After School Activities (2 page)

football team, which practically guaranteed you a place at the cool kids’

table. For another, and perhaps most importantly, Adam was really, really

hot. Not the hottest guy in school, of course. That honor was James P.

Hogan’s. All-star quarterback, perpetual prom king, with muscles in all

the right places, each strand of brown hair falling perfectly to frame an

exquisite face, eyes you could drown in even if you only accidentally saw

them from the edge of your vision. James P. Hogan graced the halls of

Oak Lake High with a perfect smile and a beautiful voice that could often

be heard singing between classes, entrancing. He was the undisputed king

of the school, but he was the most benevolent of rulers—no matter who

you were, whether the most vapid of cheerleaders or the weirdest of nerds,

he would happily stop to talk to you, laugh at your pathetic attempt at a

joke, say how you were the best part of the drama club’s production of

The Pirates of Penzance
, that you had the best singing voice he’d ever heard—which was hilarious: no one sang as well as James P. Hogan—and

he’d touch your arm just so as he walked away, shooting a smile over his

shoulder that could melt the heart of the straightest of men….

Sorry. I got a little carried away. Memory lane, and all that. Where

was I? Oh, right. Adam.

Adam was probably the fourth hottest guy in Oak Lake, as such

things are measured. Maybe the fifth, depending on how you feel about

overly muscular men. Don’t get me wrong, his body doesn’t scream

“steroids” or anything, but he’s definitely closer to Captain America than

Spiderman—James P. Hogan was a perfect Spiderman. Muscular without

bulging. Lithe, that’s the word. But I digress. Again.

Adam kept his blond hair short, and his eyes were as blue as the

ocean—but too hard to get lost in. Not that you’d want to, of course. On

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After School Activities

those rare occasions when he smiled, and that smile wasn’t filled with

malice, anyway, even I could feel my pulse quicken. And I
hated
that guy.

Maybe that was why I was about to do something really, really

dumb. “Adam, wait up,” I called, as we got out of Mr. Hayes’s office. He

stopped but didn’t turn around.

“What?” His face was even sourer than usual.

“What’s the matter with you today?”

He met my eyes for a split second, then looked away. “What the

fuck are you talking about, faggot?”

“That, right there! That’s the second time you’ve called me a faggot

today. You usually put a lot more effort into this. You’ll call me an anal

excavator, or a rubber-wristed waste of space—you once called me Puck

the Flying Fairy Fuck, which I’m
still
impressed with. Your insults used to be
Shakespearian
, man! But this? It’s just lazy. It gives me nothing to work with. This hatred of ours is a two-way street, man. You have to give

a little to get a little. I should have to struggle to think of a clever-enough comeback. I mean, I never will ’cause I’m amazing and you’re an idiot—

but I
should
. You usually only resort to dropping ‘faggot’ when you’re too mad to come up with anything else. So I ask again, what’s
wrong
with you today?”

“Seriously? You got me detention and you wonder if I’m too angry

to play your stupid little games? I’m going to have to miss football

practice, again. Coach is gonna be pissed, again….”

“You should have thought before you practiced your tackle on me

this morning.” I couldn’t help it. Adam drew sarcastic comments out of

me entirely against my will. But I regretted it pretty much immediately.

Whatever he said, it was obvious Adam got just as much into our insult

battles as I did. Something was definitely up, and my snide comments

weren’t gonna help anything. “Listen, if there’s anything I can, I dunno,

do….”

“Yeah,” Adam snapped back at me. “You can go die in a fire.”

Well. I don’t know what I was expecting, exactly. Just then the bell

rang. First period was over. I put Adam out of my mind and headed to

class.

5

Dirk Hunter

I MADE it to biology seconds after the bell rang. I still hadn’t even been to my locker that morning, and it was on the opposite side of the school.

Luckily, my two best friends had saved me a spot at our lab table in the

back corner of the classroom. Waving apologetically to Mrs. Webster—a

master of the disapproving stare, by the way, and today was no

exception—I made my way over to my friends.

Kai leaned in as I sat down. “Let me guess. Another date with Adam

and Mr. Hayes?”

I smiled. “Hooray Tuesdays.”

“You provoked him again, didn’t you?” Melanie whispered from the

other side of Kai.

“Why is everyone accusing me of that today? I don’t provoke. He’s

just an asshole.” Mel gave me an “if you say so” look. “Anyway, thanks

for saving me a seat.”

“No problem. Mel wanted to give your seat to Kyle.” He grinned at

her. Mel chuckled but didn’t look his way. “I remember things

differently,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, pretending like she

was listening to Mrs. Webster.

“Her exact words,” he said, turning back to me, “were ‘wouldn’t it

be hilarious if Dylan were trapped with half the cheer squad?’ She

sounded pretty sadistic too.”

“Yeah, ’cause that doesn’t sound like something you would say at

all….”

I smiled, listening to my friends bicker. They’d been this way pretty

much the instant Mel moved to Oak Lake in the fifth grade, arguing and

teasing. Malachi and Melanie, Mal and Mel everyone called them. Except

for me, of course. I’d shortened Malachi’s name to Kai ever since the day

I met him in kindergarten. “At least spell it C-H-I,” he’d say every time I

wrote his name. “Um, your name’s not Chi,” I’d say, and Mel would

chime in that actually “chi” is spelled “qi,” and she’d write out the

Chinese character for it, as if that proved anything, and things would

quickly devolve from there. It was our favorite argument.

Kai insisted he always knew I was gay, right from that very first day.

He said it was ’cause I insisted on doing everything differently from

everyone else, right down to which part of his name to call him. It was

probably bullshit, of course—we didn’t even know what gay
was
back

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After School Activities

then—but I kind of liked the idea; Kai had always known me better than

anyone else, almost as well as I knew myself.

Come to think of it, Adam once said he knew I was gay in

kindergarten too, ’cause I “pranced like a fairy,” which was definitely

bullshit. I rarely pranced.

“Hey, Dylan! You gonna sit there and take that?” Kai said, nudging

me with his elbow.

“What?”

“Mel here is blaming your fight with Adam this morning on you

redheads all having fiery tempers.” Of course, making fun of my red hair

was Kai’s favorite pastime, not Mel’s. She punched him in the side, her

favorite way of saying “nope.”

“Oh, sorry, I…” was dwelling on Adam, I realized. I know, I said I’d

put him out of my mind, but it turned out to be easier said than done. It

kept worrying away at me, and the more I thought about it, the more I

became convinced something weird was going on. He’d never really

seemed sullen before. Maybe I was just upset he’d called me a faggot

twice. Not my favorite word, and ugh, I’d used it myself at least as many

times today because of him. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was

something more going on and, worse, that it meant I might have to give

the guy a break for a while. Which was
not
going to be fun. What else was I supposed to do during school if not bait the bully? Learn? Hardly.

But I couldn’t tell Kai any of that. How do you explain to your best

friend that you weren’t listening to him ’cause you were thinking about

your worst enemy? Plus, though Kai would never have admitted it, he

tended to get more than a little jealous. He even got a little mad when I

first started hanging out with Mel, and they had been friends first. If

anyone should have been jealous in that situation, it should have been me.

“…I was trying to pay attention to Mrs. Webster.” I finally landed on

a good-enough excuse. “You know, there’s a test on Friday.”

Kai did not seem convinced. He gave me a look that promised I’d

be hearing about this later. Even Mel turned to give me an incredulous

stare, completely abandoning all pretense of paying attention. They knew

something was up. I could feel my face flush. I felt kinda guilty about

lying, but what was I supposed to tell them? I didn’t really know what

was going on myself. Just when it felt like I couldn’t take their scrutiny

7

Dirk Hunter

for another second, the attendance sheet was passed to me, breaking the

tension. I wrote all our names to sign us in.

“Oh come on, Dylan. At least spell it C-H-I.”

8

After School Activities

CHAPTER TWO

MY VOW to lay off Adam didn’t even last the week. In my defense, he

was totally asking for it. That Wednesday I noticed that new kid I had

rescued across the lunchroom, spaghetti-filled tray in hand, making his

way over to a table full of other little freshmen. I pointed him out to Mel

and Kai—by this time, I had told them about my encounter Tuesday

morning.

“It’s nice to see he’s made some friends,” Mel said. “Being the new

kid can be rough.”

“Especially when Adam is throwing your welcome-to-the-school

party,” Kai quipped. “Speak of the devil….”

Not quite halfway to his destination, the new kid was stopped by a

blockade of jocks, Adam in the lead. The kid looked to his friends for

support, but they all stared back at him helplessly. No way were they

going to draw the wrath of any junior, much less the most notorious

bullies in the school. It was four on one, and I itched to even the odds.

“Don’t get involved, Dylan. Mr. Hayes is gonna flip if you get sent

in twice in a week. And you’ll be the one getting detention this time. Let

one of the teachers stop Adam,” Mel said.

But neither of the teachers set to watch over the lunchroom seemed to

notice. They were caught up in some discussion, oblivious to the plight of

the underclassmen. As usual. Kai raised an eyebrow, obviously expecting

me to step up and put Adam in his place.

“You’re right, Mel,” I mumbled dejectedly into my food. Kai nearly

choked in surprise.

So I sat and watched, getting angrier and angrier with each malicious

laugh that floated across the lunchroom. Mel kept trying to engage me in

conversation but eventually quit, probably tired of me answering in grunts

and monosyllables. Kai occasionally gave me sidelong looks, as if

wondering who I was and what I’d done with the Dylan he knew. But he

didn’t say anything, which was probably for the best; the angrier I got the

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Dirk Hunter

more likely it became that I’d accidentally snap at my best friend. It was

probably only five minutes that I sat and watched, but it felt like an hour,

and by the end of it, I was seething with rage.

See, I really felt for that kid.

In elementary school, I was often the victim of the older kids’ desire

to exert dominance, prove their masculinity, impress the equally small-

minded ladies, or whatever their bullshit reason was. When Adam had

joined in, I thought I would die. It was one thing to avoid kids a few

grades above me, but Adam was around every minute of the day. I’d sit

there, trying to hide my tears from everyone, even Kai, until one day I just

snapped. I remembered it perfectly: I was in the third grade and we were

outside for recess. The fifth graders’ recess overlapped ours by about ten

minutes, and every day those ten minutes were my personal hell. But this

one day, I was cornered by the usual trio of bullies—shoving me, calling

me a wimp, a fairy boy, a ginger freak—and I lost it. I turned to the

shortest of the three—still taller than me, I might add—and let loose. Not

with my fists, but with my
words
.

Years of pent-up aggression flowed out of me as I insulted his face,

his intelligence, his family, anything that crossed my mind to use against

this demon who’d tormented me for so long. I finally finished by saying

that the only reason he liked to pick on me so much was because he just

wanted to suck my tiny, third-grader dick. He turned bright red. It was

awesome. And to my surprise, the other two started laughing. Hysterically.

After a minute, so did the kid I’d just finished berating. From then on, it

became less bullying and more a game: they’d insult me, I’d insult them,

and the shoving stopped. And usually, I won. Best of all, I’d finally found

a way to fight back against Adam without having to, you know, fight—

Adam had always been much bigger than me.

Ever since then I’d made it my personal mission to get between a

bully and his victim. I’d disarm them with wit, charm, and no small

amount of humor. More often than not, they’d end up liking me in the

end and give up the bullying, at least while I was around. So now,