151 Days (23 page)

Rarely did the two meet, much less overlap.

Nothing makes a person more popular than not wanting to follow a crowd. My reluctance to define myself by what boy I was dating made me something of an enigma to my friends. On one hand, they could sense a strength that they seemed to be lacking. On the other one, I was a freak who refused to play by their rules. The summer before high school, I got my breasts and lost my facial (and other) baby fat. I went from being a little girl to a young woman. My dad began to hover around me, wanting to know where I was all the time; and God forbid a boy should say “hi” to me on the street. There’s nothing better than a dad with a badge and a handgun for scaring off boys. I spent a lot of time rolling my eyes whenever I was with my dad.

“This was the part your mom was supposed to handle,” he told me as we bought new school clothes. “I’m not wild about you wearing a bra already.”

Dad rarely brought up the topic of my mom. She had passed away when I was five. Mom was a face that came to me in my dreams, but I didn’t have any real memories of her. I suppose being raised by the town sheriff should have made me a total tomboy, but I liked girly things just as much as any girl in town. I just never understood why someone would think she had to be defined by the guy she was going out with. Most of the girls I knew didn’t even consider the idea of college or having a career. They mostly talked about staying in Foster and starting a family, just like their mom and their grandmothers. I didn’t find anything wrong with that plan; it just was never for me.

My dad had never treated me like a “girl,” I guess. He didn’t understand the difference between the genders enough to change his parenting style. Instead, he had raised me with the same beliefs the boys in town were taught. I could be anything I wanted to be; all I had to do was work at it. I guess with all the world open for me to learn about and make a choice, staying here in Foster and being someone’s wife seemed small.

And then I began to understand how high school worked.

Being independent and strong sounded good on paper, but the truth was that “different” in high school was not appreciated and celebrated like it was in my house. Different meant weird, and weird meant exclusion, and exclusion meant never being talked to again. There’s a reason people use solitary confinement as a punishment. No one
likes
being forced to be alone. They may be able to handle it or even not be that affected by it, but when isolation isn’t a choice, it becomes unbearable. So between exclusion and conformity, I picked the easier of the two evils. Notice I say easier and not lesser, because I really think making people be who they aren’t is the worst thing you can do to another human being.

That was a lesson taught to me by Robbie after I told him Brad had come out of the closet.

I guess this is the place where I could say I always suspected Brad, but I can’t. I was so preoccupied with pretending to be someone I had never been that it never occurred to me he was doing the same thing. In a year, I had transformed myself from a freethinking person into just another one of the pretty girls who cared about nothing but which boy she could capture. It made me sick at times, but after a while I just went with it, since the only other option seemed like a fate worse than death.

I had known Brad since we were kids, but I had never thought about actually dating him until the day of the Granada game in freshman year.

We were down two runs at the bottom of the eighth. It really did look like we were going to lose. I had made the cheerleading squad, but since I was also a freshman, the only thing I had done so far was carry equipment and memorize cheers. I had been bored silly, since I hadn’t cared who won or lost when the game started. But by the last inning, I found myself drawn in. I didn’t want us to lose. Brad walked up to the plate, and for some reason, I paid more attention.

Brad was still a couple of inches short of his current height, and I remember thinking he looked so tiny compared to the rest of the guys who had been playing. I could see intensity in his eyes burning from beneath the batting helmet’s visor, and I just knew all he wanted was not to look like a complete idiot in front of the entire school. I saw his back foot dig in, and he crouched slightly as he brought his bat up. The pitcher drew back into his windup, and I held my breath as he let the ball fly.

The sound of the bat hitting the ball was like a thunderclap.

He hit that ball so hard that it was out of the park before I could even follow its movement. Brad was still at home plate, his bat in hand as he tracked the ball’s arc out of the field, his mouth open in shock. I remember it so vividly, the half second of silence that shattered against the explosion of cheers. I could hear someone behind me in the stands mutter a hushed. “Goddamn!” The Granada third baseman threw his glove to the ground in disgust.

It wasn’t until the whole place erupted that I realized he had just won the game. From the way Brad looked around at everyone yelling at him to run around the bases, he hadn’t figured it out, either. Overnight he went from one of the many boys who were tolerably cute in Foster to The Hottest Boy Ever. He was one of the few freshmen to play varsity baseball, and every single girl in our class suddenly knew his name. I remember being interested in him not because he won the game, or because he was popular, but because of the look on his face when it finally sank in he had hit a home run. The goofy grin broke out across his face as he almost tripped halfway to first. There was no swagger and no ego, just unbridled joy in the game and the contentment of a prayer answered.

One of that year’s seniors set us up at a team party out at the lake. I was one of the only girls who hadn’t thrown themselves at him. That worked to my advantage, because he was obviously looking for a way to duck some of the attention that came at him from all directions. I remember the voice in my head listing everything positive about him as we talked: he was cute; he was in shape; just underneath a thin layer of bravado, he had an alluring shyness; and—the best part—he didn’t leer at me like a creeper. When we talked he seemed to listen, and I never once caught him looking at my chest.

We ended up dating more out of convenience than anything. Neither one of us wanted to be the first to name what it was. That summer he gave me his class ring, and I wore it dutifully. Even then, I knew something was missing. We fooled around because we were both teenagers and were more curious about sex than we were about actual emotions. I thought the sex was good, but it was like nothing I had imagined it would be. Like every other girl I knew, I kept him on a short leash when it came to getting some, because if I gave it up too easily I’d be a slut. If I never gave it up, I was a prude. I kept him more than content, and he never strayed with other girls. It seemed like the perfect setup for both of us.

If only we had been in love with each other.

Now, I’m not going to be one of those girls who says “I always suspected something was wrong” just to save face, because I didn’t. Brad was the least gay guy I had ever seen. Of course, before this all the gay guys I had seen were on TV and in the movies, but still. By that I meant he never once gave away what he was feeling inside. I suppose if I had been more aware, I might have noticed that he didn’t pressure me for sex as much as the other guys did their girls, or that he seemed more interested in sports than me, but that was just Brad. He’d acted the same since the first time we talked. I had no idea he was anybody but the boy I was going steady with.

Until the day he kissed Kyle in the quad.

I had known he was failing history, but that was nothing new with Brad. He put exactly the least amount of effort into schoolwork that he could get away with. No more, no less. The fact that he had spaced out in history because he assumed Coach Gunn would cut him a break shocked no one. He had said he had a line on a tutor but nothing more. I had no reason to suspect, even when he introduced me to Kyle during lunch. I thought I knew how the rest of this drama called high school would play out, and I assure you, it didn’t involve him kissing another guy in front of everyone.

I wasn’t there when it happened; but I heard about it soon enough.

Practice was halfway done when the whispering started. That was nothing new. Foster is a small town, and not everyone had cable. The only reliable entertainment was gossip, and thankfully, there was more than enough to go around. Gossip was a lot like playing spin the bottle with a bunch of gross people. You could laugh and laugh when it landed on someone else, but sooner or later it would be pointing at you.

From the way people were staring and laughing at me, the bottle had indeed landed on me this time.

Facing a pack of mean girls is basically the same as facing a pack of wild dogs. Never turn your back on them, show no fear, and whatever you do, try to remember they are mindless beasts and are probably just hungry. Of course, it was Maggie who walked over to bring me the news. She spent most of her time talking about me behind my back, laying the foundation of succession when/if I ever lost popularity. She wanted to be the queen bee and was willing to sting me to death to get there.

“So,” she said, her face contorting to her pre-sneer look. “How are you and Brad getting along?”

There were packs of girls standing around us, some of them holding back laughter while others looked at me like I was the last one to know I had cancer. “Fine,” I answered, trying to figure out what in the hell this was about. “Why do you ask?”

She held up her phone, and there was an image of Brad kissing Kyle.

“So then you knew about this, right?” She put a hand on her hip and waited for me to lose it.

I shrugged and tried to keep my face impassive. “So Brad lost at gay chicken. Wouldn’t be the first time.” It was a bullshit answer, but I was willing to bet she didn’t know anything more than I did. Someone sent her that pic, most likely with the following text:
OMG look at this.
There was just no way anyone knew more than the fact my boyfriend was kissing another guy. “You act like the guys around here don’t try to make everyone else freak out on a daily basis.” Another bullshit answer but more truth than fiction. We live in a town where cow tipping is an actual event, not a concept, or an urban legend, but an honest-to-God activity that some people do on weekends. It was not outside the realm of possibility that one of the guys would kiss another guy just to make people squirm.

I saw the hesitation in her face, and I knew I had bought myself a few minutes.

“Seriously, Maggie, if you spent as much time practicing as you do minding my business, we’d be national champs by now.” It was an ugly thing to say, but the only way I was going to get her off my back was by attacking. People laughed at my joke, and she slowly retreated, falling back until she could get more dirt on me.

As soon as people went back to their routines, I ran toward the locker room and changed into my street clothes. I wasn’t going to admit it out loud, but I had a sinking feeling that my world was about to fall apart around me.

Turns out I was right.

By the time I got home, my phone was filled with texts and missed calls from people wanting to know if I knew. While I am sure a couple of them were actually worried about me, all I saw were vultures circling overhead, waiting for me to stop twitching. I called a couple of girls I trusted and asked them if they had any idea what had happened. Finding out the truth took time, since a lot of what people knew was second- and thirdhand. From what I gathered, Kelly had bullied Kyle, and Brad had stepped up and kissed him, daring Kelly to say something else.

How did I know Kelly would be involved?

Kelly and Brad had been friends since they were both kids, but they were never really friendly. There was always an odd tension between them, which I always took as Brad being turned off by Kelly’s neediness. Even though he was popular enough, Kelly always did what Brad said like he was Brad’s servant, almost, and it was annoying as hell. Maybe this wasn’t what it looked like. Maybe Brad was just trying to mess with Kelly somehow, though I wasn’t sure how kissing another guy did that. After a while I just sat in my room and ignored call after call that came in.

None of them was Brad.

I suppose I didn’t call him because calling was the quickest way of finding out the truth, and the truth was something I was not interested in. I expected everything to be a mistake, a bad joke, something that would clear itself up over the weekend. My head spun a thousand scenarios of what could have happened to make Brad kiss a guy, but my gut seemed to know better. My gut told me this was exactly what it looked like. If I called him, I’d have confirmation in a matter of seconds.

I didn’t want anything confirmed. I wanted to keep living the life I had twenty-four hours ago.

That may seem like a pretty oblivious statement, but it was a weird thought for me. I hadn’t been happy with my life since I started high school. I had become someone I honestly didn’t like, and the thought that I would rather stay like that then be forced to face the truth was as disappointing to me as Penny’s revelation all those years ago.

Only an idiot or a masochist would have gone to school that Friday.

There was no way in hell I could face the pack of hungry bitches that was no doubt stalking my locker. Instead, I said good-bye to my dad and ditched school altogether. I drove around town trying to find something to do until the Vine opened. My best bet was just catching a movie and wasting time until it got later. Robbie’s shop wouldn’t be open until he dragged himself out of bed, which could be anywhere from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon.

After a slow and drawn out breakfast at Starr’s, I cruised down First Street, making sure the Vine was open. I parked my car around the corner so my dad wouldn’t see it when he did his rounds and began to walk toward the theater.

Which was when I saw Brad through the window, looking at me like I was a ghost.

I don’t know what made me madder—that he had ditched school and didn’t bother to call me, or that he had taken my hiding place first. Either way, I was plenty pissed when I charged in the lobby. “Hiding?” I asked him.