by Sean Kennedy
“How many times do I have to tell you, we’re just friends!”
Jack scoffed. “Friends who want to pash each other, and probably more.”
At least he wasn’t saying he wouldn’t come anymore. However, he was snoring just as loud as Boyd when Micah checked his phone and saw it was already past their rendezvous time. He slid out of bed and pulled on his sneakers, then shook Jack awake.
“Wha—?” Jack snorted and relaxed when he saw it was Micah. “Did I fall asleep?”
Micah placed his finger over his lips. Seriously, it was like trying to sneak out an elephant. Every move Jack made, Micah was sure the rest of the boys in the room would spring awake at the noise created. Finally, however, they were outside and heading down the long driveway leading to the main road.
“Can’t see anyone,” Jack grumped.
“Probably because it’s dark?” Micah activated the torch on his phone. Instantly, one other little rectangular screen glowed farther along the road.
“Where were we without phones?” Jack said appreciatively.
“I dunno, using torches?” Micah replied.
“How ancient.”
Emma was leaning against her car. “Hello, boys,” she drawled.
Micah could see Jack perking up slightly.
“She’s a lesbian, remember?” Micah reminded him.
“Yes, that I am,” Emma said gravely. “But I do have a surprise for you, Jack.”
“Strippers?” Jack asked, and Micah was reminded of just how much of a hopeless straight boy he really was.
But when Soraya stepped out of Emma’s car, Jack’s cheeky expression melted away, and Micah was gratified to see the pure look of besotted love replace it. Jack raced over to Soraya, and they hugged and kissed exuberantly below the moonlight.
“Ain’t heterosexual love cute,” Emma said.
“It’s almost like they’re normal people,” Micah agreed.
IF MICAH had been expecting Soraya to be coldly disapproving of him and Jack’s other new “friends,” he would have been bitterly disappointed. It hadn’t occurred to him that Soraya might be a bucker of conventions herself, dating a white non-Muslim boy against her parents’ wishes, even if they had grown to love Jack.
“This is going to sound awfully nonpolitically correct of me—” she started, after they made themselves some makeshift seats from dead wood and brush and were seated in a circle together.
“Oh, here we go,” Micah said, preparing himself. Even though he was blinded by Soraya’s smile.
“—but I was rolling my eyes at the thought of Jack having another new football buddy. I mean, no offence, but a lot of you at the moment are just boys pretending to be men, right?”
Micah didn’t know what to say. But Emma was already grinning, and Micah could tell they had probably already shared doozies of conversations in their short time together on the drive up.
“Soraya!” Jack protested, but that was the limit of his protestations.
Soraya gave a small laugh and adjusted her hijab, as it had slipped slightly. “What I mean to say is that they’re boofheads!”
“She’s not wrong there,” Emma murmured.
“Emma!” Micah said, but his protest was just as lengthy as Jack’s.
She shrugged. “But when I heard you were gay, I thought, well, he can’t be like the rest of them.”
“Excuse me,” Micah said, “but we haven’t been fighting for equality for decades—”
“We?” Emma interrupted him. “I’ve never seen you on the barricades.”
Micah ignored her. “—to then be put on pedestals. Some of us are just as boofheady and as unlikable as our heterosexual counterparts—”
“And Micah here is the prime example,” Emma finished for him.
“She’s got you there,” Jack said admiringly.
“Yes, thank you, Emma,” Micah said.
“Anytime.”
Soraya’s enthusiasm wasn’t dampened. “And a lesbian!”
“We’ve got the whole set, honey!” Jack said.
“No, I think you also need a transgender and a bisexual, but I don’t think the latter actually exists. At least, I haven’t seen one in the wild,” Micah said.
“Paul,” Emma told him.
“Paul?” Micah scoffed at the thought of the soccer player from GetOut. “I doubt he even knows what breasts are.”
“Further proving your point about boofheaded gay men, Micah,” Emma said.
“He’s been doing it all camp,” said a voice from the shadows.
Jack and Emma actually screamed. Soraya, although surprised, was only slightly ruffled.
“Relax, everybody,” Micah said, letting his torchlight play over Kyle’s features. “This is Kyle.”
“Oh? And who’s he?” Emma asked.
“My… friend.”
He didn’t see Jack doing suggestive finger quotation marks behind his back but was flustered by the giggling that came from Emma and Soraya. “What?”
“Hi,” Kyle said. “Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise, I’m sure,” said Emma.
“Besides,” Micah mumbled, “I was just being a dick. Mardi’s bisexual. I know her.”
“And now you’re an expert,” Emma said, turning back to Kyle. “When you said Micah’s been doing it all camp, did you mean this football thing you’re on, or the mannerism?”
Kyle grinned.
THEY WEREN’T brave enough to light a fire, which would probably have alerted the regional fire volunteers, so they all crammed into Emma’s 4WD for the little warmth it afforded them. Emma lifted the canvas cover across the boot and sprawled in there herself to give the couples the front and back seats. Not that Micah was admitting to any coupledom between him and Kyle.
“Watch the boners, boys,” she said. “Don’t want anybody poking an eye out.”
“Emma!”
“I have the feeling he says your name a lot,” Jack said.
“She probably has to do the same,” Kyle nodded. “Usually with the words ‘you bastard’ attached.”
“Oi!” Micah said, although a trifle weakly because it seemed they knew him too well already.
“What can I say?” Emma said. “Some of us are burdened in this world, and Micah is my load to carry.”
“Boyd is mine,” Micah murmured.
Kyle and Jack groaned; Emma and Soraya looked on in interest.
“Don’t start that again,” Jack pleaded.
“He’s been your problem for three days!” Kyle pointed out. “And if you all end up in Canberra, another three days. He’s hardly your nemesis.”
“I dunno,” Emma said. “Micah has a lot of nemesises… neme… anenomes.”
“Have you already started drinking?” Micah asked her.
“No! Okay, maybe just one beer. That’s the good thing about adding a Muslim to your collection,” she said, giving Soraya an affectionate arm rub. “They can always be the skipper.”
“That’s so offensive,” Kyle said.
But Soraya laughed. “What? It’s the truth! And the good thing about having a lesbian, at least this lesbian, is she has a hockey stick she can use to protect me from racists.”
“All lesbians have hockey sticks,” Micah said, still feeling a bit put out. “They’re given them at birth.”
“All gay men have ABBA’s Greatest Hits presented to them at a secret ceremony,” Emma shot back.
“What do heterosexuals get?” Kyle asked.
“Beige carpets,” Emma and Micah said in unison.
“I’m feeling some definite heterophobia in here,” Jack said.
As everyone laughed, Micah lapsed back into broodiness. “Anyway, it’s not so much Boyd but what he represents, right?”
“Are you saying he’s a metaphor?” Kyle asked.
“Maybe.”
“He’s not deep enough to be a metaphor.”
“But he’s representative, isn’t he, of all the meathead homophobes we’re going to come ac
ross in our different sports.”
“There’s not as many as there used to be,” Kyle replied.
“Yay for progress! Meanwhile we’ll get to see shitheads like him promoted to captain.”
“Is that what this is about?” Emma asked. “You didn’t get to be a captain?”
“What, you’re going to say I shouldn’t have been one?”
Emma put her hands up. “I surrender! I said nothing of the kind, Officer!”
Soraya broke the uncomfortable silence that followed. “How many captains were there?”
Jack and Micah looked at each other. “Ten?”
“And how many boys altogether?”
“About two hundred.”
“So only one in twenty got chosen? And how many boys will get chosen for the draft?”
“Eighty, round about.”
“So it doesn’t really matter who makes captain, does it? It doesn’t seem to make any difference as to who will get chosen or not. Plenty of boys will be chosen who didn’t make captain. It’s not the be-all and end-all.”
Micah had to admit she had a point.
“See, Micah?” Emma asked. “Another person who doesn’t think the world revolves around you.”
“I don’t like her much,” Micah said, but everybody took it for the joke it was, and the car once again filled with laughter.
“Now, what about those beers?” Emma said, diving into the esky.
DESPERATE FOR fresh air, Emma left the car, and Micah followed her.
As they sat down on the branch seats they had constructed earlier, Emma giggled and swigged from the wine bottle she had moved on to after the beer. They had disappeared to give Soraya and Jack some privacy but forgotten they had also left Kyle in there. The alcohol wasn’t forgotten, though, which Soraya wasn’t imbibing, and Jack had stopped after a couple of drinks.
Micah took the wine off Emma and gulped down a mouthful, wincing at its cheap taste. “Thanks for bringing Soraya. It’s made Jack’s whole camp.”
“The poor guy needed some reward for having to be your only friend.” Emma looked at him slyly. “Oh, but I am forgetting the very handsome Mr. Marks.”
Micah played dumb. “My coach?”
“Is he as good-looking as his son?”
“If you’re into older men, which I’m not, I suppose you could say he’s good-looking.”
“Wow, what a backhanded compliment.”
“What, do you like older women?”
Emma considered it for a moment. “I’d do Sofia Vergara.”
“Hello, I’d do Sofia Vergara,” Micah said.
“Yeah, right. So tell me this, Micah Johnson, why have you followed me out here instead of hanging back with the very handsome Mr. Marks?”
“Will you stop calling him that? His name is Kyle.”
“He’s also very handsome. And you’re not answering my question.”
“I’m nervous, all right?”
Emma’s expression softened. “Oh, Micah, why?”
He gave her a look, which he hoped summed up the total of his experiences over the past six months.
She got it immediately. “It’s time to move on, dude.”
“Dude?”
“I’m trying to be your bro.”
“Bro?”
“Wing man, then. Are you just going to repeat the last word of everything I say?”
“Say?”
She shoved him, and he fell off his seat, giggling in the dirt.
“Seriously,” she said, helping him up.
Micah dusted himself off and sat down on his dead branch throne again. “I’ve had disastrous experience after disastrous experience with guys. First there was the guy who started it all, and I had to change schools. Then there was Geoff, my boyfriend from Lorne who I ran away from home for, although for all of one night, to find him cheating on me. Then there’s Will, who I was convinced was a homophobe out to get me, and then it turned out he was a closet case.”
“Okay, all bad examples. But they can’t be bad forever, right? You have to stop choosing fuckwits. And I don’t think Kyle’s a fuckwit.”
“We don’t know that. Like you pointed out, I have a talent for picking them.”
“You must like him, or else you wouldn’t be dithering so much. You would have just fucked him.”
“Can you please not make me out to be such a slut?”
“I’m not saying you’re a slut! Just that, although in many ways you’re still the same old Micah Johnson, in some ways you’re not. And I think this is the somewhat new Micah Johnson, thinking about things before rushing into them and fucking them up immediately.”
“It’s all a moot point anyway. I might not even be here in a couple of months.”
“So you’re just going to put your life on hold until then?”
“Maybe it’s for the best.”
“And what if you end up staying in Melbourne? Then that’s months of happiness you’ve wasted.”
“Better than the alternative.”
“There’s no guarantee you’d be heading down the marriage aisle if you stay in Melbourne anyway.”
“But, see, it’s not legal. So it doesn’t matter.”
Emma burst out laughing. “You have changed. The old Micah Johnson would have decapitated me for joking about marriage!”
To tell the truth, it hadn’t even registered with Micah. It didn’t even seem like a possibility, what with their age, their experiences, and of course the law.
“I think you should go for it,” Emma continued. “It would be a shame not to. The guy likes you, I can tell. And I know you like him. We’re still teenagers, Micah. Start acting like it.”
“Ran away from home, remember?”
“Well, maybe don’t do that. Again.”
Micah sighed. “I feel like things are finally starting to look up for me, and I don’t want to ruin that. Kyle is the first gay guy I’ve actually liked as a person, not just as potential boyfriend or fuck material. And I’ve made new friends. Out of all the people I could have been forced to sit next to on the bus, it was the guy with the Muslim girlfriend who might possibly understand what it’s like to be an outsider against the norm of society. And he became my friend. And Soraya seems like good value.”
“She does,” Emma agreed. “Look, I get what you’re saying. But it seems like the friendship has sailed. The friend ship, get it? Sailed?”
“You really are drunk.”
“But you get what I mean.”
“Yes.”
“So go back into the car and dry hump that boy, at least.”
“Emma!”
“Wow, you’ve become a prude.”
“No, if I want to dry hump him, I will. I’m just not going to do it in a car where there’s a het couple making out as well. This isn’t the fifties, you know.”
“That’s true, there’s a whole forest out there.”
“Why didn’t you bring your girlfriend, anyway?” Micah asked, desperate to get the subject off dry humping—or any form of sexual innuendo.
“She didn’t want to come.”
“Why not?”
Emma shrugged, but Micah could see she wasn’t happy.
“You’ve made me bare my soul.”
She snorted. “What little you gave me.”
“Come on, fair’s fair.”
Emma grabbed the wine bottle and took another sip for support. “Just the same thing that’s making you keep Kyle at arm’s length. Trish and I might be going our separate paths at the end of the year as well, so she wants to stop now so it ‘doesn’t hurt as much.’” Her mouth twisted in a cruel mockery, which just showed how hurt she was.
“Her loss.”
“And yours too, if you do the same with Kyle.”
“Maybe you’re right.”
“I’m always right.”
“So you keep saying.”
Micah had more to say to her—after all, she had just counselled him—but they heard the car door open and turned
to see Kyle stumble out. He looked around and caught sight of them.
“Hey ho,” said Emma.
“It was getting a bit ‘three’s a crowd’ in there,” Kyle said. When the other two didn’t say anything, he shrugged. “Maybe out here too.”
He turned and walked off into the woods.
Emma whacked Micah on the shoulder. “Go after him, you stupid!”
Micah jumped to his feet. “Stop drinking! You’re losing power of speech.”
“I can speak perfectly well.” Emma waved him off. “I’ll be fine here, alone in the woods, with the recently escaped serial killer with a hook for a hand.” She realised she was already alone and sighed to herself. “At least I still have the wine.”
“HEY! WAIT up!”
Kyle was stomping away from him, heading back towards the drive that would take him back to camp. He only turned around when Micah called him by name.
“Where are you going?” Micah asked, catching his breath.
“Back to bed. Where I should have been.”
“You’re not having fun?”
“Being cooped up in a car alone with the lovebirds sucking face? No, I’m not.”
“Sorry.”
“So you should be. You were meant to be sucking face with me.”
Micah felt like a thunderclap had erupted in his body. “What?”
“Come on. It’s why you asked me to come. I’m not being full of myself. But we knew it was leading to this.”
“I was trying to convince myself it wasn’t.”
“So you’re admitting it, then?”
“I guess I am.”
“Then stop fighting it. Come walk with me.”
Kyle held out his hand. Micah knew this was the last time he could resist.
But he didn’t want to. He was sick of resisting.
He took Kyle’s hand. It was strong and firm in his, slightly callused from what he guessed was the ample use of a baseball glove.
“See, that wasn’t hard, was it?”
Micah shook his head. But there were other things that were hard right now and making him walk funny. Thank fuck it was dark out.
They didn’t get that far—only a little distance away from the driveway and farther into the shrub—when the kissing started. Micah moaned, recognising how much he had been longing for it, and Kyle’s kisses became deeper, his tongue running just inside Micah’s lips.
