by Beth Goobie
Chapter Three
Sometimes I secretly watched Mom and Dad and wondered which of them was to blame. I mean, sexual orientation is supposed to be genetic. So it was, of course, my parents’ genes that were responsible for the body I ended up with—a skewed body, without normal hormones. Whatever was wrong with it had to have come from them. Only there didn’t seem to be anything abnormal about their love life. It was definitely hetero, and even after three kids, it was hot and happening. Sure, they fought, but they also kissed a lot and “slept in” on Sunday mornings. Every now and then they bought each other flowers and went out on dates. There were even times when I caught Dad dreamy-eyed and staring at Mom as if he was still a virginal teenager trying to imagine her with her clothes off. I swear sometimes he was about to start drooling.
Maybe what I’d gotten was a throwback gene. Dad had an uncle who’d died a while back. I’d never met him, but I knew he’d never gotten married and was thought of as the black sheep in the family. There was some kind of shameful secret attached to him that no one would explain. And then there was Aunt Chrissy, a sister of Dad’s, who was also unmarried. She hadn’t been given the black sheep label, but she was considered odd. After graduating from high school, she’d taken off for Europe and now worked as a travel agent in Rome. I used to study her photographs for signs that she harbored skewed genes, but we didn’t look anything alike. She was definitely a Kowolski, with blond wavy hair and broad bones, and I took after Mom, who was short and slight, with straight slate-black hair and dark brown eyes. Everyone on her side of the family was tight into marriage with numerous offspring, and any divorces were soon solved with a second marriage and another kid on the way.
So the problem gene had probably come from Dad’s side of the family. And so far it looked as if I was the only one in my generation who’d gotten it. Most of my cousins were married, or heavy into dating someone from the opposite gender. My fourteen-year-old brother Danny was definitely hetero—his room was plastered with posters of Britney Spears, and by the time he’d reached grade seven, the phone was ringing off the wall with girls calling. Two weeks ago he’d started grade nine at the Dief, and I passed him in the halls at least once a day, surrounded by a bevy of girls clamoring for his attention. We looked alike—same straight black hair and dark eyes—and whenever he saw me, he would flash me a conspiratorial grin as if letting me know that he was following in my footsteps and keeping up the family tradition. So the problem gene was obviously not part of his makeup. And Keelie, my five-year-old sister—well, she was too young to define one way or the other yet.
On the other hand, she was a genetic afterthought. Certainly unexpected. Mom and Dad had counted their diaper-washing days long over when she showed up in the womb. Mom was forty-two and a full-time accountant when Keelie was born, and Dad thirty-nine. The pregnancy really upended their lives—once I even overheard them discussing an abortion. But in the end they decided to go through with it, and the little hurricane was born seven months later. Just like Danny and me, she had Mom’s dark eyes and straight black hair. Immediately the house filled with her shrieks and bellows, and when she got her “sea legs,” as Dad put it, well, the universe became her backyard. Right now I could hear her on the other side of my bedroom door, dragging the kitchen broom between her legs as she tore up and down the hall, hollering, “Watch out, Harry! Draco’s right behind you! He’s got the snitch! No, I’ve got it. I’ve got it!”
Sprawled on my bed, I listened to her tear down the hall. About a year ago, Keelie and I started our own private tradition. Every morning at seven, she would ease open my door and poke her head into my room. She would wait there like that, her head stuck into the gap, checking to make sure I was still asleep, and then her short little figure would come tiptoeing toward me. I was always awake as soon as the door opened, but I knew my part of the deal and would continue to lie with my face burrowed into my pillow, faking sleep, while she grunted her way softly onto the foot of my bed and crawled up to my head. It was hard not to giggle as her small hand started brushing my hair back from my face, but that would have spoiled it. So I would lie with my eyes closed until she’d brushed all the hair from my face, then leaned down and whispered, “Wake up, Dylan. It is time to bring some happiness into this day.”
That was my cue to erupt with a roar and grab her tight and squealing in my arms. We would roll around for a bit, giggling our heads off until Mom poked her head in the door and said it was time to get moving. Then Keelie would slide whooping off my bed and scamper out the door, and I would watch her go, wondering if I’d been like that at her age—barreling around in a body that felt like a promise or a wish come true, riding the wave crest of my own happiness.
Thursday after school, I lay sprawled on Rachel Gonzales’ bed, bored out of my mind. I’d been invited here to play audience while Rachel put Julie Crozier through her idea of the perfect makeover—heavy on the eyeliner, massive on the mascara and absolutely brutal on the eye shadow and lip gloss. Both Julie and Rachel were core members of the Dief’s jock crowd, and as such, considered themselves to be semi-divine. As far as they, and admittedly most of the Dief student population, were concerned, it was a privilege to be seen with them and an even greater privilege to worship everything they said and did.
As their invited audience, I was expected to remain in a near-comatose state, making single-syllable statements such as “ooh” and “ah.” This wasn’t because Julie and Rachel didn’t understand two-syllable words. They regularly pulled As and Bs on class assignments, and Rachel was planning on studying engineering at McGill in two years. But they were both seriously protective of their semi-divine status, and no female outside their tiny inner circle was allowed to display anything beyond a basic Neanderthal intellect in their presence.
So there I was with my back to the wall, flipping through one of Rachel’s Sweet Valley High books and trying to ignore the obvious fact that Julie’s pale skin and blond hair were not meant for thick globs of olive eye shadow. In fact, Julie was beginning to look rather like an alien experiment gone terribly wrong, but no way was I saying anything. Rachel and Julie were not only two of the Dief’s minor goddesses, they were also part of a group that Joc and I had dubbed “the phone patrol.” Get on their bad side, and their phone network would be passing your name around like a helpless electron in a massive electrical current. The next morning you wouldn’t begin to recognize yourself in the new rumors flying around school.
Generally speaking I wasn’t into the worshiping thing, at least not unless it was absolutely necessary, and in this case it sort of was. As part of the jock crowd, Julie and Rachel were Cam’s friends—not close friends, but they always sat together in the cafeteria and went to the same parties. For the past two years I’d played on the girls junior volleyball team with them, but neither Julie or Rachel had given me a second glance until Cam and I started dating. Then they’d stared in what can only be described as stunned astonishment. I mean, why would Cam Zeleny date a fringe jock with definite nerd overtones, when he could have been dating diaphanous nymphs like Julie and Rachel?
But when Cam’s interest in me showed no sign of fading, the leaders of the phone patrol—Julie, Rachel and Deirdre Buffone—reluctantly began to include me in some of their activities. Which meant that today I got to lie here in an awed stupor, listening as Rachel and Julie attacked, mutilated and otherwise dragged through the absolute sludge the characters of various female students from the Dief. Survival of the fittest—that’s the way it works, I guess. But y’know, it’s so boring.
“Lindsay Horner’s been carrying her ass pretty high these days,” said Julie, eyeing herself dubiously in the mirror. Rachel had just finished layering the olive eye shadow on her right eyelid with a rusty red color, and the effect was indescribable.
“Lindsay!” sniffed Rachel. Shifting to Julie’s other side, she let out a breathy laugh. “She knows all the guys are watching her like crazy because she’s keeping Darryl Stronner so
happy. She’s been letting him do it to her without a safe.”
“They’re not using condoms?” asked Julie, turning toward Rachel in surprise.
“Watch it!” yelped Rachel, jerking back. “I almost stuck you in the eye.” Carefully she erased a smudge of rust eye shadow from Julie’s nose with her finger. “What was I saying? Oh yeah, Lindsay. Yeah, well, that’s what she told me, anyway.”
“But that’s crazy,” I said, ditching my stupor along with Sweet Valley High. “I mean, Darryl Stronner’s definitely been around.”
“I dunno,” shrugged Rachel, working away at Julie’s left eyelid. “Lindsay’s on the pill.”
My jaw dropped and I stared at her. I didn’t know that much about sex—four times doesn’t make you an expert—but I did know enough to always use a condom. No way would I have let Paul anywhere near me without one.
“Yeah, sure,” I said slowly. “But there are a zillion STDs you can catch.”
Even Julie was giving Rachel skeptical glances. “Yeah, Rach,” she said. “Since when does the pill protect you from herpes?”
Rachel shrugged dismissively. “Lindsay says Darryl doesn’t sleep around anymore,” she said. “Not since he started seeing her. Besides...” She paused, slowing into her thoughts, then added, “Wouldn’t you let Cam, Dylan, if you were on the pill?”
Neither Rachel or Julie looked at me directly, but I could feel them grow suddenly intent, waiting for my answer. And damn it all if I didn’t feel my usual tidal wave of nervousness as they focused in on me. Later, when I thought back on this, I was going to be really pissed-off at myself. I mean, it wasn’t as if Julie and Rachel were experts on the subject...or experience...of sex. Rachel had probably done it—last winter she’d gone out with a guy in grade twelve for a while—but my instincts told me that Julie was still virginal. Early last year she’d put out a story about how she’d done it with a guy at summer camp, but I figured it was a fib, concocted to impress the phone patrol. I mean, you don’t have sex for the first time so you can advertise it.
Still, experts or not, both Julie and Rachel were frozen into position, barely breathing as they waited for my answer.
“I’m not on the pill,” I muttered, trying to ignore the flush crawling up my neck.
“You don’t neeeeed to be,” Rachel singsonged deliberately, and Julie gave a quiet snort. My flush deepened, but I fought the urge to snap something back. It wasn’t wise to rouse the ire of the semi-divine. In fact, it wasn’t wise to even attract their attention. Last year in health class, the teacher, Ms. Harada, brought in a package of condoms for her annual talk on safe sex. It was an all-girl class, and the package was passed hand to hand with a lot of quiet giggling. No big deal for me—Joc and I used to snitch packages of Tim’s safes from his dresser, then run around the house shooting them at each other. Childish, I know, but once we even snuck a large sausage out of the fridge and slid a condom onto it to see if it would fit. It did the job nicely. We were quite impressed with that condom’s stretchability factor.
Anyway, there was a girl in my grade ten health class named Sharon Harder—a really shy, quiet Christian who was so religious, she carried a Bible everywhere she went. Unfortunately for her, Julie, Rachel and Deirdre were also in this class and keeping their eyes peeled as the package of condoms traveled around the room. The instant it was passed to Sharon, they simultaneously burst into shrieks of high-pitched laughter. For a moment it was just the three of them, cackling in absolute hysteria, while the rest of us scanned the group, trying to figure out the joke. Within seconds, the entire classroom had focused on Sharon Harder, who was still holding the package of condoms. The result was a wall of sound smashing into Sharon, and I have to admit I was part of it, roaring my head off with the others.
When the hysteria finally died down, Ms. Harada was speechless. “Well,” she faltered, her eyes on Sharon, “that wasn’t very nice.” But she left it at that. I mean, what was she supposed to do—give the entire class a detention for laughing? Besides, she coached half of the girls’ sports teams, and the phone patrol were her most valuable players. That was the secret of their power—it had to do with the way they operated as a group, pushing boundaries en masse, but never stepping over them as individuals. As Cam Zeleny’s girlfriend, I was reasonably safe from their attacks— no girl, not even a member of the phone patrol, would risk her chances of dating Cam in the future by attacking his current girlfriend in an obvious manner. But they had their way of getting in small digs, and it was easiest just to go along with things, duck your head and keep your mouth shut when you disagreed.
“What d’you think of Michelle Allen?” asked Rachel, ignoring the angry burn that was festering on my face. She’d made her point. The phone patrol knew about my sex life, or lack thereof, and had filed the information in the appropriate mental-storage unit. They had probably heard about it from Gary Pankratz or Len Schroeder, two of Cam’s friends—Julie and Len had been getting very friendly of late. But then, maybe they’d heard it straight from Cam. Like Joc said, he moaned and groaned about it enough when I wasn’t around.
“The new girl?” asked Julie, also ignoring me.
“Yeah,” said Rachel. “She’s signed up for volleyball tryouts.”
“She-male,” Julie said significantly.
In spite of the flush that was eating up my face, I gave her a startled glance. This fall, Michelle Allen had transferred to the Dief from Confederation Collegiate, a high school across town, because she wanted to get in on the Dief’s superior sports program. Though she was in grade twelve, I knew her somewhat because we’d played on the same summer-league baseball team two years ago. Nothing had seemed remotely off about her.
“She has a boyfriend,” I said quickly. “At least she did last August.”
“Can’t see why,” Julie said coolly. “Practically no boobs, and she’s built like a horse. She should’ve been born a guy—it’s written all over her.”
“D’you think she’s a dyke?” asked Rachel. Focusing on Julie’s upper lip, she sketched a Smartie-sized beauty mark above it.
“It’s as obvious as the nose on my face,” said Julie, scowling at Rachel’s latest brain wave in the mirror. “We’ll have to keep an eye on her in the locker room. If she tries anything funny, she’s toast.”
With that, they ditched Michelle Allen and started in on someone else. Rigid on the bed, I lay silent, letting my thoughts race. Everything I knew about Michelle told me that Julie was wrong, but there was no point in saying anything. Nobody argued with Julie Crozier. She had just pronounced a death sentence on Michelle Allen, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about it. The harassment Michelle would face if she made the team would never be obvious to Ms. Harada or the other coaches, simply an ongoing series of small shoves and pushes, personal belongings that constantly went missing and a wall of silence from the other players. I gave it three, maybe four weeks, before Michelle quit and headed back to Confed.
And all this was going to happen in spite of the fact that Michelle had a boyfriend. I’d always thought having a boyfriend meant you were high and dry, no one would assume anything.
“Hey,” said Rachel, turning toward me. “You haven’t signed up for volleyball tryouts yet. And you didn’t try out for soccer. How come?”
I shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “Soccer practices are in the morning,” I said guardedly. “Mornings are for beds. I’m still thinking about volleyball, though.”
“What d’you mean, thinking about it?” demanded Julie, ducking another dose of olive eye shadow. “We need you on the volleyball team. If you’re not there, Michelle will make it for sure, and who knows who else?”
My eyes slid across hers, then away. How inspiring to think that she wanted me on the team just to keep Michelle Allen, who was a ten times better player than me, off of it.
“Maybe,” I said, picking up Rachel’s Sweet Valley High book and pretending to be fascinated with it. “Like I said, I’m still thinking about it
.”
“Yeah, well you just think your butt down to the gym and get yourself signed up,” snapped Julie, then waved a dismissive hand at Rachel, who was leaning in with more eye shadow. “Cut it out, Rach,” she added irritably. “You have me looking like a corpse here.”
“Not a corpse,” Rachel protested quickly. “A killer sexy lady of the night, maybe.”
“A corpse that used to be a killer sexy lady of the night,” said Julie. “Maybe. Where’d you get the idea for this color combo, anyway? The last time your cat threw up?”
“Olive and rust look great on you,” said Rachel. “It looks great on most girls. They just don’t realize it.”
“I bet they don’t realize it,” Julie said dryly. “I think you’re the only one who does, Rach. But what about Dylan? How d’you think it’d look on her?”
Remorselessly they turned toward me, their eyes fixing on my face—the gaze of the semi-divine, considering the potential of the almost-human.
“Yeah,” Rachel said thoughtfully. “That combo would look super with Dylan’s dark hair and eyes.”
“C’mon then,” said Julie, standing up. “Your turn, Dylan.”
I stared at the chair she’d just vacated as if it was electric. This bedroom was an execution chamber in disguise.
“C’mon,” said Rachel, looking offended. “You look like I’m going to kill you or something.”
Single syllable words, I thought. The awe and worship thing.
Setting down Sweet Valley High, I got to my feet. “Y’know,” I said, trying to smile. “Olive is, like, my fave color. And rust is my second fave.”
Watch it, I thought. Second has two syllables.
Slowly I walked toward the chair.
Chapter Four
It was the following Saturday evening, and Cam and I were driving down Main Street, looking for something to do after the early movie. Well, actually it was something to do for the next hour or so—we both knew what we would end up doing eventually, and as usual, I was trying to put it off for as long as possible. And also as usual, Cam wasn’t getting on my case about it. Dates were never just grunt and jump with him—he liked to talk and do things first.
