“Homophobic twerps,” she mumbles, and then asks, “That was the reason, right?”
“They thought parents might not like it, among other reasons.”
“Other reasons?”
“Well, someone said it was fluff.”
“Fluff?” Challis asks. “It’s not fluff.”
“That’s what I said, but he wouldn’t budge.”
“He? You mean Michael, not DeMarco, right?” Her jaw pops open. “Michael-who-won’t-come-to-the-GSA-because-some-jerk-called-him-queer?”
Crap.
“Tell Michael I don’t do fluff!”
I want to tell her to tell him herself, but I don’t. “He didn’t want to lose funding.”
Challis barks out a laugh. “Funding? More like censorship!”
I nod.
She must see my face just then, because she stops and says, “Thanks, Jamie. I know you did what you could.”
I manage a smile.
And, awkwardly, Challis gives me a hug.
After school I still feel awful. I feel like I let Challis down, and for some reason, she’s someone I didn’t want to let down. Maybe because I put her on a pedestal, admired her because she was everything I couldn’t be—out at school and in the GSA. I couldn’t imagine how much guts that would take.
I have tons of friends at school, and honestly, it’s a calculated move. I never say no to anyone who offers me friendship, from football players to band geeks, cheerleaders to brainiacs. Even though I was voted most likely to have the most Facebook friends, I still feel like I don’t fit in: I’m one of the guys, but I’m not into girls; I’d hang out with girls, but I don’t understand them.
My mom says that’s why students created GSAs—that they are a place to fit in, no matter what brand of different you are. But walking in through that door—room 302—at 3:30 on a Thursday would be like getting a tattoo on my forehead. It wouldn’t ever wash off. My little secret would be out in the world and I could never take it back.
Challis’s comic is under my skin, itching like poison ivy. If I told my mom, she’d call Dr. Taylor or Principal Chambers and make a big fuss. And the last thing I need is a big gay fuss.
I have half a thought to talk to Mason about it because he’s logical with a clear-cut sense of right and wrong, and he’d see that censoring Challis’s story was wrong. But talking to him about this might lead to talking to him about other things—like me.
I call the one person I can talk to.
We meet in the park a few blocks from her house. “Challis understands,” Eden tells me, twisting the chains of her swing to face me.
“I guess,” I agree. “But it’s the principle of it all. Her comic should be in Gumshoe.”
“It should be. But that isn’t how the world works. We should be able to get married in the state where we live.”
It takes me a minute to catch up. She didn’t mean “we” as in us, but “we” as in all same-sex couples. I adjust my backside in the pinch-y rubber swing.
“You’ll see it more when you’re out,” she says. “Or is that why you’re in the closet?”
“I’m out,” I say defensively.
Her eyebrows go up.
“To my mom,” I admit, and dig the toes of my sneakers into the wood chips.
“Cool,” she says. “No wonder she looked at me cross-eyed.”
“Yeah. I don’t have a lot of friends who are girls.”
“Aw.” Eden reaches over and grabs the chain of my swing. We twist to face each other.
“That makes me feel special.”
I smile as a wave of shyness passes over me.
“You’re, like, totally cute, Jamie. And you haven’t had any girlfriends?”
My cheeks warm at the compliment. “One,” I say. “In kindergarten. Before I knew girls had cooties.”
“Before you knew what gay was?” Eden prompts.
“Yeah,” I say. “I didn’t figure that out until junior high.”
“I hated junior high.”
I nod sympathetically, and then tell her about the day that I began to think that I might be gay. “In eighth grade,” I begin, “we had a substitute teacher for a whole week. He was barely out of college—like, twenty-two, tops. Mr. Middlebrook. The girls went into insta-flirt mode the second he walked into the room—I swear the wind from their batting eyelashes blew his necktie up over one shoulder.” I laugh, thinking this would be a great Gumshoe story.
“He called my name, looked at me, and smiled. And that moment, I knew what the girls were feeling.” I remember that tumbling mix of awe and bashfulness, admiration, and the intense desire to crawl under my desk as if it were yesterday.
“Did you ever talk to him?” Eden asks.
“Oh, that’s a funny story too. During class he caught Ashley Quincy texting and took her phone away.”
Eden smiles. Ashley Quincy isn’t her favorite person. No one popular is.
“And Ashley said, ‘Come on, Gerrod. Give it back!’ Turns out, he was her cousin. He told her to come back after school to pick it up. At that moment, I wished more than anything that I had a phone. Because I wanted to get caught texting, wanted to have Mr. Middlebrook take it away and ask me to come to his classroom to after school.”
Eden laughs approvingly.
“Ashley pouted for a good ten minutes, until Mr. Middlebrook walked over, bent down, and whispered, ‘Come on, Goober, it’s not that bad.’”
“He called her Goober?” Eden asks.
“Yep. And Ashley smacked her hands down on her desk so hard, Mr. Middlebrook jumped. Then he went back to teaching algebra.”
We sway side to side on our swings.
“Ashley started passing notes telling everything she knew about him: that he was allergic to hot dogs, puked on roller coasters, and listened to country music. I think she meant to turn the class against him, but the girls found this information fascinating—thought he sounded sweet, and not at all like any eighth-grade boy they knew.”
“Sounds like it,” Eden said. “Eighth-grade boys smell.”
I laugh.
“So what’d you do?” Eden asks.
“I found a way to stay after school.”
“You got in trouble?”
“Nope. I found a math problem he explained differently than our teacher had. And would you believe there was a line at his desk? All girls and me. All waiting for their cell phones—they had been texting in class. On purpose.
“He had the phones in his desk—all but Ashley’s. Hers was in his jacket pocket and when he reached for it, all these notes spilled out. They were love notes. From girls.”
Some kids burst out of a minivan and run across the grass.
“In his pockets?” she asks, watching the kids. “Like, girls put notes in his pockets?”
“‘Cell phone?’ he asked me. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Math question.’ Boy, did he look relieved. ‘How do you put up with them?’ he asked, pointing to the notes. I didn’t really get that he was confiding in me, so I told him I thought they were crushing on him. And he shook his head and said, ‘Double not interested.’”
“Gay,” Eden concludes. “So now you’re a math whiz? Gerrod Middlebrook inspired you.”
“I aced algebra—learned how to really solve problems, not just answer the ones that were on the tests.” I’m in AP Calculus, but I don’t mention it.
“Cool,” Eden says.
“He was the first gay man I ever met,” I admit.
“But you knew you were gay?”
“Maybe not right away, but that was the week it started to click—kind of like algebra.”
Eden and I sit in still silence. And I realize that I never told anyone that story before, even though it totally defines who I am and how I relate to people around me. It makes me feel close to her. I wonder if she feels the same way.
“Eden?” I ask.
“Yeah.” She turns in her swing.
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone.”
&nb
sp; “What? That you’re gay? It’s a little late for that.” She says this with a laugh.
“Whaddaya mean?”
“Um, dot. Dot. Dot.”
“Eden?”
“Everyone knows, Jamie. I don’t have to tell them.”
“Not everyone,” I say, thinking of Mason.
“Almost everyone?”
“I haven’t told Mason,” I admit.
“Well, hurry up and tell him.”
I shake my head. She doesn’t understand. In fact, she’s probably one of those people who thinks coming out is as easy as a circling a day on a calendar. But coming out to Mason? Not exactly my idea of a national holiday. It looms like a dentist appointment—a dentist appointment where I’d have eight cavities, need a palette expander, a root canal, and my wisdom teeth pulled.
“You’re afraid he’ll reject you,” Eden says.
It isn’t a question.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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SIXTEEN
Wednesday, the Gumshoe staff has planned to meet in Dr. Taylor’s classroom during lunch to go over Gumshoe edits.
“How’s it going?” I ask Michael as I plunk my computer on a desk. He and I are the first ones here.
“Good.” He inhales. “But the limo thing, well, I did the math. It’s pretty expensive.”
“Yeah?” I ask. I’d almost forgotten about the limo. And now that Michael and I have a cheese grater in the middle of our quasifriendship, the thought of spending an evening with him and Lia makes me feel like I just ate too much school pizza.
“We’ve got three couples. But splitting the cost four or five ways would be more affordable.”
I nod in agreement, but Michael doesn’t seem to notice.
He’s counting off couples on his fingers. “Lia and I, Holland and DeMarco, and you and Mason.”
I fight back the crawl of a hot blush. “And Eden and Bahti,” I say to correct his mistake.
“Eden and Bahti?” Michael repeats. And without missing a beat, “So we do have four couples—perfect!”
By the way he says this, I think he’s still confused. But I give him props for not going all Lia on the idea of another same-sex couple. “I’m going with Eden, and Mason’s going with Bahti.”
“Oh, yeah,” he says with a shrug. “Of course.”
“So, should we pay you now, or on prom night?” I ask.
“Let me get you the number for four couples, then you can pay me back whenever.”
“Cool.” I smile as I open my laptop and feel a little forgiveness form in my chest. Michael isn’t an awful person. We just disagreed. And I need to get over it.
I promised Mason we’d go get fitted for tuxedos after school, so we are inching along through mall traffic, trying to find a men’s clothing store neither of us have been to before. He’s humming the tune to “I Remember Clifford,” the piece I’m playing in the concert next week, and drumming his fingers on the dash to keep the beat. I’d been a little late getting out of band, and he had been listening to us practice.
“What color is Bahti’s dress?” I ask. During art today, Eden had shown me a picture of a dress in a prom magazine. It was neon pink. Then she proceeded to tell me that I was required to wear the same color tie and cummerbund. Having seen my fair share of the color on account of my sisters, I protested. “No pink!”
Eden had exploded in a fit of giggles and nearly fell off her chair. “I’m kidding,” she said when she finally caught her breath. “This isn’t my dress. Mine’s black with white trim.”
“Cornflower,” Mason says.
“Cornflower?” I ask. “What’s cornflower?”
“Sort of blue sort of lavender—that’s what she said.”
“Not bad,” I say, and repeat Eden’s joke.
It follows us into the store, Mason pointing out pink things as we browse.
“Not bright enough,” I tell him about a shiny vest.
“How about this?” he asks, pointing to a Boise State orange tuxedo. “I bet we can order one in pink.”
The thing is so hideous it has me running back to the rows of safe black jackets. I find a salesman and ask which ones are rentals.
“Prom?” he asks.
“Yeah. I want something, um—” My brain freezes. He’s classically handsome—square jaw, blue jean eyes. And very well dressed. “Um, traditional. Black and white.”
The sales guy juts his chin at Mason, who is still checking out the orange tux. “Good choice. Your date will look fab in color, but it’ll just wash you out.”
“Um, yeah, no. He’s not my date.” More like, I wish he was my date.
The salesman lowers his voice. “Too bad.”
I look back at Mason. He has the orange jacket on over his black They Might Be Giants T-shirt and is tugging at the lapels. He tilts his head and does a bad Elvis impression in the mirror. He looks ridiculous.
“He sure is cute,” the salesman says with a tsk.
My head jerks in his direction and back to Mason. And, yes, in his own geek-in-black-plastic-glasses way, he is cute. I feel a now-familiar tug at my heart. “Yeah.”
“So,” sales guy says. “Let’s get you measured.”
His fingers touch my shoulders as he holds a tape measures to the seams of my shirt, then they brush my skin as he measures my neck and arms, and by the time he’s measuring the outside seam of my jeans I find myself humming “I Remember Clifford” to divert my attention from the process. Then I shrug a black jacket over my shoulders and the sales guy smooths it into place. He checks the length of the sleeves and nods as if he’s satisfied.
I look in the mirror. Smile so my teeth show—perfectly straight and still strange to me, even though it has been two years since I got my braces off. The jacket looks good. I button it, then unbutton it. I put on a serious face and say to myself, “Bond, James Bond.”
Mason appears in the mirror behind me. He has on a white jacket this time and a blue bowtie flopping over his shirt collar. He draws a fake pistol from the waistband of his jeans and aims it at me in the mirror.
I reach out, grab his wrist.
And he bursts out laughing and wriggles free. “Very 007.”
“Like you can talk?” I tell him, and sing, “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dawg. . . .”
He puffs up his chest, straightens his jacket in the mirror, and ignores me. “I think I look good in cornflower.”
I stare at his reflection. He could wear any color with that jacket and look amazing. The crisp white fabric makes his shoulders look broader, his skin glow like warm honey, and his curls shine inky indigo. Sales guy was right. He is cute. Dreamy even.
Even if I shouldn’t be thinking about it.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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SEVENTEEN
I am armed with a sixteen-ounce caramel mocha when I show up at my mom’s office on Thursday afternoon. I am eager to put Gumshoe to bed—i.e., getting the files ready for the printer—tomorrow at four p.m.
But first, I have to give it a good long look. The group of us has been editing onscreen, and with how puny my laptop is, we could have missed a comma, an apostrophe, or a dozen. I don’t want to hear about that from Dr. Taylor, so I’m printing a copy and inspecting it under the fluorescent lights.
“Hey there,” Mom greets me. She has a pencil behind one ear and a roll of blueprints under one arm. “You look ready to work.”
“Gonna finish it tonight if it kills me.”
“The back office is all yours. Let me know if you need the big table, okay?”
I nod. Mom doesn’t usually let me do school stuff here during office hours, but today is an exception. “Thanks.”
I plug in my computer, connect to the network, and select print. The printer hums to
life in the next room and I hear the first page spit out. The cover, with its painting of a koi pond populated by tangerine-colored fish, is vivid, whereas the image on the back—a photo of a girl sitting on a pedestrian bridge over the Boise River—is more subdued. The paint on the bridge had faded in the sun, almost matching her copper-colored curls. Both the fish and the girl had been voted favorites, but the fish won out because of the title of the piece, “Decoys.” It went with our detective theme. And, in the end, the fish were a better cover.
I run my finger over the date and price. Four dollars. That alone was depressing. A year’s worth of killing ourselves for four dollars—four thousand dollars if we sold them all. But we probably wouldn’t. I think we sold about three hundred last year. Then we used some to apply for the award, and donated a bunch to other schools’ libraries. That was why we needed funding from the school. From taxpayers. Gumshoe wasn’t making a profit at four bucks a pop. Why isn’t it five dollars? Or ten?
It takes me two hours to proofread every page, and another half hour to make the changes. Mom comes in and looks at the pages spread out in front of me. “It looks great, honey.”
“Thanks.”
She gives my shoulders a squeeze. “I’m proud of you.”
“Enough,” I say, teasing.
“Never,” she replies, and hugs me again. “Lock the door when you leave.”
I click print again. While I wait, I put the marked-up pages in the recycling bin under the desk. From the shadows, a black-and-white sketch catches my attention. I pull the paper out from under the pages I just put in the bin.
It’s a page of Challis’s short—the one with the party invitation in the envelope and the little heart floating up. My heart feels warm in my ribs, like I am standing in a sunny window, as I read over the speech bubbles:
“But not me. It’s okay.”
“Just because I didn’t have your address. Here.”
Then, like algebra with Mr. Middlebrook, pieces of a plan begin to fall into place in my mind. I click into InDesign, find the pages from an old document, and copy them into my new one. After which, the document has an odd number of pages, something that doesn’t work when you’re laying out a magazine. And I know who can help me even them back up again. Scrolling through my contacts on my cell phone, I find Eden’s number.
Fan Art Page 7