He gave a little laugh, and Mel looked down at her puffy blue coat, concentrating hard on the square islands of downy filling. She sat down on the divider, and after a moment he joined her.
“You know about Avery too?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Parker said. “It was all part of the story. That’s true too, right?”
Mel nodded.
“I thought Avery could be,” he said. “I guessed that.”
“She’s freaked out about something,” Mel said. “I get that she doesn’t want to be seen with me around school, but it’s more than that now. I wish I knew what.”
“So why don’t you ask her?”
“You can’t do that with Avery.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can’t get in Avery’s face with things.” Mel sighed.
They sat in silence for a minute, listening to the song of the Dumpster again. It banged harder now. The sound was almost reassuring to Mel. She liked its loudness.
“Are you really okay with it?” she finally asked. “Nothing’s changed between us, has it? I mean, if I wasn’t gay …”
“You don’t have to go there,” he interrupted. “At least you’ve got a really good reason for not wanting to go out with me, you know? I can’t really take offense if the problem is that I’m too masculine. I’m too much man!”
He flexed and then winced and grabbed his shoulder. Mel tried to laugh, but the sound that came out was more like a croak. All of her emotions were close to the surface. Parker’s face fell.
“Hey,” he said. “Hey, come on. Friends, right?”
“Right.”
Parker hesitated for a moment, then quickly threw his arms around her. Mel got the feeling that he was working something out of himself by gripping her so firmly. That was fine with her. It felt good to be here. She rested her face against his wool coat. They stayed there like that for a moment, then Parker flinched slightly and reached under his coat and adjusted his suspenders.
“These suck,” he said. “I didn’t really want acupuncture, you know?”
He pulled off a pin and slam-dunked it into the Dumpster with a yell. He jumped up, grabbed onto the edge, and continued screaming at the garbage, giving his very definite opinion of the Guinness promotion.
“If only the public knew what really goes on here,” he said, sliding down and wiping his hands on his coat. “Family fun, my ass.”
Mel managed a smile.
“Come on,” he said, reaching down a hand to help Mel off the divider. “Let’s go inside. I’m sure we’re missing out on something fun.”
22
Avery woke to the sound of something slamming into the bottom of her bedroom door. To her trained ear, it sounded like a Tonka pickup truck, thrown the length of the hallway as part of her brothers’ “Is it really indestructible?” game. She then heard her mother yelling that they had better stop throwing that truck around or they would never see high school. A minute later Eric opened her door.
“Do you have batteries?” he asked hurriedly. Her brothers knew all about the Billy Bass thing, but they weren’t foolish enough to search through Avery’s things to look for the battery stash.
“What did I tell you about knocking?” she said, brushing her hair from her eyes.
“Do you?”
She didn’t feel like arguing with her brother about batteries. She had a full-scale disaster on her hands.
“Here,” she said, reaching over and opening a drawer in her bedside stand. She reached around and found the batteries and rolled them across her floor.
So now she was wide awake, which kind of sucked. She’d been hoping to sleep a little longer. Until she was thirty would have been nice.
She hadn’t meant for this to happen. The kiss with Gaz hadn’t been planned. Hareth had bailed on rehearsal, so they’d decided to go over to the hayride. In the car Gaz made a joke about the whole hayroll thing, and much to Avery’s surprise, he started flirting with her. And she liked it.
She’d only wanted to test it out, just to see how it made her feel. The way she saw it, her whole relationship with Mel was one big experiment, so the rules didn’t always apply. She wasn’t cheating—she was checking her homosexuality quotient.
It had been … different from what she’d experienced with Mel. Something had definitely stirred in her that didn’t seem to happen while she was kissing Mel. But there was a lot missing, too. Being with Mel was warm and cozy and … complete. Being with Gaz was fun, but in the end she was just messing around with some guy in a car. Overall, kind of disappointing. Maybe a four out of ten.
Which kind of meant that she was right back where she started with the whole issue. And, as much as she questioned her lesbianity, there was definitely lots of evidence to support the idea.
One: She’d dated a girl for almost four months. She referred to this girl as her girlfriend. Not in public, but certainly in her own head and to the girl herself.
Two: She’d done things with aforementioned girlfriend that went well beyond kissing, things that might still be illegal in some of the more backward states.
Three: Mel beat Gaz’s scores in all aspects of the event.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, verdict?
Gay. Gay as the day is long.
Except that she wasn’t. Despite all the evidence, she was not gay. She knew it. Because gay women don’t have sudden, overwhelming, and (she had to admit it now) constant urges to make out with guys.
Did they?
And now she had Nina to deal with. Not only had Nina caught her and looked at her with a dislike that Avery had never seen before—if Nina decided that she couldn’t keep this a secret, everything was going to go boom.
The suckitude level, as Margo would say, was very high.
When Avery arrived, Nina was sitting in front of her computer with a physics book open beside her. She was fully dressed in jeans and the Little Miss Felon T-shirt Avery had given her for her birthday last year. Avery wondered if this gesture had some meaning—if she had worn the shirt to deliver a message. Just the fact that Nina was awake, showered (her hair was still damp), dressed, and doing physics at ten on a Saturday morning added to Avery’s current low opinion of herself. If her brothers hadn’t woken her, she’d still be in bed, drooling on herself and dreaming that she was grocery shopping with Jack Black.
“Can I talk to you?” Avery asked.
“I guess.”
She sat down on Nina’s plump cream-colored comforter. (Nina made her bed, too. She even tucked her pillows under the comforter and then pressed in the edge so that they were in a perfect little envelope, just like they did in ads for white sales.)
“You’re mad,” she said.
Nina didn’t answer. She looked down at her long nail beds and massaged a cuticle.
“I’m really confused, Neen.”
“About what?”
“About me.”
“Oh, that’s not too vague,” Nina said.
Avery sighed. Before, when they only used to talk about guys, it had been easy to pour out details. Now she was loaded down with shame—about her behavior, her mysterious sexuality, that she wasn’t showered and doing physics problems.
“I’m not sure if I’m gay, or straight, or bi, or what,” she said.
“Maybe you should have thought that one through before you started dating Mel.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“I definitely like Mel. I like … the things that go along with dating. I mean, I have those feelings. But I think it might just be Mel that I like. That way.”
“You like guys too?” Nina asked.
Avery felt her skin flushing. Something about that question made her feel like … a glutton. Like she wanted everyone. Guys, girls, dogs, cats, populations of whole cities.
“I was sitting with Gaz, and I realized I kind of like him,” Avery tried to explain. “I felt something. I wanted to see why. I wanted to see what happe
ned. I needed to check.”
“So?” Nina asked. “What did you find out?”
“It was okay.”
“What does that mean?” Nina asked.
“I have no clue,” Avery said.
“Does Mel feel … like that? Confused?”
“No,” Avery said, pulling up the little silver chain she wore around her neck and chewing on it. “I don’t think so. Mel’s pretty sure about herself.”
“That’s she’s a lesbian.”
“Yeah.”
Nina tucked her legs up on the chair and rested her face on her knees. It looked like she was folding in on herself, creating a little temple where she could ask the gods for advice on this perplexing matter.
“If she finds out, she’s going to get really upset,” Avery said.
“No kidding,” Nina mumbled.
While Nina thought, Avery got up and paced around the room, looking at Nina’s pristine desk, with her little silver Apple notebook sitting perfectly in the center and the row of books lined up along the wall in order of height. Nina’s bureau was completely stocked with makeup and lotions, yet wasn’t overcrowded. Avery knew that none of the lipsticks had gotten all over the silver-twisty part or had their tips broken off by accident in the cap. Her perfumes and lotions were used to a respectable halfway point. Unlike Avery, Nina didn’t keep piles of empty bottles because she was convinced that if she held them upside down or scooped her finger inside, she might be able to draw out just one more drop of shampoo or cream or whatever it was.
“I don’t want to mess things up between you,” Nina said, finally lifting her face from her knees.
Avery didn’t know if she should say “thanks” or just “oh” or “okay.” She nodded instead.
“It can’t happen again,” Nina said sternly. “It can’t.”
Avery resented the parental tone Nina was taking, but she couldn’t really argue.
“I know,” Avery said. “I promise.”
Avery started across the room to give Nina the hug that always came at this point, but Nina turned away and looked at her book, scrunching up her forehead as if the whole time she’d really just been doing some complex problem in her head about what happens to a bicycle moving along at the speed of light.
Avery stopped and put her hands in her pockets.
“Thanks,” she said before walking out the door.
23
The moment Nina had been dreading finally came on Monday morning, when Mel peeked shyly around the council office door. Nina had been hiding in there, stuffing holiday dance envelopes. The letters didn’t need to go out for weeks, but Nina was briskly working down the assembly line she’d made for herself, trying to seem as busy as possible. Anything to stall for time.
“Have you got a second?” Mel asked.
“Um … sure,” Nina replied with a slight nervous twitch.
“Need help?”
“No. I’m good.”
Mel sat down at the table and picked one of the reservation cards out of the stack and stared at it. She poked at the snowflakes on the card with her finger, going from flake to flake like a little child with a picture book.
“Has Avery seemed … upset to you?” she asked.
This was it. The beginning of the lie. Every second Nina kept quiet would just make the lie bigger.
“Upset?” she said.
“She hasn’t said anything to you about me?”
Between friends, not speaking was the same thing as lying.
Talking, not talking. It made no difference. She was screwed.
“Maybe I shouldn’t get involved in this stuff.” Nina asked. “I can’t really take sides, you know?”
Jeff came in, gave a quick hello, then dropped himself at the computer and started checking his sales, bringing an end to their conversation.
“I better get to homeroom,” Mel said, backing up.
Nina followed her to the door and grabbed Mel by the shoulder before she could walk away.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I think it’s just that she’s getting used to the idea that people know.”
“But did she say something?” Mel asked. There was a real urgency in her eyes.
Lies, lies, lies, lies …
“No,” Nina said. “She hasn’t said anything.”
“Really?” Mel perked up a bit.
“Really.”
“Okay,” Mel said.
Nina went back into the office and sank down at the table. Georgia came in a minute later and threw down a container of small, dry-looking bran muffins. Nina gazed at them and realized that she had absolutely no appetite.
Third-period music theory wasn’t a class Avery could really zone in since there were only four people in it, but it was hard to keep her mind on appropriate uses of the nondominant seventh chord when she could see Gaz out in the hallway, reading something off a music department notice board. He shouldn’t have been there. He was supposed to be somewhere on the other side of the building. This had to mean he wanted to talk, which wasn’t really like Gaz.
She’d just managed to get through the talk with Nina. She’d done her shift on Sunday then gone to see Mel. She’d played it well, but in her head, nothing was right. Mel was so tiny. Mel was so squeaky. Mel sat in her lap like some kind of overgrown orange kitten. Mel wanted to make out and would not let Avery watch The Royal Tenenbaums, because Mel did not understand the movie and anyway you’re supposed to make out instead of actually watching movies. You’re supposed to want to. But Avery didn’t want to. She wanted to watch Owen Wilson go insane and crash his car into the building. Owen Wilson reminded her of Gaz. They were both blond guys, after all, with that same strange blank delivery. Nonchalant.
And they were guys. She had guys on the brain. She’d eyed up every single one of her male customers at work. She’d even looked at Bob.
She went through it again in her head. The car. The cold. Gaz’s pale face, his thin, wide lips. He had muscles in his upper arms. She’d never noticed that before Friday. He’d always seemed like a beanpole.
Truth be told, the kiss wasn’t a four out of ten. It was more like a seven. She’d happily do it again. But that didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. That was the problem with dating your best friend—you needed a really serious reason to stop. It was kind of a permanent situation. It was like she’d gotten married without realizing it.
Oh, now the panic was going. Now she had it good. She jammed her pen hard up the coil of her spiral notebook and wondered if the gesture meant something.
And Gaz was outside the door, and the bell was going to ring. And she’d just missed the entire homework assignment.
Great.
She wondered if anyone would think it was weird if she just jumped out of the window and started running across the soccer field, escaping. Other people had to have these impulses.
Escape attempts are only had if they catch you.
Which they would, given her current luck.
And the bell. Ding. Round one.
“Hey,” he said, as she came out of the room. He looked really good today. He was wearing a black button-down shirt made of some kind of satin or polyester or something. It was tapered, but it still hung loose against his thin frame. It made him look taller. (What was with this sudden height obsession?)
“S’up?” she said, casting an eye over the board, but not really reading anything.
“Nothing.”
Maybe she was going to get away with this after all….
“You have a second?” he asked.
Nope.
“Um … yeah. If you walk with me to chem.”
Gaz didn’t say anything at all for about half of the walk. He just moved along beside her. There was nothing really different about his walk, except that it seemed kind of … possessive. Like he was with her.
“I was thinking …” he said.
Admittedly, this was kind of a major announcement, coming from Gaz.
“Right,” she sa
id, swerving to avoid half the lacrosse team. A few of them threw her looks. Lacrosse. Screw lacrosse.
“I heard something,” Gaz said.
“What?”
“About you and Mel.”
This was it. Moment of truth.
“It’s just …” How the hell did she explain this? “I can’t do anything about the other night. I’m in the middle of this … thing.”
“With Mel?”
“Yeah.”
He got it. She didn’t need to draw a picture.
“I think it’s cool that you’re open to stuff,” he said.
“So we’re cool?”
“We’re cool.”
And that was that. He didn’t even seem surprised. He wasn’t mad, or revolted. He didn’t ask to watch. He was just Gaz, and things were easy with Gaz. But something swept over his expression. He wasn’t completely happy with this. There was just enough hesitation….
And then there was the part that was both exciting and terrifying to Avery as Gaz left her at the door of the chem lab—nothing had ever been as appealing to her as his faint look of disappointment
Thanksgiving
November 22
TO: Nina
FROM: Steve
I’m pretty sure we shouldn’t be living in our house right now. The ceiling in my mom’s studio is sagging from all this water that’s trapped on the roof, our one toilet won’t stop flushing itself, and the corner of the wood floor in the living room turned black overnight and no one knows why. Plus this herbalist guy is staying with us. He keeps burning things and the place totally reeks.
All of this has driven our cat crazy and he has expressed his dismay by attacking my good biking shoes.
The weird thing is, no one notices any of this but me. When I point to the water coming through the ceiling or the stuff that’s growing on the floor, my parents just shrug and say, “What?”
I guess when you grow up in a teepee, some things just don’t get to you.
I’m starting my application for Stanford. By the time I’m done, it’s going to be wet and clawed up and smelly. At least I’ll stand out.
The Bermudez Triangle Page 14
