скачать книгу бесплатно
“So, what, she’s just a butch lesbian?”
The truth is, I’m not really clear on where the lines are between all these things. I was always afraid I’d say the wrong thing if I asked Toni too much about the details.
“No,” I say. “Toni hates the word lesbian.”
“So, what is she?”
“It’s complicated.” I’m getting tired now. “You should look it up sometime. Genderqueer. It’s, like, a really well-known word.”
“Right. Okay. I’ll look it up.”
I should look it up again, too. I read some stuff online back when Toni first told me about it, but I got kind of anxious reading all that, because it seemed really complicated, and I couldn’t figure out where Toni and I fit in. So I stopped reading. That was more than a year ago.
This whole conversation is making me feel really guilty. Not just because I outed Toni to Carroll, though I’m kind of wishing now that I hadn’t done that, either. But talking about Toni at all just reminds me of what I did. Of how Toni looked at me last night.
I need more distractions.
So I show Carroll yearbook pictures and tell him more about my friends back home. He’s shocked by how many gay people went to our high school.
“I think it was partly because it was an all-girl school,” I say. “Going across the street to the guys’ school was so much effort. People got lazy.”
“At my school, I was the only one,” he says.
“That you know of.”
“No. I’m positive. It was a small school. Everybody knew everybody’s business.”
He’s got to be totally wrong, but I let it go. “Were you out?”
“No, but everyone knew anyway. It sucked.” He sticks his lip out in a fake pout. “Do your parents know?”
“Yeah. I told them the summer before ninth grade.”
“Wow.” He shakes his head. “Do your girlfriend’s parents know, too?”
“Yeah. Well, not totally. Toni’s out to them as gay, but not as genderqueer.”
“Is she going to tell them?”
This one I do know the answer to.
“Not at least until college is over,” I say. “Toni’s mother is awful. She’s this total rich bitch. She practically kicked Toni out of the house just for being gay.”
For some reason, Carroll smiles.
“Hey, are you hungry?” He stands up. “I’m starving.”
“Yeah.” Now that he’s mentioned it, I’m starving, too. “Is there a vending machine?”
“Who cares? We’re in New York! They have twenty-four-hour delis here.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. He’s like a little kid.
We take the elevator down fourteen floors again and go outside. I’ve forgotten how much I missed New York at night. Even the stores that have their shutters pulled down for the night still have their signs lit. People are walking down the sidewalk in groups, laughing. I’m going to miss this next semester.
There’s a deli at the end of the block. We pick out ice cream and crackers and peanut M&Ms. At the counter, Carroll asks the clerk for a box of condoms.
I laugh. “What, you think you’re getting lucky tonight?”
“You never know who you’ll meet at breakfast,” he says, all mysterious.
We stop by Carroll’s room so he can drop off his stuff. Juan’s honking snores are so loud we can hear him from the hallway. This sends me into a giggle fit.
“Shh,” Carroll whispers. “I don’t need to give him any more reasons to hate me.”
“Why do you think he hates you?” I ask on the walk back to my room.
“He’s a jock. Jocks always hate me.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“It’s in the jock DNA. It’s like, jocks are born with a fear of falling, a taste for Pabst Blue Ribbon and a powerful hatred of Carroll Ostrowski.”
I laugh and push open my door. The light is out. Strange—it was on when we left.
Then I see a dark shape on one of the beds.
“Crap! She’s alive!” Carroll stage-whispers behind me.
“Shh!”
Wow. I’d forgotten I even had a roommate.
“Mom? Is that you?” the lump on the bed mutters.
Carroll loses it.
I shove him back out the door before his echoing laughs can wake up Samantha. I grab a blanket out of the nearest open laundry basket, dart out into the hall and lock the door behind us.
“Sorry about that,” Carroll says, but we’re both cracking up now.
We go to the lounge at the end of the hall. It’s not much bigger than my room, but it has a microwave and a TV and a couple of unsanitary-looking couches. I find spoons for our ice cream and Carroll turns on the Food Network. It’s a show about waffles. We sit on the least gross couch and eat ice cream out of the cartons with my blanket spread over our laps.
“It’s like a sleepover,” I say. “We should’ve gotten popcorn.”
“Should we go wake up your roommate and invite her?” he says.
“Only if we get your roommate, too,” I say. “Except then he’d just be honking in here.”
“Yeah, it’s better with just us,” he says.
We watch the waffles bake in silence for a while. Then Carroll asks, “So, what do you do for fun when you’re not eating ice cream and watching the Food Network with your new best friend?”
I laugh. “Back home, you know, the usual. Hanging out, parties. I played volleyball and did debate all through high school.”
“Oh, no, you’re a jock, too,” he says. “Are you playing here?”
“No way. College volleyball is crazy intense. Besides, I was never really a jock. I liked playing, and I guess I was pretty good at it, but it was never my absolute favorite thing. Not like with you and theater.”
“Why do you assume I’m obsessed with theater? Just because I could sing you the entire score of Wicked right now?”
I smack his arm and bounce in my seat. “I used to love that show! I’ve seen it, like, thirty times at the Gershwin. What’s your favorite song? Mine used to be ‘Popular’ but it’s so overdone. I think now I like ‘For Good’ more.”
“What?” Carroll isn’t bouncing with me. “You saw it here in New York? I thought you were from Maryland?”
“I am. Well, my family lives in the DC suburbs now, but I lived in Brooklyn until two years ago.”
He looks pissed. “Wait, you’re from New York? Have you been secretly laughing at me this whole time for being such a tourist?”
“No!” Then I remember. “Okay, yeah, I did a little bit when you got so excited about the deli, but only in the nicest possible way.” I smile and tilt my head on his shoulder. “Come on, you can’t be mad at me. You’re my only friend here!”
“That’s true.” He settles back. I guess everything’s okay now.
We watch the waffle show for a while longer. I’m getting tired. I sink down lower on the couch and pull the blanket up to my chin.
Carroll is quiet for another minute. Then he slides down next to me and pulls the blanket up over our heads. I laugh sleepily. It’s so dark under here, all I can see of his face is his nose and his eyebrows. The reek of cigarette smoke is strong.
Now that it’s quiet, I can’t help thinking about Toni again. About what I did. God. I’m a truly horrible person. I don’t see how I can ever make this right.
“Look,” Carroll says, as if he can hear my thoughts. “We’re in college now. It’s going to be amazing. This’ll be a totally different universe from high school. We’ll have nonstop fun from tomorrow through May. I guarantee you.”
I nod against his shoulder. I think about seeing Toni the day after tomorrow, and how maybe college doesn’t need to be completely different from high school.
“Besides, you know what the most important thing is?” he asks. “The key reason college is going to be so amazing, for you in particular?”
“What?” I say, already smiling because I think I know his answer.
“You have me,” he says, kissing me on the cheek with a loud smack.
3 (#ulink_b70f7611-e68f-5be4-8d78-7609fd97c474)
SEPTEMBER
FRESHMAN YEAR OF COLLEGE
1 WEEK APART
TONI
I dodge an unusually aggressive squirrel as I cross Cambridge Street and take out my phone to text my roommate. I’m going to be late for lunch. Ebony will probably already have eaten and be long gone by the time I get there. Ebony’s on the varsity tennis team and inhales food by the shovelful.
I played tennis in high school, too. I even thought I was good. Until I saw Ebony play.
Ebony is cool, though. Vastly superior to our other roommates. We all moved in a week ago, and right away Ebony and I decided we should share the smaller of the two bedrooms in our suite, and let Felicia and Joanna have the bigger one. We avoid running into them in our shared common room as much as we can. In return, Joanna and Felicia use their alone time to complain about Ebony and me. (We know. You can hear everything through the walls in this place.)
Sure enough, when I get to our usual table near the front of the dining hall, there’s already an empty food tray in front of Ebony, who’s wearing gym clothes and munching on a protein bar.
“Sorry.” Ebony sweeps a manicured hand over the tray, indicating the plates full of crumbs and salsa splotches. “I was about to starve to death. I’ll sit with you while you eat, though.”
“You don’t have to,” I say. “I should be reading Race and Politics.”
“Classes have barely started,” Ebony says. “Stop being such a psycho overachiever and go get some food. The only thing you need to know about race and politics is that white people suck.”
“Totally.” I stand up. “Want anything?”
“A banana, maybe? Actually, make that two bananas.”
My phone buzzes with a text while I’m in the food line. Gretchen.
Hey remember I told u about Briana from debate?? Crazy Texas chick w big hair?? Guess what she’s here!!! In my nat sci lab.
Yeah. I remember Briana.
Briana was the star of the national high school debate circuit. Gretchen ran into Briana at tournament after tournament over the past couple of years. They started out as rivals but they got to be friends, sort of.
Here’s what Gretchen told me about Briana: One, Briana was a cheerleader during the off-season. Two, Briana was hot. Three, Briana was brilliant. Four, and best of all, Briana was gay.
Now Briana’s at NYU.
Not that it matters. Sure, Briana gets to see Gretchen every day, but that doesn’t mean anything will happen. Obviously. I trust Gretchen. Mostly.
No, not mostly. I do trust Gretchen. Gretchen only kept the NYU thing a secret to avoid hurting me.
I understand. For real, I do.
I just wish I could force my brain to stop obsessing about it so much.
Gretchen sent me an email the day we left with a list of bus times, but I said I thought we should wait a week before our first visit. I said it was because we needed time to settle in, but the truth was, I also wanted time to figure out what all this meant. How we’d wound up hundreds of miles apart instead of across the river from each other like we’d planned.
I mean, I’m not one of those people who would insist my girlfriend go to a certain school just to be closer to me. I’m not some Neanderthal.
But, damn, this sucks.
What if Gretchen meets someone in New York? What if stupid Briana from Texas screws up everything we have?
Why couldn’t Gretchen just leave well enough alone?
I text Gretchen about how funny it is that Briana’s at NYU. Then I pick up my burger and fries, and trudge back to where Ebony’s drinking from an enormous water bottle. I manage not to slam my tray down on the table, but it’s hard.
