Tales from Foster High

by John Goode

  Brad shrugged. “Don’t have to. Why would I lie about that?” he said, more to the crowd than to Kelly. “Who cares anyways?” he said. “No one here is who they say they are. And we all know it.” He began looking around the crowd. “Some of us throw up to stay skinny, some of us have sex to stay popular, some of us beat up people to hide what’s inside.” And he paused and looked at me. “And some of us hurt the ones we care for just to stay hidden.”

  I shook my head no, but he ignored me.

  “I like guys too, Kelly,” he said, still staring at me. You could have heard a pin drop in the shocked silence. “And if you have a problem with Kyle, you have a problem with me.”

  “I don’t need you to save me,” I said softly.

  “I’m not,” he said, taking another step closer. “I’m saving myself.”

  And he kissed me.

  Some people looked away, some people stared gawking, and others cheered as I felt myself kiss him back. Time seemed to stop in that moment, and it was just the two of us, caught forever in that kiss.

  He pulled back and said out loud, “So anyone else wanna call me or Kyle here a fag?” No one said a word. “Because the next time I hear it, I’m not going to let it slide.”

  Kelly gaped at Brad and then at me, and damned if he didn’t look a little jealous. “Fucking queerbait,” he said before pushing his way out of the circle of people.

  The crowd began to disperse as the first bell rang for fifth period, leaving just him and me standing there. “Why did you do that?” I finally asked.

  “Because I wanted to,” he said, moving closer, putting his hands on my shoulders. “Because I’m tired of thinking I’m broken or fucked up. And you made me realize back there that I wasn’t those things at all.”

  “I did?” I asked, still feeling very much broken and fucked up.

  He nodded and leaned in for another kiss. “Maybe we’re not broken,” he said, pressing in closer. “What if we were just two parts looking for the other piece?”

  “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  He shrugged again. “I don’t know,” he answered honestly. “But I know one thing.”

  “What?”

  “We do it together.” And he kissed me again.

  I don’t remember the moment I knew I was broken… but I do know the moment I began to feel fixed.

  It was the day the green-eyed boy fell in love with me.

  Brad 81 Cents

  MY name is Bradley Greymark, and I used to be the most popular guy in Foster, Texas.

  I know that doesn’t mean much to you, and to be honest, before yesterday, I didn't think it meant much to me either. I mean no one sets out thinking “I am going to be the most popular guy in school,” and then it happens. Those people are always just too weird and eager to ever be actually popular. The key to being popular is acting like it means absolutely nothing to you. It's like life goes out of its way to give you what it thinks you don't want, which would make life kind of mean if you think about it.

  I know I’m not supposed to say things like this, or I end up sounding like a colossal douche bag, but I am okay with that too. Over the last day I’ve realized what I used to have and how much I had really liked having it. In twenty-four hours I’ve gone from Top Dog to persona non whatever that word is, and I can say with great certainty that it sucks. I didn’t know how much I had enjoyed being popular until I had a large Coke thrown in my face.

  There is a TV show that I really don’t watch where unpopular kids get cold drinks thrown in their faces just walking down the hall. They kind of gasp and then wipe their faces as the colored liquid drips down the front of them while people around them laugh. I suppose it makes for a good bit of comedy, but let me tell you, the reality sucks balls.

  My problems started when I was sitting in the backstop during lunch a few days ago while the guy I had a huge crush on told me I had hurt him. The really bad part was that I knew I had hurt him and didn't have a good answer for why I had. Well that's not true I guess, I was afraid, so I did what I always do; exactly what I needed to do at the time and then hoping my smile would get me out of trouble. In this case it didn't so much as get me out of trouble as it just hurt him even more. So I had to make a decision to stay the guy I had always been and hated or find the guts for once to be someone else. Someone better than I was.

  Someone more like Kyle.

  So that meant standing in the middle of a crowd declaring that I liked guys too. Which wasn’t a thing I had ever told anyone else before now, but Kyle was standing there by himself being so brave that I couldn’t just stand there and let him hang by himself. So I had stood up with him and said I liked guys also and that if anyone had a problem with that, they could take it up with me. I’m not sure what I thought would come after that, but I knew it wasn't going to be something good.

  That morning I just sat there and panicked.

  Normally, I got up early, showered, dressed, and made my way to pick up my girlfriend Jennifer. Girlfriend is a term I'm hesitant to use in retrospect, but I'll get into that later. I’d hang out in the student union before first period and shoot the shit with the other guys and talk about who was having what party this weekend and if it was worth going to or not. Then I’d doze off in class, counting the seconds until lunch came around. Come noon we’d all sit at what everyone else called the Round Table, which was where everyone who was anyone ate and pretended to like each other. That would then lead to a countdown until practice after school where my day truly started.

  Nowhere in the world am I happier than on the baseball field. The sun, the wind, the smell of the cut grass, all of it is just perfect to me in a way that is hard to describe to others. Some guys like it because it wasn’t being cooped up in a classroom. Others seem to like it because it’s physical; smacking the ball around is a great way to get out all the pent-up frustration that could accumulate during a day of school. Most of the guys like it because being on the baseball team makes you cool.

  Not me. I love baseball because being out there is the only place in the universe where I can be myself.

  Out there I wasn’t Nathan and Susan’s only boy. I wasn’t a high school student who was unable to maintain a 2.75 without help. And I wasn’t one of the nameless kids who were born, bred, and died of boredom in Foster every year. Out there on the diamond, I wasn’t a disappointment; I wasn’t too dumb, and for a couple of hours a day I wasn’t stuck in Foster. From the moment I walked onto the field to the second I stumbled back into the locker room, I was in a place that, if anyone asked me, I would have said was the closest to heaven that I am ever going to see. It was the entirety of my life standing on that grass chasing after fly balls. I know it sounds corny, but it really was the only bright point of an otherwise shitty life.

  Normally, my entire day would be a prelude to that moment. Nothing else mattered to me as much as standing at home plate, holding a bat, waiting for a ball to try to get by me.

  But today wasn’t going to be normal. Today was the very opposite of normal, and there was no way I was going to avoid that fact. I sat on the edge of my bed, not sure what I should do with my time. I couldn’t go pick up Jennifer; she had taken off from school after my announcement and so far hadn’t called me. Of course, I didn’t have the balls to call her either, so I wasn’t too surprised. I was pretty sure my little announcement had destroyed her world along with mine, so calling her wasn't my first choice. In all honestly it wasn't my second, third, or even my tenth.

  I wasn’t sure if I could go sit with everyone in the student union. I mean, what could I say? “Hi, guys. So anyone else come out yesterday?” I’m sure that’d go over like a fart in church. I mean, I wasn’t even sure if I was gay or not. Sure I liked Kyle; that I knew. I didn’t know about the rest of it. Did telling the whole school I liked guys count as coming out? Could I take it back? Did I even want to?

  So I sat there and thought about faking a heart attack so I could skip school for a few months. I mean
, they wouldn’t let a kid with a weak heart deal with something as harsh as high school, would they? It wouldn’t fly—they would take one look at me and see I was fine. But then I knew my mom, though; she would overreact to the point we’d end up in the emergency room, where she’d throw a fit, all the while proclaiming that no one would see her son. The doctors would find out in two minutes that I was faking and my mom was nuts, no guarantee in that order, either. We’d end up with no ride home because the two Xanax she would swallow in the middle of her panic attack would kick in, and she’d be useless. They’d call my dad to tell him what had happened, and then the shit would hit the fan.

  The thought of my dad finding out I liked guys almost made me throw up.

  I could hear my parents’ shower running, which meant I needed to be gone now. I threw on clothes and went over to pick up Kyle as quick as I could. It took every iota of control I had not to squeal my tires as I pulled out of the driveway and took off toward his house. Kyle had given me the impression that his mom wasn’t a morning person, so I didn’t call to let him know I was coming over. I knew what it was like to have a friend fuck you over by waking up your parents, since I had caught shit more than once after one of my drinking friends called at three a.m.

  Kyle didn’t live on the nicest side of town, but then I wasn’t sure what that meant any more. Our family was supposed to reside in one of the priciest areas in Foster yet the people I knew there were more fucked up than any family in town. Sure the people over on this side of town didn’t have as much money as everyone else, but in my own personal experience, money only makes people meaner and nastier. I couldn’t imagine Kyle was proud about living in a place like this, but honestly, he had nothing to be ashamed of.

  Kyle was a great guy, but I didn’t have the same amount of faith in the rest of the people who lived around him. I knew more than a few guys in my own neighborhood who would get off on screwing up a car like mine for kicks, and those guys had a lot more money than the people around here. If anything happened to this car, my dad would beat me to death and leave my body hanging in the front yard as a warning to anyone that passed by. Everyone thinks he bought me this car for my birthday, but it was just a lease from his dealership. Sometimes I thought this car was the epitome of our family. A costly present that on the surface looks like it is a show of compassion but in the end is just a symbol to show the neighbors we have money to burn.

  Even if we didn't.

  It wasn’t even eight in the morning, so honking for Kyle was out of the question, which meant I needed to get out of my car to knock on the door. Luckily I could park right in front of his apartment and could keep one eye on the car as my knuckles rapped quickly on his door.

  After a few seconds the door opened, and Kyle stood there in his boxers. His hair was sticking up from sleep, and there was a toothbrush in his mouth. He looked so cute that I forgot all about my concern and worry about the previous day’s proclamation. I had to smile. “Morning.”

  He yelped something unrecognizable as speech and slammed the door shut.

  I knocked again. “Come on, Kyle. I already saw you.”

  “What do you want?” I heard him ask from the other side of the door.

  “Well I was here to pick you up for school, but now I want to take about a thousand pictures of you looking like that,” I said, knowing he was so wound up he wouldn’t take my cheery words as a joke.

  “Wait out there,” he said after a few seconds.

  “Kyle, let me in,” I replied, leaning up against the door. “We both know you ain’t got nothing I haven’t seen personal—”

  He swung open the door, and I fell backward into his apartment. “Shut up!” he exclaimed, looking down at me. From down there I could see him blushing, and it made him even cuter.

  I grinned and craned my head back. “Nice boxers, you know I can see up your—”

  “Fuck you,” he said. He turned away and sprinted into his room.

  I laughed as I got up and closed the door quietly.

  The apartment wasn’t as clean as I expected it to look based on how clean my other friends’ parents kept their houses. Last time I was here, his mom had let me wait for him in his room; there hadn’t been time to really look around the place. It wasn’t a wreck, but it was obviously not as clean as my mom liked to keep ours. There were a few beer bottles on the table and an ashtray full of cigarette butts in the living room. I looked through the ashes for a second and could see not all of them were tobacco. His door opened, and he poked his head out. “Get in here!” he whispered frantically, gesturing me in.

  I walked over calmly and slowly, knowing the pace would drive him even crazier.

  “Will you hurry up!” he hissed. He was really cute when he was upset.

  “Thought you said to wait out here,” I said casually.

  Kyle grabbed my arm and pulled me in his room. He had thrown on a hoodie, but he was still in the boxers. They were pale white and about the cutest thing I had ever seen on a guy. “I meant outside, not in the living room,” he said, exasperated.

  I shrugged, knowing well what he had meant but playing dumb. “How was I supposed to know?” He rolled his eyes, which finally made me laugh out loud. I grabbed the front of the baggy hoodie and pulled him close. “Come here before you have a stroke or something.” I kissed him hard, needing to hide in his embrace, if even for a few seconds. I felt him stiffen in my arms for a second, and then he kissed me back, his arms slipping under my letterman jacket and pulling me close.

  “You’re going to be the death of me,” he said, smiling up at me.

  Looking into those deep blue eyes, I swore I didn’t care what anyone thought anymore.

  “Death by kissing,” I said, cupping his ass through the thin material of his boxers. “I can think of worse fates.” I squeezed, and I felt him jump.

  “We need to get to school,” he said, swatting one of my hands away.

  “Let’s cut,” I said, the almost forgotten dread coming back to me.

  “What?” he said, pulling back. You’d have sworn I’d just asked him to head off to Dallas and kill the president from the way he looked at me. “You can’t just cut school!” he explained as if the thought of ditching classes was a federal crime.

  “Sure you can,” I assured him, sitting on the edge of his bed. “We do it all the time,” I added, leaning back with my hands behind my head. I paused for a moment because I realized the we I was referring to was gone. There was no longer me and a bunch of friends,. That was gone. There was just Kyle and me now. That was my we. It was a sobering moment.

  He turned around, grabbed a pair of jeans, and yanked them on. “It’s wrong, and we’ll get in trouble,” he chastised me.

  His remark brought me back to the here and now, I forced a grin to cover the fact that part of me was screaming inside. “So’s hitting people in the balls while the assistant principal holds them back. But that didn’t stop you,” I teased.

  “I’m going to be in enough trouble over that,” Kyle said, pulling the hoodie off with one hand and pawing through his drawers for a T-shirt at the same time. “I don’t need to give my mom any more ammunition.”

  I sighed as I plopped my head down on the bed. “School’s gonna suck,” I said, staring up at his ceiling.

  He climbed on top of me, straddling my waist as he looked down at me. “Are you sorry you said anything?”

  I wanted to tell him the truth: I was terrified about what I’d done and had no idea what it was going to mean. I wanted to just spill my guts and have it done with. When I looked into Kyle’s eyes, I knew I couldn’t do that. He had spent his entire high school life trying to be as invisible as possible, when Kelly had taken it upon himself to choose Kyle to be the guy he was going to torture for a day. What Kelly hadn’t known was how much I liked Kyle. Maybe he did, though. Kelly and I had fooled around more than once, so he had to know I liked guys a little. He never said anything because he knew between his word and mine which one woul
d win. But this couldn't be jealousy, could it?

  “You do know long pauses just make me think you're trying to find a way to say yes and not break my heart?”

  He looked just as scared as I felt, and the only thing that he could count on was that I was with him. He needed me.

  I smiled and shook my head. “No, I'm not sorry at all,” I answered with as much conviction as I could muster. I pulled him down on top of me; he moved up next to me, his head on my chest. “We’re together, and I don’t care who knows,” I said, praying the words didn’t sound as hollow as they felt.

  He squeezed me tight. “Thank you, Brad.”

  I looked down. “For what?”

  “For just being you,” he said, the two of us falling into a comfortable silence as we lay there.

  It was a nice statement. Now if I only knew who I was supposed to be.

  “You better run a comb through your hair,” I said after a while. “You look like a hamster nested up in that joint.”

  He punched my stomach as he got up. “I wasn’t expecting company.”

  I laughed as I followed him. “Looking like that, it didn’t look like you were expecting to leave the house.”

  “I wanna see what you look like first thing in the morning,” he threatened.

  “Play your cards right and you might,” I said, wagging my eyebrows and shooting him an evil grin. He blushed right on cue as I pulled out my phone and snapped a picture. The flash made him blink as I looked at the screen. His face was so perfect, so adorable that I felt something move in my chest. I wasn’t sure if I liked the way it made my heart skip a beat slightly or not.

  “You dick!” he screeched as he tried to grab the phone away from me.

  I held him back as I slipped the phone back into my pocket. “No dice. That one is a keeper.” I leaned in and kissed him quickly. “I’ll wait for you outside.”

  He was shocked just enough by the kiss to give me time to retreat out the front door. I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw my car was still there and untouched. I leaned on the Mustang’s hood and waited. I couldn’t help pulling my phone out. I looked at the picture again. It made me smile. He was everything I wasn’t, and for once in my life, that wasn’t a bad thing. His picture was like a totem, a pocket of calmness in the absolute chaos my life had become. Minutes later, he came bounding out, hair slicked back. He toted his ever-present backpack over one shoulder. I was honestly surprised he didn’t lean to one side when not lugging it around.