Dating Sarah Cooper (3 page)

“She wasn’t at school, but she came over after and then left an hour or so ago,” I explained.

“Ah. Of course.” He chuckled as he rolled a pile of noodles onto his fork, and then asked, “So did anything interesting happen today?”

For a moment, I debated whether or not to tell them about Jake, but decided eventually to go ahead and say something. We’d talked about homosexuality before, and I think my parents were a huge part of why I’d never understood why gay people were bullied. My uncle was gay, and although he lived across the country and I’d only met him a few times, his existence meant that in my family, being gay was normal.

“Yeah, actually.” I took another bite of my food as they waited for me to continue. “Um, there was this kid getting picked on on my way home. I saw him with this other guy from the football team; his lip was busted and everything. He said it was because he was gay.”

“You’re kidding,” Mom cut in. “Is he okay?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “I actually let him come here and Sarah cleaned him up. But he pretty much left right when you got here. He was worried you’d try and get in contact with his parents.”

“Well, we should certainly contact the school.” Mom looked across the table to Dad. “Don’t you think, Jeff?”

Dad’s eyebrows furrowed as he chewed his food. Once he’d swallowed, he sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe he wants to handle it himself.”

“How can you say that, with your brother being the way he is?” Mom asked him. “Would you have let Kevin take that from another boy back when you two were kids?”

“Well, he did,” Dad pointed out. “And much worse than it is today. His solution was to take up boxing.” He grinned. “They left him alone after that.”

“Well, not every gay child can just take up a violent sport to avoid getting bullied every day,” Mom countered, clearly upset.

“I know. I’m just saying that if this kid avoided meeting you because he was worried you’d get his parents involved, he clearly wants to handle it himself. Besides, he obviously has someone he can count on now in our daughter.” He smiled over at me, and Mom looked to me abruptly, almost like she’d forgotten I was even here.

“Oh, of course. Well, I’m just glad to be proven we raised you correctly,” she said. “Good for you and Sarah.”

“He invited us to join a club he’s in,” I told them. “He seems nice.”

“Well, you could always use more friends,” Dad said, and received a glare from Mom at that.

“What’s that supposed to mean? The friends she has are just fine.”

“I just mean it’d be nice to see some more friendly faces around!” Dad insisted. “Of course we love Sarah, but it was nice meeting Austin, too. I’d be happy to finally get to say hello to all of these kids you’re hanging out with on a daily basis.”

“It’s not like that,” I explained. “There’s a different between friendship and having acquaintances. I have a lot of acquaintances. You know, the people that invite you to parties because you kind of have mutual friends but that you’ll only actually talk to once a week or so?”

“All I got out of that is that you’re going to parties,” Dad replied. “What kind of parties?”

“Really crazy keggers,” I told him, straight-faced. “I drank an entire bottle of vodka all by myself at the last one.”

“Five out of ten for that one,” he rated. “You’d have died if it were true.”

“Aw, shucks,” I sighed out. Mom watched the two of us, a smile on her lips.

“So how do you feel about joining this club?” she eventually asked. “It’s a commitment.”

“I mean, I guess it’d be fine if it doesn’t have a meeting, like, every day or something,” I decided. Then I shrugged. “I guess I’ll hear more about it tomorrow.”

Chapter Two

I
slammed my locker door shut the next morning and immediately jumped when I felt something hard press into my shoulder. It turned out to be Sarah’s forehead, and she stood up straight as I turned around to face her, a pout on her lips.

“I’m tired,” she said.

“Were you up all night texting Sam?”

“Thinking of what to say,” she corrected. “Him actually talking to me was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“That was a quick change of heart,” I said as we turned to walk down the hallway together. A girl – Annie – that I used to talk to in my Trig class last year passed by us, and I raised a hand to wave at her. She smiled and waved back.

“It’s not a change of heart,” Sarah told me. “I just wish this was easier. Why is it so hard getting a boyfriend?”

I laughed at that. “It’s not… at least not for you. Your problem is keeping one.”

“Well, why is it so hard getting the one I’d actually want to keep?”

“Because life sucks,” I told her as we entered our next class.

A boy named Colton who sat in the front row heard me, and quipped as we walked by, “That’s a very cynical way of thinking about things, you know.”

“She’s a very cynical person, Colton,” Sarah sighed out. “You should know this by now.”

He grinned at us as we took our seats near the back. Once we had our notebooks out and were waiting for class to start, I let out a sigh and turned to face Sarah, reaching out to grip her hand with my own. She mirrored my actions dismally. “Look. I’ll be completely honest with you. I don’t think it’s gonna work out.”

“You sound like you’re breaking up with me,” she mumbled.

“Then just picture Sam saying those same words,” I suggested, “because you are going to get your heart broken. This guy is your typical jock who’ll date the hottest girl who gives him the time of day.”

“I’m hot,” Sarah defended.

I let out a quiet groan. She was really,
really
hopeless. “Okay then, Sarah. Do what you want.”

“Wait, am I not hot?” she hissed to me. Our teacher had just entered the classroom and was beginning to lecture at the front of the room.

“Of course you’re hot,” I told her quietly, and rolled my eyes when the girl sitting closest to us turned to raise an eyebrow at the two of us. “Just… can we talk about this later?”

“Fine,” she huffed, and we agreed to leave it until the next time we saw each other: Lunch.

We ate lunch with four other girls every day and a couple of guys. The girls were Hannah, Dina, Josephine, and Bonnie. Hannah was our only cheerleader friend, but she was nice enough, and was also the reason Sarah and I were invited to so many social events.

Dina and Josephine were a lot like Sarah and I in that they’d been best friends for a long time. They were friendly and down-to-earth and easy to talk to, and I liked them the most out of everyone in our little lunch group.

Bonnie, although she seemed nice, too, was pretty quiet, and I think she only sat with us because she was friends with Graham, who was by far the kinder of the two guys that joined us at our table every day. The other was Connor, who could be cool on the rare occasions when he wasn’t being an ass. He only sat with us because he had a thing for Sarah. And Hannah. And sometimes me, whenever he was particularly down on himself after rejections from his top two choices.

They were mostly Sarah’s friends, but I liked them okay. I was used to being around people who knew her better than they knew me. I’d always been a little shyer than her, and she’d always been the one everyone liked a little bit better. But that was okay with me, because Sarah needed to be liked, and I didn’t necessarily feel like I needed it in the same way that she did. It had hurt a lot getting teased in middle school, but I had a thicker skin because of it. And if the worst criticism anyone had of me now was that I was only able to get popular because I was friends with Sarah, well, I was doing pretty well for myself, then.

Anyway, we didn’t actually talk about Sam at lunch, mostly because for all of her obsessing over him, Sarah never talked much about him in front of anyone other than me. She didn’t really share much about herself with any of our other friends, actually. We were all into talking about when the next group hangout was or who had just started dating whom or whatever the other latest gossip was, but there weren’t very many genuine conversations about meaningful experiences or about what our feelings were. Or at least not the deep feelings, and even as shallow as Sarah’s crush seemed, I knew she was embarrassed that she liked someone as much as she liked Sam.

All in all, that second day back at school was pretty uneventful, beyond Sarah getting some hope that Sam Heath would someday know her last name. Those seven hours from eight in the morning to three in the afternoon were as boring as they always were.

At three fifteen, however, well… shit kind of hit the fan.

I hadn’t seen Jake in any of my classes and had therefore concluded that we didn’t share any, and so the first time I saw him that day was when Sarah and I met him at the front office. On the way there, she told me, “So Jake’s actually in one of my classes. He said ‘hi’ to me today and everyone kind of looked surprised when I answered. It was a little weird.”

“People are stupid,” I sighed out.

When we reached the front office, Jake greeted us, all smiles. “Wow, you guys came! I’m actually kind of surprised.”

“Well, we said we would,” Sarah replied. “So here we are.”

Jake let out a breath, then shook his head, almost in amazement. “Okay. Wow. This is gonna change things a lot around here, you know that, right? C’mon.” He beckoned us after him, and together, we followed him down the hallway.

“Okay?” Sarah said, confused, and we exchanged strange looks as we walked. Neither of us knew what he was talking about.

“The meeting’s in room 405 every Tuesday,” he explained. “So just once a week. But sometimes we do things after school on other days, to, you know, help the community.”

“Cool,” I chimed in, relaxing a little.

“Yeah, nothing wrong with a little volunteer work,” Sarah agreed. “This’ll be fun.”

“And you’re sure you’re ready?” Jake asked, pausing abruptly outside a closed door and turning to face us. “This is it. I know it’s a big step.”

“Well, you’re here to help, I’m sure,” Sarah told him. I knew her well enough to sense the edge of sarcasm to her tone, but it was obvious Jake didn’t catch it.

“Of course. I’m gonna be here for the both of you. I mean, especially after what you’re doing for the rest of the gay kids at our school. Your coming out is gonna completely change what everyone thinks of us.”

He turned away to open the door, and completely missed our reactions. Sarah’s eyes widened and she immediately turned to look at me. My jaw dropped.

We recovered quickly when we realized Jake was about to face us again. “I’m gonna let them know we have two new members, and you guys come in when you’re ready, alright?”

“Sounds great,” Sarah replied before I could, and then Jake was gone, ducking into the room and cracking the door behind himself. Sarah and I immediately went back to gaping at each other, but I could tell she was also holding back a smile. “Oh my God. He thinks we’re gay.”

“He thinks we’re a gay couple,” I elaborated. There was a long silence, and then I echoed Sarah: “Oh my God.”

She raised a hand to her still-gaping mouth, and immediately dissolved into giggles. Then she seemed to realize something, and stopped laughing. “Oh my God, Katie, we have to go with it.”

“What? No!” I countered. “Are you crazy?”

“You have to trust me. Just do it. Say we’re a couple, okay?”

“Why on Earth would I do that?” I asked, my voice climbing a few octaves higher. There was
no
way I was going to listen to her. There were so many things wrong with her idea that I couldn’t have even begun to name them all in those few seconds we were out in the hallway.

“Because this kid is already in there telling them we’re together anyway, so what do we have to lose?” she pointed out even as I stared at her, wide-eyed. “Look, just trust me. C’mon.”

She grabbed at my arm and tugged me toward the door, and I barely got out a hissed “wait!” before her hand was abruptly in mine and she’d pulled me into the classroom. I stopped struggling.

A group of twelve or so students sat in a circle of chairs as Jake stood in the center, and all thirteen of them were staring at us: Sarah smiling proudly as her hand squeezed mine so tightly it was going numb, and me, clearly uncomfortable as I offered a meek wave with my free hand. “Hey.”

The first one to speak was a girl with short, pink hair, who I’d later find out was named Hattie. “Ho…ly… shit,” she said.

“Knew it,” a boy I was surprised I recognized chimed in, and high-fived the guy next to him with glee. I suppressed an offended look. Knew it? What was
that
supposed to mean?

“Alright, so as you can see, guys, these two are our newest LAMBDA members,” Jake finally said, trying to break the tension. “Katie-”

“Hammontree and Sarah Cooper, yeah, we know,” another girl cut in. Jessa. She was eyeing us suspiciously. “You guys are actually together? Seriously?”

“Seriously,” Sarah replied as I tried not to fume beside her. It was easy to see how big of a mess she’d already gotten us into. If we denied it now we’d just look like giant assholes. “Katie and I have been dating for about two months now, and we’re ready to tell the world.”

I grit my teeth and stayed quiet. In that moment, I honestly think I was angrier at Sarah than I’d ever been. She did a lot of stupid, impulsive things, but this took the cake. And while she was smooth-talking her way into the hearts of these people, I was thinking ahead. While we were sitting down in two empty chairs and she was beginning to tell some bullshit story about how she’d known since she was thirteen that she liked girls, I was realizing why she’d wanted to do this. And while she was telling them how she’d been in denial for a while about her feelings for me, I was realizing how irrevocably big this lie truly was.

And right around the time everyone was watching me expectantly, waiting for
my
story, I realized how much it was already going to hurt these people if we told them we were making it all up.

So as they stared at me in that circle, waiting for me to explain when I’d realized that I, too, liked girls, I swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and then began, “I guess I didn’t know until recently…”

The meeting went on for a while, with almost everyone in noticeably higher spirits. They talked about what’d happened to Jake and how I’d stopped it, and he shared how he’d realized from the way I was talking and the way Sarah and I interacted that I was gay and that we were a couple. I obviously didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d mistaken an eating disorder for homosexuality and close friendship for romance. 

And when the hour was finally up and people were finally beginning to file out of the room, a girl named Violet who hadn’t spoken much came up to us and told us, “You guys were really brave for coming here. I hope things really can change,” and I had to bite my lip to keep from groaning because
how in the hell were we going to go back on this now
?

The girl named Jessa, meanwhile, brushed past Sarah close enough to give her a rather hard shoulder-check, and then turned back to roll her eyes in our direction even as she left the room. That was more than enough to tell us she wasn’t buying it. She seemed to be the only one who felt that way, though.

We walked back with Jake to the parking lot, holding hands all the while even as he rambled on about how exciting it’d be to have openly gay popular kids and how we could do so much to help end gay bullying and maybe we could even win Prom Queens in April or at least Queens at the Winter Formal, and I felt sick by the time he left us. We got into Sarah’s car so that she could give me a ride home, and I sat there in complete silence for what felt like hours. In reality, it was less than a minute before I finally said, “I think that was the shittiest thing I’ve ever done.”

Beside me, she let out a sigh. “Oh, c’mon, Katie. Did you hear them in there? They were freaking out. And did you hear that one gay guy say we were adorable together?” She shot me a wink and I glared back at her. “Lighten up! I have a plan.”

“What, to completely destroy the hopes and dreams of every gay kid at our school?” I countered. “That was sick. That was
so
mean, Sarah. We just lied!”

“But they don’t have to know that,” she explained. “Yes, it was a little rash, but I figured something out. Guys like lesbians, right? And they also like challenges.”

“You-” I cut myself off to gape at her, fuming, and then shook my head. “I can’t believe you.”

“Look, I need to stand out to Sam somehow, and this puts the both of us on the map. You need to get back out there, Katie! I know seeing Austin moping around all the time is probably making you feel bad about dating again, but you both should move on, and this’ll help you do that. And while we’re at it, we’ll be majorly boosting the confidence of the kids in that LGBT club. We’re doing them a favor.”