Can we talk?
Talk about what, Will? About how you’ve ignored me since … well, since that night? Or about your reaction at the party? Or do you want to discuss why you were basically Jesus at the lake and are now in the running to be the Antichrist? Because as interesting as those conversation topics all sound, I’d rather invite Chipmunk Charlie into my room to watch me sleep every night than hear you explain how little I mean to you.
Every time I took my phone out, my parents started talking in low voices, like I would somehow miss what they were saying from the other side of the rounded booth. I was distracted, but not that distracted. They were talking about Aunt Linda. The topic of the times, these days. I picked up enough snippets to get a feel for it. Not responding to treatment… Changing medication … Demand some better pain meds … Says she doesn’t want to be foggy, but…
My phone buzzed in my hand, and I jumped a full mile. Then I saw who was calling, and my parents’ conversation was officially tuned out.
Will. Will was calling me. Will was out there somewhere, right now, calling me. Thinking about me. Wanting me to pick up.
Maybe Mom was onto something with this “manifesting” theory after all.
I almost answered it, too. Almost. But there was that tingling power again. And honestly, it was more than that. The more I’d been thinking about his message, the more I suspected that he wanted to beg me not to out him. Or to tell me the summer meant nothing, and he’d see me around. Goddamnit, I didn’t want to hear him say that. It’d cheapen the whole thing. As if the second I heard him discount it, it’d erase all that happiness. With everything going on with Aunt Linda, and being away from my friends, and having to deal with Lara, those memories were all I had. I needed them for a little longer.
So I watched my phone in silence until the call ended.
Sorry, Will.
Too busy.
Just like you’ve been.
8
He ambushed me.
I was running more than ten minutes late the next morning. I’d finished up at my locker, mentally rehearsing my excuse to Ms. Hurstenwild, when I got that creepy, ominous feeling. The one that says there’s someone, possibly-slash-probably a serial killer, right behind you. I turned around to find Will all up in my personal space, staring me down like he was a freaking matador or something.
“Didn’t get my text, I guess?” he said in this airy way, like he couldn’t really care. Which would be believable if he wasn’t in the process of cornering me in an empty hallway about it.
I was rattled, but I did my best not to make it obvious. “Pot, kettle,” I said, even airier. So airy it was approaching helium. Okay, maybe it was obvious after all.
He shoved one hand into the pocket of his chinos and stuck one finger of the other in his mouth to chew a cuticle. I got déjà vu seeing that. It’s what he did whenever I caught him off guard in the summer. Cuticle nibbling, faraway look, shifting his weight. He was so familiar. I knew him. Probably better than someone had any business knowing someone they’d only met a few months ago.
He removed his finger from his mouth. Here we go. Considered, thoughtful response time. “You’re right. I’m a total hypocrite.”
Again. Not what I’d expected. And there I’d been bracing myself for a gentle lecture about how he didn’t owe me anything, or how I’d been reading into the summer too much. It was a surprisingly mature response for someone who’d spent a solid two weeks refusing to look me in the eye.
It made me relax a little. “Yup. Do I get an explanation, or … ?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk about.”
“Well, I’m here. So, let’s talk, I guess.”
We faced each other down. Will’s finger had wandered into his mouth again. Procrastinator. Ms. Hurstenwild was going to genuinely murder me.
I closed my locker and started walking backward. “Look, Will, if you don’t have anything to—”
At that moment, two things happened.
A little farther down the hall, a door opened, and a student stepped halfway out of the classroom. Only the back of the head was visible—the student had paused to speak to the teacher on the way out—but the close-trimmed Afro and black-and-white letterman jacket looked a lot like it belonged to Will’s friend Matt.
Lo and behold, I was right on the money with that one. With a small yelp, Will lunged forward, opened a nearby door, and shoved me into the room.
Before I could get my bearings, Will had joined me and slammed the door closed, plunging us into darkness. I tried to back away and stepped right into what felt like a mop bucket. Or at least, it was a mop bucket, I figured from the crunch of snapping plastic. I shot a hand out to steady myself and smacked straight into a shelf of some sort. A bunch of unidentified items clattered onto the concrete floor—and onto my feet. I swore in pain as a particularly heavy bottle all but shattered my toes. Motherfucker.
“Jesus Christ, Ollie, hold still,” Will’s voice hissed through the darkness.
“What are you doing? Is this an assault? Should I scream?”
“I didn’t want Matt to see us.”
“Ah. Getting rid of witnesses. So it is an assault?”
“Come on, Ollie, be serious.”
I kind of was, to be honest. “And why does it matter if Matt sees us?”
Even though I couldn’t see a thing, my third eye clearly made out some cuticle-chewing action. “Do you have to ask?”
And what the hell was that supposed to mean? “Uh, given that I did ask … yes?”
A long pause. Long pauses are never good. One day, I would write a thesis on the history of long pauses, and the hurt feelings that followed them 200 percent of the time. This was just like the time in tenth grade, when I shaved one side of my head and asked Ryan how it looked at school the next day. Except this long pause was lasting longer, and oh God, this was going to really stab, wasn’t it? Fuck long pauses. Motion to ban them from social interactions, please.
“Well … you know …”
Nope. But I was about to, wasn’t I?
“Like … most of the school has figured out you’re gay.”
“Oh. Interesting. I haven’t met most of the school, so don’t know how they managed that.”
“Yeah, but …”
I knew what he was getting at. It was fine. Whatever. It’s not like it was a state secret or anything. And hey, if people guessed, it saved me having to have a discussion about my sexual preferences with people who didn’t even know if I preferred ham or peanut butter on my sandwiches. For reference, the answer was, “both, simultaneously.”
“And so what?” I asked. “So what if they know I’m gay? Why, exactly, does that mean you can’t be seen with me? Am I contagious? Because I guess that’d explain a lot.” As far as explanations went, that’d win an award for creativity. Sorry, I stopped texting you because my precise strain of “gay” was only temporary. Kind of like salmonella.
Will’s sigh was particularly loud and scathing in the small space. Claustrophobia does that. “The guys are being dicks about it. It’s like a running joke. They keep trying to ‘set each other up’ with you at lunch.”