Tales from Foster High

by John Goode

  “Wait,” I said, turning around after him. He paused and looked back at me, and I felt my mind begin to get lost in the lines of his chin, so I blurted out, “I can help you.”

  He raised an eyebrow as the people walking past us stared, no doubt wondering what exactly that meant. I realized I had broken another cardinal rule of surviving high school besides “never look up” and “always bring your own lunch”: never talk to someone else in front of people.

  I was talking to someone else in front of other people.

  I took several steps toward him to minimize how loud I had to speak. “With your history,” I amended. “I can help you with that.”

  “I need to pass the midterm,” he said in the same conspiratorial tone I was using. “If I don’t, I’m toast.”

  I nodded to both the spoken and unspoken sentiments. I could indeed help him study for the midterm, and I was aware he would be tossed off the team if he failed it. And in a culture that is completely popularity-driven, like high school, being stripped of his letterman jacket was akin to being cast out from the pantheon of high school gods and forced to wander the barren earth with us commoners.

  The ironic part is not once did I consider not helping him simply out of spite.

  He was one of those golden boys who somehow seemed to deserve the spotlight of attention they received. Resenting or even trying to deny him that kind of adoration just seemed to be a cruel and unusual form of punishment. Imagining him not being one of the most popular boys in school was like picturing a beautiful golden retriever caked with mud or a masterpiece of a painting covered with years of grime and dust. I think that was his secret, the reason he was so well liked even though he didn’t seem to try. People naturally wanted to help him, and I’m sure the fact that he resembled most people’s concept of an ideal teenage boy in his prime didn’t hurt.

  “It’s before Christmas break. We’d need to study pretty hard,” I said, wondering what exactly I was getting myself into. “We could meet after school at the library—”

  He shook his head, cutting me off. “I have practice, has to be after that.”

  I paused. “But the library closes at five.”

  He shrugged. “Then come over to my house, and we’ll study there.”

  I froze.

  “Or we could go to yours,” he started to say.

  “We’ll go to yours!” I blurted out, not letting my overactive imagination have even a second to envision the horror of my mother stumbling out of her room, hungover and wondering why there was someone else in the house.

  “Cool,” he said, nodding to himself. “You need a ride, or do you have a car?”

  “I do not have a car,” I said tonelessly, still in shock as I realized that by not wanting him to come to my house, I had agreed to go to his.

  “Cool,” he said with an easy smile. “Meet me by the locker room after five; I can drop you off at home afterward, okay?”

  My head nodded all by itself.

  “Awesome. Thanks, Kyle,” he said, turning around and then pausing. “That's your name right?” He seemed contrite and embarrassed all at once, which made him about a thousand times more attractive in my eyes.

  I paused for an impossibly long moment as I realized I didn’t know my name either. “Yes!” I blurted out as the memory of my given name stumbled across the tip of my tongue. “My name is Kyle!” I tried again, reinforcing it by saying it out loud again.

  His smile turned into a wide grin as he held out his hand. “I’m Brad.”

  “I know,” I said before I could stop myself. His hand closed on mine, and his head tilted to the right a bit as his eyes locked onto mine, as if he were considering those words carefully. I felt my stomach fall out from under me as I realized what the hell I had just said. “I mean, everyone knows you,” I amended, and I followed that up with a nervous little serial killer chuckle that would convince absolutely no one I wasn’t crazy.

  He held my hand for a second too long as he said nothing and then slowly nodded. “Okay, Kyle. Cool.” He let go, but I could still feel the warmth of where his skin had touched mine. “So after five?” My head did the bobblehead nod as I agreed. He laughed a little to himself as he turned away. “Awesome, see you then.”

  I tried not to stare at the way his jeans hugged his ass as he walked away.

  I tried but failed pretty badly.

  I GENERALLY avoided the locker room like a West Hollywood twink avoids solid food.

  PE and watching normal guys get undressed was bad enough; the thought of actual athletes getting naked, standing around snapping towels at each other, soaping up under hot showers….

  This is the gay equivalent of how straight guys view girls having a slumber party.

  Brad came out, letterman jacket in place, duffel bag over one shoulder, hair damp and spiky from lack of product, fresh white T-shirt clinging to his chest. It was the hottest thing I had ever seen in the flesh. “Waiting long?”

  All my life.

  “Nah, not at all,” I said, trying to replicate his casual style.

  He chuckled at some internal joke. “You could have come in,” he said, heading toward his car.

  “Oh, no,” I said, trying not to sound too strident about my refusal. “I’m cool.”

  He looked at me over his shoulder and grinned. “Okay. This is mine.” He had stopped in front of a new, bright yellow Mustang that just oozed money.

  “Nice car,” I said as I eased into the passenger seat, terrified of somehow ruining the car. He tossed his bag into the backseat as he jumped behind the wheel.

  “Thanks. Got it for my last birthday,” he said cheerfully. Then, in a tone that sounded almost apologetic, he added, “My dad owns a dealership, so it’s a lease.” He turned the key, and the car roared like an angry sabertooth cat. It hit me that it was the perfect car for him. It was masculine, tough, and pretty all at the same time. Looking at him behind the steering wheel, looking over at me and grinning… it was like looking into the eyes of sex. “You okay?” he asked as I realized I was staring.

  I turned my head quickly as I nodded. “Yeah, just kinda tired, I guess,” I said as I faked the worst yawn in the history of faux bodily functions.

  “Hey, if you’re too tired for this, we can do it another day,” he said, his voice dropping in concern.

  “No,” I answered way too fast and saw him smile as I looked back at him. “I mean, nah. I’m cool.”

  He shrugged and shifted the car into drive. “If you say so.”

  I was realizing I was really bad at this whole social interaction thing.

  He lived in a house that exemplified everything that made him who he was. It was blindly normal in the middle of a good neighborhood on the good side of town where nothing ever seemed to go wrong. The cars were all polished and gleaming, the lawns immaculately groomed, making me wonder if any of them were ever actually played on. The suburban neighborhood should have been littered with kids struggling to milk the last rays of sunshine out of the dying day, dads standing in the driveway, watering the grass and waving aimlessly, but there was no one. It looked like every place I had ever wanted to live, but as with most of the actual world, it was just a bit off from the image in my head. But then again, all of my images came from movies and TV shows, so what the hell did I know?

  “Nice house,” I said as he pulled up in the driveway. There was an identical Mustang parked there, this one black as night and twice as tricked out as Brad's.

  He shrugged as he reached into the backseat and grabbed his bag. “It’s okay, I guess.”

  I wasn’t sure if I was seeing it correctly, but it seemed like his gait changed as he approached the front door. His steps became smaller, his shoulders slumped, and the bag on his shoulder seemed to have weight for the first time. It may have been my imagination, but there was a half-second pause between when he reached up to the doorknob and when he turned it.

  It was just enough time, I noticed, to say a silent prayer.

&n
bsp; As soon as he opened the door, a wave of noise hit us like a freight train. The sounds of a man and a woman screaming at each other echoed from the high ceilings and Spanish arches that made the house so much more resalable in this soft economy. The replica Greek marble tiles in the front foyer were scrubbed perfectly clean, as if they’d never been walked on. Two sets of shoes were set off to the right with a coat rack mounted above them.

  “Take your shoes off,” he said in a whisper, which was completely unnecessary, since we could have walked in with a twenty-piece brass band and failed to be heard over the din of what I assumed were his parents fighting. “My mom is psycho about the carpets,” he explained with more than a small dose of contrition in his tone. I step-kicked my shoes off as I watched him slip off his Converses and push them to the side. I found it amusing that in my entire life I've never seen any teenage boy untie his sneakers before taking them off. We all evolved into creatures that somehow gained the ability to dance/shuffle our shoes off, taking the same if not more time and effort than stopping and untying them manually would. I tried not to watch as he slid his jacket off. The muscles that seemed to show through the sheer whiteness of his shirt were distracting, at the very least. I pushed my jacket over next to his and was struck by how instantly different he seemed with his shoes and jacket off.

  He ceased being Brad Greymark, star jock, lord and savior of the local high school, and became another teenage boy in socks. A flawless-looking, well-built teenage boy who never failed to turn people’s heads, but a teenage boy nonetheless.

  “My room’s upstairs,” he said, sliding across the floor à la Risky Business to the large sprawling staircase that led to the stars. “Let’s head up,” he said, trying to keep his voice down.

  The screaming stopped.

  “Bradley?” a woman’s voice called out. “Bradley, is that you?”

  He visibly winced as his mother called out his full given name.

  A muffled male voice claimed that he hadn’t heard anything as his mother cried out again. “Bradley, are you home?”

  “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. He yelled back, “Yeah, it’s me!” He turned to the staircase and then decided to add, “I have a friend here, and we’re doing homework.”

  The sound of someone coming out of the kitchen and heading toward us seemed deafening in the echoing interior of the house. A man who looked like Brad, only twenty years older, sixty pounds heavier, and a shit ton angrier came barging into the foyer, two buttons undone, tie hanging loose, drink in a death grip. “What kind of friend?” he demanded, stopping in his tracks as he finally saw me. “Oh” was all he said.

  “This is….” There was a pause, and then Brad said, “My tutor. We’re studying history.”

  “Kyle,” I said under my breath, feeling myself shrink as we stood there.

  “History?” his dad said, not weaving or slurring in the slightest, but I had the distinct impression he was well on his way to being smashed. I had lived through more than a few drinking episodes with my mom, and I knew a drunk when I saw one. This man was dangerously intoxicated. He stood there, silent, for a long pause; I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for us to say something or had just lost his train of thought, but after a few seconds he said, “Well, God knows you need some help” before he turned around and made his way back to the kitchen. “Just keep it down,” he added.

  Seconds later, he screamed, “I can talk to my son if I want to, Susan!”

  “Come on,” Brad said, climbing the stairs to his room. I followed, trying to remember how normal the house had looked from outside.

  There was a “Do Not Enter” street sign nailed to the front of the door. From the pockmarks and chipped paint, it looked like an actual sign pulled down from somewhere. Brad pushed the door open, stepped inside, and kept his hand on the door, making it obvious he wanted to slam it shut as soon as I crossed the threshold. His parents’ fight echoed upstairs as well, the acoustics of the house carrying the sounds to his room perfectly. “Come in,” he said impatiently.

  I hadn’t even realized I had paused until he said something. Every particle of my being was telling me I should leave and leave now. I hated conflict of any kind and drunken conflict doubly so. Like a non-sparkling vampire invited into his room, I crossed the threshold, feeling a slight chill when the door closed behind me.

  Like everything else in his life, his room was everything mine wasn’t.

  Whereas the walls of mine were covered in a patchwork collection of images torn from magazines and a few tattered posters I had bought over the years, his looked like those of a poster gallery: two framed images of cars in motion; a movie poster with five teenagers leaning over each other, staring intently out; and a trio of sports athletes, each frozen in mid-victory. A wide dresser supported a parade of gold-colored people all mounted on sports trophies, enough to populate their own country, it seemed, each one another log on the fire of differences between us.

  I walked around, marveling at the maleness of the entire space. A small bathroom was set off the bedroom. The vanity counter was full of hair products, cologne, and a smorgasbord of goods devised to ameliorate teenage male insecurity. The room was like an alien planet to me; there was nothing that was not jock, butch, or alpha-male guy in or around it. Even the baseball-shaped alarm clock on the end table next to his bed shouted “I’m a dude!”

  “So what do you think?” he asked, sitting down on the weight bench on the other side of the bed. The clothes draped over the bar indicated how much it was used.

  I knew what he was asking, of course. I don’t know how it is with girls, but with boys, there is very little as sacred as their room. It is the only area in the home that they are allowed to make completely their own, within reason; therefore, it is often a direct reflection of their personality. There is nothing more telling than a boy’s room for showing who they are as a person, but you had to know how to read it. The cars were not indications of wealth but rather of the desire to get out. Movement and speed—they were horses that could carry us out of town as soon as humanly possible. That, and most of the time they were metallic red, and metallic red was badass.

  The sports figures were about his desire, his drive, to do better and the person he wanted to become someday. I noticed that the three of them were all white, good-looking, and built like brick houses, much like Brad. They were the same sports figures I would have picked if I had to pick three sports posters and put them up on my wall. I noticed that even though they were superstars, not one of them was a celebrity outside of sports. Unlike some people who used their professional athleticism as a springboard to be something more, these people were known for sports and sports only.

  But it was the movie poster that had me puzzled.

  I mean, sure, everyone had seen that movie. Didn’t matter what year it came out—that movie defined what being in high school was about. Though a complete fairy tale, it spoke of different people forced to spend a day together and realizing they had more in common than they ever knew. Real life never worked like that, of course, and even if it had, the spell would have been broken by Monday, and no one would have ever admitted anything out loud. That movie represented what every single high schooler wanted life to be, but it meant even more for those of us who didn’t have a voice.

  Finding that movie’s poster in the room of one of the school’s most popular people and seeing it hanging above his bed, the prime real estate in any boy’s room, told me there was more to him than what everyone else saw. He could have come to school naked tomorrow and would instantly become more popular before someone offered him a towel. He could proclaim water to be uncool, and there would be hundreds of people who went thirsty the next day. To think that he had watched the same movie and wanted the real him to be heard….

  Well, it was puzzling.

  “I love that movie,” I said, pointing at the poster.

  I had thought I had seen the full arsenal of his smiles since he had talked to me in the hal
lway, but as he nodded, he flashed me a new one that put all the other smiles to shame. It wasn’t until later that I realized that was the first time I ever saw him really smile. “So which one are you?”

  Another popular question in high school, and though it seemed simple, it was a complex formula to figure out. You say the jock, you are trying to say you’re in better shape than everyone else. If you say the princess, you’re a bitch. If you say the criminal, you think you’re cooler than you really are. If you say the nerd, you think you’re smarter than everyone else. And if you say the basket case, you are hiding something that everyone else will want to know. There was no right answer.

  “None of them, I guess,” I lied, putting my backpack down on his bed. “So you wanna get started?”

  Long seconds of nothing passed as I pulled my history book out and began to flip through it. When I looked up at him, I could see his wry grin was back, that “I know more than you” smile. He shook his head and moved over to the bed. I moved over and knelt beside the bed, knowing that was as close as I dared get to him. “Whatever you say,” he said, lying down, his head toward the foot of the bed. “Where do we start?”

  We started at Lincoln winning the presidency, moved through the Civil War, and rounded out with a little Reconstruction, all in about ninety minutes. That was a lot of material to cover in half a semester, and in a cram session like this, it was almost impossible. At the end of the first hour, we both knew two things. One, there was way more he didn’t know than he did, and two, neither one of us had the concentration to go for more than an hour at the rate we had. In the last thirty minutes, things began to unravel, until he began asking random questions as he flipped through the book.

  Like my own personal sun, he was not only too radiant to look at directly, I also found myself more and more drawn into his orbit with each minute. He had decided to lie back on the bed, book in his hands, as he leaned up against the pillows propped up against his headboard. This by itself was staggering, but his T-shirt had ridden up as he shifted around. The tan skin that had been exposed was just devastating to my ability to continue talking. The band of his white underwear was barely visible, and it was quickly becoming my own personal Waterloo.