Come Sit By Me

by Hoobler, Thomas

  I floated through the week in a kind of haze. I got a 73 on a math test, and I’m usually good in math. On the one day when I finally had to do some work on the newspaper, Terry asked me what was wrong. I had misspelled half a dozen words in this article I wrote. I knew what caused it: I was channelling Caleb and spelling like him too.

  Every time I opened my locker, I thought about the kid who had it before me. I shouldn’t have tried to find out what he was like. I should have just shrugged off the fact that I had his locker and made a joke out of it. Charge kids a quarter to look inside.

  But why did I feel sorry for a kid who had shot down seven people?

  I managed to keep away from North for a couple of days. I brought my lunch in a bag and ate it in the corridor near my locker. Even so, he caught me by the arm one day after gym and said, “Hey, I didn’t piss you off, did I?”

  “No, no. Why would you say that?”

  “You know, the other day at lunch we were just fooling around.”

  I tried to edge away from him, but he had a firm grip. “Yeah, I’ve just had a lot to do lately. I’ve got to get my grades up, my Dad says.”

  He didn’t look like he believed me. “I just wanted to make sure you came to the game Friday night,” he went on. “You know, we got a new place to go now.”

  I nodded, thinking of Colleen and what she had under her shirt. It was tempting. “I’ll try to make it,” I said.

  “I got something special lined up,” he told me. “You’ll like it.”

  Well, that made me curious enough to want to see the game. I knew the real sporting events started afterward. I sat next to Kyle, the freshman who started reporting the games when I was grounded. He was so much better at writing sports than I was that Terry decided to let him keep doing it. Fine with me.

  Kyle was a nut on sports, and he made kind of a running commentary on the game. He was practicing to be a sports announcer. To me, things looked pretty much the same as the last game I had gone to. Hamilton was down 24-9 after the first half. The kid who kicked field goals for us was getting better. Lots of practice, I assumed.

  “You notice something about North?” Kyle asked me.

  Yeah, he’s a real killer, I thought. “What?” I said.

  “He’s playing for stats,” Kyle said.

  I thought about this, and decided I had no clue. “What’s that mean?”

  “See, if you’re evaluating a quarterback’s play, you notice how many I’s he’s got.”

  “I’s?”

  “Interceptions,” Kyle said, in the same tone of voice Ms. Clement used when she was introducing chick lit books to me. “North almost never has an interception, because he throws the ball away or eats it instead of throwing into traffic.”

  I nodded. I sort of understood.

  “And he doesn’t fumble either,” said Kyle, “because if he’s tackled he just tucks the ball in and takes the sack.”

  “Isn’t that good?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily,” said Kyle. “A QB who takes more risks might make a few more receptions, or try to run for a gain. Kyle’s just playing for stats, not for the team.”

  “Is he good enough to get a scholarship somewhere?” I asked.

  “Probably,” Kyle replied. “Especially if somebody is just looking at stats and doesn’t actually send a scout to watch him.”

  I nodded. Everything North does is for North, I thought.

  I hung around after the game as North strutted around, taking congratulations. He had thrown for a couple touchdowns in the fourth quarter. Of course the game was out of reach by then, and the other team was hardly trying. That was when North got his best stats, as Kyle would say.

  Finally he came over, with a couple of girls in tow. They were spectacular, at least by Hamilton High standards. Both cheerleaders, naturally enough. “This’s Bree and Vicky,” he said. I had seen them around school. “They’re going with us tonight.” The girls gave me big smiles, almost identical. “I told them you’re from New York,” he said.

  And probably that I had a small role on Gossip Girl. If not Jersey Shore.

  I was a little disappointed, I admit. “Where’s Colleen?” I asked.

  North waved his hand vaguely in another direction. “She’s got something else to do,” he said.

  He looked at me funny. He could see I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down with joy. As I rightly should have been. He leaned forward and said in a lower voice. “Vicky’ll give you the beej of your life, man.” His eyes shone. I could see it was a promise that he would keep. Or she would.

  I looked again at Vicky and Bree, who couldn’t have missed hearing him. Their smiles were even bigger than before. In fact, it suddenly struck me that they were eyeing me like they were ready to pounce. Like two vampires. I know that looks like a cheap shot considering all I’ve said about vampire books, and anyway vampires are mostly men.

  But still. There they were. Ready to suck something besides my blood. It gave me the creeps. I know that if you’re a boy, you probably think I was an idiot. But you weren’t there.

  “I think I’ll go home,” I said.

  chapter nineteen

  WORD TRAVELS FAST, at least in a small town like Hamilton. By the time I got to school on Monday, the word was that I was gay. Somebody whistled at me when I was parking my car. I didn’t quite get it. Then when I got to my locker, I found that somebody else had written GAY on the door with a marker. I rubbed my thumb across the word, smearing it slightly. Well, the locker was famous for somebody else besides Caleb now.

  When I walked into my first class, world lit, everybody looked at me and then looked away. Except Terry, who motioned for me to come over and sit by her. “North told some people you were gay,” she whispered.

  “I’ll tell you about it later,” I said as Ms. Hayward entered the room.

  It was pretty much the same all morning. I was finding out what it was like to be an outsider—which I was anyway, I told myself.

  At lunch it got a little worse. When I came off the tray line, a guy at North’s table got up and mooned me. Actually dropped his trou and gave me a full moon. At lunch! A lot of people laughed too. Whoever was supposed to be monitoring the lunchroom did a pretty crappy job of it.

  After I sat down at an empty table, I saw Seese going by and tried to catch his eye. He glanced at me and hurried away. I had a pretty bad virus, all right. Just like Caleb.

  Terry finally showed up and sat across from me. “You know why North says you’re gay?” she said in a voice that indicated she was about to tell me.

  “I have a pretty good idea,” I said.

  “He tried to fix you up with Vicky Barker and you wouldn’t go.”

  I nodded. That was the mild version. I saw no reason to give Terry the details. I’d probably have to explain what a beej was. Maybe not.

  “Why wouldn’t you?” Terry asked.

  I sort of felt like she was being a little too nosy. “She’s not my type,” I said.

  Terry laughed out loud, and some people at the next table looked at us. “North thought he was doing you a favor,” she said. “Vicky isn’t exactly known as the morality queen of Hamilton.”

  “Or a bribe,” I shot back.

  “A bribe?” She was interested. “A bribe to do what?”

  I had to be careful. I didn’t want to tell her what I’d found or she’d want to read it. “To be his friend,” I said.

  She looked at me strangely. “Are you feeling all right?”

  “I’m just fine,” I said.

  “And I assume you’re not really gay.”

  “Not to my knowledge.”

  “You know how you can tell?” she said. Fortunately, she was off on a different topic. One that interested her more than what I was getting bribed for.

  I was a little afraid of what the ans
wer to her question might be, but I shrugged and said, “No. How?”

  She leaned forward. “What do you think about when you masturbate?”

  I leaned backward, my hands up as if to keep her away. I had never talked to a girl about masturbation before—ever. In fact, aside from a brief conversation with two guys in eighth grade about whether you could harm yourself, I never talked about it with anybody.

  When I didn’t answer, she looked concerned. “It’s not boys, is it?”

  “No!” I told her, maybe too forcefully.

  “Girls, then?” she said encouragingly.

  I could feel my face get hot. “Yes, girls.”

  “So you’re not gay,” she said.

  Problem solved.

  Except that I couldn’t go around to everybody else in the school and explain that I thought about girls when I masturbated.

  And when I went out to my car after school, somebody had sprayed GAY on the windshield with what looked like shaving cream. Or whipped cream, maybe swiped from the cafeteria.

  Fortunately, the windshield washer in the car took most of it off.

  Unfortunately, not before Susan saw it.

  “What’s that?” she said, pointing.

  “Nothing,” I told her. “See, I’m washing it off.”

  “But what’s it mean?”

  “Gay. Well, you know, happy, singing all the time.”

  “Don’t act dumb. I know what it means. It means you’re in love with a boy.”

  “I’m surprised you hadn’t heard that already,” I said. “Don’t you know everything that goes on in the school?”

  “Who is he?” she asked, suddenly curious.

  “Nobody!” I yelled. “I’m not in love with anybody.”

  “But if you were…” she began.

  “Just shut up,” I explained.

  Telling your little sister to shut up is like telling the ocean to stop making waves. She asked questions all the way home. I answered none of them, so by the time I turned off the car, she was already inside the house, crying and telling Dad that she couldn’t go back to that school.

  “Why not?” he asked. He was watching Oprah. Usually we don’t disturb him when he’s watching Oprah.

  “Because everybody will make fun of me because my brother is gay,” Susan said.

  Dad looked at me, blinking his eyes. “You’re gay?” he said.

  “No,” I told him. “Somebody’s just trying to get at me.”

  He cleared his throat. I could see he was going to make a speech. One of those stock speeches he had prepared for different occasions.

  “Because being gay is nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “It’s perfectly normal. By some estimates, at least ten percent of American males are gay. Let’s see, there are about 300 kids in your school, and assuming half of them are boys, that would mean at least fifteen are gay. So you’re not alone.”

  “Dad,” I told him. “I don’t need you to be understanding about this.”

  “Well, I want you to know that we love you no matter what.”

  “Then you’ll be glad to hear that I’m not really gay.”

  He nodded encouragingly. “But if you change your mind, you know you can always discuss anything with me.”

  Susan wailed.

  I closed the door to my room and lay down on the bed. Maybe in some schools there are fifteen gay kids, but it was extremely doubtful that Hamilton was one of them. In my old school in New York, that would have been true, but not here. Or if there were, the others were firmly in the closet. With the door locked.

  Because they didn’t want to be in the position I was in. Of being the object of contempt every day I went to school.

  So I could spend the rest of the year denying that I was gay. I should concentrate on taking the SATs and getting out of Hamilton forever. Almost eight months away. Maybe some tough guys would try to beat me up to show they weren’t gay. Colleen would certainly not want to go out with me. My own sister would hate me.

  Or I could cut off the story at its source.

  I thought about what would be the most effective message. Then I sat down at my computer and wrote an email to Patrot0000.

  My message was: “Unless you tell people I’m not gay, I’ll tell them who bought Caleb guns.”

  I didn’t sign it. He would know.

  He didn’t respond that evening. I guess he was trying to decide if he could deny everything and just say I was making it up.

  Nothing in my e-mails the next morning either. Maybe he’d just ignore me.

  But no. At school everything went pretty much as normal until I got to my math class. I sat by myself, but then North came over and sat in the desk next to me. He put out his hand for a high-five. I was so startled I almost didn’t respond. But then I high-fived him. He had a big smile on his face. I could feel the room relax. Everybody looked at me again, but in a totally different way from yesterday.

  I was in again. A straight arrow. A good guy, like them.

  Like North.

  chapter twenty

  I EVEN GOT TO SIT at the table with the jocks at lunch. Everything was fine. Girls smiled at me. Guys didn’t hide from me in the locker room. Life was back to normal.

  Except it wasn’t. North now knew that I knew. And I knew he knew that I…well, you get it. There was something unspoken in the air. And it wasn’t going to go away.

  The football team played an away game on Friday, at a town called Susquehanna. A few busloads of students were going along to cheer. Some other kids were driving up. On Thursday, North asked me if I was going. I said I didn’t think so.

  “We might actually win this one,” he said with a big grin. “And the girls get into a really good mood if we do.”

  I hesitated. No sense reinforcing the idea that I didn’t like girls. “Cool. I’ll see if I can make it,” I said.

  He nodded and then added, “You know, you and I ought to go hunting again sometime. It’s deer season now.”

  “Is that right?” I pretended to be interested, though a voice inside of me was warning: Be careful.

  “Didja ever eat venison?” he asked.

  “No, not really. Does it taste like turkey?”

  He laughed, knowing a joke when he heard one. “It tastes like what real men eat.” Then he added. “What about this weekend?” I could see he was trying to be casual about it. “We’ll get our deer before the other hunters chase them all away.”

  “I guess so,” I said. I don’t know why, but I felt like I needed to get this over with.

  “Sunday then,” he said. “I’ll pick you up at noon.”

  “Not Saturday?” I said.

  He winked. “Maybe we’ll be worn out on Saturday.” He nudged me, and I gave him a big grin.

  When I got home I phoned Terry and asked her if she was planning to go to the game Friday night.

  “Of course not,” she said. “I’m going to be working on my social studies paper.”

  “That’s not due until next Friday.”

  “If you want to do a good job, you have to allow time,” she said.

  “Don’t you ever take any time off?”

  “Of course, but not for something as lame as a football game.”

  “What if I took you to Peacefoods afterward?”

  There was a brief silence. “Is this a date?”

  “Well, kind of,” I said. “Not a date date. Sort of a research date.”

  “What are we going to research? Sex?”

  I wasn’t sure if she was kidding. “No, just the social habits of high school students.”

  “You could research that without me.”

  I took a deep breath. “Look. I have to go because North wants me to, and I don’t want to get on his bad side. But I don’t want him fixing me up with one of his
…harem, or whatever it is.”

  More silence. “Maybe you are gay,” she suggested.

  “Look, do you want to go or not?” I said.

  “All right,” she replied. “Just because I want to see how you do research.”

  One thing worried me: North liked my car because it had a back seat that he could use. Suppose he decided that it didn’t matter who I sat with in the front, as long as he could stretch out with his girl du jour in the back? I wondered what Terry’s reaction would be.

  Fortunately, she solved that problem. When I arrived to pick her up, she said, “Look, I hope this doesn’t destroy your ego or anything, but my car is a lot nicer than yours. If you pay for the gas, I’ll drive.”

  “Fantastic,” I said.

  “Besides, if you decide to go somewhere with North and his friends, I can still get myself home.”

  “Not going to happen,” I said.

  At the game, I could tell that Terry was actually having a good time. She knew everybody from Hamilton, and several of the girls—the non-North type—came over to chat with her. From the way they looked at me, it was clear they thought this was a real date, and they were forming opinions (of me) that they would share with Terry later.

  As for the game, the outcome made everybody on our side happy. Susquehanna’s team was pretty bad, and North was at his best. He threw for three touchdowns and ran for another. Meanwhile, our defense pulled itself together and even intercepted the Susquehanna quarterback twice. We won 37-27, and North got carried off the field. Probably the high point of his life. Unless you counted the day of the shootings.

  “That was more exciting than I expected,” Terry said.

  “You want to go again next week?” I suggested.

  “Just more of the same, I assume,” she said. “Once is enough.”

  North appeared, still in his uniform. You could smell the sweat coming off him. He sort of looked us over the way Terry’s friends had, forming his own opinion (of her, not me). “Did you bring your car?” he asked me.

  “Terry drove,” I said.

  He shrugged and slapped me on the back. “Don’t get whipped, man,” he said. “I’ll see you Sunday.”