So I slam my jacket in my locker right next to Dylan’s sweatshirt, right above the bumper sticker that Dylan gave me that says “GIVE PEAS A CHANCE.” The world seems to swirl and I’m so mad but I don’t know at what. At peas? I yank off the bumper sticker, crumple it, and hand it off to Em who knows better than to say anything. Then I throw in my pack, take out the stuff I need, and I go. I go. I go.
I go away from Dylan.
That’s what I have to do isn’t it?
Sunday was the day of rest, of grieving. Monday is the day of new beginnings. Monday is the day of work.
“What will I do when I see him?” I ask Emily.
She shakes her long, long hair. She gives me worried eyes.
She says, “I don’t know.”
I remember when Eddie Caron caught his girlfriend, Hannah Trudeau, in his truck the first week of junior year. Eddie had been totally in love with Hannah, always holding her tiny, little hand when they walked down the hall, even carrying her books and her lunch tray, completely spoiling her. I’d tease Dylan about how much better Eddie treated Hannah than Dylan treated me.
Dylan had raised his eyebrows and said, “You want me to carry your lunch tray? That’s so fifth grade.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t even get a lunch tray,” he said and then he tickled me and then I tickled him back and that was that. But, I always thought it was sweet of Eddie to take care of Hannah like that, to always open doors and give her flowers. My mom called him an old-fashioned boy. Dylan called him a cretin.
But all that ended when Eddie rushed out to his truck after school that day and saw Hannah with her tongue down Ashleigh Martel’s throat. Both their shirts were off. He yanked her out and her skinny, little body fell onto the parking lot. Everyone started running over to see what was happening because she and Ashleigh were screaming and only wearing bras, which got all the guys interested and then Eddie Caron was just hauling into her, slapping her and kicking her. She looked so little and Eddie is so big. He’s always been big, ever since kindergarten when I used to share my Oreos with him and he’d give me a piece of his beef jerky.
Never in my whole life could I have imagined Eddie Caron beating up a girl. But he was. He just whaled on Hannah.
I screamed for him to stop. I screamed and handed my gig bag to Em who would keep it safe. I jumped on Eddie Caron’s back and tried to make him stop but I couldn’t because he was too strong. I just clung onto his back like a stupid first grader, shouting at him to leave Hannah alone. I didn’t feel anything, not scared, not worried. I was a blank slate, a white piece of paper, an unstrummed guitar, background music.
Tom and Shawn Card hauled him off, yanked him by the arms and bullied him next to the truck, trapping him, cornering him like you do with a wild dog that smells meat and is scared and tastes blood in his mouth. I slid off his back, watching, wondering what to do. Em snapped a picture and I whirled around at her, angry. “Em. No pictures!”
She bit her lip, tucked her camera to her hip. “But it’s so good.”
She shot me an apology look and started snapping away again. We looked at the pictures later. Ashleigh tugging at her bra strap, stomach flab flapping over the sides of her jeans. Hannah tear stained, red faced, aching against Ashleigh’s side. Eddie, my old protector boy, his calm face twisted with wild-dog rage. Tom and Shawn with their arm muscles popping out, restraining him.
Hannah scurried off with Ashleigh but they only made it a couple of feet, clutching their shirts before they just sort of stopped and stared, and someone, Jacob Paquette, I think, yelled, “Dyke!”
Em took a picture of him, too. His mouth wide open and his teeth pointed out his hate.
And Hannah started sobbing. Her tears mixed with blood pooled on the gravel. Ashleigh, though, she had balls. She just turned around, gave everybody the finger, and shouted, “Leave us the hell alone!”
Dylan and Emily came over to me then. Dylan hugged me and said, “You okay?’
“Yeah,” I said, but I was shaking and Dylan knew it. Dylan knew I was shaking. So he just hugged me tighter. Then he let go and said, “Everybody’s got a right to love.”
I shook my head and said like an idiot, “But she was cheating on Eddie.”
Now, I know she was too scared to tell. Is that how Dylan felt? Was he too scared to tell? And what changed? Why now? Why be brave now?
Brave. That’s what Tom said I was that day.
He came up to me after Eddie calmed down and stomped off. Dylan and Emily were getting in her car, but I was lagging behind, mostly because I was annoyed at Em for taking pictures, and for Dylan sitting on the sidelines, instead of helping me stop the fight. Dylan’s best friend, with the unfortunate old-man name of Bob, yelled to him, waved his sax at him. Dylan hopped out of the car and trotted over, telling him what happened, I guess.
I stared at the two of them talking, so different. Bob so broad and Dylan so sleek. Bob with his too-thick glasses and his too-short hair and Dylan looking like he just stepped out of an underwear ad, only minus the tan.
Tom stood in front of me all of a sudden, blocked my view, and said, “Commie. You were really brave.”
It startled me. Mostly because I didn’t expect Tom to talk to me without teasing me, which is all he’d done since Dylan and I started dating, but also because he told me I was brave. Dylan never said that to me. Dylan never told me I was brave.
I shrugged like it was no big deal, like I wasn’t shaking and he reached out and touched my elbow. His fingers heated my skin. He nodded at me and said, “No. Really, you were. Everyone else was just standing there watching.”
“You weren’t.”
He smirked. “Not in the DNA.”
I must have given him a look because his smirk turned into a full smile, he picked at a patch of duct tape on his sleeve and he said, “The whole cop dad thing.”
Tom’s dad is the Eastbrook Police Chief, which everyone knows, but I never think about it since I don’t have police run-ins every day.
“Oh,” I said. “Right.”
That’s when Dylan came back and smiled at Tom but Tom didn’t smile back. He just shook his head at Dylan, then winked at me and walked away.
“What was all that about?” Dylan asked while we scrunched into Emily’s car.
“Nothing,” I said.
“He so likes you,” Emily said in this stupid singsong voice.
Dylan’s head jerked up and he reached for me from the back seat, leaning forward, wrapping his arms around me, he said, “You’re mine, Belle. You’re all mine.”
Tom knew, didn’t he? Somehow he knew.
What is it with boys?
What is it with me that I can’t ever tell if they’re gay or not?
“Your gaydar is broken,” Emily announces.
We hunch forward, whispering over the cafeteria table. I have not seen Dylan all day and I think he’s avoiding me, because I mean, it’s not that big a school. Usually at lunch we sit with a lot of people, but Em and I have asked our friends to give us a little alone time and because all our friends are decent and can tell something is up, they respect it and leave us alone.
I roll my eyes to make my next sentence dramatic. “My gaydar doesn’t exist.”
“Maybe it’s under warranty,” she laughs, pulls a drag of Coke into her mouth when she’s done chuckling.
“Expired fifteen years ago,” I say and moan.
I have spent two long high school years dating and being in love with a gay boy, my best friend, Dylan. My eyes keep glancing over at the boys at the soccer table. Tom Tanner’s there, laughing, fiddling with some duct tape, drinking soda. He’s got this smile that cracks his face, a superstar smile and when he laughs he throws his head back and his smile gets even bigger.
When we were in eighth g
rade, I had the biggest crush on him. I was a flyer on the cheerleading team then, and every time my bases put me up into a torch, I would stare at him on the soccer field and will him to look at me. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t, but I always wanted him to. Then Mimi Cote asked him out and they’d always be making out at the dances. I quit cheering after that. I couldn’t stand being near Mimi anymore.
I make my eyes go back to Em. She bites the edge of her lip and prepares to ask the question everyone wants to know. She sputters at first but finally gets it out. “Didn’t you have any idea . . . I mean . . . When you did it?”
I glare at her.
“No.”
Her hands fly through the air. “I mean . . . he must have given you some sort of indication.”
“NO!” I yell and some nearby freshman stop eating their pizza and bagels and stare at us. We smile and wave like beauty pageant contestants. I lower my voice and say, “No, everything was in proper working order.”
She shakes her head. “That’s what I thought. I mean you could tell he had a hard-on and everything whenever you guys danced.”
I shrug and lean back to sit up straight and say in a normal voice, “Probably friction.”
“He was in show choir,” she says.
“I know.”
“And he does use more hair products than you do,” she adds, chomping on a French fry.
“Tom said that too.”
“Tom?”
“Back when Dylan and I first started going out.”
“Those are stereotypes though,” she says, grabbing another fry. “I mean he’s also really hunky, doesn’t speak all high and stuff, has a studly boy walk, eats cheeseburgers all the time, and he watches football. You need to eat.”
“Yeah.” My food is untouched. I haven’t been able to eat since Dylan’s announcement on Saturday, two days ago. All I do is drink Postum. “Stereotypes are stupid.”
I leave Emily alone at the table and go through the lunch line to grab some hot water. It’s meant for tea. I don’t drink tea unless Dylan makes it for me. It’s too mealy, too watery, too nothing, but he makes it workable somehow. I can’t drink coffee because caffeine gives me seizures, and even in decaffeinated coffee there’s enough caffeine to push me over the edge and start me shaking on the floor or babbling about dogs. That’s what I do when I have a seizure, according to eyewitnesses like Dylan and Emily and my mom. I walk aimlessly saying things such as, “The dogs? Where are the dogs? They’re barking. The dogs are barking. We have to get the babies.”
It isn’t the most fun, coherent stuff and I always come off looking like a mental case, I’m sure.
So, I drink Postum.
I flip the hot water on.
Someone comes into the line behind me and makes a little, male, a-hem noise.
Behind my shoulder, Tom Tanner smiles at me. I smile back because my mother raised me to be polite and then his eyes go wide.
“The water . . .” he says, reaches over my shoulder and flips it off, just before the boiling liquid overflows my insulated cup and attacks my fingers.
The water waits right at the top. I’m afraid to move.
He nudges himself next to me, wraps his fingers around mine. They shoot warmth all the way into my shoulders somehow. I try not to giggle and he says, “We dump it on three. One quick motion. One. Two. Three.”
A flick and it’s over. He smiles at me. A dimple on his left cheek creases in.
“Thanks,” I mumble, embarrassed. My fingers are hot and quivering beneath his.
He moves his away and shakes his head. “You’re out of it today, Commie.”
I brush some hair out of my face with my stupid, trembling fingers and start over again, turning away so that I don’t have to look at him. “Yeah. I know. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“Out partying?”
“Yeah, that’s me. Sunday night party girl.”
I flick off the hot water, way before I have to. It’s barely half-full.
“Studying for German?” he asks.
“German?” I close my eyes and groan. He laughs.
“You forgot about the test?”
I nod.
“You, Belle Philbrick, forgot about a test?”
“Don’t rub it in,” I tell him as he fills up a cup with yummy coffee, caffeinated. Jerk.
He shakes his head. “That’s got to be a first.”
My empty stomach makes room for my heart, which is sinking lower and lower in my body. Tom must notice because he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Belle, everything will be okay.”
“Yeah. Right,” I mumble like a bratty fourth grader.
“With the test. With Dylan. With everything,” he says. His hand weighs against my skin. “I promise.”
Then he drops his hand and turns away, leaving me with half a cup of water, another fear gnawing away at me, and a monster headache and a question. How did he know?
“No guitar today?” he calls over his shoulder.
I shake my head, confused. He’s asking about my guitar. I always bring Gabriel to school. Didn’t he already ask me about this? Didn’t he already ask about Gabriel? Maybe he’s just trying to keep talking. I have no idea why, though.
“I forgot her,” I lie.
He nods and keeps walking.
How did he know about Dylan? How did he know?
I stomp after him. He sits with the soccer guys, Andrew, Ben, Brandon, Shawn. He’s making some sort of miniature alligator out of duct tape while the other guys watch.
“Cute.” I put my water down on the table and stare him down.
The other guys start chuckling and Shawn goes, “Uh-oh, Tommy’s in trouble.”
Tom doesn’t move.
“How did you know?” I ask him.
He looks away. He looks at the soccer guys. Andrew gulps down his Coke.
“Know what?” Tom says.
“About Dylan. About me and Dylan,” I demand. My heart threatens to pound out of my chest. I wonder if Tom can see it beating. I wonder if he’ll catch it.
He raises his hands up. “Belle, um, now’s not a good time.”
“Just tell me, Tom.”
“Yeah, Tom,” Andrew says all snarky. “Tell her.”
Andrew grabs Tom’s duct tape alligator and makes like he’s biting Tom with it. Tom bats him away.
I wait.
“Belle . . .” Tom swallows hard. His Adam’s apple moves down his throat. He extracts himself from the bench.
I glare at him. Andrew uses the alligator to bite his own throat. All the guys laugh except Tom who stares back at me as hard as I stare at him. Finally, he grabs my shoulder and walks me to the Coke machine. Ian Falvey, a freshman, is there, trying to get a dollar bill to go through, but it keeps getting rejected. Tom hands him some quarters and says, “Scram.”
The kid puts the quarters in, grabs his Coke, and throws a “Thanks” over his tiny shoulders.
Tom leans against the machine. He watches me fume with my hands on my hips.
“Belle,” he sighs out my name. He shakes his head. “You’re mad at the wrong person.”
“I’m not mad at you,” I pull in a deep breath trying to calm down. “Just tell me what you know.”
Tom tilts his head toward the ceiling. He moves it back down to meet my gaze. Nothing comes out of his mouth.
“Tom, just tell me.” I’m ready to throttle him. To pull the words out of his mouth with my hands. I try to be civil and say, “Please.”
But instead of sounding civil, my voice sounds weak. It sounds like breaking, like a fairy flower figurine that’s been knocked over by a dog’s tail, like a teddy bear that’s lost a leg during a rambunctious slumber party and because Mimi Cote likes to pl
ay keep away, like a heart of a girl who doesn’t know what’s what anymore, like breaking, breaking, breaking into pieces and trying not to.
“Please.” I beg him.
“I shouldn’t be the one who tells you this. Dylan should tell you this.” He grabs me by the shoulders to steady me, and then moves me behind him so I’m between the Coke machine and the wall. He’s hiding me, I think. He’s hiding me, because he doesn’t want the world to see me, the stupid girl, the Harvest Queen with the gay-boy king. For a moment, I wonder, maybe Dylan is in love with Tom and that’s how he knows. For some reason this crushes my heart against my spine even more than the thought of Dylan just being gay. What if Tom is gay too? They used to be best friends. They hate each other. Maybe that’s it . . . Maybe every guy I’ve ever lusted after is gay. My face scrunches up. I refuse to cry. I stare at Tom right in the eyes, an alpha-dog stare.
He licks his lips. He swallows. “I saw Dylan kissing Bob. I know something’s going on, okay?”
My mouth falls open. The Coke machine rumbles next to me. I lean against it. Not Tom. Of course, not Tom. Bob. Bob. Kissing Bob.
“Belle?” his voice says. It comes from far away, down a long, long tunnel that I don’t want to go into, but what else can I do? Dylan is gay. He kissed Bob. There is no going back, the entire fairy tale life I thought I had has already been revised, the song I thought I was singing has moved into a different key and there’s nothing I can do, nobody I can get angry at. It’s just gone. It never was.
“Belle?”
“When?” I make my lips move. “When?”
“Yesterday, at the mall. In the parking lot.”
Yesterday, they were kissing while I was listening to Barbra Streisand, or telling Em. Yesterday, they were kissing while I was wondering how my life could have fallen apart, staring at his picture, trying to keep my heart beating, my lungs taking in air. Yesterday.
I close my eyes. The world wiggles beneath my feet. I open my eyes and try to focus on Tom’s face. It’s so far away, so funny looking. I blink away my tears. I rub at my chest, trying to erase all my anger. Instead, I crumple.