Man Up

by Kim Oclon

  Mike nodded knowingly and swallowed. “I told you, man. We’re seniors. We’re going to be out of here before you know it. Once the season starts, it’s going to go so fast.”

  “Uh huh,” I said, setting down my drink so I could eat my sandwich standing up.

  Mike picked up his second slice of pizza and was about to take a bite when he paused, his nose centimeters from a string of melted cheese. “You know, there might not even be time for homework then.” He shrugged. “I’ll write the papers and study for tests, but homework? We’ll see.” With that, half the slice was gone.

  “But we’re not there yet. So, yeah, this paper.” I nodded a good-bye to Mike and left the cafeteria.

  “Smooth sailing in just a couple weeks, my friend,” Mike crumpled up the large napkin he was using as a plate and tossed it into a nearby garbage can. He gave himself a congratulatory smile before returning to his work.

  At the library, I settled into a chair at an empty computer at the end of a long row, which meant there was a wall to my left and thankfully, an empty seat to my right. I managed to type my name, the date, and class period and come up with the title 1984 Essay that I centered at the top of the page. After thumbing through the book a few times, not really looking for the part when Winston finds out who O’Brien really is, I absently searched online and began half reading baseball news sites. First looking to see if the White Sox had made any moves with spring training starting up. No new news since I last checked a couple days ago. Then, I searched for MSU Mankato and navigated my way to the site for the baseball team. I scrolled through team photos and action shots of guys sliding safely into home or making a diving catch.

  I continued to click through the pictures even though I was no longer looking at them. As the impressive plays flickered by, I couldn’t believe I was so sure it would be easy to make it through senior year with a secret boyfriend. It seemed so stupid now that I said it to myself. A secret boyfriend. Shit, I sounded like some seventh grade girl. This was high school. Things never stay secret forever. I should consider it a miracle that no one knew about me and Tyler after being together for over six months. Even so, I wasn’t ready for this.

  And in Spanish, I wasn’t ready to recite my travelogue when my teacher called me to the front of the classroom. With one last useless glance at the paper, I slid out of the desk.

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Señora Fannin smiled at me with a nod of her head.

  “Uh,” I cleared my throat. “Hola. Bienvenido…” A knock on the door and the door opening interrupted me.

  A cheerleader-type girl bounced into the room with a long ponytail swinging from side to side. “Here you go.” She handed Señora Fannin a couple small pieces of paper.

  “Gracias,” she said, glancing at slips of paper as the girl bobbed out of the room. She waved one at me. “Señor David Lukas, you have been saved by a pass.”

  “Seriously?” Relief washed over me as I went to retrieve the pass, but it was quickly replaced by anxiety as I remembered yesterday and the last time a pass called me out of class. Odd how many times in the last twenty-four hours I had completely forgotten about being in Coach Kelly’s office.

  I didn’t look at the pass until I was in the hallway and stood outside the door for a moment remembering when I was a freshman and got jealous of the kids who got a small break from class when a little piece of paper told them to go somewhere. I always wondered why no one ever called me out of class. This time, the pass told me to go to a small alcove of a classroom in the library. I didn’t even know that students were allowed in those rooms. Most of the time they were dark and empty. Only on a few occasions did I see a small group of teachers gathered in there, looking like a cluster of students working on a project for a class. I thought about not going, not having any idea who would be waiting for me in that tiny room and why they wanted to meet me there.

  Maybe it was just something counselors and deans did for seniors as they began the home stretch of their final semester of high school. That had to be it.

  “You’re here again,” said the girl behind the library check-in desk. The same one from yesterday, only today she wore black skinny jeans and a button-up shirt the color of grape juice.

  “So are you,” I said.

  The girl shrugged. “I have a couple free periods during the day. I’d rather hang out here than in the cafeteria.”

  I showed her the pass and handed her my ID, for real this time, so that my whereabouts could be properly registered in the computer. “Oh yeah, Ms. Larson is in there waiting for you.” She pointed to the back corner of the library on the opposite side of the non-fiction section.

  “Ms. Larson?” I asked, sliding my ID back into my wallet. “I haven’t talked to her since freshman year.” While I headed toward the designated corner of the library, I tried to connect the dots between Ms. Larson and me, coming up with nothing. I had her for biology, got B’s both semesters, and hadn’t really seen her since.

  I approached the door and saw her sitting at the table. She didn’t have anything with her. No paper, grade book, not even anything to write with. “Hi, Ms. Larson,” I said, opening the door.

  I recognized her welcoming smile from the first day of school my freshmen year. It was the same one she gave me whenever we crossed paths in the halls. “David, hi. You knew it was me waiting in here for you?”

  “Yeah, the girl working at the desk told me you were waiting for me.”

  “Allie gave me away, huh?” Ms. Larson motioned to the empty seat around the corner from where she sat.

  “Allie? I didn’t know her name,” I said, sitting down in the chair Ms. Larson had indicated. “So what’s going on?” I showed Ms. Larson the pass I just received.

  “Don’t you just love a mystery?” Ms. Larson smiled.

  I shifted in the plastic chair, making it squeak. “Not lately.”

  Ms. Larson folded her hands on the table and leaned in my direction. The playful smile disappeared and was replaced by soft eyes and a concerned mouth, just like Mrs. Carlson from Coach Kelly’s office. “David, a concerned person at this school asked me to speak with you.”

  With that sentence, I made the connection, pushing my chair back and standing up. The plastic chair fell over and hit the wall behind me. “You’re in charge of that group.” I looked down at Ms. Larson. What the fuck?

  “I am,” she calmly said.

  “So why are you talking to me?” The room was already small and I felt like it was getting smaller.

  “Because someone asked me to.”

  “Who talked to you?” I continued using an accusatory tone. And then made another connection. “It was Tyler wasn’t it?”

  “Tyler?” Ms. Larson asked, her head cocked to the side.

  “I know you know who he is.” I had never talked to a teacher like this. I rarely talked to teachers, period, and now they all want to discuss my personal business with me.

  Ms. Larson’s eyes widened. “You’re Tyler’s boyfriend?”

  On the field, I was known for keeping it together. If I made an error, I could shake it off and turn a double play without missing a step. If I struck out on a bad call, I didn’t take it with me on the field. Any evidence of the calm and collected David was not there in the tiny library room with Ms. Larson. “How could he tell you?” Luckily the thick door and brick walls of the library suffocated my words.

  Ms. Larson stood up but stayed on her side of the table. “Tyler didn’t tell me anything.”

  “Then who did?”

  She regained her composure. “Someone who is concerned about you.”

  “No one knows there’s anything to be concerned about besides Tyler and Coach Kelly and I know he didn’t talk to you.”

  “I just wanted to make sure you knew that there are people in this building you can turn to if you feel like you need a safe place,” Ms. Larson said.

  Safe. There was that word again.

  I wasn’t looking at Ms. Larson or even reall
y listening to her. I was looking at the woven threads of library carpeting, a tangle of black, gray, and white. Tyler told Ms. Larson. Tyler told Ms. Larson. Tyler told Ms. Larson. It wasn’t that she knew. It was that Tyler told.

  The bell rang, signaling the end of the seventh period. I shoved my chair under the table. “I have to get to my next class.”

  “I do too.” Ms. Larson slowly pushed in her chair like it needed to fit into a specific space. “If you ever need to, you can find me in the same classroom.”

  “I don’t want to talk to anyone and I’m sick of people talking to me.” I walked the step and a half to the door and flung it open.

  I made my way to the boys’ locker room with my head down, my feet somehow avoiding a collision with packs of students herding through the hallways. The thought of ditching PE crossed my mind but I was already lucky that my pre-calculus teacher must have not noticed my absence yesterday because there was no call home about it and he didn’t say anything in class when he greeted me at the door.

  As I tugged on a pair of red shorts and slipped on a gray T-shirt with “Lincoln High School” generically stamped on the front, I tried to imagine the conversation that involved Tyler telling Ms. Larson. Did he plan it? Did he mean to do it?

  The second hand on the clock reminded me that I had less than a minute to join my class that was most likely sitting in a semi-circle around the teacher, anxious for the dodge ball tournament to continue. My excitement for the tournament was at a six when it first started and now it was in the negative numbers. The only thing that annoyed me more than Kevin Kaminski were people who took PE games way too seriously. It wasn’t like I could count on a college to reward me with a scholarship due to my exceptional dodgeball skills.

  CHAPTER 10

  TYLER

  I’ve always paid attention in class, never daydreaming or looking out the window. Well, maybe to gauge the weather and see how many layers I’d have to wear to practice that day. The only time I did drift away was last year, the day before the State finals. The bus was leaving at the end of seventh period and I spent my entire English class looking at the minutes change on the digital clock in the corner of the classroom.

  But after seeing David again in Art Appreciation in the same White Sox hoodie I’d seen him wear so many times, I spent almost the entire AP Chemistry period thinking about him. Sure, my mind drifted to him throughout the day everyday but never like this. I actually imagined us going to prom together.

  Girls were already showing each other pictures of their dream dresses. I’m pretty sure some guys were beginning to plan elaborate, ridiculous ways to ask the girls they already knew would agree to go with them. I never got caught up in it. For one, I never had anyone I wanted to go with.

  Two, I always assumed David and I would spend the night in my room. Or maybe a hotel room. I didn’t know. We hadn’t talked about anything yet.

  But it would be incredible to go with him. Sure, the student council wouldn’t sell a couple’s ticket to those two girls last year. But, just because we bought two single tickets didn’t mean we couldn’t go together, walk in together, and spend the whole time together.

  It would be a lot to put on him. I knew that. So as my teacher droned on about some practice AP test we were going to take at some point next week, I decided that maybe this weekend I would try to convince David that even though Kevin Kaminski was the biggest dick to ever walk the halls of Lincoln High School, maybe his dumb ass actually served a purpose for once.

  CHAPTER 11

  DAVID

  My team was in second place by the end of the period, behind the team that had developed a strategy for double and even triple teaming the opponent so that there was no chance of them catching or dodging the ball. When a small herd congregated and raised their Nerf balls, aiming for me, I let go of the ball I was holding and waited. Less than half a second later one ball hit my chest and two others hit me in the legs. I was more than happy to go to the end of the line of four people waiting to rejoin the game. They crouched on the floor like professional basketball players, anticipating the moment when the ref would call for a substitution. I could barely move to begin with because it felt like I had weights wrapped around my ankles.

  After class, I headed toward the sophomore hallway, reaching Tyler’s locker just as he was opening it. “Looks like you made it through the day.” Tyler smiled as he pulled a duffle bag full of track clothes out of his locker.

  “Barely,” I stiffly said.

  Tyler swapped out a couple textbooks in his bag for some stacked at the bottom of his locker. “I’m sorry if it was tough.”

  “It was okay,” I shrugged. “Until I got another pass in the middle of seventh period.”

  “What? Another one?” Tyler almost dropped a textbook. “Did your coach talk to you again?”

  “Not from Coach,” I shook my head and folded my arms. “Ms. Larson. My freshman year biology teacher. Why the fuck would she want to talk to me?”

  “Ms. Larson?” Tyler looked like he tasted something that he couldn’t quite place the flavor of.

  “You know her?” I asked, faking surprise.

  “You know I know her,” Tyler said. “Why did she want to talk to you?”

  “You already know.” I knew he was confused and hurt by my tone, but I didn’t care. Kevin did what he did because he was a dick. But with Tyler…this was ours. He told me he would never…

  “I don’t know.” Tyler’s voice was quiet and it was hard to hear him over the students slamming their lockers and racing down the hallway so they could leave school as quickly as possible. “It’s not like she has automatic gay-dar.”

  “Unless someone tells her,” I said. “How could you tell her?”

  “I didn’t tell her. I didn’t.” Tyler reached to touch my arm but I took a small step back, just out of his grasp. “I went to the SAFE meeting yesterday because I didn’t know where else to go before practice.”

  “You haven’t gone in a while.”

  Tyler’s face relaxed and his eyes smiled. “I don’t need to. I have you.”

  I got that feeling inside of me when we first started going out and I’d see Tyler’s name on my phone when it rang. “You didn’t tell me you were going,” I said quietly.

  “I didn’t get a chance to and I didn’t know I was going to.”

  The hallway started to empty. The barrage of slamming locker doors were replaced by squeaking sneakers fading down the hallway. A teacher’s high heels clacked towards us and then disappeared as she turned a corner that headed towards the staff lounge. We were the only two left. My anger receded from my chest and dropped into the depths of my stomach in a ball of regret mixed with the realization of a new fear. If Tyler didn’t tell Ms. Larson someone else did. But until yesterday, no one really seemed to care about me and who I liked.

  “Are you there?” Tyler waved a hand in front of my face, giving me a full smile this time.

  “Yeah,” I said absently. “Just thinking.” When I looked at Tyler, I felt like I was seeing him last summer when he was rounding the track and heading towards a straightaway. It was the first time I felt something more than physical attraction and a casual he’s kind of cute. I wanted to know him. I wanted to be with him. Tyler looked so strong and confident. He still looked strong and confident.

  “About what?”

  I looked around the hallway. A boy dragged his feet towards us. I kept my eye on the boy’s striped hooded sweatshirt, watching him get slowly closer and closer. “About how I wish we weren’t at school right now. How I wish you didn’t have to go to track. How great it would be if it was last week when it was just you and me in my car and none of this happened.” The boy in the striped hoodie was getting closer.

  “We could, you know.” Tyler hesitated, standing straighter. “Right here. We could. Say fuck ‘em.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Okay.” Tyler looked down.

  I wanted to ask Tyler if he was
sorry for being with me. If it was too much of a pain in the ass and he wanted to just say fuck it. But I didn’t, not only because I was scared of his answer but also that boy was a few steps away. I could tell the hoodie was black with thin turquoise stripes running horizontally across it. He had his hands jammed in the pockets and with each step, the dark swoop of hair over his forehead and eyes bounced up and down. I decided to wait for the boy to pass.

  But when he saw Tyler, I noticed the boy’s slow gait gained a slight bounce. “Tyler, hi.” The boy stopped in front of us.

  I had no idea who this kid was, but he acted like he knew Tyler pretty well.

  “Hey,” Tyler paused, looking the boy and up and down. “Will?”

  “Yeah, Will.” Will smiled, tossing his head so the swoosh of hair uncovered his eyes for a millisecond. “Are you coming to the next SAFE meeting?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure.” Tyler glanced at me. “It depends if I have a late track practice or not.”

  “You should,” Will went on. “It was cool to have someone else there.”

  “It was nice to see Anna and Ms. Larson and everyone,” Tyler nodded.

  Will stood off to Tyler’s side. “Ms. Larson is so awesome,” he continued. “I think she’s the coolest teacher here.”

  “She’s pretty great,” Tyler agreed, glancing at me just in time to see me raise an eyebrow and shake my head. This kid needed to leave.

  “Hey, I’m Will.” Will turned to me.

  “David.” My tone did nothing to send him on his way.

  “Are you Tyler’s boyfriend?”

  “What?” I’d never been punched in the face before, but this had to be what it felt like. I even brought my hand to my cheek since it felt like it was throbbing.

  Will seemed oblivious. “Tyler told us about you yesterday.”

  “Will!” Tyler said.

  I glared at Tyler as hard as I could but he wouldn’t look at me. My calves felt sweaty and my jeans were sticking to them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”