“I applied to Bates last minute,” Emily beams. “I’m really done, I swear.”
“Good,” I say, but my voice is barely a croaky whisper. I give her two big thumbs-up instead.
“Oh, you lost your voice,” Emily says. “You sound sexy.”
“Yeah, like a sexy frog,” I try to say.
Emily leans over to hear me. “What?”
“Yeah, like a sexy frog,” I repeat.
She holds up her hands, which should be on the steering wheel. “Don’t talk. Let me do the talking.”
She flashes me a wicked smile, rolls through the stop sign, and rushes right onto the Surry Road. A squirrel skitters out of her way.
“Well, I decided to apply to Bates, ’cause you guys all did,” she blushes, inhales, and gets ready. “I think that Shawn is really, really cute and that he maybe likes me, which is cool, you know, as long as it isn’t too hard on you with the whole Dylan deal and everything.”
She looks to me. I smile big like a Wal-Mart sticker so that she’ll continue. I’m not going to begrudge Emily any happiness, God knows she’s been the third wheel with Dylan and me for way too many things.
“So, it’s okay?” she asks.
I nod.
“So, we’re going to the dance on Friday and I know you don’t want to come but you have to come. You have to. I mean, I can’t ignore, like the fact that Dylan is gay and everything and you’ve been to every single dance with him and stuff. But . . . well, I mean, now’s the time for you to experience the boyfriendless high school angst that the rest of us have to deal with on a daily basis.”
“Angst?” I croak out.
“SAT word,” Emily blurts and we’re almost there. If it wasn’t so hard to talk, I’d tell her I know what angst means. Really. “Okay? So, it’s not like you’ll be standing up against the wall the whole time . . .”
I know she’s thinking about the infamous eighth grade dance where I either hid from Eddie Caron or squatted by the Coke machine for the entire time.
“And I mean you did kiss Tom yesterday, so I’m not even sure you can count as boyfriendless . . . although, it’s not like you guys are going out or anything. Although he is driving you to that German restaurant . . .”
Panic hits my stomach. I lean over.
“You okay?” she asks. “Are you sick sick or is it just your voice?”
I shake my head. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong with me other than I’m scared to go to a stupid dance without Dylan holding my hand, making me not have to worry about slow dances and annoying guys with too-hot roaming hands and just letting myself go into the bang bang of the beat and the smooth moves of the music. That’s all gone now. That’s dead. And Tom . . . Tom’s kiss? Oh, God, that made me feel like I was on fire, in a very, very good way and the guilt of that is huge and just vibrates against my soul like a plucked E-string, low and grating.
“Will Dylan be there?” I ask Emily.
She takes a second to understand what I’ve said and then her eyebrows lift up. She turns into the parking lot. “With Bob? Oh my God, I don’t know. Do you think they’re that brave?”
I shrug.
“He did wear that pink triangle yesterday and buy those freaking condoms, in front of Dolly and everything,” Emily parks, barely missing the fender of a black pickup truck. She stares at me. “Oh, you poor baby. Your life sucks.”
Nodding, I unbuckle my seat belt and Emily pushes me out the door. “Now, haul your ass out of my car and run, ’cause we are both wicked late.”
Em takes a picture of me running to school. I look frantic. My backpack swings out from my shoulder. My hair tangles behind me. My mouth tights itself into my face. I look like a girl who has never plucked a guitar, a girl who never sings.
Law class. Mr. Richter rushes in ten minutes after we all get there. Emily and I have escaped a tardy.
The first five minutes Mr. Richter didn’t show up, we all sat in our chairs and were good kids. We waited and wondered where Mr. Punctual was, but after awhile it just became party time. Emily swished over and sat on Shawn’s desk. Anna, Andrew, and Kara tried to talk to me about Dylan and his “newly discovered” gayness, but I couldn’t say anything with no voice and everyone eventually gave up.
So, I put my head down on the desk and wait, wait, wait for something to happen. Every once in awhile, when I poke my head up, Mimi Cote stares at me and picks at her nails. I shiver. I try to clear my throat. Even with everything, I am so glad that Dylan picked me, sang stupid songs with me, and not her.
Mr. Richter finally bangs in, his hair standing up straight and tie whacked to the side.
“People,” he says with an elaborate sigh, leaning against his desk, hands on his narrow hips. “You will never believe what was in my swimming pool.”
“Ronald McDonald!” Emily yells as she scrambles off Shawn’s desk and back to her seat.
He shakes his head.
“A stripper!” someone shouts out. Shawn, I think.
He rolls his eyes. “No. Two moose.”
We say nothing.
He points a finger in the air. “Two gay moose. They were mating or whatever gay moose do.”
Shocked silence. Then Emily says, “In your swimming pool?”
Mr. Richter shakes his head. “They tore the liner to bits.”
Emily makes eyes at me. I nod. We think the same thing. Is everybody in the world gay? And no one’s told us.
“Even the moose,” she mouths at me.
I mouth it back. “Even the moose.”
“Do you think they wore condoms?” she mouths.
I twitch my nose at her and she smiles.
“Eww,” says Mimi, trying to pull her miniskirt down, despite the fact that she’s sitting on it. “That’s sick.”
Em does a perfect Mimi-twisted face impression behind her back and I start laughing so hard I have to put my head back down on my desk.
Mr. Richter uses Mimi’s comment to start a debate about sexuality and privacy rights. He tells us about a case where two men were in their own house having sex and they were arrested for sodomy.
“In some states,” Mr. Richter points his pencil at us, “it is illegal for men to engage in anal sex. In some states it is illegal for a man and a woman to engage in oral sex.”
Someone makes a gagging noise, but Shawn raises his hand and squeaks out, “Not here, right?”
Mr. Richter nods.
Emily can’t help herself. “You’re safe, Shawn.”
Shawn crosses his arm, shakes his head, leans back in his chair, and smiles.
Dylan, do you know how dangerous the world is for you? Do you know that your kind of love is against the law? When I think your name, I become an ache. You were my best friend. You are my best friend.
I miss you.
I’ve written you a lot of notes since Saturday, but this one I’m going to give you.
You’re gay, I’ve got it. So what? So let’s be us still, Dylan and Belle, best of friends, harmony and melody, show tune and folk song, friends, soul swappers, okay?
I wait outside his math class like some sort of stalker. I wave to people I know. Shawn and Em walk by and he pets my head like I’m some sort of puppy dog. And then Dylan trots down the hall. There’s no pink triangle on his shirt today. His face wears shadows and suspicion. His head darts to the side, looking for predators, behind him, I think.
“Dylan,” my word is one note, one note in the hall.
He sees me. “Belle.”
My lips turn up into a slow smile. His mouth flashes brilliant teeth. He comes close, in my space, really, like he’s still a boyfriend. Boy. Friend. He is.
“You’re in my personal space,” I laugh at my half-there voice and my half-there joke.
He jerks back and starts to apologize, but I grab his sleeve. “No, I’m teasing.”
He smiles again. Some kid excuses himself and pushes by us, but really slow, ’cause he wants to hear what’s going on. “You lost your voice?”
I shrug and fish inside my pocket. I refuse to think about condoms. “I wrote you a note.”
He takes it. Our fingers brush, but there’s no super-electric funky sparks. I swallow. Dylan looks at the paper.
“It’s okay,” I croak. “It’s not mean or angry or anything.”
He nods. He clears his throat. Someone else pushes by and Dylan says, “I never meant to hurt you, Belle.”
His green-grass eyes water like rain is stuck there.
“I know,” I whisper say with my almost voice. “Me either.”
By the time I climb into Tom’s truck, my voice is back, which is good and bad, because now I have to talk to Tom with his black truck and sin eyes and man-low voice. I don’t know what to say.
“Thanks for the ride,” I manage as he shifts. My lips twitch, remembering lip things that they shouldn’t be remembering. Bad lips.
He shrugs. “Like I said, I didn’t want to have to bring Crash or Bob.”
There’s duct tape on the steering wheel, duct tape on the seat, and a little duct tape man standing on the dash, forever kicking a little duct tape soccer ball that’s attached to his foot.
I touch the duct tape man with my pinky finger. Tom turns on the ignition and says, “Ready.”
“For a fun night of German food, yum. Yippee,” I deadpan.
He laughs.
His truck smells like him, deodorant and soap, clean and musky, but with just a bit of burnt marshmallow mixed in. It smells like man. Dylan never smelled like man. He smelled like pine woods and grass. Why didn’t I notice that? Why didn’t I notice things?
Herr Reitz, who smells like halitosis and bologna, skips up to our car and hands us a map of where to go. “Just in case you get lost.”
Tom raises his eyebrows because how long have all of us lived in this town? All our lives. And how often do we go to Bangor? Every week. “That’s a good idea.”
I nod in an overenthusiastic way and Tom presses his lips together to keep from laughing.
Herr Reitz fake scowls at us, points his finger. “No hanky panky, you two.”
Then he winks.
My cheeks turn scarlet. My hands touch the hotness of them. Tom shakes his head. “What a freak.”
I nod. Herr Reitz bounces on his toes, giving a girl named Janelle a map. Her car is crammed with people. I am sure there are not enough seat belts to go around. Bob is riding with Herr Reitz. I feel sorry for him.
Herr Reitz finally gets into his car and toots out a happy little beep.
“Finally,” Tom breathes out. He takes his foot off the brake, eases down the parking lot.
His thighs fill out his jeans. I close my eyes, lean my head against the back of the seat. “You already sick of me?”
My voice betrays my heart and it comes out sad and pathetic.
“Sick of my pinko commie friend,” he laughs. “Never.”
I open my eyes to make sure I don’t miss when I punch him in the arm. He just laughs harder and yells, “Assault! Assault! I’ve been attacked by a peacenik hippie freak.”
I raise my eyebrows at him. He turns on the radio, not to something loud, like I expect from those over-adrenalined soccer player rich boys, but something chocolate-cake smooth, old soul music from our grandparents’ days. I raise my eyebrows at him again and then wonder if they’ll get stuck there. Maybe I should plaster some duct tape over them.
“What?” His hands leave the steering wheel. “I like Marvin Gaye.”
He winces.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Gay is the theme of my life.”
“You’re not?” he blurts out.
“Hardly.”
“I didn’t think so,” he says and I know he’s remembering the couch incident, just the same way I’m remembering it. I try to push that memory down the heating vent but then he smiles at me. My heart flitters like dragonflies and I decide that the window view of barren Maine trees is worth contemplating.
“How about you?”
He coughs. “God, no.”
“Did you always know that Dylan was?” I ask him.
He takes a minute. We drive past Eastbrook Building Supplies and Friend, where they sell motorcycles and ATVs. He pulls in a deep breath and says, “Not always. I figured it out in eighth grade.”
“What?” I sit up straighter. My heart leaps away from my lungs.
“Remember that deal I told you about?”
“Yeah.”
Mrs. Foster, the city councilor who is afraid Wal-Mart might come, drives by in her Subaru and honks at us. Tom honks back. We both smile. That’s what you do in Eastbrook unless you want people talking about you.
Tom gets back to the point. “Well, right before the pact, we went to the Sea Coast Fun Park and he tried to kiss me. I mean, I’m pretty sure he did but he didn’t make it.”
That means Dylan always knew.
“Jesus,” my heart pounds. “All the way back in eighth grade?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you freak?”
He nods. That muscle in his cheek spasms and against my will my finger reaches up and touches it. I feel a little twitch beneath my fingertip. I take my finger away, pat him on the shoulder, and he keeps talking. “I was scared shitless. After that, Dylan made a very big deal about liking girls, like he was proving it to both of us, you know. And then Mimi asked me out and so . . .”
I nod and twist my hand in my lap. “And so . . .”
His little duct tape man stays stuck on the dashboard even as we pound into a pothole. I stare and stare at him, thinking how great it would be to be stuck and cemented, to know where you are, where you’re supposed to be, a duct tape man with a little soccer ball.
“You doing okay?” Tom asks after a minute.
“Yeah.” I inhale and take the time to look at him. His chin juts out straight and strong like superheroes in those old black-and-white movies, like cowboys. His skin glows the color of good tree bark. I gulp.
Inside my body, tree limbs stretch out, scraping at my skin. That’s all there is in there. No leaves. No fruit. Maybe it’s not even tree limbs, but the branches of blueberry bushes, barren and aching. But when I look at Tom, it feels like things are sprouting, like they’re getting ready to grow and fill me.
“You scared me when you fainted the other day,” he smiles. “I’m sorry . . . passed out.”
My hands clasp each other. “Sorry.”
“No big.” His cheeks redden. “You’re okay now, right?”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah.”
His free hand picks up the roll of duct tape and tosses it onto the floor. “I was worried about you.”
“About a pinko commie hippie freak?” I tease and then bite the inside of my lip. I want to pluck the little duct tape man off the dash and put him in my pocketbook with my guitar.
He breathes in through his nose and when he breathes out it’s just one word. “Yeah.”
I smile. I move my hair behind my ear and then wonder if that’s a flirty thing to do, touching your hair? Em would know.
“What do you think about the Eddie Caron thing?” he asks as we turn onto Bangor Road. Janelle passes us and honks. A million hands reach out her windows and give us the finger. Tom laughs and waves his middle digit back.
“What Eddie Caron thing?”
He puts his hand back on the steering wheel. His knuckles pale. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head. A branch scrapes up against my lung and I cough. br />
His Adam’s apple moves down in his throat then comes back up. “He said he’s going to beat the crap out of Dylan.”
“He what?” My ears explode. I turn off Marvin Gaye singing about getting it on. “Why?”
Tom’s eyes stop watching the back of Janelle’s car and kind into me. “You know why, Belle.”
“Because he’s gay?” My voice gives out, midsentence, but Tom understands.
Tom nods and his voice comes out steady, “He’s pissed ’cause Dylan and Bob are going to the dance.”
My hands shake so I clamp them together on my lap. “Together?”
“Yeah.”
I take this in. We climb up a hill. My chest feels like it’s my legs not Tom’s truck doing all the work.
“Should I pass them?” Tom nods toward Janelle’s car.
It’s a big hill. It’s a no passing zone. “Yeah.”
I open my window and cold wind bursts in, whipping my hair. Tom yells, “Yee-haw” as we roar by. The truck’s transmission whines. I wave my finger in the air and close the window.
“You gave them the finger,” Tom says, laughing.
“Didn’t you want me to?”
“Yeah, but I never imagined you giving anyone the finger.”
“There’s a lot about me you probably would never have imagined.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t bet.”
There’s no mistaking what he means. I turn red again. I cough. Something inside me blooms. Tom grabs my hand and says all mellow, “Everything’ll be okay.”
“With Dylan?”
He shrugs. “Yeah. With Dylan. But mostly with you. Everything will be good. I promise.”
Part of me wants to ask him how he knows, but a bigger part of me, the part that wins out, just wants to believe him. That part holds his hand tighter and doesn’t worry about anything, just focuses on the warmth of it, how much bigger his fingers are than mine, twice the size. His hand feels nothing like Dylan’s hand, which was small like mine, but it feels good, Tom’s hand. It feels really good like branches swaddled with leaves and little duct tape men knowing where to be.