My Gift To You

Chapter Eighteen: Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery, None But Ourselves Can Free Our Minds

If it was possible for someone’s eyes to be open so wide that they could pop right out of their socks, Billy was sure that that’s what would happen to Benji. The poor thing was standing in front of the thinner man like a deer in headlights, his heart practically visually pounding against his chest. It really looked like he was going to faint or, if given the chance, hit the pause button and erase what had just happened from the memory of every last person on earth. Of course, there was was no such option and Billy could only keep his eyes fixated on the crowd behind Benji.

Maybe it was just the shock of the recent event that prevented them from doing anything. Like Billy, they could only stand with their feet planted firmly on the slick pavement with their mouths either gaping or the most idiotic expressions painted on their faces—a few people had both. It would have been something to laugh at if it wasn’t happening under these circumstances. This was something that would change Benji’s life whether or not he wanted it to happen, Billy was sure.

Perhaps they would forget. When they bell rang at the end of the school day, the students and teachers would go home to spend the holidays with their families and come back the first week of January, maybe later if it snowed enough. Their minds would be filled with the images of the gifts they had received, the food they had stuffed themselves with, the person they got to kiss on New Year’s. If they didn’t forget by the time they returned to school, Benji and the rest of his band would be leaving again for New York on the third. Surely by then this whole thing would be a faded memory, one not worth trying to restore.

His brain finally relaying the message to the muscles of his eyes, Billy looked back at Benji. He could read the look in the latter’s brown pools: ‘have I disappeared yet?’ It was going to be a mixed message, but Billy shook his head a hair to the left and right anyway in efforts to tell Benji that he had not disappeared.

Benji shut his eyes again.

Time was standing still at this point or at least inching along. No one dared to move further than Billy had when he shook his head, they could only wonder what the Hell had just happened. It really didn’t make sense. Sure most of the people in the school did know about Benji, most also knew about Billy from what a friend of a friend had heard or seen, but to actually hear the proof that one of the men was indeed gay…it was enough to stop the neural synapses in their brains.

This was huge. It turned the tables and snared Benji on the rusty nail of truth. He had come out in the most nontraditional way, both giving him the allowed sense of relief and a hundred more challenges. If Joel hadn’t heard the yelling, any second know the school’s resident loud mouth, gossip queen would run into the cafeteria and tell the entire room the news. Joel wasn’t good with secrets either and even if he was, Mrs. Madden would find out soon enough and…who knew what would happen?

People might be cruel. It’s a well-known fact that they could say that they hoped little Polly Higgens would get run over by a truck and die, but the second something did happen to Polly they would be guilt stricken and wish they had never said such a thing. They knew that Mrs. Madden was a strict Christian—maybe not one of those nuttier than a fruit cake fundamentalists, but still scary—and they had heard the dark stories about what they did when they learned about someone being or doing a cardinal sin, at least a cardinal sin in their book. She would find out no matter what, but a few people in the onlooking group felt sorry for Benji.

Others just wanted to laugh and say that they knew it all along, though not a word was spoken.

Chilled to the bone yet unwilling to leave Benji alone in his somewhat catatonic state, Billy stared at their audience again. They were a living painting, only their vital organs doing any sort of movement. He began to wonder when the world would slowly start to turn again, how much time would pass before someone did something, anything. He was afraid to make any sort of facial expression, worried that if done it would send the wrong message to Benji, to the crowd of stupefied spectators.

Like being trapped in a large ice cube that was gradually melting, Benji began to move. It was subtle, a hand twitch here and a slight turn of the head there. After a while he started to walk. He began to walk away from the school, away from any possible threat or laugh. Billy didn’t know what Benji was thinking, he’d have to come back to the learning institution when break ended. Backfire was inevitable, bound to happen no matter how far Benji ran.

Without so much as a huff, Benji brushed passed Billy and kept going…the wrong way. His car was in the parking lot on the other side of the speechless crowd of men and women. Unless he thought he could saunter in a straight line around the world, he’d have to turn around to get to his vehicle. Faintly, barely above the sound of the wind, he was weaving a healthy ball of profanity.

Billy wished that Benji would stop and tell him what to do. Should he go after Benji or give him his space? Tell Joel what happened or keep freezing his balls off? He hated feeling like he was on a piece of ice as thin as tissue paper, trying to figure out what move was the wrong one that would send him falling into frigid depths.

He was sucking his teeth by now, the swearing Benji some distance away and the morass of temporarily dumb students waking from their mind hibernation. Luckily most went right back into their conversations, though some pointed at the two men and asked a few questions. Luckily no one shouted anything hurtful, no one laughed (at least not at Benji), no one tried making an even bigger deal out of the situation.

If he was going to fall through the ice by turning around, so be it. Billy turned to watch as Benji’s back faded into the horizon, folding in on himself to keep warm and to become smaller, get the attention off of him. Not wanting to get him even more worked up, Billy made his way back into the school.

Denial might have been the reason as to why no one acknowledged Billy as he shuffled through the crowd and into the front doors, the heat of the building stinging his face. Inside there was a delayed reaction to what had been going on, people staring like the boy who had just entered the cafeteria had ten heads. He swallowed thickly and scanned over the faces, some not paying attention while most had their mouths were hanging open like an old window with a snapped rope. Billy had always known that Benji was loud, but this took the fucking cake.

Going to his locker wasn’t an option to Billy at this point so he headed over to his lunch table and as quietly as he could, acting like nothing out of the blue had happened, he sat down. He shrugged out his jacket and let it settle uncomfortably between him and the chair back.

“So…did anyone eat my peanut butter bar?” Billy asked, his eyes surveying the space where his dessert had once been placed.

Make that twenty heads. Aaron waved his hand over toward the front doors, his face contorted in a look of sheer confusion. “What was that all about?”

“Apparently Benji came out and I’m coming along to New York. Who the fuck ate my peanut butter bar?”

Joel shook his head, trying to clear his mind. “Came out? What do you mean came out? I didn’t—” again, he made a failed attempt to straighten things about in his head “—What?”

Billy frowned at the empty spot on his tray. “That’s the only good thing about this lunch, the peanut butter bar.”

“Shut up about your peanut butter bar!” Joel demanded. “Benji couldn’t have come out. He’s not gay, I would’ve known! God. What if my mom finds out about this? Did you know, Billy? Did you know about this and not tell me?” It wasn’t a question, it was an accusation. He might have been clueless about his own brother’s sexual orientation, but Joel knew that Billy did in fact know about this before him.

Lie. No, lying only gets one into deeper trouble. Man, why didn’t Billy tag alone with Benji? He knew that this would happen, that’s why he walked away. All right, so Benji was a dick for walking away because he was aware that something like this was going to happen, but that didn’t help Billy come up with a good answer. Damn it all. Damn it all the Helm’s Bakery.

“Well?”

“What does it matter? So he’s gay, does that mean you don’t love him? He’s still your twin brother, Joel. For Christ’s sake calm down. Think about him, huh? He’s more upset than you, he’s had to carry news like this for years and I can assure you this wasn’t the way he wanted to come out, if he had wanted to come out at all!” Skirt around the issue, always a good choice. Pin the guilt on Joel, that way he’ll forget about prodding his friend with a question he possibly already knew the answer to.

Joel sighed and sinked back in his seat. “Where is he?”

“I don’t know. He walked away, didn’t say where he was going,” Billy replied. “He might not be going that far, his car is still in the parking lot—went away from it. He was probably too embarrassed to come back inside, I wouldn’t blame him.”

“What made him do it?” Paul asked. “What’d you say to trigger him?”

“Just asked him why he stood up for me is all, said that that was why I was thinking about not coming. It’s complicated,” Billy answered. He sighed. “Interesting day, wouldn’t you say?”

Joel made an unhappy noise, something resembling the cry of a dying moose. “Benji isn’t stupid. He’s not walking around in the cold to get some kind of attention, that’s the last thing he wants right now. He just needs to think, to calm down. When we get home for practice, Benji’ll be waiting in the garage for us. I’ll go into the office and tell the secretary that he feels ill, went home to rest.” He stood up and went to the office, his head hung.

Aaron leaned forward, setting his elbows on the table. “The rumors about you are true, then? Do you like him too or not?”

“Yeah. A lot. Just don’t tell Joel, all right? He’s been shocked enough,” Billy replied.

Paul laughed slightly. “He already knows. Joel might be dumb, but he’s not that dumb. He’s the one who ate your nasty bar, by the way.”

-

The trip wouldn’t have been called off even if the brothers were waging a war because of what had happened, instead they were civil with each other and if they did fight they waited until they weren’t around anyone to scream at one another. They acted like there was no such day as that Tuesday, just went on with their daily business of counting down the days until they could fly off to their possible record deal. They wouldn’t shut up about it and it wasn’t even January yet. Every day one of them would call one of the bandmates with a highly annoying and loud message of “x days until the trip!” and hang up the phone, off to call one of the other band members with the same short sentence. They knew the other’s would have shoved lit candles into his ears if it meant that the Madden twins wouldn’t call them with the daily countdown, but Benji and Joel did it anyway.

The Christmas tree was the biggest they had gotten in years, finally able to splurge on one with the extra money from the boys’ paychecks. While their sister was in her usual joyous mood about the fact that she would get gifts, Benji didn’t really care. He really didn’t want to get any presents while other people didn’t get any (which over the past years always almost came true for the Madden family), though he knew that those people had a better understanding of the day than he. He’d like not having a Christmas, it meant he wouldn’t get cut by the damned fir tree he was trying to set up in the living room.

Sarah had been put to bed hours ago while the house was still barren of any Christmas touch, his mother was untangling the lights and testing them to see if any bulbs were out, Joel was carrying up boxes of ornaments and other decorations from the basement, occasionally barking an order as to where something should be placed. Benji cursed, having just smacked his head on a thick branch as he tried to sit up, completely forgetting that he was still under the tree as he fixed it in the stand.

“It’s still lopsided,” Joel said calmly, setting a box on the floor before leaving again for another.

“Shut up! I’m still trying to get the thing into the stand. Why’d we have to find the biggest tree on the lot?” Benji complained. “I have all these needles all over me, down my shirt, in my hair. It’s trying to kill me, I swear! It practically fell on top of my head when we were trying to get it onto the car roof and again when we were getting it off, it’s leering at me with its one knothole eye—fuck!” Benji’s hand slipped, slammed into the floor. “I liked the Charlie Brown tree, why couldn’t we have gotten that one? I’m sure it’s not plotting my demise like this one is.”

Mrs. Madden put aside a dead light strand. “Enough, Benjamin, you’ll wake Sarah, and watch your language. Where’s your Christmas spirit?”

“It was whacked out of me when that tree slapped me in the face,” he replied coolly.

“It slipped!” Joel called from the hallway.

Benji muttered something and wiped his sweaty hands on his shirt, going back to securing the tree’s trunk to the stand. When he was done, he crawled out from under the cursed thing and stood up, brushing himself off. He corrected its tilting and stuffed it better into the corner, eyes bleary from the strong piney smell and his hands still sticky from the sap even after rubbing them on his clothes repeatedly. “If you want to move it somewhere else, do it yourself. Until then, it’s not going anywhere.”

Shaking the collar of his sweatshirt in failed attempts of getting the needles off of him, Benji watched his younger brother set one of the last boxes on the floor and leave for another one. Between the heavy yet fragile boxes and the evil tree, Benji didn’t know which task was worse. Kneeling down, he opened one of the boxes nearest to him and took out the tree skirt resting on the top, going back under the tree to wrestle the fabric into position.

“Are you excited about the trip?” Mrs. Madden asked, throwing a group of dead lights into a trash bag.

“You’ve—oomph!—asked me that question every day,” Benji said as he scuttled back out into the rest of the room, “and every day I say that I just can’t wait. This is one of the greatest things that’s happened to us so far. Think of it, ma. When we get signed we’ll never have to worry about bills anymore, never have to worry about getting from one paycheck to another, we’ll be able to get what we’ve always wanted. I’m going to buy you a nice house, ma. A big one that’s not falling apart with a huge master suite and a pool in the backyard, Sarah’d love that. I’m going to pay cash for it so you never have to think about a mortgage payment again, just the taxes which I’ll pay for.”

His mother smiled warmly and shook her head. “You’ve always been a dreamer, sweetheart.”

“And all the dreams are starting to come true,” Benji replied softly. “We’re going to come back from New York with a contract in our hands, all the hard times behind us.”

Joel put the last cardboard container on the floor and sat down on the couch, his expression a mix of happiness and disappointment. “It might not happen…We could go there, perform for them and they could send us back empty handed. Getting this meeting isn’t a sure fire deal that we’ll be signed.”

Benji lowered his vision to the carpet. “We’re going to get signed even if it kills me, Joel, I promise you that.”

“Okay, just don’t say things like that.”

The older sibling smirked slightly. “They’re going to love us. Good Charlotte will be the biggest band in the world some day, I guarantee that. We’ll be in the movies, in the magazines, on television shows. We’ll have toys made in our likeness’, we’ll have so many people buying our merchandise stores won’t be able to keep them on the shelves, we’ll have so many fans we won’t even be able to count them all.”

Their mother rose to her feet with the lights in her hands. “If it’s meant to be it will be, if it’s not it will not, until then one can only work hard and not force it. Now let’s get this house decorated for Christmas before it’s five in the morning and Sarah comes bounding down the stairs searching for her presents. Where did you put them anyway?”

Joel pointed toward the ceiling. “The attic. I know how much it freaks her out, so I put them up there knowing that she wouldn’t get to them, unlike last year.”

“Oh, before we get to work, I want you boys to have these.” Their mother handed Joel a key chain which she had gotten with her free hand from a pant pocket, it had two silver keys still hanging from it. “They’re the keys to my van. I know how horrible the Cadillac is and when you get signed and start a tour, well, you need something that will hold everything you need and make it there as well.”

“We can’t take those,” Benji refused. “That van’s the only thing you—”

“Don’t argue with your mother, Benjamin,” she said sternly.

Joel couldn’t stop looking at the objects in his hand. “He’s right, Mom, we really can’t take these.”

“I want you to have that van, you need it more than I do. I barely go anywhere as it is. It’s in a lot better shape than the Cadillac and you’ll go far with it. I was planning on giving it to you for a long time now, don’t make me surgically attach the keys to your hand.”

Benji stood up and hugged his mother, Joel soon following suit. “Thank you,” the twins said in unison.

“That’s my big Christmas present for you both. I would have waited until tomorrow to tell you, but I couldn’t wait to see the looks on your faces.”