M or F?

by Lisa Papademetriou

  “I’m sure the money will even out over the long course of our friendship,” Glenn said.

  I giggled.

  “You’re very smiley,” Glenn remarked, looking at me suspiciously.

  Suddenly, I just couldn’t keep it to myself anymore. The joke was too good not to share. “Okay, I have to tell you something hilarious.”

  Glenn lifted his eyebrows, a smile creeping up half of his face.

  I let out a little laugh-snort, then regained my composure. “Marcus is trying to set us up.”

  For a moment, Glenn just looked at me blankly. Then, all of a sudden, he busted out into this huge belly laugh, like I’d just told him the best joke in the world. He laughed like he couldn’t stop. The sound echoed through the cinema lobby.

  “Hey!” I griped, punching him on the shoulder. “Thanks a lot! I’m not that bad!”

  Glenn shook his head, confused, a smile still playing at the corners of his mouth. Suddenly, I had this weird feeling that maybe I wasn’t getting the joke after all. . . . “Frannie,” he said slowly, “doesn’t Marcus know I’m gay?”

  I felt like the floor had just dropped out from under me. It was a physical sensation, like plunging down the far side of a roller coaster. It was just lucky that I was still holding on to Glenn’s arm, because I had to grip his sleeve for support. “What?”

  Glenn’s dark eyes were serious. He looked kind of upset. “Didn’t you know?”

  “No,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean—” I didn’t want Glenn to think that I thought it was weird that he was queer. Of course, I didn’t care about that at all, although I was starting to wonder if my gaydar was seriously out of whack. I mean—what’s the deal? I wondered. Is everybody gay? But something else was happening in my mind; I was struggling to make a connection. Glenn was gay. What did that mean? Could it mean . . . “Glenn—I hope you don’t think I sound totally crazy,” I said slowly, fitting the jigsaw pieces together in my mind, “but . . . are you and Jeffrey . . . together?”

  He gaped at me like I had a fish growing out of my forehead. “Uh—no,” he said, lifting one eyebrow. “Jeffrey isn’t gay. He’s really into you, remember?”

  “He is?” I don’t know why this shocked me so much, but it did. Suddenly I had to wonder. . . . Maybe all of those times we hadn’t been connecting, maybe it was just because we weren’t on the same wavelength. . . .

  “He’s totally crazy about you,” Glenn said. “He thinks you’re sweet and funny and smart. . . .” He said a few more things, but I wasn’t listening. My mind was working in overdrive.

  Wait—

  Jeffrey is into me.

  Glenn is queer.

  Jeffrey isn’t queer. . . .

  “Ohmigod!” I shouted. “We have to get out of here right now!” Dragging Glenn by the arm, I hauled him out of the cinema.

  “Where are we going?” Glenn asked.

  We’re going to save Marcus from making the most humiliating mistake of his life! I thought desperately. But I didn’t have time to explain. “To your car. I just realized that we have to go get Marcus.” I yanked out my cell as we ran and pressed redial.

  “I thought Marcus was okay,” Glenn said. But he was running with me, thank God.

  “I just realized that the spare has a leak,” I told him. “He can’t drive on it.” Answer the phone, Marcus, I thought wildly. It rang and rang. No good. Clicking off, I tried again. Still no good.

  Glenn’s Honda let out a mechanical chirp as he used the remote to unlock the door.

  I pressed redial again as I climbed into the car. I wasn’t about to give up that easily. I was going to rescue my friend, no matter what.

  “Where are we headed?” Glenn asked as he slid in behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.

  To stop the madness, I thought crazily as I clicked off and punched redial yet again. “To Buckingham Fountain. As fast as humanly possible.”

  Fifteen

  “Who was that?” Jeffrey asked me as I turned off Dad’s cell phone and stuck it in my pocket.

  “I didn’t recognize the number,” I lied, hopefully for the last time. I couldn’t pick up Frannie’s call, not right now. I was about to do one of the most important things I had ever done in my life, and the whole point was to do this on my own.

  The setting was perfect. I’d chosen it carefully. Buckingham Fountain was public but not too crowded, beautiful but not too sappy, and miles away from Roaring Brook. There was almost no chance of running into anyone we knew. Plus, if Jeffrey laughed in my face, I could just drown myself right there.

  “So anyway,” I said, “thanks for coming.”

  “Sure,” he said. “I thought Frannie and Glenn would be here by now.”

  I wondered if I seemed as nervous as I felt. “Yeah,” I said. “I guess I should start by telling you they’re not actually coming.”

  He pushed his hair back from his eyes. The way he squinted at me asked his question for him.

  “I know,” I said. “This is all very James Bond, right? It’s just that I wanted to talk to you alone.”

  “Why didn’t you just do it over the phone?” he asked.

  “Right. That’s a reasonable question. Well . . .”

  For all my planning, I realized, I hadn’t put any thought into how to begin this conversation. But I couldn’t stop now. Not after the twelve hours of rehearsal since he said he’d meet me, plus however many weeks it had been since this whole thing started, plus a lifetime of wondering if I’d ever even have this kind of chance. No. Whether or not I felt ready, I was ready.

  “Here it is,” I said. My voice was high. It didn’t even sound like me. “I’m kind of afraid to bring this up, and at the same time, I feel like I have to.”

  “Is this about Frannie and me?”

  “Can we sit down?” I practically fell onto the nearest bench. Jeffrey sat about a foot and a half away, somewhere between “touch me” and “don’t touch me.”

  I looked at the ground and took in the cracks on the sidewalk. A bike whizzed by. The fountain splooshed. The century churned on.

  “It’s funny,” I finally said. “Frannie’s the only one who knows I’m here. Just her and you.”

  “Why is that funny?” he asked.

  “It’s not,” I said, throwing up my arms. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m just putting this off, like maybe the person who has the guts to say it will show up if I wait around long enough.”

  “Well,” he said quietly, “I can’t say it for you.”

  Somehow, that changed everything. Jeffrey knew; or at least, it sounded that way. There was something in the way he spoke, like the secret I’d thought I was keeping wasn’t a secret at all. All of a sudden, I was out of hiding places, and more than that, I was out of reasons for hiding. It almost didn’t matter what happened after this anymore. I just needed to do what I had come here to do—if I could only find the words.

  Then Jeffrey leaned the tiniest bit toward me and started to speak. “Marcus, I—”

  And I realized that words weren’t going to do it—not his, not mine. And no more thinking about this, either. In its own weird way, not thinking had gotten me to this point, and not thinking was going to get me through it. I let my mind go blank, I leaned in, I closed my eyes, and I put my lips to his.

  “Noooooo!”

  He might as well have had a thousand volts of electricity running through him. I literally jumped up and away from Jeffrey before I realized he wasn’t the screamer. The voice I’d heard was Frannie’s, and I saw her now, running toward us with Glenn right behind.

  “Ohhh God. Ohhh . . . hi,” she said looking from me to Jeffrey to me, then stopping to lean on her knees and catch her breath.

  “Uh, what’s going on, Frannie?” I asked her, trying to straitjacket my panic until I knew more.

  “What’s going on, period?” Jeffrey said.

  “Ohhh God. Ohhh God,” was all Frannie seemed able to say. Glenn hovered behind her, a
ctually looking uncomfortable, which was something I’d never seen on him before.

  I turned to Jeffrey. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m pretty sure I just made a really big mistake.”

  Frannie raised a finger like she was ready to make her statement but was still out of breath. “What I told you before?” she gasped at me. “I was . . . misinformed.”

  “What the hell are you guys talking about?” Jeffrey’s voice went sharp. I couldn’t stand the way he was looking at me now, and I couldn’t wait for Frannie anymore.

  “We thought you were gay!” It just came out of me; not what I would have chosen, but I guess it was the one thought at the top of the pile.

  “You did?” Jeffrey asked, looking at Frannie.

  “Marcus!” Frannie yelled at me, and then turned again to Jeffrey. “Well . . . kind of, for a while there.”

  “Why?” Jeffrey didn’t seem mad, exactly, but it was hard to tell.

  Frannie shifted on her feet. “It was a lot of things, I guess, but . . .” She made a face like someone was squeezing her too hard. “Well, you kind of threw up the first time I tried to really kiss you.”

  “You did?” Glenn asked.

  Jeffrey turned slightly pink. “Yeah. I don’t know what that was about, Frannie, but it wasn’t about you. I haven’t thrown up like that since I tried one of my mom’s ginseng tablets, but whatever. I still don’t see how that makes me gay.”

  “Huh.” I could see on Frannie’s face that there was no way she was going to offer up the fact that she had, in fact, fed him ginseng-slash-poison-laced hot chocolate. “Well,” she said, “even before that, you never really tried to kiss me or . . . anything me.”

  Jeffrey held up his hands in an I-give-up kind of shrug. “That’s ’cause Glenn said that you said guys never tried to be friends first. You said the guy-girl friends-first thing was a lost art.”

  Now it was Frannie who looked confused. “No, I didn’t.”

  “Um,” I interrupted. “I might have said that along the way.”

  Jeffrey turned to me, freshly perplexed. “What?”

  “Oh God.” Frannie hung her head.

  “Okay,” I said, “Let me start where I should have started. Here’s the thing. You know all those online conversations? All the instant messaging and the different screen names?”

  “Yeah?” he said slowly.

  “That was me,” I said, rounding the point of no return. “Actually, it was both of us at first, me and Frannie. I was just helping her out because she really liked you, but then, I don’t know, it kind of got away from me and I started doing it on my own. There was something about those conversations. They were great. You were great.”

  Jeffrey turned a little more pink and he looked over at Glenn, like for help.

  I kept going. “I was supposed to be Frannie all that time, and I can only imagine how screwed up this sounds, but something about it just felt so right, and I never would have taken it this far, but—”

  I stopped. A new thought hit me like a smack in the head. “Hang on a second,” I said, and turned to Glenn. “You told Jeffrey what I said about guys and girls being friends, but . . . how did you know about it before he did?”

  Glenn smiled, a little cocky and a little sheepish looking. “Well,” he said, “that’s the thing.”

  “What’s the thing?” I said. “I thought my thing was the thing.”

  He took a deep breath. “I guess Frannie wasn’t the only one with a little online helper.”

  “And he’s gay!” Frannie blurted. We all turned to look at her and she shrank back. “Sorry. I couldn’t hold it in anymore. This is so huge. Go on.”

  I have no idea how the movie will capture whatever was happening in my mind at that moment, but it will have to be something good. Some kind of special effects that haven’t been invented yet.

  Glenn thought for a second. “I guess that’s it,” he said. “Jeff would get into one of those conversations, and then he’d call me and I’d help him out. Or sometimes I’d be over at his house. Then after a while, I just started going online for him and telling him about it later. It was supposed to be a temporary thing.”

  “I think I owe you a huge apology,” Jeffrey said to Frannie. “Glenn was just so much better at that stuff than I was, and—”

  Frannie cut him off. “Believe me, I understand. Don’t worry about it.”

  I was still piecing everything together in my head. “So . . . Jeffrey knew what you were doing the whole time?” I asked Glenn.

  He nodded. “I guess that means Frannie didn’t?”

  “Not until last week,” I said.

  “Wow,” he said. “And I thought Jeff and I were being screwed up.”

  It felt good to laugh.

  “But it was great, wasn’t it?” Glenn asked me, suddenly serious. “The chemistry? The whatever that was?” I felt uncomfortable looking into his eyes. He was right about the chemistry, but I didn’t know how to respond.

  “That’s our cue,” I heard Frannie say. “We’ll see you guys later.” It took me a second to realize that “you guys” meant me and Glenn.

  “You don’t have to go,” I said, turning to her. She looked right into me, the way only she can do, and I knew she was going to leave, and she knew I knew, and we both knew that it was fine. No conversation required.

  “I’ll call you later,” she said. She kissed me and then Glenn on the cheek, then turned and left with Jeffrey. We watched them walk away, following the huge curve of the fountain until they disappeared on the other side.

  “She’s the best,” Glenn said, breaking our silence.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “She really is. Literally.”

  He sat down on the bench and looked up at me. “So?”

  “So,” I said, sitting down next to him. “This kind of changes things.”

  “Does it?”

  I stopped to think for a second. “Well, actually, I don’t know. I mean, until about a minute ago, you were straight.”

  “Riiiiight,” he said with a smile. “And the second-most obnoxious person you’ve ever known.”

  “Right,” I said, keeping his eye contact.

  “Which means I probably don’t have anything to lose if I do this.”

  He leaned over and put a hand on my shoulder, and before I could have any opinion about it either way, he kissed me right there. And no one screamed when he did it. Not even me.

  This would be a good place in the movie for some corny fireworks. It could be a totally stylized thing, all colors and music and explosions in a night sky, even though it was the middle of the day. Sitting there with Glenn, the only fireworks I saw were the ones inside my head, but they were much more real than any movie and much more my own. I didn’t question it; I just let them happen.

  When we pulled apart, I felt like I was looking at a whole new person. “Why am I just learning this about you?”

  “You never asked,” he said, and before I could speak, he added, “And I don’t exactly advertise it, especially at school. You’re a lot braver about that stuff than I am.”

  The first thing I thought of was Patricia. “I don’t know about brave,” I said.

  We sat there through another silence that would have been uncomfortable if I hadn’t had so many thoughts distracting me. I just couldn’t figure out which of them to say out loud.

  Glenn tilted his head to catch my eyes. “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Good things,” I said.

  “Like what?” He was fishing for compliments—typical.

  “Well,” I said, “you’ve probably dropped all the way down to like, fourth- or fifth-most obnoxious person I’ve ever known.”

  He threw back his head and laughed out loud. “Hey, I’m making progress with the Southern kid.”

  “And that’s another thing,” I said, poking him on the shoulder.

  “What is?” His brown eyes bored into mine.

  “You know what?” I sai
d. “Never mind. I’ll save it for later.”

  Sixteen

  “So . . .” Jeffrey said as we walked past the fountain. Cool mist blew across my face as the water shot into the air in a perfect stream, brilliant in the warm spring sunlight. “That was . . . interesting.”

  I laughed, feeling lighter than I had in weeks. I felt like I did the night I peeled off that horrible plastic shoot-the-freak costume—it was so good to be back in my own clothes, my own skin. After hours of lurching around in a costume, I’d forgotten what it could feel like to just be . . . comfortable.

  We walked along in silence for a while. But it wasn’t an awkward silence. For the first time, I didn’t feel like I had to rack my brain for things to say to Jeffrey. I really didn’t need to impress him anymore.

  “You know,” I said after a few moments, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.” I looked into his sincere blue eyes. “I never should have had Marcus talk to you for me. It’s just—I don’t even know how it happened. . . .”

  “Look, I’m sorry too. I mean, I was having Glenn do the same thing.” Jeffrey shook his head, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his khakis. “God, I still can’t believe I did that. It’s so unethical.”

  I gave a little snort-laugh.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said, punching him on the arm lightly. “‘Unethical.’”

  “Did I just make myself sound like a serious wanker?”

  Jeffrey actually looked worried, which totally cracked me up. “Kind of,” I admitted.

  He laughed too as we plopped down onto an open bench near a soft pretzel cart. The wooden slats beneath me were warm. Interesting, I thought, studying his profile. I never would have guessed that Jeffrey would need backup—just like I did. I mean, I’m this slightly chubby girl with a big nose and a weird wardrobe who doesn’t write well. But Jeffrey was tall and gorgeous—he was really smart, really sweet, and he seemed comfortable talking in front of people. . . . It was funny to think that he felt self-conscious sometimes.