I hated to think of her tense all the time, constantly worried about how she might misstep. Then again, I was no stranger to the consequences of social pressure. Maybe we carried similar baggage, just for different reasons.
“You know,” Jody said softly as she stared across the gym. “My biggest worry isn’t that I’ll never meet the right person. It’s that I won’t be able to recognize her through all the smoke and mirrors I’ve built up around myself.”
I didn’t know what to say. Jody’s confession caused a deep ache to settle in my chest. I wanted to comfort her, to tell her everything would be all right, to say she was amazing and doing the right thing, and when the time came, all the walls she’d constructed would fall. But how could I alleviate her fears when I shared them? I liked to think if the right woman came along I’d be able to risk anything for her, but the walls I’d erected had never faced a serious test, and they’d been built on a much less noble foundation than Jody’s.
“I’m sorry.” Jody stood. “I didn’t mean to keep you out so late, and I certainly didn’t mean to dump all my insecurities on you. I’ve been a terrible host and an all-around conversation killer.”
“No, please don’t say that.” I rushed to assure her. “This is honestly the best night I’ve had in a long time.”
“Wow, you don’t get out much, do you?”
I laughed. “No, I really don’t, but that’s beside the point. I’ve enjoyed talking to you. I wish we had more time.”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.” I could hardly believe I’d not only said that, but meant it. I had twenty-four hours left until I landed back in New York, and that thought still comforted me, but I wished Jody wouldn’t be a thousand miles away.
“Thank you, but I’d better get you back to Beth and Rory’s before they start to worry.”
I checked my watch. Ten o’clock. Where had the time gone? Beth and Rory would no doubt wonder what we’d been doing, but I suspected hope would be their dominant emotion rather than worry.
Back in Jody’s car, I watched the few lights left on along Main Street fade behind us. The stars were much clearer here than in the city, so I stared at them even though I really wanted to stare at Jody. “Do you ever think about leaving? I mean I know the kids need you, but there are a lot of kids in need in a lot of places.”
“I don’t rule anything out. I don’t know if I want to teach in Darlington forever, but if I decided to leave, it wouldn’t be because I got tired or gave up.” She pulled into the long gravel driveway of Beth and Rory’s farmhouse, then killed the engine. “I won’t run from anything, but some days I do wonder what it would feel like to run toward something or someone.”
The words caught in my throat, the emotion behind them so raw and achingly beautiful. I should’ve kissed her. She was so close and so beautiful there in the starlight. I should have leaned in and taken her soft, pink lips with my own. I should have run my fingers along the smooth skin of her cheek and through her light strands of hair until I cupped the back of her head, holding her loosely but passionately against me.
What I should not have done is thank her for the ride and tell her I’d see her tomorrow, then fumble my way out of the seat belt and make an awkward retreat to the house. Yet that’s exactly what I did.
At least I’d given myself plenty to obsess about while I lay awake all night.
Chapter Two
The sun rose early Friday morning, probably no earlier than usual, but it certainly felt that way. The thin curtain of my guestroom paired with the vast, open plains outside allowed the early morning rays unimpeded access to my eyelids. I’d gotten more sleep than I had the night before, which was only a couple hours, and there was no chance I’d get any more.
Normally I slept so soundly even the hounds of hell couldn’t stir me before ten a.m., but once I awoke, I stayed that way. I spent a solid half hour attempting to trick myself into believing I wasn’t actually awake, then another trying to find something interesting to read in the copy of Midwest Living Beth had left on the bedside table for me. I pulled out my iPhone and checked my mail, only to find nothing worth responding to. I even read some news headlines before flopping back onto the bed and staring at the ceiling.
Immediately my mind returned to Jody and the time we’d spent together the night before, which was exactly what I’d tried to avoid. I didn’t want to think of her eyes and how the magnitude of their blueness defied comparison. I didn’t want to marvel at her passionate approach to teaching or wonder what it would feel like to have her passion directed at me. I certainly didn’t want to obsess over the fear that I’d missed a chance to kiss her or worry I’d probably never get another one. What did I mean, probably? I definitely wouldn’t. In ten hours I’d be on my way back to New York, and happily so. Jody was special, both as a teacher and as a woman, but eight million people lived in New York City. Odds were that plenty of special women lived there too.
I looked at the clock again. How was it possible for it to still only be seven o’clock? The sun had been up for four hours. This might be the start of a never-ending day.
After showering, dressing, and spending about three times as long as usual taming my frizzy mane of dark hair into something resembling a unified attempt at wavy, I finally went downstairs.
My hosts sat at the dining room table, chatting quietly over coffee, so lost in each other they didn’t hear me approach. They were stunning together. Rory cut an imposing figure, lean and fit with her firm jaw and intense gaze, while Beth exuded femininity, with soft curves and a graceful manner. They anchored one another, offering balance both in their aesthetic and their personalities. I’d never been one to buy into “the other half” mentality of relationships, but these two offered compelling evidence of the theory’s validity.
“Morning,” I said, hoping my exhaustion didn’t show.
“Good morning,” Rory said cheerfully. “You’re up early.”
“How’d you sleep?” Beth asked.
“Fine. I think I’m just still on New York time.”
“Yeah, jet lag hurts, and you won’t be here long enough to adjust to this time zone.”
“It’s not a problem.” Or least I hoped it wouldn’t be.
“I couldn’t decide what to make for breakfast, so I waited for your input. Eggs and bacon? Pancakes and sausage? French toast with all the trimmings?”
“You don’t have to go to any trouble for me,” I said, my stomach roiling at the thought of putting food into it this early. “I usually just drink coffee.”
Beth frowned slightly. “Are you sure? It’s no trouble at all.”
“Really, but go ahead and make whatever you want for yourselves.”
“I can just grab something on campus,” Beth said.
“I ate some fruit and yogurt before my run this morning,” Rory added.
“You’ve already gone for a run?” I liked her a little less.
“I know. The thought would’ve horrified me two years ago, but with Beth’s cooking I had to do something or I’d weigh four hundred pounds.”
“She’s too hard on herself.” Beth raked a hand through Rory’s hair and tousled the chestnut mop on her way to the kitchen. “She’s in perfect shape. She’s still got the muscles of a seventeen-year-old.”
I believed it. Rory had always been athletic, and while she’d gained a little weight since high school, it appeared to be mostly muscle. I doubted anything she ate could make her less appealing. I, on the other hand, ate healthier with each passing year, took yoga classes, and always chose the stairs over the elevator but could do little to stop the accumulating pounds or the gravitational pull directing them all to my midsection. Six months shy of my thirtieth birthday, I was far from sagging into the cement, but I worked harder than ever to keep both my belt and my bra from suffering under the added strain of my slowly expanding body. Of course, sitting in a chair writing all day didn’t help, but who had the time or energy to jog every morning? Aside, obviously
, from Rory.
“So how’s your brother?” I asked Rory, hoping she’d run with the topic.
“He’s getting married in June,” she said with a grin.
“Really?” Davey had been a year behind me in high school and always seemed like a nice-enough guy, though a lot quieter than Rory.
“Yup, to Nikki Belliard. She graduated with you, right?”
“Wow, yeah. We were in a lot of classes together senior year. She was always nice to me.” Actually Nikki was probably the closest thing I had to a friend during that time. “We rode the bench together in basketball.”
“That’s surprising. She’s a pretty good softball player.”
“She’s plenty athletic, but she didn’t have the competitive drive to mix it up in the paint.”
“Makes sense. She’s an elementary teacher now,” Rory said. “What about you? What’s your excuse for warming the pine? Lack of skills or motivation?”
“Both,” I said emphatically. “I’ve never cared for sports much.”
“Why’d you play?”
“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.” I shrugged. “I did a lot of things because it seemed easier than saying no. I went along to get along.”
“Did you date guys?”
“No. Thankfully I didn’t get asked much.” That fact probably should have bothered me more, but even in high school, I only felt relief. “Most guys wanted a girl who was into them, and I never gave off those signals.”
“Did you know you were gay the whole time?”
“I had more of a gradual realization, but it started early in high school. I wasn’t traumatized, because at least I’d found a name for the difference growing between my classmates and me. Besides, what’s one more thing to get through in the grand scheme of things?”
Rory grinned. “You don’t get ruffled easily, do you?”
“No, I guess I don’t. I mean, I knew people would be jerks about me being gay, but people are jerks for a lot of reasons. I’d dreamed of New York since I was about ten. I had a plan, and I worked toward it. That was enough for me.”
“I wonder how life would be different if we all thought that way.”
“‘We all’ who?”
“All the gay people in every small-town school across the country.”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I never saw myself as part of the masses.”
“We never do at that age, but just look at the numbers. The Kinsey report says we’re ten percent of the population basically across the board. So, in a town the size of Darlington, we should have about five hundred gay or lesbian residents.”
I waved off the figure. “I doubt the majority of gay people stay here, so the statistic would hardly hold up.”
“I agree. Among the adults it’s likely much lower, but high-school kids don’t have any choice in where they live. Their location is as much of a luck of the draw as their sexual orientation.”
I pondered this idea in grand introverted fashion, quietly mulling over the concept while Rory plowed on. “How many students did you have in your graduating class?”
“Maybe ninety.”
“Say one hundred, since neither of us is a math person.”
I nodded.
“Out of one hundred students, that should mean ten people were gay, and you’ve got four classes’ worth of students, so you should have forty gay or lesbian students at Darlington High School at any given moment. Right?”
“I suppose, in a purely hypothetical sense.”
“Fine. Say half of them are outliers—maybe they don’t know they’re gay yet or maybe farmers produce a below-average number of gay offspring, even though there’s no evidence of that.” Rory began to pace, reminding me of a lion. Her movements, while scattered, seemed to build in purpose as she pursued her argument. I half expected her to pounce on the table. “Even on the conservative end, that still means twenty gay and lesbian students there at all times.”
“I suppose that’s not an unreasonable assumption.”
“So why isn’t anyone else reaching that conclusion?” she asked, opening her hands palms up like a magician who’d performed some feat of magic. “Why is no one saying these kids are here and we have to do more for them?”
I remembered Jody’s face hardened with resolve last night as she spoke about her determination to be there for those students, but I also remembered the toll that kind of dedication took on every part of her life. I did care about those kids. I ached for them even, but I was also relieved to no longer be one of them.
*
Classes were in session when Rory and I arrived at the school, so we had the hallway to ourselves. She strolled along confidently, ever the returning star, while I shuffled in her wake. Maybe some things would never change. I wasn’t afraid of high school itself or anything it represented. I wasn’t a student anymore, and while I said a silent prayer of thanks for that, I had bigger issues to worry about.
In half an hour I’d be on a platform in front of more than four hundred people. Large assemblies were not my idea of a good time even under the best circumstances, but the idea of such an event being called in my honor made my empty stomach tighten. Compound my nerves with a serious lack of sleep or food, and I could barely bring myself to put one foot in front of the other.
“Hey, did you know Drew Phillips is the principal now?” Rory asked.
“The basketball coach? Really?” His name didn’t bring back pleasant memories. No wonder Rory and Jody were worried about the gay kids in school. “Who thought promoting him was a good idea?”
“The good ole boys always gotta have one of their own in power to uphold the status quo.”
“I suppose. Darlington has never trusted outsiders.”
“I’m not an outsider. You’re not an outsider. Lots of people from around here aren’t dicks. Or for that matter don’t even have dicks. When was the last time this place had a woman in charge?”
“Not when I went here. Probably not in my lifetime.”
“Not in anyone’s lifetime. This place is a harem. One man at the top, a bunch of women underneath.”
Poor Jody. She didn’t stand a chance of changing the power structure, but she’d keep trying for her kids.
Rory stopped in front of a large trophy case and pointed to a gold softball engraved with the words CONFERENCE CHAMPIONS. “Hey, we helped win this trophy.”
“You helped win that trophy,” I said without a hint of regret. “I carried bats off the field.”
“Every team member is important, even the bat girl. And let’s be honest, bat girl sounds pretty sexy.”
I laughed harder than the joke warranted. Maybe I just needed something to break my tension, or perhaps I was getting a little loopy.
She moved down another couple of cases, inspecting each item as she went. I just focused on breathing normally. I didn’t have frequent panic attacks, but only because I held them in check by sheer force of will. They simply drew more attention than I wanted. I kept telling myself this event was almost over. One hour onstage and I’d be free. I’d already packed my suitcase and stowed it in the car. Maybe I could ask Rory to take me to St. Louis early. I could fly standby or sit in the airport like all the other anonymous travelers. Just one hour of being front and center, and then I could fade back into the crowd.
“Here’s your class picture.”
I tried to focus on the eight-by-ten photograph of all my classmates on the first day of senior year. The faces were a blur in my memory now, but Rory began to point out people immediately, as if playing some small-town version of Where’s Waldo?
“There’s Nikki,” she said, pointing to the first row. “And there’s you.”
“My hair stuck out enough to signal incoming aircraft.”
Rory laughed.
“I should have cut it all off, but that wasn’t the style then. Not that blimp hair was stylish either.”
“Shorter hair would’ve made you look butcher.”
I shrugge
d. Of course that had factored into my decision.
Rory squinted and leaned closer. “Which five do you think are gay?”
Not this again. “Well, me.”
She gave me a little shove. “Okay, there’s one.”
“What about him?” She pointed to a blond young man in the top row.
“I doubt it. He died in Afghanistan a year after graduation.”
“Damn,” she muttered. “Who would’ve thought that war would go on for so long? Did your class lose any others?”
“Not to the war, but Kelsey Patel committed suicide two months before graduation.”
“What?” She stepped back and stared at me, her hunter-green eyes wide and wounded, before she turned back to the picture. “Which one?”
I scanned the faces until I found the tan-skinned girl with the big brown eyes. “There.”
Rory studied her solemnly. “Why don’t I remember her?”
“Her parents ran one of the gas stations and liquor stores for a while. They moved here my sophomore year, I think. You’d already left for Chicago when she died.”
“What was she like?”
“I honestly don’t remember much.” I searched my memory for anything other than hearing she’d overdosed on pills one night. The family kept the funeral private, and the teachers seemed eager to brush the incident under the rug. Still, shouldn’t I remember more than her death? “We had only a few classes together. She was the only Indian-American I’d ever met. The only vegetarian too. She struck me as odd but probably ahead of her time, and certainly ahead of Darlington.”
“Was she gay?”
“I don’t know. People called her a lezzie and a dyke, but she was smart and I think kind of politically minded. She probably would’ve come out if she were gay. Kids only made fun of her because they didn’t know what to do with her.”
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