True Letters from a Fictional Life (8 page)

I'm sure Breyer was exaggerating, but he said that it was the best reading he'd ever heard, that I'd managed to rescue even the “green as leeks” line from sounding totally ridiculous. He caught me on my way out of class and asked me why I'd never done any acting. “You were really good just now,” he said. “Why not give the stage a shot? You wouldn't have
to quit the soccer team to do it.”

“I don't really like acting,” I mumbled at the floor. “Besides, that wasn't really acting.” Breyer thought I was just being modest.

“I think you have a talent for it.”

“I get lots of practice,” I muttered.

“Really?” Breyer raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

My heart was beating fast as I looked at the clock. “I'm going to be late for chemistry.”

“Another time?”

“Yeah.” I nodded. “Another time.”

Sitting in chemistry, I thought about what I would say to Breyer. How would I tell him without clumsily dropping the weight of my secret in his lap?
I liked reading
A Midsummer Night's Dream, I scribbled next to unbalanced equations.
I've always wanted to wake up one day in a world where I liked the right people, and they liked me in return. I worry it'll never happen.

That evening was the semiformal
dance at Kim's school. I stole a skinny gray tie from Luke's closet and looked through his stuff to see if he had a flask. No luck.

We'd been at the dance for about an hour or so, jumping around to hip-hop tunes and Top 40 stuff that I never listen to willingly, when a guy stepped hard on my foot, and I turned and glared at him. He was still dancing, doing exaggerated disco moves, not just hopping in one spot, but he put his hands up apologetically, grinned, and patted my shoulder as he turned away. I nodded at the back of his head, and the kid across from him, who was wearing a yellow tie, smiled at me and saluted. He was the kind of cute kid I always
had to remind myself not to stare at. I nodded at him, too, more slowly, and turned back to my own little bouncing group. When I looked back over my shoulder at him, he was still dancing and staring right at me. He smiled widely and shrugged.

I nodded at him again, uncertainly.

Kim mouthed “water” and pointed to the refreshments table. Squeezing through the crowd and ducking past flailing football players, I followed her. I pretended to pant and limp when we finally reached the table of sodas and chips. Kim made a show of laughing. The music was so loud it reduced talking to gestures.

“Are you having fun?” she screamed into my ear, grabbing my arm.

“Yeah!” I yelled back and handed her a soda. “But I'm going to take a break from the noise! Come with me!”

She nodded, put her hands over her ears, and grimaced.

When we stepped out in the hall, my ears were ringing. We both cracked up at the sound of our voices once the gym doors closed behind us.

“I used to feel like I had to say that I hated that music.” Kim laughed. “But, honestly, it is hilarious jumping around to Y-$ugar with a couple of hundred people.”

I had to agree with her. For a little while, we talked about songs we were embarrassed to admit that we like, and then I edged us toward talking about the boy with the smile. “The kids from your school are super friendly.” I tried to sound
as casual as possible. “Who are the guys dancing next to us? There are four of them.”

“The basketball players? The ones wearing white high-tops?”

“No, no. To our left. The ones that can actually dance. One of them is wearing a yellow tie. Scruffy hair? Smiles a lot . . .” I stopped myself from commenting on his eyes.

“Oh, that's Topher. He is super nice. You guys would get along really well, actually. I should introduce you to him.”

“He goes to school here?”

“Yeah, he's been in my class since we were in kindergarten. Two of those guys he's with go to school in New Hampshire. They're all in a theater group together.”

“Theater, huh? That takes guts, I guess. I can't imagine being on a stage with everyone staring at you. Terrifying.” I fished a pretzel from the stash in my pocket. “But you like this guy Topher, huh? Why have I never heard about him? Why aren't you dating him?”

“Ha! I had a crush on Topher in eighth grade. I mean, I
really
liked him to the point where being around him was sort of wonderful and painful all at the same time, you know?”

“I've heard about that kind of thing, yeah.”

“But we never dated. And then . . .” She hesitated and glanced at me as if unsure whether she should go on. “And then he told me that he's gay. So, you know, end of story.”

I felt like I'd just climbed too high up a tree, the same feeling of terror and joy running through me.

“Oh,” I said. “I don't think I would've guessed that.”

“No, you wouldn't know about Topher unless he told you. But he's pretty up front about it.”

“No kidding,” I said. I could see my reflection in the glass of a trophy cabinet. I practiced standing and holding my Coke the way I'd seen a model hold his glass in a scotch ad, his weight back on one leg, the other stretched out slightly in front, as though he wanted to trip a passerby. The picture of nonchalance. “How did he work
that
into a conversation?”

“Topher and I used to walk home from school together all the time. He lives just a few houses away from me. One day I was talking about how much I liked this new boy in school, and Topher let slip, ‘Yeah, he's really cute.' And then he went all red.”

“Oh, no!” I laughed.

“Yeah, it was adorable. But instead of making excuses for himself—I remember this so clearly—he picked an old crab apple off the road, handed it to me, and said, ‘Here. You can have this if you promise to never tell anyone I just said that.' I was sort of sad, because I had such a crush on Topher, too, but I laughed and accepted the apple.”

“Well, you better return it now because you just broke your promise,” I pointed out.

“Oh, it wasn't a secret for very long. He had a boyfriend, Craig, when we were in ninth grade. One of those guys he's dancing with right now, in fact.”

“They're still dating? That's a long time.”

“No, no. That one went down in flames after a couple of months. But everyone knew about it. Topher used to complain that Craig laughs and throws like a girl. He said the only thing they had in common was a crush on our soccer team's goalie.”

“Sean Gates.” I nodded. “Yeah, he's really cute.”

Kim gripped my arm and bent forward as she laughed, but then she looked up at me, clearly trying to gauge whether I was being serious.

I shrugged. “There aren't any apples lying around for me to offer you.”

The gym doors burst open as though the speakers had exploded. Theresa tottered out in her heels, looking worried and peering down the corridor in the wrong direction. When she turned and saw us, she fixed her smile. “Hi!” she called, hesitantly, and stood staring at us, frozen. I couldn't blame her for misinterpreting the expressions Kim and I must have worn.

“We're regaining our hearing,” I called to her, and jangled my plastic cup. “Come have some ice.”

Theresa can't walk well in heels. I love that about her. I don't know why she insists on wearing them. “Left, right, left, right,” I commanded as she teetered toward us. She gave me the finger, and when she arrived, I put my arm around her. “We were going to go back in when our ears had stopped bleeding,” I explained.

“They are in a state of shock,” agreed Kim.

I ignored her and hoped Theresa hadn't picked up on her tone. “What's happening after the dance?” I asked. “Is there a party?”

“No one's having a party in the Upper Valley ever again,” Theresa replied.

“Don't say that,” I groaned.

“James, it's true,” Kim agreed. “After the Aaron Foster incident, only a complete idiot would invite a crowd of strangers to his house.”

That complete idiot, that hero, turned out to be a kid named Steven, who I never actually met. It took some persuading, but Theresa eventually agreed to go for an hour. Her parents wanted her home by midnight that night, and she was driving. “You're allowed one beer,” she told me. Kim rode with us so she could navigate. We had to drive only a couple of miles from Kim's school, but we were on back roads and twenty miles away from where Theresa and I lived.

Cars already lined the muddy road when we arrived at the house of Brave Steve, as I called him for the rest of the night. Or Sucker Steve, as Theresa and Kim said. We entered the house through the garage, where a bunch of shivering kids were playing flip cup on a Ping-Pong table. As I walked past, a kid yelled, “Hey, Liddell! No fisticuffs!” The jokes about our school had begun.

As soon as we walked into the house, I saw Topher perched on the kitchen counter. His pals from the dance stood talking
in front of him, but he didn't seem involved in their conversation. When he saw me, he straightened up, raised his beer, and grinned. I smiled and put up a finger. One minute. He nodded and looked pleased.

I sat on the arm of a couch right next to Theresa's friends, so I was excused from being an object of gossip, more or less. My outfit got a thumbs-up. My dancing a thumbs-down. Nothing new.

So it wouldn't be obvious that I was counting the seconds, I glanced at Theresa's watch instead of taking out my phone. I also kept one eye on the garage door, the only door, as far as I could tell, people were coming and going through.

After a little while, Topher walked out of the kitchen and glanced toward us. He saw me sitting with the girls, and he didn't smile or nod or anything. He just walked purposefully to the garage door, jacketless, stuck his head out for a second or two, and then, looking very serious, walked back into the kitchen.

I squeezed Theresa's shoulder and said, “I'm going to go get a beer.”

“One,” she emphasized.

Kim and I glanced at each other as I left. Her eyebrows furrowed, but she stayed put.

Topher was up on the counter again, but when he saw me, he slid off, stepped away from his friends, and handed me one of the two green bottles he held.

“Thanks,” I said. His eyes were deep chestnut, and his
brown hair curled at the ends.

“I'm Topher,” he said. At first he was shaking my hand, and then he was just holding it. To distract myself from the warmth of his grip, I sipped from my beer.

“James,” I managed. “I'm James.” He finally let go of my hand.

“You're friends with Kim, huh?”

“Yup.” I was trying to play it cool, but his grin made
me
smile and that made him smile even more. I held the bottle up to the light and pretended to examine it. He was about my height, and he wore a silver ring on the middle finger of his left hand. “So, Kim says you guys are in the theater, huh?”

“Yeah, we're in a production of
Hamlet
this spring. It's an adaptation, not the whole thing. I'm Hamlet, actually. We all agreed not to talk about rehearsals or anything tonight, but now we're running out of things to say, so we've resorted to talking about books. Favorite books. You have one?”

“Steinbeck's
East of Eden
,” I said automatically.

“Holy smokes!” He grabbed my arm. “Me, too! I just said that a minute ago!
East of Eden
!”

“No kidding.” I laughed. He wore cologne that drew me closer to him than most guys would've considered normal. He talked for a little while about how much he liked Old Sam and Lee, but I wasn't really listening. He was poised like he might do a handspring at any moment, and his skin was perfect. I realized he was watching me watching him, so I looked at the linoleum.

“Have you seen the film?” I heard him ask.

“There's a film?”

He put his hand on my back for a second and said, “James Dean's in it, dude. You probably wouldn't like it as much as I do.”

“Never seen it,” I admitted, and fixed my gaze on the wallpaper, which was covered in horses and buggies. “Weird wallpaper,” I muttered.

“Yup,” he agreed. “Then again, I've never been a fan of wallpaper.”

I drained my beer, considered the empty bottle for a few seconds, and then asked, “Can I have another one of these?”

He pulled one from the fridge and offered me a lighter to open it, but I popped the cap with my pirate key. I probably shouldn't take such pride in that trick.

“What, do you have buried treasure?” Topher asked, nodding at the key as I returned it to my pocket.

“Yeah, but I can't talk about it. You smoke?” I asked.

“Nah, I just carry the lighter because it comes in handy.”

“For real?”

“Yup, yup.”

“So helpful.”

“Well, you never know when the right person's going to come along asking for a light or an opener.”

I gulped from my new bottle. “He hasn't come along yet, huh?”

“Nope.” He laughed. He'd caught my use of the pronoun.
“No,
he
hasn't come along yet.” He sipped and looked at me sideways. “But sometimes I'm not sure. Sometimes it's hard to tell.”

I guzzled nervously again, then reminded myself to slow down, to stop drinking, and rocked back on my heels instead.

“How long have you been dating Theresa?” he asked.

“Well . . .” I stalled. “We've been hanging out for a long time. But it's nothing serious.”

“She's pretty,” he observed after a moment. “You're a cute couple. And she clearly digs you. I mean, you
could
be dating.”

I shrugged. “Sometimes . . .” I paused. “I'm not so sure.”

“You're not sure if you could be dating her?”

I glanced at him and then squinted down the neck of my beer, as though I'd dropped something into the bottle. “I'm not sure,” I said carefully, “who I should be dating.”

“Ah!” He sipped from his bottle to hide his smile. “Maybe you're being too hard on yourself. Maybe you just need to hang out with different people and worry less about whether it counts as a date.”

“Any time you spend alone with a girl, everyone counts as a date.”

“I'm not a girl.” He had his thumb hooked through his belt loop, and he walked in front of me to lean against the refrigerator. “You can hang out with me and be confident that we are absolutely not dating.”

“Yeah?” I said.

“Sure,” he said quietly. “We're both guys. How could we be dating?”

I rolled my eyes, and he laughed, and then I tried taking a long gulp of beer and spilled it down my shirt. “This is me feeling very nervous,” I said, brushing myself clean.

“And this is me asking for your phone number so that we can arrange our first not-date sometime soon.”

“What does a not-date involve?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged. “I could pick you up at your house
without
bringing you flowers.”

I pretended to laugh, but it sounded flat. “What will we do?”