Ask the Passengers (30 page)

And there it is. The Claire moment. I cock my head. “So you’re angry because this makes you look bad? Because I didn’t tell you first? Am I getting this right?”

“No. I’m not angry at all. I’m just—uh—dis—”

“Disappointed?” I say. “Not the best word choice.”

She looks genuinely frazzled. “I didn’t mean it
that
way. I mean that I just wish I knew before now.”

“Well, you know now. Believe me. I told you as soon as I could.” I lean into the table toward her. “It’s just not easy to tell you stuff.”

She waits a second, and I think she’s going to be totally cool, and then she says, “How is this my fault?”

“Who said this had anything to do with fault?”

“You just did.”

Dad puts his hands up. “Astrid was saying that it’s hard to talk to you. That’s why she found it hard to tell us the truth.”

“
Hard to talk to me?
Are you saying that, too, Gerry?”

“Mom, you’re doing it now,” I say. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I just told you.”

“Yes. You did.”

Silence.

Awkward.

“Well, I guess that’s that, then,” she says.

“Yep.”

Dad says, “Thanks for telling us, Astrid.” He walks over and squeezes my shoulders from behind and gives me a hug from back there while I’m still sitting down. “Doesn’t change a thing about how we feel about you.”

“That’s right.” Mom leans over and holds my hand. “You’re our daughter no matter what.”

Not
we love you no matter what
but
you’re our daughter no matter what.
Not all that warm, but it’ll do.

At least it’s over.

Things do not miraculously become normal, either.

First, we go out for lunch to the Legion Diner. I order a grease-dipped grilled cheese sandwich. Mom orders a waffle and link sausage, and Dad orders the breakfast-all-day special.

While we wait for the food, Mom says, “I talked to Kristina this morning.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“She told me that she lied,” she says.

“And?”

She seems stuck. “And that’s it. Thought you’d want to know.”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “Thanks for letting me know.” I look at her and wait for the apology, but it doesn’t come. This time, though, instead of flaming up inside, I send love to her.
Mom, I love you even though you can’t say you’re sorry or admit you were wrong. If only you’d stop thinking there’s such a thing as perfect, then you’d feel a lot better about yourself. And me.

While I eat my sandwich, I tell them that I’m not going to hide who I am in school. “I mean, I pretty much came out already. With
F
-words, apparently.” I laugh. “I hope that’s okay. It’s easier to just be real at this point.”

“But it’s still going to be hard, you know?” Mom says.

“Yeah,” I say.

“For all of us,” she adds.

We eat in relative silence until I say, “Do you think Ellis will ever stop being so freaked out about it?”

“Well, I certainly didn’t raise her that way,” Mom says.

Dad chews.

Mom chews.

I chew.

“I think you’re the only one who can help her with this, Claire,” Dad says. “She only listens to you.”

Mom chews.

I chew.

Dad chews.

“What do you mean, she only listens to me?”

No one answers her question.

“You did it?” Dee yells into the phone.

“I didn’t just do it,” I say. “I did it and got suspended for doing it so loudly.”

“Holy shit, Jones.”

“And you’re right. It does feel better. So far, anyway,” I say. “Meet me at the lake?”

It’s warmer today, and I’m too hot in my scarf and gloves, so I leave them in the car before we climb up the hill.

The ground is wet, so we lie on a picnic table.

“They took it pretty well,” I say when she asks me how it went. “My dad was stoned, so he didn’t care. Mom was… Mom.”

“Your dad was stoned?”

“Yeah. You’re in the inner circle now. I can tell you shit like that, right?”

“Inner circle, huh? How’d I get there?”

“You wanted me to come out. I came out. Now we’re bound for life or something. Isn’t that how it goes?”

“I didn’t want to force you out. I just thought—it’s just easier,” she says.

I point to the sky. “Look at that. Three in a row—all 747s, I bet.”

“You can tell that from here?”

“Sometimes. Those are pretty high up,” I say.

“Sweet.” She points. “What’s that one? It seems smaller.”

“It’s a little jet. Probably an ER4.”

We watch it zoom across the sky. “I like this,” she says. “I’d have never known that you knew anything about airplanes if we didn’t just hang out sometimes.”

“And I wouldn’t know that your favorite food is roast beef.”

She laughs and turns toward me and looks at me with that smile. The smile that brought me here—to this. To her. To the truth about why I didn’t really want to kiss Tim Huber while we were dating last year. To the truth about why I buried my head in all those books for my whole life.

When I kiss her, I place us in the future, where
we are just like Mom and Dad.
No. Scratch that. I place us where we are a happy couple who are madly in love, and we are kissing the way people kiss on their wedding day. With joy and relief and love. Without guilt. Without shame.

I say, “Abracadabra.”

Dee kisses me and then says, “You know what? I don’t want to rush. I want to have fun and fall in love and actually—I don’t know,” she says. “It’s like you’re teaching me to slow down or something.”

I don’t say anything, but I’m somehow not embarrassed that I just finally said
abracadabra
and she’s all
no, thank you.

She continues. “Must be all that Socrates shit rubbing off on me, but I got to thinking about how since I came out, all I’ve done is work on being sexual, and while that’s fun and all, I never took a minute to really just relax and feel loved, and I like it.”

“It’s nice,” I say. “No doubt.”

“My first few times were kinda awkward and fast.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Actually, that thing you said a few weeks ago? About how I was a fiend and all that? Reminded me of my first girlfriend and how—uh—I guess—pushy—she was. It was fun, and I liked her a lot, but she didn’t love me,” she says. “I think she just wanted to pop my cherry, you know?”

“Yuck. I hate that expression.”

“Me too.”

I think about all those guys in school.

They say:
I popped her cherry last night!

They say:
She bled all over my varsity jacket!

“So okay,” I say. “
Abracadabra
whenever it comes naturally. How’s that?”

She nods and kisses me again. “I never asked you what your favorite food is,” she says. “And I really want to know.”

I turn to look at the sky and rest my head on her shoulder. “Well, I know it’s sure as hell not shrimp.”

We laugh, and then she gets serious. “You sure everything’s going to be okay? At home? School? Do you feel like you did the right thing?”

“I have no idea. I’m sure people will still be weird about it. Ellis will probably come around. My mom might manage to say she loves me before I graduate college. My dad probably forgot it already.”

She laughs. “Some people will always be a pain, but all in all, it’s easier to be yourself, I think. I mean, now that the pressure’s off to be perfect.”

I stay quiet for a minute and let that go through my head a few times.
The pressure’s off to be perfect.

“Jones?”

“Yeah. Sorry. I think I just got a message from Socrates. I have to go.”

She laughs. We get up and walk down the hill to our cars, and when she takes off, I open a notebook and grab a pen from my glove compartment.

My paradox is all wrong. I write out a whole list of other paradoxes until I come to the one I most want to argue. I want to argue it with everyone in this town. Everyone on TV. I want to argue it with Claire and Kristina and even with Dee, who puts too much pressure on herself to play well and run enough. Or Juan, who swears at himself every time he makes a tiny mistake in the kitchen. Or Ellis, who is still a scared little girl trying to fit in.

I want to tell them:
Nobody’s perfect.

LET’S START HERE:
Wearing a toga to school is totally boss. Given free roam of the school in order to pick fights with anyone who looks willing is also totally boss. I mean, I’m usually Astrid Jones, pacifist poet type who doesn’t usually pick fights outside of correcting your grammar. But now I’m Astrid Jones, recently out lesbian who just got back from being suspended for saying the
F
-word several times right in front of the vice principal. This is a little different than I’d imagined it all quarter.

I have a small sign with my paradox on it. Nobody’s perfect. I find most people won’t argue with this, so I have to ask them related questions. I start with teachers. Mr. Trig walks
by me after first period. “What is perfect, Mr. Trig?” I ask. “And can you say that anyone’s achieved it?”

“We’re all born perfect,” he says.

Good answer.

“My right foot is a half size smaller than my left foot,” I say. “Is that perfect?”

He waves me off and winks because he has to get back to class.

Mr. Williams walks by me, and I ask him, “Is perfection possible?”

“No.”

“How are you so sure?”

He says, “Everything is a matter of perception.”

“So does that mean nobody is perfect or everybody is?” I ask. “Because if it’s a matter of perception, then either could be true.”

“Up to you,” he says as he walks away toward his room. I could have kept that going for a while, though. This whole notion of perfection intrigues me.
How can we say nobody’s perfect if there is no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there really is a right and wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type? Moral perfection? Aesthetic? Physiological? Mental?
I write this down in my project journal.

During the five minutes between second and third periods, I start to rant on my crowded pseudo–street corner (which is the hallway next to the gym).

“If perfection were possible, which type would reign? Moral perfection? Mental perfection? Would the smarter man
win, or the stronger? The dark-skinned or light-skinned? Would the winner be the most beautiful?”

“Perfection is equal,” someone says. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”

This draws a laugh from someone in the crowd.

“There is such a thing as a perfect race,” he says.

“A whole race of perfect people?” I say. “Really? How do you know this?”

“God said so. It’s in the Bible,” he says.

“The Bible?” I ask. “What’s that? And which god are you talking about? Zeus? Hermes? Poseidon?”

He flips me the bird while he’s walking to the library wing steps.

Someone yells, “Perfection is stupid!”

“I like that!” I say. She can’t hear me, but I riff on it. “Perfection is stupid! So, what is stupid, then?”

“That toga,” Kristina answers as she slips by me and into the classroom to my right.

“I believe that’s a matter of perception, Ms. Houck. My toga is not stupid. If the rest of Unity Valley wore togas, then I would be at the height of fashion.”

During third and fourth periods, we have the group debate in the gym, and Ms. Steck invites some of the school administrators to watch and argue with us. We each sit with our signs pointing out, waiting to be picked on by audience members. Camus-loving Clay gets the superintendent all wound up about the true meaning of education by saying that in recent years, our highly paid administrators are simply puppets
for yahoo school boards who don’t know anything about the tenets of a good education.

“That’s ridiculous!” the superintendent says.

“What’s ridiculous is the cutting of the art program in the elementary schools this year, sir. And the simultaneous building of a soccer field when we already have one soccer field.” Score for Clay.

An African-American board member—Jimmy Kyle’s mom—asks me why I chose
nobody’s perfect
. “Isn’t this whole town built on the idea of perfection and standing in the community? I’ve never lived here, but I hear things. And I mean no offense by this,” she adds, nodding to the other administrators in the room.