The Battle for Jericho (9 page)

“No!” The librarian shot me the evil eye. I pulled back, hiding behind Mac. Lowering my voice, I said, “No, man, me and Hutch are cool. I just have a lot of things on my mind….”

“Like what?”

“Uh… just stuff, man. It’s nothing.”

“Yeah, okay.” Mac scowled, angry with me. “You act like you’re losing your freaking mind sometimes. But you don’t wanna talk, hey, that’s fine with me.” He turned his attention to the notes he’d taken in his French class.

I went back to my book, but I couldn’t concentrate now and just stared at the page, the words blurring. Mac’s anger stood like a wall between us. He was just trying to be a friend to me, and I hated myself for making him feel shut out. That made what I had to do next even harder. “Uh… about this afternoon, man. After school, we… Hutch and I—”

“I’m not riding with Hutch today. Gina Marie’s got a rehearsal with the Glee Club after school, and I’m gonna hang around for that. I wanna try and hook up with her.”

“Okay, cool. Good luck with that.”

H
UTCH
and I had come to some kind of agreement that day. We must have done it telepathically, because we sure didn’t talk it over. Things were different between us now that we knew we were both members of the same club, and I had a nervous feeling that the difference would be obvious somehow to everybody else who saw us. The way I felt about Hutch had changed. Knowing that his parents had beaten him for going gay, knowing that they were only a heartbeat away from throwing him to the wolves, I got this little ache in my heart every time I looked at him now. I wanted to stand by him, be there for him, the way I supported Lissandra when things got crazy in her life. I wanted to hold his hand.

But I couldn’t let anybody at school catch me looking at him that way. That wouldn’t be good for either of us. So I kind of ignored him at school, and he did the same to me. The idea was to keep anyone from suspecting there was anything unusual going on between us. Ironically enough, as my conversation with Mac in the library demonstrated, Hutch and I wound up drawing the very kind of attention to ourselves we were trying to avoid.

After the final bell rang, I said my see-ya-laters to the friends in my economics class and went down to meet Hutch in the student parking lot beside the school. He was already there, waiting for me. I made it a point to smile and loudly greet him with, “What’s up, dude!” the way I always did with my friends.

There was just a flicker of nervousness in Hutch—he sneaked a sideways glance to either side, perhaps checking to see if we were getting any suspicious looks—before he returned the smile. “Hey, Jerry. Let’s roll.”

Hutch and I climbed into his mom’s canary yellow Acura sports coupe (in my family, it was my dad who had the midlife crisis and splurged on an expensive shiny sports car), and he picked up Highway 22, heading west toward Nashville. We didn’t look at each other, and we didn’t talk.

He was like that in school—quiet, laid-back. Very friendly once you got to know him, and he would definitely stand by you when you needed it. But he wasn’t the kind to draw a lot of attention to himself. He was one of those people you’d see hanging around in the background, like an extra in a movie scene who’s there to dress up the action without being a part of it. I played soccer with him and some of the other guys at the park, and Hutch was good enough at it that he could have made the team at school, but he wasn’t on any sports team, nor did he come to any of the games. Until now, his only passion had seemed to be video games, which he lived and breathed pretty much twenty-four hours a day. Sneaking glances at him as he drove, I wondered what else there was to him, what other secrets he might be hiding.

I don’t know about Hutch, but I was as nervous as I’d been heading out for my first date with Lissandra. The current apprehension was different, and worse. Back then I’d been afraid of doing something to embarrass myself or offend Lissandra. Now I had no idea where Hutch was taking me or what would happen when we got there. Add in the certainty that whatever happened between us would leave me up to my eyeballs in shame, and you get a level of anguish that makes a person rend his garments as he hurls himself screaming off the nearest cliff.

I, however, didn’t rend or scream or hurl, although I do believe I threw up ever so slightly into my mouth when Hutch accidentally grazed my knee while changing radio stations.
Relax, Jericho, be cool
. I sat in my leather bucket seat, as prim as the old ladies on the Mothers Board at my church, backpack on my lap, arms folded across my chest like armor, hands tucked firmly in my armpits, staring straight ahead as I went to my heterosexual doom. Storm clouds should have been brooding over us, the wind howling like a lost wolf. The afternoon was a bit cooler than yesterday, but the sky was bright blue and sunny. Damn it, even the weather was mocking me.

Maybe you shouldn’t be doing this. Maybe you’re not ready.
The thoughts kept swirling in my head. I have to confess here that I had checked out Hutch’s body a few times when he was naked in the locker room after gym class. Just to see how I stacked up against him. You know? Body-wise, I’m just not in his league. As I pointed out before, he has a nice build, not as ripped as Mac’s, but nice. And his butt’s nice too. It’s paler than the rest of his body, sort of round but not the kind of round you see in a girl’s butt, and you can see the muscles flex in it when he walks….

Jesus. This can’t be happening. Tell me I am
not
sitting here thinking about another guy’s booty.
I freaked a little at that, but it wasn’t the first time I’d thought about Hutch’s naked body. Damn it, I’d even scoped out the bare bodies of some of the other guys in our gym class, just taking mental notes to see how I measured up, of course. I would have to stop doing that. Images of the naked boys I’d seen in the locker room flitted through my head now like a slideshow. Clearly, I was already getting in too deep. It was one thing to join the gay team and maybe fool around a little bit with a guy here and there. It was another thing altogether to dive so far down in the homosexual ocean that you never come up again.

“Hey,” Hutch said. “You okay over there? You’re thinking so hard, it’s giving me a headache.”

“I’m cool, man.” My body had been twisted around itself so long that the circulation had been cut off to my extremities. My fingers and toes were all tingly dead from the lack of blood. I uncoiled slowly and stretched out my limbs, shaking my hands to get the juices flowing again. “Where in God’s name are we going, by the way?”

“We’re almost there,” he replied.

“You know, I’m kind of surprised your mom is letting your drive her car just for getting an A in some subject. From what you told me yesterday, it doesn’t sound as if your folks like you very much.”

Hutch looked bitter. “They don’t. But this is their way of giving me another reason to stay on the straight and narrow. I’ve been very careful, and as far as they know, I’ve been doing, and not doing, everything they wanted. They’ll never buy me a car of my own, and I can’t save up money to buy one myself. They won’t let me get a part-time job because they think there’ll be too much temptation out there for me to resist. So believe me, them giving me car privileges is worth toeing their line.”

“I feel so bad for you, man.”

“Yeah, thanks,” he said, keeping his eyes on the road.

About ten miles outside of Webster’s Glen, we crossed the border of Benton, our sister town. Benton was a bigger municipality, large enough that it had its own police force and didn’t have to rely on the county sheriff for law and order the way Webster’s Glen did. At the border of Benton, Highway 22 officially became Poplar Avenue. Six blocks past the border, Hutch wheeled the car into the parking lot of Poplar Court, an upscale outdoor mall that my Dad swore charged people for window shopping. “This is it,” Hutch said, parking in front of a small shop with a red and black “Madison’s Deli” sign over the door. “Come on.”

A deli? Our first date was going to be at a deli? Where anybody could see us? True, we weren’t in Webster’s Glen, but plenty of people from there came here to shop. There was a pretty good chance that someone we knew would see us. After what I’d put Dylan through, I sure as hell didn’t want to risk stirring up any trouble between Hutch and his parents. I started to protest, but Hutch was already out of the car and striding for the deli’s entrance. Pitching my backpack into the rear seat, I climbed out and went after him.

The interior of the place was pretty fancy for a sandwich shop. The walls were painted an elegant pale blue, all done up with beautifully framed landscapes. The tables were covered with white linen cloths. The customers scattered across the dining area were talking quietly among themselves as they ate. Hutch breezed his way through the room and past the glass counter at the rear, where a small, slender young woman with short red hair stood dressed in black slacks and a white blouse.

“Hey, Jen,” Hutch greeted her as he passed, giving the woman a casual wave and a big smile. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder at me. “We’re reporting for duty.” That must have been some type of code Hutch used with this lady. I got the impression it was his way of letting her know he was coming to do the unspeakable with another guy.

“Good for you,” Jen replied. “Grab a broom while you’re back there. I haven’t had a chance to do the sweeping.” Then she looked at me and smiled warmly. “Welcome.”

I managed a smile in response as I followed Hutch down a long, narrow hall. A kitchen loomed ahead, but just before we reached it, Hutch stopped at a door labeled “Janitor.” He pushed the door open and led me inside.

The space was tiny, maybe six by six. The walls were lined with the usual janitorial aids—mops, brooms, shelves of bottled floor cleaners, powdered bathroom sanitizers, and other cleaning supplies. Hutch locked the door, and then he turned slowly to face me.

“Jen’s a sponsor with the MLGBT Society,” he said quietly. “She owns the shop, which she named after her daughter, and she sometimes shuts it down and lets us gay kids throw the monthly party here. She also lets me sneak in guys I’m interested in for some private time. It keeps me from getting caught again.”

“Yeah, okay,” I mumbled for lack of anything else to say. I brought my arms up and wrapped them around my chest again, as if to protect myself. Suddenly, I was very interested in the brand of industrial-strength dishwashing liquid Jen used.

“Jerry. Relax.” Hutch gave me a smile that almost masked the slight tremble in his lower lip. A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead.

Jealousy came back to say hello to me. Why in hell was I feeling jealous? “So, just how many guys have you brought in here?”

“You’re number three.”

Now I started to feel a little angry. “You get busy with those other two dudes?” My emotions were all over the map, it seemed. Anxiety peaked in me suddenly as a new thought crossed my mind. “Hey, man, I don’t think I’m ready to do anything like… going all the way….” I hadn’t gone all the way with Lissandra yet. We’d come close, lots of times, but we’d never crossed that final line. I think she was willing to take the plunge, but I’d always pulled back. It had to do with the stuff my mom and dad and the preacher at our church always pounded into my head: Save sex for marriage. Abstinence makes the heart grow fonder. (Go ahead and groan at the last one if you want. God knows I did the first time Dad tossed that line at me.) Also, Lissandra had told me that her dad said he would shoot the ass off any guy who knocked her up without benefit of matrimony. She said he was joking, but Mr. Ackerman owned five guns, and you have to take a guy who owns five guns very seriously. Boil all of that stuff down, and what you get is that I just wasn’t ready to have sex yet, straight or gay.

Hutch gave me a frustrated smile. “Jerry, would you relax already? I didn’t bring you here to have sex. Sit down.” He gestured toward a big plastic drum of floor cleaner as he seated himself on a wooden crate in the corner.

“Well, what are we doing here?” I asked as I sat down.

“I want to see if there’s any chemistry between us, man. Just because two guys are gay doesn’t mean they’ll automatically make a connection. I haven’t been turned on by you since that crush I had went away, and there’s no point in us dating if there’s no spark.”

Well, damn it. That hurt. It felt as if he was already rejecting me.

“But first,” he went on, “I want to talk about Lissandra.”

“What about her?” I asked suspiciously.

“I don’t want to get caught up in the middle of anybody’s relationship. With the three of us at the same school, this could get ugly and very public, and I don’t need that. So before you and I do anything, I need to know what you’re gonna do about your girlfriend.”

I couldn’t deny that I was still very attracted to girls, and to Lissandra in particular. I had called her this morning just before I left for school, and even though that damn cold had her voice rumbling deeper than mine, the contact excited me. I missed her, and I really wanted to be with her again. But I had made a commitment, and I knew what I had to do. “I’m breaking up with her.”

“Do you mean that? Are you sure? I’ve seen the way you look at Lissandra in school. I’ve seen the way you two go at each other between classes. You’re crazy about her, and she feels the same way about you. Everybody can see that. I don’t think you’re really gay—”

“Yes, I am,” I snapped anxiously.

“I think you swing both ways, man. And I think you’re really new to this. And I think you might not really know what you want right now.”

“Damn it, Hutch. Stop telling me what’s in my head. I know what I’m doing. I’m gay all the way.” That was my goal, anyhow. The way Hutch was talking was going to make it that much harder for me to get there.

“Okay,” Hutch replied quietly. “Prove it.”

A dumb look plastered itself over my face. “Huh?”

Smiling, he opened his arms, presenting himself to me. “I’ll let you make the first move, man. Just do what you feel comfortable doing. Whenever you’re ready.”