After School Activities (18 page)

locker and we walk together to practice and he shows me off to all of his

friends, ’cause I’m such a catch.”

“You?” Mary broke in again, voice dripping with derision. “You

have got to be kidding.”

Tiffany drew herself up. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Mary raised her eyebrows and gave Tiffany a long look from head to

toe. “Girl, don’t act like you don’t know. Ain’t no way someone as hot as

Adam would go for all that.” She waved a hand at Tiffany.

I took this opportunity to slip out of the room, before I inevitably

got pulled into this argument. I felt sick, partly because things had so

rapidly dissolved from a friendly conversation to bitchfest of the year,

but mostly because of what Tiffany had said about Adam. I felt a lot of

conflicting things all at once. I mean, confused snarl of emotions aside,

I knew exactly what was going on. The closer Adam and I got, the

more terrified he became of people finding out about him, so he was

obviously using Tiffany as a cover for his friends, showing them a girl

so they wouldn’t get suspicious. That didn’t stop me from feeling

jealous, however. And guilty, like it was my fault he was lying to

Tiffany and leading her on.

I had been wandering around the house, not really sure where I was

going, but soon found myself approaching the kitchen, where Charlotte

was hard at work, baking the cookies we had all so fervently demanded as

the movie ended.

“How’s it going up there?” Charlotte asked as I sat down at the

counter.

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“Mary’s being a bitch. Again.” Charlotte’s calm, composed

demeanor really encouraged honesty. Normally I wouldn’t be quite so

brutally honest about someone’s friend.

Charlotte wasn’t offended. She rolled her eyes and gave an

exasperated sigh. “She’s had a stick up her ass for the last two weeks, and

I can’t figure out why. She being a bitch to Tiffany again?” I nodded.

“Typical. Well, I hope you’re having fun at least.”

“Oh yeah. I am.”

Charlotte popped a ball of cookie dough into her mouth and turned

to me, eyebrow raised. “But?”

Damn she was perceptive. Nobody other than Kai and Mel had ever

really been able to tell when I was holding something back. “I don’t know.

It’s just… like, I feel this demand to be someone I’m not. Or at least, not

usually. I mean, it’s fun sometimes to be the sassy gay guy in the popular

clique, or whatever, but it’s exhausting.”

Charlotte handed me a spoonful of the cookie dough, which I gladly

accepted. “The thing about these girls is they’ve been raised on
Sex and

the City
and the like. They’ve grown up dreaming of a Gay Best Friend to call their own and, well, I’m sorry to say it, but you are the one who

decided to come out and become the object of their obsession,” she said

with a smirk and a wink.

I laughed. “How foolish of me, coming out like that.”

“A shameful grab for popularity if ever I saw one,” she joked. The

oven beeped, and Charlotte pulled out a sheet of freshly done cookies.

Practically before I could even smell their delicious, chocolate-chippy

goodness, she had poured two glasses of milk and deposited a small plate

of cookies on the counter between us.

Damn she was good.

“They’re best right out of the oven. You just have to be fast and take

a drink of milk so you don’t burn your tongue.” She demonstrated,

popping an entire cookie into her mouth and downing nearly the entire

glass of milk. Then she grinned at me, smudges of chocolate staining her

teeth. “Best we don’t tell those bitches upstairs about that little number,

am I right?”

I was a little more conservative about my own cookie. I only shoved

my face with half a cookie at a time. “How are you so amazing?”

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“It’s my mom’s recipe and Dad’s favorite way of eating them,”

Charlotte said, tossing another batch into the oven. “I really can’t take

credit.”

“Not that. Though, yes, these cookies are amazing. I mean
you
.

You’re so chill about me being gay….”

“I have a gay uncle and a lesbian aunt, on opposite sides of my

family. I just have a little more practice than everyone else is all.”

“Okay, but it’s more than that. You’re probably the most beautiful

girl in school…”

“You flatterer, you.”

“…You’re definitely the most popular. Head cheerleader, dating the

hottest, most popular guy in school…”

“Hottest? You’ve obviously never seen him in the mornings.”

“…But despite that, you’re not a shallow bitch like most of the

other girls. Not even in an endearing, good-hearted way, like Tiffany

is.” Charlotte tilted her head, studying me. She didn’t say anything for so

long, I started to fear I had gone too far, misjudged how close we were,

overestimated how honest I could be.

Finally, she said, “I used to be.”

Her expression didn’t change. Tentatively, I said, “What changed?”

“My best friend growing up was a girl named Sandy. We were

awkward little seminerds together. We grew up, and I started to get

pretty, and popular. She stayed awkward. There was this girl Laura—

you probably don’t remember her; she graduated while you were still

in middle school—she was the most popular girl in school, and when I

was a freshman, I tried to be exactly like her. She was why I started

cheering. I made the team, started following Laura around everywhere,

doing my best to imitate her every move. I was not a nice person

then.” She smiled wryly. “Even James didn’t like me. That winter, a

little before Christmas, Sandy killed herself. Her suicide note was

addressed mostly to me. Sometimes I’m surprised her parents let me

read it. It had a lot to say.”

I was aghast. Suddenly the distant look in Charlotte’s eyes made

sense. What surprised me most was how calm she was as she told me.

How matter-of-fact. The sadness was there, but it was a distant thing,

hidden under acceptance.

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“I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to….”

She waved away my apology. “Sometimes I’m glad for it, as terrible

as that sounds. It made me take a hard look at myself, who I was

becoming. Made me ask myself who I
wanted
to become. I only wish that could have happened before….” For a split second, I thought the sadness

would rise up and overtake her, but then the oven beeped and she turned to

pull the cookies out.

“Besides,” she continued, the lightness I had come to associate with

her returning to her voice, “it turns out people respond more to niceness

than to cruelty, and I’m much better at it. So I stayed popular. Maybe even

became more so. I’m sure it helped that I’m ‘probably the most beautiful

girl in school,’ as you put it. The other girls, who craved popularity as

fervently as I used to, tried to take me down, assert their superiority with

mean words and actions. That’s how girls typically get popular, you see,

by making other girls feel like shit so they retreat, follow the mean girl’s

lead, and stop competing in this terrible game we call high school. But

they couldn’t hurt me, so they never won. Far worse had been said by

someone I cared about way more. Someone I’d lost the chance to

reconcile with.” She once again stuffed an entire cookie into her mouth

and drained the rest of her glass of milk. “Sandy used to love eating

cookies like that.” She grinned, no doubt remembering those happy times.

“Thanks for sharing that with me.”

“Of course. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

We really were. Like, real friends. I felt myself compelled to tell her

about Adam, share with her my misgivings. All the doubt I’d been having

lately, feeling like his shameful secret. It seemed like she might have

something insightful to say, some way I could make the situation easier.

But at the same time, I knew I couldn’t tell her about it, not without

betraying Adam, at least a little bit. Which is exactly what I was upset

about, this need to keep quiet. It was frustrating.

So I ate another cookie, and thought of something benign to say.

“Tonight’s been fun. You really know how to throw a party.”

“You should come to my New Year’s party. Everyone’s invited, and

most of the school comes. It’s awesome.”

As we gathered up the cookies and headed back to the group, a

plan was forming. Charlotte’s New Year’s party was the perfect

solution to my problem. Everyone would be there, so no one would

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think twice about Adam and me both being there. We could spend time

together in front of everyone. We’d show everyone we were friends, so

we wouldn’t have to be quite as secretive. Maybe we could even sneak

off to some secluded corner, where no one was around to see us, and

enjoy some of our more… private activities.

And if someone did catch us, and the secret was out? Well, I

couldn’t say I’d be too upset.

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After School Activities

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“…WELL, ANYWAY, I was thinking, since Charlotte’s New Year’s

parties are always so huge—like the entire junior and senior classes will

probably be there—it wouldn’t be weird at all for us both to be there. And

since practically everyone knows we’ve been hanging out lately anyway—

okay, okay, that I’ve been ‘tutoring’ you, but still. What I’m saying is, I

think we should go together. It would be fun.”

Adam took a long time to finish chewing his bite of sandwich. We

were at Adam’s secret spot, what I still referred to as Adam’s Lake,

even though he had told me its real name at least three times. It had

taken me a few weeks to work up the courage to finally broach the

subject with him. A few weeks of practicing speeches in mirrors, and

case-testing them with Mel, all thrown out the window the instant I

opened my mouth and began stammering. Typical.

Adam finally swallowed. “I can’t. I have family stuff to do that

night. We’re visiting my mom. Besides, I figured you’d wanna spend that

time with your friends. Hasn’t Kai been complaining lately that you two

never hang out?”

Kai really had. He’d started periodically sending me texts listing

things that had happened more recently than us hanging out. The last one

was
Dinosaurs went extinct
. “Yeah, I guess.”

“There you go. I can spend time with my family. You can hang out

with your friends. Everyone’s happy. And then after that, maybe you and I

can have our own private celebration here.”

“In January? Maybe we could find someplace else. Someplace a

little more
indoors
.”

“Oh come on. It won’t be so bad. We could build an igloo, hunker

down for the winter.”

“Or, we could do it at my house, where there’s heat.”

“But there’s so much more we can do out here, where it’s private.”

Great. Private. Always private. “Oh yeah? Like what?”

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Dirk Hunter

“I can think of a few things.” He grinned at me suggestively. “In

fact, why wait until January? We could get started right now.”

“Now? It’s like thirty-five degrees out here. And we can’t exactly

build that igloo, unless you’re hiding a bunch of snow in your pants.”

“There’s always the back of my car.”

My eyes narrowed. “You’re trying to change the subject, aren’t

you?” “Is it working?”

“Oh yeah. Now go get the car started so it can warm up.”

“No need. We can get it steamy enough on our own.”

BEFORE CLASS started, I broached the subject of New Year’s with

Kai. “I thought you already had plans” was his immediate, biting

response.

I knew he wasn’t gonna make this easy. “I simply thought it’s been

so long since we’ve hung out. Why don’t I spend the holidays with my

best friends? Besides, wasn’t hanging out on New Year’s your idea?”

“Yeah, and I believe your exact words when I had the idea were ‘ha-

ha, no. I’m going to Charlotte’s party.’”

“You’re taking my words out of context,” I said.

“‘Everyone who is
anyone
is going to be there, which you’d know if

you’d gotten invited,’” he continued.

“Okay, I’m pretty sure you’re paraphrasing.”

“‘This my chance, blah blah, popular kids, blah blah, finally be cool,

new best friends, etc., etc.’”

That last part wasn’t even
close
. “Is that really how I sound to

you?” “Pretty much.”

“And are we suddenly in a teen movie? Are we the misfit kids

desperate for popularity with, like, a ‘lose our virginity by prom’ pact?

’Cause I can think of like twelve reasons why that doesn’t work off the top

of my head.”

Kai shrugged. “It’s the only reason I can think of why you’re so

desperate to go to this party.”

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“You’re right. I was popularity crazed. But now I’ve come to my

senses, and we can hang out, just us misfits.”

“Unless….” Kai’s eyes narrowed. “You wanted to go with Adam,

but he doesn’t want to go with you.”

Fuck. I was really beginning to wish I had stupider friends. “Well,

yes and no.”