“Nobody is going to believe I got hit with a door. I don’t even want to know what the rumor mill is going to churn out.”
“Layney, I’m not kidding. That color under your eyes isn’t one you see in a rainbow. It’s not natural.”
He took a step back and I slid off my perch. Only the rest of the room kind of slid with me, and I slumped against Foster.
“God. I am the worst kind of ass,” he said as he picked me up and carried me toward the door. “Your butt is wet.”
“I know. You sat me down in a puddle. Foster, don’t I have a date tonight?”
I did have a date that night.
And the preparations were not going well at all.
“Can’t you do your own makeup?” Tyler asked me with a makeup sponge in one hand and a jar of cover-up in the other.
“You’re supposed to be my best friend.”
“Yeah, sure. But I don’t know how to do this stuff.”
“The makeup was your idea.”
“All I said was that they used stage makeup when I was in the all-school play last year, and that it covered Tommy’s black eye. I didn’t say I knew how to apply it.”
I suppose we looked ridiculous. I’ll give my mom credit—she didn’t bat an eye when she found me and the Hawaiian in her bedroom using her vanity table. I think she was just glad I had a friend finally. She worried.
Tyler set the jar down. “I need to watch ESPN or something. I’m feeling all weird.”
“I promise you won’t turn into a girl by holding a makeup sponge for too long.”
Ty didn’t answer and instead he sat on my parents’ bed behind me. “Are you sure it was just a door, Layney?”
Our eyes met in the mirror. “I promise it was just a door.”
“You know if anyone ever tries to hurt you, I’m your guy, right?”
A smile stretched across my face and my heart swelled with genuine love for my BFF. “I know.”
And I did know. Okay, so he wasn’t so good at shopping or date preparation. And yeah, he actually thought a French manicure had something to do with tongue. But he was mine. I trusted Tyler the instant I met him. We were meant to be friends.
So it sort of slipped out, “I made out with Logan after he beamed me with the door in the girls’ bathroom today.”
“You’re joking, right?”
I shook my head.
“What happened to ‘Jimmy Foster is the spawn of Satan’?”
I shrugged. “I think it’s a hex. Someone in our school has been practicing the dark arts or something.”
Tyler scratched his head. He was either wondering what was wrong with me or how he ended up with the dubious position of riding shotgun in my life. “What did Jimmy say?”
“About what?”
“About making out.”
“He didn’t say anything. So this makeup is making me look kind of orange. Kind of like a bruised orange, actually.”
“Am I hearing this right? You guys kissed in the girls’ bathroom for the first time since middle school and neither of you said anything?”
I spun the stool slowly to face him, shooting him really big, really fake smile. “It was sort of the second time since middle school. We might have kissed for a minute the other day before the karaoke date.”
“Oh you might have, huh?”
“It happened very fast, but that was the impression that I got.”
“Layney, I love you, kiddo. But you are one messed-up little girl.”
“I know. I don’t even like him.”
“So you kissed him because…”
“I was hoping you would be smarter about this kind of stuff and maybe you could tell me.”
“I am smarter than you, that’s true. And the reason you kissed him is because you still have feelings for him.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
Tyler tossed one of my mother’s pillows at me. “You look like you spend every day fake-n-baking at the tanning salon. Who is your date tonight?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t have feelings for Foster, either. Other than feelings of revulsion and repulsion.”
“What about Micah?”
“What about Micah?” I turned back to the mirror and used Mom’s cold cream to get the dayglow off my face.
“Do you like them both?”
“I don’t like either of them that way.”
“Right.”
“Can we not do this now? I look like a poster for domestic violence awareness.”
And I felt battered on the inside too. Did I like them both? Did that make me a bad person? One of them was bad for me, and I didn’t trust him. The other was probably perfect for me—I really didn’t trust him either.
An hour later, Tyler dropped me off at Hootenanny’s, our small town answer to T.G.I.Fridays. On the way, we had picked up a pair of those ridiculously large sunglasses that Paris Hilton wears. They did the trick, but Hootenanny’s wasn’t brightly lit by any means. I bumped into the hostess podium and a table on the way to meet my date.
He stood when I arrived—score one for Mr. August. “I’m Jake Faraday.”
“Hi Jake, I’m Layney Logan.”
Jake was cute. I think. Hard to say in the dark.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “But your sunglasses are still…um…on. In case you forgot or something.”
“Yeah. I know. I just came from the optometrist. My pupils are dilated. I’m very sensitive.”
“Okay.” He smiled.
I think.
The waitress brought us the special desert the staff had preordered for us—a huge hot fudge sundae for two, with whipped cream and cherries on top. At the risk of sounding like a girl, a dose of chocolate went a long way in soothing the rotten—not to mention confusing—day I’d been through.
“So, Jake, tell me about yourself.”
“I’m a junior. I don’t have a girlfriend…but I’m looking for one. And I’m on the cheer squad.”
The spoon of ice cream stopped short of my mouth. “You’re a cheerleader?” I blurted.
“Yes. And I’m straight. Just to be clear.”
“I would never have…okay, you’re right. I probably would have.”
“It’s okay. Most people do. But cheering isn’t just for gay guys anymore. In fact most are really there to score with the hot girls.”
“Um, oh.”
Jake had this strange way of punctuating the end of his sentences—like it was the last word of a cheer. He startled me several times and drew attention to our table. I wanted to wave to people. Hey, look, it’s Too Loud Guy and his legally blind, blind date.
“Actually, the first cheerleaders were all men. Did you know that?”
“I had no idea.”
“The first squad was from the University of Minnesota. They were called yell leaders.”
“Well, okay.”
“Females didn’t start participating until 1923.”
“Wow, you sure know your cheer history.”
“It’s my ticket out of this town.”
Jake then proceeded to fill me in on every detail I never needed to know about cheerleading. Including the difference between a Herkie and a hurdler, the correct spelling of pompon, and that he was hoping to get a full-ride scholarship to the state college after competitions next year.
My general disdain for the girls who wore the short, pleated skirts might have lessened a little when I heard how long their practices were every single day. Yeah, a lot of them were snotty and were granted privileges because they were pretty or rich—but it sounded like they also worked really hard. And I respected that. I just wished sometimes they would work a little harder on being less stuck-up.
Jake got louder and louder until I decided I was really glad I was wearing the anonymous dark shades. The further I shrank into the corner of my booth seat, the more gregarious he became. He was nice, really nice. He was just very…excited about his future.
“So, Jake. What do you want to do after colleg
e?”
“I’m hoping to get my Master of Library Science.”
A librarian? Mr. Herkie wanted to be a librarian. Once again, the sunglasses shielded my date from my incredulous eyes. I guess, in a strange way, Foster did me a favor by trying to break my nose.
“What about you? What do you want to do after college?” he asked before he shoveled another bite, totally encroaching the boundary between our separate scoops.
I sat back, miffed about the sundae poaching. Clearly I wouldn’t be giving Jake Farraday a rose at the end of this date. “An investigative reporter.”
“Like newspapers?”
“They are my first choice.”
He didn’t notice I had stopped eating. “Aren’t they, like, dying? I mean, not just the local paper. Aren’t a bunch of them going bankrupt?”
He would have ducked if he could see the überglare I shot him. Then again, he wasn’t wrong.
“You don’t really have that TV reporter vibe either.”
While I didn’t want to be a glossy newscaster sitting behind a desk on Channel 4, I could totally pull off live reporting in a war zone or an interview with the president. Better than Mr. Too Loud could pull off shushing someone in the stacks.
Jake started talking about cheers again, and I tried to de-bitter my mood. It wasn’t his fault that the industry was changing. Sure, he could have been a little more tactful about my lack of television-worthy attributes—but he was only the messenger. Too many things were changing this year—the roadmap I’d worked on so hard the last four years was becoming riddled with detours.
I realized, too late, that I had been tuning Jake out and he was waiting for a response. So I nodded.
Big mistake.
He popped out of his seat. “Great. I won’t be as loud as I would during a game, since we are inside.” He readied himself, rolling his head and shrugging, and then took a deep breath. “Ready? O-KAY!”
O-GOD! Not ready. Not ready.
What had I agreed to? I recalled something about a cheer he had written. Did I want to hear it? I looked around the dining room hoping someone else would stop him. He had their attention—but nobody made any moves to interfere.
As he showed me the moves he choreographed to the words he had written, I wondered where Foster was hiding and if he thought this was hilarious or not. Maybe he still felt really bad about blackening my eyes. Maybe his stomach did little flips every time he remembered how my mouth felt under his. Maybe he was just as confused as I was.
But maybe I really did deserve to get smacked in the face every time I kissed him.
CHAPTER TEN
Mr. September
“I’D LIKE to make it clear from the start that I am gay, gay, gay. Like, when I come out of the closet, I’m usually wearing my sister’s prom dress kind of gay.”
I looked at Mr. September across the bench and said the first thing that came to mind. “God, you’re so lucky.”
He blinked several times, not sure what to make of me. “I am?”
“Do you know how many times I wished I were gay? Of course, knowing my luck I wouldn’t understand girls any better than I do boys, but still.”
Mr. September, aka Morgan Harris, and I were enjoying an autumn afternoon at the pumpkin patch. We’d each gotten a hot cider and settled in for the getting-to-know-you portion of the date when he blurted out his sexual orientation.
He sipped his cider, regarding me closely over the lip of the cup. “Boys are supposedly easier, but I’m not sure I buy that either. Of course, I don’t date high school boys.”
I turned toward him. “Me either!” He cocked his head a little. “I mean usually. Before this calendar thing, I didn’t date. I consider these interviews anyway.”
The rigidness in his spine loosened as he exhaled. “I was really worried about this date. I’m not exactly hiding in a closet, but I don’t usually make announcements about my queerness either. There just aren’t a lot of photogenic alternatives for your calendar on the math team. I’m sort of…it.”
He wasn’t joking. I’d seen the math team. They were most likely the future generation of the most important and influential people on the planet (think Bill Gates), but they weren’t the easiest to look at. Columbia High School, fifteen miles away, was the opposite. If I were to voluntarily date high school boys, I would have started in their campus math labs.
I patted his arm. “Don’t feel bad. I worry about every date. Not to weird you out or anything, but you should know that my co-editor is hiding behind one of the scarecrows, watching our every move.”
Morgan jerked his head sideways, trying to see behind anything tall enough for someone to spy from. “Is he cute?”
“He’s not without visual appeal,” was the least incriminating thing I could think of to say.
Morgan and I finished the ciders and walked around the farm, stopping at the petting zoo for a few minutes of quality time with really cute baby animals and a lot of kids with runny noses. He told me about the college guy he met last weekend that he hoped would be his boyfriend soon.
“How do you know, though?” I asked.
“I don’t understand the question.”
We were heading toward the pumpkins, so I walked gingerly to avoid the mud. “How do you make the leap from ‘I like looking at you’ to ‘I want to be your girlfriend’? I mean boyfriend, as the case may be. How do you know that this guy is the one for you and not that guy?”
“Oh that’s easy. I usually assign each guy a destination.”
“Are you speaking math? I don’t understand you.”
“Okay, pick one guy and tell me what locale in the world you think he best represents.”
I picked up a perfectly round pumpkin and thought of Micah. “Someplace…warm. With tiki lights and drum music and sand.”
“That pumpkin is too perfect,” he answered. “You want one with a little character. Okay, now pick another guy and do the same thing.”
I set the pumpkin down and thought about Foster. “Someplace noisy and confusing. With lots of different smells and bad weather and foul language. And a lot of energy. Like New York.”
“Okay,” Morgan handed me a strangely shaped pumpkin. “Now, where would you rather live?”
Paradise? Or the city? Sun soaked and mellow or messy and scary and dark and exciting and eclectic and…
“The city,” I answered with a sigh. A big, heavy sigh. “And I’ll take this strange, misshapen pumpkin too, I guess.”
“Press Enter, Ms. Logan. You’ve done all the damage you can do.”
My hand shook, and every time I got near the keyboard, I pulled it way like I’d touched a hot burner. “I can’t, Mr. Blake.”
“We’ve gone over the layout several times. It looks great.”
“What if there is something we both missed. Why isn’t Foster here?”
The jerk scheduled a photo shoot when we were supposed to be sending the live version of the Follower into cyberspace. The first issue was hitting the stands, and he was MIA.
“Layney,” he began sagely, as if he’d had to talk me off the ledge a hundred times in the last four years. Which he had, of course. The man had the patience of a saint. “The best part about a digital version is we can fix it instantly if we need to.”
He was right. When we used to go to print, changes were impossible. This was progression, right?
I still wished Foster were there.
Ugh, did I really just think that?
“Jimmy already said he thought it looked great, but he wanted you to be the one to have the final say. So have your say, Ms. Logan.”
The tone of Mr. Blake’s words made me wonder what else he was really trying to say. Jimmy Foster wanted me to have the final say, so if it sucked, he could pass the blame to me. No big surprise.
I shot a covert glance over my shoulder. Mr. Blake had his arms crossed and he was studying me. He shook his head as if he could read my thoughts.
I suppose it was possible that F
oster was attempting to be magnanimous. Unlikely but possible. But if he was giving me the upper hand for any reason other than to cover his own ass, I still suspected ulterior motives.
I clicked Send, and we were live.
I exhaled a breath I’d been holding since August.
We’d done it. It was a free blog still; the software we wanted was going to have to wait until we netted the results from the calendar. But the Follower still had a pulse.
We’d done it.
But I kind of missed the “we” part at the moment.
Still irrationally angry with Foster for deserting me at the launch, I threw my books into my locker. Before I could slam the door closed, a hand grabbed the edge of it. My girl parts recognized the scent of Micah’s cologne instantly, and they reacted as can be expected from parts behaving autonomously from the brain they are supposedly attached to.
I turned into the cage of his body and sighed. “Hey.”
“Hey yourself. I just wanted to remind you that in three dates’ time, you should be prepared.”
Did he absolutely have to smell so good? “Prepared for what, exactly?”
“Intense wooage.”
“Is wooage a word?” I leaned into the locker next to mine.
“It should be if it isn’t.”
“Micah, I’m just not sure about this. I haven’t exactly relaxed my position on dating, despite having been on nine of them. Probably because I’ve been on nine of them.”
He fingered a lock of hair on my cheek while closing my locker with his right hand. “I never doubted you would be a challenge.”
We both sensed our non-aloneness at the same time. Three feet away, Foster had rooted himself to the floor, his face a stern mask of fortunately unreadable emotions.
“Hey,” I offered, feeling foolish and indignant that I felt that way. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. It’s not like I had a boyfriend. I hadn’t been seeking Micah out. I didn’t know he was going to find me and flirt with me at my locker.
Yet I still felt like crap.
Micah dropped his hand, lingering slower than the situation called for. “I’ll talk to you later, Lois Layney.”
I nodded without making eye contact. My lips drew in tightly, like I was afraid he was going to swoop in and lay one on me.