by John Goode
Jeremy scoffed. “I’ve had a crush on you since the fourth grade; pity you never noticed.” I could see the blood drain from Kyle’s face as he realized he might not have been as invisible as he thought. “Just because douchebag here is experimenting with his sexuality, it doesn’t mean he’s an outcast.” He practically spit at me. “It just means karma works and that bad things do happen to bad people sometimes.”
I could see Kyle beginning to get that look on his face which meant he wasn’t about to back down. I decided to make things easier for all of us. “It’s cool,” I said. “I’ll see you after school.” I began to walk out, and though it cost me, I refused to look away, just nodded at each person as I passed. The look of hatred and disgust on the other kids’ faces made me want to puke. I turned back to Jeremy. “For what’s it worth, I’m sorry.”
Sad thing is, I really was sorry, but I knew it meant nothing.
Kyle
I WAITED until Brad was out of earshot before I turned to Jeremy. “What the fuck was that?”
It was obvious he wasn’t expecting that kind of reaction from me. “You can’t tell me you are attracted to that asshole?”
I ignored his question because I knew that wasn’t what he really wanted to know. “I get that he and his friends were dicks to you, and that sucks. But you know what it’s like to walk around this town and have people hate you for no other reason than you’re different, right?” He nodded. “Then why the hell would you treat anyone else like that?”
He looked like he had eaten a bug from the expression on his face.
“You may not like him, but he stood right next to me when no one else would. He came out to the entire school for no other reason than he liked me. He didn’t have to do that; it would have been so much easier to deny everything and stay who he had been, but he didn’t. So whatever problems you may have had with him, he is ten times the man of anyone else I have ever met. So back the fuck off.” I was out of breath and I hadn’t even realized my fists were clenched. I didn’t know what to do with my protective instincts when it came to Brad, but evidently my body did. I forced my fingers out of the fists and tried to look calm.
“Would you have even gone out with me?” he asked after a few seconds of silence.
I sighed. When had I started feeling so tired all the time? “You said you’ve known me since fourth grade?” He nodded. “And in those eight years, did you ever talk to me? Just walk up and let me know how you felt?” A quick shake of his head. “He did,” I said, pointing to where Brad had been. “He came after me and told me that he liked me.” I saw the way Jeremy seemed to deflate as what I was saying hit home. “You don’t get to say that I wouldn’t go out with you. You never even asked.”
“Jeremy,” the girl said, trying to distract us. “We have to get those chairs set up, and we’re losing time.”
“The school board can bite me,” Jeremy answered, turning away from me.
“School board?” I asked, looking at the girl.
She nodded. “They are having some emergency meeting tonight, and we have to get the auditorium set up for it.”
“Fuck,” I said, rushing past her and out of the room.
I caught up with Brad halfway across the quad out of breath. “School—school….”
He looked at me like I was a retarded stroke victim. “Yes, we’re at school.”
I shook my head as I tried to catch my breath. “School board….”
“You’re bored with school?”
I stopped and looked up at him. “What is wrong with you? The school board is meeting tonight.”
He shrugged. “And?”
“And they only meet at the first of the month. This is an emergency meeting,” I explained.
Another shrug. “Still not getting it.”
Thank God he was cute.
“What do you think they are going to be talking about?”
“Um, school stuff?” he offered hopefully.
Cute, I reminded myself. And sexy.
“Us. They are going to be talking about us,” I explained slowly. “They are going to have to come up with a policy.” He still wasn’t getting it. “There isn’t a policy yet! They can’t kick you off the team because there isn’t a rule that says players can’t be gay.” His eyes opened wide. “We still have a chance to change things.”
“How?” he asked, excited.
“I don’t know yet,” I admitted. “But I need to find a copy of the school rules,” I added as my mind raced a million miles a second. “I’m going to check the library.”
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Um… no idea,” I had to admit.
He nodded. “Okay, then, good plan.”
“I’m sorry, but honestly, I am going to be sitting in the library reading. Do you want to do that?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Not really,” he admitted sheepishly.
“Then go to class and don’t worry about it.”
He gave me a grin. “So you’re going to save me again?”
I smiled back. “I’m going to try my hardest.”
“If we weren’t in the middle of the quad, I would kiss the shit out of you,” he whispered.
I felt my face get warm. “I’ll hold you to that.”
He gave me a little push. “Go on, then, be a superhero.”
I turned around and headed toward the library, I had a purpose now and that changed everything. I couldn’t fight people like Kelly or intimidate guys like Jeremy. In fact, when it came down to it, there wasn’t much I could do to help us out. But sitting in a library and studying the school charter to find out what the board could and could not do? That I could handle.
I refused to stand by and be a victim of this.
Brad
SO IT’S possible I might be dating Batman.
If you had asked me last week what the school board was, I might have told you that it was what they used to spank kids back in the Stone Age, but Kyle knew better. I wasn’t sure how the coach could kick me off the team if there wasn’t a rule against me being on it, but he had. Only there was no rule that said Coach had the right to do that. And Kyle knew what to do with that piece of information, even if I didn’t. So I spent the rest of the day watching the clock in anticipation that he would find something we could use. When the last bell rang, I flew out of the class and made my way across the quad.
It hit me that this was the first time I had ever willingly dashed toward a library.
When I pulled open the quiet solid-glass door, I was struck by two things: one, there were two entire stories of books; and two, if I was forced to be anywhere this quiet for more than five minutes, I might lose my mind. I looked around for Kyle, but I only saw some nerds grouped together in the back of the foyer. They looked like they were playing dice or something. The goth guy at the theater had known Kyle: maybe these guys might too. They were sitting in one of Kyle’s favorite places at school: book land.
“Hey,” I said, walking up to them. “Do you guys know a guy named….”
They had all froze in place like deer in the headlights.
Oh God, did I beat you guys up too? I thought to myself, realizing there was so much more room for my day to get shittier.
“We aren’t bugging anyone,” gulped the one that was sitting behind some kind of folder that was standing up, hiding the papers he had behind it.
“I’m not saying you are. I’m just looking for—” I began to explain.
“I just bought these pants, please don’t trash me,” another of them begged.
“I’m not going to trash you,” I assured him, referring to the practice of grabbing random freshmen and stuffing them into trash cans. I had never done it myself, but I had indeed stood and laughed while the other guys did it. Last year it had been sort of funny. Now, seeing the abject terror in their eyes at the sight and sound of me, I couldn’t recall one amusing thing about it.
“Go get Mrs. Linson,” the main guy told his friend. Mrs
. Linson was the school librarian and the current frontrunner to be discovered as a child-eating witch before she died. The library was her domain in the same sense that Hell was the domain of Satan. Since I didn’t have a bucket of water handy, I knew if she did come over I was pretty much a dead man.
“I’m not here to beat you up,” I said angrily. All three of them moved away from me, and I felt sick to my stomach about how these guys were gaping at me. In a calmer voice, I said, “I am looking for someone. Kyle? Blond hair, skinny?” They continued to stare at me for a second, no doubt waiting for me to spring my trap on them. “I’m serious, have you seen him?”
“He didn’t do anything, either,” the main one answered.
I put my head down and rubbed the bridge of my nose as I began to name the lineup of the ’96 Rangers in my head. I got to Palmer and decided to try again. “Okay, look, guys, I’m Brad, and I am looking for my boyfriend, Kyle Stilleno. He is about so tall, shaggy blond hair, skinny, and was in here after lunch. I am not here to beat you up, or beat him up. In fact, I am out of the beating business. I just want to find him.”
There was an oppressive silence as they stared at me for almost a minute, their mouths open in shock. Finally, the main one said, “Kyle Stilleno is gay? Wow, I had no idea.”
That took me aback. “You know him?”
All three looked at me like I had just stated as truth that the world was flat and that if you went too far there would be dragons waiting for you when you got there. “Of course we know him. He has the highest GPA in Foster High history, hands down. He aces every honors class he’s in. Shoot, he already has college credit!”
One of the other guys nodded. “I saw him recite the periodic table from memory one time in Mr. Ethan’s science class.”
Holy crap. Kyle was, like, a nerd celebrity.
“Have you guys seen him?” I asked, hoping I had calmed them down enough to get an actual answer.
Two of them shook their head but the third nodded. “He was in here earlier, on the computer, but he ran out about an hour ago.”
“Shit,” I said, looking around in vain. “And he didn’t say where he was going?” I asked hopefully.
“Not to me, but he might come back,” he offered. “He’s in here a lot.”
That took me aback. “Really? Why?” The three of them glared at me harshly as I mentally rewound what I had said, trying to find where I had offended. “Nope,” I admitted. “No idea what I said wrong.”
The main guy shook his head disappointingly at me. “You know, if more jocks actually dared to walk in here more often, so many of them wouldn’t be failing.” That was way too close for comfort. He gestured to one of the empty chairs at the table. “You can wait with us if you want.”
“Sure.” I shrugged, taking a seat. “Why not.” I looked at the papers and dice in front of them and asked, “What are you guys doing?”
“Role-playing,” one of the other guys explained. When he saw the confused look on my face, he added, “D&D,” which did nothing to help me. “Dungeons and Dragons?”
“Oh,” I said, recognizing that name. “This is Dungeons and Dragons?” I gestured to the papers and dice. “Where are… you know… the dungeons and dragons?”
The main guy rolled his eyes. “In your head. It’s role-playing.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me,” I admitted flatly.
“Give him a character sheet,” he ordered one of the other guys. “Roll him up something easy, like a warrior.”
One of the other guys moved over toward me, sliding a piece of paper in front of me. “Okay, this is your character sheet,” he began to explain. “First things first: you need to pick a name.”
I looked from the piece of paper to him. “I have a name. It’s Brad.”
The three of them covered their mouths as they chuckled at me. “No, a name for your character,” he said after a few seconds of laughing. “I’m Jeff, by the way,” he said, offering his hand. “That’s Mike, and the DM over there is Andy.”
I shook his hand. “DM?”
“Dungeon master,” Andy explained. “I run the game.”
I nodded again, still no closer to figuring out what the hell we were doing. Jeff handed me a pencil. “You’re going to be a warrior, so pick a name first.”
“Warrior? You mean like Conan?” I asked, looking the character sheet over.
“Yes, exactly,” he exclaimed, but Mike interrupted him.
“No, Conan was a barbarian; don’t tell him he’s a warrior.” I looked over at him, confused, because he seemed really worked up over the fact. He went on, “Lancelot was a warrior.”
This time Andy spoke up. “No, Lancelot was a cavalier,” he explained to Mike and then looked at me. “Have you read any of the Dragonlance books?” I shook my head. “Lord of the Rings?”
“I’ve seen the movies,” I offered.
He scoffed, making it clear that the movies did not count. “Fine. You know Gimli.” I blinked blankly at him. He sighed. “The dwarf. With the beard.”
“Right, the one who fought with the pretty guy from Pirates of the Caribbean!”
From the way they all looked at me, I was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer. “His name was Legolas, and he was an elf,” Andy explained with a cold tone.
“Okay, so I’m an elf?”
“You’re a dwarf,” Mike corrected me.
“No, we haven’t decided that yet. All we know is, he’s a warrior,” Jeff countered.
“But why would he be an elven warrior?” Andy asked from behind his screen. “The bonuses are just wasted on that class.”
“That’s not true.” Jeff began to argue. “There are elven warriors, and they have natural—”
“Guys?” I tried to interrupt to no avail. “Guys.” Still nothing. “Guys!” I barked. They all looked at me like I had grown a second head. “You do you know I have no idea what the three of you are going on about, right?”
They looked at each other and then back to me. “Okay, just do what we say,” Andy said as Jeff took the piece of paper from me and began to roll the dice.
For the next hour or so, they began to walk me through the story that I was this guy who learned how to fight and owned a sword or some shit; I didn’t catch it all. We ended up going to these abandoned mines where we were jumped by goblins, which, from what I gathered, looked like Gremlins when they went bad. I didn’t catch all of it, but what I did understand seemed very cool.
We were about to charge into the lowest level, where a black dragon had made a lair, when Mrs. Linson walked over to the table. “Okay, boys we’re closing soon, so wrap—” She stopped in midsentence when she turned from scanning the little study cubicles to look at the D&D players and saw me sitting there. “Mr. Greymark? Are you bothering these young men?”
And I had almost forgotten how much of an asshole I had been for a second there.
I was about to defend myself when Andy said to her, “He’s okay, ma’am. He’s just playing D&D with us.”
She looked at me skeptically, one eyebrow raised, as she asked, “You’re playing Dungeons and Dragons?”
I nodded, showing her my character sheet. “I’m not bothering them; we’re about to kill a dragon.”
I don’t think she completely bought it but there wasn’t much she could do about it. “Well, be that as it may, I need to close up before the school board meeting.”
Fuck.
“Is that now?” I asked, jumping up.
“It starts in about thirty minutes,” she answered slowly, not sure why I would care about the school board.
“I need to go,” I said to the trio. “Do you keep this or do I?”
Andy looked at me. “You’re going to play with us again?”
I nodded, handing him the piece of paper. “I wanna see if the dragon has any phat loot!” He took it in disbelief as I ran out of the library. “See ya!” I called out as I exited.
Dark had already fallen. I didn’t like
the feeling as I raced across campus.
I had no idea how I lost so much time pretending to be some guy with a sword, but I had, and it had been fun. Why had the jocks always picked on guys like that? What exactly was so wrong with them that we used to seek them out just to be dicks? Were we just a pack of wild dogs, sensing weakness in others and lunging at it? Was that what we were beneath the games and the jostling for position and awards? I felt sick to my stomach as I ran into the auditorium, hoping I wasn’t too late.
What I found was Mr. Adler and Mr. Raymond with five other old people sitting up on the stage behind a desk, looking at me, puzzled. There was a podium in the aisle where people could address them, I assumed. Mr. Adler called out to me. “Mr. Greymark, this is closed to students.” The “so get the hell out of here” remained unsaid but understood. A few people had taken seats in the first row. As I began to turn, I saw one of them was my mom!
“Mom?” I said, stopping in shock.
She waved but didn’t get up. Adler shouted now. “Out, Mr. Greymark!”
What the fuck?
I stomped up the center aisle, looking behind me about five times, making sure that was indeed my mom and I wasn’t just having some kind of hallucination. The door closed behind me, and I knew there was no way I could not know what was going on in there. I smiled and took off toward the balcony where Kyle and I had started to eat lunch. If I stayed near the back and behind what remained of the stored chairs and tables, no one from below would be able to see me. Luckily, the stairway door was unlocked. Jeremy and his crew would have to come back to put everything away, so they’d left it open. Once I reached the balcony, I stayed low in case one of those old geezers had crazy eagle eyes or something.
I poked my head around the end of a table and began to eavesdrop.
“… over the previous minutes. We can move on to new business,” I heard Adler say in a pissy tone. He did not sound like a happy camper. “Coach Gunn, I believe you have something to bring up?”
I looked down and saw Gunn was sitting on the other side of the auditorium, almost as far away from my mom as possible. Any farther and he’d have been sitting in the side hall. He stepped up to the podium and began to talk to Adler and the board. “Mr. Raymond, members of the board, I have coached football and baseball here at Foster for over fifteen years. And in that entire time, I have to admit, I’ve never come up against a problem such as this. As you know, school sports are incredibly important to any school, and to Foster, perhaps more than most. A lot of our kids come from families that cannot afford to send their kids to a four-year college, and a sports scholarship is the only chance they have of attending a four-year university. Because of that, each and every spot of any team has to be considered not just for the student, but for the entire team. If we don’t win, they don’t go to college. It’s that simple. So when there is an element, no matter what its source, that disrupts team morale to the point of perhaps losing critically important players, we are forced to act for the betterment of the entire team.”
