Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (9 page)

We don’t say anything. The squirrel calls over a friend and they scurry up and down the branches, angry, worried over their acorn stash. Who do they think we are? Acorn-stash abductors?

Tom pulls his leg up close and fiddles with some duct tape that he’s pressed on the side of his shoe. In tiny black letters he’s written a line.

“‘Exit, pursued by a bear?’” I ask.

“It’s a stage direction in
The Winter’s Tale
.”

“By Shakespeare.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t figure you for Shakespeare.”

“What would you figure me for, Commie?”

“I don’t know,” I reach out and touch the duct tape with my finger. “Soccer? I mean if you’re going to quote something on your shoe, I guess I’d imagine soccer.”

He doesn’t answer.

“Do you always quote people on duct tape and smack it on your shoe?” I ask.

“Sort of.”

Tom smells nice like marshmallows on a campfire and we sit there for a good, long while, annoying the squirrels by our very presence, before I say, “We’re going to get in big trouble for this.”

He fidgets with some duct tape on his sneaker, pulling it off, tearing it in half, folding it in and out. “You think the squirrels will send the rodent mafia after us for invading their territory? Maybe in the middle of the night we’ll be cozy in our beds only to be besieged by chipmunks wielding hand guns. Exit, pursued by a squirrel.”

“No,” I laugh and bop my shoulder against him before I remember my newest worry. “In school. We just raced out of school.”

I imagine detentions, suspensions, getting kicked off National Honor Society. I imagine our principal stopping my mom in the produce aisle of Shop ’n Save, telling her what a bad kid I’ve become. Is that who I am? A bad kid? I shudder. The squirrel chucks an acorn at us, right toward my face. Tom’s hand flashes out and he catches it before it hits my cheek.

“I’ll talk us out of it,” he says, slowly opening his fingers to reveal the acorn resting in the middle of his hand.

I turn to stare into those brown eyes of his. I don’t know how to look at him when he’s not teasing me. “You can do that? You can talk us out of it?”

“Commie,” he says, giving me a fake gentle punch on the chin. “I can do anything.”

I nod at his sneaker. Duct tape is wrapped around the sole of it, like a bandage. That piece doesn’t have writing on it.

“You’re into duct tape, huh?”

“It can do anything,” he smiles, stands up, offers me his hand, then offers me the acorn.

“Kind of like you, right?” I kid and grab the acorn. It’s a Tom shade of brown, rich and homey.

“Yeah, kind of like me,” he says, but he’s not kidding at all.

Since I don’t stand up, he comes back down to me and we sit there for a little bit longer and the wind blows against us so hard we have to huddle next to each other. My fingers turn blue. Tom says, “You remember in eighth grade when you used to cheer at our soccer games?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“I liked that.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You liked Mimi Cote.”

He shrugs. “Only cause I couldn’t have you.”

“Couldn’t
have
me?” I raise my eyebrows at him. The wind whips a twig against my legs. I reach out and start stripping it of bark, but it’s hard to do because my fingers are so cold. “Why couldn’t you quote-unquote have me?”

“Dylan and I made a deal.”

I snap the twig in half. “Really?”

“If you or Mimi asked one of us out, we’d have to go out with them, leave the other one alone,” Tom shakes his head, does his little half-smile thing. “Mimi asked me out.”

“That’s awful, like we were prizes or something,” I spit out.

“It was eighth grade.”

“It’s completely stupid,” I yell at him. He puts his arm back around me and sort of jostles me the way a big brother would do. I try to edge away, but it’s too much work, so I stay put.

He nods. “Yeah, it was stupid.”

Look sorry. All I’m supposed to do in the vice principal’s office is look sorry, Tom says.

That’s not going to be hard. I am sorry.

I’m sorry that I’m such an emotional idiot.

I’m sorry that I passed out in the cafeteria.

I’m sorry that I only ate half that grilled cheese because now I’m super hungry.

I’m sorry that my face is death girl white with red splotches on it that match the rims of my eyes and I have to walk through the halls looking like this.

I’m not sorry that I ran away though. I’m not sorry about that at all.

When we are far enough away from the principal’s office, Tom and I give each other high fives.

“Told you I could do it,” he says, smiling huge, showing all his perfect white Chiclets teeth.

“You were awesome,” I tell him.

He smiles even bigger, raises his hand for another high five. When I slap it with my own hand, his fingers grab my own fingers. “You know what this means, Commie?”

I shake my head. My fingers tingle. They must be numb.

“This means we’re partners in crime,” he says.

My eyebrows raise. “Like Andrade and Trevi? Like Burke and Hare or Bonnie and Clyde. Like Cuba and the Soviet Union back in the 60s?”

He squeezes my hand, drops it, and crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Commie, sometimes you’re too damn smart.”

I wish, I think. I wish. I wish. I wish.

Okay, Dylan. I’m sitting here in advanced biology looking at a dead pig. Emily and I are trying to find its spleen, but it’s proving to be a little more elusive than we thought. If I’m in bio it means you are in chorus, with Bob. With BOB!

I need to talk to you about things. I need to talk to you, but I’m afraid to even see you. I’m afraid if I see you it will rip my heart into pieces, that it will feel like a scalpel jabbing into the center of me.

Emily is currently using the scalpel to cut through some abdominal muscles in her quest to find the spleen. She keeps wrinkling her nose and saying, “Disgusting.”

I don’t think she’ll find the spleen.

I don’t think we ever find anything, do we? I mean in life. I mean we think we find things and then it turns out those things aren’t what we thought.

How could you not be what I thought?

In my pocket, again, is the note you gave me last Friday.

You wrote,
I just want to be free with you. Just like that song “I’m free” on the Cold Spring Harbor tape. You made me free. I think that’s part of the reason I like you so much.

What was that supposed to mean?

Our science teacher, Mr. Zeki, has given up on us.

“You can’t find the what?” he shrieks at Emily.

She is pointedly trying not to stare at the crotch area of his too-tight chinos. I know this because she told me this is often a problem. When he struts up to our science-lab table he always stands on the Emily side and his genital region is pretty much the same level as her nose.

She fidgets with her fingers. She puts her hair behind her ear. She fidgets with her fingers some more.

She seems to have lost her gift of words. I evilly wish this had happened in the cafeteria when she told everyone about the state of Dylan’s and my relationship. Then I feel guilty for having such a thought, so I bail her out. “We can’t find Pamela’s spleen.”

Mr. Zeki’s eyebrows raise. “Pamela?”

I cough. It feels like the whole science room’s listening. “Um. Yeah. Pamela. We named our fetal pig Pamela after Pamela Anderson, the actress with the really big, um . . .”