Geography Club (13 page)

First thing at school the next morning, I ran into Jarred once again. I braced myself for another verbal blow.

Instead, he said, “Yo, man. Sorry about yesterday.”

“What?” I said.

“’Bout calling you a fag and everything. I didn’t believe it, but everyone was sayin’ it, so I decided it must be true.”

I was still sleeping, right? This was a dream. In a minute, Jarred would turn into a giant raspberry Popsicle.

“What made you decide it wasn’t true?” I made myself ask.

“Cause I saw the application. It’s Brian. He’s the one starting this whole fag club and shit. He’s the one Toles was talking about. That’s what I always thought anyway.”

I considered asking Jarred some more questions, but then I decided I’d better shut up before I accidentally told him something I didn’t want him to know.

I left Jarred and found Belinda in the hallway. “What’s going on?” I asked.

“Oh!” she said, excited. “I’ve been looking for you! Last night, Brian came into the office to submit an application for a club. The Goodkind High School Gay-Straight Alliance! He’s the only member. I tried to talk him out of it—he didn’t even have a faculty advisor! What was the point of submitting an application for a club that was just going to be rejected anyway? But he was determined to do it, and he made me promise I’d turn it in. Finally, I did, and a couple other kids in the office took it, and now, well, everyone knows.”

“So now everyone thinks Brian’s The Gay Kid and not me?” I said, and Belinda nodded.

I finally found Brian sitting at a carrel hidden in the back of the library.

“Why?” I said.

He wouldn’t look me in the eye, just kept staring at his book. “There’s already one Brian Bund,” he said simply. “There d-d-doesn’t need to be one more.”

So he’d submitted that application to clear my name, just like I’d thought. He’d probably even backdated it a day, to make it look more like the rumor was true and that he was The Gay Kid, not me. He was sacrificing himself in my place (just like You-Know-Who on the crucifix, or so some people think). How the hell did you repay someone for something like that?

“Thanks,” I said, and boy, did I mean it. “People at this school have no idea what they’re missing by not knowing you.”

He nodded once and turned the page in his book.

I could hardly believe it. Maybe my story was going to have a happy ending after all!

That afternoon at lunch, Kevin met me just as I was leaving the buffet line. I had my lunch tray in my hands.

“Hey,” he said. He wouldn’t look me in the eye either.

“Hey,” I said.

“Russel, I’m sorry. I’m
really
sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

He looked up at me, trying to gauge whether or not I was telling the truth. “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. I knew I couldn’t judge Kevin—not after the way I’d been acting the last few weeks. But it hurt to know that if I’d still been The Gay Kid—if Brian Bund hadn’t agreed to take the fall for me—Kevin and I wouldn’t be having this little reunion.

I looked around the lunchroom for a table. Min and Gunnar hadn’t showed up yet.

“Sit with us,” Kevin said.

“The jocks?” I said.

“Yeah. Everything’s okay now.”

“But yesterday I ate lunch with Brian. The Gay Kid. Don’t people think that’s strange?”

“I told everyone that was only because he was the only one who’d let you sit down. Because of what everyone else thought about you.”

“Oh,” I said. So Kevin had been in the lunchroom with me yesterday. He’d just been avoiding me. That figured.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s sit.”

I started to follow him to the Jocks table, but halfway there, I happened to glance across the room to Brian Bund, sitting by himself once again.

Suddenly, I knew how I could repay Brian for what he had done for me. How I
had
to repay him. Of course, I wanted to follow Kevin to the Jocks table. But I was being given a chance to redeem myself or whatever. On the subject of Brian Bund, I had three strikes, but I wasn’t out yet. Incredibly, I was being given a fourth time at bat.

“Kevin,” I said.

He stopped and turned to look at me.

“Go on ahead,” I said. “I’m going to sit somewhere else.”

“Huh?” He was confused.

“It’s just that yesterday I made friends with Brian Bund.”

“Yeah? Great.”

“So he’s a good guy.”

Kevin still looked like he had no idea where I was going with this. “So?”

“So I’m going to
stay
friends with Brian Bund.”

Kevin followed my gaze over to Brian’s table. I could see the wheels in Kevin’s head clicking into place as he realized what I was planning on doing.

He quickly stepped up alongside me. “Russel!” he whispered. “You really think that’s a good idea?”

“Yeah. I think it’s a great idea.”

Kevin was still whispering. “But Russel…!” He didn’t finish the sentence, but I knew what he was telling me. If I went through with this—if I actually sat down at Brian’s table again—there’d be no turning back. This time, there were things I’d be giving up forever. My visa to the Land of the Popular, for one thing, and probably even my return ticket to the Borderlands of Respectability. But what Kevin didn’t understand was that by sitting with Brian I was gaining something too, something I couldn’t quite name, but that was more important than any of those things.

I just nodded at Kevin and said, “Go on ahead. I’ll be okay.”

Kevin didn’t go on ahead. He watched me as I turned toward Brian’s table and started working my way across the cafeteria. I knew that everyone else in that cafeteria was watching me too. The closer I got to Brian’s table, the softer the rumble of voices became. By the time I reached him, there wasn’t anyone talking at all. I knew what they were thinking, and it wasn’t what they’d been thinking those days after I hit my first home run. But what did they know, right?

“Hey,” I said to Brian. “Mind if I join you again?”

Brian looked up at me. This time, he did look surprised. But that didn’t stop me from taking a seat.

So you probably want to know if I ever saw Kevin again. That’s what I wanted to know—if I ever
would
see him again, except passing me by in the hallways at school. But as a matter of fact, I did see him, the very night after My Big Moment in the cafeteria. He IMed me and told me to meet him at the stinky picnic gazebo. This being the epilogue, where everything is supposed to be all tied up nice and neat, I’d like to be able to say I didn’t care what he had to say. But the truth was, I was dying to know what he had to say and, even now, I was desperately hoping he wanted to get back together with me, no matter what the terms.

He was already waiting there when I arrived, a dark figure pacing back and forth with his hands in his pockets. When he saw me, he crossed the grass to where I was standing. We stood there awkwardly facing each other for a second. He’d been drinking, and I could smell the beer on his breath and clothing.

“Why?” he said. This was definitely the question of the day.

But I had a good answer for him. I explained to him about the application and how Brian had purposely turned it in with his name on it so people would think that he was the subject of the rumor, not me.

We just looked at each other. I knew what I wanted him to say. The question was, was he going to say it?

“You’re a good guy,” he said at last.

But
, I thought.

He spun away from me. “Russel, I’m not that strong! The pressure—it’s just too much! I
like
being popular!”

“I liked it too,” I whispered. “I liked it a lot.”

Suddenly, Kevin got an idea. “But we can still meet here, right? Everything can still be okay! I promise I won’t bug you at school, and I’ll make sure the other jocks don’t either, and we can still come here and talk and be together, right?”

Everything froze. This was exactly what I had wanted Kevin to say. So why wasn’t I glad? A part of me
did
want everything to be okay. That part of me thought, Yeah, we
could
meet here every night to talk (and more), just like Min and Terese had done in their darkened warehouse on Fracton, and we could carry on like nothing had ever happened. But at the same time, another part of me knew that everything wasn’t okay. We couldn’t carry on like nothing had ever happened, because something
had
happened. A lot had happened, and it had changed the way I looked at him.

“Kevin…,” I said.

He nodded, his eyes heavy. “Yeah. I know that won’t work. Russel, I’m sorry I let you down.”

“It’s okay,” I said, and it really was. I’d forgiven another friend. But sometimes just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you still love them. This Landscape of Love was a very bizarre place. (Incidentally, I hope you didn’t really think I was going to get back together with him. This
is
the epilogue, after all.)

He stepped forward and hugged me, and I felt his body, hard and lean and warm. In spite of everything, he still felt wonderful, like I was embracing a mountain. But I now knew that as solid as he seemed, he was no mountain.

He didn’t pull away. I decided that had to be my job. After all, I was the one who was ending it. (I was actually ending a relationship with
Kevin Land
?) I had to be the one who was strong.

When I did pull away, he started to shake and sob. But I kept pulling, and it felt like an amoeba separating—like half of my body was being torn away from me. But at the same time, it felt kind of good, like when you cut your fingernails too short, but you know they’ll eventually grow back, cleaner and stronger than before.

“Good-bye, Russel,” he said. It was weird to have the tears on his face for a change.

“Good-bye, Kevin,” I said. Then I turned and starting walking away.

I’d like to say I didn’t look back, but I did.

I think I always will.

As for me and everyone else, three weeks later, I was back in Kephart’s classroom after school. But it wasn’t for a meeting of the Geography Club.

“The Goodkind High School Gay-Straight Alliance,” I said, trying out the new name of the group gathered around me. “Well,
that
has a terrifying ring to it!”

“Gay-Straight-
Bisexual
Alliance,” Min corrected.

“Is everyone absolutely sure they want to go through with this?” I asked.

“Yup,” Belinda said.

“Positive,” Ike said.

“I’m in,” Gunnar said.

“Me too,” said Brian.

And Min just nodded and smiled at me reassuringly. “It’s a gay-
straight
alliance,” she said. “If anyone asks, we just say that a lot of our members are straight, which they are. We don’t have to say which ones.”

“Gay-straight-
bisexual
alliance,” I reminded her.

Min giggled. “Touché.”

Ever since I’d started sitting with Brian at lunch three weeks before, I’d been called my share of names, and I was definitely on the outs with the jocks (and Kevin). But incredibly, people still didn’t think of me as gay. Brian was The Gay Kid (even if he wasn’t really gay), and I was just being nice to him. I guess people couldn’t quite grasp the fact that at a school of eight hundred students, there might actually be more than one gay kid. I couldn’t complain; just a couple months before, I’d thought there could only be one gay kid (me!). Besides, now for the first time in my life, homophobic ignorance was working to my advantage.

But all that was about to change. None of the six of us gathered in Kephart’s classroom—Min, Gunnar, Belinda, Ike, Brian, and me—had any idea what would happen when the teachers and other students found out about the Goodkind High School Gay-Straight-Bisexual Alliance. Would we be banished to Outcast Island? Or would we maybe, just maybe, be allowed to stay in the Borderlands of Respectability? (Let’s face it: the Land of the Popular was no longer an option.)

I didn’t care. None of us did. Because wherever we ended up, we’d be there together. And I now knew that even the ugliest place in the world can be wonderful if you’re there with good friends—just like the most fabulous destination on earth is pretty boring when you’re all alone. And when it came to friends, you couldn’t ask for better ones than Min, Belinda, Brian, and yes, even Ike and Gunnar.

Now that we were going public, maybe we’d even be joined by the “real” Gay Kid—the kid Ms. Toles had been talking about in the newspaper article that had started all this in the first place. Maybe there were other kids at our school who would join us too.

“So what do we d-d-d-do now?” Brian said.

I explained that with the Geography Club, we had gone around in a circle, with everyone getting five minutes to say whatever they wanted.

“Who wants to go first?” Belinda said. “Russel?”

“Someone else go,” I said. For the first time in my life, for the time being at least, I’d already said everything I had to say.