After School Activities (12 page)

“Thanks, Dad. I will.”

WHEN MEL finally burst through my cocoon of self-pity, I had barely

left my room for four days. She practically beat down my door, dragged

me from the protective warmth of my blankets, literally kicking and

screaming, with one hand grabbing my wrist, the other with a fistful of

hair, and forced me to take my first shower all week, ignoring my

protestations the entire way. She shoved me in the bathtub, still

completely clothed, and turned on the water, drenching me.

“I assume you can do the rest?”

I sputtered under the cold water, still trying to come to terms with what

was happening. Seconds ago I had been so warm and cozy! But Mel didn’t

wait for an answer. She left, slammed the bathroom door behind her. So I

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After School Activities

peeled off my soaked pajama bottoms, turned up the temperature of the

water, and did as I was told.

It actually felt really good to get clean. There’s a certain trajectory to

ignoring all aspects of your personal hygiene. First, you feel all gross.

Sweaty, greasy, dirty, all of it. But by the end of day two, that passes, and this slimy swamp monster, as you have suddenly found yourself, becomes

the new normal. Before long, you begin to resent the very idea of getting

clean, and shedding this second skin you’ve so carefully developed,

because it might mean you have to go back to being who you were, and

you’re in no way ready to do that.

But as the swamp monster crumbled away, and I felt more and more

like a person again, everything seemed a little better. Sure, my life had

suddenly fallen into shambles. Adam would probably never talk to me

again, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to face Kai, if ever. But now that I was clean, I felt like I could face the world again.

Well, almost.

When I got back to my room, towel wrapped around my waist, I

found that Mel had made herself busy. She’d cleaned up the days’ worth

of dishes I’d left piled on my floor, changed the sheets on my bed, opened

the shades on my windows. She had even laid out clean clothes on my bed

for me to get dressed.

“I knew my best friend was hiding somewhere under all that grease

and body odor,” Mel quipped as I walked in. She was sitting at my desk,

idly paging through one of my books. She turned her back to me, giving

me some privacy to change.

“How did you get in?” I asked as I pulled on my clothes.

“Your mom texted me. Said it was about time someone pulled you

out of your funk.” She gestured at my suddenly tidied room “What, did

you think
I
did all this for you? I mean, I like you, but come on.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t even realized my mom was home, though that might

have had something to do with my adamant refusal to let them near me for

the past few days. “Okay, I’m dressed.” I dropped back down onto my

bed, but refrained from crawling under the covers. To be honest, I was a

little afraid of what Mel might try next, if she thought I was about to undo

all her hard work dragging me out in the first place.

Mel closed the book and turned the chair to face me. “Good. Now

talk.”

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Dirk Hunter

I avoided her eyes. “About what?” I asked with exaggerated

innocence.

“Fine. Be that way. I’ll just have to make a few guesses about what

has been going on lately.” Yeah, right. Like she could possibly…. “First,

you and Malachi have been getting sexy, to some degree or other, until

about three weeks ago when I’m going to say it was you who called it off.

Possibly because Adam found out and got jealous. How am I doing so

far?” Okay, what was it about me that everyone could apparently see

completely through? Do I have any secrets at all? Am I actually an open

book for anyone to read at their leisure?

“I take it from the look on your face I was pretty close. So let’s see,

you stopped talking to me because you’re an idiot, you’ve been trying to

get Adam to talk to you at school ’cause, again, you’re an idiot, and went

ahead and got yourself suspended. Like an idiot.”

“How did you know?”

Mel muttered “idiot” under her breath. “Dylan, I pay attention. I

know you only got into drama club because you went through an ‘am I

gay enough’ phase and decided you needed to do a musical, and Malachi

followed you like the little lost puppy he is. But theater is what I actually want to do with my life. I pay attention to people, how they behave, why

they behave that way. So when you and Kai started acting like you had

this giant secret no one could ever find out while simultaneously being

very careful not to accidentally touch in public, ever, it wasn’t much of a

mental workout to figure out what was going on. And then there was the

sudden transformation of Adam, from bully to buddy, not to mention the

covert looks he kept casting your way when he thought you weren’t

looking. Plus there was the time—”

“Okay, okay! I get it!”

“Good. Now that we’ve established that you can’t hide anything

from me, ever, why don’t you actually tell me what’s been going on? At

the very least you’ll feel better.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Yeah, ’cause keeping it in has been working so well.”

I sighed. She was right, of course. “Okay, fine. So, um, remember

that day I got punched in the face?” She nodded. “Well, that’s when Adam

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After School Activities

and I started to be… well, friends, I guess. Which made Kai all kinds of

jealous….”

I recounted the entire story, right up to my brief interaction with

Adam before I got suspended. Mel listened quietly to the whole story,

occasionally asking a question or two. I told her everything. Well,

maybe I glossed over a little bit of the sexy-time details, but that didn’t

seem entirely appropriate. When I finally finished, over an hour later,

she sat there silently for a minute, absorbing.

“So, what are you going to do?” she finally asked.

“What can I do? I mean, I can’t talk to him. It’s still too weird. I

know he’s my best friend, but that’s exactly why I have to….”

“Malachi’s fine where he is. He knows you need space. I meant

about Adam.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip, thinking. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t even talk to

me.” “Did you apologize?”

“Of course I… wait, no. I just said that he didn’t understand.”

Suddenly I got really angry. “And why should I apologize? It’s not

like I did anything wrong! Kai and I had been fooling around for

weeks before Adam snuck into my bedroom. What’s more, Adam has

spent his whole life trying to make mine miserable. Am I supposed to

just magically forgive him for all of that, be whatever it is he wants

me to be? Fuck that. All we did was fool around one night. What did

he want, to be my boyfriend? No, he wanted me to be his secret fling,

to use at his leisure. So why should I apologize? It’s not like I

promised anything anyway.” My excuses were starting to sound

hollow even to my ears.

Mel was giving me a very flat look. “Okay. I’m going to ignore, like,

half of the idiocy you just spouted. So I’ll skip right to the point. You

don’t apologize to people because they are right and you aren’t. You

apologize to people because you hurt them. Whether you meant to or not.

Regardless of whether you think you did anything wrong. That’s called

respecting other people’s feelings, AKA not being a douchebag. No

wonder you couldn’t get Adam to talk to you. What did you think, that

you’d only have to say ‘it didn’t count ’cause he’s, like, ninety percent

straight’ and Adam would heave a sigh of relief and you two could skip

off into the sunset?”

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Dirk Hunter

“That kind of is what I said.”

“Did it work?” Mel asked. I shook my head. “Look,” she continued,

“I’m not saying you
have
to apologize to Adam. Honestly, you sort of had a point. He has been your bully forever. But if that’s your tactic, that you

don’t care because he used to be mean, you really should think twice about

moping around your room all day. One might think you actually do care.

A lot. A casual observer might, for example, come to the conclusion that

you’re lying to yourself, because you don’t want to swallow your pride,

admit you fucked up, pun intended, and take some responsibility for your

actions.”

“Okay, fine. Let’s say I do that. Then what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What I mean is, what happens next? Do I go back to being a dirty

little secret? I mean, what even
am
I to Adam? It’s not like he’ll come out for me. He won’t even be
friends
with me. You’ve seen how he acts

around Will Davis, even since we’ve started hanging out. Wouldn’t I have

just been better off sticking with Kai? At least with him I know where I

stand.”

“Listen, you need to get Malachi out of your mind. One day he’ll

find happiness in some bisexual polyamorous relationship, but until

then he’s just going to chase all the sexual satisfaction he can find. Is

that really what you want to get involved in?” It wasn’t. I want the

sappy, “run off into the sunset” kind of romance, and she knew that

perfectly well. “I know it’s not what
I
want. Why do you think I’ve

resisted his numerous advances? You’re right. Maybe Adam won’t

come out for you. Maybe all you’ll ever be is his shameful secret. The

real question is, are you willing to take that risk?”

“I don’t know.” I looked over at Mel, realized I was scared. “What if

he doesn’t actually like me? What if I’m only convenient—the only gay

guy he knows?”

Mel shrugged. “You know him better than I. But really, only he can

answer that question. Now would you look at the time! I really must be

going.”

“You’re leaving?” I asked, “Just like that?”

She paused at the door to my room. “Listen, some of us weren’t

suspended for heartbreak histrionics, and so have school in the morning.

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After School Activities

Think about what I said, okay? In the meantime, maybe leave your room a

bit.”

THE NEXT day, I took Mel’s advice. I made it out of my room, at least as

far as the kitchen, and I thought about what she said. She was definitely

right about Kai, but I really already knew that. It’s just that throughout my life he’s always been a point of such certainty. With Adam, there was

nothing but uncertainty. It made sense that I kept coming back to feeling

like I needed to choose between the two, between the guy I’d always

wanted and the guy I never expected.

And hey, maybe the answer is neither of them. Maybe a third guy

will waltz along who is
both
something I always wanted and never

expected. Voilà, problem solved.

The doorbell rang as if in answer to my thoughts. When I opened the

door, I found standing on my front step none other than James P. Hogan,

wearing his letterman jacket and the sweatpants he always had on after he

finished football practice or a workout, the ones that always gave

tantalizing hints of what lay beneath that bulge at the crotch.

“Holy shit, I wasn’t being serious,” I said without thinking.

James P. Hogan raised an eyebrow, giving me his trademarked amused

smirk. “Um, what? I mean, hi, James.” I had to stop myself from adding the

“P. Hogan.” I had already made enough of a fool of myself, and he had only

been here for less than a minute. “What’s up?”

“I bring the gift of knowledge.” His eyes twinkled. He pulled a stack of

papers out of his bag. “By which I mean a week’s worth of homework.”

“For me? You shouldn’t have.” James laughed at the sarcasm in my

voice. “Um, you wanna come in?”

“Sure,” he said, stepping inside. He gestured at me with the papers.

“The English work is pretty self-explanatory. Mr. Cortez is on another one of his SAT-prep binges, so it’s mostly analogies. The math looks like it’s just

some simple sine/cosine nonsense. I can explain al that if you want. Your bio homework is al drawing molecules. I brought Charlotte’s answers if you

wanted to check your work. I assumed choir doesn’t have any homework, but

I guess you could sing some scales if you wanted. I never took econ so you’re 71

Dirk Hunter

on your own there.” He dropped the homework on the kitchen table and sat

down. “Wait, you got
all
of my homework?” I asked, sitting across from him.

“We only have English together.”

He shrugged. “Mr. Cortez asked if someone could bring you the

homework, and since you and Charlotte have been hanging out so much

lately, I knew where you lived, so I volunteered. Figured while I was at it, I could stop at al your other classes.”

“But how did you even know what my classes were?” I had no idea

what classes anyone took, except for Melanie and Kai.

Another shrug. “I pay attention.” He looked out the window for a

second before casual y dropping, “Adam misses you.”

I tried to sound nonchalant. “Oh. I—what?” I wasn’t very successful. “I

mean, he said that?”

James P. Hogan looked back at me. “Not in so many words. He’s

gotten real y withdrawn, ignores everybody, his friends included. A week ago