Fan Art (23 page)

I tiptoe into the house after
school. I’d tried to not come home, but Eden had Bible study and I didn’t need to practice for the concert. It wasn’t like I could go over to the Viveroses’ and try to mooch dinner because I can’t possibly talk to Mason after what I said in government.

I know my mom is home and Frank is out of town—her car is in the driveway and his truck is nowhere to be seen. And I don’t want to explain to her that my
Gumshoe
stunt wasn’t really about coming out—at least not intentionally. She was so proud of me—like I did it to make a personal statement. How can I tell her that I am still not out? That I’m deathly afraid of telling Mason and how everything between us will change forever after I say it?

And I don’t feel like talking about it.

I hear my mom in the kitchen, talking on the phone. She’s here and so are the twins—their baby dolls and a
grocery store’s worth of plastic food are strewn across the living room carpet. One of them spies me as I toe off my sneakers and tiptoe toward the stairs, trying to avoid stepping on a plastic steak. It’s a dog toy and it squeaks.

I put my finger to my lips, “Shh.”

Surprisingly, she stays quiet.

“Good girl, Annie M,” I whisper, figuring it must be her and not talks-up-a-storm Elisabeth. I’m stepping over the baby gate when I hear a little voice ask, “Amy?”

“What’d you say?” I ask.

“Amy,” she says.

Weird.
Elisabeth calls me Jamie.
Not Amy
. “Ann Marie?” I ask.

She nods.

Then I realize that my sister just said her first word. “Mom!”

Mom comes rushing in, clutching her phone to her chest. “What?”

“Ann Marie talked!” I say.

The panicked look on my mother’s face falls away as she drops to her knees. “What’d you say, sweetie?”

“Amy,” she announces, pointing at me with a chubby finger.

“Yeah,” Mom says. “Jamie and I have some talking to do.”

Damn it
. I was hoping she might forget.

Then into the phone, she asks, “Did you hear that,
Frank? Your daughter spoke.”

Frank’s voice is muffled.

I wonder if he had hoped it’d be
Dada.
Elisabeth’s was
Mama.

“Say it again so Daddy can hear,” Mom says, and holds out the phone.

“Amy,” Anne Marie says.

This time I hear Frank laugh. And I think to myself,
Did she know I was trying to sneak to my room?

“I’m so relieved,” Mom says to Frank. “I know the pediatrician said not to worry, but she was so far behind Elisabeth. . . . Yes . . . Me too.”

I escape while I can. I flop down on my bed and wish there was a restart button for the day because, God knows, I need to push it.
Why the hell did I have to say “I love you, man”?

I hardly ever say, “I love you, man” because I worry that people will think I mean it in the very real, very gay sense, and not as a joke. But I did. And I do. And I never should have said it. Not in the middle of government. Not to Mason.

Crap. All that stuff that happens to guys who are friends with gay kids? The jokes that they might be gay too? Those have probably already started circulating. Mason was counting on me—on our car—to get the hell out of Dodge. Forget the closet, all of Dodge was running out of ventilation right about now.

“Amy?” Mom asks, poking her head in around my bedroom door.

“Not funny,” I say to the ceiling.

“She loves you,” she says. “Her first word was your name.”

I soften, look at her.

“Come downstairs?” she asks. “We need to talk.”

I sigh and get up.

Mom and I sit on the couch where we can see the twins playing.

“There are better ways to do things, Jamie,” she starts, patting my knee. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad you stood up for what you thought was right, but you shouldn’t have taken advantage of your position on the
Gumshoe
staff. The literary magazine was their baby too.”

“Yeah.”

“It wasn’t yours to manipulate. It wasn’t yours to use to make your own statement. You understand?”

I nod.

“You should have worked together with Michael and Lia and the others to come to a consensus.”

“I know. But it wasn’t going to happen. I felt like I had to—” I stop.

She waits for me, but when I don’t continue, she touches my knee again. “It’s a cute story. Flattering, huh?”

I don’t understand.

“The boys in the story—they look like you and Mason.”

My skin goes cold, like the air conditioning just kicked on. I lunge for my backpack, reach for a copy of
Gumshoe.
But I don’t need to open the magazine. I know she’s right—even without a pair of chunky black glasses and a mop of unruly hair, I can imagine Tony as Mason.
And Justin? She might as well have named him James.

“You didn’t notice?” she asks.

I shake my head. Once to the right and back to center.

“Oh, honey. It’s probably nothing. Just me thinking of you two . . . ,” she trails off.

“No,” I say. “You’re right.”

“Mason’s seen this, hasn’t he?” Mom asks.

I shake my head. “Not that I know of.”

“Well, you might want to warn him. He’s going to see it eventually.”

I don’t tell her I can’t possibly talk to him ever again.

“Jamie, you found time to come out to him, haven’t you?”

I bite my lip. Feel the sting of tears prickling behind my eyes.

Mom reaches for me, pulls my head down to her shoulder.

I melt into her, cry as if the tears are the last of my ice-cube resolve. “I can’t.”

“Why not?” she whispers gently.

“I can’t—I can’t—” I sputter. “I won’t be able to stand it if he—”

“He’s your best friend, Jamie. I don’t think he’ll reject you.”

“That and—” I think of how to explain it. Not the part about how he’ll think that I am the world’s worst best friend and that I don’t trust him with a secret—my mom won’t fall for that—but the
other
reason. My
other
fear. “But, like, what if he reaches over to, like, mess up my hair or something and stops. Thinks,
But Jamie’s gay
, instead of what he usually thinks—just for a second. I don’t think I could deal with that.”

She squeezes my shoulders. “I see.”

I swallow, slide out of her arms. The urge to cry is gone. Replaced with shame.

Because the pride is gone from my mother’s face.
Why was she ever proud of me? Was she proud that I was gay? Happy that I finally came out?

When I hadn’t. Not even to my best friend.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THIRTY-SEVEN

The weekend between the first and
second week of AP exams is a great time to disappear. If you don’t call your friends, they don’t notice. They’re too busy studying. If you don’t text your best friend, he’ll think you’ve got your nose in a book. If you’re ignoring your mother and hiding in your room contemplating becoming a hermit, she believes you’re cramming for the calc exam on Monday. If you stumble down the stairs on Monday morning, looking pale everywhere except the black circles under your eyes, and your stepfather says, “What happened to you?” and you say, “Got my AP calc test today,” he’ll imagine you’re a good student. But who in their right mind would study for forty-eight hours straight if they weren’t going to graduate?

I just hope Principal Chambers will let me take the exam. It’s in the afternoon timeslot. The disciplinary committee meets this morning, so I’ll learn the status of
my fate at lunch. Then, if I’m lucky, I’ll be allowed to take the test.
Please, please, please
, I whisper to the clouds as I walk in from the student parking lot.

“Got your calculator?” Mason asks, landing a playful punch on my shoulder.

I nearly jump out of my skin. He doesn’t know I’m avoiding him. “Yeah,” I say. “You?”

“Got it.” He pats his backpack. “You have a good weekend?”

“Studied a lot.”

“So you weren’t grounded-slash-babysitting?”

I frown, wonder what he heard.

“Principal’s office? Friday?” he hints.

“Yeah,” I admit. “For, um, well . . . ,” I choke.

His eyebrows wrinkle with concern.

I stop walking and he does too. I just look at him. Look into his eyes and absorb every ounce of chocolate-cake softness before I say anything—because Mason is smarter than I am, and he’ll be able to add things up. If I mention
Gumshoe
and how I put Challis’s comic in without permission, he will add that to my announcement in government and calculate the truth. I. Am. Gay. And I’ve never told him. He’ll deduce that I don’t trust him. He’ll have proof that I am the world’s worst best friend. And that I’m in love with him.

I get the urge to wrap him in a bear hug and hold him. Hold on to him. So he can’t leave me.

“Jamie?” he asks.

I shake my head. I can’t say it.

“Dude,” he says sympathetically.

And I think I might lose it. Right there in the quad in front of everyone.

I’m about to make a break for the privacy of the restroom when Wesley catches up to us in a blur of rainbow tie-dye. “Got any more magazines?” he asks, out of breath.

Wesley
+
Mason
=
Jamie is screwed.

I gulp back the lump in my throat, swear, then ask, “But you bought four
Gumshoes
on Thursday?”

“Yeah. And they are the hottest thing since One Direction over at South,” Wesley sort of explains.

Mason stifles a laugh as we walk inside.

“South Junior High?” I clarify. That was where Mason and I had gone.

“Yeah. Next year’s sophomore class is so gay!” he says, following me down the hall.

And I think he means literally.

“So, well, I unloaded my copies and need more.” He flashes me a dimpled smile complete with a skinny-shouldered shrug. It’s adorable.

My face grows warm as the pit of my stomach drops a few degrees.
Is he flirting with me?
“Cool,” I tell him, and busy myself with my locker combination before I think about it too much.

Mason leans against the locker next to mine. He’s so close I smell Speed Stick and Scope. I glance over at him and get a dizzy feeling—hot and cold swirling together. I wonder what he thinks of obviously very gay Wesley. He presses his lips together between his teeth.
I know that look.
Mason’s amused, like watching me with Wesley is an improv comedy act in progress.

I open my locker, and my hand brushes his arm. I jerk away as if my fingers got burned. He’s so close, I can’t think clearly. It takes me a second to remember what I was doing. “How many?” I ask Wesley, taking the last handful of magazines out of the shrink-wrapped package of samples.

“Four,” Wesley says, and holds out his hand and a twenty.

I hand the magazines to him and put the rest back in my locker.

“Thanks, man.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And nice to meet you,” he adds, this time to Mason. Then he’s off, bouncing down the hall like a six-year-old on espresso. Over his tie-dyed shoulder, he shouts, “Page twenty-seven!”

I grab a
Gumshoe
, flip it open, turn to page twenty-seven, and read a poem I had seen at least two dozen times before. I know what it says and snap the magazine closed.

“Do I get to buy one?” Mason asks in a whisper.

My whole body tingles as if he whispered it in my ear. “Uh, well, um . . . They aren’t supposed to be on sale yet.”

Mason’s eyebrows go up as if to say,
Really? And how come I don’t believe you?

“But, yeah, you can buy one.”

“Good,” he says. “I want to see my poetry in print.”

I know his name isn’t in there anywhere. I would have memorized that poem.

“I can’t tell you the page number,” he says, “because you haven’t sold me a copy yet.”

Reluctantly, I give him a copy of
Gumshoe.

He tucks a five-dollar bill into the pocket of my shirt and pats me on the chest.

The motion is like the opposite of CPR. It stops my heart.

“Hey,” I say, noticing the time on a clock down the hall. “Good luck on your exam.”

“You too,” he says, and starts to walk away. He stops and comes back.

I wait.

“My poem,” he whispers. “It’s called, ‘At Night I Dream.’”

It’s the title of a poem I remember—the one with the word,
homophobia
in it—the one that made me decide to scan Challis’s comic. “That was yours?”

He avoids my gaze and shrugs as if it’s not important.

“You didn’t sign it,” I say.

“I know.”

“But . . . ,” I start, but I don’t know what else to say.
But your poem started me on a path to Chamber’s chambers? On the road to self-destruction?

“I thought you might’ve guessed,” he says to the floor tiles.

And with that, he leaves me standing there, remembering that I did think of him and his bilingual family when I read it. I turn to the page and reread, “a thousand words and ways to say it—simply, deeply, profoundly.
I love you
.”

He didn’t mean me, obviously. The poem was about his family, not me.

I’m the one in love with him, not the other way around.

And if I’m not careful, we won’t even be friends.

You and Me

by Wesley Osteryoung

You never see me,

even though every shirt I own

is brighter than a fire-season sunset,

more neon than Main Street at night.