Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (30 page)

Em takes a picture of us, smiling at each other like two trees in the middle of summer, sharing the secret of the wind. Then she runs off to find Shawn.

After Dylan’s scooted into economics and I’m walking to law class I hear it again, the nasty whisper hate of it, bouncing past Kara Raymond’s shoulders and latching itself to me.

“Fag hag.”

I whirl around and see her. Mimi. The girl Dylan didn’t choose when he chose me. Or maybe he did. What do I know? I stomp over to her. She’s frozen there with her little miniskirt stretched across the bottom circles of her round body. She’s frozen there, staring, staring, staring at me out of her too-much-eye-shadow eyes and her sad hair. She’s frozen there, staring, staring, staring with hate smashing out of her pores, out of her clothes, out of her hair.

I stop two inches from her. My hands ball into fists. Sebastian Puller, an evil junior boy who is always getting suspended, yells, “Cat fight.”

Mimi would step back, I know, but she’s frozen. She smells like her mother’s cigarettes. Her mother smokes. Whenever I went over to play, I’d smell like it, too.

“Mimi,” I say. “You need to get a life.”

Her eyes squint at me. But she does it again. She says it again, spits it out.

“Fag hag.”

Everyone in the circle around us pulls in their breaths, but I breathe out and laugh. I laugh because it’s too stupid, so stupid really. Kara Raymond giggles too and then turns self-righteous and is a second away from ripping into Mimi, but I beat her to it.

“What, Mimi? I’m a fag hag because I used to go out with Dylan, who you, obviously, are still in love with? I’m a fag hag because I don’t care if someone’s gay, I’m still friends with him. Is that what’s wrong? What? Should I be dragging him behind a pickup truck or dropping him off a bridge? Is that what you think? Jesus. Dylan’s a way better person than you’ll ever be, Mimi. And he’s my friend. Yeah, my friend and if that makes me a goddamn fag hag then I don’t give a shit!”

The second bell rings. The late bell. Then Mimi spits it out at me, “You’re so fucking deluded, Belle. You think everybody’s all good all the time, but they aren’t. You make everybody into song lyrics and heroes, but nobody’s good. Nobody is.”

“Shut up, Mimi. Don’t be such a bitch!” Kara Raymond yells, trying to come to my rescue, but I don’t need a rescue, I don’t think.

“That’s crap,” I say.

She arches an eyebrow. “Oh, right? Like your little gay boyfriend wasn’t all a big fake. Did you know he kissed me right when you guys first started going out? Did you know that?”

I sigh out my words, “Yeah, I know that.”

She pauses for a second and then she starts in again. “And I bet you think Tom’s a handsome prince too, huh? Well, he’s not. He’s a sucky kisser. Not like you’ll ever know that, because you only like gay boys, right? He’s liked you for fucking ever and you never even looked his way, not until Dylan dumped you.”

My hand shakes. Kara starts charging at Mimi again but I hold her back. “Shut up, Mimi.”

“Why? Because you don’t want to hear about how delusional you are?”

I let go of Kara and she surges forward with her warrior voice, “Shut the hell up, Mimi, like you and your push-up bras aren’t delusional? Belle is . . .”

But I don’t hear her because I’ve whirled around and am walking away. I’m walking away to my law class and I don’t care. I don’t care about Mimi Cote or evil Sebastian Puller or vigilant Kara Raymond or all the people watching. I don’t care about being a fag hag or delusional or that I just swore in the middle of school and if a teacher finds out I’ll get the first detention in my life. I don’t care about anything except trying to make the staccato beat of my heart slow down.

“Dyke!”

I whirl around and there’s Mimi Cote still standing in the middle of the hallway, her middle finger sticking up at me.

Kara starts laughing. “Dyke? Is that all you can come up with Mimi? Jesus, Belle’s the most pathetically hetero girl in the school. She’s gone from Dylan to Tom in like two days or something. God.”

“Four days,” I shout down the hall smiling. “Four days if you count Saturday. Three if you don’t.”

She stares at me and then I add, “And he is too a good kisser. He’s a phenomenal kisser!”

Shawn has come down the hall and is standing beside me and he lets out a big cowboy YEEHAW! Then he starts clapping. Kara claps too and some other people join in. Nobody’s even pretending to hurry off to class because the Mimi-Belle showdown is too worthy, like having reality TV in the hallway, I guess.

“You’re a slut then,” Mimi spits out, but it’s too late to mean anything. She’s too far gone.

Shawn slaps me five. I kind of miss his hand because I am not the best high-five hand slapper, but it’s still good.

And then I laugh too, because it’s so sad really. I laugh because Kara is so right and it’s ridiculous how hormone-ruled I am. I laugh because Mimi is such a pathetic villain, unoriginal, boring. And the crazy thing is back in eighth grade when we were cheerleaders that stuff she said would have torn me apart. My world would have ended right there.

Now?

Now I’ve got a gay ex-boyfriend, a rebound relationship, and a semi-psycho next-door neighbor who watches my bedroom window at night.

But I will not be a Mallory about this. I will just move on. I mean, once I get home and pick up Gabriel, I could probably write a really good song about all of this. That happy little thought makes me bebop down the hallway, happier than I have any right to be.

At lunch, Emily and I abandon our normal table and sit with the soccer boys. Tom sits across from me and stretches his legs out. He watches me drink my Postum and chomps into his pizza slice.

“Heard you had a little spat with Mimi Cote.” He raises one eyebrow. How does he do that?

“Yeah.”

I put my mug up to my mouth so I don’t have to talk about it, but Emily, who has been telling Shawn all about the outfit she’s wearing to the dance, stops mid-sentence and barks, “What?”

“Mimi’s been calling me a fag hag,” I explain. “So, I told her to stop.”

Emily’s nostrils flare the way my mom’s do when she’s mad. “That bitch! I’ll kill her.”

Shawn starts laughing and clamps his hand over Emily’s mouth. “Calm down, mighty one. Belle’s got it under control, don’t you, Belle?”

“Yeah,” I answer. Tom smiles at me and shakes his head. “I’ve got it under control.”

End of conversation, right? Wrong.

“She called you a dyke, too. Right?” Tom says. A slow smile creeps across his face. I glare at him, because we both know he’s just trying to get Em riled up, which the whole town knows doesn’t take much.

Emily licks Shawn’s hand to get him to move it. He does, completely grossed out, and wipes it on his thigh. Emily pays no attention, she’s too busy yelling, “She did what?”

I sip my Postum. “She called me a dyke.”

Emily rants for a minute, while the rest of us laugh at her. She finally catches on. “What? What? Don’t you even care?”

I shake my head. “Nope. It’s sad. She’s sad, really.”

Emily shakes her head. “Well, I think she’s a bitch.”

“A sad bitch,” I agree.

“You’re not, are you?” Shawn asks me, eyes twinkling.

“What?”

“Gay?”

Emily throws down her bagel. “Jesus! How stupid are you?”

She leaps up from the table and stomps off toward the lunch line. Shawn smiles and saunters after her. Tom and I watch them argue. Em keeps pointing at him. Shawn keeps opening his arms up like he’s surrendering or expecting a hug, only he keeps stepping backwards.

“They’re already fighting,” I say. “They’re barely going out.”

“Must be love,” Tom says.

He holds up his pizza slice. “Want some?”

I shake my head.

“So are you?” He raises that eyebrow again.

I kick him under the table and he grabs my foot between his metal-strong calves, keeps it there. My cheeks flame. My leg feels like it’s on fire, but it’s a good, good fire. I glare at him.

“Nope,” he smiles. “I’d say not.”

He keeps my foot there for all of lunch. I pretend like I want to get away, but I don’t. I don’t want to at all.