“Look,” I say, “I messed up, okay? And I want to make it right. A million things have been going on in my life, and I want to explain it all to you. Everything. If you don’t want to talk, fine. Then don’t talk. But at least listen to me. Please.”
“Take your seats, boys,” Mrs. Spelczik says as she walks past us and enters the classroom.
Alfonso doesn’t need to be told twice. He turns around and walks into the classroom, leaving me out in the cold, neon-lit hallway. Meanwhile, Mrs. Spelczik isn’t giving me much time to mope.
“In or out?” she says standing in the doorway, her hand on the door handle.
Despondently, I walk through the door.
Mrs. Spelczik asks us to produce our homework, so I take out my notepad that has my homework in it somewhere. I turn over a new page and grab my pen. I’d rather be anywhere else than in class right now, but on the upside, Alfonso is here too, and he’s got nowhere to go, so I scribble him a note.
I’m gay!!! Do I have your attention now? Good!!! We need to talk, so stop running away!!!
I tear the paper out of my notebook, fold it up, and throw it on Alfonso’s desk. He eyes it disdainfully, but before he has the time to pick it up and throw it back in my face, Mrs. Spelczik ninjas her way between us and grabs it. My face flushing, I look at the floor, hoping to find a hole I can disappear in.
Mrs. Spelczik unfolds my little letter and reads it silently. I keep my pencil clenched in my fist, ready to stab myself right in the heart as soon as she starts reading my note out loud.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, she looks at me and says, “Never use triple exclamation marks. Never! Express urgency through words, not punctuation.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I say in a low voice.
“Are you sure you want him to read that?”
I look back at her. I want to say, ‘I sure as hell didn’t want you to read it,’ but I don’t have the balls to be so ballsy, so I stammer, “Y-yes.”
She turns to Alfonso. “You can pick this up after class.”
As she puts the note in her pocket and returns to her desk, I unclench my fist and put down my pencil, relieved I get to live another day.
At the end of the period, Alfonso jumps up at the ring of the bell, grabs his bag, and heads for the door. When he makes his way past Mrs. Spelczik’s desk, she calls after him.
“Mr. Alonso?”
Almost out of the door, he stops and turns his head.
Mrs. Spelczik holds up my note. His empty gaze grazes me briefly as he walks up to her and takes the note. I try to avoid eye contact with Mrs. Spelczik as I make my way out of the room, but I fail. On her face I detect the faintest shadow of sympathy. It doesn’t take away any of the embarrassment that came with her inadvertently outing me to herself, but at least she didn’t go out of her way to make me feel even more miserable like some of my other teachers might have done in a similar situation.
Out in the hallway, Sandy is waiting for me. Not just Sandy, actually, but she’s the first in line. Alfonso, however, is nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?”
“Restroom,” Sandy says. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah. I mean, no, not really. But I’m working on it.”
“Poor Matt.” She rubs my arm. “Listen, I have to get to my next class. I’ll see you at lunch.” She gives me a peck on the cheek, and as she rushes off I find Phil standing in front of me.
“Hello,” he says like a dork.
“Wha… yes, hello.”
“We don’t have to work on our term paper together if you don’t want to,” he says. “I talked to the teacher. She said we don’t have to work together. We can both finish our papers on our own. It won’t affect our grades, she said. So if you—”
“Oh shut up, will you?”
Taken aback, he shuts up.
“Next Wednesday at four. My place. You stay for supper. My mom will cook something Asian.”
Philip looks puzzled. “But I thought—”
“No you didn’t. Wednesday at four.”
“All right, but—”
“Don’t you have a class to go to?” I interrupt him.
“Yes, but—”
“Well, then what are you waiting for? Go!”
I turn to leave, but I don’t get far because I literally bump right into Chris. We almost hit our heads together and laugh awkwardly.
“Oh, hi,” I say.
He smiles his beautiful smile. “Hey.”
“Sorry about that.” I take half a step back although I don’t actually mind standing so close to him. His T-shirt reads Cute, and I’m thinking, No kidding.
“No worries,” he says, looking at Phil as he walks down the hallway. “Everything okay?”
“What? Oh, yeah, sure.”
He looks at me. “So, have you talked to Alfonso yet?”
“No. I mean yes! I mean, well, I finally came out to him, and to Mrs. Spelczik too I’m afraid, but we haven’t talked about it yet.”
He frowns at me for a second, then it dawns on him. “Oh! You mean you came out to him by scribbling him a note in the middle of class?”
“Yeah.”
He sighs. “Why would you do that?”
“Because he wouldn’t talk to me. I needed to get his attention.”
“Right,” Chris says. “Mission accomplished I guess. But anyway, listen, what I really wanted to talk about: you’re invited to Jack’s birthday party.”
I frown. “What?”
“Saturday next week. Can you make it?”
“I guess. I’m grounded this week, but next week should be okay. Probably.”
“Okay, awesome,” he says, sounding genuinely happy.
“How come he gets to have a birthday party anyway? I thought with his domestic situation and everything …”
“His parents are away for the weekend. His stepdad is taking his mom to Disneyland or something.”
“Huh,” I say. “But why would Jack invite me to his birthday party? I mean, me of all people?”
“Well, technically he didn’t invite you. You’re my plus-one. I asked him if it’s okay if I bring my boyfriend, and he said yes. In fact, he’s excited to meet you.”
“You did what?!”
“I asked if it’s okay if—”
“Rhetorical question!” I interrupt him. “I heard you. I just can’t believe you basically outed me to Jack!”
“Technically he won’t know until you show up at his party. And he thinks you’re a fag anyway, so …”
“Jesus Christ!”
“I know, right? It’s gonna be awesome,” Chris says. “We can have a beer and make out on the couch.”
Suddenly I’m beginning to think of ways to make Mom extend my detention so I have a reason not to go. Not that I would mind making out with Chris, but off the top of my head I can think of a million better places to do it than Jack’s couch.
“Right,” I say. “We’ll talk later, okay? I’ll have to ask my parents first anyway. And now I gotta get to class.”
“Sure,” Chris says.
I scurry down the hallway, but I still don’t get far because just as I’m about to pass the restroom, Alfonso steps out of the door and into my way.
“Oh, hey,” he says, which is a huge improvement on our previous situation, because apparently he’s speaking with me again.
“Hey.”
“I have to get to class,” he says, looking at his watch. “Let’s have lunch.”
I don’t have any time to reply, because he’s already hurrying down the hallway. I have to make my way to class too, and I do it with a little spring in my step.
* * *
“I can’t believe it,” Alfonso says. We’re sitting at the small table under the stairs in the cafeteria, the one where Phil used to sit before he joined our clique. Alfonso’s assessment comes after I’ve told him everything, and I do mean everything.
“It’s true, though. I’m gay.”
&n
bsp; “Oh, that I can believe,” he says. “It’s pretty obvious. I can’t believe you created this whole mess because you were afraid to tell me. Me, your best friend! I’m hurt, Matthew. Hurt!”
“I know,” I say sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”
“So what else have you been keeping from me?”
“Nothing!” I hurry to say. “That’s all, I swear. And all this only happened because I didn’t know how to tell you that I’m … you know, gay.”
“Well,” Alfonso says, “I guess you could have said something like, ‘Hey, Alfonso, guess what? I’m gay.’”
“How was I supposed to know that—”
“… that I’m open minded and that you can tell me everything and that I will always have your back? How were you supposed to know indeed? We’ve only known each other for, like, …”, he looks at his watch, “… ten years!”
“Yeah, sorry. I thought if I tell you, you might think I want to hit on you or something.”
Alfonso snorts. “Please. I’m not even your type.”
“How the hell do you even know what my type is?”
“Because I’m not blind,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I know the type of guys you look at when you think nobody’s looking.”
I’m blushing.
He laughs.
“Why are you laughing?”
“You’re blushing!”
“No, I’m not!” I protest and blush some more.
“Hey!” he says, looking all serious all of a sudden. He wags his finger at me. “No more lies!”
“Right, sorry. Yeah, I’m blushing. I thought I was good at casting glances at cute guys without anyone noticing, but I guess not.”
“To be fair, I don’t think anyone who hasn’t known you your whole life would notice where you look. Or care, for that matter.”
“Phew!” I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. “That’s kind of a relief.”
“So,” he says, looking at me with a subtle smile. “Chris, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say and glance over at our regular table. Chris is sitting with his back toward us, but I catch Phil staring at me. When our eyes meet, he quickly checks if his lunch tray is still in front of him on the table.
Alfonso shakes his head slowly. “I can see why you’re attracted to him physically. But …”
“But what?”
“Nah, never mind. I don’t know him well enough, at least not as well as you do, so I was just wondering if his personality matches his looks.”
“Well,” I say. “I don’t know. I mean, he’s really really nice when we’re alone together. Really, he can be the sweetest guy you can imagine. But …”
“Here we go,” Alfonso.
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I knew there was a but. No pun intended. Never mind, keep talking.”
“I was gonna say,” I continue, “he’s the sweetest guy you can imagine when we’re alone. But when there are other people around it’s almost as if he’s a different person. Especially when Jack and Steve are around. Like, you know how they sometimes say really mean things to people?”
“Sometimes?” Alfonso says. “They say mean things to people all the time!”
“Exactly. And Chris thinks it’s hilarious. It’s almost as if he’s got two different personalities. And I don’t know which is the real Chris.”
Alfonso thinks for a moment, then he looks me in the eyes and says, “Look, I don’t want to pee on your parade or anything. I know you’re on cloud nine at the moment, but be careful, okay? I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I appreciate that.”
“But if you do get hurt, I’m gonna beat the hell out of whoever did the hurting.”
Clasping my hands over my heart, I say, “My knight in shining armor!”
Alfonso scowls at me. “Dude!”
“Too much?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry,” I say, and we both laugh.
It feels good to be laughing with Alfonso again.
* * *
My day is going pretty awesome, which is more than I can say about any other day since I’ve started high school, but being the little Miss Sunshine that I am, I’m expecting to hit a major roadblock any minute now. If my past experiences are anything to go by, I’ll probably run headfirst into a closed door, drop my lunch tray in the middle of the cafeteria, or fall flat on my face trying to pass the baton to Chris during Track & Field.
In a curious turn of events, none of that happens.
In fact, things seem to keep getting better and better. All of a sudden I feel five inches taller, and I’m not sure if it’s the cause or the effect of my new and improved self-confidence, but I’m feeling like I’m high on some kind of wonder drug that makes me think I can do anything.
In Track & Field we have the best training session ever. Jason, Jack, Chris, and even myself, we’re all strong individual runners. The problem that Coach Gutierrez has been facing in the past few weeks was using the parts at hand to build a machine that runs smoothly and reliably. There are twenty-four different combinations to have four runners run a relay race, and I think we’ve tried them all except the ones that involve Chris as the anchor. You want the fastest runner to finish the race and squeeze that last hundredth of a second out of it, so Chris’s position as our anchor was never in question. But all other positions were up for grabs. At one point the coach even put me in the starting position, and that worked great as long as we were the only team running. But against other teams it would always put us at a distinct psychological disadvantage because by the time I, the slowest in our team, passed the baton on to the second runner, we’d already be five meters behind the next team, and that wasn’t doing a lot for the motivation of the other three runners. So Coach Gutierrez has been switching Jack and me back and forth between the second and third position, and we’ve been driving him insane because someone would always mess up the exchange. If we didn’t drop the baton, we’d pass it outside the exchange zone, and if we did manage to do it inside the zone, it would take us too long. It was almost as if someone had cast an evil spell on our team.
Today, though, we run the perfect race.
Jason is off to an excellent start. With a two-meter lead he passes the baton to Jack who manages to maintain our lead until he passes the baton to me. I lose a meter on the next team, but my exchange with Chris is a work of pure beauty, and in the end Chris manages to win that meter back and not only win the race for us but win it in record time.
Coach Gutierrez waits for us to gather at the finish line. He looks at us, then at his stopwatch, then back at us.
“Gentlemen,” he finally says, “if this had been an official competition you’d have broken the California high school 100-meter-relay record in your age group by two hundredths of a second. Finally! Finally you guys live up to the completely overblown expectations I’ve put in you. Keep it up, you little bastards!”
We’re stunned. Under the applause of the entire team we celebrate, shouting and jumping up and down. Jack hugs Chris, and he high-fives Jason. Then he turns to me. I lift my hand for a high five, but instead of just high-fiving it, he grabs it and yanks my arm so hard that he almost pulls it out of its socket. It’s painful, but I can bear it because for the first time ever, I can detect the faintest sign of respect in his eyes. He lets go, and then Chris is standing in front of me with the widest grin on his face. He puts his arms around me, lifts me up, and swirls me around a full three hundred and sixty degrees. When he puts me down again, I feel Jason’s hand squeezing my neck and his other patting my head. High on adrenaline and testosterone, the four of us end up in a ginormously rambunctious group hug. When we break up, I turn around and cast my glance across the field. There, as always, Phil is standing on the sidewalk, holding his umbrella and his handbag, but today he’s not facing the street as he’s waiting for his dad to pull up in his old clunker. Today he’s standing by the fence, looking in my direction. On any other da
y that would have freaked me out, but not today. Today it makes me feel proud to have someone—anyone—witness my success. I raise my hand for a coy wave, and Phil nods back at me, which by his standards is tantamount to an emotional outburst of unprecedented proportions.
I turn my head to look toward the other end of the track, and sure enough, there, behind the fence, Special Agent Nicole Tesla is sitting in her shiny black car, watching me from behind her dark sunglasses. When I catch her staring at me, she looks away and takes a drag from her cigarette.
“I have to go and celebrate,” Coach Gutierrez announces, “and possibly draft my High School Coach of the Year acceptance speech, so get out of here, you little bastards!”
With the rest of the team, I ride a sweeping wave of inebriating pride back to the locker room, and before I even know it, I find myself getting undressed. Caught up in a moment I don’t want to end and unwilling to let the others continue their celebration without me, I strip down naked in front of everyone as if I’ve never done anything else in my entire life.
And nobody even seems to notice—or care—except Chris.
When he sees me take off my undies, his eyes linger for a brief moment—on my face, not my private parts—and the faintest of smiles crosses his lips. On a bad I would have taken this as a smirk triggered by some sort of amusement about my physical features, but this isn’t a bad day. This is the best day I’ve had in a long time, and that makes me think of his smile as a genuine appreciation of the fact that I’ve finally found my place among equals. And it feels awesome.
Taking a shower with a dozen teenage boys is—who’d have thunk?—a pretty straightforward and uneventful affair if you ignore all the testosterone-driven teasing and sexual innuendo. It’s all about soap and water and dicks and boisterous laughter.
As a large part of the conversation revolves around dick sizes, I turn and face the wall. I don’t want to give anyone the chance to catch my furtive glances at someone else’s private parts and point that awkward fact out to the others. I imagine getting pummeled to death by a naked, homophobic mob probably isn’t a very joyous affair.
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