Nine

I lost track of time after I locked the door and shoved a chair under the handle. First I wandered around the small room, then I flopped onto my bed, then I sat on the floor. Finally I repeated the exercise—twice—four times. I was on my fifth wandering when I heard someone banging on the door.

“Miro! Miro! Are you in there?” they shouted. Marian. Why did he want to come in where I was? “I know you’re in there, open the goddamn door!” He rattled at the handle. I stared very hard at the door, hoping maybe he would go away.

I stared some more.

“Open the fucking door or I’ll break it down!” he yelled. I believed him that time and rushed to open the door. Look what I’d done just by association; I’d turned this gentle man into a monstrous screaming beast.

“Hi,” I mumbled, cracking open the door and shoving the chair aside.

“What the fuck’s wrong with you? Why are you locking me out? It was my room first, you know.” His face was red with exertion. “Well?”

“I, um, didn’t want to be disturbed,” I muttered, staring at the floor.

“It’s a goddamn self-locking door! I’m the only one who could get in! Who did you think was going to disturb you? What the hell’s wrong?”

I cracked my knuckles.

“I don’t know.”

Before I knew what had happened, Marian had smacked me hard across the mouth, shocking me into silence. I was getting sick and tired of quiet in rooms; it never led to anything good.

“What—what?” I sputtered, once I had regained the power of speech.

“That’s for being so fucking childish. It’s for keeping your mouth shut when it should be open and open when it should be shut. It’s for whining and complaining and being petulant and generally annoying the hell out of everyone who comes in contact with you!” he rattled off in a long breath. He sighed.

“It’s not my fault Ziggy hates me.” It wasn’t. I’d spent all this time worshipping and idolizing and loving him, only to come meet him and discover that he hated me, hated my very bones, would do anything in his power to kill me and be rid of me.

“Ziggy doesn’t hate you—what on God’s green earth are you talking about?”

“He hates me and he wants me dead. I’ve made him so angry that he’ll never want to look at me or see me again. He already doesn’t. He averts his eyes from me in the locker room and hardly acknowledges me on the ice. He doesn’t even see me off it. If I were to go dive into the Great Salt Lake right now, he’d be overjoyed,” I said breathlessly. It was all becoming clear. It wouldn’t have mattered anything I’d done—even if I hadn’t known he was alive until then he would have hated me anyway. Of course; why hadn’t I thought of this earlier? It was just me being stupid again.

“What the fuck?” Marian said strangely. I looked up and realized he was staring at me, as hard or harder as I’d stared at the doorknob wishing it would go away—as hard or harder as I’d stared at Ziggy’s picture at home—as hard or harder as I’d loved Ziggy.

“Can’t you see it? It hasn’t made a difference all the time I’ve spent loving him, he’ll always hate me. And—”

“Loving him? What are you talking about?” Marian cut me off. “You didn’t love him.”

“Of course I did!” I said excitedly. “I loved him more than anything in the world! He was my world, my planet, my soul. Everything I was belonged to him, the king of my life.”

Marian stared again.

“You did not love him. You can’t love a person until you know them—really know them! Not obsess over them! Love! Do you even know the meaning of the fucking word?”

I looked down again. Why did this kid think he knew more about love than me?

“You’re saying that because you think I’m weird.” Again, words I didn’t intend to say came spilling out of my mouth.

“I don’t think you’re weird!”

“Yes you do.”

“You’re not! You’re completely normal—except for this Ziggy obsession. You would be! Why didn’t you give yourself the chance to be normal when you had it?” Marian’s voice wavered, going up and down.

“You do NOT think I’m normal! You mentioned it yourself! You think I’m weird and you want to keep me that way! You want to keep me gay and weird! You want to keep me that way because you’re gay! You want company! Misery loves company!” My voice was perfectly accusatory.

“I am gay, but that doesn’t have anything to do with the issue! It doesn’t matter a freaking bit if you’re gay—that’s the normal part! It’s fine! The obsession has got to stop!”

Somehow no one had noticed that we were both screaming at the tops of our lungs by this point, part English and part Slovakian, some parts just incoherent rambling.

“It is abnormal! You had to mention it and that means it’s different. Different is not normal and not normal is bad!” I screeched.

“What do you not understand? GAY IS NORMAL. OBSESSION IS NOT!” he shouted. My head was spinning and my ears were ringing and Marian was contradicting everything I’d finally been understanding in the past few days—what was wrong with him? What was wrong with me? Why bad? Why abnormal.

I grabbed my face where Marian had smacked me and closed my eyes.

“I was normal. I wanted so badly to be normal. So badly,” I said under my breath, almost too quiet for myself to hear.

I leapt up from the bed.

“HE ruined it! You ruined it! You’ve ruined me, ruined me!” I screamed.