7 Days at the Hot Corner (6 page)

I nod my head numbly. “Sure, Rita,” I say, trying not to show how sick I feel. I just want to get out of here. My chest hurts and my palms are wet.

I make it out the door. I jump down off the porch onto a little path leading toward the driveway. This path is a line of heart-shaped cement bricks, set down low in the grass. In all the times I've been to this house, I've never paid any attention to these stupid little heart-shaped stepping-stones before. But I notice them now; cement hearts: Yeah, that's about right.

You live in fantasyland … where my parents are perfect and yours are not because they got divorced.

“Up yours, Travis,” I whisper to myself, but I realize that I don't really mean it anymore.

After talking to Rita, I feel terrible, even worse than before. Thank god I've got a game in an hour. Thank god for baseball.

Baseball offense, final thoughts: You step up to the plate and tap the dirt out of your cleats. If you're successful one time out of every three, you'll end up in the Hall of Fame, so even if you're really good, your chances of failing are pretty high. A good hitter has to stay calm and centered, keep his weight balanced and his emotions under control, and if he does all that and does everything else just right, he'll still probably not get a hit. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? Why even play?

Keeping your head in the game: Whether on defense or offense, you have to keep your head in the game, and to me this means that you have to know what's going on in every situation and how things change with everything that happens. This means that a man on second with two outs is a whole different concern than a man on first with one out. Keeping your head in the game just means knowing what is going on!

What
is
going on?

Well, first off, we won again yesterday. It was great. In baseball the worst teams
win
a third of their games and the best teams
lose
a third of theirs—so how can our team win
16 games in a row
, like we've done this season? Such things are extremely rare, almost impossible; believe me, I've subscribed to
Baseball Weekly
since I was nine years old, and there are winning streaks, but an undefeated season like we're having is unheard of. Okay, for a little perspective: The most wins in a row in Spokane high school baseball history, before our team this year, was 13, back in 1954!
1954!
Wasn't Teddy Roosevelt president then or something? And get this, that 1954 team was from Gonzaga Prep, and they didn't even go undefeated that season—they lost in the semifinals of the city play-offs.

So the answer to the question “What is going on?” is that
we are—
Thompson's baseball team!!

Still, I have to admit it, the rest of life at school is happening too. But it's been three days since the “Coming Out” article hit the newsstands at Thompson H.S. Three days since my HIV test. So far as I can tell, nobody has ID'd Travis, nor has he gone any more public. Truthfully, the excitement caused by the article has quieted down a little bit. Although the question of Who's the gay guy? is still a semi-hot topic in the cafeteria and hallways, mostly it's not angry, more like just curious.

Actually, more and more students have started to notice what we're doing in baseball—we got a big write-up in this morning's
Spokane Herald.
The article even mentioned me and two other seniors by name. It was pretty cool. We're getting a little bit famous. Of course, that also means more pressure.

It's just before our game today. I've been hoping that the whole gay thing has maybe died away completely, but as we're changing, getting suited up, Willie Brown, our second baseman, and Tom Archer, our left fielder, joke about the article.

“It's not one of you guys, is it?” Matt Tompkins asks, gruff and serious.

“Not me,” Tom says, laughing, “but I think Willie might be yer man.”

“That true?” Matt asks, turning toward Willie and squaring up.

“No way!”
Willie says. He's a full head shorter and probably twenty-five or thirty pounds lighter than Matt. “I'm no fag!”

“Hey.” Josh Williams's voice comes from the other side of the bank of lockers. He steps around and stands looking at all of us. “
Fag
is derogatory slang,” he says. “It's offensive.”

“Sorry,” Willie says.

Josh plays center field on our team and is also team captain. He's a senior and a three-year letterman in football, basketball, and baseball, a pretty fantastic athlete. He's also an excellent student. Josh is popular in the sense of being widely known in our school. How many really close friends he has I don't know. I never see him out much. Travis and I always call him Josh Flanders behind his back, after the Flanders family on
The Simpsons.
Led by the dad, Ned, they're the perfect “All-American” family, the opposite of the Simpsons. For the Flanders family, who are always happy and successful, “darn” is a swear word. That's Josh Williams—scary, squeaky clean. If it's possible to be
too
good … Josh is that. I often feel a little less than fresh when Josh is around, and when it comes to moral certainty and self-assurance, nobody is about to step up against Captain Josh.

I feel a tiny rush of appreciation for Josh's speaking out against antigay stuff until he speaks again.

“The fact is,” Josh adds, his voice cool and certain, “homosexuality is a sin against God and nature. We should feel pity for gays and try to help them get better whenever we can. I feel sorry for that kid in the article, whoever he is.”

Everybody is quiet. I want to say something, but what words would I use? If I speak up, what will everyone think of me? I know I don't agree with him. If my dad were here, he'd make Josh look and sound like an idiot. But I'm not my dad.

Before I have a chance to say anything, Matt speaks up again. He says to Josh, “Whatever you say. But don't let me catch any of you guys playing fag …” He interrupts himself and grudgingly corrects, “Playing gay crap with each other around here. Whatever anybody does in private is their own business, but keep it private or you'll have to deal with me.”

He sounds mad—not too surprising, since he's
always
sounded at least a little bit mad the few times he's ever said anything. The thought of Matt discovering that Travis is the “secret gay” from the “Coming Out” article is scary to me—even though Matt says that if the gay kid keeps it to himself he'll be all right, I don't trust that for a minute. Somebody like Matt could hurt Travis pretty badly if he wanted to.

My comfort level isn't exactly increased by the feeling I have that once again, just like in World History yesterday, Matt seems to be addressing himself more to me than to the others. It's almost as if he keeps trying to look at the other guys, especially Josh, but he can't stop from looking right at me. What? Does he think
I'm
the guy in the article? I try not to blink or break eye contact with him, but I can't hold on; I look away. Am I just being paranoid?

My ears are still burning, my head is reeling; as I lace up my spikes and run out onto the field, I wonder if I'm going nuts.

I play one of the worst games of my life, striking out
four
times on mediocre breaking balls. In baseball this is called getting the “golden sombrero,” and it's a bad thing, a
real
bad thing for a guy who fantasizes about someday being good enough to actually make the pros. Unlike pro football and pro basketball, where high school guys usually go to play their sports in college first, most good baseball players start their careers right after high school—that's why baseball players are called “the boys of summer.”

Right now, though, I'm playing more like “the boy in the toilet”! In our first three games of the tournament my batting average is .233 (3 for 13), more than a hundred points below my regular season average and about one measly base hit above the Mendosa line, a numerical zone below which baseball players disappear like dinosaurs in a tar pit. I'm not able to hit anything that doesn't come straight over the plate, fast. Pitchers are not stupid. They just keep throwing me off-speed junk, curves and sliders and changeups. When I do get a fastball, I'm so completely screwed up that I might as well be swinging one of those little twelve-inch toy bats they sell as kiddie souvenirs.

I know that the stuff going on in my life outside of baseball is having an effect on my play. At least, that's the excuse I'm making for myself, but it's gotta be partly true. For instance, Travis and my dad sat up in the bleachers yesterday and again today, watching me play. They looked ridiculous—a real Hallmark-Kodak moment. I kind of hated them for it—nice, huh, being mad at Dad and Trav for being there to support me?

I'm not as good a person as my dad is. Lots of kids I know talk like they hate their parents, but to be honest, my dad is pretty cool. He and my mom have always shared custody of me, although I spend more time with him, Monday through Thursday. This is partly because he lives in town, where school and all my friends are, and partly, to be honest, 'cause he's less strict than Mom.

But seeing Travis sitting there with Dad in the stands today reminded me of what Matt was saying about the secret gay kid. The thing about Matt that's always bugged me is that, though he's usually quiet, when he does say something, it never feels quite right to me, never feels like he's saying what he really means; I can't explain it better than that, but I don't trust Matt.

In the locker room I grab all my gear as quick as I can. I want to get home and warn Travis about what Matt was saying before the game today.

I pull into the driveway and go into the house. I go up to my room, where Travis is sitting at my desk studying.

“Travis,” I say.

“Yeah?” he says, sounding a little pissy but turning toward me.

I ask, “Aren't you worried about kids putting the whole ‘unknown gay' thing together with you being kicked out of your parents'?” I know I sound like a jerk, but I don't have the patience for politeness.

“I don't really care,” Travis says. “You're the one who's worried about that.”

“Well, yeah, maybe I don't care and for selfish reasons.” Then I say, “Sorry,” a little bit sarcastically—hey, it's not just
me
who's been avoiding
him.

“Come off it,” Travis snaps, staring straight into my eyes. “You haven't talked to me for how many days now? Is this your idea of being a friend?”

I look right back and say, “Hey, pal, that's a two-way street. You said some pretty mean stuff to me, you know. I'm sorry I've been kind of a jerk, I feel bad, but I've—”

But Travis cuts me off. “Yeah,” he says. “That's a little problem you have, isn't it?
I … I … I
.” Then he turns his back.

Now I'm totally steamed again. “
Me?
What about
you
? Don't you think you're being selfish? This gay thing affects all of us—your friends, your family; I even went and talked to your mom about it.”

Travis turns back to me; his expression looks horrible, like I just kicked him in the 'nads. “You did what?”

Suddenly I feel really uncomfortable, ashamed or guilty or both. “That wasn't okay to do? I mean … I wasn't trying to … I just—”

Travis interrupts, tears in his eyes. “What did she say?”

I look away from him. I feel sad, and
really
bad for him. “She said to say hi,” I answer, like an idiot. I glance up real quick to check what Travis looks like; his eyes are even wetter … I feel
terrible.

I say, “She said to tell you she loves you.”

Actually, Rita never said this—but I say it to Travis anyway because it's what she
should
have said. I may be mad at him, but I can't help but feel awful that he's so miserable.

Travis looks away and tries to nonchalantly wipe his eyes. He says, “Oh, yeah?”

I say, “Yeah, for sure.”

Travis takes a couple of slow, deep breaths and then stares back down at his book and says, “I gotta do this trig.”

I say, “Okay,” glad to have an excuse to get out of here. “I'm sorry about talking to your mom.”

Travis doesn't say anything, just pretends that he's studying again.

I quietly leave the room, realizing that I never even told him about Matt Tompkins—but that will have to wait; I'm not going back in there right now.

I go downstairs and walk into the kitchen. Dad has gotten home, and when he sees me he asks, “You doing okay?”

I say, “Not really,” and then, speaking softly, I add, “I wish Travis would move out.”

“Why?” Dad asks.

I tell Dad why Travis has been living with us for the past couple of weeks. Dad listens and nods and says, “Yeah, both Travis and his dad talked to me about this already.”

“Well?” I ask.

“Well what?” Dad asks.

“Don't you think it's kind of weird, all this stuff?”

“I don't know, Scotty,” Dad says. “Not really. It's just life.”

“Dad!”

“Scott,” he says quietly, “Travis is your friend and I don't care what his sexual preference is—that's his business, not yours or mine or anyone else's. Besides, it's not really about ‘preference' anyway—nobody chooses who they're attracted to, so ‘preference' isn't the right word—it's just about who Travis is.”

I say, “Roy and Rita obviously don't feel that way about it.”

Dad says softly, “I know.” Then he looks away from me and says even softer, “And that's a shame.”

I swear this whole gay thing doesn't amount to a pimple on the butt of the universe to my dad.

We're quiet for a few seconds, then finally I admit, “I'm tired of this gay stuff, I guess. Every time I turn around, I'm scared that somebody will think I'm queer too. I'm sick of it.”