Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (11 page)

Our test is translating lyrics to German songs.

The universe is tormenting me.

The songs?

Love, Love Me Do

She Loves You

Eleanor Rigby
. . . the one that has the line about lonely people and how they are everywhere.

Across the aisle, Bob hums under his breath. It sounds like a mosquito that roams around your head when you go to bed at night. It sounds like a pin pricking the tips of your fingers over and over again. It is hard not to throw my Deutsche text book at him. It is hard not to scream.

Finally, finally, finally, Tom says, just low enough for Bob to hear, but not loud enough to alert Herr Reitz, “Shut up, Bob.”

Rasheesh, who is about four feet tall and a wicked brat goes, “Yeah, Bob, shut up. You sound like a drugged-up black fly.”

Bob stops for maybe two minutes and then he starts up again.

It’s about loving someone do and always being true.

I break my pencil in half.

Top Ten Reasons Why I Can’t Believe
I’ve Been Dumped for Bob

1. He hums during German class.
   
2. His glasses are thicker than the soles on L.L. Bean hiking boots.
   
3. He smells funny, like mothballs or something, mixed with metal.
   
4. He hums BEATLES songs in German class.
   
5. He’s in band.
   
6. He scratches his head too much.
   
7. He hums BEATLES songs in German class OFF-KEY.
   
8. He wears tighty whitie underwear that show his butt because his pants are always doing that working man’s smile thing on him.
   
9. He hums BEATLES songs in German class OFF-KEY and taps his FEET in time.
   
10. He’s a boy.
    

The bell rings. We grab our books. I fold up my list and shove it in the bottom of my shoe, to remind me why I’m mad, and that it’s okay to be mad, even if I’m supposed to try to love everybody and all that Students-for-Social-Justice stuff. Bob skitters out of German class but he pauses at the door. He turns around and walks back, walks toward me, one step, two.

“Belle?” his voice cracks.

I keep gathering my books, but Tom’s turned still, standing at my elbow like some sort of protector dog.

“Yeah,” I say to Bob. “What?”

“I’m sorry,” he says and he turns and runs before I can say anything back. My words, my emotions are peanut butter stuck somewhere behind my incisors.
He’s
sorry.

Tom comes up behind me, puts his hand on my shoulder, and says, “I have a game but I can run you home if you need a ride.”

I shake my head. “I’ve got a Key Club Meeting.”

“Pinko Commie,” he says and scruffs my hair like I’m a black lab or something.

“Takes one to know one,” I bounce back, but it sounds flat. It doesn’t sound like our normal teasing. “And ‘pinko’? What’s with ‘pinko’?”

“That’s what all the fascists used to call the communists. Pinkos.”

“So, you’re a fascist?”

“No. Jesus. That’s not what I’m saying,” Tom’s eyes drill into mine for a minute, like he’s trying to figure things out and he finally says, “You still playing guitar?”

“Yeah. You know I play guitar.” Everyone knows I play guitar. I bring Gabriel to school every day, and lots of time I just skip out on most of lunch and go play her in an empty classroom, but maybe Tom’s just making conversation about something he thinks is safe so I shrug and think about Gabriel, lonely, stuck against the wall of my room, soundless.

“You didn’t bring it to school today,” he smiles behind his hand, which was scratching at his cheek.

“You’ve told me that, what, twice now?” This is a little snarky, but I don’t care. “I mean, it’s not like I’m attached to my guitar, like she’s some sort of security blanket or something.”

He shrugs and I feel bad for being snarky. “You were good at the talent show last year.”

“Thanks.”

He smiles and turns away and then shouts over his shoulder, “For a pinko commie.”

There’s this little cemetery up the road from my house, all hidden by trees. The tombstones have sunk into the earth. Moss and lichen mar their whiteness. Time flattened away the names on the stones.

Dylan and I would go there sometimes, when we wanted to be alone, when my mom was home. Or sometimes we’d just walk down there when we wanted some quiet. We’d hold hands and duck our heads between the low cedar branches, inhale the sweet smell of woods coupled with silence, and slip between the granite pillars that once held a gate, I guess.

We’d wander among the gravestones.

“Charlotte Block,” Dylan said. “I bet she had an affair with the good reverend, and pined her days away, looping together rugs from scraps, the maiden aunt in the corner, misunderstood, empty but for her longing.”

I squeezed his hand and then squatted by Charlotte’s grave. “Too sad. She married young and had lots of babies. She wrote poems about ferns and kittens playing with mice. She tried to be who everyone wanted her to be, but never succeeded.”

“She tried so hard to be what was expected that she lost herself,” Dylan added.

I sighed and pulled him down next to me. We leaned on Charlotte’s grave. His tan calf rested on the ground, touching mine. The sun had lightened the hairs on his leg to a gold color. It sparkled against the grass. It was so much bigger than my leg, despite all my biking. He still had bigger calves.

“Do you think everyone’s like that?” I asked him. An osprey flew over us, circling, searching for something on the ground while it soared in the air. “Hey, an osprey.”

“It’s beautiful,” he said. We stared at the v-shaped markings on its wings. “Yeah, I think everyone’s like that.”

“Everyone’s trying to be someone they aren’t?” I plucked up some grass and split the blade in two.

“Yeah. To different degrees, but yeah.”

The grass fell from my fingers. It hit Dylan’s knee. I brushed it off. “Even you?”

He nodded. The osprey circled higher, farther away. “Yeah. Everybody. You too.”

The air heavied against us. I swallowed. The osprey shrieked. “I don’t want to make you into someone you aren’t.”

He shook his head and he put his arm around my shoulder, leaning me into him. “We do it to ourselves. It’s scary to be who we really are.”

“I don’t think I’m trying to be anybody I’m not.”

He let go of my shoulder and leaned away, obviously annoyed. “Belle. Give me a break. You don’t think you aren’t trying to live up to other people’s expectations?”

“Well, yeah.”

I grabbed a handful of grass and started sorting it on my thigh, separating the strands by lengths as Dylan kept talking. “When are you happiest?”