151 Days (25 page)

He nodded. “I am always right.” Then he paused. “Wait, right about what?”

“They beat up Brad, and they are going to throw him off the baseball team.”

His face went pale, and he put a hand over his mouth, but I could tell that was a reflex at being shocked. His actual reaction was to stare off over my shoulder as his expression hardened in anger. “Well, of course they did,” he said with more spite than I had ever heard used in any sentence before. “Is he okay?” he asked me after a few seconds. In that time he went from an expressionless robot back to his normal, over-the-top self, which only solidified in my mind that the over-the-top thing was all an act.

“I don’t know, but we need to do something,” I replied quickly. “If Brad gets kicked off the baseball team, it’ll kill him.”

Robbie stared at me for a long few seconds and then let out a sarcastic laugh. “Only in Foster, Texas, would someone be more concerned about a boy playing baseball than him getting physically attacked.” He rolled his eyes and looked up for a moment. I could swear under his breath he said something about “Riley” and then took a deep breath. “Okay, so what do you think
we
can do?”

I wanted to ask who Riley was, but I could tell he wanted to ignore he’d ever said that, the same way I wanted to ignore my little outburst a couple of days earlier. A free crazy is a free crazy so I let it go. “Okay, I meant
you
need to do something about it.”

He gave me a look. “Like what? I know I may act like I have magical powers, but I assure you I don’t have an invisible jet out back. And even if I were Wonder Woman, which I am not denying, the people at Hick High still wouldn’t listen to me. You do know that, right?”

I did know that, but Robbie was the only adult I knew of who could help. “But you’re a grown-up.” I paused as his look bored into my eyes. “I mean, you’re technically a grown-up.” He nodded for me to continue. “They have to listen. I just know no one else will show up to speak for him. It’s just going to be a lot of uptight assholes saying the queer can’t play baseball.”

“Good,” he said, walking away from me. “I mean, why would anyone even want to play that horrendous game? I mean, sure those pants are hot, but only in a stripper way—no one could ever wear those for real. It’s grown men running after balls. Brad’s better off without it.”

This was the part about being friends with Robbie that drove me crazy. He just didn’t get how things worked in Foster, and he had no desire to learn. I walked over to him and turned him around. He wouldn’t meet my stare, so I knew the big guns were necessary.

“Are you going to send Brad to college?” He just stared at me in surprise. “Are you going to come up with a ton of money so he can go to a college?” He said nothing. “Then Brad needs to play baseball so he can get a scholarship and go to college. I don’t care what you personally think of baseball. Unless you are willing to pony up at least a hundred thousand dollars, we need to help him.”

That seemed to get his attention.

“Running around chasing balls—that’s a skill you need to get into college,” he said, walking back behind the counter. “You think Tim Gunn got offered a scholarship for design? You think Michael Kors got a full ride when he graduated? No, but if he could hit a ball the farthest, then he was a shoo-in.” He sat down and sighed. “I swear, I hate everything in the world right now.”

“Will you go?” I asked him.

He looked up at me, and I could tell the answer was no before he even spoke. “Sweetie, I would love to help, but those people are just going to laugh me out of the room, and in the end it will do more damage to Brad’s case than help. I am an outsider here, the token fag for this one-horse town, and the only way they tolerate me is if I stay on the outskirts and shut up.” In a lower voice, he said, “Trust me, I’ve seen what happens when you try to be gay and happy in this town.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So that’s it? You’re just going to do nothing?”

“I’ll talk to some people,” he said, which sounded like so much bullshit I wanted to scream. “But I have a sinking feeling that Brad is on his own.”

And that was where I left it, pretty sure Brad was screwed.

But that next week a story started to get circulated, a story no one really believed. They said—and isn’t it always
they
who talk, no one with names, always the faceless
they
—they said that Brad had been offered his place on the team because his dad had come in and threatened to sue the hell out of the school.
They
said that Brad had gotten a free pass to play if the subject was just dropped and ignored.
They
said that it was a perfect deal for Brad and that anyone in their right mind would have taken it.

And then
they
said Brad refused it.

This was where the stories got blurry, but it seemed that Brad, instead of taking the deal and pretty much solidifying his chance to play baseball, instead demanded the school give the same protection to everyone. He said that the way people were treated in Foster was horrible, and the school just let people do it. He said it had to change, and if it didn’t, then he would play baseball somewhere else.

And then he walked out.

They
had no idea what to do about it. On the surface it sounded like Brad had walked away from a cush deal that would have saved his ass, but that was just on the surface. Deeper… it sounded like he’d stood up for every single person in the school who had been picked on. The long and the short of it was…
they
had no fucking idea how to react to it.

But I thought I did.

I spent the time talking to Robbie and trying to get over how pissed I was at Brad for using me like that. I didn’t think random people had the right to beat him up, but that didn’t mean I forgave him instantly. Robbie explained to me how hard it was for a guy to come out and that the fear they feel of someone finding out their secret was deadly sometimes. Brad hadn’t just been lying to me; he’d been trying to hide himself from the entire town. It wasn’t about appearances; it was about safety. It was about survival.

After a while I began to understand what he meant.

One day I woke up, and I wasn’t mad anymore. I still remembered the shame and anger, but I wasn’t feeling the actual emotion. I was just too tired. Keeping the anger alive demanded too much energy, and it began to fade. That was when I decided to take a real look at Brad and Kyle without feeling like a dagger had been shoved through my heart. I watched them eat on the music hall steps, and it was so obvious they were in love—like a neon sign flashing over their head obvious—that I had to accept what Robbie had been telling me was true. Brad had forced himself to like me just to hide who he was because he had never, in the entire time I had known him, looked at anyone that way. Now that I was seeing it for the first time, I also realized that Brad was truly happy.

After that, I just said screw it and decided to be their friend.

Which catches us up to the week of Brad’s away game and the SATs.

Watching Brad try to deal with Kyle’s crazy was cute because it was pretty obvious he had no idea why the test was so serious to his boyfriend, but he never hesitated to back Kyle all the way. Kyle was desperate to get out of Foster, and I had to silently admit I knew how he felt. I couldn’t imagine having no prospects after high school and having to live with the knowledge that the rest of your life was going to be spent between First and Main Street. Brad, on the other hand, never once thought about the possibility that he wasn’t going to get out of Foster, as far as I knew.

One of the things that made Brad equally adorable and annoying was his ability to just ignore reality while trying to will things to be the way he wanted them to be.

Here we were on a seven-game winning streak, and it was hard to argue that Brad had not willed it into existence. He had more than stepped up as team captain. He owned the role. There were zero whispers about him not doing a good job or that he was screwing up somehow by being gay. In fact, most of the talk about his sexuality had vanished altogether, which was as surprising as it was a relief. No one much cared that he was gay or straight; he was Brad, and he was dating Kyle, and that was that.

Of course, I wasn’t privy to most gossip anymore, since I had all but abandoned my previous life.

I still showed up to prom committee, because I hadn’t spent the last three years doing every piece of grunt work I needed to become the chairperson to quit. No way would I give up running it because I was sick of mean girls. I refused to resign, which drove the other girls that tiny inch over the edge into crazy. I have to admit, I loved watching them squirm while trying to find a way to ask me things with a smile on their faces. They would have loved me to step down so they could all fight to see who would run prom, but I hadn’t, so they were forced to deal with me. And forced to do it nicely, which was killing them.

Watching them deal with that was the high point of my day, to be honest.

So the day of the Archer away game, Brad came slinking into class looking like death warmed over. He told me that Kyle and he had finally moved into the having-sex stage of their relationship. I really expected to hear complaints from Kyle since I knew how bad Brad could get if he went without too long. But it seemed Mr. Greymark had met his match, if not his better, in sexual appetite from the way he looked. I didn’t say anything to Brad, but it didn’t surprise me that much. Quiet ones like Kyle were the ones with the most surprises. I didn’t mean to laugh. I really tried not to, but I kept leaking snickers, you might say.

Brad took me out of class and tried to explain his problem to me, once I’d controlled my laughter. By the time he’d finished, it was pretty obvious to me that he needed to talk to Kyle before things got out of hand. I’m not sure why I thought that Brad would actually try to do that, since I knew from personal experience that he hated conflict and would do anything to avoid an argument. His standard move had always been to apologize, even if he had no idea what I was pissed about, and hope I would forgive him. After a while I counted that as a win and let the situation die since the apology was the best I was going to get out of him.

Kyle was not me, though. And the better I knew Kyle the more apparent it became.

He would stress and worry about it until he imagined things to be much, much worse than they actually were. The longer Brad waited, the bigger it would get, so he was better off just saying something and cutting it off at the pass. I felt that way until I saw how crazy Kyle was over the SATs, and then I realized, the last thing Kyle needed was one more thing on his plate, he was about to explode. I pulled Brad aside and told him just to do whatever Kyle wanted because the alternative was him ending up on the ten o’clock news being referred to as “victim.”

I honestly thought that was the end of it.

The next day I saw Brad walking Kyle to the SAT, and they looked as happy as ever. I can’t say that seeing them that much in love didn’t hurt a little. I mean, I wasn’t spiteful; there’s just nothing that highlights how alone you are like seeing another couple in complete love.

I couldn’t wait to get out of Foster. I stopped where I was and said that sentence out loud.

I realized I hadn’t felt like that in a long time. Before I got to high school and started dating Brad, getting away was all I thought about when I looked ahead at my life. Getting into a good school or just going somewhere like Dallas or Austin and going to junior college: I had a thousand dreams back in the day. Those dreams all went away when I started playing the popular game. I felt good, to be honest, like I was waking up from some kind of mind-control programming that made me giggle at jokes that weren’t funny and go to the bathroom as part of a group.

“They are disgusting, aren’t they?” a voice commented from behind me.

I spun around, surprised. Josh Walker was standing there looking three different kinds of hot in his letterman jacket. Only problem was that Josh knew how hot he was and used it like a bludgeon to impress anyone around him. I must have looked confused about who was disgusting, because he nodded toward Brad and Kyle.

“Are you calling my friends disgusting?” I said, balling my hands into fists.

His expression did a quick double take as he tried to figure out why I was so pissed. “Yeah, I mean… wait, no!” he said, holding his hands up. “I didn’t mean disgusting like that. I meant how much they are in love. It’s disgusting to see when you don’t have it yourself.”

It was an eerie echo of what I had been thinking, but I didn’t cop to it. “I think expressions of affection are sweet. Not enough people have the guts to show how they feel these days.” That was half-true. I mean, I agreed seeing someone like those two in love when you were single sucked, but having someone who would be willing to make you the center of their universe no matter how many people were watching… that’s hard to find.

“You do?” he asked in a stranger tone. “You always seemed a little more low-key.”

Maybe it was the fact that I was acutely aware of how single I was. Maybe it was the fact that I had been pretending to be someone else for so long around here, that no one knew a thing about me, so having someone express how they thought I would act pissed me off. Maybe I was just being a bitch, but I do know his words just hit me the wrong way.

“I always seemed?” I asked him angrily. “Did you learn that from your Sherlock Holmes-like skills of observation? Or from the countless hours we’ve spent not talking to each other? Or is it just the first thing that popped into your head, so of course you said it out loud?”

He was silent for a few seconds and then said, “Um, C?” in a halting voice.

“It’s not a multiple-choice question!” I raged and stalked away from him.

“What did I say?” he asked as I stormed off to class.

If you had asked me, I couldn’t tell you what he’d said that pissed me off so much. I just knew that I didn’t need to be there anymore.