by Liane Shaw
“Okay, thanks. I might give her a try.”
He seems like he wants to ask something about my sudden interest in relationships, but then he just smiles.
“She’ll love it. Giving advice is her absolute favorite thing. Anyway, I’d better go, or the essay police will be on my case. Maybe if I get enough done, we can hang later and work on some graphics for the novel.”
“Okay, sounds good. See you later.”
I was going to go to the restaurant and see if Mom would feed me, but I change my mind and head for home.
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“Hey, Jack, this is so nice. I’ve always wondered why you never talk to me!”
Clare’s face grins at me from my laptop screen. As soon as I got in the door, I checked to see if she was online, but now that she’s sitting there staring at me, I don’t know what to say.
“I didn’t know if you would want to talk to me.”
“You are my boyfriend and my brother’s friend. Of course, I’m interested in you.” She smiles sweetly. She is definitely beautiful.
“How is Lucas?”
“He’s great. He and Jamal are heading down to Hawaii for a little trip next week. I have a feeling that Jamal might be popping the question.”
“What question?”
“The will you marry me question. I could be wrong because they haven’t been together all that long, but Jamal seems super crazy about Lucas, and he’s a few years older, so I think he might be heading in that direction. I hope so. I like him, and he makes Lucas happy. Lucas would love to be the star of his own wedding. I’m pretty sure he would create the most amazing wedding dress.”
A wedding. I’ve never even thought about getting married someday. I’m too obsessed with wondering if I’ll ever go on a date.
A wedding dress. If a miracle happened and I ever did get married, I’d probably chicken out and end up wearing a tux in basic black. I imagine Lucas will create something beautiful in every color of the rainbow, worthy of landing on the cover of a magazine.
I know a lot of people call that cross-dressing, but I don’t understand why there needs to be a label at all. I think it should just be called getting dressed.
I also know it’s a myth that all “cross-dressing” men are gay, just like the belief that all gay guys want to wear feminine clothes. But some of us do…or at least we want to try it outside in the daylight instead of in the closet where it’s kind of dark and hard to see how we look. I envy Lucas’s unique style so much that I swear I can feel my skin turning green every time I see him. He can rock a pair of jeans just as easily as a designer dress. I wish I had his courage. I dream all the time about wearing what I want, when I want, and not having to worry about other people’s opinions.
“Earth to Jack.” Clare’s voice pulls me out of the inside of my head, and I smile self-consciously.
“Sorry. Just imagining Lucas in a wedding dress, or whatever he might decide to come up with for his big day. He has a pretty creative style.”
“That’s putting it mildly. But I’m pretty sure you didn’t contact me to talk about Lucas. What’s up? Are you okay? Things going better with your mom?”
Her eyes look concerned, but it doesn’t bother me the way it does when Ryan stares at me like that.
“That’s a good question. She’s making an effort to understand, I think. She doesn’t talk about it much, but she isn’t trying to get me to her priest for an exorcism either.”
“Well, at least she loves you enough to try. Not all of Lucas’s friends were that lucky when they came out.”
“Yeah, he told me. But it’s hard to feel lucky when I know she wishes I wasn’t gay. She wants me to be straight and get married and have babies.” Clare makes a face.
“Straight. As if everyone else is crooked or something. Anyway, I guess all you can do is give her time. Someday she’ll understand that you can be gay, get married, and figure out a way to have babies.” She looks at me expectantly. She’s obviously figured out I didn’t call her to talk about my mother.
I take a deep breath.
“So, there’s a new guy at my school.” She smiles widely but doesn’t say anything. “And he’s gorgeous and seems friendly and smart, and I can’t stop thinking about him, and I don’t know what to do about it.” The words come rushing out, tripping over each other in their hurry, and probably sounding like a mess of nonsense syllables to Clare.
“That’s great,” she says, nodding as if I said something intelligent.
“I don’t know what it is. I’ve barely talked to him, and besides, I don’t even know if he’s gay or not. I don’t know why I’m feeling this way if he isn’t, but how do I know?”
“I don’t think anyone knows anything when they first meet someone and feel that…thing.”
“Thing?”
“Like a chemical reaction or something. I felt it when I saw Ryan.”
“But it’s probably not a good idea to feel chemical reactions for someone who isn’t gay when you are. Have you ever heard of gaydar?”
“Yeah, Lucas says he has it.” She laughs.
“Do you think it’s real? That you can somehow sense if someone else is gay?”
“I don’t know. Maybe you just sense that the person is interested. If a guy is interested in another guy, chances are he’s gay. I don’t know if that’s gaydar or just love.”
“Love? I think I’m a long way from that.”
“Hey, you never know. It has to start somewhere.”
“How do I find out if he’s gay or not? I can’t just walk up to him and ask. And I don’t want to keep feeling this way about him if he isn’t.”
“No one ever knows if there’s a chance or not at the very beginning. Just talk to him. Find out more about him. If he is your guy, it’ll happen.”
My guy. The thought gives me a little shiver.
“But I don’t want to keep feeling all…stalker-guy if there’s no chance.”
She laughs again. “Don’t stalk him then. Try being his friend instead.”
“Can I be his friend with all of these feelings messing up my head?”
“You can try. Welcome to the wonderful world of falling in love, Jack.”
Falling in love. I never thought I’d do that with anyone, let alone someone right here in Thompson Mills.
My dad has this expression: There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell.
My mom would probably think I’d end up down there with the snowball if I actually fell in love with a guy.
A gorgeous guy with big brown-and-gold eyes who smiles at me in a way that no one has ever smiled at me before.
Except he might stop smiling once he gets to know more people and starts hearing all the rumors about me.
Or worse, finds out the truth.
four
The story has become a town legend, fact and fiction blended together into some kind of conversational smoothie that people still talk about even though it feels like it happened a lifetime ago.
Less than a year now, but it feels like forever to me.
Ryan the hero, flinging himself out of his wheelchair to save the poor little gay kid from drowning.
At first everyone called it an accident. It even made it into the local news because nothing much ever happens in a town as small as ours, and the idea of someone who can’t walk managing to save someone who can’t swim was pretty fascinating to the outside world for about fifteen minutes.
In my world, it moved from an accident to a suicide attempt pretty quickly, and everyone started to look at me like I had morphed into a bigger freak than they’d thought I was in the first place. And that made everything seem so much worse.
They made me start counseling before I even left the hospital. My counselor, Matthew, keeps trying to make me talk about it. He thinks it’s important for me to understan
d what I was doing at the water that day so that I can find a better way of dealing with my problems than trying to float away from them.
He wants me to say that I was trying to kill myself.
That I wanted to die.
But the thing is, I don’t know if that’s true.
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I can still close my eyes and see the yellow fabric floating out from my hands, soft and shimmery, like an extension of the sunlight just waiting for someone to slip it on and blend into the morning.
I hesitated for a few seconds, trying to shake off the realization that this was a seriously bad idea. What if someone saw me? Everything—absolutely everything—would end if someone saw me.
I looked over at the bridge and the street beyond it. Still deserted. I put the skirt over my head and tugged it down over my jean jacket until it sat over the waistband of my pants. It looked lumpy with my jeans underneath, but there was no way I could risk taking the time to get them off.
I closed my eyes, lifted the edges of the skirt, and began to twirl until I couldn’t feel anything but the wind moving me around and around, endless circles with no beginning and no end. I wanted to do it forever, just keep dancing until I could forget everything.
But I couldn’t dance fast enough to erase the words written across my mind. The reminders that I’d been living in a town where no one, not even my own mom, wanted me to be myself.
My mom. The thought of her made my heart hurt, as if someone had reached down into my chest and started to squeeze. I wanted to tell her who I was so badly, but I was so scared of what she’d do that I felt like I was going to faint every time I imagined the conversation.
What was I thinking—dancing around where someone might see me and laugh?
Or worse.
My feet just stopped. I stood there, staring at the river. The water glistened in the sunlight. Soft. Calm.
I moved forward to the edge and started to walk slowly in. My skirt tripped me a little as it soaked up the liquid, and I had to hold it up a bit, so I didn’t fall. I couldn’t really swim. I always hated lessons, and my mom finally took pity on me before I actually figured out how to stay on top of the water.
Mom. I moved forward, trying to put her out of my mind. Trying to put everything far away from where I had to think. The water felt wonderful. Each step deeper made me feel like everything was just leeching out of me and floating away. The fist around my heart loosened, and I wondered why I’d ever hated swimming lessons in the first place. My whole body felt loose, almost the way dancing makes it feel, but different. Better.
I kept walking until the gentle coolness was up to my chest and then my chin. I could hear nothing but my own heart beating, thump-thumping against my ribs until it almost hurt but felt good at the same time.
The water floated up around my cheeks, teasing me a little. What would happen if I took just one more step? Would I float? Drift away from everything and everyone until nothing hurt anymore?
So tired of it hurting.
I took one more step and then, suddenly, the water grabbed hold of me, pulling me under and wrapping around me like a huge, heavy, wet blanket that pushed me down until I couldn’t breathe. My heart started to pound at an uncontrollable pace, and I felt like it was going to shoot right out of my chest as all of the light disappeared, and I couldn’t even tell if my eyes were open or shut.
I didn’t know until later that Ryan was sitting up on the bridge, calling out to me, trying to get me to stop moving.
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So much has changed since that day. When I replay it in my mind, it’s almost as if I’m watching a movie about someone else’s life, and I’m trying to figure out the character’s motivations from my seat in the audience instead of wandering around inside my own head. And I don’t want to watch it anymore. I just want to put it away so that I can pretend it never happened.
After everything that happened last summer, I decided that I’m going to move to Bainesville after graduation. I applied to school there, but even if I don’t get in, I’m still moving there to work. I need to live somewhere that isn’t here. I want a chance to try to be myself in a place where people haven’t already decided what they think about me.
I don’t want to be the freaky kid who had to be saved from drowning. I want to leave that part of me behind, in the back of my closet where there will be extra space because my makeup has come away with me to my new life. I had planned to keep a low profile this year so that I could graduate and get away from this place without adding anything new to my less than stellar reputation.
But then Benjamin arrived on the scene.
I don’t even know him. But for some reason, I can’t sit on the sidelines and watch other people narrate my life in a way that will make him want to close the book on me before he gets past the first chapter. I want him to know that there’s more to my story than the opinions of other people who don’t even know me.
Which probably means I’ll have to try to remember how to talk the next time I see him.
five
“Hi.” I get the single word out of my mouth, telling myself to stand my ground and resist the urge to run. Benjamin looks up from his painting of…I want to say a dog, but it could be a pony.
“Hey!” He gives me his awesome smile.
“How’s it going?” I ask, trying to smile back with an equal level of awesomeness. My face feels strange, and I have a bad feeling that I resemble one of the gargoyle drawings I discarded because it was too weird to use in Ryan’s novel. I gesture toward his artwork so he’ll look away until I can get my face under control.
“How’s my crap-ass painting going, or how is life in general going?” He laughs and, shaking his head, glances down at the dog/pony.
“Either one. That’s an interesting…dog?” Please let it be a dog.
“Yeah, totally interesting, seeing as it’s a deer.”
Shit. Wrong on both counts. At least pony would have been closer. I can feel my cheeks betraying me, flaring up like they always do when I’m making a fool of myself.
“Oh, yeah, I see it now.”
“Liar. I suck at drawing. I like the abstract stuff, where no one knows what you’re trying to draw so they can’t say you did a crappy job.”
I think abstract painting is all about using color and lines in a way that creates an impression of different things to different people. I personally believe it’s actually much harder than realism. Probably shouldn’t say that out loud though. Telling him I think he’s wrong is likely not the best way to start a friendship.
“Yeah, me too,” I lie. Good choice! Lying is so much friendlier.
“You can draw like crazy though. Maybe you could give me some pointers?”
“Sure. Umm, well, one thing I find really helpful when I’m drawing is to use a photograph to start from, just to get the proportions and details right.” He grins at me as he pulls a piece of paper out of his bag. It’s a photo of a deer.
“I did that. And here is the wonderful result. My lopsided dog with long legs and knobby knees.”
“Well, you could just slim out the body a bit, like so.” I borrow his pencil and make a few lines, streamlining the torso and giving the legs some muscle tone. “And give more definition to the hooves so they look like—”
“Hooves instead of paws,” Benjamin finishes for me, watching me work. He’s leaning forward, so his chest is brushing against my arm as I work. My hands are starting to sweat a little, and I’m not sure I can hold on to the pencil long enough to finish.
“Just trim the ears back a little and lengthen the nose, and there you go. It’s a deer.” I turn my head and he’s right there. We’re nose to nose, and I can’t stop myself from staring.
He has a really nice one, just a tiny bit crooked on one side as if maybe he broke it once upon a time, which just makes him even better-lookin
g, kind of edgy and tough. I keep on staring at it, wondering if he got in a fight or maybe swam into a pool wall before I realize what I’m doing and jerk myself back out of his personal space. I drop the pencil on the table and wipe my sweaty hand on the back of my pants, hoping he doesn’t notice.
“Thanks, that’s awesome,” he says, seeming oblivious to my sweat-drenched palms and inappropriate nose gawking. “I’m glad you stopped to talk. And not just because you fixed my work. You never talked to me after the first day I came here. I was kind of thinking I’d done something to piss you off.”
Damn! I was hoping he hadn’t noticed. Or is it good that he did notice? What’s better? Noticing or not noticing?
Right now, he’s probably noticing that I’m just standing here instead of answering him.
“No—nothing like that! I’m just…shy, I guess. I don’t always do well with new people.” Good answer. You definitely don’t sound like a loser now.
“When I saw you that first day, I was kind of hoping you were friend material. I don’t have any of those around here just yet.” He smiles that smile, and I have to lean casually against the table so I don’t fall down and embarrass myself.
“I’m not exactly overloaded with them either.” Oh, wow, Jack, this just keeps getting better and better!
“I don’t know why. You seem like a pretty cool person.” I smile at him, so startled by the almost compliment that I feel a little light-headed for a second. Either he hasn’t heard what people say about me yet or he hasn’t made the connection between the words and the face.
“There are people around here who wouldn’t agree.” Way to go. Let him know you’re Mr. Unpopularity. That’ll impress him.
“There are stupid people in every school. I do my best to avoid them, and if I can’t avoid them, I just tune them out.” He makes very deliberate and direct eye contact, and suddenly I can see it in there. That he’s heard at least some of what people say about me but he’s talking to me anyway.
