Jumpstart the World (3 page)

So I thought.

Then, coming back from lunch, I saw somebody’s locker had gotten graffitied. Some idiot had taken a spray-paint can with a narrow tip—the kind kids use for tagging—and painted the word “QUEER” on somebody’s locker. They’d painted it vertically, with the
Q
on the top, and it covered the whole locker.

How humiliating. For somebody.

When I got close enough to read the locker numbers, turned out the somebody was me.

I kept double-checking the number. Thinking I was making a mistake. I had to be. I mean, new school—I just forgot the number. But it checked against the number I’d written on the inside cover of my notebook. Still, it wasn’t until my key fit the lock that it hit me. The insult really had been meant especially for me.

I looked around to see a group of older boys watching me. Waiting to see what I would do. They looked pretty pleased with themselves.

“I’m not gay,” I said.

They laughed and walked off down the hall.

I’m not gay. Why would somebody paint that on my locker? I’m not gay. Must have been a case of mistaken identity.

Or the haircut.

I thought it made me look like Annie Lennox. I didn’t think it made me look gay.

I had no idea what to do about the locker, so I just walked away.

I went into the girls’ room and looked at myself in the mirror, trying to see if I looked more Annie Lennox or more gay. I guess it sort of depended on how you looked at me. When I looked for Annie, I saw her, but when I looked for gay, I guess I saw something that might have given somebody the wrong idea.

Then all of a sudden, there was this girl standing right behind me. I saw her in the mirror, and spun around. She was short, and heavy, with hair not much longer than mine, only it was dyed blue. She was wearing a top that didn’t cover her whole midriff. She had a ring in her nose.

She
looked gay. Actually.

“Here,” she said. She handed me a cleaning rag made from half an old towel, and a metal can of paint thinner.

Probably I should have said thanks, but it just happened so fast. “You just walk around carrying paint thinner?”

“We’ve all been there,” she said. I guess she meant the locker. I figured, yeah, she probably had. She looked like she would have to take that kind of crap on a pretty regular basis.

“How do I get this back to you?”

“I’ll be right here,” she said. “I’m not going to French today. I’ll be in here having a smoke or two all period. When you get the locker cleaned up, you can bring it back.”

She lit a cigarette.

I went off to clean my locker, and it wasn’t until I was most of the way down the hall that I realized I never did say thank you.

When I got back to the girls’ room, she was still there. Still smoking.

“Thanks,” I said. “That really saved my ass.”

“No worries.”

I went over to the sink and washed out the towel as best I could, and washed my hands. My hands still smelled a little like paint thinner, even after I scrubbed them raw.

She just stood there, half in an open stall, smoking and watching me. Then she said, “You can hang with us if you want.”

“I’m not gay,” I said. Sounding a little ticky, I think. “I don’t know why people are saying this stuff about me. I just cut my hair to piss off my mother.”

“I didn’t ask if you were gay. I just said you could hang with us.”

“Oh,” I said. And then felt really embarrassed. “You meant either way.”

“Yeah.”

“So you were actually just being nice.”

“Pretty much.”

“So I was being … like … a total jerk.”

“Pretty much.”

“Sorry.”

“Whatever.”

“No, really. I mean, seriously. I’m sorry for being a jerk to you. I actually try really hard not to be. I try to spend as little time as possible being a jerk. But then sometimes I find out I just was. Already. And it’s too late. You know?”

“Special dispensation,” she said. “You’re having a bad day.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll take it.”

It was a hot afternoon, but I didn’t know it for real until I got out of the air-conditioned school. I walked home instead of taking the subway. I turned on the air conditioner in my apartment for just a few minutes.

I hate air conditioners. In our old apartment, Mother always kept the place like a deep freeze. She had this thing about sweating. She never wanted it to happen to her. She viewed sweating as something that happened to lower-class strangers only. The air in that place always felt so unnatural.

After a while, I turned it off and opened all the windows. Then I crawled out onto the fire escape and sat outside my window, just watching the city go by underneath.

I watched cabs bunch up and then go again, heard them honk their horns. I watched people bustle by down there, and heard the sirens of fire trucks or ambulances I never saw. Sometimes I could smell the cigarette smoke all the way up on the third floor. The exhaust smell was constant. You almost forgot you were breathing fumes after a while.

The air never really moved out there. It felt thick and heavy, like there was barely enough to breathe.

I heard Frank’s voice say, “Radical new haircut.”

I looked over and saw he was on the fire escape outside his window. I don’t know how long he’d been there.

“Yeah,” I said. “Another bright move. Just about as smart as the cat.”

Speaking of the cat, I hadn’t seen him since I got home. I’d have to be careful he didn’t scoot out the open window.

“Sorry you did it now?”

“Yeah. Kind of. I had to eat shit for it at school.”

“Yeah, school is like that.”

“I got called a queer.”

“Oh.”

“I’m not.”

“I wouldn’t care if you were.”

“I’m not!”

“Okeydokey.”

Then we just sat quietly for a long time. It was starting to get dusky. It gets dusky fast in the city, inside that maze of tall buildings. I felt like I could just sit there and watch the light get dim.

“And the worst part is,” I said, “I have no friends at school. Not one. I’ve been there one whole day, and I don’t know anybody. Days like this, it sucks to have no friends.”

Which was a very weird thing for me to say, because I’m not a huge fan of people, and I usually prefer being alone over spending time with people, unless I know them really well or unless I’ve known them for a long time.

I guess I’m one of those people who don’t make friends all that easily. My best friend in middle school, Rachel, once got me a shirt that said
DOESN’T PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS
. But I never wore it. Because it was too true to be funny.

“This might be a stupid thing to say,” Frank said. “I know you’re talking about friends your own age. So I hardly qualify. But if you ever get so desperate for a friend that even an old guy starts looking good to you … I’m a good listener.”

A good listener. What a concept. That idea was so foreign to me that I just sat a minute, trying to picture how that would go. We definitely never kept any good listeners around my house. My old one, I mean.

“Thanks,” I said. “I may actually take you up on that. I mean, stranger things have happened.”

“So, listen,” he said. “Is your kitchen unpacked yet? I mean, could you even find a fork if you needed one?”

“I thought I’d go to the deli later.”

“Molly just made a batch of her homemade chicken noodle soup. You’re welcome to some. You can eat with us, or I’ll just bring you over a bowl. Whatever you want.”

Ah. So that was the other half of “we.” A woman named Molly. I’d been kind of thinking maybe Frank was gay. Something about the gentleness of him. Sort of the opposite of macho. That
and the way that he was so quick to tell me he would be okay with
me
being gay. But back to the issue of this invitation at hand. I really wanted to say no. But I really love homemade chicken noodle soup. My grandmother used to make it before she died. I hadn’t had food like that for years. Mother made food like shrimp cocktail or chilled soups.

“Does she even make the noodles from scratch?”

“Yup. Even the noodles.”

“I’ll be right over.”

Molly made her homemade chicken soup with whole-wheat noodles. I wasn’t used to that. But it was good. It had lots of big chunks of chicken and fresh tomatoes and big pieces of vegetables, almost like a stew.

“The thing that sucks the most,” I said, “is that Donald totally knows when my birthday is. And Mother knows he knows. So it’s this really stupid game. Choose me over your own daughter. And he keeps winning. That’s why I’m even here.”

“What do you mean?” Molly asked.

Molly was a throwback to the sixties. She had black hair in a long braid down her back like some kind of Native American princess. She wore purple. She was plump. Mother would disapprove.

I think part of me was
trying
to disapprove. I wanted not to like Molly for some reason. But it was hard. She was like Frank in that way. Someone you just almost had to like. You had no grounds not to. And it’s not like me to be looking for reasons to disapprove of someone, so I had no idea what was up with that. For the moment, I just chalked it up to my generally stressed and foul mood.

But now, looking back, I think part of me might have been
just the tiniest bit aware of the fact that I was jealous of her. Because she got to live with Frank. And I didn’t. But I’m sure I would have argued strenuously if you’d tried to tell me that at the time.

“Donald basically just said to Mother, ‘I don’t want a teenager around. Choose.’ And I’m here. So we all know who she chose.”

“Wow,” Frank said. “That had to hurt.”

I preferred to think of it as infuriating. Hurtful was a whole other ball game.

We all ate in silence for a long time.

The soup was so damn good it hurt me to scrape the last of it out of the bowl. I felt like I could eat it all day long. Like I’d been starving.

I hadn’t eaten in so long. I mean, really eaten. I’d nibbled. The food was making me feel more grounded.

I said, “Would it be tacky to ask for seconds?”

“Are you kidding?” Molly said. “It’s the highest compliment. Besides, you’re so skinny. We need to put some meat on those bones.”

Frank and Molly had two tabby cats, George and Gracie. They both rubbed against my legs at once. I wished my cat would do that. I reached down and picked one up and held him tight. Or her. I didn’t know if I had George or Gracie. I didn’t care. I loved friendly cats.

“Well, at least you were eighteen,” Frank said. Then I just waited to see if he was smart enough to figure it out on his own. “Hey. Wait a second. Your birthday is next week? Your mother said you just
had
a birthday.”

Bingo.

“That was a little white lie,” I said. “It’s next week. I’ll be sixteen.”

In the silence that followed, I watched them look at each other. I think I learned a lot from that look.

It’s not like I didn’t know that it’s pretty radical to dump a kid in her own apartment at barely age sixteen. I knew. But my mother insisted on acting like it was no big deal. And even though I didn’t believe her, I saw it all over again through Frank’s and Molly’s eyes. It was a pretty dicey thing to do.

I felt vindicated.

Also scared.

“That’s not even legal,” Molly said.

That scared me even more.

“Oh, God, please. Don’t say anything. Don’t get Child Protective Services in on this. Please. That’s about the only way this could get worse.”

“But you have to have someone looking after you.”

Frank hadn’t spoken yet. I was waiting to hear what he would say.

“She’ll look in on me,” I said.

“From the other side of town? That’s criminal!” Molly had a highly developed sense of outrage. I could tell. She wanted life to be fair. I think I’d given up on that.

“
We’ll
look after her,” Frank said.

It was the sweetest, nicest, most wonderful thing anybody had ever said to me. It was the closest thing to open, unguarded caring that had ever been thrown my way.

I could have kissed him.

Then I sat a minute, wondering which left field that weird thought had come from.

And then I did something I don’t do every day. I said thank you like I really meant it. Because I really did.

THREE
The Heartbreak of Too Many Guys Named Bob

W
hen I woke up the next morning, Toto was up on the bed with me. As far from me as he could possibly get, but up on the bed.

And get this: he was purring.

Not at anybody or anything in particular. Just huddled there with his front legs all tucked under him, purring.

Then I thought about Frank.

Or maybe it would be better to say I
felt
about him. Felt something. Something weird.

But that little uneasy something was probably just about school looming. The Frank thing was fine. He was my friend. A nice new friend. I really liked him, sure. Who wouldn’t? But just as a friend. Anything else would be pointless and stupid. And completely embarrassing.

So that’s what I felt. Exactly what I said I felt.

I just really liked Frank as a friend.

Toto was still sitting there purring. I reached out to touch him. Or, I guess this would be a more accurate way to put it: I gave my hand a nerve signal to move, and before it even could, Toto sensed what was coming and split.

I just lay there, thinking, Well, that was nice while it lasted.

After that, I stuck my head out the window a lot, to see if Frank was sitting out on the fire escape. But he had school four nights a week.

Molly said he was working as a veterinary technician all day and then going to school to be a veterinarian at night. I ran into her in the hall one day, and she told me that. She said it would take him a long time.

I took it kind of hard. Hearing that he wasn’t around much. But then again, I don’t have tons and tons of friends. And only one ever offered to look after me. Even my mother isn’t entirely committed to that.

It took me five days to find him out there.