Beyond Clueless (2 page)

This is where my parents believed I would find fertile ground.

OK, so maybe there is
one
redeeming thing about the school. About ten years ago, one of its alumnae died and left a ton of money to the school—her family fortune had come from a certain well-known floor wax. She had earmarked the money to be used for a theater, which would be named
after her, Maureen Jerry. The amount of money she left was clearly more than the school had ever seen, because Jerry Hall is by far the nicest part of campus. (Completely coincidentally, Jerry Hall is also the name of rocker Mick Jagger’s second wife.)

The building is actually kind of amazing. It has fly space for at least ten different backdrops (who would ever need more than five in any one show?), and the stage is forty feet across and fifty feet deep—with, like, sixteen trapdoors! Also, the dressing room has a snack machine with Twix bars.

Speaking. Of. Which. I love Twix bars. I mean, I am
completely
obsessed with them. If the Mars candy company ever needs someone to pledge their eternal, undying love for them in a commercial, I am so there. Twix bars are truly—oh, words fail me—ambrosia from the gods! Manna from the heavens! I’ve already written Mars, Inc., more than a few letters over the years, volunteering my services, but still, if you ever hear they are looking for someone . . .

Sorry, I’m getting way off track. Where was I? Oh, yeah, so Jimmy’s settling into life at Bracksville, while I’m in rural exile. We made a pact that we would see each other at least every other day, no matter what. That lasted about five minutes after school began, until we realized how much work high school was going to be. Don’t get me started on the crazy craploads of homework I get at Our Dear Lady. I swear to God I’m going to die from sleep deprivation, and still we’re supposed to be involved in every extracurricular activity under the sun or we won’t get into college and we’ll
end up living with our parents and working at Pizza Hut for fifteen years until we finally drink a bottle of bleach to end the misery into which our lives have devolved. But I said I wouldn’t get started, so I won’t.

Anyway, our weekends became that much more important.

Then Jimmy met Derek.

The End.

F
ine, yes, there’s a lot more to it than that; still, it
was
the end of an era.

One day, only a few days after school began, Jimmy called me up, all serious, saying, “We have to talk. You need to come over.” This was very un-Jimmy-like speech. Normally, every conversation with him starts off with a scream—like, a happy scream. Then we proceed to the salutation, which usually involves calling the other person a fetching vegetable or fruit, like “you ravishing radish” or “my saucy persimmon.” So this was bad. Real bad.

Of course, I immediately assumed that he had brain cancer. Or, worse, that he was moving back to Michigan.

I threw on a hoodie and headed over to Jimmy’s house. He lives on Cottonwood Drive, and I live on Iroquois Trail, both of which are cul-de-sac streets in their own developments. In sixth grade, there was this one day when we were playing with his dad’s iPad. We tagged our houses on a satellite overview of the area. Seriously, it was like fireworks went off in our brains. We lived
way closer
than we’d ever realized! The forest behind my house was the
same one
that was behind his; we just had to work out a trail, using the iPad and a roll of pink ribbon, tying bows on trees along the
way. So, instead of a twenty-minute-long bike ride, it was just a ten-minute hike through the woods. Best day ever.

On the serious-conversation day, however, the ribbons had long since faded to gray. But whatever, even if they had fallen off, it’s not like I didn’t know the trail without them, and I arrived at Jimmy’s house in no time. He led me up to his room, all ashen and nervous, and made me sit on his bed.

“Here, take this,” he said, handing me a Twix bar. You know, like I’m some sort of zoo animal. Here, little monkey, take the pretty candy! Obviously I didn’t open it. I was afraid it contained sedatives or something. This was all very freaky. Freaky, freaky, freaky.

“Martha,” he said, “I have something to tell you. About me. It’s . . . it’s rather personal.”

And apparently “rather” formal, I thought. This whole time, Jimmy was sweating like he was doing downward-facing dog in Bikram Yoga or something. I started developing a new theory that maybe it wasn’t cancer. Maybe, instead, Jimmy’s chest would open up, and an alien baby would spring out to attack me. I fingered the strap on my book bag. Bring it on, little alien.

“I’m . . . well, I think I’m . . .” Big pause.

“Yeeesss?”

“I’m . . .”

An alien? A cannibal? Ryan Gosling’s love child?

“Holy bejeezus, Jimmy, what the hell?”

He winced. “OK, OK, hold on—I need a drink.”

He got up and grabbed an iced tea from his mini-fridge. He kept one eye trained on me as his Adam’s apple bobbed with every gulp. I twisted a lock of blond hair, wrapping it around the end of my index finger.

Finally, Jimmy regained some shred of composure, but of course by now it was clear that this announcement involved some kind of family drama. His parents were divorcing? Something with his little sister? Jimmy and I were pretty much never serious about anything, so I wasn’t sure how to handle a conversation like that.

My finger pulsed, and I realized I had wrapped my hair around it way too tightly.

Jimmy opened and closed his mouth a few times—false starts.

Then suddenly he spat out,

“Imetsomeone.

“IthinkmaybeImaylikethissomeone.

“Thissomeoneisaguy.

“I’mnotsurebutIthinkImightbegay.”

Uh, excuse me? I stared at him. Did I hear that right? Did he just say he thinks he’s gay?

Jimmy stared back at me, those blue eyes looking like Bambi’s watching his mother die.

“Uh . . . and?” I said.

Jimmy’s shoulders slumped. “What do you mean, ‘and’? I just told you I’m gay.”

“Well, of course you are. I’ve figured that since we were about ten.”

“But now it’s true.”

“I know!” What was I supposed to say? “Oh, my God! I had no idea”? But for some reason, Jimmy was getting mad.

“What do you mean, you
know
? How could you possibly know? You’re not me!”

“Jimmy, you’re the gayest kid I know. I mean, take a look around you: This isn’t exactly butch.” His eyes scanned the vintage fringed lampshade, the wall color he’d spent weeks trying to decide on (“Verona Green”), and the framed One Direction poster (the original five) over his bed.

“I . . . like baseball!” he countered, which merely got a snort-chuckle in response. “Anyway, that’s not the point,” he continued. “We’re friends, and you were supposed to believe me when I told you before that I didn’t
know
if I was gay. You don’t just draw your own conclusions and then
pretend
to believe me!”

Oh, great. Now he was in full self-righteous-indignation mode.

“So I’m supposed to completely ignore reality?” I asked. “Last time I checked, friendship is not the same thing as forced stupidity.”

“No, but while you were checking, did it say friendship meant lying?”

“I was not
lying
.”

“You were totally lying!”

“Well, so were you!”

“I was not.”

“Oh,
please
, everyone always knew you were gay. Including you, princess.”

We glared at each other for a full five seconds.

“Homophobe,” he said.

I snorted in response. “Delusional freak.”

Another glare. But then, ten seconds later, I couldn’t help it: I started to crack a smile. Then it broadened. Jimmy’s glare held out for another few seconds, but then we both started giggling, erupting finally into a release of laughter. I don’t know what it is about the two of us, but just looking at each other makes us lose our shit. That’s usually all it takes, and something clicks, and we’re back to normal.

“Come on, Jimmy, don’t make me laugh this hard. Now I have to go pee. But when I come back, I want the full report on this mysterious new stranger recruiting you to be a homosexual.”

Jimmy threw a pillow at me, but I’d already closed the door behind me.

So it turns out that with the start of a new academic year at a new school, our little Jimmy had decided it was time for some self-discovery. He took the bus into the city to check out a certain notorious gay hot spot in University Circle. I mean, this little café is actually pretty unremarkable: It has fluorescent-colored walls painted in a flower-power motif, a few comfy flea-market couches, a collection of mismatched metal, plastic, and wooden tables and chairs. But it was known for being gay-friendly, so from the way people would talk about it, you’d imagine it was Sodom and Gomorrah, or Amsterdam’s red-light district, or, I dunno, some sort of sex-crazed fever dream.

Jimmy walked by the café about six times, trying his hardest to look like he was on his way somewhere
important
, that he just
happened
to be traversing the same block every two-point-three minutes. Finally he managed to gather enough chutzpah to walk in—and immediately made a beeline to the counter to order without looking around. You know, like he was actually there for the jasmine tea.

Five minutes later, he had settled into one of the comfy couches and, at last, started breathing again. Of course, he was also pretending to read his copy of
The Age of Innocence
with a muscular intensity to avoid making eye contact with all the Gays around him (who had long ago stopped pretending to read). Then, a certain handsome fellow—later to be identified as Derek—sat down beside him and started coughing. And by “coughing” I mean “deep, phlegm-gargling hacking.” Apparently, Derek really was mostly there for the tea. How that boy managed to get bronchitis in late August continues to be a mystery.

Serendipitously, Jimmy feels the same way about Halls cough drops that I do about Twix bars—except that, tragically, because of its quasi-medicinal status, he can’t responsibly succumb to the same level of indulgence that I can. But he always carries cough drops around, just in case his throat gets scratchy. Which, amazingly, happens several times a day! (When Jimmy gets a cold, he practically throws a party.)

So a cough drop, an awkward explanation, and a conversation later, Jimmy shed the last vestiges of his heterosexual
delusion and decided that this Derek character was the cat’s pajamas.

“Well, good for you!” I told Jimmy, stretching out on his bed. “Do you have any visuals?”

A slow smile made its way across Jimmy’s face, despite his best efforts to stop it.

“You do! Lemme see!”

“You can’t laugh,” Jimmy insisted.

“I would never!”

“Oh, please. You’ve refined making fun of
me
into its own sophisticated art form,” Jimmy grumbled, but he made his way to the computer, anyway. “OK, he has a profile, but the pic he posted really doesn’t do him justice.”

In no time, I was looking at a devilishly good-looking, chiseled-jawed boy.

That’s when I felt a searing flash of envy go through me—lonely, loveless me. You know, it’s funny. Until that moment I never really thought I was missing something. But now I felt a strange, hollow sensation, perhaps of being left behind.

“Yummy. Is he Indian?”

“His parents are from Sri Lanka.”

I scanned Derek’s “favorites”:
Catcher in the Rye
, juggling, Cape Cod, postcards, blah, blah, blah.

“Huh. He certainly has an earnest profile, but does he have a sense of humor?” I caught myself: Marty, don’t be a bitch. “I mean, I’m not criticizing. You just can’t really tell from this.”

Jimmy squirmed a little. “Well . . . I wouldn’t say he’s Jimmy Fallon or anything, but he has a funny dark side that no one sees until they really get to know him. Like, snarky.”

All of a sudden I was seized with the desire to leave. I straightened up and picked up my book bag. “Well, you
know
I like a good snark. A very promising fellow.” I patted Jimmy’s shoulder. “But now, my succulent squash, I, alas, must take my leave. I have my first algebra test on Friday and a drama club meeting tomorrow night, so I have to study tonight. When do I get to meet this Derek person?”

“Actually, you can meet him on Friday! He’s coming over. We’re going to watch bad sitcoms and eat cookie dough. It’ll be fun! We can celebrate your algebraic success.”

I felt another stab in my chest. That would have been really fun—if it had been just us.

“Super. Sounds awesome.”

I speed-walked home the long way, via the sidewalks, lost in thought over this new Derek development. Jimmy and I barely had any time to spend together as it was, and if he all of a sudden had a boyfriend, where would I fit in? What if I despised Derek after I met him? If push came to shove, whom would Jimmy choose?

I stared hard at the pavement, my hands clenched into fists around my book-bag straps.

For so long, it had always been Jimmy and Marty. Jimmy and Marty everything. School, shopping, weekends, TV-watching, late-night snarfing of cough drops and Twix
bars—we did everything together. He got the meanings of all my jokes, all my pointed looks, all my thoughts—honestly, I usually didn’t even have to say anything, and he’d totally know what I was thinking.