M or F?

  “Don’t you have to meet somebody?”

  “Oh, crap!” I’d completely forgotten about the little lie I’d told him when I came in . . . and now I was half an hour late for my fake date. Suddenly, an intense sense of panic flooded my body—as though I really were late for something. What am I doing here? I thought as I yanked a five-dollar bill out of my purse and slapped it on the table. “For the sodas. I’m so sorry—I’ve gotta go—”

  “What about the carnival?” Sundance asked.

  I hesitated, unsure. I mean, I sort of had a boyfriend. Even though, as Marcus had pointed out, maybe he wasn’t even all that into me. And he had been kind of accidentally cheating on me with my best friend. Not to mention the fact that he might be gay!

  Still, I didn’t want to sound like a slut. I’m not like some people, I thought meanly as an image of Marcus flashed in my brain, who just cheated on people without even thinking about it. “I don’t know. . . .”

  Sundance nodded. “The boyfriend you’re meeting?” he guessed.

  I sighed. “Yeah.”

  He blinked and looked down at the table, then back up at me. “Some guys have all the luck,” he said.

  I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I just said, “I guess.” I felt like I wanted to say something more—but I wasn’t sure what. Finally, I had to give up. “Well, see you.”

  “Yeah.” The corner of Sundance’s mouth tucked into a smile, and he nodded. “I hope so.”

  Eleven

  “Marcus?” Patricia was back at my door again. “What just happened in there?”

  That’s exactly what I was trying to figure out. Ever since Frannie had stormed out of my room, I’d been sitting at my desk with my head in my hands, going over the whole thing. I’d said way too much to Frannie, at least, too much out of anger. It was true that she hadn’t tried to see my side of this, but it was even truer that I had let the whole Jeffrey thing turn into one big lie fest. Now that it had blown up, I couldn’t explain it, even to myself.

  I heard the door open behind me. “Marcus, honey? Can I come in?”

  “I don’t really feel like talking right now,” I told her.

  “Just tell me if you’re okay,” she said.

  “I’m fine. At least, I will be.” I didn’t even know if that was true, but it seemed like the fastest way out of the conversation.

  Patricia came in anyway. She walked over and hugged me from behind. Purple gauzy fabric billowed around me and brushed my arms. At least she was fully clothed this time, in one of her goddess dresses. That’s what Frannie called them—they were Patricia’s version of sweats.

  “Sugar, I know you want to be alone right now, but I can’t just walk away from that hangdog look on your face. Now, why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  I stared straight ahead, grinding a pencil tip into a pad of sticky notes. I was afraid I’d say the wrong thing or cry or throw up if I even opened my mouth.

  “You know,” she said, “Arthur and I had a tiff the other day, and I was so mad. But honey, it was nothing. With a little time, it was all fine.” She gave my shoulders a squeeze. “And I hated to admit it, but he was right. My ass did look big in those jeans.”

  “He said that?” I asked, grateful for the change of topic.

  “Well, not in so many words. But honey, the point is, it only seemed real big at the time. The fight, I mean, not my ass.”

  I knew she was trying to cheer me up, but she couldn’t touch this one. “This is a little different,” I told her.

  “Of course it’s different, hon,” she said, sitting on the bed. “Every relationship is different, but—”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t understand.” As soon as I said it, that little warning siren in my head went off. Where was I going with this?

  “Well,” Patricia said. “Do you want to help me understand?”

  Talk about an opening. If this were Coming Out: The Musical, that would have been the perfect song cue. But it wasn’t a musical. It was just me sitting there, wondering if it was finally time to tell Patricia the truth.

  Frannie isn’t my girlfriend.

  She has a boyfriend.

  I wish he was my boyfriend.

  It was so straightforward in the abstract. Getting it to come out of my mouth was, as usual, a completely different prospect. Once upon a time, I would have shriveled up and died if Patricia asked me outright, Are you gay? Now all I wanted was for her to ask the question. I guess I was ready to say “yes.” I just wasn’t ready to do the long version.

  I looked at her, smiling back at me. I thought about it one more time.

  And I caved.

  “It’s just that I’ve known Frannie longer than you’ve known Arthur,” I flubbed. “It seems really . . . complicated right now. I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it, if that’s okay.”

  Patricia stood up to go. “No problem, hon.”

  I think she was surprised when I got up and hugged her. I’m not so big on initiating physical contact, which is one of the few traits I get from my dad. Patricia tensed just a tiny bit but then squeezed me tight. Her goddess dress had long hanging sleeves, and for a few seconds, I was inside a gauzy purple cocoon. It was a nice place to be.

  “You’re going to be fine,” she whispered in my ear. “You’re going to be just fine.”

  “I know,” I told her, which was another lie.

  When she left me alone in my room, I realized I had to get out. It was too claustrophobic in there, with all my thoughts closing in. I needed a change of scenery, even if it was just a walk around the block. Dad told me to be home by eleven and that was it. I’m sure he’d overheard the fight I had with Frannie, and I’m sure he was glad to let Patricia go in for the follow-up. He did his part by not giving me a hard time about going out at nine-thirty on a Wednesday.

  Somehow, I ended up on a bus and then at the mall. Maybe it was some kind of instinct. The mall was perfect right now, I realized. It was familiar. It was undemanding. And as far as I knew, there wasn’t anyone here who I had recently lied to, fought with, or pretended to be.

  I showed up at Scoops just after closing. The metal grate was halfway down and I ducked inside. Margaret was at the cash register counting the drawer. She still had her uniform on, but I could see she had already touched up her makeup for wherever it was she was going from here.

  “Got a date?” I asked her.

  “Where’d you come from?” she said.

  “Hell.”

  She laughed tentatively, like she wasn’t sure it was the correct response.

  “Yo, Beauregard!” Cal was wiping down the stainless steel, his polyester tunic already unzipped. One of his Phish T-shirts showed through underneath. “What’s going on, man?”

  I went over and sat at the counter. “Nothing.”

  “You out on your own? Where’s Frannie?”

  My first impulse was to say, Why Frannie? Why wouldn’t I be out with some other friends? But Cal pretty much knew I didn’t have any other friends of my own.

  “Whoa.” He stopped what he was doing. The rag in his hand dripped dirty water on the floor. “You guys have a fight?”

  Apparently, I had traded in my regular skull for the see-through kind. “How do you do that?” I asked him.

  “The way you shrugged, man. If you don’t know where Frannie is, something’s wrong. You always know where she is.”

  “People like you are the reason people like me get paranoid,” I said.

  “Nah, man,” he said. “Too much weed is the reason people get paranoid.”

  “So that means you—”

  “Get just the right amount. Recommended daily allowance.” He went back to wiping the counters. “You going home from here? You want a ride?”

  I knew Cal didn’t smoke at work, but still. “No thanks,” I said. “That’s all right.”

  “Buses stop at ten.” He pointed at the Scoops clock. “Looks like you’ve got a choice between me and your Adidas. So
where do you live, anyway?”

  The parking garage was nearly deserted, but Cal’s car would have been easy to spot all the same. It looked like it had some kind of animal-print paint job, between the rust, the patches of primer, and the original brown color, or maybe it was red. I wondered who was older, me or the car.

  “Is this thing safe?” I asked.

  “Define ‘safe,’” he said.

  Since the alternative was walking home, I decided not to think about it. Cal opened the driver’s side door for me.

  “Oh. No thanks,” I said. “I’ll let you do the driving.”

  “I know, man. Passenger door doesn’t work.”

  I crawled over the army blanket he had covering the front seat and found that the inside was both odor- and clutter-free. I’d expected it to smell like some combination of corn chips and/or socks and/or cigarettes and/or bong water. And I was surprised not to see a single butt, fast-food container, or Ziploc bag on the floor. Actually, I was just glad to see floor on the floor. Gaping holes with a view of the concrete below wouldn’t have surprised me either.

  “Not what you thought, right?” Cal said, sliding in. “Everyone always thinks I’m going to be this huge pig, when actually, I’m a pretty tidy guy. Oh, and don’t bother with that.” I was groping around with my right hand. “Seat belt got sucked into the vortex a long time ago. I don’t think it’s coming back.”

  We angled out of the lot and onto the dark streets. It felt good to move. I rolled down my window and let the wind come in over me. Calvin rolled his down too and lit a Camel unfiltered.

  At first, the silence was uncomfortable. We always had plenty to banter about at work, but here, somehow, I wasn’t sure what to say. Cal seemed fine with it. He drove and smoked and looked like he was exactly where he wanted to be. I was jealous of that.

  When he finished his cigarette, he said, “You okay, M. B.? You’ve got sad all over you.”

  Why did everyone in the world want to talk about this except for me?

  “I’m okay,” I said. We were driving along Lake Michigan now, and I watched the water go by. There’s something I love about a lake you can’t see across. It’s a lake, but it’s something more, too, something bigger than its name. They should have another word for what that is.

  “So tell me the story,” he said.

  “About what?” I said, even though I knew.

  “Whatever happened with Frannie.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “You don’t know if you want to talk about it, or you don’t know what happened?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “All right.” He lit another Camel.

  “Frannie trusted me, and I . . .” What did I do? “I kind of went behind her back on something.”

  “Got it,” he said. “So is she permanent mad?”

  “That’s what I don’t know.” I really liked that Cal wasn’t asking me for more details than I wanted to give.

  “Hm,” he said, and then after a long pause, “Was it an accident, what happened?”

  That question hurt, but it was fair. I couldn’t even say sort of. “No. I knew what I was doing.”

  “Do you know why you did it?”

  I looked over at him now. “Where are you coming up with all this?”

  “Don’t know,” he said casually. “I just hang back and see what comes out of my mouth. The way I see it, there’s me, and then there’s my mind. Like I’m the tenant and my mind is the superintendent. I pay the rent, but the super does most of the work. He fixes things up and takes care of stuff for me, and the more I stay out of the way, the better everything goes. You know?”

  “What is that? A metaphor? Simile?”

  “Whatever.”

  I was still trying to sort out what he had just said when he came back with more.

  “It’s interesting.”

  “What is?”

  “I asked if you knew why you did whatever it was, and you changed the subject, and then you didn’t go back.”

  “You lost me again,” I said.

  “You either don’t want to know why you went behind Frannie’s back, or you do know, and you don’t want to face up to it.” He poked his cigarette in my direction. “And that’s when you call the superintendent.”

  “Yeah, I still don’t get that analogy,” I said, or whatever it was.

  “But that’s not really the point, is it, Beauregard?”

  “Are we almost there yet?” I asked, and he laughed. We both knew I was joking and avoiding at the same time. Still, Cal waited for me. “Okay,” I said finally. “Remind me of the question.”

  He said it slowly. “Do you know why you did what you did?”

  The first thing that popped into my head was the same thing I thought of when he’d asked the question the first time. In my mind, I saw Jeffrey’s face. He was smiling. My stomach clenched.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think I do.”

  The next couple of days were all about silence. Frannie not talking to me. Me trying to figure out what to say to Frannie and giving her space to cool off in the meantime. Me staying away from the chat room and from Jeffrey. Dad and Patricia not asking the questions they obviously wanted to ask. Me not telling Patricia what I wanted more and more to tell her. All silence, and nothing golden about it.

  The only real conversation I had at school was with Ethan Schumacher. He popped up over the top of my study carrel in the library one day, where I was hiding out rather than risk the awkwardness of the cafeteria at lunchtime.

  “So, you’re coming to the next GSA meeting, right?” he said. “And I’ll tell you right now, you have to say yes.”

  I stopped myself on the way to “I don’t think so” and thought for a second. It was becoming clear to me that no matter what happened with Frannie, I needed to branch out. The Gay-Straight Alliance was as good a place to start as any, and for that matter, I was really glad that Roaring Brook had a GSA. I’d always taken it for granted and left it on its own. In the course of about two seconds, this whole new appreciation for Ethan Schumacher blossomed inside me.

  “I’ll be there,” I said.

  “Excellent. Bring Frannie if she wants to come.”

  Ouch. “I don’t know if she can make it.”

  “Well, bring anyone,” he said. “The more the merrier. And for that matter, the more guys, the more merrier.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” I said, and then suddenly, “Hey, Ethan? Do you want to go see a movie or something this weekend?”

  He blinked and adjusted his glasses.

  I wondered if he thought I meant a date, which I didn’t.

  “Uh . . .” he said. “I’m kind of overextended these days. But I’ll see you at the meeting. Okay? Cool. Later.” And he beat it out of the library even faster than his usual rabbity pace.

  I had to laugh. It was either that or start crying and never stop. The person who was so far on my back burner that I didn’t even know he was there wasn’t interested in hanging out with me. Whatever the social version of body odor is, I obviously had it. I was going to have to start paying people to get close to me.

  By the end of that week, I couldn’t stand the idea of sitting home alone anymore, especially on a Saturday night, when I should have been video festing with Frannie. So I called myself up and asked if maybe I wanted to go to a movie with me.

  Thank God, I said yes.

  The local theater in Roaring Brook was playing Crap, and Crap II, and Return of the Son of Crap. For anything decent, you had to go into Chicago, but one of Dad’s rules was no riding the El downtown at night by myself. It would have been easy enough to sneak away, but I was still hungover from the latest round of lies. I decided to opt for the dumb-movie/no-lying route.

  I was standing at the counter waiting to buy some Twizzlers when I heard my name.

  “Hey, it’s Marcus of the South!”

  I recognized Glenn’s voice right away, not to mention that annoying Southern fixation
of his. When I turned around, I found him standing there with Astrid, whose neon fuchsia clogs were enough to distract me for a second. Frannie definitely would have had something to say about those.

  “What are you seeing?” Glenn asked.

  I tore my eyes away from Astrid’s shoes and looked at my ticket stub. “Um . . . Head for Hell.”

  “Us too,” Astrid said.

  Glenn nodded. “Yeah, the preview looks terrible and the reviews are like, worst movie of the year, so we figured we had to see it.” I noticed the way he used “we” and wondered if it meant something about him and Astrid. “Is Frannie here?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “She’s . . . not here.” I was little surprised Glenn didn’t know about our fight by now. Maybe he had been too busy with his own love life to obsess over his best friend’s.

  “Come. Sit with us,” Astrid said.

  “No thanks,” I said. “I’m going to sit in the balcony.”

  “Okay, well—” Astrid moved toward the entrance to the theater.

  “No, come on,” Glenn insisted. “Do you really want to sit alone?”

  “It’s fine.” Message to Glenn: Some people actually like to be alone.

  “Why don’t I meet you both up there?” Astrid said, like I hadn’t even spoken, and she ducked off to the ladies’ room.

  “Listen, I don’t want to bogart your date,” I told Glenn. “I’ll sit downstairs.”

  That didn’t work either. Glenn blew a mouthful of air. “Dude, it’s not a date. Don’t worry about it.”

  I wondered if “it’s not a date” was code for “it’s totally a date.” I hoped so, for Frannie’s sake. If Astrid was otherwise occupied, Frannie would have nothing to worry about when it came to Jeffrey. I knew what a good friend would do in this situation. A good friend would confirm whether or not Astrid was truly out of the picture.

  As some kind of penance, I followed Glenn up to the balcony.

  “Third row center okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, perfect.” We sat down with an empty seat in the middle for Astrid, although it made me self-conscious that someone would think I was one of those straight boys who always sit two seats apart in the theater So No One Will Think They’re Homos. Obviously, that was more Glenn’s gig.