Chapter
5
Only the second day of school and already it's started. Cody and I are walking from our lockers to home-room on Tuesday when someone rams us from behind and slams Cody against a trash can.
“Watch it!” I yell, even though I can't see who it was.
Cody wipes trash juice from the side of the can off his new boot-cut jeans. His face shows more than distaste for the gross. He is afraid.
I hand him a tissue out of my backpack. I'm pretty sure it's clean. “Don't worry. It was just an accident.”
He nods but doesn't look at me. The tissue turns a splotchy brown, and he throws it away. “It's not the only thing.”
“What else? Why didn't you tell me?” I promised Cody this would stop, but really, I'd just hoped it would all go away.
“Didn't want you to worry.” He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a drawstring bag. “It was in my locker this morning.”
I peek inside. “What's Mr. Manly doing at school?”
My sisters gave me a dildo for my fourteenth birthday. I still haven't figured out if it was a joke, a girl-power thing, or just a statement on the sad state of teen sex in the new millennium. Whatever it was, Mr. Manly is still in his gift bag, hidden under my bed.
Cody shakes his head like he can't believe he wants to laugh. “It's not Mr. Manly.” He urges me to lean in. “Look closer.”
This dildo is definitely not Mr. Manly. This is Mr. Manly's older, bigger, black brother. “Oh my God. Why would they give this to you?”
He digs in his backpack. “It came with a card.”
Maybe this will keep you at home.
I give Cody a hug. “It's just some jerk. Ignore them.”
Cody's body quivers. “I can't do it againânot this year, not anymore. Abs, I've got to get out of this place.”
“We'll tell someone. A teacher, or the principal. They'll make it stop.”
On soap operas, teens are only taunted for being uncool, which usually a makeover from a do-gooder character can cure. With Cody, it's not that simple and I understand why he's so afraid to come out. If this is how they treat him when they're not sure, how much worse will it be when they know?
“No one can help me. I don't even know who it is.”
I have a hunch. When you've known someone your whole life, you pretty much know what they are capable of. Sean Evans and Craig Phelps are my two main suspects. They tortured the fetal pig in Bio last year, making it dance with its dissected insides hanging out. To Cody, I say, “We won't know unless we try.”
“No.” He stands up straight, takes the drawstring bag, and stuffs it into his backpack. “It's bad enough what
they
think. I won't have my teachers looking at me weird, thinking I'm . . . you know.”
But you are
. I don't say it, because just the word
gay
makes him wince. There are only three openly gay students at Union High, and they're mostly left alone. I don't know why Cody is singled out. Last year, he dealt with graffiti on his locker, and stupid shit like having his underwear stolen during PE and then returned the next day with a hole cut in the butt. The brush-bys in the hallways, the whispered hate. It escalated in the spring, but no matter how much I begged, he wouldn't tell anyone but me.
The bell rings. We're late. And because Cody swears me to silence, I lie to my Biology II teacher, Mr. Kimball, about having female problems. He lets it go, and I wonder what excuse Cody is giving his teacher.
Mr. Kimball asks us to get our textbooks and open to chapter four. There is a full-color blowup of a fruit fly on the first page. Ugly little buggers.
“Perhaps those of you who took Bio I with me last year remember the famous scientist Gregor Mendel and his ground-breaking experiments with pea plants?” Mr. Kimball asks in what is clearly a rhetorical tone, because he plows ahead without even looking to see if anyone is raising their hand. “Or perhaps not. There has, after all, been a summer recess, which I suspect has had an adverse effect on your memory.”
He pauses to allow time for us to laugh, then shushes us with one of his trademark looks. “Since genetics is a special interest of mine, I thought we'd jump ahead in the text and start this year off with an in-depth study of Mr. Mendel's Laws of Inheritance and how they shaped genetic research. From there, we'll finish off the unit by bringing it all to the present with a look at what's happening in genetics today.”
“Like cloning?” someone in the back asks.
Mr. Kimball dances his eyebrows. “And so much more!”
“Will all this be on the AP test in the spring?” Lucas Fielding, who was in Bio I with me last year, asks. He has a new haircutâshorter around the ears and a little messy on topâ that's way more flattering than the flattop he had last year.
Mr. Kimball's lips thin. He's that weird age men get when they're old, but you can't really tell their age. Forty? Fifty? He clears his throat and says in his always scratchy voice, “Never fear, Mr. Fielding, you'll be amply prepared for the Advanced Placement exam.”
Lucas's shoulders relax and he flips to page seventy in the book. I use the eraser on my pencil to turn a few pages. Charts and more charts. It's going to be a long semester.
“Two more weeks.” Cody kicks rocks out of his way as we walk the mile from our bus stop to home. Two more weeks until he's driving and dust up our noses as we trudge along in the August heat with overweight book bags is a thing of the past. My Bio II book alone weighs about twenty pounds. I should've left it in my locker, but something tells me I'm going to need a lot of boning up on my genetics tables if I'm going to pass this class.
A car slows down behind us. Cody tenses.
“Get in.” It's Jackson in his '98 gray Corolla. “Too hot to walk in this.”
I worry for a second that he'll peel out as soon as we open the doors, a trick he thought was oh so funny when he first got his license, but he doesn't. We climb into the back of the car, which Jackson has turned into an arctic zone. The A/C is so loud I can barely hear the radio.
“Rough day?” Jackson asks when neither of us speaks. He studies us in the rearview mirror. “What's that?”
Cody slaps a hand low on his neck, just under his collar. “What's what?”
“That.”
“Nothing.” Cody doesn't move his hand.
Jackson smiles knowingly into the mirror. “It's a hickey, isn't it? C'mon, man, 'fess up.”
My eyes burn holes in the side of Cody's head. He doesn't turn. I am forced to wrestle his hand away from his neck.
“It
is
a hickey! Cody, who?”
He shrugs and turns red, and the smattering of freckles across his nose blend away. “No one you know.”
“Impossible. Need I remind you how small our school is?”
Cody lowers his hand. “She's a freshman. Just forget it.”
She?
“She who?” Jackson is the one who says it. Our eyes meet in the mirror.
Cody's jaw slams shut. “Nobody, okay? Leave it.”
I bounce a little on the seat. “At least tell me
when
? It's the second day of school. You're not ditching already, are you? Without me?”
“Art,” is all he'll say. I
knew
I should've taken that class. Everyone knows how free Ms. Sheila is with that hall pass.
We pull into their driveway, and Cody jumps out before the car is fully stopped.
Jackson turns around. “That was weird.”
In a lot of ways. “He's always been private. He'll tell us when he's ready.”
At least, that's what I always thought. Now I'm not so sure. Something's different with him lately, and I don't like it. I also don't like that Cody won't tell on those jerks from earlier today.
“You okay?” He must see the worry on my face. I try to fake it, but he knows me pretty well. “Tell me. Maybe I can help.”
“It's nothing you'd understand.” I wish Cody hadn't made me promise not to tell. I wish I didn't take that promise so seriously.
“Try me.”
If Jackson was still at our school, it might be his friends teasing Cody. It wasn't that Jackson was mean to us last year, but his and my ideas of funny are pretty far apart. Like I'm supposed to find having my locker filled with a week's worth of Jackson's football-practice socks amusing. And his friends were worse, always with the bodily-fluid jokes and bra snapping. “Maybe you can guess?”
“Some guy is harassing you.” His hands clench the wheel and his shoulders are rigid.
“No, not me. Guess again.”
Jackson's eyes light with understanding. “Cody? What're they doing?”
I hook my pinky and wiggle it at him. “Guess.”
“You promised not to tell?”
“Bingo.”
He faces forward again. His shoulders slump. “Is it bad?”
“He's taking it bad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Picking my backpack up off the floor, I slide across the backseat and out the door. Jackson stops me with a honk.
I circle around to the driver's side. “What?”
“I'll drive you guys to and from school.”
A mixed blessing. “Why?”
“I want to get to the bottom of this. I want to be there if he needs me.”
There are a lot of reasons why riding to and from school with Jackson is not a good idea. I try to find one that he can't argue with. “Don't you have to go to A.U. soon? When does your semester start?”
“Yesterday.”
“What?” My eyebrows shoot up. “Are you kidding me?”
He closes his eyes for a second. “It's no big deal. Just freshman orientation stuff. Real classes don't start until next week.”
“But aren't you a freshman?”
“I'll catch up. Right now, I have some stuff I need to figure out. I can't go off to college until my head's back on straight.”
I look at Jackson, really look at him. He has been Cody's pain-in-the-ass brother for as long as I can remember. Then, oh so briefly last spring, he was my hottie next door with the melty kisses. But what I see in his eyes now has never been there before.
“You're different,” I say.
“The stuff I saw on my trip to Nicaragua . . . kids, little kids, living in the streets, starving, sick, dying, and no one doing anything to help them. I don't think anyone could be the same after that. So I'm here, for a little while anyway, until I figure things out.”
I search his face, his eyes, for some clue about this change in him. “Maybe someday you'll tell me more about your trip.”
“Maybe.”
We leave it at that.
Although Kait is a second-time senior, she isn't going to Union. She's in some kind of alternative, study-at-your-own-pace program. It's pretty sweet, because she doesn't have to attend classes. She checks in with her adviser twice a week, and in between, she studies at home. Or at least, she's supposed to study. What she's actually doing is working extra hours at the Blockbuster.
“Pleeeeeease,” she begs me now from where she is propped against a mound of pillows on her bed. “I know you read it this summer. One measly paragraph, that's all I'm asking.”
She is talking about me writing her summary for
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath. I am disinclined to do her homework, especially considering I have plenty of my own to do. I beat a pencil against the notebook in which I'm trying to make notes about the genetic research on fruit flies. It's not going well. I'd like to blame the fact that my bed is too hard, or that the overhead light is too bright, or that Meg and Drew are distracting me with their happy-in-love smiles on poster after poster, but I fear it's just that fruit flies who got it on half a century ago are not intrinsically interesting.
“Please, please, please? I'm supposed to be at work at eight tonight. I have to leave in half an hour, and I haven't even showered yet. I'll never get this stupid essay done by tomorrow. ” Kait's voice cracks like she's about to start crying.
When I think about how much she has cried lately, I decide to do my future niece a favor and keep her mother away from Sylvia's depressed and suicidal work.
“Sure, I'll do it,” I say, deciding that perhaps the
Kate and Leopold
poster is hurting my concentration. Hugh Jackman is beaucoup distracting.
“You will?” Kait's mouth actually drops open like you see in cartoons, but her tongue doesn't roll across the ground.
I push my own homework onto the floor. “Are there guidelines or anything?”
I'll tell you my secret. The main reason I do well in school is that I read the directions for every assignment and do exactly what the teacher asks for. No more, no less.
Kait hands me a paper that isâsurprise, surpriseâtearstained. “Thanks, Abs. I didn't think you would.”
I'm not sure what to say to that. As I read the assignment, I see that it is not
one measly paragraph
but in fact an opinion essay with a minimum of five paragraphs. My future niece better appreciate the sacrifices I'm making for her.
“Abby?” Kait worries a fingernail between her teeth. She won't bite it off, just sort of sucks it until the nail polish peels. “Can I ask you something?”
“I'm not doing your math, too.” I twirl my pencil while thinking of a stunning opening line for her essay. I look to Hugh for inspiration but he's no help.
“Do you think Steve still loves me?”
“What?” I drop the pencil. “The Guitar Player?
That
Steve?”