“Hey,” Mason says, putting a steaming cup of something on a coaster. “I made you tea. There’s nothing else in the cupboards.”
I sit up and let the blanket puddle in my lap. I’m not surprised. This was Frank’s bachelor pad before he married my mom. He was on the ski patrol and spent the weekends here in the winter. Summers he’d spend in Boise, working as a contractor. That’s why there was only one bedroom. Which was why we didn’t come up here much—a family of five in a place built for one, maybe two. We didn’t fit.
I take the mug of tea and let it warm my hands. It feels good. “Sorry I got angry at you last night,” I say, remembering, but not mentioning, the handholding.
“Sorry I made you come up here,” Mason says. He wraps his fingers around his own mug. He stares into it instead of looking at me. “I had this vision—it’d be so perfect, so fun. Something I’d always remember. Just you and me. You know?”
The why to why we’re here. The words wallop me in the gut, forcing a lump of guilt into my throat. Why did I have to be such an asshole? Why don’t I change the oil in my car?
This meant so much to him, and I ruined it.
“I had fun,” I say. “Jet Skiing was great.”
“Yeah?” Mason asks, his eyes tracing a path up my bare torso to my face.
“Yeah,” I agree.
He rewards me with half of a smile, and says, “Nice boxers.”
I look down because I forgot what underwear I put on twenty-four hours ago. They’re blue with yellow smiley faces on them, the fabric crisp and the colors garish because I don’t wear them very often. My face warms. I hurry to put down my mug and say, “I should probably get dressed.”
Mason’s lips fold in like he’s holding back a grin.
Blanket and all, I dash to the bedroom. But being alone and away from him doesn’t cool my heated face. Instead I see the bed. He has straightened the sheets and blanket. There’s a pillow on the side where he slept. I tug on my jeans and tell myself to calm down. Nothing happened in that bed.
But something did happen. I was being stupid and holding Mason’s hand, and he said, “Don’t.”
Don’t do that?
Or don’t let go?
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TWENTY-NINE
We’re paying for our breakfast burritos and bottles of soda at the gas station when Mason’s cell rings. He answers it.
“M’ijo ¿Dónde carajo estás?” his father’s voice booms.
I shiver. It might be the cool morning air, but I doubt it.
“At the gas station,” Mason answers, nodding for me to take the change from the cashier.
Although I hear Mr. Viveros as clearly as if he was standing right here—he’s shouting—I don’t understand a word of his rapid Spanish.
“You don’t have to come get us,” Mason says, probably to dilute the anger, and heads out the door. “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” He takes off across the parking lot, walking so fast I have to jog to catch up.
If we don’t die first, I think, guessing that Mr. V found my car. And my car is three or four miles down the road, meaning it will take a lot longer than fifteen minutes to get there.
Mason shoves his phone into one pocket and the Coke into the other. Then he breaks into a jog. I follow, my burrito like a hot baton in a relay race.
I’m sweaty and panting by the time we spot my car. And Mason’s father. And his tow truck. I gasp for air. Hands on my knees I catch my breath and say, “The tow truck? Crap.”
“Yeah,” Mason agrees between breaths. “We’ll never hear the end of this.”
“More like I’ll never be able to pay him back.” I imagine the pump at the gas station and how quickly the dollar amount would blink from three digits to four to five, filling the tank of Mr. V’s tow truck.
We straighten up, square our shoulders, and walk into the firestorm of Mr. V’s angry accusations. I pick out enough words—insults Gabe taught me—to know that Mason is feeling like the gum stuck to the sole of my Converse.
“Sorry for all the trouble,” he says through a tight jaw. “And thank you for coming to get Jamie’s car.”
I can tell that Mason’s forced calm is throwing his father off his game. He looks a little confused.
“Yeah, Mr. V, thanks for saving my bacon,” I add.
He scowls at me.
“Can I help get this loaded up?” Mason asks, jutting his chin at my car. The tow truck is positioned in front of it.
Mr. V grunts a response, and I don’t make a move. Mason, though, gets to work unfurling the chain and crawling under my car to hook it to the axel.
After a very long, very silent drive back to Boise in the cab of the tow truck, I walk home from Mr. Viveros’s garage because I can’t bring myself to call my mom. I let myself into the blissful quiet of my house without the twins. There’s a grocery list on the kitchen table, and with how stressed my mom is, it’s a pretty good guess she’s at the supermarket. Frank is, as usual, nowhere to be found. And I swear the calendar in the kitchen said he was home this weekend. Whatever.
So I turn the shower to hot. I step out of my smelly clothes and under the stream of water. When I’m finally clean, I pull on shorts and a tee and collapse on my bed.
Mom knocks on my door. “Hey,” she says through the open space. “How was your little vacation?”
“Good,” I admit, sitting up and swinging my legs over the edge of my bed. “Until my car died and I ended up owing Mr. V for one helluva tow and an alternator.”
“Karma sucks,” she says, sitting next to me.
“You can say that again. Mason said he’d put the alternator in for me so I didn’t run up a bill for labor on top of it all.”
“Look, Jamie, I am trying really hard to let you be an adult and make your own decisions.”
“Yeah, Mom. I know.”
“But this one?” she says touching my knee. “Well, it wasn’t your shining moment. In fact, it was pretty stupid.”
I have half a thought that I should blame the whole fiasco on Mason. But I step up to the plate. “School’s been stressful. We needed a break before exams.”
“I get that, Jamie. That’s why I said okay to senior skip day, why I was okay with you spending the night at Mason’s. But lying to me about where you are? That’s not okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
Mom reaches over and touches my cheek. “I was worried about you. Mrs. Viveros called me. You know the thoughts that run through my head when the phone rings at eleven thirty at night?”
I know how those calls make her jump—and that’s when I’m home. But what about when I’m not?
“You should have called me, Jamie.”
“I know.”
“But you didn’t?”
“I was—God, I felt so stupid.”
“Karma,” Mom says.
“Karma has my butt mowing lawns for Sal this summer,” I tell her, guessing at what my punishment might be.
“Karma has you working for me this summer. You can mow lawns on weekends.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me to get started?”
Mom stands ups and walks to the window. She peeks out through the blinds. “Yes, in fact, I am. The lawn could use it. Then maybe a little babysitting? Just while Frank and I grab dinner.”
I smile. Weakly.
“And that movie I’ve been wanting to see . . . ,” she adds.
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THIRTY
Monday, Eden nearly tackles me in the hallway. “You should have been here!” she says.
“When?” I ask, pulling books from my locker. I notice her brother lurking across the hall and I nod a curt hello.
“Friday!” Eden says.
“Hey, Eden,” Nick says.
She shoots him an annoyed look that I’d never dare.
“You need a ride home tonight?” Nick asks. “Or are you doing something gay after school?”
“No,” she says. “I have Japanese club. And it isn’t gay.”
“Yeah, it is,” he mutters.
She glares at him until he shuffles away.
“Friday? It was senior skip day?” I say, getting back to our conversation. “I was in McCall.”
“But it was so cool—no one went to first period. We were all out in the quad!”
I raise my eyebrows. This is überbad behavior as far as Eden goes.
“And Principal Chambers got on the loudspeaker—told us to go to class—but we watched the janitor unwrap Abe instead. There was a shipload of tape on that thing!”
“I know.” I shut my locker and give the lock a spin.
“All my classes were study hall. I mean, since no one was here. And it was Day of Silence and all.”
“Day of Silence?” I ask.
“Um, yeah,” she says as if I’m stupid. “Nationally. You know, the GLSEN LGBT anti-bullying campaign?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say.
“You’d know these things if you were in the GSA,” she points out.
And at that moment, the noise in the hall seemed to die down, her voice sounding like she shouted it into a bullhorn by comparison. “Shh,” I say.
“Why?” she whispers back.
“I don’t want—you know.”
“You mean you don’t want to come out of the—” she starts.
But I reach over and press her lips shut.
“Cwosits ave wery wittle wentilashoon,” she mumbles through my fingers.
“What?” I ask, moving my hand away.
“Closets have very little ventilation, Jamie.”
“Very funny.”
“I thought you were going to tell Mason when you went to McCall.”
“Huh? No. Where’d you get that idea?”
Eden’s own hand jumps to her lips. She shakes her head.
I roll my eyes.
“Well, I didn’t. So I’d appreciate it if you—and your friends—wouldn’t either,” I explain as I remember what I did tell Mason. That Eden was a lesbian.
“Okay. Okay.”
“But you are out, right?” I ask. “At school?”
“Yeah,” she says. “Except that my parents keep pushing me back in.”
“So doesn’t make any sense,” I say, half wondering how God divvied up the parents. My mom wants me to be out.
The bell rings.
Eden hooks her thumb in the direction of her first class. It’s in the opposite direction from mine. “See you in art?” she asks.
“Uh-huh,” I agree.
During announcements, Principal Chambers’s no-nonsense voice rings out over the loudspeaker. “If any student has information about the writing on the gym wall or about the defacing of the statue of President Lincoln in the front quad, please report what you know to the front office. Your name will be kept confidential.”
I laugh. No one will turn anyone in. It’d be like raising your hand and saying, “I was there!”
I’m stretching my hamstrings on the edge of the track when I see the others spill out of the building. There’s several Frisbees being tossed among them—probably another Brodie-inspired soccer-unit replacement. They fan out over the football field, except for Brodie, who stands in the end zone. When everyone appears to be in place, Brodie shouts, “Fifty alive!”
The group trips over themselves, trying to catch the disc before it hits the ground. Some end up sprawled on the grass, except Mason, who emerges unharmed with the Frisbee—and fifty points. I let out a whoop and he looks my way with an ear-to-ear grin. His glasses are off and he’s wearing a threadbare Lincoln Lions tee, sunshine yellow and snug across the chest.
He gestures for me to join them.
I shake my head. Because there is no way I’d be able to catch a Frisbee with him smiling at me like that.
I finish my mile and take a shower. I’m dressed and almost out the locker room door when I hear the Redneck roll his neck behind me, his bones popping like far-off fireworks.
“Fagmag,” Nick says. “You tell the principal I made Abe into a dick?”
“No,” I say. “Why? You get called into Chambers’s chambers?”
“Yeah.” His fists planted on his hips, each as big as a dodgeball. “She knew I was there—like someone narced on me.”
“Uh, maybe someone saw your truck there?” I take a guess. Or saw the photos on Facebook. Crap.
“You better not rat,” he warns.
“Why would I rat?” I ask him. “I’d be in trouble too.” Idiot.
He looks me up and down, maybe trying to decide if I’d tattle, or maybe to see if I’d make a nice lunch. “I know you messed with the fag mag,” he tells me.
Messed with Gumshoe? Double crap. How does he know about that? Oh, yeah. Challis helped me with it. Challis and Eden are friends. And he’s Eden’s brother. “Yeah,” I agree. “And since you didn’t rat on me, I won’t rat on you.”
I watch his face as my words sink in. His face lights up real slow, as if it’s on a dimmer switch. “Yeah, cool,” he says.
And I hope he means it.
At first I think the whole school overheard Eden in the hall earlier this morning, because everyone is looking at me, saying “hey” or smiling as if I’m their new best friend. The I’m-pretty-sure-is-gay sophomore who wears tie-dye shirts cuffs me on the shoulder and says, “Cool” when he passes me in the hall. I do a 180 and watch him walk away. Huh?
I feel like a celebrity—albeit an outed one—until I see Brodie and Kellen in the cafeteria at lunch. Our table, which is normally pretty tame at the end where Mason and I sit, is teaming with students. And it’s pretty clear that they are the celebrities, not me.
“Like, how did you get the idea?” a blond junior asks Brodie.
“Abe is kinda tall, you know,” he replies. “And has a hat on his head.”
The girl giggles, a tee-hee-hee sound escaping from around her blue-polished fingernails. The guys laugh. “Head,” they repeat.
Mason plunks a stack of textbooks down, his day planner on top. “The average IQ around this place has gone into the crapper.” He nods to indicate the newcomers.
“Heck,” I say. “It just doubled, now that you’re here.”
His lips form a swearword that he doesn’t say out loud. “I asked for that one.”
“Sorry,” I say.
“Whaddaya want?” He is asking about lunch.
“Pizza,” I say, and hand him my caf card. “Fries.”
“Save me a seat,” he says, and escapes.
“Jamie!” Brodie bellows. “Now that man’s an artiste!”
The blond girl’s head swivels my direction. And soon the whole crowd is looking at me.
“He’s the one that did all the work—taping and sculpting,” Brodie explains out loud while his hands gesture the shaping of a very large penis.
My face heats up faster than a propane grill.
“Really?” the blond-and-blue girl asks, easing away from Brodie and closer to me. “That was a lot of work.”
I force a smile.
“I’d, like, never have the guts to do something like that,” she says, now so close I can smell her shampoo. “Are you gonna get suspended?”
My smile warps into a gape.
Her touch on my arm doesn’t help.
I gulp in a lump of air, wonder if I will get suspended—it wasn’t like we disassembled the principal’s car and reassembled it on the roof like the class of 1977 was rumored to have done. And we didn’t flood the basement in an attempt to make an indoor swimming pool (class of 1985), and we didn’t photocopy hundreds of exams stolen from teacher’s desks and briefcases and drop them down stairwells and off the roof (class of 1991). We just wrapped ol’ Abe in a little insulation
and covered him with a plastic bag in case it rained—and the chalk murals, they were gone too, thanks to a power washer. I say, “I hope not.”
“Oh, but it’d be so cool. I mean, like, we could all protest for you,” she coos.
I wince. Then decide that the best way to get rid of horny girls is to ignore them. I sit down in the seat closest to Mason’s books. I open the first thing I lay my hands on and pretend I’m busy reading.
Only it isn’t a book.
It’s his day planner.
And I’m open to April. There with rows of tiny printed letters in each of the calendar squares—homework assignments, tests, and my band concert tomorrow night. I can read those. I can even read some of the Spanish. Trabajo on the days he has to work. But there are other notes. Not in either language. Like on this past Friday—the day we went to McCall—there’s several sentences.
In French.
And even though I can’t read them, I feel guilty. I snap the planner shut.
Blond-and-blue girl has moved on to drooling over Kellen, and Hailey Beth—his girlfriend—is doing her best to fend her off.
And so my fifteen minutes of fame faded into oblivion, no one noticing that I’m gay or even caring enough not to hit on me. I breathe a sigh of relief.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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THIRTY-ONE
After school, I get a text from Mason. Car is ready. Can I drive it?
I think about my clutch. And how Mason doesn’t drive stick. And how my mother would kill me if someone else ended up in a fender bender on my already-very-expensive insurance. Then I figure that Mason can probably learn anything—especially about cars—in six seconds flat. And the garage is only a few miles away. He is my best friend. I text him back. Sure.
Soon I hear a car pull into the driveway, purring as it idles. I look out my window and see my car—the once blue paint worn away at the edges, the bumper scratched, and the passenger side of the windshield marred by a spider-shaped scar from a rock chip repair gone bad. I guess Mason couldn’t fix everything about it. I bound down the stairs and out the door, still in my bare feet.
Fan Art Page 14