M or F?

Table of Contents

 

 

 

M or F?

 

RAZORBILL

 

Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Young Readers Group
345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York,
New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue, Suite 700, Toronto,
Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,
Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi - 110 017, India
Penguin Group (NZ), Cnr Airborne and Rosedale Roads, Albany,
Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

 

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand,
London WC2R 0RL, England

 

Copyright 2005 © Razorbill All rights reserved

 

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Papademetriou, Lisa.

M or F? : a novel / by Lisa Papademetriou and Chris Tebbetts.

p. cm.

Summary: Gay teen Marcus helps his friend Frannie chat up her crush online, but then becomes convinced that the crush is falling for him instead.

eISBN : 978-1-101-09983-4

[1. Gays—Fiction. 2. High schools—Fiction. 3. Schools—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction.] I. Tebbetts, Christopher. II. Title.

PZ7.P1954Maor 2005

[Fic]—dc22

2005008149

 

 

The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.

 

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

I'm thinking this whole thing will make a good movie someday. It will be the first feature from Tributary Productions, which will be my company. Tributary, as in, out of the mainstream but always going somewhere. Productions, as in, life is one big—. Frannie says I'm a drama queen. I prefer to think of myself as someone who knows a good story when he sees one.

So. Opening credits roll. Camera tracks down the hallway of a typical high school. Make that painfully typical. Everyone you see looks like someone else you already know. Geeks and gods and everyone in between are either hanging out or jostling along, all of them wearing clothes that look like they came from the same mall, which they probably did. The camera passes by a big banner on the wall; it used to say GO BUCKS, but now the word YOURSELF is scrawled after it, with the S in BUCKS crossed out. A grumpy looking thick-necked teacher with a bad tie is taking the banner down as the camera passes him by and pushes into a crowded cafeteria.

Move in on a small table at the far corner, where someone is sitting with his back to the camera. He's sixteen, has straight dark hair that shags over his ears, and wears a bright green T-shirt with BOOLIO on the back in black writing. The way the camera is positioned, you think he's eating alone, but then a girl's face comes into view as she leans a little to the side to look at something over his shoulder. She's the same age but more put together than he is, with lots of curly dark hair pulled back from her face and a wavy fade-stripe top that almost looks out of focus and definitely didn't come from everyone else's mall.

That's me and Frannie, or at least, the movie versions of ourselves, who of course will be better looking. (Hey, it's my movie; I can do what I want.) The camera moves in closer. Frannie's eyes register something across the room and she says:

“Hm.”

And that's really how this all began. Not even a syllable. I didn't think much about it at the time, but I did look up from my bowl of Fruity Pebbles.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she said, as in, something, but I was going to have to ask twice to find out.

“What?”
I asked again.

“That girl, Astrid.” Frannie was still staring over my shoulder. “She's just hanging all over him.”

“Who?”

“Astrid. That girl from Germany. The exchange student with the big lips and the stupid shoes.”

“No,” I said, knowing better than to turn around conspicuously. “Who's she hanging on?”

But now Frannie was back on her sandwich like it was the most interesting thing she'd ever eaten. She might as well have had the word
oops!
in a little cloud-shaped bubble hanging over her head. I knew right away she had said more than she wanted to, which was strange for us. We always told each other everything, so of course I was more interested than ever. Now I gave myself permission to turn around and look. I did it subtly, without letting my eyes stop in any one place, then turned back to face Frannie again.

“Jeffrey Osborne,” I said. That's who Astrid was hanging on. “Good choice.”

Jeffrey Osborne was all the right things and wasn't any of the wrong things, either. He was hot—blue eyes, long eyelashes, sexy little smile, nice arms—but he wasn't stuck-up about it. (I don't think he knew how good looking he was, which always makes a person better looking.) He was also nice but didn't seem sugary sweet. He was quasi-high profile at school, but he wasn't mainstream, either. As far as I knew, he didn't really slot in with a particular group or clique, but he always had a swarm of people hanging around him.

And hanging was exactly what Astrid was doing. She had one hand clamped on Jeffrey's shoulder like she couldn't stand on her own. They were working a table in the cafeteria, getting volunteers signed up for something to do with Green Up Day. At least, Jeffrey was working the table. Astrid was just working Jeffrey.

Frannie, meanwhile, was plowing through her pastrami on rye like it was Astrid's head.

“I can't believe this is the first I'm hearing about this,” I told her. “How long have you been window shopping him?”

“I don't know,” she lied. That meant a long time.

I leaned in close. “Do Jenn and Belina know about this?” Jenn and Belina were Frannie's girls on the side. I had best friend status, but sometimes they could get things out of her that even I couldn't.

Frannie shook her head. “There's nothing to know.”

“That's so not true,” I said. This was about the hundredth deep dark secret Frannie had ever told me, but as far as I knew, it was the first one she had ever held back before telling. That meant something. I tried wearing her down with a heavy stare for a few seconds but then realized something else.

“Wait a minute. This isn't just an eye candy thing. You're
big
smitten, aren't you?” That's why she wasn't talking. If silence speaks louder than words, right now Frannie's silence was saying
crush, crush, crush,
which is different than
hot for, hot for, hot for.
Hot was all she'd ever been for anyone until now.

I walked my fingers across the table and up her arm. “So what are we going to do about this?” When I reached her ear, she squirmed off to the side.

“We,”
she told me, “are not going to do anything.”

“Yeah,” I said. “That's exactly the kind of line people give right before they do the thing they just said they weren't going to do.”

“This is real life, sweetie,” she said. “Not a movie. Remember?”

“It's the same thing,” I argued.

“Actually, it's not.”

“Well, it ought to be.”

We both took bites of food at the same time and chewed in silence. End of round one.

I started round two almost right away. “Just go see what this Green Up Day thing is about,” I told her. “You don't even have to do anything. Just get on his radar.”

“And say what?”

I patted Frannie's hand. “You're so cute when you're stalling. Let's see, how about . . . ‘Hi. What's this Green Up Day thing all about?'”

“It's bad timing,” she said. “Astrid's right there. She's practically stapled to him.”

“That means it's perfect timing,” I told her. “Time to send in the staple remover.”

“Ooh, office supplies. Very sexy,” she said.

“Ooh, changing the subject. Nice try.”

Frannie rolled her eyes. Translation: she knew I was right but didn't have a comeback.

“Seriously,” I went on. “You're thinking about it too much. If you want, you can pretend in your mind that you're not interested in him, but then don't act like you're not interested in him when you're over there. It'll help you balance out.”

“Okay, one.” She started counting out her responses on her fingers. “I'm not even sure what you just said. Two: saying that something is easy doesn't make it easy. And three: remember the guy at the Thai place? I didn't see you going for it and getting all bold. Let's see, what happened? Hmmm. Marcus got lost in his pad ki mao and never said a word.”

“That was some stranger in a restaurant,” I said. “This is someone we know at school.”

“
Barely
know,” she interrupted.

“Whatever. It's totally different.”

The other difference was that this was her we were talking about—not me. It's always easier to know what someone else should do. Not to mention the fact that Frannie's odds were so much better than mine. Roaring Brook High School wasn't exactly crawling with out and eligible gay boys. I couldn't even find someone to have a realistic crush on, much less think about finding a boyfriend. This Jeffrey thing, on the other hand, had some potential.