The Bermudez Triangle

by Maureen Johnson

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Why?” Mel’s voice was high again, but this time out of a rising panic. “You’re the one who always says that labels are stupid.”

  Avery took a long drag on her cigarette. She started running her hands over her face again, over her eyebrows, along her nose, up her cheekbones—like she was trying to rub her own face off.

  “I’m just going to walk home,” she finally said, putting her car keys in Mel’s hand.

  Mel watched Avery walk away. Her shoulders hunched against the rain as she walked down the sloping street and then around the corner. It wasn’t until Avery was out of sight that Mel realized that she was cold, wet, and strangely alone, right in the middle of town.

  19

  On Monday morning Devon came into the council office and said, “So.”

  Except he didn’t just say, “So.” He said, “Soooooooooo.” It lasted for about three minutes.

  Nina looked up from the sheets of elaborate pumpkin-shaped tickets she’d designed for the hayride. (Oh, they had laughed when she was a kid, but years of watching Martha Stewart were finally paying off.) Devon sat down at the table across from her and looked down at her little pumpkin patch.

  “I didn’t know your friends were gay,” he said. “How long have they been dating?”

  Before Nina could even react, Georgia came into the room. She threw down a box of muffins, extras from the buffet her parents put out every morning.

  “Who’s gay?” she said. “What did I miss?”

  Devon was playing it very close to the chest now. He took a muffin, tore off a chunk of the top, and popped it into his mouth, eyeing Nina all the while. Georgia looked to Nina for her explanation.

  “Come on,” she said. “I had a shitty morning. A big branch fell on my car. It dented the trunk. Tell me something good.”

  “I don’t know,” Nina said. It came out clumsily. “Devon was just talking….”

  “About who?”

  “I think he’s joking or something,” Nina said, narrowing her focus to her pumpkins. Even as she spoke, though, she knew that this was a bad thing to say. The “think” and the “or something” implied uncertainty. Or worse yet, they seemed to confirm what he was saying. Unless she flat-out lied, everything out of her mouth was suspect.

  From the look in his eye, though, Nina knew that Devon had already gotten the confirmation he wanted.

  “What?” Georgia said. “Aren’t you going to tell me?”

  “I have to go to the photo lab,” Devon said, getting up.

  “Well?” Georgia prompted as Devon left the room.

  “I don’t want to say who it was,” Nina said.

  Georgia’s eyes went wide.

  “Why not?”

  Because if Georgia knew, somehow, that information would spread. She just had that effect. Rumors lived in her blood cells. She was the universal Patient Zero of AHH, spreading information through her touch and her very breath.

  “I can’t,” Nina said.

  Nina could almost hear the file drawer in Georgia’s mind opening, ready to receive the knowledge. She would find out somehow.

  “What’s with you and Tieboy?” Georgia asked. “With the secrets and the pictures?”

  “Pictures?”

  “Didn’t you see it?” Georgia asked.

  “See what?” Nina said warily. She wasn’t in the mood for another surprise.

  “The picture.”

  “What picture?”

  “Come on.”

  Georgia waved Nina out into the hall, just a few steps down from the photography lab, where Devon was working. She pointed into a glass case.

  “There,” Georgia said.

  There was a collection of pictures of body parts—an earful of studs, a bare foot, the back of a guy’s neck, a hand. A hand with long fingers with several chunky rings on them and, farther up the wrist, the shadow of a white bracelet. It was Nina’s hand.

  Georgia was gaping at her wide-eyed, as if to say, “Well?” Nina pushed her along back in the direction of the office.

  “He’s taking pictures of you,” Georgia said.

  “Of my hand.”

  “Still.”

  “Boyfriend. Got one.”

  “In Portland. Tell me who’s gay.”

  “Georgia …” Nina sighed. “I have to go to class. See you later.”

  Doug and Jean were intensely interested in Mel today. All the mental vibes were directed onto her, not through her. Mel stared down at Doug’s massive black cowboy boots with the white stitching and tried not to notice.

  Maybe she was imagining it. She was very tired, and everything was a little foggy. She’d sat up half the night, wondering what Avery meant by “not gay” and looking at Web sites about bisexuality and sexual identity, trying to get some kind of understanding of what Avery was trying to say to her. She spent hours reading about femmes and butches and transgendered people, bouncing from page to page, topic to topic. In the end her mind was so muddled that she couldn’t remember what it was she’d been trying to find out in the first place. What little sleep she got, she’d spent dreaming about those little bouncing icons people put next to their mood and current music selection in their blogs.

  Parker was tapping a rhythm into the back of his head with a pen. Zimm was attempting to explain essay structure by drawing an upside-down triangle, a square, and a right-sided triangle on the board. Everything was fuzzing out. Mel reached up and unleashed her ponytail in preparation for making a hair shield to close her eyes behind.

  “It’s like a top,” Zimm was saying as he pointed to the upside-down triangle. “The weight of the introduction rests on this one point, the topic sentence. The weight of the entire essay really rests there. You can put a lot on one point. Medieval scholars used to debate about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.”

  Mel scrawled the picture into her notes and wrote, Everything here. Angels. She hadn’t really been listening and didn’t know what the angels part was supposed to mean. It sounded meaningful, though.

  “Am I completely losing it, or was Vampire Douglas sniffing your head?” Parker asked the second they walked out of class.

  “Sniffing my head?”

  “It looked like he was leaning into you. I thought he was going to bite your skull.”

  As they walked down the hall, one of the guys she’d seen talking to Devon passed by. He looked at Mel and smiled. Parker noticed this as well. He didn’t say anything about it, but he swung around and watched the guy as they walked in opposite directions.

  They stopped at Mel’s locker. It took her a moment to remember the combination. She shook her head, trying to get her mind back on track.

  “Is there something really weird happening today?” Parker asked. “A full moon, perhaps?”

  Instead of facing out toward the hall and giving a mumbled running commentary on the people who passed by like he normally did, Parker turned in and faced her. He didn’t exactly box her in, but the exhaustion was hitting her again, and everything felt close.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Huh?” Mel backed up a step.

  “You seem a little out of it.”

  “I didn’t get much sleep,” she said.

  She could tell he didn’t believe her, but he didn’t press the issue.

  Avery was nic-fitting right now, in the middle of lunch. But the school rules prohibited anyone from leaving during the lunch period, so there was nowhere for her to go for a cigarette. She drummed her fingers on the table and ignored her tuna fish sandwich.

  Gaz and Hareth, her lunch companions, were oblivious to this. At the moment they were preoccupied by the loss of Angry Maxwell’s bass player, Margo. She had stormed out of Gaz’s basement the night before, citing some specific issues with Hareth’s rhyming style and the general “suckitude” of the band.

  “If I’m rhyming,” Hareth was saying, “I need a heavy beat under me, you know, to hold me up. We have to sta
y together, you know? Behind the rhyme. And if I’m rhyming …”

  “It wasn’t you,” Gaz said as he sucked down a long swig of soda and rolled his upper lip toward his nose in thought.

  “That’s what I’m saying. I’m rhyming for all of us. And the beat has to stay with me. So if I move, the beat has to follow me. The beat’s gotta be like on my ass the whole time. I need it that tight. And Go wanted her own beat, and you can’t have that.”

  “It wasn’t you,” Gaz said again. “It was Go.”

  “You can give him a strong drumbeat,” Avery said.

  “I’m not the drummer anymore,” Gaz said. “I’ve been playing lead guitar since Mike went to Mass Distraction.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “About a week ago.”

  “What the hell are you going to do without a drummer?”

  “Freelance,” Hareth said knowingly.

  Avery didn’t even pretend she knew what this meant. Hareth had his own language.

  “I found this keyboard in my garage,” Gaz said. “I think it was Phil’s. He played with us last year, and then he moved. Want to play it?”

  Avery thought this over. It probably wouldn’t hurt to join a group—even a really bad group like Angry Maxwell. Then again, she would probably end up beating Gaz and Hareth over the head with the keyboard. They were nice guys, but they weren’t very technically proficient. “I’m getting a Kit Kat,” she said, wanting to buy herself a few minutes to think this over.

  She got up and walked to the back of the cafeteria, where the machines were. The school had blocked the use of the soda machines during the day in an attempt to make it look like they were part of the fight against obesity, but the candy and chips were, thankfully, still available. Avery dug around in her pocket for a few coins and dropped them into the machine.

  And then she heard it. It was soft and indistinct, but she heard it.

  “Dyke.”

  Avery froze. If she turned to see who’d spoken, she would implicate herself. Better not to associate herself with the term. Pretend like she didn’t even know that it could be her that this person was talking about. She steadied her hand and hit the code for the Kit Kat. B2. The coil that held the Kit Kat started to rotate back to free the package.

  “… such a dyke.”

  Still just a little over a whisper. It was coming from behind her, from the direction of the soda machine.

  The Kit Kat landed with a thud. As she bent down to reach for it, she turned her head just slightly to see who was talking. Two girls were leaning against the wall on the other side of the soda machine, deep in conversation about something. Avery only knew one of them. Her name was Alicia. She sat in front of Avery in geometry when they were sophomores. She had long, straw-colored hair that always reeked of really expensive-smelling hair care products.

  As she passed them on her way back to her table, their conversation got just a tiny bit quieter, and there was a sliver of a pause during which Avery knew that they were both examining her reaction. She kept her gaze forward, as if she hadn’t heard anything at all, and made sure not to increase her pace. She was instantly paranoid, sure that eyes were following her as she wove between the tables. Everyone knew.

  Hareth was beating out a rhythm on the table when she returned.

  “Mixing with this, mixing with that, Avery got a Kit … Kat.” He stopped and turned to Gaz. “See?”

  “Right,” Gaz said. “You have to break there or else it makes no sense.”

  “Exactly.”

  Alicia and the other girl silently passed the table, never once turning back to glance at Avery. Once they got to their table, though, they bent their heads together again, and Alicia threw a quick look over her shoulder.

  Now Avery’s brain was moving quickly, filling with unformed thoughts. She looked down at herself. Jeans, a grungy vintage T-shirt for some plumbing company, heavy shoes, and a leather cuff bracelet. She could feel her cropped hair brushing against the back of her neck. The only makeup she had on was some dark liner around her eyes. Why didn’t she just put on an I’m Not Gay, But My Girlfriend Is shirt and get it over with?

  No one would call Mel a dyke. Mel wore pink shirts and cute little necklaces, and she had all of that long, orangey hair that was always whipped into some adorable arrangement. She hated Mel’s cuteness at that moment. Hated that Mel had been so stubborn in the bookstore. Mel had nothing to worry about. Only Avery would be seen as the rough dyke who lusted after the cheerleaders and couldn’t be trusted in the locker room after gym. Other girls would put their books up over their boobs when they passed her in the hall, and they’d stop fixing their makeup when she walked into the bathroom. They would see her as a predator trying to sneak a peek or cop a feel, even if she just bumped into them in the doorway or as she squeezed in between rows of desks.

  “What do you think?” Gaz said, interrupting Avery’s psychological meltdown.

  “Oh … yeah.”

  She couldn’t recall exactly what it was that Gaz had requested. Something about a keyboard. It didn’t matter. Now she just wanted to be seen with some guys. She would need to stick close to these two.

  “Right …” Gaz said, smiling.

  Alicia and her friend turned away, but Avery knew she was going to be under observation from now on, like some kind of mutant organism trapped on a slide.

  Halloween

  October 29

  TO: Steve

  FROM: Nina

  So, tomorrow night is one of the big events at AHH—the annual hayroll, which is run by the council, which basically means me. It’s a hayride at one of the local farms. You know, get in the truck, ride around the woods, people in costumes go “boo.”

  Here’s a little background so that you can feel totally in the know about My Life and the Stuff I Have to Do:

  1. It’s called the hayroll because people are supposed to try to lose their virginity on it, like it’s supposed to be a hot farm sex fest. This is a total lie, because everyone’s squished into the trucks together and there is no privacy at all. (Also, hay? Ouch.) This is an extra-big deal because if you leave our school a virgin, the bust of Alexander Hamilton in the front lobby is supposed to speak your name on graduation day.

  2. The school actually seems to believe in this hayroll crap, because the teachers always make sure the reproductive system lessons come up in health class right beforehand.

  3. Someone always throws up on one of the trucks—usually the one I’m on. Since I’m not taking the ride this year, it probably won’t happen. Plus it’s always crazy cold and I can’t even wear two pairs of gloves this year because I have to count money and rip tickets.

  Sorry. I usually sound a lot more enthusiastic. I think this is just one of those times when you feel extra far away because everyone’s going to be talking hot farm sex all night. Also, if you’re a couple at AHH, you have to go to the hayroll as a date, which means that Mel and Avery will be there together, probably talking h.f.s. too.

  Okay. Here’s something really weird. The more I try to just get used to the Mel and Avery thing, the more I keep … picturing them. It’s not on purpose. I’m just trying to force the idea into my brain that they’re a couple and it’s all fine, then suddenly I’ve got an episode of “The L Word” going on in my head and I have to run downstairs and watch decorating shows until it washes away.

  I may not live through this weekend. Remember, if I die, I love you, and you can have my Apple notebook and my label maker.

  October 29

  TO: Nina

  FROM: Steve

  This is one of those times I wish I was there (okay, which is always). I can handle hay. I am rugged and outdoorsy.

  At my school it’s Samhain time. Beltane is supposed to be the big sex holiday, but here every holiday is an excuse for sweet pagan love. I don’t usually have to picture it because it all happens right in front of me. I’m that guy everyone feels comfortable around. It’s like, “Steve won’t mind if we
have sex here on the coffee table. He’s totally down with the Goddess.” And it’s not that I care, it’s just that you’re really far away, so I have to concentrate on things like how to get more people to reuse their plastic shopping bags and not my INCREDIBLY GORGEOUS AND AMAZING GIRLFRIEND ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COUNTRY.

  See? All caps. That’s how much this stresses me out sometimes.

  Okay. Speaking of, I have a thing to go to tonight that my friend River is having, and it will totally be like what I just described. Great, huh?

  I love you.

  Plastic bags, plastic bags, plastic bags …

  20

  On the morning of the hayroll the S thief was definitely in the spirit. The sign in front of the school mysteriously changed from GET YOUR TICKETS TO ANNUAL HAYRIDE ON FRIDAY to the much simpler AL SES GET LAID. (Thus using his spare S but gaining a lot of new letters.)

  Avery noticed this, not just because she liked to follow the exploits of the S thief, but also because she wasn’t really in the mood for the hayroll at all. The last few weeks had been hard. Nothing had really happened except a few lingering looks now and then. Only a couple were unfriendly. Most were just curious or even kind of approving. Still, Avery didn’t want to be observed, and the hayroll was all about public displays of coupledom, which was only going to make her feel more conspicuous about herself. Also, she knew that Mel was going to be on high alert for signs of romance, something Avery was feeling increasingly less comfortable supplying.

  Fortunately, Mel had to work most of the night, but she was going to be getting off in just enough time for them to make the hayroll if she hurried. That would mean a talk about whether or not they should make it clear that they were going together. Avery just wasn’t up for it.

  When Avery went to Mel’s locker after Spanish, a tiny, triangle-shaped note fell out. It read: Hayroll 2nite, yes? —M. Avery shoved it deep in her pocket. Then she went to lunch and asked Gaz to schedule a rehearsal for that night. Gaz never minded doing this because all rehearsal really meant was having Hareth and Avery come sit in his basement.