The Cutting Room Floor (2 page)

My phone buzzes and I practically fall out of my seat. The call I’ve been waiting for. I motion for Jonah to give me a minute. He bites his nails, cursing the day I was born.

The screen on my phone reads:
All ready to go. Are you sure?

Do it!
I type back.

Then I hold my breath.

If I knew then what I know now, I never would’ve sent that text. I wouldn’t have done a lot of things. Yeah, if my life were a movie, I’d go back and edit out all the bad stuff. Leave it all on the cutting room floor.

But I can’t. And now I will have to pay.

Big time.

After several uncomfortable moments, Jonah clears his throat.

“Okay, my bad,” I say before checking my phone one last time. “Gimme another shot.” I’m a sucker for a guy in lust. Jonah’s date
is
pretty cute, and just because I’m not getting any doesn’t mean I should deny my friend the opportunity.

“Yeah?” Jonah says, looking hopeful.

“Yeah.” I pat his shoulder.

“Thanks, man.”

“Okay. First order of business: stop with the nails.” I swat his hand “Chicks hate that shit. It’s disgusting.”

Jonah nods and pulls his fingers from his mouth. “Check. Anything else?”

“Yeah, take this.” I hand him my tin of Altoids. “Probably not a good idea to load your burger with onions when you’re trying to impress a girl.”

“See, this is what I need.” Jonah flashes his gummy grin and pops a few mints. “My wingman is back.”

When the girls—Ginger and Nicole, thank you very much—return, I do a complete 180.

“So,” I say to Jonah, gearing up to make it a big production. “Are you getting the band together this weekend?”

He raises an eyebrow.

“You’re in a band?” Ginger squeaks.

“Guitar and lead singer,” I say.

While it’s true that Jonah can sing, he’s terrible at guitar and there hasn’t been a band since eighth grade. But I have to do something. He’s sinking over there.

“I’d love to hear you play sometime.” Ginger laughs and whispers something to Nicole.

Jonah mouths
thank you
when she’s not looking.

My work here is done.

Jonah and Ginger are deep in conversation the rest of the night and I work my hardest to keep Nicole entertained.

“So, Desmond Brandt, do you have a girlfriend?” she asks while twirling a clump of hair. I’m not sure if she’s trying to be cute or sexy or what. But it’s none of the above.

“Ah … not exactly,” I say.

“Well … ” She untangles her hand from the hair clump and rests it on the table, dangerously close to mine. “What
is
your status then? Exactly?”

“Long story. Let’s just say it’s complicated. You?” I ask, not caring to know the answer.

The next several minutes are a blur of Nicole telling me about all the guys who want her and why. I nod, smile, and do everything in my power to get through the night.

In the end, it’s not too bad. I buy everyone churros, Jonah gets another date with Ginger, and there under the fluorescent lights of the food court, I become one of the best wingmen who has ever lived.

All is right with the world.

Until Monday.

RILEY

I free my hair from the braids Mom put in this morning and fan the long locks around my face to create a barrier between
me
and
them
. By fourth period the gossip has traveled far and wide. I try to ignore the stares and snickers as we walk down the hall. Libby, on the other hand, cannot. She flips people off, hurls insults, and is basically a nightmare our entire walk to the gym. What can I say? She always has my back.

I keep my head up, ears closed, and try not to look at my classmates’ faces. This is how it goes around here. One wrong move, one bad rumor, one mistake, and it’s social death row.

I’m the latest to be sentenced.

Move out of the way, everyone.

Dead girl walking.

We pass the lockers and classrooms without saying a word. The school’s walls and floor are beginning to show their age—they’re grungy and tired with wrinkles and cracks, peeling paint and water damage. Poor old thing; it’s only going to get worse until our district can afford a face-lift. And
that
will come long after I graduate this spring.

In the Heights, a deteriorating high school is the least of our worries. Most people are just trying to make it, and many are hanging on by their fingernails. In an area plagued by unemployment, things like housing foreclosures, car repos, and bankruptcy are as common as grocery shopping, football practice, and church on Sunday.

And that’s only the half of it.

So far, my family’s been lucky. Dad is tenured at the community college and Mom works at a Montessori daycare, which is pretty much foolproof—bad economy or not, people
need a place to put their kids. Libby’s family hasn’t been as fortunate. Her dad lost his job a few months ago. Things must be getting tight at home because she’s always “forgetting” her lunch money, and more often than not, she’s “just not that hungry.” Not to mention she took on a job doing janitorial work at the Java House and she hates to clean. But she makes minimum wage and gets all the free coffee she can drink, so she’s not complaining.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Libby looks up at me when we get to the locker room.

“Does it matter? I have to face her sooner or later.”

I’d rather it be later.

Libby and I go to our lockers and pull out our standard-issue gym uniforms: navy shorts and white T-shirts. Tori and Natalie are just steps behind us. At the end of our row, they begin to change out of their designer clothes. Of course they wouldn’t be caught dead wearing anything from our ghetto mall or Target, so they go into the city for two-hundred-dollar jeans, trendy flats, and modest skirts that hang below their fingertips. Personally, I like Target and even a few shops at the mall. But who are we kidding? I have no one to impress.

Tori looks down our row and shudders. “Let’s get away from the dykes,” she says to Natalie. “I wouldn’t want to turn them on before class.”

And so it begins.

Tori Devlin is the head of the Christian brigade. She wears a purity ring and leads a group of dedicated wannabes we call the Tori Rollers. Tori’s dad is the mayor of our little rundown city and is currently running for a second term, so Tori’s been helping him preach family values and morality out on the campaign trail. Here at school, that means hating on anyone or anything deemed unchristianlike.

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, that means
me
.

“Keep dreaming,” Libby yells as Tori and Natalie retreat to the other row of lockers.

“Nice comeback,” I scoff.

Libby shrugs. “You know I’m not great under pressure.”

That is so not true. If there is one person you want to have by your side in a disaster-type situation, it’s Libby. In kindergarten, she helped me take care of my bloody nose after the boys bombarded me in the face with the four-square ball. Then she kicked the ball over the playground fence so they couldn’t play with it anymore. We’ve been friends ever since. Libby knows how to handle the sticky situations and she’s more loyal than a golden retriever. She is also—unfortunately—a little hotheaded.

I sigh and stretch my neck. It’s going to be a long hour.

“What?” Libby throws her arms up at me before pulling on her tee.

“Do you have to antagonize them?” I ask.

Libby’s head pops through her shirt and now that she’s looking directly at me, I can see the dark bags that hang under her eyes. “They’re the ones calling us names.”

“I know.” I bump her hip. “And, you are so
not
a dyke.”

She makes a pouty face. “No shit. Guilt by association.”

Poor Libby has been guilty by association since Saturday night, after my very public outing.

We change and walk into the gym. It’s full of ratty volleyball nets and bodies and smells like mold and sweat. The boys are bunched up in one group at the end of the room and the girls huddle in another cluster. Coach Keller stands in the middle with his clipboard, ready to choose the team captains.

I spot Emma against the gym wall and ache instantly. The pain starts in my stomach, moves to my chest and up my neck, and finds a resting place behind my left temple. Emma doesn’t notice. Her head is down as she twists the ring on her finger.

Up until Saturday, Emma and I were a couple. Maybe that’s too strong a word. We were dating. Secretly. I didn’t want it to be that way but the Heights is not exactly the place for non-traditional lifestyles. Last week, Tori and her friends came to school one morning wearing T-shirts for the Day of the Righteous. Apparently it’s some religious movement to help gay people become straight. It’s the second year they’ve done it, but this year, Mayor Devlin had the whole congregation from his church saying prayers outside the school—and then his daughter went around the halls telling everyone she suspected of being gay that they were going to hell for their sins.

Most people don’t even understand what the Day of the Righteous is all about. But that doesn’t stop them from pumping their fists, saying “Righteous, Dude,” all day long. And that includes some of the teachers.

Though Emma and I were both technically in the closet, rumors have been circulating about me for years.
Is she? Isn’t she?
The problem was, even
I
wasn’t sure.

Now it doesn’t matter if I am or not. Emma decided to out me at the Java House over the weekend. Emma works at the Java House too, and I’d always meet up with her after her shift. Saturday night was no different than any other, until this happened.

So … everyone knows.

Looking back, the whole thing seems like it was staged. I could almost hear a director’s voice in my ears …

Riley and Emma breakup scene.

And ... Action!

“Riley, not everyone is gay,” Emma yells, in front of the whole crowd, after I make my way to our booth.

“I think you’re nice and all,” she continues. “But I’m not into you that way. Please just back off.”

Everyone bursts out in laughter—at least it seems like everyone. I stand there in shock, like a bucket of cold water has been dumped on my head. I’m shivering, watching people in slow motion. Emma’s face is frozen, not giving anything away.

Then Libby sweeps in, leads me away by my arm, and tells the pack of onlookers exactly what they can do with their body parts. Thankfully, Java management isn’t around, because I’m pretty sure telling patrons to go fuck themselves would be cause for termination.

Here in the gym, Libby lifts her chin in my direction—her way of telling me to be strong. She knows I’ve been sick all day, worrying about seeing Emma again. Emma’s been MIA since it
happened. I’ve tried to get ahold of her but I’ve had no luck. There’ve been no texts, no email, no messenger pigeons. Nada. I haven’t seen her in any of our school meeting spots either.

She’s at the other end of the gym and I want to go to her, but there’s no way we can talk here—in front of everyone. She’s made that perfectly clear.

One month ago, it was the two of us having fun in this very room. Totally G-rated, but it felt like the beginning of something. Then we started meeting up for lunch, spending time at the coffee shop drinking mochas, and hiding in the bookshelves at the library sharing secrets. We talked about my plans to go to acting school.

I already have applications in at my top choices: Tisch School of the Arts at NYU, Northwestern, and the Guthrie program at the University of Minnesota. I want to be invited to the first round of artistic reviews and auditions, and that means starting early. If all of these fall through, it’s community college for me.
With my dad
. If it actually comes to that, I hope to be struck by lightning and live the rest of my days at Good Samaritan’s Home for Vegetables.

Emma, conversely, wanted to stick around the Heights once she became a vet. Her family lives in town but has some land in the country where they have a few horses and chickens. Emma would live out there if she could. She hopes to take it over one day, though I can’t fathom why she’d want to stay around here—a place where she has to hide.

Now I won’t get to know that hidden piece of her. Yet, with all that’s happened, I
feel like it’s a piece of
me
that’s missing. A piece I hadn’t even realized I’d found.

“Move in, folks,” Coach K shouts, crammed between his chosen captains—Tori and one of the jock girls. The chosen guys stand to the left.