by John Goode
Copyright
Published by
Harmony Ink Press
5032 Capital Circle SW
Ste 2, PMB# 279
Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886
USA
http://www.harmonyinkpress.com/
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Tales From Foster High
Copyright © 2012 by John Goode
Cover Art by Paul Richmond http://www.paulrichmondstudio.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Harmony Ink Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Ste 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA.
http://www.harmonyinkpress.com/
Print ISBN: 978-1-61372-718-8
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61372-719-5
Printed in the United States of America
Second Edition - Young Adult Novel
August 2012
First editions originally published in digital format by Dreamspinner Press:
Maybe with a Chance of Certainty – October 2011
The End of the Beginning – December 2011
Raise Your Glass – May 2012
This book is dedicated to Shayne, Dean, Chris, Eric and Jason.
Without them growing up gay wouldn’t have been half as fun.
Of course it would have been half as frustrating, but you have to take the good and bad. You take them both... damn. That’s the theme of Facts of Life. Forget all that.
This book is dedicated to my grandfather. For a man who never graduated from the 4th grade, he was the smartest man I ever knew.
Author’s Note:
I went to school at Shermer High School.
Even though it says different on my transcript and my permanent record would contradict that statement, I assure you I did all my growing up in those halls. I paid a buck to see Ted hold a pair of girl’s panties in the boy’s bathroom. I still think he stole them from someone. Me and some friends climbed up to the town’s water tower and painted “Save Ferris” on the side one night. We spent the entire time pretty sure we were going to get caught, but it’s still there to this day. I attended Saturday school the week after five kids got together and waged war against Principal Vernon. The week I was there the new principal, Mr. Rooney, was watching over us, and he was a complete dick. I remember the time the McCallister kid got left during Christmas and a couple of homeless guys tried to break into his house. Was a big fuss for a while since nothing really ever happened in the town, but after a while people forgot.
It was a nice place to grow up. It was small town, yet filled with a wide variety of people who never stopped showing me that no matter how different we were, at heart we were all the same person. Like take for instance Andie ended up going out with this preppie douche bag and everyone was up in arms. Most people thought she should go out with Duckie because they were similar but in the end let me tell you, the two of them made it work. Or the story about Keith who thought he had the hots for Amanda, who was one of the prettiest girls in school. Everyone thought they would end up together but it was his best friend, Watts, he fell in love with. Proof that no matter who you think you should fall in love with, your heart will always go down its own path every time.
The main thing I learned in Shermer is that no matter how different we all are, no matter what labels people put on us, we are all alike where it counts. We all want to be loved, we all want to be liked, and no one likes being hurt. I took those lessons with me in life, and when I moved to Foster I tried to incorporate them the best I could. After all, the entire point of being brought up in a decent place is taking those lessons and applying them in the rest of your life. Brad and Kyle could have gone to Shermer, I like to think. If the high school was still open, I have no doubt that they would be welcome through their doors, and though they might not have been the most popular kids in the world, they would have been accepted. Sooner or later, people would have embraced them.
I guess what I am trying to say is that these stories don’t exist without those. Everyone from a certain generation forward owes John Hughes a debt that can only repaid by taking those moments he created and paying them forward. Being gay was never really covered in his movies, but I like to think that if he was still here, he would have dealt with the subject in the same caring and entertaining way he dealt with everything that teenagers deal with.
If these stories can convey even ten percent of what Hughes got through in his movies, then I am eternally grateful. And if you find yourself in these stories, even a little, then you went to high school in Shermer also. We probably were there at the same time. I was the guy two lockers down who never talked. Drop a note in my locker—maybe we have more in common than we thought.
From somewhere in Foster, Texas
John Goode
Kyle History Whore
I DON’T remember the moment I knew I was broken.
I was seventeen and on the edge of an eighteen that seemed terrifying to a young man not sure of his sexuality. I knew I liked guys but was still under the delusion that an attraction to guys didn’t make you gay just like drowning didn’t mean you couldn’t breathe, it just meant you were breathing something other than air. It made me different, and as we all know, in high school, there is nothing worse than being different. Though every TV show or movie will tell you the wacky, zany, oddball character is not only cool but a necessary component in most social settings, no one ever closed their eyes and wished they ended up being Screech.
I never assumed I was broken, coming from a single-parent family that consisted of a mom who spent more time drinking and partying than being an actual parent—not that I had any idea what an actual parent looked like. Pop culture had taught me that a mom was either baking pies in pearls and heels, Xanax smile pasted on her face as if she were a post-modern zombie, or the spunky single lady who worked hard and never seemed to secure herself a real romantic entanglement. My mom was neither of those, and the concept of a dad was about as familiar to me as walking on the moon.
I was emotionally retarded in a way that made connecting with another human being so daunting a task that even considering it could cause my heart to race and my breath to stop altogether. Since junior high, boys had made me feel funny, and not in a laughing sort of way. That clumsy, all feet and no balance stutter that most teenage boys feel toward girls, I would get in the locker room. Let me assure you, no one sounds slick stuttering like they are having a seizure. All sound would drain away as my vision zeroed in on the boy next to me taking his jeans off for gym. More than once I had found myself forcing my eyes to look away so I could finish dressing out for PE.
By the time I started high school, I had constructed a virtual igloo of emotional distance between me and everyone else. I projected a coldness that bordered on snobbery, and I knew it. I was the guy everyone knew of but no one could recall speaking to personally. I imagined myself an urban legend of Foster High School, like the Sasquatch or a chupacabra. Everyone had a friend who had seen me talking to someone, but no one had ever talked to me directly. I was a ghost wandering the halls, head down, backpack over one shoulder, eyes focused on where my next step would take me and nothing more. In a social environment where being cool and liked were currency, I was a monk who had taken a vow of poverty, whi
ch then necessitated a vow of celibacy. I sidestepped conversations, ate lunch by myself, and practically ran home after school.
I didn’t know it, but I was broken in a way that wasn’t readily evident to those around me.
As anyone who has read comic books knows, when one sense is taken from you, the others become almost superhuman, allowing you the ability to get by in life the best you possibly can. Since I was completely and utterly devoid of any knowledge of how emotions worked for other people, my mind had taken the unused space and used it to amplify what book smarts I already possessed to a Rain Man level of intellect. I was the person who never needed to study, never needed to read anything more than once, and always finished his test first. It may sound like I am bragging, but I assure you, these are not good things to other kids my age. I am sure in some alternate universe there was a high school where being a nerd was cool. That possessing a vast array of useless knowledge would be a badge of notoriety, and it would have garnered me some kind of social worth. Alas, I was not born there. Instead, my brain made me a geek at worst, at best the quiet, smart guy who never seemed to look up when he walked.
That’s why I never saw him coming.
I knew who he was, of course; everyone did. His name was Brad Greymark, and he was one of those lucky few who walked on rarefied air as he passed you by in the hall. He was on the baseball team, and every image I had of him before we met was of him wearing a letterman’s jacket, green with white leather sleeves adorned with a huge F on his lapel, making him look like a superhero amidst the rest of us normal people. He wasn’t perfect-looking, though he was closer to it than most. He was good-looking enough to get you to turn your head at least once, and with Brad, once was all he needed. With his dark-red hair and green eyes, he was the very model of a modern teenage athlete: nice body, strong features with just a hint of prettiness that made him irresistible.
He had to know how popular he was, but it never came across when he talked. There was earnestness in his attitude that made you want to like him despite all of the obvious benefits already bestowed on him by the universe in general. Brad had hit the genetics lottery, yet from the outside he seemed oblivious to his effect on people around him. I never knew anyone to dislike or take umbrage with his obvious gifts as was so common in the high school ecosystem. Normally people like him were coveted and loathed behind their backs, but this wasn't true when it came to Brad. It was as if instead of pushing those around him down by reminding them of his physical superiority, he shared it somehow, like when you were talking to him, somehow you were made more popular as well.
I had, of course, never talked to him, but I had eaten lunch near the group of people that gathered at his feet every noon to break bread. Being in his presence was almost akin to listening to royalty speak. The way people hung on his every word seemed surreal at times. No matter what the subject, there seemed to be a gravity about it that made even the most trivial of subjects seem important. His voice was strong and soothing, containing none of the odd tones and subliminal insecurities most high school boys possessed. It was easily recognizable above the noise of a crowd, and no matter where he was in a room, it commanded attention.
Which is why, when I heard it coming from right in front of me, I almost screamed.
I had been walking through the hall as I normally did, head down, concentrating only on getting out of the building. Navigating a high school hallway is no easy task, since the inborn pocket of comfortable space most people possess seems to have no value when you have fifteen minutes to run to your locker, grab the books for your next class, and catch up with gossip before you are tardy. If you weren’t careful, you could get body checked more times than a forward at a hockey game without even the briefest of acknowledgments by the person who had committed the personal foul. I had perfected an almost radar-like ability to pass by a crowd of people without them ever knowing I was there. This was one thing that TV never seemed to get right when they showed people in high school moving from class to class. They seemed to have an infinite amount of time to get from one class to another with time left over to discuss whatever plot du jour was unfolding in today's episode. There was never that much time in real life, it was hard enough just to grab your books and run to the next class.
So when I saw a set of size twelve Converse sneakers directly in my path that day, I swerved sharply left to avoid the collision. The sneakers moved to intercept me. As I tried to pull right, I heard his voice say, “Hey,” and mentally, I lost it.
There is nothing worse than your body reacting to someone before your brain can even recognize who it is. It is a Pavlovian response when you run into someone you are attracted to and aren’t ready for it. There is something that runs up your spine, as if every particle of your being is being magnetically pulled to the other person. Whatever automatic system your body has for keeping itself upright and moving forward temporarily fails, and inevitably you are going to stumble like your sneakers have grown three sizes too big.
And because I was a teenage boy, I began to throw wood.
There are few materials known to man more unforgiving to an erection than denim. It is coarse, dense, and not even the least bit interested in giving you an inch or two of room as the swelling member gets bigger. I don’t know any male who has not felt the gnawing maw of jeans clamping down on his member at least once in his life. Sitting down, standing up, running laps, eating lunch—there is never a penis that is as comfortable hard as it is soft in a pair of jeans. The only thing worse than becoming aroused in the middle of a hallway while standing in front of a straight guy is adjusting yourself in the middle of a hallway while standing in front of said straight guy without seeming like you are playing with yourself.
I forced myself to focus on a spot between his eyes and tried to replicate the heterosexual male head nod that all teenage boys except me seemed to know, and responded with a, “Hey” that was a few octaves higher than I initially intended. My right hand was still gripping the history book and folder I had just retrieved from my locker, so as he began to talk, I tried to move the book in front of my groin as unnoticeably as possible.
“So you’re kind of smart, right?” His question was far more rhetorical than an actual inquiry, since he kept talking without waiting for an answer. “Because Gunn is a cool coach, but he is a dick about grades.”
This only made sense if you knew how our high school worked.
Coach Gunn was a bulldog of a man who spent his day coaching baseball and teaching history. That would seem to be a godsend to our school’s jocks, who had to maintain a grade point average of 2.75 to stay on the team. They thought that since he coached them, his history class would be a breeze. So every year, the new group of jocks would do everything they could to make sure they got into his class.
And every year, a fresh group of boys found out that Coach Gunn did not believe in a free ride.
Brad had paused to wait for some kind of response from me, which was his second mistake; his first was expecting me to be normal in the first place. I wasn’t used to talking to actual people, much less people waiting for me to respond to them. My gaze had moved from the space between his eyes and drifted to the almost luminescent green of his irises and had stayed lost there for a few long seconds. His eyes led me to the ruddy blush of his cheeks, which, upon closer inspection, seemed to hide pale freckles that made his skin seem that much more perfect with its newfound imperfections. His freckles led down to what I could see of his muscled neck. It was hidden by the collar of his jacket on either side, and I saw the first Adam’s apple I was ever transfixed by. His neck led my eyes down to a thin white T-shirt that seemed to accentuate the hard muscles that made up the twin curves of his pecs instead of covering them. The way the cotton seemed to dip between them almost invited a person to see how deep the space between them actually was. I could see the impression of a chain underneath, and when he shifted his weight and I spotted the glint of silver between the white T-shirt and the jacket, I
felt like I had almost seen the band of his underwear.
“You okay?”
My head jerked up so fast it was a blur as I realized I was still standing in the middle of a high school hallway instead of running toward him in the middle of a field while music played around us. On second thought, that sounds more like a fabric softener commercial than actual love, so never mind. “Yeah,” I said quickly, not sure exactly what question I was answering.
Obviously he didn’t either, because he cocked his head like a dog and asked, “Um, to which one?”
“What?” I asked, as confused as he was, if that was possible. And then whatever buffer that had frozen in my head freed itself, and time started moving normally again. “Yes,” I said again, now answering his question, followed by a sharp, “No.” Which didn’t sound good. “I mean, I don’t… what do you mean by smart?” I could see in his eyes that whatever hopes he had that I possessed any superior intellect were dwindling quickly as it became apparent I couldn’t even string together a sentence. “I mean, there is street-smart, and there is, like, math smart, which I’m not because numbers suck, so not really, but if you’re talking about….” I began to ramble.
“History,” he said, cutting me off. “Coach Gunn teaches history, and you seem good at it.” He was talking slowly now, as if he were trying to communicate with an alien. “Are you?”
“Yes,” I answered, trying to swallow.
We stood there staring at each other for about five seconds before he just shook his head. “You know what? Forget it.” He began to walk away.
And only then did I realize that one of the best-looking guys in school had just been talking to me and was now walking away from me. I tried to calculate all of the different possibilities that would have made someone like him talk to someone like me. Was I getting cooler? Did he know I liked guys? Did he like guys? Did he like me? Was this a vain attempt to reach out and get me to understand that there was someone else in this world as lonely as me? Maybe he was trying to get across in code or something that he…. This was when my brain screamed at me. He needs help with his history homework, you retard!