The Sweet Revenge of Celia Door (4 page)

CHAPTER

8

After the basketball game, Drake asked me to go to the wooded lot again after school. I spent the next three periods failing to sit still in class. I must have asked to go to the bathroom or water fountain twenty times before the final bell. I was so drunk on the thrill of discovering him, I managed to forget about what Sandy and Mandy did at lunch. Drake was from a fantasy world called New York City, a place where it was possible that people might actually “get me.” If I was an alien here, then Drake had come from my home world, and we were both currently stranded on a bizarre planet called Pennsylvania.

“Meet anyone cool in the basketball game?” I asked on the walk home, trying to sound nonchalant.

Drake cleared his throat. “Yeah, one of the guys told me about the new exhibit at the art gallery, and another one invited me to a silent film festival.” He looked at me and crossed his eyes. He was carrying his skateboard under one arm so we could walk together.

“Oh yeah, those guys never shut up about the symphony season,” I managed to say before hiding my hot cheeks inside my hood. I was still holding out hope that I might have fooled this hapless newcomer into believing I was one of the cool people in Hershey, not some jealous girl desperate for friends.

“All the jocks love Debussy,” Drake said back.

When we got to his house, we cut across his lawn to the wooded lot. I followed Drake through the leafy ground cover and snarling undergrowth to the same horizontal log we had populated the day before. It felt familiar to me already as we each settled in across from each other on a smooth and barkless section of the tree trunk.

The more time I was spending with Drake, the more I found myself noticing how truly handsome he was. When he smiled, his jaw formed a set of ninety-degree angles, and his mouth sat in the middle like it was framed. He had brown eyes and exceptionally long eyelashes for a boy. His hair was styled to point up in the middle, a short faux-hawk. Drake’s lips, particularly the bottom one, were plump. If you sat close enough, you could count the creases in the pulpy flesh. I counted fourteen, sitting on the log.

“Celia,” he said, snapping me out of my crease-counting daze. I turned away from him to fumble awkwardly in my backpack, so I had an excuse to hide my face. “Yeah?” I responded distantly. I pulled lip balm out of my bag and made a show of putting it on.

“So, do you date guys or girls?” asked Drake. “Or both?” He asked me casually like we were talking about bowling. “Still using duckpins?” he might have been saying. “Or have you graduated to ten-pin bowling?”

“Um, I guess . . . guys,” I answered, trying to match his casual tone. I hesitated because in order to date guys, you actually have to go
on dates
. I had never been on an
actual
date.

I do have an interest in guys. In fact, I have so many love interests, I’ve organized them by genre. My classic crush is Mr. Darcy from
Pride and Prejudice
. For fantasy, I’ve chosen Aragorn from Lord of the Rings. Sci-fi is a tie between Peeta and Gale from
The Hunger Games
, and my favorite contemporary fiction bad boy is Holden Caulfield from
The Catcher in the Rye
. Maybe they aren’t exactly real boys, but I feel like I know them all, their deepest thoughts and desires. It’s not like I’m going to go get a crush on some boy in Hershey High when I’ve got Howl from
Howl’s Moving Castle
at home.

I wasn’t about to tell any of that to Drake, though, and I didn’t know why was he asking me. Was he checking my sexual preference before telling me he liked me? Was this a New York thing? I held my breath to listen for what Drake would say next, hoping he would ask me out or ask me to be his girlfriend or whatever boys ask when they like you.

“Well, I . . . like guys,” Drake said in a voice that sounded abrupt and professional. Then he softened and added, “
A guy
, actually.”

I was suddenly aware of all the little noises around me. There was the textured, white noise of the leaves rustling and falling, at least three types of birds calling to one another from high branches, the distant hum of the highway. It had never crossed my mind that Drake might like boys. There were two older men at my church who were a couple, but I had never met anyone my age who was gay.

Drake stood up off the log, put his hands on his head, and said, “Wow. That felt
so
good.” He wiped his palms off on his jeans like they had been sweating. “I have never said those words out loud to anyone before.”

The best response I could come up with was, “Um . . . congratulations.”

“Thanks, Celia,” he said sincerely, putting a hand onto his chest. “I needed a test run. I needed to tell someone who just met me, who I knew wouldn’t judge me. I’ve been nervous about it all day.”

I sat on the nurse log trying not to wish he had said something else. I kept crossing and uncrossing my legs, looking for a position that didn’t seem awkward.

“I just feel like it’s time now.” Drake started to walk carefully over the roots around the log. “Ninth grade, high school, new opportunity to define yourself.” Drake used his hands to talk. “I wanted to tell someone before I go back to New York this weekend and come out for real.”

“For real?”

“You know, like tell the people who really know me. My parents and Japhy.” Drake sat back down on the log next to me.

I reminded myself for the second time that day that Drake’s real life was still back in New York. “Japhy?” I asked. “Like the character in
Dharma Bums
?”

“Hippie parents.” Drake laughed. “His mom’s an actress at the theatre my dad runs. You’re well read.”

“Is Japhy
the guy
?”

“Yeah. He’s
the guy
. He’s my best friend since we were ten. We’ve always been close, and I guess I always knew I had feelings, but in the last month . . . I don’t know, something’s been changing. You know, Celia, when you can just
tell
someone likes you?”

“Yeah. It’s so . . . cool when that happens,” I lied.

“The last time he was over . . .” Drake stopped. “It’s hard to explain.”

“Do you guys hang out a lot?” I didn’t want to feel jealous of Drake’s other friend, his
best
friend, whom he did
like
. But I did.

“Our parents have always had dinner together every Tuesday night and then gone to a show. When we were little, they would bring Japhy over and get us a sitter. When we turned twelve, we convinced them we could be left alone. Well, really, Japhy convinced them. Japhy likes trouble.”

Since I met Drake the day before, he had looked so confident and unflappable. Now he was blushing and braiding his fingers together. He stood up again and picked a stick out of the dirt.

“When we do something risky, or a little dangerous, Japhy calls it the ‘envelope
,
’ like ‘Come on man, we gotta
push the envelope
.’” Drake kicked leaves away from a patch of dirt and started drawing pictures with his stick. I dangled a leg on either side of our tree-bench.

“Sometimes we sneak out and go to Times Square, talk to homeless guys, skateboard on subway platforms, count rats.” Drake drew a circle surrounded by arrows. “Our parents don’t know about any of it.”

Jealousy threatened to burn a hole right through my sweatshirt. Why didn’t I get a best friend to sneak out of the house and count rats with? Why didn’t I get a best friend who was possibly in love with me and liked trouble? I felt cheated. Sandy Firestone’s face flashed through my mind.

“But the last time, we decided to stay home. We were playing video games in the living room, and I kept beating him. So, finally, he grabbed the controller out of my hand and tackled me. Japhy’s athletic, great at basketball and skating. I was fighting back, but he pinned me on the floor.” Drake threw down his stick and stood in the leaves, holding out both arms to pantomime the act of holding someone down. “We’ve always wrestled, but this time when he was lying on top of me, he just looked at me and smiled. Then he said, ‘Don’t beat me again,’ and got up.” Drake’s cheeks were in full bloom, red as a sunburn.

“After that, we just sat on the fire escape and watched pedestrians. But I have the feeling that he was telling me something. That smile. Wow, I’m so nervous,” Drake said, shaking his hands like he had just washed them and couldn’t find a towel.

“There’s a new play opening at my dad’s theatre this weekend. I’ll see it Friday night, and then Japhy will come over Saturday night while our parents are at the show again. I’m going to tell him, Celia. Or, at least, see how things go and maybe tell him or maybe just . . . No. I have to tell him. I can’t chicken out.” Drake ran both hands through his hair and then styled it again. “Then I’ll tell my parents on Sunday.

“Celia,” said Drake, turning toward me and folding both arms over his chest. “Promise me you won’t tell anyone what I told you? I don’t want anyone in Hershey to know before I tell my parents.”

Drake looked so vulnerable then, I felt terrible for being jealous of him. Plus, it had been a painfully long time since anyone shared a secret with me. “Drake,” I said, pulling my hands out of my hoodie sleeves and clutching them together. “I would never do that. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”

“Thanks,” said Drake, moving to sit down next to me on the log again. “Okay, your turn. Now you have to tell me something.”

I swear I almost told Drake right then, all about eighth grade and Sandy and the Book. It was the perfect moment with a secret hanging out on my tongue just waiting to sprout wings and fly out of my mouth. But a familiar black hole started to open in my chest sucking my words away into it. What if I told him the truth and he didn’t like me anymore? He was staying for only a month, but a friend for a month was better than no friend at all. I needed him too much to be honest with him.

“I write poetry,” I blurted out.

“Oh, cool,” said Drake, sounding only mildly disappointed with my tame secret. “Will you read it to me sometime?”

A little light started to flicker in my chest where the black hole had been. I nodded.

CHAPTER

9

Before I left his house to walk home, Drake asked me if I wanted to walk to school together the next day. So, Friday morning, the end of our first week of ninth grade, I showed up at the park in our neighborhood at eight a.m. I was there a few minutes early, hoping to get to school in time to exchange my library book before first period. I hadn’t read all of
Foreignisms
because it was a bit like reading the phone book, but I did pick up some good words and felt I could ethically move on to the 500s class of the Dewey decimal system. I sat on a swing to wait for Drake.

I don’t have a cell phone. I had one, briefly, when my dad left for Atlanta and bought me one, saying we could “keep in touch better.” But I left it in my hoodie pocket and accidentally washed it and that was the end of my connectivity. Mom said, “No more cell phone until you make enough money to replace that one. You’re old enough to babysit.” This particular attempt to teach me responsibility reeked of hypocrisy because she loses things more than anyone. Since the only people who called me were my mom and dad, I decided to teach a lesson of my own and not bother to earn money for a replacement. Now my dad mostly emails, and my mom has to deal with not being able to contact me whenever she wants.

Waiting for Drake in the park, I checked the time on the digital watch I got at the thrift store. It told me Drake was running late. I started pushing my feet back and letting myself swing casually forward, then twirling side to side, looking down the street in the direction of Drake’s house and then up the street toward school. At ten minutes after eight, I started to get a bad feeling. Maybe I didn’t react well enough to Drake being gay. Maybe he was hoping that I was gay, too, and now that he knew I wasn’t, he wasn’t all that interested in me. Maybe he just wanted someone to practice coming out to and I had served my purpose. It’s not like it really mattered, since he was going back to New York soon anyway, and I would go back to being a lone wolf again, no friend in sight.

I used to have a best friend in middle school, from sixth to eighth grade. Ruth and I found each other at the public library the weekend after school started, both reading
The Egypt Game
on a sunny Saturday afternoon. We fell into a conversation about the book and didn’t climb out of it for two hours.

Ruth’s family was religious, and she wasn’t allowed to watch television or wear pants. She wore long white dresses and a blonde braid that hung to her waist. She also wasn’t allowed to have sleepovers or go to the mall, so our friendship, although intensely close, was limited.

One of the ways we connected was by reading the same book and trying to stay on the same page so that neither one of us gave away plot points. Sometimes she would call to say, “I couldn’t stop myself and I read a hundred more pages after dinner.” I would have to stay up late to catch up. One time I was so sick with the flu that I couldn’t hold up a book, and Ruth read to me over the phone from
James and the Giant Peach
for over an hour until I fell asleep with the receiver on my pillow.

We were inseparable at school and good students. But middle school is a toxic environment for kids who deviate from the mainstream. Maybe it was my friendship with Ruth that first brought me to the attention of Sandy Firestone. Early in the seventh grade, Ruth was targeted. Changing in the locker room before gym, she pulled off her button-down dress, revealing large, white cotton panties that looked two sizes too big, and a heavy, stitched polyester bra. They seemed out of place on her body, like a three-piece suit on the beach.

Ruth was already starting to “develop,” so she needed the polyester bra. What little I have in the boob department hadn’t started to emerge yet, so I was still wearing an undershirt.

“Jesus, Ruth,” said Sandy Firestone from her station at the lockers. “Do you even have hand-me-down underwear?”

Mandy was still vying to be Sandy’s favorite back then, so she laughed like she was at a comedy club. They were both wearing matching bra-and-panty sets and taking their time before they put on their gym shorts.

Ruth looked like she wanted her locker to be a portal to another world so she could climb in and climb out in Narnia. That was before I turned Dark, so instead of saying anything, I just put my head in my locker and hoped Sandy wouldn’t notice me. These sorts of attacks went on for weeks.

Ruth made some desperate attempts to fit in. She would fly into the bathroom as soon as she got to school and emancipate her hair from the braid snaking down her shoulder blade. I learned to replicate it for her at the end of the day so that her hair didn’t betray its daily freedom when her mom picked her up. She rolled up the sleeves of her dresses in a sad attempt to look more urban and worked at opening up more, smiling and even chatting with people other than me. Still, we didn’t manage to attract any more close friends. We were an oddball couple of library nerds who made easy shooting for Sandy and Mandy.

But Ruth and I were happy hanging out after school. We played in our imaginations, invented new worlds, and spent hours sketching characters who lived there. Ruth was the third oldest of seven brothers and sisters, so at her house, we were constantly interrupted to change diapers or make someone a snack. At my house, Ruth reveled in the quiet, with my mom studying for nursing school and my dad always coming home late.

It was in the spring of eighth grade when Ruth’s mom came to pick her up from school early one Friday for a church retreat. She found Ruth talking to me at my locker with her dress unbuttoned and her hair hanging in spirals around her face, eye shadow brushed onto both lids. As Ruth’s mother grabbed her hand and snapped her head toward the nearest exit, her own braid cast out like a whip. She didn’t let Ruth get her things from her locker or say good-bye. She just wrenched her from the clutches of public school like she was pulling her from the arms of Satan. Ruth held one hand out toward me like I might have a life ring to throw her. I didn’t.

I tried to call. Ruth’s mother answered both times, and the second time, she asked me politely not to call back. I got a letter in the mail a week later. Ruth wrote that she was going to be homeschooled from now on and that she wasn’t allowed to talk to me anymore.

I appealed to my parents for help. My dad said, “I’m sorry, Celia, but we can’t tell anyone else how to raise their children.” My mom twisted a finger in her curly hair and sighed, “Maybe her parents will change their minds. It’s painful, but sometimes a friendship just has to end.” They both seemed distracted. I read
Bridge to Terabithia
and cried every night, wishing the phone would ring. Two weeks later, my parents told me they were separating, and three weeks after that was the incident with the Book.

I was sitting on the park swing, thinking about Ruth and wondering if I would ever see her again, when Drake finally appeared twenty minutes late, pushing himself fast down the street on a skateboard. He skidded to a stop on the sidewalk closest to the swing set and stepped on one end of his board, grabbing the other with his hand.

“Dude, I’m so sorry. I overslept,” he said, running a hand through his hair and then attempting to force it into a style with his fingers.

“No big deal.” I shrugged, hoisting myself out of the hammock-like swing and disguising a relieved sigh. Drake had shown up; he hadn’t disappeared or decided he didn’t like me or been dragged away by a parent to be homeschooled. We walked as quickly as possible the twenty blocks to school.