“Actually, the name is Jisun,” Jason says, “but most people call me Jason.”
“Hi, Jason,” I say with a friendly nod, and Alfonso shakes Jason’s hand, still sucking on his straw.
Jason has an endearing permanent smile that turns his eyes into two little slits so narrow that I can’t even tell his eye color. Then again, he’s Korean so I guess it’s probably brown, although I’m not sure if that is a racist thing to say. Or think.
“So Matt,” Sandy says, sticking her fork into her salad, “have you thought about your extracurriculars yet?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. I’m thinking maybe Journalism or something.”
“Sounds great,” Sandy says. “I’m thinking about Contemporary Dance maybe, or Cheerleading.”
Alfonso looks at Jason. “What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Extracurriculars,” Alfonso says. “What are you gonna go for?”
“Oh,” Jason says, “I already signed up for Robotics and Track & Field.”
Alfonso nods approvingly. “At least one person who knows exactly what they want.”
“Yeah, well,” Jason says and shrugs. “All you need is a goal, something you know you want to achieve, and then you just do the things you need to do to get there. Simple, really.”
Alfonso looks at him. “So what kind of goal requires robotics and athletics? Building a robot that competes in the Olympics?”
Jason laughs. “Building robots is the goal. But it involves a lot of sitting on your ass planning, building, programming and whatnot. So it’s good to have some balance. Something to keep my body active as well so I don’t turn into a fat blob.”
“That makes sense, I guess.”
“Hi, girls,” a familiar voice says, and when I look I see Jack, Steve, and Chris standing at our table, holding their lunch trays and looking for somewhere to sit.
I hurry to remove my backpack from the chair next to me, hoping that Chris will accept my silent invitation to sit with me, but Jack nudges Chris out of the way and slumps into the chair.
“Thanks, Maddie,” he says.
Maddie is the Jackrabbit’s affectionate nickname for me because he knows I hate how it sounds like a little girl’s name.
I nod and discreetly cover my nose with my hand because Jack’s breath reeks of cigarette smoke. So that’s why they made it to the cafeteria so late. Jack and Steve had to satisfy their craving for nicotine. I can’t help but wonder if Chris smokes. I wouldn’t call it a deal breaker per se, but I find it difficult to see how anyone would ever want to kiss someone whose breath stinks like that of Jack.
Not that I want to kiss Jack or anything.
I’m just saying.
Hypothetically.
Steve sits down next to Jack—he never leaves his side—leaving Chris’s only option to walk around the table and take the last remaining chair next to Sandy.
“Hey,” Sandy says. “You’re Chris, right? I’m Sandy.”
“Hi, Sandy,” Chris replies.
His smile is so brazenly adorable.
Sandy looks back and forth between Christian, Jack, and Steve. “You guys, this is Jason Dong.” She doesn’t have the time to add that Jason’s name is actually Jisun and that everyone calls him Jason, and which extracurriculars everyone around the table is going for, because at the sound of Jason’s admittedly unfortunate last name, Jack and Steve start braying with laughter like a pair of horses. Even Chris doesn’t bother to conceal his grin.
“I’m sorry,” Jack says after a while, wiping tears from his eyes. He looks at Jason. “No offense, dude, but that is one hilarious name. Dong!”
“Guys!” Sandy says like a disappointed mother. “You’re not being nice!”
“Sorry,” Jack says, still shaking with laughter.
Sandy puts her hand on Jason’s arm. “Don’t listen to them. They’re just being silly.”
“It’s okay,” Jason says in a low voice, shaking his head and digging into his lunch.
From one moment to the next, the mood around the table has noticeably changed from relaxed to awkward. Nobody says a word anymore. I’m sure none of us approves of Jack and Steve’s asshole behavior, but apart from Sandy—bless her—nobody has the guts to stand up to them, because deep down inside we all share the lackadaisical mentality of all silent witnesses of bullying and name-calling and their selfish feeling of relief that at least this time the target was someone else.
With a feeling of sympathy mixed with guilt, I watch Jason eat his lunch in subdued silence. At one point his gaze meets mine, and sure enough his eyes are brown.
CHAPTER THREE
After brushing my teeth and spending more time in the shower than would be required for general cleaning purposes, I go to my bedroom, open my laptop computer and log into Wattpad, the outlet for my creative writing endeavors. I have twenty-nine followers on Wattpad. The various stories I’ve been posting over the last year or so have a total of seven hundred and thirty-two views and eighty-nine likes. That’s a far cry from the millions of followers and tens of thousands of likes other Wattpad authors accumulate, but hey, I bet there was a time when they had twenty-nine followers and eighty-nine likes.
The reason I started using Wattpad is because my stories are not safe for family consumption, due to their shameless expression of sexually explicit teenage fantasies. I don’t want those stories lying around my house, ready to be discovered by nosy family members, so I started posting them to Wattpad. Because let’s face it, I’m not a writer because I love the sound of my own writing voice. I want to be read. Just not by my family, or anyone else I know personally, for that matter.
The recurring main character of all my first-person stories is a guy called Matt, and that’s not a coincidence. In writing, nothing should ever be a coincidence. The reason I didn’t choose a different name is because it’s the perfect decoy. If—God forbid—anyone who knows me should ever accidentally come across my stories on Wattpad, they’d never think it has anything to do with me, because nobody in their right mind would ever write semi-pornographic stories about themselves using their real name. Therefore, most readers will subconsciously think that whoever wrote this story, his real name is probably definitely not Matt.
Oh, the cleverness of me!
Without further ado, I crack my knuckles and start typing.
Hi Wattpad, it’s me, Mattoid2002.
Today I have some bad news, some good news, and some … other news for you. Let’s start with the bad news to get it out of the way. There will be no new installments of Jules’s Jewels. Yeah, I know, it’s a terrible tragedy, and I’m sorry for your loss. But really, that story wasn’t going anywhere, and to be perfectly honest, I was running out of naughty things for Julian and Matt to do, so I’ve decided to scrap the whole thing.
But hey, here’s the good news: today I am presenting you with the first installment of a brand new story in which your favorite hero and boy toy Matt, on his first day of high school, meets a gorgeous guy named Chris, and as you can imagine, he falls head over heels in love. Matt, that is. Not sure about Chris yet, because I’m making this shit up as I go along. So anyway, I hope you’ll like it…
I take a moment to collect my thoughts, then I write down the story of my first day in high school, recounting everything from me soiling my pants to Chris winking at me to Jack being an asshole at lunch. Great literature it is not, but I’m reasonably happy with it and I need that kind of release. I need to talk about my most intimate feelings, and as long as I can’t talk about them with anyone in real life, I’ll have to share them with the entire Internet.
Once I’m done on Wattpad, I head over on YouTube to watch a handful of coming out videos, or, more specifically, videos of people recounting how they came out to their friends and family. I’ve probably been watching hundreds of them in the last couple of months, looking for inspiration. Alas, it turns out there are about a million ways to go about it, some of which work great for some peo
ple and not so well for others and vice versa, and the more of these videos I watch, the more confused I get over which might be the right way for me.
* * *
When I wake up in the morning I reach for my phone like every morning, and like every morning I’m too drowsy to remember that the charger is plugged in, so I accidentally pull the plug out of the socket that is two feet up on the wall and have it slam down on the hardwood floor. That’s how I went through three chargers in the last year. Also, it makes enough noise to wake up Greg in the room next door, and he responds by throwing random items against the wall to express his discontent.
Not that I give a rat’s ass about my brother’s discontent.
First I check my emails. Of course there aren’t any because everyone I know was sleeping through the night just like I was. Also, nobody uses email anymore, even during the day.
Next I open Wattpad. I have a number of new eyes on my stories, most of them on the new one, probably thanks to the not very imaginative but distinctly clickbaity title Freshmen Love. There are even a couple of likes and comments. Not to sound ungrateful or anything, but they’re pretty generic and uninspiring. It’s always nice when people take a moment out of their busy lives to drop you a little Thank you or I like it, keep it up! but the amount of useful and constructive literary criticism on places like Wattpad is woefully small. Most people simply don’t care enough to be honest with you and tell you why a story doesn’t work. I have a handful of fans on Wattpad—people who regularly comment on my stories—but there’s only one who never shies away from honest, sometimes blunt criticism. She usually doesn’t leave comments overnight though, and she hasn’t today.
I get up, put on a fresh pair of boxers and a T-shirt, and I make my way to the bathroom, but Greg beats me to it by a second. He usually showers for at least fifteen minutes in the morning, so I go and use the downstairs bathroom. After brushing my teeth and taking a quick shower I go back to my room and put on a pair of jeans because my favorite shorts are soiled and in the laundry. Then I try on five different T-shirts, and in the end I go for a plain green one because I don’t have any clever slogan T-shirts that could play in the same league as Chris’s Larsenist T-shirt. I don’t even have anything pink or rainbow-colored. God, I suck at gay pride.
Breakfast is a largely unspectacular affair, except for an empty milk carton in the fridge that Greg put there after he poured the last milk on his cereal. I’m not going to eat my cereal without milk, so Mom makes me a grilled cheese and tomato sandwich, and then Zoey and I leave for school.
As soon as we’re out of earshot, she asks, “So who’s Blondie?”
I don’t immediately know what she’s getting at, so I frown at her and say, “You mean the 70s band?”
“Don’t play dumb, Matthew. I’m talking about the cute blond guy you’ve been eating up with your eyes during lunch yesterday.”
“Oh, him,” I say. “How do you even … wait, have you been spying on me?”
“Spying is such an ugly word. I’ve been sitting two tables behind you, and I couldn’t help but notice.”
I figure there is no point in denying it, so I tell Zoey everything about Chris.
“You’re totally smitten!” she says when I’m finished. “That’s so sweet. So is he gay?”
“No, I’m not. And how am I supposed to know? I hardly even know him.”
“Sure you are,” Zoey insists. “And you could just ask him.”
I snort. “That is so not gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t just ask people intimate questions like that.”
“Right. Well, then you better start getting to know him better. You know, spend time with him, talk to him, get to know him. And then take it from there.”
“I have no idea what to talk about with him, though.”
“That’s why you need a plan. Spend time with him and get to know him. Once you know him, you know what his interests are. Come on now, it’s not rocket science.”
“No,” I say and nod. “It’s much more difficult than rocket science.”
“No, it’s not. Don’t be such a wallflower.”
“But how am I supposed to talk with Chris when the Jackrabbit is always around?”
“Forget about Jack. You’re not trying to impress Jack, so why do you care what he thinks about you? Just ignore him.”
“That’s easy for you to say. For you it’s easy to make new friends or to ignore people you don’t like or who don’t like you. I’m different. I’m too … self-conscious, and I’m always worried I might say or do something stupid.”
Zoey nods. “Yeah, that’s not the right mindset. You’re so focused on not doing anything stupid that you end up doing something stupid. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Self-fulfilling prophecy?”
“Yeah, no, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not the right word. What I’m trying to say is, the things that you focus on are gonna happen to you. It’s how your mind works. It’s how everyone’s mind works. Here, let me show you something. Close your eyes and try not to think of a pink elephant.”
“Why does it have to be a pink elephant? I mean, why pink of all colors?”
“Because it’s a gay elephant,” Zoey says, rolling her eyes.
“That’s not funny.”
“For crying out loud, just do it, Matt!”
I close my eyes.
“Good,” she says. “Now try not to think of an elephant, no matter which color.”
Naturally, I fail. Trying to focus on what not to think of makes me think of exactly that. I open my eyes again. “Oh.”
“See?” Zoey smiles. “The more you think about not doing or saying something stupid, the more likely you will do just that because that’s what your mind is focused on. You need to stop worrying about what people might think about you and just be yourself. This is high school, Matt. You’re gonna make a fool of yourself one way or another anyway, so you might as well relax and try to enjoy it.”
“Gee, thanks, I guess,” I say, turning my head because a shiny, black Tesla Model S is cruising past us down Vine Street. It’s the first time I’ve seen one in the wild. A few weeks back, at the beginning of the summer holidays, Dad took me and Greg down to the Tesla showroom in Newport Beach where he had a test drive scheduled. Dad is the biggest Tesla fanboy east of Texas, and he keeps daydreaming of buying one. Mom isn’t crazy about the idea, mostly because we don’t happen to have seventy-five thousand dollars lying around, but she couldn’t talk him out of having a test drive. Behind that wheel, Dad was the happiest I’ve ever seen him.
As we walk on, Alfonso catches up with us on his bike. He and Zoey immediately start talking about school, and I zone out because I’m not interested. I have other things on my mind, things in which high school is but a mere backdrop, just the setting of the story I’m being the main character in. I can’t stop thinking about what Zoey has said. Not just the pink elephant, or how I should relax and try to be myself, but about having a plan. And the more I think about it, the more I realize she’s right. I do need a plan. A brilliant plan. Or just any old plan, really.
“Guys,” I say as we approach the school, “before we go to class, can we stop at the message boards and check the sign-up lists for the extracurriculars?”
Zoey and Alfonso look at each other and then at me as if I just suggested we defect to North Korea or something.
“Dude,” Alfonso says. “Have you been listing? That’s what I just said.”
“Um … I know,” I lie. “So what are we waiting for then? Let’s go!”
As I increase my pace, Alfonso and Zoey exchange puzzled looks, trying to keep up with me.
* * *
There are about two dozen extracurricular sign-up lists, and although we have until the end of the week to sign up, they’re filling up fast. Some of them are almost full already. I scan each list, trying to find Chris’s name somewhere, but I don’t even know if he’s signed
up already.
“Matt,” Alfonso says and nods at one of the lists, “over here.”
I walk up to him, and he points at the list titled School Newspaper. “This is what you’re looking for, right?”
“Yeah, um,” I say. “Thanks. Maybe. I’m not sure yet.”
“Oh? What else are you’re looking into?”
“I … I’m not sure. There are so many.” I laugh nervously.
Alfonso looks at me. He knows something is not quite right, but he doesn’t pry. “You can always cross out your name later if you change your mind. There are only three spots left, so you better make up your mind quick.”
“I guess.” I scan the list. Chris’s name is not on it, because that would have been too easy.
He shrugs. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
“Right,” I say and pull out my pen. I’m reluctant to sign my name because I want to know what—if anything—Chris has signed up for. It’ll look stupid if I sign up for the school newspaper only to cross out my name two minutes later when I find Chris’s name on the Arts & Crafts list or whatever. Not that I hope that’s what he’s going for, because I really suck at arts and crafts.
I look over to Zoey to my left, and she silently motions me over. When I join her, she points at Chris’s name. I love his handwriting. It’s so much clearer and prettier than my scrawl—or that of Jack directly above his. I look at the top of the list. It reads Track & Field.
“Oh shoot,” I say. It’s a double whammy. Despite his physique Chris didn’t really strike me as a jock, and the fact that if I were to join him in Track & Field I’d have to join Jack as well considerably curbs my enthusiasm.
“Well,” Zoey says. “There you go.”
“What am I gonna do?” I hiss at Zoey, making sure Alfonso can’t hear me.
She looks at me. “What do you want to do?”
Cupid Painted Blind Page 3
