151 Days (2 page)

Sammy shrugged. “I looked alliances up before winter break. I didn’t think we could ever start one here. But that was before….” Her voice trailed off, and she looked out over the quad.

“We couldn’t have,” Kyle agreed. I looked at him and could see he was excited. “But I think we can force them to make one.” I realized what I had thought was excitement was really determination lighting his eyes.

“You’re talking about the emergency school board meeting this week, right?” I asked. He nodded, and I instantly sighed. “Dude, have you forgotten the last time we tried to go to one of those?”

He just smiled back at me and said, “Yeah, but this time
we’re
not going.”

That was when I knew the school board was not going to be ready for him, not this time.

His idea was to go to Mrs. Axeworthy and ask her to help.

Now, I don’t know about yours, but it seems like every school always had one teacher who was just… weird. I was going to say off the beaten path, but off doesn’t really cover it for Mrs. Axeworthy. She’s one of those teachers who never let the class get boring or just went on about the same stuff day after day. She always tried new things, like having class in the quad, or going on field trips to First Street. One time she made us write a song about Foster and its history. Like I said, in her case weird wasn’t a bad thing
.
Mrs. Axeworthy knew she was weird, and I think she liked it that way.

She had talked to Kyle after the last school board thing. From what he said, she had been out on a family emergency or something, so she didn’t find out until after, but she wanted to let him know she was on our side. I never knew what
on our side
meant, but at least it wasn’t actively against us like most everyone else. I’m going to be honest and say I had almost forgotten she existed until Kyle brought her up again in his plan.

This gay-straight thing had to have a teacher to run it or the school wouldn’t recognize it, and since most of the teachers at the school were barely tolerating us, I didn’t think asking them to volunteer would be a great idea. But Mrs. Axeworthy had said she was on our side, and Kyle thought that meant something. I silently hoped he was right.

Part of Mrs. Axeworthy’s weirdness was her wearing a black cat pin on her blouse every day. However, that afternoon, when we walked into her office, I realized we had not even begun to scratch the weird surface. She collected black cat things. Stuffed animals, pictures, mugs, anything that had a black cat on it seemed to have ended up in her office. I mean, sure, on the weirdness scale, black-cat-thing collecting was way low, but the idea of something like black-cat-thing collecting made me nervous. “Weird” meant “unpredictable” in my mind. Things I couldn’t predict always made me nervous, doubly so where Kyle was concerned.

She greeted Kyle like they were old friends and then stood up when she saw me. “You must be Brad,” she exclaimed. “I’ve heard a lot about you!” She looked like she was about to hug me, but then she stopped and held out her hand. It was odd, but I could swear I saw her glance at her door for a second.

I looked and Kyle nodded. He’d seen it too.

“Pleasure to meet you,” I said, trying not to sound confused.

“I came to ask you a question.” Kyle went straight to the point once she sat back down.

“Well, that sounds serious,” she replied, gesturing at the chairs across from her.

I wanted to stand, but then I would have looked like some kind of secret service agent, so I sat down next to Kyle.

“Have you heard of a gay-straight alliance?”

She smiled, but the expression didn’t seem very genuine. “Why do you ask?”

I saw Kyle pause. He hadn’t been expecting that question at all. “Um, I was thinking that we could use one here at school.”

Most adults are pretty good at hiding what they’re feeling. Case in point: my dad could be plotting how to kill me and hide the body undetected, and the smile on his face wouldn’t waver an inch. Mrs. Axeworthy was not one of those people. Her expression went from fake smile to nervous to almost paranoid as she glanced at the door. She walked over to it and opened it all the way, toeing the doorstop hard so it couldn’t close by accident. “That’s an interesting idea,” she replied, but her voice made the word sound like it was anything but interesting.

“Do you think you can help us?” Kyle asked.

She visibly paused.

“I mean, if you want to,” Kyle added, mentally backtracking. “It was just a thought.”

“No, it’s okay,” she said, sitting down again. “I am glad you asked me, but I’m afraid I can’t be of much help.”

I saw Kyle’s hopes deflate slightly around him.

“Why?” I asked, not really caring if this was a difficult subject for her or not.

She looked at me, and I could see a sadness in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. Seeing a teacher like a real person is weird, but my friendship with Tyler has taught me that grown-ups don’t know that much more than kids do. They just hide things better. “It’s a long story, and I’m afraid I am not at liberty to share it.” She paused and studied her desktop for a moment.

“You don’t have to tell us if you don’t want to,” Kyle assured her.

She gave him a sad smile. “It’s not that I don’t want to, Kyle.” Without knowing it, she’d picked up a pen shaped like a seated cat and started to doodle on a blank piece of paper.

“It’s that you can’t?” I threw out since she wasn’t saying anything.

She just looked at me silently.

“Mrs. Axeworthy, you can trust us.” Kyle reached across the desktop and put his hand on hers. She sat up a little straighter, eyes widening very slightly.

Then she patted his hand with her free one before gently lifting his hand away and pulling hers clear. At first I couldn’t understand, and then it hit me: if someone saw….

“You got in trouble,” I blurted out.

“I wish I could help you, but I can’t,” she stated quietly, not contradicting me. She stood up, ending the meeting.

Kyle got up after her, confused at what was going on.

“I hope you find someone who can help you,” she added earnestly.

“It’s cool, Mrs. A,” I said, standing up. “We’ll just keep trying.”

“We will?” Kyle asked me, half stunned.

I smiled and gave him a nod. “Damn right we will.”

“Thanks for talking with us,” I continued, since Kyle’s big brain was too busy thinking to give him the cue that he should actually talk. She gave me a grateful smile as we walked out. “So what’s plan B?” I asked Kyle.

He gave me an odd look. “You tell me. She was my only idea.”

“Have to be other teachers out there who will help.”

He stopped walking. “You’re pretty gung ho about something you didn’t even know word one about an hour ago.” He wasn’t mad, but he was curious.

I knew what he meant, so I stopped walking. “Look, you think this is important, so it is important. I didn’t do a thing to help you with Kelly, and that was a mistake, one I am not making again.” My voice cracked, as it usually did when I brought up Kelly. No one but Kyle had seen the danger in what was happening to him. I had sworn to myself that I wouldn’t let him be the only one again.

I didn’t tell him, but I wasn’t going to give up on this. So after school, I went with plan B.

“Me?” Tyler paused and looked at me for a second. I nodded as I pulled another handful of Dallas Cowboys towels out of a box and began to place them on the shelves. “But I’m not a teacher. How can I do it?”

“Well, you’re not a teacher yet, but I bet if you asked Coach Gunn, he would sign you up as an assistant coach or something. I mean, you’ve played college ball—that kind of experience has to be worth something.”

“Well, it was barely one year of college ball, and it does count for something. Not enough to get me a degree in education or sports management, which I would need to be an assistant coach.” I could tell by the tone in his voice he thought I was only half-serious.

That was his mistake.

“But how many credits are you shy an associate’s? I bet if you started at community college, Gunn would hire you on in a second.”

He paused what he was doing and looked over at me seriously. “Now you have me going back to school? And who will be taking care of the store between me going to school and coaching?”

Hmmm, I hadn’t thought that far ahead.

“What about Matt?” I offered. Tyler and Matt had been dating since New Year’s, and though it wasn’t serious, I thought it would be enough to ask Matt to hold down the store while Tyler came to school and made everything better somehow.

He laughed and shook his head. “One, he has a job. Two, I don’t want to be a coach. And three, you know, even if I did do all of that, there’s still a huge chance that they’d say no.”

Sighing, I nodded and kept putting the towels away. “I know, but Kyle wants this so bad, and I feel fucking useless.”

“You’re not useless,” Tyler assured me. “It just means it’s going to take a little more thinking is all.”

“Like I said,” I muttered, tossing the last of the towels on the shelf, “useless.”

When it came to thinking, I was a bit out of my comfort zone. After all, my claim to fame was being able to hit a little white ball 205 feet over the back fence more often than most guys. There wasn’t a lot of thinking in that job. But I wasn’t going to let Kyle down again.

“You do know just being there for him is enough, right?”

I tried not to look at him like a complete idiot, but I’m pretty sure I screwed that up. “You do know that sooner or later he is going to realize he’s been doing all this on his own and find someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time?”

He gave me that sympathetic face that adults give when they are lying their asses off. “You’re not dumb, Brad.”

“This is coming from a guy who is, like, fortysomething and is just
now
dating his first serious boyfriend?”

He shot me a look and asked, “What does that have to do with anything?”

I shook my head and slapped a set of golf tees on the shelf. “It means you might not be the best guy to judge if other people are smart or not.”

He crumpled up the piece of paper he had been going over and threw it at me, but he didn’t disagree with me. Suddenly his expression changed.

“You know, I heard of a club like that back when I was your age.”

I tried not to gape at him. “What? Where?”

“There were rumors there was some gay club at Foster. I mean, it could have just been talk. You know how bad the two schools talk about each other behind their backs. For all I knew, Granada said there was a dungeon under Foster where we locked up anyone who dared to root for the wrong team or something. I just remember hearing that there was supposed to be a gay club at Foster and that it ended up getting shut down, and someone almost got fired. I wouldn’t even remember, but at the time I was scared that my name would somehow get attached to it because I was curious to go see what it was about.”

That sounded crazy even for this town, but Tyler wouldn’t make something like that
up.

T
HE
NEXT
day there was no practice, a sure sign the faculty didn’t think we were over Kelly’s death yet. Kyle was out somewhere with Jennifer, which meant when I was done at Tyler’s, I had some time to myself.

Time for Plan C.

I sat in my car for about ten minutes trying to think of a better Plan C than the one I had, but nothing came to mind. There were so many reasons I did not want to have to rely on Plan C. Then I thought of Kyle busting his ass for the rest of us and told myself to suck it up.

I drove up First Street and turned onto East Avenue like I was going to Kyle’s house. Maybe I could just go to Kyle’s house… no, I couldn’t….

I stopped a couple of blocks up and pulled in to the parking lot for Twice Upon a Time.

Robbie was a person I’d barely ever talked to, but for some reason, I didn’t like him.

I had “met” him when I was dating Jennifer, since she practically lived at his shop. Robbie was loud, flamboyant, and above all else, stereotypically “gay.” I admit it was a shitty attitude to have, but guys who didn’t act like guys drove me fucking crazy.

He had made a few smart-ass comments about me when I’d come into the store with Jennifer. I hadn’t really heard them because I was too busy biting the inside of my cheek to stop myself from saying something ugly about him and his place.

Sighing, I got out of my car and walked inside. Some show tune garbage being blasted at a speaker-shattering level smashed into my eardrums the minute I opened the door. Robbie’s back was to me, and his concentration was focused on the rack of clothes he was sorting. I didn’t even think he heard me come in. I called his name, but the music drowned me out. I took a deep breath and roared, “
Hey
!”

He let out half a shriek and spun around to face me, brandishing the blue plastic hanger he clutched like a sword. “What the fuck!” he yelled at me. “Who just yells at people?”

I pointed upward to the speakers. “It helps if you can hear people trying to talk to you.”

He pulled a remote out of his pocket and lowered the music. “Kyle isn’t here,” he said, stuffing it back into his pocket.

I opened my mouth to say something but paused. “I know. Why would you think I was here looking for him?”

He put the hanger up and moved toward the counter. “Well, in the entire time I’ve owned this place, you’ve been in three times. Twice with Jennifer, during which you gave me dirty looks the entire time, and once to pick up Kyle, during which you barely acknowledged my existence. I don’t see your ex-girlfriend dragging you in here, which leaves your boyfriend. Who isn’t here,” he added.

“I know he isn’t here,” I snapped at him. “I know where my boyfriend is.” I have no idea why I said that, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Well, bully for you,” he said, sitting down behind the counter. “So now what? You pledging a frat or something? Because I know for a fact there is no way you would ever wear anything that was second hand.”