Page 13 of Love Immortal

Twelve

T he first six months following Clay’s death were hell.

The school principal called my parents and told them everything. My mother became hysterical; my father turned my room upside down, searching for evidence that I’d abandoned God’s righteous path. I’d hidden the remaining letters, but that didn’t stop him from unloading more than a few hefty punches on me to try and force a confession, or perhaps merely to express his disappointment. My parents pulled me out of school for the rest of the quarter and permanently grounded me. But despite the constant abuse and threats, I never betrayed the location of the letters. They were the only things I had left of Clay, the only real things. My parents told me I couldn’t even attend his funeral.

I didn’t let them stop me, though.

It was held in a small Episcopal church that Clay’s family belonged to. They never missed a Sunday mass, which was likely the reason Clay wasn’t denied his last rites, as was usually the case with suicide victims. The priest made an exception for this one lost lamb. However, the rest of the town felt this was a step too far on account of the lamb being queer. It was one too many things for them to forgive.

On the day of the funeral, I snuck out of my house and went to the church, thinking I could go unnoticed among the attendees, but other than Clay’s immediate family, no one came. That sprawling circle of friends he’d tried so hard to belong to—not a single one of them risked showing up. Not one of his football teammates or coaches. None of the girls who had pined for him. The church was dark and cold while outside, just down the street, people were starting to hang Christmas lights on houses—the holiday season was already upon us. I’d never felt emptier in my life.

When Clay’s mom found me huddled in the last row of the pews, she started screaming, her son’s dead body lying in a coffin just a few feet away. Clay’s older brother, an army sergeant, promptly grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and dragged me outside. He threw me down the church stairs, but not before shouting that I was going to rot in hell for corrupting his baby brother.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Maybe for Clay’s family to realize I’d lost him too? That my soul was being slashed to pieces by grief just as much as theirs were? Instead, they’d decided I was to blame for everything. All I wanted was to say goodbye to him, to see him one last time, but they didn’t think I deserved even that. What did they think I deserved?

I didn’t have anyone to talk to about it, so for months, I stopped talking entirely. Thoughts swirled and clashed in my head, but none of them reached my mouth. Even when winter break ended, and I had to go back and finish my senior year, I stayed silent despite the endless taunts and torment.

At school, a peculiar change had taken place. It seemed that in my absence, Clay’s story had been revised. The school was split between those who wanted to punish me for existing and those who, like Clay’s family, had decided I must suffer for seducing him and destroying his life. It was me, you see, who had lured Clay off the righteous path. All those people who wouldn’t say a last goodbye to him were now whitewashing the truth, turning Clay into a martyr as though they weren’t the ones who’d driven him to the grave. That was when I learned that people pick their own versions of history to ensure they aren’t blamed for the outcome.

It’s easy to say you loved someone when they’re no longer around. After all, the dead can’t speak. They cannot refute your self-serving delusions, and you can ignore the fact that you didn’t stand up for them when it mattered. When they needed you.

Those kids barely knew the real Clay, but that didn’t stop them from relentlessly scapegoating me as an act of “justice.” Though if anyone cared about justice for Clay, how come nobody ever properly investigated who stole my backpack and exposed his private life to the school? No one was held responsible for that. None of the teachers or staff lost their jobs, and no students were expelled. As far as I could tell, the cops just swept everything under the rug. One fewer queer in their town.

Then Clay’s ghost started appearing to me. Always silent, just like I was, simply staring at me with all his thoughts and unshed tears and ruined dreams.

Camden’s acceptance letter arrived around that time. I had been interested in antique books ever since the summer job I’d had at a used bookstore in seventh grade. The owner was a collector of nineteenth-century chapbooks and penny dreadfuls. But after Clay’s suicide, my hobby took on a whole new meaning.

I had always wondered why I never saw people like Clay or me as heroes of stories, why it was so difficult to find accounts of queer lives in libraries and museums. Clay and I weren’t the only gay boys ever to walk the Earth. But given that people like us were routinely prosecuted for “indecent” behavior and outright censored by those who were supposed to preserve art, most writing about someone like us was concealed from the public eye. Museums and libraries display love letters from Mark Twain but not Oscar Wilde. Jane Austen’s family tossed most of her correspondence into the fire. Our words to each other are snatched away and destroyed before anyone has a chance to feel them. If our writing is lucky enough to survive, it quietly gathers centuries of dust in archives and rich people’s private collections. It might be naive of me, but I want to save them, to show our words to the world. That’s why I want to work in conservation and why I can never burn Clay’s letters. They are what remains of us, a truth that deserves to be known.