by Beth Goobie
Taking a quick breath, Joc said, “Dyllie, I—”
Without warning, “Fear of Bliss” cut off mid-note. The change was so sudden, the music ending so abruptly, it was as if a fist of silence had slammed down onto the room. Instantly Joc jerked away from me, and we turned to see Tim standing by the stereo, staring at us.
“Whooooa girls,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “What is going on here?”
A flush swept Joc’s face, but she raised her chin defiantly. “Just fooling around,” she said. “What’s it to you?”
“Me?” demanded Tim, his chin jutting back at her in a mirror image. “What would your boyfriends say if they saw the two of you like this?”
“It’s just dancing,” protested Joc. “Dikker and I always dance with other people at parties. We dance with whoever we want.”
“You call that dancing?” said Tim, his voice skyrocketing. “Why—because your clothes are still on? I don’t know what you’re thinking, Joc, but there’s no fagging around in this house.”
For a second Joc just stared at him. Then she darted forward and shoved him hard in the gut.
“Fuck you!” she shouted. “Just fuck you!”
Taking off down the hall, she slammed the door to her room so hard, the walls shook. In the silence that followed I stood frozen, staring at Tim who was bent double, hugging his gut and moaning.
“I think you’d better go now, Dylan,” he wheezed, dragging himself to the couch and sinking down onto it.
Turning, I stared down the hall, but the door to Joc’s room remained closed. As I stood there stunned, not knowing what to do, I felt it everywhere—silence all over the house, people curled into themselves, no one moving or speaking, just Tim wheezing on the couch. Suddenly then, I was afraid—skin-melting, radioactive, nuclear-gut afraid. Without speaking, I pulled on my jacket and shoes, pushed open the front door, unlocked my bike and took off down the driveway for home.
By the time I got home, most of the beer had worn off, and I managed to brush my teeth before anyone smelled it on my breath. Then I tried to call Joc, but the line was busy. Before I could try a second time, Mom called me for supper. It was Danny’s night to cook, and for some reason he’d ditched his usual meat loaf in favor of chili. Except he obviously had no idea whatsoever of the impact a hot chili pepper can have on the inside of the human mouth. Fortunately I’d eaten so much pizza I wasn’t hungry, and everyone else’s attention was too taken up with surviving the food on their plates to notice my mood. As soon as I finished eating, I took off for my room and called Joc again, but the line rang continually busy. Finally, at 8:20, Tim answered, and I just hung up. I didn’t think in advance, If Tim answers, I’m ditching this. I just heard his voice, jerked the receiver from my ear and slammed it into the cradle.
Then I sat there shaking while I relived the whole thing—the music cutting off, Tim’s expression of utter disbelief and his “Whooooa girls.” I mean, he’d looked as if he’d thought the Martians actually had landed. There’s no fagging around in this house, I heard him say again in my head. No fagging around in this house, no fagging around...
I guess what made it so surreal was that I never would have seen it coming from Tim. Sure, he was a bit of a roughneck, but more in a daredevil sense than a mean one. He’d never tried to boss Joc around, at least not much, and he’d never struck me as the kind of guy who got off on authority trips. More than that, I couldn’t remember him ever going on about fags or dykes, except for the occasional comment, and everyone did that. Even I used those words sometimes. Not to attack anyone, but as a joke, as in, “Hey, you look like a fag when you do that.” Or, “You’re wearing your dyke shirt today.” No big deal, just joking around.
So that was why this thing with Tim really blew me away. I mean, all Joc and I had been doing was dancing. Lots of girls danced together at school dances. If Tim jumped all over us for doing a simple thing like dancing together, how would he react if he saw us holding hands? Or kissing? How would Len Schroeder and the phone patrol? Not that I was thinking of dancing down the school halls with Joc or anything, but this afternoon’s incident with Tim underlined how important it was to maintain my reputation as Cam Zeleny’s loyal and devoted girlfriend. Maybe, all things considered, I should stop being sexually unattainable. If I concentrated, I mean, really worked on it, I could probably figure out how to fake liking sex with him. So what if I didn’t feel much? It would make Cam happy, he would tell his friends we’d finally made it, and the phone patrol would lay off on the pressure. Besides, if Cam was happy, I was happy, right? It might even make him stop trying to break his neck in football practice.
Reaching for my phone, I dialed Cam’s number. It had been a day and a half since I’d talked to him, and suddenly I had to hear his voice, I just had to.
“Hi,” he said at the other end of the line, and my whole body went limp with relief.
“What’re you doing?” I asked and listened to his quiet intake of breath.
“Dyllie,” he said. “I was just going to call you.”
Tears stung my eyes, I wanted to bury my face in my pillow and bawl. “Oh yeah,” I said hoarsely. “What about?”
“Nothing much,” he said. “Saturday, I guess. What d’you want to do—go see a flick? Cruise the mall?”
“Whatever,” I said. “As long as it’s just us. I’m tired of everyone always bugging me about those censor strips. I wish I’d never done that goddamn display.”
There was a short pause and then Cam said, “Why don’t you just tell them, Dyl? What’s the big secret?”
“I dunno,” I mumbled, riding out a wave of panic. I had to be careful here—this had to convince him utterly. “At first,” I said slowly, “I thought not telling anyone would emphasize what Brennan did, y’know? Censorship means you don’t get to know what someone else wanted to say, period. If I told everyone what Brennan censored, then it would be as if there was no censorship, right?”
I held my breath. Big, fucking, obvious lie. Would Cam suss it out?
“I guess,” he said quietly. “But then, because I wouldn’t tell anyone,” I continued, fighting a tightening in my throat, “well, the whole thing just got so loaded, right? I mean, everyone thinks Foxfire is a book about dykes, instead of a story about justice and independence and thinking for yourself. And I started to feel...”
I hesitated. At the other end of the phone I could hear Cam breathing steadily, waiting me out.
“Well,” I said finally, “I didn’t want everyone to think I was a dyke, that’s all. Because I’m not, I’m really not. You know that, don’t you, Cam?”
I was clenching the phone so tightly, my hand hurt. In the short silence that followed, Cam let out a long slow breath.
“Course you’re not,” he said firmly. “I always knew that, Dyllie. It’s just got to be right for you. You’re the kind of girl who’s got to feel right about it.”
“Yeah,” I said, my heart thundering with relief. I mean, it was booming, I was shaking with each thud. “And it’ll be right for me soon, I promise,” I blurted. “I’m getting there Cam, I can feel it. I really can.”
“Sweet,” he said softly, and I could feel him smiling. “Sweet sweet Dyllie, you’re my queen, right?”
“Right,” I said, and a wave of utter hopelessness washed over me. Cam had just bought my lie, or was trying to convince himself to. Even though he knew something was wrong, even though he knew that I knew he knew something was wrong. Cam Zeleny was making himself believe my lie because it made him feel safer. He was one of the best guys on the planet, but for some reason in his relationship with me he was afraid. What exactly he was afraid of, I didn’t know. I mean, it couldn’t have been a fear of losing me. Who was I but Queen Dylan, and Queen Dylan was nothing more than a very good liar.
“Read any more about parallel universes?” I asked, twisting the phone cord around my finger.
“Yeah,” he said, his voice quickening. “I told you particles are also waves,
right?”
“Right,” I said.
“And theoretically,” he continued, “because they’re waves, they can be everywhere at once...”
Curling my body around the phone, I listened to him talk.
Chapter Eighteen
I woke to the sound of steady drumming on the roof and water sluicing down the windowpane. Rain—I could smell it, the air heavy with wetness and a deep earth smell. Rolling onto my side, I reached for the venetian blind, intending to push it up and look out, and bumped into something large and warm lying next to me. Startled, I almost let out a shout, then realized that it was Keelie, curled in tight and facing me. She must have woken early and thought it was time to come wake me, then fallen asleep when she climbed onto the bed. But she’d managed to work her way thoroughly in under the blankets first.
Kids, I thought. Looking down at her flushed sleeping face, I just had to smile. The first thing people always said when they met her was, “You look so much like Dylan!” And Keelie always beamed, she always said, “Yes, Dylan’s my BIG sister.” I’d never met anyone else who gave off such a constant glow of happiness. It made me want to shrink her to the size of a pebble, put her into a pocket and carry her everywhere like an amulet.
Unfortunately she wasn’t enough of an amulet to protect me from what had happened yesterday. Even as I was still smiling down at her, memories came flooding into my brain—Joc and I dancing, Tim’s reaction, last night’s unsuccessful phone calls. With a groan, I sank back onto the bed. What in the world was I going to say to Joc when I saw her today? The rain meant I couldn’t double-ride her on my bike. On days like this she usually called Dikker for a ride, but maybe I could get Dad to pick her up when he drove Danny and me to school.
Climbing carefully over Keelie, I tiptoed down the hall and knocked on my parents’ door. Bedsprings squeaked, there was some muffled muttering, and then Mom said sleepily, “What is it?”
“It’s raining,” I said into the door. “Is it okay if Dad drives me and Danny to school, and picks up Joc on the way?”
More muffled muttering followed, and then Mom said, “Dylan, it’s 5:30. Go back to bed.”
“Oh,” I whispered, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
Tiptoeing back to my room, I pulled up the venetian blind, then crawled over Keelie and lay staring out at the rain. No way was I going to be able to fall asleep now, not with yesterday on my mind. I mean, something enormous had happened between Joc and I, or almost happened, and I didn’t have a clue what she was thinking about it. The situation between us was getting so complicated, so flat out twisted, it was enough to send any sane person over the deep end. Why didn’t she call me last night? Tim couldn’t possibly have been on the phone the entire evening. And what about my phone call with Cam? For sure we were still going out, and I’d virtually promised I would make it with him sometime soon.
So what did that mean for me and Joc? Would it be best to just tell her straight out? Joc, it was all a mistake. I’m sorry, I was drunk and I didn’t know what I was doing. And you know I’m Cam’s girl, he’s the best guy on the planet and he has my whole heart. The part I haven’t eaten, of course, but still...
With another groan, I rolled over and stared at the wall. Not a good scene, I thought miserably. Joc knew me better than Cam, she would suss out that lie before I even opened my mouth. That is, I reminded myself heavily, if she was thinking what I thought she was thinking—about us, I mean. Because, realistically speaking, I didn’t actually know what was going through her head. After all, Tim had interrupted her before she’d finished speaking. So it was entirely possible that I was assuming the wrong things. My brain had been fuzzy with beer—it would have been easy enough to misread the scene. All things considered, that was probably the reason Joc had taken off down the hall. When she’d heard Tim’s accusation, she’d realized how I might be misinterpreting things and hadn’t known how to handle it.
Which meant that the best way to deal with the situation was to ignore it. Taking a deep breath, I rode out a shuddery wave of relief. Okay, I thought. As usual, Queen Dylan is in a funk over nothing. I mean, once I got a grip and started thinking rationally, it became overwhelmingly clear that I was misreading the whole scene. Like Joc said, girls often danced with each other. It didn’t have to mean anything. It was ridiculous, really, to even wonder if she was like me. She was so obviously hetero—she turned on to Dikker and their sex life was definitely happening. She’d just gotten tipsy yesterday, and her usual physically friendly self had gotten friendlier than normal. No big deal, no need to get radioactive about it.
Another hour and a half went by as I lay awake, watching the rain come down and wondering what to say to Joc the next time I saw her. But in the end I didn’t meet up with her that morning. When I called at 8:00 AM her phone was busy, and when Dad drove by her house to see if she needed a ride to school, her mom told me that Dikker had already picked her up. Then, when I went looking for her at lunch hour, she was nowhere to be found. I even tracked down Dikker painting sets in the drama room, but he said he hadn’t seen her since school had started. He didn’t seem concerned and obviously hadn’t noticed anything odd about her that morning, but after lunch she didn’t show up for English. And when I went to her house after school, no one answered the door.
Just to be sure I went around to her bedroom window, pushed through the soaking wet hedge underneath and looked in, but the room was empty. A scared feeling came over me then—I mean, with all the rain and cold and wet dark trees, it felt as if someone had died. And suddenly I just didn’t know what to do anymore, how to manage things. I mean, all I wanted was to be close to Joc, to be with her. Why did friendship have to be so complicated?
Returning to the front of the house, I sat on the porch and watched cars go by. But none of them stopped, no derelict Honda came revving up to the curb. With all the rain coming down and cars slushing past, the street looked dismal and gray, and after a while tears started slipping down my face. Joc and I had had a lot of fights over the years, but none of them felt like this—a huge yawning ache, too big to even begin wrapping my mind around. I mean, technically we weren’t even having a fight. Neither of us had done anything stupid, it wasn’t as if I could say, Hey, I’m sorry I was a jerk, and everything could go back to normal.
No, this time there was no normal to go back to, I realized with a fresh rush of tears. When Tim had made his accusation yesterday afternoon, Joc had finally had to face what she’d suspected about me for years, and now she was avoiding me because she didn’t know how to deal with it. As usual, everything came down to my goddamn hormones.
With all the crying I was doing, I knew I couldn’t go home yet. Someone would notice, and I would have to lie, or explain things I didn’t know how to explain. So after a while I got up from the porch and wandered off down the sidewalk. The Dundurn Street bridge was close by, and soon I was leaning against the rail and staring down at the river, watching the water flow past. Only that got me thinking about last month’s gigantic bubble bath, and the way Joc had taken off her clothes and I’d refused to take off mine. And that just got me started on all the crazy mixed-up possibilities again.
That was when I saw Joc. Crouched on the riverbank, she was partway under the bridge, trailing a stick in the water and watching the rain come down. I couldn’t see her face, but her clothes and hair were soaked, and I realized that she must have been out in the rain for hours, skipping school and walking around the way I was now, thinking her own lonely thoughts.
What were those lonely thoughts about? I wondered as I watched her. If I went down there now and we talked, what would she tell me? Would we be able to be honest, say the things we each needed to say, and work out how things were going to be between us? But if that was what Joc wanted, why was she here all alone, hiding out under the bridge? It could only be because she didn’t want to talk to me, because she was so completely and utterly embarrassed by the things Tim had said that she wasn’t taking even the sli
ghtest chance of running into me.
Fear reared up through me then, and a sadness so huge, I could barely breathe through it. Because I wasn’t ready to hear Joc say something like that, not in the middle of a cold gloomy rain, with both of us upset the way we were. It would be too absolute, too final. I mean, I just wanted things to go back to the way they’d been yesterday afternoon before Tim’s accusation— secret, shimmering and in-between, where I could play with ideas in my head without having to do anything about them.
As quietly as possible I moved away from the rail and started walking back over the bridge. My legs had gone stiff from standing still for so long so I was walking slowly, my head down, full of a damp emptiness. Then, halfway over the bridge, a new thought hit me. What if Joc came climbing up the riverbank right now and saw me walking away like this? She would know that I’d seen her down there and hadn’t talked to her, hadn’t even bothered to say hello. Our friendship would be over for sure then, nothing would ever bring us together after that.
Without looking back I took off, running full out into the rain.
Saturday evening Cam picked me up at 6:30 and we headed to the mall. The movie we wanted to see started at 7:30, so we hung around the arcade for a while, playing Streetfighter, Cam’s favorite game. He was in a good mood—I was wearing a sweater he liked, a light green crew neck with pale yellow flowers worked across the front, and his face had lit up when he’d seen it. So we were holding hands and leaning against each other a lot, and the whole thing could have been really fun if it hadn’t been for the cold I was coming down with due to being out in yesterday’s rain. And, of course, I kept thinking about Joc crouched alone on the riverbank, watching the water go by. Watching her thoughts go by. Just watching the sadness all go by.
