My mom knocks on my door.
My arms hug my yearbook to my chest and I close my eyes, hoping she won’t come in. Hoping never works. The door squeaks open and her voice squeaks after it.
“Honey?” she asks. “You okay?”
I nod, but do not open my eyes.
She says again, “You okay?”
I nod but the nod is a lie and I do not want to be one of the liars so I make my tongue put air out of my mouth. The air forms a word. The word is no.
She rushes in, because that is the kind of mom she wants to be. She rushes in and launches herself onto my bed. Her arms wrap up me and the yearbook in a hug.
“Oh, honey? What is it? Do you want to tell me?”
I shake my head.
She smoothes down my hair with gentle hands. “You sure?”
The volume of Barbra Streisand’s voice gets lower. My mom must have turned it down. Dylan’s song voice slips further and further away.
I shrug. The thing is, I am really mad at Dylan. I am really mad at him but it’s not because he’s gay, it’s because he pretended not to be. How can I tell my mom that? How can I tell her that the boy she thought I’d marry never liked me that way at all?
She hugs me and rocks me back and forth. “I’m here for you, you know. I’m right here.”
“Yep,” I say. “Thanks.”
I lean away from her. She moves the hair out of my face. It’s wet from my tears. Her voice comes out a murmur, “Oh, baby. I am so sorry you are so sad.”
I sniff in. “Yeah, me too.”
“Okay. I’ll give you some space, but you know if you need me . . .”
“You’ll be right here,” I finish for her.
“I haven’t heard you play today,” she motions toward Gabriel. “Maybe that would make you feel better.”
I shake my head.
I don’t think so.
“My fingers are too cold,” I tell her. “Maine is too cold.”
When you sit alone in your room, hugging your pillow to your chest and listening to pretty cheesy music because the love of your life has turned out to be gay, some pretty simple questions bounce around in your brain over and over again.
Questions like:
How long did he know?
How many times did he kiss me and wish I were a boy?
How many times did he groan inside when I kissed him?
How could I not notice?
It is a completely Mallory thing to hug your pillow to your chest and let your cat crawl all over you while you obsess about things, but I do it anyways and I start to remember one time last week. He came to my house after school. He held my hand walking up the steps and he had such sad eyes. He took my backpack off my back and said, “It’s too heavy for you.”
I laughed and said, “It’s a heavy, heavy burden.”
And he said, “We all carry heavy burdens.”
I didn’t know if he said that because of my seizures, which I hate thinking about, ever. Since I rarely have them, but then I thought maybe he was talking about himself, Dylan.
His eyes were sad but I made it all jokey, because I couldn’t stand to see him looking sad, not my golden boy, not my Dylan. I wanted to press myself into him and take all his sadness away, but I also wanted to be inside of him somehow and be that sadness in his eyes, to be tall like him and golden like him, able to sing out those music breaths forever. All of a sudden, I was scared of being me and Dylan being Dylan and I just wanted, just wanted for us to be together, mingled souls like in the bathtub. Or else I just wanted to be a tiny, tiny girl who could disappear into his hugs and not have to see his sad eyes, not have to see them looking at me but not telling me anything.
Tom Tanner drove by and honked his horn. There was a bunch of soccer players in his truck. He waved. I waved back. Dylan’s eyes narrowed. He’s never liked Tom, since freshman year, although they were best friends in grade school, then Tom went out with Mimi Cote and everything got all weird.
Mrs. Darrow yelled to us from the front door of her house, “I’ve got cookies if you two want some.”
“Thanks, Mrs. Darrow,” I yelled back.
We ran over and took a plate of cookies. Mrs. Darrow makes the best cookies. She asked Dylan about his parents and his brothers. She thanked us for raking up her leaves, which we always do, every year, but she always spends the rest of the winter thanking us.
When we walked away, Dylan said, “You ever feel like everything you do, everybody knows about?”
“There are no secrets in Eastbrook,” I said and added a hideous movie ghoul laugh and reached my hands out like a zombie’s. Dylan’s mouth twitched but he didn’t quite smile.
He walked behind me into the house like he was protecting me from the whole world outside, a knight in shining armor. He shut the door behind us and locked it.
“Did you take the key out?” he asked me because I am forever leaving keys in the doors. Dylan always tells me it’s because I’m so brilliant, because my mind is thinking about so many big things it forgets to focus on the little ones.
I don’t feel brilliant now, crying on my bed with my headphones on. I feel stupid and blind and empty, an unused guitar. I feel like someone who has no idea who anybody is.
I wish I still had some of Mrs. Darrow’s cookies. What would she think? She always said, “Such a beautiful couple.”
Then she would pinch both our cheeks.
“You look sad,” I said to Dylan that day, when we walked into my house with Mrs. Darrow’s cookies and the memory of Tom’s truck horn vibrating in our heads.
He shrugged. “We all have burdens.”
I held him against me and he held me against him and he smelled. He smelled like pine trees and Christmas. He smelled like green earth ready to farm on. He smelled like the wind.
We made love that day. We made love most days and then I’d help him with his homework. But I remember that day best because afterwards he kissed me on the nose, like I was his baby and he traced my collarbone with his finger and said in his husky voice, “I will always love you, you know. Always.”
“Me too,” I murmured.
He grabbed my hand and held it tightly in his. “I mean it.”
“Me too.”
I will, Dylan. I am so mad at you for being a liar, but I will. I will always love you. I am mad at me for that, too.
He was just a boy and I was just a girl and that’s how it was for a long time. He was just a boy and I was just a girl and he would write me notes when he was bored in class and I would read them and carry them around in my pocket. Then I would write him back. And he would write, “Can I come over this afternoon?”
And we both knew what that meant. It meant, “Let’s sing silly songs, play a little guitar, and make love at your house on your bed while your mom’s at work.” It meant, “Let’s lie on the front yard and stare up at the sky and imagine things.” It meant, “I love you and I want you and I love you.”
I didn’t know it was a lie. How could it have been a lie?
I decide to take a more practical approach and open up my laptop and begin a list on what to do and what NOT to do.
Muffin glances up at me. She jumps onto my desk and knocks over this elephant figurine Dylan bought me once at a yard sale. It’s supposed to be good luck if you point the trunk at the door. I point the trunk at the door, give Muffin a couple of strokes, and start typing.
Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend
Do not tell anyone.
Do not call yourself a fag hag, as this is a derogatory term that conjures up Paris Hilton impersonators, Liza Minnelli, and far too much blue eye shadow plastered on a face that has been dried out from one too many highballs.
Do not whine for over a week, but during that week
explain profusely that a mere seven days is not a sufficient amount of time to overcome the reality that your whole entire identity has been stolen, that your faith in the world has shattered.
Wonder why being a girlfriend was your identity. Listen to kick-ass rocker girls who don’t give a shit about anything.
Think about being a lesbian.
Reject the whole lesbian idea when even the concept of kissing super-beautiful Angelina Jolie doesn’t make you hot.
Wonder how you could have had such good sex so many times with a gay seventeen-year-old guy.
Cry.
Cry more.
Hug your cat. Resist calling him. Resist telling your mother. Resist the whole idea. Resist. Resist. Resist!!!!
Decide you must be punked. Look around for Ashton Kutcher, that guy who does the practical joke show, then remember you are not famous and therefore not worthy of being punked.
Remember how he looked at that guy selling pretzels at the Bangor Mall. That was not a straight-guy look. Straight guys do not let their eyes linger on other guy’s bottoms, unless there is a KICK ME sign plastered there. There was no KICK ME sign.
Think about taping a KICK ME sign to your own bottom.
Cry.
Make a stupid list that does not make you feel better, but gives some semblance of non-hysteria and complete control.
Rip list up.
Do homework with radio blasting.
Give up and go ride bike out to the country. Again.
Write him notes. Rip them up, too. Rip everything up so that everything is like your heart, shredded.
I print out my list, because I always print them out. If they’re good enough, or important, I thumbtack them onto my corkboard. I call Em again.
“Getting dumped on a Saturday sucks,” I say. I print out my tips.
“Uh-huh,” she says.
I continue over her, “Because when you get dumped on a Saturday you have all day Sunday to obsess over it and then you have to worry about telling everyone at school on Monday about it. And you know, I’ll have to tell people over and over again and everyone will be all shocked that we’re broken up.”
I pause for breath, pick up my printed-out sheets, and glance at them.
Em inhales so sharply I can hear it on the phone. “Belle, you can’t tell people about it.”
“Oh God, I can’t, can I?” The papers in my hand shake. “Dylan has to tell people.”
“Yeah.”
I close my eyes. Muffin rubs against my face, moving the phone in my hand. I steady it.
“Why does he have to be gay?” I say. Em doesn’t answer because there is no answer. I know that. I know that, but I am acting stupid. “People will notice though. They’ll notice when we’re not kissing each other all the time, and when we’re not together.”
“True. And all that butt-groping stuff he used to do.”
“My butt is going to be lonely.”
“Your butt will be just fine. If anyone asks just tell them that you broke up. Don’t give out details,” Em’s voice is calm, smooth.
“Everyone always wants details,” I say.
“It doesn’t matter. This isn’t about everyone. This is about you and Dylan. Okay?”
I drop my list, pull Muffin onto my lap. “Okay.”
Emily drives me to school in her little red car that’s the color of a fire hydrant. She knows I don’t want to talk so she puts in the soundtrack to Phantom of the Opera. This is what we do when one of us is sad. We sing really off-key and really badly in these fake opera voices with super large, exaggerated arm movements.
It usually works, but this time I just watch her out of the corner of my eye.
She’s super skinny, Emily is, with no breasts to speak of, but bigger hips than I have. We wear the same size, two, but have entirely different bodies. I look like I outweigh her by twenty pounds, but it’s really five.
“It’s all in the boobs,” she always says. I always nod. She always smiles.
Even now, she’s smiling.
“I’ve got Paddy on!” she shouts at me, even though she’s only one foot away in the driver’s seat. That’s how loud the music is.
That’s what she’s named her padded bra, Paddy.
“And how is Paddy?” I ask her.
“Sad. He needs some girls to comfort him!” she brakes hard and comes three inches from the tail end of a big orange Hummer. It belongs to our local veterinarian. She just laughs and yells, “Sorry, Dr. Lasko!”
Then she pats my knee. “You okay? Where’s Gabriel? Did you leave Gabriel at home?”
Her eyes register a sort of shock like I’ve forgotten to put on a shirt or something.
“No talking,” I tell her as she steps on the gas again. “Just singing.”
She nods and starts riffing into a super-high soprano voice. Her nose sticks up into the air and her mouth opens wide, wide, wide.
“Lala LA . . . the Phantom of the Opera!” she screeches. She pulls out her digital camera and snaps a picture at me with one hand. The other hand, thank God, is still on the steering wheel.
Em started taking pictures a couple years ago when her father died. He had cancer. Em used to get annoyed with her mom whenever they were on vacation together because her mom would always wander behind them, taking pictures of everything, so that they could remember it. Now Em’s really glad she has those pictures, rolls and rolls of pictures of her and her dad doing anything and everything. I wish I had all those pictures of my dad, but he died when I was so young, just three. I don’t really remember him at all.
Emily is always taking pictures. It’s her thing. You have to tune it out in order to deal with her, but today I can’t.
“No pictures,” I say like a movie star. She takes another one and puts her camera between us by the stick shift.
“Fine. Sing then.”
She starts off again. I join in. “Oh . . . la something, something . . . The Phantom of the Op-er-a . . .”
“Ahh . . .” she yells going higher, up to an E above high C.
“Ahhh . . .” I sing/shout it with her, making my arms wide open and smacking her in the ear. We screech to the G. “AHhhhhh . . .”
It is like screaming and it feels so so so good.
She hits the REPEAT button on her CD player and we sing it over and over again the entire way to school. We sing it past Dead River Oil Company, and Mike’s Store, past Tom Tanner’s house, past the library and Denny’s. Our voices are hoarse like we both have laryngitis, but our hearts feel ready for what the day might bring.
“That,” she says, “is the cheesiest song ever.”
“It’s what makes it so good,” I adjust my seat belt. “The Cheez Whiz factor.”
She smiles. “Let’s do it again.”
In the parking lot, I stop walking. The high school waits big and cold. Dylan is in there. Will he be waiting at my locker like he normally does? I gulp.
Emily throws an arm around my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go take the bull by the horns.”
“The what?” I ask.
She shrugs. “The bull by the horns. That’s what my dad always said.”
I giggle and start walking forward, shaking my head.
Emily trots after me. “What? What?”
“The bull by the horns,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Like Dylan’s the bull and his penis is the horn,” I snort.
Emily shakes her head at me as the first bell rings. “Oh, Belle. You are not doing well. You are not doing well at all. You’ve lost it, totally lost it.”
She grabs at her bra strap. “Do you want to wear Paddy today? For support?”
That makes me just laugh harder. I yank open the door to the h
igh school and walk smack into Tom Tanner. Tom’s in my German class and on the soccer team. He’s chestnut color like acorns and good toast.
He grabs my shoulders to gain his balance. “Whoa! Commie, slow it down.”
I shake my head. “Sorry.”
He seems thrilled to see me and keeps his hands on my shoulders. Then he realizes what he’s doing, I think because his eyes shift. Emily lets out a low whistle.
He smiles, a slow smile that would melt an ordinary girl’s heart, but I am not into soccer boys who once went out with Mimi Cote no matter how cute a soccer boy he is. He keeps smiling anyways. “It’s okay.”
Then I remember. Tom Tanner told me not to go out with Dylan, back when we were sophomores. What had he said? He said, “He does more to his hair than you do, Commie.”
Tom calls me Commie because I am in Amnesty International and Students for Social Justice, and also because in seventh grade when we did our big United Nations project we all had to be countries and I had to be Cuba, which is a communist country. Tom, of course, was the United States. But that’s not what I care about now. What I care about now is how Tom Tanner knew and I didn’t.
“Where’s the guitar, Commie?” he asks me.
“Home.”
He lifts an eyebrow and then gives me a wave and saunters down the hall. I just stand there staring until Emily tugs at my arm. “We’re going to be late for Law.”
I whirl around on her. “Did everyone know? Did everyone know except me?”
She knows what I’m talking about. Her face scoots down an inch and looks sad.
She sighs and says, “I don’t know, Belle. I didn’t. Maybe Tom did. I don’t know. I mean, they used to be friends in grade school. Maybe something happened.”
When I get to my locker, Dylan isn’t waiting for me like normal. My head leans against it, feeling the cold, hard metal.
“Belle,” says a voice.
It isn’t him.
It’s Emily.
“We’re late,” she says.