After School Activities

by Dirk Hunter

  “What’s happening?” came Kai’s voice from behind the bed. “Did he say yes? Is he coming in?”

  “Oh, you lovable idiot,” Mel said. “No.” She always was that much quicker on the uptake. The two of them came over and wrapped their arms around me in a group hug. I think they were expecting me to cry. To be honest, I was kind of expecting me to cry, too, at least a little. But all I did was stare out the window at those footprints, barely visible in the snow, feeling hollow.

  There was a soft knock at the door. Mel and Kai jumped, no doubt thinking it might be Adam, changed his mind or come to his senses or something. I knew better. Regardless, it was still a slight surprise when my mom poked her head through the door.

  “Hey,” she said, “I brought you some ice cream. I figured you might need it.” She held out a newly opened pint of ice cream with three spoons stuck in it.

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. This was just too surreal. It was helpless, almost crazed laughter. “You heard, huh?”

  Mom smiled. “Well, that’s the funny thing about having a shouting match with someone outside your window. It isn’t exactly private.”

  “What about Dad? Any chance he slept through it?”

  “Oh, he tried, but I woke him up. Didn’t want him to miss the show.”

  “Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

  “He’s in the kitchen now, baking some cookies. Three different kinds. Drown heartbreak in calories, I always say. We can also order a pizza, if you want. I’m sure somewhere is still delivering.” She gave me a big hug. “I’m sorry, hon,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Thanks, Mommy,” I whispered back. I did feel like crying then, but I held the tears back.

  “Well, I’ll leave this here,” Mom said, putting the ice cream on my dresser. “The cookies should be done in a few minutes. Let me know if you need anything. Love you, kids.”

  “Love you too, Mom Number Two,” Kai said.

  “I have strong feelings of affection for you as well, Mrs. O,” Mel said. With Mom gone, I turned to my best friends. “Well, who wants to play GoldenEye? I don’t know about you guys, but I really want to just shoot a bunch of things right now. And I don’t care what you say, I’m playing Oddjob. Plus, I’ll be eating all this ice cream at the same time, and if you don’t let me win, you’re both officially the worst friends ever.”

  “I love you, Dylan,” Mel said, “but I will never let you win.”

  Kai nodded. “What she said.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  SO FAR it was shaping up to be a rather ordinary Tuesday. I was miserable, alone, and just generally no fun to be around. I walked in a daze from class to class. There were dozens of opportunities for jokes, wisecracks, and witty observations, but I came up blank every time. In the few weeks since my split with Adam, this had become my new, boring, depressing reality.

  It was funny. Just a few months before, things were exactly like this — I was single, with no prospects for love, the only sex I was getting was from my left hand, and I spent my days bored out of my mind in school and my nights with my best friends. Yet then I was happy, and now I was categorically not. The only variable that was any different is Adam.

  Then we talked every day, albeit mostly yelling and insults, and now we avoided each other. It’s funny that I’d miss having a bully.

  I know, I know. It wasn’t the bully I missed. If that really were the case, then all my problems would be solved, because a new bully had stepped up to take over Adam’s old responsibilities. A new bully by the name of Will Davis who, with a sixth sense that seemed to be every asshole’s gift, knew exactly how to kick me when I was down.

  “It must be hard,” Will was saying as we stood in the lunch line, “being the only faggot around. Lonely.” I ignored him. Adam stood a few people ahead in the line. It was obvious he could hear what his supposed friend was saying, but he didn’t even react.

  “Oh, Will, you’re not alone,” Kai said. “I’m sure there’s someone out there for you.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Malachi. I didn’t realize it was the Jew’s job to speak for the faggot.”

  “It’s pronounced ‘Fa-jay,’” Mel said. “It’s French.”

  “Sure it is, bitch,” he mumbled, turning away.

  “The soul of wit, you are, Will,” Mel muttered.

  “Why didn’t you say anything back there, Dylan?” Kai demanded when we got to our lunch table. “Normally you’d tear the guy a new one for saying even half of what he did. If it were Ad —” He gave a strangled yell and snapped his mouth shut, glaring at Mel. No doubt she had kicked him under the table. She had been becoming more and more unnecessarily protective lately. Not that I was complaining. A part of me was thankful.

  But the truth was, I didn’t care if Kai said Adam’s name. I wasn’t gonna burst into tears or plunge back into the depths of sadness.

  You kind of need to be happy first, before you can plunge back into anything.

  Besides, he had a point. Normally I would leap at the opportunity to put an annoying jock in his place. Sure, Adam was my main sparring partner, but I’d shut down Will Davis nearly as many times, though mostly because he was right there behind Adam. Back then there had been a sense of outrage at their idiocy, a feeling of righteousness and a joy to a well-timed quip, to seeing their faces screw up with trying to figure out what exactly you had called them. Now there was only apathy. To most things, really. And so, like we had every day that week, the three of us ate our lunches in silence. On the bright side, my dad made cookies practically every night now. So at least it was a tasty lunch.

  WHEN SCHOOL had started back up again after the New Year, one of the first things I did was seek Charlotte out to apologize. I heard a good many stories about what had happened after I left. Adam stopped being the center of those girls’ attentions. Instead they began to focus more and more on each other, competing for no other reason than to win. It happened rather abruptly. One second they were vying for his attention, the next there was only screaming, crying, and throwing things. It made me realize how much effort Charlotte had gone through to avoid drama at her party — and why it was so important. I had no idea things would escalate so quickly or so drastically. Mel didn’t seem surprised. She told me never to underestimate the power of teenage girls to absolutely destroy any situation.

  “Just be glad none of the guys got involved,” she had told me, clearly speaking from experience. “That’s when things really get bad.”

  Sometimes she frightens me.

  That night wasn’t a complete waste, though. Sure, the focus of the ladies’ scorn had eventually shifted from Adam, which was apparently when he was able to make his escape to come plead his case to me, but there had been more than enough opportunities to make Adam feel the pain of my ire. I still heard about it from kids in the halls of school. Mostly guys, mostly speaking in admiring tones, awed at the prowess of a man who seemed able to be the object of so many women’s affections. Of course, they believed Adam was straight, expected him to have enjoyed all their attention. I knew better. Their stories gave me a sick pleasure I am a little embarrassed to admit to. Stories of girls trying to tear his clothes off, of coercing him into that darkened room upstairs — of course, in their telling, it was he who coerced them — and partaking in God-knows-what depraved sex acts. The arousal in their voices was palpable as they imagined being under a pile of vaginas and surrounded by more boobs than they could count. They never guessed that, to Adam, it would have been a kind of torture.

  But the point is, I felt bad about all of this. Well, specifically the ruining Charlotte’s party bit. But she was very gracious in accepting my apology. She had even invited me to a few more parties — small weekend get-togethers, more along the lines of girls’ nights. I even went to one, but only ’cause I knew Tiffany wasn’t going to be there.

  Tiffany… she was a harder problem to solve. True to what I promised myself, I did apologize to her, though I adamantly refused to explain what I was
apologizing for. She forgave me instantly and with a laugh. She did look really confused, but that was not exactly a feeling she was unfamiliar with, and she soon forgot about the whole encounter. As far as she was concerned, we were the best of friends.

  Luckily, she hadn’t started to suspect that I’d been avoiding her.

  See, Adam’s straight-guy charade wasn’t a one-night affair. It had been almost two months since the party, and he was still leading Tiffany on. “We aren’t, like, boyfriend and girlfriend, you know? But just like a boy and a girl who are friends and really like spending time together. Besides, what does boyfriend and girlfriend even mean , you know? They’re just labels. That’s what Adam says, and he’s, like, really hot so, I don’t know, I just go along with it.”

  Tiffany talked about him all the time.

  “He’s, like, top ten best guys I have ever dated, easy.”

  Keeping quiet about it was getting harder and harder.

  “Last night we spent over an hour in his car just kissing. Most guys would push for something more, you know? But Adam is just a romantic. He knows I’m a lady.”

  It was really annoying.

  “Guys, how do you know if you’re in love?”

  It was also a real moral quandary. I mean, she was getting lied to.

  And it was obvious this whole thing really meant something to her. I was basically watching a friend setting herself up for heartbreak. But what could I say without compromising Adam’s secrets? ’Cause I still refused to be that guy, the one who outs someone ’cause he’s angry. I talked to Charlotte about it, that night I went to her girls’ night, the one Tiffany didn’t go to.

  “Well,” Charlotte said as she mixed some cookie dough. It was surprising how many of our conversations happened over baking. Also, how much of my life had come to revolve around cookies lately. “I’ve been trying to tell her that Adam’s not good for her as subtly as I can. Especially since I can’t tell her why.”

  “Subtle? With Tiffany? You sure you don’t wanna try, I don’t know, spelling it out for her?”

  Charlotte waved a reproachful finger at me, though the effect was somewhat spoiled by the fact it was covered in cookie dough. “She’ll surprise you.” She stuck her finger in her mouth and made a delighted sound at the taste.

  “I just feel like I should be doing something too.”

  She shook her head, an emphatic no. “You’re too mad at him. That, more than anything else, will come across to her.”

  I wanted to argue with her that no, I wasn’t mad, but some of the other girls chose that moment to join us in the kitchen. Besides, I was pretty sure she would have seen through me. I doubted she’d buy the “I’m not mad, just disappointed” shtick. I couldn’t even get myself to believe it.

  Now, I know that literally everyone would probably think “Gee, Dylan, why don’t you talk to Mel and Kai about this? They are your best friends.” At least, those who weren’t thinking “Poor Dylan, things are so hard for you right now. You’re such a good guy. You don’t deserve this. You deserve a hug. And a cookie.” Thank you, nice people, I will have a cookie. Or six.

  The truth is, I didn’t quite feel like I could. To understand this, you really need to understand them. They expected me to be so sad about all of this. And, I mean, I was sad. But they tiptoed around the subject like someone stealing honey from a napping bear. Remember that day at lunch? When it did come up, they stared at me with these faces so steeped in pity and sympathy I only wanted to punch them. At least Charlotte still acted like I was a normal fucking person.

  Plus, Kai had always been against Adam. I couldn’t help but feel there was a little bit of an I-told-you-so air about him. It was probably my imagination, but there you go. And Mel… well, like I said, she kinda frightened me sometimes, especially when she got protective. I half worried that every time I talked about how I feel about Adam, she got one step closer to breaking into his house and waterboarding him until he agreed to take me back.

  Not that I even wanted him back necessarily.

  So I talked to Charlotte sometimes instead. But mostly I kept quiet and carried on. It was one of the worst times of my life. I had been through plenty of bad times, but this was the first time I’d really felt alone, walled off from the people around me. Probably the worst part about it was how every day felt so exactly the same as the day before, like time had stopped but no one else got the memo. The cookies helped. Some. This went on for exactly forty-seven days, a period I like to call the Great Midwinter Sadness or, alternatively, the Time of Many Cookies. Things didn’t get better right after. In fact, in some ways they got worse. But at least, finally, they changed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  IT STARTED with a right turn. By all accounts that day was going to be a regular Friday in February. I woke up miserable, had cookies for breakfast, sat quietly in the back of Kai’s car on the way to school, staring out the window as Mel and Kai laughed. It wasn’t too cold, but not unseasonably warm. Really, there was nothing about it that would make it any different from an average day. No reason for me to vary my routine.

  And yet I did.

  We walked into school, and Mel and Kai immediately turned left to head to our lockers, like we did every morning. I was lagging a little behind. They didn’t notice — I’d been doing that a lot lately.

  I stood there and watched them go, wondering if they’d see I wasn’t following. They didn’t, which was odd, in hindsight. Maybe I was sick of the routine, maybe I was sick of Mel and Kai themselves, or maybe I knew, somehow, that despite today’s unremarkable exterior, something big was about to happen. Whatever the reason, I turned my back on their now distant figures, about to vanish into the crowd, and walked the other way. I took a right.

  Of course, this wasn’t really a big deal. At the time I didn’t think anything of it. But in hindsight it was remarkable. If I hadn’t broken my routine, hadn’t turned right instead of left, I honestly have no idea how things might have changed. Because immediately after turning right, I walked past Tiffany, standing at her locker, alone and subdued. And I stopped. I’m a little surprised that I did, looking back. But not a lot — she was my friend, after all. Usually, Tiffany was bubbly, full of laughter and energy. She was rarely ever without her group of friends — they typically traveled in a pack. She never, ever stood, frozen, holding a textbook half out of her locker and staring off into space. I watched her for well over a minute before I spoke.

  “Tiffany? Are you all right?”

  “What?” Her head turned toward me. It was the first I’d seen her move. “I said, are you okay? What’s up?”

  She looked at the textbook in her hand, finally completing the motion of putting it in her backpack. I wondered how long she had stayed like that. “Oh, I’m fine. It’s just, I was thinking.”

  Somehow, the idea of Tiffany simply being lost in thought was more alarming. “About what?” I asked.

  “About Adam,” she said. That hollowness in the pit of my stomach grew. I should have known. “He broke up with me last week.”

  That hollowness grew even larger, was suddenly filled with butterflies and all sorts of other winged critters engaged in sudden and very bloody war. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, I’m not upset about that. I think…. It seemed like he never really liked me. This will sound weird, but it was almost like he just felt obligated to me, somehow. Like he was doing what he thought he should, rather than what he wanted. Sounds crazy, right?”

  All I could manage was a “Huh.” Charlotte was right, Tiffany really could surprise you.

  “But he was always nice to me, so I’m not mad. That’s more than I can say for some of the guys I’ve dated. He never tried to force me to do anything I didn’t want to. He was always very respectful. It’s funny. Being around him kind of reminded me of hanging out with you. Weird, right?”

  She laughed softly, shaking her head. “He kept himself so distant, but I suppose that makes sense now. I hope he’s all right.�
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  “I’m sure he is.”

  “I hope so. Have you seen him today?”

  “No….”

  “He left so abruptly yesterday. At first I thought it was me, because he didn’t want to be around me. You know, after he broke it off. But then I heard his brother had called the school, got him excused. Did you know his mom was sick?”

  Suddenly all the pieces of this conversation, which had been refusing to make sense, all slid and snapped into place. She didn’t seem sad for herself, but for him. Pulled out of school yesterday. Was sick, she said.

  Was. It all came crashing together.

  His mom had died. And he was all alone.

  “I have to go.” Without waiting for Tiffany to respond, I turned and ran. “There you are,” Kai said as I made it to his locker, “We were wondering where you went.”

  “I need your keys,” I said, a little out of breath.

  “You what now?” he asked, bewildered. I didn’t have time to explain. I shoved my hand in his pocket and groped around for them.

  “This is… intrusive…,” he said but didn’t stop me.

  I got them. “Thanks. I love you. Bye,” I called over my shoulder as I left. “What was that about?” Kai asked, watching me go.

  “Beats me,” Mel said.

  “Am I going to regret letting him go?”

  “Probably.”

  I NEVER really paused to think about what I was doing. Which I’m actually glad for. If I had, maybe I would have gone back. It wasn’t like I didn’t have the opportunity.

  Principal Hayes stopped me. “Mr. O’Connor! It’s been quite some time since I’ve seen you.”

  “I know. You’re very disappointed.” I stepped around him and kept walking. “Worry not. I’m sure that’ll change soon.”

  “On the contrary, I find it quite heartening that…. Where are you going, Mr. O’Connor?”

  “Out.”

  “Mr. O’Connor, if you don’t turn around this instant, I’ll have no choice but to —”