Fan Art

by Tregay, Sarah

  “That and—” I think of how to explain it. Not the part about how he’ll think that I am the world’s worst best friend and that I don’t trust him with a secret—my mom won’t fall for that—but the other reason. My other fear. “But, like, what if he reaches over to, like, mess up my hair or something and stops. Thinks, But Jamie’s gay, instead of what he usually thinks—just for a second. I don’t think I could deal with that.”

  She squeezes my shoulders. “I see.”

  I swallow, slide out of her arms. The urge to cry is gone. Replaced with shame.

  Because the pride is gone from my mother’s face. Why was she ever proud of me? Was she proud that I was gay? Happy that I finally came out?

  When I hadn’t. Not even to my best friend.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The weekend between the first and second week of AP exams is a great time to disappear. If you don’t call your friends, they don’t notice. They’re too busy studying. If you don’t text your best friend, he’ll think you’ve got your nose in a book. If you’re ignoring your mother and hiding in your room contemplating becoming a hermit, she believes you’re cramming for the calc exam on Monday. If you stumble down the stairs on Monday morning, looking pale everywhere except the black circles under your eyes, and your stepfather says, “What happened to you?” and you say, “Got my AP calc test today,” he’ll imagine you’re a good student. But who in their right mind would study for forty-eight hours straight if they weren’t going to graduate?

  I just hope Principal Chambers will let me take the exam. It’s in the afternoon timeslot. The disciplinary committee meets this morning, so I’ll learn the status of my fate at lunch. Then, if I’m lucky, I’ll be allowed to take the test. Please, please, please, I whisper to the clouds as I walk in from the student parking lot.

  “Got your calculator?” Mason asks, landing a playful punch on my shoulder.

  I nearly jump out of my skin. He doesn’t know I’m avoiding him. “Yeah,” I say. “You?”

  “Got it.” He pats his backpack. “You have a good weekend?”

  “Studied a lot.”

  “So you weren’t grounded-slash-babysitting?”

  I frown, wonder what he heard.

  “Principal’s office? Friday?” he hints.

  “Yeah,” I admit. “For, um, well . . . ,” I choke.

  His eyebrows wrinkle with concern.

  I stop walking and he does too. I just look at him. Look into his eyes and absorb every ounce of chocolate-cake softness before I say anything—because Mason is smarter than I am, and he’ll be able to add things up. If I mention Gumshoe and how I put Challis’s comic in without permission, he will add that to my announcement in government and calculate the truth. I. Am. Gay. And I’ve never told him. He’ll deduce that I don’t trust him. He’ll have proof that I am the world’s worst best friend. And that I’m in love with him.

  I get the urge to wrap him in a bear hug and hold him. Hold on to him. So he can’t leave me.

  “Jamie?” he asks.

  I shake my head. I can’t say it.

  “Dude,” he says sympathetically.

  And I think I might lose it. Right there in the quad in front of everyone.

  I’m about to make a break for the privacy of the restroom when Wesley catches up to us in a blur of rainbow tie-dye. “Got any more magazines?” he asks, out of breath.

  Wesley + Mason = Jamie is screwed.

  I gulp back the lump in my throat, swear, then ask, “But you bought four Gumshoes on Thursday?”

  “Yeah. And they are the hottest thing since One Direction over at South,” Wesley sort of explains.

  Mason stifles a laugh as we walk inside.

  “South Junior High?” I clarify. That was where Mason and I had gone.

  “Yeah. Next year’s sophomore class is so gay!” he says, following me down the hall.

  And I think he means literally.

  “So, well, I unloaded my copies and need more.” He flashes me a dimpled smile complete with a skinny-shouldered shrug. It’s adorable.

  My face grows warm as the pit of my stomach drops a few degrees. Is he flirting with me? “Cool,” I tell him, and busy myself with my locker combination before I think about it too much.

  Mason leans against the locker next to mine. He’s so close I smell Speed Stick and Scope. I glance over at him and get a dizzy feeling—hot and cold swirling together. I wonder what he thinks of obviously very gay Wesley. He presses his lips together between his teeth. I know that look. Mason’s amused, like watching me with Wesley is an improv comedy act in progress.

  I open my locker, and my hand brushes his arm. I jerk away as if my fingers got burned. He’s so close, I can’t think clearly. It takes me a second to remember what I was doing. “How many?” I ask Wesley, taking the last handful of magazines out of the shrink-wrapped package of samples.

  “Four,” Wesley says, and holds out his hand and a twenty.

  I hand the magazines to him and put the rest back in my locker.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “And nice to meet you,” he adds, this time to Mason. Then he’s off, bouncing down the hall like a six-year-old on espresso. Over his tie-dyed shoulder, he shouts, “Page twenty-seven!”

  I grab a Gumshoe, flip it open, turn to page twenty-seven, and read a poem I had seen at least two dozen times before. I know what it says and snap the magazine closed.

  “Do I get to buy one?” Mason asks in a whisper.

  My whole body tingles as if he whispered it in my ear. “Uh, well, um . . . They aren’t supposed to be on sale yet.”

  Mason’s eyebrows go up as if to say, Really? And how come I don’t believe you?

  “But, yeah, you can buy one.”

  “Good,” he says. “I want to see my poetry in print.”

  I know his name isn’t in there anywhere. I would have memorized that poem.

  “I can’t tell you the page number,” he says, “because you haven’t sold me a copy yet.”

  Reluctantly, I give him a copy of Gumshoe.

  He tucks a five-dollar bill into the pocket of my shirt and pats me on the chest.

  The motion is like the opposite of CPR. It stops my heart.

  “Hey,” I say, noticing the time on a clock down the hall. “Good luck on your exam.”

  “You too,” he says, and starts to walk away. He stops and comes back.

  I wait.

  “My poem,” he whispers. “It’s called, ‘At Night I Dream.’”

  It’s the title of a poem I remember—the one with the word, homophobia in it—the one that made me decide to scan Challis’s comic. “That was yours?”

  He avoids my gaze and shrugs as if it’s not important.

  “You didn’t sign it,” I say.

  “I know.”

  “But . . . ,” I start, but I don’t know what else to say. But your poem started me on a path to Chamber’s chambers? On the road to self-destruction?

  “I thought you might’ve guessed,” he says to the floor tiles.

  And with that, he leaves me standing there, remembering that I did think of him and his bilingual family when I read it. I turn to the page and reread, “a thousand words and ways to say it—simply, deeply, profoundly. I love you.”

  He didn’t mean me, obviously. The poem was about his family, not me.

  I’m the one in love with him, not the other way around.

  And if I’m not careful, we won’t even be friends.

  You and Me

  by Wesley Osteryoung

  You never see me,

  even though every shirt I own

  is brighter than a fire-season sunset,

  more neon than Main Street at night.

  I don’t want you—

  even though I think I might
—

  to think I’m too young, too awkward,

  too out, to be considered your friend.

  Maybe you just haven’t noticed me yet,

  even though I’m the only one

  cheering for the marching band,

  and waving a flag with a stripe of every color.

  I don’t blame you,

  even though I wish I were

  in your circle of I-love-you-man friends,

  under your radar, on your mind.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The disciplinary committee reached a decision. My punishment? It’s not so bad.

  It’s just the last thing I need right now: more schoolwork. I have to write a ten-page paper about censorship of books in schools and libraries—since I appeared so interested in the topic—while I am sitting in the library. With detention. And if my paper is satisfactory, I can walk at graduation and get my diploma.

  After my calc exam and before detention, I swing by Dr. Taylor’s classroom to turn in the twenty-five dollars from the rest of the Gumshoe magazines I sold—even though they were technically samples—because I don’t want to get in any more trouble with Principal Chambers.

  “Thank you, Jamie,” he says about the money. “So, they’re selling well?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I think we have a hit.”

  “Good,” he says. “I hope I wasn’t too harsh with your punishment—I see where you were coming from regarding the comic and I don’t disagree with you, just how you went about it.”

  Wow. Dr. Taylor agrees with me? “It’s fine. And an interesting topic,” I add, since the idea for me to write a paper on censorship obviously came from an English teacher.

  “I’ve decided. I think we should sell the magazines as is,” Dr. Taylor says.

  Double wow.

  “Which means we’ll enter it for the awards that way too,” he continues.

  I resist the urge to do an end-zone dance. “Thank you. It means a lot—and not just to me.”

  “I know,” Dr. Taylor says, returning to the papers on his desk. “I look forward to reading your paper on the seventeenth.”

  “Yes, sir,” I promise, and head out.

  “Jamie,” he says, calling me back. “I want to start selling them tomorrow, so can you man the table during your lunch hour? DeMarco has the lunch hour before you. Holland has zero-hour covered, and Michael volunteered for after school.”

  His words sound like music, sweet and satisfying. “Yeah, of course!”

  “Lia’s still upset,” Dr. Taylor continues. “So I didn’t ask her to participate. But she’s welcome to.”

  I nod. I’d sit next to Lia every lunch for the rest of the year if I had to—as long as we were selling uncensored Gumshoes.

  I’m on my way to the library when I hear familiar shrieks—and from the location and from purple posters on the walls, I know it is the Japanese club party. And Eden. So I poke my head in the door.

  Challis is writing something on the whiteboard, and Eden is trying to jump up and grab the marker, but Challis is writing high on the board.

  “She’s making my drawing pornographic,” Eden complains to the group.

  Several look up from reading manga and sketching on notebook paper. A girl dressed like a Pokémon giggles. She is drawing on the other whiteboard—and her artwork is pornographic. A spiky-haired redheaded boy is nestled between the legs of a blond, androgynous-looking character—their big eyes at half-mast.

  It’s enough to make me blush.

  “Jamie,” Eden pleads.

  And I turn to inspect her drawing. Two boys caught in a hug but with thought bubbles. It isn’t nearly as dirty as Pokémon’s.

  Challis adds to the second thought bubble, writing in what must be Japanese because I can’t decipher the dashes and curves.

  “Tell her to stop,” Eden says.

  “Challis?” I ask, sitting on a desk. “You owe me a favor.”

  Challis stops writing to look at me, her eyebrows straight lines. “A favor?”

  “A-week-of-detention, ten-page-paper favor. And if I don’t get to walk, you’re gonna owe me a whole lot more.”

  She pouts. “I do, don’t I?”

  I smile.

  And she relinquishes the marker to Eden.

  Eden pulls a chair over to the whiteboard, stands on it, and starts erasing.

  Challis comes over and sits on the desk next to mine. “But you’re the only one selling Gumshoes. It’s like the rest have been sent through the shredder.”

  “Nope,” I say. “Taylor just told me we’re going to sell them as is—with your graphic short!”

  “Woo-hoo!” Challis leaps off her desk and opens her arms as if she’s going to hug me. But then she stops, as if she thinks twice.

  I wipe the unintentional girls-are-icky look from my face and open my arms.

  “Thank you,” Challis says in my ear as we hug. “Lincoln needed a little shaking up.”

  “Especially for our incoming sophomores—they’re your biggest fans.”

  “Yeah,” Challis says. “Next year the GSA is gonna kick butt.”

  “Wish I was going to be here to see it,” I say, wondering if I would’ve come out if I had been among a supportive group of friends like them.

  “Careful,” Challis says, her blue eyes twinkling. “You might be.”

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Principal Chambers loves to hold the you-might-not-graduate thing over everyone’s heads.”

  “I’ll ace the paper,” I say.

  “Let me know if you need help,” Challis says. “I’ve got tons of LGBT sites bookmarked on my computer—some about straight-washing YA lit.”

  I’m not sure what she means and what it has to do with my paper, so I say, “Yeah. Can you send them to me?”

  Then, like a toddler wanting her parents’ attention, Eden jogs over and points to her whiteboard.

  “Aw,” Challis coos.

  I can’t read the kanji. “Nice.”

  “It says, ‘I’ve been looking for you all my life,’” Eden translates. “‘Where have you been?’”

  “And Raffi says”—Challis points to the other character and his thought bubble—“‘Right here.’”

  “Cute,” I tell them, and motion that I want to speak to Challis alone. We step into the hallway.

  “My mom said something when she saw The Love Dare,” I begin, because I need to know if she was right. “She said she thought the characters looked like me and Mason. Was that on purpose?”

  Challis looks down at her shoes. They’re the ones she wore to prom.

  I tilt my head and try to catch her eye, but she doesn’t look up.

  Instead she nudges my sneaker with her toe and, barely above a whisper, says, “You were my inspiration.”

  “Inspiration?”

  Challis’s blue eyes meet my own. “You’re a good person, Jamie. You don’t care if someone’s hot and popular or doesn’t even have a best friend; you see them for who they are.” Her fingers find my hand and squeeze it. “That’s something. Inspiring.”

  “I don’t feel it’s my place to judge.” I shrug. “Since I’m, well . . .”

  She nods as if she understands the rest of my sentence. “I hope Justin and Tony didn’t look too much like you—I left off Mason’s Clark Kents and your freckles on purpose.”

  “Uh, thanks,” I say, knowing those details won’t change how people choose to see it.

  Challis squeezes my fingers one last time and walks back in the classroom.

  I walk to the library and find a table, my mind still on our exchange. I guess I asked for it, literally. I’d asked Challis for a graphic short story and she drew me one, using my best friend and me for inspiration. I had promised her I’d get it in, but that was before I knew what it was about. Only after Michael and Lia r
ead it, they rejected it. The rest of it was all me. Her story inspired me. It was like I was the one taking the dare, not my likeness in a comic book frame—I took the pen from her hand and wrote my own fate.

  Now it comes down to Mason. He’s got a copy of Gumshoe to decipher and decode. Add in a few clues from the art-geek girls, and well, he’ll figure me out. The ball will be in his court. He’ll choose to be my friend, or not.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  THIRTY-NINE

  Each morning that week, the Redneck calls me Fagmag in the locker room. Eden’s friends gossip in art class. I sell dozens of Gumshoes at the door of the cafeteria while Mason studies for more APs in the library. My exams are the regular ones, so I’ll take them next week. After school, I report to the library to work on my paper and study for exams. The Redneck does the same. When I get home, my mom doesn’t feel guilty asking me to mow the lawn or to run to the store or to watch my sisters—because it’s McCall payback time. Eden calls and we talk on the phone. And Mason and I don’t talk about my declaration in government or the comic in Gumshoe. In fact, we don’t talk all that much, as if our last conversation—after Wesley and over Gumshoe—was our last. So even though I try to fool myself with the idea that I’m avoiding him, it could be that he’s avoiding me. Or maybe he’s just had enough of my crap.

  Thursday afternoon, I’m shoving my computer into my backpack in preparation for my mad dash out of detention when the Redneck blocks my path. I dodge right and reach for the door handle in vain.