Invisible Boys

by Holden Sheppard

  ‘Not really,’ I grumble.

  He pulls his pants up, and I quit moping on the throne and open the cubicle door. It’s like we both instinctively know how bad it would look for me to be talking to guys in the boys’ toilets.

  Zeke hands me my phone. The screen is still intact. I kind of wish I’d shattered it, just to see something break.

  ‘You having a hard first day back?’ he asks, washing his hands. ‘Maybe you should go home. You made it this far. That’s pretty good for a first day back.’

  ‘No,’ I say, clenching my fist. ‘I’ll make it through the whole day. These people aren’t going to break me.’

  ‘I think you’re really brave,’ Zeke says, wiping his hands on his shorts. ‘I couldn’t be open about it. Not in high school, at least. And not here.’

  A flame of hope flickers in my heart. ‘Come to the dance with me.’

  Zeke’s dark eyes widen. ‘Oh, um … I’m already going with someone.’

  I chuckle. There is nothing else I have the energy to do but chuckle. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Sabrina Sefton. We work together on the dance committee and I think she has a crush on me. She asked me this morning. She even wants me to go to some party with her tonight. Like, it’s a school night! Anyway … sorry, man, but … like I said, I’m not out. I’m not even sure I want to be out.’

  ‘No,’ I say quickly. ‘I’m the one who should be sorry. I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have asked you. I shouldn’t have asked anyone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I hold my hands up as if to push him away. ‘Nothing. Just leave me alone.’

  Letterbomb #3

  I feel dumb about the last letter because I started going on about how being homosexual was like a devil thing but when I read some more websites I realised that’s just crazy bullshit that religious nutcases push and last night I got into a real dark place and I had a messed up dream where I was the grim reaper and I had to tell a young guy like me that he had satan inside him so it was time for me to kill him for his own good before he hurt his parents and everyone he loved and ruined their lives and ruined the whole town, but when I swung my big steel scythe it went straight through this guy like he was made of smoke and stuck into my chest and my blood gushed out black like it was diseased or like when you have a scab

  point is: I don’t hate being gay because of God or religion. I really don’t believe in that … but I still don’t wanna be gay and I don’t like the idea of being gay because:

  I want to get married and have a normal family and kids of my own

  I don’t want to leave everything and move to another country or a big city

  I don’t want to be a weirdo

  I don’t want to be a guy who can’t hang out with normal straight guys

  that last point is the worst because once you accept you’re gay and tell people then that’s the moment the world won’t see you as a real man anymore you will always be weaker than straight guys and less than them and they won’t look you in the eyes and when they do look at you all they’ll see is a feminised sissy guy and it doesn’t matter if you don’t want to be like that that is all the world sees and it doesn’t matter what you think of yourself, you can be gay and want to still be manly and you can even be a bloody gay lumberjack but no straight man will think of you as masculine and even if you know you belong at the men’s table they’ll never let you sit there ever again because you’re only masculine if other men think you are, which is what I learned the night of the Summer Dance

  12: Jupiter’s Rings

  Hammer

  So far I’ve balanced three biros in Manny Mendoza’s afro and he hasn’t noticed. I’m about to make it four when Miss Krushnev or Krakow or whatever her name is catches me.

  ‘Kade! That’s enough! Please, just do your diagram!’

  I withdraw my arm. Mission failed.

  ‘Check it out,’ Razor says, holding up his diagram of the female reproductive system. ‘I gave her pubes and a dick.’

  ‘Nice. Tranny diagram.’

  Sabrina Sefton rolls her eyes at us. ‘That is literally so immature. You guys are like pea-brained eight-year-olds.’

  ‘Better than being a teenage witch,’ I shoot back.

  Razor and Lockie piss themselves.

  ‘Like I’ve never heard that before,’ Sabrina says. She nudges Zeke. ‘Did you see what Razor did? You don’t think that’s funny, do you?’

  Razor holds up his mangled diagram proudly. Zeke snorts.

  ‘It’s kinda funny,’ he says.

  ‘See? Old mate Zeke gets it. He’s a good egg.’

  Zeke smiles at me. It’s not the kind of smile you give to one of your mates when you think something they said is funny. It’s the kind of smile I would give to a relief teacher when I want to charm her, or a girl when I want to hook in with her.

  I sensed it when he helped me at the drive-ins. I saw it at the church last night. And I’ve seen it all the way through last-period health class.

  Maybe Zeke’s going through this phase, too. The thought doesn’t even scare me or make me mad. It makes me excited. I can’t explain it and I don’t want to. I don’t want to think too much about it or it’ll make me freak out like I did the other night at the drive-ins.

  Or maybe it’ll just make me happy? I mean, if we’re both feeling the same thing, and it’s just hormones and it’s just temporary, no sense in not having a bit of fun, right?

  So I just return the smile back to Zeke. His face gets pink, and he turns back to sour Sabrina Sefton to work on their diagram.

  As I take my eyes off him, I see a blur of grey and pink streak past the front of our desks.

  Miss Kleenex snatches Razor’s diagram from his hands and stares at it with a sour face.

  ‘You think this is appropriate for school, do you?’ she demands.

  ‘Of course, miss,’ Razor says coyly. ‘The uterus diagram identifies as a dick and balls, so I gave it gender reassignment surgery.’

  Miss Kleenex just gapes at him. ‘That’s not what the task is.’

  ‘Why do you have a problem with it, miss? Are you transphobic?’ Razor goads.

  Miss Kleenex’s eyes go wide. She puts the diagram back on Razor’s desk and backs away, like we’re infected with a zombie virus.

  ‘Just … be quiet. And leave me alone.’ As she walks stiffly back to her desk, we can all hear her mutter, ‘Typical Meder, leaving me to teach this …’

  Me and Lockie crack up.

  ‘That was fun,’ Razor says, grinning. ‘She’s so easy to mess with, man.’

  My laughter trails off as I spot Charlie Goth sitting in the back row. He has his earphones in and is drawing on the desk. His eyes have dark circles around them. He looks like hammered shit.

  Must be hard for him.

  No more thinking, Kade.

  I stare at my diagram. This is so stupid. And looking at the female reproductive system just makes me think of Jess, and the back of her ute, and that sick, horrible feeling I had after I came inside her.

  I screw my diagram up and lob it at the back of Zeke’s head.

  He turns, half-frowning, but his eyes look over me like they’ll take any excuse to smile.

  ‘I’m bored,’ I tell him. ‘Entertain us. Do a backflip or something.’

  ‘I’m not really that flexible,’ he says.

  The word “flexible” makes me think of me holding his leg up around his shoulders. I shake the image out of my head.

  ‘Mate, I reckon you’re smarter than Miss Krouton over there,’ I say. ‘Go on. Teach me something interesting.’

  ‘Teach you? About what we’re doing?’

  ‘Nah, not that,’ I say, glancing at the diagram. ‘I already know what a pussy looks like. Teach me something interesting.’

  Sabrina coughs and whispers something to Zeke. He smiles and ignores her. What a lad.

  ‘Um, okay,’ Zeke looks around the walls of the science lab. ‘Pick your topic. Chemistry or
physics.’

  I chew on the lid of my blue pen. ‘Neither. What about those?’ I nod my head at a big glossy chart of all the planets in the solar system. ‘Tell me if it’s possible for aliens to exist on Mars.’

  ‘That’s not exactly science,’ Zeke says. ‘That’s speculation.’

  ‘Then speculate, mate.’

  Zeke would usually have turned around by now, pretending to do his work. But he’s smiling at me, and I’m smirking back the way I would at a hot chick. Something’s different.

  ‘Well, probably not, because there’s no breathable atmosphere,’ he says. ‘There’s no running water, although they have some polar ice caps on Mars, so there could be some basic bacterial life hidden there.’

  ‘You’re such a square,’ I tease him. ‘Okay.’ I point my mangled, drool-coated pen at the chart. ‘What about that one? Venus.’

  ‘No way. Too hot. Any aliens would be vaporised by the heat and the sulfuric acid clouds.’

  ‘But what if they learned to adapt?’ I say, tapping my nose. ‘See, I’m not as dumb as everyone thinks.’

  Zeke smiles awkwardly. ‘Well, they wouldn’t be able to adapt, because they’d vaporise too quickly.’

  ‘Mate, I’m just speculating,’ I explain to him. For a smart guy he doesn’t pick things up too fast. ‘What about Mercury?’

  ‘Too hot and too cold. Like a desert planet.’

  ‘Okay, smart guy. Jupiter, then. There could be aliens on Jupiter.’

  ‘Unlikely, since it’s all made of gas,’ Zeke says. He looks like he doesn’t want to correct me too much – and yet there’s a kind of geeky triumph in his dark eyes when he tells me I’m wrong.

  ‘Gas?’ Razor guffaws. ‘Like, fart gas?’

  Zeke screws up his nose. ‘I don’t know. Maybe.’

  ‘Are the rings made of gas, too?’ I ask. ‘Or could you walk on them? Hey, how awesome would it be if you could like drive a space car around the rings like a race track? And if you knock the other drivers off the track they just spin off into space and explode!’

  ‘Good Lord,’ Sabrina Sefton mutters.

  ‘Well, here’s an interesting thing about Jupiter’s rings,’ Zeke says, swivelling his spine even more. His hands grip my desk; he shuffles so he can see me clearly past the science lab’s taps. ‘They’re not actually rings.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The rings are an illusion,’ he explains. ‘They’re just big chunks of rock and ice and debris that kind of fell into Jupiter’s orbit. From a distance, it looks like they form rings, because they’re moving so fast, but actually, we’re not seeing the planet as it truly is. We’re just seeing what the planet is surrounded by.’

  ‘Hey, that’s actually cool. See, I said you were a better teacher than Miss Krispy Kreme.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Hey, you going to Amber’s party tonight?’ I ask him.

  Zeke looks at me blankly. ‘Yeah. Are you?’

  ‘He’s coming with me,’ Sabrina says, turning around. ‘And it’s Amber’s party. Why would you be there? Didn’t you and Richelle break up on the weekend?’

  ‘Yeah. So? Amber invited me. We were mates before I got with Richelle.’

  ‘Oh, that’s real classy, Hammer,’ Sabrina says. ‘It’s a pre-Valentine’s Day party, and you’re going to show up to torment Richelle, are you?’

  ‘On yer broom, Sabrina,’ I sneer at her, flicking another pen lid her way. ‘Well, I’ll see ya there, chief,’ I say to Zeke.

  He smiles and turns back around, like he’s scared of talking to me for too long. It’s kind of cute.

  Cute.

  No more thinking, Kade.

  ‘What was that about?’ Razor mumbles in my ear. ‘You mates with the squares now? I wasn’t consulted on this.’

  I shrug. ‘He’s not as bad as I thought.’

  Feeling cocky again, I slide my chewed pen into Manny Mendoza’s afro – except this time, he detects the movement, and brushes a hand through the back of his hair.

  Four pens erupt from his curls and clatter to the ground.

  ‘BOYS!’ Miss Kalashnikov screams.

  Amber Brinkley lives in Mount Tarcoola and her parents are away until Thursday. She can’t throw a weekend party, which would’ve gone off, but a party on a weeknight isn’t that much worse. Theoretically, it means we can’t get as smashed as we would on the weekend, but the reality is I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve rocked up to home room hungover. One time I’m pretty sure I was still actively drunk.

  Razor drives me and Lockie over with him at around eight. We already had pre’s on his patio so we’re all half-cut already.

  The party’s kind of lame: about forty people, mostly from our year. We’re in the grassed backyard; there’s a handful of plastic chairs and everyone else is standing. Some R’n’B shit is on the speakers. It’s mostly our crowd from school: the footy guys, the popular chicks, a few people from the mid-tier groups like the stoners and the drama dorks.

  ‘Jesus,’ Razor says. ‘Look at that.’

  He points at that emo chick Hannah who hangs around with Charlie and Rocky. She’s wearing a black and pink hoodie and tight bike shorts exposing some clean-shaven but stumpy legs.

  ‘Fuck me,’ I say. Probably pretty loudly. ‘For the sake of everyone’s eyesight, put some bloody pants on.’

  ‘Look at them,’ Razor groans, pointing to the other couple of girls beside Hannah and Rocky. ‘All of them as revolting as the other. The unfuckables.’

  ‘Maybe I’ve been drinking too much,’ Lockie says. ‘Hannah doesn’t look that bad, does she?’

  ‘And now we know Lockie has a fat fetish,’ I declare.

  ‘If I ever get as desperate as that, make sure to take me out into a paddock and shoot me in the head,’ Razor says, in a dead serious tone.

  ‘Of course I will,’ I say. ‘I’ve got your back, man.’

  Suddenly, a shriek of ‘FUCK YOU!’ pierces my eardrums. Cold rum and Coke splashes over my face as a blur of oinkand black races past me, into the house.

  When I wipe the liquid out of my eyes, I see Rocky sidling past, following Hannah into the house.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you guys?’ he snaps. ‘You can’t say that shit to someone.’

  ‘Crap,’ I say, turning to Razor. ‘Did she overhear us?’

  Razor doesn’t respond, because he’s already got his tongue down Michelle Free’s throat.

  I grab a beer from our esky and do the rounds of the party. When I shuffle up to a group under the patio, I realise too late that Richelle is amongst them.

  Some Maori-looking dude has his arms around her protectively. What a tool.

  ‘What are you doing, showing your face here?’ Richelle demands, slicing through the group conversation.

  ‘Free country,’ I say, shrugging.

  She grabs the Maori guy’s forearms and drapes them over her bare shoulders. ‘Jai is taking me out to Portocello’s for Valentine’s Day dinner.’

  The Maori guy flexes and gives me the stink eye. I want to punch him, but he’s bigger than me.

  ‘Expensive time to start dating someone, huh?’ I say, winking at him. The footy boys are nearby and they won’t let him get too far with me.

  ‘He’s also taking me to the Summer Dance,’ Richelle says. ‘I bet you haven’t found a date yet, have you?’

  I haven’t. But I don’t want to be beaten.

  So I do the coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life.

  I scan the circle for the lowest-hanging fruit I can find who also doesn’t like Richelle, and lock on to Piera O’Dell. She’s a bit ethnic-looking, a couple of pimples on her face, but curvy and good-looking enough with make-up on. She’d never in a million years get a date with a guy in my league, so she’s the right target.

  ‘Piera,’ I say, locking eyes with her for our first conversation ever. I flash my cockiest smile. ‘I’ve always had a thing for you. Wanna make me a happy man and be my partner for the dance?’


  ‘Oh … gosh, okay,’ Piera says, more out of shock than anything else, I think.

  Richelle’s glare is split between me and Piera. She whispers something to Jai and flounces away with him in tow.

  Hammer: 1. Frigid Richelle: 0.

  ‘So, you meant it, right?’ Piera says.

  ‘Of course, babe. Of course. Here.’ I punch my number into her phone. ‘I’ll text you. Later.’

  Fuck, I am a machine.

  The rest of the party is one beer after the other, until I’m probably classed as ‘fully cut’.

  And just as I’m draining the second-last beer in the esky, I see him.

  Zeke Calogero wanders into Amber’s backyard, hand-in-hand with Sabrina Sefton.

  My breath catches in my throat. He’s wearing a black V-neck shirt and some dark jeans that hug his bubble butt just perfectly. I’ve never noticed before how incredibly hot he is. He looks like a young Marlon Brando. Big, warm, dark eyes. Olive skin. Those short, dark curls.

  ‘Zeeky!’ I shout, walking over to him. Some chairs pop up out of nowhere and my foot hooks them; suddenly, I’m flying through the air. Then grass all over my limbs, beer all over my face and sand in my nostrils. My chest hurts.

  ‘Upsadaisy.’

  I peer up.

  Zeke is standing over me, holding out his hand to help me up. The full moon makes a halo behind his head.

  ‘You’re an angel,’ I say, taking his hand. ‘A sexy angel.’

  Zeke hauls me up with effort: I forget he’s not muscly like me. When he goes to release my hand, I tighten my grip and twist my fingers in between his. The tendons in his hand tense up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ His whisper comes near my ear.

  I squeeze his fingers and whisper back, ‘You do want it, don’t you? I knew it.’

  Zeke says ‘oh wow’ so softly that nobody except me can hear him. He pulls his hand away and then, after a second, touches my shoulder. ‘How drunk are you, Hammer?’

  ‘Drunk enough to know I wanna do this,’ I say, stroking his chest with my knuckles. ‘I’m sorry I said you had moobs. They aren’t even that bad. You look really good.’

  ‘Hang on a second,’ Zeke says.