Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend

Em wiggles her eyebrows. “Kinky.”

  Someone in a minivan honks at her because she’s cut them off and she screams at them, “Hey! No honking! We don’t honk at people in Maine!”

  I check out their license. “They’re from Connecticut.”

  “They should know better,” she says, mad now. Then she forgets, races around the schoolhouse corner, and smiles. “You got over Dylan fast.”

  I gulp and watch the angry New Yorkers in front of us flail their arms around. “I know. I feel guilty.”

  “Don’t. He got over you.”

  I shrug. I tell her the rest about the Y and about Mimi and Tom.

  “Damn, you’ve had a week. Your voice is better today,” she says after I’m done and turns on the radio.

  “Yeah.” I hadn’t noticed, but it’s perfect now. “Do you think it’s bad that I got over Dylan so quick?”

  “No!” She gives me big eyes. “I do not! You need to live, girl.”

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “Yeah!” she shouts it.

  I shout it back. “Yeah!”

  “You know, if you think about it, you and Tom were always meant to be together. He gave you that ILOVEU ring in first grade or something. Remember? And then Mimi borrowed it and you let her and then she lost it.” Em turns onto another road.

  I remember. Mimi’s always wanted what’s mine. Dylan’s always wanted to be who he really is. Tom’s always wanted me. And what have I always wanted?

  We pass the blueberry barrens. There’s a dusting of frost covering the boulders, the short bushes making it all more magical than barren, or maybe the barrenness is magical.

  Em presses the CD button. “You want to sing?”

  “Yeah.”

  We sing the cheesy musical music. Then Emily changes the CD. “That’s Dylan music. That’s not your music. Let’s listen to some Dar Williams.”

  “Sing to folk stuff?” I say.

  “Yeah. Sound good?”

  The turned-up volume of guitars and Dar Williams’s sweet voice blares through her speakers. Em snaps a picture of me singing. I wish I had Gabriel, my guitar. I take out the little duct tape one in my purse and pretend to play it. Em laughs and takes another picture. She’s so into it, she almost rear-ends the New York minivan. We just laugh and turn up the music.

  “Yeah,” I yell. “Sounds good.”

  Then we start to sing. My voice sounds low and full of things. My voice sounds like me, not a show-tune voice, but a folk voice, like there should be guitars playing with it. And the thing is, I like it. I like it. It’s good.

  Dylan waits by my long metal locker, number 238 for anyone interested, and leans his body against it, just like he used to. I swallow. Maybe I imagined everything. Maybe it was all a big, rotten joke. But Dylan’s shaking hands and sad dog eyes tell me it’s true—all of it. All of it. My heart caves in, but my feet keep moving on automatic pilot.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” he says and tilts his head just a little bit to the right. It’s so sad that I reach out, pull him to me and hug him, while people walk around us. People turn and stare. People don’t look on purpose, but everybody, everybody sees.

  He lets go first and says, wiping at his eye with the back of his hand, “I read your note.”

  I nod.

  His voice cracks. “Thanks. It meant a lot to me. You mean a lot to me.”

  “Yeah,” I swipe at a tear that’s escaped out his eye and follows the contours of his cheek, racing for his chin. “You mean a lot to me too.”

  He swallows big, nods, moves aside so I can put my stuff in my locker. He helps me pull off my coat. I hang it up, grab my things, try to figure out what to say. “You know Eddie Caron is threatening to beat you up?”

  He shrugs. “He’s always threatening to beat someone up.”

  “I wouldn’t be talking about beating people up. You nailed Tom last night.”

  Dylan smiles. “Gay guys can hit too, you know.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Let’s-Break-the-Stereotype.”

  Em walks by and mouths, “You okay?” I nod.

  “You know, Eddie Caron used to be nice.”

  Dylan barks. “When was that?”

  “When we were little,” I say, remembering Eddie building castles in the dirt at the edge of the road, scaring off the third-grade school bus bullies on our first day of kindergarten.

  Dylan shifts his weight back against a locker, looking more casual than he has all week, and Anna walks by giving us a thumbs-up sign like she’s proud of us just for talking. We both give a little wave back and then Dylan says, “You’re always trying to see the good in everybody, Belle. Sometimes there’s no good to see.”

  I nod. The air between us is soft and hard, easy and difficult. I can taste the worry in it. “I heard you and Bob were going to the dance.”

  “Yeah.” He shifts his weight on his feet, pushes a hand through that golden hair, my golden boy, my Dylan. “You okay with that?”

  I step back. My eyes search his. My hands don’t tingle. But my heart leaps with love.

  “Yeah,” I say because I am.

  “Where’s Gabriel?”

  “I haven’t been playing her,” I pause and watch Em fumble around, probably looking for her camera. “Not since we broke up.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “I know.” I smile and shrug because it is stupid, to give up something that’s important to me so easily. “Just call me stupid.”

  Then all of a sudden, Dylan smiles and he’s back, all golden, all glowing, and says, “You’re my best friend, Belle.”

  I scunch up my nose at him. He used to call that move the Belle Bunny Nose. “Yeah, you’re mine, too. But I’m really pissed at you about the Mimi thing.”

  “That was stupid.”

  “Yeah, it was. You lied to me a lot you know, about Mimi, about Bob,” I say, but the truth is it doesn’t hurt at all right now, all those lies.

  “You are a twerp,” I tease and then I punch him in the shoulder. He punches me back. I punch him again, harder. He rubs his arm and says, “Can you help me with my economics homework sometime?”

  I shake my head at him and smile. “You’re such a user.”

  He laughs. “I know.”

  The his face turns serious. “I was attracted to you, you know.”

  I smile. “I know.”

  “You know . . . in the sexual way.”

  I nod, and feel my cheeks flame red. “But you were gay.”

  He nods. “I think I made myself not gay somehow, but it wasn’t real. I mean . . . I don’t mean that you aren’t attractive.”

  He laughs.

  “But I like guys better,” he finishes. He looks up toward the ceiling like he wants to hide in the water stains. His eyes shift back down to me. He bites his lip and he smiles.

  “You like boys a lot better,” I say and he nods and grabs me into a hug.

  I let him. I hug him back and it feels good, not tingling good, but good. But what feels the best is how I no longer hurt.

  “I’m not sure Bob is good enough for you,” I say.

  He glares at me. “And what about Tom? Like he’s good enough?”

  I bite my lip. The bell rings. “Maybe we shouldn’t go there, Slugger.”

  He hustles me off away from the lockers and down the hall, like he used to when we were going out, only it feels like a friend kind of hustle, like Emily. “Probably.”

  Em takes a picture of us, smiling at each other like two trees in the middle of summer, sharing the secret of the wind. Then she runs off to find Shawn.

  After Dylan’s scooted into economics and I’m walking to law class I hear it again, the nasty whisper hate of it, bouncing past Kara Raymond’s shoulders a
nd latching itself to me.

  “Fag hag.”

  I whirl around and see her. Mimi. The girl Dylan didn’t choose when he chose me. Or maybe he did. What do I know? I stomp over to her. She’s frozen there with her little miniskirt stretched across the bottom circles of her round body. She’s frozen there, staring, staring, staring at me out of her too-much-eye-shadow eyes and her sad hair. She’s frozen there, staring, staring, staring with hate smashing out of her pores, out of her clothes, out of her hair.

  I stop two inches from her. My hands ball into fists. Sebastian Puller, an evil junior boy who is always getting suspended, yells, “Cat fight.”

  Mimi would step back, I know, but she’s frozen. She smells like her mother’s cigarettes. Her mother smokes. Whenever I went over to play, I’d smell like it, too.

  “Mimi,” I say. “You need to get a life.”

  Her eyes squint at me. But she does it again. She says it again, spits it out.

  “Fag hag.”

  Everyone in the circle around us pulls in their breaths, but I breathe out and laugh. I laugh because it’s too stupid, so stupid really. Kara Raymond giggles too and then turns self-righteous and is a second away from ripping into Mimi, but I beat her to it.

  “What, Mimi? I’m a fag hag because I used to go out with Dylan, who you, obviously, are still in love with? I’m a fag hag because I don’t care if someone’s gay, I’m still friends with him. Is that what’s wrong? What? Should I be dragging him behind a pickup truck or dropping him off a bridge? Is that what you think? Jesus. Dylan’s a way better person than you’ll ever be, Mimi. And he’s my friend. Yeah, my friend and if that makes me a goddamn fag hag then I don’t give a shit!”

  The second bell rings. The late bell. Then Mimi spits it out at me, “You’re so fucking deluded, Belle. You think everybody’s all good all the time, but they aren’t. You make everybody into song lyrics and heroes, but nobody’s good. Nobody is.”

  “Shut up, Mimi. Don’t be such a bitch!” Kara Raymond yells, trying to come to my rescue, but I don’t need a rescue, I don’t think.

  “That’s crap,” I say.

  She arches an eyebrow. “Oh, right? Like your little gay boyfriend wasn’t all a big fake. Did you know he kissed me right when you guys first started going out? Did you know that?”

  I sigh out my words, “Yeah, I know that.”

  She pauses for a second and then she starts in again. “And I bet you think Tom’s a handsome prince too, huh? Well, he’s not. He’s a sucky kisser. Not like you’ll ever know that, because you only like gay boys, right? He’s liked you for fucking ever and you never even looked his way, not until Dylan dumped you.”

  My hand shakes. Kara starts charging at Mimi again but I hold her back. “Shut up, Mimi.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to hear about how delusional you are?”

  I let go of Kara and she surges forward with her warrior voice, “Shut the hell up, Mimi, like you and your push-up bras aren’t delusional? Belle is . . .”

  But I don’t hear her because I’ve whirled around and am walking away. I’m walking away to my law class and I don’t care. I don’t care about Mimi Cote or evil Sebastian Puller or vigilant Kara Raymond or all the people watching. I don’t care about being a fag hag or delusional or that I just swore in the middle of school and if a teacher finds out I’ll get the first detention in my life. I don’t care about anything except trying to make the staccato beat of my heart slow down.

  “Dyke!”

  I whirl around and there’s Mimi Cote still standing in the middle of the hallway, her middle finger sticking up at me.

  Kara starts laughing. “Dyke? Is that all you can come up with Mimi? Jesus, Belle’s the most pathetically hetero girl in the school. She’s gone from Dylan to Tom in like two days or something. God.”

  “Four days,” I shout down the hall smiling. “Four days if you count Saturday. Three if you don’t.”

  She stares at me and then I add, “And he is too a good kisser. He’s a phenomenal kisser!”

  Shawn has come down the hall and is standing beside me and he lets out a big cowboy YEEHAW! Then he starts clapping. Kara claps too and some other people join in. Nobody’s even pretending to hurry off to class because the Mimi-Belle showdown is too worthy, like having reality TV in the hallway, I guess.

  “You’re a slut then,” Mimi spits out, but it’s too late to mean anything. She’s too far gone.

  Shawn slaps me five. I kind of miss his hand because I am not the best high-five hand slapper, but it’s still good.

  And then I laugh too, because it’s so sad really. I laugh because Kara is so right and it’s ridiculous how hormone-ruled I am. I laugh because Mimi is such a pathetic villain, unoriginal, boring. And the crazy thing is back in eighth grade when we were cheerleaders that stuff she said would have torn me apart. My world would have ended right there.

  Now?

  Now I’ve got a gay ex-boyfriend, a rebound relationship, and a semi-psycho next-door neighbor who watches my bedroom window at night.

  But I will not be a Mallory about this. I will just move on. I mean, once I get home and pick up Gabriel, I could probably write a really good song about all of this. That happy little thought makes me bebop down the hallway, happier than I have any right to be.

  At lunch, Emily and I abandon our normal table and sit with the soccer boys. Tom sits across from me and stretches his legs out. He watches me drink my Postum and chomps into his pizza slice.

  “Heard you had a little spat with Mimi Cote.” He raises one eyebrow. How does he do that?

  “Yeah.”

  I put my mug up to my mouth so I don’t have to talk about it, but Emily, who has been telling Shawn all about the outfit she’s wearing to the dance, stops mid-sentence and barks, “What?”

  “Mimi’s been calling me a fag hag,” I explain. “So, I told her to stop.”

  Emily’s nostrils flare the way my mom’s do when she’s mad. “That bitch! I’ll kill her.”

  Shawn starts laughing and clamps his hand over Emily’s mouth. “Calm down, mighty one. Belle’s got it under control, don’t you, Belle?”

  “Yeah,” I answer. Tom smiles at me and shakes his head. “I’ve got it under control.”

  End of conversation, right? Wrong.

  “She called you a dyke, too. Right?” Tom says. A slow smile creeps across his face. I glare at him, because we both know he’s just trying to get Em riled up, which the whole town knows doesn’t take much.

  Emily licks Shawn’s hand to get him to move it. He does, completely grossed out, and wipes it on his thigh. Emily pays no attention, she’s too busy yelling, “She did what?”

  I sip my Postum. “She called me a dyke.”

  Emily rants for a minute, while the rest of us laugh at her. She finally catches on. “What? What? Don’t you even care?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. It’s sad. She’s sad, really.”

  Emily shakes her head. “Well, I think she’s a bitch.”

  “A sad bitch,” I agree.

  “You’re not, are you?” Shawn asks me, eyes twinkling.

  “What?”

  “Gay?”

  Emily throws down her bagel. “Jesus! How stupid are you?”

  She leaps up from the table and stomps off toward the lunch line. Shawn smiles and saunters after her. Tom and I watch them argue. Em keeps pointing at him. Shawn keeps opening his arms up like he’s surrendering or expecting a hug, only he keeps stepping backwards.

  “They’re already fighting,” I say. “They’re barely going out.”

  “Must be love,” Tom says.

  He holds up his pizza slice. “Want some?”

  I shake my head.

  “So are you?” He raises that eyebrow again.

 
I kick him under the table and he grabs my foot between his metal-strong calves, keeps it there. My cheeks flame. My leg feels like it’s on fire, but it’s a good, good fire. I glare at him.

  “Nope,” he smiles. “I’d say not.”

  He keeps my foot there for all of lunch. I pretend like I want to get away, but I don’t. I don’t want to at all.

  Our fetal pig’s flesh bears the marks of knives and invasions. Em snaps a picture.

  “God, she’s gross,” she says.

  “She’s sad, really,” I say, trying to move some skin around to make her look whole again, but the truth is, she never will be. “What do they do with them, when we’re done?”

  Em shrugs. Her lip quivers. “Throw them away?”

  “I don’t want them to throw Pamela away in some dumpster somewhere,” I say.

  “I want to remember her.”

  Em nods, shows me her camera. “That’s why I took the pictures. I’ll download them and give you one, okay?”

  Em took a lot of pictures of Dylan and me. Someday I’ll look at them again, and try to figure everything out, but not now, not yet. Pamela the Fetal Pig? Her picture I can handle.

  I smile at her, my Emily friend, and I nod. “Yeah, I’d like that. You and Shawn okay?”

  She turns the camera at herself and snaps away. “Yeah. But sometimes he’s so dumb. He’s lucky he’s cute.”

  She puts the camera down. Mr. Zeki’s gabbing to the cute student teacher in the front of the class and paying no attention to us. Em says, “What should we do about Mimi?”

  “Mimi? Nothing.”

  Em does not like this answer. She drums her fingers against the lab table and waits.

  “We could name our next fetal pig after her?”

  Em stares down at the pathetic Pamela. “That is a damn good idea.”

  In German, Tom raises his eyebrows at me when I come into class. I blush and yank out my textbook, which we never use. The trees outside have lost all their leaves now. It’s gray and claustrophobic out there. Another Maine almost-winter day.