We Are All Made of Molecules (22 page)

IF MY LIFE WAS
a movie, I'd toss out all the footage from the past couple of months and do a major rewrite. Jared wouldn't even have a part. Then we'd do a reshoot, and the movie would be much more uplifting.

But my life isn't a movie. Jared was in the hallway with Lauren, and he was very real. I wanted to turn around and walk back out the front doors of the school, but I knew it would only make things worse. I couldn't avoid them, or school, forever. So I kept on going. Heads turned in my direction, and not in a good way.

Lauren looked nervous when she spotted me. But she also looked like she had won the lottery. How could I tell her that she'd actually won the booby prize?

“Hey, Ashley,” Jared said as they passed by. “Great New Year's party.”

“Is it true your dad's—well—
you know
?” Lauren said.

“Gay? Yes, he is.” Then I screwed up my courage. “I believe the word Jared would use is
faggot
.”

He laughed. “You said it, not me.” Then he turned away to talk to one of his teammates.

I took the opportunity to grab Lauren's arm. “Be careful, okay? He's a real creep.”

She glared at me. “You expect me to believe a word that comes out of your mouth? You've been a total bitch to me since seventh grade. I don't want anything to do with you anymore.” Her words were like a slap across my face.

Jared returned and draped his arm around her shoulder. Then he looked at my chest and said, “I see you're wearing your gel bra.”

I wanted to kill him. I wanted to strangle him and punch him and tear out his heart all at once.

But I didn't. I couldn't even think of a comeback. Worst of all, I felt my face go super-hot, and I knew I was twenty shades of red.

I walked away. I could hear them laughing behind me.

The same thought kept running through my head:
Stewart is right. I am a coward
.

—

THE DAY DIDN'T GET
any better. Everyone stared at me wherever I went. Word of the party had spread, and also the news that my dad is gay. But, of course, the biggest, juiciest
gossip was the fact that Jared and I were no longer an item, and that Jared and my ex—best friend were.

Every time someone whispered or giggled or stared as I walked past, I couldn't help but wonder,
Are you the one who puked in our living room? Are you the guy who punched the hole in the wall? Are you the one who stole my mom's iPad?
It wasn't a nice feeling.

Worse still, a lot of my so-called friends avoided me. Yoko, Lindsay, and Amira had clearly chosen Team Lauren and wouldn't even say hi. I had been knocked down quite a few steps on the Social Ladder. I admit: It hurt. Big-time.

The moment the bell rang at three o'clock, I headed home.

So it wasn't till later that night that I found out what Stewart had done. And that it had got him suspended.

MY FIRST DAY BACK
at school after the holidays wasn't much fun, although from what I could see, it wasn't as bad as Ashley's. Phoebe and Violet were super-kind to me and hung out with me at lunch, which I appreciated. And my fellow Mathletes made a point of being nice to me, too.

I was about to head home right after school when Mr. Stellar spotted me. “Where do you think you're going? We have a game!”

I'd completely forgotten. I dragged myself to the change room and got into the mascot costume. In the gym, I stood as far away from Jared as I could.

At halftime I started to run out onto the court when someone tripped me from behind. I went flying face-first onto the floor. Lucky for me there's a lot of padding in the
head of the costume, and I wasn't hurt. Behind me, I could hear Mr. Stellar yelling at Jared, who kept saying, “But, Coach, it was an accident!”

When I had finished my routine, I ran back to the sidelines. A voice beside me said, “You owe me four hundred bucks for the phone.” I had no peripheral vision, but I knew who it was.

“Screw you.”

“You know,” he said, lowering his voice, “I came this close to getting a nice close-up shot of your sister's—”

The buzzer went off to indicate the start of the third quarter, drowning Jared out. He trotted onto the court and started to play.

I was so angry I was seeing red.

I was so angry that all rational thoughts left my head.

I was so angry that none of my Model UN training was going to help me now.

There would be no negotiating. There would be no bargaining. There would be no compromising.

This was war.

I was working on pure fury when I ran onto the court and plowed my dog-head into Jared's stomach. I was working on pure fury when, before he had a chance to stand up straight, I ran behind him and pulled his gym shorts, along with his underwear, down to his ankles.

Even without peripheral vision, I got a good view of the look on his face, and it was priceless.

For once in his life, he looked
vulnerable
.

I know I should have been ashamed of myself, stooping to his level, but I wasn't. Kind of like when my mom had
thrown stones at Cedric, I was happy to give him a small taste of his own medicine.

The crowd erupted into a mixture of gasps and laughter. I pumped my dog-fists into the air. Jared started to pull up his shorts. I knew I had mere seconds before he started to chase me.

So I ran off the court.

“You're a dead man, Stewie!” I heard.

“It's
Stewart
!” I yelled. Then I took off through the gym doors and ran all the way home.

WHEN I GOT THE
full story later that night, I just about fell over. I knew what Stewart had done was wrong. But I also knew he'd been defending my honor, and it made me almost proud to have him in our family.

Mom and Leonard met with the principal the next day and told her everything that had happened leading up to the gym incident.
Everything
. I spoke to her, too. She was sympathetic, and she mentioned that they knew a lot about Jared's bad behavior. She even promised that she'd personally keep an eye on him. But without any concrete proof, she couldn't do much. And she wouldn't lift Stewart's weeklong suspension. She said what he'd done was still way out of line, and she had to set an example.

If I am one hundred percent totally honest, I was almost jealous of him. I would have loved an excuse to not go to school for a week, because it was
no fun at all
.

Tuesday was even worse than Monday. Wednesday stank, too.

But then, on Thursday, a weird thing happened. For every kid who ignored me, another kid made a point of talking to me. They weren't, like, top-rung types, but I was grateful anyway.

At lunchtime on Thursday, I was sitting by myself in the cafeteria for the fourth day in a row when Claudia sat across from me. She was joined by Phoebe and Violet (ever since they helped us clean up on New Year's Day, I've decided I should call them by their real names).

“We heard about what happened to your dad's house,” Phoebe said.

“We're really sorry. That's awful,” Violet added.

I couldn't believe it. They were being nice to me even though I had not been very nice to them.

Then Claudia said, “I think it's so cool that your dad is gay. It's so…twenty-first-century. Very cutting-edge.”

I smiled. I hadn't thought of it that way before.

A few more kids joined us, including some people Lauren and I had labeled as Tragics. There was Larry, who we'd nicknamed Lardy. One girl, I think her name was Melanie, told me, “I have two moms.”

A boy in tenth grade, Jeff, also joined us. I recognized him from home ec; he's amazing with a sewing machine. He was joined by the kid who runs the LGBT club, Sam.

“You should come to an LGBT meeting sometime,” Sam said.

“But I'm not gay. Or lesbian, or bi, or transatlantic.”

Sam smirked. “I think you mean
transgender
.”

Melanie piped up. “It doesn't matter. We open up meetings sometimes to kids with gay parents or siblings or friends, too, as a safe place to talk and ask questions.”

“Thanks.”

Then Phoebe said, “We need to talk about Stewart.”

And that was when I clued in. For Phoebe and Violet, at least, it was their loyalty to Stewart that had made them come sit with me. It was kind of a punch in the gut to realize that my sort-of-stepbrother—who'd only been at Borden for a few months—had better friends than me.

“We're worried that Jared's going to try to get revenge when Stewart comes back to school,” Phoebe said.

“So am I,” I admitted. “It took me a long time to figure out that he is
not
a nice person.”

“Yeah,” said Violet. “Longer than it should have.”

“He trips me in the hall all the time,” said Sam.

“He shouted ‘beached whale' at me on a crowded bus one day,” said Larry. I shook my head in sympathy. Maybe I could find a nice way to lend him my copy of
The South Beach Diet
.

Everyone started to tell stories about how and when Jared had been a jerk to them. I even told them what he'd done to me on New Year's Eve, minus the gorier details. It felt good to be able to talk about it.

“We all know this guy's a creep. So why do we feel so
powerless when there are so many of us, and only one of him?” Phoebe asked.

“Imagine if we could have protection squads,” Larry said. “Like some of the characters have on
Game of Thrones
.”

“That would be so cool,” said Sam wistfully.

Then the bell rang, and we all split up for afternoon classes.

But during math and home ec, my mind wandered.

Larry had given me an idea.