Ask the Passengers (20 page)

After two hours of half sleeping and half reading, I roll out of bed and shower. I hear Mom on the phone with someone, and I can’t find anyone else when I go downstairs, so I grab my keys off the quiet-room desk and decide to take myself out to breakfast.

Why the hell not? What are they going to do? Double ground me?

As I drive up Main Street, I look in my rearview mirror and see Frank S. in the backseat. He’s smiling again.

“Hi, Frank,” I say.

“Hello,” he says.

“Why are you smiling?”

“I love pancakes,” he says. “Why are you smiling?”

“Because today is the last day.” I say. “Before the word spreads. Before the people know. Before the people talk. Before they come for me with pitchforks and torches.”

He laughs.

“I also love pancakes,” I say.

I call Kristina’s cell, and when she doesn’t answer, I leave a message. “I’m going to the diner for a sick breakfast. Call me in the next ten if you want me to pick you up.”

I call Dee’s cell, but when she doesn’t answer, I don’t leave a message.

I drive to my favorite diner across town and order a huge plate of pancakes. Then, for dessert, I eat a sundae. As I’m digging at the bottom of my sundae dish with my long-handled spoon, my phone buzzes with a text.

It’s from Dee’s number. And it says:
Stay away from my daughter.

All I can think of as I drive home is what it would take to say those words.
Stay away from my daughter.
Does she think I’m some bad influence? Doesn’t she know by now that I’m just a nerd who edits the school literary magazine? That I’m harmless? A lot more harmless than her daughter?

After all, it was Dee who told me I was gorgeous.

It was Dee who found me in the walk-in freezer.

It was Dee who kissed me.

It was Dee who invented the word
abracadabra
.

Not me.

It’s like an accusation, that sentence.
Stay away from my daughter.
It’s the kind of thing Dad would say to Jeff Garnet if he wasn’t always upstairs in the garage attic exhaling out the right window depending on the wind.

It’s the kind of thing Mom would say if she knew what really happened at work this summer.
Stay away from my daughter.

And Dee has been out since she started high school. She’s dated a ton of girls. Why am I suddenly the bad guy?

I look to Frank, who is still in the backseat, picking blueberry pancake crumbs from his beard. “It’s about last night,” he says. “It’s about Atlantis.”

I nod.

Dee may have dated tons of girls, but none of them got her busted at a gay club. Just me.

As I reach Unity Valley, I am distracted. I drive down Main Street, and it’s like driving through a fog of gossip. I put the window down just a little to check if I can hear it. It’s like that sound people make when they pretend they’re whispering.
Pppsssswwwsssww.
They have heard the news here. I can feel the fog feasting on my reputation as I drive. I feel my pulse in my palms as I grip the steering wheel.

When I step out of the car, the gossip fog is like ether. I am instantly four times more exhausted than I was when I left the diner parking lot.

I get in the door, kick off my shoes and go straight up the steps and into my room. I curl up on the sheepskin rug and drape two knit afghans over my body. I think about calling Dee to make sure everything’s all right, but then I don’t.

The last thing I think before I fall asleep is:
Stay away from my daughter.

MONDAY MORNING.

They say:
Holy shit! I can’t believe it!

They say:
Did you even know we had a bar like that?

They say:
Did you hear? Did you hear? Did you hear?

But no one actually talks to us.

They say:
I
knew
something was wrong with the Kristina-and-Justin thing. No relationship is that perfect.

They say:
We should kick them off the Homecoming Court. Liars.

Actually, that’s the Koch twins. They are talking right to my head and not to each other here in fourth-period study hall.

“Who’d have thought they were dykes? They don’t look like dykes.”

“I just can’t believe that Jeff kissed the same lips that were probably all over Kristina Houck’s privates.”

I turn to them both. “Can you stop?”

“Why don’t
you
stop?”

“You’re completely wrong, you know. You’re completely full of shit.”

“That’s not what we heard.” They say that in unison, like the creepy girls in
The Shining.

They say:
That’s not what we heard.

The fog is so heavy by lunch, Kristina and I go outside—totally against the rules—and walk through the parking lot toward the football stadium and sit on the empty bleachers behind the press box.

“Holy shit,” she says.

“Yeah.”

“So you know everyone thinks we’re a couple, right?”

“Yeah.”

“And they think we’ve been together since we were in grade school.”

“Yeah.”

“And I heard someone say Justin was offering favors for ten bucks a shot in the back room.”

“Ugh.”

“And I heard—”

“Stop!” I say. “I can’t care about what the assholes in this stupid town say. I just can’t care.” I eat two more Rolaids. I’ve lost count today.

She puts her hands up in a defensive way. “No problem. Just thought I could vent with my best friend about the weekend everyone found out we’re gay. Obviously not.”

“Sorry. You can vent. I just don’t want to hear the rumors. So stupid,” I say.

She sighs. “So how was yesterday? Did they freak out on you at home? Because they sure as shit freaked out on me.”

“Claire held a mini-trial from the minute I got home until about four thirty. Even woke Ellis up for it,” I say.

“Wow. At least mine waited until yesterday,” she says. “My mother seems to think I did it to kill her. How’d Claire and Gerry take it, though? Are they okay with the news?”

I don’t say anything for a while. Then I say, “I didn’t tell them.”

“But didn’t he pick you up?”

“I mean I didn’t tell them that I’m gay,” I say.

She looks at me sideways. “You mean they didn’t get the hint from the whole
busted at a gay bar
thing?”

“I told them I was only there to have fun with my friends.”

“And they
bought
it?” she says way too loudly. I nod. She bursts into overexaggerated laughter. Just like at the bar on Saturday night.

I give her an annoyed look. “The Koch twins totally sucked in study hall.”

Kristina pretends to fluff her hair. “The Koch twins are jealous.”

I sit there silently for a minute.

“What’s your problem?” she asks me. “You look like you’re gonna hurl.”

“I got a text from Dee’s mom yesterday, and it said ‘Stay away from my daughter,’ and I’m really freaked out because what if I did this all for nothing? What if I can’t see Dee again, and I’m wrong about all of it?” I put my face in my hands.

This is all slowly biting me in the ass, just like Dad said it would.

I got caught in a gay bar. Dee’s mom hates me. I am about to lose my license. I will have to go before some judge and talk about this. Everyone thinks I’m gay.

And I think I
am
gay.

I think I’m gay, and my girlfriend’s mom wrote
stay away from my daughter
.

“Have you talked to her?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I’m too freaked. Her mom has her phone, anyway.”

“You should call her. Her mom probably freaked out like all of our parents did, right? I mean, we did get totally busted at a bar, right?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

She looks at the time on her phone. “Almost time to go back.”

“Did you get my message yesterday?”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t call me back.”

“I was in between lectures, cross-examination and screaming fits. First my mom, then my dad, and then my mom again.
Oh, poor us! Our reputations are ruined forever! Are you sure you’re gay? How could you lie like that? Is Justin gay, too? How long has this been going on? How could you do this to us?
Blah blah blah. And then they had a huge fight because Dad wanted to set me up with someone’s weirdo son to make things all better, and Mom said nothing would make it all better and that we are all basically screwed until the end of time. And then Dad packed a bag and drove off.” She shrugs.

“Shit. That sucks,” I say.

“As far as I know, he may never come back. He didn’t show up last night, anyway.”

“Huh,” I offer. For all of Claire and Gerry’s fighting, I can’t imagine either of them leaving and not coming back. I don’t know what to say.

“Justin, too,” she says, and hands me her phone with his texts on-screen.
Back after shit blows over. Don’t worry about us.

The bell rings for the end of sixth period and we start to get up and Kristina stops dead in her tracks. Her smile fades, and I can see the cockiness dissolve in waves. What’s left is the friend I met when I was ten. Nice, vulnerable and sincere. The kind of kid who helps you unpack your boxes and arrange your room even though she just met you.

She starts to tear up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her cry about anything. “I can’t go back in there,” she says.

“You’ve lived through the worst of it,” I say.

“No. There’s a lot more. I can’t go back in.” She’s shaking her head, and her lip is sticking out.

“You don’t have to, I guess,” I say. “You can just walk home. No one will stop you.”

We look at each other. Kristina nods and starts walking toward the street entrance, and I run across the parking lot and in the side door by the industrial arts wing. We don’t say good-bye.

I block out everything I hear in the hallways.

They say:
Blah blah blah Kristina Houck.

They say:
Blah blah blah Astrid Jones.

They say:
Blah blah blah Justin Lampley.

European history is Kevin in the back row whispering “Hey, dyke! Yo, lezzer!” the whole time. “One night with me and my crew would cure that, you know!”