7 Days at the Hot Corner (3 page)

That was enough to shut me up. But my curiosity had been killing me. I've known Roy and Rita Adams, Travis's parents, for as long as I've known him. They're really nice people. When my parents got divorced I was seven, and I'd just met Travis; his parents became real important to me—the whole family did. I was too young back then to talk much about how I felt about my parents' divorce—in fact, to this day, I've
still
never talked about it with Dad or Mom. What's the point? Yakking about it won't change anything. But the divorce was hard—real hard. I cried a lot. Not many kids in our class had divorced parents, so Travis's friendship and my feeling that I was almost a part of his family was big for me. I'm not saying Trav's parents are perfect; Roy is gone a lot in his work and I've heard Rita lose her temper and swear more than once, but she's also put her arm around my shoulder and comforted me when I was upset—lots of times, actually. She's always made me feel safe and okay. And Roy is a great dad. He took Travis, Travis's little brother, Hank, who is now ten years old, and me across the state to see the Seattle Mariners every summer for five years: driving us to Safeco Field and back (six hundred miles round-trip), hassling with the traffic, motels, the comic book/baseball card store in the Pike Place Market where we always demanded to go. He put up with all of that garbage just for us.

The first time I met Travis was right after the weekend my dad moved out of our house, a few days after my parents told me they were getting divorced. I was really scared. Travis was new to my school. We were second graders, standing near each other at recess, and out of the blue, like the total wack job I was that day, I just blurted out, “Are your parents married?”

He looked at me kind of funny, but answered, “Yeah.”

I said, “Mine are getting divorced.”

He said, “Oh,” looking at the ground before looking up and adding “Bummer.”

I said, “Yeah, I guess.”

Then I said, “You know, if one of my parents just died or something, everybody would feel sorry for me.”

Travis nodded his agreement, as if what I'd said wasn't pretty nuts.

We were quiet awhile, and then he said, “When they get divorced, though, you'll get twice as many Christmas presents.”

I asked, “How do you figure?”

Travis said, “In our church, this girl, Ashley Anderson, her parents are divorced and she said she gets twice as many presents for Christmas and her birthday because her mom and dad feel so guilty or something.”

I thought about it a second and said, “Cool.” Then I thought more about what I'd said about Mom or Dad dying. “It's not like I wish my parents were dead.”

Travis said, “No, yeah, I know what you mean.”

I said, “I'm just saying that if one of them died, it'd be easier than a divorce. I hate it.”

I started to get some tears in my eyes then, so I looked away from Travis so he wouldn't see.

He said, “You can borrow my parents any time you want. You can pretend they're your parents too, if you wanna.”

I asked, “Really?” even though it seemed like a pretty goofy idea.

Travis said, “Sure, I don't care. I've already got one brother anyway—why not have another one?”

We both laughed then. And that was the first time I'd laughed since I'd heard that my own family was blowing apart.

The very next Saturday, Travis and I went together to try out for the first organized baseball I ever played; actually it was T-ball. I was great at it. Trav wasn't. My first time at bat I smacked the ball off the tee and watched the kids in the outfield chase it as I legged it out a triple. From that moment on I was in love with baseball and I've never looked back.

So Travis and his mom and dad have actually been in my life as long as baseball has. Somehow, Roy and Rita kicking Travis out of their house changed everything—I just couldn't get my brain wrapped around it. I couldn't imagine what Travis could have done for such an impossible-seeming thing to have happened—until yesterday, when he handed me a copy of an article that appeared today in our high school newspaper.

A senior in our school is gay. He doesn't want to have sex with every good-looking guy he sees, and he doesn't think of himself as weird, though he knows some of us will think he is. Since “coming out,” telling his family he's gay, he's been kicked out of his parents'home. (They don't want him to “influence” his younger brother.)

He's a kid a lot of us know. He doesn't want his name used in this article because he doesn't want to embarrass his family or his friends, but he does want us to know that he's here at our school. He says that even though coming out to his family has been the hardest thing he's ever done, he doesn't want, or need, our pity. He is not ashamed of who he is. He's gay and he knows other kids who are gay too, though he says he would never “out” anyone else. But he's starting the process for himself; he's coming out.

The reason this student has talked to me is best summed up in this statement from him.

“If I were black and walked into a room, I'd like to think that people would stop telling a racist joke or speaking racial slurs while I was there, but also after I'd walked out. Being gay, I never know what I'll hear when I walk into a room. I can't control what people say after I leave, or even when I'm there, but I can't and won't keep pretending that gay jokes are funny or that homophobia is any more okay than racism.”

Our classmate hopes that this article helps increase our sensitivity to his and other gay students' needs. If it doesn't, and where and when it doesn't, he's going to start standing up for himself. He doesn't say this like it's a threat or a warning; rather, he'd like us to treat it as a simple declaration of his right to be treated with the same dignity and respect that every other student here expects and deserves.

It's funny: Not in a billion years would I have guessed the story was about Travis except that he handed it to me himself. In fact, I said, “No way,” the second I finished reading.

Here was my best friend for the past eleven years, now living at my house, sharing my food, sleeping in my room, and it just so happens that he's
gay
and I never knew! I stared down at Margo's article for several moments after I'd finished reading. I was afraid to look up at Travis. I knew that when I did look up, I would have to see him differently than I'd ever seen him before, and I wasn't sure I'd still like what I saw.

I asked, “Are you saying your folks threw you out 'cause you're queer?”

Travis said, “Gay.... Yeah, they said they didn't want me around my little brother anymore—like he might catch it or something.”

“Wow,” I said, unable to think of anything else at that moment.

“Yeah,” Travis said.

All right, here's the thing: I know that in lots of places, like big cities, the whole gay thing is not that big of a deal. Even here in Spokane the local community college has a club for gays and lesbians and there's a Gay Pride parade every year—but at Thompson High School, at
any
high school in Spokane, for a lot of kids there's still a stigma attached to the whole homosexual thing. I'm just being honest; the word “gay” is even a synonym for “bad,” as in “This party is so gay, let's get out of here …” or “This pizza tastes gay!” There are “out” gay kids in our school, but they are often kind of ignored, and the best they can do socially, whether anybody wants to admit it or not, is to be left alone. Until this thing with Travis, I never really thought much about what you might call “the gay issue.” But then Travis handed me the article.

Truthfully, I felt like screaming at him! I don't need my teammates finding out about Travis being gay and then looking at me, wondering if I'm queer too. Most of them know that he's been my best friend forever and that for the last couple of weeks he's been my
housemate.
Never mind how totally mind-blowing it is to think I know people as well as I thought I knew Trav and his parents, only to find out something like this.

“Gay, huh?” I asked him, unsure of what to even say. “Why didn't you ever tell me before? Why'd you bring this up now, of all times?”

“Margo and I were talking,” Travis said. “It just kind of came up, and I didn't feel like lying anymore.... Sorry if the timing isn't perfect for you.”

He sounded pretty sarcastic with the thing about timing, so I said, “Kind of came up?” not even trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

Travis looked at me and said, “I'm not trying to hurt you or your dad or anybody. She was asking about my being out of my parents' house, wanting to write a story for the paper about kids who get kicked out. She asked me what was going on, and I just told her the truth.”

I couldn't think of how to ask the next question, but Travis seemed to read my mind. “She's not gonna tell anybody that I'm the guy in the article. She gave her word.”

With lots of kids that wouldn't mean squat, but with Margo Fancher Travis's secret is safe. When Margo was only a freshman, she got written up in Spokane's real newspaper,
The Spokane Herald
, for refusing to “divulge her sources” for a school newspaper article she wrote about kids who were stealing cars. It almost went to court, but the cops dropped it when they caught the car thieves and when they realized how serious Margo was about respecting the “confidentiality of the press.” Travis is safe from Margo. But what about all the kids who'll try to find out in other ways? And what about me?

“I don't get it, Travis. How could you tell her before you even told me?”

Travis stared into my eyes and answered, “Are you kidding me? Tell you? Yeah, right.”

I felt my ears start to burn. “What's that supposed to mean?”

Travis said, “Look how you're reacting.”

I heard my voice go up. “I'm reacting fine—what's your problem? I mean, it's cool, you telling her. You did what you had to do, right?” I hoped my words sounded genuine enough, but my heart was definitely not behind them. Really, I wished the whole thing would just disappear.

Although I tried not to let Travis see, I started to feel more and more freaked out. “I can't believe you're gay,” I said, looking up at him for about half a second before I looked away. He didn't seem any different, but something was changing between us; at least for me it was. “Are you sure you are?” I asked, staring at the floor and feeling kind of stupid.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “Course I'm sure. You think I'd tell you if it was a ‘maybe'?”

“I don't know,” I said. I felt embarrassed and not in control. “I just …” I couldn't think of what I wanted to say or ask. “You can't be gay—it just doesn't fit,” I finally mumbled.

Travis said, “I've never tried that hard to hide it, Scott; it doesn't fit for you because you've never looked at me that way, never looked beyond your own life, which mostly revolves around
Baseball Tonight.
It doesn't fit because you're oblivious.”

“That's not true,” I said, thinking how completely true it really was; if something is not about baseball, I'm usually not that interested. Still, the whole gay thing, to use a baseball cliché, was definitely coming at me from out of left field.

“Well,” Travis said, “whatever. But think about it: Don't you find it a little bit weird that I've never had a date with a girl in my whole life, that I've never talked about getting laid, that I've always changed the subject every time we even got close to talking about sex?”

I said, “I guess, yeah, but I thought you were just … I don't know … shy or something.”

Travis said, “Do I seem shy at any other times?”

I answered, “I don't know.... No, I guess not.”

“I'm not shy, Scott; I'm gay,” Travis said.

I asked, “How long have you known this about yourself?”

Travis said, “Since I was, like, six or seven maybe.”

“That's ridiculous,” I said. “We never even thought about sex back then.” Even as I spoke, I knew I was lying. The truth is that when it comes to sex, I've
always
thought about it. I fantasized about girls as early as second grade. So was Travis fantasizing about guys back then—about
me
, even when we were that little? Does he fantasize about
me
now?

“I can't speak for straight people,” Travis said softly, “but I've always known I was different. It's just the way I am. I tried to pretend it wasn't true, but for as long as I've thought about sex, I've known it.”

I thought, So much for truth and honesty between best friends. But I'll admit it: If I had that kind of secret, I'd probably struggle with talking about it too; in fact I'm not sure I'd ever tell anybody!

“Why?” I asked. “I mean, do you know why you're gay?”

“No,” Travis said. “It's just the way it is, who I'm attracted to. I couldn't change it even if I wanted to, which I used to want.” He paused a moment, then looked at me and spoke clearly. “But not anymore.”

We just sat there.

I didn't know what to say to him, didn't know what he wanted or needed from me.

Travis didn't say anything either.

And that was the moment I suddenly remembered the blood all over my hands that day at the batting cages. I tried not to let Travis see my panic, but I'm sure I turned white. I felt a sudden rush of fear,
real
fear, unlike anything I've ever felt before. It was terrible, like getting the wind knocked out of you and almost passing out: My chest ached, my hands quivered.

“What's the matter?” Travis asked. “You look sick.”

“I'm fine,” I answered, trying to catch my breath.