M or F?

  It was a year and a half earlier. I was one of those kids no one ever wants to be, the ones who get moved across the country just days before starting high school. In my case, it was from Athens, Georgia, to Roaring Brook, Illinois, and it felt something like this:

  Welcome to your new life, Marcus. This is a school full of people who all know each other. You don’t know any of them. They all already have enough friends, thank you very much. Oh, and you’re queer. Ready? Go.

  Forget the school; I didn’t know a single person in the whole state except my grandmother and father, who’d moved here with me. Not to mention that I was barely just starting to figure out who I was. I’d basically come out to myself that summer, so it was a less than optimal time to not have anyone to talk to, but there it was, and there I was. And then there she was.

  Frannie rescued me on the second day of school. She just struck up a conversation in the cafeteria line. I think it was the first time anyone at that school said something to me that wasn’t a question, as in, Where you from? Do you have the answer to the equation? You want fries, honey?

  “Don’t take the fries.” She whispered it at my shoulder, like some kind of spy. I guess she was trying to be polite to the cafeteria lady, who at least called me honey.

  I looked at the floor, playing it cool because she was whispering to me but also kind of excited because someone was talking to me. I saw a pair of vintage buffalo sandals and these two petticoats she was wearing as a skirt, and I thought, Cool.

  “Do you have any little boxes of cereal instead?” I asked the cafeteria lady. When I turned away with my Frosted Flakes in hand, Frannie was standing there waiting for me. I liked her style right away—she wasn’t anyone’s clone, but she wasn’t trying too hard, either. This girl had taste. It wasn’t like anyone else’s taste, but it worked. And she had this very friendly face, too—the kind that can stare at you without making you mad or uncomfortable.

  “I don’t really like fries, anyway,” I said to her. “But thanks for the heads-up.”

  “Frannie Falconer.” She said it just like that, which could have been weird but wasn’t. I responded in kind.

  “Marcus Beauregard.”

  “Beauregard?” Unlike most people, she got her mistake right away. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  Usually, everyone repeats my name like I picked it out myself or something. There’s no good answer you can give to the question, “Beauregard?” I didn’t have to say anything; she just got it. It was the first conversation we ever had without actually having it. The first of many yet to come.

  Maybe it was fate. Or maybe our mothers got radiated by the same alien experiment when they were pregnant with us. Or it was a long-lost-twins-switched-at-birth kind of thing. Whatever it was, we snicked together like two refrigerator magnets that day, and no one’s looked back since.

  Flash forward and Frannie’s dropping me off at home a year and a half later.

  “Tomorrow, you’re going to talk to him,” I told her as I got out of the car. I still hadn’t managed to get anywhere with her on the Jeffrey thing.

  “Whatever. I’ll pick you up after dinner.” We were going to study for a quiz later at her house, which was way more comfortable than mine and always had better snacks.

  “I’m serious!” I yelled. She pretended not to hear and drove away.

  Inside my own house, I could hear my grandmother singing in the shower, something about yellow roses. I snarfed some peanuts from the freezer, where my father kept them, and went back to my room. A few minutes later, she knock-knock-knocked. Always three.

  “Marcus? You home?”

  “Come on in, Patricia.”

  I’ve never called her grandma in my life. Patricia Beauregard, my father’s mother, is what some people might call “young at heart” and what other people might call “crazy.” Anyone who’s ever seen or read The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood will have some idea of the kind of person she is: a blender full of proper Southern debutante, modern older woman, and ex-hippie.

  She leaned into my room far enough to show the towel-turban on her head and one bra-strapped shoulder. “Hey, sugar, how you doing?”

  “Fine,” I said, trying not to look. I love the woman, but I love her more when she’s dressed.

  “I’m leaving soon. You and your dad can order a pizza. I already made a salad and some iced tea. That gonna be okay for you?”

  “Sure, thanks.”

  Patricia eyeballed me, squinting without her glasses. “You got plans tonight?”

  “Just studying at Frannie’s.”

  She made this mouth-clicking sound of hers. “You two are so cute together. You ought to have her over here more often. She’s welcome anytime.”

  “I know. Thanks.”

  Tidy doesn’t exactly run in our family, and the furniture’s about as old as I am. Patricia paid for half of everything, so I didn’t want to tell her how uncomfortable our house was if you weren’t used to living in it. I let it slide, along with everything else—like the fact that she thought Frannie was my girlfriend.

  In the year and a half since we’d moved here, and more specifically, since I’d started thinking of myself as gay, I had shared that piece of information with my father, with Frannie, and with anyone else at school who cared to know. The one person I hadn’t come out to was Patricia.

  Coming out to Dad had been amazingly stress-free. He was fine about it; bland is probably a better word. I really don’t think it bothered him that much, although he can be hard to read. Either way, telling him wasn’t a big deal. For some reason, though, Patricia felt like another matter. I just couldn’t bring myself to change her idea of who I was. She’d caught me lying once about some candy I’d stolen from the grocery store and I always remembered how disappointed she seemed in me and how terrible that disappointment made me feel. This was a completely different kind of lie, but the risk felt that much bigger. Now, even though I’d never said so, Frannie was my girlfriend where Patricia was concerned, and I was trapped in this stupid game of charades I couldn’t stop playing.

  Dad and I talked about it later, after he came home.

  “If you want me to tell her for you,” he said, “I will, but—”

  “No,” I said. “Never mind. Thanks.”

  The only thing that ever changed in this conversation was the amount of time it took me to come back to the same conclusion: I wanted to tell Patricia myself. Someday. Maybe on her deathbed, if I could put it off that long.

  “What is a quark?” Dad said to the TV.

  We were parked in front of Jeopardy, the closest thing he and I had to father-son bonding. I watched it with him all the time and usually held my own, too. Dad’s some kind of trivia genius, but I can get him on pop culture and geography. He’s got science and history buckled down. Everything else is up for grabs.

  His job is something with computers and engineering and plastic packaging. One of these days, I’m going to have to find out what it is, exactly. Other than Jeopardy, he and I don’t have a whole lot in common. The same is true between him and my grandmother. If Patricia is mocha almond fudge swirl on a sugar cone, then Dad (whose name is Patrick, after her) is a dish of vanilla. I’m somewhere in between.

  It’s hard to say which side of the fence all my chromosomes fall to. I never knew my mom. She took off before I can remember, which of course opens the door to all kinds of homophobic pop psychology about absent mothers and gay sons. I can’t speak for anyone else, but for myself, slap a BORN GAY sticker on my chest and move on. End of discussion.

  “What is Papua, New Guinea?” Dad said.

  I shoved him with my shoulder. “I knew that one.”

  “You’re too slow on the buzzer,” he said. He’s more competitive than most people would guess.

  The phone rang a single time. That was Frannie’s signal that she was about a block away. I stood up and grabbed my backpack, then heard her honk out front.

  “See you, Dad. Gotta go.”
r />   “Who is Thurgood Marshall say hi to Frannie for me and be home by eleven, please.”

  “No prob,” I said. Then I headed out the front door to go spend the rest of the evening with a normal family.

  Two

  “So, did you talk to him yet?”

  These were Marcus’s first words as he slid into Chirpy’s passenger seat when I picked him up for our quiz study session. He hadn’t even closed the door yet. (Chirpy, by the way, is my car—a bright green Beetle, which has a particularly fluty alarm. It’s kind of like driving a cricket. You know—only bigger.)

  So, anyway, there we were. It had been exactly five hours and forty-three minutes since I had told Marcus about my crush, and he was already demanding to know whether I had gone for it.

  “Shh!” I whispered. “Close the door. There’s a major update. I’ll tell you the whole story.”

  He closed the door. “What? What? What’s the story?” His hazel eyes were all wide. He’s so cute when he’s gullible.

  “I haven’t talked to him yet,” I said. Then I pulled away from the curb.

  “Um, that story lacks a little something.” Marcus drummed his fingers against the window.

  “Give me a break,” I told Marcus. I mean, school was over. What did he think I was going to do? Go over to Jeffrey’s house dressed in a sheet of Saran Wrap and ask him if he wanted to “cook something up”?

  “If I give you a break, this is going to end up like the talent show.” Marcus fiddled with the radio, like he always does. I can’t program anything, so Marcus is in charge of tech support—like the station buttons on the radio, my alarm clock CD player, and creating shortcuts on my computer desktop. Now he pressed a button and Fabulous Condescension blasted through the car—broadcasting from one of the indie stations in Chicago.

  “Marcus—how could I have won the talent show? I don’t have any talent!”

  “I just didn’t want that Glenn guy to win it again. Besides, you have plenty of talent.”

  “Look, I know you think that me giving Mr. Welton and Miss Snead style makeovers onstage would have blown everyone away. But I’m telling you, they never would have gone for it.” I sighed as I turned into my family’s gated community. I can never figure out if the bars and walls are supposed to keep people out or keep people in—like maybe families live here because they’re afraid that all of these enormous houses built from the same five floor plans might make their children go crazy and try to storm out in a mass exodus of individuality.

  Marcus jabbed at the radio, changing the station. Reggae poured from the speakers. “Look, it’s not just the talent show.” Jab—disco. “It’s the art contest.” Jab—NPR. “It’s the poetry magazine.” Jab—electronica. “It’s Derek Johannsen—”

  “I thought you said that Derek was a drug dealer waiting to happen.”

  “He’s just an analogy!” Jab—eighties Madonna. Marcus let the radio rest. “An analogy of your unwillingness to go for it.”

  I pressed my lips together. I really hate it when I can’t think of a good comeback. But I knew that Marcus was right.

  The truth was, I wanted to talk to Jeffrey. I really did. I mean, I’ve liked a lot of guys before. Marcus always teases me about my Hottie of the Minute. But the guys I usually like always turn out to be losers. Like Ronald McHauser. And Derek. And Colin Jeffers—who was tossed out of school for trying to steal one of the computers from the lab. And Randy Neel—who I thought was totally hot until he shocked everyone by becoming a father last semester . . . to two babies by different mothers, both of whom were in my gym class. And I’m not even going to get into Andy Gardener, Felix Rack, and Damien Barbieri. Let’s just say that they’re all better forgotten.

  But it wasn’t until Drew Tiller that I decided I needed to get over myself. Jenn and Belina warned me that Drew had a reputation as a nut job, but I didn’t listen to them. I thought he was the hottest guy on earth, and Marcus agreed, even though he said that he thought Drew was really only good for “viewing purposes.” Anyway, so two months ago, I went to a party with my girls and had a drink or two and started chatting up Drew. It turned out that he had a dog—a beagle—and he was crazy about it. I love dogs, so we talked about that for a while. The conversation was going well until someone turned up the stereo.

  “Whoa,” I said to Drew, “this music just got really loud.”

  “What?” Drew frowned. “I can’t really hear you; this music is too loud.”

  “Is this better?” I shouted.

  “Hold on a second,” Drew said. Then he picked up a baseball bat that was lying in a corner of the rec room, walked calmly over to the stereo, and smashed the crap out of it.

  That was pretty much the end of the party.

  “I told you that boy was crazy,” Belina said as I drove her home later that night.

  I sighed.

  “Is Drew on the baseball team?” Jenn asked suddenly.

  Belina flashed her a look.

  “It’s just that he had a really good swing . . .” Jenn explained.

  “Drew has been kicked off of every sports team at RBH.” This was Belina’s boyfriend, Keith, who was sitting beside her in Chirpy’s backseat. “He’s not for you, Frannie, trust me.”

  “You should be glad this happened,” Belina went on. “Now you don’t have to waste any more time on that kind of crazy.”

  I glanced at Belina in the rearview mirror just in time to see her snuggle closer to Keith. I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help smiling a little. It’s funny—taken on their own, Belina and Keith are both kind of intimidating smart-asses. But when they’re together, it’s like something melts. It’s sweet—and not in a vomitous way, either. Just in a nice way.

  “Belina, you were right,” I said. “You too, Keith. And I think the one thing we’ve all learned tonight is that my taste in guys totally sucks.”

  Nobody said anything after that. What was there to say?

  Mercifully, Marcus has never to this day teased me about that incident with Drew. I think he realizes that it was actually pretty scary.

  Anyway, since then, I’ve been on the lookout for a different kind of hot guy. I decided that I needed someone sweet and thoughtful . . . you know, in addition to being really cute. And it all came together for me one day when Jeffrey Osborne read this poem in an all-school assembly. The poem was called “The Candle and the Flame,” and Jeffrey read it in this beautiful, calm, deep voice. And I started thinking . . . wow. I mean, I knew Jeffrey a little bit from last year’s play. I’d been the wardrobe mistress, and he’d had about two lines, so we hadn’t actually bonded much, although I was sure he knew who I was. But when I heard him read that poem, things shifted for me. I thought, Here’s a guy who reads poetry. He cares about animals. He’s smart. He’s sweet. He looked out at the audience with those earnest blue eyes and said, “I hope you’ll all consider signing the Amnesty International petition.” His eyes locked onto mine for a second, and I felt like he was looking through my skull and into my soul. And that was when I knew. He was The One.

  But ever since then, I’d been lying low. Here was the problem—how could I let him know that I was The One for him? Talk about pressure! I wanted the first time I talked to him to be perfect. I wanted to come up with something witty and clever—yet sensitive—that would blow him away. I knew that Marcus was right, that this wasn’t brain surgery and I should just say hi . . . but somehow, it just seemed like hi wasn’t going to cut it.

  Marcus sighed. “Look, Frannie, just say hello to the guy. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Nothing but my dignity.”

  “Okay, so you don’t have much to lose.”

  “Gee, Marcus, I wonder why I kept this a secret from you. What possible reason could I have had for not telling you about my crush on Jeffrey Osborne?” I shook my head. “I’m drawing a blank!”

  “I’m just trying to be helpful,” Marcus huffed.

  He actually sounded kind of hurt, so I put the brakes on the sar
casm and sighed. “I know. You’re right—I’ll do better.”

  “Good.” Marcus brightened.

  Okay, I feel the need to interject a little something here. I love Marcus. He’s like my queer guy brain twin. But sometimes he can be relentless—like a dog with a bone. He’ll gnaw and gnaw and grr! gnaw some more. Talk to Jeffrey, talk to Jeffrey—I, Marcus Beauregard, command you to talk to Jeffrey!

  On the other hand, I totally knew why he was fixated. Marcus doesn’t have a boyfriend. And it isn’t going to be easy for him to get one, either. Boring Brook, Illinois, isn’t exactly a mecca for gay pride—especially when you’re in high school. So instead, Marcus wants me to have a boyfriend so that he can go out on vicarious dates, hear vicarious gossip, spend time putting together vicarious outfits, blahbie, blahbie, blah. I mean, when I had that one stupid date with Ronald, Marcus was all over it. He wanted all the pregame drama and the postgame wrap-up, even though he thought that Ronald was basically something ripped out of a display at the Museum of Natural History.

  “Home sweet home,” Marcus said happily as we pulled up in front of my house.

  “Oy.” I grabbed my green fake-fur messenger bag (made it myself to match my car. Not that my car has fur . . .) and we walked into the kitchen through the back door. My parents were sitting at the table with my sister, Laura, and her boyfriend of three years, What’s-his-name. The four of them looked like they were on a double date.

  “Frannie, you’re home!” My mom grinned at me. “Marcus! Do you two want to join us for a snack?” There was a big plate of my mom’s double-fudge brownies in the middle of the table. I swear, my mother thinks she’s Betty Crocker. Mom works full time for an interior design firm, but she’s also the best housekeeper I’ve ever met—she makes Martha Stewart look like a lazy slob. Mom’s favorite hobby is Swiffering. I looked up at the kitchen clock. It was ten past seven, which meant that Mom had whipped up these brownies the minute she got home.

  It’s borderline psychotic, if you ask me.