Fearless (4 page)

“What about them?” I asked, pointing at the stoners with my chin.

“They’re not my friends. They’re just who I buy weed from.”

“Oh.”

Liam raised an eyebrow. “I’m not a stoner. I just like weed.”

I busted up at his little joke. He grinned at me, and I have to say, he was cute when he smiled. It was like this light just burst out of him. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt such pure and simple joy.

“I’ll help you with history,” I volunteered, hoping he understood it was an apology.

Liam got it. He nodded. “Cool.”

“Did you want to come over after school? I could show you my class notes….”

Liam’s face clouded over. “I can’t.”

I felt stupid for pushing too far too fast. “Sure, I get it.”

“Tomorrow?” he offered.

Embarrassed despair turned to excitement and then I told myself I was an idiot. I couldn’t get all lame about this. I had to try and be cool. I just wished I had any idea what that looked like. “Sure.”

The rest of the school day passed without any more surprises—thank God. I wasn’t up for any more shocks. I liked that my life was so predictable—there’s a real safety in routine.

My mom and I live in a little run-down apartment. We used to have a nicer place, but then my mom kicked my dad to the curb (and I’m glad she did, since he’s a total jerk) and with one income, this was the best she could do. I didn’t mind. She was a lot happier now than she had been while married to my self-centered dad, and she was too good a person to be sad all the time.

I grabbed a slice of cold pizza from the fridge and a can of soda and then shuffled into my room. I put my backpack with the day’s boatload of homework in a corner and pretended it didn’t exist. Then I got out my laptop and surfed the Net to kill time until four o’clock. That was when my Internet boyfriend showed up.

No, I don’t really have a boyfriend. But I do have a vivid imagination.

I hang out a lot on this site for gay teens. It’s like having a social life without all the work and rejection. Sometimes I just read the articles—I’m obsessed with the advice column and I keep thinking that one day I need to send in a letter of my own. I just don’t think anyone can tell me how to stop being a loser.

A lot of the times, I’m in the chat rooms.  It’s fun to gossip about which celebrity might be gay and trade links to pictures (all very artistic pictures, I assure you) and commiserate about how the adults are fucking up the world we’re going to inherit.

It’s also fun to flirt. Online flirting is something I can handle. For one, I don’t have to worry about the person I’m flirting with scrunching up their face in disgust. Second, I can edit my flirting several times before anyone sees it. Even if I don’t hit it off with my online playmates, I can just move on without feeling rejected.

Of course, there’s the usual chat room problem. You know what I mean. The Creeps; those guys who are probably ancient—like in their
forties
—trolling for pictures of teens in various states of undress. The good thing about this site I go to is that it’s moderated, so as soon as we spot one of The Creeps, we just bring in an admin and get them booted.

The Stalkers are the more subtle cousins of The Creeps. These are the guys who try to lure you into meeting them in some secluded park. They’re a lot harder to spot. Some of them give themselves away with the old Age/Sex/Location question or simply “Stats?” but most had wised up by now.

I was pretty sure “Hawaii5*9” was a sixty-year-old dude with a paunch and bad teeth, but I chose to imagine he was a sexy guy my age who had a thing for awkward nerds. Oh, I’ll just admit it. In my most secret and lurid fantasies it was Zach. I’m pathetic, I know. But don’t worry, it gets worse. Because I have this whole elaborate scenario where we meet and he tells me he’s glad that I’m the one behind “JustM3*87” and that he had wanted to ask me out for a long time. I told you, I read a lot. It helps me come up with all kinds of scenarios in my head where Zach and I wind up together.

Hawaii comes on at four every other day and we chat. We started talking a month ago, before school started. I’d never seen him on the site before, and I was in a good mood (can you believe it?) so I side-messaged him with a friendly greeting and told him who to watch out for. Since then, I’d found out he was a closeted comic book fan, though our interests aren’t the same. He’s mostly into the dark stuff like Neil Gaiman’s
Sandman
series. I like titles about younger heroes. Hawaii and I have a lot of fun arguing about who the best writers are.

I try really hard to not ping him as soon as he comes on because I don’t want to come off as one of The Stalkers—or worse, needy. So when the site told me he was online, I didn’t immediately click on the side message button. I have a little self-control.

I got a thrill when he messaged me in the next second.

Hawaii5*9:
Hey! What up?

JustM3*87:
Nothing. Weird day. You?

Hawaii5*9:
 Nothing. 2day was boooring.

JustM3*87:
That bad?

Hawaii5*9:
 You have no idea. Why was ur day weird?

JustM3*87:
This stoner dude started following me around.

Hawaii5*9:
 Maybe he was into you.

That idea had never even occurred to me. I panicked just even thinking about it. It would explain a lot of his weird behavior. But I couldn’t make sense of him being attracted to me. And I didn’t know what I would do if it were true. So I took the option of not believing it.

JustM3*87:
He said he’s str8.

Hawaii5*9:
 A lot of guys say that.

JustM3*87:
And most of them really are.

Hawaii5*9:
 Yeah, and some of them are bi.

JustM3*87:
I keep hearing there’s no such thing as bi.

Hawaii5*9:
 Nah, there is.

JustM3*87:
I just can’t even figure out how that works.

Hawaii5*9:
 Some people like both, is all.

I didn’t get it, but I didn’t want to seem like an idiot or a jerk. For all I knew, Hawaii was bi. I didn’t want him to get pissed at me for trashing his orientation.

JustM3*87:
I guess that makes sense. I just have a hard enough time figuring out how to date guys. If I had to figure out both genders, I’d lose my mind.

Hawaii5*9:
 I hear you, dude.

So, he wasn’t bisexual. I was relieved about that, though that’s probably not cool of me to say. I just didn’t want any unknown factors creeping into my entirely fictitious online relationship.

Hawaii5*9:
 Homecoming’s in a few weeks. You going?

JustM3*87:
You know I don’t dance.

Hawaii5*9:
 It’s not all about your moves, you know.

JustM3*87:
No?

Hawaii5*9:
 It’s also about the making out.

JustM3*87:
Why didn’t anyone tell me that b4?

Hawaii5*9:
 Maybe you should go with your bad boy stoner.

JustM3*87:
Not gonna happen.

Hawaii5*9:
 Is he hot?

I really wanted the whole subject dropped, so I sent him a link to the latest P!nk song that had become my obsession.
That moved him off the Liam topic and on to safer subjects. After a little while, he told me he had to go do his homework. I agreed, but what I meant by “homework” was something else entirely.

Jerking off thinking of Zach was one of my few pleasures in life. I refused to feel guilty about it, since I wasn’t hurting anybody. It wasn’t like I was ever going to tell Zach—like
ever
.

The uncomfortable and unsettling thing was, though, that Liam’s laughing face kept popping into my head. I absolutely did not want that to start, so I kept returning to Zach’s GQ perfect face. I was willing to befriend a stoner, but I absolutely would not crush on one. I have my limits.

Chapter 4

L
IAM WASN’T IN
P
.
E
. THE
next morning. I admit, I was disappointed. Against all good sense and in spite of my repeated warnings to myself, I had been looking forward to seeing him. I guess since there was literally nothing at school to look forward to, having one maybe-good thing was too much for me to resist being happy about.

I kept looking for him as we collected outside on the bleachers, thinking he might just be late. But Coach Lancaster came out and got class started without any sign of my new friend.  Realizing I was investing way too heavily in someone who couldn’t be relied upon, I had a few harsh words with myself. Liam was probably in the parking lot getting wasted. A whole day of attending classes had just been too much for him.

You don’t know me
, I remember him saying.

Turns out I do.

“Today we’re going to do some races to see who gets the best time,” Lancaster announced.

What did he just say?
I wondered, giving him my full attention.

I think I’ve made it clear that I don’t like competition. So I panicked for a second before I remembered there wouldn’t be any teams. It was just me against the rest of the class. That was a lot less pressure. I didn’t mind losing—I mean, really, is it that big a deal losing a race in a class in high school? I just didn’t want to take anyone else down with me.

I was in the second group, so I had more time to brood. I mean I had more time to think about how much I didn’t care that Liam had bailed. Because I totally didn’t. Sure, it would have been nice to have a friend to sit next to and talk to so I didn’t look like the loser no one wanted to hang with. And, yeah, it might have been cool if that person had been the class stoner so I got some kind of “dangerous” cred.

But that wasn’t happening, so I was just going to have to deal. It was back to my first plan for the school year—militant apathy. I wrapped my towel around me for a little warmth and hunched in on myself and put on my best angry face. I can’t deny that the expression came naturally to me.

I took my mark when I was called. A disturbing image came to my mind of some truly catastrophic accident where I pushed off the springboard and my feet slipped and I fell into the water in a tangle of arms and legs. I wouldn’t get images like that in my head if things like that didn’t actually happen to me. I did my best to grip the springboard with my toes, just in case.

Lucas was on my left and a guy named Charlie was on my right. We all had goose pimples from the crisp morning breeze. I trembled, anxious to get into the heated pool. Adrenaline coursed through me, which I shrugged off as a sincere desire to get the race over with.

“You’re an awesome swimmer.”

His words echoed in my ears.

Shut up, Liam.

The coach blew his whistle and I flew into motion, knifing into the water with such skill and precision that I almost whooped in delight. The strong start gave me the confidence to surge through the water with everything I had. I didn’t even think about winning. For me, right then, it was just about reveling in the feeling of being good at something.

I reached the edge of the pool, flipped and kicked off. The momentum carried me seamlessly back into my freestyle stroke. I felt like I could go for hours. I
wanted
to go for hours. I never wanted the feeling to end.

Of course, I had to stop. When I had finished the laps, I pulled myself out of the water and pinched my eyes to clear them. It was only then that I realized that the guy closest behind me was a full pool-length back.

That made me a little smug. But that was nothing compared to when the coach announced I was the fastest in the class.

I didn’t know what to say. I’d never won anything before. But seeing, for once, the way some of the guys in my class looked at me with approval was quite a rush. Was that why people liked playing sports? Because it made them feel so good seeing other people admire them? Having never experienced anything like it before, the idea had just never occurred to me.

The coach cornered me as I headed back to the locker room. “So why don’t you want to join the swim team?” he asked.

He sounded angry. It was like not wanting to join the team was a direct insult to him.