Pride Must Be a Place

by Kevin Craig

  CHAPTER 13

  After school, I’m almost afraid to walk outside. I imagine a crap-load of kids swarmed around in a circle with Will and Marc in the middle of it, fighting to the death. I don’t want Marc to get hurt. And I also don’t want him to get into trouble. Stepping outside, I scan the schoolyard with my heart in my throat.

  Nothing. No crowds gathered. This is a good sign. If ever there are two or more people fighting, the crowd grows almost instantly and the smartphones come out and the filming begins. Since this isn’t happening, they’re not fighting. Yet. Or here, anyway.

  I breathe a sigh of relief when I spot Marc way ahead of me on the sidewalk, walking with Hank. He has his arm on Hank’s shoulder and he’s looking down at him, talking non-stop.

  So he decided to go to Hank instead of Will. Good choice. See, he’s such a good guy. He had time to think about things, calmed down a bit, and he’s making sure his friend is okay. He’s just perfect.

  By the time I catch up, Marc has let go of Hank, and they’re just walking. Neither is talking. It’s clear to me they’re comfortable with one another, like friends should be. This is obvious just by their gestures and body language with one another. Makes sense. They live two doors down from each other.

  “Hey,” I say, interrupting their comfortable silence.

  “Hey, Ezra.” Hank stops momentarily. “Thanks for earlier. It really helped.”

  “No worries, bud,” I say. “Having been there, I know what you were feeling. I’m just sorry it happened. I feel kind of responsible.”

  “Why would you feel responsible?” Marc says, and I can tell he’s still frothing at the mouth. I guess I misjudged. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I know. It’s just…it happened because of the posters and the club. Hank wouldn’t have been caught out if we hadn’t plastered the school with those club posters.”

  “Bullshit,” Marc says. We continue walking in the direction of their neighbourhood. “It happened because someone is a bigot. Period. Don’t you dare take responsibility for this. Your club is going to change things. We just have to be prepared for the worst at the beginning. I was just telling Hank we won’t leave him alone between classes anymore. Once Will gets a target, he never lets go. He’s like a bulldog that way.”

  “And I was just saying, NO,” Hank says.

  “Hank, I already told you I’m not taking no for an answer. We’re going to start watching out for you. Like it or not. And I’m also telling his parents,” he continues, directing his last comment at me. “Which he also disagrees with.”

  “But Dad gets so freaky about this. He’s been lecturing me about the dangers of coming out for two years now. This is such a perfect I told you so moment for him. Please don’t tell him, Marc. Please.”

  “How about,” I say, “We don’t tell them just yet. But—”

  “Nope. We’re telling them. This is too serious to not—”

  “I wasn’t finished, Marc. Compromise. Try it. We don’t tell them just yet, but we never leave Hank alone. We can always tell them later, if we feel we need to. Come on. Between all of us, I’m sure we can keep our eye on him. Maybe we can talk to Will too.”

  “No,” Hank says. “If you talk to him, he’ll want to get me even more. It’ll be a challenge for Severe.”

  “Yeah. You’re right. Okay,” I say before I turn to Marc. “We’ll protect him. And we’ll hold off telling his parents. Okay?”

  “I don’t like this,” Marc says. He speed walks away from us. But Hank isn’t letting this go. I’m guessing he uses his size to his advantage whenever he can. Everyone wants to give the cute little kid his way, right.

  “Marc,” Hank says, stepping directly into his path. “You know Dad would lose his shit over this. Please. Just be reasonable. He might even take me out of school. They talked about homeschooling before. You can’t do this.”

  “You’re…tiny, Hank. I’m sorry, but you are. If Will wanted to, he could probably kill you with one punch. I don’t want to be responsible for that. Your parents need to know.”

  But I can see that he’s losing his resolve. Just another nudge and he’ll give in.

  “Marc,” Hank says. “I need to prove to my parents that I can look after myself. I can’t do that if they pull me out of school just when things are about to change for us. Please? You’re not gay, so you don’t fully get it. But, please. Don’t take me out of this time at our school. I need this.”

  “Argh.” Marc stomps his feet a bit and makes fists. But he drops them to his side. He’s now fully beaten. “Okay.”

  “Yes!” Hank says as he makes his own fist and pumps it in victory.

  “Do not make me regret this.”

  “I won’t let him,” I say. I don’t even know the kid, but I want this for him. He’s so excited about the club. I’d hate to see him miss out on the long-term benefits of it. I so hope there are long-term benefits. Please don’t let us be doing this for nothing. “We’ll watch him non-stop.”

  “Thanks, Ezra,” they both say, simultaneously.

  “Okay. Well. That’s that. So, you’ll be leaving Will alone for now, too?” I say this to Marc.

  “Well,” he says. “I don’t remember saying that. But…maybe. If I can, Ez. You have no idea how pissed off I am.”

  “No, no. I think I do. But we have to do everything right. It wouldn’t help if you were to get into trouble just as the club is getting off the ground.”

  “I know you’re right. It’s just, this kid…” He gestures to Hank.

  “I’m not a kid, Marc.” He looks pissed enough to attack, but it’s just funny coming from someone so small. He even makes me look tall.

  “Sorry, dude. You know me, though. Okay. I’ll leave Will alone. But not if he does it again. If he does it again it’s no holds barred.”

  “Fair enough,” I say. “I’ll even help you.”

  “Okay. This is where we get off, Ezra. I’ll text you later, dude.”

  “Sure thing, Marc.” If he had said that to me a week ago, I’m sure I would have dropped dead. But now, well, I want to drop dead…but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it’s not going anywhere. Before, at least I could dream. “Talk to you later, guys.”

  “See you, Ezra. Nice meeting you today. Finally. And thanks for everything. You rock.”

  “You’re pretty awesome yourself, Hank. Ciao.”

  They both wave and I continue on my way while they turn down the street that will take them to the frigging paradise in which they live.

  CHAPTER 14

  Just as I’m about to walk in the front door, I see the house beside ours. It’s just sitting there trying to make me feel guilty. If a house can actually do that. It’s glaring at me.

  I’ve been neglecting my best friend like she’s some kind of pariah. And then I freak out on her for daring to speak to my crush. For even looking at him. I was so jealous.

  I leave my porch and jump the short hedge between our two front yards. I forego the front door and walk around to the back of the house, climb the trellis to the second floor, and tap on Nettie’s bedroom window.

  I peek in and see her sprawled across the bed with her laptop open in front of her. She’s surfing the web, I think.

  She turns and sees me, but makes no move to come over and open the window. She turns back to the laptop screen.

  Nicely played. Cold.

  I tap again, and can almost hear the exaggerated sigh. I can definitely see it. She walks over to the window, unhitches the latch, slides it open and moves back to her bed. “Come in.”

  “I know, I know,” I say as I haul myself up through the open window and slither down on the other side, banging into the dresser that I always bang into no matter how hard I try not to. “I’m sorry. But you know how I feel about him.”

  “I heard your whiny little crush talk for about three years, yes. Which is why I would never in a million years make a move on him. I know the best friend code, you ass. It doesn’t mat
ter if we’re not the same sex, the same rules apply. You don’t make a move on your best friend’s crush.”

  “Oh,” I say. “I did not know that.” I walk over to the bed and fall down beside her.

  “So you would make a move on Sean Carrington?”

  “God, no. You know redheads aren’t my type. Sean is all yours, girlfriend.”

  “That’s not exactly the point I was trying to make, sweetie,” she says, shaking her head. “I just meant…you wouldn’t try to hit on my crush, would you?”

  “Yeah,” I have to admit, “I guess you’re right. Yeah, I get it. But in the moment, I just saw red. Sorry.”

  “Okay,” she says, closing her laptop and turning to face me. “I accept your apology. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to grab my tweezers. Your eyebrows have been bugging me for a week now. Must. Fix. Them.”

  She jumps off the bed and goes to her bathroom. When she returns she’s wielding tweezers like a surgeon would wield a scalpel, and my stomach rolls with uneasiness.

  I sit up on the edge of the bed and open my legs. She moves between them and the last thing I see before I close my eyes is her maniacal expression as she moves in, tweezers first.

  “So? What were you talking about? You and Marc, I mean.”

  “Well,” she says as she takes relish in plucking the trees from their roots on my eyebrow ridge. I hold off screaming with each pluck. I don’t want to be the baby I most definitely feel like. Every time she does this, it hurts like hell!

  “Well, what?”

  “We were talking about Alex, okay, if you really must know. That’s why we weren’t sitting with you.” I open my eyes long enough to give her a shocked expression. “Well, I knew you wouldn’t want to be in on that conversation. I know how close you two are. You would have been offended on his behalf and you would have derailed the conversation.”

  “But what do you mean?”

  “I mean, he’s been a nasty little bitch from day one of this club thing. I don’t know if he’s the kind of person we even want in the club, let alone representing it.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I say, putting a hand on her shoulder and pushing her back far enough so that I can stand. Standing is the best position from which to show indignation. “We can’t do this to him. He’s the face of gay in our school. Everyone knows that. He’s the most out gay in Nelson. He needs to be a part of this, Net. You realize you’re both straight, right? You were talking about not having Alex in the gay-straight alliance group?”

  “I know, I know. But we want him in. Really. We were conspiring to figure out a way to keep him and to change his attitude. He is such a dick to Marc. And not some of the time, Ez. Always. Marc is convinced Alex hates him.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t hate him,” I say, with zero conviction. “He’s just, you know, jealous. He doesn’t like that my crush is in my life now. Remember, Nettie, the basis of my relationship with Alex is that he’s been crushing on me since forever. I can’t do anything about that.”

  “No,” she says. She gestures with her tweezer-wielding hand for me to sit back down. And I do. Getting back into position, she continues the torture inflicting. “But we did decide you would be the best to talk to him about it. Tell him we are ready to give him the boot, Ez. Tell him Marc is hurt by the way Alex treats him. Just, whatever you do, convince him to stop being such a diva prick. No one likes a diva.”

  “Okay,” I say. I’m now keeping my eyes open, watching her cute little face scrunch up in concentration as she picks her next victims and yanks. “I’ll talk to him. But I can’t promise anything. You know as well as me that he’s one whacked out horse who cannot be saddled. He’s a wildcard, always. But, yes. I’ll talk to him.”

  “Perfect!” She gives me a spin, grabs a hand mirror off her dresser mid-spin and puts it in my face. “Your eyebrows, that is. Take a gander at those puppies. Two is always better than one, Ezra. No more unibrow.”

  She laughs, but I don’t. Gotta hand it to her, though. My eyebrows are perfect. She’s a master. I stand and bow to her expertise. And, yeah, I laugh too. Feels like things are already back to normal. Mental note: Do not blow off Nettie. No clue why I do that. She’s definitely the most awesome thing in my life.

  “Okay,” I say as I walk toward the still open window. “Best friends? I didn’t piss you off enough to get sent to the number two spot, did I?”

  “Christ, Ezra,” she says, smiling. “Who the hell is even in that spot? I have room for you. Everyone else is simply an acquaintance. You’re still number one.”

  I smile and swing a leg up over the ledge on my way out. I can feel the ghost shadow of pain around my new eyebrows and wonder if it’s red enough for my father to take notice. I doubt he’d see it if there was a neon sign on my forehead telling him I had my eyebrows plucked. Or, if he does see it, he’d probably pretend he didn’t. Our dance of denial is so complete and pure and good. Ha.

  “Walk to school tomorrow?” I ask, swinging my other leg over and sitting on the ledge of her windowsill with my feet dangling outside.

  “Sure thing, baby boy,” she says. And just to rub salt into the wound she gives me a little jab. “I do see what you see in Marc, though. My god, that boy is sexy.”

  “Gah,” I say as I swing to the trellis, climb down a few rungs, and jump down into her mother’s garden…careful not to murder her pansies.

  “Just kidding. Lol.”

  “Har de harhar. And you know I hate it when people actually say lol.”

  “Yep,” she says, smirking. “I know.”

  I wave goodbye and she nods her head bye back to me and I leave for my house, relieved at how easy that went. When you’re best friends, it doesn’t take much to make up. I don’t know how I even imagined Nettie would do that to me.

  I brace myself for whatever can happen when I open the front door, and pray my eyebrows aren’t fire-engine-red-angry from Nettie’s attack.

  CHAPTER 15

  “I can’t even wait!” Alex says in a near shriek. I’m sure he just woke up every neighbourhood dog within a three-mile radius from their afternoon naps.

  He has the ballot box in his lap with his fingers on the tape that miraculously still seals it. But he’s not going to wait much longer.

  “No,” Marc says. But it’s not a bossy or empirical no. It’s filled with laughter and amusement. “You have to wait for Mr. Reason. We all agreed. The whole committee should be here, dude.”

  “Yes, yes, yes,” Alex shrieks. “But my wanna!”

  “I know, dear,” Nettie says with the patience of a mother at the end of her rope. “He said five minutes. That was three minutes ago. We’re almost there. Don’t make me come over there and take that box off of you, young man.”

  “You’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands, Miss Shrew.”

  “Nice,” I say, laughing. “Enough name calling. Alex, heel.”

  He moans, keeps his hand on the tape that’s slowly coming away from the box, but holds off ripping it. It seems that my talk with him may have worked. He hasn’t bitten Marc’s head off once since we got here. That’s a good sign.

  The classroom door opens.

  “Well, well,” Mr. Reason says as he enters. “Looks like we have an eager beaver raring to rip into the Christmas present.”

  “Thank God you’re here. I was dying. Dying!” Alex doesn’t waste another second. He tears into the box while Mr. Reason puts his briefcase down and joins us at the little circle of chairs we created for the meeting.

  Alex immediately starts reading the ballots, but only to himself. He’s reading one, then dropping it on the empty chair beside him, then reading another. We all watch his face for a reaction. His expression goes from smile to frown to smile to frown. We look first to one another before we interrupt Alex’s frenzy.

  “What’s up, Alex?” I ask, breaking the silence.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. I kind of figured this would happen. It’s not all bad.”

  “W
hat do you mean, it’s not all bad?” Mr. Reason asks. He’s standing in front of him now, hand out. He wants to read them, but Alex just keeps scanning them and dropping them onto the chair beside him.

  “You know,” he says. Then he holds one up and reads it out loud. “The Fag Club.” He drops it beside him and reads the next. “The Flaming Nancys. I’m actually kind of jealous I didn’t come up with that one.”

  Mr. Reason puts his hand inside the box and comes up with several ballots. He begins to read them and slams them down ineffectually one after the other. He holds on to two.

  “These two are in the running. Don’t worry, kids. We’ll just pull out the bad ones and consider the others. Don’t let it get to you. It’s no doubt the work of one bad seed. This doesn’t mean the whole school is against you. The good entries are many. Take pride in those.”

  He’s saying all the right things, but his ears are beet red and there’s no denying the look of raging anger on his face. He’s ready to tear someone apart. But I give him an A for effort.

  Alex is now wiping errant tears from his eyes, but he’s smiling like a lunatic and pretending everything is okay. Marc reaches over and passes him a tissue, ever the chivalrous knight. Alex smiles at him, takes it, and blots at his eyes. He keeps reading. Now, though, he’s making two piles. Obviously the bullshit ballots and the serious ones.

  I wish I could say the serious ballot pile was bigger than the bullshit one, but it isn’t.

  We all kind of swarm the ballot box now and go through it. When we’re done, there’s a healthy pile of serious contenders. Some of them are bad, obviously, but placed in the ballot box with good intention.

  The extremely large pile of bullshit ballots sits like an angry blot on the chair beside Alex before Mr. Reason marches over to grab the trash can. When he returns with it, he swipes every single ballot, with one quick motion, into the trash can.

  “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” Mr. Reason says. He’s still containing his anger, but just barely.