Quite an Undertaking: Devon's Story

by Barbara L. Clanton

  After lunch, we walked the mall. Early November seemed too soon for Christmas stuff, but every store was decorated for the December holiday. We passed an electronics store with some of those mechanical puppies out front that barked and did flips. They were cute, but we didn’t stop to look, even though I kind of wanted to.

  I think I gained a few points at the food court, but that didn’t seem to matter since Natalie and I were relegated to second-class status behind Jessie and Rebecca. We’d tried to walk four across, but a lot of Canadians had come across the Seaway International Bridge to shop in the United States forcing us to walk two and two. I didn’t really mind walking with Natalie because she loved to talk about basketball, and I was learning a lot about the sport. She was a sophomore, a little overweight, not to the point of obesity, she was just a big girl. She wore her hair down, like Rebecca, but Natalie’s hair was shorter, falling just below her collar.

  “So what exactly does a power forward do?” I asked her.

  “Oh, uh, I’m kind of a cross between a center and a regular forward.”

  I laughed. “Okay, that’s as clear as mud.”

  Jessie must have been listening because she said over her shoulder, “Her job is to rebound the ball and then find me, so I can dribble up the court, do a behind the back move around the defense, and lay it up as soft as a baby’s behind.”

  I only understood about half of it, but I said, “Oh,” as if impressed with her skills.

  Rebecca decided she wanted to look at earrings at one of those free-standing carts in the middle of the mall walkway. I think she was trying to change the subject. “Hey, Devon,” she beckoned me over and held up a small pair of hoop earrings, “I think you’d look great in these.”

  She held the earrings up to my ears, and as I looked in the mirror, I tried hard to focus, but Rebecca’s smile reflected in the mirror overtook me. Her rose-scented perfume wrapped itself around me making it hard to think straight. I even imagined that I felt her body heat as she stood behind me. I took a quick breath and looked away.

  I dug out the ten-dollar bill I had in my jeans pocket to pay for the $6.99 pair of earrings. I never spent money on jewelry because Mom, Missy, or Grandma took care of that for me at Christmas or on my birthday. In fact, my grandmother had given me the pair of gold ball earrings I usually wore. My stomach clenched when I thought of her. I forced it away. There was no way I was going to cry in front of Jessie. No way.

  Rebecca seemed pleased when I took them to the cashier at the far end of the cart and stood with me while I paid. Jessie and Natalie stood together in the walkway where we’d left them. They didn’t even pretend to be interested in the jewelry. Instead, they made fun of people in the mall, including this really fat lady who walked by them. Jessie, without saying a word, waddled after her. That cracked up Natalie who in turn waddled in a circle. I pretended to be oblivious to them, but out of the corner of my eye I saw an almost sad look take over Rebecca’s face.

  Change and bag in hand, I turned toward Rebecca. “Ready?” My heart leaped when I saw the troubled look in her eyes. Her cheeks flushed, and I could tell that Jessie had embarrassed her. Thank God the fat lady didn’t notice them making fun of her.

  “C’mon.” Rebecca put a hand on my back and nudged me toward her friends.

  We resumed our original pecking order and walked the full length of the mall. When we hit the Sears at the end, we turned around and walked up the other side. Natalie continued to talk about basketball and the Connecticut Sun, her favorite WNBA basketball team. I’d pretty much had my fill of basketball by that point, but I asked her questions anyway just to keep the conversation going. What I really wanted to do was vaporize Jessie, so I could walk next to Rebecca. I’d take Rebecca’s hand, and we wouldn’t even care if people stared at us—two girls holding hands in the mall. Unfortunately, Jessie still existed. Technically, I was spending the afternoon with Rebecca, but at that point I just wanted to go home. Editing bad copy was beginning to sound much more appealing than playing second fiddle to Jessie.

  As we walked back up the other side of the long stretch of mall, an interracial couple walked toward us. A tall black man held hands with a noticeably pregnant white woman. Once we passed them, Jessie shook her head. “They’re dilutin’ the blood, man.” She turned toward Rebecca. “Don’t they see that?”

  Rebecca glared at Jessie.

  Jessie shrugged. “What? I was kidding.”

  I didn’t sound like she was kidding, though, and I realized that all day I’d felt self-conscious about the color of my skin.

  I SAT IN my room after they dropped me off and tried to edit the girls’ soccer article, but my mind kept wandering back to my wonderful trip to the mall that afternoon. Even though I stole a few smiles from Rebecca, I didn’t have much fun. I was hoping Rebecca would text me or call, but so far nothing.

  I tried one last time to focus on the soccer article, but finally closed the file in frustration and shut down the computer. I got up, took my new earrings out of their small plastic bag, and then took off my gold ball earrings. I lifted the lid to my jewelry box and laughed. I’d have to ask Mom for a grown up jewelry box for Christmas this year. The cheesy Howe Caverns stamp on the top of my current one reminded me of the car trip Missy and I took with Grandma and Grandpa to the Finger Lakes when I was ten. Amazingly, I didn’t choke up at the memory. Maybe I was making progress.

  I carefully put on my new hoops. They were only about a half inch in diameter, but still, I’d never worn any kind of hoops before. I felt grown up all of a sudden. With my new earrings and new highlights, maybe Rebecca would look at me the way I wanted her to. Not just as a friend, but something more.

  I sighed and gently placed the earrings that Grandma had given me in the cedar box and then shut the lid. There was no way I could have told Grandma that I was gay. She had been old-fashioned, but maybe she knew now. Maybe she looked down from heaven and was okay with me. Grandpa, too. Maybe they’d both know that being gay wasn’t a choice or something I randomly decided to be. Maybe they would understand that I wasn’t some evil horrible person, and that it was something I figured out about myself in eighth grade. My crush on Marcy Berger didn’t last long, but the deep attraction I had for her back then woke up something inside me. When Missy wasn’t around, I secretly searched the Internet for anything gay-related and discovered a whole world of gay people. They called it “the gay community” on a few websites. I didn’t know if Grasse River had a “gay community,” but I hoped someday I’d find one somewhere if it existed. Those websites were right. I wasn’t gay because I chose to be. I just was.

  I found myself in Grandma’s room, not quite sure how I got there. I took a deep breath. I hadn’t gone into her room since she died. I sat down on the edge of her bed and wondered if and when Missy would take her room back. I smoothed out the comforter with my hand. The softness reminded me of all the times I sat on Grandma’s bed and we’d talk about stuff. Stuff like the animal shelter or her bridge club or my school. I choked up, so I stood up and went to Grandma’s bookshelf. Darn, Mom took the butterscotches out of the jar, but that made sense because Grandma wasn’t there anymore.

  I picked up my favorite glass snow globe from Grandma’s collection. I shook it and watched the snow swirl around the skyline of Manhattan. Missy brought it back from New York City when she went to a journalism conference last summer. Once all the snow settled on the bottom, I put the snow globe back and picked up a picture of Grandma and Grandpa standing in front of their Christmas tree. They looked young and confident, but there was a better word to describe them. Peaceful. I hoped they were at peace up in heaven. I wiped the dust off the top of the picture of my dad and Uncle Joe as young boys. They looked so dorky in their old-fashioned clothes. Grandma even had an old elementary school picture of me and one of Missy. I hated my picture. Mom had gotten tired of brushing the knots out of my long hair and cut it short into a page boy. The bangs were the biggest reason I hated the picture
. Once I got into middle school, I informed my mother I was going to grow out my hair. When she didn’t protest at my first real rebellious act, it knocked the wind out of my sails. After that, Missy helped me find a good style that I liked, one that framed my face nicely, as she put it.

  I put my school picture back on the dusty shelf, and before my sorrow overtook me, I fled to my room. I didn’t want my mom to see me crying in Grandma’s room. I plopped onto my bed and faced the wall. I pulled my knees up into a fetal position and pulled Seymour tight to my chest. I cried mostly about Grandma, but I think I also cried about the frustrating afternoon I’d spent with Rebecca and her friends. I made a promise to myself that I’d never be in a situation where I’d have to hang out with Jessie ever again. Of course, as soon as I made that promise, I knew that if Rebecca asked me to hang out with them again, I’d do it. Who was I kidding?

  I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to find out if Rebecca was gay like me. How in the world did you find out something like that? It’s not like I could come right out and ask her. Could I? What if I did find out she was gay? How could I tell her I liked her? How could I tell her that I loved French now because I got to see her every day? How could I tell her that what I felt for her was six-thousand times more intense than what I’d felt for Marcy Berger? I had no idea.

  A WEEK AFTER that stupid trip to the mall with Rebecca and Jessie, I waited in the backseat of Travis’s car as he and Gail went into the P & C food store to get beer. Travis had his older brother’s ID and since they looked alike, most people didn’t look at him twice. We were going to go to Bruster Park to hang out with the regular Friday night crowd because that’s where everybody went on Friday. In fact, I was going back there on Saturday night with Rebecca. Well, I was going there to hang out with Rebecca, Jessie, and Natalie. I never should have made that ridiculous vow about not hanging out with Jessie because I broke it immediately.

  Last Sunday when I talked to Missy on the phone, I asked her how you told somebody you liked them.

  She asked, “You mean like like?”

  I felt myself blush and was glad she couldn’t see me over the phone. “Yeah.”

  “Okay,” she said, “do you have any classes with them?”

  “French.”

  Them. Again, Missy didn’t say “him.” I knew she was leaving it up to me to come out to her, but I didn’t know how. The only person I had ever come out to was myself, and even though I wanted desperately to tell my secret to at least one other person in the world, I didn’t know if I could handle the rejection or hostility that could happen when you come out. I’d read horror stories on the Internet about people getting beaten up or thrown out of their houses. At sixteen, I didn’t want to get thrown out of my house. Where would I go?

  “Okay,” Missy said, “do you sit near them? If not, you should try to move closer. If you can do it without making it obvious that is.”

  “Yeah, sh—” I stopped myself just in time. I almost said, “she.” Talking in code like this was tricky. “Actually,” I tried again, “they moved their seat next to me last week.”

  “No kidding, Squirt. I think you’re already in. I think they already like you if they moved seats.”

  Missy had my attention. “You think so? But what do I do now?”

  “Well, have you invited them to hang out with you and Gail? You know, do something in a group of friends? That way it won’t seem like a date.”

  A date? The word scared me to death. “Um, I went out with some of her friends to the mall last weekend.” Oh shit, shit, shit. I just said, “her.” I held my breath hoping Missy hadn’t heard it.

  Maybe she hadn’t heard my slip because she said, “Squirt, that’s awesome. Keep doing stuff like that, and if it’s meant to happen then it’ll happen.”

  “Yeah, okay.”

  “But don’t push it. You could always...”

  “What? Always what?”

  “You could always wait for them to make the first move, you know.”

  Oh, God. Maybe Rebecca had already made the first move when she changed her seat. Maybe she made the second move by asking me to go to the mall. I rubbed my forehead when I realized she had probably already made the third move by asking me to go to Bruster with her. How many more hints did I need?

  I guess I hadn’t said anything while these thoughts sloshed through my brain because Missy said, “Hey, Squirt, you still there?”

  “Yeah, sorry. I’m just...I don’t know. I’m new at this.”

  Missy laughed. “It’s scary, liking somebody when you don’t know if they feel the same way.”

  Missy then started to tell me about a new guy she was seeing, but she used definite pronouns this time. “His name is Brandon. He’s a chemistry major. He’s a junior, too.”

  Travis and Gail came back to the car knocking me out of my thoughts. Travis lifted the grocery bag. “We scored,” he said triumphantly. He put the brown grocery bag filled with what looked like two six packs of beer on the seat next to me.

  “Cool,” I said. I hated beer, but everybody went to Bruster to drink beer, so that’s what we were going to do, too.

  From the passenger seat, Gail said, “The cashier hardly looked at Travis. She just glanced at the ID.” She gazed at Travis with such admiration that once again I felt like a voyeur, a spy, a fifth wheel. When Travis got in, closed the driver’s side door, and looked back at Gail the same way, I decided that, yeah, I was intruding. Gail only asked me to tag along because she felt guilty about spending so much time with Travis and not with me.

  “Hey, guys,” I called from the backseat. “You know what? I don’t feel so hot all of a sudden. Maybe I should go home.”

  “Oh, Devon.” Gail turned full around to look at me. “Are you sure? Do you want us to go back in and get you something? Aspirin?”

  “No, I’ll be okay. I need to go home, I think.” I didn’t like lying to her, but I would have been uncomfortable hanging out in the backseat knowing they wanted to be alone together.

  “Okay,” Gail said. “If you’re sure. We’ll try again another time.”

  Travis drove the couple of miles back to my house and dropped me off. Before he backed out of the driveway, watched Gail lean over and give him a long kiss. Yup, I’d definitely read the signs right. Was I reading Rebecca’s signs right?

  Chapter Six

  Stranded

  I BRUSHED MY hair in front of the bathroom mirror debating whether to wear it up or down. Down, I decided. Rebecca wouldn’t see much of me in Jessie’s dark car anyway, so why bother.

  I looked at myself for an extra second in the mirror. Grandma always said I was pretty. I wasn’t so sure, but at least I had a good nose—kind of straight, not too big and not too small. Okay, so maybe I had one good feature, but you couldn’t just walk around telling people to look only at your nose, that would be weird. I wondered if Rebecca liked my nose.

  Gail called earlier in the day and told me she was sorry I had to go home the night before. I think she missed the closeness we used to have. I did. I missed hanging out with her like we used to, but I guess things were changing for both of us. When she asked me what I was doing that evening, I lied. I don’t know why I lied, but I told her I was going to stay home and work on newspaper stuff. For some reason I didn’t want to tell her I was going to hang out at Bruster with Rebecca.

  I didn’t know how to tell Gail I was gay. I’d have to tell her eventually, and maybe after she got over the shock, she could give me advice about Rebecca. I’d probably tell Missy first, though, and see how that went. I wasn’t sure now if Rebecca’s signs were signs at all, and I didn’t want to scare her away.

  I put the hairbrush down and stood back. So far so good, but I only had a half hour before they came to pick me up, and I still had to figure out what to wear. I wish we didn’t have to hang out in a car in November, but we had nowhere else to go. We’d already done the mall thing, so Bruster was next.

  I went into my room and pull
ed out a pair of black jeans, my black cowboy boots that pinched my toes a little, and a green turtleneck sweater. Actually, the sweater was Missy’s but she hadn’t taken it to Plattsburgh, so I figured she wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it this once.

  I scurried out of my robe and dressed in record time. Dad was on a thermostat kick again, so the house was arctic. I couldn’t risk frostbite before my date with Rebecca, or I’d never know if she liked me. I scolded myself. This wasn’t a date. This was just hanging out with some new friends from school.

  I checked myself one last time in the mirror and put my wallet in my back pocket. I didn’t think I’d need money, but I had ten bucks—next week’s lunch money. I was headed out my bedroom door when I noticed my robe on the floor. I turned on my heels, picked up the robe, and hung it in the closet, which was weird because I usually left my clothes on the floor and then Missy or Mom would yell at me. For some reason I felt like picking it up. I guess I was thinking that Rebecca probably would have picked up her robe, so I should, too.

  I made one quick stop in Grandma’s room and picked up my favorite snow globe. I shook it hard, and watched the snow settle over the Empire State Building. “Wish me luck tonight, Grandma. I want Rebecca to give me a sign.” I put the snow globe back on the shelf in exactly the same spot I’d taken it from.

  I practically skipped out of Grandma’s room, down the hall, and down the steps to the window by the front door. I breathed a sigh of relief. They weren’t here yet.

  I jumped when my mom spoke.

  “Are your new friends here?”

  “You scared me, Mom.” I sat on the couch next to her armchair. “No, they’re not here. Rebecca said they’d be here at seven.”

  “Now, who are these girls again?” She took her reading glasses off and put down her book.