After School Activities

by Dirk Hunter

  But I beat him to it. “Dan, is Bruce going to be home for Christmas? Helen gets in the twentieth. My parents have been talking about inviting your family over, for old times’ sake.”

  Dan grinned impishly at me. “That sounds like fun. I look forward to it.” I was bluffing, and he knew it. His brother Bruce and my sister Helen had had kind of a bad breakup. But he also knew Will was an asshat and probably enjoyed the look of betrayal on his face as much as I did.

  Finally I turned to Will. “Oh, hey there, Will. I didn’t see you standing there. All alone. Were you saying something?” Will sputtered, no doubt overextending his rather small brain for some kind of comeback. Narcissistic douchebags like him could recover from almost anything except being so completely dismissed. Separate them from their crowd of ego-boosting followers, and they withered pretty quickly. “Thought not.”

  “What just happened?” Adam asked as we walked away.

  “Will needed a quick reminder that no one really likes him. Besides, Alec and Dan are not actually jerks, even if they do suffer from a bad case of follow-the-loudest-asshole-in-the-room-itis.”

  “But what if that had been Kevin, or Ty? Those guys are even worse than Will.” Adam was whispering fiercely. I started to realize just how panicked seeing Will had made him.

  “Then I would have thought of something else.”

  “And what if you hadn’t?”

  I stopped walking, turned to confront Adam. “What are you saying?”

  “Nothing. I just…”

  “…Never want to be seen with me?” I supplied.

  “No! Only, maybe we should be more careful.”

  “…About being seen with each other. Okay. Cool. Not like I wanted to spend time with you anyway.” I started walking again angrily. “You realize that we have always spent a lot of time together? I used to see you between most of my classes. You’d shout at me across the lunchroom at least twice a week. Everyone is used to us interacting. Even fucking Will. Some people even think we’re friends, despite us landing each other in detention more times than I can count. The only reason anyone would have to even raise an eyebrow at us is ’cause of you acting like I’m your shameful fucking secret.”

  “I’m not ashamed of you,” he protested.

  “But I’m still a secret?” Adam looked away. “That’s what I thought.”

  We walked in silence from then on. We got outside, into the nearly empty parking lot. Back by where Adam had parked, a few remaining cars blocked us from the view of anyone who might be looking from school, and Adam took that opportunity to grab hold of my hand. It wasn’t exactly an apology, out there where no one could see, but I appreciated the gesture.

  “Don’t think I’m going to let you off that easily,” I muttered.

  “I have a few ideas on how I can make it up to you.”

  “Do you now?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “OKAY, SO what’s happening now?”

  “The game still hasn’t started yet, Dylan,” Mel said flatly.

  “But there’s people all over the field,” Kai remarked from the other side of Mel.

  “They’re warming up.” She was clearly starting to get exasperated.

  “When do we get to warm up?” I asked. “I’m really cold just sitting here.” “Yeah,” Kai agreed, “When do we get to jump up and cheer?”

  “And what do we cheer for?”

  “Which team is our team?”

  “I think we’re red. Mel, are we red?”

  “What even is football?”

  Mel buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God, you two are the most hopeless….” Her head snapped up, and she glared at Kai. “Wait, I thought you watch football all the time?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to see how much you would put up with.”

  “They don’t kick the football, right?”

  Mel laughed. “Nice try, Dylan.”

  I guess I’ll just have to wait and find out for myself, then.

  IN CASE you were wondering, feet do not play a major role in football.

  Seems to me they could have been a little clearer on that front, perhaps considered a different name entirely.

  What did play a major role in football, however, were piles of men, and no small amount of ass-slapping. In fact, athleticism practically took a backseat to the almost staggering amount of man-on-man action taking place on the field. Up until then I had assumed, naively, that it was either the love of sport or pure masochism that made Adam put up with all the douchebags and homophobia of the football team, or at least the demands of a father desperately trying to relive his glory years. But by the ninth time I saw him under a pile of hot jocks, the truth had become readily apparent.

  “Why did no one tell me about this?” I demanded.

  “What, football?” Mel said.

  “It’s a gay man’s paradise!”

  “What, football?”

  “It’s almost as good as wrestling, but completely without the risk of awkward erections that everyone can see. Tackled by hot guys, ass-smacking on the sidelines….”

  “You have some really strange sexual appetites,” Kai said wryly.

  “An interesting point from a straight guy who likes to get fucked by another dude,” Mel said.

  “Harsh. But fair.”

  The game finished pretty quickly after that. We lost, which I needed explained to me. (“Dude, you do see those giant numbers on that board with ‘Score’ written on it, right?” “…Shut up, Kai.”). I said my good-byes to Kai and Mel and hurried over to wait for Adam to get out of the locker room. I waited outside, at the side exit near the gym, where I knew the team would be leaving on their way to the parking lot. Parents and friends of the players stood around me in loose clumps, chatting quietly, subdued no doubt by the loss. I found a spot out of the way, where I could see when Adam walked out the door, but where I wouldn’t draw too much attention.

  A shriek split the relatively calm evening. “Oh my God!” I turned to see Tiffany jogging over to me, a clump of other cheerleaders not far behind. “I can’t believe you came! I’ve been trying to get you to come see us cheer for ever, and you come on the very last game, you bitch!” She was still wearing her tiny cheer outfit as though in defiance of the cold.

  I smiled despite myself. Sure, Tiffany was pretty annoying, but her enthusiasm was also rather infectious. “I couldn’t miss seeing my bitches cheer, could I?”

  “Were we fierce?”

  “Superfierce.”

  “Beyoncé fierce, or like ‘last few contestants of So You Think You Can Dance when it gets really good’ fierce?”

  “Um….” I had no idea how to respond to that. There were degrees of fierce? And which one was better? Tiffany, as much as I liked her, happened to be one of those girls where the vaguest implication of an insult, or even merely a lackluster compliment, would send her spiraling into some stygian depths of self-doubt. It would be fascinating if it weren’t quite as terrifying to watch. Luckily, the rest of the cheerleaders caught up to Tiffany and rescued me from having to answer.

  “Dylan!” Charlotte’s face broke into a wide grin. “It’s been so long since we’ve seen you.” The other girls echoed her.

  “Oh my God,” Tiffany turned to Charlotte, face lighting up with even more excitement, as impossible as that seemed. “I have the best idea ever. Dylan should come tonight!”

  “Oh my God, Tiffany, you are literally reading my mind right now!”

  Amanda, the bustiest, blondest cheerleader exclaimed. “Can he, Char?”

  “Sounds like fun to me,” Charlotte replied, the only presence of calm in the midst of the tumult of excessively girly excitement. “The girls are all coming over to my house to sleep over tonight. You want to come?”

  “Um….” I looked over at the door where half the team had already exited, and any second now Adam would walk out.

  “We are not taking ‘no’ for an answer!” Tiffany said. “It has been w
eeks since we last hung out. I have so much to tell you.”

  Right then, Adam walked out of the school with a few of his teammates. A group of his friends immediately surrounded him. He chatted with them distractedly, all the while looking over their heads, searching the crowd. He finally noticed me, surrounded by the gaggle of cheerleaders, literally being dragged away by force. His grin split his face nearly in two at the sight of my plight.

  Help me, I mouthed at him.

  He only winked, smiled wider, and turned back to his friends.

  So much for Prince Charming, am I right?

  CHARLOTTE’S PARENTS weren’t home, which seemed to happen with almost conspicuous frequency. Sure, I’d only been to her house twice before, but every time we all had a free run of the place. Three for three, I’d almost be concerned — if it were anyone other than Charlotte.

  Even when the group spread to multiple rooms, which, with nearly a dozen teenage girls, happened all too often, she managed to flit effortlessly between rooms, expertly inserting coasters under drinks and somehow catching tipped-over snack bowls before the Chex Mix spilled all over the floor. And that’s not even mentioning her juggling of the cooking, music playing, and drama-busting. That last one was especially a marvel to watch. With so many huge personalities in one room, and all of them made up of popular girls who sometimes seemed to subsist entirely on narcissism and cattiness, no sooner would an argument start to think about bubbling than Charlotte would swoop in and work her magic, easing nerves, soothing egos, and just generally reminding everyone that they were friends and were supposed to be having fun.

  James P. Hogan should really go into politics, or something that necessitated huge, expensive galas and the like, because Charlotte seemed born to run them.

  By ten p.m., the party had pretty much wound down. Most of the cheer squad had dissipated throughout the night, until only five remained, presumably Charlotte’s closest friends. And me. At this time, pajamas became the outfit of choice. They even produced a pair for me, an obnoxiously pink-and-kitten-covered pair of matching bottoms and top, which Charlotte insisted was the only type she owned, and she convinced me to wear them in the nicest, politest bout of bullying I have ever had the pleasure to be on the receiving end of. Later that night, when she appeared wearing a perfectly plain pair of flannel pajama bottoms and sweatshirt, she only smiled sweetly (way too sweetly) and insisted she had no idea what I was talking about.

  We were all sitting in Charlotte’s living room, swaddled in blankets. We had finished watching a movie — a romantic comedy of the sappiest variety, of course — and the conversation turned to boys.

  “There’s someone I’ve been spending more and more time with lately,” Tiffany was saying, smiling coyly. “You’ll never guess who.”

  “Travis Butler,” said this girl Mary snidely. Travis was one of the nerdiest guys at school, leader of the physics club, probably the valedictorian of my class, face covered in pimples and painfully awkward around girls. He was also really nice, and happy to help anyone who was struggling in math class, even if that kid had just come out of the closet and most everyone else at the school still acted like he was some weird mix of dinosaur and leper — something they never thought they’d see in the flesh, and quite possibly dangerous.

  It made me pretty uncomfortable to hear him be the butt of a joke. I looked around for Charlotte, hoping she’d chime in a delicate reprimand like she had so often already that night, but she was down in the kitchen.

  Tiffany’s face screwed up in exaggerated disgust. “Ew, no. I’ll give you a hint: he’s the hottest guy in school.” I felt a sinking in my stomach as I started to remember who Tiffany considered to be the hottest guy in school.

  “You don’t mean…!” Amanda said.

  “Yes! Adam Anderson! Every day this week he meets me at my locker and we walk together to practice and he shows me off to all of his friends, ’cause I’m such a catch.”

  “You?” Mary broke in again, voice dripping with derision. “You have got to be kidding.”

  Tiffany drew herself up. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Mary raised her eyebrows and gave Tiffany a long look from head to toe. “Girl, don’t act like you don’t know. Ain’t no way someone as hot as Adam would go for all that.” She waved a hand at Tiffany.

  I took this opportunity to slip out of the room, before I inevitably got pulled into this argument. I felt sick, partly because things had so rapidly dissolved from a friendly conversation to bitchfest of the year, but mostly because of what Tiffany had said about Adam. I felt a lot of conflicting things all at once. I mean, confused snarl of emotions aside, I knew exactly what was going on. The closer Adam and I got, the more terrified he became of people finding out about him, so he was obviously using Tiffany as a cover for his friends, showing them a girl so they wouldn’t get suspicious. That didn’t stop me from feeling jealous, however. And guilty, like it was my fault he was lying to Tiffany and leading her on.

  I had been wandering around the house, not really sure where I was going, but soon found myself approaching the kitchen, where Charlotte was hard at work, baking the cookies we had all so fervently demanded as the movie ended.

  “How’s it going up there?” Charlotte asked as I sat down at the counter.

  “Mary’s being a bitch. Again.” Charlotte’s calm, composed demeanor really encouraged honesty. Normally I wouldn’t be quite so brutally honest about someone’s friend.

  Charlotte wasn’t offended. She rolled her eyes and gave an exasperated sigh. “She’s had a stick up her ass for the last two weeks, and I can’t figure out why. She being a bitch to Tiffany again?” I nodded.

  “Typical. Well, I hope you’re having fun at least.”

  “Oh yeah. I am.”

  Charlotte popped a ball of cookie dough into her mouth and turned to me, eyebrow raised. “But?”

  Damn she was perceptive. Nobody other than Kai and Mel had ever really been able to tell when I was holding something back. “I don’t know. It’s just… like, I feel this demand to be someone I’m not. Or at least, not usually. I mean, it’s fun sometimes to be the sassy gay guy in the popular clique, or whatever, but it’s exhausting.”

  Charlotte handed me a spoonful of the cookie dough, which I gladly accepted. “The thing about these girls is they’ve been raised on Sex and the City and the like. They’ve grown up dreaming of a Gay Best Friend to call their own and, well, I’m sorry to say it, but you are the one who decided to come out and become the object of their obsession,” she said with a smirk and a wink.

  I laughed. “How foolish of me, coming out like that.”

  “A shameful grab for popularity if ever I saw one,” she joked. The oven beeped, and Charlotte pulled out a sheet of freshly done cookies.

  Practically before I could even smell their delicious, chocolate-chippy goodness, she had poured two glasses of milk and deposited a small plate of cookies on the counter between us.

  Damn she was good.

  “They’re best right out of the oven. You just have to be fast and take a drink of milk so you don’t burn your tongue.” She demonstrated, popping an entire cookie into her mouth and downing nearly the entire glass of milk. Then she grinned at me, smudges of chocolate staining her teeth. “Best we don’t tell those bitches upstairs about that little number, am I right?”

  I was a little more conservative about my own cookie. I only shoved my face with half a cookie at a time. “How are you so amazing?”

  “It’s my mom’s recipe and Dad’s favorite way of eating them,” Charlotte said, tossing another batch into the oven. “I really can’t take credit.”

  “Not that. Though, yes, these cookies are amazing. I mean you. You’re so chill about me being gay….”

  “I have a gay uncle and a lesbian aunt, on opposite sides of my family. I just have a little more practice than everyone else is all.”

  “Okay, but it’s more than that. You’re probably the most beautiful girl in
school…”

  “You flatterer, you.”

  “…You’re definitely the most popular. Head cheerleader, dating the hottest, most popular guy in school…”

  “Hottest? You’ve obviously never seen him in the mornings.”

  “…But despite that, you’re not a shallow bitch like most of the other girls. Not even in an endearing, good-hearted way, like Tiffany is.” Charlotte tilted her head, studying me. She didn’t say anything for so long, I started to fear I had gone too far, misjudged how close we were, overestimated how honest I could be.

  Finally, she said, “I used to be.”

  Her expression didn’t change. Tentatively, I said, “What changed?”

  “My best friend growing up was a girl named Sandy. We were awkward little seminerds together. We grew up, and I started to get pretty, and popular. She stayed awkward. There was this girl Laura — you probably don’t remember her; she graduated while you were still in middle school — she was the most popular girl in school, and when I was a freshman, I tried to be exactly like her. She was why I started cheering. I made the team, started following Laura around everywhere, doing my best to imitate her every move. I was not a nice person then.” She smiled wryly. “Even James didn’t like me. That winter, a little before Christmas, Sandy killed herself. Her suicide note was addressed mostly to me. Sometimes I’m surprised her parents let me read it. It had a lot to say.”

  I was aghast. Suddenly the distant look in Charlotte’s eyes made sense. What surprised me most was how calm she was as she told me.

  How matter-of-fact. The sadness was there, but it was a distant thing, hidden under acceptance.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to….”

  She waved away my apology. “Sometimes I’m glad for it, as terrible as that sounds. It made me take a hard look at myself, who I was becoming. Made me ask myself who I wanted to become. I only wish that could have happened before….” For a split second, I thought the sadness would rise up and overtake her, but then the oven beeped and she turned to pull the cookies out.

  “Besides,” she continued, the lightness I had come to associate with her returning to her voice, “it turns out people respond more to niceness than to cruelty, and I’m much better at it. So I stayed popular. Maybe even became more so. I’m sure it helped that I’m ‘probably the most beautiful girl in school,’ as you put it. The other girls, who craved popularity as fervently as I used to, tried to take me down, assert their superiority with mean words and actions. That’s how girls typically get popular, you see, by making other girls feel like shit so they retreat, follow the mean girl’s lead, and stop competing in this terrible game we call high school. But they couldn’t hurt me, so they never won. Far worse had been said by someone I cared about way more. Someone I’d lost the chance to reconcile with.” She once again stuffed an entire cookie into her mouth and drained the rest of her glass of milk. “Sandy used to love eating cookies like that.” She grinned, no doubt remembering those happy times.