The Fight (2 page)

“Cool—I took a whole class on the Harlem Renaissance last year, remember?”

I stared at him blankly.

Matteo laughed. “Izzy, you so don't even listen to me.”

“Don't call me Izzy,” I said automatically.

After dinner, I unpacked my backpack. I wasn't going to start any homework on a Friday night, though. Matteo grabbed my reading list for English. He frowned.

“Didn't you say you were doing the Harlem Renaissance? How come Langston Hughes isn't on this list?”

I shrugged. I was looking at my math assignment and wondering if I should try to do it when Matteo was around so he could help me.

“When are you going—” I started.

“And James Baldwin? Countee Cullen? Claude McKay? What the…”

I yanked the list out of his hands. “Matteo, I don't
know
. I don't know who any of those people are. And I don't care right now. And neither did you when you were a junior in high school. Even if you are super smart.”

I could feel tears coming into my eyes. I didn't even know what I was fighting about with him. “I just had a stressful day, OK?” I muttered, shoving the list in my folder.

But Matteo was barely listening to me. “I think some or maybe all of those guys were gay,” he said. “I remember because that unit was how Watson kind of came out to us. I mean, most people already thought she was, but she was pretty open about discrimination back then and what she'd experienced.”

He had my attention now.

“Those guys you said were gay? And none of them are on the list?”

What the hell, I thought, too. Was Weller some kind of gay hater? Did that explain her actions today? For some reason, this made my stomach plunge.

“Umm, Matteo? Did kids beat up other kids for being gay when you were at Southside?”

He looked at me. “Yeah, sometimes. I never saw it, but I heard rumors. Certain teachers were super strict about kids saying ‘that's so gay' and stuff. Watson, obviously. And Salazar—he's gay too.”

“Salazar's gay?” I said. He taught theater, not a class I'd had.

“Yeah,” Matteo shrugged. “So what?”

“So what? So what? It's like in your little liberal college bubble you've forgotten what it's like where we live. It's a big deal at Southside if people just think you're gay!” I was getting worked up.

“Whoa, what's up?” Matteo asked. Then his phone rang. “Oh, sorry, I gotta get this,” he said and turned away as he answered. “Hello?”

“Hey, Matt,” I heard a girl's voice say.

“Hey, Casey, what's up?” he said, walking out of the living room. I heard the door to his room shut. I put my head down on the table.

O

n Monday I had a plan. I was nervous about it. I had kind of thought before about joining our school's gay-straight alliance, the GSA, as everyone called it. I needed more extracurriculars for applying to colleges next year anyway, and the GSA probably wouldn't involve a ton of work or meetings.

The GSA was new at Southside, I thought. There had been some big deal about it last year, but I hadn't really paid attention to it. I mean, when I first heard about it, I didn't think it had anything to do with me. And these seniors, Carmen and Scott, who had been in charge of it or something were kind of scary. Carmen rolled her eyes at me in the bathroom once because I was putting on lipstick.

But now I thought I should check it out. Maybe I'd see Dominic there. I could see if he was OK. We used to be friends, kind of. Our families went to the same church. During confirmation a couple of years ago, our moms had carpooled sometimes. And we'd just ended up hanging out during the class (which could be pretty boring). We knew each other from school, and neither of us knew the other kids very well. But we didn't have any classes together this year so I hadn't seen him much.

And seeing Matteo always reminded me that I should do more extracurriculars and work harder in class. He, of course, had done everything in high school from sports to theater. And he got good grades. I was less stellar. I didn't want to worry about scholarships and stuff yet, but my mom was starting to drop little hints.

I had barely seen Matteo the rest of the weekend. He had been out with his friends or in his room talking or texting or something to that Casey girl. And I have a life, of course, too.

So checking out the GSA was just my idea. I was kind of proud of it—and nervous.

I thought I remembered posters about the GSA meetings, so all morning I kept scanning the hallway walls. Nothing. Well, lots of other stuff like the next dance, tryouts for whatever, blah-blah.

So at lunch I tried to ask my friends about the GSA casually.

“I think it was shut down,” said Kim. “Or didn't, like, start. Wasn't that guy, the cute senior, trying to start it or something? Is he gay? I thought he had a girlfriend.”

The others shrugged. I guess, like me, they hadn't paid much attention because it didn't seem like something for us. We all liked guys, not girls. So for the rest of lunch, we just talked about who were the cutest boys in our grade.

I

t was a regular week. I couldn't remember all the writers Matteo said were gay, but I don't think Ms. Weller mentioned any of them. But I liked some of the stuff we were reading.

My friends were trying to set me up with this guy, José. He and his friends ate lunch with us sometimes, but he didn't seem too interested in me. I thought he was nice but not much more than that. I'd had a boyfriend at the end of last year, but he graduated. It seemed stupid to try to keep dating while he was in college, and I had two years of high school still.

But I missed the attention. And making out. We seriously kissed for hours straight. Or it felt that way. It was pretty awesome. Even though he was older than me, he never pressured me. And we didn't really date long enough for a lot to happen. So I had some experience but not enough to ever feel like I really knew what to do around guys or how to make one like me.

Keesha and I were walking to health class on Thursday when we passed José at his locker. Keesha nudged me and called out, “Hiiiiii, José. Whasup?”

He just nodded at us.

After we'd passed him, Keesha smacked my arm. “Did you even smile at him? Girl, we can't do all the work for you, you know!”

I shrugged. “I don't think he's interested. And he's nice but—” I broke off because June was approaching the classroom just as we were. My stomach flipped over, and I could feel my face get super hot.

“Hey,” she said locking eyes with me (because I was staring at her) as she walked past me through the door. I watched as she tossed her long hair out of the way to slide her bag off her shoulder as she sat down. I sighed.

“Why are you blushing?” Keesha said, interrupting my thoughts. She followed my gaze. “Is that why you're not interested in José?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

I blushed even harder and hurried to my desk. I wasn't even sure what she meant exactly.

A

fter school everyone was going their separate ways to activities or jobs. Lots of times Jenny gave me a ride home, but I could walk home too. I didn't want any of my friends with me today because I wanted to walk by the theater and Mr. Salazar's classroom and see if there were GSA posters there. Now that Matteo had told me Mr. Salazar was gay, I thought I remembered that he was the teacher adviser for the GSA back when people were talking about it.

There wasn't anything by the theater or the school office. I thought Salazar's classroom was on the first floor too, so I kept walking, peeking into classrooms as I passed. The custodian was following me down the hall, rolling a really loud trash can, and it was making me nervous. My hands were sweating.

I could hear kids talking in a room up the hall. I tried to see in as I walked by slowly. I saw Salazar right away. He was really cute, but he definitely looked gay. I wondered why I hadn't really noticed before.

It didn't look like a meeting to me. I was so busy looking at them as I walked by that I hadn't looked at his door to see if he had

a poster on it. I stopped to look at another poster like I was reading it (just in case the custodian was watching). Then I slowly turned around and walked back to pass Salazar's room again.

I heard one of the girls say, “And then she's all like ‘Eww, that's so gay. He's so faggy.'” Salazar's response was too quiet for me to hear, but all the kids started laughing. I slowed down and fumbled around in my bag like I was looking for something. I came to a stop outside his classroom, trying to listen.

I snuck a look up at the door. No GSA poster or anything. I glanced inside again. Salazar looked right at me and smiled.

A girl came up to him and looked at me too. “Who's that?” she said. It was the girl who'd been talking earlier.

I gave them a weak smile and a wave like,
don't mind me
, and hurried down the hall.

O

ut in the parking lot I breathed a sigh of relief to be out of that awkwardness. But then I immediately felt annoyed and stupid. Maybe I should have just asked him. But I wasn't totally sure he was the adviser. There should be some place you could look up all the extracurriculars and their advisers. I was walking fast now, feeling mad.

But why did I care anyway? I should just sign up for the yearbook or something if I really wanted an extracurricular.

A squeal of tires at the end of the parking lot made me look up. A guy was walking far ahead of me and a car was driving next to him, swerving and braking hard. At first I thought it was guys just messing around with a friend or trying to talk to someone.

Then I recognized the backpack was Dominic's. He was walking with his head down as a guy hung out the window, yelling something at him.

I held my breath as the car squealed again as it turned hard away from him. Good, they were leaving.

Then I saw they were just turning around to come by him again. I thought for a second that they were going to drive up on the sidewalk and hit him or something crazy like that. Dominic jumped over onto the grass. They braked hard again, the whole car rocking. Everyone in the car was screaming something, and then all this trash came flying out the windows. A bottle was going right toward Dominic's head. He ducked. I think I might have yelled, but you wouldn't have heard it because the car roared off then.