"...but Karen happened to be looking out the window, so she saw the squad car pulling up! She yelled 'oh my God, it's the cops!'" Donna waved her hands, animating the story she was telling. Naomi was half listening, and flipping through an old Newsweek; every once in a while she looked up at Donna and smiled. Hyde was slouched in the lawn chair, but I could tell he was listening to Donna intently - as interested as I was, and probably less appalled, by the story of how the entire student newspaper staff had almost been arrested. It was just Donna, Naomi, Hyde and me in the basement tonight. Jackie and Kelso both had important tests to study for, and God only knew where Fez was. "So Naomi said, 'burn the photos,'" Donna went on. "So we put them in this metal garbage can and we lit them on fire. But then the smoke detector went off! So Naomi stayed to deal with the photos, and Karen and Jeff and I ran downstairs and the cops were right there! So I told them that we were making popcorn on the hot plate and it caught on fire but it was OK now and we had to go tell the janitor to turn the alarm off, and by the time they got upstairs Naomi had flushed everything down the toilet!"
"Wow, Donna," Hyde said with a smile, "Looks like you might take away my 'most likely to go to jail' title."
Donna smirked. "Not likely, since you've already been to jail."
"Overnight lockup doesn't count."
Naomi looked intrigued. "What were you arrested for?" she asked him.
"Stupidity," I muttered under my breath.
"Possession," Hyde said.
"Of what, pot?" Naomi asked.
"Yeah."
Naomi smiled. "Do you have any now?"
"...and then I sat on his head," Donna finished, giggling.
Naomi giggled too, and Hyde just smirked.
"OK, well, what about the time our families went camping together and I dug up a bunch of worms and put them in your sleeping bag?" I said. If we were going to get stoned and then tell Naomi all our embarrassing childhood stories, there had to be some balance.
"Wait, I think I remember that story," Hyde said. "Didn't you get mixed up in the dark and put them in your sleeping bag?"
Donna laughed so hard she snorted. "Yeaaah. He screamed like a girl."
"Damn, I forgot that part," I mumbled. I hadn't, but I'd hoped that they had.
"Hey, remember the next year when we brought Hyde with us?" Donna went on. She turned to Naomi, putting a hand on her leg. "The campground was by a lake, and Hyde convinced Eric and me to steal this rowboat with him."
I remembered. "We made it halfway across the lake, and then the wind picked up and we couldn't make it back the other way."
"I said we should swim back," Donna said, nodding lazily on the edge of laughing again. "But neither of these dorks knew how to swim."
Hyde half-shrugged. "Edna never had money for swimming lessons."
Naomi looked at me, so I pointed at my ear. "I used to get a lot of ear infections when I was little. Couldn't put my head underwater."
"So what did you do?" Naomi asked.
"We beached the boat and walked back," Donna explained. "It took an hour!"
"Yeah, and after that Donna taught us how to swim," I added. "Man, those were the days."
"You know what's cool?" Naomi asked absently, pulling a loose thread out of her jacket sleeve. "The way you all grew up together, and now you're all gay. That is just fucking awesome. I think I was the only one in my whole damn high school."
"What?" said Hyde.
"Um, Donna?" My voice went all squeaky. "You told Naomi about us?"
Hyde held up his hand in a 'stop' gesture, frowning behind his sunglasses. "Donna? Are you a lesbo now?"
"Dammit, Naomi, you weren't supposed to say anything." Donna punched her girlfriend in the arm.
"Ow! What was that for?" Naomi rubbed her arm glared at Donna. "Didn't they already know?"
"No, Eric knew, but Hyde didn't."
"Fuck, Donna, this is too complicated." Naomi hugged her knees and pouted.
"I'm sorry, sweetie, sorry I hit you," Donna murmured, kissing Naomi on the lips. "It's OK."
I just stared for a moment, transfixed by the sight of my ex-fiancee kissing another chick and calling her 'sweetie.' It was kind of hot. Weird, but hot.
Hyde, on the other hand, was staring at me. "Thanks for keeping me up to date, Forman."
"Donna swore me to secrecy!"
"Whatever, man." He stood up and left the circle, headed for the furnace room. We all watched until he shut the door behind him.
"You shouldn't keep secrets from your boyfriend," Naomi said to me, very solemn with a giggly Donna hanging over her shoulder.
"Aren't they cute together?" Donna said to Naomi. "Do you know, they were in love the whole time I was dating Eric and I never guessed?"
Now Donna was pissing me off. "Why don't you two go home now?"
"Yeah, we'll get out of here so you can go kiss and make up." Donna giggled again. "I still can't believe it! They kiss each other, Naomi! I've known them since we were six!"
Naomi, who did seem less stoned than Donna at this point, gave me a kind of apologetic look while she yanked Donna to her feet. "C'mon, honey, let's go. It's time for bed."
As soon as they were gone, I knocked on Hyde's door. He didn't answer, but I opened it anyway. He was lying on his cot, listening to the Doors.
"OK, I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Donna and Naomi," I said.
He sat up. "Yeah, what I want to know is what you told Donna and Naomi."
"I only told Donna."
"You shouldn't have told anyone," he snapped.
I felt kind of uncomfortable - guilty for talking to Donna, and resentful that I was feeling that way. I wished he'd be more Zen about this. "Donna and Naomi won't tell anyone else," I said to reassure him, sitting down on the cot next to him. "They're in the same situation as us."
He didn't say anything, but I saw his jaw muscles move just a bit, like he was clenching his teeth. He was still mad at me. Damn it, words were not getting me out of this. I leaned in and kissed him. He stubbornly kept his lips pressed together, not letting me in. I traced a line of kisses down his neck, hoping he'd relent and we could make out and it would fix everything. I guess I should have told him about Donna, since I'd told Donna about us - at least I could see why he'd think I should have. OK, I'd screwed up - but all the dynamics here were so new and confusing!
"Get off me, Forman." He pushed me away, hard enough I nearly fell off the cot.
"I'm sorry, OK?" I said. His attitude was starting to piss me off a little, even though I knew I was in the wrong. "When Donna told me, she swore me to secrecy because she was scared of what everyone else will think."
"But you couldn't wait to tell her about us," he said, very cold. The light on him was too dim for me to see his eyes behind his sunglasses, and I had a sudden impulse to just rip them off his face and stop him from shutting me out this way.
"It just - it came up in conversation! Yesterday night!" I hated how he was making me so defensive. "She wanted to know why you and Jackie broke up."
"Yeah, Forman, I understand what's going on now." He stood up and crossed his arms, glaring down at me. "Your girlfriend dumped you for another girl. The only way to get back at her for that was to get with a guy."
"What?!" My voice went all squeaky with disbelief. "That's about the stupidest paranoid theory you've ever come up with!"
"Oh yeah?" he said, way quieter than I was talking. "You're still in love with her. I saw the way you were looking at her."
"No! Well, maybe, yeah, she's still attractive and I still care about her, but that page is turned, man! She's batting for the other side now!" Damn, that came out all wrong.
"And what side are you on? You expect me to think you can love me, when you're still hot for Donna?"
"OK, what, you think I'm pretending to be gay just to get back at Donna for being gay? That is - Hyde, that's fucking insane!"
"Isn't it an amazing coincidence, though?" His posture radiated angry sarcasm, while his voice stayed calm. "All your life it's girls, girls, girls, and then Donna tells you she's a lesbian, and suddenly you want to kiss me."
"Jesus Hyde, you've slept with way the hell more women than I ever have! And I'm not the one who freaks out at the idea of sex with a guy!" OK, even as I was saying it, I knew, I knew that I shouldn't say it. But somehow the words kept right on flowing out of my mouth. He was attacking me, so I attacked him right back.
And it worked. Oh yeah. I didn't even see the expression on his face, he was out the door so fast. I heard the outside door slam.
"I am a dumbass," I said out loud. That barely even scratched the surface. I swore at myself, and punched the cot.
Right, now what? Hyde probably hated me now. How the hell did I manage to screw up so badly, so fast? It had to be a new world record. He was probably begging Jackie to take him back right now....or worse.
I went out into the basement, and saw that he'd taken his coat - not likely he was just going next door, then. I grabbed my own coat, and went outside.
The El Camino was gone. I swore again, and ran back in the house for my car keys.
By the time I got the Vista Cruiser on the road, Hyde had at least two minute's lead on me. I had no idea what direction he'd gone in. I tried the Hub first. They were just closing up, and he wasn't there. I drove out to the reservoir, remembering how he'd gone there one other time when I'd hurt him badly - but he wasn't there, either.
I was worried, and I didn't know where to go next. I drove home, hoping he'd gone back while I was out looking - but no.
I had to find him. I had to take it back, tell him I was sorry, make him see that I did love him. And I had to save him from the fucking demons I'd conjured up.
I started driving again, aimlessly this time, just looking for the El Camino. Point Place had never seemed so big.
I drove, and drove. I lost track of where I'd been; the residential streets blended together. I thought I saw the El Camino a dozen times, but each time it turned out to be some other car or truck. Not his.
I searched for hours. Around four a.m. I realized I was too tired to drive any more. You'd think the worry gnawing at the pit of my stomach would be enough to keep me awake, but no. I caught myself nodding off at the wheel for a second, and that scared me enough to send me home. I held my breath as I pulled into the driveway, hoping again that he'd come home while I was out looking - but, just like earlier, there was no sign of him.
It was four a.m., and I was too tired to drive, but I wasn't ready to give up yet. I just needed help. I needed Donna.
It wasn't too hard to climb up to her bedroom window - just stand on top of the fence, scramble onto the garage roof, then jump over to the roof under her window. I'd done it plenty of times back in the good old days.
I peeked through the window. By the soft glow of Jackie's unicorn night light, I could see three sleeping forms: one on the cot, one on the bed, and one on the floor between them. I couldn't tell who was who, so I just tapped on the glass. Nobody inside moved, so I rapped the windowpane with my knuckles.
They all sat up. Jackie, on the bed, shrieked, at the same time as Naomi, on the cot, yelped "Shit, there's a man at the window!"
Donna, who'd been lying on the floor, stood up, pushed her hair back from her face sleepily, and gave a little wave in my direction. She said something to the others - I couldn't hear what, since unlike Jackie and Naomi she wasn't yelling - and then climbed over the cot so she could open the window.
"OK, what the hell, Eric?" she asked. Jackie and Naomi both glared at me in the background.
"I need to talk to you," I said. "Alone."
"It's four in the morning."
"I know. I need to talk to you now."
I heard a pounding at Donna's bedroom door, and then Bob yelling "Is everything all right in there?"
"It's OK, Dad, it's just Eric at the window!" Donna called back over her shoulder. I cringed.
"Oh, all right! Good night then." Bob was a funny guy.
"Eric, come in so I can shut the window, it's freezing outside," Donna said.
I climbed in, careful not to step on the cot or the blankets.
"Eric," Jackie said, "this is pathetic. She dumped you. Go away."
"Donna, can we go downstairs?" I said quietly. I leaned in close to her ear, and whispered, "It's about Hyde."
"OK," Donna said out loud, "but this better be good."
We left Jackie and Naomi and went downstairs to the kitchen. Donna turned on the lights and then looked at me. "What the hell is going on?"
"We had a fight. Hyde walked out. I've been looking for him all night."
"That sucks, Eric, but couldn't we talk about it in the morning?" She yawned, covering her mouth with her hand as an afterthought.
"No!" I kind of shouted; I was too sleep-deprived and agitated for a calm conversation. "I have to find him. And I can't drive anymore, I started falling asleep at the wheel. I need your help."
"Whoa, Eric, cut the drama." Donna smiled a bit, which was probably meant to be reassuring. "Hyde's a big boy, he'll come home when he wants to. Did he take the El Camino?" I nodded. "OK, so he's gone somewhere to cool off. You can talk it out when he comes back."
"Uh, no. You don't understand. It was - fuck, it was a bad fight. And last time something like this happened-" I stopped. I was thinking about the night two years ago when I'd dumped Hyde for Donna, and he'd gone out to the reservoir and got drunk on moonshine and nearly frozen to death. I wasn't quite ready to give Donna those details. "He went out and did something really stupid."
She sighed. "OK, look. I'll make us some coffee and get dressed. You go lie down on the couch and have a ten minute nap. Then I'll go out searching with you."
"You promise you'll wake me up in ten minutes?" I was worried she still wasn't taking me seriously.
"I promise." She gave a wry smile and held up a hooked little finger. "Pinky swear."
It seemed like as soon as I'd closed my eyes, Donna was shaking my shoulder - but the hot mug of coffee she was pressing into my hand, and the fact that she was now dressed in jeans and her winter coat, told me I must've slept at least ten minutes.
With our travel mugs of coffee in hand, we went out to the Vista Cruiser and Donna took the wheel.
"You didn't tell Jackie and Naomi what's going on, did you?" I asked. My head felt fuzzy - that short nap had left me feeling even worse than before.
"Nah, I just said you needed me to drive you somewhere, it was an emergency. You can bet there'll be some wild speculation, though." She glanced over at me. "OK, you'd better give me a good explanation now, because the one you gave me before sucked."
"So why'd you agree to come out here?"
"You looked like you were going to cry." She didn't quite stop herself from smirking as she stopped at the first intersection. "Which way? Where are we going?"
"Uh, I dunno... try north. I've just been combing the town all night, looking for him."
"This is nuts," she said, turning left. "When did he leave?"
"Um, not long after you and Naomi did."
"God, Eric, he could practically be in Canada by now! What makes you think we can find him?"
"Fuck," I swore softly, letting my head fall against the window with a thud. The glass was nice and cold. Somehow, it hadn't even occurred to me that he could have left town. "OK, let's search along the highway."
"Which one?"
"Uh...towards Madison."
"OK." Donna frowned. "For the record, this makes no sense, but I'm going along with it anyway."
"Thanks," I whispered.
"So, what the hell is going on? Was he mad at you because Naomi and I knew about the two of you? Or because you didn't tell him about us?"
"Yeah, kind of. But that wasn't the important part." I took a sip of my coffee. It tasted like hell; Donna hadn't put any sugar or milk in. "He's got this idea that I only got with him to get back at you for dumping me for a girl."
"Seriously? That's - wow, that's unbelievably paranoid, even for Hyde."
"Yeah." I gave a hollow sort laugh. "So then we got into this argument where we accused each other of being straight...."
Donna laughed too. "That's messed up."
"And then he stormed out," I finished.
Donna drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Look, Eric, I'm sorry I got you in trouble with Hyde. But I think you're acting a little crazy here. He's pissed at you now, but that's no reason to drive all over Wisconsin in the middle of the night looking for him. If by some miracle we do find him, he'll still be mad at you and it won't solve anything. Just wait for him to come around."
"It's not about him being mad at me." I paused, watching the bleak December streets flow by outside. Winter gets pretty damn ugly while it's waiting for the first snow.
We were almost out of town. She was still taking me at my word, driving towards the highway for what she thought was no good reason. And I'd known she would - because we had a bond of friendship that was even stronger than blood ties. All three of us did - her, and me, and Hyde.
It was time to tell her the whole truth.
"What is it about, then?" she asked.
I squeezed my fingers tight around my coffee mug. "It's possible that he might be just a little self-destructive."
"What makes you think that?" Donna asked, sounding a little worried but mostly puzzled. "I mean, OK, you had a bad fight - but you're the high-strung one. Hyde's got the Zen."
"I'm not-" I started to protest, but then I remembered that wasn't the important point here, so I let it drop. "Remember I told you we kissed two years ago and then we never talked about it again?"
"Hell yeah. You blew my mind."
"That was after you and me started dating."
"What?" She glanced over at me, her eyes wide. "Oh my God, you cheated on me with Hyde?"
"Uh, yeah." Well, that was an awkward moment. But again, it was beside the point. "And then I after I told him it'd been a mistake to kiss him and sleep with him-"
"You slept with him while you were dating me!?"
"Slept, just slept, not sex! Which is kind of the point, because he thought I dumped him for you because he wouldn't have sex with me."
"Damn, Eric, good thing I've already broken up with you or I'd have to kick your ass." Despite her words, she sounded more amused than mad. "Wait, Hyde wouldn't have sex with you? Is this where accusing each other of being straight comes into it?"
"Yeah." I took a hot, bitter gulp of coffee to prepare myself for letting Donna know what an asshole I was. "See, I brought that up in the fight. He was accusing me of using him to get back at you. So I hit back....with the sex thing."
"OK, I don't get it yet." Donna frowned. "Hyde doesn't want to have sex with you? And this is a huge issue? Do you think he is straight?"
"No." I rubbed my temples. I was starting to get a throbbing headache. "I think it has more to do with Stu."
"Stu who?" Donna asked. Before I could answer, she swore. "Oh my God, you mean Edna's Stu. Fuck."
"Yeah." A road sign flashed by: Madison, 60 miles. "Whenever we start messing around, Hyde starts remembering about him. It's pretty fucked up."
"Wow," she said softly. Then, after a moment, "He told me to forget about it, that it didn't bother him anymore."
"You mean back after we first found out?" I asked.
She nodded. "I didn't really believe him, but what could I do about it? Besides, nothing ever seems to bother him."
"I know," I agreed quietly. "Like two years ago when I told him kissing him was a mistake, he just said 'OK,' or something lame like that. I thought he didn't even care. Then as soon as I was out of the room, he walked out to the reservoir and started drinking."
"Oh, man," she said. Then a pause. I wasn't really sure how long the pauses in our conversation were - I was so tired my time sense was all skewed. "I guess it could have been worse..." Donna added.
"Donna, it was the middle of the night, it was January, it was zero degrees out, and he was drinking some kind of moonshine that tasted like lighter fluid."
"Oh my God," she breathed. "What happened?"
"I went back downstairs to try to explain myself better, and he was gone. There was fresh snow outside, so I was able to follow his footprints. He was in pretty bad shape when I found him. I - I don't think he would have made it home on his own." I felt myself getting panicky again, just remembering it. It was cold tonight, too. Just below freezing, not nearly as cold as the other time - but cold enough. I took a swallow of coffee to calm myself down.
"Eric," Donna said in a low, scared tone, "do you think he meant to kill himself?"
"I don't think he meant to, exactly," I said slowly, giving voice to these thoughts for the first time ever. "But I don't think he cared much either way."
"Why the hell didn't you say anything? Get him some help?"
"Well, he seemed OK afterwards."
"Jesus Christ, Eric! Somebody doesn't just attempt suicide one day and then poof! they're all better the next day!"
I closed my eyes and pressed my forehead against my window's frosty glass. My head was really pounding now. "OK, you're right. I was an idiot. But what else could I have done? Can you see convincing Hyde to go to a psychiatrist?"
"Good point," Donna admitted. "And even if he did...it probably wouldn't have gone so well. A lot of psychiatrists think being gay is a mental illness."
"Seriously?" I could almost laugh. I certainly would believe it right then if they told me I was crazy.
"Seriously. Naomi's a psychology major, she's told me all about it."
I felt us taking a turn and slowing down. I opened my eyes. "Where are we?"
"Truck stop," Donna explained, parking the car. "We can go in and see if he's been through here."
The guy behind the counter hadn't seen anyone who looked like Hyde, but a big, red-faced trucker who was finishing up what looked like a massive dinner perked up when he heard us mention an El Camino.
"Sure, I passed it going the other way about an hour and a half up the road, on the other side of Madison." He grinned wide, showing his yellow teeth. "That there's a beautiful vehicle, it is."
We thanked the trucker, and I bought a refill of bad coffee for my travel mug, and we headed back out into the dark parking lot.
"He's got a huge lead on us," Donna said, letting me into the Vista Cruiser. "There's no way we're going to catch him."
"Come on," I begged her as she went around to the driver's side. "At least now we know we're going the right way."
Donna started up the car, and checked the instrument panel. "Crap. You have much money on you? 'Cause I don't have any, and we're almost out of gas."
I didn't have much. This hadn't been a well-planned road trip. After I bought as much gas as I could pay for at the truck stop's gas station, we had what looked like barely enough to get home.
"He's on his own," Donna said, pulling us back out onto the highway, heading for home this time. "There's just no way we can get to him." She reached over and squeezed my hand. "He'll come home."
We drove in silence for a while. I stared blankly out the window at the moon rising over farmers' fields.
"Maybe Hyde could talk to Naomi," Donna said suddenly, startling me out of my trance.
"Huh?"
"We have to get him to talk to someone, right? He wants us to think he's fine, but he's got some serious problems. We can't just let it slide this time."
"OK. But why Naomi?"
"He might be more willing to talk to her than to a total stranger," Donna said. "And she's studying to be a psychologist."
"No offense to your girlfriend, Donna, but I don't think three months of Psychology 101 makes her ready to fix people."
"First of all, she's not a freshman. She's a senior."
"You're dating a senior?" For just a second, my mood lightened. "Way to go, Donna."
"Yeah." She gave a sort of sheepish grin. "Anyway... not only that, she used to volunteer at a women's shelter, and she's been volunteering on a crisis hotline for a couple years." She glanced over at me, to see my reaction I guess. "She has experience helping people who've been sexually assaulted, Eric."
It was hard to think about what Donna was suggesting. I had to keep pushing back my deep, desperate fear that it was all irrelevant, because I'd never see Hyde again. Also, my head was pounding and I was starting to feel nauseous, probably from the coffee.
"What do you think, Eric? Will you try to get Hyde to talk to Naomi?"
"OK." It had to be better than doing nothing.
"I'll talk to her first, make sure it's OK with her. Don't worry, I won't tell her who it's about."
"OK."