by Dakota Chase
“Harsh, dude.”
“That’s what boyfriends are for. Go.”
I laughed all the way into the shower, feeling better than I had in a week. The hot water felt incredibly good and washed away the last of the depression I’d wrapped myself in. By the time I was through, I felt almost like my old self again.
THINGS SEEMED to actually get better after that.
Billy was gone, and while his absence still hurt, Doug’s disappearance from my life was terrific. It was peaceful at home now, and I had the television all to myself. Mom seemed to be doing okay. She smiled a lot more, and we spent more time together than we had before. She and Dylan were becoming friends, or at least more comfortable around one another, which was also a good thing considering how much time I was spending with him.
We saw each other constantly—at school, after school, on weekends—as often as his practice schedule would allow. I’d dropped out of track, feeling too awkward now that the team was beginning to suspect there was more to Dylan’s and my relationship than just study buddies. In truth, I hardly missed it. I spent that time boning up for the SATs and wondering whether I could get a good enough score to get into State. There were grants available, and a scholarship through the police department I might be eligible for, if I could make the grade. It would be really cool if I could go to the same college as Dylan.
Neither of us had officially come out at school. We weren’t ready for that step, not yet, but we also didn’t try to hide behind the cover of studying in order to see one another anymore. Still, people were beginning to talk. We didn’t miss the sideways glances and whispering going on around us; we just didn’t acknowledge it.
That would all change one sunny Tuesday afternoon, just after our English IV class.
Chapter Nineteen
I’D RUN to my locker after our English class, wanting to dump some books in there before meeting Dylan in the cafeteria for lunch. The night before, we’d spent a few hours in the gym his dad had set up for him in their basement, and I’d gone overboard on the weights, aggravating the injuries I had from being struck by the car over a week before and falling when I tried to outrun Doug. I didn’t feel like carting around an extra twenty-five pounds worth of physics, calculus, and English textbooks all afternoon.
I’d opened the locker and was digging into my backpack for the unneeded books when I heard my name called. Looking up, I saw two guys staring down at me. They were both big enough to be on the football team, all shoulders and biceps and very little in the way of necks.
They weren’t smiling.
As a matter of fact, I got the distinct impression they were upset about something. Their eyes were small chips of cold ice, staring at me as if I was a big, ugly bug about to be swatted by a couple of very large, very hard fists.
“Is it true, Waters?” one of them asked me. His hair had been buzzed so close to his skull I could see a birthmark on his scalp just above his left ear. I knew his name was Peter Green, and he had the reputation of being a ball-breaker. From the look on his face, he wasn’t in a very happy place at the moment.
“Is what true?” I asked, looking from one scowling face to the other.
His friend, another big guy by the name of Tony Petrino, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Pete and didn’t look any friendlier than he did. I was trapped between them and the wall of lockers behind me.
“You know what.”
A hysterical giggle bubbled up. Twenty Questions, anybody? Let me see… is it animal, vegetable, or mineral? Bigger than a breadbox? How about Charades? One word, one syllable, rhymes with “hay,” right?
“Are you gay?” Tony growled. It wasn’t as much a question as a statement, and the way he spat the word out left no doubt he rated homosexuals on the same scale as the slimy stuff he might scrape off the bottom of his shoe. “You hang out with that Billy kid, right? We all know he’s queer.”
“What’s it to you?” I managed to say, even as I weighed my options. I could try to run. I could yell out for help. I could hyperventilate, pass out, and hope I didn’t split my skull open on the metal lockers on my way to the ground.
Unfortunately, none of them seemed like very viable options. In order to run, I’d have to get around the twin mountains of flesh that blocked my path. If I yelled, there was a good chance I’d attract a crowd. I admit that might have added a certain amount of entertainment value to the incident—but chances were good I wouldn’t be the one being entertained. That left fainting, but I was already hurting. I didn’t really want to add a concussion to my list of injuries.
One thing was for sure: if they wanted a fight, I was going to go out swinging. Dylan wasn’t the only one who was tired of hiding. As I stood with the cold metal of the lockers pressing against my back, everything that had happened over the past two weeks came roaring back in a wave of anger, and the two beefy crew cuts in front of me wore the faces of everyone who’d ever wronged me. They became Doug, they became Billy, Robbie, and a host of other nameless people who’d hurt me over the years.
My teeth ground together painfully, the muscles in my jaw jumping. I could see people beginning to gather behind Tony and Peter. They reminded me of dogs growing nervous just before a big storm hit. Edgy and uncomfortable, unsure of whether to bark or stay quiet, they shuffled from one foot to the other, exchanging apprehensive glances tinged with excitement.
If they were looking for a show, they were in luck. I was about to give them one.
My hands balled into tight fists and slammed into the lockers behind me, the noise echoing in the hallway, making several people in the crowd yelp in surprise. “Enough!” I screamed, my entire body bristling. “Yes! I’m gay! Did I say it loud enough for you? Should I take out an ad in the school paper? Maybe you’d rather have the word tattooed on my forehead! I’m also nearsighted, broke my right arm learning to ride a bike when I was six, and I had my tonsils taken out when I was four! Is there anything else you want to know about me?”
They both topped me by at least six inches, but I was on my tiptoes screaming in their faces. It must have looked like my springs had popped; they actually took a half step back from me.
“Leave him alone, Tony!”
It was a girl’s voice from somewhere in the crowd.
“Yeah! Back off, Pete! He’s not bothering anybody!”
A guy this time. I thought it might have been Frank Hughes of the imagined near serial-killer status from English IV, but I couldn’t be sure.
Suddenly the entire crowd was yelling, throwing insults and warnings alike at the two football players. To say I was surprised would be putting it mildly. I’d thought the crowd was there to watch me get my ass kicked; I hadn’t once thought they might support me.
Just goes to show that you never really know what people are going to do until they’re put to the test.
Then a warm body sidled up to me. “You two have a problem?” Dylan asked, standing tall beside me. I straightened up, and I felt as big as Pete and Tony, even if it was only in my mind.
Neither one spoke. There were a couple of minutes of intense posturing, like a pair of gorillas feeling the need to display their strength, but then it was over. Tony and Pete grunted something under their breaths, probably half-formed sentences studded with obscenities, and shouldered their way through the crowd and away.
All in all, coming out at school had gone much, much better than I’d ever thought it would. It hadn’t happened in quite the way I’d imagined it, but the outcome was better than I’d have ever hoped.
I was out, and I was still all in one piece. It was almost a miracle.
“Are you okay?” Dylan asked me. His pretty turquoise eyes were focused on me, ignoring the crowd watching us intently. The other kids were figuring it out now. I saw the pieces of the puzzle coming together in their eyes when I cast a quick, sideways glance at them. Not only was I out… so was Dylan.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“What happened?”
“I
sort of got cornered. Cat’s out of the bag, Dylan.”
“So I gathered. I heard you yelling at them from downstairs. Remind me never to piss you off. Ready to go to lunch?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
The crowd began to break up into smaller fragments, heads close together, whispering among themselves. More than one or two cast looks back at us over their shoulders. Word would be all over the school before lunch was over.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Dylan asked again as I finished what I’d originally set out to do and placed my unneeded textbooks into my locker, pushing the metal door closed and snapping the combination lock.
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was a little hairy for a while, though. I really thought they were going tear me into little pieces and stuff me into my locker.” I tilted my head. “What about you? You just outed yourself to the whole school too, you know.”
“What’s the worst they can do to me? I’m bigger than most of them.”
“Not Pete and Tony. They’re practically mutants.”
Dylan snorted. “What they are is a pair of prizewinning jerk-offs.”
“Yeah, but they’re big, tough, prizewinning jerk-offs.”
“I can handle them. Besides, it looked to me like they were scared of you. You were pretty impressive.”
“Me? Nah. I’m all bark and no bite, like Mr. Fisher’s Great Dane—the one without a tooth in its head. I might have gummed them pretty good, though.”
Dylan laughed, and for a minute I forgot we weren’t alone. It was just him and me, and I really, really wanted to kiss him. Luckily, I remembered myself just in time. Losing my cool with Pete and Tony had been one thing; public display of affection was another. I wasn’t ready for that—not by a long shot.
Dylan, evidently, didn’t feel the same way.
“Ready for lunch?” I asked instead, after clearing my throat. “I’m starving.”
“Yup. Me too,” Dylan said, smiling.
As we walked down the hallway toward the stairwell, past the last of the curious onlookers, Dylan put his arm around my shoulders.
For the second time that day, I was floored when I heard a smattering of applause from the crowd of kids behind us. Even more amazing, I didn’t hear a single shout of “Faggots!” or “Homos!” or any of the other million derogatory taunts I’d imagined would be hurled at us at school.
Maybe there was hope for humanity yet.
DYLAN AND I didn’t sit alone at lunch that day, or any of the days that followed. Suddenly, we seemed surrounded by people all the time, as if the majority of the senior class had assigned themselves the position of our personal bodyguards. Tony and Pete didn’t bother me again; as a matter of fact, they kept their distance, rarely coming within twenty feet of me and not looking in my direction if they did. I wondered if word had gotten back to their coach about what had happened. Nobody wanted a gay bashing on their record this close to graduation.
Word did filter up to the school administration, and I was presented with a pink hall pass in homeroom one day. I had been given an appointment with Ms. Starkey, the school shrink.
I spent the entire morning sweating over it, rehearsing what I would say, imagining her trying to analyze me, trying to get inside my head. By the time my one o’clock appointment rolled around, I’d worked myself up into a righteous state. There was nothing wrong with me! Being gay wasn’t a mental illness! How dare they send me to a shrink?
Again, I’d spent a lot of time and energy worrying over nothing. All she asked me was whether I knew about HIV prevention, safe sex, and if I was out to my mom. She talked to me for a little while on homophobia and how to handle uncomfortable situations before they got out of control (read: the incident with Tony and Pete had reached her ears), then gave me a handful of pamphlets and the phone number for a GLBT teen group that met once a week at the YMCA in Chester.
I passed Dylan on my way out of the office and realized he’d been given an appointment too. “Don’t sweat it,” I mouthed to him as I passed by, adding a reassuring smile.
That was basically the end of it. We were out, free to be proud, accepted by most of our peers and ignored by the rest. Things were definitely looking up.
Chapter Twenty
“WELL?”
“Dylan….”
“You can’t say no, Jamie. I already rented the limo and paid for the tickets.”
I stared at the pair of blue and white engraved invitations in my hand that Dylan had handed me. They were prom tickets for Saturday, May 18 at 8:00 p.m., to be held in the gym in exactly one month’s time.
The theme was Paris in Spring, and the prom committee had already begun working on a gigantic chicken wire and papier-mâché Eiffel tower and a painted cardboard Arc de Triomphe. The music would be provided by a local band, Hardly Working; the buffet would be catered by the diner (the food would no doubt be awful, but the school wasn’t about to turn down the offer of a free meal); and the town florist was already busily taking orders for boutonnieres and corsages.
“Everyone already knows about us, Jamie,” Dylan reminded me. “Remember? People are expecting us to show up together.”
“I know, I know. Still… it’s prom, Dylan. We’d need tuxedos. Dress shoes. Cummerbunds. Roses for our lapels. Black socks. I don’t even own a pair of black socks. We’d need to get our freaking photo taken for the yearbook….”
“So what? I happen to think you’ll look like a million bucks in a tux, we’ll photograph really well, and I’ll lend you a pair of socks,” Dylan said, laughing.
“People will stare at us, Dylan. Oh, look at the queers dancing. It would be weird.”
Dylan sobered, pulling me into his arms. He held me tight, tucking his chin on my shoulder. I wrapped my arms around his waist, looking over his shoulder at the tickets in my hand. “Listen to me, Jamie. I don’t care what other people might say. If they want to watch us, let them. We only get one prom in our lives, Jamie, and I don’t want to miss it. One prom, one prom date, and I want mine to be you.”
“Are you sure you’re ready for that? We might make the papers. If the school board finds out beforehand, they might try to rescind our tickets. There could be protestors, trouble—”
“Say yes, Jamie.”
“Our families might feel the backlash. My mom, your parents—”
“Say yes, Jamie.”
Damn it. He was the most stubborn, pigheaded, obstinate, wonderful guy on the planet. That he was all mine was a thought I still couldn’t seem to process, even after several months of exclusive dating. After Dylan and I had hooked up, I’d never even thought about finding anyone else, and if he were being truthful with me, neither had he. We’d even exchanged high school rings.
I gave him a half smile. “Okay, Okay. If you promise that we’ll keep our heads low until prom night, then….”
“Then…?” Dylan prompted, grinning at me.
“Yes.”
Dylan let out a whoop and gave me a hug that lifted me off my feet. He ended it with a kiss that curled my toes inside my Converse sneakers. “Thank you!” he cried, dancing me around in a circle.
Honestly, he was like a big kid—a big, handsome, sexy kid with whom I might just be falling in love.
Whoa, that was the L word. It had never popped up in my mind before, not once in all the time we’d been dating. I liked Dylan, yes, liked him a lot, in fact. But love?
What did I know about love, anyway? Not much. Only that Dylan was the first person I thought about when I woke up in the morning, and he was the last one I thought of before going to sleep. I liked him even though he popped his gum when he chewed, and hogged the popcorn when we went to the movies. I didn’t care that he cracked his knuckles, or consistently scored higher than I did at Guitar Hero. I didn’t mind that he always drove, even though my mom had relented and put me on her insurance. I especially liked that he never failed to give me that warm oatmeal feeling every time he kissed me, and that he wasn’t afraid to hold my hand, even in p
ublic.
Was I falling in love with him?
Maybe I already had, and the thought scared me.
I didn’t have an especially stellar family history when it came to love. In our house, love died with a motorcycle skidding underneath a tractor trailer. It ended in a drunk and abusive second husband, and a mother who had refused to see reality until it had almost been too late. It ended in a best friend turning out to be a stranger.
Dylan pulled away from me and the grin on his face blew away my doubts. I didn’t know if I was in love with him, but I did know I’d do practically anything to make him happy. He was so excited it was impossible not to feel the same way. I sighed and returned his smile with one of my own. “Okay. We’d better get over to the Tux Hut in Chester, or we’ll end up wearing jeans and T-shirts to prom.”
I STRUGGLED out of Dylan’s car with my arms full. We’d picked up our gear for prom—tuxedos, shoes, cummerbunds, ties, and crisp, white, starched shirts—and I was anxious to get them into the house and hung up in my closet before they wrinkled.
We’d tried the whole enchilada on before leaving the Tux Hut, and Dylan had nearly taken my breath away. He looked so good in his fitted, black tuxedo that I felt sort of short and dumpy standing next to him, although he’d told me I looked just as hot as he did.
I didn’t believe him, but it was really nice to hear anyway.
His engine purred as he pulled away, and I struggled along the walkway leading to the kitchen. I was more than halfway there before I noticed someone sitting on the stairs.
“Hey, Jamie,” Billy said, looking up at me. “I was wondering when you’d get home. A tux, huh? You’re going to prom? With who?”
“Dylan,” I answered, too shocked not to reply. Billy! After all these months, he’d shown up out of the blue, sitting on my side stoop as if he’d never left. At first glance, he looked the same as he always had, dressed in a tight red T-shirt and his ripped Abercrombie jeans. A closer look told a different story. He looked tired and worn out, and his eyes were red and puffy. There was dirt under his fingernails, and his T-shirt was stained. Not all of the rips in his jeans had been put there by the manufacturer, I noticed.