Out of the Pocket (16 page)

Finch snapped out of his sudden funk. “That’s really great, I mean, that’s really cool that you’re so together about everything,”

he said.

I gasped. “Together? Finch, have you seen me lately?”

The waitress came over and I ordered my float. Finch ordered onion rings and a Coke. He gathered our menus and placed them in the menu holder on the side of our booth. As she walked away he said, “You look fi ne to me, Bobby. It’s probably all in your mind.”

“Let me ask you something,” I said, flicking a sugar packet. Carrie or not, those packets couldn’t survive a visit by me. “Do you think it’s weird?”

“What’s weird?” he asked.

“That I’m gay.” I paused and looked behind me to see if I’d said it too loud. No one was paying any attention. “It’s still pretty new, this being gay stuff.”

Finch squinted at me. “Weird? Are you serious?”

I sighed and drummed my fingers against the table. “Nah, I guess not.”

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“Bobby, you’re a cool guy. Who cares if you’re gay or straight?

It’s all the same, I mean, either way you love someone. That’s all there is to it. Anyway, I think it’s sort of cool. If you ever decide to be open about it, you’re going to change the world, Bobby.”

I looked down at the tape recorder and was bothered to see it still running. “Maybe we should turn that off?”

Finch laughed. “Okay,” he said, turning it off.

“Maybe we should get back on topic.”

“We can talk about whatever you want, Bobby,” he said, wiping white flakes off the left shoulder of his blue shirt, before reaching down and starting up the recorder again.

“Football, then,” I said. He nodded, searched his notebook for a moment, and asked me the first question. During our twenty-minute interview, Finch asked typical questions, ones I’d dealt with before, about what it’s like to play the position, and about my best and worst experiences. He told me he was writing a feature article that would be in Wednesday’s school paper.

Finch’s eyebrows twitched, and I realized he was looking up at someone behind me. Turning, I saw the two girls who had been sitting up front. The blond girl was rail thin and wearing tight low-rider jeans. The other girl was about to fall out of her pink top.

“Hey, Bobby!” the blond girl said, and as she said it, both girls smiled.

“Hey,” I said, wondering if I should know their names. I had noticed the cheerleading girls about as much as Austin would notice the guys on the baseball team. “How are you?”

“I just wanted to ask you . . . can we sit down?” the blonde asked.

“Sure,” I said, glancing over at Finch, who was rearranging his pens obsessively.

Both girls sidled into the booth on my side. I moved all the 144

way in. There was more than enough room, but the blonde wound up pressed against me, so close I could smell her perfume, which smelled like an obscenely powerful rose. She moved toward me until my hand actually rubbed against her leg. Remembering Carrie and the laser-tag disaster, I resisted the impulse to pull away. I looked over at Finch, who was staring down at the table, looking really uncomfortable. I felt bad for him. Here he was, the only one at the table who’d appreciate this sort of attention, and he was getting shut out.

“So what’s up?” I asked.

Blond girl smiled at me. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a
Cosmopolitan
cover photo. “I was just wondering, are you and Carrie Conway dating?”

My neck flinched. “No, not really,” I said. And as soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t.

“Cool,” she said, and suddenly her hand was on my knee.

I couldn’t swallow. I could feel the muscles in my left eye contracting, and I wondered if I was about to have a seizure or something. “My friend Beth is having this party on Saturday night. I’ll give you the address.”

“Sounds great,” I said, hoping they’d both leave, quickly, which they didn’t.

A few agonizing minutes later, they got up and left Finch and me alone. I felt like taking a shower. Not because the blonde was so close to me, but because I felt like a liar, a fraud. I knew this was one thing Finch wouldn’t get. We were silent for a moment.

“Are you okay?” Finch asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. I just wanted to sit there, no talking, for a bit, and somehow Finch seemed to get that. We sat that way until our food came, and then he picked at an onion ring while I ignored my fl oat.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Bobby,” he said after a while.

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I craved the warmth of my bed, a blanket, silence. I wanted to be with Bryan. He was the one person who got me, who maybe understood what my life was about. “I sit there not saying anything, and it might as well be a lie,” I said, a headache forming along the sides of my skull. “I should just come out.”

“Well, Bobby, you can do that,” Finch said, and I looked at him and realized, for a moment, that he was right. I could do that.

I could also rob a 7-Eleven or dance naked in the cafeteria.

“Maybe someday I will,” I said, only half meaning it.

“There you go,” Finch said, gulping down some Coke and looking energized.

“Maybe I should just do it, come out of the closet, get it over with. Something has to give,” I said.

“Just say the word,” Finch said, his voice cracking slightly.

I thought about the big picture. The team, Coach, my dad. I sipped my float and wiped my mouth before speaking again. “This just isn’t the right time, not yet,” I said. “Thanks for your support, really. And I know you want to write it. But can you just give me some time?”

Finch nodded. “Doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “Whatever you want to do.”

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It was a warm Southern California Wednesday morning and I was feeling good. My homework was done, I was just a few days removed from my first-ever date, and I’d just woken up from a dream in which Bryan had played a stunningly key role. I woke up feeling invincible, even though I was running slightly late, and another tardy on my record would mean a detention. I could deal with everything that was happening in my life, all of it. That’s how I was feeling as I made the turn off our street, Palm Court, toward Durango Avenue, the road that takes me all the way to school, two miles north.

I turned on sports radio and thought, if the world was a whale, sports radio was kind of the blowhole. I laughed to myself, since the analogy broke down quickly once I thought about it harder. Still, it was a lot of hot air and sometimes I liked to listen, for kicks.

“Coming up next,” the announcer said, “a local high school 147

quarterback comes out of the closet. How’s that for a wake-up story!” There was laughter, and then they spliced in this really effeminate voice saying, “Oh mah goodness!” Then they went to a commercial.

My shoulders jerked. A gay high school quarterback coming out?

Where? My head pulsed and a huge air bubble filled my chest. I needed to hear that story, but I knew I was going to make it to school about one minute before the morning bell sounded. They’d have to hurry right into that story or I’d miss it.

The Athlete’s Foot commercial wasn’t too long, but the one following it, for a product guaranteed to restore lost hair or your money back, went on forever, testimonial after testimonial. “End!” I screamed as first Powell and then Warner Road flashed by. I was just about a minute away from school, and the clock read 7:58. Finally, the stupid commercial for bald guys ended, and the familiar voice returned. “Two minutes till the top of the hour. Time for a quick look at the weather . . .”

“It’s Southern California! Who cares?” I yelled at my stereo, pounding the dashboard as I waited at the stoplight on Reed.

“Hurry up!”

As I pulled into the parking lot, they went from weather to traffic, and I gave up, knowing I’d have to sprint just to make it inside the building on time. I slammed the door and pivoted into a full-on sprint, dragging my backpack behind me in my left hand. The story would have to wait until after school.

I made it to the doorway literally seconds before the bell rang, and sighed, relieved. The policy was that you had to be in before eight on the dot or you were marked tardy by the officer who stood by the door every morning.

Is this high school, or jail?

I headed down the long main hallway to homeroom. Coming 148

toward me was this guy with a buzz cut I’d had a math class with junior year.

“Congratuations, man!” he said, and he slapped me on the shoulder. I looked back at him, and he saluted. I didn’t just climb Mount Everest, I thought, I just made it into school before eight. I continued down the hallway and saw a guy and a girl talking by the lockers. As I got near they stopped talking and looked at me.

“That really took a lot of courage,” the guy said, smiling warmly at me. “Wow.”

“Yeah,” the girl said, coming over and giving me a hug. She had an orange ribbon in her hair, and I recognized her as one of the theater girls. I’d seen her in a play Carrie was in. She clasped me and held on tight. “That’s about the bravest thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Everything froze. The hug, the hallway, time itself. I gasped and my whole body shook. I don’t remember letting her go, or her letting me go. All I remember is running as fast as I’d ever run, football games included, down the hallway and to the right, to the journalism offi ce.

I bolted through the door and a senior named Phil Johnson, the student editor, was standing in front of the main desk, reading a paper. He looked up. I thought my head was going to explode.

“Is there something in the newspaper today about me?” I asked, trying to catch my breath, as I approached him. The office was empty other than us.

Phil was a small guy, dark hair, acne. He studied me and smirked.

“Very funny.”

“What the hell do you mean, very funny?” I got in his face and repeated my first question. I wasn’t a violent guy, but the images in my head were beyond real violence. They were more like cartoon clips of severing people’s heads, pushing them into oncoming traffic, and watching the bodies explode.

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“Bobby . . . have you read?” Phil stood up and stepped backward, as if to get away from me. He had no chance. I felt my fist clench and realized that I was about to hit this guy.

“What? What did you put in the paper about me?”

Phil’s eyes were wide as saucers and he sputtered. “I heard the recording . . . Finch . . . he wrote . . . oh God.”

I took a deep breath, and allowed the reality to enter my brain.

I wanted to scream. Why would Finch do something like that? This had to be a mistake. Phil rummaged through his desk. “You need to hear this . . .” he said. He found a digital recorder and showed it to me. “Isn’t this you?” he asked as he pressed play. After a couple of seconds I heard my own voice.
“. . . it’s new, I’m just figuring it all
out . . .”

“Are you kidding me? Are you absolutely kidding?” I started to pace. “This is unbelievable. You put that I’m . . . you put it in the newspaper? Without asking me fi rst?”

Phil shut the tape off and stammered, “Finch vouched for you.

He played me the recording.”

“He taped that without me knowing it, you idiot,” I said.

“No, he didn’t,” Phil said, shaking his head with confi dence.

“What?”

“In the tape, Bobby. You mention the interview. Being on tape.

You knew.”

Finch.
My head swam with memories of talking to Finch.
What did I
do?
Then I knew. He didn’t just tape me in the cafeteria and at the diner, he was taping me outside my house, when we talked by the tree! Wasn’t he like fiddling with his fanny pack? Was that a digital recorder in there? Why the hell?

“You want to hear?” Phil asked.

“You think?” I answered.

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He pressed the play button, and there was my voice.
“I sit
there not saying anything, and it might as well be a lie,”
I heard my voice say.

Then Finch:
“I think it’s an amazing story.”

And my response:
“It’s still pretty new, this being gay stuff . . .

Maybe I can make a difference in people’s lives.”

The feeling was like I’d just been punched in the throat, or like someone had just reached down my mouth and yanked words right out of me. My whole body felt violated, and if I hadn’t had a burning desire to read the article, I’d have been out the door and away, far, far away from that school, from anything in my life.

The truth was out, and I had no control over it. I scanned to the bottom of the piece.

For Bobby Framingham, it’s bound to be a long and

hard road, but it’s one he’s well equipped to handle. And his decision makes sense, since he hates lying.

“I sit there not saying anything, and it might as well be a lie,” says Bobby, reflecting about his silence to this point. As a community, we should stand behind such

bravery one hundred percent.

It didn’t matter that it was nice. All I could do was shake my head at the betrayal by a guy I’d let into my life, trusted as a friend.

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Really juicy news travels fast.

I found that out as I sprinted around the entire school, trying to swipe every single copy of the paper. I wondered if the papers were spawning other papers, or what, because everywhere I went, I got seriously strange looks from people. After about twenty minutes I gave in to the fact that the news was out there, and wasn’t ever going to go away simply because I deposited a few hundred papers in trash cans.

I thought about ditching Spanish class and going to see Dr. Blassingame. At least he’d be supportive, but as I passed his office I didn’t go in. Instead I decided to catch Rahim outside of Spanish class. I took the stairs three at a time as I climbed to the second floor, my heart pumping fi ercely. I opened the door to the second-fl oor hallway and almost smacked into the one person I was least ready to see.

Carrie’s eyes were bloodshot, the color of her dyed hair. I just 152

avoided a collision with her, and when she saw it was me, her hand went up, the Stop Sign.