benji’s recliner. “Wake me up when the timer goes off, will you, mom?” He was already half asleep, his eyelids drooping…


The school didn’t look right. To any passerby it would seem to be completely normal, but there was something wrong about the hallways and the brick walls, the lockers weren’t the right shade of green and there were too few people in the halls. The clock said that it should be in-between classes, but on closer inspection it wasn’t moving at all.

He was walking down the corridor, trying to get to the nearest classroom to tell a teacher about the clock, but he wasn’t really walking. The people around him were walking normally, yet Benji seemed to be leaning back as far as he could go and his legs only moved an inch or two. His feet seemed like led, he had to grab at the things around him and pull himself forward—water froze faster than how he walked.

Billy was in front of him, his back turned, just standing in the middle of the hallway. It looked like he was talking to someone, but no one was there.

“Can I talk to you, Billy?”

The younger man turned around, something stripped from the usual Billy. He looked like a fallen angel, sad and helpless. “I don’t have a lot of time.”

“I love you. I’m in love with you.”

What he was hoping for didn’t happen. Billy’s face stayed withered, eyes dull and lifeless. “I love you, too.” The words, like spoken from another being, were genuine and dripping with comfort, hope, joy. Then Billy walked away, fading into the sudden wave of students walking down the north corridor.

The words lingered in the air and Benji tried to reach them. His arms were too short, he couldn’t walk forward enough to get closer and grab the sentence, close it up in his heart forever.

Suddenly, he fell through the floor and slammed into his kitchen floor. It was cold and dark, Benji’s breath forming a cloud as he exhaled. His parents were standing in front of him, animated but silent. Benji was frozen in the spot in which he landed, only able to watch what surely happened that night. In an instant, his father’s voice boomed through the small space, loud enough to shatter eardrums. Mr. Combs’s voice was filled with rage and disappointment. The warmth and love it used to hold was gone, replaced by frigid air and hate.

“My son is a faggot!”

The words drilled into Benji, piercing every inch of him right down to the soul. He couldn’t cover his ears no matter how hard he tried. He was too hurt to cry, too shocked to utter a sound.

Mr. Combs turned to Benji, looking right through him. “You’re no son of mine.”

Benji looked to his mother as her husband left her. She didn’t see him crumpled on the floor a few feet away from her. She only stood there as something cascaded down on Benji, warm and metallic tasting as some of it entered his mouth. He didn’t need to look at it to see what it was. Blood.

The voice that erupted from his throat was a child’s voice, not that of a man of 16. It was raw and screaming out for dear life, calling out for the one thing that gave him life. “Mommy!”


Something was on him, covering him. Benji threw it off of him and woke with a start, sweating. He looked around and found himself in the living room of the waking world. What was on him was only a blanket, one his mother must have wrapped around him. Benji couldn’t get out of the chair for a moment, but finally he scrambled out of the chair and ran into the kitchen. Sarah and his mother were eating quietly, an open plate for Benji at his usual spot. He wanted to throw up.

Mrs. Madden was the first to look up. “You look like ten miles of bad road. Sit. Eat some food.”

“I’m…I’m not hungry. I’ll eat when I get home.”

“Are you okay?” Sarah turned around in her chair and looked at Benji, his face void of any color.

Benji nodded. “Just a nightmare. I better be getting to work now.” He kissed the 2/4s of his family good-bye. “I love you. I’ll see you when I get home in eight or more hours, I’m not sure.”

He quickly left without eating anything, he couldn’t possibly keep anything down, and jogged out to his car. He got in and locked the doors behind him, soon crying into the steering wheel.