After a while, I was tired of my mother’s friends’ question, “Ari, when did you turn into a man?” I was a good sport about it, but about the fifth time I heard that question, the wiseass in me wanted to say, Yesterday. Yes, I think it was yesterday. I woke up and looked into the mirror, and there I was, a man! I was getting a little bored of listening to conversations of people who were talking about other people—in a nice way—I didn’t know. I piled some food on a paper plate, and I was looking for a place to sit where I could make myself invisible. That’s when Mrs. Ortega came up to me.
“Cassandra’s out on the patio. Maybe she could use some company.” I was thinking that Cassandra probably could use some company, but I thought that she’d prefer the company of a rat—even a really big rat, even a really big rat that was disease-infested, to being in my presence. I felt like I was going into battle with a rifle that wasn’t loaded—something of a suicide mission. Mrs. Ortega couldn’t help but see the look on my face. “Ari, I know you two don’t like each other very much. But I hate to see her out there all alone. And maybe you’ll distract her from all that sadness.”
“What if she hits me?” I said. God, I really said that.
At least I made Mrs. Ortega laugh. “If she hits you, I’ll pay for your medical bills.” She was still laughing—and making someone laugh was better than making someone cry. She gently pointed me in the direction of the back door.
I stepped out onto the patio, which was more like an outdoor living room, with plants and furniture and lamps. I saw Cassandra sitting there. She resembled a character in a tragic novel, a solitary figure who had been condemned to live in a sea of sadness.
There was a chair with cushions that looked pretty comfortable next to the outdoor couch where Cassandra was sitting. She was intimidatingly beautiful. She had hazel eyes that could stare you down and make you feel like a cucaracha crawling around in her house and she was about to step on you and rid you of your miserable life. “Mind if I sit?”
She came back from wherever she was and gave me that look, the one I just described. “What. The. Hell. Are. YOU. Doing here?”
“I tagged along with my parents.”
“Well, when you’re as friendless as you are, I guess you have to settle for hanging out with your parents.”
“I like hanging out with my parents. They’re smart and they’re interesting—which is more than I can say about most of the assholes that go to Austin High School.”
“Well, aren’t you one of those assholes? I guess not all assholes like one another.” She may have been a superior being—but that was no reason to make other people feel like they should apologize for breathing. “What’s that smug look on your face?”
“I should have just acknowledged the fact that you hate me—and left it at that.”
“You want me to apologize for hating you?”
“You don’t owe me any apology. And I don’t owe you one either.”
She looked away from me. It seemed like a studied pose to me. And I felt as though she was something of an actress. Which didn’t make me believe that what she felt about me wasn’t real. It was real as hell.
“You’re a little boy. I don’t like little boys. I prefer adults.”
“I forgot, you’ve been an adult since you were twelve. Maybe that’s why you lack compassion. You just can’t relate.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud. Tell me, when did you start your psychiatric practice? I’ve got a few observations of my own. You get into fights because it makes you feel like a man. And you have a high opinion of your own intelligence.”
“I don’t think I’m all that smart.”
“Well, you certainly don’t qualify as being thoughtful. You hurt people. You hurt Gina and Susie, who really like you. They try to be friends with you, and you don’t give a damn. Susie has a theory. She says you’re not arrogant at all. You just hate yourself.”
“Well, maybe I do.”
“There’s a lot to hate. I can hand you some reasons to put on your list.”
“Don’t put yourself out. For someone who doesn’t know me, you seem to know all about me.”
“You don’t have to interact with someone to know them. Do you know that you’ve never, ever said hi to me in the hall?”
“You’re not exactly Ms. Congeniality. You look at me as if you’re one second away from slapping me from here to hell. But then again, you look at everyone that way.”
“You think you can walk into my house and insult me? Fuck you.”
I held back my own Fuck you too, Cassandra. “When you let people put you down, then you’re a dead man. You know what you are, Cassandra? You’re a killer. You use your looks as a weapon. You’re a loaded gun disguised as girl.”
“You don’t know one thing about me. You don’t know anything about what it means to lose. I just lost a brother, and he didn’t die of cancer. He died of AIDS, and a lot of people already know that, courtesy of Mrs. Alvidrez. The last time I saw him was at a hospital in San Francisco. I didn’t even recognize him. He was already dead. He always made me feel like I was worth something.” She was crying—not just crying, but sobbing—and her tears were tears of loss and they were tears of anger and they were tears of hurt and they were tears that said I’m not going to let anybody hurt me again. Not ever.
“Do you know what it’s like to be helpless in the face of a dying brother? He was brilliant, and brave—and he was gay, which meant he wasn’t a man. And not even human. Let them die. Guys like you don’t care. You don’t know anything about what a man like my brother went through just because he was born. You’ll never know his kind of courage.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because straight little boys are callous dicks.”
I didn’t know I was going to say what I said, but it just came out. “How do you know I’m straight?”
She looked at me. She kept studying me with a look of confusion, and she didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything, but there was that question on her face.
“How do you know that I’m not gay?” I’d said it, and a part of me was glad and another part of me regretted it. “Cassandra, I’m gay. I’m seventeen years old—and I’m scared.” The silence between us seemed to last an eternity. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to tell you. It just came out. I’m sorry, I—”
“Shhh,” she whispered. It was as if all the hardness in her had just vanished. And then she looked at me with a softness in her that I had never seen. And she whispered, “Well, maybe you shouldn’t have told me. Because you only say things like that to people you trust, and you have no reason to trust me. But you said it. And I heard it And I can’t unhear it.” I think she was trying to find the right thing to say—but there wasn’t a right thing. “I guess that explains a lot of things,” she said. “Oh God,” she said. “Oh God, I’m such an asshole.” And she was crying again, and she was really fucking crying. “Ari, I’m, oh God, I am such an asshole. I’m—”