Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits

by Michael Murphy

  Scott had a habit of drinking cherry slushies, which stained his mouth dark red, and Evan knew, from paying slightly too close attention, that Scott’s bottom lip was plumper than the top. Especially in the middle.

  The Sparrow family didn’t flaunt their wealth, not like some of the other families in town. They didn’t drive ostentatious cars or go on family vacations to Europe. But their kids always had new, clean clothes and brand-name sneakers. The Sparrow kids all had college funds and inheritances, which were tied up until they graduated.

  Evan wasn’t jealous; jealousy was the wrong word. He looked into Scott’s family with a strange sort of longing. It wasn’t just that he came from a single-mom, only-child family and they had a lot: siblings and cousins and grandparents. It was that they all had one another. There was so much love to go around.

  Scott sang along with the radio at the top of his voice, windows down even though the car had air-conditioning, letting the summer spill inside. The mall was a good choice in this heat; out-of-towners flocked to the beach, where they’d sizzle and burn. The locals hid in the cool malls and movie theaters or their own backyards. For a week or two more, then school would start and the beaches would be safe again.

  Evan laughed at Scott and joined in on the choruses. He noticed that he still had acrylic paint on his cargo shorts. There was cerulean blue matted in his leg hair, and that was going to hurt like a bitch when he scrubbed it out.

  They swung into the parking lot at the mall, in one of the few spaces that would be in the shade for the rest of the afternoon. Scott treated this victory like any other—a stupid, butt-wriggling dance that always made Evan laugh.

  “Come on. The others will be there by now.”

  Scott rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically as he hauled himself out of the car and slammed the door, pressing the button on his key to lock it. He threw his arm around Evan’s shoulders as they walked into the blessedly air-conditioned building, taking the shortcut through JCPenney to the food court.

  “You’re too tall now,” Scott complained after Evan ducked out from the hug, sick of stooping as they walked along.

  “I grew almost three inches this summer.”

  Scott leered.

  “In height, you asshole,” Evan added with a laugh. “My bones hurt.”

  “Really? Is that a thing?”

  “Apparently so. My mom asked someone at work, and they said to just take Tylenol for it. There’s not a lot anyone can do.”

  “That sucks.”

  The burger bar in the mall was independently owned, rather than being part of a chain. Kids from school liked it because of the big booths, meaning they could make out without being seen from the main thoroughfare in the mall.

  Evan liked it because they made a chocolate milk shake with chocolate ice cream, which had real chocolate in it rather than just weird chocolate flavorings. There was something almost childishly reassuring about good chocolate milk shake.

  “Two, please,” Scott said when Evan recounted his order to the waitress. “What? I’m in the mood for chocolate milk shake.”

  “Why don’t you just share one?” Andy teased.

  “Gay,” Cassie sang, drawing out the word.

  Scott was too much of a gentleman to tell a girl to fuck off, even when Cassie was being obnoxious, and Evan was used to shrugging off those kinds of insults. Scott’s mom nicknamed him “Teflon,” because nothing ever stuck to him. It had taken him years to get the joke.

  “Because Cap has the appetite of a walrus, and I want my milk shake,” Evan said easily.

  Scott laughed and pushed his shoulder, and it was fine.

  THE MOVIE was terrible, and Scott spent most of it making out with Katie McCarren. Evan excused himself to the bathroom halfway through and took a new seat, on the end of the row, when he returned. That way he didn’t have to watch or listen to his best friend slobbering into some girl’s mouth.

  Evan skipped the joint the rest of his friends indulged in after the movie, not liking the woolly feeling it put in his head, not when he wanted to go back to his painting when he got home. If he got high, he’d just spend the evening watching TV and eating Doritos, and though there was merit in that plan, he had better things to do.

  “How are you getting to school on Monday?” Scott asked as he pulled up in front of Evan’s house. Evan wasn’t convinced Scott was okay to drive, but he’d insisted, and Evan hadn’t been in the mood to push.

  “I’ll walk. Like I always do.”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  “It’s fine, Scott,” Evan sighed. “Seriously.”

  “I’ll pick you up,” Scott insisted. “Be ready for seven thirty, or I’ll come in and drag you out of bed myself.”

  “Fine.”

  IT WAS seven thirty-five when Scott pulled up, blasting his horn, apparently not caring that Evan had neighbors. Neighbors who had kids.

  He grabbed his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, then jogged out of the house. His mom was working but not until later. Evan would be on his own for dinner.

  “Get in, loser. We’re going shopping,” Scott called out the open window.

  Evan laughed as he opened the door and shoved his backpack between his feet. “You are such a geek. I have no idea why people think you’re cool.”

  “I am cool,” Scott said as he pulled away from the house. “I am.”

  “You keep telling yourself that.”

  “Are you ready?” Scott asked as he stopped at the red light at the end of Evan’s street. “Last year of high school, yo.”

  “I think so. Doesn’t matter, either way it’s gonna happen.”

  “True. How long do you reckon it’ll be until some teacher starts reminding us about GPAs and college applications?”

  “Fifteen minutes?”

  “Ten bucks says it’s five.”

  “You’re on.”

  Evan only lived a few blocks from the high school. He’d been in this area long enough to know all the cut-throughs, the paths down the side of his neighbors’ garages that no one minded him walking, ducking under fences that led onto the football field. It almost took longer to drive around than it did for Evan to walk.

  The parking lot was already starting to get busy when Scott pulled in. There wasn’t any assigned parking for staff or students, though school tradition said the teachers parked close to the school building. It had become cool to park as far away from the teachers as possible, at the back of the lot under the cover of trees. That meant you could smoke in peace, smoke pretty much whatever you wanted, and no one would notice or care.

  Evan and Scott had the same homeroom class, one toward the back of the school building. The first day of the new school year was always crazy, people swarming everywhere, kids who didn’t know their way around standing wide-eyed, stunned into silence. Evan kept his head down and didn’t offer to help.

  “Aye, aye, Captain,” Andy called as he strolled over on long legs. Scott’s nickname was inevitable; with the surname Sparrow and his position as captain of the school football team, it had arrived and then stuck firmly the previous year.

  “Andy,” Scott said, saluting.

  “When are tryouts, then?”

  “Are you serious? I haven’t even gotten to my locker yet.”

  Andy sighed dramatically. “Come on. You’re supposed to have all of this organized and ready to go. People are going to be asking me all day, and I want to have an answer.”

  “I really don’t know,” Scott said, stopping at the locker bank where he and Evan had shared side-by-side lockers for the past two years.

  All of the padlocks got reset at the beginning of the year to a 0000 code; setting it took concentration, and Evan tuned out of the conversation as he adjusted the number to 0808—Scott’s birthday.

  “I’ll talk to Coach, set up some dates,” Scott was saying as Evan unloaded a few textbooks and paperbacks he needed to return to the library into his locker. It was empty from when he’d cleared it
out at the end of last year, so since he didn’t have anything to pull out, he slammed it shut and leaned against it.

  “Okay.”

  Scott threw his arm around Evan’s neck, pulling him down into a rough hug as they started up the hall toward their first class.

  “Get off me, asshole,” Evan laughed. He pushed Scott away, then punched him on the arm so Scott knew he didn’t really mind.

  “Sure I can’t convince you to try out this year?” Scott asked.

  They turned the corner and both paused at the bottom of the school’s main set of stairs. This was how Evan worked out—four flights of stairs up to homeroom every morning. Not that he was unfit. Far from it.

  “I don’t want to play for a team, no,” Evan said. He swung his arm into the second strap of his backpack and settled it over his shoulders.

  “You’re good, though, man,” Scott complained. “And we’re good together.”

  “Gay,” Andy muttered from behind them.

  “Fuck off,” Scott said easily. “Seriously, though. We’d win with you.”

  “You’ll win without me,” Evan said.

  “Well, yeah. But we’ll win by more points with you.” Scott shot him a devilish grin.

  “It stops being fun when people get all competitive.”

  Evan had had this argument with Scott too many times before. He liked sports, didn’t even mind the competition from time to time. But people turned mean on a football field or the basketball court, and it always managed to rub him the wrong way. It wasn’t fun when someone was screaming at him to stop being such a girl, or calling him a pussy if he pulled out of a rough tackle. Or a faggot if he didn’t throw hard enough, run fast enough, be butch enough.

  “The competition is what makes it fun,” Scott argued.

  “For you.”

  “You’re not going to win this one, Cap,” Andy said. “Leave him to his pretty pictures.”

  Evan stopped abruptly, causing Andy to stumble behind him on the stairs. He frowned down, and Andy put his hands up, a gesture of surrender.

  “Your beautiful pieces of incredible art,” Andy amended.

  “That’s better,” Evan grumbled.

  He was sure there was some irony in his situation. He didn’t get picked on for being artistic or needing reading glasses or being, as his mom put it, a “sensitive soul.” He got away with all these things because he was only a few days away from his eighteenth birthday and already six foot two and around a hundred and sixty pounds of fairly solid muscle.

  Genetics, inevitably, played a part in this. From what he knew of his father, the man had been a Marine and built like one. His father had left when Evan was around three years old, and Evan remembered him only in the vaguest of terms. His parents had been married for five years in total, and for four of those, Evan’s dad had been out of the service. According to his mom, Mitchell King had never adjusted to civilian life and had chosen to rejoin the military when Evan was still a toddler. His mom kept the house, on the agreement that Mitchell didn’t pay child support. In the long run, it was probably a good deal.

  Even though he’d inherited his father’s build, Evan’s features and temperament were all his mother. His skin was quick to tan like hers, and his hair lightened to almost white in the sun. She didn’t like it when he wore it too short. Evan guessed it was because it made him look too much like the Marines that reminded her of Mitchell, so he kept it long, tucking around his ears in softly curling strands.

  When they reached the top of the stairs, Andy was out of breath, and Scott was teasing him mercilessly about it.

  “You won’t get back on the team if you don’t get your fitness up,” Scott said, jumping up the last few steps as if to prove his point. He wriggled his butt as he danced toward the open classroom door, and Evan couldn’t help but smile after him.

  EVAN HAD gained first-name terms with his art teacher the previous year when it became clear to everyone that he had both talent and passion when it came to his artwork. Jocelyn “Joss” Martinez had called on Evan to help run a few art clubs over the summer for children in neighboring communities, and he loved working with her.

  She was short, with acorn-colored skin and hair that burst out from her head in dense, immense spirals. Joss, or Ms. Martinez, as he would have to relearn to address her, dyed a few of those spirals blonde or amber, meaning her explosion of hair was as multicolored as the rest of her.

  Today she wore a long skirt in deep red, and a yellow shirt that should have clashed but somehow worked. Ms. Martinez was the sort of person who pulled off fashion effortlessly, and Evan couldn’t help but admire her style.

  The art classrooms were at the back of the school. Ms. Martinez had been involved in their renovation a few years previously, moving the space from the dark, dingy basement to the current location, where light spilled in through the floor-to-ceiling windows.

  The view wasn’t too bad either. They looked out over a small copse of trees that lined the edge of the school property and, in the other direction, the sports fields. In the summer, noise from games drifted over to them, though Evan had never found it distracting.

  This year Evan had taken an additional class to start building his portfolio. This would become a key component of his college applications, and Joss had promised to help him ensure it was as strong as it could possibly be.

  He found her, ten minutes before class was due to start, sitting on top of her desk with a sketchbook in her lap, doodling something outside one of the huge windows.

  “Hey, Evan,” she said with a broad smile. “How are you?”

  “Good.” He nodded. Over the summer, he would have greeted her with a hug. That seemed inappropriate now.

  “Glad to be back?”

  “Glad to be back in here,” he amended, and she nodded.

  “This is your last year of high school. You need to enjoy it. Experience the experience.”

  “I’ll try. Do we have assigned seats?”

  “Yes, but I gave you a good one.” She pulled an elastic from her wrist and tied her mane of hair into a knot on top of her head, sticking the pencil through the middle. “Um, let me check. There’s a printout around here somewhere….”

  Evan dumped his backpack on one of the tables and walked over to the printer, where he found the seating chart sitting on top of the class schedule.

  “This it?”

  “Evan, what am I going to do without you?” she said with a laugh. “Thanks.”

  “No problem.”

  “See, right there. Good light.”

  Evan nodded, pleased. It was good light, and he’d do good work from that spot.

  The classroom didn’t yet smell like acrylic and charcoal and pencil, but it would soon enough. The school had been deep cleaned over the summer, and nothing smelled like it was supposed to for the first week back. It wouldn’t take long for the gym to smell like sweat and the cafeteria to smell like grease and the art rooms to smell like home.

  “How’s your mom?”

  “She’s good, thank you,” Evan said as he started to unpack his backpack, shuffling things around to suit his particular way of working. He was precise, if nothing else. “Busy at work. As always.”

  “Aren’t we all. Are you going to work this year? I only ask because I’ve been offered a place teaching on Saturday mornings, which I really can’t do, and I thought of you. It’s adults, not children.”

  Evan cocked his head. “Where is it?”

  “At the community center. They want an art teacher for four hours—nine till one—to do a few sessions. Senior citizens and then vulnerable adults. If you’re interested, I’ll pass them your number, and you can get in contact. One of my friends works there. She said she’d be happy for you to take over since I can’t do it.”

  “Sounds good. It’ll look good on my college applications too.”

  Joss grinned. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Okay. Give her my number. I’ll talk to my mom about it.”r />
  She smiled and winked at him as the door opened and a few of Evan’s classmates started to filter into the room. He turned to his corner and went back to his things, frowning as his thoughts started to wander in another direction.

  PEOPLE DIDN’T know Evan was gay. Evan wasn’t really certain of the fact himself. He’d toyed with the idea of bisexuality, but that didn’t seem to fit the feelings he was only starting to admit to when no one was around.

  For a long time, he’d used the word weird to describe himself, both privately and publicly. He’d dated girls, taken them to school dances and kissed them chastely at the end of the night. He’d walked them home and delivered them safely back to their fathers, whom he referred to as “sir.” Fathers of teenage girls trusted Evan King to behave appropriately around their daughters.

  Evan sometimes wondered if those fathers suspected things about his sexuality that Evan hadn’t discussed with another living soul. There wasn’t a neon sign above his head that flashed Gay.

  He thought he didn’t look gay, didn’t act gay, then forced himself to consider what sort of prejudices made up that line of thinking. Evan watched a lot of Queer as Folk and studied those characters in a way he thought other people his age probably didn’t. Not all of the characters on that show looked gay. Some of them did. Some of them acted gay too, but not all of them. Some of the gay men looked and acted like straight men.

  Evan thought he was probably one of those gay men. The ones who didn’t look gay on the outside. Even if what he felt, underneath it all, was pretty fucking gay.

  People didn’t know Evan had a crush on his best friend. At least he didn’t think they knew. He hoped they didn’t know. Evan lay on his bed, the TV turned to something stupid on MTV. His door was locked, and his mom was on a late shift, so she wouldn’t finish until much later in the evening. He was safe.

  There was porn on the Internet, sure, but Evan was still unsure of looking for it. He preferred the images that flashed before his eyes when he threw an arm over his face, blocking out all the light.