The Boy I Love (20 page)

It surprised me that Allie would say this first. “It's okay,” I told her.

“It's not okay,” she said. “I've been a terrible friend. You've been going through so much, with the farm and everything, and I've just been pouting about nothing.”

“You've been going through a lot too,” I said. “I know this year hasn't gone exactly the way you pictured it.”

Now, all this might sound very mature. It might sound
like a grand reconciliation. But to my ears our voices did not quite match the words we were saying. Maybe in Allie's case it was on account of her hangover. I knew I should go over and sit beside her, that we should hug or something. But I felt a kind of hangover too, even though I hadn't had a drop to drink. It seemed like we both needed to just get the words out. We could deal with whatever we felt—if we ever felt anything—later.

From where I stood I could see Allie's mom driving down Cutty River Road and turning into our driveway. “Your mom's here,” I said.

She dropped her face in her hands and groaned. “I just can't even tell you,” she said, “how much I am not looking forward to seeing that woman.”

I laughed and drummed my fingers on top of her head lightly. “It'll be okay,” I said. And I knew the words were true as far as Allie was concerned. The person I didn't feel so certain of – as far as being okay—was Tim.

*   *   *

OMG
, read the text from Caroline Jones, when I finally picked up my phone after Allie and her furious mother had driven away.
IS IT TRUE?

I guess she wasn't really looking for confirmation, because when I called her back, the first thing she said—without even saying hello—was, “No wonder he never pressured me about sex.”

“How did you find out?” I said.

“How did I find out? Rachel and her friends came right back inside, and the news spread like wildfire. Rachel even posted it as her Facebook status.”

“What? How can that even be?” What a jerk! I knew I never liked that girl.

“She said something kind of mysterious about never judging a book by its cover, but then of course there were a million comments with people talking about what happened.”

I wasn't allowed to have a Facebook account. But I could just imagine what this looked like, and it made me sick. I wondered if Tim was still at church, if he knew yet.

“Did Devon say anything?” I asked her.

“No,” Caroline said. “But he didn't stop anyone from saying anything either. Poor Tim.”

I said, “This should be an awesome day for him. After the play and all.”

“I know,” Caroline said. “The world is a very sucky place.”

I hung up the phone and tried to think about whether this was true—about the world, that is. The buzzing, gnawing worry in my gut, about Tim and how he must be feeling, seemed to confirm that it was.

That afternoon he didn't call or come over even after hours ticked by and church must have finished. I flopped
across my bed, thinking selfish thoughts about how come Monday everyone would know Tim wasn't really my boyfriend, and the play was over, so what would I have left? As I may have mentioned before, I can be quite a terrible person.

Daisy jingled into the room and got up on the bed with me, snorting dog breath in my face, but I barely had the heart to pet her. I kept picturing Tim's face as he'd petted Pandora, with the light gone out of it. Like someone had died. Pretending to be his girlfriend had been fun, I admit, but it had also worn on my heart, because all the while I knew it could never be real. But at least it was one way I could help protect him from the world, protect him from exactly what was happening now. And I guess a little part of me felt like if I couldn't do that for him, not only would he be at the world's mercy, but I'd lose him for good. My best friend, my fake boyfriend, the cutest boy in the whole school. Come tomorrow I would just be another girl, one whose bankrupt parents were about to lose the farm, literally.

Worse than that, a million times worse, what about Tim? What would happen to him now that everybody knew? It was the thing in the world that scared him most, and now it had come true.

Daisy gave up on me and lay down on the bed with a sigh. I wished again that Tim was right here in my room
so I could see for myself that he was all right. But since he wasn't, I just lay across my bed, and I cried and cried, wishing there were something I could do—something real—to help him.

By the time Monday morning
came around, I worried so hard I couldn't stand it. I had called and texted Tim a million times, asking if he could come over, or if I could go over there, and he only answered once, with a text that said in all capitals,
NOT A GOOD TIME
. And then when I got on the bus, our usual spot at the back was empty. I'd never felt so frantic in all my life.

At school, remembering what Caroline had said about Facebook, I walked by Tim's locker, expecting something to be written on it in big red letters. But it was clean. As I headed down the hall, I felt like everybody was staring at me with this kind of pitying smirk. Part of me wanted to scream, “I knew! This was not a shock to me! I knew!”

When I got to American history, Devon had stationed himself in the corner desk in the front row, right by the door. I was actually kind of glad there wouldn't be any way to avoid him,
because what I wanted to do was look him right in the eye and see if there would be any sympathy or understanding or worry for his friend. I wanted to give him a chance to ask me how Tim was. So I kept my eyes on his as I walked toward the back, where Allie was already sitting. Devon drummed his pencil on the desk, looking around the room everywhere except at me.

So I stopped. And I said, real pointed, “Hey, Devon.”

He caught the pencil short and finally looked up. “Oh. Hey, Wren.”

His face looked just the slightest bit drawn, like he had to fake his usual friendliness. I thought what Caroline had said, about him not stopping Rachel from spreading the news all over the party. And my heart started beating with a fiery kind of anger.

“Devon,” I said. “Don't you have anything you want to ask me?”

He tilted his head, and some color came back into his face. By now a couple of people around us were paying attention, and you could tell Devon was real aware of this. So he arranged his face in a way that seemed very deliberate. Like he thought my saying this was the funniest thing in the world. And he said, loud enough for pretty much everyone in the class to hear, “How's your gay boyfriend?”

There may have been a snicker or two, but I swear most of the room was quiet. Although I didn't raise my eyes, I had this sense of solidarity, like most everyone was on my—and
more importantly Tim's—side. So I started to give up and head to the back of the room.

I heard Devon shuffle in his seat. I waited for him to say something else sarcastic and nasty. That's what I was braced for. Instead he started humming Og's song from the musical, “When I'm Not Near the Girl I Love.” What an a-hole!

I heard him say then, “We should've known when we saw the tights.”

Whoever he'd said it to not only laughed in this mean, disgusting way—wrecking that nice sense of solidarity I'd felt a moment before—but muttered the word “faggot.” To which Devon said nothing at all, not a single word. And then he laughed too.

I swear I couldn't help it. Even though I knew better, what happened next felt like the only thing in the world to do. I turned around and walked over to Devon's desk and kicked him as hard as I could in the shin with my steel-toed cowboy boots.

“Ow,” Devon said, in a tone that I will permit myself to notice was quite unmanly. “Are you crazy?”

As luck would have it, Ms. Durand chose that moment to walk into the classroom. “Wren,” she said, clearly surprised. “
What
are you doing?”

“Kicking Devon,” I said. And then, because obviously I was in trouble anyway, I lifted my foot and kicked him just as hard in the other shin.

*   *   *

In my whole life I had only been to the principal's office once, in first grade, when I stole a pack of Tic Tacs out of a substitute teacher's purse. Ms. Sincero, the principal at Cutty River, had made me call the substitute at home and apologize. I remember the phone call clearly. I called up the teacher and repeated everything Ms. Sincero whispered to me, about how I was sorry and I took personal responsibility. The sub forgave me, and then she said, “Is there anything else?”

“How are you doing?” I said, and she laughed. It made me happy, hearing that laugh, like what I'd done wasn't so bad and maybe she even still liked me a little bit.

But as I sat outside the principal's office at Williamsport High, I crossed my arms over my chest and narrowed my eyes in preparation for battle. Because no one in the world could make me apologize to Devon. I didn't care if they threatened to expel me. I was glad I'd kicked him, and I would do it again.

Which is exactly what I said to Mr. Bernacki when he finally called me into his office. “I'm glad I kicked him, and I'd do it again.”

Mr. Bernacki looked up from the computer screen he'd been reading—probably my file. He pointed to the chair in front of his desk. “Have a seat, Ms. Piner.”

I sat down. He gave me a little rigmarole about how
violence was never the correct course of action and wouldn't be tolerated at Williamsport High School.

“That's all fine and well,” I said. “But I'm not going to say I'm sorry, because I'm not.”

Ms. Sincero, my old principal, had been tall and young and easy to make laugh. To me Mr. Bernacki looked about a hundred years old, and like he hadn't found anything funny since he was fifty. He sighed, took off his glasses to wipe them clean, then propped them back on his nose.

“Ms. Piner.”

“You can call me Wren.”

“Yes, I'm aware that I can call you Wren. You, however, seem entirely unaware of how to comport yourself in a principal's office.”

I slumped in my chair while he lectured me, feeling like even though Mr. Bernacki was so old and kind of mean, if I told him the
reason
I'd kicked Devon, he'd be on my side. But I just couldn't shake the feeling it wasn't my reason to tell, because then what if he went ahead and told Tim's parents about it?

“Ms. Lang, my secretary, is on the phone with your parents now. You'll be excused from school for the rest of today and tomorrow.”

“You mean suspended?”

“This time we're going to call it excused. I am hoping there won't be a next time.”

“No, sir,” I said.

“Please make sure to have all your assignments completed.”

“Yes, sir.”

He didn't say anything else, and after a few seconds of silence I realized it was time for me to go. I stood up, gave an awkward little good-bye wave, and let myself out of his office, hoping this would be my very last brush with any kind of law.

*   *   *

My dad came to get me in his Jeep. Up till now he had kept a low profile in terms of what had happened over the weekend. Yesterday all he'd said was that as long as I hadn't been drinking, none of it was any of his business, but he hoped I'd take note of what a mess my friends had gotten themselves into. As I climbed into the passenger seat he tried to look stern, but I could tell his heart wasn't in it.

“You want to tell me what happened, Wren?” he said, after he'd pulled the car away from the curb. “When they told me you'd kicked someone, I felt sure they had the wrong kid.”

I told him about Devon, and how he'd acted. “But it wasn't just that one moment,” I said. “I feel like ever since I met that guy he's been saying rude things about Tim without even knowing it. You know what I mean? If it weren't for people like him, saying mean things and not minding
their own business, none of this would even be a problem. You know?”

“I sure do,” Dad said. “I can certainly see how you would feel that way. And I agree, people like that, they sure do their share of making this world a tougher place to live.”

I nodded, feeling tears pop into my eyes.

“But still,” Dad said. “You can't kick them.”

“Yes, sir,” I said. Dad laughed, and I laughed along with him but only a little.

I guess Dad could tell how forlorn I felt, because out of the blue he offered to take me to the DMV for my driving test. He said it being a school day we could probably get in without an appointment. It took most of the morning, but by the end of it all I had a shiny North Carolina driver's license, even if my picture did look kind of sad. To celebrate, Dad took me to my favorite downtown restaurant called the Basics, which serves the best Southern food in the whole world. Even their spinach is delicious, and don't get me started on their biscuits. It wasn't exactly how you'd expect to be treated the afternoon you got “excused” for kicking a kid in American history, but I sure wasn't going to complain.

*   *   *

Soon as we got home I called Tim. He still wouldn't answer his phone, and I didn't think I could stand it another minute, not seeing him or even talking to him. I would have
gone over to his house, but even though my parents weren't really mad, they said I couldn't leave the farm until it was time to go back to school. So I looked up his home phone on MSN White Pages.

“Hello?” Mr. Greenlaw said. It surprised me that he'd be at home in the middle of a Monday afternoon.

“Hello,” I said. “May I please speak to Tim? This is Wren Piner.”

There was a long pause on the other end, and I couldn't help but read a whole lot into it. While I waited for Mr. Greenlaw to say something, I suspected that he had found out Tim was gay and couldn't decide whether I was a part of the problem or a possible solution. I heard Mrs. Greenlaw's voice in the background, asking a question, and then I heard his father say my name.