The nurse seemed to buy it; she smiled at him without questioning his age.
“You sure are dressed funny for a guy who's visiting relatives,” Jase said.
Luis glanced down and saw he was still wearing the tuxedo slacks and a white shirt. He saw his tuxedo jacket resting over a chair in the nurse's office. He didn't know how to respond, so he shrugged his shoulders and said, “I packed lightly for the trip. There was a party last night.”
The nurse looked at her watch and frowned. “Well, if everything is okay, you can both go home now. It's after four o'clock, you know.” She seemed more interested in getting out of the school than worrying about a strange kid in a tuxedo who'd passed out in the auditorium.
Jase pulled Luis's jacket off the back of the chair and he handed it to him. “Here you go, buddy,” he said, and then he turned toward the door and said goodbye to the nurse.
Luis put the jacket over his arm and said, “Thank you. I'm sorry if I was any bother.”
The nurse was fishing around in her purse for her keys. She didn't even look up. “No bother, honey. You'll be fine. Now you go on home to your relatives and have a good night.”
Luis smiled and looked at the calendar again. Without realizing it, he said, “1986? What the fuck?”
Thankfully, he spoke softly: a tone below a stage whisper. The nurse smiled and lifted her car keys out of her purse. “What was that? I didn't hear you.”
Luis smiled and walked toward the door. “It was nothing important. I just said thanks again.”
“Don't mention it,” she said.
When Luis walked out into the long dark hallway, he looked left and then right. The walls were light gray and the tiles on the floor were a darker shade of gray. He wasn't sure which way to go. There was no one around to follow in either direction. At least if there had been a crowd he could have blended in. So he turned to the right and started walking very slowly. He was still a little dizzy and he remained close to the wall in case he lost his balance. When he reached the end of the hall, he looked to the left and saw the main entrance where the folding tables had been set up for the class reunion. He remembered this without any problems. The main entrance looked almost exactly the same as it had the last time he'd seen it. So he started walking in that direction, hoping the front entrance was still there.
The heels of his expensive black Prada half boots clicked and echoed all the way down the hall. As he approached the wall of glass shelves in the main lobby, he noticed the large photo of Jase wasn't there anymore. He turned and rubbed his jaw. He looked left and then right again. Two young women wearing tight jeans and short blouses burst through a set of double doors. They were carrying school books, walking close to each other. It took a minute for him to realize one of the girls was Betsy, the middle aged woman he'd met at Jase's reunion who had been handing out name tags.
The girls looked him up and down and started laughing. Luis felt like he'd just plunged right back into all the drama and deceit of his own high school days. The girls walked faster and gave him a few backward glances as they headed in the direction from where he'd just come. He smiled at them and turned toward the auditorium doors. Though he had no idea what was happening to him, he knew he had to get out of this tuxedo as fast as he could. He wished Jase had stayed there with him. He'd always been able to depend on Jase, and now Jase didn't even know who he was. He hadn't felt this alone since the first day he arrived in New York on his own.
Luis remembered someone at the reunion mention the school gym was connected to the auditorium. So he walked to the front of the dark auditorium and opened the first set of double doors he saw. This led him into a huge empty gymnasium, with a large polished basketball floor and folding bleachers on both sides that slid out from the walls. He looked both ways, and then turned left again. A sign over a single door read, “Men,” and he figured that was the men's locker room. But as he pushed the door forward, it stopped short halfway because there was someone else on the other side.
Luis stepped to the side and said, “I'm sorry. I didn't see you coming.” He felt naked, standing there in a disheveled Tuxedo.
An attractive young man with dark wavy hair and large brown eyes gazed at him and said, “It's cool, man. No problem.” Then he continued walking out of the locker room, leaving Luis standing there in the middle of the doorway with his mouth wide open.
Luis watched the guy walk away until he couldn't see him anymore. The guy wore tight running shorts, a skimpy black tank top, and thick-soled running shoes. He had the sexiest, hairy legs Luis had ever seen on a man, and he walked on the balls of his feet as if he were ready to break into a graceful run at any moment. Luis recognized the guy from the photo Luis had seen at the reunion. It was Alec, the guy in the wheel chair who had rescued him from that hideous little dick Kyle creature at the reunion. But Alec didn't recognize Luis. He didn't even give him a second glance.
A moment later, Luis walked into the men's locker room and looked around. There didn't seem to be anyone in there, so he started opening and closing lockers, hoping to find something decent to wear. All he needed was a pair of jeans. He could still look normal with the white shirt and his black quarter boots. There had to be something in the locker room that would fit him. He hated stealing anything from anyone. But Luis had learned how to survive a long time ago, way before he'd met Jase and had a lucrative modeling career. And sometimes survival meant breaking a few rules. And he wasn't really stealing. He'd remember where he found the jeans and he'd pay the person back eventually.
But most of the lockers were sealed tightly. And those he could open were empty, except for a few stray jock straps. So he walked out of the rear exit of the locker room, into a small hallway that led to the coach's office, and spotted something interesting. At the end of the hall, he saw a large bin overflowing with clothes. A cardboard, handwritten sign above the bin read, “Clothing Donations for Annual Charity Drive.”
Luis took a deep breath and jogged back to the clothing bin. But when he started rummaging through it, he found it was filled with mostly young women's clothes from the l980's. There wasn't a decent sweatshirt or denim jacket to be found. It was all frilly blouses, soft sweaters, and pants in every color of the rainbow. There were a few cute dresses that would have fit perfectly, but that would be worse than the tuxedo. He was about to give up and go back to the men's locker room to look around in there again when he came across the only pair of jeans in the bin. He pulled them out fast and held them up to his waist. The length was perfect. They were those acid dyed jeans that had been popular for about three days back in the l980's. Luis had only been a little kid back then, but he remembered his mother had a friend who wore jeans just like them, and she'd worn them well into the l990's long after they'd gone out of style. Unfortunately, these could have belonged to his mother's friend. They were women's jeans and they had a discount designer label inside Luis had never seen before.