Boy Meets Boy

Boy Meets Boy David Levithan The unforgettable debut novel by co-author with John Green of Will Grayson, Will GraysonTo be together with someone for twenty years seems like an eternity. I can’t seem to manage twenty days…How do you stay together?Paul has been gay his whole life and he’s confident about almost everything. He doesn’t have to hide his feelings like best friend Tony or even cope with loving the wrong guy like his other best friend Joni.But heartbreak can happen to anyone. Falling in love changes everything. Boy Meets Boy david levithan for Tony (even if he only exists in a song) Contents Title Page (#u3dba9ad1-bebc-5dc5-a1e4-accd656dc257) Now Away We Go (#u2149dd14-92f3-557d-aaaf-18a2d542bd6c) Paul is Gay (#u283a93a7-5f45-5667-82a3-44bfc57f58e1) The Homecoming Queen’s Dilemma (#u8eb4ae54-10b2-5175-ba4d-d826cc0ccb01) Pride and Joy (#u46f2a769-b226-5ed3-944a-766c558624a4) Hallway Traffic (Complications Ensue) (#ued996a6f-6544-5c43-805e-bb394ee04be9) Finding Lost Languages (#u3f0322a0-bf9c-555f-a12b-09cc0702833b) Dangling Conversations (#ufa34a83c-a4c8-55d4-9f54-7008bda87265) Painting Music (#u7dd0a507-2398-5669-a093-49a9afd7bc31) Chuck Waggin’ (#litres_trial_promo) A Walk in the Park (#litres_trial_promo) Please Rewind Before Returning (#litres_trial_promo) Things Unsaid (#litres_trial_promo) Pinball (#litres_trial_promo) Hitting the Mountain (#litres_trial_promo) Everybody Freaks Out (#litres_trial_promo) Elsewhere (#litres_trial_promo) Boy Loses Boy (#litres_trial_promo) Dealing with the Club Kids (#litres_trial_promo) More Than, Equal To, Less Than (#litres_trial_promo) To Bring You My Love (#litres_trial_promo) A Very Late Night Conversation With Ted (#litres_trial_promo) Meet Me at the Cemetery Gates (#litres_trial_promo) Tony (#litres_trial_promo) Possibly Maybe (#litres_trial_promo) Instinct and Proof (#litres_trial_promo) Flicker (#litres_trial_promo) One Small Step (#litres_trial_promo) What I Will Always Remember (#litres_trial_promo) Acknowledgments (#litres_trial_promo) About the Author (#litres_trial_promo) Copyright (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Now Away We Go (#ulink_d75fd5be-22dd-58f6-a5d3-999f843d05a6) 9.00 p. m. on a November Saturday. Joni, Tony and I are out on the town. Tony is from the next town over and he needs to get out. His parents are extremely religious. It doesn’t even matter which religion – they’re all the same at a certain point and few of them want a gay boy cruising around with his friends on a Saturday night. So every week Tony feeds us bible stories, then on Saturday we show up at his doorstep well versed in parables and earnestness, dazzling his parents with our blinding purity. They slip him a twenty and tell him to enjoy our study group. We go spend the money on romantic comedies, dimestore toys and diner jukeboxes. Our happiness is the closest we’ll ever come to a generous God, so we figure Tony’s parents would understand, if only they weren’t set on misunderstanding so many things. Tony has to be home by midnight, so we are on a Cinderella mission. With this in mind, we keep our eye on the ball. There isn’t really a gay scene or a straight scene in our town. They got all mixed up a while back, which I think is for the best. Back when I was in second grade, the older gay kids who didn’t flee to the city for entertainment would have to make their own fun. Now it’s all good. Most of the straight guys try to sneak into the Queer Beer bar. Boys who love boys flirt with girls who love girls. And whether your heart is strictly ballroom or bluegrass punk, the dance floors are open to whatever you have to offer. This is my town. I’ve lived here all my life. Tonight, our Gaystafarian bud Zeke is gigging at the local chain bookstore. Joni has a driver’s licence from the state where her grandmother lives, so she drives us around in the family sedan. We roll down the windows and crank the radio – we like the idea of our music spilling out over the whole neighbourhood, becoming part of the air. Tony has a desperate look tonight, so we let him control the dial. He switches to a Mope Folk station and we ask him what’s going on. “I can’t say,” he tells us, and we know what he means. That nameless empty. We try to cheer him up by treating him to a blue Slurp-Slurp at the local 24-7. We each take sips, to see whose tongue can get the bluest. Once Tony’s sticking his tongue out with the rest of us, we know he’s going to be OK. Zeke’s already jamming by the time we get to the highway bookstore. He’s put his stage in the European History section, and every now and then he’ll throw names like Hadrian and Copernicus into his mojo rap. The place is crowded. A little girl in the Children’s section puts the Velveteen Rabbit on her shoulders for a better view. Her moms are standing behind her, holding hands and nodding to Zeke’s tune. The Gaystafarian crowd has planted itself in the Gardening section, while the three straight members of the guys’ lacrosse team are ogling a bookstore clerk from Literature. She doesn’t seem to mind. Her glasses are the colour of liquorice. I move through the crowd with ease, sharing nods and smiling hellos. I love this scene, this floating reality. I am a solo flier looking out over the land of Boyfriends and Girlfriends. I am three notes in the middle of a song. Joni grabs me and Tony, pulling us into Self-Help. There are a few monkish types already there, some of them trying to ignore the music and learn the Thirteen Ways to Be an Effective Person. I know Joni’s brought us here because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore. So we dance. Tony hesitates – he isn’t much of a dancer. But as I’ve told him a million times, when it comes to true dancing, it doesn’t matter what you look like – it’s all about the joy you feel. Zeke’s jive is infectious. People are crooning and swooning into one another. You can see the books on the shelves in kaleidoscope form – spinning rows of colours, the passing blur of words. I sway. I sing. I elevate. My friends are by my side and Zeke is working the Huguenots into his melody. I spin around and knock a few books off the shelves. When the song is through, I bend to pick them up. I grasp on the ground and come face to face with a cool pair of sneakers. “This yours?” a voice above the sneakers asks. I look up. And there he is. His hair points in ten different directions. His eyes are a little close together, but man, are they green. There’s a little birthmark on his neck, the shape of a comma. I think he’s wonderful. He’s holding a book out to me. Migraines Are Only in Your Mind. I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my heartbeat. I am aware that my shirt is half untucked. I take the book from him and say thanks. I put it back on the shelf. There’s no way that Self-Help can help me now. “Do you know Zeke?” I ask, nodding to the stand. “No,” the boy answers. “I just came for a book.” “I’m Paul.” “I’m Noah.” He shakes my hand. I am touching his hand. I can feel Joni and Tony keeping their curious distance. “Do you know Zeke?” Noah asks. “His tunes are magnificent.” I roll the word in my head – magnificent. It’s like a gift to hear. “Yeah, we go to school together,” I say casually. “The high school?” “That’s the one.” I’m looking down. He has perfect hands. “I go there, too.” “You do?” I can’t believe I’ve never seen him before. If I’d seen him before, it would have damn well registered. “Two weeks now. Are you a senior?” I look down at my Keds. “I’m a sophomore.” “Cool.” Now I fear he’s humouring me. There’s nothing cool about being a sophomore. Even a new kid would know that. “Noah?” another voice interrupts, insistent and expectant. A girl has appeared behind him. She is dressed in a lethal combination of pastels. She’s young, but she looks like she could be a hostess on the Pillow and Sofa Network. “My sister,” he explains, much to my relief. She trudges off. It is clear that he is supposed to follow. We hover for a second. Our momentary outro of regret. Then he says, “I’ll see you around.” I want to say I hope so, but suddenly I’m afraid of being too forward. I can flirt with the best of them – but only when it doesn’t matter. This suddenly matters. “See you,” I echo. He leaves as Zeke begins another set. When he gets to the door, he turns to look at me and smiles. I feel myself blush and bloom. Now I can’t dance. It’s hard to groove when you’ve got things on your mind. Sometimes you can use the dancing to fight them off. But I don’t want to fight this off. I want to keep it. “So do you think he’s on the bride’s side or the groom’s side?” Joni asks after the gig. “I think people can sit wherever they want nowadays,” I reply. Zeke is packing up his gear. We’re leaning against the front of his VW bus, squinting so we can turn the streetlamps into stars. “I think he likes you,” Joni says. “Joni,” I protest, “you thought Wes Travers liked me – and all he wanted to do was copy my homework.” “This is different. He was in Art and Architecture the whole time Zeke was playing. Then you caught his eye and he ambled over. It wasn’t Self-Help he was after.” I look at my watch. “It’s almost pumpkin time. Where’s Tony?” We find him a little ways over, lying in the middle of the street, on an island that’s been adopted by the local Kiwanis Club. His eyes are closed. He is listening to the music of the traffic going by. I climb over the divider and tell him study group’s almost over. “I know,” he says to the sky. Then, as he’s getting up, he adds, “I like it here.” I want to ask him, Where is here? Is it this island, this town, this world? More than anything in this strange life, I want Tony to be happy. We found out a long time ago that we weren’t meant to fall in love with each other. But a part of me still fell in hope with him. I want a fair world. And in a fair world, Tony would shine. I could tell him this, but he wouldn’t accept it. He would leave it on the island instead of folding it up and keeping it with him, just to know it was there. We all need a place. I have mine – this topsy-turvy collection of friends, tunes, after-school activities and dreams. I want him to have a place too. When he says “I like it here”, I don’t want there to be a sad undertone. I want to be able to say, Sostay. But I remain quiet, because now it’s a quiet night and Tony is already walking back to the parking lot. “What’s a Kiwanis?” he yells over his shoulder. I tell him it sounds like a bird. A bird from somewhere far, far away. “Hey, Gay Boy. Hey, Tony. Hey, folkie chick.” I don’t even need to look up from the pavement. “Hello, Ted,” I say. He’s walked up just as we’re about to drive out. I can hear Tony’s parents miles away, finishing up their evening prayers. They will expect us soon. Ted’s car is blocking us in. Not out of spite. Out of pure obliviousness. He is a master of obliviousness. “You’re in our way,” Joni points out from the driver’s seat. Her irritation is quarter-hearted at best. “You look nice tonight,” he replies. Ted and Joni have broken up twelve times in the past few years. Which means they’ve gotten back together eleven times. I always feel we’re teetering on the precipice of Reunion Number Twelve. Ted is smart and good-looking, but he doesn’t use it to good effect, like a rich person who never gives to charity. His world rarely expands further than the nearest mirror. Even in tenth grade, he likes to think of himself as the king of our school. He hasn’t stopped to notice it’s a democracy. The problem with Ted is that he’s not a total loss. Sometimes, from the murk of his self-notice, he will make a crystal-clear comment that’s so insightful you wish you’d made it yourself. A little of that can go a long way. Especially with Joni. “Really,” she says now, her voice easier, “we’ve gotta go.” “You’ve run out of chapter and verse for your study group? ‘O Lord, as I walk through the valley of the shadow of doubt, at least let me wear a Walkman…’” “The Lord is my DJ,” Tony says solemnly. “I shall not want.” “One day, Tony – I swear we’ll free you.” Ted bangs the hood of the car to emphasise the point and Tony gives him a salute. Ted moves his car and we’re off again. Joni’s clock says it’s 12.48, but we’re OK, since it’s been an hour fast since Daylight Saving Time ended. We drive into the blue-black, the radio mellow now, the hour slowly turning from night-time to sleep. Noah is a hazy memory in my mind. I am losing track of the way he ran my nerves; the giddiness is now diffusing in the languid air, becoming a mysterious blur of good feeling. “How come I’ve never seen him before?” I ask. “Maybe you were just waiting for the right time to notice.” Tony says. Maybe he’s right. Paul is Gay (#ulink_87a25705-c42c-54ad-a83d-b4db340eb309) I’ve always known I was gay, but it wasn’t confirmed until I was in kindergarten. It was my teacher who said so. It was right there on my kindergarten report card: PAUL IS DEFINITELY GAY AND HAS A VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF. I saw it on her desk one day before nap-time. And I have to admit: I might not have realised I was different if Mrs Benchly hadn’t pointed it out. I mean, I was five years old. I just assumed boys were attracted to other boys. Why else would they spend all of their time together, playing on teams and making fun of the girls? I assumed it was because we all liked each other. I was still unclear how girls fit into the picture, but I thought I knew the boy thing A-OK. Imagine my surprise to find out that I wasn’t entirely right. Imagine my surprise when I went through all the other reports and found out that not one of the other boys had been labelled DEFINITELY GAY. (In all fairness, none of the others had a VERY GOOD SENSE OF SELF, either.) Mrs Benchly caught me at her desk and looked quite alarmed. Since I was more than a little confused, I asked her for some clarification. “Am I definitely gay?” I asked. Mrs Benchly looked me over and nodded. “What’s gay?” I asked. “It’s when a boy likes other boys,” she explained. I pointed over to the painting corner, where Greg Easton was wrestling on the ground with Ted Halpern. “Is Greg gay?” I asked. “No,” Mrs Benchly answered. “At least, not yet.” Interesting. I found it all very interesting. Mrs Benchly explained a little more to me – the whole boys-liking-girls thing. I can’t say I understood. Mrs Benchly asked me if I’d noticed that marriages were mostly made up of men and women. I had never really thought of marriages as things that involved liking. I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement was yet another adult quirk, like flossing. Now Mrs Benchly was telling me something much bigger. Some sort of silly global conspiracy. “But that’s not how I feel,” I protested. My attention was a little distracted because Ted was now pulling up Greg Easton’s shirt, and that was kind of cool. “How I feel is what’s right…right?” “For you, yes,” Mrs Benchly told me. “What you feel is absolutely right for you. Always remember that.” And I have. Sort of. That night, I held my big news until after my favourite Nickelodeon block was over. My father was in the kitchen, doing dishes. My mother was in the den with me, reading on the couch. Quietly, I walked over to her. “GUESS WHAT!” I said. She jumped, then tried to pretend she hadn’t been surprised. Since she didn’t close her book – she only marked the page with her finger– I knew I didn’t have much time. “What?” she asked. “I’m gay!” Parents never react the way you want them to. I thought, at the very least, my mother would take her finger out of the book. But no. Instead she turned in the direction of the kitchen and yelled to my father. “Honey…Paul’s learned a new word!” It took my parents a couple of years. But eventually they got used to it. Besides my parents, Joni was the first person I ever came out to. This was in second grade. We were under my bed at the time. We were under my bed because Joni had come over to play, and under my bed was easily the coolest place in the whole house. We had brought flashlights and were telling ghost stories as a lawn mower grrrrred outside. We pretended it was the Grim Reaper. We were playing our favourite game: Avoid Death. “So a poisonous snake has just bitten your left arm – what do you do?” Joni asked. “I try to suck the poison out.” “But that doesn’t work. It’s spreading up your arm…” “So I take my axe and chop off my arm.” “But once you chop off your arm, you’re bleeding to death.” “So I pull off my shirt and tie it around the stump to stop the blood.” “But a vulture smells the blood and comes swooping down at you.” “So I use my right arm to pick up the left arm that I cut off, and I use it to bat the vulture away!” “But…” Joni trailed off. At first I figured I had her stumped. Then she leaned over, her eyelids closing. She smelled like bubblegum and bicycle grease. Before I knew it, her lips were coming near mine. I was so freaked out, I stood up. Since we were still under my bed, I crashed into the bottom of my mattress. Her eyes opened quickly after that. “What’d you do that for?” we both yelled at the same time. “Don’t you like me?” Joni asked, clearly hurt. “Yeah,” I said. “But, you know, I’m gay.” “Oh. Cool. Sorry.” “No problem.” There was a pause, and then Joni continued. “But the vulture pulls your left arm out of your hand and begins to hit you with it…” At that moment I knew Joni and I were going to be friends for a good long time. It was with Joni’s help that I became the first openly gay class president in the history of Ms Farquar’s third-grade class. Joni was my campaign manager. She was the person who came up with my campaign slogan: VOTE FOR ME…I’M GAY! I thought it rather oversimplified my stance on the issues (pro-recess, anti-gym), but Joni said it was sure to generate media attention. At first she wanted the slogan to be VOTE FOR ME…I’M A GAY, but I pointed out that this could easily be misread as VOTE FOR ME…I’M A GUY, which would certainly lose me votes. So the A was struck and the race began in earnest. My biggest opponent was (I’m sorry to say) Ted Halpern. His first slogan was VOTE FOR ME…I’M NOT GAY, which only made him seem dull. Then he tried YOU CAN’T VOTE FOR HIM…HE’S GAY, which was pretty stupid, because nobody likes to be told who they can (or can’t) vote for. Finally, in the days leading up to the election, he resorted to DONT VOTE FOR THE FAG. Hello? Joni threatened to beat him up, but I knew he’d played right into our hands. When the election was held, he was left with the rather tiny lint-head vote, while I carried the girl vote, the open-minded guy vote, the third-grade closet-case vote and the Ted-hater vote. It was a total blowout, and when it was all over, Joni beat Ted up anyway. The next day at lunch, Cody O’Brien traded me two Twinkies for a box of raisins – clearly an unequal trade. The next day, I gave him three Yodels for a Fig Newton. This was my first flirtation. Cody was my date for my fifth-grade semi-formal. Or at least he was supposed to be my date. Two days before the big shindig, we had a fight over a Nintendo cartridge he’d borrowed from me and lost. I know it’s a small thing to break up over, but really, the way he handled it (lying! deceit!) was symptomatic of bigger problems. Luckily, we parted on friendly terms, Joni was supposed to be my back-up date, but she surprised me by saying she was going with Ted. She swore to me he’d changed. This was also symptomatic of bigger problems. But there was no way of knowing it then. In sixth grade, Cody, Joni, a lesbian fourth grader named Laura and I formed our elementary school’s first gay-straight alliance. Quite honestly, we took one look around and figured the straight kids needed our help. For one thing, they were all wearing the same clothes. Also (and this was critical), they couldn’t dance to save their lives. Our semi-formal dance floor could have easily been mistaken for a coop of pre-Thanksgiving turkeys. This was not acceptable. Luckily, our principal was cooperative and allowed us to play a minute or two of I Will Survive and Bizarre Love Triangle after the Pledge of Allegiance was read each morning. Membership in the gay-straight alliance soon surpassed that of the football team (which isn’t to say there wasn’t overlap). Ted refused to join, but he couldn’t stop Joni from signing them up for swing dance classes twice a week at recess. Since I was unattached at the time, and since I was starting to feel that I had met everyone there was to meet at our elementary school, I would often sneak out with Laura to the AV room, where we’d watch Audrey Hepburn movies until the recess bell would ring and reality would beckon once more. In eighth grade, I was tackled by two high school wrestlers after a late-night showing of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert at our local theatre. At first I thought it was a strange kind of foreplay, but then I realised that their grunts were actually insults – queer, faggot, the usual. I wasn’t about to take such verbal abuse from strangers – only Joni was allowed to speak to me that way. Luckily, I had gone to the movies with a bunch of my friends from the fencing team, so they just pulled out their foils and disarmed the lugheads. (One of them, I’ve since heard, is now a drag queen in Columbus, Ohio. I like to think I had something to do with that.) I was learning that notoriety came with a certain backlash. I had to be careful. I had a gay food column in the local paper – “Dining OUT” – which was a modest success. I’d declined numerous pleas to run for student council president, because I knew it would interfere with my direction of the school musical (I won’t bore you with the details, but let me just say that Cody O’Brien was an Auntie Mame for the ages). All in all, life through junior high was pretty fun. I didn’t really have a life that was so much out of the ordinary. The usual series of crushes, confusions and intensities. Then I meet Noah and things become complicated. I sense it immediately, driving home from Zeke’s gig. I suddenly feel more complicated. Not bad complicated. Just complicated. The Homecoming Queen’s Dilemma (#ulink_67fb175a-5bf5-53e1-b78b-ff163136c99b) I look for him in the hallways on Monday. I hope that he’s looking for me, too. Joni promises me she’ll be my search-party spy. I’m afraid she’ll get too carried away with the job, dragging Noah over to me by the ear if she finds him. But the connection isn’t made. No matter how far I drift from the hallway conversations I’m having, I never drift into him. The halls are awash in Homecoming Pride posters and post-weekend gossip. Everybody is jingling and jangling; I look for Noah like I’d look for a pocket of calm. Instead I run into Infinite Darlene. Or, more accurately, she runs on over to me. There are few sights grander at eight in the morning than a six-foot-four football player scuttling through the halls in high heels, a red shock wig and more-than-passable make-up. If I wasn’t so used to it, I might be taken aback. “Ah’m so glad I caught you,” Infinite Darlene exclaims, sounding like Scarlett O’Hara as played by Clark Gable. “Things are such a mess!” I don’t know when Infinite Darlene and I first became friends. Perhaps it was back when she was still Daryl Heisenberg, but that’s not very likely; few of us can remember what Daryl Heisenberg was like, since Infinite Darlene consumed him so completely. He was a decent football player, but nowhere near as good as when he started wearing false eyelashes. Infinite Darlene doesn’t have it easy. Being both star quarterback and homecoming queen has its conflicts. And sometimes it’s hard for her to fit in. The other drag queens in our school rarely sit with her at lunch; they say she doesn’t take good enough care of her nails, and that she looks a little too buff in a tank top. The football players are a little more accepting, although there was a spot of trouble a year ago when Chuck, the second-string quarterback, fell in love with her and got depressed when she said he wasn’t her type. I am not alarmed when Infinite Darlene tells me things are such a mess. For Infinite Darlene, things are always such a mess; if they weren’t, she wouldn’t have nearly enough to talk about. This time, though, it’s a real dilemma. “Coach Ginsburg is going to have my hat,” she declares. “It’s the frickin’ Homecoming Pride Rally this afternoon. He wants me to march with the rest of the team. But as homecoming queen, I’m also supposed to be introducing the team. If I don’t do the proper introductions, my tiara might be in doubt. Trilby Pope would take my place, which would be ghastly, ghastly, ghastly. Her boobs are faker than mine.” “You think Trilby Pope would stoop that low?” I ask. “Is the Pope shrewish? Of course she would stoop that low. And she’d have gravity problems getting back up.” Usually Infinite Darlene acts like she’s in a perpetual congeniality contest. But Trilby Pope is her weak spot. They used to be good friends, able to recount an hour’s worth of activity with three hours’ worth of conversation. Then Trilby fell into the field hockey crowd. She tried to convince Infinite Darlene to join her, but football was the same season. They drifted into different practices and different groups of friends. Trilby started to wear a lot of plaid, which Infinite Darlene despised. She started to hang with rugby boys. It all became very fraught. Finally, they had a friendship break-up – an exchange of heated classroom notes, folded in the shape of artillery. They averted their glances dramatically when they passed in the halls. Trilby still has some of Infinite Darlene’s accessories, from when they used to swap. Infinite Darlene tells everybody (except Trilby) that she wants them back. My attention is beginning to wander from the conversation. I am still scanning the hallways for Noah, knowing full well that if I see him, I will most probably duck into the nearest doorway, blushing furiously. “I do declare,” Infinite Darlene does declare, “what has gotten you so distracted?” It is here that I feel the limit of our friendship. Because while Infinite Darlene feels comfortable telling me everything, I am afraid that if I tell her something, it will no longer be mine. It will belong to the whole school. “I’m just looking for someone,” I hedge. “Aren’t we all?” Infinite Darlene vamps ruefully. I think I’m off the hook, but then she adds, “Is it someone special?” “It’s nothing,” I say, crossing my fingers. I pray that it’s not nothing. Yes, I pray to my Big Lesbian God Who Doesn’t Really Exist. I say to her: Idon’t ask for much.Iswear.ButI would really love Noahtobe everythingIhope he’ll be. Please let him be someoneI can groove with, and who wants to groove with me. My denial has sent Infinite Darlene back to her own dilemma. I tell her she should march with the football team while wearing her homecoming queen regalia. It seems like a good compromise to me. Infinite Darlene starts to nod. Then her eyes see something over my shoulder and flash anger. “Don’t look now,” she whispers. Of course, I turn and look. And there’s Kyle Kimball walking by. Turning away from me like he might catch plague from a single bubonic glance. Kyle is the only straight boy I’ve ever kissed. (He didn’t realise he was straight at the time.) We went out for a few weeks last year, in ninth grade. He is the only ex I’m not on speaking terms with. Sometimes I even feel like he hates me. It’s a very strange feeling. I’m not used to being hated. “He’ll learn,” Infinite Darlene says as Kyle recedes into a classroom. She’s been saying that for a year now, without ever telling me who Kyle’s going to learn from. I still wonder if it’s supposed to be me. With some break-ups, all you can think about afterwards is how badly it ended and how much the other person hurt you. With others, you become sentimental for the good times and lose track of what went wrong. When I think of Kyle, the beginnings and the endings are all mixed up. I see his enraptured face reflected in the light of a flickering movie screen; passing him a note and having him rip it into confetti-sized pieces without reading it; his hand taking mine for the first time, on the way to math class; him calling me a liar and a loser; the first time I knew he liked me, when I caught him hovering around my locker before I actually got there; the first time I knew he didn’t like me any more, when I went to give him back a book I’d borrowed and he pulled away instinctively. He said I’d tricked him. He said it to everyone. Only a few people believed him. But it wasn’t what they thought that mattered to me. It was what he thought. And if he really believed it. “He’s the worst,” Infinite Darlene says. But even she knows this isn’t true. He is far from the worst. Seeing Kyle always takes some of the volume out of my soundtrack. Now I’m no longer floating on a Noah high. Infinite Darlene tries to cheer me up. “I have chocolate,” she says, reaching a big hand into her purse for a Milky Way mini. I am sucking at the caramel and nougat when Joni comes up to us with her latest Noah Report. Sadly, it’s the same as the last five. “I haven’t been able to find him,” she says. “I’ve found people who know who he is, but nobody seems to know where he is. Chuck was helping me before, and Chuck said that he’s one of those arty types. Now, from Chuck that wasn’t an ultimate compliment, but at least it pointed me in the right direction. I looked at the wall outside the art room and found a photo he did. Chuck helped me get it.” I am not really alarmed by Joni’s thievery – we take things off walls and put them back all the time. But my inner security device does take notice of the number of times that Joni’s name-checked Chuck. In the past, I’ve been able to tell that things with Ted were getting better when Joni began to name-check him again. The fact that it’s now Chuck has looped me for a throw. Joni takes a small, framed photograph out of her bag. The frame is the colour of Buddy Holly’s glasses and has largely the same effect. “You have to look at it closely,” Joni tells me. I hold the photo up to my face, ignoring my own reflection to see what lies beneath. At first I see the man in the chair, toward the back of the photo. He’s the age of my grandfather and is sitting in an old wooden rocker, laughing his head off. Then I realise he’s sitting in a room covered by snow globes. There must be hundreds – maybe thousands – of the small plastic shakers, each with its own blurry locale. Snow globes cover the floor, the counters, the shelves, the table at the man’s arm. It’s a very cool photograph. “You can’t keep it,” Joni says. “I know, I know.” I look at it for a minute more, then hand it back. Infinite Darlene has kept quiet through this whole exchange. But she’s about to burst with curiosity. “He’s just some guy,” I say. “Do tell,” she insists. So I do. Tell. And I know as I do that he isn’t “just some guy”. There was something in our two minutes together that felt like it could last for years. Telling Infinite Darlene this doesn’t just feel like I’m setting myself up for gossip. No, it feels like I’m putting my whole heart on the line. Pride and Joy (#ulink_aef3e92b-8d61-5b14-93dc-2bb974458465) Joni, Ted and I sit together for the Homecoming Pride Rally that afternoon. It’s the first rally that I’ve ever been in the stands for. This is due to a fluke of scheduling. Our school has too many activities and teams to be represented in each and every cheering session, so whenever we have a rally, only a dozen groups are spotlighted. They’d asked me to bring my acting troupe this time around, but I felt such recognition might damage our art – putting the personality before the performance, as it were. So as a result I am sitting in the bleachers of our gymnasium, trying to gauge the Joni-and-Ted barometer. Right now, it looks like the pressure is high. Ted keeps looking over at Joni, but Joni isn’t looking as much at Ted. He turns to me instead. “You find your boyfriend yet?” he asks. Panicked, I look around to see if Noah is in the immediate vicinity. Luckily, he is not. I am starting to wonder if he actually exists. The principal’s secretary gets up to the microphone to start the rally. Everybody knows that she wields the real power in the school, so it makes sense to have her leading things here. The gymnasium doors open and the cheerleaders come riding in on their Harleys. The crowd goes wild. We are, I believe, the only high school in America with a biker cheerleading team. But I could be wrong. A few years ago, it was decided that having a posse of motorcycles gun around the fields and courts was a much bigger cheer-inducer than any pom-pom routine could ever hope to be. Now, in an intricately choreographed display, the Harleys swerve around the gym, starting off in a pyramid the shape of a bird migration, then splitting up into spins and corners. For a finale, the cheerleaders rev all at once and shoot themselves off a ramp emblazoned with our high school’s name. They are rewarded with massive applause. Already the rally is doing its job. I am proud to be a student at my high school. The tennis team is the next up. My brother and his friend Mara are the doubles champions, so they get a pretty good reception. I try to cheer loudly so Jay can hear my voice above the crowd. He’s a senior now and I know he’s started to feel sad about everything coming to an end. Next year, he’ll be on a college tennis team. It won’t be the same. After the tennis team has been cheered, our school cover band comes out to play. The cover band’s stats are actually better than the tennis team’s – at this past year’s Dave Matthews Cover Band Competition, they went all the way to the finals with their cover of the Dave Matthews Band covering All Along the Watchtower, only to be defeated by a cover band that played Typical Situation while standing on their heads. Now they launch into a cover of OneDay More from Les Mis?rables, and I admire the lead singer’s versatility. After an encore of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus, the principal’s secretary asks for quiet and introduces this year’s homecoming king and queen. Infinite Darlene strides out in a pink ball gown, covered in part by her quarterback jersey. The homecoming king, Dave Sprat, hangs from her arm, a good thirteen inches shorter than her (if you count the heels). Infinite Darlene is holding a portable microphone we borrowed from Zeke’s van, so she can introduce and march at the same time. As the school cover band strikes up a skacore version of We Are the Champions (we’re not entirely without tradition), the members of the football team line up for their presentation. I lean over to Joni. She’s fixing her eyes on Chuck. I honestly don’t know why. Chuck is the second-string quarterback who fell for Infinite Darlene and got all upset when she didn’t return his affections. He was real bitter about it, worse than Ted in his fouler moods. Ted, at least, is able to lose his cool without totally losing his sense of humour. I’m not sure that Chuck’s the same way. I wish Tony went to our school, so I could lift my eyebrow and get his take on the situation. Ted doesn’t seem to notice where Joni’s glance is taking her. He is looking elsewhere. “Is that him?” he asks. Because he’s Ted, he goes right ahead and points at someone in the stands across the gymnasium. I squint to make out the faces from the crowd. At first, I think he’s pointing at Kyle, who is somewhat subdued in his applause for the football players as Infinite Darlene introduces them. Then I realise Ted is pointing rows up. I see an empty seat. Then, next to it, I see Noah. He senses me looking. I swear. He looks right at me. Or maybe he’s looking at Ted, who’s still pointing. “Put your finger down,” I say between gritted teeth. “Chill,” Ted tells me, moving his finger through the air, as if he hadn’t been pointing at Noah at all. I try to play along. When the whole pointing charade is over, I see that Noah’s still where he was a second ago. I don’t know why I thought he would have disappeared. I guess I don’t believe these things can ever be easy, although I also don’t see why they have to be hard. Joni’s broken her attention from Chuck for long enough to get what’s going on. “Don’t just sit here,” she says. “If you don’t go over there, I will – and I’ll tell him all about your crush,” Ted informs me. I’m not sure if he’s kidding or not. It’s a mighty thin border between peer pressure and bravery. Knowing that Joni and Ted aren’t going to let me get out of it, I head to Noah’s side of the gym. One of the teachers shoots me a stay-in-your-seat glance, but I wave her off. Over the loudspeakers, I can hear Infinite Darlene’s crystal voice: “And now, introducing the quarterback…the one…the only…ME!” I look at the crowd. Everyone cheers, except for some of the more elitist drag queens, who feign disinterest. I duck behind the bleachers, weaving to the stairs. I wonder what I’ll say. I wonder if I’m about to make a fool of myself. All I can feel is this intensity. My mind beating in time with my heart. My steps keeping sway with my hopes. I get to the bottom of the stands. I’ve lost track of the space. I can’t find Noah. I look back to Joni and Ted. Much to my mortification, they both point me on my way. The football presentation is over and the quiz bowling team is preparing to enter. Infinite Darlene is basking in her last round of applause. I swear she winks when she looks my way. I focus on the seat next to Noah. I do not focus on his crazy-cool hair, or his blue suede shoes, or the specks of paint on his hands and his arms. I am beside him. “Is this seat taken?” I ask. He looks up at me. And then, after a beat, he breaks out smiling. “Hey,” he says, “I’ve been looking all over for you.” I don’t know what to say. I am so happy and so scared. There is a roar through the stands as the quiz bowling team is announced. They come sprinting on to the court, rolling for pins while answering questions about Einstein’s theory of relativity. “I’ve been looking for you too,” I say at last. He says, “Cool,” and it’s cool. So cool. I sit down next to him as the audience cheers for the captain of the quiz bowling team, who’s just scored a strike while listing the complete works of the Bront? sisters. I don’t want to scare him by telling him all the things that are scaring me. I don’t want him to know how important this is. He has to feel the importance for himself. So I say, “Those are cool shoes,” and we talk about blue suede shoes and the duds store where he shops. We talk as the badminton team lets its birdies fly. We talk as the French Cuisine Club rises the perfect souffl?. We laugh when it falls. I am looking for signs that he understands me. I am looking for my hopes to be confirmed. “This is such serendipity, isn’t it?” he asks. I almost fall off my seat. I am a firm believer in serendipity – all the random pieces coming together in one wonderful moment, when suddenly you see what their purpose was all along. We talk about music and find that we like the same kinds of music. We talk about movies and find that we like the same kinds of movies. “Do you really exist?” I blurt out. “Not at all,” he says with a smile. “I’ve known that since I was four.” “What happened when you were four?” “Well, I had this theory. Although I guess I was too young to know it was a theory. You see, I had this imaginary friend. She followed me everywhere – we had to set a place for her at the table, she and I talked all the time – the whole deal. Then it occurred to me that she wasn’t the imaginary friend at all. I figured that I was the imaginary friend and she was the one who was real. It made perfect sense to me. My parents disagreed, but I still secretly feel that I’m right.” “What was her name?” I ask. “Sarah. Yours?” “Thom. With an h.” “Maybe they’re together right now.” “Oh, no. I left Thom in Florida. He never liked to travel.” We are not taking each other too seriously, which is a serious plus. The paint on his hands is not quite purple and not quite blue. There is a speck of just-right red on one of his fingers. The principal’s secretary has the microphone again. The rally is almost over. “I’m glad you found me,” Noah says. “Me too.” I want to float, because it’s that simple. He’s glad I found him. I’m glad I found him. We are not afraid to say this. I am so used to hints and mixed messages, saying things that might mean what they sort of sound like they mean. Games and contests, roles and rituals, talking in twelve languages at once so the true words won’t be so obvious. I am not used to a plain-spoken, honest truth. It pretty much blows me away. I think Noah recognises this. He’s looking at me with a nifty grin. The other people in our row are standing and jostling now, waiting for us to leave so they can get to the aisle and resume their day. I want time to stop. Time doesn’t stop. “Two sixty-three,” Noah tells me. “?!???” I reply. “My locker number,” he explains. “I’ll see you after school.” Now I don’t want time to stop. I want it to fast-forward an hour. Noah has become my until. As we leave the gym, I can see Kyle shoot me a look. I don’t care. Joni and Ted will no doubt be waiting under the bleachers for the full report. I can sum it up in one word: Joy. Hallway Traffic (Complications Ensue) (#ulink_325d1177-20c6-5726-8ab7-a037efd44f43) Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour. But I can’t do that, because (a) it’s impossible, and (b) if I make any of these changes, Noah will notice that I’ve changed, and I don’t want him to know how into him I am. I hope Mr B can save me. I pray his physics class today will transfix me in such a way that I will forget about what awaits me at the other end. But as Mr B bounds around the room with anti-gravitational enthusiasm, I just can’t join his parade. Two sixty-four has become my new mantra. I roll the number over in my head, hoping it will reveal something to me (other than a locker number). I replay my conversation with Noah, trying to transcribe it into memory since I don’t dare write it down in my notebook. The hour passes. As soon as the bell rings, I bolt out of my seat. I don’t know where locker 264 is, but I’m sure as hell going to find out. I plunge into the congested hallway, weaving through the back-slap reunions and locker lunges. I spot locker 435 – I’m in the wrong corridor entirely. “Paul!” a voice yells. There aren’t enough Pauls in my school that I can assume the yell is for someone else. Reluctantly I turn around and see Lyssa Ling about to pull my sleeve. I already know what she wants. Lyssa Ling doesn’t ever talk to me unless she wants me to be on a committee. She’s the head of our school’s committee on appointing committees, no doubt because she’s so good at it. “What do you want from me now, Lyssa?” I ask. (She’s used to this.) “The Dowager Dance,” she says. “I want you to architect it.” I am more than a little surprised. The Dowager Dance is a big deal at our school, and architecting it would mean being in charge of all the decorations and music. “I thought Dave Davison was architecting it,” I say. Lyssa sighs. “He was. But then he went all Goth on me.” “Cool.” “No. Not cool. We have to give people the freedom to wear something other than black. So are you in or are you out?” “Can I have some time to think about it?” “Sixteen seconds.” I count to seventeen and then say, “I’m in.” Lyssa nods, says something about slipping the budget into my locker tomorrow morning, and walks away. I know it’s going to be a rather elaborate budget. The dance was created thirty or so years ago after a local dowager left a stipulation in her will that every year the high school would throw a lavish dance in her honour. (Apparently she was quite a swinger in her day.) The only thing we have to do is feature her portrait prominently and (this is where it gets a little weird) have at least one senior boy dance with it. At first I am distracted by theme ideas. Then I remember the reason for my after-school existence and continue heading to locker 264…until I am stopped by my English teacher, who wants to compliment me on my reading of Oscar Wilde in yesterday’s class. I can’t exactly blow her off, nor can I blow off Infinite Darlene when she asks me how her double role at the Homecoming Pride Rally went. The minutes are ticking away. I hope Noah is equally delayed and that we’ll arrive at his locker at the same time, one of those wonderful kismet connections that seem like signs of great things to come. “Hey, Boy Romeo.” Ted is now alongside me, luckily not stopping as he talks. “Hey,” I echo. “Where you goin’?” “Locker two sixty-four.” “Isn’t that on the second floor?” I groan. He’s right. We walk up the stairs together. “Have you seen Joni?” he asks. Sometimes I feel like fate is dictated by irony (or, at the very least, a rather dark sense of humour). For example, if I am standing next to Joni’s on-and-off boyfriend and he says, “Have you seen Joni?” the obvious next step would be to reach the top of the stairway and see Joni in a full frontal embrace with Chuck, on the verge of a serious kiss. Joni and Chuck don’t see us. Their eyes are passionately, expectantly closed. Everybody pauses to look at them. They are a red light in the hallway traffic. “Bitch,” Ted whispers, upset. Then he charges back down the stairs. I know Noah is waiting for me. I know Joni should know what I’ve seen. I know I don’t really like Ted all that much. But more than I know all those things, I know I have to run after Ted to see if he’s OK. He stays a good few paces ahead of me, pushing through hallway after hallway, turn after turn, hitting backpacks off people’s shoulders and avoiding the glances of gum-chewing locker waifs. I can’t figure out where he’s going. Then I realise he doesn’t have any particular destination in mind. He’s just walking. Walking away. “Hey, Ted,” I call out. We’re in a particularly empty corridor, right outside the wood shop. He turns to me and there’s this conflicted flash in his eyes. The anger wants to drown the shock and the depression. “Did you know about this?” he asks me. I shake my head. “So you don’t know how long?” “No. It’s news to me.” “Whatever I really don’t care. She can hook up with whoever she wants. It’s not like I was interested. We broke up, you know.” I nod. I wonder if he can actually believe what he’s saying. He betrays himself with what he says next. “I didn’t think football players were her type.” I agree, but Ted’s not listening to me any more. “I gotta go,” he says. I want there to be something else for me to say, something to make him feel even marginally better. I look at my watch. It’s been seventeen minutes since the end of school. I use a different stairway to reach the second floor The locker numbers descend for me: 310…299…275… 264. Nobody home. I look around for Noah. The halls are nearly deserted now – everyone’s either gone home or gone to their activities. The track team races past me on their hallway practice run. I wait another five minutes. A girl I’ve never seen before, her hair the colour of honeydew, walks by and says, “He left about ten minutes ago. He looked disappointed.” I feel like a total loser. I rip a page out of my physics book and write an apology. I go through about five drafts before I’m satisfied that I’ve managed to sound interested and interesting without seeming entirely daft. All the while, I’m still hoping he’ll show up. I slip the note into locker 264. I head back down to my own locker. Joni is nowhere in sight, which is a good thing. I can’t even begin to know what to say to her. I can see why she would have kept the news about Chuck from Ted. But I can’t figure out why she never told me. It hurts. As I slam my locker shut, Kyle walks by me. He nods and says hi. He even almost smiles. I am floored. He keeps walking, not turning back. My life is crazy and there’s not a single thing I can do about it. Finding Lost Languages (#ulink_572843bd-4662-5651-b180-c782174d8442) “Maybe he was saying hi to someone else,” I say. It’s a couple of hours later and I’m talking to Tony, recounting the drama to the one person who wasn’t there. “And the smile – well, maybe it was just gas,” I add. Tony nods noncommittally. “I don’t know why Kyle would start talking to me again. It’s not like I’ve done anything differently. And it’s not like he’s the kind of guy who changes his mind about this kind of thing.” Tony sort of shrugs. “I wish I could call Noah, but I don’t feel like we’re close enough for that. I mean, would he even know who I was if I called? Would he recognise my name or my voice? It can wait until tomorrow, right? I don’t want to seem too neurotic.” Tony nods again. “And Joni. What was she thinking, snogging up to Chuck in the middle of the hall like that? Do I let her know that I know, or do I pretend I don’t know and secretly count the number of times she talks to me before she lets me know, resenting each and every minute that goes by without her telling me the truth?” Tony sort of shrugs again. “Feel free to chime in at any time,” I tell him. “Don’t have much to say,” he answers with another slight shrug, this one slightly apologetic. We are at my house, doing each other’s homework. We try to do this as often as possible. In much the same way that it’s more fun to clean up someone else’s room than it is to clean up your own, doing each other’s homework is a way to make the homework go faster. Early in our friendship, Tony and I discovered we had similar handwriting. The rest came naturally. Of course, we go to different schools and have different assignments. That’s the challenge. And the challenge is what it’s all about. “What book is this paper supposed to be on, anyway?” I ask him. “Of Mice and Men.” “You mean, ‘Please, George, can I pet the bunnies?’” “Yup.” “Cool, I’ve read that one.” I start scribbling a topic sentence, while Tony flips through a French-English dictionary to finish my French homework. He takes Spanish. “You don’t seem very surprised about Joni,” I say. “Saw it coming,” he replies, not raising his eyes from the dictionary. “Really? You pictured Ted and me catching them in the hallway?” “Well, not that part.” “But Chuck?” “Well, not that part, either. But face it. Joni likes having a boyfriend. And if it’s not going to be Ted, it’s going to be someone else. If this guy Chuck likes her, odds are she’s going to like him back.” “And you approve of this?” This time he looks right at me. “Who am I to approve or disapprove? If she’s happy, then good for her.” There is an unhappy edge in Tony’s voice and it doesn’t take many leaps to get to the source of it. Tony’s never really had a boyfriend. He’s never been in love. I don’t exactly know why this is. He’s cute, funny, smart, a little gloomy – all attractive qualities. But he still hasn’t found what he’s looking for. I’m not even sure he knows what that is. Most of the time, he just freezes. He’ll have a quiet crush, or even groove with someone who has boyfriend potential…and then, before it’s even started, it will be over. “It wasn’t right,” he’ll tell us, and that will be that. This is one of the reasons I don’t want to dwell on Noah with him. Although I’m sure he’s happy for me, I don’t think his happiness for me translates into happiness for himself. I need another way to buoy him. I resort to speaking in a nonexistent language. “Hewipso faqua deef?” I ask him. “Tinsin rabblemonk titchticker,” he replies. Our record for doing this is six hours, including a lengthy trip to the mall. I don’t know how it started – one day we were walking along and I just got tired of speaking English. So I started throwing consonants and vowels together in random arrangements. Without missing a beat, Tony started to speak back to me in the same way. The weird thing is, we’ve always understood each other. The tone and the gestures say it all. I first met Tony two years ago, at the Strand in the city. It’s one of the best bookstores in the world. We were both looking for a used copy of The Lost Language of Cranes. The shelf was eight feet up, so we had to take turns on the ladder. He went first and when he came down with a copy, I asked him if there was another up there. Startled, he told me there was a second copy and even went back up the ladder to get it for me. After he came back down, we hung together for a minute – I asked him if he’d read Equal Affections or APlace I’ve Never Been, and he said no, Lost Language of Cranes was his first. Then he drifted off to the oversized photography books, while I got lost in fiction. That would have been it. We would have never known each other, would have never been friends. But that night as I boarded the train home, I saw him sitting alone on a three-seater, already halfway done with the book we’d both bought. “Book any good?” I asked as I hit the space in the aisle next to him. At first he didn’t realise I was speaking to him. Then he looked up, recognised me and half smiled. “It’s very good,” he answered. I sat down and we talked some more. I discovered he lived in the next town over from mine. We introduced ourselves. We settled in. I could tell he was nervous, but didn’t know why. A cute guy, a few years older than us, passed through our car. Both of our gazes followed him. “Damn, he was cute,” I said once he’d left. Tony hesitated for a moment, unsure. Then he smiled. “Yeah, he was cute.” As if he was revealing his deepest secret. Which, in many ways, he was. We kept talking. And maybe it was because we were strangers, or maybe it was because we had bought the same book and had thought the same boy was cute. But it was very easy to talk. Riding the train is all about moving forward; our conversation moved like it was on tracks, with no worry of traffic or direction. He told me about his school, which was not like my school, and his parents, who were not like my parents. He didn’t use the word gay and I didn’t need him to. It was understood. This clandestine trip was secret and special to him. He had told his parents he was going on a church retreat. Then he’d hopped on a train to visit the open doors of the open city. Now the city lights ebbed in their grip over the landscape. The meadowlands waved in the darkness until the smaller cities appeared, then the houses with yards and plastic pools. We had talked our way home, one town apart. I asked him for his phone number, but he gave me an e-mail address instead. It was safer that way for him. I told him to call me any time and we made our next set of plans. In other circumstances, this would have been the start of a romance. But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself. “Diltaunt aprin zesperado?” Tony asks me now, seeing me lost in thought. “Gastemicama,” I answer decisively. I’mgood. It’s hard for me to concentrate on Tony’s homework, with so many things to think about. Somehow I manage to write three pages before my brother comes downstairs and offers to give Tony a ride home. Of all my friends, Jay likes Tony best. I think they have compatible silences. I can imagine them on the way back to Tony’s, not saying a word. Jay respects Tony, and I respect Jay for that. I already know that Tony won’t give me any advice about what to do with Noah or Joni or Kyle. It’s not that he doesn’t care (I’m sure he does). He just likes people to do their own thing. “Lifstat beyune hegra,” he says when departing. But his tone holds no clues. Goodbye? Good luck? Call Noah? I don’t know. “Yaroun,” I reply. Goodbye. See you tomorrow. I head back to my room and finish my homework. I don’t look over what Tony’s already written. I’m sure it’s fine. I spend the rest of the evening in a television daze. For the first time in a long time, I don’t call Joni. And Joni doesn’t call me. This is how I know she knows I know. Dangling Conversations (#ulink_a2a159bd-ed7c-505e-9739-e4e460b7fde1) The next morning, I look for Noah and find Joni instead. “We’ve got to talk,” she says. I do not argue. She pulls me into an empty classroom. History’s great figures – Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Homer Simpson – look down at us from posters on the walls. “You saw us. Ted saw us.” It isn’t a question, so I don’t have to answer. “What’s going on?” I ask instead. Implied in that question is the bigger one: Why didn’t you tell me? “I wasn’t expecting this to happen.” “Which part? Falling for Chuck, or having to admit it?” “Don’t get hostile.” I sigh. Early signs of defensiveness are not good. “Look,” I say, “you know as well as I do what Chuck did after Infinite Darlene rejected him. He trashed her locker and bad-mouthed her to the whole school.” “He was hurt.” “He was psycho, Joni.” (I don’t mean to say that; it just comes out. A Friendian Slip.) Joni shoots me the look I know so well – the same look she shot me when she dyed her hair red in sixth grade and I unsuccessfully tried to pretend it had come out well; the same look she shot me when I tried to convince her (after the first break-up) that getting back together with Ted wasn’t the best idea; the same look she shot me when I confessed to her that I was worried I’d never, ever find a boyfriend who loved me the same way I loved him. It’s a look that stops all conversation. It’s a look that insists, You’re wrong. We’ve been best friends too long to fight each other over this. We both know that. “So have you talked to Ted?” I ask. “I wanted to talk to you first.” I think she’s doing the wrong thing. My intuition is clear on this: Chuck is bad news. But I know there’s nothing I can do to convince her to change her mind. Not without proof. “So are you, like, Chuck’s girlfriend now?” Joni groans. “Remains to be seen, OK? And how are you doing with your Mystery Boy?” “I have to find him again.” “You lost him?” “Suppose so.” I say goodbye to Joni and head to Noah’s locker. I see Infinite Darlene and duck past her – I’m sure by now she’s heard about Joni and Chuck, and I’m sure she’ll have loads to say about it. I also pass Seven and Eight in the halls, their heads leaned gently into each other, their words impossible to overhear. Their real names are Steven and Kate, but no one has called them that for years. They started going out in second grade and haven’t been apart since. They are the one per cent of one per cent who meet early on and never need to find anybody else. There’s no way to explain it. Noah is waiting by his locker. No – let me change that. He is standing by his locker. There is no sign in his posture or in his gaze that he is waiting for anybody. “Hey,” I say. I scan his features for a reaction. Surprise? Happiness? Anger? I can’t read him. “Hey,” he says back, closing his locker. “I’m sorry about yesterday,” I continue. “Did you get my note?” He shakes his head. I’m a little thrown. “Oh. I put a note in your locker. I tried to get here right after school, but ten thousand things got in my way. I really wanted to be here.” He can’t read me, either. The confusion is on his face. He doesn’t know if I’m being sincere. “Locker two-six-four, right?” “Two-six-three.” Oops. I apologise on behalf of my pathetic memory and then ask him what he did last night, trying to ease things into a conversation. “I painted some music. You?” “Oh, I fought a forest fire.” When I don’t have anything interesting to say, I usually try to make up something interesting. Then I take one last stab at sounding impressive: “And I started thinking about the Dowager Dance. I’m going to architect it.” “What’s the Dowager Dance?” he asks. I forgot he’s new to the school. He has no idea what I’m talking about. For all he knows, I really do fight forest fires in my free time. I start giving him answers, explaining away the Dowager Dance and the organisational fury of Lyssa Ling. But instead of giving answers, I want to be asking him questions. What does he mean by “paint some music”? Is he happy I’m here? Does he want me to stop talking? Because I keep talking and talking. I am telling him about the time Lyssa Ling tried to sell bagels with fortunes baked inside them as a sixth-grade fundraiser, and how the shipment was switched and we got the fortune bagels that were supposed to go to a bachelor party, with XXX-rated slips of paper inserted into the dough. It’s a funny story, but somehow I am making it boring. I can’t stop in the middle, so I go on and on. Noah doesn’t walk away or nod off, but he’s certainly not riding my tangent. I’m barely on it myself. “Thank God I found you!” It’s not Noah saying this. It’s Infinite Darlene, right behind me. “Am I interrupting?” she asks. Now, I really like Infinite Darlene. But among all my friends, she’s usually the last I introduce to new people. I have to prepare them. Because Infinite Darlene doesn’t make the best first impression. She seems very full of herself. Which she is. It’s only after you get to know her better that you realise that somehow she’s managed to encompass all her friends within her own self-image, so that when she’s acting full of herself, she’s actually full of her close friends too. There is no way I can expect Noah to understand this. I try to send Infinite Darlene a look to let her know she’s interrupting, without actually telling her out loud. It doesn’t work. “You must be that boy Paul likes,” she says to Noah. I turn Elmo red. “And boy,” Infinite Darlene continues, “you sure are cute.” The first time Infinite Darlene talked to me like this, I stuttered for days. Noah smiles and takes it in his stride. “Now, are all the girls at this school as nice as you?” he asks. “If so, I’m definitely going to like it here.” He looks right at her as he says it. And I can tell that even Infinite Darlene is a little taken aback, because it’s clear he’s seeing her just as she wants to be seen. So few people do that. With two sentences, he’s managed to win over my most critical friend. I am in awe. I am also mortified by Infinite Darlene’s declaration of my liking. Sure, I’m about as smooth as a camel’s back…but I was still trying to win him over with my own sweet plan (whatever that might be). Of course, Infinite Darlene will only let a beat last so long before stepping in again. “Is this awful, vile rumour I hear actually true? Break it to me gently.” “Do you mind if I derail for a second?” I ask Noah, then quickly add, “Please stay.” “No problem,” he says. That settled, I face Infinite Darlene. In heels, she is easily six inches taller than me. In an effort to break it to her gently, I talk to her chin. “It appears that Joni has started something with—” “Stop!” Infinite Darlene interrupts, stepping back and holding up her hand. “I can’t take any more. Why, Paul? Why?” “I don’t know.” “He’s scum.” I am not about to argue with a football captain who has long fingernails. “Haven’t I taught her anything?” Infinite Darlene is clearly exasperated. “I mean, I know she has bad taste. But this is like licking the bottom of your stiletto.” Clearly, Infinite Darlene still feels some hostility toward Chuck. “I have to find that girl and talk some sense into her,” she concludes. I put up a show of trying to dissuade her, but we both know there’s no way I’m going to stop her. She leaves in a huff. “Friend of yours?” Noah asks, eyebrow raised. I nod. “I’ll bet she’s always like that.” I nod again. “I feel very calm in comparison.” “We all do,” I assure him. “This is the kind of stuff I was dealing with yesterday when I should’ve been here.” “Does this happen often?” “Not this specific thing, but there’s usually something like it.” “Do you think you could escape the crisis for a few hours this afternoon?” Since Infinite Darlene blew my cover so thoroughly, I decide to take a risk. “You’re not asking me just because I like you?” He smiles. “The thought never crossed my mind.” We don’t say any more than that. I mean, we say things – we make plans and all. But the subject of us is dropped back into signals and longing. We make plans for after school. I’m going to help him paint some music. Painting Music (#ulink_758a8a21-1a87-5960-989b-6a78691b1f9f) Noah’s house is in a different part of town than mine, but the neighbourhood looks just the same. Each house has a huge welcome mat of lawn sitting in front of it, bordered by a driveway on one side and a hedge on the other. It should be boringly predictable, but it’s not really. The houses are personalised – a blush of geraniums around the front stoop, a pair of shutters painted to echo the blue sky. In Noah’s yard, the hedges have been made into the shape of light bulbs – the legacy of the former owner, Noah tells me. He lives close to the high school, so we walk the bendily cross-hatched roads together. He asks me how long I’ve lived in town and I tell him I’ve lived here my whole life. “What’s that like?” he asks. “I don’t really have anything to compare it to,” I say after a moment’s thought. “This is all I know.” Noah explains that his family has moved four times in the last ten years. This is meant to be the final stop – now his parents travel everywhere for business instead of making the family move to the nearest headquarter city. “I’m so dislocated.” Noah confesses. “You’re here now,” I tell him. If my family were to move (honestly, I can’t imagine it, but I’m stating it here for the sake of argument), I think it would take us about three years to unpack all of our boxes. Noah’s family, however, has put everything in its place. We walk through the front door and I’m amazed at how immaculate everything is. The furniture has settled into its new home; the only thing the house lacks is clutter. We walk into the living room – and it’s one of those living rooms that look like nobody ever lives in them. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/david-levithan/boy-meets-boy/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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