Playing for the Other Team (14 page)

“You’re really owning this,” she said admiringly as we made our way into the building together.

I shrugged. “At this point, it would take a miracle to make things return to normal, so I might as well.”

“Maybe I should try girls,” she mused. “What do you think?”

“I
think
I spent a lot of time yesterday trying to explain to my mom how sexual orientation is not a choice, so if you go and prove me wrong now, I’m totally screwed.”

She giggled. “I would never do that to you. But I could claim I was only experimenting when I dated Trip.”

“He’s crushed enough as it is,” I pointed out.

“Not nearly,” she groused.

My hopes that this might be a relatively calm day for a change evaporated when we approached the hallway that housed my locker, just to find a big cluster of students assembled there, talking excitedly. I tried to figure out what had them all up in arms, and when that proved fruitless, I changed tactics and simply pushed my way through the crowd. Oddly, my locker appeared to be the center of attention of the assembled crowd. When I finally got close enough to spot the sheet that someone had taped very thoroughly on the door of my locker, my heart sank. This could not be good.

“What the—” Elle didn’t even manage to finish her sentence before I had pushed ahead of her and through the remaining students. The name of the local hospital was the first thing I could make out, proudly displayed in the top left corner of the sheet. The rest of the print was smaller, and I couldn’t read the words yet, but their arrangement made me think of some sort of test result.

Then I finally pushed the last idiot aside and read:

Patient: Jasper Everett Reyes

I ripped down the sheet, seeing red. What the hell
was
this? Who did stuff like that, spreading around people’s medical records—records which more than likely should have been confidential to start with?

“What does it say?” Elle wanted to know.

“Don’t know.” I ripped the paper in two. “Don’t care.” I repeated the process, shredding furiously until my hands were holding a pile of confetti, then stalked over to the nearest trash can. A hell of a lot of eyes were suddenly on me as I dumped the whole mess in with brown apple cores and failed pop quizzes.

“Dude,” someone said, stepping up to me. “You should have—”

“Go away,” I requested, none too politely.

“Yeah, but didn’t you see what—”

“Go the fuck away,” I screamed at him at the top of my lungs and from less than a foot away. The effect was pretty impressive. The guy acted as though someone had just run him into a wall. He swayed backward, looking baffled, and finally stumbled away.

“Thanks,” I said with mock-cheerfulness to no one in particular and opened my locker with far more force than strictly necessary.

“I don’t understand,” Elle confessed.

I didn’t either, but I knew enough to be royally pissed off. “Just ignore it,” I advised her.

“I don’t even know what I’m—”

“Just. Ignore. It.”

“Okay,” she said soothingly.

I grabbed my books and rushed to class without another word. Hopefully, Elle would understand my bad mood and why I was being so short with her.

In the middle of my second class, I was called to the administration office. At that point, I was the opposite of surprised and in fact getting to be pretty cynical when I was led into Vice Principal Barron’s office. I almost didn’t see Jasper sitting there at first. He was slumped into a chair by the wall, his head in his hands, and he looked utterly defeated.

Mr. Barron, disgustingly poised behind his desk, cleared his throat. “We are here to discuss the incident that occurred this morning,” he informed me as he waved me closer and pointed to the only empty chair in the room.

I sat. “Okay.”

He looked at me expectantly. I stared back. Jasper had not moved an inch from his spot or reacted in any other way, and I felt awful for him. I still didn’t know what had been on the sheet I’d torn up, but obviously it was not something he had wanted to advertise.

“The incident where a confidential document was taped to your locker,” Mr. Barron prompted and leaned forward a little.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said testily. I wasn’t in the mood for dealing with Barron, not when Jasper looked so miserable. Decisively, I slid my chair next to his and put my hand on his arm. He didn’t react.

“Well?” Mr. Barron asked.

“Well what? I tore it down and threw it away. What else do you want me to say?”

“Do you know who put it up, Mr. Thomas?”

I opened my mouth to tell him that if I did, I’d be busy putting my fist in their face, but before I could get the first word out, there was a knock on the door.

“Yes?” Mr. Barron called out. He looked annoyed. I hoped he was.

“Mike Johnson’s father is here,” one of the office workers informed us through the closed door. “He is rather…unhappy.”

“Dear God.” Mr. Barron wiped his face with his sleeve. “Keep him calm,” he shouted back. “Just tell him that Mike’s anger managem—”

His mouth snapped shut as he glanced our way, and then he pushed himself up with a deep sigh and went to the door. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and vanished.

I was thankful for the break. Turning my attention fully to Jasper, I hugged him more tightly. After some initial hesitancy, he leaned into me.

“I didn’t read it,” I murmured into his hair. “I swear I didn’t. I stopped as soon as I saw your name and realized what I was looking at.”

Finally, Jasper raised his head. “Thanks,” he said. His cheek was moist when it brushed against my nose. “But everyone knows by now anyway. You’ll hear eventually. I’d rather tell you right now.” He blew out a long, slow breath. “Three years ago. I had gonorrhea. I’d only had one boyfriend at the time, but I was stupid enough to believe he wouldn’t cheat on me.”

“Asshole,” I said succinctly, then, just to be clear, added, “Him, not you.”

“As far as who taped it up, I can’t prove it, but I’m sure it was Christopher.” Jasper snuggled against me again. “Had to have been. When he wanted to stop using condoms, I told him about it. Showed him the paperwork that said I completed the treatment too, but he made a few nasty comments about it while we were still together. He’s the only one apart from my parents that I ever told.”

Yeah, Christopher
definitely
needed a dentist appointment.

“I’m sorry,” Jasper whispered miserably.

“Not your fault.”

“Yeah, but—” Jasper broke off when the door opened once again and a harassed-looking Mr. Barron dropped back into his chair.

“Well,” he said. “Where were we?”

“Right here,” I couldn’t stop myself from informing him. He shot me a look but apparently decided to otherwise ignore my smartassery.

“Well,” he said again, folding his hands and placing them on his desk. “We have already received three parent complaints—”

“Complaints about what, exactly?” I interrupted him.

“They are concerned about there being a student with an STD at school.”

“It was
three years ago
.” Jasper finally glanced up. He looked like he was about to be sick, but his voice was strong. “I have the paperwork to prove I’m clean. I—”

“That shouldn’t even matter,” I cut him off. “This is private. He shouldn’t have to defend himself for something that is in no way his fault.”

Barron glared. “Our student code of conduct—”

“—should punish people who spread someone’s private information, not the victims of it,” I growled. I’d gone from mildly annoyed at our vice principal to utterly furious in a matter of seconds.

“Nevertheless, the parents who contacted the school expect us to act.” Barron gave me a pointed look. “And that means, in addition to looking into the perpetrator, that we will have to suspend Mr. Reyes until he can provide a current doctor’s note stating—”

“Bullshit!” I screamed at him, jumping up.

He met my glare evenly. “And one day of suspension for your contrary attitude, I think, Mr. Thomas.”

“This is—”

“Bry, please.” Jasper took my hand, which got me to look away from Barron and down at him. “Don’t make it worse. Please. I just want to go.”

So I bit my tongue while giving Barron one more toxic stare, tightened my grip on Jasper’s hand, and led him from the room. Once outside, we’d barely taken two steps before he slumped against the wall.

“I feel like I’m right in the middle of a nightmare,” he whispered. “I can’t believe he did that.”

I wasn’t sure whether he meant Barron or Christopher with that statement, but I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut and give him a hug instead.

“Fuck,” he muttered into my shoulder. I concurred.

* * * *

I was starting to be afraid he might shatter.

I’d taken Jasper home—
fuck
the attendance policy, seriously—and into his room, where he’d collapsed onto his bed and rolled the sheets around his body like a protective cocoon. And then he’d spent a good hour staring blankly at the ceiling, exuding a palpable air of defeat.

“I’m sorry,” I said for probably the fiftieth time that day.

Jasper blinked. It was his only reaction. I longed to hear him mutter at least a gentle “Not your fault, sunshine,” but that didn’t seem to be in the cards for me.

“I wish I could fix it.” I was talking to myself as much as to him. “I
so
wish I could do that for you. Your ex is a grade-A douchebag. There’s got to be something wrong in his head, because this bullshit is just…” I tried to find words. “So
low
.”

“Yeah,” Jasper said tonelessly. “He’s horrible. And I was only with him because I’m worthless and pathetic and desperate. Figured I’d never do better than him anyway.”

“Don’t talk about yourself like that.” I nudged him from my spot on the floor next to his bed. “Don’t even start. I’ll have you know I have impeccable taste in men.”

Jasper gave me a weak smile, which I optimistically counted as progress. Then he sat up, threw off the sheets, and left the room before I had a chance to ask what he was doing. My unspoken question was answered a moment later when I heard water running and then the sound of his toothbrush.

He returned a couple of minutes later. I hadn’t moved from my spot. Jasper gave me a lost, helpless look before pulling his shirt over his head and then—whoa!—unbuckling his belt and ridding himself of his jeans. While I was still trying to process seeing Jasper in nothing but black boxer-briefs, he brushed past me, climbed back into bed, and pulled the sheet up to his chin.

“Hold me?” he asked tentatively into the ensuing silence. “Please?”

Because it seemed weird to join him fully clothed, I stripped down to my underwear as well and then tried to ignore how much of my skin was in contact with his when I joined him and put my arms around him. He felt fragile, and smaller than he should have.

“Should we talk about this?” I wanted to know. “Figure out how we’re gonna get this stupid suspension revoked?”

“If it’s all right with you, I’d like to pretend for five minutes that my life didn’t just go down the drain,” he said.

“Pretend all you want.” I clung to him. My lips wandered down his neck, kissed across his shoulder blade. “Not going anywhere.”

He sighed and relaxed into me. “I don’t even deserve you.”

“Sure you do” was the most clever thing I could come up with in response. “This isn’t your fault, Jas. None of it is.”

He was silent. I kept pressing small, comforting kisses to his skin in the hope that they would maybe, magically, take away some of his anguish. We were lying there so intimately, his back pressed against my chest, my legs entwined with his, and it felt completely natural. It felt nice.

“Sunshine,” Jasper said. “I’m really not all that sure Christopher is going to leave it at this.”

“He’d better. Else I’m going to have to become a dentist.”

Jasper snorted. “It’s just, I don’t want to have to keep worrying about you finding out all this stuff about me. Honestly, I’d rather you hear it from me. That way at least I know it’s the truth. And if I disgust you, well, I can’t help that, but I’d rather just rip the Band-Aid off.”

“I’d start telling you how nothing about you is ever going to disgust me,” I said, “but it’s probably less time-consuming if you just talk and then I show you how not disgusted by you I am.”

“That…would be nice.” Jasper made a big production of turning around. He cuddled up against me and actually managed to look into my eyes when I glanced down. “So. My first boyfriend and the gonorrhea thing.”

I stroked my fingers through his hair in silent support. He shuddered but kept going.

“I never used protection with Jeremy. I trusted him. I was so freaking naive. We never even discussed it. I just thought, we’re a couple so…that’s all there is to it.” His sigh brushed against my shoulder when he turned his head. His eyes once more found the ceiling and lost their focus. “He was almost three years older than me. I felt
so
worldly, dating an eighteen-year-old. He always gave me crap because I wasn’t allowed to sleep over at his place. I mean, we had sex, but it was, like, a daytime activity, you know? All hurried and stuff. But I kept begging my parents, and after I swore up and down I’d behave myself, they let me spend the weekend.”

“You don’t sound like that turned out well,” I remarked.

“Jeremy…he took me to a party. It was some guy’s birthday, and almost everyone there was gay, and everyone but Jeremy and I was, like, in their twenties. I was fifteen and completely in over my head. I’d never been to a party like that. I was totally intimidated. Before I knew what was happening, I was surrounded by people I didn’t know, who were trying to get me liquored up.”

His words made me want to scream. I kept picturing the innocent, wide-eyed boy who’d passed me a note in eighth grade. He’d been so sweet and quiet, and he did
not
belong in that kind of environment.

“Anyway.” Jasper took several deep breaths. He looked like he might be sick. “I didn’t have a whole lot, really, but it was my first time drinking, so I didn’t know how to handle it. At some point I just passed out on a couch. Woke up to two guys undressing me. They were holding me down, and…” Jasper swallowed hard. “And Jeremy was watching. Telling them what to do to me.”